Marginalia Weekly Round-Up | September 21–24, 2026

September 25, 2026September 22, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

This week’s Marginalia keeps circling a question of presence: where God is found when comfort fails, when grace appears in another person’s face, when salvation comes by hidden means, and when what looks like abundance turns out to be a lack.

When God Is Your Existential Anchor—and Your Enemy | Job 16.6-9
What if the thing we need in suffering is not an explanation—or even “comfort”—but presence?

Seeing the Face of God in Another | Genesis 33.10
Jacob’s reunion with Esau offers a startling place to glimpse the face and presence of God.

The God Who Hides Himself | Isaiah 45.15
Sometimes the hiddenness of God is bound up with the strange and unexpected means by which salvation arrives.

When Abundance Is Actually a Lack | Mark 10.21-22
Jesus looks with love at a man who has much—and names the one thing he lacks.

From the Margins

History, Theology, & Wrestling with God | Genesis 32.24-32 — The chapter immediately before this week’s Genesis note also turns on seeing God “face to face.” Read together, the two Marginalia put Jacob’s encounter with God beside his encounter with Esau in a fascinating way.

Elsewhere in the Archive

My Sermon on Judgment, Poverty, Sheep, & Goats — Thursday’s Mark note finds Jesus confronting a wealthy man with what his possessions may be keeping him from. This older sermon turns to Matthew 25, where Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the stranger, the naked, and the imprisoned—another unsettling Gospel meditation on what our relationship to material abundance reveals.

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When Abundance Is Actually a Lack | Mark 10.21-22

September 24, 2026September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
—Mark 10:21-22

I love the word play here. First off, the text makes it clear that Jesus knows that these words are harsh. But, the text tries to assure us that even these seemingly hard, impossible, graceless words actually come from a place of love from within Jesus.

Also, I love how he calls this young man’s wealth a lack. The things we have can actually be a void to our souls and our humanity. And so, the implication is that by giving things away he receives a fullness. He gains something. A lack is turned into an abundance as his abundance is turned into something that is lacking.

For more on possessions, scarcity, and the economy of God’s abundance, read: A Brief Theology of Stewardship.

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The God Who Hides Himself | Isaiah 45.15

September 23, 2026September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself,
O God of Israel, the Savior.”
—Isaiah 45:15

You truly are a God who hides himself, Lord. But it’s interesting that this statement, which speaks so much to me right now in a mystical, spiritual way, originally seems to have been referring to the mysterious and hidden means by which you save your people. That salvation comes through hidden things and unexpected things and not in the ways we expect, or even want. I really don’t like this, frankly. But it seems your people have had an issue with it well before me. Nevertheless, you sometimes save us in your hiddenness in a way that that would not be as thorough or effective if you were more apparent.

For more on Cyrus and God’s unexpected means of redemption in Isaiah 45, read: The Sweet Taste of Sovereign Suffering.

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Seeing the Face of God in Another | Genesis 33.10

September 22, 2026September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

“Jacob said, ‘No, please; if I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand, for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me with such favor.’”
—Genesis 33:10

Showing favor to one another is like seeing God among us and with us. A gracious and generous countenance is God’s presence about us. One way God can facilitate reconciliation between even enemies is simply by the look on someone’s face. Even as infants, we know that the most important things we long to know about how someone feels about us is communicated by their face and nonverbal cues. Anyone that’s been in a country where they don’t speak the language knows this is also the case. We are such a word-based culture, and yet even here, God simply appears in the face of a perceived enemy.

And on one other small practical note: this demonstrates how the first moments of receiving someone or greeting someone sets so much of the tone for everything else that follows. So consider the first words you say to people when you wake up or when you walk into the office or when you pick your child up from school. How we initially receive people is so important for them getting their bearings and knowing who they are to you. Because in it, they might see the face of God.

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When God Is Your Anchor…and Enemy | Job 16.6-9

September 21, 2026September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
    and if I refrain, how much of it leaves me?
Surely now God has worn me out;
    he has made desolate all my company.
And he has shriveled me up,
    which is a witness against me;
my leanness has risen up against me,
    and it testifies to my face.
He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
    he has gnashed his teeth at me;
    my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.”
—Job 16:6-9

When your existential anchor is your enemy, no words comfort, yours or anyone else’s. And maybe that’s one of the points here: “comfort” is not what we need or seek or offer in these moments. Perhaps it’s simply presence.

For more on comfort as presence within suffering, read: The Suffering of The Holy Spirit.

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How do you know you’re salty? | Luke 14.34-35

September 18, 2025September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is useful neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. If you have ears to hear, then hear!”
—Luke 14:34-35

I fully understand that this can be taken too far, but how could salt know if it has lost its saltiness? I would contend that the salt itself cannot determine its own saltiness in any other way than seeing its effects on the world around it.

In other words, I wonder if how the world views us in regards to the effects we have in the world are a better indicator of our “saltiness” than our own perception of how faithful to a system of the doctrines we are. If you have ears to hear, then hear!

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Proof of God? Wilderness & Return | Exodus 3.11-12

November 18, 2024September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
—Exodus 3.10-12

So…what’s God’s proof that He is with Moses and He is the one behind all this?

Not the mystical voice from the fire.
Not the miracles nor plagues.

Moses will know that God is real and he is the one that did all this only after deliverance and wilderness, having returned to where he started, utterly transformed.

Ain’t that the truth?

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Suffering: A Family Affair | James 1.2-3

March 28, 2023September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

“My brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”
—James 1.2-3

These verses are so rich, it’s going to take more than one post to mine their treasures. A flattened, cursory reading can sound very callous and insensitive to the lived experience of human suffering. However, I think there is a nuanced, sensitive perspective here that deserves sitting with a bit.

“brothers and sisters…”

James knows he is going to say tough things, so he uses this intimate term on the outset. He doesn’t say “children” holding himself above those going through trials, but uses this familial term for peers under the same authority. This shows that no one–not even an apostle, not even the brother of Jesus–is above suffering and trials.

It also reminds us that this letter is not to individuals, but a community. This is a huge key to these verses (and the whole book). The encouragement to “consider it all joy” when we face trials can seem at least insensitive, if not outright abusive, apart from this context.

Suffering should be a community effort. We ought to be close enough to others that we hurt when our spiritual family members hurt. We share the burden to live this verse out. In suffering, not everyone will have the wherewithal to follow all these encouragements, so others step in and make up for what we lack in a given moment.

Others can keep hope on our behalf when we feel hopeless. They can recognize the resilience and endurance growing within us when we have no more to give. They can maintain faith in God’s goodness while we doubt God is there at all. These words are meant to mark a community at all times, not individuals at all times.

Note here that the brother of Jesus calls us his siblings, showing the unity we have as the singular body of Christ. James knows that spiritual family is deeper and more defining than natural, biological family. Blood may be thicker than water, but spirit is thicker still.

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Family Messiahs & Modern Dispersions | James 1.1

March 24, 2023September 27, 2026 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes in the dispersion:
Greetings.
—James 1.1

1. “servant” (or “slave”): This is surprising. Traditionally, James is one of the brothers of Jesus (I’ve tried, but I just can’t follow Catholicism in its beliefs of Mary’s perpetual virginity and these being Jesus’ “cousins”). The Gospels tell us that Jesus’ brothers denied Christ as Messiah. They thought he was crazy. What must have happened to James to change his view to be a “slave” of his brother? How easy would it be for any of us to so quickly start seeing our brother or sister as the Son of God through which all things we were created, by which all things are sustained?

2. “dispersion”: All Jews living outside Judea. We can find ourselves in this. God’s people far from where God has promised us to be, trying to figure out how to do this whole “Christianity” thing. This is what the rest of James is about. This whole earth is ours and we wait expectantly for the enemies to be cleared out so we can receive our inheritance. So what does life look like in the tension of awaiting promises for a new home, knowing it’s not yet time, but it will come? What is the first characteristic of this life that James brings up? What does life here look like? The answer is probably in verses 2-4: a life of suffering for the purposes that God has laid out for us.

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Mary: Ordained as Prophetess, Priestess, & Queen

December 8, 2021December 8, 2021 / Paul Burkhart / 4 Comments

One of the beautiful things about Catholic theology is that it sees story as one of its main interpretive filters. Protestantism, on the other hand, focuses much more on historical context and the text itself.

To modern ears, the Protestant ways sounds great, but there’s one big problem: this is not how most of the biblical writers, Jesus, the apostles, the early church, nor most of church history have ever treated the Bible. They were and have been much “freer” with the text (yes, often to a fault). Catholicism’s rootedness in ancient ways of reading invites them into new dimensions and interpretations.

Take Mary, for example. Catholics see her foretold in the Old Testament just as much as Jesus is. They see her in prophecies and allegorically represented in other women. They see parallels between her and the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, and the Temple, saying they all carried the Holy of Holies within them, and were revered for it.

There are three biblical offices of authority among God’s people: Prophet, Priest, and King. Christians see Jesus as the fulfillment and highest expression of each of these, but in the Advent event, you can see Mary serving these functions as well. So today, as a Protestant, I want to sit with this and revel in some beauty and divine mystery.

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The Gospel of Mark & Laureti’s “The Triumph of the Cross over Paganism”

October 16, 2019 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

For each preaching series at my church, we take time in choosing a piece of art to reflect the content. This is a reflection I wrote for our series going through the Gospel of Mark.

Of all the Gospels, the Gospel of Mark is the most stripped-down, earthy, human depiction of Jesus. It is spare and humble, with an earnest pace, and ironic wink. Yet it may seem odd that we’ve decided on Tomasso Laureti’s 1585 fresco Triumph of Christianity as its thematic image—a painting that hangs in one of the most opulent, larger-than-life halls of power in all the world.

Laureti’s piece lives on the ceiling of the Hall of Constantine, the largest room in the Vatican’s Papal Palace. It is not part of the original design: it replaced the original wooden ceiling in 1585, six decades after the room was finished. This being the case, there is an odd tension between this art and the garish displays on the walls below; and this tension embodies much what we will be explore in our sermon series through Mark.
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Palm Sunday or, “Oh, the Glory, the Beauty, & the Tragedy of Being Human!”

April 15, 2019 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

This past Sunday was Palm Sunday, the Christian holiday that ushers in Holy Week. It celebrates the “triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem (Mk 11:1-11). In hindsight, though, this is one of the oddest “triumphal entries” one could imagine. It is the triumphal kick-off for what would be the death of the Son of God for the sins of the world.

Even now, millennia removed from the events of this week, we still wonder at how this all works. How does one person’s death–however good they are–account for every sin of every human in all of history?

It only begins to make some sort of sense when we acknowledge that this great exchange is not between to equals. Jesus, the Good and Innocent human, cannot merely be “another man” dying for another.

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I Am a Victimizer

March 20, 2018February 28, 2020 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.
~ 1 John 2.9-11

“The First Christian Sermon” [a sermon, ironically]

July 3, 2017July 28, 2021 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Well, I’m finally coming off a whirlwind month of preaching three out of four weeks while our lead pastor is on vacation…and while I keep doing my full-time day job. So now, hopefully I’ll be able to post more here again. I do want to share with you these sermons though.

This summer, my church is going through different key texts in the book of Acts, chronicling the opening years of the Christian movement in the world. In the first of these sermons I’ve done during the past month, I got to preach on the Christian holiday of Trinity Sunday and my text was the very first Christian sermon ever preached–Peter’s Pentecost message. I tried to weave these together best I could.

The text is Acts 2.22-39, and here’s the sermon audio. Feel free to send me any thoughts, questions or concerns:

You can also download it here, or subscribe to our podcast. If reading is more your style, here are my notes for your perusal. Continue reading →

After the Final “No”, There Comes a “Yes” [Good Friday Sermon 2017]

May 4, 2017May 26, 2017 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

I’m really looking forward to doing a happy sermon sometime soon. But alas, I find myself preaching on both Ash Wednesday and Good Friday this year–not the happiest of Church Holy Days.

And yet there is hope.

It’s fashionable to emphasize the narrative nature of God’s work in the world. And yes, it’s true–there is a progressive nature to Redemption, with a beginning, middle, and end.

But God’s work is also often cyclical, with certain rhythms and movements that return, repeat, and fold within one another.

I had this in mind as I went into this sermon. Yes, we ought to press into the darkness and doubt of the Cross without just quickly comforting ourselves with the Resurrection–we have to sit there for a bit–and yet the Church Calendar gets into our bones and souls to such an extent that it transforms the darkness. We can never sit in the Cross’ forsakenness without feeling the spiritual muscle memory of previous Easters gone by. And in that is hope.

This realization led me to largely do away with my notes (which you can find below) when giving this sermon and largely ad-lib, speaking from the heart as I wrestled with this stuff in real-time. The text selections came from Matthew 26-27, and here’s the sermon audio. Feel free to send me any thoughts, questions or concerns: