The inherent legalism of the Western Church trains our eyes on Jesus' suffering as the judgment of God upon our sin & virtually blinds us to the more obvious point that Jesus suffered from the wickedness of humanity. It was the human race, not the Father, who...
Luther said, "Remember your baptism." How can people do that? In Luther's church, most of the baptisms were of infants. They were brought by their mothers and fathers and they were baptized. So how could they remember their baptisms? Luther knew that when they became...
When Jesus talks about this Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. What he more has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each...
The Bible does not limit God to masculine images. God as Father is not the only image in Scripture. Faithfulness to the complete biblical revelation leads us to include other images. Opening our minds to new ideas can be scary at first. Growing up I learned that God...
Where the Spirit of God is, there is also singing. The early church was characterized by its singing; so also in every generation where there is renewal by the Spirit a new hymnody breaks forth. If most such songs do not have staying power, some of them do, and these...
There is but one God, “in whom we live and move and have our being,” and when we worship we stand before the mystery of that deep and eternal Reality to whom we give different names. From Jews, we learn of God’s faithfulness; from Muslims, of God’s sovereignty and...
Worship is right because God is worthy of it; it is the best of all antidotes to our own self-centeredness, the most effective way to “disinfect us of egotism,” as one writer put it long ago. In true worship we turn the searchlight of our mind and heart upon God and...
Although taking the risk of openness to new experiences with God can be scary, we will find the resulting growth in faith rewarding and exhilarating. The commandment against worshiping idols includes more than physical statues. We create an idol when we become set in...
We must beware of the naive idea that our music can “please” God as it would please a cultivated human hearer. That is like thinking, under the old law, that He really needed the blood of bulls and goats… For all our offerings, whether of music or martyrdom, are like...
What help is it to me that Mary is full of grace, if I am not also full of grace? And what help is it to me that the Father gives birth to his Son unless I, too, give birth to him? It is for this reason that God gives birth to his Son and lies in the maternity bed so...