Filed under: Devotional Thoughts, Prayer | Tags: muslim, Prayer, righteousness, rude christians
I recently threw out a tweet that also went to my facebook expressing my shame at the actions of some Christians a few weeks back who felt it was somehow in the Spirit of Christ to go disturb their Muslim neighbors who had gathered at the National Mall for a day of prayer. While the people tried to pray, some stood to the side with bullhorns and tried to “evangelize” them, and then got in arguments with the DC police. Sheesh.
Really, that’s who we are supposed to be? The persecutors? We somehow have been granted the licence to rudeness? Really?
So, I went to my Sunni next-door neighbor and apologized, even though he wasn’t there that day. He was so great. He said something like, “We know all Christians aren’t like that.” He then looked over my shoulder to the view of my church building down the street, and he looked at the Presbyterian church across the street, and turned back and said something to the tune of, “My wife and I are so happy to have the churches here so close, we feel it is a sign of peace for us.” Sorry, it wasn’t a news interview so I have to do some paraphrasing.
I also spent some time trying to find an email for the fella who planned the whole prayer event at the Mall. I finally found one and sent him an apology, as a local Christian Pastor who was embarrassed by the angry, rude Christians. I wanted to share the reply I received yesterday, because I thought it was very gracious…
“Dear Reverend Thomas,
Thank you very much for your kind words and prayers. We did receive opposition from Christians but it didn’t prevent us from having a most wonderful prayer service on Capitol Hill. We prayed for the good of America, for all people of all races, religions, etc. Many of us who participated were born in America. We deeply care for and love America.
Take good care and may the peace of God (the one creator) be with you always.
Peace and blessings,
Sayydah”
There’s no doubt that there are Muslims in the world who don’t love America. Heck, there are Christians in the world who don’t love America. And I’m not going to jump onto a bandwagon of condemnation for the Christians with bullhorns… as I recently heard the late, great Rich Mullins say in video, “I’m not saying they’re bad, they’re just wrong.” Scripture directs us to be the righteous ones, so that observers have no true basis to make derisive remakes about our behavior. Scripture also says that our anger does not accomplish the will of God. And common sense says that interrupting someone else’s prayer does nothing to help my prayer.
So, I’ll just close with sincere apologies to the artist of the icon with which I took certain liberties when trying to do something visually clever for this post. Sorry, my friend.
Filed under: Devotional Thoughts | Tags: crucifixion, incarnation, jesus, salvation
For several years I’ve made statements like, “My theological gravity well is in Eastern Orthodoxy…” and I did mean it, but I’m really only now discovering what that really means to me.
I have loved the Orthodox emphasis on the incarnation and the deep incarnational theology for a while now, though I would hazard to say that I’m just beginning to identify an internal shift within me to feel the significance of the incarnation and what it means to see it as what I will call the “hinge” or pivotal moment of the scriptural narrative.
As the vast majority of Western Christians have, I have always operated my faith and life in relation to the crucifixion being that pivotal moment of the biblical narrative. The Orthodox however choose the incarnation as that point, and it’s finally gotten down into me.
You see, it changes things when you make these kinds of shifts. I am not saying that the crucifixion is not a hugely meaningful and important event in the narrative. I believe it happened, happened as scripture tells us, and it had deep significance for our faith and life. I’m not even trying to convince you to think as I do… the last thing I want is some kind of fight over who’s got the best hinge passage or story.
But different things take on different hues and natures as we shift from one focus to another. For instance… God’s love, care and concern for all of creation become so much clearer and real when the event of God’s arrival is loosed to be the clarion call of our salvation, a salvation we share with all things created, not just human souls. Stop and recall that we read “For God so loved the world (kosmos)…” There’s more than a small problem with our crucifixion-heavy view of narrative which allows us to unthinkingly interpret that to an exclusively human experience of “For God so loved us…”
And it feels right to fully rejoice with the scriptural writers that “Word became flesh…” and “Now God has spoken to us through his Son…” and that “He humbled himself, taking the form of a slave…” The good news of Immanuel is self-evident and really doesn’t need too much explaining, “God is with us.”
A few weeks ago at CiB we made an attempt to capture gospel or “good news” in a way that we could live it and share it with our neighbors… we tired to gain a hold on the essence of the good news. What we landed with were three big ideas that we’d like folks to experience: 1) God is real, 2) God is near, and 3) God is love. That is the story of incarnation, the story of our salvation, in three terribly simple sentences. It’s a reflection of a titanic shift (hinge) in the biggest story of all, the time when God drew near.
Filed under: Devotional Thoughts | Tags: dualism, environment, essence, humanity, unity
Well, I’ve been working thru “Man and the Environment: A Study of St. Symeon the New Theologian” by Anestis G. Keselopoulos for a few years now. I will look in and read a little, then forget it, then find it again and try wading through some more… but today I decided to take a far less linear approach and start moving back and forth thru the book trying to grab some of the big ideas and only dig into successive paragraphs when needing more detail or illumination… and I feel like Anestis and I are getting something done… finally.
Here’s a quick rundown of what I’m taking away from St Symeon’s work, seen through Keselopoulos:
1) We have a real problem in the western dualistic mind as it leads us to be wrongly antagonistic toward matter. We’ve tended to view humanity as spiritual beings trapped in matter instead of whole beings intended, in fact created by God, to be beings of unified spirit and matter. This dualism and it’s subsequent antagonism leads us to subordinate the inferior matter to the superior spirit, thereby devaluing matter and all created things, even functionally separating matter (ultimate nothing) from God (ultimate everything).
2) Now, out of this functional separation of creation from it’s Creator (except as an object lesson every now and again for beauty), we have a free hand to develop any and all technologies or uses of matter regardless of their negative impact on creation. I think this is where some of us will actively be abusive of creation (both our own bodies and the created world around us), or we’ll be fairly apathetic of the abuse happening around us. We then are free to exercise a “domination” over creation that has no understanding of our shared essence or responsibility toward creation.
3) Christ came at a time when many had abandoned a true understanding of nature as a reflection of the Creator, and they had turned to worship the created out of that disconnect. We have not gone that way today, but instead I think many of us have such a morbid fear of somehow worshiping creation that in our separation of the created from the Creator we “ultimately denigrate” it instead of “ultimately deifying” it. So, anyone today who speaks of the connection between God and matter/creation, or of our responsibility to creation and matter as the people of God, intended to live a unity of spirit and matter, runs the risk of being called an idolater of the world who has forsaken the highest spiritual matters before us.
These things are running through my mind right now, or maybe I should say, running roughshod over my mind. I am very appreciative though of our Christian tribe having a deep and long non-dualistic tradition that becomes present and timeless as we continue to struggle through a epoch in which so many Christians have lived a life built on shaky premises such as “This life is just a dress rehearsal for eternity” or “It’s all gonna burn one day anyway.” We exist in a “now” that engages us in an exciting, dynamic and God-intended present existence, not only a hopeful future one.
Sunday was a fantastic day. In the morning we had the joy of a new experience for me, a couple from our church family exchanged wedding vows during our worship gathering. That was really cool. And on top of that, their exchange of vows brought in a whole bunch of visitors to the service, their friends and family, who added an amazing element of diversity, discovery and participation.
I knew before the service that many of the visiting family were Jewish. And though we didn’t leave Jesus out of our vocabulary or singing, or any part, we were able to welcome this group of people to a level of comfort and participation that I hoped for, but wasn’t sure we might achieve. I spoke of marriage in a brief homily, mostly from the New Testament and I shared the story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana. Then in the ceremony I referenced the love of God seen in scriptural metaphors from the garden in Genesis through the Psalms and up to Paul’s writings. And our guy Gary, who was leading communion, did the best possible job I could imagine of welcoming our guests to celebrate what was originally their Sader, now our commemoration of Christ. He spoke of communities of faith working to enlarge our circles of fellowship and love, versus shrinking those circles… he was great.
Most of our visitors joined our communion celebration and then shared some prayers during our “open mic” time of Prayers of the People after communion.
All that to say that when we had moved onto a time of fellowship, many visitors stayed to share their joy and appreciation of the worship gathering. One visitor said to me, “I’m Jewish, and I’ve taken communion for the first time!” and I’m thinking, and I believe I replied, “That is awesome!” I thought of Ephesians 2, when Paul says that Jews and Gentiles can be made into one person to have access to God… I saw that in real life!
Another visitor asked if they could return to worship with us again, even though they are gay. That gave me a chance to express how our people would probably represent a vast multitude of ideas, opinions and experiences having to do with the issue of sexual orientation, but our commonality would be found in our commitment to welcome, love and safeguard the dignity every human being. So yeah, you come on back and share yourself with us, all of yourself. Please. We need you. We welcome you.
So there we were, for a short time on Sunday morning, gathered around the table… Jew, Gentile, black, white, American, Nigerian, heterosexuals and homosexuals, Republicans and Democrats, male, female, young and old, and more… reaching out to the God who made us, craves our attention and has laid a table of welcome for all of us.
I know it’s not the church, the typical Sunday morning, of my youth. I know that it doesn’t really fit all the tidy boxes into which many of our churches tend to safely cradle our worship experiences. Still, I also know that God showed up. And I will be always grateful for that morning, even if not one of those visitors ever returns. O, Lord, I pray they do… but that one morning was a real gift, and I want to let it stand on it’s own and not neglect a single syllable of thanks that I owe for it.
I guess this is when I need to quote someone smarter than me, to you know, cement the moment…
“The day will come when, after harnessing the ether,
the winds, the tides and the gravitation,
we shall harness for God the energies of love.
And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world,
man will have discovered fire.”
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
Wow, do I love Advent! I was working on the reading for this Sunday from Isaiah 64:1-9 and moved into writing something to be read while we light that first candle…
On The Lighting of Advent’s First Candle
One candle, one small light.
It seems so insignificant a gesture,
Drowned in the darkness that surrounds us.
War, poverty, disease, the age old enemies
That seem to be the lasting bane,
Which steal hope generation after generation.
“Oh, look on us, we pray!”
We strain to see, but our eyes so often fail.
We hope to be seen, but our hearts so often fail.
We remember!
But we light that one candle.
We light that candle
And we try to wipe the sleep from our eyes…
We stand in the paradox of waiting
For that which we have already received.
We come again to a day of longing, a moment of renewal,
The presence of a single candle to recall us to the light.
Our own steps have too seldom chosen the brightened path.
We remember!
We light that one candle!
We defy the numbing pain and cast away the fatigue
That steals the strength and peace from our spirits.
We place ourselves in the hands of God,
We steady ourselves again, and we cry out,
“Oh, look on us, we pray!”
Filed under: Devotional Thoughts
So, I am keeping a novena for Christmas… a nine day prayer routine that starts today and goes thru Christmas Eve. I’ll share some of it with you along the way. The following will be part of the daily prayer plus the day’s anitphon…
Novena in Preparation for Christmas
“O Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sake didst vouchsafe to descend from thy throne of glory to this world of pain and sorrow; who wast conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man; Make, we beseech thee, our hearts a fit habitation for thyself. Beautify and fill them with all spiritual graces, and possess them wholly by thy power. Give us grace to prepare for thy coming with great humility, to receive thee with burning love, and to hold thee fast with a firm faith; that we may never leave thee or forsake thee. Who livest and reignest, world without end. Amen.”
Daily Antiphon, December 16
“O shepherd that rulest Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep: Come to guide and comfort us.”
All from the St. Augustine Prayer Book,
pgs. 311-312
Second Sunday of Advent
I enjoyed the liturgical passages for today, especially the Peaceable Kingdom verses in Isaiah. In case you haven’t seen them, those passages were as follows: Isaiah 11:1-10, Psalm 72:1-7 & 18-19; Romans 15:4-13, and Mathew 3:1-12. Next week’s passages are included in the church calendar on the website.
In the sermon time I spoke with a copy of one of Edward Hicks’ paintings behind me, a painting of the peaceable kingdom. He was a cool, Quaker sign-painter quite a while ago. Google him and you can learn all you ever wanted to know about his work. We had several of his paintings at the Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and I enjoyed his style back then as now.
What a beautiful picture… the Peaceable Kingdom. It’s a haunting image of all the animals and serpents and infants wallowing in a seemingly blissful harmony. And as Hicks’ paintings all had social and political ideas strung through the with the scriptural imagery and meaning, so today the image of the peaceable kingdom laid out for us in Isaiah can be read and used in many different ways. I Googled it last week and found a website using it to promote a vegetarian lifestyle. Even though I have all kinds of respect for vegetarians, I doubt seriously that the leopards had turned to bean curd and the lion to mango smoothies. I appreciated so much the thoughts that Michael shared during communion of their appetites being so satisfied by God that they had no need any longer to kill and eat one another. What a great insight.
You see, as I dwelt on the passage throughout the week I came to realize that the image might be getting in my way. The image follows a description of the One who comes to make the kingdom possible. The kingdom is not the hope, but the One who comes is the hope, the point. The kingdom simply follows after, very naturally.
The kingdom is the daily manifestation of the One’s sovereignty. Go back and read that description of the One, Isaiah 11:1-5! How can I miss that the point is not found in lions and lambs and leopards and snakes, but in the coming of the One, and the reign of such a Sovereign that can change us into a community of peace, allowing us to take our place in that great mosaic of justice and truth?
So, we have our baby Jesus in a manger… another image that we get so caught up adoring and fighting to have on display. I love that image! I don’t want a single nativity scene going back in the closet! But, I also want to make sure that I don’t allow the images I pick and choose to be able to distract me from the realty of what is happening.
Here’s what I mean… I was thinking this past week about the whole birth scene of Christ. I started to have a few questions: What was Joseph thinking? He took Mary on a road trip when she was nearing the end of her term? What was Mary thinking? Why didn’t they use Expedia.com or call ahead and book a room? We won’t hardly let pregnant women fly these days, especially not in their third term! Why was there nothing for Joseph there in the “city of his family?” He’s the hometown boy, and he’s got no strings to pull?
But, then I remembered a little something… you know our sensitivities are probably a lot more delicate than Mary’s and Joseph’s. I mean, we are constantly building bigger and better hospitals, fine-tuning every aspect of the experience, incurring more and more debt. Why? Because our sensibilities say that no baby should be born into anything but a $2000 a day, psychologically soothing birthing suite with a flat-screen TV, movies and good drugs on demand.
Joseph and Mary don’t seem to put off by the manger. And neither does God. I mean, God can arrange for the star, but not a room at a Best Western? Of course, God could do anything needed in the situation, but a room at the inn didn’t make the cut. Even so, it was the orchestration of the whole scene that grabbed me. John is sent to “prepare the way.” There’s a census in the empire. Jesus’ family must go to the prophetic town of Bethlehem. (Every knows that the Messiah will be born there!) Angels are dispatched to alert the shepherds and a star is hung to announce to any and all with the ability to read it, “This is the place!”
There was a fair level of orchestration going on here, but not the theatrics that the manger can become for us. The momentous event is the arrival of the One, the arrival of Christ.
The images are great stuff and have stood the test of time. But they are there to convey the ultimate glory of the One who has come, is coming, is here. The Peaceable Kingdom is about the reign of One who can change our lives and bring us the peace. The manger could have been anything, and it would have made no difference to the coming of the One. I read a little further in the Romans passage, in fact into the next chapter, chapter 14… and in the context of our making sure of our mutual respect and acceptance of one another, Paul pens these words,..
“For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too. So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up.”
Romans 14:17-19
The peaceable kingdom is not lions and lambs, but you and I. The Kingdom of God is not what we eat and drink, but how we meet and greet. If I could take the liberty to just pull the kingdoms together for a moment, we’re talking always about the reign of God in a people who claim to be beholden to such a King. The making of congregation is the manifest image of the kingdom as we submit to the reign and the sovereignty that calls us together. There is no other way to make the peaceable kingdom, to dream such dreams, than to give ourselves, our fealty, our will to God for the using. I love the idea of satisfaction that Michael shared, and I also believe that the lions are simply commanded not to kill the lambs. Isn’t that the point of the strong caring for the weak? We are beholden to One who calls us to peace, regardless of the many appetites that might also call to us.
We finished our sermon time with a prayer by St. Ignatius Loyola. I read it in the plural sense for our corporate worship, but I’ll render it here, faithfully, as it was written:
“Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty,
my memory, my understanding and my whole will.
All that I am and all that I possess
You have given me.
I surrender it all to You
to be disposed of according to Your will.
Give me only Your love and Your grace;
with these I will be rich enough,
and will desire nothing more.”
St. Ignatius Loyola
Movie Disease
I suffer from an affliction, and I don’t know how many of you can empathize. So often in life I rent a movie, and it turns out to be really bad, really lame, but I must watch it all the way thru. It is monumentally difficult for me to stop a movie part way thru. This has lead me to see a lot of sorry movies, in their totality.
I have also seen some movies that began pretty slow, but around the midway point starting heating up and got good. And I was glad for the inability to walk away at the rough start.
The story of Jesus isn’t like that. From the beginning, things are happening and people are popping up that demand our attention and warrant our sticking around to see where this thing goes.
Think for a moment with me of the way this the story begins to unfold…
⊕ Zechariah and Elizabeth, barren, visited by an angel, and conceiving a son. John is their son, who would be known as the Baptizer, the forerunner who would lay the finishing touches for the arrival of his cousin.
⊕ Of course, there’s Mary and Joseph, engaged, visited by angles, unexpectedly and seemingly miraculously pregnant, caught up in a sudden political necessity that sets them on the road for Bethlehem on the eve of her delivery… Bethlehem, the town of prophecy, a humble place, and yet a place where the prophets of old had pointed and said, “Watch.”
⊕ Jesus is born and more angles appear, gathering some shepherds from the fields to come and bear witness. I’m comforted folks, that these shepherds are called to witness… we aren’t told they’re in the line of kings, they aren’t priests, they’re humble shepherds. If they can be called to bear witness, then I know that I can be as well.
⊕ As an infant Jesus is taken to the Temple and there awaits Simeon the Prophet who raises Jesus and proclaims to God, “I have seen your salvation!” And then there’s Anna, the sweet widow Anna, who praises God at the sight of Jesus and picks up where the angels with the shepherds left off, telling everyone she sees, “Jesus is here.”
⊕ But, we’re not done yet, because some wise men of the East still have to drop in looking for this child, the new king of the Jews. They had seen his star in sky… the arrival of Jesus being what it was, an announcement seemed to be placed in the sky for those able to read it, and follow the directions, even from far away.
⊕ And the arrival of the wise men leads to a dramatic escape to Egypt for the family of Jesus, fleeing the murderous wrath of the petty King Herod who could not stomach the idea that prophecy and events were coming together to announce such an arrival.
No, this story starts off running and soon careens into the political and religious maelstrom of the day. And we find more and more characters along the way, who like the humble shepherds, invite us into the story with their authenticity and honesty. One of my favorites is the man in Mark 9, when a father brings a son to Jesus and his followers for healing… and ends up in a fascinating conversation with Jesus… Mark 9::14-29. When a story like this one starts rolling in such a fashion, it’s hard to not be a little overwhelmed. And I relate to a parent who believes that going to Jesus is the right move, but there’s still room for growing that belief! It’s an expression of humility and inadequacy when caught up in a compelling story that feels just too good to flip channels and look away.
“Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed,
‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’”
Mark 9:24
I love the season of Advent. We need to start again each year, returning to the beginning of this story, the conflict, the miraculous, the hopes and machinations of both God and humanity. It becomes for us a needed anchor, a place to remember the belief of a previous year and the need for even more belief in the year that waits to begin.
My prayer for this Advent Season, for myself and for this church family, is to humbly join that father in Mark 9, “We do believe, help us in our unbelief!”
I have enjoyed the writings of a very smart lady named Marva Dawn, and in a book she co-wrote with Eugene Peterson she penned these simple but true words, “You cannot help but be disillusioned if only Santa Claus come to your house. But if the one you yearn for is the Christ Child, you will never be disappointed, for he always comes.”
So, welcome to Advent.
Filed under: Devotional Thoughts | Tags: truth christian search life authenticity
I’ve been plowing my way through a new book for the last week. It hasn’t been a fast read, but it’s been good. The book is called Eyes to See, Ears to Hear by David Lonsdale. The book is an introduction to Ignatian Spirituality. I’m reading it because I’m in an Ignatian Daily Life Prayer Retreat this week. So, far, I’ve been reading about the images of God, Christ, the World, etc., and the experiences that made Ignatius tick. As Lonsdale moves into a discussion of discernment he has this quote, which I considered worthy of sharing:
“Today we are more ready than we have been in the past to acknowledge that being a Christian is more a search for genuine truth than a secure position of certainty from which to survey the world and pass judgment. Trying to be a Christian means learning how to respond with love to God, to people and circumstances. It means searching for ways of living out the two great gospel commandments of loving God and our neighbour, while recognizing the imperfection of our attempts. It also means searching honestly for the most authentic truth; not just the knowledge that can be learned but makes little difference to how we live, but also the deeper gospel truth that makes little sense in fact until it becomes the truth which governs our lives.”
August was a long month for Senator Larry Craig. If you’ve watched the national news, or local in Idaho, you’ve undoubtedly heard it all. Of course, you and I won’t ever know exactly what happed that day in an airport bathroom. We have accusations from a peace officer and we have a plea of guilty to lesser charges… and we have the national circus that comes to town when there’s the smell of fresh blood.
My question is for us of faith… for we who should never be caught viewing a human being as anything other than a beloved of our God, regardless of seen and unseen brokenness. Where do our concerns and priorities lie? Do we value the political spectacle of Senator Craig’s situation over the obvious brokenness in his own life and the life of his family? Are we Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and Moderates, Communists and Anarchists, and all the political spectrum therein, before we are disciples of Christ? I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question. I mean it as a serious “this really needs some attention” question, because the answer to the question will determine how we respond. Some of us are immediately drawn to the political feast and others may be scared into silence and shame.
Will we respond with prayer for a man and his family, or respond with ridicule and malice, or silence and apathy? I’m not debating guilt here, I’m wondering about healing. I’m not asking if he should or shouldn’t have made his resignation, I’m asking about hope. I’m wondering if we have any role in the healing and hope, or if we only interact with this particular human being in the political arena. Under what circumstances do we cease to have spiritual obligations to our fellow, broken beings? When do we stop carrying obligations of forgiveness, words of life and peace, and humbled service?
So, Sunday morning we raised Senator Craig before God’s throne, along with his family, for healing and help. That in this time of undeniable pain and hurt, God would do the needed work of peace, making whole, and giving joy.
The world doesn’t need another Democrat. The world doesn’t need another Republican. The world can’t really do much with another howl of “hypocrite!” or bout of snide laughter, or silent judgment.
The world could use some folks on their knees in prayer and on their feet in love… the world could use a fresh perspective on things.
