Jesus, Savior

          In Pastor Jessica’s excellent message yesterday, she made it clear that salvation has more than one meaning in the Bible.  We 21st century Christians almost always use the word to describe spiritual salvation, by which we mean being saved from our sins and their consequences.  But it is a much fuller, richer, and more complex idea than just that.

Let’s Hear It For the Lambs!

      Sunday, I talked about two titles for Jesus that seem to point in opposite directions: Lion of Judah and Lamb of God.  In fact, they are flip sides of the same coin, representing the hard as well as the soft sides of God’s love for each of us.  I talked about how much we tend to prefer Lion-like leaders today, but that many of the key aspects of Jesus draw on his role as Lamb of God.  Here’s a few paragraphs that I didn’t have time to include Sunday:

In Sunday’s sermon, I closed by thinking through what a real worst-case scenario might look for us leading up to Christmas.  I offered the following:

What would Our Worst Case Scenario be this holiday season
if we had to imagine it?

I Just Wish It Were Obvious

         It really is frustrating that understanding the Bible as it demands to be understood takes so much on our part.  It’s not that we’re lazy, it’s just that we think it ought to say what it means and mean what it says.  We begin to resent the word, interpretation in all its forms because of it.