February 29, 2008
the irs and the ucc...presidential tango
Welcome to the church, my friends.
Obama speech to denominationAnd this is how the separation of church and state works. Not that I think that the UCC has done anything inappropriate...well, nothing they thought was inappropriate at least. But as we push the separation more and more, agencies like the IRS will finally enforce the laws that have been unenforced for lo these many years. This is what no favoritism looks like. Now, how "ecclesial profiling" will get into the news cycle I don't know. But we should expect it.
spurs IRS investigation of UCCBy Robert Marus
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A speech that Barack Obama made last year to his fellow Congregationalists has spurred an Internal Revenue Service investigation that threatens the tax-exempt status of an entire denomination.
Leaders of the Illinois senator’s United Church of Christ are fighting back, saying the IRS charges are baseless and “disturbing.”
In a letter dated Feb. 20 and received by church officials Feb. 25, IRS official Marsha Ramirez said “a reasonable belief exists” that the denomination violated federal law. Churches and other non-profit groups organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code are barred from endorsing or opposing candidates and political parties.
The UCC is generally considered the nation’s most liberal large Protestant body. Obama has been an active member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades. Trinity is the UCC’s largest congregation.
In the IRS letter, Ramirez said the agency’s concerns “are based on articles posted on several websites” that described Obama’s June 23 appearance at the UCC’s biennial General Synod meeting in Hartford, Conn. The senator -- by then an announced Democratic candidate for president -- spoke to about 10,000 church members, according to the denomination and news accounts.
But UCC officials said they took pains to ensure that the speech was not perceived as a campaign event or an endorsement of the candidate.
Obama was invited “as one of 60 diverse speakers representing the arts, media, academia, science, technology, business and government. Each was asked to reflect on the intersection of their faith and their respective vocations or fields of expertise,” a UCC news release said. It also said church officials invited Obama as a church member rather than in his capacity as a candidate and said they asked him to speak a year before he declared his intention to run for higher office.
“The United Church of Christ took great care to ensure that Sen. Obama’s appearance before the … General Synod met appropriate legal and moral standards,” UCC General Minister John Thomas said in the news release. “We are confident that the IRS investigation will confirm that no laws were violated.”
Prior to the speech, a church official told the crowd that the appearance was not intended to be a campaign event and that campaign-related material and other forms of electioneering would not be allowed inside the event venue.
The IRS letter claimed that “40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside” the Hartford Civic Center, where the event was held. But church officials said they barred any campaigning inside the venue.
Thomas said that, while he believes the investigation will ultimately acquit the denomination, he nonetheless is concerned about its effect.
“The very fact of” the investigation’s existence “is disturbing," Thomas said. “When the invitation to an elected public official to speak to the national meeting of his own church family is called into question, it has a chilling effect on every religious community that seeks to encourage politicians and church members to thoughtfully relate their personal faith to their public responsibilities.”
IRS officials do not discuss such investigations with the press because tax information is private. But several ministries and local congregations have been warned and investigated in recent years for electioneering.
The agency is currently investigating Southern Baptist pastor Wiley Drake for using church letterhead and a church-sponsored radio show to endorse Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
Last year, the IRS ended an investigation without any sanctions against All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif. It had been under investigation for a guest sermon its former rector had given just before the 2004 presidential election. In it, he strongly criticized the war in Iraq but said he believed that both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, were good Christians.
IRS officials contended that the sermon amounted to an endorsement of Kerry over Bush. The church contested the charge. In a September letter to the congregation announcing that it was ending its investigation without penalty, IRS officials said they continued to believe the church had illegally intervened in the election.
All Saints’ legal defense ended up costing more than $200,000, according to church leaders. Anticipating a similar financial burden for the UCC, Thomas sent an appeal Feb. 27 to church members asking them to donate to a special legal-defense fund.
“In order to adequately defend ourselves, as well as protect the broader principle of the freedom of religious communities to entertain questions of faith and public life, we will need to secure expert legal counsel, and the cost of this defense, we are told, could approach or exceed six figures," Thomas wrote. “This is troubling news.”
Man pulled over by police, "profiling" revealed him to be a suspect in political rally scheme. Quoted as saying "Just because I wear a cassock doesn't make me a criminal!" More at www.CNN.com.Yeah, something like that.
February 28, 2008
separation anxiety
Where Calvin would eventually go awry would be in making this policy one for the entire city of Geneva. There would be a Christian litmus test of sorts with proper allegiance being to the church as proper for the citizenry as well.
February 27, 2008
more thesis: gotta have max
Max Thurian, in The Eucharistic Memorial, suggests that Calvin's theology of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist is derived "from a sermon attributed to Chrysostom by Erasmus and printed in the edition of his works published at Basel in 1530."
February 26, 2008
sign language...
This Thursday I will be taking part in a panel discussion about language and privilege. I am, as has been advertised, the token straight male white guy....and a Baptist Minister (horrors!) as well.
Language and Privilege: A Panel Discussion
Feb 28, 2008
6:00 PM - 8:00 PMHave you ever been in a situation where you were not allowed to say or sign something because it was not the proper thing due to your own background? Have you ever been offended by someone's statement because he or she may not belong to your linguistic community? Have you ever been unsure of the right thing to say? How do we empower ourselves through our language without dictating the way other's use language? This panel brings to the table members of varying language communities so they may share their experiences with language and the privilege that language provides. Q & A follows.
Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash, 8th Floor,
312.344.7837
It should be a great time. Go here for details (Scroll down to Thursday for the listing.). I am really looking forward to it. One of our newcomers is an ASL interpreter and I am trying to find ways to incorporate ASL interpretation in the Sunday services. We'll give it our first shot on Easter Sunday. That should be great. To prepare me for what it may look like, she sent me this video. Wow...what if church were half this fun on Easter?
thesis-ing
As essential as the regular frequency of the observance may have been to Calvin, Barth suggests that this was not Calvin’s principal concern. In stead, the principal concern was the purity of the church, the worthiness of the congregant to come forward. “The institution of the Lord’s Supper has as its aim the uniting of the members of Christ to their Head and the uniting among themselves as one body and spirit. But this union must not be stained and besmirched by the participation of those whose evil lives declare that they do not belong to Jesus.”
February 25, 2008
monday videoblog: beach blanket bingo
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February 24, 2008
sermon: digging out
Sermon: Third Sunday of Lent, Year A
The Community Church of Wilmette
February 24, 2008
John 4:5-42
Digging Out
There is something about a well. It’s a rich symbol, practical and yet mysterious, frightening and yet life-giving. We dig them. We cover them. We send Jack and Jill up a hill to fetch a pail of water from a well. We fall into them.
There is a really deep well inside me.
And in it dwells God.
Sometimes I am there, too.
But often stones and grit block the well,
and God is buried beneath.
Then God must be dug out again. – Etty Hillesum
There is a well on my father’s property. Actually, there are two now. The first one dried up and Daddy had to have another one, a deeper one, dug in the back yard. Out in the country where he lives there are no water mains, no civil infrastructure to provide water for everyone. People live too far apart. So, every family has their own well.
Like I said, the first one dried up. It was a hot and dry summer and the well was at the top of a hill. One day it just ran dry. That’s all. There wasn’t enough rain and the water table dropped. So, there was no water for the house. And it made no sense to wait for the rain to come…though that might have made a great sermon illustration if he had.
My father decided that such a dry spell would be a relatively frequent occurrence, so he had someone come out and dig another well. This one would be dug deep into the ground, much deeper than the old well. We wouldn’t want it to dry out. It was such a good idea. Truly. But something interesting happened. The water from that deep in the ground is rich in minerals, too rich. It has to be filtered to make it drinkable. It leaves a coppery residue on anything that is not cleaned regularly. The well water corrodes and stains.
Digging a well is a complicated business. It’s not as simple as walking around with a dousing rod in your yard and then digging a hole in the ground. Sometimes you dig and find nothing. Wells run dry. Wells tap into undrinkable water. Their capstones crumble and become hidden hazards in the woods, deep and dark holes into which people fall. What is meant to bring life for a community (Picture a bucolic village with a lovely well in the village square. People gather at the well. They gossip and charm one another. They do business there. They quench their thirst there.) may also become a place of fear.
In the movie Batman Begins, the boy Bruce Wayne falls into a deep well. It had been covered and hidden in the family garden, but somehow he fell in. The well led to a cave and in the cave were bats. The young Bruce Wayne would develop a phobia of bats because of his experience in this deep well. Batman begins.
Today we encounter Jacob’s well…and at the well is a woman. She is an outcast, forced by virtue of her being a Samaritan and her marital status to the fringe of the community. So, she gathers her water in the heat of the day.
So often this passage is interpreted to be about right marital practice...or less vaguely, sex. This story, however, may not actually be about sex. Someone recently reminded me that sex is the subject we love to talk about not talking about. And this is one of the favorite stories about how we don’t talk about sex. So we won’t.
What if this story is not about sexual morality? What if there is something else at work?
Jesus approaches the woman as comfortably as he would approach his own mother. She is completely taken aback. And she says as much.
“The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)The first impulse she has is to challenge the religious identity that separates them. Samaritans, if you recall, were the remnant of those who stayed in Israel during the Babylonian Exile. They intermarried with non-Jews. They worshiped in a different Temple and the scriptures they deemed legitimate were different as well. This should sound like familiar territory to many of us.
The woman’s instinctive push back against Jesus is religious. “We don’t belong together.” She seems to be saying. “Aren’t I supposed to be unclean or something?” You can almost hear the venom in her tone. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" This is a religious debate that they are having and not a discussion on sexual morality.
But Jesus is unrelenting. He tells her who he is. He is the person that has been promised to all God’s Creation. And he tells her who she is (this is the sex part we’re talking about not talking about) and that God loves her. And in this exchange, the religious divide between them is gone. His love for her, his intimacy and comfort with her, and his acceptance of who she is and where she is overcomes the religious divide. Healing in her life is made possible.
This is the most important piece of this story. Like the blind and the lame, this woman is healed of what has burdened her. The segregation with which she has lived for so long is lifted. Following this exchange with Jesus she no longer hides on the fringes of society. She becomes an evangelist…one who proclaims good news: “Have Hope! God is here!” And those who hear her believe and they too are transformed.
Religious divides are often the most profound. And people who have been shunned because of religious differences are often deeply wounded. We know that here at Community Church. We know how someone can suffer under the burden of religious difference. Some of us call ourselves “recovering Catholics” or “recovering fundamentalists.” Perhaps we are “church damaged.” We say we are spiritual but not religious. Maybe you are a woman who has never felt welcome in Christianity. Maybe you are gay, queer, or lesbian. There are countless divisions. There are many stories.
The gift of today’s story is this: Such division does not belong to God. Such division is our own creation.
Such division is like throwing stones in a well, or covering it with boards and dirt. We bury God and ourselves in the process of trying to shut one another out. This is always the fruit of acting in fear.
Christ knows that the wells we drink from are often Tainted.
We Survive, but we don’t Thrive.
Somehow we are still thirsty no matter how often we drink.
But Jesus offers us living water. Jesus offers us the gift of the Love of God…Love, Faith, Hope and a Family of believers to call Home.
People, even the disciples have difficulty accepting this. What seems so obvious is incredibly challenging. There are spiritual and religious differences between us. Sometimes those differences serve simply as distinctions…like having a favorite color. Sometimes, however, they divide us deeply. How we each come to God, understand God, or encounter God is precious and to be cherished. The stories and experiences of faith are dear to us - intimate and life giving. How we navigate that part of our life together is essential to who we are as a congregation. It is essential to who we are as a people.
Can there be a more important message in our time?
When armies gather and cities are razed to the ground in the Name of God,
we
must
proclaim
something
else.
We must join the Samaritan woman and proclaim the presence of God in our midst. We must step across the lines that divide us and shout: “Have Hope! God is here!”
The divisions are real. And they are dangerous. Dangerous people gather the poor and fearful around them promising them water that will not satisfy their thirst. Governments respond in fear. In their acts of violence they do nothing more than cover the wells that would sustain us. And in these wells they bury their own sons and daughters. In these wells they bury God. Thus we are all impoverished. We are all made fearful.
We are called to dig out.
We are called as God’s own Children to help the world dig out…to clean out the wells, to uncover God, to uncover the Love that exists for one another. We must join the Samaritan woman, our sister, and shout: “God is here! Have hope!”
We must come to understand this is part of our vocation at Community Church. Navigating difference, healing the wounds that religion can cause, is part of who we are and perhaps always have been.
The Annual Program Meeting is tonight. This is the time of the year where we return to the well with one another. We look to the past and envision the future. This is when we are challenged to ask the question: What has filled our well? Is our well filled with stones and debris, or is our well overflowing with, living water, the messianic promise, the coming of God and of Christ’s Love? Is our well filled with Hope? We gather tonight to re-encounter who we are.
We are called to minister to the “church damaged.”
We are called to be a witness to Christ’s kindness to those who may find themselves on the outside of communities for any reason, be it gender or sexual orientation, age or politics, economics or race.
We are called together to help one another dig out.
We are called to minister to Wilmette, to help it dig out its own well.
We are called to minister to the world.
We are called to dig out.
There is a really deep well inside me.
And in it dwells God.
Sometimes I am there, too.
But often stones and grit block the well,
and God is buried beneath.
Then God must be dug out again. – Etty Hillesum
Amen.
February 23, 2008
paschal mystery
Life and death...institutions struggle with issues of life and death all the time. Institutions are born, they live, they die...and sometimes they resurrect. Sometimes the shift in management/structure/vision is so dramatic at an institution that it has to die in order to change. It must die and then be resurrected, a new creation.
I don't know the specifics of the goings on at Seabury right now. And I'm not entirely sure I want or need to. Selfishly I am simply glad that I can complete my thesis this year and still receive my 2004 MTS degree. A little more compassion in my vision reveals a deep love and concern for Seabury and the potential it has always possessed...skills and scholarship it has to offer to the Church Universal. I hope that the people on the current planning committee can resurrect Seabury.
No...that's not it.
Yesterday at CCW a group of clergy gathered to talk about church growth and development. We are all baptists trying to work and pray our way through re-invigorating our older churches. We've agreed to meet every 4-6 weeks and pray and talk together. Each congregation represented is at least 100 years old (or nigh upon it like CCW at 95). We talked about history and what is in the congregations' DNA...both the good and the bad. Like with any individual, there is the functional and dysfunctional. Also, as with any individual, what was once functional may have become dysfunctional. And somehow the pastor fits in with both functional and dysfunctional aspects of a congregation.
We spoke of metanoia...the "changing of one's mind," or "repentance." Is an ecclesial U-turn in order?
We spoke of prayer and how it is central to the process of ministering to a congregation. Even those among us skeptical of intercessory prayer ("Isn't God already at work doing what is best for Creation? I need to pray that I can discern and participate in what God is doing.") agreed that prayer is key in all of this. Why? Well, we all agreed that in the end, it is God who will have to put all these places together again. Whenever we try to "fix things" we stumble and fall. Inevitably, the Holy Spirit is wiser than we. Go dis at work. How do we join in? Can we be God's servants and let our own agenda fall to the wayside?
I imagine the same is true for SWTS. There is a lot of work to be done to fulfill God's vision for Seabury. One piece of that work is to discern what God is doing there. What does God want from SWTS and can the people called to ministry there trust, pray, and hope their way into God's vision? There's surely a ton to do...I know this. And I have faith that those responsible for Seabury's welfare are asking these questions...have been asking these questions.
SWTS is 150 years old...There is a lot of history, function and dysfunction at work. Sorting through all of this will take time, patience and wisdom...and the presence of God with all our prayers.
If you can, keep all involved in your prayers. Faculty...will they need new jobs ASAP? Staff, administration...Good grief, but it gets complicated very quickly...Pray for the students who relocated only to have to relocate again...amazing.
May God bring life into old bones. May Seabury be God's new creation in Evanston for all the Church.
February 22, 2008
all I know about it...
Frank posted the letter from the Dean. Here is the text:
February 20, 2008It's a sad day to say the least. I am fearful for my friends and professors. No one knows exactly how this will play out but it does not look good. AKMA is talking about it as well. I pray that it is a metamorphosis and not closing. Transformation, metanoia, is a generous process...difficult but generous. Closing just plain sucks. Yeah...let's hope for transformation and a new vision.To: Students, Faculty, and Staff of Seabury
The Board of Trustees of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary spent two days at its regular February meeting in discussion of the immediate opportunities and challenges before the seminary. There are, first, enormously creative opportunities facing seminaries today. Many areas of the church are developing new ways both of doing and preparing for ministry. And multiple church groups continue to call for a new range of educational services from our institutions of theological education: continuing education for clergy, lay education, distance learning, and consulting services for congregations and dioceses.
At the same time, all the seminaries of the Episcopal Church face real economic and missional challenges. The stand-alone residential model developed in the nineteenth century is becoming unsustainable for most of our institutions. Bishops, congregations, and seminarians have fewer resources to allot to the education of seminarians. And the cost of theological education has
resulted in an unprecedented level of student debt.Like many other Episcopal Church institutions, over the past two decades Seabury has both confronted and thought hard about how it can adapt to the challenges and opportunities of the present moment. We have come to the realization that we cannot continue to operate as we have in the past and that there is both loss and good news in that. We believe that the church does not need Seabury in its present form; there are a number of other schools who do what we have traditionally done as well as we do. But we also believe that the church very much needs a seminary animated by and organized around a new vision of theological education—one that is centered in a vision of Baptism and its implications for the whole church, one which is flexible and adaptive and collaborative in nature. We are committed to Seabury’s historic and ongoing ministry as a vital center of theological education, reflection, and congregational study. We are enthusiastic about the prospect of doing this in a new and, we hope, more economically feasible and pedagogically innovative way. At its heart, Seabury will always be a school in service of the mission of God as proclaimed and enacted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
At our regular February meeting, the Board adopted the following resolution:
The Board, having heard a report by the Dean as to the state of Seabury and the rapidly changing and expanding needs for theological education in the Episcopal Church, and being deeply mindful of its mission responsibilities for the operation of the seminary, and the uses of the seminary’s resources, hereby resolves:
1. The Dean is directed to prepare and present to the Board, on or before the next scheduled meeting, a detailed plan for the future operation of Seabury, including a financial plan that brings expenses in line with revenues. The report will also include recommendations for the immediate future of current programs.After consultation with the faculty, students, and staff, the Planning Committee met on Tuesday, February 19, 2008. The Planning Committee asked the board’s Executive Committee to clarify its understanding of the long-range educational mission of Seabury, and it proposed two resolutions which the Executive Committee passed in the following form on Wednesday, February 20, 2008:2. The Dean will be assisted in developing the plan by a Planning Committee to be made up of eight members, of whom six will be officers and/or trustees, who will be named by the Dean and Board Chair, and two will be faculty members named by the faculty. Should the faculty not choose its representatives on or before Monday, February 25, 2008, the Dean may make the appointments as he deems necessary.
3. In developing the plan, the Dean or his designees may explore potential partnerships with appropriate institutions.
4. The Dean and the Planning Committee may hire consultants they deem necessary to assist them in their deliberations.
The Executive Committee affirms that Seabury will no longer offer the M.Div. as a freestanding 3-year residential program. This does not preclude offering the M.Div. in other formats.
The Executive Committee accepts the 3 following recommendations of the Planning Committee:
1. That Seabury will immediately suspend recruitment and admissions to all degree and certificate programs in this time of discernment.The Planning Committee will continue its schedule of weekly meetings so that it can produce a financial and programmatic plan in time for a special board meeting to be called in April. In the meantime, Seabury’s administration is at work talking with potential partner institutions both to enable the school to move forward in the future and to enable all those affected by these decisions to make the transitions they may be required to make as plans emerge.
2. That Seabury will enable all current D.Min. students to complete their programs.
3. That Seabury will assist all current M.Div., MTS, MA, and certificate students to find alternative arrangements for the completion of their programs as may be required.Our hearts and minds are filled with a multitude of emotions. At the center of our immediate concern is the well being of our students, faculty and staff. Accordingly, most of our energies are focused on the internal community at this time, however, we will be informing our alumni/ae, donors, and the wider church within the next several days. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we move into this new understanding of our mission.
The Very Reverend Gary R. Hall, Ph.D.
As a pastor I am remembering all those days in class when we were told that we might have to close down a place, or change it so dramatically, that it would feel like a death. It's something I think about...how it might look someday. My current congregation is re-enlivening itself, a little resurrection goes a long way. But I may someday have to close a place. Anyway...Well, now the seminary itself is called to practice what they preached to us. Keep Seabury in your prayers, please. It's a good place.
February 19, 2008
monday on tuesday
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February 16, 2008
sermon: all astonishment
Sermon: Second Sunday of Lent, Year A 2008
The Community Church of Wilmette
February 17, 2008
John 3:1-17
All Astonishment
Begin with printout page from Pride and Prejudice.
Pride and prejudice By Jane Austen
Poor Miss Bingley. She blundered into that one. In the movie (the proper BBC film with Colin Firth and not the shorter, Cliff Notes version that was released in theaters a year or so ago), Miss Bingley appears to be searching for a compliment, perhaps assuming that the “fine eyes” to which Mr. Darcy refers are her own. She initiates the conversation with a set of assumption she knows to be true only to discover that the landscape had shifted under her feet. The reality is that she knows very little if anything at all about Mr. Darcy and how he thinks.
This may be a familiar experience for many of us. We have done our research. We have plumbed the depths of commonly held wisdom. When we arrive at our destination, however, convictions and assurances in hand, we are surprised…astonished at what we encounter.
This is how we encounter Nicodemus in this morning’s passage from John’s gospel. He was astonished by what he heard. Jesus knew it and happily pointed it out.
“Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’” (3:7)
It could not be helped. You see Nicodemus walked into his meeting with Jesus knowing that he had everything figured out.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” (3:2)
Nicodemus knew the rules. He knew how one was supposed to tell if a prophet or teacher is from God. There are signs. But Jesus shifted the landscape under Nicodemus’ feet. He essentially said, “Close, but not quite. I am more than a teacher, and it takes more than signs to find the Truth of God.”
Discernment is more complicated than that. The Kingdom of God is not simply found in signs, the flesh, but also in the Spirit…in being born from above.
I am one of those people who like to know as much of the lay of the land as possible before I begin something. I want to know the rules. I want to read ahead. Many of the books I own are the fruit of such effort. I simply hate feeling stupid.
I sometimes wonder if Nicodemus had the same difficulty.
He was a “leader of the Jews” himself. He was an expert, qualified to instruct and guide people in matters of faith and religious practice. Nicodemus had every reason to think that he knew what he was talking about.
Yet he didn’t. Jesus showed him this simple truth right from the start.
“Very truly I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” (3:3)
For Nicodemus, everything would change. He had to let go of what he thought he knew about how the world works. His Mind would have to be transformed with his Heart if was to follow Jesus. Such a shift in perception, however, is never easy. We have to let go of a lot of what we think we know.
When I first started going to AA meetings about 15 years ago, I thought I had it all figured out. I had read about addictive personalities. I knew that I was a prime candidate. I knew all I thought I needed to know.
I knew I had it all under control.
It would take another eight years for real change to take place…for the illusion of control to be shattered.
My first sponsor would often say things like, “You think too much. You think yourself into a corner, until your back is against a wall. Then you cry for help. Do you see how crazy that is?”
I had to learn to think differently. It was a matter of life and death for me. That was seven years ago. Sometimes I still think myself into corners, and imagine control that I do not possess. This process never really ends.
Knowing something intellectually is not the same thing as letting that knowledge touch and transform the heart. This is what Jesus tells Nicodemus. God desires the heart. What was once only information such as my thinking about addiction and dysfunction…or Nicodemus’ thinking about what makes a “man of God”…is transformed into something new. What is happening in the head has to drift down into the heart. This is the Movement of the Spirit. This is the Wind of Transformation.
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (3:8)
February 14, 2008
innovate!
In Calvin’s mind, and for the purposes of his on-going debate with Rome, the practice of the laity taking only one element during the communion rite is an inappropriate liturgical innovation. It is “satanic.” It is not the will of Christ as witnessed to by the scriptures and the liturgical habits of the ancient Church. Calvin turns to Chrysostom and others as barometers for liturgical practice as well as doctrine.
February 13, 2008
written
From the beginning, Calvin was insistent that the Lord’s Supper be a weekly observance in the churches in Geneva. In Calvin’s own words, “Jesus did not institute it to be remembered only two or three times a year but as a constant exercising of our faith and love in which the congregation should engage every time it meets. The admonition of the mass has led to decline from the original use. ”
February 12, 2008
getting it in gear
Hat tip to Micah.
What is most interesting is that Calvin feels free to disagree with Chrysostom on the Greek father's insistence on free will. So, it is not that Calvin felt that Chrysostom was without spot or blemish. Calvin simply knew the work of the Greek father well enough to know when Chrysostom would be an aid and when he would be a hindrance. He knew enough to disagree. “The teachings of the fathers has value, but it is always open to correction in the light of Scripture.”
February 11, 2008
monday videoblog: tinkering with i-movie
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February 08, 2008
sermon mumblings and a friday five
Abba Poeman said, "Teach your mouth to say that which you have in your heart."
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers
Bendicta Ward, SLG ed.
Once again, I shall have no sermon manuscript for the blog. I am preaching without a manuscript. This is hardly extemporaneous. I muse, mumble and rehearse a great deal for this kind of sermon. It actually takes more of my time than writing a manuscript. Imagine!
Last week I stepped out from behind the pulpit to talk about terrorism and politics. The news of the two mentally disabled women being used as bombs in the pet market demanded my attention. There are a lot of reasons for that. But the focus I took was the right placement of faith and politics. I am told that stepping out from behind the pulpit made a huge impact...a positive one at that. I need to practice that kind of preaching more. It's good to be able to do both. Sometimes standing at the pulpit is appropriate. Sometimes it's simply a hindrance. It'll take some work to figure out when is the best time to do one or the other. But that's just part of the craft, I think.
This Sunday is "Scout Sunday" at our church. We'll have 100 guests. The resident Boy Scout Troop and their parents will be joining us. It's an annual event and should be a good time. Last year certainly was grand. I hope this year is even half as fun.
The Scouts sit by patrol in the first three rows of the sanctuary. It's fun to come down to them and involve them in the sermon in some ways. The older boys manage it really well. And I pray that the embarrassment for the younger boys is not permanently damaging. Heh.
This Sunday I am stepping away from the lectionary (The assigned reading is about Jesus' temptations in the desert. I already preached on that a couple of weeks ago. I was actually thinking ahead! Who knew?). I am preaching on creation...and in some ways expressing a position about the whole creation/evolution debate. I think that the Boy Scouts' philosophy actually underscores the reality of human beings as creatures...spiritual and physical creatures, and not one aspect over the other, but as two important aspects to a complete person. This is what God would have us know about ourselves.
If you don't have anything to read for the next few weeks, I'd recommend The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. She also wrote Eat, Pray, Love. It's a great book about Eustace Conway. Check it out. It'll show up in the sermon somehow.
As a diversion, I offer up this Friday Five from the RevGals.
1. Did you celebrate Mardi Gras and/or Ash Wednesday this week? How?
Well, we were supposed to have a service that evening. But the weather was horrible. I called around and discerned that likely no one would come. The roads were bad. The snow was falling sideways. It was wiser to cancel it. So, this year I did not celebrate it. And it bothers me.2. What was your most memorable Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday/Lent?
I am not sure I have a most memorable. I do remember my first in Chicago. I was singing in the choir at St. Peter's in the Loop, the local Franciscan cathedral. It's in downtown Chicago. I sang one of the noon masses. It perhaps the first time in my life that I noticed business people walking around with ashed on their foreheads. That's when I learned that I had moved to a Catholic city.3. Did you/your church/your family celebrate Lent as a child? If not, when and how did you discover it?W
e did not. I was not really raised in the church. I guess I discovered Lent when I lived in community at Richmond Hill. I was suddenly living with a Catholic nun and a Catholic priest, an Episcopal priest and some other folk who practiced the devotion. Eventually I found myself as part of the community at Holy Comforter. I don't recall for certain, but I likely celebrated my first Ash Wednesday there.4. Are you more in the give-up camp, or the take-on camp, or somewhere in between?
I am somewhere in between. I used to be solidly in the give up camp. But the last couple of years my wife and I have been wrangling with diet and the new schedule of commuting suburbanites. Giving up anything else seems foolish. And so too does taking anything on this year. I may do something, but it'll be "hidden." I will give up TV and internet at the house for a week with the children of the church this year. They are choosing their own week to embark on a media fast.5. How do you plan to keep Lent this year?
Oops! See above!Ya'll have a great weekend. I won't post again until the Monday videoblog.
February 04, 2008
monday videoblog: blather
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