outWORD by Matte Downey

We go through doorways and openings every day, stepping across thresholds as we do, and seldom think much about it. But thresholds and doorways and gates are significant places, liminal spaces which tie two realms together. Thresholds are places of transition and decision. They are entrances and openings to new worlds, offering promise and invitation, but they are also places of ambiguity and disorientation. Open the door of your warm, cozy home during a blistering blizzard in the dead of winter and you know what I mean. Or step through the doorway of a plane after you land in a foreign country and you know the feeling. Gates are important places in the biblical text. We read about certain events happening "in the gate." This makes little sense unless we know something about ancient cities. A city usually had a wall around it and where there was a gate into the city, an outer gate would be built around it, providing a second line of defence. Between the inner and the ou...

I know the Christmas season is over, but it is not as far in the rear-view mirror as one might think. This past Saturday, Dean and I stopped in at our favourite nut store and the lady at the counter mentioned that she was celebrating Christmas that very day, January 6. For those of us in the Western church tradition, this might sound a bit strange, but for the first few centuries, the early church celebrated the birth of Christ and the manifestation of Christ as Messiah on Epiphany, January 6. Only later (4th century) was the celebration of the nativity separated from the celebration of the manifestation of Christ. The separation of the two events eventually resulted in commemorating the twelve days of Christmas, with the Twelfth Night feast falling on January 5. That's right. The Twelve Days of Christmas is not just a song from the 18th century. The church has been celebrating various feast days following the birth of Christ for many centuries. To be honest, our Western Chr...

This is from a talk I gave at a church meeting last night. I was reading Luke 7 this week and the question that John the baptist asks jumped out of the page at me. He was in prison and sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the One we've been expecting, or are we still waiting?" Despite John's extensive preparation work for the long-awaited messiah, he still wasn't sure that what Jesus was bringing was what he had been expecting. Sometimes this life of following Jesus is not what I expected, either. I'm with you, John. It got me to thinking about my love/hate affair with expectations and I came up with these delineations: Expectation is: - a prospect of success or gain - belief that someone should behave in a particular way - focus on a particular outcome - Dean comes home with flowers for me. Expectancy is: - anticipation - excitement, feeling hopeful - focus on a catalytic factor, not an event - Dean comes home and that brings many possibilities ...