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p/c White House Butlers Pantry via Wikimedia Commons, 2002; public domain
…to their request Jesus gives what I call a “broken parable” —a parable that begins with reference to the way things are right now and then, by implication, suggests that if this is true of things in a broken system how much better are your fortunes in God’s jovial kingdom (e.g. the parable of the persistent widow in Lk. 18:1-8)…
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p/c Mateus Campos Felipe via unsplash
There’s a question I get from time to time which runs something, amidst all its variations, like: “Why are you called a ‘priest’ when Jesus alone is the final priest between God and man?” quoting verses like 1 Tim. 2:5 or Heb. 4:14-16. It’s sometimes also asked relatedly of me that “the New Testament churches were lead by Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons —why don’t we use those terms?”
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Some iterations of Christianity assume that the goal of salvation is to merely return to Eden. To “re-start” as it were; to “go back to the garden” having had the thousands of years between creation and consummation carefully redacted from our account of glory…
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Second Coming, Georgios Klontzas, 16th c.
“And am I born to die, / to lay this body down? / And must my trembling spirit fly / into a world unknown?”
Is this the beginning of a Christian hymn? Surely not! Are you serious?
You bet your bottom dollar I am…
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p/c Worshae via unsplsh
At the end of an intense teaching about putting him in first place (Lk. 14:26) and carrying ones cross and following him (v.27), Jesus gives two “teaching illustrations” which, on the surface don’t seem very helpful in unpacking the call to discipleship:
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p/c Sincerely Media via Unsplash
I was away from our Sunday services at All Saints this past Sunday preaching and celebrating at our Network mission on Maui, and I will be away next Sunday also preaching at our daughter church-plant in Puna. For a pastor who loves his parish, stretches of weeks like this are incredibly difficult for me, even though I am here during the week between my Sunday absences. The weight of it is heavy.
That heaviness notwithstanding, I am convicted that the work I do on these Network trips and the work you all do in the worship and liturgy (liturgy, after all, means “the work of the people”) and mission, are not dislocated or oppositional. They are one corporate response that our whole parish offers to the God who called us and loves us…
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p/c Paul Zoetemeijer via unsplash
In reflecting on the first two of The 39 Articles of Religion, Oliver O’Donovan notes the curious way in which the biblical and creedal claims about Jesus offend our contemporary sensibilities. “Curiously” it is not the sheer statement that Jesus was divine or that God was in Christ or anything like that —many people are willing to admit as much (I remember watching a lecture in which Gregory Nagy referred to the historical transmission of the works of Homer as “divine” so its a fairly wide-ranging term). What offends the modern mind is “[t]he statement of Christ’s pre-existence as the eternal Word of the Father” (20). O’Donovan adds that “other difficulties” about Christology “appear no more than symptomatic.”
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from "My Catholic Faith"(1949) by Louis La Ravoire Morrow. Public Domain courtesy of wikimedia commons.
There are certain places in the liturgy where we are encouraged to make the sign of the cross (tracing the sign of the cross over ourselves from head to chest, and from shoulder to shoulder). Most frequently this occurs when we say the Triune name ("In the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"), or when we give or receive blessings.
This is not some random act of superstition but rather a proclamation that all blessing and power and hope and victory and divinity come to us through nothing other than the Cross of Jesus (Gal.6:14).
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p/c Roman Mager via unsplash
In last summer’s issue of Plough David Schaengold wrote a delicious essay entitled, “Computers Can’t Do Math.” It’s an excellent title: enticingly simple, provocative without crudity, almost naive but not quite. I commend the whole piece in its entirety.
For our purposes here, however, I will simply summarize a basic contention from the essay and reflect on its import for the Christian life…
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p/c Santa Caterina del Sasso, by Wolfgang Sauber via wikimedia commons
In chapter two of the Song of Solomon the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of the Vulgate, owing a bit to the idioms of Latin, is a bit stronger: lilium inter spinas. She is a lily set in a nest of spines. One cannot get at her without getting into the spines. Towards the end of the chapter the Lover says of her Beloved that they belong each to the other and that he willingly pastures, or “browses”, among the lilies which means also among the thorns.
What’s going-on? Why make this comparison? What’s more —what do the lovers of the Song mean by this?
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