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We need redemption, and we receive it in our church community through God’s Word.
Repentance is meaningless unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are: sinners needing mercy.
He cuts into our darkness with words that work like a knife. They awaken us from our routine to a sliver of light. Jesus reigns and He will return.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
There were no discussions, no committee meetings, no master planning, he and his group simply went to Macedonia.
What we have in our reading is a picture of how God deals with a lack of understanding.
The church does well to remind the world that God is unmasked, indeed, that God has unmasked himself in the person of Jesus.
Backwards. That is the only way to describe the world Jesus portrays in Luke 6. Consider what He says about blessings. The blessed, He says, are the poor, the hungry, those who weep. It is those who are hated, excluded, reviled, spurned. Who among us wants to be “blessed” like that?
We fail over and over again to tame the sin in our hearts, to guard the doors of our lips and to act like the children of God.
“Whatever you do, don’t share the Gospel with me?” Those were my exact words to my slightly mystified seminary professor. As he set his coffee down, I could tell that he was holding back in an effort to allow me to process what I was thinking.
This week we come to the end of our readings in Hebrews for Series B. There is a lot here, so rather than argue about the cohesion of the text, which I hope becomes obvious, let us get right to a few avenues for preaching. The pericope from 10:11-25 fits beautifully with the week’s theme and church’s preparation for Christ’s return.
Duke is my dog-in-training; although, sometimes I suspect I am actually his person-in-training. Regardless, we have both been learning a lot.