Peter Hawkins

1 month ago | christiancentury.org | Peter Hawkins |Mac Loftin |Liz Charlotte Grant |Amy-Jill Levine

To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up. For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century. We do not know for sure what audience Isaiah had in mind with these stirring words of invitation, how close his first hearers stood either to the destruction of Jerusalem in around 586 BCE or to the return to the promised land from Babylonian captivity some 50 years later.

1 month ago | christiancentury.org | Mac Loftin |Liz Charlotte Grant |Debie Thomas |Peter Hawkins

Like any good preacher eager to move his audience into action, Jesus draws on a variety of homiletic approaches in Luke 13. On the one hand, he recalls the scary news of the day, local disasters guaranteed to put the fear of the Lord in anyone within earshot of Jerusalem. He speaks of events now lost to history but presumably vivid in the moment—cultic sacrifices mingled by Pontius Pilate with Galilean blood, a Siloam tower that crushed 18 people in its sudden fall.