Category: Luke

From the beginning, the Scriptural God commanded biological reproduction—be fruitful and multiply. Reproduce biologically because the generation yet unborn cannot be created by studying or preaching the Torah. But remember that God is King, and they are his children, not yours. But the human beings did not listen. Cain multiplied himself, raising offspring to his…

After expending significant effort to construct a genealogy—almost from scratch, only now, as he approaches his knockout punch, “Son of Man (ben adam), Son of God,” Luke draws upon pre-existing material to finalize his inverted dynasty. Climbing past an excerpt borrowed from Matthew detailing Abraham’s line, we now stumble across another collection of names, this…

Thus far in Luke’s genealogy, the writer has emphasized two critical points within the broader storyline of the New Testament. First, after paralleling Matthew’s dismissal of Joseph’s patrimony, Luke builds on Matthew’s handling of Hebrew terminology in Genesis, pushing the biblical tension between the positive, godly expression, “Son of Man,” and the pejorative worldly title,…

When a person experiences cognitive dissonance, that is, when they find themselves in a situation where exposure to conflicting ideas and information becomes too stressful or mentally uncomfortable, their natural inclination is to seek security in the safety of consonance. Humans naturally avoid, discredit, belittle, and delegitimize the ideas or people that cause them to…

As in the story of Genesis, for each generation of Luke’s genealogy, the functional names outline the literary framework of a recurring biblical dilemma: without God’s perpetual intervention, life from age to age is impossible. In science and engineering, numerous terms are used to describe similar mechanisms. In physics and thermodynamics, it is referred to…

When we set out to start a business, a project, a book, or an endeavor of any kind, most of us begin by asking ourselves, who is my audience, and how can I make my work relevant to them? Outside the arena of biblical preaching, these are normal, practical – even necessary – questions. However,…

For years on this program, in homilies and personal discussions with parishioners, family, and friends — I have explained that there is no such thing as progress. That you can’t earn anything. That nothing you have belongs to you. No one owes you anything, and even what you seem to have will be taken away,…

According to the rule of the Lukan genealogy, the recent coronation of the English king was uncanny in its egregious assault on the biblical proclamation of the Resurrection. On the one hand, those who have stayed with this podcast over the years have (hopefully) come to understand that Scripture is a system of cancellation encoded…

If you are fortunate to live under the pressure of the Gospel, sooner or later, your life will be reduced to a showdown with the Scriptural God. You will have the opportunity to be embarrassed, admit your failure, lose face, and look foolish in front of the person who preached the word of God to…

Nothing is more painful than watching young parents explain their intention to raise their children differently than their parents or observing young mothers hovering over grandmothers, micro-managing their every move, scolding, correcting, worrying, overprotecting, and gossiping, all based on advice from their therapist or some silly blog post about the “right” way to parent according…