"At the heart of New Year's resolutions is a hope in our own resolve or our own capacity to make this better. And indeed, there are things we need to do to make efforts toward that. But in the end the Christian church has always understood that without God, without his action in our life, without the intervention of a holy God in our lives and in our world, we'll ultimately always fall flat."
"Very often, we have a sense of God being very far away... not paying attention, perhaps, to our worries or cares or concerns. And this is truly the message that John speaks to us about Jesus in his first chapter: that the One, the Word who was with God in the beginning, who was God, has made his dwelling among us. This is the great joy that we recognize every Christmas."
Bishop Alex invites us into his home during his annual staff Christmas party to encourage us with the hope of Christmas—that the living God came to us in Christ Jesus.
"Things are amiss, but when Jesus comes again in glory, all things become right, all things are set right in him. That's one of the great hopes of Advent—he is indeed the hope of the nations. He is the hope for peace. He is the hope for reconciliation. He is everything."
In this third installment of our series on the Collect for Advent, Bishop Alex explores the contrast between Jesus coming "in great humility" and his coming again "in his glorious majesty."
"We are not good at humility, but God is. In the incarnation, in the cross, in every way that he comes to us, he comes in humility... We remember in Advent the humility of God, the smallness of God. Even though he is glorious and huge, he makes himself small. And that is one of the great graces of his life, death, and resurrection. As we consider his humility, let us also ask for the grace for that humility to be formed in us."
"As we take off that which is not of God, there is an invitation to the second act, the grace to put on the things of God, to put on the helmet of salvation, to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Those things go together—to cast off one is to put on another. If we drive out a demon and don't fill the gap with something else, seven more demons worse than the first come flooding in."
"At the heart of Thanksgiving is ultimately redirecting our attention from that which is not, to the abundance of that which is. And particularly as Christians, that abundance flows to us today and always in the person and the life of Jesus."
Happy (American) Thanksgiving, friends! Bishop Alex's Thanksgiving message counsels us on what to do when we struggle to be thankful and fixes our eyes on the eternal promise of God.
"As we reflect on history and on the world today, we recognize that there are things that remain amiss, that are not set right. Historically, whenever there is war, then peace, there is war again. Nothing is ever perfect. Nothing is ever entirely resolved. But the gospel says this: that Jesus shall come again in glory and he shall judge... And his kingdom, the kingdom he establishes, will have no end. The great gospel of the end is that what is wrong will be made right, and will be made right eternally.
"When we are together, we see something larger—we see the reality of God in our midst. It is fundamentally an encouraging experience to be together. The church will eternally, always be together in glory with the Lord."
"We as Pittsburgh Anglicans (or Nashville Anglicans, or wherever you are) have Christian foreign perspectives that are quite different from the culture around us. What we need to do to become good missionaries is to develop the kind of curiosity that missionaries have for the culture they're going to.... Understanding others who are not of our own mindset helps us to understand how the gospel intersects with that reality. Jesus is indeed the hope of the nations. Jesus is the answer to everybody's deepest longings. But sometimes we don't understand what those longings are.
"Often in those contexts where we step out of the ordinary, what we're doing every day, we have an opportunity for God to break into our busyness and hyper focus and for us to hear God afresh."
As we prepare for the upcoming diocesan clergy retreat, Bishop Alex reflects on the importance of intentionally taking time away and creating space for the Holy Spirit to lead us in reassessing our path and priorities.
