After talking about salt and light, Jesus returns us to righteousness. Is righteousness just a state of being? Or is righteousness about what we do in the world? This passage seems...

By this point in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is well into the Sermon on the Mount. He gives the well-known instruction to be salt and light. A master of metaphors,...

My wife and I have a running joke. If there is a breakdown in communication, one of us will say to the other, “This would be a lot easier if you...

In this passage from the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul waxes a bit ironically about his inability to communicate well. He downplays his eloquence and knowledge. He talks of the...

The psalmist continues Isaiah’s theme of righteousness as a beacon of God’s way. Rather than lay into us for failing to be righteous, though, the psalmist connects God’s goodness with the...

What do we do when we’ve experienced loss? How do we move forward? Isaiah seems to know human psychology, suggesting one common response to loss is lashing out at others. Instead...

In today’s reading, Isaiah starts off nice and easy. “Shout out; do not hold back! Lift your voice like a trumpet!” But then the record scratch comes. We’re not shouting praises;...

Who does Jesus call blessed? The big dreamers—those who refuse to agree with things as they are—are blessed. Those who claim nothing as their own, who don’t cling to the things...

I joined the church back in the 1990s during a wave of revival in Ukraine. We used to say, “May God bless you!” to the people sitting beside us after worship...

The very same passage from First Corinthians can be perceived in a radically different way than how we considered it earlier this week. It depends on the status of the one...