Latest Articles
In Praise of the Holy Angels
When I was in college, my priest gave a sermon for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels which I still remember. “Angels are like living thoughts flowing from the mind of God,” he said, “and the mind of God sustains and fills all things.” He went on to remind the congregation that the existence of angels is assumed by Jesus throughout the Gospels, and that it seems that God has placed human beings
After Millennial Nostalgia
A question I hope I’m never asked to answer before a very large audience is “what’s your favorite poem?” That’s because I’d have to admit that, instead of something by Shel Silverstein or Emily Dickinson, the poem that’s haunted me the most ever since I read it (as a high schooler) is a 1960 piece by Philip Larkin entitled “A Study of Reading Habits.” When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short
God of Spirits and All Flesh: The Grace of Prayer for the Dead
In a culture that likes to pretend death does not exist, there are some vocations which don’t have the luxury of ignoring the most unavoidable aspect of human existence. People who work in law enforcement, medicine, ministry, and mortuary services experience death as a regular, if not constant, companion. Of those four, it is the minister and the mortician who are most often called only after a person has died. We show up when the
The Sabbath Can’t Be Secular
In his new history of Christian politics, The Two Cities, Andrew Willard Jones discerns that modern people, including Christians, erroneously divide the world up into distinct religious and secular realms. The former sits “totally outside of history” and the latter refers to what is “in time,” which is to say, devoid of the timeless, eternal, and supernatural. The religious realm intervenes in the secular only extraordinarily. Absent a miraculous event that defies the status quo,
Paradise for Thieves
The thief called Him “Master” and knew Him as King. After hours of humiliating torture, he would enter paradise, comforted by the sight and the nearness of his Master as he suffered. I too can be crucified with the King this day and see with the eyes of my heart the King who does not die nearby, but dwells within. O my soul, O dying thief, look into your heart where the King of glory
The Long Pause (Part 3)
This post is part of a series exploring God’s Story: God’s Story (Part 1) | Another One Bites the Dust (Part 2) Most of us don’t like waiting. Like, not even a little bit. Like, if this webpage took more than a few seconds to load, you were probably already thinking about moving on to something else. Why wait a few seconds when we have places to be and things to do? Our whole culture
Godforsakenness and Redemption Pt. 3: Infinite Inescapable Triune Love
In the previous two articles in this series, I examined the linkages between crucifixion and lynching made by theologian James Cone and his argument that Christ’s crucifixion opens up the possibility of redemption despite atrocities like lynching that were designed to demonize and devastate the very humanity of a group of people. Additionally, I moved beyond Cone and investigated an experience I refer to as “Godforsakenness,” which is the feeling of being abandoned by God
Prayer
Lord, help me . . . save me from the world outside of me, trying to crush me and push me into its mold. But Lord, I have swallowed the world and it is inside of me. Save me, too, from the world within. . . . The world that burns, that eviscerates, that kills like an ever-spreading cancer. Save me from being eaten alive, emaciated, and gutted. Save me from being drowned by the