Jurgen Moltmann on what is central to our faith

At the centre of Christian faith is the history of Christ. At the centre of the history of Christ is his passion and his death on the cross.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 151, quoted by Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement, 61.

Mary's Song

In The Real Mary, Scot McKnight points out just how subversive and powerful Mary's Song was (and still is, at least in many places in our world today) in her anticipation by the Spirit just what her son, as God's Son and Messiah would mean, in the coming of God's kingdom to the world. Though Mary had much to learn about this, still her song is certainly right, and part of what she surely taught Jesus as he grew up.

This past Sunday in my mother's Mennonite church in Ohio, we had the pleasure of singing a song which I intend to work on. Because of copyright laws I don't feel free to reproduce it here. Canticle of the Turning, words by Rory Cooney based on this passage from Scripture, with a traditional Irish tune arranged by him. You can play part of it here. The words are powerful and the tune quite like Mary might have actually sang (in my imagination and from what little I think I know).

We don't have enough songs that mirror the concerns and passion of Mary's Song, which indeed is an important part of God's concern and passion. It's all too much about me and God, about God's great salvation for us. Those are good, important, and needed. But it must not stop there. We are terribly lacking in hymns and songs which address the theme which stands out in Mary's Song, how God's kingdom in Jesus impacts the kingdoms and evil of this world. And the film which came out the same year Scot's book here referred to came out, makes Mary more into the traditional Mary, who in the film seems quite overcome with the notion of bearing the Christ-Child, and hardly expectant as to what that bearing would mean.

May more songs like Rory Cooney's be written.

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coming home

"There's no place like home." Maybe a trite saying, but there's truth in it. It's good to get away, and that's part of most people's summers. But there's no place we're at home at quite like home! :)

We as people are likened in Scripture to sheep. We easily lose our way and go astray. But Jesus is the good Shepherd who brings his sheep through the gate (which Jesus is likened to), finding that lost sheep and bringing it home, into safe pasture. And Jesus keeps his sheep in his care.

We as humans are really only at home when we find that home where God is in the center through Jesus by the Spirit- and as human beings living on earth.

Are we coming home? Are we more and more at home with Jesus, and is he by the Spirit more and more at home in our hearts by faith? Are we finding all of this in the midst of our daily existence, even in this world where there is no escape from trouble?

The beginning of this now in Jesus, in anticipation of our future home when heaven and earth become one, is here for us now. Are we learning to live in it?

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the cross

Here is a good example of Paul’s ministry to the intellectual elite of his day. And note these words of Paul:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

Where are the wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

It’s the cross, which of course is shorthand for Jesus’ death and resurrection- God's work in Christ, to which we Christians go and from which we live, and on which is our hope for the world. Nothing more and nothing less.

need is needed

We need a sense of need. Jesus came, not as the means by which we save ourselves, but as our Savior. But we need to have the sense and conviction that we need salvation, that for some reason we need to be saved.

We see faith in Jesus come alive at the point of need in a man who had leprosy. And Jesus pointed out that he did not come to save those who were righteous, but sinners. The self-righteous have no sense that they need salvation, but those who know they are sinners and condemned, as well as not able to change themselves, are in a position to see Jesus as the one who can save them.

Not only we ourselves, but this world is in need of a savior. Jesus and the kingdom of God coming in him, is the answer, which begins now through us, his people. We need to help others see their need of Jesus, and we need to understand that Jesus as Savior extends to the needs of all the world, in every system and domain. So that what we do now, in his name, matters. And someday will be taken up into the completion of the new creation, in Jesus.

I'm glad for a sense of need in my own life, and more glad that Jesus meets that need. Every day, as salvation in Scripture is not only glorious past tense, but present. As well as future. We have much to look forward to, in Jesus, which can help us move forward in anticipation of that great, final salvation in him!

What would you like to add to this?