isaiah on Jesus' Suffering

In this excerpt, Frederick Buechner shares a meditation on the vulnerability of Jesus’ birth: The child born in the night among beasts. The sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts. And nothing is...

A mother’s service is the most intimate, willing, and dependable of all services, because it is truest of all. None has been able to fulfill it properly but Christ, and he alone can.  We know that ou...

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely ...

Jesus needed, not once, but again and again at each stage of his mission and each crisis in his living and dying, a freshly confirmed knowledge of his own identity.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Israel’s State of Mind The Book of Isaiah is a remarkable accounting of the history of the relationship people of Israel with God. By t...

Jesus didn’t die on the cross to change God’s mind about us; Jesus died on the cross to change our minds about God!”

Justin Martyr (ca. 100–165), the most renowned apologist of the second century, dedicated his life to defending Christianity as the one true philosophy. Engaging the Greek philosophers and intellectua...

Leader: Why do you look for the living among the dead? People: He is not here; He has risen!   Leader: Alleluia! Christ is risen! People: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Servant of the Lord This is the third of Isaiah’s four “Servant Songs,” which display the posture of the true and perfect Servant of the Lord. ...

Pastor: He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities;  People: upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. Pasto...

Pastor: Heavenly Father, as we draw ever closer to the end of this Lenten season of repentance and renewed devotion, we pray that You would remember us according to Your steadfast love and goodness ...

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, Such a dainty, fragile child, But the one we know is bold and strong We can hear that in your dying song, Little boy, little boy. ‘Just a boy of flesh and b...

Preaching Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Israel’s State of Mind The Book of Isaiah is a remarkable accounting of the history of the relationship people o...

Preaching Commentary What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey reli...

Preaching Commentary Introduction The lectionary text from John is an exceedingly long passage, but covers the main events that we commemorate on Good Friday. For that reason, I am going to break u...

A few years ago, a vicious stomach bug swept through our community. (When you live in a religious community and one person gets sick, it’s just a matter of time before everyone else does too.) And one...