A Fresh Perspective

In the Apostle Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthian church, he advocates something truly radical when compared to other organizations and institutions. Paul argues that while all members of the Christian community are loved and valued equally, God bestows special honor and dignity on some whom we would never expect. He contends that those parts of the body that appear to be “weaker” are actually indispensable to the health and well-being of the body (see 1 Cor. 12:21–25). We could read “weaker” as “more vulnerable” or even “less useful.” In the conventional wisdom of this world’s organizations and institutions, such “weaker” members are considered expendable.         Paul is probably echoing the language the Corinthians were using in order to issue an implicit warning. Paul is saying: You who fancy yourselves to be “stronger,” to be more spiritual or knowledgeable, you’d better be careful. The ones you call “weaker” are the very ones to...

In his book, Letters to a Young Doubter , William Sloan Coffin says that when he was chaplain at Yale, he would sometimes get requests from seniors to write a letter of recommendation to some highfalutin school like Harvard Law or Columbia Medical School . He mostly wrote about their character and integrity rather than their academic achievements or potential, which to some students was not totally satisfactory. Coffin describes it this way: “Never mind that I enumerated some sterling extracurricular qualities. Never mind that in order to be accepted into Harvard Law or Columbia Medical School you had to be in the ninety-seventh percentile and to graduate ninety-eight. Just because I didn’t say they would be in the ninety-ninth percentile, they felt they had somehow failed.” Coffin ends by concluding: “Such is the power of higher education to tell you who you are!” I think that if Jesus had not been listening to God and open to the leading of the Divine Spirit, he may have ...

The scriptures of the Judeo-Christian tradition invite us into the human struggle for truth. They are not perfect from any angle and some texts should trouble us. The scriptures reflect the faith journeys and struggles of faith communities, therefore, we should expect to find in our scriptures contradictions, paradoxes, conflicts, and inconsistencies. When we struggle with the sacred text, we struggle with God, and that provides us with an opportunity to grow up, to evolve in spiritual consciousness. Creeds and doctrinal statements are basically distractions that invite people to avoid the struggle and, as a result, avoid real growth and transformation. My assessment of such documents is obviously biased, springing from the impact they have had on people I know. Creeds and propositional statements of doctrine offer single sentence answers that end the questioning and hence, the thinking, searching, and struggling with questions of faith. In the Gospel story of Matthew 2:1–12, t...

A healthy Christian spirituality includes both an internal life of integrity that is developed through a personal relationship with Christ and an external life of ministry that is expressed through self-giving service for the good of others.  The life of service includes both personal and communal acts of mercy and compassion, as well as social justice and peacemaking.  In the Gospels, Jesus makes care for the poor a priority. Jesus says, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they invite you back and repay you. No; when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind; then you will be blessed (Luke 12:12–14).” This is not a liberal agenda item; it is a nonnegotiable characteristic of discipleship to Jesus. In the judgment parable of Matthew 25:31–46, treatment of the poor and disadvantaged (“the least of these”) becomes the criterion for the final judgment.  We car...

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...

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death , to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78–79) Years ago a soldier who had fought in the trenches in France in the First World War explained how one Christmas a truce was made for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. A British soldier broke the quietness of Christmas Eve night as he began to sing a familiar Christmas carol. Then, across the way, a soldier from Germany familiar with the hymn joined in, singing in German. The two voices beautifully harmonized. Early on Christmas morning, some British soldiers climbed out of their trenches into no man’s land carrying a football. Even in war, the British took their teapots and their footballs. It wasn’t long before some German soldiers had joined them. Right in the middle of the bloody battlefield in France they kicked that ball around and had a pick up game. But then, the...

The Gospel reading this year (Year C) for the first Sunday of Advent was Luke 21:25–36. My Lectionary study group didn’t want anything to do with preaching that text, instead they decided to focus on the reading from Jeremiah. This text in Luke is part of a larger apocalyptic passage linking the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans with the apocalyptic discourse of the coming of the Son of Man. If we can get past the apocalyptic worldview that dominated the first century Jewish world and the sensationalism and literalism of modern day apocalyptic interpretations like those expressed in the Left Behind books, this passage yields some profound spiritual truths. Apocalyptic language is great poetry, and if we can read apocalyptic texts with a poet’s mind and heart and imagination, these texts can bring forth life. Jesus chided the religious authorities of his day for their failure to see the signs of the inbreaking reign of God. These were signs of healing and restoring grace...