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Krister Stendahl

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I received news last night that Krister Stendahl has died. For many years, Bishop Stendahl was one of the leading lights of the Lutheran church. First known for his influential scholarship on the Apostle Paul, his academic work influenced his ministry. His understanding of a Jewish Paul working in the multicultural Mediterranean fed Stendahl's own passion for religious openness, tolerance, and friendship. As Bishop of Stockholm and Professor at Harvard Divinity School, his leadership role helped many in the church find legitimacy and hope in that kind of vision. Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord: And let light perpetual shine upon him. Few leaders of the church in our day - perhaps ever - have combined his depth of scholarship, pastoral discernment, and unfailing kindness and graciousness. While taking strong and controversial positions (on the full inclusion of women and gay people into the church, on the "Jewishness" of the early Christian movement, on the religious ope...
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He Told Me Everything I Have Ever Done!

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Third Sunday in Lent March 27, 2011 John 4:5-42 She came to the well every day at noon, when the sun was hottest. The other women in the village had long since gone back to their households, lugging the heavy water that sustained life and health in a dry land – as millions of women still do, daily, in poor and developing nations all over the world. Coming to the well at midday meant that she could avoid the dulling pain of being shunned and frozen out of the cheerful group that would meet each morning at the well, to carry the water in the cool of the day. Some traditional depictions of this story portray this Samaritan woman, someone who was very much an “other” to the Jews, as a sort of Bible-story version of Zsa Zsa Gabor or Elizabeth Taylor – a “use ‘em and lose ‘em” character with all her many husbands, a “woman of the world.” But more recent – and careful – scholarship, that takes the anthropology and social structures of that time and place into account, gives us a differe...
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Which healing? Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

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This gospel lesson is difficult for preachers. Which healing do you pay attention to? Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 Much has been made in recent years of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak. The daily loss of her life-blood not only indicated health problems (an infection? fibroid tumors? uterine cancer?) and sapped her strength (anemia?), it made her unclean. It deprived her of touch, of entry to the Temple, of normal social interaction. For twelve years... Even in her pursuit of healing she tries to be audaciously inconspicuous. The healing she finds in Jesus restores her body, her spirit, and her place in the community. It is difficult to ignore the story the daughter raised from the dead. The brief descriptions in the gospel lesson are easily filled out by imagination and experience. Children continue to die, by accident, illness, and violence, and the chord this sounds is recognizable, resonating deep in the soul. The death of a child strikes hard, on the family and also on the...
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