Jonah reveals one of the secrets of the prophet game: they secretly don’t want to succeed. Prophets pronounce God’s judgment and proclaim an opportunity to repent, but they hope no one listens. I had an evangelical – a person for whom sharing the Gospel is the central call of his faith – tell me that he no longer tells anyone …
Nahum: A Prophet for Our Times
Sunday’s discussion was dense and far-flung. Much of it centered on biblical interpretation, but that concern arose as we read Nahum, which is filled with misogyny. It is what we call a “text of terror.” Specifically, it imagines Nineveh, the capitol of fallen Assyria, as a woman being sexually assaulted. Worse, it imagines that God is the agent of this …
We Are the Just Remnant
I’ve said before that the reason it seems like the prophets are predicting the future is that we keep making the same mistakes. It should come as no surprise, then, that the time into which Micah was speaking is very much like our own. Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah, but an outsider, not a professional prophet. He prophesied mainly …
From Rebuke to Repentance
If y’all read last week’s blog, you know I was in a mood. A bad mood. Justice Kennedy’s mic drop after contributing to one terrible decision after another is disheartening, so I ended my introduction to our series on the Minor Prophets by noting that no one ever listens to them. Israel never repents. My fear and my lament is …
Repent, for the End is Near at Hand
In 1976, my parents took me and my brother to the Freedom Train. Amtrak, to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial, launched a rolling museum filled with memorabilia of our nation’s history. I was seven, so I don’t remember a lot of details, except for a lot of red, white, and blue. I remember there were old things, which have always captured …
The Gospel or the Gun
I’m sure we are all used to the rhetorical pattern following a mass shooting. Thoughts and prayers are offered, people suggest all kinds of possible causes and explanations, then we do nothing. I’m interested in that middle stage because it might suggest what our mindset is that results in the final moribund stage. The way that we talk about gun …
You Must Be Drunk! (sermon and commentary)
The idea for this sermon did not hit me until the night before I was to present it. It could have used some editing, perhaps some expansion of some points to make it more clear. Perhaps it needed some time to percolate, to find some heart. But, since it was so short, we got to have a conversation, which I …
Prosperity and Virtue
I wish that I had simply asked the question on Sunday that, it seems to me, must be answered at the beginning of the Poor People’s Campaign’s National Call to Moral Revival: Why is it hard to talk about money? As our friend Wanda pointed out to me, a productive dialog on poverty must include both those who have …
The Bible Says…
I suspect that all Christians would affirm that the broad theme of the Bible is “the Gospel.” I also suspect that, once we drill down into the details, things will fragment substantially. Even so, I suspect that most Christians will affirm, as I would have thirty years ago, that the Gospel is about sin and salvation, heaven and hell, who’s …
The Truth About Ruth
This Eastertide series is ostensibly about resurrection displayed in Scripture other than the Easter story, but it’s turning out to be just as much about ruining our favorite childhood stories from the Bible. This week, we took on Ruth. If you’re like me, you grew up thinking this was one of the great romances of the Bible. Ruth and Boaz …