[S]in in popular Christianity is often understood individualistically, obscuring the reality of social sin. An emphasis upon sin most often leads to introspection about what I have done wrong. Of cour...
[I]n addition to being a Spirit person, healer, and wisdom teacher, Jesus was a social prophet. There was passion in his language. Many of his sayings (as well as actions) challenged the domination sy...
What was going on at the time? What were the circumstances that the author addressed? What did the author’s words and allusions mean in their ancient historical and literary setting? Without context,...
We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it...
The risen Jesus opens up the meaning of scripture. The risen Jesus is known in the sharing of bread. The risen Jesus journeys with us, whether we know it or not. There are moments in which we do come...
The phrase kingdom of God (and such similar reverential phrases as kingdom of heaven) denoted, not a place where God ruled, but rather the fact that God ruled—or, rather, that he soon would rule, beca...
The United States over the last thirty years has seen a growing gap - indeed, a deepening gulf - between rich and poor. The gap is significantly greater than in any other developed nation. Moreover, t...
The Bible’s function as sacrament is familiar to many Christians in its private devotional use. This common Christian practice involves spending time with a passage from the Bible and lingering over i...
Rather than imagining God as a personlike being out there, this concept imagines God as the encompassing Spirit in whom everything that is, is. The universe is not separate from God, but in God. Indee...
Our culture’s secular wisdom does not affirm the reality of the Spirit; the only reality about which it is certain is the visible world of our ordinary experience. Accordingly, it looks to the materia...
Moreover, when you think about it, faith as belief is relatively impotent, relatively powerless. You can believe all the right things and still be in bondage. You can believe all the right things and...
Jesus was not attacking Judaism but telling his fellow Jews that their moment had come and that they were in danger of missing it. He was not criticizing Jewish religion and offering a different varie...
Importantly, the issue as we describe the wealthy and powerful is not whether they—in our case, the Jerusalem authorities centered in the temple—were corrupt, if by that we mean an individual failing....
I am convinced that salvation in the biblical tradition has to do primarily with this life.
He points beyond himself to God—to God’s character and passion. This is the meaning of our christological language and our credal affirmations about Jesus: in this person we see the revelation of God,...
For Jesus, compassion was more than a quality of God and an individual virtue: it was a social paradigm, the core value for life in community. To put it boldly: compassion for Jesus was political.
Eschatology is not, of course, about the destruction of the earth, but about its transfiguration, not about the end of the world, but about the end of evil, injustice, violence—and imperialism.
Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and indi...
Days pass, and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles. Fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the dark...
But redemption in the Bible and in Paul is not about the forgiveness of sins. Rather, it is a metaphor of liberation from bondage—from life in Egypt, from a life of slavery. The redemption that is in...