“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who was leaving.” It’s a strange start to a parable. At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples have been following Jesus for...

Sometimes in our suffering, we wait for God awake and alert to the possibilities that God will reveal. And God comes, issuing promises of deliverance. But deliverance does not always come...

Twenty years. It seems so short compared to nine hundred. Perhaps it even seems like an improvement after forty years of wilderness wandering. But twenty years is a long time to...

I raise my eyes to you—you who rule heaven” (CEB). Immediately I think of the climactic scene in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie and her lover, Tea...

Grace is in short supply in our increasingly polarized world. “Choose a side!” the world demands. There is no room for deviation, no tolerance of complexity. Polarization encourages us to make...

“Stay woke” is a common phrase these days, a cultural call to arms designed to galvanize people’s attention to social and political issues. Wikipedia traces its etymology to African American vernacular...

I think it notable that the backdrop for this Matthew parable is a wedding celebration, a significant event that binds families and communities together publicly. Rituals like weddings are a vital...

Today’s passage sits squarely within the eschatological section of the Gospel, in which the kingdom of heaven and the coming Son of Man are outlined through narratives and parables such as...

In college, I became enamored of learning our old family recipes. I would go to my Nana’s house each break and learn to make one of our family’s signature dishes. As...

How do we teach our history? And whose stories are included? It is tempting to frame our history to hide all our mistakes and failings. But how we tell our histories...