Isaiah stands as the preeminent prophet of the Season of Advent. Many of the most recognizable Scripture readings associated with the season are found in the pages of what is sometimes referred to as “the fifth Gospel.” These include:
“A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD .’” (40:3 NRSV) Continue reading It Ain’t Easy Being a Prophet
This past Sunday many congregations marked the end of the Christian year by celebrating Christ the King Sunday. The Feast of Christ the King is a relatively recent addition to the Christian calendar. It was established as a festal celebration by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and has, in the years that have followed, also begun to be celebrated by many Protestant denominations and congregations. There is a certain fittingness to the Christian calendar ending with the proclamation, “Christ is King!” Not only does this resonate with the shape of the biblical narrative itself, it also provides an obvious segue into the season of Advent, where we await the coming of the King. As I was preparing for worship this past week, I came across a prayer I wrote for worship on Christ the King Sunday back in 2008 that seems like it might also be of use for us today. Continue reading A Prayer for Christ the King Sunday
The following reflection was originally posted earlier today on the website of Amberlea Presbyterian Church.
I imagine that there are many bleary-eyed Americans arriving at their places of work this morning. I am simply an interested observer in Canada, yet I found myself up into the wee hours of the morning unable to pry myself away from the television coverage of the final stages of what has been an extremely divisive, and often ugly, presidential campaign. This morning there is extra spring in the steps of many our neighbours to the South who are elated with the surprising election results. Others, for whom the election did not go as planned, find themselves in a place of sheer despondency. While it’s understandable that the candidates and those who have worked so hard to support them would feel such emotions, I would suggest that this should not be the case for Christians. Continue reading The Morning After
After months and months of campaigning the United States presidential campaign has finally come to an end. Millions both within and beyond the borders of the United States now wait with bated breath for the results to come in. While others are finally able to breathe a sigh of relief at the prospect of no longer having to endure the 24-hour news cycle filled with prickly pundits and surly syndicates attempting to yell over top of one another. Sadly, the presidential election campaign is indirectly responsible for what has become by far my most read blog post, in which I questioned journalist, author and former VeggieTales writer Eric Metaxas’ appropriation of the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Continue reading The Ruler of the World Has Not Changed
In his significant, ironically entitled work, To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers the following diagnosis of the current cultural moment in which the church finds itself in the United States:
“The problem for Christians—to restate the broader issue once more—is not that their faith is weak or inadequate. In contemporary America, Christians have faith in God and, by and large, they believe and hold fast to the central truths of the Christian tradition. But while they have faith, they have also been formed by the larger post-Christian culture, a culture whose habits of life less and less resemble anything like the vision of human flourishing provided by the life of Christ and witness of scripture. The problem, in other words, is that Christians have not been formed ‘in all wisdom’ that they might rise to the demands of faithfulness in such a time as ours, ‘bearing fruit in every good work.’”1 Continue reading Faithful Presence: Hunter, Fitch and Being Church
“Lex orandi, lex credendi” is a Latin theological expression which basically means “the rule of prayer is the rule of belief.” In more colloquial terms, we might say, “You show me how you worship and I’ll tell you what you believe.” The rule of prayer has shaped the development of the Christian theological tradition through its existence. A particularly prominent example is found in the fourth century in Athanasius’s appeal to the worship practices of the Christian community as part of his refutation of the Arian heresy. Essentially, the Arians were maintaining that the Son was a highly exalted creature, but certainly not God. One strand of Athanasius’s argument against the Arians consisted of drawing attention to the fact that the Christian community had worshipped Jesus from its earliest days. If Jesus was only a creature then for the first three centuries of its existence the church was nothing more than a collection of idolaters! Lex orandi, lex credendi. Continue reading Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi and Divine Impassibility