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Posts from the ‘Advent/Christmas’ Category

Dec 18

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God is Born

Christmas at the jail is invariably a night of brutal dissonances. Kitschy decorations (Santas, elves, cardboard fireplaces, candy canes) labouring to add a bit of colour to drab concrete and plastic. Christmas carols competing for auditory space with the squawk and buzz of intercoms and the clanging of heavy doors. Ornate words about hope and joy in a place where despair and cynicism come more naturally. In the Christian life, there is always a gap between the hope we proclaim and the reality we experience. This is life in between Christ’s advents. At the jail, the gap just seems exponentially wider. Read more

Dec 25

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A Child

A child is placed here at the midpoint of world history—a child born of human beings, a son given by God. That is the mystery of the redemption of the world; everything past and everything future is encompassed here. The infinite mercy of the almighty God comes to us, descends to us in the form of a child, his Son. That this child is born for us, this son is given to us, that this human child and Son of God belongs to me, that I know him, have him, love him, that I am his and he is mine—on this alone my life now depends. A child has our life in his hands.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A very Merry Christmas to all who drop by here!

Dec 23

All In (Sing!)

So here we are at the doorstep of another Christmas. This is a time of year that tends to be drenched with an awful lot of hope and nostalgia and longing and kitschy expectation. The family will be together and the snow will be lightly falling and there will be candles and cheer and lights and the perfect present (always gratefully received) and funny movies and good food and hot chocolate and eggnog (or perhaps something stronger) and wistful smiles and everything will be magnificent. Christmas, perhaps like no other holiday, has a lot to live up to each year. Read more

Dec 25

The Gift Too Great to Make Sense Of

What can I give him, poor as I am? What indeed: for God today has recreated the world and refashioned you and me in his own image. God today has burst open the frontiers of all possible and imaginable experience and come among us. The Maker of all reaches out his hand and touches [us]. And for that reaching out there is no exchange, there is no fit return that we can make. God’s pure, causeless, gratuitous love can have no answer, except some faint fumbling echo of that very gratuity and pointlessness itself; the gift too great to make sense of.

— Rowan Williams, from a sermon called “Christmas Gifts” in Open to Judgment

Image source.

Dec 15

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A Soul’s Worth

Last year around this time, I wrote a short piece on my first Christmas at the jail, about how Christmas carols sound different surrounded by plastic and concrete than they do in candle-lit church sanctuaries, about how lines like “And you, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low” or “For sinners here, the silent Word is pleading” seem somehow more urgent or pressing or something here. The familiar words come crashing into the ugliness of the human condition from out there in “abstract theology land” with startling force. Read more

Dec 22

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Far as the Curse is Found

He comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found. — Joy to the World

I often tell people that the bible sounds different when you read it in jail. The same is true for Christmas carols. The words and the melodies sound different when sung far away from festive church sanctuaries, when instead of candles and creches it’s just concrete and plastic and reinforced glass. You’re drawn to different lines of the familiar songs. Read more

Dec 21

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Some Force of Love and Logic

As Christmas draws near, I am thinking, appropriately, no doubt, about awe. I happen to rather like awe and experience it regularly. I experience it in all the usual places—mountaintops, oceans, majestic cathedrals, spine-tingling music. On a perhaps less obviously inspiring note, after a third consecutive morning dragging myself out of the house in sub -30-degree temperatures I am currently experiencing awe at just how bone-crushingly cold this planet is capable of getting. But yeah, I am generally a big fan of awe. Read more

Dec 13

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The Violent Take It By Force

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. — Matthew 11:12

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I am not a violent man. I have never been in a fight. Not a real one anyway. I suppose there were hockey skirmishes and the ordinary fraternal conflagrations of childhood, but these little irruptions don’t really count. I was invariably terrible at violence. At heart, I am a peacemaker, if of a conflicted sort. Read more

Dec 29

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The Presence of God

Mid-way through the Christmas season, I’ve been thinking about the presence of God. This season is all about celebrating “God with us.” This is what our songs and scriptures and stories proclaim throughout the season. And is this not what we all long for? To experience God as present with and for us. Read more

Dec 25

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The Fullness of Time

Christmas is a time for joy. Perhaps this year, of all years, we could use a focus on joy as we draw near to the manger. I want to offer a brief reflection on those two words.

Time and joy.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:1-4).

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Dec 16

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Winners and Losers

I was captivated by an article over breakfast this morning. It was about a kid from a small town in southern Alberta who has improbably made his way to a massive NCAA college football program. Ajou Ajou is the child of South Sudanese refugees who grew up in Brooks, a rough prairie town whose demographics have been transformed in the last two decades by virtue of a massive meat-packing plant that aggressively recruited around the world for labourers. His is, in many ways, a classic rags to riches story. A poor immigrant kid with plenty of obstacles, growing up in a strange land, whose drive and determination, and no small amount of God-given talent, have led him to the top. His future looks bright. He is, against all odds, a winner. Read more

Dec 13

4 Comments

Come

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of my favourite songs each year around this time is Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. There are endless versions of it, of course—this year, I’m enjoying Future of Forestry’s take on the grand old hymn—but I’m at least as drawn to the lyrics as any particular rendition of it. There are few songs that convey the depth of human longing and the beauty of the Christian hope like this one. Read more

Dec 20

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The Conquest of Christmas

Each year around this time, I find myself remarking to my congregation that the songs of Advent and Christmas give us some of our best theology. I’m sure they’re getting weary of hearing it by now. In my meagre defense, after a while one runs out of new things to say. At any rate, it’s no less true for my repeating it endlessly. Aside from just being a delight to sing, these songs give us marvelous lines like:

  • Oh, love beyond all telling, that led thee to embrace, in love, all love excelling, our lost and troubled race.
  • Dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.
  • Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today!
  • Hail the incarnate deity; pleased with us in flesh to dwell; Jesus, our Immanuel!
  • Son of God, Love’s pure light, radiant, beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.

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Dec 18

8 Comments

A Body

There are days when the weight of human cruelty and carelessness seems almost too much to bear. I’m not speaking about the vicious climate of our political discourse or the endless shouting and posturing the dominates our news media—the wearisome, grinding tedium of left shouting at right and right shouting at left. This, too, is excruciating, but I’m thinking more prosaically today. I’m thinking of the middle school playground, or the creaking and groaning marriage, or the toxic workplace or the chaos and confusion of the dementia ward or the high school cafeteria. I’m thinking of the endless weaponizing of words, the myriad ways in which we are inhuman to one another in our everyday lives. Read more

Dec 4

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It’s All Your Fault!

There are at least two reasons to like the Nashville Predators hockey team. First, the yellow uniforms. Obviously. You have to admire a team that cares so little about the intimidation factor that they’re willing to skate out in mustard yellow. Second, the Preds fans have (had?) this delightful tradition that follows each of the home team’s goals. They begin by serenading the opponent’s goaltender, chanting his last name in a kind of whiny, mocking voice, and punctuating the ridicule by screaming, “It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault, it’s all your fault!!” It’s great fun—at least if you’re on the right end of the score. I watched a bit of a Predators game last night before heading out to my own beer league hockey game where, as it happens, half of the goals our team gave up were, well, all my fault. Luckily there aren’t many fans at beer league hockey games and the few who do show up can’t be bothered to summon the requisite energy for mockery. Read more

Nov 29

Look Up

The season of Advent approaches and with it the ever-present temptation to dwell in the saccharine, the safe, the sanitized—harmless images of God’s coming that trouble us far less than they ought to. I feel this temptation every year. It’s easy to prepare for the coming of a harmless child that is with us but demands little of us. It was and is all too easy for earth to receive her king poorly. Read more

Dec 20

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Dwell With Us

“I think that the Christian doctrine of redemption—this idea that we need to be “redeemed” from something—is just wrong. And it’s done all kinds of harm.” The comment came in the midst of an invigorating and wide-ranging conversation with an acquaintance over coffee recently. It was one of those delightful encounters where the person you’re talking with is much smarter than you—where you feel like you’re kind of scrambling to keep up. It was good exercise for the brain. Read more

Dec 24

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Holy Night

Last night the kids and I went Christmas caroling with some friends from church. For whatever reason, I haven’t done this much over the years. But my daughter had been enthusiastic about it all week. And my son, well, we bribed him with the prospect of pizza after our caroling was done.  Read more

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