Last year, at the height of the pandemic (or is this the height of the pandemic?), a clergy colleague asked me to write a new version of the birth of Jesus that might preserve the radical message of Luke but translate it into more contemporary metaphors.
There are 3 parts of Jesus’s birth story that we want to open here, like gifts. There are many parts of this story that, once unwrapped, hold great truth and importance including dreams, angels and what was going on for Joseph.
Almost all of us, at one time or another, have participated in a Christmas pageant. We have been angels or shepherds, wise men or Joseph, the Virgin Mary or …
Matthew has thus far mined the Hebrew Scriptures for texts that will advance his thesis that Jesus has fulfilled the Jewish messianic expectations. In the opening genealogy, he has …
The creators of the birth narratives, Matthew and Luke, used two motifs in interpreting the life of Jesus of Nazareth. First, each was historically aware that Jesus hailed from …
In order to understand the birth narratives found in Matthew and Luke, we need to embrace the fact that there is no way these stories were intended to be …
Somewhere six to ten years after the Gospel of Matthew was written, another gospel, the one we call Luke, makes its appearance. Both Matthew and Luke had Mark as …
Christianity was born in the synagogue and the original followers of Jesus were primarily observant Jews. They gathered in the synagogue regularly on the Sabbath for worship. A major …
Reading the Bible with any real comprehension in the 21st century is not an easy task. The gospels are a product of the 1st century, a dramatically different time, …
The prologue to Mathew’s gospel, which also serves to introduce the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth, is now complete. Matthew writing as he does to the members of a …