Hanukkah.

The Hebrew lunisolar calendar doesn’t sync with the western solar calendar. That’s why its holidays tend to “move around”: They don’t really. Passover is always on the same day, 15 Nisan. But in the western calendar it wobbles back and forth between March and April. Likewise Hanukkah is always on the same days, 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet. But in the western calendar, in 2025, this’d be sundown 14 December to sundown 22 December.

Christians sometimes ask me where Hanukkah is in the bible, so I point ’em to this verse:

John 10.22 KJV

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.

The “feast of the dedication” is Hanukkah. The word חֲנֻכָּה/khanukká (which gets transliterated all sorts of ways, and not just because of its extra-phlegmy kh sound) means “dedication.” Other bible translations make it more obvious—

John 10.22 NLT

It was now winter, and Jesus was in Jerusalem at the time of Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication.

—because their translators didn’t want you to miss it, whereas other translators figure that’s on you.

Hanukkah is an eight-day holiday which celebrates the Hasmoneans’ rededication of the temple in 165BC.

The church is not the building. But it’s the building.

If you’ve been Christian for any length of time, at some point someone’s gonna preach a sermon in which they state the church isn’t a building; it’s the people. It’s not an institution, not a corporation, not a campus; it’s people. It’s made of people. The plural of the word Christian isn’t only the word Christians; it’s also church.

But let’s be honest: It’s also the building. And the organization. In fact these very same preachers will tell various church attendees, “Meet you at church!” or “These are the things our church believes,” and in neither case do they mean the people of their church. They mean the campus. They mean the 401(c)3 nonprofit corporation which facilitates everything your people do. They mean the organization—or as pagans call it, the organized religion. They mean those things way more often than they do people.

No, they’re not trying to deceive anyone! Church first and foremost does mean the people of a Christian group which gathers to collectively worship, follow, and promote Christ Jesus, and support one another in these practices. But popular culture—including Christian popular culture—constantly uses “church” to mean the building or the institution. We use it that way too. It’s an old habit which not only dies hard; loads of Christians aren’t making any effort whatsoever to kill it. It doesn’t appear to hurt anything to use the word that way, so they don’t feel any pressing need to change their behavior.

Though I have known some folks who try to reserve the word “church” only for people. I’ve tried it myself. They’ll greet the people of their worship services with, “Hello church!” and end prayers with, “And all the church says Amen.” They regularly address the people as “church.” In everything else, “church” is an adjective: The building is the church building, the organization is the church organization, and so forth. Takes longer to say, but it makes the point, and reminds everyone, the church is people.

Like I said, I’ve tried it myself. I lapse a ton. Old habits do die hard. But I don’t stress out about it; no one should.

Job, the resurrection, and his redeemer.

Job 19.25-27.

Same as my article “Dem bones,” you might be thinking, “What does the book of Job have to do with advent?” And again: Resurrection is part of Jesus’s second coming, and in this passage Job speaks of the resurrection.

Job was written in the fourth century before Christ. A lot of Evangelicals think it’s a way older book; even that it predates Abraham and the writing of Genesis! This, despite the fact every scholar can tell you it can’t have been written back then. It’s written in late biblical Hebrew, as we can tell from the sentence structure and all the Babylonian loan-words. Uz, Job’s homeland, was in Edom, and all the people’s names are Edomite. Edom—another name for Esau—is Abraham’s grandson. So why do Evangelicals insist it’s a much older book? Because young earth creationists have told them so. For various crazy reasons, YEC proponents have decided the words בְ֭הֵמוֹת/vehemót (KJV “behemoth”), likely meaning “hippopotamus,” and לִוְיָתָ֣ן/livyatán (KJV “leviathan”), likely “crocodile,” aren’t really west Asian and north African animals like you would reasonably think. They’re dinosaurs. Which makes Job proof humans and dinosaurs coexisted on earth, just like in The Flintstones. So every other bit of historical and linguistic evidence for when Job was written, is tossed aside in favor of their harebrained theory. Job must be really, really old. Gotta be.

Of course an old date for Job would mean resurrection is likewise a very old idea, for the Edomite prophet Job talks with his useless comforters about his own resurrection in chapter 19.

Job 19.25-27 KWL

25“I’ve known my redeemer is living.

At the end, he will stand on the dust left over

26after this flesh of mine was destroyed,

yet from my body

I will see God.

27Whom I will look upon for myself!

My eyes get to see him.

Not another’s—

though my kidneys fail within me.”

When Job fell ill, his so-called friends assumed—as those who believe in karma will—that he must’ve brought his disasters and illness upon himself, thanks to some secret sin, or from hubris which made him imagine he was greater than he was. The fact Job kept protesting, “But I didn’t sin,” simply proved to them he was too proud to acknowledge he had to have sinned. But Job clearly believed in a future divine judgment—that at the end, God will sort out right from wrong, once and for all. And believed he’d be alive to see it. After he’d died and his body decayed into dust.

Job would physically see this. He’d have eyes. And, he admits, he’d probably have to pee really bad. God-appearances have made braver men than Job wet themselves. Although having one’s kidneys fail is also a middle eastern metaphor for an emotional breakdown; it doesn’t have to literally mean a lapse in bladder control, or even organ failure.

Job’s statement is evidence of how, by the fourth century before Christ, the LORD’s followers had adopted (however loosely) the idea of bodily resurrection. After we die, we’re not merely gonna become ghosts and live in the afterlife forever, nor take on some quintessential physical form in the underworld. God means for us to live. When he created humanity, we became living souls; Ge 2.7 he intended his first humans to eat of the tree of life and live forever. Sin got in the way of that plan, but God never ditched the plan. He meant to redeem us; he meant to become human and atone for our sins and extinguish the sin problem. And once Jesus returns—once it’s the time of his second advent—we get to live again.

Yep, Job foresaw that. Not all of it; he doesn’t go into any detail, likely because the Holy Spirit hadn’t given him all the details. But he knew this much. He knew what he said in his book.

St. Nicholas’s Day. (Yep, it’s this early in the month.)

Whenever kids ask me whether Santa Claus is real, I’ll point out he is based on an actual guy. That’d be Nikólaos of Myra, whose feast day is today, 6 December, in honor of his death on this date in the year 343.

Here’s the problem: There are a whole lot of myths mixed up with Nicholas’s life. And I’m not just talking about the Santa Claus stories, whether they come from Clement Moore’s poem, L. Frank Baum’s children’s books, the Rankin-Bass animated specials, or the various movies which play with the Santa story. Christians have been making up stories about Nicholas forever.

That’s why it gets a little frustrating when people ask about the facts behind St. Nicholas: We’re not sure we have any facts behind St. Nicholas. There are way too many myths! We honestly have no idea which stories are true, partly true, or full-on fabrications. It could all be fiction.

But I’ll share what little we’ve got, and you can take it from there.

Round the year 270, Nikólaos was born in Patara, in the Roman province of Lykia. That’s just outside present-day Gelemis, Türkiye. No, he wasn’t Turkish; the Turks didn’t move in till the middle ages. He was Anatolean Greek. Hence the Greek name, which means “people’s victory,” same as Nicodemus.

Nicholas’s parents were Christian. When they died, he was raised by his uncle, the town bishop, who had the same name as he, Nikólaos. Seems his uncle expected him to go into the family business, so Nicholas was trained to be a reader, the person who reads the bible during worship services. Later he became a presbyter—or, as they were considered in the Orthodox tradition, a priest.

Tradition has it Nicholas’s parents were wealthy, and he was very generous with his inheritance, regularly giving to the needy. Probably the most popular St. Nicholas story tells of a man who couldn’t afford to marry off his daughters. Apparently they needed a large dowry in order to attract decent husbands. (Though you gotta wonder just how decent such husbands would be… but I digress.) Mysteriously, three bags of gold appeared just in time to pay for each daughter’s dowry. Of course their anonymous benefactor was Nicholas.

Depending on who’s telling the story, these weren’t bags of gold, but gold balls—and here’s where the three-ball symbol on pawnshops supposedly comes from. Or the gold appeared in the daughter’s stockings as they dried over the fireplace (even though stockings weren’t invented yet) and here’s where the custom of gifts in Christmas stockings supposedly comes from. Or Nicholas threw the gold down the chimney, and here’s where that story comes from.

Of course, people are gonna try their darnedest to link Nicholas myths to Santa Claus myths, so as to explain how on earth a magical fat Dutch-American is the same person as an ancient devout Anatolean Greek. There’s the strong likelihood none of these stories are true. Nicholas had a reputation as a gift-giver… and maybe he was. We don’t know! Hope so. But the rest is probably rubbish.

Saved by grace, not goodness. [Ep 2.8-9]

Ephesians 2.8-9 KJV

88 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9not of works, lest any man should boast.

There’s a common belief humanity has, that we save ourselves: We go to heaven because we’re good people.

Sometimes because we’re inherently good people; we might act like dirty rotten sinners, but at our core we’re naturally good, and all you gotta do with the worst people is figure out the psychological key to unlocking that good person inside ’em. In Charles DIckens’s A Christmas Carol it was to show Ebenezer Scrooge his happier youth, how everyone else this year would be having fun without him, then threaten him with death. Other people are harder nuts to crack; you might have to give ’em happy pills.

And sometimes because we’re not inherently good; it’s a choice we make. We can choose good—or evil. We can accumulate good karma, or through inaction or wrongdoing, rack up lots of bad.

Christianity doesn’t teach this. Yes, there are plenty of Pelagian Christians who definitely do teach this, but that’s because they’re taking their cues from humanity, not the scriptures. Or they’re cherry-picking the scriptures which say God created humanity and called us good, Ge 1.31 and skip the whole bit where the first humans sinned, and the result is their descendants—us—are corrupt. And need saving. Need a savior. Need Jesus. Need him; he’s not just a fun option.

We’re not saved because we’re good people; we’re saved because Jesus is a good person. When we trust him (i.e. the “through faith” part of Ephesians 2.8) he graciously saves us (i.e. the “by grace” part). You’ll find Christians who mix this up and claim we’re saved by faith, but we’re not. Nobody believes their way into God’s kingdom—we believe in Jesus, and he gets us in. So if you memorize today’s verse—and I recommend it—make sure you remember which thing is “through” and which thing is “by.” We’re saved by grace.

Grace is a difficult idea for a lot of people. Including Christians. Mostly ’cause we’re way too comfortable with the pagan point of view. It’s embedded in our culture, embedded in our minds, and hard to shake! God’s kingdom runs on grace, but our culture—even church culture!—absolutely doesn’t.

Does God listen to pagans’ prayers?

I’ll answer the question in the title right away: Yes. God listens to pagans when they pray.

And, well, duh. Of course he listens to them! He listens to everyone. He knows what everyone’s saying, what everyone’s thinking, and whether what we’re saying and what we’re thinking line up. (And when they aren’t, he knows we’re being hypocrites.)

He knows what our needs are; he hears us express ’em to him; he knows whether we’re sincere. True of everybody. Not just Christians.

Why’s this even a question? Because of course there are Christians who claim he doesn’t. Only we get access to the Almighty; only the true believers; only the elect.

And maybe Jews, depending on whether these Christians like Jews. If they do, they always manage to find an exception to the “no non-Christians, no unbelievers” rule. They’re God’s chosen people, so they’re kinda believers, so he has to listen to them, doesn’t he? Now, if these Christians are antisemites, either Jews are simply another type of pagan whom God refuses to hear, or (as claim these antisemites) God’s rejected and cursed them for not accepting Jesus, so of course he won’t hear them; he can’t abide them. Neither of these views are based on biblical, reasoned-out theology.

Really anyone who claims God rejects a people-group based on race or creed, is basing it on personal bias. It’s always bigotry and chauvanism. And you’ll notice how often antisemites likewise figure God rejects the prayers of Muslims, Mormons, Roman Catholics, anybody in the opposition party… basically anyone they hate. They claim it’s based on bible—

Isaiah 1.15 KJV

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Micah 3.4 KJV

Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.

—and of course they’re not reading these verses in their proper context. Both Isaiah and Micah referred to unrepentant sinners. These were the prophets’ fellow Israelis—people whose ancestors were in covenant with God, who should therefore already be in conversation with God. But they didn’t care to follow his commands, didn’t believe he’d follow through on his warnings about willful sinners, and frankly weren’t gonna turn down some hot pagan sex. They chose sin. God warned ’em, and had his prophets warn ’em, there’d be consequences, and when those consequences came, he wasn’t gonna respond, in the very same way they weren’t responding to him.

No, this doesn’t sound very gracious of God. Which is why a number of Christians who like to preach grace, often like to skip these verses, pretend they don’t exist, or pretend they can’t mean what they clearly do. In the case of liberal theologians, they’ll even claim the prophets were wrong, and Jesus came to earth to rebuke and correct them. I won’t go there; I can’t, because there are plenty of New Testament verses which indicate Jesus agrees this is how his Father treats unrepentant sinners.

Matthew 18.34-35 KWL

34And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. 35So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

I believe the prophets were accurately relaying what God told ’em. God has infinite grace, and offers us infinite chances. But he also sets deadlines, and if we resist his grace all the way up to the deadline and beyond, he’s gotta follow through with his entirely fair judgments. When these people beg him to not follow through… what’s he gonna do, cave in like the parents of a spoiled child, let people go right back to doing evil, and allow evildoers to inherit his kingdom? They’d turn heaven into hell. Nope. He’s gotta ignore their shrieks of indignation, and stop the evil.

That’s what the verses mean when they state God sometimes won’t hear people. The rest of the time, of course he will.

Psalm 145.18-19 KJV

18The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. 19He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.

Romans 10.12-13 KJV

12For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. 13For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Jl 2.32

If God didn’t heed the prayers of pagans, it’d be impossible for pagans to call upon him to save them! Even the most hardcore cases of people who claim “God doesn’t hear pagans” have to admit this is true. It’s just they claim every other prayer these pagans make, every other thing they request, God ignores… ’cause he’s waiting for the sinner’s prayer, and only after he hears that will he move his hand.

But nope, God hears pagans when they pray. Even if their prayers are weird, ridiculous, warped, selfish, or evil. Same as our prayers, ’cause we can get just as weird, ridiculous, warped, selfish, and evil. God hears everyone.

Dem bones.

Ezekiel 37.1-10.

You’re likely thinking, “How is an Ezekiel passage a scripture for advent? Well, the passage is about resurrection, and resurrection takes place at the second coming of Christ Jesus. Ezekiel is the first time the LORD explicitly shows a resurrection to someone—in the Valley of Dry Bones Story.

The title of this article comes from the gospel song, “Dem Bones.” Most people have no idea it’s a spiritual, ’cause all they know is, “Ankle bone connected to the shin bone, shin bone connected to the knee bone…” They think it’s about anatomy. Or skeletons. Well anyway.

The point of this passage actually isn’t the literal resurrection of the dead. It’s the LORD trying to bring hope to ancient Israel. At this point in history, Israel had been conquered by Nabú-kudúrri-usúr 2 of the neo-Babylonian Empire (KJV “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon”), and deported to Tel Aviv, Iraq. (Tel Aviv, Israel is named after Ezekiel’s village.) Ezekiel and his family had been part of the first deportation, a decade before that destruction, so he wasn’t around to witness the temple get destroyed. He heard about it after the fact, from survivors.

Nabú had installed Mattaniah ben Joash—whom Nabú renamed Zedekiah—to rule Jerusalem as his puppet king. Zedekiah proved insubordinate, and after 12 years Nabú had enough, and personally overthrew him. He invaded, besieged, and destroyed Jerusalem. His soldiers burnt the temple down. (The first temple was made of gold-plated cedar, which made it far easier to destroy than the stone temple the Romans knocked over.)

Word got back to Tel Aviv. Up to that point, the refugees had hoped some day they’d go home. Didn’t know when; just knew Jerusalem was waiting for them. Now it wasn’t. No more homeland. No more city. No more daily worship for the LORD, so for priests like Ezekiel, no job to return to. They were gonna die in Iraq.

If you’re an American who’s old enough to remember when the World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001, the destruction of the temple felt way worse. For Israelis it was a blow to both their patriotism and their religion. It didn’t only feel like their country was destroyed, but like they were now utterly cut off from the LORD. It felt like being damned.

So, through Ezekiel, God sent ’em a message of hope.

Ezekiel 37.1-10 KWL

1The LORD’s hand took me,

and by the LORD’s Spirit he brought me out:

2God put me in a valley full of bones.

He made me walk round and round them.

“Look how very many, all over the surface of the valley!

Look, how very dry!”

3God told me, “Son of Adam.

Can these bones live?”

I said, “Master LORD, only you know.”

4God told me, “Prophesy over these bones.

Tell these dry bones, ‘Listen to the LORD’s word.’ ”

5My Master LORD tells these bones, “Look!

I put a spirit in you. Live.

6I put sinews on you. I grow muscle on you.

I encase you in skin. I give you the Spirit.

Live. Know I’m the LORD.”

7I prophesied as instructed.

At the sound of my prophecy, look:

Shaking, and bone came together with bone.

8I saw—look!—sinews and flesh grew on them.

Skin encased them.

But there was no Spirit in them.

9God told me, “Prophesy to the Spirit.

Prophesy, son of Adam!

Tell the Spirit this: ‘My Master LORD says this.

Spirit, come from the four winds!

Blow into these who were killed.

They will live.”

10I prophesied as instructed.

The Spirit came into them. They live!

They stand on their feet—a very, very great army.