Blogging Towards  Sunday, September 2^nd 

The Question of Guilt

Leviticus 5:14-19; 7:1-6 | Isaiah 53:10-11 |
 Galatians 5:15-21

GUILT.  It’s an ugly word.  A feeling that often overwhelms us.  Those that critic Christianity from  Friedrich Nietzsche to modern atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, lift up the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth as something that causes guilt based on unrealistic and inhuman morality.  In Hebrew the word for guilt and that for sin are used interchangeably.  In Leviticus 5 & 7 we hear of the proscribed sacrifices to make restitution for sin or guilt, whether it be consciously or unconsciously committed.  The Law seems to provide a way to remove guilt, to make the one who offers the sacrifice clear, to empower them to experience a before and an after, to continue with the certitude of being no longer guilty.  The twist is that it can happen again, no matter how many rams of the flock are sacrifices on an altar.

Blogging Towards Sunday, August 28^th

Mark 8:31-35 | Mark 11:22-25 | Philippians 4:10-13 | Ephesians 3:14-21 & Galatians 2:20

The Gospel according to Mark begins with a radical affirmation: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” [1:1].  In the original language of the book, Koiné Greek, the word for gospel, euanggelion, also means “good news”.  It means good news as in headlines of a paper, an blessed event like a birth or marriage, a joyous pronouncement like VE-Day at the end of WW II, or a military report of victory.

Louise Hirschman asks, “if we actually believe the good news of the gospel, why don’t our lives show it in wild, crazy, amazing expressions of joy?  If we believed it, we could do anything, knowing that Jesus the Christ has our back!”  So what holds us back?  - holds you back?

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Blogging Towards Sunday, August 7, 2011

Colossians 1:1-23

Chosen by Anne Marie Adams, this  scripture lifts of the awesomeness of who Jesus is.  He is the “visible image of the invisible God”.  WOW!  That says a lot, and potentially nothing (for our secular world today).  The passage points back to the beginning of who Jesus is, spelling it out ontologically (regarding being) and epistemologically (regarding the origin of knowledge).  Yet the passage isn’t just about the past, it moves from this universal proclamation of what has been and what is, to a description of where we’re headed, what the world is becoming alongside, because of, in and through this Jesus.