Even in the midst of an empire that crucifies the innocent for political gain, despair is not warranted. Instead, there is work to be done.
My hope this All Saints Sunday is that we would fully and faithfully engage in the realities of life and death, so that those who have gone before us will continue to inspire us to work towards love for those around us in the land of the living.
Jesus doesn’t ban sitting or reclining in public. He encourages it, supports it, and even participates in it.
If Jesus is a vine, can we really accept a theology which permits us to sit back and take without contributing anything ourselves?
Mutual knowing is not a given in relationships…
The son of Man, the son of God gives us a sign that, once more, he is not only at odds with but opposed to the structures that administer (a certain kind of) life and death.
In this passage in John, light is associated with Jesus and with the love of God for the entire world. Light is explicitly linked with a capacious love that was present from the beginning of creation and includes all of creation. It is therefore opposed to racism of any kind.
In a world of increasing anti-Jewish sentiments, we do well to note at whom Jesus points a finger. It’s not at Judaism, it’s at Rome.
The capacious and eternal love of God is neither a verifiable fact nor an opinion, but a theological truth-claim, staked on trust in Jesus as a credible witness. Christians who believe in such love should be wary of both the politics of condemnation and the politics of purity.
Pentecost isn’t simply about the dreams of old men or the prophesies of children; though, these, certainly, are a part. Pentecost is about living the dream.
Inspiration—being filled by the spirit, is not about dreaming dreams or seeing visions, it is about living them.
“Jesus’ “I am the way” is an opportunity for Christians to demonstrate the path of love to people…it doesn’t warrant any exclusion or hatred towards the other…”
Since the risen Christ embodies the gift of hope for those who follow the post-resurrection Christ, our reading of the Johannine narrative on the encounter between the risen Christ and the followers ought to open our hearts to encountering difference as an opportunity to replicate the gift that the followers received – openness to difference as the means by which God chooses to make God present in our world.