The Bible doesn’t say Jesus was nailed to a cross.
A Holy Week choice between two parades
Some years ago, I led an adult formation (Baptists, read “Sunday school”) series for the good people of Calvary Episcopal in Bastrop, Texas, on The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, a book…
A Roman governor ordered Jesus’ crucifixion – so why did many Christians blame Jews for centuries?
It’s a straightforward part of the Easter story: The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus of Nazareth killed by his soldiers. He imposed a sentence that Roman judges often inflicted on social subversives – crucifixion.
‘Not of this world’: Jesus, Caesar and Holy Week
In Luke’s Gospel, the Jesus story begins with these words: “And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” The Gospel of John describes a…
It’s time for MAGA to be Christian
I’ll let others describe the economic carnage President Trump’s tariffs already have begun to wreak. I want to describe the damage they will do to the American psyche and the American soul. I want to describe the damage they are…
Did Jesus really say that?
During some of the hardest days of racial tension in in the 1960s, a Mississippi Delta white pastor in his frustration one day asked one of his stalwart members what she thought Jesus would do if Black people came to…
Why ‘Jesus is a Palestinian’ sounds like Christian solidarity but is disastrous theology
In Advent of last year, a Nativity scene at the Vatican briefly showed the baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh, along with the spurious declaration that “Jesus was Palestinian.”
The Cross and ‘Them’
Jesus’ death on the Cross was not a limited act only for his family, the 12, the other followers and some of the rest of the world that was salvageable. Imagine Jesus saying from the Cross, “Father, forgive my disciples,…
Jesus fed the 5,000, but the people of God can’t fill the chasm left by USAID
I have a day job that has nothing to do with feeding people. I’m a missionary trauma surgeon, training Christian Malawian doctors to become surgeons. In Malawi, a country of 21 million people, there’s roughly one surgeon for half a…
The pattern is contempt for the poor
The pattern emerged in the biblical text when the prophet Nathan confronted the king of Israel and said, “Thou art the man.” And in the United States, that very same pattern now has become crystal clear. The pattern is contempt…
Jesus is still woke
Despite the stampede of corporations running away from any identification with diversity, equity and inclusion work, the gospel has not changed. Jesus is still woke. In the Second Coming of Donald Trump, we’re seeing a flood of headlines declaring the…
Will we be the right kind of light to the world?
I love metaphors. I love the meaning they create. I love the dissonance they generate. I love how our imagination goes in a multitude of directions that our logical minds might not explore. All because of metaphors. Metaphors are a…