Sublime

“Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS

Throughout volumes 1 and 2 I’ve claimed that Jesus Christ becomes present when we give and receive ministry person to person. Bonhoeffer can claim that Jesus Christ exists as church-community because the church-community is in the form of personhood, and Jesus Christ is present in and through personhood (this is deeply incarnational).

As a household of ministry, the shape of a church’s gathered life revolves around three core dispositions that continue to renew the household as ministry. These three dispositions are directed not toward the household itself but toward Jesus, the one who is ministry.

While our secular age seems to stymie pastors, surgeons like Kalanithi are awakening to the pastoral task as central and transformational. The invitation to share in the depth of human experience, to enter into the reality of death, seems to bring an overwhelming sense of transcendence within the most immanent of occupations.

Every third year you shall bring out the full tithe of