What does it mean to be “religious”? It is a word some people are proud of. It is a word some people are terrified of. And here, for those of us in the Christian tradition, the Bible offers a clear definition. A definition that does not mention going to church, participating in sacraments, studying the Bible, praying, or any number of (arguably very lovely and important) things that we would usually think of us as “religious.”

Dreams, careers, marriages. Things that we nurture, into which we pour our hearts, which we expect to last forever, die. They all die. Sometimes they die with us. And sometimes they die before us. And so I prayed and I grieved among the simple and spectacular beauty of the salt marshes and ferns. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Oh so much. I plan oh so much. I do, admittedly, so much less.

Depression and I are in a constant struggle. And sometimes I win. But let me tell you something about what I want. ‘’I’’ want to live. I want to raise my children. I want to hug them and tell them I love them every day until I’m too old to lift my arms around them, and even then, I will still want to. I want to work as a pastor until my eyes can’t read the words on Bible’s page, until my voice can’t even whisper any more Good News. I want people to come to me and tell me what is going on in their lives, to seek advice, to seek assurance that I love them, that God loves them, until they are stunned such a wrinkly old man is even breathing. That is what ‘’I’’ want.

Millions of Christians are gathered now, surrounding tables, some simple tables in house churches, trying to emulate the simplicity in which Jesus and his disciples ate, and some gilded altars in towering cathedrals, trying to symbolise a fraction of the holiness in which Jesus and his disciples gathered. Holy Thursday has always been an evening full of paradox.

The man hid among the graves, death itself his company, and slit himself with the rocks.  He could not bear to truly live among the living, but he did not die among the dead, either.  His life was an agony on the fringes between the worlds of death and life.  And centuries later, we know his anguish, but we do not know his name. 

Christmas day is not the end of the story; it is a birthday, and therefore the beginning of a lifelong journey. Throughout the Christmas season, we sing triumphant songs about stars shining and choirs of angels, but after Christmas, the manger is empty, the star faded, and the angels withdrew quietly back to heaven. It would be profoundly mistaken, however, to think Christmas’s promise was anticlimatic.

Shorter than even my teenage frame, he was an intimidating figure. In his hometown of Plymouth, especially among those of us in the field of history, he was a celebrity.

Covetousness is a silent sin. Jealousy for what is not ours that wells up inside of us. It makes us bitter. And it eventually erupts. Perhaps it erupts in the betrayal of adultery, in the greed of theft, in the violence of murder, in the ingratitude of idolatry, or scapegoating of bigotry. But erupt into our lives, it will. It is a gateway drug into the clenching addiction of sin.

The Twelve Tribes Community sees itself as the restoration of the New Testament Church. Their practice is deliberately committed to living the paradox of John 17:11-16, to not be of the world, but to remain in it. Its members renounce all individual property and live communally, homeschooling their children, supporting themselves from cottage industries, cafés, and natural food stores.

The twelfth century brought a whirlwind of change to European social and religious life. In the rapidly growing towns and cities, a middle class of artisans and merchants was emerging in cultures where a clear delineation between aristocracy and peasant had previously prevailed. Sweeping reforms against simony and concubinage had begun to standardize Catholicism and consolidate power to the pope, whose international reach was expanding through an evermore geographically diverse college of cardinals, and a surge in Papal letters sent across Europe. Yet even as the pope’s power grew, his challenges mounted.

Can any good thing come out Nazareth? What a ridiculous question. Nathanael is wrong. Good, the greatest good humanity has ever known, can indeed come out of Nazareth, the son of God, the savior of mankind, from an insignificant backwater of an oppressed land, a place no esteem to the world.

We all have roads that are before us that we don't see, we chose not to take, or that we fear exploring.

Many of the paths so plainly available to us are left unnoticed amidst the frantic blur of striving so strongly toward one destination.