What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
These are challenging times for the church, and especially for those responsible for a congregation. Ronald P. Byars, a former pastor, teacher, and now pew-sitter, reflects on how the varied “languages” of faith most effectively reach the faithful and the unfaithful in times both unfavorable and favorable. Byars served as pastor of congregations in Fremont, Allen Park, Okemos, and Birmingham, Michigan; and in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1999 he joined the faculty of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He continues to write in retirement, living now in Lexington.
The world feels broken, and we are worried.
When we trust God’s providential hand, anxiety becomes a useful caution rather than a pathology.
Someone has said that our time is one of “bare, ruined altars.”
And yet, it’s also a time when people are starving for some Word from the Lord.
There are some questions for which we want answers that science really can’t touch.
Faith is a way of “knowing.”
What makes a people great?
Jesus intends to replace his disciples’ “love of power with the power of love.”
Being a Christian is not a solo performance.
Jesus Christ functions like the director of an ensemble.
Every period of history provokes new insecurities.
God has promised: “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
The letter of James asks, “Are any among you sick?”
“They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.”
Some of the deepest truths require a story that kindles the imagination.
Noah’s Ark and the Sacrament of Baptism.
The universal church has a shared job description.
The church of Jesus Christ needs to cherish its role as intercessor and advocate for those from whom society would prefer to turn away.
Insofar as our human capacities are concerned, God is next to unknowable.
Unless God chooses to be known, our attempts to know God are going to fall short of the mark.
Is God’s mercy too generous?
God’s mercy can be found even where we don’t approve of it.
We live in a culture that can be suspicious of the intellect.
Can we love God with heart, soul, and mind?
In Texas, the government wants to require public school students to learn about the Bible.
I object for both political and religious reasons.
Would we recognize an authoritative voice if we heard one?
When it comes to authority, you know it when you see it.
Some scriptural stories shed light on others.
Stories about meals point to God’s divine action.
The Lord’s Day liturgy resembles a dance.
Explaining the dance is not a substitute for joining in the dance
We can’t easily calculate how things will fit together to shape the future.
The ultimate future belongs to God.
Christian theology is communal at its very core.
Community is a gift of grace.
There! Does that make everything perfectly clear?
Faith is a judgment “in the light of a truth that cannot be proven.”
The new convert had been led to expect the Holy Spirit to do something dramatic.
I hadn’t expected to become a believer and certainly didn’t expect or experience a dramatic or ecstatic moment.
He ascended into heaven.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
Jesus “descends into hell” to be where we are, where we have been, or where we may yet be.
“We know of none whom God has wholly and exclusively abandoned to himself. . .only of One who was lost. This One is Jesus Christ.” – Karl Barth
To speak of holy things requires using earthbound language in creative ways.
The Reformer John Calvin spoke of scripture as God’s “baby talk.” It’s not written just for intellectuals or experts.
Neither English nor any other human language has the capacity to speak directly about God.
Only by improvising, juxtaposing one image alongside another, do we have any chance of glimpsing the enormous grandeur of God.
The Apostles’ Creed is a brief summary of the Christian faith.
We may spend a lifetime wrestling with the creeds, challenging them and being challenged by them, while growing into them.
In baptism, we encounter the God who reaches out to lift us from the dangerous flood and pull us to safety.
From early times, baptism was often likened to a new birth.
The Easter story is set in a graveyard.
There’s something about a cemetery that focuses the mind.
How could the Roman soldiers possibly take seriously this Jewish carpenter they were supposed to crucify?
Jesus embraces the pain without passing it on.
Easter without Holy Week can be dangerous to one’s spiritual health.
Jesus turns the old status systems upside down.
The American Funeral
The American funeral, as Tom Long has so ably pointed out, has undergone a process of transformation in recent years to the point that it has become more and more remote from a Christian approach to life or death.
Rehearsing the grand homecoming that is to come. The sure sign of home: sharing food together.
“Then, people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29).
Life isn’t fair, and we’re outraged, because it seems as though it ought to be fair.
Grace is amazing!
What does what we do in worship say about God, God’s character, and God’s disposition toward us?
In worship, I see further out than I can see anywhere else.
In Scripture, “evil” always has a face. The adversary, the tempter, the fallen angel reenters the Biblical story at many points.
Evil is subtle, alluring, always in disguise, and shrewd.
There are afflictions that don’t precisely fit the usual diagnostic patterns.
The Christian faith is a healing movement.
Fundamentalism isn’t the only option for serious faith.
Becoming fluent in the “grammar of the gospel.”
Preaching is meant to be a “sacramental act.”
There are some things that can’t be understood by reasoned explanations alone.
Indiscriminate Baptism
Surely we don’t expect parents to perjure themselves in public!
Jesus was baptized alongside “sinners”
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. . .”
Is there anyone in charge here? Some way to know for certain that there is some conscious intentionality behind the origin of the universe?
God's “Word” is God reaching out to us who bring nothing to the table but our questions.
