I’ve always known in my bones that we should celebrate New Year’s Day on September 1. New pencils. Empty notebooks. Fresh eager faces. New classes to take or to teach. That is when it all starts for me. I’m now very happy to discover that the Orthodox Church had the same idea centuries ago. September […]
Why the Cross? (Heidelberg Catechism Q39)
We Protestants tend to be pretty focused on the Cross. We hear Paul saying that he wanted to know nothing among the Corinthians but Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). We transmogrify it to mean we should preach nothing but the Cross, even on Christmas (when the Cross was thirty years in the future) […]
Why Easter Eggs? My “AHA!” Moment
Ever since I was a kid, long before I had much of an active Christian faith, I wondered: Why do we use eggs to celebrate Easter? Why Easter Eggs? It is not at all obvious. There is only one mention of eggs in the whole New Testament, and it isn’t about Easter. Unless we paint Christian […]
Vocabulary Lesson: And Why Do We Call it “Good Friday”?
For a lot of people Good Friday brings one question to mind: Why ‘Good’? If I love Jesus and want to follow him, how can I say that the day he died was ‘Good’? It sounds like I should be jumping with joy. I can’t read the Gospel accounts without tears. English speakers have called […]
Lent 4: On Sex, and Being a Seaworthy Ship
Like food, sexual activity is necessary for survival. But while food is needed for each individual, in the case of sex the need is for the species. Nobody, as they say, ever actually died of chastity. The understanding of many Christian centuries that chastity is actually better for you may seem at least foreign. In our society we equate sexuality with […]
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