34;It was found that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit." No one rushed, no one displaced. She will give birth to a son, and you must call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." It was said by God through the prophet that the child's name should be Emmanuel, which means "God is with us."
And, finally, "the favor of God was upon him." It was clear to Jesus' contemporaries that he was one who loved and blessed God.
God with a Human Face by John C
Purdy
God Can Take the
Heat(Mark 1:9 - 11; Luke 4:1-13)
God is a Visionary (Luke 4:16-21)
On the morning of December 22, 1989, friends came to the Bucharest home of the dissident poet Mircea Dinescu. He got up to read and was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He was an outspoken advocate of the idea that Jesus came to usher in radical social improvement.
When this novel appeared in 1939, we thought it was a heartbreaking description of the poor.
God Freely Forgives (Mark 2:1-12)
But when Jesus answers the scribes, he plays neither the role of Rabbi nor Compassionate. Surely the key words are "that you might know." The liberation of the paralytic points beyond himself. It is difficult to listen to the story of the healing of the paralytic and not hear echoes of contemporary debates and discussions about AIDS.
This two-faced god is an idol -- a figment of the human imagination, a projection of fear and guilt.
God Feeds the Hungry (Mark 8:1-9)
Is anyone planning to make a play or film about the feeding of the four thousand?” Such questions suggest that the feeding of the four thousand is a mysterious and complex event with many meanings. Consider the plight of the Kurdish refugees who lined the mountain roads leading from Iraq to Iran in the spring of 1991.
But surely the story of feeding four thousand people is not about our need for better distribution systems or a more orderly society. If the feeding of the four thousand is to be believed, then the second answer is correct: Something or someone gets in the way. This has to be one of the greatest complex performances of all time.
Whatever the expectations of the four thousand, it is difficult to imagine that they were prepared for what would happen. Look at the birds in the sky; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. The signal of the arrival of a new Teacher is the publication of a bestseller.
Does the way that Jesus teaches us lead us out of the system that Smith described? What Jesus teaches is this: If the birds of the sky and the flowers of
God Is a Peacemaker (Mark 4:35-41)
Purdy is a retired minister of the Presbyterian Church, USA, where he served as curriculum resources editor for 26 years. God with a Human Face was published by Westminster/John Knox in 1993 and is used with permission of the author, who also prepared the text for Religion Online. Jesus' calming of the storm has a predictable consequence: the disciples' fear turns to awe.
While the storm in the story is definitely a real storm, the meaning of the story is not limited to why or how Jesus calmed the wind and waves with his "Peace." As with Jonah and the fish, the calming of the storm has been the subject of Or it may be a disaster to which humans have contributed, such as global warming through the so-called greenhouse effect.
As a climax to the sermon, the preacher might ask the congregation this question: How can terror exist in such a world? When the police leave, Mookie throws a garbage can through the pizzeria window, destroying the store. In the middle of the night the father woke up and found the child in great distress.
Some might say that these three sermons do not exhaust the possibilities of stilling the storm. God with a Human Face was published by Westminster/John Knox in l993 and is used by permission of the author, who also prepared the text for Religion Online.
God Allows All Prayers (Mark 11:15-18)
The cleansing of the temple can be told as a tale of the small town boy who came to town. He is outraged by what he finds - commercial transactions, including the exchange of money and the sale of birds, and the use of the temple grounds as a shortcut. But there is one more story to be recited - that of the tragic fate that awaits everyone.
They tell him that news of the pollution and the proposed remediation could destroy the city's economy. Finally, a public meeting is called, in which the doctor is voted unanimously as an enemy of the people. Someone coming fresh from the cleansing of the temple can only feel pity, knowing that fierce opposition - and possible defeat - awaits Jesus.
Friedman's friend suggests a fourth way to read the account of the cleansing of the temple—as the inevitable flow of piety, profit, and politics together in the Middle East. This is one of the reasons why Ken Burns's Civil War television series captured so many of our imaginations in the fall of 1990. But surely the story of the cleansing of the temple is more than a case study in the use of violence.
The final meaning of the narrative is revealed in the words with which Jesus justified his action. The cleansing of the temple is the story of a God who will be known and worshiped by all people - Israelis, Iraqis, Kurds, Palestinians.
God Loves Beyond Betrayal (John 13:1-11)
Now before the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Jesus knows that he will soon be killed; the Big Wheels, offended by his cleansing of the temple, will not wait long to initiate measures for his removal.
The Passover, when the lambs are slaughtered, seems a possible time for the death of Jesus. It cannot be mistaken for anything but a demonstration of the deepest, purest, most selfless love. He who treats as equals those who are far below him in strength, truly makes them a gift of the quality of human beings.
In the account of the washing of feet, Peter represents the redeemed—those who, in Vachel Lindsay's poem, are "washed in the blood of the Lamb." As John immersed Jesus in the waters of the Jordan, so Peter was thrown into the heavenly river. Any attempt to make the washing of feet a pious gesture goes to the hands of the devil.
There is no concept that will suffice for the harvest turned golden, the lilies of the field, the lost drachma, the wounded man on the road to Jericho" (Morning Light: The Spiritual Journal of Jean Sulivan, 1988, p. 18). So whatever we make of foot washing, let's not make it a liturgical act.
God Is an Ex-Convict?
John 18-19, selected verses)
God with a Human Face was published by Westminster/John Knox in l993 and is used by permission of the author, who also prepared the text for Religion Online. soldiers, their officer and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him. Finally, Elizabeth agrees to testify, although it is revealed at the last minute that another of the convicted rapists is also getting a new trial. Nevertheless, he is labeled a criminal; he is said to have claimed to be the king of the Jews.
But in this version of the story, he is the only one who perceives that Jesus is innocent. Finally Pilate gives in to the pressure of the crowd; he allows them to convince him that Jesus may indeed be a dangerous revolutionary. The juror played by Ed Begley is prejudiced against all of the boy's minority group.
Some of the most tenacious fighters for justice in this century spent time in prison: Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights champion; Emmeline Pankhurst, the British suffragette; and Mohandas Gandhi, who fought for Indian independence. He had reason to know the fear of imprisonment: he had spent four years in a Japanese prison camp and three years as a prisoner of the Chinese Communists. In our Gospel story, Jesus accepts the role of the accused criminal with no attempt at evasion or escape.
He is as passive in the hands of his accusers as a lamb in the hands of the butchers. My concern was allayed by another member of the choir who was chosen to preach a short sermon.
God with a Human Face by John C. Purdy
God Goes Ahead of Us (Matt.28:1-8)
Or it may have been one of the others of that select group whose feet Jesus washed. They may have believed in the resurrection of the dead; they may have been hoping for something out of the ordinary. Charles Darwin, the proponent of the theory of evolution, spent three years at Cambridge studying theology.
Mary's Easter journey led them to the place where God pulled aside the curtain and let them have a first look. An angel in shining robes came crashing down from heaven like a stealth fighter;. The one element of the story that is not surprising is the reaction of the women.
One of the greatest discoveries in human history is described in eight verses of Scripture. Is the discovery by the Marys of Jesus' resurrection a kind of metaphor of the life of faith. Another question: Is Jesus the rabbit that God pulled out of the hat at Easter.
Why are we presented at the end of the Gospel story with something as irrational, unscientific, impractical and irrelevant as a resurrection. And the wonder with which she heard the angel's announcement would have been that of the prodigal son when he heard his.
