Empire and Christianity

Belonging in God’s Kin-dom 

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

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Theologian Kat Armas celebrates how early Christians would have heard the gospel call to dignity and belonging, in contrast to the empire’s insistence on conquerors and those conquered:   

In the empire’s world, belonging was a double-edged blade. To be counted, to have a name that meant anything beyond yourself, you had to be willing to shed your own skin, to carve yourself into a shape that mirrored the empire’s desires. Conformity to the empire’s will was a way of survival, a bitter peace won through the erasure of identity. There was no space for wild diversity, no room for the vast and beautiful spectrum of human existence. 

But then this voice, this gospel, cuts through the air: “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free …” (Colossians 3:11). These labels—Greek, Jew, slave, free—were more than words; they were walls built around souls, barriers defining who could rise, who was condemned to serve. But with Colossians’ bold proclamation, the empire’s iron categories tremble. In Christ, even the outsider is welcomed. No longer must anyone bow to belong; this new kin-dom dismantles the lie that peace requires our silence…. 

The way of Jesus stands in stark contrast. This gospel takes the empire’s most despised and remakes them, offering not only belonging but belovedness. The reach of Christ’s love goes to the most forsaken corners of the imagination and brings forth kin. Here, we find a love that turns the feared into family. 

In this new kin-dom, there is no lower rank, no conquest hiding under the guise of unity. Jew and Greek, slave and free, barbarian and Scythian all gather at the same table, each honored as they are.  

Armas emphasizes how this movement of God supported both diversity and belonging: 

When Colossians speaks of putting off the old self, of shedding the garments of empire, it calls us into a transformation that is not about adornment but about a fundamental rebirth. In Roman triumphs, victors would strip away their old clothes and don the robes of victory in a ceremony that celebrated the rule of the conqueror. In the empire, proper dress symbolized civilization itself. To be Roman was to be clothed rightly, while those deemed “barbarians” were marked by their supposed lack of refinement, cast as outsiders not just by geography but by appearance, by dress, by body. This belief endured through European colonization and still lingers into our modern minds. To belong in the empire is to dress the part. But the gospel invites us to clothe ourselves instead in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and above all love. This love is no shallow thing—it binds us, mends us, forms a communion where there were once only categories. In this kin-dom, power falls away, and what’s left is a peace so deep that it becomes home, a place where difference can finally breathe. A place of communion, solidarity, and friendship.

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The Death Penalty & America’s Spiritual Crisis

The Secretary of War is not following the Prince of Peace.

HOLY POST MEDIA OCT 21

By Shane Claiborne

A lot of people are talking about the death penalty right now. First, there was the recent botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee. She survived two lethal doses of the poison meant to kill her and is still alive, as all executions in Tennessee are halted, at least for now. Then we heard Pete Hegseth announce that the military execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood gunman would be livestreamed, an announcement initially met with enthusiastic support from President Trump. It appears the President has now canceled the livestream, but we can’t let the debate over livestreaming an execution eclipse the larger reality—not only is it wrong to livestream an execution; it’s also wrong to have an execution. The death penalty is a cruel, gruesome, failed experiment in America.

We are one of only a handful of countries still executing people on a regular basis. The United States is usually in the top five countries when it comes to the number of executions in any given year, and we are always in the top 10. The company we keep is China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen—countries not known for being champions of human rights. When I was born just over 50 years ago (1975), most of the world’s countries still executed people. In my lifetime, most of the world has stopped executing people and found better ways to administer justice. We are one of the outliers.

There is another layer of this that deeply troubles me as a Christian. More than 95 percent of executions in America happen in the “Bible belt”—where Christians are most concentrated. The Bible belt is the death belt. The death penalty has survived in America not in spite of Christians, but because of us—and that should trouble any of us who genuinely love Jesus, the Prince of Peace. It is Christians who are driving the machinery of death—Christian governors, legislators, parole board members, even up to the Supreme Court, where the most pro-death Justices are the ones who profess to be Christians. If Christians decided to abolish the death penalty in America, it would end overnight.

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Now, it is also true, and worth noting, that these Bible belt states are also formerly Confederate states. The states that held on to slavery the longest are the same ones that continue to hang on to the death penalty. Where lynchings happened 100 years ago is precisely where executions happen today. That’s all massively important. While some folks insist that we need the death penalty for “the worst of the worst”—folks like the Fort Hood mass shooter set for execution in December. And yet, as you take a closer look at the death penalty, it becomes clear that we are not killing the worst of the worst, but the poorest of the poor and disproportionately people of color. What determines who gets killed is not the atrocity of the crime, but arbitrary things like the resources of the defendant (there are no rich people on death row), the race of the victim, and where the crime was committed. 

Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t get the death penalty. Charles Manson died of natural causes in prison. Harvard-educated Ted Kaczynski didn’t get it. Race and resources play a major role in who dies and who lives, and even the Supreme Court recognized that when they halted executions in 1972, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.” Justice Stewart famously compared the randomness of the death penalty to being “struck by lightning.” Less than 1 percent of murders end with an execution of the perpetrator—and it is certainly true that the “lightning” hits people of color a lot more than white folks. Nevertheless, let’s dig a little deeper on why I think the death penalty is not just a moral crisis but a spiritual one.

I want to suggest that the death penalty, and Christians’ fidelity to it, is a theological and spiritual crisis.

When you look at the research and polls, when people are asked if they can quote a passage from the Bible, at the top of that list is “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:24). Unsurprisingly, when President Trump was asked what Bible verse has shaped his character and thinking, he cited this one. (It’s also worth remembering that during his first term, Trump carried out federal executions at a rate we haven’t seen in over 100 years).

It is literally one of the most well-known Bible verses in the world—and, I believe, one of the most abused and misunderstood. The ancient law, older than Scripture itself, is known as “lex talionis.” It is where our idea of “proportional retaliation” originated. This framework for justice allowed for reciprocal harm—a victim has the right to harm the perpetrator who hurt them. But the ground rules were clear—it had to be an exact exchange. If someone broke your left arm, you could break their left arm, but not their right. If someone gouged your eye out, you could gouge out their eye, but not both eyes. And you certainly couldn’t burn down their house or do them harm in other ways. Scholars point out that the whole purpose was to stop the spiral of violence from building. We know how violence escalates. We might think of lex talionis as “an eye for an eye… but no more.” It was meant to limit violence, not license it.

Deep down, we all know we can do better. Our parents taught us, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” If someone actually gouged your eye out, not many of us would suggest that the best version of justice is to gouge their eye out. We don’t rape people who rape to show that rape is wrong. And yet in the case of murder, we still hold out this logic—that we can kill to show that killing is wrong. 

This is where Jesus shines so brightly. He challenges this version of justice head-on. “You’ve heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye’… but I tell you.” He knew the prevailing logic of his time—“Moses told you this… but I tell you.” As one who believes Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Old Testament but to fulfill it, this all makes total sense. Stopping the spiral of violence was a good place to start, but refusing to resort to violence at all is divine. Jesus makes it clear—just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. Just because we can harm someone back doesn’t mean we should. He shows us how to engage with evil without mirroring it. As Scripture says, we do not repay evil with evil, but we overcome evil with good (Romans 12, 1 Peter 3). This is why the death penalty is so problematic. It is a direct betrayal of the redemptive love we see in Christ.

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At the heart of the Gospel of Jesus is the deep conviction that no one is beyond redemption. Where sin abounds, grace abounds. Mercy triumphs over judgment. That’s what the Bible says. And it is worth remembering that Moses murdered someone. David murdered Uriah to cover up his rape of Bathsheba. The apostle Paul oversaw the torturous execution of Stephen. If murderers are beyond redemption, then we can rip out most of the Bible, because it was written by them. The Bible is a love story, a grace story—one of the central themes is that God is good even when we are not.

One of the things I am quite proud of as someone who was raised Methodist is the powerful statement of the United Methodist Church on capital punishment: 

“The death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore, and transform all human beings.” 

There is the iconic story of Jesus interrupting an execution of a woman caught in adultery, as he says: “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” It is Jesus who blesses the merciful and promises that in as much as we forgive, we will be forgiven. And of course he didn’t just preach it—he lived it up to his last breath as he pleaded for forgiveness for the people who were killing him. If Christ refused to kill, so should we.

The early Christians got it. For the first few hundred years, they were a steady voice for life on all fronts, which included the death penalty. Cyprian, one of the third-century bishops, insisted that it is always wrong to kill, regardless of whether the person taking a life is a criminal, or a governor, or a President. His words: “… Murder, considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse.” He found it utterly absurd that we would denounce murder done by an individual but sanctify it when it is done by the state.

My friend Sr. Helen Prejean often says, “Sometimes the question isn’t whether someone deserves to die, but whether we deserve to kill.” After all, weren’t we all deserving of death, but given the gift of life by the love and grace of God?

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Let us also make it clear—every one of the people killed by Nidal Malik Hasan, and all those injured and traumatized by his violence, are also made in the image of God, and they deserve justice. To be against the death penalty is not to be against justice. It is not to be numb to the pain of the victims and their families or to say that murder shouldn’t have consequences. But real justice, God’s justice, Biblical justice, is restorative. The best translation of the biblical concept of justice, always connected to “righteousness,” is restorative justice.

Rather than asking, “What did they do wrong, and what punishment do they deserve?” restorative justice asks a different set of questions: ”What harm was done, and how do we heal the wounds?” The death penalty does not heal the wounds of violence; it just creates new wounds. It mirrors the evil. It creates a whole new set of victims. Violence is the disease, not the cure. It is long past time to stop killing to show that killing is wrong. The death penalty raises the question not just of who Nidal Malik Hasan is, but who we are—and who we want to be.

Here’s the good news—enthusiasm around the death penalty is hitting a record low. We are finally seeing polls with a majority of Americans wanting alternatives to the death penalty. On average, a new state abolishes the death penalty every two years. And when it comes to new death sentences, one of the most important data points regarding the death penalty’s future, the numbers are the lowest they have been in decades. In 2025, only 23 people were sentenced to death. Compare that to 325 in 1986.

A generation from now, we will look back on the death penalty like we look back at slavery—with shame and horror, with many of our grandchildren asking how Christians used the Bible to defend such a thing. So this is a time for courage. It does not take courage to say slavery is wrong generations after we abolished it. But it took courage to say slavery was wrong when many people thought it was acceptable, even God-ordained. This is a time for courage. We just have to convince our fellow Christians to be a little more “pro-life.” They really are the only folks keeping this failed experiment alive.

Shane Claiborne is the author of Executing Grace, an activist, and founder of Red Letter Christians.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Theologian Kat Armas celebrates how early Christians would have heard the gospel call to dignity and belonging, in contrast to the empire’s insistence on conquerors and those conquered:

In the empire’s world, belonging was a double-edged blade. To be counted, to have a name that meant anything beyond yourself, you had to be willing to shed your own skin, to carve yourself into a shape that mirrored the empire’s desires. Conformity to the empire’s will was a way of survival, a bitter peace won through the erasure of identity. There was no space for wild diversity, no room for the vast and beautiful spectrum of human existence.

But then this voice, this gospel, cuts through the air: “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free …” (Colossians 3:11). These labels—Greek, Jew, slave, free—were more than words; they were walls built around souls, barriers defining who could rise, who was condemned to serve. But with Colossians’ bold proclamation, the empire’s iron categories tremble. In Christ, even the outsider is welcomed. No longer must anyone bow to belong; this new kin-dom dismantles the lie that peace requires our silence….

The way of Jesus stands in stark contrast. This gospel takes the empire’s most despised and remakes them, offering not only belonging but belovedness. The reach of Christ’s love goes to the most forsaken corners of the imagination and brings forth kin. Here, we find a love that turns the feared into family.

In this new kin-dom, there is no lower rank, no conquest hiding under the guise of unity. Jew and Greek, slave and free, barbarian and Scythian all gather at the same table, each honored as they are.

Armas emphasizes how this movement of God supported both diversity and belonging:

When Colossians speaks of putting off the old self, of shedding the garments of empire, it calls us into a transformation that is not about adornment but about a fundamental rebirth. In Roman triumphs, victors would strip away their old clothes and don the robes of victory in a ceremony that celebrated the rule of the conqueror. In the empire, proper dress symbolized civilization itself. To be Roman was to be clothed rightly, while those deemed “barbarians” were marked by their supposed lack of refinement, cast as outsiders not just by geography but by appearance, by dress, by body. This belief endured through European colonization and still lingers into our modern minds. To belong in the empire is to dress the part. But the gospel invites us to clothe ourselves instead in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and above all love. This love is no shallow thing—it binds us, mends us, forms a communion where there were once only categories. In this kin-dom, power falls away, and what’s left is a peace so deep that it becomes home, a place where difference can finally breathe. A place of communion, solidarity, and friendship.

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

To live in My Presence consistently, you must expose and expel your rebellious tendencies. When something interferes with your plans or desires, you tend to resent the interference. Try to become aware of each resentment, however petty it may seem. Don’t push those unpleasant feelings down; instead, let them come to the surface where you can deal with them. Ask My Spirit to increase your awareness of resentful feelings. Bring them boldly into the Light of My Presence, so that I can free you from them.
     The ultimate solution to rebellious tendencies is submission to My authority over you. Intellectually you rejoice in My sovereignty, without which the world would be a terrifying place. But when My sovereign will encroaches on your little domain of control, you often react with telltale resentment.
     The best response to losses or thwarted hopes is praise: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Remember that all good things–your possessions, your family and friends, your health and abilities, your time–are gifts from Me. Instead of feeling entitled to all these blessings, respond to them with gratitude. Be prepared to let go of anything I take from you, but never let go of My hand!

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:23-24: David asked God to search for sin and point it out, even to the level of testing his thoughts. This is exploratory surgery for sin. How are we to recognize sin unless God points it out? Then, when God shows us, we can repent and be forgiven. Make this verse your prayer. If you ask the Lord to search your heart and your thoughts to reveal your sin, you will be continuing on “the path of everlasting life.”

1st Peter 5:6 (NLT)
6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 5:6: We often worry about our position and status, hoping to get proper recognition for what we do. But Peter advises us to remember that God’s recognition counts more than human praise. God is able and willing to bless us according to his timing. Humbly obey God regardless of present circumstances, and in his good time – either in this life or the next – he will honor you.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 5:7: Carrying your worries, stresses, and daily struggles by yourself shows that you have not trusted God fully with your life. It takes humility, however, to recognize that God cares, to admit your need, and to let others in God’s family help you. Sometimes we think that struggles caused by our own sin and foolishness are not God’s concern. But when we turn to God in repentance, he will bear the weight even of those struggles. Letting God have your anxieties calls for action, not passivity. Don’t submit to circumstances but to the Lord, who controls circumstances.

Job 1:21 (NLT)
21 He said,
“I came naked from my mother’s womb,
    and I will be naked when I leave.
The Lord gave me what I had,
    and the Lord has taken it away.
Praise the name of the Lord!”

Additional insight regarding Job 1:21: Job did not hide his overwhelming grief. He had not lost his faith in God; instead, his emotions showed that he was human and that he loved his family. God created our emotions, and it is not sinful or inappropriate to express them as Job did. If you have experienced a deep loss, a disappointment, or a heartbreak, admit your feelings to yourself and others, and grieve.

Additional insight regarding Job 1:21: Job had lost his possessions and family in this first of Satan’s tests, but he reacted rightly toward God by acknowledging God’s sovereign authority over everything God had given him. Satan lost this first round. Job passed the test and proved that people can love God for who he is, not for what he gives.

Universal Healing

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Cherokee theologian Randy Woodley contrasts Western Christianity’s emphasis on salvation through doctrine with the healing work of Jesus: 

People who believe themselves to be at the top of a hierarchy must find ways to maintain power. Doctrines can be a handy tool for doing so. If you can convince the masses that a reward awaits them in heaven, you’ve got a way to keep the restive crowds a bit quieter, more compliant. And if you can convince them that they’re actually sinful through and through—and that as sinners, they’ve got to keep themselves in line in order to have a chance at God’s grace—well, you’ve got it made. Your power can continue to expand.  

One such doctrine was the belief that all people are born sinful. This is often called the doctrine of original sin … [which] fits nicely with the dominant church’s presumed authority to either grant or withhold salvation….  

What Christian theology calls “sin” Native American understandings often describe as imbalance, or broken harmony. These different terms point toward the same spiritual reality. Salvation then, is restoring the harmony and imbalance through healing. 

By reducing the idea of salvation to a series of formulas, or disciplines, or prayers, or creeds, the Western church missed the whole point. Salvation … was not something that could be bought with money, power, or obedience to words in a creed. Salvation is about one thing: healing. And not healing for later, in the by and by, but healing for right now.  

Even today, many people allow doctrine to determine their idea of salvation rather than understanding salvation as the way God heals us all, including the rest of the community of creation. I would love to see people grasp this important concept: that healing is a much better way to think of God’s greatest gift than salvation is. 

Woodley describes how Jesus offers collective healing rather than individual salvation:  

When we look at Jesus through the lens of Indigenous and Hebrew understandings rather than imperial American and Roman frameworks, we see that his ministry was fundamentally about restoring wholeness, healing bodies, bringing outcasts back into community, challenging unjust systems, and mending broken relationships…. Healing is the bigger picture of God’s vision that Western Christianity calls “salvation,” and healing is for all of us now.  

Perhaps most importantly, healing language better reflects the Creator’s heart for shalom: that comprehensive peace and abundance in which all creation coexists in harmony. Shalom, and the Indigenous visions of harmony, contains a justice and wholeness that extends far beyond individual souls to encompass whole communities, cultures, and the land itself.  

The path forward must be about stripping away the imperial distortions to reveal the Jesus who heals rather than conquers, who restores rather than erases, who empowers rather than overpowers. In this understanding, salvation becomes what it was always meant to be: the healing of all things.

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Sunday Musings

Simple, but not easy

DIANA BUTLER BASS. OCT 17

TODAY IS THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

We are moving swiftly through these final weeks of Pentecost. Advent is coming. 

The lectionary readings raise increasingly pressing questions about what it means to live in politically fraught and conflicted times — while hoping for a better world to come. 

Matthew 22:15-22

The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 

But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” 

And they brought him a denarius. 

Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 

They answered, “The emperor’s.” 

Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 

When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

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I paid taxes this week. 

I know. It’s not April. This is October. But, since I’m a freelancer, it takes time to organize everything. We always ask for an extension and pay in the autumn.

While struggling through piles of receipts, I was thinking about preaching this weekend on this text: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

And so, I wrote a check and rendered.

These verses are often quoted to support “good citizen” theology. “Good citizen” theology teaches that we live in different spheres of duty, responsibility, and obligation — state and church, politics and faith, or the sphere of “Caesar” and the sphere of “God.”

It seems, on the surface at least, easy. Pay your taxes, support the government; pray and serve, love your neighbor; honor the king, worship God. 

Just when we think we’ve solved the problem of politics and religion, the New Testament throws us a story like Jesus’ argument with his critics, the Pharisees.

In this passage, the Pharisees quiz Jesus, to “entrap” him. Jesus was, most likely, a fellow-traveler to the first-century Jewish movement called the “Pharisees.” He shared much of their theology, rabbinical teaching style, and practices of worship. But for all his similarities with them, there were differences, too. And those differences often emerged in sharp encounters. 

The Pharisees were both a theological and political movement. They hated Caesar and Rome — seeing the Romans as unclean and barbaric pagan overlords. But they’d adopted a program of what one scholar calls, “pragmatic survival and accommodation” instead of violent resistance to Rome. As much as they detested Caesar, they really, truly wanted to stay out of trouble with the authorities, waiting out Rome and hoping for better years ahead. Instead of criticizing the political order directly, they emphasized faith and Jewish practice and kept out of Caesar’s way. 

When they questioned Jesus, they wanted to pin him down on politics and religion. Getting Jesus on record would serve them well. They could figure out if Jesus sided with their survival strategy. He’d be a good ally both religiously and politically. If he didn’t agree, he might be dangerous. Perhaps he sided with the Zealots or one of the politically revolutionary groups. The Pharisees needed to know that. If he became too popular, he might draw Rome’s ire and threaten the already-tenuous survival of the struggling Jewish community. 

Understanding Jesus’ position on taxes was key to defining his politics. Generally, the Pharisees paid taxes as part of their “accommodation” strategy. Better to cough up the cash than go to jail — or worse. But Jesus? What did he do?

And so their question: Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?

In one of his finest no-answer answers, Jesus said: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

His critics were “amazed.” They got it. They understood his point.

It seemed somehow clear to them. Clear enough to turn and walk away.

But it has rarely seemed that clear to us. Over the centuries Christians developed at least five interpretations of Jesus’ “render to Caesar” comment: (1) Caesar and God are separate — pay the tax; (2) Caesar and God are an enigma, an unsolvable puzzle meant as a deflection; (3) Caesar and God are a paradox and we, somehow, must serve both; (4) Caesar and God are at odds — pay your taxes but “with contempt”; or (5) Caesar is under the authority of God and give the state nothing, no matter the consequences.

Take your pick. Each one of these positions has theological oomph — and has been supported and argued over and over and over again in church history. 

That makes me wonder: Have we missed the point? 

When this story was first written down, sometime between 60 and 80, Roman emperors made a claim to divinity. Indeed, the imperial titles for Caesar included “Dominus et Deus” and “Dominus et Salvator.” Not “Mr. President” or “Your Honor” or even “Your Royal Highness” or “Your Majesty.” But “Lord and God” or “Lord and Savior.” Those were titles held by Caesar.

Jews hated it. This was idolatry. And Christians hated it, too. Christians hated it so much that they stole the titles and gave them to Jesus. No calling Nero their Lord and God. Instead, they proclaimed “Jesus is Lord.” 

And the year 60, they were being killed for saying it.

That’s the invisible context of the Caesar tax story. In these early years, every Christian knew their creed: Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. 

The first audience of Matthew’s gospel would have known exactly how it was intended. The story undergirded their creed — Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. They might have laughed upon hearing or reading it. Caesar thinks everything belongs to him. We don’t think that! Because nothing belongs to Caesar. Everything belongs to God! 

The story was written down because it supported what Christians already believed. Not that they were trying to figure out some doctrine of church and state. 

They were not worried about taxes. They were worried about Roman authorities throwing them to wild beasts. 

They already knew that Caesar was a pretender. That evil was upon the throne. And God? Well, no matter what Caesar did, even if he murdered them, Caesar could never own them. Because God did. Through faith. Through baptism. Through their love of God. Through their solidarity with neighbors. Jesus is Lord! 

And that’s it. The first creed was a theological statement. And it was a political statement. The first creed was theo-political. Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not.

In the case of this verse, the long historical argument of state and church in Christian theology is a complexity of our own making. It is complicated because we’ve made it complicated — trying to justify governments and practices and systems of politics that literally have nothing to do with divine intention and the sacred heartbeat of the cosmos. 

Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not.

The Pharisees were amazed because it was so clear. So simple. They’d complexified Caesar and God — and Jesus cut to the chase. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s — to God what is God’s. 

It is simple. Everything belongs to God. Simple, yes. But it is very hard to live. The early Christians knew that. Simplicity doesn’t mean it is easy. And we know that, too.

But the simplicity still shines: God. Dominus et Deus. Lord and God. Dominus Mundi. Lord of the Earth. Dominus universum. Lord of the Universe. 

Remember the creed — the cry — of the first followers of Jesus: Jesus is Lord! 

Not Caesar. Never Caesar.

May we be brave enough to proclaim the same — and courageous enough to live it in our day.

Insisting on Winners and Losers

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Father Richard Rohr points to the creation of winners and losers as a sure sign that an “empire consciousness” is at work:  

There is an overall paradigm that I’ve been calling “empire thinking,” which is a zero-sum game. And in a zero-sum game, one can only win by causing another to lose. Unless that assumption is stated very clearly, we don’t realize how often it’s at work. It will not really be a game where I have a wonderful skill to share or a gift to be highlighted. I just have to defeat the other side. We could also call it the win-lose worldview. I want to say as strongly as I can that the win-lose worldview, the expectations of the zero-sum game, are absolutely dominant in the minds of most people. 

This game of winning and losing is a tragic way of defining reality. A zero-sum game demands losers. Surely it isn’t true that the only way we can really “win” in life is to make certain that others lose? It’s amazing how we take some kind of happy delight in this. Just look at the enthusiasm communities have for their sports teams! We like that framing of reality. At this point in our history, we like winners and losers so much that, whereas Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am,” the American mind now says, “I win, therefore, I am.” That is not an exaggeration. “I win, therefore, I am” is at work in our economics, politics, global policy, social media, religion, and even our personal relationships! We’re not considering the other side of that equation: Whenever we think that way, there have to be losers. 

Christianity quickly adopted that interpretation of the gospel, though the four Gospels in no way validated it. After several centuries of persecution by the Roman Empire, most Christians felt quite happy, excited, and even liberated when the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the established religion in 313 CE. We moved from the bottom to the top, from the losers to the ultimate winners. 

Ascending, top-down religions love a top-down, win-lose worldview. Protect the top, make sure the top is winning, and it just so happens that a lot of other people lose. Unless we’re transformed by grace, we can’t even recognize that we’re doing it. Without grace, we really don’t know how to think in terms of “win-win.”  

That type of win-lose thinking is associated with a high degree of Christians today, and it’s not even really our fault. No one ever taught us to think differently. Presenting heaven and hell in the first grade offers a nice, dualistic explanation to keep little children from misbehaving—but does it have much to do with the teachings of Jesus? I don’t think so. But when we frame reality and the whole world that way, that’s the way we frame the gospel. 

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The Games of Empire

Monday, October 19, 2026

Father Richard considers how the lens of empire shifted the interpretation of the gospel: 

Once Christianity became enmeshed with empire, we could no longer talk about the opening line of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). Emperors don’t want people who are poor in spirit. They want loyalists. They want people who salute the flag and follow the rules. They want national security states. Any talk of nonviolence frankly goes underground until the twentieth century. That’s how well empire Christianity buried the gospel message. Empires need clear judgments about up and down, who’s in and who’s out, who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s our enemy and who’s our friend. 

Here’s an example of how thoroughly it infected the church. In 1054, with no sense of irony, the bishop of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople, representing the Latin church and the Greek church traditions, mutually excommunicated one another. Each side effectively called themselves the winner. This was a triumph of dualistic, win-lose thinking. We had the Holy Roman Empire in the West, and the Byzantine Empire in the East, and they basically stopped talking to one another. 

The Holy Roman Empire transitioned into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Similarly, the Spanish Empire brought its version of Western Roman Catholicism to the New World, including my own state of New Mexico. 

These empires handed on a reading of the gospel that did not threaten top-down power, war-making, or the accumulation of wealth, but was presumably perfectly aligned with it. That’s why people think I’m a heretic when I critique capitalism. Did you know that until the 1100s, taking interest on a loan was considered material for excommunication? Now, it’s the only name of the game! We are so aligned with our current money-making system that much of Jesus’s teaching, in which he says the top will be bottom and the bottom will be top, doesn’t make a bit of sense to us. (See Matthew 19:30, 20:16.) We don’t agree with it, privately or publicly. 

There are, of course, the outliers, those who remained outside of empire. In the Catholic world there were the desert fathers and mothers, the Celts, and the mendicant orders. In the Protestant world, non-imperial Christianity was probably best illustrated by the Anabaptist movement, which led to groups like the Mennonites, the Amish, the Waldensians, the Bruderhof, and even the Quakers (although the Quakers aren’t really Anabaptists). 

These forms of Christianity emphasize things like a simple lifestyle, non-participation in war, not taking oaths to governments, and not saluting the flags and systems of this world. These groups were never established by any state whatsoever, nor did they enjoy the privileges that came from being the established religion of the Roman, Spanish, or British Empires. This is actually to their benefit because once you’re established, you have to be careful! Your ability to speak truth will be highly limited. There’s a whole bunch of things you cannot say anymore.

God Is Our Home

Friday, October 16, 2026

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
—Maya Angelou

Historian Diana Butler Bass emphasizes the importance of “home” in Scripture and different faith traditions.  

Home is a central theme in the world’s great religions: Jews seeking a homeland with God; Christian proclaiming that God dwells within our hearts; Muslims facing home to pray; Buddhists find a true home in enlightenment…. Human beings build temples to shelter God’s presence, we mark sacred places with shrines, and we bury, float, or burn our dead that they might find their way home to God.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is that of humanity searching for home…. Throughout, a spiritual interplay emerges: not only did God create our earthly home, but God is our home…. It is a powerful story, rich in literary ambiguity—the earth, us, home, and God are almost interchangeable characters in this ancient record of humankind’s aching search to dwell….

Specific stories also relate tales of us, home, and God. Perhaps none does so more beautifully than the book of Ruth. Ruth, a Moabite woman married to a Jew, is widowed. Instead of staying in her own homeland after her husband’s death, she pleads with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to be allowed to accompany her to Israel to find a new home: 

Where you go, I will go; 
where you lodge, I will lodge;  
your people shall be my people,  
and your God my God. 
Where you die, I will die— 
there will I be buried (Ruth 1:16–17) 

Home is the relationship between two people, a physical place, and God. This is sacred dwelling. [1]

Butler Bass describes how God dwells with and in us:

Theistic faiths insist that ultimately God is our home. God dwells with us, and we in God. In Judaism, one way of referring to God is shekhinah, meaning the dwelling or settling of the Divine Presence, a word that also is used to describe the nesting of birds. The ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah spoke of Immanuel, “God with us,” as the promise of shelter and safety for Israel, one of the names that Christians later adopted for Jesus….

The word “dwell” is related to an Old English word for “heresy” or “madness.” Perhaps it is a sort of insanity to believe that God dwells with us. If so, the madness is the long-lingering hope of the human race, the dream to dwell. It is not only a hope, however; it is also hard work, this effort to shelter our souls. Perhaps making a home is both a divine madness and a human one. Ultimately, physical houses go to ruin, but home is an ongoing spiritual promise….

Home, a holy habitation, a sacred space. We do not often stop to consider where we dwell, much less how it shapes us to move about in the world, for either good or ill. But somehow we keep searching for home, looking for a safe haven to reside and return.

References:
[1] Diana Butler Bass, Grounded: Finding God in the World; A Spiritual Revolution (HarperOne, 2015), 169, 170.

[2] Butler Bass, Grounded, 190, 191, 192.

Image credit and inspiration: Andrew Wong, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Penang, Malaysia. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The inner sanctum is always with us, shedding light on who we are, our journey with and to the divine.

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John Chaffee – Five on Friday

1.

“No medicine is more valuable, none more efficacious, none better suited to the cure of all our temporal ills than a friend to whom we may turn for consolation in time of trouble, and with whom we may share our happiness in time of joy.”

– Aelred of Rievaulx, 12th Century Cistercian Monk

My life has absolutely been enriched and made significantly better by having good friends.  Adulthood means you may see those friends less often, but it is always great to reconnect and talk about what we both agree matters most.

2.

“If one completes the journey to one’s heart, one will find oneself in the heart of everyone else.”

– Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk

A common thread in the Christian mystical tradition seems to be the solidarity one feels toward the rest of humanity.

If we look deep enough into ourselves, we will see everyone else, and if we look deep enough into everyone else, we will find ourselves.

In our world today, compassion, empathy, and connection seem increasingly undervalued as we spend more and more time in front of screens.  I found it hard to believe that, several months ago, empathy was called a “sin.”

I think the highest and most mature interpretations of the world’s religions will focus on recognizing one another’s shared humanity.

3.

“The Church is an army of peace which sheds no blood.”

– Clement of Alexandria, 2nd-Century Catechetical Teacher

The early Church actually patterned its early structures after the Roman military.

From lay people to deacons to priests to archpriests to bishops to archbishops and finally to the Pope, the hierarchy of the early Church (and many denominations now) resembled that of the Roman military.  The reason for that was to regionalize who was in charge of which areas.

The major difference, though, was the tactics.  The Roman Empire used violence and intimidation to achieve its goals.  The early Church, on the other hand, was to use the tools we now call the Fruit of the Spirit…

Love

Joy

Peace

Patience

Kindness

Goodness

Faithfulness

Self-Control

The early Church saw itself as in the midst of a spiritual battle for mankind’s soul.  In its day, it saw the way that society valued people according to their utility, the way that it mistreated the poor, the widow, and the orphan, and how it demonized the homeless and the beggar.  If you ask me, it is little wonder why the early Church grew so much; it was a tender refuge for people from a brutal world.

Plus, the paradox of being a “Church militant” that advances its mission through virtues rather than vices?  I am sure that made many people scratch their heads in curiosity.

4.

“We remember to change the oil in our cars, change the filters in our water dispensers, and change the bag on our vacuums, but we neglect the work of inner housecleaning. We’re unfamiliar with the vast territory of our hearts.”

– Chuck DeGroat, Seminary Professor and Author

Chuck has a new book on character coming out that I am very excited to read.

Here, though, he makes a simple analogy: we take better care of our cars, filters, and vacuums than our own inner landscape.

If our souls had a “check engine light,” we might be more inclined to work on it and give it regular checkups.  Without such a light, we are prone to going too long without working on ourselves.

I guess it is possible that irritability, sadness, depression, loneliness, and the like are all warning signs that we often overlook or simply push through by means of force of effort.  Obviously, this isn’t good, but we may feel like we have to keep pushing no matter what.

It is my opinion, but I think some church folk keep counseling or therapy at a distance because there’s a turf war over who does the internal healing.  Is it spirituality or is it psychology?

Or could it be both?

5.

“We do not have to live in a monastery to find our way into the deep healing and liberation that monastic life nurtures and protects.”

– Jim Finley, Former Monk Turned Psychotherapist

Years ago, I heard Jim Finley say that monastery life is finely tuned to cultivate the inner experience of God through all that one does.  Whether you’re raking leaves, working in the kitchen, helping visitors, praying, or serving, it doesn’t matter; all of life can be done in a way that keeps God’s presence very apparent.

I liked that.

It makes me wonder how I might better craft and fine-tune my own life so I can experience God’s presence more fully in the midst of everything.  (This makes me think of Brother Lawrence’s life.)

I already deactivated social media, and I already live a rather slow pace of life…  Perhaps the next step is minimalism: giving away the “stuff” that clutters and unnecessarily fills life?

Any suggestions? 

Stories of Home

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Feast Day of Teresa of Ávila

Theologian Willie Jennings recalls how his parents cultivated a sense of safety and belonging through stories told at home:

Mary, my mother, taught me to respect the dirt. Like many black women from the South, she knew the earth like she knew her own soul. I came along late. I was the last of her eleven children, born not of the South but of the North, the fruit of the great migration when black folks wearied of the Jim Crow South and, in search of work, pointed their hopes toward northern cities and replanted their lives in colder air. So I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and found myself each spring with my mother, Mary, in her garden in the backyard.

There near the soil Mary deepened my understanding of her life, her history, and her hopes. My mother and my father, Ivory Jennings, were both magnificent storytellers. They told stories the way water cascades over Niagara Falls or runs down the Mississippi, stories that encompassed larger or smaller fragments of people, places, jokes, incidents, sayings, sermons, arguments, clothing, foods, meals, body parts, and prayers. I could never take in all those stories. I had to simply let them wash over me, again and again, until I was able to locate myself in the stream of their historical consciousness.

Mary and Ivory Jennings found their home in Jesus, who sustained them in all circumstances:

Running through their amazing stories were several themes. Like large, immovable rocks that shaped the contours of the water’s flow, these themes carried the keys for understanding every story. Foremost was Jesus. Ivory and Mary loved Jesus. To say they were devout Christians is simply too pale a descriptor. A far more accurate characterization would be, “There were Ivory, Mary, and Jesus.” Woven into the fabric of their lives was the God-man Jesus, who, rather than simply serving as an indicator of their orthodoxy, became the very shape of their stories. The stories of Jesus and Israel were so tightly woven into the stories my parents told of themselves, their lives in the South and in the North and then with their youngest children in the North, that it took me years to separate the biblical figures from extended family members, biblical sinners from the sinners all around us, and biblical places of pain from their places of pain. I was never able to separate biblical hopes from their real hopes. They knew the Bible, but, far more important, they knew the world through the Bible….

As a little girl [my mother] lived with her grandmother, a former slave…. The experience of agricultural labor, life in the dirt, also brought her into a contradictory but very intimate relationship with the land itself.

My parents loved the soil, the earth, the outside, and in their garden I saw the freedom they felt with it. The garden announced to them and the world that they were absolutely free to be themselves.

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: October 18th

Go gently through this day, keeping your eyes on Me. I will open up the way before you, as you take steps of trust along your path. Sometimes the way before you appears to be blocked. If you focus on the obstacle or search for a way around it, you will probably go off course. Instead, focus on Me, the Shepherd who is leading you along your life journey. Before you know it, the “obstacle” will be behind you and you will hardly know how you passed through it.
     That is the secret of success in My kingdom. Although you remain aware of the visible world around you, your primary awareness is of Me. When the road before you looks rocky, you can trust Me to get you through that rough patch. My Presence enables you to face each day with confidence.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

John 10:14-15 (NLT)
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, 15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep.

Isaiah 26:7 (NLT)
7 But for those who are righteous,
    the way is not steep and rough.
You are a God who does what is right,
    and you smooth out the path ahead of them.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 26:7,8: At times the “path” of the righteous doesn’t seem smooth, and it isn’t easy to do God’s will, but we are never alone when we face tough times. God is there to help us, to comfort us, and to lead us. God does this by giving us a purpose (keeping our mind centered on him, 26:3: You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!”) and giving us provisions as we travel. God provides us with relationships of family, friends, and mentors. God gives us the wisdom to make decisions and faith to trust him. Don’t despair; stay on God’s path.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Father Richard reflects on Homer’s Odyssey as an archetypal story that reveals the necessary journey from and return to home:  

Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our true self in God. The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find ourselves inside God, and this is the full homecoming. Until then, we are homesick, although today most would probably just call it loneliness, isolation, longing, sadness, restlessness, or even a kind of depression.  

The common word for this inner abiding place of the Spirit, which is also a place of longing, has usually been the word soul. We are born with our soul. The end is already planted in us at the beginning, and it gnaws away at us until we get there freely and consciously.  

In The Odyssey, the stirring of longing and dissatisfaction is symbolized by the collapse of Troy and the inability of most of the Greeks to return home. It seems they had forgotten about home, had made home in a foreign land, or were not that determined to return home (which are all excellent descriptions of the typical detours or dead ends on the spiritual journey). Only Odysseus was trying to get home at all costs, and he is the stand-in for what we all must be. Those who do not seek their home are symbolized perhaps by the lotus eaters whom Odysseus encounters, who forgot themselves and lost their own depths and consciousness. 

Remember Odysseus’s oar that an inland wayfarer thought was a winnowing fan? His oar, a symbol of his first-half-of-life occupation, had become a tool for inner work, a means for knowing the difference between wheat and chaff, essentials and nonessentials, which is precisely the turn toward discernment and subtlety that we come to in the second half of life. 

It’s no surprise that this marks the end of Odysseus’s journey. Now he can go home because he has, in fact, come home to his true and full self. His sailing and rowing days of mere outer performance are over, and he can now rest in the simplicity and ground of his own deeper life. He is free to stop his human doing and can at last enjoy his human being, at home in himself.  

And so, like Odysseus, we leave from Ithaca and we come back to Ithaca, but now it is fully home because all is included and nothing wasted or hated; even the dark parts are used in our favor. All is forgiven. What else could homecoming be?!  

Poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) expressed this understanding most beautifully in his famous poem “Ithaca.” This is my rendering of its final lines:   

Ithaca has now given you the beautiful voyage. 

Without her, you would never have taken the road. 

With the great wisdom you have gained on your voyage, 

with so much of your own experience now, 

you must finally know what Ithaca really means.

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CHRIS EW GREEN OCT 12

In her book, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages, Ann Astell, drawing on Balthasar’s reading of Bonaventure’s meditations, shows how Francis’ reception of the stigmata was the outworking of his inner conformity to Christ: 

The imprint of the wounds corresponds to the opening wide of the saint’s soul… In Bonaventure’s theological aesthetics, expressio and impressiobelong together and are proportioned to each other. “It is significant,” Balthasar insists, “that although the power of expression goes out from the Crucified, the bodily sign [of the stigmata] is imprinted only because Francis, through grace and his own inflamed love, has already become in spirit an expression of the love of the Crucified.” The “open seeing of faith” that is an expression of Francis’s soul is exactly configured to the image of the crucified Seraph, so that the image, in turn, “stamps [its] impression” on Francis’s body. Like Christ, the stigmatized Francis becomes a book that is “written within and without” (Ezec. 2:10).¹

The same opening-out marks, one way or another, the lives of all the saints. And it is that that draws us to them. What made and makes them so attractive is that they mirrors the love from which they do not look away. They are transfixing because they let us see them being transfigured. 

“I’m no saint.” When, in everyday conversations, we say this, we imply that being a saint is about perfection, blamelessness, purity. Ironically, though, the saints we’re actually drawn to are much more “human” than that. We’re drawn to saints like Augustine, who was open about his failings, and saints like Francis, who was unafraid of the failings and frailty of others. So, despite what we sometimes suggest, we are compelled not by the innocence of the saints but by their vulnerability and compassion—their openness to God, and their God-like openness to others. They make grace visible precisely because they need it. 

That said, the saints are not always easy for us to take. That is because their lives, attractive in their openness, disclose how much we have closed ourselves against. But they do not expose and shame us. They reveal us, as well as the mercy of God. And in that way they spark hope—that all-consuming fire in the bramble-bush of our gut that says despite everything that it is good to be alive, here and now, to have these people around us, to have this future opening up before us. 

The saints don’t always look like God. They always look to God. Just so, they make it so we can take more of God, more of ourselves and others, more of reality in all its seeming absurdity and dumbfounding complexity. In their company, we are surprised to find we are not as out on life as we had feared we were. All that at is what this poem is trying to honor: 

The saint is a question 
God has left open. A safe 

blown apart, nothing
missing. A flower 

that blossoms for water 
to know the truth 

of its nature. A tear in the 
veil made of tears, 

a wound in the shape of 
the cleft we were borne through. 

The lion’s carcass—
honeycomb sweet 

under its ribs. 
The grace of a grave 

robbed of its dead. 
An iris widening its dark. 

A window blue with bruised light.
The space in the sentence 

to stop, 
listening.

1

Ann Astell, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2006), 127-128.

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Researcher and storyteller Brené Brown shares her sense of spiritual homesickness.   

The word “homesick” often conjures up images of a child’s fleeting sadness or their temporary yearning for home and family. In today’s culture, the emotion itself is often dismissed … [as] a fuzzy overnight-camp feeling, not a fierce emotional experience that is key to the human experience and central to our hardwired need for a sense of place and belonging. 

Brown tells of her soul’s regular longing for home:   

Spiritual homesickness has been a constant in my life. It was not an everyday experience, but a predictable and always reoccurring desperation to find a sense of sacredness within me, not outside of me: my soul, my home, God in me. It was homesickness for a place that exists only inside me.   

Through my thirties and forties, I would occasionally succumb to the yearning, drop everything, and run as fast as I could to  visit  the home within me. The door to my internal spiritual home would be one simple experience, one encounter with a thin place—maybe sitting in my car listening to Loretta Lynn sing “How Great Thou Art,” or an afternoon swim with God in Lake Travis, or one night praying the Daily Examen. But then, after that visit, I would leave and go back to my first-half-of-life world. I’d describe this first-half-of-life spirituality as the ebb and flow of [the Greek words] nostos and alga, homecoming and pain.   

Over the past two years, I’ve found that I’m more spiritually homesick than not. Spiritual homesickness has become an almost daily dulling grief. It’s not depression or exhaustion. It’s an uncomfortable knowing that I’m coming to the end of one thing and the beginning of the next. I’m leaving and arriving. There’s fear, but there’s also joyful anticipation.   

Today, when I return home to the place in me where God dwells, I’m no longer interested in making it a quick visit so I can run back to the world of “what other people think” and “what I can get done.” Today, I can barely be dragged out of the house. I’m drawn to different conversations and deeper connections. I want this sacred space to be my home, not somewhere I visit to buttress my “real life” that’s on the outside of my connection with God. I’m starting to wonder if my alga, my pain, is fueled by my separation from God and from my True Self.…  

Leaving the first half of life is scary. Most of us have the first-half-of-life hustle down. The thing is, I’m just never, ever homesick for the first half of my life when I walk away from it…. Maybe I’m not homesick for the first half of life because it’s really never been my true home.  

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Friday Five on Tuesday

1.

“For the most part, these anxieties and struggles come from the fact that we don’t understand ourselves.”

– St. Teresa of Avila, Carmelite Spanish Mystic

Teresa of Avila was the first Christian mystic to make sense to me.

I had tried reading her works before, but then, after a very difficult and trying season around 2013, she finally clicked.

At the King of Prussia Mall, outside Philly, I distinctly remember sitting at a Starbucks and reading her magnum opus, Interior Castle.  Plenty of people milled about, and I found myself crying while reading Teresa of Avila.

Why?

Because there was something about her and the way she wrote about the human soul that brought tears to my eyes.  It was the right combination of words at the right time, and it led me to several realizations about myself: how I am a walking, talking, and gloriously beautiful bundle of contradictions.

I absolutely agree with her that most of our problems stem from not understanding ourselves.

Not only that, but I deeply regret the way that religion is sometimes interpreted in a manner that confuses or even blocks us from coming to understand ourselves more.

For many of the Christian mystics (if not all of them), self-knowledge and God-knowledge are two sides of the same coin…  One affects and influences how the other is done.  Hopefully, the more we come to understand ourselves, the more we come to understand God… and vice versa.

2.

“Jesus, my feet are dirty. Come, even as a slave to me, pour water into your bowl, come and wash my feet. In asking such a thing, I know I am overbold, but I dread what was threatened when you said to me, ‘If I do not wash your feet, I have no fellowship with you’. Wash my feet then, because I long for your companionship…”

– Origen of Alexandria, Early Church Father

Wow.

Isn’t that poetic?

It is something of a prayer after reflecting on John 13, the passage in which Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.

3.

“Moses’ vision of God began with light; afterward God spoke to him in a cloud. But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.”

– Gregory of Nyssa, Early Church Father

This is a great example of “Apophatic Theology.”

In German, Immanuel Kant coined a word: “Grenzbegriff.”  It denotes a concept or idea that exists beyond the boundaries of human comprehension.

There are many concepts or ideas that are Grenzbegriff.

Time.

God.

Death.

Infinity.

The ever-expanding edge of the known universe.

Quantum physics.

Black holes.

Transcendental experiences.

Many things exist beyond the boundary of human comprehension.

Gregory of Nyssa, the Cappadocian Early Church Father, understood God as utterly beyond human comprehension; if you can understand it, then it isn’t God.  For Gregory, the longer one stays with the mystery that we call “God”, the more mystery, darkness, and unknowing there comes to be.

Most of us in the West believe that the longer you stay with a concept or idea, the more you come to understand it…  Well, not so in Christian theology.

The more we try to comprehend God, the less we should feel like we understand.

4.

“I am burning.

If anyone lacks tinder,

let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.”

– Rumi, Sufi Poet

And thus, holiness spreads like a fire by exposure to holiness.

It is not a matter of doctrine, teaching, or argument.

It is a matter of passing the fire on.

5.

“It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.”

– Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jesuit Theologian

Hans Urs von Balthasar was an interesting fellow.  While doing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, he found a vocation to join the Jesuit order.  Then, many years later, he did the Spiritual Exercises again, and they led him to decide to leave the Jesuit order!  He considered both decisions right and true, and a matter of correctly discerning how best to show his love of God and neighbor.

As a Catholic, he sounds here as though he was deeply influenced by Martin Luther (the Protestant Reformer) in that the Christian life will make a way straight through hardship, rather than around it.  In short, this is known as having a “Theology of the Cross.”

It is impossible to follow Jesus and yet believe that we will be spared hardship.  Oh, and this hardship is not just the simple consequence of our own actions; no, it is suffering imposed on our lives from without.

Fortunately, the Cross is only one side of the coin; the other side is the Resurrection.

The Cross might be an inevitable fact, but then so is Resurrection.

Which Quote Most Jumped Out at You?

Individual Reflection
What are you still asking God to help you get around that may only be gotten through?

Group Discussion — choose one

1. Why do we read unknowing as God’s absence rather than God’s nearness?
2. What makes it harder to let our feet be washed than to wash someone else’s?
3. Whose fire did you catch, and is anyone catching it from you?

Home Is Where We Begin

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Letting go into God is coming home to our true selves. 
—Ilia Delio  

Father Richard Rohr considers how the spiritual journey of “homecoming” requires holding the tension between the past and future:   

The archetypal idea of ‘‘home’’ points in two directions at once. It points backward toward an original hint and taste for union, starting in our mother’s body. We all come from some kind of home—at times, a bad one—that plants the foundational seed of a possible and ideal paradise. It also points forward, urging us toward the realization that this hint and taste of union might actually be true. It guides us like an inner compass or a homing device. In Homer’s Odyssey, it’s the same home, the island Ithaca, that is both the beginning and the end of the journey. Carl Jung offered this concise, momentous insight: “Life, so-called, is a short episode between two great mysteries, which yet are one.” [1]   

Somehow, the end is in the beginning, and the beginning points toward the end. We are told that even children with sad or abusive childhoods still long for ‘‘home’’ or ‘‘mother’’ in some idealized form and still yearn to return to it somehow, maybe just to do it right this time. What is going on there? I believe the One Great Mystery is revealed at the beginning and forever beckons us forward toward its full realization. Most of us cannot let go of this implanted promise. Some would call this homing device their soul, some would call it the indwelling Holy Spirit, and some might just call it nostalgia or dreamtime. All I know is that it will not be ignored. It calls us both backward and forward, to our foundation and our future, at the same time. It also feels like grace from within us and, at the same time, beyond us. The soul lives in such eternally deep time. Wouldn’t it make sense that God would plant in us a desire for what God already wants to give us? I am sure of it.   

To understand better, let’s look at the telling word homesick. This usually connotes something sad or nostalgic, an emptiness that looks either backward or forward for satisfaction. I use it in an entirely different way. I propose that we are both sent and drawn by the same force, which is precisely what Christians mean when they say the Cosmic Christ is both alpha and omega. We are both driven and called forward by a kind of deep homesickness, it seems. There is an inherent and desirous dissatisfaction that both sends and draws us forward, and it comes from our original and radical union with God. What appears to be past and future is in fact the same home, the same call, and the same God, for whom ‘‘a thousand years are like a single day’’ (Psalm 90:4) and a single day like a thousand years.   

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Returning Home

Monday, October 12, 2026

Indigenous People’s Day

Home is a feeling in the centre of my chest of rightness, balance and harmony of the mind, body and spirit…. To be away from it, even for a day, is that acute awareness. It is also knowing that home is what I bring to it, and in that is the sure and quiet knowledge that home is within me and always was.  
—Richard Wagamese, Embers 

In the Everything Belongs podcast, Father Richard speaks about the spiritual path that winds away from and toward one’s true home:   

The first going out from home we can say is the creation of the ego. While this is a necessary creating, it is also the creating of a separation. It’s taking myself as central. We probably need to do that, at least until we reach middle age. But then we need to allow what we’ve created to be uncreated. Maybe I was a great basketball player, but that’s gone now. Or maybe I was good-looking, but that’s gone now.   

When we can say “yes” to that uncreation and still be happy, we’ve done our work. My true self is in God and not in what I’ve created. My self-created self gave me a nice trail to walk on, and something to do each day, but it isn’t really me. It might be my career or my vocation; yet as good as it is, it isn’t my true self, my home in God.   

In the metaphor of life as a journey, I think it’s finally about coming back home to where we started. As I approach death, I’m thinking about that a lot. I think the best way to describe what’s coming next is not “I’m dying,” but “I’m finally going home.” I don’t know what it’s like yet, but in my older age I really trust that it is home. I don’t know where that trust comes from or even what home is like, but I know I’m not going to someplace new. I’m going to all the places I’ve known deeply. They’re pointing me to the big deep, the Big Real. I do think homecoming is what it’s all about. [1]   

The retired Episcopal bishop and theologian Stephen Charleston offers a benediction for our life’s journey:   

We are forgiven for the mistakes we have made.  
We are loved without condition. 
We are blessed without asking.  
We are watched over when we are careless. 
We are understood when we are not making sense. 
We are remembered 
Even when we have forgotten ourselves…. 

The Spirit around us is compassion. 
We may not understand it all. 
We may differ widely in how we describe it. 
But we each have an invitation to freedom 
A chance to see more deeply, a path to follow home. 
We awaken to what is sacred. We grow into the holy. 
We find what has always been there. [2]  

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Individual Reflection
What in my self-created self am I still unwilling to let be uncreated?

Group Discussion — choose one

1. When has your homesickness shown up as dissatisfaction rather than nostalgia?
2. How has the home you came from, good or bad, shaped the home you long for?
3. What would change if we truly believed we’re not going anywhere new?

Have you been around?
Have you done your share of comin’ down
On different things that people do?
Have you been aware?
You got brothers and sisters who care
About what’s gonna happen to you
In a year from now

Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, we’re talkin’ ’bout together, now

Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, we’re talkin’ ’bout together, now

Did you pay your dues?
Did you read the news
This morning when the paper landed in your yard?
Do you know their names?
Can you play their games
Without losin’ track
And coming down a bit too hard?

Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, we’re talkin’ ’bout together, now

Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, we’re talkin’ ’bout together, now

Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, we’re talkin’ ’bout together, now

Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand (Shake your hand)
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land (Share the land)
That they’ll be givin’ away
When we all live together, together together

(Shake your hand, share the land)
You know I’ll be standing by to help you if you worry
(Shake your hand, share the land)
No more sadness, no more sorrow, and no more bad times
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Everyday comin’ sunshine, everyday everybody laughin’
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Walkin’ together by the river, walkin’ together and laughin’
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Everybody singin’ together, everybody singin’ and laughin’
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Good times, good times, everybody walkin’ by the river now
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Walkin’, singin’, talkin’, smilin’, laughin’ diggin’ each other
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Everybody happy together, I’ll be there to worry you if you need-a me
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Call on me, call on me, call my name, I’ll be runnin’ to help you
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Everybody walkin’ by the river now, everyday everybody laughin’
(Shake your hand, share the land)
Everybody singin’ and talkin’, smilin’, laughin’, diggin’ each other

Listen, Learn, and Contribute

Friday, October 9, 2026

Cherokee descendant Randy Woodley responds to Francis of Assisi’s deathbed invitation, “I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what is yours”:

My Keetoowah ancestors had a concept that I think gets at what this question really means. They understood that every person, every being, every element of creation has a particular responsibility—a role to play in the harmony of the whole. Not everyone had the same role. Some were healers, some were warriors who protected the people, some were farmers, some were storytellers. But everyone had something that was theirs to do, and the community couldn’t function without all of it.

An old Indian saying puts it more bluntly: The worst thing that can be said about a person is, “He acts like he has no relatives.”

To act as if you have no relatives means to live as though your actions don’t ripple outward. It means to treat the world as though you’re the only one in it. It means to extract what you want without asking what you owe.

Sound familiar? This is essentially the operating system of Western capitalism—the worldview that treats land as inventory, water as delivery system, people as labor units, and the sick as revenue streams. Take what you can, discard the rest, and never ask who’s downstream.

What my ancestors practiced was the opposite. They understood that humans are the younger siblings in creation—that the plants, animals, waters, and stones have been here longer and know how things work. Our job is not to dominate but to listen, learn, and contribute to the wellbeing of the whole. That’s not metaphor. That’s a survival strategy developed over thousands of years of living in reciprocal relationship with the land.

The mystics have always known that the separate self is an illusion—that we are woven into one another and into creation. That what we do to the least of these, we do to the Sacred. Indigenous peoples have been practicing that truth in daily life for millennia, not as theology to be debated but as a way of being to be lived. It goes by various names, but I call it the Harmony Way….

This is what contemplation should lead to—vulnerability. Not withdrawal from the world but deeper engagement with it. Not escape from suffering but the willingness to sit with it long enough to see clearly what is ours to do. Vulnerability requires living reflectively with yourself but also living deeply into the whole community of creation—all your relatives.

Reference:
Randy S. Woodley, “Planting for the Seventh Generation: What Is Ours to Do” ONEING 14, What Is Ours to Do?” (CAC Publishing, 2026): 100–101, 102.

Image credit and inspiration: Nina Plobner, untitled (detail), 2020, photo. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The mystery of creation reveals itself most fully when we pause to notice something small and simple, like dew caught on a single blade of grass.

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More on “Freed Will” & Apokatastasis 

Lecture at Love Wins Conference by Bradley Jersak – Excerpt

BRADLEY JERSAKSEP 12

READ IN APP

“Freed Will” – Bradley Jersak

Maximus the Confessor on Freedom Grace and Becoming Fully Human
Love Wins Conference – PPT Lecture Notes (without footnotes)

Perhaps you have seen the familiar exchange. Someone asks, “If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why doesn’t God save everyone?” The answer comes back: “Because God respects our free will.”

That answer presents a serious challenge to apokatastasis, the early Christian hope that God will finally restore all things in Christ. If someone refuses God until the day they die, what can God do? Would saving that person require God to overpower the will? Must a loving God permit the refusal to continue forever?

C. S. Lewis gave this argument its most memorable image: “The gates of hell are locked on the inside.” He meant that hell is finally self-chosen. God does not keep people out; they refuse to come in

.The image has real moral force. It reminds us that love does not treat persons as objects. Even so, it assumes that we already know what a free will is and how it works. Maximus the Confessor gives us reason to look more carefully.

But first Christians never portrayed Christ standing outside the door of Hades, waiting for its inhabitants to unlock it. In the traditional icon of the resurrection, Christ stands on the broken gates and reaches into the grave. He takes Adam and Eve by the wrists and raises them with him.

So too the hymns of the ancient church. Two angles:

The Gates of Hades are Opened — Canon of the Cross & Resurrection

Having been tested by wounds, by Your suffering of the Cross,
You raised up with Yourself those wounded by hades.
Wherefore, I cry out: Lead up my life from corruption,
O You who loves mankind.

The gates of hades opened to You in fear,
And the vessels of the enemy were plundered.
Wherefore, the women met You, receiving joy instead of grief.

The Gates of Hades are Broken — Kontakion, in Tone I

As God, You arose from the tomb in glory,
and with Yourself, raised up the world;
Human nature hymns You as God, and death has vanished,
Adam dances, O Master, and Eve, delivered from bonds, now rejoices, Crying aloud: You are He, O Christ, Who grants resurrection to all!

Let us hymn as God the Almighty Who rose on the third day,
Who broke down the gates of hades,
Who raised up from the grave those held there from ages past,…

Hades groans and death utters lamentation;
the world is filled with gladness, and all rejoice with it,
for You, O Christ, granted resurrection unto all.

The image does not settle the theological question, but it does suggest a different place to begin. Perhaps salvation depends less on God’s ability to persuade an untouched, self-contained will and more on Christ’s power to free a will that has become bound.

This brings us to Maximus. His account of freedom starts with a simple distinction that modern discussions often miss. The ability to choose is real, but choice and freedom are not identical.

When Choosing Is Not Freedom

Consider a person living with an addiction. There may come a point when the person understands the harm and wants to stop, yet repeatedly returns to the same behaviour. In one sense, the person still chooses. In another, we can see that freedom has narrowed. The will operates under a form of bondage.

Fear can do something similar. A person who is terrified of flying can decide whether to board the plane, but one option may feel almost impossible. Deception complicates matters further. People can act voluntarily on the basis of propaganda or manipulation and sincerely believe that they are choosing for themselves. The decision belongs to them, but a false picture of reality has shaped it.

Religious coercion belongs in this conversation too. If a preacher says, “Accept our gospel freely or suffer forever,” the resulting confession may be a choice, but the threat makes its voluntary character difficult to judge.

These examples are different, and none of them removes personal responsibility. They do show why bare choice is an inadequate definition of freedom. A decision can arise from fear, ignorance, compulsion, or a badly distorted sense of what is good. The will is active, though it is not necessarily well.

Maximus understands freedom in relation to our created end. Human beings come from God and are made for communion with God. Our natural will is the movement of human nature toward life and goodness. We do not begin as neutral creatures with an equal appetite for good and evil. We desire what appears good to us because desire itself belongs to the good creation of God.

This is easier to see in Maximus’s account of being, well-being, and eternal well-being. Being is the gift of existence. Well-being is our life developing according to its proper end. Eternal well-being is the fulfilment of creaturely life in communion with God, which Maximus calls deification. Deification does not mean that we stop being human or become God by nature. It means that grace brings human nature into full participation in the life of God.

Freedom belongs within this movement. It is not simply a possession handed to us in complete form at birth. It is our capacity to become what we were created to be.