The Long Trail of Love that Leads to Where We Are

The Long Trail of Love that Leads to Where We Are

Chris Cox

EA teaches high school and therefore usually leaves our house before the sun is up. Since she has to be awake at such an ungodly hour, every morning she goes to Chick-fil-A to get a large Coca-Cola. The employee that regularly brings out EA’s Coke is a woman by the name of Monica. Over the last several years, EA and Monica have become pretty good friends one drive-thru at a time. EA has made Monica birthday presents and has said that Monica’s kindness has helped her on many a difficult day.

EA is heading out of town after school for a few days. She woke up the boys a little earlier this morning to tell them goodbye before she left. Then I got them moving to get ready for school. Our youngest started strong with his routine, but the though of not seeing his mom until the end of the week began to take its toll. It was a struggle to get Liam into the car and even then he was scared that he wouldn’t be able to go to school.

I had told the boys the night before that we would get Chick-fil-A breakfast as a treat since Mom was going out of town. In the drive-thru line, Liam looked like he was about to jump out of the car and run home. We pulled up to the window and who was there but Monica. She smiled warmly at Liam and reached through to him a five. A minute later, she came back out and brought a cookie for both Liam and his brother before going back inside.

Everything Will Change (But in the Meantime...)

Everything Will Change (But in the Meantime...)

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

One of the helpful aspects of scripture is how it is multifaceted. You can hear a story over and over again and then the 40th time you here it, it hits you a different way. The Transfiguration is a great story that I have heard many times. I have written blogs and monologues and I think even a skit about it. Yet it wasn’t until today that it struck me how this experience was both such an unbelievable blessing and crushing curse for Peter, James, and John. And perhaps there is something in that two-sided coin for those of us who are trying to do this faith thing.

These three disciples got to witness something that no one else in their group got to witness. They saw their teacher transformed before their eyes. They saw his clothes shine brighter than a flame. Moses and Elijah appeared and spoke with Jesus. Finally they heard the voice from the heavens tell them that this man they were following was the Beloved, God’s own Son. It was simultaneously amazing and terrifying; a spiritual experience like no other and a brain-melting “What the sheol is happening?” moment. And they were the only ones who knew. Jesus told them not to tell anyone else until after all was said and done.

On one hand, that is an amazing gift. They got a peak behind the curtain. Even though they didn’t stay on that mountain like Peter wanted, this trio knew there profound divinity coursing through every moment down in the valley. Each healing, each word had deeper resonance. Perhaps when things went sideways for Jesus, that experience on the mountain was a source of hope. A flashpoint of conviction that despite the present horror that everything would change.

God of the Long Game

God of the Long Game

Chris Cox

It is likely out of necessity, but I believe in the God of the Long Game. This is a God who is antithetical to how immediate and automatic most life is today. It is not the God of the Bullet Points nor the God of the Five Steps to Become a Better Blahblahblah. This is a God who takes time. That taking of time can be frustrating because honestly there is a lot in our world both big and small that we would like to be better now. And for whatever reason, God really seems to want us to be a part of that process of creating a tomorrow that was slightly better than the day before.

Of course, if we are going to be part of this then we need a God who takes time because we take time. Jesus spent three years teaching and molding his disciples. He was with them seemingly every day, hours on end. And the disciples didn’t get it and they didn’t get it and then they would have moments of breakthrough and then they wouldn’t get it again. These people were at ground zero of God With Us for tens of thousands of hours and it took them more than a minute to grasp on to what their teacher was teaching. The Way of Christ had to seep into them. It took lots and lots of time but, by God, it eventually took.

So this is where I am going to stake out my hope: God is with us for the long haul. Becoming the people that God desires us to be will take time. There will be moments of two steps forward, one step back, leaps of faith, and falling on our faces. Yet God is with me. God is with us. God is not here to give us our Best Life Now™️ or snap Their fingers to make everything perfect. God is with me to help me grow organically into who God wants me to be.

Star of Wonder

Star of Wonder

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

There are times when I find myself wishing that the Gospel writers gave us a little more detail. Actually there are many times when I find myself wishing for that. I know that their aim was not to flesh out the stories of all the “side” characters, but it doesn’t stop me from wondering what all these people were thinking when all this weird Jesus stuff was going on. The word gospel, of course, is ancient Greek for “weird Jesus stuff” (that was a joke; it most definitely is not).

Take the magi for example. They were scholars from the east who saw a great star and journeyed a great distance. Traveling a great distance was not something you did on a whim in those days. It looks some time. You would say goodbye to your friends and family and there was a reasonable chance that goodbye could be final. It was a long journey.

The magi finally arrive in Jerusalem after months or even years of travel. They come to the palace ready to pay homage. And this newborn ruler isn’t there. Not only is he not there, but the king has no earthly idea what they’re talking about and has to meet with his advisors to figure the whole thing out. This is the first thing I wonder: Was there a moment in which they thought they had come all that way for nothing? Were they frustrated? Angry? Did they snipe at each other as they waited for Herod’s scholars to figure things out?

May You Find a Light

May You Find a Light

Chris Cox

I cuss very sparingly. Not for moral reasons though it did start out that way. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I have spent so much of my career working around young people. Of course, some young people love it when an authority figure cusses, but I want to be respectful that different families approach profanity in different ways. Plus it is fun to play with language and exclaim “biscuits” like Bandit or “horse hockey” like the 4077’s Colonel Potter. Ultimately, I greatly value language. If you are just carelessly using cuss words all the time, or any words for that matter, they start to lose their meaning.

All of which is a prelude to saying that 2023 was a s*** year for our family.

Not that it was all bad. I got to fulfill a lifelong desire and stayed at a monastery for a weekend and it was a profoundly meaningful experience. We finally got to take our boys to Disney World and we ended up starting a podcast to talk about those memories. Furman finally made the NCAA Tournament and dramatically upset a #4 seed in the first round. We got to go on an Amtrak adventure and visit Canada. EA had a quilt go viral on Instagram. I got to laugh around tables with family and some friends.

The Perilous Pursuit of Peace

Chris Cox

There is no peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When we’re hurt, we have to decide to make our lives bigger than the pain we were caused….But it’s a choice we’ll have to make over and over. We’ll have to scream it, cry it, whisper it, say it boldly. And when we have said it enough times to enough people who love us it will get easier - Jason VanRuler, Get Past Your Past

We’ve got a few hours left in this second week of Advent in which our watchword is peace. Given what is happening in the Middle East, it is a difficult notion to talk about with any sort of confidence. And honestly it feels wrong to make special exception for this year because peace is always an elusive quality around the holidays. There are always wars within the nations and within our hearts.

Part of what makes this all difficult is that we typically think of peace as one side of a binary. On one end there is war or conflict and on the other there is peace. Thus anytime there is any sort of struggle, our instinct is to think that peace has left the building. Even the pop Christianity can unwittingly play into this idea. I cannot tell you how many t-shirts or bumper stickers that I have seen with the slogan “Know Jesus, Know Peace; No Jesus, No Peace.” The idea is that peace is something that you possess or you don’t.

The Edges of What We Can Hope For

Chris Cox

I spent most of this First Sunday of Advent traveling back home after spending about 30 hours in South Carolina to hang out with my family/watch our collective alma mater punch their ticket to the Division 1 FCS Quarterfinals for the first time in nearly two decades. The trip was more than worth it despite the travel and little sleep. Yet I felt bad that I was missing church on this first day of what is probably my favorite liturgical season. So I tried to church as best I could solo, which is most certainly not the optimal way to church. Yet sometimes one has to make do with podcasts and journaling at taco joints on the road.

As I nibbled on the complimentary, shockingly tasty friend chick peas and waited for my tacos, I scribbled a little in my journal about hope. Advent exists in this weird, timey-wimey place of anticipating the several millennia-old birth of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas and the event of Christ making everything right that is arriving and has yet to arrive. Advent is a season in limbo so the Church has traditionally decided that hope is a good place to start.

The stories that have most resonated with me over the years are one in which hope is a foregrounded theme. The shield that Superman wears on his suit is the Kryptonian symbol for hope.My favorite movie series is Star Wars, which famously began with an episode entitled A New Hope* and the series constantly highlights the value of staunch hope in the face of adversity. I’m reminded of how even in my favorite modern installments of the series—The Last Jedi and Rogue One—we witness characters wrestling with what to do when circumstances, the powerful, and their own haunted past cause them to lose hope.

The Sounds of Saints

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

This first dark evening, EA and I drove back to church for All Saints Choral Evensong. St. B’s had been hyping this service for some time. And by hyping, I mean Episcopalian hyping which is basically just letting us know that it was going to be a beautiful and meaningful service. It was indeed both of those things.

I don’t want to be reductive but All Saints Day is a day of heartache and hope. We remember those who have gone before us. Many churches remember those who had passed on in the previous year. It is also a day where we look forward to the time when everything will be made right and we all will be saints in the presence of God.

Within this gorgeous service of music, meditation, and readings of scripture, we took part in a liturgy that I had never experienced before. Everyone was invited to come to the altar rail to light a candle in remembrance of the departed. Then all along the front were chimes of different notes. Each person was invited to ring a chime in remembrance of someone who was no longer here with us. Each ring was for another person. Some would kneel at the front and ring their chime three or four or five times.

I can only describe for you what it was like for 10 or 15 minutes to hear all of these notes ringing out. As they echoed through the sanctuary, you realize that each note is representative of a life. Not just of a life, but also love that perseveres despite time and distance and a stubborn hope that death is not the end of all this. It was good and holy and also heartbreaking. Yet it is the kind of cathartic heartbreak that we need but all too rarely allow in our lives.

The Priesthood of All

Chris Cox

I have a weird relationship with ordination. On one hand, I was ordained into the ministry seven years ago and it was one of the most meaningful days of my life. It was a moment where a calling, passion, and years of work came into bloom. I truly hope to find my way to a place where I can serve in a church again because there is so much that I love about it.

On the other hand, I have this very stubborn, very Baptist conviction that every Christian is a minister and that creating a separate class of “professional ministers” is antithetical to what Jesus taught. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that anyone who walks off the street should start running a church. The education and testing that occurs in seminary, ordination councils, and ongoing accountability are critical to the health of a minister and the communities they lead.

Yet the idea when you go into a church that one person is a minister and one person isn’t creates what I believe is a false dichotomy that one person’s vocation is sacred while the other person’s is not. For me to serve as a youth minister is no more “holy” than another person serving as a teacher, accountant, nurse, caregiver, artist, or whatever else. We often refer to it as the Priesthood of All Believers. If you are trying to follow Jesus and want to see me get animated quickly, tell me you are not a minister. Every interaction that we have with others in this world has the potential to give the ministry of love, grace, joy, light to the world around us.

It All Hangs on This

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

Since early September, our youngest son and I have been doing weekly “Dinner, Discipleship, & Dad” meetings or “D&D&D” for short (last week, we added another “D” when we had deep dish pizza). Liam is wanting to take the next step in his faith by getting baptized. At our old church he would have been getting ready for a confirmation class of sorts. Though we are attending another church, he doesn’t really feel comfortable there yet. So we’re pressing forward with our one on one confirmation class, which sometimes feels like I am going rogue yet I take some solace in that I am ordained and seminary-trained.

It’s one of my favorite times of the week. Part of it comes from the fact that any time you get to have one-on-one time with your kid, it’s special. We have dinner. We talk a little about school and then we talk about forgiveness or the life of Jesus. We pray. Nerd and former youth minister that I am, I make up colorful worksheets about whatever we are talking about that night.

As awesome as it is, I feel a certain weight to talking with my kid about faith. On one hand, I know that God is bigger than whatever shortcomings that I have. On the other hand, I want to give him a good foundation with which he can grow.

This verse is where I started. Truth be told, it was the version in Mark because I like how the “Hear O Israel” part connects to the Shema in Deuteronomy. But it was the Greatest Commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Is it obvious? Yes, but we are not trying to be clever or cunning here. In fact, one of the things I love about the Greatest Commandment in Matthew is Jesus’ assertion that all of the Law and the prophets hang out these two things.

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