Shows / What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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…
Episodes
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Does God periodically drop down one more bit of wisdom spelling out how to play well with others?
If I were asked what we human beings need, I’d venture to guess that it would look more like help than like advice.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
God’s people are on trial.
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
The world to come doesn’t operate by the rules of this world.
There is, in all of us, some homing instinct--some sense that we’re on a journey.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
The world feels broken, and we are worried.
When we trust God’s providential hand, anxiety becomes a useful caution rather than a pathology.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
What makes a people great?
Jesus intends to replace his disciples’ “love of power with the power of love.”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Being a Christian is not a solo performance.
Jesus Christ functions like the director of an ensemble.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Every period of history provokes new insecurities.
God has promised: “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Some of the deepest truths require a story that kindles the imagination.
Noah’s Ark and the Sacrament of Baptism.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Is God’s mercy too generous?
God’s mercy can be found even where we don’t approve of it.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
We live in a culture that can be suspicious of the intellect.
Can we love God with heart, soul, and mind?
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
In Texas, the government wants to require public school students to learn about the Bible.
I object for both political and religious reasons.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Would we recognize an authoritative voice if we heard one?
When it comes to authority, you know it when you see it.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Some scriptural stories shed light on others.
Stories about meals point to God’s divine action.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
The Lord’s Day liturgy resembles a dance.
Explaining the dance is not a substitute for joining in the dance
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
We can’t easily calculate how things will fit together to shape the future.
The ultimate future belongs to God.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Christian theology is communal at its very core.
Community is a gift of grace.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
There! Does that make everything perfectly clear?
Faith is a judgment “in the light of a truth that cannot be proven.”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
He ascended into heaven.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
The Easter story is set in a graveyard.
There’s something about a cemetery that focuses the mind.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
How could the Roman soldiers possibly take seriously this Jewish carpenter they were supposed to crucify?
Jesus embraces the pain without passing it on.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Easter without Holy Week can be dangerous to one’s spiritual health.
Jesus turns the old status systems upside down.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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…
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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).
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
There are afflictions that don’t precisely fit the usual diagnostic patterns.
The Christian faith is a healing movement.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Fundamentalism isn’t the only option for serious faith.
Becoming fluent in the “grammar of the gospel.”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Preaching is meant to be a “sacramental act.”
There are some things that can’t be understood by reasoned explanations alone.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Indiscriminate Baptism
Surely we don’t expect parents to perjure themselves in public!
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Jesus was baptized alongside “sinners”
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. . .”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
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.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
A star shall come out of Jacob
Matthew gathers biblical images to fashion something that’s less a piece of journalism and more like a hymn of praise.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
It’s a simple story.
The very familiarity of it dulls our capacity to recognize how radical the story is.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Ave Maria
God’s business is about lifting up the lowly.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
“Is this the best of all possible worlds?”
In Christ, God has offered a foretaste of a healed creation.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
He descended into Hell
What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend?
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
There is a difference between a trip and a journey.
The journey reshapes the traveler.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
"So it goes."
The problem comes when accumulating resources becomes a kind of competitive game, where there can only be a few winners and a lot of losers. A vicious problem…
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Saving the World
As the prophet Jeremiah put it, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
She gave away “everything she had.”
One day, without even knowing it, someone becomes Christ to us.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Judgment and Grace
Legitimate self-interest easily gets swollen out of its proper proportions. Judgment isn’t an antiquated notion that needs to be put on the shelf. The words…
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
What my mother told me.
Maybe it’s not just about how to get to heaven.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Missed the Funeral
The deceased was wakened when he heard his own name.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
The very architecture of our souls requires that there be seasons of lament.
In the shedding of tears there is healing.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
The Risks of Liturgical Indifference.
Capturing the imagination in a multisensory fashion, to orient our love and our longing.
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Liturgical Testimony to a Cosmic Redemption
Jesus did not say. “Think this in remembrance of me” or “Feel this” or “Do this if you have time,” or “Make this really ‘special’,” but simply “Do this.” Just…
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
How easy it is to get the Eucharist wrong.
The apostle Paul describes the Eucharist at work in three dimensions: past, present, and future. It turns to the past “On the night when he was betrayed.” It…
- What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith
Evaluating Our Loyalties
Jesus attracted a lot of people who thought joining his parade might elevate their status. There were enough of them that Jesus felt that it was his duty to…