Matthew 18 is Jesus’s fourth teaching block of the Gospel. What does that mean? That today’s text doesn’t stand alone. This doesn’t take away from it. It just makes it richer, because it’s part of a larger whole.

My “Cross to bear” is neither my bum knee nor an invitation to be trampled upon.

The Canaanites brought back in

The walking on the water story is a theophany…

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Charli XCX’s new album ends with David Cronenberg saying, over and over, that no one lasts forever. I appreciate the honesty. A critic called it a litany for an afterlife-free church. Romans 8 is the response. Not a Hallmark card, not death-denial, but the promise that God makes a way out of no way. That nothing is lost. That everything bad will be undone.

We cannot tell wheat from weeds — not in the world, not in the church, not even in ourselves. The line runs through every heart. The servants’ zeal to purify is the most natural instinct in the world, and it’s the one thing forbidden…

Today’s Gospel invites reflection, but it’s about more than that.

The same Sower who seems reckless with the seed is the good farmer who keeps scattering and tilling until the soil is ready.

Join us every Sunday at St. John’s Park Slope at 10 AM. 💒

Like Bob Dylan, I love America (Go US Soccer 🇺🇸), but “My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man. My first allegiance is not to democracy or blood. But to a king and a kingdom.”

Indicative and imperatives; commands wrapped up in promises