His disciples were with him as he left. They saw a beggar. They put to him a question which bothered them, just like it bothers us. They asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

I can see why they built a church to commemorate her. I can hear the preacher’s words at the dedication service of the church, 1,700 years ago.

What should be the response of Christians to those whose favourite verse is “an eye for an eye”? Are they Christians?

Most of the homes are filled with ang pow, red packets with gifts of money; and oranges, which signify wealth. Talk of death is forbidden. Yet,

Why did Matthew tell us of the transfiguration? Why does he frame it as Jesus’ response to the depression his disciples fell into when they learned about the crucifixions in their own futures? Why does he tell us about Peter’s tent-construction proposal? Why was God so “political” in the way he addressed Jesus?

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Matthew 5:13-20. The English Standard Version supplies the heading “Salt and Light” to verses 13-16, and the heading “Christ Came to Fulfil the Law” to verses 17-20. Last week, I discussed the earlier verses in today’s chapter, the first words in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus

Why did Jesus begin with blessings? And why did he label as “blessings,” things which we surely don’t want?

In the first months of my discipleship, a man called Mr Purdie asked me why I chose to follow Jesus. I said I somehow …

Jesus joined sinners in solidarity. Not to commit sin together with them. But to reveal sin as the cause of so much trouble in our world, and to reveal and to act out God’s solution to it – a solution which required his death on the altar of a Roman cross in Jerusalem, the Holy City.