Dan's Marinations

"Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God...unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (Jesus of Nazareth circa 30 A.D.) The second topic for a blog post from among the sermon suggestions is "a transformed life."  This is a very, very good suggestion because it does hit so close to the core of the Christian faith and life.  Straight from Jesus' own mouth is this statement; without being born again (or born from above, as it can also be translated) we cannot enter the Kingdom.  What does this actually mean, though? To begin with, this doesn't mean that one must have one specific life-transforming event in order to inherit eternal life.  We should celebrate the person who experiences such a singular event, and the many churches that "celebrate recovery" in their programming or worship are doing exactly that.  Jesus said that there was joy in Heaven over ever...

My good folks at the United Methodist Church of the Covenant provided lots of suggestions for sermons.  We had more suggestions than we have Sundays available to preach them, so I will be covering on this blog over the coming weeks all those that couldn't be treated in a sermon .  The first of these topics that I would like to cover is The "Peace of God."  By this I'm not referring to the "peace of God that surpasses all understanding," as mentioned in the New Testament.  The "Peace of God" (Pax Dei) I refer to was instead an ecclesiastical/political movement of the middle ages.  I actually referred to this in a sermon in early December. To understand the Peace of God we must first remember the culture from which it arose.  This movement arose in 10th century Europe in an increasingly violent militaristic society.  This was the age of feudalism in Europe.  Most of the land was owned by very wealthy lords who were subject only loosely to their ki...