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Posts from the ‘Discipleship’ Category

Apr 26

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Prometheus vs. Adam

I spent yesterday evening with a group of young adults discussing, among other things, what it actually means to love our neighbours. Do any of us go as far as Jesus wants us to? Or even come close? Do we love enough or as well or as consistently as we ought to? Do we serve or give or help or deny ourselves in meaningful ways? Or do we just become increasingly skilled at making excuses for why we don’t do more?  At one point, I think I said something predictably uninspiring, something that seemed to reek of middle-aged resignation and cynicism. Well, give all that a decade. Sounds like a recipe for burnout to me. Read more

Apr 20

3 Comments

“Let Me Fit Myself into Your Setup”

Over the last while, I’ve been using a prayer book called, simply, Morning and Evening Prayers by Cornelius Plantinga. These prayers are often simultaneously simple and profound. It’s a rare morning (or evening) when I don’t find language in his prayers to anchor my own experience and aspiration.

Today, for example: Read more

Apr 3

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Falling Night: Review

It’s been a while since I did a book review in this space. I’m not sure if I’ve ever reviewed a work of fiction. Well, no time like the present, I suppose. Philip Clarke recently published Falling Night, his first novel. Clarke spent a good chunk of the 1990s in Africa, working as first a humanitarian aid worker and then as a tropical forest researcher. He also spent nine years as executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), an organization that I highly respect, and who I encountered through the writing of James Orbinski (An Imperfect Offering). Now, Clarke has moved on to fiction. Read more

Mar 26

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Our Selves and Our God

What kind of selves do we need to be to live in harmony with others?

I came across this question in a recent interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. The context for the question was the endlessly discussed and analyzed “polarization” that defines our cultural moment. But the question extends far beyond the culture wars or the toxicity of social media or the relentless politicizing of everyday life. It’s the kind of question we should always be asking, I think. And yet so few of us give even a passing thought to the “kinds of selves” we are becoming through the habits and disciplines (or not) that we are daily cultivating. Read more

Feb 5

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“Is Your Eye Evil Because I Am Good?”

I’ve written before about how Jesus’ parables sound different at different stages of one’s life. The story of the lost son, for example, is a story that seems to contain almost the whole of human failure and frustration, hope and longing, love, and desire. I have at various points in my life identified with the recklessly destructive younger son, the self-righteous older brother, and the heartsick father. I doubt I’m terribly unique in this. The story sounds different at forty-eight than it did at twenty-two. It’s the kind of story that can keep one company for a lifetime, opening new truths, unlocking new understandings, making sense of some of the terrain covered along the way. Read more

Aug 22

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Yay, I Love That Guy!

Should the world love and admire Christians? In a recent blog post, Richard Beck, professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University in Texas, shared something that he said to his students in a lecture last semester:

I hope for the day where, when the world sees Christians coming, they say, ‘The Christians are here! Yay! I love those people!’

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Jul 12

2 Comments

On Wisdom and Desperation

“I have learned, over time, to accept what I cannot change.” The words came from an older friend over breakfast recently. These were not trivial words, I knew. This person has endured significant physical trauma—the kind of thing that irreversibly changes a life, the kind of wound that never fully heals. This was no treacly aphorism, no self-congratulatory internet meme. This was the real deal. Read more

Jun 20

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Our Sense of Self

I recently received an email from someone who had concerns about various SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) initiatives being implemented in the school system where they worked. This person had strong convictions on the matter but expressed something bordering on helplessness when it comes to how to wade into an arena where it seems like there are landmines all around, where it seems virtually impossible to have a sane and respectful conversation that does not immediately descend into polarized tribalism and overheated rhetoric. “Well, join the club” I felt like saying. Read more

Feb 23

7 Comments

The Longing

Last year, I wrote a post called “Thick Like Honey, Sweet Like Grace.” The title came from a quote in Matthew Perry’s recent biography. It was Perry’s own description of encountering God in the pit of his despair and addiction. The post was a reflection on the lack of this kind of “existential urgency” in some (not all) “progressive” Christian circles. It was a plea not to swap out a political agenda for an existential one. To not forget, in all our important talk and work for social justice, that there is an irreducibly personal and affective dimension to Christian faith. To speak urgently of both justice and mercy. There is room for both. We need both. Desperately so, it would seem, given the barrage of articles these days outlining how sad and lonely and anxious and hopeless so many people feel, particularly the young. Read more

Jan 31

13 Comments

Back-to-Back

I’ve been reading the Beatitudes for over three decades. They’re kind of like the constitution of Mennonite churches (or at least we’re often pleased to think so). The rest of the bible can be hard and confusing and bewildering and even offensive, so we’ll just double down on what Jesus actually said, thank you very much. And we’ll really zero in on Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, the most substantive continuous block of Jesus’ teaching, where he reinterprets and transcends the Law. And we’ll be laser-focused on the first eleven verses where Jesus talks about who is “blessed” in the kingdom of heaven. We’ll leave the theologizing and harmonizing of disparate texts to others. We’re just humble Jesus people. Read more

Jul 26

3 Comments

What Do We Declare?

This week, Mennonites from across Canada will gather in Edmonton for our biennial nationwide Gathering. This year, the theme is taken from the opening words of 1 John: “We Declare: What We Have Seen and Heard.” What does it mean to speak of the good news and bear witness to the gospel of peace? A good and timely question, on the face of it, particularly in our disenchanted, polarized, guilt-ridden, merciless age. Do we still believe that we have any good news, for ourselves or for the world? Have we seen or heard anything worth bearing witness to? Is Jesus still worth gathering around? Read more

May 3

6 Comments

Jesus Doesn’t Stop (Where We Wish He Would)

I’ve probably preached half a dozen sermons on “Doubting Thomas” over the last decade or so. Thomas and his doubt show up faithfully in the lectionary readings each year after Easter Sunday. Thomas and his stubborn needing to see to believe. Thomas and his demanding what his fellow disciples received as a gift and the surprise of a lifetime. Thomas, the recalcitrant empiricist. Read more

Dec 13

9 Comments

Music, Despite Everything

Yesterday morning before worship, I saw a headline in a major Canadian newspaper imploring me to “at least try to pretend that I care about the BC drug overdose crisis.” I paused on that headline. What exactly was it telling me to do? I thought I cared at least a little about the poor souls trying to deaden their pain and loneliness and despair in any way possible (in BC or anywhere else), but it seems that it wasn’t enough. I should care more, evidently. Or care differently than I was at present. But how would I know if or when I had cared enough or in the right ways? And according to whom?

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Oct 20

4 Comments

Over-Under

Last Sunday’s gospel reading about power and how it does and doesn’t operate in the kingdom of God was an interesting (and indicting!) one to preach on. Our cultural moment is saturated with talk of power dynamics and all the myriad ways that race, gender, and sexuality intersect with this. Jesus’ teaching represents a rebuke and a reminder to us in all kinds of ways (and across ideological persuasions). Jesus’ words also speak to us personally. As human beings, we generally like to think that we’re right and we like making other people do what we want. Jesus will have none of it. Read more

Oct 13

8 Comments

On Deciding in Advance

In her marvelous book Prayer in the Night, Tish Harrison Warren tells the story of her friend Julie, whose infant son had to undergo surgery. As the nurses were about to wheel him into the operating room, Julie looked at her husband and said, “We have to decide right now whether or not God is good, because if we wait to determine that by the results of this surgery, we will always keep God on trial.” Read more

Aug 12

9 Comments

On Incentives

One of the podcasts I’ve been periodically dropping in on lately is Bari Weiss’s Honestly. Weiss’s story is an interesting one to me. She had the job I imagine many writers covet. She was an editor and writer at The New York Times, the journalistic equivalent of reaching the summit of the mountaintop. It’s not the sort of job you leave. But last year she did. In her resignation letter, Weiss cited the Times’ drift from being a publication that at least attempted an objective pursuit of the truth toward being a tool for disseminating an implicit (or explicit) orthodoxy that is “already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.” This was not what Weiss signed up for as a journalist.  Read more

Jun 8

9 Comments

Busy Bees

I’ve been preaching roughly forty sermons a year for the last decade. I preached around twelve per year during the three years before that. By my (admittedly atrocious) math, that’s in the vicinity of four hundred fifty sermons. Which is, I suppose, a decent sample size from which to extrapolate. To detect some trends, to observe a trajectory. Or, I suppose, to chart a decline, depending on your perspective. Read more

Nov 19

3 Comments

The Last King of Ireland

Jason* pulls up in an old white pick-up truck. It’s cold outside and he’s wearing a big black jacket and oversized camo hunting pants. A worn-out toque is pulled down tight over a baseball cap. His face is weathered and worn. Long strands of blonde hair spill out underneath his headwear. His grin has plenty of gaps. There are the by-now familiar COVID greetings. We instinctively reach to shake hands, but then don’t. We ponder touching elbows, but don’t. We laugh at how awkward and forced it all feels. We make our way into the meeting room. The smell of stale smoke wafts across two meters of distance across the table. Read more

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