Quotes about Spirituality

prophetic preaching can take place only where the preacher is deeply embedded in the YHWH narrative.

Prophecy cannot be separated very long from doxology, or it will either wither or become ideology. Abraham

Relationship with God is not immune to the surprises and costs of our daily life.

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

requires both the outrageousness of God and the daily work of decreasing so that Jesus and God's vision of peace may increase.

Nobody is profane or unclean. Nobody can be discounted. Nobody is second-class. Nobody is subject to dismissal. Nobody should be cheap labor. Nobody should suffer systems of violence. Old living is contradicted by the truth of the Spirit. The superstition of superiority is broken. The old distinction of chosenness is placed in question.

to domesticate God and so to curb the freedom that belongs to this erupting God (Exod. 20:4

Sabbath is the visible acknowledgment that life is not defined by commoditization.

we will not have a politics of justice and compassion unless we have a religion of God's freedom.

Reading Jeremiah alone leaves faith in death where God finally will not stay. And reading Second Isaiah alone leads us to imagine that we may receive comfort without tears and tearing. Clearly, only those who anguish will sing new songs. Without anguish the new song is likely to be strident and just more royal fakery.

So in Psalm 73, when life is inequitable, the speaker is aware of a skewed relationship in which one is less than human: When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast toward you. (Ps. 73:21-22; cf. 102:7-8)49

But the pull of God's largeness summons all of us, often through the words and presence of "the other." The old teaching of exclusion cannot fully protect us from God's pull to be a neighbor.