Christmas Eve at Immanuel always begins by singing Once in Royal David’s City. But in our 1982 hymnal, a stanza was missing. Thanks be to God, it was put back in our current hymnal. It starts like this: “For He is our childhood’s pattern.” Children are to imitate Jesus; He obeyed Joseph and Mary, and He’s our pattern. But we’re still missing a stanza! There’s one more the church doesn’t seem ready to sing. It goes like this…
Read MoreToday is the eleventh day of Christmas. But even the readings in these twelve days of joy don’t let us get too comfortable. The birth of Jesus causes Herod’s horrific malice to explode. This malice is a power at work in the world, malice which will never end and never weaken until the day of judgment [Schmemann].
The Epistle for the Second Sunday after Christmas prepares the disciple of Jesus to face this malice. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” St. Peter is writing to the newly baptized. He’s saying, “Don’t be surprised when trouble comes! The demons, and those captive to demonic desires, hate Jesus, and they hate those who follow Him.” …
Read MoreIn Numbers 13, Moses lists the names of the twelve men he sent as spies into the land of Canaan. Each represented one of the twelve tribes of Israel. After each man is listed, and the name of his father, then we get this interesting detail. There is no explanation or elaboration, it’s just dropped there, like a little Easter egg waiting to be discovered:
“These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua” [Num 13:16]….
Read More“These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” This day’s liturgy applies those words to the little children of Bethlehem cut down by Herod’s sword. “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” The little children suffered the great tribulation. But it is not limited to them. The great tribulation is a vast span of terror, from the babies Pharaoh ordered thrown into the Nile, to today’s little children dismembered by the billion-dollar abortion business….
Read MoreAnd war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him….
Read More“If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else.” G.K. Chesterton wrote this in his 1908 essay Christmas. “If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else.”
Chesterton was responding to early twentieth-century rationalists, who wanted to celebrate a holiday without all the old “superstitions” of a virgin birth, angels, and wise men. I’ll admit, Christmas is something I’ve struggled with…
Read MoreOne problem with transgenderism is it embraces the lie. A man presents himself as a woman (or a woman a man), and demands others go along with the illusion, or delusion….
Read MoreWhen resources are scarce, anxiety is over food. Jesus asks, “Why do you worry about what you will eat?”
There’s no scarcity in America. But there’s still anxiety. And the anxiety still often connects to food. We eat our feelings. Or drink our feelings. Or find other ways to make ourselves numb – doomscrolling, binge watching, cyber shopping – something to distract us from our meaningless lives trapped on the conveyor belt, ending in a nursing home reeking of urine and loneliness.
“Do not be anxious about anything,” the Epistle for Thanksgiving says. How? Anxiety is our daily bread….
Read MoreIn today’s vernacular, virgin is synonymous with loser. Something is wrong with you, the culture assumes, if you remain thus until marriage. God’s Word declares the opposite. He made intimacy for marriage.
Some are, indeed, called to celibacy. There is nothing wrong with remaining unmarried. Yet, married or not, God made us for community….
Read More“I think I’m going to hell.” A text like today’s can provoke such a thought.
One wonders if the invention of purgatory was in part to deal with texts like today’s. I don’t meet the standard of the sheep, but perhaps if I can work off my sins in purgatory, then I might stand a chance.
But there is no purgatory. It’s taught nowhere in the Bible. It’s taught nowhere in the Apocrypha. It’s not nowhere in the first few centuries of Christianity. The Lord Jesus presents two stark realities – the sheep and the goats, the blessed and the cursed, the eternal kingdom or the everlasting fire, punishment or life….
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