Summary: Lent provides opportunities to reflect on our experience of encountering God and God’s salvation in embodied ways — in our bodies’ abilities to perceive familiar realities and to interpret new ones. I prepared a five-part series that invites us to think about Jesus’ ability to make God known in tangible, sensory ways. The series explores selected biblical passages that permit us to reflect on who we are and how we bear witness to the gospel — not so Lent causes us to denigrate this life, but so we learn to encounter God among us and to know Christ through our bodies.
I wrote this series to spark the creativity of those who are preparing to preach or teach during Lent, although individuals might also use it for devotional purposes. Read it at Working Preacher.
Love among the Ruins (John 3:14-21)
Summary: Believing in God’s love is much easier than trusting in it. Trust implies action and a willingness to open ourselves up. It has become increasingly difficult to trust in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and God’s love appears not to have motivated the most of our wider society to imitate it. To embrace a passage like the one in which Jesus insists that he has come because “God so loved the world,” we need to do more than just convince ourselves and our neighbors about God’s love and its benefits. We need to open ourselves up to the magnetic power of that love, something we experience less through intellect and more through desire.
I wrote this article for those preparing to preach or hear sermons on John 3:14-21. It was originally a contribution to the “Dear Working Preacher” series. Read the full article at Working Preacher.
Bible commentary: preachers & teachers workingpreacher.org commentary
augustine belief believe covid-19 death gospel of john lent love pandemic preaching selfishness song of solomon trust