Man, this dude took a while to drop a jewel in this book, but he finally came through half way through the book. Listen to this piece on the resurrection and culture.

"In accordance with Girards theory of the sacred, cultures were regularly erected over the graves of the slain victims, as they presuppose that the society has reached an inner peace, which spontaneously sets itself up by means of the violent driving out and sacralization. The grave, which covers up the corpse , thus become son the one hand the symbol of that great process of veiling on which every society is based, and on the other the first clearly defined cultural sign, because with it the distinction between sacred and profane is symbolically pinned down: Culture always starts form the grave. The grave is always the first human memorial, which has to be erected over the victim  who has been driven out, the first, most elementary, most fundamental layer of cultural signs. No culture without a grave, no grave without culture. If the sealed grave is really the great symbol of the sacred cultures, insofar as they cover something over, then it is more than an accidental detail that the accounts of Easter in the gospels begin with the narration of the opened grave, in which there is no longer a corpse to be found. ... In a violent conflict, the murdered corpse is the emperical sign there from the very beginning, that there has been a victim and that some one else was the victor. Talk of an Easter victory can not therefore lightly pass by this sign....the opened grave has, against the background of Girards theory, an important symbolic meaning. It shows that the new beginning constituted by Easter reaches so deep that the ultimate foundations of human culture itself, until now veiled, are laid bare" p. 129-130

Another sign pointing us to the fact that we have not even begun to understand the riches and wisdom and depth of the gospel. The incarnation, Ministry, Death, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus are saturated with the mystery of God and the concrete ....everything. WOW! is all I have to say.

I kind of like this presentation from James Choung. It hits a few of the models of atonement, but leaves out the penal-substitution model, which I am not too excited about these days actually :) I think we need to explore and emphasize other models of the atonement, and dive deeper into Christus Victor for example. Can you tell me what model of atonement this guy is alluding to with his presentation? If not, then you probably familiar with only one model of the atonement. This should bother you as there are multiple images and models used in scripture to help us understand what Jesus did.

This is a great picture of what it means to be salt and light in the world. These pictures are from Tel Aviv, an area that has felt the brunt of violence and war. There is a small movement called Dispatchwork where people go around with Legos and patch up the holes and craters in walls and monuments with a colorful mosaic of plastic art. It is a refusal to let the effects of war brand an area with destruction.

They are filling in the wounds and scars of war with a creative, beautiful touch of art. It is a testimony that beauty can emerge after tragedy. This is exactly what Jesus does in our lives.