RoboPreacher

'tis only the splendor of light hideth thee a sermon on Isaiah's sermon about fruitless vineyards : This passage sounds so, well, primitive ! Doesn’t it? All this talk of GOD letting the people have it strikes our ears as problematic . It sounds needlessly retributive and wrathful .   No, we know better. Don’t we? We know God would never do anything like that. Or, if God ever did, that was the God of the Old Testament, as we like to say. Since then, God has turned over a new leaf. These days, God is as treacherous as a leaf . Now, God is hopelessly merciful .   A couple of things. First of all, that’s a heresy. And it’s an old one, too. The heresy is known as Marcionism, and the name comes from the founder, Marcion.   Marcion was a theologian (of course) who lived in what’s now Turkey during the second century. And like us , he found the violence in the Old Testament distasteful . Like us, Marcion couldn’t reconcile the Old Testament’s depiction of God with the one...

it will find you Isaiah 5:1-7 and 11:1-5 : From the Thanksgiving-ings, to the holiday office, in quotation-marks parties , to the shorter days and even shorter tempers , to the over -stimulated children and even more over -blown expectations, we’re about to go through it. Before you start to feel too sorry for yourself, though, remember for many folks the excess of the holidays only point to days gone by . There are many of us who would love to have our calendar be a little more crowded . You see? None of us are going to escape. We’re all about to go through it. The days ahead are going to nick us all up. But , for all that, it isn’t really all that, that’s going to make the days ahead so hard .   No, the biggest challenge is going to be the person who stars back at you from the mirror each morning. We are the ones who make the holidays so hard!   And one of the reasons, if not the primary reason, is a piece of advice we received; ...