For Transfiguration-some Pts on 2 Kings 2.

I find transfiguration Sunday increasingly difficult to preach, almost as difficult as the baptism of Jesus. First, I want to post some thoughts on the OT passage, I 2 Kings 2.

The transformation theme could be placed on the changes wrought by leadership. Why does Elisha want a double share of charismatic gifts? To what degree should the church ape business models of leadership? To what extent can we be transactional or transformational leaders?

Why a chariot fire? It appears to be part of the arsenal of the heavenly host, but this time it is for life and not death. (messengers?) Picture of a god traversing the heavens in a chariot/sun disc image. The defeater of Baal’s prophet is brought to god’s abode in Baal’s vehicle is possible. it could be a way of connecting his new dimension with the circuit of the sun, often pictured as moving as a heavenly chariot.

One could go with the transformations of grief. The slow steady beat of saying goodbye marks the narrative here, as does the cry of Elisha at the end.

The assumption into heaven of Elijah could be a way to speculate on the transformation of heaven for us. I recall a lady in the nursing home saying that we needed to speak of heaven at times other than funerals as she was too upset to hear a that time.

Devotional Pts for Week of Feb. 8

Sunday-Ps.147- links the overweening power of the Creator with the tender capacity to help the brokenhearted and with the specific knowledge of “naming” the individual stars. God then sees the forest and the trees. How has your broken heart be healed? When have you felt God sustaining you?

Monday-"My Life Flows On in Endless Song,"  My life flows on in endless song;above earth's lamentation,I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.Refrain:No storm can shake my inmost calm/while to that Rock I'm clinging./Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,how can I keep from singing?Through all the tumult and the strife,/I hear that music ringing./It finds an echo in my soul./How can I keep from singing?  Refrain/What though my joys and comforts die?/The Lord my Savior liveth./What though the darkness gather round?/Songs in the night he giveth.  Refrain/The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,/a fountain ever springing!/All things are mine since I am his!/How can I keep from singing?  Martin Luther wrote, "Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our hearts and minds and spirits." In this season of the church year,what are we going to do? We are going to sing: sometimes beautifully, sometimes poorly, sometimes happily and sometimes sadly, but we will sing. Silence is contrary to all that we know and feel. From God Pause

Tuesday-"Do not depend on the hope of results...you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself...gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people...In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything." (Thomas Merton)

Wednesday-You might simplify the "examen" of Ignatius of Loyola, a gentle practice of noticing:A gift of the day that is past, struggle of the day that is past,invitation for the day ahead...I say of spiritual practices: "never obligation--only invitation." Kent ira  Groff

Thursday- Is. 40”21-31-In the Small Catechism we confess: "I believe God has created me together with all that exists ... " Read Isaiah's questions aloud and ponder your creator and the creation. Have you not known? O God, we affirm that you have given us our bodies and souls, our senses, reason and all our mental faculties. May we use them to serve your people and to preserve your good creation. Amen.Robert Brusic

Friday- I am interested in relationship advice from the Gottman Institute-here are some tips on building togetherness: Ask “How are you?” in a way that shows that you really want to know-Listen to stories and jokes, even when you’ve heard them before-Say thank you for favors, invitations to go Invite out for coffee, dinner, a movie -Offer compliments-Let them off the hook when they say “I can’t do it, I’m exhausted” Ask for help Let them help you- Collaborate on projects Celebrate each other’s successes

Saturday-The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution no to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.— Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

sermon notes Feb. 8, Is. 40, Mk. 1 healing and weariness

Feb. 8 Is. 40:21-31, Mk. 1:29-31, I Cor. 9:16-23

You are making some progress with a project: the doorbell rings and it’s a JW, or the cell phone beeps or the computer beeps. You try to get a moment’s peace and the clamor starts: where did I put my socks, where are my keys? We get a sense of needs clamoring for the attention of Jesus. He responds to the situation decisively. Like Paul suggests, he will do what it takes for the cause, no matter how it looks to others.He will adapt to the situation. he sounds a bit like Proteus, as flexible as the need requires..

Jesus healed. Faced with all of that crying need, jesus does not blame victims for their plight; he does not tell them to develop a positive attitude; he does not tell them to find meaning and purpose in their suffering; he does not tell them to overcome it; he heals them.I always feel a bit for Simon’s mother-in-law. That is healing in itself to have sympathy for a mother in law, perhaps. What does she do when she is healed-pray-rest- receive visitors, no she starts serving folks-I think of Edith Bunker running to serve her family in the dining area

To be bold, healing seems to affect Jesus. Maybe it was the sheer crush of crying human need.To heal, to be resotred, Jesus goes to a solitary place and prays. Jesus needed to find sabbath rest beyond the sabbath itself. he needed to create sabbath time for himself. Jesus faced the possibility of burnout right away in his work and took steps to keep a balanced life. Hear this with care. We call being alive being hectic, moving from task to task, feeling pressured and burdened. All the time, people say that they are busier in retirement than at work, as if that is a good thing.

Jesus connected perhaps to the words we just read from Isaiah.We are getting tired of winter, but the end is not yet in sight.Isaiah starts with God as Creator and then moves to it as fully capable of a new start, a new creation, if you will. A dispirited people receives the promise of a surge of energy.I have always loved its lyrical ending. Isaiah notes not only the power of God, but god;’s attention to detail. not only does god construct the universe, but god pays attention to the smallest detail, God  names and numbers the stars as President George W. Bush once quoted in an important speech on the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. Reliance on that Creator can offer energy,powers renewal that move us past our normal way of reckoning. Irt envisions flying over trouble; it imagines being better than young again for both the long haul and a crisis moment. Here that well, while even the young will grow weary, God provides strength to those who have grown weak, in faith, in body, in spirit.I think of a minister whom I admired who was stricken with cancer at least three times and he would say he could feel a certain of prayer around him when he was too exhausted to move but found the strength to face the morning.

Who doesn’t grow weary sometimes?Who doesn’t get too tired to move another inch? No, no our way is not hiddens from God, God does not disregard us. God has stamina to stay with us. God continues to be at work with us and through and beyond our best imaginings. Yes, it applies to each one of us. yes,it applies to a graying congregation seeking new vitality. God heals. God restores.

New bldg at WTC site.

Column on Lincoln religion, fatalism

 When I was a boy, we noted Lincoln’s birthday on the 12^th. We still use the words of the great man to try to buttress our beliefs. Lincoln would be amused at his being proclaimed as an orthodox religious believer. We seem determined to recruit a great person in the service of our beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln never formally joined a church. He did attend Presbyterian churches both in Springfield and in Washington, DC. He was accused of being anti-religious publically in the 1840s. In response, he wrote a carefully parsed notice. While admitting he did not join a church, he stood against holding religion in contempt. At the same time, he could not grasp how religious adherents could have the temerity to be certain of a belief that could not be proven. In other words, Lincoln was humble about the limitations of human power. He was even more humble in our capacity to try to grasp the workings of what he sometimes termed as providence.

While most Americans unthinkingly genuflect at the altar of the doctrine of free will. Lincoln seemed to have substituted the notion of a personal god for an impersonal force, along the lines of a determinism or fatalism. For instance, he thought that prayer was unavailing as nothing could change God’s working in divine necessity for events. The world is far too complex and inter-connected to assume that we are utterly free to make decision as if many forces do not impinge on our decisions. He was unwilling to speak of some sort of pure moral sensibility, as reflecting his Calvinist-Baptist upbringing in Indiana; our decisions are always involved in our own self-interest and prejudices.

When Lincoln quoted Scripture in the great second inaugural address, he echoed words spoken at the funeral of his son Willie by the Rev. Dr. Gurley of New York Ave. Presbyterian church. There the pastor spoke of terrible tragedy as within the hand of a god whose purposes we cannot fathom. “His kingdom ruleth over all. All those events which in anywise affect our condition and happiness are in his hands, and at his disposal. Disease and death are his messengers; they go forth at his bidding, and their fearful work is limited or .extended, according to the good pleasure of His will.” At Lincoln’s funeral again notice the language “ it is our Father in heaven… who permits us to be so suddenly and sorely smitten; and we know that His judgments are right, and that in faithfulness He has afflicted us. In the midst of our rejoicings we needed this stroke, this dealing, this discipline; and therefore He has sent it... Through and beyond all second causes let us look, and see the sovereign permissive agency of the great First Cause. It is His prerogative to bring light out of darkness and good out of evil. …in the light of a clearer day we may yet see that the wrath which planned and perpetuated the death of the President, was overruled by Him whose judgements are unsearchable, and His ways are past finding out.”

Still, Lincoln also saw us as instruments of some sort of divine purpose, and in that role, we apparently have some real power, albeit limited. Having lost two sons and seeing the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people, he seems to have relied on God, as he grasped God, to help assuage the relentless pressures on his heart and mind, his conscience. In some ways, Lincoln could be the patron saint of the spiritual but not religious set, but he clearly struggled long and hard over fundamental issues of ethics, even as he disdained inquiry about matters catechetical. With the theologian Paul Tillich, he exemplified the interplay of faith and probing its depth and edges.  Many of us prefer to be more measured and sedate in our approach to the gospel. Yet here is a hymn that calls forth a response of praise over and over again—twelve times in fact, even if you only sing it through once!

This outburst of praise is consistent with what the writer of Psalm 147 observed. Implied in the swirl of praise is the realization that God has created us and all that exists. 

I Cor 8-Paul on response to judging others to aid community cohesion-sermon notes

Feb. 1 I Cor. 8

Judging others is one of those areas where we say the words but the church does not give nearly enough help in how to do it.In I Corinthians Paul is dealing with a church that seems capable of fighting about almost anything, in other words, they were a typical congregation. All of us feel being in the cross hairs of criticizing and judging.  An offshoot from judging is in the word scrutinize/poke around inside/discern.The Spirit of God gives us insight into spiritual matters. With this special insight, we grasp the patterns of the world.. Earlier, I would see him saying that we scarcely understand ourselves, but claim to know God?

Paul's words on judging center on an intra-religious dispute in the new communities about eating meat that had been used in pagan rites at temples. I realize that it is hard for us to grasp the extent of the difficulty inherent in the controversy over eating some meat, but it is a hot button issue.  We do have a tendency to make matters of principle out of fairly trivial matters. . Kosher food was and is an identity marker in Jewish communities, along with sabbath observance and circumcision. In our time, people make ethical statements as vegans, or in slow foods, or in locally grown foods, foods organically produced, or food without chemical additives, on not eating veal or animals raised in confinement.  This was a trigger/valence issue since it deals directly with the issue of boundary, who is in and who is out.  As the Jewish/Christian sect started to draw more Gentiles, this issue became contentious.  People did not want to give tacit approval or credence to pagan worship by consuming meat offered in their rituals/rites. To what degree would this community, rooted in Judaism, relax its boundaries with the influx of Gentile believers? After all, we consistently raise up matters of personal preference and raise them to the matter of principle. Think of the seemingly trivial reasons people decide to leave their congregation or their broader denomination.

Paul begins by stipulating that some of the arguments are indeed correct. Yes, God is one. Yes, we pay no heed to idols. Paul knows full well the weight of biblical tradition against honoring an idol. Paul makes his concern the formation and maintenance of Christian community. Paul is looking for ties of cohesion instead of the splintering nature of dissent. Unlike our time, he is less concerned with exit strategies and protest resignations and spinning off new groups. All Christians have knowledge, not just the in-group. A sense of superior knowledge causes arrogance, but love upbuilds. Yet, they live in a culture filled with idols and the gods whom they represent. What's the problem, they know better than to ascribe importance to mere idols. Let the weak ones get built up. No, love builds up, not puffs up, no matter who we are.. So, should love take on a mantle of being supercilious toward those with whom we disagree?  Can we look down on anyone when we are gazing through the eyes of love? Love extended to the weak ones should be the norm. For Americans, to say that it's my right tends to stop any discussion. Does failing to assert a right make one too passive?  At 8:11-13, look at how Paul uses family language to get at basic equality and respect. As Bruce Springsteen sings, "we take care of our own."  Paul goes to the point of saying that he would forgo meat, period, if it caused one person to stumble. At this point, he is becoming an example of foregoing his personal liberty and knowledge to accommodate the perceived needs of others in the community who are more easily swayed and "scandalized" than is he.

Quotes and Pts. to Ponder

Sunday-Ps. 111 is an acrostic, so lines start with letters of the alphabet(in Hebrew). Mostly it links god’s actions with the description of God’s character from Ex. 34.At the end, it oculd just as well read, the reverenc eof the Lord is th ebeginning of wisdom. How do you interpret that? Notice that it is the start of the journey toward wisdom, not its conclusion.

Monday-we learn that we must balance our Christian freedom against the needs of those we serve: that's part of being in community. The rule of love is not intended to inhibit us. It is intended to enrich and enhance human life for each of us and for those around us. From God Pause

Tuesday-A consideration of the old hymn Jesus Calls Us-”When we sing Isaiah's words, "bind up the broken hearted ones and comfort those who mourn," we are reminded that a new light has arrived for those who have no imagination for such a far reaching God, one who willingly connects with the hell and pain of grief and loss. We sing of the prophet's vision—God's light comes with the power to unlock prison doors of the innocent, to transcend tragedy and the systems of oppression that so often confine us and dash our hopes and dreams..Matthew A. Maas

Wednesday-"The more conception of God, the more self; the more self, the more conception of God," Søren Kierkegaard wrote in Sickness Unto Death. Notice some areas of your own self-awareness that lead you to a deepening awareness of God. Example: If you're a risk-taker, how does that thrust you on God's love? If you play it safe, how does that lead you to need God to challenge you?

Wednesday-A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love."– St. Basil the Great.

Thursday-Rabbis have said the miracle was not the burning bush--but rather that Moses turned aside to look!(Exodus 3:3-3).Mindfulness. In the poem below, for us "plucking blackberries" might mean checking our electronic Blackberries or Smart Phones instead of paying attention to a sunset or another person's countenance!  

Friday- We all belong together. That is the way God made us...Our sin is only and always to pull asunder what God has joined together.” W. S. Coffin

Saturday-If we could read the secret history of those we would like to punish,we would find in each life a suffering and a sorrow enough to disarm all of our hostility. -Longfellow

thoughts on American Sniper

Jesus was a pacifist. So the church has struggled with war for centuries. The movie American Sniper has become a point of contention. It seems to permit more than a bit of a projection for those who supported the war in Iraq and those who opposed it. We read a lot into it based on our preconceptions about the war.  Second, it continues the issue of looking at private and public life. Third, it continues our difficulty with the post modern blurring of fact and fiction. I frankly don’t grasp those who expect a movie to be a documentary.

This is perhaps the best-made film by a director in his eighties. Some of the scenes are shown from Kyle’s point of view, and that tends to build identification with his character. One feels the deadly strain of close quarter’s urban combat. Lots of cross cutting and editing build momentum in the combat scenes, and the scenes move at a crawl when he is struggling to make a decision to fire. It highlights the limitations placed on troops in a situation such as Iraq with no clear objectives or tactics for one to declare victory. In other words, the film shows savagery on all sides.

I frankly don’t grasp the complaint that movies should be documentaries. It seems we now go into the theater with the expectation that our opinions need to be confirmed to make them affirmed. Some think it glamorizes war with its sniper hero. For me, the movie depicts the terrors and horrors of war and its aftermath. Rita Nakashima Brock runs a program in Texas dealing with the “moral injury” of those in war who continue to find their ethical compass disoriented. Kyle is shown making decisions about killing a woman or a child if they pose a threat to American soldiers. We want a match between public and private behavior and motives. That is not the case frequently. Pure heroes are rare beings. At any rate, we enter some murky waters trying to isolate his actual viewpoints and those presented in the movie. It may be based on his book, but any movie takes dramatic license to present its story. For that mater, maybe many new outlets should place the statement, “based on actual events” before their broadcasts.

It renewed my fury at those who seem so willing to send young men and women to die but want to pinch pennies for their acclimation to civilian life upon returning. Part of this is our steadfast refusal to see mental and emotional injury fully. We continue to want to blame the victim for lack of will power or strength. When Kyle’s therapist tells him that the VA had lots of people who needed saving, he pointed to a huge number of people wounded in body, mind, and spirit. The very capacity to \wall off emotions in wartime can come back to haunt the returning vet. Yet, the movie shows the obvious pain and despair of many of the returning vets, including the seeming super-human Kyle himself. The all-volunteer force has tamped down protest, as the military does not represent a fuller cross-section of the country.

I thought it showed the immense strain that deployments, especially multiple deployments, take on a family. The stress of joining one’s comrades in arms collides with the guilt of leaving family. The family resents the deployment, even as they honor the obvious risk and sacrifice made in our relatively new volunteer armed forces. It is a fearsome existence to dread every phone call, every knock on the door.

At their best, movies open eyes to new perspectives. American Sniper takes aim at the welter of responses to the long war in Iraq and the longer battle for restoring the lives of those who have borne the weight of war.