Links from the Past Couple of Weeks

Some of these posts are older, but here are a few things I've read over the past two or so weeks:

April Fiet's sermon on Christ the King Sunday and Psalm 95:
All about Christ the King Sunday as New Year's Eve, God extending love, grace, and invitation to us before any action of our own, and how to live as a response in gratitude. Also, the sermon ends with quotes from "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling." (The whole sermon actually reminded me a lot of some of the Wesley I've been reading recently.) Some quotes:

• "Today, as we are on the cusp of a new year, we are invited to come and worship. We are invited to come and humble ourselves before our God and King. And, in so doing, we are invited to be more like the One we worship. We are invited twice before we’ve had the opportunity to do anything else."
• "We are being re-membered by God, and we are called to be agents of re-membering here on earth."
• "If we were to dream big dreams and believe that where God calls God equips, what risks might we take as we live as children of the King?"

Steven D. Bruns on Scripture reading in the early Church
"For the early Christians, Scriptures were read at length in the context of worship, they were seen as a unified voice spanning God’s work in Israel through the life of the Church, and they were interpreted together, always pointing to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of every passage."
I have mixed feelings on the Lectionary, but the fact that each week it includes an OT reading, a Psalm, an Epistle passage, and a Gospel passage to be read together is one of the things I like most about it. What Bruns talks about here is part of why that's valuable. My favorite line from this post is this: "The early Church completely integrated the Old and New Testaments and created a poetry to the faith."

Alastair Roberts tweeted about liturgy
Liturgy is about practicing and living our theology; it is the "work of the people." This was in the context of liturgical theology vs systematic and biblical theology, but it's good commentary on what liturgy actually is and why it matters. The best quote from this series of tweets: "All the streams of theology converge at and flow from the font."

Drew McIntyre on Advent outreach
This starts off as a response to the Greater New Jersey Conference's announcement about commuter train communion, but then there are ten ideas for Advent outreach, ranging in originality, audience, and scope. Also, Drew quotes "I Come With Joy," which is appropriate both to discussions of communion and outreach.