david bentley hart's new testament

I am finding David Bentley Hart's translation of the New Testament a fascinating immersion in Christianity's root texts. His attempt to translate "as if doctrine is not given" and to reproduce in English the raw and often halting prose of the Greek provides a new lens on these source documents. Particularly striking is the impact that undertaking this translation had on Hart himself ...

"Before embarking on this project, I doubt I truly properly appreciated precisely how urgent the various voices of the New Testament authors are, or how profound the provocations of what they were saying for their own age, and probably remain for every age. Those voices blend, or at least interweave, in a kind of wildly indiscriminate polyphony, as if an early Baroque vocal trio, an Appalachian band, a couple of Viennese tenors piping twelve-tone Lieder, and a jazz crooner or two were all singing out together; but what all have in common, and what somehow forges a genuine harmony out of all that ecstatic clamor, is the vibrant certainty that history has been invaded by God in Christ in such a way that nothing can stay as it was, and that all terms of human community and conduct have been altered at the deepest of levels ....

preaching john 3:1-21

There are three articles on this site written to provide preachers with pastoral reflections for sermons proclaiming the message of John 3:1-21. If you are to preach a sermon on this text ... or listen to one ... where do you think the emphasis should fall? What is the Word from God from these verses for our time and place or for you at this point in your life?

You can find preacher's notes at these three links: John 3:1-8, John 3:9-15 and John 3:16-21.

shocking grace

Once again this year University Hill Congregation has prepared an online daily Lenten Devotional. This is the seventeenth year in which members of the congregation have been invited to host a scripture passage and to listen for a Word from God on behalf of us all. You can read more about this tradition here. This year I was invited to host Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is my contribution ...

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant …. for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

We are accustomed to singing of grace as “amazing”. That it is. But here, when Jeremiah discovers it – hears it – on the lips of the LORD (“Yahweh”) it is shocking. Jeremiah is well known for preaching “Jeremiads” – sermons filled with rage and judgment. The LORD is furious with the ways in which God’s own people systematize injustice and whitewash its sin with religious rituals. The LORD is the source of the coming downfall and exile.

jeremiah & jesus

Next week our Wednesday morning Bible at Breakfast group is discussing chapter seven of the book of Jeremiah. The story told there is an obvious point of contact between Jeremiah and Jesus. The correspondences between Jeremiah and Jesus seem largely forgotten in the church these days (witness the lack of passages from Jeremiah's Temple sermon and trial read in the church during Holy Week). Yet these parallels have long been recognized, as noted in the following quotation by H. Wheeler Robinson (originally published in 1915):

a people, a name, a praise and a glory

"Jeremiah" by Michelangelo

Here is a paper about the prophet Jeremiah that I wrote while I was a student of Walter Brueggemann at Columbia Theological Seminary. It was written two weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks and was later published in the Fall 2002 issue of Word and World. Reading it afresh in 2024 Jeremiah is more contemporary than ever:

A People, a Name, a Praise and a Glory:  
False and True Faith in Jeremiah

In a world of conflicting truths, how does one know which truth to trust? Living in the aftermath of the cultural hegemony of Christendom, the consensus truth of modernity, and the visceral body blow of September 11, we are witnesses to the rapid deconstruction - even demolition - of the old, solid, foundational truths. In the face of this smoldering rubble pile of certitude, the stable assumptions of our once modern world seem already, strangely, ancient. What we tentatively name postmodernity is, at the least, a hotly contested conversation about what is the truth. When truth is in question so is falsehood (1). Which decision is true to God’s calling? What future trajectory tells a lie about God’s intent? How will we know the truth when we see it? Jeremiah enters the epistemological courtroom, stands in the witness box, and gives daring testimony. He offers no half-truths, no spin doctoring, no soft soap. Jeremiah names suspects, exposes lies, neutralizes counter- testimony, competes with adversaries, and calls for a hearing.

the hope that is in you

This morning at our weekly Bible at Breakfast group at a local restaurant in Vancouver we continued to read through the First Letter of Peter. Today we were hosting chapter three which begins with advice for Christian wives married to non-Christian husbands and ends with verses that link Noah and the flood with our baptism. We had plenty to wrestle with in the chapter. Then there in the middle of it all is a wonderful verse that, as one of our number put it, could easily be carved above the door of the Chapel to be read as we are leaving worship: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you" (I Peter 3:15).

annunciation, ave maria & magnificat in one text. wow.

The ecumenical lectionary lists Luke 1:26-38 as the gospel lesson for this coming Sunday, Advent IV. It also offers that the Psalm (or sung text) for either last Sunday or this Sunday can be Mary's song - the Magnificat - found at Luke 1:46-55. We will read the whole passage, beginning at verse twenty-six, carrying on through Elizabeth's greeting to Mary and then to Mary's joyful song - the first carol. I don't know where to begin. There is so much here.

sweeter than honey

 

"How sweet is your word on my tongue, sweeter than honey in my mouth." 

Psalm 119:103

People gather around a cross shaped by candles placed on jars of honey in the presentation of the Blessed Virgin church in Blagoevgrad on February 10, 2011, during a celebration in honour of St. Haralampi, protector of the beekeepers.

a higher righteousness

Well, I am not sure what to think of the sermon that I preached yesterday. There is just so much in eight verses: "salt of the earth", "trampled underfoot", "light of the world", "see your good works and give God the glory", "not to abolish but to fulfill the law", "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:13-20). Sheesh. By Saturday night I realized that I had spent so much of the week wrestling with the first seven words ("You are the salt of the earth") that I risked brushing off the rest of the text. Then I realized that the children's time was a telling of Jesus' blessing of children (Mark 10:13ff). Their entrance into God's kingdom has to do with receiving it as a child. The text from Matthew closes with a call to be exceedingly rigorous in keeping and teaching the law of God (exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees). It all seems so confounding. Is the kingdom a gift to be received or a demanding new way of life that requires all our energy and skill and commitment? And how does one preach on this within the confines of a liturgy that includes a celebration of the Eucharist? Not to mention that just before the service I met four guests who were attending the congregation for the first time - university students including two from China who were in a church for the first time in their lives. It felt impossible to do justice to the text. Which, in truth, it always does.

salt of the earth

The text that we're hosting in the sermon this coming Sunday is Matthew 5:13-20. It begins with Jesus' announcement: "You are the salt of the earth". Since this is the title we have given to the Christian Seasons Calendar that University Hill Congregation publishes it seems a good time to hear Jesus out when he makes this outlandish claim. On some levels I get it. We've become a minority voice, an alternative community, odd people even if that wasn't what we imagined our future would be in the 1950's. But this odd identity still feels, well, odd. When I read the name that I gave this blog I cringe a bit at the word "holy". There's something about the word that feels like it should be reserved for the divine, not used of human speech. I remember coming out of a movie years ago and bumping into an acquaintance who bellowed at the top of his lungs: "Hey, here's the local holy man". I wanted him to be quiet, tone it down, leave me alone. Not me. Yet that is who I am - by my calling set apart for God's use. Holy. It is what Jesus is saying of all of his followers when he announces that his apprentices "are the salt of the earth"