Jim Flowers (Page 38)

Notice, gentle reader, that in the above title I said “Resurrection,” not The Resurrection. Mincing words you might say. When I was a child, I had been in Sunday School and had just heard the story told of Jonah and the whale (great fish, if you’re mincing words), and I askedRead More →

At the risk of understatement, we live in a self-indulgent culture in the western first world. Ever since the intellectual renaissance of the late 17th century dubbed “The Enlightenment” we have lauded the individual; the power of the human mind; the gift of self-determination. Hegel coined this emerging phenomenon asRead More →

We have begun a study of the Gospel of Mark in the Rector’s Forum, and that has caused me to think again about how we read the Bible. What are our expectations? What is its authority? Is it so laden with ancient superstition and ignorance that as modern people weRead More →

We are now in Year B of the Lectionary, so we’ll be reading from Mark’s gospel mostly throughout the year until Advent. Aristotle teaches us in his Poetics that the prologue of a rhetorical piece of literature predisposes its theme; that the entire narrative is informed by how it begins. Mark’sRead More →

In the very early church, at least as far as we know according to New Testament literature, what characterized the Christian faith was an intense expectation. And this expectation was not merely about one’s personal salvation, one’s own well-being and dignity. This expectation was about a radical reordering of society;Read More →