The Little Friar

For my wife, Kendra She is beautiful,          and not like those girls in magazines.  She is beautiful          in the way she thinks.  She is beautiful          for that sparkle in her eye,     when she's talking about things she cares about.  She is beautiful          for her ability to make others smile      with jokes that might make others blush.  No, she's not beautiful based on something       as temporary as looks.  She is beautiful in a way that you know      her beauty will last.  She is beautiful, deep down in her soul. 

Today is the First Sunday of Advent.  The new day of the Church's year.   When all the rest of the world is rushing to sing Christmas carols, the Church resists.   That's because Advent is the Church's exile.  Advent isn't Christmas.  Advent is exile.   Waiting, hoping God will act in the future.  We are slaves in Egypt.  We are exiles in Babylon.  We are sad friends mourning the the sufferings and deaths of a fallen world.  Places like Ferguson, MO, capture our attention and imagination.  Where is God?  We are waiting.  That is Advent.  Learning to be patient, learning to wait on God.  Which is why I think the Church should do more with the Book of Job during Advent.  Up until the Book of Job, the story has been governed by a theology of retribution, the "blessings and curses" of Moses (Deuteronomy 11).  Do good and stay faithful to God and you will be blessed.  Turn to wickedness and idolatry and...

I've fielded this question often enough over the past few days, that I should go on record here with my response.  And in order to give my response, let me begin with a story.  On Sunday April 21, 1912,  Karl Barth preached a sermon entitled "On the Sinking of the Titanic ".  The "official" text of the sermon is Psalm 103.15-17, but the actual text of the sermon -- in terms of its homiletical focus -- is something else entirely.  Those who know me, understand why I'm tempted to lambast Barth's text.  And why I would be uncomfortable with this sermon in toto .  But before I go ripping his sermon to shreds, some historical context.  In the spring of 1912, Barth had been out of seminary for about a year and was about a year from getting married.  This is clearly not the Barth of his 1919 Romans commentary and he's decades away from his mature, voluminous, magisterial theological Church  Dogmatics  which remained unfinished when he...

When asked recently what I thought Christians should be doing in respect to Ferguson, I thought of 1 Corinthians 6. In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul chastises the members of the Corinthian church for taking each other to court.  Suing each other was one of the many ways that church expressed and experienced disunity.  We don't know why the members of the Corinthian church were taking each other to court.  But scholars are relatively confident that the lawsuits were being brought by the wealthier members of the church against the poorer members.  Given the power structure at play in Corinthian society the legal system "worked" for the wealthy and disadvantaged the poor and less privileged.  Thus, lawsuits could be used by the wealthy to get their way.  In his book  Conflict & Community in Corinth  Ben Witherington describes the situation and its relevance for the problems Paul calls out in 1 Corinthians 6: From at least the time of Augustus certain peop...

" Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6.11-12). Last night, the District Attorney announced that the Grand Jury declined to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown.  And Ferguson -- yea even all America -- erupted in the hate-filled violence that perpetuates the sins and struggles that made this shooting possible.  I've said since August that this shooting is not just about two men.  I've said since August that it's time those of us in White America bear the cross of sympathy for those in Black America.   So what is now a Christian response to this verdict?  It's not my place to forgive officer Wilson.  Peace is not merely the absence of violence, Dr King rightly taught us.  Ins...

As a Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar, I am excited to see a new edition of Christoph Blumhardt's postumely-published collection of Evening Prayers:  For Every Day of the Year.   Blumhardt was a German Lutheran theologian who was one of the founders Christian Socialism and led a theological revolution in Germany at the outbreak of World War I, proclaiming "the Kingdom of God".  Blumhardt was a significant influence upon Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth, among others.  What we find in Evening Prayers  is a collection of prayers that live and breathe in the Lord's Prayer, in the gospels.  Blumhardt has a deep spiritual life in which the Light of Christ shines in a dark world.  While the prayers were originally intended only for his closest friends, the Church has here a wealth of prayers.   Evening Prayers  is a gracious addition to my own spiritual practice.  Every pastor should have a copy in his or her library.  And utilize its spiritual wealt...

Watch for the Light  is now my favorite devotional for Advent and Christmas.  It is an amazing collection from classic and contemporary authors that offers so many reasons to incorporate this book into your personal, family and even ecclesial Advent and Christmas traditions.   First, Watch for the Light  contains such spiritual wisdom from the wide swaths of Christian tradition that its diversity contributes to its usefulness.  I know of no Advent devotional that brings together such wise voices as Will Willimon alongside  Meister Echart, Madeleine L'Engle with John Howard Yoder, Karl Barth with Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer with Annie Dillard.  And the Christmas Day meditation from Church Father, John Chrysostom.  Each of these has so much to offer so many in the contemporary Church catholic and apostolic.  Second, Watch for the Light 's diversity hints at a major appealing factor for my own devotional life as a pastor:  Its the...

The Parable of Great Judgment (also called the Parable of the Sheep and Goats) rounds out Matthew's gospel, in Matthew 25.31-46.  This is one of the nastiest stories for preachers to try to preach.   Because ... At  the end, the Son of Man shall ascend the throne and judge all the ethnoi , all the peoples.  On his left will go the goats -- who have not done good to the "least of these", have not recognized the incognito Christ among the poor, the imprisoned, and the oppressed -- and will be punished.  " I was in jail, and you never visited me".  On the King's right will be the sheep, those who having reached out to the "least of these" through their giving, visiting the prisoners, and clothing of the poor, and will be eternally rewarded.  "I got busted, and you visited me in jail!  Come right into the kingdom". But there's a shock.  In the story, as Jesus tells it,  the sheep talk exactly like the goats -- same words, same reaction to...

"Christians are made, not born", observed Church Father Tertullian.  And over the years, one of the tools the Church has utilized to live out the making of new Christians is evangelism.   Now EvanTell, the ministry training and equipping Christians  to share the Gospel, offers The Evangelism Study Bible , meant to offer fresh perspective to the God's Word in the task of making new Christians.   EvanTell founder and CEO, R. Larry Mouer serves as the general editor and occasional contributer to The Evangelism Study Bible , with the goal of enabling Christians to share the Good News of Jesus Christ simply and clearly.  Filled with evangelistic themes and including various features and study notes throughout the New King James text, this study Bible is a unique resource for pastors and churches and individual Christians.  It's meant to remove guilt and fear from the evangelism process, so that Christians can share in the act of grace in sharing the Go...

Tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday.  And so many of us will be preaching the Parable of the Goats and Sheep from Matthew 25.  The King puts the sheep on his right hand and says this to them: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." The sheep are shocked.  Consulting their memory, they don't ever recall seeing the King on earth: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?" The King replies with the famous words: "Truly I tell you, ...

Michael Faber's Book of Strange New Things  is part science-fiction, part Christ fiction.  It's a book that genuinely deserves its title, and a book I thoroughly enjoyed.  In fact, it's the best fiction I've read since Neil Gaiman's American Gods  in 2005! The novel chronicles Peter, a pastor who's been  accepted to go on a mission to a planet in another galaxy, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spread the Gospel to the -- what should he call them?  Creatures?  Beings? -- living there.  But he must leave behind his beloved wife, Bea, a nurse who converted him to Christianity and saved him from his life as a thief and druggie. Peter finds his new life working for the shadowy USIC, on the planet Oasis, after having worked amongst England's downtrodden on Earth.  And it's the Oasis that we come to know through Peter's eyes that makes The Book of Strange New Things  an absolute treat! Peter finds that the folks of Oasis, much to his deligh...

Anne Marie Miller's Lean on Me is a follow-up to her 2010 spiritual memoir, Permission to Speak Freely .  In Lean on Me , she tells the story of her continued spiritual healing, following her  painful divorce, as well as from her previous trauma.  Lean on Me  highlights the value of a healthy Christian community.  She starts by presenting four categories of relationships with others:  Not vulnerable and not committed, vulnerable and not committed, committed but not vulnerable, and committed and vulnerable.  And for each category, she provides actual stories to illustrate genuine Christian community.  "In writing  Lean on Me, it's  my desire to show you that whatever course you find yourself on, you are not alone, you need God, and you need others."  The reader's guide and resources at the end of the book provide valuable guidance for growing genuine Christian communities.  This book is a must-have for pastors and those tha...

In the debates over Christianity vs. unbelief, I don't have much constructive to add.  All I can say for myself is that I find the stories about Jesus to be the most profound and captivating thing I have ever encountered.  This is not to say I understand everything in the gospels or that there aren't things I find troubling or perplexing in them, even things about Jesus.  But there are moments -- the teachings and actions of Jesus -- that defy my ability to describe how they affect me, in the vision they cast and inspire and provoke within me.  Having searched far and wide, I've encountered nothing like Jesus.  Nothing in the history of philosophy.  Nothing in the other world religions, admirable and profound as they are.  I experience Jesus as a singularity.  Unprecedented.  Unreplicated.  This man is, as the early Christians knew and remembered him, Emmanuel, God-with-us.  And I think they're right.  So I worship this man by ...

Joanne Huist Smith lost her husband of 20 years that September.  By Christmas, she was ignoring all the ubiquitous happiness of Christmas she saw -- the trees, the lights, the music.  Ignore, that is, until her 10 year old daughter starts constantly asking to get the family a Christmas tree and to start decorating the house.  Her eldest teenage son agreed with her, but her two youngest children as well as her "true friends" certainly didn't.   The 13th Gift  tells how this family overcame their grief enough to carry on; but only with some rather unconventional help.  Through the help of those "true friends", Smith comes to realize what affect her behavior is having on her children, specifically Megan, her youngest child.   Initially she resists the power of the gifts of those friends.  And she becomes obsessed to discover their identity.  But, over time, eventually, she realizes that these gifts are bringing the "broken ornament" of her ...

To think:  All this time I called myself a Christian.  But Christ lay dead in me.  I've  spoken in tongues with the Pentecostals, attended Bible study with the evangelicals, kissed icons with the Orthodox, worked for justice with the liberals.  But Christ lay dead in me.  I've gone  to church and said amen, I've sang the alleluias.  But Christ lay dead in me.  I've  prayed Christ’s words, I know them all by heart, I've even eaten the bread of life and drank his cup.  But Christ lay dead in me.  I've  kept the Lenten fast and kept the vigil, sang Easter hymns, said  Christ is risen .  But Christ lay dead in me.  I've  studied Christ, read books about him, and as if that weren't enough I'm writing some now.  But Christ lay dead in me.  With the gift of prophecy stirring in my chest I've climbed the narrow steps into the pulpit.  I've looked out on the faces of the waiting worshippers. ...