word | spirit | world | church
Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? We think we know that to welcome is the very opposite of having a wall up. We’re wrong. Ivan Illich taught that the welcome of hospitality requires a threshold. By definition, we need to move over a threshold in order to be welcomed. If there is no threshold to move over, I can’t welcome… Continue reading Put up walls so you can welcome
It’s a dreary winter Saturday. Frost has limned the limbs of trees with a stark outline against the grey sky. The house is slow and lazy as we sleep and read and emerge into the world. A small bowl of hastily made dough has been waiting overnight, doubling in size as it prepares itself for… Continue reading The Story of Bread
Embedding Habits II The second way we can embed habits to help us in the discipleship crisis, is by what we do Sunday by Sunday in our church’s liturgy. I suspect most of my charismatic friends don’t want to admit that we have a liturgy, as that word is used to describe a different sort… Continue reading Liturgical Habits
Christianity is practised, and practiced, around the table. The table is one of our central metaphors for everything we do, and its around the table that we learn how to be disciples. We need more tables. We need more time around the table. Jesus ate with people all the time, they said of him that… Continue reading Repost: Around the Table
The Church’s worship should include the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, with the gathered people of God eating and drinking Jesus’ body and blood together in order to receive from him. The Lord is the host who has laid the table for us. This is the plank of my eucharismatic manifesto which makes the charismatic… Continue reading A Eucharismatic Supper
Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? We think we know that to welcome is the very opposite of having a wall up. We’re wrong. Ivan Illich taught that the welcome of hospitality requires a threshold. By definition, we need to move over a threshold in order to be welcomed. If there is no threshold to move over,… Continue reading Welcome requires walls
When we gather to the table to eat the supper with the saints, we do exactly that. I wonder if you’ve ever considered it. If the Lord’s Supper is a participation in the marriage feast of the Lamb—and most Christians would be comfortable describing it as at least a prefiguring foretaste, though I’m going further… Continue reading A Great Cloud of Witnesses
At Jesus’ last supper he ate the Passover with his disciples, lamb, wine, bread, bitter herbs—the whole kit and caboodle. Which might seem like an obvious statement but is important for our understanding of how Jesus was inhabiting and renewing the Old Covenant Feast. Before we get into the details it might be worth noticing… Continue reading The Lamb at the Supper
Israel is given seven feasts. We can read about them in Leviticus 23, Numbers 28-29 and Deuteronomy 16. They come as a set, a week of feasts to pattern the year with, each mapping onto the days of the creation week. They mark the harvests and they operate liturgically: they tell the people of God… Continue reading The Supper in Israel’s Feasts
The world is infused with wonder, and the presence of God reveals truth that was previously unseen. When seen with the eyes of faith, every tree is a song that sings of life, of wisdom, of death that flowers with the scent of unknown spices. Every rock is the Rock and hides honey and gushing… Continue reading God has changed every table
nuakh 