Flesh made Word
Can we truly claim the profound dignity of the baptized, of personhood? How do we live into this awesome mystery as the Church, through her liturgy, the Eucharist, prayer, metanoia, tradition, community and mission? What is the kenotic posture, the antinomy we are to embrace if we are to travel where reason and the god made in our own image is finally left behind?
Who is Lord? Vigil, personhood, renunciation and baptismal identity, part 2
Coming to the church from Eastern traditions, my personal difficulty was not just in personifying evil, but personifying God. If I am a person, how is God a person? Is Satan a person? Continue reading
Who is Lord? Vigil, personhood, renunciation and baptismal identity, part 1
Are you ready to renounce your pharoahs and name your true Lord? Continue reading
Spring decorating
First, the church exists to worship God in Jesus Christ. Second, the Church exists to make new disciples of Jesus Christ. Everything else is decoration. Continue reading
Dung in her hair
Esther has “Gap.” Naming our unworthiness, with our hair full of dung does not please God. The posture of humility and repentance is for us: to create the space, and to acknowledge the vast gap—so to enable us to receive what God has already given. Continue reading
Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing
The language of sin and death doesn’t bode well for filling our pews with newcomers, it would seem. We tactfully tiptoe around these words, somehow afraid that we’re being perceived as exclusive, barn-burner preachers with tightly brill-creamed hair, our voices hoarse with gnashing of teeth and hell fire, waving the holy book above our heads. Continue reading
Other
In the moment of being seen by this other, I realize that that other is another subject, another me, another “I am” looking back at me as his object. We experience the other when we are seen by the other. Continue reading
Pair of kings and Holy Innocents
That is why the stakes are so high for this Christian business of ours. It’s up to us to choose our king—the consequences for us all, and especially the innocent, could not be greater. Continue reading
Ring true?
May this mystery, revealed in vulnerability and lowliness turn our reasonableness upside down so that we can tenderly embrace our own lowliness and boldly love one another. After all, no matter how big, bad, and reasonable you are, when your heart is broken open, a toy phone rings true. Continue reading
Imagine
“But about that day and hour no one knows… therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” What a world that is going to be. Imagine. Continue reading
“The chosen”
God doesn’t “save” those who pray more fervently, or pronounce the correct creed, or destroy living cancer cells in his “chosen.” Nor does he miraculously alter the laws of nature to interfere, scold, punish, or reward. God is love. God is. Continue reading
