Category Archives: Weekly Reflections on Scripture

Lectionary Reflection – Romans 10:5-15

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Sometimes Paul is hard to understand. He is like a child so excited about some new idea his words seem to run together and doesn’t take a breath to explain it all. When I encountered, the text for this week, I exhaled with a loud, “Wow.” I said to myself, how am going to get cut through this dense theological text that we might see what God is doing?

But let’s try anyway. To understand where Paul is coming from, we need to know he is a Jew. We also should remember that Paul is a Pharisee. Thus, he was a devout Jew that spent considerable time every day in the Hebrew Scriptures, or what we call the Old Testament.

To Paul, and the other Jews of his day, and even today, everything about being Jewish and of the people of God lies in the Pentateuch. So, we should not be surprised that the foundation of what Paul proclaims lies there. Specifically, Paul is calling upon Deuteronomy, and Moses farewell address to the people he leads from bondage in Egypt and the 40 years of formation in the desert.

Moses at the end warns the people of Israel that God has called them to be a particular people. They are a particular people in covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That covenant declares that they would be blessed so that through them all the nations would be blessed. Unfortunately, Israel failed to live up to God’s concepts of the covenant and attempted to make their own rules, or own righteousness – or life apart from God.

Moses, knowing them also to be a stiff-necked people who are prone to rebel, also offered them some words of being freed from their idolatry and rebellious way, to repent and return to God.

Last week, Paul was worried about those who were going in the wrong direction. They denied Jesus as the Messiah. Part of Paul’s purpose is to connect the dots for Israel. The salvation of Deuteronomy 30 is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And, a very big and, even Gentiles are welcome to this fount of blessings, as promised in the covenant made to Abraham, he was to be blessed to be a blessing to the nations.

The Person of Jesus

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Jesus says I am: the way, the truth, and the life. I use the colon because first Jesus says I am the same as YHWH who spoke from the burning bush to Moses. Jesus is God with flesh, and is the person who is the way, the truth and life. We frequently think of the way, the truth and the life as ideas. Jesus says they are a person. So when we encounter Jesus, the living Son of God, we encounter the person who is the way, the person who is the truth, the person who is life. So it is in that relationship with the risen Christ we enter into the way, the truth and life that God the Father offers to redeem humanity. Like all gifts we can also reject God’s self-giving love in Christ Jesus. Just like we frequently reject relationships in our life. So we have the choice to reject the One Person who is the way, the truth and the life.

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

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“he [Jesus] knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.” John 2:24-25

This struck me hard this morning, having just come through interviews with the Board of Ordained Ministry. In the end, as I stand before God, Jesus will not rely on the testimonies of others, but will go direct to the source, my heart. That is both encouraging and frightening. It is encouraging that Jesus direct knowledge of us is the only testimony that is needed. And for that same reason it is frightening, for I know sometimes what is in my heart, and I know through the testimony of the Spirit it is not all good. Thus, I am reliant on the grace of God, that has considered a sinner like myself to be reconciled through the saving grace of the cross of Jesus.

What We Already Know

09 Thursday Feb 2012

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This week I am meditating on Micah 6:8. It begins: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good.” Today it made me think about how many times I have heard from an earnest questioner, “How do I know what God wants?” And God answers in Scripture over and over, “I have told you what is good, but you have not listened. You want to create your own good, but that is not the way it works. I, says the LORD, have told you what is good.”

Reflection On Romans 13:8

01 Thursday Sep 2011

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“Owe no one anything, except to love one another” Romans 13:8

Paul makes a powerful statement here, in line with the 2nd Commandment given by Jesus to the lawyer in the testimony of the evangelist Matthew (22:34-40). If we have any debt to another it is to love another. This is agape love, the love that desires for the well being of another.

We currently live in a world where there is very little concern for the well being of another, both among non-Christians and Christians. Most of the world has placed self aggrandizement and prosperity above another’s well being and freedom, thus exploitation and injustice is rampant, much of it made in the name of progress. The Christian world should be an enclave standing against such injustice and loss of concern for the well being of another, and we can be if we allow the Spirit of Christ to be the source of that love.

Reflection on Matthew 16:23

23 Tuesday Aug 2011

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Jesus said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (NRSV).

OUCH! This is hard. And yet isn’t it so true. Day in and day out are we not more often stuck on human things rather than divine things. Jesus aptly points out if we are stuck on human things, we are going to be a stumbling block to what Jesus is intending to do through the Church and through us.