Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Loitering with Jesus - Kenneth Tanner

Loitering with Jesus

The leaves of this Japanese maple in our front-drive are not “useful” to me but I love beholding them.

In the church we are in the habit of asking, “What difference does this make for me on Monday morning?” or “How can I make use of this in my day-to-day life?”

The contemplation of God and of humanity in the person of Jesus Christ is good for you and for the world. It does not need to lead to anything “practical.” Loitering with the person of Jesus is beneficial all by itself.

To behold Jesus, to hear his words, and attend to his actions in the gospels are enough.

Yes, taking a walk or riding a bike is good for your health but if you are only walking or riding a bike to aid your well-being, if you’re not enjoying these acts of being in and of themselves, you are missing out on the best part.

Trust leaders who invite you simply to ponder the Word made flesh, who beckon you to contemplate God and humanity by and in Jesus Christ without a to-do list. No applications.

What you can learn from such teachers is that God is present and at work in you, in the creation, and in your circumstances (that’s a very good thing); that God is the active agent in the world’s salvation; and that your gracious participation in his words and acts begins with dwelling in and with him in stillness of heart and mind.

Sometimes we need to trust that the sheer meditation on God that John (and the other gospel witnesses) grant us is enough; that there does not have to be a “So what?” or a “What now?”

Just ponder the mystery.

There can be an unhealthy fixation on utility that we need to recognize and address, in this and in many areas of our lives.

“Is this useful or instrumental” *can* deny the legitimacy of wasting time in the wondrous contemplation of God and humanity that the person of Jesus affords us.

Nothing could be more relevant to life and how to live it than contemplation of the person who is both God and human.

Andromeda's Vulnerable Creator - Kenneth Tanner

Our closest galactic neighbor, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light-years away. She dwarfs our galaxy and contains a trillion stars.

 

The energy that fuels all of those stars and has kept them in a spiral for 13 billion years is measurable, but who has the instruments or the time? The best we can do is make estimates.

 

Our witness and wisdom says that a first-century baby born to a peasant Jewish teenager, a baby whose stepfather was a carpenter, is the One who spoke this galaxy into fiery substance and perpetual motion from nothing.

 

And our tradition claims that this human is the One who spoke another hundred billion galaxies into existence from no substance that existed before...*ex nihilo* in the ancient tongue.

 

One of the stories about this human tells us that on the night before he suffered for the cosmos he created, that he loves from eternity before his own life, he took a towel and a basin of water and washed the feet of his friends.

 

You cannot wash someone’s feet without getting low to the ground, on your knees.

 

In the world of his time, the host of a meal would not be the one to wash the feet of his guests. This was the task of a servant.

 

What does it mean that the One who creates all stars and fuels their fires, is on his knees, serving humans?

 

Let me suggest that it means that most human projection of what it means to be a god or the God in the history of humans—and most human imagination of what it means to be powerful—is deeply mistaken.

 

One makes oneself vulnerable to wash feet in a world without proper sanitation and waste removal but this detail about humbly kneeling and scrubbing who knows what from smelly feet is not nearly the lowest place this human goes or will go to love the cosmos.

 

This human who is God descends further still, down into death, entering by his own terrible death into the death of every human, for every time the one human nature we all share dies we die again, and he dies again with us, and further still: he descends into all our hells.

 

Athanasius says that he keeps falling further than our hells and his descent is not slowed until he is beneath the deepest falling human, down to the edges of non-existence, to rescue us from the non-being from which we came and to give the one human nature we all share permanence.

 

He is not stingy with his kind of existence. He wants his fellow humans to participate in his never-ending divine life.

 

He gives humans not the permanence of Andromeda but his own permanence, and with all humans somehow gives the cosmos the gift of his eternity.

 

The name of this human who is God is Jesus Christ.

No Analogies, Please. Encounter! - Kenneth Tanner

Forget about explanations and analogies for the Trinity. Please instead take them hand-in-hand, then walk his students or disciples down a dusty path to the Jordan.

 

There, among the tall reeds on the bank stands Jesus, who has also just walked there from Nazareth, his feet tired, sore, and dirty.

 

Jesus wades in ankle-deep. The cool, flowing water is soothing. From here he watches his human brothers and sisters descend one by one, waist-deep, faces drawing near to John the Baptist.

They are entering the water to be cleansed, to repent. Jesus has no need for the cleansing, or the change of heart and mind, and yet here he is, his human face set toward suffering encounter.

 

Bonhoeffer says that Jesus does not ponder his perfection or feel his superiority but rather expresses solidarity with everyone gathered to be made well, to amend their ways, by—what wondrous love is this?—presenting himself for baptism, too.

 

As he approaches John, the Baptist recognizes not only the body of his cousin, with whom he played as a child, but Isaiah’s lamb, the One who takes away the sin of the world.

 

John is reluctant. He does not see why Jesus needs this ritual because he does not see the cross in this watery moment, does not understand that Jesus is already, here In the murky waters of the Jordan, descending into chaos, darkness, and death, taking on himself the sin of the whole world.

For every moment in this story is a story about the cross, and as a story about the cross is also a story about resurrection but only after it is a story about torture.

 

This is not a God who remains on the banks of the river, uninvolved and aloof from the pain of existence, but who joins us in our predicament, participates without sin in the deaths we each of us bear about in our bodies, especially in the moment of our deaths—all the preparatory ones and the last and final one—is baptized for us and with us.

 

Unlike the other gods we project and handcraft and make wishes for, this God is a baptized God. He identifies with us so that he might identify us with him.

He also rises out of the waters. He does not stay in the grave. And as he comes up out of the chaos and the darkness, he is in prayer. Perhaps he prays among other things, “Father forgive them.”

 

And here I want to loudly encourage the catechists, pastors, Sunday School teachers, and theologians of the church: forget your distorting analogies and torturous explanations and help your students and disciples have an *encounter* with the Living God!

 

Like this:

 

Jesus comes up out of the cool, flowing, murky waters, and as he prayers, we are told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that there’s the sound of avionic movement, there are wings, feathers, and mystery as the Holy Spirit “alights” or “rests” on the Son in the body of a dove. Perhaps she rests on his shoulder?

 

Do you see and hear the rustle of divine wings on the air?

And this is not nearly all.

 

We are told that the sky is torn, a rip occurs in space-time. And through the tear in existence, there is suddenly a Voice: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

 

The majestic voice proceeds from the invisible Father who dwells in light so bright no one can approach him. And yet here is his Son with whom he is One God with their Spirit, who does not wait for us to approach him but who has approached us, who touches his human brothers and sisters and heals us, who looks upon us with compassion, who embraces us in suffering, who dies with us, that we might ever live.

 

The Father and the Spirit *reveal* themselves in this moment that the Son draws near to every human who has ever lived or ever will live, just as they reveal themselves in the transfiguration and at the cross.

 

The baptism of the human God does not separate Jesus from any other humans, nor any humans from any other humans, but draws every human into Love’s triune fellowship. And this why I trust that the Father is pleased with the Son, as he always is.

 

Why on earth would you use a symbol when you can *enter* the story of God with humans, the story of God as a human, a human with a Spirit that rests on him, a human with a Father who loves the world so much that he sent him, not to condemn the world but that the world through him might live.

 

Why make an analogy or explanation when you can live this revelation of the triune Love?

 

*thanks to Taylor, Drew, Jason, David, Ryan, Josh, and Todd for prompting this from somewhere deep in the Covid-jaded heart of this mere human that sometimes still feels like he has something pressing to say to anyone that might still be listening

Double Down on Jesus - Kenneth Tanner

Those who follow my social media know that the vast majority of my stories and images are about Jesus—his authentic humanity and his vulnerable divinity, how his unique person is our salvation and the salvation of the world. I’m astonished by and obsessed with Christ.

This same Jesus, who embodies the law and the prophets, who became one of us—a frail human who’s not immune to hunger, thirst, pain, and death—in order to liberate captives and set the oppressed free.

Those who bear the name and work of Jesus as they lead the church are not allowed to remain silent about the illnesses effecting their societies. We are held accountable for silence and inaction.

Our nation’s war on drugs and on terror has slowly eroded civil liberties and presents us with a crisis about personal freedoms, police powers, incarceration, and so on, and black Americans have shouldered the cross of what’s wrong.

Jesus came to set prisoners free—actual prisoners.

Justice systems are corrupt, are punitive rather than restorative, and America is not immune. 

The gospel seeks to upend all of that with a profound trust in the ability of humans to heal—to be forgiven and to forgive—a trust that’s not shared by our nation’s “survival of the fittest” mentality. 

Jesus stands with the poor, the refugee, the prisoner—not the ideal poor, or employable  refugees, or model prisoners but the kinds we find in the real world, just as they are in all their inconvenience—and he expects us to lift up their cause. 

What’s happened lately is that the political Left and the political Right define a lot of what the gospel urgently calls us to embody and to do as “political,” as supporting the ends of political movements, figures, or parties. 

For the Left, if you believe that pre-born children have the right to life, for but one instance, then you must be a Republican or a supporter of the President.

No, you are simply applying to our public life together ideas of humanity, creation, and personhood taught in the Scriptures. 

For the Right, if you want immigrants and refugees welcomed and treated with dignity, for but one instance, then you must be a Democrat or a supporter of their leaders.

No, you are simply listening to the law and prophets of Israel and applying to our public life together their relentless and ubiquitous warnings about God’s wrath toward any people who do not welcome and care for strangers and sojourners. 

Salvation is not only about life after death but about this world, about our time and place in this world, and God is often waiting for Spirit-empowered humans to bring the kind of salvation he intends for the world by living the gospel.

So while I do not speak out about most things that concern me—I would never stop speaking right now if I did that—I do speak out loudly when I feel compelled before God to do so (as in this week’s meme about Breonna Taylor and our society’s collective responsibility for her). 

It is a high wire act and something like a personal siege to be the leader of a spiritual community in this moment. 

I don’t know any pastor who’s not disheartened, burned out, and ready to quit. They won’t tell you about it, but I will.

I preached Jesus Christ to the folks at Holy Redeemer for 15 years but like every other church in this town (and around the country), our congregations are divided between those who want everyone to wear masks at church all the time or they won’t attend and those who don’t want to wear a mask at all so they won’t attend, some who think the pandemic is a hoax and others who think it’s real, along with so many other silly binaries that divide us, driven by a media and a political class that thrives on our separation.

It rips me up. Day and night. I/we won’t be one of them by the grace of God but a tidal wave of pastoral resignations and church closings is coming.

I *thought* we were all centered in Jesus Christ. I thought we were different at HR. It’s a MAJOR gut punch. I don’t even hear from families we served for more than a decade. Not a phone call, not a text, not a peep, even though we reach out consistently.

Then I read something from Eugene Peterson, in his “Eat This Book,” about 1982 and economic and racial tensions that were present and how disappointed he was, after 20 years of preaching, to see his congregation as divided as the world. 

He started reading Galatians and the Corinthian letters and realized that Paul had the same troubles with his congregations in the first century, divided over truly dumb stuff.

It’s a human problem.

Eugene realized he was not a failure.

And he decided to double down on Jesus Christ.

And that’s how The Message was born.

I decided months ago to double down on Jesus, too. And my joy in preaching and leading has returned, even though far fewer people hear my sermons. They feel like some of the best of my life and some folks are hearing them. And that’s OK with me. It really is.

When I do address matters of public concern I address them not as a person with political interests but as one called to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That means that sometimes I sound like a “liberal” and sometimes I sound like a “conservative.”

And therefore a lot of times I am misunderstood by most everyone for all of the reasons I just laid out. And that’s OK with me, too. It really is.U

Dear Heartbroken: My Heart Is Broken, Too - Kenneth Tanner

Dear ones:

I have encountered you in coffee shops, on park benches, in the pews at Holy Redeemer, on social media platforms, in private messages, and on late night walks. 

I love your questions, your sincerity, your energy, your conviction, your charity, and your passion.

I am sorry that the gatherings we grew up in made Christian faith about pursuing purity, power, and certainty. 

Walking with Christ is about trust not certitude, about humility not power, about sobriety not purity.

Your doubts are evidence that you are human not faithless. Your immunity to coercion is evidence that you value conscience. Your rejection of purity culture is evidence you prefer integrity over masks, substance over surface.

I am sorry that the churches in which we grew up prostituted themselves to American culture and power, trading gospel suffering for political control. 

You don’t seek an excuse to behave as you want, or opt out of church just because you see hypocrisy, or reject the gospel’s demands for fear of hardship. 

Your hearts are broken because the church looks and sounds nothing like Jesus. 

My heart is broken because of what you’ve seen and heard.

These churches *do not* represent the genuine, beautiful faith of the first Christians, and what they teach about God, humanity, and the world would not be recognized by them.

My heart is torn because I love you.

Sometimes your wounds are so deep that even when you see and hear that there’s an authentic faith, a good way of practicing life in Jesus Christ, it’s not enough to overcome your hurt. You suspect that the manipulative and puritanical sects we came from must be what the Christian faith has always been.

There are moments in *every day* when my heart is rent with your heart, praying you have a vibrant encounter with the Living God that defeats all of the false teachers and all of the bad experiences.

I stand ready in every moment to trust your story, listen to your pain, and offer glimpses of the reality of the crucified God, whose love astonishes me, whose humility compels me, who enters into our poverty and suffering, who makes our frail existence his own.

We can trust this God with ourselves. He makes every end a new beginning. He makes all things new. He will make us and all things well.

With all my love and respect,

Father Kenneth+

Dear Heartbroken: My Heart Is Broken, Too - Kenneth Tanner

Dear ones:

I have encountered you in coffee shops, on park benches, in the pews at Holy Redeemer, on social media platforms, in private messages, and on late night walks. 

I love your questions, your sincerity, your energy, your conviction, your charity, and your passion.

I am sorry that the gatherings we grew up in made Christian faith about pursuing purity, power, and certainty. 

Walking with Christ is about trust not certitude, about humility not power, about sobriety not purity.

Your doubts are evidence that you are human not faithless. Your immunity to coercion is evidence that you value conscience. Your rejection of purity culture is evidence you prefer integrity over masks, substance over surface.

I am sorry that the churches in which we grew up prostituted themselves to American culture and power, trading gospel suffering for political control. 

You don’t seek an excuse to behave as you want, or opt out of church just because you see hypocrisy, or reject the gospel’s demands for fear of hardship. 

Your hearts are broken because the church looks and sounds nothing like Jesus. 

My heart is broken because of what you’ve seen and heard.

These churches *do not* represent the genuine, beautiful faith of the first Christians, and what they teach about God, humanity, and the world would not be recognized by them.

My heart is torn because I love you.

Sometimes your wounds are so deep that even when you see and hear that there’s an authentic faith, a good way of practicing life in Jesus Christ, it’s not enough to overcome your hurt. You suspect that the manipulative and puritanical sects we came from must be what the Christian faith has always been.

There are moments in *every day* when my heart is rent with your heart, praying you have a vibrant encounter with the Living God that defeats all of the false teachers and all of the bad experiences.

I stand ready in every moment to trust your story, listen to your pain, and offer glimpses of the reality of the crucified God, whose love astonishes me, whose humility compels me, who enters into our poverty and suffering, who makes our frail existence his own.

We can trust this God with ourselves. He makes every end a new beginning. He makes all things new. He will make us and all things well.

With all my love and respect,

Father Kenneth+

We are aflame but not destroyed - Kenneth Tanner

In firefighting parlance, the bush on Sinai is “fully involved,” it’s engulfed by flame, every branch, every stem, every leaf.

The bush is burning but it’s not being harmed. The leaves are not turning to ash, the branches are not becoming red coals, fallen to earth and aglow as they are consumed.

No, the plant is verdant, full of life, and moisture, not a cell is dead or damaged. It’s internal life-giving structures remain. There is therefore no smoke but there is somehow an inexplicable fire.

This is what turns the head of Moses and this would turn our head, too. This is not how it goes with the things of this world and fire. Fire destroys the things of this world but not *this* fire.

The first Christians see the Son of God in the bush, not only as the “angel” that speaks from its center; for them this tree represents the body of God in the humanity of Jesus and the sacred fire represents the divine life that suffuses his ordinary and frail human dust.

Jesus is human all-in and divine all-in: the human things he does reveal his humble divinity and the divine things he does reveal his vulnerable humanity.

The burning bush in this sense prefigures the transfiguration of Jesus, where a brightness unknown to this world engulfs the physical Christ, shining brighter than the sun in full strength, a bright sadness that reveals the cross as the crux of what it means to be human and what it means to be God.

The cross neither destroys the humanity of Jesus; nor his divinity. Instead the death of God in the human flesh of Jesus destroys death, not only for Jesus but for all who share human nature, making resurrection the end of every human and not the grave.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes that “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes.” Every bush. Ponder that.

By grace every human can become as the bush: engulfed by the fiery presence of God but unharmed, “fully involved” by flames that sanctify her, body and soul, burning away everything in her that is not of love.

The first Christians, some of whom, like Moses, dwelt in the desert, tell this story:

“Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’”

The angel that speaks from the midst of the bush identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He tells Moses that this has been his name before any of these mere humans existed and will always be his name, for he is outside time and always simply the same God that appears to us whenever in time he appears to us.

Centuries later, Jesus—the “angel” who speaks to Moses from the fiery bush—gets into a conversation with the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection. Jesus goes all the way back to this story on Sinai:

“But now, as to whether the dead will be raised—haven’t you ever read about this in the writings of Moses, in the story of the burning bush? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ “So he is the God of the living, not the dead. You have made a serious error.” (Mark‬ ‭12:26-27‬ ‭NLT‬)

Moses, too, is now among these who ever-live, as the transfiguration of Christ reveals.

The deliverance that God accomplishes in the flesh of Jesus, by the Passover he endures on the cross—prefigured in the thorns of the engulfed-but-not-consumed bush—is the defeat of death that death might vanish from human nature like straw in flame (Athanasius).

When we ignore every satanic voice that hinders us from taking up our cross, we too with Jesus Christ become walking, talking trees of life, aflame with the fire of God but not destroyed, made ready to participate in his deliverance of those who all their lifetimes are enslaved by the fear of death, made ready to love our enemies, made ready to preserve the creation God loves. In our eyes every bush is afire with his energies, every patch of ground holy.

Image: “Holy Ground” by Mike Moyers.

The End Is Love - Kenneth Tanner

You either believe that the end is the arrival of power, or you believe that the end is the arrival of nothing, or you believe that the end is the arrival of love.

A lot of people believe we are waiting for the arrival of nothing. At the end of their physical life the person they were is gone forever, disappearing as quickly as the brain cells die, never to return. This is also how they see the end of everything and everyone else. Sooner or later it's all going dark. No ultimate justice. No ultimate mercy. No ultimate meaning. Just nothing.

Many more people believe we are waiting for the arrival of power, a power that imposes its will on everything and everyone more or less the way that the worst sort of humans and dark spirits—both at present and in history—impose their will and power: by killing, by taking, by destruction. This is the work not of God but, as Jesus tells us, the work of the Enemy.

Whatever differences there may be in the story these believers tell about the final arrival of power across the religions and philosophies of the world the theme is more or less "our God (or idea) wins." And the way their God or idea wins looks a lot like the way a military power conquers and subdues. Their God is synonymous with Brute Force.

But there is another way, another vision, of the end. It is about the final arrival of Love. It is not about a power that triumphs but a love that converts. The weakness of this God is greater than human strength. The humility of this God is greater than human pretense. The vulnerability of this God brings our notions and idols and weapons of power to nothing.

This God brings a fitting end to history by dying so that his creation and everything in it can be alive with the Spirit that in the beginning breathed the cosmos into existence from nothing.

The cross upon which we killed God, where God offers Godself for the life of the world, is the tipping point of history, where God brings an end to death that is also the end of all endings, and an Arrival—not of nothing, nor of power as humans comprehend power, but of everlasting life, the power of an inextinguishable and indestructible life. 

Yes, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father but this great moment that is coming is not about coercion, not about force, but about an untrammeled vision of Love that is so compelling and converting and wondrous that the only response is awe and worship and gratitude beyond any experience of joy the world of veils and tears can offer.

Simply stated, we will be overwhelmed by the generosity and beauty of the Love that is God.

You have to have a face for God to wipe away your tears, and you have to have knees to bow, and you have to have a tongue to confess. And the dead have none of these things, only the living.

I usually get impatient when people say that we know little about what the end will look like. Not so. We know that we will have eyes to see and ears to hear and knees to bow and tongues to confess.

And there will be so much more than this. The end is Love.

The End Is Love - Kenneth Tanner

You either believe that the end is the arrival of power, or you believe that the end is the arrival of nothing, or you believe that the end is the arrival of love.

A lot of people believe we are waiting for the arrival of nothing. At the end of their physical life the person they were is gone forever, disappearing as quickly as the brain cells die, never to return. This is also how they see the end of everything and everyone else. Sooner or later it's all going dark. No ultimate justice. No ultimate mercy. No ultimate meaning. Just nothing.

Many more people believe we are waiting for the arrival of power, a power that imposes its will on everything and everyone more or less the way that the worst sort of humans and dark spirits—both at present and in history—impose their will and power: by killing, by taking, by destruction. This is the work not of God but, as Jesus tells us, the work of the Enemy.

Whatever differences there may be in the story these believers tell about the final arrival of power across the religions and philosophies of the world the theme is more or less "our God (or idea) wins." And the way their God or idea wins looks a lot like the way a military power conquers and subdues. Their God is synonymous with Brute Force.

But there is another way, another vision, of the end. It is about the final arrival of Love. It is not about a power that triumphs but a love that converts. The weakness of this God is greater than human strength. The humility of this God is greater than human pretense. The vulnerability of this God brings our notions and idols and weapons of power to nothing.

This God brings a fitting end to history by dying so that his creation and everything in it can be alive with the Spirit that in the beginning breathed the cosmos into existence from nothing.

The cross upon which we killed God, where God offers Godself for the life of the world, is the tipping point of history, where God brings an end to death that is also the end of all endings, and an Arrival—not of nothing, nor of power as humans comprehend power, but of everlasting life, the power of an inextinguishable and indestructible life. 

Yes, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father but this great moment that is coming is not about coercion, not about force, but about an untrammeled vision of Love that is so compelling and converting and wondrous that the only response is awe and worship and gratitude beyond any experience of joy the world of veils and tears can offer.

Simply stated, we will be overwhelmed by the generosity and beauty of the Love that is God.

You have to have a face for God to wipe away your tears, and you have to have knees to bow, and you have to have a tongue to confess. And the dead have none of these things, only the living.

I usually get impatient when people say that we know little about what the end will look like. Not so. We know that we will have eyes to see and ears to hear and knees to bow and tongues to confess.

And there will be so much more than this. The end is Love.

“No one suffers it like God” Kenneth Tanner

Michael was missing for almost four weeks. Like millions, he exists at the margins and this Covid crazy was simply too much; too much went wrong with no one to help him, all relief agency minders working from home, and he just could’t handle his unbearable existence anymore. He walked out the door of his apartment one night without telling a soul and just drifted away.

When he missed a couple of services, I went looking for him, as I tend to do (ask around, haha). I’d been to his place a few times during the crisis to check on him but when I discovered that no one in his apartment complex had seen him in three weeks, my heart sank.

With help from the homeless community in Pontiac, some good shop owners, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, and Emery, we first spotted Michael last Friday and then found him Wednesday night after a week of searching. I was overjoyed. I’d put some important things I’d promised friends on hold to find him. He matters to me and to our church.

Michael and I visited his landlord Thursday, a very good man, and Michael should be back in his apartment next Wednesday. A lot else remains to be done to restore some semblance of togetherness for his life—a lot of logistics and resourcing—but he is resting well on our church campus tonight with all he needs because that is the kind of community we are. 

We will do better by our brother, assist him more closely going forward, make sure he feels our support, and I repent for not being more diligent, but he said something on the way back from the landlord that felt like a window I’d been hoping might open for a long time.

I’ll remind you, this man slept under a concrete staircase for four weeks on Michigan’s hottest days this year and until Wednesday night had not had a shower or complete meal in a month (longer?). God help me.

He pointed out the front windshield at the blue sky as we were driving down M-59 and said: “Father, there’s a lot of pain in this world, a lot of people suffering right now, but no one suffers from bearing the weight of it it all like God.”

Photo: The staircase Michael lived under in July.

Inherited Sin? Responsibility, Repentance & Justice - Fr. Ken Tanner

"WE HAVE SINNED" - Daniel 9:5

That people are in an important sense held responsible for things that happened before they were born is a frequent theme in Old Testament descriptions of humanity and how the world works.

There is in the collective biblical mind such a thing as social, intergenerational, and even national sin.

We are responsible for each other. This is Judaism and it is Christianity.

It surprises me how often those who are seeking to expose and bring justice for systemic racism are told by some Christians that they cannot be held responsible for something their grandparents or great grandparents did.

There is an important sense in which this is true. I cannot be tried for a murder my great grandfather committed.

And yet the Scriptures describe how the collective sins of a people are eventually judged by God, even judged by the creation. And this judgment can be experienced generations after a societal transgression (often a systemic and ongoing one) occurs.

While I am at it, I find it strange that when folks try to address racial hatred and injustice some Christians will respond that the only way to ameliorate racial hatred is by converting hearts, not by marching in the streets or passing legislation.

Ironically, it’s often those same Christians who will march in the streets to end abortion, spend enormous energy on Supreme Court appointments, and hang their entire vote on the question.

It seems to me there are practical things to do to combat sin and there’s also the need to recognize that God alone is capable of converting our hearts and minds and that all of it—the converting and the marching, the inner renewal and the outward rectification—are gracious participations in what *God alone is doing.*

There’s this complexity to existence that binds us to what every other human says and does, and that something like a mystery of inherited guilt is real.

God alone is capable of removing this guilt and it is what one human being says and does and endures on the cross as God that removes this stain, and yet the new life beyond death into which we Christians are baptized involves also our free participation in God’s works of justice that reconcile the world to himself.‬

It’s all grace and it’s all work. It was and is and will be the grace and the work of the human God alone, and the human God alone is glorified in all the things he creates and forever sustains in life.

It's Easy. It's Hard. - Kenneth Tanner

It’s easy to pose with a Bible in front of a church. It’s hard to allow yourself to be encountered by the Living God that walks its pages.

It’s easy to burn down a Muslim family’s small restaurant in Minneapolis. It’s hard to build a business over decades with your children and see it go up in flames overnight.

It’s easy to break a window. It’s hard to put yourself between a BIPOC protester and the shields and batons of a tone-deaf state.

It’s easy to circle the wagons and deny that many police departments have serious deficits in training and tactics, to pretend that police brutality is not a real and present danger. It’s hard to take off the tactical gear, like Sheriff Chris Swanson did, admit there are problems, and march with protesters and stand with protesters for change.

It’s easy to denounce racism in another. It’s hard to discover and confess racism in myself, to have the courage to name racism in the structures of my society, to put anti-racism into practice.

It’s easy to paint all law enforcement with the brush of Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane. It’s hard to put on the uniform with a genuine desire to serve and protect, and feel many judging your vocation by its worst actors.

It’s easy to violently clear a street of peaceful protesters for a photo-op. It’s hard to sit down and listen to what’s animating their protest.

It’s easy to Tweet a James Baldwin quote or post a meme by Austin Channing Brown. It’s hard to read their books and sit with their ideas (like a book requires you to do) and ponder fundamental change in yourself and in society.

It’s easy to sow chaos and confusion, to manipulate a moment of crisis in order to promote divisiveness and destruction. It’s hard to bring people to a table and get them to recognize what together ails them and how they might transcend the crisis to achieve a just mercy.

It’s easy to say and do what your tribe expects you to say and do. It’s hard to go against your tribe for the sake of others and for the sake of your tribe.

It’s easy to get tired of hearing about racism. It’s hard to keep experiencing racism.

It’s easy to join a riot. It’s hard to restrain your community for hundreds of years while they are oppressed and murdered.

It’s easy to burn it all down. It’s hard to build it back up.

It’s easy to issue a statement. It’s hard to live the words.

It’s easy to hate. It’s so very, very hard to love.

"This Wounded God" - Fr. Kenneth Tanner

Against our attempts to make the resurrection a ghost party, like a wisp of fog on hot tea, Jesus appears among us forever with “real wounds,” shows us that resurrection is a matter of flesh and bones, of broiled fish and honeycomb. Christ reveals that his resurrection (and ours) is culinary and involves eating.

His wounded body, a body that yet eats, a body of flesh and bones—flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone—ascends into what it means to be God in eternity, forever taking with his embodied self all the good and hard memories of what it means to be human.

He remembers comfort from the injuries of childhood in the arms of his mother, the ecstatic gladness of meals with friends, the anxiety of facing torture, that odd mixture of cold and thirst in the desert night, and intense heartache at the tomb of his friend. All of this ascends with Christ.

We worship a God who remembers what it is like to die a human death, whose wounded and resurrected body is the antidote to death. As the human who exists beyond the touch of death, this one who remembers all our faces can keep his promises—promises he makes as the new human and as God.

And it is this wounded God with human memories whose rule of resurrection overcomes death, whose rule of forgiveness overcomes sin, whose rule of welcome overcomes estrangement. Now and forever no other human except Jesus Christ governs this wide globe, no matter how certain their control may seem.

Conspiracy theories are a lot like Gnosticism - Kenneth Tanner

Conspiracy theories are a lot like Gnosticism.

They claim that only an enlightened few know what is actually going on in the world and what almost everyone else knows is a lie; that the knowledge available to the average person on the street is unreliable.

The true believer who spreads these conspiracies is like the member of a mystery cult: in the “know” no matter how disconnected from important events he or she may be, no matter how unreal their imagined scenarios are in the face of realities.

And by implication, most people trying to make their way in the world and care for their families, who have almost no time for anything but work, and precious little time for reflection, have not the first clue (again, according to the conspiratorially-obsessed).

Only the most centered and widely-informed persons can resist the temptation to superiority, false certainty, and preoccupation that often follows this phenomenon.

The theories prey on those who live in understandable apprehension (in moments like this one) and increase the every day anxiety of many. Conspiratorial whispers and broadcasts are a scourge, as destructive on human trust and brotherhood as a virus to the human body.

I cannot believe how many who trust in Christ are manipulated and misled in their daily lives by what is so often nonsense.

And obsession with wild speculations steals energy from the sort of practical imitation that the Spirit empowers in us when we take time to contemplate the life of Jesus: care for the stranger, the prisoner, the sick, the hungry and thirsty, the naked, the sex slave, the widow, and the orphan. It’s sexier to tell others about a fearsome secret cabal that controls everything and everyone.

The good news is that the Gospel — the things that God has done to make the world right again, what God has done to secure everyone’s future — is public information, available to everyone. And this Gospel, this Love, casts out fear.

The Gospel says over and over and over again, “Do not be afraid.”

I don’t deny the possibility of conspiracies. They certainly do occur and can have devastating consequences even when involving only a few: the assassination of Lincoln, for example.

But conspiracies are not stronger than Love and often fail to achieve their ultimate ends because the wounded God, publicly executed in the most shameful manner, is the true Lord of history.

This crucified, human God, who is yet alive and embodied beyond death, has been given the guardianship of the cosmos, not temporary rulers and plotters who forget that they are but blades of grass, here today and mown down by death tomorrow.

Again, I am not suggesting that conspiracies do not in fact occur but they don’t for the Christian replace the story of the wounded God who loves the world that he makes and who dies for love of the world as the true story of the world, whatever temporary evils might preen or posture or imagine they control the destiny of anyone or anything.

God is never an agent in evil, so there is much that occurs in this world that has nothing whatsoever to do with his will. And we can, like God, be victims of evil.

Christians trust that God is orchestrating an end to evil where his total victory on the cross somehow makes all things well, and converts the greatest human and demonic conspiracy, our rejection and murder of God, into an infinite good that brings permanence to the cosmos and life without end to human nature, and that is why we fear not.

While some things that seem far-fetched end up being true we do not orient our lives to speculations or explanations that give us a sense of control amid chaos or that sell us insider information to combat anxiety amid uncertainty. Instead, we trust a public life and a public execution that reveal the world’s true story.

The gospel is the best possible news in a perplexing time. There is evil and randomness and we are not in control but genuine Love has conquered and overcome darkness by self-giving, co-suffering humility.

Love is revealed, not secret or hidden, and Love wins.

The Universe Doesn't Love You - Kenneth Tanner

Galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+484 (NASA)

The universe is vast, mysterious, dark, and lovely. The images of the universe that we are the first privileged humans to see boggle the mind and provoke deep emotion.

The size and beauty of the cosmos compel us to ask questions of time and existence and meaning, some of which we cannot answer. The ones we can answer inspire us to know, experience, and see more of what we have not seen.

The universe is intelligent and beautiful and is created good but it’s not personal and “the Universe” is not a good or a proper way to name God.

The “Universe” does not love you, the “Universe” will not raise you from death, the “Universe” is not patient or kind and it does not hate evil or rejoice in the good.

The “Universe” has not suffered for you, does not bear you up and give you a living hope, and — our science understands this — the “Universe” is impermanent, at least by the laws of physics absent resurrection.

So the “Universe” has not given you life or breath or family or friends or love or made a day special, nor can it grant you sunsets or rainbows or roses, or rescue you from death and meaninglessness without the personal force of Love who has a better name and who has spoken the sun that sets into existence.

The “Universe” does not forgive.

Alfonso Cuaròn showed us in “Gravity” how hostile and cold a wilderness the vast majority of the universe is to carbon-based, oxygen-necessary life, even as in its vastness the cosmos was made to sustain life under what are rare and almost impossible circumstances in tiny isolated places like Earth.

The cosmos declares the glory of God in a grand poetic sense, and creation groans in its bondage to evil. We trust this scriptural voice, that a deep-down created goodness animates and resides in the fabric of space and time— from the microscopic to the intergalactic — but the universe is not personal.

And while the universe does not hate you, the universe cannot love you.

God is love and this love is made known in a baby human born of a teenaged mother and this baby and this mother suffer — a sword piercing them both — so that the universe might be restored to the permanence the One who made it intends.

Athanasius says that God wants to give permanence of existence to all that from the beginning he creates, wants to give us a share in his kind of never-ending life.

The cosmos is great and gorgeous and you might be tempted to deify it but it’s really dark and empty and meaningless without the tri-personal God whom John called Love and whom Mary named Jesus.

Christ is all. Christ holds all things — all microcosms and constellations — together.

Christ is light and life and in his flesh and in his suffering on the cross all things are made new and all things are sustained forever.

The “Universe” is his beloved creation but when you seek to honor or praise or name its maker and keeper — the one who holds you together, gives you all things, and excites joy in the deepest places of your heart — use the name above all names: Jesus Christ.

Postscript: The “universe” cannot rescue us from our common plight as humans, this darkness we are all walking through right now.

We are reminded by the present time that death is always there though often hidden from us in our rush, as we build our little impertinent kingdoms.

The enemy of God seeks to steal, kill and destroy us but Christ can rescue us — he always and everywhere only brings healing to humans, restores us to life — and Christ will rescue us.

So repent of everything in you that is not a participation in his love and return to God.

Awaiting the Arrival: Love, Power or Nothing - Kenneth Tanner

Planet of the Apes final scene, recreated by Tony Hoffarth | Flikr

You either believe that the end is the arrival of power, or you believe that the end is the arrival of nothing, or you believe that the end is the arrival of love.

A lot of people believe we are waiting for the arrival of nothing. At the end of their physical life, the person they were is gone forever, disappearing as quickly as the brain cells die, never to return. This is also how they see the end of everything and everyone else. Sooner or later it's all going dark. No ultimate justice. No ultimate mercy. No ultimate meaning. Nothing.

Many more people believe we are waiting for the arrival of power, a power that imposes its will on everything and everyone more or less the way that the worst sort of humans and dark spirits—both at present and in history—impose their will and power: by killing, by taking, by destruction. This is the work not of God but, as Jesus tells us, the work of the Enemy.

Whatever differences there may be in the story these “believers” tell about the final arrival of power across the religions and philosophies of the world the theme is more or less "our God (or idea) wins." And the way their god or idea wins looks a lot like the way a military power conquers and subdues. Their god is synonymous with Brute Force.

But there is another way, another vision, of the end. It is about the final arrival of Love. It is not about a power that triumphs but a love that converts. The weakness of this God is greater than human strength. The humility of this God is greater than human pretenses about controlling the world. The vulnerability of this God brings our notions and idols and weapons of power to nothing.

This God brings a fitting end to history by dying so that his creation and everything in it can be alive with the Spirit that in the beginning breathed the cosmos into existence from nothing.

The cross upon which we killed God, where God offers Godself for the life of the world, is the tipping point of history, where God brings an end to death that is also the end of all endings, and an Arrival—not of nothing, nor of power as humans comprehend power, but of everlasting life, the power of an indestructible life.

Yes, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father but this great moment that is coming is not about coercion, not about force, but about an untrammeled vision of Love that is so compelling and converting and wondrous that the only response is awe and worship and gratitude beyond any experience of joy the world of veils and tears can offer.

Simply stated, we will be overwhelmed by the generosity and beauty of the Love that is God.

You have to have a face for God to wipe away your tears, and you have to have knees to bow, and you have to have a tongue to confess. And the dead have none of these things, only the living.

I usually get impatient when people say that we know little about what the end will look like. Not so. We know that we will have eyes to see and ears to hear and knees to bow and tongues to confess.

And there will be so much more than this. The end is Love.

Ash Wednesday Homily - Fr Kenneth Tanner

This day we mark ashen crosses on our foreheads is a day of remembrance.

We remember three things by this ancient practice, a practice that itself recalls how those in grief would look “ashen” because sorrow kept them from cleansing themselves in a world warmed and lit by fire.

First, we remember that we are made from dust. Our wisdom tells us that when God made the universe, he spoke everything we see into existence from nothing.

When, on the “sixth day,” God made humans, he did not speak us into existence from nothing but handcrafted us in the divine image from the dust of the earth.

The Spirit breathes into lifeless dust and humanity comes alive.

And what a miracle this is. Dust can think. Dust can create. Dust can do justice. Dust can love mercy. Dust can embrace. Dust can love.

Nothing else in the universe bears this image. Not the constellations. Not the oceans. Not the flowers. Not the animals. As remarkable as all things are in their own way, humans alone bear the Imago Dei.

We are dust that builds bridges. We are dust that finds cures for microscopic diseases and spies far-distant planets. We are dust that climbs Everest. We are dust that writes haikus. We are dust that sculpts, paints, and dances, that solves equations that produce microchips and launch satellites into space.

We are dust that brings food from the dust. We are dust that cares for all the woodland, pasture, and desert creatures. We are dust intended to garden and to serve the earth.

There is beauty and strength and courage and ingenuity and stamina in humans.

Yet today we also remember something else about ourselves, something truly tragic about the dust that we are.

This morning I read an account of a female journalist stationed in Beirut who has for several years now covered the nightmare in Syria.

Her story contained a photo of a man holding his twin daughters tight to his chest. The toddlers were strawberry blondes with curly beautiful hair like my grandgirl, Lela.

The father was kneeling with them by an open grave where they were about to bury the girls, inconsolable.

They had died in a  sarin gas attack on their village.

This past week, we learned that a revered human, a human with arguably unique insights into being human, was at times for decades rather inhuman.

There’s credible evidence that Jean Vanier—founder of the L’Arche communities, which have done some of the most beautiful work that we who are dust can do—manipulated and abused several women, and covered up the abuse of many others.

As a spiritual director and leader of healing communities, he used his position and influence to take advantage of and harm women, and this is especially evil because he (and others) taught that these women would experience emotional and sexual healing by having sex with him (them).

So we remember today that we are dust that has walked away from the Love that is God, the Love that made us and the Love in which we were made. We are dust that now must return to dust.

We are dust that is infected with death.

I am infected. You are infected.

Our crimes may not look like the horrific murders carried out by the Syrian government or feel like the sexual and emotional abuse of a beloved spiritual authority, but when we inventory our minds, search our hearts, and examine our deeds, if we are honest and patient, we know (or come to know) ourselves as fractured vessels of dust.

Here now is the final startling thing we remember on Ash Wednesday: despite all our crimes God becomes dust to rescue us dusty ones from death.

God so identifies with the dust that he makes human—dust that in the beginning, he makes very good, dust on which he imprints his image and likeness, dust into which he breathes his life—that he forever becomes human, not for a moment but for always.

This is a radical thing that God does.

Against every charge that dark accusing spirits make opposing humanity, against our truly epic record of wrongs, against collective human rejection of all that is human (even our wish to escape our humanity), against our own whispering accusations of ourselves, God from love becomes dust in order to rescue a humanity inexorably returning to dust from remaining in death.

Ponder this: How could God hate what God is, for God is now forever human in Jesus Christ.

He hates nothing that he has made, as the Ash Wednesday collect reminds us, but he also cannot become that which he hates. God loves what God becomes and God becomes what God loves.

Ponder also this: how could humanity as created be anything but good for God cannot become what is inherently evil.

We have done evil, to be sure, and we continue to do evil, but that is not the end of the human story.

Like the Father in the story Jesus tells, God waits along the path to the kingdom on every morning of the world, ready to run toward every human child who returns to him, for in his kindness he desires and loves us even before we repent, even while we are yet on the lam.

And in the Son the Father’s running toward us looks like a human, slowly and painfully carrying a cross to the place of the skull.

God becomes dust. And in the walking, talking dust that is Jesus Christ, the human God, God shows us what it means to be human and what it means to be God.

Jesus shows us that what it means to be human and that what it means to be God is to die for the world that God loves and for the humanity that God loves—every last human.

It is not enough to be conceived in the womb of the virgin. It is is not enough to live in constant faithful communion with God. It is not enough to suffer. In order to become human God must die. In order to become human we must die.

The good news of Ash Wednesday is that when the human God dies death itself begins to work backwards. By death God defeats the evil of death, the last enemy of the human who is God, and converts it (as only God can) into an unqualified good, a door to eternal life.

So hear now how these words—“Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return”—are suffused with meaning, meaning we have not considered, meaning that makes a real difference.

God made us good in the image of his beauty from dust.

In our failure to love we are bound by death to return to dust.

So God becomes dust to rescue us from death that we like Jesus might become human forever by dying for the world that God loves, that we like the transfigured Jesus might forever shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

A homily for Ash Wednesday, 2020

Sword or Cross? War or Love? Which will Christians finally trust? Fr. Kenneth Tanner

The church’s gradual and at times nearly complete break with the pattern of her Lord and of the first Christians on the question of war is yet another public witness to the unconscious practical atheism of many whose mantra is “in God we trust.”

Either we believe finally that love is stronger than death, and the way of the cross stronger than the way of the sword, or we do not.

Our Lord trusted this way unto death.

My meditation from last week—prior to the escalation with Iran—asks whether at some point before the end of history the whole church will return to Jesus and the first Christians and put our money where our Creed is.

Either we trust this radical stuff about the cross and resurrection as revealing the way to become human as God is human in the flesh of Jesus Christ—as the cruciform path by which God saves the world God loves—or we believe in the will to power, in horses and chariots, like the majority of Homo sapiens in history.

Does the end of history involve a global church that recovers from amnesia and remembers to trust the way of the cross in all its weakness, to trust that co-suffering love is stronger than any means of power this world offers?

Does a church arise that trusts God will defend and rescue and vindicate and resurrect them after their passion, and so they, as the only body Christ now has in the world, lay down their collective life in this world as the body of Christ in imitation of our Lord?

It is after all the *kind* of life one human lives among us as the only living God dies for the life of the world that ought to instruct how *we* live and how *we* die—a life manifested in the dispositions, thoughts, words, and actions of Jesus Christ.

The first Christians were fully immersed in his way of dying to become human. They chose the way of the cross.

It is a great mystery of human existence that the first Christians did this for more than three hundred years—without insurgencies, without a Spartacus, without a Mark Anthony—unlike any other movement within humanity before or after, and this magnificent sign and wonder is certainly a great witness to the authenticity of the gospel.

The way of self-preservation (as families or communities or cities or nations) has not always been the way of Christians, and as citizens of a world power we may not know how to make this path our own.

Millions have perished while trusting in the resurrection and in their crucified God. To suggest that they should have taken a more realistic or utilitarian stance, that they should have taken up arms, is a kind of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. These were looking to a transfigured world. These had a different country in their hearts.

They trusted that God was on the side of humanity, on the side of his creation, no longer a God with or for one geography or one people or one culture but a God with and for everyone, everywhere.

Is there a final moment in history when instead of fighting the Antichrist, instead of taking up arms against the penultimate Hitler or the final ISIS or whatever form death’s last great tyranny takes, the church visibly rejects the means and powers of this world, the privilege of self-defense, our idolatry of weapons, and decides instead to beat all our swords and spears into farming tools, chooses to trust the humility and weakness of God in Jesus Christ to vindicate us—not our armaments, our anger, our right to stand up for ourselves—in order to make manifest an already-accomplished defeat of darkness on Golgotha?

What if the end comes only after an unprecedented and great slaughter of Christians, after a worldwide crucifixion of the body of Christ, in which after great sacrifice in imitation of her Lord she dies and rises from the ashes of her demise by the Spirit, and God is finally all in all because the cruciform pattern of love that governs the universe and holds all things together and gives all living things breath has been confirmed in a peculiar crucified and resurrected people with Christ as her head?

In the end Jesus tells us we will win not by defending our life, nor by trying to hold on to our privilege, but by giving up our life so that the world might live.

Perfect Eschatology - Kenneth Tanner

Someone finally described perfect eschatology. This is my only answer now about my end or the world’s end or when Christ is coming again.

Bear in mind that the definition of "world" here is not “the earth” or “the cosmos” or “material creation” but “the fallen order” or “the realm that is captive to death.”

All who listen to the depths of the gospel and live it so completely that none of it remains veiled from them care very little about whether the end of the world will come suddenly and all at once or gradually and little by little.

Instead, they bear in mind only that each individual’s end or death will arrive on a day and hour unknown to him and that upon each one of us ‘the day of the Lord will come like a thief.’

It is important therefore to be vigilant, whether in the evening (that is, in one’s youth) or in the middle of the night (that is, at human life’s darkest hour) or when the cock crows (at full maturity) or in the morning (when one is well advanced in old age).

When God the Word comes and brings an end to the progress of this life, he will gather up the one who gave ‘no sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids’ and kept the commandment of the One who said, ‘Be vigilant at all times.’

But I know another kind of end for the righteous person who is able to say along with the apostle, ‘Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.’ In a certain sense, the end of the world has already come for the person to whom the world is crucified. And to one who is dead to worldly things the day of the Lord has already arrived, for the Son of man comes to the soul of the one who no longer lives for sin or for the world.”

—Origen of Alexandria, saint, theologian, exegete, Commentary on Matthew, 56.

The opening of that last paragraph has the sort of weight I feel when Paul says, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
‭‭(1 Corinthians‬ ‭12:31‬)

Recommended Readings on Faith Renovation - Kenneth Tanner

Folks undergoing what my friend Brad Jersak calls “faith renovation” often ask me to suggest books as companions on their journey.

What follows are thirty-five small(ish) books to heal hurting hearts and bewildered minds by introducing and inviting them to the older, deeper, authentic way of majority Christianity down the centuries.

These books point us to the beauty and wisdom of the Great Tradition, discussing distortions of Christian teaching only where necessary.

With exceptions they are under $15 and many of them are under 200 pages. The average reader will find no particular challenge in comprehending them.

With one exception the books are by living authors who have other published or pending books that one can turn to, and all but about a handful were published in the past five years.

The list is eclectic, because seeing all there is to see of Jesus Christ requires us to encounter his followers in as generous a company of orthodox Christians as possible.

These books will reorient readers to the classic Christian consensus on creation care, the cross, solidarity with the poor and the broken, death and evil as negations of the good with no origin in God, what the end of the world means, hospitality, the Scriptures, the creeds, enemy love, the created goodness of humanity and the material world, the sacraments and practices of the church, contemplation, the ancient church’s multi-faceted understanding of salvation, and the much-neglected doctrine of the incarnate God who truly sets our faith apart from every philosophy and religion that projects a god that looks and sounds like the worst imaginations of the fallen human heart.

A person who makes it through even some of these will understand that Jesus Christ is the most vital human and the most humble God and that he alone is truly the savior of the cosmos.

Note: A few of these books address the contemporary Christian trying to navigate our inherited authentic faith in the complex reality of the churches and our culture here in the United States. My apologies if you are an international reader.

It would be good to make a similar list of primary sources from the Tradition and another from literary fiction, for Christian faith engages our imagination in the concrete world God has made, and some (not all!) fathers and mothers among the first Christians should be read as often as and alongside contemporary authors, but those lists are for another day.

**********

A list of contemporary non-fiction books for folks undergoing faith renovation:

Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Images by John Behr

Jesus of Nazareth (three volumes) by Benedict XVI

Our Only World: Ten Essays by Wendell Berry

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Taylor Brown

Surprised by Jesus Again: Reading the Bible in Communion with the Saints by Jason Byassee

Love Anyway: An Invitation Beyond a World That’s Scary as Hell by Jeremy Courtney

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans

Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe by Stephen Freeman

Surprised by God: How and Why What We Think About the Divine Matters by Chris E.W. Green

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practice in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren

The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? by David Bentley Hart

The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father by Wesley Hill

A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel by Brad Jersak

A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith by Brad Jersak

Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird

How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help Is on the Way and Love Is Already Here by Jonathan Martin

A Spiritual Evolution: Rediscovering the Greatest Story Ever Told: John MacMurray

Prayer: Forty Days of Practice by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson

The Apostle’s Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism by Ben Myers

The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Save Us from Drowning by Aaron Niequist

In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Pádraig Ó Tuama

For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann

O Death, Where Is Thy Sting? by Alexander Schmemann

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K.A. Smith

Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer by Rowan Williams

Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief by Rowan Williams

Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to the Life of Spiritual Discipline by Lauren F. Winner

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News by Brian Zahnd

Water to Wine: Some of My Story by Brian Zahnd