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May 2024

May 16, 2024

When God Sends Us the Bird

This coming Sunday is Pentecost, a celebration on when the Holy Spirit descended on a...

May 14, 2024

Perfection or Slight Improvement?

As I begin work on the final version of my forthcoming book A Year of...

May 12, 2024

Ascension Day and the Olympics

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are coming soon! On this Ascension Sunday I am...

May 09, 2024

The Smell of Mulch in the Morning

Here's an essay from late April 2015 that celebrates all things spring--flowers, trees, and mulch--with...

April 2024

April 30, 2024

The Word is a Person

In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh,...

April 19, 2024

Healing Begins with Listening

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that the spring semester is ending...

April 15, 2024

Jesus Wants You to Pay Your Taxes and to Like It

Today is tax day. As the familiar saying goes, just like death taxes are inevitable....

April 07, 2024

Thomas, Michel, and the Importance of Doubt

Jeanne and I spent Thursday through Saturday of Holy Week in a movie theater. We...

April 04, 2024

The Rapture or a Random Harvest?

Perfect submission, perfect delight, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight; Angels, descending, bring...

April 02, 2024

The Apocalypse During Apocalyptic Times

It is interesting, perhaps fitting, that the first class in my team-taught "Apocalypse: colloquium after...

March 2024

March 31, 2024

I See You: An Easter Reflection

Easter Sunday--the most triumphant day on the Christian liturgical calendar. According to New Testament scholar...

March 30, 2024

The Day Between Good Friday and Easter

A few years ago in a course that I was team-teaching with two other colleagues,...

March 29, 2024

What’s “Good” About Good Friday?

Many Christmas Eves ago, Jeanne, our youngest son Justin, and I were invited to share...

March 28, 2024

Could You Not Watch With Me One Hour?

HOly WeekSome people can sleep anywhere. One of those people was a student in one...

March 26, 2024

God Finds Us to be Infinitely Interesting

April is going to be Marilynne Robinson month for me. In the team taught interdisciplinary...

March 24, 2024

Kicking Off Holy Week: “I’ll be Jesus”

The Palm Sunday celebration in a liturgical Christian church can be both confusing and jarring....

March 19, 2024

On Being a Person

In her award-winning trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, the consigliere and fixer for Henry...

March 10, 2024

Serpents in the Wilderness

Today's gospel gets us back to the basics. Sports fans old enough to remember the...

February 2024

February 27, 2024

God, Your Boss at Applebee’s, and Larry

An alternative title for this essay might be “A Comedian Interprets the Parable of the...

February 25, 2024

What If I Don’t Want to Take Up My Cross?

Last week I introduced a bunch of honors sophomores to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's distinction between "Cheap...

February 22, 2024

Did Jesus Misread Human Nature?

The Gospel reading for last Sunday, the First Sunday of Lent, is the account of...

February 18, 2024

Who Would Jesus Bomb? A President’s Day Reflection

Tomorrow is President's Day, which for all college professors means--as do all Monday holidays in...

February 11, 2024

Basketball and Forgiveness

For someone who is a dedicated college basketball fan and a rabid follower of the...

February 01, 2024

Is Religion a Virus?

The last time I was a member of a search committee for a new tenure...

January 2024

January 25, 2024

God Isn’t Angry At Us

A former student who wrote for our campus student newspaper once asked me during an...

January 23, 2024

What Exactly is a Freelance Christian?

I have been told on occasion by readers of this blog that "Freelance Christianity" is...

January 11, 2024

A Theology of the Compost Pile

In his 2014 book The Bible Tells Me So . . .” and The Sin...

January 09, 2024

This I Believe–and that’s not a good thing

A number of years ago, at the end of a presentation to fellow resident scholars...

January 07, 2024

When Things Got Real Between John the Baptist and Jesus

The gospel lectionary reading for the First Sunday of Epiphay traditionally is one version of...

January 04, 2024

Why January 6th is Important

Three years ago this coming Saturday, I was sitting in the recliner in our little...

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