Worth Doing Badly

Jesus’ disciples were to have courage because God was really present and that makes the decisive difference in how life is lived. When faith recognizes Christ’s real presence, it is reasonable to meet truly fearful things with the courage that fears not.

The path away from anguished weeping and angry gnashing of teeth gives thanks to God because His presence means the satisfaction of the many and massive hungers inflicted on humanity after the fall.

Having citizenship in the kingdom of heaven promises a better hope and joy that outlasts and overcomes the anguish and anger of all our experiences of loss.

To live by grace means that “our help is in the name of the Lord”, which means that we must wait on God to grant a solution that is final; and it happens to be eternal salvation.

Rather than giving into the despair of thinking that our work is in vain, Jesus’ parable of the Sower focuses on the fruitful seed being the sign of God’s fulfilled promises.

Jesus offers rest for the soul because humanity is plagued by a restlessness that constantly demands our effort while inflicting the weight of anxiety.

Christ’s peace would be disruptive of all worldly peace which can only promise a temporary avoidance of death and not freedom from death; a freedom that is expressed by freely taking up one’s cross, expecting death to pay everlasting benefits.

If God is, then fearing disguises the truth that we have a refuge from time’s destroying movement. Believing that God is means enduring the movement of time to reveal the fullness of our rescue.

Glad praise and thanksgiving are express recognition of and appreciation for the goodness that owes itself to God. Creatures worship when they come to know the goodness of the Lord God as both our Creator and as our Good Shepherd who cares for His flock.

Having experienced and enjoyed Christ’s mercy, the Evangelist Matthew desired to become like Him, being a god-like agent of mercy in transforming healing and edification.

Trinity Sunday asserts that we live and move and have our being within the Trinity. We are baptized in the name of the Trinity and through teaching, which is energized by the Holy Spirit, we actively, freely and joyfully participate in the Trinity’s restoring of creation, through the forgiveness won by Christ’s Incarnation.

Pentecost added to the Incarnation’s great reversal where God became a man so that mankind could hope to be like God. The reversal reverberated throughout fallen creation so that Christ gave life to the dead, health to the infirm, understanding to the ignorant and righteousness to the unrighteous.

Christ’s Ascension completed the path begun with the incarnation and this fact has changed every fact of life that is affected by death.

Jesus defined love as a linguistic connection established through listening to his word. Loving Christ means keeping his commandments, which means to value Christ’s words as being more precious than gold and sweeter than honey.

The upshot of Jesus’ resurrection is the possibility of untroubled hearts. The claim, like all interesting claims, is enticing, but much easier promised than possible. Christ’s claim that his presence lifts human hearts above adverse circumstances is not recognized as a promising possibility for overcoming anxiety.

Christ as the Good Shepherd not only leads us to the eternal fulfilment of our desires, he teaches us that what we truly desire is eternal and, in this life, insatiable.

Christ’s finished resurrection founded the fact of salvation. The fall had been reversed for all and forever. What remained is for single individual souls to come to understand the meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

Jesus utilized Thomas’ doubt to forge in the disciples a durable trust in the truth of the resurrection.

Jesus’ command “Fear not!” did not make the world less fearful, but promised to make us less fearful. The positive alternative to fearing is joy mingled with reverent fear and Christ’s resurrection placed these at the centre of human history.

The natural draw of the cross is that it promises to satisfy the desire to live by feeding on the sacrifice of the Bread of Life. The draw of the cross is also supernatural glory, being the demonstration of God’s love for the world.

Faith gives us immediate access to an exuberant way of living that crescendos and finally culminates in the resurrection.

Beginning with the phenomenon of the physical healing, blindness becomes a metaphor to contemplate the irrational choice to reject Christ’s salvation. This means choosing to be determined by the mathematical certainty of one’s existence ending in sickness and death rather than being defined by the hope of eternal health and wholeness.

Jesus’ thirst was a metaphor for a woman’s never-satisfied thirst for life. Even though she knew the facts about God promising satisfaction, her thirst to love and be loved was unquenched and frustrated. The gift of God’s grace promises to forever quench the human thirst for living water so that we would never again be defined by shame and sadness.

On this episode we consider how Jesus used Nicodemus’ examination to increase our appreciation for the consolation of God’s love as expressed in Jesus’ death.

Life is a path of deprivation toward death interrupted by hints, foretastes and rumours that life has not always been a fall.