Well, I safely returned from across England, a bit lighter and hungrier than when I left, both of which are good things. I traveled 20 daylight hours on Saturday and then preached on Sunday in Highlands, so I have been a bit jet-lagged this week; plus I filed an over-due report with a granting agency and prepared a workshp for this week-end in California (I can hear the violins tuning up now) anyway, I'm not preaching Sunday, so I haven't done a lot on the texts, but, I feel like I ought to give you something, so here's a piece from my recent early morning readings which hit me pretty much where I live. Every once in a while, the only truthful response to a truly preached word is "ouch, that hurt!"
"Discipleship is commitment to Christ. Because Christ exists, he must be followed. An idea about Christ, a doctrinal system, a general religous recognition of grace or forgiveness of sins does not require discipleship. In truth, it even excludes discipleship; it is inimical to it. One enters into a relationship with an idea by way of knowledge, enthusiasm, perhaps even by carrying it out, but never by personal obedient discipleship. Christianity without the living Jesus Christ remains necessarily a Christianity without discipleship; and a Christianity without discipleship is always a Christianity without Jesus Christ. It is an idea, a myth. A Christianity in which there is only God the Father, but not Christ as a living Son actually cancels discipleship. In that case there will be trust in God, but not discipleship." Dietrich Bonhoefffer, from Discipleship
And, on the theological front: I saw in the papers when I returned home the resurgent debate about the Triune name, all those proposed ideas, so here's mine: Paper, Rock, Scissors. It's Triune, it's non-gender specific, and it has lots of Biblical and theological metaphorical, symbolic, like you know, stuff. The Word of God, (on Paper) The Rock of Salvation, Jesus is my Rock and Rolls my sin away, The Spriit or something cuts like a two-edged sword, etc. I think it'll work.
delmo
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Brief Hiatus: Study Leave
Though I'm not sure how many people regularly check in with this site for sermon help, or just for low level entertainment, I do feel like there are enough of you that I should keep you apprised of changes in schedule. I'm hopping a plane in Atlanta this afternoon, flying to England to attend Oxford University's Summer Programme in Theology. I'll be there a couple of weeks and will return in early August, so I will post again for Sunday August 13. In the meantime, if you get desperate, reread my old posts. There is probably something back there you can shoehorn in sideways that will suffice for a summer crowd. ;-) peace, delmo
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
PENTECOST 6:RCL texts for July 16, 2006
One day last week I was driving around town, running from one thing to another, when I pulled into a convenience store to buy a bottle of water. I was in a hurry and I pulled up to the door at an awkward angle. When I came back to the car, a woman driving a UPS truck was pulling in behind me. She leaned out the window and asked, “Are you going forward or backing up?”
It took me a minute to figure out her question and why she was asking it. If I was pulling forward, it was safe for her to park behind me; if I was backing up, she needed to move. After I got back on the road, I continued to meditate on her question. Being a preacher, and of a naturally abstract cast of mind, I took her question far beyond its original, pragmatic meaning. “Am I,” I thought, “going forward or backing up in my life?”
The question stayed with me all day, as I applied it to my self and my personal spiritual life goals, and to my relationships and to my family and to my church. Am I going forward or backing up? Am I making progress or going backward? Is my church making progress of backing up? It’s a good question to ponder, isn’t it?
In our gospel lesson, King Herod has a dilemma about what to do with John the Baptist. He has more than a political decision to make here; the text reveals that he was struggling with a deep spiritual question, a question he only barely perceived or acknowledges, but one which was more important than any other question he would ever face. What would he do about John’s call to repentance and the coming Kingdom of God? Would he go forward of back up?
As the story begins, Herod has begun to hear about the preaching and teaching and healing of Jesus. People are speculating as to who Jesus is. Herod leaps to a ridiculous conclusion, based on his own guilt and fear; he decides Jesus is John the Baptist, whom he beheaded, reincarnated to haunt him. Therein lies a tale.
When John the Baptist was alive, he was fearless in preaching truth as he saw it. Herod had married his brother’s wife, a questionable arrangement, both morally and legally. John was not hesitant in telling the King that he was a sinner bound for Hell. Not surprisingly, Herod’s wife was unhappy with a popular preacher calling her an adulterer in public, so she pressured Herod to shut him up.
Now, Herod could have killed John right away, but something stopped him. It was fear and perplexity and the minute stirrings of the soul. Listen to the way Mark says it in verse 20:
“. . .for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man,
and he protected him. When he heard him he was greatly perplexed,
and yet he liked to listen to him.”
Herod was perplexed. He was confused. He couldn’t decide whether to go forward or back up. He knew what politics and self-protection dictated; and he was a consummate politician; and yet something kept him from doing the politically right thing. Something deep inside, be it religion or superstition, kept him from doing away with John. So he kept him in prison, locked away, kept John from interfering with his daily life, and yet, and yet, he liked to listen to him.
Is that perhaps the way some of us live our spiritual lives? Most days, in most ways, we follow the customs of our time, the dictates of the so-called real world, making decisions based on pragmatic necessity; keeping our religiosity locked away in a convenient spiritual prison, where we can listen to it when we have time and when it won’t cause us any trouble.
That’s what happens when we try to live our lives by two contradictory and competing standards. The great tenor Luciano Pavarotti tells the story of his decision to pursue a music career full-time. He took voice lessons from a professional tenor while also attending a teacher’s college. At graduation, he said to his father, “What shall I do, be a singer or a teacher?”
His father said, “Luciano, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.” Luciano chose singing.
Amos used the symbol of the plumb line, a simple builder’s tool, a string with a weight at the end. Hold it to the top of the hall and it hangs straight down, showing you if your wall is built correctly.
Amos says that God’s word and God’s way are to be our plumb lines, that by which we measure our lives to see if we are straight and true. Herod’s problem is that he has too many plumb lines working, plumb lines with different gravitational pulls.
One is John’s preaching, a plumb line that judge’s Herod’s life and finds it wanting.
Another is Herod’s wife, who is pressuring him to follow her will. Another is public opinion, another is the will of his political friends and another is the will of his political enemies. No wonder Herod is perplexed, his plumb lines are getting tangled, calling him to differing standards of truth. Herod can’t decide what to do, so he tries to get away with doing nothing.
Herod’s hand is forced when the plumb lines come together and he can no longer delay. There is a party, he drinks too much, he makes a rash promise. His wife seizes her moment and demands the death of John; and there Herod sits, again perplexed bothered. Will he do the right thing? Or will he cave in to the pressures of prestige and pride? In his struggle to sit between two chairs, Herod falls. In his choice between going forward into God’s Kingdom or falling back into his old ways, Herod chooses badly and calls for the head of John the Baptist. He has picked the wrong plumb line by which to measure his life.
In his novel about early Christianity, THE ROBE, Lloyd C. Douglas tells the story of what happened to Jesus’ robe, the one the soldiers gambled for at the foot of the cross. In Douglas story, it continually changes hands, and its owners are faced with a choice about how to respond to the story of the Robe, the story of the crucified Jewish peasant.
One who responds is a Roman soldier named Marcellus. He hears the Gospel story, he receives Christ into his life, he becomes a Christian. He writes his lover, Diana, back in Rome, telling her the story of the Robe, the story of Jesus. She writes back, “It’s a lovely story . . . .We don’t have to do anything about it do we?
Diana, like King Herod before her, has hit upon the dilemma of hearing the Gospel. It is a beautiful, frightening, perplexing story, one people like to listen to. And if you listen carefully, you will realize that it is calling you to change, to become different. And most of us don’t want to. Like Diana, we cry out, “We don’t have to do anything about it, do we?”
Well, yes we do. We cannot sit on two chairs, for we will surely fall between them.
We cannot live our lives by a variety of standards, we cannot measure ourselves by contradictory plumb lines, for they will surely get tangled, and our house of faith will fall.
We cannot sit still in the parking lot of life; we must go forward or back up.
We cannot keep God and Christ locked away in a private prison of our own devising, bringing them out to look at and listen to at our convenience.
We must decide, we must do something about the story of Jesus.
Our calling today is to measure our lives by the plumb line of God’s love. That plumb line was established on the cross, where Jesus gave his life, his all, for us.
Our calling is to conform our lives to his, to love with his love, to forgive with his grace, to move with Christ into the fulfillment of the Kingdom.
So, I ask you, as I ask myself, “Are you going forward, or are you backing up?”
Peace,
delmo
It took me a minute to figure out her question and why she was asking it. If I was pulling forward, it was safe for her to park behind me; if I was backing up, she needed to move. After I got back on the road, I continued to meditate on her question. Being a preacher, and of a naturally abstract cast of mind, I took her question far beyond its original, pragmatic meaning. “Am I,” I thought, “going forward or backing up in my life?”
The question stayed with me all day, as I applied it to my self and my personal spiritual life goals, and to my relationships and to my family and to my church. Am I going forward or backing up? Am I making progress or going backward? Is my church making progress of backing up? It’s a good question to ponder, isn’t it?
In our gospel lesson, King Herod has a dilemma about what to do with John the Baptist. He has more than a political decision to make here; the text reveals that he was struggling with a deep spiritual question, a question he only barely perceived or acknowledges, but one which was more important than any other question he would ever face. What would he do about John’s call to repentance and the coming Kingdom of God? Would he go forward of back up?
As the story begins, Herod has begun to hear about the preaching and teaching and healing of Jesus. People are speculating as to who Jesus is. Herod leaps to a ridiculous conclusion, based on his own guilt and fear; he decides Jesus is John the Baptist, whom he beheaded, reincarnated to haunt him. Therein lies a tale.
When John the Baptist was alive, he was fearless in preaching truth as he saw it. Herod had married his brother’s wife, a questionable arrangement, both morally and legally. John was not hesitant in telling the King that he was a sinner bound for Hell. Not surprisingly, Herod’s wife was unhappy with a popular preacher calling her an adulterer in public, so she pressured Herod to shut him up.
Now, Herod could have killed John right away, but something stopped him. It was fear and perplexity and the minute stirrings of the soul. Listen to the way Mark says it in verse 20:
“. . .for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man,
and he protected him. When he heard him he was greatly perplexed,
and yet he liked to listen to him.”
Herod was perplexed. He was confused. He couldn’t decide whether to go forward or back up. He knew what politics and self-protection dictated; and he was a consummate politician; and yet something kept him from doing the politically right thing. Something deep inside, be it religion or superstition, kept him from doing away with John. So he kept him in prison, locked away, kept John from interfering with his daily life, and yet, and yet, he liked to listen to him.
Is that perhaps the way some of us live our spiritual lives? Most days, in most ways, we follow the customs of our time, the dictates of the so-called real world, making decisions based on pragmatic necessity; keeping our religiosity locked away in a convenient spiritual prison, where we can listen to it when we have time and when it won’t cause us any trouble.
That’s what happens when we try to live our lives by two contradictory and competing standards. The great tenor Luciano Pavarotti tells the story of his decision to pursue a music career full-time. He took voice lessons from a professional tenor while also attending a teacher’s college. At graduation, he said to his father, “What shall I do, be a singer or a teacher?”
His father said, “Luciano, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.” Luciano chose singing.
Amos used the symbol of the plumb line, a simple builder’s tool, a string with a weight at the end. Hold it to the top of the hall and it hangs straight down, showing you if your wall is built correctly.
Amos says that God’s word and God’s way are to be our plumb lines, that by which we measure our lives to see if we are straight and true. Herod’s problem is that he has too many plumb lines working, plumb lines with different gravitational pulls.
One is John’s preaching, a plumb line that judge’s Herod’s life and finds it wanting.
Another is Herod’s wife, who is pressuring him to follow her will. Another is public opinion, another is the will of his political friends and another is the will of his political enemies. No wonder Herod is perplexed, his plumb lines are getting tangled, calling him to differing standards of truth. Herod can’t decide what to do, so he tries to get away with doing nothing.
Herod’s hand is forced when the plumb lines come together and he can no longer delay. There is a party, he drinks too much, he makes a rash promise. His wife seizes her moment and demands the death of John; and there Herod sits, again perplexed bothered. Will he do the right thing? Or will he cave in to the pressures of prestige and pride? In his struggle to sit between two chairs, Herod falls. In his choice between going forward into God’s Kingdom or falling back into his old ways, Herod chooses badly and calls for the head of John the Baptist. He has picked the wrong plumb line by which to measure his life.
In his novel about early Christianity, THE ROBE, Lloyd C. Douglas tells the story of what happened to Jesus’ robe, the one the soldiers gambled for at the foot of the cross. In Douglas story, it continually changes hands, and its owners are faced with a choice about how to respond to the story of the Robe, the story of the crucified Jewish peasant.
One who responds is a Roman soldier named Marcellus. He hears the Gospel story, he receives Christ into his life, he becomes a Christian. He writes his lover, Diana, back in Rome, telling her the story of the Robe, the story of Jesus. She writes back, “It’s a lovely story . . . .We don’t have to do anything about it do we?
Diana, like King Herod before her, has hit upon the dilemma of hearing the Gospel. It is a beautiful, frightening, perplexing story, one people like to listen to. And if you listen carefully, you will realize that it is calling you to change, to become different. And most of us don’t want to. Like Diana, we cry out, “We don’t have to do anything about it, do we?”
Well, yes we do. We cannot sit on two chairs, for we will surely fall between them.
We cannot live our lives by a variety of standards, we cannot measure ourselves by contradictory plumb lines, for they will surely get tangled, and our house of faith will fall.
We cannot sit still in the parking lot of life; we must go forward or back up.
We cannot keep God and Christ locked away in a private prison of our own devising, bringing them out to look at and listen to at our convenience.
We must decide, we must do something about the story of Jesus.
Our calling today is to measure our lives by the plumb line of God’s love. That plumb line was established on the cross, where Jesus gave his life, his all, for us.
Our calling is to conform our lives to his, to love with his love, to forgive with his grace, to move with Christ into the fulfillment of the Kingdom.
So, I ask you, as I ask myself, “Are you going forward, or are you backing up?”
Peace,
delmo
Friday, July 07, 2006
PENTECOST 5: Gospel lesson: Mark 6:1-13
A few years ago a woman in Denver went into a jewelry store to buy a cross as a gift for her soon to be confirmed god-daughter. When she made her request the clerk inquired, "Do you want a plain one, or one with a little man on it?"
Those of us in the church are appalled at the clerk's ignorance, but we must be careful here. As the story of Jesus preaching in Nazereth shows, it is entirely possible that the people who think they know Jesus best are the very ones who know him least of all.
Remember, Nazereth was a small town. Jesus had lived there most of his life. He was already 30 years old when he left home. Life in such a place is lived very publicly. Everybody knows everybody, and almost everything there is to know about everybody. We can speculate that many of the people gathered in the synagogue that day had in their homes furniture made by Jesus, they plowed their fields and did their work with tools shaped by his hands in his carpenter's shop.
They had done business with him, worshipped with him, gone fishing with him, stood around the town square in the early evening gossping with him. They knew Jesus very well, yet, in the end, it was shown that they didn't really know him at all.
There is a danger that we in the church know Jesus so well that we, like the people of Nazereth, really don't know him at all.
It's easy to assume that we know Jesus because we know about Jesus. And that is a very dangerous assumption indeed. For, "familiarity breeds contempt", or, if not contempt, then something which may be spiritually worse, a spirit of indifference. A blase', "I know all about that Jesus stuff" attitude. One of the great witnesses of Scripture is that God and Jesus are always more than we expected or dreamed.
In order to get in touch with that "something more", we must always approach the Christ with open minds and open hearts, ready and willing to be surprised and changed and moved from where we are to where God wants us to be.
Just knowing the identity of the little man on the cross only puts us one tiny baby step ahead of the the jewelry store clerk. In order for that "little man" to make a difference in our lives, we must make a step of faith and allow our identity to become tied up in Christ's identity.
In the village of Stepanavan, Armenia, there is a woman known locally as "Palasan's wife." In 1988, a devastating earthquake struck Armenia. It was nearly noon and Palasan rushed from his little shop tot he elementary school where his son was a student.
He discovered the front of the school had begun to crumble. Palasan entered the school and began shoving the children out to safety. He stood in a doorway and held the door jamb up with his back whild 28 children crawled through into the open air.
Suddenly, an aftershock hit and Palasan perished in the collapsing building. To honor the deeds and memory of Palasan, the people refered to the widow as "Palasan's wife"
The relationship of Christians to Christ is somewhat like that of "Palasan's wife" to Palasan. To call oneself a Christian is to say that our lives are intimately tied up with the life of Christ. Who we are is determined by who Christ is.
The difference is that Palasan's memory lives on in his wife, but Christ himself lives on in us, the church. All to often we are all too much like Palasan's wife,
living MEMORIALS to Christ rather than the living BODY of Christ.
Jesus did not say, "Go be me" or ""Go be like me" Jesus said, "Go forth in my name and I am with ou always." The Christian is one in whom the life of Christ lives on. The Christian is one through whom Christ continues to serve the world.
The Christian is one in whom Christ continues to speak and comfort and heal.
The Christian is one with whom Christ carries on his work of saving the world.
In the second part of our lesson, Jesus sends out the 12 2x2. And to whom did he send them? He sent them out to the first century equivalent of people who talk about "the little man on the cross", people aware of the reality of the spiritual, but just barely, people in desperate need of a living, real, life-changing encounter with a loving and active God. He sent them to people whose lives had grown stale and sterile, to people who had begun to lose sight of the fact that there is more to life than just getting though each day until retirement. He sent them out to people just like us, people with restless hearts, hearts with holes in them, a hole only God can fill.
And, just as he sent them, he sends us. It is not by accident or mere "formal" tradition that our worship unfolds the way it does. Our worship is designed to imitate the ebb and flow of the Christian life. We come into God's Presence, we experience forgiveness, we hear God's word of love and promise, we respond with faith and prayers and offerings, we enter into God's living presence in the Sacrament of the Table, and then we go out to serve and bring others to the table,into the presence of God.
Go in Peace, Serve the Lord! are the last words we hear each Sunday, for that is what our real lives, out there, are about.
Our lives are lived on the Frontier between the presence of God and that so-called "real world". We are called to stand perilously balanced between two worlds, without falling too deeply into either. As the old songs says, we must not become "so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good," but yet, if we plunge so deeply into the world and its problems that we lose touch with God, we will lose the only power we have to deal with the world's problems.
We are called, like the disciples, to move back and forth between these two worlds, just as Jesus' disciples were called to go out from Jesus on their mission and to return to him for prayer and support.
It seems to me that our calling here is a simple one. We are called to point to the cross and identify to the world the little man who hangs there. Who he was, what he did, and especially what he has meant in our lives. That's it. That's all God asks of us. And like the disciples going out without a lot of provisions, we have to trust that what God has given us, that simple story, is enough.
Peace,
Delmo
Those of us in the church are appalled at the clerk's ignorance, but we must be careful here. As the story of Jesus preaching in Nazereth shows, it is entirely possible that the people who think they know Jesus best are the very ones who know him least of all.
Remember, Nazereth was a small town. Jesus had lived there most of his life. He was already 30 years old when he left home. Life in such a place is lived very publicly. Everybody knows everybody, and almost everything there is to know about everybody. We can speculate that many of the people gathered in the synagogue that day had in their homes furniture made by Jesus, they plowed their fields and did their work with tools shaped by his hands in his carpenter's shop.
They had done business with him, worshipped with him, gone fishing with him, stood around the town square in the early evening gossping with him. They knew Jesus very well, yet, in the end, it was shown that they didn't really know him at all.
There is a danger that we in the church know Jesus so well that we, like the people of Nazereth, really don't know him at all.
It's easy to assume that we know Jesus because we know about Jesus. And that is a very dangerous assumption indeed. For, "familiarity breeds contempt", or, if not contempt, then something which may be spiritually worse, a spirit of indifference. A blase', "I know all about that Jesus stuff" attitude. One of the great witnesses of Scripture is that God and Jesus are always more than we expected or dreamed.
In order to get in touch with that "something more", we must always approach the Christ with open minds and open hearts, ready and willing to be surprised and changed and moved from where we are to where God wants us to be.
Just knowing the identity of the little man on the cross only puts us one tiny baby step ahead of the the jewelry store clerk. In order for that "little man" to make a difference in our lives, we must make a step of faith and allow our identity to become tied up in Christ's identity.
In the village of Stepanavan, Armenia, there is a woman known locally as "Palasan's wife." In 1988, a devastating earthquake struck Armenia. It was nearly noon and Palasan rushed from his little shop tot he elementary school where his son was a student.
He discovered the front of the school had begun to crumble. Palasan entered the school and began shoving the children out to safety. He stood in a doorway and held the door jamb up with his back whild 28 children crawled through into the open air.
Suddenly, an aftershock hit and Palasan perished in the collapsing building. To honor the deeds and memory of Palasan, the people refered to the widow as "Palasan's wife"
The relationship of Christians to Christ is somewhat like that of "Palasan's wife" to Palasan. To call oneself a Christian is to say that our lives are intimately tied up with the life of Christ. Who we are is determined by who Christ is.
The difference is that Palasan's memory lives on in his wife, but Christ himself lives on in us, the church. All to often we are all too much like Palasan's wife,
living MEMORIALS to Christ rather than the living BODY of Christ.
Jesus did not say, "Go be me" or ""Go be like me" Jesus said, "Go forth in my name and I am with ou always." The Christian is one in whom the life of Christ lives on. The Christian is one through whom Christ continues to serve the world.
The Christian is one in whom Christ continues to speak and comfort and heal.
The Christian is one with whom Christ carries on his work of saving the world.
In the second part of our lesson, Jesus sends out the 12 2x2. And to whom did he send them? He sent them out to the first century equivalent of people who talk about "the little man on the cross", people aware of the reality of the spiritual, but just barely, people in desperate need of a living, real, life-changing encounter with a loving and active God. He sent them to people whose lives had grown stale and sterile, to people who had begun to lose sight of the fact that there is more to life than just getting though each day until retirement. He sent them out to people just like us, people with restless hearts, hearts with holes in them, a hole only God can fill.
And, just as he sent them, he sends us. It is not by accident or mere "formal" tradition that our worship unfolds the way it does. Our worship is designed to imitate the ebb and flow of the Christian life. We come into God's Presence, we experience forgiveness, we hear God's word of love and promise, we respond with faith and prayers and offerings, we enter into God's living presence in the Sacrament of the Table, and then we go out to serve and bring others to the table,into the presence of God.
Go in Peace, Serve the Lord! are the last words we hear each Sunday, for that is what our real lives, out there, are about.
Our lives are lived on the Frontier between the presence of God and that so-called "real world". We are called to stand perilously balanced between two worlds, without falling too deeply into either. As the old songs says, we must not become "so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good," but yet, if we plunge so deeply into the world and its problems that we lose touch with God, we will lose the only power we have to deal with the world's problems.
We are called, like the disciples, to move back and forth between these two worlds, just as Jesus' disciples were called to go out from Jesus on their mission and to return to him for prayer and support.
It seems to me that our calling here is a simple one. We are called to point to the cross and identify to the world the little man who hangs there. Who he was, what he did, and especially what he has meant in our lives. That's it. That's all God asks of us. And like the disciples going out without a lot of provisions, we have to trust that what God has given us, that simple story, is enough.
Peace,
Delmo
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
PENTECOST 4: RCL texts for July 2, 2006
LESSONS: Lamemtations 3:22-33, Ps. 30, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Mark 5:21-43
Of Faith and Fear (and Finances)
National Geographic carries a regular feature called Zip Code USA, in which they focus on the place and people within a particular Zip Code. IN June of 2006, it was my home town, Mt. Airy, NC 27030. While the article focused manly on the Bunker twins, Eng and Chang, America's first famous "Siamese" or conjoined twins, who after a career with PT Barnum, settled in Mt. Airy and raised families; as an aside it mentioned the radio obituaries.
Now, for years I have told a story about the "Moody's Obituary Column of the Air," and people have doubted my word that such a thing existed. (In other words, they thought I made it up, which would of been fine, had I admitted making it up, but because I insisted it was true, they considered my a liar, not a nice thing to call your Pastor, even if you are only half serious) so I was grateful to be vindicated in a serious print resource.
The story has to do with eating breakfast at my Grandparent's house. We all lived on the same farm, in houses about a quarter of a mile apart. I spent one or two nights a week at my grandparents house, which was good because instead of cereal I got bacon and biscuits for breakfast, but it was bad in that I had to sit very still and eat quietly (which is hard for a 6-year-old) so that Grandpa could listen to the aforementioned obituaries.
It always began with eerie organ music, then a deep, deep voice said, WILLARD JONES, OF ROUTE 3 LOWGAP, PASSED AWAY LAST EVENING AT NORTHERN SURRY HOSPITAL. HE WAS 72.
A LONG-TIME EMPLOYEE OF BALLARD MILLS, MR. JONES WAS A HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL REFEREE, A RURITAN, AND A MEMBER OF GOODE CREEK CHURCH OF CHRIST. SERVICES WILL BE AT THE CHURCH, TUESDAY AT 1 PM, ELDER EZEKIEL PUTNAM PRESIDING.
And so it went through 5 or 6 names. Now, over time, I developed the notion that the voice on the radio was the voice of God. After all, who else would know all that stuff about all those people? And I further decided that the purpose of the obituaries was to warn the rest of us to straighten up and fly right. After all, didn't Jesus say that he would come like a thief in the night, and weren't these death stories the first thing we heard in the morning? So I ate my breakfast in trembling silence, and went out into my day trying to be as circumspect as possible.
One day, my Daddy dropped me off at Elmer Timmon's barber shop to get a haircut while he went to town to get fertilizer at the FCX (Farmer's Cooperative Exchange).
I liked Elmer's. It was a small concrete building in the corner of his yard, it shared parking with the Baptist church where Elmer was a Deacon. He had lots of Boys Life Magazines and Superman comic books, and always gave us suckers.
I went in and called out "Hey Elmer!", and Elmer replied, "Hey Delmer!" There was someone in the chair, so I started reading, when suddenly, my blood ran cold, my heart almost stopped, I couldn't breath. Because God had spoken, God's voice rang out in the very room in which I was sitting, the voice that haunted my near sleep nightmares was palpably present, not three feet away from me, and God said, "SAY ELMER, COULD YOU TAKE A LITTLE MORE OFF THE EARS, AND LEAVE A BIT MORE FOR ME TO COMB OVER, THAT BALD SPOT SEEMS TO BE GETTING BIGGER.
I needed no UCC ad campiagn to convince me that God was still speaking, I was in the room when God Spoke! And I did what any reasonable, impressionable, imaginative, fundamentalist 6 year old would have done. I ran to the bathroom, turned out the light, locked the door and hid under the sink.
(It took quite a bit of gentle coaxing and promises of candy to get me out of that bathroom, where Elmer did the best he could to explain the concept of radio announcer
to me)
In our Gospel lesson, I was struck by the words FEAR and FAITH. After the woman with the flow of blood touched Jesus and he stopped and asked who touched him etc, it says she "came in fear and trembling, fell down before him , and told him the whole truth. He (Jesus) said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well.'"
In the wrap-around story of Jairus' daughter, at this point , the text says, "some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But Jesus says to the man, "Do not fear, only believe (have faith)."
As demonstrated by the story of the obituaries, when I was a child I had a lot of faith, I also had a lot of fear. My faith was faith in the reality of God, not any sort of trust in the goodness or compassion of God. And my fear was rooted in a fear of the power of that real but vengeful God I had conjured up from hints in Sunday School and Fundamentalist preaching and comic books and horror movies and God knows what else.
As I have grown older, faith and fear have remained in dynamic tension in my life. Just as my faith has matured and become more sophisticated, my fears have grown less generalized and more realistic. But they are still there as they are for all of us.
All of us fear things: terrorism, avian flu, economic collapse, earthquake, fire and flood, to name a few. And the last few years have shown us that our fears are realistic and founded in reality, not fantasy as were mine.
And the question is, as we face these realisitc fears, where do we place our faith, our assurance and hope for the future? In money and its accumulation and clout? In armies and governments and secret agents? Is it any surprise that in this time of generalized fear and anxiety, we have another Superman movie, a Saviour from the skies.
The scriptures call us to trust in God, a thing much easier said than done. Lamentations reminds us "that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, (God's) mercies never come to an end." and then goes on to talk about those times when one feels abandoned by God, a realistic look at faith in the face of fear. The Psalm repeats this theme, as in "then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear" but also exclaimes, "O Lord, My God, I will give you thanks forever."
And our lesson from 2 Corinthians reminds us not to hoard our money in time of other's need, but to share our resources with the needy, trusting in God to provide for us through them in our time of need. Generosity is an act of faith overcoming fear. (Warren Buffet is sufficient illustration here.)
By the way, I not only heard God, I met God. My Daddy's cousin, Ralph Epperson, owned that radio station, WPAQ in Mount Airy, and Ralph introduced me to God (by the way, God's name isn't YHWH apparently. It's Ernest.) Ralph was featured many times on NPR for his role in preserving authentic Appalachian "mountain music" through his long running live Saturday morning radio show. Ralph's microphone is in the Smithsonian.
He passed away last month. I wasn't in Mount Airy at the time, but I'm sure his passing was noted on "The Moody's Obituary Column of the Air." just like everybody else's. Which is how it should be.
Peace,
delmo,
Of Faith and Fear (and Finances)
National Geographic carries a regular feature called Zip Code USA, in which they focus on the place and people within a particular Zip Code. IN June of 2006, it was my home town, Mt. Airy, NC 27030. While the article focused manly on the Bunker twins, Eng and Chang, America's first famous "Siamese" or conjoined twins, who after a career with PT Barnum, settled in Mt. Airy and raised families; as an aside it mentioned the radio obituaries.
Now, for years I have told a story about the "Moody's Obituary Column of the Air," and people have doubted my word that such a thing existed. (In other words, they thought I made it up, which would of been fine, had I admitted making it up, but because I insisted it was true, they considered my a liar, not a nice thing to call your Pastor, even if you are only half serious) so I was grateful to be vindicated in a serious print resource.
The story has to do with eating breakfast at my Grandparent's house. We all lived on the same farm, in houses about a quarter of a mile apart. I spent one or two nights a week at my grandparents house, which was good because instead of cereal I got bacon and biscuits for breakfast, but it was bad in that I had to sit very still and eat quietly (which is hard for a 6-year-old) so that Grandpa could listen to the aforementioned obituaries.
It always began with eerie organ music, then a deep, deep voice said, WILLARD JONES, OF ROUTE 3 LOWGAP, PASSED AWAY LAST EVENING AT NORTHERN SURRY HOSPITAL. HE WAS 72.
A LONG-TIME EMPLOYEE OF BALLARD MILLS, MR. JONES WAS A HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL REFEREE, A RURITAN, AND A MEMBER OF GOODE CREEK CHURCH OF CHRIST. SERVICES WILL BE AT THE CHURCH, TUESDAY AT 1 PM, ELDER EZEKIEL PUTNAM PRESIDING.
And so it went through 5 or 6 names. Now, over time, I developed the notion that the voice on the radio was the voice of God. After all, who else would know all that stuff about all those people? And I further decided that the purpose of the obituaries was to warn the rest of us to straighten up and fly right. After all, didn't Jesus say that he would come like a thief in the night, and weren't these death stories the first thing we heard in the morning? So I ate my breakfast in trembling silence, and went out into my day trying to be as circumspect as possible.
One day, my Daddy dropped me off at Elmer Timmon's barber shop to get a haircut while he went to town to get fertilizer at the FCX (Farmer's Cooperative Exchange).
I liked Elmer's. It was a small concrete building in the corner of his yard, it shared parking with the Baptist church where Elmer was a Deacon. He had lots of Boys Life Magazines and Superman comic books, and always gave us suckers.
I went in and called out "Hey Elmer!", and Elmer replied, "Hey Delmer!" There was someone in the chair, so I started reading, when suddenly, my blood ran cold, my heart almost stopped, I couldn't breath. Because God had spoken, God's voice rang out in the very room in which I was sitting, the voice that haunted my near sleep nightmares was palpably present, not three feet away from me, and God said, "SAY ELMER, COULD YOU TAKE A LITTLE MORE OFF THE EARS, AND LEAVE A BIT MORE FOR ME TO COMB OVER, THAT BALD SPOT SEEMS TO BE GETTING BIGGER.
I needed no UCC ad campiagn to convince me that God was still speaking, I was in the room when God Spoke! And I did what any reasonable, impressionable, imaginative, fundamentalist 6 year old would have done. I ran to the bathroom, turned out the light, locked the door and hid under the sink.
(It took quite a bit of gentle coaxing and promises of candy to get me out of that bathroom, where Elmer did the best he could to explain the concept of radio announcer
to me)
In our Gospel lesson, I was struck by the words FEAR and FAITH. After the woman with the flow of blood touched Jesus and he stopped and asked who touched him etc, it says she "came in fear and trembling, fell down before him , and told him the whole truth. He (Jesus) said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well.'"
In the wrap-around story of Jairus' daughter, at this point , the text says, "some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But Jesus says to the man, "Do not fear, only believe (have faith)."
As demonstrated by the story of the obituaries, when I was a child I had a lot of faith, I also had a lot of fear. My faith was faith in the reality of God, not any sort of trust in the goodness or compassion of God. And my fear was rooted in a fear of the power of that real but vengeful God I had conjured up from hints in Sunday School and Fundamentalist preaching and comic books and horror movies and God knows what else.
As I have grown older, faith and fear have remained in dynamic tension in my life. Just as my faith has matured and become more sophisticated, my fears have grown less generalized and more realistic. But they are still there as they are for all of us.
All of us fear things: terrorism, avian flu, economic collapse, earthquake, fire and flood, to name a few. And the last few years have shown us that our fears are realistic and founded in reality, not fantasy as were mine.
And the question is, as we face these realisitc fears, where do we place our faith, our assurance and hope for the future? In money and its accumulation and clout? In armies and governments and secret agents? Is it any surprise that in this time of generalized fear and anxiety, we have another Superman movie, a Saviour from the skies.
The scriptures call us to trust in God, a thing much easier said than done. Lamentations reminds us "that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, (God's) mercies never come to an end." and then goes on to talk about those times when one feels abandoned by God, a realistic look at faith in the face of fear. The Psalm repeats this theme, as in "then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear" but also exclaimes, "O Lord, My God, I will give you thanks forever."
And our lesson from 2 Corinthians reminds us not to hoard our money in time of other's need, but to share our resources with the needy, trusting in God to provide for us through them in our time of need. Generosity is an act of faith overcoming fear. (Warren Buffet is sufficient illustration here.)
By the way, I not only heard God, I met God. My Daddy's cousin, Ralph Epperson, owned that radio station, WPAQ in Mount Airy, and Ralph introduced me to God (by the way, God's name isn't YHWH apparently. It's Ernest.) Ralph was featured many times on NPR for his role in preserving authentic Appalachian "mountain music" through his long running live Saturday morning radio show. Ralph's microphone is in the Smithsonian.
He passed away last month. I wasn't in Mount Airy at the time, but I'm sure his passing was noted on "The Moody's Obituary Column of the Air." just like everybody else's. Which is how it should be.
Peace,
delmo,
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Pentecost 2: RCL texts for June 18, 2006
THE LESSONS: Ezeliel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 (11-13) 14-17; Mark 4:26-34
"the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how."
My Grandpa Reid Chilton was born in 1892, in the general vacinity of Mount Airy, NC. (If you are unfamiliar with Mt. Airy, check out the latest edition of the National Geopgraphic magazine.) Grandpa was one of many children in the Chilton family and when, after the turn of the century, his parents decided to moved to Winston-Salem NC to open a boarding house, they left young Reid with his uncle, a Primitve Baptist preacher named Green Arrington. Grandpa lived with the Rev. Arrington and worked on his farm to earn his keep. When I was a kid in the late 50's early 60's, all my grandpa's stories bagen with the line "I recollect when I was living with Uncle Green Arrington. . . '
One story had to do with Uncle Green's inadvertent introduction to the then new pentecostal practice of snake-handling. Uncle Green was not a strict Primitive Baptist, holding to Separatism, he was willing to tell anybody they were going to Hell without Jesus, so when Pleasant Mountain Holiness invited to preach during their revival, he saddled up his mule and off he went.
After he got through preaching, he sat down and took a long drink of water and mopped his brow and was startled to see the deacons bringing in cages full of snake. He looked at the snakes and then asked the Head Deacon, "what are them for?"
"they's for handling, proving your faith, like it says in Matthew. Do you want the first one?" Uncle Green said, "No, but I do want to know where the back door is?" They said they din't have a back door. Uncle Green said, "All right. Where exactly do you want one!" (that story has nothing to do with Sunday's texts, I just like it.)
One thing Grandpa and Uncle Green never saw eye to eye on was baseball. Uncle Green thought it and all other games, dances and youthful frivolities were the devil's handmaids, tempting young folk off towards hell. Which was pretty hard on Grandpa, since he was a very good baseball player.
One Saturday when Grandpa was about 15 or 16, he was scheduled to play for Dry Pond against Mt. Airy. Uncle Green told him he could go if he planted the peas first.
This was no small operation. In those days they cleared land by cutting down the trees and burning out the stumps, and then waiting for the biggest ones to rot, in the meantime plowing around them. They planted peas in the corn-field, using the stalks as natural stakes. Uncle Green wanted Grandpa to sow several buckets full of peas in the cornfield. Everytime Grandpa emptied the bucket, Uncle Green sent him back into the field with a full one. It was getting late, Grandpa was running out of time. And then he stumbled upon a burntout stump. Grandpa glanced around, nobody could see, he dumped the entire bucket of peas into that hollowed out stump and covered them with dirt. He ran out of the field, put on his uniform, grabbed his bat and glove, jumped on a mule and took off.
Things were fine for several weeks, then Uncle Green was in the cornfield plowing with the mule. he happened upon a stump over flowing with a cornucopia of peavines. In the vernacular, Grandpa didn't sit down for a week. Corporal punishment was very popular in that time and place.
The peas grew behind Grandpa's back, he had nothing do do with it. The Kingdom of God is like that. We throw the seed around and God takes those seed and creates the kingdom, creates minitry, creates love and healing and grace moments, as it were out of the nothingness of our mediocre efforts. And we continually try to come up with new "transformational strategies" and "church growth plans". And most of them work for a while, sort of. The reality is that our church growth strategy has been around since the beginning of the church. Love one another. Take care of each other. Act like Christians. Sing songs of praise, preach the word, celebrate the sacraments.
and then, as Luther says, drink your beer and trust the Word of God to do its work.
I especially like the drink your beer part.
peace,
delmo
"the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how."
My Grandpa Reid Chilton was born in 1892, in the general vacinity of Mount Airy, NC. (If you are unfamiliar with Mt. Airy, check out the latest edition of the National Geopgraphic magazine.) Grandpa was one of many children in the Chilton family and when, after the turn of the century, his parents decided to moved to Winston-Salem NC to open a boarding house, they left young Reid with his uncle, a Primitve Baptist preacher named Green Arrington. Grandpa lived with the Rev. Arrington and worked on his farm to earn his keep. When I was a kid in the late 50's early 60's, all my grandpa's stories bagen with the line "I recollect when I was living with Uncle Green Arrington. . . '
One story had to do with Uncle Green's inadvertent introduction to the then new pentecostal practice of snake-handling. Uncle Green was not a strict Primitive Baptist, holding to Separatism, he was willing to tell anybody they were going to Hell without Jesus, so when Pleasant Mountain Holiness invited to preach during their revival, he saddled up his mule and off he went.
After he got through preaching, he sat down and took a long drink of water and mopped his brow and was startled to see the deacons bringing in cages full of snake. He looked at the snakes and then asked the Head Deacon, "what are them for?"
"they's for handling, proving your faith, like it says in Matthew. Do you want the first one?" Uncle Green said, "No, but I do want to know where the back door is?" They said they din't have a back door. Uncle Green said, "All right. Where exactly do you want one!" (that story has nothing to do with Sunday's texts, I just like it.)
One thing Grandpa and Uncle Green never saw eye to eye on was baseball. Uncle Green thought it and all other games, dances and youthful frivolities were the devil's handmaids, tempting young folk off towards hell. Which was pretty hard on Grandpa, since he was a very good baseball player.
One Saturday when Grandpa was about 15 or 16, he was scheduled to play for Dry Pond against Mt. Airy. Uncle Green told him he could go if he planted the peas first.
This was no small operation. In those days they cleared land by cutting down the trees and burning out the stumps, and then waiting for the biggest ones to rot, in the meantime plowing around them. They planted peas in the corn-field, using the stalks as natural stakes. Uncle Green wanted Grandpa to sow several buckets full of peas in the cornfield. Everytime Grandpa emptied the bucket, Uncle Green sent him back into the field with a full one. It was getting late, Grandpa was running out of time. And then he stumbled upon a burntout stump. Grandpa glanced around, nobody could see, he dumped the entire bucket of peas into that hollowed out stump and covered them with dirt. He ran out of the field, put on his uniform, grabbed his bat and glove, jumped on a mule and took off.
Things were fine for several weeks, then Uncle Green was in the cornfield plowing with the mule. he happened upon a stump over flowing with a cornucopia of peavines. In the vernacular, Grandpa didn't sit down for a week. Corporal punishment was very popular in that time and place.
The peas grew behind Grandpa's back, he had nothing do do with it. The Kingdom of God is like that. We throw the seed around and God takes those seed and creates the kingdom, creates minitry, creates love and healing and grace moments, as it were out of the nothingness of our mediocre efforts. And we continually try to come up with new "transformational strategies" and "church growth plans". And most of them work for a while, sort of. The reality is that our church growth strategy has been around since the beginning of the church. Love one another. Take care of each other. Act like Christians. Sing songs of praise, preach the word, celebrate the sacraments.
and then, as Luther says, drink your beer and trust the Word of God to do its work.
I especially like the drink your beer part.
peace,
delmo
Friday, June 09, 2006
HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY: Readings for June 11, 2006
I'm doing this from memory, because I haven't seen a copy, mine or anyone else's, of Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul On Ice" in about 30 years. In that book, Cleaver tells of his first encounter with Christianity, a religion class at Soledad Prison. He remembered being asked to come up with an explanation of the Trinity. He studied the text and the Bible and had an idea. He said they went to class and the teacher, a local minister, asked if anyone could explain the Trinity. Several people raised thier hands, Cleaver included. The minister/teacher pointed to first one, then another. After each one, he said. "Wrong, sit down." Before he got to Cleaver, he quit and said, "This was the point. It's impossible to explain the Trinity without getting it wrong." Cleaver was glad he had not been called on. He was sure his comparison to three-in-one oil was going to get a major rebuke.
Although his pedagogy was a bit weak, the teacher had a point. Explaining the Trinity is tricky, nigh on to impossible. Three persons, one God, etc. And the most common way most of us think about it (modalism) is heresy. I am reminded of my Aunt Mildred on the telephone, when she would hang up she would say, "Well, I would tell you more, but I already told you more than I heard myself." At least, that's what Uncle LW said she said. When we try to explain the Trinity, we usually tell our listeners more than we heard (from the Bible) ourselves.
Me, I'm lazy. I use golf theology. Used to play golf with minister friend of mine and we came up with the term. We got to thinking about all the people we knew who spent a lot of time on the golf course complaining about their lie, or trying to improve their lie, legally or, most often, illegally and sneakily. And we realized that neither of us worried too much about all that. We were just glad to be out of the office and out on the golf course, whacking away at the ball in the general direction of the hole.
then, being preachers, we started thinking of all those pastor friends who were always trying to improve their lie, make things make better sense, etc. And we decided that we were golf theologians, we preferedd to take things as they came,
to play it as it laid, to whack away in the general direction of heaven.
So, rather than spend a lot of time of the philosophical understanding of the Trinity, I prefer to think a lot about the Trinity's implications for the Christian life, about how God exists in community and so do we, about how each of us has different spiritual personalities and some respond to the Father, others to the Son and many to the Spirit, and how the trinity both touches all the bases and keeps them in balance.
So, whack away this Sunday. Be careful about modalism and retain the mystery and things will be fine. ;-)
peace,
Delmo
Although his pedagogy was a bit weak, the teacher had a point. Explaining the Trinity is tricky, nigh on to impossible. Three persons, one God, etc. And the most common way most of us think about it (modalism) is heresy. I am reminded of my Aunt Mildred on the telephone, when she would hang up she would say, "Well, I would tell you more, but I already told you more than I heard myself." At least, that's what Uncle LW said she said. When we try to explain the Trinity, we usually tell our listeners more than we heard (from the Bible) ourselves.
Me, I'm lazy. I use golf theology. Used to play golf with minister friend of mine and we came up with the term. We got to thinking about all the people we knew who spent a lot of time on the golf course complaining about their lie, or trying to improve their lie, legally or, most often, illegally and sneakily. And we realized that neither of us worried too much about all that. We were just glad to be out of the office and out on the golf course, whacking away at the ball in the general direction of the hole.
then, being preachers, we started thinking of all those pastor friends who were always trying to improve their lie, make things make better sense, etc. And we decided that we were golf theologians, we preferedd to take things as they came,
to play it as it laid, to whack away in the general direction of heaven.
So, rather than spend a lot of time of the philosophical understanding of the Trinity, I prefer to think a lot about the Trinity's implications for the Christian life, about how God exists in community and so do we, about how each of us has different spiritual personalities and some respond to the Father, others to the Son and many to the Spirit, and how the trinity both touches all the bases and keeps them in balance.
So, whack away this Sunday. Be careful about modalism and retain the mystery and things will be fine. ;-)
peace,
Delmo
Friday, June 02, 2006
PENTECOST SUNDAY:RCL Texts for June 4, 2006
One of my college friends is an industrial scientist. One day, quite a few years ago, his then six year old son was sitting in the back seat eating an apple. Suddenly, he poked his father in the shoulder and said, "Dad, why does my apple turn brown." His father absent-mindedly replied. "When the skin is removed from the apple, air reaches the flesh of the apple and causes oxidation. This changes the apple's molecular structure and results in a brownish color."
The boy thought about this for several minutes and then said, "Dad are you talking to me?"
Often times, the meaning of the universe seems shrouded in mystery. And all too often, those who porport to know the truth speak in unknown tongues of complexity and, quite frankly, metaphysical bull crap.
Among the many things we can celebrate and learn from on Pentecost is the fact that it was God's apparent desire that all should understand the truth about Jesus Christ, that all should understand in their own language, that all should be revealed to all, in as plain and simple a language as possible.
I have been reading Henry Chadwick's "History of the Early Church". It is a good antidote to both the Left Behind Apocalyptic nonsense and the Da Vinci code hysteria.
As the saying goes, there's nothing new under the Sun. The Left Behinders are basically Montanists (early Second Sentury) and the Da Vinci Coders are Gnostics, (first to the fourth centuries). The Montanists were devoted to the Ecstatic Prophecies of three prophets, one of whom was Montanus, from whom they derived their name. Besides their direct line to God, they decided Jesus was coming to Phyrgia and it was going to be bloody and it was going to be next week.
And of course the gnostics were a loose definition for all sorts of folks who could, with many moderns,say they were "more spiritual than religous" (a nonsense statement). The main thing about gnostices was the idea of secret knowledge, that only the elite and the initiaited could have access to.
The early church countered these deviations by pointing out a very important fact, God's Spirit came to everyone and that the reason it came was to send us out with the gospel, to everyone, and instead of being hidden, the Christian story was shouted from the mountaintops for all to hear. The first Pentecostal experience was one which made sure everyone heard everything, in a language they could understand.
Bottom line: God was speaking, and God was speaking TO us.
peace,
Delmo
The boy thought about this for several minutes and then said, "Dad are you talking to me?"
Often times, the meaning of the universe seems shrouded in mystery. And all too often, those who porport to know the truth speak in unknown tongues of complexity and, quite frankly, metaphysical bull crap.
Among the many things we can celebrate and learn from on Pentecost is the fact that it was God's apparent desire that all should understand the truth about Jesus Christ, that all should understand in their own language, that all should be revealed to all, in as plain and simple a language as possible.
I have been reading Henry Chadwick's "History of the Early Church". It is a good antidote to both the Left Behind Apocalyptic nonsense and the Da Vinci code hysteria.
As the saying goes, there's nothing new under the Sun. The Left Behinders are basically Montanists (early Second Sentury) and the Da Vinci Coders are Gnostics, (first to the fourth centuries). The Montanists were devoted to the Ecstatic Prophecies of three prophets, one of whom was Montanus, from whom they derived their name. Besides their direct line to God, they decided Jesus was coming to Phyrgia and it was going to be bloody and it was going to be next week.
And of course the gnostics were a loose definition for all sorts of folks who could, with many moderns,say they were "more spiritual than religous" (a nonsense statement). The main thing about gnostices was the idea of secret knowledge, that only the elite and the initiaited could have access to.
The early church countered these deviations by pointing out a very important fact, God's Spirit came to everyone and that the reason it came was to send us out with the gospel, to everyone, and instead of being hidden, the Christian story was shouted from the mountaintops for all to hear. The first Pentecostal experience was one which made sure everyone heard everything, in a language they could understand.
Bottom line: God was speaking, and God was speaking TO us.
peace,
Delmo
Thursday, May 25, 2006
EASTER SEVEN: RCL texts for May 28, 2006
Easter 7, May 28, 2006
Texts: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; I John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
Secular Context: Memorial Day weekend
“they do not belong to the world. . . .As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
For most of us, Memorial Day is simply the excuse for the first long weekend of the summer; a chance to take a little trip, to get a head start on being in a summertime sort of mood. Go to the beach or the lake, grill out and chill out.
A few years ago, a writer in the Nashville paper complained that churches don’t celebrate Memorial Day anymore, by which he meant, I presume, the playing of patriotic music, etc. A pastor wrote back saying that the Church has a higher agenda than a secular holiday, that the church is obligated to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ above all else.
I found myself agreeing with each of them. As the son of a man who served and suffered in Europe in WWII and as the nephew of a man who died in the Pacific at the age of 19 fighting the Japanese, I too lament our turning a “Holy-Day” intended to show respect for their sacrifice into an excuse for a long week end.
On the other hand, the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can not take second place to any other agenda in the life of the church. And, I kept thinking about Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson, about not being of the world, but being sent to the world.
How can we talk about this subject in the church without either dishonoring the dead or glorifying war?
True story. Small Southern town. Town Council asked a young
architect and landscape artist to crate a Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial out of a narrow vacant lot downtown.
He landscaped the lot into a grassy knoll with winding walkways, flower beds and park benches. He created a “triptych” monument, moderately sized, out of local granite. On the two side panels were listed the locals who had served and died in Vietnam. In the center he designed an etching of one weary soldier carrying a wounded buddy on his shoulders. It was cruciform without being a cross. It was meant to evoke service and sacrifice and “no greater love”.
The Town Council approved and applauded everything but the etching. They didn’t like it. It was “defeatist”, and “negative”; not “upbeat” and “positive”. So that got a stone cutter at the quarry to etch in the scene of raising the flay at Iwo Jima instead. They even painted the Red, White and Blue on the Flag.
Wrong symbol from the wrong war, but that didn’t matter to them. American honor was all that mattered.
(You can go to Mt. Airy NC and see that statue. It’s across the street from the Post Office. The young architect was my brother.)
That story can serve as a parable of our ambiguous attitudes toward war. On the one hand, we lament the loss of life, we honestly mourn those of our families and communities who died, we carry a deep sorrow for their pain and suffering. We mean it. We are not hypocrites.
But, on the other hand, we sometimes get carried away with our pride in America’s military might, with its “win-loss” record if you will. By replacing the cruciform symbol of service, sacrifice and suffering with one of victory and triumph, the town council said to the Vietnam Veterans,
We want to remember that you served and that some of you died. We just don’t want to remember that you, we, lost and that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
As Christians, we must always shy away from the glorification of war. War is mean, nasty and ugly. It is the result of the failure of humanity to settle issues of economics and ethnic tensions peacefully. War is the eruption of our inherent sinfulness on a national and global scale. War occurs when Pride and Materialism and Greed and Hatred of the Other overcome the Divine call to peace with justice. For Christians, War comes when we forget that we are not of this world, but are sent into this world by the Prince of Peace, to spread the Gospel of Peace.
Memorial Day is an opportunity to prayerfully remember those who have suffered and died because of the world’s inability to live love and justice on an international scale.
One of my childhood pastor’s explained Original Sin this way:
Original Sin means that there is something in us that just can’t wait to mess up a good thing.
The longer I live, the more right he seems. At the beginning of the 20th Century, much was written about how the World was on the cusp of its greatest Golden Age. Science, Technology, Learning were leaping ahead at a record pace. The end of war and disease and poverty were practically in sight, or so it was thought.
A look back at the last 100 years shows a much different picture. We have seen 2 world wars, the rise of totalitarian governments, the use of weapons of mass destruction, new diseases and behaviour related health problems. We are trying to destroy the earth and sea and all that is in them. What happened? Well we did. We, the human race. We, all of us. Original Sin erupted and continues to erupt in our persistent proclivity for messing up a good thing.
What we do on Memorial Day is weep for those who lost their innocence and perhaps their lives in the service of their country.
My Daddy lived until he was 80. Until he went to the hospital a week or so before he died, he lived in the house he was born in.
The only time he spent any real time away from there was when he was in Europe in WWII. He never told us much about it. Until the last year of his life, and then in bits and pieces. Buddies who were there and then blown up, little French and German children stepping on mines or begging for food. As I sat at that kitchen table, listening to him talk, coffee cup in one hand and cigarette in the other, I began to understand his years of staring into the distance, the emotional distance, the stoic devotion to duty.
And as he began to weep, his 80 year old shoulders going up and down, as he cried for someone named Willie from Oklahoma, I cried for Willie and Daddy and millions of others, American and English and French, Korean and Vietnamese and Iraqi and Afghan and all those caught up in the senselessness and pain.
On Memorial Day, we remember and weep and commit ourselves anew to going into the world with the light and love of Christ.
Peace,
Delmo
Texts: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; I John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
Secular Context: Memorial Day weekend
“they do not belong to the world. . . .As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
For most of us, Memorial Day is simply the excuse for the first long weekend of the summer; a chance to take a little trip, to get a head start on being in a summertime sort of mood. Go to the beach or the lake, grill out and chill out.
A few years ago, a writer in the Nashville paper complained that churches don’t celebrate Memorial Day anymore, by which he meant, I presume, the playing of patriotic music, etc. A pastor wrote back saying that the Church has a higher agenda than a secular holiday, that the church is obligated to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ above all else.
I found myself agreeing with each of them. As the son of a man who served and suffered in Europe in WWII and as the nephew of a man who died in the Pacific at the age of 19 fighting the Japanese, I too lament our turning a “Holy-Day” intended to show respect for their sacrifice into an excuse for a long week end.
On the other hand, the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can not take second place to any other agenda in the life of the church. And, I kept thinking about Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson, about not being of the world, but being sent to the world.
How can we talk about this subject in the church without either dishonoring the dead or glorifying war?
True story. Small Southern town. Town Council asked a young
architect and landscape artist to crate a Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial out of a narrow vacant lot downtown.
He landscaped the lot into a grassy knoll with winding walkways, flower beds and park benches. He created a “triptych” monument, moderately sized, out of local granite. On the two side panels were listed the locals who had served and died in Vietnam. In the center he designed an etching of one weary soldier carrying a wounded buddy on his shoulders. It was cruciform without being a cross. It was meant to evoke service and sacrifice and “no greater love”.
The Town Council approved and applauded everything but the etching. They didn’t like it. It was “defeatist”, and “negative”; not “upbeat” and “positive”. So that got a stone cutter at the quarry to etch in the scene of raising the flay at Iwo Jima instead. They even painted the Red, White and Blue on the Flag.
Wrong symbol from the wrong war, but that didn’t matter to them. American honor was all that mattered.
(You can go to Mt. Airy NC and see that statue. It’s across the street from the Post Office. The young architect was my brother.)
That story can serve as a parable of our ambiguous attitudes toward war. On the one hand, we lament the loss of life, we honestly mourn those of our families and communities who died, we carry a deep sorrow for their pain and suffering. We mean it. We are not hypocrites.
But, on the other hand, we sometimes get carried away with our pride in America’s military might, with its “win-loss” record if you will. By replacing the cruciform symbol of service, sacrifice and suffering with one of victory and triumph, the town council said to the Vietnam Veterans,
We want to remember that you served and that some of you died. We just don’t want to remember that you, we, lost and that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
As Christians, we must always shy away from the glorification of war. War is mean, nasty and ugly. It is the result of the failure of humanity to settle issues of economics and ethnic tensions peacefully. War is the eruption of our inherent sinfulness on a national and global scale. War occurs when Pride and Materialism and Greed and Hatred of the Other overcome the Divine call to peace with justice. For Christians, War comes when we forget that we are not of this world, but are sent into this world by the Prince of Peace, to spread the Gospel of Peace.
Memorial Day is an opportunity to prayerfully remember those who have suffered and died because of the world’s inability to live love and justice on an international scale.
One of my childhood pastor’s explained Original Sin this way:
Original Sin means that there is something in us that just can’t wait to mess up a good thing.
The longer I live, the more right he seems. At the beginning of the 20th Century, much was written about how the World was on the cusp of its greatest Golden Age. Science, Technology, Learning were leaping ahead at a record pace. The end of war and disease and poverty were practically in sight, or so it was thought.
A look back at the last 100 years shows a much different picture. We have seen 2 world wars, the rise of totalitarian governments, the use of weapons of mass destruction, new diseases and behaviour related health problems. We are trying to destroy the earth and sea and all that is in them. What happened? Well we did. We, the human race. We, all of us. Original Sin erupted and continues to erupt in our persistent proclivity for messing up a good thing.
What we do on Memorial Day is weep for those who lost their innocence and perhaps their lives in the service of their country.
My Daddy lived until he was 80. Until he went to the hospital a week or so before he died, he lived in the house he was born in.
The only time he spent any real time away from there was when he was in Europe in WWII. He never told us much about it. Until the last year of his life, and then in bits and pieces. Buddies who were there and then blown up, little French and German children stepping on mines or begging for food. As I sat at that kitchen table, listening to him talk, coffee cup in one hand and cigarette in the other, I began to understand his years of staring into the distance, the emotional distance, the stoic devotion to duty.
And as he began to weep, his 80 year old shoulders going up and down, as he cried for someone named Willie from Oklahoma, I cried for Willie and Daddy and millions of others, American and English and French, Korean and Vietnamese and Iraqi and Afghan and all those caught up in the senselessness and pain.
On Memorial Day, we remember and weep and commit ourselves anew to going into the world with the light and love of Christ.
Peace,
Delmo
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The Sixth Sunday of Easter: RCL texts for May 21, 2006
Acts10:44-48, I JOhn 5:1-6, John 15:9-17
On Monday, May 8, 2006, USA Today published a column by Presbyterian Pastor Henry G. Brinton of Fairfax, Virginia. In his article, Brinton makes a helpful "two kinds of Christians" argument. Or rather, he argues that each of us carries two, often contradictory, religious impulses: 1) obligation-keeping and 2) liberation-seeking.
As Brinton points out, this is not as easy as RED state and BLUE State, Conservative and Liberal. Many Red State Conservatives seek to liberate people from oppressive regimes while many Blue State Liberals oppose war on the grounds that Christians have an obligation to be non-violent. As Billy Pilgrim says "And so it goes."
I have found this a helpful dialectical tool. I have begun to ask myself: "Which of my religious notions is based in obligation-keeping and which are rooted in liberation-seeking?" Pro-life or Pro-choice, Peace-activist or Military defender, Gender choices, Capitalism versus Socialism, Science and Religion; which impulse rules in what areas?
This week's lessons pose an interesting opportunity to play with this dialectic.
In both the Second Reading from I John and the Gospel from John 15, we get a lot of obligation keeping language, "I command" and "obey his commandments" "You are my friends if you do what I command you."
On the other hand, the Acts lesson is about all kinds of liberation: Peter becomes liberated from his notions about the Gentiles and their need to follow certain rules and regulations in order to be acccepted by God. He discovers that God pours out the Spirit on whom God chooses, regardless of our sense of their readiness.
And Peter shifts from obligation-keeping mode to liberation-seeking mode when he says "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?"
The tricky thing is balancing somewhere on the tightrope between obligation keeping and liberation seeking. As you know, pure obligation keeping leads to oppressive, regimented legalism with blinders on, communities of faith unable and unwilling to repond either to the world or to God's new movements of the spirit.
On the other hand, pure liberation-seeking leads to "tossing to and fro on the winds of doctrine", seeking the next new thing, whatever it is, which will loose one from whatever restrictions one wishes to be released from; antinomianism in theological terms.
The command to love is probably as good a balancing point as any. My Mama told me once that Jesus had to command love, because love is not easy sometimes. If it were easy, no commands, no orders would be necessary. As it is, there are times we need the command to keep us loving, even when we don't feel like it. Thanks Mama.
G.K. Chesterton said somewhere, "Jesus told us to love our neighbours. In another place, he told us to love our enemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people." Same point.
I recommend what AA calls a fearless inventory of our religious positions, our opinions and prejudices on a variety of issues, an inventory which uses two basic questions: 1) is this obligation-keeping or liberation-seeking and for whom?
and 2) Is this the most loving thing I can do here?
And now this, just for fun. This past week at a Pastor's Spirituality Retreat in Durham, NC, I heard a new description of the minister's life.
"A Pastor is like a stray dog at a whistler's convention." (the ones who have ears to hear, let them hear)
Peace,
Delmo
On Monday, May 8, 2006, USA Today published a column by Presbyterian Pastor Henry G. Brinton of Fairfax, Virginia. In his article, Brinton makes a helpful "two kinds of Christians" argument. Or rather, he argues that each of us carries two, often contradictory, religious impulses: 1) obligation-keeping and 2) liberation-seeking.
As Brinton points out, this is not as easy as RED state and BLUE State, Conservative and Liberal. Many Red State Conservatives seek to liberate people from oppressive regimes while many Blue State Liberals oppose war on the grounds that Christians have an obligation to be non-violent. As Billy Pilgrim says "And so it goes."
I have found this a helpful dialectical tool. I have begun to ask myself: "Which of my religious notions is based in obligation-keeping and which are rooted in liberation-seeking?" Pro-life or Pro-choice, Peace-activist or Military defender, Gender choices, Capitalism versus Socialism, Science and Religion; which impulse rules in what areas?
This week's lessons pose an interesting opportunity to play with this dialectic.
In both the Second Reading from I John and the Gospel from John 15, we get a lot of obligation keeping language, "I command" and "obey his commandments" "You are my friends if you do what I command you."
On the other hand, the Acts lesson is about all kinds of liberation: Peter becomes liberated from his notions about the Gentiles and their need to follow certain rules and regulations in order to be acccepted by God. He discovers that God pours out the Spirit on whom God chooses, regardless of our sense of their readiness.
And Peter shifts from obligation-keeping mode to liberation-seeking mode when he says "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?"
The tricky thing is balancing somewhere on the tightrope between obligation keeping and liberation seeking. As you know, pure obligation keeping leads to oppressive, regimented legalism with blinders on, communities of faith unable and unwilling to repond either to the world or to God's new movements of the spirit.
On the other hand, pure liberation-seeking leads to "tossing to and fro on the winds of doctrine", seeking the next new thing, whatever it is, which will loose one from whatever restrictions one wishes to be released from; antinomianism in theological terms.
The command to love is probably as good a balancing point as any. My Mama told me once that Jesus had to command love, because love is not easy sometimes. If it were easy, no commands, no orders would be necessary. As it is, there are times we need the command to keep us loving, even when we don't feel like it. Thanks Mama.
G.K. Chesterton said somewhere, "Jesus told us to love our neighbours. In another place, he told us to love our enemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people." Same point.
I recommend what AA calls a fearless inventory of our religious positions, our opinions and prejudices on a variety of issues, an inventory which uses two basic questions: 1) is this obligation-keeping or liberation-seeking and for whom?
and 2) Is this the most loving thing I can do here?
And now this, just for fun. This past week at a Pastor's Spirituality Retreat in Durham, NC, I heard a new description of the minister's life.
"A Pastor is like a stray dog at a whistler's convention." (the ones who have ears to hear, let them hear)
Peace,
Delmo
Friday, May 12, 2006
Fifth Sunday of Easter
I'm back! Sorry for the last two weeks. My day job got over busy.
TEXT: I John 4:7-21, Gospel of John 15:1-8
My subject today is HOLY HELIOTROPSIS or
DIVINE RADIATION and Human TRANSFORMATION or
The Ministry of Plant Rotation. Let me explain:
There are two women in my life: my mother and my wife;
BOTH are inveterate gardeners in the English mold that I call
“out piddling in the yard”. My earliest memories are of my mother dragging her hose around the house to water her various bushes and flowers. My boys tell me that their main memory of their pre-school days is of Deborah, with sun-hat and gloves and
little plastic gardening wagon puttering around the yard.
I am not a gardener, but I have paid attention to their gardening; in particular to the methodology of plant formation.
*Some plants are tied to stakes to force them to grow in a certain way: Pea vines and Rose bushes and tomato plants and certain other flowers and vegetables.
*Other plants are planted in pots and are rotated in the Sun,
and grow in the direction of the light. They are shaped by being pulled toward the light. Their growth in a certain direction is not forced, it is encouraged.
Conformity to the world eventually becomes what the Prayer of Confession in the Lutheran liturgy calls “bondage to sin”
To be conformed to the world is to be staked out on the altar of popularity; it is to lose your soul in the effort to live what is called “the good life”. You will live, but you will not be free, far from it, you will find yourself a slave to will and the way of the world.
On the other hand, to be Transformed is the result of being bathed in the light of God’s love; of daily turning your face toward the Source of Life itself.
Martin Luther said that in Sin the human will became bent,
turned away from God and toward evil. In their powerful little book on the Lord’s Prayer, Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon make reference to this when they say, The Lord’s Prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives toward God in the way that God has offered –“thy will be done, thy kingdom come.”
One reason that all the Reformers, including John Wesley, desired that Holy Communion be celebrated weekly, was that they recognized that we need constant exposure to the physical signs of the presence of the Holy in our lives so that we may be continually drawn into the light of God’s love.
One of the great dangers of Church Leadership is that we will try to make folks conform to our ideas of what they ought to be doing. We sometimes try to tie them to the stake of our preconceived ideas of how THEY should respond to the Gospel.
Our Calling today is to the ministry of HELIOTROPSIS, of exposing ourselves and others to the light of CHRIST, of moving things around a bit so that the light of God’s Love continually draws us to it, makes us prosper on the vine and helps us bring forth good fruit.
TEXT: I John 4:7-21, Gospel of John 15:1-8
My subject today is HOLY HELIOTROPSIS or
DIVINE RADIATION and Human TRANSFORMATION or
The Ministry of Plant Rotation. Let me explain:
There are two women in my life: my mother and my wife;
BOTH are inveterate gardeners in the English mold that I call
“out piddling in the yard”. My earliest memories are of my mother dragging her hose around the house to water her various bushes and flowers. My boys tell me that their main memory of their pre-school days is of Deborah, with sun-hat and gloves and
little plastic gardening wagon puttering around the yard.
I am not a gardener, but I have paid attention to their gardening; in particular to the methodology of plant formation.
*Some plants are tied to stakes to force them to grow in a certain way: Pea vines and Rose bushes and tomato plants and certain other flowers and vegetables.
*Other plants are planted in pots and are rotated in the Sun,
and grow in the direction of the light. They are shaped by being pulled toward the light. Their growth in a certain direction is not forced, it is encouraged.
Conformity to the world eventually becomes what the Prayer of Confession in the Lutheran liturgy calls “bondage to sin”
To be conformed to the world is to be staked out on the altar of popularity; it is to lose your soul in the effort to live what is called “the good life”. You will live, but you will not be free, far from it, you will find yourself a slave to will and the way of the world.
On the other hand, to be Transformed is the result of being bathed in the light of God’s love; of daily turning your face toward the Source of Life itself.
Martin Luther said that in Sin the human will became bent,
turned away from God and toward evil. In their powerful little book on the Lord’s Prayer, Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon make reference to this when they say, The Lord’s Prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives toward God in the way that God has offered –“thy will be done, thy kingdom come.”
One reason that all the Reformers, including John Wesley, desired that Holy Communion be celebrated weekly, was that they recognized that we need constant exposure to the physical signs of the presence of the Holy in our lives so that we may be continually drawn into the light of God’s love.
One of the great dangers of Church Leadership is that we will try to make folks conform to our ideas of what they ought to be doing. We sometimes try to tie them to the stake of our preconceived ideas of how THEY should respond to the Gospel.
Our Calling today is to the ministry of HELIOTROPSIS, of exposing ourselves and others to the light of CHRIST, of moving things around a bit so that the light of God’s Love continually draws us to it, makes us prosper on the vine and helps us bring forth good fruit.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER: RCL texts for April 23, 2006
The Second Sunday of Easter
TEXT: John 20: 19-31
TITLE: Church Happens!
When you hear the word CHURCH, what picture comes to your mind?
Just close your eyes and try it with me. Ready? CHURCH!
What did you see? A large neo-gothic cathedral? A picture perfect
white frame building with arched windows and a high steeple?
Perhaps a sturdy brick building with a bell tower? Maybe something more modern; with soaring glass walls and sharp angles vaulting toward the sky? What do you see when you hear the word church?
I’d almost be willing to bet none you saw 15 to 20 scared and lonely people, huddled behind closed and locked doors, whispering among themselves, jumping out of their skins at every noise from the
outside. Whatever our image of church is, it usually doesn’t include
locked doors and frightened people.
Yet that is the picture John paints of the very first church.
First Church, Jerusalem: gathered together on that first Sunday after Jesus’ death, huddled and hiding, trembling and terrified, lonely and loveless. They’re not much of a church; no organ, no pews, no pulpit, no stained glass windows. Nothing but a room to meet in and memories to talk about.
What was it he said at Supper the other night? Something about the bread being his body and the wine his blood? Peter, what did he mean by that?
Did you hear what Mary Magdalene and the other women said? They said they went to the tomb this morning and Jesus’ body was missing, the stone was rolled away and the body was missing. And Mary Magdalene said she saw the Lord?
Well, sure, did anybody check her breath to see what SHE’D been drinking? She saw Jesus ALIVE this morning? Right!
And so on. They talked, they fretted, they worried themselves sick about what it all meant and what the Roman soldiers or the Chief Priests might be up to. And maybe, just maybe, somebody in the room was praying, but it’s not likely.
Doesn’t sound like much of a church does it? Dr. Tom Long of Princeton Seminary says they are a picture of the church at its worst, “scarred and scared, disheartened and defensive.”
Long wonders, What sort of advertisement might this church put in the Saturday paper to attract members? THE FRIENDLY CHURCH
WHERE ALL ARE WELCOME? Hardly. Locked doors are not a sign of hospitality. THE CHURCH WITH A WARM HEART AND A BOLD MISSION? Forget it. This is the church of sweaty palms and shaky knees and a firmly bolted front door.
Here is a church that has almost nothing going for it, has practically no claim to being church except. . . . . . . .except that when they gathered, the Risen Christ pushed through the locked door and stood among them.
That is what turned that little group of scarred and scared people into the church, the Presence of the Risen Christ in the room. It wasn’t anything they did or didn’t do, it wasn’t anything they said or didn’t say.
Church HAPPENS when the gathered community pays attention to the presence of the Risen Christ in the room.
AND, when that presence is ignored, nothing of any consequence can or does happen. It was the disciples’ awareness of and attention to the presence of the Risen Christ that made the difference then; and it is the awareness of and attention to the Presence of the Risen Christ that makes the difference now.
Jesus comes to us today, Jesus comes to us showing us his love for us by showing us the wounds he has suffered on our behalf.
Jesus comes to us offering us Peace and the fiery breath of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus comes to us, to tell us, I love you and I have great plans for you!
Are we paying attention?
Peace,
Delmo
TEXT: John 20: 19-31
TITLE: Church Happens!
When you hear the word CHURCH, what picture comes to your mind?
Just close your eyes and try it with me. Ready? CHURCH!
What did you see? A large neo-gothic cathedral? A picture perfect
white frame building with arched windows and a high steeple?
Perhaps a sturdy brick building with a bell tower? Maybe something more modern; with soaring glass walls and sharp angles vaulting toward the sky? What do you see when you hear the word church?
I’d almost be willing to bet none you saw 15 to 20 scared and lonely people, huddled behind closed and locked doors, whispering among themselves, jumping out of their skins at every noise from the
outside. Whatever our image of church is, it usually doesn’t include
locked doors and frightened people.
Yet that is the picture John paints of the very first church.
First Church, Jerusalem: gathered together on that first Sunday after Jesus’ death, huddled and hiding, trembling and terrified, lonely and loveless. They’re not much of a church; no organ, no pews, no pulpit, no stained glass windows. Nothing but a room to meet in and memories to talk about.
What was it he said at Supper the other night? Something about the bread being his body and the wine his blood? Peter, what did he mean by that?
Did you hear what Mary Magdalene and the other women said? They said they went to the tomb this morning and Jesus’ body was missing, the stone was rolled away and the body was missing. And Mary Magdalene said she saw the Lord?
Well, sure, did anybody check her breath to see what SHE’D been drinking? She saw Jesus ALIVE this morning? Right!
And so on. They talked, they fretted, they worried themselves sick about what it all meant and what the Roman soldiers or the Chief Priests might be up to. And maybe, just maybe, somebody in the room was praying, but it’s not likely.
Doesn’t sound like much of a church does it? Dr. Tom Long of Princeton Seminary says they are a picture of the church at its worst, “scarred and scared, disheartened and defensive.”
Long wonders, What sort of advertisement might this church put in the Saturday paper to attract members? THE FRIENDLY CHURCH
WHERE ALL ARE WELCOME? Hardly. Locked doors are not a sign of hospitality. THE CHURCH WITH A WARM HEART AND A BOLD MISSION? Forget it. This is the church of sweaty palms and shaky knees and a firmly bolted front door.
Here is a church that has almost nothing going for it, has practically no claim to being church except. . . . . . . .except that when they gathered, the Risen Christ pushed through the locked door and stood among them.
That is what turned that little group of scarred and scared people into the church, the Presence of the Risen Christ in the room. It wasn’t anything they did or didn’t do, it wasn’t anything they said or didn’t say.
Church HAPPENS when the gathered community pays attention to the presence of the Risen Christ in the room.
AND, when that presence is ignored, nothing of any consequence can or does happen. It was the disciples’ awareness of and attention to the presence of the Risen Christ that made the difference then; and it is the awareness of and attention to the Presence of the Risen Christ that makes the difference now.
Jesus comes to us today, Jesus comes to us showing us his love for us by showing us the wounds he has suffered on our behalf.
Jesus comes to us offering us Peace and the fiery breath of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus comes to us, to tell us, I love you and I have great plans for you!
Are we paying attention?
Peace,
Delmo
Thursday, April 13, 2006
HOLY WEEK SERMONS: Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday
Maundy Thursday
April 13, 2006
Texts: Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
I Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
Title: Up the Down Staircase
One of my oldest friends in ministry is the Rev. Denny Camp. Denny and I have known each other over thirty years. He is a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Denny graduated from Cummings High School in Burlington, NC. It was an old building built in the early 1900’s, a long, brick, two-story building with staircases at each end of the central hall.
Some long ago principal had organized the class changing chaos by decreeing that the East End Staircase was UP and the West End Staircase was DOWN. This rule was strictly enforced, going the wrong way on a staircase was a serious offence!
One day Denny found himself at the bottom of the DOWN staircase a few minutes before classes changed. His next class was in a room directly over his head.
To PROPERLY, LEGALLY, LEGITIMATELY, go upstairs, he would need to walk all the way to the other end of the corridor, go up the UP staircase, and then walk all the way back to his class room. (Which would probably have been good exercise, but he was a 15 year old boy, exercise was not on his mind.)
Denny glanced at his watch, looked around and saw no teachers, and headed up the DOWN staircase.
When he was about halfway up, he first felt, then saw, then heard a presence above him. He glanced up and saw the Football Coach/Assistant Principal glaring down at him.
CAMP! Get up here!
At just that exact moment, the bell rang and a sea of teenage humanity started flowing down the DOWN staircase.
Denny couldn’t make any headway – he was stuck.
The Coach kept glaring – and shouting
CAMP, GET UP HERE!
He couldn’t go up, he couldn’t buck the tide,
He couldn’t go down, the coach was calling him up.
He was stuck, stuck going up the DOWN staircase.
Sometimes our lives feel like that,
like a constant struggle to push against the tide,
Henry David Thoreau said it best in the 1830’s
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
We start out with great hopes and grand plans; our way is clear and the sailing looks easy. Then suddenly – we look around – and we’re stuck. Nothing is working out the way we thought.
Marriage is complicated, jobs are uncertain, the economy is shaky, the world is a place full of danger and trouble and here we stand: unable to go forward, unwilling to back down.
It is when one finds oneself stuck,
immobile on the staircase of life,
that one must re-evaluate the very meaning of life,
re-define one’s goals,
re-calculate what “going up” means,
re-focus on loving and serving God
which means:
loving and serving others.
That is the point of Jesus’ footwashing ritual,
His “object lesson” his “children’s sermon”
for his spiritual children, his disciples.
Listen again to the words of our Gospel lesson:
Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him . . ..
After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord-and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
In this act of humility, servanthood and love; Jesus has lived out a radical reversal of the way things normally are; and he has called us to do the same.
Jesus has invited to embark on a journey up the DOWN
staircase, swimming against the tide of the world’s values of self-interest and personal privilege.
In Jesus’ new way of being,
the meaning of life is found in the cross.
When we embrace this new way of being
our life’s agenda becomes discipleship and service.
And our struggle is transformed from an effort to succeed
into a journey of obedience to the Gospel.
This transforms the image of going up the DOWN
staircase from one of frustration and failure
to one of spiritual pilgrimage and virtue.
The people flowing down the stairs are the material and cultural forces hindering us in our efforts to ascend.
And though it’s difficult to imagine God as a red-faced football coach, we can at least envision a Higher Power calling to us from above, encouraging us,
calling us to “go up higher.”
The Spiritual life is a struggle, a struggle to live a life of love and service to God and neighbor in a world which constantly pushes us in the opposite direction.
And the GOOD NEWS is, we don’t fight this fight alone,
God sent Jesus to lead the way, to teach, guide, show, and yes, carry us if necessary, Up the DOWN staircase.
Amen
Easter Sunday
April 16, 2006
TEXTS: Acts 10:34-43
I Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18
TITLE: But God,
“They put him to death by hanging Him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day. . . “
2005 was a year filled with death for me. Even a partial list is daunting.
Jack English was my college room-mate. He has been my life-long friend. Barbara was his wife. Jack was in my wedding in 1974, I was in his wedding in 1975. His now-grown kids are my god-children. We visited each other often over the years, and the four of us got into hour long conversations on the phone every other month or so. Barbara died of cancer last year. She was 51.
Rene’ Teems was the mother of one of Joseph’s team-mates on the Hayesville High School basketball team. We saw them at all the games,
ate with them at fast-food places all over the mountains. Rene’ died of an aneurysm last summer. She was 48.
Dick Morton was my English Professor at Guilford College. But he was more than that. He worked with me, he saw within me something I could not see in myself. Without him I would have dropped out of college and gone back to the farm and the mill. He went to the hospital for surgery, he got a staph infection, he died. He was 69.
Richard Wallace was an African-American Lutheran Theologian and pastor. He was also my friend. We met in the early 90’s when I was on the board of the Lutheran Theological Center in Atlanta. We worked together in teaching racial awareness to Lutheran teen-agers in the South. He taught for me in my Spirituality Programs at Hinton Center.
The last time I saw him was at the Mexican Restaurant in Arden, across from Nativity Church. We ate lunch and I took him to the airport. A few months later he was dead of a heart attack. He was 53.
Yes, 2005 was a year filled with death in my life. And the only thing that gives me any hope is to remember two little words from Acts: BUT GOD!
They put him to death on a tree, BUT GOD raised him. .
Those words, BUT GOD, are the church’s real,
and ultimately only, answer
to the temptations and trials the world offers.
Trying to reason our way through grief and loss,
trying to make sense of the senseless,
trying to convince a world gone crazy
with the desire for more of everything and anything
that that desire is deadly of both body and soul;
these things are, at the end of the day, pointless.
There is no reason which can assuage our grief,
there is no sense to be made
of the raging evil we see around us,
there is no way to divert the addicted and bloated
from seeking their fix, be it oil or drugs.
The only answer we have to offer to these things,
which Luther summed up as
Sin, Death and the Devil,
is these two words, BUT GOD!
Beginning with Adam and Eve and the Apple,
the Devil tempts, people Sin, Death ensues,
and God intervenes with another chance.
It is the golden thread running through the Bible;
This story of God’s
redeeming and forgiving love,
This story of God’s willingness to act
in response to the world’s evil.
This story summed up in the words BUT GOD.
Today we celebrate the ultimate BUT GOD moment, the raising of Jesus from the tomb.
It is both the proof and the promise of our faith.
It reminds us of what God HAS done in the past while promising to us what God will do in the future.
With Jesus, the world, Luther’s tri-logy of
SIN, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
had done their best to do their worst.
Good Friday had appeared to be
a complete victory for those forces of destruction which assail all of us,
Evil had reared its ugly head and roared;
and Good had stood by idly and done nothing.
When Mary went to the tomb,
she went in deep sadness and despair,
she went into a place of coldness and death, she went to a place
with no hope and no happiness,
she went to prepare a body for burial,
she went to put Jesus in his grave.
But when she got there,
she discovered that things had changed,
the tomb was empty,
the body was missing,
and angels were lurking about.
Mary had come upon the greatest
BUT GOD! moment of all.
Our lives are full of difficulty.
Hurricanes come, friends die,
relatives get sick, jobs don’t pan out,
politicians and teachers and yes,
even preachers,
turn out to be less than they seem.
All of life is subject to the painful realities
of decline and decay.
But Easter reminds us
that the church has an answer
and that answer is God’s.
God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s power,
God’s calling, God’s actions in the world.
Easter is more than a promise of life beyond the grave, of happiness in heaven with our loved ones.
Easter is a promise that life is good now, that God’s power is active in this moment, in this place, in our lives.
Easter tells us that our eternal life begins now and goes with us through death into God’s future.
Easter tells us that whatever may happen to us in this world there is an answer, and the answer is BUT GOD.
The world says; seek success and glory and material well-being above all else,
BUT GOD says; “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The world says; It’s a dog eat dog world, it’s a rat race. It’s every man (person) for himself.
BUT GOD says; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The world says, Find your self, your bliss. Do that thing which makes you feel most fulfilled.
BUT GOD says; You shall love the LORD your God, with all your heart, mind and soul; and the second is just like it; love your neighbor as yourself.
The World says, Stave off death at whatever cost. The worst thing that can happen is to die and any action that you take to avoid it is good.
BUT GOD says, Those who would save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it.
The world’s way leads to the death of the soul and eventually the death of the body, with no hope for tomorrow and no joy for today.
BUT GOD’S way leads to life, both now and forever; life full of the joy of loving and serving God and neighbor with reckless abandon and total trust in God’s will and way.
Which is why we cry out today:
Christ is risen!
CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!
April 13, 2006
Texts: Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
I Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
Title: Up the Down Staircase
One of my oldest friends in ministry is the Rev. Denny Camp. Denny and I have known each other over thirty years. He is a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Denny graduated from Cummings High School in Burlington, NC. It was an old building built in the early 1900’s, a long, brick, two-story building with staircases at each end of the central hall.
Some long ago principal had organized the class changing chaos by decreeing that the East End Staircase was UP and the West End Staircase was DOWN. This rule was strictly enforced, going the wrong way on a staircase was a serious offence!
One day Denny found himself at the bottom of the DOWN staircase a few minutes before classes changed. His next class was in a room directly over his head.
To PROPERLY, LEGALLY, LEGITIMATELY, go upstairs, he would need to walk all the way to the other end of the corridor, go up the UP staircase, and then walk all the way back to his class room. (Which would probably have been good exercise, but he was a 15 year old boy, exercise was not on his mind.)
Denny glanced at his watch, looked around and saw no teachers, and headed up the DOWN staircase.
When he was about halfway up, he first felt, then saw, then heard a presence above him. He glanced up and saw the Football Coach/Assistant Principal glaring down at him.
CAMP! Get up here!
At just that exact moment, the bell rang and a sea of teenage humanity started flowing down the DOWN staircase.
Denny couldn’t make any headway – he was stuck.
The Coach kept glaring – and shouting
CAMP, GET UP HERE!
He couldn’t go up, he couldn’t buck the tide,
He couldn’t go down, the coach was calling him up.
He was stuck, stuck going up the DOWN staircase.
Sometimes our lives feel like that,
like a constant struggle to push against the tide,
Henry David Thoreau said it best in the 1830’s
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
We start out with great hopes and grand plans; our way is clear and the sailing looks easy. Then suddenly – we look around – and we’re stuck. Nothing is working out the way we thought.
Marriage is complicated, jobs are uncertain, the economy is shaky, the world is a place full of danger and trouble and here we stand: unable to go forward, unwilling to back down.
It is when one finds oneself stuck,
immobile on the staircase of life,
that one must re-evaluate the very meaning of life,
re-define one’s goals,
re-calculate what “going up” means,
re-focus on loving and serving God
which means:
loving and serving others.
That is the point of Jesus’ footwashing ritual,
His “object lesson” his “children’s sermon”
for his spiritual children, his disciples.
Listen again to the words of our Gospel lesson:
Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him . . ..
After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord-and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
In this act of humility, servanthood and love; Jesus has lived out a radical reversal of the way things normally are; and he has called us to do the same.
Jesus has invited to embark on a journey up the DOWN
staircase, swimming against the tide of the world’s values of self-interest and personal privilege.
In Jesus’ new way of being,
the meaning of life is found in the cross.
When we embrace this new way of being
our life’s agenda becomes discipleship and service.
And our struggle is transformed from an effort to succeed
into a journey of obedience to the Gospel.
This transforms the image of going up the DOWN
staircase from one of frustration and failure
to one of spiritual pilgrimage and virtue.
The people flowing down the stairs are the material and cultural forces hindering us in our efforts to ascend.
And though it’s difficult to imagine God as a red-faced football coach, we can at least envision a Higher Power calling to us from above, encouraging us,
calling us to “go up higher.”
The Spiritual life is a struggle, a struggle to live a life of love and service to God and neighbor in a world which constantly pushes us in the opposite direction.
And the GOOD NEWS is, we don’t fight this fight alone,
God sent Jesus to lead the way, to teach, guide, show, and yes, carry us if necessary, Up the DOWN staircase.
Amen
Easter Sunday
April 16, 2006
TEXTS: Acts 10:34-43
I Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18
TITLE: But God,
“They put him to death by hanging Him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day. . . “
2005 was a year filled with death for me. Even a partial list is daunting.
Jack English was my college room-mate. He has been my life-long friend. Barbara was his wife. Jack was in my wedding in 1974, I was in his wedding in 1975. His now-grown kids are my god-children. We visited each other often over the years, and the four of us got into hour long conversations on the phone every other month or so. Barbara died of cancer last year. She was 51.
Rene’ Teems was the mother of one of Joseph’s team-mates on the Hayesville High School basketball team. We saw them at all the games,
ate with them at fast-food places all over the mountains. Rene’ died of an aneurysm last summer. She was 48.
Dick Morton was my English Professor at Guilford College. But he was more than that. He worked with me, he saw within me something I could not see in myself. Without him I would have dropped out of college and gone back to the farm and the mill. He went to the hospital for surgery, he got a staph infection, he died. He was 69.
Richard Wallace was an African-American Lutheran Theologian and pastor. He was also my friend. We met in the early 90’s when I was on the board of the Lutheran Theological Center in Atlanta. We worked together in teaching racial awareness to Lutheran teen-agers in the South. He taught for me in my Spirituality Programs at Hinton Center.
The last time I saw him was at the Mexican Restaurant in Arden, across from Nativity Church. We ate lunch and I took him to the airport. A few months later he was dead of a heart attack. He was 53.
Yes, 2005 was a year filled with death in my life. And the only thing that gives me any hope is to remember two little words from Acts: BUT GOD!
They put him to death on a tree, BUT GOD raised him. .
Those words, BUT GOD, are the church’s real,
and ultimately only, answer
to the temptations and trials the world offers.
Trying to reason our way through grief and loss,
trying to make sense of the senseless,
trying to convince a world gone crazy
with the desire for more of everything and anything
that that desire is deadly of both body and soul;
these things are, at the end of the day, pointless.
There is no reason which can assuage our grief,
there is no sense to be made
of the raging evil we see around us,
there is no way to divert the addicted and bloated
from seeking their fix, be it oil or drugs.
The only answer we have to offer to these things,
which Luther summed up as
Sin, Death and the Devil,
is these two words, BUT GOD!
Beginning with Adam and Eve and the Apple,
the Devil tempts, people Sin, Death ensues,
and God intervenes with another chance.
It is the golden thread running through the Bible;
This story of God’s
redeeming and forgiving love,
This story of God’s willingness to act
in response to the world’s evil.
This story summed up in the words BUT GOD.
Today we celebrate the ultimate BUT GOD moment, the raising of Jesus from the tomb.
It is both the proof and the promise of our faith.
It reminds us of what God HAS done in the past while promising to us what God will do in the future.
With Jesus, the world, Luther’s tri-logy of
SIN, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
had done their best to do their worst.
Good Friday had appeared to be
a complete victory for those forces of destruction which assail all of us,
Evil had reared its ugly head and roared;
and Good had stood by idly and done nothing.
When Mary went to the tomb,
she went in deep sadness and despair,
she went into a place of coldness and death, she went to a place
with no hope and no happiness,
she went to prepare a body for burial,
she went to put Jesus in his grave.
But when she got there,
she discovered that things had changed,
the tomb was empty,
the body was missing,
and angels were lurking about.
Mary had come upon the greatest
BUT GOD! moment of all.
Our lives are full of difficulty.
Hurricanes come, friends die,
relatives get sick, jobs don’t pan out,
politicians and teachers and yes,
even preachers,
turn out to be less than they seem.
All of life is subject to the painful realities
of decline and decay.
But Easter reminds us
that the church has an answer
and that answer is God’s.
God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s power,
God’s calling, God’s actions in the world.
Easter is more than a promise of life beyond the grave, of happiness in heaven with our loved ones.
Easter is a promise that life is good now, that God’s power is active in this moment, in this place, in our lives.
Easter tells us that our eternal life begins now and goes with us through death into God’s future.
Easter tells us that whatever may happen to us in this world there is an answer, and the answer is BUT GOD.
The world says; seek success and glory and material well-being above all else,
BUT GOD says; “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The world says; It’s a dog eat dog world, it’s a rat race. It’s every man (person) for himself.
BUT GOD says; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The world says, Find your self, your bliss. Do that thing which makes you feel most fulfilled.
BUT GOD says; You shall love the LORD your God, with all your heart, mind and soul; and the second is just like it; love your neighbor as yourself.
The World says, Stave off death at whatever cost. The worst thing that can happen is to die and any action that you take to avoid it is good.
BUT GOD says, Those who would save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it.
The world’s way leads to the death of the soul and eventually the death of the body, with no hope for tomorrow and no joy for today.
BUT GOD’S way leads to life, both now and forever; life full of the joy of loving and serving God and neighbor with reckless abandon and total trust in God’s will and way.
Which is why we cry out today:
Christ is risen!
CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!
Monday, April 10, 2006
HOLY WEEK, 2006
Rather than comment on the specific texts, (of which there are a lot this week) I am going to give some ideas about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter preaching without a lot of reference to particular texts.
This past Sunday's Asheville Citizen-Times had a column by a local high school student, extolling the study of Latin. In the course of her essay, she made the point that one cannot translate directly from one language to another; words are not "signs" which stand for the exact equivalent universal truths. Languages are symbol systems; words are symbols, that's why we say "something was lost in translation," symbols are more complex than signs.
It seems to me that way too often we try way too hard to turn Biblical symbols into Theological signs that can be translated into our current experience. Starting with the fact that the original stories are in languages other than English, and they are from a culture of 2000 years ago, and going through those 2000 years of mutation and translation and mangling, and new cultures and other interpretations; it is, I think, almost impossible to get at a one-to-one correlation between the "signs" of the Biblical Talk and the signs of our Modern/post-modern "dialectic."
Which is why I think taking the biblical stories as symbols is a more productive way to go, particularly in preaching. The important thing is to find a way to hear and experience the "symbolic" language of the story and to pay attention to the ways those symbols intercect with our lives and our language.
And the way to do this is to experience the Biblical stories as just that: stories, indeed the whole Biblical account as a story, a story which sucks us in and translates us, and creates in us a new way of seeing and being in the world.
For example, on Maundy Thursday, one should experience the washing of feet without a lot of explaining, the same with the supper and the stripping of the Altar. Any attempt to create a "sign" from ancient experience to this moment in time is misplaced. It is important to let the symbols, the drama and rituals, so their own work in each heart.
Proclamation on this night is accent, nuance, poetry rather than prose. Stories of hospitality, servanthood and/or betrayal. A meditation on meals and rewembrance,
these are the stuff of preaching on this night.
For Good Friday, Tennebrae or a Soluemn Good Friday Liturgy, with A long prayer Litany and the reading of the Passion Narrative, slammed books, and dimmed lights and preocessions of crosses; these things do not so much need to be expalined as they need to be highlighted, touched upon, augmented. A reflection on despair and darkness or lost hope is the theme here, deepening the mystery, not explaining or relieving it.
Easter is all about JOY, inexplicable JOY, and if it is inexplicable, why do we try so hard to explain it? Proclaim the joy. Announce the victory. Again, tell the story, and let the story do its work on us.
Peace,
Delmo
This past Sunday's Asheville Citizen-Times had a column by a local high school student, extolling the study of Latin. In the course of her essay, she made the point that one cannot translate directly from one language to another; words are not "signs" which stand for the exact equivalent universal truths. Languages are symbol systems; words are symbols, that's why we say "something was lost in translation," symbols are more complex than signs.
It seems to me that way too often we try way too hard to turn Biblical symbols into Theological signs that can be translated into our current experience. Starting with the fact that the original stories are in languages other than English, and they are from a culture of 2000 years ago, and going through those 2000 years of mutation and translation and mangling, and new cultures and other interpretations; it is, I think, almost impossible to get at a one-to-one correlation between the "signs" of the Biblical Talk and the signs of our Modern/post-modern "dialectic."
Which is why I think taking the biblical stories as symbols is a more productive way to go, particularly in preaching. The important thing is to find a way to hear and experience the "symbolic" language of the story and to pay attention to the ways those symbols intercect with our lives and our language.
And the way to do this is to experience the Biblical stories as just that: stories, indeed the whole Biblical account as a story, a story which sucks us in and translates us, and creates in us a new way of seeing and being in the world.
For example, on Maundy Thursday, one should experience the washing of feet without a lot of explaining, the same with the supper and the stripping of the Altar. Any attempt to create a "sign" from ancient experience to this moment in time is misplaced. It is important to let the symbols, the drama and rituals, so their own work in each heart.
Proclamation on this night is accent, nuance, poetry rather than prose. Stories of hospitality, servanthood and/or betrayal. A meditation on meals and rewembrance,
these are the stuff of preaching on this night.
For Good Friday, Tennebrae or a Soluemn Good Friday Liturgy, with A long prayer Litany and the reading of the Passion Narrative, slammed books, and dimmed lights and preocessions of crosses; these things do not so much need to be expalined as they need to be highlighted, touched upon, augmented. A reflection on despair and darkness or lost hope is the theme here, deepening the mystery, not explaining or relieving it.
Easter is all about JOY, inexplicable JOY, and if it is inexplicable, why do we try so hard to explain it? Proclaim the joy. Announce the victory. Again, tell the story, and let the story do its work on us.
Peace,
Delmo
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
SUNDAY OF THE PASSION/PALM SUNDAY: RCL Texts for April 9, 2006
FIRST READING: Isaih 50:4-9a,verse 4: "The LORD God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word."
Dr. Richard Lischer's Beecher Lectures on Preaching have been published as "The End of Words: the Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence." A couple of quotes are appropriate here:
"Preaching bears the impossible weight of its own message, which is God's willingness to be pushed out of the world and onto a cross. Preaching has to conjure with its own apparent irrelevance. God (and the preacher) can relate to the world only via the great symbol of marginalization, the cross and by means of the hidden presence of God's chosen instruemnt, the marginalized Man for Others."(p.8)
"We preach God's love to those who are staggering through loveless relationships. We preach forgiveness to injured parties who possess a moral right to say "Never again." Worst of all, we preach reconciliation to those who, either consciously or unconsciously, seize upon our words as permission for continued sin. Of them, the Scripture says, "They crucify the Son of God afresh." No where do you see the vulnerability of the church more clearly than when it gathers up its authority and announces the forgiveness of sins." (p.144)
"The End of Words", Richard Lischer, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005
SECOND READING: Phillipians 2:5-11: verse 5: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus"
A Quote from T.S. Eliot: "People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction." (cited in AARP Magazine, May/June 2006 by Sallie Foley, M.S.W. p.38)
If this is true, (and my 30 years of experience as a parish pastor teaches me it is) and if we are called to follow Jesus to the cross (which we are) and if, as preachers, we are supposed to issue this call to the cross to our parishioners (again, which we are), so how do we get people to put self-interest aside and want to go to the cross? How do we make cross-living the direction they want to go.
How do we "make them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction?
About ten years ago, I was standing at the sink washing dishes with my oldest son David, who will be 23 this summer. David was then taking cooking classes and he was talking about his plans to be a gourmet cook for about 20 years and then run for the US Senate. As gently as I could, I pointed out to him that though I was sure he was capable of both those things, it might be very difficult to convince millions of voters that gourmet cooking was good experience for becoming a Senator. He said, "Well, I'll just get them to change their minds." Then I said, "That could be very difficult. Look how hard it is for me to get a couple of hundred people at the church to change their minds." To which David replied, "You're not called to get them to change their minds. You're called to preach the Gospel. The Holy Spirit changes their minds." (Hmm. Boy must of had a good catechism teacher. Thank you Pr. Laura)
THE GOSPEL: Mark 15:1-39 - verse 1 - "As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate."
It's reading week. This from Carl Jung, "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves." (Sally Folie, AARP, p.38)
I remember that same thought from a counseling seminar as "That which we dislike most in others is that which we dislike most in ourselves."
Either way, it raises up some interesting reflections about the crucifixion of Jesus.
1) What was it about Jesus that irritated others? What does that irritation say about them?
2) More to the point, what about Jesus irritates us? And what does that irritation say about us?
To go one more step, though we do not cry out "Crucify him," for we are much too polite or indifferent for that, how do we "crucify him" again, and again, and again, in our lives? In what ways to we speak his praise with our lips and drive more nails into his hands with our lives?
If we take Jung's thought seriously, we might think of Jesus' story as a mirror held up to our lives. It is only as we look at Christ that we begin to see ourselves clearly.
I noticed it again the other day, one of the creations of modern technology that I simply do not understand. Nothing real significant, just something that puzzles me. Passenger side rear-view mirrors. They say, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." Whose bright idea was that? The only thing I use that mirror for is to change lanes to the right, and believe you me, I want to know EXACTLY where that car back there is. So WHY???? does the mirror show it further away than it really is, thus making moving right more dangerous?
But you know what, there is emotional, spiritual truth in those words, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" That is the point of Jung's observation. The irritation we feel at others is not over there with them, it's in here, with us.
The reactions we have to Jesus, the cross and the gospel are not over there, or back there 2000 years; they are right here and right now. They are indeed "Closer than they appear."
Peace,
delmo
Dr. Richard Lischer's Beecher Lectures on Preaching have been published as "The End of Words: the Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence." A couple of quotes are appropriate here:
"Preaching bears the impossible weight of its own message, which is God's willingness to be pushed out of the world and onto a cross. Preaching has to conjure with its own apparent irrelevance. God (and the preacher) can relate to the world only via the great symbol of marginalization, the cross and by means of the hidden presence of God's chosen instruemnt, the marginalized Man for Others."(p.8)
"We preach God's love to those who are staggering through loveless relationships. We preach forgiveness to injured parties who possess a moral right to say "Never again." Worst of all, we preach reconciliation to those who, either consciously or unconsciously, seize upon our words as permission for continued sin. Of them, the Scripture says, "They crucify the Son of God afresh." No where do you see the vulnerability of the church more clearly than when it gathers up its authority and announces the forgiveness of sins." (p.144)
"The End of Words", Richard Lischer, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005
SECOND READING: Phillipians 2:5-11: verse 5: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus"
A Quote from T.S. Eliot: "People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction." (cited in AARP Magazine, May/June 2006 by Sallie Foley, M.S.W. p.38)
If this is true, (and my 30 years of experience as a parish pastor teaches me it is) and if we are called to follow Jesus to the cross (which we are) and if, as preachers, we are supposed to issue this call to the cross to our parishioners (again, which we are), so how do we get people to put self-interest aside and want to go to the cross? How do we make cross-living the direction they want to go.
How do we "make them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction?
About ten years ago, I was standing at the sink washing dishes with my oldest son David, who will be 23 this summer. David was then taking cooking classes and he was talking about his plans to be a gourmet cook for about 20 years and then run for the US Senate. As gently as I could, I pointed out to him that though I was sure he was capable of both those things, it might be very difficult to convince millions of voters that gourmet cooking was good experience for becoming a Senator. He said, "Well, I'll just get them to change their minds." Then I said, "That could be very difficult. Look how hard it is for me to get a couple of hundred people at the church to change their minds." To which David replied, "You're not called to get them to change their minds. You're called to preach the Gospel. The Holy Spirit changes their minds." (Hmm. Boy must of had a good catechism teacher. Thank you Pr. Laura)
THE GOSPEL: Mark 15:1-39 - verse 1 - "As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate."
It's reading week. This from Carl Jung, "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves." (Sally Folie, AARP, p.38)
I remember that same thought from a counseling seminar as "That which we dislike most in others is that which we dislike most in ourselves."
Either way, it raises up some interesting reflections about the crucifixion of Jesus.
1) What was it about Jesus that irritated others? What does that irritation say about them?
2) More to the point, what about Jesus irritates us? And what does that irritation say about us?
To go one more step, though we do not cry out "Crucify him," for we are much too polite or indifferent for that, how do we "crucify him" again, and again, and again, in our lives? In what ways to we speak his praise with our lips and drive more nails into his hands with our lives?
If we take Jung's thought seriously, we might think of Jesus' story as a mirror held up to our lives. It is only as we look at Christ that we begin to see ourselves clearly.
I noticed it again the other day, one of the creations of modern technology that I simply do not understand. Nothing real significant, just something that puzzles me. Passenger side rear-view mirrors. They say, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." Whose bright idea was that? The only thing I use that mirror for is to change lanes to the right, and believe you me, I want to know EXACTLY where that car back there is. So WHY???? does the mirror show it further away than it really is, thus making moving right more dangerous?
But you know what, there is emotional, spiritual truth in those words, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" That is the point of Jung's observation. The irritation we feel at others is not over there with them, it's in here, with us.
The reactions we have to Jesus, the cross and the gospel are not over there, or back there 2000 years; they are right here and right now. They are indeed "Closer than they appear."
Peace,
delmo
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Lent 5: RCL Texts for April 2, 2006
Jeremiah 31:31-34: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God; and they will be my people.'
I have never been any good at things like singing or playing a musical instrument or playing a sport beyond the sort of 8th grade level. Part of it is a lack of talent. But that's just part of it.
Another part of it is an unwillingness to practice, to go over and over the basic, rudimentary motions of any particular activity enough to get good at it. There were a couple of exceptions.
I could shoot a fairly consistent jump-shot in basketball and I became a pretty good contact hitter in baseball. But I was not a good player. I wouldn't work at it.
The same thing with singing. I had no natural talent or ear, but I could have learned to be more than adequate, but I wouldn't put in the dull, repetitous time necessary. Same thing for the guitar I bought and the piano lessons I signed up for.
I have been thinking about how it is that covenants get written on people's hearts and it seems to me that developing a right relationship with God and neighbour; learning to live life by Jesus' Great Commandments (e.g. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And the second is like unto it, love your neighbour as yourself.) is a lot like learning to play baseball or to sing; it's a matter of staying with the basics until they become a part of who you are.
One of the goals in sport is to make the regular activities such second nature that you quit thinking and just do it. To do that takes "practice." Which, it seems to me, might be why we talk about "practicing our religion." Could it be that covenants get written on our hearts through practicing the "unnatural acts" of unselfish and unconditional love toward others until they become second nature; i.e. are written on our hearts?
Hebrews 5:5-10 - In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him, and he was heard . . . ."What? He was heard? What do you mean "He was heard?" He was crucified wasn't he? He still got executed, didn't he? In what sense was his prayer heard?
When I was about 12, I was a Boy Scout. We met at the Community Building across the road from the Elementary School. Just down the road was the medical clinic. As often happens in a small place, one person wore many hats. Dr. Tulledge was the doctor at the Rural Clinic. He was also our Scoutmaster. And he was a lay preacher at the Presbyterian Church.
One night at Scouts we ran a race in the school parking lot. I fell, skidded on the asphalt and gravel and lodged a small pebble under the skin of my forehead. Dr. Tulledge left the troop under the care of some of the Dads and he and my Daddy took me down the road to the clinic to tend to my wound.
The Dr. was a good man and an adequate doctor, but he didn't have much of a bedside manner. He came at me with a huge needle to numb my forehead. When I squirmed, he threw one giant leg over my mid-section and held my arms down with his left arm. I looked at Daddy and started crying and yelling, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, don't let him hurt me PLEASE Daddy.
DADY! DADDY! DADDY!
The Dr. inserted the needle while holding me down and then proceeded to grope around in my forehead with a pair of tweezers trying to get that little rock. It really, really hurt. I continued to cry and beg Daddy to make him stop. And just as I felt the rock move and then come out I saw my Daddy squeeze my jacket in his hands and let a tear slip slowly from his eye. It was the only time I remember seeing my Daddy cry.
DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! I was heard. And I was denied.
Jesus was heard. And he was denied. And "he learned obedience through what he suffered and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
GOSPEL LESSON: John 12:20-33 "Sir we wish to see Jesus."
Afew years ago, they made a movie out of John Irving's novel "The Cider House Rules". It was set in an orphanage in Maine right after WWII. When the film was nominated for an Oscar, USA Today ran a story about the Connie Maxwell Home in Greenwood SC to see how orphanages had changed in half a century.
The Connie Maxwell home is run by the Baptists of South Carolina, and like most former orphanages now, deals mostly with children who have been removed from their homes and are awaiting foster care. The Administrator says she keeps a file of cute things the kids say, as overheard and written down by the house parents. She reads in this file to lift her spirits when she's had a bad day.
My favorite goes like this. "Germs, germs germs. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That's all I hear about in this place, and I ain't never seen either one of them"
Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Ain't it the truth.
Peace,
Delmo
I have never been any good at things like singing or playing a musical instrument or playing a sport beyond the sort of 8th grade level. Part of it is a lack of talent. But that's just part of it.
Another part of it is an unwillingness to practice, to go over and over the basic, rudimentary motions of any particular activity enough to get good at it. There were a couple of exceptions.
I could shoot a fairly consistent jump-shot in basketball and I became a pretty good contact hitter in baseball. But I was not a good player. I wouldn't work at it.
The same thing with singing. I had no natural talent or ear, but I could have learned to be more than adequate, but I wouldn't put in the dull, repetitous time necessary. Same thing for the guitar I bought and the piano lessons I signed up for.
I have been thinking about how it is that covenants get written on people's hearts and it seems to me that developing a right relationship with God and neighbour; learning to live life by Jesus' Great Commandments (e.g. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And the second is like unto it, love your neighbour as yourself.) is a lot like learning to play baseball or to sing; it's a matter of staying with the basics until they become a part of who you are.
One of the goals in sport is to make the regular activities such second nature that you quit thinking and just do it. To do that takes "practice." Which, it seems to me, might be why we talk about "practicing our religion." Could it be that covenants get written on our hearts through practicing the "unnatural acts" of unselfish and unconditional love toward others until they become second nature; i.e. are written on our hearts?
Hebrews 5:5-10 - In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him, and he was heard . . . ."What? He was heard? What do you mean "He was heard?" He was crucified wasn't he? He still got executed, didn't he? In what sense was his prayer heard?
When I was about 12, I was a Boy Scout. We met at the Community Building across the road from the Elementary School. Just down the road was the medical clinic. As often happens in a small place, one person wore many hats. Dr. Tulledge was the doctor at the Rural Clinic. He was also our Scoutmaster. And he was a lay preacher at the Presbyterian Church.
One night at Scouts we ran a race in the school parking lot. I fell, skidded on the asphalt and gravel and lodged a small pebble under the skin of my forehead. Dr. Tulledge left the troop under the care of some of the Dads and he and my Daddy took me down the road to the clinic to tend to my wound.
The Dr. was a good man and an adequate doctor, but he didn't have much of a bedside manner. He came at me with a huge needle to numb my forehead. When I squirmed, he threw one giant leg over my mid-section and held my arms down with his left arm. I looked at Daddy and started crying and yelling, DADDY, DADDY, DADDY, don't let him hurt me PLEASE Daddy.
DADY! DADDY! DADDY!
The Dr. inserted the needle while holding me down and then proceeded to grope around in my forehead with a pair of tweezers trying to get that little rock. It really, really hurt. I continued to cry and beg Daddy to make him stop. And just as I felt the rock move and then come out I saw my Daddy squeeze my jacket in his hands and let a tear slip slowly from his eye. It was the only time I remember seeing my Daddy cry.
DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! I was heard. And I was denied.
Jesus was heard. And he was denied. And "he learned obedience through what he suffered and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
GOSPEL LESSON: John 12:20-33 "Sir we wish to see Jesus."
Afew years ago, they made a movie out of John Irving's novel "The Cider House Rules". It was set in an orphanage in Maine right after WWII. When the film was nominated for an Oscar, USA Today ran a story about the Connie Maxwell Home in Greenwood SC to see how orphanages had changed in half a century.
The Connie Maxwell home is run by the Baptists of South Carolina, and like most former orphanages now, deals mostly with children who have been removed from their homes and are awaiting foster care. The Administrator says she keeps a file of cute things the kids say, as overheard and written down by the house parents. She reads in this file to lift her spirits when she's had a bad day.
My favorite goes like this. "Germs, germs germs. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That's all I hear about in this place, and I ain't never seen either one of them"
Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Ain't it the truth.
Peace,
Delmo
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Lent 4: RCL Texts for March 26, 2006
TITLE: Lift High the Cross
TEXTS: Numbers 21:4-9, Ephesians 2:1-10, John 3:14-21
A few years ago the SE Synod of the ELCA had its annual Synod Assembly in Nashville. At the time I was pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church there and was on the “host” conference committee making arrangements for the meeting. My particular task was getting “gifts for the visiting “dignitaries”, i.e. the Bishop, The Lutheran Bishop of Singapore and Dr. Adie Butler, the head lay-person in the ELCA. At the committee meeting, I observed jokingly that this was going to be harder than it seemed, because I needed to buy gifts that were both tasteful AND reflective of Nashville culture. The chair of the committee remarked that I had, indeed been given an OXYMORONIC task.
I like that word oxymoron. It means expressing two contradictory things at the same time; like bittersweet or military intelligence or, some would say, Lutheran Humor. I have often thought that having a good grasp of the concept of an oxymoron is vital to understanding Christian Theology.
Is God oxymoronic? Does God express truths which are mutually contradictory?
As we read the Bible, we can find evidence for two quite different, even contradictory, pictures of God.
1) the first – Harsh, Judgmental, Strict, a god of law and punishment, of revenge and retribution, a god who keeps a careful tally of our sins and metes out appropriate penalties.
2) The second – Gentle, loving, forgiving, indulgent. A god who loves us with a prodigal, spendthrift love.
Each and every one of us has a mental picture of God, a picture shaped in part by the Biblical stories we have heard.
As we grow older, we begin to realize the contradictory, the oxymoronic nature of these stories and pictures.
And we begin to wonder, which is it? What is God really like?
Is God like the strait-lazed, self-righteous Commandant of a Military Academy, all rules and regulations and carefully calculated systems of demerits?
Or is God like your favorite Grandmother, all warm hugs and twinkly eyes, fresh-baked sugar cookies and a sympathetic ear?
Our lesson from Ephesians begins But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us . . . .reflecting the sweet, loving God.
But, just before that, in verse 3, Paul says we were by nature, children of wrath. Wrath as in the wrath of God, Wrath which would condemn us all to Hell.
Our Gospel lesson contains everybody’s favorite memory verse, For God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved Son . . . . a message of love and forgiveness.
But it also contains these words, words of judgment and wrath: Those who do not believe are condemned and . .
And this is the judgment, . . .people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
The puzzle, the contradiction, the oxymoron, remains, weaving in and out of every story, sometimes every sentence of the Bible.
Take our Old Testament Reading. Let’s look at this strange story of Moses and the Bronze Serpent verse by verse. Notice how the “pictures”, the “images” of God alternate throughout:
1 – the People are in the Wilderness, having been liberated from slavery in Egypt:
PICTURE: God the Loving
2 – the Children of Israel complain and get impatient and start whining. (vs.4-5) God gets mad and sends fiery serpents that bite and kill (vs. 6).
PICTURE: God the Vengeful
3 – the people repent and ask for forgiveness (vs. 7) and God shows them mercy, provides a way of salvation, The bronze serpent of a pole:
PICTURE: God the Loving
In our Gospel lesson, this strange story of Moses and the Bronze Serpent is lifted up as a picture, an image of what Jesus the Christ is for us, Jesus the Fiery Serpent of God !
Jesus comes, first of all, as the judgment and wrath of God, pointing out and condemning the world’s sinfulness.
Jesus, far from being meek and mild, was often quite angry about sin, was often judgmental and harsh towards people he met. Just remember last week’s Gospel lesson about driving the money-changers out of the temple. Jesus was many things, but meek and mild were not two of them.
BUT, Christ is not only our judgment, but also our salvation:
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved. . .”
The Son of man must be LIFTED UP!
The Son of Man must be CRUCIFIED!
The Son of man must DIE,
so that we may LIVE!
What a puzzle, what a contradiction, what an oxymoron,
what a mystery!
The Cross of Christ contains both God’s judgment on our sin, and God’s salvation from our sin.
Yet, God is not an oxymoron, God is amazingly consistent.
For God’s anger at our sin is the direct result of the love God has for us, his children, caught in the web of the world’s sin.
Sin pulls us down, Sin cuts us off from God and from each other, and worst of all, cuts us off from our true selves.
God’s hatred for is so great that God was willing to do anything to save us from it.
The greatest paradoxical, oxymoronic image of our faith is Christ upon the Cross. There, on the Cross, the Judgment of God AND the Love of God are revealed.
Sin is such an insidious and dangerous cancer on the soul of humanity that it must be dug out and destroyed. The Cross is radical surgery on the world’s cancer of Sin.
The mystery, the oxymoron, is that God is not only the surgeon, but in the form of Jesus the Christ, God becomes the patient for us all.
As the Scripture says, “He who knew no sin, became sin for us all . . .” going under the knife, in our place and on our behalf.
Several years ago, a young woman went into a jewelry store in a mall in Colorado Springs and asked to look at a cross. The clerk said,
Do you want a plain one, or one with a little man on it?
We cannot have the Cross without the Christ, nor can we have Christ without a Cross; it is the mysterious, oxymoronic truth which holds the story of God’s judgment and love together.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
So must the Son of man be lifted up!
That whoever believes in him, May have eternal life. Amen.
TEXTS: Numbers 21:4-9, Ephesians 2:1-10, John 3:14-21
A few years ago the SE Synod of the ELCA had its annual Synod Assembly in Nashville. At the time I was pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church there and was on the “host” conference committee making arrangements for the meeting. My particular task was getting “gifts for the visiting “dignitaries”, i.e. the Bishop, The Lutheran Bishop of Singapore and Dr. Adie Butler, the head lay-person in the ELCA. At the committee meeting, I observed jokingly that this was going to be harder than it seemed, because I needed to buy gifts that were both tasteful AND reflective of Nashville culture. The chair of the committee remarked that I had, indeed been given an OXYMORONIC task.
I like that word oxymoron. It means expressing two contradictory things at the same time; like bittersweet or military intelligence or, some would say, Lutheran Humor. I have often thought that having a good grasp of the concept of an oxymoron is vital to understanding Christian Theology.
Is God oxymoronic? Does God express truths which are mutually contradictory?
As we read the Bible, we can find evidence for two quite different, even contradictory, pictures of God.
1) the first – Harsh, Judgmental, Strict, a god of law and punishment, of revenge and retribution, a god who keeps a careful tally of our sins and metes out appropriate penalties.
2) The second – Gentle, loving, forgiving, indulgent. A god who loves us with a prodigal, spendthrift love.
Each and every one of us has a mental picture of God, a picture shaped in part by the Biblical stories we have heard.
As we grow older, we begin to realize the contradictory, the oxymoronic nature of these stories and pictures.
And we begin to wonder, which is it? What is God really like?
Is God like the strait-lazed, self-righteous Commandant of a Military Academy, all rules and regulations and carefully calculated systems of demerits?
Or is God like your favorite Grandmother, all warm hugs and twinkly eyes, fresh-baked sugar cookies and a sympathetic ear?
Our lesson from Ephesians begins But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us . . . .reflecting the sweet, loving God.
But, just before that, in verse 3, Paul says we were by nature, children of wrath. Wrath as in the wrath of God, Wrath which would condemn us all to Hell.
Our Gospel lesson contains everybody’s favorite memory verse, For God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved Son . . . . a message of love and forgiveness.
But it also contains these words, words of judgment and wrath: Those who do not believe are condemned and . .
And this is the judgment, . . .people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
The puzzle, the contradiction, the oxymoron, remains, weaving in and out of every story, sometimes every sentence of the Bible.
Take our Old Testament Reading. Let’s look at this strange story of Moses and the Bronze Serpent verse by verse. Notice how the “pictures”, the “images” of God alternate throughout:
1 – the People are in the Wilderness, having been liberated from slavery in Egypt:
PICTURE: God the Loving
2 – the Children of Israel complain and get impatient and start whining. (vs.4-5) God gets mad and sends fiery serpents that bite and kill (vs. 6).
PICTURE: God the Vengeful
3 – the people repent and ask for forgiveness (vs. 7) and God shows them mercy, provides a way of salvation, The bronze serpent of a pole:
PICTURE: God the Loving
In our Gospel lesson, this strange story of Moses and the Bronze Serpent is lifted up as a picture, an image of what Jesus the Christ is for us, Jesus the Fiery Serpent of God !
Jesus comes, first of all, as the judgment and wrath of God, pointing out and condemning the world’s sinfulness.
Jesus, far from being meek and mild, was often quite angry about sin, was often judgmental and harsh towards people he met. Just remember last week’s Gospel lesson about driving the money-changers out of the temple. Jesus was many things, but meek and mild were not two of them.
BUT, Christ is not only our judgment, but also our salvation:
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved. . .”
The Son of man must be LIFTED UP!
The Son of Man must be CRUCIFIED!
The Son of man must DIE,
so that we may LIVE!
What a puzzle, what a contradiction, what an oxymoron,
what a mystery!
The Cross of Christ contains both God’s judgment on our sin, and God’s salvation from our sin.
Yet, God is not an oxymoron, God is amazingly consistent.
For God’s anger at our sin is the direct result of the love God has for us, his children, caught in the web of the world’s sin.
Sin pulls us down, Sin cuts us off from God and from each other, and worst of all, cuts us off from our true selves.
God’s hatred for is so great that God was willing to do anything to save us from it.
The greatest paradoxical, oxymoronic image of our faith is Christ upon the Cross. There, on the Cross, the Judgment of God AND the Love of God are revealed.
Sin is such an insidious and dangerous cancer on the soul of humanity that it must be dug out and destroyed. The Cross is radical surgery on the world’s cancer of Sin.
The mystery, the oxymoron, is that God is not only the surgeon, but in the form of Jesus the Christ, God becomes the patient for us all.
As the Scripture says, “He who knew no sin, became sin for us all . . .” going under the knife, in our place and on our behalf.
Several years ago, a young woman went into a jewelry store in a mall in Colorado Springs and asked to look at a cross. The clerk said,
Do you want a plain one, or one with a little man on it?
We cannot have the Cross without the Christ, nor can we have Christ without a Cross; it is the mysterious, oxymoronic truth which holds the story of God’s judgment and love together.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
So must the Son of man be lifted up!
That whoever believes in him, May have eternal life. Amen.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
LENT 3: RCL texts for March 19, 2006
FIRST READING: Exodus 20:1-17: The Ten Commandments. Or is it Eleven. Or Nine. Depends on whose counting, doesn't it. Well, I was looking them over and trying to figure out which ones I hadn't broken; at least not in the STRICTEST, most LITERAL sense.
No other Gods - Nope. No Baal or Fertility Cult worship going on in the Chilton household.
No graven image - Nope. No bowing down to a man-made object that's not a God.
Not taking the Lord's Name in Vain - Nope. Well, I do have a barn-yard vocabulary but I draw the line at G-- D---.
Remember Sabbath Day - Nope. Always go to church on Sunday, seldom work.
Honor parents - Nope. Birthday cards, weekly phone calls, Christmas gifts. Done.
You shall not kill - Nope. Never even been in a fight since 7th grade.
You shall not steal - Nope. Unless you count sneaking fries off Deborah's plate when she's not looking.
You shall not bear false witness - Nope. Like Daddy said, always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said.
You shall not covet,neighbor's house, wife, slaves of his ox or his ass - Nope. Good on all of them.
Looks like I'm in the clear. Based on this record, I didn't need Jesus to die for me. I've got the being good thing covered.
On the other hand, if Other Gods means things which get more of my attention and loyalty than THE GOD, then I'm probably guilty.
And if Graven Images implies earthly things to which I have devoted a great deal of time and energy and which are the most important things in my home, well . . .
Suppose taking the Lord's name in vain means using religion for less than holy reasons, oops!
And the Sabbath could be about creating enough silence and space in my life to allow God to seep in and nurture and lead and refresh me. Oh my!
Honoring father and mother may have something to say about how I deal with those who have taken on the responsibility for leadership; have I been responsive and cooperative? Dang!
Well, I really haven't killed anyone; but I haven't prevented or protested a lot of the violence which goes on in my name, funded by my dollars.
Adultery? Well there is that Lust in the Heart thing.
You shall not steal? What was it Augustine said, anything you have more than you need is stolen from the poor. Ouch!
False Witness? I do not lie, but I can "spin" like a whirling dervish.
Okay, I still haven't coveted anybody's ass and nobody can say I did!
SECOND LESSON: I Corinthians 1:18-25 : verse 25 "For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."
The paradoxical nature of the Gospel is still very hard for most of us to grasp. Just like last week's Gospel lesson with the lose life/save life vice-versa pairings; this wisdom/foolishness thing goes against the grain of "real" life.
We think that "winning", "succeeding", is important; and the way to win, to succeed, is to be smart and strong and force one's will and to come out on top.
But we are confronted with the cross, which shows God losing, failing, looking "foolish" and weak and coming out on the bottom. And it makes no sense.
Which is why, I suppose, we so often dart immediately from the cross to the empty tomb, turning tragedy into triumph as quickly as possible. We do not wish to linger near the death of God too long; it is a frightening and lonely place which causes us great anxiety.
A couple of years ago I did a Lenten Lecture series in a moderate Baptist Church in a University town in the South. I spoke each day on different aspects of Luther's Theology of the Cross. On Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday, I preached about the Theology of the Cross and encouraged the congregation to hold on to the sadness and dismay of the cross for a few days, to linger in the mystery of the death of God for us.
A local Baptist Association official was in attendance that day, and in good Baptist tradition, the pastor asked him to give the benediction. The good reverend proceeded correct my sermon in his prayer, reminding God (and the people) that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead and we can be assured of that.
We have indeed, turned the Weakness of God into the Power of the Cross. We have to be careful here. God's weakness is strong, but it is still weakness and we must resist the temptation to turn it into another avenue or technique for success.
In a classic scene from Huck Finn, Huck embraces damnation rather than rejecting his friend Jim. If Huck had thought of it in terms of a wise way of earning salvation, it would not have been a salvific silliness. It was only because he embraced damnation as the cost of doing the right thing, accepted suffering as the cost of righteousness; that we can then say he was saved.
Peace,
Delmo
No other Gods - Nope. No Baal or Fertility Cult worship going on in the Chilton household.
No graven image - Nope. No bowing down to a man-made object that's not a God.
Not taking the Lord's Name in Vain - Nope. Well, I do have a barn-yard vocabulary but I draw the line at G-- D---.
Remember Sabbath Day - Nope. Always go to church on Sunday, seldom work.
Honor parents - Nope. Birthday cards, weekly phone calls, Christmas gifts. Done.
You shall not kill - Nope. Never even been in a fight since 7th grade.
You shall not steal - Nope. Unless you count sneaking fries off Deborah's plate when she's not looking.
You shall not bear false witness - Nope. Like Daddy said, always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said.
You shall not covet,neighbor's house, wife, slaves of his ox or his ass - Nope. Good on all of them.
Looks like I'm in the clear. Based on this record, I didn't need Jesus to die for me. I've got the being good thing covered.
On the other hand, if Other Gods means things which get more of my attention and loyalty than THE GOD, then I'm probably guilty.
And if Graven Images implies earthly things to which I have devoted a great deal of time and energy and which are the most important things in my home, well . . .
Suppose taking the Lord's name in vain means using religion for less than holy reasons, oops!
And the Sabbath could be about creating enough silence and space in my life to allow God to seep in and nurture and lead and refresh me. Oh my!
Honoring father and mother may have something to say about how I deal with those who have taken on the responsibility for leadership; have I been responsive and cooperative? Dang!
Well, I really haven't killed anyone; but I haven't prevented or protested a lot of the violence which goes on in my name, funded by my dollars.
Adultery? Well there is that Lust in the Heart thing.
You shall not steal? What was it Augustine said, anything you have more than you need is stolen from the poor. Ouch!
False Witness? I do not lie, but I can "spin" like a whirling dervish.
Okay, I still haven't coveted anybody's ass and nobody can say I did!
SECOND LESSON: I Corinthians 1:18-25 : verse 25 "For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."
The paradoxical nature of the Gospel is still very hard for most of us to grasp. Just like last week's Gospel lesson with the lose life/save life vice-versa pairings; this wisdom/foolishness thing goes against the grain of "real" life.
We think that "winning", "succeeding", is important; and the way to win, to succeed, is to be smart and strong and force one's will and to come out on top.
But we are confronted with the cross, which shows God losing, failing, looking "foolish" and weak and coming out on the bottom. And it makes no sense.
Which is why, I suppose, we so often dart immediately from the cross to the empty tomb, turning tragedy into triumph as quickly as possible. We do not wish to linger near the death of God too long; it is a frightening and lonely place which causes us great anxiety.
A couple of years ago I did a Lenten Lecture series in a moderate Baptist Church in a University town in the South. I spoke each day on different aspects of Luther's Theology of the Cross. On Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday, I preached about the Theology of the Cross and encouraged the congregation to hold on to the sadness and dismay of the cross for a few days, to linger in the mystery of the death of God for us.
A local Baptist Association official was in attendance that day, and in good Baptist tradition, the pastor asked him to give the benediction. The good reverend proceeded correct my sermon in his prayer, reminding God (and the people) that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead and we can be assured of that.
We have indeed, turned the Weakness of God into the Power of the Cross. We have to be careful here. God's weakness is strong, but it is still weakness and we must resist the temptation to turn it into another avenue or technique for success.
In a classic scene from Huck Finn, Huck embraces damnation rather than rejecting his friend Jim. If Huck had thought of it in terms of a wise way of earning salvation, it would not have been a salvific silliness. It was only because he embraced damnation as the cost of doing the right thing, accepted suffering as the cost of righteousness; that we can then say he was saved.
Peace,
Delmo
Thursday, March 09, 2006
THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT: RCL texts for March 12, 2006
FIRST READING: GENESIS 17:1-7, 15-16: verse 5 "No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have mad eyou the father of a multitude of nations." and verse 15: "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name..."
Names are funny things. Some people fit their names, others don't. Some years ago I did what used to be called a "shotgun wedding", the young woman was about 17, the groom was 19. The wedding was on a Saturday afternoon at the church, with the full membership and both families. There was no real animosity from anyone. Getting pregnant and then "doing the right thing" was an accepted idea in that rural community. About 5 months after the wedding, the baby was born. The parents named it Chastity, after Sonny and Cher's baby. They obviously didn't have a clue what the word meant. Which raises the question: if Sonny and Cher named their baby Chastity as an ironic comment, then did this young couple inadvertently follow suit, or did they just not know? I know the couple and I'm voting for option #2.
I'm not sure if parents are aware of the power that giving a name can bestow. I remember the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue", believe you me, even in the South a name like Delmer is tough, especially during the Junior High years. I tried to go by D.L. in High School, but my older brother put a stop to that by shouting DELMER everytime he saw me, much to the amusement of his friends. So, Delmer I was.
It's also a tough name for non-Southereners to respect. One of my parishioners in Highlands emailed a medical school friend in Boston that she had a new pastor and gave my name. The person wrote back, "Oh my God, it's worse than I thought, you're in the NC mountains and you have a pastor named DELMER."
Names have power. And what we call each other and what we call God and what God calls us are powerful things. We have a tendency in the post-modern world to think that things like names and labels are mostly matters of indifference, of perspective. We live in a world of shifting meanings, a world of "thinking by public opinion poll", "what's hot and what's not" is more important to many folks than "what's true and what's not".
In such a world, it is important to inject some timeless reality. Abram and Sarai's name changes were part of a one time shift in their relationship to God and God's relationship with them, and Israel and ultimately with all the peoples of the world. This was not a thing done lightly, done for more popularity or propriety or coolness or hotness or whateverness. This name change signalled a different covenant, a defferent relationship, a personal, first-name basis relationship with God.
This is why naming cermonies are so important in all religions, especially the Judeo-Christian Tradition. It is a time of Covenant, a time to seal the relationship between the named parties:
"Delmer Lowell Chilton I baptize you in the NAME of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."
It's not the name I would have chosen for myself, and I have dickered with it over the years, but ultimately, I have grown into it, and it suits me: both the Delmer Lowell Chilton part and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit part.
SECOND READING: ROMANS 4:13-25: "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."
Two old preacher stories, one true, one an old chestnut.
TRUE ONE: Back in the thirities or forties there was a major drought in the Rowan County NC area. The area Lutherans, of whom there were many, decided to have a prayer meeting to pray for rain. It was held in Concordia Lutheran Church, out between China Grove and Mooresville. My memory is fuzzy here, I can't remember which stern old Lutheran "Herr Pastor" it was who got up and asked everyone to show their umbrellas. Nobody did. "What!?" he exclaimed, "No umbrellas! Then you have no faith. Go home and come back tomoorow and bring your umbrellas; then we will pray for rain."
OLD ONE: There was a drought in South Georgia. The members of a time church gathered for a prayer meeting. The next day a Hurricane hit. There was massive flooding. The little church was seen floating on the river. The pastor was holding to the steeple shouting: Not bad for a little church!"
GOSPEL READING: Mark 8:31-38 ""For what does it gain a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' (RSV)
In a recent edition of LEADERSHIP magazine, a story was told about Ray Romano, the star of the hit comedy, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. When the opportunity came to do the show, he was making a decent living as a stand-up comedian in NY, but he was neither rich nor famous. On the day he packed to move to Hollywood to do the show, his brother pinned a note to some clothes in his suitcase.
After the taping of the last show of EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's long succesful run,
Ray Romano came out and talked to the studio audience. He told them about his brother's note and read it to them. It said, "WHAT DOES IT PROFIT A MAN TO GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS SOUL?"
A tearful Ray Romano looked out at the audience, "I'm going now, to work on my soul."
Lent is a time for soul work. I wish Mr. Romano well. Soul work is hard work, for all of us. May we all be about the business of working on our souls.
Peace,
Delmo
Names are funny things. Some people fit their names, others don't. Some years ago I did what used to be called a "shotgun wedding", the young woman was about 17, the groom was 19. The wedding was on a Saturday afternoon at the church, with the full membership and both families. There was no real animosity from anyone. Getting pregnant and then "doing the right thing" was an accepted idea in that rural community. About 5 months after the wedding, the baby was born. The parents named it Chastity, after Sonny and Cher's baby. They obviously didn't have a clue what the word meant. Which raises the question: if Sonny and Cher named their baby Chastity as an ironic comment, then did this young couple inadvertently follow suit, or did they just not know? I know the couple and I'm voting for option #2.
I'm not sure if parents are aware of the power that giving a name can bestow. I remember the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue", believe you me, even in the South a name like Delmer is tough, especially during the Junior High years. I tried to go by D.L. in High School, but my older brother put a stop to that by shouting DELMER everytime he saw me, much to the amusement of his friends. So, Delmer I was.
It's also a tough name for non-Southereners to respect. One of my parishioners in Highlands emailed a medical school friend in Boston that she had a new pastor and gave my name. The person wrote back, "Oh my God, it's worse than I thought, you're in the NC mountains and you have a pastor named DELMER."
Names have power. And what we call each other and what we call God and what God calls us are powerful things. We have a tendency in the post-modern world to think that things like names and labels are mostly matters of indifference, of perspective. We live in a world of shifting meanings, a world of "thinking by public opinion poll", "what's hot and what's not" is more important to many folks than "what's true and what's not".
In such a world, it is important to inject some timeless reality. Abram and Sarai's name changes were part of a one time shift in their relationship to God and God's relationship with them, and Israel and ultimately with all the peoples of the world. This was not a thing done lightly, done for more popularity or propriety or coolness or hotness or whateverness. This name change signalled a different covenant, a defferent relationship, a personal, first-name basis relationship with God.
This is why naming cermonies are so important in all religions, especially the Judeo-Christian Tradition. It is a time of Covenant, a time to seal the relationship between the named parties:
"Delmer Lowell Chilton I baptize you in the NAME of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."
It's not the name I would have chosen for myself, and I have dickered with it over the years, but ultimately, I have grown into it, and it suits me: both the Delmer Lowell Chilton part and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit part.
SECOND READING: ROMANS 4:13-25: "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."
Two old preacher stories, one true, one an old chestnut.
TRUE ONE: Back in the thirities or forties there was a major drought in the Rowan County NC area. The area Lutherans, of whom there were many, decided to have a prayer meeting to pray for rain. It was held in Concordia Lutheran Church, out between China Grove and Mooresville. My memory is fuzzy here, I can't remember which stern old Lutheran "Herr Pastor" it was who got up and asked everyone to show their umbrellas. Nobody did. "What!?" he exclaimed, "No umbrellas! Then you have no faith. Go home and come back tomoorow and bring your umbrellas; then we will pray for rain."
OLD ONE: There was a drought in South Georgia. The members of a time church gathered for a prayer meeting. The next day a Hurricane hit. There was massive flooding. The little church was seen floating on the river. The pastor was holding to the steeple shouting: Not bad for a little church!"
GOSPEL READING: Mark 8:31-38 ""For what does it gain a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' (RSV)
In a recent edition of LEADERSHIP magazine, a story was told about Ray Romano, the star of the hit comedy, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. When the opportunity came to do the show, he was making a decent living as a stand-up comedian in NY, but he was neither rich nor famous. On the day he packed to move to Hollywood to do the show, his brother pinned a note to some clothes in his suitcase.
After the taping of the last show of EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's long succesful run,
Ray Romano came out and talked to the studio audience. He told them about his brother's note and read it to them. It said, "WHAT DOES IT PROFIT A MAN TO GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS SOUL?"
A tearful Ray Romano looked out at the audience, "I'm going now, to work on my soul."
Lent is a time for soul work. I wish Mr. Romano well. Soul work is hard work, for all of us. May we all be about the business of working on our souls.
Peace,
Delmo
THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT: RCL texts for March 12, 2006
FIRST READING: GENESIS 17:1-7, 15-16: verse 5 "No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have mad eyou the father of a multitude of nations." and verse 15: "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name..."
Names are funny things. Some people fit their names, others don't. Some years ago I did what used to be called a "shotgun wedding", the young woman was about 17, the groom was 19. The wedding was on a Saturday afternoon at the church, with the full membership and both families. There was no real animosity from anyone. Getting pregnant and then "doing the right thing" was an accepted idea in that rural community. About 5 months after the wedding, the baby was born. The parents named it Chastity, after Sonny and Cher's baby. They obviously didn't have a clue what the word meant. Which raises the question: if Sonny and Cher named their baby Chastity as an ironic comment, then did this young couple inadvertently follow suit, or did they just not know? I know the couple and I'm voting for option #2.
I'm not sure if parents are aware of the power that giving a name can bestow. I remember the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue", believe you me, even in the South a name like Delmer is tough, especially during the Junior High years. I tried to go by D.L. in High School, but my older brother put a stop to that by shouting DELMER everytime he saw me, much to the amusement of his friends. So, Delmer I was.
It's also a tough name for non-Southereners to respect. One of my parishioners in Highlands emailed a medical school friend in Boston that she had a new pastor and gave my name. The person wrote back, "Oh my God, it's worse than I thought, you're in the NC mountains and you have a pastor named DELMER."
Names have power. And what we call each other and what we call God and what God calls us are powerful things. We have a tendency in the post-modern world to think that things like names and labels are mostly matters of indifference, of perspective. We live in a world of shifting meanings, a world of "thinking by public opinion poll", "what's hot and what's not" is more important to many folks than "what's true and what's not".
In such a world, it is important to inject some timeless reality. Abram and Sarai's name changes were part of a one time shift in their relationship to God and God's relationship with them, and Israel and ultimately with all the peoples of the world. This was not a thing done lightly, done for more popularity or propriety or coolness or hotness or whateverness. This name change signalled a different covenant, a defferent relationship, a personal, first-name basis relationship with God.
This is why naming cermonies are so important in all religions, especially the Judeo-Christian Tradition. It is a time of Covenant, a time to seal the relationship between the named parties:
"Delmer Lowell Chilton I baptize you in the NAME of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."
It's not the name I would have chosen for myself, and I have dickered with it over the years, but ultimately, I have grown into it, and it suits me: both the Delmer Lowell Chilton part and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit part.
SECOND READING: ROMANS 4:13-25: "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."
Two old preacher stories, one true, one an old chestnut.
TRUE ONE: Back in the thirities or forties there was a major drought in the Rowan County NC area. The area Lutherans, of whom there were many, decided to have a prayer meeting to pray for rain. It was held in Concordia Lutheran Church, out between China Grove and Mooresville. My memory is fuzzy here, I can't remember which stern old Lutheran "Herr Pastor" it was who got up and asked everyone to show their umbrellas. Nobody did. "What!?" he exclaimed, "No umbrellas! Then you have no faith. Go home and come back tomoorow and bring your umbrellas; then we will pray for rain."
OLD ONE: There was a drought in South Georgia. The members of a time church gathered for a prayer meeting. The next day a Hurricane hit. There was massive flooding. The little church was seen floating on the river. The pastor was holding to the steeple shouting: Not bad for a little church!"
GOSPEL READING: Mark 8:31-38 ""For what does it gain a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' (RSV)
In a recent edition of LEADERSHIP magazine, a story was told about Ray Romano, the star of the hit comedy, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. When the opportunity came to do the show, he was making a decent living as a stand-up comedian in NY, but he was neither rich nor famous. On the day he packed to move to Hollywood to do the show, his brother pinned a note to some clothes in his suitcase.
After the taping of the last show of EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's long succesful run,
Ray Romano came out and talked to the studio audience. He told them about his brother's note and read it to them. It said, "WHAT DOES IT PROFIT A MAN TO GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS SOUL?"
A tearful Ray Romano looked out at the audience, "I'm going now, to work on my soul."
Lent is a time for soul work. I wish Mr. Romano well. Soul work is hard work, for all of us. May we all be about the business of working on our souls.
Peace,
Delmo
Names are funny things. Some people fit their names, others don't. Some years ago I did what used to be called a "shotgun wedding", the young woman was about 17, the groom was 19. The wedding was on a Saturday afternoon at the church, with the full membership and both families. There was no real animosity from anyone. Getting pregnant and then "doing the right thing" was an accepted idea in that rural community. About 5 months after the wedding, the baby was born. The parents named it Chastity, after Sonny and Cher's baby. They obviously didn't have a clue what the word meant. Which raises the question: if Sonny and Cher named their baby Chastity as an ironic comment, then did this young couple inadvertently follow suit, or did they just not know? I know the couple and I'm voting for option #2.
I'm not sure if parents are aware of the power that giving a name can bestow. I remember the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue", believe you me, even in the South a name like Delmer is tough, especially during the Junior High years. I tried to go by D.L. in High School, but my older brother put a stop to that by shouting DELMER everytime he saw me, much to the amusement of his friends. So, Delmer I was.
It's also a tough name for non-Southereners to respect. One of my parishioners in Highlands emailed a medical school friend in Boston that she had a new pastor and gave my name. The person wrote back, "Oh my God, it's worse than I thought, you're in the NC mountains and you have a pastor named DELMER."
Names have power. And what we call each other and what we call God and what God calls us are powerful things. We have a tendency in the post-modern world to think that things like names and labels are mostly matters of indifference, of perspective. We live in a world of shifting meanings, a world of "thinking by public opinion poll", "what's hot and what's not" is more important to many folks than "what's true and what's not".
In such a world, it is important to inject some timeless reality. Abram and Sarai's name changes were part of a one time shift in their relationship to God and God's relationship with them, and Israel and ultimately with all the peoples of the world. This was not a thing done lightly, done for more popularity or propriety or coolness or hotness or whateverness. This name change signalled a different covenant, a defferent relationship, a personal, first-name basis relationship with God.
This is why naming cermonies are so important in all religions, especially the Judeo-Christian Tradition. It is a time of Covenant, a time to seal the relationship between the named parties:
"Delmer Lowell Chilton I baptize you in the NAME of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."
It's not the name I would have chosen for myself, and I have dickered with it over the years, but ultimately, I have grown into it, and it suits me: both the Delmer Lowell Chilton part and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit part.
SECOND READING: ROMANS 4:13-25: "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."
Two old preacher stories, one true, one an old chestnut.
TRUE ONE: Back in the thirities or forties there was a major drought in the Rowan County NC area. The area Lutherans, of whom there were many, decided to have a prayer meeting to pray for rain. It was held in Concordia Lutheran Church, out between China Grove and Mooresville. My memory is fuzzy here, I can't remember which stern old Lutheran "Herr Pastor" it was who got up and asked everyone to show their umbrellas. Nobody did. "What!?" he exclaimed, "No umbrellas! Then you have no faith. Go home and come back tomoorow and bring your umbrellas; then we will pray for rain."
OLD ONE: There was a drought in South Georgia. The members of a time church gathered for a prayer meeting. The next day a Hurricane hit. There was massive flooding. The little church was seen floating on the river. The pastor was holding to the steeple shouting: Not bad for a little church!"
GOSPEL READING: Mark 8:31-38 ""For what does it gain a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' (RSV)
In a recent edition of LEADERSHIP magazine, a story was told about Ray Romano, the star of the hit comedy, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. When the opportunity came to do the show, he was making a decent living as a stand-up comedian in NY, but he was neither rich nor famous. On the day he packed to move to Hollywood to do the show, his brother pinned a note to some clothes in his suitcase.
After the taping of the last show of EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's long succesful run,
Ray Romano came out and talked to the studio audience. He told them about his brother's note and read it to them. It said, "WHAT DOES IT PROFIT A MAN TO GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS SOUL?"
A tearful Ray Romano looked out at the audience, "I'm going now, to work on my soul."
Lent is a time for soul work. I wish Mr. Romano well. Soul work is hard work, for all of us. May we all be about the business of working on our souls.
Peace,
Delmo
Friday, March 03, 2006
FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT: Gospel lesson for March 5
GOSPEL: Mark 1:9-15 : Eugene Peterson, in the Message, translates the last line as : "Time's up! God's Kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the message!"
It the "time's up" that got me. I am an inveterate procrastinator. I wait until the last minute on almost everything. In college, I pulled all-nighters to write term papers. When I became a pastor, I wrote sermons on Saturday night, (and on Sunday morning!) For years, I have done my taxes on April 15, driving around late at night, looking for an open Post Office.
So the words, "Time's UP!" send a chill down my spine. And I think that one of the things that ails me and us in the life of the church is that we have very little sense of urgency about the gospel or the church. After all, its been 2000 years and Jesus hasn't come back yet, so why worry?
But really, a better question is what are we waiting for? A sign from heaven? Already had one, his name is Jesus. What are we waiting for? Clear instructions on what to do? Already got those. Love God with heart, mind and soul and the second is just like it, love your neighbor as yourself? What are we waiting for? Don't have enough time? We've got all the time we need; from this moment until the day we die, and then really and for sure, it will be Time's Up!
Peace,
delmo
It the "time's up" that got me. I am an inveterate procrastinator. I wait until the last minute on almost everything. In college, I pulled all-nighters to write term papers. When I became a pastor, I wrote sermons on Saturday night, (and on Sunday morning!) For years, I have done my taxes on April 15, driving around late at night, looking for an open Post Office.
So the words, "Time's UP!" send a chill down my spine. And I think that one of the things that ails me and us in the life of the church is that we have very little sense of urgency about the gospel or the church. After all, its been 2000 years and Jesus hasn't come back yet, so why worry?
But really, a better question is what are we waiting for? A sign from heaven? Already had one, his name is Jesus. What are we waiting for? Clear instructions on what to do? Already got those. Love God with heart, mind and soul and the second is just like it, love your neighbor as yourself? What are we waiting for? Don't have enough time? We've got all the time we need; from this moment until the day we die, and then really and for sure, it will be Time's Up!
Peace,
delmo
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