Pentecost 13 A: Can You Imagine?

Matthew 16:21-28 Dear Partner in Preaching, Can you imagine? One moment, Jesus is saying you’re “the rock on which I will build my church” and the next he’s calling you “a stumbling block.” That’s not just great word play – from cornerstone to stumbling block – but such a reversal of relational fortune that it had to be incredibly painful. Can you imagine? And perhaps that’s the difficulty. Peter couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t imagine that Jesus had come not just to comfort people but to free them. Comforting isn’t that hard – just give them a little more of what they already had and tell them it will be alright....

Re-Imagining

Adam Walker Cleveland writes a thoughtful blog about theology, ministry, and technology called “Pomomusings.” Recently he’s been collecting the essays of folks from a variety of corners of what’s sometimes called “the Emergent Church” to answer two questions: 1: What is one belief,...