Inflection is everything. What do Americans call the game of table tennis? Do we say, “ping pong”? No. We call it “ping pong.” In English, men’s names such as David, Matthew, Isaac, Daniel, are emphasized on the first syllable. We tend to inflect with emphasis. In other languages inflection is handled differently. In Turkish, for example, even…

Imagine the scene. You are downtown in one of the world’s great cities. You’re standing at the main entrance of a huge, opulent hotel, whose solid stone walls soar upward for many floors. The canopied entrance features a red carpet that crosses the sidewalk to the street, and brass fittings that gleam like gold. It’s…

A Sunday school teacher in Kansas reports this conversation in her class: “If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?” she asked the children in her Sunday school class. “No!” the children all answered. “If I…

Sometimes the folks who put the Lectionary—the lists of Sunday readings—together do a really wonderful job. Sometimes it’s questionable, as in August, but today it’s a perfect pairing. John the Baptist, the Gospel tells us, was traveling around baptizing people. This was a departure from traditional Jewish practice, and that—and the fact that he was…

Some signs are sacred; some are secular. Some familiar; some unrecognized. Each Advent sign points to the one who first came to us in the obscurity of Bethlehem and to the same one who is now to come “in great glory to judge the living and the dead.” Each Advent sign points to Jesus. Four…

It’s because the Baptist’s voice is so cold, urgent and disturbing that the Judaean priests and Levites come out to demand in effect: “Who do you think you are?” That’s what this morning’s Gospel dialogue is all about. And the Baptist’s answer is even more disconcerting. He is shaking up things as they are; he…

One of the classic stories that is repeated each December is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The timeless character of Ebenezer Scrooge demonstrates the consummate selfish, self-centered, unforgiving and unloving qualities of human kind. This originator of the “bah-humbug” was the perfect embodiment of sin. Whether we read this famous story in a leather bound first…