Sermon Notes on John 9 (read with column notes, perhaps)

The telephone rang in the office recently. The voice on the other end was from Indiana. His long-troubled marriage was moving into separation and in all likelihood, divorce. How did we get from where we were happy to this, he wondered? This long long story strikes me as a cri de coeur from John and his reading group  of what went wrong  in their emergence within Judaism. It is a story of an impending divorce, between two  facets of an ancient faith, I think. It plays around with sight and blindness as it concludes that it is a matter of seeing things in a certain light and an inability to see things as well.

When presented with a blind man, the disciples see the issue clearly. The disciples right away take the stance that someone has to be to blame for misfortune. They link it directly to punishment for sin. God must be punishing the blind man and his family, no? Centuries after the book of Job they have not progressed one inch from the position of the friends of job or in our time people who blame illness on thinking positively, as if germs and virus do not exit.Notice that Jesus will not even begin to countenance their question. Instead, he proceeds to move the person toward healing. Let the question linger here. Are the disciples blind about suffering in their midst. What do we see and not notice about suffering in our world?

Here Jesus does not heal with a word but with medicine. The ointment is interesting.something that would blind us is used as the vehicle for sight. In the face of the blindness of the disciples Jesus calls himself the light of the world. Yet, light cannot help the blind.His cured blindness will be a vehicle to see the reality of a god who wants healing not punishment.

The reaction of the religious leaders reminds me a bit of a few of the people we feed who complain about the portions or the variety of food. Faced with a miracle, they begin an inquisition that spreads out, as they are wont to do. it also becomes quite a comic parody of an investigation as the investigators are left further and further in the dark.As Bruce Springsteen would say, they were blinded by the light, in this case, the light of the world bringing sight to the blind.

While the man is healed of blindness it takes him a while to come to the blinding realization of the reality of Jesus.Physical sight has come to him, but spiritual insight seems to take time, even as it starts in a blinding flash of revelation.It seems to me that we accuse others of being blind when they do not agree with us. Don;t you see? why can't you see my point? Paul Mccartney struggled with the issue in We Can Work It Out. sometimes blindness is a sign of incapacity or perhaps inability or unwillingness to  see something as it is just too painful to contemplate. Springsteen sang I would rather be blind that to see you with your man.

God is able to see past the disappointment with Saul and the expectation for a king for what it was. god looks past appearance and age to select David. One of the attributes of God is to see clearly where we cannot. god can perceive light within the deepest darkness.

We can view so much. CAT scans peer into our bodies. We are not nearly as adept at seeing to into the motivations and viewpoints of others.Mostly we grumble at how they can be so blind not to see things our way. (see judge not book). John Calvin famously called Scripture to be a glasses. It gives us  a way to look at ourselves and each other with fresh eyes.

Devotional Notes for Week of March 30

Sunday-Ps.23 is the listed psalm for the day. We do not pay as much attention to its closing section as the early section. Why is it better to be feted at the table on any enemy than with friends? For now, where would you most like to see your cup running over in different areas of your life? I iwll say that we live this out every time we have Communion.

Monday-Clinging to drab visions, we pursue paltry resolutions. Restore our souls, O god. Inspire within us such imagination that we may address with optimism the needs of this and every day." (James S. Lowry, "Prayers for the Lord's Day: Hope for the Exiles")

Tuesday-”I don't know anyone who'd recommend living "a divided life"—a life in which our words and actions conceal or even contradict truths we hold dear inwardly... yet our culture counsels us to do exactly that: "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve." "Play your cards close to your vest." Sadly, most of us learn early on that it's not safe to be in the world as who we really are with what we truly value and believe.”-Parker Palmer

Wednesday-Resilience is part of our name.  It is the word I am trying to celebrate during the month of March.  It's been a long hard winter for many of us and for some there is still no sight of Spring.  The ravished land is a marvelous metaphor for what happens in the human spirit.  There are times when what seemed to be blossoming in us comes to a halt and remains frozen, yet beautiful.  How can we trust that the winter of grief in our lives, the deep containers of doubt, the mountains of discouragement can all become teachers for us. Somewhere in the heart of everything is a resilience that wants to lift its face, lift its voice-- and sing its way out of the frozen land of our lives.  AND IT WILL! Macrina Wiederkehr

Thursday From Ira Kent Groff"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" A friend shared these words from Marcel Proust. How do they speak of your spiritual journey?

Friday-After John 9 this past Sunday, I am still playing around with what we see and don’t see, what we don’t even realize that we see or do not see. I’m working through the little book Stitches by Anne lamott and her musings that many of us are blind to troubles because it is just too much to face. What are you able to see clearly/ when do you need help? what are your spiritual reading glasses?

Saturday-We have a small reflective “emerging church” style service at 6PM, usually wiht a sparse group. Lately we have been sharing some movies as well on Sunday afternoons. I need ot find a balance between success as numbers and success as quality. Still, I get frustrated that folks complain constantly about wanting a different service style at times and to have something good to watch and ignore it when it is offered. For me, I will keep on making offerings and let the acceptance up to others.

Column notes on sight for John 9 (and Donald Rumsfeld)

This Sunday, many churches will read a long passage on Jesus curing a blind man from John 9. It has set me to thinking about sight. When I was young, like many people, I read Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. If you truly grasped something, the science fiction word for it was to grok. When I express I understanding, I use a visual term, oh I see it. I may say that I don’t see your point. My ineptitude with things mechanical stems from my inability to “see” how things work and are put together.

Do we see things as they are? When I was young, John Birch Society lunacy was properly laughed off as conspiracy viewpoints of folks untethered to reality. Now such viewpoints are said openly in public, sometimes by seemingly sane people. People freely post and reposting ravings, and then get upset if they are called on their being the product of fantasy.

As Anais Nin said, we do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” We project attitudes on to people and events all of the time. I suppose introverts look at things differently than extroverts, at least at times. We definitely know that pessimists view the world with a different set of lenses than optimists.Objectivity is often more of an aspiration than a reality when we are dealing with human behavior.

We cannot or will not face certain things. Ideology is an interpretive screen, but it can scrren out the unfamiliar or unacceptable to the cause. Religious people screen out part of the bible that they find uncomfortable from any perspective. Of course, so called creationists apply their particular view of only Gen. 1 to screen out scientific facts. they then have the unmitigated gall to declare outmoded thought patterns, inaccuracies, and ill-understood points to be on par with the vast array of scientific studies, as in the call for “equal time” for the new series, Cosmos.Partisanship blinds us to the good points of politicians of the other party and blinds us to the foibles of those in our own. Perhaps, it is most clear in matters concerning climate change. People disregard a scientific consensus because thye find the truth more than inconvenient, but unpalatable.

We see things that are not there.We are fully capable of ocnjuring up what we wish to see even when we can find no evidence ot support us.As the Temptations taught us, “it is just my imagination, running away with me.” We claim our own misinterpretations as the truth.

In Pilgrim’s Progress one of the early stages involves visiting the house of the Interpreter. Sacred religious texts require interpretation. In my literary interests in regard to the bible, we can say that we interpret through three screens: the historical background of the passages, the world that the words  created within the text itself, and the  perspective we bring to the passage when reading it now. No one interprets the Bible literally. Everyone emphasizes or downplays elements within it.

John Calvin famously called Scripture to be spectacles, our instrument for seeing God and the truths about ourselves.

Love is blind, we have heard. Lord Byron reminded us that after a period of infatuation, especially when love goes wrong, our sight becomes positively microscopic in detailing faults that were seen as charming or were unnoticed just days before.In the end, Christians are exposed to a story that tells us that god indeed loves us blindly. We are to see the Christ, the author of blind love, within each person we encounter. Perhaps most difficult, that includes oneself. Perhaps, we see clearly only through the eyes of love.

Week of March 23 devotional pts

Sunday-Ps. 95 is a hymn to god as Ruler. toward the end it refers us to another reading today in Ex. 17 of a dispute over finding water in the desert. Here it imagines God’s fury atan incapacity to trust as not permitting them to find rest in god. Is spiritual restlessness a sign of searching or cna it be a sign of deep mistrust?

Monday-God, kindle Thou in my heart within/A flame of love to my neighbor,/To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,/ To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,/O Son of the loveliest Mary, /From the lowliest thing that liveth/ To the name that is highest of all.-Kent Ira Groff © Lately people have been using Irish prayers as a guide ot their prayer lives, and I thought this was a lovely example.

Tuesday- Weaving in and out of lives/I've come to know/the letting go/as the surrender in that war/between my roots and wings.-MACRINA WIEDERKEHR, Seasons of Your Heart where do you most need to let go of some things in your life so you cna fly? where do you need ot keep solide roots?

Wednesday-The Church is always God hung between two thieves. Thus, no one should be surprised or shocked at how badly the church has betrayed the gospel and how much it continues to do so today. It had never done very well. Conversely, however, nobody should deny the good the church has done either. It has carried grace, produced saints, morally challenged the planet, and made, however imperfectly, a house for God to dwell in on this earth. Ronald Rolheiser

Thursday-"If it were possible," he continues, "to read the histories of those who are doomed to have no historian, and to glance into domestic journals as well as into national archives we should then perceive the unjust prodigality of our sympathy to those few names, which eloquence has adorned with all the seduction of her graces."from Michael Jinkins Go back over the course of some years and track some key elements that made up peaks and valleys of your own experience or of a loved one.

Friday- What is all this juice and all this joy?/A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden.–Have, get, before it cloy,Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.-Gerard Manley Hopkins,

Saturday“-Confidence is not a wilted plant that can be brought back to life with a bit of water. It is a highly flammable object. Doubt sets it aflame and destroys it irreparably.” ― Michèle Halberstadt, The Pianist in the Dark: A Novel What builds up your confidence and what attacks it.? Bear in mind the root of confidence is faith in Latin.

John 4, Ex. 17 sermonnotes

John 4 March 23

My mother was raised in a coal company town in Pennsylvania. I got her to write to our daughters about what Monday wash day wa slike. Mostly she wrote of hauling water. Her job was to lug the water from the shared pump to the kitchen. then it had to be loaded on to the coal stove for the water to heat and for different containers to be used for washing rinsing, final rinses with something called bluing. You did not waste water in our house, as the memory of all of that sheer work stayed with her.

This long story in John may well speak for itself, but I do wish to touch on a few points.John continues to have fun with folks who take the words of jesus at a basic physical level and refuse to move up into a spiritual plane.

We often imagine here as an ancient multi-married Elizabeth Taylor, but recall that divorce was the male prerogative. Either she is widowed many times over or she has been sent away over and over and now is in social and legal limbo.

She reminds me a bit of Eve as she has this theological discussion with the crusher of the serpent, Jesus.the famous promise of living water is prompted by her drawing water. what does running, living water mean? My immediate reaction is to think of the polluted water in West VIrginia after another chemical spill that poisons and fouls that most precious of natural commodities.

As a biblical type scene, this is a place for a marriage to emerge. Here a different sort of spiritual union is formed. Instead of a marriage, they exchange a most intimate connection, a religious discussion. Notice how Jesus engages her as a full discussion partner at a time when men and women were not to speak openly in public as in radical Islamic society.Just as Jesus was using a physical image with Nicodemus, we hear it again from the woman. She too gets stuck on the water in the well and loses its spiritual import.she would love running water, instead of having to haul it from a well back and forth.

Jesus certainly found this foreign woman who lived a life of real struggle worthy to have a discussion with him, just as he just had a discussion with a leading religious figure, Nicodemus, even if we are not graced with her name. perhaps that is to draw us into her story, to draw us into conversation with Jesus, to realize that Jesus sees us as worthy of dialogue and respect as well.After all, in Communion we do claim a union with Christ.

At Massah and meribah, the question lingers, Is God among us or not? Is God in samaria or Jerusalem? Nothing separate sus us from God as much as hard times and religious quarreling.Here we are in the midst of spiriutal living, life giving water.At the end of the story in Exodus, the peopel get all the water they need. At the end of our story in John, we have a se ort of wedding feast,as the whole community gets involved in spirit and truth. she is not certain. In Greek she expects a negative answer-this cannot be the Messiah? Nicodemus is impressed with signs,and she is impressed with the knowledge that Jesus has on her life. Still, Jesus offers her the living water, even given the highs and lows of her past. No matter the highs and lows of our pasts, Jesus looks past all that to the treasures within each one of us. jesus looks to a bright future of a deeper, richer, fuller life that moves far past any physical deprivations. No matter who we are, where we come from, jesus welcomes us with wide open arms.

I Sam. 16 Notes

1) Why does Samuel mourn Saul? After all, he wasn;t thrilled aobut the original selection. I must admit tha tsaul elicits sympathy from me, especially when I consider him mentally unstable.

2) Why does Samuel arouse such trepidation?

3) What does the selection of David tell us about appearances being deceiving, if anything? Again we are in the biblical preference for the youngest.On the other hand, David is described. His name means beloved. that too could tell us something: beloved of whom,? Is God's love for David utterly arbitrary or does looking in on the heart mean that God sees special qualities in this youngest or smallest one, perhaps the runt of the litter? If smallest, then it is in contrast to both Saul and the eldest brother Eliab.

4) Jesse means perhaps wealthy, or God exists, or gift. Bethlehem means house of bread.

5) It cannot be coincidence that a shepherd boy becomes a shpeherd ruler of Israel.

6) What kind of sacrifice was offered, I wonder.

7) To what degree are we to read ourselves into the succession of named and unnamed brothers and wait for the seemingly insignificant one to be chosen and anointed. remember that priest, prophets, and kings were anointed ones, hence messiah/ christos.

8) I wonder why the sotry stops naming the borthers?Could that draw us in as the rejected ones? Many of us recall being the last one picked in a game.

Ex. 17 Notes

I forgot to publish this in a timely way, but one can look up older thoughts on the passage on this blog if you wish.
Recall that the rock can be a feminine image as in the rock of birth Dt.32:18 What does it say about the people as followers? How are they keeping a slavish dependence mentality here?
What does this passage say about Moses and God as leaders? Why does God have water come out at all?
Massah means place of testing and Meribah is place of a lawsuit, contention, dispute. so this could be a great time to address church conflict or interpersonal conflict.
Notice that Paul associates the water with Christ elsewhere in I Cor. 10:4

Work with the image of water form the rock.Remember where they are in the narrative.Horeb probably comes from a word for dry, desolate.
This also could be a great place to talk about complaining
Look at how this is remembered in Ps. 98
Massah could be a good place to examine the te4sting of God when we are feeling tried/tested/tempted. See the Lord's Prayer or the first week in Lent reading as well

Devotional Pts for week of March 16

Sunday-Ps.121 is beloved for good reason. it is part of a set of psalms that may have been recited on pilgrimage to the temple. Even if god seems indfferent, we are told god is wide awake. Please ocnsider reading its 2 closing verses before you go to sleep during Lent.

Monday- Perhaps only those who have once been partially blinded by the Truth—whether suddenly or gradually—come to the breath-taking realization that the One who sits at table and breaks bread and drinks wine with us is the One through whom and for whom all ten billion light years of creation, including our own come-lately, here-and-now existence, have their being.” James E. Loder (1931-2001)

Tuesday-Why confess our sins to God? The psalmist points to two excellent reasons. First of all, we weren't made to spend our days covering up, to pretend to be what we're not, to live our lives on the run from the truth. The more we don't get off our chest, the harder it is to breathe (v. 3-4). And to the degree I succeed in deceiving even myself into believing I'm innocent of wrong, the more I become both deaf to the cries of those I'm harming and blind to the glory of God's astonishing goodness. I end up needing to be "curbed with bit and bridle" if I'm to do good and not evil.The second, much more important reason to confess our sins to God is that "steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord." What greater sign can there possibly be that we trust someone than our willingness to confess all to that one? (God pause from Luther seminary)

Wednesday-"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." -- William Arthur Ward-I sometimes worry that feelings of gratitude do not well up in me more often because I think that I often deserve good things. i get shocked when people take a nice event and decide that they need to unload complaints or resentments off their chests. Please consider someone to whom ti would do your soul c good to express gratitude, pure unalloyed gratitude.

Thursday-Nanette Sawyer writes "Grieving our mistakes comes from a place of love, if we let it. Grieving our mistakes means we want something different. We want something better. And so it means turning toward the grace and compassion of God which is buried somewhere deep within us. It means letting go of what we have done, letting go of our guilt and our grief and letting God love, forgive and welcome us in to a fuller embrace."

Friday-I am playing around with the idea of giving up getting so easily frustrated during Lent. Frustration for me results in two areas:when my expectations do not get met and when I fail to meet a self-imposed deadline.In other words, I set myself up for constant frustration.

Saturday-Elizabeth Clephane of Melrose, Scotland, wrote the hymn (Beneath the Cross)shortly before she died. During her lifetime, Elizabeth knew hardship, suffering and loss. Her parents died when she was very young, she endured ill-health most of her life and she died at age 39. Nevertheless, her life was spent serving others. She once sold her horse and carriage to provide life essentials for another in need. As a result of her positive disposition, Clephane was known as the Sunshine of Melrose. In spite of, or perhaps because of, her cheerful outlook in the face of illness and ongoing physical and financial challenges, Elizabeth could write the last stanza of the hymn: " from Saturday God Pause

notes on march 15 sermon John 3

March 16 John 3:1-17, Rom. 4, Ps. 121

Our readings this morning push us toward shoring up the foundations of our beliefs. Here we are at square one, or the first stage of Christian theology. Many of us had grown accustomed to seeing John 3:16 plastered on bedsheets at football games, even rainbow head did so for a while (Rollen Stewart is in jail on kidnapping conviction).the trouble with using single verses is that we los their depth, their context.

Before the narrator moves in we have a story of a religious person named Nicodemus. While we stereotype the religious people, he is obviously a seeker. In the dark, he comes at night. His name is greek, not aramaic, victory fo the people. In John’s gospel, Jesus is frustrating, as he often talks a good bit, but rarely directly. i think of a Zen master. We have here a basic religious truth. the physical level is the gateway to the spiritual level. They do work together, but if we conflate them, we misunderstand. this teacher of israel is stuck on the physical plane and misses a spiritual truth. of born anew/from above  some of our fellow Christians see this as an event of singular power. this  view took particular root in our country, so that it is perhaps the standard of religious practice in many Protestant circles. We tend to see it as a constant activity of god through our lifetimes. This is a much more democratic statement than a decision that people have to all have a religious experience they way others have decided it must be. No this is about about not our experience of god. We are given the gift of new life, just as we receive the gift of physical life itself. water and spirit in our interpretation refers to the new life demonstrated in baptism.

Grace has been mentioned forever in the church and has particularly force in some Protestant churches. yet, few words seem to have as little meaning as it does.We have  a hard time grasping a gift with no strings attached.Paul’s take on new life is stark and powerful-God gives life to the dead-Yes in Lent we live in the shadow of the cross but the shadow comes form the light of Easter resurrection of the god who gives life to the dead.

Ps. 121 is called a traveller’s song. the chinese said that every jor\urney begins with a first step. In Christian baptism every day of our lives is a step in the journey toward the far horizon of hte soul. we get some good starting points in these readings today. Ps. 121 reminds us that even if we go off course, even if we stumble god is there in our going out and in our coming in, or coming home.As a travelling psalm, it is a fine counterpart to the travel sof Abram and Sarai as they set off from Iraq southeast out to an unkown future.

Let’s refer to the reading in our passage again-not to condemn the world-If we peel the onion of our beliefs down, we tend to see God as condemning us. Some Christians delight in condemning the failures of others. Here that temptation runs counter to God’s action in Jesus. If you will it condemns condemnation.God so loved the world, the cosmos, the who inhabited world. Hear those words with real care again. Not hated, not angry with, not liked, not even loved, but so loved the world. that love continues unabated right now. God so loves the world that we can receive Communion this morning here in 2014’ springtime.Communion feeds the Christ within, the new life we all share.

draft notes on participation v observation

I will try to use this space to start to think through some thoughts on participation and observation.  I saw two young people sitting near each other using mobile devices to send messages to other people, including each other.My aging mind immediately went to criticism, but I did manage to slow myself down. When i was young, parents complained that we were on the phone too much and had the radio on in the car for music instead of a ball game. Is it not merely another form of communication. It would have been easier to deal with my shyness around girls to be able to text a message instead of sweating and stammering in person. When is face to face communication superior to other methods of talking? Who am I to judge methods of communication, just because I don’t use them?

When I was younger, people made jokes about tourists taking many pictures. i must admit that a vision of purgatory for me was sitting through a slide show of people showing their vacation pictures. Now it seems that folks are compelled to take pictures of any trivial happening. At the same time, if someone suffers a terrible loss in the home, we look for pictures. It is as if an event is not occurring unless it is pictured, and now captured in that awful word, a selfie. It is as if an event is not in progress unless it is being documented and published to a yawning world. I wonder what is the impusle to publicize one’s everyday activity and what doe sit say about a sense of self?

As I prepare, my favorite sporting event commences, March Madness.I have no favorite teams this year. .Still, I root like crazy for teams about whom I know nothing, other than they threaten an upset.How can we pour so much feeling into watching an event in which we do not participate? At the same time, i am mystified how anyone can watch golf on TV or a mid season baseball game and  not fall asleep within seconds. Fandom is a vicarious participation, and it has become one of the last refuges for sharing an interest in an area beyond oneself, to experience a bit of community.Where does all the energy for fans come from?

I worked the primary election on Tuesday. In our precinct, we had 95 people enter the polls. A good percentage of them did not seem to grasp the notion of primary election instead of a general election in November.a common comment was, one has no right to complain unless one goes to the polls.What factors influence such low voter turnout:alienation, despair, apathy, what?

As one can imagine, it is a long day setting up the polling place and staying after 7PM to shut it down. We did not have enough d to do. One of the topics that seemed to energize our little group was  how difficult it was to listen to a sermon since a person talking is boring.I hear the same complaint frequently in a Bible Study I attend  as sort of an outside observer.We talk about participation in worship, but frequently hymn singing is being replaced by being an audience for the music. We often mumble the prayers and responses, even if they are sometimes astonishingly beautifully written. Perhaps we bring an expectation of a certain feeling state being evoked for us to call an event participatory.where does the sense of being a critic of religious ritual as performance emerge? Why does such a small thing as sunday service attendance arouse such strong feeling?

Participating and observing are both fundamental aspects of our lives. Sometimes we seem to merge them. How will this affect relationships in our common future?

Celtic spirituality Piece for St Patrick's Day

With a last name like Crowley, i am obviously Irish on my father's side. He was killed in a ship accident when I was a toddler, so I did not identify with that side very much. As i have grown gray, a part of Irish culture has captured my soul, Celtic spirituality.

My first exposure to irish religiosity came with knowing Mrs. Kennedy's faithful daily Mass attendance. As a teen, I discovered that an Irish priest near the Catholic high school was kinder about underage drinking than our parish priest. Years later when I became, of all things, a minister in the old Orange Irish Presbyterian church, I noticed the famous breastplate prayer attributed to St Patrick in our book of Common Worship. We have precious little accurate information on Patrick, but I am Irish enough not to let legend  or absence of facts get in the way of good material.

Before that, i realized that I was introduced to the Celtic religious imagination by the singer/songwriter Van Morrison. (We use a number of his songs in our Saturday reflective worship at 6PM here at First Presbyterian, Alton In Dweller on the Threshold he writes: “I have seen without perceiving/I have been another man/Let me pierce the realm of glamour/So I know just what I am.” Into the Mystic begins: “We were born before the wind/also younger than the sun/ ere the bonnie boat was won/as we sailed into the mystic/ Hark now hear the sailors cry/ smell the sea and feel the sky/ let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.” Morrison realizes that a thin veil is all that separates us from a deeper engagement with the depths of life.

Celtic spirituality has a few distinctive traits. it seemed to have a prayer for everyday act from milking cows to putting out a candle at night. It is most definitely a creation faith that sees the goodness of God in the manifold elements of creation itself.In that created order are so called thin places, where it seems the divine touches or penetrates our physical relammore easily or radiantly.

I am on Facebook with the Irish writer John Philip Newell. He was a member at the famed Iona community. It liturgy is contemporary, but beautifully written. In his Listening to the Heartbeat of God, he reminds us that Celtic approach does not conflate creation with God but does see God suffusing all of life. “Attention moves, like a shuttle of a loom between the physical and the spiritual “(45). So, it moves beyond the merely aesthetic sense of folks who “find God in a pretty sunset,” but find traces of the divine within creation as  a whole. The Celts are cognizant of the dangers of the world, that is why so many prayers are indeed asking for shield of protection from the realm of the valley of the shadow.

Celtic spirituality is earthy. On Ash Wednesday we are forcefully reminded that we are beings made of the elements of the earth. Adam, after all, is a play on the Hebrew word for arable soil. Celtic spirituality does not see the physical to be derided as a lower sort of plane of existence, but simply where we live. So, prayers are thankful for food and drink and plenty of it. After all, the fundamental christian assertion of Jesus Christ is that he embodied the human and the divine together, “without division, without confusion.” Jesus used natural examples in his teaching and transformed mud to be a healing salve for the blind. In that sense then, Celtic spirituality is sacramental as it sees the whole world as capable of shining with the presence of God. If only we have eyes to see, the everyday becomes a portal to the overflowing grace of god, the good gift of God.

OT Pts to consider on Gen.12:1-4

I keep going back to Gerald Janzen's little commentary on Abraham and all the Families of the Earth (Gen.12-50).Abram means father is exalted or perhaps on high.
Abram leaves from Haran, in modern Turkey, where his father had settled on his way to Canaan from the ancient city of Ur in southeastern Iraq of our time.. It is an ancient city. It s distance to  Shechem would be about 400 miles.
Quite simply he is told to go and will  both receive and be a blessing to all the families of the earth.The curse part usually gets deleted in church discussions.The word qll in Hebrew carries  a sense of belittling, making small, the opposite of the great name promised. Janzen notes seven verbs in total in this divine human relationship.
This then could be a good place to speak of the imperative of a call and its mysterious nature as well.
I realize that the patriarchal ages are fairly extended, but nothing compared to the primeval ages. If one chose then Abram is middle-aged given his life span, or we could go with the age given. either way, we could discuss the impact of a major move at middle age or as an elderly person. for instance, it just hit me that every person int he assisted living center where I just did a bible study had made a move, local or some distance, to be there.
Lot, his nephew is mentioned twice in the setting out. why is that do you think?Lot means to be covered, veiled.

I think it fruitful to consider noticing how we moved from the primeval history, a high altitude view, to an intense focus on one family now.

We could look at how Abram is continuing the unfinished journey of his father Terah. recall how the second President bush sought to continue the work of his father in Iraq, especially after agents sought to assassinate the elder Presdient Bush. Terah could mean ibex, or a wanderer, or some who who delays, loiters, or a moon god,depending on how to work with the letters and vowels and language roots.

blessing means what, then and now? In our time how does one bless or receive a blessing. Can it mean our current preoccupation with it meaning any good thing as in many religious argot?

Lent column draft

Even though I am a Presbyterian minister, I was raised Roman Catholic. I am the last of the Latin Mass altar boys.In those days one of the things that marked Catholics was being especially careful about friday abstinence from meat and “giving up something for Lent.” One of the many times i was paddled in school was when I mentioned that I thought about giving up not eating meat on Friday for Lent. I remember being delighted by a joke where a wife tells her husband that they should give up sexual relations for Lent, and the husband wants to know how Lent changed anything?

When I became Presbyterian, the older established Protestant sects were adapting ancient  church patterns, including Lent. We tended to impose them, more than explain them, I think. some of our Reformation ancestors had abandoned such periods of the church year. I see both sides of the view of the church year, but I suppose I rather like the idea that the church year is not bound by the way we measure time in everyday life.

Quite simply, the synoptic gospels have Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism.so, we take the same amount of days, not counting sundays, as a time of spiritual preparation as we move into Holy Week. The word, Lent, comes from an old English word for springtime. It starts with Ash Wednesday. The readings for the day always remind us that public signs of worship should be carefully considered. It is  no magical ritual, but a physical sign of a reminder of our mortality. Since we are mortal, we are also limited spiritually, emotionally, as well as physically. It is a mark then of humility, in the sense of being grounded, of admitting our linkage to the earth. Lenten disciplines, learnings, exercises acknowledge those imperfections.

Paul used the image of an athlete preparing for an event in his letters. Christians have long looked at Lent as a time of spiritual exercises.One of the biblical methods for deep prayer is to accompany it with fasting. To help train children, the church suggested finding something else to abstain from other than meat. Many people did not progress from this basic teaching tool. If we are being called to lives capable of self-sacrifice, then perhaps we could practice a few small acts of self-denial.By extension, Lenten practices could follow the sterling advice in Phil. 4 to seek paths of excellence, not privation.

I can already hear one of the objections, isn't it hypocritical to try to tithe some of the days of the year and not the others? first, when did we make a social decision that hypocrisy is a terrible sin, or that its mere mention clinches an argument? We inspire physical Lent all the time with diet and exercise. I recently heard someone compare Crossfit to a religion.(As I write this I am heading to the senior center to ride a bike).Who among us is perfectly capable of walking the talk? Just as we try to move flabby bodies, we try to give some spiritual exercise to sharpen flabby spiritual muscles. On the other hand, it is not sin to not follow a Lenten regimen.

In the end, Lent is a spiritual journey toward  our destiny, more than a destination. We may be mortal, mere dust and chemicals, but that dust is  formed from the star reactors of distant creation. Breathed  with  the spirit of god’s own energy and life, these small  frail lives  are considered by God to be worth  extraordinary events of Holy Week. Unable to face that dust moldering in that selfsame dust, Lent’s springtime moves into Easter, the season of new sweet life.

devotional Pts. march 9 Week

Sunday-Ps.32 is a great penitential psalm, perfect for the first sunday in Lent.This time I’ve noticed that silence about sin beings distress, and confession brings relief. It relies on the goodness of God as a refuge in times of distress. that includes sin.

Monday-We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light. - Hildegard argues from the perspective of one often silenced in society. I think it would be better ot balance her statement and see the world interpreted by others and by ourselves and to seek a balance there and to accept the tension always there.

Tuesday-“The Eucharist is a drama in three acts---faith, hope, love---through which we share God’s life and begin even now to be touched by God’s happiness. Each act prepares for the next." Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go To Church?

Wednesday-"...the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?" The Reverend John Ames in Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead: A Novel"

Thursday-"No, my life is not this precipitous hour through which you see me passing at a run. I stand before my background like a tree.Of all the many mouths I am but one, and that which soonest chooses to be dumb.I am the rest between two notes which, struck together, sound discordantly,because death's note would claim a higher key.But in that dark pause, trembling, the notes meet, harmonious.And the song continues sweet."("Poems from the Book of Hours" by Rainer Maria Rilke)

Friday-Miroslav Volf Living on the surface and in the present bereft of strong echoes of the past, we are (occasionally) happy, but rarely truly joyous. why does surface living preclude joy do you think? what is the distinction between joy and happiness in your mind?

Saturday-One of the greatest teachers in the Celtic world, John Scotus Eriugena in ninth-century Ireland, also taught that Christ is our memory. We suffer from the “soul’s forgetfulness,” he says. Christ comes to reawaken us to our true nature. He is our epiphany. He comes to show us the face of God. He comes to show us also our face, the true face of the human soul. This leads the Celtic tradition to celebrate the relationship between nature and grace. Instead of grace being viewed as opposed to our essential nature or as somehow saving us from ourselves, nature and grace are viewed as flowing together from God. They are both sacred gifts. The gift of nature, says Eriugena, is the gift of “being”; the gift of grace, on the other hand, is the gift of “well-being.” Grace is given to reconnect us to our true nature. At the heart of our being is the image of God, and thus the wisdom of God, the creativity of God, the passions of God, the longings of God. Grace is opposed not to what is deepest in us but to what is false in us. It is given to restore us to the core of our being and to free us from the unnaturalness of what we are doing to one another and to the earth.

March 9 sermon notes Gen. 2, 3 Mt. 4, rom. 5

March 9 Gen. 2:15-17, #:1-8, Mt. 4:1-11, Rom. 5

Why does human life seem determined to go wrong? What better time to address Sin that great opponent of Christian life and health than the first Sunday  in Lent? What better time to address the depths of evil than the season that leads to the depth of the cross? Gen. 3 looks at the fundamental problem with human beings in a daring way.

Irenaeus, the first great  theologian of the church in the second century,  also saw the so called Fall of Adam and Eve to be rather a move from childlike innocence to the hard won experience of adulthood. Why do Adam and Eve  fall from innocence? The emphasis on being naked and not ashamed involves some new sort of knowledge, if not wisdom.One: they were deceived.The talking serpent is called sly. We may also be in the midst of a pun fest here.In wishing to beocme enlighted, to have their eyes opened, they become blinded to our capacity for evil, for the good in themselves and others. Do they become wise, or merely crafty, as they make clothes for themselves? Second,they did wish to be like God,note how Gen. 11 enfolds the same theme. Some think that while the serpent spoke of wisdom, Eve and Adam were desirous of all knowledge, the omniscience of God.They could not accept creaturehood, and aspire to the awareness of good and evil or b perhaps omniscience, but there lies the path not of fuller life, but of death. Humans have a hard time with obeying a command of limitation

To be naked may be less a sign of innocence and more a sign of being  much like animals. they eat of the tree of knowledge and what do they notice? They need clothes. Of course look at what we have done with the internet, an avenue for pornography and video of our pets.

Trible speaks of human nature being contaminated.So is the good, as it ccan be twisted into wrong ever so slightly.

Taken in isolation, Jesus was tested by good things, feeding, protection, and power.Note well Jesus passes the tests or trials or temptations and sues Scripture as his source. He was tempted three times while Eve and Adam faced but one test. As Paul said,Jjesus emptied himself of equality with God, so the temptation toward the divine was perhaps greater for Jesus than for Eve and Adam.In Romans Paul makes a kingdom of sin as children of Adam. In baptism, we are also children of christ, the new Adam.The kingdom of heaven is a new way in the world with the advent of Jesus Christ.They are worlds in collision.Irenaeus in the late second century wrote that Jesus was a recapitulation of God’s hopes for humanity. “ ..he "recapitulates" Adam, in whom all humanity can see itself, transforms him into a child of God and restores him to full communion with the Father. Through his brotherhood with us in flesh and blood, in life and death, Christ becomes "the head" of saved humanity... "Therefore, the full realization of the Creator's original plan emerges: that of a creation in which God and man, man and woman, humanity and nature are in harmony, in dialogue and in communion. . Jesus himself said he was the fulcrum and point of convergence of this saving plan.”

Temptation beckons so forcefully, while calls for virtue seem so weak and tinny.This year, I will not urge us to give up something for Lent, nor will I add to your long list of duties and ask you to pile on one more. I will ask that we all do some serious self-examination this Lenten season for our weak spots toward temptation, our strong points, and only then rely of god’s grace, god’s gift to reflect the name, Christian.

Ash Wednesday 14 notes

When I was a child we were told to give up something for Lent, something we liked.I remember trying to show a boy that barbecue chips did not have bbq meat in them. I have fallen into the ide aof trying to do something extra for Lent, a work ethic view of the period.To me the idea was if jesus could fight temptation, give up so much, then we could take some steps toward the same way. It is a move to see that self-indulgence weakens our ability to say yes or no to the right things.

Lent’s root lies in the spring. I tend to see it as a fallow time so that we can plant and nourish spiritual growth.It can be a time to clear the decks to see where we have some internal obstacle sot spiriutal growth.It is a bit of preparation time to examine the undergrowth in our lives, to scout out the dying portions of our spirutal lives , so we can appreicate the resurrections of new life that may already be  ready to burst forth.As the days grow longer, we are asked to more than title some time to spritual preparations.

I do not think there is anything wrong with Lenten abstinence as a sort of spiritual training.We do well with regimens for getting in shape, and if it helps to see lent as a spiritual training time so what? the response will often be that such observance is hypocritical, as if that decide sht ematter. I am giving up complaining about hypocrisy for Lent.When did we come to a consensus that hypocrisy is a grave social sin?Why is utter correspondence between words and action the highest virtue? All fall short on this scale. I prefer a high aspiration and occasional misstep to thorough going selfishness, let’s say. I actually heard someone say that they would prefer being with a consistent villain than an inconsistent person striving to be a better person.I am so tired of people calling church folks hypcirites as if that is a sufficient reason to avoid going to church. a service like this signals our awareness of hypocrisy and our admission of being sinners.

Joel stands against the  stereotype that Israel had a ritualistic faith. what could be more bovious than this call that the ritual signs of mourning and repentance should be matched by internal change and remorse. What could be less magical than the idea that such rituals  are not some sort of divine slot machine. It goe back to the classic definition  the character of god in Exodus, but emphasizes the merciful side of God. whjere is the utterly wrathful stereotype of god?

Ash Wednesday is a public announcement of being broken spiritually. Instead of the mark of Cain, we wear for a bit the mark of repentance, of sorrow over spiritual wrongs.the ashes remind us our our mortality and our limitations. Our bodily chemical may be jsut ashes, but when touched with the spirit of life, God sees them as worth the events that conclude Lent and culminate in Easter’s new life..

Transfiguration Sunday notes(assuming sacraments performed) Mt. 17

Transfiguration-Mt. 17, Ex. 24

Now we come to a decided fork in the road, as  the truth about Jesus is more than a casual encounter would permit. The transfiguration prefigures a post Easter view of Jesus at the very start of our reading of him. We learn about a depth to him in a flash of revelation in a metamorphosis, a transfiguration where we encounter a deep truth about him.

Truth is rarely simple, and it often exists in layers. Appearances deceive. We have reality veiled from us. When I wa sin school, we had a class where the professor was fascinated by the question of whether any human being can fully grasp the behavior, let alone the intentions of another. The shine of revelation makes us shield our eyes. the shine of the truth may well make us shield our eyes. Peering too deeply into another life may veil  our eyes from hard truths or noble ones.

The mountaintop awakens Moses to new intimacy with God and continues  the fire of the burning bush, and the mountaintop awakens the disciples to deeper realities-They carry their vision with them down off the mountain. We are so tempted to try to stay in some sort of spiritual high

I’ve usually read Peter’s trying to build booths/shelter as an impetuous act of generosity or maybe trying to hold on to the glory for a while. It is more likely a thoroughly apocalyptic scene (See Zech. 14) and a belief that God’s reign would arrive at the feast of tabernacles where God would indeed dwell with the people as they dwelt in booths. it was a divine hospitality in its notion.

The sacraments reveal the presence of Christ to the yes of faith when common basic things are transfigured by God’s action. In the movie Tender Mercies a boy looks in the mirror to see if he looks different after baptism. He does not yet grasp transfiguration. The sacraments reveal the presence of God beneath or through very common things, water, bread and cup. This child looks the same but is transfigured as this child is not  a member of the Christian community, The water now is about internal cleansing and being reborn in the waters of spiritual life, God’s grace will nurture this child as surely as plants need water to grow.(Cloud of glory appears in both the exodus reading and the gospel reading.)

Roman Catholics hold to a doctrine of transubstantiation of the substance of  the bread and cup changing. We are not that far away from them, without the ancient explanation of Aristotle. for us, the bread and cup remain plain bread and fruit of the vine. In participating in this we see the elements as moving beyond their appearance, and see ourselves and our God in a new light. Bathed in some sacramental water,this child is bathed in baptismal light. Eating a ritual meal with Jesus, we are united with the living Christ, in our whole lives, body, ind, and our very souls.the sacraments show God moving to our dimension, our physical level as a gateway to the divine realm. God is dwelling with us here and now.(Battle Hymn transfigured you and me)

The words of Matthew are applied to Kennedy and all of us in our baptism. You all recall that the voice from heaven says the exact words when Jesus is baptized, but in today’s reading is added-listen to him. In Communion we do just that, we live in a glimpse of what life is meant to be under the sway of God.In God’s eyes, we are seen through the eyes of divine love, to receive the blessings of heaven itself, to luxuriate in the very presence of God.