We remember this day, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by the order of King Herod. Receive, we beseech thee, into the arms of thy mercy all innocent victims; and by thy great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish thy rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today's the feast of the Holy Innocents, remembering the massacre of Bethlehem infants by order of Herod. In replica 15th Century German glass at Erpingham, Norfolk, the Holy Family flee into Egypt while the awful slaughter happens in the foreground. pic.twitter.com/jb4i9EE96V

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) December 28, 2023

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
    break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people,
    and will have compassion on his afflicted.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
    my Lord has forgotten me.”
“Can a woman forget her sucking child,
    that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.
Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are continually before me.
Your builders outstrip your destroyers,
    and those who laid you waste go forth from you.
Lift up your eyes round about and see;
    they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, says the Lord,
    you shall put them all on as an ornament,
    you shall bind them on as a bride does.

“Surely your waste and your desolate places
    and your devastated land—
surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants,
    and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
The children born in the time of your bereavement
    will yet say in your ears:
‘The place is too narrow for me;
    make room for me to dwell in.’
Then you will say in your heart:
    ‘Who has borne me these?
I was bereaved and barren,
    exiled and put away,
    but who has brought up these?
Behold, I was left alone;
    whence then have these come?’”

–Isaiah 49:13-21

☘️Guten Morgen ☀️ pic.twitter.com/JesvMQP4s6

— 💫Stein_harmonie🍀🧚‍♀️ (@SteinHarmonie) December 28, 2023

By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.

Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.

The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”

–Eugene Peterson in God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas ed. Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe (Massachusettes, Paraclete Press, 2007), p., 5

Merry Christmas to you all. And to celebrate some Christmas themed photos. First a window from Hambledon, Hampshire… pic.twitter.com/JogNvXFUS3

— English Churches (@EngChurchPics) December 25, 2023

This mediator must represent God to humankind, and humankind to God. He must have points of contact with both God and humanity, and yet be distinguishable from them both. The central Christian idea of the incarnation, which expresses the belief that Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, portrays Jesus as the perfect mediator between God and human beings. He, and he alone, is able to redeem us and reconcile us to God.

—“I Believe”: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p.48

'For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God'
Psalm 86: 10 pic.twitter.com/mYB4olG0Tz

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) December 26, 2023

Merciful Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that we, being illumined by the teaching of thine apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of thy truth, that we may at length attain to the fullness of life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Lieven van Lathem, Flemish
Saint John on Patmos, 1469

(The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 37, fol. 18) pic.twitter.com/A2QikuEiXf

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) February 25, 2023

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives any one whom I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me.”

When Jesus had thus spoken, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast of Jesus; so Simon Peter beckoned to him and said, “Tell us who it is of whom he speaks.” So lying thus, close to the breast of Jesus, he said to him, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the money box, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast”; or, that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the morsel, he immediately went out; and it was night.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified; if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

–John 13:20-35

Winter's Joy (1928)
🎨 Peder Mørk Mønsted pic.twitter.com/maZ5GU0Uho

— Cian McCarthy (@arealmofwonder) December 27, 2023

How can you cope with the end of a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? “How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh, that life itself became life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality of the world, or it is a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful playacting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between. We may not be content there, but we don’t know how to escape.

–NT Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids, Eerdman’s, 1994) the introduction, page ix

Today's art: The Adoration of the Magi – Leonardo da Vinci https://t.co/TK2hAm4jnj pic.twitter.com/JiYBAsuHQS

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) August 27, 2021

God with us means more than God over or side by side with us, before or behind us. It means more than His divine being in even the most intimate active connection with our human being otherwise peculiar to Him. At this point, at the heart of the Christian message and in relation to the event of which it speaks, it means that God has made himself the one who fulfills his redemptive will. It means that He Himself in His own person at His own cost but also on His own initiative has become the inconceivable Yet and Nevertheless of this event, and so its clear and well-founded and legitimate, its true and holy and righteous Therefore. It means that God has become man in order as such, but in divine sovereignty, to take up our case. What takes place in the work of inconceivable mercy is, therefore, the free overruling of God, but it is not an arbitrary overlooking and ignoring, not an artificial bridging, covering over or hiding, but a real closing of the breach, gulf and abyss between God and us for which we are responsible. At the very point where we refuse and fail, offending and provoking God, making ourselves impossible before Him and in that way missing our destiny, treading under foot our dignity, forfeiting our right, losing our salvation and hopelessly compromising our creaturely being at that very point God Himself intervenes as man.

—Church Dogmatics (IV.1) [E.T. By Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas Torrance of the German Original] (London: T and T Clark, 1956), page 12

Strange bursts of light create fantastical effects in this nighttime Adoration of the Shepherds by, of course, El Greco, in 1610. pic.twitter.com/3PtC6J4wH5

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens (@PP_Rubens) December 27, 2022

The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context…the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it–not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

–J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; 20th Anniversary ed.), p.42

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1608 #rubens #flemishart https://t.co/Ks6skyuNca pic.twitter.com/SXrCNP3dPK

— Peter Paul Rubens (@artistrubens) March 5, 2023

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Proch′orus, and Nica′nor, and Timon, and Par′menas, and Nicola′us, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them.

And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

–Acts 6:1-7

Today's Boxing Day, the feast of St Stephen, by tradition the first Christian martyr. He holds the stones that were the instruments of his martyrdom on the late medieval rood screen at Ludham, Norfolk.

Ludham: https://t.co/RhTZtnZ3Ud pic.twitter.com/H2teunlv3S

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) December 26, 2023

He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth belongs to the earth, and of the earth he speaks; he who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony; he who receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for it is not by measure that he gives the Spirit; the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.

–John 3:31-36

The Nativity

BL Add MS 49598; 963-984; The Benedictional of St Æthelwold; England, S.; f.15v @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/rUuPCvxeW3

— Ennius (@red_loeb) December 24, 2023

This section of the poem offers two images of Mary, each extraordinary in its own way. Elsewhere among the Advent Lyrics, Mary is the subject of ‘O virgo virginum’ and of the dialogue which begins ‘O Joseph’; the latter brings to life the tension and pain in the story of her child-bearing, dramatising the anguished thoughts of a couple who have had a world-changing miracle erupt in the middle of their marriage. That’s an emotional, intimate conversation – the Incarnation as personal human drama.

This poem gives us a very different view of Mary. Here she is a queen, and on a cosmic scale – ruler of the forces of heaven, earth, and hell. God and Mary are described in language and tropes drawn from Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry: they are the brytta and his bryd, the generous ring-giving lord and his resolute queen. Described thus, they might easily be Hrothgar and Wealhtheow in Beowulf, or even Cnut and Emma. Like many another woman in Anglo-Saxon poetry, Mary is a bride ‘adorned with rings’ (beaga hroden), but this bride is far from a passive figure: she is courageous and determined (þristhycgende, ‘steadfast in mind’). This poem frames her situation in a distinctive way, presenting it as if she has decided to undertake a diplomatic mission from earth to heaven. Though literally this decision is made when she accepts Gabriel’s message to her, the poem describes it as if she set out to travel on a journey to unite herself with God…

Read it all.

'You are the door in the wall…
Intercede for us now, bold in your words,
that he may not allow us any longer
to go astray in this deadly valley.'

An Anglo-Saxon Advent poem to Mary, queen of three realms and door in the wall between the worlds https://t.co/kg1YIeygui pic.twitter.com/8I0uwMSaOQ

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 24, 2023

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

–Revelation 12:1-6

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, the last window.
‘Winter Pastoral’
Artist: SR Badmin pic.twitter.com/14IsxIlsOo

— Helen Day (@LBFlyawayhome) December 24, 2023

“When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

–Matthew 25:31-46

Walking in Great Langdale, Lake District NP pic.twitter.com/S9php2QLJq

— YorkshireLass (@MaureenPlatts) December 23, 2023

Faith leaders in London and the south-east have joined forces with the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, in calling on the Government to address the leave-to-remain status situation for asylum-seekers, and the increasing risk of homelessness this winter…. They want practice to match policy, better communication, and for the timeframe to be extended.

Forty-five of them signed the letter, sent last week to Michael Tomlinson MP and Baroness Scott of Bybrook, ministers respectively in the Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Signatories included the Bishops of Chelmsford, Southwark, and Rochester, and their area and suffragan bishops.

Welcoming the Home Office’s efforts to tackle its backlog on asylum claims, the faith leaders say that they are “concerned at the number [of refugees] who, on receiving their leave to remain, are becoming street homeless”. They report growing demand in London’s churches, mosques, gurdwaras, synagogues, and temples, for support with accommodation from those with new refugee status.

Read it all.

Faith leaders in London and the south-east have joined forces with @bishopSarahM in calling on the Government to address the leave-to-remain status situation for asylum-seekers, and the increasing risk of homelessness this winterhttps://t.co/MW6noWWnJo

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 22, 2023

You can listen directly via the link above or via downloadable podocast there.

Today's pick: Caravaggio: St John the Baptist (1604) https://t.co/4GpRchR5GI pic.twitter.com/n9obXdpmzL

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) May 7, 2021

It is unsurprising that euthanasia consistently breaks its boundaries, always presented as an expansion of choice as the route to kindness. This is rooted in liberalism’s fundamental presuppositions, for as George Grant wrote, “it is the very signature of modern man to deny reality to any conception of good that imposes limits on human freedom … man’s essence is his freedom. Nothing must stand in the way of our absolute freedom to create the world as we want it. There must be no conceptions of good that put limitations on human action.” If there is no ultimate value towards which our lives point, then “the vaunted freedom of the individual to choose becomes either the necessity of finding one’s role in the public engineering or the necessity of retreating into the privacy of pleasure”. We are reduced to utilitarian measures of the good, achieved through harm reduction and happiness maximisation, materialistically defined.

The result of the liberal conception of the human person is expressive individualism, where “persons are conceived merely as atomized individual wills whose highest flourishing consists in interrogating the interior depths of the self in order to express and freely follow the original truths discovered therein toward one’s self-invented destiny”. This conception of the human person privileges cognition, will, rationality and autonomy in defining full personhood. Our nature as embodied souls is largely ignored: if one cannot employ one’s body to achieve the desires of one’s autonomous, rational, willed cognition, then one cannot achieve full personhood.

As a result, the constraints of our existential finitude made so explicit by disability are seen as immoral barriers to maximal autonomy attained through rational will. The unchosen bonds of interdependence, obligation, reciprocity and mutual loyalty that comprise the texture and meaning of life are denigrated. Liberalism discards the weak just as the Greco-Roman world once did, now done for reasons of supposed benevolence. From Locke onwards, liberalism has always seen some more capable of, and suited to, forming political society than others. Mill took this furthest in his proposal of colonisation and slavery for those less capable of freedom.

It is not such a stretch from liberalism’s definition of the individual’s capacity for personhood to advocating the killing of disabled infants deemed incapable of fulfilling this. As Leon Kass has written, it is no surprise that those Germans who coined the phrase “life unworthy of life” were two liberals: a jurist and an academic. Better to curb the depersonalised source of the suffering with all haste. James Burnham viewed liberalism as the ideological legitimator and enabler of Western suicide. I’m not sure he meant for the title of his book to be taken so literally, across so many countries.

Read it all from 2022.

As assisted suicide is in the news again, re-upping my piece for @TheCriticMag from last year, in which I argue that assisted suicide is not only wrong in itself, but that it’s the logical endpoint of the liberal view of the human person https://t.co/ZMK8sy5Pyh

— Henry George (@intothefuture45) December 22, 2023

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God
from every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on earth.”

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

–Revelation 5:6-14

The old post office with a dusting of snow.
Haworth. pic.twitter.com/gSmj5GnRv7

— Dave Z Photography (@DaveZ_uk) December 22, 2023

You can listen directly just above or you can download it also there.

David Cumbie of Church of the Apostles, Houston, called to be new rector of Holy Cross, Sullivan's Island #SouthCarolina https://t.co/0ylo4poNBE #parishministry #lowcountrylife #anglican #religion #faith #transition #leadership #marriage #family #children #texas #acna pic.twitter.com/oAsFYduwBZ

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) October 18, 2023

It’s no coincidence that ‘O Oriens’ is sung on the evening of the winter solstice, as darkness falls on the longest night of the year – the time when winter is at its deepest, but the year’s turning-point has come. In the antiphon and in the Old English poem, Christ is figured as the dawn and the returning sun, appearing in the time of greatest darkness, in the depth of the season the Anglo-Saxons called midwinter. In his De temporum ratione, Bede explains the traditional understanding of the relationship between the church year and the equinoxes and solstices:

very many of the Church’s teachers recount… that our Lord was conceived and suffered on the 8th kalends of April [25 March], at the spring equinox, and that he was born at the winter solstice on the 8th kalends of January [25 December]. And again, that the Lord’s blessed precursor and Baptist was conceived at the autumn equinox on the 8th kalends of October [24 September] and born at the summer solstice on the 8th kalends of July [24 June]. To this they add the explanation that it was fitting that the Creator of eternal light should be conceived and born along with the increase of temporal light, and that the herald of penance, who must decrease, should be engendered and born at a time when the light is diminishing.

Bede, The Reckoning of Time, trans. Faith Wallis (Liverpool, 2004), p. 87.

The medieval church attached profound importance to the solstices and equinoxes as signs of God’s power over time and the created world.

Read it all.

'O Earendel, brightest of angels,
sent to mankind over middle-earth…'

On the winter solstice, the medieval antiphon 'O Oriens' is sung – an appeal for light in darkness. It inspired an Anglo-Saxon poem, which in turn inspired Tolkien's myth of Eärendil: https://t.co/ooFa8lQAzO pic.twitter.com/fSMjCOSPK5

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 21, 2023

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,
or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and pay your vows to the Most High;

and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

–Psalm 50:13-15

December #rainbow over the #LincsWolds #loveukweather pic.twitter.com/u23H1onleo

— ianW (@IanW1985) December 21, 2023

Assisted suicide is banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. While there is no specific offence of assisted suicide in Scotland, euthanasia is illegal and can be prosecuted as murder or culpable homicide.
Rantzen says she’s joined assisted dying clinic

Mr Stride, one of 27 Conservative MPs who voted for the 2015 bill, said he thought some MPs could be wondering “whether this should be something we look at again”.

“The government has not decided to bring forward legislation,” he told the Today programme on Wednesday, “but if Parliament in some form or another decided that it wanted to have a fresh look at this, given it was some years ago that we last did so, that’s not something that I would be resistant to.”

Read it all.

Glad this article calls this for what it is: assisted suicide. I have argued against this in all my episcopal roles and will continue to do so. Investment in palliative care is essential. It will so often be the vulnerable who would suffer most in this. https://t.co/g94iLf0yQZ

— Bishop of Newcastle (@BishopNewcastle) December 20, 2023

….if the sexed nature of the body is irrelevant to the most intimate of human personal interactions, then who I am is detached from my body in a most fundamental way. I become something that inhabits my body and uses it as an instrument, not something that I am. In sum, one cannot desecrate the body and retain a stable notion of personhood any more than Nietzsche thinks one can kill God and keep the earth hitched to the sun.

If sex is no longer sacred, then practices relating to death have followed a similar path. Once it was a sacred mystery; now we mobilize social and technological forces to deny it. Violence and death, once too sacred to be depicted onstage in Greek tragedy, have become the trivial or pornographic fare of movies and video games. The Roman Colosseum made death a matter of entertainment; today, movies and video games bring pornographic violence into the living rooms, indeed the palms, of everyone with a television, a game console, or a smartphone.

Real death is a purely medical affair, with the dying placed in hospitals and hospices. The battle against the body is significant here too, for what is the final authority that the body possesses? Not to dictate our sex as male or female, but to dictate that we are mortal. In light of this, euthanasia looks like one last (and arguably futile) attempt to seize control of who we are.

The attempt to domesticate mortality continues after death. Churches are no longer typically built with graveyards, with the result that worship is today not experienced in the vicinity of dead loved ones. Funerals are becoming celebrations of life. Every year, cremations rise in popularity in America. There may well be practical reasons for this—cost, lack of space—but it still serves to incinerate any lasting, visible reminder from among the living of the dead as the dead. True, some have urns with the ashes of loved ones. But the jar on the mantel at home is different from—dare one say less sacred than?—a burial ground next to a place of worship. It is hard to maintain quiet reverence when the television is blaring and the kettle is boiling.

Read it all.

Carl Trueman on the Desecration of Man. As usual, he's spot on. https://t.co/AxXHGY8XYS

— Mackenzie Boudreaux (@PaperandPipe) December 13, 2023

After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up hither, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Round the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments, with golden crowns upon their heads. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

–Revelation 4:1-8

Beautiful dawn.@stormhour #nature #landscape #christmas #winter #uk pic.twitter.com/Er9tDY69Xw

— William Hulbert Photography (@WLH1972) December 20, 2023

“The bishops have exported this division down to every single local parish”

Two ordained women – Rev Catherine Bond and her partner Rev Jane Pearse – became one of the first same-sex couples to be blessed at a Church of England service, at St John the Baptist Church in Felixstowe yesterday. The couple has reportedly acknowledged that there is still “a lot pain” over the existence of their relationship.

The move to bless same-sex relationships has caused widespread division within the denomination, throughout the seven year process of deliberation and discernment known as ‘Living in Love and Faith’. Conservatives, who believe marriage must be heterosexual, and liberals pressing for change have yet to reach agreement or even a happy compromise.

Dunnett says it remains a highly divisive situation: “You’re going to have fractious debate at parochial church council meetings. You’re going to have vicars having to explain to people why they’re not doing this…

“This is going to be a recipe for distrust. It’s going to bring fracture to relationships that have up to now been good in local parishes.

“Already we’re hearing from clergy person after clergy person and from PCC members in dioceses all over the country that they are fearing what is now going to happen.”

Read it all.

There’s a lot to take in. Noticing a huge silence on the part of various bishops on social media in reaction to the papal pronouncement, Catholic blogger Amy Welborn said it for all the laity out there:

Whassup?

Judging by their silence on Twitter/X feeds, I’m guessing the papal pronouncement came as a surprise to the bishops, too. Were I one of these men in red hats, I’d be furious. They’re made to look like fools. The laity are wondering: Is this a change in doctrine or not?

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a statement saying that no, it actually was not, because same-sex unions were not considered marriage but that “anyone can ask for a blessing when they are seeking God’s assistance, mercy and grace.” What does this mean? Is this something like bringing up a pet for a blessing during an annual St. Francis Day service?

Most others saw it as a major shift in doctrine, including the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit and LGBTQ+ advocate who is editor-at-large for America magazine and someone whose ministry has been openly praised by Pope Francis.

Read it all.

Reaction to the note from LGBTQ Catholics and advocates touted the declaration as a major step forward. Commentary from some theologians, meanwhile, cautioned that it’s misleading to frame the declaration as a kind of monumental shift.https://t.co/CEtthGF4pa

— Crux (@Crux) December 19, 2023

On 5 December, a U.S. company called Orchid Health announced that it would begin to offer fertility clinics and their hopeful customers the unprecedented option to sequence the whole genomes of embryos conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF). “Find the embryo at lowest risk for a disease that runs in your family,” touts the company’s website. The cost: $2500 per embryo.

Although Orchid and at least two other companies have already been conducting more limited genetic screening of IVF embryos, the new test offers something more: Orchid will look not just for single-gene mutations that cause disorders such as cystic fibrosis, but also more extensively for medleys of common and rare gene variants known to predispose people to neurodevelopmental disorders, severe obesity, and certain psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia.

That new offering drew swift backlash from genomics researchers who claim the company inappropriately uses their data to generate some of its risk estimates. The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), an international group of more than 800 researchers working to decode the genetic and molecular underpinnings of mental health conditions, says Orchid’s new test relies on data it produced over the past decade, and that the company has violated restrictions against the data’s use for embryo screening.

Read it all.

Genetics group slams company for using its data to screen embryos’ genomes: Orchid Health’s new in vitro fertilization embryo test aims to predict future health and mental issues | Science | AAAS https://t.co/RukcF29qiJ

— Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics (@bermaninstitute) December 18, 2023

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man. Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left. Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

–Matthew 24:36-44

Morning everyone hope you are well. Allan Bank in Grasmere under the gaze of Helm Crag (The Lion and the Lamb). Although Wordsworth objected to it being built, he did end up living there. Canon Rawnsley,founder of the National Trust also lived there. #LakeDistrict @keswickbootco pic.twitter.com/2KZvD7VdSf

— Rod Hutchinson (@lakesrhino) December 19, 2023

The rupture of the United Methodist Church (UMC) is nearly complete. As the window closes on a temporary plan allowing disaffiliations, nearly 1 out of 4 of the denomination’s 30,000 congregations decided to split over issues of sexuality and authority.

This month marked the final push to exit before the December 31 deadline. In that time, another 74 churches in Florida voted to leave, plus 51 more in Illinois, 152 in Mississippi, 8 in New Mexico, and 36 across three regions in Texas. When regional conferences ratified the last batch of disaffiliations, the tally came to 5,642 congregations departing in 2023 and a total of 7,659 over the past four years, according to United Methodist News.

The thousands of disaffiliations represent the conclusion of decades of UMC debates, proposals, and gatherings focused on sexuality.

This is also largest denominational divide in the United States since the Civil War. While there have been several notable church schisms in the 20th century—including those that gave birth to the Presbyterian Church in America, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the North American Lutheran Church, and the Anglican Church in North America—none involve more than 600 or 700 separating congregations. The UMC split is more than 10 times as large.

Read it all.

"As the window closes on a temporary plan allowing disaffiliations, nearly 1 out of 4 of the denomination’s 30,000 congregations decided to split over issues of sexuality and authority."

Year-end UMC update from @CTmagazine: https://t.co/Ak60aeHpSf

— kate shellnutt (@kateshellnutt) December 18, 2023

If you want to understand your own behavior, you must understand that all sin against God is grounded in a refusal to believe that God is more dedicated to our good, and more aware of what that is, than we are. We distrust God because we assume he is not truly for us, that if we give him complete control we will be miserable. Adam and Eve did not say, “Let’s be evil. Let’s ruin our own live and everyone else’s too!” Rather they thought, “We just want to be happy. But his commands don’t look like they will give us the things that we need to thrive. We will have to take things into our own hands—we can’t trust him.”

—Tim Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (New York: Viking, 2018). pp.137-138, shared by yours truly in the morning sermon

KINDLE DEAL: "Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation" by @CollinHansen is $5.99. This book is an excellent read, *especially* for the bibliography all those who influenced and shaped Tim Keller. https://t.co/dG221YZAeE (affiliate link) pic.twitter.com/HTqUHP3V65

— Barnabas Piper (@BarnabasPiper) December 13, 2023