Aug. 11 sermon notes Is. 1:10-20, Lk.,12:32-40, Ps. 50

God is less than satisfied with even well-performed worship practices here. God is fed up with worship practices that are ‘gifts of nothing”they have blood on their hands, but not the blood of sacrificial animals, but human blood.It is directeed a tthe outcome of greed. I think that sometimes Christians have an image of a Spirit directed automatic, magical consensus. Alternately, we fall into the latest fad with process and have unending meetings that spends so much on the how of arriving at a decision, we don’t reach one.I would like to suggest that the Spirt is fully capable of working through a disagreement on assumptions, process, or product. The spirit is fully capable of working through the clash of opinions and data. If we can reach unanimity in a court case of 12 people, we can reach good decisions in other areas.

basic hebrew ethics as clear as one could wish or fear Notice that the prophetic denunciation of Sodom is not homosexual rape but neglect of the poor (see Ezek 16:49).God’s love may be unconditional, but God certainly sets conditions here for proper worship. So many of the feeling swirling around different worship style would be preference for formal v. informal, classical or contemporary sounds. Our passage this morning sees that as wasted breath. what it demands is a social precondition for good worship-justice.Let’s work this through. God says. in our polarized time; we do not even attempt this. “You are either with me or against me;my way or the highway: one right way does exist:mine.” We have some consensus on possession, however. With the Beatles we agree money can’t buy me love.” (Insert your own joke here). I hear people say  that money cannot buy happiness either, but ocme to think of it, i don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone rich say it.

Let’s try to work through the issue of possessions some more. Personally, i am attracted to a simpler, ascetic lifestyle at times, so I need ot tread carefully here. i find no reason to try to guilt people into being more generous, as it seems to be to fade quickly wiht time. second, I see little value in denouncing folks for having some material comforts. At the same time, we would probably to well to seek some balance.I saw the movie the Way Way Back last weekend. All of the adults taking summer vacation are well off. They are all miserable.When the search for the next possession seems to be taking up so much time, attention, and money tha tit interferes with other things in lfie, then we know our balance is shifted. The kingdom of god, God’s way in the world, god’s vision for us seems to be a shared road. In my short time here, we run a deficit and then some magical donations pour in at the end of the year. Our pooled resources seem to be more than adequate to maintain our church structure, but we do well to ask if we are carrying our fair share of the load.I have come to realize at how fresh the wounds of previous decisions about finances continue to eat away at the attitudes of a number of folks here. Here we recive the gift of God, the living jesus Christ without cost, because the fit is priceless.

Communion responds to the issue of possession in a number of ways. One it shares resources, but here just a taste finds our cup runneth over. Second, it sees our future as more than the sum total of what we have.We may not achieve consensus on Christian beliefs about Communion, but most of us agree that this practice helps to define Christians.The word eucharist, good grace, is another word for thanksgiving, the name of our long, long Communion prayer. gratitude is an antidote to greed.

Week of Aug. 11 Devotional Pts

Sunday-Ps.50 does not leap up at me immediately. It is a psalm of judgment that fits perfectly the reading today from Isaiah. God decries worship if it does not show up in lives worthy of being in a worship space. We often enter gorgeous sanctuaries but bring in lives that are inappropriate to the presence of God, no matter how carefully and elegantly clad we may be.How christians dare call Judaism legalistic with these passages repeated in Scripture astounds me.

Monday-I notice when I find myself saying, "I should do such and such." Self-talk affects our unconscious thinking and acting. Decades ago I remember reading psychologist Karen Horney's phrase "the tyranny of the should," only slightly more philosophical than the Saturday Night Live line, "You're shoulding on yourself!" When I catch myself saying "I should" do a certain task, if I can translate it "I'd like to..." or "I need to..." then it lies close to my passion. (If not, it's someone else's call). I move from "should" to "can" to "will"--then discern when and how to act on it. Ira Kent Groff

Tuesday-I may as well continue with some quotes.Micheal O’Siadhail goes against the grain of a long marriage become dull and routine.”over bequeathed secrets we learn to repossess/in hints and   traces, these words we must guess....riddles of what we read between the lines...this tick-tack of things we still negotiate....those unheard words that in a heart betoken/ all of all which must remain unspoken.” What surprises do you receive from someone you have known for a long time? What must remain unspoken in your prayer life, if anything? How are we still secrets to each?

Wednesday-I saw this quote from William Blake  in David Ford’s fine book, The shape of Living (p.157): “every moment has a couch of gold for soft repose...there is a moment in each day that Satan cannot find...once is found,it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed.” to me it sounds similar to a sabbath moment of repose in each day. just as we can take one day of rest a week, perhaps we should alos take some sabbath time each day to refresh the working soul.

Thursday I read the new Dan Brown novel, Inferno. He is hardly a prose stylist, but his plot is moderately involving. It centers on readings of Dante’s great three part poem on the afterlife, The Divine Comedy. Most of us remember the first part, Inferno, on Hell. why is that, do you think?

Friday-I am seeing a lot of postings of back to school. it always makes me a little sad. From carefree to work is a tough transition. Do we ever feel as if the child is ready for hte next step in life? do you have back to school memories in your experience or children or grandchildren? I wonder if God feels that we are not ready to face the world with our level of strength, daily?

Saturday-”Unlike the claims of consumer society, the community operates with a powerful vision, a vision that affirms that the future is not yet finished. God has a powerful intention and resolve to bring us to a wholeness not yet in hand.” Walter Breuggemann in Texts Under Negotiation

Column on image of God from Hos. 11

Many churches will be reading Hosea 11:1-11 this Sunday. I realize that the so called minor prophets (as in smaller books), or the Book of the Twelve are not on the top ten list of biblical material. I lift it up today as it gives us a different angle on how we imagine God.

I do not like to admit it, but if pushed, I have to admit that the image of god that resides in the back of the mind runs from a punitive, angry being to one that sighs constantly in disappointment with me. Now I do not want to go to the current extreme and try to lift up the self to be equated with the divine. That strikes me as either arrogance or a sad yawning pit of need to feed a depleted, dejected sense of self. One of the admirable points of the entire Bible is its wide-ranging and overflowing number of ways to approach a weak grasp fo the Holy One.

First, Hosea uses a traditional Old Testament view of God as a wounded spouse who has been hit with the infidelity of the spouse, the people. It was as close ot the prophets could get to the broken heart of god who saw a faithless people over and over again. Toward the end of the scroll, the image shifts to a parental one. Now I realize that this is a dangerous image for a few reasons. Some project their own personal parental experience on to the divine. if their experience was inadequate, they have a difficult time forming an adequate image of the divine. The most notorious matter would be the breach of trust and care that is abuse. Second, for adults, I am not sure how helpful an image that fosters dependence would be for people who carry so much on their shoulders. Adults do not need to be infantilized only in matters of religion.

Hosea’s image is a good deal more sophisticated. it portrays god with the anguish of a parent who has done everything right, who has done the absolute best one can for children and find it repaid with derision, rebellion, and a headlong rush toward destructive behavior.  Yes, god has a desire to make an end of it, to cut ties, to start again. Then memory will not permit it. God is pictured like a parent remembering playing with a child. The connections are powerful cords/bands/ropes of love. What doe sit do to your view of God to picture God playing like a grandparent with a small child, with infinite delight and patience? What memories of you do you think touch the divine heart deeply?

Then, God turns aside from thoughts of giving up and asks, “How can I give you up?” At funerals, I often speculate that one reasons for eternal life is that god cannot bear the thought of losing us to death forever. God’s compassion, God’s motherly love (as the word in Hebrew is related to the womb) grows warm and powerful, more powerful than anger.

God reminds us that the divine is not to be equated with being a mere mortal. At best, we can make analogies from our experience of God, but they will always fall short. The divine heart cannot bear the thought of losing the people. As Anne Lamott has said, when you find a god agreeing with you all of the time, that god loves those whom you love and hates those whom you hate, you know that you have constructed an idol. Allow yourself the quest to catch glimpses of the Holy One in ways deeper, more surprising than our mortal hearts and minds can ever hold. In the end, God is God, and we are humans, so we can never, ever, feel that we can capture the divine in its entirety.

Is. 1:1, 10-20 OT Notes

 Look at Patricia Tull's fine commentary please.

1) Why does it appear god abhors the religious acts here? again, here is a good chance to delineate justice v. charity.

2) What sins seem to be in min at v. 18?

3) Johnson quoted come let us reason together during legislative battles. What doe sit seem to mean at 18?

4) Given v. 18., this has a courtroom feel to it. It could be a good diea to make a skit out of the passage like a Law and Order episode.

5) this marks 2 weeks in a row we are reminded of Sodom. Look at Gen. 19 and its view in DT. Why were the cities destroyed? How would this be read after the exile?

6) How does this reading square with last week's reading from Hosea?

7) Some time ago, Theology today had a good discussion on worship and justice. I recall that it was perhaps Prof. Olson who reminded us that injustice is part of the sin we carry with us into worship and seek to redress.

sermon notes aug 4-hos. 11:1-11, Lk. 12,123-21 Col. 3:1-11

August 4 Lk. 12:13-21, Hos. 11:1-11, Col. 3:1-11

I have long been taken by the remarkable portrait of God in Hosea. Here, we get a picture of God as a confused parent. All the right steps have been followed, but the child is rebellious and determined to make a hash out of life. Anger wells up, as does the desire to punish and even wash one’s hands of the impending disaster, but wipe them off the face of the earth. god relents, no, the divine is better than some human tantrum.Last week Rev. Riley gave me the opportunity to do a grief workshop at Northminster church and another unit on congregational transition as they will be enfolded into a new church.we spoke of the image of God we hold openly and also ones that are more covert. No, the divine frustration emerges not from thwarted power but from love. this is no distant, unfeeling, clockwork God, but one motivated by love. This is the god of connections, of bands of love.(is this swaddling?)

Colossians gives us good reason to see God’s frustration. We are given a vice list and a virtue list. for some reason, we continue to grab at the vice list with both hands and reject the e virtues for the new life.Again notice how the virtue list allows relationships to flourish. today notice how the vice list corrodes relationship and dulls the sense of virute from within, so its posion works from within and without.Let’s look at envy a moment. I understand it as to want someone to lose something they have, because we feel that we should have it we deserve it. It bears relation to greed, that gnawing sense that no sufficiency, no satiation, no satisfaction exists, only the squeal for more, more, more. It seems that the writer equates greed with idolatry, the replacement of God with another deity. Just as in idolatry of old, greed replaces God with human artifacts.we get our word invidious from latin for envy. Avarice of course is latin for greed.the word could also be coveting, as in letting nothing stand in the way of insatiable desires.Dante had the greedy ascending through purgatory with their eyes sewn shut to not covet.If eyes are the mirror of hte soul, they often desire what they see to become personal possession.

Jesus too seems frustrated in Luke. Again, someone asks jesus to become their ally in a private dispute. this time, ti is about an inheritance. we have all probably seen the absolute craxiness that can engulf a family over an inheritance or the reading of a will.My aunt labored for a long time to detail the list for her childrne to distriubte the different good knickknacks she had acqured in later years. the children ignored her details almost completely.Again, Jesus won;t do it, as he seems to wish us to reconcile face to face. Again, he gives some advice about the root fo the is pure, and this time it is the question of possessions leading us away from God.why is the man in the story a fool? Is it that he is successful? I think not. He may be a fool for 3 reasons: One he talks to himself and does not include other relationships, including prayer, into his calculations. Second, he trusts planning too much. the world can be manageable but it is often filled with random events that lay waste to our best-laid plans and carefully plotted projections.third, I love this phrase, “not rich toward God.” With little reason, other than stereotype, our church is seen as a rich church. Our church is blessed with some folks with substantial resources, and many us of live in relative comfort. I do wonder if our comforts have bought us being rich toward God.In the end our possessions are pale substitutes for the restless yearning we have for God. Time to grow away from our toys and welcome the Love at the heart of our universe.

devotional thoughts Week of Aug.11

Sunday-Ps.107 has some verses listed for today. It starts the last section of the psalter.It repeats calling on the name of god in times of distress and trouble, but it also sees affliction as a sign from God as well as deliverance. If you agree with this view of the divine. How does it square with the reality of Jesus Christ? If you don’t., then how do you view hte power of God in our age?

Monday I was talking to someone making an important choice, and she made a distinction between deciding and discerning. to her deciding has an ultimate, either-or position to it, and it is done with a paucity of time and information.discernment first take time. Second, it tries to include prayer and prayerful reflection to seek the will of God. third, it does not see a decision as irrevocable but capable of being revisited. It is a sophisticated process to seek the guidance of God through our very human capacities.

Tuesday-”To see reality—not as we expect it to be but as it is—is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”-Frederick Buechner-Where does this quote affirm or challenge your view of spiritual insight, especially in regard to indiviudal angles on the spiritual?

Wednesday is Hiroshima Day.-I continue to struggle with this day, but more so Nagasaki three days later. i do understand the rationale that the first atomic blast would save us from an invasion of Japan, but I am unable to grasp the import of the Nagasaki blast so soon afterward.It strikes me as a powerful evil, and one that highlights our being bound to political sins as citizens. We are entangled, enmeshed in the political history and impact of political decisions.

Thursday-I heard the phrase again,”taking something for granted.” I just heard someone use it for the gift of time and life itself. My thoughts flashed to the cneter of hte book of Lamentations:’Your mercies are new every morning.” Every morning we have is indeed a gift that comes without our determination to wake. Each breath is a connection to God’s spirit of life.

Friday“Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul.” I’ve been reading a bit of a flowery writer, John O’Donahue. This quote is from Anam Cara (Soul friend).

Saturday-NPR’s Scott simon recently sent out a remarkable set of postings on twitter, where his one million followers witnessed his brief thoughts on keeping vigil at his dying mother’s bedside in the hospital. They spoke and held hands. they sange old songs and watched a ball game together.It seems to me to be a prescription for a good death, but also guidance for those of us keeping prayerful vigil in the holy place of impending death, as we wait for hte holy moment of transition form one plane of existence to the next.

Column on image of God through Hos.11

Many churches will be reading Hosea 11:1-11 this Sunday. I realize that the so called minor prophets (as in smaller books), or the Book of the Twelve are not on the top ten list of biblical material. I lift it up today as it gives us a different angle on how we imagine God.

I do not like to admit it, but if pushed, I have to admit that the image of god that resides in the back of the mind runs from a punitive, angry being to one that sighs constantly in disappointment with me. Now I do not want to go to the current extreme and try to lift up the self to be equated with the divine. That strikes me as either arrogance or a sad yawning pit of need to feed a depleted, dejected sense of self. One of the admirable points of the entire Bible is its wide-ranging and overflowing number of ways to approach a weak grasp fo the Holy One.

First, Hosea uses a traditional Old Testament view of God as a wounded spouse who has been hit with the infidelity of the spouse, the people. It was as close ot the prophets could get to the broken heart of god who saw a faithless people over and over again. Toward the end of the scroll, the image shifts to a parental one. Now I realize that this is a dangerous image for a few reasons. Some project their own personal parental experience on to the divine. if their experience was inadequate, they have a difficult time forming an adequate image of the divine. The most notorious matter would be the breach of trust and care that is abuse. Second, for adults, I am not sure how helpful an image that fosters dependence would be for people who carry so much on their shoulders. Adults do not need to be infantilized only in matters of religion.

Hosea’s image is a good deal more sophisticated. it portrays god with the anguish of a parent who has done everything right, who has done the absolute best one can for children and find it repaid with derision, rebellion, and a headlong rush toward destructive behavior.  Yes, god has a desire to make an end of it, to cut ties, to start again. Then memory will not permit it. God is pictured like a parent remembering playing with a child. The connections are powerful cords/bands/ropes of love. What doe sit do to your view of God to picture God playing like a grandparent with a small child, with infinite delight and patience? What memories of you do you think touch the divine heart deeply?

Then, God turns aside from thoughts of giving up and asks, “How can I give you up?” At funerals, I often speculate that one reasons for eternal life is that god cannot bear the thought of losing us to death forever. God’s compassion, God’s motherly love (as the word in Hebrew is related to the womb) grows warm and powerful, more powerful than anger.

God reminds us that the divine is not to be equated with being a mere mortal. At best, we can make analogies from our experience of God, but they will always fall short. The divine heart cannot bear the thought of losing the people. As Anne Lamott has said, when you find a god agreeing with you all of the time, that god loves those whom you love and hates those whom you hate, you know that you have constructed an idol. Allow yourself the quest to catch glimpses of the Holy One in ways deeper, more surprising than our mortal hearts and minds can ever hold. In the end, God is God, and we are humans, so we can never, ever, feel that we can capture the divine in its entirety.