Monday To Sunday

Tucked inside most wedding invitations is a small reply card with its own stamped envelope. It asks one question: will you attend? A lot of those cards spend weeks on the refrigerator, and almost nobody who has one is...

Paul had the résumé. Tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, a Pharisee, blameless under the law, and every line of it checkable. Then he took the whole list and called it a word most English Bibles are too polite...

A man plants a vineyard and does everything right: good hill, stones cleared, a watchtower, a wine vat. At harvest it gives him grapes, just the wrong kind. Sour ones. All three readings this week turn on the same...

A man falls asleep on a rock in the middle of nowhere, running from his brother with nothing but the clothes on his back. It turns out to be the most important night of his life. He wakes up and says, "Surely the Lord...

A father has two sons and one job for them: go work in the vineyard. The first says no and walks off. The second says yes, sir, on my way, nice and polite about it. Only one of them actually shows up, and it isn't the...

The only person in the ancient world who insists on calling Matthew a tax collector is Matthew. It is his book. When he reaches the roll call of the twelve, every other name on the list is just a name. His has the job...

Nobody in Sunday's gospel got underpaid. The workers hired at dawn agreed to a denarius and received a denarius, in front of witnesses. They complained anyway, and Matthew writes the grievance down word for word: "you...

The church has a feast day for a piece of Roman execution equipment. September 14, Holy Cross Day. Try the same move with anything modern, a feast of the electric chair, and listen to how it sounds. There is a cartoon...

Ten thousand talents is roughly a hundred and fifty thousand years of labor. Jesus picks that number in Sunday's gospel because it is absurd. Then the king cancels it in the space of one sentence, and the man who was...

"If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone." Alone. Not to your sister first. Not at the dinner table, in the version where they come off badly. Not to...

God marks the doorway and dwells among us. This week, we explore what it means to recognize His presence where He's closest—not in distance, but in the neighbors who surround us every day. Readings: Exodus 12:1-14 •...

There's a sentence in Sunday's Gospel that's built wrong. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it. Read it as a rule about behavior and it's just a paradox, the kind of thing that goes on a wall. But Jesus wasn't...

Moses is at work when the bush catches fire. He's not on a retreat and he's not praying — he's watching somebody else's sheep out past the edge of everything. And here's the part I can't get past: God doesn't say a word...

Jesus asks the disciples two questions back to back. Who do people say I am? They rattle off the answer like they've been keeping notes. Then: but who do you say I am? Out of twelve grown men, one of them speaks. They...

We don't know Pharaoh's name. We know the midwives'. A king with an empire behind him orders every Hebrew boy killed at birth, and the plan falls apart because two working women decide not to. Shiphrah. Puah. Scripture...