Week of Feb. 3 Devotions

Feb. 3 Sunday-Ps. 71 is one of the few psalms written explicitly from the perspective of growing older. This psalm has a great sense of God being with us in all periods of our lives. it also sees aging as an important place for continuing to  be able to speak of God to others. I often say that the relative quiet of aging permits more fervent prayer than the harried lives of the middle-aged. As you have grown older, where have you noticed improvements or decline in the quality of your spiritual life?

Monday-Patience is a virtue I continue to work on. One of my issues is that I have a little timer in my head that goes off when I think someone should be finished with some task. I also seem to be overly sensitive to what I consider rude behavior when people in a line seem to act as if they deserve special treatment. One starting point is to admit the impatient feeling and then have some ways to counter it. Often my impatience is a symptom that I am feeling stressed about something else.

Tuesday-I’ve been thinking about politically correct speech lately. I do realize that words do hurt. I realize that words create stereotypes. It seems to me that we sometime equate words with actions. Speech with which I disagree, to paraphrase Jefferson, “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” It seems ot me that actions or behaviors are of more concern. Isn’t that why we seek integrity, as in walking the talk?

Wednesday- We talked about boundaries in church yesterday. Yes, we are social creatures, but if we permit others to invade our privacy, our choices, even our attitudes, it confuses things. We can keep our boundaries to tight, impermeable and then buffer ourselves from life. We can keep them too porous and act as if everything is our business, our fault, our concern. What should we let in and what should we defend against?                        

Thursday- I am preparing for a short trip. I am looking up material about the city and its environs: things to do, places to eat. I wish I were that assiduous in preparing my spirutal maps. Planning for a trip has joy and expectation connected to it, but spiritual planning feels like a dutiful behavior to me. If you could snap your fingers and move your spirutal life ot a new plane, what would it then look like? Come back to reality, what are some ways to reach that place? Could you at least take a few steps in that direction?

Friday-I’m listening to a radio station as I write this, WTTS. They play songs A through Z for a while. Some psalms use a similar format. It gives a sense of completeness, of having a chance to say your speech. A-Z also has a sense of closure. When one reaches the final letter, is it not time to move on? As a spiritual exercise, consider writing out an A-Z prayer on some virtue or vice, some facet of your relationship with God, some hope or frustration?.

Saturday-We had a talk at Rotary recently from Pere Marquette’s naturalist on bobcats, eagles, and other wildlife in our area. We are fortunate to have such a great facility in our area. When does wildlife make you appreciate creation and when does it threaten something you hold dear? How do you balance respect for creation and economic developments?

OT Notes Ex.34:29-35-transfiguration

1) Moses is a figure in the transfiguration account of course. In tradition, his lack of a burial site indicated an assumption into heaven.
2) one could work with the image of  being in the presence of god transferred a radiance to Moses. We speak of people being radiant for a variety of reasons.
3)Notice how Paul turns or twists the veil image in his rendition of it in the 2 Cor 3,4 reading.
4) The quite rare word translated as shine could be related to the word for horn in Hebrew, so that is why some pictures of Moses have him with horns, as Jerome read it that way. At this point, make up your own jokes.
5) Is there a better description of intimacy with god than speaking with a friend, face to face? What affects our intimacy with God? How does the Incarnation affect it?
6) Would not Ps. 34 make sense as a reading  (Janzen, p. 262)
7) Could we play with the veil in the temple and the veil of Moses?
8) When do you feel a spiritual veil between you and the presence of God/ when is God's will veiled? When are we veiled form ourselves? When is the veil more of a protective mask for our well-being?
9) In similar way, when do we see the light of God in our communities?
100 One could work with Moses the representative, the mediator as well. It could make a good topic to consider bridges and go-betweens in our lives.

Jer. 1:4-10 Feb.3/13

I have rarely preached on this passage for some reason.(Or the sermons were lousy and I repressed the memory)  So it is important for me to try to work with it more closely.

1) we start out with one of the few places in the Bible where God speaks of knowing someone fully before their birth. After all, the OT usually seems to me to speak of this bodily existence as it s starting point. I wonder if the nephesh, the throat literally, but more like life force is behind this?

2)I love how call accounts often have some sort of resistance. i have a bit of trouble with folks who are so certain that god has spoken to them directly, or has confirmed their judgment. For me, the static on the line distorts the message.So maybe one could work on a sermon on discernment here, or getting clear on the will of God in our lives a la Ben Campbell Johnson. Alternately, how do you perceive the call of God in life? The signal move of the Reformation was its expanded notion of vocation beyond the clerical orders.

3) The responsive God engages in dialogue, but runs over the lad's objection on youth. is it because god sees it as excuse? God is having him live out his name for surely God is exalting this young man.

4)God also detects fear. Of course we are dealing with the divine therapist.Again, the struggle with fear is grist for the preaching mill and our own spiritual development. In small churhces, I detect a lot of fear as a motive force and obstacle.

5)God ordains Jeremiah in his role. How do we view and enact ordination in a meaningful way now?

6)Pay attention to this verse 10, as it will appear in various forms in this book.Notice with care the tension within it, and we do well to maintain that tnesion when we look at this book.

sermon notes Jan. 27 Neh. 8, I Cor 12

Now I realize that most of you came in this morning thinking, I haven’t heard about Nehemiah in ages. It fits the new year, as it deals with rebuilding. Our sense of rebuilding here seems ot be a return to the glory days of this church where money flowed in, where we had more than triple our membership, and incidentally when Alton had a thriving business climate. That is a noble goal, but still we should ask what spiritual support, what attitudes and actions do we owe each other?Quite simply, it asks us to invite each other into our lives.

Nehemiah talks about the Christian task of renewing the Scripture every time we open it. When they book  is read before the people, they had translators or interpreters there. I think of the house of the interpreter, as I am sure you all did, in Pilgrim’s Progress.Not only do thye need to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, they need to rebuild a sense of community. Nehemiah ahs faced obstacle after obstacle in his building project, but he wants to build it into the community structure of Scripture. Here interpretation seems to be a communal process as well.

Nehemiah deals with the difficulties of a restoration, or better a reclamation project.Just as the rebuilding of the temple left many disappointed, the difficult process of rebuilding the walls of jerusalem, to make it a proper city again, brings to mind the slow comeback of New Orleans. When I was younger, habitat for Humanity spent a lot of time rehabbing older buildings but many groups switched over to an easier process of building from scratch.

In our time, I do not know if the rebuilding of a wall is the best image. I am honestly unsure about it. Part of being a community is having boundaries. On the other hand, Scripture indicates that
christ broke down the dividing wall of hostility.Building up the body of Christ.-energy source-exercise-permission-emphasize commonality and respecting differences. I tend to be concerned about spiritual health and disciplines. It is good for me to see the work of the spirit of God as penetrating every part of the church, the body of Christ. Yes, we have this magnificent structure and it costs money.Still, we ask what sort of body of christ does this magnificent church structure shelter? Is it part of a gilded age or is it extra ornamentation for Paul’s vision of the church says no to hierarchy and status concerns. The body of Christ has a sense of a home being more than a house. It has to include a recognition that we are in the same boat, on the same team. It calls for a real sense that we are so connected that the suffering of one, the joys of another, touch us deeply, even so deeply that it  has happened to us.

Paul keep putting syn/together to start a series of words in this passage,to mean  only together, only with each other.Yes, we are a diverse lot, but we are interconnected. As John Donne would say no one is an island. More than in It’s about a boy where Hugh Grant can assent to being part of an island chain. In our time, the move is ecological, where things fit together in an inter-related fashion.moves away from arrogance and envy and a tightly bound sense of privacy. I’m a private person, I like to mind my own business, and this radical call that everyone in the church is my concern alarms me, even if I weren;t a pastor called to just that spiritual fact. the old saw, a chain is as strong as its weakest link applies here. The strongest are not only bound to the weak but may seek to outdo one another in honoring those folks. (burden) How do we learn to allow ourselves to become part of the community?

Week of Jan. 27 devotions

January 27 Ps. 19 does an interesting split between creation and the teachings of the Bible. they are joined as God is a god of order. I wish to emphasize the first part today. We live in an age of miracles.Often we say we see the hand of God in something pretty in nature. Take a moment to look at a picture of a galaxy. Take a moment to examine something of biological complexity. Take a look at the microscopic level. the consider that selfsame God love you by name.

Monday-I have heard a lot lately about people wanting to hear more about the “harsher” side of God.they actually sneer at the Scriptural description of God is love. They see power as the ultimate value, and so they wish to emphasize passages and events that proclaim that power. I understand the impulse, but fear that it projects our view of power too much on the divine.

Tuesday-”To see a world in a grain of sand/or heaven in a wild flower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/or eternity in an hour” (William Blake Auguries of Innocence) I have always loved these words, and they get at some of the mystic’s view of the world.Mystic see connections. Mystics can use the ordinary to catch a glimpse of the extraordinary. Where does the everyday give you an intimation of the divine?

Wednesday-Evaluations alarm us. It is as if we are afraid that the world ill be let in on the secret of our incompetence. We tend to hear the word as relentlessly critical and rarely complimentary. Iv e noticed how difficult it is to get people to agree on the basis for an evaluation. It seems to be open season on being not only critical but judgmental. I’m struggling with this, as I am being evaluated by our session at the same time I am evaluating a candidate for ministry under special circumstances.

Thursday-We’ve looked at I Cor. 12 lately and one insightful woman noted its emphasis on variety as an asset. So often, we look for uniformity as our security blanket. Variety may show us a better way, some lack we may now notice. As Justice Jackson said, “compulsory unification of opinion brings only the uniformity of the grave.” Where do you find diversity to be a threat? Where do you find it to add depth, richness, and novelty to your life?

Friday- My thoughts keep coming back to kindness lately. I think of the line from Hamlet: ”I must be cruel, only to be kind”, and it was adapted to a Nick Lowe song, “you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.” Perhaps it opens the door to what we call tough love. I just a good collection of stories by Pete hamill and he was put on a bus by a cop when he was hitchhiking the turnpike. The driver waved off the money; he says: “ I have always recalled the kindness.” What kindness have you received from a stranger? What have you offered?

Saturday is Candlemas in some Christian communities. since Christ is the light of the world, it emphasizes the use and blessing of candles. In some areas, someone who discovers a gift in the Epiphany King’s cake makes food for folks on this day. why do candles promote a spiritual sense, do you think? Do you have a person, a memory, an object that operates as a candle in the dark for you?

Thoughts on the 2nd Inaugural 1/25 column

Today, I was scheduled to help lead a study of a group of men who have committed to a serious study of Scripture every Friday morning at 7AM. The psalms contain sacred history, a way of handing down important themes and committing them to the memories of succeeding generations. Part of community is the maintenance of shared values and vision.

In his second inaugural address, President Obama gave us a version of civil history. He recovered the truth that governing can mix the prose of policy with the poetry of rhetoric. He tried to steer a course between ardent American individualism and our impulse toward community, mutual aid and understanding. Whether you agree with his policies or not, I would think that an objective observer would find it a compelling presentation.  He wove important documents into a narrative of our present and the arc of our common future. He took important historical events to try to weave their pattern into our time and cast a vision of a future.

The Russian literary theorist Bakhtin taught us that no text is an island. All material swims in a sea of words and connections. Sometimes we quote them directly. Other times, we hear their echoes distinctly. This speech is a great example. It quotes directly from the Declaration of Independence and quotes the first words of the preamble to the constitution, We the People to serve as anchor and refrain for it.

We hear echoes of the great Lincoln Second inaugural with its reminder of the lash of slavery that Lincoln wondered was the very cause of the immense suffering of the civil War itself. The emphasis on a security foundation for our citizens takes a cue from the second inaugural of FDR.

He picked up the banner of equality as it has become embodied in important social movements with the brilliantly alliterative Seneca Falls (women’s rights: 1848), Selma (the Civil right struggle of the 1960s), and Stonewall,  ( the uprising of gay Americans in 1969). He captured the sense of a march through history, and we bear its legacy.

The president and his writers grasp that traditionalism is fealty to the dead hand of the past, but tradition is a living faith in the principles of the past. Notice how they sought to finesse the generation gap by “caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” So the see the need for us to honor our tradition as a pole star but adapting methods and policies as required under new and different circumstances.

I was impressed by his insistence that progress can be made, but that we need to realize that it may not have 100 per cent approval. He carries the notion that ideological purity cannot stand in the face of human limitations. Still, imperfect, partial victories are what we can achieve. His vision imagines  responsive, adaptive, active government. As any human institution, it will be flawed but it can have achievements.

I caught at least three references to God. First he sees the inalienable rights of the Declaration as gifts from god. Second, he uses the image of god from gen. 1 as the basis for seeking global human rights and dignity. Third, he again uses Gen. 1 to emphasize that we are called to care for, to serve the well-being of this planet. He demonstrates that climate change shows the futility of our thinking we can conquer or even subdue nature, but we certainly have an impact on it. Just as he sees our lives are inter-related, just as goals such as peace are inextricably bound to other goods, such as justice, he see the natural order as an interdependent nexus of relationships that ripple out in unexpected and unforeseen ways. In that sense, the speech hangs together through its rich evocation of mutuality.

OT Notes. Nehemiah 8 for Jan. 27

When the book is read, I am not sure is thy have translators or interpreters. Anyway, the words needed to be heard and understood. I think of the House of Interpreter in the Pilgrim's Progress.

1)Note how long he read. What does it say that we get complaints about 3 readings and a psalm.

2)The people want to hear the word-it was one of the things that held them together as a people.

3) v) 6 certainly has a number of  liturgical words and actions.

4) this was read in the early fall, the time for the festival of booth/tabernacles/dwellings.We are around the new year and soon the water ritual could have peen practiced in the pool of Siloam and soon Simchat torah would be celebrated. One of the Chaim Potok books, probably the firs tone about the artist as a young man has a great evocation of this celebration.

5) How could we develop a thirst for Holy Writ, or is it pure gift? Can we at least develop open minds and hearts toward it?

6_ The ending can be read in different ways-look at the working preacher piece by Patricia Tull. At any rate, it seems our worship[ either tries to force joy or more easily falls in a lamenting form, if not in words, in feel.
In a way, it could be a good blessing for people on the way to a graveside to a mercy lunch.