The starting place for understanding the growing conflict between Jesus and the often well-intentioned conservatives (those holding on to the value of established traditions) is Mark 2:21-22. Until now, Jesus has offended them by healing the paralytic and claiming the authority to forgive sins which has already set them against him. They can handle the preaching of John because it is about repentance and personal holiness but there is nothing in it that would threaten their system.  John and his disciples are likely as strict with themselves as the Pharisees.  Preaching a message of social justice, ethics and treating people fairly is not seen as threatening.  In fact, making religion…

Last week we said that Chapter 38, the story of Judah and Tamar, seemed like an interruption of the main story of Joseph. This week we pick up the story again but, clearly, there is an intentional comparison of Judah and Joseph. In a way, this is a story of how one man is seen through four different sets of eyes: Potiphar, his wife, the prison warden, and God. First, Potiphar. The text says, “When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant.” From the beginning of his…

Let’s work backward this morning and start with the bones of Joseph being buried in Canaan several hundred years after his death. We can read in Joshua 24:32 “And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.  This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants.” Why was Joseph at the end of his life in Egypt so insistent that his bones be carried back to Canaan and buried in Shechem?  I think we’ll see after we look at the story of his…

One of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories is about a grandfather who takes his grandson, Nelson, to Atlanta to show him by comparison how good it is in the country. A visit to the city will cure him of his boredom with rural Georgia. Arriving on the train, they begin to walk and are soon lost. For the whole day they try to find their way back to the station but walk around in circles confused and no closer to the station. The grandfather’s “moral mission” to show the boy how evil, dark and unwelcoming the city is takes an unexpected turn but in the end they find the train home…

I don’t know another passage of Genesis with which I have wrestled more than this one. That’s good for you to know at the outset because you can relax and not be thinking I am going to resolve all the questions about this account. In some ways, I am like Jacob.  I come into it with fear and trembling and leave it limping. But, because it is such a central part of Jacob’s journey from the deceiver to the father of the twelve tribes of Israel we don’t have any choice. Many stories, like this one, are told to explain something. Almost all of Greek mythology is composed of stories…

Weddings are typically beautiful events with the music, candles, glamorous bride and handsome groom. Receptions, especially those with jumbo cold boiled shrimp, are festive and seeing the happy couple off to Maui just completes the picture. That does not describe this wedding. In fact, had there been the ritual invitation for someone to stand up and object, this would have been the time. Certainly, it was love at first sight for Jacob and Rachel. “When Jacob saw Rachel daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, and Laban’s sheep, he went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered his uncle’s sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and…

 We hear so much talk about transitions today.  People are in transition from careers to retirement.  The balance of power in the world is shifting from West to East. The economy is in transition from making things to knowledge and accumulating data for sale. Religion is in transition from believers to nones. Education is in transition from campus-based to online. Brick and mortar is over and everything about physical place has moved to the web. Well, Jacob was in transition from the certain world of home in Beersheba to the uncertain world of a strange place he had never been and a family he had never known.  As well, he was…

Stories about our origins are always stories about ourselves and our unique characteristics. Most tend to highlight the good and play down the flaws.  We airbrush history and our forefathers. You really have to dig around in the history books to read about the darker sides of Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Lincoln. It is almost impossible to find any stories about Washington that make him fully human.  He is a complete enigma even to those who knew him well. “Adams fumed in his diary, Franklin sparkled in his anecdotes, Jefferson agonized in his treatises, and Hamilton bristled with passion in his letters. Washington resisted any urge he may have had…

When Catherine was small I had to use a local clinic for something or other. I don’t even remember. What I do remember is this. I went into the doctor’s office and when he saw my motorcycle helmet he said, “Do you have a wife or child?” I said, I did and he said, “No one on a motorcycle in an accident with a car escapes without serious life changing injuries.” He then went on to tell me about the variety of motorcycle victims he had treated at the clinic over the years – and then threw in some he had only read about. “If I could tell you one…

When I see the black church pandering to liberal politicians, the Catholic leadership unwilling to correct abuses that have been going on for ages and the white church prostituting themselves for a picture in the White House, I think about this passage in James. “You adulterous people.” From the beginning the church has been plagued with divisions, betrayal, corruption, greed, ambition, fighting, slander, and chasing after the approval of the world.  It’s only too late we find while we want to be friends with the world the world does not want friends. It wants worship. It wants to take more than it gives and gradually draws us away from friendship…