[Un]Orthodoxy

This season I am blogging through Advent in a series called “Resurrecting Christmas”. I hope to find something new and fresh in the midst of this season. I hope you join me.

Well, everyone, here we are. Christmas is a week away. As much as it saddens me to say so, this Advent season has truly been a time of darkness.

I wrote in my first post that Advent is the time of the Christian year that we allow our darkness to creep in, that we take this time to examine our darkness, even enter into it, and create space for God to enter in and be incarnate. This is something I tried to do in my last post myself by telling a story that hurts my heart a lot to tell, because it reveals my doubts and my insecurities about God and my own future.

What I didn’t anticipate, and no-one could have, is that we as an American society would be repeatedly confronted with our darkness collectively during this time. Continue reading →

This season I am blogging through Advent in a series called “Resurrecting Christmas”. I hope to find something new and fresh in the midst of this season. I hope you join me.

One thing I mentioned in my first Advent post was that this season is about experiencing and entering darkness, and creating space there for God to enter in, to be incarnate.

So I suppose it’s fitting that I am awake writing this at 2AM.

When i was home most recently, I was going through all of my scattered belongings from the times I’ve moved. I found this old photograph from a church I interned at called Penn Avenue Church of the Nazarene. This was an inner-city urban mission church, concerned primarily with social justice, homelessness and recovery ministries. When I left this church, I recorded some of my reflections here.

The photograph is of a man named Albert, a very important friend of mine from that church. Thinking about this story is a dark place for me, because it brings up a lot of pain from my past, and my present. It makes me question my strength as a minister, my belief in God’s power and compassion, and my hope for the future.

And because of that I think it is an Advent story, and one I need to share and reflect on.

Continue reading →

This season I am blogging through Advent in a series called “Resurrecting Christmas”. I hope to find something new and fresh in the midst of this season. I hope you join me.

Only Matthew and Luke give us narratives of the birth of Christ. Mark, being the briefest, fast-paced gospel, doesn’t bother with it.

The Gospel of John gives us a theological exposition of the significance of Incarnation. Over the first chapter, he makes this poetic case that the “Word” of God, known in the Old Testament by other names like Wisdom, was with God in the beginning and has now come to dwell on earth. The crux of this chapter comes in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

This is what Incarnation means. It’s what Emmanuel means. That God became flesh.

Continue reading →

This season I am blogging through Advent in a series called “Resurrecting Christmas”. I hope to find something new and fresh in the midst of this season. I hope you join me.

This post initially appeared on Fuller’s website. They had asked for students/faculty/alumni to write Advent reflections, and I wrote this piece. As it was my first Advent reflection of the year, and because I like to keep things all in one place as much as possible, I’m posting it here as well. But I would also encourage you to check it out over at the Fuller page so you can read some other great reflections by some friends and faculty I know and a lot that I don’t. You can find all those reflections here.

“Do not be afraid!”

Every appearance by an angel of the Lord in Luke’s gospel contains these words.

Zechariah in the sanctuary, then Mary, then the shepherds in their fields—everyone’s first reaction is fear. I always assumed this was because they were startled by the sudden appearance of a heavenly being. Wouldn’t you be?

But maybe there’s more to the story.

Continue reading →

I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas.

Of course, as a kid I loved it. I used to always wake up way too early on the morning of Christmas in anticipation and feel tortured waiting for an appropriate time to leave my room.

I love the time with family, the season of weather (as much as an Arizona boy can,) I love the food and baked sweets my mom makes, the ideas of hope and peace on earth with the coming of Jesus.

But I’m also not crazy about some aspects of Christmas. I hate Christmas movies, hearing the same 1950′s version of every Christmas music (though I find the songs themselves to be compelling and beautiful,) the stress of gift buying and receiving, the unavoidable family drama, and the fleeting nature of all the good feelings of the season.

This isn’t a post about how as I’ve grown up I’ve become frustrated by the materialism of Christmas. This isn’t a post about how I’m frustrated about our culture “removing Christ from Christmas”.

This post is simply about wanting this year to be different, what I’m doing about it, and to invite others to join me.

This post is about Resurrection.

Continue reading →