Tag: grace
-
Thanking Another Thinker for Thoughts about the Trinity
Elizabeth Sands Wise has written a profound and beautiful reflection on the Trinity, and vocation, and grace, which I commend and which I hope many will read.
-
Questions for Reflection and Discussion – 2 Corinthians 8 7-15
The Uniform Series text we are studying for Sunday, August 12 is 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, a portion of Paul’s encouragement of the Christians in Corinth in the matter of collecting funds for the church in Jerusalem. Here are some questions on the text that we might or might not want to consider in class: In…
-
Notes – 2 Corinthians 8 7-15
The Uniform Series text we are studying for Sunday, August 12 is 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, a portion of Paul’s fund-raising appeal to the Corinthians for “the collection for the saints” (1 Corinthians 16:1). Here are my notes on the text: FIRST IMPRESSIONS: It sounds a lot like every other fund-raising letter! A little flattery, maybe…
-
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
This morning, in our class discussion of Romans 2:1-12, we all agreed that it’s HARD not to judge people. “Don’t judge people” might not be exactly what Paul is saying in Romans 2 (although he will say that, exactly, in Romans 14). He’s just saying “you don’t have any excuse, then, because whenever you judge…
-
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In class this morning, we had just started identifying themes we wanted to talk about in relation to Luke 13:22-30 when one of the members mentioned something about Jesus saying to sit down at the end of the table, so you would be invited to take a better seat (Luke 14, next chapter), and I…
-
Notes on Matthew 15 1-9
The Present Word and Uniform Series text for Sunday, June 17, is Matthew 15:1-9, Jesus’ endorsement of the distinction between the commandments of God and the traditions of “men.” Here are my [hasty*] notes on that text: Background and Context We are still in Matthew, in the midst of a long narrative section that features…
-
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
This morning we talked some about what James meant by faith “saving you,” or not as the case may be. We looked up that place in Romans (it turns out to be Romans 3:28) where Paul says “we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law,” and then…
-
Christian Doctrine (16)
Here are my summary notes on Chapter 16 of Christian Doctrine1, “Are You a Christian? The Doctrine of Justification”: Guthrie introduces the topic with possible answers to someone’s question “Are you a Christian?” What do you say? That you go to church, etc.? So, it’s about what you do? That you believe Jesus Christ died…
-
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
[A sermon partly on Jeremiah 1:4-10, delivered at a small church in southern Indiana] We’re continuing to look at stories of God’s calling in the Bible; this is the prophet Jeremiah’s autobiographical account of his call, which came in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, in the late 7th century, and whose career…
-
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
[A sermon on Isaiah 6:1-8, the Uniform Series text for Sunday, July 9] Would we want to have Isaiah’s vision? That overwhelming vision clearly affected Isaiah’s understanding of God; a vision of God like that might change our understanding of God, too. Whether we would want to have this particular vision, however – we might…
-
Seventh Sunday of Easter
I blame Jonah. I blame Jonah for this past week having been … unusually uncomfortable. Because … I wanted to enjoy the feeling of being able to point at Jonah and say “what’s wrong with this guy?” I wanted to indulge my first impression of being better than Jonah, because I know that something’s wrong…
-
Sixth Sunday of Easter
[A sermon mostly on Jonah 3, and a little on Revelation 7:9-17, for the Sixth Sunday of Easter.] The people of Nineveh – and to a lesser extent, the animals of Nineveh – are really the main characters of this reading, even though it comes from the book of Jonah and Jonah does play a…
-
Second Sunday in Lent
This is an effort to put together something like a coherent reading of Ephesians 2:1-10, which was the Uniform Series text for today, and the topic of some exegetical notes earlier in the week. Focus statement: Ordinary life, apart from God, is actually a form of death, no matter how “successful” or even “religious” it…
Matters of Interpretation 