Process Theology

The passage from Luke begins with people telling Jesus about Pilate’s murder of a group of Galileans who were offering sacrifices. One might expect Jesus to have condemned Pilate’s action, but instead he uses the incident as a teaching opportunity to make his own point. The rhetorical question in v.

When we search for a common thread that joins our lectionary texts for this second Sunday of Lent it seems to be the manifestation of the transcendent, the holy, the other, God. This manifestation comes in many ways, often unexpected ways. These texts remind us that life is not just what we see and hear around us.  There is a transcendent reality that appears occasionally in our daily round and makes us look at “everyday” reality as not so everyday after all. Abraham, “David,” Paul and Jesus, different witnesses to a reality which

The Gospel of Luke, as is well known, lacks a notion of the atonement. Although it emphasizes Jesus’ death and resurrection, there is nothing in Luke that suggests the redemptive character of these events. Nor is it legitimate to argue that this motif is implicit.

If one wished to find a link among these four texts for the first Sunday of Lent of 2004 it appears to be the confession of faith. Bear this in mind as we go through the reading of each of these texts in turn, inverting the last two for reasons that will become apparent.

Lent recalls Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. “Full of the Holy Spirit,” and fresh from his baptism, Jesus is led by the Gods’ spirit into the wilderness. However, we understand the complexities of this story, it is clear that Jesus, like shaman and shamanness before him, must go on a “vision quest” in order to clarify his vocation and claim his future as God’s beloved child. And, only Jesus could have been the source of the account of his retreat and temptation in the wilderness.

This is a text about fasting, an appropriate subject for Ash Wednesday. Fasting was usually performed to publicly indicate repentance and to ask for restoration from God. This is also the intention of Christian Ash Wednesday.

This Sunday I have chosen to follow the lectionary readings of my own denominations, the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and other mainstream denominations. Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopalian churches celebrate the Transfiguration during Pentecost.

A child in my congregation recently asked, “why doesn’t God talk to people now like God did in the Bible?” As his pastor and as a theology professor, I took his question seriously. Certainly, to quote Karl Barth, mystical experiences and theophanies (appearances of God to mortals) are essential to the “strange world of the Bible.”

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

This week’s gospel reading proclaims a blessed interdependence that radiates through each of the lectionary readings. The context of Luke’s Beatitudes is a time of healing and preaching. “The power of God came out from Jesus and healed all of them. ” Divine power flowed in and through Jesus to bring healing and wholeness to a great multitude. Jesus’ power to heal is not grounded in his own abilities or personhood, but arises from his constant openness to God’s life-transforming energy. Open to God, Jesus’ touch and words changed lives and restored hope to the hopeless.