Worth Doing Badly

Habakkuk 1:1–4; 2:1–4; Psalm 62; 2 Timothy 1:1–14; Luke 17:1-10 How does faith elevate the quality of our lives now? Faith is the source of peace, patience, bonds of trust and forgiveness of sins.

Why does Jesus think a child’s humility embody greatness? Children conceive of their lives the unfolding of future possibilities. Children are humble, at the bottom looking up, because they possess nothing and have accomplished nothing: They have a future which they expect will fulfil their out-of-this-world desires. Having the child’s point of view means seeing our lives, not as dwindling away to...

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-15; Luke 16:1-15 God chooses to do His work in our lives through an edification that happens slowly through repetition and repentance. The good that is done in preaching happens over time and in the thick of the relationships where the people test to see if the preacher himself believes what he speaks.

Ezekiel 34:11-24; Psalm 119: 169-176; 1 Timothy 1: (5-11) 12-17; Luke 15:1-10 God values personal bonds of love that are as inefficient as a woman wasting time to find a lost coin and then throws a party that costs more than the value of the found coin. Why? Because heaven so enjoys the lost being found, the disconnected being reconnected and the unreconciled being reconciled, when this happens th...

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-2; Luke 14:25-35 Everyone desires to be happier and this makes us vulnerable. Wanting happiness to run deeper, last longer and be more satisfying produces selfishness and cynicism. The happiness that is caused by "the Lord’s teaching" is not obvious because it gives life slowly; working below the surface, in feeding the roots that eventually bear fruit.

Engaging the pericopes is worth doing even if we do it badly. In fact, the good that comes from repeatedly reading Scriptures "pericopely" is both existential and cumulative. The existential good is that the Biblical texts speak at a particular moment to a particular congregation by a particular pastor and then are repeated next week. This repetition, over time, achieves the cumulative good of rev...