You see, I’m one of those privileged people who gets to think for a living. I write text, I compose music, I preach, I teach, I organize activities, etc. Obviously, the vast majority of the human species, throughout time, has not lived this way, but I do.

The Kingdom of God, however, cannot be conceived by thought alone. If it were, then the divine logos, the Word of God, could have been revealed to us as a book, or a poem, or an idea. It could have been a formula or a creed or a doctrinal statement. It could have been an argument.

The Word of God, however, is none of these things; the Word of God is an infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. The Word of God was revealed to us as a person who got calluses on his hands, who had animated dinner conversations, and who drank excellent wine at weddings. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.

It’s so tempting to reduce Christianity to a religion of ideas and to equate Christian formation with theological study. It’s so easy to say that the soul is sacred and the flesh is profane, that white-collar work is more respectable than blue-collar work, and that it’s what’s on the inside that really matters. To do so, however, is to deny the miracle of the Incarnation.

That’s what I’ve been doing. For the last year or so, I’ve been slowly gaining weight, eating food on the run, and generally treating my body as an inconvenience.  This, too, denies the miracle of the Incarnation.

My Advent discipline was to watch for the places where Christ is breaking into the world. My Christmas discipline is going to be fully inhabiting my body, living in the flesh as an act of prayer.

I invite you to join me. Go for a hike. Eat a fantastic meal. Look at something beautiful. Give someone a back rub. Play with your dog. Have an incredible make out session. Build something with your hands. Stretch. Cook. Run.

Live.

No, when Jesus was made known to the shepherds, they were just chilling on a hillside and then suddenly: HOLY CRAP! ANGELS! Similarly, the Magi took a couple of years to make it to Jesus because the star took them by surprise, too. Even John the Baptist, the guy who made his entire career by announcing the coming of the Messiah, didn’t get going until Jesus was well into adulthood.

Jesus took everyone by surprise. The season of Advent certainly captures the feeling of waiting, but it misses the feeling of uncertainty – the process of waiting in hope and faith for something even though you have no idea what it is.

That’s pretty much what the Kingdom of God is like, though – we can’t predict it, we can’t control it, and we don’t always recognize it when we see it. Emmanuel – God With Us, the Incarnate Deity – is revealed to us when we least expect it. Jesus didn’t tell us to wait, he told us to keep watch, for we do not know when our Lord will come.

This year, instead of thinking of Advent as a countdown to Christmas, I’m going to treat as a challenge to keep watch for every way I see God breaking into our world.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

We arrived to a carnival in D.C., where the crowd was as much of a show as the events on stage. College kids, 20-somethings, 30-somethings, families and senior citizens, in costume as Uncle Sam, The Mad Hatter, Honest Abe, Darth Palin, and illegal aliens with antennae. But above all there were the signs: signs like “I Disagree With you But I Don’t Think You’re Hitler,” “I wanted to write something important but I ran out of lett”, and “I’m Mad As Hell but I’ll probably be fine tomorrow.”

Unfortunately, the polarization of American politics has bled over into the church – there are people who allow issues like LGBT justice and reproductive rights to split the church. I, myself, have been accused of spreading a doctrine of demons in public media.

I would really like to see the church remember its roots as an alternative to the dominant culture – a place of grace, forgiveness, and justice.

Some other fresh expressions of church get a lot of use out of projectors, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.  In my experience, projections are best when they are a substitute for stained glass – they enhance the mystical ambiance of a room, they provide a visual backdrop for sacred activity, and they convey emotional information to the gathered community.

Projectors are at their worst, however, when they’re used as a substitute for bulletins – we’ve all seen lyrics and liturgy projected on a screen against stock photos of pristine mountain landscapes, and we all know it sucks.  I’m not a big fan of bulletins, in general, but they are very good at what they do – much better than PowerPoint, in fact.

I got to thinking about this due to a short little pamphlet by Seth Godin on really bad PowerPoint and how to avoid it.  Maybe I’ll set myself a goal of doing a ritual that really makes creative use of space and ambiance, and which uses projection in non-obvious ways…

Now I’m all for community service, but there’s a big part of me that still gets bitter when people co-opt the WTC tragedy.  9/11 was a huge red-letter date in my life – I was there when it happened and I spent a year working by the pile alongside the construction crews, the police, the USAR folks, the firemen, and all the volunteers.  For my 20-year-old self, it was both formative and traumatizing.

Now, nine years later, I’m kind of surprised to find that I still have resentment built up around that day.  I don’t want that chapter of my life to be co-opted for patriotism.  I don’t want it co-opted for ecumenism.  I don’t even want it co-opted for volunteerism – it just seems manipulative.  When perky activists start talking to me about the 9/11 legacy, I just want to say, “You weren’t there.  You didn’t smell it.  You didn’t see the bodies.  You weren’t even in New York.  You don’t have the right to appropriate that day.”

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that this isn’t the healthiest of attitudes.  I don’t own 9/11 any more than any one else does, and 9/11 is as good a reason as any to get a bunch of people out volunteering in their communities; it’s certainly be better than everyone staying home and being mopey in their rooms, which is what I usually do.  So I’m going to go out and volunteer with everyone else.  If anyone wants to join me, I encourage you to.

I’m never, however, going to call it “Patriot Day.”

“Jesus is known to us today because he captured the hearts of first-century Galileans and the best way to the heart of a first-century Galilean was through his stomach,” Snodgrass told the group as they ate.

You can read the entire article here.

Food has always been an important part of Transmission – there’s something truly sacred about a group of people gathered around a table eat a home-cooked meal. I wonder if we could do a Transmission series on food in the bible and in our lives?

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