Rest on Grace

One reason I love living in Dallas is that I get the chance to see large buildings being built over time. There is a certain satisfaction in driving by a build site day by day and noticing the incremental progress as the building slowly goes up. I especially love the initial stage of the build, seeing the dirt work and the digging necessary to start building anything at all. No matter how many times I see it, I am always shocked by how large and deep the holes they dig are. In seeing those holes dug, I realized, that in order to go tall, they must first dig deep. That initially dirt work is so important, that substructure so critical. When a building is finished, it may be the glass and the steel that draws our eyes upward, but the super structure of the building rests on a subterranean substructure that we can't see and so often forget  

In the epistle reading for this week, out of Romans 4, Paul wants to draw our attention to the substructure of the Christian life. Speaking of Abraham as the father of all who believe, Paul reminds us that as important as faith is, there is something even more important, something deeper because he tells us that "it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace" (Rom. 4:16).

We think of the Christian life in terms of faith, as we should. We think of the Christian life in terms of promise, as we should. But both faith and promise rest on something deeper. They are both built on the substructure of grace. Grace is the subterranean substructure of the Christian life. There can be no other substructure than grace, otherwise the building would collapse. If it were based on law, based on performance, then as Paul says, "faith is null and the promise void" (Rom. 4:14). 

It is good to be reminded of grace in Lent. Lent at its best is meant to draw our attention from ourselves toward God. That is the intention of any practice of self-denial. As Jay said, spiritual practices at their best can turn down the volume so that we have a better chance to listen to God. But spiritual practices can themselves become an opportunity for measuring performance and forgetting grace. "Am I doing well? Did I mess up again?” we might ask ourselves, but any practice built on those kind of questions will ultimately crumble because such questions do not ultimately rest on grace. 

If you find yourself already discouraged in your Lenten journey, take heart that it all rests on grace. 

- Chris+

Meeting God During Lent

"Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. … Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so also must you forgive.” Colossians 3:3;12-13

There is a steely-eyed realism to Lent, beginning as it does on Ash Wednesday with that solemn remembrance of our mortality: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” To be marked with ashes in this way, to take heed that we are in fact mortal, is our individual and communal acknowledgement that death is the consequence not ultimately of natural causes but of sin. The ashes speak to our mortality and to our estrangement from God without Christ.

For this reason, some might see Lent as needlessly morose, since we have all been forgiven after all. Truly, we have been forgiven, and our forgiveness is precisely the basis of our ongoing formation into the image of Christ. According to Paul in Colossians 3, it is those who have been raised with Christ, those who have been forgiven, who are called to continually put to death what is earthly in us. Lent is a season when we seriously consider what is earthly in us and what it means to put those things to death.

True, the act of putting to death earthly things in us is the continual call of Christians; but the season of Lent offers an especially intensified period of time to do this. In many ways that is what the church calendar does. Each season brings to mind in intense and vivid ways some aspect of the Christian life and some particular dimension of God’s character. In Lent, we focus on our fragility, our mortality, our need for forgiveness and healing because we are simultaneously focusing on the forgiving and gracious nature of the God we serve. Lent, in other words, is a season to pay attention to those earthly things in us that need to be put to death, so that we might continue to put on Christ.

The dynamic of putting off the things of the former self and putting on Christ is one of the reasons we fast during Lent. Fasting itself is a means of putting off earthly things, of signaling to God that we are serious about putting to death those things in us that are sources of death themselves. Many will choose to fast in some way during Lent. From my personal and pastoral experience, I would heartily recommend that you do fast from something during Lent. While fasting can never obligate God to us, He very often graciously responds to our willingness to give up something for Him. In fasting we turn the volume down on certain appetites by saying no to things we typically would say yes to, and in so doing we turn up the volume of our own attentiveness to God. When we fast from food or from certain types of media or from anything, we are saying to the earthly things in us that they are not ultimate. We say to God by fasting that we want Him to be our ultimate satisfaction.

In addition to fasting during Lent, some choose to take on a spiritual practice of some sort, such as almsgiving. For example, some who fast from food during Lent not only dedicate the time they would have spent eating to prayer, but they also save the money they would have otherwise spent and donate it to their church or to a charity. There are any number of examples of things to fast from or of practices you could take on in this season. My hunch is that if you spent a few moments in prayer, you would have a strong sense of the appetites God might be asking you to say no to in this season. I encourage each of you to take the time to do this. The Lord in His grace wants to meet with us during Lent. He wants to continue to form the image of His son in each of us. Paul reminds us of this in the same passage from Colossians: “You have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Colossians 3:9-10)

As you enter into Lent, consider asking these questions in prayer:

What might the Lord be asking me to put to death?

What might He be asking me to take on?

- Chris+

He Went East

We’ve journeyed through four weeks of hearing about St. Bartholomew and how his life and mission are the headwaters for a new vision for our church. We’ve heard that he was the son of a farmer; he exemplifies what it means to be a child of God, fully human, fully free; the prayer for his feast day asks that God would strengthen us to love what he believed and preach what he taught; he was from Galilee, a place overlooked and forgotten full of people that were the same. And this Sunday we’ll see that after the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he was sent east as a missionary.  

In the days following Jesus’ death and resurrection the disciples, understandably in awe yet mystified, went back to life as usual. In John 21 we catch up with Bartholomew and his friends as they encounter Jesus in a miraculous catch of fish on the Sea of Galilee. We’ll also drop in on them in Acts 1 as, just before he ascends into heaven, Jesus promises they’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on them, and that power will fuel mission: “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). For some of the disciples, like Bartholomew, the ends of the earth would be their destination.

Not unlike Bartholomew and his friends, we have been sent out. Being planted from All Saints Dallas wasn’t a haphazard career move. It was a prayer-inspired initiative calculated and executed for the sake of mission. We, friends, have been sent out.

I hope to see you Sunday for this last installment about St. Bartholomew. 

- Jay+

Galilee: Overlooked and Forgotten

Our bus wound up and down through the hills as we made our way from Tiberias to the Mount of the Beatitudes. I found myself repeating the Venite under my breath as I stared out the window in wonder.

“Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation….

For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. in his hands are the caverns of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also.

The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands have molded the dry land….”

(see Psalm 95)

There was something about the heights of those hills and the sea that sits below sea level. In one moment I was fascinated that Jesus walked these very same hills, that he hazarded the enormous igneous rocks that lie strewn about as if a giant had thrown pebbles at a puddle. In the next moment I was captured by the haze that sat upon the lake shrouding the region in mystery.

This is Galilee. It is the region where Jesus was raised, where he learned to be a carpenter, where he went about “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Matt 4:23). To believe I was there is still a mystery.

Galilee is also the region St. Bartholomew called home, and the place where Jesus would call his disciples to follow him.

What’s striking about Galilee is how unremarkable it is in comparison with Jerusalem, the mighty, holy city, or even the desolate, unforgiving Judean wilderness. Yet Jesus called his disciples from this place on the fringe, inviting a people who were largely overlooked and forgotten to be witness to a new creation breaking in on the world. 

We’re now 3 Sunday into our series of 5 on St. Bartholomew and a vision that flows from his name.

This Sunday we’ll look at Bartholomew’s home region of Galilee, highlight Jesus calling his disciples from this region, and meditate on why that matters to us as a church.

Join us as we sing to the Lord and shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.

- Jay+

To Love What He Believed and Preach What He Taught

These inspiring words come from the collect, or prayer, for St. Bartholomew’s Day which is celebrated August 24. Part of the vision in changing our name to St. Bartholomew is wrapped up in who Bartholomew was as an apostle, a friend and follower of Jesus, and someone who preached the Gospel unto his own death. 

For me they are aspirational, a hoped-for description of who God is making us as a people. In other words, if someone said, “wow, these people love what Bartholomew believed” - our Lord Jesus - “and they preach what he taught,” I believe that is evidence God is using us to make an eternal impact for his kingdom in East Dallas and beyond.  This Sunday we’ll look at the collect for St. Bart’s day, but we’ll do it with a very special guest The Rev. Canon Dr. Jon Shuler. 

Jon was my first rector at my first Anglican church - Grace Church in Fleming Island, Florida. Jon faithfully preached and taught the Gospel of our Lord Jesus week in and week out at Grace. And as I got to know him more and heard of his obedience to the Lord, I discovered that the collect for St. Bart’s day had given shape to his own life of mission and ministry. In fact, Jon introduced me to St. Bart’s day in 2009. So I thought it would be fitting for him to share with us about Bartholomew, the gospel, and mission.

Join me this Sunday as we welcome Jon and hear the third part of our five-part series on St. Bartholomew. 


- Jay+

To Bear the Weight of Who We Are, Who We’ll Become

The next four weeks I’ll be sharing the vision behind our new name. Below is an excerpt from Sunday night’s sermon laying the foundation for why a new name is important to our identity, our vision, and our mission.

Inspired by the heroic faith and sense of destiny she read about in young Queen Esther, several years ago a teenage girl in West Texas decided one of her children would one day be named after Esther, but not her Persian name. She would name a daughter Hadassah, Esther’s Hebrew name (Esther 2:7). 

And when I began to date and eventually marry that West Texas girl, who by then was nearing the end of college, she shared with me her hope of a daughter named Hadassah. Our first two children were boys, so no luck there - though we love and adore them. And when we named Olivia, we knew there was yet one more girl out there, our Hadassah, even though friends gave us a hard time about the Hebrew name. 

Many of you know Hadassah, or Dassie as we often call her. And you would probably agree with me that she is very unique, that there’s no one else on earth quite like Dassie - as is the case for each one of us. But Dassie wouldn’t be Dassie were it not for her name. There is something about the uniqueness of her name that bears the weight of who she is, of who she’ll become.

As Anglicans, part of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church," we name churches not after regions, streets, cities, or who was somewhere first but typically after feasts and saints. Feasts mark events of salvation where God concretely engaged his world in love. Saints are people who have lived lives of heroic faith, some more conspicuously than others, and many to their death in the name of our Lord Jesus. Churches named for these celebrate a kinship with their saints or feast, and the uniqueness of the name is meant to bear the weight of who the church is, of who she’ll become. 

More so, a name for a church is meant to be the fountainhead for a cohesive vision that will give character to a church’s identity, shape to her mission, breadth to her community, and depth to her individual members.

The name I believe God has chosen for us and that accomplishes these things is St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church - or St. Bart’s for short. 

Join me the next four Sundays to hear about the vision connected with Bartholomew’s name - how he bears the weight of who we are and we’re becoming.  


- Jay+

Jay? Can't It Be Michael?

Maybe it was KITT the talking car, maybe it was the stealth nature of the missions, or the mysterious nature of the theme song, but as a six year old Knight Rider was my favorite television show. So much so that I wanted to change my name to Michael after David Hasselhoff’s character Michael Knight. Hasselhoff was cool enough, I suppose, but the name Michael seemed so substantial, weighty, and much more sophisticated than…..Jay. I mean, the letters of the alphabet are cool, and hey, I’m named after one, but I was ready to move on to bigger and better things. 

That is until I learned some more about my name. When I would ask my parents about my name, they would always talk about how much I kicked in the womb. Jay means adventurous, vivacious, quick (maybe like the bird?), and that seemed to fit me well. As I grew up, I grew into my name. I owned it, rejoiced in who God made me. Life and experience would prove that this name, Jay, would bear the weight of who God made me to be.

In last week’s newsletter I mentioned we’ve been asked to take on a new name by our Bishop Philip Jones and our sending church All Saints Dallas. This Sunday I’ll be sharing a new name I believe God is calling us to take on and will begin a series of Sunday sermons where I unpack a vision based on the new name. This name is one that I believe will bear the weight of who God is asking us to be, who he’s calling us to be. I believe it will make space for the breath of life he’s breathing into us, the vision he’s incarnating in our midst and that which he’ll continue long after each one of us dead and gone. 

This name won’t change the core of our identity - a three-stream Anglican church connecting with the people of East Dallas and beyond - but it will enable us to embody the vision and mission God is unfolding in us and through us. 

I hope you can be there this Sunday. 

- Jay+

New Year, New Us

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope it’s been a season filled with rejoicing, time with your loved ones, and a fresh reminder of God’s overwhelming love and grace to us. 

Today at Morning Prayer I was so encouraged by St. John’s epistle where he offers this trinitarian insight to the churches of Asia Minor. “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” (1 John 2:23-24). 

Our call as children of God, disciples of Jesus, members of his Church, and leaders in this local church is simple - believe in Christ, love one another, keep his commands, abide in God and rejoice in the Spirit he has given us. 

As you’ve heard me preach since August, we’re transitioning to take ownership of our finances, governance, and organizational development as we become our own church. As part of this transition, I began a series of monthly meetings in October with Bishop Philip, Mike Blanchat (administrator at ASD), and John Williams (ASD Board President); these meetings are focused on our transition and have been very productive. 

One result of that initial meeting in October was an encouragement and blessing from Bishop Philip to change our church’s name. He, John, and Mike agreed that as we become our own entity, it makes sense to have our own identity, and that around this new identity we’ll have an opportunity to build vision, velocity, and momentum for the coming months and years. 

I have to tell you that I was very excited to hear this counsel. And as I’ve prayed over the past three months and shared with our staff and a few of you, I believe God has given us a name. This name won’t change the core of our identity - a three-stream Anglican church connecting with the people of East Dallas and beyond - but has to do with the vision and mission God is unfolding in us and through us. I will be sharing this name during the service on January 14th. I hope you can be there.

God bless you all! Here’s to a fantastic new year full of God’s vision, power, purpose, and love!

- Jay+