You know the Sistine Chapel? That famous building in the Vatican, where Michaelagelo painted frescoes depicting stories from Scripture, like God creating Adam and imagining Jesus at the Last Judgment. He painted these in the early 1500s, so 500 years ago, and visitors are still showing up to see these works. In fact, every day, some 17,000 to 20,000 people visit the Sistine Chapel to marvel at these works of art. Last year, seven million people passed through this holy space. And every...

I wish I had better news for you today, but I don’t. The truth is this: the Gospel is not fair. Jesus tells this parable where the hardest workers don’t get paid more according to their hard work. It feels like people are getting good things that they don’t deserve. And we live in a world where people also get bad things they don’t deserve. What kind of justice is this? I suppose this is to be expected from the God who sustained the people of Israel through the wilderness on a diet of...

How do you explain the idea of sin as being in debt to someone, perhaps in debt to God? This is how Jesus explains it in the parable from the Gospel lesson, about an unforgiving servant. Apparently sin has some kind of value, such that debt can be accrued by sinning repeatedly against someone. This is a difficult statement, because you could imagine that sin is just one person’s opinion against another person’s opinion of what is right or wrong. That only God can judge, so our...