Ps. 139:1-6, 13-18 see
Miller- Interpreting the Psalms- see a good Barth quote at149.- Mays
in the Interpretation series, Limburg in WBC, McCann in NIB among
others in this wonderful period of psalm study.

This reminds me of the
Runaway Bunny, or the story of the nut-brown hare and his father, we
can run but not hide from God.

God is so close, knows
us so well. Here omniscience is more the depth of God’s
knowledge, its sheer totality and fullness of knowing what we don’t,
can’t even know about ourselves.

Are we surrounded by
God’s presence or hemmed in, trapped? I see it in a sense of
being bounded by God, so that the space created is within God’s
frame. As Joe Louis said, you can run but you can’t hide.

When has you been
touched by the hand of god?

v. 13-18-If this is
metaphysical language; they are not ontic categories, impersonal
abstractions. ‘This is a relational metaphysic, a very personal
mode of knowing and being known.

It sees God’s
hand present at the knitting together in the womb. Perhaps the
calling is made there as well at times. Inward being has a sense of
the seat of conscience, of wisdom.

The Purpose-driven Life
and Church are popular works. Here, it seems that we are part of
God’s grand design.

Ps. 139:1-6, 13-18 see
Miller- Interpreting the Psalms- see a good Barth quote at149.- Mays
in the Interpretation series, Limburg in WBC, McCann in NIB among
others in this wonderful period of psalm study.

This reminds me of the
Runaway Bunny, or the story of the nut-brown hare and his father, we
can run but not hide from God.

God is so close, knows
us so well. Here omniscience is more the depth of God’s
knowledge, its sheer totality and fullness of knowing what we don’t,
can’t even know about ourselves.

Are we surrounded by
God’s presence or hemmed in, trapped? I see it in a sense of
being bounded by God, so that the space created is within God’s
frame. As Joe Louis said, you can run but you can’t hide.

When has you been
touched by the hand of god?

v. 13-18-If this is
metaphysical language; they are not ontic categories, impersonal
abstractions. ‘This is a relational metaphysic, a very personal
mode of knowing and being known.

It sees God’s
hand present at the knitting together in the womb. Perhaps the
calling is made there as well at times. Inward being has a sense of
the seat of conscience, of wisdom.

The Purpose-driven Life
and Church are popular works. Here, it seems that we are part of
God’s grand design.

I Samuel 3 notes

Eli (my God) is a priest. (Is it significant that his name could be a short form of Elisha or Elijah?

Eli’s sons were desecrating their role as priests. His pleas for them to repent found deaf ears. God saw what they did. When Samuel is called, Eli is asleep/deaf and asleep/blind

This is a priest who does not hear God. He is a Good enough priest that he recognizes the calling of another. He knows enough to give Samuel the ritual response to the call of God. See the novel, Diary of a Country Priest.

Comic elements are here for those who are good at deklivering humor. The repetition of poor sleeping eli being awakened is classic.

Samuel-God hears, as his name was the answer to his mother’s desperate prayer for a child. Remember that Eli thought she was drunk in saying her prayers. Even then, he was spiritually deaf.

Samuel is young when called by God.. His mother consecrated him to serve God’s tabernacle. Every year, she made him a new robe.

We are told that visions were rare in those days? Are they today? Why or why not?

The lectionary appends vv.10-20. it is the awful realization of the curse placed on eli’s sons. How do you deal with the seeming vindictive work here?

Samuel is called by God. Have you detected God’s call? How old were you? When and where did it come? Do callings shift with time? How does one do that? How can be hearing other voices? How do you test competing spirits?

The lamp still burns. The presence of God lights the tabernacle. I assume tha the lamp refers to the lamps of Ex. 27 that burns with pure oil at night. God’s presence does nto depend on time.

Sermon Gen. 1:1-5, Acts 19:1-7

At the beginning of the year, we have readings on beginnings, creation and baptism. I have little patience with insisting that this first creation account is the only Biblical view, and that it is a scientific account. It is presented as a theological account. It presents a God of order, of planning, of evaluation. It is an account that always pushes toward the web of life. Since we are not given a source of the first light, let us assume that light is the presence of God in the world. In a sense then, creation is sacramental when we see signs of the nature of God within the patterns of nature.

When the Genesis account was written, the future seemed without form and void. Around the same time, Isaiah hears that God did not make a chaos. God turns disorder into order, into something sensible, most importantly, creation points toward life. Genesis chooses the polarity of light and darkness. Chaos is represented by the darkness. As children, we instinctively grasp this, as many of us feared the darkness and made a world of fears from it. We know: light overcomes darkness.

Within the immensity of God’s creation, Christians like to argue about a truly trivial point. In what mode should baptism be performed? Our Book of Order solves the issue nicely by saying: any mode of water baptism is proper as long as it is approved by session. Baptism is the sacrament of new beginnings, new creation for Christians. Baptism in the Spirit presents issues of mode and source. We link the Spirit and the act of baptism together through Jesus Christ. We may present a candle to the baptized as a sign that Christ, the light of the world, is present in their life. Baptism takes the chaos of human nature and points it to a direction. It transforms a basic element of creation, to signify new birth, a new community. Baptism is a sign of God’s continuing work with creation. Out of the billions of years of creation, God works with the blip on the screen, the time human beings have been on this planet. Out of those billions of years, God works in a new way for the less than two thousand years in this way for us. It points us to the Christ who “will fulfill God’s purpose in God’s promised future.” When some of the old troubles persist into the new year, we get resentful. God’s new work in creation and in baptism signals that the past does not have to be a chain. We are always being released into a new future.

Once again, God evaluates us and God sees that it is good. As God said at the baptism of Jesus, this is my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased. Once again, God distinguishes one form of life from another: Christian life or not. Christian baptism is a new year’s, new life resolution that lasts a lifetime. Listen to the baptismal promises again. We profess faith in Jesus Christ. We renounce evil. We rely on the grace of God. We promise to be an active part of the life of Christ’s church together. God is faithful to us. We remember and strengthen our vows on occasion. God marks us all with the sign of baptism, so we are all marked for service to God and each other. When we feel the need to turn a new leaf, the waters of baptism live. In creation and in baptism, it is God who makes the first move toward us in love. The creation gives us glimpses of God. Jesus Christ helps us to see God more clearly and fully. In this new year, we can try to keep God in better focus than in the past. We can try to keep our eyes open to God’s hand with the attention we pay to the moves of the coaches during the playoff games. We live between two creations, nature and baptism. In 2009 , let’s live in both fully.

We are in that limbo
period after Christmas. Now that pictures of Father Time are around,
that put me in a mood to consider that most powerful force. John
Lennon saw it as the way we measure our dreams.

One of our fancier word
bases for time, chronology comes from Chronos, a primordial Greek
god. Time wrapped around the world in a serpentine way. One of his
children, Zeus would replace him and become king of the gods. In
other words, time was wrapped around the world.

January’s name
comes from the Roman god, Janus, who had two faces, one looking back
and the other looking forward. It was used at entryways, so it became
a good choice to enter the New Year. We look back at the year past,
tinged with a sense of blessing and regret, and look forward to the
new year, tinged with a touch of foreboding and anticipation.

The new movie, Benjamin
Button, is about reversal of time, when a child looks old and becomes
more youthful in time. In this instance, Father Time looks to be Brad
Pitt in his middle years. We often hear people say that they would
love to be in their teens but knowing what they do in their middle
years. It wonders aloud why time seems to conspire to draw us
together or to pull us apart. Even as he grows physically younger,
Benjamin worries about the transience of life, and what to hold on
to.

For Christians,
Christmas marks the entry of the eternal God into the transient world
of our mortal life and times. God is involved in our futures, but God
has us working to mold our futures. Called to be good and faithful
custodians of this world, we are asked by God to handle time with
care. Most o us first think of wasting time, but I think our issue
with time points in another direction.

Time pressures seem to
dog us, new year or old. It’s not merely a matter of
organization, but of trying to jam so much activity into limited time
that time feels like a weight constantly hanging over us. Watching a
great football game, we find that time does fly. Listening to a
sermon may well convince us that all the clocks in the world have
stopped. The clock moves inexorably, but time feels relative to our
interest and engagement. Our filling every available moment is a form
of denial of the transience of time and our limited time here.
Multitasking is a sign of refusing to pay attention to something
worth our precious time.

Perhaps a valuable New
Year’s resolution would be to take some careful looks at how we
squander or overuse our time. Where do we spend more time than we
should, say in watching the 4^th quarter of a meaningless
game? Where do our spoken time priorities fall away, say in playing
with our young children or paying special attention to our spouse?
Quality time is a good use of our life, but we could look at all the
areas where we do not spend quality time. In that sense, think of
prayer time’s miracle. The eternal God of time is always
willing to take time, to spend time with us. For a while, our souls
are brought together to tha tplace where time has no end.

Sermon Jan 4-Psalm 72, Mt. 2:1-11, Jer. 31:7-14, Is. 60:1-6

Our readings take us into the biblical territory where the Magi became kings. This is where they acquire the ethnicity that many manger scenes carry, and where the camels appear. The early church saw these passages as shedding light on Matthew’s story. The selections are handy insights into the movement from Magi to kings. The gifts and the mention of camels coalesce into our crèche set visions of the Magi. We build on one bible account and let other parts fill in some of the picture for us, to further enlighten us.

In the month a new administration and a new Congress come into office, Ps. 72, attributed to Solomon, and its social justice theme is perfectly timed. People have recovered from New Year’s Eve, so. Even for a king, the psalmist imagines that power has to be used in the service of justice. Power over others is mere tyranny. Instead, the psalmist imagines a world of power with justice. Jesus would live out power for the sake of others, always looking to empower others. Is. 60 is a dream of people who have been humiliated, but one day the greats ones will come crawling to them, a kind reversal fantasy. In a time of darkness, light prevails. Here gold and incense would be treasures, the wealth of nations, pouring into Jerusalem. We know that Exodus 30 includes gold and incense as vital aspects of the worship of God, in the tent in the wilderness, in the temple of Solomon, or the rebuilt temple. Jer. 31:7-14 fits that celebration and the coming Super Bowl parties. God promises the words of the hymn of comfort and joy. God promises that sadness will not be the constant companion, but instead, mourning can turn into dancing. Everybody will dance, like everyone joining in the hokey-pokey at weddings.

The Magi themselves were probably counselors to the rich and powerful. It may well have been the transition to the three kings started due to the knowledge early Christians had of these advisors, perhaps with knowledge of the dark side. Our word for magic probably derives from them. Indeed the NIV translates Magi as magicians in Daniel. In the book of Acts, Magi are often opponents of the faith. I’m not sure that they do grasp what they had come to see. They know the star rose in the house of Israel, but they do not know Num. 24:7, the star that had achieved messianic resonance by this time.

The Magi were men of the world, well-educated and wealthy. Worldly wisdom takes us only so far. The star could get them close, but the Scriptures told them to go to Bethlehem, not the palace of Herod. The word for worship in Matthew could also be to pay homage. Without realizing it, in paying homage to the one they thought was a king, they were in a worshipful posture befitting the Christ. Some people think that the magi’s gifts were medicinal in nature. Without realizing it, they were bringing healing agents to the one who would heal bodies and souls.

Sometimes we are guilty of confusing magic and faith. We imagine that the perfect prayer or the right vow will guarantee the result we want, a religious technology, or illusion. God’s light helps us to see things as they are, or more deeply, or peer beneath the surface of things. God is not at our disposal, but God is to be worshipped. Faith is much more a relationship, a trust. God’s trust is so complete that folks who are wandering around in the dark are given stars to guide them, away from their own views and toward a new revelation, a new reality in God.

These passages push us into considerations of biblical intepretation and the nature of the Bible.

 

For the short passage from Genesis, we consider if the bible is a science textbook. We make a decisionabout creation from nothing or is it forming chaotic material?

Is the presence of light without the sun a scientific statment? Is it a theolgoical one, where light denotes the presence of God, apart from any physical issue? Is light a sign that god is making room for creation?

The orderliness of the Priestly material is evident quickly. it opposes chaos, see Is. new creation motif, esp. ch.

It is about making divisions, separations, distinctions.

Bara is the word used for creation. it reapears in Is.41, 65, and Ps.102.

Chaos here is tohu and bohu-formless and empty/void of purpose, meaning, production.

I read the deep as at least resonating with mythical views of the Babylonian creation story that this account fights. It is against the idea of the cosmos emerging from bloody conflict, but from planning.

At the beginning, God evaluates. God sees it as good.

 

Psalm 29 is considered to be ancient, an adaptation of a Canaanite hymn to Baal, a god of weather and fertility.

(see NIB, p. 792)

Its global reach goes to both heavenly beings and to all peoples. One is left to wonder if these are angels, lesser gods, heavenly forces, stars. It osunds like the divine council perhaps of Job or Ps. 89.

My sense of ascribe to to offer what someone is due.

Glory is a tough one too, I tend to use it as a sense of God's holy presence. It has a sense of gravitas, of weight.

Worship here has the sense of bowing before the throne.

Voice is sometimes thunder, another sign of God's presence as in Exodus 19.

I tend toward seeing the waters mythically, as a sign of chaos, anything that opposes God's order.

Amidst all of the storms of life, God remains stable.

This has a rare use of the word flood (mabbul).

The blessing is shalom=peace, well=being, health, harmony.It has a creation/environment push for all of the world, not just the good, not just human beings, but creation.

The reflection question at 793 of the NIB is a good one on seeing creation material reminding us of our limits to power, especially technology or even fully understanding the intricacies of nature.

 

Mays is quoted from 138 of his Psalms Commentary. The linkage to baptism is appopriate. "Christology is not adequate unless is setting in somology is maintained. Teh OT doxology is necessary to the gospel." In other words, the incarnation and work of Jeuss becomes the incarnation of God's glory, work, and goals.