"...in the very first book of the Bible, we learn that God is able to overturn the forces of evil and bring good into being. In New Testament terms, Satan is a great enemy agent, but God is a greater agent for good. This is striking, since it’s the book of Genesis that tells us how evil came to rule over the creation in the first place. Or, rather, how evil arrived in the second place—a far distant second place. The first place is always God’s." #FlemingRutledge #Advent

Karl Barth wrote of Christmas, and the gospel, as '“the journey of the Son of God to the far country.” And when the incarnate Son arrives in this far country, what does he find? He finds that it is occupied by a great Power.' He came unseat that Power. #FlemingRutledge #Advent

(continued) "If you ask me how God can allow so much evil, here’s the answer: We don’t know. Nobody knows the answer to the problem of evil. And yet it is in a sense the most important of all theological problems, and we should never lose sight of it." Still #flemingrutledge

"Let me say right here at the beginning: no one has ever come up with a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil." #FlemingRutledge #Advent

In a cranky mood. I am trying to decide if it is due to a poorly done Professional Development I wasted a Saturday morning on, or the fact that I am in the middle of reading about the problem of evil in #FlemingRutledge 's #Advrnt book. Or is it that said PD WAS an example of the problem of evil? 🤔

"The solemnity and awe do not lie in the fact that the baby becomes the eternal Judge. What strikes us to the heart is this: the eternal Judge, very God of very God, Creator of the worlds, the Alpha and the Omega, has become that little baby." #FlemingRutledge #Advent

"In Advent, we don’t pretend, as I once thought, that we are in the darkness before the birth of Christ. Rather, we take a good hard look at the darkness we are in now, facing and defining it honestly, so that we will understand with utmost clarity that our great and only hope is in Jesus’s final victorious coming." #FlemingRutledge #Advent

"Conflict and contradiction are part of our lives in Advent. Our hope is in the coming triumph of God in Jesus Christ." #FlemingRutledge, meditating upon #KarlBarth, and our "Apocalyptic Hope" during #Advent, 1986.

"Humanly speaking, there is no answer to Rachel’s lament and no hope for her children’s future. The only word left is the Word of God." - #FlemingRutledge #Advent

We are called to a vocation of protest against suffering. Patience does not mean passivity. Believing that God will come does not imply inaction. Rather, it stirs up the church to hopeful enactments of the reign of Christ.

#FlemingRutledge #Advent

A quote included in #FlemingRutledge's #Advent book.

"...It is not impossible to convey even to young children the sense that the real meaning of Christmas lies precisely in the combination of magical ceremonies and the grown-up message that in the very midst of our human selfishness, the waylaying love of God has broken through to us unconditionally. We may therefore sing with indescribable joy..."

#FlemingRutledge #Advent "For Grown Ups"

“ How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one who brings glad tidings. . . . Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people.” This rhapsodic passage moves directly without a break into the Suffering Servant text associated with Good Friday: “His appearance was marred beyond human semblance . . . he was despised and rejected.” We may not linger at the crib.

#FlemingRutledge #Advent, "For Grown Ups"

Oops.
#FlemingRutledge

After centuries of #history being written by the victors for the victors, we're now rightly questioning #colonial histories and beginning to listen better to the stories of those #colonized.

I'm thinking of this as I listen to a sermon by #FlemingRutledge. Jesus was crucified by the #RomanEmpire, brutal and efficient #colonizers, at the insistence of their #colonized locals. None are righteous; no, not one. Jesus submitted himself to the fatal judgment of both colonist and colonized. Yet the #judgment that really matters is that of Jesus' #heavenlyFather, who raises him, and us, from death, vindicated, beloved, and forever welcome in our true home.

'Advent teaches us to delay Christmas in order to experience it truly when it finally comes. Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness.' (Rutledge, F. Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ.2018:252)

#Advent #Christmas #Christianity #FlemingRutledge