I attempted to take our church family on an Advent journey this year. With a few exceptions Advent was mostly unknown to many people in our community. I’m already looking forward to how we can build on this experience next year.

Our journey this year was steeped in the prophets (specifically Isaiah, Zephaniah, Mary, and Ezekiel.) Thousands of years have passed and we still find it hard to listen to these men and women of God.

Candle #1 – HOPE
Here comes our God. Creator has drawn near.

Listen to me, Jacob;
Israel, whom I called:
I am the one;
I am the first and I am the last.
My hand founded the earth;
my strong hand
spread out the heavens.
When I call to them, they all stand up. -Isaiah 48:12-13

Listen to me, house of Jacob,
all that remains from the house of Israel
who have been borne by me
since pregnancy,
whom I carried from the womb
until you grow old.
I am the one,
and until you turn gray
I will support you.
I have done it,
and I will continue to bear it;
I will support and I will rescue. -Isaiah 46:3-4

Candle #2 – SHALOM
“Comfort, my people. I am doing a new thing!”

A voice is crying out:
“Clear the LORD’s way in the desert!
Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God!
Every valley will be raised up,
and every mountain and hill
will be flattened.
Uneven ground will become level,
and rough terrain a valley plain. -Isaiah 40:3-4

Don’t remember the prior things;
don’t ponder ancient history.
Look! I’m doing a new thing;
now it sprouts up;
don’t you recognize it?
I’m making a way in the desert,
paths in the wilderness. -Isaiah 43:18-19

Candle #3 – JOY
Being open to the in-breaking of God. Do we have eyes to see his arrival?

Rejoice, Daughter Zion! Shout, Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem.

Watch what I am about to do
to all your oppressors at that time.
I will deliver the lame;
I will gather the outcast.
I will change their shame into praise
and fame throughout the earth. -Zephaniah 3:14,19

Read the story of Zachariah in Luke 1 and meditate on its connection to the message here in Zephaniah.

Candle #4 – LOVE
God moves in justice and mercy. Forever and today!

Mary said,
“With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.
He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.
Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored
because the mighty one has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
He shows mercy to everyone,
from one generation to the next,
who honors him as God.
He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.
He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty-handed.
He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
remembering his mercy,
just as he promised to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.” – Luke 1:46-55

And all of this promise and deliverance comes together in the fifth reflection:
CHRISTMAS
The promised Shepherd. Hope, peace, joy, love. Our salvation!

The LORD God proclaims: I myself will search for my flock and seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out the flock when some in the flock have been scattered, so will I seek out my flock. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered during the time of clouds and thick darkness. I will gather and lead them out from the countries and peoples, and I will bring them to their own fertile land. I will feed them on Israel’s highlands, along the riverbeds, and in all the inhabited places. I will feed them in good pasture, and their sheepfold will be there, on Israel’s lofty highlands. On Israel’s highlands, they will lie down in a secure fold and feed on green pastures. I myself will feed my flock and make them lie down. This is what the LORD God says.

I will seek out the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the wounded, and strengthen the weak. But the fat and the strong I will destroy, because I will tend my sheep with justice.
-Ezekiel 34:11-16

Walking through this month of expectancy and longing has benefited my own journey and I hope it has been half as helpful to some others in the church. One thing that I held to be very important throughout the month was to not come to a simple and straightforward lesson or application with each reflection. While they are concise thoughts I don’t think they turn salvation into something simplistic. I did not try to sum up all that God is doing. What I did try to do is awaken our imaginations – to focus us on who God is and what his dreams and plans are. My hope is that then we can find our place in that divine memory.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

(All scripture quotations are taken from the Common English Bible. I’ve been using the CEB for readings and Bible studies at our church for the past couple months and I absolutely love it.)

So while walking down the street on the way to an amazing vegan restaurant (I’m not vegan, but their food makes it tempting) I was stopped by a tall, thin, bald guy of about 25. He introduced himself as a monk and wanted to talk to me about the Hare Krishna movement. I’d never been approached by a Krishna devotee before so I was very interested to talk to the guy. I introduced myself as a Christian pastor and we began to talk about God, Jesus, and spirituality. We had a great short conversation about place, practice and devotion. He offered me the Gita and a couple other Krishna texts and in return I offered him Jean Vanier’s Becoming Human which I had just picked up for myself in a bookstore down the road. I had read it before and saw it for a good price. If you haven’t read Vanier’s book I fully recommend it – an amazing read.

We had what was a short and friendly conversation that concluded by the exchanging of gifts. I also made a donation to help his journey as a monk. We sought to help each other take suitable steps on our spiritual pathway. I had an opportunity to speak of my life as a follower of the way of Jesus and be blessed by this guy’s passion and devotion to his own spiritual journey.

Every chance to look into the eyes of someone who is passionate about life and faith is so rewarding. I can only hope that he felt the same as he looked into my eyes. My hope is that the fruit of the spirit was evident through me in our encounter. There was something very blessing about the way that neither of us sought to cage the other in our own system of belief, but rather saw in each other the face of a fellow seeker of the way and talk to each other with openness and respect.

I’m sure that many evangelistic folk would tell me I missed some sort of opportunity to save this fella, but I really don’t think so. God was a participant in our conversation and faith, hope, and love were proclaimed vividly.

While the thoughts and questions I have about life and faith have increased over this year my ability to blog about them has frozen.

The church I am pastoring at is fairly traditional and I suppose the simplest way to contrast me is to say that I’m not. That’s not to say that I find myself disagreeing on everything folks may believe in our community, but my thoughts tend to wander to places where others may not feel comfortable. Where some may see boundaries to the conversation and action of God or Christianity I see exciting frontiers.

So my blogging has dried up out of a fear that an unfiltered thought may find itself being read by someone who wouldn’t appreciate it and I might find myself out of a job.

This is completely selfish and fear-driven and I’m slowing coming to a place where I feel a bit more free to trust people not to misunderstand me.

This week I’m on vacation and I am hoping to use some of this extra time to release some of the things that have been building up as I’ve been working through relationships, studying the Bible to prepare for sermons and studies as well as my adventures as a hack youth pastor.

I welcome your eyes and thoughts, even if (especially if) you are from our local church!

Aaron’s album debuted only a few days ago and there is clarion agreement when it comes to the brilliance of the work within. This is most definitely an album of music that makes you wish that all artists producing their art under the banner of Jesus Christ could be similarly daring and honest in their declaration and expression.

I mean, the source material is epic! The expressive potential of our artistic renderings of the good news has almost no ceiling. And in Aaron’s album hope is born anew. Imagination, prayer, and wonderfully silly joy have centre stage.

So good! Visit Aaron’s site to buy it for yourself and your friends!

Yet I remain unconvinced that the best way for me to engage with this art is to write an essay and then speak that essay. The Bible and my life of journeying with God is so much more rich than a 30 minute lecture could ever be. There has to be more to what has become such a central vehicle of the Christian faith in protestantism.

God’s best for delivering his message has to be better than what I have experienced. The glazed expression, a few occasionally interested faces, completely bored kids. Sometimes it seems that the greatest good that is being done is giving an overworked grandma the chance to nap.

I’m going to spend a couple hours this afternoon reading Doug’s most recent book on preaching.

All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them. – Mark 8:35

No mention of special places, people, temples or creeds. In the following story – the transfiguration – even the mountain that Jesus, Peter, James and John climb has no particular name.

Matthew 16
28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Matthew 17
1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

and then in Mark…

Mark 9
1 And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

2 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them.

Why was Jesus’s “Truly I tell you,” phrase divided from the Transfiguration via chapters in Matthew and not in the Mark? (For the record, I think that in Matthew they got it “right”.)

Art, Community, and Philosophy

These three passions drive my theology and my evangelism, as well as my role in the church body. They inform me and form me. To sum things up very generally and probably horribly, art is my connection to God and his creation, community is my connection to others, and philosophy is my connection to my critical self.

And there is a fourth idea that floats in and out and does its best to connect these three. I have a constant ambition to plot my ministry in the midst of the radically local.

Local art and local community are compounds I can wrap my head around; but I have a question: What is local philosophy? Philosophy is a pursuit that has really big, universal tendencies, even when those tendencies are admitted to be laced with relativity. There is often not room made for the particularities of location. Really. Most philosophers would rather apologize for their location than embrace it as part of their mission. So how does one interact with the concepts of philosophy without getting caught up in the pursuit of all-encompassing—the way things are everywhere—answers (or questions)? Is such a goal possible? Or is this question simply part of postmodern angst.