Liturgy of the Passion (Year B, RCL)

“If the gospel isn’t good news to the women in the passage, is it still good news?”

The purpose of the word of God is not to make us feel condemnable, but to help us see what is commendable.

Every knee shall bow, even our knees.

Did Easter even come last year? Will it ever come again?

Let me cut to the chase, brothers and sisters. Is this what you think living in Christ looks like?

What heals me may harm another.

God is the encounter we can't control.

Isaiah’s suffering servant plays on our own ambivalent ideas about violence, passivity, and retribution.

In the hours before the Passion, the Jesus who was hidden becomes revealed.

Jesus isn’t pitting himself against poor people. He’s one of them.

“One second-century pagan critic of Christianity was willing to tolerate everything else about Christians if they would only worship the gods.”

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Matthew 26:14–27:66; Philippians 2:5–11

In her most recent book, Blessed Are the Consumers, Sallie McFague focuses on kenosis as the key element in shaping a Christian alternative to the pervasive religion of consumerism. McFague says that consumerism consists of those cultural patterns and practices by which people “find meaning and fulfillment through the consumption of goods and services.” We may rightly identify consumerism as a religion.

Like Willimon and Hauerwas, Donald MacKinnon began with Philippians 2.

Bart Ehrman's conclusions aren't novel to anyone familiar with historical scholarship on Christology. But those aren't the readers he has in mind.

If this Sunday's service seems crowded and discordant, there’s a historical reason for it: the lectionary readings are a combination of two different local liturgies.