I am currently on vacation and will not be at my office hours this week.
Upon my return times and locations will be moved around.
Starting August 31st I will be at Ennui Cafe Tuesday evenings 7:30 to 9:30 pm.
I will be at Metropolis coffee Thursday Afternoons 3:30-5:30 pm.
And Friday early afternoons at the Coffee Studio on Clark at Hollywood, starting September 18th.
Wednesday, August 26
Friday, August 21
Health Care Reform
I have also posted my current thoughts on health care reform on my Priestly Goth Blog. Those are my personal opinions and they inform what I would say pastorally but they are not intended as that on my blog.
As a pastor and minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ I remind all that for the Church and as disciples of Christ we must begin our thinking with Jesus' and God's concern for the "least of these", and the poor. Given this it seems that the staggering numbers of those who are without insurance and that among those are people working two perhaps more jobs to support their families and who cannot afford basic health care nor the insurance that would enable them to afford basic health care, is unacceptable given this need to care for the least of these. We as Christians should be concerned about this situation. A public option is one way to address this issue. The Gospel and any moral mandate does not though demand a public option, what is demanded is that we make choices not out of our own self preservation but out of a sense of justice and righteousness and a care for the outcast stranger, poor and other. Those who are Christian and oppose a public option then need to offer ways in which such an opposition is more than simply passing by on the other side of the road convinced that there is nothing we can do to help, and being self-satisfied in our private and personal charity. In part this is so because still a majority of people claim to be Christian in this country, which means that there is a good chance that Christians are among those who profit off a system that in the least is as concerned with making a profit as it is for peoples health. This also means that Christians are also among those who cannot afford health care and are without insurance. If we simply oppose health care reform based on some sense that the church and personal charity should fill in the gaps of our for profit system, it is clear that this is not happening, that we are not providing care for those who do not have access to it. Show how the churches and their institutions and members are stepping in and providing the care for those our system does not care for and I will listen.
Yet for those who support health care reform, I urge caution. We should ask from a Christian POV how much power should we give the government. Even well meaning politicians and rulers can make selfish and power appropriating decisions in the name of the Good. In the Revised Common Lectionary in year B we have been following the story of the Kings of Israel starting with Saul and now reading about Solomon, all duly appointed and anointed of God, all in varying degrees failed to act in true justice and righteousness, and found the temptations of power to be too great to resist. I do not think we as Christians can ignore the dangers of increasing the ways in which a government can have a say in our day to day lives. Justice and the Gospel do not call us to accept whatever a legislature may give us as possible reform. Our scriptures give us a healthy dose skepticism even of good government.
So as we as followers of Christ seek to wade through this current morass two things we need to keep in mind: that we are called away from self preservation and moved to seek to help and care for the least of these and the poor, and government and the power to do something does not make it necessarily just, even if it is well intentioned and done by a legitimate power structure.
For us at Reconciler I suggest that perhaps we use this current legislation as a case study for our fall study on Biblical and Christian perspectives on government and justice, and take the time to examine the ins and outs and the justice of the proposed legislation.
As a pastor and minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ I remind all that for the Church and as disciples of Christ we must begin our thinking with Jesus' and God's concern for the "least of these", and the poor. Given this it seems that the staggering numbers of those who are without insurance and that among those are people working two perhaps more jobs to support their families and who cannot afford basic health care nor the insurance that would enable them to afford basic health care, is unacceptable given this need to care for the least of these. We as Christians should be concerned about this situation. A public option is one way to address this issue. The Gospel and any moral mandate does not though demand a public option, what is demanded is that we make choices not out of our own self preservation but out of a sense of justice and righteousness and a care for the outcast stranger, poor and other. Those who are Christian and oppose a public option then need to offer ways in which such an opposition is more than simply passing by on the other side of the road convinced that there is nothing we can do to help, and being self-satisfied in our private and personal charity. In part this is so because still a majority of people claim to be Christian in this country, which means that there is a good chance that Christians are among those who profit off a system that in the least is as concerned with making a profit as it is for peoples health. This also means that Christians are also among those who cannot afford health care and are without insurance. If we simply oppose health care reform based on some sense that the church and personal charity should fill in the gaps of our for profit system, it is clear that this is not happening, that we are not providing care for those who do not have access to it. Show how the churches and their institutions and members are stepping in and providing the care for those our system does not care for and I will listen.
Yet for those who support health care reform, I urge caution. We should ask from a Christian POV how much power should we give the government. Even well meaning politicians and rulers can make selfish and power appropriating decisions in the name of the Good. In the Revised Common Lectionary in year B we have been following the story of the Kings of Israel starting with Saul and now reading about Solomon, all duly appointed and anointed of God, all in varying degrees failed to act in true justice and righteousness, and found the temptations of power to be too great to resist. I do not think we as Christians can ignore the dangers of increasing the ways in which a government can have a say in our day to day lives. Justice and the Gospel do not call us to accept whatever a legislature may give us as possible reform. Our scriptures give us a healthy dose skepticism even of good government.
So as we as followers of Christ seek to wade through this current morass two things we need to keep in mind: that we are called away from self preservation and moved to seek to help and care for the least of these and the poor, and government and the power to do something does not make it necessarily just, even if it is well intentioned and done by a legitimate power structure.
For us at Reconciler I suggest that perhaps we use this current legislation as a case study for our fall study on Biblical and Christian perspectives on government and justice, and take the time to examine the ins and outs and the justice of the proposed legislation.
Friday, August 14
Glennwood Ave. Arts Fest
We have a booth at the 8th annual Glennwood Arts Fest. Arists Clove, Kate Setzer Kamphausen and Larry Kamphausen will be showing their work. Members of the congregation are staffing the booth with the artists. Come out and see us and enjoy the festival, Saturday August 22 and Sunday August 23rd noon to 8pm.
This is our second time at the festival. In 2007 it was a fun time, and there are always great artists.
This is our second time at the festival. In 2007 it was a fun time, and there are always great artists.
Thursday, August 13
Sermon Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 9 2009
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
The tragedy of the story of David and Absalom is palpable, choices of both David and Absalom lead to Absalom’s death. This past week we remembered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrific end to a horrific war. A whole slew of human choices lead us to that point. So often our choices as human beings collectively and individually lead to tragedy. In history, whether of Israel or our own we are confronted with the tragedy of so much of human existence. I say this at the top because neither the story in Samuel nor the memorial of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the numerous horrors of WWII, not the least being the concentration camps, should be passed over in silence, yet this is not where I want to linger. So, acknowledging that much in this world as it has always been and is not as they should be I direct us to contemplate living in faith, a faith that should satisfy all our longings a faith that leads us to be as children towards God.
This is perhaps challenging view of faith; faith is in this view is neither simply holding certain comforting beliefs about the supernatural world and being, nor is it ones own fundamental belief about the nature of the world. This view of faith challenges us by this exhortation to be like children. What might this mean: As we grow up one of the things we desire is independence. This is especially so for us within our culture that emphasizes individuality, self-sufficiency, and independence. We want to be different from our parents, be on our own, blaze our own trail. Yet in growing up our ability to become self-sufficient and independent is a dependent process. It depends on not only one’s parents but an entire functioning system that is the adult world, which even as one grows up one both wants to enter into and rebel against. Our emphasis on independence and individuality, at times hides from us the ways in which becoming our own person depend on what we push against in this process of individuation. Our ability to become different and move out on our own from our parents depends on the care nurture, and teaching of our parents and other adults. Dependence on others never really ceases, and who we are is due to who others are and how we have been raised, and the options we have been shown. But we often hide ourselves from these webs of dependence, or downplay connection and debt of those who have gone before. This tendency to not see the web of dependence may hide from us a radical notion in our Epistle and Gospel. According to Paul and Jesus we are not meant to become independent of God. Our flowering and fulfillment as human persons depends on God and being in true relationship with God.
This sort of faith is what we reflected on last week, as that faith brings us to the waters of baptism and from the waters of baptism that our faith is sustained. Paul directs our attention to this faith as a calling as Christians members of the body of Christ. In speaking of calling I am not necessarily talking about a specific call from God to do a certain thing with your life or a period of your life, but that call which is shared by all Christians as members of the church. Paul describes what that should look like, and that this way of being is known in seeking to be imitators of God, the way children imitate adults.
Jesus in Johns Gospel pushes further on what is perhaps objectionable about Christianity: the claim that there is only one who gives life to us and the world. There is only one who gives life to the world and as such we are only to have hunger for that one. This assertion of Christ’s reveals to us one of the things that is most difficult to keep attuned to in Christian faith: our responsibility and our dependence. God is the source of all life and existence; Christ is God, the Word who sustains everything. Yet, Ephesians reminds us that all in all of Christ does not negate the importance of our actions. While it is true that God in Jesus Christ is the one who gives life to the world, if we live in death, this life not only doesn't come to us there is that potential that those who we know and the world and the world around us continues to taste death.
According to the Apostle Paul, once we understand all God has done in Jesus Christ once we have received God in Jesus Christ in faith and baptism and recognize that we are part of the people of God, the bodiy of Christ the Temple of the Holy Spirit, we then are to act in ways consistent with this reality, with life. As children we learned from adults around us what it meant to be human and human acculturated into a particular culture, we learned what it meant to be a man or a woman, how to treat people. In fact even as we wanted to be independent we also wanted to act like the adults around us. This is a complex process and there is choosing and sometimes this imitation is not of parents or a blood relative. Imitation can also be something asked up us. Someone gives us a piece of candy or bread and we are instructed to say "Thank you." We want something and the parent will tell the child "say, please may I have some candy." or we tell our children say good buy. Imitation takes on the both subtle things that a parent or another adult may not even be aware of, those things that very from culture to culture but aren't at the front of the mind, and the child imitates, and we take on delight when we see a child mimic some subtleties of someone’s personality. It is through imitation that we learn what it is to be human and what our culture understands to be appropriate human behavior. Paul's instruction here is about imitation, not of human beings but of God. God is the adult world we are to be acculturated to as Christians. We are to become like God, this is the point of faith and Baptism.
We may struggle with the reality that becoming like God is a childlike activity. Accepting this journey of faith accepts our dependence upon a reality outside ourselves, which we can not wholly grasp, comprehend, or control. The language of both our Epistle and Gospel tells us that our relation to God is always like being a child in the adult world. These passages also reminds us that our actions matter although the source of our ability to act in these ways is dependent on another reality, another person, God. When Jesus says that the one who will eat of his flesh, which is the bread of heaven, will no longer hunger is to point to the centrality of this dependence, and also that only God in Jesus Christ satisfies us allows us to be who we truly are to be. Just as children cannot become who they are to be without the nurture support and example of adults around them.
Paul's instruction is what we are to look like Christ as we are sustained by Christ. As we are given life, even as we still find that we are hungering after other things than God, We are to seek only after God to satisfy all we are and desire. Perhaps this feels limiting and constricting? Perhaps this is too much? We want our passions and hungers, they seem to give us life, but they exhaust us and never ultimately satisfy. The one of whom we are to eat and let satisfy our hunger sustains us, and is the creator of the entire universe, all that we see, of our very beings, thus is only what can ultimately satisfy our desires. The truth that in comparison to God we are like infants and toddlers all of humanity: we don't know anything about how to be, or what to eat, or how to live. Only in Christ only by allowing Jesus Christ to satisfy us completely, only by focusing on who God is, seeking to imitate and be sustained by God, can we know what true desire is, and what it means to be truly human. At times certainly this restrains, but like a parent who keeps a child from chasing their favorite ball out into a busy street this sense of restriction is safety and life. In some fashion our culture sees all this when we focus on righting injustices and seek after justice. Yet as a society as a whole in seeking for justice we aren't looking beyond ourselves but solely relying on our human understanding, as if children could know how to be adult without first imitating adult behavior. Our desire for justice is true but we do not want to look to the one who in Jesus Christ’s life death and resurrection showed us the meaning and source of the only justice that deserves the name. The Christian claim the claim of Jesus Christ and his Apostle Paul is that we cannot know life and justice without first learning of them from God, and being sustained by the very flesh of God. Or we have no ability to truly change ourselves and the world, unless, as some mystics have put it, we suckle on the very breasts of God. Amen.
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
The tragedy of the story of David and Absalom is palpable, choices of both David and Absalom lead to Absalom’s death. This past week we remembered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrific end to a horrific war. A whole slew of human choices lead us to that point. So often our choices as human beings collectively and individually lead to tragedy. In history, whether of Israel or our own we are confronted with the tragedy of so much of human existence. I say this at the top because neither the story in Samuel nor the memorial of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the numerous horrors of WWII, not the least being the concentration camps, should be passed over in silence, yet this is not where I want to linger. So, acknowledging that much in this world as it has always been and is not as they should be I direct us to contemplate living in faith, a faith that should satisfy all our longings a faith that leads us to be as children towards God.
This is perhaps challenging view of faith; faith is in this view is neither simply holding certain comforting beliefs about the supernatural world and being, nor is it ones own fundamental belief about the nature of the world. This view of faith challenges us by this exhortation to be like children. What might this mean: As we grow up one of the things we desire is independence. This is especially so for us within our culture that emphasizes individuality, self-sufficiency, and independence. We want to be different from our parents, be on our own, blaze our own trail. Yet in growing up our ability to become self-sufficient and independent is a dependent process. It depends on not only one’s parents but an entire functioning system that is the adult world, which even as one grows up one both wants to enter into and rebel against. Our emphasis on independence and individuality, at times hides from us the ways in which becoming our own person depend on what we push against in this process of individuation. Our ability to become different and move out on our own from our parents depends on the care nurture, and teaching of our parents and other adults. Dependence on others never really ceases, and who we are is due to who others are and how we have been raised, and the options we have been shown. But we often hide ourselves from these webs of dependence, or downplay connection and debt of those who have gone before. This tendency to not see the web of dependence may hide from us a radical notion in our Epistle and Gospel. According to Paul and Jesus we are not meant to become independent of God. Our flowering and fulfillment as human persons depends on God and being in true relationship with God.
This sort of faith is what we reflected on last week, as that faith brings us to the waters of baptism and from the waters of baptism that our faith is sustained. Paul directs our attention to this faith as a calling as Christians members of the body of Christ. In speaking of calling I am not necessarily talking about a specific call from God to do a certain thing with your life or a period of your life, but that call which is shared by all Christians as members of the church. Paul describes what that should look like, and that this way of being is known in seeking to be imitators of God, the way children imitate adults.
Jesus in Johns Gospel pushes further on what is perhaps objectionable about Christianity: the claim that there is only one who gives life to us and the world. There is only one who gives life to the world and as such we are only to have hunger for that one. This assertion of Christ’s reveals to us one of the things that is most difficult to keep attuned to in Christian faith: our responsibility and our dependence. God is the source of all life and existence; Christ is God, the Word who sustains everything. Yet, Ephesians reminds us that all in all of Christ does not negate the importance of our actions. While it is true that God in Jesus Christ is the one who gives life to the world, if we live in death, this life not only doesn't come to us there is that potential that those who we know and the world and the world around us continues to taste death.
According to the Apostle Paul, once we understand all God has done in Jesus Christ once we have received God in Jesus Christ in faith and baptism and recognize that we are part of the people of God, the bodiy of Christ the Temple of the Holy Spirit, we then are to act in ways consistent with this reality, with life. As children we learned from adults around us what it meant to be human and human acculturated into a particular culture, we learned what it meant to be a man or a woman, how to treat people. In fact even as we wanted to be independent we also wanted to act like the adults around us. This is a complex process and there is choosing and sometimes this imitation is not of parents or a blood relative. Imitation can also be something asked up us. Someone gives us a piece of candy or bread and we are instructed to say "Thank you." We want something and the parent will tell the child "say, please may I have some candy." or we tell our children say good buy. Imitation takes on the both subtle things that a parent or another adult may not even be aware of, those things that very from culture to culture but aren't at the front of the mind, and the child imitates, and we take on delight when we see a child mimic some subtleties of someone’s personality. It is through imitation that we learn what it is to be human and what our culture understands to be appropriate human behavior. Paul's instruction here is about imitation, not of human beings but of God. God is the adult world we are to be acculturated to as Christians. We are to become like God, this is the point of faith and Baptism.
We may struggle with the reality that becoming like God is a childlike activity. Accepting this journey of faith accepts our dependence upon a reality outside ourselves, which we can not wholly grasp, comprehend, or control. The language of both our Epistle and Gospel tells us that our relation to God is always like being a child in the adult world. These passages also reminds us that our actions matter although the source of our ability to act in these ways is dependent on another reality, another person, God. When Jesus says that the one who will eat of his flesh, which is the bread of heaven, will no longer hunger is to point to the centrality of this dependence, and also that only God in Jesus Christ satisfies us allows us to be who we truly are to be. Just as children cannot become who they are to be without the nurture support and example of adults around them.
Paul's instruction is what we are to look like Christ as we are sustained by Christ. As we are given life, even as we still find that we are hungering after other things than God, We are to seek only after God to satisfy all we are and desire. Perhaps this feels limiting and constricting? Perhaps this is too much? We want our passions and hungers, they seem to give us life, but they exhaust us and never ultimately satisfy. The one of whom we are to eat and let satisfy our hunger sustains us, and is the creator of the entire universe, all that we see, of our very beings, thus is only what can ultimately satisfy our desires. The truth that in comparison to God we are like infants and toddlers all of humanity: we don't know anything about how to be, or what to eat, or how to live. Only in Christ only by allowing Jesus Christ to satisfy us completely, only by focusing on who God is, seeking to imitate and be sustained by God, can we know what true desire is, and what it means to be truly human. At times certainly this restrains, but like a parent who keeps a child from chasing their favorite ball out into a busy street this sense of restriction is safety and life. In some fashion our culture sees all this when we focus on righting injustices and seek after justice. Yet as a society as a whole in seeking for justice we aren't looking beyond ourselves but solely relying on our human understanding, as if children could know how to be adult without first imitating adult behavior. Our desire for justice is true but we do not want to look to the one who in Jesus Christ’s life death and resurrection showed us the meaning and source of the only justice that deserves the name. The Christian claim the claim of Jesus Christ and his Apostle Paul is that we cannot know life and justice without first learning of them from God, and being sustained by the very flesh of God. Or we have no ability to truly change ourselves and the world, unless, as some mystics have put it, we suckle on the very breasts of God. Amen.
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