The Little Friar

After Christianity Today 's call for the removal of Donald Trump from office a number of evangelical leaders have rushed to Trump's defense including Franklin Graham and now theologian Wayne Grudem . I've met Grudem before.  And he's so well-known in evangelical circles -- having written that popular textbook on evangelical theology and having founded the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  I have little good to say about his textbook, because I feel it's historically just vacuous.  His approach is undeniably thoroughly "biblical", but it's more like a theological commentary on the concordance than a genuine, exegetically-astute biblical theology.  He basically presents God in the image of the Republican Party and not necessarily the best part of that party in another of his books -- something that, sadly, is just beneath the surface in his textbook.  It's why guys like him ignore Karl Barth to their own peril.  Barth knew first-hand t...

Childermas.  Feast of the holy innocents.  Today goes by a variety of names.  When it's observed -- if it's ever observed -- it names those little children, specifically boys, in and around Bethlehem, who by the accident of birth had the unfortunate luck to be born when Jesus was born.  Herod had them massacred in order to kill Jesus. It's odd to have their deaths mark a day so close to Christmas -- which is why, I suppose, so few of us really even remember today.  But if we're honest, all the haze around Christmas day has already lifted.  The peace and tranquility that names the holy day is shattered so quickly in a world such as ours. Violence, you see, is the way the world is supposed to work.  And threats to power cannot be tolerated, particularly when that power supports the state.  Where does that kind of cruelty come from?  In grew in Herod in stages (as is true for all of us), because it's bequeathed in us from others.  H...

It is no real secret to those closest to me that my Christian community is now fragmented.  I haven't been to eucharist in months my spiritual life has been, as Bonhoeffer once observed about Advent as a whole, lived in a prison cell -- where I wait and hope, believing that at some point God will open the door from the outside. During Advent this year, I began praying my way through the Lord's Prayer.  Again.  This time in the cultural context of the chaotic and at times toxic political climate of this past year.  Whose kingdom counts most?  Whose will to power should we support?  What political leader is the least worst choice when politics itself is losing its capacity for constructive dialogue, civil discourse, a shared commitment to the common good.  Is the Lord's Prayer too heavenly minded to be any use in countering the hard-edged cynicism and divisive rhetoric of life online? And then there's that awkwardly ordinary request for bread.  If J...

Christmas is a celebration that God is for us, near us, because God is one of us.  God comes to us, in the vulnerability of child, to save us from our sins, and to rescue us from the evil forces that oppress us. Christmas promises us that the despots of this age, political or spiritual, are living on borrowed time.  The Christmas story is God's answer to all the evil, injustice, brutality, suffering and death that we see around us. Christmas is the annual reminder that God's liberating love will always find us in the darkest corners of the world.

I was reading through the Annunciation text in the gospel of Luke (1.26-30) this morning.  Specifically, my attention was caught by Mary's reaction to Gabriel's famous "Hail Mary" greeting: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.  The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." Here's what struck me.  Notice what perplexes Mary.  It's not the angel , it's the greeting .  Mary "pondered what sort of greeting this might be". Ponder that.  An angel has just appeared to Mary.  You'd think that would be the big shocker.  But it's not; it's what ...

Your brightness is my darkness. I know nothing of You and, by myself, I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. If I imagine You, I am mistaken. If I understand You, I am deluded. If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy. The darkness is enough. -- Thomas Merton, prayer before midnight mass at Christmas, 1941.

Promises made and kept, but not the way we thought. Prophets foretelling and forth-telling the truth as they saw it. Empires on the make and populations on the move. Mary and Joseph, angels and shepherds performing the first scratch nativity. A baby born in underprivileged circumstances. A refugee family fleeing the slaughter of the innocents looking for a safe home. All told, not the greatest story ever told. Every day the story is retold in Syria, Myanmar on the Mediterranean. Advent is when Eternal love intersects with human history, when reconciliation, peace, justice and hope came gift-wrapped in swaddling cloths.

Winter sunrise at Cades Cove, GSMNP, 2019 Advent joy is the powerful undercurrent which drives forward the history of God's love affair with the world. Advent joy arises from the deep conviction that God is for us, and with us. The Emmanuel promise refuels our hopes,transforms our worldview, and opens us to the risk of trusting God. Advent joy is the default setting of the Christian heart towards Christ, the Prince of Peace. Advent joy has an air of defiance, teaching us to look on life at its darkest, knowing that out of the darkest hours in the life of God, came resurrection and new creation.

Well, it happened.  The final installment of the Star Wars 42-year cinematic saga.  I thought I'd enjoy the film, maybe even write about it. But here's the deal.  It's bad.  It's so, so bad.  There are multiple levels of bad here.  But, since I don't want to ruin the story for those who've yet to see it, I'll place the rest beneath a fold.  Read on, only if spoilers be damned.

I haven't said much about the impeachment process, because there hasn't been much to say.  Impeachment itself is just bringing charges; the charges that were eventually made were, I'm very sure, much more vague and less serious than Democrats were hoping.  To be honest, I had hoped for something with much more teeth -- reflecting any number of what I would personally call "high crimes and misdemeanors".  But I get why that never happened. In principle, of course, since the point of impeachment is to give primacy to the legislature, the House can impeach any civil officer of the United States for anything whatsoever that it regards as misconduct; it is the sole authority on what counts as 'high crimes and misdemeanors', and the power has never been understood to require a legally defined crime at all.  (In the first impeachment that went to conviction, that of John Pickering , it was universally recognized that there was no crime committed in a ...

The world is greater than the burden it bears, and life is more than the sum total of its grey days.  The golden threads of reality are already shining through; if we look we can see them everywhere.  Let us never forget this; we must be our own comforters ....  The air still vibrates with the noise of violence and destruction.  But silently the eternal values are gathering on the horizon.  They are like the first pale rays of light as the promise of radiant fulfillment creeps upward accompanied by the first tentative notes of jubilation.  It is not yet a full chorus but only an indication, a hint, far away.  But it is drawing nearer. -- Fr Alfred Delp, SJ, from his "The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp" When I was a seminary student, I first discovered a little book entitled The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp .  I read it around this time in 1995.  It has since been one of those books that refreshes my weary Ad...

The autumn leaves are falling brown and dusty on the road, the winter chill is beating like a hammer on the brain, the sun perhaps forever-lost is hiding, veiled by cloud. A dull and aching boredom rules, worse than any pain, and time -- the word is inexact, but we may call it 'time' -- time is bare, oppressive; time is numbered in one word, advent ; it covers all the sublime. We itch to walk and wander, inquire, think, and ponder -- we itch but do not scratch, for where is there to journey when the sameness never ceases (brown below and gray above) and life in bits and pieces knows not peace nor joy nor love? The world is drained of every color, fading is its life and light, and all without reprieve await an all-elusive night. Yet in a little building, quiet and tucked away, a little light of day is through the dismal breaking, only a little ray but a beam of sunlight pure like water to the thirsty and to the ill a cure: A little bread, unobtrusive,...