So I posted a video these two engineers made last year and couldn't resist posting this one too. I watched it twice straight through giggling the whole time. And my poor Potter couldn't figure out where the other cats were coming from. Thanks for the clip Ginger!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Scary Stories of the Bible II
If you want to read the story first, the text for 2 Kings 4:8-37 is here
***
The story takes place in a territory in northern Israel at the foot of the slopes of the Hill of Moreh. The town of Shunem was about15 miles away from where the prophet Elisha had a home, but just a few miles from Tabor where there was an Israelite Sanctuary.
This episode occurs during the reign of Jehoram (or Joram), second son of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, roughly 850 BC. From all indications, King Jehoram gave lip service to God, allowing Elisha freedom to preach and travel, while at the same time granting similar freedom to pagan religions. While he wasn’t as heinous as his infamous parents, I guess he just liked to keep his bases covered.
Like last week’s story, our hero is Elisha, a man of God, a prophet, but second only to him in this story is oddly enough a woman, a wealthy woman who invites town visitors into her home for meals and conversation. When she recognizes Elisha as a man of God, she persuades her husband to build Elisha a room on top of their house for whenever he passes through town. (Holy men were often put in rooms on top of homes to be kept free from the profane and mundane rituals of the household).
The Rabbis who read this ancient text praise the hospitality of the Shunammite woman and learn from her conduct that everyone should bring a Torah scholar into their house, give him food and drink and let him enjoy all that they possess. The Shunammite woman is mentioned by the midrash as one of the twenty-three truly upright and righteous women who came forth from Israel.
The woman’s name is not given, but she is described as “a great woman.” In Hebrew, the word translated “great” in the KJV and “well-to-do” in the NIV has several nuances of meaning, wealthy being only one of them. This description was used of Abraham in Genesis 24 and is often used to describe an attribute of God. Being great included character and influence. Even though her husband was generous, the wealth belonged to him and his male heirs. Her greatness in the eyes of God and the prophet Elisha was not dependent on her economic status. Her wealth gave her the means to support Elisha’s ministry. It was her kindness and generosity that made her great as well as her continual worship of God.
Pretty cool! We like strong women here!
So Elisha accepts this giving woman’s hospitality and as a blessing to her asks her what she would like to receive from God. Insisting that she has all she needs, yet another noble attribute of contentment and humility, Elisha eventually learns that this rich old woman is barren and gives her the gift of a child.
Reminiscent of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth, this unnamed and barren but remarkable woman gives birth, of course, to a son.
Some years later though and while the details are scanty, most commentators suppose the child falls victim to sunstroke, a heatstroke caused by direct exposure to the sun. Out in a field of grain, the boy must not have had any protection from the intense rays of the Mediterranean sun. Being a child, he succumbs quickly, feeling the first symptom as a massive headache before fainting.
When her husband sends the complaining child in from the fields, the Sunnammite woman feeds him and nurses him. But when the child dies in her arms, the she lays him in Elisha’s bed in the back of her house and leaves on her donkey hollering back to her husband that she has to go see Elisha immediately, and is off… 15 miles to go.
Elisha spots her from some distance and sends his scoundrel of a servant, Gehazi to go check on her. Now Gehazi was probably Elisha’s assistant like Elisha had been to Elijah, but unfortunately Gehazi lacks the integrity and spirit of his forerunners. We learn about his misdealings in the next chapter and what his envy for Naaman’s money makes him do. But Gehazi doesn’t come off so well in this story either.
Gehazi reports back to Elisha that the old woman is fine, but when she finally reaches Elisha, she clasps his feet in a true sign of submission and desperation. Gehazi steps forward to push her away from his master. Interestingly, the midrash understands “le-hodfah” or “push away” as an abbreviation of two Hebrew words meaning the “majesty of her beauty,” and surmises from this that when Gehazi went to rebuff the Shunammite woman, he pushed the majesty of her beauty, that is, between her breasts. The Rabbis observe that although Elisha was extremely careful in sexual matters, Gehazi acted differently. Although the latter was a man of great Torah scholarship, he had several shortcomings including licentious behavior.
But as the narrator in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever says of those rascally Herdmans, “And that’s not all,” the midrash has a few other stories to tell on Gehazi.
Like, he did not believe in the resurrection of the dead.
Elisha took his staff and instructed Gehazi: Go and place the staff on the face of the boy, that he may live, but say nothing on the way. According to Jewish tradition, Gehazi thought that Elisha was sporting with him, and he did not do as the prophet had told him. On his own initiative, Gehazi turned to everyone he met along the way and asked them: “Do you believe that this staff can resurrect the dead?” I picture him kind of like Wormtail in Harry Potter, scurrying around doing what his master tells him to all the while thinking he’s all that and a bag of chips when he’s just not. According to another tradition, when someone met him on the way and asked him: “From where have you come and to where are you going?” he would reply: “I am going to resurrect the dead!” Consequently, when he came to the son of the Shunammite woman, his efforts were for naught. And so it is Elisha who must come to the boy in his room. Elisha lay upon the dead child and placed his mouth on the boy’s mouth and his eyes on the boy’s) eyes, and began to pray to God. True to the ancestry of Elijah his mentor, through the Spirit of God Elisha brings the dead boy back to life.
What?
I don’t even want to go there. It’s very strange. The whole story reminds me of my friend Frank who had cancer and went to a Chinese doctor in Illinois to have him lay hands on his salivary glands or something. This guy, who also works with the Chicago Bulls I think, had a dead fish in his fish tank and when he secretary buzzed back to tell him that Frank was in the office, she also mentioned the unfortunate predicament of the fish. Not to worry. That little doctor of Eastern medicine came out and scooped the fish out of the fish tank and put him in his hands and blew on him and I’ll be darned if that fish didn’t come back to life. Frank was standing right there watching!
Thankfully he healed my friend Franks glands too, but I think you get my point.
Our Halloween story about a dead boy suddenly turns into something straight out of A Chinese Ghost Story or something.
I mean it’s weird. Lay on the boy and transfer God’s Spirit or your qi (chi) or whatever and the kid comes back to life?
Man, sometimes God calls us to do some pretty scary things.
Sometimes we live up to the challenge, like Elisha. Through us God is able to do some amazing things. You should have heard the testimony last night of Caroline Boudreaux who started the Miracle Foundation for orphans in India. One woman has brought so many dead and empty children back to life; she even puts Elisha to shame. You can change the world if you follow God’s call!
But other times we end up doing our own little cowardly dance like Gehazi, very Gollum-esque, tossing God’s call back and forth across our tongues deliberating what to do, and from one hand to the other, weighing the idea of where following God might get us and what it might demand of us.
“Open your door to God,” Preacher Will Willimon writes, “O.K. Just remember: this is a real God, not some make-believe image of ourselves, not some tame deity you can have over for a chat. Break bread at the table of the living God, you don't know how you'll be surprised.”
The Shunammite woman opened her home to a holy man and look what happened to her life. A holy friendship, a son, a death a resuscitation, and as we read earlier in the service, eventually an evacuation from the town due to famine and upon returning seven years later receiving all her land back full fold.
Imagine what would happen if we opened up our hearts.
***
The story takes place in a territory in northern Israel at the foot of the slopes of the Hill of Moreh. The town of Shunem was about15 miles away from where the prophet Elisha had a home, but just a few miles from Tabor where there was an Israelite Sanctuary.
This episode occurs during the reign of Jehoram (or Joram), second son of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, roughly 850 BC. From all indications, King Jehoram gave lip service to God, allowing Elisha freedom to preach and travel, while at the same time granting similar freedom to pagan religions. While he wasn’t as heinous as his infamous parents, I guess he just liked to keep his bases covered.
Like last week’s story, our hero is Elisha, a man of God, a prophet, but second only to him in this story is oddly enough a woman, a wealthy woman who invites town visitors into her home for meals and conversation. When she recognizes Elisha as a man of God, she persuades her husband to build Elisha a room on top of their house for whenever he passes through town. (Holy men were often put in rooms on top of homes to be kept free from the profane and mundane rituals of the household).
The Rabbis who read this ancient text praise the hospitality of the Shunammite woman and learn from her conduct that everyone should bring a Torah scholar into their house, give him food and drink and let him enjoy all that they possess. The Shunammite woman is mentioned by the midrash as one of the twenty-three truly upright and righteous women who came forth from Israel.
The woman’s name is not given, but she is described as “a great woman.” In Hebrew, the word translated “great” in the KJV and “well-to-do” in the NIV has several nuances of meaning, wealthy being only one of them. This description was used of Abraham in Genesis 24 and is often used to describe an attribute of God. Being great included character and influence. Even though her husband was generous, the wealth belonged to him and his male heirs. Her greatness in the eyes of God and the prophet Elisha was not dependent on her economic status. Her wealth gave her the means to support Elisha’s ministry. It was her kindness and generosity that made her great as well as her continual worship of God.
Pretty cool! We like strong women here!
So Elisha accepts this giving woman’s hospitality and as a blessing to her asks her what she would like to receive from God. Insisting that she has all she needs, yet another noble attribute of contentment and humility, Elisha eventually learns that this rich old woman is barren and gives her the gift of a child.
Reminiscent of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth, this unnamed and barren but remarkable woman gives birth, of course, to a son.
Some years later though and while the details are scanty, most commentators suppose the child falls victim to sunstroke, a heatstroke caused by direct exposure to the sun. Out in a field of grain, the boy must not have had any protection from the intense rays of the Mediterranean sun. Being a child, he succumbs quickly, feeling the first symptom as a massive headache before fainting.
When her husband sends the complaining child in from the fields, the Sunnammite woman feeds him and nurses him. But when the child dies in her arms, the she lays him in Elisha’s bed in the back of her house and leaves on her donkey hollering back to her husband that she has to go see Elisha immediately, and is off… 15 miles to go.
Elisha spots her from some distance and sends his scoundrel of a servant, Gehazi to go check on her. Now Gehazi was probably Elisha’s assistant like Elisha had been to Elijah, but unfortunately Gehazi lacks the integrity and spirit of his forerunners. We learn about his misdealings in the next chapter and what his envy for Naaman’s money makes him do. But Gehazi doesn’t come off so well in this story either.
Gehazi reports back to Elisha that the old woman is fine, but when she finally reaches Elisha, she clasps his feet in a true sign of submission and desperation. Gehazi steps forward to push her away from his master. Interestingly, the midrash understands “le-hodfah” or “push away” as an abbreviation of two Hebrew words meaning the “majesty of her beauty,” and surmises from this that when Gehazi went to rebuff the Shunammite woman, he pushed the majesty of her beauty, that is, between her breasts. The Rabbis observe that although Elisha was extremely careful in sexual matters, Gehazi acted differently. Although the latter was a man of great Torah scholarship, he had several shortcomings including licentious behavior.
But as the narrator in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever says of those rascally Herdmans, “And that’s not all,” the midrash has a few other stories to tell on Gehazi.
Like, he did not believe in the resurrection of the dead.
Elisha took his staff and instructed Gehazi: Go and place the staff on the face of the boy, that he may live, but say nothing on the way. According to Jewish tradition, Gehazi thought that Elisha was sporting with him, and he did not do as the prophet had told him. On his own initiative, Gehazi turned to everyone he met along the way and asked them: “Do you believe that this staff can resurrect the dead?” I picture him kind of like Wormtail in Harry Potter, scurrying around doing what his master tells him to all the while thinking he’s all that and a bag of chips when he’s just not. According to another tradition, when someone met him on the way and asked him: “From where have you come and to where are you going?” he would reply: “I am going to resurrect the dead!” Consequently, when he came to the son of the Shunammite woman, his efforts were for naught. And so it is Elisha who must come to the boy in his room. Elisha lay upon the dead child and placed his mouth on the boy’s mouth and his eyes on the boy’s) eyes, and began to pray to God. True to the ancestry of Elijah his mentor, through the Spirit of God Elisha brings the dead boy back to life.
What?
I don’t even want to go there. It’s very strange. The whole story reminds me of my friend Frank who had cancer and went to a Chinese doctor in Illinois to have him lay hands on his salivary glands or something. This guy, who also works with the Chicago Bulls I think, had a dead fish in his fish tank and when he secretary buzzed back to tell him that Frank was in the office, she also mentioned the unfortunate predicament of the fish. Not to worry. That little doctor of Eastern medicine came out and scooped the fish out of the fish tank and put him in his hands and blew on him and I’ll be darned if that fish didn’t come back to life. Frank was standing right there watching!
Thankfully he healed my friend Franks glands too, but I think you get my point.
Our Halloween story about a dead boy suddenly turns into something straight out of A Chinese Ghost Story or something.
I mean it’s weird. Lay on the boy and transfer God’s Spirit or your qi (chi) or whatever and the kid comes back to life?
Man, sometimes God calls us to do some pretty scary things.
Sometimes we live up to the challenge, like Elisha. Through us God is able to do some amazing things. You should have heard the testimony last night of Caroline Boudreaux who started the Miracle Foundation for orphans in India. One woman has brought so many dead and empty children back to life; she even puts Elisha to shame. You can change the world if you follow God’s call!
But other times we end up doing our own little cowardly dance like Gehazi, very Gollum-esque, tossing God’s call back and forth across our tongues deliberating what to do, and from one hand to the other, weighing the idea of where following God might get us and what it might demand of us.
“Open your door to God,” Preacher Will Willimon writes, “O.K. Just remember: this is a real God, not some make-believe image of ourselves, not some tame deity you can have over for a chat. Break bread at the table of the living God, you don't know how you'll be surprised.”
The Shunammite woman opened her home to a holy man and look what happened to her life. A holy friendship, a son, a death a resuscitation, and as we read earlier in the service, eventually an evacuation from the town due to famine and upon returning seven years later receiving all her land back full fold.
Imagine what would happen if we opened up our hearts.
Anne From A Window
I love Anne Frank and always have since I played her in The Diary of Anne Frank on the stage of the Missouri Theater seventeen or so years ago. Here's a lovely article on the only video footage we have of Anne and of what it means to be one who looks out windows...
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Post You Must Read (especially if you know women or have heard of the church)
Please please please go read this blog posted by an Emergent Methodist named Jessica. it's hilarious and discouraging and awesome.
Here's my favorite quote...
"In implying that women should accept discursive erasure of their spiritual experiences in order to be liberated, those outside of church are performing the exact same violence that those inside the church have been doing for centuries. Guess what? Y’all both need to knock it off."
Here's my favorite quote...
"In implying that women should accept discursive erasure of their spiritual experiences in order to be liberated, those outside of church are performing the exact same violence that those inside the church have been doing for centuries. Guess what? Y’all both need to knock it off."
Beresheth Sermon: Scary Stories of the Bible Part 1
“Do you have any inspirational quotes about dead people… specifically zombies?” I hollered over to my colleague and fellow minister across the hall.
Because here I am on October 22, 2009 with Halloween right around the corner (hurray!) writing a sermon on a topic my Beresheth team suggested I do called Scary Stories of the Bible, where in worship we use texts commonly left out of the lectionary and quite frankly, out of church.
I know I’d never studied this story.
But while researching the Lazarus story in the New Testament where Jesus waits four days and then brings poor, dead Lazarus back to life, one of the commentaries I was reading emphasized the difference between resuscitation and resurrection.
Resuscitation: being brought back to life, Resurrection: being given new life.
Cool. I thought. What other resuscitation texts are in the Bible? So I did a little research and found two more. One of which we just read. And in case you blinked and missed it, let me reread it for you…
"So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. As a man was being buried, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha; as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he came to life and stood on his feet."
Riight.
Maybe if I retell the story in my own words it will sound better: A man dies. His body is on the way to the cemetery and suddenly some bullies or a gang or some outlaws show up and in a panic the mourners throw the corpse into the nearest grave where it happens to land on Elisha’s bones and magically comes back to life. The man got up and crawled out of the grave, alive.
That is NOT better.
So I did some research.
Turns out that occasionally funeral rituals included a pilgrimage to the grave of someone important or inspirational. Thus the proximity to Elisha’s grave. Additionally, miraculous things happening at someone’s gravesite is actually common in hagiography, or in the study of saints. Yep, the Catholic church would call Elisha a Saint. I guess all the prophets were. And this story definitely shows up in Elisha’s hagiology.
But who was Elisha?
Elisha was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom during the reigns of Kings Ahaziah, Johoram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, and Jehoash. The Nothern Kingdom was called Israel which was sometimes at peace and sometimes at war with it’s fellow God-fearers in the Southern Kingdom, called Judah. These two kingdoms came about when after King Saul, King David, and King Solomon there was a civil war of sorts and of course, the country split into two kingdoms, the northern and southern, Israel and Judah. And so the time of Kings Saul, David and Solomon is called the United Kingdom and the time of Kind Jeroboam, Rehoboam and the 38 others who ruled either Israel or Judah is called the time of the Divided Kingdom.
Elisha is one of the prophets during this time of the divided kingdom who was led to power through his mentor, the famous EliJah. Elijah was a great prophet who did many wondrous miracles like calling fire out of the sky which promptly burned up a completely drenched pile of firewood. Elijah spoke God’s truth of compassion and honest worship against the evil King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He’s also the prophet who didn’t die, yep, another spooky story worthy of a campfire and a bunch of scared little kids, but rather was taken up by a great whirlwind into the sky, never to be seen again.
Elisha is his appointed successor and true to Elijah’s memory, Elisha too performs great miracles and speaks out against unrighteous kings. Thus, “Elijah lives on in the ministry of Elisha; Elisha is Elijah one more time, larger than life.” Indeed, such is the power of God in Elijah and Elisha’s memory that when a corpse even touches the bones of the deceased Elisha, the corpse comes back to life.
And now here we are, sitting in worship, wondering how in the world the story of some Zombie has any effect on our life or our faith.
And it’s not like the writer of 2 Kings gives us any help on the matter. He simply tells the story about as matter of factly as can be. I mean, I would have given it a little more substance, a little more pizzazz. I would have described what it felt like landing on the bones in the grave. I would have described the dead man receiving air into his lungs again, his dried blood suddenly warming up and coursing through his veins again. I would have described his shriek of surprise and the look on his friends faces as they began screaming and running away when he came waddling out of the tomb trying to untangle himself from the mummy rags.
But I also just got done watching Zombieland last week.
Obviously, the writer of 2 Kings didn’t. The facts are there, they’re stated and the story is over. (And when he man comes back to life he probably returns to eating hummus and hallah, not brains and humans.)
And scholars say this is intentional: “it is important to note that the narrator does not linger on the ‘miraculous’ but presents each occasion in almost matter-of-fact terms…The reader is thereby pushed away from focusing on the spectacular in itself and asked to discern the theological and religious import of what is being stated.”
So what’s being stated? What’s the point of Zombieland, I mean, verses 20-22? What theological wisdom can be gained from this scary story of the Bible?
Quite frankly, it’s that God is powerful. And God doesn’t just act in religious settings. God acts in every area of Israel’s life.
Did you know while all the prophets of the Old Testament warned the Kings and people that God did not like the way they were treating their neighbors and enemies, while they warned that justice would flow like a mighty fountain and that it would flow against God’s people. While all this was happening, despite the King’s or the people’s unrighteousness, God continued to work on Israel’s behalf. Indeed in chapters 13-14 of 2 Kings, “god acts on behalf of the faithless Israel… God’s compassion and promises continue to shape Israel’s life in the midst of its evil ways.”
In other words, “the most fundamental witness of [the Elijah and Elisha] stories is that Israel’s God makes true life possible in every sphere.” Even in politics. Even in relationships. Even in schools. Even in churches and synagogues. Even in war… Even in the graveyard.
And I guess that is good news.
Because we all have our fair share of faithlessness. We all experience times when we abandon faith for societies’ whims. We all choose coping mechanisms over prayer and perseverance. We all choose to be selfish rather than compassionate. We all choose to judge when we should offer grace. We all choose death when we should be choosing life. And God is faithful to us despite us. There’s always hope for new life… even if you’re dead as a doornail. And while maybe God isn’t going to resuscitate you after you’ve passed on, plenty of us feel dead enough inside that we could use a breathe of fresh air, of God’s air, of God’s spirit, waking us up inside.
And that may be the scariest part yet, letting go of ourselves enough to let God’s life take over. This is America and we like to be the best, look the best, know the most and accomplish the most whether that’s our success in academia, success in the business world, doing the most at church or downing the most at our favorite bar. To let go of our need to be in control and instead live by faith, to let go of our cynicism and live by hope, to let go of our fear and live with intellectual and emotional integrity… that is to receive life. Life that is waiting for us no matter what we do and who we are.
Life is always available if we’d just be willing to take it. I just hope we don’t get so far gone that we have to fall into a dead man’s grave to wake up to that.
Because here I am on October 22, 2009 with Halloween right around the corner (hurray!) writing a sermon on a topic my Beresheth team suggested I do called Scary Stories of the Bible, where in worship we use texts commonly left out of the lectionary and quite frankly, out of church.
I know I’d never studied this story.
But while researching the Lazarus story in the New Testament where Jesus waits four days and then brings poor, dead Lazarus back to life, one of the commentaries I was reading emphasized the difference between resuscitation and resurrection.
Resuscitation: being brought back to life, Resurrection: being given new life.
Cool. I thought. What other resuscitation texts are in the Bible? So I did a little research and found two more. One of which we just read. And in case you blinked and missed it, let me reread it for you…
"So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. As a man was being buried, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha; as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he came to life and stood on his feet."
Riight.
Maybe if I retell the story in my own words it will sound better: A man dies. His body is on the way to the cemetery and suddenly some bullies or a gang or some outlaws show up and in a panic the mourners throw the corpse into the nearest grave where it happens to land on Elisha’s bones and magically comes back to life. The man got up and crawled out of the grave, alive.
That is NOT better.
So I did some research.
Turns out that occasionally funeral rituals included a pilgrimage to the grave of someone important or inspirational. Thus the proximity to Elisha’s grave. Additionally, miraculous things happening at someone’s gravesite is actually common in hagiography, or in the study of saints. Yep, the Catholic church would call Elisha a Saint. I guess all the prophets were. And this story definitely shows up in Elisha’s hagiology.
But who was Elisha?
Elisha was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom during the reigns of Kings Ahaziah, Johoram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, and Jehoash. The Nothern Kingdom was called Israel which was sometimes at peace and sometimes at war with it’s fellow God-fearers in the Southern Kingdom, called Judah. These two kingdoms came about when after King Saul, King David, and King Solomon there was a civil war of sorts and of course, the country split into two kingdoms, the northern and southern, Israel and Judah. And so the time of Kings Saul, David and Solomon is called the United Kingdom and the time of Kind Jeroboam, Rehoboam and the 38 others who ruled either Israel or Judah is called the time of the Divided Kingdom.
Elisha is one of the prophets during this time of the divided kingdom who was led to power through his mentor, the famous EliJah. Elijah was a great prophet who did many wondrous miracles like calling fire out of the sky which promptly burned up a completely drenched pile of firewood. Elijah spoke God’s truth of compassion and honest worship against the evil King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He’s also the prophet who didn’t die, yep, another spooky story worthy of a campfire and a bunch of scared little kids, but rather was taken up by a great whirlwind into the sky, never to be seen again.
Elisha is his appointed successor and true to Elijah’s memory, Elisha too performs great miracles and speaks out against unrighteous kings. Thus, “Elijah lives on in the ministry of Elisha; Elisha is Elijah one more time, larger than life.” Indeed, such is the power of God in Elijah and Elisha’s memory that when a corpse even touches the bones of the deceased Elisha, the corpse comes back to life.
And now here we are, sitting in worship, wondering how in the world the story of some Zombie has any effect on our life or our faith.
And it’s not like the writer of 2 Kings gives us any help on the matter. He simply tells the story about as matter of factly as can be. I mean, I would have given it a little more substance, a little more pizzazz. I would have described what it felt like landing on the bones in the grave. I would have described the dead man receiving air into his lungs again, his dried blood suddenly warming up and coursing through his veins again. I would have described his shriek of surprise and the look on his friends faces as they began screaming and running away when he came waddling out of the tomb trying to untangle himself from the mummy rags.
But I also just got done watching Zombieland last week.
Obviously, the writer of 2 Kings didn’t. The facts are there, they’re stated and the story is over. (And when he man comes back to life he probably returns to eating hummus and hallah, not brains and humans.)
And scholars say this is intentional: “it is important to note that the narrator does not linger on the ‘miraculous’ but presents each occasion in almost matter-of-fact terms…The reader is thereby pushed away from focusing on the spectacular in itself and asked to discern the theological and religious import of what is being stated.”
So what’s being stated? What’s the point of Zombieland, I mean, verses 20-22? What theological wisdom can be gained from this scary story of the Bible?
Quite frankly, it’s that God is powerful. And God doesn’t just act in religious settings. God acts in every area of Israel’s life.
Did you know while all the prophets of the Old Testament warned the Kings and people that God did not like the way they were treating their neighbors and enemies, while they warned that justice would flow like a mighty fountain and that it would flow against God’s people. While all this was happening, despite the King’s or the people’s unrighteousness, God continued to work on Israel’s behalf. Indeed in chapters 13-14 of 2 Kings, “god acts on behalf of the faithless Israel… God’s compassion and promises continue to shape Israel’s life in the midst of its evil ways.”
In other words, “the most fundamental witness of [the Elijah and Elisha] stories is that Israel’s God makes true life possible in every sphere.” Even in politics. Even in relationships. Even in schools. Even in churches and synagogues. Even in war… Even in the graveyard.
And I guess that is good news.
Because we all have our fair share of faithlessness. We all experience times when we abandon faith for societies’ whims. We all choose coping mechanisms over prayer and perseverance. We all choose to be selfish rather than compassionate. We all choose to judge when we should offer grace. We all choose death when we should be choosing life. And God is faithful to us despite us. There’s always hope for new life… even if you’re dead as a doornail. And while maybe God isn’t going to resuscitate you after you’ve passed on, plenty of us feel dead enough inside that we could use a breathe of fresh air, of God’s air, of God’s spirit, waking us up inside.
And that may be the scariest part yet, letting go of ourselves enough to let God’s life take over. This is America and we like to be the best, look the best, know the most and accomplish the most whether that’s our success in academia, success in the business world, doing the most at church or downing the most at our favorite bar. To let go of our need to be in control and instead live by faith, to let go of our cynicism and live by hope, to let go of our fear and live with intellectual and emotional integrity… that is to receive life. Life that is waiting for us no matter what we do and who we are.
Life is always available if we’d just be willing to take it. I just hope we don’t get so far gone that we have to fall into a dead man’s grave to wake up to that.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Almost Famous
"Hollywood, come and get me Hollywood," floated through my head all day (kudos to whomever catches this movie reference.)
Yep, Hollywood bound we were. And after a twenty minute drive, we were there, walking the stars, sizing our hands and avoiding all the people dressed up like famous characters. (Zorro practically accosted me).
We went to the Graumann's Chinese Theater where lots of stars' hand prints and footprints and cigars (Woody Allen) and dreadlocks (Whoopi Goldberg) and even a pistol (I can't remember whose) are saved in cement. My favorite print of the day was of course Judy Garland who, alongside her daughter, was an amazing singer and actress.
After we walked the block and mused at all the (literal) stars on the pavement with names etched in gold, (some real - Jeff Bridges and some not real - Mickey Mouse) and after I got startled after running into Samuel L. Jackson outside the house of wax (damn those statues look real) we decided to go back to the Movie Palace and actually watch a movie. We were in luck as Zombieland was just about to start, so we bought tickets and popcorn and took our seats.
Unfortunately, it's October, which means it's almost Halloween. Now, you will rarely ever hear me say the words "unfortunately" and "Halloween" in the same sentence, but on this occasion, it meant that I had to watch the previews for the four scariest movies coming out around Halloween and since I hate horror and scary movies, this was traumatizing.
It did set us up for the gruesomeness that was the Zombies storming the beginning of the movie, Zombieland, but after the first twenty minutes when the plot finally became more character driven, I emerged from underneath my ball cap and actually was able to watch most of the film. It was hilarious and had an amazing cameo in the middle of it. Don't worry, I won't tell who and spoil it for you.
To end the day we ate at a diner where of course I had to order a chocolate malt.
Yum! What a perfect ending to a perfect day. "In fact," I told my friend as we drove home, "I wouldn't mind moving out here to become a famous movie star."
I suppose I'll have to settle for being called beautiful by some black guy dressed up as Zorro outside a movie palace in Hollywood before he moved on to his next panhandling mission.
Almost Famous. Figures.
Yep, Hollywood bound we were. And after a twenty minute drive, we were there, walking the stars, sizing our hands and avoiding all the people dressed up like famous characters. (Zorro practically accosted me).
We went to the Graumann's Chinese Theater where lots of stars' hand prints and footprints and cigars (Woody Allen) and dreadlocks (Whoopi Goldberg) and even a pistol (I can't remember whose) are saved in cement. My favorite print of the day was of course Judy Garland who, alongside her daughter, was an amazing singer and actress.
After we walked the block and mused at all the (literal) stars on the pavement with names etched in gold, (some real - Jeff Bridges and some not real - Mickey Mouse) and after I got startled after running into Samuel L. Jackson outside the house of wax (damn those statues look real) we decided to go back to the Movie Palace and actually watch a movie. We were in luck as Zombieland was just about to start, so we bought tickets and popcorn and took our seats.
Unfortunately, it's October, which means it's almost Halloween. Now, you will rarely ever hear me say the words "unfortunately" and "Halloween" in the same sentence, but on this occasion, it meant that I had to watch the previews for the four scariest movies coming out around Halloween and since I hate horror and scary movies, this was traumatizing.
It did set us up for the gruesomeness that was the Zombies storming the beginning of the movie, Zombieland, but after the first twenty minutes when the plot finally became more character driven, I emerged from underneath my ball cap and actually was able to watch most of the film. It was hilarious and had an amazing cameo in the middle of it. Don't worry, I won't tell who and spoil it for you.
To end the day we ate at a diner where of course I had to order a chocolate malt.
Yum! What a perfect ending to a perfect day. "In fact," I told my friend as we drove home, "I wouldn't mind moving out here to become a famous movie star."
I suppose I'll have to settle for being called beautiful by some black guy dressed up as Zorro outside a movie palace in Hollywood before he moved on to his next panhandling mission.
Almost Famous. Figures.
My San Diego Zoo Experience
THE ZOO.
Was...
Different.
It was cool. Don't get me wrong. But it was weird too.
Like, how many zoos are so big that you can't tour it all in one day (or at least five hours)? And how many zoos have a bus AND an express bus that tour the grounds? And how many zoos are so complicated and with maps so insufficient that one can get LOST for an HOUR in ONE section of the zoo.
Damn those monkey trails. I never want to see another monkey again.
Y'all seriously. And we finally determined that up in elevation was actually down on the map which was eventually helpful. But not before it was 2pm and we still hadn't found the restaurant we were trying to get to.
Despite the episode of Lost that we were apparently being filmed in anonymously, some of those animals were AWESOME.
For example, there was a POLAR BEAR. What? And he was playing in the pool when we rode the Bus (but not the Express Bus) around the zoo. So we stopped to watch a minute and he was hilarious tossing his ball around the water and splashing around.
Unfortunately when we were viewing him later through the glass up close and personal, he was having some sort of personal problems He kept walking to the corner of a small covering like a hut, walking directly into the same right corner, then would take six steps backward diagonal left, swinging his head from side to side. Over and over he did this same movement. Like he had Tourette's or was performing a not so sacred rain dance. We stood there captivated though, watching the same thing over and over again because, well, he was a Polar Bear. And that was pretty amazing.
"Sorry we're destroying your habitat," I called out to him as we left.
And even better than the polar bear was the lion. And maybe it's because I'm reading through the Chronicles of Narnia right now so I'm a little biased in fondness for giant cats, but I checked with the others and they agreed, the Lion was the best. Because we were (maybe) ten feet away and he was sitting there chewing on a bone (a big one) like Sophie or Janie. It was amazing.
No wonder they're the kings of all the animals.
Other than that, there was a very cool flourescent yellow snake, some lame pandas whom the park totally talked up but who were actually in these small habitats sleeping in such positions that you couldn't even see their faces, and about a million bajillion deer of a thousand different varieties. "Probably to feed the lions," Amy determined.
So, back to the bus. The original bus, not the express mind you, although the express bus looks just like the tour bus only it has "Express" written on a green sign across the front of it.
This is Amy and I on the bus, the original bus. Not the express bus. Which was fun and a great way to tour the park in 45 minutes. Except the original bus tour was obsessed with the express bus and Brent and Amy couldn't tell you how many times the driver reminded us of "the express bus that looks just like this bus but with the word Express across the front on a green sign."
That became the butt of many jokes.
So at the end of the day, when we were tired, we decided to take the Express bus back to the entrance/exit of the park.
So we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally when I was about ready to pull my hair out (because the zoo was about to close and I hadn't bought my fuzzy stuffed animal yet), it showed up. Green sign and all. So we boarded, rode a few minutes and then it stopped. "Now this is Panda Canyon, and if you want to exit the zoo you go up the moving walkway, to the tower and take a right," the express bus driver announced.
So we got off. And you get one guess as to where we were.
Monkey Trails.
That bus had NOT taken us to the exit, but as Brent figured out, had taken us from the far east side of the 100 acre zoo back north (up on the map but down in elevation). And of course in true dysfunctional map and bus form, they called this drop off spot the exit. And so we walked and walked and walked to the exit. And as soon as I bought a stuffed Lion, we left.
Goodbye Polar Bear, goodbye Lion, goodbye Express Bus.
Was...
Different.
It was cool. Don't get me wrong. But it was weird too.
Like, how many zoos are so big that you can't tour it all in one day (or at least five hours)? And how many zoos have a bus AND an express bus that tour the grounds? And how many zoos are so complicated and with maps so insufficient that one can get LOST for an HOUR in ONE section of the zoo.
Damn those monkey trails. I never want to see another monkey again.
Y'all seriously. And we finally determined that up in elevation was actually down on the map which was eventually helpful. But not before it was 2pm and we still hadn't found the restaurant we were trying to get to.
Despite the episode of Lost that we were apparently being filmed in anonymously, some of those animals were AWESOME.
For example, there was a POLAR BEAR. What? And he was playing in the pool when we rode the Bus (but not the Express Bus) around the zoo. So we stopped to watch a minute and he was hilarious tossing his ball around the water and splashing around.
Unfortunately when we were viewing him later through the glass up close and personal, he was having some sort of personal problems He kept walking to the corner of a small covering like a hut, walking directly into the same right corner, then would take six steps backward diagonal left, swinging his head from side to side. Over and over he did this same movement. Like he had Tourette's or was performing a not so sacred rain dance. We stood there captivated though, watching the same thing over and over again because, well, he was a Polar Bear. And that was pretty amazing.
"Sorry we're destroying your habitat," I called out to him as we left.
And even better than the polar bear was the lion. And maybe it's because I'm reading through the Chronicles of Narnia right now so I'm a little biased in fondness for giant cats, but I checked with the others and they agreed, the Lion was the best. Because we were (maybe) ten feet away and he was sitting there chewing on a bone (a big one) like Sophie or Janie. It was amazing.
No wonder they're the kings of all the animals.
Other than that, there was a very cool flourescent yellow snake, some lame pandas whom the park totally talked up but who were actually in these small habitats sleeping in such positions that you couldn't even see their faces, and about a million bajillion deer of a thousand different varieties. "Probably to feed the lions," Amy determined.
So, back to the bus. The original bus, not the express mind you, although the express bus looks just like the tour bus only it has "Express" written on a green sign across the front of it.
This is Amy and I on the bus, the original bus. Not the express bus. Which was fun and a great way to tour the park in 45 minutes. Except the original bus tour was obsessed with the express bus and Brent and Amy couldn't tell you how many times the driver reminded us of "the express bus that looks just like this bus but with the word Express across the front on a green sign."
That became the butt of many jokes.
So at the end of the day, when we were tired, we decided to take the Express bus back to the entrance/exit of the park.
So we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally when I was about ready to pull my hair out (because the zoo was about to close and I hadn't bought my fuzzy stuffed animal yet), it showed up. Green sign and all. So we boarded, rode a few minutes and then it stopped. "Now this is Panda Canyon, and if you want to exit the zoo you go up the moving walkway, to the tower and take a right," the express bus driver announced.
So we got off. And you get one guess as to where we were.
Monkey Trails.
That bus had NOT taken us to the exit, but as Brent figured out, had taken us from the far east side of the 100 acre zoo back north (up on the map but down in elevation). And of course in true dysfunctional map and bus form, they called this drop off spot the exit. And so we walked and walked and walked to the exit. And as soon as I bought a stuffed Lion, we left.
Goodbye Polar Bear, goodbye Lion, goodbye Express Bus.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Beresheth Sermon: 10 Bridesmaids
Text: Matthew 25:1-13
Oh this parable. It’s a good one isn’t it? You can see all the bridesmaids, waiting around for the bride and groom to show up. They’ve got their lamps or their flowers or whatever is appropriate for a bridesmaid to hold for the age the story is told. And they’re hanging out expecting the happy couple to arrive any minute, but they don’t. And like excited girls at any sleepover, the bridesmaids fall asleep. But they awaken to discover the bridegroom is approaching. They smooth their skirts, pat their hair, pad their bras and suddenly discover that five of them don’t have enough oil to keep their lamps lit.
“Give us some of your oil!” Five bridesmaids beg of the five other girls. “No way, they say, buy your own.” And the unlucky bridesmaids scurry to the store to grab some more oil. And of course, while they are gone, the groom comes, invites the five remaining into the wedding hall and shuts the door.
The five girls return with fresh oil and lamps burning but when they beg of the groom to be let inside to which he replies, “Yeah, sorry, not sure I recognize you.” And the door remains shut.
I actually hate this parable. Why do you need a burning lamp to get into a wedding anyway? And what’s up with the five stingy bridesmaids? Surely the gospel teaches us to share. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? And then there’s the groom. He doesn’t recognize them because they’re late to the party? I mean, better late than never right? Doesn’t Jesus remember telling the story of the Prodigal Son?!
So I read before this parable in Matthew chapter 24 to see if I could get any insight.
Well, we’ve got the destruction of the Temple in addition to wars, famine, and earthquakes. Then we’ve got faithful followers persecuted and false prophets running rampant. There’s also desolating sacrilege and vultures eating corpses. Then comes the story of Jesus and the trumpet trio, not to mention some mighty winds. After that a story about some guy getting plucked up out of a field and a cruel slave who gets cut up into pieces and of course some good old weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Helpful. Maybe I’m liking this bridesmaid story more and more.
Okay, so what comes after this parable? What does the rest of Chapter 25 say?
Next is the parable of the talents and the guy who saves his master’s money by burying it and then returns it to him as it was and gets reprimanded for not monopolizing on the opportunity. Then we get some sheep and goats and left hands and right hands and finally we find out that anytime we saw someone hungry and gave him food, or thirsty and gave her something to drink… anytime we saw a stranger and welcomed him, or someone naked and gave her clothing… or when we saw a sick person or someone in prison and visited them we were doing the same for Jesus. And maybe finally we can begin to make sense of these parables.
It’s important to remember as we read passages like Matthew 24 and 25 or any of Jesus’ parables, that we are not reading a systematized theology. Just as that goofball wrote his Left Behind series so could someone easily write the A New Creation series or the I Shall Draw All People Unto Myself series or The Great Divorce. Oh wait. C.S. Lewis already did that one.
My point is that this is a story. And just as soon as Jesus says, “you will know the time has come because of war and famine,” so in the next breathe he says, “no one will know the time it will come like a thief in the night.” The word eschatology means the study of the end times or of the final things, and a theology of eschatology deducted from these chapters would be hard to pin down. In fact, the most tangible word Jesus actually gives us in these stories comes to us at the end of chapter 25.
Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, hang out with the sick, refresh the thirsty, welcome the visitors. And finally I think. Okay, I don’t know about oil in my lamp, but I can do these other things.
In fact, I can do them now.
And suddenly we move from a theoretical eschatology to a realized eschatology.
In other words, ushering in the Kingdom of God was something that Jesus and the disciples did in their own lives before Jesus’ death and resurrection and after. And ushering in the kingdom of God is something the Holy Spirit continues to do on earth amongst us and indeed through us right now! Thus, if we are to celebrate the death and resurrection of God here on earth and live life abundantly, if we’re gathered to celebrate the wedding, we have to keep our lights shining, our lamps burning and our neighbors taken care of.
We need to be a city on a hill as a testimony to God’s love and mercy. We need to be salt that irritates the wounding sin of injustice in the world. We need to be faithful to wait expectantly for the bridegroom and active in preparing for his arrival. For just as he returned to the disciples in his resurrection, so one day will we be resurrected along with all creation indeed the entire universe to a new life fully realized with God.
For the end of the night is not the time to run off to attend church or to write a check to the Red Cross or drive down and feed a couple of people at the Soup Kitchen. At the end of the night if you’ve missed living fully in God’s abundant love and justice, you don’t want to miss the bridegroom. Don’t go running off to make last minute amends. Wait expectantly for God whether you’re a child on a playground, a college student in classes or a thief hanging on the cross. When God is among us it’s not the right time to try and usher in God’s kingdom. Rather, it’s time to meet the King.
Amen.
Oh this parable. It’s a good one isn’t it? You can see all the bridesmaids, waiting around for the bride and groom to show up. They’ve got their lamps or their flowers or whatever is appropriate for a bridesmaid to hold for the age the story is told. And they’re hanging out expecting the happy couple to arrive any minute, but they don’t. And like excited girls at any sleepover, the bridesmaids fall asleep. But they awaken to discover the bridegroom is approaching. They smooth their skirts, pat their hair, pad their bras and suddenly discover that five of them don’t have enough oil to keep their lamps lit.
“Give us some of your oil!” Five bridesmaids beg of the five other girls. “No way, they say, buy your own.” And the unlucky bridesmaids scurry to the store to grab some more oil. And of course, while they are gone, the groom comes, invites the five remaining into the wedding hall and shuts the door.
The five girls return with fresh oil and lamps burning but when they beg of the groom to be let inside to which he replies, “Yeah, sorry, not sure I recognize you.” And the door remains shut.
I actually hate this parable. Why do you need a burning lamp to get into a wedding anyway? And what’s up with the five stingy bridesmaids? Surely the gospel teaches us to share. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? And then there’s the groom. He doesn’t recognize them because they’re late to the party? I mean, better late than never right? Doesn’t Jesus remember telling the story of the Prodigal Son?!
So I read before this parable in Matthew chapter 24 to see if I could get any insight.
Well, we’ve got the destruction of the Temple in addition to wars, famine, and earthquakes. Then we’ve got faithful followers persecuted and false prophets running rampant. There’s also desolating sacrilege and vultures eating corpses. Then comes the story of Jesus and the trumpet trio, not to mention some mighty winds. After that a story about some guy getting plucked up out of a field and a cruel slave who gets cut up into pieces and of course some good old weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Helpful. Maybe I’m liking this bridesmaid story more and more.
Okay, so what comes after this parable? What does the rest of Chapter 25 say?
Next is the parable of the talents and the guy who saves his master’s money by burying it and then returns it to him as it was and gets reprimanded for not monopolizing on the opportunity. Then we get some sheep and goats and left hands and right hands and finally we find out that anytime we saw someone hungry and gave him food, or thirsty and gave her something to drink… anytime we saw a stranger and welcomed him, or someone naked and gave her clothing… or when we saw a sick person or someone in prison and visited them we were doing the same for Jesus. And maybe finally we can begin to make sense of these parables.
It’s important to remember as we read passages like Matthew 24 and 25 or any of Jesus’ parables, that we are not reading a systematized theology. Just as that goofball wrote his Left Behind series so could someone easily write the A New Creation series or the I Shall Draw All People Unto Myself series or The Great Divorce. Oh wait. C.S. Lewis already did that one.
My point is that this is a story. And just as soon as Jesus says, “you will know the time has come because of war and famine,” so in the next breathe he says, “no one will know the time it will come like a thief in the night.” The word eschatology means the study of the end times or of the final things, and a theology of eschatology deducted from these chapters would be hard to pin down. In fact, the most tangible word Jesus actually gives us in these stories comes to us at the end of chapter 25.
Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, hang out with the sick, refresh the thirsty, welcome the visitors. And finally I think. Okay, I don’t know about oil in my lamp, but I can do these other things.
In fact, I can do them now.
And suddenly we move from a theoretical eschatology to a realized eschatology.
In other words, ushering in the Kingdom of God was something that Jesus and the disciples did in their own lives before Jesus’ death and resurrection and after. And ushering in the kingdom of God is something the Holy Spirit continues to do on earth amongst us and indeed through us right now! Thus, if we are to celebrate the death and resurrection of God here on earth and live life abundantly, if we’re gathered to celebrate the wedding, we have to keep our lights shining, our lamps burning and our neighbors taken care of.
We need to be a city on a hill as a testimony to God’s love and mercy. We need to be salt that irritates the wounding sin of injustice in the world. We need to be faithful to wait expectantly for the bridegroom and active in preparing for his arrival. For just as he returned to the disciples in his resurrection, so one day will we be resurrected along with all creation indeed the entire universe to a new life fully realized with God.
For the end of the night is not the time to run off to attend church or to write a check to the Red Cross or drive down and feed a couple of people at the Soup Kitchen. At the end of the night if you’ve missed living fully in God’s abundant love and justice, you don’t want to miss the bridegroom. Don’t go running off to make last minute amends. Wait expectantly for God whether you’re a child on a playground, a college student in classes or a thief hanging on the cross. When God is among us it’s not the right time to try and usher in God’s kingdom. Rather, it’s time to meet the King.
Amen.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
A Testimony at Truett
So yesterday I awoke at 6am to prepare to drive to Waco to speak at CBF Hispanic Awareness Day at Truett Seminary. No, I have not suddenly become tan and hispanic. But I did take a group of students to Chile in May, and the CBF director wanted me to speak about my experiences there to raise awareness of Mission work in South America. "You'll speak for about 15 minutes with the students and let them ask you question," he said. "No problem," I replied.
As I was driving in the car yesterday morning after about an hour into my trip to Waco I started musing about the day. Okay, I'll speak at 9:30 and I wonder if we'll have lunch... Wait a ticker. 9:30. 9:30. What day is this? Tuesday. 9:30 on a Tuesday.
That's Truett's Chapel Service.
Somewhere in between Chicago the Musical and Regina Spektor, somewhere in between Austin and Temple, I discerned I would be speaking in Chapel.
Shit.
I started to worry and called my friend JoAnn who works now at Truett in their recruitment office. Hey, JoAnn. So you know how I'm supposed to be speaking to the students at Hispanic Awareness Day? Well, they told me 9:30 and do you guys still have chapel at 9:30 cause if so I haven't prepared anything and well, if you knew of something I'd...
"Yeah girl, I saw you on the program. And there's a song we're doing (she plays the violin in the worship band) where we leave room for testimonials. Maybe that's you."
A testimonial?!
Hanging out with some students and telling them about my trip suddenly became giving a testimony about Chile in chapel. I began to freak out. I was in jeans and cowboy boots for heaven's sake. Would Paul Powell groupies pull me out of the pulpit? Granted I had a dress shirt on and nice jewelry but he was such a jerk so many years ago, who knows what it's digressed to now.
I arrived at the school and met the CBF director. "Yes, you'll give your testimony," he said. "Three or four minutes."
"Okay great. I've uh just gotta run to my friends office to type something up."
"No no, speak from your heart seniorita. About your trip. A lot of people have criticized me for bringing white people to talk today but I want people to hear from your hearts about how we call all work together as one."
"Yeah, that's super. But I'll be right back."
There was no way in hell I was going to stand up in chapel and speak before all my former professors and give my testimony without writing it down. I need my words, my symbols, my metaphors, my language. It tells my heart. I had a very love/hate relationship with Truett as in some of the people there loved me and some of them hated me. There was no way I would be caught dead in front of them in worship unprepared.
My friend Kate and I (she'd come to drive up with me at the crack of dawn praise Jesus) went to my friend JoAnn's office where I told Kate, "Give me ten minutes of silence." "Okay, I'm timing you she said."
I began shaking and I began writing.
"Ten minutes," she said and I kept typing.
Three minutes later I was done. We went to the bathroom (all that pop drinking to stay awake on the trip up!) and then went to sit down in the chapel.
But things had changed since I'd been there last.
There were instruments on stage. Lots of them. More than just a piano and an organ. Cool, I thought. And there were students. Lots of them. In the chapel. Going to worship. What? What happened to my school? And some of them were, *gasp* dressed in shorts.
Worship started with one of my former professors, Dr. Tucker, welcoming everyone to "community gathering" (guess the language of Chapel left with PaPa) and introduced me and the other guest speakers. Dr. Tuck was now dean of the school. "He used to teach here?" one of the students I spoke with during lunch asked. "Yep, I had him for Hebrew. He gave me a B+."
The main speaker who was sitting next to me, a white guy who'd done work for 13 years in Argentina and spoke great Spanish, leaned over to tell me he knew Roger after Dr. Tucker introduced me. After that he paid much greater attention to me than he had when I was just some little girl talking about a mission trip. It's amazing how who you know can affect how you're perceived. Thank God there are men like Roger who advocate for women in ministry and help them succeed.
The song came and the first verse was sung. That was my cue. With my knees still shaking I went to the pulpit and delivered the following testimony...
"I arrived in Temuco Chile in May of this year with ten students and another sponsor who would serve as our translator. When I spoke with the CBF last year about doing overseas missions, they asked me, “Where do you want to go?” I said, “Well, somewhere that Spanish is spoken.” “Oh great,” they replied, “you speak Spanish.” “No,” I said, “I speak French, but most of my college students speak Spanish, so I want to go where they can work and interact with people linguistically.”
I figured I would supervise. Delegate responsibilities, make sure the fence got painted the floors got mopped, I would chaperone, make sure no one snuck out of their room at night to go into town, you understand. And of course, I had Steve, or Estaban to be my translator.
What I discovered was that I had a whole other calling. Yes, I delegated, yes I chaperoned, but I also met people. I met girls who had been court ordered removed from their homes. I encountered their smiles and their giggles and I became a part of their world and they became a part of mine. They crawled into my arms, they sang me their favorite songs, we played games.
With no common language.
You know why? Because God moves beyond language. God moves beyond racial lines. God is bigger than a theology of mission or the structure of a denomination or a carefully planned out mission trip where 10 American students would work for a Girl’s Home. God is a spirit that moves amongst people of all ages, languages and gender.
I expected to accomplish a lot of things while at the girls home. Get a new fence painted, build a study room for the girls and re-do a storage closet. I wanted tangible results and while I did get that, what I also found were friends. Friends and colleagues in the adults who served at the home. Friends in the teenage girls, working to finish school so they could go to college. Friends in the little darlings crying out “Tia Ann, Tia Ann!” I discovered I had been changed.
I’m wearing a bracelet on my arm given by a child in the home to all twelve of the North Americans. When I told the director of the home that the girl had made each bracelet for each of us. She said, “No. Not her. You’ve confused her with someone else. She’s a hoarder, she always takes and stores and keeps her stuff.” And then the director and I realized that this girl who was usually selfish and stingy with her possessions had been changed too and chose to share her love through giving.
I was changed. My students were changed. The employees of the school were changed and the girls who have had such hard lives at such young ages were changed. Not because of what we did or what we said, but because of Who God Is.
Thanks be to God."
I swallowed and returned to my seat on the pew. Kate squeezed my hand. We sang the second verse and the second testimony began. I was done. I had survived.
Thanks be to God.
As I was driving in the car yesterday morning after about an hour into my trip to Waco I started musing about the day. Okay, I'll speak at 9:30 and I wonder if we'll have lunch... Wait a ticker. 9:30. 9:30. What day is this? Tuesday. 9:30 on a Tuesday.
That's Truett's Chapel Service.
Somewhere in between Chicago the Musical and Regina Spektor, somewhere in between Austin and Temple, I discerned I would be speaking in Chapel.
Shit.
I started to worry and called my friend JoAnn who works now at Truett in their recruitment office. Hey, JoAnn. So you know how I'm supposed to be speaking to the students at Hispanic Awareness Day? Well, they told me 9:30 and do you guys still have chapel at 9:30 cause if so I haven't prepared anything and well, if you knew of something I'd...
"Yeah girl, I saw you on the program. And there's a song we're doing (she plays the violin in the worship band) where we leave room for testimonials. Maybe that's you."
A testimonial?!
Hanging out with some students and telling them about my trip suddenly became giving a testimony about Chile in chapel. I began to freak out. I was in jeans and cowboy boots for heaven's sake. Would Paul Powell groupies pull me out of the pulpit? Granted I had a dress shirt on and nice jewelry but he was such a jerk so many years ago, who knows what it's digressed to now.
I arrived at the school and met the CBF director. "Yes, you'll give your testimony," he said. "Three or four minutes."
"Okay great. I've uh just gotta run to my friends office to type something up."
"No no, speak from your heart seniorita. About your trip. A lot of people have criticized me for bringing white people to talk today but I want people to hear from your hearts about how we call all work together as one."
"Yeah, that's super. But I'll be right back."
There was no way in hell I was going to stand up in chapel and speak before all my former professors and give my testimony without writing it down. I need my words, my symbols, my metaphors, my language. It tells my heart. I had a very love/hate relationship with Truett as in some of the people there loved me and some of them hated me. There was no way I would be caught dead in front of them in worship unprepared.
My friend Kate and I (she'd come to drive up with me at the crack of dawn praise Jesus) went to my friend JoAnn's office where I told Kate, "Give me ten minutes of silence." "Okay, I'm timing you she said."
I began shaking and I began writing.
"Ten minutes," she said and I kept typing.
Three minutes later I was done. We went to the bathroom (all that pop drinking to stay awake on the trip up!) and then went to sit down in the chapel.
But things had changed since I'd been there last.
There were instruments on stage. Lots of them. More than just a piano and an organ. Cool, I thought. And there were students. Lots of them. In the chapel. Going to worship. What? What happened to my school? And some of them were, *gasp* dressed in shorts.
Worship started with one of my former professors, Dr. Tucker, welcoming everyone to "community gathering" (guess the language of Chapel left with PaPa) and introduced me and the other guest speakers. Dr. Tuck was now dean of the school. "He used to teach here?" one of the students I spoke with during lunch asked. "Yep, I had him for Hebrew. He gave me a B+."
The main speaker who was sitting next to me, a white guy who'd done work for 13 years in Argentina and spoke great Spanish, leaned over to tell me he knew Roger after Dr. Tucker introduced me. After that he paid much greater attention to me than he had when I was just some little girl talking about a mission trip. It's amazing how who you know can affect how you're perceived. Thank God there are men like Roger who advocate for women in ministry and help them succeed.
The song came and the first verse was sung. That was my cue. With my knees still shaking I went to the pulpit and delivered the following testimony...
"I arrived in Temuco Chile in May of this year with ten students and another sponsor who would serve as our translator. When I spoke with the CBF last year about doing overseas missions, they asked me, “Where do you want to go?” I said, “Well, somewhere that Spanish is spoken.” “Oh great,” they replied, “you speak Spanish.” “No,” I said, “I speak French, but most of my college students speak Spanish, so I want to go where they can work and interact with people linguistically.”
I figured I would supervise. Delegate responsibilities, make sure the fence got painted the floors got mopped, I would chaperone, make sure no one snuck out of their room at night to go into town, you understand. And of course, I had Steve, or Estaban to be my translator.
What I discovered was that I had a whole other calling. Yes, I delegated, yes I chaperoned, but I also met people. I met girls who had been court ordered removed from their homes. I encountered their smiles and their giggles and I became a part of their world and they became a part of mine. They crawled into my arms, they sang me their favorite songs, we played games.
With no common language.
You know why? Because God moves beyond language. God moves beyond racial lines. God is bigger than a theology of mission or the structure of a denomination or a carefully planned out mission trip where 10 American students would work for a Girl’s Home. God is a spirit that moves amongst people of all ages, languages and gender.
I expected to accomplish a lot of things while at the girls home. Get a new fence painted, build a study room for the girls and re-do a storage closet. I wanted tangible results and while I did get that, what I also found were friends. Friends and colleagues in the adults who served at the home. Friends in the teenage girls, working to finish school so they could go to college. Friends in the little darlings crying out “Tia Ann, Tia Ann!” I discovered I had been changed.
I’m wearing a bracelet on my arm given by a child in the home to all twelve of the North Americans. When I told the director of the home that the girl had made each bracelet for each of us. She said, “No. Not her. You’ve confused her with someone else. She’s a hoarder, she always takes and stores and keeps her stuff.” And then the director and I realized that this girl who was usually selfish and stingy with her possessions had been changed too and chose to share her love through giving.
I was changed. My students were changed. The employees of the school were changed and the girls who have had such hard lives at such young ages were changed. Not because of what we did or what we said, but because of Who God Is.
Thanks be to God."
I swallowed and returned to my seat on the pew. Kate squeezed my hand. We sang the second verse and the second testimony began. I was done. I had survived.
Thanks be to God.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Moltmann: Session Three
I got to be an interlocutor for this Session (more on this later!!) so I will refer you to my friend Joe B's blog. His notes are there.
Moltmann: Session Six
A congregation who is not accepting of disabled persons is a disabled church. (Moltmann's older brother was disabled and died when euthanasia began in Germany).
We often associate reason as being created in the image of god but how do people without reason fit into the Imago Dei.?: "The Imago Dei is two things, it is a relationship with God. The relationship of God to EVERY human being and this cannot be destroyed neither by disabilities or sin. So we must respect God in every person we meet. The other part is our ability to respond to God."
Regarding the framers of our constitution who were influenced by Locke. Inalienable human rights. Some contemporaries have said there's no such things. People who share a language create those. Theologically what do you think about America's foundation and our thoughts on inalienable rights.: "In 1978 I wrote about human rights and God's rights. All churches in the World Alliance of Service have signed up. How do we apply the rights of humans to the rights of nature? Every Chinese and every African person has inalienable rights. If you create a crime against this we have an implementation for holding people accountable in the UN. But the US didn't sign this. The world community must be based on human rights or there will be no world community. Every child in Africa says, 'Am I not a human being?' After that we belong to race or society or whatever. Inalienable rights - whether John Locke said it or whomever, it's true!"
"God is neither he nor she nor it. God is God. We should not use Gods divinity to justify the domination of man over women. The image of a trinity is neither the Father or the Son or the H.S. but a community. This can be reflected in human relationship. Let them all be one like you in me and I in you Jesus says. So no human being is the image of the Father and no human is the image of the son. It's community. Which we call parouasis or love."
Talk to us about the schism that happens in American churches regarding sexuality: "Let me first say this is no problem in Germany. We never have a struggle about sexuality or homosexuality. The church is about the gospel not about sex. We believe in the justification of faith alone. It is heresy to see it another way. Whomever believes by faith alone is SAVED and is certainly able to be ordained in a Christian community. Why should I not bless a partnership in two human beings. Homosexuality is neither a sin nor a crime. Why is this more important than the question of war and peace for example."
"People who died are with us and they are watching over us and can feel occasionally their presence. If a life was cut short God will bring what He had begun with the human being to it's intended end. Death cannot hinder God to do this because God is God. This is my trust and the future world we may see them again if seeing is the right expression for an intimate relationship. "
What is the church?: "For a long time we said it is the body of Christ. after Vatican 2 we talked about the people of God. If we say this we must say that God has two parts of his people - Israel and the church. The mission is not only through the church but also through Israel - the Jews. This is my understanding of the mission of the church. To take care of the poor people and of the Jews. We have a book in common and a hope in common. We should dialogue with Israel. Not with all the other dialogues. Because if we convert the other person the dialogue ends. A dialogue needs a common ground and with Israel and we have that."
On the one hand we have the mission of the risen Christ whoever hears you hears me, on the other hand we have the inviting voice is Christ whoever visits them visits me.
I still believe strongly in the face to face community. Cyberspace may be nice to communicate but a cyberchurch would be a church without the Eucharist. You can see and listen but you cannot feel, touch, or smell. The near senses are underdeveloped and our far reaching senses are over developed. This has effects on our communities! I believe in local face to face communities where we can see each other and be a community with full senses.
How do you see the role of communion and Eucharistic in the church?: I believe strongly that you do not celebrate on the Lord's table our theories about his presence but his presence! we may have different theories but let's celebrate his presence first and then after let's talk about our different theories. If we start with out different theories we will never come to the table. Every dialogue is better when we have eaten and drunk first. Jesus invited all who are heavy and burdened not just catholics or just Presbyterians. that would not be the Jesus I know. Wine for the priest and bread for the community (catholic church) is heresy.
Do we need to go to church: when time is a commodity, etc.?: "For those who have a church attending church is an issue of community. For the unempleyed it's not an issue. The church is both a gathered people and a sending into the world. Like inhaling and exhaling air."
We often associate reason as being created in the image of god but how do people without reason fit into the Imago Dei.?: "The Imago Dei is two things, it is a relationship with God. The relationship of God to EVERY human being and this cannot be destroyed neither by disabilities or sin. So we must respect God in every person we meet. The other part is our ability to respond to God."
Regarding the framers of our constitution who were influenced by Locke. Inalienable human rights. Some contemporaries have said there's no such things. People who share a language create those. Theologically what do you think about America's foundation and our thoughts on inalienable rights.: "In 1978 I wrote about human rights and God's rights. All churches in the World Alliance of Service have signed up. How do we apply the rights of humans to the rights of nature? Every Chinese and every African person has inalienable rights. If you create a crime against this we have an implementation for holding people accountable in the UN. But the US didn't sign this. The world community must be based on human rights or there will be no world community. Every child in Africa says, 'Am I not a human being?' After that we belong to race or society or whatever. Inalienable rights - whether John Locke said it or whomever, it's true!"
"God is neither he nor she nor it. God is God. We should not use Gods divinity to justify the domination of man over women. The image of a trinity is neither the Father or the Son or the H.S. but a community. This can be reflected in human relationship. Let them all be one like you in me and I in you Jesus says. So no human being is the image of the Father and no human is the image of the son. It's community. Which we call parouasis or love."
Talk to us about the schism that happens in American churches regarding sexuality: "Let me first say this is no problem in Germany. We never have a struggle about sexuality or homosexuality. The church is about the gospel not about sex. We believe in the justification of faith alone. It is heresy to see it another way. Whomever believes by faith alone is SAVED and is certainly able to be ordained in a Christian community. Why should I not bless a partnership in two human beings. Homosexuality is neither a sin nor a crime. Why is this more important than the question of war and peace for example."
"People who died are with us and they are watching over us and can feel occasionally their presence. If a life was cut short God will bring what He had begun with the human being to it's intended end. Death cannot hinder God to do this because God is God. This is my trust and the future world we may see them again if seeing is the right expression for an intimate relationship. "
What is the church?: "For a long time we said it is the body of Christ. after Vatican 2 we talked about the people of God. If we say this we must say that God has two parts of his people - Israel and the church. The mission is not only through the church but also through Israel - the Jews. This is my understanding of the mission of the church. To take care of the poor people and of the Jews. We have a book in common and a hope in common. We should dialogue with Israel. Not with all the other dialogues. Because if we convert the other person the dialogue ends. A dialogue needs a common ground and with Israel and we have that."
On the one hand we have the mission of the risen Christ whoever hears you hears me, on the other hand we have the inviting voice is Christ whoever visits them visits me.
I still believe strongly in the face to face community. Cyberspace may be nice to communicate but a cyberchurch would be a church without the Eucharist. You can see and listen but you cannot feel, touch, or smell. The near senses are underdeveloped and our far reaching senses are over developed. This has effects on our communities! I believe in local face to face communities where we can see each other and be a community with full senses.
How do you see the role of communion and Eucharistic in the church?: I believe strongly that you do not celebrate on the Lord's table our theories about his presence but his presence! we may have different theories but let's celebrate his presence first and then after let's talk about our different theories. If we start with out different theories we will never come to the table. Every dialogue is better when we have eaten and drunk first. Jesus invited all who are heavy and burdened not just catholics or just Presbyterians. that would not be the Jesus I know. Wine for the priest and bread for the community (catholic church) is heresy.
Do we need to go to church: when time is a commodity, etc.?: "For those who have a church attending church is an issue of community. For the unempleyed it's not an issue. The church is both a gathered people and a sending into the world. Like inhaling and exhaling air."
Moltmann: Session Five
"Unless you confess God cannot bless." Saw this sign but I don't give God the power to forgive me. It's like we've handcuffed God. - Jones
You cannot make as a human being conditions to God. This wouldb eto make God an object an idol. God will bless whom God will bless. The initiave is God's initiative and> God will bless you and then you can confess whatever is on your heart. God is God, not a bargain partner for you and your religion. this is completely heathen. If we do this then God will do this. It's a denial of the freedom of God and it's ot Christian. I am completely opposed to this bargaining for our destiny. This is pure capitalism. - Moltmann
But Jesus' teaching about prayer seems to be all about keep bothering God and you will get what you want. - Jones. "But this is not Jesus' only teaching on this. Whenever you pray you know that God knows already what you need otherwise it would be nonsense to pray. the hearing of God proceeds your prayer." Moltmann
Can we pray for something that's already happened? Is God separated from time so that I could pray for something in the past?:
"There's a long tradition for prayer for the dead because they are included already in the prayer of Christ. i think I am praying for the dead because the dead are not dead. They died but we cannot say that they are dead now. they are sleeping until the day of awakening. they are with us. they are watching over us. they are not in a modern sense dead and gone and annihilated. they are present. if you believe Romans 14 then we have a community with the dead in Christ and a community of hope because we are raised from death together. we need to overcome this modern thought of death is annihilation."
Zimzum: prior to creation all there was was god and in order to create god limited god's self and made space and room for creation. How does that relate to panentheism and does that mean God bound God's self to time?:
"I'm not the first person to take up this kabalistic thought. Christians have been doing this for 300 years now. Before God created the world he decided to become the creator. the first act of creation was inside God. Before He created heaven and earth he needed space and room for creation that another limited and finite reality of heaven and earth can be and can co-exist with God. Normally we understand creation as act but to take oneself back to oneself to let another being develop and flourish is also very creative." Moltmann
"If God as a being by nature is timeless but part of God's self limitation that wie're in that God has bound himself to time so God is experience time with us." Jones "Yes otherwise he couldn't be called the living God. A living God he must be able to have life giving relationship to other living beings." Moltmann
Hegel - God is unfolding history:
"Hegel did not develop an understanding of the trinity. It has nothing to do of the Christian understanding of Jesus, Abba and the Holy Spirit. Hegel had no eschatology. Panentheism everything is in God. But this is only one side of the biblical understanding of God. The other idea is that God is in everything. God dwells in the highs and the lows with the broken hearts. He's dwelling with Israel a cloud by day and fire by down. Shekinah. In the NT you have a mutual indwelling especially in the letters of God. Parousis. Mutual indwelling. So whomever remains in love God is in him. Also in John Calvin. The glory of god is already reflecting himself in all things. but we have no eyes to see it. So was God in the Tsenumi or with the terrorists. This is nonsense."
Theosis - god in each human being. Do you believe in this: "yes."
Martin Luther - God became a human being so that we unhappy gods could become fully human. "So God became a human being to liberate us from our God complex." Moltmann
Original Sin: Judaism doesn't have a doctrine of original sin. Can you comment on Augustine?: "I think these ideas of Augustine is leading to a christian form of gnosticism. Procreating is bad. Original Sin is like AIDS that we deliever from one generation to another. This is gnosticism this is not the OT form of life. We have received life and we should give life to another generation. So original sin ahs notheing to do with sex and procreation. The idea is more collective Guilt. I think this was the understanding of Luther. Everyone is guilty of evreything which happens in the world because everything is related to everything. There is a collective destiny because we share into everything and everything shares in us. But this has nothing to do with Adam or Eve. Did it enter with Adam or eve, this is all speculation. Guilt came into the world through Cain and Able since this time it's one against the other. This is more realistic I think."
"The other people's religion I give so God may give so you must make sacrifices to the Gods so God will give you God's blessing. If you don't do it right the God gets angry and you experience disease or whatever. So you have to look around and figure out who brought the wrong sacrifice to God. Jonah. This is all not biblical. The scapegoat is given by God. He is not asking this from the people but is giving this to Israel so that all the sins can be put on the scapegoat who then takes the sins out into the desert. God doesn't NEED a sacrifice. He GIVES it to the world. The initive is God'sinitiave. They used the Temple language but something completely different is meant."
So God is always the protagonist. The initiator. How is God the protagonist in allowing trinitarian love to overflow?: "Love takes God outside of himself and therefore he creates creatures which can resonate. He is not in need of the creation. The creation is a result of his overflowing joy and love."
"Dispensationalism is not a Christian idea. You can talk about this without mentioning Christ. Jesus was just one part of it. What is lacking is the new beginning that comes in the resurrection of Christ in anticiaption of the general resurrection and the new creation. So the new has already begun and the future is not very far away because it is already beginning. Prophet Isaiah: don't remember the things of old. Behold I create a new thing. Not one dispensation after another."
Will there be a moment in time of Jesus' return?: Yes. We have this linear concept of ttime and this is the time of our clock. In this linear concept he will not come. But we have another concept of time, the kairos. Our life experiences are not according to clock time but to kairos. A good time. This Kairos is an anticipation of the eschatological moment. 1 Cor 15. You can put it in terms of fulfilled time or life. In fulfilled time you don't care about the clock anymore you live in the eternal moment. When you come into the intensity of living you take the clock away.
Do you separate from Reformed Theology when you say we cooperate with God?: "I don't see that putting everything on God is a very Christian understaning of God. God enables us and gives us chances and energy to work in accordance with his will. and to resonate to his tune. and take responsibility which includes response. If God were all in all already then yes. But now it is our responsibility."
Who is the trinitarian God in nature?: "My question for science is: do you understand what you know? We need a hermeneutics of nature. We need to interpret the science. So science explains but we need understanding and interrupting. A doctor measures your blood pressure and your temp and takes all the data he can get from your body if you're not well or sick. So he takes the data and then he takes the data as symptioms of a disease and he interprets this as a disease you have and then the therapy can begin. The data is symptoms and now we must interpret these symptions to understand what we know. For example, to understand the data we get from climate research and economic research and interpret them and react in order to get over the danger which is come. The hermeneutics of nature. We put whatever we know of nature in the transcendant dimension. We can see the H.S. in the transcendant cycle of every human being. More complex life forms are open systems transcending themselves. This is an expression of a transcendance of the Spirit. You must speak of the H.S> herself and the energies of the H.S. Every Christian is filled with energies of the H.S. and therefore they form different communities with different gifts and energies. But only one spirit. The positive energies are from the spirit. The annihilating ones are not from the spirit. In each criminal or negative act of destruction there is energy which much be redeemed. Redeem the sinners, redeem the sin. Turn it into a positive life giving energy."
"If death will be no more. There will be a creation without organic death. ALL the death will disappear. That maybe a brand new biology a brand new physics, etc.
Evolution: nothing new, only evolving.
Emergence: something new; the old is new according to the qualification of the parts.
I think something new is always happening."
"At the end God will be All in All. So the end is not the annihilation of the world (Luther) but the deification (Greek Orthodox) or transformation (Reformed) of the world. "
You cannot make as a human being conditions to God. This wouldb eto make God an object an idol. God will bless whom God will bless. The initiave is God's initiative and> God will bless you and then you can confess whatever is on your heart. God is God, not a bargain partner for you and your religion. this is completely heathen. If we do this then God will do this. It's a denial of the freedom of God and it's ot Christian. I am completely opposed to this bargaining for our destiny. This is pure capitalism. - Moltmann
But Jesus' teaching about prayer seems to be all about keep bothering God and you will get what you want. - Jones. "But this is not Jesus' only teaching on this. Whenever you pray you know that God knows already what you need otherwise it would be nonsense to pray. the hearing of God proceeds your prayer." Moltmann
Can we pray for something that's already happened? Is God separated from time so that I could pray for something in the past?:
"There's a long tradition for prayer for the dead because they are included already in the prayer of Christ. i think I am praying for the dead because the dead are not dead. They died but we cannot say that they are dead now. they are sleeping until the day of awakening. they are with us. they are watching over us. they are not in a modern sense dead and gone and annihilated. they are present. if you believe Romans 14 then we have a community with the dead in Christ and a community of hope because we are raised from death together. we need to overcome this modern thought of death is annihilation."
Zimzum: prior to creation all there was was god and in order to create god limited god's self and made space and room for creation. How does that relate to panentheism and does that mean God bound God's self to time?:
"I'm not the first person to take up this kabalistic thought. Christians have been doing this for 300 years now. Before God created the world he decided to become the creator. the first act of creation was inside God. Before He created heaven and earth he needed space and room for creation that another limited and finite reality of heaven and earth can be and can co-exist with God. Normally we understand creation as act but to take oneself back to oneself to let another being develop and flourish is also very creative." Moltmann
"If God as a being by nature is timeless but part of God's self limitation that wie're in that God has bound himself to time so God is experience time with us." Jones "Yes otherwise he couldn't be called the living God. A living God he must be able to have life giving relationship to other living beings." Moltmann
Hegel - God is unfolding history:
"Hegel did not develop an understanding of the trinity. It has nothing to do of the Christian understanding of Jesus, Abba and the Holy Spirit. Hegel had no eschatology. Panentheism everything is in God. But this is only one side of the biblical understanding of God. The other idea is that God is in everything. God dwells in the highs and the lows with the broken hearts. He's dwelling with Israel a cloud by day and fire by down. Shekinah. In the NT you have a mutual indwelling especially in the letters of God. Parousis. Mutual indwelling. So whomever remains in love God is in him. Also in John Calvin. The glory of god is already reflecting himself in all things. but we have no eyes to see it. So was God in the Tsenumi or with the terrorists. This is nonsense."
Theosis - god in each human being. Do you believe in this: "yes."
Martin Luther - God became a human being so that we unhappy gods could become fully human. "So God became a human being to liberate us from our God complex." Moltmann
Original Sin: Judaism doesn't have a doctrine of original sin. Can you comment on Augustine?: "I think these ideas of Augustine is leading to a christian form of gnosticism. Procreating is bad. Original Sin is like AIDS that we deliever from one generation to another. This is gnosticism this is not the OT form of life. We have received life and we should give life to another generation. So original sin ahs notheing to do with sex and procreation. The idea is more collective Guilt. I think this was the understanding of Luther. Everyone is guilty of evreything which happens in the world because everything is related to everything. There is a collective destiny because we share into everything and everything shares in us. But this has nothing to do with Adam or Eve. Did it enter with Adam or eve, this is all speculation. Guilt came into the world through Cain and Able since this time it's one against the other. This is more realistic I think."
"The other people's religion I give so God may give so you must make sacrifices to the Gods so God will give you God's blessing. If you don't do it right the God gets angry and you experience disease or whatever. So you have to look around and figure out who brought the wrong sacrifice to God. Jonah. This is all not biblical. The scapegoat is given by God. He is not asking this from the people but is giving this to Israel so that all the sins can be put on the scapegoat who then takes the sins out into the desert. God doesn't NEED a sacrifice. He GIVES it to the world. The initive is God'sinitiave. They used the Temple language but something completely different is meant."
So God is always the protagonist. The initiator. How is God the protagonist in allowing trinitarian love to overflow?: "Love takes God outside of himself and therefore he creates creatures which can resonate. He is not in need of the creation. The creation is a result of his overflowing joy and love."
"Dispensationalism is not a Christian idea. You can talk about this without mentioning Christ. Jesus was just one part of it. What is lacking is the new beginning that comes in the resurrection of Christ in anticiaption of the general resurrection and the new creation. So the new has already begun and the future is not very far away because it is already beginning. Prophet Isaiah: don't remember the things of old. Behold I create a new thing. Not one dispensation after another."
Will there be a moment in time of Jesus' return?: Yes. We have this linear concept of ttime and this is the time of our clock. In this linear concept he will not come. But we have another concept of time, the kairos. Our life experiences are not according to clock time but to kairos. A good time. This Kairos is an anticipation of the eschatological moment. 1 Cor 15. You can put it in terms of fulfilled time or life. In fulfilled time you don't care about the clock anymore you live in the eternal moment. When you come into the intensity of living you take the clock away.
Do you separate from Reformed Theology when you say we cooperate with God?: "I don't see that putting everything on God is a very Christian understaning of God. God enables us and gives us chances and energy to work in accordance with his will. and to resonate to his tune. and take responsibility which includes response. If God were all in all already then yes. But now it is our responsibility."
Who is the trinitarian God in nature?: "My question for science is: do you understand what you know? We need a hermeneutics of nature. We need to interpret the science. So science explains but we need understanding and interrupting. A doctor measures your blood pressure and your temp and takes all the data he can get from your body if you're not well or sick. So he takes the data and then he takes the data as symptioms of a disease and he interprets this as a disease you have and then the therapy can begin. The data is symptoms and now we must interpret these symptions to understand what we know. For example, to understand the data we get from climate research and economic research and interpret them and react in order to get over the danger which is come. The hermeneutics of nature. We put whatever we know of nature in the transcendant dimension. We can see the H.S. in the transcendant cycle of every human being. More complex life forms are open systems transcending themselves. This is an expression of a transcendance of the Spirit. You must speak of the H.S> herself and the energies of the H.S. Every Christian is filled with energies of the H.S. and therefore they form different communities with different gifts and energies. But only one spirit. The positive energies are from the spirit. The annihilating ones are not from the spirit. In each criminal or negative act of destruction there is energy which much be redeemed. Redeem the sinners, redeem the sin. Turn it into a positive life giving energy."
"If death will be no more. There will be a creation without organic death. ALL the death will disappear. That maybe a brand new biology a brand new physics, etc.
Evolution: nothing new, only evolving.
Emergence: something new; the old is new according to the qualification of the parts.
I think something new is always happening."
"At the end God will be All in All. So the end is not the annihilation of the world (Luther) but the deification (Greek Orthodox) or transformation (Reformed) of the world. "
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Moltmann: Session Four
"The war and peace question can be reduced to three options: one change swords into christian swords and be a dragon killer. this is the option of the christian empire. change bombs into christian atomic; leave the swords to the unbelievers and return to the plowshares; change swords into plowshares and the military complex into an ecological complex - a peace making men, change arrows into pots in the kitchens. change two patrons into pens, engage yourself in making peace. Take the swords out of the hands of the violent people. Mankind will not survive with swords, only plowshares. We need communities who anticipate this type of kingdom a peacemaking people."
Nicaragua: live in the slums as a community. "Show them that community can get them out. Escaping Poverty isn't "property" but "community." "Christian church is alive where smaller communities live together church is not formed out of individuals." (What does this mean to a downtown church? - Ann)
A church has two tasks: serve the poor and the sick and the homeless and jobless; prophetic chance to say look at those in the shadows. Without the prophetic the service and vice versa the other is empty. If you visit a sick member of your church in a hospital and this person says pastor how nice you are coming, my family has forgotten me you should turn around and go to the family and say why did you leave that person alone in the hospital! the same is for the church at large. you cannot make this. prophets are called and sometimes against their will. Nelson Mandela, MLK Jr. So let's pray for prophets who can speak in public and convince people"
Are we co-creaters with God or this something we just expect to happen: "We prepare the way for the kingdom and the peace of God. We must anticipate the justice of the Kingdom of God. We thought the kingdom of God was progress: science, technology, hospitals, etc. But this belief collapsed in WW1. Now the belief in progress is returning in the idea of globalization. the abyss is approaching with the destruction of the environment. We have globalization without the globe. The earth has nothing to say and this is dangerous of course. So we need a globalization of social justice and peacemaking. Otherwise the Kingdom would be the Kingdom of men, not of God."
The POWs after WW2 were given a chance for education and life through the YMCA and other camps and in this way they received forgiveness and it changed everything. (What can we learn from this America?! - Ann)
"If given the chance to kill a german dictator or keep the peace of the masses. I would kill the dictator. I told the Mennonites this and they said, 'That's okay'."
Nicaragua: live in the slums as a community. "Show them that community can get them out. Escaping Poverty isn't "property" but "community." "Christian church is alive where smaller communities live together church is not formed out of individuals." (What does this mean to a downtown church? - Ann)
A church has two tasks: serve the poor and the sick and the homeless and jobless; prophetic chance to say look at those in the shadows. Without the prophetic the service and vice versa the other is empty. If you visit a sick member of your church in a hospital and this person says pastor how nice you are coming, my family has forgotten me you should turn around and go to the family and say why did you leave that person alone in the hospital! the same is for the church at large. you cannot make this. prophets are called and sometimes against their will. Nelson Mandela, MLK Jr. So let's pray for prophets who can speak in public and convince people"
Are we co-creaters with God or this something we just expect to happen: "We prepare the way for the kingdom and the peace of God. We must anticipate the justice of the Kingdom of God. We thought the kingdom of God was progress: science, technology, hospitals, etc. But this belief collapsed in WW1. Now the belief in progress is returning in the idea of globalization. the abyss is approaching with the destruction of the environment. We have globalization without the globe. The earth has nothing to say and this is dangerous of course. So we need a globalization of social justice and peacemaking. Otherwise the Kingdom would be the Kingdom of men, not of God."
The POWs after WW2 were given a chance for education and life through the YMCA and other camps and in this way they received forgiveness and it changed everything. (What can we learn from this America?! - Ann)
"If given the chance to kill a german dictator or keep the peace of the masses. I would kill the dictator. I told the Mennonites this and they said, 'That's okay'."
Moltmann: Session Two
Exploring Methodology:
You broke some of the rules of German, Protestant Systemology, so tell us what is the normal German way of going about Systematics?:
"Behind all this is the conviction that humanly speaking truth is to be found in unhindered dialogue." Moltmann Intro
How is that different than Karl Barth or others?
Regarding Karl Barth's 8000 pages a critic once said, "The Truth cannot be so long!"
"I resist the temptation to write a system because I am not a systematic person. I had an idea and I wrote about it."
Hidden Universalism in Barth not to reconcile nature to God but people to God.
"Whenever i find something that sounds true to me, i say hello yes, that's fine. that's the way i also think. so don't become narrow minded to defend only your won denomination. Christ is more than one's own denomination."
Elie Wiesel's book Night, three prisoners were hanged and two died with a loud cry of freedom and there was a boy who was tortured because he was so light he wouldn't die. he heard a voice behind him saying "where is god" and the answer: he is hanging up there."
Regarding 911: "God is not punishing New York homosexuals. A God who uses terrorists to punish his own people is a monster and for me, not a god. But maybe we should turn around our thinking of the omnipotence of God. God isn't in control of everything but is carryng and bearing everything. Exodus language: you carried us like a mother is carrying a child in her arms. you are burying us through the desert like a father bury's his own sons. we are carried on eagle's wings. I will carry you until you become old. This patience of god, the carrying of everything gives his word time and this is the omnipotence of god."
Divine impassibility was inherited by Greek philosophy. Is there an epiphany moment when you thought, that's not god. Because you write that an impassible god is not a god it's a demon.: "Aristotle, metaphysics, pope 12... criticism against the many god stories in Greek mythology god is not apathetic he is full of pathos of love and anger (wounded love) for this people. if god is apathetic then his image of us is apathy."
"it's better to be defeated than not to begin. get out of apathy. thus i talk about the passibility of god."
"i try to bring life and death experiences into contact with theological questions but theology that doesn't affect life is only a game for play. the book of my best students, Volf, exclusion and embrace is a good book because of his experiences. life and death are a source of theology, of course!"
You said once we should Read forward and backward what do you think?" "I'm old enough not to fear becoming heretical. i read the bible with a presupposition to meet the divine word in human words and whenever i meet the divine word which became incognate in Jesus Christ then i feel to meet the truth. then i have a criterion over against the human expressions of this proof. Galations 3:28 in Christ there is no male female, lord nor slave, all one in Christ and heirs of kingdom. but then i read that women should shut up in the congregation. what sentence is closest to Christ and my decision is clear. if the women were always silent we would have no knowledge of the resurrection of Christ." (clapping).
"My question for fundamentalists is do you read the bible and if you do, do you understand it?"
"My wife convinced me to change sentences from this is the case to i think this is the case and not to make objective statements. because if i say it in this way, this is my experience, provokes the subjectivity in others to make up their own mind and not to just quote me."
"Luther said theology and politics have nothing in common. We must change our attitude with the death of Auschwitz pulling on our hearts."
John Paul II - He was a good pope.
Pannenburg - He is a very dear friend and componant
Dietrich Bonhoffer - Died too early
Whitehead - Very Complicated to read.
Jaques Dierida - i think post modernity is just another form of modernity. we have universal dangers which we can ready only united we cannot split up in everything goes anwith peoples little narratives or small narr we live under the threat of atomic bomb and the extinction of mankind is all around us so why should we give up thsese universal questions
Stanley Hauerwass - The nt speaks not about a peacable kingdom but a peace making kingdom.
Martin Luther - Great job on reforming but there are two ML and MLK what's the difference.
Augustine - Ask his wife about him There was a wife and a son and he left both of them for his mother but it happens :)
Marx - I like the early Karl Marx had influences from romantic philosphy, the naturalization of human beings and nature his early writings the communist manifest is one of the greatest documents of the 19th century. Even if you disagree with it.
Miraslov Volf - he is a very dear friend and a very gifted theologian he came to me at tuberton to write his dissertation about work and marx but then he was drafted and when he returned and experienced suffering and resistance and i loved him very much when he returned wounded. and then he wrote the book on community and now he is going on writing writing writing. He had a calling to Heidleberg once. Either go there to Christians there or you go to Yale and be an American postmodern theogian. Unfortunately
Pelagious - he is the saint of american christians.
You broke some of the rules of German, Protestant Systemology, so tell us what is the normal German way of going about Systematics?:
"Behind all this is the conviction that humanly speaking truth is to be found in unhindered dialogue." Moltmann Intro
How is that different than Karl Barth or others?
Regarding Karl Barth's 8000 pages a critic once said, "The Truth cannot be so long!"
"I resist the temptation to write a system because I am not a systematic person. I had an idea and I wrote about it."
Hidden Universalism in Barth not to reconcile nature to God but people to God.
"Whenever i find something that sounds true to me, i say hello yes, that's fine. that's the way i also think. so don't become narrow minded to defend only your won denomination. Christ is more than one's own denomination."
Elie Wiesel's book Night, three prisoners were hanged and two died with a loud cry of freedom and there was a boy who was tortured because he was so light he wouldn't die. he heard a voice behind him saying "where is god" and the answer: he is hanging up there."
Regarding 911: "God is not punishing New York homosexuals. A God who uses terrorists to punish his own people is a monster and for me, not a god. But maybe we should turn around our thinking of the omnipotence of God. God isn't in control of everything but is carryng and bearing everything. Exodus language: you carried us like a mother is carrying a child in her arms. you are burying us through the desert like a father bury's his own sons. we are carried on eagle's wings. I will carry you until you become old. This patience of god, the carrying of everything gives his word time and this is the omnipotence of god."
Divine impassibility was inherited by Greek philosophy. Is there an epiphany moment when you thought, that's not god. Because you write that an impassible god is not a god it's a demon.: "Aristotle, metaphysics, pope 12... criticism against the many god stories in Greek mythology god is not apathetic he is full of pathos of love and anger (wounded love) for this people. if god is apathetic then his image of us is apathy."
"it's better to be defeated than not to begin. get out of apathy. thus i talk about the passibility of god."
"i try to bring life and death experiences into contact with theological questions but theology that doesn't affect life is only a game for play. the book of my best students, Volf, exclusion and embrace is a good book because of his experiences. life and death are a source of theology, of course!"
You said once we should Read forward and backward what do you think?" "I'm old enough not to fear becoming heretical. i read the bible with a presupposition to meet the divine word in human words and whenever i meet the divine word which became incognate in Jesus Christ then i feel to meet the truth. then i have a criterion over against the human expressions of this proof. Galations 3:28 in Christ there is no male female, lord nor slave, all one in Christ and heirs of kingdom. but then i read that women should shut up in the congregation. what sentence is closest to Christ and my decision is clear. if the women were always silent we would have no knowledge of the resurrection of Christ." (clapping).
"My question for fundamentalists is do you read the bible and if you do, do you understand it?"
"My wife convinced me to change sentences from this is the case to i think this is the case and not to make objective statements. because if i say it in this way, this is my experience, provokes the subjectivity in others to make up their own mind and not to just quote me."
"Luther said theology and politics have nothing in common. We must change our attitude with the death of Auschwitz pulling on our hearts."
John Paul II - He was a good pope.
Pannenburg - He is a very dear friend and componant
Dietrich Bonhoffer - Died too early
Whitehead - Very Complicated to read.
Jaques Dierida - i think post modernity is just another form of modernity. we have universal dangers which we can ready only united we cannot split up in everything goes anwith peoples little narratives or small narr we live under the threat of atomic bomb and the extinction of mankind is all around us so why should we give up thsese universal questions
Stanley Hauerwass - The nt speaks not about a peacable kingdom but a peace making kingdom.
Martin Luther - Great job on reforming but there are two ML and MLK what's the difference.
Augustine - Ask his wife about him There was a wife and a son and he left both of them for his mother but it happens :)
Marx - I like the early Karl Marx had influences from romantic philosphy, the naturalization of human beings and nature his early writings the communist manifest is one of the greatest documents of the 19th century. Even if you disagree with it.
Miraslov Volf - he is a very dear friend and a very gifted theologian he came to me at tuberton to write his dissertation about work and marx but then he was drafted and when he returned and experienced suffering and resistance and i loved him very much when he returned wounded. and then he wrote the book on community and now he is going on writing writing writing. He had a calling to Heidleberg once. Either go there to Christians there or you go to Yale and be an American postmodern theogian. Unfortunately
Pelagious - he is the saint of american christians.
Moltmann: Session One
JURGEN MOLTMANN
Tell us your story:
"It's easy to tell but was difficult to live through the years. I was born in 1926 in Germany. Family secular of school teachers. My father left the church because of free will and reason. I also believe in reason. When I was 16 I was studying a book on quantum physics when my class was drafted into the army." There was a firestorm in Humborg in July of 43 where fires went on for miles and miles. Mostly women and children were killed because the men were on the front. Additionally, a bomb went of around Moltmann and when he got up, he looked and there were dead people all around him. From those experiences come the questions "Where is God" and "Why am I alive and not dead as the others are?" "These two questions followed me and tortured me for years."
POW in Feb 45
"Imprisonment of the soul and of the body." But he saw a blooming cherry tree which raised the first response of life in his life.
Scottish families and workers were kind to POWs even though they were enemies and the POWs felt forgiveness despite the guilt of Moltmann and his people.
An Army chaplain distributed Bibles to the POWs which he started to read. When he came to the Psalms, especially psalms of lament, and epecially psalm 39, he found words that spoke to his heart. Then when he found in Mark "My God Why hast thou forsaken me," Moltmann understood the torture of Christ and felt that God understood him. "This was my first encounter with Jesus and the impression hasn't left me since that time. Christ found me in the dark pit of my soul and behind barbed wire."
After that "I lost interest in mathematics and physic and wanted to find the truth of Christian faith. I was still seeking God but I got the impression I wasn't seeking for God if God was not already drawing me."
"In 46 I heard about a special camp for the education of teacher and pastors of post-war germany a gift from the bittish to the prisoners and was funded by an american business man. And then I started studying Theology and then Hebrew and then Greek. I heard my first lectures and had my first contact with the church, but still wasn't sure to become a pastor. I didn't know what the church was all about. I was only searching for the church."
April of 48 he was sent home. "I felt that my soul was healed from the wounds of the war and post war time. I felt I was like Jacob who had come through the dark side of God. And then had experienced also the warmth of his love and the presence of his shining face."
Asked to be the doctoral student under the professor that his wife was already studying under (not his wife at the time). :) "I wanted to become a pastor and nothing else. I had read Karl Barth up and down and thought there was nothing else to be said about theology. When I pastored a small town of mostly people and cows." And there he was with his PhD. Pastored there five years.
Then went to seminary and felt impoverished because as a professor he had the more or less good educated young students with the distance of a lecture hall - and this wasn't life. "I had to bring life into this more distant way of doing theology" more "than I did as a pastor."
He was a guest lecturer at Duke and they had a different interest than the students at Tubingen. At Tubingen they ask "What is the Church" but the students in NC only asked "How to run a Church?"
At first he loved America, but then he was shown the black ghettos and the burnt crosses of the KKK and "my american dream was a little disappointed." Theology of Hope was published in America and the NY Times front page "replacing the God is Dead theology which is not too difficult." :) At a Theology of Hope Conference, he was debating with someone when someone else came in and said MLK was shot. The conference was over immediately. "This was the end of my american dream? no it was not because that same evening 400 students went out on the campus and sat for four days and four nights sitting in silence and mourning and this made a deep impression on me and then on the last day black students came from a black college and danced through the rows of the white students sitting and then they all students stood and sang we shall overcome. At first I liked American then I didn't like America and then I came to love America."
What's the message of early 20th Century European humanism?: "do good, love the beauty of nature and follow your instinct for adventures of life, a kind of humanism of free will and good emotions but without sentence. God is everywhere and everything is divine. But with this you cannot go through the war, imprisonment and suffering so this collapses very quickly. There were no words for the destruction, the war, the forsakenness."
"All the best theologians were pastors" McClendon. Do you continue to draw on that years later?: "When a theological idea occurs to me i think, 'what would the people think about it' or 'what would they make of it.' and the people of my congregation would appear in my eyes and react to it. professional theologians must again and again go down and listen to the people's theology and their questions and also to their answers and the people should not be shy but should take responsibility for the theologians. most seminaries have connections to local congregations."
"To most of the things in my life i came by chance." In 1990 in Manague Nicaragua it was a really poor and destroyed country with a very self-conscious people who had won their freedom by themselves. Five years later they created the first Protestant university. Atlanta coast is Protestant and the indians are moravian brothers
In San Salvador they killed six Jesuits and the wife and housekeeper and in the blood of one of the man the crucified god fell off the bookshelf and was soaked in blood. three years later he made his pilgrimage there where the book is now held in glass as a reminder.
Trinity: "Eastern Orthodox you have the three angels sitting around the table - a complete doctrine of the trinity which we in the west do not. the best would be to create a social doctrine of the trinity where the father Son and holy spirit are one, you are in me and i am in you. true human community is an icon and witness to the one triune god. Very simple. If you come into fellowship with jesus you come into fellowship with the Father and when you do you feel the life giving energies of the spirit. not a mystery. we live in god through Jesus surrounded by the spirit. we are surrounded by God on all sides. I found this for myself very enlightening."
"Jesus addressed his god as abba dear father. Paul heard the abba prayer in Galacia and Rome and after a few centuries the abba prayer was replaced with 'our father art in heaven' which is patriarchal. if we would reintroduce the abba prayer we would feel the nearness of jesus in the moment. so i'm trying to convince congregations to reintroduce the abba prayer because then you are already in the trinity. Not only three persons but three rooms - give room for the indwelling of the other's spirit in their room. we too much leave room for other people, open our lives and houses and love and friendship to them. A group giving to each other is the best."
Tell us your story:
"It's easy to tell but was difficult to live through the years. I was born in 1926 in Germany. Family secular of school teachers. My father left the church because of free will and reason. I also believe in reason. When I was 16 I was studying a book on quantum physics when my class was drafted into the army." There was a firestorm in Humborg in July of 43 where fires went on for miles and miles. Mostly women and children were killed because the men were on the front. Additionally, a bomb went of around Moltmann and when he got up, he looked and there were dead people all around him. From those experiences come the questions "Where is God" and "Why am I alive and not dead as the others are?" "These two questions followed me and tortured me for years."
POW in Feb 45
"Imprisonment of the soul and of the body." But he saw a blooming cherry tree which raised the first response of life in his life.
Scottish families and workers were kind to POWs even though they were enemies and the POWs felt forgiveness despite the guilt of Moltmann and his people.
An Army chaplain distributed Bibles to the POWs which he started to read. When he came to the Psalms, especially psalms of lament, and epecially psalm 39, he found words that spoke to his heart. Then when he found in Mark "My God Why hast thou forsaken me," Moltmann understood the torture of Christ and felt that God understood him. "This was my first encounter with Jesus and the impression hasn't left me since that time. Christ found me in the dark pit of my soul and behind barbed wire."
After that "I lost interest in mathematics and physic and wanted to find the truth of Christian faith. I was still seeking God but I got the impression I wasn't seeking for God if God was not already drawing me."
"In 46 I heard about a special camp for the education of teacher and pastors of post-war germany a gift from the bittish to the prisoners and was funded by an american business man. And then I started studying Theology and then Hebrew and then Greek. I heard my first lectures and had my first contact with the church, but still wasn't sure to become a pastor. I didn't know what the church was all about. I was only searching for the church."
April of 48 he was sent home. "I felt that my soul was healed from the wounds of the war and post war time. I felt I was like Jacob who had come through the dark side of God. And then had experienced also the warmth of his love and the presence of his shining face."
Asked to be the doctoral student under the professor that his wife was already studying under (not his wife at the time). :) "I wanted to become a pastor and nothing else. I had read Karl Barth up and down and thought there was nothing else to be said about theology. When I pastored a small town of mostly people and cows." And there he was with his PhD. Pastored there five years.
Then went to seminary and felt impoverished because as a professor he had the more or less good educated young students with the distance of a lecture hall - and this wasn't life. "I had to bring life into this more distant way of doing theology" more "than I did as a pastor."
He was a guest lecturer at Duke and they had a different interest than the students at Tubingen. At Tubingen they ask "What is the Church" but the students in NC only asked "How to run a Church?"
At first he loved America, but then he was shown the black ghettos and the burnt crosses of the KKK and "my american dream was a little disappointed." Theology of Hope was published in America and the NY Times front page "replacing the God is Dead theology which is not too difficult." :) At a Theology of Hope Conference, he was debating with someone when someone else came in and said MLK was shot. The conference was over immediately. "This was the end of my american dream? no it was not because that same evening 400 students went out on the campus and sat for four days and four nights sitting in silence and mourning and this made a deep impression on me and then on the last day black students came from a black college and danced through the rows of the white students sitting and then they all students stood and sang we shall overcome. At first I liked American then I didn't like America and then I came to love America."
What's the message of early 20th Century European humanism?: "do good, love the beauty of nature and follow your instinct for adventures of life, a kind of humanism of free will and good emotions but without sentence. God is everywhere and everything is divine. But with this you cannot go through the war, imprisonment and suffering so this collapses very quickly. There were no words for the destruction, the war, the forsakenness."
"All the best theologians were pastors" McClendon. Do you continue to draw on that years later?: "When a theological idea occurs to me i think, 'what would the people think about it' or 'what would they make of it.' and the people of my congregation would appear in my eyes and react to it. professional theologians must again and again go down and listen to the people's theology and their questions and also to their answers and the people should not be shy but should take responsibility for the theologians. most seminaries have connections to local congregations."
"To most of the things in my life i came by chance." In 1990 in Manague Nicaragua it was a really poor and destroyed country with a very self-conscious people who had won their freedom by themselves. Five years later they created the first Protestant university. Atlanta coast is Protestant and the indians are moravian brothers
In San Salvador they killed six Jesuits and the wife and housekeeper and in the blood of one of the man the crucified god fell off the bookshelf and was soaked in blood. three years later he made his pilgrimage there where the book is now held in glass as a reminder.
Trinity: "Eastern Orthodox you have the three angels sitting around the table - a complete doctrine of the trinity which we in the west do not. the best would be to create a social doctrine of the trinity where the father Son and holy spirit are one, you are in me and i am in you. true human community is an icon and witness to the one triune god. Very simple. If you come into fellowship with jesus you come into fellowship with the Father and when you do you feel the life giving energies of the spirit. not a mystery. we live in god through Jesus surrounded by the spirit. we are surrounded by God on all sides. I found this for myself very enlightening."
"Jesus addressed his god as abba dear father. Paul heard the abba prayer in Galacia and Rome and after a few centuries the abba prayer was replaced with 'our father art in heaven' which is patriarchal. if we would reintroduce the abba prayer we would feel the nearness of jesus in the moment. so i'm trying to convince congregations to reintroduce the abba prayer because then you are already in the trinity. Not only three persons but three rooms - give room for the indwelling of the other's spirit in their room. we too much leave room for other people, open our lives and houses and love and friendship to them. A group giving to each other is the best."
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