Today’s Gospel picks up where last week’s left off. If you remember, last week Jesus was not having one of his best days. Those people who knew him best, his neighbors and kinfolk, heard him preach in the synagogue and, instead of being proud of him, they said, “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of…

He was just a boy from Nazareth, when all was said and done. It wasn’t the greatest place to be from. The people there knew that. They knew what people from more important places said. “Can anything good come out of Galilee?” And Nazareth wasn’t even the best place in Galilee to come from. It…

A commentary on our Gospel lesson, the story of Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter, suggests that “stories like this one seem to promise too much.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, page 590.) One is tempted to ask, “How much is too much?” In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and…

Bill was in his late 20’s, a single, handsome fellow a little over six feet in height with wavy black hair and green eyes. He worked in health care as an x-ray technician and was very good at his profession. Bill’s life was hard growing up and he had little use for his parents and…