Faith Improvised

According to the Christian calendar, today is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. This is a meditation on the political character of Paul’s conversion. Before he was arrested and transformed by the exalted Jesus on the Damascus Road, Paul (called Saul, at the time) was a Pharisee.  As such, he had a thoroughly […]

David Brooks, in a lovely column called The Art of Presence, introduces a family that has reflected at length on suffering and how to care for and bring comfort to those traumatized by tragedy. Brooks highlights a few of the most important lessons for bringing grace and comfort to those who suffer: Be present. Don’t […]

I’m still in the midst of reading Paul and the Faithfulness of God, so I’m not yet certain that it will do in Pauline studies what Jesus and the Victory of God did in the study of Jesus and the Gospels. But while doing some digging for a writing project, I again came across these […]

Our Father in heaven, you guided the wise men to the worship of your Son by the light of a star.  Give us light, give us life, and draw us ever closer to you by the light of faith.  Enlighten and enliven our hearts to search after you just as they did.  Give us the […]

Paul has been underappreciated as an apocalyptic figure, though this, to some extent, is being remedied more recently. He doesn’t write apocalyptic literature, but he writes from within an apocalyptic frame of reference. God has acted to transform all creation by his resurrection power, and the cosmically significant redemption must be embodied by a completely […]

Lively prose fills much of N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God. At times I’ve burst out laughing. Who else could get away with a paragraph like this? This brings us to the question of what second-Temple Jews believed about ‘the end of the world’, which obviously impinges on New Testament discussions about […]

I’m teaching a two-week intensive course on Ephesians beginning today. It would’ve started on Monday were it not for the “polar vortex” that shut down West Michigan for a few days. With every new semester, I think of this prayer for Bible study from the BCP: Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be […]

We’re about to begin a new academic semester (if this “polar vortex” ever allows us to open the campus!). At the end of the fall semester, as I was buried under piles of papers, exams, and excuses for late work – and trying literally to dig out from under blizzard after glorious blizzard – I […]

Today is called “Epiphany,” a term that means “to show” or “to make known” or even “to reveal.” In Western churches, this day is specially marked out to remember the coming of the wise men to bring gifts to the Christ child.  By doing so, they “reveal” Jesus to the world as Lord and King. Epiphany – and […]

The Gospel text for this second Sunday after Christmas is from Matthew 2: When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for […]