Our pulpit at First Presbyterian is being graced by Alan Meyers of Lindenwood this Sunday and the next. So, I don’t have a chance to work up the material for this Sunday’s readings. Many churches employ a lectionary, a selected group of readings from the Old Testament, the Psalms, an epistle, and a gospel reading over a three year cycle. This week we have a fabulous list from which to choose. All of them pose issues of interpretation. Everyone is laughing at the recent howler: alternate facts. Even when we do agree on facts, we may differ in interpretation of them.
On the face of it the beatitudes (from Latin blessed) are jarring. In Greek (makarios) it means either blessed or happy. It seems as if they all open the heart and mind to the presence of God in different ways in the world, but sometimes listed in places where the word does not seem apt. The very first one says Blessed/happy are the poor (ptochos), the destitute, the helpless, the desperate. Why are they blessed? Not due to their poverty, but this point: they are not separated from God; they are full citizens of God’s kingdom, god’s realm in the world. The same applies to those who mourn. They may feel adrift from God, cast out from the presence of God, but Jesus assures his listeners that they will be comforted. I am troubled by the indefinite future, of course: Does it mean now, soon, at some unspecified point? Nonetheless, I hear a clear word of promise and aspiration there.
Few beatitudes cause the confusion are blessed are the meek. One of the troubles of Bible translation is the shifting meaning of words over time. Words have a range of meaning. Praotes (Gk) means tamed, well suited to a task, fitting, or well-balanced, having one’s feet firmly on the ground.
I Cor. 1:18-31 works with the cross. Paul highlights the same jarring aspect of god’s way in the world. By our standards, the cross makes no rational sense as the vehicle of faith. In our time, that would hold no matter one’s theological position. Further, Paul deconstructs the idea of divine power by pointing to its opposite, the cross. Paul maintains that the very instrument of the death of Jesus, of utter powerlessness, is an instrument of divine power, hidden under its opposite as Luther would say.
In both passages, we can hear an echo of the first step in 12 step recovery programs. They point us toward an acknowledgement of the divine intersecting our experience. They point toward a sense of powerlessness to control a life far too deep and rich to be contained within our tight grasp. They all point us to an aching need for the presence of the divine in this life, but also reaching out beyond our limited grasp.
If you wish a good summary statement of the Bible go to Micah 6:8.In our time it speaks to our obsession with the individual preference and inserts the cause of justice. As I have mentioned before, humility is a needed virtue at a time where inflated, yet tender ego parades about seeking constant support for a personal projected damage. Love mercy it says in many translations. The word (hesed) means steadfast love, lovingkindness. Note well, not self-love, not love of a group or an idea, to love with the compassion, with the passion, of love itself.
As we move through the start of a calendar year, this Sunday’s assigned readings give us a starting point, square one for the Christian journey. At the same time, their depth invites reflection, over and over, the very definition of a classic touchstone.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
column on Is. 58
This Sunday, the Old Testament reading in many
churches is Is. 58. Some Christians routinely issue a calumny against ancient
Judaism that assumes that it was a legalistic religion. Here is a parade
example of its falsehood.
The setting is one where God is answering the
complaints of the people. They are wondering why their worship practice seems
to do little good. They do what they are supposed to, but they feel no closer
to God.
God fires back with a remarkable linkage:
worship and justice. Some wish the church to be a place of solace away from
political squabbles. Some go so far as to say that the spiritual should not
intersect with the political. This does not seem to comport with much of the
biblical material. After all, the 10 Commandments have two tablets, one for the
“vertical” relationship with God and the “horizontal” relationship with each
other. Jesus sees love of God and love of neighbor as inextricably bound
together. Some take this and act as if worship is secondary to the doing of
social good, to be the Salvation Army without the Salvation part. NO,
Christians are called to help make the world look like the world presented
within the stained glass of the sanctuary.
Here are words from a generation or so ago:
“examples are profuse in the life of Jesus as to the political dimensions of
the gospel. Consider Herod's attempt to assassinate the child. Or the healing
episodes in which Jesus directly confronts the demonic powers and their effort
to wreck creation and ruin human life... Jesus is tempted by the power of death
incarnate as the devil in explicit political terms. ... Jesus in the wilderness
was tempted, truly tempted, to become idolatrous of the power of death, thereby
rejecting the very Word of God which constituted his being. He transcends and
repels the temptations and thus enunciates his Lordship in this world now. That
politics is, then, verified in his crucifixion. The politics of the gospel are
the politics of the cross." (Stringfellow, The
Politics of Spirituality, p. 44)
Indeed God turns the table on the worship
practice of fasting and instead makes it a program of social aid (6-7):“to
loose the chains of injustice... to set the oppressed free...to share food with
the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter (NIV). In other words, it
is a prequel to the famous sheep and goats parable of Mt. 25 and the source for
the Roman Catholic corporal works of mercy.
It then becomes chilling as it seems to indicate
that the presence of God will become apparent if their social actions change
(v. 9). We rarely think of social sins as blocking our relationship with God.
We rarely feel the need for forgiveness, human or divine, for social sins.
In a time where spirituality is often limited to
the ethereal feelings of an individual, or people of faith are convinced that
faith means following a partisan banner, disengaged from the faith itself,
these are bracing words indeed.
In his new book the New Testament scholar N.T.
Wright sees our basic problem as a steadfast refusal to carry out our mandate
as humans: to see each other as made in the image and likeness of God and to
act like it. IN Isaiah we are called to be repairer of the breach, the restorer
of the streets. That had resonance in the time f Isaiah when the streets of the
once ruined city still needed repair. It has resonance in Alton
Pts. for Feb. 5 Week
Sunday-Ps. 112-This comes close to health and wealth theology at points. I would like to emphasize two points. Fear in v. 1 is probably better put as revere. VV.6-9 speak of the stability of being in right relationship with God and neighbors. Where is your faith most secure?
Monday-Where there is great love there are always miracles. --Willa Cather
Tuesday-“God is already praying in us. Through lectio, we make ourselves available to join this unceasing prayer already happening in our hearts. God is the one who initiates the dialogue. Our practice is to make space to hear this prayer already at work within us.”
.--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD
Wednesday-Gerard Manley Hopkins. By 'inscape' he means the unified complex of qualities which give each thing its own uniqueness. God expresses God's self through fire, earth, wind, and water, and through many other ways as well. In deepening our relationship to the elements we encounter the face of God. We discover unique aspects to how God works in the world."
Thursday-Merton critiques the "irreversibility of evil," the idea that sin only moves from evil to evil, that it is unforgivable, and that those who commit evil acts are beyond hope and sympathy. Such ideas are simply unChristian. The moral world is flat. There is no moral high ground. Even in the midst of doing good, we fail. And often believing we have failed to act righteously, we unconsciously have accomplished good. Only God is in a position to judge. And while God allows us to participate in God's work of justice and peacemaking, God never relinquishes the Judge's bench, and we never achieve the role of chief prosecutor. Inevitably, we stand in the dock beside the accused. At any moment, the accused and we may exchange places; we are all guilty, all in need of grace. Fortunately, God is more eager to forgive than to punish. Michael Jinkins
Friday-W Paul Jones-courage, the only adequate resolution of our primal predicament, is the road less taken. Courage requires a steadfast, honest gaze at the human condition, but we are paralyzed by the thought of doing it alone. Isolated we come into the world; and isolated we will leave. We experience this specter of primal loneliness either as the fear of rejection (the isolation of not belonging) or as the fear of ridicule (the isolation of not measuring up). Either way, this forces us to try to impress or please others.
Saturday- as Rinkitink heard it, "Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders." Above all, never question the truth beyond all understanding and surpassing all other wonders that in the long run nothing, not even the world, not even ourselves, can separate us forever from that last and deepest love that glimmers in our dusk like a pearl, like a face.- Originally published in The Sacred Journey
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Week of Jan. 29 Pts
Sunday-Ps.15 runs through some of the commandments. It is concerned with the use of words at v. 3. How do you use words, in prayer, in self-talk, and to or about others?
Monday-We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tuesday-God speaks to us through our lives, we often too easily say. Something speaks anyway, spells out some sort of godly or godforsaken meaning to us through the alphabet of our years, but often it takes many years and many further spellings out before we start to glimpse, or think we do, a little of what that meaning is. Even then we glimpse it only dimly, like the first trace of dawn on the rim of night, and even then it is a meaning that we cannot fix and be sure of once and for all because it is always incarnate meaning and thus as alive and changing as we are ourselves alive and changing.
Wednesday-The life of each of us is woven of two threads: the thread of inward development, by which our human and spiritual attitudes are gradually formed; and the thread of outward engagement, by which we always find ourselves at the point where the whole sum of the forces of the universe meet together to work in us the effect which God desires. (Adapted from Teilhard de Chardin,The Divine Milieu). How is the ratio of these two threads in your life?
Thursday-When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart. For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost.
Friday-The practice of humility is an invitation to allow others to offer us wisdom, to recognize that we don’t always have the answer ourselves. The root of the word humility is humus, which means “of the earth.” To be humble means to be profoundly earthy and grounded, to remember from where we arise and to where we return.”.--- Christine Valters Paintner
Saturday-Michael Jinkins-Whatever we will do we must do in the shadow of the Fall.
Our moral vision will never be whole.Our intentions and motives inevitably will be mixed.
Our complicity in Sin cannot be erased.We can, however, entrust ourselves to the God whose vision and will are true, and whose mercy is everlasting.
Monday, January 23, 2017
Column on Inaugurations
As I write this, Washington is in a frenzy of preparation for the inauguration of President Trump. Inaugurate goes back to Latin. Omens, augurs were consulted when it was a proper time to install someone into a position of public importance In our time, data is the substitute for omens often. We do not peer into the future well. We are uncertain about assessing risks and rewards.
I am glad that we have formal ceremonies for important public events. I even wish that we had more of them, for congress and the Supreme Court for instance.The military is the great bastion of formal ceremony for public demonstration. Since Johnson. Presidents have not worn formal top hats, and we will notice President Trump’s formal style sense. The White House was overrun after Jackson’s first inaugural. A persistent rumor was that the crowd moved outside only after the punch was taken outside. Police had to be called to control the crowd for Lincoln’s party. Our new president has planned his address to be short. William Henry Harrison spoke without a coat or hat for almost two hours. (He died a month later.)
In so many ways the omens are good. We are not at war.The unemployment rate has fallen as we averted an economic meltdown just eight years ago.The air and water are cleaner. Since 1970 we have a 70 percent decrease in major pollutants. Water considered fishable has increased dramatically in my lifetime, a lifetime that includes the Cuyahoga river catching on fire and Lake erie being declared dead to fishing.Educational attainments have moved to where almost one third of our citizens have completed four years of college. Crime has had an alarming uptick but it is paradise compared to a generation ago.In 2014 murders, in a growing population, were at the number in the late sixties.
Of course dark omens lurk. The new president is saddled with low approval ratings, a trump card in negotiations with Congress Since the oil shock of the seventies, wages have remained relatively stagnant for many of us. Global warming continues at an unnatural pace. Poverty rates for African americans are over double of that of whites.
At least the ancients did not trust themselves to try to peer into the future, so they use incantations and omens. We see the omens we wish to see. Given a wealth of data, we choose to ignore it. Sometimes, we “cherry-pick” data to conform to our own predilections.We may be given a set of facts and interpret them differently. We seem to be in a new stage where we ignore data and make claims without evidence. Public life requires reason along with passion.
Lincoln edited a draft of his first address from Sec. Seward. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Let me close with a prayer. God of all, bless our new president. May he be gifted with health, security, and safety throughout his term. May he discover within himself the virtues required to take on the awful responsibility of this office. May he be given the grace to discern and act upon the public interest.May he receive wise counsel. May peace rest upon our land. May his vision extend to the undiscovered country, the future, and the world we leave our progeny.May he aspire to the very best of our traditions and national identity, and may we grow into our founding promise.
Reflection Pts. week of Jan. 22
January 22-Sunday-Ps. 27 deserves attention over and over. I like how it shifts from different feelings as it goes through its paces.Where does it speak ot you, and where does it not speak to you at this time in life?
Monday-To be ‘whole-hearted’ means to bring our entire selves before God – our intellect, our emotional life, our dreams and intuitions, and our deepest longings. The heart is both active and receptive. The heart listens, but also hears; the heart savors and supplies nourishment to be savored; the heart responds but is also open to the call of others.”
.--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD
Tuesday-"Many of us don't realize that the call to intimacy with God is possible, or that we are good enough or holy enough for God to love us in this personal way. Yet the Scriptures remind us over and over again that God's love is not earned: it is a gift."— from Weaving Faith and Experience"
Wednesday-Out of so much love for the world, God sends his only Son to seek us out and save us. In English the verbs to save, to salvage, to salve come from the same etymological root. Jesus has come to save us, to salvage our lives, to salve our wounds.-Br. Curtis Almquist
Thursday-“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” - Teilhard de Chardin
Friday-"Never question the truth of what you fail to understand," the white pearl said when Rinkitink consulted it for the first time, "for the world is filled with wonders." It was great wisdom indeed, and has proved greatly helpful many times since.-Buechner
Saturday-"Someone who cares about what God cares about” is a Jewish quote alan Meyers found that applies to Christians as well, of course.
Jan 22 Sermon Notes
Is 9, extend? Obvious link to Mt.
Mtt 4:12-23 start- the kingdom of heaven has come near-nearer than what we could imagine-he sounds like John here darkness light motif form the quote follow me, not a coercive command but more of an invitation, no? As the days are growing longer again, we have images of light amid the winter cold and darkness. When Jesus' ministry is threatened, he sometimes withdraws from the threat to a place of relative safety.We can assume Jesus sought solace and strength in prayer.the verb is typically used in Matthew when there is movement from one place to another in the face of threatening circumstances.
Of course we read of light after epiphany. Light v. darkness is a core metaphor for the faith."a great light" (Matthew 4:16-17).The followers of Jesus who continue to his light in the world by their own (collective) way of life. Jesus' proclamation that the realm (kingdom) of heaven has come near is the first flicker of a light that will grow and burn among his followers
Jesus calls people as they are, from where they are. Nonetheless, they follow: as they are, from where they are, being who they are. As is true for the followers of Jesus who come after them, the meaning of their choice will unfold only over time.Their light will grow over time, not diminish.Jesus is not content for us to remain as we are, to stay in the repetition that we are special, unique, gifted. Jesus assumes self-esteem and works from it.
God's call invites and empowers a different way to live, to drain the swamp, to begin agiain..Jesus starts out in being baptized by John. It does not look like an inaugural ball. When the news comes to him about John's arrest Jesus withdraws to Galilee, where he calls his first disciples, and he must choose how to respond. but for now Jesus pulls away in order to carry out his ministry of proclamation in and around Galilee.In other words we need down time as well as energy for action in spirutal life.Now he will preach the Sermon on the Mount, heal, and teach what it means to be the Messiah who is "God with us." Those first disciples moved into a whole new way of living, might have preferred to keep their jobs, to remain with their families, to stay with the life that they knew. When they see Jesus and hear his words to them, they make a different choice, however; they take a risk, step out in faith, leave behind that which is comfortable and secure. They choose to follow Jesus.In our baptism we are taken into a new community. We become citizens of a new regime, or if you will, we have dual citizenship, our political one and our spiriutal one. That spritual one oftne inersects with the work of the political, the physical, the everyday world wher ethe Spirit breathes life, insporiation, and yes, light into our lvies.(West-working Preacher).
As Jesus moves into a new chapter, he prays. We have the 150 model prayers in the psalms. ps 27, light salvation protection/hiding then lifted up. It finds solace and strength in the presence of god in prayer at the temple. Week after week we offer that promise here at Sabbath worship. I love the candor of the prayer. Notice shift at 7-it speaks of a real need, an ache for the presence of god It has the sense of being absent from a great love. We close with its great ending
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