Resurrection Life

Thrift

Whatever comes of the "current economic crisis", my hope and wonder is that it might return us as Americans to the idea of thrift vs. consumption as the baseline of our well-being as a people.

Hedging Our Bets?

Technorati Tags: Parables, sermons

Salvation on the Small Screen: a Review

"Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television" (Nadia Bolz-Weber)

Nadia is one of the new emerging church leader-type folks who are surprising the status quo by how seriously they take the Church, theology, and the future of both! I will admit that I was not excited to read this since I usually swim in cynicism and irony but was pleasantly surprised not only by Nadia's tone (respectful yet critical) but by the depth and breadth of the things that she was able to do using the idea of watching 24 hours of TBN as her coat-hook. From that little hook she hung biography, theology, criticism, a peek into the life of a mom-pastor, and a culture slam for us who think we have all the answers. I highly recommend this book!

You can also get to her awesome blog by clicking on Sarcastic Lutheran on my blogroll.

Technorati Tags: Nadia Bolz-Weber

The Parable of the Talents

I am preaching on this wonderful parable from Matthew 25 this weekend and have a few comments that need to make their way here... I will post the sermon Sunday or Monday!

a. It is unfortunate that this parable appears during most congregation's stewardship campaigns. This Gospel is often reduced, at these times, to a celebration of what God has given us (time and talent sheets anyone?) and a challenge (read that works righteousness) from the pastor that we better not bury those talents but give them back to God.
b. I would challenge that reading of the text to ask why we are not able to let this Scripture be itself and interpret itself?
c. What if we look at what a talent actually *is* i.e. the equivalent of 16 years labor? Each one weighs over 25 pounds? in other words, the master left these slaves with wealth beyond anyone's comprehension.
d. Even the slave with the one talent got something like 300,000... this is not a sermon topic looking for a 5 percent budget increase...
e. I would argue that the master is God, yes, but the slaves are the church... corporately not just as little individual people seeking their purpose. The talents are the gift of *himself* that God has dropped on us... you know... everlasting life?
f. I think we remove the power from this gospel by tying it to stewardship, or at least stewardship along the needling and "water from a rock" variety. It also loses power when we use it to nominate people for the various committees that inevitably show up in a church... I truly don't feel that reckless ministry and mission can happen with 7 percent or less budget increases and a leadership structure in the committee model...
g. We need to get people together to truly discern the reckless wonder of God who threw the sun, moon, and stars out there for who? us? Are you kidding me? What a beautiful, crazy, fearsome master...
h. And, in the end, we must confess that the Church is ill-equipped to figure out what to do with this amazing gift of resurrection life... a confession that draws us back, again, to the foot of the cross... worshipping the One who died because we would not and was raised from the dead because no one else was going to get that gift out of the ground again except God.

Technorati Tags: Parables

The Church

Technorati Tags: Oswald Bayer