Dear Friends,

This past week, I joined colleagues from across the diocese to attend the annual Clergy Conference sponsored by the diocese. Dick and Lyn were also there, and if you have attended such conferences in your own field, you know that time away and together can be rich indeed. You reconnect with friends, find out what is going on in other parishes, and, as is always the case, come to fairly quick judgments about the effectiveness of the key note speaker or content being presented.

To note that this year’s speaker, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, received a standing ovation at the end of her last lecture is to only hint at how compelling and informative she was. Dr. Levine is a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences. She is one of the editors of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, and has written numerous books related to the Jewish world in which Jesus lived and from which the New Testament arose.

A main emphasis of her work has been to help Christians understand the ways in which traditional, but by no means accurate readings of the New Testament, have often perpetuated an anti-Jewish bias.  In her opening remarks, she summed up much of her work by reminding us that we do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus and Christianity look good.

Her presentations were at once scholarly, insightful, serious, and humorous. I know I will be reading some of her works in the future, and we have a copy of The Jewish Annotated New Testament here at the church office, if you are interested in borrowing it.

I’m grateful for the ways in which I was fed, challenged, and blessed during this conference. And I am grateful for your support in providing the time and funds for me to attend.

Faithfully,

Tom