The Eagle & Child

You are all, I am sure, at least vaguely familiar with the “Footprints in the Sand” poem.  If not, here’s the poem and here’s a typical picture with the poem. Somehow I ended up at a blog which has a section on bad Christian art.  Readers sometimes post captions to the posted pictures.  Here’s one [...]

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Just a thought I had as I was ruminating on these words of Jesus: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which people may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of [...]

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from John Frye’s reflections arising out of his reading of The Aims of Jesus: Christians primarily encounter events in history surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. We do not encounter tidy spiritual concepts sanitized of dust and blood. We walk into the dreadful passion and the stunning resurrection of Jesus. Events.Time, place, people, events. If you wipe [...]

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Yesterday morning I jogged alone.  Not having a conversation partner (yes, we talk while we jog), I listened instead to half of a lecture Jesus by N.T. Wright.  He made a remarkable observation about the differences between the Gospel records of Jesus’ words–remarkable and so obvious that I wonder why hadn’t thought about it myself. [...]

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Jesus’ rebuke to the unseeing pair on the road to Emmaus was not that they had been looking for a kingdom, and should not have been.  Their fault  is that, just like Peter at Caesarea Philippo, they were failing to see that the suffering of the Messiah is the inauguration of the kingdom.  ”Was it [...]

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The blogging malaise continues.  At this rate, I may start posting some of my sermon material.  Would that be too pretentious?  I suppose I could post it without saying it’s sermon material, but I’m sure it would be riddled with tells. * * * On Sunday my thoughts for the sermon were based around the [...]

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“[Jesus'] appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.” — Henry Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

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[Jesus] speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking.  [...]

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