A challenge of John’s Gospel is the phrase “the Jews” to describe Jesus’ detractors. Many scholars believe John intended to refer to the religious leadership of Jesus’ time, since Jesus and...

John’s triumphant victory song defies words to fully express its power. Consider listening today to any musical interpretation of “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” My favorite is from G....

Eighty years ago today World War II ended in Europe. As I am writing this in early 2024, the Russian invasion of Ukraine nears its two-year mark, the 2023 Sudanese war...

With apologies to William Shakespeare, a gazelle by any other name is still a gazelle. Tabitha is Aramaic for a female gazelle. Perhaps, like my almost-six-year-old granddaughter Eva, Tabitha was a...

The joke among my friends is that I’m failing retirement. Six months after retiring in 2018, I took a six-month interim parish appointment that lasted thirty months, including fifteen months during...

What more time-honored and cherished words of scripture are there than the Twenty-third Psalm? They are de rigueur at many funerals, often printed on remembrance cards; a memory requirement for some...

We end this week’s readings by coming full-circle back to the Psalms. Psalm 30 provides opportunity for deep self-reflection. How has God pulled you from the depths? How has God shown...

Jesus foretells Peter’s upcoming death through martyrdom in verses 18 and 19. This story is a call to the disciples to embrace the sacrificial agape for God, reflected in Jesus’ agape...

In today’s passage, Jesus appears to the disciples: visible, transfigured, and in an incorruptible body. He also reveals himself in a setting that is familiar to his disciples: fishing. The fish...

The book of Revelation is attributed to the apostle John, one of the twelve disciples. John is the only disciple who was not martyred, but he did face exile on the...