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Posts from the ‘Jesus’ Category

Oct 14

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Shout Comfort

I first noticed evidence of Lenny on our church property around a week ago. Some fast food wrappers and cigarette butts. A few peanuts lying around the front entrance. More impressively, a meticulously stacked and folded collection of blankets, clothes, and a sleeping bag against the side of the church. He had also managed to find a big piece of plywood to prop up in our church entrance to shelter him from the elements at night when he slept there. And the elements haven’t been particularly friendly lately, with temperatures near the freezing mark along with wind and wet snow and rain over the past weekend. I cringed to think of who might be sleeping outside in those conditions. Read more

Oct 8

1 Comment

The Far Country 

Every once in a while out at the jail I run into someone I know or am vaguely familiar with. Someone from childhood, perhaps, or someone who knows of me via someone else or has heard of my church. The connections are usually fairly distant. Recently, however, I was out on one of the units and I ran into someone whose parent I know. Which is a different kind of thing entirely. Read more

Sep 26

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Castles of Regret

My Saturday morning coffee was spent reading an interview with Sylvester Stallone. I’m not sure why, exactly. I’ve never been a huge Stallone fan—his brand of American machismo never really connected with me. He seemed all brawn, no brains. Even if part of my younger self was drawn to the violence of his films, I sort of suspected that it wasn’t the sort of thing that I should be drawn to. It was probably the headline of the article that grabbed me (as good headlines are supposed to do). It spoke of “struggles” and “coming clean.” I suppose I’m always interested in how people make their way in this world and how they think about their lives now that they’re closer to the finish line than the starting blocks. Read more

Sep 9

6 Comments

The Irrelevant Moral Stranger

To be a pastor for nearly twenty years is to become familiar with people coming and going. People dropping in for a service or two or twenty, and then never coming again. People coming once a month, a quarter, a year and then disappearing. People enthusiastically jumping in to the life of the church and then one day vanishing without a word. It is to know what it is for the inquiring call or email to go unanswered. It is to wonder, even if only briefly, “What did I/we say, do, sing, pray, share, believe, be that was wrong or not enough or…” Well, you probably get it. Read more

Aug 26

8 Comments

We Should Let Jesus Save Us

So, it seems Woke 1 is not aging particularly well. In the past few weeks, every tour of the mainstream publications that I frequent yields some new article pondering what seems like the passing of a hyper-progressive ideological moment (see here and here, for example). Often these pieces refer to recent comments made by American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who recently suggested to ABC News, with a laugh and a smile, that “Woke 1 was crazy.” Indeed.  Read more

Jul 14

7 Comments

The Results Business

I recently made my way out to one of the units at the jail to deliver a few items that had been requested by inmates. Bibles, writing paper, calendars, devotionals, bible study courses—each must be documented, labeled with a name and a number, and then placed on the window sill at the bubble so the guys can see when there’s something for them. On my most recent trip, one of the guards noticed a name on one of the packages I was putting out which contained a bible study course. He snorted. “That guy’s not here any more. Down in the hole. Guess you were a few days too late with that stuff!” I smiled. Picked up my materials. “Yeah. I guess I was.” Read more

May 7

1 Comment

Stand at the Crossroads

Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

— Jeremiah 6:16

***

A few days ago, I attended the funeral of a young Christian man who took his own life. A few days from now, I will attend the funeral of another young Christian man who took his own life. These sentences feel grotesque and offensive even as I type them. These things should not be. Mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and spouses and friends should not have to stagger to the front of church sanctuaries to read tear-stained eulogies, to bear witness to, to lament the unfairness of, to rage against, to somehow attempt to drag bewildered meaning from these cruel endings.

Read more

Apr 29

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Can We Still Love Each Other?

Lately, I’ve been noticing and delighting in instances when couples are kind to each other in public spaces. One reaches for the other’s hand. A bit of playful banter. An arm on the shoulder. An affirming word or expression of fondness. A smile in the other’s direction when they don’t imagine anyone is looking. A head on a shoulder. Little tokens of warmth and affection that probably wouldn’t even have registered with an earlier version of me, but which now seem to be extraordinary. Read more

Apr 23

50 Comments

Desecrations

A few days ago, a story and photos surfaced about a few members of the Israeli Defense Force who took a sledgehammer to a statue of Jesus somewhere in southern Lebanon. The incident drew immediate and widespread condemnation from a wide range of ecclesial and political figures around the world. Read more

Apr 14

8 Comments

At Just the Right Time

“That’s it?”

He looks at me with a mixture of incredulity and suspicion across a grungy table in a glorified storage closet at the jail. The setting, even given the context, is unimpressive. A broken vacuum cleaner. A bunch of haphazard toilet paper rolls. Some dust-covered supplies from the pandemic era. A couple plastic chairs. On the other side of the door, the buzzing and clanging and crashing and shouting that is the near-constant soundtrack out on the remand units. Read more

Apr 7

1 Comment

Sectored to Grace

On Saturday night, I attended The Great Vigil of Easter at an Anglican church in our city. It was a beautiful liturgy, leading worshipers through the broad sweep of Scripture, from creation to new creation. There were candles and holy water, Dante and Herbert, a baptism and the renewal of baptismal vows, the gradual physical transformation of the sanctuary from the bleak deathly tones of Good Friday to the light and the life of resurrection. And there was the celebration of the Eucharist, of course. We remembered Christ’s death, proclaimed his resurrection, and strengthened our resolve to await his coming in glory. Read more

Feb 24

6 Comments

Haunted (Whispers in a Ruined House)

He looks at me warily as he approaches the guard’s station at the jail. He’s thirty-something, huge beard, menacing tattoos snaking up and around his neck and bald head. I stand there, inoffensively, with my clipboard and my death notification. “I’m a chaplain here, just wondering if you’d like to talk to someone about losing your dad?” I motion over to the interview room over in the corner of the unit and start to walk in that direction. His expression doesn’t change. “Not really,” says. He follows me anyway. Read more

Feb 4

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“Don’t Put Words in My Mouth!”

Anyone who is involved in giving leadership to corporate worship regularly finds themselves in the position of putting words in people’s mouths. Asking people to read Scripture, inviting people to participate in responsive liturgies or corporate prayers of confession, selecting songs to be sung by the gathered community—each of these elements of worship (and others) involve, on some level, some people telling other people what they should say or pray or sing out loud. Read more

Jan 9

2 Comments

In Pain

There is nothing more ordinary than suffering.

There is nothing more extraordinary than suffering.

Both of these statements are true.

The last few months have been characterized by a number of people that I know and love enduring significant pain. Sometimes the pain is physical, sometimes it is relational, sometimes it is existential. Sometimes it is all the above. Always, it is excruciating to watch people suffer. Read more

Dec 23

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“We Cannot Wait Till the World is Sane”

We read the Christmas story out at the jail yesterday. Matthew’s version, all the way through. We read about Mary and Joseph angelic visitations and prophecies fulfilled and Magi from the east bearing strange gifts. We read about a mad king’s maniacal decree, about the slaughter of innocent baby boys, about the Holy Child of Bethlehem being hunted from the day he was born. I had taped images from William Kurelek’s A Northern Nativity on the wall throughout the chapel and invited the guys wander around looking at them while I read. I wanted the Nativity to somehow migrate from words on a page or sanitized religious images to their world, to them, to us. Read more

Dec 18

4 Comments

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 10

1 Comment

To Not Feel Lost in the World

A friend recently directed my attention to an episode of CBC’s The Current where the subject matter was Gen Z’s return to Christianity. Many are noticing that the kids are coming back to church. At least some of them. We’re not exactly talking a tidal wave here, but certainly a steady trickle. What on earth is going on, the venerable CBC wanted to know? Read more

Oct 30

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Take a Swing for Jesus (Straining a Metaphor)

Most Canadians are laser-focused on the Toronto Blue Jays these days. And understandably so. They Jays are on quite a run, and they are an easy team to like. I’ve never been a huge baseball fan, but even I am enjoying watching them give the gazillionaire Dodgers all they can handle. When the Jays aren’t on, though, I’ve been keeping an eye on the Rolex Paris Masters, the world’s biggest indoor tennis tournament (here, too, a Canadian is doing well—Felix Auger-Aliassime is into the quarterfinals). Tennis is a sport that I’ve come to really enjoy in the last five years or so, both the viewing and the playing. And it’s given me a new window into some aspects of the Christian life. Read more

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