Touchpoints on The Gospel (Page 7)
Jesus is JUST KID-ing
“While your relationship with Jesus may be personal, it is not private and neither is your salvation, your healing, or your wholeness. Which, by the way is what the word ‘salvation’ means. It means ‘healing,’ ‘wholeness,’ ‘completeness.’ And none of that can you accomplish alone…in private…personally.”
Please Answer the Question. And Show Your Work.
“We have to let the actions of Jesus, the actions of the Christ, define the Christ. We can’t let our theologies and belief systems determine who God is. God is much bigger than that. It isn’t Law/Gospel. It’s Gospel/Law/Gospel.”
Breaking Point
“Like [the Pharisees], we might be a little disappointed to learn, at this late stage in life and after this long trek, that some of the biblical formulas we’ve clung to are wearing thin.”
Which Disciple Are You?
Which kind of disciple am I? I am all of them. Sometimes I walk away from the Christ, and the flesh and blood the Christ inhabits. “Lord, when did I see you hungry, or thirsty, or in prison?” Sometimes I declare as well, “Lord, to whom shall we go? This is where I experience life at its deepest level.” And sometimes I betray it all.
Food Fight!
Grace and peace from the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread;” Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. The Israelites, freed from slavery, come face to face with freedom and what do they do? They pray to God that they could be…
The Other Side of the Storm
And perhaps that can give us a different perspective on the disciple’s cry, “Do you not care that we are about to perish?” The disciple’s cry speaks to more than a storm on a lake. It is the cry of all who go with Jesus, who follow Jesus to the other side. And while Jesus does calm the storm, perhaps their perishing is exactly what needs to happen.
Crazy Jesus
You see, for Jesus, the Holy Spirit is not something you can name and claim. It is so far beyond you and me that no family or religious system can contain it. It is free to blow wherever it will and it catches up all kinds of people in its presence.
The UN-certainty of God
Let’s not make the mistake with this text of trying to move from one certainty to another. That is just moving from the frying pan into the fire. No, the move is from certainty to mystery. That is why the analogies are birth and wind.
No Choice in the Matter
It’s a theological Copernican revolution if you think about it. Just as the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, God doesn’t revolve around me. I revolve around God.
The Un-Folding of God
“The Un-Folding of God” is Bro. Jim Hanson’s Touchpoint on the Good Shepherd text (John 10:11-18), the Lectionary reading for Sunday, April 25, 2021.
FORE!!!
“Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24 :36b-48) What a strange way to talk about repentance. I mean, how does one proclaim repentance?
The Final Line
Grace and peace from the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3: 14-21 It’s always the next line. The one, after the one you know, that is often the key. You know, like… “The wages of sin is death,” You’ve all heard that one or read it on a…