It can’t have been comfortable to be John the Baptist. Camel’s hair clothes and locusts aside, it’s never pleasant to be the
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One of my strongest memories of my paternal grandmother is sitting with her at the piano, listening to her play and sing her favorite songs. She had a soft spot for love songs, and she taught me how to plink
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All four gospels provide a lengthy depiction of Jesus’ trial, and each writer brings their own lens to the story. Luke asserts Jesus’ innocence, portrays him as stunningly gracious, and surrounds him with people — those who hate him, those who adore him, and those who simply don’t know what
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Source Text: All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” (Luke 19:7) Chapter Summary: The book of Luke is historically identified as the first account of Christian history. Scholars believe Luke’s foundational ministry is to demonstrate
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The parable of the Good Samaritan is peculiar because it follows after a Samaritan village rebuffs Jesus. To appreciate the parable in Luke 10, one should read from near the end of Luke 9, where the Samaritans are first mentioned. When Jesus sends messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to
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What Luke 6 is doing so forcefully is what liberation theology spells out directly: God is not encountered in abstract ideas separated from history, but in the concrete realities of hunger, exclusion, violence, and survival. We cannot look for God only in what is comfortable, respectable, or socially approved, because
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After an infant’s greeting in his mother’s womb, after a maiden’s soul magnifies the Lord, after angels, births, shepherds, more angels, and finally the astonishment of the young Christ’s prodigious intellect in Luke’s first two chapters, Chapter 3 comes as a bit of a slower read. Here, our author takes
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Luke Chapter 1 packs quite a bit of interesting and unique stories into less than 100 verses and sets the tone for the rest of this Gospel. Luke states his intentions for these writings in the first four verses. He desires to make his theological point through his well-grasped understanding
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Why do bad things happen to good people? This is the question of theodicy, which humans have wrestled with for millennia. Job is an answer to that question in Jewish and Christian traditions, albeit a potentially unhelpful and confusing one. In order to dig into Job 38 when God responds,
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Elihu continues his series of speeches in Chapter 34 overall rebuking both Job and his three friends with a passionate, perhaps overzealous defense of divine justice. By doing so, Elihu accuses Job of being brash, recalcitrant, arrogant, and ignorant of God’s ways in the world. Elihu’s impassioned defense of God’s
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