It’s quite a stirring list—all those heroes of faith and all the trials they encountered. Weak people, it says, who were given strength. And such a lot of strength to face all the hardship the reading piles up, line after line. So much so that it’s quite a shock to get to the last sentence—for …
Monthly Archives: January 2005
Sunday Week 3 Year A
I’ve caught myself several times in the last few days walking a particular way with these readings. That echo between Isaiah and Matthew has me wondering, wondering about the people who walked in darkness, wondering about the darkness, about the yoke, the bar across the shoulder, the rod of the oppressor. God knows there’s enough …
Thursday Week 2 Year I
‘To suit us’, says the author of Hebrews, ‘to suit us, the ideal high priest would have to be holy, innocent and uncontaminated, beyond the influence of sinners, and raised up above the heavens’. To suit us. … I wonder. I wonder if that’s what I want, who I want. Don’t I want someone a …
Wednesday Week 1 Year I
These are very earthy readings, very ‘bodied’ readings: Jesus, flesh of our flesh, touching, holding, healing; his flesh lifting up our own. And, the way Hebrews puts it, sharing our same flesh and blood so that his death could take away our death. This is a God who completely identifies with us, is us, right …
January 7th
To tell you the truth I’ll be glad when Christmastide is over and we can have 12 month’s break from John’s letters. There’s good stuff, I know—God is Love, for example—but every year they strike me as just a touch too cult-ish for my taste: a little sectarian; a lot defensive. Nearly every reading has …