You’ll find reference to these all over the New Testament, on the lips of Jesus and the apostles. So much so that C. S. Lewis calls the New Testament but “a tissue of quotations” from the Old Testament. Reading the latter, you realize “how constantly Our Lord repeated, reinforced, continued, refined, and sublimated” what came before him, and “how

Sin is a turning away from God; it is missing the mark of giving God what God is due—namely, the whole of ourselves.

God, we may say, sings us into being. He breathes forth a poem, and the poem is us: galaxies, planets, molecules, continents, animals, people. It is a beautiful poem, a glorious song, and somehow we are alive and in the middle of it.

God does what only God can do: make a way out of no way, something from nothing, life from death.

The Song says that love is stronger than death. Indeed it is. The gospel of Jesus is one long expansion of this simple claim. Death cannot defeat true love. True love is God’s love for God’s people. No matter the slings and arrows of this life, no matter our pain or sorrow in this world, nothing—nothing, not in heaven or on earth—can separate the

In everything that makes a human community human, Israel’s election as God’s people should shine in their lives like neon lights.

We have learned that God is love and God is faithful. Now we see that God is mighty to save, for he is the great Liberator and Deliverer. Israel knows him as Savior and Rescuer, the breaker of chains who responds to the suffering of his people. The loving and faithful God hates injustice and smashes the bonds of servitude. He frees.

Imagine God, if the comparison is not too much of a reach, as a bottle of champagne. What happens when you shake it up and pop off the cork? It explodes! It shoots out and up and everywhere. It runs over every which way. This is what creation is like. God is so full, so rich, so much that he simply runs over with being—and out come quarks and

I described the role of a priest as standing between God and the people, representing each to the other. A prophet does this, too, but in terms of speech: what the people have to say to God and what God has to say to the people. When a priest stands in the gap, it isn’t about words. It’s about sin. Sin and sacrifice.