Saturday, March 30, 2013
Holy Saturday
Isaiah 15
My first thought on reading how Moab will be reduced to a wasteland is, "Good gracious, what has Moab ever done to you?" I suspect a cursory examination of Jewish history would inform me of this, of course.
But something about the way that the Bible kept saying that they would cry out made me wonder - to whom? To the God of the Jews making them suffer? To the God of the Jews in true belief that the Egyptians must have come away with? To the God of the Jews for mercy and love?
I'm not sure I think that adversity breeds better people. Good people can be refined and strengthened by it, that I believe. I've seen people turn bitter, however, and go dark. People who I hesitate to think that was their "nature" all the time. So...I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.
I want this entry to be excellent and insightful and somehow sum up the little journey of this Lent - but it hasn't entirely felt that way. Perhaps because of all the different books of the Bible, perhaps because I changed my observance part way through, perhaps just because I haven't been as devout and thoughtful this Lent.
Perhaps...perhaps I'm writing in the morning because I am headed to a wedding in Houston tonight and not bringing my computer. So I'm trying to force revelation early in the morning on my schedule.
Perhaps that's part of faith too, and it's a definition of hope a priest once told me in confession that made it feel like the most bold and wonderful and rare of the three cardinal virtues: "the faith that some day it will be made clear." Or the faith that someday X will happen. The faith that we are only waiting until the day when everything will be revealed and all suffering will be washed away and we will stand before the Face of God.
So I have hope that someday I will understand why Moab was leveled to the ground.
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Friday, 29 March 2013
Isaiah 14
Friday, March 29, 2013
Good Friday
Isaiah 14
...is a thoroughly unfitting chapter to read on Good Friday.
It is God at His most wrathful and, more than that, vengeful. I have wrath of my own, and so I understand it in others more readily. I make excuses for it regularly. But I try to steer clear of revenge.
I have often tried to explain to my mother on a recurring argument over a certain young man's actions that I don't believe in vengeance, but I do believe in righteous anger. I do believe in compassion for the sinner and, what's more, complete forgiveness - the moment that the behavior stops. Forgiveness before then seems ridiculous to me. How can you forgive ongoing behavior? You have to deal with ongoing behavior.
And perhaps that's what's going on here - but this passage so laboriously illustrates how powerless and then miserable Babylon and particularly its braggart king will be. That seems like revenge - doling out punishment after the power to do harm has been removed.
But then, perhaps this is the perfect reading for Good Friday. This is a reminder of how it used to be, before the Price was paid. This is a remind of what His Suffering saved us from. This is a way of keeping fresh in our minds just what we have been saved from.
This is what should have been ours. This is the just vengeance, long after the behavior has stopped.
This idea of forgiveness, even cosmic forgiveness...it's so new, compared to human history. And it was so very dearly bought.
Good Friday
Isaiah 14
...is a thoroughly unfitting chapter to read on Good Friday.
It is God at His most wrathful and, more than that, vengeful. I have wrath of my own, and so I understand it in others more readily. I make excuses for it regularly. But I try to steer clear of revenge.
I have often tried to explain to my mother on a recurring argument over a certain young man's actions that I don't believe in vengeance, but I do believe in righteous anger. I do believe in compassion for the sinner and, what's more, complete forgiveness - the moment that the behavior stops. Forgiveness before then seems ridiculous to me. How can you forgive ongoing behavior? You have to deal with ongoing behavior.
And perhaps that's what's going on here - but this passage so laboriously illustrates how powerless and then miserable Babylon and particularly its braggart king will be. That seems like revenge - doling out punishment after the power to do harm has been removed.
But then, perhaps this is the perfect reading for Good Friday. This is a reminder of how it used to be, before the Price was paid. This is a remind of what His Suffering saved us from. This is a way of keeping fresh in our minds just what we have been saved from.
This is what should have been ours. This is the just vengeance, long after the behavior has stopped.
This idea of forgiveness, even cosmic forgiveness...it's so new, compared to human history. And it was so very dearly bought.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Isaiah 13
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Holy Thursday
Isaiah 13
So...Babylon is going down.
That was a very dark passage to read after Holy Thursday Mass, about the loving act of God in giving Himself to us not just the once but daily (except Good Fridays) in the Eucharist, about Jesus washing feet. Father Jamail gave a lovely homily about our whole lives being in God that I think just may stick with me. Also, he mentioned my patron saint Martha and her sister Mary - Martha of the world was reminded of Jesus's divinity, Mary who sat at his feet was shown Jesus's humanity.
It's definitely the divine face of God in Isaiah 13, and a frightening one at that. I've always disliked the term "God-fearing", mostly since I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond and a character I didn't like ordered the main character that she was going to go to church like a "God fearing woman".
"That's not why you're supposed to go to church!" I remember screaming in my mind even then.
I've written a lot on this blog about why I think you should go to church, what the reasons for church are, and what I think is wrong with going to church out of tradition, obligation, or fear of hell fire and being left behind in the rapture.
But does that mean there is no place for fear of God? No place for fear of the Being who holds us all in the palm of His hand like a soap bubble?
I listened to WNYC's rebroadcast of "Emergence" this afternoon, which amongst other things discusses how patterns suddenly appear as if there is an intelligent guiding hand despite the complete absence of one in both ants and (as seen in city neighborhoods, etc.) human behavior. And I thought about how I've always been so much more impressed when God answers prayers and seems to set things up so wonderfully for us because I don't believe He comes in an meddles on a micro level. I think His initial plan set it up so that these things would happen. So that order and beauty would emerge from the chaos as if of their own accord. Perhaps even of their own accord.
Do we have nothing to fear from such a Being?
Should we not at least fear the loss of His love?
And now I'm thinking of marriage, and whether a good marriage should be freedom from fear of it ending or if a good marriage is to someone whom you necessarily fear losing their love because it is so precious to you. God's love of us is so precious and so the foundation of our lives that perhaps we should fear. Should fear the wrath that could destroy Babylon (and perhaps the world, it sounds like a full on doomsday prophecy, especially in places) in His anger.
Who could have set us up from the beginning to fail and burn and die as if of our own accord.
But we cannot forget that He does love us. The fear should make us grateful for His love and mercy. And perhaps that is the proper way to fear God.
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Isaiah 12
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Isaiah 12
I want to quote this whole (short) chapter. It will be forever incorporated into my
already elaborate understanding of the Woman at the Well.
I think this is what Jesus was referencing when He made it
sound like she should already know what He was talking about with the waters of
salvation or living waters.
“1 On that day you will say
I give you thanks, O Lord;
Though you have been angry with me,
Your anger has abated, and you have consoled me.”
That’s precisely what she found, to the enormous relief and
blessing in her life. That the Son
of God was treating her as a beloved child of God, that any anger God felt at
her actions was abated, and she was taken under Jesus’s wing. And I think this is how she must have felt
afterward:
“2 God indeed is my savior,
I am confident and unafraid
My strength and my courage is the Lord,
And he has been my savior.”
And then the direct reference:
“3 With joy you will draw water
at the fountain of salvation 4 and say on that day
Give thanks to the Lord, acclaim his name,
Among the nations make known his deeds,
Proclaim how exalted is his name.”
Whici is certainly what she ran off to do.
Just to finish up:
“5 Sing praise to the Lord for his glorious achievement,
let this be known throughout all the earth.
6 Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel.”
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Isaiah 11
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Isaiah 11
Continuing our reevaluation of Isaiah In Context, Chapter 11
features the well known:
“6 Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
The calf and the young lion shall browse together
With a little child to lead them.”
I’ve heard this appropriated to mean nothing more than the
greeting of the stable animals at Jesus’s birth. More commonly, I’ve heard it as a call to kindness and as a
way of knowing that the world had gone completely surreal and thus Jesus’s
return was nigh.
But this is what comes before it.
First, an introduction of Jesus (I have no objection this
time) by his many titles and lineage, then
“3 and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.
Not by appearances shall he judge,
Nor by hearsay shall he decide.
4 But he shall judge the poor with justice,
and decide aright for the land’s afflicted.
He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth,
And with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
5 Justice shall be the band around his waist,
And faithfulness a belt upon his hips.”
Notice that the very next verse is 6, the one above.
So this passage is about Jesus striking down oppression of
the poor, of eliminating all the divisions but also all the POWER of the rich
and powerful, so that for all they are lions, the lambs need never fear that
they will be hurt. There will be
an end of the suffering of the poor and the elite lording their power over the
rest.
Yes, I suppose to many that does look like the apocalypse
must be nigh. A surreal world
indeed.
Let’s work toward it, shall we?
Isaiah 10
Monday, March 25, 2013
Isaiah 10
After the last few chapters, the 10th chapter of Isaiah seems like much more standard, expected stuff. God promises that, after He allows the Assyrians to conquer Israel to make His point about the way they've wandered from righteousness, He will in turn destroy Assyria in all their offensive pride.
It starts, however, with an admonition against using political power to oppress and gain wealth at the expense of the poorest, to take advantage of widows and orphans, to deny people their rights. So I think there's a larger message - that all the things that make the Assyrians proud as a nation and all the things that make a person proud of their position of authority, will pass away. And when what will you do?
That's actually in the chapter - where will you run when it's gone? If you use your power to bully and oppress, when that power is proved to be temporary, to whom will you turn?
I often think that about America. We may not be given the dignified retirement England got when it stopped being the world's dominant superpower, not the way we're going. I mean, England had the India fiasco, but I think we're being pretty huge bullies. I'm just saying. This too shall pass, guys. All things pass.
The authority, the power, that you have - all of this is on loan. As Jesus told Pilate in the second gospel yesterday, he would have no power if it did not come from God. He will someday be without that power. It's all temporary, one day you will have to face the world without it.
So use that power while it's yours to help others. People you can turn to when things go belly up. People who will testify before God and you helped them. People who will help you when it's their turn in a position of authority.
I think I finally understand that parable of the dishonest steward - who is found out and then goes to each of the master's debtors and forgives their debt, so that he'll have people he can turn to for help when he's fired. And the master is impressed rather than even more furious that the dishonest steward not only cheated him once but cost him a lot of money.
The message is that we are given these powers only for a time - and we all use them imperfectly and we all disappoint God with how little we make of them. But if we are using that power and authority to help others, we are improving the world. We are making a home for ourselves when our misuse of our gifts gets them taken away in anger. We are making witnesses before God that we didn't screw everything up.
We are serving God.
Isaiah 10
After the last few chapters, the 10th chapter of Isaiah seems like much more standard, expected stuff. God promises that, after He allows the Assyrians to conquer Israel to make His point about the way they've wandered from righteousness, He will in turn destroy Assyria in all their offensive pride.
It starts, however, with an admonition against using political power to oppress and gain wealth at the expense of the poorest, to take advantage of widows and orphans, to deny people their rights. So I think there's a larger message - that all the things that make the Assyrians proud as a nation and all the things that make a person proud of their position of authority, will pass away. And when what will you do?
That's actually in the chapter - where will you run when it's gone? If you use your power to bully and oppress, when that power is proved to be temporary, to whom will you turn?
I often think that about America. We may not be given the dignified retirement England got when it stopped being the world's dominant superpower, not the way we're going. I mean, England had the India fiasco, but I think we're being pretty huge bullies. I'm just saying. This too shall pass, guys. All things pass.
The authority, the power, that you have - all of this is on loan. As Jesus told Pilate in the second gospel yesterday, he would have no power if it did not come from God. He will someday be without that power. It's all temporary, one day you will have to face the world without it.
So use that power while it's yours to help others. People you can turn to when things go belly up. People who will testify before God and you helped them. People who will help you when it's their turn in a position of authority.
I think I finally understand that parable of the dishonest steward - who is found out and then goes to each of the master's debtors and forgives their debt, so that he'll have people he can turn to for help when he's fired. And the master is impressed rather than even more furious that the dishonest steward not only cheated him once but cost him a lot of money.
The message is that we are given these powers only for a time - and we all use them imperfectly and we all disappoint God with how little we make of them. But if we are using that power and authority to help others, we are improving the world. We are making a home for ourselves when our misuse of our gifts gets them taken away in anger. We are making witnesses before God that we didn't screw everything up.
We are serving God.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Isaiah 8-9
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Isaiah 8 and 9
Isaiah is an odd read when you move straight through it, because it can give you whip lash the way it switches tone. It goes from threatening death and destruction and occupation of Israel, which I'm pretty sure is mostly talking about the upcoming invasion of Judea during Isaiah's time, to talking about deliverance and forgiveness and God's love with the coming of the Messiah.
The passage "The people in darkness have seen a great light" which is such a lovely whole (really, more of Isaiah should be read in its full context - stop cherry picking verses!), but it is all the more striking for being surrounded by lamentations of our wickedness and God's just revenge upon the whole nation.
It, like reading Peter, have really made me think in the back half of this Lent, about how Jesus came when Judea was invaded, when it was under the thrall of Rome, when everyone was waiting for the next time God would swoop in and save them - choose some thoroughly unlikely prophet and raise an army and/or perform wonders and/or do an elaborate shadow play with the Emperor of Rome in order to save His people and return their freedom. Like He had before.
And perhaps the fact that God's promise of saving those who have suffered, those who have been in the darkness, is surrounded and seems to (in the mind of this prophet) live comfortably alongside the warnings of invasion and oppression should have been a clue that what we really need deliverance for is a very different kind of problem.
God isn't political. He's spiritual. Jesus came to deliver us from the darkness of sin and the cloud of the threat of damnation and the terrible weight and darkness from being trapped in our own ugly messes.
You can be spiritually free even when you're politically oppressed. It can get you in trouble with the oppressing state (just ask the early Christians), but it's a lesser problem. It's an Earth-problem, not a soul-problem. Not a heaven-problem. Not the kind of problem that stops you from trying to fix the world or be closer to God.
Isaiah 8 and 9
Isaiah is an odd read when you move straight through it, because it can give you whip lash the way it switches tone. It goes from threatening death and destruction and occupation of Israel, which I'm pretty sure is mostly talking about the upcoming invasion of Judea during Isaiah's time, to talking about deliverance and forgiveness and God's love with the coming of the Messiah.
The passage "The people in darkness have seen a great light" which is such a lovely whole (really, more of Isaiah should be read in its full context - stop cherry picking verses!), but it is all the more striking for being surrounded by lamentations of our wickedness and God's just revenge upon the whole nation.
It, like reading Peter, have really made me think in the back half of this Lent, about how Jesus came when Judea was invaded, when it was under the thrall of Rome, when everyone was waiting for the next time God would swoop in and save them - choose some thoroughly unlikely prophet and raise an army and/or perform wonders and/or do an elaborate shadow play with the Emperor of Rome in order to save His people and return their freedom. Like He had before.
And perhaps the fact that God's promise of saving those who have suffered, those who have been in the darkness, is surrounded and seems to (in the mind of this prophet) live comfortably alongside the warnings of invasion and oppression should have been a clue that what we really need deliverance for is a very different kind of problem.
God isn't political. He's spiritual. Jesus came to deliver us from the darkness of sin and the cloud of the threat of damnation and the terrible weight and darkness from being trapped in our own ugly messes.
You can be spiritually free even when you're politically oppressed. It can get you in trouble with the oppressing state (just ask the early Christians), but it's a lesser problem. It's an Earth-problem, not a soul-problem. Not a heaven-problem. Not the kind of problem that stops you from trying to fix the world or be closer to God.
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Isaiah 7 Part 2
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Isaiah 7
Okay, so I've been thinking about this since yesterday. The footnotes mention that the curds and honey is a food you eat only after all the good food has been eaten, so it's what happens when there is famine.
And here is a potential interpretation that I have come up with - an interesting chance to have an example of prophecies speaking to your way of seeing God at the moment, actually.
God is judgmental in the Old Testament, we certainly can't deny that. He gives us rules and He judges us by those rules and by the way we act.
But once Jesus comes, He tells us to love one another and reverses a lot of the Judgment. For one thing, He pays the price for us, but even before that - it becomes about Love rather than Rules.
I think when God became Man, that is when he learned to "reject the bad and choose the good" - which can for your money mean either that God stops using negative reinforcement and instead showers us with love and blessing and forgiveness or that this is when God really decides what makes a good person and a bad - not being of a particular tribe, not being of a certain belief, but Love of fellow man.
And yes, God is omniscient, which makes all this interesting. BUT, does that mean that experiences still can't teach God what makes a good or a bad person? After all, to Him time is all of a piece, so He would have known it from the beginning even if He learned it when He came as Jesus. And that's...circular, so I'm going to jump out of that line of thought before I get trapped.
I find I really like that idea.
Isaiah 7
Okay, so I've been thinking about this since yesterday. The footnotes mention that the curds and honey is a food you eat only after all the good food has been eaten, so it's what happens when there is famine.
And here is a potential interpretation that I have come up with - an interesting chance to have an example of prophecies speaking to your way of seeing God at the moment, actually.
God is judgmental in the Old Testament, we certainly can't deny that. He gives us rules and He judges us by those rules and by the way we act.
But once Jesus comes, He tells us to love one another and reverses a lot of the Judgment. For one thing, He pays the price for us, but even before that - it becomes about Love rather than Rules.
I think when God became Man, that is when he learned to "reject the bad and choose the good" - which can for your money mean either that God stops using negative reinforcement and instead showers us with love and blessing and forgiveness or that this is when God really decides what makes a good person and a bad - not being of a particular tribe, not being of a certain belief, but Love of fellow man.
And yes, God is omniscient, which makes all this interesting. BUT, does that mean that experiences still can't teach God what makes a good or a bad person? After all, to Him time is all of a piece, so He would have known it from the beginning even if He learned it when He came as Jesus. And that's...circular, so I'm going to jump out of that line of thought before I get trapped.
I find I really like that idea.
Friday, 22 March 2013
Isaiah 7
Friday, March 22, 2013
Isaiah 7
I confess myself rattled.
Isaiah 7:14 is a verse we all know: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel."
But, well, this is the whole prophecy:
"14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. 15 He shall be living on curds and honey by the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good. 16 For before the child learns to reject the bad and choose the good, the land of the two kings who you dread shall be deserted."What??!!
Just...what???
Footnotes in my Bible mention (off-handedly) that some Catholics interpret a "preliminary and partial fulfillment" of the verse in the birth of future King Hezekiah whose mother was, at the time, a young virgin.
...
...
...
How do the later parts refer to Jesus? Just...how does it...
I need to find some proper commentary on this. Father Dempsey? Are you reading these? What's going on?
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Isaiah 6
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Isaiah 6
Recounting visions is always such an interesting part of a sacred story. There's a signal that goes off and suddenly every little word, every little detail, is presumed full of symbolic meaning, of some kind of secret decoder ring message and moral weight.
It makes me think of Julian of Norwich, whom the Catholic Church never got around to canonizing (I've always assuming because it was poorly timed with the Anglican split). She's not like other visionaries, whom God or Mary or Jesus or other saints or all of the above visit over and over again with instructions and messages for the people of the world. She had one vision relatively early in her life then spent the rest of it locked away as an anchoress, interpreting it diligently.
She spent her whole life on that one visionary dream. Getting it down precisely in written and artistic form. No doubt turning it over and over in her head until she was convinced that every little meaning had been made clear to her. A puzzle worth spending her entire life riddling out.
It could take a lifetime to riddle out all the details of a vision. It could take several, and not doubt this vision of Isaiah's has absorbed several scholars' lifetimes. I should find their work - because I have no idea what to do with the six wings of the Seraphim - two to cover their faces, two to cover their feet, and two to do what wings are actually intended to do and help them hover. There's something lovely about God's robe spreading over the Temple, but I'm not precisely sure what it means - we're all in the shadow of His wings comes to mind. His honor on Earth is the Temple also.
It makes me think of a passage in a fantasy novel that I read today - where characters are telling each other's fortunes by the use of tarot cards. I don't hold with fortune telling nonsense, but an artist friend of mine hoping to make some money by selling a deck she drew herself made the interesting observation that it's more a way to clarify your thoughts. Each card can stand for many things - which on the surface may make it seem less credible. But how you decide to interpret those cards shows how you are thinking and reacting to things in your life. I can certainly imagine it doing that, even if it wouldn't tell you what is to come.
I wonder if visions like the one here or Julian's elaborate one are something like that - heavy with dozens of potential meanings. Meant to therefore show us where we are in our relationship to God by which details catch our eye and hold our attention, what stories we end up writing to explain them, why we hold to one interpretation over another.
In this way, the same vision can tell each reader about their relationship with God, not simply the person receiving the vision. Not all of the recognized visions follow this format, but I admit I find it fascinating.
Although I'm not sure I like what it might say about my current relationship with God that my first thought on hearing that the seraphim are covering their feet is that it was to conceal hoofs.
Isaiah 6
Recounting visions is always such an interesting part of a sacred story. There's a signal that goes off and suddenly every little word, every little detail, is presumed full of symbolic meaning, of some kind of secret decoder ring message and moral weight.
It makes me think of Julian of Norwich, whom the Catholic Church never got around to canonizing (I've always assuming because it was poorly timed with the Anglican split). She's not like other visionaries, whom God or Mary or Jesus or other saints or all of the above visit over and over again with instructions and messages for the people of the world. She had one vision relatively early in her life then spent the rest of it locked away as an anchoress, interpreting it diligently.
She spent her whole life on that one visionary dream. Getting it down precisely in written and artistic form. No doubt turning it over and over in her head until she was convinced that every little meaning had been made clear to her. A puzzle worth spending her entire life riddling out.
It could take a lifetime to riddle out all the details of a vision. It could take several, and not doubt this vision of Isaiah's has absorbed several scholars' lifetimes. I should find their work - because I have no idea what to do with the six wings of the Seraphim - two to cover their faces, two to cover their feet, and two to do what wings are actually intended to do and help them hover. There's something lovely about God's robe spreading over the Temple, but I'm not precisely sure what it means - we're all in the shadow of His wings comes to mind. His honor on Earth is the Temple also.
It makes me think of a passage in a fantasy novel that I read today - where characters are telling each other's fortunes by the use of tarot cards. I don't hold with fortune telling nonsense, but an artist friend of mine hoping to make some money by selling a deck she drew herself made the interesting observation that it's more a way to clarify your thoughts. Each card can stand for many things - which on the surface may make it seem less credible. But how you decide to interpret those cards shows how you are thinking and reacting to things in your life. I can certainly imagine it doing that, even if it wouldn't tell you what is to come.
I wonder if visions like the one here or Julian's elaborate one are something like that - heavy with dozens of potential meanings. Meant to therefore show us where we are in our relationship to God by which details catch our eye and hold our attention, what stories we end up writing to explain them, why we hold to one interpretation over another.
In this way, the same vision can tell each reader about their relationship with God, not simply the person receiving the vision. Not all of the recognized visions follow this format, but I admit I find it fascinating.
Although I'm not sure I like what it might say about my current relationship with God that my first thought on hearing that the seraphim are covering their feet is that it was to conceal hoofs.
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Isaiah 5
Wednesday, March 21, 2013
Isaiah 5
It's a very depressing book of the Bible, full of judgment and anger and threats of invasion and destruction of an entire nation. It's hard, in a word, to see it as talking about just one incident. It seems like the kind of thing that just keeps happening.
Which seems to connect, in my mind, to the start of the chapter, which is a parable about a man who did everything he was supposed to! to make his vineyard produce good grapes, but wild grapes grew instead. So he gets furious that it didn't work - that what should have worked didn't, that everything he had been told to do didn't change the way the world worked - and burns the vineyard to the ground.
And yes, this is a parable about how God gives us everything we need and still we rebel.
But I also think - man has not conquered the natural world, just as God chooses not to conquer our wills. We don't (and the people writing this certainly didn't) understand all the laws of the natural world and why they work. Complaining that you've done everything you were supposed to do and that still everything went wrong - well, it's very familiar but it's not very surprising, right?
There are things about the world and ourselves that we do not understand any more than the vineyard owner in the story understands the way the natural world works. And I think we often end up making lists and rules and procedures for how we will live successful or sinless or both lives. We have paths that we set children on, rigidly enforced with the threat of college admission, and we get upset when following all these rules doesn't lead to happiness.
Perhaps what the vines needed was something totally different. Perhaps what he was always working with were wild grapes and he should have worked with what he had. Perhaps there's no sense to this crazy world we live in - at least not one that would let us make it bend to our will - and we have to just do the best we can in it.
We would choose to break the will of the natural world if we could, I think. So it would stop hurting us and frustrating what we want for ourselves and it. We are trying all the time to do so.
How much God loves us that He does not break our wills to have His vineyard produce good fruit.
Isaiah 5
It's a very depressing book of the Bible, full of judgment and anger and threats of invasion and destruction of an entire nation. It's hard, in a word, to see it as talking about just one incident. It seems like the kind of thing that just keeps happening.
Which seems to connect, in my mind, to the start of the chapter, which is a parable about a man who did everything he was supposed to! to make his vineyard produce good grapes, but wild grapes grew instead. So he gets furious that it didn't work - that what should have worked didn't, that everything he had been told to do didn't change the way the world worked - and burns the vineyard to the ground.
And yes, this is a parable about how God gives us everything we need and still we rebel.
But I also think - man has not conquered the natural world, just as God chooses not to conquer our wills. We don't (and the people writing this certainly didn't) understand all the laws of the natural world and why they work. Complaining that you've done everything you were supposed to do and that still everything went wrong - well, it's very familiar but it's not very surprising, right?
There are things about the world and ourselves that we do not understand any more than the vineyard owner in the story understands the way the natural world works. And I think we often end up making lists and rules and procedures for how we will live successful or sinless or both lives. We have paths that we set children on, rigidly enforced with the threat of college admission, and we get upset when following all these rules doesn't lead to happiness.
Perhaps what the vines needed was something totally different. Perhaps what he was always working with were wild grapes and he should have worked with what he had. Perhaps there's no sense to this crazy world we live in - at least not one that would let us make it bend to our will - and we have to just do the best we can in it.
We would choose to break the will of the natural world if we could, I think. So it would stop hurting us and frustrating what we want for ourselves and it. We are trying all the time to do so.
How much God loves us that He does not break our wills to have His vineyard produce good fruit.
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Isaiah 4
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Happy St. Joseph's Day!
Isaiah 4
Again, I feel I am probably reading this wrong, but I can't help seeing a little prophecy for an Biblical approval of women's liberation in the first verse of this chapter.
Because it feels like the shadow of something. A small acknowledgement that women don't need men to support them, even way back when. It's saying, as the footnote tells me, that the ratio of men and women will be so dramatic that women will do anything to avoid the shame of being childless.
This actually doesn't sound quite right to me. It sounds like they want marriage, not just children, and the creepy polyamory stuff I will not indulge because they don't say that all seven get what they want or that they want a group rate, just that seven of these women who are quite capable of taking care of themselves will all be clamoring just for the propriety of being married. Just for the cultural approval of a man's protection.
How messed up is that? How apocalyptically sad is that?
To think we've shamed women sufficiently that they neither need nor love the man they beg to be their husband - but they are so disgraced for being single they will all set upon him and beg him to make them whole and wholly accepted into society?
So, there's a lot there. Evidence women don't need men, and a sad reminder that they've been made to feel they do by society's standards.
Happy St. Joseph's Day!
Isaiah 4
Again, I feel I am probably reading this wrong, but I can't help seeing a little prophecy for an Biblical approval of women's liberation in the first verse of this chapter.
1 Seven women will take hold of one man on that day saying "We will eat our own food and wear our own clothing Only let your name be given us, put an end to our disgrace!"I realize I'm perverting it, but I read it several times the first time through just...wondering on that.
Because it feels like the shadow of something. A small acknowledgement that women don't need men to support them, even way back when. It's saying, as the footnote tells me, that the ratio of men and women will be so dramatic that women will do anything to avoid the shame of being childless.
This actually doesn't sound quite right to me. It sounds like they want marriage, not just children, and the creepy polyamory stuff I will not indulge because they don't say that all seven get what they want or that they want a group rate, just that seven of these women who are quite capable of taking care of themselves will all be clamoring just for the propriety of being married. Just for the cultural approval of a man's protection.
How messed up is that? How apocalyptically sad is that?
To think we've shamed women sufficiently that they neither need nor love the man they beg to be their husband - but they are so disgraced for being single they will all set upon him and beg him to make them whole and wholly accepted into society?
So, there's a lot there. Evidence women don't need men, and a sad reminder that they've been made to feel they do by society's standards.
Monday, 18 March 2013
Isaiah 3
Monday, March 18, 2013
Isaiah 3
I am honestly a little baffled what to think of Isaiah chapter 3. I'm not sure I approve of all the harbingers of a time of chaos listed ("12 and women will rule them"). And I'm not sure I entirely disapprove of chaos. There's an old curse, "May you live in interesting times."
And I can't helping thinking of the recent episodes of Downton Abbey I've been watching with my mother (recent to us, second season, not the ones airing now), of how World War I is disrupting the carefully maintained rules of social order so firmly established in the first season that we stopped seeing them toward the end. So well the show did it that seeing people violating them, even for the war, felt like a shock to the system.
If higher causes like defending our country don't call to us, what will break down all the walls we erect to keep us from people? That keep us from loving or moving to help others? Perhaps only chaos.
I admit as much as any other person, I like to know my place in the world. I've never had a particularly hard place in the world, of course, but I like to know where the hierarchy is and where I fit in it. And what the proper procedure for moving forward is.
So I understand liking the comfort of what's expected.
But I can't help thinking that people are so often at their best in chaos. Women came out of their single lonely sphere in a time of chaos and since some refused to go back (causing more chaos), I have options now. The Civil Rights movement was a time of great chaos, but the few who doubt America is better off for it are not invited to my house for dinner. Which is perhaps unchristian of me, but I don't know how to make the other option work so it'll have to do.
Perhaps what I am trying to say that perhaps the threats of chaos and upheaval and all the upending of the social structure outlined in this chapter - some of which sounds fine and even needed, some of which sounds awful and frightening - aren't to punish or chastize us back into our little boxes. Maybe it's God's way of reminding us that we created the boxes ourselves. They were never His idea, and if the boxes stop being warm and comfortable and start becoming prisons, it is quite in our power to step out of them.
Of course, so much of the chapter sounds terrible. But perhaps that's only when we rise above.
Isaiah 3
I am honestly a little baffled what to think of Isaiah chapter 3. I'm not sure I approve of all the harbingers of a time of chaos listed ("12 and women will rule them"). And I'm not sure I entirely disapprove of chaos. There's an old curse, "May you live in interesting times."
And I can't helping thinking of the recent episodes of Downton Abbey I've been watching with my mother (recent to us, second season, not the ones airing now), of how World War I is disrupting the carefully maintained rules of social order so firmly established in the first season that we stopped seeing them toward the end. So well the show did it that seeing people violating them, even for the war, felt like a shock to the system.
If higher causes like defending our country don't call to us, what will break down all the walls we erect to keep us from people? That keep us from loving or moving to help others? Perhaps only chaos.
I admit as much as any other person, I like to know my place in the world. I've never had a particularly hard place in the world, of course, but I like to know where the hierarchy is and where I fit in it. And what the proper procedure for moving forward is.
So I understand liking the comfort of what's expected.
But I can't help thinking that people are so often at their best in chaos. Women came out of their single lonely sphere in a time of chaos and since some refused to go back (causing more chaos), I have options now. The Civil Rights movement was a time of great chaos, but the few who doubt America is better off for it are not invited to my house for dinner. Which is perhaps unchristian of me, but I don't know how to make the other option work so it'll have to do.
Perhaps what I am trying to say that perhaps the threats of chaos and upheaval and all the upending of the social structure outlined in this chapter - some of which sounds fine and even needed, some of which sounds awful and frightening - aren't to punish or chastize us back into our little boxes. Maybe it's God's way of reminding us that we created the boxes ourselves. They were never His idea, and if the boxes stop being warm and comfortable and start becoming prisons, it is quite in our power to step out of them.
Of course, so much of the chapter sounds terrible. But perhaps that's only when we rise above.
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Isaiah 2
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Isaiah 2
I have often heard these two Bible verses - actually, taking a closer look, it's one verse split into two poetic lines - separated. I never knew one followed the other directly. That...changes everything.
This is saying that what God will do when He comes down in judgment is...fix everything. Have fairness and justice in the world - so that we no longer decide our conflicts by who has the nuclear missiles (the modern version of who carries the biggest stick). We will grow things and create with what we now fight with.
And somehow, beating our swords into plowshares doesn't seem to have the right interpretation away from the first part of the verse either. We think of it as a hippy compound (or I do, I suppose I shouldn't speak for everyone). We think of it as an individual choice or something that will be nice once the swords are no longer necessary.
That's a decision we could make now, by the way, if we all set them down or beat them into plowshares at once, but I digress.
Because it's not an individual turning away from war. It's nations on whom God will "impose terms" in order to stop the fighting. It's God coming down and telling us to stop being homicidal jerks. That's His judgment. Not individual weighing of the scales, not tossing cities and nations whole hog into the fires like Sodom and Gommorah.
Indeed, not an individual thing or a punishment thing. It is everyone suddenly being forced to, all at once, set the weapons aside forever. A common call to the peace that we're all afraid to be the first to take step toward. That's what we've been promised.
That is so much more powerful than how those two halves of the verse are commonly used.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Isaiah 2
I have often heard these two Bible verses - actually, taking a closer look, it's one verse split into two poetic lines - separated. I never knew one followed the other directly. That...changes everything.
"4 He shall judge between the nations, / and impose terms on many peoples. / They shall beat their swords into plowshares / and their spears into pruning hooks."I know elsewhere in the Bible they say that God will sit in judgment and they mean individual judgment of His people, and I know that elsewhere God punishes those who have strayed from Him, but this feels so amazingly different.
This is saying that what God will do when He comes down in judgment is...fix everything. Have fairness and justice in the world - so that we no longer decide our conflicts by who has the nuclear missiles (the modern version of who carries the biggest stick). We will grow things and create with what we now fight with.
And somehow, beating our swords into plowshares doesn't seem to have the right interpretation away from the first part of the verse either. We think of it as a hippy compound (or I do, I suppose I shouldn't speak for everyone). We think of it as an individual choice or something that will be nice once the swords are no longer necessary.
That's a decision we could make now, by the way, if we all set them down or beat them into plowshares at once, but I digress.
Because it's not an individual turning away from war. It's nations on whom God will "impose terms" in order to stop the fighting. It's God coming down and telling us to stop being homicidal jerks. That's His judgment. Not individual weighing of the scales, not tossing cities and nations whole hog into the fires like Sodom and Gommorah.
Indeed, not an individual thing or a punishment thing. It is everyone suddenly being forced to, all at once, set the weapons aside forever. A common call to the peace that we're all afraid to be the first to take step toward. That's what we've been promised.
That is so much more powerful than how those two halves of the verse are commonly used.
Saturday, 16 March 2013
Isaiah 1
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Isaiah 1
I feel as if I made a mess of 1 Peter, and I hope to do better here in Isaiah. But I feel at something of a loss to come up with the clever and thoughtful reflections I've occasionally managed on this blog. I feel dull and plodding.
Perhaps it is the lack of story. There is no plot to the epistles to capture my imagination. I am a creature of stories.
Isaiah certainly sets the scene. The present age (I wrote Israel and then deleted it, for I think the problems described are not limited to that one age and nation) had grown so bad that Isaiah declares their prayers and offerings disgusting to God.
Just...wow.
The age had grown so wicked that, unlike with Jonah, sackcloth and ashes would be repulsive to God.
We can't just say we're sorry over and over again. And God knows - there are some sins that apologies cannot set right or appease. Only actions can do that.
A fantasy television show I watched is currently tracing a very problematic and often back-tracking road to redemption (presumably) for one character. Or, at least, this character thinks she's on the road to redemption despite her actions. Several times in the past season, she has asserted her goodness, questioned her role as the villain, and challenged the other characters for not forgiving her her many and heinous sins against them. But because she hasn't hurt them recently, she wants a full pardon. But because she wants to be different, she thinks she should be fully accepted.
You can't just do a mea culpa for everything. At some point, the tears become an affront to those you have wounded. At some point, God is not pleased with your prayers and offerings.
Some things require work.
Isaiah 1
I feel as if I made a mess of 1 Peter, and I hope to do better here in Isaiah. But I feel at something of a loss to come up with the clever and thoughtful reflections I've occasionally managed on this blog. I feel dull and plodding.
Perhaps it is the lack of story. There is no plot to the epistles to capture my imagination. I am a creature of stories.
Isaiah certainly sets the scene. The present age (I wrote Israel and then deleted it, for I think the problems described are not limited to that one age and nation) had grown so bad that Isaiah declares their prayers and offerings disgusting to God.
Just...wow.
"13 Trample my courts no more! Bring no more worthless offerings; your incense is loathsome to me...14 Your new moons and festivals I detest; they weigh me down, I tired of the load. 15 When you spread out your hands, I close my eyes to you; Though you pray the more, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood! 16 Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; 17 learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow."Faith without works isn't only dead, it is offensive to God. Faith without social justice, prayer without service - it is an affront.
The age had grown so wicked that, unlike with Jonah, sackcloth and ashes would be repulsive to God.
We can't just say we're sorry over and over again. And God knows - there are some sins that apologies cannot set right or appease. Only actions can do that.
A fantasy television show I watched is currently tracing a very problematic and often back-tracking road to redemption (presumably) for one character. Or, at least, this character thinks she's on the road to redemption despite her actions. Several times in the past season, she has asserted her goodness, questioned her role as the villain, and challenged the other characters for not forgiving her her many and heinous sins against them. But because she hasn't hurt them recently, she wants a full pardon. But because she wants to be different, she thinks she should be fully accepted.
You can't just do a mea culpa for everything. At some point, the tears become an affront to those you have wounded. At some point, God is not pleased with your prayers and offerings.
Some things require work.
Friday, 15 March 2013
1 Peter 5
Friday, March 15, 2013
Happy Ides of March!
1 Peter 5
Again, I get the feeling of a general giving standing order to his troops. First to the officers or the elders, then to the infantry, the younger men instructed to obey them. It's so easy to forget how under siege the Church was when these letters are written. So many of Paul's ask for internal policing - of both the churches that sprang up in the separate places and of the self. But Peter is thinking of protecting his people or at least asking the sheep he promised to feed to stick together.
It's very dense and business-like, and you can feel his worry for them in every verse. He's begging them to just hold on a little longer, to bear up under suffering, for it will be over soon. To just...make it through.
I think we're called to more than that in this life. I think we're called to build, and not just homes in heaven. I'm not saying we should metaphorically build our homes on earth and sand rather than heaven and solid ground, as the parable goes, but I think we are meant to live in the world (but not of the world) working to make it a better place. I don't think our suffering is just for a short while. I think our suffering is until we go out and put a stop to it everywhere.
So I understand why Peter gives instructions in this way, and many of them are good even so, but it's strange to read and feel a different time - feel the apostle's understandable mistake that we are in the end times. Perhaps to the faithful it always seems like the end times. Especially when you have seen so many miracles.
But almost two thousand years later, what are we supposed to do? Bear up under the load and hold together - or try to alleviate what has been pressing down on the necks of good people too long?
Goodness, I sound like quite the radical, don't I?
Happy Ides of March!
1 Peter 5
Again, I get the feeling of a general giving standing order to his troops. First to the officers or the elders, then to the infantry, the younger men instructed to obey them. It's so easy to forget how under siege the Church was when these letters are written. So many of Paul's ask for internal policing - of both the churches that sprang up in the separate places and of the self. But Peter is thinking of protecting his people or at least asking the sheep he promised to feed to stick together.
It's very dense and business-like, and you can feel his worry for them in every verse. He's begging them to just hold on a little longer, to bear up under suffering, for it will be over soon. To just...make it through.
I think we're called to more than that in this life. I think we're called to build, and not just homes in heaven. I'm not saying we should metaphorically build our homes on earth and sand rather than heaven and solid ground, as the parable goes, but I think we are meant to live in the world (but not of the world) working to make it a better place. I don't think our suffering is just for a short while. I think our suffering is until we go out and put a stop to it everywhere.
So I understand why Peter gives instructions in this way, and many of them are good even so, but it's strange to read and feel a different time - feel the apostle's understandable mistake that we are in the end times. Perhaps to the faithful it always seems like the end times. Especially when you have seen so many miracles.
But almost two thousand years later, what are we supposed to do? Bear up under the load and hold together - or try to alleviate what has been pressing down on the necks of good people too long?
Goodness, I sound like quite the radical, don't I?
Thursday, 14 March 2013
1 Peter 4
Thursday, March 14, 2013
1 Peter 4
Another indication that Peter is expecting the end times presently, but then he gives us words worth living by:
And if we cause harm, it will be through error rather than malice.
Love covers a multitude of sins.
No one should need a crying four year old to tell us that.
1 Peter 4
Another indication that Peter is expecting the end times presently, but then he gives us words worth living by:
"7 Remain calm so that you will be able to pray."I love that. Prayer has more than once restored my calm in a panicked moment. Prayer has settled me, been a lifeline. But I only truly pray, I only truly find God in my prayers, a conversation with Him, when my mind is already calm. When I am able to let the world fall away. When I can let this world pass away.
"8 Above all, let your love for one another be constant, for love covers a multitude of sins."That's why we only really need the golden rule. That's why Jesus told us elaborate codes of conduct are unnecessary, a side effect of how we don't embrace the true way to goodness and holiness. Because we do not love one another enough to think of them first, to place them in each of our actions ahead of ourselves. Surely we will not sin if we act in love of our fellow man. Surely if we treat them with care and respect, we will not fall into terrible sins.
And if we cause harm, it will be through error rather than malice.
Love covers a multitude of sins.
"9 Be mutually hospitable without complaining. 10 As generous distributors of God's manifold grace, put your gifts at the service of one another, each in the measure he has received. 11 The one who speaks is to deliver God's message. The one who serves is to do it with the strength provided by God. Thus, in all of you God is to be glorified through Jesus Christ: to him be glory and dominion throughout the ages. Amen."Peter can't help giving us a few more guidelines anyway, but they are good ones. Particularly to remember that the gifts of God we are given are not for us. They are for us to use in service of others. The gifts we hold in our hands are no more for us than the presents we wrap and bring in our hands to a birthday party. They are from us, they are of us, they often say so much about us. But they are not for us.
No one should need a crying four year old to tell us that.
1 Peter 3
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Welcome Pope Francis I!
1 Peter 3
Peter is rough going for me this week, when I feel as if I should be bringing my A Game.
But here we have the sometimes infamous wives obey your husband's passage. What really gets me about it is the idea that wives by their conduct will convert their husbands - because if not for the way it's phrased, I would love this being said.
Saint Francis of Assissi was the one who said, "Evangelize constantly - use words only when necessary."
Words are cheap. Words are nothing compared to the way we live our lives. Half of the memes that my fundamentalist atheist friend are on that theme - people claiming Christian love rather than showing it. I'm not sure kindness would convert her, but it seems a nearer way of bringing her to God. Setting an example by our lives - good advice for all.
Peter also advises against being afraid to suffer or taking it as a sign of failure. There are few things more admired throughout time as strength in suffering, endurance and fortitude in the face of trials and tribulations.
This is how we will show the world the way of God.
Welcome Pope Francis I!
1 Peter 3
Peter is rough going for me this week, when I feel as if I should be bringing my A Game.
But here we have the sometimes infamous wives obey your husband's passage. What really gets me about it is the idea that wives by their conduct will convert their husbands - because if not for the way it's phrased, I would love this being said.
Saint Francis of Assissi was the one who said, "Evangelize constantly - use words only when necessary."
Words are cheap. Words are nothing compared to the way we live our lives. Half of the memes that my fundamentalist atheist friend are on that theme - people claiming Christian love rather than showing it. I'm not sure kindness would convert her, but it seems a nearer way of bringing her to God. Setting an example by our lives - good advice for all.
Peter also advises against being afraid to suffer or taking it as a sign of failure. There are few things more admired throughout time as strength in suffering, endurance and fortitude in the face of trials and tribulations.
This is how we will show the world the way of God.
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
1 Peter 2
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
1 Peter 2
I imagine this is one of the passages that slaveowners used to justify slavery. And I don't intend this as an apologist for the passage telling slaves to be good and respectful of even harsh masters and offer up their suffering in this world. I can imagine for too long, especially in times of serfdom or particularly punishing class systems the beliefs of the apostles that the world would end and therefore why provoke a widespread rebellion were used to keep people in their places.
But I do think there's something radical in addressing the slaves at all - at considering their actions as also worthy or unworthy of God's attention and graces. Of not lumping an entire household in with the head of it. Of saying that God cares about the doings and sufferings and sins and goodness of even slaves.
It's a shame that when we finally realized we were going to be here for awhile, that we were to build the Kingdom of God on earth - not simply wait for Jesus to return and build it for us - we did not always apply this message of personhood.
I think a lot about the ongoing project of the human race as a whole to try to define only certain people as people and the abhorrent turns it takes. And I hate it when my religion - the religion of kindness to your neighbor and the personhood of even slaves - is used to help further that awful end.
Because the only reason the Bible sounds like it's okay with it is because the apostles thought a revolution would be counterproductive since soon Jesus would come and sweep all this away.
Our world is made of issue compared to the world of the spirit, but we are made of tissue as well. So we should build it to catch the light.
1 Peter 2
I imagine this is one of the passages that slaveowners used to justify slavery. And I don't intend this as an apologist for the passage telling slaves to be good and respectful of even harsh masters and offer up their suffering in this world. I can imagine for too long, especially in times of serfdom or particularly punishing class systems the beliefs of the apostles that the world would end and therefore why provoke a widespread rebellion were used to keep people in their places.
But I do think there's something radical in addressing the slaves at all - at considering their actions as also worthy or unworthy of God's attention and graces. Of not lumping an entire household in with the head of it. Of saying that God cares about the doings and sufferings and sins and goodness of even slaves.
It's a shame that when we finally realized we were going to be here for awhile, that we were to build the Kingdom of God on earth - not simply wait for Jesus to return and build it for us - we did not always apply this message of personhood.
I think a lot about the ongoing project of the human race as a whole to try to define only certain people as people and the abhorrent turns it takes. And I hate it when my religion - the religion of kindness to your neighbor and the personhood of even slaves - is used to help further that awful end.
Because the only reason the Bible sounds like it's okay with it is because the apostles thought a revolution would be counterproductive since soon Jesus would come and sweep all this away.
Our world is made of issue compared to the world of the spirit, but we are made of tissue as well. So we should build it to catch the light.
Monday, 11 March 2013
1 Peter 1
Monday, March 11, 2013
1 Peter 1
I had to read this chapter twice to have anything to say about it, but I think that says more about where I am at the moment than the chapter.
I can feel in it how Peter doesn't think the world will last much longer. The world is insubstantial and we have trials to suffer before God takes us to Himself. But there's some interesting historical stuff going on with Peter saying that God did not redeem us with silver and gold but with Christ's blood. I wonder if this is in response to some Roman beliefs or if it's a warning about putting stock in anything this world has to offer.
We did not repay our deeds in this world in the currency of this world. It was paid for us by God in the most precious things of heaven.
We cannot through any method in this world make up for our sins and our transgressions - there is nothing so precious in the world to pay it back, until Jesus came.
1 Peter 1
I had to read this chapter twice to have anything to say about it, but I think that says more about where I am at the moment than the chapter.
I can feel in it how Peter doesn't think the world will last much longer. The world is insubstantial and we have trials to suffer before God takes us to Himself. But there's some interesting historical stuff going on with Peter saying that God did not redeem us with silver and gold but with Christ's blood. I wonder if this is in response to some Roman beliefs or if it's a warning about putting stock in anything this world has to offer.
We did not repay our deeds in this world in the currency of this world. It was paid for us by God in the most precious things of heaven.
We cannot through any method in this world make up for our sins and our transgressions - there is nothing so precious in the world to pay it back, until Jesus came.
Sunday, 10 March 2013
James 5
Sunday, March 10, 2013
James 5
The book of James ends with an interesting warning/admonition about prayer - reminding us that prayer is powerful. James talks about how Elijah prayed for a drought and then prayed to end it, and warns us to be careful in our own prayers.
We can't any of us imagine what it must have been like to spend three years in close contact with Jesus. If there were not daily wonders, there were enough signs and proofs offered to the apostles that well might they fear ever letting a hasty prayer escape their lips.
Our relationship with prayer these days is more complex - if nothing else by the way that we have so many sayings like the one, "God answers every prayer - either 'yes', 'no', or 'not yet.'" We have had to make peace with the unanswered prayer.
And I wonder, is it in part because our hearts are not so pure as James tells us to be? Can we not be trusted as these men who had had their lives so thoroughly changed could be to pray wisely and well? Is this part of believing and not seeing?
I have personally come to think of prayer not as something that can change the world in the way that James talks about. Prayer is something for ourselves and our personal relationship with God. I don't think God decides who lives and dies or what course destiny takes because of the number of entreaties that wing their way up to heaven or the sincerity of them. I don't think that prayer for our petitions is therefore useless. And I wonder if James's warning is just as apt.
If our prayers are about nurturing our relationship to God, it is all the more important that we make sure we pray wisely and well, that we do not pray for harm but for good, that we are not afraid to air everything in our lives and led God help us sort through it. That we should not forget that prayer is powerful, that it changes who we are, and that we should take full advantage of it.
James 5
The book of James ends with an interesting warning/admonition about prayer - reminding us that prayer is powerful. James talks about how Elijah prayed for a drought and then prayed to end it, and warns us to be careful in our own prayers.
We can't any of us imagine what it must have been like to spend three years in close contact with Jesus. If there were not daily wonders, there were enough signs and proofs offered to the apostles that well might they fear ever letting a hasty prayer escape their lips.
Our relationship with prayer these days is more complex - if nothing else by the way that we have so many sayings like the one, "God answers every prayer - either 'yes', 'no', or 'not yet.'" We have had to make peace with the unanswered prayer.
And I wonder, is it in part because our hearts are not so pure as James tells us to be? Can we not be trusted as these men who had had their lives so thoroughly changed could be to pray wisely and well? Is this part of believing and not seeing?
I have personally come to think of prayer not as something that can change the world in the way that James talks about. Prayer is something for ourselves and our personal relationship with God. I don't think God decides who lives and dies or what course destiny takes because of the number of entreaties that wing their way up to heaven or the sincerity of them. I don't think that prayer for our petitions is therefore useless. And I wonder if James's warning is just as apt.
If our prayers are about nurturing our relationship to God, it is all the more important that we make sure we pray wisely and well, that we do not pray for harm but for good, that we are not afraid to air everything in our lives and led God help us sort through it. That we should not forget that prayer is powerful, that it changes who we are, and that we should take full advantage of it.
Saturday, 9 March 2013
James 4
Saturday, March 9, 2013
James 4
Sometimes a Bible verse is just pointed, you know?
I have been beating myself up a lot recently about job-wise, personal life-wise, and service I should be doing in my community why I am not doing all of my plans. The main reason being that they keep changing, so how can I work steadily and successfully on one?
So I suppose I am being told that I need to take a moment and really listen to God to see what He wants me to do - what, if He suffers me to live until tomorrow, is the reason He kept me here on Earth.
God grant me the strength to hear it.
James 4
Sometimes a Bible verse is just pointed, you know?
"13 Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we shall go to such and such a town, spend a year there, trade, and come off with a profit!' 14 You have no idea what kind of life will be yours tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears briefly and vanishes. 15 Instead of saying, 'If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that,' 16 all you can do is make arrogant and pretentious claims."I got the reminder in a less Biblical and pointed way from a friend recently. And I've been making the joke for over a year now. "If I did a better job of listening to Him, perhaps God wouldn't have to leave me with only one option all the time."
I have been beating myself up a lot recently about job-wise, personal life-wise, and service I should be doing in my community why I am not doing all of my plans. The main reason being that they keep changing, so how can I work steadily and successfully on one?
So I suppose I am being told that I need to take a moment and really listen to God to see what He wants me to do - what, if He suffers me to live until tomorrow, is the reason He kept me here on Earth.
God grant me the strength to hear it.
Friday, 8 March 2013
James 3
Friday, March 8, 2013
James 3
This chapter is about the awesome power of the tongue. My favorite bits:
I was sitting visiting with a friend of mine on the couch, when one of my brothers friends stumbles over to us from where he has been having a small gathering of his own. She is the only girl present at the party and drunkenly explains her desire to commiserate with women over the way the boys have been treating her. There was some mansplaining involved.
I forget just what wandering turns the conversation took to get here, but at one point she misspoke, saying of her current boyfriend, "I'm his boyfriend!" She began to laugh at the mistake, and asked what would that even mean? I offered, without thinking, "Is that a way of calling yourself a fag hag?" My friend looked over at me in shock, and I blanched.
I hadn't meant to say it, and though I have often heard it used playfully rather than offensively in recent media attempts to be edgy, I immediately felt deep regret at using the offensive term. Which I then had to explain and define. And I could tell that not only she but the boy who wondered by to get another beer from the fridge and became embroiled in the conversation, had a temporary new favorite word.
I felt terrible. Not only did I introduce a concept that is patronizing and belittles a too common and painful part of the gay experience, I, as I mentioned to my friend, hate reminding this particular group of people that the word "faggot" exists - mostly for my inability to convince them not to use it casually.
It was a small moment, it was a little phrase that popped out without thinking in a conversation largely unremarkable. But I could see with uncommon clarity the disastrous ripples forming from that little stone.
A little reminder that our words have untold power, that they can start a great blaze. That it's a wonder how great a good and how terrible an evil they can seem to do on the same day - and even more remarkable, given that, how little we regulate what we do with our tongues.
James 3
This chapter is about the awesome power of the tongue. My favorite bits:
"5 See how tiny the spark is that sets a huge forest ablaze!"
"10 Blessing and curse come out of the same mouth. This ought not to be, my brothers! 11 Does a spring gush forth fresh water and foul from the same outlet?"It reminds me of a recent thing that happened to remind me of the awesome power of our words that we fling about so carelessly.
I was sitting visiting with a friend of mine on the couch, when one of my brothers friends stumbles over to us from where he has been having a small gathering of his own. She is the only girl present at the party and drunkenly explains her desire to commiserate with women over the way the boys have been treating her. There was some mansplaining involved.
I forget just what wandering turns the conversation took to get here, but at one point she misspoke, saying of her current boyfriend, "I'm his boyfriend!" She began to laugh at the mistake, and asked what would that even mean? I offered, without thinking, "Is that a way of calling yourself a fag hag?" My friend looked over at me in shock, and I blanched.
I hadn't meant to say it, and though I have often heard it used playfully rather than offensively in recent media attempts to be edgy, I immediately felt deep regret at using the offensive term. Which I then had to explain and define. And I could tell that not only she but the boy who wondered by to get another beer from the fridge and became embroiled in the conversation, had a temporary new favorite word.
I felt terrible. Not only did I introduce a concept that is patronizing and belittles a too common and painful part of the gay experience, I, as I mentioned to my friend, hate reminding this particular group of people that the word "faggot" exists - mostly for my inability to convince them not to use it casually.
It was a small moment, it was a little phrase that popped out without thinking in a conversation largely unremarkable. But I could see with uncommon clarity the disastrous ripples forming from that little stone.
A little reminder that our words have untold power, that they can start a great blaze. That it's a wonder how great a good and how terrible an evil they can seem to do on the same day - and even more remarkable, given that, how little we regulate what we do with our tongues.
Thursday, 7 March 2013
James 2
Thursday, March 7, 2013
James 2
A brief introduction to this book of the Bible described this epistle as one of the catholic epistles - meaning "universal" or to the whole church, as opposed to all of Paul's letters by place. But this chapter definitely feels like the Catholic one, because there's a pretty no-ambiguity, complete with "you ignoramus!" at opposition argument that faith without works is dead and thus we are not saved by faith alone.
Which reminds me of when my sister was counselor for a Protestant Christian summer camp. She described the way the religious lessons she was trained to teach would sometimes hit her with the example of a worksheet that had the question: How are we saved? There were three circles, one that said "Works Alone" one that said "Faith and Works" in the middle and then on the far side "Faith Alone". Erin said, and we agreed, that the obvious answer she assumed was "Faith and Works" whereas to the camp the obvious answer was "Faith Alone".
I suppose if you believe, as I do, that it's not our faith that saves us but God's faithfulness, His love, and His faith in us, if you believe that everyone is saved they just don't know it yet in some cases, then you can't fathom the point of religion if it is not to do good works. If it is to bring us comfort, then why does it challenge us? If it is to shame us, then why are we instructed to love unconditionally?
No, faith is to make us better people and bring us closer to God while we are on earth. Faith is for us to have a way of coming to grips with the awesome love of God that will make us try to improve the world around us. To make it more fit for His return, to make it more fit for the Holy Spirit that still abides here. To make it a place more fit for the love He showers on us.
James 2
A brief introduction to this book of the Bible described this epistle as one of the catholic epistles - meaning "universal" or to the whole church, as opposed to all of Paul's letters by place. But this chapter definitely feels like the Catholic one, because there's a pretty no-ambiguity, complete with "you ignoramus!" at opposition argument that faith without works is dead and thus we are not saved by faith alone.
Which reminds me of when my sister was counselor for a Protestant Christian summer camp. She described the way the religious lessons she was trained to teach would sometimes hit her with the example of a worksheet that had the question: How are we saved? There were three circles, one that said "Works Alone" one that said "Faith and Works" in the middle and then on the far side "Faith Alone". Erin said, and we agreed, that the obvious answer she assumed was "Faith and Works" whereas to the camp the obvious answer was "Faith Alone".
I suppose if you believe, as I do, that it's not our faith that saves us but God's faithfulness, His love, and His faith in us, if you believe that everyone is saved they just don't know it yet in some cases, then you can't fathom the point of religion if it is not to do good works. If it is to bring us comfort, then why does it challenge us? If it is to shame us, then why are we instructed to love unconditionally?
No, faith is to make us better people and bring us closer to God while we are on earth. Faith is for us to have a way of coming to grips with the awesome love of God that will make us try to improve the world around us. To make it more fit for His return, to make it more fit for the Holy Spirit that still abides here. To make it a place more fit for the love He showers on us.
"18 Show me your faith without works, and I will show you the faith that underlies my works!"It's related to C.S. Lewis's elegant solution to the problem of good people of different faiths - that it is impossible to do good without God's spirit being underneath it. That doing good is faith in action even if that is not what you call it. When there is good done in the world, there is always God behind it. There is always faith at its heart.
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
James I
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
James 1
I chose the letter of James because I am not ready to delve into the letter of Paul, and I suppose it is high time I read the epistles properly.
I really like the first chapter of James, for all he seems to be trying to say everything at once before his audience loses attention. But the end of the chapter has the best point:
The idea that listening to God's word but then not putting it into practice is forgetting who we are. It's not just laziness or hypocrisy - or perhaps it's the very essence of hypocrisy. What is hypocrisy but being completely unaware of who you really are? Of how what you say and what you do are in conflict? Of not understanding that you are hating yourself? Forgetting your own face that you see in the mirror every day.
James makes the point that we should act on the word first by helping the widows and orphans and second by keeping ourselves unstained by the world. And I can't help thinking how much modern religious hypocrisy comes from putting the "unstained" focus ahead of the charitable one. Of worrying about keeping yourself clean at the expense of helping someone out of a messy situation.
But I think the real problem is the first one. Of not being able to remember your own face.
Of forgetting we are a beloved child of God and His images in this world. That is what we should see in the mirror - a child of God and His representative on earth. That is what we forget if we look away too long. If we only listen and do not do.
James 1
I chose the letter of James because I am not ready to delve into the letter of Paul, and I suppose it is high time I read the epistles properly.
I really like the first chapter of James, for all he seems to be trying to say everything at once before his audience loses attention. But the end of the chapter has the best point:
22 Act on this word. If all you do is listen to it, you are deceiving yourselves. 23 A man who listens to God's word but does not put it into practice is like a man who looks into a mirror at the face he was born with: 24 he looks at himself, and then goes off and forgets what he looked like.There's something so...powerful about that metaphor.
The idea that listening to God's word but then not putting it into practice is forgetting who we are. It's not just laziness or hypocrisy - or perhaps it's the very essence of hypocrisy. What is hypocrisy but being completely unaware of who you really are? Of how what you say and what you do are in conflict? Of not understanding that you are hating yourself? Forgetting your own face that you see in the mirror every day.
James makes the point that we should act on the word first by helping the widows and orphans and second by keeping ourselves unstained by the world. And I can't help thinking how much modern religious hypocrisy comes from putting the "unstained" focus ahead of the charitable one. Of worrying about keeping yourself clean at the expense of helping someone out of a messy situation.
But I think the real problem is the first one. Of not being able to remember your own face.
Of forgetting we are a beloved child of God and His images in this world. That is what we should see in the mirror - a child of God and His representative on earth. That is what we forget if we look away too long. If we only listen and do not do.
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
John 21
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
John 21
The conclusion of the Gospel of John - has it really been three weeks? I will have to choose a new book of the Bible tomorrow.
Two things really struck me in this final chapter. The first is the simpler one, so I will begin there. I love that Peter went fishing. I love that after all the wonders and the doubting of Thomas and the putting of hands in the nails, Peter looked about the room and said, "Well, I guess I'll go back to my old job."
Or he thought it would give him some kind of peace and clarity to go about the familiar work he had done so long without Jesus. The way that we must all, even knowing our loved ones are dead but not gone, find ways to live our lives without them in it. I'm not surprised Peter turned to the work he had done before he met Jesus. And I'm not surprised Jesus had to gently call him once again.
And then, with the three questions, Jesus makes sure that Peter understands what he is to do now. Because Peter seemed so lost for the next step, because he thought of moving backwards, Jesus appears to recreate his initial call to ministry and then to explain gently what Peter must do.
It's kind and gentle and oh so very real.
And perhaps I should end there, with that lovely little reflection.
But it does amuse me tonight, the way it has always puzzled me before, that John refers to himself in his gospel as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I wonder if that's how they all felt - that they were the slightly special one or that they were the one whom Jesus just loved. That the reason they were there in what they had all at one point assumed was a conspiracy to topple Rome was just that the great leader loved them and wanted them at His side.
I wonder if He made them all feel that way, if they all thought of themselves either proudly or humbly as the one that Jesus loved.
I know He makes me feel that way.
John 21
The conclusion of the Gospel of John - has it really been three weeks? I will have to choose a new book of the Bible tomorrow.
Two things really struck me in this final chapter. The first is the simpler one, so I will begin there. I love that Peter went fishing. I love that after all the wonders and the doubting of Thomas and the putting of hands in the nails, Peter looked about the room and said, "Well, I guess I'll go back to my old job."
Or he thought it would give him some kind of peace and clarity to go about the familiar work he had done so long without Jesus. The way that we must all, even knowing our loved ones are dead but not gone, find ways to live our lives without them in it. I'm not surprised Peter turned to the work he had done before he met Jesus. And I'm not surprised Jesus had to gently call him once again.
And then, with the three questions, Jesus makes sure that Peter understands what he is to do now. Because Peter seemed so lost for the next step, because he thought of moving backwards, Jesus appears to recreate his initial call to ministry and then to explain gently what Peter must do.
It's kind and gentle and oh so very real.
And perhaps I should end there, with that lovely little reflection.
But it does amuse me tonight, the way it has always puzzled me before, that John refers to himself in his gospel as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I wonder if that's how they all felt - that they were the slightly special one or that they were the one whom Jesus just loved. That the reason they were there in what they had all at one point assumed was a conspiracy to topple Rome was just that the great leader loved them and wanted them at His side.
I wonder if He made them all feel that way, if they all thought of themselves either proudly or humbly as the one that Jesus loved.
I know He makes me feel that way.
Monday, 4 March 2013
John 20
Monday, March 4, 2013
John 20
This is the simplest telling of the resurrection story that I remember reading. Perhaps I'm just more used to conflated versions.
We start with Mary Magdalene telling the boys that the body is gone (no angels rebuking them for even looking) then them coming to see for themselves and going away even more downhearted. And then Mary Magdalene, who is still suffering, who must have depended on Jesus in ways that the boys (who never had seven demons in them) cannot really imagine, just stays there crying until Jesus appears to her.
And I wonder if that was part of the official plan or if Jesus took pity on her. I wonder if this was a moment that lets us know that even the resurrected Jesus is still very human. Capable of the closest thing to improvisation an omniscient God can ever reach. Who saw his friend suffering and appeared early.
After all, why does He tell Mary not to touch Him when, later in the same chapter, Thomas is permitted to check his nail marks?
Doubting Thomas, I've always felt, gets rather a bad rap. I always felt for him. Of course he thinks they've all gone a bit mad!
But then I remembered all the wonders they have seen. How Jesus has brought at least two separate people back from the dead. Even with all that they went through in the last few days, even with the sudden change in what they thought Jesus was here to do, surely Thomas should have at least heard them out. But perhaps no one had ever said to him, in plain terms, just what he was being asked to believe before.
I notice that's a Fundamentalist Atheist tactic - saying your sacred story back to you in reductive, simplistic terms. It's a weapon that's never worked very well on me because I kind of love that about religion - that it is the absurd made holy, that it is the thing that is true despite sense and reason and all the things that are supposed to govern our lives. It is the thing that is other and More than all those things, so of course it seems ridiculous when you try to explain using the words for things that aren't More.
Or was it more about a more ordinary and less evangelical kind of skepticism? Less "that grilled cheese looks like Jesus" and more "but if this is real guys, why isn't He here now? Doesn't it sound odd that He's only here when only you guys are here? When only you, who have been cooped up alone together in this room and not eating well and scared out of your minds, are the only ones here? That Mary Magdalene only saw Him when she was having a major breakdown? None of those things raise a red flag?" It's at least more honest and fair. It's the kind of skepticism that is happy to accept the nail holes in Jesus's hands when they stand before Thomas. It's the kind of skepticism that just doesn't want to pour energy down the wrong well.
But how much more glorious is it to believe. How much more productive is it to believe and build rather than find reasons not to believe? I think that's what Jesus means by blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. Blessed are those who don't need to examine every possible miracle. How much more full of wonder are those who don't feel the need to make CERTAIN before letting religion or miracles or even simple pure motivations for good works enrich their lives.
Skeptics...I feel for skeptics, as I understand their language about many more mundane things. But how blessed are those who can hear of wonders and just...believe. Not look for reasons why the world is not that wonderful and fantastic. Just believe.
John 20
This is the simplest telling of the resurrection story that I remember reading. Perhaps I'm just more used to conflated versions.
We start with Mary Magdalene telling the boys that the body is gone (no angels rebuking them for even looking) then them coming to see for themselves and going away even more downhearted. And then Mary Magdalene, who is still suffering, who must have depended on Jesus in ways that the boys (who never had seven demons in them) cannot really imagine, just stays there crying until Jesus appears to her.
And I wonder if that was part of the official plan or if Jesus took pity on her. I wonder if this was a moment that lets us know that even the resurrected Jesus is still very human. Capable of the closest thing to improvisation an omniscient God can ever reach. Who saw his friend suffering and appeared early.
After all, why does He tell Mary not to touch Him when, later in the same chapter, Thomas is permitted to check his nail marks?
Doubting Thomas, I've always felt, gets rather a bad rap. I always felt for him. Of course he thinks they've all gone a bit mad!
But then I remembered all the wonders they have seen. How Jesus has brought at least two separate people back from the dead. Even with all that they went through in the last few days, even with the sudden change in what they thought Jesus was here to do, surely Thomas should have at least heard them out. But perhaps no one had ever said to him, in plain terms, just what he was being asked to believe before.
I notice that's a Fundamentalist Atheist tactic - saying your sacred story back to you in reductive, simplistic terms. It's a weapon that's never worked very well on me because I kind of love that about religion - that it is the absurd made holy, that it is the thing that is true despite sense and reason and all the things that are supposed to govern our lives. It is the thing that is other and More than all those things, so of course it seems ridiculous when you try to explain using the words for things that aren't More.
Or was it more about a more ordinary and less evangelical kind of skepticism? Less "that grilled cheese looks like Jesus" and more "but if this is real guys, why isn't He here now? Doesn't it sound odd that He's only here when only you guys are here? When only you, who have been cooped up alone together in this room and not eating well and scared out of your minds, are the only ones here? That Mary Magdalene only saw Him when she was having a major breakdown? None of those things raise a red flag?" It's at least more honest and fair. It's the kind of skepticism that is happy to accept the nail holes in Jesus's hands when they stand before Thomas. It's the kind of skepticism that just doesn't want to pour energy down the wrong well.
But how much more glorious is it to believe. How much more productive is it to believe and build rather than find reasons not to believe? I think that's what Jesus means by blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. Blessed are those who don't need to examine every possible miracle. How much more full of wonder are those who don't feel the need to make CERTAIN before letting religion or miracles or even simple pure motivations for good works enrich their lives.
Skeptics...I feel for skeptics, as I understand their language about many more mundane things. But how blessed are those who can hear of wonders and just...believe. Not look for reasons why the world is not that wonderful and fantastic. Just believe.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
John 19
Sunday, March 3, 2013
John 19
Reading the story of Pilate today, I am reminded of what I believe was a made for TV movie version of the Passion story that showed a conversation early in the Passover week between the Chief Priest and Pilate where they tried to play political games with each other for awhile then agreed that if Jesus was brought to Pilate, then the governor would take care of it. Pilate's colleague gave him a slow clap once the Chief Priest had left for making the Chief Priest believe that it was Pilate doing the favor for him.
I always wish I had watched the rest of it to see if the movie played what happened with Pilate later as Pilate being so moved by Jesus that he almost breaks this deal.
Because I've always heard the Pilate part of the story as Pilate being moved by Jesus, really wanting to let Jesus go, really believing but washing his hands of the whole mess because he dare not actually stick his neck out. That's what I've always heard as the take-away moral of Pilate's story.
But I can't help noticing today how brilliantly this all works out, politically, for Pilate - or, at least, how it looks like it will turn out in the moment. The Jewish people - the people so famously stubborn the Roman Empire dare not challenge their protective and exclusive God, seriously think about that for a moment, the Roman Empire at (or near) its height - all cry out in one voice, "We have no king but Caesar."
And what does Pilate do (over the political objections of the Chief Priests)? He crucifies the man he explicitly labels as the King of the Jews. First he dresses Jesus up to look ridiculous, then he plays into the crowd, offering them this sham of a king. And they answer in anger that they prefer Rome's authority. That they already have a King - the distant Caesar to whom they have always struggled and resisted and threatened to call on their powerful Protector who nearly flattened Egypt. And then the governor, representative of Rome, hangs their king on the cross, a label over his head declaring his royalty and the rival power Jesus represents to Rome.
Wow. Good day for Pilate. Until Christianity nearly tramples Rome in the dust, of course.
But there's something about petty politics being involved in all of this (I suppose not entirely petty but you take my meaning). These days I often want to be upset about people's pain being exploited for political means, and of course that's nothing new, but there's something so moving today about the fact that even Jesus was temporarily caught up in politics not really about Him at all.
And that He transcended the attempts of Pilate and the Chief Priests to use Him into something they could never have imagined.
John 19
Reading the story of Pilate today, I am reminded of what I believe was a made for TV movie version of the Passion story that showed a conversation early in the Passover week between the Chief Priest and Pilate where they tried to play political games with each other for awhile then agreed that if Jesus was brought to Pilate, then the governor would take care of it. Pilate's colleague gave him a slow clap once the Chief Priest had left for making the Chief Priest believe that it was Pilate doing the favor for him.
I always wish I had watched the rest of it to see if the movie played what happened with Pilate later as Pilate being so moved by Jesus that he almost breaks this deal.
Because I've always heard the Pilate part of the story as Pilate being moved by Jesus, really wanting to let Jesus go, really believing but washing his hands of the whole mess because he dare not actually stick his neck out. That's what I've always heard as the take-away moral of Pilate's story.
But I can't help noticing today how brilliantly this all works out, politically, for Pilate - or, at least, how it looks like it will turn out in the moment. The Jewish people - the people so famously stubborn the Roman Empire dare not challenge their protective and exclusive God, seriously think about that for a moment, the Roman Empire at (or near) its height - all cry out in one voice, "We have no king but Caesar."
And what does Pilate do (over the political objections of the Chief Priests)? He crucifies the man he explicitly labels as the King of the Jews. First he dresses Jesus up to look ridiculous, then he plays into the crowd, offering them this sham of a king. And they answer in anger that they prefer Rome's authority. That they already have a King - the distant Caesar to whom they have always struggled and resisted and threatened to call on their powerful Protector who nearly flattened Egypt. And then the governor, representative of Rome, hangs their king on the cross, a label over his head declaring his royalty and the rival power Jesus represents to Rome.
Wow. Good day for Pilate. Until Christianity nearly tramples Rome in the dust, of course.
But there's something about petty politics being involved in all of this (I suppose not entirely petty but you take my meaning). These days I often want to be upset about people's pain being exploited for political means, and of course that's nothing new, but there's something so moving today about the fact that even Jesus was temporarily caught up in politics not really about Him at all.
And that He transcended the attempts of Pilate and the Chief Priests to use Him into something they could never have imagined.
Saturday, 2 March 2013
John 18
Saturday, March 2, 2013
John 18
We don't really get an Agony in the Garden here, and it's much more minimally about Judas's betrayal. This chapter is about Peter's reaction.
And I must say that the sequence of events puts his three denials into an interesting light. Jesus spends that night oscillating between saying that soon they will all be scattered and abandon Him and saying that soon they will understand or even do now understand His message and soon the Paraclete will come.
Then they arrive in the Garden and Jesus repeatedly gives Himself up, but they hesitate to arrest Him. Either because they think it a trap or because (as His apostles must think) He is going to pull another "which among you" moment like when He walked through the crowd that was going to stone Him. When things get serious, Peter draws his sword to defend Jesus - perhaps even because of Jesus telling him he will betray Jesus before the night is out.
But it also suggests that Peter is still of the "Let's defeat Rome, Messiah!" camp even at this late date.
So Peter cuts off a servant's ear to prove his devotion to Jesus, and Jesus rebukes him for missing the point. And then Jesus is taken into custody. Not only does the Messiah not rise in necessary violence, but the teacher who challenged the establishment seems to give in to their authority and bow to their kangaroo court.
I wonder if Peter answers no, at least one of the times, because he feels like he's not anymore. Or perhaps that he never really was. I wonder if he feels betrayed by how this is all ending up playing out. I wonder if he is there at the high priest's watching where the others are not because he keeps hoping that Jesus is going to change the script. He's going to do some wonder or at least baffle them with His words as He has always done before. But Jesus refuses to answer - seriously, He's being something of a smart mouth. You've got to love how human Jesus is in this chapter leading up to when He shows just how human He really is.
I wonder if Peter felt like he was the one betrayed. I wonder if he felt betrayed and like he did not know how to follow Jesus anymore but he still couldn't leave Jesus. After all, where would he go? Jesus has the words of everlasting life.
And perhaps that's when we all feel like Peter. I remember when I prayed for my father to miraculously recover. And I remember how afraid I was to pray for it. And I remember how it felt to have the prayer unanswered, and how ridiculous any assertion that it was God's plan felt considering how much true good my father did on a daily basis. I remember feeling betrayed - like God had broken a promise that I knew He never made. Like Jesus broke a promise He never made to Peter to be the kind of Messiah they had all been expecting.
But, if we are lucky, we remember - where else shall we go? Jesus is the one with the words of everlasting life. There is hope and comfort and love and faith there, even when the promises God never made are not kept.
John 18
We don't really get an Agony in the Garden here, and it's much more minimally about Judas's betrayal. This chapter is about Peter's reaction.
And I must say that the sequence of events puts his three denials into an interesting light. Jesus spends that night oscillating between saying that soon they will all be scattered and abandon Him and saying that soon they will understand or even do now understand His message and soon the Paraclete will come.
Then they arrive in the Garden and Jesus repeatedly gives Himself up, but they hesitate to arrest Him. Either because they think it a trap or because (as His apostles must think) He is going to pull another "which among you" moment like when He walked through the crowd that was going to stone Him. When things get serious, Peter draws his sword to defend Jesus - perhaps even because of Jesus telling him he will betray Jesus before the night is out.
But it also suggests that Peter is still of the "Let's defeat Rome, Messiah!" camp even at this late date.
So Peter cuts off a servant's ear to prove his devotion to Jesus, and Jesus rebukes him for missing the point. And then Jesus is taken into custody. Not only does the Messiah not rise in necessary violence, but the teacher who challenged the establishment seems to give in to their authority and bow to their kangaroo court.
I wonder if Peter answers no, at least one of the times, because he feels like he's not anymore. Or perhaps that he never really was. I wonder if he feels betrayed by how this is all ending up playing out. I wonder if he is there at the high priest's watching where the others are not because he keeps hoping that Jesus is going to change the script. He's going to do some wonder or at least baffle them with His words as He has always done before. But Jesus refuses to answer - seriously, He's being something of a smart mouth. You've got to love how human Jesus is in this chapter leading up to when He shows just how human He really is.
I wonder if Peter felt like he was the one betrayed. I wonder if he felt betrayed and like he did not know how to follow Jesus anymore but he still couldn't leave Jesus. After all, where would he go? Jesus has the words of everlasting life.
And perhaps that's when we all feel like Peter. I remember when I prayed for my father to miraculously recover. And I remember how afraid I was to pray for it. And I remember how it felt to have the prayer unanswered, and how ridiculous any assertion that it was God's plan felt considering how much true good my father did on a daily basis. I remember feeling betrayed - like God had broken a promise that I knew He never made. Like Jesus broke a promise He never made to Peter to be the kind of Messiah they had all been expecting.
But, if we are lucky, we remember - where else shall we go? Jesus is the one with the words of everlasting life. There is hope and comfort and love and faith there, even when the promises God never made are not kept.
Friday, 1 March 2013
John 17
Friday, March 1, 2013
John 17
This is another place where I hope I am not missing the real point, but this chapter as a whole really reads to me like an affirmation of the Gospel of Inclusion - for which I am always so grateful when I stumble upon it.
Jesus speaks in such present tense about knowing the Father through Him, about being with the Father now, about none of us belonging in this world.
I think that's what is so easy to forget. Because this world God gave us is amazing - seriously awesome. Just look at some of the space photographs or listen to a WNYC Radiolab podcast. This world is awesome. I've always wanted to be a mathematician or physicist and spend my life studying the translation we're attempting of the Word that made and is everything. Oh the numbers, how beautiful and inadequate they are!
But we are not meant for this world. We are not of it. We belong somewhere else.
One of my favorite songs is from the Muppet Movie "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" which is about, among other things, a home none of us really remember but will someday reach. We all know the feeling of longing for that place. Best stanza, by the way:
It's a deep longing, but I think we forget it. Or we spend our lives looking for it on earth. We call it soulmates or a true home or finding ourselves. We're looking for our heavenly home here. That place where we will be whole and made anew and better and get to be the good version of ourselves all the time - to rest and love and be and do. That's not in this world.
We are not of this world. So we should stop looking for ourselves or our home or our perfect whatever and start getting out hands dirty to make this world better while we're here. Because we are only visiting - and when you're visiting, you try to leave everything just a little better than you found it.
John 17
This is another place where I hope I am not missing the real point, but this chapter as a whole really reads to me like an affirmation of the Gospel of Inclusion - for which I am always so grateful when I stumble upon it.
Jesus speaks in such present tense about knowing the Father through Him, about being with the Father now, about none of us belonging in this world.
I think that's what is so easy to forget. Because this world God gave us is amazing - seriously awesome. Just look at some of the space photographs or listen to a WNYC Radiolab podcast. This world is awesome. I've always wanted to be a mathematician or physicist and spend my life studying the translation we're attempting of the Word that made and is everything. Oh the numbers, how beautiful and inadequate they are!
But we are not meant for this world. We are not of it. We belong somewhere else.
One of my favorite songs is from the Muppet Movie "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" which is about, among other things, a home none of us really remember but will someday reach. We all know the feeling of longing for that place. Best stanza, by the way:
There's not a word yet for old friends who just me
Part heaven, part space, or have I found my place?
You can just visit, but I plan to stay
I'm going to go back there someday
It's a deep longing, but I think we forget it. Or we spend our lives looking for it on earth. We call it soulmates or a true home or finding ourselves. We're looking for our heavenly home here. That place where we will be whole and made anew and better and get to be the good version of ourselves all the time - to rest and love and be and do. That's not in this world.
We are not of this world. So we should stop looking for ourselves or our home or our perfect whatever and start getting out hands dirty to make this world better while we're here. Because we are only visiting - and when you're visiting, you try to leave everything just a little better than you found it.
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