Painting Fakes

This is my meditation for this year’s Easter Friday service.  The readings are John 18:12-17 (in which Jesus is arrested and taken to Annas and Caiaphas, and Peter follows them to the High Priest’s courtyard but denies being Jesus’ disciple) and Amos 5:18-24 (in which the prophet tells the Israelites their worship is an abomination in the absence of justice and righteousness). It seems like only yesterday that we were celebrating Christmas.  The angels sang “glory to God and peace to men”, the shepherds paid their respects, the magicians brought their gifts.  It was a time of hope and joy, anything seemed possible, God was with us and all would be well. Yet already today is Easter Friday, when all the darkness and violence of the world is revealed and we know ourselves to be powerless against it.  It is a day of mourning and weeping, a day of anger and frustration, a day of terror, a day of failure.  Soon it will be Easter Sunday and hope will be rebo...

Bearing in mind my previous post on the non-legalistic way of understanding the Law and the New Testament, I'd like to illustrate by applying it to Paul's writing about relationships in a household in Ephesians 5 and 6.  It's a long passage so I won't quote it all here.  You can look it up if you want to (read it here ), or else just take my word for it. Paul's letter to the Ephesians follows the general structure he often uses in his letters - theory (or theology) followed by practice.  In the first three chapters he talks about how his readers have been chosen and redeemed, how Christ is now exalted and we have new life in him, how God has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile to make one people and how he (Paul) is a servant of this message. In Chapters 4-6 he addresses the impact this should have on the way his readers live.  This second half of the letter can be divided into roughly four sections, and in each he provides some general guid...