Hebrews and the gospel this week! Read them again when you get home. Then read them again and again – maybe every day this week – because if we could really understand and then take to heart these two passages, we just might be convicted enough to open ourselves to the fire of the Spirit…

As it says in today’s reading from Jeremiah: “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” Or as it says in the Sanhedrin: “As the hammer splits the rock into many splinters, so will a scriptural verse yield many meanings.” Perhaps this Talmudic interpretation…

Many times, when we read a contemporary book, we pass right over the short quotation many writers include in the very beginning to sum up the meaning or theme of their book. However, one contemporary novel has a great opening quotation that’s impossible to ignore: “Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig.”…

We human beings are stubborn. We may understand, or at least we may have heard, that we are God’s people and that our promise of salvation, of redemption, was purchased at great price. A price that was so great, God’s sacrifice of his only Son, it is hard for us to grasp what it might…

The words of this mornings Gospel may be difficult to hear. The words may even seem harsh. Where are the comfortable words of Jesus, we may ask. The words of our Savior suggest the difficulty of the mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ mission is to oppose and overthrow evil. It is, in a sense, a…