I don't know how many times "whore" and "whoredom" appear in the first two chapters of Hosea, or how many references to "whoring", directly or indirectly, litter the text, but that may not have been my best choice for a Mother's Day text.
Made sense last summer when I was laying out my preaching calendar, Hosea commanded by God to marry, feeling the pull to turn to the Old Testament, closing the readings in 2 Timothy with the close of the pledge campaign the week before, it made sense.
Except for the fact that I did not do the close reading of the text I did the week leading up to Mother's Day. Wow.
I didn't try to justify the language in the sermon. Part of that is due to my theological interpretation of the bible. I believe that God inspired the bible, using the skills and abilities of the individuals that he called upon to write its various books. For example, Amos seems to have been a man of the soil. Paul has been interpreted as a man who doesn't like women. Perhaps Hosea has a little too much history in the sex trade. A sermon cannot speculate on the history and talents of biblical writers.
Besides, Hosea is a prophet, which means tons of fire and brimstone, punishment on the people of Israel for screwing up yet again and turning away from God, you know, all the violence and judgment that makes the Old Testament so difficult for many Christians. I tried to keep the focus there, any my friends in the congregation can tell you how well I did or did not make that work.
You'd think that in a culture like ours so obsessed with sex that the sex metaphors would go over better. Maybe not on Mother's day.
So what is next? There are a dozen more chapters. I've returned to the discipline of book preaching. The thought of ditching it for something else has crossed my mind...a few times. But the Old Testament is the bible of Jesus. It is what he fulfilled when he made the ultimate sacrifice on the cross.
And there are other translations where the translators were not as hung up on whores, whoring, and whoredom as these guys (a fair assumption in the world of bible academia).
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Ceremony
I had the privilege of attending the Memorial Service for Fallen Officers at Ocean Grove today. Four officers ended their watches in the year 2011. I was there with a number of the officers and chaplains from the Perth Amboy Police Department.
It was intense and it was moving and I still find myself unable to process through the feelings it left behind. Maybe that is why I need to blog about it.
There were police honor guards stretching around three sides of the great auditorium. There were row upon row of shaved heads from what I think was the training academy of the Department of Corrections. The Lieutenant Governor was present to give honors in memory of those fallen officers. And there were cops from across the state.
And the ceremony cut me to the quick. I've never been witness to that before, it sent a chill down my spine to be in 'the law enforcement community'. It is very much a man's world in law enforcement, and that gathering was ample proof of that.
That ceremony is how cops deal with their emotions. Gathered in that place with so many uniforms, with tight discipline and a formality that seems so alien into today's world, something very powerful happened. There wasn't crying or sharing of feelings or anything like that, there was something deeper.
Men and women who have been called to a higher purpose, who are governed by a code, by honor, by justice, in ways that most of the rest of society is not, came together and, on the one hand, collectively grieved the loss of colleagues, but, on the other, reaffirmed the life and death nature of their profession, all in one thing.
It blew me away. I felt a code at work. It is the code that defines what it means to do right and wrong. It is a code I would aspire to. It is the code I believe Jesus taught.
It was intense and it was moving and I still find myself unable to process through the feelings it left behind. Maybe that is why I need to blog about it.
There were police honor guards stretching around three sides of the great auditorium. There were row upon row of shaved heads from what I think was the training academy of the Department of Corrections. The Lieutenant Governor was present to give honors in memory of those fallen officers. And there were cops from across the state.
And the ceremony cut me to the quick. I've never been witness to that before, it sent a chill down my spine to be in 'the law enforcement community'. It is very much a man's world in law enforcement, and that gathering was ample proof of that.
That ceremony is how cops deal with their emotions. Gathered in that place with so many uniforms, with tight discipline and a formality that seems so alien into today's world, something very powerful happened. There wasn't crying or sharing of feelings or anything like that, there was something deeper.
Men and women who have been called to a higher purpose, who are governed by a code, by honor, by justice, in ways that most of the rest of society is not, came together and, on the one hand, collectively grieved the loss of colleagues, but, on the other, reaffirmed the life and death nature of their profession, all in one thing.
It blew me away. I felt a code at work. It is the code that defines what it means to do right and wrong. It is a code I would aspire to. It is the code I believe Jesus taught.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Cops and Preachers
Cops enforce the behaviors that preachers sermonize about. It's preaching peace versus enforcing peace. A 'good' Christian is supposed to act in a way worthy of Jesus. Imitating Jesus is usually the rule of thumb for achieving that act of worthiness.
Those values, those behaviors, of love, grace, forgiveness, and so on, those are the grounding behaviors of polite, egalitarian society as well. We are past the days in this nation where the boss says it and we do it. Rather, we have a Social Compact, Ethics of the Public Sphere, whatever you want to title it, a series of do's and don't's that are supposed to define how we treat each other.
An application of that is exercising our Constitutional rights. I can exercise them to the point where they impinge upon your Constitutional rights. There is a Judeo-Christian ethic at the base, thankfully divorced from its religious overtones so that we can have a pluralistic society and not the Inquisition. I love the irony of thanking God for secularism...
So, the difference between preachers and police is that we, the preachers, can talk the good talk, police can enforce the good talk. We have bibles, police have guns. We are called by God to share the Word of God, daring to make the ultimate sacrifice of our own lives for it, in the pattern of Jesus. Police are called by God as well, but they carry a double burden.
On the one hand, to serve and protect the public may cost them their lives also in the pattern of Jesus. On the other hand, they also carry the responsibility that their calling may require that they take the life of another. It is a paradox that we hope is never exercised in the lives of our peace officers. On the other hand, I don't know if it something that is ever really preached about either.
Preachers have it easy, we talk the talk. It is the police who have to walk the walk. And they do that in a veiled world the rest of us don't want to see so we can pretend it doesn't exist.
But that's a post for another day.
Those values, those behaviors, of love, grace, forgiveness, and so on, those are the grounding behaviors of polite, egalitarian society as well. We are past the days in this nation where the boss says it and we do it. Rather, we have a Social Compact, Ethics of the Public Sphere, whatever you want to title it, a series of do's and don't's that are supposed to define how we treat each other.
An application of that is exercising our Constitutional rights. I can exercise them to the point where they impinge upon your Constitutional rights. There is a Judeo-Christian ethic at the base, thankfully divorced from its religious overtones so that we can have a pluralistic society and not the Inquisition. I love the irony of thanking God for secularism...
So, the difference between preachers and police is that we, the preachers, can talk the good talk, police can enforce the good talk. We have bibles, police have guns. We are called by God to share the Word of God, daring to make the ultimate sacrifice of our own lives for it, in the pattern of Jesus. Police are called by God as well, but they carry a double burden.
On the one hand, to serve and protect the public may cost them their lives also in the pattern of Jesus. On the other hand, they also carry the responsibility that their calling may require that they take the life of another. It is a paradox that we hope is never exercised in the lives of our peace officers. On the other hand, I don't know if it something that is ever really preached about either.
Preachers have it easy, we talk the talk. It is the police who have to walk the walk. And they do that in a veiled world the rest of us don't want to see so we can pretend it doesn't exist.
But that's a post for another day.
How Do We Make Sense of Death?
I "did" the funeral of a long time church member and friend yesterday. That's a deliberate shorthand. I've also said or heard said "performed", "led", "conducted", not sure if Miss Manners has a proper action term for the process of a Service of the Witness to the Resurrection. That's what a funeral service is called in my Book of Common Worship.
In a Christian funeral service, that is where the rubber meets the road. That is where the promises of the faith are depended upon. As a minister, I am standing on what might metaphorically be called a line. On one side of that is the promise of heaven and eternal life while on the other are the grieving friends and family of a good man.
But it is not a line. It's a fogbank. If the promises of Christ transcended our human natures, these services would be celebrations. Who, according to the order of things in the church, should not be absolutely delighted and praising Jesus at the time of death that their loved one has gone to the place without pain, suffering, illness, hospitals, chemotherapy, collapsed lungs, blood problems, kidney problems, cancer...and the list goes on and on?? We should be thrilled.
Being thrilled someday means very little on the day of tears and grief. The promise of eternal life being fulfilled can take the edge off, it can give hope for the future, but to dwell there in a funeral service is to discount the very grief and loss of those gathered to say good bye.
I don't live in heaven, I live on earth, and this is where I am going to be until it is my turn to die. This is where I have to come to terms with the fact that although my friend was a walking miracle for over a decade and a half, there came a time when he died.
One valuable lesson I have taken away from being a Police Chaplain is from their procedures of Death Notification. You don't say "passed away", "passed on", "with the Lord", or anything else that can give the human ear the ability to slide away from the truth. The person has died or the person has been killed. It is couched in the best way possible, with emotional support and outreach, but truth be told.
I've been told, and I've used this line, that death is neither good nor bad, it just is. No. Death is bad. It can be argued that death can end illness and suffering, so it isn't always bad. No. The illness and suffering can be worse, a higher measure of 'bad', and death can be a release, even a relief, but at best, it is a lesser 'bad'.
At this moment, we are on a continuum, where death is good relative to the pain it ends, but that doesn't mean its good.
There have been moments, among the deaths that I have had the privilege to be witness to and participate in, when I've seen nothing less than heaven leaking in. A person is at such peace, that person has somehow touched the presence of our Father in Heaven and they have the assurance that everything is going to be okay.
That doesn't mean, for me, that death is not a bad thing. What it does mean for me, as a pastor, as a believer, as one struggling to figure out how to live like Jesus wants me to live, what it means for me is that we are seeing God's power at work for a greater good to emerge from that bad time.
And it reminds me to look forward to the day when we will have the greater good without having to first experience the bad.
In a Christian funeral service, that is where the rubber meets the road. That is where the promises of the faith are depended upon. As a minister, I am standing on what might metaphorically be called a line. On one side of that is the promise of heaven and eternal life while on the other are the grieving friends and family of a good man.
But it is not a line. It's a fogbank. If the promises of Christ transcended our human natures, these services would be celebrations. Who, according to the order of things in the church, should not be absolutely delighted and praising Jesus at the time of death that their loved one has gone to the place without pain, suffering, illness, hospitals, chemotherapy, collapsed lungs, blood problems, kidney problems, cancer...and the list goes on and on?? We should be thrilled.
Being thrilled someday means very little on the day of tears and grief. The promise of eternal life being fulfilled can take the edge off, it can give hope for the future, but to dwell there in a funeral service is to discount the very grief and loss of those gathered to say good bye.
I don't live in heaven, I live on earth, and this is where I am going to be until it is my turn to die. This is where I have to come to terms with the fact that although my friend was a walking miracle for over a decade and a half, there came a time when he died.
One valuable lesson I have taken away from being a Police Chaplain is from their procedures of Death Notification. You don't say "passed away", "passed on", "with the Lord", or anything else that can give the human ear the ability to slide away from the truth. The person has died or the person has been killed. It is couched in the best way possible, with emotional support and outreach, but truth be told.
I've been told, and I've used this line, that death is neither good nor bad, it just is. No. Death is bad. It can be argued that death can end illness and suffering, so it isn't always bad. No. The illness and suffering can be worse, a higher measure of 'bad', and death can be a release, even a relief, but at best, it is a lesser 'bad'.
At this moment, we are on a continuum, where death is good relative to the pain it ends, but that doesn't mean its good.
There have been moments, among the deaths that I have had the privilege to be witness to and participate in, when I've seen nothing less than heaven leaking in. A person is at such peace, that person has somehow touched the presence of our Father in Heaven and they have the assurance that everything is going to be okay.
That doesn't mean, for me, that death is not a bad thing. What it does mean for me, as a pastor, as a believer, as one struggling to figure out how to live like Jesus wants me to live, what it means for me is that we are seeing God's power at work for a greater good to emerge from that bad time.
And it reminds me to look forward to the day when we will have the greater good without having to first experience the bad.
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