"The American Indian", I hate that.

It is midday, got my son home sick, taking a break in front of the television.  I like to watch “Encore Westerns”.  “Laredo” is on, the episode “Oh Careless Love”, about the Texas Rangers winning the old West.  If I keep watching, I can see Paladin, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Marshal Matt Dillon each take their turns in winning the old West.

God, I know why First Nations hate the whites.  I am an American, but Canadian originally (not that there is a tremendous difference), and I do not borrow from my heritage lightly.  First Nations has become the ‘term de jour’ in Canada for what are generally known as “American Indians”.  It is my nod to 'political correctness'.

Watching Laredo where a couple of the Rangers are treating with the ‘Indians’. 

The ‘redskins’ talk in the typical way of Hollywood, in grunting mono-syllables “I no say yes yet”, broken phrases, long black, braided hair; the chief has a fat daughter… “she carries a lot of weight with the old man” (her father), said one of the Rangers.  (and she giggles like she has a mental deficiency)

They eat with their fingers, eat stewed coyotes, talk of many wives, prefer the brute culture.  Then it looks like they cut to an old Hollywood western for scenes of  “braves on the warpath”.

“Here stick, you beat me, I make good wife” said Little Bird, the chief’s daughter.

It’s like watching “Blazing Saddles” but without the satire.  You watch the extras on the Blazing Saddles DVD and there are powerful interviews with the white actors expressing their regrets over the continuous use of the word “nigger”.  No, I am not going to say ‘the “n” word’ because “nigger” is too ugly to pretty up.  And yes, I am a white man using that word.  They said it for a pointed purpose.

There is absolutely nothing satirical or apologetic or the least bit responsive that a terrible wrong is being committed to film.

SIDEBAR: A couple weeks ago, there was a brief news report of an AIM protest march of the Washington Redskins.  The NFL reaction, as reported, summed up as “get over it.”

The plot of the show hinges on a Ranger marrying the Chief’s daughter, making the young chiefs who want war look bad.  Of course, once the cavalry arrives, the Ranger will get pulled out and the white man will reneg on yet another agreement.

So, we make fun of sweat lodges, shaman practices, ritual dances, do whatever we can to make the Indians look backward and primitive.

And the thing of it is, as a I watch to critique, I find the episode to be entertaining.  It’s funny to make fun of ‘lesser’ people.  White man outnumbered but will outsmart the Indian.  Makes for entertaining television.

It is so wrong.  A history of a great nation laid over another history so dark.  “Laredo” was on the air from ’65 to ’67.  We have 400 years of history between immigrant and the first nations to correct.

Some Untold Darkness in our History

Just finished James Bradley’s “The Imperial Cruise”.  He is the author of “Flyboys” and “Flags of our Fathers”, so I picked up this book with high confidence of good information.

I was not expecting what I got.  “A Secret History of Empire and War” is the subtitle.  Bradley focuses on Teddy Roosevelt, President at the beginning of the 20^th century, and weaves a very compelling tale of the dark side of American history.

This is not a review, just some threads of thought that impressed me.

The language used in that time period of American History to talk about the superiority of the “white race” so eerily echoes Nazi Germany, right down to the Japanese being adopted as ‘honorary Aryans’ by both America and Germany.

But what struck me was the repeat of the Conquistadors.  Part of my cultural knowledge of the New World is how the Spanish used missionaries as the leverage and the wedge to invade and conquer the New World in the name of Jesus.  At worst, the missionaries were the agents and collaborators of the conquerers.  At best, they were ignorant stooges who were exploited for their naïve faith in ‘converting the natives’.

I got the sense of White American and European expansion into Asia going along the same lines.

Bradley is not drawing historic parallels or offering ‘alternate church history’.  The historic reference he comes back to a number of times is that of “Jesus Opium”, white missionaries fronting the importation of opium into China. Yes, it was the British who introduced opium to China, but the number of American families that built their fortune in the opium trade was eye-opening to read. 

I would not have included “Drug Boss” in Queen Victoria’s curriculum vitae before this book.

This is not the first inclination of Christianity-or the Christianity of some people-mixing into American politics with less that Jesus-like results.  Gotta go pull some more from my library.

The Walking Dead: “30 Days Without An Accident”

Season 4; Episode 1

They have built a new Garden of Eden!  There is a barnyard in the prison yard, there is a fence to keep them out, they go trawling for supplies…all seems good…but it is a new season, so bad things have to happen.

I am not entirely sure what it is that brings me back to the fourth season of the show.  Zombies, cool, over a series, it is working pretty well.  The idea that main characters get bit at seemingly random times, all that plays in. 

But the piece that really gets me is how they portray real people in extraordinary circumstances.  I want to play out one bit tonight.  SPOILER ALERT!!! DON’T READ ON IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED!!

Beth, not a primary fighter, the younger daughter, little sister, the one who sang songs to keep up the spirits last season, she has a suitor.  His name is Zach.  And they have an “aw shucks” moment before Zach heads out with the supply party.  “Aren’t you going say goodbye?”  And she answers, “No.”

And then he gets bit, a couple of times, ending rather badly.  When Darryl brings the news back to Beth, her reaction was one of cautious indifference.  She was glad she didn’t say good bye, because she hates good byes.  And she casually changes the sign that said “30 days without an accident” back to zero.

That is why I like this series.  Hers was not a healthy reaction.  One mourns someone when you lose them, it is human nature.  It is how we recover from the shock and trauma.  The mourning process or the grieving process works well when we are able to, for ourselves, complete what was left incomplete when we lost something important in our lives. 

She is so calm.  And I’ve seen people who have been calm like that in the face of tragedy.  But the very nature of the show, the circumstances that they have set up, that are so extreme that it is somehow ‘the new normal’ for her to act this way.  The extreme of the situation that make her reaction a ‘healthy’ one, that contrasts with our ‘old normal’.

As a pastor, I’ve met people with the ‘Beth-face’ in the face of personal tragic circumstances.  And I don’t want to provoke anguish, but I know how important grieving is.  I know the necessity of completing that work to be able to live fully once again.  And you have to get them to talk about it.

Let them tell you the stories, press for the stories, even if they are being shared by a smiling face.  Because we are hard wired to recover by a grieving process.  That process is a gift from God so that we do not get stuck in the gloom of despair.

And I sit here, and rehash the episode in my mind, and wonder why Beth’s reaction provoked me.  And that is what good art is supposed to do.  Welcome season 4!

 

Does God Need Us To Pray?

There's a question for you.  Does God need us to pray?  Yes and no.  Don't you love answers like that?  There are a lot of role playing games out there, many online, but the classics as well, like Dungeons & Dragons.  I remember reading one that defined a very interesting relationship between humanity and deity.  It went like this:

There is this divine realm beyond the human realm.  It is made up basically of compartments of all the different religions, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc., etc.  The divine realm is of a finite size and the relative sizes of each religious 'zone' is relative to the number of believers the religion has.  So, back when Christianity was young, it contended with very large sections devoted to Mt. Olympus and to Asgard.

In that vision of the natural and the supernatural, God would certainly need our prayers.  If we produced our 'gods' out of collective conscious (or unconscious), prayer would be the fuel on which the divine ran.

Thank the Lord it doesn't work that way!  To assume it does actually mocks God.  As the all-powerful Sovereign Lord, there is nothing that is beyond God's knowledge and determination.  There is no request that we can put before the Lord that will come as a surprise to Him (I have trouble going gender-neutral on the All Mighty).  So, in one sense, does God need us to pray?  No, She doesn't (Fair is fair!).

But in another, more fundamental way, God indeed needs us to pray.  Not for His/Her sake, but for our own.  God is all-powerful, we are all-broken.  In the gospels, Jesus does not even include himself in what he defines as "good" when he speaks to the Rich Young Ruler.  None of us is "good".  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Praise God that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

Now consider this: God needs us to pray so that we stay focused on the things of God.  A prayer could be said along the lines of "Heal all the sick people everywhere" or "We pray for all the missionaries" but that is so abstract as to be meaningless as a prayer. 

When we pray for Mr. X who has cancer, we are investing ourselves into their healing process.  We are remembering him, we are giving a d**n about him, God's Spirit is working in us to connect to him as our neighbor.

When we pray for Missionary Y in deepest darkest Illinois, once again, we are investing ourselves in their ministry.  The more specific our prayers, the more time and inclination we have taken to specify our prayers, the more we will care about the ministry we are interceding for, and the more our own lives will change-perhaps along the lines of that very mission work.

People complain to me that they don't know how to pray, as if their lack of ability will be offensive to God.  My response is to remember your multiplication tables.  Remember how we had to drill those things, 1x1 through 10x10 (the 11 and 12 times tables came later).  We drilled them until they became second nature.  So it is with prayer.

Don't know how to pray?  God needs you more than anyone to pray.  Because when you pray, I mean really pray, not simply come to God with your Christmas list, but are willing to listen, willing to look for answers, willing to let Him work in you, you will change.  God needs you to pray so that you will learn that change, achieve that change, and become more like our Lord Jesus Christ.  And for our God in Heaven, that is something She would appreciate very much.

“Does Our Church Thunder? Or Does It Clatter?”

September 15, 2013

Sermon Text: I Corinthians 12:27-13:7

SERMON:  “Does Our Church Thunder? Or Does It Clatter?”

Rev. Peter Hofstra

            As we begin to interact with the ideas from the Journey, our time together is going to consider things that get in the way of the church carrying out its vision in joy and wonder.  As we become aware of them, can we find, in Scripture, Jesus’ leading to overcome what gets in our way.

            Here is the hypothesis: “We come to church and church activities weary, rattled, and empty from hectic, out of balance lives.  We come with little left to give.  We are free to choose in every area of our lives, but what we fail to realize is that our choices then bind us.  Often our choices block meaning participation in the church.”

            One church’s self-description expands from this idea.  They are “overwhelmed, over-committed, and burnt out.  We have learned from our culture that all our time must be filled with activity.  It seems the church adds to this problem by demanding more of our time and energy.  We no longer take the time to listen and discern how God would have us full our time.”

            Very quickly, the governing council of the church responded by asking “How can we get more members to do the work of the church?”  Instead of recognizing how overwhelming the demands are on the lives of our members, instead of recognizing that the role of the church is to provide an oasis in the midst of the chaos of life, this response treats the problem of being overwhelmed as a symptom of an operational problem to be solved, looking for ways to enlist more volunteers in order to relieve the overburdened few that carry the load.

            The members of the church community suffer from a mindset of scarcity.  “I just don’t have the time.”  And the Christian life gets pushed to the margins, an hour a week when “we go to church.”

            Here are the questions based on this hypothesis.  Do these paragraphs describe our church, in your estimation?  Do you have a ‘for instance’ that you can share?  Secondly, what forces in the culture around us do you feel this church is contending with as it seeks to be faithful to its ministry and mission?  The questions are up on the screen and there is room for them to be written in to your connection card.

Now, a biblical response, so here is our Scripture reading once again:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ²⁸And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. ²⁹Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,^* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

            There are two pieces of Scripture here that not usually joined together in preaching.  The more famous is 1 Corinthians 13, the exposition of love.  It is the most selected passage for weddings and its power is undeniable, fundamental to the lives of all Christians.

            The verses from Chapter 12 are also very important to the life and structure of the church.  In talking about the body of Christ, Paul is explaining to the people of Corinth that there are many gifts from the Spirit, there are many roles for people in the church, it is the diversity of a church that is being explained.

            But, in fact, they connect in a very fundamental way.  The first verses are about what goes into the creation of the body of Christ, apostles, prophets, teachers, power-doers, healers, the list goes on.  And the warning is to respect the diversity of gifts, is to know and understand that there is a place for everyone and there is work to be done by everyone.  The church is charged with figuring that out.

            But then, as we go into chapter 13, there is something even more at stake for those of us who know and love Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  You can have faith ‘to move mountains’, you can have all wisdom and knowledge, you can speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but if you do not have love, you have nothing.

            When I started preparing for this sermon, when I started to reflect on these words, I thought Paul was warning against those entering into the work of the church going in with a big ego, or grand personal ambitions, or the desire to be numero uno.  The warnings seem to fit.  Don’t go for the top job, do the job from love. 

            But the more I reflected, the less certain I became.  Consider how people move into the work of the church.  It begins at their loving relationship with Jesus Christ.  Each person comes to a place where they know that Jesus loves them, loves them so much that he gave up his life for them on the cross at Calvary. 

            Coming to a church home is the next natural step in that process, finding fellow Christians around whom you can build a loving community that is in God’s image, not the image of the world around us.  From that community, as experience grows, so does involvement.  As involvement grows, the words of Paul take on better meaning.  What are we called to do in the church?  How do we participate in its growth, drawing more of God’s power to ourselves against a world that would seek to tear us down?

            I believe Paul is speaking to us about people who have their roles in the church, who have been working at it for so long, that they have forgotten why they began.  I think Paul is talking about burn out, just doing the job because that’s what you’ve always done.  But even if you are the best in the world, world-moving, if you don’t have love, it means nothing. 

            And if the hypothesis is to be believed, we come to church and church activities weary, rattled, and empty from hectic, out of balance lives.  Is that your truth?  Is that your reality?  Has the schoolwork overwhelmed you?  To my people in school, you have been in class for a week, anybody feel like they are already three weeks behind?

            Or how about those of us who work?  How many of you who have a whole new week of work to look forward to next week wouldn’t trade places to be back in the classroom in a heartbeat?

            And I will not forget those of us who are retired.  Most of you are busier now than when you held down jobs.

            The purpose of church is not to add to the burden and time demands.  This is the place of relief.  You come here on a Sunday to worship because of what Jesus has given to you.  You take the rest of the tools out into the week with you, prayer, Scripture, measuring in your life how the Lord would want you to act, helping others when and where you are able, to build upon the spirit of the Living God found here.

            This is the place where we are reminded that love is patient; love is kind, that love ⁷bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  We are reminded that these are not just abstract platitudes, nice things to say because Christians are nice people. 

            We are given the living example of love in the person and life of our own Lord Jesus Christ.  We see him in his ups and downs, in celebration and persecution, in times of joy and times of sorrow.  It was his life, his teachings, his leadership, his faithfulness unto death, even death on the cross; this knowledge of Jesus is what Paul writes from.

            So the church is not about filling the jobs because we have to.  It’s not about setting the agenda of what a church is ‘supposed’ to do, then endlessly worrying and begging and pressing for people to get the work done. 

            The agenda that we set, the jobs we seek to fill, what church is supposed to do, is to bring us into the love and grace of our Lord Jesus, to be an oasis in the world that surrounds us with its demands.  Here is where we are anchored to live the life of love out there.

            So go back to the questions.  Do we come here weary, rattled, and empty from hectic, out of balance lives? Secondly, what forces in the culture around us do you feel this church is contending with as it seeks to be faithful to its ministry and mission?  Finally, are you willing to work with this body of believers, to take this journey, to overcome what stands in our way that we may live the love of Jesus Christ in our neighborhood in God’s kingdom?

            I invite you to answer those questions for yourselves.  If you wish, include them on the connection card and return them to us when we receive those cards in the offering in just a few moments.

Amen.

“Do You Know What the Church Is Called To Do?”

Sermon from Sept. 8, 2013   First in the Missional Context Series

Text: Matthew 28:16-20

            Here is the checklist for doing church:

1.      Are we worshipping Jesus with joy and wonder? ___

2.      Have we spelled “Presbyterian” right? ___

3.      Do we have a clear and compelling vision statement for the church?  ___  Is it easily remembered?

4.      Do we have a plan for church-wide response and implementation ?

There, I think we have gotten stuck.

It is time for this church to begin its Journey to implement our vision.  Step one is to discover our ‘missional context’.  That is technical jargon for how a congregation “does church”.

             Our church has been participating in the Jeremiah Journey process with sister churches in our Presbytery.  The first portion of that Journey was done more behind the scenes, setting up a team, getting to know one another, considering where this church comes from.

That culminated in our church’s “conference on the past”, conducted at our 210^th anniversary celebration.  Generations of church members have strong affection for their time as youth in this church, from our current group on back.  Best memory: Shirley Petersen calling the Session members the ‘bully boys’.

Now, our Jeremiah Journey is going to become far more visible in the life of the church.  JJ comes out of the Center for Parish Development, an organization doing the best work today helping churches do what God is calling them to do.

Our aim is to take their materials, connect them to Scripture, and consider seriously where we are and what our context is as we take the next step on our checklist. 

            Using the JJ definition, a church comes together to do its work out of ‘common view’, a ‘collective understanding’ as Christians.  The challenge is trying to define that common view when we, as individuals, come out of such divergent backgrounds.  Is the Biblical ‘bottom line’ that we are called to work from?   

            I believe it is the Great Commission, Jesus’ final words to his disciples in the gospel of Matthew.   He begins, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.” His disciples work in the earthly to make disciples of all nations by 1. Baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  2. Teaching obedience to Jesus.   

            That is the Bible’s “common view” of the church, its “collective understanding” for the church.  Each individual church is then challenged to figure out how to do that work in their own context.  Different people, with different backgrounds and differing needs, they come together in a church environment, they unite to achieve something bigger than themselves.  Achieving this unity is a common human experience.

            This kind of unity can happen on a grand scale, organized and spread across nations.  Remember the Cold War? US vs. USSR?  Before we were enemies, we united against the greater evil of Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

            This kind of unity can be spontaneous and organic.    Remember the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid?  The Soviet Union was the power house hockey team, built on soldiers, therefore ‘amateurs’, but full time hockey players.  And the Red Army Team was consistently one of the five best hockey teams-including the NHL-in the world.   Then came along a team of true amateurs, young men from the United States, who took those Russians to school American-style, and took the country along with them.  

            This kind of unity can bring together the strangest bed-fellows.  In the last months, when reports of how the National Security Agency is conducting broad-based spying operations on American citizens went public, Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans joined hands, to protest. 

            This kind of unity can simply be people reacting to a situation.  I am thinking of how Miley Cyrus’ onstage antics at the MTV Video Music Awards united people in disgust and distaste.

            Now, come back to church.  This unity is brought to us by Jesus.  Each of us is called into a personal relationship with him, each of us coming to the foot of the cross, each of us surrendering our lives to him, each of us born again into new lives of grace and salvation in Him.  

            Then, as a congregation, we reach out with the gift of grace and salvation to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all Jesus’ commands.

            This is the Bible’s common view, the bible’s collective understanding of what it means to ‘do church’.  The next step is to figure out how to do that.  And we start with our vision, ‘being a neighborhood in God’s Kingdom’.  Now, back to our checklist.  What’s next?  JJ encourages us to figure out where we are.  What’s our context?  There are questions we have to answer.  

            “Who do we say we are?”  What is our particular identity as the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy, New Jersey in September of 2013.

            “What is going on out there?”  We do not live in a vacuum.  There are particular challenges and circumstances going on in the community around us, in the nation around us, in the world around us that affect who we are and how we react to things.

            “What is going on in here?”  We are the church.  What are we, in fact, doing or failing to do at this time in this place?  What attitudes, what fears, what hopes, what expectations, what stuff, mental and emotional and spiritual, do we bring to the table?

            These are the same questions the disciples faced when Jesus commissioned them.  They too needed to know who they were and needed a plan to move forward.

            Seen the movie, “The Avengers”?  Captain America and Iron Man have a crisis.  Cap is thinking ‘team’, thinking united effort.  “We need a plan of attack!”  Iron Man replies as the lone sentinel, the solo hero, “I have a plan…attack!”  But in the end, Captain America is right.  They need the team and they need a plan to win the day.

            Here at the giving of the Great Commission, the disciples are the team.  These words are their Vision.  And when they receive the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, they will have their plan to carry out Jesus’ vision.

            We are the team of the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  We have a Vision.  And we are going to use the Holy Spirit to inspire us with the truth of Scripture as we test these best practices for a church to discover its missional context laid out in the Jeremiah Journey.  We will take what God gives to us, and discard the rest.

            And don’t be scared, because we are not alone.  Jesus’ final words to us are a guarantee.  “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Amen.

 

 

 

Contemplation: "The Last Templar" by Raymond Khoury

I love historical conspiracy books, especially when the Templars are involved.  "The Last Templar" opens with a scene of four men, mounted on horseback, dressed as Templars, riding into the Met to raid a special Vatican exhibit.  In the exhibit is a Templar encoding device, which allows ancient documents to be deciphered that could lead to a treasure that would turn Christianity upside down.

Who could ask for anything more?

There are enough gaps in our Templar knowledge, mysteries unanswered, oddities strewn about to fill in with a grand imagination.  Raymond Khoury does that wonderfully.

I didn't read this one by eye, but by ear.  Richard Ferrone brings the narrative to life.

What interests me the most about thrillers of this sort is their take on the Christian faith and what could be so huge as to undercut the entire Church-although for some reason it is usually the Roman Catholic Church that fills the role for the entire body of Christendom.  I guess they are more fun to pick on than Presbyterians.

"The Da Vinci Code" is the measure against which such historical conspiracies are measured.

As a book, there is much to strain credulity, some details that didn't exactly line up, some harsh treatments of the Christian church, but on the whole, I enjoyed it.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are at all planning to read or listen to this book, stop right now!  I am not a reviewer, I want to measure popular culture's take on my faith.  So I am going to do that starting now.

The Templers were supposed to have, in their possession, a journal, a gospel, written in the hand of Jesus himself that outlines his life, not as the Son of God or the Miracle Worker, but simply as a man, a reformer, and a radical at the time of Caesar Augustus.  All the rest of it, Christmas, Easter, the healings, the raisings from the dead, the casting out of demons, walking on water, the piling on of divine status, all of that is the result of the next generations of leadership deciding to create the religion we have now as the grand fiction piled on top of this historic figure.

And it was so convincing that it allowed the Templars to blackmail the Church for two centuries.  And the hidden references to it in the Vatican library are so compelling that the Vatican will conspire with the world to keep it hidden.  There is a Monseigneur hit man playing a villainous role throughout.

This idea of Jesus as simply a teacher is nothing new.  People from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Schweitzer have sought to strip away the miraculous, the eschatological (end-times stuff), and the divinity from Jesus.  The ethics of Jesus, forgiveness, love, and justice, seem to make up the core of what is left to the teacher-human.

My response is that if you do away with all the miraculous stuff in the gospel accounts and base your interpretation solely on the words of Jesus, you get a madman!  Jesus claimed all kinds of crazy things about "I and the Father are one", the temple of his body being destroyed and rebuilt in three days, right on down the line to presuming to be an expert at fishing, telling the disciples it is better to fish at midday.  Or, if one side of the boat has been bad for casting, try the other side!

Now I am being deliberately provocative.  People who want to draw lines around Jesus to tuck him into a certain cubby hole have the best reasoning about what parts of the bible should be left behind and what parts might be true. 

The premise of the novel is that there is another gospel, authored by Jesus, which debunks all the rest of the New Testament (or is there?).  The author does not stray into giving us any quotes or examples from this gospel manuscript on what is different, and I think that is wise.  It would never be a good idea to try and outwrite the bible.

There have been other gospels that have been recovered in the historical record that have caused a stir.  The Nag Hammadi library is referenced in the novel and is the largest cache of these 'other' holy books.  There hasn't been enough in them yet to upset the balance of Holy Scripture.  Bible believer would point to God's preservation of His holy Word.  Nay-sayers would point to book-burning, power hungry religious types.

Could such a gospel really exist?  Could it force the opening of the Canon of Scripture?  Could it force us to re-examine the basics of our faith?  Could it be at once so dissimilar to the presentation of Jesus in the current gospel accounts and yet be faithful enough to the time and place to convince people to believe it?  Could it have survived down to the present age without seeing the light of day?

To me, that presses me to consider what would I have to see or read to be convinced that the New Testament as we have it is a falsehood.

I don't know what that would look like.  Because here is what I believe.  I believe the Bible as a whole shows a division of two things.  There is the perfection of God and the brokenness of the world.  When these two are put side by side, it is always to point to the perfection of God, brokered to us by Jesus in his sacrifice for us, and instilled in us by the Holy Spirit.

What humans have done with the Bible since that time, the wars, the pogroms, the inquisitions, the slaughters, that is a whole other issue, at least for me.  My religion has much evil to answer for in its history.  My faith seeks to overcome those evils with good for the next generation.

Lawsuit Over The 9/11 Cross

I was watching a news report on the 9/11 museum slated to open.  One of the displays is going to be a cross, two pieces of structural steel that became this symbol of the Christian faith and a symbol of hope to many of those working at Ground Zero.  And it was the subject of a lawsuit to prevent it being displayed.

According to the Christian Post online, "New Jersey-based American Atheists Inc. filed a lawsuit in 2011 against the planned presentation of the cross-shaped beam, arguing it will impose religion "through the power of the state." "  Somehow, this is to "Christianize" 9/11, the argument goes on to say.

Now, these reports were back in March and April, the news report today said the lawsuit was still open, I could not find more recent articles after a very cursory search of  "Google."

Usually, I am a person to accommodate the questions and arguments of people who disagree with or speak against my faith.  The purpose of this blog, in part, is to talk about how the faith is portrayed in the popular media.  It takes a lot to make me angry.  This makes me angry.

This is like the "keep Christ in Christmas" argument that shows up every year in some form or other.  This is like the lawsuits to keep  a crèche off public property or strip the Ten Commandments away from legal institutions or God knows what else.  Most of the time, I can dismiss such things because, frankly, there are more important things that I have to put my energy into.  But 9/11 occupies a unique place in my faith and my psyche.

What I take offence to is in the presumption that my faith is seeking government power to expand its  presence and control in this country.  Thomas Jefferson, in his Presidential inaugural address, said "And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."

We have the FREEDOM of religion in this country.  That was the answer of our Founding Fathers to the religious intolerance, persecutions, and wars of Europe.  The answer was NEVER to sideline religion, to stick it in a corner, to allow a secular mentality to force it to the margins.  That is the message that we should be celebrating.  That is the story that this cross from Ground Zero should be telling. 

We have gotten very paranoid as a nation about religious extremism, and with good reason.  There are violent Christian-avowing extremist groups in our nation, including the KKK and any number of 'militia's.  There are Christian leaders who see the use of political power and influence as valid tools of evangelism and the extension of a blended Christian-American religio-nationalism.  I accept that some leaders in our nation support the nation of Israel in an attempt to move us to the End Times as outlined in the Book of Revelations.  (I consider their theology to be arrogant to the core that they can somehow force God into Armageddon).

But the way to address these dark forces of the Christian religion in the American culture is NOT to suppress our freedom of expression.  Rather, it is to embrace it.  Our Christian Founding Fathers (and don't try to water down their faiths by calling them 'deists') created a nation where all religions were welcome because the Christians of the countries of Europe were slaughtering each other.  Our Christian Founding Fathers found in the words of Jesus the concepts of peace, love, justice, and truth.  And they were willing to let the truth of Jesus go toe to toe with the truth of any other faith, including faith in humanity itself, freely and protected by the government.

The Christians who put on the collar and the gothic black clothes (Medieval Gothic Black, not modern gothic black) and went in as chaplains at Ground Zero did not go in to 'convert the unbelievers' in their time of weakness.  They did not go in to extend the power of the state to set up Christianity as the State Religion.  They went in to help any person they came in contact with to muster their own spiritual and emotional resources to overcome the Great Evil of that day.

And many of them are suffering and dying from the same illnesses that have afflicted the First Responders and workers at Ground Zero.

That cross properly symbolizes the Christian faith as one best practiced when men and women of faith are helping other, healing others, serving others, counseling others, and loving others because that is what Jesus would want them to do.  That is the message of our faith that will transcend those who would try to subvert the Christian faith for their own purposes.  That is the message of our faith that should speak to those people who brought their lawsuit to ban the cross from the museum.  That is the message of our faith that was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of our great nation. 

God Loves, Man Kills

A couple is having their first child.  Preeclampsia is diagnosed.  The mom's health is not the strongest and the doctors recommend, to save her life, she should have an abortion.  The couple consults with their religious leader who invokes "Thou shalt not kill."  In the case of an unborn child, their religious leader asks "What if the child were one year old?  One month old?  Would you give your life for the child then?"  The couple decides against an abortion and instead, 'to trust in God'.  The wife dies of complications and the baby dies, its lung undeveloped.  The husband will NEVER trust God again.

The member of one church discovers that their co-worker attends a different church.  In what I guess is a test of orthodoxy, the first church member asks what their co-worker believes about homosexuality.  This question about belief comes with the assurance from the church member that the Bible-and God-do, in fact, condemn homosexuality without exception.  The co-worker chooses to remain silent about their beliefs rather than face condemnation from someone they consider could be a friend.

Church colleagues discuss whether or not the United States should militarily intervene in Syria in the wake of chemical warfare.  People of faith hedge their bets, give generic answers, go into political arguments.  Biblical or ethical arguments are avoided, as is the unspoken subtext questioning how a loving God could permit humans to use Sarin gas on one another.

Anybody who claims to speak for God is putting themselves into such a presumptuous, vulnerable position. 

There is a bumper stick that reads "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it."  It SHOULD read "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

How many words do we put into the mouth of our God in heaven?  How many times do we, the humans, cause pain and injury and suffering because we are arrogant enough to be God's prophet?  It is bad enough when a human is self-serving when they seek to invoke God's authority.  It is more painful, for me at least, when the human invoking God's name really thinks that hurting someone else is God's will.

Wonder why people either find the church, as God's thing, at best irrelevant, and, at worst, culpable, for the evils that happen around us?

Where do we start?  My suggestion is to measure anything that anyone ever claims with Godly or Biblical or Churchly (Ecclesial) authority against the one Biblical measure that is the foundation for all the rest.  "God is Love."

If love isn't there, I believe there is a problem.

The Movie Ratings System Undermined

I went to a PG-13 rated movie today.  Have you ever really considered the ratings system?  I took a crash course at mpaa.org on "the anatomy of a rating" and it provides pretty good information, a general age-appropriateness, and details on what kind of things to watch out for, violence, sex, language, etc.  The reason I did that was because something happened that I have never seen before.

Before the movie, after the commercials for the TV shows and the colas, they ran the trailers for other movies, more commercials for movies that I will probably see on Netflix if anywhere.

 Today, the trailers had a line I've never seen before, that the trailer is "appropriate for the rating of the movie that is to follow".  In other words, "R" films came up with trailers cut up for PG-13 audiences.  And since, as a parent, I can admit the child between the ages of 13 and 17 to the R movies at my discretion, how about a little extra pressure?

I got a big problem with 'R' movies being advertised before a 'PG-13' film.  I got a bigger problem with the fact that the trailers DO NOT carry the movie ratings so that I can have an informed conversation about the movie's appropriateness with my children or my wife or my parishioners or in this blog.

So why would they do that?  Why try and advertise movies not appropriate for children to movies where there are going to be children?  Without clear labeling?  Why advertise any product?  To sell it of course, to make money off of it.  The movie business is no different from any other business. 

It is hard enough to get a discussion going about what is appropriate for our children to be exposed to.  The producers of violent and sexually oriented media content are the same producers of news media content, news programs that might in fact sponsor such discussions in the public sphere.  But this kind of discussion is not in line with the purpose of media content producers, which is to make money. 

It is hard enough to get solid information on the connections between media violence and school violence, good information on media sexuality and sexual practices among our children-at younger and younger ages.

Imagine trying to have a serious discussion on the appropriateness of advertising this kind of material to children? 

The ratings system is one of too few tools out there to help us make informed decisions about movies, television, or video games.  It amazes me that whenever there is any mention of the ratings systems for popular media, the discussions too easily get sidetracked into the appropriateness or the usefulness of the system.   

And continuing in Romans...

"Paul, a servant^* of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ²which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures..."

Romans 1

 

 

So it narrows down.  Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, identifying himself with all who seek to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

Then Paul, called to be an apostle.  It is a job within the movement of spreading Jesus' message to the world.  Paul gives us lists of some of these jobs, teachers, preachers, apostles, healers, prophets, and more.  The Apostles were the leaders of the church, the twelve disciples became Apostles. 

 

Then Paul, set apart for the gospel of God.  The gospel is the Good News, the message of Jesus who lived, died, and lived again.  We know from the book of Acts and Paul's letters that he was a traveling missionary, going town to town to share the gospel of God.  This seems to distinguish him again from the other Apostles, some of whom were travelers, but others of whom seemed to stay settled in the church of Jerusalem and Judea.

 

Now, we develop again on the sense of the gospel of God.  What is it, in Paul's own words?  It is that "which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures..."  Who is he?  God.  I know, it is odd not to have "he" capitalized.  "he" and "his prophets".  Paul has been set apart for that which God promised beforehand through God's prophets in the holy scriptures.

 

Now, a point of clarity about the 'holy scriptures'.  These are what we know to be the "Old Testament" of our bibles.  The Letter to the Romans, the gospel accounts of the life and miracles of Jesus, these are (literally) only beginning to be written.  The gospel of God does NOT include Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  It includes Genesis to Malachi. 

 

Think about this.  Paul is telling the Romans that God promised everything that we are going to find in this Letter in the Old Testament of our bible.  God's prophets set everything down before the first word of the New Testament was ever written.  Can you imagine sharing the faith without pulling out your bible to share the words of John 3:16?  Or the Great Commission in Matthew 28?

 

Paul's work is to share the gospel of God, the good news of God, which was laid out in the Old Testament by God's prophets before Jesus came down to fulfill what had been promised.  And that doesn't just mean Isaiah and all those other guys so fun to try and remember.  Moses was a prophet, David was a prophet, they were the 'mouthpieces of God'.

 

So Paul is not coming with something new.  He is not taking the Jewish faith and putting a new spin on it.  Our faith is the faith of the Jewish religion fulfilled in Jesus.  And Paul will spend much time in this Letter speaking more on that.

 

This phrase continues to develop the authority under which Paul operates, servant of God, apostle, set aside for the gospel that ALREADY exists in the words of God's prophets.  Thus is the story that he will tell.



From The Wolverine (Wolverine 2), a focus for church?

About Yashida, who appears as a young Japanese POW camp guard at the beginning of the movie with Logan, then as the leader of the powerful industrial complex in the present day (aging gracefully as opposed to Logan, the Wolverine, who does not), it was said (and I paraphrase)

"He has one foot in the past and one in the future". 

He has taken the traditions of Japan in his industrial structure and brought them into the future of technological advancement and attempted to be a bridge, one to the other.

I believe we need the same bridge for our church.  We are doing things 'differently'.  If we don't, we are going to go extinct as a congregation.  We are seeking to be the church for the next generations.  That is where our future lies.  But certain things do not change.

Our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, DOES NOT CHANGE.  God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  The Good News of Jesus Christ does not change.  The 21st century did not bring in a new way to heaven.  The Bible does not change-although our understanding of it certainly does.  To each generation, the Word speaks the Truth.  These are the things of the past and the future.

In the future, the style of worship will change.  Formal authority gives way to earned authority.  Codes of conduct and modes of doing things change.  A more casual generation is on the rise.  The pastor no longer carries the Authority of the Pulpit as in ages past.  The preaching contains more teaching, more persuasion, seeks to address and interpret God's message to new and more diverse situations.  The level of education and bible knowledge has dropped from past generations.  Christianity used to be more in the mainline of the secular culture, but it has been systematically marginalized for the last three generations.

So we stand across the generations, one foot in what came before, the legacy of two thousand years of faith, and one foot in what will come, the ever changing, dizzyingly diverse world of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  At the balancing point of past and future is the present.  Here today and gone tomorrow.

Romans, the next piece

"Paul, a servant^* of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God..."

 

 

So Paul is introducing himself to the church in Rome, to whom the letter is addressed.  He starts by identifying himself as all Christians can, "a servant of Jesus Christ".  I don't know how I feel about self-identifying as a 'servant', even of Jesus Christ.  I mean, I understand it in my head, being a servant and all that, but some gut reaction, something about being an American and what that means in regards to equality and justice and freedom, is reacting against that phrase.

 

But that is the challenge of Scripture, to set for us a baseline of truth against which to measure our lives.  We talk about service in our faith, even one who serves, but 'servant' implies a humbling, a surrendering of control, an acknowledgement that we have 'a better'.  I know, it's class thinking, nobles and peasants, aristocrats and domestics, "Downton Abbey", "Gone With The Wind" manor house life, know what I mean?

But it is to be a servant to perfection...should be good enough to overcome personal biases about class warfare.

Beyond the call to be a servant, we have laid before us Paul's job description.  He is "called" to be an "apostle".  "Called" is a notion still very important in the church today.  As I pursued ordination, the Committee on Preparation for Ministry laid a lot of importance on the "call".  Is Jesus calling me to ministry?  Is it something that can be seen in my by other people?  Is it something that the commitee can see?  If not being called, it is easy enough to pull a "reverend" title off the internet.

An "apostle" is a technical title in the work of Jesus Christ.  The twelve disciples transitioned from "disciple", literally 'follower' to "apostle", literally 'servant', on Pentecost.  That was the day that the Holy Spirit came upon them and turned them after three years of internship with the Almighty into leaders of the church.

Paul was called later, by special arrangement of Jesus, outside the walls of Damascus, when he was intent with a religious fervor to stamp out this new Jewish sect.  (It wasn't its own religion yet).  He turned that fervor to the service of Jesus Christ and changed the world.  Thankfully, he also changed his methodology from 'arrest and charge' to 'preach and convert'.

So, his title is "Apostle", to which he has been called.  He is called to be a Servant, called by God, "set apart for the gospel of God".  Set apart, this is what he is supposed to be doing, set apart for the "gospel" of God.  I leave you with the idea of the "gospel".

"Gospel" is Greek for "good news", quite literally.  Paul is set apart for the Good News of God.  He is an Apostle for it.  He is a Servant for it.  What is the Good News?

The Good News is that Jesus lived, died, and lives again for us.  It is Good Friday, Easter, and eternity.  It is the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, "Go and make disciples of ALL the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit".

This Good News is that people's lives can be changed FOREVER.  It is the Good News of love that changes lives for the better.  It is the Good News that claims 2 BILLION believers around the world.  It is why I was called to be a pastor, to spread that news. 

So much in the first three phrases of Paul's most encompassing letter.