Friends tell one another a story, and the story invites the friend into its own world. Here’s mine: last year Kris and I decided to have a garage built. (We had lived here for about 20 years without one; it was time.) So, we called in a garage builder, and he got things rolling. |inline Read more
In Obery Hendricks’ The Political Jesus, chps. 1-2, we are treated to a survey of the socio-political context for Jesus’ kingdom message. Let me ask this question for our conversation today: |inline Read more
Psalm 119:17 is both a little request and a world of insight. “Do good to your servant, and I will live; I will obey your word.” That first verb, “Do good,” brings one element of the verb gml to the surface: it can mean “to deal kindly” or even to “deal bountifully.” What seems to be a little request — “God, do good to me” — covers up a world of intention. |inline Read more
That’s our new bracelet idea: “Who Would Jesus Vote For?” On the question of the politics of Jesus, many have put forth their proposals, none more influentially than The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder. And now from the African American professor (New York Theological Seminary), Obery Hendricks, Jr., comes The Politics of Jesus: Rediscoving the True Revolutionary Nature of the Teachings of Jesus and How They Have Been Corrupted (NY: Doubleday, 2006). |inline Read more
Yesterday I began my day with a 6:30am breakfast with a pastor. It was encouraging to hear all the missional work that is going on at Willow Creek. Then I had a meeting with Mindy Caliguire, who directs SoulCare, and we chatted about a variety of things, including a spiritual formation/mission of the church event to be held this summer in the Chicagoland area. And then it happened… |inline Read more
A meditation on the experience of the psalmist in Psalm 119, esp vv. 1-16. I take the key idea of this psalm to be absorption. I see this in three directions: |inline Read more
The 7th chp (and chp 8 ) of Sarah Sumner’s Men and Women in the Church begins with this statement: “If Christian women have a tendency to pretend they are inferior, the opposite is true for Christian men” (81). This statement sets the assumption and the theme of the chp — that cracked Eikons mess up their genderedness (or sexuality). |inline Read more
Speaking at a college chapel, regardless of where it is, carries one of my biggest challenges. Iâm not sure why, but one thing comes to mind immediately: by and large, students are there because they have to be. It’s not an easy audience, and so it is necessary to have something to say. Yesterday, at John Brown University, my chapel address on the Jesus Creed seemed to click with the students. I wanted to be there and I sensed they... Read more
The pleasure the psalmist speaks of in Psalm 119:14-15 is not simply the mental exhilaration of study and discovery — the sort of thing many experience when they chance upon something previously unseen in the Bible, which I think is grossly overrated for Bible study. No, the pleasure of the psalmist is otherwise. |inline Read more
If I’ve been asked this once, I’ve been asked it 500 times: “How do you do it?” And by that my questioners want to know how I have time to teach, write books, take care of this blog, and speak on occasions. I’ve given all kinds of answers — our kids and grown and gone; I’ve been at it for 30 years; it’s fun. Now that I’ve read James Vanoosting’s essay in And the Flesh Became Words, “And Be a... Read more
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