Messiah
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“Get behind me, Satan!” is one of the most shocking phrases in the gospels. It is also one of the most revealing.
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When Jesus asks the disciples who people say he is, he invites his followers to dig past identity. And into what they have seen. what is Jesus inviting all of us into?Proper 16A | Matthew 16:13-20 Jesus asks his followers a pair of tough questions in this gospel. They aren’t complex, of course. Jesus isn’t…
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The Transfiguration comes as a strange interlude. But its brevity reveals its true purpose is to reorient the disciples to their new journey.
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Their confusion over expectations of the Messiah isn’t Jesus’s fault.
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Advent 3B | John 1:6-8,19-28 Two weeks in a row, the preacher gets to deal with John the Baptizer. And some of the elements sound repetitive. The quote from Isaiah, the preaching and preparing of the way, for instance. It is a subtle switch from Mark to John. And yet, while we might have the…
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When Peter calls Jesus the Messiah, he gets the right answer the wrong way. A pattern we repeat in our fear of chaos and of intimacy. Proper 16A | Matthew 16:13-20 If you’ve ever watched a painter work a canvas, you see the very transformation of absence into presence. The white canvas gets swirled and…