Gen 17 for second Sunday of Lent 2012

1) We move to a far different covenant, with Abraham and his progeny. It is explicitly everlastng.
2) Circumcision takes seriously the old phrase in Hebrew, to cut a covenant. If ypou are interested in the old divisions, this looks to be P, Priestly material.
3) OK, this is material just ripe for jokes. The eminent CRE Mick Saunders (in his case it means committed rousing emperor) reminded me of an old, old, old, joke. Priest, Baptist pastor, and a rabbi make a bet to convert a bear. They all ended up in the hospital. The priest spoke to the bear about the catechism and got attacked. finally, he sprinkled holy water on the beast and it calmed. The bear is now going to confirmation class. The Baptist preached the Bible and the bear swung at the bible. They wrestled up and down hills in the forest until they toppled into a river, and the pastor immersed the beast , and he calmed.The bear is now a deacon. The rabbi looked up and sighed. I guess I shouldn’t have started with circumcision.

Circumcision is also used to refer to someone’s heart not being committed to God as in uncircumcised heart. Col.2 uses it as a gateway into baptism. Jesus himself was circumcised. Originally, it may have been a rite of passage at puberty.
4) Circumcision was practiced in ancient Egypt, and it was performed by other Semitic peoples.
5) We are connected to the promise of progeny extended to old age.
6) Abraham means father of many. Abram means the father is exalted. Sarah means princess or female leader.
7) El Shaddai’s meaning here is uncertain, God of mountain, perhaps related to breasts to emphasize sustenance,
8) Janzen (Abraham and the Families)m 50-1) speculates on circumcision as somehow symbolic of social organization and male power.
9) At any rate, circumcision is a sign of being in a community. it is an identity marker v. the “uncircumcised.”
10) God loves working from the small, as well as the large scale. here form this couple will come a multitude, even thought they are far past childbearing age. for a new novel on this topic see Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder

Sermon Feb. 26, 2012 first sunday Lent Gen. 9:8-17, I Peter 3:18-22

February 26,2012
Our other readings take us away from what we would normally consider to start the season of Lent as a struggle against temptation and the building of spiritual resources. Lent is a new season of the church year, and we can use that as a prism with the readings.

In older English, Lent comes from the words for spring, as it precedes the spring festival of Easter. What would Noah’s rainbow have to do with Lent? This year it appears that we are marking signposts of God’s deep and abiding partnership with the people, what Presbyterians usually call a covenant, a sacred bond or pledge, so we are moving to the climax of those relationships in the cross and resurrection. The readings lead us to consider ways to renew our covenant commitments, a spiritual renewing of the vows. The rainbow was a symbol of power in ancient times, a divine bow. Noah’s flood was a story of God going back to the drawing board in a sense, sweeping off the old ways in this primeval history. Our passage drastically changes it into a symbol of peace. In other cultures, it is the bridge between heaven and earth, more of a barrier than a bridge. here it is a sign of union between heaven and earth. Ezekiel and Isaiah both pick this up as a covenant of peace with God and all of creation.The rainbow is a sign for God as well as creation.God realizes that human heart is prone to evil, but God swears against destruction as a weapon against human evil in any event. God will work with us as the divine bow is put away. God will remain faithful, in solemn peaceful covenant with us, but destruction is off the table.

Our reading from I Peter places us in mythic territory that is touched on in the Apostles’ Creed. The spirits in prison seem to be those who perished in the time of Noah, but I am not sure who they are. It reminds me a bit of Greek stories of facing the abode of the dead whether it is Heracles or Orpheus. Allied with other biblical quotes, this passage influences the declaration in the Creed that Jesus descended into hell. The Reformers saw this descent as starting at Gethsemane, of the process of being forsaken or at least distanced form god on the road to crucifixion. Even death does not separate us from the love of Christ.

Baptismal founts are sometimes shaped as little arks as a link to our passages this morning.We remember the waters of the flood in our baptismal prayers. they often have eight sides as a result of this passage reminding us how small a remnant was saved in the story of Noah. In our tradition we link baptism to the sign of the covenant in circumcision, an eighth day practice. Also, it links to Easter, the so called eight day, the new creation where the tomb could become a womb for new life. In Norse mythology, the rainbow bridge will take on to Asgard, the abode of the gods. As a kid, we would make rainbows in the light spectrum when we were washing the car. Maybe we should paint a rainbow , now a symbol of diversity, on baptismal fonts as a sign of the inclusive nature of the church. (here add material on spiritual practices?)

The rainbow is a reminder for God to a commitment to human life and all life. The bow, a weapon, now can be seen as a shield of protection. It is a sign of divine forbearance and protection. Even with all of our flaws, God is sticking with us and our cause.

devotions week of Feb.25

Feb.25 Sunday-Ps. 25 mentions the paths of God a good bit. By v. 10 we read that the paths a of the Lord are the characteristics of Ex. 34:6, steadfast love (or loyalty or loving-kindness) As I read it the paths of God are not set out for us brick by brick. we can recognize detours or ramps that are entrance or exists to the ways of life or the ways of sin. More to the point we can use the characteristics of God as tests about the quality of our path.

Monday- It just hit me that we can use the phrase, soul searching, as a Lenten phrase. When we usually say it, we mean deep reflection for a decision. In Lent, we could take it to mean real sustained spiritual reflection. For some reason my mind switched to a picture of a pearl diver going down deep, for a long time, to discover a precious pearl. lent gives us time to do that diving. We have many tools to go soul searching, to peer within our deepest self. We are fearful that we may not like what we will find, buried under repression. With God’s grace we will also glimpse our own true best self.

Tuesday-A fundamental spiritual practice is learning to say yes and no. Maybe a fancier way to put it would be to develop our sense of boundaries. What was the hardest, most demanding yes, you have uttered? What was a difficult no for you to utter? What are easy places for you to keep a boundary firm? when are they too permeable, or too rigid?

Wednesday-We have an extra day today for leap year. When we are in crisis, when we mourn a loss, we may well say, if only I had more time, if only I had one more day. OK, here it is. We get this gift but every four years and today is it. Please carve out some spirutal time for this day. Consider using this precious extra day to do something you have been putting off. Perhaps you can check off one item on your bucket list.

Thursday-yesterday I preached on a hymn. I selected In the Cross of Christ I Glory. In part some of the phrasing attracts me: “wrecks of time…head sublime…..sun of bliss…bane and blessing. Let me quote v. 2 in full (#84 in blue hymnbook) when the woes of life o’ertake me/hopes deceive and fears annoy/never shall the cross forsake me/lo, it glows with peace and joy.” When have hopes deceived you? What fears continue to annoy? In Christ, you need not fear. in Christ, your best hopes shall be realized.

Friday-My calendar calls today the World Day of Prayer. It is an outgrowth of the work of women. Malaysia is a focal point this year, and the theme is “let justice prevail.” I went to our BCW and found this international prayer (797) from Zaire “we bring before you the absurd violence….that breaks the courage of people…human greed and injustice which breed hatred and strife. Send your spirit to renew the face of the earth; teach us to be compassionate to the whole human family.”

Saturday-Economics comes from the Greek word for household management. Some people find it helpful to get a handle on their household management by making a group to go over their decisions in three area, essentials, non-essentials, and in-between/uncertain. Read through your recent spending in light of Lk. 12:22-34. Did you learn something about your relative priorities?

Column for Feb.24

We may have recovered from Mardi Gras by now; the ashes are washed off foreheads ( in my case one need a paint brush to cover it), so we are fully into the season of Lent. I was raised Roman Catholic, so I associate the season with “giving something up for Lent.” One of the few joys of facebook is that it reconnects us with people from our past. I was reminded by a grade school friend how we had a difficult debate if BBQ potato chips could be eaten on Friday since the name implied meat.

The name, Lent, comes from the season itself. The word is drawn from spring in Old English, as it moves toward Easter. It may be related to a German word, to lengthen, to see precious daylight making longer days after the solstice. In a bow to my baby boom generation, allergic as it is to any word remotely concerned with sacrifice, permit me to suggest that we use that natural image to approach the spiritual season from a different angle.

Think of this time as preparing and planting in your spiritual garden. Just as this is the time to start getting a garden ready for planting, look at this as a time of preparation. Look at yourself and start selecting from a spiritual seed catalog those blossoms that you would like to see in your life. (I may need to do a spiritual inventory to find out why I consistently mistype the word, spiritual).

Next, I walk a bit of a tightrope. The usual message from the church is that we need to keep do more, more across the board to help the vast array of crying need we encounter. It may be a response, again, to baby boomers, as one of the generation’s signal desires is that they are not to be ever told they could be wrong, and heaven forfend if we use the word sin to describe an attitude or action,. To be fair, the latter means that it should never be used toward them, but it is fine to use it toward others, with whom they may disagree on important preferences such as clothing or musical styles. I would suggest that we consider during the Lenten season to do more of a good thing we already do, just by a little, perhaps. Consider strengthening an existing virtue and be grateful for its presence in life. If you have the gift of patience, note it and be pleased that you can apply it in a variety of situations. I just got off the phone with someone who degraded a gift they have. In Lent, we can appreciate a virtue and be grateful for its presence in our lives.

Finally, I will cheat a bit a refer to our Ash Wednesday sermon here at first Presbyterian. Yes, the ashes remind us of our mortality. that does not mean a morbid preoccupation with death. It is a mark of humility. It reminds us of our common human nature, frail as it is. it reminds us that we are mortal, therefore vulnerable to all sorts of assaults. To be humble is to learn to accept human limitations. Humility is not being humiliated or to humble others. Years ago, the great theologian Paul Tillich preached a sermon, You Are Accepted. Tillich translated the word justification into a more familiar one, acceptance. Humility is born from realizing that we are accepted by God. With all of our faults, we are good enough to be in relationship with God, to receive the love of god. In that light, it is time to give up the notion that we do not measure up to some abstract standard and accept ourselves. that could grow into the greatest Lenten gift.

Ash Wednesday Sermon Joel 2, 2 Cor. 6

All living beings share that condition. In the second creation account we are told that we are from and of the earth, of the soil, of farmland. Ash Wednesday marks us as grounded in the soil. Often, the human response is to claim that we are the crown of creation- that we should be above it all. The other response is what I urge on us today: the virtue of humility.

Then very word comes from the soil, the humus. Humility is a virtue that grounds us for who we are: human beings. Let’s be clear. I am not speaking of Ash Wednesday as a day of self-abasement, of being humiliated or humiliating ourselves. We are still made in the image and likeness of God, and nothing or no one can change that signal religious fact.

Joel reminds us of proper humility in our worship. Of course we need a pattern to follow, but human beings have a way of displacing the goal and mistaking the means toward the end as the most important thing. Tearing a garment was a sign of grief, and it was a sign of repentance, of contrition for the wrongs we do and the good we fail to do. The point is that worship frames our spiritual experience. The rending of garments is a sign of a heart, a life torn apart by sin.

Part of the inner deal with make in faith is a hidden contract with God. If I am good, I should be immune from trouble. I should be above it all. No lonesome valleys for me, I deserve only mountaintop experiences. Paul disabuses us of that quickly with his listing of the troubles we face. If Jesus would face temptation and trouble, where would we get the diea that we should be shielded from it all? This continues to follow from his basic metaphor in this section, that we have treasures in frail vessels, clay jars, and earthenware vases.

We have limitations. Ash Wednesday starts us off in a period of the church season where we work on and through our imperfections. If we were perfect we would have no need of deliverance from the things that assail us, no need for salvation. I am working a a Bible study on the injunction to judge not. A local professor, Terry Cooper has written on being judgmental. he makes the case that our judgmental attitudes may appear to be full of pride, of a supercilious air. he wonders if they are all a cover for a deep seated sense of being unworthy, of not being good enough, of not ever measuring up to some internal ideal that we can never achieve. Humility, an acceptance of limitations, of our own imperfections and misunderstandings, frees us. We don’t have to be right all of the time; we don’t have to prove ourselves to be the superior one; we lose the need to put other people down, to humiliate others in a desperate bid to prop up our fragile sense of self, always in comparison with someone else.

Martin Luther was an earthy guy. he was also afraid of death, and afraid of god. When he started to see god’s justice as leaning toward mercy, and instead saw God’s movement toward us as justifying, centering us from our extremes, he found solace. Paul Tillich, centuries later, saw the word lose its potency, in its stead, he replaced the word, justify, with the word acceptance. God accepts us, welcomes us, draws us into one big family.
If we are good enough in the eyes of God, earthy, earthly, creatures whome we are, then we can be good enough for each other.

OT notes first sunday in lent Gen. 9:8-17

1) First, please consider if you find this an odd reading with which to start Lent. we used this for Illinois side pastors as an exercise in a preaching roundtable at a recent lunch. I will try to remember to cite individual contributions and apologize if I missed a contribution. Preaching Master Janet Riley observed that Lent’s end marks a “new covenant in Communion, so it is fully appropriate to notice this covenant to start what may be a series of them in the OT readings.
covenant comes in variety, but it is surely a pledge of loyalty.

2) Lent means spring, perhaps that will help one enter into the story.

3) Rainbows occupy different meanings in myth. The Norse saw it as the bridge to Asgard. We all know the story of the pot of gold at the end of it. Here it could be a buttress for the great chaotic expanse of water in what we would call outer space. It also seems to have a sense of the cosmic bow and arrow. In light of Baal, or Zeus, or Thor, maybe lightning was the arrow (Ps. 7) . Here its stands for an empty bow of peace. It may pick up the image of a broken bow of peace in the Psalms. Noted exegete Mark Strothmann noted that a rainbow is in part an optical issue of limitation. From the air, it takes on a look of a circle.

4) Julie Gvillo Wood River CRE told us about her participation at the CE conference in Grand Rapids. She recalled the story of Rabbi Sandy Sasso on how we engage Scripture through midrash, through stories to fill in holes or questions from the text. We told her story of Naamah, Noah’s wife, who was assigned the task of getting plants while Noah herded the animals.

5) Paul Frazier and Don Stribling pushed us on the story showing a change in God by making covenant in full knowledge of our human weakness. Don reminded us that when God relents it goes toward mercy, not punishment being increased or being arbitrary. jnaet Riley then reminded us tha twe must be careful to explore all dimensions of god’s persoanlity and character in Scripture. thsi was seconded by Pam Laing’s going to the Exodus definition of god’s character that she saw as stable but responding to creation.

6) Toward the end, we asserted the ecological import of the story as the covenant is made with all flesh, all living creatures, not humans alone. (See Fretheim’s God in Creation). Paul noted the anti creation aspects of the flood story and Genesis 1. Janet noted that the flood story had more echoes of the Tiamat conflict account than the orderly progression of Genesis 1 as a counter to that initial story of primal violence. Please note how broad this protective element toward creation is here.

7) It was noted that we pick up flood imagery in the baptismal vows and made some linkages then to the read from I Peter 318-22. So one could pick up different sorts of water imagery from the rainbow and water itself. Don noted that we see a rainbow only from a certain perspective.

8) We discussed the issue of remembering in light of the rainbow as a sign to God as well as humanity. In Hebrew parlance, to remember is to bring the past into the present. For the eternal One, we have a difficult time trying to imagine a being in whom time flows together.

Column for Washington's birthday

Presidents’ Day combines, I suppose, the Washington and Lincoln birthdays, and perhaps all presidents. Those of us of a certain age recall that the 22nd is Washington’s birthday.

First, I admire Washington because he followed a lifelong plan and pattern of self-definition. He was plagued with temper all of his life, but made a youthful determination to control it. He wanted to look the part of a gentleman and assiduously worked to create the impression of being a gentleman by following a code of manners that he copied by hand.

Almost alone among the founders of the South, he freed his slaves upon his death. That was not an easy task, as Virginia law made it difficult to do so. In An Imperfect God, we can read of his care in going over the will with painstaking care to assure that his wishes would be followed. So many of those who were so loud in demanding American liberty never could see fit to grant liberty to the enslaved.

He knew the value of example and precedent. As the first chief executive for the country, he get that value uppermost in his mind. When a Revolutionary War hero approached him for a position, he replied: “as a friend I would offer up my life for you, but as president, I am unable to offer you a position.” So, he acted with a sense of posterity in view, not only the immediate political situation of the moment. Look at an administration that would have Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in the same cabinet. When they disagreed, Washington asked them to prepare careful reasoned analyses of the their views before he made a decision.

He was able to relinquish power. That included using religion as a basis for policy decisions. In a letter to a synagogue in Rhode Island “all alike share in liberty of conscience…no longer is toleration spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people…the government gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Article 11 of a treaty with Tripoli negotiated under his administration noted that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation. At the same time, he saw religion as bolstering the public spirited morality that a democratic republic requires.

Cincinnatus was a much admired story of someone returning to the plow after having power in Rome. At the time, everyone thought that power, once grasped, was not easily released. Even George III marveled that he left the military to return to Mt. Vernon and that he left office after his second term. In part, that was designed to allay fear of monarchical tendencies in the office, part of his sense of setting precedent. When he died, Admiral Nelson ordered a salute and Napoleon ordered a moment of silence.

In that same letter to the synagogue in Rhode Island he ended with these words: “may the father of mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths.” Washington used common language to promote common ground. He had the humility to realize that he would make mistakes, as would the nation he led. He knew that the light would shine more brightly on this country when we find common ground. He saw what parochial loyalties did to the emergence of a functioning nation spread over so much territory. He himself became a symbol of that very national common ground and common purpose. He deserves to be on the money, deserves to have a monument, deserves the great honor of being called: “father of his country, first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

transfiguration 2012

I don’t have much new to say on the transfiguration year after year. Then I realized that I am new here, so whatever I say about the transfiguration can sound relatively fresh in this new setting for me. the transfiguration, metamorphosis actually, is part two of Mark’s gospel, as both parts start with the heavens being opened.

2 Cor 4:3-6 has not been part of my repertoire.I’ve told you that I led the book discussion on Life in God by the new Christian Theological Seminary president, Matthew Boulton. He makes a case that Calvin’s opus is more along the lines of spiritual handbook than systematic theological tome. Calvin has a similar diagnosis to Paul for our spiritual condition: blindness to spiritual realities. Both use the figure of light to be enlightened. Paul indeed uses the figure to underscore the movement from creation to new creation. When we enter the faith, it is as if God says “let there be light.” For Calvin it is as if we have spiritual cataracts and understanding the faith enough to read Scripture and participate in the sacraments all lead to clearer view of ourselves and God, and the sheer generosity of God.

I dearly love the figure of transfiguration. What we see is through a veil. We do not see ourselves or situations as clearly as we think we do or as we would like.This section of Mark will emphasize sight v. blindness. Transfiguration looks at the same thing but its appearance is transformed into a glorious one. I was chatting with a friend at supper a few weeks ago, and she was going back to her youth when she had three male friends, but they were interested in being more than friends. They were out as a crew, but she danced with one of them, and she saw him in a new light after that, and they started going out. Mother Teresa said that when she worked with the desperate poor of India, she imagined that she was honoring the body of Christ.

I would like to suggest that all of the readings after Christmas add to our early portrait of Jesus. This last picture is not only a heavenly one, but it is bathed in Easter light. They shed light on Christ as the self-revelation of the divine.Perhaps we can look at each other as bathed in Easter light. the gospel itself is the light for transfiguration. Christ is the new Adam, so rightly the new image of god for us. Christians When you have been in the same church for a while, some Sundays are more challenging than others. I don;t havould take this to mean that Christ is the very image of divinity and what humanity itself may aspire.

Everyone dumps on impetuous Peter for trying to build some sort of shelter on the mountaintop. who doesn’t want mountaintop experiences to last. Who hasn’t thought that they would like a moment of bliss to last forever? Rather, the point seems to me to be that the transfiguration is carried down the mountain into the valley where lie is lived, including the difficult troubles we all face.
Luther said”when God wants to speak and deal with us, he does not avail himself of an angel but of parent, a pastor, or a neighbor....so I fail to recognize God conversing with me through that person.”The great agent of transfiguration is love. Looking through the eyes of love does transform both the viewer and the one being seen. As we move through the life of faith, may our eyes be continually transformed into the eyes of Christ, that we may see the Christ in others, to see each other Christ sees us.

week of Feb. 19 Devotions

Sunday Feb. 19-the Psalter for today is #50. We are singing a marvelous hymn based on it, People Clap Your Hands. I always think of Augustine that a hymn is praying twice. V.19 has God accusing us of giving our mouths free rein for evil. It reminds me of James’s admonitions on our failure to control our speech. One easy way to start to curb the tongue is to make sure you make a compliment for each criticism or complaint you make.

Monday Presidents’ Day-I like that we celebrate Washington and Lincoln in this holiday, and I suppose, all presidents. I admire Washington for many reasons; just a few are in my on-line column on Friday. For today, I suffice to mention his lifelong struggle with his temper. he was determined to control it to give proper control over his public life. He knew that building his character was a lifelong process, not an immediate gift. Can you select one character trait you continue to need to work on in the process of sanctification?

Tuesday-Mardi Gras, great/fat Tuesday comes form the idea that one should have a blow out party before the deprivations of Lent. In some communities, this closes the season of carnivals with one last party. In some English communities, this was Shrove Tuesday, an old word for confessing one’s faults. It was a day to examine what were the spiritual needs for the Lenten spiritual practices that could be of value for one’s character. I love that celebrations were written into the church year.

Ash Wednesday starts Lent as you all know. I am always touched that the reading selected for this day from the Old Testament show a keen awareness of the difference between ritual and merely following the steps. In Joel 2, God asks us to realize that tearing the garment as a sign of repentance is to tear the heart wide open. Is. 58 seeks a fast from injustice as the action toward which fasting from food points. Can you think of some issue where you heart needs to be opened in light of justice?

Thursday- A young man from a congregation I served in Indian made his mother a homemade valentine. It celebrated her of course, but he added something to the effect she was filled with “loveness.” I am in loveness with this new word, and he was gracious enough to give me permission to use it.. I have decided that the young man invented a contraction for the old KJV word for God’s hesed that was translated as loving-kindness.

Friday-Lent comes from an old English word for spring. Allow that simple connection to affect life during Lent. What seeds could you plant in Lent that would lead to a spiritual harvest later? What areas of growth in your spiritual life would you like to see? Are there some tender blossoms in your spiritual life that require special tending?

Saturday-I’m reading a new book on judging others by a local Terry Cooper. He makes the excellent point that when we get concerned about others being judgmental, we can rest assured that we are doing the same process, but often over different things. I remember as a child being told that what we note in others as a problem is that which we dislike in ourselves. Do you have judgmental triggers? Do you have a sense why some things don’t trigger that response?

Notes for OT Reading 2 Kings 2:1-12

1) Again, I fear that this could use more work, but here goes. My first thought on this passage is that of inheritance. How easily does inherited talent, money, position, expectations weigh on our shoulders?
2) This is a favorite passage among interim pastors, that of transferring a mantle. Yet, the ghost of Elijah still echoes in the tradition. the mantle may be transferred, but it still holds some of those who have gone before. How do we and should we, handle that tension?
3) This has obvious, to me, links to the Enoch story, and his image continued into other religious works. Indeed, by the time of Jesus many thought Moses assumed into heaven, given tha the was not buried, so then they are with Jesus in the Transfiguration.
4) One could go make an interesting narrative style of sermon if one were with the company of the prophets behind the two great men.
5) why do you think that the Jordan figures so prominently in this story?
6) what do you make of Elisha continuing to thwart the words of Elijah?
7) Note the ancient name that El , the old Canaanite word for God is Yah, short for the divine name, or perhaps its base. Elisha=God saves (one sees a piece of messiah in the name)
10) What do you make of the double share, perhaps a reference to the share of the oldest son in inheritance and the response of uncertainty from Elijah?
11) One could usefully compare this story to the story of the still small voice in I Kings 19,
12) In the Dorothy Bass book on spiritual practices, Theologian Amy Planting Pauw wrote of dying well. this could be an excellent entry point for considering that topic.The major cities, possibly cultic sites, could be a way of introducing the topic of ritual into the consideration.they get separated, while they are still walking and talking. One could use famous dying words or a description of needed conversations of family when a loved one was dying. Elisha performs a ritual of mourning at the end of the passage, after all.

Sermon Notes Feb. 12 Mk.1:40-5 ,2 Kings 5:1-14. Ps. 30

Naaman. Of all things, his name is the male Naomi, it means joy and pleasantness. and JC OK seems matter of fact, almost casual in this healing.
We have the Americans with disabilities Act. We try very hard to mainstream students in school. integration, not segregation is our impulse.
(God and the outcast from hunchback Movie on crusades with the leper christian king Baldwin the IV depicted fictionally in Kingdom of Heaven.Father Damien and Molokai
When ill, the body seems to betray us. If it is Hansen’s disease here, we are talking about falling apart at the seams. The first indication was numbness at the extremities. -inner sores/wounds)

We have to get past the understandable chuckle Israel got out of a great general being cut down to size. For one of their own, a servant, to tell the great man about a prophet in Israel. Illness will drives us to absurd lengths. my mother resisted going to doctors for her arthritis but oh she would try anything from magnets to shark cartilage to who knows what snake oil was being peddled to help relieve her pain. Can we not see a bit of our own pride in Naaman’s reaction to undergoing a cleansing ritual in Israel? The aides understand him and us. Surely you would be willing to do some great thing. We do not seek out the help we need. It may be fear of finding real trouble, as my mother would say medical tests could find something. I have told a guy for years that he should see a therapist, but he resists, as he is afraid and too proud to ask for help.
We are as insular as he with our notions of charity begins at home, our self-focus first- I loved the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Jack Benny told him that his “I don;t get no respect” routine would last him a lifetime because everyone feels that way at one time or another. (do jokes) Life can be a string of indignities.

Seeing a healing can cause rejoicing but also resentment. Why would this pagan’s prayer be answered and not mine. for that matter, why would anyone have a prayer answered when it is so obvious that it is my prayer that should be at the very top of the list. It is an invitation to the spiritually deadening act of comparing one to another, and we rarely judge another with the same standard as we use toward ourselves.

Leprosy seemed to have a real fear of contagion,so an element of exclusion was at play as well. Mental illness gets the reaction in our time. maybe even grief gets the same reaction. We ourselves try to wall it off from within. We don;t have many public outlets for it, and we may not intentionally exclude the grieving out of both a sense of propriety but also fear of how to treat them until things calm down a bit to being more normal.

Oh to undergo such a turnaround as Naaman, or the spiritual turn around of the Psalmist. It does not happen often that we turn from defeat to victory, from illness to healing, from mourning into dancing. Sometimes we push it and dance when we are not quite ready, try to force joy. We may feel a bit guilty when we start to feel better when we may think we should be mournful. Presbyterians have a tradition of a serious mien to prevent an sudden eruption of frivolity. Depressed people live under a pall of sadness, or at least the threat of a dark cloud appearing right over top of them in an otherwise cloudless sky. May you be blessed with such a conversion.. Even more, may you be able to find joy, love, and peace, even in struggles.

Valentine's Column

On Facebook, a number of people have been posting that they don’t like Valentine’s Day. Some are reflecting being brokenhearted or yearning. Some, males, are feeling the pressure. I don’t know of many people who give a lot of thought to a Valentine’s present for males. Of course, in part, that is because as a rule we are so easy to buy presents for anyway, and often so easy to please. If a spouse gets new lingerie, and it’s red for the special day, then this was a most successful holiday.

Men are in real trouble on this holiday. If we get the requisite candy and flowers, we are not being creative. Lost as to what is a proper gift, we may hear something on the order of: “if I have to help you with what to get me, then it’s not as meaningful.” Possibly worse, we get told that a loved one does not want anything special for the holiday, and if we believe them, then we have hell to pay. I grasp that women often want to see that some thought has been put into a present. They may we even want it to reflect some time and effort tot tailor it to their specific preferences. Too often, it can be a test for listening. If something was casually mentioned as being desirable, then men are expected to have filed it away for just this purpose.

Of course, the main disquiet on Valentine’s Day comes from those who wish to be in a relationship and are not. On the 14th it may well seem that the whole world is in love, with very few exceptions. It heightens loneliness. It is a shot across the bow for those who have recently lost a love to death. Few days are such a shocking reminder of the radical change in one’s life.

The church is not a big help to folks on dealing with romantic holidays, or romance in general. For instance, the Song of Songs has been used to get at the intimacy of God and the people of god. At its basic level, it is a love poem. I read parts of it at a renewal of vows ceremony and the groom blurted out: “that stuff is in the Bible?”

The Church is correct that romantic love is playing with dynamite. The church is so afraid that the unmarried will play with that dynamite that it has laden romantic love with too many hazards, too many negatives. We keep love a safe abstraction, or we try to wall it off from the realm of romance. We do well to recall that some stories that surround St. Valentine would be ones where he delivered notes of love. Other stories say that he married people in love, even though soldiers were not permitted to marry. Some say that he signed letter, from your Valentine. Others link it to a Roman festival around his feast day when young ladies would deposit their wishes for love in a large urn and males would court them when they drew their note form the urn.

Yet, the Church invites and invokes the dynamic, dangerous presence of the Holy One in worship and indeed in our own frail selves all of the time. With all of the talk of celebrating life in the church, we can celebrate the glories of romantic love in its intrinsic terms. Also, Scripture uses the intimacy of romance to try to build a bridge to the love God has for us and we for God, at least at our best. Zelda Fitzgerald said that “no one, not even poets, can measure the love a heart can hold.” As Valentine’s Day approaches, that is a worthy aspiration for the church, to explore the capacious human heart.

Devotions Week of Feb.12

Sunday Feb. 12-It is Abraham lincoln’s birthday. A good spiritual exercise would be to explore his ethical stance and how they comport with his reading of Scripture. While he would not join a church, he did frequently attend Presbyterian services when he was in Springfield and in Washington. It shows, I think, in his search for the hand of god in difficult decision. It may even show in his realization that all are fallible, so we should not see enemies when we look at our neighbors.

Monday-How can we move out of this impasse of demonizing people with whom we disagree? One way, one little way, is to hear them tell a story that helps to give insight as to why they have taken a particular interest in the story. It is noteworthy how often pain is attached to that story. It is not as easy to castigate someone who has opened up in pain. I t may make disagreements more civil, or at least be a good first step.

Valentine’s Day-The church should do more to celebrate the glories of romantic love. Do you recall when the church does so? Do even weddings celebrate romantic love as well or fully as we should? Of course, I note the Song of Songs as love poetry, definitely in the full flush of youthful romantic love. I also note that the first sign in the Gospel of john was a t a wedding. We are reading Tobias from the Greek Old Testament called the Apocrypha, its prayers for a wedding still read well as modern prayers.

Wednesday-In a song Stones in the River, Carrie Newcomer sings of patience in a world dominated by spreadsheets and performance measures, even in schools. Her response is to do good things knowing that one may not see the results, the fruit of one’s efforts but know that they will be fruitful someday. When have you done something for later generations, or even a later resident of a town or house, when you would not see the fruit of your labor or see someone enjoy your work? When are you best with a long time perspective?

Thursday-Is. 4 seems to slip by me, but it is certainly worth a look. Whre I grew up in the soot of coke ovens, a book was published called Cloud by Day. it was a biblical reference to the presence of god in the wilderness of course. Where do you most want the presence of god in life? When would you prefer God be hidden away? I knew the Bob Dylan song, Shelter From the Storm, was a biblical reference, but I had forgotten where. When has God been a refuge for you? In what areas of life do you most yearn for shelter?

Friday- I saw Carrie Newcomer, the folk singer, and the writer Parker Palmer recently. he had a great line about heartbreak. I f your heart is cold and rigid, the heart breaks into shards. If the \heart is warm and supple, it breaks open to compassion and more sensations and depth.

Saturday-the book of Lamentations is little read in church. I can appreciate that, as it is a difficult, terrifying reading. Of course, we do lift up its words of hope at the very center of the book, but we shy away from the rest. Few prayer poems are so relentless in detailing pain and loss. It is an attempt to compel god to look, to notice, to act on the pain of Jerusalem. When you are in pain, be wiling to catalog your pain. it gives a sense of having your say, and it may even set a fence around it, so you may rediscover some hope.

2 Kings 5:1-14

1) This is definitely a first cut, as I don't know if I can provide anything different for this text.First, Naaamn name is the male Naomi, meaning joy/pleasantness.Great name for a general.
2) The skin disease could be a variety of ailments. I do not know if Hansen's disease was yet on the march.
3) Some of you may think of the Kingdom of Heaven with the king. He was fictional but based on a real Christian Crusader king.
4) An interesting way to go at this would be to focus on the Hebrew captured slave who helps her master. is she compassionate or a collaborator?
5) What do you make of Elisha's sending the messenger? Is it prejudice, hatred for a powerful foreigner, an ironic twist on divine power?
6) A character study of Naaman would be good. See the new Christian Century pieces by Lose on power in this regard.One could do a character study of Elisha here and elsewhere that could be great. As my hair is disappearing, we could include his actions toward those who taunt him about baldness.
7) this account would also be a good gateway to explore our attitudes toward healings, physical, spiriutal, emotional.
8) Link this story about inclusive healing to Lk. 4's sermon, Jonah, Ruth and Naomi, and Ezra's inward turn on marriage.
9) This could be a good entry point on inclusive v. exclusive or prejudice, or our work on disabilities of various types.
100 Naaman's comparison of israel or Syrian rivers could be a good place ot consider ritual in church and culture as well. It is my increasing contention that we are ritually impoverished in 2012.

Sermon Notes Is. 4):21-31, Mark 1:29-39

St Blaise Day was February the third. As a child, the priest would place two candles and bless our throats. He was the patron saint for ailments of the throat as legend had it that he saved a boy who was choking on a fish bone. I am too quick to turn healing accounts into spiritual healing. Physical healing is important. Still, stories of healing are also always gateways to the spiritual, I think. Nothing brings out a desperate prayer more than healing of sickness. With all of the wonders of medical science, our prayers grow more desperate because what drives us to our needs are of its few areas of uncertainty or inability.

Of course, when we are sick, it has a real impact on our emotional and spiritual state. If healing can be seen as a move toward wholeness, then it includes all facets of our well-being. The image of God and healing requires some thought. If God is a benevolent dictator, then why is illness not just banished, or healing more certain. In my struggles with the issue of God and human suffering, theodicy, I sometimes find some comfort in the assertion that creation is complex, and our struggles with illness, let alone mortality, are part of its structure. In other words, creation is under constant assault from natural evils, often held at bay, but they do spill over routinely.

Jesus is making a reputation as a teacher and a healer.When Jesus encounters suffering, he does not blame its victims. he doesn’t tell them to look on the bright side, or to compare their plight with others worse off. Jesus heals them. Deborah Krause of Eden Seminary notes that women may mutter under their breath as they realize that Peter’s mother-in-law is healed just in time for supper. The word for serving here is being a deacon, however. (I do note that the mother-in-law appears right after an incident with demons).

I spent time considering radiation treatments since my prostate cancer was lurking in what the physicians call the margin of the gland. A number of people have written me saying that I should trust the Great Physician and forgo treatment. They imply that my faith is weak if I continue with the prescribed treatment program. I have faith in healing prayer, but I also have faith that God works in many directions, including human technology and ingenuity.

Isaiah gives voice to our frustrated complaints that God seems out of reach and seems to disregard our need. While warning us not to fall into the trap of thinking that we can grasp the enormity of God fully, the prophet sees God as lifting up those in need. When people don;t know if they can lift one foot after another during chemotherapy, may they hear the words echo within Is. 40:31. (quote here) I read this as a helping hand from above. I also read it as lifting us from within. I recall a pastor in Indiana who faced down cancer a number of times, and how he felt prayers lift him out of bed in the morning when he felt no power left to do so on his own.

Jesus needed to recover his balance and energies too it seems, to get some time to pray, to recharge, to reconnect to his source of healing. Jesus Christ needed some sabbath time, some time to commune with God. His newly minted disciples track him down. We too need to pray for the strength to go through another day. We need to have our need to be in charge healed. Maybe we need to learn to receive as well as give as love of self to be connected to love of neighbor.

devotions for Week of Feb.5

Sunday Feb. 5- I Cor. 9:22 Paul says that he is willing to try to be ‘all things to all people” in order to try to persuade them of the gospel. Part of me sees it as manipulative and inauthentic. Part of me sees as expecting oneself to be protean in skill set. Another part of me sees it as admirable, in that, once again, Paul is willing to forego selfish desires and preferences in order to try to reach someone with the good news, the gospel. “Different strokes for different folks” work well in respecting diversity.

Monday-A good number of people sort of stumble into work today. Some wonder if we should make this a national holiday, to recover from the Super Bowl. In the face of that struggle, I commend being gentle on yourself and try to establish some manageable goals. Sometimes, aiming low allows us to get freed up and accomplish more than with a grandiose vision.

Tuesday-I recently visited someone in the hospital how had knee replacement. We live in an age of miracles, but we complain about even that. My eye surgery was outpatient, when I remember people becoming immobile for 6 weeks after eye surgery. The blind see; the lame walk; diseases such as polio are virtually eradicated. Thank God for these now common miracles. Thank God for your physicians and pharmacists, nurses, technicians, hospital staff and medical schools.

Wednesday-Words matter. We speak about the environment, and for some people it sounds clinical detached. Environmentalist has a bad connotation in some circles. I wonder if Christians should speak of caring for creation more, as we had a group with that name here at Alton, First. Seeing the natural world as creation reminds us that it is not our possession to despoil, but ours to respect and indeed, care for. In Genesis 2, the story tells us that we are earthlings, creatures of the soil. That keeps us grounded.

Thursday-Be not anxious, says Jesus. Even when the Lord commands it, it seems to me easier said than done. At a recent meeting, as we went around the table, I heard so many anxious words: panic, fear, concern, worry, nervous. We can pray for anxiety to be lifted. We can notice when it raises its head and learn effective ways for us to fight it.

Friday-Presbyterian pastors take national ordination exams in Bible content, worship and sacrament, theology, Biblical exegesis of either the Old or New Testament, and polity, our governmental structures. I am a critic of our examination system, but the idea has some merit, as it tries to match theory and practice. They rely on each other and build on each other. When they are kept together, we move closer to wisdom.

Saturday-I remember this day as Lincoln’s birthday. I was envious that the kids in public school received this day off. Just consider the words of his 2nd inaugural’s end, with malice toward none, and charity (love) for all.” It’s biblical in its tenor, and it reflects a powerful biblical public theology that is so lacking in our poor denuded politics of retaliation, demonizing, and flat out hatred.

Column for St. Blaise day-Feb.3

Catholics of a certain age may have awakened this morning, and a vague sense of unease about health appeared. This is St. Blaise Day. When I was a boy, we would get special blessings for our throats today. The story I learned said that he was a physician before he became a bishop in Armenia, in the early 300s. A woman brought her son to him in desperation, as he was choking on a fish bone. The bishop was able to have the boy be relieved of the bone. S, a blessing ritual could include two candles, crossed, and the base of the “V” was placed on the throat for protection and healing of its ailments. Other stories about him include a period when he was driven into the wilderness during persecution. Birds brought him food and waited around until he blessed them. Hunters were unable to get game in the region where he lived. Once a wolf took a woman’s prize pig, and the saint smiled and the wolf returned with the pig, unharmed (the pig, and the wolf). As a martyr, he was tortured repeatedly, but I won’t go into detail. OK, we are in the realm of legends here, but these stories met felt needs in communities.

The ritual was one of my first religious crises. I got strep throat not long after having my throat blessed. I could not understand how a germ could defeat the power of St. Blaise. I think I consoled myself with the thought it could be worse, and the medicine made me feel better fast. Plus, my mother always got us ginger ale when we were sick, and I knew I could get a nickel back for the big bottle when I returned it to the store. I then struggled how someone who had the power of healing could then be martyred but gave up on that difficult mental exercise.

The stories of saints, the proliferation of days dedicated to saints immerses a careful, pious person into a thoroughly religious environment. Saints cover the panoply of human experience and situations. In a way, they are human exemplars of the Celtic way of prayer where prayers exist from the time one awakes, to lighting a lamp, to work, to retiring at night. Rituals such as that of St. Blaise have gone out of favor, it seems to me. In part, it feels a bit like a plea for magic, and our technology has obviated the need for it, at least at times. Upon reflection, I still miss those sorts of rituals, as we live in a time when we are ritually impoverished. We don’t know how to share depth experiences well in common, so we feel as if we have to make everything up from scratch. Otherwise we somehow feel as if it is impersonal and inauthentic.

Saints are not meant to be perfect. Such is not our condition. They do demonstrate a trait, a decision, a virtue toward which we can aspire. In Christian theology we are all called toward a saintly life. Indeed, the Creed speaks of the communion of saints. In baptism, we are all family, all sisters and brothers, connected by that common property of water. In a sacramental sense, the simplest thing can be a pointer toward divine presence, divine reality, within the physical. the physical is the gateway to the spiritual, not its opposite, not is lesser cousin. That includes this life we live, right here and right now. How would it affect your relationships to seek the saintly qualities in others, to see them as saints? How would it affect your sense of personal worth, to realize that you gaze at a saint in the mirror?