Good Friday 2010
In the early church, Good Friday was pictured as a battleground between Life and Death personified. With every lash of the whip, Death heard it a the rhythm of celebration. Every pounded nail echoed in Death's chamber as a victory march. When the soldiers played dice for the cloak of Jesus, death got dressed up in its best array of clothes to dance. the pierced side elicited a piercing cry of triumph from Death. God's own lay in the grave. Prior to Easter, death  won,in all its enormity. Jesus lay dead in abject failure, no mere death mask but burial. Over time, as we reflect on that awful day, we start to wonder if it was an abject loss. Could it be that God could use even death toward a divine purpose? Could some good emerge from that awful day? Could victory be wrung from it somehow, some way?

 

God's life with us intersected with new power at the Incarnation. Even in death, maybe especially on Good Friday, God's life could be found even in the abode of death. In the life of Jesus and the death of Jesus, god is in solidarity with creation. even in all of its fragility and vulnerability. On
Good Friday we see the loving face of God on the face and body of Jesus hanging on the cross. On Good Friday we see the stunning image of the crucified messiah, God in the grave. Hope interred but not put to rest. Good Friday subverts our view of power. From the foundation of the world, the Son was a chosen vehicle. Then God was determined, from the foundation of the world, to offer salvation, Karl Barth argued that the Son was also the rejected one. In giving space to creation, God gave love breathing space. In love, God could give up power over Creation to the worst impulses of human beings. God would turn that evil toward good and make it a gateway for a life of love and forgiveness.

 

Love reaches into death itself and into the grave. God will not be deterred even from death itself. The Lord and giver of life faces death.

The Pieta is a famous image from art. You have perhaps the most famous image with your bulletins this evening. look at that face. You see not only the face of mother Mary. It is looking into the broken hearted face of heaven itself on that day.Look at the broken lifeless body. The TV movie, Jesus, has a heartrending scene where Mary washes the face of her son on the linen sheet in the borrowed tomb.

Jesus would not be left to vultures. Instead some brave souls dressed the body hurriedly, for the Sabbath approached and carried him into a new borrowed grave.What was it like to bury Jesus? Then the cruel finality of rolling the stone across the opening.

 

It continues to be difficult to try to make sense of the death of Jesus on the cross. I do know that it shows us that divine love will reach all the way into the human condition. I do know Jesus represents human and divine love and shows that it can face self-sacrifice for the good of the loved ones, In our case, that means loved ones unknown to Jesus, we who live in a distant future from Nazareth. sacrifice is an offering. Sacrifice joins the giver and receiver. Love is the ability to sacrifice, to offer oneself, for the sake of the other. In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy it says that Jesus left nothing undone until we are brought to heaven. that selfsame love was offered to heaven itself as well.

Is. 65:17-25 First cut

 

Note that we have a huge number of texts available for the Easter vigil readings that one could apply to Easter Sunday as well. I'm not sure as yet how to handle those here.

1) Only God can bring life from death.

2) Now the suffering servant is vindicated. On Easter, it is an easy transition to the risen Jesus.

3) This is a good place to move away from predictive end times work and move into the decisive change God has made in the world through the resurrection. How does Easter set in motion a new world, here and for our futures?

4) We see in v. 25 a fulfillment of ch. 11:6-9.

5) Blessings, maybe of the original Eden, but going beyond them, overwhelm the cursed ground.the tree of life wins.

6) v. 24 is a remarkable view of communication that seems to be understood without needing to even be expressed.

 

Is. 25:6-9

1) This is a tricky passage for Easter and for the grieving. Easter starts death being swallowed up forever, but it certainly hasn't yet banished it from our lives. We need to exercise some restraint with brave words about Easter defeating death in the face of hospices.We  certainly wait for a time when the shroud is removed from human life, but it has not yet beaten our ancient foe. The denial of death is a potent force in our day. At the same time, how does the resurrection affect our view of death and the afterlife. What will our resurrected form be like. Certainly, if Jesus is the pioneer of resurrection, it cannot merely be a soul released from the chains of the body?

2) v. 8 does affect our tears on Easter but it certainly does not obviate them. Notice that it is replayed in Rev. take on the passage.

3) The swallowing is an interesting image in that Death was portrayed as swallowing up life, as a boa constrictor perhaps. Now death, the swallower, is being swallowed up.

 

Both Sides Now Palm Sunday 2010

Holy Week moves from Palm Sunday triumph to the cold of the Holy Saturday grave. The high point seems to fade fairly quickly, but the suffering is extended.  I wonder how long Jesus was caught up in the elation of the moment. The two sides of Hosanna are evident here. It was apparently a cheer of victory in the time of Jesus. We are in the midst of March madness where the cries of fans echo in living rooms, bars, and arenas for upsets in the making. The Canadian woman in the Olympics had just lost her precious mother to a heart attack and then heard the cheers of the crowd and shared their tears as she performed beautifully, freezing her grief for a few precious minutes of artistry on the ice.

 

The crowd cheered, Hosanna. Hosanna means save us. So it is a plea as much as a cry of acclamation. Did the people know that they were quoting Ps. 118? We hear the irony in the shouts, for salvation will emerge along a different path than they imagined. The healer will be wounded. Yet, the wounded one would have this horror become an instrument for the healing of souls. The one who is our judge would himself be judged by the very political power he rejected in his mission. The conquering hero on a beast of burden would soon himself be burdened by the terrible weight of a cross. Jesus hears shouts of acclaim as the representative of political hopes, of national hopes. Soon he would hear shouts of crucify him. The same power opposed on Palm Sunday would be the instrument of his untimely death.From cheers and palm branches waving and paving the way into town, the street gets splattered with sweat and blood.

 

Holy Week reminds me of the wedding vows. The holy  can occupy space that encompasses what we go through. In the Incarnation, Jesus makes common cause with us, in all of our joys and sorrow, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Loyalty allows us to stay with someone in the midst of the ups and downs of life that give us emotional whiplash. Love remains stable apart from the circumstances. Life does throw us highs and lows in the space of one week. If we charted our lives on a graph, it rarely stays level for long.  ( Lewis-god in the grave; god choosing the grave)

 

God gives a fixed central point, a point of stability, the eye of the hurricane, even amid the rough and tumble. When we are in ecstasy, it is easy to forget about God. God is with us and celebrates with us in Palm Sunday moments. When we are at our low points, God is with us. When God seems utterly absent, perhaps then we not only fall on our knees for God's help, but we are closer to God in those Good Friday, dying moments as well. We so want the good times to last forever, but in a fallen world they cannot. Even when hard times are relegated to memory, we can relive them in a moment. God's love can wrap the divine arms around both poles of experience. My working title for this sermon was "Both Sides Now," and old Judy Collins song.  I gave Margaret the title, yin and yang. In Chinese thought they have a symbol many of us now even recognize of yin and yang, a representation of the sun and moon, the two great lights of the sky, a joining of opposites.In its way Holy Week brings those sides together in a short space of time.

Palm/Passion Sunday OT selections First cut

Is. 50:4-9 Patricia Tull (Willey) in Remember the Former Things notes an oscillation between servant material and Zion material in this section.

1) Do we select readings for Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday, or both?  Obviously, this is a Passion Sunday reading, especially because of v. 6 and the sufferings of Jesus.

2) Mel Gibson probably loves the phrase "set my face like flint," given his near fetish over physical suffering in passion of the Christ.

3) How does God waken the ear from slumber? (v.4)

4) How can we sustain the weary with a word? When have you been encouraged, given new energy?

 

 

Ps. 31:9-16 Limburg  (WBC Psalms) notes that the pain is systemic. Everything hurts.

1) We are in extremis here. Even death would be preferable. Notice what a long, longtime this seems to be in 9-10. v. 12 seems to be an invisibility for the suffering.

2) The lament form often includes complaint followed by some sort of resolution. Trust emerges in v. 15.

3) v. 15 my times are in your hands

 

 

 

 

Ps. 118-this psalm works for almost any liturgy for Holy Week.

1) hesed=steadfast love, or loyalty, unbreakable bond. How else could you define it as give examples of it? 3 psalms share this verse 106, 107, 136.

2) mesar-distress= a tight spot, a constricted, claustrophobic space, the opposite of the sense of salvation being a broad, open, safe place.

3) on my side= for me. God is for me.

4) In an age of miracles in technology, it is not easy to take refuge in God. Still human power is not final, as defense or in the form of adversary. We can resist the enemy.

5) Even though surrounded, we find God's presence is steadfast.

6)  salvation and victory are both related to the word save that is similar to the name of Jesus.

7) We are in exodus territory here as a reminder of God's capacities. That memory can b e productive of hope, but it is also a hard event to live up to. Why isn;t it happening now for the one praying?

8) Save us=hosanna

9) v. 17 was loved by Luther.

10) In what ways would Jesus still be the rejected one in our times?

11) I shall not die but live takes on new meaning with Easter.

12) This is the day the Lord has made certainly fits different circumstances, just consider saying this on Good Friday or Easter.

March 21. 2010

In Jn 12 a place of raising from the dead becomes the locale for the impending sentence of death. This pivotal scene moves us through the gospel story. This supper with friends is linked to the last supper with disciples. When she wipes his feet it leads us to Jesus wiping the feet of the disciples.  We are certainly in the realm of the body with the scent of perfumes, the smell of feet, the stench of death at the tomb. At issue here is using a year's wages for one act of devotion-time and urgency push an astounding act of devotion. She shows the extravagance of love here (indeed a prodigal act). She  reveals what it is to follow Jesus fully-defined by love and service that may appear to go overboard. On one hand, it looks as if it is an extravagant act of devotion. In the eyes of Christ, the anointing is a prophetic act that launches his march to the cross and to our eyes marks Jesus as messiah, anointed one in his work as priest, prophet, and king, all of which come to a climax in Holy Week. So often, people use these words  of Jesus about the short time left to him as an excuse to ignore the poor, since they are a longstanding concern. He is defending her apparently rash decision to anoint him at great expense since his time was short. We all have plenty of time to deal with those in need.

 

Is. 43:16-21-Some time ago, I was made aware of a impressive book by Patrica Tull of LPTS, Remember the Former Things, that looks at the dense interplay of this section of Isaiah with other prophets.Here,  I am struck by God's instruction to not remember the former things. In 46:10 God says to remember the former things. Some would call that sheer contradiction. That's part of the balancing act of life, isn't it? We live between memory and hope, between past, present, and future, all being woven together. We can't live in the past only, but we do ourselves no favors to ignore its lessons. I'm not sure what the former things are, but I'll proffer two this morning. One is that the impending punishments of the book are not finished and gone. the other would be the powerful memory of the miracles associated with the freedom from slavery that led to Passover observance that we have transformed into Maundy Thursday. I have a sense that to spend a life waiting for a miracle prevents us from living life the best we can right now.(In searching for the one, we may well miss a partner, as the book Settling for Mr Good Enough argues). God's goals may be consistent for us, but the mechanisms may well change, so we should not be looking for repeat episodes from the unfettered creativity of the Almighty. Bakhtin said  "past and present make up the warp and woof of the present moment." New contexts do furnish new ways of understanding Scripture. The bible is a living book as we can see our situations in it. God is always doing a new thing. The living God is fully capable of responding in new, genuine, effective ways in our world. God works on an emerging, open future. The Christian faith insists that the past does not have to be endlessly repeated. the faith is not chained to the way things are.At the cusp of spring, some of the early plants are sprouting; every day we hear more birds outside. In the structure of the seasons, God is doing a new thing. Every time we wake up in the morning, God is doing a new things with us.

Prodigal's father

 

The story starts about a father, a man with two sons. He gave the son what he asked for. It was rare, apparently, to ask for an early inheritance. Jesus has the father give him a share of his life. The younger son has left the family, cut ties with them. In a way, the payment for the inheritance was redemption money for him to be free of his family and their rules. Everyone said he was too good to the young man. Perhaps the father feared that he were not gracious, he feared worse rebellion, insolence, maybe theft or ruining the estate.  Or worse, he'd become like the elder brother. Maybe he knew that he would get in trouble if given enough rope, but that he would have sense enough to return home. He would have to learn the consequences of his prodigal actions through experience, not a lecture.

 

We don't know how the father handled things in the interim. I'm sure he worried some. Maybe he was like Jinkins who speaks of a Zen Calvinism, of a calm assurance that the world is in "God's hands in the end, not his." We are told that the son "came to himself, or recovered his senses." Some suspect why he rehearsed the lines. Some suspect that he was practicing to manipulate his father with a show of repentance and offer to be treated like a servant. The father won't let him finish his speech.

 

When the prodigal returned the father did not act like a patriarch whose pride and reputation had been damaged.(Ken Bailey material)-  he celebrated. He brings him back into the family fold. He threw a party, a big party.

 

The father handled the elder brother with kindness, maybe how he needed to be handled. Maybe the father  did he take him for granted too much. He does tell him that all that I have is yours. I think it includes his heart. The elder son has as much emotional distance as the younger brother had in a far country. The father has to handle the distance now here. Again the father goes out to meet the son; he makes a move to close the gap. The elder son feels like a servant. He needs to learn to say brother Possibly, we see the essence of forgiveness, to be able to see someone not as an enemy, but as family, as close to us again.

 

This makes a story out of Paul's words where the father is an instrument of reconciliation. it is not always easy, as it causes strife with the elder brother. For the father, the past is finished and gone. His relationship with the son is a new creation I think of the movie The Straight Story, where an old man who has no license, gets on a lawn mower from Iowa to Wisconsin to patch things up with his brother.As Jeremias wrote "repentance is learning to say father or brother again." Trying to patch things up is worth going to extremes sometimes.

 

The word prodigal doesn't appear in the story. Prodigal means profligate, wasteful spending, to squander something. In this way, we could speak of the prodigal father, for he is abundant, maybe wasteful, in forgiveness and reconciliation, an ambassador for the soft side of parental love. Who are we to judge the loving reactions of someone else? Worse, who are we to withhold love and forgiveness when someone does not live up to our standards for them? Is it possible to ever squander love? In its very nature, isn't  love prodigal, profligate? Is it love when it isn't? Look at the exuberance of divine love in light of this story and Zeph. 3:17.

Is. 43:16-21 Third cut
1) Two good Is. books-the commentary  by the late Brevard Childs and Patricia Tull (Willey) of LPTS, Remember the Former Things.

2) It seems clear that we are making reference to the exodus. I don't know if that is a former thing or does it refer to the sins and punishments of exile. If it is referring to exodus, it could mean not to look for a climatic miracle but something within our power with God. If the former things are the promised punishments, then Israel is entering a new future.

3) OK, God is making a new way, through wilderness instead of sea, but the wilderness did precede the Promised Land. NIB (378) mentions a change from murmurs to praise, but I'm not so sure.

4) This wilderness is a transformed wilderness, more zoo than threat, or better a wilderness church.

5) When is dwelling on the past dangerous? Think of folks at reunions. think of a church always looking for its glory days as the baseline. Is dwelling on past hurts a sign that forgiveness has yet to take hold?

6) How does one keep alert to God doing a new thing? What dulls our perception?

7) Elsewhere in the book, God says to remember the former things (46:9-10) so I would assume this is a matter for discernment. The Russian literary critic, Bakhtin said that the "old and new make the warp and woof of every moment." New contexts can demand new readings of God's ways. Indeed, here God's new thing is a new way out, but it is the same redemptive impusle. the past cannot be a stranglehold on the present and future, but it lives anew in its refashioning in new contexts.

 

Ps 126 see Limburg in WBC on living between memory and hope (Long's new preaching book shares the sense)  This is part of the ascent psalms it could have been part of liturgy as one moved toward the temple. Mays (Int. series- speaks of joy remember and joy anticipated. Hebrew prayer often has this anticipation of answered prayer.

1)It ends with bringing in the sheaves, that has an apocalyptic sense as well.

2) It's an odd arrangement: of the thrill of seeing Zion restored but still needing fortunes restored. On the other hand, that sounds just like life.

3) This is a bold psalm to use for the grieving. It won't last forever.

4) One could work wonders with the early phrase we were like those who dream(ed). It could be "like people renewed in health" as well

5) The Negev is often dry but the wadis can rush with water at times.

6) One could link to to Eccl.3 and the seasons/time issue for different sets of actions and feelings.

Holy Week 2010

 

Palm Sunday has readings for the entry to Jerusalem or readings that leap into the dark scenes of the Passion of Jesus Christ. They certainly fit the highs and lows of life and those often are squeezed into a short period of time. It may even be a spiritual diagnostic test to see which ones we gravitate toward on this day, the triumph or the tragedy. What part of the palm Sunday story stands out for you in the different gospel versions? What parts of the Passion accounts stand in stark relief for you?

 

Monday-Calvin wrote on Holy Week: (Jn. 19:11) "we ought to be prepared for enduring the cross.Knowing that we must die, we should be prepared for death.The time of death is unknown to us, and the Lord permits us to defend our life with the defenses God has appointed.We must patiently endure diseases...yet we ought to seek alleviation of them...let this be fixed in our hearts, let the will of God be done."

 

Tuesday-Jinkins quotes George MacDonald (p.53, Called) "sometimes it seems I cannot pray for doubts and pain and anger and all strife....All things seem to be rushing straight into the dark. But the dark still is God." In the darkness of Gethsemane God was there. God is there in the midst of our worst struggles.In that knowledge, the light will emerge.

 

Wednesday-Grief and Holy Week have an uneasy equilibrium. Easter tends to blow the doors off our grief, but the events of the days prior are full of grief. the women weep as they visit the empty tomb. Nothing shows how well acquainted God is with our grief than in the cross. christian grief acknowledges the pain of loss that is always present, but it is softened by the Easter story and given wings in the hope that we will meet again in heaven.

 

Maundy Thursday I picked up a book of Communion sermons by Marice Fetty, The Feasts of the Kingdom. In the great banquet of Lk. 14, he says that (68-9) "Jesus was an outsider, rejected by insiders... Communion invites all of us, insiders and outsiders into the great banquet feast. This is the right invitation. This is a dinner party not to be missed. You are invited. Are you coming?"

 

Good Friday-Douglas John Hall wrote in Lighten our Darkness (117-9) "Luther wrote preach one thing, the wisdom of the cross...we are devoid of wisdom..our natural tendency is to regard ourselves as sufficient, autonomous, masters..theology is a broke statement on life's brokenness...we find God in the midst of peril..God is the one who manifest himself on the cross." It is a full extension of the Incarnation, of the human condition.

 

Holy Saturday-I continue to be touched by a posthumous work on Holy Saturday by Alan Lewis. At the end of the preface (5) he writes:" We relive annually the growing tensions of the climatic week; the grieving farewells, shameful betrayal, guilty denial, and agonizing fear of the night before the end; the long dark, deadly day of pain and forsakenness itself; an ecstatic daybreak of miracle and color, song and newborn life; and in between one eerie, restless day of burial and waiting."

Josh 5:9-12, Psalm 32 Second cut
1) OK, I must be thick as I do not get why this passage from Joshua appears in the readings. But here we go.

2) We are after the setting up of a memorial, a cairn,  at Gilgal for the crossing of the Jordan on dry land.My guess is that Gilgal was a cultic site of some importance at some point. With that, it is good to note that Joshua is not a particularly reliable source of accurate information; but it is history with a point. In particular, it uses the conquest story as a way for its readers to reflect on one's present experience. Many people are fascinated when digs bring up material that may coincide with a Biblical narrative, but evidence rarely backs up the Joshua material for dating. See the entry on the book before the commentary in the NIB, for instance. National Geographic has an excellent new picture book atlas on the bible and Oxford published some years ago a wonderful edited volume on the biblical world. One could introduce maximalist v. historical minimalist views from BAR or bible World as well.

3) We are in transition where the manna ceases, because they can eat the crops of the land. abar means to cross over and abur is a word for produce, so a pun may be involved that they have crossed over to eat the produce.

4) Passover figures prominently in the book. i do not think it  goes too far to see it linked as a passover from sin's and slavery's deadly effect to a new start. It is as if the wilderness experience cleansed the people of the stench of slavery's pervasive effects on them.

5) Surely we are facing a priestly insertion about circumcision in the chapter.

6) Perhaps one could link this to the prodigal's story of lack of food and ritual issues with the pigs. ould look at the issue of being responsible v. dependent, of starving when abundance is available.

 

 

Psalm 32

1) First we need to face squarely the decline of guilt in our culture, so the power of the psalm is lessened automatically. Do you sense any relief during our confession of sin and declaration of pardon in Reformed churches?

2) this is one of the traditional penitential psalms:6,38, 51, 102, 130, 143.

3) we get a Hebrew breviary of sin here. Sin =pesa, like the Gk. hamartia is to miss the mark. transgression has a sense of rebellion (awon) hata-a=iniquity an enduring stain of sin's effects. Sin is not merely doing something against the rules but a disposition that ranges across time, space, and society itself.

4) Still, the emphasis here is on forgiveness=sins been 'covered' Perhaps this is in the sense of out of sight out of mind.

5) Blessed works in v. 1 but happy would work better here, I think.

6) Notice the effect of denial and silence in v. 3 to the cathartic openness of v. 5

5March 7, 2010  I Cor. 10:1-13, Lk. 13:1-9

 

It was 9:30 in the morning of All Saints Day in the most devout country in the world. First, the earthquake struck, killing people in the churches and throughout the city. Then the fires started. The people fled for the water to escape the flames, and then, the tidal wave came. It was Lisbon, Portugal 1755 and 3/4 of the city was ruined. The priests responded by searching for heretics to burn slowly, for the heretics were the obvious cause of the earthquake.

 

How do we regard God and human suffering? I hear versions of our passage from Paul a lot. It goes something like this. God doesn't give us more than we can take or tackle. First, the pronoun is the collective you, not singular. Second, the key trouble with it is the underlying assumption that God deliberately gives us troubles, especially ones over which we have no choice. Another way to go at it would be that God gives us a doable regimen of improvement but God will not overtax our limits. What some call radical suffering, unjust, arbitrary, senseless suffering does not, ever, come from the hand of God. That includes the common phrase that god takes our loved ones. Third, the emphasis of the passage is on the way out, an exodus, that replicates God's deliverance from the sore troubles of slavery in Egypt for the people. Life is hard enough without having God act as our enemy. 

 

Jesus faces two types of evil in the gospel. First, Pilate's act is pure human evil an example of arbitrary, innocent suffering at the hands of a tyrant. The collapse of a tower probably would be a form of natural evil, an unfortunate event of the blind forces of nature, the forces of tornadoes or earthquake. First, notice that Jesus does not assign blame to the victims of evil. He does not say that they somehow deserved it, that they weren't positive-thinking enough, that God was punishing them. Second, Jesus does not assign God a role in this suffering.

 

Instead of seeing a punitive, controlling God, Jesus gives a parable that speaks of patience, of willingness to give more time. Much of this land was covered with trees.When land was opened up for farming, trees were removed as impediments to the long straight rows of crops. If a tree is supposed to be productive, all well and good, but don't waste energy on trying to save it. Plant something else. Here the emphasis is on trying to save the one little fig tree, to do everything in one's power to bring it to full life. I've read that the fruit starts to appear before the leaves.Instead of an impatient demand for results, the gardener is willing to give time and effort toward making the conditions for the tree to be productive. It did not escape notice that the fig tree was a Biblical symbol for Israel, or was a sign of the coming of the Messiah. God is patient with our failings to bear the fruit with the gift of life. Put differently, God is not chomping at the bit to get at us for our failings; God continues to work with us.

 

One fine day, God's fond hope for all the world will come to fruition. Until that time, trials and temptations will not cease. The exodus, the way out for us when we fall prey to temptations is the road of repentance, of course.  The trials of death await us all. Even there, God provides a way out, the road to heaven.In the meantime, with infinite patience and care, God continues to tend the garden of our lives, giving us the precious gift of time, to bloom like the coming daffodils, to grow toward the beauty intends for this life.

Lent 6

Sunday-Ps. 126 is reflected in the hymn, Bringing in the Sheaves. It is a wonderful evocation of the reversal from bad fortune to good times, like the Depression-era song, happy Days Are Here Again. What bad place or time were you in when you dreamed of escape? When have you a dream come true?

 

Monday-Earthquakes have ravaged Haiti and Chile.I've already heard some fools blame some elements of religion in Haiti for the earthquake. I'm sure that they can think up something in Chile to cast aspersions on suffering people and to blame them for their plight. the Christian response to suffering is to have compassion and seek to ease the suffering, not to heap on piles of blame on top of the rubble.

 

Tuesday-Frances Taylor Gench teaches at Union Seminary, Richmond. In a fine book, Encounters with Jesus, she writes on the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) "much has been made of her irregular marital history but little of her witness, or missionary endeavor, or the vindication of her role by Jesus...Kysar observes... "the reader knows, because of her, that no matter who you are...the revelation of God in Christ is for you." (38) Who is a surprising embodiment of the faith for you? How does it surprise you that you embody the Christian faith? Where does it shine out in your life?

 

Wednesday-Calvin had a realistic view of human nature. On  I Cor. 15:58 on abounding in the work of the Lord: "unquestionably,if the hope of reward is taken away and extinguished, alacrity in running will not merely grow cold, but will be completely destroyed." Earlier he says," who would not turn aside from the way if not by thinking of a better life, so they are kept in reverence of God?" What are you7r hopes for heaven?

 

Thursday-Using people, taking advantage of people, is a sin against our creation in the image and likeness of God. Sometimes we will say thing such as, it not personal, it's just business. People are sacred and should not be treated as mere objects for our own selfish desires or plans. People are too vital to be considered merely part of statistics or especially mere means toward some larger end, no matter how well-intentioned.

 

Friday-Terence Fretheim has written his magnum opus, God and World in the Old Testament. In its closing paragraph on the relations of God, nature, and human beings he writes: "Human beings give voice to nonhuman praise, to a world highly charged with wonder and praise. On the other hand, the heavens will proclaim the glory of God with less clarity on a smoggy day."(284) He sees us involved in a triadic relationship always: human beings, nature, and our God. As creatures of the earth itself, we are charged as being its representative; our fates are intertwined in the divine drama.

 

Saturday-Donald Capps is  a recently retired pastoral theologian at Princeton. In Agents of Hope, he sees the enemies of hope as despair, apathy, and shame. The allies of hope are trust, patience, and modesty. Emily Dickinson imagined hope as a bird, the thing with feathers. It lifts us from the tyranny of what is into the rarefied air of what could be. What fond hopes to you have that lift you from the mundane?