Bornkamm: faith in Jesus the foundation

Saturday, December 4, 2010
    Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637
Meditation:
    Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
    He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
    The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
    —Matthew 8:24-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Form-criticism... has made an end of the false notion, which for a long time dominated critical scholarship, that it was possible throughout the gospels to distill from them a “Life of Jesus” that would be free from dogmatic presuppositions and not affected by any “retouching” derived from the faith of the Church. In fact, however, faith in Jesus Christ crucified and risen did not first appear at some later stage in the tradition, but was the foundation of the tradition, the very soil out of which it grew; and it is in light of that faith alone that the tradition can be understood.
    This faith in Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Exalted One, explains both the things which the primitive tradition makes known to us, with its manifest concern for the factual truth of the tradition about Jesus, and at the same time the peculiar liberty which the evangelists take in making alterations in the record in points of detail. In relating the acts and words of Jesus, they do not refer back to any sort of “archives” possessed by the community... Jesus Christ is not for them a figure of past history whose proper place is in a library.
    ... Günther Bornkamm (1905-1990), “The Stilling of the Storm in Matthew”, as quoted in The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History, Gabriel Hebert, London: SCM Press, 1962, p. 37 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are our contemporary. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Taylor: Beatitude

Friday, December 3, 2010
    Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552
Meditation:
    May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
    —1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, for Himself is love: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the Law. It does the work of all the graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation and without opportunity, so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other aims but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for Himself, and our neighbors for God. The consideration of God’s goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from Him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.
    ... Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Holy Living [1650], in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., v. III, London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1847, p. 156 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, send Your Holy Spirit to teach me love. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Kurosaki: His will for us

Thursday, December 2, 2010
Meditation:
    One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
    —Romans 14:5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Paul uses the example of differing opinions about food and days among the believers in Rome to teach that Christians should not despise or judge one another. Note that he does not advise them to find a happy medium between the contending opinions or to average the two extremes into a compromise. On the contrary, he admonished that “every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” He declares that God is able to make both stand, since both of them are serving the Lord in obedience to their individual convictions of His will... Each of us has to find personally what is the will of God for his own life, and let all others meet their responsibility to do the same... For God, by giving different commands to many, and putting them together according to His plan, shall accomplish ultimately His complete will.
    ... Kokichi Kurosaki (1886-1970), One Body in Christ, Kobe, Japan: Eternal Life Press, 1954, ch. 9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, lead us to see our unity in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Casteel: the class meeting

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
    Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916
Meditation:
    Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:11-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The genius of the Methodist movement, which enabled it to conquer the raw lives of workingmen in industrial England, and the raw lives of men and women on the American frontier, was the “class meeting”—ten members and their leader, meeting regularly for mutual encouragement, rebuke, nurture, and prayer.
    ... John L. Casteel (1903-1993/5), Spiritual Renewal through Personal Groups, NY: Association Press, 1957, p. 20 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, increase the bond of love among the brethren. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Sayers: like us

Tuesday, November 30, 2010
    Feast of Andrew the Apostle
Meditation:
    In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.
    —Hebrews 2:10-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it was well worthwhile.
    ... Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957), Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, Eerdmans, 1969, p. 14 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have suffered as one of us. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Fenelon: fidelity in little things

Monday, November 29, 2010
Meditation:
    About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.”
    Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.
    —Luke 22:59-62 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is only by fidelity in little things that the grace of true love to God can be sustained, and distinguished from a passing fervor of spirit...
    No one can well believe that our piety is sincere, when our behavior is lax and irregular in its little details. What probability is there that we should not hesitate to make the greatest sacrifices, when we shrink from the smallest?
    ... François Fénelon (1651-1715), Selections from Fénelon, ed. Mary Wilder Tileston, Boston: Roberts Bros., 1879, p. 160 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, keep me faithful in the small things. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Newman: failure to start

Sunday, November 28, 2010
    Advent I
Meditation:
    However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.
    —1 Peter 4:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
    ... John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), included in Leaves of Gold, Evan S. Coslett & Clyde Francis Lytle, ed. [1948], Honesdale, Pa.: Coslett Publishing Company, 1938, p. 55 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, through Your grace, my life has begun. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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