It is most unfortunate that, in the long history of the church, “faith” has been almost everywhere transubstantiated into “belief,” which transposes the concrete practicality of trust into a cognitive enterprise. How ludicrous that in the long, oppressive history of orthodoxy – which guards cognitive formulations – that those who enforce right belief seem most often to be themselves unable or unwilling to engage in deep trust.

Even in the wilderness with scarce resources, God mandates a pause for Sabbath for the community:.

The key insight is that honest talk transforms and emancipates when it is received in faithful seriousness.

In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal consciousness. He has, in fact, dismantled the dominant culture and nullified its claims. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability required by that solidarity. The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience.

As we go to the places where we are called by God – sometimes gladly, sometimes reluctantly, always in anxiety – we are drawn into the newness of God’s future.

We have nearly lost our capacity to think ihcologicafly about public issues and public problems.

Cynicism always comes clothed in “realism”. The alternatives to begin with an act of imagination. Can we imagine another way?

Hans Walter Wolff has suggested that the Sabbath is the great equalizer, for that day is a foretaste of the kingdom when all-great and small-are reckoned to be exactly equal .2′ All-masters and slaves-are to engage in this most godlike activity of being at peace.

The church has a huge stake in breaking the silence, because the God of the Bible characteristically appears at the margins of established power arrangements, whether theological or socioeconomic and political.

To participate in the Eucharist is to live inside God’s imagination. It is to be caught up into what is really real, the body of Christ.