Category Archives: Five Books of Moses; Pentateuch; Torah
Peripheral Vision
I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 31st at Christ Presbyterian Church by the Sea in Broad Channel, Queens. Their sanctuary and fellowship hall are newly restored after major flooding suffered during Hurricane Sandy almost two years ago. Many of … Continue reading
a bittersweet farewell
Last week, I finally finished Deuteronomy, and it was bittersweet. Instead of plunging into Joshua, I’ve been meditating on what it’s meant to spend the past four months immersed in the Pentateuch. For one thing, I feel a sense of … Continue reading
odds and ends
The last few chapters of Deuteronomy are chock-a-block with a bizaare assortment of laws, some of them so brutal that it would seem impossible to uncover any goodness in them at all. In bullet form, here are some of the … Continue reading
the moneychangers
Sometimes, because biblical stories are so familiar, I forget to wonder about their origins, or even to ask simple questions of their meaning. For instance, the Gospel stories of Jesus ‘cleansing the temple,’ overturning the tables of the moneychangers. The … Continue reading
refreshment
While Deuteronomy is not specifically liturgical, the flow of the text is so poetic and ‘hymnal’ that many of the verses/phrasings have been plugged into Jewish and Christian liturgy as foundational prayers and catechism. For instance, one of the most … Continue reading
the beginning of mercy
Plugging away at Deuteronomy and stopped short at 4:31- For the Lord your God is a merciful god. He will not let you go and will not destroy you and will not forget your fathers’ covenant that He swore to them. It … Continue reading
a stumbling block
Numbers has been a stumbling block for me, and I wonder if you have had a similar experience? Yes, I cringed and yawned plenty through certain parts of Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, but nothing has felt quite so alien (and … Continue reading
i did it! (and you can, too, i promise)
Please forgive me if I take a moment of personal privilege to publicly pat myself on the back for – finishing Leviticus! I have spent the past three hours on a lumpy couch in my local coffee shop, plodding through … Continue reading
Oh, Leviticus, what am I going to do with you?
Kudos to anyone who has ever sat down with the Book of Leviticus, intent on reading the entire thing, start to finish. Whoah! But first, an admission of my frailty- I have only just begun. I’m speeding up quickly and … Continue reading
a flawed hero
I found this sermon from August 31, 2008. It was an experiment for me- it’s not a first person narrative, but it has the feel of first-person. The process of crafting this sermon was wonderful- spiritually and theologically, and it … Continue reading
gather the folks. tell the stories. 