“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness: Mapping the doctrines, questions, and mysteries of a complicated topic” – Brad East in Comment: “Forgiveness has an expiration date. Unlike God or love, it has both a beginning and an end. For this reason, though forgiveness lies at the heart of Christian life, it is not the heart itself. Likewise, forgiveness is integral to the good news proclaimed by the church, but it is not itself the gospel. Why is this? There are three main reasons, and each concerns God. First, the heart of Christian life is God. Forgiveness is one of his benefits to us, and it is great. If, however, forgiveness did not flow from God and draw us back to him, it would be useless to us, worthless in the strict sense of the word. Second, forgiveness does not belong to God’s eternal life. God is love, from everlasting to everlasting. He is not forgiveness in the same way. Apart from us, there is no one and nothing to forgive. The Father loves the Son in the unity of the Spirit in an infinite continuous act of giving and receiving and witnessing and glorifying; forgiveness is nowhere to be seen. Third, forgiveness presumes sin, a defection from God’s will. This is why it does not belong to God’s inner life. It would be absurd to imagine God rebelling against God. Not so with us. Humanity needs forgiveness because something has gone terribly wrong.”
“St. Theophan the Recluse On Prayer” – From the Letters of Bishop Theophan the Recluse: “Thoughts wander when one is reading spiritual works and during prayer. What should one do? No one is free from this. There is no sin in it, only vexation. Having wandering thoughts becomes a sin when one willingly allows flightiness of mind. But if thoughts scatter involuntarily, what fault can there be? There is fault, though, when one notices thoughts wandering and, taking no action, one wanders along with them. When we catch our thoughts wandering off, we must bring them back to their proper place at once. To be free from the tendency to have wandering thoughts during prayer, one must concentrate and pray with warmth. Before prayer, one should prepare for such an effort by making prostrations and by a moment of reflection. Accustom yourself to pray your own prayers. For instance: it is the essence of evening prayer to thank God for the day and everything that happened, both pleasant and unpleasant; to ask forgiveness for all wrongs committed, promising to improve during the next day; and to pray that God preserve you during sleep. Express all this to God from your mind and from your whole heart.”
“The Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Black Missionaries” – F. Lionel Young, III, in Christianity Today: “TThe African American pastor and emancipated slave George Liele (1750–1828) began his missionary career some ten years before William Carey, the great English missionary to India, set sail for Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1793. Liele formed the Ethiopian Baptist Church in Jamaica in 1783, intentionally using Ethiopian in the church’s name because he rightly believed that Christianity was the religion of Africans long before it became the dominant religion of Europeans. Liele’s effective missionary labors gave rise to a Baptist movement in Jamaica that would animate a slave revolt in 1831 and inspire the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. About a half century before Liele founded the Ethiopian Baptist Church, an Afro-Caribbean woman and former slave named Rebecca Freundlich Protten (1718–1780) began her own long career as a missionary. Her labors predated those of Ann Judson, the celebrated American missionary, by more than 75 years. Protten led revival movements in West Africa and the West Indies and helped spread Christianity throughout the Atlantic world. By some accounts, she is considered the matriarch of modern Christian missions. (Her life is the subject of a book, Rebecca’s Revival, published by Harvard University Press.)”
“Hope as an act of love: Theologian Norman Wirzba’s account of hope is compelling precisely because it is so grounded in harsh reality” – Lilia Ellis in The Christian Century: “In recent decades, apathy and despair have come to permeate the global mood. From climate change to the rise of anti-democratic movements, it is tempting to tell the same story: things are getting worse with each passing day. Hope—traditionally a Christian virtue—appears to be on shaky ground. But maybe hope is not as distant as it seems. Maybe if we better understand hope, we can work toward growing it together. This is the argument Norman Wirzba makes in his reflective new book, Love’s Braided Dance. Wirzba, a theologian at Duke Divinity School who works on ecological and agrarian issues, sketches a bold vision of hope not as a naive belief that things will get better, but as a shared act of love. Drawing from a series of real and hard-hitting stories across the globe—the global refugee crisis, apartheid South Africa, and the sexual violence following World War II, to name a few—Wirzba’s book is less a systematic account and more a kaleidoscope that reveals ‘the experiences and journeys’ of hope for different people and places. By that measure, Love’s Braided Dance is a clear success, proving the possibility of hope and charting a way forward for our seemingly desperate times.”
“After eyebrow-raising sermon to Trump, Bishop Budde beset with criticism and praise” – Jack Jenkins in Religion News Service: “On the morning of the presidential inauguration, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde pretty much had the structure of her sermon for the next day finished. The Episcopal bishop of Washington had ruminated on it ever since she was announced in October as the preacher for the interfaith prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral that traditionally concludes the presidential inauguration festivities. Budde had decided to focus on three values she believes are important for national unity: honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, honesty and humility. But as she watched Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday (Jan. 20) and the executive orders he signed immediately after, she realized she needed to add something else. ‘I found myself thinking, there’s a fourth thing we need for unity in this country — we need mercy,’ she told RNS in an interview on Wednesday. ‘We need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And after listening to the president on Monday, I thought, I wasn’t going to just speak of it in general terms.’ The result was a sermon, delivered from the cathedral’s pulpit on Tuesday morning as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance sat quietly just a few feet away, that pleaded with the president to have ‘mercy’ on people who stand to be disproportionately impacted by his administration’s policies.”
Music: Wendell Kimbrough, “Be Still (Psalm 46),” from Planted Like Trees
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Matthew Erickson 