Third Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C, RCL)

How do we wade through the vast morass of different teachings and beliefs about the God of the Bible?

In an uncertain, murky time, God gives the people a gift: ten laws.

Stanley Hauerwas’s The Peaceable Kingdom at 40

What are we willing to sacrifice for racial justice?

This isn't the day we envisioned, but it is holy because God is in it.

The word of God is living and active; it meets us where we are.

Brian Brock’s book is both academic and deeply personal.

As a homiletics professor, I would be inclined to give Jesus a passing grade, and not just because he is Jesus.

There’s a lot of urgency in that single word today.

How would Norman Rockwell have painted Jesus' homecoming to Nazareth?

The thin cannot say to the fat, "I have no need of you."

Theologian Deanna Thompson used to criticize the pervasive technological creep overtaking our lives. Then she was diagnosed with cancer.

For several years, I directed the Center for Pastoral Excellence at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. The center hosts five initiatives that together address and support the long arc of ministry through a variety of resources and research projects. Its name--the Center for Pastoral Excellence--has been somewhat controversial.

When asked about Pope Francis’s call to America for a welcoming immigration policy, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) perhaps unwittingly invoked a biblical trope used countless times in American Protestant churches. I call it the “American Nehemiad.” 

The book of Nehemiah is political. 

In this week’s Gospel reading, many people praise Jesus’ teaching—until he claims that he is the fulfillment of the scripture he reads. It is difficult for American Christians to grasp how shocking Jesus’ announcement is to a first-century synagogue.