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You’ve been on a roller coaster, right? I am not an aficionado at all, but most coasters, like Space Mountain, have a long windup while you climb the hill that allows gravity to pull you up to speed. Mark is more like Rockin’ Roller Coaster, where you get launched into warp speed right away. (I…
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So I prayed to be protected from spiritual pride, from caring more about how many likes or kind words I got for my post than whether it was faithful. Then I wrote a super-challenging interpretation of Matthew 25 about the tension between imperfect and perfect loves, whether we think of love as a finite resource…
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When you follow the Church year, you can miss some things. After 25 years of being Catholic, I have gotten used to the Jesus story moving pretty much directly from Palm Sunday, when Jesus enters Jerusalem, to the Last Supper-Crucifixion-Resurrection Triduum. So what I was reminded of tonight was that Matthew puts some really significant…
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Why do you think Jesus was executed? Matthew 20 has Jesus telling his gang, for a third time, that he’s going to get killed in Jerusalem by the powers that be. They don’t seem to get it – they are still vying for who will be his right-hand guy – and in that regard, maybe…
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A hundred times over. Before I get to the other thing, Matthew 19 has a lot of stuff you’ve probably heard so many times that it’s easy to glaze over (at least, that’s what I did tonight). But one thing I notice is just how hard it is to read tone into text. Jesus encounters…
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With a hat-tip to baseball philosopher Casey Stengel, who said the secret to managing was to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are still undecided, sometimes I think the secret to my success is keeping the folks who think I don’t curse from those who know better. Which comes to…
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OK, so Matthew 16 ends with a version of the saying that we heard at mass Sunday from Luke 14 about needing to hate your mother and father and brothers and sisters and pick up your cross if you want to follow Jesus. There’s a Christian radio station in Orlando that has a catchphrase that…
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A note on Matthew 15: maybe my new favorite miracle is here, the feeding of the 4,000. Here’s what I love about it. The story plays out just like you always heard: Jesus teaching to big crowd until late in the day, tells his disciples to feed them because they are too far from any…
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Who is the healer and who is being healed? In my too-slow walk through the New Testament, Matthew 14 has an interesting little touch you can miss if, like me, you just focus on the chunks of stories you’ve heard a zillion times. If you just get those out of context – Herod beheading John…
