A few weeks ago I had told of a woman we met in October at the island of Hydra in Greece. She had just returned from Latin America and vowed never to return. She was turned off by the proliferation of crucifixes. Everywhere she went in Latin America there were crucifixes, and she wanted no …
Powers and Principalities Then and Now
Jesus encountered constant opposition and criticism for breaking sabbath rules and the taboos of society. In the healing of the woman in Luke 10:10-17, the synagogue leader could not tolerate Jesus healing on the sabbath. He was following the biblical rules that clearly prohibited work on the sabbath. Jesus responded that healing was not …
Blind Spots
Chapter numbers were introduced into the Gospels about a thousand years after they were written. So I like to think of Luke 17:20-19:10 as comprising one unit in the Gospel of Luke, and ignore the division into chapters. This section is the culmination of Jesus' trip to Jerusalem and his fateful encounter with the …
The Logos of Advent
Advent is a time of rich liturgical and popular traditions in the western churches, especially in the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches. But it is a much undeveloped liturgical time in the eastern churches, where it is primarily observed as a fasting season, probably thanks to the disproportionate influence of monastics in the evolution …
The Cross is not a political slogan
Living in Montreal and two other Canadian cities in the 1970s I became aware of the politics that ruled the Greek Orthodox churches in Canada. As a matter of fact, it came to the point, at least in Montreal, that the Hellenic Community administration that governed all the Greek churches of Montreal was split along …
The gospel of enough
We live in a time of unbridled greed. There seems to be no limit to how rich a rich person wants to be. And corporations are the greediest persons of all. I call corporations “persons” because that’s what the Supreme Court in its questionable wisdom decided to call them in 2010. When is enough? Today …
Jesus, the Good Samaritan
In recent weeks we have seen a constant stream of allegations of sexual misconduct against prominent men. One of these is Judge Roy Moore who is running to be elected to a Senate seat in a special election in Alabama next month. It's not for political reasons that I mention him. I mention him because …
We are not neutrinos!
On a recent trip to Germany we visited friends in the city Karlsruhe, a typical German city of medium size. I did not know at the time - but found out just days ago - that Karlsruhe is the site of a very important experiment in physics: the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment, Katrin for …
On the Way to Resurrection
Our Gospel reading today is the story of two resurrections. On the way to raise from the dead the daughter of Jairus, Jesus stopped to raise to life a woman who had no life.... Miracles are signs, they are reminders that Jesus is on the way to resurrection, and on the way once in a …
Searching for a Human
Άνθρωπον ζητώ ("I seek a human being.") Diogenes, the great 4th century BC philosopher, spoke those words as he walked around with a lamp in broad daylight. Diogenes the Cynic, he is often called, one of the founders of Cynic philosophy - but don't confuse Cynic philosophy with the cheap cynicism most of us engage …
Ancient Answers 