The Incarnation

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A God who not only understands but experiences hunger, thirst, weariness, joy, sadness, physical pain, growth, interpersonal relationships, intimacy, betrayal, offense, occasions for celebration, grief, and the full gamut of the human experience is a great deal different from a God who is content to sit on high while looking down low.

In the incarnation, we are confronted with a bizarre proposition. The God that existed before the beginning of time chose to walk among the people as one of their own. What was once thought of as imperceptible became a tangible reality that people could see with their own eyes. Converse with. Even touch. The incarnation suggests that God is indeed living. And, for some of us, all of this is a little difficult to square with a God who exists outside the boundaries of time and space.

— Trey Ferguson, Theologizin’ Bigger, p. 158

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2024

Forgiveness, not Punishment

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Actually, we might say that sin condemned and punished through retribution is sin condemned without hope for redemption. But sin exposed through righteousness, with the intent to restore the sinner to God, is grounded in the hope of salvation. So instead of saying that God inflicted the pain of the cross on Jesus as a penalty for our sin, we can say that the horrific nature of the cross exposed and condemned the gravity of our sin. After all, human beings are the ones who put Jesus to death, not God.

And remember, Jesus never said anything about coming to receive punishment for sin, but he said quite a bit about forgiving it. The righteousness of God in Jesus transcended the retributive aspects of the law and brought about our forgiveness – think about Jesus’ prayer for our forgiveness from the cross. In this manner, Jesus gave us his life and revealed to us the law of love that restores us to God and to each other. The Bible tells us that no greater love exists than this (John 15:13).

— Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 134

Photo: Sunset at Blackwater Canyon, WV, April 23, 2025

Opposite of Disgust

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We aren’t so much afraid of one another as disgusted – a much harder truth to face. We don’t resist the foreigner, orphan, and widow out of fear for our lives and well-being so much as out of a fear that they will contaminate us – change us into something we do not want to become. It’s a very human and very normal reaction but not one that Jesus seemed to follow. The Way of Jesus runs in the opposite direction of the exclusion that disgust instigates: it welcomes instead of rejecting, integrates instead of segregating, and loves instead of fearing.

–Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. xiii

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 22, 2025

Blessed Are the Poor.

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It’s true that the gospel of Luke records Jesus as saying, “Blessed are you who are poor” – period. In Luke’s Beatitudes, Jesus simply blesses the poor, and the further categorization of “in spirit” is omitted. In Luke, Jesus blesses the poor without reference to what kind of poverty it is. The truth is this: Jesus meets us at our point of poverty, not our place of strength. If we want to position ourselves to receive Christ’s blessing, we must identify an area of need and cry out for grace from there. If we think we have no area of weakness, need, or poverty, we essentially have no need for Jesus. This is why in the Book of Revelation Jesus condemns the people in the church of Laodicea for arrogantly confessing, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” They were essentially saying, “Thank you very much, Jesus, but I really don’t need you right now because I’m not poor.” So be it. Jesus has no blessing for them. The grace of Christ is perfected in weakness and poverty, not in strength and wealth. As Mary said of Messiah in her prophetic Magnificat, “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” This is the spirit of the first beatitude – and to the poor it is beautiful.

–Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World, p. 190-191

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, August 16, 2025

Becoming Lowly

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On the last night of his life, at his last supper, Jesus puts into words what we’ve seen throughout the entire Gospel. This is what he’s done in befriending outsiders and outcasts, in seeking to lift up the lowly. He came as a servant-king. Everything we’ve seen to this point in the Gospel is a picture of Jesus doing what finally now he puts into words. He gave himself to love, heal, and care for the broken and hurting. He sought to show mercy and grace to the marginalized and those far from God. He came to see those who were often overlooked or unseen. And if he did that for us, as his disciples this must be our posture and the mission we are called to as well. This is what it means to be his disciple: we follow him, and we lift up the lowly.

Lifting up the lowly requires becoming lowly. Greatness is defined by lowering ourselves and serving others. In our world, this is utterly countercultural, but it is absolutely the culture of the Kingdom.

If the disciples, who spent three years with Jesus, were still focused on status and power at the Last Supper, it should not surprise us that we struggle with those same things at times as well. But nearly every one of the conversations Jesus had over his final week were on this same theme. He encouraged a rich young ruler to lay down the source of his status. He blessed and healed a blind beggar. He befriended a wealthy and powerful tax collector who gave up half of what he had to the poor. He praised the poor widow while castigating the powerful and status-loving religious elite. “The greatest among you must become like a person of lower status and the leader like a servant” (Luke 22:6).

–Adam Hamilton, Luke: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws, p. 107

Photo: pink Mandevilla flowers, August 6, 2025.

Come to Me, All You Who Are Weary and Burdened

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I was struck by hearing that Jesus acknowledges our weariness and our burden, friends. Jesus doesn’t judge the burdened one for the burden or the sad one for the sadness or the disappointed one for the disappointment or the brokenhearted one for the grief. Jesus doesn’t say to you, “If you were more faithful, you wouldn’t feel like that! This is your fault – you need more quiet times, you need more work, more Bible studies, more prayer, more YouTube deep dives, more faith, you deserve this suffering, you need to put others first more! Squash those doubts and complexities! Ignore your unanswered questions and quiet devastations.”

Rather, there is a tenderness to Jesus’s words here. God acknowledges, even blesses, your weariness. It turns out that, yes, the yoke has been too heavy. It’s not all in your head.

— Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness, p. 21

Photo: Columbia River Gorge, June 16, 2025

Breaking Through

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That’s what we mean when we say Jesus had to die for us. It’s not that he had to literally pay God some price, which makes God appear rather petty and powerless. Is God that unfree to love and forgive? Does God not organically and naturally love what God created? It can’t be true. John Duns Scotus taught that good theology will always keep God free for humanity and humanity free for God. Love can only happen in the realm of freedom, and ever-expanding freedom at that. We pulled God into our way of loving and forgiving, which is always mercenary and tit-for-tat. It was the best any of us could do until we sat stunned before the cross.

Quite simply, until someone dies, we don’t ask bigger questions. We don’t understand in a new way. We don’t break through. The only price that Jesus was paying was to the human soul, so that we could break through to a new kind of God. Most of religious history believed that humanity had to spill blood (human sacrifice or animal sacrifice) to get to God, but, after Jesus, some were able to comprehend that, actually, God was spilling blood to get to us. That reversed the engines of history forever, but the human mind still resists that reversal. It is too good to be true.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 79

Photo: Columbia River, June 16, 2025

More Loved Than We Found Them

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Honestly, I don’t know if organized Christianity, on balance, is helpful anymore. What I do know is that the compassionate heart of Jesus I find in the stories told about him is helpful – and urgently needed. The world can use more tender-hearted humans, doing what they can to live selflessly, gently, and focused on others – and that’s probably the highest spiritual aspiration we can have: leaving people more loved than we found them. I want to stand with the empathetic souls, no matter where they come from and what they call themselves and who they declare God to be, because that is the most pressing need I see in the world. I want to be with the disparate multitude who believe caring for others is the better path, even if that means never stepping foot in a church building again or doing the hard work of renovating the one that I’m connected to. People who are assailed by the storms of this life don’t need any more heartless, loveless, joyless self-identified saints claiming they’re Christian while beating the hell out of them. They need people who simply give a damn in a way that emulates Jesus, people who see how hard it is to be human and feel burdened to make it a little softer.

–John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 12

Photo: Irises, South Riding, Virginia, May 3, 2025

We All Have a Place

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Over and over again, Jesus shows us the humanity of those we would put into different compartments from ourselves. He reminds us that our fellow brothers, sisters, and siblings are not so easily categorized and separated. To one another, we should not be enemies to be defeated, resources to be exploited, or infidels to be converted. We all belong to one another as one family, and we all belong to God as a heavenly Parent. So it only follows that we would all have a place through God’s gate and at God’s table, no matter how long it takes for us to get there.

–Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 91

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 18, 2025

Greater Glory

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What would have happened if Jesus, in terrible pain on the cross, had commanded an army of angels to come and wipe out his persecutors? What would have happened if Jesus had bought into the violent response of Peter when the Romans came to arrest him? Violence, bloodshed, death, maybe even war, right? But instead, Jesus responded in the opposite way. He commanded Peter to put away his sword and he spoke words of forgiveness from the cross. In so doing, he broke the cycle of violence and reconciled us to God so that we could spend an eternity celebrating and enjoying our restored relationship with a God who loves us. Which brings God more glory – retribution or restoration? I think the answer is obvious.

–Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 99

Photo: Cherry blossoms, South Riding, Virginia, March 28, 2025