According to Matthew, the whole grand experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph... The child is Joseph's until he says otherwise...the issue at stake is not a biological one but a legal one... Will he believe the impossible and give it a home or will he stick with...
If religious patriarchy was true, the angel of the Lord would have spoken first to Manoah about the miraculous conception of Samson. Instead, he spoke to Manoah’s wife—a woman—alone (Judges 13:2-24). If religious patriarchy was true, the angel Gabriel would have...
The Bible says that Jesus wept when He saw Mary weeping over the death of her brother. It records that Peter denied Jesus three times on the night of Jesus' arrest. When it dawned on Peter what an abject failure he was, he went out into the night and wept. Tears say...
Anna is the very last character in the Christmas Story. Mary and Joseph have left behind the shepherds and the stable animals, stopping in the temple to fulfill their requirements of their faith. Upon arrival, they meet Simeon the Priest who would perform the...
I take so much delight in the silence of the men in the Christmas story. Zechariah can't speak. Joseph doesn't speak. While the words and emotions of Mary and Elizabeth are unapologetically centered. The sound of Advent is the voice of women.
I’m mindful that for many of us, we have heard a lot of “no’s” in our lifetimes. Especially from people who think they are speaking for or defending God. Whether implicitly or explicitly, we’ve heard things like:"No, you’re not supposed to be asking questions like...
How many sermons about the women of the Bible did you hear when you were being nurtured into the faith? How many sermons about Miriam or Deborah or Huldan? Or Ruth or Esther? How many sermons about Mary or Priscilla or Phoebe or Junia? Or Philip's daughters?
It would be foolish to pretend that it is always easy to remember [that Christ is present in the ordinary stranger]. . . . If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun, a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet...
When we think about the Annunciation, this scene between the angel Gabriel and Mary, we think of the faith it took for her to believe that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and that her son, the illegitimate child of an insignificant girl, really...
I reject the version of Jesus who would have told the rich young ruler, “you are blessed” instead of, “give everything to the poor and follow me.” Who would have pushed women to the fringes of the narrative, instead of empowering Mary to be the first preacher of...