February 12, 2025

The Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen has long been a favorite of mine. Known for his wide-ranging engagement with Jewish and Christian scripture in his poems and in his songs, Cohen grew up studying the Torah with his grandfather, Rabbi Klinitsky-Klein. About Jesus, Cohen says, “I’m very fond of Jesus Christ. He may be the most beautiful guy who walked the face of this earth. Any guy who says ‘Blessed are the poor, Blessed are the meek’ has got to be a figure of unparalleled generosity and insight and madness.”

This Sunday, February 16, we begin a two-week study of the Sermon on the Plain; the Gospel of Luke’s variation of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. A look at “blessings” and “woes” will get us started, followed by Jesus’s call to “Love your enemies.”

If you have any interest in Leonard Cohen, I highly recommend a book I just finished reading: Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of the Biblical Imagination by Brian J. Walsh. Written last year, the book is short… but deep and thick; a brief exploration of Cohen’s thought weaving together his words, scripture, and life into a delightful whole.

Rev. Eric