by Stephen Phelps | Mar 6, 2011 | identity, interpretation, Lent, sermon 2011, transformation
Is not this your transfiguration: “Now that I have felt him, I can see him?” Jesus is not visible except to the inward eye, the feeling eye. There was nothing there for all to see. The gospels are plain-spoken in this–some saw him as devil, some as disturbed, some as miscreant, some as master, some as transfigured in the light of God, some face to face. Never suppose that your faith, and your deepening faith, depends on some fact yet to be pinned down, or on your forlorn acceptance of some assertion that seems to you contrary to nature. Faith is not a thing so small. It is a feeling for life that gives sight to the blind.
by Stephen Phelps | Feb 27, 2011 | democracy, history, Lent, salvation, sermon 2011, social justice
. . . Thus, after a long affliction, there was a revolution in Egypt. The people had been treated harshly. Their labors were hard, their pay like slave wages. Then, on the wing of an exterminating angel moving swiftly over the land, the oppression in Egypt crumbled. According to Exodus, it happened one night. According to our newer news, it happened in one fortnight of February 2011. Now, the whole world is astonished as Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Libya, and even Iraq at last feel movements of the people against their oppressors. But it is too soon to guess what governance the people will secure in these lands. Trusting an ancient pattern, let us undertake to think more clearly about our times by returning to Israel’s central story of liberation in Egypt. . .
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