As Christians, we have much to learn from Simone Veil and from the many men and women well beyond the bounds of our Christian household who revere the wisdom and the way of Jesus. As Martin Buber (1868-1965), the great Jewish philosopher, said, "I do not believe in...
"Christ" means more than Jesus. It also refers to the new skein of relationships that arose around him during and after his life. Several biblical references support this interpretation. Paul frequently speaks of the Christ who dwells within him and within the other...
When Jesus talks about this Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. What he more has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each...
Choral music was founded, nurtured, and developed almost exclusively within the Christian church for hundreds of years. To participate in choral singing is to participate in a historically Christian art form. If you choose to sing in a choir and do it with an accurate...
Private benevolence will not relieve world poverty, ease third-world debt, promote full employment, stop the mangling of the environment, mitigate obscene excesses of wealth, or negate all the damaging alienation that exists between groupings of people such as "Jew...
The preoccupation with protecting boundaries between the chosen and the despised people is not limited to the Samaritan/Jewish conflict of the first century. Throughout human history, people and nations have defined themselves over against other groups. The history of...
So Jesus' practice of table-fellowship was not only an expression of the good news of God's kingly rule. It was also an implicit critique of a Pharisaic definition of acceptability, of a Pharisaic practice which classified many fellow Jews as sinners, effectively...
There is but one God, “in whom we live and move and have our being,” and when we worship we stand before the mystery of that deep and eternal Reality to whom we give different names. From Jews, we learn of God’s faithfulness; from Muslims, of God’s sovereignty and...
For at least some of the followers of Jesus, maybe the worst day was the third one, Sunday, which for the Jews was like our Monday, with everything around them returning so completely to normal that it was impossible to believe that either his life or his death was...
Change can force a transformation. Spiritual transformation always includes a usually disconcerting reorientation. It can either help people to find a new meaning, or it can force people to close down and turn slowly bitter. The difference is determined precisely by...