I’ve heard the words “gospel gun” used to describe an argumentative approach to evangelism that many of us have experienced, and some of us tried.

Do Presbyterians really believe Jesus will come back, as he says he will in our gospel today?

Every day, says Deuteronomy, bind these words to hand and forehead, hammer the words to the doorposts. They must be the last words you see as you go out into the world.

When you’re tired out from walking, fed up with scrounging for food, weighed down with your few belongings and your growing children, you can actually forget the feel of the whip on your back. All you want is a full belly, a night’s rest, and a day off the road.

Behind the beauty of this story is a thief, cheat and liar who gets what he wants. Genesis makes a hero out of Jacob, a seriously flawed hero, but a hero nonetheless.

How do we preach the gospel without blaming the Jews?

Why doesn’t John tell the story of the Last Supper, as the other gospels do? It’s one of the most important stories about Christians.

Many years ago, Dr. Stanley Walters told us theological students to read the first dozen chapters of Genesis as “pictorial theology.” This is a graphic novel, each episode told in a page or two of vivid images.

Today’s reading from Leviticus 19 is a good example of the way the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary presume to know what’s best for us. They cut six verses of theo-politically incorrect stuff.

Repentance is not a prerequisite to being found and loved and valued and accepted by Jesus.

We shudder at the expression of such violence against children, against the idea of such deadly revenge.

Jesus told a story we often rush through to get to the part about the (Hebrew) Bosom of Abraham and (Greek) Hades. The story isn’t about, as one scholar puts it, the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell.

Sometimes we speak of faith as if it’s agreeing to accept something that doesn’t make sense unless we see it through “the eyes of faith.” Mark Twain said it through Huck Finn: “Faith is believin’ what you know
ain’t so.”

Whatever the disorder of her life may have been, there’s no reason to call Mary Magdalene a whore or paint her hair the iconographer’s devilish red.

Can we say for sure Jesus’s prayer is for all of us who call ourselves by his name to belong to one, big church? Can we say for sure Jesus prays just for people we would recognize as Christians?