the life of Jesus recapitulates key elements in the earlier story of Israel. For a moment, as Jesus stands on the mountain giving the famous sermon, he is Moses. For a moment, answering his critics about his actions on the sabbath, he is David. For a moment, as he calls and names the twelve disciples, he is perhaps Jacob, bringing the twelve patriarchs into the world. For a moment, healing the sick and raising the dead, he is Elijah or Elisha. And so on. In the transfiguration he actually meets Moses and Elijah.

The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity.

Scripture is, at its heart, the great story that we sing in order not just to learn it with our heads but to become part of it through and through, the story that in turn becomes part of us.

Arguments about God are like pointing a flashlight toward the sky to see if the sun is shining.

Heaven is important, but its not the end of the world.

Worship is love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved

What Jesus did was not a mere example of something else, not a mere manifestation of some larger truth; it was itself the climactic event and fact of cosmic history. From then on everything is differentthe End came forward into the present in Jesus the Messiah