word | spirit | world | church
Technology changes our lives. That’s a truism, you wouldn’t find anyone to disagree. The disagreement comes when we speak of particular technologies—whether pesticides or automated looms or Bluetooth speakers—and the particular ways they change our lives. Then we need to add an extra layer, not only are there specific ways that technologies change our lives,… Continue reading The digital world shapes us
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
It’s something of a truism that we’re formed by everything around us. It’s common for people to point out that in the average church you’ve got at best two hours of people’s time a week to use to form them towards Christ—you might get a third of them for another two hours midweek—and everything else… Continue reading The Need for Christian Formation
Jesus has three bodies, which is the sort of nonsense saying that gets Christians in trouble. No, I’m not suggesting some sort of Trinitarian confusion where either the Father and Spirit have bodies (they don’t) or that all three persons are Jesus (they’re not), but in some classical accounts Jesus has three bodies. The three… Continue reading The Three Bodies of Christ
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
We think of time in a very distinctive way, which many of our forebears did not. We think it’s linear, we think it’s homogenous—progressing in ordered sections we call days or years or hours—and we think it’s largely ‘empty,’ a container that is indifferent to what we fill it with. I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s… Continue reading Time and the Table
We treat the Bible like it’s arbitrary. I think it’s important that we understand that it isn’t. Perhaps we read that the God declares a particular action to be a sin. We aren’t entirely clear what would be wrong with it—our friends and neighbours don’t think it’s bad—and so we decide to follow the Lord… Continue reading Explaining the Food Laws
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 