24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, RCL)

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

Nevertheless, I think that John’s prologue has much more to say. In speaking about this Word become flesh, it also speaks powerfully to us about what it means to be human. Over the years, I kept returning to a few verses that changed the way that I saw the entire prologue and which consequently changed my entire theology.

Each time I read these words from the beginning of Proverbs, I can't stop thinking about how much I would like to hear a child read them in worship.

James reminds us of the duplicity of language, like a matchstick dropped by singed fingers that leaves behind charred acres. The deception of language is that we believe it is innocent.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

For there to be a heresy about the cross, there would have to be an orthodoxy about it. Michael Gorman argues that contentions over how Jesus saves lead to an inadequate grasp of what the Passion means and does.

In my lectionary columns and posts for the first two weeks in Lent, I am suggesting the Lenten theme of covenant. God’s plan of salvation is founded on a faithful relationship extended over time and space.

Over the past 20-plus years in my own faith journey, the Bible’s anthropology has taken primacy for me over its theology, providing a crucial reason for the importance of covenant to salvation. René Girard’s work proposes that what has “saved” us as a species—thus far—are the false gods of our own unconscious creation.

We are still learning what it means to be human, even as we learn who God truly is.

As I read the headline yesterday, my heart began to pound and my throat closed up: “School Clerk In Georgia Persuaded Gunman To Lay Down Weapons.” This was a good story—ultimately a hopeful one—but all I could see was “school” and “gunman."

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how disturbed and saddened we’ve been by the hateful and decidedly unchristian words spoken by self-proclaimed Christian leaders in recent years. The examples are too numerous to cite, and each has its own agenda of hatred and division. I complained that it was so deeply unfair that such intolerant and offensive perspectives were being allowed to speak for me and all other Christians.

My friend offered a profound and simple response: “Chris, they only speak for you if you don’t speak for yourself.”

Ever since Westerners discovered Asian cultures they have been intrigued by possible relationships between Christianity and Buddhism.

I can't fool myself into believing that I've gotten close to the kind of costly discipleship that Jesus is speaking of in Mark 8.