Worth Doing Badly

Do we resit God’s living Word actively changing who we are? True humility in the face of God’s Word leads to the response of worship.

Here at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus transports us to the end showing us that we can experience our future reality in the present moment. This does not necessarily change our present circumstances, but it does change us, making us tread a little more boldly toward the final hour.

You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. Luke 3:22b Christ identified Himself with sinners in his baptism. Sinners identified with Christ in their baptism become God’s beloved children with whom He is well-pleased.

Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. Matthew 2:2 Epiphany celebrates the promise of God making himself known to us; revealing himself to and through the church through the glorious weakness of preaching. The epiphany to the Magi is first a decisive act of revelation that casts light on what it means to be in the Church now a...

The Holy Innocents were martyrs in deed but not will: Their lives were taken for the sake of Jesus, but were not yet able to confess His name with their own minds and tongues. Jesus gave His life of His own to save the world from sin and death and He rose again to intercede for us.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. Luke 1:46–48 God’s mercy is powerful, but works not in the way the wannabe powerful act. God’s mercy seeks the humble, intending to edify and elevate him to God’s glory.

Blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Luke 7:23 The road through Advent to Christmas is no walk in the park. Although it is repeated each year, it is never experienced the same way. Life’s journey carries us to different points, but no matter where we are, we must learn again that the Way of Christ is not a broad, smooth path, but rather a narrow, rocky trail. We need the Lord to teach us...

Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. Luke 3:8a The truth of salvation is expressed in the double confession which expresses truthful recognition of God’s wrath and His love for the unlovable. The desire to reach God and the recognition of God reaches us in Christ’s incarnation.

Right when we think the journey is going to end with the Last Sunday of the Church Year, the lectionary rolls us quite seamlessly into Advent – the season of preparation. It turns out the Lord is drawing near, “at the very gates,” not to bring things to an end, but to carry them forward into fullness. The church calendar’s seamless movement from the end to the beginning shows us that the eschatolo...

The last Sunday of the Church year remind us that the lectionary texts unfold the movement of the church calendar which repeatedly recalls the saturated meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This truth requires a special calendar to show us how time itself has been altered by the Incarnate Son of God so that now it measures our movement through – Not to. Through – our mortal end towards...

The Kingdom of God invades the kingdom of man first by proclamation because God would have free followers, having been drawn by the desire to live, rather than being the last resort of the alarmed and fearful.

God keeps faith forever. His kingdom is one of justice and generosity. To be a citizen of his kingdom is to put our trust in Him completely; and with that faith in Him, we trust that he will raise up those who are bowed down and sit us at his royal banquet table.

The life of Jesus and the lives of His "saints" are the two witnesses to the truthfulness of the alternative version of reality transfiguring deprivation, deficit, wickedness, or weakness into the state of ultimate blessedness that is experienced in the soul/mind/heart where Jesus opens His mouth to teach and opens us up to the new version of reality.

The hope of this fallen/falling world is temporary, but the beauty, truth and goodness of God’s salvation are eternal.

Jesus’ disciples were struck by His dismissing of wealth as a hindrance to desiring salvation. Then, He taught them the difference between gaining the whole world and losing the soul and "great exchange" – Christ swapping His righteousness for our un-right-ness.

Everything turns on Jesus being the cause and consummation of the goodness we desire; i.e., quality-perfect; quantity-forever. Only if that is goodness are we free to see possessions as ancillary, ministerial, auxiliary, useful tools of knowing and doing the good.

“Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” Mark 10:4. The regulatory aimed to weakened the hold of marriage by giving permits for divorce while Jesus defined marriage as our participation in God’s faithfulness that gave marriage the heft and oomph to battle our selfish, fat, insatiable egos.

Not everything called peace is peace. Jesus’ alternative peace is salt-like— “Have salt among yourselves and live in peace.” Salt subtly draws out and combines foods’ various flavours without notice until, that is, the salt is missing.

“Who is the greatest?" is an embarrassingly irrelevant question. Greatness is defined by Jesus turning the world right-side-up again.

Faith means seeing the physical by the truth of the metaphysical; the material by the non-material; the mortal by the light of the eternal.

Faith comes by hearing, and even hearing is restored by the special attraction of the Word of God.

How is one made clean? By having the heart transformed, which happens by humbly hearing God’s promises, His Word of forgiveness, and engaging His commandments and precepts; and with that our souls are guarded, which is Jesus’ main concern.

The defeat of the fat, relentless ego is experienced when Christ’s presence works so that we desire to will and to do God’s good pleasure. When what we confess with our lips is what we believe, value and desire in our hearts.

There will always be difficult and offensive things in the life of faith; but part of that life of faith is willingness to continue walking with Jesus and be led by him to see the truth in his difficult teachings.

Eternal life, like all life, depends on having the right kind of food and Jesus reminds us in in John 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”