A Fresh Perspective

To say that Jesus is Lord is to echo one the earliest and most basic Christian confessions. Lordship language came right out of the Roman culture: Caesar claimed for himself the titles “son of God” and “Lord.” To claim the Lordship of Jesus flew in the face of the powerful Roman Empire. No wonder Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3b). Of course, anyone might say it and not mean it, but in the context of the Roman empire why would you make such a claim and put your self, your family, and your faith community in danger unless you were serious? But even before the Roman emperor was called “Lord,” this was a title ascribed to God. The Greek word  kyrios  was employed in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures) as a substitute for the unspeakable name of God. The early Christians did not claim that Jesus was God, but they believed as the “Son of God” he acted as God’s med...

John’s prologue is actually a poem that introduces major themes that will be developed in the unfolding of the story that follows. It is a beautiful poem about the mystery of incarnation. I love the story about two mischievous boys, Tommy the oldest, Jimmy his little brother. One summer the two boys became quite popular in their community, but not in a good way. Families were waking up to lawns covered in toilet paper. One lady who liked to hang up her laundry to dry found a dead rat hanging next to one of her clean sheets. Something had to be done. So a few members of the community went to the pastor of the church where the boys and their parents attended; the pastor also lived in the neighborhood. “Pastor,” they said, “would you have a talk with the boys.” He reluctantly agreed. A couple of days later he looked out his living room window and saw Tommy, the oldest, walking up the street. He stepped out of his front door and motioned for Tommy to come inside. Since this was hi...

Warning: Not to be read by the doctrinally certain. These thoughts reflect where I am right now in my thinking on the incarnation of the divine in the person of Jesus. This could change next week. An incarnational theology probes into the nature of God’s presence in the world and in particular the degree to which God’s presence became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The Apostle Paul and the Gospel of Mark, the earliest witnesses to Jesus’ life, say nothing that would suggest that there was anything miraculous about Jesus’ birth. Mark’s Gospel was the first Gospel to be written (probably around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.) and he begins with John the Baptist. Either he wasn’t familiar with the tradition of a virgin birth (probably because it had not yet appeared) or he deemed it irrelevant. The seven authentic letters of Paul (1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, Philippians, and Romans) were written even earlier (likely in th...