Having come to the end of the Easter weekend, and having delivered many sermons / talks / meditations during the course of that weekend, it is refreshing to read Peter Leithart's Easter Homily for this year, and be fed and encouraged from the Scriptures for myself.
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?", the angel said to the first witnesses. It's a funny place to look - and yet, in many ways, it's where we often look too. Have a read.
It's Good Friday the day after tomorrow.
If, like me, you enjoy finding snippets to read to help you reflect on the events of Good Friday, may I recommend you take a visit to Steve Jeffery's blog, and read his post entitled The Deliverance of the Cross, where he reflects on Psalm 22, and why Jesus appropriates it in the way he does.
Maybe one day Steve will write a book of such thoughts.
Are you trying to find out which Church of England Parish you live in? Simply visit the link below and put your postcode into the search tool. Note, they've changed their website. You now have to wait after entering your postcode, and select one of the autocomplete entries served by Google maps; only then can you click the arrow button to begin your search. https://www.achurchnearyou.com/
It has been announced this morning that Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the 106th Bishop of Rochester, will step down as Bishop of Rochester from 1st September 2009. The precise area of work he is moving into has not yet been announced.
We've been having a most enjoyable, instructive and edifying Lent Course here in Kemsing. John Goulding, a retired Anglican clergyman, has been taking the sessions, leading us through some of the Psalms. The feel of the evenings has been pleasantly relaxed, and as we've wandered together through the Psalter we've noticed all manner of things that has brought those Psalms to life in new ways. Many, many thanks to John for taking this course so well for us all.
I've just read Palmer Robertson's treatment of the book of Jeremiah in his The Christ of the Prophets
Robertson shows how, "as with Hosea, Amos and Isaiah, the principal message of the prophet finds its summation at the time of his call to the prophetic office." (268). In Jeremiah's case this means, amongst other things, 6 key verbs (4 negative and 2 positive ones).
John Mackay is very helpful in his commentary on Jeremiah (volume 2)
Mackay's concern is to be true to Jeremiah's message. This requires recognising that Jeremiah spoke a message to a particular group of people in a particular setting (even though chapter 31 is one of the more debated chapters in Jeremiah when it comes to working out what that setting is). But (no less important) it also recognises that Jeremiah's message contributed to the final canon of Scripture and so has something far wider to say. The challenge is to hear the message as a single message that has both a historical context and a canonical one.
There is a really helpful paragraph in Carson's wonderful commentary on John expounding John 2:21, where Jesus speaks of his body as a temple. I've grasped the general idea expressed in John 2:21 for some time, but Carson's paragraph is very helpful for its clarity.
Psalm 69 is David praying to God about his enemies that are more numerous than the hairs on his head. He is fearful lest others who love God suffer because David is known to love God and is in disrepute. It is because of his zeal for God that he suffers.
Verse 9, quoted in John 2, comes in that context. David has zeal for God’s house, and because of that zeal he is suffering as he is. So, “consume” does not just mean “absorb”, in the sense that he is consumed with passion for God’s house. Rather, his zeal for God’s house is eating him up; it is leading to his mistreatment.
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