Married to @revannek, 6 kids, pastor of Good Shepherd, Binghamton NY, Anglican, Reformed, etc.
Joined September 2019
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"Getting married in a Christian way is even more unusual, being so against the cultural grain. Emma and Ben used the real 1662 vows—not the sort of tepidly watered down “1662” ones that are in the 2019 book. If she was going to vow to obey him, he, so the reasoning was in the days leading up to this great occasion, should utter that glorious Scarlet Pimpernel bit, “With my body I thee worship, all my worldly goods I thee endow.” This put her obedience into the proper context, and would, I think, right many of the wrong ideas that cause so much relational suffering." Anne Kennedy, link below
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Jun 14
We gave our first daughter Emma away to her husband Ben on Friday; the first time I’ve walked a daughter down the aisle. It’s not as easy as it looks.
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Jun 14
I've spent time in Spain, Portugal, France and England. It may be that I've just been fortunate to visit the right places and at the right times, but the average corner grocery stores in those places (even in poorer neighborhoods) are vastly superior to the larger grocery stores here. You can buy cheeses that would cost a fortune here, fresh bread, high quality wine and spirits, good vegetables and meat for extremely low prices by comparison and even the processed and packaged foods are, ingredient-wise, far healthier. I've never eaten better at less expense than in western Europe. It's true that gas prices are insane and that some items are far more expensive there but generally speaking, in my experience, I would trade a town's worth of big box Krogers or Price Choppers for a corner Carrefour any day.
Jun 14
Americans have really become desensitized to how good they have it.
During my summer internship in Germany in 2018, I learned that the hard way. If you forgot to buy groceries on Saturday, you were out of luck, everything shut down on Sundays, so you’d go hungry until Monday.
Even during the week, if you left work a little late and missed the 8 p.m. cutoff, every grocery store in town was already closed.
On top of that, the food in the small town where I lived (Saarbrücken) was pretty terrible.
After that experience, I moved to the U.S. for grad school and I was genuinely mind-blown.
The abundance, convenience, and quality of everything felt almost unreal by comparison.
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Jun 14
We happily submitted to Nigerian, Ugandan, Kenyan...etc bishops when our Episcopalian bishops apostacized by supporting sexual perversion and throwing over the Gospel. Miles is absolutely right here. Christian orthodoxy and faithfulness always transcends everything else (culture/ethnicity are explicitly included in that "everything else" in the scriptures). I've got no idea why that's even controversial.
Jun 13
A lot of white Presbyterians in the United States could stand to submit to some Nigerian bishops.
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Matt Kennedy retweeted
I can see, of course, why not speaking that which is dearest to your heart appears to be a sensible path. If you never say what you really think, you never give the other person the opportunity to contradict and thereby reject you.
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Jun 11
"Meanwhile, Jacob was away in Paddan-aram, flourishing in the rich soil of bitterness into which Laban planted his own verdant seeds of deception, subterfuge, and selfishness. This must have suited Jacob well enough, so long habituated to not openly speaking his mind, but negotiating his way behind the scenes, so that there would never be a time for open, frank conversation leading to reconciliation. I can see, of course, why not speaking that which is dearest to your heart appears to be a sensible path. If you never say what you really think, you never give the other person the opportunity to contradict and thereby reject you. What might happen if you speak your mind, and the other person furrows her brow and then just doesn’t say anything? No—speech is too high stakes, too dangerous. Better to remain silent. What is so strange about God—and why I think we are always so determined to misunderstand, ignore, or explain him away—is how plainly he tells us who he is and what he feels about us in the Scriptures. He is uncomfortably communicative with us mere mortals, who shudder and creep away from such open self-revelation." Anne Kennedy, link below
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Jun 10
"Like rage, contempt is usually satisfying in the moment. It is the kind of emotional register that can carry a person through a lot of stressful times. It helps raise one out of the swirling, chaotic mire of what it means to be human when death and disappointment are always lurking around the next corner. Contempt works in the near term because it so sharply delineates between the goodness of one’s own character and way of viewing the world, and the badness of the other. But as the days go by, it is the ugliest and worst kind of relational poison because ultimately, the Person you really end up despising is God. I feel the pathos and the heartbreak of Michal so often on full display in our chaotic world. You don’t know, when you are young, where you will end up when you are old. And most of us don’t get to control what happens next any more than she did. It seems like she made the best of it for a while, but in the end, she took her eyes off the Lord of Life and looked at the mere mortal held in his thrall, and, a little bit like Lot’s wife, she faltered and fell." Anne Kennedy
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Jun 9
"Noah, you might remember, lived in a time of social mayhem. Somehow, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth” so much so that “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” That, my dears, is a lot of evil. We wouldn’t be able to even imagine it, except that we have the internet, and so we actually have a pretty good idea of what God was up against. And God, seeing how bad everyone was, decided to do what I think many of us would—put a total stop to it all. If you’ve ever looked around at the world and asked, “Why doesn’t God do something?” well, this is something he did do that one time, and a lot of people have been blaming him ever since. One man, though, Noah, “found favor” with God, just like that young woman would some several millennia later. He would go into an ark and she would become one, and that, I think, represents some rather beautiful biblical symmetry, the kind that satisfies, like when the chairs fit nicely into the room and the rug is the proper color." Anne Kennedy, link below
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Matt Kennedy retweeted
Faith in the wrong Jesus
Baptized into the name of a false God
This is nice but doesn't save you
Also nice but doesn't save you
Great! Keep it up!
Correct, you're not Christians.
See, being a Christian isn't about what you do, it's about what you believe.
Jun 8
Mormons have faith in Jesus Christ.
Mormons are baptized.
Mormons keep the commandments and live the beatitudes.
Mormons care for the poor and needy.
Mormons read the Bible.
Mormons aren’t Christian’s?
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Jun 7
There's yet another rash of Mormon postings. Do Mormons have a cage-stage? It seems like today was a mass Mormon cage stage moment. For Christians who are wondering about the biblical foundations for the doctrine of the Trinity (which the Nicene Creed articulates beautifully), the doctrine derives from the whole of scripture which reveals (in many more places than the ones I've used as examples) the following:
There is only one God: "I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God." Isa 45:5
The Father is God: "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" Eph 1:3
The Son is God: "He is the radiance of the glory of God and hthe exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power" Heb 1:3
The Holy Spirit is God: "But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds...You have not lied to man but to God.” Acts 5:3-5
The Father is not the Son or the Spirit. The Son is not the Spirit or the Father. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son: "And when Jesus was baptized...behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matt 3:16-17
The only way to harmonize these passages (only a very short sample of many others) is to agree with the Creed that God is One in essence or being and that there are three distinct Persons in the one God.
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Matt Kennedy retweeted
But giving up trying does not mean that the burden of guilt goes away. Just because God says that he does not desire sacrifice does not mean that it is not required.
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