Jesus dove into the waters of baptism, plunging into our deepest need to rescue us.
Alligood is at pains to stress that glorification is not the result of our own efforts any more than sanctification or justification.
Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.

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If you haven't seen this video clip yet (and even if you have), it's worth watching (again) regardless of your taste for Colbert's style of humor. In it, he trounces the typically smug fundamentalist-turned-liberal Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, who is so used to being fawned over by members of the media that Colbert's defiance leaves him at a near loss for words.
In the pageant of Easter Week, Maundy Thursday speaks about the last time Jesus ate with his Disciples and how He washed their feet in preparation for participating in the Passover meal (John 13).
What we confess concerning a corpse confesses much about how deep, or how shallow, is our understanding of the importance of the incarnation of Jesus, his death, and his (as well as our own) resurrection.
A cemetery is a hard place to confess because the cemetery itself seems to confess, “You, O mortal, have lost.”
But this dying world is still the world of our living God, who graces us with tokens of a final renewal. As leaf subsides to leaf, and frost to snow, and snow to ice, there comes a day when the gold of nature sprouts anew.
For out of the mouths of these opposition forces, gathered on enemy turf, comes the defiant declaration of death’s undoing: “Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!” An audacious act it is, to march smack dab into the middle of a place that screams, “Dead!” and to sing, “Alive!”
This is the night when the earth is formless and void; and the darkness of blood is over the face of Thy Son. And the Spirit of God moves out of His body as He gives up the Ghost.