When God asks questions its not because he needs information. It’s because we need to learn something about ourselves and our circumstances that we’re hiding from ourselves. The question reframes our insistence on control and self-reliance and reveals our need. This is also true of Jesus’ questions, with the added reality that his human nature …
When Jesus restores Peter after his denial he does so not by questioning Peter’s knowledge, but Peter’s heart. From Winn Collier: Warming by the enemy’s fire, three critics posed Peter the most straightforward query: “Are you a follower of Jesus?” They did not ask what Peter thought of the Galilean’s theology. They did not quiz …
I hope if you hear a sermon tomorrow it does not offer counsel about therapeutic change, but an invitation to spiritual reanimation. From Accidental Preacher by Will Willimon. We mainline, non evangelical, noninvasive preachers pat a congregation on the head as we murmur, “There, there, God loves you as you are. Promise me you won’t …
Will Willimon relates a lesson about Scripture that he attributes to learning from Karl Barth in his memoir, Accidental Preacher. Sometimes preachers are tempted to figure out how to make texts relevant to the lives of hearers. Scripture calls us to realise that our lives need transformation, not fine-tuning. (You might think I’m cherry-picking all …
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