Isaiah 50:4-9a Dr...
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Isaiah 50:4-9a
Dr. Tom Barnard writes that in the spiritual life, there are things that belong together, like perfectly-matched oars. Two of the more important ones are surrender and service. They go together. Surrender without service is hollow piety. Service without surrender is sterile duty. Try activating one without the other, and the spiritual cruise will result in circle making. No significant gain will result from such foolish exercise.
Isaiah 50 is the prophetic foreshadowing of the trial of Jesus Christ and his response to his accusers. Jesus demonstrates the two oars of surrender and service through his personal surrender to God and yielding to the action of the mob. As someone said, "Wherever the Spirit of the Lord controls the heart there is a passion to serve."
Derl K.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Emily Dickinson was a poet who lived at the end of the 1800s. Her poems often use metaphors and analogies that seem unusual. One of her poems talks about the passing of time: "If I could see you in a year/ I'd wind the months in balls/ And put them each in separate drawers/ Until their time befalls." Dickinson's female-centric metaphors like this one -- wrapping time into a ball, like one might wrap yarn in a ball -- is one of the things that makes her poetry unique. Our reading from Isaiah uses similar unusual images -- "all of them (his enemies) will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up." Isaiah, like Emily Dickinson, likes to make comparisons to everyday occurrences that his audience can relate to.
Leah T.
Philippians 2:5-11
I've started seeing commercials for a new reality TV series on CBS called "Undercover Boss." The premise of this show is that a CEO of a company goes "undercover" and works as a new employee for their company. I guess the idea of it is to show these executives what life is like for those under them. I would imagine that it would have to be a rather humbling experience.
In Philippians, Paul talks of Jesus "humbl[ing] himself" and becoming one of us. The Creator became part of the creation. And unlike these undercover bosses, Jesus didn't just come to see what our existence was like. He came to suffer death on a cross in obedience to the Father that we might have life with him.
Craig K.
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark clearly recalls a summer night at church camp when he was in his early teens. Tensions were running high all week between the campers. One day Mark and his friend dabbed on clown makeup to perform a skit for other campers. Their only prop was a pair of 2 x 4s. The spectators began chuckling as the two clowns were arguing, and then began using the 2 x 4s as swords. The boards clacked at one point in the mock scuffle. The staged conflict melted away as the boys took the wood and intersecting the beams slowly raised a makeshift cross for all to see.
Silence descended upon the group. Clearly this was a holy moment unlike no other. The campers understood the cross. Mark claims that after this skit everyone at camp seemed to get along better -- there was no longer any tension in the air. "Suddenly it seemed less hot as the cool breath of the Spirit melded all the campers into one."
Mark learned that the cross, the emblem of suffering and shame, can also be a symbol of peace and reconciliation.
Jesus died upon the cross for all people. Jesus humbled himself. The apostle Paul wrote, "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Tim S.
Luke 22:14--23:56
Many years ago a pastor told the story that in one of the earliest pictures of the Nativity, Jesus is represented as lying in the manger, while just above him, on the wall of the stable, is the shadow of the cross. In his painting, "The Light of the World" Holman Hunt pictures Jesus in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. The day's work is finished. The tired carpenter lifts his arms in an attitude of utter weariness and the level rays of the setting sun cast upon the wall the shadow of a cross. Both artists were right. Jesus was born under and lived under the shadow of the cross. He was born to die. The penalty had been passed upon the race, "The soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). Jesus would take the sin of the world and taste death for every person. The cross that he bore for us compels us to know him and calls to us to follow him.
Derl K.
Luke 22:14--23:56
Bruce Wayne, Gotham city billionaire, is by day the first among his fellow citizens. Rich, famous, and good-looking, Bruce is unquestionably the best of the best. But by night, Bruce Wayne becomes Batman: a superhero who is not so much loved as feared, not so much celebrated as considered a vigilante menace. Meanwhile, Superman is celebrated as the best of the best -- but his alter ego, Clark Kent, is a lowly newspaper reporter. Whichever way you spin it, many comic book superheroes live out the idea that the first must become last and the last must become first. But comic book superstars were not the first to show this message. Two thousand years earlier, Jesus showed the world what it really means to put the first last.
Leah T.
Dr. Tom Barnard writes that in the spiritual life, there are things that belong together, like perfectly-matched oars. Two of the more important ones are surrender and service. They go together. Surrender without service is hollow piety. Service without surrender is sterile duty. Try activating one without the other, and the spiritual cruise will result in circle making. No significant gain will result from such foolish exercise.
Isaiah 50 is the prophetic foreshadowing of the trial of Jesus Christ and his response to his accusers. Jesus demonstrates the two oars of surrender and service through his personal surrender to God and yielding to the action of the mob. As someone said, "Wherever the Spirit of the Lord controls the heart there is a passion to serve."
Derl K.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Emily Dickinson was a poet who lived at the end of the 1800s. Her poems often use metaphors and analogies that seem unusual. One of her poems talks about the passing of time: "If I could see you in a year/ I'd wind the months in balls/ And put them each in separate drawers/ Until their time befalls." Dickinson's female-centric metaphors like this one -- wrapping time into a ball, like one might wrap yarn in a ball -- is one of the things that makes her poetry unique. Our reading from Isaiah uses similar unusual images -- "all of them (his enemies) will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up." Isaiah, like Emily Dickinson, likes to make comparisons to everyday occurrences that his audience can relate to.
Leah T.
Philippians 2:5-11
I've started seeing commercials for a new reality TV series on CBS called "Undercover Boss." The premise of this show is that a CEO of a company goes "undercover" and works as a new employee for their company. I guess the idea of it is to show these executives what life is like for those under them. I would imagine that it would have to be a rather humbling experience.
In Philippians, Paul talks of Jesus "humbl[ing] himself" and becoming one of us. The Creator became part of the creation. And unlike these undercover bosses, Jesus didn't just come to see what our existence was like. He came to suffer death on a cross in obedience to the Father that we might have life with him.
Craig K.
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark clearly recalls a summer night at church camp when he was in his early teens. Tensions were running high all week between the campers. One day Mark and his friend dabbed on clown makeup to perform a skit for other campers. Their only prop was a pair of 2 x 4s. The spectators began chuckling as the two clowns were arguing, and then began using the 2 x 4s as swords. The boards clacked at one point in the mock scuffle. The staged conflict melted away as the boys took the wood and intersecting the beams slowly raised a makeshift cross for all to see.
Silence descended upon the group. Clearly this was a holy moment unlike no other. The campers understood the cross. Mark claims that after this skit everyone at camp seemed to get along better -- there was no longer any tension in the air. "Suddenly it seemed less hot as the cool breath of the Spirit melded all the campers into one."
Mark learned that the cross, the emblem of suffering and shame, can also be a symbol of peace and reconciliation.
Jesus died upon the cross for all people. Jesus humbled himself. The apostle Paul wrote, "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Tim S.
Luke 22:14--23:56
Many years ago a pastor told the story that in one of the earliest pictures of the Nativity, Jesus is represented as lying in the manger, while just above him, on the wall of the stable, is the shadow of the cross. In his painting, "The Light of the World" Holman Hunt pictures Jesus in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. The day's work is finished. The tired carpenter lifts his arms in an attitude of utter weariness and the level rays of the setting sun cast upon the wall the shadow of a cross. Both artists were right. Jesus was born under and lived under the shadow of the cross. He was born to die. The penalty had been passed upon the race, "The soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). Jesus would take the sin of the world and taste death for every person. The cross that he bore for us compels us to know him and calls to us to follow him.
Derl K.
Luke 22:14--23:56
Bruce Wayne, Gotham city billionaire, is by day the first among his fellow citizens. Rich, famous, and good-looking, Bruce is unquestionably the best of the best. But by night, Bruce Wayne becomes Batman: a superhero who is not so much loved as feared, not so much celebrated as considered a vigilante menace. Meanwhile, Superman is celebrated as the best of the best -- but his alter ego, Clark Kent, is a lowly newspaper reporter. Whichever way you spin it, many comic book superheroes live out the idea that the first must become last and the last must become first. But comic book superstars were not the first to show this message. Two thousand years earlier, Jesus showed the world what it really means to put the first last.
Leah T.
