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02/21/2018

Textweek/ATLAS -- March 18, 2018 Lent 5B

Studying lectionary texts? Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts:

http://www.textweek.com/yearb/lentb5.htm

Lent 5
March 18, 2018

Rhymer, David, "Between Text & Sermon: Jeremiah 31:31-34," Interpretetation, 2005.
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“This remarkable verse, often (mis) appropriated by Christian commentators to provide support for New Testament ideas of ‘knowing God,’ is all the more remarkable when considered in its proper context—a prophetic imagining of a post-exilic community where knowledge of God (through the "internalized" Torah) is shared by all without any intermediary teaching authority.”

Abstract: “This essay has two parts. After a brief historical sketch of Christian anti-Judaism, we turn to the major issue in Christian relations with Judaism and the Jewish people: how we Christians understand and use the Jewish Bible—our Old Testament. In the first section we deal in particular with misreadings of the Old Testament and how we might interpret Jewish scripture more accurately and fairly. In the second part we call attention to themes and teachings in the Jewish scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) that are, in my judgment, central and vital to Christian faith, elements held in common with Judaism.”

“It was not pain and violence that God desired, but human life as it was created to be.”

O'Day, Gail R., "Piety without Pretense, Faith without Falsehood: The Lenten Journey according to John," Journal for Preachers, 1997.
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The section covering this text begins on page 12. “In order to understand Jesus' teachings in this lesson, it is important to remember that in the Gospel of John, ‘glorification’ refers to Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension. The arrival of the hour in which the Son of Man will be glorified, then, means the arrival of the hour in which Jesus will die, and the final acts of his mission in the world will be played out.”


Abstract:"Theories on leadership, in their capacity of suggesting a vision of a preferred future, implicitly make theological claims, and explicitly challenge theological imagination. Based on the analysis of the (implicit) anthropological telos in theories on leading change in secular and theological works, this article challenges the assumption of these theories by envisioning a theological anthropology for leading change in ministry. This vision focuses on the historicity and plasticity of human beings and the metaphor of the grain of wheat (John 12:24) as fundamental modes for leading change with human beings. In Christian theology, these modes of change are inscribed in the sacramental and Christological narrative of the reality and promise of change through resurrection."

02/21/2018 at 02:34 PM | | Comments (0)

Textweek/ATLAS -March 11, 2018, Lent 4B

Studying lectionary texts? Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts:

http://www.textweek.com/yearb/lentb4.htm

Lent 4
March 11, 2018

O'Day, Gail, "Piety Without Pretense, Faith Without Falsehood: The Lenten Journey According to John," Journal for Preachers, 1997. Section on this text begins on page 12.
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“The decision that John 3:14-21 places before the church resonates even more intensely in the Lenten season. There may be no better place to contemplate the decision for life with God that this text describes than in the forty days of Lenten wilderness, because in the wilderness it is difficult, if not impossible, to hide from the moment of decision.”

"All his life long, wherever Jesus looked he saw the world not in terms simply of its brokenness—a patchwork of light and dark calling forth in us now our light, now our dark—but in terms of the ultimate mystery of God's presence buried in it like a treasure buried in a field... .Tobe whole, I believe, is to see the world like that. To see the world like that, as Jesus saw it, is to be whole. And sometimes I believe that even people like you and me see it like that. Sometimes even in the midst of our confused and broken relationships with ourselves, with each other, with God, we catch glimpses of that holiness and wholeness that is not ours by a long shot and yet is part of who we are.”

“For redemption in Christ to be complete, it must range as far and wide as the forces of evil.”

Long, Thomas G., "Just As I Am," The Christian Century, 2006.
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02/21/2018 at 02:30 PM | | Comments (0)

Textweek/ATLAS - March 4, 2018 Lent 3

Studying lectionary texts? Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts:

http://www.textweek.com/yearb/lentb3.htm

Lent 3
March 4, 2018

“But in invoking the Temple's destruction and thus the rhythms of Jewish history, in dying for his proclamation of the Kingdom's speedy coming to which that event would witness, Jesus came to embody a religious message that is quintessentially Jewish and — yet? thus? — universally human.”

“It is not too much to suggest that John, early in his narrative, is teaching his readers how to read. Look beyond the literal sense, he whispers, and read for figuration. Read retrospectively, in light of the resurrection. See the Temple and Israel's Scriptures as prefiguring the truth definitively embodied in Jesus.”

“As a teaching for Lent, this lesson invites us to look at the way we live our lives with God and one another and to examine the sources of power and authority which shape our lives and to which we regularly make appeal.”

"However odd the story may appear, there is one significant truth that wc should not ignore. It is the transformation of Jesus' own perceived position from a guest to the One through whom miracles are created."

Marcus, Joel, "Idolatry in the New Testament," Interpretation, 2006. 
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Abstract: “The New Testament inherits its attitude toward idolatry from the Old Testament and early Judaism. In all three, idolatry is the primal sin and is connected with sexual immorality and avarice. Both Jesus, in his response to the question about tribute, and Paul,* in his treatment of food sacrificed to idols, reflect the conflict between revulsion against idolatry and the need to survive in an idolatrous world. Moreover, Paul and the Johannine literature respond to the Jewish charge that Christianity itself is idolatrous. Appropriation of New Testament attitudes toward idolatry for our own pluralistic society is complicated by their variety and their apparent caricature of pagan religion.”

Green, Donald E., "The Folly of the Cross," Master's Seminary Journal, 2004.
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Abstract: “First Cor 1:23 indicates that both Jews and Gentiles refused to believe Paul's preaching of Christ crucified. They rejected the message in part because of the cultural connotations of crucifixion in the first century. Crucifixion was a vulgar, common execution that the Romans imposed on notorious criminals, prisoners of war, and rebellious slaves. Its harsh brutality symbolized the supremacy of the Roman government over the victim. Gentiles thus viewed crucifixion as a sure sign of the victim's defeat. Jews, on the other hand, held crucified men in even greater contempt because to them crucifixion was a sign of God's curse on the victim. Paul's preaching of Christ crucified thus cut deeply against the grain of his culture. Jews rejected the idea that the Messiah could be crucified (and thus cursed) and looked for signs instead. Gentiles rejected as foolishness the notion that a crucified man could be the only Savior of mankind and sought eloquent rhetoric in its place. Paul's example challenges today's Christian leader to confront the culture with the same message of Christ crucified and not to cater to the latest fads in marketing the gospel to the passing whims of unbelievers.”

 

02/21/2018 at 02:27 PM | | Comments (0)

Textweek/ATLAS Lent 2B February 25, 2018

Studying lectionary texts? Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts:

http://www.textweek.com/yearb/lentb2.htm

Lent 2
February 25, 2018

“God's power manifest in the imagery of creation is another attested dimension of the Mosaic covenant as it was developed in the postexilic period.”

“If a mystical path is one in which the traveler learns to submit to God, then it is the virtue of agrarian life to show us that our submission is authentic only as we commit ourselves to the health and vitality of creation, for it is here that God s ways, however mysteriously, are being worked out. It is here, in the soil beneath our feet and among countless created neighborhoods rather than in some far away celestial place, that God meets us in work and grace that exceeds our comprehension and our wrongdoing.”

Burnett, Joel S., "Where Is God? Divine Absence in Israelite Religion," Perspectives in Religious Studies, 2006.
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“This review of religious expressions from as early as the first half of the second millennium indicates that divine presence and absence were conceived and perceived in Israelite and West Semitic religion in terms of life's blessings and difficulties, respectively. Thus the favorable presence of the deity was not assumed or taken for granted.”

Carder, Kenneth L., "Why Follow a Crucified Christ?" The Christian Century, 1997.
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“We follow the crucified Christ as people of hope. We live on the other side of the cross from Peter.”

“Either the Lord is with us or we are pathetic fools. Down in the valley, with our faith buffeted by storms of disregard, doubt and disdain, our eyes can tell us only one thing: we are pathetic fools. But up on the mountain there is another angle of vision. Up there, in the light of Christ, we can see for real.”

“Where shall preachers and teachers locate the meaning of the gospel story of the transfiguration for themselves and their hearers: behind the text, in it, around it, or in front of it? Each location will yield insight, and none can he ignored.”

02/21/2018 at 02:21 PM | | Comments (0)