Beautiful and Terrible Things: A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope is out and available from the publisher and all the usual places where you buy words on pages (and words in pixels and spoken, the Kindle and audio versions are available too!). The description from the publisher: Bible […]
A picture of a window in the Duke Humfrey’s Library in the Bodleian Library. You can see the Radcliffe Camera and the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in the background of the pane on the left. On the right, I do not know who the man is in […]
A sermon for St. John’s, Versailles, KY. Proper 25 (30) (October 29, 2023) Matt. 22:34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is […]
“I believe…in the resurrection of the body.” I grew up in a Presbyterian church where the preacher focused on interpreting the Bible, expository preaching plain and simple. The physical space had very little adornment. The windows were rose-colored stained-glass (ironic, I always thought)1The video linked is of Petra’s “Rose-Colored Stained […]
Fowl Language is a panel comic by Brian Gordon that usually focuses upon the challenges of parenthood…through ducks. It seems that, in the world of the comic, if not Gordon’s own life, grief has arrived as the father’s mother is nearing her end. His last two comics are wonderful and […]
As a member of the Bible Gateway Blogger Grid #BibleGatewayPartner, I was offered the opportunity to review a free copy of The Evangelical Study Bible (Thomas Nelson Bibles, 2023; evangelicalstudybible.com). It is available for purchase from the FaithGateway Store and Amazon. TLDR “Too Long Didn’t Read,” as the kids say: […]
Thirty years ago in August, Elizabeth and I were married. Over our honeymoon, I was encouraged to send in an application to the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew & Jewish Studies for their one-year “Graduate Diploma.” I was admitted and received a full scholarship, so we deferred the offer from […]
A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 7, 2023) Yesterday was the coronation of King Charles III, whose mother the Queen once worshipped here, in this congregation. Like many of you, I watched the service, and I was struck by a particular prayer uttered when the Archbishop of […]
The following is a series of experts from Chapter 8, “Raised Imperishable,” in my book Beautiful and Terrible Things. When I teach courses on the Bible one of the first interpretive rules I put forward is this: The Bible doesn’t answer all the questions that we want to ask. My […]
It is our nature to mark specific dates and times, not just the annual remembrance, but particularly those that seem somehow significant, whether numerically (5, 10, and so on) or personally, as when we passed the threshold when Mack had been gone from this world longer than he had been […]
A sermon for Christmas Day at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Lexington, Kentucky. Nativity of the Lord – Proper III: First reading, Isaiah 52:7-10; Second reading, Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12); Gospel, John 1:1-14 On this Christmas morning we find our readings have none of the expected images of […]