By its very nature, grace exists in time. Grace doesn’t just exist, it occurs, being given in a particular moment.
God is gracious by eternal nature, but that grace is doled out in time.
This could be one of those moments, you know. And so, on the chance that you’ve stumbled onto this page in a moment when you need a little grace…it is there for you. It is God’s nature to abound in grace.
May you receive it. May this be a moment of grace for you.
Over time, everybody picks up sources—people whose ideas profoundly shape us. Or perhaps for others, it’s something of their way of life that forms us.
I’m 47 years old now, and many of the threads are so deeply wound through me now that it’s hard to know which particular giant’s shoulders I’m standing on in any given moment. But I feel my debts, nonetheless. And I want to name my sources—even if doing so exhaustively is impossible—I’d have to name every soul I’ve ever met, and each author who penned a word I’ve absorbed, every songwriter whose lyric that ever found its way to my ear; down to every actor who ever tried to sell me Captain Crunch in a 30 second spot between segments of Voltron, Thundercats, G.I. Joe and the others. These are the trillions of cells I’m made of, after all.
And yet, the proportions aren’t all the same, and I’ve felt particularly grateful lately for mentors like Paul Beavers and Keene Steadman, Mike Shepherd and Keith Jones, Laurie Mitchell and Kenny Barfield. At Harding, Daniel Stockstill, Paul Pollard and John Fortner wove their own threads into the way I think about life and God. As a grad student, Allen Black, Dave Bland, Rick Oster, Anna Carter Florence, Jeffery Tribble and Brennan Breed all found me at just the right time.
What got me started thinking about all this were the myriad authors who have influenced me deeply. It’s really too much to enumerate, but here’s a shortlist of thinkers whose work has shaped me as a theologian and minister:
Brennan Manning
Henri Nouwen
Walter Brueggemann
N.T. Wright
Darrell Guder
James K.A. Smith
Charles Taylor
John of the Cross
Augustine
Barbara Brown Taylor
Fredrick Buechner
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Annie Dillard
Jürgen Moltmann
Stanley Hauerwas
Thomas Merton
Anne Lamott
“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” -Mark 8:31
That the Messiah suffered is something that we grasp—Jesus’s suffering, as brutal as it was, could perhaps be comprehensible or even regarded as noble. Bonhoeffer notes the possibility that it could be celebrated as that tragic form of suffering we sometimes regard as having its own honor and dignity.
But the cross was not just suffering alone, not just a physical attack, but was suffering accompanied by vicious rejection. Christ is not only physically victimized, but it comes at the hands of those who reject him. They reject his messiahship. They mock his authority as a king. They humiliate him, stripping away not only his clothes, but also his human dignity.
The great irony of the cross is that Jesus, who had already acted in humility in taking human likeness, is then dehumanized through cruel humiliation. They seek not to just pierce his body with nails, but his soul with insults. They not only ravage his back with the flail, but they ravage his humanity with shame. He’s not only beaten, but spat upon.
Spat upon!
The Lord of the cosmos is spat upon!
It is this mockery, more than the physical brutality, that Mark takes great pains to emphasize. It first shows up in the account of Jesus before the high priest. The trial there, full of false witnesses who can’t get on the same page finally builds to this conclusion (14:60-65)
Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?” But he was silent and did not answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” 62 Jesus said, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven.’” 63 Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “Why do we still need witnesses? 64 You have heard his blasphemy! What is your decision?” All of them condemned him as deserving death. 65 Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!” The guards also took him over and beat him.
Jesus is taken to another trial, this time before the Roman Governor Pilate. The trial deadlocks, and Pilate seems ready to release Jesus. He’s even given a chance to release him when the crowd calls on him to practice his custom of granting mercy to someone at the time of passover.
Every once in a while I drift away from the masterpiece that is Seth Godin’s blog. (https://seths.blog/)
When I come back to it, I marvel. Seth’s disciple as a thinker and writer provokes me. He knows that thinking is work, and that thinking better through brevity is art.
Whenever you feel the need to reboot your spiritual life, or reignite some spiritual practice such as prayer, it’s best to consciously avoid grandiosity. You may feel the need to compensate for your previous lapses or failures by pledging some extraordinary practice, either in intensity or scale. (I’ll pray an hour every day, fast twice a week, etc.) This urge toward grandiosity should be noticed, named, and resisted. The simple practice is to be preferred.
Grandiosity is problematic if you fail, because you’ve set yourself up for disappointment and frustration when your new practice doesn’t come through. Further, there’s a great chance it will fail if it is coming out of nowhere without first building the maturity needed to sustain it. And all of our journeys will have seasons of lapse along the way.
Grandiosity is equally problematic if you’re successful, anyway! Success in a grandiose practice makes us prone to developing arrogance, or imagining that our relationship to God is due to our practice rather than God’s grace.
Take the simple, humble path. Simply choose to begin your spiritual practice again. lean back into the simple things. Just begin walking again, with one foot in front of the other.
Apollos is a fascinating person in the story of the New Testament. He features prominently in a story in Acts 18, and Paul mentions him in 1 Corinthians and Titus. Besides that, he is rather mysterious. though some have speculated that he might be the author behind Hebrews, there isn’t much definitive evidence to support such a conclusion.
Here is what we can gather from the New Testament about Apollos:
He was a Jewish Jesus-follower (Acts 18:24)
He was a native of Alexandria (in Egypt) (Acts 18:24)
When he came to Ephesus he only knew the “baptism of John” (as opposed to Jesus baptism) (Acts 18:25)
He was an eloquent and passionate teacher. (Acts 18:24-25)
He willingly learned from Priscilla and Aquila. (Acts 18:26)
He was a traveling teacher.
He came to Ephesus (modern day Turkey) soon after Paul (Acts 18:24)
He also spent time in Corinth, where some of his loyal followers developed a rivalry with followers of other Christian teachers (1 Cor 1:12)
Paul refers to him as someone who watered what he had planted. (1 Cor 3:5-6)
Paul later encouraged him to return to Corinth, but he didn’t want to at that time, and delayed a return to Corinth (1 Cor 16:12)
He was with Titus in Crete, along with a lawyer named Zenas. (Titus 3:13)
The opening verses of Acts are easily skipped over by readers eager to get to the action. Yet, even before the camera has made its way to focus on the characters of the drama, the narrator’s voice over tells us a lot about what’s at stake in this particular drama.
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
-Acts 1:1-5, NRSV
Notice that we begin with a tight summary of the gospel of Luke, of which Acts is to be the sequel work: it was a book about all that Jesus did and taught. Luke centers the actions—healings, exorcisms, etc—along with the things Jesus taught. His life, including his suffering and resurrection, is the anchor that orients us to what’s important in Acts.This seems simple enough, but too many readers of Acts don’t connect this book with the things Jesus did and taught in the gospel. Everything we’re going to read in this sequel flows from the actions and teachings of Jesus. Indeed, I prefer the NIV translation of the first verse: “all that Jesus began to do and to teach” The former book contained the beginnings of his actions and teachings, which are going to continue in this book!
We may wonder if the phrase “the instructions that were given through the Holy Spirit” refers to all the teachings of Jesus in the first book, and it may, but I tend to think that particular phrase points towards this passage at the very end of Luke:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
– Luke 24:44–49 NRSV
These words from the resurrected Jesus thus set the agenda for the book of Acts, and we wait the infusion of “power from on high”. When that Spirit arrives it will drive the story of Acts, just as it often drove the story of Luke. The same Holy Spirit that was on the move through Jesus in the gospels is going to move now through his disciples.
Acts 1:1-5 is a fitting prologue for the book, but also worth considering as a prologue for our lives as disciples today. What if we thought of our own lives as being anchored in the actions and teachings of Jesus—a continuation fueled by the Holy Spirit of Jesus’s own story? The Jesus who “began” to act and teach in the gospels wasn’t finished—his actions and teachings continued in the stories of Peter, Paul, and the others. And the story of Jesus goes on today! He is still alive, and still working and teaching, still reaching towards the world through his Holy Spirit, at work in his disciples.
I just released a new playlist for Advent. The 2022 list leans into longing, and I’ve really enjoyed on working on it, collecting songs throughout the year. Any time I landed on a song that hit the sort of hopeful longing tone I associate with advent, I dropped it on the playlist. In October, I went back, culling the list and looking for some missing pieces. I’m happy with how it’s turned out.
I told a friend yesterday that “It’s an interesting way to do theology…kind of like a collage, cutting scraps here and there to create an impression.” That feels right to me.
I started a new partnership today, working at the Central Church of Christ in Little Rock, Arkansas.
It’s a sort of homecoming for Kelly and I, having spent a decade here before the last twelve in Tennessee (2010-2022). Of course, for our kids it all feels like starting over from scratch.
New chapters can come with all kinds of emotions, and we’ve felt them all—the excitement of a new challenge and the grief of separating from some beautiful friendships.
This is a time in our lives of finding new friends, discovering a new neighborhood, building new habits and routines.
New.
That word can hold all kinds of promise—and challenges too.
May God be with us, and may the Christ who says “Behold, I am making all things new” lead us into this new chapter.
Steven Hovater 