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Posts Tagged ‘biblical reflection’

you can have it, but you can’t buy it: Acts 8

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

It was inevitable, as the early Jesus movement spread from one city to the next, that people would covet its power without loyalty to its source.

One imagines that the movement’s leaders were as surprised as anyone to see the power of Christ flowing through their words and hands to liberate the mad and heal the sick. Happily, the Book of Acts provides more than one glimpse of the earliest stewards of such remarkable power fending off the misguided adulation of the crowds. But sometimes the threat of corruption reared its head via the jealousy of impressed onlookers who stood outside the immediate circle of the Jesus community. (more…)

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neither blind nor dumb: Luke 18

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Sometimes those closest to Jesus understand nothing, while someone with no ‘Jesus history’ comprehends immediately. It has always been so.

Jesus explains to his disciples that Jerusalem, their portentous destination, holds out for him no obvious good:

And taking the twelve, he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.’ (Luke 18:31–33 ESV)

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small ball: Proverbs 13

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The biblical proverbs rarely aim for the fence. They just keep poking singles.

Rarely does the Book of Proverbs open a window to stupendous secrets that were heretofore unknown. Rather, it gradually builds a home out of the cumulative lessons learned by people who pay attention, brick upon brick, one small board after another fixed in just the right place with little fanfare and no shouting.

One man pretends to be rich and has nothing; Another professes to be poor and has much wealth. (Proverbs 13:7 JPS)

Attentive people know that things are often not as they appear. (more…)

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truth’s irreducible complexity: Luke 17

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

A kind of self-oriented religiosity craves a formula.

We want a rule, a predictable sequence, a guaranteed outcome.

Admittedly, the Christian message is, from one angle of view, simple. Its redeeming beauty hides behind no intellectual prerequisite, no gate-keeping aesthetic sensitivity, no necessary spiritual predisposition. It’s the walking wounded, the drooling madman, the self-loathing sinner who seizes its promise before the sophisticate can get past his first reflexive sneer. (more…)

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tenderhearted: Ephesians 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Life with people often seems like a storm of chaos, intending to damage.

We are violent. If we cannot imagine striking out with our fists, then we destroy with a word, a sneer, the quick and lethal rolling of two eyes. With our need to voice disagreement with anything and anyone, as though the world waited breathlessly to know what I think about things that hardly matter. (more…)

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precisely for the faint of heart: Psalm 61

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The faint heart is often insomniac. What is it about the 3:00 a.m. hour, so full of worries, fears, and untimely wakefulness? As though on schedule, eyes open and the faint heart races. Life’s shadows loom taller and more menacing than usual. Improbable fears seem perfectly plausible. Things that will shrink into proportion in the light of day take the shape of lethal threats and impassable walls. The sixty-first psalm relieves us of at least one of our disabling fears: that we cannot pray because our heart is faint. (more…)

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a father’s joy, a mother’s laughter: Proverbs 23

Posted in textures, tagged , on September 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

A studied self-interest and the concern for community pervade the realism of the biblical Proverbs.

The wisdom of this anthology is neither romantic nor sentimental. The student applies himself to knowledge because there is a career to forge, a life to plan, a community to construct. Distractions abound, blind alleys lie to the right and left. The environment demands a certain steely, interested resolve. (more…)

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looking through the menu: Proverbs 23

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Bon appétit!, we say, and we tuck excitedly into the feast. Eyes bigger than stomach. So many dishes, so little time.

Where power is in play and self-restraint is absent, the banquet becomes a feast of death.

When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you have a big appetite. Do not desire the ruler’s delicacies, for they are deceptive food. (Proverbs 23:1–3 NRSV)

The Bible carves out a celebrated space for feasting. The biblical witness is no killjoy. It knows how to fast, when things come down to that, but it enjoys a good meal when they don’t. (more…)

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infinity by any other name: Psalm 36

Posted in textures, tagged , , on August 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

After detailing the radical bent-ness of the wicked, the writer of the thirty-sixth psalm finds himself overwhelmed by the ubiquity of YHWH. The LORD’s loving justice is everywhere.

Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD. (Psalm 36:5–6 ESV)

The Hebrew Bible does not traffic in the notions of omnipresence or ubiquity to which thoughtful readers of the Bible would eventually lay their hand. Its natural dialect is more concrete, more this-worldly. Yet, in spite of what might seem to our habits of thinking a limitation, the Hebrew poet knows how to say exactly what he wants to say. (more…)

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the songs of the forgiven: Psalm 32

Posted in textures, tagged , , on August 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The thirty-second psalm is all but drunk with sweet release.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Psalm 32:1–2 ESV)

Like most durable truths, this one has been hard won. Whatever the shattering failure of the writer, it led to writhing that seemed a sickness unto death:

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

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