Heaven is populated entirely by forgiven sinners...

At about 3 pm on Thursday, September 5, Father Robert Farrar Capon died and entered his eternal reward.  His preaching has been both a mine from which I have dug many treasures as well as a jewel of what it means to creatively and faithfully speak the Gospel.  I highly recommend him to those just beginning as well as those well into their lives behind a pulpit.

Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013) was an Episcopal priest, noted preacher, and author of works on faith, preaching, and food. A lifelong New Yorker, he was for almost thirty years parish priest in Port Jefferson, New York. In 1965, he published his first book, Bed and Board, and in 1977 he left parish to write full-time. He authored a total of twenty books, including Between Noon and Three, The Supper of the Lamb, Genesis: The Movie, and a trilogy on Jesus’ parables: The Parables of Grace, The Parables of the Kingdom, and The Parables of Judgment.  Capon described himself in the introduction to one of his books as an “old-fashioned high churchman and a Thomist to boot.” Perhaps he is primarily known for his theme of the is the radical grace of God.

“We are free; and free above all from the messes we have made of our own lives.”

 “Once dead, we are out from under all the blame-harrows and guilt-spreaders forever.”

 "The sad truth of our fallen condition is that we don't want anything to do with a system of salvation that works by grace through faith."

"If after 2000years we are not perfectly certain we are supposed to be preaching that Jesus died and rose again, then we had best file for bankruptcy..."

"At its root, therefore, the Gospel is immoral, not moral: it lets scoundrels in free for nothing."

"God says in Jesus...that he's junked that whole order in which bookkeeping was king and made a new one in which forgiveness reigns supreme." 

“He saves losers and only losers. He raises the dead and only the dead."

“A pastor can’t take grace too far. That is, not unless he claims that sin doesn’t matter…It matters to me, the sinner.”

"Every time it [grace] is rediscovered, we send in an army of moralizers, backwaterers, and scholasticizers to get us clear of it"

“The shepherd loses the sheep and acts out of his own goodness to alleviate his own loss.  The finding, the saving, are all in his hands—the sheep do nothing but get lost. It’s all grace.”

"Jesus came to call sinners, not the pseudo-righteous; he came to raise the dead, not to buy drinks for the marginally alive."

“In the Mystery of Christ’s death, he drops all the rotten works in the world down the black hole of his own forgetting”

“You have to see the Bible as one complete story, with redemption in Christ as the underlying theme and plot"

"Come then; leap upon these mountains, skip upon these hills and heights of earth. The road to Heaven does not run from the world, but through it. The longest [Supper] of all is no discontinuation of these sessions here, but a lifting of them all by priestly love. It is a place for men, not ghosts — for the risen gorgeousness of the New Earth and for the glorious earthiness of the True Jerusalem...Eat well then. Between our love and His Priesthood, He makes all things new, Our Last Home will be home indeed"

Hope that gets you going!