Devotional Pts. Week of 12/21

Sunday-Ps.89 is a royal hymn that Christians then link to Jesus, as a child of the great king David. Now look at the first two verses and apply them to the royal work of Jesus and its constant reversal of royal expectation. What do you make of a king in a cattle stall? Why did god choose to work through Behtlehem?

Monday-Centering Prayer means allowing a sacred word arise within you "that gathers up you all your desire," according the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing. Once a young Italian man told how the word adagio emerged as his centering word. How wonderful since adagio means "slowly" or "at ease." Later we listened to a CD of multiple versions of Samuel Barber's "Adagio."

Tuesday-One day, according to legend, a neighbor observed Michelangelo rolling a jagged boulder up the street and onto his front step. When the sculptor took out his hammer and chisel and began to strike the boulder, the neighbor was overcome by curiosity. He crossed the street and asked, "What are you doing hammering on that boulder?" Michelangelo responded, "There's an angel inside and I'm trying to let it out!" Bruce Epperley

Christmas Eve-I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~Charles Dickens-

Christmas-The Evangelist shows how, when they arrived at Bethlehem, they were the most insignificant and despised, so that they had to make way for others until they were obliged to take refuge in a stable, to share with the cattle, lodging, table, bedchamber and bed, while many a wicked man sat at the head in the hotels and was honored as lord. No one noticed or was conscious of what God was doing in that stable. He lets the large houses and costly apartments remain empty, lets their inhabitants eat, drink and be merry; but this comfort and treasure are hidden from them. 0 what a dark night this was for Bethlehem, that was not conscious of that glorious light! See how God shows that he utterly disregards what the world is, has or desires; and furthermore, that the world shows how little it knows or notices what God is, has and does.

Friday-keep your feet on the dry bank - you maintain as best you can your own inner peace, the best and strongest of who you are - and from that solid ground reach out a rescuing hand. "Mind your own business" means butt out of other people's lives because in the long run they must live their lives for themselves, but it also means pay mind to your own life, your own health and wholeness, both for your own sake and ultimately for the sake of those you love too. Take care of yourself so you can take care of them. A bleeding heart is of no help to anybody if it bleeds to death.

Saturday-The patience for waiting is possibly the greatest wisdom of all: the wisdom to plant the seed and let the tree bear its fruit.-John MacEnulty

Notes on annunciation-Advent 4

Dec. 21, Lk. 1, 2 Sam.7

Brad Wigger has been working on children’s images of God. Some children correlate Santa and God. (Since I portrayed Santa we may be in trouble, given pastoral egos.) Like God, Santa bestows gifts. As far as I can tell, we do not imagine that Santa’s naughty or nice list contains social justice issues.

Gabriel’s name may be God is a mighty warrior, but the message, that’s the meaning of angel, recall, is one of life not death.annunciation-it is possible that Mary is not of childbearing age yet. so, god ‘s great move depends on a young young woman, so the story of the baptist and Jesus would be framed by unlikely births--her engagement is arranged by the respective families-so again-her range of choice is limited here.Mary is baffled/perplexed/confused/disturb/agitated by the angel’s visit, and the formal greeting, something like all hail, one most favored, O Gifted One When Mary  asks how can this be, his answer is  indirect. Somehow the Holy Spirit is involved in this new life.The Spirit will be on Mary as the Spirit will be upon the disciples as Jesus says before the Ascension. It is part of a symbolic connection of a cloud, an overshadowing that denotes the presence of God, as in the Transfiguration.

Young or not, Mary knows her Scripture. the prayer of Hannah is an obvious source for her prayer. Her prayer reflects her coming to grips with the miraculous announcement of Gabriel.What a prayer-her whole being magnifies extols the Lord. mega-make great-pray with a megaphone and this is a song, a canticle, poetry in music? Sondheim on urging lyrics and music to be kept together. Mary may hear soft words from Gabriel, but she turns them back into tough words of change. Mary sees the birth of Jesus as heralding a battle of systems.Mary represents the hopes of all of Israel.In Is. 8:17 God was hiding the presence form the house of Jacob,now god’s very self will dwell with that selfsame people. They would walk in the light of the Lord (ch.2) God has carried them, borne them like a mother (ch. 46)

We get two great images of the strength of God.God uses his mighty arm to wrest the mighty from their thrones. At the same time that same strong arm holds on to the people like a parent with a toddler. That same strong arm is not being used in a strong arm tactic of violence.

messianic promise in 2 Sam 7 Just a note on the hope here. We do not know how much hope was placed in a new David, a Messiah at this time. Or passage goes back 1000 years before the birth of Christ. If Luke is using it, others must have continued to hold the promise dear for many years.the angels says he will rule over the house of Jacob,but it will be a different sort of rule. Indeed some  more mystical jewish sects had a deep messianic expectation of their leader just recently in New York. Followers of Moon see him as a new Christ  figure. Jesus will replay the words of the angel (ch. 18?) Jesus will replay her words about the will of God in the garden agony.From the reading on David, we get a good sense of how expectations can change over time. the word messiah and therefore Christ means anointed one. In our tradition we notice that priests, prophets, and kings were anointed. .This is a good Advent text as it links, past, present, future.7) I like how God, with a moreover, reverses David’s request and decides to be the giver, not receiver of gifts. Again, the issue of giving or receiving gifts is a good piece for spiritual growth.How do those appearin 2014?

Notes on Luke 2 for Christmas Eve

Dec. 24 2014

Some folks want Christmas to be just right with perfect placement of decorations, and foods and presents.Luke does a bit of this in this exquisitely structured piece we have heard so many times.He structures it along the lines of the elite and the masses.-

Luke is careful to place the birth of Jesus in a regional setting of the Roman Empire. In that way, he shows two contending ways of organizing life at the same time. He shows how god is using a hidden hand in the face of Roman imperial power. Augustus had been divinized.He was called son of God and Savior, we speak of the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome-the immaculate goddess of childbirth was with him and his mother claimed he was the child of Apollo and his father and mother both had visions the day of his birth. Augustus took his position after a huge power struggle. He was growing older. Here’s an important part for our story. he took on divine names that Luke uses to apply to a baby born in little Bethlehem, on the eastern outskirts of the empire. Son of God. Pax Romana both internal and external. He called himself first citizen but held dictatorial powers for life.Successors to the throne died around the time Jesus may have been born.We are certain of dates for the empire, but less so for the date of the birth of jesus. Divine time and human time do not always correspond neatly.

We don't know that much about Quirinius. I was taught that he was a mere functionary,but that was lazy. He was a rich, fairly high level bureaucrat in the Roman system. He was on the track to being a Roman elite, say a first century Jeb Bush, connected, rich, powerful. I like a governmental appointee is listed with the birth of Jesus.His census was a tax adjustment that demanded taxes be paid in cash and elicited a good bit of Jewish unrest, especially where Jesus grew up in Galilee. .

Society stereotyped shepherds as liars, degenerates, and thieves. The testimony of shepherds was not admissible in court, and many towns had ordinances barring shepherds from their city limits. The religious establishment took a particularly dim view of shepherds since the regular exercise of shepherds' duties kept them from observing the Sabbath and rendered them ritually unclean. The Pharisees classed shepherds with tax collectors and prostitutes, persons who were "sinners" by virtue of their vocation (Saterlee) In our time, the status of shepherds would be that of say ponographers, IRS evaluators, or perhaps Congress.  At the same time, the rulers such as Augustus were called shepherds in the bible.  

Look at the stained glass window in daytime.Stop for a moment and consider the utter dependence and vulnerability of an infant.That is where the hopes and fear sof th all the years was placed.Notice how it turns its back on power.-Every year Christmas arrives in the face of great powers, including the constant drumbeat of the shopping madness instead of the voice of heavenly choirs-do the angels sing? It does not say so explicitly. i like it as the formerly host of heaven as warriors have transformed into a choir.Their praise is to the highest point or in the highest most noble way, that could well be song, I think.-

The word usually translated as inn is translated as upper room in the story of the last supper.Emmanuel God with us is laid in a feeding trough, not a throne. This night, jesus is enthroned in that most unlikely of places, our very lives.

Dec. 28 Column

At this time of year, I often think of the Andy Rooney pearl: “the most glorious mess lies around the living room Christmas tree-don’t clean it up too soon.” Some of us will be celebrating Christmas season into the New Year, a tip of the hat to the 12 days of Christmas until Epiphany, January 6. We are in the gap between Christmas and New Years. I so admire the people who do not insist on the holiday being celebrated precisely at noon on the 25th and are flexible enough to adjust the varying needs of family  and the desire to get together.

Even the most insistent spiritual but not religious may enter the door of a church at Christmas time. As we approach New Year’s the secular celebrations have trounced the church as we mark the turn of yet another calendar page. Though the sands of the hourglasses are almost gone, there on the other side is the promise of a happy, healthy new born.

Too many rituals of family dysfunction mar the holiday. I do not grasp why it is not a get together unless feelings are hurt and someone is left crying. It is as if we walk around we so many grudges that we seek out a chance to unload that poisonous cargo.

The readings for this Sunday from Luke 2 include the lovely story of Anna and Simeon at the temple with 8 day old Jesus. One or maybe both actors are really old, even older than me, as our daughters would say, as in my mind they look the way we picture the outgoing year. They appear to be denizens of the temple precincts, the very model of pious, devout people. All of their lives, they have hoped for the sign that a new age was dawning, but year by year those hopes faded a bit, as Rome’s power seem to tighten its grip. They are guardians of the ritual of prayer and hope, twins.

Yet, hope exists in spite of the facts on the ground, not their absence. Hope may be doomed to disappointment, but its power lies in its capacity to imagine a new or brighter day.Simeon blesses, blesses, the child who was and is the embodiment of our hopes for a better way to live. I like to think that both Anna and Simeon receive a bit of youth again, as did Naomi in the great story of Ruth. In our time, Jews continue to celebrate the birth of a child and bless the child that he or she may grow into the life of Torah, marriage and good deeds. Elijah, the harbinger of the messianic age is welcomed there, for each new birth is the birth of hope.  

In some ways, I love the symbol of Father Time teetering toward the edge of extinction as an exhausted year stumbles to a close. As we age, that same feeling occurs as we hurtle toward retirement. Every movement toward turning a chapter in life brings the threat of unwelcome change and the promise of new life being born, not busy dying as Dylan said,     

Many of us have given up on the great ritual of making New Year’s resolutions. Too many failures have weakened the desire for self improvement. In the created Festivus, participants would air grievances, disappointments in those close to them. As a spiritual practice, this strikes me as salutary, a clearing of the emotional and mental baggage we lug throughout the year, for that matter, our lives. When the presents were taken up, I would burn the papers in the fireplace. I would write out old lingering ghosts of Christmases past and write them out and burn them along with the wrappings. Please consider creating some new rituals for the New Year and holding on to the ones that bring you health and jo

Sermon Notes Dec. 28-Luke 2

We often say that Christmas is for children.This little story brings the infant Jesus with an old woman and perhaps a man facing death ( but we do not know his age) Simeon is waiting for the comfort/consolation of Israel. In Greek his name sounds like a sign, so we get a word play when he speaks to Mary. From Hebrew it would mean being heard or listening. Anna is related to John, so grace or favor. Mention is made of her tribe. it was  blessed in Dt with all sorts of blessing, and the name itself means happy.The tribe is on the margins, however as it did not have the martial capability of driving out the inhabitants of its share of the promised land. Phanuel means face of god, and in later literature was an archangel's name.

I have always loved this little story in Luke’s gospel. I love how it is framed by both the old and the 8 day old child. I always feel a tinge of sadness, as Luke presents it as the  couple slipping away like the way we picture the old year giving way to the infant 2015. Nonetheless they glory in seeing this child, and their thrill is similar to that of Is. 7-8 in the birth of a royal child. It may have been different than they expected, for they receive revelation it appears, but they catch sight of a lifetime hope before their own lives close.

We do well to pay attention to entry points in a gospel and then keep an eye out if they are placed into an ending frame. Purification ritual for Mary alone from Leviticus , or it could be that the family or mother and child are in need of ritual cleansing/purification. By the time of Jesus the link to Adam and Eve in Eden and the temple as holy space was clear. So we are in quite a thicket here, a holy child, in a holy place, needs to undergo the same ritual of purification as everyone else.The sacrificial offering was a adjusted for poverty here. This is the clearest evidence from Lu,e that Mary and Joseph were not well off.

Jesus is circumcised and the rite of purification here is a bit muddled, perhaps. To be of god’s people included a phsycial mark on males very quickly, after the first week fo their young life.In our time, we have resistance to it as causing some pain or a sense of disfugurement ot boys, but we see it as a public health measure an dhav elost its relgious significance unless one is Jewish. He is marked as one of the people, but he is also marked for suffering. Life carries pain with it. Today, circumcision has the prayer for the speedy arrival of Messiah. It has a prayer for the child’s well-being, marriage, and good deeds and reverence for God. blood is drawn from the wound.the bit of blood  required of him at 8 days prefigures the blood pouring from him at the end of his young life. What does it mean to require a bit of flesh from God’s own? Jesus is made part of a people, a Jewish citizenship if you will. He is connected by an ancient, even primitive act.8th day and resurrection??

The year is closing on the calendar. In the church marking of time,we are well into a new year.Look back over the past year and decide that some things deserve to be cast aside and tossed out.Look with care at what is being born,what is generative in your life.

Sermon Notes Dec. 7

Is. 40:1-11, Ps. 85-Some associate the end times solely with days of wrath.The OT always keeps a tension between hope and endings. After words of warning last Sunday , we hear a decidedly different voice: one of comfort. Instead of shouts of warning, we hear of tenderness. Instead of the word of impending doom hanging overhead, we hear enough is enough. The dreadful waiting was over; the feared punishment had indeed come, and their country was in ruins. A page in national life had turned. God’s edict is for comfort to reach the people.

Instead of wilderness wandering, the people will be treated to a divine super-highway, with the obstacles flattened. One day our journey won’t be so hard, but it will be an easy trip. The bathrooms in the rest stops will all be clean. The vending machines will be cheap and will all work. The advent of jesus perhaps can change our images of the end. Perhaps the second coming will come with the words of Ps. 85, a time when righteousness and peace will kiss each other. One day all of the obstacles we have built against peace will fall, and the problem will be in creating conflicts. Let alone war. One day we won’t need laws to keep us in line.

After this wonderful announcement, heaven wants the news to spread, and we move to a dialogue in and with heaven. The prophet’s words in response to the request to announce the comforting news that the punishments are at an end are utterly depressed. After all, the prophet has seen destruction. Why bother, life is so fragile, so transient, so ephemeral. God’s breath/spirit does cause flourishing but withering. What’s the use? What’s the point.? As we heard last week, the leaves seem dry; life seems barren and frail.

Please note that it seems that the prophet is in the midst of a vision in the midst of heaven, and his first word is arguing with the assembled host. I think that prophet’s sudden shift from depression to hope is the result of the prophet’s cathartic words of depression allowing him to see a note of hope. Here’s something to hold on to, the faithful promise of God. To be able to pray like this is a sign of abundant trust in God’s patience. We’re family, and families need to talk things out sometimes.

At passage end, we have 2 images of God: one of might and one of compassion. The emphasis seems to me to be on the gentleness after the terrifying destruction of Jerusalem and the pain of exile. For Christians, the last image redefines the image of God in compassion rather than the iron fist of might. As the faith developed, that second image of God started to blossom. . God’s power is more often demonstrated by the power of tender care and to take on more and more weight, as we can see with Jesus. Mark’s gospel was written with the destruction of Jerusalem in the reader’s mind.It also uses our Isaiah passage to introduce Jesus and the divine project. In the end, the destruction of Jerusalem did not teach a long-lasting lesson for moral change. Somehow suffering must be infused with meaning, noble meaning, or else it serves to depress and corrode the moral sense, not uplift or transform it. Human wrong is so deep-seated that God would work from the inside out. Many of our brothers and sisters practice Advent waiting with undisguised glee at the assumed coming destruction. That leaves out Incarnation and Resurrection. My sense is that God will use examples such as the highway of the Lord to transform and build, not annihilate. Jesus Christ did not lead a life of destruction but of teaching a different path and healing to allow people to discover that path. It’s no accident that Jesus would take on the title of the Good Shepherd. This is a time of year when our hearts go out to people in trouble, and we try to give them a helping hand out of the troubles. All of us become part of one flock, one family.

week of Dec. 7 Devotional

Sunday Ps 85 has one of my favorite images at the end-where righteousness (right relations) and peace shall kiss.Such intimate imagery often makes us uncomfortable, since we rarely think of such matters in terms of intimacy.what other ways could we express that thought? Have you seen it happen? How would you like to see it happen? why do you think this is an Advent psalm?

Monday-In the movie of Harper Lee's classic book To Kill a Mockingbird, young Scout tells her father Atticus about being upset on her first day at school. He says, "You never really understand another person until you understand things from (his or her) point of view, until you climb inside (their) skin and walk around in it." In some mysterious way, that's what Christians believe God has done in Jesus, and calls us to do. Ira Kent Groff

Tuesday-from Abbey of the Arts-Could you pause right now, for just 5 minutes, quieting your thoughts and breathing deeply? (yes, even just 5 minutes can offer deep refreshment if you give yourself over to it) What might you discover?

Wednesday-"In the beginning . . . the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (Genesis 1:1-2). In other words, God started with nothing, zero, and out of it brought everything.In the end, says John, "I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them" (Revelation 20:11). In other words, there is zero again, and out of it God brought a new heaven and a new earth. Perhaps more than for anything else, God is famous for calling something precious out of something that doesn't even exist until God calls it. At the beginning of each one of us it happened, and at the end of each one of us maybe by God's grace it will happen again.~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Thursday-Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety----all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs." Henry Ward Beecher

Friday-Miroslav Volf reminds us of a quote from David Kelsey-”we should worship God for God's own sake,not for what we get out of worship.: What do you think Kelsey means?How should worship reflect his point?

Saturday-Children struggle with the large questions of life, and we don’t often give them credit for that. We assume that they’re not capable of engaging in conversations that we assume are more philosophical and abstract. I don’t think that’s the case.What they don’t have is the language. It’s our obligation as educators, adults, clergy to give them the language. My feeling is that language is story, and so through story they are able to deal with these larger theological questions.Sandy Sasso