Luke 14:1, 5-23 Meals matter in the Gospel of Luke. We’re listening to Jesus eating with wealthy people. He ate with them often enough to know how to do it acceptably. He knew how to recline at the table, when to wash, when to reach into the food. He knew where the...

Isaiah 58.9b-14 “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” You can actually get that printed on a coffee mug— the vessel for the caffeine that is making it possible to get bread into the toaster and the other demands of the morning imaginable.  We might want it on a coffee...

Luke 10.25-37 A lawyer tells Jesus that when he reads the law the Moses, he finds the hope of life in the commandments to wholeheartedly love God, and to love his neighbors and he loves himself. Jesus agrees and, when the lawyer asks “alright, but who is my neighbor,”...

1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21 / Luke 9:51-62 The histories of Jews and Samaritans diverge in the abyss of bad kings and broken kingdoms after Solomon, and the collapse of those kingdoms before the Assyrians, and in the rebuilding of identity as peoples after the exile....