According to Matthew, the  crowd sees and hears John the Baptist thundering words of warning and doom – the one who comes has his winnowing fork in hand, and will clear his threshing floor – and then Jesus is there, in the midst of them, coming to be baptized, and John says – to Jesus privately – “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” – and Jesus says, clearly also privately,  Let it be... Read more

  In the beginning  .  .  .  .  The roar of white-hot, full-throated argument erupts at the word beginning.  The trail of this argument has been marked with the tears of science teachers denied tenure and the rage of preachers and parents demanding that creationism be taught in public schools.  We shatter the peace to which Christ called us, in order to make war over a beginning that we do not know but can only begin to imagine. The paleontologist... Read more

Good news;  but if you ask me what it is, I know not; It is a track of feet in the snow, It is a lantern showing a path, It is a door set open. —  G. K. Chesterton Flight  — it is the leit motif of the birth of Christ, in Matthew’s telling.  If Joseph had kept a journal, it would detail change after change in his plans, hurried changes, haste made necessary by danger, menacing shadows all around.... Read more

Born in the night, Mary’s Child, a long way from your home. Coming in need, Mary’s Child, born in a borrowed room. Clear shining light, Mary’s Child, your face lights up our way. Light of the world, Mary’s Child, dawn on our shadowed day. Truth of our life, Mary’s Child, you tell us God is good. Prove it is true, Mary’s Child, go to your cross of wood. Hope of the world, Mary’s Child, you’re coming soon to reign. Sovereign... Read more

mind without soul may blast some universe to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall even prevail a million questionings against the silence of his mother’s smile -whose only secret all creation sings -by e e cummings, from spiralling ecstatically this Only Matthew speaks about Joseph, acknowledging his doubts about the marriage, about Mary’s unexpected pregnancy, how he struggles in his mind and is disturbed in his sleep.  An angel... Read more

We are all called to be mothers of God, for God is always waiting to be born. -Meister Eckhart, medieval German mystic. John, the Forerunner.  How was Christ born? One of the ways, all four gospels tell, was through his baptism by John in the wilderness.  Another was through the visions of the prophets.  Still another was through the spirit and body of Mary.  According to the Gospel of John, he was present from the beginning of time.  Each Advent,... Read more

Flood, fire, The desiccation of grasslands, restraint of princes, Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal grief, These after all are our familiar tribulations, And we have been through them all before, many, many times. . . . That was why We were always able to say: “We are children of God, And our Father has never forsaken His people. — W. H. Auden, Narrator in the Advent section of For The Time Being:  A Christmas Oratorio. John... Read more

The eyes huddle like cattle, doubt Seeps into the pores and power Ebbs from the heavy signet ring; The prophet’s lantern is out And gone the boundary stone, Cold the heart and cold the stove, Ice condenses on the bone: Winter completes an age. — W.H. Auden, in the Advent section of For The Time Being:  A Christmas Oratorio. The Great Wheel of the church year has turned, closing one year and opening another.   And every new year begins with... Read more

That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had His hands in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it – books, bricks, grief – it’s all in the way you... Read more

Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us . . . Romans 5:3 This week the BBC has brought us news of the discovery of a large cache of paintings that had been seized during the Holocaust from German museums and stolen from Jewish homes, by Nazi storm troopers.  This was all done as part of a plan to purge German culture of what Hitler and Joseph Goebbels called Degenerate Art, art that... Read more