By: Stephen C. Rose
RENEWAL 2 NEWSLETTER & AN UNCOMMON LECTIONARY
January 16, 1995
SIN, THERAPY & THE BIBLE
Concluding a seven unit course designed as an optional lay empowerment study module of An Uncommon Lectionary.
Welcome to new Internet subscribers!
By: Stephen C. Rose
Seven
T H E U L T I M A T E H O U S E C A L L
God does not will that a single one of us perish. God is like the old-fashioned family doctor in a small village who
knows everyone, makes house calls and plays no favorites.
To save us, He made the most costly call of all.
With full knowledge that His only Son could be despised and rejected, He sent Him to preach and teach and embody the reconciliation of all humankind to God and to one another.
By the time of Jesse’s birth, Israel was a nation enslaved in the humiliating grip of the Roman Empire, an empire that demanded idol worship and placed heads of emperors on coins as though they were gods.
Jesus is the absolute height of God’s healing activity. The house call God made in Jesus was to heal all Creation for
all time.
But there was a condition. Jesus stated it in his very first sermon: The kingdom (or realm) of God is very near, he
said. But then he added the clinker: Repent and believe this good news!
Repent and believe. Biblical therapy requires that we honor ourselves by being truly sorry for the wrongs we have done. We honor ourselves when we take the weight of responsibility and put it where it belongs: on our own shoulders.
If we do that honestly and without hypocrisy, God accepts us, lifts us up, loves us and brings us into the realm of his
restoring work.
Then God is as close as an intimate prayer, a turning, a whisper in the mind, a hand in our hand.
WINDOW:
So important is repentance that God sent many prophets including John the Baptist, to prepare the way by insisting that God intends us, even in our fallen state, to turn from our personal vices and our social evil and believe that God will then receive us and be our strength and salvation.
A N U N C O M M O N L E C T I O N A R Y
January 16, 1995 KEEP US UPON THE NARROW PATH
[Keep us upon the narrow path]
So Mi So DO Ti La So So Fa Mi]
PSALMS 141:4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let
me not eat of their dainties.
MATTHEW 28:8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.
ACTS 9:36 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this
woman was full of good works and alms-deeds which she did.
Seed Thoughts: It has been said of a modern good person that more than anything he made the word God synonymous with the word good. The greatest good of all is that Jesus was not finally vanquished on the cross — that the goodness he spoke, advocated and represented as God was and remains victorious. Acts points us to what we see when someone has heard and celebrates this greatest good. Dorcas is full of good works and alms-deeds. The Psalmist suggests that the parameters of evil are not hard to fathom: Consorting with those who work iniquity and
sharing in the perks that result from their evil is a fairly strong sign of straying from the path.
Renewal 2 Newsletter & An Uncommon Lectionary Copyright 1995 by Stephen C. Rose, Editor & Publisher. The right to distribute freely in Cyberspace is freely granted.
