Do not bother looking for Lent in your Bible dictionary, because there was no such thing back then. There is some evidence that early Christians fasted forty hours between Good Friday and Easter, but the custom of spending forty days in prayer and self-denial did not...
We need Lent! Our forebears were wise to put its 40 days into the calendar to keep us mindful of the great sacrifice of Christ and the immense love of the Father, the overwhelming grace-full—and grotesque—suffering of the Trinity. In these post-modern times, sin and...
The cross is not and cannot be loved. Yet only the crucified Christ can bring the freedom which changes the world because it is no longer afraid of death. In his time, the crucified Christ was regarded as a scandal and as foolishness. Today, too, it is considered...
This season is not just for us but for the reconciliation and communion of the whole world. These forty days are for becoming the very holiness of God, for radical alterations in the society and life we dwell within. We all become fellow workers receiving grace and...
…because of the narrative we know best,we discover that in the rock where you had nestled us,You have blown the rock open from the inside.You have rolled the stone away,You have surged out of a tomb-like womb, a womb-like tomb,And are back surging in the world, to...
Easter morning is the Sunrise of the coming of God and the morning of new life and the beginning of the future of the world. The laughter of the universe is God’s delight. It is the universal Easter laughter in heaven and earth.
The event of the resurrection, the empty tomb, and the risen Lord breaks every mold that would imprison God in the rationalism of a fallen world. But it is the starting point for a new kind of rationality, for the possibility of living hopefully in a world without...
Resurrection is not a deferred consolation—”the opium of the next world.” It is the power which enables this life to be reborn. The hope is directed, not towards a different world but towards the redemption of this one. In the Spirit, resurrection is not merely...
First, the point of Jesus’ meals—from the loaves-and-fishes ones to the bread-and-wine one—is to insist on shared meals as the mandate of divine justice in a world not our own. If, as God asserts in Leviticus 25:23, “The land is mine; with me you are but aliens and...
Resurrection means the life we know is not all there is to life. God may introduce surprises to all unfolding stories. Face it. We often feel bound by history, both corporate and personal. Most of us seldom use the term “fate",” but we act as if our lives are already...