Bruce Epperly challenges us to think more carefully about God and human suffering in his Adventurous Lectionary for the week.
Takeaway:
Adventurous theological reflection challenges images of God as unilateral punisher and bully. These images are unworthy of Jesus of Nazareth.
Scriptures: Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, John 2:13-25 There are quite a number of places in the gospels where authority is displayed, but in today’s passages we see the theoretical basis or the underlying explanation of God’s sovereignty. There are a number of key elements. These are likely quite obvious to you, but…
Well, I’m back again on one of my irregular forays into lectionary blogging. I hope visitors in the meantime have found value in the links to other people’s lectionary blogging found in my sidebar. It’s not hard to find a theme in this week’s lectionary texts, nor to imagine why those are the texts for…
This is just a very short note with a link. I’d like to tie the repentance described in Psalm 32 to Leviticus 6 (5 in Hebrew). I wrote about that previously on my Participatory Bible Study Blog. This passage describes the priestly doctrine of repentance.
Reversal is a common theme in the teachings of Jesus. The poor are blessed? The persecuted are blessed? How silly is that? And today we have another reversal in our gospel passage (Mark 12:38-44). The widow who puts in two little coins that might, optimistically, add up to a penny, is the one who put…
Bruce Epperly has an excellent set of comments on the texts for Advent 1B at Process and Faith. In particular take a look at the discussion of our perception that God has abandoned us in the comments on Isaiah 64. But are we abandoned, and what would it mean? Perhaps, as later Jewish mysticism suggests,…
That’s a pretty obvious theme, but it would seem even more odd to skip it! The second Sunday in Christmas is a good day to commemorate these events. There are a few different items that strike me here. The connection of the return from exile with the redemptive mission of Jesus. This shouldn’t be surprising,…
