Category: Scripture
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Ordination Testimony
This summer I’ll be ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Covenant Church. On Friday I gave the following testimony about my call to ministry to a regional gathering of Covenant pastors. The best thing about the call to vocational ministry is also what makes this call so hard. In Ephesians…
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“Let there be a moratorium on such preaching!”
Legalists and antinomians are equally guilty of hermeneutical gerrymandering to annex New Testament texts to foreign modes of ethical discourse. Christian preachers, at least since the time of Clement of Alexandria, have preached hundreds of thousands of disastrous sermons that say, in effect, ‘Now the text says x, but of course it couldn’t really mean that, so we must see the underlying…
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A Sermon: Take Up Your Lynching Tree and Follow Me.
A lightly edited version of yesterday’s sermon from Mark 8:27-9:1 at New Community. Our passage begins: “Jesus & his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi.” This geographical context is important. Mark wants us to remember that Jesus is first recognized as Messiah near Caesarea Philippi, that he Jesus first predicts his execution near Caesarea…
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Weeping on Friday. Rejoicing on Sunday.
Over the next few days of this Holy Week I plan to reflect on two simple questions: What might keep me from weeping on Good Friday? What might keep me from rejoicing on Resurrection Sunday? Weeping and rejoicing aren’t the only appropriate responses on these days, but the testimony of the Church has been that they are certainly primary…
David W. Swanson 