Sadly, most people’s image of God is jolly Santa, making a list and checking it twice, finding out who’s naughty or nice. It’s certainly not this humble, helpless baby who has come to love us in ways that we’re not ready to be loved.
I would rather live on the verge of falling and let my security be in the all-sufficiency of the grace of God than to live in some kind of pietistic illusion of moral excellence. My faith isn't in the idea that I'm more moral than anybody else. My faith is in the idea...
Jesus Christ needs to be understood more realistically than as a high ideal that we try to apply to historical reality. Jesus Christ was deeply engaged in historical struggle. Jesus is the revelation of God’s engagement in historical struggle. from A Thicker Jesus
It is quite the fragile god who needs political power to preserve and enforce their will. It is quite the powerful God who partners with peasants, is born in poverty, washes feet, heals the sick, advocates for the oppressed, is unjustly killed, and still changes the...
When we think about the Annunciation, this scene between the angel Gabriel and Mary, we think of the faith it took for her to believe that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and that her son, the illegitimate child of an insignificant girl, really...
God does not give Divine Love except to people who really want this, choose this, and say "yes" to this. Divine Love is so pure that it never manipulates, shames, or forces itself on anyone. Love waits to be invited and desired, and only then rushes in.
The new thing that God seeks often occurs in times of disruption, when the familiar world has collapsed and the future is in doubt, when the days grow shorter, and we wonder if darkness will swallow the light... God's new thing is the vision of "something more," a...
Immanuel means ‘God with us.’ And not in the sense that God just showed up or arrived on the scene. A thousand times no. In spite of the fact it changed everything, the birth of Jesus didn’t technically create a new reality for God or us; rather, it was simply and...
Christ came into the world to make us truly human. When we look at human beings today in terms of what God has done for humanity in the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, we should respond with awesome wonder and treat everyone with tender dignity —...
In Christ’s incarnation all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God. Whoever from now on attacks the least of the people attacks Christ, who took on human form and who in himself has restored the image of God for all who bear a human countenance....