Living Where You Belong
We must expose our own darkness to the light so that we can live the reality that we are always in God’s presence. We can live in such a way as to deny this reality, but that does nothing to change it.
Clothed in Christ
“Like Adam and Eve, we reach for fig leaves that cost us nothing when what we need are the covering of skins that cost the blood of another.”
The Scandal of the Incarnation
And more than that, let us as a church think: Who are we here to serve? We are a high church, liturgical church, in downtown Jackson. Who has God put us here to serve? Is it the intact marriages, the intact families, with 2.5 kids and a dog? Is it the picket fences on the 3 story homes? Or is it regular people with regular lives? Messy, scandalous, difficult, confusing? Yes. This is where God wants us to work.
God Doesn’t Create Junk
The deepest longings of your heart, however mingled with sin and selfishness they may be, have their origins in God’s grand design, His intentions, His purposes. We don’t have to invent our own meaning. We don’t have to craft our own identities based on what we want, because what we want most is given to us as a gift.
The Whole Christ for the Whole You
Why did Jesus come as a human being? Couldn’t he have redeemed us some other way? The incarnation of the Son of God has many implications for us, but perhaps the most important is that he came to redeem our entire being, not just the invisible parts. On this First Sunday of Christmas, Fr. Ben Williams reminds us that we don’t have to escape our physical existence; even our bodies will be redeemed.