Summit, Spirit, Sky: connect to Creator, community and creation!
Summit, Spirit, Sky: connect to Creator, community and creation!
Tue, Mar 2: MOURN At first pass, in English, this sounds like a blessing for the bereaved. As if it was meant only those who are grieving. Yet it encompasses more. All by itself, grief is a defining human experience. People mourn for those who have died. According to Maxie Dunnam and Kimberly Dunnam Reisman,“Sorrow[…]
As he talked to the people of his time, Jesus used imagery that helped them identify with the conditions of humanity: those who would receive the blessing. Hunger. Thirst. The same metaphors translate well for modern folks. We understand such deep and essential needs. Authors of the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Biblical commentaries write about this Beatitude by[…]
The people referenced in these blessings are considered in a communal way. In particular, they are the followers of Christ within the Greek-speaking community for whom the author of the Gospel of Matthew wrote. They are also, in another sense, all humans. Common folk. People like you and me. We might not want to recognize[…]
In these Beatitude statements, the ‘to be’ verb is open-ended. It is not past tense. It is not even present-tense. Nor is it conditional. It creates the world by declaring it as accomplished. In fact, as Maxie Dunnan and Kimberly Dunnan Reisman write, “Originally there was no verb in the Beatitudes … ‘are’ … did[…]
Matthew uses the Greek word basileía. It contains such a big idea. What is heaven? Is it above us, up in the sky or cosmos? Is it lodged within our minds and hearts? Is it a place or a state of being? We can sum up cultural ideas of heaven as a location or realm[…]
