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,...

We are made for joy and love and creativity.  We are embodied because the care of the soul requires human touch and beauty, music and vision in order to thrive.  Yet we live in a broken, wounded world.  Everything good and necessary is so easily corrupted, abused, lost and wasted.  We often bear our torment within ourselves, carrying it wherever we go.  I've spent the past year or so frequently sorrowing over existence.  To be honest, I'm not good at life these days.  Life is as much a burden and disappointment as it is a gift.  Yes, I have certain gifts that make life tolerable:  Humor and poetry and laughter.  And I've devoted so much of my life in the pursuit of wisdom.  But most days the weather of my soul is more like Northern England and Scotland than the Appalachians.  It's a kind of betrayal of the heartfelt love gifted to me by my family who hoped and prayed so passionately that I might live and have the opport...

Thank you, Lord, for infant smiles and children bright at play; thank you for the silly souls who goad us every day. I appreciate those most, O Lord, those crosses that I bear, and I thank you that I'm not yet bald from pulling out my hair. I thank you, Lord, for mercy! It saves me from the brink; and thank you, Lord, for righteous wrath -- I need more of it, I think. But thank you for all gentle souls who always tempers keep; protect them, Lord, from the rest of us, lest we kill them in their sleep. I thank you, Lord, for cheerful sun that rises every dawn, and that my students learn to hide the sound and sight of yawn, that education is a joy that overflows with awe, and, on those crazy grading days, that there are murder laws. I thank you, Lord, for fruitful fields, for wide and healthful skies, and for the hopes that we can have that are not marred by lies. And thank you, God, for mysteries still left for us to solve upon this awesome floating b...

When I teach the basic theology course, one of my lectures goes something like this:  Christology -- the doctrine of Jesus Christ -- can only be discovered "from behind" (in contrast to the distinction commonly made between "from above" [high Christology] and "from below" [low Christology]).  We only know Jesus by following him with humility and critical faithfulness.  All of life, as Martin Luther put it, is lived coram deo , "in God's presence" (Matthew 10.24-25, 2 Corinthians 3.18). By contrast, modern theology turns to vain historical criticism in order to establish "what really happened" and thereby appreciates Jesus only at a distance.  This is what I call the "Jesus action figure" problem.  They will end up bending Jesus and posing him in the easiest way possible to make sense of the stories and thereby create a bigger, wider gulf between Jesus and ourselves.  Abstract theology and shallow sentimentality both impl...

"I don't know what the world's coming to."  I remember older people saying that when I was growing up.  Now I find myself wondering along the same lines.  The world seems to be a conflicted place; globalized, polarized and destabilized.  Our own country is experiencing depths of division that are putting families, communities and friendships under such strains, that they threaten the common good of shared and caring communal life.  Watching television over the past two weeks -- particularly the impeachment hearings -- taught me to pay attention to the division in new ways. "Blessed are the peacemakers."  Jesus knew about the more challenging life skills.  Wherever we are there are situations going wrong.  People get angry, words are said, resentments are verbalized on social media, alliances are formed and though we might not use the word, enemies are made. Christians serious about following Jesus work hard at being peacemakers, servants of reconc...

The other day, I'd had about enough of all the weights of daily life.  I needed to clear my head. So I went to the "head clearing clinic" that has become my go-to spots in these moments over recent months.  I had no intention to bring my phone, so I don't have a visual record of this spot.  Nor, for that matter, do I really intend to describe it.  Just know it's that spot that over recent months has been the place to which I retreat when my heart is too heavy. I've often wondered about what it means to "clear the head", and whether prayer is a way of doing that.  If what is meant is a recovery of focus, a centering of attention, a reboot of the inner hard drive, then yes, prayer does that.  Much of my life in 2019 has been lived in the interrogative mood:  Why?  What if?  How? I know those deepest questions are unanswerable.  But that doesn't excuse the urgency in asking them.  So my "head clearing clinic" is a spiritual pla...

I observed in The Fire and the Rose that I don't preach universalism.  And for good reason.  The world needs to hear the judgment of Gospel -- that God, in Christ, is setting the world to rights, and that means some of the things we really do to one another (poverty, war, abuse, neglect, etc.) really aren't going to stand.  The Gospel is good news proclaimed to the poor, imprisoned, forgotten of the world.  But that good news, when heard from the vantage point of the oppressor, isn't good at all.  It's bad news.  The rich guy, to paraphrase Jesus, has the same chance getting into the Kingdom as the camel has getting through the eye of a needle.  It can happen -- with God, all things can -- but it's probably not going to be comfortable on either the camel or the rich guy. But what of predestination?  Why don't I -- and more generally, why won't other preachers -- preach the Gospel as it's proclaimed in Paul? When treated abstractly, as an explan...