As someone has put it, the biblical understanding of human beings is not that they have bodies, but that they are bodies… Those who believe in the immortality of the soul believe that life after death is as natural a human function as waking after sleep. The Bible...
Christians, too, must maintain the mystery of God, must let God be God. But Christians do know how to respond to that mystery, how we can go toward God. We must follow the example of Jesus and join him in his journey. We must put all that we have in the service of the...
He descended into hell. That is very cheerful news… There is nothing I have known this side of hell that is unfamiliar to him. There is nothing known to me which I am wont to call hell which he has not already known. Nor is there anything beyond these realms which,...
Lent has begun, and we need to live in this dark place between the ashes and the bread and wine, between the declaration of our mortality and the declaration of Christ’s redeeming work. Lent is a time to reckon with the reality of the darkness. We do so with hope,...
The outcome of Jesus’ arrest and trial was that brute force killed him in what appeared to be a triumph for the powers of evil. Yet that triumph of evil was limited and momentary. As the Gospels recount the story, three days later Mary Magdalene and other women, and...
There is no genuine Christianity where the sign of the Cross is absent. Cheap grace is grace without the Cross, an intellectual assent to a dusty pawnshop of doctrinal beliefs while drifting aimlessly with the cultural values of the secular city. Discipleship without...
Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. Creation has a pattern of wisdom; and we dare not shield ourselves from it, or we literally will lose our soul. We can obey commandments, believe doctrines, and attend church services all our lives and still...
What is the wisdom that matters now? For me, it’s the Paschal Mystery [the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ]. . . . Simply, the one who would save his life or her life will lose it and the one who’s willing to lose it, will save it. In...
Jesus forgave a thief dangling on a cross, knowing full well the thief had converted out of plain fear. That thief would never study the Bible, never attend synagogue or church, and never make amends to those he had wronged. He simply said, “Jesus, remember me,” and...