The minister pastoring this Lutheran congregation is actually the retired bishop of New York. You will search the street maps of New York in vain for a Lutheran cathedral, which may be just as well since it is one less building to have to put into mothballs waiting for a buyer to convert it into condos or a recreation center or some other use that profanes Christ's sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

And any intelligent reader would ask why is this? The Gospels and the Epistles contain only one point of tangency. No explication of the parables, no exposition on the Beatitudes, no commentary on the miraculous healings. Only the supper which conveyed in simplest terms the substance of faith--an unleavened carbohydrate and a fermented beverage. What to make of this?

Imposition is an odd word for a religious rite. With outstretched palms we receive holy communion. With bowed head we receive the laying on of the hands of forgiveness. With pinched nose or upraised visage we receive our baptism. But ashes are imposed with no action from us; we need not even kneel before the minister with dust-flocked thumb as he traces the sign of the cross on our foreheads.

Scholars get their academic gowns in a twist over whether Jesus' brothers described in the Gospels were of Mary or Joseph or both or neither. I'm not sure why this matters but it may give them something to argue about instead of trying to spread the good news of salvation. Joseph's status as somebody necessary to the narrative is in some ways reminiscent of the original Joseph: persecuted in a foreign land, but scarcely earth-shattering.