Joel 2:23-32 OT Notes for 10/27/13

We usually think of some of this section for pentecost. I am going to a conference on the Holy Spirit, so some of this passage is ringing that tune, but other material deserves a look as well. this is part of the Book of the 12/ Minor Prophets, of course, and the next few Sundays contain readings from that section of Scripture.

The locust plague, whether it is a natural catastrophe or a metaphor for invasion is over.God's fertility, or if you prefer, the verdure and vitality of the spirit takes over.this could be a good place to speak of the Spirit and nature in our ecological age.

So it starts with words of gladness and rejoicing. I don;t see my denomination as synonymous with these feelings. How do you best experience and demonstrate public joy?

I like the inclusive nature of the Spirit in this text.It is certianly a Pentecost text, but it alos has an Ester resurrection aspect to it as well, no?

I wonder about the dreams and visions section, if it signals a surprise or merely is intimating that dreams are part of the young and old. This could be a good place ot speak of the dreams and visions of the future.

One could play with the image of pouring out the spirit like a drink offering a la our other reading in 2 tim. 4 and include other images for the spirit of life.See vv23-4 poured down and overflow as well.

twice we read of being put to shame. That can be a deep communal or individual experience. notice that is seems connection with divine absence, but the presence of God seems to make it abate in light of a new future.

Week of Oct. 20 devotional points

Sunday-Ps. 119:97-104 is today’s selection from the enormous psalm that sits in the center of most Bibles. This hymn to God’s order and teaching stresses wisdom. Wisdom strikes me as co-operative  as it is both gift but also task for us. When have you heeded wisdom and when have you ignored it? Why?

Monday-"Let us pray to live from our hearts. Let us pray that we enliven what the old Hasidic tradition defines as dawn--that when we look into the face of another human being and have enough light to see ourselves, then we have awakened, then we have opened the living moment of compassion where night ends and day begins." (Robert Lehman) When are you able to see the light in another’s soul? How do the sacrmanets touch on this quote?

Tuesday- John Philip Newell-“In the many details of this day let me be fully alive. In the handling of food and the sharing of drink, in the preparing of work and the uttering of words, in the meeting of friends and the interminglings of relationship let me be alive to each instant, O God, let me be fully alive.” I tend to think we are only fully alive in relationship. When are you most tempted to take things for granted and when are you most alive to the prompting sof the spirit of God?

Wednesday-Persistence is the antidote to resistance. It is a mark of maturity to realize that some things are slow in coming, and others may never bear fruit. Still, we keep at them out of belief in intrinsic merit or a hope that the object will improve things.When has persistence succeeded ro failed with you? When have you been persistent toward a spiritual goal?

Thursday-I go to a college reunion today. It will be a test of memory’s flexibility. some folks I have kept in contact, but others have faded from much of any touch point in life. It let me to think about what sort of family reunions we will enjoy in heaven. I do not remember my father, dead before I was three. I wonder how I would meet him in another dimension of existence. Whom do you wish to meet or see in heaven?

Friday-I hope the government museums are open in Washington today, but we can use some of the charging ones as well. I fear that osme churches are moving toward being museum pieces as they often are in Europe. At the same time, I am so pleased that som many churches try to use the creativity and talent of artists to make worship space beautiful for the worship of God. Part of me cringes at the cost, but it still strikes me as a worthy aspiration. What are noteworthy churches in your experience in terms of their artistic structures?

Saturday-I have been reading a lot on the Holy Spirit for our group next month. the late evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock in the Holy Sprit and the Flame of Love wrote: “the spirt has been implementing god’s purposes from day one and seeing that they issue in restoration…the spirit is the ecstasy that implements God’s abundance and triggers the overflow of divine self-giving.” How do you spea

Sermon Notes Lk. 18:1-8, 2 Tim 3:14-4:5

Sometimes I wonder if God feels sympathy for a maried woman who hears her husband grunt a few syllables but is clear as a bell, honey where’s my socks? We are content for resilience to be the foundation of our prayer life, until we need something: that drive sus to our knees. Prayer and persistence-Basically if a corrupt judge listens to a persistent plea, how much more will a good god listen to a persistent plea. One way I handle the issue of persistence in prayer is to use a quote about politics from the great sociologist Max Weber, politics (prayer) is the slow boring of hard boards. As much as I do not like the fact, some things take time.

Unanswered prayer is a difficult topic for us. Yes, some try to get around it with silly retorts, as in god said no, but that’s contemptuous of the issue. We deserve better.

Sometimes adages conflict. If at first you don;t succeed, try try again, but the british add don;t make a bloody fool of yourself, or the definition of insanity is doing  the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.In an age of instant answers, persistence doe snot seem like a virtue any longer.

Let’s first look at the widow. she has few options to power other than her voice, her persistent voice. the judge says that her badgering is giving him a black eye.She has the courage, or maybe the despair, to do anything for justice to be done.

It almost seems to be dropped in but we see the same advice in 2 Tim be persistent.It is good advice to us at any time, but maybe especially in our youth, or when we get downcast aobut not seeing obvious fruit of our labors.

Just as the bible is a dialogue across hundred and hundreds of years, so too is prayer a dialogue, a daily dialogue,  between us and God. If prayer says the exact same thing over and over, i think it has been reduced to nagging.  I can grasp how praying for a result could end up working to our benefit down the road, but if a healing would violate some divine plan, then i would pray that the plan be revised. One way to go at it is to realize that God’s direct intervention in our plane of existence seems rare in Scripture and reality. instead, god’s work is mediated through the creation, and that includes us. Second, god’s world is infinitely complex. When God would intervene to answer a prayer in a direct way, consider all of the manifold ways that decision radiates throughout the lives of others. I fully sympathize with the counterpoint that a powerful god is wasting resources if they are not moved toward healing of an illness, for instance. Persistent prayer moves us away from seeing god as a 365 day day version of santa claus.

God does not give up on us, so we do not give up on god.albert Ellis said that the “art of love is the art of persistence.” We can include our frustration at unanswered prayer as part of our conversation with God. Part of the idea of discernment is coming to a fuller understanding of the hand of god in events. Like the Garth Brooks song Unanswered Prayer we may come to see that a desperately desired result may not be in our best interest down the road. On the other hand we can continue to come to grips with unanswered prayer haunts us when we cannot do much about the outcome.With process theologians, i do hold to this: god is at work seaselessly to help bring this world to a place fit for us to live. God is always seeking to turn divine vision into reality. Our prayer life seeks to align itself with that divine quest.

OT Notes Jer. 31:27-34

Note that this is a promise of fertility and a new start. it is the turn to the sequence in 1:10 that includes hope as well as pain within the divine repertoire.

To what extent do you see as announcing a new beginning as eschatology?

Careful, careful here not to fall into the old trap of speaking of Judaism as external v. the internal drive of Christianity. isn't this text proof enough of that fallacy? would it be wise to translate torah as instruction/teaching here and not law?

The god of the perfect memory will forgive, will bring to present life the past sins no more. the sins, not the people, are banished ot the outer darkness.

Get clear on what you mean by covenant/testament.Does a covenant mean more than a contract? doesn’t it seem to move into a social dimension immediately, for a people?

is the new covenant an admission of failure on the part of God’s relationship with the people?

Apply covenant language to the sacraments.

How do you see the role for the Spirit in this interior change?

we are in the same territory as Ezek 18 here. We see a shift from communal, inter-generational responsibility to individual responsibility. Why? the people obviously feel that the impending doom is not condign punishment.Stop for a moment, please. This turns against the great divine self-description in Ex. 34 This is a great example of devleopment and change within the corpus of the bible itself over time

Thoughts on columbus day

Columbus Day does not seem to have the import it once did. Some get a day off; sales are announced, and some parades still occur. With the 500^th anniversary fading, so does the day. The anniversary brought a ton of revisions to the discovery narrative, even alerting us to the silliness of calling a populated land to be “discovered.” In our falling back from large explanations and the great person view of history, we perhaps and recapture some of it by recalling how small the first three small ships to the Americas were, with only around 90 sailors. Is it not a form of the “butterfly effect” where a small enterprise can have enormous consequences down the road?

Kirkpatrick Sale sees the great voyages as an attempt to leave the decay of Europe behind in search of something new, a natural paradise. The voyages started a period of annihilation by disease and subjugation by the new overlords of the native peoples. Of course they were not perfect people, but Columbus and those who followed brought faith under the sword, and compassion faded in the lust for gold. Columbus thought he had discovered a paradise, but one he interpreted as a sign that the world was being prepared for the return of Christ and the end of days. To be able to convert the Indians, instead of the Great Khan, as he had intended, was a sign of the faith spreading over the globe, as the Great Commission at the end of the gospel of Matthew commanded, or John 10:16, as Columbus himself thought.

I am struck by recent interest in the religious dimension of Columbus. Before the voyages, he became more pious and received Communion before the ships left the river near Portugal. he felt that God revealed to him the westward voyage as a new route to the Indies. It seem that he was influenced by apocalyptic musings and even saw himself in the role of the bearer of God’s purposes to help inaugurate a new age. After all, his given name meant Christ-bearer/carrier. Some see religious significance in his new way of signing his name at that time.  He had mystical experiences and in the last difficult voyage heard the voice of god tell him to be strong and of good courage for tribulations had purpose. Some speculate that he hoped to obtain wealth enough to fund yet another crusade to conquer Jerusalem. Columbus himself made a massive search of Scripture and looked to his discoveries in the west as the fulfillment of prophecies. he had more latitude than modern readers of Scripture as it was held that scripture contained levels of meaning that pointed toward spiritual images not seen at the plain level of reading passages (see his comments of Is. 66:19, for instance).

Columbus died, a failure in the eys of the royals who sent him on his voyages. Columbus himself died disappointed and feeling persecuted. So often, only time is able to help us sort through the impact of a solitary life.

We live in an age of discovery of space and the micro-world, and of astounding movement in biology. Yet, discovery seems expected. In some circles of the right wing, the crusading impulse still burns. Fox news and its propaganda allies continue to try to paint opponents in terms of religious conflict. We have grown more mature in our history, as we expect that all human beings are flawed, so our heroes may be flawed as well. We are more willing to see the vast complexity of the forces that affect both individual and social actions. Yet, as Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote: “we had heroes once, and we will again.”

Devotional Points Week of Oct. 13

Sunday-Ps. 66 starts as a hymn to God’s creative power. It then moves to an evocation of god’s providence and governance, in v. 9. “You have kept us among the living and have not let our feet slip.” In other words, the same power that is behind all creation continues in concern and care for us now. When have you been ready to slip physically, emotionally, or spiritually and felt somehow protected from a fall?

Monday-“Open our eyes to see your Spirit in all life. Open our hearts to receive the blessings that is in all created things. Guide us with your wisdom, O God, in the handling of matter, in the sharing of earth's resources and in the knowing of one another, your Spirit within every living spirit.” (JP Newell from facebook) Does this sort of prayer appeal to you? Do you perceive the Spirit of god in creation, in other people?

Tuesday-Jealousy can be attractive, for a moment, as it makes its object feel wanted and important. it is a disabling emotion in a relationship as it corrodes trust. Sometimes jealousy is accurate and is picking up on restless signals. It’s a maddening emotion when someone is innocent and feels accused. to what degree does it emrge from insecurity do you think?

Wednesday-John Ortberg-“Spiritual growth is not micro-wearable. It can happen only at the rate grace allows. This is good. But very frustrating.” This strikes me as welcome advice in a microwave age. We want things to move a the speed of light. The spiritual life is often a small series of steps, of unfolding. For those of a conversionist mindset, it may start in a flash but ti is a lifetime of practice and change thereafter. When have you noticed some slow even subtle changes in your life over time?

Thursday-"Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be, what urgency calls you to your one love?" David Whyte, What to Remember When Waking and  "You're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so... get on your way!” Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go! This was posted recently by someone who had a succession of bad days and another looming day ahead. would this sort of affirmation work for you?

Friday-Anne Lamott- “I do not understand at all the mystery of grace, except that it meets us where we are but does not leave us as we are.” I like this quote as it captures the willingness of god to accept our position as the starting point. it also gives lie to the common misperception that God’s interest is then finished. No, our starting point si our present condition but god is not content to leave us there, as god sees oin us wellsprings of potential/

Saturday-A number of pastors have been lamenting the devastating budget news in their churches of late. We too are facing a major deficit. Part of it is the economy and fears about it, but part of it is a change in our relationship to the church. It seems that we feel as if our contributions are contingent on our agreement with its actions, as if contributions are votes. To what degree do you see generosity to the church as an indicator of spiritual health?

Sermon notes for Oct. 13 Jer. 29, lk. 17:11-19

Bloom where you are planted. Be Here Now. Stop and smell the roses.Learning gratitude in the moment and upon reflection Gratitude affects the way we look at time:past, present, and future. Often we collect grudges from the past, but gratitude pushes us to see a series of gifts and blessings.Instead of seeing the future as going downhill, we look forward to a brighter future, where God’s is working toward the goal of more and greater blessing, not death and destruction.

Also, I extended the reading to include the great passage on the future. So many of our fellow Christians rub their hands in glee at the thought of God raining down vengeance on those with whom they  disagree or discredit. Here instead, the God who is seen by the people as punishing them through the exile is now offering a vision of a brighter future. Not only are they to work and pray for the welfare of their new albeit temporary home, but God continues to have their welfare at heart.we hear that the generous god continues to work, and we can be grateful for the future as a gift, not dread.

I think Luke makes sure that we know that the one person who thanks Jesus is a Samaritan. Jesus seems to assume that they are orthodox jews who would go to the proper procedures to place the seal on their healing. the last person one would imagine thanking Jesus may do so because he does not need to follow the precise rules. On the other hand, the proper procedures serve as a deterrent from the other nine thanking Jesus. In other words, the sheer fact of being the chosen people  may move them to think that they deserve a healing, deserve their unanswered prayers to finally come to pass, no longer seemingly wasted. Many of us harbor the hope that if we live a good life, god owes us benefits.

It’s been on my mind how our visions of the future have grown stark instead of hopeful. I hold with Benjamin Franklin and Ronald Reagan that a picture of the usn on the horizon is a rising sun, not a setting one.I do think we can hold the words of Jeremiah close in our time as well as the depths of trouble facing the tiny kingdom of Judah. I have plans for you a future and a hope, for your welfare and not for harm. Session was looking into the present and future on budgets and see a noticeable gap. In part our offerings are built toward not only the maintenance of this congregation but a declaration about the future.

Gratitude is often a difficult virtue for us. We are so self-sufficient, self-reliant it is difficult for us to see how we live in a network of social relations, and it is particularly difficult for us to absorb that Scripture says the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. It is hard for us to connect with worship with glad and generous hearts, but certainly easier generous hearts than generous wallets.So we could move toward gratitude as a postiive virtue for us that leads to increased happiness. a social psychology experiments demonstrated that people who delivered a gratitude letter to someone who touched their life showed higher levels of well-being after a month. People who keep gratitude journals show a variety of indicators of happiness to a greater extent than control groups.Gratitude helps immunize us against the assumption that we earn all good things and that people usually cause us grief and trouble. It tends to orient us to present benefits instead of romanticizing the past or mooning about the future. It seems to make us more resistant to stresses in life.

return of Alton telegraph column-the future

I’ve been thinking about the future in different guises. First, I am a lecti0onary preacher, and some of our Old Testament readings, for instance, Jer. 29 and 32 deal with the future. Our youngest daughter is a senior in college now, so her future is looming, even glaring at her. (I’m reading the new library book, Present Shock, and it asserts that our digital age has changed the way we conceive of the future to the extent that everything seems ot be collapsing into the present. Also, I love movies and have been wondering why movies now paint a future earth in the most stark ways and project a dystopia, not a utopia. Why are zombies, the “living dead” emblems of the future on TV and movies?

As a Christian, I continue to notice the continued stress on the end times in the thinking of a number of American Christians. In the Bible, apocalyptic, end time material came late in the history of Israel. When Israel was defeated, they could find no confidence in their own ability to fight. In our time, some have become beholden to a particular view of the end times that insists that God will act only when things reach a nadir. So, they can the events for trouble, but at the same time dismiss clear evidence of impending climate change. When people do not feel that they have the resources within themselves to seek a different future, they look to outside themselves. In that sense waiting for god to reverse the course of events is an indicator that they have given up engaging with God’s purposes, to build God’s work here, and to seek outside help solely.

As part of a denomination that has been in decline for a while, I have been wondering if the anti-religious institution bias in our culture is due, in part, to a different view of the future. When people build and support institutions, they are thinking for the long haul. they are investing in the future itself. They look past current occupants of a position and look toward a legacy, toward, dare we say it, posterity. If the future looks bleak, if the future seems to be fated beyond human powers, then why even try to plan for it?

One biblical point is clear on the future: it is not predictable. god the Creator is fully capable of adjusting and reweaving the created order. God has chosen human being to be partners in the work of creation’s orderings. While God does seem to have purpose, God seems to respond to human action and consider options, and they rarely seem to involve direct divine agency. Instead, God uses human action to mediate divine intention and response. For Christians, of course, Jesus Christ, in person and work, is the shining example of this.

Must the future replay the past or be an iteration of it? Apocalyptic thought, which Jesus may well have represented, sees God as capable of doing a new thing. In Isaiah, God can tell us to “remember not the former things.” God is not bound by cyclical constriction; God can choose different means, different paths toward divine purposes for human well-being.

It was not that long ago when President Reagan spoke of morning in America. I fear that too many leaders figure that we are looking at a setting sun, not a rising one any longer. I have grown tired of people asking if we should bring children into our world. Why not work toward making our world a place suitable for young life, a place that will recognize and permit their gifts to flourish? The God of life expects no less.

Week of Oct 6 devotional points

Sunday Oct 6- Ps 137 is a heartbreaking song of longing for home. Even when Jeremiah can tell them to bloom where they are planted, they are still exiles. Will they every feel at home again? When have you been homesick? when have you felt exiled? How did you learn to recover?

Monday-Wisdom requires discernment: not all facts are equally relevant, not all motivations are equally commendable, and not all potential outcomes are equally laudable. Wisdom is not for the faint of heart. --Galen Guengerich, "God Revised"

who is the wisest person you’ve known?

Tuesday-Jer. 29 speaks of a future and a hope from God who has plans for welfare of a desperate people. It is as if god says that a page is being turned, and hope and the future can beckon again instead of feeling like a dreaded, leaden weight dangling overhead or dogging every step. What elements of the future have the most hope for you? what do you look forward to?

Wednesday-It was in the brokenness of Europe and the bloody trenches of the front lines that Teilhard (de Chardin) woke up to communion with God through earth. During Easter week 1916 at the Battle of Dunkirk, It was as he cared for the wounded, it was as he felt the shock of the earth around him, bombs blasting craters out of trampled vineyards, that he came to see most clearly the sacredness of creation’s body. He saw that what we do to one another as nations and what we do to the earth as a human race is what we do to the Presence of Love. And with almost unbelievable tenderness, he addresses Christ and creation in one breath: “I love you, Lord Jesus,” he prays at Dunkirk. “You are as gentle as the human heart, as fiery as the forces of nature, as intimate as life itself. . . . I love you as a world, as this world which has captivated my heart.” (From Philip Newell on Facebook)

Thursday-I saw a touching movie recently, Unfinished Song. A group of senior people join a community chorus, and the music and the community brings them joy. As we age, we sometimes let go of things that brought or bring us joy, or at least enjoyment. Thomas Long has a wonderful book on the funeral, Accompany Them With Singing, What osng would you like played at your funeral?

Friday- "If indeed we love the Lord with all our hearts, minds, and strength, we are going to have to stretch our hearts, open our minds, and strengthen our souls, whether our years are three score and ten or not yet twenty. God cannot lodge in a narrow mind. God cannot lodge in a small heart. To accommodate God, they must be palatial." (William Sloane Coffin) What circumstances have seemed to enlarge your perspective?

Saturday-We have a fairly regular ministerial reading group at our church. After our work, we conclude with worship in our chapel. One of our members found that the singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter speaks to her quite deeply. Another friend found that her record, Ashes and Roses helped immensely through the struggle of grief. We just quoted her song, Elysium, at a recent minister’s meeting. What song speak to your heart in a special way?

sermonnotes Oct 6 lam. 1, 3

When I would walk to church as a boy, the crippled grandmothers of our area would be walking up the steep hill toward church with rosaries in hand, saying (bieda, bieda forgive spelling of slavic tongues) poverty, poverty, a spiritual and material lack. the book of Lamentations starts out with a single exclamation, ekah.It’s a world of hurt rolled up in a word, like George Jones bending a note, or sinatra phrasing a line in a song such as It Never entered My Mind.

We speak of celebrating Communion, but it rarely feels like it. It often has the feel of a funeral service to me, as we have unthinkingly adopted the Baptist view of Communion as a mere memorial of the death of Jesus.That’s my lament this morning as we enter into this day. We have sadly relegated this sacrament ot the back of awareness and have accepted a poor substitute for its fullness, depth, and richness. For a generation the national PCUSA has been urging us to have Communion every week. Most congregations have responded by having it more frequently. World Communion Sunday does move us to examine the world of our fellow Christians.It also is a casue for lament that the great symbol of christian unity is riven by disagreements so that some of our chruches withhold the sacrament from each other.

Lament is a proper response to a world riven by conflict and pain. As Cornelius Plantinga says, lament makes sense only in the belief that god is active and is being called ot arrest obvious injustices. Lament makes sense only if we consider that we worship a god who listens.Our world does seem out of kilter, but then again, it has always been the case.Lament releases energies expended in suppressing thoughts and feelings.One of the trouble with laments is that God seems silent in the face of our suffering. A listening ear is vital, but we are looking for a response.Even here at the beginning of Lamentations, we sense some distance between the narrator and the suffering.

In part, communion speaks a word to us that we can handle in the face of laments. Yes, words of thanksgiving dominate our ritual, but its core is wordless: the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine.God speaks through the action of communion.I am sure that we have all been noting, re-reading, and celebrating the 450th anniversary of the heidelberg Catechism, the first reformed statement of faith that reached these shores in New York, before the Westminster confession was written. Look at its thick view of Communion. A19th century advocate of it, Nevin of Pennsylvania said this: “through the Holy “soirit we participate ...mystically,,dynamically, and substantially through the inmost soul-center of our being, int he divine life that springs up perpetually though the fountain of the humanity of christ, for our dreary and dying nature.”

Years ago, Communion was called the medicine of immortality. Applying the words of amazing Grace, it is healing balm for sin-sick souls.Communion does incorporate laments into its very fabric, but it also answers lament with the same word of hope that lies at the very center of Lamentations.Our hope lies, in part, in the very word Communion. We do not live all alone, but we live within the relationships of lf life through the church. We do not grieve alone or celebrate alone. This spiritual feast is not for hermits. More significantly, we are in Communion with the living risen Christ  fully. both divine and human energies of Jesus Christ enter into our very lives as surely as the food becomes part of our body structure.God is part of the fabric of our lives.