Date: 01 Nov 1999
Time: 08:47:12
This scripture amazes me. We're God's children now, but as if anyone would think that wasn't enough, we have something MORE to receive! Spurgeon preaches a sermon on this text in which he emphasizes the word "we." This promise is given to all who seek Jesus Christ, and this is what makes us all saints of God. We receive the promise together.
Date: 03 Nov 1999
Time: 13:08:18
I want to explore the "what we will be" portion of this lection. For our observance of All Saints Sunday, with eschatology rising in the lectionary, and the new millennium looming on the calendar, I would like to focus on the "not yet." "We will be like him, for we will see him as he is." I am supposing we will see him in his resurrection/heavenly body, in his fullness of power and dominion, in his dazzling light. Can we imagine ourselves in resurrection/heavenly bodies, in fullness of our own power and dominion, radiant with his dazzling light reflected, or even radiant with light now fully present in and emanating from our own completed selves? So how does this hope purify us? Is this an invitation to meditation that imagines ourselves in such light, such completion? Could this be fruitful in purging us of the power of sin? Does this describe the process of "becoming perfect in love in this life" which Wesley declared the goal in us of sanctifying grace?
Rick
Date: 03 Nov 1999
Time: 14:55:31
Here is a story I found in Homelitics for Oct. 11 that I will be using on All Saints Sunday:
Around the altar [in a refuge in San Salvador on All Souls' Day] there were various cards with the names of family members who were dead or murdered. People would have liked to go to the cemetery to put flowers on their graves. But as they were locked up in the refuge and could not go, they painted flowers 'round their names. Beside the cards with the names of family members, there was another card with no flowers, which read: "Our dead enemies. May God forgive them and convert them." At the end of the Eucharist we asked an old man what was the meaning of this last card, and he told us this: "We made these cards as if we had gone to put flowers on our dead because it seemed to us they would feel we were with them. But as we are Christians, you know, we believe that our enemies should be on the altar, too. They are our brothers in spite of the fact that they kill us and murder us. And you know what the Bible says. It is easy to love our own, but God asks us also to love those who persecute us." --Jon Sobrino, "Latin America: Place of Sin and Place of Forgiveness," Concilium 184 (1986), 50, cited by L. Gregory Jones in Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 266.
Caroline in CT/USA