The Christian church . . . has always been committed to a triune experience and understanding of God, but most preachers seldom preach on this subject. The discipline of addressing the congregation once a year on the meaning of triune faith and worship is helpful and necessary. . . . [...]
Pentecost Sunday ends the extraordinary season that began on the first Sunday of Advent. In approximately six months the church has been carried through all the saving events of God—his incarnation, manifestation to the world, life, death, resurrection, and ascension as well as the coming of the Holy Spirit. All [...]
If Jesus ascended into heaven, has he left any signs of his presence among us? . . . If we wish to form congregational and personal spirituality, we will call attention to the ascended Lord who eternally intercedes for us and is always with us through the church and the [...]
The contours of God’s divine embrace are captured in a few words: God, creation, fall, incarnation, death and resurrection, re-creation, new heavens and new earth. . . . The spiritual life that we live in God’s creation is situated in this narrative, the story of God’s world. This is the [...]
In memory of our founder and friend, Bob Webber (Nov 27, 1933 — Apr 27, 2007). Though deeply missed, his vision thrives. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might (Eccl 9:10). In his resurrection [Jesus] conquered the results of sin—which is death—so that death is [...]
We are all part of the problem. . . . But only one man is the solution, and his name is Jesus. -Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 111. Sign up to receive Webber Quote by email.
Every Sunday is a “little Easter.” Every Sunday of the year is a celebration of the Easter event. The work of the people in “doing the Christ event” through memory and hope is the source for personal and corporate formation into resurrection spirituality. -Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality [...]
The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ and are called to live in our baptismal identity in his resurrection. This essential theme of Easter cannot be communicated in a day. [...]
The biblical metaphor for Easter spirituality is found in baptism. The baptized life is a life that is lived in the pattern of death and resurrection. . . . This is a daily, existential, moment-by-moment experience as we choose in this or that situation to die to the sins for [...]
The spiritual life is a calling to become fully human after the likeness of Christ, who, being united with God, has shown us what humanity, united to God, was intended to be. -Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 103. [...]
Spirituality is our union with God through our union with Jesus Christ accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. The symbol of this union for the Christian is baptism. The spiritual life that results from this union is dying to sin and rising to the new life in Christ [...]
Worshipers are not a cheering section for God. The problem with this kind of worship is not only that it is an accommodation to culture but that it is also a severe example of self-situated spirituality. -Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, MI: [...]
Experience in worship is not my immediate pleasure or even my immediate response. The focus of experience is not on my experience of God but on how God as the subject of worship forms me through word and sacrament and thereby changes my life. -Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: [...]
Lent is the time to identify a power working against us and crucify it with Christ and bury it in the tomb, never to be raised again. . . . [Fasting] controls the passion for food in order to deal with a passion of another sort that holds us in [...]
Lent . . . calls us back to God, back to basics, back to the spiritual realities of life. It calls on us to put to death the sin and the indifference we have in our hearts toward God and our fellow persons. And it beckons us to enter once [...]