OT Notes Ps 116:1-4, 12-19

1) it is surprising but the phrase I love the Lord does not appear very often in Scripture. That itself could be a good sermon starter.Note similarity and difference with Ps. 18. Incline the ear is an interesting way of saying listen. That sense of divine attention could be a good start too.
2) The love is a response to God's activity, so this truly is a thanks/gratitude hymn
3) The name of the Lord seems to be a later way of speaking of god. Why? It could be an entry pt. for the power of the name.So some folks speak of God as the Name, Ha Shem.
4)the OT rarely speaks of anything approaching heaven, but it does mention Sheol, both as a shadowy afterlife but as a way of speaking of the grave, or the valley of the shadow.
5)12-14 seem to be a liturgical response to God's goodness. In our time, we seem to downplay liturgy, especially corporate liturgy. This could be a time to look back to the sacrifice in Exodus and Numbers.What would you make as a thanksgiving liturgy and action if you were given the opportunity?
6) This could read as if God finds death precious. i would read it that god sees us as so precious as to protect us from death. Another way is that God takes the precious death of precious ones seriously indeed.
7) I find the phrasing for your servant to be quite moving.
8)Have you ever made a vow to God?

devotional Pts. week of april 27

Sunday-Ps.16 is cited in the sermon of Peter in Acts 2. It is a sterling example of how the Old Testament was read with new eyes through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So often we associate being religious with being sour. Here, we have just the opposite. when does faith add to your levle of good, of well-being?

Monday- I checked out some prayers by the writer Flannery O’Connor, when she was just 21,  at the library. Here are some excerpts:“Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon . .

“I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside . . .

“I do not mean to deny the traditional prayers I have said all my life; but I have been saying them and not feeling them. My attention is always very fugitive. This way I have it every instant. I can feel a warmth of love heating me when I think & write this to You.

Tuesday-”And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him.  For He departed, and behold, He is here.”  ~St Augustine

Wednesday-I am trying to read more of Hans von Balthasar- “The splendor is the attractive charm of the Beautiful, the gravitational pull, the tractor beam pulling the beholder into it. When confronted with the Beautiful, one encounters "the real presence of the depths, of the whole reality, and . . . a real pointing beyond itself to those depths" (Glory of the Lord). Thi is his way of saying that we are attracted to the beautiful, not just a sunset, but a beautiful deed, a beautiful person.

Thursday..Forgiveness does not excuse anything.........You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness......” ― Wm. Paul Young, The Shack

Friday-St. Paul describes Holy Communion as "sharing (koinonia) in the body and blood of Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:16).A parishioner once asked me, "When did you ask Jesus to come into your heart?" He was astonished when I answered, "I never have." I explained that Jesus became part of my life when I was baptized as a baby, long before I would have been old enough to "ask him into my life."The popular idea of "asking Jesus into my heart" puts the matter the wrong way around: Rather than say "Jesus lives in us," it's biblically more accurate to say, "We live in Jesus."s you receive the body and blood of our Lord today, think not only of the bond between you and those next to you, but picture yourself surrounded by Christians from every continent on earth—because they are all with you at this Supper of the Lord.- Michael Rogness

Saturday-I got to see our daughter in Austin this week. when you haven't seen someone in a while, you notice small changes. When you see them everyday, we do not notice them as readily. I wonder if god sees us as a combination of those perspectives? Does your view of god shift when you are not in regular o contact wiht the divine presence?

Sermon Notes John 20:19-31, I Peter 3-9, Ps. 16

April 27 Ps. 16, John 20:19-31, Acts 2:22-32 I Peter 1:3-9

Forgiveness offers new life to a relationship.It seeks to bury the desire for revenge. At its best, it seeks to let the old hurt itself  be dead and buried. Forgiveness gives a new birth to a relationship.the Easter community’s first tasks than are peace and forgiveness. Perhaps they are inextricably bound.You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.Lewis B. Smedes “Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.”(Henry Ward Beecher)

Easter life is given right away, the breath of the spirit of life.Notice that Jesus does not castigate Thomas, so I wonder if the issue of forgiveness for his questioning is even on the table.He offers Thomas not only what he needed but what the other disciples had received.

Instead of the new life of baptism Jesus gives the breath of life, the spirit of life.the disciples are behind locked doors as closed as the tomb. is worth mentioning that the disciples were not rounded up by Pilate, so did he ever see Jesus as a real political threat?On the other hand, maybe, they need some time to process, including their fear.Jesus says peace be with you, i do not know if this is Greek for Shalom or if it has deeper resonance in the gospel., Jesus shows them his wounds for his identity. Now Jesus opens the door and sends them out.

they are to carry Easter with them.Here is inspiration from the mouth of Christ and the spirit

One of the salutary things in preparing the Saturday night service has been to go through quotations for the theme of the evening from the Scripture selected.  “Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.” ― J.K. Rowling, “Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.” ― Robert Jordan

I Peter new birth into a living hope.can we speak of a dying hope? Yes a dying hope is that we can change people by nagging them into a vision of what they should be.Peter plays on the same theme as the Thomas story. The gift of seeing without first hand sight is astounding.

Amid the transient transitory nature of life, we are given someone stable and eternal and imperishable.this is a move forward into a new future. (discovery of big bang grav. waves)we see a move from the troubles of this world into the hope for something better in a world beyond. We also have a sense of this: you cannot take this gift away from me, no matter how big you are or how small i appear to be. We place so much trust in mere objects.
forgiveness offers a living hope. Instead of piling up resentments that signal the diminution even death of a relationship, it clears the burden of carrying and of being attacked by wrongs, real or imagined, large or small.

The theologian Cynthia Rigby wonders that we can certainly forgive directly, but can we take it upon ourselves to claim or authorize forgiveness for others as outsiders? From this premise she wonders then if forgiveness is available in the Christian community because God does not forgive on behalf of others who have been hurt but as one who has suffered in Jesus Christ.

Column thoughts on Thomas and the afterlife and this life

I took a few days after Easter to visit our daughter and son-in-law. while there, i went to a large WWI exhibit at University of Texas.So much death was visited upon the world in that senseless struggle. My eye was caught by an old filmed piece by the author of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. He lost a son to the carnage of the war. Well before that, the author of the cerebral, logical Holmes was fascinated by spiritualism. My mind rocketed back to the civil War carnage and Mary Todd Lincoln’s interest in trying to converse with the dead through a spirit medium. Not long after the war The Gates Ajar was an enormously popular depiction of heavne as an extension of Victorian-era domesticity.

While in Austin the book and movie Heaven Is For Real was featured at a trivia contest.It dawned on me that many churches are reading the “Doubting Thomas” John 20 passage.  this Sunday. Too often that passage has been used as a hammer to slam Thomas. He is a foil to show how great we are who accept Easter accounts. Far too often, doubting Thomas gets used to try to halt people questioning ro struggling with a point of doctrine or practice. Notice that Thomas was the only one not ot have an appearance by Jesus at first. Notice also that Jesus does not seem to criticize Thomas. Thomas is given what the disciples received earlier in the week. Even the phrase, doubting, is not quite right. it is much closer to believing or disbelieving in English.

In the Genesis stories of the patriarchs, Jacob, after wrestling with a mysterious figure, is given the name Israel. it has been translated as wrestling with God.In that sense thomas was a true child of Israel, struggling to grasp the enormity of Easter. When Jesus gives a  summary of the command to love God, he adds the words to love God with the mind. So instead of blind faith, loving God with the mind would seem to include questions, doubts, and hypotheticals.

It is striking to me that the folks who decry Thomas demanding some sort of evidence for Easter flock to material such as reports of near death experiences. The motive seems to be the precise motive of Thomas, evidence, even tangible proo of an experience of life after death. While discounting vast troves of scientific evidence on evolution or climate change, skepticism turns into utter credulity in the face of out of body experiences, especially if they conform to our current dreams of heaven.

Over the years, i have done a number of bible studies in centers for the elderly. When i give them a chance to examine a question of the faith, they often center around the afterlife. In particular, they are seeking some assurance that they will truly see their loved ones and be truly seen  by them. As Springsteen sings in The Wall, “if your eyes could break through this black stone/would they recognize me?” I empathize with the quest, with my brother long gone and my mother a few years passed. Memory is a salve, and at times, we are hurtled back into time by a song or a hint of fragrance.

Perhaps heaven will be a version of the movie What Dreams May Come, where we create a vision of bliss. Our visions of heaven are colored by our own culture, desires, and missed and made steps on the ladder of life. The Bible gives but glimpses of a future in the great beyond, and perhaps that is a way for us to project our best dreams. In the end, how do we even begin to try to express being enfolded in the love of God forever? 

Ps 16 April 27

I always forget that we have no Eastertide regular OT reading, but we still have psalms. This won;t have a lot of material, as I returned form seeing our daughter and son-in-law in Austin and I am suffering from a splitting headache.

v.2 ends with a declaration of no good apart from God. i do not think that I have ever had that level of trust.

v. 3 I wonder who are the holy ones?

v, 4 goes against other religious practices. how do we distinguish between those and "secularized" practices such as yoga? In the Reformed tradition, we speak often of idolatry, but how does another god multiply sorrows do you think?

v.6 is an image of the root of salvation, t9o be in a safe place with room to grow.

v. 7 how does the Lord give counsel-how are we instructed at night-could this be while asleep?

v. 9 evokes feelings that again are often foreign to me, especially joy.What makes your heart glad?

v.10 has obvious Easter resonance. Sheol seems to be a shadowy place similar to Hades, but could also be the Pit, the grave, the abode of death as opposed to  perhaps the temple as an abode of life.

v.11 is a fine benediction, again notice that while we see faitfulness as a killjpoy, here it is full of pleasures.

Week of april 20 Devotional Thoughts

April 20 Sunday-Psalm 114 is selected for Easter evening, but I am not sure why. I suppose that this ancient prayer that praises the god of the Exodus can also then be taken to praise the god of the Exodus from the power of death, our move from slavery toward freedom from the fear of death. After all, the sea is often a symbol of chaos against god’s order for life.

Monday-"Dear God, We celebrate spring’s returning and the rejuvenation of the natural world. Let us be moved by this vast and gentle insistence that goodness shall return, that warmth and life shall succeed, and help us to understand our place within this miracle. Let us see that as a bird now builds its nest, bravely, with bits and pieces, so we must build human faith. It is our simple duty; it is the highest art; it is our natural and vital role within the miracle of spring: the creation of faith. " Amen Prayer by Michael Leunig from the book, When I talk to You

Tuesday-Maybe any one day of a life, even the most humdrum, has in it something of the mystery of that life as a whole. (Frederick Buechner)

Wednesday-the Psalms have many laments where people feel abandoned by God. Job felt God was silent or even his enemy. As the death of his wife neared, C. S. Lewis was reminded by friends that God knew and God was present. Lewis replied, "I know God knows and is near, but does God care?" Sometimes people struggle with the same questions as Lewis. Today we are reminded of a time when Jesus also felt abandoned by God. If at some time in your life you have felt abandoned by God, do not feel guilty. God can take your feelings and questions. Be honest, ... at least with God. God's presence and love go deeper than our momentary feelings and despair.  Peter Sethre

Thursday-“Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction. Only a few years ago I enjoyed my tranquility; now I am so disturbed by the outer world and by human quality in general that I want to put things right, as though I still owed a debt to life. I must calm down. I am far too frail to indulge in moral fervor.” –Florida Scott-Maxwell, from her wonderful little book, THE MEASURE OF MY DAYS.

Friday-I encourage you to build your nest of faith out of the hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, doubts and confusions, the creativity and insights, even the anger and despair of daily life. The bird takes any old thing and starts building. Good luck with your nest of faith. Build it with love. Birth and Renewal will be the surprising miracle of your life.-Macrina Wiederkehr

Saturday-Dan Hotchkiss  It's good to pay attention to what's going well. Most congregations--like most people--can accomplish more by building on their strengths than worrying about how to fix everything that could be better. Thats the basic insight of Appreciative Inquiry and other asset-based approaches to strategic planning: Instead of asking "What's the matter?" ask, "What's good? What's going well?"Sometimes that's all it takes. But at other times, wise leaders need to add an extra twist and ask, "What's good about this?" This simple question takes appreciation to a higher level.

Thoughts on Holy Week and Alan Lewis

Some sophisticated church people call the three days before Easter, the Triduum. While the first two days are often fully honored, the last Holy Saturday often get short shrift. it is usually a time of preparing for Easter, maybe getting groceries and coloring eggs. Every year during Holy Week, I try to fulfill a promise to myself” to re-read at least parts of Alan Lewis’s Between Cross and Resurrection. Reams of paper have been used to speak of good Friday and Easter, but few have looked with care at Holy Saturday.Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ made a fetish of the torture of Jesus prior to the crucifixion. we will hear a lot of brave words and songs about the defeat of death on Easter Sunday.

Lewis was one of a rare breed of theologians who have the courage, with Luther, to look directly at the cross without flinching. In so doing, they come to a remarkable conclusion, that we find God not only  in times of blessing, but in the times of darkness and suffering. Indeed the cross is much less about some sort of criminal justice transaction than it is God willingness to suffer with us as covenant companion.

In the Creeds, we say crucified, dead, and buried. Holy saturday places its focus on dead and buried and pushes us to contemplate what that means in terms of the Christian faith. Lewis puts it starkly: God is in the grave; the Word Incarnate was interred.If you want a sense of how the hopes  were crushed go back to the walk to Emmaus passage in Luke 24.

Crucified, dead, and buried is shorthand for underscoring that  a good man died, jsut as we all do. this was not an apparition, not a demigod, not an illusion, but the full weight of the human experience met its conclusion.

Holy Saturday stops us in our tracks from making a rush toward Easter.Holy Saturday helps preserve the sheer shock of Easter: new life from the grave. The author of life can make the tomb a womb. Easter vindicates the life of Jesus for those who see the world bathed both in Good Friday shadows and in Easter light.

Alan Lewis did not live to complete his magnum opus. while he was writing it, he was stricken with the cancer that took his middle-aged life. In other words, he was facing Holy Saturday as he worked on his project As mortal, we all face Holy Saturday. In our time we have shown an aversion to facing the dead body and the reality of the grave.The gospel accounts go to great lengths to have Jesus buried, not left for the dogs and vultures on the cross or at its foot. People took the time to care for the body, mangled and bloody. Is it an accident that the resurrection appearances are placed for the women who went to care for and honor the slain Jesus? I have been reading pieces of Thomas Long and thomas Lynch, The Good Funeral. In terms of our reflection here, they wonder if our attempt to skip Holy Saturday moments provide a sufficient attitude of care toward the disposition of remains to their final resting place.

Resting place is a lovely phrase.Recall that a rush to bury jesus occurred as the Sabbath was approaching. In that day of utter rest, jesus lay in the grave. The Sabbath is our reminder that the world goes on without us needing to life a finger. Even in the darkness of the grave, God does not rest, but is present with us as the light of love, no matter what.

Holy Week OT Readings

I always forget that the lectionary switches to Acts in Easter season.Nonetheless, we do have Is.25 for Easter evening readings. We have a number of Psalms for this great week, and of course, a vast panoply of salvation history readings in the Holy Saturday vigil.

Is. 25:6-9 is referenced in Rev. 7 and 21. We are in an apocalyptic section of the book, and I am not sold on dating chs.24-7.If one wishes to touch on the powerful image of Death's power being defeated at Easter, this is a fine passage to capture its mythic dimensions.

Death is usually portrayed as swallowing up life, so I love the reversal here.

Where does a shroud lie over us now within the culture of death as John Paul II put it?

How does Easter reflect this wonderful banquet. I love the old image of fat things for those of us raised that fat was always hazardous, thereby depriving ourselves of wondrous food.

Work with the image of God wiping away tears from our eyes. Notice that it does not eliminate the cause of tears, perhaps especially in memory. Wiping away tears usually stops them though. How can Easter serve to wipe away tears?

In a time when formal worship is derided, note where this scene takes place.

Palm Sunday and Baptism service 2014 Notes

Palm Sunday baptism-Col. 2, 3. Mt. 21:1-11

Pre-check at the airport and TSA as if to say right this way. it’s like hearing one shining moment as the winners of the NCAA basketball tournament.. In Matthew children are present for the festive gathering, as in the hymn Hosanna, Loud hosanna.

Baptism is a ritual death.the ultimacy of sin is broken in the face of the ultimacy of life and love.

Jesus lived died and rose for all of us, including children.this sacrament opens the door for them to share in the reality of Jesus Christ in their own lives, to share in the body and blood in Communion.Water poured out of his side on Good Friday according to John.  Waters of the Jordan were visible only in tears and sweat later this week.

Twins in Bible-made twins with Jesus. We get animals twinned as well in Matthew, and it fits so well, perhaps a nursing mother animal and its colt.

Zechariah’s Prince of Peace-Hosanna’s double sense of celebration and root meaning to save us/give victory. So does it shares sounds  with Messiah? So the Messiah is not only anointed one but saving one.

A movie Noah is number one at the box office. this baptismal font is eight sided to remind us of Noah and his family being saved in the ark. the church is seen then as a mark of salvation,l a ship to keep us safe until we reach the farthest shore.They will be welcome aboard this ship of grace for the times when life feels like a cruise and when it goes through stormy weather.

Baptism points also to be raised to new life with Christ here and now in this ritual for this world and the world to come. that is why the baptismal font is oriented to the East.The early church often tried to have candidates for entry into the church be baptized on Easter itself.

Recently we had a discussion here on original sin, the traditional pessimistic view of human nature. We spent time speaking about choice as the ultimate human attribute. Baptism of infants stands against that egotistical argument. Baptism gives us a way out of that pessimistic view of life. they are part of a community that can shout Hosanna. They have dual citizenship as Americans and as members fo the commonwealth of heaven.So oftne, people accuse folks in churhc of being hypoicrites. Instead, we see ourselves as a hospital for sinners, not a zoo for the good. Here’s a different way: Baptism’s basic root is cleaning : the church as laundromat, a a cleaners.

Holy Week begins today. Today marks the beginning of a holy years for Alice and Wyatt.In some accounts of this day cloaks were laid before Jesus as a royal gesture. This morning heaven itself rolls out the red carpet for Wyatt and Alice.How I pray that they will live in a more peaceful world, the kind presaged by arriving as a Prince of Peace/ Not only that, i wish them inner peace.

Sometimes we call the church to be a parent. It is a place for the birth and care of souls.This is their second visit to a maternity ward. Here they are  brought into a place that may offer medicine even cure for sin sick souls.Palm branches are a sign of victory and honor. They were on the first temple and Revelation uses them as an images of victory as well.I like to imagine that their ancestors gather in heaven now, bragging on their great great great grandchildren.Just look at them. They are part of a worldwide family now, i always held in the embrace of God.

April 13 Week Devotional thoughts

Sunday-Ps 118 is the psalm of Holy Week, so it keeps reappearing in the liturgies of the week. It fits well some of the events and response to it that it makes sense why the church seized on it as a lens for the week.This could well have been one of the pslams that Jesus sang with the disciples before going to the Garden to pray.So not only did the psalter give us a lens to read Jesus, ti could well be that the psalms formed the very template for the narrative aobut Jesus as well.

Monday-Tradition says that Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) wrote this touching hymn after visiting a dying friend, an experience that would have given a face to our need for God's presence. Lyte himself suffered from asthma and tuberculosis. His own longing for the presence of God, no doubt, added to the depth of his empathy. Who hasn't felt lonely, isolated, and in need of the near presence of Jesus? Haven't we all prayed, "Abide with me?" From God Pause

Tuesday-Unfortunately, we have the natural instinct to fix pain, to control it, or even, foolishly, to try to understand it. The ego always insists on understanding. That’s why Jesus praises a certain quality even more than love, and he calls it faith. It is the ability to stand in liminal space, to stand on the threshold, to hold the contraries, until you move to a deeper level where it all eventually makes sense in the great scheme of God and grace. (Richard Rohr)

Wednesday-"God of forever...The days of youth were filled with dreams and ideals when both body and spirit seemed invincible. Yet now, O God, for some and soon for everyone, invincibility fades and we grow weary.The days of adulthood move at breakneck speed as we move headlong into the fragile. Yet it is now, O God, in this glad day, when we have come to pray for the sweet gift of those things which remain:(James Lowry)

Maundy Thursday into each of our lives Jesus comes as the bread of life...to be eaten, to be consumed by us. Then He comes as the hungry one, the other, hoping to be fed with the bread of OUR life, our hearts loving, and our hands serving.(Mother Teresa of Calcutta)

Good Friday- I know that I reject the notion that God’s honor or sense of justice required the death of Jesus as some sort of propitiation to the divine. I am not nearly so good at making sense of Good Friday in a way that I find compelling and clear.For years, i have struggled with the theology of the cross (Luther, and in our time DJ Hall and Moltmann).Is it possible that we find God in the midst of a time when a practical atheism is in view? Do we see God’s nature more clearly in times of suffering than in times of triumph?

Holy Saturday-Every year, I try to read some of Alan Lewis’s book on Holy Saturday.”Can it be in the broken godforsaken of Jesus...he is showing us the fullest, deepest truth about his Father's nature also?” -(Between Cross and Resurrection, p.122) Lewis reads Holy saturday as a critical time where the credal dead and buried is taken to its depth. god in Christ was not only “incarnate but interred.” Nothing makes Easter more potent than reflecting on that awful reality to claim the fullness of Easter. Even in the grace, we can find God, or rather, god finds us.

Column draft for April 11

We had a very good Bible study this week with a focus on everyone’s first choice in Biblical reading, Habakkuk 1. We barely go through the first few verses, where the prophet cries with the Psalmist, how long.

We heard the usual defense of unanswered prayer: “sometimes God says no.” David Marshall, a retired pastor, wanted the talk to be more candid. He shared his struggle with unanswered prayer, especially in terms of illness when he visited hospital rooms. It reminded me of a new work by Frederick Schmidt, The Dave Test, where he writes of his physician-brother’s death to cancer recently. So much of what we say may bolster us during hard times, but I find it difficult to grasp how helpful it could be in times of trouble. Prayer is not magic. Positive thoughts are not magic. Still, prayer is perhaps one of the few times we pull yourself up by your bootstraps types ever admit dependence on a force greater than our own willpower.

A lot of a pastor's time is spent in hospital rooms, praying for healing. First, it brings up the issue of direct divine intervention in illness. given that we know so much, we often reserve to the divine only those inexplicable, surprising rises from illness. By and large, I see large-scale faith healing ministries as a scam worthy of Peter Popoff. Still, even charlatans may witness a healing as the linkage between mind, body, and spirit, are not fully grasped.

When I was stricken with cancer over two years ago, a number of people told me that I should not get surgery or radiation for prostate cancer and should rely on prayer exclusively, along the lines of Christian Science stance upriver at Principia. With karl Barth, i tend to see prayer as part of a protest against the hardships of life. Instead of prayer being a substitute for action, I tend to see it as an attempt to engage our will with the ways of god, to mobilize our resources to seek a partnership with the ways of God.

I see God’s work as often mediated through human action. So, healing may come at time directly, bidden or unbidden, i suppose. With our capacities, we  are co-healing agents with God in matters of all of life, mind, body, heart, spirit.

I do hold that God does not will illness on us. I am not among those who says that god takes our loved ones due to some tossed off statement about needing them in heaven.Even though i  am part of the Calvinist tradition, I cannot see how all things that happen  are discretely planned and acted upon by God. The answer to job in chs.38-41 show that god has both the wild and the tame, the planned and the random events as part of the divine order.

At the same time, prayer strikes me as a valuable support in times of trouble. I recall a minister who was stricken with the plague of cancer for the third time. this bout would be his last. He told me that some  days he did not have the strength to move from bed in the morning. Then, he said it was as if all of the prayers coalesced about him and he felt almost lifted up out of bed to try to embrace another day.

I am not one who sees suffering as an instrument of getting the tough going. i have seen too many instances of suffering’s destructive powers to the psyche and soul. As we move into Holy Week, i am comforted by the fullness of the personal grasp of suffering in the life of Jesus. There, in unanswered prayers as at Gethsemane, we are still accompanied by the One who cna comfort and lift us up.

OT Notes Zech 9:

I have posted previously, I believe, on Ps. 118 and may get to Ps. 31, but I decided at this late date to write up some notes on Zech. 9 as it fits the Palm Sunday reading.

First, I would think it useful to see that Zechariah is part of a new and different section of the book. Yes, it does have some linkages to the first chapters, but it does seem to be from a separate set of hands. At any rate, we have a classic use of this Scripture in the hands of gospel writers, os an intertextual field is being established for us on Palm Sunday.

Second, the quoted passage from v. 9 is a response to other v nations getting blasted by the re-emergence of the warrior God. So, one could easily read the peace portion as a military victory parade that announces peace due to the subjugation of the neighbors of the nation. Put differently, i hear the restoration of the armies of the heavenly host being aroused so that Israel would not need to rely on its weaponry and size of army as in the days of Joshua.

Third, the animal mentioned is a symbol of peace. For those who wonder if Matthew was being a bit literal in his description in his account with two animals, I think  it is Crossan who has made the suggestion that it is taken to be a nursing adult female and her colt to further the peace imagery.

Fourth, some folks say that God lays some message  on their heart. Here the oracle is a burden tha t is placed on the prophet in  a perhaps similar way.

Fifth, could one see political danger in the Palm sundya acclamation if they knew the text being quoted in Zech? After all, this is an expansive area being considered, no? Yes humble is there but so is triumphant, victorious as a king.

Sixth what do you think the divine command of peace would look like in 2014? Also, the word translated as peace, shalom, has a wide range including well-being, prosperity/abundance, and health.

Sermon Notes on John 11 and Ezekiel 37

these are more scattered than usual, as I hit the wrong button and had to resotre an earlier version to even be able ot recover this.

April 6-Ezekiel 37, John 11

Some days everything seems gray, or meh as some folks say: no color, no freshness, no life. On thursday, i heard good morning, but then again what’s good about it. Le Weekend is an OK movie about a middled aged couple trying to bring some life into a lifeless marriage after 30 years.

In Ezekiel the spirit is alive in a place of death. Verse 11 is a description of desolation, dry bones, lost hope,cut off. A cemetery, a battlefield is now the birthing room of a new vision. Life is knit together again.Part of the change comes from speech, so the word makes flesh here. so, the old spiritual, Dem Bones would be apt.Part of the hope here then is connection. that reminds me. Hope is not the same as optimism that looks for the good and expects it. in spite of the facts at hand, hope looks toward better days.

Both Mary and Martha say the exact thing to Jesus. Did Jesus weep as he looked his own tomb in the eye? Could Jesus have dawdled to give himself time to collect himself, and his powers? Or perhaps, Jesus lives in a sort of unhurried zone of serenity and calm. God’s timing hardly seems impeccable in either place-At first Lazarus, God helps does not receive that help in time. Mary lives out her name. Martha too as the mistress of the house/the lady.

All of this talk of life, eternal life seems to ride along the boundary between the physical and the spiritual myself to be so encumbered by cares, have I paralyzed myself to be not much more alive than Lazarus in the tomb.Grave clothes are swaddling cloths for Lazarus-in life they are too constricting, a sort of straitjacket. Raised Lazarus is still bound up tightly by the strips of burial cloth until he is released by others.3)Notice that the image puts flesh on the bones. This is no airy spirituality, is it? Raised from the dead to die again-It just hit me that in none of the raising from the dead accounts are we treated to accounts of the death or near death experience pre or post mortem.

How did Lazarus live out the rest of his life? At first did he notice every sense, every act as if it were fresh and new? Percolating just beneath the veneer of awareness is the great fear that we are living dying lives or a living death.Have I allowed too much time to slip away in a sort of hazy daze? Ps 130 out of the depths but the grave is silent , no? For a moment let’s see the phrase as talking about the deep dark moments and situations we face. It is living a partial life to keep skimming about on the surface. Rom. 8:11 quote here.

I find these 2  accounts ot be visualizing masterpieces. with our experience with the visual, may I suggest that you imagine yourself as the director of making movies out of these passages? Where would you like the fresh breeze of the spirit to blow through your congregation and your own life. Some people go to church and the only way they find life if the music is loud and vaguely familiar to radio songs.Church growth groups are constantly asking about  how to bring life, energy, dynamism to worship.forgive me if I am being too direct at this point. Every baptized Christian has been given the gift of the spirit of new life. Every Christian church is touched in some way by the spirit of God toward new life. Can the dry bones of an older well established church be reconfigured? Yes? Can the dying moments of a life be put to death and new sparks of vitality be constantly ignited? Yes.Spirit of life for individuals or groups is the ultimate force

Week of April 6 Devotional Thoughts

Sunday-Ps.130"Out of the depths I cry unto you," goes far deeper into life's sorrows than a bout with the blues or a depressed feeling. For many folks, the pit is so deep and dark that they can't climb out. Those feelings of deep sorrow, grief, or profound sadness will assail all of us at one time or another. Maybe that's why the author of this psalm doesn't ask for anything beyond God's attention. The writer doesn't know what to ask for, or how to imagine anything besides the present depths and darkness. That's a despair that can surround us and pull us down, and trap us in a "Slough of Despond" as described in Pilgrims Progress, a classic image of hopelessness. (Wendell Debner)

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Monday-If we don't find ways and time to ponder who God is and what God wants and works for, perhaps our God is too small. Maybe we have latched on to only one little word or event which now has become insufficient for understanding what God is about in our world. Perhaps we, too, need the light, so we can see and be seen and discover God's size. We might begin by reading aloud the four verses of this hymn, "God Whose Almighty Word." from Luther Seminary’s God Pause

Tuesday“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.”---Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Wednesday-I just noticed that the supreme court struck down more campaign finance regulations. The approach is based on the expression, “money talks.” when does money speak loudly in your relationships? when is it reduced to a whisper? Should money equal voice? should money be power? When does money acquire symbolic importance for you?

Thursday-”I cannot do this alone O God. Early in the morning I cry to you. Help me to pray.  (Bonhoeffer) When do you feel most alone? Why do you think he has the phrase about early in the morning? Where do you need the most help in prayer?

Friday-”We have been created as embodied persons, claimed by the promise of baptism, and focused on the Spirit, who redeems us and guides us to all that is good and true. That's what it's like to be "in the Spirit" and have God dwell within us.” Wendell Debner form God Pause

Saturday-”Who should we accept, embrace, love? Everyone God does…‏”(From Prism) that is difficult in the real world instead of in airy abstraction, isn’t it? In some ways it is easier to love humanity than individual people.What groups of people do you find it easiest to exclude from the ambit of love? Why is that do you think? Whom t do you want to make sure is embraced within the orbit of love?

Column notes on Choice

Every month or so, a group of Riverbend clergy get together to talk through an article from Theology Today or Interpretation to help keep us up with development in  religious studies. I realize that many would consider this Hell on earth, so let’s just call it a Lenten spiritual discipline that goes throughout the year. This week, we talked about the hoary doctrine of original sin. Some call it a pessimistic, but I would call it a realistic assessment of human nature.

It hit me with special force that the Reformed and Lutheran traditions are far removed from American culture on this matter. Americans believe fervently in choice as the very essence of freedom in human life. In matters of faith newer churches speak of choosing Christ, making a decision for Christ, but older churches speak of being chosen by God, not choosing God. One of the reasons that older established churches are declining is that we live in a culture that so cherishes the democratic ideal of choice and free will that we are not heard clearly. After all, Luther spoke not of free will but of the bondage of the will.

David Marshall, a member of our group, spoke of us being born in a milieu of evil. All of us are not only born with conflicting impulses, we are placed in a world that does not operate the way God intends. Instead of seeing sin as only individual wrongs or bad choices, the tradition asserts that it is as if we are addicted to sin because we live enmeshed in a world of wrong. !2 step programs betray a religious sensibility when they realize that willpower usually fails in terms of converting from addiction. Instead, only when one realizes that they are indeed captured by a power greater than will  power do they start on the road to healing.

We have the privilege of the sacrament of Baptism to two infants soon here at first, Presbyterian, Alton. It is a great antidote to egoist Christianity. A baby does not choose to be enrolled into the household of God. The child is made a citizen of the commonwealth of heaven just as we are born citizens of our country, without choice on our part. who chooses to be born, after all? It is about becoming part of a community on its way than a ticket to heaven in the world to come.

At this time of year, we get a fuller sense of its salvific purpose as Paul sees it in Romans 6. Baptism is a ritual dying and rising with Christ. We have our backs to the direction of the setting sun, the old self. The old self, its shame and guilt, needs to be buried. We face the rising sun of Easter life, to be able to embody that we are people of a new dawn, a new way. We don't have to wait for heaven to appropriate the gift, the sheer grace, of that new life.

Certainly our culture has evolved more quickly than we can expect our physical being to change. It does not seem that we have understood, let alone, been able to alter the mélange of impulses that stir beneath us and move us to action or inaction. To change from within, ti appears we still need a hand from above to help us out of the mire, even as we ascend newer and greater technical heights. We will not save ourselves. Every advance will hold within it the potential for harm. Tragedy will continue to haunt us. As Easter approaches, God continues to offer us not only embrace but  a way toward a new d

OT Notes Ezekiel 37

One of our members keeps reminding me that we do not work with the Spirit nearly enough in church.
Here we have a good etymological point as wind/breeze/breath is the word for spirit as well, rua(c)h here.

I realize that this passage has been beaten to death to speak about church revitalization.

Speaking/delivering prophecy to the four winds is not to be missed. Just as the recent PBS show on Jews indicated, this is a faith of the word, spoken and read.

Not only do the bones need to be revivified but they need to be connected-
I am reminded of the scene in Lord of the rings when the army of the dead appears to make atonement for their previous cowardice in life.

We tend to see the vision in terms of the individuals being restored. Yet, does it not lean more t9oward a corporate restoration. One of the many loathsome things I found in the bush administration's Iraq policy was its refusal to have the coffins that landed in our country be televised. The wanted to present a vision of a sanitized war.

This is a visual masterpiece. Please consider highlighting that-take the listener to Gettysburg or the windswept Normandy beaches, or the local cemetery.

Ezekiel does not answer if he thinks the bleached bones can live, does he?

cut off can refer to being under the sway of death.

Is this not a replay of the creation of humanity in Gen.2? Doe we require both tthe breath and spirt of life?
One could do well to play around with wind/breeze/breath/Spirit in working with theis passage in a sermon.