When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves--that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.

Perhaps art can help us to look beyond the immediate beauty with all its puzzles, and to glimpse that new creation which makes sense not only of beauty but of the world as a whole, and ourselves within it ... The artist can then join forces with those who work for justice and those who struggle for redemptive relationships, and together encourage and sustain those who are reaching out for a genuine, redemptive spirituality.

There's all the difference in the world between humbly saying "I want to find more light from Scripture than we have yet had" and saying "I'm going to prove the rest of the Church wrong and do something totally new!"

Since all human governments, like all human individuals, are subject to temptation, especially the temptation to use this God-given role for their own ends, there must be clear and wise critique, and holding to account.

Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.

Of course there are people who think of 'heaven' as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that's a problem as old as the human race.

Jesus himself, as the gospel story goes on to its dramatic conclusion, lives out the same message of the Sermon on the Mount: he is the light of the world, he is the salt of the earth, he loves his enemies and gives his life for them, he is lifted up on a hill so that the world can see.