Marginal Christianity

We inevitably associate hope and New Years. Ever optimistic we pine for and pin our hopes for some change in our lives or nation or world on the mere flip of a calendar page. Even many in the church buy into this version of pagan mysticism. I believe, however, that this version of hope is -more optimism than hope -more Western than biblical -focused on big victories, large accomplishments worthy of grand celebrations -beset by expectations galore -accomplished by a few but never many Biblical hope, however, cuts much deeper than such optimism-laced expectations. It garners little fanfare and breeds few large-scale parties. People like Debie Thomas know and practice such hope ( The Christian Century (December 4, 2019). She’s the mother of a child with debilitating chronic pain. Caring for him is time-consuming, exhausting, and expensive with no hope of a respite. It won’t change with a flip of a calendar page. The stories of hope she inclines to in her situ...

A “good life” is a function of the vision of the life that informs it. A good life for an athlete will be different from that of a businessperson from a wealthy trust fund person from a doctor from a drug dealer from a politician and so on. Jesus too has a vision of a good life. It’s found (but frequently misunderstood) in what we call the Beatitudes, the very first part of the Sermon on the Mount. This section is frequently misunderstood because the word usually translated “Blessed” (or “happy”) is not rightly interpreted.   Jonathan Pennington, in his book The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary , has led the way to a more biblical understanding of this word. “Blessings (and the corresponding negative, curses) are divine, effectual speech,” he writes. Something he performs in us or on us. But the Greek word we find translated as “blessed” or “happy” (as here in the Beatitudes) is makarios. This word is “Macarisms (and the correspondi...

One can certainly be excused for assuming that violence is an intrinsic part of all life in our world. Nothing and nobody is free of its taint and corruption. Well, almost nobody. Jesus of Nazareth, a 1 st century a.d. Galilean peasant and prophet, acclaimed the Messiah of Jewish expectation and Lord and world ruler by Christian faith, seems to have lived free of its taint and even its allure. And therein lies the nub of the problem investigated in this study. How do we understand this Jesus, and the God he worshiped and served, and the books of the Bible that witness to him? Especially since the latter, and the God they present as the “Father” of this Jesus, his “Son,” seem as “bloody, brutal, and barbaric” as the world in which it arose and to which it claims to witness to a redemptive nonviolent alternative reality and possibility for human life on this planet. The Bible itself testifies to the near ubiquity of violence in the life of our planet. Most of its content is ...

The Entry (Mt.21:1-10) Jesus’ strategy now takes a quantum leap forward. The conflict brewing throughout his ministry with the Jewish religious leadership reaches full boil. He provokes it with a piece of strategic   messianic street theater we’ve come to call, rather ironically, the Triumphal Entry.   But strategy is hand in glove with scriptural fulfilment here. No surprise in that with Matthew. Jesus moves according to the Father’s will. The essential props come first. Jesus sends out two disciples to fetch his ride. And this ride resonates not only with the explicit text Matthew provides but implicitly with other Old Testament texts that speak to Jesus’ identity. The props Jesus wants are a donkey and a colt (v.2). The prophecy from Zech.9:9 foretells this: a royal arrival for the people, a king humble riding on a donkey and a colt. Now donkeys are not highly thought of in our time and place but in that time they were royal steeds (cf. Judg.10:4; 12:14; 1 Sam....

Ponderings for Christmas We start with the ridiculous and move toward the sublime. Or maybe it’s the other way round. Or ,maybe, even, the sublime is found in the ridiculous. Decide for yourself. Christmas with Calvin and Hobbes Does God “ever show himself and prove his existence”? Nor do I! Seems to work for Christians in the US, huh? Martin Luther and the Christmas Tree According to tradition, Luther may have also popularized the tradition of the Christmas tree as a way to express and teach theology to his family. The story goes that, while he was on his way home one evening, he became overwhelmed by the incredible beauty of a fir tree positioned against the backdrop of the brilliant starlit sky. He so desperately wanted to describe what he had seen to his family, but the words failed him. So he ventured back outside and chopped down one of these trees, bringing it home to share with his family. He even decorated the tree with candle ...