Advent - Chain Reaction

Photo credit: moses namkung

God—the one who made all things and for whose glory all things exist—wanted many people to be his children and share his glory. So he did what he needed to do. He made perfect the one who leads those people to salvation. He made Jesus a perfect Savior through his suffering.

Jesus, the one who makes people holy, and those who are made holy are from the same family. So he is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. He says,

“God, I will tell my brothers and sisters about you.
Before all your people I will sing your praises.”

Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2 verses 10 - 12, ERV

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You may recall that in the first essay of this series we asked what was so desperately important to God that he felt compelled to throw himself into such a drastic, audacious plan as this. And we found, mind blowing as it may seem, that we were what was so important to him. "God so loved the world..." That's us! We are the prime motivation of the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

But this still begs the question, "What is it about humans that makes God regard us as so incredibly valuable?" The answer I believe is found in today's scripture.

The whole purpose of Jesus' nativity was to set off a chain reaction of millions and millions of other nativities. God created the Earth as an incubator where we flawed blobs of mud could be invested with the never-ending life of God and grow up into his very children, at home in "glory" -- the state God lives in.  And he was not about to let any power or persuasion prevent that from taking place.

We sometimes think of our ultimate destinies as perhaps drifting along eternally in some happy paradise or becoming angels, but it is far, far greater than that. As the writer and thinker C S Lewis said, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours, (The Weight of Glory, page 46).

Or as St. Athanasius put it, simply,"God became man so that man might become god," (On the Incarnation, chapter 54 verse 3).

Of course, there are ways we will never be like God: We will never be eternal, for instance, since we had a beginning and God did not.  But as Jesus' emissary John pregnantly put it, "Dear friends, we are now children of God. We have not yet been shown what we will be in the future. But we know that when Christ comes again, we will be like him. We will see him just as he is," (First Letter of John, chapter 3 verse 2, ERV).

Today in church -- or anyplace, really -- take a second to look around you. You are are surrounded by dozens and dozens of people going through their own nativities, who are among the sons and daughters Jesus is leading to glory. And "he is not ashamed to call them his brother or sister."

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Prayer: Pioneer of our salvation, please continue to lead us through this incarnational journey until we are resurrected into your brilliant glory.  In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Life After Death, Part 1

Read more in Part 1a>>

What happens to us when we die? Do we lie there moldering in our graves? Do we head off to Heaven to live a disembodied eternity with God? Are we conscious or do we "soul sleep" until the resurrection?

As the Apostle Paul said in the scripture I posted Sunday (1st Letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verses 22 - 24), whatever it is that happens to us, it will be the same thing that happened to Jesus when he died. Followers of Jesus live "in Christ," bonded together with him. Like him we will die and be resurrected; only the timing is different. As the Messiah, he went first, and we will all follow him by being bodily resurrected when it's our turn -- "when Christ comes again."

Jesus' younger brother once wrote, "A person’s body that does not have a spirit is dead." Christ's body, we know, died and was buried in a tomb for 3 days, but what about his spirit? Where was the spirit of the Son of God during what the Christian Movement has long called "Holy Saturday" -- the time between his burial and resurrection?

Wherever it was, or whatever condition Jesus' spirit existed in, our spirits will experience the same thing between our deaths and resurrections -- with one important caveat: the universe was altered on a cosmic scale with the death and resurrection of the Messiah. That was sort of the point, after all: "The Son of God came for this: to destroy the devil’s work," (1st Letter of John chapter 3 verse 8, ERV). So conditions may have changed even in the world of the dead since those epic 3 days, but the overall situation of those who will be resurrected remains.

 It's never been our main topic of conversation (that, of course, would be the announcement of the arrival of the Lord Messiah and his Kingdom) and we never fleshed it out as much as you and I might like, but the early Christian Movement was aware of where Jesus was, and where we go, between death and resurrection.

So this will begin a series of posts on the after life. The scholar N.T. Wright famously calls being resurrected "life after life after death," something Jesus and his Apostles were much more interested in. But we won't go quite that far for now. We'll be looking at what they taught about what comes before that: "Life After Death."

Read more in Part 1a>>

Just Like Him

 Meditation for a Sunday Morning

"The Resurrection" by William Blake

Courtesy of the Art Renewal Center

In Christ all of us will be made alive again. But everyone will be raised to life in the right order. Christ was first to be raised. Then, when Christ comes again, those who belong to him will be raised to life. Then the end will come. 

(1st Letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verses 22 - 24, ERV)


Jesus coming back to life is just the beginning. We will all follow him through death and out the other side.

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We believe also in the resurrection of the dead. For there will be --  in truth there will be -- a resurrection of the dead, and by resurrection we mean resurrection of bodies. For resurrection is the second state of that which has fallen. For the souls are immortal, so how can they rise again? ...It is then this very body, which can decay and dissolve, that will rise again incoruptible.

John of Damascus (AD 676 - 749)
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith Bk. 4 Chap. 27

Going Home

Synchroblog is a little community of essentially Christian blogs that post on a particular subject each month. Read more about it here and (assuming you're on Facebook) here. This month our topic is "Coming Home for Christmas." The bloggers who posted are listed at the bottom of this post for you to peruse. Visit them all! We're an interesting and eclectic group!

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It may be that this Synchroblog was intended to conjure up images of festive times and happy reunions. But I'm afraid this one may be be a bit morose, although I still find joy in it. This is the first Christmas without my mom. She passed on in July after a couple of years of progressive dementia. I preached her funeral sermon.

My mother had an interesting relationship with Christmas. When we were kids it was the highpoint of her year. She loved to pick out -- or make -- presents for us and would sit there on the couch so sparklingly happy to watch us enjoy our new toys.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and people I had no earthly idea who they were would wedge themselves into our little house or we went to theirs. There was much too much turkey, potatoes, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pies.  Christmas records by Frank Sinatra and Perry Como blared, the living room was covered with yet more decorations than last year, and we had a little tradition: every year each of us boys would take one of the new Christmas tree ornaments and write our names and the year on it. She treasured those glass bulbs and guarded them with her life. That was her personal record of the blissful Christmases we shared together. With all the happy hubbub this was when mom was totally in her element.

End of Christmas

But later on, as I mentioned in my last Synchroblog, she accepted the idea some groups teach that Christmas and other traditional Christian holidays are based on old pagan practices and should be rejected. Following Christ as best she understood it was even more important to her than Christmas. So those joyous, raucous, happy, happy, so very happy Christmases essentially ceased for us in the mid-70's. Even later, when she grew old and came to believe she had been mistaken about the pagan holidays, she never celebrated Christmas again. Just ignored it.

So now she is gone and "at home with the Lord." I'm sure you can see where this is going. She is, as I believe, in the one place where people are the most at home of all, transcendently at home. The being Christmas is about is right there with her. Mom always said she'd have a lot of questions for him. Whatever the truth about Christmas really is, she knows it now and can joyfully, loudly celebrate Jesus and his invasion of this world with her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and on and on backwards through the entire vast throng of her ancestors. And with our own celebrating here too. Because this Christian faith we profess insists that death is just a doorway and all of Jesus' people are eternally linked together in a "communion of the saints."

It's funny. When I think of mom and Christmas now I can only see the pre-1973, exuberant, close, warm ones with my enthusiastic mother running here and there, eagerly soaking in the joy all around her. We're not travelling anywhere this year. Physically, I'm already home with our tree up, ready for Christmas, enjoying my own family. And happy. But when I think of going home for Christmas, I'm afraid there is only one home I can think of.

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Here are the December Synchroblog blogs. Lots of thoughtful people here:

Christine Sine - Is There Room for Jesus to Find a Home In Your Heart?

Jeremy Myers - It Sounds Like Christmas

Nathan Kitchen - Coming Home

Michelle at Moments with Michelle - Home 

Mallory Pickering - I’m Kind of Homesick 

Bobi Ann Allen - Coming Home 

J.A. Carter - Going Home 

Glenn Hager - Where the Adventure Begins 

Marta Layton - Can You Ever Come Home Again? 

Peggy at Abisomeone - Abi Has Finally Come Home For Christmas 

Amy Hetland - Coming Home 

Coffeesnob - Home 

Carol Kuniholm - Advent Three: Redefining Home 

Liz Dyer - Advent 2013 The Way Home 

Harriet Long - The Body and the Sacred: Coming Home 

Edwin Pastor Fedex Aldrich - Who I Was Made to Be 

Emkay Anderson - Homemaking

Anita Coleman - At Home in the Kingdom of God

Kathy Escobar – Mobile Homes (Not That Kind) 

Jennifer Clark Tinker - My Itinerant Home 

Doreen Mannion - Heart is Where the Home is 

"The Living Faithful and the Faithful Departed..."

Photo courtesy of Zeevveez

Meditation for an All Saints Sunday morning


"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us."

Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12 verse 1, NET

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"The church embraces believers spread out over the past, present, and future. To the church catholic belong all who who have ever believed, now believe, and all who ever will believe in the saving work of the triune God. The church is celebrated as a whole community embracing all times. As far back as human time remembers (as with Adam, Eve, and Abel), some anticipating form of God's called out people have existed within human history through the flow of time...

"Eternal life with God brings an incomparable interpersonal blessing: communion with God amid the communion of the saints with God and with all who mirror God's holy love (Luke 23.43; John 12.26; Phillipians 1.23). This celebrating community embraces both the living faithful and the faithful departed who now enjoy eternal life with God (Revelation 14.1-4). 

"The church is a fellowship among the faithful now living, but it extends far wider to embrace also all who have died in faith, as well as those yet unborn who will come to faith. Some remain pilgrims in history, while others having died in the Lord are already joyfully beholding 'clearly God Himself triune and one, as He is,' (Council of Florence, DS 693)."

Thomas Oden,  Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology,  pp.745, 823