Back in Indiana, a local pastor said her rarely spoke on Palm Sunday, but he much preferred to speak about the events of Holy Week. “How much can you say about a parade,” he asked. Today, I thought I would give our readers a bit of a glimpse into sermon preparation, where much material goes into background, or church education class, but may not ever see the light of day on Sunday morning in the sanctuary.
I am interested in how quickly things changed for Jesus. How could the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday of Hosanna (save us, or more likely a shout of acclaim) turn into cries of ‘crucify him” so quickly? The gospels suggest crowds of some size, and that alone would gain Roman attention, especially because of the crush of people visiting the temple for the Passover sacrifices. (For serious looks at the historical context of the last week of the life of Jesus see the 2 volume Death of the Messiah by Raymond Brown, Crossan’s biography of Jesus and his little book, Who Killed Jesus, Meier biographies of Jesus, N.T. Wright’s huge collection of work on the topic, among many others.)
Paula Frederickson would argue that Jesus had his fate sealed by the Triumphal Procession itself. The critical issue would be if Jesus were proclaimed as King of the Jews during that demonstration. The gospels cite Zechariah 9, and he speaks of a king. Christians point out that Jesus was redefining messianic expectation here and arriving as a man of peace and gentleness. However, Judea was under Roman occupation, with Ronan soldiers garrisoned nearby, especially for the Passover festival. Such a phrase would arouse suspicion in Pilate’s mind immediately, given the turbulence of politics in that time and the sometimes restive political nature of the separate area of Galilee, the home of Jesus. Galilee was a hotbed of religious reformers, and that often spilled over into political messages. Passover often spelt trouble as it recalled the exodus from the oppression of Egypt, so it was not a large step to equate Rome with Egyptian oppression.
We know little about Pilate, but what evidence we have is not noble. Pilate’s disposition was inflexible, stubborn, and corrupt. In other words, he was a typical colonial administrator. . He was removed from office not that long after the death of Jesus because he ordered the massacre of pilgrims in Samaria, the area between Galilee and Judea in the south. A few times, he incited protests by carrying Roman standards, with the image of the emperor, into the Temple precincts.
The gospels also put the prediction of the Temple’s destruction and the symbolic overturning of the tables in a small corner of the Temple may have led toward Jesus being considered trouble for Roman order. Herod started an enormous reconstruction and expansion of the Temple complex that lasted almost a century, and almost as soon as it was finished, Rome destroyed it. the Dead Sea Scrolls have material that speak of cleansing the temple as a prelude to two messianic figures, a priestly one to reform religion and a political one to offer political freedom.
Our gospel accounts are religious documents, so they have heavy theological import and symbolism throughout. Pilate could not have cared less about Jewish theology. Quite simply, if he heard that a potential troublemaker had alerted the attention of leading people in Jerusalem, he would act decisively to nip a potential movement with political overtones in the bud. He had Jesus executed. Crucifixion was a political statement of rome as a warning to others. To avoid this horror, keep quiet and passive. the mere threat of it was enough to turn demonstrator from dreams of a new way in the world to cries of crucifixion in the blink of an eye.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Sermon Notes 3/25 Jn. 12:2-33, Heb. 5:5-10
Can we speak of divine feelings? I tend to think we must, as we all confess that God is love. Our readings touch on it in one way or another. Our little piece on a new covenant, a new partnership in Jeremiah emerges from a broken divine heart. God speaks of the people of Israel with a metaphor of marriage. He goes on to say that the people broke their threw away their wedding ring, if you will. they broke the vow of loyalty and fidelity. God remains faithful in spite of being kicked to the side. god really offers a new start, to remember no more, to call to mind the hurt no more.
Our passage from Hebrews does not seem to cite a particular piece of Scripture. Here in Lent, my thoughts immediately move to the cross or Gethsemane, but maybe not.We are faced with the tears of a priest. I am one of those who like to picture Jesus as preternaturally calm. We get a different picture here, do we not?
It is possible that we are getting a glimpse at the prayer life of Jesus. In some ancient material, these loud cries and tears describe the prayers of pious people, sincere people. They also, though, are linked to people in trouble. Again, if we take a stance that Jesus serenely floated through life, this again pulls us up short. They could also be prayers of intercession as well as supplication. Jesus’s compassion was and is so deep that prayers for others had perhaps more emotion than prayers for his own condition. This letter is convinced that Jesus is shaped by suffering to help bear the suffering of the world on his shoulders. This high priest is empathetic, more than sympathetic with us. We are not clients of salvation, we are more than patients for divine healing, we are family. Jesus can go beyond saying there by the grace of God go I, but there by the grace of God I am (see Long commentary on Hebrews:42). Parker Palmer, writing on the season, says that Midwestern winters (well usually) are to be feared, but the way we can survive them is to learn to face them, get outside to experience the winter cold and winter wonders. So in prayer, Jesus carries not only our needs, but Jesus carries us into the abode of
God. (Cite What a Friend verses). Put differently, in the Incarnation, God’s own is intimately with us, and that includes our suffering. Jesus prayed to get through his own suffering, to find strength and help; Jesus prayed for us to get strength and help through our suffering. Jesus continues to do so right now. Suffering is not some secret signal of God’s disfavor, some retribution for a long forgotten sin. No, it is part of human experience, period.
Of all places, we get further evidence for this in the gospel of John. By and large, Jesus glides over life in this gospel; I always think of the otherworldly sense of a Zen master. Here, Jesus says, now my soul is troubled. He asks aloud, prays aloud, should I say, “Father, save me from this hour?”Yes, Jesus can face death heroically , especially in this gospel. it reminds me of the Sidney Carton line, it is a far, far better thing that I do then I have ever done.” Recall that Carton takes the place of someone on the guillotine.He will be lifted up, on the ross, on Easter, at the ascension and will draw all people to himself. Notice, not coerce, not force, but draw like a magnet. Power may be a great aphrodisiac, but the power is love is compelling enough to draw us toward it. It can even take the cross and attract us to it. One day, we too may pray with loud cries and tears, for others.
Our passage from Hebrews does not seem to cite a particular piece of Scripture. Here in Lent, my thoughts immediately move to the cross or Gethsemane, but maybe not.We are faced with the tears of a priest. I am one of those who like to picture Jesus as preternaturally calm. We get a different picture here, do we not?
It is possible that we are getting a glimpse at the prayer life of Jesus. In some ancient material, these loud cries and tears describe the prayers of pious people, sincere people. They also, though, are linked to people in trouble. Again, if we take a stance that Jesus serenely floated through life, this again pulls us up short. They could also be prayers of intercession as well as supplication. Jesus’s compassion was and is so deep that prayers for others had perhaps more emotion than prayers for his own condition. This letter is convinced that Jesus is shaped by suffering to help bear the suffering of the world on his shoulders. This high priest is empathetic, more than sympathetic with us. We are not clients of salvation, we are more than patients for divine healing, we are family. Jesus can go beyond saying there by the grace of God go I, but there by the grace of God I am (see Long commentary on Hebrews:42). Parker Palmer, writing on the season, says that Midwestern winters (well usually) are to be feared, but the way we can survive them is to learn to face them, get outside to experience the winter cold and winter wonders. So in prayer, Jesus carries not only our needs, but Jesus carries us into the abode of
God. (Cite What a Friend verses). Put differently, in the Incarnation, God’s own is intimately with us, and that includes our suffering. Jesus prayed to get through his own suffering, to find strength and help; Jesus prayed for us to get strength and help through our suffering. Jesus continues to do so right now. Suffering is not some secret signal of God’s disfavor, some retribution for a long forgotten sin. No, it is part of human experience, period.
Of all places, we get further evidence for this in the gospel of John. By and large, Jesus glides over life in this gospel; I always think of the otherworldly sense of a Zen master. Here, Jesus says, now my soul is troubled. He asks aloud, prays aloud, should I say, “Father, save me from this hour?”Yes, Jesus can face death heroically , especially in this gospel. it reminds me of the Sidney Carton line, it is a far, far better thing that I do then I have ever done.” Recall that Carton takes the place of someone on the guillotine.He will be lifted up, on the ross, on Easter, at the ascension and will draw all people to himself. Notice, not coerce, not force, but draw like a magnet. Power may be a great aphrodisiac, but the power is love is compelling enough to draw us toward it. It can even take the cross and attract us to it. One day, we too may pray with loud cries and tears, for others.
April 1-Is. 50:4-9
1) I haven;t decided how I am going to handle of the Holy Week readings. It is possible that I will move into readings for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The number of readings is so huge for Holy Saturday, that if I approach them, I will be selective and perhaps pick less familiar ones.
2) Most of you know that this is the third Servant Song. It is always wise to look at the Dame Zion material in these sections as well. Here it is possible that the Servant is linked to the prophet.
3)How do we sustain the weary with a word? How do we fail to do so?
4) How and why would one be rebellious if God spoke and opened their ear?
5) Here we cannot help but reflect on the scourging of Jesus . I leave it to the reader to decide to move into the fetish territory of Passion of the Christ.
6) Is it possible that v. 6 is a template for the description of Jesus and torture? I would like folks to explain to me how we can support torture when our Savior was tortured?
7)Knowledge that Go helps allows the tortured one to "set the face like flint." When is setting one's face like flint not a good idea/ I am almost done with Tim Madigan's I'm Proud of You, his memoir of Fred Rogers. He gives ample evidence of its problems.
8) Vv 8-9 are definitely in the courtroom dispute arena. We move beyond help to vindication. I know people who are sustained in their justice work with this confidence of vindication. I am convinced that one day we will have health care for all Americans as a right, not a privilege as Sen. Kennedy used to say.
90 what does this passage say to us on the use and abuse of power?
2) Most of you know that this is the third Servant Song. It is always wise to look at the Dame Zion material in these sections as well. Here it is possible that the Servant is linked to the prophet.
3)How do we sustain the weary with a word? How do we fail to do so?
4) How and why would one be rebellious if God spoke and opened their ear?
5) Here we cannot help but reflect on the scourging of Jesus . I leave it to the reader to decide to move into the fetish territory of Passion of the Christ.
6) Is it possible that v. 6 is a template for the description of Jesus and torture? I would like folks to explain to me how we can support torture when our Savior was tortured?
7)Knowledge that Go helps allows the tortured one to "set the face like flint." When is setting one's face like flint not a good idea/ I am almost done with Tim Madigan's I'm Proud of You, his memoir of Fred Rogers. He gives ample evidence of its problems.
8) Vv 8-9 are definitely in the courtroom dispute arena. We move beyond help to vindication. I know people who are sustained in their justice work with this confidence of vindication. I am convinced that one day we will have health care for all Americans as a right, not a privilege as Sen. Kennedy used to say.
90 what does this passage say to us on the use and abuse of power?
Week of March 25 devotions
Sunday March 25- Ps. 51 is one of the great penitential psalms. Its heading recalls David coming to grips with his moral failings with Bathsheba. Not only doe she want to be cleansed, he asks for a “new heart to be created for him. When faced with our sin, our best offering is ‘a broken and contrite heart.” this from one who had moved the tabernacle and wanted to build a temple for the lord.
Monday-the issue of control springs up in all sorts of ways. Someone won’t say a preference out loud or says they don’t care and when someone does make a decision they hear they are controlling. Others cannot abide if anyone has an opinion on anything if \it would dare to not coincide with theirs. In part, the impulse to being controlling comes from seeing life as chaotic. At other times, it may be the incapacity to try to adjust to other points of view.
Tuesday-In Gal. 5:21-22 Paul shows the dichotomy between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh, anti-spirit if you will. Look at how the vice list shows how we do not treat people with respect or cannot live together in harmony. Look at how the virtue list shows the result of treating people with respect and living in harmony with others. Life in the spirit is the capacity of living together.
Wednesday –Robert Hayden’s poem, Those Winter Sundays, recalls a father who woke up firs to get the chill from a house and shined the shoes of his son for church. “No one ever thanked him.” He ends: “what did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices/?” What are some thankless tasks that were or are performed for you/ what are some thankless tasks you perform, all for love, all for love?
Thursday James Martin has a book on humor, Between Heaven and Mirth. he tells a story of a novice in a silent monastery where he can say 2 words every five years. the first time, he tells the abbot after five years, food cold. We’ll handle that, he is told. After ten years, he says, bed hard. We’ll handle it says the abbot. After 15 years, the monk say, I’m leaving. The abbot replies. No surprise. You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here. What are your favorite jokes? Favorite comedians?
Friday- I skimmed through a book on the reconstruction and extensions of the U. S. Capitol during the 1850s and early 1860s. The project was filled with missteps and tension, often due to the clash of ego, roles, and expectations. It is a great example that our ages not the only one where time and money are spilled out due to the inertia of the refusal to work together. Indeed, it could be a symbol for the tower of Babel. We find it os hard to speak the truth in love.
Saturday-I am paging through a new book on Copernicus by the talented writer Dana Sobel who has written on working out longitude for navigation and a wonderful piece on Galileo’s daughter, a nun. While he was revolutionizing astronomy and certain readings of the Bible, for that matter, he was involved in the day to day work as a church bureaucrat. While he was displacing the earth as the center of everything, he was up to his neck in making property assessments and working on currency reform. nPeople have depths we may merely guess at.
Monday-the issue of control springs up in all sorts of ways. Someone won’t say a preference out loud or says they don’t care and when someone does make a decision they hear they are controlling. Others cannot abide if anyone has an opinion on anything if \it would dare to not coincide with theirs. In part, the impulse to being controlling comes from seeing life as chaotic. At other times, it may be the incapacity to try to adjust to other points of view.
Tuesday-In Gal. 5:21-22 Paul shows the dichotomy between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh, anti-spirit if you will. Look at how the vice list shows how we do not treat people with respect or cannot live together in harmony. Look at how the virtue list shows the result of treating people with respect and living in harmony with others. Life in the spirit is the capacity of living together.
Wednesday –Robert Hayden’s poem, Those Winter Sundays, recalls a father who woke up firs to get the chill from a house and shined the shoes of his son for church. “No one ever thanked him.” He ends: “what did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices/?” What are some thankless tasks that were or are performed for you/ what are some thankless tasks you perform, all for love, all for love?
Thursday James Martin has a book on humor, Between Heaven and Mirth. he tells a story of a novice in a silent monastery where he can say 2 words every five years. the first time, he tells the abbot after five years, food cold. We’ll handle that, he is told. After ten years, he says, bed hard. We’ll handle it says the abbot. After 15 years, the monk say, I’m leaving. The abbot replies. No surprise. You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here. What are your favorite jokes? Favorite comedians?
Friday- I skimmed through a book on the reconstruction and extensions of the U. S. Capitol during the 1850s and early 1860s. The project was filled with missteps and tension, often due to the clash of ego, roles, and expectations. It is a great example that our ages not the only one where time and money are spilled out due to the inertia of the refusal to work together. Indeed, it could be a symbol for the tower of Babel. We find it os hard to speak the truth in love.
Saturday-I am paging through a new book on Copernicus by the talented writer Dana Sobel who has written on working out longitude for navigation and a wonderful piece on Galileo’s daughter, a nun. While he was revolutionizing astronomy and certain readings of the Bible, for that matter, he was involved in the day to day work as a church bureaucrat. While he was displacing the earth as the center of everything, he was up to his neck in making property assessments and working on currency reform. nPeople have depths we may merely guess at.
Friday, March 23, 2012
March 24 column on Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott is speaking tomorrow, March 24th, at the St Louis County Library. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, but I know her through her printed essays and when she wrote a column for salon, the on-line magazine.
She has struggled in her life, especially with alcohol. She found some solace and stability in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian church in the California bay area. She raised a child, mostly on her own, and faced the tough decisions about being sandwiched between a child and a mother slipping into dementia.
She has a knack for the aphorism. “If God hates the same people you do, you can be fairly certain you have created God in your own image.”
she came to the faith as an adult, but she speaks for many of us in her constant battles to live within it. She wants her life to be a a smooth flight path toward heaven. Instead, she often finds it a slow slog, of small steps, and relapse, and then finding her footing again. As she puts it, “slog, scootch, scotch, rest.” One of the tricks in life, she learns is ‘falling better.” She learned to ski but falls a lot, and she enjoys the run in between the “spills and humiliations, just like life.” In the story she recounts taking her friend Sue, who was dying of cancer, for one last ski trip, the week after Easter. They replayed the Hoy Week services a week late, in the hotel room. Her friend was in a Good Friday time, but she lived as if it were Easter. She taught Anne that the trick to skiing was learning to fall better. The fear of falling impeded her love of the skis. For many of us, we will not reach the summits of our desires. On the way there, perhaps the best we can do is to learn to “fall better.”
She is that most special and gifted of writers on the spiritual life, as she is funny, irreverent and funny, moving and funny. She imagines the disciples on the day after the crucifixion all playing Monday morning quarterback, drunk, and deciding that is was all over for them too. She tells of her struggle finding a dress as an adult flower girl in a wedding where she had visions of looking like some forest princess but being told that she could fit only into an extra large mother of the bride outfit, at 5-7 and 140 pounds.
One of her special gifts is finding some grace in small moments in the hardships of life. She speaks of going past the choir at practice and enjoys their muffled piety. Then, someone has to step out for a moment and “a beam of singing falls directly on me.” She troops off to do a service in a nursing home. Her teenaged son has been impossible all weekend, but he dutifully helps his partner follow the songs and she recites the Lord’s Prayer with him. Her lady falls asleep during the service, and then se wakes and yells that she likes a house, and points to the air. Her teenaged son comes to help her and says let her sleep, she like d the house in her dreams.
Lately, a number of folks have complained that they miss hearing ministers preach about hell and damnation as much as they recall from their youth. they are convinced that we have to demonstrate, prove, our worth before God and each other. Anne Lamott knows better. she knows of grace, full and free. “Grace means you’re in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.”
She has struggled in her life, especially with alcohol. She found some solace and stability in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian church in the California bay area. She raised a child, mostly on her own, and faced the tough decisions about being sandwiched between a child and a mother slipping into dementia.
She has a knack for the aphorism. “If God hates the same people you do, you can be fairly certain you have created God in your own image.”
she came to the faith as an adult, but she speaks for many of us in her constant battles to live within it. She wants her life to be a a smooth flight path toward heaven. Instead, she often finds it a slow slog, of small steps, and relapse, and then finding her footing again. As she puts it, “slog, scootch, scotch, rest.” One of the tricks in life, she learns is ‘falling better.” She learned to ski but falls a lot, and she enjoys the run in between the “spills and humiliations, just like life.” In the story she recounts taking her friend Sue, who was dying of cancer, for one last ski trip, the week after Easter. They replayed the Hoy Week services a week late, in the hotel room. Her friend was in a Good Friday time, but she lived as if it were Easter. She taught Anne that the trick to skiing was learning to fall better. The fear of falling impeded her love of the skis. For many of us, we will not reach the summits of our desires. On the way there, perhaps the best we can do is to learn to “fall better.”
She is that most special and gifted of writers on the spiritual life, as she is funny, irreverent and funny, moving and funny. She imagines the disciples on the day after the crucifixion all playing Monday morning quarterback, drunk, and deciding that is was all over for them too. She tells of her struggle finding a dress as an adult flower girl in a wedding where she had visions of looking like some forest princess but being told that she could fit only into an extra large mother of the bride outfit, at 5-7 and 140 pounds.
One of her special gifts is finding some grace in small moments in the hardships of life. She speaks of going past the choir at practice and enjoys their muffled piety. Then, someone has to step out for a moment and “a beam of singing falls directly on me.” She troops off to do a service in a nursing home. Her teenaged son has been impossible all weekend, but he dutifully helps his partner follow the songs and she recites the Lord’s Prayer with him. Her lady falls asleep during the service, and then se wakes and yells that she likes a house, and points to the air. Her teenaged son comes to help her and says let her sleep, she like d the house in her dreams.
Lately, a number of folks have complained that they miss hearing ministers preach about hell and damnation as much as they recall from their youth. they are convinced that we have to demonstrate, prove, our worth before God and each other. Anne Lamott knows better. she knows of grace, full and free. “Grace means you’re in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.”
Saturday, March 17, 2012
OT Notes Jer. 31:31-4
1) This is a short little war horse passage, isn’t it?
2) Without falling prey to supercessionism, interpret the new covenant. Without being anti-Judaic, interpret the new covenant.
3) What images come to mind when we read that god took the people by the hand? How could you work that for a congregation and/or an individual?
4) Work with the image of god as a husband to a people. Clearly we get a hint of why adultery was used to amplify the meaning of idolatry to God. Is God saying the people acted a divorce? What makes you uncomfortable with this marital image? What opens up for you with it?
5) What would it mean to have the law/teaching written on the hearts?
6) Notice that God is not accepting a divorce but is seeking reconciliation:they shall be my people. (Note that Hosea is told to call a child “not my people” lo ammi.’)
7) What would spiritual and social life look like if we knew God so well we would have no need of teaching or proclamation? In sports, we sometimes say that certain qualities or attributes can;t be taught.
8) Remember their sin no more is a powerful thing for the the Eternal One, the Omniscient One to say. remember in Hebrew has a sense of bringing the past into present awareness, so I assume that the past is being consigned to the past. Notice how often we say we may be told to forgive, but we can;t forget.
2) Without falling prey to supercessionism, interpret the new covenant. Without being anti-Judaic, interpret the new covenant.
3) What images come to mind when we read that god took the people by the hand? How could you work that for a congregation and/or an individual?
4) Work with the image of god as a husband to a people. Clearly we get a hint of why adultery was used to amplify the meaning of idolatry to God. Is God saying the people acted a divorce? What makes you uncomfortable with this marital image? What opens up for you with it?
5) What would it mean to have the law/teaching written on the hearts?
6) Notice that God is not accepting a divorce but is seeking reconciliation:they shall be my people. (Note that Hosea is told to call a child “not my people” lo ammi.’)
7) What would spiritual and social life look like if we knew God so well we would have no need of teaching or proclamation? In sports, we sometimes say that certain qualities or attributes can;t be taught.
8) Remember their sin no more is a powerful thing for the the Eternal One, the Omniscient One to say. remember in Hebrew has a sense of bringing the past into present awareness, so I assume that the past is being consigned to the past. Notice how often we say we may be told to forgive, but we can;t forget.
devotions Week Of March 18
March 18-Ps. 107 is today’s reading. It starts the last of the five parts of the Psalter. I suspect it is to reflect the five books of the Torah, the first five books of our Bibles. I note vv.298-30, as it notes the storms we face and like Jesus on the sea, they are quieted. “They were glad they had quiet and were brought to the desired safe heaven.” Have you been so quieted/? Do you desire to be so quieted? What would your safe harbor look like? do you have an internal safe haven to which you may repair?
Monday-Buds are on the trees as I write and some daffodils and crocuses have emerged as well. I ran into Janet Riley, and she said the dogwood trees are gorgeous down south. I love that pastels match the approaching Easter season. Recently Biblical scholar and stated clerk Carol Griffith spoke of God as an artist. This is surely one of the times of the year when that image is at its peak. Today, I am taken with the thought that god does some of the best artistic work with living material.
Tuesday-Stellar spring begins with the equinox. This has been a warm march already. I’ve gotten some salad greens planted and am trying peas for the first time. For me lent is a time of planting spiritual seeds that we harvest all through the year. Is there something in your spiritual garden that you need every year? Is there something missing that you would like to have?
Wednesday-Contempt is the opposite of seeing the image of God in someone. It is a hurtful thing to feel contempt, especially from someone you love. It gives the sense that one is unworthy of even time or basic consideration. Sin against others holds them in contempt. I am so grateful that God does not look at us with contempt. Instead we are counted worthy of the life, death, and resurrection, of Jesus.
Thursday-I love March Madness college basketball. I love when a David beats a Goliath. Already some top teams have gone down. I love the emotion of getting wrapped up in a team and how much the players care. That feeling can be an aspiration for us on church feast days. That feeling of togetherness is an aspiration for the fellow feeling of a congregation.
Friday-We live in a ritually impoverished time. The concern for being casual and authentic has robbed us of socially agreed upon way of doing things. We may be at the point where we may need to create our own for ourselves and family for significant moments. Ritual has a way of marking special time. Our children are grown, but they recall what special food we would have at Easter and Christmas.
Saturday-Learning to be gentler on ourselves is a spiritual issue. It seems to me that we have imported the correcting voice of parents, teachers, or bosses and turned them into the voice of conscience. We are all spiritually fragile. I realize that we may be too easy on ourselves at times. We should expect that we will fail at times. Castigating ourselves can become sinful when it attacks our very self-worth and regard. Beating ourselves up gets us where in the end?
Monday-Buds are on the trees as I write and some daffodils and crocuses have emerged as well. I ran into Janet Riley, and she said the dogwood trees are gorgeous down south. I love that pastels match the approaching Easter season. Recently Biblical scholar and stated clerk Carol Griffith spoke of God as an artist. This is surely one of the times of the year when that image is at its peak. Today, I am taken with the thought that god does some of the best artistic work with living material.
Tuesday-Stellar spring begins with the equinox. This has been a warm march already. I’ve gotten some salad greens planted and am trying peas for the first time. For me lent is a time of planting spiritual seeds that we harvest all through the year. Is there something in your spiritual garden that you need every year? Is there something missing that you would like to have?
Wednesday-Contempt is the opposite of seeing the image of God in someone. It is a hurtful thing to feel contempt, especially from someone you love. It gives the sense that one is unworthy of even time or basic consideration. Sin against others holds them in contempt. I am so grateful that God does not look at us with contempt. Instead we are counted worthy of the life, death, and resurrection, of Jesus.
Thursday-I love March Madness college basketball. I love when a David beats a Goliath. Already some top teams have gone down. I love the emotion of getting wrapped up in a team and how much the players care. That feeling can be an aspiration for us on church feast days. That feeling of togetherness is an aspiration for the fellow feeling of a congregation.
Friday-We live in a ritually impoverished time. The concern for being casual and authentic has robbed us of socially agreed upon way of doing things. We may be at the point where we may need to create our own for ourselves and family for significant moments. Ritual has a way of marking special time. Our children are grown, but they recall what special food we would have at Easter and Christmas.
Saturday-Learning to be gentler on ourselves is a spiritual issue. It seems to me that we have imported the correcting voice of parents, teachers, or bosses and turned them into the voice of conscience. We are all spiritually fragile. I realize that we may be too easy on ourselves at times. We should expect that we will fail at times. Castigating ourselves can become sinful when it attacks our very self-worth and regard. Beating ourselves up gets us where in the end?
Sermon Notes 3/18 Num. 21:4-9, Jn. 3:14-21, Eph. 2:1-10
We all recognize the verse John 3:16 from being waved on bumper stickers and on bed sheets at football games. Most of us don’t catch the reference just two verses prior to it.Years ago, I helped a friend of mine with a fledgling Bible school, since I like to teach, and this issue hit me very hard with his classes. The students could rattle off some chapter and verse numbers but they rarely could place those passages into their context. In the Wiseman Bible class on Friday morning, the gentlemen read form their resource packet on the necessity to read Scripture in its historical and literary context, to more fully appreciate the treasure within the bible.
As good Presbyterians, let’s look at the Old Testament behind this verse. The people were afflicted by poisonous snakes, fiery serpents. If they looked up at an image of a bronze snake, then they would live. Recall the image of the snake in healing still graces pharmacy shops all around our country. It comes from Greek myth of a healer deified by Zeus and his staff had a serpent, a symbol of wisdom entwined around it.
My old professor now dean at Princeton seminary James Kay, preached on this passage in Australia. Looking up at the cross, we see that terrible instrument brought spiritual healing to a world. Looking at the cross drains some of the poison away. Put differently Calvary provides an antidote to the venom of all the hate and violence we face. On many crucifixes we see a snake being crushed by the foot of Jesus on the cross. to look at the cross is to drain the poison out of us, the antidote to all of the venom that courses through us day in and day out.
Some of you may have watched the old TV show Star Trek. In one episode a creature infested members of the ship, and they found that light could rid them of the infection. Mr Spock was the first to try out the experiment, but he was left blinded by the light, at least for a time. For john, to see the light of Jesus Christ as the love of god is to know salvation. It may well mean becoming blind to the faults of others and seeing them through the eyes of love. To be blind to the reality of the love of god in Jesus Christ becomes the judgment, the terrible curse of being unable to see or receive love. Hear it again, not to condemn the world, not to use punishment as a divine weapon. In our time, sin is better conceived as an illness, a sickness, than a crime or a bad habit.
In the gospel of John the physical is the gateway to the spiritual realm. the two intersect but have different dimension, of course. The remarkable set of readings we have for today underscores this with our reading from Ephesians with john. The Israelites were dying in the wilderness. The spiritual and emotional poison in our bloodstream renders us on the spiritual critical list. Twice Ephesians calls us dead, no spirit, no life. Only God, out of the great love, the love made incarnate in Jesus Christ. I heard two two complaints this week that ministers do not preach about judgment, punishment as a goad to good behavior and a deterrent against bad behavior. After all of these years, we recoil against the very notion that god gives the us the precious gift of being saved. Maybe that is both accurate and proper, but thoroughly wrong-headed in my view. Following the logic of our passages, punishment and deterrence are tools for a graceless world.
the church has been called a hospital for sinners. Here we get the prescription we so require in order to live into this lfie and the world to come. It’s a simple remedy from Jesus. See me.
As good Presbyterians, let’s look at the Old Testament behind this verse. The people were afflicted by poisonous snakes, fiery serpents. If they looked up at an image of a bronze snake, then they would live. Recall the image of the snake in healing still graces pharmacy shops all around our country. It comes from Greek myth of a healer deified by Zeus and his staff had a serpent, a symbol of wisdom entwined around it.
My old professor now dean at Princeton seminary James Kay, preached on this passage in Australia. Looking up at the cross, we see that terrible instrument brought spiritual healing to a world. Looking at the cross drains some of the poison away. Put differently Calvary provides an antidote to the venom of all the hate and violence we face. On many crucifixes we see a snake being crushed by the foot of Jesus on the cross. to look at the cross is to drain the poison out of us, the antidote to all of the venom that courses through us day in and day out.
Some of you may have watched the old TV show Star Trek. In one episode a creature infested members of the ship, and they found that light could rid them of the infection. Mr Spock was the first to try out the experiment, but he was left blinded by the light, at least for a time. For john, to see the light of Jesus Christ as the love of god is to know salvation. It may well mean becoming blind to the faults of others and seeing them through the eyes of love. To be blind to the reality of the love of god in Jesus Christ becomes the judgment, the terrible curse of being unable to see or receive love. Hear it again, not to condemn the world, not to use punishment as a divine weapon. In our time, sin is better conceived as an illness, a sickness, than a crime or a bad habit.
In the gospel of John the physical is the gateway to the spiritual realm. the two intersect but have different dimension, of course. The remarkable set of readings we have for today underscores this with our reading from Ephesians with john. The Israelites were dying in the wilderness. The spiritual and emotional poison in our bloodstream renders us on the spiritual critical list. Twice Ephesians calls us dead, no spirit, no life. Only God, out of the great love, the love made incarnate in Jesus Christ. I heard two two complaints this week that ministers do not preach about judgment, punishment as a goad to good behavior and a deterrent against bad behavior. After all of these years, we recoil against the very notion that god gives the us the precious gift of being saved. Maybe that is both accurate and proper, but thoroughly wrong-headed in my view. Following the logic of our passages, punishment and deterrence are tools for a graceless world.
the church has been called a hospital for sinners. Here we get the prescription we so require in order to live into this lfie and the world to come. It’s a simple remedy from Jesus. See me.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Column for March 16
St. Patrick’s Day is tomorrow. The European Irish look askance at our desire to make it a day of parades, but mostly alcohol consumption. Combined with March Madness on the TV, we could be swimming in green beer. My father died when I was small, but with a last name like Crowley, I own that slice of my heritage.
So much of the stories of St. Patrick are swathed in legend. Of course, some of my Irish ancestors would say that one shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. He was from Britain and enslaved in Ireland for a number of years. He escaped, but he had a vision to be called back to Ireland to spread the Christian faith. Ironically, he worked as a shepherd and then was called to shepherd souls as a bishop in Ireland around the 400s.
To be Irish is to know that “the world someday will break your heart.” the old country was harsh for the poor, under the yoke of a foreign hand. Laughter helps comfort the heartbreak. I love the idea that parishes would provide dispensations for the Lenten strictures for St. Patrick’s Day. While the Irish are proud: “if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, then that’s luck enough,” They love to puncture self-importance: “the greatest danger to the country is “the small minds of its small people.”
They know full well, for all of their love of language, (as “there is no tax on talk”) that words are insufficient in a hard world. “The sweetest sound of all is a quiet mouth.” Action is required in life, as deciding and action are separate steps. “You never get a field plowed by turning it over in your mind.”
A marvelous prayer is attributed to Patrick, the so called breastplate prayer. I love it as it touches on Celtic spirituality. The words reflect ancient Ireland and they were not translated into English until the 19th century. First it emphasizes the “strong name of the Trinity,” sometimes called the Three in Irish prayers. (The story of Patrick using the shamrock leaves to speak of the distinct but unified plant was used to speak of the Trinity, after all.) Second, it touches on the natural world:” the virtues of star-lit heaven…the whiteness of the moon, the flashing of the lightning free…and the old eternal rocks. Third, protection is key: “the power of God to hold and lead, god’s eye to watch…God’s shield to ward…the heavenly host be my guard.” Finally, it has a sense of the enveloping nature of God’s love: “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me…Christ to comfort and restore me…Christ in hearts of all that love me.” for the Irish it is indeed a model prayer as it touches all of life. For the Irish, all actions communicate to heaven’s gates, are offerings to a generous God, so the Irish had prayers for everything from lighting a lamp or putting it out at night, to washing dishes, to grace before meals.
In a hard world, we all need blessings. May the rain blow soft against the snug windows of your house that’s paid for. May your blessings outnumber all the weeds in your garden. May troubles avoid you like a debtor avoids an evening phone call. May good luck pursue you like a linebacker. May your wallet be fat with cash and your heart be light.
“May God indeed hold you in the palm of his hand, but may God never close the fist too tightly.”
“May you be in heaven one half hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”
So much of the stories of St. Patrick are swathed in legend. Of course, some of my Irish ancestors would say that one shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. He was from Britain and enslaved in Ireland for a number of years. He escaped, but he had a vision to be called back to Ireland to spread the Christian faith. Ironically, he worked as a shepherd and then was called to shepherd souls as a bishop in Ireland around the 400s.
To be Irish is to know that “the world someday will break your heart.” the old country was harsh for the poor, under the yoke of a foreign hand. Laughter helps comfort the heartbreak. I love the idea that parishes would provide dispensations for the Lenten strictures for St. Patrick’s Day. While the Irish are proud: “if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, then that’s luck enough,” They love to puncture self-importance: “the greatest danger to the country is “the small minds of its small people.”
They know full well, for all of their love of language, (as “there is no tax on talk”) that words are insufficient in a hard world. “The sweetest sound of all is a quiet mouth.” Action is required in life, as deciding and action are separate steps. “You never get a field plowed by turning it over in your mind.”
A marvelous prayer is attributed to Patrick, the so called breastplate prayer. I love it as it touches on Celtic spirituality. The words reflect ancient Ireland and they were not translated into English until the 19th century. First it emphasizes the “strong name of the Trinity,” sometimes called the Three in Irish prayers. (The story of Patrick using the shamrock leaves to speak of the distinct but unified plant was used to speak of the Trinity, after all.) Second, it touches on the natural world:” the virtues of star-lit heaven…the whiteness of the moon, the flashing of the lightning free…and the old eternal rocks. Third, protection is key: “the power of God to hold and lead, god’s eye to watch…God’s shield to ward…the heavenly host be my guard.” Finally, it has a sense of the enveloping nature of God’s love: “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me…Christ to comfort and restore me…Christ in hearts of all that love me.” for the Irish it is indeed a model prayer as it touches all of life. For the Irish, all actions communicate to heaven’s gates, are offerings to a generous God, so the Irish had prayers for everything from lighting a lamp or putting it out at night, to washing dishes, to grace before meals.
In a hard world, we all need blessings. May the rain blow soft against the snug windows of your house that’s paid for. May your blessings outnumber all the weeds in your garden. May troubles avoid you like a debtor avoids an evening phone call. May good luck pursue you like a linebacker. May your wallet be fat with cash and your heart be light.
“May God indeed hold you in the palm of his hand, but may God never close the fist too tightly.”
“May you be in heaven one half hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”
Monday, March 12, 2012
Sermon Notes 3/11 I Cor. 1:18-25
When people are engaged in criticism, a decisive slam seems to be, they have no common sense. Sometimes that means a sense of the practical as opposed to the theoretical.
Sometimes, it means something we assume people agree with reflexively, without much thought, common opinion. II am learning here that some folks have a real antipathy toward Paul’s work, in part due to stereotypes without reading him, or in reading him, they find him difficult. Perhaps, Paul has no religious common sense. With that thought, I jump right into the thicket of his work on cross. Part of me admires the relentless optimism and promise of a lot of contemporary American religion. People need to be lifted up. I oppose its relentless feel good command, however. It does not reflect human experience. It adds to our positive thinking refusal to admit to the hardships of dealing with the tragedies that afflict every human life, no matter how well lived, no matter how good we are. We need a religious way of expressing times and situations that threaten to crush, those hard times when religious pick me ups sound like platitudes or cliches.
The Presbyterian God is rightfully big, capacious, and powerful. That is part of the biblical witness, but we are in a sanctuary that has the Celtic cross dominating our central sight line. The cross is the gospel of admitting suffering in life and into the very life of god. Luther spoke of a theology of the cross.In Christ, God demonstrates power and wisdom in a cross, in an instrument of capital punishment. Who in their right mind would do this? Paul answers, god, proof positive that it is beyond human claims on it.
Paul first wants to emphasize the cross of Christ as a gift no one would think of as an instrument of salvation. He calls it utterly moronic, to our way of thinking. Second, it wants to make sure that we do not see that cross as a personal possession; it is god’s gift to humanity. Let’s go at it this way. men and women sometimes differ on appropriate gifts. Women see them as symbols of someone taking time and effort to find a suitable gift. Men see them as utilitarian, as something needed and useful. So men are right that a blender for a birthday is useful, but they are wrong that a woman will see it as a proper symbol of respect, care, and romance, of true love. so then it becomes a useful weapon for the woman when they brain the husband with it. In other words, Paul says that God demonstrates no common sense. It’s obvious god should clean hose, well maybe except ours. God should eliminate opposition to the Way of God. The Mighty One shoulfd continue to demonstrate mighty acts like the Parting of the Red Sea. (Hall quotes here)
The deep wisdom here is in the nature of love. Love is not coerced. Love empowers, but love is not power over someone in an attempt to control them. Love seeks to bring the best out of people. Love seeks to bring the best out of a bad situation.the cross enters right into the hells we all face of abandoning the way of God or feeling as if God has abandoned us in our plight.
The way of the cross is for us too. We forfeit the grand game of power plays. We walk away from self-promotion, and look out for others.We do not apply the standards of business models to the work of the church. we so blithely say god is everywhere. The cross shows us God at God’s most divine there at the nadir, the deepest darkest valley of life.
Sometimes, it means something we assume people agree with reflexively, without much thought, common opinion. II am learning here that some folks have a real antipathy toward Paul’s work, in part due to stereotypes without reading him, or in reading him, they find him difficult. Perhaps, Paul has no religious common sense. With that thought, I jump right into the thicket of his work on cross. Part of me admires the relentless optimism and promise of a lot of contemporary American religion. People need to be lifted up. I oppose its relentless feel good command, however. It does not reflect human experience. It adds to our positive thinking refusal to admit to the hardships of dealing with the tragedies that afflict every human life, no matter how well lived, no matter how good we are. We need a religious way of expressing times and situations that threaten to crush, those hard times when religious pick me ups sound like platitudes or cliches.
The Presbyterian God is rightfully big, capacious, and powerful. That is part of the biblical witness, but we are in a sanctuary that has the Celtic cross dominating our central sight line. The cross is the gospel of admitting suffering in life and into the very life of god. Luther spoke of a theology of the cross.In Christ, God demonstrates power and wisdom in a cross, in an instrument of capital punishment. Who in their right mind would do this? Paul answers, god, proof positive that it is beyond human claims on it.
Paul first wants to emphasize the cross of Christ as a gift no one would think of as an instrument of salvation. He calls it utterly moronic, to our way of thinking. Second, it wants to make sure that we do not see that cross as a personal possession; it is god’s gift to humanity. Let’s go at it this way. men and women sometimes differ on appropriate gifts. Women see them as symbols of someone taking time and effort to find a suitable gift. Men see them as utilitarian, as something needed and useful. So men are right that a blender for a birthday is useful, but they are wrong that a woman will see it as a proper symbol of respect, care, and romance, of true love. so then it becomes a useful weapon for the woman when they brain the husband with it. In other words, Paul says that God demonstrates no common sense. It’s obvious god should clean hose, well maybe except ours. God should eliminate opposition to the Way of God. The Mighty One shoulfd continue to demonstrate mighty acts like the Parting of the Red Sea. (Hall quotes here)
The deep wisdom here is in the nature of love. Love is not coerced. Love empowers, but love is not power over someone in an attempt to control them. Love seeks to bring the best out of people. Love seeks to bring the best out of a bad situation.the cross enters right into the hells we all face of abandoning the way of God or feeling as if God has abandoned us in our plight.
The way of the cross is for us too. We forfeit the grand game of power plays. We walk away from self-promotion, and look out for others.We do not apply the standards of business models to the work of the church. we so blithely say god is everywhere. The cross shows us God at God’s most divine there at the nadir, the deepest darkest valley of life.
Week of March 11 devotions
Sunday March 11 Ps.19 is great linkage of a religious attitude to science. They do not have to be enemies. Indeed that is the main issue of the Clergy Letter Project of which I am a member. It starts with a hymn to creation and then move to god’s teaching or law. At the end, notice how it admits that our knowledge is always partial and provisional.
Monday-I was re-reading Martin Marty’s Cry of Absence. It was written in the wake of his wife’s death. He uses the psalms extensively to probe his pain, and ours. He writes as what he terms a summery, optimistic spirituality only made him feel worse. For the hard times, he needed a wintry, spirituality that admits to cold and fallow times of the spirit.
Tuesday-We practiced the hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded in choir and heard it in the community service last week. Bernard, the great preacher of love, wrote the words a millennium ago. Brian Wren picked up the last verse “what language shall I borrow/to thank you dearest friend.” Search your heart and mind for language to describe for gratitude for the life, person, and work of Jesus Christ.
Wednesday-The book of Proverbs applies wisdom to everyday life. 26 2--1: looks to anger as a problem. “For lack of wood, the fire goes out; and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. As charcoal is to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.” Anger burns, and it can burn out of control. Proverbs has it also need an accelerant, as in arson. Here, we are the ones who fan the flames.
Thursday-I am leery of Christians who valorize suffering. To me it often degenerates into blaming the victim of suffering for their plight or tells them that suffering makes us stronger. Suffering can threaten us as well. In hindsight, we may see some wisdom we acquired, but it is so hard to deal with in the moment. We are called, instead, to try to heal suffering when we encounter it. Ins tead of passive acceptance, we resist it.
Friday-The Ides of March just meant a division within the halves of a month. It is known to us as Caesar was killed in 44BC on this date. It was foretold that he should beware the Ides of March. a sense of foreboding is a difficult thing to handle. Are we caving to anxiety, or should be honor feelings that something is a miss and alter our plans? Intuition can be a gift, a curse, or a figment of our imaginations. We can pray for discernment to read our intuitions. We can go boldly in the prudence of care and in the boldness of God’s protection.
Saturday-St Patrick’s Day is a celebration of Irish/Celtic lore. Celtic spirituality has garnered more attention of late. I am attracted to it, as it hold store in praying without ceasing, as it makes every activity a locus for prayer. I also prize its use of nature to offer praises for adoration to the Creator. “Patient lover give us love: till every shower of rain speaks of Thy forgiveness:/till every storm assures us that we company with Thee:
and every move of light and shadow speaks of grave and resurrection: to assure us that we cannot die: Thou creating, redeeming and sustaining God” (George MacLeod)
Monday-I was re-reading Martin Marty’s Cry of Absence. It was written in the wake of his wife’s death. He uses the psalms extensively to probe his pain, and ours. He writes as what he terms a summery, optimistic spirituality only made him feel worse. For the hard times, he needed a wintry, spirituality that admits to cold and fallow times of the spirit.
Tuesday-We practiced the hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded in choir and heard it in the community service last week. Bernard, the great preacher of love, wrote the words a millennium ago. Brian Wren picked up the last verse “what language shall I borrow/to thank you dearest friend.” Search your heart and mind for language to describe for gratitude for the life, person, and work of Jesus Christ.
Wednesday-The book of Proverbs applies wisdom to everyday life. 26 2--1: looks to anger as a problem. “For lack of wood, the fire goes out; and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. As charcoal is to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.” Anger burns, and it can burn out of control. Proverbs has it also need an accelerant, as in arson. Here, we are the ones who fan the flames.
Thursday-I am leery of Christians who valorize suffering. To me it often degenerates into blaming the victim of suffering for their plight or tells them that suffering makes us stronger. Suffering can threaten us as well. In hindsight, we may see some wisdom we acquired, but it is so hard to deal with in the moment. We are called, instead, to try to heal suffering when we encounter it. Ins tead of passive acceptance, we resist it.
Friday-The Ides of March just meant a division within the halves of a month. It is known to us as Caesar was killed in 44BC on this date. It was foretold that he should beware the Ides of March. a sense of foreboding is a difficult thing to handle. Are we caving to anxiety, or should be honor feelings that something is a miss and alter our plans? Intuition can be a gift, a curse, or a figment of our imaginations. We can pray for discernment to read our intuitions. We can go boldly in the prudence of care and in the boldness of God’s protection.
Saturday-St Patrick’s Day is a celebration of Irish/Celtic lore. Celtic spirituality has garnered more attention of late. I am attracted to it, as it hold store in praying without ceasing, as it makes every activity a locus for prayer. I also prize its use of nature to offer praises for adoration to the Creator. “Patient lover give us love: till every shower of rain speaks of Thy forgiveness:/till every storm assures us that we company with Thee:
and every move of light and shadow speaks of grave and resurrection: to assure us that we cannot die: Thou creating, redeeming and sustaining God” (George MacLeod)
Saturday, March 10, 2012
A Response to the Failure Rate on Presbyterian Ordination Exams
Another national Presbyterian exam process is complete. Again Facebook is filled with postings by readers of the exams defending the abysmal failure rates on these exams. I was unable to read this year, due to daily radiation therapy, but I continue to be at war with our system and wanted to post some objections. I frankly do not buy the contention that our excellent seminaries are not preparing people to explore the exam questions. The possible exception could be worship and sacrament as I like data on the number of students who have such a course prior to taking the exams.
Most of the folks who read exams have never graded exams at all, or have read our ordination exams for a nubbier of years. The materials given as guidelines fail in a number of ways.
1) They do not serve as guidelines but as models. Graders are sorely tempted to compare exams to the resource material models and fail to then read exams on their own merits.When readers say that the questions were not answered fully, I fear they mean that the responses do not look like the resource material.
2) The resources are lacking in providing a range o9f different approaches to the questions.
3) the resource papers need to provide a variety of sample answers considered adequate. I repeat not perfect, adequate.
4) We have no clear criteria as to what parts of an exam are not adequately covered require a failing grade.
5) Readers routinely admit to overstepping their bounds. They admit to grading on stylistic issues, organizational issues and the like. Again, readers usually lack training sufficient to grade someone down on what are often subjective measures.
6) Readers routinely grade someone down if they disagree with the premise, the method, the style of argument of the exam. Again, the point would be not if a student is agreeing with the reader, we need guidance as to how to judge the quality of the argument, irrespective of the reader’s opinion.
7) We have yet to come to grips with the critical question of the diversity of readers. A student may have to satisfy two professors, or two pastors, or two elders. I hesitate to claim this, but I will anyway. A number of pastors who read exams strike me as frustrated academicians and are determined to judge exams to a standard few can meet. Elders may come in with the discerning tool of thinking if they would like to hear this in their church, not if the response is an adequate one, whether they are attracted to the position of the piece or not.
8) I suspect that these exams require too much, in the time allotted. Increasingly exams are take-home, or group projects, or papers. Time sensitive tests with blue books ar enot as frequent as they once were in professional school.
9) It is high time to question that guilt-reduction notion that the exams are already failures or successes before the readers grade them. Readers bring a world of experience and attitudes toward the test. They interact with the material. They need more help in learning how to evaluate an adequate exam.
Most of the folks who read exams have never graded exams at all, or have read our ordination exams for a nubbier of years. The materials given as guidelines fail in a number of ways.
1) They do not serve as guidelines but as models. Graders are sorely tempted to compare exams to the resource material models and fail to then read exams on their own merits.When readers say that the questions were not answered fully, I fear they mean that the responses do not look like the resource material.
2) The resources are lacking in providing a range o9f different approaches to the questions.
3) the resource papers need to provide a variety of sample answers considered adequate. I repeat not perfect, adequate.
4) We have no clear criteria as to what parts of an exam are not adequately covered require a failing grade.
5) Readers routinely admit to overstepping their bounds. They admit to grading on stylistic issues, organizational issues and the like. Again, readers usually lack training sufficient to grade someone down on what are often subjective measures.
6) Readers routinely grade someone down if they disagree with the premise, the method, the style of argument of the exam. Again, the point would be not if a student is agreeing with the reader, we need guidance as to how to judge the quality of the argument, irrespective of the reader’s opinion.
7) We have yet to come to grips with the critical question of the diversity of readers. A student may have to satisfy two professors, or two pastors, or two elders. I hesitate to claim this, but I will anyway. A number of pastors who read exams strike me as frustrated academicians and are determined to judge exams to a standard few can meet. Elders may come in with the discerning tool of thinking if they would like to hear this in their church, not if the response is an adequate one, whether they are attracted to the position of the piece or not.
8) I suspect that these exams require too much, in the time allotted. Increasingly exams are take-home, or group projects, or papers. Time sensitive tests with blue books ar enot as frequent as they once were in professional school.
9) It is high time to question that guilt-reduction notion that the exams are already failures or successes before the readers grade them. Readers bring a world of experience and attitudes toward the test. They interact with the material. They need more help in learning how to evaluate an adequate exam.
Friday, March 9, 2012
First cut of Num 21:4-9
1) Now we’re talking: snakes in the wilderness. Samuel L. Jackson with Moses.I assume they are fiery serpents, burning serpents, either because of glittering skin, or the burning of the poison of their bites.
2) The best job I have ever seen with our texts today is a sermon by James Kay in Seasons of
Grace. Not only that, he is one of the rare preaching professors who publishes short sermons, actual 12-15 minutes sermons.
3)Recall Dennis Olson’s path in his Birth of the New book.The original generation cannot move from slavery to freedom, so they will fail to reach the Promised Land in favor of a new generation. for their complaining they get killed off.
4) A good sermon could make a distinction between lament prayers and this sort of complaining.
5) I don’t know what to make of the cure not being the snakes being removed but this bronze, shiny image. A really powerful image is looking up at it instead of down at the snakes. Maybe we have a hint of homeopathy and getting a touch of the poison.
6) This image apparently then gets destroyed later in a purge against idolatry by a later king of Israel, Hezekiah. Why this snake would not be a graven image in the first place mystifies me.
7) We are in the middle of some wordplay here. nahash means serpent and nahoshet is brass/bronze/ Isaiah links this to seraphs as fiery serpents in a number of places 14, 30.
Is the image a sort of sympathetic magic so that the shiny serpent image counters the fiery serpent bite? We have some evidence of snake worship in Canaan.
8)I suppose one could make a good study of the serpent’s mythic power throughout Scripture.
I don;t know how far we could go in linking this story with Gen.3
2) The best job I have ever seen with our texts today is a sermon by James Kay in Seasons of
Grace. Not only that, he is one of the rare preaching professors who publishes short sermons, actual 12-15 minutes sermons.
3)Recall Dennis Olson’s path in his Birth of the New book.The original generation cannot move from slavery to freedom, so they will fail to reach the Promised Land in favor of a new generation. for their complaining they get killed off.
4) A good sermon could make a distinction between lament prayers and this sort of complaining.
5) I don’t know what to make of the cure not being the snakes being removed but this bronze, shiny image. A really powerful image is looking up at it instead of down at the snakes. Maybe we have a hint of homeopathy and getting a touch of the poison.
6) This image apparently then gets destroyed later in a purge against idolatry by a later king of Israel, Hezekiah. Why this snake would not be a graven image in the first place mystifies me.
7) We are in the middle of some wordplay here. nahash means serpent and nahoshet is brass/bronze/ Isaiah links this to seraphs as fiery serpents in a number of places 14, 30.
Is the image a sort of sympathetic magic so that the shiny serpent image counters the fiery serpent bite? We have some evidence of snake worship in Canaan.
8)I suppose one could make a good study of the serpent’s mythic power throughout Scripture.
I don;t know how far we could go in linking this story with Gen.3
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Notes from a facebook posting on the Ten Commandments and romantic Science
I got into a small disagreement on facebook and wanted to write a bit more. Since it’s raining this morning, I can get started as I hate to walk in the rain , especially first thing in the morning.
I reacted against a quick post question that seemed to ally the 10 Commandments with a vague mention of scientific principles. firs tissue was a direct likening of Torah with the 10 Commandments. OK, I suppose the 10 C can be a summary form of Torah, but it means more. It can be the first five books of the OT. 2) It means instruction, teaching and is not limited by any means to explication of the 10C. 3) It can mean in the NT, identity markers that distinguished Jews from the surrounding culture, sabbath, circumcision, kosher. 4) Torah gets summarized in other scriptural points: Micah’s do justice, love mercy, walk humbly before the Lord, or the love god and neighbor approach of Jesus.
Second, I react when ministers casually use science to buttress a religious point. First, we tend to be romantic about nature. We highlight harmony and ignore its terrors. I am going in for daily radiation treatments after prostate surgery and find it difficult to read of the joys of natural life. It includes more than sunsets, but is filled with entropy and death. the cruelty of nature militates against using nature as an ethical base. Trying to follow nature as a guide would not use the 10C as guide.
Third, i react when folks seem to feel that Biblical ethical material needs to be buttressed with romantic views of science. My eyebrows raise when easy attempts are made to link it to vague Eastern notions of karma, so that the 10C then get relegated to being part of a demonstration that these norms fit with a scheme of nature. I especially object when it is allied with points such as it proves that ‘what goes around comes around” when that does not comport with the Christian message of forgiveness. a critical point came when one writer spoke of physics demonstrating a living universe. This is a powerful extension of the Gaia hypothesis, but it threatens to dissolve the distinction between the Creator and the creation. Physicistsin my limited experience do see the lawlike connections in matter, but do not seem to use that as a move into making ethical pronouncements.
Fourth, in context, the 10C are presented as intrinsically important, almost as ‘self-evident” truths.
Fifth, one member of the clergy then tried to elevate the disagreement to one about natural theology. Ps. 19 was used for the point. Calvin of course noted the impact of nature as pointing toward god. He spent most of his time speaking about our blindness to the reality of God, however. In part, nature itself is blind to the nature of God. SO, he insists that not only do we have the spectacles of Scripture but that the revelation of god in Jesus Christ and the impact of the spirit deals with the issue of relying on nature to buttress the impact of the 10C. (See Matthew Boulton’s new book, for instance) Looking for some sort of ethical harmony between nature and the 10C, and using the former to give credence to the latter is, i would guess, precisely the kind of thing that elicited Barth’s famous, No, to natural theology.
As to Ps. 19. first, I have no issue with seeking linkages between creation and wisdom and torah, as generally employed. I will not see the 10C as embodying torah on its own. Terence Fretheim’s great book on God and Creation shows a relational god in dynamic activity with creation, including law/torah, generally conceived. See especially, for our purposes, his chapter on law and creation, even if he goes a bit far in his analysis of the 10C not having much new to say. Instead of that dynamic interplay of change, we are prone to make the 10C frozen and I fear that trying to tie them to science would only increase that tendency. No one, read Ps. 19 ‘s torah as being the 10C only. Rather it is about god’s communication through nature and its order and with us in our activity in the world. note well its warning in vv. 11-12 on the depths of the human heart in ways Calvin both used and approved. Even science cannot help us from being prone to errorm false assumptions, denial and other hidden faults.
Sixth, casual use of harmony between the 10C and some shards of science allow us to ignore vital work.:examining the meaning of the 10C themselves. Jesus uses the 10C as a frame for a powerful expansion of their scope, externally and internally. It seems to me that we have some excellent resources in the PCUSA adult or confirmation catechisms on the 10C or to work with the impressive extensions done by the Westminster catechism, especially the longer one, with it positive emphasis on the third use of the law.
I reacted against a quick post question that seemed to ally the 10 Commandments with a vague mention of scientific principles. firs tissue was a direct likening of Torah with the 10 Commandments. OK, I suppose the 10 C can be a summary form of Torah, but it means more. It can be the first five books of the OT. 2) It means instruction, teaching and is not limited by any means to explication of the 10C. 3) It can mean in the NT, identity markers that distinguished Jews from the surrounding culture, sabbath, circumcision, kosher. 4) Torah gets summarized in other scriptural points: Micah’s do justice, love mercy, walk humbly before the Lord, or the love god and neighbor approach of Jesus.
Second, I react when ministers casually use science to buttress a religious point. First, we tend to be romantic about nature. We highlight harmony and ignore its terrors. I am going in for daily radiation treatments after prostate surgery and find it difficult to read of the joys of natural life. It includes more than sunsets, but is filled with entropy and death. the cruelty of nature militates against using nature as an ethical base. Trying to follow nature as a guide would not use the 10C as guide.
Third, i react when folks seem to feel that Biblical ethical material needs to be buttressed with romantic views of science. My eyebrows raise when easy attempts are made to link it to vague Eastern notions of karma, so that the 10C then get relegated to being part of a demonstration that these norms fit with a scheme of nature. I especially object when it is allied with points such as it proves that ‘what goes around comes around” when that does not comport with the Christian message of forgiveness. a critical point came when one writer spoke of physics demonstrating a living universe. This is a powerful extension of the Gaia hypothesis, but it threatens to dissolve the distinction between the Creator and the creation. Physicistsin my limited experience do see the lawlike connections in matter, but do not seem to use that as a move into making ethical pronouncements.
Fourth, in context, the 10C are presented as intrinsically important, almost as ‘self-evident” truths.
Fifth, one member of the clergy then tried to elevate the disagreement to one about natural theology. Ps. 19 was used for the point. Calvin of course noted the impact of nature as pointing toward god. He spent most of his time speaking about our blindness to the reality of God, however. In part, nature itself is blind to the nature of God. SO, he insists that not only do we have the spectacles of Scripture but that the revelation of god in Jesus Christ and the impact of the spirit deals with the issue of relying on nature to buttress the impact of the 10C. (See Matthew Boulton’s new book, for instance) Looking for some sort of ethical harmony between nature and the 10C, and using the former to give credence to the latter is, i would guess, precisely the kind of thing that elicited Barth’s famous, No, to natural theology.
As to Ps. 19. first, I have no issue with seeking linkages between creation and wisdom and torah, as generally employed. I will not see the 10C as embodying torah on its own. Terence Fretheim’s great book on God and Creation shows a relational god in dynamic activity with creation, including law/torah, generally conceived. See especially, for our purposes, his chapter on law and creation, even if he goes a bit far in his analysis of the 10C not having much new to say. Instead of that dynamic interplay of change, we are prone to make the 10C frozen and I fear that trying to tie them to science would only increase that tendency. No one, read Ps. 19 ‘s torah as being the 10C only. Rather it is about god’s communication through nature and its order and with us in our activity in the world. note well its warning in vv. 11-12 on the depths of the human heart in ways Calvin both used and approved. Even science cannot help us from being prone to errorm false assumptions, denial and other hidden faults.
Sixth, casual use of harmony between the 10C and some shards of science allow us to ignore vital work.:examining the meaning of the 10C themselves. Jesus uses the 10C as a frame for a powerful expansion of their scope, externally and internally. It seems to me that we have some excellent resources in the PCUSA adult or confirmation catechisms on the 10C or to work with the impressive extensions done by the Westminster catechism, especially the longer one, with it positive emphasis on the third use of the law.
Monday, March 5, 2012
First cut at notes on 10C-Ex. 20
1) We’ve worked on the Ten Commandments before, but I’m not sure if I am going to be too lazy to see what we’ve done before. Again, please get your hands on Patrick Miller’s Ten C for the Interpretation series. Also see the intriguing look at the decalogue by the great ethicist Paul Lehmann. when i was in seminary Harrelson’s book captured a number of folks and it has come out in a new format or edition.I really like Dennis Olson’s look at them in Dt. and the Death of Moses, especially as chapters following the 10C amplify the commandments. (Recall, in Hebrew, they are the 10 words. I think jerome coined the word commandments for them in the Vulgate).
2) first, let’s notice some differences in this batch and the form in Dt. 5.Sabbath and honoring one’s parents, to a lesser degree, come into play immediately.One could use this as a way to introduce repetition in teaching, or re-iteration. I tend to think we cannot usefully talk about them all in a sermon, so please consider picking one or two.
3) Sometimes I wonder how much of this imagines a legal proceeding. Notice oath taking and the command against false witness/perjury. If you are a Republican and mourning the folks running for President, you could pick these two and attack Clinton.
4) While I am on the subject once could use the image of the push to have the Ten C monuments gracing public areas and courthouses in our country.
5) One could also do some legal anthropology and see the not much is different in the second table, with the exception of coveting, but some significant differences seem to come into play with the first tablet.
6) One could also break loose a bit and then look at Moses going back up after the Golden Calf incident.
7) consider looking at how the Larger catechism handles the 10c, especially how it employs the third use of the law to turn them into positive as well as negative guidelines for living. Also the PCUSA Adult Study Catechism does very good work on them, and so cold be good material to open the mind and heart.
8) You may wish to look carefully at some words. for instance, the word, kill/murder seems to me in its use to be closer to homicide, intentional and negligent, in English usage. maybe you could feel brave and move into capital punishment, or abortion (not in the Miller treatise) or just war theory v. pacifist material. A professor at CTS, Indy, Wilma Bailey agrees with the anabaptist formulation that it indeed means kill.
2) first, let’s notice some differences in this batch and the form in Dt. 5.Sabbath and honoring one’s parents, to a lesser degree, come into play immediately.One could use this as a way to introduce repetition in teaching, or re-iteration. I tend to think we cannot usefully talk about them all in a sermon, so please consider picking one or two.
3) Sometimes I wonder how much of this imagines a legal proceeding. Notice oath taking and the command against false witness/perjury. If you are a Republican and mourning the folks running for President, you could pick these two and attack Clinton.
4) While I am on the subject once could use the image of the push to have the Ten C monuments gracing public areas and courthouses in our country.
5) One could also do some legal anthropology and see the not much is different in the second table, with the exception of coveting, but some significant differences seem to come into play with the first tablet.
6) One could also break loose a bit and then look at Moses going back up after the Golden Calf incident.
7) consider looking at how the Larger catechism handles the 10c, especially how it employs the third use of the law to turn them into positive as well as negative guidelines for living. Also the PCUSA Adult Study Catechism does very good work on them, and so cold be good material to open the mind and heart.
8) You may wish to look carefully at some words. for instance, the word, kill/murder seems to me in its use to be closer to homicide, intentional and negligent, in English usage. maybe you could feel brave and move into capital punishment, or abortion (not in the Miller treatise) or just war theory v. pacifist material. A professor at CTS, Indy, Wilma Bailey agrees with the anabaptist formulation that it indeed means kill.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Sermon Notes 3/4/12 Mk.8:31-8
Right after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, Jesus them upturns that magic moment by radically changing the notion of messiah. Jesus take the triumph, the power of the Messianic hope away and replaces it with words about cross, death, and yes rising again.When Peter makes his great testimony of revelation of Jesus as Messiah, he is called Peter, Rocky, but now his name is turned as he is placing rocks in the path of Jesus otward the cross.
Peter is appalled. He knows what the messiah will do: take power, clean up the religious establishment, lead Israel into a new golden age. Now he hears this business of suffering, death, and resurrection. He worries about Jesus and pulls him aside to perhaps exorcise the demon that has touched the mind of Jesus. Jesus turns the tables and calls him Satan. Peter is tempting him without meaning to. Jesus is not chasing after martyrdom. He wants to live, a long, rich, full life. He does not want to have his life end, just as his mission was getting off the ground.
We have to be so careful here. It could easily seem to me that we are expected to chase after suffering, to accept our lot. it is especially dangerous when these verses get used as advice to people in trouble. Countless women have been told that it is their cross to bear under the repeated beatings of their husbands.Countless poor people have been told that poverty is their cross to bear. I remember the elderly ladies climbing the steep hill to our church as they walked maybe a mile to get there. Biedya, biedya, poverty, poverty, poverty they would say. theirs was a voice of resignation. My sense is that the cross seeks to put to death our fear of living, of living fully into this world knowing full well it is full of risk and pain, as well as certainties and joys.
At the same time, we need to be reminded that when we sell the Christian faith as some sort of talisman against the suffering of life, we are selling a bill of goods. Against what they and we would desire, Jesus points toward a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice. We can be grateful daily that we rarely face organized opposition to our religion, but Christians do practice their faith and risk and lose their lives.Reinhold Niebuhr who had connections to Eden Seminary across the river spoke of a logic of the cross. Its divine logic works within human tragedy, suffering, and yes sin. To work from within includes working from within the vast panoply of suffering we endure.
Lenten disciplines are thought to be ways of learning self-denial. I suppose that one could see them as baby steps to being able to follow Christ to the cross. Spiritual practices are deeper than mere duties, mere items on a checklist (see review of Davison Hunter book) They are designed to use the ego’s abilities to drain power away from being egotistical, from making the self the measure of all things. We may not be able to kill off the sin that lurks within, but we do learn to control our impulses. In losing a part of our life, we do gain hold of a sense of eternal life breaking through. that commitment to life Paul sees in Abraham. At 100, Abraham was as good as dead to be an expectant father. God calls into existence a new life all of the time.God is god as God gives life to the dead. After all, God can make the darkest cross shine with light. We are more than a collection of impulses. down deep, we discover resources to face and face down the crosses we bear.
Peter is appalled. He knows what the messiah will do: take power, clean up the religious establishment, lead Israel into a new golden age. Now he hears this business of suffering, death, and resurrection. He worries about Jesus and pulls him aside to perhaps exorcise the demon that has touched the mind of Jesus. Jesus turns the tables and calls him Satan. Peter is tempting him without meaning to. Jesus is not chasing after martyrdom. He wants to live, a long, rich, full life. He does not want to have his life end, just as his mission was getting off the ground.
We have to be so careful here. It could easily seem to me that we are expected to chase after suffering, to accept our lot. it is especially dangerous when these verses get used as advice to people in trouble. Countless women have been told that it is their cross to bear under the repeated beatings of their husbands.Countless poor people have been told that poverty is their cross to bear. I remember the elderly ladies climbing the steep hill to our church as they walked maybe a mile to get there. Biedya, biedya, poverty, poverty, poverty they would say. theirs was a voice of resignation. My sense is that the cross seeks to put to death our fear of living, of living fully into this world knowing full well it is full of risk and pain, as well as certainties and joys.
At the same time, we need to be reminded that when we sell the Christian faith as some sort of talisman against the suffering of life, we are selling a bill of goods. Against what they and we would desire, Jesus points toward a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice. We can be grateful daily that we rarely face organized opposition to our religion, but Christians do practice their faith and risk and lose their lives.Reinhold Niebuhr who had connections to Eden Seminary across the river spoke of a logic of the cross. Its divine logic works within human tragedy, suffering, and yes sin. To work from within includes working from within the vast panoply of suffering we endure.
Lenten disciplines are thought to be ways of learning self-denial. I suppose that one could see them as baby steps to being able to follow Christ to the cross. Spiritual practices are deeper than mere duties, mere items on a checklist (see review of Davison Hunter book) They are designed to use the ego’s abilities to drain power away from being egotistical, from making the self the measure of all things. We may not be able to kill off the sin that lurks within, but we do learn to control our impulses. In losing a part of our life, we do gain hold of a sense of eternal life breaking through. that commitment to life Paul sees in Abraham. At 100, Abraham was as good as dead to be an expectant father. God calls into existence a new life all of the time.God is god as God gives life to the dead. After all, God can make the darkest cross shine with light. We are more than a collection of impulses. down deep, we discover resources to face and face down the crosses we bear.
Devotions-week of March 4
Sunday March 4-Ps. 22 is one of the great penitential laments. Jesus quotes its start on the cross. Read it, and make a chart comparing it to the Passion account, and it seems to have a number of points of contact. Feeling forsaken is a great spiritual emptiness. Whenever it strikes, may you be filled with the love and comfort of God.
Monday-Memory is powerful and fallible. Isaiah has contradictory advice on it by telling us to remember the former things and remember not the former things. That strikes me as an excellent spiritual exercise. What memories deserve to be dead and buried? What memories deserve to be tended and kept as fresh as the first daffodil of spring?
Tuesday-Instead of giving something up for Lent, consider trying some new spiritual practice. Do a spiritual inventory and decide if you wish to work on a weak spot or to bolster an older strong virtue. Try another way. Are you more introverted or extroverted? Consider either appealing to that weight of your personality, as we are all a mix of the two poles. You may want to try something our of your comfort zone and appeal to that other side of your preferences.
Wednesday-Beneath the Cross is a standard Lenten hymn. Consider reading it as a religious poem and then maybe sing it softly to yourself. The Scot Elizabeth Clephane wrote the lyrics. Although she was a frail woman, she was called sunbeam, due to her unfailing cheerfulness, in her community near the home of Sir Walter Scott. Notice how willing she is able to transpose her pain on to the cross.
Thursday-This is International Women’s Day. It is dedicated to rural women this year. When you think about it, many biblical heroines were rural women. Consider reading the book of Ruth again. (Calm down, remember, it’s only four chapters). What do you consider the special joys and challenges of rural living? It’s followed by the World Day of Prayer on the theme, “Let justice prevail” from Amos 5. Justice is about structure, not individual acts of charity. It imagines a world where we are treated fairly. In my lifetime, we have made great strides toward justice in our own land. Our eyes are open to the unfairness across the globe. Justice is on the march.
Friday-Vice has an old fashion ring to it. It usually shows up as the opposite of virtue, another old-fashioned word. In our day, a vice has lost some of its moral connection. We usually speak of eating something bad for our weight as a vice, or a temptation for that matter. Would you say you struggle with a moral vice? What are your, oh, top three virtues?
Saturday-In our frenetic society, Sabbath keeping may be one of the most difficult spiritual practices. it has fallen by the wayside in much of Protestant experience, even going to church every week seems to be optional. Our busyness reflects a business mentality that time is money and must be filled with efficient and effective practices. Dorothy Bass wonders if we need to re-introduce Sabbath slowly. Consider doing no job tasks on the Sabbath time, from say 6PM Saturday to 6PM Sunday or all day Sunday, or no bill paying, no church committee meetings.
Monday-Memory is powerful and fallible. Isaiah has contradictory advice on it by telling us to remember the former things and remember not the former things. That strikes me as an excellent spiritual exercise. What memories deserve to be dead and buried? What memories deserve to be tended and kept as fresh as the first daffodil of spring?
Tuesday-Instead of giving something up for Lent, consider trying some new spiritual practice. Do a spiritual inventory and decide if you wish to work on a weak spot or to bolster an older strong virtue. Try another way. Are you more introverted or extroverted? Consider either appealing to that weight of your personality, as we are all a mix of the two poles. You may want to try something our of your comfort zone and appeal to that other side of your preferences.
Wednesday-Beneath the Cross is a standard Lenten hymn. Consider reading it as a religious poem and then maybe sing it softly to yourself. The Scot Elizabeth Clephane wrote the lyrics. Although she was a frail woman, she was called sunbeam, due to her unfailing cheerfulness, in her community near the home of Sir Walter Scott. Notice how willing she is able to transpose her pain on to the cross.
Thursday-This is International Women’s Day. It is dedicated to rural women this year. When you think about it, many biblical heroines were rural women. Consider reading the book of Ruth again. (Calm down, remember, it’s only four chapters). What do you consider the special joys and challenges of rural living? It’s followed by the World Day of Prayer on the theme, “Let justice prevail” from Amos 5. Justice is about structure, not individual acts of charity. It imagines a world where we are treated fairly. In my lifetime, we have made great strides toward justice in our own land. Our eyes are open to the unfairness across the globe. Justice is on the march.
Friday-Vice has an old fashion ring to it. It usually shows up as the opposite of virtue, another old-fashioned word. In our day, a vice has lost some of its moral connection. We usually speak of eating something bad for our weight as a vice, or a temptation for that matter. Would you say you struggle with a moral vice? What are your, oh, top three virtues?
Saturday-In our frenetic society, Sabbath keeping may be one of the most difficult spiritual practices. it has fallen by the wayside in much of Protestant experience, even going to church every week seems to be optional. Our busyness reflects a business mentality that time is money and must be filled with efficient and effective practices. Dorothy Bass wonders if we need to re-introduce Sabbath slowly. Consider doing no job tasks on the Sabbath time, from say 6PM Saturday to 6PM Sunday or all day Sunday, or no bill paying, no church committee meetings.
Column on World Day of Prayer
Today is the date selected for the World Day of Prayer. Its theme is : “let justice prevail” from Amos 5. (It also reminds me of the legal maxim that justice should be done though the heavens fall.” This year a group of women from Malaysia took the reins of the liturgy and prayers for this international event. Its consistent message is for “informed prayer and prayerful action” as inextricably bound in their view. This worldwide movement started with some Americans, one a Presbyterian from New York who made the call for it and two Baptist women who started it rolling. The prayers are composed from a different country every year. The women share information about their country. It is thought that we are then drawn into their struggle as we learn. So, this day of prayer is not generic generalities, glittering spiritual atmospherics, but based in street-level experience.
Often, too often, we see prayer as a last resort. At times, it is seen as a pious substitute for action. As I grow older, I see prayer as mobilizing us into action. Without it, we start to rely on our own limited resources and start running on fumes. Burnout is the result of expending energy without receiving more in return through rest and renewal. Recently, I had the privilege of getting to hear a local Lutheran pastor, the Rev. (I’m sure that it should be the utterly revered Reverend) Bill Veith make a presentation on Martin Luther King at the Unitarian Church in Alton. His knowledge of King is extraordinary, and he reminded his rapt listeners that king’s spirituality, his prayer life, enabled to him to carry on his exhausting schedule of work in the thirteen years or so before he was gunned down. He told us the story how King and his family were again threatened, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In his kitchen, he prayed and he received the strength to ‘stand up for righteousness” out of his desperate prayer. He shared some recent work that has collected some of his prayers, testaments of tradition, eloquence, and social justice.
I never thought I would live to see the Soviet Union crumble and people under the boot of a foreign power find freedom again. At times, I think that its sudden disintegration, without a shot being fired, was an answer to prayer. When some good thing happens that I would not predict, I wonder if countless prayers moved heaven to act. I thought south Africa would end up in a maelstrom of violence, but it transferred power to the majority well.
Prayer also puts us in touch with the horizon of hope. I am not a natural optimist, as it seems to me that a moment’s reflection does not indicate that things just improve naturally and irrevocably. As the noted philosopher Bruce Springsteen sang sometimes life is “one step up and two steps back.” Our imaginations get hobbled by fear and failures. Prayer links us to the Source of Wisdom. It links us to the Future One, the God who is laboring to make a better future, a future where human life is respected and made worth living. The connections of prayer may help us break the bonds of our normal ruts and patterns and see things in fresh new ways, as God says, “I make all things new” and “remember not the former things.” Hope is not chained to the present, nor to mere facts. Hope can fly to a distant horizon to “see things that never were and ask why not?” Prayer can ally us with that hope to be a beacon, to guide us to a new and better day.
Often, too often, we see prayer as a last resort. At times, it is seen as a pious substitute for action. As I grow older, I see prayer as mobilizing us into action. Without it, we start to rely on our own limited resources and start running on fumes. Burnout is the result of expending energy without receiving more in return through rest and renewal. Recently, I had the privilege of getting to hear a local Lutheran pastor, the Rev. (I’m sure that it should be the utterly revered Reverend) Bill Veith make a presentation on Martin Luther King at the Unitarian Church in Alton. His knowledge of King is extraordinary, and he reminded his rapt listeners that king’s spirituality, his prayer life, enabled to him to carry on his exhausting schedule of work in the thirteen years or so before he was gunned down. He told us the story how King and his family were again threatened, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In his kitchen, he prayed and he received the strength to ‘stand up for righteousness” out of his desperate prayer. He shared some recent work that has collected some of his prayers, testaments of tradition, eloquence, and social justice.
I never thought I would live to see the Soviet Union crumble and people under the boot of a foreign power find freedom again. At times, I think that its sudden disintegration, without a shot being fired, was an answer to prayer. When some good thing happens that I would not predict, I wonder if countless prayers moved heaven to act. I thought south Africa would end up in a maelstrom of violence, but it transferred power to the majority well.
Prayer also puts us in touch with the horizon of hope. I am not a natural optimist, as it seems to me that a moment’s reflection does not indicate that things just improve naturally and irrevocably. As the noted philosopher Bruce Springsteen sang sometimes life is “one step up and two steps back.” Our imaginations get hobbled by fear and failures. Prayer links us to the Source of Wisdom. It links us to the Future One, the God who is laboring to make a better future, a future where human life is respected and made worth living. The connections of prayer may help us break the bonds of our normal ruts and patterns and see things in fresh new ways, as God says, “I make all things new” and “remember not the former things.” Hope is not chained to the present, nor to mere facts. Hope can fly to a distant horizon to “see things that never were and ask why not?” Prayer can ally us with that hope to be a beacon, to guide us to a new and better day.
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