There is something curious about the way human beings change.

Every generation inherits a vision of the world, a vision of God, and a vision of itself. Then, by experience and grace, that vision begins to change. We reconstruct our understanding. We discover that God is larger than our categories, mercy wider than our boundaries, and holiness more beautiful than our fear had allowed.

But when we take this journey, we rarely begin with empty luggage.

We bring things with us.

We bring biases, prejudices, assumptions, anxieties, and old ways of thinking. We may construct a more beautiful vision of God while quietly preserving an old image—indeed, an idol—of who is worthy, who belongs, who can be forgiven, or what salvation is supposed to look like.

The old structure may be gone, but some of its stones remain in the new one.

One of those holdovers is the idea that salvation is a single decisive event—something God did once, entirely in the past, after which the Christian’s task is simply to remember that it happened.

We speak of having been saved, as though salvation were a date on a calendar. We may imagine it as a moment when we crossed a spiritual boundary: before that moment, lost; after that moment, saved. And certainly, the gospel announces something objective and decisive. In Jesus Christ, God has acted. In the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Christ, humanity has been taken into the life of God.

That is not merely one of many possible outcomes. It is not waiting for us to complete it. It is a settled, FINISHED work of divine love.

But prior to the late 19^th century, the Christian tradition has never reduced salvation to one isolated moment in the past. The church has spoken of salvation as a reality accomplished, a reality being actively unveiled, and a reality yet to be revealed. The language of Scripture itself moves in all three directions: we have been saved, we are being saved, and we shall be saved.

The “one-and-done” model of salvation is not the sum total grammar of the church. It belongs much more so to the modern period, particularly to revivalist and fundamentalist forms of Christianity that developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

But the gospel is not a spiritual transaction that was completed and then filed away within the pages of the Lamb’s Book of life.

Salvation is a completed objective event fulfilled in and through the incarnation of the Son. Yet salvation—deliverance, healing, liberation—is also experienced—engaged, tasted, and lived—every moment of every day.

The Triune God’s saving work is finished.

Our experience of that saving work is not.

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There was no warning. No gradual preparation for the moment when I would have to learn how to live in a world in which she no longer existed. (Although whether a slow goodbye is any better is certainly disputed.)

And so, over the past year, I have grieved.

Some days, grief has been overwhelming. Other days, it has been surprisingly quiet. There have been emotional starts and stops, moments when I thought I was doing better, only to discover that grief has a way of returning when you least expect it. A song. A smell. A photograph. A familiar place. A holiday. A birthday. Or sometimes, nothing in particular at all.

I miss my mother. I miss her voice. I miss her presence. I miss the simple comfort of being able to pick up the phone and talk to her.

I have come to realize, however, that grief is only partly about missing the person; although that part is deep enough. But grief is also about missing the world as it was when that person was still part of it. And I think that is something we don’t always talk about.

It is not only that I miss Mom. I also desperately miss the world as it was before she left it.

Because nothing is quite the same.

Every sweet thing contains, now, the faintest aftertaste of bitter.

Every bright spot is just ever so slightly duller than it would have been 366 days ago.

The world is still beautiful. But it is not the same world.

And perhaps that is one of the most disorienting things about grief. The world continues. People go to work. Children go to school. The seasons change. The sun rises. The sun sets. People laugh.

Life goes on.

And yet, for the person who is grieving, something fundamental has shifted. The world that everyone else inhabits is not quite the world you remember. You are walking through the same streets, looking at the same sky, participating in the same routines—and yet everything is different because someone who was part of the meaning of that world is no longer there.

Yet this is by no means a new feeling. It is only new to me.

The history of the world is filled with billions upon billions of people who have known this exact experience.

Every generation has stood at the graveside.

Every generation has had to learn how to live in a world that suddenly feels unfamiliar because someone they loved is no longer in it.

And one day, others will feel this about me.

That thought is sobering.

One day, I will be the person whose absence changes someone else’s world…and that same someone will find the axis upon which their life turned forever off kilter as a result.

And perhaps this is why grief is one of those experiences that unites us in ways we rarely acknowledge.

We all grieve. And we all, eventually, become the reason someone else grieves.

There is no theology or set of ‘right beliefs’ that can prevent this.

There is no clever explanation that can make it disappear.

On the contrary, I have increasingly come to believe that we do ourselves—and one another—a disservice when we try to manufacture theological answers that are designed primarily to make us feel better in the immediate aftermath of loss.

Sometimes we say things because we desperately want them to be true.

Sometimes we offer explanations because silence makes us uncomfortable.

Sometimes we attempt to put a neat theological bow on an experience that is anything but neat.

But grief does not need a theological platitude.

It needs the truth. And the truth is that death is an enemy. An enemy, that while conquered in and through Christ, casts a long, enduring shadow that greatly wounds each and every day.

Loss is real.

Pain is real.

Absence is real.

The world is not as it was.

Christian hope does not require us to deny any of that. In fact, I think Christian hope is most beautiful precisely because it does not.

I do not need a theology that tells me I should not be sad.

I do not need a theology that explains away my grief by insisting that everything happened for a reason I am simply not enlightened enough to understand.

I need a promise that is strong enough to stand in the middle of death without pretending that death is anything other than what it is.

And that is the promise I choose.

The enduring promise. The promise that does not deny pain. The promise that does not explain away loss.

The promise of a Creator whose compassion, mercy, and love know no limit.

The promise that the God revealed in Jesus is not standing at a safe distance from human suffering, but has entered fully into the depths of our existence.

The promise that death does not have the final word.

The promise that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord—not as the triumph of coercion, but as the ultimate unveiling of the truth that Love has always been telling us.

The promise that every tear shall be wiped away and death shall be no more.

All that has been broken will be made whole.

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The tragedy is that Scripture—and the Church’s historic witness—forces us to reject both extremes. The Finished Work and participation are not competing realities. They are inseparable.

More to the point, the Finished Work is precisely what makes participation possible.

When Jesus cried, “It is finished,” He was not announcing the completion of a legal transaction detached from creation. He was announcing the completion of His redemptive mission.

Everything necessary to reconcile humanity to God had been accomplished.

The incarnation had united divinity and humanity in His own Person.

Sin, death, and the powers had been defeated.

The old Adamic existence had reached its end.

The new creation had begun.

Nothing remains to be added to Christ’s work. Nothing can supplement His total fulfillment. Humanity contributes nothing to the reconciliation God has accomplished in Christ.

This is why Paul can proclaim, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19) Notice the subject of the sentence. God acts. Humanity is acted upon. Redemption is God’s accomplishment from beginning to end.

Yet this is not the end of the story. It is its beginning.

One of the curious assumptions that often sneaks into discussions of grace is the idea that if something is finished, nothing further can happen.

But this is not how finished works function. Consider…

• A surgeon finishes an operation. Now healing begins.

• An architect finishes a home. Now a family lives within it.

• Parents finish preparing a meal. Now everyone gathers to enjoy it.

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Completion does not eliminate participation.
Completion creates the possibility of (or perhaps better phrased, access to) participation.

Likewise, Christ’s Finished Work does not remove humanity from the equation. It removes every obstacle preventing humanity from sharing in the life of God.

From Genesis onward, humanity was created not merely to exist under God’s rule but to participate in God’s life. Human beings were created in the image of God—not as isolated individuals striving toward heaven, but as creatures invited into the natural outgrowth of their secure union with the Triune God: communion (i.e., mutually experienced union).

The New Testament repeatedly describes salvation using participatory language.

• We die with Christ.

• We are raised with Christ.

• We are seated with Christ.

• Christ lives in us.

• We abide in Him.

• We become partakers of the divine nature.

Notice that the language is relational rather than transactional.

The gospel is not merely about sins forgiven.
It is about humanity brought through objective union into subjective communion.

This is why the Apostle Paul can say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) This is participation!

Long before theological debates became framed around competing theories of atonement, the early Church consistently understood salvation as participation in God’s own life.

Perhaps no statement summarizes this better than that of Athanasius of Alexandria:

“For He was made man that we might be made god.”
(On the Incarnation, 54.3)

Modern readers sometimes stumble over Athanasius’ language, but his meaning is unmistakable. He was not suggesting that human beings become divine by nature. Rather, through union with Christ we participate by grace in the life that belongs eternally to God. Stated another way, union brings us to communion.

This same vision appears centuries earlier in Irenaeus of Lyons:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ... became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
(Against Heresies, Book V, Preface)

Again, redemption is not merely rescue.
It is participation.
It is communion.
It is inclusion in the life of the Trinity.

Likewise, Cyril of Alexandria wrote:

“For we have all been united with Christ through the Holy Spirit... becoming partakers of the divine nature.”
(Commentary on the Gospel of John, reflecting 2 Peter 1:4)

Notice the remarkable consistency.
The Fathers never imagined salvation as merely receiving benefits from Christ while remaining external to Him.

Salvation meant union.
Participation.
Communion.

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At this point some become understandably nervous. If participation matters, does that mean Christ’s work was somehow incomplete?

Not at all.

Participation contributes nothing to the accomplishment of redemption. It contributes everything to the enjoyment of redemption.

There is an enormous difference between building a bridge and walking across it. Walking does not complete the bridge. Walking is why the bridge exists.

Likewise, our participation does not finish Christ’s work. Christ’s work makes participation possible.

Grace is not opposed to participation.
Grace creates participation.

This is why faith should never be understood primarily as intellectual agreement with doctrinal propositions.

Faith is participation.
Faith is trusting surrender into the reality already established by Christ.
Faith awakens us to the union Christ has accomplished.
Faith does not persuade God to include us.
Faith allows us to live from the inclusion already given in Christ.

As Maximus the Confessor would later describe throughout his writings, God’s work and humanity’s response are not rivals but harmonious cooperation. The tradition came to call this synergia—not two parties contributing equal power, but humanity freely participating in the divine life made possible entirely through grace.

Participation is itself a gift!

The irony is that those who most passionately defend the Finished Work sometimes describe the Christian life in ways that barely require Christ’s ongoing presence. If salvation is reduced to a change in legal status, then formational maturing becomes optional ornamentation. But if salvation is participation in the life of the Trinity, then every aspect of Christian existence becomes an invitation into deeper (or perhaps more accurately, into clearer) communion.

Prayer becomes participation.
Worship becomes participation.
Forgiveness becomes participation.
Love becomes participation.
Holiness becomes participation.
Mission becomes participation.

None of these add to Christ’s accomplishment. They simply allow us to live within it—or as the ancient’s termed it, a means of grace.

Jesus did not cry, “It is finished,” so humanity could become passive spectators of redemption. He cried, “It is finished,” because every barrier preventing humanity’s participation in God’s own life had been overcome.

The cross is not the cancellation of participation.
It is its foundation.

The resurrection is not merely proof that Jesus won.
It is the unveiling of a new humanity already alive within Him.

Pentecost is not an optional sequel.
It is the Spirit drawing humanity into the very communion secured through Christ’s Finished Work.

The hallmark of the Christian life has never been mere agreement with theological propositions. It has always been participation in the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Finished Work is therefore not the end of the story. It is the beginning of humanity finally confirming into what it was always created to be: a people who live, move, and have their being in the unending communal oneness of the Triune God.

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Thank you for reading, for engaging, and for being part of this growing community. I’m grateful you’re here.

If these reflections have encouraged you, challenged old assumptions, or helped you encounter the God who looks exactly like Jesus, I invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. As a paid subscriber, you’ll receive exclusive essays, in-depth theological reflections, extended studies, and early access to new projects designed to help you see beyond fear-based religion into the joy of participating in the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which excludes no one. NO EXCEPTIONS!

What it has revealed is something far more concerning: we have largely forgotten how to listen.

Instead of engaging one another’s actual arguments, we increasingly respond to arguments we imagine are being made. We hear a phrase, attach it to a familiar tribe, recall every previous disagreement we’ve had with that tribe, and then fire back at the position our own triggers have constructed. Before long, no one is having the same conversation anymore.

The result is predictable. Everyone becomes territorial. Everyone becomes defensive. Everyone feels misunderstood. And almost everyone walks away convinced the other side simply refuses to deal with ‘the facts’.

Rarely do we stop long enough to ask whether we’ve even understood what the other person was actually trying to say.

Two Different Conversations

One of the greatest obstacles to meaningful dialogue about The Passion Translation is that two entirely separate issues have become hopelessly intertwined.

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“When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly…”

There is something in that first verse that we often rush past in order to get to the wind, the spectacle, the tongues of fire. But before there was a suddenly, there was an all together.

Before there was manifestation, there was communion.
Before there was power, there was presence—shared presence.
Before there was proclamation, there was proximity.

“They were all together.”

Pentecost did not fall upon isolated spiritual achievers. It did not descend upon solitary mystics scattered across Jerusalem. It came upon a gathered people—waiting, praying, breathing the same air, sharing the same hope.

And suddenly…

The Condition of the Suddenly

We love the “suddenlies” of God. We sing about them. We pray for them. We long for breakthrough moments when heaven invades earth and everything shifts.

But how many “suddenlies” have we forfeited because we have not been “all together”?

If, as 2 Peter tells us, we have been given “all things that pertain to life and godliness,” then whatever lack we perceive—within the church and by extension within the world—cannot be traced to divine stinginess. It must be traced to our having lost the plot of together.

We were designed for communion.

We were made by the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—whose very being is eternal fellowship. Isolation is not merely unhealthy for us; it is unnatural. It runs counter to the very architecture of our creation.

No amount of private prayer can transform an arm into an entire body.
No depth of personal revelation can turn a hand into a whole organism.
No solitary communion with the Spirit can make one member self-sufficient.

The Christian life is not a solo performance. It is a symphony.

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On the one hand, we are those who follow the crucified and risen Christ—the One who reveals that the very life of God is self-giving …

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“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heave…

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What makes her so compelling isn’t just that she had visions. It’s that her theology is deeply centered on Christ, richly Trinitarian, and saturated with grace — and yet it never feels abstract. It feels warm. Pastoral. Usable.

Julian lived in fourteenth-century England, in the shadow of plague and social upheaval. Around the age of thirty, during a severe illness in 1373, she experienced a series of visions that she would later record in Revelations of Divine Love — the earliest surviving English-language book written by a woman. She eventually lived as an anchoress attached to St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, and from that small room she gave the church an astonishingly expansive vision of divine love.

And here’s what’s striking: she does not speak from a world of stability. She speaks from fragility. From sickness. From uncertainty. Yet she keeps returning — again and again — to mercy. To fidelity. To the quiet but steady conviction that God’s purpose is not punishment, but healing.

The Trinity — not a puzzle, but a living communion

For Julian, the Trinity is never an abstract doctrine to diagram. It is the living God who creates, keeps, and delights.

She writes, “For the Trinity is God: God is the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and Keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting love and everlasting joy and bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ.”1

Notice what she’s doing there. She doesn’t treat the Trinity as a riddle to solve. She treats the Trinity as the living source of everything — creation, preservation, joy, salvation. The triune life is not a theological add-on; it is the beating heart of reality.

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Text: John 14:1-14

Yesterday, the first Saturday in May, was World Labyrinth Day. (I know, it snuck up on me again too. LOL) Organized by The Labyrinth Society, for the past 18 years participants have been encouraged to walk a labyrinth at 1:00 PM local time, praying for world peace. [screen share the labyrinth picture].

In Christianity, the labyrinth has often been used as a prayer practice, symbolically representing the human journey of discovering the Triune God. Unlike a maze, it has one winding path that invariably leads to the center, making it a form of walking meditation with a guaranteed outcome, not a puzzle. Historically, Christian labyrinths appeared in medieval church settings such as cathedrals, where they could serve as a symbolic pilgrimage for believers who could not travel to Jerusalem, and in some traditions, they were used for reflection, repentance, and contemplative prayer.

In today’s Gospel reading, Thomas speaks for all of uswhen he says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It is a sincere question, an anxious question, a relatable question. We want directions. We want clarity. We want the shortest route, the safest route, the most efficient route. We want to know what to do next, where to turn, how to avoid getting lost. All because we assume the destination is variable, mercurial, or only accessible to the few. After all, didn’t Jesus Himself reportedly say that “Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. ¹⁴ For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”???

And yet when Jesus responds to Thomas’s (and our) question, He doesn’t give him a set of coordinates. He does not say, “Here is the route. Here is the technique. Here is the religious program.” Instead, he says, “I am the way.” That answer is not merely comforting; it is confronting. It tells us that the Christian life is not first of all about discovering a system or a method, but about abiding in a Savior. Jesus is not one guide among many; He is the living road into the life of God. He’s not a path towards the road. He IS the road!

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But the Lord is more patient than that.

Before we rush to settle the meaning of a difficult text in black-and-white terms, it is good to remember the God who gives us Scripture in the first place. In the light of Christ, we are learning to read from within the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—where love is not fragile, grace is not scarce, and truth is never detached from communion. If an interpretation leaves us more anxious, more harsh, or more afraid of being excluded than of being embraced, then something in the way we are reading needs to be gently reconsidered.

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A Principle Rooted in Christ

The vocation to speak truth to power is not a modern invention. It is woven into the very fabric of the Church’s being because it is first woven into the ministry of Jesus Christ Himself. Christ was neither a revolutionary in the political sense nor a defender of the imperial status quo. Yet He consistently disrupted the self-justifications of the powerful, both religious and civil. When He stood before Pilate, He neither flattered nor feared him. He declared simply, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” That statement remains the essence of the Church’s prophetic vocation: to bear witness to the truth, not as a weapon, but as an act of love.

Truth-telling in the name of Christ is not oppositional for its own sake. It is restorative. It seeks to call all power back into its proper order—an order under God, and ultimately oriented toward the flourishing of all people, not the preservation of privilege.

The Early Church and the Witness of Conscience

In the early centuries of Christianity, the Church had no armies, no political influence, no wealth with which to sway the world. What it had was spiritual integrity—the moral clarity that came from being neither the court nor the courtier, but the conscience. The Roman Empire, recognizing its moral control slipping, often regarded Christianity as subversive precisely because Christians refused to make ultimate claims for any earthly ruler.

Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, declared that Christians prayed faithfully for the Emperor even while rejecting the idolatrous titles that claimed divinity for him. Their love of God translated into a genuine but limited loyalty to the state—a loyalty of conscience, not of worship. Tertullian, too, argued that while Christians were commanded to honor the Emperor, they must never participate in acts that confuse political allegiance with spiritual devotion. The Kingdom of God, he reminded his readers, does not advance by decree or sword, but by the quiet power of truth.

The story of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, remains one of the earliest images of this dynamic courage. When commanded to renounce Christ and “swear by the genius of Caesar,” Polycarp answered with both dignity and love: “Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong; how can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” He prayed even for his persecutors as the flames were lit. His voice echoed not rebellious hatred but the peaceful defiance of one whose loyalty had already been claimed by another kingdom.

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And yet, there is something altogether different—something rhythmically sacred—about preaching within the lectionary. It is not a superior method but a different mode of hearing. The lectionary arranges Scripture according to the Church’s seasons, aligning the pulpit with the pattern of the Christian year. On any given Sunday, the preacher does not select a text so much as receive one. This act of reception is a form of ecclesial humility. Instead of saying, “What would I like to preach?” the pastor asks, “What is the Spirit inviting us to hear with the whole Church today?” That singular shift—from choosing to receiving—transforms the preacher’s posture from control to communion.

A Shared Hearing Across Time and Tradition

The beauty of the lectionary lies in its connectedness. On the Second Sunday of Lent, an Anglican parish in Kenya, a Lutheran congregation in Minnesota, and a Roman Catholic cathedral in Poland all encounter the same Gospel text—perhaps the story of Nicodemus or the journey up the Mount of Transfiguration. Each hears it in its local tongue, surrounded by their own liturgical colors and cultural cadence, but the scripture itself is the same. This is no small mystery: the Spirit moves through common readings to knit together a global Church. The preacher who steps into the pulpit on Sunday morning thus does so not alone, but alongside countless others wrestling with the same text, asking similar questions, seeking divine illumination for diverse peoples.

That shared rhythm offers more than sentimental unity. It reinforces the truth that our faith is not isolated or provincial. The lectionary embodies catholicity—the universality of the Christian life amidst a panorama of traditions. We stand inside a symphony rather than a solo. Even small congregations in rural communities find themselves part of something transnational and transcendent. In an age when many Christians feel fragmented by politics, denomination, and digital echo chambers, preaching the lectionary is a quiet act of resistance against disunity. It says: we are listening together.

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Even tonight.

We know what is coming. We know the stone will be rolled away. We know the alleluias are only three days distant. And so there is something in us that wa…

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