In 1867, the great American writer Mark Twain embarked on what he wryly called his “Great Pleasure Excursion,” a journey through Europe that would later inspire his travelogue, The Innocents Abroad...
Proverbs 13:12, Luke 24:13-35, Ecclesiastes 1:2-3, John 4:4-26, Psalm 42:11, James 4:13-15, Matthew 6:19-21, John 20:1-10, Matthew 28:1-10, Luke 24:1-10
Do you remember Geraldo Rivera's most famous fiasco? In 1986 he broadcast a television special entitled The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault. In the publicity leading up to the live opening of Capon...
I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denyi...
John 3:19-20, Luke 5:8, Isaiah 6:5, Hebrews 4:13, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Hebrews 12:29, James 1:22
I am still haunted by a long conversation I had with a man who was a member of one of my early congregations. . . . He had a stunning vision of the presence of the risen Christ . . . [and] had never t...
I went to a psychologist friend and said if 500 people claimed to see Jesus after he died, it was just a hallucination. He said hallucinations are an individual event. If 500 people have the same hall...
1 Peter 1:3, Luke 24:1-12, Mark 16:1-8, Matthew 28:1-10, John 11:25-26, John 20:1-18, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8
The “swoon theory” argues that Jesus never really died, only appeared to have died, and then came back to life while buried in the tomb. It’s an interesting idea, one that was popularized in a book in...
It seems that every four years, the American people come through another exhausting political season. No matter who “wins,” there are feelings of frustration and disgust on all sides as we observe the...
To preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection. Thus people who had heard Paul’s teaching at Athens got the impression that he was talking about two new gods, Jesus and Anastasis (i...
The Text The Short Ending or the Long ending? This is not the Easter story we’re looking for. The short ending of Mark is not what we want or expect on Easter Sunday. We want celebration, big music,...
Leader: Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you." People: Jesus said to he...
The resurrection was as inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The Greeks ...
Voice 1: Words! Voice 2: By them the universe was created: planets and moons, stars and sky, all living things, day and night. People: We come today to worship and adore the Creator of this world and...
We will rise From the destruction From the ruins From the sin and isolation We will rise Building strong foundations Bridging the breach Making a way, a highway to our God We will rise in our ce...
Many of the disciples have seen the risen Lord…. Thomas simply wants what the others have been granted: an encounter with the risen Jesus. No doubt he gives voice to the desires, the longings of many ...
...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we ...
Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), who were experiencing social m...
Ancient Lens What's the historical context? The Gospel in a Pagan World Paul writes this letter to the Christians in the church at Corinth, which he founded during his second missionary journ...
Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) who were experiencing social ma...
Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....
In spite of closed doors and the seclusion of the frightened disciples, Jesus finds them…. Nothing keeps Jesus, the good shepherd from finding his own.
Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....
Ancient Lens What's the historical context? The Gospel in a Pagan World Paul writes this letter to the Christians in the church at Corinth, which he founded during his second missionary journ...
Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles: The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...
In 1964 Peter Higgs wrote a paper entitled, “Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons,” which proposed the existence of a new fundamental particle of matter based solely upon mathematical dedu...
Hear the good news! Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us. (Romans 8:34, Phillips) Leader: Friend...
Norman Malcolm was an American philosopher who became close friends with Ludwig Wittgenstein (the founder of Analytic Philosophy, one of the most popular schools of philosophy up through today). In 19...
If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether...
Luke 24:1-12, Matthew 2:11, Matthew 16:21-22, 1 Corinthians 15:17, Ephesians 3:20-21
The resurrection was inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The Greeks did...
Here’s a true story, from the year 891, of those who cast off in an embodied journey to live “in a state of pilgrimage, for the love of God.” Three Irish pilgrims, Dubslane, Macbeth, and Maelinmun, ma...