We are to look at ourselves with conscious penitence. We are to confess, and to know our forgiveness. We are to take responsibility for our corporate brokenness and injustice. And we are to commit our selves to a new way, the disciplines of individual goodness and corporate reform.
Now she lived in simple dread — the burden of living up to the perfect chain or the burden of inevitable failure.
The Christian life is an invitation to an ongoing commitment to transformation.
By this time in our Genesis narrative, Jacob has been assured and reassured of God’s intention to bless him. . . But Jacob has never really trusted God. He has always made his own way, usually by cunning — willing to cheat, lie or deceive to advance his cause.
When Jesus names himself the “Good Shepherd,” it might have been heard as a very political statement. When Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, he may have in mind a challenge similar to the metaphor of the Kingdom of God.
Today’s readings are reminders of how we bring conflict, division, jealousy, and sin into nearly everything we touch.
One of the ways of thinking about the process of life is to see creation as the Divine emptying Itself of its transcendent nature into material creation, a process of “involution” — Spirit becomes matter; out of no-thing is something. From that point on, creation is being gathered back into its Source, a process of evolution.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Romans 13:1-3a
Jesus does good without recourse to the relative merit, or lack of merit, of the royal official. He did not reject the man because he was a servant of Herod Antipas, despite the cruel treatment to John.
All three of today’s readings invite Christians and all other religious people to develop creative relationships toward one another in our different religious expressions.