Right after his baptism, Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. We read about this in Luke 4:1-13. Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days and near the end of that time, the devil tempts him. Today I’m looking at one aspect of this journey—the commitment to a complete incarnation. One aspect…
In the Gospel of Luke, we read about the transfiguration of Jesus. This transfiguration experience describes the moment when Jesus reveals his divinity to his inner circle, Peter, John, and James. We find this encounter in three of the Gospels, and I’m looking at Luke’s account in this article. Now about eight days after these sayings…
Luke records the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:17-26. This discourse parallels the Sermon on the Mount found in the Gospel of Matthew. The teaching is so similar and yet very different. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount hits hard on morality, but Luke’s Sermon on the Plain hits hard on lived experience. Jesus elevates the…
When the ministry of Jesus started to grow, he went back to his hometown and visited the synagogue. Returning home carries with it a lot of expectations. In Luke 4:14-30, we see that it’s no different for Jesus. They’ve known him his whole life, and they’ve heard the stories about his work in Capernaum. Talk about…
While sheltering in place, I’ve read a variety of articles about the Coronavirus. Some of these are news, some are statistical, and some describe the loneliness that those who are dying will experience. I’ve seen articles about the process of dying that have been written by people in the medical community. These are often an appeal to honor the shelter…
Was Hurricane Katrina really God’s judgment on New Orleans? How about the 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco—was that a judgment on the Barbary Coast? When tragedy strikes, people are quick to assign a moral cause. Luke 13:1-9 shows us pious judgments designed to explain away bad things. This reflex goes way back. We don’t know…
Nobody likes to think that they might have areas of hypocrisy in their life. That is an indictment we give to insincere Christians, or money-making charlatans. However, hypocrisy isn’t just unethical actions. Often, hypocrisy is mixed motives intertwined with good practices. In Matthew 6:1-6, Jesus warns against two ways that hypocrisy manifests itself among religious people….
Jesus delivers “blessings and woes” to the rich and the poor in Luke 6:20-26. The woes are for the rich. Jesus didn’t give a nod to the rich people who were merely hard workers or well-meaning. He didn’t take the time to differentiate between those who were abusing their privileges or not. Jesus delivers blessings to…
I’ve heard the story in Luke 5:1-11 most of my life, as far back as pre-K, in Sunday School. This is where Jesus tells Peter to put his nets back in the water after a night of unsuccessful fishing. Peter then gets the biggest catch he’s ever pulled in. At the end of this interaction, Jesus…
In Paul’s famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, he’s writing to a group of people who have multiple disagreements and divisions. This snippet of Paul’s letter has become the focus of poems, cards, and wedding ceremonies, so the context can easily get lost in all the sentimentality. Although it’s often called “the love chapter” only a…
If there’s one word that describes the Christian church the least, it would be the noun “unity.” This unfortunate reality seems to stretch all the way back to the earliest iteration of the Christian church. This lack of unity is the basis for Paul’s well-known metaphor, that the church is like a body. He creates…
The Gospel of John follows the miracles of Jesus that act as signs of his role as the Messiah. The other gospels record Jesus as saying he won’t give the people a sign. John is detailing the things Jesus did right under their noses that were signs. John even recounts a different chronology for some…
