Some do not know what to do with homosexual marriage because we do not know how to think about love and marriage. For the last sixty years or so we have underwritten romantic accounts of marriage-if we “fall in love we get married” – if we “fall out of love” we get a divorce or at least feel real sorry …
Within Galatians Paul lists works of the flesh – works coming from our emptiness and not from the Spirit’s fullness. Seven of these are context specific social sins– hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions and factions .(5:20-21) Paul is writing to a specific Church with a big conflict going on about law and grace. Circumcision was the …
Though unrestrained consumerism creates an enduring ecology for envy and humanistic psychology just tries to moderate envies excesses Jesus places envyings (plural) in the broken world of self rule and isolated competitiveness—where people cannot find anything in common, fight a lot, are chronically discontented , rage, separate into parties and such like. (Galatians 5:19-21). Envyings starts off in scripture capturing …
In many lists of relationship busting behaviors the Greek word translated whisperers appears. Whispering often hangs out with quarrels, jealousy, flaring tempers, taking sides, angry words, swelled heads and general bedlam, according to the Message.(See 2 Corinthians 12:10.) Whispering speaks quietly of another person, always absent, savoring their sins, weaknesses and such like. Whisperers often trick themselves into believing that …
In Galatians 5:19-21 Paul lists the works of the flesh- sexual sins (3), misdirected worships (2), breakdown in relationships (8) and excesses (2). Broken relationships dominate his concerns. The flesh here is not a reference to the body or to sex but rather to an unredeemed, alienated body- a body that is not filled with the Spirit of God. Such …
The seemingly endless cycle of the years -Spring-Summer-Fall and Winter brings us to what we call a new year-2016. Sometimes the passages of time begin weighing on us. We quietly mutter, “Here we go all over again.” Do we dare ask, “Are we just going round and round or what? “ The ancient Greeks and Romans as well as the …
Jesus is the fullness of God on stage. He is what John Donne called “Immensity cloistered in a womb.” Just when we thought the Lord God would sue for divorce, after a thousand years of our adulteries, the Lord God sends Jesus. In a world of no-fault divorce, this is astonishing grace. It was the most dramatic of moments. Angels …
The Bible’s basic story line is laid down in the Torah, the first five books. Creation is the good beginning, worked into our memories with the rhythmic repetitions, “and God saw that it was good.” The promise land is the good ending as Moses leads the people up to the border of Canaan. In between is the catastrophe of the …
The Lord God who could not be looked upon has come near to us and is visible in the person of Jesus. Jesus who seven times in the Gospel of John refers to himself as the “I am” puts the true face on the “I am” God of the Burning bush. We saw his face and we lived. In fact …
We attempt to engineer a world where sadness and despair just don’t have a place. And then one day sadness-a sense of loss- runs a red light and hits us broadside. The Christmas story tells us we are wired for relationships. So why are we shocked when memories of relationships gladden or sadden us? Relational loss accounts for a lot …
