“You Won’t Die”: Was the Serpent Right?

In Genesis 3, the Man and the Woman eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, even though they had been warned that “in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17). That’s a pretty specific warning. It specifies 1) what they are and aren’t supposed to do; 2) what will happen if they...

Impossible

A Message Delivered on Christmas Eve, 2014 When you read the gospels it is evident that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke aren’t the same. That’s because Matthew and Luke aren’t interested in telling what happened, but what it means. Matthew says everything he wants to say with Magi, and Luke says...

Christmas Faith

It is back around 732 B.C.E. and Ahaz is king of Judah. He’s just a young man in his early twenties, but he was surrounded by some older advisors, among them the prophet Isaiah. Assyria is a rising power and is threatening the nations of the eastern Mediterranean coast. The kings of Syria and Israel, who...

Letting “Emmanuel” Be Enough

“‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” God is with us. After a few hundred years, the Israelites of the first century had to be wondering. It was a period of defeat, exile, occupation, and extreme brutality, made...

Kings and Harlots: A Genealogy of the Incarnation

The birth narrative in Matthew is found in the first chapter, but it doesn’t begin with the story of Joseph and Mary. We begin there; we like to skip the boring parts and get right to the interesting parts. Matthew actually begins the birth narrative with a genealogy, but who reads those? You can’t...

« Older Entries