lent 5b

Psalm 51 does not let any of us off the hook—not the progressives, the evangelicals, or the feel-good agnostics.

It is not pain and violence that God desires, says the preacher of Hebrews. It is human life as God created it to be, summoned it to be.

The Epistle to the Hebrews joins the Revelation to John as the literature most intimidating to readers of the New Testament. With the Revelation the reader must endure its terrible splendor; with Hebrews the reader must listen intently to the tightly woven arguments in what the writer calls a sermon.