tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84181433576210158142024-02-20T03:53:48.969-06:00Books with the BishopAn online book club in which all are invited to read along with the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. Discussion in the comments is welcome.Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-46906353577339247252012-04-06T08:34:00.000-05:002012-04-06T08:34:46.968-05:00“It’s Good Friday now, but Easter’s coming!”<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 6 April 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <i>“We are all saved
in spite of ourselves—and for one another.
It never was a worthiness contest.
If God is love and if grace is true, then what exactly is the cutoff
point? “When is God’s arm too short to
save?” (Isaiah 50:2) Are there any who have achieved worthiness and
do not need saving? Name them, please.”</i> (Page 218)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Fra Angelico, Christ Resurrected and the Maries at the Tomb in Cell 8</span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Good Friday. I
remember as a child of perhaps 9 or 10 asking my mother why, if Jesus was so
brutally killed on this day, do we call it Good Friday and not Bad Friday. Her response was, as the British say, spot
on. “We call this day good because with
Jesus’ death we are freed from sin and death.”
My mother was not theologically trained, nor did she know the nuances of
the variety of Atonement theories, but she was grounded in a life of Episcopal
Church worship and living that life as a nurse, wife, mother, and friend. She did the best she could to answer my
questions, although sometimes she would reply, “You’ll just have to find out
when you are older.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One of my favorite
collects in the Book of Common Prayer, written at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup>
Century by Bishop Charles Henry Brent, sometime Episcopal Bishop of the Philippines
begins, “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard
wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving
embrace:…” (BCP page 101) Please note that salvation is not limited to
only those who agree with a particular theological position or those who have
earned God’s love, or even those who need it most. Jesus’ whole <i>raison d’être</i>, his complete purpose in taking on human nature, was
to show us perfectly how God loves every one of us regardless of our station in
life or the depth of our sinfulness. He
came to BE love, not just as an example, but in order for our lives to shine
with that same love for those who God brings into our lives. Bishop Brent’s prayer continues, “So clothe
us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those
who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your
Name. Amen.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a young priest, I came
to know as a colleague a fairly well known older priest named Curt Junker. Father Curt was always wonderful to be around
because he had a gift of making everyone he talked to feel like they were the
most important person in the world. He
did have, at least for me, a difficult aspect, in that he was not a linear
thinker. I used to say that Curt “free
associated” on the last word spoken, which meant that following his train of
thought was next to impossible for me.
One mutual friend called him a “Trinitarian—able to talk in three
circles at the same time.” One
conversation devolved to Curt’s raising the theological question of the “shelf-life”
of Grace. His ramblings ultimately came back to posit that the shelf-life of
Grace is eternal, because in eternity there is no linear time anyway. Or to rephrase Father Rohr, when do God’s
love and Grace expire?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The purpose of that story
is to bring us back to a concept I discussed a couple of days ago of
remembering, or more exactly re-membering as in putting back together, or in
Greek <i>anamnesis, </i>bringing then into
now. There is a wonderful old Spiritual
that is frequently sung on Good Friday, “Were you there when they crucified my
Lord?” We are called to be present with
Jesus, to say “Yes, I was there” as he
is mocked, humiliated, stripped, beaten, crowned with the crown of thorns,
forced to carry his own cross, nailed, pierced, murdered, and laid in the tomb,
all for our sake. Yes, the Christ event
occurred 2000 years ago, but it happens for us today. The best way that we can recognize the true
glory of Resurrection is to walk with Jesus the <i>Via Doloroso</i>, to go down to the darkness with Him and there
discover the light. Or as a wonderful
preacher from the African American tradition said, “It’s Good Friday now, but
Easter’s coming!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I pray for you the joy of
God’s wondrous love through the death and Resurrection of Jesus. May you know the outstretched arms of Jesus’
loving embrace in order that you can reach out with His love to that part of
this broken world that so desperately needs the Good News that only you can
bring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Halleluiah! Christ is Risen!</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-62564612991433879572012-04-05T11:45:00.002-05:002012-04-05T11:45:39.880-05:00"My life is not about me."<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 5 April 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Each time we eat and
drink, we agree to die with him, in him, for him and because of him. The eating says to our very body that
henceforth our lives are not our own, and ‘my life is not about me!’” </i> (Page 216)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Last Supper by Juan de Juanes (1523 - 1579)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"> Lent is just about finished; there is still the last meal
for the condemned and then the execution.
We know the outcome, we have read the book and seen the movie; we have
walked this path before, some of us too many times to want to count the times
we have gone to Golgotha. We have been
changed every time we have looked into the face of the one who accepts the
horrors of a brutal death in order to absorb the evil that tries to consume
us. But for today we need to remain with
Jesus and his disciples, including the one who will not just betray Jesus, but
us as well. For today we must be willing
to enter the upper room and sit at table with our Lord, allow him to bring us
to a deeper understanding of his work in our own lives, and discover more
intense transformation in our lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As we recline around the low table with Jesus, we watch
intently as together we rehearse the ages-old story of release from slavery, of
God’s mercy for us as the angel of death passes over our homes to strike the
first-born of every generation, both human and animal, in the homes of the
Egyptians. We watch as Jesus does what
he has done so many times in our presence at meals: he takes, blesses, breaks
and gives. We saw this on the hillside
when there were the thousands to feed with merely five barley loaves and two
small fish. As we have walked with him
toward Jerusalem in the past weeks he has done the same at most of our meals,
but this time it is different. Tonight
he changes us as he says, “This bread is my body…this wine is my blood.” Some of us are horrified at the thought of
eating human flesh and drinking human blood—cannibalism—which is absolutely
prohibited by the Law. But Jesus has
instructed—no commanded—us that when we do this he is present in our midst,
that he himself is nourishing our souls for the work we have yet to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> The liturgical Churches that follow the <i>Triduum Sacrum</i>, the “holy three days”
with our reliving the Last Supper in the upper room, the Garden of Gethsemane,
the Way of the Cross, and finally the explosion of light with the Resurrection
have the opportunity not just to think about and “remember” in our minds those
events. We have the occasion to
understand at an experiential level what all this has to do with me. Being a follower of Christ, being a
Christian, is not just about “me and Jesus” in a sweet embrace that brings me
salvation. Being a Christian means being willing to take up the Cross and
follow Jesus wherever He leads me, to absorb the evil with which I am
confronted rather than reacting with violence, to have my life transformed, day
by day, as I grow into the full stature of Christ. Being a Christian means dying to self in Him,
with Him, and for Him in order to live in Him, with Him and for Him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As I write this essay this morning, I am intensely aware
of impending death. The joy of being at
table with Jesus is muted by the cloud of immanent dying. I know the story too well to be naively
joyous. Not only is it Maundy Thursday,
the first day of the <i>Triduum Sacrum</i>,
this day I will be with a friend from youth whose wife is like family as the
medical team disconnects life support systems which have been keeping David’s
body in a semi-functional condition for the last several days. David will die today as his lungs and
virtually all of his other organs have ceased to function. We will release him into the arms of a loving
Savior, in whom David has rededicated his life in recent months. We will be given the gift of the presence
among us of our Lord Himself as we mourn the loss in this life of our brother,
husband and friend. We will be able to
witness to one another the love of God because we know, as Paul Harvey used to
say, “the rest of the story.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As Father Rohr says, we learn through living into our
Christian vocation that “my life is not about me!” As we continue to be transformed into the
likeness of Christ, as we are able little by little to let down our defenses to
our Lord, as we discover God’s love in some new way and through some unexpected
person, as we mature not just in years but in depth of dedication, as we give
up the need to control, as we are fed again and again at the Lord’s Table, we
discover that our lives are richer than we ever could have asked for or
imagined. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> May you discover this day your life in Jesus in some new,
more deeply transformed way. And may you
be nourished from the abundance of God’s richness in order to meet with
confidence the way you have been called to carry the Cross.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-70817196025307432382012-04-04T10:10:00.001-05:002012-04-04T10:11:38.699-05:00In remembrance of me<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 4 April 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Speaking of Holy Communion Father Rohr says, “He gave us
something that he did not say we needed to “think about” or “agree upon,” “look
at” or even “worship,” but he just said ‘Do this!’ It was an action, an audiovisual aid, a
sacred ritual for a community, built on Jewish roots, that would summarize his
whole lasting message for the world.”
(Page 215)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaSDAYvq3IDXylaV8zu-JnF4SxE-IrkzNF5OToB_GstZFcVFZzYBmIMszx2_Ie6EsV0kQ58zC2uWSJ5Lx9BRI6Q-Jxl2v342sSBQcy6r0txUYtC-SIJzp8uf08JT8uKF6DPr3qyU0MkG8/s1600/da_vinci_last_supper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaSDAYvq3IDXylaV8zu-JnF4SxE-IrkzNF5OToB_GstZFcVFZzYBmIMszx2_Ie6EsV0kQ58zC2uWSJ5Lx9BRI6Q-Jxl2v342sSBQcy6r0txUYtC-SIJzp8uf08JT8uKF6DPr3qyU0MkG8/s400/da_vinci_last_supper.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Leonardo Da Vinci – “The Last Supper”.</span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Perhaps the most powerful and important legacy given to
the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion of the 20<sup>th</sup> and 21<sup>st</sup>
centuries by a group of Oxford scholars of the 19<sup>th</sup> century is the
recovery of the Eucharist as central to the Sunday worship of the community of
faith. Prior to the late 16<sup>th</sup>
Century ascendancy of the Puritan movement in England, the “Lord’s Board” or
Holy Communion was the normal worship of the Lord’s Day. By the middle of the 17<sup>th</sup> Century,
laws regulated the percentage of a parish which was required to be present for
Eucharistic worship. (In England, a
parish is a geographical area and consists of all those who live within the
boundaries of the parish; by contrast, in the US a parish is a voluntary
association of individuals whose membership is entered in the parish
register.) For at least one Sunday prior
to celebrating Holy Communion, the Vicar would be required to read the
Exhortation and announce to the congregation his intention to offer Holy
Communion on the subsequent Sunday. If
the requisite number of members of the parish were not present, the Vicar would
begin Morning Prayer and omit Communion.
To violate the law invited imprisonment or being defrocked. In the first quarter of the 18<sup>th</sup>
Century, the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, were teased and lightly
ridiculed by their fellow students for their “methodical” celebrations of the Sacraments. It is interesting that Methodism devolved
almost entirely to prayer services with only infrequent Communion
services. Toward the middle of the 19<sup>th</sup>
Century, several instructors at Oxford began to re-examine the Church of
England pattern in light of their study of Scripture and the tradition and
theology of the Early Church, and they began to write tracts in favor of a more
“high Church” understanding of worship, communal aspects of the Gospel
(outreach), and community life. Out of
the Oxford Movement came a recovery of the importance of the sacramental life
as well as ministry to the poorest of the poor who lived in slums, teaching of
the faith from what we now call an Anglo-Catholic perspective, and monastic
orders for men and women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> On the evening Jesus gathered with his disciples either
to celebrate the first day of Passover (as recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke)
or to eat a meal which has Passover overtones (John) we have the long tradition
of the Jewish “remembering” of the escape from Egypt which leads to freedom
from tyranny and oppression. Even today,
as modern Jews celebrate Passover, the four questions, traditionally asked by
the youngest male child, begin, “Why is this night so different from all
others?” For 3500 years families and
communities re-call the events and re-live them “today.” It is not a “once upon a time” tale, nor is
the remembering of what happened to our ancestors long, long ago. They are participants in the events of God’s
protection in which they are being led out of slavery. The Haggadah, the ritual of the Passover
meal, is spoken in the present tense which intensifies the participation in the
singularly focal event of all Jewish theology and experience. There is a Greek word for this re-calling
which we use for our Eucharistic understanding as well: the word is <i>anamnesis</i> which means to re-member, to put together, to bring to
the present, to experience now what once occurred then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Jesus took this very Jewish experience of being present
in the central “God Event” for Jews and expanded it for his disciples. When he said “Do this for the remembrance of
me” he was giving the 12 and all who have come after them a way to be present
with Jesus in the upper room as he says “This is my body…this is my
blood.” The <i>anamnesis</i> brings Jesus present to us in a way that is both
spiritual and physical; we are given “outward and visible signs” of bread and
wine through which we can appropriate at a very physical level the Presence of
our Lord Jesus, not just a spiritual thought that we can either accept or
ignore as we feel at any given moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Unfortunately since the 16<sup>th</sup> Century, Western
Christianity has argued and fought over how Jesus becomes present to us in the
Eucharist. Roman Catholic doctrine
utilizes Aristotle’s philosophical basis in the term<i> transubstantiation, </i>the language of the Scholastics of the 12<sup>th</sup>
and 13<sup>th</sup> Centuries, to describe the Real Presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. Some Lutherans quibbled with
the older term and rephrased it as <i>consubstantiation.</i>
Other of the 16<sup>th</sup> Century Reformers rejected both of those
understandings and posited that Holy Communion is simply a memorial of an event
which occurred in the life of Jesus. [For
a more thorough definition of any of the terms used in describing the Real
Presence, I suggest exploring Google.] Anglican
doctrine formed in the late16th Century in the Articles of Religion, Article
XXVIII, says, “…the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ;
and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.” Exactly how this occurs is not specifically
defined, although the doctrine of Transubstantiation is “repugnant to the plain
words of Scripture…” My preference is
simply to say that in the bread and the wine we are able to receive Christ’s
Body and Blood which is available to us, unexplainable but absolutely real. As a Rabbi friend from long ago would say,
“It’s a mystery.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As believers gather to celebrate Jesus’ presence among
us, we are nurtured and fed on Heavenly food.
We are strengthened to be the Body of Christ and to live out our calling,
as St. Teresa of Avila says, to be the hands and feet and lips of Jesus to
bring blessing and Christ’s healing touch to our broken world. Spirituality without action is hollow; action
without spiritual preparation is merely good work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As we continue to walk through Holy Week, may we remember
the words of Richard of Chichester whose day we celebrated yesterday, “to see
thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-3960160042846445272012-04-02T09:41:00.001-05:002012-04-02T09:41:34.994-05:00Grounded in love and freedom<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 2 April
2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> “<i>Jesus did not come
to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of
humanity about God. </i>This grounds
Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning; it creates a very
coherent and utterly attractive religion, which draws people toward lives of
inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing and even universal “at-one-ment,”
instead of mere sacrificial atonement. <i> </i>Nothing
“changed” on Calvary, but <i>everything</i>
was revealed so <i>we</i> could
change.” (Page 200)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzTEdOaekc7rZPAbUg6qNq2zHIerouzgP9N4d2Srswoq2qFgH_0Og-EPh3QwPS0HaBu0BVLENeJpSdVUMB4CAYrE4uPRmAC6H4x5RV4gKiVdnJGVhijgdcilyiZCIj1pvW2OY6OJ0kg84/s1600/Jesus+on+Cross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzTEdOaekc7rZPAbUg6qNq2zHIerouzgP9N4d2Srswoq2qFgH_0Og-EPh3QwPS0HaBu0BVLENeJpSdVUMB4CAYrE4uPRmAC6H4x5RV4gKiVdnJGVhijgdcilyiZCIj1pvW2OY6OJ0kg84/s640/Jesus+on+Cross.jpg" width="404" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">The Crucifixion</i><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;"> , by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Vouet" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f9f9f9; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" title="Simon Vouet">Vouet</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;">, 1622, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoa" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f9f9f9; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" title="Genoa">Genoa</a></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I have posited before that we human beings have a deep
seated need—one might say we are hardwired—to require sacrifice, particularly someone
else’s sacrifice, in order for the world to have meaning.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">We glorify self-sacrifice in combat
situations where a soldier (or sailor or Marine) gives his life to save his
comrades. (I am fully aware of the women who are serving in our armed forces, many
of whom are as deserving of awards for valor as their male counterparts.) The
majority of Medals of Honor are awarded posthumously, and we all, those with
military backgrounds and civilians alike, stand in awe of the heroism required.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Our country’s history is replete with
military strife, from Bunker Hill to Afghanistan; we celebrate the red stripes
on our flag to honor the blood shed to carry freedom to our own generation and
hopefully for generations to come.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Without denigrating any of the sacrifice of everyone who
has ever put on a military uniform to protect our freedoms, whether serving in
a combat situation or not, I am not willing to make Christianity the equivalent
of American patriotism, with Jesus as General Patton (or insert your favorite
military leader) who brings salvation by force and violence. Not one time in any of the Gospels do I see
Jesus either commend violence for others or exercise it himself, with the
possible exception of the “cleansing of the Temple,” and even there the force of
the whip is directed primarily toward the animals to get them out of the Court
of the Gentiles. (John 2:14-16) Even as he is being arrested in the Garden of
Gethsemane, Jesus condemns the violence against the servant of the high priest
(Luke 22:51; John 18:11) and against the soldiers and the Temple leadership armed
with “swords and clubs” who had come to arrest Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> From the beginning of Genesis through the final chapter
of the Revelation to John, we are given an image of God as a lover of all of
God’s creation. In the initial story of
creation, Genesis 1:1-2:4a, we hear that God is delighted with the evolving
world as God creates it. Even in the
second creation account, Genesis 2:4b-3:24, which includes the forming of First
Man (Ish, later called Adam by God), the removal of the rib to form First Woman
(Ishshah later named Eve by Adam), the introduction of the Serpent, temptation
and sin and the consequences for that sin, we continue to see God who cares so
much about his creatures that he clothes them and provides a means of
sustenance for them. Even the first
reported act of violence—Abel murdered by Cain—is not met with violence against
the perpetrator by God; Cain is sent away and marked as protection against further
violence. Again and again, God calls
humanity into relationship with God, but repeatedly we fail to accept the
gracious invitations. In fact, on
occasion we human beings slay the bearers of God’s invitation to reconciliation,
the prophets. The final move to bring us
into the deepening relationship that God so longs for is the coming of the Son,
Jesus of Nazareth, who offers Himself “to reveal the lie and the absurdity of
the very notion of sacrificial religion itself.” (Page 201)
Remember, “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son…” (John
3-16-17) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “The cross is about how to fight and not become a
casualty yourself. The cross is about
being the victory instead of just winning a victory. It is a way of winning that tries to bring
along your opponents with you. … What the mystery of the cross teaches us is
how to <i>stand against </i>hate without <i>becoming</i> hate, how to oppose evil
without becoming evil ourselves.” (Page 203)
Even though much of the popular theology in our culture, some of the
hymn texts in the Hymnal 1982, and even some of our liturgical language which
is the product of Anselm’s theology of substitution and payment to God for sin
to redeem us, I believe the Scriptures give us another theological option. Violence begets violence; Jesus absorbs the
violence of this world and refuses to pay it back “in kind.” He becomes the “suffering servant” of Isaiah
who accepts the humiliation, brutality, and death and helps us to see a
religion not of “redemptive violence” but of ”redemptive suffering,” as Father
Rohr describes. Easily, Jesus the Son of
God could have called down Archangel Michael and the Angelic Army to destroy
his enemies, but he takes into Himself the anger and hatred of the ages and
defeats them with His love for all creation.
The totality of His life and death becomes for us an icon, a pattern,
the “way, the truth, and the life” to walk in His footsteps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I do not believe that Jesus’ Passion and Death are debt
payment to Satan or to God; rather Jesus accepts willingly the path of the
Cross to transform our human need from having violence direct our lives to
revealing God’s love for us in a way that we could not otherwise
understand. The sublime act of Jesus
changes who we are in relationship to God.
Through the Way of the Cross we can begin to understand that the
relationship that binds together the Persons of the Trinity is one of equality
and love, without dominance being brought to bear by any one against the
others. God had spent human history
telling God’s people about relationship, but we would not—even could not—listen
because the truth was too good to be true.
And we all know that if something is too good to be true, then it isn’t
true, or at least that is what we have been told most of our lives. The only way for God to get beyond our disbelief
is to become “one of us”, human but without the sin that besets each of us, and
take our anger and hatred and absorb them in order to offer transformation for
all who will accept His invitation to become as Jesus to those we meet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We who have been “born from above” or “born again” (John
3) begin our new life as vital parts of Jesus’ living body (I Corinthians 12)
in order to carry on the work of the Christ where God calls us to be. Like Jesus, we are to reflect the
relationship of the beloved we have with God in order to draw others into
healing and wholeness, expressing God’s love, not God’s domineering power,
offering God’s welcome as the prodigious parent to the wastrel child without
conditions. This is what being “little
Christ”—Christian—is all about. This is
the transformation God offers to everyone, but it is my responsibility and
yours to “proclaim by word and example” the Good News that we have been given
freely. We cannot do anything to make
God love us, or even love us more, because God’s love precedes everything. We show others the love that God has shown us
in so far as we are willing to allow our selves, our souls and bodies, be
transformed into the likeness of Christ Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Through the rest of this week, meditate on the myriad ways
in which God has offered God’s love to you.
Ponder how you might show that same love to your family, to your
companions at work or at play, to the stranger you meet, to yourself. Pray for the courage and strength to become
good news in difficult moments and to transform those moments as Jesus would
transform them. And then go forth in the
name of God.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-72558739422524368062012-03-30T07:53:00.000-06:002012-03-30T07:53:11.792-06:00How is God loving you?<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 30 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “The Incarnation of God, in Jesus, gives us the living
‘icon of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15) who is the template for all else
(1:16), who reconciles all things to himself (1:17), who is the headmaster in a
cosmic body that follows after him (1:18).”
(Page 198)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3LlTw0O0kE2kZCF_ZFclukYZz3f74xsbr2drEnUZ37uto3nu8b_h53OxbwcwGfmEzxRD1-uDS0s7qpDZ0XJP2MKl9MZ0eS_cwcGMEr88VL_qJGLDQXWpU_bbCFCYIHAmz3LSjoawNxk/s1600/Abelard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="387" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3LlTw0O0kE2kZCF_ZFclukYZz3f74xsbr2drEnUZ37uto3nu8b_h53OxbwcwGfmEzxRD1-uDS0s7qpDZ0XJP2MKl9MZ0eS_cwcGMEr88VL_qJGLDQXWpU_bbCFCYIHAmz3LSjoawNxk/s400/Abelard.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Peter Abelard 1079 -1142. James E. Kiefer</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Peter Abelard, one of the early proponents of the
Scholastic Method of dialectic, is best known for his treatise </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Sic et Non</i><span style="font-size: large;">, translated “Yes and No” or
“Yea and Nay”. Sometimes touted as the
founder of the University of Paris, Abelard contended throughout his life with
Church authorities because of his approach to theological inquiry. Although never condemned by papal writ, his
writings were discredited in his native France by councils convened by archbishops
in France and by his intellectual opponents, primarily Bernard of
Clairvaux. Abelard is also linked
eternally with Heloise, his lover from youth, about whom he wrote in great
detail. Their love story is classic
tragedy, with each retiring to the life of a religious order, Abelard to a
variety of monasteries and Heloise to the convent of the Paraclete.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Abelard’s contribution to the understanding of Atonement
theology was not to propose a thorough going theory of how Jesus’ death somehow
satisfied the need for payment for sin. Rather he challenged the earlier
understanding that Satan was owed the purchase price for all humanity, as well
as the newer, Medieval concept that God was the one to whom the debt was
owed. If Satan truly held humanity
captive then God was not in charge; if God was in charge and required a blood
sacrifice for payment for sin then God is not free to forgive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Part of our problem, even into the 21<sup>st</sup>
century, is that we want to create God in our own image. We look at justice from our own perspective
and declare that there must be <i>quid pro
quo</i> (we would say tit for tat) exaction to bring the scales of justice into
balance, and we posit that God must have the same justice needs. The Old Testament concept of an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life is deeply embedded in our
psyche. Interestingly enough, in reading
Jewish scholars’ comments on the eye-for-eye passages, I discovered that for
the most part, precise eye for eye payment was rarely carried out; normally the
consequence was payment for the <i>worth</i>
of an eye, a tooth, a life. The
difficulty is that if I poke out your eye, even accidentally, and my eye is
poked out by your brother, then your brother has transgressed against me and my
son gets to poke out his eye, and so on.
Or as Gandhi is reputed to have said, “An eye for an eye, and pretty
soon the whole world is blind.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My difficulty with most of what I hear proclaimed concerning
Jesus’ sacrifice has to do with what is called “substitutionary atonement”
theology. That argument presupposes that
justice or salvation is only possible when the scales of justice are in
balance. When I sin, a price must be
paid to buy me out of the bondage in which sin has imprisoned me. Unfortunately, I was born into sin (Original
Sin), and I have no ability to pay the ransom or purchase price to release me
from that captivity. Someone else must
pay the price, but all other human beings, me included, are trapped in sin as
well, and none has the means to pay even for my sin, let alone their own. Except one—Jesus, the sinless one. He takes my sin and the sins of the whole
world and bears them to the Cross, substituting Himself for me in His brutal
Passion and Death on Calvary, paying either Satan (early Church) or God (medieval
to modern) the ransom for my soul.
However, in order for me to come under the list of those ransomed, I
must pray a prayer of acceptance of Jesus’ redeeming work. I must declare my own depravity and complete
unworthiness through sin and then accept the loosing of my bonds by a loving
Savior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“The
trouble is that we emphasized paying a cosmic debt more than communicating a
credible love, which is the utterly central issue. The Cross became more an image of a Divine <i>transaction</i> than an image of human transformation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “We ended up with a God who appears—<i>at least unconsciously—</i>to be vindictive, violent and petty, not at
all free, subject to supposed laws of offended justice—and a Son who is mainly
sent to solve a problem instead of revealing the heart of God. … sin becomes
the very motive for redemption instead of love, and the very central act of the
redemption of the world appears to be based on an act of violence!” (Page 199)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Rohr goes on to say, “<i>Divine
love is not determined by the worthiness of the object but by the goodness of
the subject.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i>As we move toward Holy Week, beginning on Palm Sunday
with the reading of the Passion according to St. Mark, I hope you will look
with new eyes on the story of God’s love in the saving work of Jesus, not just
on the Cross, but in all His life, His death, resurrection, ascension, and
coming again in the Holy Spirit. If it
will help review John 3:16-17 which says, “16)
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to the end that
everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. 17) Indeed,
God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him.” (NRSV)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tomorrow let’s look at the love of God as the motivating
factor for reconciliation between humanity and God and between individuals and
groups. Love only grows when it is given
away; like the manna in the wilderness, love shrivels and rots when
hoarded. How is God loving you today?</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-27903068011376624922012-03-29T19:36:00.000-06:002012-03-29T19:36:15.128-06:00Atonement<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 29 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Jesus is, in effect saying, “<i>This is how evil is transformed into good. I am going to take the worst thing and turn
it into the best thing, so you will never be victimized, destroyed or helpless
again! I am giving you the victory over
death!”</i> (Page 188)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi076CYzKhzS6KaAk7MT9Xi-m-zV-n84EjUN34i7PjleTVimp_o59oyxaKEGk3UoCIFbuQL4aDZYtk9M35tnRsTjHLtnFwKNIWsltZcu9qWW9YsCEcFxrdVb8cc1aeQ_1kZNAPWUmnaZ7M/s1600/RubensResurrection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi076CYzKhzS6KaAk7MT9Xi-m-zV-n84EjUN34i7PjleTVimp_o59oyxaKEGk3UoCIFbuQL4aDZYtk9M35tnRsTjHLtnFwKNIWsltZcu9qWW9YsCEcFxrdVb8cc1aeQ_1kZNAPWUmnaZ7M/s640/RubensResurrection.jpg" width="444" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Resurrection of Christ (1611-12) by Rubens</span>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Atonement is probably the only theological concept which
has its roots in the English language rather than Greek or Latin. At-one-ment is the Middle English way of
speaking about reconciliation or recovery of relationship; theologically this
is a way of speaking of the reconciliation between God and humanity through the
saving work of Christ, especially Christ on the Cross.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Before the high Middle Ages, some theologians, including
Irenaeus and Origin and Augustine, understood that the “sacrifice of Christ”
was a necessary payment of debt for the sins of the world, not unlike modern
theologians, but in payment to the Satan to buy humanity out of the control of
evil. In the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, the beginning of Scholasticism, several competing theological
understandings arose. St. Anselm posited
that the debt or sacrifice was to be paid not to Satan but to God in
satisfaction for the debt owed for sin.
Peter Abelard, on the other hand, argued that the only reason for the
Incarnation, Passion and death of Christ was to show visibly the complete love
of God for creation. John Duns Scotus, a
Franciscan, argued that the redemptive work was clearly shown in Jesus’ life
death and resurrection, but raised the questions of the precise nature of
redemption and challenged the metaphors of debt and payment price.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> To grossly compact history, Anselm, Abelard, Duns Scotus
and others debated understandings of Atonement for centuries without a
condemnation for any of these positions.
In the sixteenth century, with the rise of the reformation theologians,
both Protestant and Roman Catholic theology accepted St Anselm’s position and
rejected all other understandings of Atonement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Modern Christian theology has in some ways taken in its
entirety the theology of Atonement of Anselm—the understanding that a debt must
be paid, a blood sacrifice is essential in order for reconciliation to be
effected between God and humanity.
Whether Anselm himself understood God to be an angry, blood-thirsty,
distant deity, needing to be assuaged by the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross,
unfortunately this image of God has become the major icon of contemporary
Christianity for non-believers. Of
course, those words are not used, but by inference it is not only possible but one
is likely to arrive at such an understanding.
In fact, I have heard those who reject Christianity use the argument,
“How can I believe in a God who requires the blood of his son to appease his
anger?” The incredibly popular movie of
2004, <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> by
Mel Gibson, is a graphic depiction of the brutal death of Jesus with only a
hint of Resurrection, portraying what has come to be called substitutionary
Atonement, which grows completely out of Anselm’s theology. The substitution is, of course, that Jesus
paid the debt you have incurred by your sin, the debt putting you out of the
reach of grace and the love of God. The
movie was presented as a way to draw people to Christ, but from conversations
and experience all it did was appeal to the basest level of human desire to see
gore and suffering, not unlike travelers who stop to gawk at a wreck on the
highway. The movie did not swell the
ranks of seekers or church goers; it only made money for the producers and
distributors of movies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tomorrow I will look more in depth at the theology of
Peter Abelard and how it, I believe, is much closer to the biblical
understanding of God’s love which flows out of both Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures. Certainly both understandings
of atonement theology are accepted by Episcopalians and Anglicans. My hope is that this conversation will open
up a deeper insight into God’s grace, love, and mercy for all of us in order that
we might be able to articulate why our faith is so dear to us. In other words, I am hoping that those who
read these essays have the words to “proclaim by word and example the good news
of God in Christ” as our Baptismal Covenant challenges us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">(This essay relies on both
Rohr’s book <i>Things Hidden, Scripture as
Spirituality </i>and the Catholic Encyclopedia available on line.)</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-3192535002244348472012-03-28T08:59:00.000-06:002012-03-28T08:59:53.748-06:00Threat and fear versus love<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 28 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <i>“Threat and fear is
not transformation.” </i>(Page 173)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTzTFrrYTEkmM62fkzmeyE9cfaptkvwqIHUOQeclYJtjoB14BJYI2XyuCjGJIQ8TS0HMVLFbsfUVZ3-fRQmTYFH7zjqQjvDJqWsa4T30hHRNovrmdvgNtmrs6DsbfyQIbsIOz4GYo_KKc/s1600/Harrowing+of+hell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTzTFrrYTEkmM62fkzmeyE9cfaptkvwqIHUOQeclYJtjoB14BJYI2XyuCjGJIQ8TS0HMVLFbsfUVZ3-fRQmTYFH7zjqQjvDJqWsa4T30hHRNovrmdvgNtmrs6DsbfyQIbsIOz4GYo_KKc/s640/Harrowing+of+hell.jpg" width="420" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: 11px; text-align: left;">The Harrowing of Hell, Netherlandish,, Nasher Museum of Art</i></td></tr>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> When I arrived to register as a student at Nashotah House
in August 1971, Sheila and I and our son Trey had obtained an apartment in
nearby Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, as there was no housing available on campus for additional
married students. However, married
students, both those who lived off campus and those who lived in the “flats,”
were assigned a study room in the Cloister which had been originally designed
for single students. My study room was in
a suite in “B House” on the back side facing the lake. The suite was three rooms, two small bedrooms
and a common room with toilet facilities adjacent to the suite. When I arrived to arrange my room, I
discovered that there were two other students with whom I would share the
suite. Because I arrived first I chose
one of the bedrooms believing that the common room would be busier with comings
and goings, and my supposition later proved to be correct. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In my study room were a bed, a small book shelf, and a
desk and chair; to say the room was full would be an understatement. I immediately noticed a poster on the wall
that had been left by a student who had previously used “my” room. When I first saw the poster, I stood and
stared at it for some time, and decided it had to remain. The poster said: “Because you have shouted someone into
silence doesn’t mean you have converted them!”
I do not remember if there was an attribution or citation for the
quotation, but I knew that that was to be my theme for theological study. In the fall of the next year, one of my
roommates and I decided to stay together but requested that we move to the
“front” side B House, and we were granted our request. As I made the move, taking my accumulated
books and other student “stuff”, I took the poster and taped it to the wall in
my new “digs” where it stayed for the next two years. I left the poster for a successor student,
never knowing where it had come from originally or whether he would either keep
or dispose of it. (Nashotah was almost
totally male in those days.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Having grown up in Oklahoma, “the buckle of the Bible
Belt,” (I know other parts of the Old South claim that attribution also) I was
aware of the evangelistic methods of fear and threat. I never understood why anyone would be drawn
to a religion that constantly berated its members with threats of eternal
condemnation for any minuscule misdeed.
The God of Love that I was hearing about at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
in Chickasha did not sound like the same wrathful, angry God that my friends
who attended some of the other churches in town were telling me about from
their faith perspective. The Rev.
Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was alive and well
and being preached in paraphrase weekly in the 1950s and 60s in Chickasha,
Oklahoma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> What amazed me even more than an image of an angry God
was the way in which my classmates professed this God but acted like the rest
of us 99% of the time. Dancing for many
of my classmates was a dreadful sin with dire consequences; the jaws of Hell
were gaping wide to devour sinners who danced or went parking or stayed out
late. But I believe almost everybody in
my class was present for Friday night “sock hops” in the high school gym. I had a long conversation with a friend from
one of those churches that preached fear and threat, and I asked him about the
incongruity of belief and action.
Neither he nor others with whom I has similar conversations could give me
an answer except to say that this was a way to try to keep people “in line.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Years after I graduated from high school I began to speak
of fear and threat evangelism as “spiritual fire insurance.” Over the centuries, Christians took the
images of Heaven and Hell, union with God and separation from God and gave them
geographical locations. The
deliciousness of torment—for others, of course—reached its pinnacle in Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>.
Few read beyond <i>Inferno</i> to
find <i>Purgatorio</i> truly cleansing and
fewer to discover in <i>Paradiso </i>the
culmination of Christian unity with God.
Some writers and preachers have even attempted to locate within earthly
parameters the sites of both Heaven and Hell.
Christian Scripture describes hell using Gehenna, Jerusalem’s burning garbage
dump, as its primary image. Heaven is
always “above” as would have been understood by our predecessors who thought of
creation in a three tier universe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> For me, the most unfortunate aspect of a theology of fear
and threat is that the work of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is
horribly skewed. That perspective makes
Jesus the appeaser of an angry God who desires – no, demands - human
sacrifice. The only difference between
that understanding and that of a multitude of other ancient religions is that
Jesus is the only sacrifice, whereas the others required periodical, sometimes
frequent offerings of human blood, sometimes enemies, sometimes their own
children. The basic understanding,
however, is the same: God’s ravenous anger must be fed with human blood. It is little wonder that many in our
post-Christian era have no interest for themselves in a God who demands human
sacrifice, even the sacrifice of Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, I am going to
focus my essays on what is called Atonement theories, or what the Cross is all
about. If you want to read ahead,
Chapter Nine of <i>Things Hidden, Scripture
as Spirituality</i> is all about Atonement.
We Western Christians have a particular doctrine of Atonement which I
believe feeds into the threat and fear theology. How can that understanding be changed? Tune in tomorrow; same time, same station.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-45281948572019679982012-03-27T08:31:00.002-06:002012-03-27T08:31:55.881-06:00God loves you<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 27 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “<i>God does not love
you because you are good, God loves you because God is good.” </i>(Page 164)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZwTZgvZci2_0VixZytJ2hexE1EvsIPVMqWxYh-bxDhtXGEUBVjZwwHCB4UECCoYfFCTURI-_cy-soyudY7NlDt7yXILyFXNoSaJXTuJ8WmaMI9zsCZ4FOjym1iXvJbZ81iNwhoAyO_dg/s1600/god-sistine-chapel-600x411.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZwTZgvZci2_0VixZytJ2hexE1EvsIPVMqWxYh-bxDhtXGEUBVjZwwHCB4UECCoYfFCTURI-_cy-soyudY7NlDt7yXILyFXNoSaJXTuJ8WmaMI9zsCZ4FOjym1iXvJbZ81iNwhoAyO_dg/s400/god-sistine-chapel-600x411.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michelangelo painting of God, Sistine Chapel, the Vatican, Rome</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> All of us, I believe, have devised some sort of what
Father Rohr calls “meritocracy” in order to determine the parameters of
worthiness for receiving God’s love, mercy, and grace. We may speak of Grace as a free expression of
God’s munificence, but deep down in our heart of hearts we have a built-in need
to limit God’s reach either for ourselves or for someone else. Even
though we profess theologically that salvation—the greatest gift of
Grace—cannot be earned, we hedge that tenet by fairly innocuous conditions
which become, in fact, steps to earning or proving that we have earned our
place in heaven. We must pray a certain
prayer, we must have a certain attitude, we must do something to prove to God
that we are worthy of receiving God’s love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I am not willing to go quite so far as to proclaim a
universalist salvation, but at the same time, it is not our place to decide who
goes to heaven and who descends into hell, which is shorthand for speaking of
who is saved and who is condemned. American
Christians, Protestant and Catholic, are quick to damn those who are different,
whether by culture or race or economic status, to the fiery furnace of the
nether world; we determine by our own particular criteria who is “in” and who
is “out.” And yet our Lord Jesus
cautions us “Judge not (condemn not) lest you be judged.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We are told in Genesis 1:27, “So God created humankind in
his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created
them.” (NRSV) Throughout history, human beings have used
this passage to work backward from human to divine to ideate what God either is
like or looks like, since we are created in God’s image. As a small child growing up, I saw in my
Sunday school room a drawing of God as what I now see as a Zeus-like figure
sitting on a large stone throne with a very long beard and a stern
expression. Many of my generation and
older saw this same picture or a similar one, and that child-like image
continues into our adulthood. There were
other pictures in that class room including Jesus who looked very northern
European smiling as he receives children, Noah’s ark receiving the animals
two-by-two, and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with a very large snake
lurking in the background. In a subtle
way each of these pictures helped craft my early image of God in whose image
and likeness I was created. Children are
absolutely concrete in their thinking and cannot imagine God as Spirit, as
formless, as anything other than humanoid.
But then adults tend to have this same trait, which is why we project
onto God our facial features as well as our very human tendencies to pettiness
and jealousy and very conditional love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> What is it to be created in the image and likeness of
God? I will not try to rehearse what
theologians through the ages have posited, but I will give you my own condensed
version, which is at the core of my own theology. God is both creative and loving; beyond that
is conjecture. Genesis 1 and 2 proclaim
God’s creative nature as foundational; God creates “<i>ex nihilo</i>” out of nothing by calling forth creation, “And God
said…and it was…” God speaks and it
is. In Genesis 3 we see God as lover not
when all is wonderful, before the temptation as God walks through the garden in
the cool of the day, but when First Man and First Woman have defied the command
against eating of the fruit of a particular tree. There are consequences for their
actions—removal from Eden, pain of childbirth for woman, hard work for man,
bodily death, eating dust for the serpent—but God clothes the pair and gives
them food for their sustenance. The
remainder of Scripture, often called Salvation history, is God’s continuous
calling of humanity back into relationship with God because of God’s love for
creation. We see that love in the
patriarch saga, in Moses as he leads the Hebrews out of Egypt as well as the
giving of the Law, in the prophetic calls to holiness, in sending God’s Son
Jesus, in the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost event, and in the
continuing care for proclaiming God’s love to ALL people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In other words, we who are created in the image and
likeness of God are called to be creative and loving toward all creation. No, we cannot create “out of nothing,” but we
all have a creative bent in some area, some talent, some gift that fashions
beauty for all to see. More important is
the gift of love which burns in our hearts to be shared with another person and
community. We are not fully human when
we are alone; we only begin to become complete in relationship as we share
ourselves and the love God has infused into our very being. There is an old adage that love only grows
when it is given away, a characteristic, I believe of being created in God’s
likeness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> God does not love you only when you are good; God loves
you because it is God’s nature to love you.
Nothing you have ever done or ever will do will cause God to cease from
loving you—or anyone else. That is who
God is—a lover. The sooner we get in our
heads and hearts that God loves us, the sooner we will begin to act like God
and begin to love all those God loves.
Repeating the quotation above just might be the start of a new
perspective: “God does not love you
because you are good; God loves you because God is good.”</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-15226390621831564702012-03-26T09:06:00.000-06:002012-03-26T09:06:44.960-06:00Divine Unmerited Generosity<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 26 March
2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “At this point I want to name what I think is the central
positive theme of the Bible. It is the
Divine Unmerited Generosity that is everywhere available, totally given,
usually undetected as such, and often even undesired. It is called grace….” (Page 155)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNSk1Cb45eBQx2dqTbjKbaeQxm_MByxJsSu_6QTmv6URBeHa79YXTnrMKVc6iVUfLzTeD7GrxYrpIAXFT8PdAxt2nFFW98FkH-iWX03rDrJgBUU-lIDR_dLbA0JR8GiaVDLtwO2daS0ZE/s1600/DSC02107.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNSk1Cb45eBQx2dqTbjKbaeQxm_MByxJsSu_6QTmv6URBeHa79YXTnrMKVc6iVUfLzTeD7GrxYrpIAXFT8PdAxt2nFFW98FkH-iWX03rDrJgBUU-lIDR_dLbA0JR8GiaVDLtwO2daS0ZE/s640/DSC02107.JPG" width="360" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reflection of a cross, Executive Council, Fort Worth; Katie Sherrod photo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was a parishioner in St. Michaels’ Norman who when
asked how he was would reply, “Better than I deserve.” Pat Mayes was the first person I heard use
this phrase, but not the last. Many
years later, I heard a radio talk show host, Dave Ramsey, use the same
expression. Dave’s program is a call-in
show during which Dave tries to help individuals who are loaded down with debt
escape the cycle of credit overload. ”
Those who had taken his course “Financial Peace University” and unburdened
themselves would phone in and declare, usually with a loud shout, that they
were “debt free!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the spirit of Pat Mayes I, on occasion, use what I
call Pat’s reply, “Better than I deserve,” and sometimes add, “That’s why it’s
called grace.” Most of the time when
someone asks, “How are you?” they really do not want to know; asking someone
how they are is merely a polite form of greeting. If you don’t believe me, next time you are
asked how you are, try answering with a full detailed explanation of your
physical, mental, and spiritual health inventory and watch the asker begin to
recoil and move away as quickly as possible.
I use Pat’s reply with my own addition both as a simple addition and a
witness to God’s abundance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Perhaps scarcity thinking is part of our DNA, embedded in
our cells from ancient history when daily survival was absolutely
uncertain. Long before human beings
began to cultivate crops and store up food for future fallow times,
hunter-gatherers had to spend most of their daylight hours searching for prey
for protein and natural crops for roughage and carbohydrates. Today might be secure for our ancestors if
meat and grains could be found, but who knows about tomorrow. The fear of starvation was an ever present
reality, and a sense of scarcity could mean the difference between life and
death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Unfortunately, the “scarcity gene” still infects us
today. In the richest country history
has ever known, Americans live with a sense of never having enough: enough
food, enough “stuff,” enough money. Part
of the reason Dave Ramsey will always have a job is that we Americans, besides
always wanting more, are impatient and want more stuff now, so we charge more
stuff on our credit cards, pushing us deeper in debt and in some cases unable
to purchase the real needs for sustenance.
Even those living in the US on welfare have a higher monthly income than
much of the world’s annual income. And
yet we, as a culture, want more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Also, unfortunately, we Church leaders do not do a
sufficient job of educating our communities that God’s grace is more abundant
than we can ever imagine. We continue to
try to put limits on who can receive Grace, and even more ridiculously, we try
to limit the amount of Grace available to any individual or group. We see that in Jesus’ ministry when the
disciples come to Him complaining that others are healing in Jesus’ name. Our Lord’s reply is to tell his followers that
those others are doing good work and to rejoice. Apparently God’s Grace will be diminished for
me if someone else has an abundant share of Grace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, we are moving to
change our focus from scarcity to abundance in every area of life. That, in fact, may be the most difficult
shift for us to make, even much more complicated than reorganizing our
structure from a top-down pyramid of power to a circle of shared authority and
responsibility. At our diocesan
convention in November 2010, our new diocesan treasurer, Bob Hicks, challenged
us to live our lives out of a theology of abundance. Now that was a breath-taking moment; a
treasurer who calls us to live out of abundance! Periodically I hear Bob challenge the Executive
Council, the leadership team, parish vestries, and individuals to live abundantly. Most of the time he is speaking of finances,
but Bob’s entire life has become centered on this one revelation: God is overwhelmingly generous!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Jesus calls us to live out of God’s abundance in this
way: “Therefore, do not worry about your
life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear….Instead strive
for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” (Luke 12:22-31 NRSV)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> As we approach Holy Week, I encourage you to meditate on
the theme of “Divine Unmerited Generosity” which is the best news we can ever
receive. It takes a lifetime to
internalize that concept, so begin today to live into God’s abundance and
repeat to yourself again and again, “Better than I deserve.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-37354854360260384102012-03-23T08:16:00.000-06:002012-03-23T08:16:46.870-06:00Children of wrath<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 23 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “They imagine that they are fearing and hating for
something holy and noble like God, religion, truth, morality, their children or
love of country. It takes away all
guilt, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground
or being responsible and prudent, as a result.”
(Page 135)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXzJfOGsaZgQXn-LfoxE68NPBaqlX694gehbv9HeXjzOlI4Q_SST0txCIX9hJ9WnfI_HttSNDVWTpGeDFH6COqU8u1R4nntNHuKupyREesnShWV_inKxQt0oyZ2fHMIBfzZs0LIV5VIU/s1600/Urban.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXzJfOGsaZgQXn-LfoxE68NPBaqlX694gehbv9HeXjzOlI4Q_SST0txCIX9hJ9WnfI_HttSNDVWTpGeDFH6COqU8u1R4nntNHuKupyREesnShWV_inKxQt0oyZ2fHMIBfzZs0LIV5VIU/s640/Urban.png" width="432" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">POPE URBAN PREACHING THE CRUSADES</span> from gutenberg.org</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I received a note concerning my essay of yesterday,
asking if I were un-American or even anti-American. For those of you who do not know, I am a
loyal American who votes in almost every election, pays taxes, occasionally
writes my congressman, supports the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights,
and even served this country as a member of the US Marine Corps during the
Vietnam War era. I was never sent to
Nam, but I was trained to do what Marines do. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> From the mid-1960s until about 1975 there was a conflict
that raged on the American continent concerning the war in Southeast Asia. Those who were in uniform were not supported
generally by US citizens. At best, there
was a neutral attitude by most of this country; at worst, active duty soldiers,
sailors and Marines in uniform were spit upon and chastised for being murderers
and pillagers. Events like Mei Li
certainly didn’t help to dispel the mind-set of those who were thoroughly
anti-military. There were no welcome
home parades or assemblies for those returning from “in country” duty. On the other side, we had folk like the Rev.
Carl McIntyre who marched in Washington D.C. with signs that said, “Kill a Commie
for Christ”, “My country, right or
wrong”, “America. Love it or leave it”. There was no room for those who might
question the morality of our action in SE Asia (the war for years included Laos
and Cambodia and not just Vietnam) and yet be supportive of the men and women
who put their lives on hold and on the line for their country. Many of my friends still have difficulty with
their decisions while serving what they thought was the greater good of the
country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “War is hell,” said General Sherman during the American
Civil War. It was then, and it is
now. Christian theology has striven for
centuries to first define and then understand and apply what has come to be
known as a “just war theory.” Exactly
when and under what circumstances can we justify violence? Is it to protect one’s own life or the life
of a family member? One’s property? The
property of a neighbor? Whenever I feel threatened in any way? These questions are currently being debated
in legislative arenas when discussing “Make my Day” laws, and especially in the
press when someone acts violently toward an intruder and then is or is not
prosecuted under existing law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Is retaliation justifiable? If you slap me, may I slap back with my hand?
With a hammer? With a .45 semi-automatic pistol? With “shock and awe”? Where do we draw the line? How do we protect the security and safety of
our country, our way of life? What is
our responsibility to those who cannot protect themselves, or do we have any
duty toward them? What do we do with
bullies and terrorists? Should we
release Charles Manson or John Wayne Gacey, or those who perpetrated 9/11 or
the Oklahoma City bombing? Or someone
who preys on children for sexual gratification?
Where do we place capital punishment in our list of justifiable actions
of violence? Is it even unpatriotic to
ask these questions? More questions than
answers, for sure, but questions that must be wrestled with before the fact and
not after the fact (of violence of any kind).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Unfortunately, there is a growing segment of our culture
that looks at religion as being the perpetrators of war, or at least the reason
for most wars. It is not always
different cultures or races at war, such as Christians and Muslims. The Middle East wars of Sunnis versus
Shii’ites provide us with enormous insight into how “might makes right”
works. And also unfortunately,
Christians have through the last 2000 years battled against one another with
the most war-like demeanor, justifying the killing of other Christians with
impunity. In recent decades, one need
only look at Northern Ireland to see Protestants and Catholics murdering one
another in the name of God. Sounds an
awfully lot like Cain and Abel to me.
Either my God is better than your god, or God loves me more than you
because you are a heretic or apostate or infidel. I do not believe this is what our Lord Jesus
wants for creation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I spoke yesterday of the phrase “children of wrath” that
we find in Ephesians 2. St. Paul tells
his hearers that we have been called out of that state into a life of faith and
trust in God. The Apostle’s words are
more of a vision statement than reality, a hope for what we can become rather
than who we are now. This discussion challenges
me to explore how I justify any violence, my own or others. I just might discover that the justification
devolves between the lesser of two evils, which leads me to pray for
forgiveness for myself and for those against whom I act or justify the acts of
others. Jesus calls us to love our
enemies and to love those who persecute us.
That may be the most difficult commandment of all, especially in our
culture of violence and abuse. Pray for
our country.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-31396688360377838392012-03-22T08:55:00.002-06:002012-03-22T08:55:38.194-06:00Disguise for evil<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 22 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Scapegoating or sacralized violence is the best possible
disguise for evil. … We all choose “apparent goods” inside of our own
unrecognized frame of reference. <i>Your</i> violence is always bad and
evil. <i>Mine</i> is always necessary and good.”
(Page 135)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKQBazCxyN434pR9us3GFe3YnposB7pZ_uZHSjpLjkiQOR6nTcG7NZV_tW81zvsF28kZENvYj9FWoyivsixUwU_PTPTZRZBvy9wqm06trLQfKGcPDK3T77tGY2zisiUb-Cq0Se6j_gfnA/s1600/kain_abel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKQBazCxyN434pR9us3GFe3YnposB7pZ_uZHSjpLjkiQOR6nTcG7NZV_tW81zvsF28kZENvYj9FWoyivsixUwU_PTPTZRZBvy9wqm06trLQfKGcPDK3T77tGY2zisiUb-Cq0Se6j_gfnA/s400/kain_abel.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Il Tintoretto: Cain and Abel</span> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There is something about human nature that needs to
exhibit or express violence. It must be
in our DNA, likely as a survival instinct from the dim past when all of life
was dangerous and survival unlikely. “Only
the strong survive,” is an adage I grew up with and one that operates daily in
American culture. Violence needn’t
always have a bloody victim as with Cain and Abel; that is to say, violence can
be emotional or spiritual to affect the desired abuse on the one to which it is
directed. In recent months we have seen
in news reports the effect of cyberspace bullying on vulnerable children and
teenagers, resulting in suicide. But physical
violence is also perpetrated widely within families, by groups against other
groups (gangs against gangs), by countries against countries. Within the past 70 years we have attained the
ability to end all life on planet Earth, with the possible exception of
cockroaches, through nuclear destruction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My heritage is that of a bellicose people, the Scots, who,
when they were not focused on killing as many Englishmen as they could,
centered their fighting against one another in clan wars, and even at times
sub-clan battles for dominance and power.
Knowing my lineage helps me to understand how I respond, or at least am
drawn to respond, when challenged. Most
of the time I am able to control my responses in a learned behavior that
manages to keep me from “over reacting” to situations that might become very
nasty, either verbally or physically without choosing to subdue the violent streak. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Last night I watched a program on PBS entitled “What
females want…And what males will do.”
The focus was on mating behavior of prairie chickens, a type of monkey
related to baboons, lions, and others, studying a variety of mating rituals seeking to discover how such
rituals help perpetuate the species. In
every species studied, the competing males acted in aggressive ways to assert
their dominance over other males in order to spread their own DNA. Human dating rituals do not usually become as
aggressive as what I watched on PBS, but occasionally we are not as far from
“animal violence” as we would like to think we are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Father Rohr has hit on a very important issue: we can justify our own violence in stunning
ways, including theological—God blessed—ways.
We need only look back a little over ten years to 9/11 to see the
righteous indignation that immediately arose in our country against anyone of
Middle Eastern descent, or individuals who even looked like they were
Arabic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately,
we did not go to the extremes of the 1940’s internment of all of Japanese heritage,
but violence was perpetrated on individuals, groups and houses of worship that
was shameful. “<i>Your</i> violence is always bad and evil. <i>Mine</i>
is always necessary and good.” We were
able to justify wars against Afghanistan and Iraq that have now dragged on for
over 10 years, costing thousands of American lives and untold numbers of both
enemy soldiers’ and innocent citizens’ lives.
We feared for our survival, so we responded in-kind, violence for
violence. “An eye for an eye…” as I
believe it was Gandhi who said, “leaves the whole world blind.” We easily justified—and continue to
justify—our reaction to violence against us, which gives the Afghan's and
Pakistanis justification to respond with their violence against us, which
demands that we respond against them, and on and on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Jesus calls us to a different path: if someone slaps your right cheek, turn the
other cheek. If someone takes your
cloak, give them your shirt also.
Blessed are you when you are reviled and all sorts of evil are spoken
wrongly of you. Need I go on? The story of Jesus’ last days, relived
through the liturgies of Holy Week, draws us into the contradiction of our DNA
against our faith perspective. Jesus,
the Son of God, easily could have called down the angelic army to avenge the
violence perpetrated against Him but chose not to act <i>quid pro quo</i>, tit for tat, violence to end violence, which is a <i>non sequitor</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I wrote a couple of days ago about the phrase “children
of wrath” that appeared in our Epistle lesson last Sunday in Ephesians 2. St Paul speaks to us in that passage of how
we have been raised up with Jesus out of God’s mercy and not our own
doing. For the rest of Lent, I am
setting my heart on responding to any attack, real or imagined, although not
likely physical, by seeking to remember that Christ has raised me from the
death of violence into the life of mercy and forgiveness, forgiveness both for
myself and for all others. And when I
remember the attacks that have been perpetrated against me, I will, with God’s
help, forgive those deeds of violence and give them into God’s hands. I will with God’s help. I will with God’s help. I will with God’s help.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-25473596546626630572012-03-21T10:37:00.002-06:002012-03-21T10:37:27.859-06:00A dangerous document<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 21 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You
can prove anything you want from a single verse or passage in the Bible. It is a dangerous document, as history has
shown, and nowhere has this been more true than its continual usage to
legitimate hatred, prejudice, violence, killing, punishing and exclusionary
systems, even at the highest levels of church.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimA59U8u6V3NCG_5QqzoRthJZcDSUrMXWYsJAL1zsV87skpTQF96O0fGObJcYKBTY50in5hHkuSyDVWFq1nFbZ_E3lH7hqYAVHE3pNYCx63bduPOtWq64G7a6fsfMK4BMRqpMjgNakc0E/s1600/marriage_cana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimA59U8u6V3NCG_5QqzoRthJZcDSUrMXWYsJAL1zsV87skpTQF96O0fGObJcYKBTY50in5hHkuSyDVWFq1nFbZ_E3lH7hqYAVHE3pNYCx63bduPOtWq64G7a6fsfMK4BMRqpMjgNakc0E/s400/marriage_cana.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Byzantine Icons: The Wedding at Cana (Vladimir Grigorenko)</span> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I know of a story of a young seminarian who in homiletics
class had used a portion of a verse upon which to construct a sermon. Apparently the sermon was not bad, but the
premise of the sermon was skewed by using only a bit of the verse which did not
take the entire passage in context. The
professor, as an instructional lesson, then assigned the student to write a
sermon on another partial verse, a portion of the Summary of the Law which in
its entirety says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as
yourself. On these two commandments hang
all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew
22:37-40) That bit of Scripture on which
the student was to preach was: “hang all the Law and the Prophets.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> That may be an extreme example of misuse of a passage but,
frankly, it is not unusual to take a word, a phrase, a verse or a short passage
of either Hebrew or Christian Scripture and expand those few words to become
the basis of a teaching that separates or isolates individuals or groups and
gives permission for prejudice or violence.
For two centuries in the colonies and later in the United States, slaves were
preached at using two or three texts to show how they should be happy with
their situation in life and not try to change that system of brutality. I have read some of those sermons from that
time which still exist and I am appalled at the misuse of the totality of the
texts. I believe that most Americans
would find abhorrent such preaching today.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I have said for years while teaching Bible studies, “We
are all selective fundamentalists.” By
which I mean, each one of us has our favorite passages upon which we rely, and
we will allow no one to challenge our understanding. One of my favorite passages is John 2:1-10,
the story of the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus changes water into wine, and not
just good wine but the very best wine.
Some Christians who reject any use of alcohol have tried to say that the
Greek word <i>uinos</i> really means
unfermented grape juice. Others try to
argue that the six stone jars were not completely turned into wine, only the
dipper taken to the wine steward became wine; the jars still were full of
water. Others argue that Jesus himself
would never have tasted wine. My
fundamental understanding of this passage, along with both Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures, commends the use of wine, both as drink and as symbol of the living
God. Even St. Paul commends a little red
wine to help digestion! Actually, I love
the passage for many reasons other than the argument concerning wine/grape
juice: the relationship of Jesus and his mother, the “first sign” as John calls
the miracles of Jesus, the exploration of at least one of the wedding practices
of the first century. All of this
together is a delight to me and enriches my spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Even a brief history of the Christian Church is the story
of how individuals and groups have been persecuted. It is a dark tale which gives credence to
the rants of those who have no use for God or the Church. In some ways we have been our own worst
enemies by perverting the teachings of Jesus to meet our own desires and needs
for power and control rather than the needs of the world around us. Our Lord challenges us to feed the hungry,
give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and visit
the sick and those in prison. (Matthew 25)
However, all too often we have used the poor in our midst to feed our
hungers and justified it with a prosperity gospel message of wealth for me and
too bad for you. Your poverty must be
your own fault. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">In
an earlier chapter, Father Rohr speaks of the “meritocracies, worthiness
systems and invariably base them on some kind of purity code—racial, national,
sexual, moral or cultural.” (Page
105) These systems are not based on
Jesus’ life, death, Resurrection, Ascension, much less the power of the Holy Spirit sent upon
the Church at Pentecost. Rather, we
devise ways to insure that we are “in” and “those people”—whoever they may
be—are “out.” What is it about human
nature that causes us to think the only way we can be the beloved of God is to
have others who are despised by God.
Westboro Baptist Church is a glaring example of such hatred of the other
and certainty of their position that they are able to hurl hate-filled
invectives at funerals toward grieving families. I suppose it makes them feel
superior to put others down, but I also know that Jesus weeps over such misuse
of His people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I
encourage you today to reflect on how easy it is to put up barriers between
yourself and others, using jokes that demean individuals or groups, subtle
inferences, or direct words of dismissal.
It might be good to read the Gospel of Mark, the shortest of the
Gospels, and look for how often Jesus connects with the outsider, the outcast
of His society, the lepers, the tax collectors, the unclean. If we are to be Christ in this world, can we
do less than our Lord? And let’s be
cautious about how we use Scripture to justify any behavior, good or bad. We may be skating on thin ice.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-46575316130173084962012-03-20T13:10:00.002-06:002012-03-20T13:10:56.706-06:00Come Holy Spirit<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 20 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Some Jewish scholars say that the consonants used in the
spelling [of the Hebrew name for God <i>YHWH]</i>
are the very few that do not allow you to close your mouth around them, or even
significantly use your lips or tongue; in fact, <i>they are very likely a brilliant attempt to replicate human breathing:
YH on the captured in breath and WH on the offered out breath! </i> (Stop and literally take a breath on that
one!)…God is as available and accessible as our breath itself, and no religion
is going to be able to portion that out, control it or say who gets it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Is that not the very
meaning of Jesus dramatic breathing on them after the Resurrection (John
20:22)?” (Page 129-30)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAYs74saA9wPxaLUnrylAEjAEqauOkoptKXIcSSfKzeixqgcs07bvFIYsMWOdyCuKUY5xmgXke0EfGI8QMW-ry2SIKWUxqey-k4v19dJE-04GoGRE8R44yrrYu-wSR0b0lFw9mesIXlf8/s1600/Gian_Lorenzo_Bernini_-_Dove_of_the_Holy_Spirit.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAYs74saA9wPxaLUnrylAEjAEqauOkoptKXIcSSfKzeixqgcs07bvFIYsMWOdyCuKUY5xmgXke0EfGI8QMW-ry2SIKWUxqey-k4v19dJE-04GoGRE8R44yrrYu-wSR0b0lFw9mesIXlf8/s400/Gian_Lorenzo_Bernini_-_Dove_of_the_Holy_Spirit.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Dove of the Holy Spirit</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Until the second half of the 20</span><sup>th</sup><span style="font-size: large;"> Century,
Western theology had not deeply delved into </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">pneumatology,
</i><span style="font-size: large;">or the theology of the Holy Spirit.
At the very end of the 19</span><sup>th</sup><span style="font-size: large;"> Century the Holiness Movement
which gave rise to the Pentecostal Movement, began to grow across North America
and Europe, gradually moving into Latin America and Africa though missionaries
of the Pentecostal Holiness and
Assemblies of God Churches. Those two
groups divided into a multitude of other groups that differed on points of
theology but which all had as their central focus the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit with the exercise of various gifts of the Spirit, especially </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">glossolalia</i><span style="font-size: large;"> or</span><i style="font-size: x-large;"> </i><span style="font-size: large;">speaking in tongues. By 1960 even the mainline Christian
communities, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, were discovering, or more
properly rediscovering, the power of the Holy Spirit for individuals and
congregations through the Charismatic Movement.
The Rev. Dennis Bennett may not have been the first Episcopalian who
expressed life in the Spirit, but he quickly became the most well-known through
his autobiographical work </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Nine O’clock in
the Morning.</i><span style="font-size: large;"> Suddenly, it seemed, theologians of every stripe were feeling
the need to think, pray, converse, and write about the Third Person of the Holy
Trinity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> During the late 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the Charismatic
Movement swept through the Episcopal Church and brought both renewed vigor and
dissension. Members who were moved by
the Holy Spirit began to exert pressure to move out into the world in a
powerful way; while at the same time the requirement of some Charismatics that
all speak in tongues brought division and in some cases schism in parishes and
dioceses. Other renewal movements, such
as Cursillo, Chiros, Walk to Emmaus, Marriage Encounter and others, began to
draw more and more Episcopalians to move from the pew to an understanding of ministry
which included prayer <i>every day</i> and
not just Sunday. By the late 1990s, the
Charismatic Movement had filtered into the ordinary life of the Episcopal
Church so that it is no longer a radical idea to have a group within a parish,
or an entire parish, alive with the power of the Holy Spirit, perhaps even with
some who speak in tongues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> From Genesis 1:1 where we hear about the <i>ruach</i> of God [Hebrew for breath, wind,
spirit] or Genesis 2:7 where God blows breath into First Man, to St Paul in I
Corinthians speaking of the <i>pneuma</i> of
God [Greek for breath, wind, spirit] to Revelation, the Holy Spirit is present
and working to breathe life into God’s creatures. That the Church for several hundred years did
not stress the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of ordinary Christians
could be laid at the feet of power: that
is to say, the Holy Spirit brings a power for personal transformation and
exercise of the gifts of the Spirit for ministry that is not easily controlled
by the structure of the Church and is often feared by those who control the
structure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The idea that the name of God, usually written <i>Yahweh </i>in modern works, [in the King
James Bible written as Jehovah] is a breath prayer in and of itself is a brand
new one for me. The Hebrew of the
Scriptures is written without vowels, so there is no absolutely certain way to
know how to either write or pronounce YHWH, the name revealed to Moses on the
Mountain of the Burning Bush (Exodus 3), which translates normally to “I am who
I am.” This name is intended to be
unpronounceable, and in modern Jewish worship, when the Sacred Tetragrammaton
appears it is pronounced “Adonai.”
However, to think of YH as an inspiration—breathing in—and WH as an
expiration—breathing out—is inspired and becomes inspiration to me. Centering Prayer, as taught by Father Thomas
Keating and others, has gained many adherents in recent years, and many use a
“breath prayer” such as the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy on me a sinner.” I sometimes use a
breath prayer that I discovered some years ago: “Holy Spirit, breath of God,
blow into my life.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We ignore the Holy Spirit to our soul’s peril. All of our liturgical prayers and many of our
collects close with a doxology which includes the Holy Spirit; blessings always
are Trinitarian; through St. Paul’s understanding we discover the “fellowship
of the Holy Spirit.” Perhaps it is time
to acknowledge in our own private prayers the presence of the Spirit of God and
seek a fuller indwelling and empowering for the work we have been called to in
our lives. As we move toward Holy Week,
let me encourage you to discover the depths of the Spirit, the breath, the wind
that “blows where it wills”. Breathe
deeply of the life, the fellowship, the power of God; then use that power to
proclaim the presence of the Lord to the world.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-50191445023120753462012-03-19T07:30:00.000-06:002012-03-19T07:30:02.979-06:00Prayer in action<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 19 March
2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i>“The entire biblical text would emphasize ‘right
relationship’ much more than being intellectually ‘right.’ Some call it <i>orthopraxy</i> or ‘right practice.’ <i>Jesus
consistently declares people to be saved or healed who are in right
relationship with him, and never grills them on their belief or belonging
systems.”</i> (Page 110)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVZ2gQ7rHpyLJt27HOKZOcq-jJoKwI1ufVA_dG1ZiA0GoAd4QoEDo4yqoIsplOjJ2nChGTKHUFn6vN8iSN7ARvuWi02koh0BJwCPmz1d91nSiLLrQnAMWyLpLczSwapb_bCmYU32AIuc8/s1600/_Sermon_to_the_Birds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVZ2gQ7rHpyLJt27HOKZOcq-jJoKwI1ufVA_dG1ZiA0GoAd4QoEDo4yqoIsplOjJ2nChGTKHUFn6vN8iSN7ARvuWi02koh0BJwCPmz1d91nSiLLrQnAMWyLpLczSwapb_bCmYU32AIuc8/s640/_Sermon_to_the_Birds.jpg" width="472" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
<li style="background-color: #f9f9f9; border-left-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; display: inline-block; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0.3em; padding-right: 0.3em; padding-top: 0px; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Stories_of_Saint_Francis_in_the_Upper_Basilica_in_Assisi" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Category:Stories of Saint Francis in the Upper Basilica in Assisi"> Saint Francis <i>Sermon to the Birds</i> in the Upper Basilica in Assisi</a></li>
<li style="background-color: #f9f9f9; border-left-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; display: inline-block; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0.3em; padding-right: 0.3em; padding-top: 0px; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Giotto_di_Bondone" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Category:Paintings by Giotto di Bondone"> Giotto di Bondone</a></li>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I spoke in an earlier essay about being a clerk in a
battalion chaplain’s office when I was in the Marine Corps in the
mid-1960’s.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">One of the Chaplains for
whom I worked was an Orthodox Chaplain, specifically a member of the
Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic Orthodox Church of North and South America,
although he normally introduced himself as Russian Orthodox.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I learned a great deal from Chaplain Radasky
about the Orthodox Church, including iconography, positive and negative
understandings (cataphatic and apophatic theology to be exact), liturgical
practice, vestments, and the various cultural understandings of Eastern Orthodoxy.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">When I hear Episcopalians/Anglicans—and
others belonging to Protestant groups—talking about being orthodox, I often get
more than a little annoyed.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I have even
asked on occasion to which of the Eastern Orthodox Churches they have changed their
membership.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Now I understand that I am
being a bit exclusivist with my own understanding—dare I say orthodox—but </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">orthodox</i><span style="font-size: large;"> has become one of the
contemporary purity codes against which Father Rohr warns. (p. 105) Modern use
of the term orthodoxy generally implies a particular way of interpreting
Scripture to separate out those who understand such issues as human sexuality,
women’s ordination, atonement, and salvation in what is often termed a
“liberal” understanding.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">If one can
claim orthodoxy for oneself, then anyone who disagrees with any position is
obviously “heterodox” or heretic or apostate or any other term that can divide
or set them apart as unworthy of relationship.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My reading of Scripture, both the Hebrew and the
Christian Scripture, draws me into relationship with God who is willing to come
into my life, not once but repeatedly—dare I say constantly—to draw me into
God’s nearer presence and life. It
doesn’t seem to matter what I believe or how I exercise my belief patterns, God
continues to call me into a way of living that proclaims to the world the life
of Jesus the Christ. Looking at the
Baptismal Covenant, (Book of Common Prayer pages 304-305) our belief system is
articulated in the first three questions of belief contained in the Apostles’
Creed (orthodoxy) which is followed with five questions concerning the living
out of our beliefs (orthopraxy). They
make up a unity that cannot be separated, even though we sometimes try to
emphasize one aspect/question over all the others. Episcopalians are experts at ignoring the
command to “go out into all the world, making disciples…” (Matthew 28:19) and
being witnesses “to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) We are happy being good examples, but please
don’t anyone expect me to talk about my faith or how God has worked in my life.
We are more than delighted to tell our
friends about a wonderful new restaurant we have found, but we are resistant in
speaking to them of the food of Life. We
gush with enthusiasm to friends over a book that has changed a perspective on
family life, but will not say a word about how Scripture draws me into deep
relationship with God. We speak readily
of how the music on a CD moves me emotionally, but we won’t utter a word about
God’s miraculous presence in our lives that sings with life and love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> For some months, the members of the Standing Committee
and the Executive Council have begun their meetings with what is widely known
as African Bible Study. We also as a
diocese experienced this method at our diocesan convention in November 2011. For
those who are not familiar with this method, it proceeds like this: if the group is larger than 8-10 the larger
group is divided into small groups of 3-4. A chosen portion of Scripture is
read by one of the group with discussion answering the question, “What word or
phrase stood out for you today?” After a
few minutes the same passage is read again by another member of the small group
and the discussion focuses this time on the question, “Where is the Good News?” Again after a few minutes of discussion, the
passage is read a third time by yet another person and the conversation focuses
on “What is this passage calling me to do?”
We set the stage for our conversation and deliberation as leaders of the
Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth by centering our gathering time on Scripture,
knowing that we are being called by any passage—every passage—to action and not
just belief. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> On Saturday past, at the beginning of the Executive
Council meeting in Wichita Falls our passage was the Epistle lesson for Sunday,
Ephesians 2:1-10. There was a phrase
that grabbed me that I had never noticed before: “children of wrath”. (I argued that it had been inserted overnight
into Ephesians because it had never registered on my brain.) I meditated on that phrase for more than just
the few minutes of Bible Study on Saturday.
At the discussion of the third question, my action focus was on letting
go of my anger, but in the ensuing days I have kept coming back to that phrase. Yes I need to let go of my own personal
anger, but perhaps more importantly, when
I see the wrath exhibited around me I believe now I am challenged to
step into the path of wrath and absorb it with God’s love, not following my
instincts to react in kind, but praying through the anger until it is defused.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Rohr’s book carries the title <i>Things Hidden, Scripture as Spirituality</i>. His understanding of spirituality is not just
pious prayer but prayer in action, not surprisingly a thoroughly Franciscan way
of living. It is also the path of Jesus. He never allows His disciples to remain
simply students sitting at His feet; Jesus calls us all into apostolic action,
carrying the Good News with us always and proclaiming it constantly. Or as St. Francis is reputed to have said,
“Preach always; use words when necessary.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-20148124879447155612012-03-16T09:02:00.000-06:002012-03-16T09:02:01.360-06:00Concerning pain<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 16 March
2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Not that enlightened people <i>must</i> be rejected, but it is true that wounded and rejected people
have a much greater chance of seeing clearly and having something to say (they
also have a greater chance of being bitter!).
But Jesus still sends his followers to that place, because <i>wisdom emerges from what you do with your
pain!</i> It is a unique and needed
perspective, as poets, artists and seers have always understood. In fact, I would find it hard to understand
all of the beatitudes in any other way (see Matthew 5:1-12).” (<i>page
101)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XgpXby24HUoG0mzGBtnyS9IgjXXrxfJ8TyzdeQZ3o0Hml1StZR7bjO4UWU_2z8YRQbXCSIVP3TtGIIxvEmbzDVyXiqDAxMA2t31tULHH74NL-SYS72wn_aHhzaqHZJkUtfklOdsXw-I/s1600/Job+on+dungheap.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XgpXby24HUoG0mzGBtnyS9IgjXXrxfJ8TyzdeQZ3o0Hml1StZR7bjO4UWU_2z8YRQbXCSIVP3TtGIIxvEmbzDVyXiqDAxMA2t31tULHH74NL-SYS72wn_aHhzaqHZJkUtfklOdsXw-I/s400/Job+on+dungheap.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Job on dungheap (from the Admont Giant-Bible, ca. 1140)</span> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Chapter five purports to be all about power—both good and
bad. Richard Rohr, however, enters into
a conversation concerning pain, a seemingly tangential focus. His discussion concerns how individuals and
communities ultimately deal with pain and suffering, whether it is from
physical causes, rejection, failure or any other source. Another way of understanding what the
quotation is pointing toward is that in pain, human beings are able to focus on
what is most important, making first things first, or as a friend of mine from
many decades ago used to say, “to stop majoring in the minors.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Those who have never experienced pain in any form are
less likely to be able to understand it or even come close to one who is in
pain. Sickness, and the attendant pain,
can be an extremely uncomfortable situation for human beings. Too often I have heard parishioners say they
didn’t want to visit someone who is seriously ill, perhaps even terminally ill,
because they don’t know what to say. And
I must say that in that discomfort we sometimes babble and say the “wrong”
thing. I am certain that everyone
reading this meditation has some knowledge of the character Job. Some may not know the whole story, and if you
do not, I recommend a good reading of the Book of Job. After he has been inflicted with boils, a
condition which renders him a leper because of oozing sores, Job goes out of
the city to sit on the sewage pile (dung heap) and to reside there. He has three friends, Zophar, Elephaz, and
Bildad, who come from a great distance to visit him, having heard of the calamities
with which he has been afflicted (including losing ALL of his children, his
wealth and his health). From a distance
they see his misery and as they approach, they internalize his pain to such an
extent that they remain silent for seven days, simply sitting with Job. After seven days they produce more pain with
their words and arguments. Each asks in
long poetic discourses what Job has done, how Job has offended God, to bring
this suffering upon himself. To each Job
replies, “Nothing, I am innocent.” His
“friends” will have none of that and continue to batter Job with their
accusations. Job finally becomes so
angry that he does accuse God of not understanding, to which God replies,
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” (Job 38ff)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There is much to learn from Job’s friends. When I have been a part of the training of
Stephen Ministers—or others doing much the some sort of visitation ministry—I
have always cautioned against talking too much, rather listening and as we like
to say “empathizing” with the other. The
ministry of presence is heightened by our own ability to grasp another’s pain
by knowing how we have suffered in some form and at some depth. I have never been diagnosed—at least not to
date—with a terminal illness, but I know the pain of failure, rejection, and
illness. When I am able to access those
feelings and memories, I can grasp at least a bit of the other’s fear, loss,
and suffering and sit with them, perhaps weep with them, knowing that God is
present and suffering alongside them. My
goal is to be present. The operative word is <i>be,</i> not <i>do</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I remember a person who was seeking ordination who was
asked at a conference where we explored with the aspirants their experience and
understanding of ministry (it was called BACAM, but I can never remember what
each of the letters of the acronym stood for).
This person was asked when he had failed at something. He pondered for a while and said he had never
failed at anything. Many of us knew that
he had failed to complete two areas of study, he had had a failed marriage, and
there were other areas that were problematic.
He was not recommended for postulancy, because the team felt he would never
be able to grasp the pain and suffering of others until he could come to grips
with the pain in his own life. He
reminded me of Job’s friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Pain and suffering, regardless of the cause—be it
illness, death of a loved one, our own impending death, accident, termination
from a job, financial woes, divorce—can, and I say can, help us to prioritize
our life in a healthy manner. As Rohr
says, it can also make us bitter. By
seeking priorities, we have the opportunity to focus on the true first things
and let some of the niggling “stuff” go.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I do not encourage anyone to go out and seek pain just to
be able to relate to others better; but I do encourage everyone to think back
to those time that have been painful.
Some have experienced bullying in childhood or youth, some have suffered
from illness that was debilitating, even if now recovered; some have lost loved
ones who were close. Whatever your life
experience, it is worth recalling those times to see in retrospect where God
was present in order to look for God’s presence in the present. Lent is a great time to reflect; let this be
a part of your reflection, not just so that you can rejoice in knowing God’s
presence more thoroughly, but in order to proclaim God’s presence to others now. How else are we going to “proclaim by word
and example the Good News of God in Christ?”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-88358263525448222372012-03-15T08:42:00.002-06:002012-03-15T08:42:47.472-06:00<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 15 March
2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> “A
prime idea of the Bible is its very straightforward critique of power, from
Genesis to Revelation.” </i>(page 85)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggoncioS7Xtv9Bm-Buq3_MfnIoj92sq_hv5VeS8zDtY7E5ooASXWSxYubJIu0xZlrLDIsRb_GlCEGu290nwPWkbqWhTkiJnh8DNth60F49dJ_-sS2hFp-XGbmbb4PdlMpDl2hhqFgh4CI/s1600/Christ+before+Caiphus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggoncioS7Xtv9Bm-Buq3_MfnIoj92sq_hv5VeS8zDtY7E5ooASXWSxYubJIu0xZlrLDIsRb_GlCEGu290nwPWkbqWhTkiJnh8DNth60F49dJ_-sS2hFp-XGbmbb4PdlMpDl2hhqFgh4CI/s400/Christ+before+Caiphus.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;">Caiaphas questions Jesus, by Matthias Stom</span> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">From the very beginning of his book </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">Things Hidden, Scripture as Spirituality,</i><span style="font-size: large;"> the author Richard Rohr
had posited that there are themes, or as he calls them dots, that connect the
entirety of Scripture from the beginning to the end.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">A long time priest friend who grew up
Southern Baptist uses an expression for the whole Bible that I dearly love: he
speaks of everything from “Genuine Morocco to maps.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I was listing to him teach many years ago
when he said that and I had to ask for clarification.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">He explained that many Bibles are leather
bound, and on the front cover is printed, often in gold leaf, “Genuine Morocco”.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Then he asked me, “And where do you
invariably find the maps?”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I replied, “At
the very end.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, now I see.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Rohr takes this theme—or dot—of critique of power and
builds chapter 5, entitled <i>good power and
bad power</i>. His discussion of power
may make some readers uncomfortable and others angry. Jesus does the same thing when he challenges
the powers that be in his own culture and time: the Sadducees, the Pharisees,
the Scribes who are all trying to put Jesus in his place with both subtle
argument and direct confrontation, leading finally to Jesus’ crucifixion. Even the Roman Imperial government comes
under Jesus condemnation when he refuses to meet the power of government in a <i>quid pro quo</i> fashion by calling down the
army of angels to dominate and defeat Pilate, Herod, and finally the Emperor in
order to save his own life. At his
so-called trial before Pilate, the governor asks Jesus, “Are you the King of
the Jews?... Jesus answers, ‘My kingship is not of this world….” (John
18:33-36)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Part of the problem that we continue to wrestle with is
the power of this world versus the power of God’s kingdom. When all is well with the world, at least in
my little corner of the world, I am quite happy to rely on God and to put my
“whole trust in his grace and love” as we promised in our Baptismal
Examination. When life is chaotic or I
am experiencing the attacks of either the Enemy or other human beings,
sometimes both at the same time, I tend to want to rely on and exercise what
Rohr calls “dominative power” which he describes as “the ability to influence
events or others through coercion, punishment, threat, money, the power of my
role or any other external force.” This
is what our author calls “bad power.”
Jesus life and witness, throughout his life is the exemplar of “good
power.” From the Garden of Eden to the
present day, God could have chosen at any point to overwhelm us human beings
with force to make us behave properly, including annihilation of the entire created
world. However, God chooses to be a God
who reveals God’s self as “a God who is willing to wait, allow, forgive, trust
and love unconditionally. (page 89)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My challenge continues to be how I use power. Do I act out of fear, thus dominating others
including my family, those with whom I work, the members of the diocese? Or am
I willing to put my need for control into neutral and make my primary focus
relationship and reconciliation. I
believe the latter is Jesus’ image and that to which He is calling us. If indeed Scripture is to become spirituality
for me I need to work continually on that as a growing edge which will take the
rest of my life to hone. Lent is our
yearly opportunity to reflect on our relationship with God who is not punitive,
threatening and coercive but forgiving and who loves unconditionally—even
me. I encourage you to reflect on your
own use of power—good and bad—and set as discipline for the remainder of Lent,
or as 12 Step programs say “Just for today”, a reflection on how you relate to
others. Then go back to the Liturgy for
Ash Wednesday and pray through the Litany of Penance once again. Accept the forgiveness which God is offering,
forgive yourself, and then begin the difficult task of forgiving others. May your day be filled with God.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-12882111871544279632012-03-14T10:41:00.000-06:002012-03-14T10:41:06.525-06:00"I am with you always . . . "<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation
14 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> It seems this is more than enough
for God to create the yeast and the critical mass that God needs to unfreeze
and save the world. ‘The whole batch is holy if the first handful of dough is
holy’ as Paul says (Romans 11:16). We
rub off on one another because true spirituality is always contagious.” </i>(page 84) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXOW224LHHkWo8zbWqt5T79hMCWRciMQ6FK5BXfU8rPYnBULPYSOjEqWEKAI_RDXCY8Lucy8hVmLGx5fbs4SOJv88yIcIM7WINGUnVb0ji8p8QzHiBkPmXrCZ6y5M4UUwWxcQiAwcpfg8/s1600/Jesus+appears+to+the+disciples.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXOW224LHHkWo8zbWqt5T79hMCWRciMQ6FK5BXfU8rPYnBULPYSOjEqWEKAI_RDXCY8Lucy8hVmLGx5fbs4SOJv88yIcIM7WINGUnVb0ji8p8QzHiBkPmXrCZ6y5M4UUwWxcQiAwcpfg8/s400/Jesus+appears+to+the+disciples.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><i>Jesus Appears to the Disciples</i>, Congregational Church of Austin, UCC</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “In
polite company one never speaks about religion, politics, or sex.” That was a mantra with which I was raised,
and there are probably a fair number of those who are reading this,
particularly if you grew up in the Episcopal Church, that heard the same or a
similar “rule”. Of course, there is a
quite valid reason for never discussing any of those subjects: it is far too easy to fall into
argumentativeness with politics; if when speaking of religion one might become
arrogant and make others seem to be wrong; and sex is just plain embarrassing. The mantra really came out of the Victorian
Era of what we now believe to be total repression of the human psyche. I was in a conversation recently with someone
who had not heard that sentence but was talking around it. When I quoted my mother, she said, “Then what
is there to talk deeply about?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Episcopalians
have always—at least in my lifetime--been uncomfortable talking about our
faith. Unlike some of our Evangelical
brothers and sisters who have been raised with personal witnessing within the
worship service, our experience was to be at worship alone with God, supposedly
ignoring the fact that there are others in the same space with us. “It’s God and me and no one else.” That is why the introduction of “Passing the
Peace” was so uncomfortable; Episcopalians had to admit that there were others
in the church with them. Before I began
to be an acolyte at about age 7, my mother chastised me when I would look
around, and especially when I watched the other parishioners returning to their
pews from the communion rail. “This is
not a time for watching others; it’s a time to be alone with God,” she would
say, suggesting I should bow my head and close my eyes. Children (and adults when we are willing to
admit it) are curious about our surroundings and want to see who all is with
us. We really do want to know that we
are not alone, but that we are part of a community of worshippers. And yet we are extremely cautious—embarrassed—about
talking to one another about the incredible experience of being in relationship
with God. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> As
Jesus is about to ascend, he gives his 11 disciples their final marching orders
including a promise. “Go therefore and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20) He does not tell the eleven to go hole up in
some house so that they will be safe; he orders them to get out of their
protective shell, take some risks, and bring others into the beautiful
relationship with the Living God that they have experienced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I
remember vividly when the “Decade of Evangelism” was proposed in the 1980’s the
reaction of many of the congregation I served in Norman, which mirrored much of
the Episcopal Church. We were aghast
that we might be forced to go door-to-door passing out tracts or to stand on a
street corner asking if passersby were saved.
That seemed to be the only expression of evangelism that was
possible. Even today we forget that one
of the questions of the Baptismal Covenant asks, “Will you proclaim by word and
example the Good News of God in Christ?”
We promise in our response, “I will, with God’s help.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I am
convinced that part of the reason the Episcopal Church—and every other
main-line Christian group—continues to decline in numbers is that we are not
willing to be “witnesses,” the term
Jesus uses for his disciples (Acts 1:8), to the grace, love and mercy of God in
our own lives. Everyone in the US knows,
because we have seen enough lawyers on TV, that witnesses can only testify to
what they have seen and heard or they will be challenged for giving hearsay
testimony which is inadmissible. I can
only be a witness to my life in Christ, to the miraculous deeds that I have
seen and experienced, to the transformation that has occurred in my life. Why am I so reticent to share God’s
love? Could it be that I am too
timid? Now is the time for all of us to
pray for the courage to allow our deep spirituality to “rub off” on others and
take those baby steps of sharing how the Good News of God in Christ is alive in
me. Begin with a trusted friend who you
know will not ridicule you and practice until you are comfortable enough to
speak to someone not so close. God will
give you the opportunity; remember Jesus’ last words in Matthew 28:20, “Lo I am
with you always…”</span><o:p></o:p></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-2285584550630981342012-03-13T06:52:00.000-06:002012-03-13T06:52:02.538-06:00Mercy<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation, 13
March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <i>“We, indeed, have
been given a God who not only allows us to make mistakes, but even uses our
mistakes in our favor! That is the
gospel economy of grace and is the only thing worthy of being called ‘good news
and a joy for all people’ (Luke 2:10).” </i>(Page
84)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7fS8hZHUeXTKLxYPxQ1vczl1SG-0Pnq8dRyvUlTnMcMZDqwNhUnXgSelKTv85xC4DPx-IajxfCxlcV1T7xnIYp_zbEnnLLXWOo4JObarWilfMN7Uvcmc5oTleFocmyfmzdPnmTv_wviQ/s1600/Atlerpiece+Gates+of+Heaven.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7fS8hZHUeXTKLxYPxQ1vczl1SG-0Pnq8dRyvUlTnMcMZDqwNhUnXgSelKTv85xC4DPx-IajxfCxlcV1T7xnIYp_zbEnnLLXWOo4JObarWilfMN7Uvcmc5oTleFocmyfmzdPnmTv_wviQ/s400/Atlerpiece+Gates+of+Heaven.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Altarpiece of the Nativity, St. Peter and Musicians at the Gates of Heaven</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> (ca 1405), Pere Vall. Cardona, Spain: Iglesia de San Miguel</span> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I forget far too often that grace is not available to me
only when I am “good” but especially when I have really blown it. The pre-teen child that lives in my head is
still wrapped up in the fairness issues of what is right and wrong, but God’s
Grace has nothing to do with fairness. I
once heard Bishop Bill Frey say, “If you have the chance to pray for only one,
pray for mercy, not fairness.” That is
exactly what Grace is about. If left to
our own devices to earn a place at God’s table and in God’s kingdom, we fail
miserably. Law is about pointing a way
to right living, moral behavior; but law teaches us that we cannot ever be
perfect in applying law in our own lives.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Father Rohr makes the point that St. Paul argues that law
was given by God as a way for us to discover our failure in order for God to
make God’s grace, mercy and love available to us who are unworthy of any grace,
mercy or love. If law could make us
“worthy” we would have absolutely no use for Jesus’ life, death, resurrection,
and ascension. Nor would the Holy Spirit
be available—or even necessary—in living into the life God has prepared for us
in God’s kingdom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The Liturgy for Ash Wednesday is a powerful reminder that
we do not come before God relying on our own righteousness, as did the Pharisee
in the parable of the “Pharisee and the Publican.” (Luke 18:9-14) There is a wonderful story of a man who has
been a faithful Christian all of his life.
When the man dies he is met at the gates of Heaven by the keeper of the
keys, St. Peter, who informs the man that in order to enter the kingdom he must
have earned 100 points in his life. The
man feels fairly confident and begins by telling St. Peter of his perfect
attendance in Sunday School all 12 of his school years; and besides that he
taught the junior high class at his parish for 35 years. St Peter replies, “How wonderful! That’s one point.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Now the man is a bit
perplexed, thinking teaching junior high students should count for at least 10
points. So he continues, “My wife and I
were married for 53 years, and never once was I unfaithful. We raised our children to be faithful
Christians, and their children are following in those same footsteps.” St Peter says, “That’s even better! Now you have two points.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Beginning to sweat a bit,
the man says, “I began to tithe when I was 7 years old and never failed to give
at least 10% of all of our total income.
In addition, I managed the Every Member Canvass for 36 years, each year
raising more than the stated goal. I
also chaired the capital campaign which raised almost twice the needed
funds. And I insisted that the overage
be put into an endowment fund to finance outreach locally and globally.” “Now you’re really talking!! You have three points,” replies Peter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">The man is almost frantic
and begins to blurt out, “I never passed by anyone asking for assistance, even
those who I knew would spend it on drink.
I worked in the homeless shelter at least one evening a week for my
entire adult life. I started the food
pantry that feeds thousands each month and personally donated both goods and
money. We travelled to Navajoland and
helped start a mission near Window Rock, and we funded it for many years. I also did everything I could to encourage
outreach across our diocese and formed the first international outreach mission
in Uganda.” “Wow! That’s really something. Now you have four points. You only have 96 points to go.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">At a complete loss,
thinking all of that would be worth more than 4 points, the exasperated man
says, “Well, I can’t think of anything else.
I guess without the grace of God I go to Hell.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">“That’s 96 points. Welcome home!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “If you can only pray for one, pray for mercy not
fairness.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-26895022407138548102012-03-12T08:09:00.000-06:002012-03-12T08:09:19.350-06:00"The power of me first"<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 12 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> “Now
the definition of sin that many of us were given was ’a thought, word or deed
contrary to the law of God.’ The
requirements for sin were three: (1) you had to have full knowledge; (2) it had
to be a grievous matter; (3) you had to give it full consent.… but
actually it’s not a definition of
biblical sin at all; it’s a juridical definition of law.” </i>(page
78)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbb0ffHuJ6AZtUIks8khWaphiNgVlA2mI3sT3q1c9k4uO4Z-z5qtPC78nnOj78qoUwPvjJ53-TdtcFpDhO6CLPB7SNOUdAg7ewdG0dBgNIQKT6vd7cxwIjo2IiJtVVLhRpIO-DX8gLH-k/s1600/Alexandre_Bida_Jesus_eats_with_publicans_and_sinners_525.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbb0ffHuJ6AZtUIks8khWaphiNgVlA2mI3sT3q1c9k4uO4Z-z5qtPC78nnOj78qoUwPvjJ53-TdtcFpDhO6CLPB7SNOUdAg7ewdG0dBgNIQKT6vd7cxwIjo2IiJtVVLhRpIO-DX8gLH-k/s400/Alexandre_Bida_Jesus_eats_with_publicans_and_sinners_525.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Over 45 years ago I served as a clerk for a battalion
chaplain when I was in the Marine Corps.
The first chaplain I served with was an Episcopalian who had just
returned from a tour with Marines in DaNang Vietnam. While he was at Quantico Virginia, Chaplain
MacLean worked on occasion with several of the local Episcopal parishes in the
area. One Saturday he was working with 6-year-old
children and asked them, “What is sin?”
The expected answers came out immediately: “It’s when I hit my brother.” When I don’t obey my mother.” “When I do something wrong.” But one child who had been very quiet at
first spoke up and said, “It’s the power of me first.” Since I first heard Chaplain MacLean report
that story to me in 1966, I have yet to find a better definition of sin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Father Rohr, the author of our study book <i>Things Hidden, Scripture as Spirituality</i>,
takes an entire chapter to explore the question of sin. Chapter 4 is entitled “The Boxing Ring”,
which is an appropriate arena for discussion of law and Grace. As does St. Paul, he delves into the argument
of how law and Grace are connected and how one leads to the other. In an earlier chapter Rohr discusses
spiritual development which begins with “my story” --just me, which moves to
“our story” --the tribe or community, and finally to “The story” or “the great
patterns which are always true.” That
follows my experience with children who from birth to about age 7 live in an
age of wonder. At about 7 children move
into a real beginning of understanding of self which is an age of black-and-white,
right-and-wrong. This is when we really
begin to hear, “It’s not fair.”
Generally in early to mid-teen years, an understanding of abstract ideas
begins to build about the same time a separate identity takes root. Grace is very difficult for those in pre-abstract
thought, because Grace violates the fairness principle. How can someone who has done something
completely wrong receive forgiveness?
It’s not fair. That is the point
of the parable of the “Man with Two Sons,” or as I prefer to call the story
“The Prodigious Father.” It is the basis
of the teachings of Jesus. It is the
argument of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Most of us mature during our teen years to at least a
rudimentary understanding of abstraction, and those of us who grew up in a
worshipping family may have gotten some grip on Grace. Even though we mature, and as some would say
progress, most—maybe even all—of us retain something of the wonder of early
childhood as well as the legalistic, right/wrong, good/bad, fairness
focus. Especially when we have been hurt
by another, we tend to revert to a juridical desire to “get even” by seeing the
other punished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Unfortunately, Christians are not exempt from desiring
the pound of flesh from those who have hurt us.
Whether the “sin” has been a minor slight or a grievous matter, we tend
to want to see heads roll, blood spilt, condemnation abound. Most of us are amazed and stunned when we see
forgiveness offered in dramatic situations such as happened a few days ago when
the mother of one of the teenagers killed at the school in Ohio forgave the
shooter, or when an Amish community reached out to the family of a man who had
killed about 20 children and then took his own life. How can they do that? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> As long as I remain in the position of non-forgiveness,
am I not acting/reacting in a “me first” pattern? If this is all about me, am I not as guilty
of sin as the one who has sinned against me?
Am I willing to allow God’s Grace to penetrate into my soul and touch
me? Am I willing to pray “Forgive me my
sins only as much as I am willing to forgive others?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Lent is a wonderful time to reflect on how we both accept
God’s love, mercy and grace and offer it to those around us. How can I take one baby step today by
offering my forgiveness, my love, my mercy to one who does not deserve it? Remember, it took most of the great saints of
the past a long time to move toward an outward manifestation of that which had
been growing in their hearts and souls.
Remember St. Peter and his repeated “failures,” including his denial of
Jesus; remember his wavering over whether Gentiles should be part of the
Christian community; but remember at his death he was willing to give his life
for his Lord. Baby steps today, but
steps none the less. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-4531016066749860932012-03-09T09:45:00.000-06:002012-03-09T09:45:34.211-06:00Staying in relationship<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 9 March
2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “<i>It doesn’t have to
do with being perfect. It has to do with
staying in relationship, holding onto union as tightly as God holds onto you,
staying in there. The one who knows all
and receives all, as a mirror does, has no trouble forgiving all. It’s not a matter of being correct, but of
being connected.” </i>(page 67)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsan1fbvtvXcJoeHXKHgiylisKImAptOXe2Yw018Bk5R6al7ScDDe4_7f9i-YTwSXGMVK1cfwrA_eZ0jF-wt0oXasQnlu3r1uRlTX5P2fvIDjSMb0iXhA64p4E7ob4C9nlmCIIvA0MRgE/s1600/Trinity+icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsan1fbvtvXcJoeHXKHgiylisKImAptOXe2Yw018Bk5R6al7ScDDe4_7f9i-YTwSXGMVK1cfwrA_eZ0jF-wt0oXasQnlu3r1uRlTX5P2fvIDjSMb0iXhA64p4E7ob4C9nlmCIIvA0MRgE/s640/Trinity+icon.jpg" width="425" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Holy Trinity, painted by Andrei Rublev</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t need church; I can worship God in the forest (or
golf course, or at home, or wherever) just as well, and I don’t have to put up
with all the hypocrites.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I am sure some
of you have heard someone say something like that; perhaps you have even said
it yourself at some point in your life.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">There have been moments that I have felt that way, but blessedly God has
drawn me back into the arms of the community.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">Yes indeed there are hypocrites in every congregation, and you and I
might be the biggest hypocrites from time to time.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Salvation and redemption, however, are not
about being sinless—or hypocrite-less—before we approach God.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">It is about being a part of a community that
is working together to discover God’s call on our life and living that out as
completely as we can.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One of the foundations of Christianity is the theology of
the Trinity. Now the word “trinity”
never appears in either the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, but there are pointers
to the community and communion of God within God’s self. “Let us make human beings in our image.”
(Genesis 1) The story of the three
travelers—the Lord--that appear to Abraham and relate once again the promise
that Abraham will be the father of many nations, and, in fact, his wife Sarah
will bear a child in the coming springtime.
(Genesis 18) And there are many
other examples in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the Christian Scriptures the examples are far more explicit: John’s Gospel is replete with references to
the Father and to the Paraclete/Holy Spirit/the Advocate with Jesus referencing
himself as the Son. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Are we then worshipping three gods or are we indeed
monotheistic? The Jewish equivalent to
our creedal statements, the Shemah, begins, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God,
the Lord is one.” It took the early
Church 450 years to work out how we could articulate our understanding of One
God in Three Persons, separate and distinct, and yet a unity. Perhaps the most famous attempt to describe
this three-in-one God came from St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. I am sure you are aware that shamrocks are
always associated with Patrick, but most Americans do not know why. As Patrick was evangelizing the Irish Celts,
he was challenged on the concept of the Trinity. He is reputed to have bent down and plucked a
shamrock, held it up and showed the three blades but only one shamrock all of
the same substance, different, but the same.
Some modern day Christians have used water in much the same way--ice,
liquid, and steam—but there are theological difficulties with this metaphor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> My favorite representation of the Trinity is a Russian
Orthodox icon painted by Andrei Rublev in the early 15<sup>th</sup>
century. [Above] It shows the three visitors to
Abraham at the oaks of Mamre, but clearly it represents the Father (left) the
Son (center) and the Holy Spirit (right) seated at a table but with the fourth
side closest to the viewer vacant inviting the viewer into the icon to commune
with God. A meditational description of
this icon is available through Google if you are interested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> We are called as Christians into a community of
believers, not perfect, sometimes hateful to one another, all sinners, but
seeking together to re-present the community of the Trinity to this world. It is only through community that we are able
to discover our true selves and to grow into the full stature of Christ. Every Christian is different, we were not
produced by a cookie cutter to all look the same and have the same abilities
and gifts. St. Paul speaks to the
concept of the differences of the various body parts in I Corinthians 12 and
how no part of the body is more important than any other, but that all are
necessary to function in a healthy manner.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Yes it is possible to worship God in the mountains; I
have done that myself. But it is a poor
substitute for praying in the community of believers. Yes God is occasionally mentioned on the golf
course, but not often in a prayerful manner.
Yes one can worship God at home alone, but there are too many
distractions there; and in addition the community is not present to uphold
edify and challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As Father Rohr says, it’s not about being correct or
perfect, it’s about being connected.
Through community and communion, two words with the same root, we learn
to live into the community of God, the Trinity, which shows us that we cannot
be “lone ranger” Christians. Left to our
own devices we will wander off on a path that will take us farther and farther
away from God and alienate us from our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes our challenge is to be connected,
but that is our call. Pray for your
community, your congregation; visualize one who is a challenge to you and pray
that the love, mercy and grace of God may fill that person to accomplish God’s
purpose. Try that for a week and trust
that God is changing you.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-3327778582484058752012-03-08T17:58:00.000-06:002012-03-09T09:35:48.693-06:00Discovering the God-ness in everyone<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lenten Meditation 8 March 2012</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">If you are not trained in a trust of mystery and some degree of tolerance for ambiguity, frankly you will not proceed very far on the spiritual journey. … Why? Because faith is that patience with mystery that allows you to negotiate the stages….it allows God to lead you through darkness—where God knows and I don’t.” </i>(page 55)</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQD51n580oOSRlKtFRW9Nn87HKM95zqEa1IXPvnQvbqenIaKkU3NjcejB5tLMqkIbw_Vu37JulHO59JrOTPkoaCorEKK4mhwFdO9OfJUeRbYRbTwVZDniM4GSrw0vuAfbhvrbRfeU8cw/s1600/NASA+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQD51n580oOSRlKtFRW9Nn87HKM95zqEa1IXPvnQvbqenIaKkU3NjcejB5tLMqkIbw_Vu37JulHO59JrOTPkoaCorEKK4mhwFdO9OfJUeRbYRbTwVZDniM4GSrw0vuAfbhvrbRfeU8cw/s400/NASA+image.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NASA images -- this image of the 30 Doradus Nebula spans about 100 light-years.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The great difficulty in our culture today is the need for certainty and the unwillingness to live with ambiguity. We find it in virtually every area of life: politics, economics, science, and perhaps most especially in religious discourse. I have heard the argument that we are so needy for certitude because we live in such a rapidly changing universe. If I am certain about a particular position I have taken in any area, the argument goes, I will see anyone who disagrees with me as an enemy. Perhaps this is why the campaign for the presidential nomination has become so bitter. Or perhaps this explains why the “Occupy Movement” has gathered such force as well as animosity on both sides. Certainly the argument can be made that it is greed and power that motivate these fights. (I hesitate to call most of our arguments today debates, because there is almost no willingness to concede the value of another’s position or admit my own error.) Religious battles are being fought by ideologues, conservatives and liberals alike, for whom there is no room for doubt or ambiguity. There is almost no room for any middle way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I came to realize some time ago that we are all selective biblical fundamentalists, that we each have our favorite passages to support our arguments. When I was young, the arguments about wine in Communion were specious to me because Jesus used wine for the Last Supper. A junior high teacher tried to tell us that the Greek word for wine, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uinos,</i> really meant grape juice. But I argued back that grape juice would not have made the disciples so sleepy in the garden after dinner. There are other passages that I hold dear to this day and will not allow anyone else to interpret them differently from me. But I am not alone; I am convinced that we all do this with Scripture. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Ambiguity is difficult for young children who are pretty much “black and white” in their understanding of the world. Grey is not an option until we move toward teen years, when we begin to differentiate ourselves from the family of origin, specifically our parents. Teenage rebellion appears as a child starts to become an entity and begins to look at other options than those the parents have given them. The fear of the parents is that all the parents’ hopes and dreams for the child will disappear like smoke or that the exploration will turn deadly. Often a child’s move toward the fringes can be described by an artillery term: firing for effect.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> When we cannot live with ambiguity, we tend to distrust anyone who is unlike us; we often demonize those who have a different skin color, speak a different language, have different cultural norms, or come from a different socio-economic background. And of course, those who experience human sexuality in another way from me are the worst of the worst. We have lots of Scriptural “proof texts” to show how this is so, even from God’s perspective. Of course, we are reading those passages from a 21<sup>st</sup> century perspective and either ignoring or not knowing the cultural times in which they were written and what the passage meant then. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">To show how culture plays into this I will tell a story. During Lambeth Conference 2008 I had a conversation with a bishop from an African country who related that “gay” in his country meant “pedophile.” Yes, there were homosexual people in his country but someone who is gay is an abuser of children.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The desire, even the need, to be “right” is an ingrained part of us all. That need might even be a result of the Fall from Grace in Eden. In order to be right, someone or some position must absolutely be wrong. Hopefully as we mature in body and soul and thinking we reach a point that it is much more important to be in relationship than to be right. We may still disagree but we are not willing to end our relationships with those with whom we disagree. In the realm of faith we are still willing to come to God’s table—to the Altar—to worship and break bread together.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Unfortunately our diocese has been ripped apart by an unwillingness to hold disparate opinions in tension within the same diocese. Many who left were certain that those who have chosen to remain with The Episcopal Church are apostates because of their position on one or another theological or biblical point. Faithful people on both sides of the divide have seen relationships destroyed and a divorce-like atmosphere prevail. The litigation may settle who gets the family jewels, but repairing the relationships will take the rest of most of our lives. Difficult accusations have been hurled by folk in both camps and fractures have wounded both the TEC folks and the ACNA folks. God cannot be happy with our division, any more than God was happy in the 11<sup>th</sup> century when the Eastern and Western Churches divided or in the 16<sup>th</sup> century at the time of the Protestant Reform or at any other point when Christians fling insults and epithets at one another. Under stress we revert to behavior patterns that are comfortable, but mostly childish in nature where ambiguity is most uncomfortable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Our task this Lent, I believe, is to seek through the study of Scripture and prayer to discover the God-ness in everyone, absolutely everyone. As we meet Christ in the other, we begin to discover more of ourselves through that encounter. I challenge you to look for Jesus in those you meet today; His presence will make an angry, damning response ever so much more difficult and perhaps open some new avenue of life to you. Try it, just for today, or as the 12 step groups say, “One day at a time.”</span></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-9425529929443605862012-03-07T10:08:00.000-06:002012-03-07T10:08:23.070-06:00God is always choosing people<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lenten
Meditation 7 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>“God
is always choosing people, First impressions aside, God is not primarily
choosing them for a role or a task, although it might appear that way. God is really choosing them to be himself in
this world. … It’s not that God likes anybody better or that they are more
worthy than the rest. God’s chosenness is for the sake of communicating
chosenness to everybody else! … In other
words, what first feels like exclusivity is finally and fully for the sake of
inclusivity!” </i>(page 43)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivg3PynAY6cved2ZQV9fuP4ROLopZpSIKXAB_9Ub4YOGhdkjMtDy2i-IihlxZ_Ob2Sg7oCZK6IOE8A4rQnRZxEbpCz84eBuLuHyrqebY7Arcegq56LyaNdLH6BjEBIjg46YLORnV2pYkU/s1600/St.+Teresa+of+Avila.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivg3PynAY6cved2ZQV9fuP4ROLopZpSIKXAB_9Ub4YOGhdkjMtDy2i-IihlxZ_Ob2Sg7oCZK6IOE8A4rQnRZxEbpCz84eBuLuHyrqebY7Arcegq56LyaNdLH6BjEBIjg46YLORnV2pYkU/s640/St.+Teresa+of+Avila.jpg" width="448" /></a></td></tr>
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Stained glass
window detail of St. Teresa of Avila photographed in Summit, NJ.<span style="color: #7d633b;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<a href="mailto:Lenar@Christian-Miracles.com"><span style="color: #8d0718; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Lenar@Christian-Miracles.com</span></a><span style="color: #7d633b;"> </span>Photograph Copyright 2010 Loci B. Lenar</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> When I was a young man about to embark
on the journey to seminary, I met a member of my home parish downtown one day,
a middle aged woman with children just younger than I. This parishioner had not grown up in the
Episcopal Church but was a staunch supporter of our parish. She asked me, “Do you know what I like about
the Episcopal Church?” Being a polite
young man I replied, “Tell me.” Her
answer stunned me. “Only the right
people belong to our church.” I could
not think quickly of a response that would not have been both argumentative and
confronting, which would not have been appropriate in a bank lobby. So I simply said, “That’s why we are not
growing.” I really wanted to speak to
the fact that she had it all wrong, but I suspect my voice would have been
raised and it likely would have produced an ugly scene. And I was a polite young man.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Another story. A friend related a conversation that he had
when he was on a search committee in the Diocese of Virginia. He and another member of the committee had
gone to visit a parish in a nearby town where a candidate was rector. There were no signs for the church in town,
and after stopping at a couple of filling stations to ask for directions,
without success, they continued to drive around town until they finally
stumbled on the church. At coffee hour,
Charlie saw a person he had known from diocesan conventions and related their
difficulty in finding the Episcopal Church.
The member of the local parish said, “Sir, everybody who needs to know where
the Episcopal Church is in Culpepper already knows where it is.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Both of these stories relate an
exclusivity that is both embarrassing and antithetical to the Christian
Gospel. Unfortunately, however, we
Christians, and because I know more Episcopalians than other Christians will
say especially Episcopalians, seem to delight in the fact that we are “the best
kept secret in town.” I believe that is
an abomination! To be the best kept
secret in town is to revel in an exclusivity that is arrogance of the highest
order. It is to look at the world around
us and decide that they have nothing to offer us, so they are unworthy of our
attention, except of course to give away our leftovers in clothes and canned
goods. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Once upon a time, the Episcopal Church
was the apex of the social class both locally and nationally. We were the Church of Pierpont and Morgan, of
presidents of the US and captains of industry, of society leaders. A hundred years ago an Episcopalian was
regularly the senior chaplain at both West Point and Annapolis, training
officers to be leaders of the military and the Church. We were the settled Church, the connection
with England and history, the right place to be seen on Sunday morning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Every main line expression of
Christianity in America is shrinking. It
is no longer necessary to belong to a church of any stripe in order to advance
in a job. The younger the age group, the
smaller the percentage of church membership.
The trend is definitely downward, which is disturbing because we ignore
our calling to our soul’s peril. Sharing
the Good News is not about getting members for our congregation so we can keep
the doors open. Sharing the Good News is
about showing others that they are chosen and beloved by God. We can only share what we have; I cannot
share what you have because it is not mine.
I cannot bear witness to someone else’s experience of God; in courts of
law that would be objected to as hearsay evidence. I can only speak of how God has impacted my
life. I can only proclaim by word and
deed what God is doing through me. I can
only offer you the knowledge of God’s chosenness when I have accepted it for
myself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It is time for all of us to hear and
acknowledge that we are chosen, called to be images of God for this world. As St. Teresa of Avila said, Christ has no
body, no hands, no feet on earth but yours to accomplish the work of God. I would add no lips to proclaim God’s Good
News of inclusion of absolutely everyone as beloved. We cannot afford to be “the frozen chosen,”
not because we are dwindling in numbers but because we have been called to
proclaim God’s grace, mercy, and love to a broken and hurting world, starving
for a morsel of acceptance and inclusion.
Now let’s be about the work of Christ in our corner of life.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-46505953812900440462012-03-06T11:51:00.000-06:002012-03-06T11:51:44.130-06:00A table is prepared for you<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lenten
Meditation 6 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">“I think forgiveness
is the only event in which you simultaneously experience three great graces:
God’s unmerited goodness, the deeper goodness of the one you have forgiven and
then you experience your own gratuitous goodness too….There is really nothing else
quite like it for inner transformation, which is why all spiritual teachers
insist upon it, both in the giving and
the receiving.” </span></i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">(page 37)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6M3m-qs4KGGUPT3aakuMN2VblNQKOiKTQe5sl24VVXfxm41C9ytWC0bxhMjiAC_AScO_-ZuCOGPKDNKGlwFKyA-6f8Ig6TFxcuq66KTbBrBlXBeJ0K4taOd_0gdyFGJ3WIVh8z9S3Qg/s1600/Reprentace+of+King+David.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6M3m-qs4KGGUPT3aakuMN2VblNQKOiKTQe5sl24VVXfxm41C9ytWC0bxhMjiAC_AScO_-ZuCOGPKDNKGlwFKyA-6f8Ig6TFxcuq66KTbBrBlXBeJ0K4taOd_0gdyFGJ3WIVh8z9S3Qg/s640/Reprentace+of+King+David.jpg" width="420" /></a></td></tr>
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Repentance of
King David stained glass window created in 2010 by Pickel Studio for<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sts. Anne and
Joachim Catholic Church, Fargo,ND<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lent
began almost two weeks ago with a reminder of our mortality and an extended
confession. Each year, as we prepare for
the great celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord, we are challenged to set
our lives on a path which draws us closer to God and one another. Lent gives us the opportunity to take stock
of our own lives; we are called to look at how we have fallen short of the full
stature of Christ in our relationships and dealings with others. It may be as much of a challenge to recall
those for whom I feel animosity because of their behavior toward me in order to
forgive them. It is not enough to make
our confession, either in our heart or with another person, sacramentally or as
a 5<sup>th</sup> step from a 12 step program.
Our call is to be reconciled. Now
I know that is an extremely difficult task; how can I forgive someone who has
hurt me deeply, especially if they have not come groveling at my feet, begging
to be forgiven? Or how can I receive
forgiveness from one who I believe I have not hurt and even worse who I believe
has hurt me? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We
have before us the “God task” of forgiveness.
I call it a God task, because God offers us forgiveness and
reconciliation before we even realize that we are in a state of broken
relationship with God. I may have been
aware at the time of a sin that I was not acting appropriately, but then
immediately my defenses kick in and I can justify virtually any behavior. Remember Genesis Chapter 3? “Adam, did you eat of the fruit?” “It’s not my fault. It’s the woman’s fault—and yours because you
gave her to me.” “Woman is this
true?” “It’s not my fault. It’s the serpent’s fault—and yours because
you created it.” (My own paraphrase.)
Sound familiar? Perhaps you have
not accused God quite so blatantly for your sin, but there have been occasions
when I have fallen into the trap of blaming anyone and everyone (God included)
so I can feel better about myself. “Oh,
I am not so bad after all.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Long
before I come to my senses and realize that I am wallowing in my own sin, God
has prepared a banquet for me, calling me back into the relationship of beloved
child being welcomed home. By the time I
am ready to admit that I have sinned against God and those human beings that I
have hurt, God has put my sins far from me.
My confession allows me to recognize the reconciliation which I have
been offered, and hopefully to accept it with open arms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Forgiveness
and reconciliation, as I have alluded, are not just for me. As I receive God’s forgiveness, I must give
forgiveness away prodigiously. There is
a phrase in the Disciples’ Prayer—usually called the Lord’s Prayer—which says,
“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” That is a very sharp two-edged sword. Some years ago I realized the import of that
phrase and re-phrased it to say, “Forgive me my sins only as much as I am
willing to forgive those who sin against me.” As the little old lady said, “You’ve quit
preaching and gone to meddling.” But
that is exactly what I believe Jesus is saying to us in the prayer He teaches
His disciples—then and now. We can only
accept what we are willing to give away—which is why it is a God task.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In
the past two years I have heard repeatedly, “I cannot forgive _____ for the way
he/she treated me and the things that were said.” “I cannot forgive the lies that have hurt me
and my friends.” “I cannot forgive them
for taking my church building from me.”
Perhaps you have heard the same things, or even said them yourself. I challenge the speaker every time I hear
that because I know from personal experience that when I refuse to forgive I am
the only one who is hurt; the one who has offended me goes merrily on their
way. My soul, on the other hand, becomes
calloused with unforgiveness and my spiritual health suffers. Like the proverbial bad apple that spoils the
barrel, a lack of willingness to forgive belies what I preach and the way I
want to live.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Forgiveness
may be a task that takes me a long time; it may not be immediate. I have had to forgive someone repeatedly over
a course of years before I was completely ready to let go of the pain and truly
be reconciled. By the time I had reached
full forgiveness the person had died, but I was no longer chained to the hurt,
anger and fear that had burdened me for so long. It is possible now to look back to the
original hurt and know there was hurt but not be enraged by it. I can even celebrate the relationship which
was broken and rejoice in God’s joy in my own forgiveness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This
Lent, I want to challenge you to look at your own life to see your sins which
need to be acknowledged; then accept the reconciliation that God offers. Then look for those individuals that you need
to forgive and begin the hard work, the God task, of forgiving them. “There is really nothing else quite like it
for inner transformation, which is why all spiritual teachers insist upon it,
both in the giving and the receiving.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-79818889327251450052012-03-05T17:09:00.001-06:002012-03-05T17:09:24.612-06:00Be images of God<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lenten
Meditation 5 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">“But our creation
story says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God, and
out of generative love, as you see above and elsewhere (Genesis 1:27;
9:6). This starts us out on an
absolutely positive and hopeful foundation, which cannot be overstated.” </span></i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">(page 28)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRxYdHvajmqvNpSuS4vfIYywQQUWCj4deuQbmhVPz08uKbGV3vn2VasJEnWoir3yHE2bHwJd9zLIeWadbDHALgtnExhEPwgAehFvn20rjFyOp-f5oXJrkIrnLz6IScsaClCPfwSIyHV4o/s1600/cranach_adameva_1526.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRxYdHvajmqvNpSuS4vfIYywQQUWCj4deuQbmhVPz08uKbGV3vn2VasJEnWoir3yHE2bHwJd9zLIeWadbDHALgtnExhEPwgAehFvn20rjFyOp-f5oXJrkIrnLz6IScsaClCPfwSIyHV4o/s640/cranach_adameva_1526.jpg" width="433" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Lucas Cranach the Elder: Adam and Eve (1526) </span> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Our author, Richard Rohr, uses the
metaphor of “connecting the dots” to explore and discover the fullness of the
biblical story. Virtually all of us remember the childhood excitement of having
before us a page of dots, sometimes with numbers, which only became a
comprehensible picture when we took our crayon and drew from number 1 to 2 to 3
and on to the end.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Finally, a complete image
emerged before our very eyes, an image that was unrecognizable before the lines
were drawn.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is the means by which
Father Rohr would like us to delve into the Bible.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In order to make complete sense of the dot
connecting he says, “To achieve that realization, I’d like to invite you to see
both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures as one complete book,
an anthology of inspired stories, with a beginning, middle, and end.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Read it as one guided text.”</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(p. 30)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The first dot of the emerging picture
is contained in the quotation above: the creation of humanity in the image and
likeness of God. It is in what Rohr speaks
of as “the objective unity with God” that underlines the Bible and which is the
thread woven through all the stories of the Bible. We have fallen short of the completeness of
our unity, a fall that begins with suspicion planted by the Evil One
represented as a snake in Genesis 3. But
the Fall didn’t just happen in Eden to First Man and First Woman; it occurs in
our lives over and over again - some could argue at every moment. The most destructive action we can take is to
deny our own connectedness with God, our being created in the “image and
likeness” of God. This comes out in our
proclamation of our unworthiness—or no worth for me, as if my relationship with
God were dependant on my actions, my behavior, my sinless-ness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I have frequently sat with an
individual who is describing what he or she believes is his or her call to ordained
ministry and heard that person say, “I believe I am called to be a priest (or
deacon), but I am so unworthy.” My
response has always been, “Of course you are unworthy! That is what Grace is about.” The understanding that one can enter into
ordained ministry—or any other ministry--only if one has attained some level of
perfection on their own merits is the complete opposite of what the Gospel is
about. Left to our own devices, we fall
into the morass of either self-pity or self-aggrandizement, both of which are
destructive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “God isn’t looking for slaves,
workers, contestants to play the game or jump the hoops correctly. God is simply looking for images! God wants images of God to walk around the
earth!” (p. 35). Now that is good
news. Our call, our task is to represent
God at all times and in all places. This
is, I believe, what St. Paul is proclaiming with his “body” metaphor. We are the individual and corporate
incarnation of the living God who created us, “male and female he created them”
in God’s own image. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It is also foundational to our
theology to remember that God saw everything created and declared it to be
“very good.” (Genesis 1:31). Much of
Western Christianity has proclaimed a world of depravity and sin since the
Fall, as if the goodness of creation was totally annihilated by the “sin of
Adam.” Does God destroy the first
sinners and declare that humanity was a mistake? Or does God care for Adam and Eve by
nurturing them and even sewing clothes for them, the feminine side of God’s
nature. Yes, there are consequences for
their sin (expulsion from Eden, travail in childbirth, toiling to till the
ground) but God is with them and us and continues to draw all human beings into
the objective unity which is our true relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Do we have to strive to be worthy
before God, or is it time to open our eyes to discover the God who created us
in God’s image is welcoming us with open arms?
I challenge you, this Lent, to live as a beloved child of God, one
created in the image and likeness of God, called to be a walking, breathing,
talking image of God for this world, broken and hungry for some Good News. Be the good news for all you meet today.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8418143357621015814.post-56538344186785311742012-03-03T11:09:00.000-06:002012-03-03T11:09:41.874-06:00God loves what God creates<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lenten
Meditation 3 March 2012<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“The genius of the
biblical revelation is that, instead of simply giving us “seven habits for
highly effective people” it gives us permission and even direction to take
conscious ownership of </span></span></i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">our own<i> story at
every level, every part of our life and experience. God will use all of this material, even the
negative parts, to bring us to life and love.”
</i>(page 14)</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtOJi6lUyUo4Bm9HPv2_zuhUZivoHQTOfWxc25o_h_04ufof8p7ZXn96pXsvDqwkRZ9uLxTemXGWmsfBBE1XhVSXHLvi613JoQFSBJY-fdJa0K4cw1hzAR_gw9LAjGeuqHh9K22kbc9zo/s1600/Job+on+dungheap.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtOJi6lUyUo4Bm9HPv2_zuhUZivoHQTOfWxc25o_h_04ufof8p7ZXn96pXsvDqwkRZ9uLxTemXGWmsfBBE1XhVSXHLvi613JoQFSBJY-fdJa0K4cw1hzAR_gw9LAjGeuqHh9K22kbc9zo/s400/Job+on+dungheap.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Job on dungheap (from the Admont Giant-Bible, ca. 1140)</span> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">For 16 years I was a mentor for
Education for Ministry, a four year study of Scripture, history, and theology
primarily for laity which was developed in the mid-1970’s by the School of
Theology at Sewanee.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">EfM is a
combination of individual study, seminar presentations, and group theological
reflection.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">One of the most rewarding
aspects for me was watching students discover that the biblical story, in whole
or in part, was the backdrop for their own life stories.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">More frequently than not, as we would enter
into theological reflection, individuals around the table—myself included—would
relate to the discussion through biblical stories that illuminated the
conversation.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Often one or more of us
could speak to from personal experience about how God’s interaction in our
lives mirrored how God had related to the characters in our biblical passage. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">One particularly meaningful conversation
brought in the story of the temptation of Jesus immediately following his
baptism.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Several of us could relate
personally to a time of testing following a realization of beloved-ness.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Father Rohr takes some pains to speak
of what he calls <i>sacred wounding.</i> He also defines suffering “very simply as
when you are not in control.” (p. 15) Religion, in fact all religions, focus an
enormous amount of their energy on showing one what to do with pain and
suffering. Christianity gives us a
direction for making our personal suffering sacred through the life, passion,
death, and resurrection of Jesus himself.
In our own times of suffering and pain we are able to wrestle with the
theological questions, “Where is God in all of this? Where can we find redemption? How am I being called to proclaim good news
through this situation?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I do not know if Father Rohr is
immersed in Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, particularly as espoused by
Rabbi Ed Friedman, but this comment makes me think he must be: “Biblical
revelation is about transforming history and individuals so that we don’t just
keep handing the pain on to the next generation.” Family systems theory challenges individuals
to look back at their family of origin, including several generations prior to
our parents if possible, to discover patterns that may have been transmitted unconsciously
from parent to child. The purpose, of
course, is to be able to name a pattern, to have knowledge of it in order to be
able to deal with the pattern, to strengthen the positive and to ameliorate the
negative in order not to continue to either live it or pass it on to our
children. One pattern I recognized in my
family about 20 years ago was secrecy.
When I was working through my genogram (known as family tree for most of
us) I realized that I knew names and dates of birth and death of several
generations in both my mother’s and father’s family, but I knew none of the
stories of who these people were. It was
about that same time that I began trying to find out about my grandfather John
Wallis Ohl who was ordained in Colorado in 1886, in order to be able to tell my
children and grandchildren about this missionary priest in the wild mountain
mining towns who was their ancestor. I
have since discovered some intense pain and some incredible joys by learning
some of his story. It also has pushed me
to be open with my children about some of the pain of my life that has made me
who I am today—and by nurture who they are.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> One feature of the Hebrew, and I would
argue Christian Scriptures, that is heartening is that the story of God’s
interaction with the Hebrew people is not just a story of goodness. We also find unspeakable cruelty, depravity
of sin, failures, and pain. The
suffering of Job is unimaginable for most of us, and yet there it is, big as
life. The pain inflicted on Job by his
friends is unspeakable; but it is there, plain as day. The failure of the religious leaders to
follow God is embarrassing; but read any of the prophets’ condemnation of the
mistreatment of the poor and the widow.
And yet God is steadfast, forgiving, and loving. That is good news. The point for me is that if God can forgive
those wretched people, will he not also forgive me? Will God, in fact, use all of my story to
bring redemption, even the negative, sinful parts? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> A theme that runs throughout the
Scriptures is that God loves what God creates.
We are the beloved creatures of a God that made us to proclaim God in
and through our lives. We do not have to
earn belovedness; we cannot earn belovedness because we are already
beloved. Our task is to incorporate that
into our lives and proclaim God’s love to all we meet. It’s that simple. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Katie Sherrodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09159503802660122104noreply@blogger.com0