Jesus’ story of the two sons in today’s Gospel lesson has special resonance for me, because I have two teenaged boys. Not that it’s common in my household for one of the boys to say he will not do something and then go ahead and do it anyway. But on almost a daily basis I…
This parable Jesus tells about the workers and their wages is kind of annoying, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not just the workers who were at it all day who feel there’s something not right here – the whole thing just doesn’t seem fair. For those of us raised in what we sometimes call the…
As I was preparing the sermon for this week, I was drawn to the reading from the letter of Paul to the church in Rome, first because of his snarky comments about vegetarians. I’m not as familiar with the epistles as I am with the gospels, and while it was clear that Paul was speaking…
This passage from Matthew’s gospel is troubling in many ways. Beyond the content itself, we have to acknowledge that it just doesn’t sound like Jesus – certainly not the Jesus of the rest of Matthew’s gospel. Amid all of the parables about the reign of God and the prophecies of his own death and his bantering with Peter and with outsiders, this…