Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Tag: Priesthood

Lenten Journal 2019 (4 April)

Lenten Journal, Day 29

So, typical of me, I let the Lenten discipline slide and didn’t write anything in this journal yesterday or the day before. In my defense, the first day was dominated by the “prep” for a colonoscopy and yesterday the procedure was done early in the morning; I spent the rest of the day sleeping off the Propofol used as anesthesia during the procedure.

That’s one of the drugs used in the capital punishment “cocktail,” by the way. One minute I was watching the nurse inject the stuff into my IV line; the next, I was in a different room, my wife at my bedside conversing with the gastroenterologist about radiation damage to my colon (that damage being a sequela of my treatment for prostate cancer). The rest of the day was spent mostly in a fog of unthinking, which is not the same thing as the cloud of unknowing by a long shot!

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Christology & Ministry: Sermon for Pentecost 22, Proper 24B, 21 October 2018

Christology is one of those odd words of the Christian tradition that one doesn’t hear much in church but which one hears a lot in academic circles. Christology is defined as “the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the ontology and person of Jesus as recorded in the canonical Gospels and the epistles of the New Testament.”[1] That’s really helpful, isn’t it? Begs the questions, “What is theology? What is ontology? What is a ‘canonical Gospel’?”

Christology in its basic form is just the attempt answer some deceptively simple questions: Who was Jesus? Who is Jesus? Who will Jesus be? What did he do? What is he doing now? What will he do in the future?

Today’s lessons from the Prophet Isaiah, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Gospel according to Mark present us with three different Christologies: the suffering servant of Isaiah, the high priest following in the footsteps of the Old Testament character of Melchizedek, and the kingly messiah following in the line of David the Shepherd King of Israel. Jesus debunks the latter in his conversation with James and John, the sons of Zebedee, but it remains a prominent feature of Christian understanding. All three shape our understanding of who Jesus was, who he is today, and who he will be tomorrow.

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