Verse of the Month — January 2010

Reason

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD:  “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be like wool.”

— Isaiah 1:18

Verse of the Month — November 2009

Thanksgiving

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.

Psalm 118:1

Stories

Over on a friend’s blog, I saw some musing which included comments about the purpose of stories, and it got me thinking. I actually stopped reading, mid-paragraph, so as to see where this thought would lead me, so here it is, after mulling for a few days. I’m going to make a rather sweeping generalization, but I think I can defend it. Here goes.

The purpose of every story is to create community.

Each of us, as a human being, which is to say, an animal that talks and thinks in words, or, if you will, is reflective of the Divine act of creation that begins with a Word (as above, so below), lives inside a story, or really a vast cycle of stories, partly of our own making: The story of my life, my family, my tribe, my town, my county, my valley, my nation, my planet, my dog, my dreams. This personal story in all of its particularities is what we are talking about when we talk about personal identity. It is of the intersection of personal stories that community is forged, and it is the overlapping of communal stories that creates a sense of individuality. We tell stories, we hear stories, and a person who does not have a story does not yet feel like a person, does not yet have a place. Some stories are powerful, and shape us. Religions and mythologies are essentially the stories that are broad enough that hearers and tellers see themselves as living inside of them; the same with political ideologies.

Of course there are larger stories and smaller stories, just as there are larger communities and smaller communities. Stories within stories. Variations, versions. But having a story in common is what binds people together. Marriages dissolve when the story of his life and the story of her life begin to diverge from one another into mutual unrecognizability, it is said, then, that they have become estranged.

When the stories a person tells himself are unintelligible by anyone else, that person becomes —has become — isolated, alienated, alone. When such a person is able to bring someone else into the circle of those who can understand, you have something else: a new community, a cult, perhaps.

Verse of the Month — September 2009

Openness

For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed,
and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.

Mark 4:22

Integrity redux

Just some random thoughts on a Friday afternoon….. in preparation for Sunday.

I’m thinking about the 24th Psalm:  “Who shall asscend to the hill of the Lord? And who can stand in his holy place?  He that has clean hands, and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol, or swear by what is false.”  This sounds like the search for integrity.

Clean hands:  That’s the behavioral part of ethics. It recalls to mind those things that are prohibited in the behavioral portions of the Big Ten;  murder, theft, adultery.  While motivation is of utmost importance, behavior is here listed first.  Good intentions are no excuse for careless actions.  Short cuts lead to trouble.  Over in the New Testament, an apostle says: “avoid every appearance of evil.”  This can be carried too far, as some focus so much on appearance that the next, more necessary part, gets ignored; but at a bare minimum, a person of integrity should have, as is said, his “act” together.

Avoidance of obvious contamination, however, goes only a certain distance.  Next comes the really hard part, a pure heart.  These two go together.  As Kierkegaard observed, “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.”  His essay by  that title goes on to demonstrate how it is that it is not possible to will one thing, unless that thing is “the good;”  contrasting it with “double-mindedness,”  recalling the admonition of St. James.  Here is where our search becomes a search indeed.  Who knows his own heart?  Who can say that his or her own desires are, let’s say, completely unselfish?  I can’t.  That is, I can’t until I enlarge my vision, and begin to truly pray as we are taught:  “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  If the will of God is for peace, prosperity,  and health to prevail, I am double-minded so long as I care for those things with regard to myself, but not for others; but also if I seek them for others while pretending that I don’t want them for myself.  So my sense of my own need must expand to include all of my neighbors, even my enemies (as Jesus taught), and at the same time must acknowledge that I too am one of those whose need requires a divine action.

This leads us to the next thing:  who does not lift his soul up to an idol.  I’m thinking of an idol, in this instance, as anything partial, anything less than the good of the whole, as St Paul said, “worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator” — even though we are to desire good things for every creature, none is to take on absolute significance. Idolatry, then,  is treating what is secondary as if it were of first importance; and since we cannot see the full picture, nothing we can see or understand can be of first importance. Not myself, not my cause, not my family nor my country, least of all wealth or comfort, belongs in the place of the God who wills the best for me in relation to all of these.  Always remembering that my current picture is partial, again as is said, “Now we see through a glass darkly,”  can I truly value any of these good things rightly.  So often we think that an idol must be something obviously false and wrong, to be forsaken utterly; whereas more often it is likely to be something good and even worthy of much attention, which nevertheless falsely takes the first place, ahead of all else, distorting our view of the rest of the world, never mind that of our Creator.  Which leads us to the fourth matter in this progression:

“nor swear by what is false.”  What is false is exactly this wrong relationship of God’s creatures to one another, when one or another takes absolute precedence.  In my search for integrity I have to acknowledge that I, myself, some of the time, am what is false, in those instances where I have taken the smaller view, forgotten my neighbor, failed to see Christ in the one who is hungry or homeless or imprisoned— or simply when I have taken the easy road, pretending that actions in one arena do not have consequences somewhere else.

The Psalmist presumes that such people as he describes exist.  If they do, these are the ones who never cease in their own search for integrity.  They, he says, shall receive blessing from the Lord.

Verse of the Month — July 2009

Fulfillment

Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Romans 13:10

Verse of the Month — June 2009

Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

—Psalm 37:4

Verse of the Month – May 2009

Self-promotion?

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord,
with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

2 Corinthians 4:5

Possible Sermon Outline

From some scribbled notes:

By scripture we are INFORMED
Of wondrous acts that God PERFORMED,
So that, no longer CONFORMED,
The church can be REFORMED,

And we — and through us the world — TRANSFORMED.

Resurrection

Richard Rohr’s meditation for today.  I think it is particularly fitting on the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Resurrection      

Question of the day:    How do I join in the liberation of the victims and executioners?

The good news of the resurrection is not that the poor victims of this world will finally triumph over the executioners, while the executioners will be fittingly punished. That is our petty notion of justification.  If the resurrection is truly God’s great answer and God’s good news, then God is telling us that Jesus died and rose not only for the victims but also for the executioners. God is not just liberating the liberated and saving the saved.  The new righteousness, the good news that is too good, is that God is somehow seeking to free the executioners too. 

from Near Occasions of Grace