Exodus 1:8-2:15
Category Archives: reconciliation
All Have Sinned
Rom 5:12-19
Up a Couple of Steps (Isa 2:1-5)
A sermon preached at Ginter Park Baptist Church, Richmond VA 12/1/19
Civility: Reconciliation ‘Lite’
“God…gave us the ministry of reconciliation…committing to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18-19)
In a moment characterized by unusually bitter and deeply-rooted strife, enmity, distrust, and mistrust, we hear frequent calls for a return to “civility” (cf. https://www.christianpost.com/voice/return-to-civility-american-life.html) when, in fact, only something much more profound – reconciliation – can produce the harmony needed. Continue reading Civility: Reconciliation ‘Lite’
On Wasting an Opportunity to Learn
“The one persecuting us then, now preaches the faith he destroyed” (Gal 1:23)
Listening to the current public debate about the proper course of action to be taken by or regarding the governor and the attorney general of Virginia, both of whom admit to having worn black-face in the 1980’s, I am struck by a failure to examine the situation in terms of the complex history of white culture in the South in the era immediately following the huge Continue reading On Wasting an Opportunity to Learn
On Being Useful vs. Suffering Abuse
According to this morning’s news, the Paige Patterson/SWBTS saga continues. Its prominence in the news cycle has focused my thinking on Jesus’ call to self-sacrificial love both as properly understood and also as commonly misunderstood. Continue reading On Being Useful vs. Suffering Abuse
The Curse of Ham: An Admonitory Case-Study in Misreading Scripture
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah Continue reading The Curse of Ham: An Admonitory Case-Study in Misreading Scripture
Tireless Exertions
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. Eccl 1:4 RSV
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was born in February of 1957, when the union still had only forty-eight states, three years after the US Supreme Court handed down the historic Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483), and just a few months before the first nine black students enrolled in Little Rock Arkansas schools implementing the ruling. Local sit-in campaigns began at a Woolworth Continue reading Tireless Exertions
Hermeneutics, Consistency, and “Christian Values”
The concept of “Christian values” is playing a prominent role in the public arena today, but my Facebook® feed lately suggests very little agreement among those who call themselves Christian concerning the identification of these values or the definition of them individually. No one should wonder that people outside the church view it with suspicion Continue reading Hermeneutics, Consistency, and “Christian Values”
“Blessed are the peacemakers” – Matt 5:9
Saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace – Jer 8:11
Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with nine “Beatitudes” that readers often unfortunately reduce to platitudes. The seventh, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” for example, can sound like a call to passivity and placidity: “Blessed are those who accept life with serenity, remaining calm, preserving calm, spreading calm.” Both the context and Continue reading “Blessed are the peacemakers” – Matt 5:9