Our personal pantheon

The ancient Jewish prayer puts it this way: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Our tradition holds that there is one God. But while we declare ourselves to be monotheistic, throughout scripture we get hints that there may be more than one god in the picture.

When Moses gets into his dueling match with Pharaoh, it’s really a battle of Egypt’s gods vs. the God of Israel. It’s clear that the gods of Pharaoh have some power. When St. Paul went to Athens, he wandered around the Areopagus and noted all kinds of different gods. There was even a statue to an unknown God, the Athenians covering their bases. The author of the psalm we heard in church yesterday (reprinted above) says this: Before the gods, I will give you praise.

We may think it quaint, the notion of many gods. We may think we’ve reasoned ourselves out of such primitive mythology. But it may be that we have our own pantheon.

It’s mere hours after the Super Bowl, one of the great religious rituals of our culture. Millions pay attention, offering devotion. What god is worshipped there? What of our fascinations with sports and entertainment, with Travis and Taylor (Sorry for your loss.)?

The ascendancy of the heresy of Christian nationalism makes a god out of country. Folks ascribe messianic qualities to politicians. This veneration happens around the world, as it has throughout history.

We worship technology and pay homage to those who bring it to us. It may well be that AI takes over the place of supreme being in our lives. (Read the book Genesis, by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt.) We place high value on access to social media. What if we had to give it up?

We worship gods of affluence, success, education, good parenting, health and fitness. We worship the god of being right or righteous, which can morph into self-righteousness in all its unattractive manifestations. Think Dana Carvey’s church lady. Of course, there is the delicious idol of righteous indignation, and there’s the way we savor resentments.

A cutting edge for me: we can live in a me-centered universe, mindful of course that there’s peril in that. (Did you know that ego stands for edging God out?)

You get the idea. All kinds of things tug at our hearts, vying for attention and affection. There are all kinds of things that we might be inclined to worship. They may be good and noble things. They will always be part of our lives. The challenge is how we order them. How do we avoid giving our hearts to that which will not satisfy our hearts?

A priest I admire talks about the challenge of leading a parish. He repeatedly speaks about keeping the main thing the main thing. In his mind, the main thing is discipleship. It’s following Jesus. Another way to think about it is to make the great commandment (love of God and love of neighbor) our guiding principle. As theologian Andrew Root puts it, it’s about remembering that God is the star of the story. As Evelyn Underhill put it, God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God.

Think about the gods in your life, tugging at your heart this week. I’ve suggested a few, which may or may not resonate with you. I’m guessing you could name others. How might you keep all those affections in perspective? Before the many gods in your life, how can you praise the Lord who is one, the one from whom all blessings flow?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Calling All Pilgrims

In reading Psalm 84 (heard in church yesterday and printed above) I was struck with the mention of pilgrims (v. 8). As far as I can tell, it’s the only place in scripture where the word is used. It got me thinking about what it means to be a pilgrim. Suspending immediate associations with Thanksgiving plays, perhaps we can hear the word in another way, and see how it applies this Monday morning.

For starters, it suggests movement. If there’s a desire to be a pilgrim, you can’t stay put. In my work with RenewalWorks, it was a bit of a revelation to me how much resistance there can be to movement when it comes to church folk and the spiritual life. I get that. In a world of rapid change, increased anxiety, uncertain future, our souls hanker for something solid and steady, reliable and predictable. Nothing new about that. The Psalms are filled with images of God as a rock, stronghold, and refuge.

In RenewalWorks, part of our work has been to identify archetypes of churches. About 25% of the churches were identified as “Complacent.” There was no expectation or desire for transformation in those communities. One rector whose church was assessed as complacent called me to tell me (tongue in cheek) that in light of the assessment, the church was changing its tagline: St. Swithen’s: We’re spiritually shallow and fine with that. In the spiritual life, it’s tempting to say: “Can’t we just keep it the way it’s always been? We’ve never done it that way. We’ve always done it this way.” (Just so you know, these are some of the words clergy dread most.)

So for starters, we have to ask ourselves, quite honestly, whether we’re interested in movement, in being a pilgrim. For better or for worse, that movement seems to be part of the spiritual experience. Note that Abraham was described as a wandering Aramean. Note the centrality of exodus or return from exile in the Hebrew Scriptures. Note how Jesus told disciples: Follow me. Note how the first Christians were called people of the way, a name which suggests movement, as opposed to the later developing name, Christian, which frankly has an institutional ring, and hints at arrival. Note the more recent wisdom of Pope Francis who said: “There is no such thing as a stationary Christian. A stationary Christian is sick in his (or her) identity. A Christian is meant to walk. To move.”

Given all that, if we decide to go for it, we may need to get clear about what it is to be a pilgrim. It’s different from being a tourist, as wonderful as that can be. They can be awesome experiences of discovery, and tons of fun, but they don’t always help us know God better. It’s different from going on a mission trip, as wonderful as that can be. They can be awesome expressions of generosity, but it can also have an air of superiority.

So what’s a pilgrim? Here are insights from an anonymous author on a website called seetheholyland.net: “A pilgrim is not a pious tourist. A pilgrim and a tourist may follow the same itinerary, but the pilgrim is on a sacred journey in which God is encountered through places, people, and situations….The pilgrim travels with the expectation that the one who returns will not be the same person as the one who set out.” The article goes on to detail some markers: A pilgrim will leave behind business concerns. A pilgrim will have an open mind. A pilgrim does not travel alone. A pilgrim respects the host country.

Here’s the deal. Whether we cross oceans or borders, or never cross the street or our home’s threshold, we are pilgrims. We are each and all on journeys to encounter the Holy One. In so doing, there is the prospect of being transformed, wonderfully, amazingly, into the likeness of Christ.

Imagine such a journey! Are you ready for that as you make your pilgrimage through this first week of February?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Einstein was on to something.

“We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”

-Albert Einstein

I find myself wondering if Albert Einstein was tapping into the wisdom of the author of Psalm 19. (We heard the psalm in church yesterday, and it’s included above.) The psalm seems to have two parts. At first, I thought they were non-sequiturs, the first part speaking of the marvel of creation, the second part speaking of the marvel of God’s law, the perfection of commandments.

The quote from Einstein made a connection. Adopting the vision of a child (Jesus said that was a good idea), Einstein notes the insight that creation conveys a definite plan, a mysterious order, a universe marvelously made. In light of that, the human mind perceives certain laws, even if only understood dimly, even if our “limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellation.”

So what’s the so-what factor this Monday morning? We can start by recognizing that our call is to live in radical amazement, a phrase attributed to Abraham Heschel. Any attentiveness to the beauty and miracle of creation, always surrounding us, can help us live that way. Recognizing all of that, we are to respond by living according to certain laws.

The psalmist speaks of those laws in verses 7 and 8: The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the innocent. The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.

And what might we know of those commandments? More to the point, given that we’re talking about the so-what factor, how are we meant to live?

The Jewish tradition calls the faithful to repeat the Shema daily: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind.” The prophet Micah said that this is what the Lord requires: To do justice, love mercy, to walk humbly with your God. (Thanks for reminding us, Bishop Budde. Thank the Lord for Bishop Budde.) When Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, he said it was simple, if not easy. It was not one thing, but two. It involved a complete love of God with all that we are and have. And it involved loving neighbor as self. Like my initial reading of Psalm 19, we might see these as non sequiturs, as separate pursuits. Jesus didn’t seem to think so. And while I don’t think any of us will fully live in obedience to Jesus’ commandment, we are each called to take steps in that direction. How might we take those steps this week?

One more insight from Albert Einstein, here paraphrased. He said that we have a choice in life. We can see nothing as miracle or we can see everything as miracle. Like that child entering that library, sensing marvelous intention, may we walk through this coming week with radical amazement. May that point of view, that way of being, help us step into a life marked by deeper love, which is what our Lord commands.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Have you heard the voice of the Lord?

When people tell me that they heard God talk to them, I have a variety of reactions. I can be skeptical. Are you sure? Have you been working too hard? Need some sleep? I might consider psychiatric referrals. I can be jealous that I’ve never heard the voice they describe. The cynic in me can assume they’re trying to ratify a personal agenda by claiming God told them to do something. Our politics seems to be full of that these days. As Anne Lamott has noted, we can safely assume we’ve created God in our own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people we do.

And sometimes I think: “That is simply amazing that this holy event happened to you.”

Maybe you can tell that all this talk about hearing the voice of God is a spiritual growth opportunity for me. I got to thinking about the voice of the Lord when I reflected on the psalm heard in church yesterday (included above). The psalm speaks about the power of that voice, how it can break cedar trees, split flames of fire, shake the wilderness, make oak trees writhe, strip the forests bare. Yikes. Where do we experience that kind of power in the voice of God? And if it is there for us to experience, is it always as dramatic as this psalm makes it out to be?

I commend to you a column written by David Brooks, printed in the N Y Times on December 19 entitled: The Shock of Faith: It’s nothing like I thought it would be. His evolving relationship with the Holy One was not conveyed with wilderness shattering, tree stripping force. Rather, he describes a gradual, unfolding process, with quiet and unsuspecting moments of epiphany. A subway ride where he looked at fellow passengers, recognizing each had a soul and deducing that there was a higher source of all that soul-ness. He describes revelation that came to him on a mountain hike, when the voice of the Lord was heard through the glory of nature. Not the hurricane force voice of Psalm 29. More like the still small voice, the sound of sheer silence which Elijah heard in his encounter with God on the holy mountain. (Read the story in I Kings 19.)

I was thinking of where the voice of the Lord came in the life of Jesus. On occasion, we read that God’s voice sounded to bystanders like indecipherable thunder, though Jesus got the message. Since yesterday we observed the baptism of Jesus, we begin the season of Epiphany by hearing the voice that came from heaven at the Jordan River, a voice that said: You are my beloved. It’s quite similar to the heavenly voice heard on the last Sunday of this season, when Jesus is transfigured in Stephen Spielberg special effects mountaintop glory. The heavenly voice speaks of Jesus’ belovedness.

Henri Nouwen zoomed in on that voice from heaven when he wrote his beautiful book called Life of the Beloved. It’s written for a secular friend to explain Nouwen’s faith. The book is centered on the voice Jesus heard in baptism. Nouwen claims we can hear that voice as well. He wrote to his friend: “All I want to say to you is “You are the Beloved,” and all I hope is that you can hear these words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold.  My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being – “You are the Beloved”.

Nouwen recognizes that we are surrounded by competing voices: “It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody—unless you can demonstrate the opposite.”

He reassures his reader: “Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. It is like discovering a well in the desert. Once you have touched wet ground, you want to dig deeper.”

We may not hear God speaking to us in the voice of James Earl Jones, as much as I would like that. But God’s voice is there for us, as David Brooks found out. We can hear it in the most ordinary places, like a subway car. We can hear it in nature, maybe a morning walk on the beach or in the woods.

Paradoxically, we can hear that voice as we address the suffering of the world. For those of us who swim in the Christian stream, we hear that voice in scripture, in worship, in community, in sacrament. In Epiphany, we are reminded that we find that voice in Jesus himself, the word made flesh, God speaking to us of a love from which we cannot be separated. That voice has power, the power to change our hearts.

Listen this week. Can you hear that voice speaking directly to you, speaking of your belovedness?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Praise

More than a week before Christmas, I drove past a billboard telling folks where to recycle Christmas trees. It reminded me how hard it is for us to live in the present moment. We’re always thinking about what’s next. After breakfast, I wonder what I’ll have for lunch. Before I finish a project, I wonder what I’ll work on next. As new year approaches, I wonder how I’ll navigate 2025.

Being present to the moment is a spiritual growth opportunity for me. I can spend a lot of time revisiting the past, especially those things I would have done differently. I can fret about the future. That may be the reason that the liturgical seasons are important.

Specifically, that’s why it’s helpful to speak of Christmas as more than one day. It’s a season to savor, without rushing to figure out how to recycle the tree. The psalm heard in church yesterday (reprinted in this email) can help. Like many of the psalms that come at the end of that collection in the Bible, it’s a call to offer praise, to let that be our focus in these twelve days of Christmas.

I encourage you to read over that psalm and reflect on why praise is the order of the day, a theme for this Christmas season. The psalm speaks of a transcendent God, source and sustainer of all creation. At the same time, the psalm speaks of a God who is very much down to earth. We meet that God in Jesus. Like shepherds and magi, we are invited to let our focus be gratitude and worship, awe and praise.

With two Sundays in the season of Christmas, we’ve had the chance to sing about all this in worship: O come let us adore him. Glories stream from heaven above. Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia. Come adore on bended knee. Let heaven and nature sing. Gloria in excelsis deo.

And carols aren’t only for Christmas Eve. I know a rector who would schedule “Joy to the World” in the middle of August, just a reminder of good news. Another friend worked with me, planning her mother’s funeral. She requested “Joy to the World,” even though Christmas was months away. A posture of praise need not be limited to the end of December.

There’s no need for the spirit of those carols to be limited to song. In our actions, not only with our lips but with our lives, we can offer praise of the God who, according to the psalm, gathers the exiles, heals the broken-hearted, binds up their wounds, lifts the lowly. What better act of worship of the God who does such things than for us to find ways to do the same. Those opportunities surround us.

My 5-year-old grandson asked me last week if I would be celebrating my birthday in heaven. I confessed that I hadn’t thought about that. I said it was a good question. It caused me to imagine a wondrous timelessness in heaven, when we eternally live in the moment. Christmas may well be that time when we glimpse such wonder here on earth. Maybe it’s what Christina Rossetti had in mind when she wrote the poem: Love came down at Christmas. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar said that Christmas was more than an event. It was invasion of time by eternity.

Such wisdom might tell us to pause the plans for recycling the tree. That day will come. Such wisdom might tell us to experience the invasion of time by eternity, reflected in the story of Christmas. Such wisdom might lead us to live in the moment by responding with a posture of praise. Such wisdom might invite us to think this Monday morning about what causes us to lift our hearts in praise of God from whom all blessings flow.

For many folks, this Christmas season has its own timelessness. School’s out of session. Work schedule is different and for some, quite light. Some might ask: What day is it? This time can be a gift to be present with a focus on praise. How might you do that in the remaining days of this Christmas season, as we hear heaven and nature sing? What blessings have flowed your way? What leads you to praise in this moment?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

To-do list

By way of refresher, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I’m guessing there’s still a lot that has not been crossed off your list, even if you’ve been checking it twice. So it may be time to take a deep breath and prioritize. Hit the pause button and consider the reason for the season. I know. None of us have time to do that. Which is precisely why we need to do that.

Here’s one way to do that. Turn to the song Mary sang when she began to wrap her mind around the miraculous prospect of being the God-bearer. In the version of the song we heard in church yesterday (reprinted in this email), Mary proclaims the greatness of the Lord. In older (perhaps more familiar) translations, she magnifies the Lord. I want to suggest that such magnification is what we’re called to do as we enter into the celebrations of the next few days.

What might it mean to magnify the Lord? It is not about making God greater, as if that was our job or skill set. Rather it is widening our vision, enlarging our hearts, coming to recognize a bit more of the transcendent greatness which has been there for eternity and is actually beyond human comprehension.

That’s probably why the first way we magnify the Lord is by coming together for worship, as we claim that worship is at the heart of all we do. Maybe you come to church every week. Maybe you come to church only on Christmas and Easter. Whatever your pattern, use upcoming church gatherings over the next few days to focus on the mystery of a power greater than ourselves, a loving presence that chose to take on the form of a child. Marvel at the mystery of Immanuel, God with us.

Getting back to to-do list: Getting to church on Christmas can be rugged. Everyone needs to be dressed. Presents have not all been wrapped or even purchased. Children’s toys have not been assembled. What if someone drops by with a present and you have nothing to give in return? Family members squawk at each other. Somebody with whom you disagree insists on talking politics. Parking is a nightmare. People you’ve never seen in church commandeer the best pews, saving rows of seats. Recent experiences of loss and navigation of grief can make it feel hollow to sing “Joy to the World.”

But what would it mean to let all of that go and to sing with all our hearts: “O come let us adore him”?

Then what would it mean to let that worship experience spill over into all of life, to magnify the Lord not only with our lips but with our lives. Thank God that Christmas is more than just one day. It’s a season in which we might find opportunity to be of service, to continue the spirit of gift giving. Maybe there’s a chance to cheer someone in your orbit who battles loneliness or sadness. Maybe you and members of your household can help prepare a meal for people in need. Maybe you can go through the closet and find stuff you no longer use, delivering it to a place where it can find usefulness. Maybe there’s a way to strive for justice and peace.

Magnify the Lord this Christmas. Proclaim God’s greatness. Let every heart prepare him room, as heaven and nature sing. Merry Christmas, friends.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

You shall draw water from the springs of salvation.

Um, excuse me, where might I find those springs?

I’m wondering where in your life, when in your experience you have run across springs of salvation. Maybe we can begin by talking about salvation. How do we understand that word? The way that Christian theology has evolved among certain circles, salvation is about a ticket to heaven. Depending on which group you’re talking about, it can be a very small number of folks who make the cut.

When I was a kid, I would often walk each day with my neighborhood best friend. As we passed by a couple churches, we would often have profound 7 year old conversations about religion. He was Roman Catholic and was concerned I was not going to make it to heaven. I was Protestant Evangelical and I was concerned he was not going to heaven. That mindset can come early. Salvation was about the heavenly price of admission.

There are other ways to think about salvation. I’ve been told that it really means wholeness, that it suggests healing, a process of restoration and reparation and renewal. Among other things, that means that salvation begins right now. See St. Paul: Now is the day of salvation. (II Corinthians 6.2 ) As I thought about this, it seemed like a good idea to go to wiser sources, so I considered what Frederick Buechner had to say about salvation.

In his book Wishful Thinking (a great Christmas gift by the way), he speaks of salvation as an experience first and a doctrine second. He says it is a process, not an event. For him, it is the paradoxical experience of losing oneself and then finding that one is more fully oneself than usual. Perhaps not surprisingly, he says that the closest analogy is love. He says that when you love somebody, it is no longer yourself who is the center of your own universe. It is the one you love. He suggests that is what Jesus had in mind when he said: He who loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39). In that way, we do not love God so that, tit for tat God will save us. Rather to love God is to be saved. Get this: “You do not love God and live for him so you will go to Heaven. Whichever side of the grave you happen to be talking about, to love God and to live for him is Heaven.”

And he has a word for those who have had this experience. “How about the person you know who as far as you can possibly tell has never had such a moment – the soreheads and slobs of the world, the ones the world has hopelessly cripple? Maybe for that person the moment that has to happen is you.” In other words, best I can tell what Buechner is getting at is that we can point others to springs of salvation.

The psalm begins: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” (Psalm 42:1,2) Hear what Jesus told the woman at the well: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4.15) The woman said to Jesus: “Give me this water.” Which is to say that the springs of salvation are accessible right here. Right now.

Hey, maybe that’s what the good news of Christmas, God with us, is all about.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you odd.

–      Flannery O’Connor

Case in point: John the Baptist. We hear a lot about him these days. If Academy Awards were given for liturgical seasons, John the Baptist would get an Oscar for Best Actor in Advent. Our church lets us know he is a big deal, with attention not only on several Sundays in Advent but also on a few feast days throughout the year. That is probably a reflection of what Jesus said about John the Baptist, which is that there was no one greater born of woman than John (Matthew 11:11).

The most generous adjective I can come up with to describe the guy is eccentric. He wore strange clothes. Ate strange food. Set up a public ministry in the wilderness where there were no people. When people finally found him out in the desert, he called them a brood of vipers. No Dale Carnegie course graduate here.

We heard about him in church yesterday, and in lieu of a psalm which usually appears in the line up, the lectionary invited us to read a canticle which is really a passage from Luke’s gospel (see column on the left). Zechariah, John’s father, holds forth with prediction of his son’s greatness. So what does John have to teach us this Advent?

We get clues from a tradition in Christian art that has John the Baptist depicted again and again with outstretched hand, index finger pointing away from himself to Jesus, usually to Jesus on the cross. It’s an illustration of what John said when asked about his relationship to Jesus. John said: He must increase and I must decrease (John 3:30).

Let’s be clear. There was no shortage of ego strength with the Baptist. But he knew who he was and he knew who Jesus was, and he knew the difference, so his ministry was one of preparation for the advent of a greater presence, a higher power. It was a ministry of humility. Cue in Godspell: Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

How does that apply to us? First, channeling Flannery O’Connor, we might embrace the weirdness, the oddity, the eccentricity that comes with the truth of our faith. What might that look like? Maybe like St. Paul said, it’s being a fool for Christ (II Corinthians 4:10). Maybe it’s letting someone ahead of us in traffic or in line at the store. Maybe it’s giving an absurdly generous tip to a server the next time you go out to eat. Maybe it’s extending forgiveness to someone who by all accounts doesn’t deserve it. Maybe it’s listening to someone else’s point of view when you have felt that their point of view is wrong or stupid. Maybe it’s advocating for justice and peace (in word and action), in a season when the most vulnerable are threatened, for example, those threatened with deportation (See Leviticus 19:34). Maybe it’s resisting a racist joke or comment or policy. In a time when church attendance may be an oddity, maybe it’s inviting someone to an Advent or Christmas gathering in your church, or telling someone why the place means something to you. Maybe none of these make sense in the economy of our common life, but the truth will make you odd.

Second, it’s about getting clear eyed about who we are and who Jesus is. The slowed pace and quiet time recommended for Advent might give us space to reflect on Jesus’ question to his disciples: Who do you say that I am? That kind of clarity is bound to make our experience of the joy of Christmas more intense.

Finally, it’s about finding a way to point beyond ourselves to Christ. John had his own distinctive way. We are called to find our own way. How will your life this week point beyond yourself to Jesus? How will you prepare the way of the Lord?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!