You start to notice this focus on Lazarus in the earliest centuries of Christianity through the art. In the Roman catacombs alone there are over 55 paintings of Lazarus’s resurrection. Roughly an equal number exist of Roman sarcophagi, the marble caskets in which nobility were buried, depicting this life-affirming story relayed only in John’s Gospel. […]
Archive | New Testament
I Peter: Figures of Speech and Sermons in Stone
“Literature is picture-thinking, ideas made flesh in figures of speech”, wrote a former college professor and friend, Dr. Colin Campbell (from talk given 10/10/15). The author of 1st Peter creates such word pictures for us in spades. Chapter 2 is a rich example as the writer employs a stone metaphor to explain three different functions […]
Where Even Angels “Long to Look”
Do you ever come across a snippet of a verse that so captures your thought and heart that you stop everything to stay with it? Maybe you see how it’s translated across multiple Biblical versions. Maybe you simply sit with it for awhile, listening for further inspiration because you know its coming if you’ll be […]
Why The Sower and the Seed Parable is the ‘First Among Equals’
As you study Jesus’ parables’, it becomes quickly obvious how important the Sower and the Seed story is, one of the few to appear in all three synoptic Gospels. (John’s Gospel doesn’t contain any parables.) Even more noticeable is that the Sower and the Seed story headlines the rest–in Matthew (Matt. 13:3-17), Mark (Mark 4:1-9) and […]
Revisiting the Magi as Role Models
Do you find that some aspects of the Christmas story, no matter how familiar, stand out to you more some years than others? For me this season, it was those mysterious magi. What do we really know about these exotic visitors from a distant land? Are they a fulfillment to Biblical prophesies, and if so, […]