Aug. 26 sermon notes Eph. 6:10-20, I Kings 8

Eph 6 draws images from Isaiah and non-violent spiritual struggle.Instead of weapons, the writer of ephesians uses the prophet of the distant past as a resource to examine the present-day work of god. In this sermon, in this place, we continue that holy work. Weapons of virtue. With one set of eyes we walk into a fight naked, unarmed, defenseless. How many divisions has the Pope, Stalin famously asked. With the eyes of faith, we are bristling with weapons, offensive and defensive, suited for the battle we wage.These are the weapons of a militant non-violence. We have seen examples of this arrayed against real power, satyagraha of Gandhi and the King civil rights approach of facing down dogs with the security of prayer, of Le Chambon in France where a pastor, Trocme urged them to resist the violence being waged against their conscience. The people of Le Chambon saved between 3 to 5 thousand people. They hid folks in houses and convents and schools, faked ID cards, even smuggled people in Switzerland.. When the Gestapo came looking, they had secure places in the forest for people to hide. Others in the resistance attacked them for being non-violent, but they persisted. Solomon’s offers a great prayer for the new temple.I still think it is a template for a dedication of some great deed, such as when this sanctuary was dedicated after years of labor to rebuild after a fire.Its emphasis is on the presence of God in this center of worship, center of the life of the people. Will God indeed dwell on earth? Even the highest heaven cannot contain God, he prays. The temple is a place of God’s relentless focus. It is a place of forgivenss for a whole people.It is a place ot plead for deliverance against natural forces. It is an open place for all. Certainly God saw Le Chambon as a sanctuary. For Christians, God indeed dwells on earth in the person of Jesus Christ. God indeed dwells on earth through the church, body of Christ. As we used to say the church provides hands and feet for the work of God in Jesus Christ. The good Huguenots, Reformed French Christians, the heirs of Calvin prayed and heard the word of God in their small sanctuaries. the walls of the sanctuary expanded out into the hamlet, into the farms and huts of people who saved the lives of strangers.Surely God was present with those villagers who risked their lives, to act as Good Samaritans. Surely they created a place of deliverance from the unnatural forces of nazi hatred and Vichy acquiescence. Solomon’s prayer was answered not only for the temple in jerusalem for the his children’s children when the Temple was again destroyed. Notice that Ephesians is clear that our enemies are less physical than manifestations of powers behind evil actions:the force of beliefs, ideologies, the powers that can capture a mind, heart, and spirit.Look at these weapons of virtues:truth fights falsehood, righteousness fights any bad relationship, anything that makes someone a thing, an object; mwe walk on shoes of peace not combat boots; faith is not a hammer here to beat someone into submission but a shield of protection against evil’s taunts, weapons, and lures. Salvation is a helmet not a weapon to protect against the blows that hit us all.The only weapon mentioned here is the sword of the word of god, of scripture, of preaching and prophecy, of the living Word, the message of God Incarnate Jesus Christ.He turned his back on violence and lent it to the violence of his killers. Yet, when all of their weapons of war lie rusting or on display in museums, his message of non-violent weapons of love lives still.

OT Notes song of solomon 2:8-13

1) What a nice time for this to reappear, after lots of summer weddings. 2) I still am taken with Phyllis Trible in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality on the love poem, but one can find much excellent material on this. 3) One could go the old route of reading it as spiritual allegory. See for instance the set of 86 or so sermons by Bernard of Clairvaux. 4) I love the mutuality in this section of the letter, for that matter throughout the letter. 5) If there is even a hint of seeing sexuality as dirty in this poem, I cannot find it. 6) For a long time, I have held that these are young lovers,, with all of that leaping. Then the loving description of body parts would not be written by the late middle-aged or elderly. unless one has a thing for sagging flesh. 7) In our section we are treated to sight and sound as well as fragrance. this could be a great entryway into our senses and maybe the addition of a spiritual sense or a sixth sense. 8) One could be led into a poetic disquisition on the erotic and why the church is so poor in dealing with it. 9) should every church service feel like a wedding, at least in part? On Assumption Day recently, a local Catholic church had a long service as a novice became a bride of Christ, as in the sound of Music scene.

Week of August 26 Devotions

Sunday August 26-Ps.84, today’s reading, speaks of the pleasure of worship. It is a demonstration of how dutiful we have become with worship and the low point of our life in prayer together. Worship is the place where the heart finds a home in this prayer (v.4). The next verse says “happy/blessed are those whose heart is a highway to Zion. Where is your heart such a highway to worship? the we can go from strength to strength (v.7). Monday-Our eldest daughter and new son-in-law came to visit recently. It is hard how empty the nest feels when the company leaves. It helps, but only a bit, to realize that god is as near as our latest breath. We are made for company and companionship. By the same token, we cannot be solitary Christians very easily. We require the interaction of the entire body of Christ. Tuesday-“Not worth the trouble” can be a dangerous phrase. It can be dismissive of a person or a project. It is a judgment that invites disrespect. It could also signal that we don’t want to face something troublesome that we should attend to. On the other hand, it is so valuable in not taking a slight or a wrong to seriously. It could be quite accurate, that we are stressing over something insignificant that is diverting us from a more vital matter. Prayer is a vehicle to help us discern the differences when we notice ehta tphrase issuing forth from us. Wednesday-I’ve been working on the book of the Twelve, the Minor Prophets. Hosea uses a marital metaphor to get at the depth of god’s love for Israel. It then follows that it is useful for trying to get across the depth of hurt when sin intrudes. For God, sin has the feel of adultery in a marriage, a cut to the very core of life together. In Ch. 11, God announces that the divine is beyond mere mortals, so that we cannot expect the divine to fit within human categories. For me, that is one of the great cores of the faith. the ineffable God loves us, mere creatures, to the highest degree imaginable. Thursday-I sometimes forget how crippling anxiety can be. It can take over our thoughts, throw our health into a tailspin, and undermine or relationships. Even when we know that Jesus says that worry does not add an inch to the length of our life, we still worry. Anxiety clouds our judgment. It may even choke off our ability to pray easily. Consider using some calming biblical images when anxious. I tend to picture Jesus in Mark 4 on the stormy sea, saying “peace be still” and using it as a mantra but also as an image of serenity. Friday-I wonder about the history of how treasures in heaven, connected to doing good deeds, turned into a pre-requisite for entry into heaven? We speak of grace as unconditional and unearned, but it seems to be a religious cliché that does not sink in. We insist that God is a cosmic auditor who checks the books of our lives and assigns debits and credits to our actions and maybe inaction, fi we are more sophisticated. Saturday-I talked with a spiritually adept person recently who was castigating herself for not facing hardships in a manner she thought she should. she hoped that the depth of her prayer life and scriptural study would sustain her without feeling the pain and anxiety of a series of tough situations. Anything can be safely placed in the envelope of prayer.

A new chapter in Family Life, First Visit

As I have written, our eldest daughter married a couple of months ago. She and her husband visited for the first time as a married couple. It was a good visit, as we mixed tourist activity and staying at home. I appreciate living fairly close to St Louis even more, as I was able to present them with an array of things to do, if they felt so inclined. Her husband lived in Japan as a youngster for a while, so we went to the Botanical Gardens and spent most of our time at the Japanese Gardens. After lunch with one of our daughter’s classmates, we went to the City Gardens. I had yet to visit this random collection of junk and objects of interest in its mad mixture. I noticed that a number of the various tubes. toward the end I sat down with a knot of other exhausted parents. It made my day to hear so many delighted shrieks of girls and boys alike. So many children told their minders: “this is the best place ever.” I loved seeing how our graduate school daughter played and that her genius husband could discover some of the child within him. It warmed my heart to see them at that stage in life together where they reach out to touch each other, a quick caress, a fleeting brush of the hand, as if they are checking to see if they are really here, together. Since he is interested in the ancient Near East, we fed his interest in archaeology by going to Cahokia. they were impressed by the excellent explanatory material, especially on culture and cosmology, in the museum. I was delighted to see grandparents slowing making their way up the Monk’s Mound stairs even more slowly than I as children bounded up them two or three at a time. Since they had energy, something I have read about in physics books, we walked over to the burial site of the euphonious Mound 72. All of that set me to thinking about time. i was walking over the places of many homes in the museum, visited its major ritual place, and walked by a final resting place. How were the residents of Cahokia just like us and how did their family life differ? Did they know how to welcome a new member of the family? How much did their rituals of transition help when a daughter married? In our ritually impoverished age, we feel as if we need to make things up as we go along. These activities help frame time and interaction. I need to learn how to treat my first-in-law in our nuclear family. Outings make more of a safe space. Plus, it gave me an excuse ot give them plenty of room and not feel so intrusive. Our daughter is now married, but I have yet to work through what then should stay the same and what needs to be changed. Our daughter seemed utterly herself, and I was glad. They were really good about helping me plan making food at home or what they were in the mood for if we went out. I was struck how closely they listened to each other and how they seemed connected even when they were both staring at their separate computer screens. Parenthood is learning when to let go and when to hold on. It keeps the center of love and respect even as its focus shifts and grows through time and may well become a parent too, one fine day. In the end, what helps me face having a new son-in-law is the same thought that gave me comfort when our first held our firstborn. We do not do this alone; god is involved fully in this most precious life, this new relationship.

OT Notes I Kings 8, August 26

1) This is a marvelous model prayer. it can be adapted, and shortened, for all sorts of dedicatory purposes. 2) Please consider v. 27 Can God indeed dwell on earth.Dwell itself creates a sermon as one goes through its placements. Shakan/dwell is directly linked ot the transfiguration booths/tabernacles. One could use it to speak of the Incarnation. We could consider the issue of the finite containing the infinite. 3) another way to go is that the temple appears to be an axis mundi, a centerpoint, a thin place, an axial portal between heaven and earth. One could also use this as a communion meditation on real presence. 4) the lectionary cuts out 46-53 but it is a deep consideration of prayer, even in the midst of a predicted exile. (If one wants to be historical about it, rest assured that this is a later editorial edition, or the entire prayer comes form the hand of the writers of this section of Kings. 5) v. 10 brings back the cloud from the Exodus story. Again cloud is an image that one could work with in a variety of ways, especially its obscures and shines. If you have a science fiction background, i am sure countless examples come to mind. If one enjoys astronomy photos, one could speak of say the Magellanic cloud. 6)How did people hear v. 25? how would Christians interpret it? 7) 28-30 offer a nice summary of prayer as communication and offer lots of avenues for a sermon on prayer, or the importance of corporate worship, or a sermon on one's sanctuary where the community gathers. I suppose one could go the individualistic route and speak of one's heart as a sanctuary as in the popular song, make me a sanctuary. 8) In a time when we struggle with the notion of the alien, llok at the remarkable inclusion of the alien or the foreigner in 41-43.

Sermon Notes I Kings 3 On Wisdom August 19

August 19 I Kings 3 We know so much. We have data spilling out in all directions. Pundits will examine that treasure trove of information and apply it to the campaigns and seek hints of the national mood. This year in the campaigns, the offices will do data mining as they try to tailor political messages to ever smaller segments of the population who may be open to certain types of messages or policy positions. I wonder if that has been the desire of new presidents or governors over the years, to ask for wisdom. Solomon shows a public leaders heart by looking for a virtue for the public good, not the things of Aladdin's lamp. In the famous serenity prayer, Niebuhr sees wisdom as discerning the difference between the things we can change and those we cannot. recall that he says that we learn to accept the things we cannot change and the courage to change those we can. I would add that wisdom knows what things we should change and what should be left well enough alone. Solomon is asked to make a decision without any evidence other than two conflicting stories. This awful story has Solomon look into the depths of grief, human nature, and madness. His wisdom lies in being able to discern the truth in two utterly incompatible accounts. Wisdom sees into the fullness of human nature, into the depth of things. Wisdom has insight into the human condition, puts things together, synthesizes. Wisdom can keep both the forest and the trees in sight, or at least it has the ability to realize that in focus on one we are in danger of losing sight of the other.Jesus comes at wisdom from an angle. Jesus seems to realize that we cannot absorb wisdom in a gulp. Yes, his very life embodies wisdom, but his teachings seem more indirect. The stories or pithy saying invite us into the path to insight but do not claim to provide it directly. Even the Sermon on the Mount, constructed as a commentary on the 10 Commandments, has the beatitudes offering striking contrary points of view within a normal context of blessing.Sometimes wisdom reveals something that we sense we knew but it was hidden from our awareness. Alyce McKenzie writes winsomely of our crying need for wisdom in a world deluged with information, data, and computer screens by looking to the Proverbs attributed to Solomon and our vast store of sayings. . She sees wisdom involved in a dance between experience and reflection. It seeks to discern some order amid all the chaos of life. It always points toward the maintenance and enjoyment of life. for me, the kicker is that wisdom material realizes that no standard can encapsulate our experience. Life destabilizes are best attempt to him it in, for life itself is borne on wings of unpredictability, and the eruption of the random. Perhaps that is a wise way to approach wisdom: to seek a stable place amidst the chaos and to seek the signs of the new when things seem old and tired.Data can tell us that we can do something. Wisdom tells us if we should pursue it, if it is worth it.Our eldest daughter and her husband Aren came to visit for a few days. Before they married, I wanted to write Saralyn something along the lines of a teacher at their Indiana alma mater, Scott russell Sanders,as he is a wise man. He writes”Wisdom comes, if it comes at all, not only by the accumulation of experience, but also by the letting go, by the paring away of dross until only essential remain...the world appears to be a vast whirl of bits and pieces. Religion (means) to bind back together, as if things have been scattered and now must be gathered again. I find myself pointing to an elusive energy, a shaping power that flashes forth...I favor spirit.

August 19 Week Devotions

August 19-Ps.111-“the great works of the Lord are studied by all who delight in them.” For many Jews, to study the works of the Lord are a delight and aspiration. Christians have been resistant to that message. On the rare times we do work with religious material, it tends to be of a romantic, popular sort. When is the last time you read a serious piece of religious reflection? when was the last time you studied, pored over, Scripture? Monday- Kent Ira Groff wrote this week on diminishment. The word caught my eye. We live in a time of diminished expectations. We live in a time of diminished vision. I just heard a radio piece where a professor of political thought said that her students are astonished at the scope and confidence of social theorist a generation ago. One things I prize about Presbyterians is adherence to a magnificent God, not one put easily in a small box of our devising. After all, who wants to worship a diminished deity? Tuesday-We had an interesting moment in Bible class about the point or moral of a story finishes our look at a passage. I suppose that we can draw a vital lesson from a story, but one of the shining lights of story is that it works on multiple levels and pushes us to consider more than one point as we reflect on them. Look at Jonah. I sit not more than a fish story/ Is it not more than a story about making a response t9o the call of god? Does it not open doors to considerations of forgiveness, creation, prayer, and death itself? Wednesday-I flipped through a book on wishful thinking at the library recently. The author argues that we have moved our magical thinking to technology as a panacea. When facing a problem, we shrug our shoulders and figure that technology can handle it. We laugh at the magical thinking of children and primitive cultures, but we have merely transferred the wishful thinking to a new source. How do you distinguish prayer from wishful thinking? Thursday-Shared experience helps make a community, even negative ones. I told both of our daughters that they will make more friends in a poor college class as you have a common enemy. One of the reasons that church outings and projects are good ideas is that they build community through shared effort. Shared experience becomes a glue for community, as it guides us into common purpose and common effort. It can be a form of prayer in action. Friday-No Biblical book emphasizes justice as resolutely as Amos. It is one of the earlier books in the entire Bible. When it imagines punishment for the sins of Israel, it is injustice that garners the attention. It blasts the complacency of wealth, its self-satisfaction and blindness (ch.6). Look at the beginning of chapter four and see if it does not give a chill in 2012 America. Saturday-I had a difficult evening recently, as in quick succession I learned that an elderly gentleman killed himself in front of his visiting grandchildren, and then an old friend was a possible suicide as she stepped out in front of a city bus. I tend to look at suicide as an outcome of mental illness, not a rational choice, not a moral filing. In that light, I see God’s compassion pouring over a suicide and family and friends in the same way as when cancer or diabetes strikes down a life.