Once, I found myself with a spare half hour in Bellingham, Washington. The March weather was cold and gray. Pearly drops of rainwater fell onto my cheeks as I parked my rental car and began to walk toward Henderson Books, a used bookstore recommended by a friend.
Read MoreWe are now in the six-month Trinity season. The challenge of Trinity is how to remain faithful during a long season in which there is no particular wake-up call.
Read MoreIn my youth group, I was taught once that the best way to recognize a counterfeit is by carefully examining and remembering the real thing. The anecdote that attended this lesson drew from the training of experts who spot fake currency. As the story went, they spent long hours studying every detail of real money so as to be prepared to note any possible deviation from it. This was deemed a more effective method of preparation than exhaustively cataloging the fakes. With most important or valuable matters in life, we should be especially wary of fakes because these are the very things that are most worth the effort of faking. Likewise, over the time we’ve spent thinking about a Christian idea of what it means to rest, I’ve tried to focus on the real thing, rather than by focusing on all the false visions that run about in our world.
Read MoreAs a priest, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about ritual, and find that I spot pretty quickly instances of ritual when I encounter them in the wild. One such ritual caught my eye recently in the context of a conversation about how people go to sleep. It began with a few parents sharing stories about the routines surrounding bedtime for their children of various ages. And even though they were not initiates of the same rites, the basic shape of their liturgy was the same: some sort of dinner, bath, story, and lights-out. Those present without kids spoke in similar terms of food, Netflix, hygiene and beauty, and then surprisingly elaborate rites including sound-machines, CBD oil, melatonin, mindfulness, and still usually-fitful sleep.
Read MoreIn our previous post, we talked about the extending of the horizon of the old covenant Sabbath through the Resurrection of our Lord, how He makes that Sabbath the occasion for a new work through His rising again. As should be apparent by now, the Sabbath means something very different for the Christian than it meant for the Jew, even if they are continuous with one another in the Person of Christ. It will help if we look to the Gospels for guidance.
Read MoreSabbath is remembrance. It is to remember and anticipate through a moment the world of God’s great seventh day, of Creation as it is known with God enthroned, consecrating all things and celebrating them with delight. But modern people have a difficult time approaching remembrance because they consider it a matter of ‘thinking’ rather than ‘being.’ This is not how the Scriptures communicate ‘remembrance’ to us.
Read MoreWe closed Part I by thinking about the futility of our toil and how it can only deliver expiration and collapse rather than real rest. We came to understand that we must somehow be returned to the Lord’s anointed rest, that seventh day of Creation that consecrated the whole creative work. I would like to propose that the means by which we are led back into that rest, despite our continual tendencies to avoid it, is to attend to the remembrance of the Sabbath as it becomes the Eucharist through its fulfillment in Christ. In this post, we will take a look at the first of the two.
Read MoreAs a recovering work-addict, I have been obliged to a keen awareness of the patterns of work and leisure that surround me. Frustratingly, I have often felt like a recovering alcoholic living in a walk-up above pub row, immersed in the ambient noise of what I imagine to be great enjoyment and satisfaction happening just downstairs. All around me are impulses to feed a beast who is just biding the time it needs to grow large enough to feed on me. Like those who’ve struggled with any substance or habit will know, the addiction isn’t about the thing but about something else behind, beneath, beyond it.
Read MoreThe fact that we pray for God to “keep us” in His true religion clearly implies that it is possible for us to drift out of it, into false religion or no religion at all. Most of us have observed this tragic reality in the lives of the people around us, and if we look frankly at our own hearts, we will likely recognize tendencies that could lead to apostasy if left unchecked. If we are to maintain our faithfulness, some sort of safeguard is evidently necessary.
Read MoreThe true meaning of time is rooted in agriculture and the agricultural metaphor. The acts of God commemorated in the Old Covenant were all linked to the cycles of planting and harvesting. Redemption itself is described in terms of agriculture. St. Paul says that “Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). This refers to the offering of the first sheaf of grain that was the promise of more to come.
Read MoreLet us summarize three important points from the previous posts. First, the church year is the way the church experiences the true meaning of time that was revealed in the covenant God made with Israel, in the light of the fulfillment of both time and the covenant by Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Messiah of Israel. Second, this experience of time is rooted in the dynamic relationship between fulfillment and expectation, between the current experience of the kingdom "in the Spirit" and the longing for its fulfillment in the coming of Christ. Third, this experience of time requires commitment to disciplines of prayer that are rooted in the church year.
Read MoreThe life of Jesus Christ changed the way the people of God experience time. Jewish weekly time was rooted in six days of work leading to a Sabbath. Holy Week narrates Jesus’ fulfillment of this time. He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the first day of the week. He finished his work on Friday, the sixth day. This is the primary meaning of the words “It is finished” (John 19:30). The word “finished” is a form of the word “teleo” which is related to “telos.” On the cross, both time and the covenant were brought to their completion.
Read MoreThe experience of time in the church stands in contrast with the experience of time outside of the church, in “the world" (cf. 1 Jn. 2:15-17). Each experience of time brings us into its own narrative or story and forms us accordingly. Many Christians struggle to live out their faith because they live in the wrong time. They "believe" in the sense that they hold in their minds certain things to be true, but they are stuck in the world's experience and narrative about time. Living in the world's time and story cancels the impact of a merely cognitive faith.
Read MoreIn Part I, we started by acknowledging the many ways we attempt to make peace without being born again to the life of God the Trinity, without seeking earnestly to enter peace in the rest of God the Father by being conformed to the likeness of Jesus the peacemaker and the Spirit the peace-giver. In Part II, we approached and considered again the Person of Jesus, He who is the peacemaker, seeking understanding of how He enables and empowers us to know the peace of God again. In this third and final essay, I think it is now possible for us to talk about what it means to be makers of peace like Him in the world.
Read MoreAs we come to terms with how we’ve attempted to create false peace, we begin to yearn for the true thing. Shalom, true peace, is the creation of God, the quality of life known by all things that walk in step with His will. We cannot make peace for ourselves. It is given, and we must receive it by the terms that it is given. We must enter into it and participate in it with a sense of humility and wonder.
Read MorePeace is a concept that emerges clearly in the Biblical account of Creation. The poetry of Genesis characterizes the creation of the cosmos as God making a dwelling place for Himself. Each part of the creation story involves a kind of call-and-response as God makes a place and then fills it with life, calling each of these dwellings and dwellers “good.” On the seventh day, when God takes His rest, it is meant to invoke an image that would have been common to those familiar with the architecture of an ancient temple: the god seated in the center of the temple to consecrate it and inaugurate its operation.
Read MoreThe Christian hope of Resurrection is the certainty planted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that our lives will follow the pattern of Good Friday and Easter. On Good Friday Jesus died. His spirit left his body (John 19:30, Luke 23:46) and went to the place of departed spirits. In the Old Testament, this place is called Sheol. In the New Testament, it is called Hades (translated in the Apostles’ Creed as “hell”). And his body was buried in the tomb. On the third day this process was reversed.
Read MoreMany Christians live in the wrong story. The wrong story is the narrative that is bounded by time. It begins at birth and ends at death. Prayer in this story is aimed mostly at improving the quality of life between birth and death. Though “heaven” is sometimes invoked in this story, it carries with it a sense of a consolation prize. It is not the thing a person was deeply longing for; rather, it is something that will be talked about now that the person has lost the temporal life that was the real focus.
Read MoreThe streets of Jerusalem were empty. Observing the Sabbath, the people kept to their homes. In the upper room, the Apostles lay hunkered down, scared and despondent. Their Savior was dead, crucified and buried. Were they next? The Romans still prowled about the city on the Sabbath; were they looking for them? Would the Jewish leadership want to kill them as they had Jesus?
Read MoreLike all real and good things that take practice, prayer doesn’t always come easily. In fact, as we grow in prayer, we can expect to have seasons where it is downright difficult to pray. There are a lot of reasons for this. When the newness of a habit begins to wear off and we settle into a pattern, we begin to experience new challenges to our disciplines of prayer. It is important for us to remember that difficulties in prayer are not necessarily a sign we are doing something wrong. In fact, experiencing difficulty in prayer can be a sign that we are doing exactly what we need to do. Here are some of the common difficulties that face a person who is learning to pray.
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