Word From Below
“Says Who?”
Our passage leaves out exactly what unauthorized things Jesus has been doing. If we back up, we see that this inquisition takes place the morning after Jesus has entered Jerusalem cheered on by a crowd.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
The Lavish Landowner
When was the last time you read Scripture to know God more deeply? I know that sounds like an odd question, but for many, including myself, picking up the Bible is often more about uncovering practical life lessons or moral guidance, rather than seeking to connect with the Creator. For example, in this week’s parable of the landowner, it’s tempting to dissect it for lessons on jealousy, or fairness, or the enigmatic ways of God.
By Kristy Humphreys
Word From Below
Forgiving Uncertainty
I really like to have the right answers. That’s why, when I started my theological studies many years ago, I struggled with my own inclinations toward legalism. Legalism was comfortable for me. It spared me from the complexities of life because it often provided straightforward responses grounded in phrases like, “because the Bible says so.” It took time for me to realize that a legalistic, literal interpretation of scripture wasn’t the sole way to read the Bible, and, in fact, it could stifle life’s beautiful complexity.
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
Structured and Tight, but Open
Both my parents worked away from home all throughout my childhood years. As the eldest child, I was entrusted with the responsibility of looking after my siblings, which included ensuring they were fed.
By Esau Oreso
Word From Below
The Scandal of Misplaced Desire
In today’s world of instant news, we experience one story of scandal after another. Our news feed constantly tempts us with the tantalizing details of the latest political or Hollywood scandal. The details of this Gospel story seem so comparatively mild. Peter has become a “scandal” to Jesus for insisting that Jesus should live and not die: “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Shhhhh
I’m not sure why Jesus said, “Don’t tell.” All I know is, Love seems not in a rush. She takes her revealings slow.
I’m learning, very slowly over a lifetime, not to be in a rush either. Present to the absence; present to the presence.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
A Reluctant Jesus and a Woman with Great Faith
She knows who he is and she is calling forth what she knows to be true… at the end of the day, he is a God of mercy. From my vantage point, it feels like the unnamed Canaanite woman actually knew more about Jesus and his mission than he did. She either knew, or didn’t care, that her status should not preclude her request for mercy. She is holding Jesus accountable to who he is.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Room for the Impossible
This week’s lectionary text contains some thoughts that make me feel a bit nervous. I think of the fact that in doing something relatively easy in the name of Jesus we can come face-to-face with nightmares of opposition. Powerful gusts of wind can batter our most sincere efforts. Thundering waves overwhelm our hearts, sweeping away our motivation. Dense darkness and blinding uncertainty about tomorrow — a feeling of being lost without knowing where you are or where you are going.
By Hultner Estrada
Word From Below
Gracious Plenty
Jesus says, Give them to me. He takes, blesses, breaks, gives. And all ate and were filled. They even had leftovers.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
The Kingdom’s Cadence
May we scribes be grateful: we have been formed to welcome, to prepare, to read, to bear witness and after this, to wait for the kingdom of heaven. The wonder expressed at the found pearl or at the treasure in the fields follows only the stillness of the fermentation.
By Jenna Smith
Word From Below
Helicopter Gardening
In this week’s text, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Someone sows weeds in a field of wheat, and the workers are concerned, wanting to uproot the offending vegetation immediately. The Master, however, is surprisingly relaxed about the whole thing. Just wait, you guys. If you try to weed now, you’re gonna tear up the wheat too. Be patient. I’ve got this.
By Kristy Humphreys
Word From Below
Good Soil
The good news of the Kingdom is what God has done for all of us. The more we’re able to see God’s goodness, the more we can produce the life-giving fruit that feeds a hungry world. The fruit is our loving openness to others in community — a reflection of the radically inclusive God who first loved us.
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
A Restful Yoke
In our lectionary text today, Jesus extends a gracious invitation to all who are exhausted. He offers rest for those who take his yoke upon themselves and earn from him, for he is “gentle and lowly in heart,” and his yoke is “easy” and his burden is “light.”
By Esau Oreso
Word From Below
Embracing Hospitality
A part of the disciples’ call is to be recipients of hospitality from those to whom they are sent, even as they anticipate the hardships and risks of following Jesus into the unknown. However, they are assured that provision will be made for them on their journey — God will be with them.
By Trisha Welstad
Word From Below
The Trouble With Uncovering
Jesus was not a violent disruptor. That much is abundantly clear in his life and teachings. Rather, he was a disrupter of violence—both interpersonal and structural. By no coincidence, he died by violence.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Embracing the Paradox
Here, Jesus raises two animals before us, serpents and doves, as symbols of a way forward. It’s both thought provoking and confusing. This simile invites us to embrace a particular way of existing in the world, one that reflects the formation of disciples — God’s people who, filled with the Spirit, discern with wisdom and approach life with humility.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Master of Allusion
Creator Sets Free (the name used for Jesus in the First Nations Translation of the Bible) is seeking to set the Pharisees, and all of us, free from the rules and rituals we use to define ourselves over and against other people.
By Joel Kiekintveld
Word From Below
Discovering Freedom
The one who came into this world helpless as a babe, who lived poor and on the margins, who suffered and died just as we do and yet never strayed from the way of love, this one now claims all authority in heaven, and on earth, and even over our lives.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
Peace Be With You
The point is that when faced with the worst of what humans can do to one another, Jesus’ response is “Peace be with you.” He even shows them His wounds, choosing to expose his vulnerability instead of acting violently or retributively out of His woundedness.
By Kristy Humphreys
Word From Below
Reconciling
Shame has a distinct ability to turn us inward, manifesting in unhealthy ways that often result in us turning outward in unhealthy ways. When we experience personal dis-integration, it often leads to communal dis-integration.
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
The Promise of Presence
Here we are, nearly 6 weeks past Easter. The gospel lectionary passage will not let us forget the days before Jesus’ death…and the words…the last words he spoke to his disciples. Jesus is measured and intentional with what he wants them to know and remember…and here it is…
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Hope is the Way
John 14 reveals Jesus’ masterful ability to hold loss and hope together. As he comforts His disciples and calls them forward, he shares profound truths with them and speaks about what lies ahead.
By Trisha Welstad
Word From Below
A Different Kind of Gate
As a part of the broader church, I see myself in the mirror of Jesus’ words today. We have a crucial decision to make. Will we be the kind of gate that uses all of our energy acting like bouncers, deciding who is in and who is out? Or, will we embrace the role of a gate portrayed by Jesus, dedicated to creating a sanctuary where sheep are known and can flourish?
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
The Courage to Disappear
This week’s gospel story depicts two people walking down a road with a stranger who joins them. So happens the stranger is famous, but they don’t recognize him. Like the airplane story, it’s a setup for comedy, but it’s no time for laughter. All three are in the aftermath of trauma, walking away from the scene of public and personal horrors. Primary trauma, suffered directly. Secondary trauma, witnessed and absorbed.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
From Back to Front
The Christian story begins at the end, at the resurrection. It is by the light of the resurrection that we begin to see what’s really happening. Until then, we are shrouded in what T.S. Eliot calls “hints and guesses.” It’s only when we see through the eyes of the risen Christ that we begin to make sense of Jesus’ life and our own.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Resurrection Sunday: Easter Eyes
Today is Resurrection Sunday. He is risen! Creation in Christ continues! If Good Friday is the 6th day of the Creation and Holy Saturday is the 7th day of the Creation, then Resurrection Sunday is the 8th Day of Creation. Or perhaps the 1st day of New Creation. The point is that Easter is not the end of God’s work. It’s just the beginning!
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Holy Saturday: Sabbath Rest
Today is Holy Saturday. It remains the least understood of all the days and for good reason. According to the Jewish calendar, Saturday is the 7th day of the week – the day God enters his own sabbath rest. Today God’s power is perfected in weakness.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Good Friday: Mission Accomplished
Today is Good Friday. According to the Jewish calendar, Friday is the 6th day of the week. It was on the 6th day that God breathed into the dust of the ground and created humanity. Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is doing the work of his Father.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Maundy Thursday: Preemptive Love
Today we remember a very strange meal. We call it the “Last Supper.” It is also the first communion. Jesus hosts the meal. He also takes the form of a servant. The host drops to his knees with a towel and basin, washing and blessing then feeding his beloved friends who will soon betray him.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
The Way of The Donkey
Jesus’ life and death fell smack dab in the middle of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. This was a 200-year period where the empire largely enjoyed “peace” — but it came at great cost.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
Freedom from Fear
We trudge along this Lenten season towards the horror of the cross. Just two weeks away, Good Friday marks the day when the shadow of death will completely shroud us in darkness and despair. As the body of Lazarus lies entombed, wrapped in the grave clothes of death, we find ourselves also shrouded in darkness, wrapped in the grave clothes of sin: fear reigning in our hearts.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Scratched Eye
At the beginning of the story, there is a group of people whose spiritual blindness triggers the conflict around the healing of the blind man. This group is the blind man’s immediate community. In a twist of irony, his neighbors fail to see the miracle before their eyes: one of their own experienced healing! Sadly, instead of welcoming him back into the community, they bring him to the Pharisees to be interrogated.
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
The Gift of Unbounded Identity
In today’s text John introduces us to a remarkable story of Jesus encountering a Samaritan woman by the well. Jesus crosses socio-cultural and religious boundaries and there, establishes a relationship with the Samaritan woman, a relationship that eventually leads to plentiful harvest.
By Esau Oreso
Word From Below
Salvation
As I read the text for this week, amid the cold and chaos, I can struggle to get past my childhood perspective of Jesus. It was shaped by a hyperfocus on the “eternal life” mentioned in John 3:16, often to the exclusion of other scripture that help complete our understanding of what life with God looks like.
By Trisha Welstad
Word From Below
It is Written
“God hates,” men told her. Many men in fact, many times. Because they were religious, she believed them, because she wished to believe in God. The men held the sacred writings, copied from goat skins to gilded pages to church multimedia screens.
By Scott Dewey
Word From Below
Ash Wednesday – Storing Up Treasures
What struck me more than Chief Seattle’s monument were the rows of plain, worn cement markers that said only “Unknown.” As I walked slowly among them, I wondered about the people and stories buried here. How did they live? How did they die? How old were they? Did they have families? What did they laugh about? What were they proud of? Who loved them?
By Susan Okamoto Lane
Word From Below
What Happens on the Mountain
It’s safe to say that James, John and Peter had the strangest, scariest, holiest, most other-worldly experience when they accompanied Jesus on a hike up a high mountain. At some point during this trek, Jesus’ appearance changed — right before them. It was like he was shining from the inside out. One translation said, “Sunlight poured from his face.” Even his clothes became super bright.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
It Only Takes a Spark
In the 1980s there was a popular song among Christian youth in Nicaragua named “La Chispa,” or “The Spark” in English. The song starts by saying “It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.”
By Hultner Estrada
Word From Below
Blessed? I don’t know about that.
A few years ago we ended up adopting an 18-year-old woman (we’ll call her Carla) into our family. She had been abused and rejected by her family — the stories were heartbreaking. We gave her a safe space to catch her breath and find stability.
By Josh Erickson
Word From Below
Beyond Guilt
The Kingdom of Heaven coming near is the beginning of God’s new creation where God can come and dwell with His people forever.
In other words, the party has already started, and we are all invited whether we are attuned to that reality or not.
By Kristy Humphreys
Word From Below
What Do You Want?
I love introductions — whether they happen in between two people or in front of large groups. I love them because the things people share during an introduction reflect what they believe is important in the moment. Our introductions say a lot about how we understand ourselves and our audience.
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
Relational Affirmation
I love introductions — whether they happen in between two people or in front of large groups. I love them because the things people share during an introduction reflect what they believe is important in the moment. Our introductions say a lot about how we understand ourselves and our audience.
By Esau Oreso
Word From Below
Hope in the Darkness
Each year the season of Christmas gets me excited. Even as the days get colder and darker the warm feelings of Christmas and all the wonder the holidays bring propels me into preparations for celebration. My two small children, just old enough to grasp the meaning of this season, have joined in on the traditions.
By Trisha Welstad
Word From Below
Making Room
When Many years ago, I started collecting nativity scenes – both elaborate and simple, traditional and contemporary, from many different places. Some included the whole entourage of characters (shepherds, magi, angels, animals), and others just had Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Uncle Frank
In today’s text, we are given the perspective of Joseph. Matthew, the author, seems to be interested in telling the story in a way that clearly reflects the Old Testament: he either quotes or alludes to it almost 100 times!
By Ron Ruthruff
Word From Below
God of the Ordinary
In my part of the world, advent is sometimes seen as an ominous sign. Instead of the picturesque holiday cards we see in the hallmark aisle, Advent feels more like a warning. Yes, the Advent air has a different vibe, for it evokes the memories of the devastation of the yearly typhoons that visit the Philippines during this time. More recently, there’s been a chilling social effect because so many activists are being arrested or worse, killed.
By Fred Laceda
Word From Below
A Loud Invitation
I love the lead up to Christmas. It’s this cozy, warm season. But just as I get settled in, John the Baptist shows up yelling.
Change! You better change! Change it all!!
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
Advent Week One
I associate Advent with Christmas anticipation, cozy gatherings, and carving out time (amidst all the errands of “Christmas anticipation”) for some reflection and contemplation on Mary’s radical “yes” to the coming of Emmanuel — to God not only being with her, but within her.
By Kate Davis
Word From Below
More Than Charity
Identify with those who have nothing. Not in charity alone so as to be a helper of those without food,…
By Tali Hairston
Word From Below
Real Talent?
For those of us who were raised in the United States, we have a tendency to read the Parable of…
By Pat Thompson
Word From Below
Mad at the Maidens
This week’s text, The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, has often been used as a precautionary tale about who gets…
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
The Shoulders of the People
They do not practice what they teach.They are unwilling to lift a finger.They love the seat of honour. Jesus’ criticism…
By Jenna Smith
Word From Below
The Impossible Purity Tests
Last week I walked along Tacoma Avenue, and found myself passing Simone’s yellow tent on the grass right next to…
By Joey Ager
Word From Below
The Emperor’s Coin
My sister does this funny thing before she asks you for a favor. She says, “I’m going to ask you…
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Should We Have a Dream?
I’m told there is no utility in my delusions yet I choose to imagine, envisioning a world of fellowship and joy….
By Ojii BaBa Madi
Word From Below
Entering the Building
Recently, our church community gathered in the parking lot of the campus. Together, like many other congregations, we are reflecting…
By Tali Hairston
Word From Below
The Corner of Delridge and Roxbury
Whenever I read the parable of the landowner and the day laborers, my mind often drifts to the day labor…
By Pat Thompson
Word From Below
The Cancer of Unforgiveness
Cancer is something that scares us out of our minds, especially if our families have a history with it. In…
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
Binding and Loosening
We start Advent not with shepherds and angels and babies meek and mild. Instead we start with apocalyptic warnings. I don’t like it. I prefer the kids in animal and shepherd costumes—the cute Christmas. But we don’t always get what we want. Instead we start Advent with a passage that is full of images of floods, and people disappearing, and thieves.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
Human Concerns
It is an odd image in this week’s text:, uprooting a tree (already challenging) and planting it into a body of water that is salty (impossible). But it is not surprising to talk of agriculture in terms of challenges, impossibilities, and indeed, as an act of faith. In downtown Montréal, Innovation Youth has been growing our expertise in urban agriculture for several years.
By Jenna Smith
Word From Below
The Human Catechism
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Persistence
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
The Transformation of God
Filipino Muslims are our closest siblings, yet we are divided by our differences and a lack of trust. We were not prepared to address this lurking and lingering issue. We walked, as it were, down the road Jesus describes in his parable, asking whether we would continue to affirm the ossified lines of our identities, or transcend that which divides us?
By Fred Laceda
Word From Below
What You Have
The desert isn’t just a site for prayer. It’s the wilderness. It’s not safe. It’s a place we’ve all been. This pandemic is as disorienting as any desert. Grief is a wilderness. Sometimes the desert just grows up around us for no apparent reason at all. Depression is like that. We have all been to the desert.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
Changing the Metaphor
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
An Invitation to Imperfection
We start Advent not with shepherds and angels and babies meek and mild. Instead we start with apocalyptic warnings. I don’t like it. I prefer the kids in animal and shepherd costumes—the cute Christmas. But we don’t always get what we want. Instead we start Advent with a passage that is full of images of floods, and people disappearing, and thieves.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
The Hospitable Iconoclast
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
A Whisper
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
21st Century Pentecost
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Will We Listen?
Like Peter, like Edwaan, and like so many of us, there is a longing for belief out on life’s “danger waters” — those places removed from the placid nature of peace and plenty. Persecution, pain, and tragedy inspire deep longings, often taking the shape of foolhardy propositions such as Peter’s, “Save me in these dangerous waters or watch me die.”
By Justin Mootz
Word From Below
Oneing
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
She’s Calling
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
The Sacrament of Hospitality
As fearful and terrorizing as it may be, the transfiguration causes me to long for a glimpse of the illuminated face of Christ and especially the body we have esteemed as most unlovable and unlikable. I pray that in meeting with such a vision, I will not be derailed, busying myself with building tabernacles, places where I can limit and control God’s uncontrollable light.
By Ojii BaBa Madi
Word From Below
Pastureland in a Pandemic?
After an encounter with the shadowlands of Ash Wednesday, we now sit silently in front of an opened curtain, revealing the five-week theater that is the Valley of Lent. The Gospel narrative for the first Sunday of Lent is that of the desert temptation.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
The Verbness of Easter
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
The First Word
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Maundy Thursday
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Mary Pandiani
Word From Below
Good Friday
I imagine the rich man at the beginning of his day. He is a man about town, with pressing matters on his mind and very important people to meet. I am easily persuaded that someone like him has no time to volunteer with a local charity or dedicate himself to the protection of the less fortunate. But then we find Lazarus right outside his gate.
By Pat Thompson
Word From Below
Enough
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Ben Robinson
Word From Below
Embedded
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Dr. Joyce del Rosario
Word From Below
The Judgement of God
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Desire is Viral
Faith, hope and love are the antidotes to social chaos. But let’s be honest, they take a bit longer to spread than fear and anxiety. That is why in times like these, as the body of Christ, we are invited to get clear about what we want and whose desires we are borrowing.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
The Most Unlovable and Unlikable
As fearful and terrorizing as it may be, the transfiguration causes me to long for a glimpse of the illuminated face of Christ and especially the body we have esteemed as most unlovable and unlikable. I pray that in meeting with such a vision, I will not be derailed, busying myself with building tabernacles, places where I can limit and control God’s uncontrollable light.
By Ojii BaBa Madi
Word From Below
Setting Out From Where You Are
After an encounter with the shadowlands of Ash Wednesday, we now sit silently in front of an opened curtain, revealing the five-week theater that is the Valley of Lent. The Gospel narrative for the first Sunday of Lent is that of the desert temptation.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Ash Wednesday: Desire
In the inner room we can finally stop acting. In the inner room we are free of the crowds who so easily rule and run us like puppets. In the inner room, we stop feeding on the unstable and fickle desires of others and learn to borrow our desires from the One who desires us.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Moments into Monuments
God’s glory is the divinity of seeing and proclaiming the Passion and the resurrection, even in the darkest of places. The way of Jesus journeys into the desert and sees bread where others see rocks. The divine glory sees the imago dei in a demon possessed boy that others have marginalized.
By Ron Ruthruff
Word From Below
Becoming Human
To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
The Box by the Door
This world’s devotion to middle class affluence is predicated on the sacraments of global gentrification’s hard sweeping brooms, capitalism’s consumerist temples, and a careless society’s superhighways that bypass the poor, the blind, and those crowded out by “progress.”
By Ojii BaBa Madi
Word From Below
Nunc Dimittis
As I stood at the pulpit and looked toward the pews, my breath was taken away. On the back wall of the chapel were several huge drawings of naked murder victims. An artist had taken a pencil and used it to bring to life the pain and agony of massacre and execution.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Team Jesus
It’s when we’ve done just about all we can do to screw things up and yet still discover ourselves loved, forgiven and trusted at our most untrustworthy worst, that the Spirit is fully unleashed.
By Kris Rocke
Word From Below
Come and See
The authentic work of Christ and the work of the church is hard to do, if not impossible, from a distance. An incarnational ministry prioritizes proximity in order to “see” God.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Born from Afar
When did they recognize this deity in their midst? When did it dawn upon them? Exactly when did the epiphany occur? When did the light of ‘aha’ shine upon these unknown number of magi revealing the human one before them was the flesh and blood presence of the creator of their star in the heavens?
By Ken Sikes
Word From Below
Born in Grace
At the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, the night sky in Guatemala City explodes in bursts of color under the canopy of fireworks. Everyone heads outside into the streets to wish one another Feliz Navidad with hugs for neighbors, family, friends and strangers amidst columns of smoke and the barrage of bottle rockets.
By Joel Van Dyke
Word From Below
Born in Dreams
The Advent and Christmas seasons are a time to remember God’s call on our lives is constant, and it comes in many forms, whether we are sleeping or awake. It’s a call to a heavenly perspective that allows us to release our fears and see good news in the least likely places.
By Joel Kiekintveld
Word From Below
Born from Below
Our jails, back alleys and slums are the “low” places that Jesus would have been born in today, away from the lights and festivities that mark the opulence our society strives for.
By Gideon Ochieng
Word From Below
Born in Scandal
Not too many years ago, in a community marked by a history of scandalous events, I encountered one of the wittiest and smartest kids I have ever met. His name was Kevin. Kevin understood what it meant to come from a scandalous background.
By Joel Aguilar
Word From Below
Born in Jail
John the Baptist, sitting In Herod’s prison with nothing but time on his hands, is beginning to question his expectations about Jesus. And I would imagine he’s wondering about his own life in light of his present circumstances.
By Lina Thompson
Word From Below
Born in Wilderness
For Karen, the stairwell was her wilderness sanctuary, right in the heart of the merciless city. There, she found the space and solace to let loose and cry out with a loud voice. The oppressive thumb of drug addiction, abuse, pain and poverty could not find her in that place.
By Ojii BaBa Madi
Word From Below
Born into Chaos
We start Advent not with shepherds and angels and babies meek and mild. Instead we start with apocalyptic warnings. I don’t like it. I prefer the kids in animal and shepherd costumes—the cute Christmas. But we don’t always get what we want. Instead we start Advent with a passage that is full of images of floods, and people disappearing, and thieves.
By Rev. Sarah Wiles
Word From Below
The Canaanite Woman in Charlottesville?
Like Peter, like Edwaan, and like so many of us, there is a longing for belief out on life’s “danger waters” — those places removed from the placid nature of peace and plenty. Persecution, pain, and tragedy inspire deep longings, often taking the shape of foolhardy propositions such as Peter’s, “Save me in these dangerous waters or watch me die.”