Enjoy the concerts; find a Christian one too, maybe in another church. Have some people over; ask them, “What do you remember from this time of year when you were growing up?” Get that conversation going, don’t just mumble ‘Jesus’ when it’s your turn, spell it out.    Is Jesus the reason for the season?... Continue Reading

These are major temptations to anxiety and fear. Serious distractions. Now add to all this the additional distractions and stressers of the Christmas season – presents to buy and wrap, getting a tree, decorating, family gatherings, travel, then there’s the gift wrap outreach and the food collection and the Christmas eve outreach with the live... Continue Reading

Over the last fifty years in particular the religious sensibilities of the modern Western world have turned eastward to inform our self-understanding.  Today the all-pervasive message conveyed in the culture is that mother-nature is all there is and all we have.  There is no infinite, personal, transcendent God separate from the universe, rendering the Incarnation... Continue Reading

It’s easy to look to the temporal, tangible realities staring us in the face as our assurance of hope, like the assurance of our newborn’s breathing patterns or making our toddler hold our hand at all times in public. We feel like we can control those moments. We can put our finger on them as... Continue Reading

As for myself, I have never been offended when the Pope says something that sounds robustly Roman Catholic or when bears refuse to use the public lavatories and simply relieve themselves in the woods.  It is what they are supposed to do.  And when I talk about how beautiful my wife is, you should not... Continue Reading

Spiritual death is our natural home and habitat. As we look around this home, we see the ornaments and decorations of hatred, murder, ill-will, and malice confirming our dismal and dreadful location. The good news is that John doesn’t leave us there. He sees a way out, a way of being transported from death to... Continue Reading

That the expressions “kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven” are interchangeable teach us that the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated is principally eschatological but was manifested clearly during his ministry on the earth and, according to the early church, the Apostles’ Creed, the medieval church—during which the question was not whether Christ is reigning now but... Continue Reading

“The incarnation compels our praise, not our foolish and self-serving notions of its replication. There is one incarnation under God. God’s Son, Jesus Christ, is the only incarnate One. He submitted to the Father and took on human flesh. To honor God in worship and in mission is to celebrate and proclaim this Beloved, incarnate... Continue Reading

“Throughout long centuries of enslavement based on race followed by decades of racism enshrined in the laws of Jim Crow, African Americans have endured constant assaults on their image-bearing status. Being counted as 3/5 a person for voting purposes, living under the morbid rule of “separate but equal”, and absorbing the subtle blows of micro-aggressions... Continue Reading

“The Bible makes it rather clear that we were made for community. We gather together for the worship of God. The Bible makes it rather clear that there are structures of authority in regards to spiritual matters. The Bible makes it also rather clear that when we fail to honor and remember the past, we... Continue Reading