First observations on Mark 7: 24-37

Gospel text for Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B [Sept 6, 2009]

v. 24 “He entered a house there where he didn't think he would be found, but he couldn't escape notice” [The Message]. Thirteen foreign men [and maybe some hangers-on] arrive in a town and nobody is expected to notice? It seems that somebody must have asked a few questions and somebody spoke, perhaps after sophisticated questioning, perhaps more voluntarily. Likely one of the twelve? Maybe somebody connected with the owner of the house [landlord/landlady? Host?] or somebody connected with him/her?

Why do some versions say Tyre and Sidon and others just Tyre? Different texts, or is it more like Tampa and St. Petersberg?

V. 25 The woman hears at once. More reason to suspect that information may have been leaked earlier from a local source.

Greek, Syro-Phoenician by birth. Likely considered Greek by the Hebrews and non-Greek by the Greeks? Matthew’s similar story says Canaanite. May be different stories, but there is so much similarity. Maybe all the labels are true, they are all labels bestowed by others. In any case they refer to a Gentile. In Matthew, Jesus did not answer her until until the disciples tell him to shoo her off. It does not seem unlikely that they were less than polite.

Jesus knew the Greatest Commandment, that neighbors need to be loved as much as selves. There must have been a reason He reminded the foreign woman of her non-Jewishness and its assumed inferiority.

Is the lesson that if we have faith that we all get our place at the table? Or that because of this woman and her attitudes/teaching [and others like her] that the table is available to all?

The demon gets evicted without the physical presence of the Redeemer. Jairus’ daughter was raised off-site as well. Has anybody else ever wondered why some miracles require direct presence and others do not? But the distance healing shows that the power of God is more than a bit of prestidigitation.

The second miracle (vv. 31-37) involves direct physical contact. Same question only in reverse.

How many times do the healed and those around them break the command to tell nobody?

v. 36 Everything he does is good. He has done everything excellently. He has done it all and done it well. How wonderful it would be if things even half as good could be said about us.

Full communion?

From a post at Christian Post:

Lutheran ministers who are in same-sex relationships will not be allowed to serve as clergy in United Methodist congregations despite the new full communion agreement between the two denominations.

The post goes on to state that Gregory Palmer, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, states that the recent ELCA action does not negate the UMC Book of Discipline.

I think I understand how this works, but it does make me wonder if “full communion” is not a misleading term. But it has been in vogue for a few years now and may not go away.

Government can be an inefficient deacon

I recently saw two articles – one by Robert Martin in the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and the article to which he is reacting, by Tim Stoltzfus Jost in The Mennonite.

The Jost article calls for Christians to support proposed health care legislation. Martin agrees but notes:

I agree with the article in The Mennonite and the resolution in Columbus that the Mennonite church “asks members to urge their legislators to support legislation extending access to all Americans, especially the poor and disadvantaged”. That is EXACTLY what the Mennonite Church has done over the centuries. But what is MOST important to our traditions of the church, is that it doesn’t stop there. It is the church (meaning the body of believers characterized by faith in Christ) living out the mission of God that ultimately bears the responsibility for the Kingdom. To sit back and expect the government to do so I would argue is going along with the idolatry of the government (also stated in Article 23 of our confession of faith). To say that the government has more power than the church to effect change in our society, I believe, is a wrong statement.

This seems like good advice for all Christians. We need to want our government to do help bring about justice for all and justice means more than being civilly or criminally correct in the legal sense. But we need to remember that government can never be Christ-centered in what it does and that Christ-centered ministries fill a different, no less valid role.

Martin notes that the Anabaptist/Mennonite foundations are not advocating government to do things and let the government determine the ethics involved. but do what needs to be done themselves. This would be what I have always understood about Mennonites, that they have a long history of being noted for their pacifism. But we need to remember their often lesser-noted social programs and the successes they have had.

There are other Christian organizations who do great good work. We should remember that church or other Christian organizations such the Salvation Army, Church World Service, and many others have often outperformed government and secular private organizations such as FEMA, Red Cross, and numerous “Human Services” departments. I cannot help but think that part of that is that they consider themselves serving a Cause and not just helping clients, able, because they answer to God rather than a bureaucracy.

First observations on I Samuel 17 [David vs. Goliath]

The entire concept of holy war has bothered me since I grew up. When I was a boy it seemed that David was a great guy because he was helping God's people against a bunch of heathen non-believers [although he did go off the way a bit with that Bathsheba thing], but as I got older and learned that it was acceptable to kill Vietnamese who weren’t doing anything to us but might have some kind of Communist connection and saw many American Christians exult after the Six-Day War I really began to have problems with some of this. I assume that there are lessons to be learned here on things like faith, courage, and the perils of bad-mouthing the LORD.

v.4 For some reason, I have never questioned the height of Goliath, although I do wonder how close [based on possible translation problems that differing languages and systems of measurements] we can infer nine feet or so, but I always wondered how one could make a fair determination of a winner from a one-on-one conflict. It would seem that with so many armed men present that they would not accept the result.

v.11 why were Saul et. al. terrified. Settling disputes by one-on-one could not have been the

v. 16 What were both armies doing for 40 days? You have to assume that they didn’t just retreat to their tents and play cards until the next day’s challenge.

v. 17. It sounds almost like the Iraq war. Soldiers need things from home that the government which has hired/conscripted/recruited them does not supply.

v. 20 David the shepherd had a shepherd.

v. 28 David’s oldest brother already thought of him as conceited. Nowadays battles are often available for viewing, but how would one just watch one then? And if it were possible wouldn’t there have been wives there helping out?

v. 37 Saul seems like a less than decisive guy, allowing himself to be persuaded by the boy’s arguments from his shepherd experience. Or did he question his own relationship with the LORD so much that he was afraid of David being closer to the Divine that he?

v. 39 David did not eschew armor because of any matter of principle but for comfort.

vv. 40-47 Both of the men are guys and could talk big.

Lectionary text cuts off with Goliath going down, saving us David's severing of Goliath’s head and hes carrying it around with him.

Although it is not a text question, one does wonder a bit why those who created the Lectionary ended the story at this point. To spare parishes the gore when it was read? To make the text more PC?

What's in your mailbox?

The mainline church I attend would not expect Communion to be celebrated without a clergyperson officiating. “Order” seems to be important. I do not personally agree that ordination is a requirement for the celebration, but understand that others have that opinion, one which I think is an anachronism surviving from pre-Reformation, Transubstantiation days.

But, despite that tradition which limits Communion and where and when [and by inference, with whom] it can be celebrated at least a little, we, like what seem to be most congregations in the United Church of Christ, seem to want to go out of our way to encourage participation by everybody, even by those who are too young and too skeptical to know what “remembrance of Me” might mean.

But now a church in England [not the Church of England] is offering mail-order Eucharist. The Open Episcopal Church is now sending Eucharistic wafers out by mail. There is a handling fee, although it seems modest and they insist that they are not charging for the wafers.

They note that many people just cannot or will not get to church.

The creeds refer to the one catholic church ‑holy and universal, spanning all time and nations – of which those who cannot get out of their abodes would be members, members who should still have access to what God and the Christian community have to offer. However, it makes me wonder how much awe and reverence a wafer received in the mail [and I don’t know British mail, but I assume not received on Sunday] inspires or how much sense of Christian community this brings about.

Television has long been accused of making us a more non-social world and these days the internet receives the same accusations, not without reason.

We do Communion in our church the first Sunday every month and on special liturgical occasions [e.g., Maundy Thursday] and my attendance is little affected by that schedule. Communion services are not the reason I attend church, although I know that many of my fellow congregants do think it important. I guess I attend to listen, learn, and pray with others, to receive a message, and to socialize a bit in a way that one cannot do that by television or on line.

Link: Host by post

At cross purposes with the message

There is continuing to be a lot of furor over the murder of the Kansas abortionist in his own church. Most mainstream and liberal media are bashing any and all pro-life people.

It is undoubtedly a case of people working at cross purposes when the educating people in the pro-life movement, including some people who consider themselves pro-choice, continually remind us that there is a victim in each abortion, a message which, although it needs to be aired also seems to incite people to extreme, sometimes violent, action.

I found an interesting post on the Christianity Today politics blog.

I found the first comment [June 3 by Brendan] enlightening.

People for the American Way - whose very name insidiously implies all who disagree with them are being "un-American" - has once again gone overboard, linking all strong pro-life rhetoric with a vicious murder by a deranged individual..

Curiously, in the same breath they say pro-lifers have "dehumanized their opponents." Pot, meet kettle.

Similar problems came up during the great national arguments over slavery. Remember John Brown.

Preliminary observations on Mark 4:35-41

As we read the Gospels we continue to wonder why the disciples “didn’t get it.” From early ministry until even after Resurrection this seems to be a constant recurring thing, in the synoptics and in John

This is an earlier one and one that seems more understandable. They had left what they had and had followed a man of great leadership and charisma, but their understanding was just that, they were following a man – and man in lower case.

And what lower-case man can stop the weather?

When I was a child and heard the story the KJV word “ship” was used. I guess back then I was thinking of a large vessel, maybe something like the Queen Mary. I had a harder time imagining a storm big enough to sink it and then thinking that it must have been a REALLY BIG storm.

Somehow realizing that the ship was really a boat seems to make the disciples’ fear more understandable but has not made me think the calming of the storm less miraculous.

And I really like the way the passage end in the Message where the disciples are saying, "Who is this, anyway? "Wind and sea at his beck and call!"

I know that most Bible translations or versions do not capitalize pronouns and nouns referring to God and that many modern sources, Christian and secular, no longer do so either. I continue to do so in my own writing because I think that sometimes it makes what I am writing clearer but do not necessarily infer hostility to Christianity or to God when the capitalization is not done. The reference above was only used as an illustration that divinity was not something they were yet attributing to their Friend and Leader.

RCL readings for April 26, 2009

Revised Common Lectionary texts for April 26, 2009

[Third Sunday of Easter, Year B]

Acts 3:12-19

Psalm 4

1 John 3:1-7

Luke 24:36b-48

When the calendars meet

Sometimes the scriptures the liturgical calendar the Revised Common Lectionary provides have no easily noted connection with the calendar we all use in daily life.  This week seems to be a fortuitous exception.

 

This morning’s gospel selection does include that nice passage on forgiveness.  As our news media have been reporting anniversaries of Blacksburg, Waco, Oklahoma City, and Columbine this week and how survivors are coping or not coping, the importance of forgiving and letting go seems more important than ever.

 

The church I attend was observing the Second Sunday of Easter as Holy Humor Sunday instead, and while I admit there is something to learn with that approach too, I admit being disappointed although not surprised at our church’s choice.

 

But I hope that in the places of grief that pastors and teachers were able to help survivors and friends and acquaintances. 

First observations: texts for April 19 [Easter B2]

Ten of the eleven were shown Jesus’ hands and sides, so maybe Thomas’ request does not seem so extreme.

 

If we forgive somebody his sins, it must mean that the sins are forgiven as far as we are concerned.  It certainly cannot be that we have control over whether there is Divine forgiveness.  And if we are truly forgiving we don’t have to do it again, they are indeed gone for good as far as we are concerned.

 

The origin if the phrase “doubting Thomas” clearly comes from the gospel passage.

When Thomas does see the Savior his does not insist on inserting his hand into the wounds.  The presence of Jesus was enough to sway him.

 

Wouldn’t it have seemed so much simpler to us if more of the miraculous signs and wonders were recorded?  But on second thought, would we accept things better?  Yet the Acts passage would seem to tell us that even after Pentecost the disciples were wanting more miraculous signs.

 

The epistle seems to fit in.  The writer discusses revelation and personal experiences with it [“We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you . . . (The Message)]  While the gospel text talks of the ability to forgive, this passage discusses the need for and availability of forgiveness.  [If we claim that we're free of sin, we're only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. (Message)]

 

People have used the part of the Acts text after v. 32 as a basis for forming utopian communal societies.  It does seem ideal, but even before the Acts were over that people in the church did indeed have private property, apparently without shame.  I guess I had never made the connection between the shaking of the meeting place and trembling of the believers [v.31].

 

RCL texts for April 19, 2009

RCL texts for April 19, 2009

[Second Sunday of Easter, year B]

 

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

I John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

RCL texts for February 22, 2009

RCL texts for February 22, 2009
Transfiguration Sunday

II Kings 2:1-12

Psalm 50:1-6
II Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

How tolerant are we?

The various ceremonies surrounding the inauguration of President Obama featured prayers and messages from people of an amazingly broad spectrum of religious traditions – Protestant of almost all stripes (Pentecostal, Evangelical, Liberal main line), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish. Although there was some flak about the placement of some of these, especially Rick Warren at the inauguratal ceremony, nobody seemed to mind this reflection of American religious diversity and tolerance for others’ beliefs.

Which is one reason that I find this story interesting.

Oklahoma is a place with which I am not familiar, but one would think that people there would want the records of their legislative bodies to be correct, even if they did not all like what happened.

But I guess the matter is not clear cut, after all. According to the web site of the United Church of Christ Rev. Scott Jones, pastor of Cathedral of Hope – Oklahoma City gave an invocation for the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

After Mr. Jones gave the invocation, the House actually debated on whether to include the prayer in the journal and 20 voted against putting it in.

The pastor is gay. The congregation is primarily gay and lesbian. And the church is in the capital city of the state. Surely people knew this before inviting the man. The pastor’s denomination is upset and its leaders are screaming “bigotry.” I think I can safely assume that his congregation is less than happy.

My first thought is that there is a whole lot of unnecessary ugliness here. But after thinking more about it, I am wondering if maybe we should be glad that even though it is a shame how some reacted, that fact that the leadership appreciated religious diversity enough to invite Rev. Mr. Jones in the first place is an encouraging thing.

(In Minnesota Ojibway shamans have given invocations, even being allowed to light the otherwise taboo tobacco in the chambers in preparation. I don’t think that there are any members of the legislature who practice Ojibway religion and almost all of them are clearly anti-tobacco, but they are accepting enough to welcome the shamans.)

link to story

The state is still the state

I am not of the Anabaptist tradition, but have always admired the Mennonite commitment to peace and justice, even as I hedge through life in the main line. And I doubt whether there are any groups who have been as strong on the separation of church and state as they have been.

I recently saw this post on an Anabaptist blog from somebody called DAVIDC which was posted the day after President Obama’s inauguration.

It is a great oversimplification for me to put it this way, but DAVIDC seems to say that, although the inauguration was indeed a turning point, that the state is still the state. He notes with some apprehension that with the changing of the guard that many “will start to put our faith in the ideals of the state and our hope in its progress.”

He sums his own post up with “In this time of celebration, may we not forget that the state is still the state. And we are still called to be the church.”

Link to the article.

Church and State in the UK: Church of England acts against British party

The General Synod of the Church of England has passed a motion that bans clergy and lay staff from being members of a certain British political party.

There are a lot of things about Her Majesty’s politicians and the system in which they work that I neither know nor understand and the British National Party does seem to be a party fueled by racial prejudice, a party which seems inappropriate for Christian people to participate in.

Two observations come to mind immediately:

1. Are there any large American denominations which go so far as to tell their clergy and staffs that there are political parties to which they dare not belong?

2. The Church of England is a state church. Its head is appointed by the Queen and general taxes authorized by the Parliament are used for its support. We Americans do not understand this concept well, but doesn’t it seem just a bit of a conflict of interest for the church to be meddling in politics this way?

More information available at http://www.christiantoday.com/article/cofe.synod.passes.bnp.membership.ban/22484.htm

No Starbucks, no pastor?

Time has an article [Rural Churches Grapple with a Pastor Exodus, by-line Dan Viema; dateline Crookston MN] about the crises rural churches are facing getting and keeping pastors.

A lot of this problem comes from obvious reasons. Small congregations of non-affluent people, often people who are becoming older, have difficulty affording men or women with professional degrees who have come out of theological school with significant debt. Many of these new clergypeople have spouses whose work has helped them get through school and much of this work is of a relatively high professional level and comparable work may not be available in rural or small town areas.

I doubt that there is any simple solution. Combining parishes or sharing clergy may work sometimes. Accepting less than fully educated and credentialed ministers may work sometimes also, but both solutions bring about problems of their own.

But what I find amazing is the article tells us that for the first time a majority of seminarians do not come from rural areas. An expert from Kansas City is quoted as saying “A town without a Starbucks scares them.”

That statement scares me a bit. We have all heard probably for most of our lives about apostles, saints, missionaries, evangelists, pastors, prophets, brothers, priests, and nuns who have undergone real and extensive inconveniences [many not so minor and some fatal] to spread the Gospel and tend to the needs of the faithful.

But no Starbucks?

Please give us a break.

RCL texts for February 15, 2009

RCL texts for February 15, 2009
Epiphany 6B

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30

I Corinthians 9:24-27

Mark 1:40-45

Lowery on the inauguration

From an article by Rev. Joseph E. Lowery who will give the benediction at today's inauguration

I thank a loving and caring God who has allowed me to witness this watershed moment.

Like all Americans of good will, I say a prayer that a wise God will continue to guide and bless our new president as he navigates the ship of state through dangerous and challenging seas.

But I know too, as always, that the God on whom we depend did not bring us this far along the way to abandon us.

And, I know that what we are about to witness is an omnipotent God using his faithful and trusting children to continue the labor of bringing the Beloved Community to reality here on earth.

The MLK holiday

Somebody I used to work with commented that he was opposed to the Martin Luther King holiday, not because of Dr. King’s work or his color, but because Dr. King was a clergyperson and we already had too many religious holidays.

I did not believe it – not so much because the concern might not have been valid, but because I had heard the same person use the “n” word too many times.

But it is worth noting that Martin Luther King Day is indeed a holiday named for a clergyperson, a pastor from Atlanta.

But it is not for his pastoral work that we remember Dr. King, but instead for his prophetic work. And with all that happens since can we doubt that there was indeed a lot of truth in his message?

So many are too young to remember what the world was like sixty, fifty, or even forty years ago. And some of us who were around were too geographically removed from the worst of Jim Crow to appreciate its horror, its ongoing belittlement of so many of God’s children without acceptable reason.

But there were other injustices, ongoing belittlements, going on and Martin Luther King knew it.

Dr. King not only made certain that all America, indeed all the world, knew of America’s, indeed the world’s, injustices and linked Jim Crow to evils facing peoples of all races and ethnicities.

And we need to appreciate that.

Who prays for the President?

Who prays for the President?

Our President-elect has received a lot of grief from two sides on his choices of clergypeople to participate in inauguration ceremonies. His choice of Rev. Rick Warren raised a lot of concerns. Some people seemed to think that he was going back on what he had run on.

Cathleen Falsani, religious columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, writing for sojo.net, puts things in good perspective, noting that the inventory of clergy participating included the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, the first female president of the Disciples of Christ, the female president of the Islamic Society of North America, three rabbis, Bono, and a Hawaiian shirt-wearing mega-church pastor.

This is the first post-Billy Graham inauguration. I don’t know how much the talking heads on television and radio will make of that, but it does seem worthy of note. And the choices made this year seem to provide good criteria, not only for future inaugurals but also for other civic events, large and small.

And, of course, who prays for the President? Well, it should be all of us.

Revised Common Lectionary texts for January 25, 2009

Jonah 3: 1-5, 10

Psalm 62: 5-12

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1: 14-20