Advent 4

Advent 4

Links to the series on Advent in Revelation can be found in these places

• blog: oncoffee
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/mbells
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• X: x.com/mbells
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/@michaelalanbells

A Christmas Sermon from 380AD

A Christmas Sermon by St. Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 380)

Christ is born, glorify Him. Christ from heaven, go out to meet Him. Christ on earth, be exalted. Sing to the Lord, all the whole earth; and that I may join both in one word, let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for Him who is of heaven and then of earth. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope.

Again, the darkness is past; again, Light is made; again, Egypt is punished with darkness; again, Israel is enlightened by a pillar. The people who sat in the darkness of ignorance, let them see the great Light full of knowledge. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. The letter gives way, the Spirit comes to the front. The shadows flee away, the truth comes in on them. Melchizedek is concluded. He who was without Mother becomes without Father (without mother of His former state, without father of His second).

The laws of nature are upset; the world above must be filled. Christ commands it, let us not set ourselves against Him. O, clap your hands together, all you people, because unto us a Child is born, and a Son given unto us, whose government is upon His shoulder (for with the cross, it is raised up), and His name is called The Angel of the Great Counsel of the Father.

Let John cry, prepare the way of the Lord; I, too, will cry the power of this Day. He who is not carnal is Incarnate; the Son of God becomes the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Let the Jews be offended, let the Greeks deride; let heretics talk until their tongues ache. Then shall they believe, when they see Him ascending into heaven; and if not then, yet when they see Him coming out of heaven and sitting as Judge.

This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God—that putting off of the old man, we might put on the new; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him. For I must undergo the beautiful conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the more blissful come out of the painful.

For where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; and if a taste condemned us, how much more does the passion of Christ justify us? Therefore, let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own, but as belonging to Him who is ours, or rather as our master's; not as of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of re-creation.

Advent 3

 welcome to Advent 3 & the book of Revelation

Advent 2

Advent 2 

Welcome to the 2nd Sunday of Advent and a reflection on Revelation 21-22

Links to the series on Advent in Revelation can be found in these places

• blog: oncoffee
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/mbells
• Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/mbells.bsky.social
• X: x.com/mbells
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/@michaelalanbells

Advent 1

Advent 1 

Welcome to the 1st Sunday of Advent and a reflection on Revelation 21

Links to the series on Advent in Revelation can be found in these places

• blog: oncoffee
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/mbells
• Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/mbells.bsky.social
• X: x.com/mbells
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/@michaelalanbells

Introduction to Advent 2024

Links to the series on Advent in Revelation can be found in these places

• blog: oncoffee
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/mbells
• Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/mbells.bsky.social
• X: x.com/mbells
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/@michaelalanbells

Introduction to Advent video

book review: The Great Open Dance

Title: The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology

Author: Jon Paul Sydnor
Date: 2024
Publisher: Pickwick Publications

Description: The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary ideals: environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress—an interpretation of Christian faith as ever-changing and ever-advancing into God’s imagination. Faith demands change because Jesus of Nazareth started a movement, not a tradition. He preached about a new world, the Kingdom of God, and invited his followers to work toward the divine vision of universal flourishing. This vision includes all and excludes none. Since we have not yet achieved the world that Jesus describes, we must continue to progress. The energizing impulse of this progress is the Trinity: Abba, Jesus, and Sophia, three persons united by love into one perfect community. God is fundamentally relational, and humankind, made in the image of God, is relational as a result. We are inextricably entwined with one another, sharing a common purpose and a common destiny. In this vision, we find abundant life by practicing agape, the universal, unconditional love that Abba extends, Jesus reveals, and Sophia inspires.

Review

Jon Sydnor has written a book which he says offers “a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary ideals: environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration.”

There are parts of the book which indeed point to some good understandings of faith and how it is lived out in our culture.

But overall, while he may be “progressive”, I think he leaves behind a lot of “Christian theology” and not just the parts that should be left behind. He leans more on Eastern philosophies, especially Buddhism, than he does on Christianity.

Sydnor’s vision of a kinder, gentler and more caring world is rightly rooted in an agape-centered Christianity. His understanding of Christian theology again rightly makes room for an intellectually engaging, inclusive, pro-science approach that offers a protest against both the injustices and the distortions of theology in the world.

My problem with Sydnor’s approach is that his view of spirituality is so broad that it is not just open to others, but there is no difference between Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other philosophies.

On one level this is true. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, we are all God’s ikons. And the trinitarian God, who is in relationship – Father, Son, Spirit – invites us into that relationship, out of his love.

In his first chapter, one of Sydnor’s sections is entitled “The Persons of the Trinity Relate to One Another in a Divine Dance”. He writes: “[t]hey [the Persons of the Trinity] dance freely, spontaneously, always in relation to one another but never determined by one another, co-originating one another in joyful mutuality.” And then Sydnor concludes: “We, being made in the image of God, are made to dance—with God, with one another, and with the cosmos.”

Sydnor’s worldview, is deeper and wider than that of most of western Christianity. He rightly roots it in the perfect, unconditional, love of God expressed by the Greek word agapé.

Sydnor says that “people want faith to give them more life, and people want faith to make society more just, and people want faith to grant the world more peace.”

He then states that he has “written this book in the conviction that Trinitarian, agapic nondualism can do so.”

In his third chapter, Sydnor cites Ephesians 4:6:

§  There is one God and Creator of all, who is over all, who works through all and is within all (The Inclusive Bible, 2022).

§  There is… one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (NIV, New International Version, 2011).

§  There is… one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in all (Greek, my translation).

Sydnor, points out that “all” means “all” – an all-inclusive worldview. It seems like a small point, but when Sydnor chooses to use a translation that changes “father” to “creator” he actually argues against this relational view of God.

Sydnor argues that “the unconditional, universal love of God for all creation” leads to the question: “What would society look like if its members truly trusted God and enacted the divine love?” Sydnor’s conclusion is: “it would be universalist.”

The problem is Sydnor, it seems to me, understands universalist as a make up your own belief system. The trinitarian God of scripture invites us all into the dance. God invites us all into relationship. God pours out his love and grace into all of his creation.

And this agape love will lead God’s people to advocate for equality between all, cherish the environment, learn from others who are different, welcome those who are rejected by others, and promote a generosity of economics. And in this there is change; there is shalom: peace, flourishing; there is freedom.

God has created people to be free. And to be free means that we can make choices.

§  We can choose to respond to God or turn away from God.

§  We can choose to move toward one another or away from one another, toward joy or discouragement.

§  God desires, longs for all of us to come to him – that’s what the incarnation is all about. God wants us to experience all that he has for us.

§  But God does not impose that on us. God allows us to choose the direction of our activity, while always inviting us to work toward the reign of love.

Would I recommend this book? No. Sydnor’s argument is overly complicated. Despite talking about the Spirit, he ultimatrley makes no room for the calling

Conclusion

This book was provided free of charge by Speakeasy and Mike Morrell.
Views expressed here are my opinion.

#TheGreatOpenDance

 

After war - peace

 

“War is War, and Hell is Hell" | MASH

Season 5, Episode 20. “The General’s Practitioner.” February 15, 1977

Burns: Well, everybody knows, ‘war is Hell.’

Hunnicutt: Remember, you heard it heard it here last.

Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?

Father Mulcahy: Um, sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them – little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

Burns: Well, I’m not. I’m here because my country needs me.

Hunnicutt: How do you know it wasn’t just some excuse to ship you eight-thousand miles from home?

Eric Bogle | The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Bruce Cockburn | Each One Lost

Mary Gauthier | The War After The War

from her album Rifles and Rosary Beads

The Peace of Christ to you today!

If we were meeting in person right now, I might warmly shake your hand as I speak those words, with a smile.

If we know one another well, we might embrace, a physical touch that communicates we are one in Jesus—Christ's peace is shared between us and is making each of us whole.

J.D. Walt tells of a greeting of peace he learned from, Maxie Dunham: 

The Spirit of Jesus in me greets the Spirit of Jesus in you, and brings us together in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The word for peace in Hebrew is shalom, and carries with it a vision of an expansive and permeating wholeness, completeness, and flourishing that is not merely the absence of conflict, but is the presence of God abiding with us.

Shalom speaks of relational peace, mutual connection, shared delight, a just creation, completeness, and wholeness between people, between us and the world, and ultimately between us and God. It is the Peace of Christ Jesus who makes us all whole.

As the royal priesthood [1 Peter 2:9], we can offer the Peace of Christ to whomever we meet, whether they are a follower of Jesus (it's mutual) or not (it's a blessing and resets our hearts toward the other).

In the early Church, and the earliest centuries of the Body of Christ living and growing in a pagan world, the "kiss of peace" was a common way for them to greet one another and confer a mutual blessing. 

While the holy kiss may not be as commonly exchanged in church traditions today, or may feel less appropriate given our cultural views of the kiss, the exchange of Peace in a spoken word, handshake, or embrace between believers is a sustaining, embodied practice that changes our relationships.

With the word, "Peace" on your lips, move into your day today sharing the word and its riches as a blessing, with perhaps a physical gesture of connection (a handshake, or an embrace as seems appropriate), to affirm that the Peace of Jesus dwells in you, and that His Peace heals all it touches.

9 November 1989, 1938, 1924?

9 November 1989

The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin. 

After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all West Berlin citizens could visit West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side, and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall over the next few weeks. The Wall was demolished, beginning on 13 June 1990 and concluding in 1994.

9 November

The unprecedented pogrom of November 9-10, 1938 in Germany is known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Violent attacks on Jews and Judaism throughout the Reich and in the recently annexed Sudetenland began on November 8 and continued until November 11 in Hannover and the free city of Danzig, which had not then been incorporated into the Reich. There followed associated operations: arrests, detention in concentration camps, and a wave of so-called Aryanization orders, which completely eliminated Jews from German economic life. see myjewishlearning.com/article/kristallnacht

9 November 2024

May 9 November 2024 be the day that Israel stops its senseless destructive bombing of Gaza and Lebanon, which has killed over 43,000 and injured over 104,000 in Gaza and killed over 3,000 and injured over 13,000 in Lebanon. almost 70% of those are women and children.

toward Advent

The year is moving toward Advent.
Advent is about waiting and longing.

We wait for lots of things...

• the results of the next election
• results of medical tests and/or surgery
• snow
• good news

There are a couple of things that stand out in our world.
People are afraid and exhausted. 

But, as honest an assessment as that is of this moment, it is important to point out that our current political climate - some call it fascism - thrives on these emotions.

One of the strategies of fascism is wearing people down.
So how do we push back? How do we offer an alternative?

During Advent this year I will be offering a series on Revelation 21-22. Waiting for the new heavens and the new earth. This is not escapism - that has nothing to do with biblical Christianity. But waiting for, longing for, hoping for, expecting the fullness of God's Kingdom to continue to break in.

The Old Testament offers an alternative.
Wonder is an antidote to fear.
Read Job 38:1-7 and Psalm 104.
Read them slowly.
Read them out loud. 

Job 38:1-7

The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?"

Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 35b

Praise the Lord, my soul.
Lord my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent

and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.

He makes winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants.

He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.

You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.

But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;

they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.

You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.

There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.

Praise the Lord, my soul.
Praise the Lord.
Hallelujah!

I invite you to recall wonder.
The wonder of new discoveries.
The wonder of the universe.
Let wonder fill your heart and mind and soul.
Breathe in wonder.
Rest in that wonder.

One of the first photographs from the James Webb telescope.