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Longsuffering Lord: A Good Friday Prayer

In the book, “The Orthodox Way” by Bishop Kallistos Ware, he includes this prayer (on p.86):

He whom none may touch is seized;
He who looses Adam from the curse is bound.
He who tries the hearts and inner thoughts of man is unjustly brought to trial;
He who closed the abyss is shut in prison.
He before whom the powers of heaven stand with trembling stands before Pilate;
The Creator is struck by the hand of his creature.
He who comes to judge the living and the dead is condemned to the Cross;
The Destroyer of hell is enclosed in a tomb.
O thou who dost endure all these things in thy tender love,
Who hast saved all men from the curse,
O longsuffering Lord, glory to thee.

-from Vespers on Great Friday

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for our natures to change

I love Christmas music. Every year I spend some time looking for new songs or different renditions of old songs I enjoy. This year I found a song by Frightened Rabbit, a Scottish independent rock group that I enjoy. It is called, “It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop.” They sing that it is Christmas, so we should stop conflicts and actions of hatred.

“We’re built to give at least once each year
Now that’s better than never I guess
And life might never get better than this
With the perfect excuse for our natures to change”

It’s a fairly common sentiment, I think, that somehow we ought to treat each other better during Christmas, or that we ought to be more generous during Christmas. Continue reading “for our natures to change”

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Vineyard or Vegetable Garden

picture of our garden
I do happen to enjoy our vegetable garden…

The story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21, is full of challenging little bits.  Since I couldn’t get to them all in this past week’s sermon, I wanted to do a few posts on some of those elements.

Naboth had a vineyard. Ahab wanted to purchase it and make it into a vegetable garden. Little details like this are the things that make the Old Testament so fun for me. Israel is compared in scripture to a vineyard (Psalm 80, Isaiah 5), and since vineyards take a while to become established, the vineyard tended to be symbolic of a place being established and having had some peace for a time. The vineyard is a sign of God’s abundance. The only other time the word for “vegetable garden” is used in the Old Testament is in Deuteronomy 11:10. It states, “For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.” Continue reading “Vineyard or Vegetable Garden”

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The church of the open door

door-opening-to-the-skyI’ve been studying the book of Revelation for some time now in order to prepare for a class I’m going to teach this fall.  As I studied it, I found this recurrence of doors in chapter 3 and 4, in part due to my commentary written by Craig Koester – which is a good little commentary on Revelation if you’re looking.  Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be able to use this particular collection of thoughts in the study or sermons, so I’ll post on it.

The multimillion dollar advertising campaign for the United Methodist Church used to read, “Open hearts, Open doors, Open minds.”  I found myself thinking of the “open doors” portion of our advertising slogan as I studied portions of Revelation. Continue reading “The church of the open door”

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Beauty and origin

I got to thinking about things as I have seen the beautiful colors this fall. One of my favorite books and the hardest book I’ve ever read is “The Beauty of the Infinite,” by David Bentley Hart. In the book, one of the things that Hart does is he makes an aesthetic appeal for the existence of the Christian God. In other words, one of the things he does is explore the goodness and beauty of God. The beauty that we see around us raises some interesting questions and thoughts. Continue reading “Beauty and origin”

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Livin Leviticus Loca part 3

Some tattoos are wrong for reasons other than religious

Alright, so after almost a month I am finally returning to tattoos and Leviticus. Things got busy around the church building – things falling, mold growing, all sorts of fun stuff. Plus this congregation expects a sermon every week. Slave drivers. I’m afraid that I began this jaunt down considering the holiness of tattoos and then left you hanging too long. The four people who read the blog have probably gone out and just covered themselves with tattoos of all kinds without the guidance of their pastor. I’m sorry.
We’ve looked at the Old Testament Law in the last two posts on Leviticus. I’ve shown how the law has been understood by some people as being ceremonial, civil, and moral. I also raised some concerns about this distinction because it isn’t always clear which is which and then one has to wonder why there would be parts of Scripture that seem to serve no purpose. Then I examined the Law from a New Testament standpoint and we saw that at times the law was superseded by Christ and in other times it was made even more challenging. However, I think a good rule of thumb is given by scripture that the two great commandments of love the Lord and love your neighbor hold the key. Continue reading “Livin Leviticus Loca part 3”