the incarnation on Gossip

In the ancient world, a place where the veil between the earthly and spiritual was easily pierced, rumors and gossip about great leaders being born of the gods, especially amongst royals, was somewhat...

O Lord, We marvel that you would take on flesh and blood in order to be crucified, killed, and buried for us. You humbled yourself and submitted to the hatred of sinful men, accepting the thorns, the ...

The Incarnation [and I might add Communion] remains a scandal to anyone who wants religion to be a purely spiritual matter, an etherized, bloodless bliss.

When Quentin Rowan published his first spy novel, Assassin of Secrets , it was initially received with glowing reviews. But five days after its release, it became clear that the novel had been al...

The gospels are earthy. People are close to the earth. They travel here and there by foot. They eat the live heads of grain growing from the soil as they walk through the fields. They get grubby and h...

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

John's Imprisonment, Jesus' Debut John the Baptist is as good as dead when we hear of Jesus’ splash onto the Galilean landscape in Mark 1:14. Mark tells us that Jesus arrives in Galilee preac...

Hear the good news! The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, that we might be dead to...

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed) I watch the manger where my Lord is laid; Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence Some woolly innocence!

Hear the Good News. God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem us, free us, and make us children of God. In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Glory to God! Amen.

Disguise is central to God's way of dealing with us human beings. Not because God is playing games with us but because the God who is beyond our knowing makes himself known in the disguise of what...

During spring 1981, one of my favorite persons at the time, Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, made the announcement that she and her husband were going to move into my old neighborhood: the Cabrini-Green hous...

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

[I] try to get into their world a little bit [by listening to hip-hop], because if they’re only adapting to you and you’re not adapting to them in some way, I don’t think you’ve developed a relationsh...

We know the Incarnation mysteriously unites all of humankind to God and one another, but so often the lines of Christianity feel like they do nothing but divide us.

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

The incarnation is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers... Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by i...

Hear the good news: You are God’s holy, precious, and beloved children. Your sins are forgiven. But more than that: through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has opened the way for us to dwell ...

The last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have...

If we’re ever concerned with being wrapped up in Christmas busyness, it may be worth considering the Italian legend of La Befana. The elderly Befana was in her home when suddenly she was visited by th...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A Hard Saying The difficulty of this saying was used by opponents of the early Christians to justify persecution, yet the early church still rallie...

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every ma...

The angel said there would be no end to his kingdom.  So for three hundred days I carried rivers and cedars and mountains.  Stars spilled in my belly when he turned. Now I can’t stop touching hi...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A Hard Saying The difficulty of this saying was used by opponents of the early Christians to justify persecution, yet the early church still rallie...

A few years ago, a vicious stomach bug swept through our community. (When you live in a religious community and one person gets sick, it’s just a matter of time before everyone else does too.) And one...

He who wraps the heavens in clouds wrapped round himself a towel. He who pours the water into the rivers and pools tipped... water into a basin. And he before whom every knee bends in heaven and on ea...

I am watching a family of black-tailed squirrels. I should be working on a Christmas message but can’t focus. They seem set on entertaining me. They scamper amid the roots of the tree north of my offi...

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.

As we come together, we are gathered by a God who amazes and astounds. We are gathered to experience again God’s power and healing. We are gathered by God who has stepped into our reality as a human b...

We gather today to remember To hear again the story of God’s suffering To hear the cry of our lives echoed on Jesus’ lips: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? We gather today to remember That ...