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“…People there were observing him carefully,” Luke tells us, when Jesus went to dine at the home of a leading Pharisee. But Jesus also was observing the people carefully! And what he observed is something we are very familiar with — high-status people and lesser-status folks. “All men are created…
Great-grandparent Catholics can remember the days when Catholics thought maybe only they were saved, not “those Protestants.” At the time of Jesus, it seemed some of his Jewish people believed they also had an “in” on salvation, not “those Samaritans” or “those gentiles.” Today’s Scripture has someone asking Jesus, “Lord,…
Most people I know do not enjoy conflict and usually choose “peace at any price.” Today’s Scriptures are teaching that conflict is part of discipleship. Why? Because living by Jesus’ way, being “kingdom people,” inevitably conflicts with the ways of the world in which we find ourselves. In today’s Gospel,…
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. This first line of Sunday’s second reading from Hebrews (11:1) is profound. It is counterintuitive — we operate ordinarily on proof, things we can see, figure out, measure. “Seeing is believing,” we say, like Thomas…
Do you think humans have advanced any morally since the time of Jesus? This weekend’s Scriptures make me wonder! They could be news stories from today’s world. Greed today, as in Jesus’ day, leads to embezzlement and Ponzi schemes, estrangements in families over inheritances, the inequity between the wealthy and…
This Gospel poses problems for preachers! It has two lessons about prayer. First, Jesus teaches his disciples the Our Father. It would be pretty safe to preach about that! Next he tells a parable about a person who arrives late, after all the town’s gates and doors are locked for…
At one point in my life, I was in the Middle East with a study group, and we visited a Bedouin encampment in the sand desert. We got to see a hospitality tent — a very wide tent with its flaps pinned open, with cushions spread on rugs inside, waiting…
In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers), Pope Francis uses the parable of the good Samaritan, our Sunday’s Gospel, to unwrap his main teaching. The victim lying by the road is not just an individual in need of charity. It is humanity itself that lies there, broken and wounded…
In 1630, John Winthrop urged his fellow Massachusetts Bay colonists to aspire to “be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” Later John Kennedy used Winthrop’s image to describe how he wanted his own administration to lead, and Ronald Reagan was also fond…
I used to hike a lot, and it took me three tries to make it to the end of Angels Landing trail in Zion National Park. After exhausting switchbacks, the trail ended with portions of hand-over-hand chain stepping and then a narrow rock bridge, with 2,000-foot dropoffs on either side…