Two quick words of introduction and explanation: First, I realize this video is about Easter and we’re not yet there. But so many people have reported enjoyed seeing and sharing this video that I thought I’d make it available a few days early. Second, a number of folks have asked me where the idea for Easter is Coming came from, including most recently a colleague who is teaching a course on media, culture, and the gospel. So I decided to share what led up to a very fun, and now widely seen, endeavor. I hope it enriches your preparation for, and celebration of, the resurrection of our Lord. The Origins of Easter is Coming The story...
Luke 23:48
posted by DJL
And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. Luke, on the whole, takes a more generous view of the witnesses of the Passion than the other Evangelists. There is little indication in the other gospels, for...
Holy Week in 2 Minut...
posted by DJL
Ever wonder why there are so many special services during Holy Week? Or why we wave palms on Palm Sunday? Or the significance of the foot washing on Maundy Thursday? Well, the folks at Busted Halo have put together another great video to help explain all these things and more…and all in...
Luke 23:47
posted by DJL
When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.” We gather now around the climax of Luke’s narrative. And as is typical of this moment in grand stories, each sentence, each detail, has meaning. So also here. For immediately after...
Spring and All
posted by DJL
I have spent the last week in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, visiting family and friends we haven’t seen for too long. We were eager to escape the clutches of another long and cold Minnesota winter, if even for a few days, but chanced upon just the kind of spring William Carlos Williams...
Luke 23:46
posted by DJL
Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. One of the persistent questions we ask when we approach the Passion story is “why?” Why did Jesus have to endure the pain, the suffering, the abuse,...
Lent, Clean Water, and the Opportunity for Self-De...
posted by DJL
Lent is a time of self-denial, a chance to remember and identify with the sufferings of our Lord. It is also an opportunity to make do with less and in this way to identify also with all those who have so little, those with whom our Lord identified. That gets increasingly more difficult – and simultaneously more important – in a word that seems to grow more materialistic by the day. It is challenging to watch the ads of television and across the media and not succumb to believing that we just can’t get buy without that new ______________ (fill in the blank). In this light, Lent and its call to self-denial is a gift, an opportunity to...
Luke 23:44-45
posted by DJL
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Heaven and earth itself give witness to the turn of the ages and climax of history that takes place at our Lord’s death....
The Theology of Work Project
posted by DJL
For the last four years I have the pleasure of overseeing a grant project that seeks to help seminaries train pastors to better equip their people to recognize God’s calling in everyday life. The grant arose, in part, because of a peculiar and somewhat troubling inconsistency in two groups of research. In the first survey, we discovered that the graduates of five seminaries from five different Christian traditions all highly value vocation and name it as a central theological category in their preaching and teaching. In a second study, composed of surveys and literature reviews, we discovered that most of the people in congregations served...
Luke 23:39-43
posted by DJL
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are...
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