Sublime

Rather, I suggest that Jesus was seen as, and saw himself as, a prophet; not a particular one necessarily, as though there were an individual set of shoes ready-made into which he was consciously stepping, but a prophet like the prophets of old, coming to Israel with a word from her covenant god, warning her of the imminent and fearful consequences

At this juncture in our common life, the chance of the preacher is crucial—as it has not been in a long time—precisely because the dominant texts are failing. . . . It is a task of the church—with synagogue and mosque—to offer this countertext of generosity, fidelity, and neighborliness. It is the chance of the preacher to permit people to give up

of freedom expressed in this spiritual?

God-talk is human speech in which God is depersonalized into a language of information, manipulation, propaganda, and gossip.

The Bible is replete with the scathing indictments of those who wept over oppression. Recall Jeremiah: “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor” (Jeremiah 22:13); and Amos, decrying those who “trample on the heads of the poor as on the

The central evil of the modern view is that “religion is a private, personal matter.” This is a revolutionary idea, a product of the modern era and of revolutionary ideologies. Basic to the Western world has been the premise that, because the God of the Scriptures is the living God, the maker of heaven and earth and all things therein, any attempt

Elijah—He stands first as a new breed of prophet, confronting Israel’s political and religious establishment with pronouncements that begin with the jolting phrase, “thus says the Lord.”