Saturday, May 31, 2014

Column Notes on Sabbath and Vacation

I will probably take summer vacation in mid September and go to Zion and Bryce canyon national parks in utah. In part I do this due to the sage advice from our younger daughter some years ago-”Dad, at your advanced age, you should start checking things off the bucket list.” As summer begins, i am also determined to take some road trips. One of our members grew up near Carbondale and sends me southern Illinois tourist material. Soon,I plan to visit giant city State Park area. first, i want to enjoy some hiking. Second, I am interested in FDR public works programs. i am intrigued that the CCC built the fine buildings here at Pere Marquette and in giant city.

While many of us prize vacation time, few of us seem to prize sabbath time. The same folks who speak of the 10 Commandments as the basis of our legal and  ethical culture seem to have a blind spot to the sabbath, whether it is for worship or for rest.

Vacations are a secular form of sabbath, are they not? They are opportunities for rest and recreation. I always like that recreation could work as re-creation, that we make something new of ourselves in leisure time. Vacation has an inherent spiritual dimension to it.

As you may know, we use quotes to discuss in our Saturday at 6 informal, style of worship.Here are some illustrative quotes on sabbath observance. Let’s look at just a few:

“Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.” ( Walter Brueggemann)The eminent biblical scholar reminds us that  Israel was formed under slavery. Sabbath is an antidote to anyone or anything claiming all of our time and labor.

We are all in thrall to the work ethic. that in itself can become problematic. “If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us.” ( Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives) Notice how he connects rest to spiritual rest. In a world of constant demands, our frenzy can drown out the voices of the spirit. maybe that is our intention in our busy hectic lives all along?

“The Sundaies of man's life, / Thredded together on time's string,/    ...  On Sunday heaven's gates stand ope;/   Blessings are plentiful and rife./  More plentiful than hope.”       ( George Herbert, Temple--The Church--Sunday)  For the religious poet, sabbath time allows us to transcend time and space.Sabbath gives us perspective against the constant bleat of more, more, more. Sabbath worship opens us to a world beyond the senses, to the realm of the divine.Herbert moves into a string of sabbath time strung together, like jewels on a necklace that decorate our lives. Perhaps better, those Sundays sting the disparate pieces of everyday life together.

We are more than beasts of burden. We are more than individual factories of production. We are human beings, not only human doers, made for a pace of work and rest. Sabbath Is time carved out for enjoying the blessings of God and the fruits of our labor.May the summer bring  much needed Sabbath time to us all.

Sermon Notes for June 1 I Peter 4,5

June 1 I Peter 4, 5
Years ago, I did some serious work on I Peter as it pays particular attention to the issue of suffering.Everybody suffers: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. It is one of the conditions of being human, I suppose. I saw that someone posted on Facebook a bumper sticker that said Suffering ended on Good Friday: not in my world it hasn’t. I can accept the notion that sacrifice of others should end after Good Friday. Still, if the new age is inaugurated in Jesus Christ, why is life still so hard?

I Peter sees suffering as a predictable sign of being a Christian in a hostile world. He is very quick to say that we should not be punished for criminal behavior but should not expect our good deeds to be rewarded.Hear that again. instead of constantly speaking of everything being a blessing to be expected due to being a Christian, Peter says the opposite: a sign of faith was unjust suffering in a world antithetical to the message of the Suffering One, Jesus Christ.Trouble stalks us all. Troubles prowl about looking to strike.

Earlier Peter’s epistle brings out the notion that suffering disciplines, teaches, strengthens, purifies even. I do not grasp that personally, but I will grant that some people find themselves strengthened by some adversities. On the other hand, I have seen too many people crushed by the weight of suffering, especially the merciless suffering that seems to have no discernible reason.One of the needful things for suffering is to try to find some purpose, some meaning, some sense out of what often is so devoid of a reason.I am rather amazed that people so routinely survive what we undergo. At times, the only way that I find it explainable is that they receive a strength that they did not even realize they had in the face of adversity. Parents of children with special needs live out lives of such selfless service day in and day out.

Peter finds solace in this simple assertion: Jesus christ suffered. Jesus was not above suffering, so why are we so proud as to think we should be given a pass when it seems that everyone suffers in one way or another. He goes on to say that we are closer to Jesus when we share his sufferings. to tell the truth, i would often prefer some distance, but i do realize that few events drive me to prayer as easily as trouble for others in my family or church and myself.

Peter wants to make sure that suffering is not a sign that God is absent and does not care for us. I do not find it easy to be able to cast my anxieties on to God, as I seem to much rather stew over them on my own to get into a real maelstrom of trouble. I love the series of verbs at the end of our final passage:restore, support, strengthen, and establish. Three of the verbs could be taken as other ways of saying being strengthened in one form or another.Again, I am thrilled about the prospect of heaven, but its appearance at the horizon does not do much for me to be lifted up in the face of current trouble. I am not sure that heaven can somehow make up for the hells people suffer here on earth. I do appreciate the e idea that suffering will not continue in heaven as it does on earth. I like the notion that it exists in an entire new reality of wholeness and goodness.Today, perhaps the best I can do and hope for is for those four words to apply to our experience of heaven, a place where we are free from strife and have the permission and room to be our own best selves.

Week of June 1 devotional notes

Sunday-Ps.68 has a sound of an ancient hymn to me. Its paean to power is a poetic marvel at. v.2. I wish enemies would melt away took, especially natural plagues such as cancer and ha eart disease.At the same time, this power is directed for the weak at v. 5-6. Of course, the weak are unable to often be effective agents on their own. they are overwhelmed. When trouble comes, i too yearn for the god of power to sweep trouble away.

Monday- “We sing a slow hymn at my church, St. Andrew, that goes, "God has smiled on me, He has set me free." For us to acknowledge that we have been set free from toxic dependency, from crippling obsession or guilt, that we have been graced with the ability finally to forgive some­one, is just plain astonishing. You can't have gotten from where you were—gripped by anxi­ety, tiny with fear—to come through to freedom, for God's sake. To have been so lost that you felt abducted, to feeling found, returned, and set back onto your feet: Oh my God, thankyouthankyouthankyou. Thank you. Thanks.”(Anne Lamott)

Tuesday-”Theology of abundant life: you have enough./ You can do enough. You are enough. “- David Lose. I like the sound of misterrogers in the line-You ar enough. So often, we fall into seeing only negatives about ourselves that we are blind to the deep pool of resources within.
Wednesday-”our unattended baggage sits/ locked in guarded rooms,unclaimed treasures stacked/in corners, dark upon dark,/each one growing heavier,/ mustier by the decade,/awaiting lost identities.”(Kent Ira Groff) We accumulate so much stuff, visible and invisible. Sometimes treasure slie within those things, but some of them are better off to be disposed to the scrap heap of life, even driven from memory.Still, they do help form us. What are some things you regret or missed, but now realize that they were decisive in your journey, your growth?
Thursday-As you move through this day remember this: the hours of the day can be like bookmarks helping you not lose your place in the day. Remembering to pause is a way of marking your place in the day, assisting you to live more mindfully. Pausing is a way of offering hospitality to the hours. Every step you take can be a prayer. (Macrina Wiederkehr)
Friday-”It is an insistent grace that draws us to the edge and beckons us to surrender safe territory and enter our enormity.We know we must pass beyond knowing and fear the shedding.But we are pulled upward nonetheless through forgotten ghosts and unexpected angels realizing it doesn't make sense to make sense anymore.This morning the universe danced before you as you sang--it loves that song!" (Stephen and Ondrea Levine)
Saturday- Ignatius of Loyola writes:God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life. All things in this world are also created because of God's love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily. ... Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God's deepening life in me.




Wednesday, May 28, 2014

I Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

1) the fiery ordeal may be persecution, but I am open to other interpretations. At any rate, Peter sees this suffering as a test or trial. christians should expect to be put on trial for their faith in this period.
2) I ma not sure what to make of this notion of sharing Christ's sufferings. Is that as a model, or something else? Most of us tned to think of sharing benefits, not sufferings.
3) the attitude  is similar to the beatitudes that one is glorified for bearing suffering for the faith.

moving down the lectionary picks up at 5:6.
Humble here has the sense of being a more passive recipient of trouble is another reversal.of values a la the Beatitudes. Proud here has the sense of shining too brightly.
Certainly many of us can gravitate to the command to cast anxieties on to god.
the resistance to the prowling of the devil somehow comes from realizing that we share suffering with one another.

After suffering, for a little while,not forever, for a little while. Suffering seems to last a long time for its victims.
Notice the great  words, restore (or perfect, men), support (make firm, confirm, make stable) ,strengthen establish.(be well-grounded), so most of the words are in the range of being strong in the face of adveristy.
In a world where power oppresses it closes with a word of the power of god.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Column Notes on YWCA Women of distinction and Community

Recently, we spent well over two hours deciding on the Rotary Student of the Year Scholarship. My favorite meetings of that organization would be presentations of Student of the Month awards. When we get older, we so easily fall into a chorus of complaint of the changes, few of which we like, in youth. Nothing so wipes the slate clean as hearing of the stunning lists of accomplishments of our award recipients. i was utterly serene in the meeting as I felt that we could not make a bad decision for our award. We could have given it to 8 or 10 young people, and I would have been pleased with the quality of our recipient. Not only are they remarkably intelligent and hard-working, the students have an astonishing number of community service activities.


Also, I was privileged to attend the local YWCA Women of Distinction award ceremony this week. I was delighted to attend an event where the significant social contributions of local women were honored. I loved the diversity of the those honored:: from a therapist, to a nursing professor, to a champion of those struggling with cancer, to a police officer.The public sector was also noted by a school board official.


So much good work goes unrecognized or on the periphery of awareness. So much crying need exists that does not register. One of the impressive things about the honorees is their refusal to give into inertia or despair, but in rolling up their sleeves to do battle against often intractable problems. I knew that a the Methodist church in Upper Alton organized a feeding program for summer lunches. i did not know that they seek to serve 5 elementary schools whose subsidized lunch recipient number over 70% of enrollment. I had no idea that 100 people are organized to provide that basic human need of food. A contributing factor in so many of our social problems has to be the baleful effects of poverty of individuals and the so-called culture of poverty that places such limits on aspirations, attitudes, and behaviors toward  social upward mobility. While education is vital in our technically sophisticated society, it is not a magic wand. Education  struggles to create citizens who face so many daunting challenges.


That took my thoughts to the need for organization. It is probably impossible to try to do the kind of work of these women alone. It requires joint effort. It also requires the organization of getting disparate people and interests together for efficiency and effectiveness sake. In our time, we constantly criticize organizations and institutions, but good causes are subject to burnout in their best people when they try to shoulder too much of the load themselves.


I was forcefully reminded of the importance of public and private partnerships in our land. A number of the folks work for public agencies but are members of private agencies and the obverse holds as well. Volunteers help shape the social fabric of a community.


I also thought of Sec. Clinton’s much derided proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child.” I do not wish to get into partisan insanities here, but to point out how the care of our children is, increasingly, an endeavor that takes the involvement of a community. The different causes almost outlined the array of forces that stalk our young people. It  would seem that a concerted community effort is required to battle the evil  cavalry that assaults them daily. Not only is no one an island, we are all connected.

May those who work so diligently for public purposes know that they are doing good, human work. May their awards encourage them to keep up their efforts, to discover pools of patience and perseverance even they did not suspect would lie within.

Sermon Notes-May 25 Acts 17

May 25-Acts 17 John 14:15-21, I Peter 3:13-22
The Greeks were on the lookout for the next new thing. Most of us have grown up with the idea that new is better. When I was young new and improved was a constant advertising slogan.
they were not receptive to the resurrection of the body as it sounded like a zombie to them, so they were much more comfortable with a soul moving through the spheres.How do we speak to people with a whole different set of mental furniture?

At first, Paul is appalled by the idols, but when he speaks to the Greeks he switches gears and calls them religious then he seizes on the statue, to an unknown god and says he knows of God, perhaps that very unknown god? Paul does not rattle off dogma to folks who have no hint of his background.this may well be our increasing task as we deal with people with little religious background.

God is giver of life.spirit.breath, and all. Yes the Creator but the stress is on the gift of life itself.
Work with in whom we live and move and have our being. This is a picture of God’s spirit as a sort of environment, a medium for life, a force field of the  pervasiveness of God.Paul uses an ancient quotation  to also get them and us past seeing God as a great grandfather in the sky, at least solely.

Part of the work of Christina communication seems to me to be translation of its thought world to our time and place. For instance Paul Tillich thought that  fate was the force to deal with early in history, guilt at the time of the Protestant Reformation, and now it could well be finding meaning and purpose in life.Paul tries to find common ground with his listeners. he does not deride them or castigate them, even if he feels it personally. He finds correlative beliefs with his pagan hearers and may even quote them.Paul’s sermon gets three reactions: derision, a willingness to hear more, and belief.Not one message or style appeals to everyone.In part, i am still interested in Paul’s task fo trying to take orthodox religious faith but speal of it in more accessible ways for contemporary ears. No I do not mean wholesale attempts to sound as if I am conversant with current argot  but how do we make things clear in our time but do not sacrifice the depth of the concepts or language.

In my experience, no form of activity helps us come to grips with putting the faith into our own words and experience better than Christian education. Nothing enhances reading the Scripture more than hearing different people’s reaction and response to its material. I have actually heard people say that it is not good to think about the faith, and it is better to keep the stance of a six year old. How does that love god with the mind and strength? The goal ot me is to be able to discuss the faith with people of different backgrounds, ages, and education. Instead of seeing all religious viewpoints as somehow equal, are we sufficiently clear on our beliefs that we can sift through other faiths to find points of contact and practices for our own?

In the end, our reading from John gives us a way into the faith through the simplest, yet deepest angle of all: love. Yet love is mediated in culture, preference, and actions.In owrhsip we cannot empahsize enought love of each other but that is no substiutee for the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Deovtional Pts for May 25 Week

Sunday-Ps.66:8-12 has a complex view of God’s work in the world. it uses the image of being purified by trials, as in metal. It sees God as placing burdens on us. At the same time, it has God moving through these trails to bring us to a spacious place. that sense of a safe and secure place lies at the heart of the word for salvation in Hebrew. Where do you feel secure, and where do you feel  threatened in life right now?

Monday-”O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart./Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.” (St. Augustine) nI like the idea of the Spirit entering into a heart abundantly, for God is not the god of scarcity. Where is your spiritual dwelling neglected? Where do you need cheerful beams of light to enter into life?

Tuesday-Divinity is aimed toward humanity...God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else. (Hildegard of Bingen) I like her sense of the world being connected, related, joined together. it is part of the complexity of creation. it also elicits awe at the ways we are bound together in god’s care and providence for all of creation.

Wednesday-in working with Haggai, we spoke of contemporary temples such as sports stadia. One person brought up the computer screen. What spiritual contacts do we make through this stained glass of the 21st century? What threats do you perceive n this new mode of technical expertise? Can the computer screen replace worship of any style together?

Thursday-In that same class on Haggai, we also spoke about the decline    in the felt significance of worship.I never get that the people who talk about the 10 Commandments miss a lot of church services. I don't get that people who speak of the early church miss  Acts 2:42-47. Do we even bother with making excuses for skipping worship?

Friday-"There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun." Thomas Merton-What would happen today, if you choose to see yourself (and everyone you meet) as this amazing combination of light and spirit and good rich earth? How would we treat one another differently if we saw how very connected and related we are to one another?
“Would we care for the earth more tenderly and consciously because we are in such intimate relationship?” (Carrie Newcomer)

Saturday-the Missouri History Museum has an exhibit on Prohibition, based on the book, Last Call. Seeing the wreckage that alcohol and its enterprises made of human lives, a national movement used a variety of political approaches to outlaw alcohol to be sold for most purposes. Admissions to mental hospitals for alcoholism did fall during the period, but a culture of crime leaped up in the legal gap. Good intentions do not always created good policy. unintended consequences have a way of popping up to create new sets of problems.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Notes I Peter 3:13-22

First, I see this passage as relating to the descent into hell. On that score, see work by Alan Lewis (Between Cross and Resurrection) Light in Darkness (von Balthasar), and David  Lauber (on Barth)

Again, it says we should expect to suffer for doing good, as did Christ. We are a long way from our fixation on blessings purely out of being Christian.

We are to be able to defend our beliefs ( apologia, as in apologetics) At the same time we are told to do so with gentleness and reverence. That may well be virtues I often find wanting in apologetics,

Once again we encounter the notion of being put to shame. That notion seems to have fled the awareness of mnay in our time.

Baptismal fonts have 8 sides due to the counting of those saved in the times of Noah.The functional descrtiption of baptism here could be due some more careful thought. AKM Adam has written in workingpreacher that it demonstrates a determination of god to bring us to safety.

In the midst of suffering, hope may well be required. I think of chritiaan Beker's little book, Suffering and Hope.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

On Jocelyn's graduation

Our youngest daughter, Jocelyn, was graduated by Indiana University last weekend in history of art and communications. Her father took it much harder than he anticipated. Part of it is her future in an uncertain economy, part is her introverted nature, part is that she is our youngest, and our lives have definitely turned a corner last weekend.I feared for her as she entered college. Now as I breathe more easily, I continue to fear for her future.Some of that fear comes from the experience of age and in wondering if she is too sweet and kind for a world that is often cold and callous.

Graduation comes from Latin and has the sense of taking a step.In our country, ti seems to me to be a bi step. the difference between an American high school graduate and college graduate is stunning in its scope and depth.Commencement obviously has the sense of a start, a beginning from French but did not come into vogue for graduation until the mid 19th century.It’s a nice ter, as saying goodbye to being an undergraduate is saying hello to adulthood in its movement toward maturity.

IU is a huge school, so it took over one half hour to march the graduates to their stations. Her extended interim period before adulthood closes.The most childlike part came at the start. A sea of phone appeared. Students directed their families where to try to spot them and know ts of hands would start to wave all over the basketball stadium.

I was struck by the sheer ritual for the ceremony: the banners, the regalia, the mortarboard hat my a daughter dismissed, the carefully chosen words. In its way, the university s the seat of the church of reason and study, so we mark such a chapter change in so many lives with ritual. One of the many mistakes of my generation was its dismissal of ritual in favor of an imagined authenticity. What has since transpired is seat fo the pants rituals that fail at their social task. Why reinvent the wheel when a ritual provides a wa for strangers to share the iprot of an event?

The President of ireland spoke as an alum of the university. he is also a poet, so was quite arresting in his presentation. His insistence that education means being able to question assumptions struck me as invaluable.

Her liturgical rule has always been short isgood. sre enough, her only complain was that the opening prayer was a bit long for her taste. The prayer had a fine thought about seekign wisdom rather than the mere accumulation of knowledge.

I did not have as many flashbacks to her childhood, as I did for her sister who was sitting next ot me. I am so proud that she has worked through some significant dyslexia over the years. That may have been one reason she  was not as involved in reading aw we would have preferred. For a while, she liked maps,and then I am so grateful to Agatha Christie books for getting her involved in reading. It is such an experience going to an art museum with her as it is like having your own perosnal docent adding material to the tour.In media, both she and her sister are such literate and viewers and consumers of mass media.

I now wave goodbye to being a parent of a dependent person. Now I am the parent of adults. Perhaps I need a graduation ceremony too. I commence the struggle in how to treat offspringas adults themselves.

Week of May 18 devotional points

May 18-Sunday-Ps.31 is one of the great psalms, and Jesus alludes to it at the cross.Indeed, the Psalms provide us with a sterling prayer book. f we use the Psalter to guide our prayers, by using them or rewriting them, or using them as a template, we get a course in spiritual path finding. V. 15’s “my times are in your hand” could be an invitation to avoiding  responsibility for one’s life, or it could also be a source of real relief for those prone to being too dutiful.

Monday-"Creator of the Universe, preserve us from our own presumption. Do not let us close ourselves into ourselves but open us continually into You. Let us be more in love with You than with our notions of You. Let us stop claiming to know everything so that we may understand something. Increase in us kindness. Make us people who care and who take care, who venerate the truth and recognize each other. Draw us with an irresistible beauty!" (Terri Davis)

Tuesday-“The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.” ― Julian of Norwich Where are you aware of the love of God? where do you find yourself living gladly? What makes you glad, or must it well up despite circumstances?

Wednesday-It is at the bottom where we find grace; for like water, grace finds the lowest level and pools there.” Richard Rohr I like this quote, as I imagine grace being poured on us from above. When have you found grace at the low end of the pool? How do you define grace, or do you only know it when you encounter it?

Thursday-What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like. Saint Augustine. Here Augustine moves past our sense of love as sentiment, as feeling as primary. He sees love in action. perhaps love in action can spur feeling.   

Friday--Years ago a retired farmer told me you can;’t be a sissy and get older. Aging brings very few physical benefits. I am not sure that the increase of perspective and wisdom balances the scales of physical decline vewy well. It gets harder when it seems our resilience is not what it used to be either. How have you learned to cope with physical decline? Where do you handle it well and not so well? does your religious life help or hinder you in that task?

Saturday-We just read Haggai 1, where it speaks of drinking and not being sated and making money and putting it in a bag full of holes.Right away, susie said that  it sounds like 2014. It does seem many of u are on an economic carousel, where we gain one moment and lose the next. Where do you seek lasting value across the board? Where do persistent hungers dog your spiritual path? when is dissatisfaction a welcome part of your path?

Sermon Notes, Acts 7, John 14, I Peter 2

May 18-Jn 14, Acts 7, I Peter 2
In all of my years I do not recall working with this Stephen passage at all. Stephen is pictured as Jesus said as a prophet who then faces death in Jerusalem.Secure in our bastion of freedom of religion, we don't naturally flock to stories of martyrdom.Ensconced in a society that considers itself nominally Christian, we rarely see ourselves as outsiders who could be the victim of blind murderous hatred.Sure some of our sisters and brothers call mere disagreement oppression and discrimination, but that is a pale word compared to this religious lynching.

Stephen was one of the first deacons, as the early movement starts to organize for its growing numbers. Luke portrays him also as an extraordinary religious interpreter, given the length of his sermon that exceeds those of Peter and Paul in Acts. He has a vision of heaven itself before his death.Indeed after he has infuriated the crowd with a long recitation of  opposition to God’s way, his vision of an exalted Jesus pushes the crowd to wrath. It is also an end time vision, as he sees the Son of Man in heaven, He dies like Jesus almost quoting the words of Father forgive them they know not what they do.His name means crown or victory wreath.We catch a glimpse of the early church emphasizing that Jesus was vindicated, not only by resurrection, not only by ascension, but as the creed says is seated at the right hand of God.

Our reading from John captures another sense of facing death with dignity. Jesus  will soon be the victim of a religious and political  foregone conclusion to his death. Jesus is just starting a long set of speeches that center on his impending death; this is a long goodbye’s beginning. While Stephen has glimpsed a heavenly throne room, Jesus speaks of an expansive place with many rooms. I like that Scripture just gives us hints of what heaven could be for us. It opens up our imaginations. It allows all  sorts of projections into it that reflect some of our deepest desires.So i tend to side with the allusive quality of Scriptural visions more than the precision of some of hte near death experiences that capture our attention, in part, due to their sheer specificity, such as the book and movie heaven Is Real.

A minister’s son had  near death experience catalogued or expanded in the book Heaven Is Real and now a movie with Greg Kinnear.I don’t see these types of experiences as proof of an outer reality, Personally, but I do sympathize with the desire to try to find additional warrants on heaven. Quite simply heaven makes space for us to be with God.the KJV spoke of mansions, or in the more accurate version, one house, God’s house with many rooms.Let’;s go a bit further and apply I Peter’s notion to God’s house. God’s house is composed of living bricks, us, in the church and in the world to come. The erudite theologian David Bentley Hart writes of christians being steeped in the bible so that their angles of vision can take in more than one reality.Last week Jesus is both shepherd and gate to the sheepfold. this week, Jesus is the living way, the living map that thomas seeks to life with God.Peter call him the living cornerstone of the new dwelling place on this earth, as we wait to move into a dwelling place with god.In oteher words, we build up the church and heaven brick by huiman brick, so tha thte whole strucutre is connected by and through us and God. Heaven is a living place, so the God of life uses life itself    to build it.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Notes on I Peter 2:2-10

This is a melange of Scriptural citations blended together.Ps. 34:8, Ps. 118:22, Is. 28:16, Is. 8, 14-5, Hos. 2:23, Ex. 19:6. what a facility for Scripture to be able to weave passages in and out.
I am unwilling to say that we get a coherent picture here, instead of flashes of images.
First we get an  image of infants being fed. I do wonder if we stick to spiritual milk too long. I attend an elderly gathering of men who have done a bible Study faithfully, but they seem so resistant to anything that challenges their particular reading and ignoring of scripture.
Taste is not a sense we emphasize that much in church, even though we are in the midst of a foodie explosion.

How can we take this notion of living stones and make ti breathe more, or be amplified more clearly. Note well  it is an image of a spiritual house, a temple, if you will. This is a corporate image for Americans weaned on individualism.
What are spiritual offerings acceptable to god in 2014?
the final quotes seem to fit well the experience of people not seeing things through the eyes of i Peter and his readers. It continues to bedevil Christians, but also anyone, how do we see things so differently?

Week of May 11 Devotional Pts.

Sunday-Ps.23 is the beloved psalm for many. I have little to add today, but I do wish to highlight “the table spread before my enemies.” Religious people still have enemies. I take the line to mean that the enemies are foaming at the mouth to see a banquet prepared for someone they hate.Enemies lurk in the valley of the shadow. Yet Yet, can they stand against the goodness and mercy of God?
Monday-“Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.” William Barclay

Tuesday-"Our business in life is less making something of ourselves than finding something worth doing and losing ourselves in it." (William Sloane Coffin) this is a fine definition of vocation, a calling not a job.

WednesdayWhere there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.” (Bach) Our church takes understandable pride and pleasure in its musical offerings.Where does the presence of God enter your awareness with sacred or secular music? Does a particular piece of music have particular spiritual resonance for you?

Thursday-Dona nobis pacem. Dona nobis pacem.Ralph Vaughan Williams, writing in 1936, produced this simple hymn as his plea for peace by referring to recent wars and during the growing fears of a new one. His text was taken from the poet, Walt Whitman, who wrote in the time of the Civil War, 1861-1865. And to this day, the wars continue. But we continue to join in the song of the ages, "Grant us Peace." We pray for peace not only among the nations but also in our communities, our church, and in our families. It all begins as we receive from the Lord Jesus his promise, "My Peace I leave with you." As we trust in the peace he gives, we have the opportunity to pass on the peace in our words and actions. As we "pass the peace" in our worship, let that be a reminder that passing the peace is also a part of our ministry in daily life. Help us Lord to identify a place in our lives where we join our Lord in answering the prayer, "Dona nobis pacem." In Jesus' name. Amen.Vern Rice

Friday-I am polishing a way too long sermon on worship and Acts 2:42-47. Karl Barth saw the essence of theology, thinking the faith, in worship:” the essence of theology (is) lying in the liturgical action of adoration, thanksgiving, and petition.” At its best, worship gives us a pattern of thinking and feeling the faith. Irt gives form, pattern to our often inchoate thoughts about the divine.

Saturday-Our youngest should be a graduate of Indiana University today. She is a major in art history and communications.I pray for her in matters social and private. Given my nature, i do fairly well in not worrying too much, but I still worry about both of our daughters still. Her mind’s horizon is so far expanded in her years in college, and I am grateful for her.I hope and pray the world can accept and recognize her gentle soul.
  

May 11 Sermon notes on worship for Acts 2:42-7

Acts 2:42-47
I fear that we are mistaking style over substance. When folks mention a different style of worship here, I remind them that we have a small informal service Saturday at 6, but they rarely show there. When they continue their complaint, i note that they use entertainment as the analogy they are drawing.
I brought a book for the plane called A More Profound Alleluia. we .use Acts 2 as worship template and gift of the spirit. I just read a defense of contemporary styles of worship as a party, but I do not recall that Scriptural reference, but that may be a fault of a memory that is not as strong as it once was.
What is the result of Pentecost in this story? Worship. What worship elements are mentioned? To me it sounds like a synagogue service.Where do we encounter the spirit in worship, or better put, where does the Spirit encounter us. Of all things, let’s go to the Book of Order. Some of its governing sections have been slimmed down, but not this fairly new revision of how we look at worship[. Let me just pull out some sections and make brief comment on them All time, all space, all matter are created by God and have been hallowed by Jesus Christ. Christian worship, at particular times, in special places, with the use of God’s material gifts, should lead the church into the life of the world to participate in God’s purpose to redeem time, to sanctify space, and to transform material reality for the glory of God.” Hear that ending piece-the glory of God.

“Prayer is at the heart of worship. In prayer, through the Holy Spirit, people seek after and are found by the one true God who has been revealed in Jesus Christ. They listen and wait upon God, call God by name, remember God’s gracious acts, and offer themselves to God. Prayer may be spoken, sung, offered in silence, or enacted. Prayer grows out of the center of a person’s life in response to the Spirit. Prayer is shaped by the Word of God in Scripture and by the life of the community of faith. Prayer issues in commitment to join God’s work in the world. “

I went to church and sat through sermons. I understand the antipathy toward them, but I am mystified by the frequency of complaints about 15 minutes. In a Bible Study I attend at times, a gentleman never fails to strike out at sermons as long and boring, and another never fails to mention that he did not get much out of them and his appalling ignorance about Scripture proves it .  People went to college and hear sometimes 1 ½ hour lectures but don't get the grief of sermons. At their base, in our tradition they  try to make a passage clear. I offered to run some sermon preparation groups where we study the passages beforehand but we have no takers.
worship as the flock together’
I Peter (w/ living stones?) Perhaps some of our antipathy to worship comes from a poor grasp of it. this is a plea to consider doing some sessions on our worship style as a study.

The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God', says St. Irenaeus, getting to the heart of what happens when man meets God on the mountain or  in the wilderness. Ultimately, it is the very life of man, man himself as living righteously, that is the true worship of God, but life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking toward God.” ― Pope Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy

Mother's Day 2014

God is on our side as a mother is on our side
God says Yes to us as a mother embraces our virtues
No proper training exists for the role
so we rely on instinct, learnings, and prayers.

God too must be able to let go and hold on without
being cloying or too distant
Mothers struggle to keep close
without smothering or too much worry.

God is described as a fierce mother bear in Hosea 13..
Jesus uses an image of an anxious mother hen.
Dt. 32 uses the image of a safe secure place
to bring new life into the world.

The church has been called a mother.
The church swaddles infans, guides us, provides a place
where we can be assured of hearing, welcome home.

God knows what it is like to be called at all times.
Mothers hear the plea of a sick or hurt child
With infinite patience they help us
learn to be civilized, to date, to drive

Does God, too, care more for
us than for the self?
Mother surely know that fierce sense of love.
Hesed in Hebrew has a sense of loyal love, unbreakable love.
do we ever see a better example of it than in mothers?

They stitch up cuts and clothes
After all, they are teaching us
that much of daily life is mending and patching
Not only do they mend broken toys
they help mend a broken heart and a scuffed ego

That care moves seamlessly generation to generation.
Mothers endure in life and in memory.
So may stimuli,
a hint of fragrance, a word, a thought
bring them to us in utter clarity.

All mothers are held in the divine embrace.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Column draft on free expression

Like most folks, the Sterling Affair with the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team left me feeling uneasy. This new embarrassment  does provide an opportunity to consider a number of vexsome issues.

First, I am committed to free expression. A number of comments continue to make an elementary error. The First Amendment applies to governmental strictures (through the Fourteenth Amendment). As far as the government is concerned we can “say anything we want” but that does not apply in the private sphere. Under  the First Amendment, only imminently dangerous speech connected to an act can be punished. Such limitations do not apply to private groups. I am concerned that speech seems to be more readily punished than, say discriminatory acts. To what degree should we be able to contract away free expression rights in our country at all? Do we need to think through talking about free expression when it can be punished to the degree it is by the NBA in this instance? Maybe this tawdry mess can get us started in a national conversation about the degree to which speech should be punished in private settings.Is a huge fineand a ban an appropriate remedy for his language as levied by a private agency, the NBA?

Second, I have some real privacy concerns. If pushed, I suppose that i would make a distinction between public speech and private speech. I do not understand how we can use surreptitious phone tapes, transfer them to a third party, then have them broadcast, and be punished for private speech.We do not know who released the tape and for what purpose, other than a hefty reward from TMZ. . Do we have no expectation of privacy in this new age of technology? Does punishment for released private conversation start to move us in the direction of thought police, not by the government but by private entities?  When should public outcry be used as a decision to punish someone in their business affairs? what recourse does Mr. Sterling have for violation of his privacy when such a boatload of punishment hits him? Commissioner silver merely dismissed such concerns since they were publicized, that make shtat a public matter. I am not sure it is so easy. Certainly no governmental agency could respond so flippantly.

Third, it seems that we leapt to the conclusion that the tape was legitimate. Even if it was his voice on the tape, could it not have been manufactured from scraps of previous conversations and then smoothed into a narrative as choppy as an ordinary conversation? Again that conclusion was reached due to a sorry history of discriminatory acts and and speech.

Fourth, where was I when someone openly has mistresses in this country while still being married? I realize that in other countries men have dual families, but the point seemed to me to keep one;s affairs private.I have heard some people say that it permitted the wealthy, but not other classes.

Race continues to percolate through  our national life in so many ways. Most would agree with Commissioner Silver that racism continues to be a moral stain within the human heart and as a country. Racial code words are the stock in trade of what passes for political discourse in our country. It is not at all clear to me How is racist speech more deserving  of punishment than racist acts? Mr. Sterling seemed to have a primary concern of his mistress, herself of mixed race, publically being in the presence of non-whites. When we wish to hid, shame is at its core. Equality is an aspiration for many of us, but a solid core of racism exists both structurally and in the recesses of the dark corners of our own hearts and minds. Is racist opinion to be countered by other opinion, or shall we let it fester in the shadows, as we seek to forbid it in speech, public or private?

Monday, May 5, 2014

Notes I Peter 2:19-25, some very preliminary musings

This is usually on the OT. with Eastertide, we are in Acts. I have nothing new to say on Ps. 23, so i decided ot work a bit with the Peter passage.
This is a good example of ripping out of context. this is directed at slaves, but we carefully excise the preceding verse.Ron Allen of CTS avoided the downsizing of faculty in Indianapolis. He writes of preaching against the passage. This may be an example of that necessity.
Whether directed at slaves or not, this passage comes very very close to glorifying suffering as a godly act.Suffering may strengthen some people, but it serves to destroy many more. I just saw Railway Man, and I see little that torture by the Japanese did for the English soldiers in the film.
Further, right wing Christians have taken to picturing themselves as an oppressed minority awaiting martyrdom...in America.
Granted, Peter is speaking of unjust suffering to be borne when we have no choice in the matter. Note that he concludes with a statement on a proper judge at the end.We get a direct allusion to Isaiah's suffering servant in the quote from 53:9 (in Greek).
Some admire the stoic resignation to suffering in silence. i wonder if the religious response is rather to lament.
I wonder what Peter means when he says that Jesus bore our sins upon his body on the cross/ or carried up our sins in his body? Is it an allusion ot an sacrificial ritual?
V.25, i do not know how well the sheep image works in our time and place. What would be other wayws of speaking of hte shepherd and guardian of souls?
I am struck by the inmag eof going astray. i heard someone in bible class going on and on aobut sin as choice, but that misses much of its power, no? does one deliberatley "go astray?"