When I was a kid I sometimes saw movies in which one of the characters called out, “Smithkins, you’re fired!” To me back then, it seemed like a moment of power. But, a few years ago when I found myself in that situation, the experience was quite different. I was running a theological college in another country, and one of the ancillary workers, let’s call him Raphael, was going through a marital crisis. We were arranging marriage counselling for them, but before it could t

In today’s Gospel, we hear the beginning of chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel, which scholars call the “parabolic” discourse of Jesus (don’t worry, it has nothing to do with mathematics!). It’s the third of five discourses in the Gospel of Matthew, so we are right in the heart of his Gospel. There are seven parables in this chapter. We hear the first, and the longest, today, and we will hear the rest of them over the next two Sundays. Given that we are entering into Matthew’s pa

Rhetoric, the art of giving finely crafted and persuasive speeches, is often condemned. The paradox about condemnations of rhetoric, however, is that the best of them are themselves finely crafted speeches, great examples of precisely what they apparently condemn. There is something of that in Jesus’ praising the Father for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to little ones: Isn’t he also clever and obviously learned in the way he uses and