A Fresh Perspective

The wisdom of the domination system, the wisdom of the world can come to us disguised as the wisdom of God, and we can go a long ways and a long time thinking it’s the wisdom of God. For a good number of years my dominant image of God was that of a Judge who presided in a heavenly courtroom and demanded payment from his human creation for breaking his law. The God I imagined was bound to the law and intolerant toward sin. God demanded punishment. And not just any punishment. Punishment by death. So God sent Jesus, God’s unique Son, to die, so that God’s justice would be satisfied, and that God would be free to release the rest of humankind from the penalty and punishment they deserve for having transgressed God’s law and offended God’s justice. But then, at some point on my journey when I gave myself permission to question and even doubt, I began to wonder why God’s unique Son would have to die such a cruel death by execution in order to satisfy some broken law, particularly ...

A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:29). According to a consensus of scholarship, Mark’s Gospel was written first just before, during, or shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. One to two decades later the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written. Finally, one to two decades after Matthew and Luke came the Gospel of John. All the Gospels are first and foremost spiritual and theological proclamations of the meaning of the story of Jesus, not historical reports. But John’s symbolism, Jesus monologues, and metaphorical storytelling takes it to a new level. In John the cross of Jesus is the culmination of a cosmic drama. At the cross, the worlds of ungrace and grace collide; the powers of death and life meet with explosive force. As Jesus anticipates...

For many chapters God has been silent and that perhaps as much as anything is basic to Job’s agony and dilemma. In our text today God finally responds. God speaks. But God does not speak to a single question Job agonized over. Instead of answers God responds with more questions. Basically God asks: Who are you to question how I do things? Where were you when I created all these different forms of life? What do you know about all of this? Can you influence the elements of this vast creation? Do you have the wisdom to run things? So instead of answers, Job gets more questions that seem to be aimed at putting him in his place. But the amazing thing about this is that this seems to be enough. I will say more about that later. But first note how God speaks. God speaks out of a whirlwind. What’s the significance of that? Maybe it’s a way of saying that you can’t hold God down, you can’t limit the way God works to four spiritual laws, or the Nicene creed, or the Baptist faith and messag...

There are some people who actively pursue transcendent experiences; it’s almost like they’re addicted to spiritually induced highs the way others are addicted to physically induced highs. They pursue one peak experience after another. But peak experiences cannot be programmed or predicted. You can’t say, “Well, I am going to climb the mountain or withdraw to a monastery and have my own epiphany experience.” You can’t order it up off a menu.  There is no pressing necessity for epiphanies. If we stumble upon a burning bush, fine, but it is, in my judgment, a waste of time to go looking for burning bushes. I can't find a whole lot of evidence that would suggest that such experiences actually change us. There is no evidence in the Gospel story that the three disciples who experienced the Transfiguration were changed by that single experience. In fact, shortly afterward these three along with the other disciples get caught up in an argument over who will be the greatest in the ...

The antithesis Paul develops between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world in his correspondence with the Corinthians was most likely prompted by the spiritual arrogance of some in the Corinthian church who were claiming to have special wisdom and knowledge of God, and therefore were deserving special honors and status. When Paul talks about the wisdom of the world he is not talking about Greek philosophical wisdom; rather, he has particularly in view the wisdom that crucified Jesus. The wisdom of the world is the wisdom of the domination system that attempts to shape society according to its own self-interest. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The First Paul call the wisdom of the world “the normalcy of the world, the way life most commonly is, the way things are.” The wisdom of the world is expressed anytime individuals, governments, organizations, institutions, communities, and societies act in their own self-interest. It is the wisdom of “might makes right” ...

In his letter to the church at Philippi , it is fairly obvious that Paul is concerned about some influences that were steering the church away from the teaching he had imparted and the example he had modeled. It seems that there were two different kinds of pressures being exerted upon the church. One influence pressed for legalistic obedience to rules (3:2), while the other invited a casting off of all restraints (3:18–19). These two influences are still around and they tempt us in very subtle ways. One calls us to take part in an economy of meritocracy, of tit-for-tat. Its appeal is to the calculating mind where there are clear winners and losers.  The other influence entices us with appeals to freedom to shed boundaries that we think we do not need. Here the message is: Just let yourself go, don’t worry about the consequences, live for the moment. There is certainly something to be said for living in the moment, but living in self-indulgence without regard for boundaries is...

If we allow them, our fears can become huge obstacles that stifle a healthy spiritual life. One of the great fears that many Christians wrestle with is named in Mark 4:38. It’s the story of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee in a storm, fearing for their lives. Jesus is on board, sound asleep. They wake him, terrified: “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” In some of the Hebrew creation stories the raging sea often stood for the powers of chaos opposed to the creative will of God. The disciples are up against chaotic forces as they struggle to make it to the other side of the Sea of Galilee . We live in a world where all sorts of chaotic things can happen to us and the people we love. We live in a world of natural disasters, of hurricanes, tsunamis, and floods. We live in a world of uncertainty and unpredictability, where there is still much evil. We live in a world of war, a world filled with violence—with terrorist attacks, drone strikes, and where inexplicable acts of ...

In this passage, Paul draws a contrast between those who "are being saved" and those who "are perishing." Our human tendency is to put ourselves in the group that is being saved as opposed to the group that is perishing. When we label and categorize we polarize people; it leads to “us” vs. “them.” So, instead of applying this to other persons or groups—this is the being saved group; this is the perishing group—what we need to do is apply this to ourselves. We make choices each day, choices that set us on a course of spiritual ruin or spiritual well-being. The choices I make today are choices that will contribute either to my spiritual collapse or my spiritual health. The decisions I make tomorrow will either nourish or impede a healthy spiritual life; they will nurture a “being saved” kind of life or they will contribute to a “spiritually perishing” kind of life. Salvation is more of a project, than a one-time event. It is more of a journey, than a single ...

The Cross at the Center (Mark 9:2-13; OT reading, 2 Kings 2:1-12) Thomas Tewell, the Pastor of Fifth Ave. Presbyterian Church in NY City, tells about visiting a large church in another part of the world. He said it was a great worship experience and he was blessed by the service, but as he looked around, on the inside, outside, in their church literature, he couldn’t find a cross. Afterwards, he went to see one of the pastors. He said, “I love your worship, I love what’s going on here. But I’m missing the cross. Is there a cross in here anywhere?” The pastor whispered to him, “The cross doesn’t market well in this culture, so we don’t say a lot about it.” That evening Pastor Tewell wrote in his journal, “Am I into marketing or ministry?” In the conversation down the mountain Jesus links mystical experience to costly discipleship. This brief glimpse of glory on the mountain of transfiguration is inseparably connected to Jesus’ suffering and death . In Luke’s version, the subje...