Salvogesis

Today we are talking about divisions; so I have a little quiz for you to take with a group of friends: Who is the best football team? Who is the best hockey team? What is the best province in Canada? What is the second greatest province in Canada? Coke or Pepsi? Here’s an even more divisive one. Don’t answer this one: Conservative, NDP, Green, or Liberal? My father often sums up any difficulties he may have had with his sister growing up as their weekly rivalry: Hockey Night in Canada or Lassie .     Divisions can cause serious problems and there are some divisions showing up in the Christian church at Corinth as Paul writes them this letter. Paul eases gently into this topic with the small church. He begins by telling them how much he appreciates them: he thanks God for the grace that has been given them through Jesus. He tells them how he has noticed that Jesus has enriched them in knowledge and in speech, in sharing the testimony of Christ, and in every sp...

5. DONKEY  This brings us to our fifth and final image for today: the donkey. Verse 14: ‘Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: 15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” John quotes Zechariah’s well known prophesy about the king who will save and rule Israel as he comes into his kingdom on a donkey (Zec 9:9). And here and now comes Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. There is more to this too because a donkey is not a war horse a donkey is an ambassador’s mount. It is an animal of peace (cf. Genesis 49:10-11, Isaiah 40:9, 44:2)![9] The Romans claimed that their wars brought the ‘Pax Romana’, the Roman Peace, but John here is pointing out that Jesus – not Caesar – is the Prince of Peace.[10] Jesus is King of the Jews and more than that Jesus is King of the World! [11] These are exciting times. Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem at this time and place in history is his crossing the Rubicon. There is no turning b...

3. ‘HOSANNA’, ‘KING OF THE JEWS’, ‘NAME OF THE LORD’ Our third image to consider today is that of the crowds shouting. Verse 13, John records, ‘They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!” This is significant stuff. We sing ‘Hosanna’ in a lot of songs. We always mention ‘Hosanna’ at Palm Sunday. ‘Hosanna’ is what they are shouting as Jesus is riding into the capital of occupied Judea right under the noses of the Romans even as their collaborators, the Jewish religious leaders, have already put a plan into motion to kill Jesus. Do we know what Hosanna means (Verse 13; cf. Psalm 118:25-26)? Hosanna means ‘O Save!’, ‘Salvation!’, ‘Save us!’ [3]  Jesus is triumphantly entering the historic capital of Judah – which is occupied by the Romans and people are saying, ‘Jesus! You are our king! You –like all kings are supposed to – you come here in the Name of the Lord! Jesus, you –...

 Palm Sunday is a significant day in the Christian Church. Any of us who have grown up in the church or who have been going to church for a few years have inevitably been to a few Palm Sunday services. Do we know what the big deal is about Palm Sunday? John in his gospel does a great job of telling us the meaning of Palm Sunday in his record of the triumphal entry. He uses a lot of symbolism – not unlike Shakespeare in ‘Julius Caesar’. This week we are going to pull out five pieces of that imagery and then put it back together for a full picture of what Palm Sunday looks like in our life today. In this entry we are going to look at Triumphal Entry and Jerusalem. First, let’s re-read John 12:12-19: The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel!” Jesus found a young...

When my eldest two daughters were six and five sometimes I would go to the park with them like I do with my youngest now. In the winter we'd take our sled but in the summer we'd often ride our bikes there. My six year-old had been riding her bike for a couple of years and grown quite confident. She was quite proud that she didn’t even need training wheels anymore. She raced everywhere – zooming past her sister and I. At six, she was an excellent bike rider. She took some risks; sometimes she crashed but she was a great bike rider and she knew it. Her sister, at five, was still learning to ride her bike. She told us that she is also really fast. She hadn’t been riding as long as her sister and still needed training wheels. She headed out in faith but sometimes – after a crash or getting stuck too often – she just wanted to quit. She hadn’t yet developed the perseverance that comes from faith that she can ride her bike ‘really fast.’ My six year old daughter, on the other han...

How can I experience a new life? We are told in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; so then the answer to the question 'How can I experience a new life?' is, 'if I become in Christ I will then have a new life' – great. Let’s do that –um-but what is in Christ ? Well, when we are in-Christ we no longer act the same way as most others; we are changed through changing our minds so that we can see and do the good things God wants for us and others (Romans 12:2). Being in-Christ is no longer thinking about ourselves. Just before I first penned this article for the Nipawin Journal in 2008, I received an e-mail from an old friend of mine who works in a BC prison; I myself spent time in Stony Mountain Penn as a volunteer. We agreed that many of the fellows there who are stuck, unable to change, unable to be happy; the ones who are threatening and litigious are the people who seem to act upon ‘a perverse sense of entitlement.’ It is th...

9:1-3 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"             Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. Corporately through tradition, the scriptures and experience we have seen future generations of societies suffer significant consequences related to previous generations' actions. [1]  Christian debates around war, the environment and immigration relate to this – if we don’t have a large enough population, we can’t provide income for our retirees and disabled and if we don’t have an environment, it doesn’t matter because we’re all dead anyway. Those with Jesus here seem to have been trying to either stretch or reduce this concept to a one-to-one correspondence. [2]  If you do good, good will happen to you; if you do bad, bad will happe...