tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90204970417916693172024-03-05T22:04:21.536-08:00A Sojourn in South AfricaAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-69588832516462397882016-07-10T08:28:00.004-07:002016-07-10T08:28:42.489-07:00One More Sermon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Here it is. The last time I'm preaching here. It ended up being 10 sermons in total, so nothing to scoff at.</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This one is a bit fiery. It just ended up coming out that way. Amos will do that to people.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lectionary is (see Amos):</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp10_RCL.html</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lectionary provides two possible readings from the Hebrew Bible today, Amos--which we heard--or Deuteronomy. The text from Deuteronomy offers beautiful words of encouragement for a people tasked with being God’s chosen. It gently reminds Israel that they will be successful in all their undertakings so long as they “turn to the LORD [their] God with all [their] heart and all [their] soul”. This is not an unmanageable task or an unreasonable request; God assures us that “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” We can all love God, in fact, it is completely natural; the words are waiting on our tongue, we need to merely open our lips.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This poetic and uplifting passage ties perfectly into the first part of our Gospel reading, where we are reminded of the message at the core of our faith: love of God and love of neighbor. It was with this in mind that I found myself drawn to Amos because it’s proposed inclusion made little sense to me. Why this alternate reading? What does Amos have to do with love?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have come the conclusion that Amos speaks better to the latter half of our Gospel passage, to the succinct but ever-powerful tale of the Good Samaritan. It is a story of love of neighbor; a reminder that “neighbor” cannot be defined in a sharply limited way. It is a call to imitate this famed Samaritan, who went beyond himself and the conventions of the time for the sake of a fellow human in need. But it is also a story of God’s justice. A rousing call to be God’s hands in the world, to actively heal and help. When we truly love our neighbor--in deed as well as word--we are pursuing and bringing about God’s kingdom. This, God’s justice, is where Amos has a few things to say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Amos is one of the most consistently angry prophets. The nine short chapters of his book are filled with dire predictions and scathing condemnations; Amos is speaking with the full authority of God’s righteous fury. There is no room for bartering or reversal; God’s mind is made up and the Kingdom of Israel is soon to face its doom. Amos is also not your typical prophet; as our reading today describes he is a “herdsman” and as such, he is particularly well suited to deliver God’s complaint. More than anything, God is angry at the inequality that has grown rampant in Israel. It is not “idolators” nor “fornicators” who are facing this day of judgment; it is the wealthy and powerful who have provoked God to the limit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is entirely fair and valid to question the severity of God’s response--it is worth noting that the judgment Amos invokes will result in the complete annihilation of the northern Kingdom of Israel; regardless of who survives the onslaught, history will never hear from those ten Hebrew tribes again. But what cannot be refuted is that God’s justice--here and now on earth--matters immensely and must be taken seriously.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This same justice is what is Jesus is invoking with his parable of the Samaritan traveler. We generally focus on the compassion of the Samaritan but this story is also a condemnation of the two men who pass by. The Samaritan undoubtedly did a good deed and deserves to be commended for his kindness, but he had less to lose. As a member of a suspect class of people--as all Samaritans were--he is merely demonstrating compassion which remains fairly comfortably within caste boundaries. The Levite and the priest, however, are right to be concerned with the sort of ritual defilement which a stop could entail. As two men who are fully invested in the temple system--one as priest and another as a member of the priestly tribe--the impurity that would result from a brush with a dead body wasn’t worth investigating. The man set upon by thieves looked dead and that was enough information to keep these pious men at a distance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is so radical about this story, about this interpretation of God’s justice, is that it doesn’t matter. Caring for your neighbor is more important than maintaining your purity. If you are pious in all the right ways but ignore the most obvious need in front of you, you have horribly missed the mark. The Levite and priest would undoubtedly point to passages like the one cited earlier from Deuteronomy, declaring their piety to be a matter of loving God and their obsession with purity to be in keeping with that ideal. They have put God before all others and by meticulously maintaining the law of Moses, they have proved their devotion “with all [their] heart, and with all [their] soul, and with all [their] strength, and with all [their] mind”. But this parable shows us that picking and choosing is not possible. If you are so concerned with loving God at the expense of your neighbor--at the expense of a man bleeding and slowly dying before your eyes--what is your love truly worth?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Amos, in all his righteous fury, would agree. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“ I hate, I despise your festivals,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I will not accept them;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I will not look upon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Take away from me the noise of your songs;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I will not listen to the melody of your harps.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But let justice roll down like waters,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. ”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wanted to share that whole passage because of how it resolves itself--I recognize that I am jumping a bit outside the normal confines of the lectionary but these words from Amos felt too significant to simply ignore. Because, for most Americans, that last verse holds special meaning beyond scripture alone. It is one of the great moments of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and is commemorated as such in the very center of our nation’s capital. Removed from its context and hallowed as “great history” this verse has lost so much of its original biting intent but read as is one cannot help but come to the conclusion that God’ justice will not be tamed. It is rarely easy or convenient but if we are to take these words seriously, we must be willing to commit ourselves to the path of transformation outlined in Amos, declared in Jesus, and reiterated by King.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because Martin Luther King knew a fair bit about people of privilege evading or downplaying the insistent call of justice. King knew all about “well-intentioned” white folks urging a more cautious approach. His iconic ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ was penned in response to eight white clergymen who were urging protesters to leave the streets and rely on the courts instead--to be patient and slow things down a bit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am hard pressed to see any difference between these men of God and the same pious Levite who passed by on the road. I am willing to bet that they were good men, nice people--kind fathers, generous neighbors, upstanding citizens in the eyes of all. I’m sure they had the respect and admiration of most of those in their community and as such felt called to respond to the demonstrations that were roiling their city at the time. But where they failed--where they were blind to Christ’s call--was in seeing their duty beyond their community, beyond their comfortably insular life. God’s compassion does not end at borders drawn by men. The Levite and priest fell short in their pursuit of God’s justice when they left a man for dead on a road--we fall short when we leave countries to fall apart and watch as their citizens pile into boats destined for the sea floor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I will not pretend to have any solutions for some of the most persistent and painful problems of our time but I cannot believe that inaction is an adequate response. It’s OK to be a little bit angry, to embrace your righteous fury. Because God’s justice is not easy, and being spurred on by our emotions is not an unreasonable response. But what is not acceptable in my mind is passivity. Being nice and good isn’t enough. We must risk something. We must put ourselves on the line. We can’t agonize over the cost lest we become like the Levite or priest, more concerned with maintaining our position than with the needs of the human family. We must to let go of our purity and embrace the radical compassion of Christ--to pick up the outcast, the vulnerable, the dirty and bloody in our midst. We need to act; God’s justice depends on it.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-32107585234016819792016-07-02T11:37:00.000-07:002016-07-02T11:37:42.389-07:00Every Last Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It is an aphorism of the young and enthusiastic to "live each day as if it were your last" and though I understand the impulse, I think it is misguided.</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Or at the very least, a misuse of language.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we are encouraged to live each day with the urgency of imminent and predictable death we are thought to be freed from the constraints of respectability, prestige, security, and general meaning/purpose. If we do not have to worry about tomorrow, we are freed to do anything. If we are not paralyzed by fear and reasonable-ness we can embrace risk and revel in the moment, living our lives to the fullest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But of course--not. Living with such a lack of restraint is impossible for the vast majority of people and it seems rather cruel to pretend otherwise. To "live life to the fullest" ignores the predictable and entirely understandable anxieties and pressures we have placed on us--to abandon these responsibilities would be selfish and immature. People rely on us and compromising for their sake is nothing to be ashamed of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet even beyond the practical realities that restrict our ability to treat each day as our last, I take further issue with the notion because it seems myopic and unrealistic. Regardless of how carefree and reckless we may be inclined to be, (almost) no one would choose to spend their last day on earth sky-diving or swimming with sharks. No one would do "that thing" which they'd always been dreaming of if they knew death were just around the corner. I am inclined to believe that almost everyone would search out those they love and spend the remaining hours with those nearest and dearest to their heart. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since we cannot live each day as our last--neither in extravagant self-indulgence nor in exclusively tender company--does this still qualify as sage advice? Why does such an obviously flawed idea still have staying power? I think the truth being grasped at here is about presence, about being open and available to the everyday. We cannot (nor should not) live each day as if it were our last--the consequences of tomorrow matter and they should always be considered--but we can open our eyes and see a bit more of the world, see the remarkable gift that living can be. I don't want to live each day with death in mind but I think it is a worthy goal to see the world with dying eyes, to treat each moment as precious and lead a life of joy and gratitude. I plan to live each day as it comes but I hope to never take those days for granted; today could be my last day, and how lucky I am to see it.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-83545478590705462972016-06-19T08:21:00.001-07:002016-06-19T08:21:37.592-07:00Sermon IX<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Another sermon? Huh. OK then.</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All glibness aside, I preached again today which was--as always--a great pleasure and honor. Here it is for your reading pleasure.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lectionary (I used 1 Kings as opposed to Isaiah):</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp7_RCL.html</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This morning we have an odd story. Jesus travels across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Garasenes and is immediately confronted by a man possessed. A demoniac afflicted so severely that all efforts by his community to subdue or calm him have been unsuccessful. And when Jesus sets himself to perform--what seems to be--just another exorcism, the demons in the man...haggle. We are offered the strange sight of Christ negotiating with evil spirits and conceding to their demands. Which results in the equally strange, and quite a bit distressing, death of a herd of pigs; the terrified troupe of possessed swine flinging themselves to a watery grave. What is happening here?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t have an answer and I’m not entirely sure there is one. Additional context can be provided but it remains one of those enigmatic tales of Jesus, leaving far more questions than answers. But if we ignore the pigs and the haggling it is a beautiful story about the opening of God’s grace to all people, regardless of origin or personal history. The land of the Garasenes--across the Sea of Galilee--is gentile country and this healing is one of only a handful of times that Jesus’ ministry takes him beyond the borders of Judea and Galilee. In the purity obsessed minds of ancient Jews, what Jesus does there would have been almost unthinkable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gentile land was impure. Gentiles were impure. Demons, by definition, are impure. And, according Jewish teaching of the day, the dead and their resting places were especially impure. The demoniac hits every mark yet Jesus does not shy away. This naked, raw, broken, and abandoned man, an outcast unlike any Jesus has witnessed before, was worthy of Christ’s healing love. The demoniac, who had no logical right to divine grace, had a share in Christ’s salvation. When viewed through this lens we should rightly be astonished at the limitless nature of what God in Christ is willing to do, where divine love is willing to go.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I still struggle with this story because of its ending. Though the man once possessed can be healed by Jesus and share in the wholeness of God’s grace, he is explicitly denied the opportunity to join Jesus and his companions. He is instructed to “return to [his] home and declare how much God has done for [him].” Mark’s gospel adds the particularly cruel word “friends” to the command--“Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you...” What friends? What home? This supposed home is the same place that he was bound in chains and shackles and kept under guard. This supposed home is the same community that left him to fend for himself, alone and naked in the wilderness for years. And now he returns, healed, to a community that has just lost a significant portion of its livelihood and income. He will be viewed suspiciously at best and likely scapegoated as the cause of this financial catastrophe. He was an outcast before the exorcism; will Jesus’ healing really change that?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With all of this in mind, I want turn to 1Kings and the unforgettable tale of Elijah’s brush with God in the wilderness. Elijah, fleeing the wrath of Jezebel in the aftermath of his bloody triumph over the prophets of Baal, has decided he wants to die. Life is too difficult, too trying, and he is too alone to handle it. After being fed by angels and wandering for 40 days and nights, Elijah finds himself atop Mt. Horeb (also known as Mt. Sinai), still alone and still frustrated--convinced that he has been abandoned by Israel and might as well be abandoned by God too. It is particularly jarring to see Elijah this way--suffering from Reluctant Prophet Syndrome--when we consider that just moments before in this story Elijah was pitting Yahweh against Baal and slaughtering his competition after Yahweh’s victory. But God is patient with Elijah and decides to reward his honored prophet with an personal and intimate experience of the Divine. “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” And so there is a strong wind and a shattering earthquake and a raging fire, but God is in none of these. Until finally there is the “sound of sheer silence”--rendered in the King James Version as “a still small voice”--and Elijah returns to his cave placated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The temptation, I believe, is to see this silence as exclusively representative of God; since God was not in the wind or fire God must never be in those sorts of dramatic displays. Only by retreating to quiet places, by spurning company and seeking solitude, can we find God. That is not the point of this story though; lest we forget, God also spoke to Moses on Mt Horeb and that first occasion was filled with plenty of wind and fire and quakes. The tale of Elijah on Mt. Horeb is merely an addition, a gentle reminder that God can be found in the silence too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hindu teaching speaks of atman and brahman which are best translated as personal soul and cosmic soul. Yet these two distinct ideas should be understood as being one: atman is brahman. Atman is God within us and it is no different from God the way we normally conceive of it--vast, grand, and powerful. God can be found in the great expanse of the natural world but God is also equally present in our selves. It does not matter which you seek or how you experience God; neither is greater and both are equally True. Atman is brahman.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps I’m stretching things a little bit but that is how I like to perceive Jesus’ abandonment of the Gerasene man. He was blessed to experience God outside of himself, to see the divine as personally revealed in Christ, and he was changed by it, exorcized of his demons and made new. This experience, this intimate vision of God’s healing, is Brahman, it is the smoke and flame shrouding Moses on Mt. Horeb, it the mystical experience, the born-again moment, the parting of the curtain, and the Gerasene--understandably--wants more. He has seen God and cannot have enough. But as Jesus reminds him and us, eventually we have to return. We have to come down from the mountain top, step away from our ecstatic union with God, and get back to the messy business of living. We have to trust that God is still there, even as we move from what was our most profound and personal experience of the divine. We must let go of the desire to control how God is revealed to us and accept that our faith is not diminished by the mundane or everyday. Sometimes we must search for God in a new place. And more often than not, we fail to search in the nearest place available--ourselves. God is in the sheer silence too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We do not know what happened to the Gerasene man next but I must admit that I admire his approach. Despite his disappointment and, likely, quite a strong dose of fear, he takes Jesus’s instructions to heart and goes on his way, “proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.”</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-26941634886648413622016-06-10T12:35:00.001-07:002016-08-31T16:59:27.684-07:00Not Knowing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This is an idea that I've been thinking of for a while but is kind of hard to explain. </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>That being said, I will try. Here goes nothing.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In faith one must accept--sooner or later--that God is unknowable. Or at the very least, unknowable in total (no matter how confident you may be in your personal relationship with the divine, you cannot pretend to <i>know</i> all that is God). This is the most commonly referred to idea around not-knowing and it is the great conundrum that has stumped religious thinkers for millennia. The simple fact is that no matter how much one thinks about God, or studies theology, or debates on dogma, language will eventually fall short. Experiences of God cannot be classified easily and anyone who attempts to describe them will inevitably feel frustrated in the effort (see 2 Corinthians 12:1-4*). We can explain all we want--a valuable and interesting exercise in its own right--but at some point we must acknowledge our limits and return to the time honored concept of "mystery". Because that, in the end, is God. That is faith. It's beyond language and experience and understanding. It is vast and amorphous and confusing. It's something that we can never be certain about even if we are certain about the feeling. It's trusting that there's something bigger than us and that we are not totally alone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But my sense of not knowing goes beyond mystery. It goes beyond believing in something ineffable. What "not knowing" has come to mean to me is the glorious recognition that I have fallen short before and will surely fall short again but in that fall there is an opportunity to learn, to see what I had not seen, and to understand just a little bit more of this wonderful and challenging thing that is life. So often when I assume I have something figured out, when I assume that I have someone pegged, when I assume that I know what is best, I get walloped with the grace of failure. One could say this is a situation of pride coming before the fall--and there is a little bit of that here--but I feel that this sensation goes beyond any misplaced confidence or hubris. Because my ideas or assumptions beforehand were rarely <i>wrong </i>they were just incomplete. And when faced with new facts, when confronted with an expanded picture, I recognize that <i>I didn't know</i>; that I was thinking simplistically and I had grown overly assured of my own place in things. The messiness of life and the varied shades of gray, the definite reminder that <i>there is more to the story than I had first thought</i>--these are all opportunities to let God in. To admit fault, to recognize my limits, and to embrace the fact that God--that life--still has a lot more to teach me. When I embrace "not knowing" and I get over any attempts to control or shape things, I am given the opportunity to experience what is in front of me and to be present to all that I have (as easy or as hard as that may be). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And that, I believe, is where God is; in the uncertainty of the present. When I stop knowing--or stop trying to know--will I begin to understand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">* <span style="font-size: x-small;">The point I am trying to make is unfortunately subject to translation but I am inclined to follow the logic of something like the Contemporary English Version (and though I won't pretend to know much about these sorts of things, I don't think I'm swimming entirely against scholarly consensus with this)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+12&version=CEV</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-35197259620672967332016-05-30T10:33:00.000-07:002016-05-30T10:34:14.392-07:00Preacher Man<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I preached again. Not much more to say beyond that... Enjoy!</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The lectionary can be found (Track 1): </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp4_RCL.html</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It can sometimes be a challenge when one sits down to write a sermon to determine just what exactly the through line is between each text; what is the shared thought in the reading, epistle, and gospel passage? Not so much this week. Within moments of having looked over our texts for today the thematic element of “faith” struck me as obvious and notable. But what would come next was where I then stumbled. Because what could I say in the face of Elijah’s unwavering strength? What did I have to share when confronted with the Centurion?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I must be honest, I really struggle with today’s passages because of what they imply; because of the the comparison I inevitably draw between myself and these men of great faith. And the comparison isn’t the easiest to accept. Because I don’t have faith that strong. I don’t believe with enough fervor to enable long-distance healing or light drenched wood on fire. I don’t have the confidence that God will listen or the assurance that God will act. I don’t experience faith as a test that can be beaten with just enough belief or the right kind of belief. I find these stories to be far from inspiring.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That being said, I draw inspiration from at least one aspect of our gospel passage in a way that is entirely impossible for me with 1Kings. Elijah’s test is a wonderful story filled with excitement and one can easily imagine it being told around fires and in halls as generations of Israelites took heart in the cunning of their prophet and the power of their God. But more than two thousand years removed from Ancient Israel and with a message that has grown beyond the possessive relationship between Yahweh and his people, I struggle to find relevance in this battle of divine power. I struggle to see myself in Elijah. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>With the Centurion I can feel somewhat connected; I can imagine his motivations and I can certainly sympathize with his hesitancy. Because who wouldn’t struggle with the idea of Jesus entering their house? Even if you didn’t know--as the Centurion presumably did not--exactly who Jesus was, his holiness and prophetic power would likely have seemed too much to play host to. We often do not feel worthy and much like the Centurion we keep ourselves at a remove from challenging business of the meeting God. And yet despite his fear and humility, despite his status as an occupier on Jewish soil, despite his complicity in the sort of systems Jesus seems intent on challenging--the sick man in question is a slave after all--the Centurion believes. He believes in Jesus’ power and compassion. He believes that the promised Kingdom of God has no limits.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So once again I am stuck, on the outside looking in, as humbled and challenged by the Centurion’s faith as I am by Elijah’s spiritual strength. Because I don’t have faith that strong. And when making that comparison, when feeling weak and small in the context of these two incredible acts of God, I cannot help but take one step further and note that these miraculous acts happened because of the strength of their conviction; there is seemingly no grace. Both men did not doubt the ability or willingness of God to intercede and their faith was rewarded. As the Epistle of James says “the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective”. If one prays the right way or is fervent in prayer and firm in belief then God will come to your aid. But the flip side of this coin can quickly lead to blaming and shaming in the context of prayers left unanswered. Because God did not listen, because my greatest hopes and desires were not answered, then I must be deficient somehow, my faith must surely be lacking.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I cannot abide that logic and I cannot imagine that God only pays attention when requests are put forward by the right people in the right way; I cannot believe that God only responds when spoken to. But if I question or doubt the truth of these stories am I not as bad as the much maligned scribes and Pharisees? I readily admit that my faith has limits, that I could not have stood idly by assuming that Christ’s healing would work. The same humility that prevented the Centurion from ever dealing with Jesus beyond an intermediary would probably have stopped me from even asking the question. The basic audacity that assumes God would care, that Christ would intervene, seems like an incredible step for the Centurion or any person to make.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And yet that is what makes faith, in general, so amazing. Because why would God care? The mover and builder of all that is and has been, a deity of scale and power so vast that it silences the most confident believer--this God, is a God who listens, a God who saves. How absurd. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Though I do not buy into the idea that there is a wrong or right way to do faith, that God is only as powerful as the person asking the question, I see myself in Elijah and the Centurion and in every human who has fought, struggled, and battled for their belief, for their faith in a loving and intimately involved God. Whether or not I could bring down fire from heaven and set a sodden pile of lumber ablaze matters less than the basic impulse to pray. Faith has less to do with the results than with the desire to ask in the first place; to believe that God is invested in our lives is the most impressive action of faith. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And so, regardless of how I feel about Elijah and my comparable deficiencies, I will still pray. I will still ask for intercession. I will still hope for the Christ’s healing of the world. I will doubt. I will waver. And much of the time, my prayers will not be answered (to my benefit and to my ill). But I will still lift up my innermost parts to God, assured that God cares. It’s a small act of faith, a weak, humble and much maligned act of faith; it is a faith that can back track and miss the point; a faith that can assume the worst and doubt the very purpose of the exercise; it is a faith that will never move a mountain, a faith that is surely smaller than a grain of sand. But it is still faith. And it is mine. And I am still asking, strengthened by the belief that God is listening.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-78658968795048025052016-05-24T10:56:00.001-07:002016-05-24T10:56:40.869-07:00At School<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This is to be printed in the forthcoming issue of UXOLO (the brothers' newsletter).</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here is an early preview!</span></b><a name='more'></a><div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From the first moment I crossed the threshold of Holy Cross School I knew that I was entering a special place. This was less a flash of insight than an intuitive sense that where I now found myself was truly blessed. I sensed that whatever was to come out of my time here in Grahamstown, whatever challenges or joys I might encounter, my work at the school would always be a profound source of comfort and inspiration. My instincts were right on the mark.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Though it feels somewhat cliche to talk about how “children teach you so much”, as I sit here trying to synthesize my experience thus far it is one of the few concrete phrases I can pull up. Or more accurately, it is one of the few thoughts to which I consistently return. I, of course, could talk about more staid practical matters like the library or our soon to be expanded computing capabilities. Or I could delve into amusing specifics like my (moderately) successful attempts at substitute teaching. But I would like to try to explain, in whatever limited language I can manage, exactly what Holy Cross has meant to me thus far.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At its simplest these children have taught to me be present; to be willing to put my life on pause and enjoy what is around me; to embrace my blessings and respond with joyful thanks. It is a truism of working with children that you can’t really have an “off” day--that kids will demand so much of your attention and energy that even if you don’t feel up to it, in the end, you don’t really have a choice. That has undoubtedly proved true as my months at the school have unwound but I have, in these kids, experienced something beyond just the taxing of energy and focus. I have experienced nothing less than the love of God, expressed through the simple, joyful demands of the love of children. When I am rushing to fulfill some task or caught up in my own mind with various frustrations or anxieties it is easy to ignore the wonder that is daily living--that is creation itself--and simply plod along, fueled by my own internal drama. But there are moments daily in which I am caught by a child (either literally with a hand or figuratively with a voice) and my attention is demanded: to see, to “look Bhuti <i>look</i>!”. It is in these moments that God is calling me to forget myself, to let go of my ego and simply look around me with new eyes. It is in these moments that our students are opening my eyes to the blessing of love with their simple demand of the same. It is in these moments that I am given an opportunity to remember once more my love of God and the love God has for me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1John that we learn that “...those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” This is what the children at Holy Cross School have helped me to truly understand; that in allowing myself to being present and open to the love of others, I will inevitably be opened to the love of God.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-83230520765667012752016-05-11T13:08:00.002-07:002016-05-11T13:08:41.196-07:00A Thought or Two<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I wrote this a while back with little intention of sharing it as it felt a little too dense and esoteric for this platform.</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But as I have already shared things that fit that description and I'm in the sharing mood, here is this.</span></b></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was thinking today about death; the oddity of it, the total incomprehensibility of it. Though I can know intellectually that I am going to die--I can imagine it, I can plan for it, I can grasp my limits as they are--I believe that the enormity of it, the real truth of it will always evade me. I can think about death but I cannot <i>understand </i>death. Because death is impossible for my present self. My ego--my past and my future--is wrapped up in all that I am and will be and that abstract self (that which is bound up in memory and plans) can face death; it is certainly a struggle but it is conceivable. I am going to die and that cannot be denied. But my present self--my id, my animal self, my sensual self--cannot not exist. If I am truly present (a quasi-impossibility), if I am truly immersed in the now and allow myself to be only a collection of sensory inputs, death seems ludicrous. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But even if one pulls a bit back from this logical extreme it’s fair to say that death is basically incomprehensible to our present selves. When we are truly immersed in an experience, when our very soul is singing, when we are truly alive, death seems beyond distant. Because how the can we die when there is so much beauty around us? How can we imagine a world without us we are surrounded by its glory? When we are most alive it can feel as if the world and all that it has to offer is in existence in that moment for us and us alone; that what we are experiencing came to be so that we could experience it; that we are end to all of creation's means.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And in a way, that’s true. Because for each of us, the world is ours. As far as we are concerned, it came into being with our birth and it might as well die with our death. Each thing we see and experience has value and meaning simply because we saw/felt/smelled/tasted/heard it. We understand conceptually that other people see and experience things as well and that they may see and experience the same things as us but it is only when we are confronted with the possible variation of experience and memory--in particular when both parties were witness to the same event--do we really begin grasp that we each have our own world and our own truth; we all accept that it must be shared but in the end it is our “own little world” and what we make of it. I can study and learn as much as I can--history, sciences, philosophy, art--and expand my own idea of what the world is and what it means beyond myself but there will always be limits and I will always only be grasping the smallest pieces of others’ lives, accreting bits to myself and expanding my personal truth yet still staying within my human notion of the world as I have come to know it. This is all a long way of saying “I cannot be assured of or guaranteed that the world is anything beyond what I know and so although I believe and understand life to have a continuity beyond my existence it also doesn’t entirely matter; the world is finished for me when my consciousness goes and could thus be imagined to be gone entirely.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But what then of beauty? What then of the glorious and wonderful that I saw while alive? Does it still maintain its glory? Is the vibrancy of life on earth still thrumming if there is nothing 'conscious' to witness it? If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it does it make a damn noise? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a man of faith, I say: of course. Beauty does not need a witness for it to be beautiful; life does not need a ‘purpose’ for it to strive onward; love does not need a reason beyond itself. Beauty, life, love--these are ends unto themselves and they require no validation from human sight. A plant will continue in its work--a glorious life, filled with patient beauty--whether or not I pause to regard its splendor; the plant does not care that I stopped to marvel and it does not need me in any way to be further assured of its purpose and place on this earth. A cosmic cataclysm of size and power beyond our reckoning will take place, did take place and is taking place without any desire to impress its distant human observers. God is in all of this; from the greatest workings of our universe to the smallest movements of a protozoa and it all continues on in spite of me. I will die but all of these most noble ideas, all of the things that make life worth living, will continue on without me and they will continue on beyond even our species. God is a means unto itself, the machine and the mover, the stupendous workings of all creation that glorifies itself. We are blessed witnesses, visitors in this grand vastness who are privileged with a slightly wider view of things but let us not fool ourselves into thinking it’s here for us. All that is good and beautiful and worth loving has a future long beyond us just as it had a past long before our arrival; let’s enjoy what we have while we’re here and revel in knowing that it’s not ending any time soon.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-83591779294792146792016-05-02T05:58:00.003-07:002016-05-02T05:58:30.871-07:00Another Sermon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Not much to say beyond that.</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here it is. Enjoy!</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lectionary can be found here:</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEaster6_RCL.html</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“May God be merciful to us and bless us, show us the light of his countenance and come to us.” God blesses us: in the glory of creation, in the joy of relationship, in the power of faith come alive through worship. And we bless each other in the name of God--a reminder of the binding love we all share as God’s people. The giving and receiving of blessing is a basic component of the bible’s narrative and standard vocabulary for all Christians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would argue that some of the best language of blessing in the New Testament can be found in the book of Revelation. Though it bears a reputation as one of the more harsh and violent books in the bible, it also contains some of the more transcendent passages in all of scripture. Verses of reverence and praise as well as some of the most powerful and well-crafted symbols are the basis of Revelation’s best known chapters. The culmination of John’s vision is the arrival of a New Jerusalem: a place, where there is no darkness, where God is among us, where songs of blessing and praise can be heard unceasing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet for most of us this seems like a distant possibility. The painful reality of everyday life makes the blessings of New Jerusalem seem like the shell of a promise--theoretically attainable but so far from our experience as to ring false. This comparison, of God’s kingdom to our own world becomes particularly harsh when we line up our cities next to God’s own. Even as we have moved beyond a Dickensian sense of the city as a den of vice and immorality; even as a majority of humans now live in urban areas; even as we have made enormous strides (among the world’s wealthiest cities) with the inclusion of green spaces and the improvement of infrastructure enabling cities to be the healthiest and cleanest that they have ever been in human history, we do not pretend that we have created any concrete and steel idyll. Even as city life appeals to more and more people, whether for economic reasons or general disposition, we cannot convince ourselves that paradise is readily found among the roads and buildings of human ingenuity. Cities have reached a peak yet unseen in human history but no one is promoting that God’s home is in the midst of our modern-day Jerusalems. Churches can be safe spaces, sanctuaries, a respite of calm and quiet amidst the chaos of a 21st century life, but if we wish to “find God” we go further afield. If we are searching out thin places, it is to far off retreats--like this--that we find ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet New Jerusalem is a city. A city unlike any other before. In dimensions too vast to comprehend and with some of the most magical, and gaudy features ever conceived by a city planner. Gold, glass, and jewels compose the walls and its buildings. The ever-flowing stream of life runs through the middle of its avenues. The tree of life towers in the town center. And divine illumination has preempted any possible power outages. But the most significant feature to be found in New Jerusalem, the most tantalizing and dreamt of quality, is that of God’s permanent and unending presence. There is no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” We need no priests to bear our offerings aloft. We need no class of divine intercessor to make ourselves known to the Lord. God is among us, and with it his light, healing, and hope. As we were assured last week’s epistle: “mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” God is with is us and everything has changed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From this glory--this image beyond our wildest imaginings, this promise of God’s love and eternal presence--we must eventually come down, for we know we are not yet near. We are nowhere close to the New Jerusalem so we must fall from that ecstatic high, from that wondrous imagining of John’s Revelation to the more mundane reality of our own, painfully familiar, home. Was it all a dream? Was it all an illusion? How can we ever expect to close that gap?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so we now turn to John’s gospel passage today and Jesus’ promise of peace and love in the form of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. We have God in the third part of the trinity to guide us along this path, Christ is incorporeal form to teach us how we should live. No, we do not have the triumphant, blinding, indisputable presence of “the Glory of God and the Lamb” shining forth on all of our city. We do not have the inescapable knowledge that comes from God’s throne centrally placed in all civic life. We cannot and will not feel/sense/know God’s awesome power and permanence in our lives as the New Jerusalem promises will one day occur. But we have the Holy Spirit. We have the promise of God’s presence in our everyday lives. A God as small and subdued as Revelation’s God is massive and earth-rending. That “still small voice” which spoke to the prophet Elijah is the God we can know and pursue. The God who is always near and will not abandon. The God we can find, readily and consistently, should we merely focus on our seeking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet...so what? The promise of a New Jerusalem feels as fanciful as an assurance of the Holy Spirit’s ministrations. Because the New Jerusalem feels impossible and unreachable, because it seems a fantasy born of John’s poetry rather than an achievable promise we must rely on that token Christian response: love. It can feel like a cop out. An answer as all-encompassing as it is vague. We trust in the Holy Spirit to bridge the gap between our reality and God’s future one but what to do in the mean time?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Martin Luther King once famously uttered “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” The truth of this is debatable--though I am inclined to agree with him--but what is harder to argue is how different our daily, lived experience feels from that. Yes, we may be bending in the right direction, we may be approaching a new and indisputable Truth but as humans trudging along, concerned with survival above all else, the bend of moral universe can feel, at best, irrelevant. When we look at all the harm and damage we are still spectacularly capable of, that long arc feels to have numerous divots and cracks along the way; that long arc seems dangerously close to crumbling, collapsing into a morass of human woe and ill.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet...we have God’s peace. We have Christ’s promise of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to walk along with us and guide us. We have the love of the Lord to rely on, to believe in, to rejoice over. “[Christ] does not give as the world gives”. The peace of Jesus isn’t in exchange for something. The Holy Spirit was not sent forth because we had met the right criteria. God’s gifts are different than our own. There is no tit for tat, no scratch my back, I scratch yours. Jesus gives without expectation of receiving; there is no understanding that the favor will one day be returned. In fact, Jesus doesn’t want our back scratch. Jesus wants us to pursue love not because it is a moral good but because it is a behavior that will bring us contentment beyond our wildest imaginings. He wants us to seek peace because he knows it will fulfill us and the very core of our being. He knows that the true joy of New Jerusalem lies not in the “problem solved” nature of God’s descent but in the continuing absence of our previous woes. The old things have passed away, let us rejoice. And though we are not there, cannot be there, the call still remains; God’s peace is still available. It will never be as climactic and permanent as God’s final presence here among us--the New Jerusalem is not achievable on our own. But that peace which passes all understanding, that peace of Christ, is searchable and knowable, in our daily lives. It will slip away, regularly, and we may always feel as if we are grasping at shadows. But occasionally God’s peace will rest upon us; occasionally we will hear the Advocate and settle in God’s love for the moment. Occasionally we will find the promise of the New Jerusalem in ourselves. We have the Holy Spirit--let us rejoice and bless the Lord.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-44054115348615271612016-04-25T09:43:00.000-07:002016-04-25T09:44:14.153-07:00Facing the Difficult<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This is an idea that I've been wrestling with since my first day in South Africa.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>I will not pretend that I am providing a definitive answer though my tone is sweeping at times; this is simply one person's approach to what is an unanswerable problem.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When confronted with tragedy (on a individual or mass scale) there are, as I see it, three basic responses that people can employ: apathy, anger or--as I will call it here--openness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The first response I think to be the most common despite its very soul-crushing nature. It is not apathy born of intention or purpose but comes from a place of a basic self-preservation. There is just too much pain in the world for us to attempt to bear even a small portion of it. To consider the real, human consequences of famine death in the millions is beyond our abilities. To <i>accept </i>the fate of a child victimized by neglect and abuse is beyond our (entirely reasonable) limits. If we are to get up in the morning, if we are to live lives of love and kindness, if we are to work and strive to be truly content and thankful for all that we have we must wall ourselves off. We must become numb to the pain of others. We must accept that we have limits and stop ourselves there, where we know we are safe, where we know that doing <i>something </i>is doing enough. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Though I have my issues with this approach--and I fervently believe it to be detrimental to our well-being in ways that we often do not recognize--I also wholly understand where it comes from. I have undoubtedly been victim to the same mentality, closing myself off, because the opposite was just too difficult.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This leads us to the second possible reaction which, though reasonable, has significant problems of its own. This is not to say that we shouldn't be angry at injustice. Anger is a powerful motivator and I will not try to deny the basic human instinct involved. When those millions die of starvation while their wealthy compatriots feast on imported luxuries who does not feel roiled with righteous anger? When a child is beaten, ignored, and exposed to unforgivable trauma who doesn't want to sucker-punch the offending parties and/or neuter the parents? But as proper as that anger may feel, it doesn't get us anywhere; we will eventually run into our undeniable limits, left with nothing more than bitter impotence (which will finally morph into the apathy described above). Worse than this, anger basically diminishes the humanity of the very person/people we are trying to help. Anger calls us to action, assures us we have answers, but in our pursuit to provide solutions, we turn these victims into passive objects in need of saving instead of human beings capable of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">participating</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(and perhaps wishing to participate) in their own salvation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And so we come to this third approach, that which I have termed openness. This is, I believe, the hardest way to live, the hardest way to confront our hard world, but also, the most essential. Openness asks us to abandon our preconceptions and avail ourselves to the possibility of contradiction, to the inevitability of ambiguity. Openness means development projects that begin as a conversation with a community instead of as a solution for its inhabitants (as obvious as this may sound, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international-development-and-plan-fix-it" target="_blank">it isn't</a>). Openness means asking the victim of child abuse to be a partner in their own healing, to be a participant in their justice (instead of charging in to lock up and indict the offending parties). Openness means practicing patience; recognizing that change must always start small, that perfect solutions don't exist, that the best answers are sometimes the least <i>satisfying</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And that is perhaps what is most difficult about this third path. It does not appeal to our ideas of justice nor can it be condensed into an elevator pitch. We want to point fingers, to have answers, to make fast work of what seems to us outsiders so obviously cut-and-dried. I will never argue that there are justifications for the mistreatment of a child but I can almost guarantee that its consequences are beyond whatever "solutions" we would jump to implement; regardless of the success of a court system and the justice it administers trauma will always remain. Anger can impel you to that initial ruling but being witness to the damage done will soon result in apathy as the long process of healing--with its fits and starts--begins to settle in. Openness allows you to be a witness to that healing, to process the possibility of failure, and the likelihood of messy, incomplete victories. Openness gives you the strength to believe in your attempts, to have faith in a process that won't always work like you thought it would (or should). Openness gives you the strength to fight another day, to keep returning to the well of boundless optimism unbent by the trials of experience, wiser, perhaps, but far from jaded.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-17797276273290805772016-04-14T12:12:00.002-07:002016-04-14T12:15:01.206-07:00Collect<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is the collect for the Third Sunday of Easter in the Anglican Prayer Book (Southern Africa). </span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Every time I have heard it this week the words have been more moving than the last. I felt compelled to share it.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Merciful God whose love will not let us go: restore in us the power of your calling that we may boldly fulfill the tasks you set before us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit is worthy of blessing and honor, glory and power, for ever and ever. AMEN</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-10276073820318489262016-03-31T06:36:00.003-07:002016-03-31T06:40:34.740-07:00Guilt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I'll be honest; this one makes me nervous. It feels like a level of sharing that is perhaps too much. Even as I have moved beyond the feelings discussed below, exposing this part of myself that I worked so hard to hide feels...reckless.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>But I think these thoughts are important and worth sharing. We all hope to find ourselves--to whatever extent possible--in the lives and stories of others; perhaps that's all writing really comes down to as well. Hoping that someone will find themselves in you.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am 26-years-old and thus far my life has been without suffering. I am attempting to say this with as little extravagance or affect as possible recognizing the dual perils of seeming to glorify pain (which I have not known) or trumpet my blessings (which have been many). I have, simply put, lived a life of comfort and security and avoided the realities which afflict so many on this earth that were I to begin listing countries, cities, communities, and people which/who specifically come to mind, this piece would lose all cogency and descend into a nearly endless string of commas and proper nouns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now you may perhaps be a kind, gentle, and fair-minded reader who upon absorbing that first paragraph found yourself objecting to this characterization of my life; I must undoubtedly have known some hurt in my 26+ years of living. You may even know me personally and can pull specific up examples with which to prompt me; “you are not being fair to yourself” you’d say. This is true and yet also, totally, patently false. I have, of course, known other human emotions beyond joy but to characterize my life as anything approaching one of suffering is an insult to anyone who has seen the darkest places humanity can offer. I have never wanted for food. I have never run for my life. I have never slept in inadequate shelter and I do not know what a dignity-reducing lack of privacy entails. I have never been raped. I have never been wracked by a chronic illness nor been betrayed by my body or mind in any meaningful way. Whatever pain I have known has been limited in scope and, generally speaking, temporary in nature.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And yet despite all this good fortune I have frequently found myself in the curious position of personal anguish concerning all that I have been given: I feel guilty. For accidents of geography. For the fortunes of family. For the luck of privilege. I am well aware of the manifold blessings that have fallen upon me and I am not naive enough nor presumptuous enough to believe that I have earned my place in the world. “Why me?” is most often a plaintive cry associated with heart-ache or perceived injustice but I have frequently found myself torn up by the very things that are supposed bring me joy and security. I have agonized over random chance and the unbelievable hand I’ve been dealt, and I’ve berated myself up for wasted opportunities and a sense that I was not using my gifts to their fullest potential. At my worst moments I hated myself for not doing enough (though exactly what “enough” was was unclear) and came to doubt my essential goodness believing that I was a stunted, ill-formed person--selfish and broken beyond retrieval. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After years of ignoring these thoughts through whatever distractions I could muster I went to a therapist (only possible through the generosity and understanding of my parents--another potential source of guilt) and began to tackle what this feeling was and why it was so firmly embedded in my sense of self. It was through this process that I began to recognize that I was being more than a little unfair to myself and that my skewed internal logic was far from the reality that most others experienced; that not only was I a person worthy of all the love and support I was baffled to find myself receiving but that what provided such great worry and anxiety to me was in fact something that most people didn’t bother themselves too much with. Life was good to them and they accepted their blessings without complaint. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I tried to move beyond my guilt, accepting all that I have and am as one more product of an illogical world (but one that I had no hand in creating). I tried to embrace these blessings without criticism or torment (particularly aware of how ungrateful I could seem to anyone living in more insecure circumstances). I tried to just be; to live in the world as it is, no more or less responsible for my life than anyone else. That, as you might have guessed, did not work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the past year or so that I have finally stopped trying to avoid this guilt, stopped running from my own instincts and accepted these thoughts for what they are: an intrinsic part of me and not necessarily one to be swept under a rug. It had been my assumption that because my guilt (which would frequently spiral into feelings of self-loathing) was a source of unhappiness it was inherently a bad thing; that my basic project of self-improvement hinged on ridding myself of these masochistic impulses and their primary driver. If I could understand and label my guilt, recognizing it for it was--illogical and unhelpful, as I saw it at the time--I would finally be able to move beyond this sense of being “less than” and blossom into a regular, happy person, etc. THE END. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is in embracing my guilt that I have finally been able to move beyond myself and focus on whatever I can accomplish with whatever means I possess. By accepting the basic validity of some of these thoughts--though not necessarily their most extreme conclusions--I am less beholden to them; I am more willing to make sacrifices and try new things, allowing for the possibility of failure but not necessarily viewing that as a catastrophe nor an indictment of my capabilities. Guilt motivates me. And admitting that gives it less power and gives me the freedom to see just what I am capable of.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-11299558310866632232016-03-13T10:44:00.000-07:002016-03-29T04:10:53.572-07:00On Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This is something I've been mulling a lot recently, prompted by an excerpt from a sermon of Augustine of Hippo on what it means to "take up your cross".</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As sacrifice is a central theme of the Christian faith it is worth wrestling with what exactly we are being called to do; what "taking up your cross" means. The key, as I see it, is love.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I used to think of love as a kind of moral imperative, a bitter pill that one needed to swallow to be that “good person” you’re supposed to be. I assumed that constant love could be coaxed/forced out of me and that the resulting process would build me into this morally superior, unimpeachably good human. I reached and strove for love because I thought it was a hard thing worth pursuing and that the challenges and battles would purify me in a way. This notion preceded my renewed embrace of Christianity but it found a new model in the martyrdom and sacrifice embodied in Jesus. To live a life of love was not going to be easy but it was the “right thing" to do. To love one’s neighbor (and one’s enemies). To turn the other cheek. Whatever setbacks would arise I could applaud myself for trying to be a true Christian; pat myself on the back and declare that I wasn’t like everyone else because I tried to place love first.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I now recognize that though the end result I aspired to was correct--love--my method had a great flaw beyond the smug self-satisfaction hinted at above. If love is to truly rule me I cannot care what others think. I recognize that this seems counter-intuitive--doesn’t love require some sort of feedback or response?--but by “others” I mean the crowd, the public, the amorphous ‘they’ that we assume to be watching and considering and judging our every action. My pursuit of love as a moral good was, in the end, for ‘their’ benefit. It was to receive congratulations and praise (as much as I told myself I didn’t want or need those things); it was to build a <i>solid </i>reputation; it was for plaques on walls, a packed, weepy funeral, admiring biographies, and maybe a sainthood at the end of it. It was to be an Oscar Romero or a Mother Teresa. To live and embody sacrifice in a way that no one can easily object to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But that misses the point. God doesn’t want us to love because it’s the right thing to do, nor we are not supposed to love because it will reflect well on our moral qualities. We are called to love (all of us--every single human being) because to live a life of love is infinitely better than not. To lead with love is the best thing we can do; love is its own reward. Yes, God wants us to love but that has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell or Karmic reincarnation or whatever sort of afterlife (or lack thereof) you want to imagine. God wants us to love because to live a life of love is to be a closer to God or put another way, to live a life of love is to be closer to your truest self. Love has nothing to do with judgment (either divine or human); it does not care two wits what an action means or what it costs. To be ruled by love is to embrace everything that comes at you with presence and openness, a desire to see God (and yourself) in the people right in front of you. Yes, this approach to life does require sacrifice but in love sacrifice is not sacrifice. As St. Augustine shares in one of his sermons: “What is hard in precept is made easy in love.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is not to say that I or any one person is truly capable of living into this ideal. We cannot embody love all the time, and even when we try to, our actions may still come from more selfish motivations than we care to admit. Altruism feels good; knowing that you are “doing something” feels good. A little smugness might just be inevitable. I would also readily admit that good works, regardless of motivation, are better than inaction. But to be the person that God wants me to be I have to recognize that martyrdom isn’t about suffering or pain--it’s not about gritting your teeth and just being a "good person" like you're supposed to be. Sacrifice isn’t about abandoning yourself for the sake of others. Love doesn’t make you less. Love means that you give and give freely. We find it in relationship with parents, with children, with partners, with friends. It’s crazy and illogical and counter-intuitive. It is not easy and can seem like more than we are capable of. But it’s how God sees us, and I'd like to try to see with God’s eyes.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-61805020001467655692016-03-03T10:48:00.005-08:002016-03-03T10:48:48.669-08:00Third Sunday in Lent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I preached again this past Sunday. Not to be immodest but I'm pretty happy with how this one came out.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The lectionary as usual: </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Lent/CLent3_RCL.html</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We have a big one today. A story that can be evoked with a mere two words: burning bush. It is one of the seminal stories of our faith and basic knowledge for all people of the book. This is a tale that everyone knows.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I hear this passage again the feature that stands out most clearly to me is that of reverence; Moses’ total respect of God, from his outward posture to his very core. This is not a situation of token ritual or well-trod piety, this is a man rightfully shaken as he is confronted by the presence of God. The necessity of deference to the divine is brought up again and again in all religions and cultures; even language shows the marks--my name, Timothy, means ‘fears God’. But what we see in Moses is the appropriate, and perhaps instinctual, response to a brush with God; he removes his shoes and hides his face “for he was afraid to look at GOD”. God is awesome, in the truest sense of the word, and that enormous magnificence requires us let go of our presumptions and self-possession and humble our self before the unfathomable greatness of the LORD.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is also in this famed passage that the personal name of God is revealed: “I am”. The translation is a subject of much debate but what we do know is that God’s personal name--four letters that are rendered in the Latin alphabet as YHWH--derives from the verb “to be”. Our chosen translation renders this whole famed sentence as “I am who I am” but "I am that I am" "I shall be what I shall be", "I shall be what I am" or "I will become what I choose to become" could all apparently work as well. What matters most is that God is--God is an active, influential force in the world; an essential feature of all being and becoming; the center of what is, was and is to come.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is worth noting that part of the disagreement surrounding the personal name of God is that by the Babylonian captivity these four letters had become so loaded with sacred meaning that it was forbidden to utter God’s name. In fact, in modern rabbinic Judaism that reverence has seeped into seemingly generic terms like Adonai (which means Lord)--limiting the use of such titles to prayer alone. What we see in Moses and in his descendants is this constant and undeniable instinct to worship God, to place God above all else and embrace the awe that we rightfully feel when faced with the divine. Moses reacts as any on of us might; God is too great to directly observe, too vast to try and grasp, too intimidating to do anything in front of but simply cower and hide.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And yet, in the central glorious contradiction of our faith, God the vast, awesomeness of all that is--the great I AM--comes to live on earth, as one of us, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. God, who we stumble before and hide our faces from, was born to humble circumstance, lived as an itinerant preacher and died on a cross, executed by the state like a common criminal. The story is so familiar that it’s easy to lose sight of just how radically audacious it is.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today’s gospel passage is a perfect example of what I see as God’s baffling humility. Jesus relates to us a parable about a landowner who has an unproductive fig tree which he is prepared to cut down until his gardener convinces him otherwise. 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" The gardener staves off judgment for a time and allows the fig tree one final chance to prove its basic worth. As one commentator points out, what matters most is not the inevitable destruction should the tree once again fail to produce but that the gardener cares so much as to intervene for it, staying the ax and spreading manure. It is this last symbol that is particularly loaded because what is the gardener, what is Jesus our divine intercessor, doing mucking about in crap? Why is God stooping to such low standards for our small sakes?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The temptation is to declare that this is simply another example of the “New Testament God”, that this later interpretation and experience of the divine claimed by Christians is a more gentle and approachable deity than that laid out in the Hebrew Bible. There is a tendency to be dismissive of the “Jealous God” of Israel and assume that our spiritual ancestors missed the point. We believe in a God of love and forgiveness unlike those people who stayed devoted to an antiquated notion of the divine. We contrast our seminal stories--the resurrection and the Exodus--and see a new “humble” aspect of divinity because of it. Aside from the dangerous implications this line of thought has had historically it also ignores the most obvious fact about the “Old” Testament: these are our books too. They are a part of our canon and were the stories for the early church, the language all New Testament authors were steeped in, and--most importantly--the sacred texts for Jesus. Try though we might, we cannot ignore or remove ourselves from the current of ancient Hebrew thought that is the foundation of all Christian belief.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But more than that; we shouldn’t. Because despite the seeming differences in approach or interpretation God is and always has been the same God. Yes God is awesome and worthy to be praised, I don’t disagree with Exodus in the slightest, but God is also of us and with us. I AM that I AM. Moses is called as a lowly shepherd and he, like all the reluctant prophets who follow, is scared, confused and incredulous. But God tells him in no uncertain terms "I will be with you”. This is God powerful and mighty and yet also near. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">God is great and it is right for us praise the Lord at all times. But God is also humble: present, personal and knowable in our every day experience. Neither of these thoughts can or should dominate the other but it is my feeling that the greater tendency is to remove God, to set the Most High apart from us through burdensome ritual and teaching. It is our duty as seekers to fight that impulse, to bring God back to earth, back to the concrete messiness of our lives. As psalm 34 tells us: Look upon God and be radiant and let not your faces be ashamed.</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-75462533901545838522016-02-03T12:33:00.005-08:002016-02-03T12:35:06.349-08:00Sermonizing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I preached again! I'm becoming old hat here.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Here's the lectionary as usual: </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi4_RCL.html</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Love. It is the cornerstone of our faith and a theme that is carried throughout the bible, inspiring and upholding millions of Christians the world over. Today’s reading from 1Corinthians lays it out about as perfectly as one could ever hope to; the passage so completely captures the primacy of love that I am loath to quote just a part for fear of disregarding the rest. It’s one of the bible’s greatest hits and is well deserving of its long-lived popularity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But it is important to highlight, very briefly, exactly what kind of love Paul is referring to here. The word used in the original Greek is <i>agape </i>which is defined in one source as the “highest form of love; the love of God for man and of man for God.” 1Corinthians is a reminder that this kind of love, this <i>agape</i>, must be foundational to our life and work as Christians; that without love we are essentially nothing. But it is also assures us that “love never ends” and that God’s love will always be with us. These two ideas--the essential, foundational nature of God’s love in our actions and the all-encompassing, limitless gift that is divine love--cannot be overstated. One of the unfortunate affects of popularity is how quickly genuine appreciation can turn into jaded familiarity; these are words most Christians have heard and read dozens of times and despite even our best efforts the message will lose some power in repeating. But try again to hear them with fresh ears and draw strength from the encouragement Paul is offering to us. Hold onto the love of God, cherish the awesomeness that is <i>agape</i>. God loves you and you have a Christian duty to share that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With that in mind I would like to turn today’s gospel passage. It’s not something generally discussed but this is one of those occasions where Jesus is being difficult, one could even say mean. Love seems to be lacking. As Jesus is dismissive of and aloof to his former neighbors he recalls two tales from the early kingdom of Israel when God was similarly distant. Despite the presence of many widows in the time of Elijah and many lepers in the days of Elisha it is to two lowly gentiles outside the borders of Israel that these holy men visit. Despite the desperate need for God’s love within the body of God’s covenant, <i>agape </i>makes itself known where it seems to have no business being. In his retelling Jesus does not emphasize the singular qualities of the widow at Zarapheth nor does he applaud the positive attributes of Naaman the Syrian, it is God’s apparent absence within Israel that is noteworthy. Why did God abandon his people? Where did God’s love go?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is one of the singular challenges of a life lived in faith: the unanswerable question of why bad things happen to good people. Why, if God is good, is there so much suffering? The simple answer, of course, is that all evil is the result of human action, that the greatest sources of human suffering are born of our own misguided free will run amok in the world. Even when we look at catastrophic “natural disasters” and their inflated death tolls we see the ever present hand of unequal human structures. The Irish Potato Famine was one of the great tragedies of the 19th century killing approximately 1 million people over a period of seven years, but the disease which struck Ireland’s potato crop would not have been as fatal should English policy and rule been more kind-hearted. Reflecting after the crisis had abated author and activist John Mitchel wrote “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">More recently, in 2010, a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti killed at least 100,000 people (possibly as many as 316,000) while the 1994 Northridge earthquake--a 6.7 which had an epicenter just north of downtown Los Angeles--killed exactly 57 people. These differences in building safety, emergency response and even basic death accounting demonstrate quite starkly the unequal distribution of resources between two countries that are less than a thousand kilometers apart. It is important that we acknowledge and accept our role in the suffering caused by natural forces but even that reasoning can only go so far. Why blight in the first place? Why earthquakes at all?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I will not pretend to have the answer to those questions; it is a struggle that all thinking men and women of faith must tackle in their own way. It is a difficult truth we must all reconcile ourselves to and I will not presume to instruct you as to the best approach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That said, I must personally reject the notion that “God’s way are not our ways”. The idea that millions of violent, painful, and premature deaths are part of God’s plan is untenable for me. If massive death tolls are the intended result of God’s order then I want nothing to do with God. If widespread suffering is what God wants then our primary message of love and grace is hopelessly misguided. I do not know what God’s place in all this is. And not knowing is hard. We long for certainty so to embrace indecision, to comfortably accept the limits of our own knowledge in this most elemental of questions is extremely difficult. But I think it is essential, for an overly deterministic view of human pain will inevitably blame the victims for whatever tragedy befell them. What did the Haitians do to deserve that earthquake? God must be punishing them for something. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No one can provide a good answer to that; no one living can offer the basic truth of why there is pain. But I’d like to return to where we began this morning and highlight what still remains in spite of that. <i>Agape</i>. The love of the divine who knew us before we were formed in the womb. That love which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Whatever suffering’s ultimate source is, know that God is with you while you endure; that God is with us all. Know that God’s love extends beyond our darkest places and that God is present for all humans in spite of the hell they may find themselves in. Elijah and Elisha may have gone outside Israel but God was still there for all widows and lepers. As we are promised in 1Corinthians, “love never ends” and though suffering will always be around, <i>agape </i>is enough to hope in.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-9949799437507155212016-01-13T13:05:00.000-08:002016-01-13T13:05:09.072-08:00The Baptism of Christ<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I'm slightly baffled to have preached this past Sunday--I feel like I keep getting pretty weighty material--but here it is as best as I could manage.</span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lectionary can be found here:</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi1_RCL.html</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“For I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior.” These words from Isaiah are a reminder of the Israelites privileged status as God’s own people, a part of a covenant that reaches back countless generations to Abraham and Sara--the patriarch and matriarch of all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is worth pausing here for a moment to parse exactly what the difference between a contract and a covenant are. A contract is, of course, entirely secular, bound up in the law of the day while a covenant invokes a mystical aspect; there are oaths with promises of blessing (or cursing) and the entire proceeding is sealed, according to ancient Near Eastern custom, with an animal sacrifice, the implication here being that whomever should break the covenant will come to an equally ignominious end. Should a contract be broken there is specific recourse that can be taken through the courts or some sort of neutral arbiter which will, theoretically, help recoup the loss. But if a covenant is broken the offending party should expect far worse than bankruptcy or jail time--bodily harm and/or death are pretty much guaranteed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is this context which should color all our interpretations of God’s relationship to Israel (and Israel’s relationship to God). There had been many covenants between the Israelites and God up to this point--Abraham, Moses, and David can all claim specific promises made for them and their extensive kin--but the most basic component, I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD, is a promise not easily forgotten. The people of Israel are God’s people and that cannot be taken away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But this is a covenant after all and Israel’s favored position is not without requirement--613 requirements according to the law of Moses. And as a covenant the punishment for its betrayal will be harsh and violent in nature. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The prophet Isaiah is speaking to a people shaken to its very core by such violence, a nation dispossessed of its homeland and packed off to exile in the distant cities of Babylon. The Babylonian captivity has lost some of its power through the centuries, this first uprooting seems mild in the context of Roman diaspora, the Spanish Inquisition, centuries of pogroms, and the brutal efficiency of the Holocaust, but the shock of this first fall from grace, the final culmination of a slow but inexorable decline, could not have been easy for a people once covered in glory, the royal subjects of David, God’s beloved. It would have been easy to doubt God’s favor at this time, to assume the the Lord had abandoned his people, that the covenant was irreparably damaged but Isaiah, like numerous other prophets proclaiming death and doom, also has a message of hope. Despite the injustices committed, despite the law disregarded, despite the innumerable ways both big and small that the Israelites have scorned and broken God’s covenant they are still and will continue to be God’s people. “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Israel needed these words at this time, God’s people needed the reassurance of God’s everlasting promise, but when I hear Isaiah today I cannot help but claim them as my own. For all of us have a stake in this gentle reminder of love and redemption, all of us who are “called by [God’] name, who [God] created for [God’s] glory.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so we come to today’s gospel passage and with it the recognition of a new covenant with God offered in the person of Jesus Christ. As Christians we believe that Jesus opened up the promises of God’s love to all people, that in Christ we can all see and receive the same redemption God is offering to Israel. We are all God’s people and we are all called to enter into a relationship of divine love. But lest we forget, it is a covenant, and thus is not without requirement an essential feature of that being ritual itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Though we have a number of ritual sacraments within in our faith tradition undoubtedly the two most important are baptism and the Eucharist. I do not believe I have the time nor the depth of learning to properly analyze these age-old rite, rituals that have their roots in the very first generation of Christ’s followers, but I think it is worth noting that both sacraments were personally lived and experienced by Jesus. Jesus was baptized too. We find in Jesus an example, certainly, but equally important, we find a reminder of our own sacred humanity. Jesus was baptized too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the most beautiful explanations of the sacraments that I have heard emphasized the every day nature of these holy objects; pageantry and symbolism aside they are still only bread and wine and water. As humans I think we have the tendency to over-complicate matters, an impulse displayed in our most ornate sacred spaces, churches and shrines overflowing with the finest glass, stone, metal and tile work that money can buy, but despite our tendency to glorify God (and ourselves) in the most gaudy ways possible we cannot escape the simplicity of the elements; marble and gold doesn’t make it any holier. By calling attention to the sacred in these humble items can we begin to see God in everything; what makes these objects special is not exclusive to them, it is in calling attention to their sacred nature that they become something more. The Holy Spirit is not confined to the water of baptism nor is Jesus only present at the Eucharist.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so in Christ’s baptism, in our Lord’s example, do we see ourselves mirrored. Yes Jesus was sacred as God fully human but in his humanity we must see our own divinity. As one person was made holy we are all made holy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is God’s personal recognition of Christ after the baptism that I find relevant here: “You are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Just like Christ, we have all been called by name. We are all beloved. And this covenant invites us to discover our own divinity.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-38784853841399144512015-12-17T06:15:00.000-08:002015-12-17T07:24:08.212-08:00God is Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I've been meaning to post something about Holy Cross School and its students for a while... but that is not this post. </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>This post wrote itself to a certain extent, coming out of the thoughts and prayers I have been struggling with in the past few months around the importance placed on works within the Christian faith. These are the (very early) beginnings of some sort of synthesis on my part.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As Christians in the 21st Century we have a significant identity issue that stems from, as I see it, the most basic principle of our faith: God is love. The love of God has been rightly emphasized by Christians of all stripes but I think we have now reached a point where the message has lost some of its meaning. Because of the repetition and enthusiasm with which it spread the idea of God’s love has diminished in potency and become, sadly, trite and cliche. To most non-believers these words sound like a load of hooey or do not even register. Divine love and all it implies has become an idea best left to bumper stickers and cheery T-shirts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Along with this ubiquity the foundational concept of God’s love has a bit of an image problem that is equally hard to correct. Whatever one’s feeling on the matter it is hard to deny that the message of the love of God, as we experience it through Jesus Christ, has been put into the world very successfully and enthusiastically by Evangelical Protestant churches. Where I find issue is not with the message or even the format--billboards and coffee mugs need be no less holy than a pulpit--the basic problem is that God’s love inevitably is given qualifiers. Now this is not overt, no one is wearing pins that say “Jesus ♥ you <i>unless</i>...”, but the behavior of most--if not all--churches quickly makes those limits clear. God loves you unless you are an immigrant or Muslim or gay or homeless or Black or loud or illiterate--the list goes on. Some of these objections may be publicly exclaimed by churches such as Westboro Baptist but most are more subtle and thus more difficult to correct. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now before you object and state confidently “well, my church is different, we would welcome anyone” consider what it may be like for a marginalized or even slightly different kind of person to enter your sanctuary on a Sunday and join in the worship. Would a homeless person feel truly welcome? Would a family with a intermittently squalling child? Would a person with limited abilities in your language? Would someone unfamiliar with your worship tradition? Would someone with a skin color unlike the common tone of your community? Certainly some of these issues can not (and probably should not) be corrected; one of the great glories of worship in America is the breadth of choice available to us. If you don’t like praise music well you’ve got plenty of other churches that will take you! If you don’t like incense well there are lots of un-smoked places to gather! But we cannot make light of the fact that every church will feel forbidding or unwelcoming to someone. I know from a number of conversations with African-American acquaintances and friends that what makes a place “diverse” is very different for Black people and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">White people</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It should be obvious that these limits are human imposed, that God’s love is far beyond these various categories that repress and inhibit our ability to unite, but as long as we are human the message of God’s love will inevitably be constrained by our nature. So what to do. It’s untenable to dilute or diminish the centrality of God’s love to the faith but it’s apparent to my mind that we’ve hit a limit of sorts where that message is concerned. I think our best response is to tweak slightly, to acknowledge the limits of our humanity in spreading the message of divine love and press onward using the same words in a new, but not at all unfamiliar, way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The idea of divine love is comforting and rightfully appealing but it is sometimes used as a palliative instead of as a call to action. As a culture we proudly embrace the rights of the individual and so that is the framework through which we view Christ’s love and forgiveness--whatever I am and whatever I have done, God still loves me. This is important and is undoubtedly redemptive for millions of Christians but to stop there is to miss the other equally important foundation of our faith: love of neighbor. If God loves me wholly and unconditionally, for no other reason than that I am beautifully alive and made in God's image, then it stands to reason that God loves everyone else just as much. I am no more or no less loved than anyone else who lives, has lived or will live. If I am to accept this, to truly acknowledge another’s belovedness alongside my own, I cannot be still; I cannot accept the world as it is nor the structures that have made it this way. I cannot be satisfied with inequity and injustice and I cannot pretend that someone else will come along to solve the messier bits of our world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So we arrive back at my starting point--God is love--and continue to where I believe Church needs to be loudly and triumphantly heading. The true embrace of another’s beloved nature must impel us as Christians to action and, I believe, will help us resolve the issues of identity that have arisen from a limited definition of the love of God. God loves you and this is what that means. God loves you and this is what I’m going to do because of it.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-64765337148191218292015-11-29T09:05:00.003-08:002015-11-29T09:12:11.171-08:00First Sunday of Advent!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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And crazily enough I was preaching again! It was undoubtedly an honor but I cannot deny a bit nerve-wracking. </span></h3>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The lectionary can be found here: </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CAdv1_RCL.html</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Good morning everyone, Welcome to Advent! I feel as if every sermon on the first Sunday of this season has to begin in a certain fashion so before I throw myself into things let me acknowledge the proper form. “My goodness. Another Advent! Another Christmas season! Where did the year go! It felt like we just did this!” And yet, I am perhaps being a shade too glib. Where did the year go? How do we once again find ourselves facing another Christmas, another new year. As we reset our church calendars and enter this season of waiting it is hard not to wonder, both with joy and longing, at the ever plodding passage of time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In my mind, it is one of the great strengths of the liturgical year that we collectively experience Jesus’s life and work from birth to death to resurrection and glory all within a calendar year. Through the familiarity born of repetition we are given an opportunity every year to discover anew Christ’s mission for us. And it is worth noting, briefly, that Pentecost, the celebration of God the Spirit at work in the world, is the most prolonged of liturgical seasons. Jesus’s birth and death and resurrection, while important, are nothing more than singular events in a very long year; feasts made possible by a long growing season.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But now all of that changes! Now we are once again made potently aware of the transition before us. Now we find ourselves beginning again, awaiting the birth of Jesus that “holy infant so tender and mild”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So what the heck is going on with today’s gospel passage? We find ourselves skipping right over the entirety of the Jesus story, infancy and adulthood, and are faced instead with the chaotic prophecy of Jesus’s Second Coming; no heavenly babe but “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” This is where the repetition of the liturgical year begins to work upon us, where the familiarity of the story Christ’s human birth is to open our hearts to the promise of his heavenly return. Yes, we are awaiting the baby wrapped in swaddling cloth; we are preparing to celebrate the birth of God in human form. But we are also waiting--still waiting--for Christ’s second coming, an event that promises to be significantly more “action packed” than his humble birth two millennia ago. As our reading from Luke is quick to inform us, things won’t be so idyllic the next time around. In the verses directly preceding today’s passage we are told quite plainly: “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people...” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If we are to be truly prepared for Christ’s return we must stay vigilant and watchful. “Be alert at all times.” It would seem that Advent is a reminder of the necessity of proper preparation. As John the Baptist declares in Matthew’s gospel: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” This is not a light spring cleaning; this is no trifling New Year’s resolution. This is God demanding the total reformation of our lives, our unending devotion to Him and His Justice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So what do we do? How do we reconcile Christ born and Christ returned? Is there room in our collective faith for both infant and judge? The contradiction seems perhaps too great to overcome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For me, part of the process of joining these two seemingly conflicted narratives lies in today’s passage from the prophet Jeremiah. Our reading comes from the middle chapters of Jeremiah that are often referred to as the “Little Book of Comfort”--brief glimpses of hope in otherwise harrowing predictions of Jerusalem’s impending destruction and the Babylonian captivity that is to follow. It is here that Jeremiah is reminding all of Judah that despite the sorrows to come, despite the imminent demolition of their life and worship, God will not forget them. That God’s love is bigger than the promised land or even the temple. That with God there is always hope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As Christians we believe in a God of Love--a God most easily personified in the form of the infant Christ--but we also believe in a God of Justice. Throughout the Old Testament we are reminded that God’s desire for justice weighs stronger than the physical comfort of his chosen people; the Babylonian exile was in direct response to inequities that had taken root in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Being God’s people does not come without requirement and it is in those requirements that we see God’s love acting through us. It is in care for the most vulnerable that we see God; in seeking God’s justice that we find love. The two cannot separated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So we find ourselves hoping for Christ’s arrival both as babe and as judge for it is in Christ’s return that we will finally have justice and in Christ’s birth that we are reminded of what that will take. It is easy to quake in fear at the thought of standing before the Son of Man, to presume that all our sins will damn us before the word “go”. And yet it is equally easy to presume that our every fault will be forgiven because of God’s love, love that has not changed or diminished through millennia of human failing. Both must be right; God’s love is guaranteed but that has to mean something, that has to pull something out of us. If we accept that we are loved--and love God in return--we also must accept a love of God’s justice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is why the Pentecost season is the longest--we can’t wait for Jesus the whole year, we have to, with the help of the Holy Spirit, do something. So as we begin a new year in our collective faith journey let us strive to remember exactly what we are preparing for. And as we wait for the coming of God’s kingdom let never cease building it on earth. “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-18157348503327586262015-11-02T21:15:00.000-08:002015-11-02T21:15:14.340-08:00A Prayer from St. Ignatius Loyola<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Or as my Alex affectionately call him, St. Iggy.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>It has been on my mind and in my prayers a lot of late so I thought it would be worth sharing. Though I generally prefer my prayers in entirely modern English, I think the 'thees' and 'thous' work here.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wherever thy glory be best served, whenever, however, there, then, and in that state let me thy servant be; only hide not from me thy divine love. Help me to trust thee to the uttermost. Teach me to serve thee as thou deservest; to give, and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to look for rest; to labor, and not ask for any reward, save that of knowing that I am doing thy will.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-7369625550832365182015-10-30T08:23:00.000-07:002015-11-29T09:12:01.040-08:00Sermon II<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">While we're at it, here's the little bit that I preached this past Sunday!</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The lectionary can be found here:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp25_RCL.html</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Go, your faith has made you well. I find myself pulled in two different directions by this ever familiar exhortation. At first I am jealous or bitter of a man like Bartimaeus who found himself so close to Christ. Faith would be so easy if I could just see Jesus for myself. Of course Bartimaeus believed, he had the Son of Man right there to soothe every momentary slip or passing fear. And don’t get me started on Job! How much easier faith would come with God talking at your from a whirlwind. I would certainly not want to tread his path but who cannot feel a even a little twinge of envy knowing that Job’s suffering and his plea for answers was actually met by the Almighty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And yet, how could they be so sure? How could they not doubt? Even Job must have had a few misgivings once the wind died down and the skies cleared; even the voice of God must lose some power as time passes and memory thins. Since Bartimaeus--like several others in the gospels--was healed because of his faith, or more accurately, by his faith, one naturally wonders: could my faith do the same? Am I strong enough in belief that Christ would not need to heal me, that my confidence in him would have already been enough? It is easy to condemn oneself as lacking when comparisons like this are readily available.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But this, as I see it, is a painful and cruel way to view the gospel story. To pretend that a life lived in faith is as easy as 'just believing’ belittles all seekers of God and their multitude of paths. Faith is not a zero-sum game--total conviction or nothing--and like anything else it takes work. It takes patience and struggle and determination. It requires a willingness to close one’s eyes and listen, even when God has not been speaking for years. I don’t pretend to know any more about what faith is than those of you gathered here--my youth would quickly betray me--but I think I have a sense of what faith is not. Faith is not simple or easy or at all straight forward. It often isn’t what you think it is and it rarely means what you think it should. Faith is not “belief” so much as it is practice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And so we return to Bartimaeus and his self-healing faith. Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, who shouts for Jesus as he passes by on the way to Jerusalem. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! The great biblical scholar Marcus Borg states that faith in the early Christian context faith meant two things: loyalty and trust. He writes: “Loyalty was about commitment and allegiance--not to a set of statements but to a person. It’s opposite was not doubt, but betrayal.Trust was about who or what you trusted. It’s opposite was not intellectual doubt, but anxiety.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is certainly trust that leaps out from the story. Bartimaeus, as a blind man, was used to a small and insignificant lot in life. A man who could not provide for himself but through his meager beggings and was likely more used to being ignored than being seen. Bartimaeus had every reason to expect the same treatment as Jesus and his followers passed by--in fact, “many sternly ordered him to be quiet.” This could have been just another cacophonous parade passing Bartimaeus by, a spectacle that meant as little to the beggar as he did to its leader. And yet Bartimaeus, in a moment of audacity that may have even surprised himself, cried to Jesus in faith and was healed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Though we cannot know how familiar Bartimaeus was with Jesus, it seems safe to say that we all know a bit more about Christ than he did in that moment. The blind man was not healed because he totally agreed with a codified set of beliefs; his sight did not return to him because he was totally convinced of Jesus as the messiah. He simply called out and trusted that he would be heard. What nature Bartimaeus’ faith took beforehand is uncertain but we know what came after his healing--like hundreds or even thousands of others he left what little he had behind and joined Jesus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And so we see the example of Bartimaeus as a faithful servant in both prayer and deed. He did not know what he would receive nor could he presume he would even get a reply but he asked God for help and his eyes were opened. And when his life had been restored to him, a new life beyond what he could have hoped for, he praised the Lord and followed him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I would be extremely surprised if Bartimaeus never wavered after that--I’m sure confusion and doubt must have appeared at least once in his life post-miracle--but I’m inclined to think that whatever challenges arose were met with the same faith that healed him, with hopeful prayer and patient trust. Though we don’t have Jesus in the flesh to affirm our faith we can, in the end, be like Bartimaeus; it just takes a bit of work.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-39726128651666954702015-10-30T08:04:00.000-07:002016-04-25T09:45:49.784-07:00Finally!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Having lost my original blog post just as it was near completion--suffice it to say I am not pleased with Blogger's saving mechanism--instead of attempting to recreate it I am going to write something completely different.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Perhaps this was God's way of getting me to reconsider things (or so I keep telling myself)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: small;">I have now been in the monastic rhythm for a month (!) and though I am certainly not a full-fledged monk--I think of myself as a 'half-brother'--I have come to a fuller appreciation of what the religious life entails. More than anything it comes down to devotion.</span><br />
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This could be put in any variety of ways--dedication, focus, discipline, patience--but devotion seems the most appropriate; what is a monastic calling but devoting oneself to God? I have been privileged to witness the celebration a monk taking his first vows and I was struck by the service's similarities to a wedding; what was being affirmed that day was in essence a wedding, the recognition of a life-long commitment to God.</span><br />
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Yet to assume that simply because they are monks, because they have taken these vows and committed themselves to a life in Christ that they do not struggle with doubt nor face any of the same challenges of a more everyday believer is niave. Whatever wisdom, whatever faith, whatever strength these men possess are not the result of putting on the habit, nor were they the impetus for entering the order in the first place; everything a monk has is the result of what we all know to be necessary for any successful endeavor--hard work. Certainly grace exists and God appears in flashes but in the end monks are no different from you or I, they are just a little more devoted.</span><br />
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These are not insights that I have picked up in any specific conversations with the brothers--though I imagine they would generally agree--but simply extrapolations from my own personal experiences thus far. The brothers here observe five daily offices and though I can only fit three of those in my schedule I am amazed at what a regimented prayer schedule does to a person. I find myself thinking on God more frequently, saying small prayers throughout the day, feeling more thankful for whatever little blessings appear, and generally less frantic where my obligations and commitments are concerned. When I first began to pray consistently with the Book of Common Prayer almost two years ago I noticed that whatever benefits I gained from the habit were more generally felt in its absence than in its presence; I noticed <i>something </i>was missing when I didn't make time for God. That is certainly the case in my time thus far--when the brother's take their Sabbath on Mondays I feel what I am missing quite acutely--but what is more encouraging is the strength I feel myself drawing from the offices and the ways in which it has opened me up to further prayer.</span><br />
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The biggest struggle is what it does <i>not </i>do. Despite all my greatest wishes I am still a fallible human with a mind that flits from thought to thought with all the congruity of a sun-dazed fruit fly: I zone out during the readings; I lose track of my place in the psalms; I follow absurd trains of thought until I am startled back into the present by the sheer insanity of whatever place my mind had come to rest. Of course, I try to be present. I try to devote myself entirely to the centuries old prayer tradition I am immersed in but inevitably I am distracted by the world.</span><br />
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But that, as I see it, is the point. The point of prayer or meditation or group worship or music or any of the myriad ways people seek (and find) God. We are all struggling against ourselves to be with the divine and all those diverse forms of worship are nothing but the foundation upon which God can build. We set the stage and hope that <i>something</i> appears. More often than not we are met with silence--or at least nothing as resounding as we might like--but we return day after day because the practice of seeking is worth it in itself. God is found in the looking.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-69277494761254115692015-09-27T14:48:00.000-07:002015-11-29T09:12:38.010-08:00Sermon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Now that I have been in Grahamstown for a little less than I week it feels like a good time to share...a sermon! I promise I will sketch out some of my initial thoughts and feelings about my arrival and what I have seen thus far later this week but until then enjoy this little bit of preaching I did today.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-weight: normal;"><b>(And yes, you read that correctly, I preached on my first Sunday here. It was not entirely my idea.) The lectionary can be found here:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-weight: normal;"><b>http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp21_RCL.html</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is a lot to work with in today’s gospel passage--a non-disciple casting out demons in Jesus’ name, the immortal words “whoever is not against us with for us”, and the perplexing closing lines about salt. Whole books could be, and I’m sure have been, written about these densely packed phrases. And I am certainly tempted to latch onto one of those lines or throw myself into a discussion of today’s readings in James or Esther. But I see that as the easy way out and, with perhaps a touch of hubris, I choose the challenge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut if off. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My first reaction when presented with such gruesome imagery is astonishment quickly followed by incredulity--Jesus must not have meant that. And certainly this has to be acknowledged as a case of gross exaggeration or all good Christians would be very easily identifiable. But simply because Jesus is descending into hyperbole does not mean that the passage should be dismissed entirely. Is this really any different form his exhortation in Matthew5--be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. Today’s reading in Mark sets before us the same high standard but with the additional warning of what will befall us should we fail. Hell. Full stop.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is a pretty bleak picture--either we achieve the impossible or we spend eternity in “un-quenchable fire”. Perfection or damnation, nothing in between.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But if we return to the text for a moment, is that actually what Jesus is saying? Three times Christ states “it is better” when comparing disfigurement to a life in hell. OK, it is better but it’s unachievable--and here I mean perfection, not self-mutilation--does that mean we should give up, accept hellfire as our fate and live the rest of our days as we see fit?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I see a similar comparison when faced with the woes of humankind. It would be better if there were an end to violence, poverty, disease, inequity, prejudice and the seemingly limitless ways in which our lives on earth can seem doomed to misery. Should we give up? Perfection seems so very far away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Obviously the answer must be no, but does that make our task any easier, knowing that we must strive for the impossible, resolute in our pursuit of an ideal. In the end, it comes down to trust--or put another way, faith.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I trust that God will forgive my failings, recognizing my basic intentions as good. I trust that my small acts of kindness are part of a greater body of love. I trust that one day, likely not in my lifetime, nor even the next hundred lifetimes, there will be something approximating the kingdom of God on earth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In a roundabout way I think that is Jesus’ message here--try your hardest knowing that you will fall; that the world will hurt you; that you will hurt yourself. That each stumble can feel like an eye has been plucked out or a hand lopped off. Yet do not be paralyzed by the threat of punishment nor agonize over the limits of your actions; we must simply do what we can and have faith that God will cover the rest.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9020497041791669317.post-44618437993490685682015-06-12T09:59:00.001-07:002015-11-02T21:15:55.775-08:00The First<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is my first ever blog post so excuse any peculiarities of format or design. Think of me as a new born calf still stumbling around, trying to figure out just what exactly these things called "legs" are.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is and will be much more to come but I'd like to start with this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For I am but a sojourner with you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A wayfarer, as all my forebears were</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(Psalm 39:17)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I initially chose the title of this blog rather flippantly; I'm a fan of alliteration and it seemed an accurate enough portrayal of what will be a relatively brief stay in South Africa. My length of visit is specified and intentionally limited; I am not putting down roots. Yet as the dust from my quick decision settled and it dawned on me more fully that this was the title of what will be a primary link between me and many of the family, friends and well-wishers I have back home the significance of it all clarified. And with that clarity came this, psalm 39.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is not the happiest psalms (see verse 5) and the sojourn to which the psalmist refers is certainly more consequential than a year spent as an international missionary but as I sit with it the title feels more and more appropriate. On the most basic level I am a sojourner; nothing about YASC is indefinite and as Psalm 39:17 indicates, all those who proceeded me were 'wayfarers' too. This is particularly applicable to my circumstance as I am to be the eleventh YASC assigned missionary at Mariya uMama weThemba, one in a long line of young, devoted, idealistic Christians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The temptation is to insert "another" into that phrase, to belittle oneself with the vastness of an enterprise. What is (another) one next to so many? The implied answer is nothing. It is that sense of insignificance that the psalmist is succumbing to here, taking humility to its self-denying extreme. But as I live into this next chapter of my life, that mentality is what I happily shrug off. I am one of many (YASCers, Christians, Humans) striving to do God's work in my daily life, a single link in a continuous chain pulling upward.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07055866513303254787noreply@blogger.com1