Earlier this week at my clergy text study and New Joy’s Wednesday Bible Study I had my First Look at Sunday’s Scripture. After some study, prayer, reflection and conversation, here’s my Second Take.   Our readings for Sunday are: Daniel 12:1-3 The deliverance of God’s people at the end Psalm 16 My...

The Hope of Leviticus 25, Part 2 As I stated in my previous post, in order for us to understand Jesus’ mission, it really helps if we understand Leviticus 25. When Jesus first preaches publicly in the Gospel of Luke, he claims that the “year of the Lord’s favor” is...

The Hope of Leviticus 25, Part 1 [Photo credit: An Idyll of the Deep South, by Aaron Douglas, 1934] Christians often give short shrift to large swathes of the Old Testament. Baked into much of Christian culture is a latent, misguided notion that the Hebrew Bible is all laws and...