I got a bit of a shock tonight during the Liturgy of December 24th. The Gospel reading was the nativity narrative from Luke 2:1-20. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has been using the Revised Standard Version of the Bible for several decades now, and so do several other Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States. Usually that's not a problem, and …
Our Genealogy
Every year on the Sunday Before Christmas we read the genealogy of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew. It's our annual exercise in getting through a long list of tongue-twisting names, but I look forward to it. I love reading these names. And, as the great Catholic biblical scholar Raymond Brown asserted, this genealogy contains …
The Rules of the Game
As almost always when reading the Gospels, context is everything! It is easy to take today's Gospel reading, the Parable of the Great Banquet, as a moralistic lesson about getting into heaven; or as a rejection of the Jewish people, in that racist and anti-Semitic interpretation that has been popular through most of Christian history and continues to endure in …
From darkness to light
In today's reading from Ephesians 5:8-19 Paul tells us to expose darkness and bring it into the light so it becomes light! This beautifully summarizes what was Jesus’ own customary way of healing and teaching, which was to bring people out into the open, where they could be healed and brought into communion with Christ. So in …
Trinitarian Community
We are living in treacherous and confusing times. In a recent book, I read the following: “the growth in Muslim populations across Europe since the mid-twentieth century runs parallel to secularization or, perhaps more aptly, de-Christianization. As Muslim populations grow and assert their religious identities in the public sphere, Christianity’s public role and influence fade. …
Life is the Politics of Jesus
It's now a week since the Paris attacks and it has been a tense week, with hateful rhetoric flaring up in France and Europe, and the US. I continue to have reservations about Islam and its compatibility with our western values, but I am dismayed by the level of hate speech that has contaminated our ability to look at the world …
Farewell, René Girard
René Girard died November 4th in his home in Stanford, California, at the age of 91. Most probably you haven't read any obituary about him, and I only learned of his death tonight when I went on the Girardian Reflections website. The reason why I went on the website tonight was because for the past few days …
The gospel of peace
How to speak of peace after the terrorist attacks in Paris? And yet peace is the message of both our readings today - especially Ephesians 2, but also the parable of the good Samaritan. Both readings are about peace, about breaking down the walls that separate and divide. Every time there is an …
Come out from hiding!
Saint John tells us at the beginning of his Gospel: No one has ever seen God, but the only Son who is at the Father’s side has made him known. The invisible becomes visible, the unknown becomes known. These paradoxes are at the heart of the Christian revelation. Revelation indeed means unveiling, uncovering - …
People of the Second Coming
Touch is the message of today's gospel reading. The poor man Lazarus was untouchable, except by the dogs who licked his wounds! He was one of the invisibles, one of the people that we choose not to see because they might trouble our conscience or our easygoing relationship with life. And he who did not touch …
Ancient Answers 