Marginal Christianity

We have just celebrated Jesus’ ascension to the Father to take up his royal rule on the heavenly throne. Before we can catch our breath from that, though, he’s coming back again! Pentecost is really Jesus’ second coming in the biblical narrative. He’s not the incarnate Son in this coming, to be sure. But it is the “Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). The form of his continuing presence in the world as he pursues God’s ultimate purpose. God never intended to leave his creation alone. From the first moments when he walked with our fore-parents in the Garden of Eden (Gen.3:8) God purposed to be near and dear to his human creatures. And that’s the story line of the Bible punctuated a key points with events hastening and deepening that divine nearness. Pentecost is another of those moments tracked by the church’s calendar. Luke story of Pentecost in Acts 2 is a rich telling of this key events. In my several posts on it we’ll explore a few aspects of it. In this first post I want to focus...

Life in Christ is a full-orbed personal existence woven around three foci: hearing, tasting, and feeling. This life is a participation in the life of the triune God we worship and in whose image we have been created. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live a life of unbroken communication, communion, and community. Participating in this life, then, means sharing in these three C’s. -communication: hearing/obedience/Word/ear -communion: feeling/affections/Worship/heart -community: tasting/experiencing/World/body Communication     “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn.1:1). God’s speech is our primordial reality. By it God called the world into being and sustains it in being. By it God makes himself known. By it God summons the response which makes us persons. By it God orders and directs our life as his people. By it God judges the world. By it God summons us to life in his new creation. Human life is one of response to God’s Word. The ear is the organ o...

John 20:19-31 19 It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.” 24 Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the Twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord!” But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.” 26 After eight days his disciples were again in a house and Thomas was with t...