06/28/2020
Acts 10:34-43
Chris Breslin
“In his appearing we find neither a dualist rejection of the present world nor simply his arrival like a spaceman into the present world but rather a transformation of the present world and ourselves within it, so that it will at last be put to rights and we with it. Death and decay will be overcome, and God will be all in all…
…We do not ‘build the kingdom’ all by ourselves, but we do build for the kingdom. All that we do in faith, hope, and love in the present, in obedience to our ascended Lord and in the power of his Spirit, will be enhanced and transformed at his appearing.” -N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
“God shows no partiality (v34). God’s tastes are much wider than Peter had imagined until this moment. Peter is at the threshold of revelation. That revelation is not of God’s wider palette for people, but that Peter’s range of whom to love and desire must expand until it stretches beyond his own limits into God’s life. God is pressing Peter’s aesthetic toward death and resurrection— the dying and rising to new desires is now the call emerging for him.” -Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary
“Do you finally see? Nobody knows anything. The righteous didn’t know they were in relationship with the King when they ministered to the least of his brethren, any more than the cursed knew they were despising the King when they didn’t so minister. Knowledge is not the basis of anybody’s salvation or damnation. Action-in-dumb-trust is. And the reason for that is that salvation comes only by relationship with the Savior – by a relationship that, from his side, is already an accomplished eternal fact, and that therefore needs only to be accepted by faith, not known in any way. ‘No man,’ Luther said, ‘can know or feel he is saved; he can only believe it.'” -Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment
Judica me, Domine by Malcolm Guite
More resources on Faith and the Apostles’ Creed:
The Apostles’ Creed for Today by Justo Gonzalez
The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine ed. By Colin Gunton
The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider
The Apostles’ Creed by Ben Myers
You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith
Unapologetic: Why Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford
The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark
Ancient-Future Worship by Robert Webber
Tokens of Trust by Rowen Williams
My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman
Simply Christian by N.T. Wright
Exploring & Proclaiming the Apostles’ Creed ed. by Roger Van Harn
Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed by Hans Urs Von Balthesar
Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering:
I Am For You by Anderson/Meek
Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending by Wesley/Benedict
Heal Us by Cowper/Twit/Morton
