Speaker: The Rev. Nathan Stomberg

Beloved, the Church is the only place where people can find true healing and refuge from the failings of a fallen world. We have an obligation to stand as outposts of truth and sanity amid a culture that is losing its collective grip on reality. This requires the Church to no longer abandon her simple duty to point out what is right and wrong, even when it is “controversial.” Our call to embrace the incarnate life, then, is to accept our duty as the Church – to be the hands and feet of Christ in our communities.

When we focus on Christ instead of complaining about the many hardships in our lives, we become a witness to the Gospel. Our lives become saturated with the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. This doesn’t make any sense if you don’t know Christ! This is how Spafford could write a hymn praising the Lord mere days after all his children died in a shipwreck.

What can the US debt ceiling teach us about the Christian life? It demonstrates the attitude of our wider culture, even among Christians. We have no desire to do the hard work of self-examination and repentance. We don’t want to embrace the struggle of a life of holiness, following Christ. We just want more stuff! We want to be comfortable, and we don’t want to be reminded that we must be holy, just as God is holy.

The Rev. Stomberg and the Rev. Galloway discuss the meaning and historical context of the Epiphany narrative; what it means to “follow the light”; what the Light actually is; where we can find the Light; what distance we must travel to find it; and what gifts we are asked to offer the King when we find Him.

The Epiphany has not ended; it shines forth to this day, radiating out from the day of Christ’s Incarnation; it is the very reason we as Gentiles can share in the riches of Christ’s inheritance. This means that we who have received this light have the responsibility to both continually seek its source and reflect it so that others may do the same.

The mystery of the Incarnation – literally “taking on flesh”, that Christ Jesus, fully human yet fully divine, was born of a pure Virgin – that mystery reminds us that the God of the universe is real, and He loves us so much that he chose to be born among us, that he may sympathize with our weaknesses and perfectly redeem all the pain and suffering we face in life.

The Rev. Stomberg and the Rev. Galloway discuss the importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the Christian life; the idea of her perpetual virginity; types of love; masculinity and femininity; gender roles; the impact of the transgender movement on children; and much more.

There are no words given to Saint Joseph in all of Scripture, and yet, Joseph is the greatest example of a husband and father in all of humanity. Indeed, Joseph is the most important man who ever lived (apart from Christ). He is here to prove that a good man doesn’t need attention, he doesn’t need to say many words, he doesn’t need to be a superhero. A good man needs to be a righteous man. May we all imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to God’s commands.

We need Advent to remind us of these responsibilities as we wait for Christ to return. And for that reason, Andrew is the perfect saint to start the Advent season. He also (unsurprisingly) embodies the call of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Advent to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”