*Given at Midtown Christian Community, March 15, 2008 Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk […]

Show us your mercy, O Lord;   And grant us your salvation. Clothe your ministers with righteousness;   Let your people sing with joy. Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;   For only in you can we live in safety. Lord, keep this nation under your care;   And guide us in the […]

It seems to me that so much modern Christian thought about the resurrection goes in the wrong direction.  It moves to the resurrection.  That is, we feel the need to think toward it, to establish it, to prove it.  So we argue that it did indeed happen, and once we’ve made our case, we imagine our […]

Last fall, David Brooks asked readers over 70 to send him “life reports,” autobiographical essays evaluating their lives.  He posted many of them and they’re fascinating and insightful to read.  Some have bitter regrets and in almost every case they have to do with broken family relationships (see my post on this).  They chose what […]

A few days ago, I wrote about Jesus’ humanity in Hebrews.  I’ve been thinking over the last few days about obstacles to taking seriously the humanity of Jesus in Hebrews. When I taught undergraduates, I routinely encountered Christian young people who were certain that Luke 2:40-52 was not portraying Jesus as learning anything.  He was […]

Non-Jewish Christians are so accustomed to reading Hebrews 7-10 as something close to anti-Jewish.  “At least since the time of John Chrysostom, Hebrews has been read as a stern warning to Jewish converts to the Christian faith not to fall back into Jewish practices” (R. Hays). It’s important to keep in mind, however, that if […]

Welcome to Midtown Christian Community. Welcome in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came into this enslaved world of oppression, exploitation, and sin, and who took upon himself all the brokenness, alienation, fear, hopelessness, estrangement, frustration, rebellion and sorrow that plagued God’s good creation, and he put it to death when […]

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear our prayer and deliver us.   From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being […]

I love this line from the Hays quote I posted earlier.  It sort of sticks a finger in the eye of a Platonic worldview: Jesus “has cleansed their consciences through the embarrassingly palpable act of sprinkling his own human blood around in the heavenly sanctuary, in the very presence of God.” As I read back […]

Hebrews appears to have something of a Platonic conception of the cosmos, regarding, among other things, the heavenly tabernacle and the exalted Jesus as greater than the earthly realities that bear on the audience. It may indeed be the case that Hebrews borrows terms and metaphors from Middle Platonism, but ultimately Hebrews’ cosmology is thoroughly faithful […]