The cause of Jesus’ lament, our sin, does not hold the final word. Jesus has invited us to stop the puppet show and to step into his grace under his wing of love, protection, and transformation.
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Peace upon peace upon peace.
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In his Capernaum campaign, Jesus took the first-century how-to adult handbook and threw it out the window. In one out-of-town trip with his buddies, Jesus overturned one of the backbones of social order.
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Without resorting to worn-out clichés, Kurt Willems walks the reader through the problem of pain with the mind of a theologian and the heart of a pastor. This book will help many people.”
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Jesus gave a simple instruction, but when the church gets that instruction wrong, the results are anything but miraculous or a sign that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
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Christmas is a reminder to us that not only are we worthy of the gift given to us by God in Christ but at the very same time the gift is ours whether we realize how much we need it. The grace of God in Christ is a precious gift, and, by the grace of God, a gift we can’t return.
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Does God so detest sin, and those who commit sin, that God is willing to turn a divine blind-eye on creation or worse, send the plagues again to East Africa while raising the temperatures in Siberia to 100+ degrees, or send a catastrophic worldwide pandemic?
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God will do what God will do, and the timing, however much we like to think we can control, is not up to us.
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In all we do, in all we post and tweet, in all we pray, may we, Christ’s body the Church, point away from ourselves and to Jesus Christ.
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Words like Grace make little sense outside of communities unified in the Lordship of Christ.
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Whatever may come the way of the church, we know that the faithfulness we exhibit is grounded in the faithfulness of Christ. Without relying on the faithfulness of Christ, to the point of death, the church then and today has little to stand on.
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In Christ, we have humanity’s first encounter with the fullness of G-d, fullness of G-d, becoming a physical reality in our world. Jesus is the capital “W” Word of G-d taking on flesh. Every Old Testament prophesy pointed towards Jesus as the fulfillment of those lowercase “w” words. Jesus is the fullness of what G-d has to say to us, and Jesus is the fullness of G-d made visible.
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To make Paul’s words through this entire letter plain - Simply put… it is foolish to think we can fool G-d with self-righteous works of the Law to achieve salvation. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection are sufficient for all people.
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As the confirmands receive the sign of the cross on their foreheads and the baptismal waters flow off of your head Milana, we as a community will pray that the Holy Spirit take up residence inside you, inside the confirmands, moving, prodding, and leading you all to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
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If the hand tells the food it is not needed and can be cutoff, the body is not unified.
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We ask questions with predetermined answers in our minds and when the answer from the responding party does not fit our expectations or needs, we keep asking. We keep asking because we need empirical truths, we think to produce faith.
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The calling extended to Peter, “Follow me,” is the same calling extended to each of us when we emerge from our baptismal waters. This calling - “Follow Me” - is an invitation to meet Christ at his table, but “Follow me” is also an invitation to experience the fullness of the freedom extended to us by the power of Jesus’ Easter victory - the final victory over our captivity to sin and death.
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The shadow of the cross blinds us to the peace of heaven spilling over into creation. Domination through ruthlessness - Pax Roma - is no match for the justice and mercy - Pax Christi - of the Kingdom of God.
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Paul wrote to a church in Philippi contending with issues of arrogance and disunity. Arrogance and disunity act as prohibitors to imitating Christ’s love as a community. Arrogance and disunity were distractions, and Paul extended grace to the Philippians by reminding them of what the love of G-d in Christ had accomplished.
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The awesome thing about the identity we receive through our baptism is that this identity is freely given to us without reservation and with the promise that the One who was chased from his hometown will be with us.
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