Why Should We Reconcile | Ralph West

The Henry Center Archive

Sermon Title - Looking Up and Looking Out: A Theology of Reconciliation There is something about the verticality of life. Whether telephone poles or sky scrapers. But we don’t simply look up; we also look out. There is also something horizontal. In our embodied existence, we see the two dimensions. Even on the cross, there is a vertical and a horizontal directionality. One is ineffective without the other. Yet, in much of our American culture, we have not sustained this mutuality. In this sermon, Rev. Ralph West exhorts the church to remember and live in the fact of the battle won. The victory of the cross has brought in the horizontality of the message, and now we are all ministers with a message and a ministry of reconciliation. Ralph D. West (DMin Beeson Divinity School) is Founder and Senior Pastor of The Church Without Walls and Adjunct Professor of Preaching at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary. The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world. Visit the HCTU website: https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/ Subscribe to the HCTU Newsletter: https://bit.ly/326pRL5 Connect with us! https://twitter.com/henry_center https://www.facebook.com/henrycenter/ https://www.instagram.com/thehenrycenter/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/thehenrycenter