We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.
TODAY’S QUESTION: If your denomination or congregation doesn’t celebrate Advent, how do you prepare for Christmas?
We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus is the light that is coming into the world. Where it shines, darkness (evil) is revealed and overcome.
TODAY’S QUESTION: What aspect of human life are you waiting/working most for in which Jesus needs to be revealed more fully?
We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.
John the Baptist is a perfect Advent voice as he prepared the way for the coming of the Lord.
TODAY’S QUESTION: How does the preaching of John the Baptist help you to prepare for Christmas, the coming of the Lord?
We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.
As you may have noted in our posts on the “war on Christmas,” or by merely observing the commercialization of this holiday, there are many forces at work to distract us from “the reason for the season.”
TODAY’S QUESTION: If your congregation celebrates Advent, how does this help you to prepare for Christmas?
We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.
Advent looks forward to two arrivals. The anticipation of Jesus coming into the world, and to his return. We live in this “in between” time.
TODAY’S QUESTION: How does the notion of the 2nd coming influence your life, or does it?
by Bruce Epperly
Let me be the first person to wish you “A Very Process Christmas.” Process theology and Christmas just seem to fit together. That might surprise you, especially since process theology asserts that God acts naturally, through the regular processes of nature, and not supernaturally, showing up from the outside every so often to overturn the laws of nature to perform a miracle or defeat an enemy. Just the same, process theology joyfully proclaims the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s beloved child, and the boy who grew up to be healer, reconciler, prophet, and world-changer. God was in the stable and God is in our lives, too! Every day is an advent adventure in which can train eyes for signs of new birth in a world of threat and challenge.
Alfred North Whitehead asserts that the world lives by the incarnation of God. God moves everywhere and in all things, seeking beauty and love. Each moment emerges from God’s inner inspiration. God midwifes each person’s journey, seeking to bring forth the holiness within. God seeks abundant life for every creature, urging all things toward wholeness.
The world incarnates God! Emmanuel, “God with us,” is just as real today as it was in Bethlehem’s stable. A child is born in Bethlehem and a baby cries in a refugee camp, recalling the fact that shortly after Jesus’ birth, the holy family set out on a refugee journey to Egypt.
Walt Whitman once said, “All is miracle.” Meister Eckhart affirmed that “all things are words of God.” Julian of Norwich rejoiced that something as small as a hazelnut contained the fullness of God’s energy. If a hazelnut can emerge from the fullness of God, so can the baby growing in a mother’s womb.
Process theology proclaims that each moment is an epiphany and every encounter an incarnation. Christ is in us, and we can become Christ-bearers in our place and time.
Bethlehem’s stable is not an anomaly but the revelation of what God is doing everywhere. Our world is full of wonder, and the same love that grew day by day in Mary’s womb grows in every person’s life. God gives life to our souls, but also our cells, even at the moment of conception.
The birth of Jesus expresses the wonder-full world in which we live. The child in the manger is a miracle child, manifesting God’s holy light and giving light to all creation. But, my grandchildren and the children in your life are also “miracles,” energetic incarnations of divine love. They too take birth in an amazing, complicated, and often challenging world.
At Christmas, we listen for angelic voices, and for process theologians there are angels around every corner. Every moment brings a message from God and divine messengers abound. God’s angelic messengers speak in our hearts, inviting us to share in the birth of God in our world today.
God also comes to us as the magi from the East, revealing God’s many-faceted wisdom giving life to every authentic spiritual quest. The unique revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth also shines in the holy words and people of other faith traditions.
Christmas celebrates God’s birth in a baby in an occupied land. Today, Christ’s brothers and sisters will take birth among Syrian refugees, inner city parents, Appalachian coal miners, grieving relatives in San Bernardino, Paris, and Beirut, and suburban households.
The word lives by the incarnation of God! Look under the Christmas tree and you’ll discover God with us. Have a very process Christmas!
We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.
TODAY’S QUESTION: What can we do to in Advent to make Christmas less commercial and more spiritual?
Today, we at EDN begin a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of the Church Year. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on. We will return to our series of controversial questions on January 4th.
TODAY’S QUESTION: What practices can you recommend during Advent that will make Christmas more meaningful?
by Chris Surber
Why are there so many Christian denominations? It’s because people are really messed up. Divisions in the Body of Christ point us directly to our need for Christ.
Divisions among the brethren are the very best evidence of this. Even after a person is born again and grafted into the Body of Christ, he or she may remain in desperate need of the grace of God. And you can’t get that through religious traditions, maintaining an impressive building, or belonging to the right church or family of churches.
In my book Gomorrah Was Religious Too, I wrote, “The Church has become a stockroom for the crumbs which fall from the world’s table, rather than a storehouse for the bread of life. Division, greed, divorce, anger, violence, and brokenness are as rampant in most of the body of Christ as they are in the world.”
Look at how divided the Body of Christ is today. We call it diversity and pretend that God is pleased with the weird variety of church options available to would be church goers on Sunday mornings. “Diversity in the Body of Christ” is a phrase that means, “We don’t want to admit that we can’t even get along with ourselves!” God surely isn’t pleased with the division in the Body.
While it’s true that we can learn from every expression of the Church, those various “expressions” are all examples of people insisting on their way over unity among the brethren. I love to study Church History because we learn from wise sages and profound saints. But we also learn that our history is one of prideful assertion that we can figure this following Jesus thing out entirely on our own.
In this series of three blog posts my heart has been to provoke thought in the direction of seeking unity in the Body of Christ. There is a lot more than can be said on the subject, but I want to leave you with this one thought. These aren’t merely thoughts. I’m living it. I’m seeing it played out in my life and ministry.
A couple of years ago I founded a ministry for Haiti called “Supply and Multiply” (www.supplyandmultiply.com) that has allowed me to watch a network of churches, individuals, friends, and supporters from various denominations and church traditions come together to support our work bringing the love of Christ and the Gospel to Haiti. It’s been amazing to watch God at work. It is astonishing to see people from such varied traditions as Pentecostal to Southern Baptist partner in direct ways to see the unifying Gospel go forward in Haiti.
The Gospel is unifying. The truth of Christ can bring His people together. It will always be hard work. It will always involve sacrifice. But it brings with it the beauty of seeing God at work on a level far deeper than brand loyalty. Why are there so many denominations? Because we are imperfect and sinful. What can bring unity? Only the love of Christ lived out in simplicity in honest fellowship with other broken sinners honestly responding the call of Jesus to follow Him together.
by Chris Surber
If it is true that the Church is the visible witness to the glory of God in this world then it must surely follow that God is schizophrenic; at least, if I were an unbeliever, that’s what I’d think. In John 17:11 Jesus prayed to the Father for His disciples saying, “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” (ESV)
If God is one and Jesus prayed that His disciples would be united as one, why is the Church so utterly replete with divisions of every kind? Some people say that God desires variety and that’s why we have so many different denominations. Others say that the division we see in the Body in the Christ is healthy as people live out different expressions of Christianity.
We may attempt to redeem the division in the Church by resorting to labeling division diversity but that doesn’t really solve the basic reality that the Body of Christ is divided. We are not at all reflective of Jesus prayer in John 17:11.
Commenting on broad divisions among the brethren, Puritan Pastor John Anderson wrote,
“Immanent lights have arisen and shone forth among Independents and Episcopalians, but yet their defenses of Gospel truths, and their distinguished piety, do not make these different forms of religion any more agreeable to the word, but only show that we know in part, and prophesy in part; and that we ought to call no man master, nor follow any man, no matter how learned or pious, any farther than he follows Christ.” (Overcoming Division and Unifying the Visible Church: A Rebuke Against the Sin of Occasional Hearing 1794)
God is one in Himself. He is unified in principle, personality and purpose. He is not at war with Himself, though His followers are often at war with one another. This should not be so, and we should fight against division by engaging in intentional acts of unification. The world is on the offensive against the Body of Christ.
To varying extents, persecution is commonplace in most of the world. Meanwhile, we make of ourselves a soft target for the enemy because we are like a soldier with an auto-immune disease: We are busy attacking our self. There are practical ways to fight against division and that’s what it’s going to take to bring about unity.
Here are three really practical ways you can seek unity in the Body of Christ:
God isn’t divided. We shouldn’t be either. We won’t see pure unity among the faithful until Jesus returns for His bride. But in the meantime we can’t let religion of a denominational and divisive sort define the nature of our interaction with one another as followers of the master of mercy.