'Gospel' Tagged Posts
Tangible Good News
In Sunday’s gospel text (John 20:19-31), while the disciples are locked up in a room, afraid, grieving, and immobilized by what has happened – the arrest, crucifixion, and death of Jesus – the Risen Christ appears, brings a word of peace, inspires the disciples with the Holy Spirit (literally breathes it into them), and sends them out. But Thomas…
Living Resurrection
God has reached into the tomb and brought Jesus to new life. God reaches into the tombs we make for ourselves and those we are placed in and brings us to new life again and again and again. That is resurrection. That is Easter. That is Good News. God loves you, the fullness of you, so much that God finds you wherever and however and loves you to new life. This gift of new…
The Economics of Abundance
We’re steeped in a model of scarcity. The idea that something is scarce begins from a place of limits. There’s only so much of something to go around – time, money, water, food, land, hours of work to be divvied among employees, etc. In this mode of scarcity, for someone or some group to get more means there is less to go around, and potentially less for me, or for you.…
Some Resources For Engaging With Our Faith This Lent
An Extremist For Love
In Letter From A Birmingham Jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asks the question, “Was not Jesus an extremist for love?”He then quotes from Sunday’s Gospel text, a continuation of Jesus’ sermon on the level place, Luke 6:27-38, saying, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…”…
A Level Place
In the Gospel according to Matthew (chapters 5-7), Jesus gives an extended teaching we call the “Sermon on the Mount,” but Luke (in chapte 6) records Jesus giving many of the similar teachings on “a level place.” I grew up on a house that was near the top of a hill. The house in which I currently reside is about halfway up a hill. It’s…
Jesus Is Calling
In last Sunday’s gospel reading, Luke 5:1-11, after being out on the water all day to no avail without catching anything. At the very moment when Peter and James and John are probably feeling like they are failures at fishing. When they are filled with thoughts of going hungry without anything to eat or any catch to earn a living. When they are feeling they are not…
Holy Disruption
“We tend to think in systems and continuities and predictability and schemes and plans. I think the Bible is to some great extent focused on God’s capacity to break those schemes open and violate those formulae.”-Walter Brueggemann What in the world could make the people of Jesus’ hometown so upset that they would chase him to the edge of a cliff…