Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter 2013 Sermon Notes


Easter 2013 Is. 65:17-25, Lk. 24:1-11
Easter is the great moment of revelation for the church. we are given new eyes to examine this have a sudden insight, they puzzle over it. they do report it however.Had they wasted time, effort, and money to go to the body? followed by two disciples-no less than 5 women, three named. Are the two unnamed women to life.-women and spices they were going to do a good and proper thing, to anoint the body. They could find no body and were understandably puzzled. The were going to honor a lifeless body, but they do not encounter the stench of death, but the springtime of fresh new life.Notice that they do not draw us into identifying with them, to getting us to place ourselves in the midst of that first Easter morning? So do it, place yourself at the tomb with the women or the two male disciples.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” I was asked to read by a dying minister for his spouse. It resonates  as a good question to ask oneself in the recesses of a soul when things seem lifeless and unremittingly  grey.(see Feasting on Word for Easter paragraph) Even at Easter, death continues to stalk us all, and that leads to the new creation imagined in Isaiah.
Easter is the beginning of a new story, not the end of the story of Jesus Christ. In itself it points to a new time, and Jesus is the trailblazer.Jesus interrupts them on their way to speak to the disciples.Easter’s message comes as an interruption.they were not believed, (idle tale=leros=nonsense, as in delirious).

I do agree that we keep the dead alive in our memory. Easter goes far beyond that. Here we take a stand that the God of life does not permit death to be the ultimate fate.Second,  Easter light not only shines on to a distant future but it lights up life here and now. It puts a relentless focus on how the past merges into new. The national PCUSA ordination exams had an essay on eternal life. Many of the essays asserted this, but they rarely amplified it. Third,Easter does point to a new and better future and our loved ones live in it through being incorporated into the presence and time of God. They are dead indeed, but they are with the living, all those who lives persist within the life of God.the Lord and Giver of life ignores the grace and opens us to a new dimension of life. Heaven is clearly then linked to Easter.

Is Easter reform or revolution? Reform means that something is OK, but needs some adjustments. Revolution wants to sack an entire system and start anew.Part of me just dismisses all of the stuff associated with Easter, the breeding green plastic grass, the eggs, the candy, the bunnies. I do get that they presage life in the spring.No, I am not going into some diatribe on incipient paganism. I do want to say that all those signs of new life are part of the natural course of events, but Easter is a transformation of nature with its heralding life beyond the vale of death.In one sense, it is a revolution of what we know. In another it is a reform of life. I have the sense that God cannot bear to lose us forever. Even though God created mortality, resurrection is turning a new leaf on that creative design.The way we view the day Easter starts in the dark of the stone-cold tomb.In the pre-dawn darkness, light appears before the sun. Teh sun rises on the shadow of death and dispels it, for on this day, life, blessed life gets all the attention. In the way Jesus saw the day, it was almost half over when he was raised. As Dorothy Bass says, he received the day as a gift, as we all do.

Week of March 31 Devotional Thoughts


Easter Sunday-We connect Easter with spring. After the snowfall, I like seeing signs of life re-emerge, and daffodils survive and green growth struggling forth. When the snow melts, I will dig up a garden. Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener, and the empty tomb was a new Eden of life.Sanctuaries are filled with flowers. to borrow from Babara Qalters, what flowers would you like to see in your spiritual garden this year?

Monday-Where did April Fools Day even come from? It may be related ot the feast of fools or prank days in various cultures, but its origin for us seems lost.In mnay culutres, the figure of the fool, the clown, the jester can go in a number of directions.I never appreciated the trick sof the day or the kind of pranks tha seem to give os much pleasure ot others. I do grasp that humor, in different forms, may be able to speak a truth that seriousness could not utter.

Tuesday-How does one handle falling behind? Sometimes we can schedule time to play catch-up, but sometimes the goal seems to recede away from us, even if we work our hardest. It may be wise to break up an ultimate goal into some pieces, and it may be wise ot make some process points to be built into one’s plans, including the inevitable delays.What are your best tools for keeping on, for perseverance?

Wednesday-Nahum is  little book. It has a phrase on peace (1:15)that also shows up in Isaiah 52.When Israel lost wars, it seems its concern for peace grew. We are so used to seeing conflict on the horizon, where do you spot emissary signs of peace? What do you tend to seek as signs of peace? What sort of emblem for peace would you create, as say, a new peace sign? Perhaps move this locus a bit: from inner peace, to interpersonal, to community to nation.

Thursday-We speak of learning to read between the lines.Sometimes what we read or hear conveys more meaning that what lies on the surface.It may be emotion; it may be a hidden agenda, it may be some didden depths under a seemingly simple exterior. Do you think reading between the lines is a virtue or a vice? why is it so diffiuclt to communicate that we feel a need to read between the lines?

Friday-The stores are selling some Easter candy at a discount. Even that plastic grass that seems to breed is available.Easter seem to flee away more quickly than the Christmas season. We seem to return to normal more easily.Every sunday we have Easter in focus, but we grow inured to it with repetition.What parts of Easter do you most want to keep in heart and mind? What parts are easiest for you to relinquish until next year?

Saturday-My favorite sporting event the men’s college basketball tournament continues. For me a big part of it is the David v. Goliath aspect of it. It also is a time for folks to move out of their personal zone and connect with people on the same thing. In the scheme of things, it is unimportant, but it still is a container for hopes and emotion.some get all wrapped up in a team with whom they have some connection. What are the connections for your response to church?

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Week of March 31 Devotional thoughts


Easter Sunday-We connect Easter with spring. After the snowfall, I like seeing signs of life re-emerge, and daffodils survive and green growth struggling forth. When the snow melts, I will dig up a garden. Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener, and the empty tomb was a new Eden of life.Sanctuaries are filled with flowers. to borrow from Babara Qalters, what flowers would you like to see in your spiritual garden this year?

Monday-Where did April Fools Day even come from? It may be related ot the feast of fools or prank days in various cultures, but its origin for us seems lost.In mnay culutres, the figure of the fool, the clown, the jester can go in a number of directions.I never appreciated the trick sof the day or the kind of pranks tha seem to give os much pleasure ot others. I do grasp that humor, in different forms, may be able to speak a truth that seriousness could not utter.

Tuesday-How does one handle falling behind? Sometimes we can schedule time to play catch-up, but sometimes the goal seems to recede away from us, even if we work our hardest. It may be wise to break up an ultimate goal into some pieces, and it may be wise ot make some process points to be built into one’s plans, including the inevitable delays.What are your best tools for keeping on, for perseverance?

Wednesday-Nahum is  little book. It has a phrase on peace (1:15)that also shows up in Isaiah 52.When Israel lost wars, it seems its concern for peace grew. We are so used to seeing conflict on the horizon, where do you spot emissary signs of peace? What do you tend to seek as signs of peace? What sort of emblem for peace would you create, as say, a new peace sign? Perhaps move this locus a bit: from inner peace, to interpersonal, to community to nation.

Thursday-We speak of learning to read between the lines.Sometimes what we read or hear conveys more meaning that what lies on the surface.It may be emotion; it may be a hidden agenda, it may be some didden depths under a seemingly simple exterior. Do you think reading between the lines is a virtue or a vice? why is it so diffiuclt to communicate that we feel a need to read between the lines?

Friday-The stores are selling some Easter candy at a discount. Even that plastic grass that seems to breed is available.Easter seem to flee away more quickly than the Christmas season. We seem to return to normal more easily.Every sunday we have Easter in focus, but we grow inured to it with repetition.What parts of Easter do you most want to keep in heart and mind? What parts are easiest for you to relinquish until next year?

Saturday-My favorite sporting event the men’s college basketball tournament continues. For me a big part of it is the David v. Goliath aspect of it. It also is a time for folks to move out of their personal zone and connect with people on the same thing. In the scheme of things, it is unimportant, but it still is a container for hopes and emotion.some get all wrapped up in a team with whom they have some connection. What are the connections for your response to church?

Friday, March 29, 2013

Column on Good Friday Frames


How do we come to grips with the meaning of Good Friday? the bible itself has many images: ransom, offering, reconciliation, and others. Such horror requires that we attach meaning and purpose to it.  In some way or another we have been stressing the understanding of Anselm, 1,000 years ago. In his view, sin attacked God’s honor, and God used the cross to restore justice and honor, with Jesus at the fulcrum point of a humanity that sullied God’s honor and the divinity that sought to restore it. Calvin, among others, turned the critical issue from God’s honor to a sense of pardon for deserved punishment, with a criminal case model. Somehow, the death of Jesus transferred both guilt and punishment on to Christ. The transfer of punishment model is breaking down, I think, and is buttressed by constant repetition more than a grasp of it. I often go back to a little girl who heard the usual model of good Friday and replied: “well I live Jesus, but I hate God.” Many have a difficult time imagining God as a dispenser of eternal punishment for minor offenses. Guilt is not the pervasive sense that dogs our thoughts. In a world of slaughter, it is almost impossible for some of us to concur with a model of redemptive violence.

Miroslav Volf, a prominent theologian at Yale, disagrees and says that Jesus is not a third party who mediates between an angry God and humanity. Jesus represents a god who was wronged and still embraces humanity. My recent Christian Century magazine had an extended piece by a British writer making a case for the cross showing solidarity with the human experience of suffering, an identification, not separation, from the plight of humanity.   

A more ancient view saw it as posed between death and life, fate and freedom. Look at pictures o the harrowing of Hell. You see images of Jesus leading people from the abode of death into the light of heaven. In some pictures, you can see a devil throwing a fit that its power is and jurisdiction is fleeing away. The question would become  if the abode of death itself was the issue or did the abode of death contain some punishment in it beyond death itself? As Alan Lewis wrote, it is a fearsome thing to confront the specter of God in the grave.

More and more, I am attracted to the idea of the cross as medicine, a sort of homeopathic medicine, for sin-sick souls. I think of John 3, before the great declaration of salvation, not condemnation. Jesus refers to a serpent in the desert during the exodus in the wilderness. If the people looked up toward an image of the serpent, they were healed. (Think of the symbol of the pharmacy in drug stores). The cross is filled with irony. The instrument of execution leads to a life where we are assured that God understands, is with us in our joys and sorrow in the deepest valley imaginable. The cross draws the poison out of human life, a sort of spiritual poultice. It’s a vaccine against an arrogant, triumphal view of the faith and its way of life. It is alos a protection against the poison of shame, perhaps our deepest wound. the cross takes shame and grace over disgrace.

The cross is a bridge, a portal, from the heart of God to earth. It is not about distant God orchestrating events like pieces on a chessboard. No, it is Emmanuel, God with us, beyond the sheer Incarnation itself but into the warp and woof of human experience. When we are drawn into its vortex, our conceptions and misconceptions abou

Monday, March 25, 2013

OT Notes Good Friday

Psalm 22 almost looks like a template for the account of the events of the end of the life of Jesus.

Is. 52:13-53:12 is the longest and most famous suffering servant passage. Again, some of its material is echoed in the accounts of the last day of Jesus. the servant is a representative figure, both individual and corporate, it seems to me.How do you think Isaiah meant it and how do see see resurrection/ascension

How do you come to grips with the notion of vicarious suffering (53:4-6).?

How does this long hymn apply and not apply to Jesus?.  as the exaltation or the cross itself, or both?

In v. 8 do you think that the unjust order was applied to the narrative of Jesus  or do you imagine an intake of breath when Christians read Isaiah in the light of the story of Jesus ( including, suffering, silence, and even the type of tomb)?

Why the emphasis on silent suffering? How is suffering ever redemptive?

v.10-how do you square this passage with the love of God? How do you square the crucifixion with that love in its operation, not its goal? The new Christian Century has a good piece by a British author on coming to grips with atonement concepts.

How do we avoid making a a passage such as this a glorification of suffering, especially of others?

Suffering falls into the abstract-perhaps one could emphasize one element of suffering from the Passion narratives. Otherwise, we get numb to the succession of pain.

It can be an instructive exercise to compare Passion descriptions in a variety of movies on Jesus.

OT Notes Holy Week

We have such a vast number of OT readings in Holy Week, I think i am going to pick one from Maundy Thursday  Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, at least as a start.I am also starting slowly as I am tired from digging a path to the church door after over a foot of snow fell yesterday.

Maundy Thursday-Since the last meal of Jesus was at Passover, we have a reading from Exodus 12. One can hear the echoes of priestly concern with the inclusion of Aaron and the careful description of how to prepare the lamb. It is clearly a scared meal, pregnant with meaning. I love how it is a meal for people on the move.this is the first time we encounter the word congregation for the people. If the blood is sacred, does it render the the houses sacred by marking their entrance ways?
Does the bitterness of the herbs reflect on the bitterness of slavery?
I realize that in blood is life according to the bible.I do not grasp how the blood on the doorpost works as a warning,but it certainly gets at the idea of death passing over the people.
Passover marks a new beginning and opens into a new future (see Janzen 81).
Linkages to Jesus as the lamb of god are a matter of the imagination.What links do you make between the Lord's Supper and Passover, if any? In the synoptic gospels, Jesus is working on the image of covenant significantly, no?

Corrected Week March 24 devotions


Sunday March 24 Palm Sunday is paired as Passion Sunday as well. More and more, i appreciate the conflicting feelings of acclamation for Jesus would soon lead to the suffering (its Greek root is where we get Passion in this light). We like symmetry of feeling, but the truth is that high and low points mix easily in time. Perhaps that is why crosscutting of two different images is such an effective device in the movies.

Monday-From Lord of the Rings-Frodo:I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf replies ;So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil... you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” Have things come to you that have caused such reflection?

Tuesday-Take a few minutes to recollect a particular issue of the past that once was a deep prayer concern for you. How has it resolved itself? Is there any way that you notice it's still in process, or that you're being changed in relation to it? Now make a note of some current issue that concerns you. How would it change your expectations to frame it as an "answering" prayer?  

Wednesday-In my mind, Holy Week was accompanied by grey skies. That may have been a child’s overactive imagination, but it seemed that nature itself knew the weight of the week. Think about how the weather should look for Maundy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week.

Maundy Thursday- Some churches do footwashing this day, from the gospel of John. I admire them. I am of two minds on it, as it seems to me rooted in a far gone culture. On the other hand, I wonder what religious ritual could fit its purpose of humility and service?

Good Friday-In my new Christian Century, the cover piece is on the cross. A British author, Hefling, He asserts we have over-stressed retribution for evil and not enough about restoration and healing. It is seeking to draw good from evil, through divine acceptance and transformation of suffering, not coercion, not control. The cross is less avoiding punishment for us, it is God absorbing suffering with us.

Holy Saturday-I am always drawn back to Alan Lewis’s posthumous book on this day.”Far from being the first day, the day of the cross is, in the logic of the narrative itself, actually the last day, the end of the story of Jesus. And the day that follows it is not an in-between day which simply waits for the morrow, but it is an empty void, a nothing, shapeless, meaningless, and anti-climactic; simply the day after the end... These were anonymous, indefinite hours, filled with memories and assessments of what was finished and past; and there was no reason to imagine.. an imminent triumph.”

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Passion Sunday Sermon Notes 2013 2 Simons


Palm and Passion Sunday 2013
When I was younger both movies and TV had a stable of folks who were character actors. they were not the stars, but you recognized them and knew their part was important even if not above the title. I’d like to take 2 critical lesser roles. First, Simon of Cyrene always grabs my attention. When I was a child, we attended the spiritual discipline of the 14 stations of the cross in church. (as does the  local Episcopalian church). The fifth station was Simon helps Jesus carry the cross. Simon  helped Jesus to bear the cross.( Cyrene, now Libya,  was a longtime Greek port city,named for a spring of water, and had a rebellion by Jewish community complaining of discrimination the period of the writing of the gospels.  had some medicines as part of its exports). Even Jesus did not bear the cross alone. If it was the cross beam, it perhaps weighed 18-20 pounds, so the entire cross would be 45-50 pounds. In the Legend of Veronica’s veil. the imprint of the face of Jesus affixed to her veil, as in the shroud of Turin’s image. Simon did not need one, the image was burned into his memory.Maybe it wasn’t only physical help that Jesus needed, Maybe he was already feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders and back already beaten to a bloody pulp.Jesus needed a helping hand.

.We have a tale with two Simons, of course. Is it an accident that while Simon Peter denies Jesus in the courtyard, this Simon  will bear the cross with Jesus? Simon Peter had talked a good game about his being willing to die with Jesus. Here  here is warming himself by a fire when he is accosted.  Peter means rock, but here he crumbles like cheap plaster. On the other hand, when he first called Jesus Messiah, he could not bear to hear Jesus link that role with suffering and death. In a way, peter was telling the truth; he did not know the man, his courage, his sacrificial love. In the narthex we have symbols of the apostles, including simon Peter. His cross is shown as legend has it that he would not permit himself to be crucified in the same position as Jesus. St Peter’s may actually be built over an ancient shrine to his memory. The nuns told us that peter had scars on his face because he cried so hard when he came to grips with his denial of Jesus.

To what degree does forgiveness make us all Simon of Cyrene? (book on track star prisoner of war, Volf, ) To what degree did Peter need to become a Smon to himself for his denial? To what degree need he bear the cross of the accusing woman at the fire? When is it asking too much to do so? After all, Jesus bore its weight and penalty. Simon did not die for him.After all, Jesus selects dimon Peter to be a leader of the fledgling church, a powerful sign of forgiveness.  Can we look at Simon negatively as moving him toward his death as an accomplice of sin’s power.(Note:The experiment with seminary students who had  a paper to deliver-the inconvenient burden placed on him-).
I wonder if Simon grasped what he had done. I wonder what he thought every time he gave someone a hand, if the cross came to him? In (Mark’s gospel) his sons are known to the disciples. Are they part of the community? Some days we act as one Simon or the other. God is not finished with us yet and holds the door open in acts large and small, to define who we are, this day.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Column-Iraq Plus Ten


We mark all sorts of anniversaries with retrospective examinations, usually in five year increments. An on-line magazine I read is going over the Beatles 50 years ago.The Iraq War’s 10th anniversary does not seem to be drawing much consideration. the movie Zero Dark 30 did  more to have us think over the recent past than the news does.

For a number of Americans, the first Gulf War felt a bit unfinished. We launched a successful campaign that threw back the forces  in Kuwait. With that predator de-clawed, the war was over. No parade in Baghdad would be forthcoming.So mnay of the  large promises go unmet. Iraq cannot be called a laboratory for democracy, at lt least yet. Its relations with Iran as stronger, not weaker, and we had voices who predicted just that outcome.Remember the rivers of oil that were to flow our way?

With the horror of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration quickly wanted to shift the focus from Afghanistan to Iraq, even though very little linkage could be made to that regime. So a remarkably compliant mass media went along with an orchestrated call to arms.With our vaunted technology and access to  information, we were led like sheep toward conclusions that were not buttressed by facts. We arrogantly claimed victory too soon, as we recall the infamous “mission accomplished” sign for the White House photos set on an aircraft carrier.

Many Christians attempt to work through a personal pacifism. Most Christians, in national security policy, adopt a “just war” approach.One could argue that it was to protect the innocent citizens of Iraq under a dictator, but we claimed an imminent threat that did not exist..One could argue that we applied force carefully, but many many thousands of Iraqis lost their lives. Certainly, we did not level the country, even as our overweening power would permit.I am so grateful that more American lives were not lost, but we have a huge burden in dealing with soldiers ill-equipped to face sometimes multiple tours from reserve units, without any serious national discussion of the switch in policy. We privatized vast segments of our military response, again, without much national discussion or explanation. With little fanfare, we transformed the role of women in military combat. At the same time, we did incalculable damage to ourselves in justifying torture as policy.

Lincoln famously asked us to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for those who have borne the battle, and for the widowed and orphaned. With advances in medicine, many soldiers survived who would not have previously. While we were willing to throw treasure at the war, we are tightfisted when it comes to care for returning veterans who need care.Even with the slum conditions connected to Walter Reed follow-up care, we have spent at least 400 billion dollars on care for soldiers. Rita N. Brock has started a program in Texas, Soul Repair, to help with the damage wrought by the war on our troops.
We spent billions on Iraq rebuilding, and the war itself cost perhaps 800 billion dollars. Let’s recall, we were in surplus before the GW Bush administration and on a glide path to paying off the national debt. We were told that the war would be virtually self-funding. any one of us knew that we were being lied to, but we chose to believe it. I recall few of the deficit hawk voices fearing the immense treasure spent in this misbegotten project, but how we hear howls of protest when american hungry are fed and the elderly cared for.

Iraq killed the voices ofthose fearing “another Vietnam.” My prayer is that it stands, for at least a generation, as a signal against the presumption that we can blithely remake the world by violence.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Sermon Notes for John 12:1-8. Is. 43:16-21 for 3/17

My mother was a depression-era person. she had to draw water from a shared pump, so we did not waste water in our house, nor did we waste food, or much else of anything. i remember I spilled something in our basement and was pleased with myself for cleaning it up, and she yelled, no, no that’s a good rag.holy waste in John even something good can be overwhelming. can anything dedicated to the holy be  a waste. I recall in the first church in seminary work, the invoice was messed up and we  had a sea of lilies in the sanctuary for Sunday. What a waste, was the mantra of that Easter Sunday.The anointing is in every gospel, but only here is it Mary, whose brother is Lazarus, the one raised. Instead of the stench of death, the whole room is suffused with perfume, an odor of life and intimacy..I am always alarmed when I agree with Judas that the act could instead of gone to so much good for the poor.When I am in a sour mood, I look at all of the church properties and shake my head at the other uses such spaces could be devoted.

Is utility the only value? Why should not care, artistry, and devotion be projected toward the worship of God? Some things are intrinsically good, useful or not.Regardless of cost,
Actually, her work is an enacted prayer. It is an act of gratitude and devotion, an act of humility, a prophecy of his death when women will go to the tomb to anoint him, and also in the narrative a foretaste of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. She acts a a female John the Baptist.  She points toward the nature of Jesus and his destiny.

Mary Chapin Carpenter has a song what to keep and what to throw away.Can we waste our memories?

Is. 43:remember/remember not (Is.46:8-9) how many regrets we hold on to. Perhaps,it is a waste of time for us to replay the past.Christians should be the last people to nurture regrets as we have a ritual of pardon and release built into our sunday services.(Is this an anointing?) God breaks into rituals and gives them new meaning. God is interested in the past, but the past is no idol for god. God does new things, for we worship a living and responsive God.Perhaps,it is a waste of time making detailed plans, when the future is so fluid. Part of our constant conversion in baptism is looking back and seeing how our minds have changed, how our attitudes evolve over time.(Tom Long on the absurd in worship-that is unless we are capturing glimpses of the way of God in the world) Our big words and bold organ chords are sentinels catching sight of something bigger and brighter beyond today’s headlines. We are people whom God formed; God labored, over, did fine-tuning. greatness fades quickly in our celebrity culture, like a flickering wick. we go to a trivia contest and struggle to remember the name of someone important,but oh we recall the jingle of ra detergent, or a lunch meat.Some people speak of healing of memories.

St Patrick is remembered, often with legends surrounding his life. Use some of the breastplate prayer.for some,it is a waste of time to consider fiction,myth,or poetry;only facts  count. For others,it is a waste  of time to accumulate data without having a sense of priority,organization,or pattern.So what we consider waste is a look inside our psyche.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Thoughts for Devotions for Week of March 17

Sunday March 17-St Patrick’s Day is a wonderful mix of the secular and the sacred. It is an early signal of spring. Anything that draws attention to the breastplate prayer, attributed to him,  is fine by me. In his legends we see a wonderful mixture of beliefs being revitalized within Irish sensibilities. Take a look at  2 cross styles associated with St. Patrick. How could the wearingof the green be a symbol of a verdant spiritual life?

Monday-Hypocrisy seems to be high on the list of sinful nature for many of us. I am wondering why?  What is it about talking a good game for others and failing to live up to a standard for oneself? Surely, we put up all sorts of false fronts, why does this one garner such antipathy? What annoys you in hypocrisy in others (given that we rarely recognize it in ourselves)? When does  it cause a mere shrug?

Tuesday-Buechner quote “To become human-This is the goal that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for. This is the victory that not all our human armory of self-confidence and wisdom and personality can win for us—not simply to be treated as human but to become at last truly human.” What are the important attributes of bieng human, or making the world more human to you? what are some of our biggest vices? do you think we are the crown of creation?

Wednesday-I was reminded of cairns recently.They are collections of stones all over the world to serve as markers for directions, graves, holy sites, or even Kilroy was here types of markers. I have heard a story that warriors would pile stones up and take one away if they survived a battle.In your journeys, where would important mak rkers be left for you or by you? where would some places that were left as unremarkable end up deserving a cairn?

Thursday I came across this piece by Wendell Berry…”In the trust of old love, cultivation shows/a dark and graceful wilderness/at its heart. Wild/in that wilderness, we roam/the distance of our faith;safe beyond the bounds/of what we know. O love,/open. Show me
my country. Take me home.” When is safety and security dangerous for your spiriutal life? Where do you think you need to press the limits a bit?

Friday-As I am writing this, Adam is being so kind as to work on tuning the choir’s piano. It is painstaking work, to try to line up the different notes by frequency. Perhaps, we can look at Lent as a time of spiritual tuning up. It struck me how slight adjustments make a really big difference in the sound. What is too sharp or flat in your spiritual life? What notes make for harmony in life?

Saturday- A prayer by Thomas Merton-”God, we have no idea of where we are going. We do not see the road ahead of us. We cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do we really know ourselves, and the fact that we think we are following your will, does not mean that we are actually doing so.” This great mystic could be candid enough with God to admit to utter confusion. when have you felt that way and how did you work yourself out of that feeling?

St Patrick's Column

St Patrick’s Day honors the best and worst of irish culture.Yet, to be Irish is to know that the world will someday break your heart. Against the backdrop of that great truth we can  see elements of the Irish attitude toward life.”Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love makes a memory no one can steal.” Realizing that life can be hard indeed, many Irish phrases are designed to help soften it over time. Laughter is a great weapons for those who feel powerless. Admitting the pains of life, not repressing them, allows us to richly enjoy the joys and surcease that life does offer.

To be Irish is to resist letting the truth get in the way of a good story. A good story may unearth truths about life that no mere fact can damage. The Irish are well aware of our foibles but distill wisdom from them. If worried that you will be held responsible for some loss, the reply is “only a stepmother would blame you.” Knowing the power of passion, the Irish may bless one ot old age with “may you live to 95 and die, shot at the hand of a jealous husband.” For a people addicted to the power and romance of words, they can say, “a silent mouth is sweet to hear.”

Drink takes the edge off the shards of life’s woes. So too,  the irish know that drink is a curse too: “drink makes you shoot at your landlord and then you go and miss him.” “God developed whiskey to keep the Irish from conquering the world.” The Irish will wish well to the abstemious: ”here’s to a temperance supper...and me not there at all.”

St Patrick's Day is said to be the day when winter dreams start their transformation into summer magic.” Stories have attached themselves to St. Patrick like barnacles. I love the idea that a land that had no snakes attributed that to Patrick’s driving them out. I leave it to the reader's imagination to imagine who or what was symbolized by snakes being driven out.

The great breastplate prayer is attributed to Patrick., I love the prayer with its emphasis on the Trinity, or the three and the One, as some say. It sees God’s presence not only up in some unseen heaven, but as pervading our lives here and now. Indeed Celtic spirituality seeks to endow every moment with sacred significance, everyday actions with blessings. that is why the Irish speak so easily of thin places, where heaven and earth seem to more easily join..One story about the Celtic cross is that Patrick was preaching near a Druid standing stone with a sacred circle. Patrick placed a cross over the circle and blessed it. In that way, he did not turn his back on traditions as much as reformulate them into a Christian frame of reference.

While the Irish are religiously devout,they maintain a light touch toward God. That is why they can pray that God takes a liking to , but not too soon, as if one would be courting death. As death draws near, perhaps the unfairness of life can be turned against death itself: “may you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”

Sometimes, i see St Patrick’s Day as a Christian analogue to the Jewish feast of Purim. There you are permitted to let loose enough that you cannot tell the difference between Blessed be Mordecai, or cursed be Haman.” I wish the food were better,but Irish cuisine may well be a contradiction in terms, like Educator’s salaries. Sometimes, we need a bit of release and laughter. So then are we energized to face the hoep and work of the coming spring.

Monday, March 11, 2013

OT Notes Is. 43:16-21

Again. please turn to Patricia Tull's new thoughtful christian piece on this chapter and the lectionary psalm as well.

1) Our first verses form  a major prop in the view that this section of isaiah sees the exile as a new exodus and return, as it drawn on the Red Sea image.

2) In our age of celebrity, when are celebrities extinguished like a wick?

3) I love v. 18. Are the former things the punishments or what? When does the past chain us? Haunt us?. When is consideration of things of old an obstacle. (This seems to be a major axiom in church growth ideology).this may also be an invitation to do some research on memory.See Springsteen's Glory Days, or Long Walk Home

4) Where do you see the hand of God in the new? When has it happened and we haven't noticed? When has god provided a way through a personal or corporate wilderness for you?

5)Why is an emphasis on wild animals? I wonder if we have an echo of the jackals prowling the Holy city in Lamentations? Do you hear echoes of Ex. 17 in the water imagery? How about John 4?

6) I think that one could go a far way with us being formed for God's praise. See the Interpretation piece, Costly Loss of Praise. Also, one could go the route of God as artist forming us, fussing over us, making alterations and adjustments.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Prodigal Brother Sermon 3/10 Lk. 15:11-32

March 10 Lk. 15:11-32
Most of us have heard about birth order in families, at least some of the features of the eldest, the middle, and the youngest. This morning let’s treat those positions more as types of people. OK,we handle the prodigal side of ourselves early in the serv ice with a private and public confession of sin and a declaration of pardon. We fully expect the God of forgiveness to do so.

How do we approach this great story in a fresh way? One way to get something out of parable stories is to put oneself in the place of the different characters. Today I wish to emphasize the elder brother, as that is the position many of us are in. In birth order, I am the elder brother, but in attitude I fall into its power as well.Everybody has a soft spot for the prodigal in their lives. We seek to date prodigals but marry elder brothers and sisters.

Most of us are not prodigal in our spending or our sins. Most of us lack the powerful living forgiveness of this father. Most of us work hard, try our best and are resentful.
We are sure that the younger brothers of the world  have all sorts of fun and are not held accountable. (see Craig Barnes article in Christian Century last year).  We work hard and we do not get acknowledged for it. So we feel put upon.the elder brother types are the ones who perform the bulk of church work.  Here the choir is behind a lot of good things, such as providing set-up for the Mardi gras party, or being there to do readings. It is a burden being the responsible one.Why are we always the designated driver at the party? Why don’t we have stories to share about the weekend at work? How do we get the role of taking care of aging parents. why is the family dinner at our house, but the younger prodigal gets to buy the drinks afterward? We are punctual;we eat our vegetables; we do not eat our dessert first. In her fine memoir Rosanne Cash says that her birth mother gave her stability, but her stepmother gave her wings.


Elder brothers hate, hate the idea of grace as a gift. It should be earned. They think that a St. peter figure should be at the gate of heaven and that heaven should have levels. they secretly wonder if hell will be more fun. The elder brother in us is not a big fan of reconciliation either. If it does happen, it is because we feel hurt by others and expect an apology. Further, we elder types expect someone to bow before our position and expect them to say that we are right.

Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again with elder brothers in mind too. the father goes to him, just a she did the younger brother.The elder brother sees the world in the polarity of reward and punishment. He reflects our typical suspicion that the evil have all of the fun, and that the good are slaves to the commandments of God and their own sense of obligation and even self. His good deeds have not brought a sense of well-being, but instead seething resentment.The elder brother is lost too, and at a loss.His self righteous, judging nature is putting himself in danger of a great sin, the death of relationships. His own attitude is going to place him in a far country that will make the prodigal’s desperate return look like child’s play.More than anything, right now, the elder needs to be recognized, appreciated so that the elder brother can begin to taste the celebration of god’s prodigal love and goodness for elder brothers, prodigals and middle child parents alike.

Friday Column on International women's day


My calendar notes that today is International Women’s Day. That caught my eye, especially as I was unaware of it. It has been in place sine the mid seventies with the United Nation’s Year of the Woman emphasis.

The day has its antecedents in this country, as far as I can tell. Much of the American advantage in textile manufacturing was the hard work done by women in factories, all the way back to the Lowell factories of the mid 1800s. The word, sweatshops, applied to the conditions by girls and women in the factories. Days often extended fifteen hours, and then work needed to be brought home. Some never saw the sun due to the hours. the cotton dust made breathing labored and ruined the lungs of many. A terrible fire killed workers in a clothing factory, as the doors were locked to ensure that the workers could not get a breath of air outside. When the International Ladies Garment Workers launched labor action, the Socialist Party picked up on it and announced a Women’s day for labor. Part of its movement was for the right to vote being applied to women.

It causes me embarrassment and consternation how much opposition to women’s rights appeared in churches. Using orders of creation arguments, clergy argued that women occupied a separate, distinct private sphere. Public life was ordained as a male sphere. Easy stereotypes of female inequality abounded in sermons and writing. Males offered virtual representation by watching out for the needs of women, as they did for children in their voting and public actions. Some of the assertions were repeated in the anti-Equal Rights Amendment campaigns of the 1970s.

This is a good day to look back on how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. so many doors have opened to women in both public and private life. In some ways, it is a revolution. Things that were considered common currency a generation ago get laughed out of consideration in our time. Surely, the radical right continues to operate under outmoded assumptions about gender, but the balance of public opinion has left them in the dustbin of historical memory.

We also realize we have far to go in the march toward gender equality. Pick an area, and the data demonstrate gains in so many areas. Pick one and look up the progress.  We do well to celebrate the achievements of women across the board in our lives. For instance Elizabeth Blackburn’s research in cells may be an important clue in cutting off cancer cell production, and Polly Matzinger has done pioneering work on the immune system. Rita Colwell heads the National Science Foundation. At the same time, female-headed households of young children suffer high rates of poverty. so much violence touches women disproportionately. At the same time, the promise of “having it all” has turned into a enormous burden for women to a far greater extent than men. In the less economically developed world, poverty weighs so heavily on women, and they suffer its cruel afflictions especially with young children.

Many of us seem caught in a reading of our culture that assumes that everything is going downhill. Some of that reading is caused by a religious insistence that if things get bad enough, God will come in and restore all to a new world. That is one reading of scripture, of course, by  no means a consensus one.  When we address social change, many of us play the role of Cassandra or Jeremiah, crying gloom and doom and having the cries going unheard. Today, I hope we take some time to celebrate the heroines of the road we have travelled and celebrate the achievements of so many across the broad expanse of human life.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Josh. 5:9-13

Sorry that this is late, but I have 2 excuses. I have been sick all week, and I was reading theology exams for the PCUSA.

1)  We have been using Patricia Tull's good study for thoughtful christian, and she speaks of taking responsibility or maturing, or becoming more adult for this passage.
2) Some speak of the wilderness period as a time when former slaves learned the responsibilities of freedom. What are those>

3) Do you think manna was a sign of dependence on the part of the people or better a sign of pure gift, or what?

4) When do you feel as if you entered into adulthood? what felt right, or scary, or plain wrong?

5) When do you wish you were more dependent and less independent? What about our interdependence?

6) Gilgal is a pun on gallal and has the sense of rolling. Notice that this cultic site is used on another Passover, just as the people were freed. What rolls away in the Promised Land? What rolls toward them?

7) How is Communion like manna?

Friday, March 1, 2013

Column on World Day of Prayer

Today is the World Day of Prayer. this is organized by women as they seek to link prayer and action. It is deliberately ecumenical. not only does it include different religious traditions, each year the material is drawn up from a different country. This year it is France.

Mary James, a Presbyterian, (I had to get that in) is credited with starting the movement in the 1880s. she was moved by the social needs around her: the plight of immigrants, health crises, and the crippling effects of poverty.the movement caught attention and has become a stable part of the worldwide religious landscape.

We often resort to prayer to find an answer to something we find incapable of solving on our own. Some see prayer as a flight from the needs of the world into an inner state of awareness. With the day of prayer, i see it as seeking to discover inner resources to face a tough world. i see it as trying to link to the source of all good. I see it as a way to try  to move into a mode of reflection and discernment. Prayer helps to mobilize our resources for action. It helps us to see them clearly.

This year the theme from Scripture is : “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” If kept at a safe level of hospitality that sounds fair enough. When it translates into political programs on immigration, then it no longer seems so harmless to many of us. so, god is dealing with prayer requests that may conflict, or be at odds with each other, even if they agree on a basic premise.
It seems to me that prayers for social causes require a gift of patience. when i get anxious about political change, I revert to to a quote of Max Weber: “politics is the slow boring of hard boards.” Weber once wrote of politics as vocation. He deliberately chose that word often associated iw th a religious calling toward one that can find a religious center in secular callings, a voice of the reformation.

Realizing that, we who pray may well be called toward a posture of humility.In a meeting yesterday I was rmeinded with some force by Rev. David marshall that we do well to be careful when we try to apply individual Christian spiritual tools and apply them on the public stage. Second, prayer often seeks better questions, that assuming a perfect solution. All of the different attitudes toward any social program should give us pause if we are hoping that our view of an issue could possibly be  only one  option in the capacious vision and wisdom of God. Third, it is an acknowledgment of our limitations of perspective and knowledge. We all tend to prize our ideas and beliefs, but we have much more difficulty in seeing their pitfalls and possible poor consequences. finally, I pray for a sense of options and possibility. When I pay attention to the crying needs in life, i quickly get overwhelmed and want to curl up and hide from the pain.

Often it seems that god work in the world with us as the agents. At other times, I detect a touch directly, beyond our hopes and expectations. those seem much more rare.Still, I never thought I would live to see South Africa change with so little bloodshed, or the Soviet Union fall. Sometimes, I have been in nursing homes and said that perhaps the prayers of folks in the new secular monasteries have been answered.Both worked in ways that I would not have imagined.Prayer is a seed who very life is beyond our ocntrol, but not beyond the vast expanse of divine intentions.world