New Series: The Vocational Gospel

Over the past few years, I've been on a journey deeper into the Gospels. This journey has had many parts to it: becoming disillusioned with the Reformed Tradition, reading N.T. Wright, and joining the Restorationist Movement, to name a few.

Recently this journey has been culminating in a calling of sorts: I'm discovering the message that I believe God has called me to preach. I call it the Vocational Gospel.

This Lent I will be posting a series of four posts that explains the basics of this perspective, which hope will turn into a much longer series. I will also be posting these entries on my website, which hosts my sermons and curricula as well. Hope you enjoy!

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The Massacre of the Innocents [By W.H. Auden]

[From For the Time Being, by W.H. Auden] HEROD One needn’t be much of a psychologist to realize that if this rumor is not stamped out now, in a few years it is capable of diseasing the whole Empire, and one doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict the consequences if it should. Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, and the same for all, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions—feelings in the solar plexus induced by undernourishment, angelic images generated by fevers or drugs, dream warnings inspired by the sound of falling water. Whole cosmologies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of school children ranked above the great masterpieces. Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Priapus will only have to move to a good address and call himself Eros

Works of Love XVIII: “Love for the Dead”

[From Part II, Chapter IX: “ The Work of Love in Remembering One Dead ”] “Weep less bitterly for the dead, for he is at rest.” Sirach 22:11 (NRSV) [1] With chapter 9 of part 2, Works of Love is beginning to come to a close. With entry 17, this blog series is also nearing its end. As Kierkegaard has given us a detailed view of what Christian love is supposed to look like, now he gives us a way to test the purity of our own love: look at the way you love those who have died. [2] We are to love everyone, and loving means remembering, and so we are to love the dead. But loving those who have died is a special circumstance, and it shows us what kind of love we are showing. If we reflect on the way we love the dead, we can see whether we are showing truly Christian love. Kierkegaard identifies three ways that love for the dead is unique. First, he says that showing love for the dead is “a work of the most unselfish love.” He writes, “If one wants to make sure that love is

The Temptation of St. Joseph [By W.H. Auden]

[From For the Time Being by W.H. Auden, about the experience of Joseph after hearing that Mary is pregnant.] JOSEPH My shoes were shined, my pants were cleaned and pressed, And I was hurrying to meet My own true Love: But a great crowd grew and grew Till I could not push my way through Because A star had fallen down in the street; When they saw who I was, The police tried to do their best.

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