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Showing posts from April, 2021

Glorified Bodies

What does the resurrection of Jesus tell us about the relationship between science and faith?     The answer is in the baked fish that Jesus ate in the presence of his amazed disciples.     But first, a story.       A few years ago, I was out fossil hunting with my wife and a group of other paleontologists in Northern Kentucky.  You may not know this, but the Cincinnati area contains an incredible trove of fossils from an age of natural history called the “Ordovician Period.” My wife, Dr. Kate Bulinski, is a paleontologist who specializes in this period and the invertebrates that populated it.   Fossil hunting often involves going to “road cuts,” which are places where hills or other rises have been blasted and dug out to allow a road to pass through.  This exposes a wide cross section of rocks and, in some places, fossils.     After a long day of visiting several of these cuts, I remember standing next to one of these tall faces of gray stone, rock hammer in hand, feeling a little sor

Washing Feet

April 1, 2021 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040121-Evening.cfm    Put yourself at the Last Supper.     The meal has just begun.     All of Jesus’ closest disciples are present—a rabble of people called out of fishing boats, tax collecting offices, brothels, and gangs—who followed him these three years through his long and winding road to Jerusalem.     They are family now.     Here they are seated at table during the Passover season.     It is an explosive time, fraught and tense with religious expectations and fear of a Roman garrison.     Yet the excitement of a palm waving parade into the city is still fresh.     It is good to be here and good to eat together.     And then Jesus does something shocking.       The Lord and Master strips down to his undergarments and gets on knees with a pitcher and bowl.  He signals that he is going to do the filthy, shameful work of the lowest slave: washing the grimy, calloused feet of these disciples.  These are people who have trod long