Reflections in Christ

The Christian Faith is all about thanksgiving.  Our secular North American society thinks that thanksgiving is moderately important, and so it has a wonderful Thanksgiving Day feast once a year.  I love this feast.  Every October in Canada—my calendar tells me it is held in November in the US—when the leaves start to turn colour and the days become…

Fans of the British satirical series “Monty Python” and its movie The Meaning of Life perhaps will remember their portrayal of Christian liturgy.  A man in cassock, surplice, and academic hood, looking every inch a stuffy Church of England cleric, comes forward in chapel and begins a prayer to God with these words:  “O Lord, ooh You are so…

I can, I think, count on the fingers of my one hand the number of times I have described myself as an Eastern Orthodox.  Usually the preferred self-designation is simply “Orthodox,” but sometimes this provokes confusion, as when I am further asked, “Oh, are you Jewish?”  The respondent has clearly heard of Orthodox Jews, and supposes that I…

What do bread and peanut butter have to do with the forgiveness of sins?  More than one might think at first glance.

Recently, a friend told me of how he met a pan-handler asking for spare change in the parking lot of a grocery store.  He knew the man well, for he had often met him and given him the requested spare change.  They hailed each other…

Recently I was taking a walk in a park nearby our home when two young girls met me, offering a tract and (ostensibly) wanting to talk about the Kingdom.  Actually they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and what they really wanted was to convert me to their sect.  Usually I politely decline and the preacher man keeps walking, but today I took the time to…

I have heard that our Muslim friends are not impressed by our New Testament.  That is, as far as Scripture goes, they think it is pretty thin stuff.  That is because for them Scripture represents the very voice of God and comes to mankind as God’s direct message.  By the term “Scripture” they understand God speaking to us in the first person. …

I recently saw a brief on-line debate from the show “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell,” featuring a debate about the existence of God.  The segment featured two comedians, Jamie Kilstein (arguing for atheism) and John Fugelsang (arguing for Christian theism).  Although lacking in intellectual substance, the debate was good-tempered and funny in…

Living near the US-Canadian border and having friends in a northern border town in Washington State, I often cross the border.  This usually involves waiting in long line-ups, which gives even people like me who have nothing to hide plenty of time to get nervous at the prospect of stern interrogation.  I don’t know why I get nervous.  Perhaps it…

This past Sunday, September 8, we celebrated the Great Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.  We sang the troparion, in which we rejoiced that her birth “proclaimed joy to the whole universe.”  It is easy enough to sing, but somewhat harder now for us to understand.  Why, we may ask, did the birth of a baby girl in around 15 B.C. or so…

The title of this piece is taken from a song of the same name, written and sung by “The Second Chapter of Acts,” a trio of siblings, in 1974.  In this song they ask the pointed question, “You don’t know which way the wind blows, so how can you plan tomorrow?”  I was thinking of this song as I recently boarded a plane to travel back east to…

I suppose I cannot be the only pastor who has often been asked by his parishioners what the unforgivable sin is that Christ mentioned in the Gospel.  Admittedly it can sound a bit alarming, especially to tender consciences.  Christ said that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven”…

The words of the title of this post were spoken by Reza Aslan, author of a new book on Jesus entitled, Zealot:  The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.  Despite his boasting of being “an expert in the history of religions,” Aslan actually makes his living as an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at a local college, so that in writing his…

The story of the deliverance of the Gadarene demoniac reappears often in our Orthodox lectionary, so it seems that someone thought we really needed to hear its message.  You know the story:  Our Lord crossed the Sea of Galilee with His disciples and disembarked on the eastern shore, in the region whose main city was Gadara.  There He met a demoniac,…

Old guys like me might remember a theological comment on the human condition heard over the radio in 1967.  A group called “The Youngbloods” offered the following assessment of mankind in their song “Come Together”:  “Love is but a song we sing.  Fear’s the way we die.”  They might have gone further, for fear is not only the way we…

In 1996 National Geographic magazine featured an article on my old hometown of Toronto, in which a Torontonian commented on how the great urban city has changed over the years and become more multi-ethnic.  The aging Torontonian delighted in his city’s diversity, and compared it to the more monochrome Protestant Toronto he had grown up in prior to…

In one of my favourite Woody Allen films, “Love and Death” (a spoof on such Russian novels as War and Peace), the following dialogue takes place between Boris (played by Woody Allen) and his cousin Sonia (played by Diane Keaton):

Boris: “What if there is no God?”

Sonia: “Are you joking?”

Boris: “What if we’re just a bunch of…

In May, I was privileged to visit the Holy Land, including the building at the summit of the Mount of Olives, the so-called Imbomen (from the Greek en bouno, “on the hillock”).  In the days of Egeria in the fourth century, it was not so much a chapel as a circular colonnade, for Egeria writes in her famous travelogue that it was a place where…

I have only one thing on my bucket list, and through the kindness of a friend I was able recently to cross it off the list.  That is, I have fulfilled my life-long dream to see Jerusalem and venerate the holy places.  My friend and I spent a wonderful and breathless week or so there.  We visited many holy sites such as Nazareth and Bethlehem, but…

We live in a Facebook world—that is, in a world characterized by the presence of what has come to be called “social media.”  Much ink has been spilled describing this revolutionary new phenomenon, some people lauding it, and some lamenting it.  But whether it is laudable or lamentable or some combination of both, it seems to be here to stay. …

At the end of October in 1840, the celebrated author Hans Christian Andersen (famous for his fairy tales) left his native Denmark for an extended trip in the east.  He wrote about his travels in his book A Poet’s Bazaar: a Journey to Greece, Turkey and Up the Danube.  Andersen was an experienced traveller, who had visited Italy some years before. …