Weblogs: Proclamation, orthodoxy, hypocrisy, etc.

any day a beautiful change: "I've been preaching weekly for going on five months now. And I really love it, in so many ways. I love that a sizeable piece of my job is to craft language in ways that illuminate the gospel. But the weight of this vocation is becoming apparent to me.

For one thing, I've rarely spent so much time with the Bible. I've had to face some of the scriptures I've preferred to ignore. And I'm realizing the portrait of Jesus in the book of Matthew - at least through the lens of the lectionary canon - isn't exactly the Jesus I thought I knew. He is bigger and more dangerous... and yes, my reading of the Chronicles of Narnia is also informing this new version of J.C. He's more leonine, more capable of righteous roaring. Perhaps this is one of the blessings of the lectionary; just when Jesus gets so Kingly we can't bear to look at him, we get to return to the season of holy baby showers.

I don't know what to do with this bigger Jesus. He does not fit into the liberal theology of my seminary education. And that makes me very uncomfortable. I'm tugging on the cuffs of orthodoxy these days, and that is extraordinary disorienting to a girl who is used to staunch heterodoxy."