A Maundy Thursday Prayer (Psalm 88)

Despair is difficult when the Resurrection hovers nearby. For two millennia the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection have been told and retold, celebrated and feted. Everyone knows how the story ends. It doesn’t end with “It is finished.” Rather, with “”Why do you look...

Accepting All of Christ

What does it mean to “accept Christ”? What are we asking a person to do? Traditionally this has involved believing as true certain things about Jesus: that he is the Son of God and thus divine himself; that he was born of a virgin; that he died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected from the dead;...

Safe and Sound

“Safe and sound.” We use the phrase often enough that it’s easy to think that the two words are almost synonymous and that the distinction is a matter of nuance. But it’s not. Someone once illustrated the difference: “The steamship whose machinery is broken may be brought into port and made fast to the...

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...