Billy Colllins’ poem puts me in mind, not of the countless rather worthless crafts or gifts I made my mother over the years – though I suspect she did not count them as worthless – but rather of the labor and delivery room in which our first child was born. I remember as vividly as if it...
Matthew 26:10-13
posted by DJL
But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good...
Forgiveness and Happiness
posted by DJL
Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith, and this is never more apparent than during Lent. As we approach Good Friday and Easter, we necessarily reflect on the cross and its relationship to forgiveness. Jesus, we say, quoting Scripture, died for our sins, but exactly what that means can vary from tradition to tradition or, indeed, from Christian to Christian. When I was working on Making Sense of the Cross, I was struck by some of the contested views of the relationship between the cross and forgiveness. The substitutionary theory of atonement, for instance, suggests that the cross is the mechanism by which forgiveness is even...
Matthew 26:6-9
posted by DJL
Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, “Why this waste? For this ointment could have...
Lent: Who Needs It?
posted by DJL
Membership in the Christian Church of the first four centuries was not come by lightly. As an underground organization, the church had to scrutinize carefully every prospective member, and a prolonged period of probation was a requirement. This period would normally terminate with reception into the Church by baptism at Easter. The final period preceding baptism, Lent, was naturally the most rigorous. Candidates were required to fast in preparation, and to attend catechetical lectures and periodic examinations or “scrutinies.” –Edward Horn III Lent. Among many Christian congregations it’s become something of a dirty,...