Moreover, the longer I studied the Christian tradition, the more transparent its human origins became. Religions in general (including Christianity), it seemed to me, were manifestly cultural products...
Jesus, then, was not just a prophet announcing the kingdom. He believed that the kingdom was breaking in to Israel’s history in and through his own presence and work. This is the third layer of my his...
Jesus was offering forgiveness to all and sundry, out there on the street, without requiring that they go through the normal channels. That was his real offense.
Jesus was killed. This is one of those facts that everybody knows, but whose significance is often overlooked. He didn’t simply die; he was executed. We as Christians participate in the only major rel...
Jesus was challenging his contemporaries to live as the new covenant people, the returned-from-exile people, the people whose hearts were renewed by the word and work of the living God. Call Jesus a s...
Jesus (as well as the authors of the gospels) would have known about Rome’s policy of sending reinforcements to the city at Passover. His decision to enter the city as he did was what we would call a...
Importantly, the issue as we describe the wealthy and powerful is not whether they—in our case, the Jerusalem authorities centered in the temple—were corrupt, if by that we mean an individual failing....
I think Jesus would have said, It’s not about me. During his lifetime, he deflected attention from himself. In an illuminating passage in our earliest gospel, when a man addressed him as Good Teacher,...
I am convinced that salvation in the biblical tradition has to do primarily with this life.
His own self-understanding did not include thinking and speaking of himself as the Son of God whose historical intention or purpose was to die for the sins of the world, and his message was not about...
He was not, then, in any shape or form, anti-Jewish. Jesus clearly knew that there was a wide spectrum of belief and practice among his contemporaries; nevertheless, like the biblical prophets before...
He points beyond himself to God—to God’s character and passion. This is the meaning of our christological language and our credal affirmations about Jesus: in this person we see the revelation of God,...
Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and indi...
But redemption in the Bible and in Paul is not about the forgiveness of sins. Rather, it is a metaphor of liberation from bondage—from life in Egypt, from a life of slavery. The redemption that is in...
And here I return to Christianity. Why be a Christian in the twenty-first century? Because it gives us a vision. And a hope. And a way. The language of the New Testament talks about the kingdom of God...
Advent and Christmas are about a new world. They are thus intrinsically about eschatology. Recall what we said about this word in Chapter 3: eschatology is about the divine transformation of our earth...
A poem by Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States, captures the ache of loss at the end of childhood. Its title is significant: On Turning Ten: The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m co...
If, when you think of the word God, you are thinking of a reality that may or may not exist, you are not thinking of God. Tillich’s point is that the word God does not refer to a particular existing b...
[S]in in popular Christianity is often understood individualistically, obscuring the reality of social sin. An emphasis upon sin most often leads to introspection about what I have done wrong. Of cour...
To shift to a voice metaphor, the gospels contain two voices: the voice of Jesus and the voice of the community. Both layers and voices are important. The former tell us about the pre-Easter Jesus; th...