People today sometimes talk about Easter as if the great message is that there really is life after death after all. That’s a very modern perception, which would occur only to somebody who had been brought up with the secularist denials of life after death. If that’s...
It is extremely strange, and extremely interesting, that the stories of Jesus’ resurrection never mention the future hope of the Christian… Instead, we find a commission within the present world: “Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you.” The stories are...
“Messiah” does not mean “your personal savior”; rather, the Messiah is the one who will come to establish a new order of the world that will end suppression discrimination, hunger, poverty and misery. Jesus accepts this designation. Yet his response to Peter contains...
Many times before, Jesus had turned down the chance to declare himself… Only on this day, first before the religious establishment and then before the political, only when his claims would seem the height of absurdity, did he admit to who he was. “The Son of God,” he...
Seems to me that many churches today are looking more for the hype and less for the depth…are looking to “beat” their competition and keep their “consumers” satisfied…are much ado about “the show” and their “ratings.” Seems to me, that is a mistake! Jesus on the Cross...
When Jesus told Peter to put his sword away and then faced his accusers and confronted death without violence, Jesus was living out the way that the reign of God confronts evil. The resurrection of Jesus, God’s act in history to overcome the ultimate enemy—death—puts...
But you can’t prove that Easter is true by going backward, only by going forward. Because John says that’s where the risen Christ is, on the move, ahead of us, not behind us. You know what is for me the main proof of Easter? It’s you! Despite all of the setbacks and...
Christ is Risen - He is risen indeed! We are baffled by the very Easter claim we voice. Your new life fits none of our categories. We wonder and stew and argue, and add clarifying adjectives like “spiritual” and “physical.” But we remain baffled, seeking clarity and...
It is Christ himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to him. We must not use the Bible as a sort of encyclopedia out of which texts can be taken for use as weapons.
The Holy Spirit as the awe-inspiring power of life and of love is a reality with which every human being is familiar, whatever name we give to it. Spirit is the very aliveness of our life. This holds true for every one of us. We differ only by the degree to which we...