Sometimes reading the lectionary feels like picking up someone else’s library book by mistake and finding familiar words but an unfamiliar story. This week’s Gospel lesson is like that, a chunk...

How do we experience resurrection in our earthly life? We often think of our eternal life beginning when our mortal life ends. But Paul’s words in Romans 6 call us to...

We refer to the writings of Paul as epistles—a literary form that uses a letter format. Paul’s epistles are meant as teaching tools to be read aloud in the early church....

When I read psalms I often try to imagine who the narrator is and why he or she composed the psalm. Sometimes I imagine the psalmist as a liturgist, rousing a...

If we pivot our focus in this passage from the history of Israel—the formation of the covenant family—to read it as a story about spiritual formation, the symbols and textures emerge...

The story of Hagar and Ishmael being sent into the wilderness has as its backstory a great moment in biblical history gone sour. Abraham and Sarah have received a powerful, joyful...

Travel light, but travel with Christ’s authority to preach the nearness of the kingdom and to heal the sick and raise the dead. These instructions to the twelve apostles follow the...

These verses offer a simple description of what Jesus does. He teaches, he preaches or proclaims, and he heals. All these flow out of his love of God and his compassion...

“Christ arrives right on time. . . . He doesn’t wait for us to get ready” (the message). The first movement of the gospel symphony is that God loves us; God makes the first...

God makes us right, gives us peace, brings us into grace, and offers us hope for the future. Despite our own best efforts and mighty struggles, God is always before us...