reading the bible in 90 days

While wandering around the Mardel Christian bookstore this past week, I saw a "90-Day Bible," and that grabbed my attention. I've never thought about reading the entire Bible in 90 days!

However, instead of buying another Bible, I decided to look on the internet, and, of course, found the 90-day plan. It works out to about 12 pages in their edition; the first day, for example, is just over 13 pages in Rebecca's ESV leatherbound.

I plan to begin reading on Sunday, July 6, and each day will post something here, a reflection or a comment or whatever. Would anyone like to join me? It might be fun to do something like this with others.

Here's the schedule.

nfl commissioner calls rookie salaries ‘ridiculous’

It's about time someone is calling the NFLPA on the absurd money guaranteed to high draft picks before they even play a down. For instance, Jake Long, who was the number one pick in the draft this spring, signed on the dotted line for a five-year contract over $57,000,000, with $30 mil guaranteed. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says it's "ridiculous;" what is even more ridiculous is that they're not talking about it until now--even the last collective bargaining agreement, in 2006, didn't address the problem.

Here's the story at Yahoo.

brave new world

I'm trying to get back into blogging. I took the site down for a couple of months, and my life has changed drastically since then. I was ordained a priest (finally--the picture on the left was the one on the cover of my ordination bulletin, on the Feast Day of St Mark the Evangelist), finished my thesis and graduated from seminary. Life is completely different from three months ago. I'm so busy (a good, no, a great busy) that the blogging that I did before is different than what I would do now. It's not that nothing has happened worth blogging about; for example, I finally implemented my long-dreamed interactive sermon in a Eucharistic setting.

I decided to re-up my blog because I saw things that I wanted to reflect on, but I'm still figuring out exactly how this is going to work! For now, I've decided that, in addition to posting new stuff, I will re-post occasional entries from the last go-around, so anything you see with "blast from the past," that's from the old blog.

blast from the past: egregious greekin'

(From 11/2007)

Watched a few minutes of Pastor Melissa Scott on the TV last night, and boy was it bad! It caught my attention because she was working on a big whiteboard with the Greek text of the New Testament, and I've always enjoyed my Greek.

I got a hint that she didn't know what the hell she was talking about when she pronounced a psi in a word as a pi several times. But then she pulled a ridiculous stunt.

"Pastor" Melissa Scott had two Greek words on the board, euangelisasthai (a form of the word "to tell the good news") and iasasthai (a form of the word "to heal"). Then, emphatically circling letters, she showed how the words both end in -sasthai, alleging that the commonalities made it impossible to "spell 'the Gospel' without 'healing'!"

Her website claims that she knows 20 languages, but I can testify that Greek is not one of them. The -sasthai ending has nothing to do with the root meaning of the word. It is an aorist infinitive ending and does not control the meaning of the term itself. It would be like saying that "helped" and "opened" are similar because they both end in "-ed".

In the Greek words that she was trying to dovetail, the parts of the respective words that govern their core meaning are the first part, not the last part, of the words. The root of iasasthai is ia-, not -sasthai. And the same principle holds for euangelisasthai.

The sad part was that her audience actually stood and applauded her when she demonstrated this nonsense. Some people know just enough Greek to be dangerous.

buried treasure

Earlier this week I was invited by our boys to play pirates with them--we were searching for buried treasure (in their bedroom). As we finally made it to our destination (sitting on the bed), Jonah jumped off and found the buried treasure.

"Look!" he said, his hands opening to reveal a pretend treasure. "Birthday cake!"

chrysostom on jonah

I'm working on a four-part sermon series on the Book of Jonah, and in my studies ran across a quote from St John Chrysostom:

'They threw overboard the wares that were in the ship into the sea; but the ship was not getting any lighter,' because the entire cargo still remained within it, the body of the prophet, the heavy cargo, not according to the nature of the body but from the weight of sin. For nothing is so heavy and onerous to bear as sin and disobedience.

new blog

New blog--same title as before!

"unresting death" meets its master

While I was in Louisiana, our parish brought the Rev. Fleming Rutledge in for a weekend, for a retreat and to preach on Sunday. She is a marvelous preacher (with a number of books publishing her sermons), who told us that she wasn't as interested in congregations thanking her for her sermons as she wanted them to say, "that was the Gospel."

The Rev. Rutledge preached an extraordinary sermon, "'Unresting Death' Meets Its Master" at the National Cathedral earlier this year. I highly recommend it, available in video, audio, or text.