Spiritual Points for Week of Nov. 1

Sunday-Ps.24:4-6 has core elements of why it is selected for All Saints Day. How are we cleansed as Christians? What does it mean to you s to seek the face of God? Where would you seek vindication and blessing in heaven?

Monday-One of the suggested scripture readings contained in the beautiful late night service of Compline is the invitation of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (NRSV). This seems an entirely appropriate way to end the day. As we let go of the busyness, the fragmentedness, the weariness, we pause to ask ourselves how far we have lived out of that gentle humility which Christ displayed and which we too will know as we are "yoked" to him.  From Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life

Tuesday- let go of our own plans. As the poet David Whyte writes, “what you can plan is too small for you to live.”

Wednesday-Ira Kent Groff-"This is the best of days--when new observations lead to new questions," says a scientist in iMax movie "Humpback Whales." If first goal of spirituality is to observe--to be aware, to really pay attention (Hebrew shema), then the next goal is to ask questions like Jesus (Matthew 18:12): "What do you think?" What's going on in me when I get disturbed by a friend's off-hand comment? Our inner questioning becomes prayer to God (like in the Psalms): What's happening?

Thursday-We are "not born in order to die, but in order to begin" ~ Arendt

Friday-"If I am at peace with myself, I do not need to despise others" (Schonborn) ... and when others despise me, I will remain largely unaffected

Saturday-from Abbey of the arts-does God give suffering? No,... as human beings, we will experience suffering, and through grace we can encounter God’s presence there with us guiding us and helping to give our suffering meaning."

Column Draft on Halloween in Alton

Since Alton seems to be the epicenter of the paranormal, Halloween seems to be a good time to examine a bit of the world beyond.

On one hand, I just dismiss talk of goblins as mere fun and amusement. It is a version of a mental roller coaster, a momentary thrill of being scared. If setting up yard signs for a longer period than having Christmas decorations gives some pleasure, so what?

On the other hand, I do wonder why talk of zombies, for instance, has such a hold on the popular imagination in this new century. I wonder that zombies appeal to folks who are living but a partial life, so that life in the midst of death could seem to be  of interest. Entranced by images on screens, we could easily be mistaken for creatures but partially alive. Instead of positing a perfect life in the future, we are captured with a vision of eternal living death.

We do live in  a culture of death, as Pope John Paul II opined.  Guns are clearly American idols. I just saw a new report from the World Health Organization that processed meats, including the great gift of bacon, probably accounts for increased cancer risk. When I was younger the cloud of nuclear destruction was a real and present threat. Now climate change is poised to threaten us throughout this century.

As science continue sot offer more explanations for understanding our environment, perhaps playing in the fields of the occult is the last redoubt against examining our world with precision. Folk beliefs and practices have long come into being when people are faced with a seemingly inexplicable assault such as plague. I wonder if the AIDS epidemic, or fears of Ebola virus fostered some of the explosion of interest in extrasensory explorations.

Some churches both decry and fear the occult as it raises the specter of an invisible world occupied by the diabolical. If people are exploring that realm, then it is further proof that it in fact exists. At the same time, it gives an opening to then openly fight the forces of malevolent spirits.  A number of books on the Salem witch trails of the 1690s have appeared of late. As we see declining religious observance and belief, people are creating a grab bag of beliefs and practices without regard for orthodoxy.

For me, we have plenty of evil to go around without resort to the unseen world. The demonic is splattered all over the blood-soaked stories in a daily paper. I am haunted by the deaths on our streets, criminal, negligent, or of illness.

In terms of the after life, as belief in a punishing Hell declines, perhaps a focus on heaven declines as well. I note that religious people of all stripes are fascinated by alleged mediums of the spirit world. Folks watch the Long Island medium and flocked to her presentation in our area not long ago that filled a huge auditorium. At the same time, we seek proofs of an afterlife. Many people who have lost a loved one to death report some sort of sensory experience of the loved one, a vision, hearing their voice, being aware of a fragrance, feeling their touch.

In Biblical faith, life, not death, has the last word. Halloween precedes directly All Saints Day, the day of the hallowed dead and All Souls Day, November 2. In our Sunday service we are merging regular worship with remembering our honored dead with prayers and the lighting of candles, as November 1 falls on a Sunday this year. Even as the church year is drawing to a close, we point to new life, a whole resurrected life, one that endures and perdures.

Column Draft for Reformation sunday

Reformation Sunday approaches this Sunday, the 25th. It recalls the time when Luther allegedly posted 95 points for debate on a door in Wittenberg, Germany. I rarely look forward to it.

Protestants (meaning confessing, witnessing, affirming the faith in Latin, not a protest group) sometimes merely celebrate the courage and intellect of Luther. Sometimes we indulge in dualistic fantasy about the nature of the Catholic Church in comparison to the advances of the Protestant movement. At other times, we exhibit flat out religious prejudice against this venerable Western church. We continue to throw around terrible stereotypes about the Roman church then and to a lesser extent, even at present. We do not note that some of the core issues no longer exist with regard to the church. In two years we will mark the 500th anniversary of Luther’s movement, and I hope and pray we will act with some measure of historical clarity.

We can view the Reformation as the wave of modern life. Around Luther’s moves,
Copernicus was working up a heliocentric model of the solar system. the invention of the printing press about a half century prior to it was fundamental toward its rapid pulses. It was a part of a social earthquake that  moved us from the Middle Ages into the sometimes harsh light of the Enlightenment and the new era we often call modern.

Paul Tillich, the eminent 20th Century theologian saw the Reformation as a signal event toward presumed, unchecked authority. for him the “Protestant Principle” is willing to question received notions, so it tries to keep itself safe from replacing God with creations of our own choosing.  “From the Christian point of view, one would say that the Church with all its doctrines and institutions and authorities stands under the prophetic judgment and not above it. Criticism and doubt show that the community of faith stands “under the Cross,” if the Cross is understood as the divine judgment over man’s religious life, and even over Christianity, though it has accepted the sign of the Cross.” (Dynamics of Faith,p. 33)

Clearly the Reformation brought the individual to the fore. Luther insisted on an unmediated reading of Scripture as the foundation for his program. At a hearing, he famously proclaimed “here I stand, I can do no other.” Luther did not realize that the bible on which he stood would become a substitute for papal authority, as its own, often unread, symbol that moved from God’s instrument to God’s goal.

That very individualized response helped usher in our own fissiparous version of religion in this country. We  moved toward  easy fracture of church bonds. We excommunicate ourselves. Exit may well seem to be the preferred option among those who shift if every tiny detail of their preference in matters of faith and practice are not met.
We treat different churches as items in a buffet line, to be sampled and move on. Now we are moving into a do it yourself spiritual quest (notice the word religion is not even used, except as an epithet).

I do prize the Reformation slogan,  “the church reformed always being reformed.” It realizes that the church. as any human endeavor, is limited. At its best, the church points toward God’s future, but cannot be conflated into it. -That impulse can help the church not become a synonym for being rigid or static, but having the flexibility to see itself clearly and to change when needed. Reformation is not revolution, where we may tear down without having a plan to rebuild. At its best, the church holds on to its vital center and its living traditions, looks to present felt needs, and walks to the far horizon of the future.

Sermon Notes for a baptism and Bartimaeus and Job 42

Oct 25 Mark 10:46-52, Job 42

Blind Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus ( meaning has a sense of being esteemed, honored, maybe in the sense of an elder being honored)) (By ut if it is transliterated form Aramaic it would meanin unclean/impure.This first time I got some benefit from Greek in seminary was this passage. anablepo he replies to Jesus’s question-one word, anablepo, to see again, to regain sight,

What would you like me to do for you, Jesus asks. Notice what this question has followed, as we have gone through this chapter almost word for word this month.This morning that question is heard anew, and one answer is that a child be baptized in our congregation this morning.

He calls Jesus Son of David-He sees the truth. He call him teacher, rabbi,l and he sees more deeply, even though he is still blind.on the roadside, now he is on his way This child is on the way in baptism. All of us who accept the designation Christina are people on the way, on the road through life and toward God.

Faith has saved you just as made you well Poor Bartimaeus is left on his own. Baptism is an open door to most Christian churches. It is fundamentally citizenship in the church, a passport to the land of the faith.

I don’t know if being healed helped  him live with the terrible loss of sight.Certainly all of the good that poured  on Job did not make up for the horrible losses he suffered and those of his spouse as well. wonders as in signs and wonder and exodus or the exodus journey into the trackless wilderness of all nature

Presbyterian understanding of baptism-all older christian churches practice infant baptism.Just as the book of Hebrews considers Christ’s life death and resurrection once and for all, so too is baptism done once in our tradition, as we honor the promise of ?god for a lifetime. Nothing shows the power of grace, prevenient grace, more than infant baptism.It is odd ot speak of new birht for a newborn. Baptism wil continue to cleanse the spiritual life of this child all through life. This child’s spiritual sight will be seen through the prism of the Christian faith. Link to baptism as healing/restoring-it offer illumination through Christ in in and with the people of God. In part that is why we pray for illumination before the Scripture and its explication and application.Issue of spiritual insight

Job  is not punished for his long cry, his long argument against a view of god as punisher. Instead God asks that Job offer sacrifice, to pray for those who spoke of god wrongly even as they were under the impression that they were the orthodox party. I pray that this child’s walk with god will be deep and abiding enough to be in conversation with god all the days of life.

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Part Of our prayer is that this child will be blessed like Job at the end of the story.Yes, in the world of heaven but also in this life.That life may not be perfect or even easy, but it is one accompanied by the presence of God within and without.Recently i attended a gathering and the notion of God’s way in the world, God’s commonwealth, God’s kingdom came up. The folks, typical of most folks, saw it as heaven. They were surprised to learn that the language points to heaven but speaks of god’s way, god’s people in the world right now as an outpost, a fortress, a safe place from which to live out God’s work in the world right now. Put differently this child is a citizen of God’s country now.

Pts. for Week of Oct. 25

Sunday-Ps. 24 has an inclusive feel suitable for All Saints Day.For All Saints Day focus on seeking the face of god. What does this mean pre and post-mortem ot yo? What draws you to seek the presence of god? Monday-Isaiah 53: 4-12 Have you ever felt cut off from the land of the living? This is how some people describe grief and loss. This is how some people describe dealing with debilitating illness. And sometimes, those who suffer from great injustice describe that same sense of being cut off from life.from God Pause Tuesday-"Perhaps life is all about--the search for such a connection. The search for magic. The search for the inexplicable. Not in order to explain it, or contain it. Simply in order to feel it. Because in that recognition of the sublime, we see for a moment the entire universe in the palm of our hand. And in that moment, we touch the face of God."(Garth Stein) Wednesday-"What is blessing but a rain of grace falling generously into the lives of those in need; and who among us is without need?...May this day be a pathway strewn with blessings.May your work this day be your love made visible.May you breathe upon the wounds of those with whom you work..May your voice this day be a voice of encouragement.May your life be an answer to someone's prayer.May you own a grateful heart.May you have enough joy to give you hope, enough pain to make you wise.May there be no room in your heart for hatred...When you look into the window of your soul may you see the face of God.May the lamp of your life shine upon all you meet this day."(Macrina Wiederkehr in "Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day") Thursday-Sleep is a rehearsal for the final laying down of arms, of course, when you trust yourself to the same unseen benevolence to see you through the dark and to wake you when the time comes—with new hope, new strength—into the return again of light.-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark Friday-Psalm 46-As human history continues to unfold, we continue to see conflict... While we may catch glimpses of peace here and now, we long for the day when conflict, brutality and war fall silent. Until then, we as people of faith work as a voice for justice in the middle of what seems like chaos:..While it is easy to say, "The world is doomed!" the Psalmist invites us to see God at work in the midst of chaos, in the voice of our neighbor who works to bring about justice, through the voice of the community that calls out injustice and oppression. God "breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire," and we get closer to the day where peace becomes a reality. From God Pause Saturday-We often hear these days that the folks who refuse to compromise are the strong and smart ones. I'm not remotely convinced of that idea. Certainly the refusal to compromise has not been shown to make us a stronger or a smarter society. In fact, those who are least flexible and most dogmatic are often the most insecure. Compromise is a sign of intellectual and moral strength, an indication that one is realistic in facing the complexities and ambiguities of life and of forging a good society. However difficult it may be to compromise, this is a word we must learn to speak again if we are going to learn to live together in this world. Michael Jinkins 27 Likes5 Comments

Version of Column on Moral Injury in Veterans

Alton seems to be a center of interest in the paranormal, maybe especially as Halloween approaches. War’s wounds continue to haunt us. As I write this, I will travel across the river to a program on moral injury and veterans. I came of age when the Vietnam War was winding down, but met plenty of people who served in that terrible action. They were rarely welcomed even by veterans organizations at times. They  did not adjust well to civilian life, and they numbed their pain with alcohol and drugs. As a reaction to that, we mouth words about supporting our troops, but rarely do I notice concerted efforts toward veterans in dire circumstances.

While about 7% of the population served, veterans account for 20% of suicides. I seethe when I think of all those so anxious to get us involved in deadly conflicts but then they turn their backs on those who come home wounded in body and soul. Moral injury is distinct from PTSD, or perhaps a part of it. Psychological wounds and scars have a spiritual and ethical component. Traumatic events cause a moral crisis for many of us. Listen to words on the moral conscience given by The Second Vatican Council:“In the depth of  conscience, we detect a law which we does not impose upon ourselves.... Always summoning us to love good and avoid evil the voice of conscience can, when necessary, speak to the heart more specifically: do this, shun that. For we have in the heart a law written by God. ..Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of man. There one is alone with God, whose voice echoes in the depths.” (gender neutral language substituted)

The death one encounters in warfare can be a profound shock to one’s sense of moral right and wrong. it can induce a severe sense of shame and guilt over what was done or what one fialed to do.It seems to harm one’s ability to integrate the identity one had before the war and as a result of being in war.When one returns home and starts to wonder about the rationale for the war and its cp onsequences, a deep sens of feeling that it was in vain, all for nothing, can push a veteran into the doldrums.The person  dealing with moral injury may feel a need ot be punished. So, they punish themselves and place themselves in situations to be punished. Some feel guilty about ever enjoying themselves, so they sabotage the events. Often, veterans suffer in a shroud of distance and silence.

Moral wounds can be addressed. Some may be healed. In other words, military chaplaincy  is important past the battlefield. Often, it is rarely a quick lightning bolt but a process, like so many things in life.Rita Nakashima Brock speaks of soul repair as a counter to moral injury. If veterans can find a new mission to pour their energies, that can help. If they feel they are making amends for wrongs done, so much the better.

Shame and guilt can be addressed in counselling. Guilt emerges from transgressing a rule, a boundary, but shame is deeper seated, as it threatens the very sense of self as a person worthy of respect. Religious ritual and teachings can be an enormous aid here. Rituals can be a safe place to address or to enact the repair of a broken spirit, when words alone cannot suffice. If any notion is central in the Christian world, it is forgiveness. To be extended a sense of forgiveness for oneself can be a salutary experience for some suffering veterans.

Our tossing around the word hero does not make veterans absolved of their moral qualms. The church can be and shall become a space to encounter the Forgiving God, the Healing One.

Spiriutal Points for Week of Oct. 18

Sunday-Ps. 104 fits our reading of God’;s creation tour with Job. Consider rewriting the psalm with our understanding of the natural world in view. I also like its view in vv.27-30 on god providing sustenance , the abundance of good things for creation, not just people.

Monday-“I live in the faith that there is a Presence...greater than I am that nurtures and supports me in ways I could not even imagine. I know that this Presence is all-knowing and all-powerful and is always right where I am.” - Ernest Holmes

Tuesday-To adore... that means to lose oneself in the unfathomable, to plunge into the inexhaustible, to find peace in the incorruptible, to be absorbed in defined immensity, to offer oneself to the fire... and to give of one's deepest to that whose depth has no end. Whom, then, can we adore? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Divine Milieu, 128

Wednesday-When we do nothing, we almost always do something; inactivity is a form activity, often with grave consequences.Miroslav Volf-

Thursday-“So often we try to force ourselves into schedules that don’t fit us, that leave us exhausted.  Certainly we need to work and earn money for food and shelter, but what might happen if one day each week you released the hold a schedule has on your life?  What if you had a Sabbath whose main purpose was to free you from the external demands of time and allowed you to see the rhythms of time as gift and invitation to a more intentional and less controlled way of being?”

--- Christine Valters Paintner,

Friday-If you knew yourself for even one moment If you could just glimpse your beautiful face,

maybe you wouldn’t slumber so deeply in that house of clay.Why not move into your house of joy~~and shine into every crevice!For you are the secret treasure-bearer, and always have been.DIDN’T YOU KNOW?—Rumi

Saturday-How often do we resist beginning a creative project due to the fear that it will not live up to the image in our minds?  Humility invites us to release those expectations and enter into the call of our gifts, knowing that it may look very differently from what we imagined.”--- Christine Valters Paintner,

sermon notes for Job 38, Ps. 104, Heb. 5

Oct. 18, Job 38, Ps. 104, Heb. 5

God doesn't answer Job’s suffering questions directly, nor does God defend the friends when they  try to defend the work of god in the world. Instead, god gives Job a tour of the universe as understood at that time, an ancient cosmos program.theodicy and creation-Creation here is pictured as a complex set of relationships. this is not a romantic view of nature, but a candid shot of nature. When I was a child Mutual of Omaha sponsored a show with Marlin Perkins, Wild Kingdom. My favorite memory is hazy at best, but Marlin is narrating and his assistant Jim Fowler was with anaconda that was wrapping itself around Jim and in his safe perch Marlon goes, it looks like Jim is in a bit of trouble, as the life’s breath was being squeezed out of him.We are not at the center of this picture of life, but we are clearly part of this vast panoply of creation, room for all sorts of activity. In particular look at how God cherishes the wild, not the domesticated animals. it. In this immense universe is it any wonder that things go awry, from our perspective? Job sees a world that mixes birth and death, of animals that kill in order to live, of unexplored, unimagined questions. Job gets a tour of cosmic scope. In large part, it is to enlarge his perspective (s) to see the pageant of life from different viewpoints, even a divine viewpoint.

Heb. on temptations would that include power and our desire to judge God in the world? Job learns that nature is vast and deep. He learns that the world is  not centered on humans but the entire natural order. He learns that a balance, even a harmony exists between order and chaos, predator and prey. In the wildness of creation, predictability for humans is not the measure of all things.Creation is good but it entails risks and dangers for human beings we are removed from considerations of propriety and deserving blessing or punishment in this reading.Janzen sees Job being moved from a zero-sum game of dualism.God speaks probably less out of a tornado and more out of a blistering hot wind a scirocco, signalling real trouble or signalling the end of the heat and the fall rain.

Jesus is tempted/tried/tested too, so has real empathy and sympathy for our plight

Ps 104-McCann-As Psalm 104 moves beyond v. 26, God is celebrated not only as creator, but also as provider and sustainer. “Food” and “good things” for “all” (vv. 27-28) derive from God’s beneficent care (see also Ps 145:15-16). vv. 29-30 -- air or “breath” (or “spirit,”. Human beings breathe about once every five seconds. On the one hand, respiration (that is, re-spiriting) can be understood as a natural process. But for the psalmist, the breath of life is a gift; every breath we take is a new creation! ..We would be a lot more inclined to gratitude and humility!

Webb-When God provides, creatures thrive, . If God’s face were to turn away from the creation, God’s creatures would be dismayed; God’s presence and attentiveness are necessary for the fullness of life of all God’s creatures. ..but the sending forth of the spirit of God brings life, and renews that which has been reduced to dust (verses 29b-30).  -There is joy at the foundation of the earth, in the dew on the grass, in the romping of a dog, in the quiet of cricket song on a summer night. here is joy in the gifts of life and spirit that we receive from God, and in our rejoicing in those gifts. For this joy, we offer God our joyous praise.

Suffering precludes joy. In our passages, joy can re-emerge . Suffering does not defeat its presence, even if it appears on the far horizon.

Column on World Communion Sunday and Guns

hen I was a child, the nuns told us to offer up suffering to God. It was one of the many things I did not grasp, and I still don’t. I started writing this piece ,but the news of another gun massacre, this time in Oregon, intruded. Why would God want to accept suffering as a gift? What would make us think it was a proper offering? Thursday night, people lit candles and made makeshift memorial to the lives lost and those injured. For almost two thousand years, Communion has been the key to the liturgy of suffering and hope in the midst of a violent world.

This Sunday is World Communion Sunday in many churches. It started by the great Hugh T. Kerr at Shadyside Presbyterian, Pittsburgh, in the depths of Depression in 1933, and the northern denomination picked it up three years later, and it was adopted by the Federal Council of Churches before we entered WWII. Just as a world was threatened in economic collapse and the rise of Hitler, Communion could imagine a new and brighter future.   

This  celebration is steeped in irony. One can find the sacrament of Communion held in nearly every type of Christian church. One can also find few liturgical elements so little understood. Even with its manifest ignorance, it is also a part of the liturgy that we know we disagree. In this new century, Christians of different  groupings cannot receive the sacrament that helps define the unity of the faith. Churches may be loath to excommunicate a church member, but we have little trouble excommunicating others.

Communion fits a time such as this (Esther 4:14). It is based on the broken, bleeding body of Jesus. It  is a   stark reminder, reliving of trauma. It creates a community of the suffering.  Suffering isolates. Shame isolates. Communion is the sacrament of solidarity, public solidarity with those who suffer.

At the same time, it is a powerful evocation that suffering does not  get the last word. After all, Jesus adapted the meaning of Passover to his own life as a representative of us. Passover saw the Destroyer pass over the houses of Israel, os it was a movement of life as they would move from the dying hand of slavery to the light of freedom. Communion is also a sacrament of healing.The broken  can be healed, and pieces put back together.It is an enactment of life overcoming suffering and even death itself. While me may not agree on the meaning of the elements, we have a long tradition that bread and wine are changed from their basic separate elements. Sacramentally, those simple elements are transformed into vehicles for reception of Jesus Christ into the very marrow of our lives.

One of the theological missteps of the American church is permitting the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to be merely of memory of that last Passover meal. For it to be eucharist, it is grateful not only for a sacrifice of an innocent life, but for the raising of that self same life.However we struggle to define it, with Paul in First Corinthians (10:19) we get the awe-inspiring opportunity of sharing, participating in (koinonia) the living Christ. Does Christ bear the scars of crucifixion? According to John’s gospel (20:19-31,), yes.

Suffering without meaning destroys a person. We may never make sense of suffering, but when we attach some redemptive purpose for it, we get tethered to hope and life, not despair and death. Right now, I feel despair for a country bowing down to the god of death, the cult of the gun. Communion points us forward, to a future of peace.

Sermon Notes _Oct. 11, Job 23-Mark 10, Heb. 4

Job had everything and lost it, wealth, health, family.- the rich young ruler had a good life but was troubled that his best was not good enough. -Fast Eddie had it all, but illness pushed him past his breaking point--then who can be saved?Jesus points toward the cross-Ps. 22 indeed is a template to grasp the suffering of Jesus, the terrible suffering of jesus in emotions and soul as well as body.

Heb. 4 great high priest-sympathizes with us in our weakness.Jesus prays for us when words do not come easily.

At this point Job's friends have gotten nervous about Job complaining that it is not fair that he suffers so. They have defended God by telling him that he must have done something terribly wrong. he is falling into deep despair. The trial image  keeps a suicidal Job alive is his desire for a trial. He wants to face his accuser. He wants habeus corpus, a face to face encounter. God is ineffable and elusive.God sees us , but we don't see God. Sometimes prayer seems as if we are talking to the wall. We feel nearsighted in our prayer, unable to focus  through the separating distance. Seeing is different for the hunter and the hunted? Is Ps. 139 being parodied? Is this an accusing eye, a loving eye, a searching eye? Who wants a punishing God to be close? We do want the helping God to be close to our needs and condition.

As we said, Hebrews is written to give encouragement to people who are tired of trying so hard to be good. Now they hear that someone is on their side. Hebrews imagines a sympathetic high priest, or a judge who is sympathetic more than critical and accusing. This high priest sees inside of us.He can slice through our defenses, the layers upon layers of protections and find our core self. This high priest knows intimately what we go through. This high priest knows what we do not or cannot face about ourselves. I would like to imagine that the prayers of Jesus on our behalf are every bit as potent as Job's challenge. This passage tells us to be bold in our prayer, as bold as Job in his desire for a divine trial.

Is Job's complaint bitter or defiant? should laments be for only those at the bottom? Lament is faith even when we do not sense God is listening, Even when we feel abandoned, it is in an envelope of prayer. In the end, it doesn't matter. God supports Job in his fervent desperate prayers for justice. In other words, the relationship between us and God is so strong that our prayers can be full-throated pleas for help, frustrated arguments, as well as songs of praise and adoration. In relationship with us, God is open to our full lives, in ups and downs, in their pleas for making sense of things when they are unravelling.

People suffer as did Job for no clear discernible reason. It is part of our common human experience. Hospital doors do not shut out God.  Nursing home locks do not exclude God. God has the distance to see us clearly, and is close enough to know our inmost thoughts.If god didn't keep some distance, we would be engulfed, overwhelmed. At the same time, God is as near as the next breathed, or shouted, prayer.We are never far enough away from God so that God is not much more ready to hear us pray than we are to pray. Whenever we pray, we are heard by someone sympathetic to our plight and our cause, a reliable listening ear.

spiritual Points for Week of Oct.11

Sunday Oct. 11-Ps 22 is a great lament psalm, one that Jesus quotes on the cross , and one that seems to serve as a virtual template for the events of the death of Jesus. It starts in a striking way, as a prayer asks about feeling forsaken by God. When have you felt forsaken? Do prayers of lament seem to help you, or do other types of prayers affect you more? How doe sgod hear lament?

Monday-On the island of Macau, the partial walls of an old stone church sit at the top of a hill. I hiked there one afternoon. At the front of the church there is a cross, one of the few things still standing. In the heat of the day, I sat in the shadow of that cross. In 1835, a typhoon overtook the island. It is said everyone fled to the church. Within its walls, many were saved. At the foot of that cross, after the storm had passed, John Bowring penned the words of this hymn. I could picture the people coming, seeking shelter. Verse two speaks the truth of our lives. When the storm comes--and it always does--when fear is real and hope is distant, we live in the shadow of the cross. It is no small thing to know that we are saved. It is no small thing to know that we are not forsaken, but sheltered in the grace of God.

Tuesday-"Many of the mystics, including John of the Cross, talk about God as the living flame within each of us. We each contain a spark of the divine, a holy fire that leads us to greater love.  Sometimes our inner fires seem to die, to fizzle out.  At these times we are often overworked, overcommitted, or undernourished by the things that bring our soul alive."--- Christine Valters Paintner

Wednesday To perceive God's presence in the world, we need not so much an argument as the "eyes of faith," an inner attentiveness, sensitivity and courage. Miroslav Volf

Thursday-May your life be an answer to someone's prayer.May you own a grateful heart.May you have enough joy to give you hope, enough pain to make you wise.May there be no room in your heart for hatred.May you be free from violent thoughts.When you look into the window of your soul may you see the face of God.May the lamp of your life shine upon all you meet this day."(Macrina Wiederkehr in "Seven Sacred Pauses

Friday-"When we pause between activities or spaces or moments in our day, we open ourselves to the possibility of discovering a new kind of presence to the darkness of in between times. When we rush from one thing to another, we skim over the surface of life losing that sacred attentiveness which brings forth revelations in the most ordinary of moments." Christine Valters Paintner,

Saturday-Admitting we don't know is just one aspect of dealing with the really difficult problems and seemingly intractable questions facing us, of course. We also would do well to agree to suspend our dogmatic adherence to party lines, our compulsion to blame others, and to score points on people with whom we find ourselves in disagreement. I suspect this would come hard to some of us engaged in politics and religion. But if we hope to deal with some of the biggest problems facing our society and our church today, we need to learn, and learning requires a genuinely open mind. Michael Jiinkins

Sermon notes on Job and World Communion Sunday

Oct 4, Job, Ps. 26, Heb. 2

Surely the theme of suffering runs through these passages like a bright line.“perfect through suffering” and Job’s inexplicable suffering on a wager suffering of divorce  The adversary in the divine counsel asks if Job’s goodness is in relation to his blessings. What if he suffers, will Jobe remain loyal to you?

Ps. 26 wonders about trouble given a good life.I have real problems with the notion that we learn through suffering. first, it seems to me that we learn from success well. Second, the lesson plan seems to not teach many people much of anything except their own breaking point. suffering teaches about the fragility of human beings. suffering seems to destroy the capacity of people to learn much of anything except about the depth of pain. When I was a child people spoke of being graduates of the school of hard knocks.

Undoubtedly, the bible makes a good life open to and deserving of blessings. We find it in many proverbs, and we certainly see it applied to a nation in the historical chapters, punishment follows apostasy-relief with repentance.At the same time it is well aware that the good stumble and the evil propser.

Rabbi Kushner had a huge success with his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I continue to think that it was snatched up due to its title. Kushner comes to the topic personally. their young son was afflicted with a premature aging disease.He picked up the perhaps repressed bargain that we acquire from part of the bible, the good are blessed and the evil are punished. Job challenges the structure of it with its imagined dialogue with God and the great inspector general (no, it should not be read as Satan,the devil)

World Communion Sunday-fellowship of the suffering -united through brokenness

In communion we again face the reality of Jesus Christ. We are in direct contact with the same cosmic christ of Hebrews who suffered and died, in one person. We take into our own bodies participate in and with that same life.the Hebrews reading calls Jesus brother and liberator, along with the number of titles of the divine one and the human one .I tis  a direct challenge to our view of god to consider that suffering is part of human life, but suffering as part of the divine life, of experienced by Jesus. that terrible event is in god’s hand salvific, healing.Not only doe sChrist live, christ’s work lives.It offers healing to the suffering.We belong to christ; we belong to each other, not in sin, not in separation, but in baptism into grace.Suffering is not the last word.taken up in the sacrament, the humiliated, the lost, th esuffering are given a promise an dat times a relaity of transformation. “restored, exalted, filled with good things” just as the ending of Job will show.

Ethics of Communion-

the god of  Jesus Christ does not play games with human destinies.

Just as we speak of Jesus as fully human and fully divine in the Chalcedon document of 451, this is a good way to explore communion.Communion puts together the shards of our lives. It underscores the good and the bad together. After all, the bread of life had a body crucified, and the cup of healing had blood shed.”sorrow and love flow mingled down” this morning.I want to be careful here. Please do not see the sacrament as glorifying or condoning suffering.The sacrament feeds  our spirits so we can continue to fight against it or heal it and to find the strength to endure it ourselves.

Week of Oct. 4 quotes and points on the spiriutal

Sunday October 4-Ps.26 wonders about a difficult issue, when the good suffer. like Job, the psalmist clings to integrity, a wholeness on the road to goodness. Integrity is a good word for spiritual examination. Where is it in your life and where is it lacking?

Monday-"Allow some time this week to ponder your own patterns of overwork and striving.  Reflect on times of forced rest such as illness and ponder your response to the experience." Christine Valters Paintner

Tuesday-The book of James invites us to imagine a different sort of community, a place where we tell honest stories about ourselves and in so doing crack the doors wide open to invite others to do the same. "Are any of you suffering? Are any of you cheerful? Are any of you sick?" Then there is a place for you here around the table of Jesus.

Wednesday-For the times when we were too eager to be better than others, when we are too rushed to care, when we are too tired to bother, when we don't really listen, when we are too quick to act from motives other than love, God forgive us."(Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness, South Africa)

Thursday-"To be transformed means to let go of our control for a while in the hope that something even greater will be revealed in us. When we open ourselves to transformation, we yield our certainties about the world for a new way of seeing."--- Christine Valters Paintner

Friday-“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.” Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Saturday-What are the ways you continue to neglect your own creative life? What excuses do you make to yourself? Imagine you were interviewing your True Self. How do you think she/he might respond to your refusal to listen to her cry? How long do you think she will keep trying to get your attention before finally giving up? What are the subtle ways ways she has tried to capture your attention? Did you listen? If not, why? from Abbey of the Arts

column on trivial pursuit and God in the everyday

It was my birthday recently. Now past 60, perhaps I should have worn mourning clothes. Instead, we wore hiking clothes and walked on some of the trails at Pere Marquette Park, one of the fine testaments to public works.

I had my closest clear encounter with mortality when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer not long after I arrived here. Facing death may alter one’s perspective. Turning 61 could alter one’s perspective.  I’ve noticed a small change, in that I hold time to be more precious and do not like to see the sand sin the hourglass sift away during a regional church meeting or  one of those presentations where the technology never works smoothly and we idly wait for the IT Savior to arrive. I rarely watch an entire sporting event as I did when I was younger.

Some spiritual directors urge us to examine our daily life and see the hand of God or its absence during that day, or week, or month, or year. One can do a life review as well. I look back at my life with real regrets that it is not marked by great deeds of public service. Has it been squandered? Have I been on a detour of trivia pursuits and lost sight of what is vital in a life?

Since I moved to this area, I noticed the number of social groups that use trivia contests as fundraisers. We have one at First Presbyterian on October 17. I love the idea that something absolutely inconsequential, trivia, can be the source of not only amusement but real help to social groups in our area. Ruth Wimp, the Marshalls, and I won an easy contest last Friday, but we were part of a group that raised over $5,000 for Ronald McDonald House in our area.

In the church year, we are moving through Ordinary Time, a period between great ancient important markers in the church year. It is recognition that the turning points are few, as life is lived in the ordinary flow of time. This year All Saints day will fall on a Sunday, so we are reminded that death is part of the normal course of one’s lifetime.

Sometimes, trivia is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve read a lot of American history, and our daughters would shake their heads that dates come easily to me in history. Quite simply, interest in something or constant exposure to something adds detail that we often call trivial attended a trivia for a health concern a while back, and they sold Jell-O shots. The folks around the table swore that they were not filled with alcohol, but by the 5^th round they were posters for the catatonic. Around round seven, a round of commercial jungles was being played; one of the group roused from slumber, mumbled the name of the product, and promptly returned to the land of Morpheus.

At times, God does seem to be at work in miraculous ways. Most of the time, the miracle is that god seems to prefer to work within the normal flow of life and events. The everyday, the quotidian, pieces of a life give it texture. Integrating all of these shards of experience into even a partial whole is a task of a lifetime. When people seem to review of life as they near death, they rarely move to the great events, but smaller, more intimate ones.

The sacraments take ordinary elements and see them transformed into something holy and meaningful, a limitless pool of spiritual depth. I am attracted to the Christian perspective that we can see daily life as sacramental, capable of revealing something of the holy even in the midst of the quotidian, the mundane. “Open my eyes that I may see.”

sermon notes on Esther and the hidden hand of god for Sept. 27

September 27 Esther, James 5, Mark 9:38

Esther is a book for a time such as this. It is one of the few books in the Bible that does not explicitly mention God. The book considers what happens if you are trying to pass under the thumb of power. She is doing quite nicely as the wife in a harem, should she risk her position for the sake of her people. we have been reading of wisdom in passages of late, and again she exemplifies wisdom in a tough spot.

Yet God is present in the book. It  opens the door to the presence of God in the way things fall together. Still, it is not magic; real human being make decisions in real social space.Certainly God is present in the lives of Mordecai and Esther. God works in and through events, some comic, some horrifying.God may appear to be quite distant. God is working through the actions of real people even though they are far away from home and exile has continued long after the elite returned to Israel.

Esther is in a really tight spot.The story is constructed so that she cannot march into the king without being asked into his presence, but he has not called for her in some time. She could live her life. Her name is the Persian goddess, as is her guardian Mordecai.
She could conceal her Jewish identity and live in an opulent hiding place forever.she could walk away from her people.she responds, if I die, I die, even though she has asked for a period of fasting ( and can one assume prayer?)

She has to finagle a way out of the king’s ordinance that she must be called to his presence. Esther grows from a mere object, a teenager in a harem, to someone who makes difficult decisions in a really tight spot.Mordecai took on the responsibility of raising her, but now she is on her own to try to save her people, at the risk of her own life. If she stays quiet she could live a life of luxury. Like Moses, she turns her back on royal court life to support her troubled people.She learns, evaluates and plans (well plots). she has to understand the nature of those with whom she plots foShe uses the tools of power at her disposal to reverse the positions of the king and the evil Haman, who is bent on genocide.(Daniel da Silva plays on intelligence and careful planning in his books on Israeli intelligence services).for her plan to succeed. She is indirect and self-f effacing (Fox) tools of the colonial people to win protection for her people. Imperfect, unformed people are capable of doing important tasks. Few of of us have  the stalwart virtues of Mordecai, but those virtues got everyone in trouble. At one point or another, all of us find ourselves in the position, perhaps called to account, in making a decision that announces what kind of person we are.

Every day may be a time such as this.Most Of us do not receive direct transmissions from the almighty One. Here this story talks of a providence that goes beyond our seeing, a providence that seems to be visible only after the fact. God may sometimes work in miracle, but the divine hand seems to be more often a hidden hand. Indeed, God’s purposes work out through very human decisions and actions within a complex network of society.. Last week James wrote of god being near. God is as close as the matrix of our actions, as they ramify and play out in human history.

Spiritual Quotes for Sept 27 week

Sunday-Ps. 124-has the sense of being delivered from enemies, political or natural.  When have you escaped danger? When was it due to your own powers, those of someone else, and did you detect the hand of God in it? given that, how do you handle it when escape may not come?

Monday-The creative life requires this gentle tension between freedom and structure, or ‘spontaneity and limitations,’ as Rollo May says.”

Tuesday-Encompassing God, enfold us in your loving care. Christ is indeed servant of all. Help us to effectively live out Jesus' ideal of leadership. Help us to be as servants to others, as you have been a servant to us. Give us courage and strength to meet the world that seeks to define leadership in terms of power over, rather than power with, others. In Christ's name, guide our paths. Amen. Jacob Burkman

Wednesday-Autumn constantly reminds me that my daily dyings are necessary precursors to new life. If I try to “make” a life that defies the diminishments of autumn, the life I end up with will be artificial, at best, and utterly colorless as well. But when I yield to the endless interplay of living and dying, dying and living, the life I am given will be real and colorful, fruitful and whole.From Let Your Life Speak:

Thursday-Thin places are not so much about intersections of longitude and latitude on a map as they are about the intersections of histories, experiences, people and places. There's no particular magic in a particular place, except that God breaks through for us there, or perhaps we break through to God. Or maybe we just discover, in certain places, that the "boundary" between sacredness and profanity is only an imaginary line. The place becomes holy because we believe the Holy has brushed past us there.Michael Jinkins

Friday-Barbara Sutton-On the sixth day God looked at everything and saw it was very good. God wanted us to revel in the Garden and in love...We live in a world where constant activity is the norm. We run from one event to another, arriving at a new place before our minds and hearts are able to let go of what we were doing or where we were. We pass through life and do not allow ourselves to experience deeply or be touched by people. We are in need of soul-searching. We must learn again love, compassion and honor so that we might heal the earth. How might you be held in the light? Restore harmony to creation?

Saturday-“I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.” ~Albert Schweitzer

column on Oregon and World Communion sunday

When I was a child, the nuns told us to offer up suffering to God. It was one of the many things I did not grasp, and I still don’t. I started writing this piece, but the news of another gun massacre, this time in Oregon, intruded. Why would God want to accept suffering as a gift? What would make us think it was a proper offering? Thursday night, people lit candles and made makeshift memorial to the lives lost and those injured. For almost two thousand years, Communion has been the key to the liturgy of suffering and hope in the midst of a violent world.

This Sunday is World Communion Sunday in many churches. It started by the great Hugh T. Kerr at Shadyside Presbyterian, Pittsburgh, in the depths of Depression in 1933, and the northern denomination picked it up three years later, and it was adopted by the Federal Council of Churches before we entered WWII. Just as a world was threatened in economic collapse and the rise of Hitler, Communion could imagine a new and brighter future.   

This celebration is steeped in irony. One can find the sacrament of Communion held in nearly every type of Christian church. One can also find few liturgical elements so little understood. Even with its manifest ignorance, it is also a part of the liturgy that we know we disagree. In this new century, Christians of different groupings cannot receive the sacrament that helps define the unity of the faith. Churches may be loath to excommunicate a church member, but we have little trouble excommunicating others.

Communion fits a time such as this (Esther 4:14). It is based on the broken, bleeding body of Jesus. It is a   stark reminder, reliving of trauma. It creates a community of the suffering.  Suffering isolates. Shame isolates. Communion is the sacrament of solidarity, public solidarity with those who suffer.

At the same time, it is a powerful evocation that suffering does not get the last word. After all, Jesus adapted the meaning of Passover to his own life as a representative of us. Passover saw the Destroyer pass over the houses of Israel, so it was a movement of life as they would move from the dying hand of slavery to the light of freedom. Communion is also a sacrament of healing. The broken can be healed, and pieces put back together. It is an enactment of life overcoming suffering and even death itself. While we may not agree on the meaning of the elements, we have a long tradition that bread and wine are changed from their basic separate elements. Sacramentally, those simple elements are transformed into vehicles for reception of Jesus Christ into the very marrow of our lives.

One of the theological missteps of the American church is permitting the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to be merely of memory of that last Passover meal. For it to be Eucharist, it is grateful not only for a sacrifice of an innocent life, but for the raising of that self same life. However we struggle to define it, with Paul in First Corinthians (10:19) we get the awe-inspiring opportunity of sharing, participating in (koinonia) the living Christ. Does Christ bear the scars of crucifixion? According to John’s gospel (20:19-31,), yes.

Suffering without meaning destroys a person. We may never make sense of suffering, but when we attach some redemptive purpose for it, we get tethered to hope and life, not despair and death. Right now, I feel despair for a country bowing down to the god of death, the cult of the gun. Communion points us forward, to a future of peace.