Category: Main Blog

There is no one Christian view on war. It is impossible to extrapolate a universal theology from the context of the historic Jesus, a man executed by an occupation army in an exploited colony. The “Day of the Lord” trope in the Christian Testament and the apocalyptic fever dream of John of Patmos can be read as acts of divine violence, while the good news that the kin-dom of God is already present in the world seems to undermine that narrative. 

Some Christians have embraced violence, committing acts of unimaginable heroism and of horrific evil, all in the name of God and country. Others have embraced non-violence, and even pacifism.

One of my personal heroes, St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, struggled with violence both generally and in particularity, struggled with the morality of his small role in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, an act of individual violence intended to prevent a greater violence.

I wrestled with some of these issues in the early 1980s as a young soldier in a unit that suddenly found itself training to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield, not at all what I had intended when I enlisted. 

I struggled with a desire for vengeance after the horrors of 9/11, the metallic smell, shared terror, and eerie silence of the walk from Lower Manhattan to my apartment in Queens. I wrestle with it still. 

Like the late Israeli author Amos Oz, I identify as a “peacenik,” not as a pacifist. For me, doing limited violence to prevent greater violence seems justified when there is no other option, for it is always the “least among us” on the receiving end of state violence.

Continue reading “A Pastoral Letter on the Current War”

John 3:1-17

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

We occasionally use the work of the 13th century Sufi mystic Jal?l al-D?n Mu?ammad R?m?, commonly known simply as Rumi, in worship. When we do so, we do so in translation, as we are not as a whole fluent in Medieval Persian. 

Rumi has been popular in recent decades, especially in translations by Coleman Barks, who died earlier this week. The problem is that Barks stripped the poetry of its Islamic context, often suggesting human romance where the ancient author expresses love of God. Secularizing and popularizing is great for sales, and more accurate translations are criticized as inaccessible, but we are left with a thing that is not the real thing, a sort of fraud that has been critiqued as literary colonialism.

If Rumi remains exotic even in Westernized translation, the Bible has been wholly domesticated, from the familiar cadences of the Authorized Version translated in late Renaissance England to colloquial translations like the Good News Bible and even the scholarly standard, the New Revised Standard Version, recently in an updated edition. Few Christians question the translations themselves, much less the theological lens through which we read them. 

We should.

Today’s reading from the gospel traditionally attributed to John is a textbook example of mistranslation. Ironically, the exchange with Nicodemus depends on wordplay, a double-meaning in Greek. But, if this represents historic memory, the two men would have spoken in Aramaic.

The Koine Greek word “anothen” can be translated two different ways, as I’ve mentioned in the past, as “again” and as “from above.” There is a hint of humor here, as Jesus proclaims that one must be born “from above,” while Nicodemus hears that one must be “born again.”

American fundamentalists do mental gymnastics trying to make this ancient text, written across centuries in different political, social, and religious contexts, say only one thing, this transactional relationship with the divine. They turn to today’s passage again and again. And because they are not fluent in Biblical Greek, they neither recognize the wordplay involved, nor do they realize that these words that they insist are literally true cannot possibly be, for there is zero chance a Pharisee on the Sanhedrin and a street-prophet from Galilee spoke to one another in Greek. 

And that is only the start of the problem. In the beloved singular line, tattooed as chapter and verse number 3:16 on so many Christians today, God’s love is the trigger, the result is eternal life. Except that is not what the text actually says, and what we think it means is most certainly not what it means. This text does not read life after death. Jesus is not the golden ticket that ushers us into some Wonka-like heaven with angels instead of Oompa-Loompas.

The Greek phrase traditionally translated as eternal life is more accurately rendered “life of the ages.” This is in contrast to “life as lived in this age,” a frequent trope in the teachings of Jesus. It sounds very much like life in this age equates to the Marxist idea of false consciousness. Salvation, as later revealed in this same gospel, is living in relationship with God. John begins not with a nativity story, but with a Christological account that draws on Greek philosophy: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God. We’ll leave why Jesus is the Word and what the Koine Greek term “logos” implies for another day.

Continue reading “Grace 2.0”

Matthew 4:1-11

Two days before Christmas 1972, an earthquake registering 6.3 on the Richter Scale hit Managua, Nicaragua. The city lost all four hospitals, and every piece of firefighting equipment. Thousands were killed and wounded, over 300,000 left homeless. 

The international response was immediate and mostly ineffective. One problem was large donations of things that were not useful in a tropical climate, like winter clothes and frozen TV dinners. All too often, this is the second disaster after every disaster, warehouses of used underwear and broken toys.

The other problem after the Managua earthquake was distribution, hard enough when essential infrastructure is lost and roads are choked with debris, made worse by the fact that the country was controlled by Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a dictator in a dynasty installed by the United States decades earlier, and by his corrupt cronies who stole from the relief efforts.

Baseball superstar Roberto Clemente, who had already sent three plane loads of supplies, was concerned, and decided to accompany the fourth flight. The overloaded plane went down moments after takeoff from Puerto Rico on New Year’s Eve, Clemente’s body never recovered.

Seven years later, the Somoza dictatorship would finally fall, after years of war against a rebel coalition led by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, known to us as the Sandinistas. They were named after Augusto César Sandino, who we heard in our first reading, an earlier revolutionary who had resisted the occupying U.S. Marine Corps and was assassinated in 1934. 

The Sandinistas were divided into three main factions, including a hardcore Marxist wing, and a more moderate and pragmatic wing led by Daniel Ortega. He would serve as head of the transitional junta until elections were held, when he won the presidency outright.

I had a chance to visit Nicaragua in the mid-1980’s. Downtown Managua looked like a war zone or a disaster zone, and of course, it was both. The Sandinistas had inherited $1.6 billion in national debt, three quarters of a million people homeless or displaced, and a literacy rate of 20%. 

By the time I visited, less than a decade later, the illiteracy rate was 20%. Somoza family holdings had been nationalized, but the economy was primarily driven by worker cooperatives. I visited a few, and have had a fondness for coops ever since. Though Ronald Reagan was waging an immoral and illegal war against the country, part of his paranoia about creeping Communism, Nicaragua was recovering and stabilizing. Much like the United States, Nicaragua is multi-ethnic and multi-racial, including members of the African diaspora and indigenous people, as well as descendants of the Spanish colonizers. The Sandinistas were committed to building a nation for all where racism had reigned.

Today, Daniel Ortega, hero of the revolution, a leader who helped lift so many out of poverty, is a brutal and corrupt dictator, every bit as bad as the man he ousted.

Lead us not into temptation.

The devil offered Jesus worldly kingdoms. Jesus resisted. His followers have not. And not just the absolute perversion that is White Christian Nationalism.

There are those who claim to speak for God, claim to be proxies for God, pastors and leaders who demand loyalty, all too often claiming power only to abuse, physically, sexually, emotionally. 

In a time of chaos and confusion, in the ruins of Managua or the ruins of our constitutional order, what are we willing to do to take power? What will we do with that power once we have it? For I believe in the moral arc of the universe, bending toward justice, the good outnumbering the bad, love winning in the end.

In refusing the temptations offered by the Devil, Jesus defeats him. Having defeated the master, he is then able to defeat the servants, casting out demons through his ministry. But we see real power when he stands before the Sanhedrin, before Herod Antipas, before Pontius Pilate, when he is brutally beaten and slowly killed, and offers only forgiveness, never wavering in his message of an alternative kingdom, where those who misuse power are brought low, where the lowly are lifted up. 

We see real power when the risen Christ turns over the movement to his followers, entrusts them to the Holy Spirit, and ascends into the sky, though that feast is weeks away. 

Lead us not into temptation. 

We can read the time Jesus spends in the desert as an analog to the initiation rites of some indigenous cultures, the walkabout of the Aborigine, the vision quest of some Native American tribes. The desert is a thin place, deprivation and isolation tests and reveals. 

We have no way of knowing long how long he might have stayed out there, or if the story even represents historic memory. A far better question is what we are meant to learn from the story. And we best understand that through the lens of the radical theological thread that runs through pre-Rabbinic Judaism, the notion that the only worthy king is God. 

Is there a personified evil, and Adversary that has earthly power? What sort of God would be cool with that?

In the context of the story, the ministry of Jesus begins with rejecting an earthly kingdom, and ends with the man being executed under a sign that reads “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

Lead us not into temptation.

It is not that hard to believe that a sociopath can rise to power in an evil system, harder to understand when sociopaths rise to power in free societies. But what makes a man like Daniel Ortega, who was once so worthy of our praise, who risked his life to free the prisoners and feed the hungry and clothe the poor, that is to say to do things commanded by the prophets, what is it that corrupts? Is it as simple as that famous phrase coined by the English historian and peer John Dalberg-Acton in 1887, that absolute power corrupts absolutely?

I think we might find an answer closer to home, in the paradox that was this nation’s first president. Though he enslaved others, denying their essential humanity, the nation that he helped create was a radical experiment in equality in the context of European culture, one that would catch fire but then fail in France, but would successfully sweep across much of the Americas. His 1796 farewell address, popularized in the lyrics of the musical “Hamilton,” contains these words:

“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend.”

It seems to me that it is not power that corrupts after all, but arrogance, self-righteousness, hubris, the notion that you are irreplaceable. The passion that fires the revolutionary leader always risks becoming a conflagration that leaves behind ash and bone where justice once bloomed. And it is not just political leaders. It happens when a football coach or pastor refuses to let go. There is even a trend these days, promoted in the cesspool of social media, of American parents forcing their young adult children to sign documents granting them broad powers to micromanage their lives, threatening to make the teens homeless or to withhold educational funds. 

It is probable that I may have committed many errors. Lead me not into the temptation of believing I am right.

St. Thomas Merton of Gethsemane Abbey wrote a prayer that continues to resonate seventy years after it was first published. It begins:

“I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.”

This Lenten season, consider keeping the chocolate, and giving up, instead, certainty Lean into the mystery. Walk humbly with your God, in the Palestinian desert, across Managua’s Plaza de la Revolución, everywhere you encounter the holy, for you encounter the holy everywhere. Amen.

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE concluding with the Lord’s Prayer

This week, the man we have known for most of our lives as Prince Andrew of Great Britain was arrested in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. But he was not arrested in connection with the sex trafficking of young women, often minors. Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested for potentially sharing details of secret trade negotiations with Mr. Epstein. The crimes that mattered enough were the ones that threatened the wealth of white men.

Let us pray.

Most Amazing God,
your prophets promised that the powerful would be brought low,
the lowly lifted up.

Jesus, a rabbi and prophet in that same tradition,
announced the same thing,
this in-breaking kin-dom of justice and love.

Yes, please.

Then again, you called us,
called immigrants from Ur,
called a fugitive in Midian,
called the youngest son, a shepherd in a field.

Jesus didn’t call priests
or members of the Sanhedrin.
He chose brothers in a boat,
a collaborator with empire,
the woman called Magdalene.

We pray for the victims,
of Jeffrey Epstein,
of Neo-nationalism,
of corporate greed,
pray for ourselves,
that we might have enough certainty to act,
enough humility to do so carefully,
to accept change,
to confess when needed.

Crucified as a false king,
we pray as Jesus taught us, saying:

Our Father…

Matthew 17:1-9

This weekend, congregations across the country and across multiple faith traditions are celebrating Religion and Science Weekend. The movement started as Evolution Sunday and coincided with the birthday of Charles Darwin. I’m not quite ready to place Darwin in my canon of alternative saints, so maybe I should refer to him as “Nearly Saint Charles.” After all, it took courage, arrogance, or both for Darwin and other scientists of the 19th century to challenge literal interpretations of the Biblical Creation myth.

It took courage in 2004 for pastors in Wisconsin to challenge the selective literalists who insisted that the two creation myths in Genesis must be read literally, though they generally pretend there is only one, along with the Flood myth pre-rabbinic authors borrowed from Mesopotamian culture. Their push to teach their anti-science Christian heresy in public schools was a warning of what was to come, and indeed has come.

Three years after that campaign to keep real science in the schools, Evolution Sunday evolved into Evolution Weekend as Jewish communities joined the movement for Shabbat. In 2023, after the Covid-19 pandemic showed just how widespread and dangerous the anti-science movement was, it became Religion and Science Weekend.

The theme this year is “Truth Matters,” and wow, is that obvious, as our nation has been overtaken by several oddly aligned cults: a personality cult around a rapist and racist; a wellness cult selling 21st century snake oil, the logical intersection of end-stage capitalism and self-help; and of course, white Christian nationalism, a perversion that twists the words of Jewish and Christian scripture in ways we have not seen since the fall of the Third Reich. All funded by the billionaires who own the media, and increasingly, our government. But we science in this church, and though only two of us took an ordination vow to speak the truth with love, truth telling is in our congregational DNA.

I could try to approach the topic from the science side, but I’d most certainly get a lot of it wrong, especially if I tried to discuss quantum mechanics, which I find fascinating and mysterious. I have the exact same experience of God, fascinating and mysterious, but at least in that case I know the fancy words that might convince you, on some days, that I’m not completely clueless. So let’s go with that.

Ancient humans, faced with existential angst and encountering the mysterious and transcendent, created placeholders for powers unknown and uncontrollable, gods with a small “g.” The Yahweh cult of ancient Israel was incredibly innovative, moving from polytheism to monotheism, from idols to a God that could not be depicted, from a God that behaved like a human despot to a God that was compassionate, always forgiving and seeking reconciliation with God’s chosen people. Jesus, as unique as he would turn out to be, would not be possible without the theological entrepreneurship of the Jewish prophets.

Ancient humans … created placeholders for powers unknown and uncontrollable, gods with a small “g.”

The followers of Jesus, all Jews, experienced something in him that felt God like. The official feast for this day, Transfiguration, represents as theophany, a manifestation of the divine. His followers experienced him as still present to them even after they had seen him tortured and executed. The movement that followed went through many theological contortions and a fair amount of bloodshed to make sense of how God could be God and Jesus could also be God and a human and God could still be present as the spirit that animated Christians and their congregations. But every iteration of God was understood as a person, with will and agency like a human person, communicating with human persons.

That constructed understanding of God got warped by Hellenistic philosophy, imperial authorization, and institutionalization. In Christianity, God became this paradox, unchanging and all-knowing, while also a puppet master in the sky, still a backstop for the unknown and transcendent.

The thing is, culture allows humans to transmit knowledge across tribes and generations. Culture changes. Even more critically, human knowledge routinely reached a tipping point when sudden surges in knowledge occurred. The biologists who recognized and named the process of natural selection represent one moment in that trajectory. The physicists of the first half of the 20th century and the geneticists of the latter half were other iterations of that pattern, and today there is zero doubt that life evolved from a common ancestor, that we humans are bipedal primates with an inflated sense of our own importance, and that human chauvinism is not only wrong, but also dangerous.

Continue reading “Religion and Science Weekend 2026”

Matthew 5:13-20

In 1986, the United States Supreme Court delivered a decision in Bowers v. Hardwick. In a 5-4 ruling, the majority affirmed the right of the state to criminalize consensual sexual activity between adults in the privacy of a home. And lest there be any confusion, this was about one thing and one thing only. Many states, including my own Commonwealth of Virginia, had sodomy laws on the books in order to criminalize homosexuality.

I had only been out as a gay man for a couple of years at that point, and only partially out, for if my Army Reserve unit asked and I told, I risked a dishonorable discharge despite having completed my Active Duty obligation, and even faced the possibility of a court martial and time at Fort Leavenworth, the military’s prison in Kansas.

Seventeen years later, the ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick was reversed in Lawrence v. Texas. Of course, marriage equality was still years away, as was protection in employment and housing. By the time the LGBTQ+ community had basic civil rights, I’d moved north, out of the so-called Bible Belt, a region that has subsequently abandoned the Bible and aligned with a heretical cult.

Every week, we remind ourselves here at Park that law and righteousness are not necessarily the same thing, that the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, while the Underground Railroad was criminal, and we are proud to be heirs of the criminally righteousness.

The Supreme Court’s reversal on privacy and sodomy laws aligns well with an oft repeated quote from Thomas Jefferson, carved into the wall of his memorial in Washington, D.C. and taken from a letter he wrote to Samuel Kercheval, a Virginia lawyer and author. Jefferson wrote:

“Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

Of course, we look back at Jefferson, so critical in the development of our democracy, and see an enslaver, and by some standards, a rapist, for not only did we mostly cast off slavery as a nation, but we problematize consent when there is an enormous power differential, as there was between Jefferson and his slave and mistress, Sally Hemmings. To quote Hamlet, Jefferson is “hoisted by his own petard,” being cast as a barbarous ancestor.

Lawfulness and lawlessness are part of our national conversation these days, a lawless regime engaged in ethnic cleansing of opposition party enclaves while claiming those they target due to ethnicity and national origin are the actual lawless ones, presumably including five year-old Liam Conejo Ramos. 

Law and authority were very much part of the national conversation in the time of Jesus as well, and later in the time of Paul, inflection points when it comes to following Jesus and religious law, and following Jesus and civil law. And I’d like to suggest that we come to opposite conclusions.

Continue reading “Our Barbarous Ancestors: 8 February 2026”

Matthew 5:1-12

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we started Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle of readings shared by many Protestant denominations. The vast majority of our gospel readings this year will come from the Gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew. Years B and C in the cycle focus on Mark and Luke, the three grouped together as the Synoptic Gospels because they are very similar. 

The Fourth Gospel, John, has unique stories that get distributed throughout the lectionary cycle. For example, the Sunday after Easter always includes John’s story commonly known as “Doubting Thomas,” a story that is not found in the synoptics.

We’ll do a deep dive into Matthew tomorrow night in Monday School, though it is my least favorite gospel. It is also the one with which many are most familiar. It is Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer that we recite. In today’s reading, we find the version of the Beatitudes we know, part of the Sermon on the Mount, probably the only sermon by Jesus you could name. In it, we hear that “blessed are those who hunger and third for righteousness,” as opposed to Luke’s version, which declares “blessed are those who are hungry now.” 

Jesus lived in a time of backbreaking extractions from Rome, a time of famine and drought. I am inclined to believe Luke’s version is the more authentic, consistent with that gospel’s focus on those at the margins. Luke also pair’s the blessings with “woes,” verses like 6:24 which declares “But how terrible for you who are rich, because you have already received your comfort,” which again, feels consistent with First Century Galilee and other aspects of the prophetic tradition, a tradition with which Jesus identified.

Part of Matthew’s agenda is to cast Jesus as thoroughly Jewish, which he was, and particularly as a new Moses, which he probably wasn’t. That is why this sermon is on a mount, meant as an echo of Mount Sinai where Moses encountered God and received the Ten Commandments. In Luke, this text is part of a Sermon on the Plain. 

It was not uncommon to think of God in connection to high places, especially on a flat earth. The Temple in Jerusalem is built on a “mount.” Jesus is “transfigured,” revealing his divine nature to the three accompanying apostles, on a mountain. Jesus ascends into the heavens by soaring up into the sky, and will, according to Paul, return at the Second Coming from the sky.

But I grew up on a coastal plain, where the tallest hill was literally a pile of trash, and the water table was just below the surface. I experienced the holy not on the mountain top, but in the ocean. This morning, I want to suggest that the Holy Mystery we name as God is just as present in the level and low places, physical and spiritual, as in the high, whether you are a faithful Trinitarian experiencing the divine as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or an adventurer in the land of the uncharted diaphanous. God is there for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, even in the Pit of Despair, even if you are being chased by the Brute Squad.

Continue reading “Pit of Despair: 1 February 2026”

Matthew 4:12-23

SERMON Hippo What?

The process of forming and authorizing someone for a Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the United Church of Christ, the kind of ministry that generally requires ordination, is complicated. Someone needs to feel a call to ordained ministry, a call that is affirmed by their own congregation, by the Committee on Ministry of the local association, by an Ecclesiastical Council representing all of the congregations in the local association, and a body, a congregation or a chaplaincy, that calls the candidate into service. There are many other boxes to check along the way, educational and clinical, but these are the theologically essential checkpoints, this shared sense of a call.

There are guidelines from the national setting’s Office of Ministerial Excellence, Support, and Authorization, MESA, but implementation is local, because we are congregational and covenantal. Some local associations have a reputation for being harder than others, including Metro Boston, where I was ordained. Though somewhat reduced with the closure of two of the local theological schools, there are still way too many academics serving in the Boston area who find their way onto the authorization committee.

So it was that I found myself sitting before the Metro Boston Association Committee on Ministry’s session to determine if I was theologically prepared for ministry. I had submitted my ordination paper, one of many gateway texts I was churning out those days, and the committee was asking questions, when a hotshot newly-minted university chaplain began a long rambling question that contained the words “hypostatic union.” One committee member, a local church pastor, was knitting through the meeting, but I did catch her eye roll. 

When bright young chaplain finished his question, indicated by silence, I tried to figure out exactly what it was he wanted to hear from me, if anything, or if he really just wanted to hear from himself, so I asked him to repeat the question. Cue a subtle snicker from our knitter. There followed another long-winded exploration of theological minutia. 

Finally, I responded. “I think you are asking if I have a low Christology. Yes, I have a low Christology.”

I am sure it was grace that carried that local church pastor, knitting needles in hand, though my response, as she did not fall out of her chair or put out an eye. The very smart young chaplain was possibly flummoxed, though I did ultimately pass that portion of the screening process.

Now, to be honest, a better question for someone who intended to serve a local church might have been “What will you do when the organist quits on Saturday night and the coffee pots fails on Sunday morning?” Local church ministry has always been practical, even without our particular Park Church emphasis. 

Continue reading “25 January 2026 ( A Snow Day )”

Isaiah 49:1-7

The Golden Globe Awards were at one time credible though controversial, the work of a Hollywood Foreign Press Association that was mostly blind to the systemic racism in America. In 2023, the enterprise was bought out by a privately-held company called Eldridge Industries. They own all or portions of many American companies and media platforms, the awards now basically billionaires celebrating the achievements of production companies owned by other billionaires.

We’ve always had foreign journalists in the United States, especially since the Second World War. And just as tapes that had been in a basement for half a century became the remarkable 2021 Questlove documentary “Summer of Soul,” about 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival, so coverage of America’s Black Power movement by Swedish reporters in the 1960’s and ‘70’s was re-discovered and became the 2011 documentary “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.” 

There is footage of the Rev. Dr. King, of course, though not much, as he was assassinated just one year into the video archive. Other well-known figures of the era featured in the documentary include Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, and Stokely Carmichael. 

It is Carmichael, a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who says on this found footage:

“Dr. King’s policy was, if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption. In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”

We celebrate King, and there is much to celebrate, though his critics were not limited to white supremacists, witch-hunting anti-communists, and the military industrial complex. Carmichael and Malcom X were Black critics on one side, while there were also Black voices on the other side, concerned that the time was not right to pursue equality, that the non-violent tactics of King and his followers were too confrontational, that any effort to address longstanding oppression would result in greater oppression. 

The 20th century prophet we have turned into a saint, despite his well-documented moral failings, was assailed from all sides.

Continue reading “Sword Mouth – 18 January 2026”

Matthew 3:13-17

Dogmatic Christianity defines heresy as incorrect belief, claiming that there is such a thing as a correct belief that has been directly revealed to humans by God, through a burning bush, prophetic visions, or the actions of the Holy Spirit. 

Constructive Christianity brings skepticism to the table, inclined to believe heresy simply indicates the side that lost, with orthodoxy the result of popularity, violence, or political interference. Those deemed heretics and their texts often felt the flame, not of hellfire, but of our more conventional murder and book burning. 

We do not know if the works of Marcion, a Second Century Christian heretic, were actually burned, but we sure don’t have them. What we do have is Tertullian’s five-volume rebuttal, Adversus Marcionem, allowing us to reconstruct the original heresy, as least as Tertullian understood it.

In short, Marcion claimed that the good and loving god who sent Jesus into the world could not be the same as the malevolent creator god named Yahweh. He rejected the Hebrew Scriptures entirely, and developed his own canon of texts, made up of a shortened version of Luke, and ten of the letters attributed to Paul.

I do not agree with Marcion, but I certainly understand how he got there. If the Jewish Bible is read as an absolute and accurate record of a deity who punishes in an arbitrary and capricious manner, who orders genocide, it is most certainly not great news. That god would be as predictable and as good as your average domestic abuser, neither rhyme nor reason behind the violence and manipulation, the victims, in this case us, trying to justify our own suffering. In fact, some of the prophetic texts do exactly that, attempting to justify what they perceive as divine punishment, invasions and slaughter.

Continue reading “Unoriginal Sin: 11 January 2026”

Matthew 2:1-12

Christmas has a fixed date every year, even if it is most certainly not the actual date for the birth of Jesus. That means Epiphany has a fixed date every year too, January 6th, at least for most of us. Some Orthodox traditions as well as some Middle Eastern Christians still use the Julian calendar for religious purposes, which places the feast on January 19th.

If you are keeping score, that makes January 5th the Twelfth Day of Christmas in our tradition, leaving you on Epiphany Eve with swans a’ swimming and lords a’ leaping and so on, retail value just north of $218 thousand and considerable maintenance costs, the geese and maids not producing quite enough milk and eggs to feed all of those pipers. 

Like many churches these days, we choose to celebrate Epiphany on the first Sunday after the New Year, not really being “holy day of obligation” sort of folks.

Easter moves, as you know. It is the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox, which changes from year to year. There is even a Latin term for identifying the date of Easter, the Computus Paschalis. Though again, traditions using the Julian calendar for religious purposes often arrive at a different date.

Christianity is not alone in having movable observances. Not surprisingly, the calculation for determining the date of Passover, the feast that brought Jesus to Jerusalem and led to the climactic events in his story, is similar to the Computus Paschalis, “paschalis” derived from “pesach,” ancient Hebrew for the infinitive “to pass over.” 

Passover begins at sundown on the night of the first full moon after the Spring equinox. Except the Hebrew calendar is lunisolar and has to add in leap months seven out of every nineteen years, which can sometimes force Passover to the second full moon after the equinox, most recently in 2016.

For Muslims, the holy month of Ramadan begins on February 18th this year. Well, maybe, depending on whether you accept the date decreed by the Saudis, or insist on a local sighting of the first crescent moon, the traditional method. And because the Muslim calendar is strictly lunar rather than solar, with no leap months, it falls between ten and eleven days short of a solar year annually, meaning everything, including Ramadan, moves in relation to fixed calendars.

Many religious observances are still based on the time of day, which was not precise in ancient times, before modern science and the powerful computers we all carry in our pockets. For example, the Ramadan fast is from dawn to sundown. For Jews, it mattered whether you had time to finish plowing and get back to the house and cleaned up before the sun went down, marking the start of sabbath. 

To help people figure out when exactly it was dawn, the rabbis taught that “It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.”

Continue reading “Daybreak”