Isaiah 35:1-10 Matthew 11:2-11 People often do like a new thing. Kim and I have recently noticed the presence of a new fast food franchise in our area, which is drawing a lot of attention: Zaxby’s. I’ve never eaten at one, although I have noticed them while traveling. Apparently, they specialize in “chicken fingerz.” I hear they are really good. Every time we have passed the new one in Cambridge we’ve seen a line of cars stretching out on the road. That’s just something humans do. When a new place opens up people have to go there and find out what it’s all about. If there is enough buzz, and if it is really good, the energy might sustain itself, and it becomes like the Rise Up drive-through on Riverside Drive. When we lived in Dayton, Ohio, food trucks were all the rage. A whole culture of food truck connoisseurs […]
Continue readingMonth: December 2025
The One Who’s Coming
Isaiah 11:1-10 Matthew 3:1-12 I recently read a snippet from an interview with one of our most famous living Bible scholars, John Dominic Crossan. The topic of the Left Behind mania came up – you remember those books that were so popular in the nineties? They promoted the rapture concept, the notion that believers will one day, unexpectedly get scooped up into heaven, leaving behind a world on the verge of chaos. According to the theory, there follows a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, ending with the triumphal return of Jesus to earth. This is the kind of stuff that begs to be made into a movie franchise. We touched on the concept last week, with our first Sunday of Advent texts focusing on the end of the world. Crossan had an interesting take on the rapture mania. He said he thought the obsession about Jesus’ […]
Continue readingAbout Time
Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44 It’s a bit quirky that the liturgical calendar which starts today with the first Sunday of Advent, usually begins with some thoughts about the end of things. The end of time, specifically. The end of the world as we know it. There is a human desire to know in advance when that end will come. I think it must be because of some completely irrational idea that we might avoid it. If you know it’s coming maybe you can duck? But, as Jesus says, no one knows. Still, people try to figure it out, as if it were nothing more than a tough riddle. And so it seems like there is always somebody somewhere offering up a prediction about exactly when the world will end. In fact, just this fall there was a prediction that caught a lot of traction. A man from South Africa announced […]
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