Just a moment...

Take These Words to Prayer

For the rabbi in distress—and for his oppressed and colonized people—Elijah breaks the rules of the game, in which the Romans governing Palestine (or the Persians governing Babylonia) always win and the Jews always lose. Elijah in disguise opens unpredictable possibilities.

Every week people file into our church services aching for eternity. In our zeal to provide something they may find comfortable and useful and inoffensive, are we offending the God who wishes to offend us in awe of his glory? Are we dismissing our brother Jesus, whose formula for victory includes crucifixion?

That such an interpretation of Moses’ teachings owed more to the Stoics than to Torah did not alter a momentous truth: that the Jewish conception of the divine was indeed well suited to an age that had seen distances shrink and frontiers melt as never before.

We need for Him to challenge us about calling what he has created “common or unclean.”