This coming Sunday is the 8th Sunday in Lectionary Cycle C. Again we are considering the “Sermon on the Plains” from the Gospel of Luke. In yesterday’s post we noted that in following Jesus there needs to be a consistency of hearts and action – a measure of holiness when both are pointed to God. Continue reading
Today’s first reading continues to work its way through the Letter of James.
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit”— 14 you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. 15 Instead you should say, “If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.” 16 But now you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, it is a sin. (James 4:13-17)
This coming Sunday is the 8th Sunday in Lectionary Cycle C. Again we are considering the “Sermon on the Plains” from the Gospel of Luke. In yesterday’s post we noted that Jesus is preparing his disciples to “be like the teacher” in that they truly begin to see the kingdom and are no longer blind. The first part of the sermon has offered a new understanding of the values of heart and action called for by God. Even if the listener decides to choose Jesus as the teacher, to what degree will they follow? Will they act on this new understanding? Will they persevere to become “fully trained” and become like their teacher? Continue reading
The gospel for today is often a central part of any discussion about the role of Peter as appointed leader of the early church leading into the successors of Peter as the Pope of the modern Catholic Church. A modern evangelical scholar, nominally part of a religious perspective that would deny any particular role assigned to Peter, offers that his peers have to twist Scripture out of shape to reach that conclusion. Their arguments are molded to fit their predetermined end. This scholar holds that clearly Peter was assigned leadership. However, he would argue that there is nothing in these verses to point beyond Peter’s leadership of that group of Apostles. He argues that Catholic apologists argue to their own predetermined ends. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 8th Sunday in Lectionary Cycle C. Again we are considering the “Sermon on the Plains” from the Gospel of Luke. In yesterday’s post we held that this point in the gospel marks a change in which appears a principal call of Luke-Acts: the practical demand of the gospel with emphasis on behavior – not a sole emphasis – but highlighted nonetheless. The issue is one of character and commitments becoming action in the life of the believer. Continue reading
In normal times and seasons, air travel is a routine thing – at least in my time. My dad was born in 1912. That year, a trip between Tampa and St. Petersburg, two cities sitting on opposite sides of Tampa Bay, took two hours by steamship, at least 4 hours by rail. Traveling by automobile around the bay took as much as 20 hours. On Jan. 1, 1914, the world’s first scheduled passenger airline service took off, operating between St. Petersburg and Tampa in a Thomas Benoist-designed flying boat. The 21-mile flight took 23 minutes. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line was a short-lived endeavor — only four months — but it was a profound technological shift in the way we lived and perceived our present and future. Some refer to such things as “shock level” events – events that impress, frighten, and make us wonder about tomorrow in new ways. Continue reading
From our first reading today: “Who among you is wise and understanding?” (James 3:13a) That is not the kind of question for which people are going to raise their hands and cry out “Me!!.” But it is the kind of question that we hope is true of ourselves, our loved ones, and those with whom we work and play. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 8th Sunday in Lectionary Cycle C. Again we are considering the “Sermon on the Plains” from the Gospel of Luke. Most years we do not celebrate the 8th Sunday because we will have already begun Lent. But this year, on the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday (2022) we again engage Jesus’ preparation of his disciples for mission. Continue reading
Did you catch the language of the second reading when St. Paul talks about “the first Adam” and “the last Adam?” It is his reference to our human nature and, with God’s grace, our possibilities. St. Paul talks about the first Adam being an earthly creature – and that is a good thing. When God created this world, he pronounced his work to be good – and when we created the first Adam and Eve, he pronounced his work to be very good. We are the work of the divine potter who knew us before we were created in our mother’s womb. We are part of that divine, creative outpouring of love that is how and why the world was created and what sustains the world in being…. and yet it was through Adam and Eve that sin entered the world. And in the millennia since, we have all participated in sins from the most grave of mortal sins to that “little white lie” and “harmless gossip.” Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet had it right: “What a piece of work man is…” The deck was stacked in our favor by a loving God and yet we do what we do…Yikes! Continue reading
The days of the secreted and persecuted church during the 2nd and 3rd centuries were long gone when the Roman Empire fell in the late 5th century. The Latin church found itself increasingly needed in secular affairs and seduced by them. By the Renaissance period of the 15th century, the millennium had long let loose the siren’s cry of secular power, national politics, and a host of other factors. This lead to the formation of the Papal States, the rise of a courtly Roman Curia comprised mainly of lay nobility, a complex means of funding the increasing “empire” of the Church, and a culture of corruption, moral laxity, and an obscuring of the lines between the holy and the secular. In the mix there were saintly popes and popes with, shall we say, other foci, aspirations, and intentions. The church was unknowingly on what the historian Barbara Tuchman would famously call “the march of folly.” The march reached its zenith in the last six popes before the Protestant Reformation(s). The folly of the papacy and the Roman Curia, pursuing secular goals at the expense of its spiritual mission, bewilderingly ignored the growing outrage and distrust of common people seeking some assurance of salvation – which they found in the theological focus of the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther. The papal/curial folly gave birth to the Reformation(s). The six popes highlighted over the next several weeks were the ones occupying the Chair of Peter in the 50 years preceding the Protestant Reformations that swept through Europe in the 16th century. They were the last pontiffs over a united western Christianity Continue reading
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