“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”

                 The meme said that this is a quote from Thomas Paine.  It calls him an “English-American political activist, writer, and revolutionary.”  But did he really say this?  Some memes put some great quotes out there.  Some of them are actually accurate.  According to Google, this one is rightly attributed to Mr. Paine.

                So I had this whole, long, rather clever blog post playing with this quote, considering how it goes back to the founding of the nation, but how true it is today.  It was a rather oversized political consideration of the nation and we who live in her.

                But there were two problems.  I knew it needed to end with a consideration of the faith, but how to make that jump while maintaining the integrity of the blog post to that moment?  The other problem was one that guides me when sermons go wandering, the question of ‘staying in my lane’ as a Christian and a pastor.

                And Mr. Paine’s quote could apply as powerfully to matters of faith as it could to political matters.  That opens up a whole new can of worms on the connection between faith and reason.  But I think it is not that theological or philosophical or even presuppositional for the Christian. 

                Consider the colonial foundations of this nation.  Religious groups who found themselves persecuted, imprisoned, even killed by trial or in open warfare, many found a new start over here.  It was a good use of reason to get out of the ‘firing line’ of the ‘old world’.  On the other hand, for me, a sure sign that the use of reason has been renounced in the Christian faith is when a person or persons of faith slip away from the plain meaning of the text where Jesus says the law is to love God and love neighbor.

                Consider the Puritans in colonial Massachusetts.  They reasoned that a new world meant new freedom for their interpretive structure of the Christian faith.  And it worked.  But how far was the use of reason renounced when it came to the cruel and vicious ways in which they killed their own during the witch trials?  Paine’s expression, renouncing reason being like giving medicine to the dead, it resonates.  Where was the love of God and the love of neighbor there?

                Consider the modern era.  The KKK was a declared ‘Christian’ institution.  The Christian love of God and neighbor is finding expression in branding the ‘others’ of our present day and age.  Immigrants and people outside tightly bound “biblical” definitions of gender come to mind.  OMG, does that make me a “big L” liberal?  It takes the renunciation of reason to suspend the law of love and condemn our neighbor with the arrogance of doing so ‘in Jesus’ name’.  Explain to me how the suspension of “big L” love leads to “big L” liberal and I will take on that question.

                Shall we explore the underpinnings of the “Black Lives Matter” movement?  As a privileged white male moving into the upper reaches of the mid-point region of my life, I know few people more ill-equipped to speak on behalf of someone else on this matter.  Does not mean I am not dumb enough to try, but not today.

                In my original post, I was appalled and relieved to read this quote from Thomas Paine.  That much has not changed as I have moved away from a political point of view to a Christian one.  I am relieved that the renunciation of reason is not just the product of the current age, with the Christian justifications for unloving activities woven into the polar opposites of the political spectrum.  But I am also appalled that in the centuries of Christian expression in the “New World”, we seem to have learned so little in how the Love of God and of our neighbor is the universal law of the Lord.

Peter Hofstra

"Flunking Sainthood" by Jana Riess, I found it meaningful and here, in brief, is why.

     Flunking Sainthood, or, as on the cover “fLunking sainthooed”-except the “e” in sainthood is “x’ed” out, not doubly struck through, which was the closest I could find in Word-by Jana Reiss is a memoir in the style of a couple other books I have read about doing “biblical” or “Christian” things for a fixed period, for a year. 

One of them is The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Simpson, taking the Scriptural law and applying it to how a man should live today.   The other, which I read with the mindset of being ‘a female response’, is A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans.  The call and response between these two volumes was a delight.  The Bible is a sexist book, written in a time when there was not even the conception of something called sexism.  In each one I found new insights into studying the Bible, or “Christianity: The Sinner’s Manual”.  Jana Reiss offered something different.

According to the rear blurb, “…Jana Reiss shares a year-long quest to become more saintly by tackling twelve spiritual practices…” and then going on to list them, one per month.  The result of this year-long experiment is evident in the bio, also on the back cover.  “Jana Riess is the author or editor…so on and so forth… Although she is a spiritual failure…she has a doctorate…”  This is highly selective, but measures the success of the experiment.

Another measure of the success comes on the front cover, in considering the extended title of this volume: Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor. 

So monthly for a year, she pursued a different ‘spiritual discipline’.  Each chapter relates the events of each month.  She provides us with the resources that she curated for each discipline, describes her methodology, and her results.  As I read it, it reminded me of applying ‘the scientific method’ I learned long, long ago to each of these disciplines, essentially seeking its effectiveness in an attempt, I presume, to reproduce the effectiveness among its original adherents.  Except that it never quite worked out that way.  Which was the delight of science.  Even a failure added to the sum increase of our knowledge and wisdom.

I was frankly relieved, having tried and failed at a few of these practices myself.  If there is one thing that pastors are good at, it is not necessarily spiritual disciplines.  It is the sure and certain knowledge that we humans are highly fallible and in need of God’s grace.  This book is an honest expression of the human being, humorous and touching and redeeming in turn. 

I came away with three things.  One is an instant reference to where to start learning about any of the disciplines from her year.  She’s picked winners in these areas of life.  The second is that spiritual disciplines do not and are not meant to ‘fix us’.  This is NOT a self-help regimen, these disciplines have been developed to bring Providence more meaningfully into our existence.  And finally, while Jana Riess had her racked up a perfect record of failures in keeping the disciplines, it is evident that they did what they were supposed to, bringing one searcher a little deeper into the joy that is our relationship with God.

 

The Book: “Flunking Sainthood”, by Jana Riess.  Brewster, Massachusetts, Paraclete Press, 2011.  I finished it mid-September of 2021. 

Worship Service, July 25, 2021

Understanding Judaism as Both A National Identity as Well as A Religious Identity

June 10, 2021                        John 5: 47

  ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.  ²A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.  ⁵When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ ⁶He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’

            He is infuriating.  That is how I perceive Jesus from the point of view of the Leadership that is in challenge with him.  The Leaders claim Moses as their foundation for their faith.  It is in distinction to all challengers, including this upstart Jesus of Nazareth who, apparently, would be welcomed as a fancy teacher, but NOT as someone claiming the authority of God.

            Fair enough, these Leaders are the ones responsible for the maintenance of the faith of the Jews through an extraordinarily difficult time.  I do not think we really understand that as Christians.  We have the context of our religion, our faith, our Christianity.  But it is not a national identity.  Despite everything we might claim about the United States being a Christian nation, Christianity is NOT a nationality.  It is a faith system.  That is where it is fundamentally different from Judaism.

            Israel is a Jewish nation.  To be Jewish is to offered citizenship.  That is not the case in the United States.  The idea of the Christian nation held sway at one time.  Before the Enlightenment, the nations of Europe were Christian nations.  For a long part of their history, they were all Roman Catholic nations in the west and Eastern Orthodox in…the East.  That broke down with the Reformation.

            Some nations remained Roman Catholic, like Spain and Portugal.  Great Britain eventually broke with the Roman Catholic Church and formed the Church of England.  Scotland went Presbyterian.  Germany, at that time a collection of smaller states, not the united nation we know today, varied between Lutheran and Catholic and a few Reformed.  France was Roman Catholic but tolerant of Protestants until a certain point where the ‘door of orthodoxy’ slammed shut.

            It is interesting how this is reflected in the American colonies.  Freedom to practice religion in their own way was one motivating factor is setting the colonies up.  The Puritans settled into Massachusetts.  Pennsylvania was predominantly Quaker in its inception.  If I understand my history, Maryland was Roman Catholic while Virginia was very much Church of England. 

            The difference in Israel is that the Jewish national identity transcends religious sectarianism.  There are secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, we might know them from the news by their traditional black hats and living side by side under one flag.

            With this national identity invested in the Leadership, Jesus is not simply challenging faith-based authority, but their very political authority.  And the political authority for the Jewish Leadership is very much at the whim of the Romans.  So the challenge coming from Jesus is of a different sort than we might understand in our own political context today. 

            More later.

            Peace, Pastor Peter

Moses and Predicting Jesus

June 9, 2021              John 5: 46

  ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.  ²A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.  ⁵When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ ⁶He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’

            So there is an interesting challenge.  Moses wrote about Jesus.  We have fairly clear prophetic passages in Isaiah that refer to the birth of Jesus as well as other Gospel references back to the Old Testament.  How clearly does Moses refer to Jesus?  That becomes a huge undertaking.  In Genesis 3, it speaks of him crushing the serpent’s head.  In Exodus, it speaks of the blood of the lamb leading to the angel of death passing over those where the blood is displayed.  Throughout the books are the commandments for animal sacrifice fulfilled in Jesus.  So there is a lot written there.  The book of Hebrews picks up on some of those connections very powerfully.

            If the Leadership truly believed Moses, they would believe in Jesus, that is the accusation.  They claim to believe in Moses, but, according to Jesus, it is Moses who accuses them, because they do not truly-or they would believe in Jesus. 

            In the grand scheme of God’s Plan, the Coming of Jesus was established before the creation of the world.  So this moment of revelation, this moment of Jesus being there, this was the time and the place for Jesus’ coming.  This challenge to the Leadership is a double edged sword.  On the one hand, it picks up on the prophetic predictions of the coming of Jesus found in the Old Testament.  On the other, it begins to fuel the resentment of the Leadership that will lead to Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

More later

Peace, Pastor Peter

Tracking on What is the Glory of God and Not of God

June 4, 2021              John 5: 44-45

39 ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴²But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.  ²A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.

            I had to read verse 44 a few times to decipher what Jesus was saying.  Flip the first part, before the ‘and’, to something like “when you accept glory from one another, how can you believe?” (in God); “when you not seek the glory that comes from God alone?”  The issue at play here is not just that they do not seek after God, but that they have replaced God, one with another.  The reward is ‘glory’.  How do we define that? 

            If we go to the Confessions, specifically the Westminster Shorter Catechism, glorifying God is defined as the chief end of humanity, that and enjoying God forever.  “How” is given answer in question 2, and I quote “The Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.”

            So…why go to the Confessions?  Why not do a word study in Scripture ourselves to see what it means about God and Glory?  Have you heard the expression about reinventing the wheel?  The Confessions and Catechisms and Statements of Faith that are gathered together in the Book of Confessions of the PCUSA are the primary guide to understanding the big sweeps of the Bible.  Each was written in a time and a place and for a purpose important to the Church in that moment. 

            The Westminster Standards, the Shorter and Longer Catechisms and the Confession, were all written to become law in England in the time after the Reformation.  They were written in Westminster Palace and Westminster Abbey, where the English Parliament sits and where Royal rituals take place in London.  It is a lesson in English history to read how these became and then un-became British law, but their purpose was clear, to establish what they believed and how to teach it in their churches.  So to use the Shorter Catechism is to use THE premiere confessional foundations of the Presbyterian tradition.

            So the rule for glorifying God comes from the Bible.  And Jesus narrows the scope for us.  He tells them that it is not Jesus himself accusing them before the Father, but rather the accusations come from Moses-upon whom they set their hopes. 

            Moses is the traditional author of the Torah, the Law, the first five books of the Bible.  It is from these books that the entire Jewish law code of the time of Jesus was drawn.  This legal code covered the moments, covered the precedents, covered the issues that the Torah did not.  At best, it filled in the gaps, at worst, it created a minutia of legal bindings that tied the people in knots. 

            Let us return to the issue of Sabbath, which we looked at again a couple posts back.  Jesus was all for the power of the Lord, on the day of the Lord, to heal the man who was in need.  The Leadership was all about how Jesus transgressed the rules of the Sabbath in telling the man to dare to pick up his bedroll, to do work on the day of Rest.  They were very proud of their laws, that is where they found their glory, in one another, creating this religious system built, in their minds, on the law of Moses.

            This goes to why Jesus has come in the first place, to bring the faith back to God the Father.  In this debate with the Leadership, he is showing how it has gone astray.  More focus on Moses next time.

            Peace, Pastor Peter

It Seems the Jewish Leadership Is Prepared to Accept A Lot from Jesus, But Not All, Not the Truth.

June 3, 2021              John 5: 43

39 ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ⁴¹I do not accept glory from human beings. ⁴²But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? ⁴⁵Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’

6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.  ²A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.

            So Jesus just told the leadership they do not have the love of God in them.  But that is not a dropped in verbal smiting.  He goes on to explain why.  Jesus has come in the name of the Father and is not accepted.  However, if another comes in his own name, that’s cool.  So, if Jesus were there preaching in the name of Jesus, a prophet of the Lord, let’s say.  If Jesus came as the new Elijah, let’s say.  Both of these would have been acceptable to the leadership?  Heck-fire, they may even have accepted him as Messiah.  (These three names go back to the first chapter.  The Leadership challenged John the baptizer with these possibilities as they tried to establish his credentials).

            It is arguable that Jesus fulfilled all three of these expectations.  There are implications in the Old Testament that all three of these, Elijah, the Prophet, and the Messiah, were coming. 

            What appears to be the disconnect, however, is God the Father.  That kind of authority on Jesus’ part, that seems to be too much for the Leadership to take.  So, if we stretch out the implications of what Jesus is saying, if Jesus came in his own name.  If Jesus claimed to be a big wheel of religious intent and intensity, given what he has said and accomplished, that would have roused the interest even of the Leadership. 

            Remember the incident where Jesus drove out the moneychangers from the temple.  That was not condemned for the actions of a violent man.  Rather, the question was by whose authority did he come.  The implication is that if the authority was right, the actions were proper.  If Jesus pronounced that he came in the name of Jesus, that probably would have justified it, in light of the rest of his words and actions.

            But the ideal that Jesus brings, his authority and connection to the Father, those are too much for the Leadership to accept.  The people seem ready to accept Jesus at whatever authority Jesus is claiming.  They see the results, they know something from God is happening here.  The Leadership see it as well, how can they not?  But Jesus has gone beyond reasonable expectations. 

            In the long view, an overview of the entire story of Jesus, this is usually put down to jealousy, political and religious jealousy of Jesus’ hold on the people as God’s own versus the presumed religious and political leadership of the priests and so forth.  And there is certainly truth in that. 

            But if we follow where the disputations with the Leadership really got tense, it was not at the cleansing of the Temple, it was healing the cranky man on the Sabbath.  Remember, Jesus told him to take up his bedroll and go home.  That is work of a kind forbidden by tradition on the Sabbath.  The man passed the buck to Jesus.  When a guy heals you of decades of invalidity and he tells you to pick up your bed and go, you do.

            But in so doing, it was not that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath.  There were ways to fix that kind of unlawful behavior.  It was that Jesus would not even acknowledge he was in the wrong.  He kept doubling down.  The one who has authority to dictate the terms of the Sabbath, to dictate the terms of the law of Moses that, up to know, has been the foundation of Sabbath legalities, that’s the authority Jesus is claiming.  And that is undermining the authority that the Leadership claims for itself.  That is why things between them are tense.

            More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter