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Posts from the ‘Gospel’ Category

Feb 17

8 Comments

Forgive Us Our Sins

Last year at the beginning of Lent I decided that rather than giving something up I was going to take something on. I would read Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion. What better way to journey toward Good Friday than by immersing myself in a serious theological reflection on the cross of Christ? I made it just over a hundred pages. I wish I could say I had a good reason for quitting, but I don’t really have one. I suppose I could blame COVID’s arrival in Lent 2020 and the way it colonized most of my mental bandwidth, but mostly it was just a combination of distractibility, apathy, and preoccupation with other (lesser) things. What can I say? The truth isn’t always flattering. Read more

Feb 9

3 Comments

What’s the Matter with Death?

Reading a book about the philosophy of the mid-life crisis is comparable to being on the receiving end of targeted advertising for Rogaine. You instinctively resent the fact that you now represent a category of humanity for whom this could even plausibly be relevant. Alas, haughty resentment is about as useful in stalling the clock as it is in stimulating long dormant hair follicles. I have thus far resisted the siren call of Rogaine. Mid-life philosophy books? Evidently not. Read more

Dec 25

6 Comments

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 22

2 Comments

What If?

I wonder if it’s any coincidence that an essay called “What if You Could Do It All Over?” seems to be getting a lot of traction near the end of the darkest month of what has been a fairly bleak year? It’s fairly natural, on one level, to wonder about lives that might have been when we’re all living lives that we never imagined we would be and that few of us want (I suspect the bloom is coming off the proverbial rose even for those extreme introverts who half a year ago were joking that all this enforced social isolation was just what they’d always been dreaming of). Not to mention, it’s easy, when we’re all stuck at home for long periods of time, to wander off into nostalgia, romanticizing the past, and hypothesizing about what might have happened if we had chosen y or z way back when instead of x. Unlived lives can often serve as both reproach and escape. Read more

Dec 18

Things Are Bad, You’re the Problem, Do Better

For what feels like the six thousandth time, I sat down at around 3:30 MT this afternoon and watched the latest COVID update from Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health. I’m not sure why I do this, exactly. I suppose like everyone, I hope to see the number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths begin to fall. Like everyone, I watch for signs of hope that the latest round of restrictions might be lifted. Like many over the last nine months, I’ve grown sort of accustomed to useless doom-scrolling and update watching. You want to feel like you’re up to date on this miserable virus that has so radically altered our experience. This is just what we do these days, I guess. Read more

Oct 27

On Razors and Reasons for Being

I’m bald. Have been for roughly two decades. Perversely, I spent the previous two or three years before losing my hair shaving my head and bleaching the stubble that remained platinum blonde. I’m not at all filled with self-loathing for my poor choices on this score or bitter about going bald early or filled with jealousy for men my age who have full heads of hair. The fact that I pleaded with my son for most of his teenage years to grow his hair long so I could live vicariously through him has nothing to do with unresolved early-onset balding trauma. My proclivity to wear a hat anytime I’m not sleeping or preaching has nothing to do with vain contempt for my bald head. I like being bald and am fully at peace with it. Really. Read more

Oct 16

6 Comments

Good Graces

As human beings, we’re generally pretty lousy at grace. We long for it in our deepest and truest moments, and we desperately need it, God knows. But we often struggle to receive it. We’d prefer to earn, to justify, to merit. Grace is for the weak and that’s not us. At least this is the impression we often give. We’re even worse at extending it, particularly to those we are convinced will treat it recklessly and wastefully. Those who most need it, in other words. We are far more interested in and skilled at scorekeeping and evaluating. This is our lane and we are too often happy to stay in it. Read more

Oct 14

4 Comments

The Importance of Time Travel

How will the post-pandemic church pay the bills? Clicking on headlines like this, along with the usual parade of daily updates, warnings and statistics have become part of my grim COVID daily reading ritual. Forever scanning the horizon in search of some sign of clarity for what the future might hold when it comes to public worship or the gathered life of the church more broadly. This particular headline, unsurprisingly, wasn’t particularly encouraging. According to a Barna Group study, 65% of American churches have seen donations decline during the pandemic. Incredibly, one in five churches may be forced to close their doors in the next 18 months. I don’t know if the same numbers would map precisely on to Canadian realities, but the general trends aren’t hard to recognize. Read more

Apr 14

15 Comments

Diary of a COVID Easter

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said (and heard) it over the past week or so, but truly this has been the strangest Holy Week and Easter weekend that I have ever experienced. This morning, I sat down to chronicle the weirdness, sorrow, and hope of the past week or so. Read more

Apr 12

4 Comments

Far More Can Be Mended

From Francis Spufford:

The friends creep out at dusk and ask for the body, promising anonymous burial and no fuss. They’re allowed to carry it away, wrapped in a tube of line that slowly stains from inside. Skull Hill sees lots of such corteges. There’s only time to stick what’s left of Yeshua hastily in the rock tomb by the highway. Washing the corpse properly and laying it out will have to wait; the holy Saturday is coming, and no one wants any confrontations. Read more

Apr 8

4 Comments

The Liturgically Awkward Hope of Resurrection

If you’re anything like me, time has taken on a bit of a funny feel during these days of pandemic. Everything seems somehow off kilter, stretched out, indeterminate. It’s easy to feel like you’ve lost your bearings. Last week, I encountered one of the endless memes floating around social media these days (COVID-19 is thus far at least proving to be a reliable generator of these!) that captured what many of us are feeling: “In case you lost track, today is March 98th!” Sounds about right. Read more

Apr 3

8 Comments

The Scourge that Lays Waste

There are times when it seems like the Psalms are trying to talk themselves into something. Into a certain view of the world and how it works. Into a formula for avoiding suffering and attaining blessing. I know the right answer on the theology test is that the Psalms are the prayer book of the church and that they give us a language of prayer for the life of faith, but sometimes the Psalms just sound tone-deaf, at best, and utterly false and misleading at worst. Read more

Mar 10

10 Comments

The Older Ones First

So, coronavirus is on everyone’s minds these days, not least due to the deluge of media coverage that ensures that this remains the case. Like many, I’m washing my hands a little more vigorously, looking askance at suspicious sneezers, pondering travel plans for the rest of the year, etc. It helps that I’ve been off social media for Lent, but coronavirus still seems to be front and center at every turn.  Read more

Jan 28

3 Comments

On “Inherent Worth”

One of the movies getting rave reviews these days is Just Mercy, the film adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s memoir of the same name. Stevenson is a defense attorney who has made a career out of fighting biases against the poor and minorities in the justice system, and often defending those deemed indefensible. It is, by all accounts, a powerful and inspirational story. I’ve not read the book or seen the film, but I plan on doing both.  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 11

7 Comments

What if Someone’s Keeping Score?

Like many, I’ve been watching the comedy series The Good Place over the last few years. The show is set in a heaven-ish place designed as an afterlife reward for, well, good people. It’s a show that actually manages to tackle some fairly weighty conundrums of moral philosophy (What is the nature of goodness? How is it achieved? What does it say about us that we so naturally understand life as an arena for moral scorekeeping) in a fairly interesting way. I’ve not yet watched the last season (hurry up, Netflix!), but so far, it’s been entertaining fare. Read more

Nov 27

2 Comments

Life Expectancy

I don’t know, I guess I kinda just feel like something’s missing in my life… you know how people talk about that God-shaped hole or whatever…?

The person on the other end of the phone was young, a member of the disappearing (in church circles) and much-coveted millennial demographic. I was initially taken aback. I had been anticipating a riveting morning of responding to emails and doing a bit sermon prep while a blizzard raged outside. But wait, what’s this? A spiritually sensitive young person calling a church to ask halting questions about God, meaning, life?! It’s the kind of scenario that many pastors assume doesn’t really happen anymore. Except, well, maybe to other pastors in other places with bigger churches. Read more

Nov 15

6 Comments

The Deepest Refrain

Lord God, you love us, source of compassion

These words provided the restorative refrain near the end of a Taizé service I attended with our local L’Arche community on Tuesday evening. Over and over again, we sang. Lord God, you love us, source of compassion. Until it was drilled down into our bones. Until the words wore down our defenses and settled into our souls. Until we could just about believe this most incredible of things.

We are loved. I am loved. By God. Read more

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