Why Mary?

The story is hardly credible to our modern minds. A fifteen-year-old girl informs her parents—I am assuming her parents were still living, though there is no mention of them—that an angel has visited her and now she is pregnant with the long-awaited Messiah. We don’t expect the birth of Messiah, and few people know the … Continue reading Why Mary?

The inconvenient Jesus

Jesus was the enemy of formalism and legalism, the one who castigated the religious leaders of His day for their hypocrisy.  He was the friend of the poor, the oppressed, the outcasts and the sinners.  We like to believe that no matter what others may think of us, Jesus is our unconditional friend. That isn’t … Continue reading The inconvenient Jesus