The reading from Genesis 8:4-21 brings to an end the narrative of the Flood and we hear God make a promise to Noah: Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his …
A Vocabulary for the Journey
Today's reading from Isaiah 11:10-12:2 skips the first half of chapter 11, which is rather strange. Perhaps because it's one of the readings of the Christmas Vespers? While the Flood narrative continues in Genesis, I'd like to focus on the whole of chapter 11 of Isaiah. The shoot from the root of Jesse has always …
Gregory Palamas and the Theology of Deification
The second in a short series of Bible Study classes exploring the themes of the Sundays of Lent focused on St. Gregory Palamas, who is commemorated on the Second Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church (last Sunday, March 8th). Palamas is most associated with the Orthodox doctrines of deification and the distinction of essence and energies. …
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Apocalypse Now!
The daily readings from Genesis this week, Monday-Friday, take us through a grindingly slow reading of the entire flood narrative (Genesis 6:9-8:22). I see no need to spend time on the separate daily readings from these chapters of Genesis this week. The story makes for expensive special effects in a lame Hollywood movie - though one must be fair and …
Plenty of room inside
By their attitude, the scribes in today's Gospel reading, Mark 2:1-12, are preventing God’s word from acting as a force that sets men free. The man’s stretcher makes me think of the many who are crippled because of the absence of love. Lying there and unable to rise are those who are without hope, who are imprisoned …
When times are critical
The primeval story reaches a cataclysmic climax. Genesis 5:32-6:8 introduces Noah in the midst of a world on the edge of apocalypse. And indeed the language is apocalyptic, straight out of a science-fiction movie. There are "sons of God" who seem to be angelic beings that come down to earth to take earthly women as …
Holy, Holy, Holy
Today I want to focus on the Isaiah reading, though Genesis will not be totally ignored. Isaiah 6:1-12 is the vision in the temple of God's holiness. It is an extraordinary passage. Ezekiel (chapter 1) was granted a vision of the glory of God that is much wilder and phantasmagorical than Isaiah's vision; but there too the voice …
East of Eden, Civilization Begins
Most mythological systems have some version of how crafts originated. Crafts and arts are essential to human identity, and so every attempt at history must account for the rise of human creativity. The Bible is no exception. In today's reading of Genesis 4:16-26 we have precisely that. We read of musicians, "all those who play …
Biblical and theological themes of the Sunday of Orthodoxy
The first in a short series of Bible Study classes used the liturgical texts of the First Sunday of Lent (Sunday of Orthodoxy) to illustrate several theological precepts of the Orthodox Church as well as aspects of typology in biblical exegesis and iconography. An audio file of the class is attached, together with a PDF …
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The mark of humanity
Today's reading from Genesis 4:8-15 brings to a tragic conclusion the story of Cain and Abel. Murder is murder, it's a fact of daily life wherever human beings live with other human beings. What is troubling is how the Yahwist, or whoever wrote this part of Genesis, has set it up in a context of religious …
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