The Unvarnished Jesus
Text: Mark 8:27-38
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
September 13, 2009
One of the ways we preserve wood an make it look better is to put varnish on it. And when it starts to look a little worn, we varnish it again. And then again. And then again. After a while, the wood is covered with varnish and we discover that we can no longer make out very much about what the wood is supposed to look like. And so we strip the wood to see what we were working with in the first place.
Jesus often gets varnished. This is not devious or evil, or deceptive. It’s just that, sometimes we like to put some varnish on Jesus to make Jesus a bit more appealing than the Gospels portray him.
Jesus is always kind and loving and gentle and wonderful in music, testimony, and sermons. Jesus is portrayed in a variety of ways in film and is usually always a picture of calm in the midst of chaos swirling around him. Popular portrayals of Jesus in the movies often makes it appear as if Jesus is just this smiling guy doing nice things for people.
The Gospels portrait of Jesus is a more unvarnished Jesus, however. Jesus isn’t always a very easy character in the Gospels. He is not always gentle, does not always appear to be very kind and nice. Mark’s portrait of Jesus here is actually rather interesting and not all together particularly delightful in this passage.
Jesus asks who people say that he is and Peter gives the right answer. The Messiah. Jesus goes on to speak about suffering, sacrifice, and rejection and Peter rebukes Jesus. Take note of this. Peter rebukes Jesus. This is not the typical thing we see, Peter rebuking Jesus.
We begin, however, to have an unvarnished look at Jesus and the first thing we take note of is Jesus’ honesty.
Jesus was totally honest.
We all profess that we want honesty. We demand honesty. If asked, most of us would say that we want one hundred percent honesty one hundred percent of the time. We all say it, but I am not sure we always mean it.
The other night the President gave a speech. I suspect many of us watched it with varying opinions that are not relevant to this sermon.
After the speech, I suspect, most of us listened to commentary from people we like explaining to us what we heard. Many used the fine art of ‘spin,’ spin we perhaps adapted.
‘Spin,’ is taking a piece of truth and adjusting it to a different perspective. It changes the facts a bit, and is, by its very nature, not truthful. But we love ‘spin,’ and listen to it and accept it despite the fact that it’s often not truthful.
We also have other issues with truth. Ponder these expressions.
We say that people lack tact.
We say that people lack diplomacy.
Generally, when we say these things we are saying that these people are too blunt or too honest for our tastes.
When I was growing up we moved and lived in an apartment while our house was being built. Our next door neighbors were really nice people and the woman loved to cook and was a wonderful cook and said that she loved to share food with her neighbors.
Her husband was a really skinny guy and that should have served as a warning to us...
She did cook and she did like to share food with us. She often time made and sent over dishes to our family. Some of them were okay, but some of her dishes were pretty awful. One night she made something and it was dreadful. The dog wouldn’t even eat it. If you’ve ever had a dog and the dog refused the food, you know how bad that food is.
After we disposed to the food and did the dishes, my Dad told me to take the dish next door and thank her for the delicious meal. I was about 12 and perplexed and told my Dad that telling her the food was delicious would be a lie. He said, “Well, it’s a good lie. Sometimes you have to use good lies to people.”
So I brought the dish over and lied through my teeth.
Here is the thing about Jesus, however. Jesus always told the truth. There was no tact, no diplomacy, no ‘good lies.’ He was flat out honest all the time. It made the apostles uncomfortable and drove the civil and religious authorities to want to kill him in the worst way.
To embrace Jesus is to embrace the honesty of Jesus and it’s not always easy to do that.
A second thing that stands out in this is this. Jesus delineates what discipleship is and is not. Jesus makes a point that discipleship is not about enhancing our lives in, in his words, “this adulterous and sinful generation.” Discipleship, Jesus is making a point, is not about personal gain, status, or anything else like that.
And here is where Peter enters the picture. Peter rebukes Jesus and Jesus rebukes Peter back. Often it seems like Peter does not understand what Jesus is saying. This is not the case. One of the great myths of the New Testament is that Peter was dumb and clueless and lacking in understanding to what Jesus is saying. But he is not dumb, he is not clueless, and the problem Peter has is that he does understand what Jesus is saying.
The theologian John Shea observes that people have a fantasy about Jesus and that Jesus spends a lot of time disappointing our fantasy by being real and unvarnished.
Peter, we have learned, was not a poor fisherman. He owned the boats. He was a smart and successful businessman and following Jesus was a position of status.
Jesus was a popular preacher and Peter liked to be standing right there, feeling the love of the crowd.
Jesus was a popular miracle worker and Peter liked to be standing right there, feeling the love.
Jesus was a celebrity and Peter was his close associate and friend. Peter thought of all the great things coming there way. Fame, fortune, status, and popularity were all there right in front of him.
And Jesus is talking about how faithfulness comes from sacrifice, suffering, and rejection. Jesus is not living up to Peter’s fantasy of what he wants Jesus to be.
Let’s be honest. We all have our fantasies of what Jesus will do for us.
Here is what I’d like from Jesus. An appearance on television stating that the United Church of Christ was the one true church and that people were going to hell unless they attended a United Church of Christ congregation and tithed.
I’d like Jesus to make it so that brussels sprouts were bad for you and chocolate chip cookies with milk were the healthiest things in the world to eat.
And, of course, I’d want Jesus to be a Giants’ fan....
Like most, I’d like Jesus to be a Messiah who fulfills what I want instead of having expectations of me.
But Jesus is not a Messiah who is here to fulfill our fantasies of how life can be great and what we can attain. Jesus instead speaks to us of service to God and to one another.
But there is one more thing.
This past Friday we recalled the 8th Anniversary of that terrible day, September 11th; a day that wounded our national psyche. The recent funeral of Ted Kennedy and the return to the grave of President John Kennedy reminded me of that day in Dallas, in 1963 as a day that wounded our national psyche. One event happened while I was an adult; the other as a child. I remember both vividly and both events cut into the heart of people in the nation in profound ways.
To me, part of the devastation of the tragedy of September 11th was that vivid reminder to us on how incredibly fragile human life is. People were speaking to loved ones on cell phones, and through the terrible all consuming fire and the collapse of the building, were never seen or heard of again. They were gone without a trace. So many people that day simply vanished never to be seen or heard from again.
These are events that remind us that there is more to life than what we see here around us. They remind us that there has to be one beyond our senses, a God who loves people and welcomes those, even gone from our sight, into another life with Him.
And it is this profound lesson, this profound truth, that Jesus is calling us to.
The unvarnished Jesus is not a Messiah of human fulfillment or status, or wealth or even popularity. The unvarnished Jesus is one who is totally honest in all things and who teaches us that discipleship is about sacrifice and service of others. It is not about us, but about others. It is not about us, it is about God. Ultimately the unvarnished Jesus reminds us that our hope is in what we might not really comprehend, but can only trust in God for our care.
The unvarnished Jesus is not always the Jesus we fantasize about; the unvarnished Jesus is the one, however, who is real and good and who provides us the hope we so need.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
I feel badly for Congressman Joe Wilson
I feel badly for Congressman Joe Wilson. Seriously. This is not a joke and I am not being sarcastic in the least.
It was obvious, in watching a short interview with him this morning that Mr. Wilson is very shaken up and obviously distressed at his outburst by saying, “You lie!,” during President Obama’s speech. It was a spontaneous outburst and an unfortunate outburst and, in so many ways and on so many levels, reflects the lack of courtesy we have for one another and, frankly, the lack of respect we have for the Office of the President, no matter who it happens to be.
In the midst of a week of swirling controversy, during a major speech on a controversial issue on which 1001 people have weighed in, and in the midst of rancor shared by people on every side of the debate, how can we be surprised that one person lost his cool at a bad moment.
Congressman Wilson was wrong to do so. People from both parties have said that from the start and he has apologized for his outburst. Here’s the thing. He is a frail human being caught up in human emotion like the rest of us. His outburst, to his dismay, was at a really bad and public time. Many of us have lost our cool and said dumb things in much safer and quieter settings them him. His outburst was both unfortunate and unlucky.
I hope that the health care debate, which I do believe is an important debate, does not hinge on his outburst. Actually, I hope that everyone learns that people’s tempers have blown out of proportion and that it is time for everyone to sit down, talk, and solve the problems like grownups. Often one person’s failure, even briefly, is a wake up call to everyone. But the debate should not hinge on one outburst----it just be taken for what it is. One man’s emotional mistake.
As for Congressman Joe Wilson. He has apologized in an appropriate manner. The White House accepted his apology in an appropriate manner. Everyone needs, from this point forward, to let the issue go and move on to more important concerns.
And finally, let’s stop piling hate on Congressman Joe Wilson. I doubt he slept last night and I strongly suspect he’s highly embarrassed. As a society, I’d say simply forgive him his ‘moment’ and allow him and everyone else to move on.
It was obvious, in watching a short interview with him this morning that Mr. Wilson is very shaken up and obviously distressed at his outburst by saying, “You lie!,” during President Obama’s speech. It was a spontaneous outburst and an unfortunate outburst and, in so many ways and on so many levels, reflects the lack of courtesy we have for one another and, frankly, the lack of respect we have for the Office of the President, no matter who it happens to be.
In the midst of a week of swirling controversy, during a major speech on a controversial issue on which 1001 people have weighed in, and in the midst of rancor shared by people on every side of the debate, how can we be surprised that one person lost his cool at a bad moment.
Congressman Wilson was wrong to do so. People from both parties have said that from the start and he has apologized for his outburst. Here’s the thing. He is a frail human being caught up in human emotion like the rest of us. His outburst, to his dismay, was at a really bad and public time. Many of us have lost our cool and said dumb things in much safer and quieter settings them him. His outburst was both unfortunate and unlucky.
I hope that the health care debate, which I do believe is an important debate, does not hinge on his outburst. Actually, I hope that everyone learns that people’s tempers have blown out of proportion and that it is time for everyone to sit down, talk, and solve the problems like grownups. Often one person’s failure, even briefly, is a wake up call to everyone. But the debate should not hinge on one outburst----it just be taken for what it is. One man’s emotional mistake.
As for Congressman Joe Wilson. He has apologized in an appropriate manner. The White House accepted his apology in an appropriate manner. Everyone needs, from this point forward, to let the issue go and move on to more important concerns.
And finally, let’s stop piling hate on Congressman Joe Wilson. I doubt he slept last night and I strongly suspect he’s highly embarrassed. As a society, I’d say simply forgive him his ‘moment’ and allow him and everyone else to move on.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Random Musings
Jon Gosselin thinks everyone hates him. I doubt it. People are just tired of him. If he goes away and we never have to hear from him again, that would be fine.
Oh, yes, and Kate. Don’t hate her either. But if she was off the national scene, that would be fine too.
The reality is that I think that most people are very weary of watching their never ending soap opera play out on television night after night.
Speaking of reality television: I do love the show Top Chef. Amazing. The things these people do never fails to amaze me. It’s a reminder that top flight chefs are truly artists in their own right. They are incredibly talented. When you eat the food of a top flight chef, you know it. Slam dunk.
I have lost all interest in Major League Baseball. I don’t even know who is in first place at the moment and I don’t care. Maybe it’s because the Mets are terrible or maybe I’m just tired of watching these overpaid prima donnas play night after night.
I am, however, still gung ho about the NFL season. The Giants played their 3rd string and hot dog vendors through most of the pre-season so it’s impossible to tell what they have going for them. I’m hoping a lot.
I suspect Raiders fans would like Al Davis to join Jon and Kate on a deserted island somewhere.
Is there a health care debate going on or competing commercial commentary. If there is a real debate, I seem to have missed it...
Emma Watson is finding it difficult ‘blending in’ at Brown University. Being a major movie star in what of the hottest series in movie history tends to have that effect. Speaking of this, the final Harry Potter book is brilliant. Brilliant. All the hype it received made it sure to not meet expectations and it surpassed them. I can’t wait for the movies on book 7.
I’m glad the President steered clear of politics in his speech to school children. I hope that the kids do stay in school, work hard, and realize that it’s on them----they are responsible for their own education. It is amazing when parents and students think teachers ‘fail’ them. Teachers don’t fail students; students fail the class. Frankly, most teachers live for students to take an interest in their subjects and do their studies, and learn. In the recent interview of our regional school’s theater directors, the passion of these teachers and their students was very evident and wonderful on so many levels. These teachers touched lives of young people and changed them. That’s something all good teachers strive for.
And lastly, a random comment. The metro Louisville area is a great area for restaurants. It truly is.
Oh, yes, and Kate. Don’t hate her either. But if she was off the national scene, that would be fine too.
The reality is that I think that most people are very weary of watching their never ending soap opera play out on television night after night.
Speaking of reality television: I do love the show Top Chef. Amazing. The things these people do never fails to amaze me. It’s a reminder that top flight chefs are truly artists in their own right. They are incredibly talented. When you eat the food of a top flight chef, you know it. Slam dunk.
I have lost all interest in Major League Baseball. I don’t even know who is in first place at the moment and I don’t care. Maybe it’s because the Mets are terrible or maybe I’m just tired of watching these overpaid prima donnas play night after night.
I am, however, still gung ho about the NFL season. The Giants played their 3rd string and hot dog vendors through most of the pre-season so it’s impossible to tell what they have going for them. I’m hoping a lot.
I suspect Raiders fans would like Al Davis to join Jon and Kate on a deserted island somewhere.
Is there a health care debate going on or competing commercial commentary. If there is a real debate, I seem to have missed it...
Emma Watson is finding it difficult ‘blending in’ at Brown University. Being a major movie star in what of the hottest series in movie history tends to have that effect. Speaking of this, the final Harry Potter book is brilliant. Brilliant. All the hype it received made it sure to not meet expectations and it surpassed them. I can’t wait for the movies on book 7.
I’m glad the President steered clear of politics in his speech to school children. I hope that the kids do stay in school, work hard, and realize that it’s on them----they are responsible for their own education. It is amazing when parents and students think teachers ‘fail’ them. Teachers don’t fail students; students fail the class. Frankly, most teachers live for students to take an interest in their subjects and do their studies, and learn. In the recent interview of our regional school’s theater directors, the passion of these teachers and their students was very evident and wonderful on so many levels. These teachers touched lives of young people and changed them. That’s something all good teachers strive for.
And lastly, a random comment. The metro Louisville area is a great area for restaurants. It truly is.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Sunday's Sermon---No Matter Who We Are...
No Matter Who We Are....
Text: James 2:1-17
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
September 6, 2009
No matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey, we are always welcome here. We always, of course, announce that in terms of ‘you,’ but it implies that all of us sitting here today are welcome here.
The Letter of James is a very brief letter in the New Testament placed between the Letter to the Hebrews, usually credited as being written by a follower of St. Paul, and 1 Peter that is often credited either to Peter or one of Peter’s close associates. We really do not know who wrote James other than what he called himself, that he was a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But he did write a letter and his letter is provocative.
It has been said, on more than one occasion, that the Letter of James contradicts the writings of St. Paul, and most especially when Paul speaks in Romans that we are not justified by our works and actions, but by our faith in God. James writes, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
It has also been said that Romans is a ‘Protestant’ letter because it speaks about faith and grace where as the Letter of James is a Roman Catholic letter because it speaks about works as Roman Catholic doctrine seems to lean in the direction of words and deeds we do to achieve salvation whereas Martin Luther indicated if is only an issue of faith. This denominational competition, however, is not particularly valid, however, as Romans is read and believed in Roman Catholic congregations and the Letter of James is read and believed in Protestant congregations.
The reality is that they do not contradict each other in the least.
Paul makes an argument that good works without faith are simply good works. It does not require an act of faith in God to be charitable to each other. There are many people who believe in the power of humanity alone who do good works. Their good deeds to not require faith. Paul’s argument is that just because a person does good things does not mean they are a person of faith. Without the faith, he argues, the person has nothing.
The words of James are not contrary to these, they merely take Paul’s words to the next level. The argument of James would be that if a person sincerely is a person of faith then they would do good deeds. A person of real faith would not sit idly by while there was suffering in the world. Simply put, Paul would say to us to make sure we talk the talk and James would remind us that while we are talking the talk, we also need to walk the walk. They go hand in hand.
But does not end there. James, in fact, is disconcertingly aggressive in making some points in this letter.
The first point is that God’s people the Christian Church, need to be radically inclusive. Words we say, No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here need not just be said, but be said and radically lived out. And he uses an uncomfortably stunning example.
Imagine, if you will, someone named Oprah moves her show to Louisville and builds a house in the Knobs and, because she has United Church of Christ background, visits St. Marks and is seriously interested in our church and is very up-front with discussing how she believes that tithing to one’s church is very important.
And that day a family who just moved into town, also with a United Church of Christ background, also very interested in our church, and who live in the projects and are happy to be a part of a church where they can go to the Soup Kitchen to eat and get clothing for their family from our Clothes Closet.
Who do we get excited about? Which one of these visitors is going to get a lot of energy from us to assure that everything in their experience at St. Marks is wonderful?
You know the answer. I know the answer. James knew the answer too. He would seem to indicate that we ought to be at least equal in our welcome to both, and if we were going to expend our best energy, give it to the impoverished family because they would need the church more. That is radical inclusion. And, if we say the words, No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here, we really need to mean them.
The second thing about this letter is that it is a lesson in imparting the Good News and the good feelings and hope to others, and not just think it’s about ourselves. Faith James is reminding us, is not for us to feel good, but it’s to make others feel good. The challenge, he seems to indicate, is getting the focus off of ourselves and our wants and needs, and focusing it upon other people.
Rob Bell is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church just outside of Grand Rapids. Several of our Sunday School classes, youth and adult, have used his Nooma video series on class. He’s an incredibly interesting man, to say the least.
He has this notion, a brilliant notion in my opinion, that says that God loves everyone so much that he welcomes them into church no matter how they are. But Bell goes on to say, “But God loves them too much to allow them to stay that way.” In short, God calls us into church to live lives of ongoing conversion and growth.
James, however, continues to not make this easy because he is speaking about mercy over judgment. He is reminding us that people break commandments all the time but are usually pretty good about proclaiming how good they are because while they did this sin they didn’t do the other.
God loves them too much to allow them to stay that way.
The first inclination we have, if we are remotely honest about what our first inclination is, is that we think about the people in our midst who we might not approve of for some reason and say, “That means they have to change.” But here is the brilliance of James’ letter. Whereas we live and serve for others, when it comes to conversion we focus not on others, but on ourselves. It is not up to any of us to indicate that anyone ought to change other than ourselves. As how we relate to others, James says it very clearly, mercy triumphs over judgment.
The Letter of James is short, but packs a potent punch of lesson to us. James reminds us that our welcome to others ought to be radically inclusive, and growth in faith begins in serving others while growing ourselves in the love of Christ and others.
Text: James 2:1-17
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
September 6, 2009
No matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey, we are always welcome here. We always, of course, announce that in terms of ‘you,’ but it implies that all of us sitting here today are welcome here.
The Letter of James is a very brief letter in the New Testament placed between the Letter to the Hebrews, usually credited as being written by a follower of St. Paul, and 1 Peter that is often credited either to Peter or one of Peter’s close associates. We really do not know who wrote James other than what he called himself, that he was a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But he did write a letter and his letter is provocative.
It has been said, on more than one occasion, that the Letter of James contradicts the writings of St. Paul, and most especially when Paul speaks in Romans that we are not justified by our works and actions, but by our faith in God. James writes, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
It has also been said that Romans is a ‘Protestant’ letter because it speaks about faith and grace where as the Letter of James is a Roman Catholic letter because it speaks about works as Roman Catholic doctrine seems to lean in the direction of words and deeds we do to achieve salvation whereas Martin Luther indicated if is only an issue of faith. This denominational competition, however, is not particularly valid, however, as Romans is read and believed in Roman Catholic congregations and the Letter of James is read and believed in Protestant congregations.
The reality is that they do not contradict each other in the least.
Paul makes an argument that good works without faith are simply good works. It does not require an act of faith in God to be charitable to each other. There are many people who believe in the power of humanity alone who do good works. Their good deeds to not require faith. Paul’s argument is that just because a person does good things does not mean they are a person of faith. Without the faith, he argues, the person has nothing.
The words of James are not contrary to these, they merely take Paul’s words to the next level. The argument of James would be that if a person sincerely is a person of faith then they would do good deeds. A person of real faith would not sit idly by while there was suffering in the world. Simply put, Paul would say to us to make sure we talk the talk and James would remind us that while we are talking the talk, we also need to walk the walk. They go hand in hand.
But does not end there. James, in fact, is disconcertingly aggressive in making some points in this letter.
The first point is that God’s people the Christian Church, need to be radically inclusive. Words we say, No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here need not just be said, but be said and radically lived out. And he uses an uncomfortably stunning example.
Imagine, if you will, someone named Oprah moves her show to Louisville and builds a house in the Knobs and, because she has United Church of Christ background, visits St. Marks and is seriously interested in our church and is very up-front with discussing how she believes that tithing to one’s church is very important.
And that day a family who just moved into town, also with a United Church of Christ background, also very interested in our church, and who live in the projects and are happy to be a part of a church where they can go to the Soup Kitchen to eat and get clothing for their family from our Clothes Closet.
Who do we get excited about? Which one of these visitors is going to get a lot of energy from us to assure that everything in their experience at St. Marks is wonderful?
You know the answer. I know the answer. James knew the answer too. He would seem to indicate that we ought to be at least equal in our welcome to both, and if we were going to expend our best energy, give it to the impoverished family because they would need the church more. That is radical inclusion. And, if we say the words, No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here, we really need to mean them.
The second thing about this letter is that it is a lesson in imparting the Good News and the good feelings and hope to others, and not just think it’s about ourselves. Faith James is reminding us, is not for us to feel good, but it’s to make others feel good. The challenge, he seems to indicate, is getting the focus off of ourselves and our wants and needs, and focusing it upon other people.
Rob Bell is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church just outside of Grand Rapids. Several of our Sunday School classes, youth and adult, have used his Nooma video series on class. He’s an incredibly interesting man, to say the least.
He has this notion, a brilliant notion in my opinion, that says that God loves everyone so much that he welcomes them into church no matter how they are. But Bell goes on to say, “But God loves them too much to allow them to stay that way.” In short, God calls us into church to live lives of ongoing conversion and growth.
James, however, continues to not make this easy because he is speaking about mercy over judgment. He is reminding us that people break commandments all the time but are usually pretty good about proclaiming how good they are because while they did this sin they didn’t do the other.
God loves them too much to allow them to stay that way.
The first inclination we have, if we are remotely honest about what our first inclination is, is that we think about the people in our midst who we might not approve of for some reason and say, “That means they have to change.” But here is the brilliance of James’ letter. Whereas we live and serve for others, when it comes to conversion we focus not on others, but on ourselves. It is not up to any of us to indicate that anyone ought to change other than ourselves. As how we relate to others, James says it very clearly, mercy triumphs over judgment.
The Letter of James is short, but packs a potent punch of lesson to us. James reminds us that our welcome to others ought to be radically inclusive, and growth in faith begins in serving others while growing ourselves in the love of Christ and others.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
We Ought to Be Ashamed of Ourselves
Please take note of something as I write this. I am using the words ‘we’ and ‘ourselves’ including myself in those who ought to be ashamed. As I reflect on what I am writing about, I take responsibility for the times I have ventured into this.
We appear, as a nation, and as a people to have sunk to some new lows in how we interact with each other and we truly ought to be ashamed.
In Red Bank, New Jersey, at a town hall meeting to discuss health care, a woman in a wheelchair, who is disabled, was speaking about her plight. All the while the woman spoke, she was heckled. Congressman Frank Pallone said that the meeting was pretty much like that the entire time. No matter who spoke and no matter what they said, they were heckled. The hecklers were pro and con. Offensive behavior knew no boundaries. The one thing, however, that stuck out was one of the men who heckled this woman mercilessly fumed afterwards wondering why some woman in a wheelchair had more rights than he. My thought was simple. She didn’t have more rights than he. She had a right to speak and not be heckled, as did he. Simple. The really sad thing in this scenario, however, was that we as a people used to care, in special ways, for people who are disabled, in wheelchairs, or ill. Now we heckle.
Senator John McCain was at a town hall meeting about three weeks ago. Whether one likes or agrees with John McCain is not the point here. He is entitled to respect. He is a United States Senator and has been one a long time. He was the Presidential candidate of a major party. He served in Vietnam and paid the price of being in a prison camp for many years. John McCain has spent a lifetime serving his country. Whether you agree with him or not, he is entitled to respect. He was heckled by a person making accusations of him being on the ‘take’ from health insurance companies. He was not asked politely. He was heckled. It was disgraceful.
President Obama is addressing school children on Tuesday. Advanced reports are that he is going to use this time to tell them to stay in school, study hard, and work to achieve their goals. These are all, I hope, good things to most parents, teachers, and kids. If he uses the time to promote his political agenda with the children by telling them to talk to their parents about health care of whatever, shame on him. If he is simply saying that the kids should work hard, shame on people who are attacking him. Whether people agree with the President or not, we owe the Office of the President respect. I did not like President Bush a great deal, but I stood on a New Albany street to see if I could get a glimpse of him. Whether I liked him or agreed with him in any way, he was my President. When we treat the President of the United States with disrespect by refusing to listen to him or allow our children to listen to him, regardless of who the President is, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Sadly, we teach our children a dreadful lesson by our shameful behavior. Ideology trumps respect.
Several point on this.
We owe others respect for a variety of reasons.
Recently Representative Baron Hill met with people at local retirement housing facility. He had something of a town hall meeting with the folks, all elderly. I was speaking with one of the residents, an amazingly wonderful and gracious lady, I might add, and I asked her how it went and if people heckled Rep. Hill. She smiled and said, “No, we were raised to be respectful.”
We were raised to be respectful. These are words to live by. Let others speak. St. Paul wrote these words in Romans 12:
9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.
£ 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;£ do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;£ for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
I love those words, ‘live in harmony with one another.’ They are words that I seek, personally, to take to heart every day.
Secondly, one of the great Biblical virtues is humility. I do try to live by an adage that I might not be right about something. I might not be right. It allows me the opportunity to listen to others who just may be right. It does not mean we don’t have opinions, even strong opinions, but if we always have open hearts and minds to the wisdom of others, we might learn that we are not right about everything, all the time.
For me, a lover of sarcasm and wit, often at the expense of people I don’t like or approve of, this has been a wake up call as well. I am not a cruel person and I enjoy a good laugh and I enjoy making others laugh. For me, this is a soul-searching journey to assure that I, personally, always choose the words of Paul first, to love others with mutual affection and seek to show honor first, and to live in harmony with others.
We appear, as a nation, and as a people to have sunk to some new lows in how we interact with each other and we truly ought to be ashamed.
In Red Bank, New Jersey, at a town hall meeting to discuss health care, a woman in a wheelchair, who is disabled, was speaking about her plight. All the while the woman spoke, she was heckled. Congressman Frank Pallone said that the meeting was pretty much like that the entire time. No matter who spoke and no matter what they said, they were heckled. The hecklers were pro and con. Offensive behavior knew no boundaries. The one thing, however, that stuck out was one of the men who heckled this woman mercilessly fumed afterwards wondering why some woman in a wheelchair had more rights than he. My thought was simple. She didn’t have more rights than he. She had a right to speak and not be heckled, as did he. Simple. The really sad thing in this scenario, however, was that we as a people used to care, in special ways, for people who are disabled, in wheelchairs, or ill. Now we heckle.
Senator John McCain was at a town hall meeting about three weeks ago. Whether one likes or agrees with John McCain is not the point here. He is entitled to respect. He is a United States Senator and has been one a long time. He was the Presidential candidate of a major party. He served in Vietnam and paid the price of being in a prison camp for many years. John McCain has spent a lifetime serving his country. Whether you agree with him or not, he is entitled to respect. He was heckled by a person making accusations of him being on the ‘take’ from health insurance companies. He was not asked politely. He was heckled. It was disgraceful.
President Obama is addressing school children on Tuesday. Advanced reports are that he is going to use this time to tell them to stay in school, study hard, and work to achieve their goals. These are all, I hope, good things to most parents, teachers, and kids. If he uses the time to promote his political agenda with the children by telling them to talk to their parents about health care of whatever, shame on him. If he is simply saying that the kids should work hard, shame on people who are attacking him. Whether people agree with the President or not, we owe the Office of the President respect. I did not like President Bush a great deal, but I stood on a New Albany street to see if I could get a glimpse of him. Whether I liked him or agreed with him in any way, he was my President. When we treat the President of the United States with disrespect by refusing to listen to him or allow our children to listen to him, regardless of who the President is, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Sadly, we teach our children a dreadful lesson by our shameful behavior. Ideology trumps respect.
Several point on this.
We owe others respect for a variety of reasons.
Recently Representative Baron Hill met with people at local retirement housing facility. He had something of a town hall meeting with the folks, all elderly. I was speaking with one of the residents, an amazingly wonderful and gracious lady, I might add, and I asked her how it went and if people heckled Rep. Hill. She smiled and said, “No, we were raised to be respectful.”
We were raised to be respectful. These are words to live by. Let others speak. St. Paul wrote these words in Romans 12:
9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.
£ 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;£ do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;£ for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
I love those words, ‘live in harmony with one another.’ They are words that I seek, personally, to take to heart every day.
Secondly, one of the great Biblical virtues is humility. I do try to live by an adage that I might not be right about something. I might not be right. It allows me the opportunity to listen to others who just may be right. It does not mean we don’t have opinions, even strong opinions, but if we always have open hearts and minds to the wisdom of others, we might learn that we are not right about everything, all the time.
For me, a lover of sarcasm and wit, often at the expense of people I don’t like or approve of, this has been a wake up call as well. I am not a cruel person and I enjoy a good laugh and I enjoy making others laugh. For me, this is a soul-searching journey to assure that I, personally, always choose the words of Paul first, to love others with mutual affection and seek to show honor first, and to live in harmony with others.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Do Not Be Afraid (Sunday's Sermon)
Do Not Be Afraid
Texts: Luke 12:1-9
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
August 30, 2009
Do not be afraid.
Considering the events of last weekend, whenever people heard that my sermon title, one I had already planned, was "Do not be afraid,' the title was met with a lot of laughter. All things considered, it's a good thing that I have a sense of humor.
Do not be afraid.
In the passage we read today we read about Jesus responding to some Pharisees who are afraid for him. The Pharisees in today's story were not enemies of Jesus.
Let me say something about the Pharisees. For the most part, when we hear about the Pharisees we think bad thoughts about them. The Pharisees were merely a sect in Judaism like any other group. Some liked Jesus and some did not.
This group approached him with a warning that King Herod was keeping an eye on Jesus. This was the same King Herod who had recently had John the Baptist beheaded, and they were concerned for Jesus' safety.
Jesus, pretty much dismisses their concerns. He is basically unafraid to die. He is willing to meet whatever fate has in store for him.
So what do we say about fear and courage? Sometimes fear and courage is not really a big deal.
One of my favorite recent movies was the movie Julie and Julia and Meryl Streep played Julia Child to perfection. She redid a scene that Julia Child once did de-boning a duck and Julia Child's opening statement on de-boning the duck was this:
Do not be afraid. But this was not a mortal type of fear. Perhaps cut fingers or a messed up duck, but there was not danger involved.
But sometimes fear is real. There is something very real to be afraid of. It might bemajor surgery, or jobs are being cut, or illness, or danger. Not being afraid, having courage, is first off confronting fear.
First off, fear, when left to its own devices, has a way of immobilizing us. When we allow fear to rule our lives, we fine it difficult to take steps forward.
Sometimes fear can immobilize us.
One day in July, a farmer sat in front of his shack, smoking his corncob pipe. Along came a stranger who asked:
"How's your cotton coming?"
"Ain't got none," was the answer. "Didn't plant none. 'Fraid of the boll weevil." "Well, how's your corn?"
"Didn't plant none. 'Fraid o' drouth."
"How about your potatoes?"
"Ain't got none. Scairt o' tater bugs."
The stranger finally asked, "Well, what did you plant?"
"Nothin'," answered the farmer. "I just played it safe."
On occasion fear can immobilize us that we do nothing in response to it.
The way we move from being immobilized is through courage. Courage mobilizes us away from inertia.
Many people mistakenly presume that courage is an absence of fear; that courage and fearlessness go hand in hand.
A lot of times this thing we call fearlessness isn't very healthy.
Would one expect soldiers in the middle of an intense battle to be fearless? One would expect there to be a great deal of fear.
Fear is a pretty normal reaction to things.
Courage isn't so much an absence of fear as it is moving forward despite having fear. Brave people do brave things not because they are fearless, but because they are able to do brave things despite the fact that they are afraid.Having courage can come from several different routes.
One route many people take is attempting to make the situation manageable for themselves.
It seems that years ago the great golfer, Arnold Palmer, was invited to come to a convention of blind golfers. He asked the golfers how they were able to know what direction to hit the ball. One blind golfer explained that the caddy went out ahead of him with a little bell which he would ring as he stood near the hole. The blind golfer would then hit the ball toward the sound of the bell. Arnold asked how well it worked, and the blind golfer said that it worked so well he was willing to take on Arnold Palmer for a round of golf; and just to make it interesting, was willing to bet Palmer ten thousand dollars he could beat him.
Well, this just blew Palmer's mind. He pressed him, but the man insisted he was willing to bet that amount on his ability to beat Palmer. So, the deal was struck. Palmer said, "OK. What time do we tee off?" And the blind man said, "Midnight!"
We can achieve courage when we can create scenarios that we can deal with.
However, very often in life, things go out of control and we do not have the ability to control the situation--so we need to depend on more than our ability to control a situation--we need to find faith and confidence in more than ourselves.
Sometimes people find faith and confidence in the wrong stuff.
Many people who have had problems with alcohol and drugs have used them to give them courage---and they were betrayed by their drug use.
In reality our only true hope can come from God and, perhaps, as important as God, the Worship of God.
Fear paralyzes us, courage mobilizes us, and the worship of God encourages us. The Worship of God is with way we em-body our faith.
The Worship of God is with way we en-courage our faith.
The Worship of God gives us grounding in something other than ourselves, and something greater than ourselves.
And the Worship of God need not be perfect to embody our faith or even to encourage us.
One of my favorite stories was about a Rabbi many years ago. A crisis had hit his village and so he went to a certain place in the woods, lit the fire a certain way, and said the prayers a certain way to God. And God heard the Rabbi and rescued the village.A generation later a crisis had hit the same village and the Rabbi of the that era went to the certain place in the woods, lit the fire a certain way, but had forgotten the prayer. And God heard the Rabbi and rescued the village.
Another generation had passed and a crisis hit the same village and the Rabbi of that era went to the certain spot in the woods, but did not know how to light the fire and did not know the prayer. But it was enough. God saw the Rabbi and rescued the village.
Yet another generation had passed and the crisis hit the same village. The Rabbi of that era did not know the spot in the woods, did not know how to light the fire and did not know the prayer. But he told the story, and that was enough and God rescued the village.
When we Worship God we retell a story that has been told over and over again. We sing hymns which are old; we read stories from the Bible which are old and we say prayers which are old. We carry on an old ritual because we tell and old, old story.
Why do we do it--because the Worship of God is the only thing which can truly move us from fear to encourage.
It is what gave Jesus the strength and the courage to confront Herod and his culture; it is what empowers us to live as Christians even when it is difficult.
Texts: Luke 12:1-9
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
August 30, 2009
Do not be afraid.
Considering the events of last weekend, whenever people heard that my sermon title, one I had already planned, was "Do not be afraid,' the title was met with a lot of laughter. All things considered, it's a good thing that I have a sense of humor.
Do not be afraid.
In the passage we read today we read about Jesus responding to some Pharisees who are afraid for him. The Pharisees in today's story were not enemies of Jesus.
Let me say something about the Pharisees. For the most part, when we hear about the Pharisees we think bad thoughts about them. The Pharisees were merely a sect in Judaism like any other group. Some liked Jesus and some did not.
This group approached him with a warning that King Herod was keeping an eye on Jesus. This was the same King Herod who had recently had John the Baptist beheaded, and they were concerned for Jesus' safety.
Jesus, pretty much dismisses their concerns. He is basically unafraid to die. He is willing to meet whatever fate has in store for him.
So what do we say about fear and courage? Sometimes fear and courage is not really a big deal.
One of my favorite recent movies was the movie Julie and Julia and Meryl Streep played Julia Child to perfection. She redid a scene that Julia Child once did de-boning a duck and Julia Child's opening statement on de-boning the duck was this:
Do not be afraid. But this was not a mortal type of fear. Perhaps cut fingers or a messed up duck, but there was not danger involved.
But sometimes fear is real. There is something very real to be afraid of. It might bemajor surgery, or jobs are being cut, or illness, or danger. Not being afraid, having courage, is first off confronting fear.
First off, fear, when left to its own devices, has a way of immobilizing us. When we allow fear to rule our lives, we fine it difficult to take steps forward.
Sometimes fear can immobilize us.
One day in July, a farmer sat in front of his shack, smoking his corncob pipe. Along came a stranger who asked:
"How's your cotton coming?"
"Ain't got none," was the answer. "Didn't plant none. 'Fraid of the boll weevil." "Well, how's your corn?"
"Didn't plant none. 'Fraid o' drouth."
"How about your potatoes?"
"Ain't got none. Scairt o' tater bugs."
The stranger finally asked, "Well, what did you plant?"
"Nothin'," answered the farmer. "I just played it safe."
On occasion fear can immobilize us that we do nothing in response to it.
The way we move from being immobilized is through courage. Courage mobilizes us away from inertia.
Many people mistakenly presume that courage is an absence of fear; that courage and fearlessness go hand in hand.
A lot of times this thing we call fearlessness isn't very healthy.
Would one expect soldiers in the middle of an intense battle to be fearless? One would expect there to be a great deal of fear.
Fear is a pretty normal reaction to things.
Courage isn't so much an absence of fear as it is moving forward despite having fear. Brave people do brave things not because they are fearless, but because they are able to do brave things despite the fact that they are afraid.Having courage can come from several different routes.
One route many people take is attempting to make the situation manageable for themselves.
It seems that years ago the great golfer, Arnold Palmer, was invited to come to a convention of blind golfers. He asked the golfers how they were able to know what direction to hit the ball. One blind golfer explained that the caddy went out ahead of him with a little bell which he would ring as he stood near the hole. The blind golfer would then hit the ball toward the sound of the bell. Arnold asked how well it worked, and the blind golfer said that it worked so well he was willing to take on Arnold Palmer for a round of golf; and just to make it interesting, was willing to bet Palmer ten thousand dollars he could beat him.
Well, this just blew Palmer's mind. He pressed him, but the man insisted he was willing to bet that amount on his ability to beat Palmer. So, the deal was struck. Palmer said, "OK. What time do we tee off?" And the blind man said, "Midnight!"
We can achieve courage when we can create scenarios that we can deal with.
However, very often in life, things go out of control and we do not have the ability to control the situation--so we need to depend on more than our ability to control a situation--we need to find faith and confidence in more than ourselves.
Sometimes people find faith and confidence in the wrong stuff.
Many people who have had problems with alcohol and drugs have used them to give them courage---and they were betrayed by their drug use.
In reality our only true hope can come from God and, perhaps, as important as God, the Worship of God.
Fear paralyzes us, courage mobilizes us, and the worship of God encourages us. The Worship of God is with way we em-body our faith.
The Worship of God is with way we en-courage our faith.
The Worship of God gives us grounding in something other than ourselves, and something greater than ourselves.
And the Worship of God need not be perfect to embody our faith or even to encourage us.
One of my favorite stories was about a Rabbi many years ago. A crisis had hit his village and so he went to a certain place in the woods, lit the fire a certain way, and said the prayers a certain way to God. And God heard the Rabbi and rescued the village.A generation later a crisis had hit the same village and the Rabbi of the that era went to the certain place in the woods, lit the fire a certain way, but had forgotten the prayer. And God heard the Rabbi and rescued the village.
Another generation had passed and a crisis hit the same village and the Rabbi of that era went to the certain spot in the woods, but did not know how to light the fire and did not know the prayer. But it was enough. God saw the Rabbi and rescued the village.
Yet another generation had passed and the crisis hit the same village. The Rabbi of that era did not know the spot in the woods, did not know how to light the fire and did not know the prayer. But he told the story, and that was enough and God rescued the village.
When we Worship God we retell a story that has been told over and over again. We sing hymns which are old; we read stories from the Bible which are old and we say prayers which are old. We carry on an old ritual because we tell and old, old story.
Why do we do it--because the Worship of God is the only thing which can truly move us from fear to encourage.
It is what gave Jesus the strength and the courage to confront Herod and his culture; it is what empowers us to live as Christians even when it is difficult.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Guys N' Divas
A documentary that is about New Albany, Floyd Central, and Jeffersonville High School and their drama programs airs on Thursday evening on Showtime at 8:30PM. You might want to tune in!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVvsbPaAB7Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVvsbPaAB7Y
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Holiness of Rest
Many people have talked about vacations this summer or days off. There is something holy about rest.
In Genesis the narrative tells us that creation took place over seven days. The ancient Jewish people often used numbers symbolically. The number six was the number of evil; seven was the number of completion. The writer of Genesis was telling us, with the seventh day being rest, is that rest is a part of God's creation, therefore good. Later, in the Decalogue, the commandment of keeping holy the Sabbath also reminds is that rest is holy.
Rest is holy because it gives us a chance to take it slower and put things into perspective. Often, when we go, go, god, we burn out and don't breath enough to put things into perspective.
Rest is also holy because it quiets us down and enables to listen to other people and listen to God.
Work, of course, is important and good. Rest, however, is also good. We ought to delight in it and know that the rest we take is, in and of itself, a holy thing.
In Genesis the narrative tells us that creation took place over seven days. The ancient Jewish people often used numbers symbolically. The number six was the number of evil; seven was the number of completion. The writer of Genesis was telling us, with the seventh day being rest, is that rest is a part of God's creation, therefore good. Later, in the Decalogue, the commandment of keeping holy the Sabbath also reminds is that rest is holy.
Rest is holy because it gives us a chance to take it slower and put things into perspective. Often, when we go, go, god, we burn out and don't breath enough to put things into perspective.
Rest is also holy because it quiets us down and enables to listen to other people and listen to God.
Work, of course, is important and good. Rest, however, is also good. We ought to delight in it and know that the rest we take is, in and of itself, a holy thing.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Sermon for Sunday August 16th
The Holiness of Wisdom
Text: 1 Kings 3:3-14
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
August 16, 2009
When Solomon was a child his prayer to God was a prayer for an understanding mind. Of all the things he desired in life, the thing he desired the most was wisdom. God, of course, is pleased and promises Solomon that when he becomes the king he will reap the benefits of requesting such a great gift. We get the impression that wisdom is something imbued with holiness. The holiness of wisdom is something precious----something almost beyond precious, in the Bible.
There are several things to be said about wisdom.
First, in Proverbs 1:7 it says:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Wisdom and knowledge all start with fear of the Lord.
But often people don’t realize what fear of the Lord is.
It isn’t about being afraid of God. In fact, one of the most common statements in the Bible is: Do not be afraid! So it’s not about being afraid of God. It is, however, being in awe of God.
And being in awe of God, is really being in awe of God. It’s almost like being in the presence of God and shaking in the awe of the moment; not shaking in terror, but shaking in being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of God.
Wisdom comes when we recognize that God is beyond your comprehension and understanding.
Wisdom comes when we stand in the presence of God and are overwhelmed by God.
Wisdom comes when we learn that we don’t know it all.
A seminary professor was vacationing with his wife in Gatlinburg. One morning, they were eating breakfast at a little restaurant, hoping to enjoy a quiet meal. While they were waiting for their food, they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting with the guests. The professor leaned over and whispered to his wife, 'I hope he doesn't come over here.' But sure enough, the man did come over to their table.
'Where are you folks from?' he asked in a friendly voice.
'Oklahoma ,' they answered.
'Great to have you here in Tennessee ,' the stranger said. 'What do you do for a living?'
'I teach at a seminary,' he replied.
'Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you? Well, I've got a really great story for you.' And with that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the couple.
The professor groaned and thought to himself, 'Great .. Just what I need... Another preacher story!'
The man started, 'See that mountain over there? Not far from the base of that mountain, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up, because every place he went, he was always asked the same question, 'Hey boy, Who's your daddy?' Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question, 'Who's your daddy?'
He would hide at recess and lunchtime from other students. He would avoid going into stores because that question hurt him so bad. When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, 'Who's your daddy?' But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast that he got caught and had to walk out with the crowd.
Just about the time he got to the back door, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, 'Son, who's your daddy?'
The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the question, 'Who's your daddy?'
'This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following to that scared little boy.. 'Wait a minute! I know who you are! I see the family resemblance now, You are a child of God.'
With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, 'Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.'
With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, 'Who's your Daddy?' he'd just tell them, 'I'm a Child of God.''
The distinguished gentleman got up from the table and said, 'Isn't that a great story?'
The professor responded that it really was a great story!
As the man turned to leave, he said, 'You know, if that new preacher hadn't told me that I was one of God's children, I probably never would have amounted to anything!' And he walked away.
The seminary professor and his wife were stunned. He called the waitress over and asked her, 'Do you know who that man was -- the one who just left that was sitting at our table?'
The waitress grinned and said, 'Of course. Everybody here knows him. That's Ben Hooper. He's governor of Tennessee !'
It’s stories like that which make us stand in awe of God, a God who can change and transform lives.
There is another aspect of wisdom, however, that is important.
The philosopher Aristotle said that wisdom begins with wonder. Wisdom begins with wonder.
It really does.
Last summer we went to Kitty Hawk and went to the Wright Brothers museum. They wondered how to fly; and flew.
Growing up in New Jersey we all learned a lot about Thomas Edison. He wondered if he could make a light bulb; he did.
Henry Ford wondered what would happen if you had large assembly lines for cars; and he made it happen.
With faith, however, it is also about wonder. Faith begins to grow when we begin to wonder and ask questions.
Much of how we practice our faith begins with wonder. We tend to view how we do things as having tradition, but take note that these traditions started with someone wondering something.
Russ Mitman is the United Church of Christ Conference Minister for the Philadelphia Southeast Conference. He wrote a book several years ago and observed that the largest innovation in Worship in the 20th century was the invention of the mimeograph machine.
We say ‘huh?’ to that now, but before that, the Worship Service started at page three in hymnals and the only changes were the hymns which were posted on the wall and the Scripture readings, and the sermon. And I am sure some people were outraged at this modern innovation that would never last.
We have electric lights in churches now because someone wondered how that would go.
We have sound systems in churches. Years ago preachers used to preached under a huge cone with large bellowing voices. Someone said, ‘I wonder what would happen if we put a microphone up there?
Someone wondered what would happen if they air conditioned churches. I am sure that some clamored that air conditioning was no necessary but they tried it anyway.
So much of what we do now in church and in the practice of our faith comes because people wondered. Wisdom begins when we wonder.
And lastly, no sermon that references wisdom and Solomon should lack a caveat.
Solomon turned out to be a bad king a man of wretched excess.
Solomon, 1st Kings tells us, had 700 wives and 300 concubines or mistresses.
He built a Temple not to honor God as much as himself.
He made peace treaties with nations he had no business in doing so. He did it for money and more wives.
Solomon enslaved his own people to do his work. This was, for a people who had been led from slavery by Moses and spent their history so often slaves to others, a grotesque sin.
Solomon wrecked the Kingdom and it split in two upon his death.
He abused the wisdom God had given him and remind us now that wisdom is a gift from God. And it is only a good gift when we, unlike Solomon, actually use it to honor God and not ourselves.
Text: 1 Kings 3:3-14
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
August 16, 2009
When Solomon was a child his prayer to God was a prayer for an understanding mind. Of all the things he desired in life, the thing he desired the most was wisdom. God, of course, is pleased and promises Solomon that when he becomes the king he will reap the benefits of requesting such a great gift. We get the impression that wisdom is something imbued with holiness. The holiness of wisdom is something precious----something almost beyond precious, in the Bible.
There are several things to be said about wisdom.
First, in Proverbs 1:7 it says:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Wisdom and knowledge all start with fear of the Lord.
But often people don’t realize what fear of the Lord is.
It isn’t about being afraid of God. In fact, one of the most common statements in the Bible is: Do not be afraid! So it’s not about being afraid of God. It is, however, being in awe of God.
And being in awe of God, is really being in awe of God. It’s almost like being in the presence of God and shaking in the awe of the moment; not shaking in terror, but shaking in being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of God.
Wisdom comes when we recognize that God is beyond your comprehension and understanding.
Wisdom comes when we stand in the presence of God and are overwhelmed by God.
Wisdom comes when we learn that we don’t know it all.
A seminary professor was vacationing with his wife in Gatlinburg. One morning, they were eating breakfast at a little restaurant, hoping to enjoy a quiet meal. While they were waiting for their food, they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting with the guests. The professor leaned over and whispered to his wife, 'I hope he doesn't come over here.' But sure enough, the man did come over to their table.
'Where are you folks from?' he asked in a friendly voice.
'Oklahoma ,' they answered.
'Great to have you here in Tennessee ,' the stranger said. 'What do you do for a living?'
'I teach at a seminary,' he replied.
'Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you? Well, I've got a really great story for you.' And with that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the couple.
The professor groaned and thought to himself, 'Great .. Just what I need... Another preacher story!'
The man started, 'See that mountain over there? Not far from the base of that mountain, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up, because every place he went, he was always asked the same question, 'Hey boy, Who's your daddy?' Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question, 'Who's your daddy?'
He would hide at recess and lunchtime from other students. He would avoid going into stores because that question hurt him so bad. When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, 'Who's your daddy?' But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast that he got caught and had to walk out with the crowd.
Just about the time he got to the back door, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, 'Son, who's your daddy?'
The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the question, 'Who's your daddy?'
'This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following to that scared little boy.. 'Wait a minute! I know who you are! I see the family resemblance now, You are a child of God.'
With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, 'Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.'
With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, 'Who's your Daddy?' he'd just tell them, 'I'm a Child of God.''
The distinguished gentleman got up from the table and said, 'Isn't that a great story?'
The professor responded that it really was a great story!
As the man turned to leave, he said, 'You know, if that new preacher hadn't told me that I was one of God's children, I probably never would have amounted to anything!' And he walked away.
The seminary professor and his wife were stunned. He called the waitress over and asked her, 'Do you know who that man was -- the one who just left that was sitting at our table?'
The waitress grinned and said, 'Of course. Everybody here knows him. That's Ben Hooper. He's governor of Tennessee !'
It’s stories like that which make us stand in awe of God, a God who can change and transform lives.
There is another aspect of wisdom, however, that is important.
The philosopher Aristotle said that wisdom begins with wonder. Wisdom begins with wonder.
It really does.
Last summer we went to Kitty Hawk and went to the Wright Brothers museum. They wondered how to fly; and flew.
Growing up in New Jersey we all learned a lot about Thomas Edison. He wondered if he could make a light bulb; he did.
Henry Ford wondered what would happen if you had large assembly lines for cars; and he made it happen.
With faith, however, it is also about wonder. Faith begins to grow when we begin to wonder and ask questions.
Much of how we practice our faith begins with wonder. We tend to view how we do things as having tradition, but take note that these traditions started with someone wondering something.
Russ Mitman is the United Church of Christ Conference Minister for the Philadelphia Southeast Conference. He wrote a book several years ago and observed that the largest innovation in Worship in the 20th century was the invention of the mimeograph machine.
We say ‘huh?’ to that now, but before that, the Worship Service started at page three in hymnals and the only changes were the hymns which were posted on the wall and the Scripture readings, and the sermon. And I am sure some people were outraged at this modern innovation that would never last.
We have electric lights in churches now because someone wondered how that would go.
We have sound systems in churches. Years ago preachers used to preached under a huge cone with large bellowing voices. Someone said, ‘I wonder what would happen if we put a microphone up there?
Someone wondered what would happen if they air conditioned churches. I am sure that some clamored that air conditioning was no necessary but they tried it anyway.
So much of what we do now in church and in the practice of our faith comes because people wondered. Wisdom begins when we wonder.
And lastly, no sermon that references wisdom and Solomon should lack a caveat.
Solomon turned out to be a bad king a man of wretched excess.
Solomon, 1st Kings tells us, had 700 wives and 300 concubines or mistresses.
He built a Temple not to honor God as much as himself.
He made peace treaties with nations he had no business in doing so. He did it for money and more wives.
Solomon enslaved his own people to do his work. This was, for a people who had been led from slavery by Moses and spent their history so often slaves to others, a grotesque sin.
Solomon wrecked the Kingdom and it split in two upon his death.
He abused the wisdom God had given him and remind us now that wisdom is a gift from God. And it is only a good gift when we, unlike Solomon, actually use it to honor God and not ourselves.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
End of Life as a Spiritual Issue
First, this post is a non-political post. I am writing this not because of the current health care bill but more because of some of the issues it has raised that are spiritual and ethical issues.
Secondly, I write this as a person who does not support euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. I can see the arguments both for and against this. I have seen many people at the end of their lives and have thought that it would be merciful if their lives could end sooner rather than later. Watching people suffer, at the end, is dreadful. But I cannot bring myself to embrace euthanasia of physician assisted suicide. I believe that the risks that go along with these are too great.
Which brings me to where we are right now. Much is being debated about the end of life issues as to what is covered and what is not covered in the health care bills. From what I have read, counseling will be optional for the patient, but required to be paid for to allow the patient and physician to have these conversations. But this is not my issue.
The end of life, natural death, has become an interesting subject of debate. There are several facts that need to be remembered.
Fact number one. All of our senior citizens will die, many of them sooner rather than later. No matter what kind of health care they have, no matter what kind of health care bills get passed or not passed, the mortality rate of our senior citizens will be 100%.
Fact number two. All of the people having the debate right now will also die. Alas, the mortality rate of human beings has always been and remains at 100%.
Fact number three. Many people will have to make decisions as to end of life treatment options. People will potentially need to make them for parents, for spouses and partners, for children, even for themselves.
Medical technology is excellent and has improved a great deal. I have been a minister for over 25 years and have seen several things change in rather dramatic fashion.
When I was a young minister and a person was having by-pass surgery, it seemed like close to half of the people who had the surgery never left the hospital. The surgery was tough and dramatic, and while most survived the surgery, many didn’t survive the recovery. I knew that if a person had the surgery they would be hospitalized for a solid two weeks and would require a great deal of critical care.
Now, most people have the surgery routinely, and most are home within the week.
Years ago if a person had their gall bladder out, a very common surgery, they were hospitalized for a week. Now it is out-patient surgery.
Then, all surgeries were inpatient and often required multiple-day stays; now, many surgeries are out-patient.
People live long and better quality lives. Medicines available are often very effective and in the hands of a skilled physician, people can live well for a longer period of time. Which is, of course, great.
The upside of medical technology is that people can be kept alive and maintained for much longer than they used to. The downside is that often people can be kept alive for quite a long time, but there are issues about quality of life and how much pain and suffering a person is willing to endure.
When is it, for example, appropriate for chemo-therapy to end? This is a hard decision for patients and their loved ones. Cancer is a killer and chemo often prolongs life; but at the expense of quality of life. Many people suffer grievously to the point that they want to stop. It it ethical to stop and allow a person to die? I am not talking about killing them, but allowing nature to take its course.
Often there is discussion of feeding tubes. Sometimes people or their families, are faced with the issue of putting in or removing a feeding tube. Without the feeding tube the person will die----of natural causes---- but because they cannot receive nutrition albeit artificially. Again, there is an ethical question on this.
A person is taken into the emergency room and they are elderly and in bad health. They have had a stroke or a major heart attack. What is the right thing? If they do not have any sort of advanced directives, what does a family and the hospital decide. What happens, however, if the family cannot bring themselves to accept or enforce the advanced directives and the DNR is not followed? What becomes the ethical thing to do?
Part of the dilemma is this. Death is not perceived to be evil. Death is the obscenity we no longer want to discuss. It is almost like we have an ethical belief that we save human life, no matter what we have to do, no matter how much it costs. Everything that can be done, even for a short time, even if there is no quality of life, even if it requires a great deal of pain and suffering, is done.
Perhaps death ought to be looked at, however, from a faith perspective. Maybe the end of life should not be a political football for people to play with but a spiritual issue for people to understand.
Christians believe that when we die we go to be with God. The embrace of Heaven is something Christians believe and share. We debate who goes and how you get there, but there is one constant. Life in this world has to come to an end first, preferably naturally and at an old age.
Increasingly, as the technology improves, people have to decide when to allow nature to takes its course and allow life in this world to come to an end. It strikes me that, as a people of faith, we support people on the journey to a better place at the end of life, than to keep the fight up when all hope and any sort of comfort is no past. This is not, in any way, killing, it is allowing a person to die of natural causes.
This seems to be rational, moral, compassionate, and faithful.
Secondly, I write this as a person who does not support euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. I can see the arguments both for and against this. I have seen many people at the end of their lives and have thought that it would be merciful if their lives could end sooner rather than later. Watching people suffer, at the end, is dreadful. But I cannot bring myself to embrace euthanasia of physician assisted suicide. I believe that the risks that go along with these are too great.
Which brings me to where we are right now. Much is being debated about the end of life issues as to what is covered and what is not covered in the health care bills. From what I have read, counseling will be optional for the patient, but required to be paid for to allow the patient and physician to have these conversations. But this is not my issue.
The end of life, natural death, has become an interesting subject of debate. There are several facts that need to be remembered.
Fact number one. All of our senior citizens will die, many of them sooner rather than later. No matter what kind of health care they have, no matter what kind of health care bills get passed or not passed, the mortality rate of our senior citizens will be 100%.
Fact number two. All of the people having the debate right now will also die. Alas, the mortality rate of human beings has always been and remains at 100%.
Fact number three. Many people will have to make decisions as to end of life treatment options. People will potentially need to make them for parents, for spouses and partners, for children, even for themselves.
Medical technology is excellent and has improved a great deal. I have been a minister for over 25 years and have seen several things change in rather dramatic fashion.
When I was a young minister and a person was having by-pass surgery, it seemed like close to half of the people who had the surgery never left the hospital. The surgery was tough and dramatic, and while most survived the surgery, many didn’t survive the recovery. I knew that if a person had the surgery they would be hospitalized for a solid two weeks and would require a great deal of critical care.
Now, most people have the surgery routinely, and most are home within the week.
Years ago if a person had their gall bladder out, a very common surgery, they were hospitalized for a week. Now it is out-patient surgery.
Then, all surgeries were inpatient and often required multiple-day stays; now, many surgeries are out-patient.
People live long and better quality lives. Medicines available are often very effective and in the hands of a skilled physician, people can live well for a longer period of time. Which is, of course, great.
The upside of medical technology is that people can be kept alive and maintained for much longer than they used to. The downside is that often people can be kept alive for quite a long time, but there are issues about quality of life and how much pain and suffering a person is willing to endure.
When is it, for example, appropriate for chemo-therapy to end? This is a hard decision for patients and their loved ones. Cancer is a killer and chemo often prolongs life; but at the expense of quality of life. Many people suffer grievously to the point that they want to stop. It it ethical to stop and allow a person to die? I am not talking about killing them, but allowing nature to take its course.
Often there is discussion of feeding tubes. Sometimes people or their families, are faced with the issue of putting in or removing a feeding tube. Without the feeding tube the person will die----of natural causes---- but because they cannot receive nutrition albeit artificially. Again, there is an ethical question on this.
A person is taken into the emergency room and they are elderly and in bad health. They have had a stroke or a major heart attack. What is the right thing? If they do not have any sort of advanced directives, what does a family and the hospital decide. What happens, however, if the family cannot bring themselves to accept or enforce the advanced directives and the DNR is not followed? What becomes the ethical thing to do?
Part of the dilemma is this. Death is not perceived to be evil. Death is the obscenity we no longer want to discuss. It is almost like we have an ethical belief that we save human life, no matter what we have to do, no matter how much it costs. Everything that can be done, even for a short time, even if there is no quality of life, even if it requires a great deal of pain and suffering, is done.
Perhaps death ought to be looked at, however, from a faith perspective. Maybe the end of life should not be a political football for people to play with but a spiritual issue for people to understand.
Christians believe that when we die we go to be with God. The embrace of Heaven is something Christians believe and share. We debate who goes and how you get there, but there is one constant. Life in this world has to come to an end first, preferably naturally and at an old age.
Increasingly, as the technology improves, people have to decide when to allow nature to takes its course and allow life in this world to come to an end. It strikes me that, as a people of faith, we support people on the journey to a better place at the end of life, than to keep the fight up when all hope and any sort of comfort is no past. This is not, in any way, killing, it is allowing a person to die of natural causes.
This seems to be rational, moral, compassionate, and faithful.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Something to be Passionate About.
Most people who know me well know that faith, to me, is more an intellectual journey than it is an emotional journey. For better or worse, when I see people emotionally excited about faith and talking about how their ‘hearts’ have been changed, I tend to step back, and I’m not sure it’s because I mistrust their emotions or because I envy them. Faith, at its best, like most things, requires intellect and emotion. Some people lean one way, some lean the other way. In a perfect world, I suspect, a person ought to have a perfect balance of both. It rarely works that way.
I am not an emotional person, by nature, and I do not approach faith from an emotional perspective. To me, inspiration comes when things make sense. As a result, I rarely get passionate about things; I tend to approach them analytically.
But I have found, in my faith, something to be passionate about. It comes via an intellectual journey, but is also comes from my heart.
At St. Marks United Church of Christ we begin each Worship Service with the words, “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” They are the new ‘slogan,’ if you will, of the United Church of Christ as a denomination. If one sees one of the United Church of Christ commercials, they always end with those words.
I’ve come to believe that these words are a Biblical and spiritual mandate. “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” They are not chapter and verse anywhere, but they come from someplace else. The bigger picture.
I decided to read the four Gospels in their entirety. The more I read, the more I realized that we have, often as a culture within Christianity, seemed to have missed something in the Gospels. We have been so busy cutting them up into little pieces and using little verses out of them, that we have missed that they were not written and not intended to be read as a collection of verses, but as whole documents.
Jesus speak of two things over and over again. The first thing he spoke of was caring for the less fortunate among us. Over and over again, he spoke about this. Jesus’ economic advice was that if you really want to be rich you need to sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus. In a larger interpretation of this he was making a point of owning what you own as opposed to letting what you own, own you. If there are poor people in our midst, we are all responsible for them. If you read the entire Gospel, start to finish, it is impossible not to come away with this. If there are poor people in our midst, we are responsible for them. How we do it may be a great political question; but that we do it is a Biblical mandate.
How this evolves into seminars on how Jesus can make your business more profitable----and we see these all the time, eludes me, but, so be it.
There is a Gospel mandate. If there are poor in our midst, we are responsible for them.
For churches the mandate towards the poor is simply this: “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
The second big picture item in the Gospel is to welcome and embrace those who know one else will welcome and embrace. The Christian Church has been good about this, with a qualification that goes to the point of that it is important to welcome and embrace all those people who are a lot like us.
The problem is that when we, as a Christian Church embrace only those who are like us, we miss the point. The people Jesus associated with, in large part, were people large sectors of society rejected.
The poor.
The needy.
The lepers.
The prostitutes.
The outcasts.
The sinners-----or those people others called sinners.
The call of Levi/Matthew was an amazing call. Levi, so named in Mark and Luke, and Matthew, so named in Matthew, was a tax collector. A tax collector was a person who would normally steal from his own people----under Roman guard and with Roman authority. Levi/Matthew would have been seen as a heinous sinner by most; yet Jesus called him.
The reason, for Jesus,” No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
Those words, “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here,” are words that, to me, are truly something to be passionate about. They are words I know, my church, and me, try to live by.
I am not an emotional person, by nature, and I do not approach faith from an emotional perspective. To me, inspiration comes when things make sense. As a result, I rarely get passionate about things; I tend to approach them analytically.
But I have found, in my faith, something to be passionate about. It comes via an intellectual journey, but is also comes from my heart.
At St. Marks United Church of Christ we begin each Worship Service with the words, “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” They are the new ‘slogan,’ if you will, of the United Church of Christ as a denomination. If one sees one of the United Church of Christ commercials, they always end with those words.
I’ve come to believe that these words are a Biblical and spiritual mandate. “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” They are not chapter and verse anywhere, but they come from someplace else. The bigger picture.
I decided to read the four Gospels in their entirety. The more I read, the more I realized that we have, often as a culture within Christianity, seemed to have missed something in the Gospels. We have been so busy cutting them up into little pieces and using little verses out of them, that we have missed that they were not written and not intended to be read as a collection of verses, but as whole documents.
Jesus speak of two things over and over again. The first thing he spoke of was caring for the less fortunate among us. Over and over again, he spoke about this. Jesus’ economic advice was that if you really want to be rich you need to sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus. In a larger interpretation of this he was making a point of owning what you own as opposed to letting what you own, own you. If there are poor people in our midst, we are all responsible for them. If you read the entire Gospel, start to finish, it is impossible not to come away with this. If there are poor people in our midst, we are responsible for them. How we do it may be a great political question; but that we do it is a Biblical mandate.
How this evolves into seminars on how Jesus can make your business more profitable----and we see these all the time, eludes me, but, so be it.
There is a Gospel mandate. If there are poor in our midst, we are responsible for them.
For churches the mandate towards the poor is simply this: “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
The second big picture item in the Gospel is to welcome and embrace those who know one else will welcome and embrace. The Christian Church has been good about this, with a qualification that goes to the point of that it is important to welcome and embrace all those people who are a lot like us.
The problem is that when we, as a Christian Church embrace only those who are like us, we miss the point. The people Jesus associated with, in large part, were people large sectors of society rejected.
The poor.
The needy.
The lepers.
The prostitutes.
The outcasts.
The sinners-----or those people others called sinners.
The call of Levi/Matthew was an amazing call. Levi, so named in Mark and Luke, and Matthew, so named in Matthew, was a tax collector. A tax collector was a person who would normally steal from his own people----under Roman guard and with Roman authority. Levi/Matthew would have been seen as a heinous sinner by most; yet Jesus called him.
The reason, for Jesus,” No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
Those words, “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here,” are words that, to me, are truly something to be passionate about. They are words I know, my church, and me, try to live by.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Shame on Those Who Call Others Nazis
There are some things that are predictable but every so often there is a huge surprise.
Most Democratic Presidents eventually get around to being called Socialist/Communists because if their inclination to have more government benefits and corporate regulations. Every time they move in this direction, even a tiny, tiny bit, people scream Socialism!!!
Most Republican Presidents eventually get around to being called Fascist/Nazis because of their inclinations toward an increased sense of nationalism, increases in defense, and a proclivity toward law and order. Every time they move in this direction, even a tiny, tiny big, people cry out Nazi!
Socialism and Fascism are often seen as the opposite ends of the political spectrum. If you move a person extremely to the left, they become a Socialist; extremely to the right and they become a Fascist. People do quibble with this for a variety of reasons, but there are some solid rationales behind this.
Barack Obama has, predictably, been called a Socialist. Government bailouts, stimulus money, the health care plan, etc., have all been labeled Socialist. This is fairly predictable and moves in, at least, the correct direction on the political spectrum. I am not sure where socializing something turns into Socialism, but that might be another question. There is even an incredibly offensive ‘cartoon’ of Obama with a white face and the red paint of the diabolically evil Joker from Batman. Using this caricature of any American President in light of the pure evil of that character in the movie is, frankly, offensive. But people see no fault in being offensive, I guess.
Interestingly enough he has now been called a Nazi and Hitler. There is a new caricature out of Obama as Hitler, little mustache and all.
One can make an argument about the absurdity of this because it would seem to indicate that Obama has managed to be an extremist on the polar opposites of the political spectrum. To confuse Fascism/Nazism with Socialism/Communism is to have little to no grasp of political philosophy. People often try to argue that the Nazi Party’s official name was the National Socialist Worker’s Party had the word ‘Socialist’ in it, but Hitler was staunchly anti-Socialist and anti-Communist. He loathed Karl Marx ( who was Jewish) and the philosophy of Marx. Loathed it. LOATHED it. Nazism had a strong sense of corporatism which was a movement seeking to have shared wealth but not at the expense of business. The name, which evolved from the Latin word “Corpus,” or “body” was designed to allow people, government, and businesses to work in partnership and cooperation with each other. In and of itself, corporatism is not a bad thing at all-----in many ways part of what we have in the United State is a sense of this in the best sense of the word when everyone does work in cooperation with one another.
But the Nazis were more than about that.
In fact, Hitler laid it all out. He argued that Nazism had 25 Points----Together which made up the spirit of the Nazi Party:
1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.
2. We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.
4. Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of Creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.
5. Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.
6. The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.
We wage war against the corrupt parliamentary administration whereby men are appointed to posts by favor of the party without regard to character and fitness.
7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.
9. All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.
10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
Therefore we demand:
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of Creed or race.
19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.
20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.
22. We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.
23. We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:
(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.
(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.
(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.
Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.
24. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.
The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:
COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD
25. In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.
The formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.
The leaders of the party undertake to promote the execution of the foregoing points at all costs, if necessary at the sacrifice of their own lives.
Hitler, as we know, lived these out. Europe was devastated. Six million Jewish people were murdered for the simple crime of being Jewish. Millions of others were murdered for a large variety of bogus reasons. The murders were cold, calculated, and efficient.
People, as they were herded into Concentration Camps were stripped of their clothing, and their possessions. Upon their deaths teeth were pulled for ivory and precious metals.
In 1942 after a brutal German Commander was killed in the modern day Czech Republic, the village of Lidice was seized. All the men over the age of 16 were executed, all the women and children were shipped to Concentration Camps, and the village was burned to the ground. It no longer existed.
All media was controlled and regulated by the state. If you expressed any criticism, you died.
Clergy were killed by the thousands. Any hint in a sermon that Jesus was greater than Hitler was a death sentence.
Barack Obama is not a Nazi. Not even close. As much as I think George W. Bush was a poor President who didn’t protect people’s right as much as I think he should have, Bush was not a Nazi. Not even close. No American President has come even close to being a Nazi. To call any American President a Nazi, or even hint at it, is an atrocity in and of itself. It, on so many levels, dishonors those who were victimized by the Nazis. It dishonors the nation of Germany that has faced its history with great courage and has worked to move beyond it.
Shame on those who use the name of these horribly evil people from a different era on those they disagree with. And shame on us when we don’t challenge it.
Most Democratic Presidents eventually get around to being called Socialist/Communists because if their inclination to have more government benefits and corporate regulations. Every time they move in this direction, even a tiny, tiny bit, people scream Socialism!!!
Most Republican Presidents eventually get around to being called Fascist/Nazis because of their inclinations toward an increased sense of nationalism, increases in defense, and a proclivity toward law and order. Every time they move in this direction, even a tiny, tiny big, people cry out Nazi!
Socialism and Fascism are often seen as the opposite ends of the political spectrum. If you move a person extremely to the left, they become a Socialist; extremely to the right and they become a Fascist. People do quibble with this for a variety of reasons, but there are some solid rationales behind this.
Barack Obama has, predictably, been called a Socialist. Government bailouts, stimulus money, the health care plan, etc., have all been labeled Socialist. This is fairly predictable and moves in, at least, the correct direction on the political spectrum. I am not sure where socializing something turns into Socialism, but that might be another question. There is even an incredibly offensive ‘cartoon’ of Obama with a white face and the red paint of the diabolically evil Joker from Batman. Using this caricature of any American President in light of the pure evil of that character in the movie is, frankly, offensive. But people see no fault in being offensive, I guess.
Interestingly enough he has now been called a Nazi and Hitler. There is a new caricature out of Obama as Hitler, little mustache and all.
One can make an argument about the absurdity of this because it would seem to indicate that Obama has managed to be an extremist on the polar opposites of the political spectrum. To confuse Fascism/Nazism with Socialism/Communism is to have little to no grasp of political philosophy. People often try to argue that the Nazi Party’s official name was the National Socialist Worker’s Party had the word ‘Socialist’ in it, but Hitler was staunchly anti-Socialist and anti-Communist. He loathed Karl Marx ( who was Jewish) and the philosophy of Marx. Loathed it. LOATHED it. Nazism had a strong sense of corporatism which was a movement seeking to have shared wealth but not at the expense of business. The name, which evolved from the Latin word “Corpus,” or “body” was designed to allow people, government, and businesses to work in partnership and cooperation with each other. In and of itself, corporatism is not a bad thing at all-----in many ways part of what we have in the United State is a sense of this in the best sense of the word when everyone does work in cooperation with one another.
But the Nazis were more than about that.
In fact, Hitler laid it all out. He argued that Nazism had 25 Points----Together which made up the spirit of the Nazi Party:
1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.
2. We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.
4. Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of Creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.
5. Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.
6. The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.
We wage war against the corrupt parliamentary administration whereby men are appointed to posts by favor of the party without regard to character and fitness.
7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.
9. All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.
10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
Therefore we demand:
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of Creed or race.
19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.
20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.
22. We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.
23. We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:
(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.
(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.
(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.
Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.
24. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.
The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:
COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD
25. In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.
The formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.
The leaders of the party undertake to promote the execution of the foregoing points at all costs, if necessary at the sacrifice of their own lives.
Hitler, as we know, lived these out. Europe was devastated. Six million Jewish people were murdered for the simple crime of being Jewish. Millions of others were murdered for a large variety of bogus reasons. The murders were cold, calculated, and efficient.
People, as they were herded into Concentration Camps were stripped of their clothing, and their possessions. Upon their deaths teeth were pulled for ivory and precious metals.
In 1942 after a brutal German Commander was killed in the modern day Czech Republic, the village of Lidice was seized. All the men over the age of 16 were executed, all the women and children were shipped to Concentration Camps, and the village was burned to the ground. It no longer existed.
All media was controlled and regulated by the state. If you expressed any criticism, you died.
Clergy were killed by the thousands. Any hint in a sermon that Jesus was greater than Hitler was a death sentence.
Barack Obama is not a Nazi. Not even close. As much as I think George W. Bush was a poor President who didn’t protect people’s right as much as I think he should have, Bush was not a Nazi. Not even close. No American President has come even close to being a Nazi. To call any American President a Nazi, or even hint at it, is an atrocity in and of itself. It, on so many levels, dishonors those who were victimized by the Nazis. It dishonors the nation of Germany that has faced its history with great courage and has worked to move beyond it.
Shame on those who use the name of these horribly evil people from a different era on those they disagree with. And shame on us when we don’t challenge it.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
A Great Story We Mostly Missed
Ponder what the 'news' has been of late. Seriously.
When is the last time you watched the news and didn't see a story about Michael Jackson? We are still on Michael Jackson overload and, as of yet, he has not been raised from the dead giving us a truly interesting story to cover.
The story of the Harvard professor and the police officer and a President who used the word 'stupidly' at a very bad time has dominated the news. We even got to watch them drink beer and eat pretzels together.
The health care debate has been on talking points and commercials. Our two parties are busily disgracing themselves by their antics instead of actually working on something constructive. They WANT to disagree with each other and WANT the other party's ideas to fail. This isn't about fixing health care; it's about making the opposition look bad. Both parties are totally guilty of this. This has been reported a great deal.
Some amazing lunatics, for whom facts mean nothing, and I use the term lunatic intentionally, are still debating over where Barack Obama was born. This foolishness is on the news. Nightly.
Missed was this:
When is the last time you watched the news and didn't see a story about Michael Jackson? We are still on Michael Jackson overload and, as of yet, he has not been raised from the dead giving us a truly interesting story to cover.
The story of the Harvard professor and the police officer and a President who used the word 'stupidly' at a very bad time has dominated the news. We even got to watch them drink beer and eat pretzels together.
The health care debate has been on talking points and commercials. Our two parties are busily disgracing themselves by their antics instead of actually working on something constructive. They WANT to disagree with each other and WANT the other party's ideas to fail. This isn't about fixing health care; it's about making the opposition look bad. Both parties are totally guilty of this. This has been reported a great deal.
Some amazing lunatics, for whom facts mean nothing, and I use the term lunatic intentionally, are still debating over where Barack Obama was born. This foolishness is on the news. Nightly.
Missed was this:
WISE, Virginia — They came in their hundreds, America's uninsured and working poor, descending on this coal mining town in Virginia's southwest corner in search of the medical care they could not otherwise afford.
Some slept overnight in their cars in the grass parking lot in front of the Wise fairgrounds, where some 1,700 medical professionals had set up dental chairs, mammogram stations, panoramic X-ray machines and more, ready to diagnose maladies, numb mouths, pull teeth and take pap smears for Americans down on their luck and battered by economic realities.
And all for free.
Remote Area Medical (RAM), a travelling collective of volunteer medical practitioners, was set up in 1985 by British expatriate Stan Brock, who wanted to take medical care to those who were too poor, or live in areas too remote, to otherwise access it.
"The appearance of a RAM team means an opportunity for poor folks to get some real treatment free of charge," Brock said.
RAM has been doing this and their venture in Wise, Virginia was a huge effort. In a day and age when health care reform is being debated and all sorts of options are being laid out on the table, one group is doing amazing work.
And their work has gone virtually unnoticed.
This is a major media failure. We are fed a steady stream of nonsense and, the major media is feeding us this nonsense because it is what we want to watch.
More people want to watch stories about Michael Jackson than they do getting down to the nitty gritty on the economy, two wars, and health care reform.
More people want to know how they forged Barack Obama's birth certificate and got people to certify it in Hawaii, and even put birth notices in the local newspapers, when they claim he was born in Kenya in 1962 with a major plot to overthrown the American government. (His father even cleverly left his family and died to keep suspicion off of him. His mother, shiftily developed cancer at a young age and died so no one could question her. Devious people!)
I can go on, but you get the point. We want to listen to garbage, we crave garbage, and so it is what we are given.
But be reminded that there is a great story we missed. Great people doing a great thing for those who have less than they do. It's not only a good story, it's a holy story, mostly missed by the vast majority of people.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j8w9zX_4NeT2B2qNQnjCic-g6PxwFriday, July 31, 2009
No Matter Who you are...
At St. Marks, no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you really will be welcome!
www.stmarksucc.org
www.stmarksucc.org
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The United Church of Christ
No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.
Wednesday Musings
I will continue on my theological journey with John Calvin, but I wanted to ‘muse’ today.
Brett Favre has decided to stay retired. It is so fitting and awesome that he will not be quarterbacking the Vikings against the Packers in Green Bay. My fear was that he would tarnish the love Packer fans have had for him over the years. He has taken a massive amount of punishment as an NFL quarterback and it is better to leave, now, while he still can leave with some semblance of health.
I am wondering about Dr. Conrad Murray and if he should be charged with a crime administering the drugs to Michael Jackson. I can make all sorts of ethical arguments and professional arguments on why he should not have, but I’m not sure there are many legal arguments against this. He was paid by a patient who requested a legal drug be administered for a medical problem. Lord knows that more than one physician has administered a drug to a patient who then died from that drug. It is often impossible to know how drugs are going to interact with people and when powerful medication enters the scene, things can happen. Unless Dr. Murray intentionally administered a dose with the intention of killing Michael Jackson, I do not see a crime here. There may be malpractice or something like this, but criminal, I doubt it. It also can create a dreadful precedent. Physicians vulnerable to criminal prosecution in the case of drug interactions.
A couple of thoughts on two sports figures.
The first controversy is that Michael Vick is going to be allowed to play this coming season. Some people are outraged, but I think this is a good thing. What Vick did was heinous, without a doubt. He has spent time in prison however, and this conviction, loss of playing time, loss of endorsements, has cost him an estimated $100,000,000.00. The man has paid for his crime and from my perspective, grace needs to be shown him and him given an opportunity to play again.
On the other hand, they are thinking of removing the lifetime ban on Pete Rose. Pete Rose bet on baseball while he as a manager. Unlike Vick, whose crime had nothing to do with football, Rose was gambling on baseball while actively part of the game. He was a great player, without a doubt, and had he not done something to disgrace himself while IN the game he was part of, he should be in the Hall of Fame. He, in my opinion, excluded himself from baseball forever. Unlike Vick, whose livelihood is on the line, and who has to prove himself on the field of play, all there is for Rose is an opportunity to be honored. It is an honor he does not deserve.
Colin Powell had the best line about the story of the police officer and the Harvard professor. “Adult supervision” was needed. That is the case so very often, isn’t it? I suspect that we have been guilty of needing adult supervision from time to time. I know I have. It is a reminder that losing one’s temper generally has consequences.
A 24 year old woman in Mississippi car-jacked a car and drove to an RV dealership to hold them up telling the people in the RV dealership that she had a gun. She told employees she had a gun and demanded money. The employees did not believe the claim and restrained her until officers arrived. As she was dressed only in a bikini that left little to the imagination it was obvious that she was not carrying a concealed weapon. Police said the suspect appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She is in the current lead for dumbest criminal of the year award. This kind of brilliance does need to be recognized.
Brett Favre has decided to stay retired. It is so fitting and awesome that he will not be quarterbacking the Vikings against the Packers in Green Bay. My fear was that he would tarnish the love Packer fans have had for him over the years. He has taken a massive amount of punishment as an NFL quarterback and it is better to leave, now, while he still can leave with some semblance of health.
I am wondering about Dr. Conrad Murray and if he should be charged with a crime administering the drugs to Michael Jackson. I can make all sorts of ethical arguments and professional arguments on why he should not have, but I’m not sure there are many legal arguments against this. He was paid by a patient who requested a legal drug be administered for a medical problem. Lord knows that more than one physician has administered a drug to a patient who then died from that drug. It is often impossible to know how drugs are going to interact with people and when powerful medication enters the scene, things can happen. Unless Dr. Murray intentionally administered a dose with the intention of killing Michael Jackson, I do not see a crime here. There may be malpractice or something like this, but criminal, I doubt it. It also can create a dreadful precedent. Physicians vulnerable to criminal prosecution in the case of drug interactions.
A couple of thoughts on two sports figures.
The first controversy is that Michael Vick is going to be allowed to play this coming season. Some people are outraged, but I think this is a good thing. What Vick did was heinous, without a doubt. He has spent time in prison however, and this conviction, loss of playing time, loss of endorsements, has cost him an estimated $100,000,000.00. The man has paid for his crime and from my perspective, grace needs to be shown him and him given an opportunity to play again.
On the other hand, they are thinking of removing the lifetime ban on Pete Rose. Pete Rose bet on baseball while he as a manager. Unlike Vick, whose crime had nothing to do with football, Rose was gambling on baseball while actively part of the game. He was a great player, without a doubt, and had he not done something to disgrace himself while IN the game he was part of, he should be in the Hall of Fame. He, in my opinion, excluded himself from baseball forever. Unlike Vick, whose livelihood is on the line, and who has to prove himself on the field of play, all there is for Rose is an opportunity to be honored. It is an honor he does not deserve.
Colin Powell had the best line about the story of the police officer and the Harvard professor. “Adult supervision” was needed. That is the case so very often, isn’t it? I suspect that we have been guilty of needing adult supervision from time to time. I know I have. It is a reminder that losing one’s temper generally has consequences.
A 24 year old woman in Mississippi car-jacked a car and drove to an RV dealership to hold them up telling the people in the RV dealership that she had a gun. She told employees she had a gun and demanded money. The employees did not believe the claim and restrained her until officers arrived. As she was dressed only in a bikini that left little to the imagination it was obvious that she was not carrying a concealed weapon. Police said the suspect appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She is in the current lead for dumbest criminal of the year award. This kind of brilliance does need to be recognized.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Calvin 1
Calvin Part 1
I have been doing some reflection on the growing sense of Calvinism we are seeing within Protestantism these days. Is this a good thing?
I decided to reflect on this a little and I want to start with some basic premises behind Calvinism and some of my thoughts on the subject. As a point of reference, I am not a proponent of Calvin so what I write may be somewhat biased.
To begin this, however, one thing needs to be stated. There are all sorts of theological frameworks in which people work. There are many theological vantage points that have a great deal of substance to them and many of them differ from each other in significant ways. Many of these frameworks, however, enable people to develop a relationship with God and ought not be trivialized. They do need to be seen, however, as theological frameworks which are not sacred in and of themselves. They are simply means of interpreting much greater truths.
In reviewing Calvinism, in its most basic form, there are five basic principles, often given the name TULIP. I’m going to reflect on each other.
In words from religioustolerance.org:
T: This usually stands for "Total depravity:" This is often mistaken to mean
that humans are all hopelessly, intensely sinful. Actually, it means
something quite different: as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience to
God -- the Fall of Man -- sin has extended to all parts of every person's
being: "his thinking, his emotions and his will."
Sometimes, this has been called "Total inability." This is the concept that it
is impossible for the ordinary "natural" human to understand the Gospel's
message. They are spiritually helpless. First, God must first decide to
intervene in the form of the third personality within the Trinity, the Holy
Spirit. Otherwise, the person is lost forever.
Calvin’s point is that not everything every person does is driven by their depravity. This would make people unable to do anything good and worthwhile. His point, however, is that this depravity (his word, not mine) or sinfulness, touches on each portion of a person’s life. The writers point out examples of ‘thinking, emotions, and will.’ It is not that our thinking, emotions, and will are totally sinful, but that sin and human weakness touch every part of our being.
Often one of the differences between much of Roman Catholic theology and Protestant Theology is the nature of humanity. From my understanding, Roman Catholic theology teaches that humanity is basically good, but sinful; Protestant Theology teaches that human nature is essentially sinful with people’s goodness coming by the grace of God. While these appear to be opposite, they ultimately end with the same idea. People have goodness within them and people have an inclination to sin. Both are present in everyone all the time.
In essence, I’m not sure I am particularly comfortable with John Calvin’s words, total depravity, but the point is well taken.
I have been doing some reflection on the growing sense of Calvinism we are seeing within Protestantism these days. Is this a good thing?
I decided to reflect on this a little and I want to start with some basic premises behind Calvinism and some of my thoughts on the subject. As a point of reference, I am not a proponent of Calvin so what I write may be somewhat biased.
To begin this, however, one thing needs to be stated. There are all sorts of theological frameworks in which people work. There are many theological vantage points that have a great deal of substance to them and many of them differ from each other in significant ways. Many of these frameworks, however, enable people to develop a relationship with God and ought not be trivialized. They do need to be seen, however, as theological frameworks which are not sacred in and of themselves. They are simply means of interpreting much greater truths.
In reviewing Calvinism, in its most basic form, there are five basic principles, often given the name TULIP. I’m going to reflect on each other.
In words from religioustolerance.org:
T: This usually stands for "Total depravity:" This is often mistaken to mean
that humans are all hopelessly, intensely sinful. Actually, it means
something quite different: as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience to
God -- the Fall of Man -- sin has extended to all parts of every person's
being: "his thinking, his emotions and his will."
Sometimes, this has been called "Total inability." This is the concept that it
is impossible for the ordinary "natural" human to understand the Gospel's
message. They are spiritually helpless. First, God must first decide to
intervene in the form of the third personality within the Trinity, the Holy
Spirit. Otherwise, the person is lost forever.
Calvin’s point is that not everything every person does is driven by their depravity. This would make people unable to do anything good and worthwhile. His point, however, is that this depravity (his word, not mine) or sinfulness, touches on each portion of a person’s life. The writers point out examples of ‘thinking, emotions, and will.’ It is not that our thinking, emotions, and will are totally sinful, but that sin and human weakness touch every part of our being.
Often one of the differences between much of Roman Catholic theology and Protestant Theology is the nature of humanity. From my understanding, Roman Catholic theology teaches that humanity is basically good, but sinful; Protestant Theology teaches that human nature is essentially sinful with people’s goodness coming by the grace of God. While these appear to be opposite, they ultimately end with the same idea. People have goodness within them and people have an inclination to sin. Both are present in everyone all the time.
In essence, I’m not sure I am particularly comfortable with John Calvin’s words, total depravity, but the point is well taken.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Monday Musings
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and police Sergeant James Crowley had a memorable meeting and are now probably going to the White House for a beer. The original 911 call did not mention race so any racial overtones that might have been raised took place at the scene with a lot of shouting. In the midst of all the shouting, I strongly suspect that we have a story of two incredibly good men with great reputations having about the worst possible meeting imaginable. I would venture a guess and say that neither of them wanted things to turn out the way they did. I also suspect that they will come together and teach the world a lesson about what took place as they are both fine individuals. They teach us a lesson that even the best of us have bad days and meltdowns.
President Obama, I think, might have also learned a lesson about speculating in front of an open microphone. When he began his comments with not really knowing all the details, he should have stopped right there. Once the word ‘stupidly’ came out of his mouth, that was going to be the center of the story.
The Octo-Mom signed a television deal for ‘reality television’ starring her children. Why do I fear that her children, much like the Gosselin children, are going to end up being ‘stars’ in a horror show that will be their lives. I am long passed believing that either of the Gosselins have their children’s best interests at heart. Kate may have an inkling in that direction, but only an inkling. Jon is too busy going on dates with crazy girls to worry about much else. Of course, there is some major money involved...
I have been a lifelong New York Mets fan and the Mets are terrible. Willie Randolph took it in the neck last year and it was ‘his’ fault that the Mets were not playing well. He is gone and they are far worse. They need to fire EVERYONE in their front office and start over.
I watched some of the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor and they were incredibly uninformative. Her responses were not much different from Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito though, one suspects, they will vote contrary to each other. No one in their right mind is going to ever really answer a question on these confirmation hearings but they have them anyway. Ugh. I think that if I lived in Alabama, however, and my Senator was Jeff Sessions I would like to crawl under a pregnant ant and hide. It is rather sad that we have such a collection of intellectually challenged folks in Congress. Ugh.
Erin Andrews has reminded us that there are still major gender problems in the nation. She is a very attractive woman who is a sports reporter for ESPN. She was filmed, through peepholes, at multiple hotels walking around naked in her hotel room. It is most interesting to see responses.
First, one person was saying that she ‘deserved’ this because she was walking around naked in her hotel room. We shouldn’t even know what she wears or doesn’t wear in the privacy of her hotel room let alone judge her for it.
Secondly, the only places that I saw ‘blurred’ photos of her was on Newscorp, most notably Fox News and the New York Post. It was disgraceful. This woman’s privacy was completely violated.
Sadly, the taping of her is not illegal in many states. Despite the fact that her privacy was completely violated and she is subjected to humiliation around the country, it is dubious that criminal charges will ever come forward. I do hope that I am wrong. Erin Andrews is a competent sports reporter and she deserves far better than she has received.
I am doing some research and teaching a class on the New Calvinism on Sunday. I will, hopefully, write something about this.
President Obama, I think, might have also learned a lesson about speculating in front of an open microphone. When he began his comments with not really knowing all the details, he should have stopped right there. Once the word ‘stupidly’ came out of his mouth, that was going to be the center of the story.
The Octo-Mom signed a television deal for ‘reality television’ starring her children. Why do I fear that her children, much like the Gosselin children, are going to end up being ‘stars’ in a horror show that will be their lives. I am long passed believing that either of the Gosselins have their children’s best interests at heart. Kate may have an inkling in that direction, but only an inkling. Jon is too busy going on dates with crazy girls to worry about much else. Of course, there is some major money involved...
I have been a lifelong New York Mets fan and the Mets are terrible. Willie Randolph took it in the neck last year and it was ‘his’ fault that the Mets were not playing well. He is gone and they are far worse. They need to fire EVERYONE in their front office and start over.
I watched some of the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor and they were incredibly uninformative. Her responses were not much different from Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito though, one suspects, they will vote contrary to each other. No one in their right mind is going to ever really answer a question on these confirmation hearings but they have them anyway. Ugh. I think that if I lived in Alabama, however, and my Senator was Jeff Sessions I would like to crawl under a pregnant ant and hide. It is rather sad that we have such a collection of intellectually challenged folks in Congress. Ugh.
Erin Andrews has reminded us that there are still major gender problems in the nation. She is a very attractive woman who is a sports reporter for ESPN. She was filmed, through peepholes, at multiple hotels walking around naked in her hotel room. It is most interesting to see responses.
First, one person was saying that she ‘deserved’ this because she was walking around naked in her hotel room. We shouldn’t even know what she wears or doesn’t wear in the privacy of her hotel room let alone judge her for it.
Secondly, the only places that I saw ‘blurred’ photos of her was on Newscorp, most notably Fox News and the New York Post. It was disgraceful. This woman’s privacy was completely violated.
Sadly, the taping of her is not illegal in many states. Despite the fact that her privacy was completely violated and she is subjected to humiliation around the country, it is dubious that criminal charges will ever come forward. I do hope that I am wrong. Erin Andrews is a competent sports reporter and she deserves far better than she has received.
I am doing some research and teaching a class on the New Calvinism on Sunday. I will, hopefully, write something about this.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Jimmy Carter Leaves His Church
Jimmy Carter left his church after many years because he cannot abide by the rampant sexism in the Southern Baptist Convention.
For those who discriminate against women and blame it on God, his words are a firm rebuke which, interestingly enough, has barely been reported.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/losing-my-religion-for-equality-20090714-dk0v.html?page=-1
For those who discriminate against women and blame it on God, his words are a firm rebuke which, interestingly enough, has barely been reported.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/losing-my-religion-for-equality-20090714-dk0v.html?page=-1
This Day, 40 Years Ago
This day, 40 years ago, July 20, 1969 the first people set foot on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin departed "The Eagle" and walked around on the moon.
I was 14 years old and watched in live on television.
Many years later I met Neil Armstrong at the funeral of a dear friend of his parents. He came back to his hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio to attend the funeral of this very fine woman. I was officiating at the funeral and was quite honored to meet him. He grew up at St. Paul United Church of Christ in Wapakoneta and, years later, I spent 11 years as the Pastor of that congregation, so I heard a good deal about his 'growing up' years from people who knew him in his youth.
Neil Armstrong was, and is, a very quiet, very private, very decent, very intelligent, very courageous person. He was the first person on the moon and he set the pace for all the others. He could have gone off the deep end and we could be using all sorts of products he chose to endorse and listened to him on all sorts of subjects or been to a "First Man on the Moon" theme park or some other foolishness. Except Neil Armstrong did not exploit what he did. He was an astronaut who was doing his job, and one of many who was responsible for landing on the moon. His quiet dignity is something that ought to always be treasured.
In the news footage remembering Walter Cronkite, two images stand out. One was the sheer pain of announcing the death of President Kennedy and the other was the smiling delight and exhilartion speaking about the moon landing. It really WAS that exciting!!!
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins were literally strapped to their seats in a small capsule on top of a large guided missile----a huge bomb, if you will. They were catapulted into the sky and travelled at 66,000 mph to the moon. The calculations to get there were done by hand (they hadn't yet invented the calculator) and an error of 1 degree would mean that they would have been lost in space forever. The moon, which is about a quarter of a million miles away from the earth, is a target that, with that distance in mind, would have been difficult to hit.
The astronauts were incredibly brave and brilliant minds led them to their destination. They were able to photograph the earth from a distance and an angle and a view never seen before----reminding us how small our world is in comparison to the universe.
It was a great a momentous day in the history of the United States and a day that, I think, is worth remembering.
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