Hosea 11
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But, as the saying goes, "The more they were called, the more they rebelled." They never stopped offering incense and sacrifices to idols and other gods. I took Israel by the arm and taught them to walk. But they would not admit that I was the one who had healed them. I led them with kindness and with love, not with ropes. I held them close to me, as one holds an infant; I bent down to feed them.
I believe that we are still learning about God’s goodness and love for all. Though at times we rebel and do not appear to listen and follow the message of love and kindness. Today, we have many false gods and idols: money, power, celebrity and material possessions that grasp our attention. It is easy to lose sight of God in our culture.
As I stand in the mist of the forest of life, I sometimes do not see things clearly. Then, a Spirit transcends my weakness and I am reminded to be kind and loving. The Teacher is and always has been by my side. He does not force me to enter his house of love and kindness but rather leads me to the threshold within my own mind. I don’t always listen. Sometime my faith waivers. However, I know that the loving Spirit is always with me in spite of my doubts. And, I know that God is always with each of you by your side with love and gentle kindness.
Has a Teacher ever transcended through the mist of your doubt and shown you the loving way?
Do you always listen to that voice?
When were you held in God's embrace? When did you first experience God as a gentle God? How is God leading you now?
-Ed Armstrong
Deuteronomy 10:14-18
Look around you: Everything you see is God's—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; God picked their children—that's you!—out of all the other peoples. That's where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. This One doesn't play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.
How do we know who we are? I come from a family that loves stories. I grew up hearing Bible stories, stories about what life was like for my parents and stories about their parents who were immigrants to this country. We often had missionaries as guests in our home. . . . and yes, we heard their stories as well. As I read these verses from Deuteronomy, ancient words written for the Jews but no less true for us, the connection with the stories of my childhood are unmistakable. Certainly the love God had for my parents, grandparents, and me . . . echoed in those stories, but God’s love for the “ancestors” of others in countries far away was just as evident. It enlarged my experience and gave me a perspective of my identity in God far beyond what I was capable of imagining on my own.
These past few weeks we have been hearing incredible stories of faith told by and about members of our community, young and old. We are hearing in these stories who we are as individuals and as a community. Calluses on my heart have certainly been cut thin by the generosity of spirit, the sincere show of love for God who is in the whole of the universe as well as the details. They have touched me deeply. I pray that as we open wide the doors of hospitality to the strangers around us, they too will rejoice and find their identity in God and hear the story of God’s love and passion for justice in this world.
Eugene Peterson uses the idea of God falling in love with our ancestors in this translation. What thoughts and feelings come up for you when you think of God falling in love with YOUR ancestors? What are the thick calluses around your heart right now?
Isaiah 11
1Like a branch that sprouts from a stump, someone from David's family will someday be king. 2The Spirit of the LORD will be with him to give him understanding, wisdom, and insight. He will be powerful, and he will know and honor the LORD. 3His greatest joy will be to obey the LORD. This king won't judge by appearances or listen to rumors.
4The poor and the needy will be treated with fairness and with justice. His word will be law everywhere in the land, and 5honesty and fairness will be his royal robes. 6Leopards will lie down with young goats, and wolves will rest with lambs. Calves and lions will eat together and be cared for by little children. 7Cows and bears will share the same pasture; their young will rest side by side. Lions and oxen will both eat straw.
For several years now, I’ve understood that the utterances of prophets, psalmists, and wisdom writings in the Hebrew Bible were intended for the Hebrews themselves, not for folks like us centuries into the future. In some readings God is silent or hidden. In some readings, the people are excoriated; in other times and situations, they are given promises of deliverance and hope.
In the first seven verses of Isaiah 11, the people are given a vision. And even though we weren’t part of the original intended audience, these verses are a part of the legacy given to us in our Scriptures. “Bible Study” means we try to ‘get’ the original intent, the context of time, culture and situation that made the utterances prophetic. But our major task is to “appropriate” them - to make them our own. They can be “true” for us as well.
Verses 1- 7 describe a system of justice that no Democrat or Republican, however well-intentioned and dedicated, could hope to achieve; no political or religious society however homogeneous, diverse, well-governed and inspired, could hope to implement and sustain. Verses 6 – 7 do not describe the real world as we know it; the meat-eating animals will all die of starvation; they can’t survive on grass. (And we know what happened to the others).
The first lesson I take from this vision is not to place any final or ultimate hope on human intentions, abilities and the institutions we create. No matter how much effort I may put into electing any candidate or even supporting the Oregon Ducks, I am bound to be disillusioned and dismayed.
The second lesson. By placing my trust in the person, life, and example of Jesus in his world, who reveals what God is like - maybe I can reconcile, in my own inner world – the leopard and the goat – which inhibit me from bringing peace and life to those around me.
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Where does your heart most feel the injustice of the world? What is the most painful burden you carry now? Do you trust a God who hears you, and believes in you? Can you offer some of the burden to be shared by God? The vision of the lion and the lamb lying down together has been a powerful one. When you let your mind go, and your imagination play, are your dreams or visions for humanity's future?
From Neal Stixrud
The Crying Tree: Redemption and forgiveness in the midst of tragedy
by Naseem Rakha
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Any book that I stay up reading until 2 a.m. deserves five stars. I hadn't done that since Harry Potter 7 came out...and I had jet lag then because we were in Hawaii.
I heard Rakha being interviewed on NPR and knew I had to read her book. A broadcast journalist for "All Things Considered" and an Oregonian, she covered the first execution in Oregon for 30 years, and the seed of this book was planted.
I'm fascinated by the themes of deep forgiveness and grace, perhaps because I wonder whether I would have the capacity to do such a thing myself if one of my loved ones were brutally hurt or worse yet, murdered.
Irene Stanley is an old-fashioned wife in rural Indiana when her sheriff's deputy husband comes home one day and announces that they are moving to eastern Oregon. No discussion, no argument, she is advised by her pastor to accept her husband's decision, even though she feels in her soul that is a very bad move.
A year after the family has settled into Blaine, Oregon, her son, Shep, is found brutally murdered. Each family member--mother, father, and sister--react to his death in different ways. Irene becomes an alcoholic and severely depressed. Bliss, only 12 when her brother was killed, grows up feeling completely neglected by her parents.
The killer is prosecuted and put on death row. Years after Shep's death, Irene finally begins to come out of her cocoon and feels compelled to write to Daniel, her son's killer. And gradually, she finds a way to forgive him. Rakha's characters find that just like hate, forgiveness fills you up. And forgiveness is like "pain and grace all tied up in one."
As Irene's life and world view changes, the secrets begin to leak out.
The book's format is to alternate chapters between the 1980s (when the murder occurred) and 2004, and to alternate perspectives among the family members (mostly Irene), Daniel (on death row), and a deeply damaged but compassionate-at-heart Oregon prison superintendent, Tab Mason. (Usually these shifting times and character viewpoints bother me, but it didn't in this book.) Other reviewers have criticized the book for including one-dimensional characters, but we all know for a fact that there are people like Irene's sister, pastor, or husband out in the world among us. People can have very simple, even hateful views of anything that conflicts with their way of thinking and being.
A few people commented that they would have liked the book to be longer, so they could have learned more about Irene's relationship with her son, or what was going on in Nate's mind. But I believe that Rakha kept that deliberately fuzzy for the purposes of the story.
I saw a few of the plot elements coming, but Rakha might have wanted this. It didn't matter anyway. I loved this story of pain and grace, and I especially enjoyed reading this fictional story of forgiveness after reading the memoir Picking Cotton earlier this year...a story of a woman who was raped and forgave her rapist, only to discover that he wasn't really her rapist after all and she had accused the wrong man. Not only did she forgive him, but he forgave her and they actually became friends. Do you have such a capacity to forgive in you?
Review by Marie Gettel-Gilmartin
Isaiah 11
1Like a branch that sprouts from a stump, someone from David's family will someday be king. 2The Spirit of the LORD will be with him to give him understanding, wisdom, and insight. He will be powerful, and he will know and honor the LORD. 3His greatest joy will be to obey the LORD. This king won't judge by appearances or listen to rumors.
4The poor and the needy will be treated with fairness and with justice. His word will be law everywhere in the land, and 5honesty and fairness will be his royal robes. 6Leopards will lie down with young goats, and wolves will rest with lambs. Calves and lions will eat together and be cared for by little children. 7Cows and bears will share the same pasture; their young will rest side by side. Lions and oxen will both eat straw.
For several years now, I’ve understood that the utterances of prophets, psalmists, and wisdom writings in the Hebrew Bible were intended for the Hebrews themselves, not for folks like us centuries into the future. In some readings God is silent or hidden. In some readings, the people are excoriated; in other times and situations, they are given promises of deliverance and hope.
In the first seven verses of Isaiah 11, the people are given a vision. And even though we weren’t part of the original intended audience, these verses are a part of the legacy given to us in our Scriptures. “Bible Study” means we try to ‘get’ the original intent, the context of time, culture and situation that made the utterances prophetic. But our major task is to “appropriate” them - to make them our own. They can be “true” for us as well.
Verses 1- 7 describe a system of justice that no Democrat or Republican, however well-intentioned and dedicated, could hope to achieve; no political or religious society however homogeneous, diverse, well-governed and inspired, could hope to implement and sustain. Verses 6 – 7 do not describe the real world as we know it; the meat-eating animals will all die of starvation; they can’t survive on grass. (And we know what happened to the others).
The first lesson I take from this vision is not to place any final or ultimate hope on human intentions, abilities and the institutions we create. No matter how much effort I may put into electing any candidate or even supporting the Oregon Ducks, I am bound to be disillusioned and dismayed.
The second lesson. By placing my trust in the person, life, and example of Jesus in his world, who reveals what God is like - maybe I can reconcile, in my own inner world – the leopard and the goat – which inhibit me from bringing peace and life to those around me.
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Where does your heart most feel the injustice of the world? What is the most painful burden you carry now? Do you trust a God who hears you, and believes in you? Can you offer some of the burden to be shared by God? The vision of the lion and the lamb lying down together has been a powerful one. When you let your mind go, and your imagination play, are your dreams or visions for humanity's future?
This second Advent reflection comes from Barbara S:
1 Peter 5:4-7
When God, who is the best shepherd of all, comes out in the open to rule, God will see that you've done it right and commend you lavishly. And you who are younger must follow your leaders. But all of you, leaders and followers alike, are to be down to earth with each other, for—God has had it with the proud, but takes delight in just plain people. So be content with who you are, and don't put on airs. God's strong hand is on you; you will be promoted at just the right time. Live carefree before God, for God is most careful with you.
The author of 1 Peter was writing to the broad community probably of the late first century. He was addressing people of all stations, leaders and followers, young and old to help them put order into their lives. His message is as valuable today as it was to the people of this earlier time. We are to lead lives of authenticity and truth no matter what our role in life is. When life becomes a struggle, we must trust in God and know that God is always with us, loves us and cares about us.
“Be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs.” That was a zinger for me. I get myself in a lot of trouble when I find myself in a situation where I am out of my comfort zone and am trying to fit in. Often my tongue engages before my brain which leads to more discomfort. I do not see myself as a leader, but as a faithful follower. I have had a number of authentic leaders or mentors in my life, first and foremost was my grandmother, who raised me. She was a simple lady who had much adversity in her life but accepted life as it unfolded with quiet humility and faith. I’ve also had a number of good friends who led by example with a deep faith in God and love of people. I feel blessed to have my life enriched with such authentic leaders.
Do you have ancestors or elders in faith you admire? What attributes do you identify that make them able to mentor others? What would it mean to be “content with who you are?”
Bruce Flath
November 28, 2011
Christianity’s Great Rummage Sales
A Review of
Tickle, Phyllis. The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. Baker Books, 2008.
Every 500 years or so the Christian Church holds a rummage sale, selling off old ideas and adopting new ones. Each of these “re-formations” comprises decades of change and results in the creation of a new vision for the Church.
So claims Phyllis Tickle, the author of The Great Emergence. Tickle was the editor of the religion section of Publishers Weekly, from which she retired. She is now a eucharistic minister in the Episcopal Church and a senior fellow of Cathedral College at the National Cathedral in Washington.
Five hundred years ago the Church underwent the Great Reformation. Approximately 500 years prior to that occurred the Great Schism, when the Orthodox and Roman Catholics broke away from each other. Another 500 years before that lived Pope Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, who instigated reforms arising from the growth of monasticism. Each of these “great” events contributed to the latest change that the Church is experiencing which Tickle calls “the Great Emergence”.
Tickle argues that each of these re-formations comes about because those uncomfortable with the institutional Church ask the question, “Where is the authority, now?” In the Reformation, Luther answered that authority lies within the Scriptures and only within the Scriptures. For contemporary Christians, however, the authority of the Scriptures has been steadily eroded over a century of critical inquiry. Furthermore, North American Protestantism has had to contend with several “assaults”, as Tickle calls them. These have included changes in attitude toward divorce, the ordination of women, and the place of homosexuals within the various denominations.
Tickle views the Emerging Church movement as the embodiment of the Great Emergence and predicts that it will mold the future of Christianity. She says that the answer to the question, “Where is the authority, now?” will be found in conversation between the various groups of Christians who are struggling with this question. Out of this conversation will arise a future Church that will be a dynamic network rather than a single institution. Tickle writes that if “the Great Emergence does what most of its observers think it will, it will rewrite Christian theology — and thereby North American culture — into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical than anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years.”
This book should appeal to those who are interested in the Emerging Church movement and models of change within the Church. My biggest complaint about the book is that the author assumes that the reader already has some familiarity with the Emerging Church movement and contemporary North American Protestantism. Because I know little about the Emerging Church movement, I was hoping that this book would provide an introduction to it; in that regard I was a little disappointed. Furthermore, some Catholic readers may be confused by the use of theological language perhaps unfamiliar to them. Nevertheless, the book should generate food for thought within a wide audience on the future of the Church.
Matthew 1:18-23
This is how Jesus Christ was born. A young woman named Mary was engaged to Joseph from King David's family. But before they were married, she learned that she was going to have a baby by God's Holy Spirit. Joseph was a good man and did not want to embarrass Mary in front of everyone. So he decided to quietly call off the wedding. While Joseph was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord came to him in a dream. The angel said, "Joseph, the baby that Mary will have is from the Holy Spirit. Go ahead and marry her. Then after her baby is born, name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." So the Lord's promise came true, just as the prophet had said, "A virgin will have a baby boy, and he will be called Immanuel," which means "God is with us."
Reflection
We all know the Annunciation―the episode that marks the beginning of the story of our redemption. In fact, many theologians tell us that the Incarnation of Jesus was the sole redemptive act that reconciled humankind once and for all with our loving God. But the Annunciation story that most of us remember is the one in Luke’s Gospel [Luke 1:26-38] where Gabrielle appears to Mary with the news of her role as mother of Jesus. In the above reading, Matthew has the angel telling Joseph this good news and tweaks the story in other ways―it is only in Matthew that we are reminded of the prophecy in Isaiah [7:14] that Jesus will be “God with us.” Indeed each of the Gospel writers had different objectives in writing their gospels so what do some of the unique points in Matthew’s version of the story mean?
First a little background. Growing up in Catholic parochial schools, I was taught at an early age that we could find our God in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments (especially in the Eucharist) and in each other. While I believed this from an intellectual standpoint, it took me more than forty years before I believed this in my heart―especially the part about finding God in other people.
When I read Matthew’s Annunciation story, I am clearly reminded that “good men” (and women) are key to finding and understanding how God can truly be with us and in us. If God could take on human form then surely we are not only created in God’s image, but in a very special and unique way we bring the face of God to others. Some twenty-five years ago I saw this clearly as scores of people, many I had never seen or known before, supported Barb and I when two of our sons and Barb’s dad were seriously injured in a head-on auto accident. Since then I have been keenly aware of how so many “good men and women” have touched my life in so many little and big ways. In the days before cell phones I had a tire blowout on the San Diego Freeway in Southern California, but managed to safely maneuver my car out of traffic. Within ten minutes eight separate people stopped to see if I needed help―some were people I knew but others were strangers. When family members have been ill or in the hospital, there have been many people who have reached out and shown me so many faces of my loving God. These and many other incidents have convinced me that we are all the face of God for each other. How truly blest we are that God came among us and remains with us today!
Who have been the "good men" and women in your life? Who are the people who have helped you when there was little in it for them? How else have you experienced God in those you know?
A Psalm of David - The Inescapable God - Psalm 139 (selected verses)
O Lord you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down,
you are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
Where can I hide from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from you presence?
If I ascend to the heavens, you are there.
If I take wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
Search me, O God and know my heart;
Test me and know my thoughts.. . .
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Having sung or chanted the entire psalter each week for many years, this psalm of King David, along with psalm 50 (David’s Prayer of Contrition) have always returned my own spirit to the loving womb of God. I call it the Old Testament version of Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son. For me, a person who in some ways is very self critical with both failing and talents, the psalm is a reminder that God loves me anyway, as have other souls over the years.
How often I have said (or heard it from others) I wish I could live my life over again. God does not want me or any of us to live our lives over again. God wants me to be free and genuine. Even when I have wanted to run from God, or the Atonement family in my soul’s trying moments. I could not, for Atonement exemplifies the womb of God, the inescapable love I cannot run away from that the psalm speaks of.
I told my family, grand nieces and nephews on down, not long ago that I cannot attend all their weddings, etc. I wish them well and hold them in prayer. I received a couple replies, like, “well if you weren’t so involved with your church, or made a pledge to it, you could do more family things. You need to get a life.” I answered back: “Atonement is my life.” What hit me emotionally was that when I ordained and a religious in vows, the family was proud to see me take on a life apart from them. It was like some could not see that the laity are asked to live the same spirit of the gospel.
It is sometimes painful to open the door of your heart. The Atonement community has done much to fill my heart at a time of great void during a huge change in my life. I am so thankful the inescapable God continues to hold the door open for me.
Recall a time when you tried to escape the inescapable love of God?How has your Atonement family blessed you in a time of void?
- Chris P.
Here's another reflection in our series, this one from D. Kruse.
Growing in Faithfulness - 1 Thessalonians 1:2-10
We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of people we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place where your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
I Thessalonians is the earliest letter of Paul we have. It gives us a first-hand account of how things happened in one of the first Christian communities. This fact gives the letter a kind of primacy in my mind.
Paul wrote the letter around the year 51, less than 20 years after the death of Jesus. It’s hard to understand how much that death shocked the followers of Jesus. Only a small group of them stayed together the night and day after Jesus died. Pentecost, as described in Acts 2, tells us what happened to them. The existence of I Thessalonians demonstrates it. Within 20 years, the little group expanded into a string of Christian communities spanning the 900 miles between Jerusalem and Thessalonika in Greece.
Evidently, the Spirit quickens the spreading of the Good News.
But it was Paul (with his companions) who traveled and whose voice told the story. What kind of collaboration developed between Paul and the Spirit? A crucial question because it’s our turn now, collectively and individually, to do the traveling and the telling.
The traveling part is simple these days. We open the door and we go out. That’s far enough. There’s plenty to do right there. Often it involves responding to needs: poverty, hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, loneliness. In other cases, it requires contributing to the public debate, advocating for the forgotten or despised or outcast, pointing out the need for legal or structural changes, or demanding such changes to correct inequities, prejudice or damage to our environment.
If I maintain an intimate connection with the spirit, I will be able to correct my course where I find myself projecting my own anger on the world. If we collectively foster our intimacy with the Spirit, we will not have to hesitate when people ask, “Where is all this activity coming from?”
Last Saturday some people from MoTA took Thanksgiving dinner to Our Mother’s House (for mothers engaged in prostitution). I wasn’t there, but I hear that one of the mothers asked, “Where did all of this come from? It must have been a Church.” If you are traveling these next few days be safe. Think of how you can take your thankfulness to others?
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