OT Notes Jer.31:7-14

I find this to be an extraordinarily rich collection of material. It matters not to gowith epiphany themesorthe regular reading forsunday.

1) Here we have the homecoming theme. N.T. Wright does interesting things with this theme by applying it to Jesus as Messiah as in Jesus and the Victory of God and elsewhere.

2) the remnant theme too is involved here. It could be a way to approach small if beautiful,or a look at restoration and rebuilding.

3) We hear echoes of Is. 35 and 42 in v.8. Why do you think these groupings were made?

4)V. 9 has fairly rare father language here. Ephraim was one of Joseph's children and its tribal allotment was good.

5)  The word consolations hit me this time.What sort of consolations mean the most and least to you? Comfort appears in v. 13.What is the difference in the two words?

6_at11-what does redemption seem to mean here? How close is it to a ransom? If so, to whom?

7)Singing is repeated in this passage.One could do some innovative things here in the liturgy.Also dancing appears and reminds one of the psalm where mourning is turned to dancing. In our culture we seem to want to require that the transformation happens swiftly. What is your take on that?

8) how is one radiant in the goodness of God?(v.12)

9) I love the line to be like a watered garden,please consider working with that image.Also, one could do well comparing it to languishing in the next line.

10) With all of the diets now, ,talking of fatness in v.14 could be well-received

Dec. 27 Column

Some people get the Christmas blues , but others get a post-holiday letdown. (I write after a morning in the office on December 26). After all of the fuss about the spirit of the season and all of the prattle about the joy of the season as we turn to the new year,some things remain the same: another hospital call to make, the door buzzing with people seeking help, my mind and body a bit foggy as i forgot to take medicine on Christmas night.  After too much time with family, people seem especially on edge after  Christmas.I had a great time with our daughters and son-in-law but maybe saying goodbye left me feeling dispirited.

I watched some old Christmas episodes from fifties television yesterday. They all centered on giving people a hand on Christmas Eve, on that special night. Our office is constantly paged  for help, as Alton seems determined to become a replica of East St. Louis. One of my spiritual exercises for 2014 is to resist my resentment when the needy get demanding about receiving handouts. I expect meek subservience in exchange for help, I suppose. On the other hand,so many of the people seeking help are mentally ill. I made myself a mental note on my morning walk to write to our state representatives, as I have in the past, with no answer, to consider finally moving toward a generation-long neglect of the mentally ill. If we finally get our pension issue resolved, it is time for us to address this stunning example of social negligence. Since we closed the large facilities, smaller scale help is hard to come by, especially when we have chosen to make it so hard to have people committed.

I got to listen to a number of the spiritual but not religious people regale me with what older churches need to do. One of the constants in their diatribes is the plea for money from churches. In the same breath, they complain that churches do not do enough to help people’s basic human needs, but they contribute not a penny to those causes, as if an organization conjures money from the ether. They continue to see worship as a sort of performance art, not as participation in prayer together.

I got a rare chance to be part of a multi-member phone call with the member of Congress.. the representative has an interestikng political gambit, voting with the radical right but speaking  about interest in compromise and working together.At least, the member learned  that not all clergy agree with his ill-cosnidered idea of Christina social ethics. He praises private charity but seems utterly bereft of the public responsibility for social welfare, including an economic base in a rust belt district. While b being pro-life, the official apparently moves  from conception to birth, as  immediately we were regaled with the importance of taking the SNAP (food stamp) program to be cut. “Faith-based policies” showed  no awareness of Roman Catholic social teaching and then topping it off by misattributing a Chinese proverb to Jesus.

Once again had dispiriting conversations with folks who see all human troubles as individually caused. We have trained folks to have an incapacity to look at the social level of life. Worse, we have become unsophisticated Christian Scientists who believe less in mind over matter but in positive thoughts  control matter.

In the original words of have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, judy Garland sang, “until then, we have to muddle through somehow.” Instead of marhcing to a martial beat toward a grand plan, we take a few steps at a time, buoyed by the magic of the season, fi only for a while. Large scale change rarely comes quickly, so progress is measured with care and precision.

Sermon Notes Dec. 29 Mt. 2:13-23, hewb. 2:10-18, Is. 63:7-9

Dec. 29-Is. 63:7-9, Heb. 2:10-18, Mt. 2:13-23

In  all of their distress, God too  was distressed.” Last week we had a blue Christmas service. One of the ideas of Immanuel, God with us, is that it means God with us in all of our circumstances. We rarely read of the aftermath of the visit of the Magi and their mistaken visit to herod.while they left gifts of Jesus, bloodshed followed in their wake.Mary Chapin Carpenter has a holiday album, Come Darkness, Come Light, and she captures the ambivalence of the holiday season better than the soft glow of sweetness that the church has allied itself with at this time of year. We avoid this Christmastide story as it places us right back into the world of abuse of  power and violence.Bethlehem was a village, so it was what we would call a surgical strike instead of a massive bloodletting, a smaller version of our army attacks on Indian villages after the Civil War.

Our culture has told us to pack Christmas away, and we have seen christmas ads and decorations for a long time. For us in church, the trouble is that we are just starting christmas readings, and we have barely started the traditional 12 days of Christmas.So, I am so grateful that we have time to reflect on the meaning of the season through our reading from hebrews.

recall that Hebrews is explicitly concerned with people who are bone tired and weary and need some encouragement. They have that I cannot face another load of laundry after company, let the dishes rot in the sink, if I hear another christmas carol I am going to scream right at crazy Aunt Jean feeling.

Few passages in the New Testament speak so well to the Incarnation as this passage. Notice that it does not speak of strength and power, but the power of solidarity with the troubles of human beings. It almost sounds as if the passage indicates that God’s desire to be with us is so strong that god wanted to undergo what creatures move through.Both the isaiah passage and the section form the epistle/sermon speak to God’s presence not in an angel but a personal presence. For us, that presence is decidedly in Jesus born in Bethlehem in a time of distress.Again, God is with us in jesus christ in the good and bad times, in times of celebration and real trouble. God is with us during the Christmas blues, the post-holiday blues, or the brightest fmaily gathering imaginable, perhaps when you have the house to yourself again.

This is also a season when we miss our loved ones terribly. the Christmas blues are not only about disappointment with presents and being stressed from too many projects and activities and trying to make five new recipes turn out like the picture in a cookbook. Refreshed grief is a big component of Christmas In few places do we see the power of death being directed so closely to the Evil One. In facing death, in being crucified, dead and buried as the creed would say, Jesus went directly into its lair and exposed it for the nothingness that it truly is. When faced with the polarity of life and death, of light and darkness, God chooses life.

How can we avoid packing our Christmas spirit away with the tinsel? Maybe that is a symbol in itself. We toss away and set in the fireplace those things that we keep doing that cause us pain and harm our relationships.Perhaps one ways is to hold on to the idea of the new light and life of the Christmas season as we hurtle toward the New Year’s Day itself pictured as an infant.

Week of Dec. 29 Devotional Pts.

Sunday December 29-The psalter ends with praises to God. Ps. 148 moves us to the end of the psalter as we move toward the end of the year. It moves in sequence from the heavenly realm of that time to living things on earth to human life. (Horn is a locution for power) Please consider writing up your own psalm of praise to god for the year 2013.Be serious about it. What was praiseworthy about the year, publically and privately?

Monday- OK maybe most fht extended Christmas gatherings are over, but New Year’s beckons. I remember when collegefootball had fewer bowl games and January 1 was the big day for those games.From Howard Thurman When the song of the angels is stilled,When the star in the sky is gone,When the kings and princes are home,When the shepherds are back with their flock,The work of Christmas begins:To find the lost,To heal the broken,To feed the hungry,To release the prisoner,To rebuild the nations,To bring peace among brothers,To make music in the heart.

New Year’s Eve-A very good spiritual exercise is to review the year along with the day, if that is your custom. January comes from the Roman Janus who is pictured looking both forward and backward. NPR had a good piece on the past by reminding us that the starlight we see is often millions of years old by the time it reaches us.When did you feel most yourself, not presenting the self that others expect to see?

January 1, 2014-We picture the new year as a baby. Ss a spiritual exercise consider imagining the baby to look like the baby of Bethlehem. Luke tells us that the child grew over the years. What spiritual (one of my resolutions should be to be able to type spiritual without messing it up)  gifts would you like to see grow in 2014. (2014, it still sounds like science fiction to me). Where are we spiritual infants and where are we spiritual adults? why do we so prize intellectual endeavor in everything but the faith?

Thursday-Jesus was circumcised in the appropriate period according to Luke.He is determined to have us see Jesus as a typical Jewish male child. Our branch of the faith makes an explicit link from circumcision to baptism as does Colossians 2. Both of them place us in a community, so that we are not cast adrift by the vicissitudes of life.

Friday-Here’s a New Year’s quote from chesterton:“the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.”

― G.K. Chesterton That is an elegant way of seeking to be born anew/born from above.Where do you feel a craving to be made new? where do you need to be pulled out from a rut?

Saturday-From Kenneth Tanner on facebook-At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon said of this tightly wrapped bundle of dust, "the heaven of heavens cannot contain you." Yet contained he was for nine months within this weary teenager, smeared with dirt, sweaty from her labor, catching her breath in time with this baby, the One who in the beginning breathed the stars into the astonished sky above them.

Notes for OT-Is. 63:7-9

1) After Chjristmas itself one can go a number of ways with this passage. One is to make an end of ht eyear recoutning of all the good things that happened to our world on the public stage. Get serious about this and look at a run through of the end of the year accounts if need be.

2) One could go the opposite way and speak of Christmas distress. It could be the letdown after the holiday, it could be a list of end of the year distress in the news.

3) I like v. 8 very much for its emphaisis on the presence of God with the people. No, not an angelic messenger or demigod, but the sheer presence of god radiating in everyday life  saves us.

4) the final verse tells us much about god of Bethlehem and knocks down the stupid OT God is primitive and NT God is kind to be malarkey. The parental compasison of carrying them as in days of old is quite moving.As the year closes, surely many people need that sense of comfort,as they have a hard time facing another year or another new year's eve alone.

5) I need to work through the meaning of a people who will not deal falsely as to its extent and context, as well as sheer content. If it has an economic basis, this could be a good place ot speak of Christian ethics in light of all the outpouring of charity but pacuity of justice at this time of year.

4th Sunday Advent sermon notes-Dec. 22

Dec. 22  Is. 7, Matt. 118-25

Joseph gets center stage this morning.When I was little I would arrange the manger scene, and sometimes I put him at the edge of the scene as a protector of the little family, but I suspect that I was also reflecting a sense that he was always a bit of an outsider in the Christmas story as we tell it.

I have always been struck by Joseph receiving the words of the reality of jesus in a dream. the message is beyond this world’s reality. Like his genesis namesake he lives with dreams, he is name, may he increase seems to deal with greater perception that most of us.I am so struck that he is regard as a good man but that he was unable to face a relationship with Mary when her pregnancy is discovered. After his vision, he sees past doing the conventional thing and doing the right thing, but I do want to honor his ability to do just that, to take on the weight of a huge task so readily.

In his day to be engaged was to be involved in a marriage legally for a year before living as a family. If he had died within that year, Mary would have been considered a widow. In my Catholic upbringing we saw pictures of Joseph as very old to protect the doctrine of Mary being every virgin. It is just as possible that the was what we would consider a fresh teenager. I notice that a new version of Romeo and Juliet has been released. For a moment consider that Mary and Joseph were as young as they, as young as the kids portrayed on Glee.I picked up a copy of the Nativity Story DVD for susie, as I like their idea that the young couple gets to know each other on the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

We affirm a virgin birth as applied in Matthew to try to get at the enormity of the Christmas Incarnation. How on earth, or maybe better, in heaven, can the fullness of God, the fullness of divinity reside within a human being? For that matter, how could a young woman of marriageable age, the hebrew for the word translated as virgin in some bibles, be able to raise such a child?I like the apocalyptic way our nativity window portrays christmas where we see Bethlehem and its starry sky, but the giant manger is a link from heaven and earth, but above it lies the Star of David. To make this miracle approachable we have made this such a sweet holiday, in part, because we cannot truly fathom the depths of what we celebrate so  easily.  Matthew picks up the same phrase as I do from the ancient words of isaiah. I am less interested in the virgin birth but more in its meaning, and the life held within Mary. We take the hebrew phrase Emmanuel and apply it directly to jesus. In this season, let’s slow it down a bit. God with us us in our our joys and sorrows, in all of our mortal limitations across the board gets encapsulated in that one life. No one can truly be alone at Christmas, for we have Emmanuel, God with us.(See Hall)This does not mean the silly way we insist that Jesus have certain ethnic features as if that is realistic, but it means that jesus is god with us where we are in our lives. At this time of year that means a Christmas presence much more than Christmas presents.That presence pervades us, envelops us, even whn, like Joseph we work so hard and feel unnoticed and underappreciated.

Week of Dec. 22 devotional pts

Sunday-Ps.80 moves us toward the big day.Thrice  it begs for restoration. I love that we move toward the visit of the shepherds when god is called shepherd here. fr people facing blue Christmas v. 5 is a witness to tears shed, or here, even ingested. where do you hope for Advent and Christmas restoration? what areas of restoration  would you like as a present?

Monday-”Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonizing. Laboring. Vast upheavals of intergalactic space. Time split apart. A very wrenching and tearing of the sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shutter before it. Before this. God of God – Light of Light – Very God of Very God – who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven. Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the resurrection and the life she holds in her arms”(Frederick Buechner).In what ways do you imagine the full humanity of Jesus?

Christmas Eve-”Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.” ― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline How would you spell out Barth’s careful words more fully on this night? How Christmas Eve services help that?

Christmas Day-“Love never comes just a little bit at a time, I thought, as I watched him, absorbed in contemplation of the Virgin. The previous day, the world made sense, even without love's presence. But now we needed each other in order to see the true brilliance of things.” ― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept  Please make sure you contemplate a figure of the creche scene today. Please read Matthew or Luke’s version of the Nativity. Please listen to some carols.

Thursday-Connie Schultz-Thomas Merton wrote, "If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between those two answers you can determine the identity of any person."Posted with the hope that we will dare to dive in. What are you living for? What is keeping you from living fully?

Friday- John Philip Newell-You have shown us the way of compassion, O Christ./You have shown us the heart of kindness./Awaken the depths of compassion in us/that we may be alive to one another's suffering./Awaken the heart of kindness in us, /that we may be truly alive.” where did you notice holiday kindness this year?

Saturday John Philip Newell-You are above me, O God,you are within.You are in all things yet contained by no thing.Teach me to seek you in all that has life that I may see you as the Light of life.Teach me to search for you in my own depths that I may find you in every living soul. where were you able to detect Christmas in other beings this year?

tags

Christmas Eve sermon notes

sketch Xmas 2013 as a panorama--hotels may post no vacancy signs--Some of us are anxiously awaiting safe travel for our loved ones in planes and trains, and cars. A family is packing up to flee to oasis during another holiday rampage-someone mutters some Christmas as they are laid up in a hospital-Somewhere as Nick Lowe sings, they are spending Christmas at the airport- a family happily settles in at a beautiful hotel and are eyed with pain by someone spending the first Christmas in forever alone and on the road

I  was struck again how Luke gives us a political panorama to start the story fo the birth of jeuss. We move from the story of two surprise births into  Roman colonial officials.a political irony to start it with-Go beneath the headlines Luke tells us. sometimes a tiny item on page 6 is the far more important. Who noted the birth of Abraham lincoln? Look beneath the surface of daily events. Hidden away in a seemingly small matter can be someone or something tha twill offer new gifts to the world.

Why no room at the upper room? The only other place it appears at at the last supper.

look at the first audience.and us. Both of us know what it is to be on the outside looking in, to not be the center of attention. We both know what it is like to feel edged out of something due to lack of space. Perhaps the great human fallacy is our secret fear that a hear to does not have enough capacity to hold such love. One of the reasons Christmas is so hectic is that we pla do place the hopes and fears of all the years on to this holiday, but can it sustain the love? Did god wonder how that baby could sustain divine love within?I am so glad to see folks at a Christmas Eve service. We seem to rarely make room in the upper room , the inn of our lives to appreciate the season. Especially, we have lathered the season in so much sentiment that it is difficult to drill into its central Christian affirmation, the Incarnation.   God is fully present in a human life, a baby’s life. the Creator of all is present in a created life.We certainly have no room in the social upper room for so many of our fellow citizens, and I will just touch briefly on the the necessity for us to  make safe places for hte mentally ill to find a place of respite as missouri is doing wht its Fulton project.Maybe one of hte great issues for us with room at the inn/upper room is time. We are so overburdened with too many competing claims on our wallets and attention and compassion, maybe especially at this time of year.

christmas peace without and within

use hymn words for sermon to alert to words last year O Little Town so the cloven skies the portal is made between heaven and earht in that out fo the way village, and the portal opens for us in worship this evening

John Calvin said “when a lodging was refused him among us, it was that heaven might be opened to us, not as a temporary lodging, but as our eternal country, so that the angels might receive us into their abode.”

Blue Christmas Column

I’ll get my commercial out of the way first. We are having a blue Christmas service at our 6PM reflective service at First Presbyterian here in Alton Saturday, December 21. (Let us know at the church if you plan to join us).My aunt could have used a service such as this. When she lost her third child of nine to a car crash, she was unwilling to put up a christmas tree for 20 years.

Why a blue Christmas service? First, many of us feel assaulted by the constant bombardment of good cheer that is demanded of us at this time of year. for people who are depressed, it may be asking too much heroic expenditure of energy. for those who have lost a love done, it may be impossible to get into the Christmas spirit. for those who have struggled with  a vexing problem, the childlike wonder of the season escapes them.

In our time, church services have capitulated to the cultural command to be positive.We do not give people sufficient permission to hold to the feelings and thoughts they experience at certain junctures in life. We organize the season around making cute pageants for the children, and that is fine with me. It is not fine with me that we neglect or indeed castigate those who are having a hard time when they feel no comfort and joy this year. Christma sis indeed for children, but it is for all people, in all circumstances. All of the sentimentality we load on this holiday is part of our deep desire to try to deny the impact of loss and hardship on the hearts and minds of people.

So a service such as a blue Christmas service first acknowledges the pain people carry during the holidays. Admitting it in public also helps to normalize it when it can be shared with others. While I tend to shy away from aesthetic viewpoints in liturgy, I would affirm that we can see the light break into the darkness when we first are able to own the darkness, to admit its fearsome presence.

It could not have been cheery for the Holy Family to be far from home, in a borrowed stable room on Christmas. It must have been terrifying that the Magi gifts brought with them the threat of assassination at the hands of Herod. Then they went into exile back into Egypt for  some time, according to matthew. The early life of the new family was spent on the road and on the run.

Christmas can warm hears or break hearts. Listen to all of the melancholy songs this time of year, including elvis and Blue Christmas.I like the story of Frank Sinatra asking the lyricist to replace until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow with hang a shining star upon the highest bough as he thought the original just too sad. I love to look at children’s picture books for christmas. A surprising number of them, such as the wonderful Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey,  have a heartwarming message that can occur only after the set-up is the pain carried by people at this season.

Immanuel means God with us. that cannot mean god is with us only in sweet days and notions of sugar plums. God is with us in the deepest valley of the shadow. christmas can help dispel the shadows, but a resolute refusal to admit their existence obscures the Christmas light as well. then maybe can can all sing and experience a silent night when the hurting offices are stilled and all could indeed seem calm and bright.

OT Notes Is. 7

1) OK let's deal with it: almah means young woman, not virgin.Yes the sep[tuagint translates it as virgin.

2)I understand that this is referring to a real child born in the face of Assyrian aggression. Still, is this child then being referred to by chapter 9? Words do have plasticity and referents beyond original intent, so i suppose we are OK in making explicity messianic claims on it.

3) Then, isn;t the point of the Incarnation for christians seeing god clearly working in the everyday anmd ordinary and not only the huge events such as the Red Sea experience?

4) How do you seek to understand Matthew's use of  this passage in terms of the virgin birth?
How is every birth a declaration of hope in a new future?

5) I lean much more toward an emphaisis on Immanuel. See Douglas John Halls's second volume in his trilogy for a superb analysis of the concept.

6) usually we are not to seek signs from God in the tradition as this is putting god to the test, no?

7) When do we weary God, do you think?

8) One could work with ahaz's protrayal here and perhaps extend it to herod, or Augustus.I could imagine a sermon, the politics of christmas tiem emerging.

Column on Mary for dec. 13

I was raised Roman Catholic, so I learned of devotion to Mary, the mother of jesus from youth. I was also raised in a Polish household, so every year we set out the Nativity scene on christmas Eve and had it up through January, 6, epiphany, the feast of the Magi. With infinite care, craftsmen would build a grotto to honor Mary in the backyard or on the side of a church such as ours. All of the pictures or statues of mary showed a young contemplative beauty, often gazing with tender devotion at the child in the manger. This Sunday we read the magnificat of Mary’s great prayer response to elizabeth when they share news of their respective miracle pregnancies.

We read of the Magnificat of Mary in Luke’s gospel alone. I do notice that she doesn’t say much about marketing the church. In our time; it does not say Christmas is for children; Christmas reaches for those in trouble.  Its prayer speaks of helping people in need. Mary does not make   a listing of the economically needy alone. The prayer mentions those who are hurting in their hearts, mourners and bind up the brokenhearted.

We leave the latter to alcohol with friends and the words and music of songwriters. We react to mourners by hoping that they well get back to work as soon as possible and not burden us with a repetition of some facet of their loss. That’s especially true this time of year, so we warn folks not to ruin Christmas. Of course we are called to do charitable things at this time of year, and an astounding generosity pours out of people, hard economic times or flush ones.

No, Mary’s words were and are political dynamite. I note that the noted Biblical scholar and theologian Rush Limbaugh went ballistic when the Pope offered words that reflected Mary’s prayer. I see that the esteemed Fox News ecclesial  contributor Sarah Palin has given us a gift of her views on Christmas that include a celebration of its being “commercialized.”  Mary’s prayer is not one for Scrooge to become converted to a new way of life. it is for the reversal of the fortunes of the Scrooges of the world. it is a prayer from the heart of the Cratchit household.

The NRSV translates Lk. 1:51 as “scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” In Genesis all people are scattered after the tower of Babel incident (ch.11) the tribes of Israel were scattered and dispersed in 722 and then in the horrific exile after the destruction of Jerusalem.Mary could well be playing on this theme. It could also be more prosaic. Just as the rich gather in money and power, so their status will one day be scattered, with one assumes, their goods. I hear mary saying that the pride of the rich will go with their fall.Just as poverty often entails a poverty of the spirit, an empty heart to match an empty purse, so the rich will be sent empty away (v. 53).

So, Mary’s prayer links her selection as the bearer of Christ as a new sign for the ages, a coming reversal of fortunes. it has the sense of saying at last, a new order for the ages is on the horizon. She does not see ti as an accident that a lowly one would bring the child to delivery in a lowly place.We make her a safe remote figure when we exclude her great prayer from our religious imagination. For mary, christmas was not a sentimental day, but a shot of divine power that echoes through the centuries.

sermon notes Dec. 15

Is. 35, Lk. 1:46,

Isaiah’s vision is  an ecological vision isn;t it? We used to hide from such texts, but now we tend to celebrate them with our environmental awareness.After all the psalmist says that the heaven proclaim god’s handiwork and our psalm for today that God is creator of all in heaven and earth. we clearly have it in our power to radically reshape and even destroy much life on this fragile planet, this gift of God’s creation, this object of God’s continued governance and providence, and care.

In this time of year, we see and use nature as a backdrop for deep spiritual connection

Evergreen and light and stars.Our passage  is careful to use natural transformation a sthe backdrop for human transformation.It sketches a dream, but it is still realistic about human nature. we are embedded in a natural course that is often violent and cruel. Many of us prefer the comforting illusion that nature is naturally peaceful, and that human beings are not naturally violent and aggressive. No, cultural evolution and transformation  must be the engine of change for our continued moral evolution.Isaiah 35 is about the reversals of misfortune afflicting Israel and offers the promise of better days ahead.

At the same time, Mary’s prayer is very much a prayer about god;’s way in the world of humans, of the great reversal, the great repentance from injustice and abuse of power to a new day. Christmas brings out the push for a more level field of social relationship.s the guest A couple of Saturdays ago were so impressed that a judge from the county court would be serving them. It seemed to strike them much more fully than our sight of having the leaders  often serving Communion to those under their spiritual charge.I heard recently that the noted theologian Rush Limbaugh called the Pope a Marxist .If he enters a church, I could only imagine what he would say of Mary;s prayer.For that matter, what would he say of the God who chose to place the hopes and fears of all the years under the care of a young woman who could pray like this in the words of the tradition of her faith, and ours? She sees her conception as a sign that thing need to and will change for those in the world who are of low estate as the old language would say. ti is part of the reason that we feel compelled to consider the least of these in the Christmas season.

This is a season when we speak different words. We greet each other with the blessings of the season. In the face of greed, we give presents. i was so moved by the simplicity of gift requests on the board that Victoria Hiatt set up downstairs and the speed with which people gravitated to it. The people with the Christmas blues may well lead worship and sing the loudest hymns.The lonely receive connection through the liturgy and experience the communion of the saints.One day the people whom we serve lunch will host us at a big thank you gathering.One day the open devastation of St Louis and East St Louis the blight of streets in Alton will look like parks, and the river shores teeming with commerce. No more will words about decline and worry dominate church meetings but the question will become one of how to handle an influx of people and programs.One day the resentment machine won’t find it helpful to invent items to stir the pot of seething about social change. One day an African American will be president of the Untied States and the Supreme Court will have three women on it     . Oh, that’s already happened.

Devotional Pts for week of Dec. 15

Sunday-Ps.146:5-10 is part of the series that closes the psalter with praise. We are opening the church year but closing the calendar year, so it is an appropriate reading, I suppose.  It also fits this time of year where we are anxious to try to help make Christmas brighter for the downtrodden. I am struck by the link of creation to those in need. Why does the psalmist make the linkage do you think?

Monday-The theologian Paul Tillich once preached that "our time is a time of waiting...waiting for the breaking in of eternity. All time runs forward. All time, both history and in personal life, is expectation." Advent is a season of longing, waiting expectantly for eternity—for the fullness of the reign of God to break in. And so we pray, "Come, Lord Jesus!" Laura Thelande. When have you notice the inbreaking of eternity? How do you scan the spirutal skies for it?

Tuesday-"The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak." Pope Francis in one of the many striking passages from his 48,000 word text Evangelii Gaudium ("The Joy of the Gospel")

Wednesday-"Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

Frederick Buechner from his book "Beyond Words"

thursday“To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.”

John Ruskin (1819-1900)Good poets illumine reality and allow us to see the world and ourselves—even God—in new ways. In this season of Advent, we hear the rich and expressive images from the poet Isaiah whose prophetic words and vision help us see with new eyes: What are we being invited to see anew in this season? What surprises does God have in store for us? What will cause our souls to sing out in praise? Ken Kovacs

Friday-In our search for the holy, there are times when our restless preparations smother the very truth for which are searching. We decorate our rooms and make elaborate preparations for our prayer, when a single flower and a moment of waiting are all we need to meed the One Who Comes.MACRINA WIEDERKEHR, Seasons of Your Heart

Saturday“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”

― Scott Russell Sanders

Column on Church and social Justice

At Bible Study, I was accosted on not nagging people enough on issues of social justice in the church. So, I thought I would use the column to consider the issue again.

While the Old Testament  issues a clarion call for social justice, it is muted in the new Testament as it was directed toward people without power. Meging the two continues to be a difficulty for the church at large. At our chruch board meeting, i was shocked to hear the slant on the history of the church in soical action projects., as if separation of church and stat emeant silence on matters of public policy in the church.

One way the church faces social injustice is through charity. Often it does it very well. to me, charity is an individual act of kindness for a basic human need. It helps out in a difficulty.

Justice is a matter of social structure. While charity deals with a symptom, justice tries to address causes or conditions for public social harms. A cup of cold water is an act of charity, but providing for safe, healthful drinking water for all is a matter of justice. Helping out an elderly person with a prescription bill is an act of charity, while Social Security and medicare are acts of public justice.

I have a number of problems with the older churches and social justice work. One is the basic presumption that admonishing, well really nagging people about social justice does not seem to work and often puts people into a defensive crouch that inhibits the very programs one may be advocating. Second, the church’s analysis of soical issues often seems to me to be faulty on a number of counts. One the linkage between biblical and ethical precepts are often only loosely tied to the program that is being advocated. Second, the social analysis by the churches seem to me to be much better done by trained social observers who aspire to objectivity and even-handedness, while church's position papers seem to cherry-pick wretrs and their positions to fit within a decision already made. Third, ti is impossible for me to see how we can argue, with a straight face, that only one style of program is “the” Christian position on social justice. people of good will are perfectly capable of seeing ends and means differently. the long-established  (mainline) churches are too quick to dismiss efficiency and effectiveness as measuring markers for social programs.faced with such a wide array of social problems, the church can easily fall victim to burnout or despair.Further, the chruches would do well to select issues that can acquire a good deal of support. One of the reasons the church is ineffective in social justice is that officials know that it does not carry the suppor tof its own membership, so that its policy statements are mere rhetorical flourishes but hold little weight. If we cannot convince our own members, why do we feel it is incumbent upon us to lobby officials?

For me repentance does lead to a transformation of values that would lead people to seek out the best ways to to approach issues of social justice.this may be to seek allies for one’s interests and to include the government as a major policy actor. Too oftne the church slips into the silly notion that the government stands against social justice and is far too quick to condemn government action. Second, the church could do well as acting as a signal. When an issue seems orphaned or lacks political clout, such as the plight of the mentally ill, the church  can help create awareness of the issue. With its constant call for inclusiveness, the church could do a better job of seeking to include different points of view in its march toward a better world.

Devotion Points for week of Dec. 8

Sunday-Ps.72 is a good psalm to read at this time of year as it added to the view we have of the three kings/magi. I would think it is in this week’s readings to emphasize other readings on the responsibility of rulers. Once again, it points us toward social justice as the foundation of political authority. Where have we moved forward in political soical justice and where do we fall short?

Monday- from Kent ira Groff-"Life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards,"wrote Søren Kierkegaard. Is this not the message of Advent?Sankofa, a primal Adinkra symbol from Ghana, provides a graphic image of Kierkegaard's thought. Sankofa portrays a bird with its feet facing forward and its head looking back, usually with an egg in its mouth.” In a way this is the image of janus-faced january that looks with one face backward and another forward, no?

Tuesday-We went to see  the famed violinist Joshua Bell in concert. The program featured music inspired by natural objects. One of the pieces was classic program music as it followed the course of a river’s wanderings through a part of the now Czech republic. We even had not one but two harp players open the program. The great theologian Barth thought Mozart would be played in heaven. We often associate angels with harps. What sort of music do you think is played in heaven.

Wednesday-from John Philip Newell-” “You have taught us, O Christ, to love our neighbor as our self.You have taught us to see our neighbor as part of our self.Let us see ourselves in those who are hungry.Let us see ourselves in those who are frightened.Let us see ourselves in one another and in every creature.For you have taught us that we are one body.” I like how he extends the mirror of Christ notion to our emotional states. Where is it diffiuclt, but helpful, to see the christ in someone else?

Thursday- From the fine writer Connie Shultz-”Once again, I offer my mom's take: "Being a Christian means fixing yourself and helping others, not the other way around." Ot os much more fun to dix others than oneself, but to expect others to help us out. It is one of the great temptations of trying to live a Christian life to try to fix others, but isn;t that placing oneself in place of God, or not? How od you react when someone tries to fix you?

Friday-In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door... For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart. The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.72  (From Frederick Buechner posting on facebook)

Saturday-In our search for the holy, there are times when our restless preparations smother the very truth for which are searching. We decorate our rooms and make elaborate preparations for our prayer, when a single flower and a moment of waiting are all we need to meet the One Who Comes.-Macrina Wiederkehr, Seasons of Your Heart-where do all of our christmas decorations encounter this warning? On the other hand, what christmas decorations bring you closerot the meaning of the season?

sermon Notes Second sunday in Advent-Mostly Rom. 15, Is. 11

IIt is easy to complain aobut political leaders, so Isaiah’s king will not judge by mere appearance and hearsay. This will be a person of strength and strategy of wisdom. In our time, look at how we make judgements based on appearance. Social psychologists know well  the impact of appearance on impressions we draw about people. So much of our attitudes derive less from behavior but from image, how something or someone is presented, what spin we put on reality. The aspiration toward objectivity falls away, and in its place is propaganda telling us what to think and feel, not inviting us to dialogue or reflection-the image of the messianic ruler here moves from predatory behavior to a different style of rule, note well it is non-violent rule as seemingly naked ot one set of eyes as the armor of “God in Eph. 6. Nature too is envisioned as a vast bloodletting to   even possibly a new Eden? Trees can regenerate even though they may seem to be nothing bare a bare stump.

This passage from Romans is It tries to sum up Pauls’ desperate attempt to hold a church together of jewish Christians and Gentile without letting one faction judge another. for me the critical phrase is to welcome each other as christ has welcomed you. (Look at Gk for welcome).

Paul creates a string of citations that points to a union of Jew and Gentile in the  For him this is a sign that God’s purposes are starting to fall into place, a new era in human relations has dawned, and it will culminate with the second Advent of Jesus Christ.Scripture that now has become a shared Scripture in this new Christian movement. Al organizations are threatened with factions at one time or another. Our political body is riven with faction to an alarming degree..Look at the words of Paul again harmony, togetherness, and peace.

In other words, the brave words of isaiah seem to slide  into the dim future. Let’s look at the gifts of the Spirit here and apply them a bit to our day and time. wisdom, understanding,counsel might, reverence of the Lord. wisdom in Hebrews has a sense of being able to make distinctions, top analyze understanding has a sense of building up knowledge-understanding has the sense of building up from one point to another, a structure of knowledge. counsel has the sense of planning carefully together. Might is better as mighty in valor-knowledge itself is knowing fully and intimately, apprehending and comprehending

Not surprisingly, the phrase, welcome on another, as Christ has welcomed you reverberates. Perhaps in this season, it has special import as so many homes ring with the words welcome home, or welcome it is so nice to meet you or s to see you again; I’m so glad to see you again. I love the notion of Christ welocming us, with an open min, open heart, and open arms.To be welocmed is to feel comfortable and included. It is a sense of belonging. Its English root is one who arrival is well with us.It inldues a sense of acceptance and reception in Greek. Go with that for a moment in this holiday season-Jesus hold a reception for us, an elegant heavenly welocme party in our honor.In this Advnet season we do well to consider not only how Christ welcomes, accepts us, as Tillich said in his famous sermon, but how we welcome christ. At this time of year it is easy to welcome the birth of a baby in the romantic view of the manger. do we even consider the miracle of the Incarnation, the astonishing statement that God’s fullness resides in this baby in an outpost of Rome? do we accept and even welcome the words of the Sermon on the Mount, and try to walk the way pointed ot us as the church year begins?