This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday and we are considering the reading from Luke 14.. In yesterday’s post we continued looking at the cost of discipleship as an all-consuming vocation. It must be accepted with mature deliberation. Discipleship is not periodic volunteer work on one’s own terms and at one’s convenience. Yet what are the marks of discipleship? Continue reading
Umbrellas existed in many ancient societies, including those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and India, where they served to protect important people from the sun, serving also as a sign of prestige and power. From these societies, the umbrella spread to the Greek and Roman worlds, and into Western Europe. But as Europe slowly descended into the Dark Ages, eventually recovering, umbrellas seem to have disappeared from European use for about 1,000 years. It seems the difficult times threw some shade on the popularity and use of what we now think of as a common device. Which is ironic in that umbrella was borrowed from the Italian word ombrella, a modification of the Latin umbella, which came from umbra meaning “shade, shadow.” Continue reading
I have lived in the Washington DC area several times before and had taken advantage of the great museums and public buildings in our nation’s capital on the National Mall, near the Mall, and not so near the Mall. But, I had never been to the Library of Congress. Until yesterday.
It was a remarkable day for several reasons: long-time friends from Tampa were in town and we spent the day together and Washington DC was on vacation – there were few people and no traffic. With an afternoon available, we chose the Library of Congress with its iconic Reading Room and the Thomas Jefferson Library (shown below in panoramic view)
At the end of the day, we visited the gift shop, and while chatting with the young man at the register, one of my friends mentioned that we were returning to their hotel with by walking, the Metro, or “by hitchhiking” as the classic “thumb” demonstrated the technique to petition passing drivers for a lift. The young man said something akin to “No way. That’s only in movies, right? You don’t really do that?”
In yesteryear we had all availed ourselves of the generosity of strangers as we occasionally hitched a ride. As we regaled the young man with stories of the road… it occurred to me that we were now living exhibits in a history museum with stories of a bygone era. Times were indeed different.
Image credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, Public Domain
Image credit: George Corrigan, CC-BY-NC-SA
This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday and we are considering the reading from Luke 14. In yesterday’s post we considered the ominous passage: If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother…” It is an expression, while shocking in English, when used hyperbolically in first-century Israel was a means of teaching by making the choices stark and clear. Today we will look more deeply at other instances when one mettle will be tested and choices made. Continue reading
In today’s “Pearls Before Swine” cartoon, we are told that Instagram is to brag, Twitter is to enrage, Facebook is to see how nutters your high school classmates are now, and — then we received the social media summary: nice has no future. Some days that seem too true. Alas.
This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday and we are considering the reading from Luke 14. In yesterday’s post we framed this gospel reading as beginning to lay out the costs of discipleship. Today we will look more deeply at the barriers that point to the repeated “cannot be my disciple.”
“If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)
The first reading is from Paul’s “1st Letter to the Corinthians,” from the middle of the first of five sections within the letter. Chapter 2-4 are about divisions within the Corinthian community. The reasons for these divisions are several and some are explored in detail in following chapters, but in this section, the divisions are about the popularity of certain leaders leading to rivalries among them: “I mean that each of you is saying, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas.” (1 Cor 1:12)
His basic response is “You’ve got to be kidding me! You belong to Christ.” Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday and we are considering the reading from Luke 14. In yesterday’s post we provided some context for the flow of the Lucan narrative and took a deeper look at the word “can” which is repeated in the ominous, “cannot be my disciple.” Continue reading
Press Release Responding to John the Baptist’s Denunciation of Herod Antipas
A spokesman for Herod, tetrarch of Galillee, has denounced as “further authoritarian righteousness” a condemnation of his marriage by the preacher John. Herod recently married Herodias, the former wife of his brother Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis.
John, known locally as “the baptist” because of his practice of anointing sinners with water, has been attracting large crowds along the edge of the Judean desert where he is said to live. He has consistently condemned Herod for alleged abuses of power. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time for Lectionary Cycle C. Take a moment to consider the sequence of recent Sunday gospels. After having critiqued host and guests alike at the human banquet of the times, the Sunday selection passes over the description and invitation to the heavenly banquet Continue reading
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