Friday, May 30, 2008
Lord's Day June 1, 2008
This Sunday at Park Hill Presbyterian Church, I'll be preaching on Isaiah 28:23-29 ("How to Avoid Apostasy") at 11 a.m., and Luke 20:19-26 ("God or Caesar?") at 5 p.m.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Scriptural echoes in the Gettysburg Address
Peter Leithart posted this interesting suggestion regarding Lincoln's use of Biblical language in the Gettysburg Address: http://www.leithart.com/2008/05/19/american-adam/.
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Presbyterian Curmudgeon is a white person
See post #99 at http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The commonplace book
Alan Jacobs has an interesting essay on literary antecedents to the now-ubiquitous blog in the May 2008 issue of First Things. If you're not a print subscriber, you can read it in two months at http://www.firstthings.com/. If you are, you can read it right this very moment online or in print. (A good reason to subscribe, I suppose.)
Friday, May 2, 2008
On Pentecost
Under the Old Testament liturgical calendar, a harvest festival (also called the Feast of Weeks) was to be held seven weeks after Passover (Leviticus 23). In time, “Pentecost,” the Greek word for that fifty-day period, became another name for the feast, as we see in Acts 2:1. This was the festival which had brought so many pilgrims to Jerusalem on the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out with power on the apostolic band in particular and the Church as a whole after Christ’s Ascension.
Properly speaking, Pentecost Sunday is the end of Eastertide, seven weeks after Easter Sunday. This is because the outpouring of the Spirit was the culmination of Jesus’ ministry. As we learn from John 13-17, Jesus left this world so the Holy Spirit might come in his place to apply the benefits of his Cross and Resurrection to believers, and to sustain them through their earthly pilgrimages. In other words, we need the Holy Spirit to enjoy the blessings we celebrate at Easter.
At the same time, Pentecost is also a celebration in its own right because it marks the day on which the Church became the Church as we know her today. In this New Covenant era, the Holy Spirit has given each believer Spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12) so the work of ministry can be completed by the whole body working together (Ephesians 4), to the end that the Church will spread over the entire world (Acts 1). In terms of the Christian liturgical calendar, it introduces “ordinary time,” during which the focus is not on a particular aspect of our Savior’s life and ministry, but on the “ordinary” life of the Church and believer, as it is taught and described in the whole of Scripture. That life is of course anything but ordinary, since it is empowered by the living presence of the Spirit of God within each Christian. Thus, ordinary time is itself an ongoing recognition that we are privileged to live in the age of the Spirit, as genuinely Pentecostal Christians.
During ordinary time, we leave the Revised Common Lectionary, which has helped us to concentrate on particular aspects of Christ’s work during the appropriate season, and turn to the “continuous lectionary” of entire books of the Bible, through which the Spirit speaks to us today. This year, we will (re)turn to Isaiah, picking up where we left off in chapter 28 back in December 2007. In this, our first year of following the traditional Church calendar, we have been reminded of all Jesus has done for us. Lord willing, this has equipped us to better appreciate the more specific points of application we will hear from the Spirit-breathed Word in coming months.
Properly speaking, Pentecost Sunday is the end of Eastertide, seven weeks after Easter Sunday. This is because the outpouring of the Spirit was the culmination of Jesus’ ministry. As we learn from John 13-17, Jesus left this world so the Holy Spirit might come in his place to apply the benefits of his Cross and Resurrection to believers, and to sustain them through their earthly pilgrimages. In other words, we need the Holy Spirit to enjoy the blessings we celebrate at Easter.
At the same time, Pentecost is also a celebration in its own right because it marks the day on which the Church became the Church as we know her today. In this New Covenant era, the Holy Spirit has given each believer Spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12) so the work of ministry can be completed by the whole body working together (Ephesians 4), to the end that the Church will spread over the entire world (Acts 1). In terms of the Christian liturgical calendar, it introduces “ordinary time,” during which the focus is not on a particular aspect of our Savior’s life and ministry, but on the “ordinary” life of the Church and believer, as it is taught and described in the whole of Scripture. That life is of course anything but ordinary, since it is empowered by the living presence of the Spirit of God within each Christian. Thus, ordinary time is itself an ongoing recognition that we are privileged to live in the age of the Spirit, as genuinely Pentecostal Christians.
During ordinary time, we leave the Revised Common Lectionary, which has helped us to concentrate on particular aspects of Christ’s work during the appropriate season, and turn to the “continuous lectionary” of entire books of the Bible, through which the Spirit speaks to us today. This year, we will (re)turn to Isaiah, picking up where we left off in chapter 28 back in December 2007. In this, our first year of following the traditional Church calendar, we have been reminded of all Jesus has done for us. Lord willing, this has equipped us to better appreciate the more specific points of application we will hear from the Spirit-breathed Word in coming months.
Lord's Day May 4, 2008
This Sunday at Park Hill Presbyterian Church, I'll be preaching on John 17:1-11 ("The People of the Father and the Son") at 11 a.m., and Luke 20:1-8 ("Questions & Answers") at 5 p.m.
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