I don’t know how it worked out this way, but I always seemed to get “stuck” at the dinner table with my uncles and father. It was summer, and we were gathered together at a cottage in Cooperstown, NY. The cottage had been bought by my great grandfather in 1906 and our families...

From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the...

Okay, so this is totally irrelevant, but at time same time so ridiculously cute and wondrous. Imagine being the kid – and of course I have no idea if it was really a kid, as it may very well have been an adult, but I still hope it was a kid – who caught this footage. And imagine...

Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother,...

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus...

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or...

In case we might be wondering whether denominations are one of those things that “have always been this way,” I thought it might be interesting to consider what one of the original reformers had to say about the notion of dividing into named groups: I ask that people make no...