Jason Micheli

If Peter is wrong in his response to his mountaintop spiritual experience—as so many sermons suggest—why doesn’t Jesus rebuke him?

The incarnation doesn't only mean that God is with us. It means that God is with us as Jesus.

I’ve come here so often, an average of four days per week for a year, that my phone recognizes the Cancer Specialists Wi-Fi signal. The woman next to me, on the other side of the drywall partition, with the plum purple glasses and weathered gray hair, is sobbing. Gasps that sound like someone drowning. My phone doesn’t recognize that but I do. Her cancer, I can tell from the fresh, pink chest port wound, is a recent discovery.

“What’s happening to America?” I’ve overheard such comments, exasperated and worried, frequently of late. Baton Rouge, Minnesota, Dallas, Nice, Baton Rouge again: “Has the world lost its mind?”

I’m closing in on my 11th year of serving this particular congregation and more so every day I’m convinced there is fruit in ministry that only becomes possible with a longer measure of time. For instance, a few weeks ago I confirmed about 30 students in our congregation, many of whom I remember from their baptisms and from their day-school years here at the church. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a pastor and my social media is flooded with churchy headlines and hashtags, but I’ve grown weary of the Christmas tradition of bemoaning the commercialization of the season and criticizing others (usually referring to non-Christians) for being so materialistic about Christmas. I mean, I’ve got my own gripes with Black Friday and Xmas music in late September but is there anything more cliché than surveying the wrapping paper debris on the curb and the pine needles on the floor and lamenting that we’ve missed the meaning of Christmas?