Haiti Update

A strong aftershock measure 6.1 on the Richter scale hit Haiti this morning, adding to the misery there. If you are still looking for a way to help, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) has already be sending in funds to mission partners on the ground in Haiti. Learn more about PDA's response and donate online at http://www.pcusa.org/pda/

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

Exploring in my grandmother's attic, I once came across some school work done by my father in the late 1940s. The lesson was from a Bible class (they used to have those in public school), and it covered the Noah story in Genesis. I was startled when I saw what the lesson taught, even though I was born in the still segregated South. The lesson explained that Ham, one of Noah's three sons, was the forerunner of dark skinned people who were forever to be subservient to whites because of the curse found in today's lectionary story.

Considering that there is no mention of race or color, it seems quite a stretch to use this story to justify the treatment of African Americans. And I suppose that should stand as a stark warning about how easy it is for those in power to use the Bible to justify the status quo.

It seems to me that the Noah stories come in for a lot of misuse and misunderstanding. Because of the ark and the animals, people think of them as children's stories. But in truth the Noah stories wrestle with a huge theological question. How will God deal with a Creation that has gone horribly awry. While on the surface the answer might seem to be, "Clean house and start over again," that is not the case. The story is quite clear that this does not happen. The "inclination of the human heart" is not improved at all by the flood, and today's story shows a drunk Noah and a dysfunctional family where relatives end up slaves to relatives. It isn't exactly clear what Ham does that is so bad in the story. (There is some heavy duty sexual innuendo here.) But if Noah and his family were the new start that was supposed to put humanity back on the right track, things have gone to pot almost instantly.

Clearly things are no better off after Noah's flood than they were before. The only thing that really happens in these stories happens with God. God makes a covenant with Creation and humanity. Despite humanity's horrible failings God will not abandon us. The only thing fixed by the Noah event is the elimination of the destroy-and-start-over option. God commits to us, with all our brokenness and sinfulness. Sometimes, when I look at all the horrors that we humans can do -- even the terrible tragedy in Haiti was largely the result of government turning a blind eye to shoddy construction -- it seems like we humans are a hopeless case. But even when we give up on ourselves, God has decided to stick with us. And I guess that is pretty good news.

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Sunday Sermon - "Gifted"

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

I used Psalm 146 for the devotion in our staff meeting this morning. We did a form of lectio divina, listening for something in the text to speak to us or grab us, and then seeking to understand why. I and one other person found ourselves drawn to the phrase, "plans perish," which was rather striking when you consider that we were in a staff meeting to make plans.

The psalm speaks of not putting our trust in human rulers whose plans disappear the moment they die. Only God is permanent, eternal. But don't we still have to make plans?

Two thoughts came to me regarding this. The first is how we should strive to connect with God's plans. Too often in churches, plans reflect the personalities and preferences of those doing the planning more than they do what God would want. How do we let God direct our plans?

The second is to accept the fragile and temporary nature of our plans. Because we associate what we do at church with God, we sometimes act as though our worship style, our structures, or our ministries are permanent and eternal expressions of how things should be. And how we've always done it becomes an idol that we serve.

God, what plans are you calling us to make? And what old plans should we let die?

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Sunday Sermon - "Gifted"

Some school children get labeled "gifted." While all are gifted in some way, we value some gifts more than others. We label as gifted those with certain gifts. Sometimes we even think that those with the "better" gifts are better individuals. The Apostle Paul thinks otherwise.

Jan. 17 sermon.mp3

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

This is only vaguely about today's lectionary verses. None of them seemed all that well suited to what many are thinking about this day, the terrible suffering in Haiti. The gospel reading does speak of those first folks who responded when Jesus said, "Follow me." And I imagine that a lot of Christians, and non Christians, are wondering just what following Jesus means right now.

Pat Robertson apparently thinks it means pronouncing blame. He flatly stated that the devastating earthquake occurred because the Haitians made a deal with the devil centuries ago in order to throw off their French masters. Thus they are under a curse. How the apparently demented Robertson knows about this "deal," I have no idea. But his callous lunacy emerges from a question that many are asking. Where is God in this?

Sometimes people of faith seem extremely worried about protecting God's reputation, and the two easiest outs available are (1) blame the victim or (2) insulate God. Robertson finds it amazingly easy to do the former. Others take the tack of moving God far enough offstage so as not to incur any divine culpability. It was only natural forces at work. And yet such forces are presumably from the creative hand of God, and surely God could have intervened if God wanted to do so. And so at the very least, God has chosen not to help.

For me, a more faithful response is to stop making excuses for God and acknowledge that we often do not and cannot know the mind of God. Sometimes the only answer available to us is the one given to Job. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth..." And sometimes the best we can do when we encounter terrible suffering is to stop trying to determine cause and start trying to help. Jesus says this in so many words when he is asked about whose sin caused a man to be born blind. Jesus says no sin caused the tragedy, but that it exists as an opportunity to reveal God's works.

Perhaps that is the best Christians can do in the face of the suffering we see on our televisions today. Let followers of Jesus simply do what he did when he encountered pain and suffering. He reached out to heal and to make whole. There isn't a soul reading this who cannot do so in some small way.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

If you were asked to come up with an image to represent power and strength, what would it be? I guessing that it would likely not be a lamb. Popular images of strength and power when I was growing up included John Wayne, Superman, and any number of cowboy and military heroes. Not a lamb among them.

John's gospel presents Jesus very differently than in the other gospels. Jesus is always in control. Jesus never prays to be spared from the cross in John. Instead, the cross is portrayed as his exaltation. And John narrates Jesus' trial before Pilate in such a way that Jesus is much more in control than Pilate. Pilate is driven about by forces beyond his control while Jesus oversees the event.

And yet, one of John's primary images for Jesus is "the Lamb of God," a lamb who is slain along with the other Passover lambs. Strange that the gospel which depicts Jesus as the least human looking and the most god like would choose such an image. Perhaps this should challenge me to reexamine my own notions of power and strength.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

Psalm 42 repeats this phrase twice. This is a prayer that longs for God's presence, the cry of one who has known God's blessings, but feels far from God now. It is an internal dialogue that calls the self to remember.

It is interesting how there are times in my life when God is so real to me, so present to me, that I have altered plans and headed my life in a new direction, sure that God was calling me there. But then there are times when that seems a distant memory, when life's experiences almost seem to taunt me in the manner of the psalmist's opponents who say, "Where is your God?"

Strange how easily time can rob a profound faith experience of its substance, how it can seem unreal, like a dream. Surely a part of faith is about a good memory that can say to oneself, "Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in the Lord, my help and my God."

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Sunday Sermon - "Solidarity, Identity, and Call"

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

Today's Genesis reading is the second of two creation stories in that book. This is the so-called "Adam and Eve" story, a story with very different points to make than the earlier seven day account of creation. A saw a quote recently that said this reading contains the first thing in God's cosmos that is "not good." You may recall that everything in the seven day account was declared "good" or "very good" by God. But in our reading today, after the man has been created, God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner."

It's worth noting that some folks have used this verse to argue for a subservient role for women, but the word translated "helper" is normally used to speak of God in the Old Testament, and I've never heard anyone claim that this means God exists to serve us.

God thinks we need to be in relationship, that our nature requires community. That's not all that stunning. Humans are clearly social creatures, although we sometimes seem to pay much more attention to career, success, etc. than we do to relationships.

God also seems to think that we need help. I think we resist this one even more. We like to think of ourselves as independent and self-sufficient. We like to do it on our own. The movie "Invictus" has called to attention the Henley poem I had to memorize in the eighth grade. It ends with the lines, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."

The words may be stirring and they may have helped Nelson Mandela withstand 27 years in prison, but they are fundamentally untrue. Our fates are inextricably linked to others, no matter how great or heroic our achievements.

I think one of the hardest things for me to do is to ask for help, especially to ask for help in an area where I think I should be fully competent. It's as though I think such help would point to a personal failing on my part.

We Presbyterians are Calvinists, and Calvin said that the human tendency to idolatry was at the very core of humanity's sorry state. We think ourselves masters when we were created to be servants. We imagine ourselves sovereign when we all need to be rescued, to be saved.

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Sunday Sermon - "Solidarity, Identity, and Call"

Like Cecilia in The Patron Saint of Liars, we sometimes want to think that we are not one of "them." But in his baptism, Jesus aligns himself with sinful humanity, says that he is one of "us."

Jan. 10 sermon.mp3

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

"We will not fear." So says Psalm 46, but I and a lot of other folks have trouble living this. The mountains might not be shaking or the waters roaring, but there's the economy and ever present fears of terrorism. Not to mention politicians and commentators on TV screaming for us to be afraid.

The Bible may insist that God is in charge of history, that even those forces that seem to be opposed to God are actually, in some mysterious way, moving things toward God's purposes. But it can be difficult to see that. Perhaps God is in charge of my spiritual well being. Perhaps God can safeguard my soul, but God seems pretty far removed from stock market tumbles that affect my retirement account, from political rancor that polarizes and paralyzes, from rogue nations bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

As human knowledge has advanced over the years, the things we attribute to supernatural causes have steadily diminished so that God is directly in charge of less and less. And we sometimes seem to think that God can only be in charge of those things that we don't understand how they work. That makes it pretty hard to trust that God is our refuge, that we will not fear no matter how messed up the world might seem.

I suppose it's a good thing that God's faithfulness is not dependent on our trusting God. God's love for us simply is. 1 John says that we are able to love only because God first loved us. It also says "perfect love casts out fear." Hmmm. There seems to be an awful lot of hate, anger, yelling, and screaming in our culture. Is this because we're afraid, or is it actually creating more fear. If love casts our fear does hate add to it?

What if loving our neighbors, even loving our enemies, is less an ethical command and more a statement of faith, something we can do only if God's love transforms us, becomes so much our refuge and strength that we are no longer afraid.

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