There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name he gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH. Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because...
01607 – Go or Stop
As the characters in the story maintain a safe distance from Jesus, speculating among themselves about this new powerful teacher, readers of Mark are invited to follow Jesus into a whole new world, says New Testament scholar Brian Blount, into "Mark's world of Jesus...
01485 – The “Left Behind” Series
The Left Behind series is not significant for its literary merits, which are few, but because it is the latest example of "end-time" eschatology, the belief that we are living out the final pages of history. It may seem like trivial pulp to sophisticated readers, but...
01310 – Don’t Demean Other Religions
To paraphrase William Sloane Coffin, a contemporary author and activist for us as Christians, God is defined by Jesus, but not confined to Jesus. To paraphrase Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar, former dean of Harvard Divinity School, and bishop of the Church...
00806 – How Did the Earliest Christians Worship?
We can learn a great deal about worship by looking at the earliest Christians, for the culture that surrounded them was in many ways similar to ours in twenty-first century North America. Then and now the population is highly pluralistic, with the people’s...
00567 – Transformation Can Happen to You!
For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving...