My most successful blog post of all time is just about to get its annual boost. Always gets readers in the week running up to pancake day.
Yes – it is the Provost’s Famous Pancake Recipe.
Full instructions here: http://thurible.net/20040224/pancake_receipt/
As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.
One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).
In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.
Oofft.
Richard Holloway has a go at the questions the Tsunami raises in an article in the Herald.The full url is http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/30782-print.shtml
In yesterday's sermon, I made mention of an article about the Tsunami that Rowan Williams wrote for one of the newspapers. It was the Telegraph, which I've heard one bemitred one call the Banner of Truth. I contrasted the article (which concluded that these things have happened before but that faith survives them) with the headline…
Last week, I stood up in church to read the gospel, just before the Children presented us with their nativity play. For once, I felt that the Lectionary had let me down. The Young Church members were crowded into the front rows of the church dressed as shepherd, sheep or king or whatever ? ready…
1 – Become young and skinny 2 – Become Prime Minister 3 – Double the congregation
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