There’s a propensity throughout history for those of us who claim the title “Christian” to use it as a badge of superiority or exclusion.

Maybe Mary had trouble seeing Jesus because she was, as yet, unwilling to see herself in him. Maybe the disciples couldn’t recognize him because they weren’t ready to acknowledge his presence in those around them.

We may have learned to associate “God with us” almost exclusively with Christ’s birth, but the point where we find ourselves today—Good Friday—might just be the most appropriate time to consider the depth of Emmanuel’s implications.

Jesus never tells anyone they have to be friends with their enemies…and that’s good, because the love associated with friendship is something that can only happen naturally as people get to know one another. But with agape, there’s a choice, and that’s the kind of love Jesus demands…

What we do with God’s gifts is on us, not God. What we do with God’s Son—any of God’s children, really—is equally on us.

In the ancient world, breath was both far more vast and far more intimate than we English speakers tend to think of it. In the modern world, my breath is mine alone—something which slips into my lungs I then exhale as waste once my body is done with it. Not so for our predecessors.

Despite how the Church has interpreted their presence, Pharisees were not the bad guys. Pharisees were essentially the cultural guardians of their day, people trying to figure out how to carry ancient wisdom and practices into a world of expanding knowledge and changing values.

After more than four decades of watching the Hebrew people develop their sabbath practices, Moses noticed that they’ve forgotten the core meaning for their special day.

There’s a propensity in Modern American Christianity of elevating dramatic stories of conversion, like the story of the demon-possessed guy and the pigs, as the proper example of repentance. But I would argue many more just as sincerely walk Nicodemus’ path of slow and steady growth.

No prayer is magic. There’s no benefit to simply reciting words or just sort of mindlessly droning our way through. As we pray together, the expectation is that we fill in our own specifics as we move along.

In our society, fasting is generally seen as a form of self-discipline. You restrain yourself from indulging in something you know is bad for you or something you may like but don’t necessarily need. The idea is to alter habits and improve health, sort of like an off-season New Year’s resolution.

Along with the Ascension, Jesus’ Transfiguration is right up there with things in the Bible that just don’t make sense in the modern world. The Ascension becomes clearer when we begin thinking in terms of the ancient cosmos with its Three Realms….The Transfiguration, however, gives us no such straightforward explanation.

Epiphany is almost over—only a week and a half remain until Ash Wednesday. As we prepare for Lent, we too need to remember the intention behind the traditions. We need to prepare ourselves to embrace the realities of what fasting and all those other customs surrounding self-restraint are meant to teach us.

Modern American Christianity likes to pick and choose between what parts of the Bible people are supposed to follow to the letter and what parts it’s more appropriate to “spiritualize”—to take metaphorically or, preferably, simply ignore. Around ancient rules and regulations, we sound like Daleks…

Gods are not—and never were—supernatural spiritual beings. Nor are they simply characters invented for story time. They are embodiments—a means of understanding and talking about greater natural, psychological, and social movements that influence and overtake a particular society.

In the oldest usage of the word, “lord” is a term of function, essentially a quick job label, like actor, or carpenter, or professor. It’s a contraction of Old English terms meaning “bread guardian,” or what we might call a “breadwinner.”

Christmas and Easter are the solstices of the Church Calendar, essentially two views of the same star from different points in a single orbit.

A few weeks ago we talked about the threatening circumstances under which Isaiah prophesied. It turns out that Ahaz is actually responsible for a good bit of that, having invited the Assyrian Empire into the region to distract Judah’s northern neighbors, the two kings mentioned in our Isaiah passage…

Jesus…is not living up to expectations. There hasn’t been a world-shaking governmental overthrow. Celestial armies aren’t yet annihilating any human ones. The Kingdom of Heaven may be at hand,[10] but it certainly isn’t making much of an entrance.

It’s easy for us to read passages in the Bible without putting a whole lot of thought toward their context. We read Isaiah’s description of an idyllic world and imagine him speaking during a historic utopia…