When thinking about the relationship between Christ and creation, something that needs to be discussed is the difference between making and begetting. The Nicene Creed states that Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made.” But to today’s ears these statements are hard to understand because we don’t use the word ‘beget’ very often in common language anymore. Thus, what exactly is meant by God from God and light from light is not very lucid to us. In essence, to beget is to give rise to, or bring about, something. The way that the tradi ..read more

In the gospel of Mark we are told the story of a father that comes to Jesus’ disciples begging that they remove an evil spirit that has been afflicting his son since his childhood. This evil spirit would throw the boy down to the ground, and cause him to gnash his teeth, foam at the mouth, and go rigid. But the disciples were unable cast out the spirit. And Jesus says to the disciples, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” And Jesus says to the father, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” In tears, the father respo ..read more

Theology is best done in community. I know that this might be a strange thought given how we have become accustomed to thinking of the theologian as the one who sits in the ivory tower with their loads of books writing for the educated few. And though I think that there is a place for this solitary figure in our tradition and life, I still must insist that ‘theology is best done in community.’ But, let me even push this a little further: ‘Theology is best done in communities at prayer.’ Many years ago, while still a postdoc at Notre Dame, and after spending many hours reading some of the great ..read more

I think that if we are being honest with ourselves, the way that Christians approach scripture is to find those characters and stories in which we already identify. Those characters and stories that seem to resinate with us and our lives at the moment. We sometimes phrase it as, “this passage really spoke to what I am going through right now.” We relocate the meaning of scripture to what we are experiencing. This is not an inappropriate thing. It is important to identify with what we are reading in the Bible and allow it to help us find comfort in what God is doing in our present life. What we ..read more

23 “…and while they were sailing [Jesus] fell asleep. A windstorm swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. 24 They went to him and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm.”   For many of us, right now, it certainly feels like we are sailing across a lake where the water around us is tossing us to and fro. Perhaps it feels as though our boat, the thing that is keeping us afloat, is being filled with water and we are at risk of sinking ..read more

“You are what you eat.” What a strange phrase. Yet, most people know exactly what this means. Essentially, the point is that it is important to eat good and healthy food, so that we can be healthy ourselves. Healthy food is equated with a healthy body and perhaps even lifestyle in general.  The phrase itself goes back to around the 1820s when French politician Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin first phrased it as, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” In the 1860s, in Germany, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach wrote, “Man is what he eats.” The phrase really started becoming a part ..read more

One of the first academic papers I ever gave was at the University of Edinburgh on the ethics of stewardship and property rights. One of the passages my paper focused on was the one from Acts that we will be reading this Sunday (Acts 4). At the conclusion of my paper I made the claim that for Christians we should not think of ourselves as owners of private property, but stewards who are called to take care of what we have been given for the good of others within the Church. At the end of the paper, I made this point by suggesting to a room of academics that their massive libraries of books tha ..read more

This morning I was reading through the book of Job. I think it is safe to assume that anyone who has been in the church for any amount of time could tell you the theme of Job. Even if the only word that came from their lips was ‘suffering,’ they would have pretty much hit the nail on the head. But, the fuller picture for this book, and this is important for my reflection today, is that Job was a righteous man, and yet still he suffered. At the very beginning of Job, before all the bad stuff starts happening to him (so really within the first 6 verses of the book), the author is trying to make ..read more

Have you ever said to yourself, “I just don’t feel like doing [fill in the blank] right now,” even though you know it’s the right thing to do? I think if we are being honest, most of us say some version of the above to ourselves often. This experience of knowing you should do something, but are having a hard time being motivated, is an ancient one. It goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks and was adopted into the way Christians think about the tension between what we feel, and what we know we should do. This tension comes out in the way these thinkers have talked about the soul. Bas ..read more

This past week I was contacted by the youth ministry officer for Episcopal Church Faith Formation at the national church to write a short reflection for high schoolers on peace and the current violence in the middle east. Myself and a few priests/pastors from a varieties of denominations of Palestinian, Israeli, and Lebanese backgrounds (I was the resident Armenian) we asked to write a reflection a day over. Below is my contribution to ‘The Way of Peace’ for d365. Scripture: John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your he ..read more