Did you catch it? Did you catch who it is that Jesus commends for his understanding and spiritual maturity? "One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing ... " (YOUTUBE - sermon starts at 39:00) But wait a minute, I thought the scribes and the pharisees were Jesus' mortal enemies, his foils in our gospels as he put down the ways of old and inaugurates a new era. I thought the scribes and the pharisees were legalistic and narrow-minded, prone to heap burdens on people, and to miss the deeper meaning of God’s holy laws? Two comments are required: 1. Anti-semitism, much of it justified by a partial reading of our New Testament scriptures, is one of the great scourges of human history, and the fact that we are seeing a resurgence of it in our times is as sad a commentary as I can think of on the state of our life together. The Anti-Defamation League logged a 57 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2017, compared to t
Life & Death, Faith & Doubt, Here & There