RoboPreacher

that in course the flow'r may flourish A sermon on Josiah's reckless reforms This is a fitting passage for today ; this, the first Sunday of Advent. But this passage isn’t just fitting because it tells of the righteous child king. No , this passage is apt for today because, in its own particularly quotidian way, it’s horrifying . That’s right, horrifying . Now, I know we don’t usually associate the frightening with Christmas . But there is a rich tradition of Yuletide ghost stories. How about that standard, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year? You know the line: “There’ll be scary ghost stories / And tales of the glories / of Christmases long, long ago.” And this motif also turns up in the classic , A Christmas Carol - The Muppets version, of course. It’s even there in those twin modern classics, Edward Scissorhands and A Nightmare Before Christmas, too! And these aren’t anomalies, either!   Before the invention of electricity-on- demand and HVAC, it was the winter...

but how you going to lift it with your arms folded tight? advent is over We’re in the Christmas season. In the church-year that means we’ve moved from expectant waiting to living with the promise. Now, in this fabricated church-year, we live with that hope for which we’ve been waiting. Now, that hope is in our arms, wrapped in swaddling clothes, ready to change everything. Change everything... Maybe you haven’t noticed, but little has changed from 12/24 to 12/28. maybe nothing has The world doesn’t seem to be bursting with hope. If anything we’re just as, if not more, cynical, pessimistic… What does that mean? One could infer it means that Christianity is a farce. And maybe it is. What does it mean if all this is simply motions we go through, some sort of opiate to cope, some opiate to ease the pain of capitulation? What would that mean? These are questions Christians must consider... Personally, I think intentionally malevolent people have expl...

Last week I raised the question about the dualism in this parable of the Pharisee & the Tax Collector ( Luke 18:9-14 ). I focused the open-ended question on theology, not particularly the parable. That was intentional. My goal is the notice the lens we bring to reading the Bible. My point, ‘sure, if you’re looking for explicit right & wrongs in the Bible you can find them.’ What is the consequence of this kind of reading, though? Well, for one; humans deserve to get humiliated by God. Is this a little troubling for you, too? Another less explicit issue is that, you water down the power of this parable. I am happy to say that much of the research I did noticed this. In fact, many astute and faithful theologians address similar issues. (This is a cause for hope in the trajectory of Christianity in the future.) As Brian Stoffregen notes : If the Pharisee is viewed as a villain and the tax collector a hero, besides the historical inaccuracies, the parable loses its ...