Walking in the Presence by Bill Wylie-Kellermann
In making a covenant with Abraham and Sarah, God promises many blessings to them if they live always in God’s presence. For us to also live in that presence, we must trust in God’s judgment above all else.
Deny…Take up…Follow by Peter B. Price
In Mark 8, Jesus first predicts his death and resurrection. He spells out the costliness of following the path of God’s justice, Price writes, yet calls on all of us to follow him.
Seeing Past Satan by Lauren F. Winner
This week’s readings illuminate the meaning of salvation, a story which begins with God’s covenant with Abraham. Our faith in the God who raised Jesus is what lets us see Jesus’ true self even when Satan - however Satan is defined - tries to prevent us.
Grounded in Hope by Joyce Hollyday
In a Lenten meditation written during the first Gulf war, Hollyday considers God’s promise that Abraham will be the father of many nations - a promise that, as Romans 4 tells us, inspires us to hope and faith. And, especially in wartime, Mark 8 reminds us that hope and faith must always inspire us to be willing to follow Christ’s path of suffering rather than triumphalism.
Embracing the Way of Jesus by Ched Myers
It is something of a shock to discover that Peter’s “correct” affirmation that Jesus is the Messiah - which forms the midpoint of the gospel of Mark - results in a confessional "crisis" and Jesus' call to take up the cross. The point: If we wish to know and follow Jesus, theological orthodoxy is not sufficient. We must embrace a vocation of nonviolent resistance to the powers.
How Christian is Zionism?: God’s Covenant with Abraham by Leslie C. Allen and Glen H. Stassen
Today’s Christian Zionists often claim that God's eternal covenant with Abraham and his descendants means that Israel must have undivided political sovereignty over all the land mentioned there - but, as Genesis 17 tells us, Abraham was to be the progenitor of many nations, not just one.
A Confessing Church in America? by Bill Wylie-Kellermann
The original readers of the gospel of Mark faced a confessional crisis not unlike that which Peter experiences in Mark 8: to truly know who Christ is means following him on the way of the cross, rather than being seduced by the political or military allegiances of one’s day. Wylie-Kellermann considers modern examples of a status confessionis, including the Barmen Declaration in Nazi Germany and the Kairos Document in apartheid-era South Africa.
The Undiscovered Secret of the Nuclear Age by Raymond Hunthausen
Christ's example - of dying on the cross, of refusing to use God's power to coerce his opponents - helps us to better understand God's call to peacemaking, love, and charity.
Faithful to the Truth by Jim Wallis
Like Advent, Lent is a time when we remember the power God’s commitment to God’s people through sending Jesus. For Jim Wallis and others in the Sojourners community, Penny Lernoux, a Catholic journalist who died in 1989, exemplified “fidelity to the gospel,” and “stands among those who have helped to show us the power of Christ in the world.”
“The politics of the cross delivers a message to the nations, to all regimes and powers, and even unto the ends of the earth, marked by the cry of Jesus which invokes the psalm: kingly power belongs to the Lord, and dominion over the nations is his (Psalm 22:28). That is truly what the Incarnation is all about.” - William Stringfellow
