Tag: Bible
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Bearing Scars and Good News
Homily for the Feast of St. Luke (observed), Evensong, 10/19/2025Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Detroit (detroitcathedral.org) This morning we observed yesterday’s feast of St. Luke, and we continue that observance this evening. St. Luke’s day has long been important in this cathedral—which is why we can move it to a…
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The Lord is risen indeed!
Alleluia! Something truly unprecedented has happened. God has become human: fully human and fully divine. I don’t know what that means, exactly. It’s unprecedented. Then, this God-man died. Men—well, people of all genders, and also all living things—die all the time. But God? It’s unprecedented. Now he’s back. And honestly?…
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Hopelessness and Holy Saturday
God is dead. This year in particular, many of us don’t have to really stretch to put ourselves in the mindset of the profound hopelessness Jesus’ follwers must have been feeling the day after Jesus died. There was nothing to do but mourn, except maybe to hide just in case…
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A hill I would probably die on
Did God abandon Jesus on the cross? My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? This saying of Jesus on the cross is referred to as his “cry of dereliction.” Dereliction, of course, means abandonment. Many Christians rightly find deep consolation in this: Jesus felt God-forsaken, as we often…
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Some unpolished thoughts on Maundy Thursday
Ideally, I’d have written this post yesterday and posted it early today; but I’m late. On the plus side, I can share what I heard in tonight’s gospel lection while I was at church. Here’s the part that struck me: And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given…
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Whose is the kingdom, the power, and the glory?
Holy Week is here again: that annual liturgical reminder of the horrors humans are capable of. We tame it—make it about the provision of a meek and mute divine sacrificial victim to atone for our personal sins. It’s such a familiar story. Our hymnals automatically flip themselves open to “All…
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In the Beginning Was the Word
And God said, “Letthere be light!”And there was light, or would have been, had God been crafting a cosmos intelligible to the Bronze Age mind, or mine. Scientists—specifically, astrophysicists—tell us that we can detect light from the Big Bang, the background microwave radiation all around us. We can see into…
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First Sunday in Lent
I am not a fan of Lent. There is altogether too much breast-beating for my taste. Or, rather, for my mental and spiritual health. I’m trying to recast it in my own mind, because I know it means so much more. As one of the Proper Prefaces for Lent says,…
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Trying so hard to be ordinary
It’s a weird calendar this year for us church folk. Christmas Eve was on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, and Ash Wednesday will be on Valentine’s Day again. This past Saturday, January 6, was the Feast of the Epiphany—a feast you would think would be transferred to the nearest Sunday,…
