Sermon Notes on Luke 11:1-13

As I started work on this, i was asked by a lady who meditates daily about prayer. “I don’t get it,” she said, “God knows everything anyway, so why bother?” Calvin called prayer “the chief exercise of faith.”We pray the Lord’s Prayer, in its form in Matthew, every week in our liturgy here.. Part of me is glad, as it gets into our very bones, but part of me fears that the words roll off our tongues into some indefinite mental and spiritual ether.So it is a bit of a jolt to read a shorter version, a stripped down verison in Luke this morning

Notice that Jesus both praises God but asks for very real and need physical help. Jesus praises in his holy name but moves quickly to pray  for the coming of God’s kingdom, God’s way, method, practice, will to be visible and clear here and now, in this world. Notice the boldness of the prayer with all of the commands, all of the imperative mood. Luke’s shorter version also has a good mix of the spiritual and the down to earth in the prayer for forgiveness.

I always have a hard time with lead us not into temptation. The same word could be testing or trial. Some read it with an end time flavor of the tribulations of the end. Some read it as please don't lead me into a situation I cannot handle.

The Christian life is framed in the story of the love of neighbor of the good Samaritan and the love of God and neighbor of the prayer. Prayer mobilizes action. It is not a passive substitute for action, but it is a ple for the resources in the world to converge on something beyond our control or capacities.Without prayer, charity work is threatened with burnout. Without prayer, the church is another public service organization.with prayer the church can present itself as the body of christ with hands extended to a hurting situation to help soothe and even heal hurting people.

Luther said we need to pray the Lord’s Prayer because we are only partly seeing the kingdom of God but are fully at home in the realm of the devil.So, we continue to need a divine hand to help us up when we slip or fall.Douglas John Hall writes that we are to be preserved from trials as we are the playthings of all sorts of evil and implicated in evil to an extent far too devastating for our consciences to contemplate apart from the presence of divine compassion.

One of the dangers of our tradition is that we can come to see the only proper prayer as being formal prayer. Look at how quick and informal the version of the Lord’s Prayer is in Luke: it is really a series, a checklist of imperatives directed at God. Place the words of Colissians into prayer practice. do not let anyone or any method get presented to you as the proper, the superior way to Pray: formal and well-crafted prayer, charismatic prayer, meditation. Just as we should not tell somehow how they should communicate with their love, we cannot dare to present one prayer practice as the template for anyone to follow precisely.Don;t let the words aobutthe immense power of prayerduissuade you from praying or worrying that the form or content of your prayer, even the state of our own collective soul is to blame ofr unanswered prayer.Look at the good disposition Jesus imagine with god, not some divine grammarian looking for a slip.(check PTS on LP)

Week of July 28 devotional points

Sunday-I was disappointed to see that we do not have a version of Ps. 85 in our hymnal. who knows;you may be subjected to my clumsy version one day.I have long loved its closing image of righteousness (right relationships) and peace shall kiss. Take some prayer time and think of a similar image you would like to see. If you are an artist or not, how would you make an image that took that verse into material?

Monday-Our youngest turned 21, and it hit me harder than I would have expected. I often say that time takes on a different dimension as a parent. Part of me is excited for her last signal of adulthood, but then I fly back to the afternoon when she was born.I am pretty good 9at least for me) at trying to respect her privacy, but I still worry about her, sometimes more htan when she was under our wing. I wonder if God feels that way at times too?

Tuesday-I have a friend who likes the beginning of Hosea as he knows what at least 2 of the names mean.To me, it is the most striking of the biblical image of infiedlity in a marriage to get at the feeling of hurt and betrayal for God in  witnessing our sin. Idolatry, substituting something or someone for God, is that sort of affront.what sins in our time hrut the heart of God, do you think?

Wednesday-I had a doctor’s appointment in Florissant. I get a kick out of the French background and the mangled way we pronounce so many of the remaining french place names. I t is still difficult for me to pronounce Creve Coeur.I would assume it means broken heart or exhausted heart or even empty heart. what would possess someone to name a place with that name? How have you coped with creve coeur in your own life? Are some heartbreaks marked as places within your own life?

Thursday-August 1-recently the choir went to an old hotel in Brussels to have a home-style banquet.Susie says it is like going back in time to grandma’s, as the meal seems to be redolent of old-line farm cooking. I was glad that a French exchange student got to partake of classic rural american food, so she doesn't see us all as fast-food addicts. Rural cooking used local products often, but to me the key feature is that they took time to prepare: slow food as some call it.

Friday from Frederick Beuchner’s writings:”Who knows what (God)  will say to me today or to you today or into the midst of what kind of unlikely moment he will choose to say it. Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery as every day is a holy mystery. But I believe that there are some things that by and large God is always saying to each of us. Each of us, for instance, carries around inside himself, I believe, a certain emptiness—a sense that something is missing, a restlessness, the deep feeling that somehow all is not “right inside his skin.

Saturday-Summer vacations are open, before school starts later this month. I always think of Jonah going off to the promise of tarshish (probably in Spain) as his attempt to get away from it all. Where would you like ot go to get away from it all? Is heaven a christian version of Tarshish in our time? Can you go somewhere locally to get away form it all/ is there a memory, a dream to which you repair?

OT Notes Hos. 11:1-11

1) God is a confused, heartbroken parent here. the image is touching, but dangerous, as the punishment being meted out could be an excuse for abuse in the wrong hands.

2)Matthew uses the first verse to buttress the flight to Egypt and the return for Jesus.

3)Here instead of betrayal of infidelity by a spouse the image is more of a rebellion or stubborn refusal to honor the parent.Which image, parent or spouse, do you find more religiously helpful?

4)_Ephraim was a child of Joseph and had some of the choice land in Israel.

5) How could they not know they were healed?

6) What are some tender memories of your growing chidlrne do you treasure?

7)What do you think are good ways to deal with wayward children?

8) what is dangerous in imagining an adult community to be hcildren?

9)How does God lead with cords of human, not divine, kindness? What bands of love do you notice that the church employs in our time?

10)How does the end of v. 4 affect your image of god?

11) Admah and ?Zeboiim were cities destroyed with Sodom (Dt. 29:23)  Look at how God resists the impulse to destroy. Recall comparison could be translated as motherly love as it is connected to the word for womb. In a way God is being tempted y the specter of vindictive punishment here. In English compassion is to suffer with, to feel with. How do you regard feelings toward within the divine?

12) Work with the phrase that God is god (a la Barth) and no mere mortal.

13) Does the locution Holy One work for you or not?

OT Notes Hosea 1

1) Hosea's name is salvation or is related to salvation or deliverance. The names, the names. Jezreel is a place name and means God sows/will sow. The site itself threatens bloodshed. It was the site of Jehu's (I Kings 19) and 2 Kings 9-10    Hosea clearly means it in the sense of sowing trouble.
 Lo-ruhamah=no compassion, not pitied, an lo-ammi, not my people. the last two names read like the prohibitions in the !0 Commandments-not kill, etc.

2) I find it hard to believe that this is enacted prophecy but a way of getting at divine feelings.God's covenant with Israel, as a people, would be similar to our feelings for a spouse. When the people are enticed by idolatry, it feels in its way to a spouse's unfaithfulness in the sense of betrayal, confusion.I was surprised in doing some research that many commentators take the account as literal event. If it did actually happen what doe sit say about the utter identification of a prophet wiht both the triumphs and sins of a people?

3) Look at the power of v. 10 then, in the midst of this threat.for that matter v. 7 has hope in it as well, but in a surprising direction that moves away from God as warrior.Jezreel does not only point backward but forward as well, as one looks at the end of the chapter.

4) One could go a good way with the pwoer of names in this passage and in our lives. How many Myrtles do you meet today?

5) How do we speak of receiving the word fo the Lord today?

6) Can we speak of infidelity in hookup culture?

Devotional Pts for Week of July 21

Sunday-Ps. 52 did not leap up at me. It seems to be a lament directed at a tyrant, or an evil powerful person. Where do you feel moved to pray such words in 2013?  How true it is that evil does love falsehood, every harmful word and deceit. One of the reasons evil persists is that people enjoy it and receive benefits from it. On the other hand, the psalmist is certain that such power will not last, and that we flourish in the house of God, for God’s love is unfailing.

Monday-(from Ira Kent Groff) “Try framing your procrastination as prayers. Turn to God in all things--even in my procrastinations. I glance at daily to-do lists; I experience human feelings of frustration. Finally, when you do make the phone call, send the e-mail, or write the check, you've wrapped the action in a web of prayers. With a slight inner shift of the sail, you are "turning to God in all things"--praying your procrastinations.”

Tuesday-A therapist recently told me that the nature of his understanding of the enterprise is essentially religious: he wishes to help the client arrive at some different perspectives on the issue that brings them to a therapist. For me, we find common cause with religious faith as it offers up images and understandings to helpus see ourselves and our neighbor and yes, God, in a new or deeper light.

Wednesday-I am trying to decide if I am going to hang up a yard sale print in the office or home. Why do certain pictures pull us in, but we can go past 100 similar ones? What pulls us in with religious thoughts and images, but others leave us cold? What sort of religious themes do you find attractive or that tend to drive you away? Do certain pictures throw you into a different mood?

Thursday-From Frederick Buechner Two apple branches struck against each other with the limber clack of wood on wood. That was all—a tick-tock rattle of branches—but then a fierce lurch of excitement at what was only daybreak, only the smell of summer coming, only starting back again for home, but oh Jesus, he thought, with a great lump in his throat and a crazy grin, it was an agony of gladness and beauty falling wild and soft like rain. Just clack-clack, but praise him, he thought. Praise him. Maybe all his journeying, he thought, had been only to bring him here to hear two branches hit each other twice like that, to see nothing cross the threshold but to see the threshold, to hear the dry clack-clack of the world's tongue at the approach perhaps of splendor.

Friday-Again this year, our garden has a number of crops coming up that we did not plant. Since the soul can be compared ot a garden, I thought of times when something good appeared that was not planned but seems a lucky addition o to the abundance of grace. Sometimes, that sort of pleasant surprise is better than something that emerges from thought and planning. Where do you most prize the spontaneous in your life?

Saturday-As I am preparing this, we are in the midst of a heat wave. Few things feel more soothing than a heat wave being broken with some blessed coolness. What helps you toward a cooling off period when angry or frustrated? When have you enjoyed the experience of a family crisis breaking, and the wonderful sense of normality returns?  

Notes on Mary and Martha Lk.10:38-42

I was searching for my copy of Luke Timothy Johnson’s commentary on Luke. In it, he remarks that Luke has the capacity to unearth depths of human psychology in a few bold strokes. Such has been my experience with the story of Mary and Martha in Lk. 10”38-42.This little story is a miracle of concision. With almost no information, we feel as if we know the characters in this family. It always amazes me how easily we place Martha and Mary into familiar types and can read into them quite easily. It is also instructive with whom we tend to identify. Do you tend to align ourselves with Mary or with Martha?

I do not think it an accident that Luke places it between the Good Samaritan story and the Lord’s Prayer. These people are at the cusp of merging spiritual life and everyday physical needs together. At Easter we noted that Thomas is a twin and has a split in his belief system. Here Mary and Martha are two parts of a whole life. Martha is anxious-too tied up with all the work and is putting herself in an uproar, getting herself all flustered and frustrated.

I hear Jesus being tender with Martha when he calls her name twice. He is being kind, as her many tasks are overwhelming her. She’s trying to do too much at one time and  is feeling put upon because she isn’t getting the help she feels she needs. My guess is that as soon as someone helps here she corrects them and drives them out because they don’t fold towels her way. Her frustration creates a relationship tension because she tries to recruit Jesus as an ally against her sister. Jesus will not take the bait, as he wants people to resolve issues themselves without recourse to triangles of pressure.

I still remember that I missed a Bruce Springsteen concert in college as I was writing so many papers that semester. Mary would have figured out a better way. I am always astonished at how those who see hard work as a primary moral quality quickly dismiss her as lazy. She has Jesus in front of her and is not going to miss out on his teachings and sheer presence. I do get a sense that she is a bit oblivious to all of Martha's work. Ethereal spirituality has to be connected to earthly needs in our incarnational religion. At the same time, Martha’s concern with the mundane and its attendant anxiety prevents her from recognizing the gift of Jesus’s presence in her home, for she is blinded by tasks. Her concern for hospitality is getting in the way of her hospitality to the words and presence of Jesus. she is not be a good host for his words to be appreciated, not just the appetizers.

In the great hymn of Colossians 1 we get a sense of Jesus Christ as what helps all the cosmos hold it together. Jesus Christ helps the Mary and Martha in us hold it together and points us to wholeness beyond the ken of either side of us. All of us need both sides to be a complete person. When I do some pre-marital work, I often quote the movie Rocky where he says that the gaps in the two are hat attracts them. Put differently, a good marriage creates a whole relationship where the quirks, strengths, and gaps in individuals of the couple are made whole and respected. A good marriage creates a whole. The soul has two sides, two faces. One face needs to be turned to the practical, and there is God, but the other face needs to be turned to the sublime, the deep quiet; there too we find God.

Column on Beauty

 OK, I admit it; I read a bit in the bathroom. Right now, the book is merely title Beauty by John O’Donohue. At my continuing education program this year, I took a class on the arts and theology. So, lately, I have been playing around with the notion of beauty in life. I appreciate getting this space as it allows me to try to work through some points at the outer edge of my ability to even put my finger on something I take for granted constantly. Beauty seems to apply to a pleasing pattern of elements that create a sense of harmony and completeness. In particular, when can we even use the word in a world where preferences get bandied about like facts? Do we have areas in life where we can agree on the beautiful, or are we consigned to only individual perceptions of beauty? After all, we no longer can agree on the factual, as major public figures continue to deny the best evidence we can muster if it disagrees with their previous position.

With the media age, we see pictures of beautiful people all of the time. I do not get inured to it, but repetition can make even the breathtaking mundane, I suppose. At the same time, we make qualifications, a natural beauty, an enhanced beauty, a face alone or a sculpted body. For models the ideal body type seems to approach a painful thinness and gorgeous women are consigned to the “plus-sized’ model category. the words itself gets thrown around enough that women seem to doubt it when it is applied to them.

Someone asked me recently what I thought about the Alton area. My first response is tha the grinding poverty depresses me. My second response is that I enjoy being able to take in the bluffs upriver and riding my bike along its levee. To clear my head at work, I will walk along the river and take in it changing contours. (In fact, I am drawn to it when I finish this piece and polish my sermon a bit).  What draws me to it? I am always taken by h its sheer width to Missouri. At the same time, its variety catches my eye: its eddies, its surface changes, its shifting colors, even the trees that floated and collected during the floods.

As I write this, we are getting ready to read the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.  I would say that the Samaritan did a beautiful thing. We see the ugliness of violence day after day. Here our eyes are assaulted by the rusting hulks of factories and the decay of once fine public building within shouting distance from the City Hall. The act of the Samaritan is both good and beautiful. it makes actual an aspiration toward compassion. to me, it is a beautiful thing to do as its sequence fits a pattern that makes the compassion whole. The parts of the act fit together toward its enacted good. Just this week, our eldest daughter’s friends acted beautifully in helping her move.

At a spiritual level, I suppose that beauty is an element of the holy itself. I Our youngest turns 21 next Saturday. I recall that she was born in the late afternoon. so the sun struck her body as it emerged from the womb. To be present in the face of a wrinkly, red, squalling infant is a beautiful moment. It was a holy moment, as was the first time I got to hear the whoosh, whoosh of her heartbeat on the early ultrasound device that heralded the presence of a new life forming. This is an appropriate time to close. What are beautiful moments, acts, and sights in your life right now?