First Sunday of Advent (Year 2, NL)

We are surrounded by wastelands. God promises new life.

What a roller coaster for the disciples: They are following the Messiah! And doing so will cost them everything.

Vida Dutton Scudder, an early 20th-century radical, points Christians to solidarity and martyrdom.

The cross we choose to bear reveals who we think Jesus is.

Peter has guts. He reproaches the very one he identifies as anointed.

It got stolen, and I got scared.

What does it mean to have a Savior?

Jesus' lesson in large-hearted theology

We can ignore the Satan stuff, or we can address it.

You've got to feel bad for Peter.

In the late 70s, two friends of mine housesat for the poet James Merrill—and got out his Ouija board.

For there to be a heresy about the cross, there would have to be an orthodoxy about it. Michael Gorman argues that contentions over how Jesus saves lead to an inadequate grasp of what the Passion means and does.

We are still learning what it means to be human, even as we learn who God truly is.

As I read the headline yesterday, my heart began to pound and my throat closed up: “School Clerk In Georgia Persuaded Gunman To Lay Down Weapons.” This was a good story—ultimately a hopeful one—but all I could see was “school” and “gunman."

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how disturbed and saddened we’ve been by the hateful and decidedly unchristian words spoken by self-proclaimed Christian leaders in recent years. The examples are too numerous to cite, and each has its own agenda of hatred and division. I complained that it was so deeply unfair that such intolerant and offensive perspectives were being allowed to speak for me and all other Christians.

My friend offered a profound and simple response: “Chris, they only speak for you if you don’t speak for yourself.”

I can't fool myself into believing that I've gotten close to the kind of costly discipleship that Jesus is speaking of in Mark 8.