God provides a reminder: whatever reforms might take place in the formal leadership structure, God is going to keep favouring those outside that structure. The centre might expand, but God’s preference for the margin is not going away.
To undertake the reformation of desires is a calling, with no guarantees of success, but some promise of God’s grace along the way.
Divine Wisdom calls. It is publicly accessible. We may not recognize the voice because we might not be listening for it. But it is there beckoning to us.
You might be forced to accept your place in a fundamentally unfair world, but you should never take the next step to allow the values of that world to become the values that shape and give meaning and purpose to your life
Jesus’ message was not only spiritually transformative but also politically charged, as it reimagined who held power and how that power should be used—not to marginalize, but to uplift and include.
The text of 1 Kings 8 is a conversation, not a monologue. For those of us who look to Scripture to guide our understanding and action in our own context, this text invites us to wrestle, conversationally, with the embedded ideologies of our own political leaders’ projects. Names matter in politics. But humble leadership, for the good of all, ought to matter more.
Just because leaders appear tough and strong, formidable and forceful, does not mean they have the qualities needed to govern well. Hubris should not trump humility.
Any effort to secure special status in the eyes of God is a rejection of manna. God’s grace and provision cannot be manipulated by humans for their own ends. It might appear successful. It might even help win an election. But hoarded manna will always become “wormy and rotten” (Exodus 16:20).
In any age, nostalgic campaign slogans must lead to clear articulation about which aspects of the past are worth retrieving. We must interrogate our own visions of the past to ensure that we’re not hiding the truth from ourselves.
Jesus doesn’t ban sitting or reclining in public. He encourages it, supports it, and even participates in it.
There is no single, correct mode of embodiment. For those who regard themselves as part of the body of Jesus, part of the family that grows from Jesus’s body, that one body is really many bodies, complicated bodies, with hands, blood, some foreskins, and a whole lot of multi-colored flesh.
Paying attention to Herod’s fears about Jesus can keep us from depoliticizing the gospel.