Can we go fishing?” my thirteen-year-old daughter, Ellen, asks quite often. Her requests are usually last-minute ones, but I try to go whenever possible. I am her ride, the one who...

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” (NIV). In 2020, the year of COVID-19 and the killing of George Floyd, “having breath” became an unexpectedly urgent issue. Floyd said that...

We must obey God rather than human beings!” (NIV). How do we discern the relation of Christian belief and spirituality to human authority? Jews in New Testament times already wrestled with...

Speaking to the authorities, Peter summarized the message of the earliest church this way: “God exalted [Jesus] at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we learned that we don’t need to be gathered in a public space to celebrate Easter or have the risen Christ come to us. This story in...

Though the John of the Gospel is probably not the John of Revelation, here too Jesus is the one who is pierced and wounded. Here too he is a witness to...

John, the author of Revelation, begins with greetings from the Eternal One and the seven spirits, and from “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler...

I’m writing this to you from a difficult moment in the past. Creating a book like Disciplines takes time, and I’m writing in the United States in 2020, the year of...

Two thousand years down the pike, it is hard for me to wait until today to say, “He is risen; he is risen indeed!” Since the first Easter morning, disciples have...

I wish the Gospels said more about Holy Saturday. Except for today's reading from Matthew and one verse in Luke (23:56), nothing is written. Yet, it was a full day as...