Author: chrisbryan

  [caption id="attachment_640" align="alignleft" width="393"] A Medieval Picture of the Universe: humanity at the fringes looking in.[/caption] People in the Middle Ages* assumed that the sun went round the earth. Given what they saw every day, that was a perfectly reasonable assumption. Because we no longer share...

13 March, 2017

It had begun the week before.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke are agreed about that--the week before, with that never-to-be-forgotten conversation at Caesarea Philippi. Perhaps “conversation” was hardly the word for it.   It had been more of a quarrel, really, if we are to trust Matthew and...

25 February, 2017

For the Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12 I would like to spend a few moments this morning looking with you at the passage we just read for the gospel, the so-called “Beatitudes,” presented by Matthew as the prologue to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Surely it’s one of...

29 January, 2017

John the Baptist is back with us again this morning. He appears a lot during the seasons of Advent and the Epiphany, doesn’t he? Today we have part of St. John’s take on him—St. John, who always has a slightly different slant on things from...

16 January, 2017

[caption id="attachment_558" align="alignleft" width="359"] Francesco Albani (1578-1660), Baptism of Christ(http://public-domain-images.blogspot.com/)[/caption] “Then,” Saint Matthew tells us—that is, while John the Baptist was preaching—“Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan.” Jesus comes with a purpose: “to be baptized by him”—and so Matthew prepares us for the conversation...

11 January, 2017

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Juliet is frustrated that her love for Romeo is forbidden for no other reason than that he belongs to her family’s rival family, and has their name: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word...

04 January, 2017

“Fear not!”[1]  That, according to Luke, was the first word of the angel’s Christmas message to the shepherds. And as we listen to Luke’s story, following the decree of Caesar Augustus and all those other high imperial goings-on, it is also the first word of the...

25 December, 2016

This morning’s gospel passage is from the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel. If you know your Bible you’ll know it’s preceded by what Matthew calls “an account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah”—or, as the old KJV translated it, “the book of the generation...

19 December, 2016

Gospel: Matthew 11:1-13 “Are you the one that is to come?” John the Baptist asks Jesus from prison. And so John reveals that even he—rough, gruff, uncompromising John the Baptist—has his moments of doubt and uncertainty. Some find that shocking. I don’t know why they should....

12 December, 2016