A Fresh Perspective

A few years age Reza Aslan, who was publicly known to be a prominent voice on Islam wrote a book about Jesus titled, "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” The fact that he was known as a popular cultural voice on Islam helped the book sell. Also, in the aftermath of its publication he had a rather nasty but entertaining interview about the book on Fox, which helped it climb up several best sellers lists. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong at all with a Muslim or any non-Christian writing a good book about Jesus. The problem, however, is that this was not a good book. Most of the reviewers noted that Aslan was a good story-teller and writer, but not a very good historian and scholar. Some suggested he was much better at fiction than at history. His basic thesis was that Jesus was a failed revolutionary who was willing to use violence to overthrow the political and religious order to bring in God’s kingdom. He rejected outright, without any evidence to back his cla...

This teaching of Jesus on love gets to the heart and soul of God’s will for humanity. I get to preach on this text yearly, because all three Synoptic Gospels has a version of this passage, and the Revised Common Lectionary includes this text yearly as part of its readings. Each version is different, and Luke’s version deviates significantly from Mark and Matthew’s version. Only Luke includes the story of what we have come to call the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which is why I love preaching Luke’s version of the story. All three versions make it clear that these two commandments – to love God with the totality of our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves – constitute the goal and fulfillment of healthy religion and what God longs to see in human relationships and society. Luke, however, clearly puts the emphasis on the command to love one’s neighbor. For Luke, loving one’s neighbor is how one loves God. Actually, these are not two separate commands, but one command. When...

Our Gospel reading today is part of a larger unit that begins in 17:1 as a prayer of Jesus to the Father. Though it’s cast in the form of a prayer, it is intended as instruction to the church. Keep in mind, as in almost all of the discourses in John’s Gospel, these are the words of John as he and his community try to imagine what the living Christ would say to them. This part of Jesus’ prayer casts a vision for oneness that extends beyond the first disciples of Jesus to embrace those who would come to be disciples after them, and eventually to embrace the world. This prayer nurtures a vision of oneness, which is not limited to Jesus’ disciples, and that shouldn’t surprise since “God so loves the world.” Jesus says that he prays for the oneness or unity of his disciples so that the world may know that God had sent him to be a definitive revelation of God’s love, and so that the world would come to know that God loves them just as much as God loves the unique Son who was sent to inc...

My sermon title is the question that this text raises. The passage begins with a direct command from Jesus, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” What follows from that initial command are several specific examples of how this can play out in the culture of that day and time. Luke first offers some examples along the line of what we might think of as nonviolent protest. Standing back up and offering the other cheek after being slapped in humiliating fashion by someone in power would have been an act of nonviolent protest. The same can be said about taking off ones shirt, after someone in power has taken one’s coat. But then Luke talks about giving to those who beg. Perhaps the reason they are begging is because they have been stripped of necessities by those in power. At any rate, I want to focus today on the initial command: Love your enemies, do good to them, bless them, and pray for them. I don’t know of an...

The sacred storywriter tells us that Moses prays, “Show me your ways, so that I may know you.” This is, I believe, the universal longing of the human heart. One ancient interpreter of the faith said, “The heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in God.”   Of course, not everyone would identify this existential angst, this missing element in our lives as a longing for God. In fact, it’s usually disguised as something else. We might think that the something that is missing is something in our marriage or our vocational career or in our friendships. We might think of something physical or material or emotional – rather than spiritual. And I’m sure there are things missing in those areas of our lives, because none of us have it all together do we? So I am not suggesting that every need, every longing, every bit of angst we experience is spiritual. But all these other longings and needs are echoes of our greatest need of all, which is spiritual. It is the need to consciously c...

Our passage begins with Jesus telling the disciples to not be troubled. That is much easier said than done. In fact, three times in John’s Gospel the writer tells us that Jesus was troubled. He was troubled over the death of Lazarus. He was troubled at least on one occasion when he contemplated his own death. And he was troubled when he realized that his own disciples would desert him in his final hour. So, let’s not assume then that being troubled is somehow a lack of faith or a sign of spiritual immaturity. I doubt if any of us are willing to say that Jesus lacked faith or spiritual maturity and yet clearly he was troubled on occasion. Being troubled is a common human experience. The challenge for us is not to allow those disturbing feelings and alarming emotions to rule our hearts and wills and lead us into despondency or despair. We can understand why the disciples would be troubled. Jesus just told them that he is going away. Toward the end of chapter 13 Jesus says to the dis...