The people of Nazareth find Jesus too familiar to take seriously. How can this son-of-a-carpenter make these kinds of demands on us?
It’s a perennial temptation. The more familiar Jesus becomes, the more we’re apt to blunt the force of His radical demands: The Jesus I know wouldn’t ask me to sell all to gain the kingdom. My Jesus doesn’t ask for a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees.
All of us are potential Nazarenes.
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…