Robert Farrar Capon
Robert Farrar Capon
Robert Farrar Caponwas an American Episcopal priest, author and chef. He was born in Jackson Heights, Queens in 1925. A lifelong New Yorker, for almost thirty years Capon was a full-time parish priest in Port Jefferson, New York. In 1965, he published his first book, Bed and Board, and in 1977 he left the full-time ministry to devote more time to his writing career. He authored a total of twenty books, including Between Noon and Three, The Supper of the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
CountryUnited States of America
brother doors grace
Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.
jesus attitude mistake
But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace - the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors - makes all infirmities occasions of glory.
jesus reform christ
Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works.
pain dirty hands
If God seems to be in no hurry to make the problem of evil go away, maybe we shouldn't be, either. Maybe our compulsion to wash God's hands for him is a service he doesn't appreciate. Maybe - all theodicies and nearly all theologians to the contrary - evil is where we meet God. Maybe he isn't bothered by showing up dirty for his dates with creation. Maybe - just maybe - if we ever solved the problem, we'd have talked ourselves out of a lover.
jesus home garden
A lost sheep is, for all practical purposes a dead sheep. It is the admission that we are dead in our sins---that we have no power of ourselves either to save ourselves or to convince anyone else that we are worth saving. It is the recognition that our whole life is out of our hands and that if we ever live again, our life will be entirely the gift of some gracious shepherd. God finds us the desert of death (not in the garden of improvement) and in the power of Jesus' resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home.
home mean responsibility
The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.
jesus taught saved
We are not saved by what Jesus taught, and we are certainly not saved by what we understand Jesus to have taught. We are saved by Jesus Himself.
cheating believe judging
...we are saved by Christ alone who raises us from the dead - from the absolution of our death. We come before him at the judgement with no handwriting whatsoever against us. It's simply cheating to say you believe that and then renege on it by postulating some list of extra-rotten crimes for which Christ has to send you to hell. He, the universal Redeemer, is the only judge; as far as he's concerned, the only mandatory sentence is to life and life abundant.
grace easier remains
Even to this day, grace remains hard to swallow. Religiosity and moralism go down easier than free forgiveness.
heaven forgiven sinner
Heaven is populated entirely by forgiven sinners
taste world forget
We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.
salvation given bargains
Salvation is a gift given, not a bargain struck.
tea safe cups
You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead —and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea.
acceptance self giving
Lord, please restore to us the comfort of merit and demerit. Show us that there is at least something we can do. Tell us that at the end of the day there will at least be one redeeming card of our very own. Lord, if it is not too much to ask, send us to bed with a few shreds of self-respect upon which we can congratulate ourselves. But whatever you do, do not preach grace. Give us something to do, anything; but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance.