crucifixion of jesus from isaiah 53

The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel. Thus, we see a little baby lying defenseless in a crib at Bethlehem, and a tortured man hangi...

The deep economic crisis that occurred in Russia soon after the collapse of communism resulted in a new wave of resentment and hostility toward Russian Jews. In times of crisis people look for a scape...

I remember growing up in the ’80s (yes, that dates me) when all kinds of fears and phobias seemed to be in the air—fear of the dark, snakes, scorpions, spiders. Someone in my own close circle was afra...

Though Christ was by nature divine, Christ did not cling to equality with God, but in utter self-emptying, took the form of a slave, and was born as a human. God have mercy. Appearing in h...

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in his classic study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity that the term stigma originated with the ancient Greeks, roughly during Jesus’ tim...

Pastor: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  People: He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; Pastor: and as one from w...

An American businessman went to Oberammergau to witness the famous passion play, just before the outbreak of World War II. Enthralled by this great drama that depicts the story of the cross, he went b...

Pastor: Almighty and everlasting God, who willed that your Son should bear for us the pains of the cross and thereby remove from us the power of the adversary, help us to remember and give thanks al...

In George Bernard Shaw’s play about Joan of Arc , as Joan faces her execution by burning, she addresses those in power who have condemned her: “I will now go to the common people and find comfort in ...

In the sixteenth century, Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci journeyed to China, bringing religious art to share the Christian story with those unfamiliar with it. The Chinese readily embraced images of t...

Why should I, who have been living from all eternity in the enjoyment of the Father’s love, go to cast myself into such a furnace for them that never can requite me for it? Why should I yield myself t...

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden the Romans setting a military guard lest there...