Lighten Up -- Trust Him -- Be Free! Greg Albrecht

Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:  "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."—1 Peter 2:1-6

We need to lighten up! Institutionalized religion has turned many of us into timid little souls. Some people seem to think of God in a similar way as they recall their grandmothers. Some may remember when they visited Grandma that they had to be extremely careful not to disturb the museum-like setting of what was erroneously called her "living room." As children, they weren't allowed to sit down, to touch anything, and they had to take great care not to break anything.

God's kingdom of heaven is not a grandmother's living room that's virtually roped off, to be used for viewing purposes only. Our relationship with God is more like sitting down at his kitchen table (which, to be fair to grandmothers, is a memorable, positive feature that many of us discovered in our relationship with Grandma). In God's kitchen, there's always something cooking, the smell of a pie or baked bread just out of the oven fills the room, and a freshly brewed pot of coffee beckons us. 

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Calvary: Crucifixion as Torture, Cross as Hope - Brad Jersak

Trite or true, we're each and all on a journey, not quite sure whether any given year, week or moment is really ascent or descent -- the calm before a storm or the dark before dawn.

I see this tension in the biblical story of Calvary, at once a crucifixion and a Cross, the intersection of goodness and affliction, of torture and hope. At Calvary, we see the violence of religious fanaticism married to national security ... and we see the humility, forgiveness and self-giving love of God.

I hear this tension in Augustine, who is quoted in the movie, Calvary, as saying, "Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned." Calvary the movie is a profound and powerful tale of an Irish priest (played by Brendan Gleeson) who receives a death threat during confession and is warned to get his house in order over the course of a week. During that week, we see two themes intensify towards the climax.



First, we see how Gleeson represents goodness and sincerity. Even his would-be killer, the victim of long-term childhood sexual abuse by a priest, says, "There's no point in killing a bad priest ... but killing a good one. That'd be a shock." In that sense, Gleeson's character (Father James) serves as a Christ figure--and each character in the drama defines his or her own spiritual condition by their response to him. The truth of their lives become transparent through their attitudes and actions towards the priest.