"I want to invite us all this Lent to embrace afresh the great discipline and joy—ultimately—of being acquainted with the truth of God that is revealed to us in the Scriptures." During Lent, Bishop Alex is unpacking what it means to "hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures."
In this introduction to the series, the Bishop recalls an instance in his ministry where a single Bible verse changed the course of someone's life.
"That's why Lent begins with that particular sign, a sign of our mortality. To remind ourselves, 'I am not going to live forever, and given that, is there something I need to do?' That's the great invitation of Lent—to self-examination and repentance."
In this week's message, Bishop Alex points out the grace of the Lenten season—that it is an annual opportunity to reflect on our regrets and to reorient our lives—and invites us all to commemorate the start of Lent by joining an Ash Wednesday worship service on February 14.
"The great, vast wash of Christians throughout the ages are not remarkable, and yet are those who wear the crown of glory in heaven. I want to encourage all of us as we live out our mundane and unremarkable Christian lives to remember that the work of pastoring, ministry, service or discipling, while it may be remarked by no one, is remarked by the Lord. And it is that thing that ultimately builds the life of the Church."
"When I first moved to the United States about 20 years ago, I was driving down the road one day and saw this place with a big sign that said 'Redemption Center,' a place that you took your bottles or cans to be redeemed. I laughed out loud because I thought, 'Isn't the Church the Redemption Center?'"
What characteristics do we share with discarded bottles? Find out in Bishop Alex's message, where he explains the meaning and hope within our "redemption" in Jesus.
"What I discovered a few years after my very powerful conversion experience is that the first experience didn't fix everything. That in fact, not everything in my life was what it should be... there were things within me and relationships that were broken that I did not know how to heal. There were people who hurt me that I did not know how to forgive. What I realized is that that is an ongoing work in our lives."
"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."
