The Little Friar

Todd Wilson's More:  Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure is a book with lots of promise -- particularly this time of year. The first part explains what a calling is and the second part helps you find yours.  This helpful book would be the ideal gift for those folks who to feel "stuck" in life.  Or, if you're a college student and not sure what to do after graduation.  Or, if you've graduated but are not enjoying your current or previous jobs (and aren’t sure about the future either). In my practice in spiritual direction, these are the folks who are searching for vocational clarification -- of the sort that Wilson's little book has to offer.  Wilson will assist readers in grounding their personal life calling in the larger story of what God is doing in the world and then discover what they should be doing regardless of their ultimate role (i.e. be a disciple and make disciples). This is the perfect gift for every up-and-comi...

Addie Zierman's Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark is another wonderful memoir of life with God, when you just aren't sure what you think and feel and believe about God.  Her first memoir, When We Were on Fire , was an amazing book -- particularly for those of us who grew up thinking we had God all figured out.  Night Driving is one of those books that will have readers -- particularly readers like me -- identifying with Zierman on page after page.  I can't count the number of times I thought, "Oh, me too!"  Because here, Zierman takes us on a journey of what it's like to struggle through doubts and darkness. Zierman's honesty and vulnerability -- when coupled with her perfect writing style -- will draw readers in.  It's an engrossing narrative that's extremely well written.  In so many ways, in fact, Zeriman's writing reminds me of one of her kindred souls -- Barbara Brown Taylor. Night Driving is one of those spiritual memoi...

You are told to pray especially for the people, that is, for the whole body, for all its members, the family of your mother the Church; the badge of membership in this body is love for each other.  If you pray only for yourself, you pray for yourself alone.  If each one prays for himself, he received less from God's goodness than the one who prays on behalf of others.  But as it is, because each prays for all, all are in fact praying for each one. To conclude, if you pray only for yourself, you will be praying, as we said, for yourself alone.  But if you pray for all, all will pray for you, for you are included in all.  In this way there is a great recompense; through the prayers of each individual, the intercession of the whole people is gained for each individual.  There is here no pride, but an increase of humility and a richer harvest from prayer. -- St Ambrose

I was reading in 1 Kings 18 tonight.  Most of the time in this chapter we focus on the contest on Mt. Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.  But early in the chapter I paused to take note of the witness of Obadiah. The chapter starts three years into the famine that Elijah pronounced to the wicked king Ahab: After a long time, in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah:  "Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land."  So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. Now the famine was severe in Samaria, and Ahab had summoned Obadiah, his palace administrator.  (Obadiah was a devout believer in the Lord.  While Jezebel was killing off the Lord’s prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water.)  Ahab had said to Obadiah, "Go through the land to all the springs and valleys.  Maybe we can find some grass to keep t...

Some years ago, I wrote this reflection on the "Jesus mythers", pointing out all the ways in which their argument made absolutely no sense.  I want to turn to a related question -- are the gospels reliable? Let me begin with something someone said to me recently:  "I don't think there is a good reason to believe in Jesus as the Christ because the accounts of him are historically non-convincing for two reasons (a) these are not his accounts but accounts of him from flawed men".  It's a popular refrain I hear quite often, actually. As I pointed out to my friend who made the comment, it seems to assume that we can't believe in Jesus without "good reasons" and without evidence that is "historically reliable".  It also seems to assume that we would be better off with writings directly from Jesus himself rather than from his followers, who were flawed like the rest of us.  Let me be honest here, this line of thinking seems reaso...

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve... The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. "I am your Go...

1.  Apples and Oranges Similar to the Copernican Revolution, when we came to recognize that the earth revolves around the sun, humanity has only just come to recognize sexual orientation as a durable and intrinsic feature of human sexuality.  That is, sexual orientation is not a choice and it's not amenable to change. Consequently, when the biblical authors, in both the Old and New Testaments, observed sexual activity they could only explain what they were seeing through the only lens they had, that of disordered and excessive sexual desire.  That was the only reasonable explanation, in the eyes of the biblical writers, for why men would desire sex with men.  Or women with women.  What was being condemned in the Bible was this excessive and disordered sexual desire, desires deemed, given the science of the time, as being "contrary to nature". We're in a very different situation today with our modern understanding of sexual orientation.  When a teenage ...

I've thought long and hard about this Donald Trump presidential candidacy, and here's what I think we Christians should be doing. First, let's avoid any negative characterization of him at all (there's no benefit there, there's plenty already floating around).  Trump has mastered the practice of agonic self-definition -- building himself up by belittling others in such a way that they can't, or won't, respond effectively in kind. Instead (secondly), I think we should aim for sympathy , suggesting that he needs gentle treatment; facts asserted as a matter of record rather than an assault ("it's not fair to introduce his failed business ventures as evidence, because he can always just print more money if he wins the election"); and keeping him associated with the very tiny group whose actual interests he represents ("He brought so many casino jobs to Atlantic City, offering part-time employment to hundreds of desperate citizens a...

You've likely seen this already:  Pope Francis on Maundy Thursday washing the feet of refugees, many of whom were Muslim . I have seen many on Facebook who consider this act to be merely symbolic. Merely. You know what?   To hell with merely . I think it's more than symbolic. I think it's a human being, down on his knees, washing and kissing the feet of another human being. And that seems to me to be about as real as it gets. It's real precisely because that is Jesus in our world, embracing the Other in the most intimate way the other might be embraced -- compassionately, lovingly, kindly. Would that the world was more real.

Holy Saturday -- part of the great Easter Triduum -- is one of those days in the Christian Year on which most of us aren't really certain what to say or do. It's a day filled with silence, even God's own silence, and therefore is a great mystery. But the Son of God cannot claim Sheol as its Lord without turning death upside down.  Death cannot hold Him.  He is too big.  Silence cannot muzzle the eternal Word, not forever.  His descent is harrowing for Hades. When Jesus rises on Sunday, his is still the Eternal Word -- the one word that dispels fear, reassures doubt, commissions disciples, and teaches everything about God that is known in the Scriptures.  On Saturday, Jesus twists death inside out.  In tasting death and submitting to the silence of the grave on Saturday, the Word speaks with all the vitality of New Creation on Sunday morning. This is the first and last confession of Easter faith:  Jesus is Lord. He is Lord of the grave:  ...

1.  Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Adam is raised into life by God's own breath, he is blessed, he is placed in the garden of Paradise, he is a friend of God, his life is crowded with a thousand joys.  But he forsakes it all.  He betrays God's friendship.  He hides from God.  He is driven out of Paradise. And every day, Adam's gestures are repeated over and over by all his ancestors.  We keep practicing the same moves, playing the same part, carrying on Adam's bitter legacy.  God watches us.  We make our choices, we go our way through life, we get up each morning and play our part, and God has seen it all before:  It's Adam, over and over again.  Generations come and go.  Adam's faithless gestures are handed down faithfully from the parents to their children. But our Jesus is the new Adam.  He is Adam 2.0.  He is a new beginning for the human family.  He restarts the human story.  He g...

My students have had drummed into them the three Old Testament texts that are most cited in the New Testament:  Psalms 2, 110 and 118.  When the early church preached Jesus, their favorite texts to draw on were the psalms.  The psalms are both "songs of experience" about faith and life, but they are also important for the declaration of the Gospel, that Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord.  It's no understatement to say that the psalms were the backbone of apostolic preaching because they told the story of the future of Israel's king!  (This is why I think the Prayer Book has it right -- that the Psalter should be prayed through every month.) So in reading this Good Friday morning, I read Psalm 23. I've always wanted to preach on Psalm 23 on Good Friday. It's certainly one of the most popular psalms -- nearly everyone (who has even the slightest biblical literacy) can recite at least parts of it.  We may recite it at funerals, but surprisingly ...

If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up your cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God ... If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ's body ... If you are a Nicodemus, like the man who worshiped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ's body for burial. If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself. -- St Gregory Nazianzen

Michael Horton's Core Christianity: Finding Yourself in God's Story is written as an introduction to Christian faith thinking for everyday Christians. Beginning with what he calls the four Ds -- drama, doctrine, doxology, and discipleship -- Horton charts a way that integrates knowing the Christian faith, experiencing that faith, and acting it out in the culture in which we live. In turn, what you have in this book is a sort of apologetic of how and why theology makes sense for all of life, not just in some cerebral narrow sense. Core Christianity is an exploration of the crucial, "core" doctrines of the Christian faith, and envisions that faith in apostolic terms, rather than the myopic arguments that usually plague Protestant works like this book. Horton begins where every faithful Christian theology must begin -- with Jesus Christ. Walking the Way of Jesus, from apostolic testimony to the empty tomb, Horton leaves us at the end of chapter one asking the qu...

So when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, "Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me 'teacher' and 'master', and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet. I have given you a model to follow." -- John 13.13-15a

Above all things, keep peace within yourself, then you will be able to create peace among others. It is better to be peaceful than learned. The passionate man often thinks evil of a good man and easily believes the worst; a good and peaceful man turns all things to good. A man who lives at peace suspects no one. But a man who is tense and agitated by evil is troubled with all kinds of suspicions; he is never at peace with himself, nor does he permit others to be at peace. He often speaks when he should be silent, and he fails to say what would be truly useful. He is well aware of the obligations of others but neglects his own. So be zealous first of all with yourself, and then you will be more justified in expressing zeal for your neighbor. You are good at excusing and justifying you own deeds, and yet you will not listen to the excuses of others. It would be more just to accuse yourself and to excuse your brother. If you wish others to put up with you, first put up with them....

Joshua Becker's The More of Less:  Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own is a testament to a new movement -- minimalism -- that calls for owning fewer things intentionally, freely, while overcoming the desire to possess.  In that way, Becker's work is a testament to the Christian spiritual practice of simplicity. The More of Less is a way of saying that the madness of possessing can be overcome.  And the statistics that undergird that clarion call are everywhere:  The average American home has tripled in size over the past 50 years, and families now own nearly 300,000 items.  When coupled with the psychological stresses of that possession -- from economic stress to exhaustion and the feeling of being rushed constantly, in an effort to work to acquire more -- The More of Less is a real gift to its readers in our culture. We don't need more books telling us how to arrange our stuff in order to reduce stress.  We need books like The More ...

Of course Trump does not need to confess his sins.  Or haven't you heard of the Immaculate Deception?  Every time I hear trump talk about being Christian I feel the need to shower. If you want to understand the Trump phenomenon, go with the fact that Trump is not running a campaign but building a church.  The ugly rhetoric and half-assed policy proposals are primarily a means to the end of selling himself as a charismatic Savior.  The traction of his teaching lies precisely in its apocalyptic promise to resentful and credulous marginalized and patronized white males, as well as to an assortment of chauvinists and bigots.  Trump is the fearless frontier Übermensch who shouts "Fuck you!" to the establishment and "Trust me!" to the hoi polloi .  What makes him so toxic is the combination of faux authenticity and can-do nihilism. Trump has got it all wrong about asylum seekers.  He should welcome them, while encouraging violence against them....

C. Marvin Pate's 40 Questions about the Historical Jesus offers an investigation of forty questions concerning the history of Historical Jesus studies and some arguments of those studies.  Divided into four sections, 40 Questions engages some of the most common issues raised by those studying or just learning about studies involving the Historical Jesus.  Part 1 examines some of the academic and background issues pertaining to the Historical Jesus, such as what is at stake and what sources are appropriate for finding the real Jesus.  This portion of the book provides especially helpful context for those new to Historical Jesus studies and Pate does an admirable job reviewing existing scholarship and critical approaches.  Part 2 considers questions about Jesus' birth and childhood, since these issues (especially the virgin birth) are often places of contention among those studying the Historical Jesus.  In this section Pate also looks at some p...

Justin and Lindsey Holcomb's Is It My Fault?  Hope and Healing for Those Suffering Domestic Violence offers a compassionate and faithful voice to the conversation about domestic violence.  And that voice echoes with these simple words:  "It's not your fault". No matter what kind of abuse you have experienced, there is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, nothing you think that makes you deserving of it.  There is no mistake you could have made and no sin you could have committed to make you deserving of violence. You did not deserve this.  And it is never your fault.  You did not ask for this.  You should not be silenced.  You are not worthless.  You do not have to pretend like nothing happened.  You are not damaged goods, forgotten or ignored by God, or "getting what you deserve" (page 21). While those pastoral truths may seem obvious, the Holcombs know that for those in abusive relationships, these are anything but obvious. ...