woe to those who are at ease in zion...
1 i was feeling quite pleased with myself. for the first time in months i didn't feel 'wrung out'.
often i would return from weekend meetings absolutely exhausted. sue, my wife, would meet me at the airport, drive me home and put me into bed. but this weekend had been quite different. i was the speaker at a camp. the organizers had not been to the Squeeze the Preacher school and had let me off with an amazing three meetings in the whole weekend. now the camp was over and i was being shown my lodging for sunday night.
after seeing my room, i made my way to an upstairs living room. the view was magnificent. through the large window i gazed at the harbor below and watched as the sun seemed to dance on the still water. i sat down in a soft armchair and took a look around. a footstool, the view, a large television, a stereo - and now the hostess entered
2 the room with a cup of hot chocolate and a plate full of fresh home baking. THIS PLACE WAS MADE FOR COMFORT. ease consumed me. i reached out to take one of the offered goodies when suddenly, much to my shock and the surprise of the woman, i jumped out of my seat like a terrified cat on a blistering hot tin roof. i then turned around to see a yellow and black bee crawling around the seat of the armchair. i had been squarely stung on the hindmost part!
i was in too much pain to be embarrassed. as i jumped about the room, my only consolation was the thought, 'there's got to be a sermon in this...' some years before, i had prayed a most dangerous prayer. i asked God to cause things to happen in my life which i could use as sermon illustrations. at this point in time i regretted having made that request.
it wasn't long until i saw the application. i am convinced that God wants the complacent Laodicean Church to rise up on its feet. for too long we have sat in ease and comfort. we have sat back in affluence and said, 'i am rich and have need of nothing', and if it takes the sting of god's chastening hand to cause the Church to stand upright, may it come quickly. charles spurgeon said, 'God save us from living in comfort while sinners are sinking into hell! Whitefield said, 'the christian world is in a deep sleep; nothing but a loud shout can awaken them out of it!' catherine booth, the gentle co-founder of the Salvation Army, regarding church buildings, said, 'a barracks is meant to be a -place where real soldiers were to be fed and equipped for war, not a place to settle down in or as a comfortable snuggery in which to enjoy ourselves.
3 i hope that if ever they, our soldiers, do settle down god will burn their barracks over their heads!
in luke 6,the religious leaders were seeking an accusation against Jesus. we pick up the story in verse 6:
on another sabbath He went into the synagogue and was teaching and a man was there whose right hand was withered. the pharisees and the teachers of the Law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched Him closely to see if He would heal on the sabbath. but Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the withered hand, 'Get up and stand in front of everyone'. so he got up and stood there. then Jesus said to them, 'I ask you, which is lawful on the sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?'
He looked around at them all and then said to the man, 'stretch out your hand'. he did so and his hand was completely restored. but they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
some year ago, the dallas morning news reported that 68% of professing christians outside of the 'Bible Belt' didn't see reaching out to the lost as being the number one priority of the Church. this was in line with what the barna research group found. in a survey, they discovered that among american adults who said they were 'born again', 75% couldn't even define the Great Commission. (note: matt. 28.18f)...around that time
4 Christianity Today..found that only 1% of their readership said that they had witnessed to someone 'recently'. that meant that 99% of their readership couldn't say that they were 'hot' or 'cold' when it came to concern for the fate of the ungodly. they were just 'lukewarm'. in one year, over 3,000 churches from a mainline denomination didn't report even one soul saved in that whole year. oswald j. smith said, 'Oh, my friends, we are loaded with countless church activities, while the real work of the Church, that of evangelizing and winning the lost, is almost entirely neglected'.
the 'right hand ' of the Body of Christ is withered. the hand, which is supposed to be moved with and by compassion, is not pulling sinners from the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. (see jude 22-3) we have lost sight of our commission. the agenda, the plan of attack, the reason for the battle has been lost under a dark cloud of apathy. the right hand of the Body of Christ hangs limp at its side. we need to hear the voice of Jesus: 'arise, stand forth in the midst and stretch forth your hand'. when we stand forth in the midst and stretch forth our hand, we will begin to see that glorious, spotless victorious Church for which Jesus is coming back. this is the fiery Church we see in the book of Acts - a far cry from what we see in thee Church of today..
5..when paul wrote to timothy, he used military terms - 'FIGHT the good fight of faith...endure hardness as a GOOD SOLDIER' etc. he wanted to remind timothy that he was involved in a BATTLE and A GREAT CONFLICT. we shouldn't be surprised if the world fires hostilities at us. we are a friend of god and therefore an ENEMY OF THE WORLD...
6 ..over the years, i have asked churches, 'how many of you can say before God that you have witnessed verbally to more than 12 people over the past 12 months? that is at least every 30 days or so somebody who is sitting in the shadow of death has heard the Gospel of everlasting life from your lips?' i have found that only 8-12 percent will raise their hands. where is the zeal? Jesus said, 'but you shall receive power when the Holy spirit comes on you; and you shall be My witnesses in jerusalem and in all judea and samaria and to the ends of the earth' (acts 1.8).. the Holy Spirit wasn't given without purpose in mind. He was given so that we might have power for the purpose of being witnesses of Christ. so many profess to possess the power, but where is the lifestyle that confirms what they profess to possess?
it would seem that the fear of battle has left many a soldier hiding in the barracks. they are afraid to let their light shine before men because they know that men hate thee light. yet, it is a natural principle that when light shines darkness flees. darkness cannot overcome light. try it. switch on some darkness and see if the light leaves, then try it the other way around.
'Gross darkness' only covers this earth because the Church has not obeyed the admonition to 'arise and shine'. we often speak up when it comes to moral issues. we do scatter a little salt. but salt doesn't shine. among other things, it merely preserves.
7 i was somewhere in the midwest sitting with a friend at a respectable restaurant, waiting to be served. i went to the restroom and when i came back, i remarked to my friend, 'that's bad. they've got a pornographic poster outside the men's restrooms.
i suddenly felt like a hypocrite. i then walked over to a waiter and asked why the poster was on the wall. he stepped back defensively and said, 'that wasn't my idea. it was the manager's. he's over there. i told him that i wanted to speak with the manager.
when the man approached me i said, 'is it thee normal policy of this restaurant chain to have pornographic pictures on the wall?
he lookd at me inquiringly and said, 'is there a nude picture somewhere?
i said, 'no. i man that one on the wall. i pointed to the poster of a beautiful woman wearing an excuse for a bikini, and said,. 'that's designed to stir up lust. that is just what it's going to do with some young guy and before you know it some lady is raped in YOUR parking lot. he went wide-eyed. i thanked him for listening to me and made my way back to my table.
when my steak was served up a few minutes later, i called the waiter over and joked that it was still alive. he smiled and said that it would be back in a few minutes, but this time cooked properly.
it was back a few minutes later. my plate was delivered to me by the manager himself. he was very humble and even took a tract from me.
the incident was a lesson for me NOT TO COMPLAIN TO CHRISTIANS ABOUT THE SINS OF THE WORLD, BUT TO CONFRONT
8 THE WORLD. we forget that salt must be shaken out of the shaker.
the bible says that we are salt AND light. salt preserves, but it's the 'light of the glorious gospel of Christ' that will banish the darkness.
some years ago a traditional church dropped 'Onward Christian Soldiers' from their song index because it made reference to war. that's understandable for people who have never been born again...
9...are we hot for God? ....do we have the testimony 'to live means opportunities for Christ'? is theere a zeal to witness burning in our bones? it doesn't matter how much we pray, tithe, fellowship - Jesus said to 'God'. obedience is better than sacrifice.
CHAPTER 2 - pre battle: standard inventory
for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. II corinthians 10.4
12 ..one great key to success in an army is a unity of purpose, a merging into one mind. this is unusually
13 achieved by de-personalizing the recruits -'you sloppy bunch! in the next 6 weeks we are going to make you boys into men; you'll wish you'd never been born! i'm going to tell you HOW to think, WHEN to thing and WHAT to think! etc. curly locks of hair are callously clipped from cringing craniums. the reason for this is that when an army is on the front lines, the commander doesn't want his troops spending time on the vanities of life. he doesn't want his men wasting time in front of the mirror. he wants one body of men to do what he wants when he wants. his life and the life of his men may depend on it.
God has made His own ways of getting new recruits into line. (i think i prefer the army's way.) as a new christian, i went into what is commonly called a 'wilderness experience'. it was a most dreadful, miserable, depressing experience, but in retrospect it was a necessary part of my primary training. God wants to shake the 'world ' out of new converts. they have enlisted in the Army of God for active service. the quicker they respond the quicker they will be trained, and the quicker they will find themselves promoted in rank and relocated to where the action is.
when the U.S. navy trains rescue pilots, they place so much psychological pressure on recruits, that 50% drop out. they want the best, so those who enlist are pushed to the limits by being dropped out of helicopters into freezing water. in the water, a man simulates a drowning, and when his rescuer reaches him, he deliberately panics, grabbing the would-be rescuer and pulling him under. the trainee must take charge of the situation or be disqualified
14 from the course. he must take control, not only of the circumstances, but also of his own fears.
christianity isn't for wimps. God put the heat of tribulation on Jesus in the desert (see luke 4.1) - 'thou He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things that He suffered...(hebrews 5.8). how much moe will you and i be tried if we want to walk in the footsteps of the Savior? if we want to rescue humanity from the fires of Hell, we must take control, both of our own fears and of the demonic restraints placed in front of us.
the time has come when every able soldier is needed in the front line of battle. he who will not overcome will be overcome. as a great man once said, 'we must keep our fears to ourselves and share our courage with others'.
we need to know what our weapons are...
1. the Belt of Truth
2. the Breastplate of Righteousness
3. feet (note: Prepared to share) the Gospel of Peace
4. the Shield of Faith
5. the Helmet of Salvation
6. the Sword of the Spirit
7. ..Prevailing Prayer
15....first, we are told to have our LOINS 'GIRT ABOUT WITH TRUTH'. this is a reference to the belt worn by soldiers around the time this scripture was written. their clothing wasn't like ours. it was often loose. to be free from being hindered by this loose clothing, a soldier would 'gird up his waist' or fasten the clothing to his belt.
..so our firs preparation for battle is to determine to (note: FIRST...LIVE, then) speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - from the heart, without compromise. ...in other words, give your all for the truth and don't make concessions at any price.
if you want to see how we deceive ourselves with lies, try this way of sharing your faith. ask an unsaved person if he has kept the Ten Commandments. most will say, 'yeah, pretty much'. then say, 'let's go through them and see how you do. have you ever told a lie/' the usual answer is, 'one or two[. then ask, 'what does that make you?' and watch human nature do verbal contortions rather than face the truth. they will say, 'i'm not a liar. everyone tells white lies. i'[m only human. i bet you've told lies! they're just 'white' lies'.
16 the Ten Commandments are like a mirror and the picture we see reflected in the Law is not a pretty one. however, when we become christians, we FACE the truth. ( note..I AM A SINNER. ) our hearts are desperately wicked. we are easily deceived by our own conceit. we know that we can look in the mirror of the law, walk away and 'forget what manner of persons we are'. (..james 1.24) we can lie to ourselves; therefore, we must continually search our hearts under the spotlight of the fear of God and the light of the Word of Truth.
if this is to be our attitude to the truth of the gospel, where the eternal welfare of men's souls is at stake. we are to be 'valiant for the truth', following the One who has the 'law of truth in His mouth', who is 'full of grace and truth', who is 'the way, the truth and the life'.
it's interesting to note the relationship john the baptist had to elijah. Jesus said that john came in the spirit and power of elijah. (..luke 1.1) there are also similarities between john and the Church. as with john, the true christian:
1. preaches in the 'wilderness' of this world.
2. rebukes even the sin of kings.
3. has a diet of locusts (plague of the Law) and honey (the sweetness of the gospel).
4. is a burning and shining light.
5. prepares the way of the Lord.
6. is uncompromising in regard to sin.
7. preaches future punishment.
8. is filled with the Spirit.
9. is bold.
10. is humble of heart.
17 ...Jesus warned peter that he would pay the ultimate price for his faith. He said that when he was young he girded himself and because of this he was able to walk wherever he wanted. then He said that when peter was old, another would gird him and carry him where he didn't wish to go. (see john 21.18) ...when we are girt about with truth, the world will hate us. if we would just say that Jesus isn't the only way to
18 God, or that you can sin and love God, or that the Bible is only one revelation of god to man, then we would have the world's smile. the unyielding truth may cause us to have to pay the ultimate price for our faith. like peter, when we were young and lacked the understanding as to what produced true salvation, we had a choice. however, because we know the truth, we have no choice. we cannot but speak that which we have seen and heard.
those who have been born of the spirit of truth, ...'cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth' - '...having your loins girt about with truth'.
the second item which we are commanded to put on as soldiers of the Lord, is the 'BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS' i thessalonians 5.8, paul says, let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love..' here we are reminded that we are enlisted in the Army of the God of love. righteousness by itself is no defense against the enemy. the pharisees had a form of righteousness, yet were still sons of the devil. )..john 8.44) without love we are nothing. (..I corinthians 13.13) charles spurgeon said, 'love should give wings to the feet of service and strength to the arms of labor'.
righteousness must be linked with faith and love. (..hebrews 11.6) it is this righteousness that shows whose side we are on:
in this the children of god are manifest and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. (I john 3.10)
19 if we have been born of the God of righteousness we will live in righteousness.
'righteousness', according to vine's expository dictionary of new testament words, is the 'character or quality of being right or just'. it was formerly spelled 'rightwiseness', which clearly expresses the meaning.
it is said of Jesus in isaiah chapter 59, 'for He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation upon His head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak'.
Jesus Christ, thee Lord of Righteousness, love righteousness. He has vehement fervor for justice. the soldier who has been taught and trained by the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead will not only HAVE righteousness, but DO righteousness. he should love what is right and hate what is wrong. the child of god longs for a new earth 'wherein dwells righteousness'. he 'hungers and thirsts for righteousness'. if we haven't that testimony, then we haven't seen an answer to the cry, 'create in me a clean heart, O god, renew a RIGHT spirit in me', or perhaps that has never been our plea.
the breastplate keeps the heart clean, for out of the heart come the issues of life. how could we approach the King with soiled garments? (note: man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart!)...
20 ... how loudly does the sergeant major of our conscience need to shout to bring us to attention? if we move out of order, do we hear his voice? a good soldier won't even wait for the voice of a sergeant major to call him into line. if by chance he gets out of step with what he knows he should be, he does immediate correction.
have we debts unpaid? ..
do we honor our parents?..
have we unforgiveness in our hearts? then forgive or you will not be forgiven.
do we lack love? then we must get on our knees and ask god to pour His love through us or we have no biblical grounds to think we are saved.
are we easily irritated?
do we obey traffic laws
do we love and pray with our spouse..
do we read God's word daily...
do we pay all our taxes...
is our thought-life pure
do we daily confess our sins and ask for cleansing when necessary
are we zealous for God ?
these questions are merely soul-searchers to see if we have the things hat accompany salvation.
this is the profile of the NORMAL christian.
if we lack these things, better we realize it now, rather than on Judgment Day.
IS GOD SPEAKING TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING RIGHT NOW?
don't let my words distract you.
stop reading this book and RESOLVE TO DO what you have failed to do and UNDO what you should not have done.
if we confess our sins,
21 He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleans us from all unrighteousness.
if you leave that thing undone, you will give a foothold to the enemy.
it will leave a gaping hole in your armor.
REPENT NOW, WHILE THERE IS TIME. (note...NOW is the acceptable time, today is the day of salvation!)
there is no such thing as a small sin. to steal one cent is to be a thief in the sight of god. there is no mention that the theft of judas was even noticed by the other disciples. perhaps he just took a little here and thee, but it only takes a small hole in the hull to sink an ocean liner. then all that is needed is time.
our Creator is righteousness itself. righteousness can no more be separated from His nature, than the ink can be from his book. we must strive to always have a conscience which is void of offence to both God and man, not only for our own sakes but for the sake of the unsaved.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
12.7.2015 THE SPEAKING AND WRITING OF WORDS by frederick buechner (#17, p182 in book quoted in previous blog)
177 in his autobiography, anthony trollope says this about himself as a writer:
178 i have always desired to 'hew out some lump of earth' and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us-with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated baseness-so that my readers might recognized human beings like to themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. if i could do this, then i thought i might succeed in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure and sweet and unselfish; that a man will be honored as he is true and honest and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious and things nobly done beautiful and gracious...there are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility - those, for instance, who regard the reading of novels as a sin and those who think it to be simply a pastime. they look upon the tellers of stories as among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a wicked world. i have regarded my art from so different a point of view that i have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons and my p0ulpit as one which i could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience. i do beleive that no girl has arisen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was before and some may have learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. i think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness; but some may have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a gentle spirit.
words like Trollope's are in many ways out of fashion now. to speak of women as pure, sweet, unselfish and to be loved and of men as tru, honest, brave of heart and
179 to be honored smacks of a view of things that we no longer find palatable. for a novelist to speak of himself as a preacher of sermons puts everybody off. but when Trollope-than whom i believe there is no greater novelist in english-says that the calling of a writer is to teach virtue and nobility and when he expresses the hope that people will learn from his words that true manliness, true humanness, is to be found not in falseness and flashness but in truth and a gentle spirit, that is something else again.
the truth of it seems to be that it is not only that literature contains metaphors but that literature essentially IS metaphor. writers (note: or speakers) travel through life like the rest of us, seeing the sights and responding to them in all sorts of inner ways and then, like the rest of us, they need, in their loneliness, to put it into words. like God saying 'Let there be light' so that by nameing it He can bring it into being, the writers of literature (note: and all speakers of words!) say, 'let there be this -this putting into words of their experience of (note: or response to) life - so that it can more fully and effectively be both for themselves and for the rest of us.
in a letter to a friend about The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky wrote, 'the chief problem dealt with throughout this particular work is the very one which has, my whole life long, tormented my conscious or subconscious being: the question of the existence of God. clearly the question was not an academic one for D but a question that arose out of what he calls his tormenting experience and to put that experience into words he did on a far larger scale what Shakespeare, for instance did when he wrote 'How like a winter hath my absence been from thee'. my experience of God and of no-God, D says, is like...and then the whole
180 complex structure and treasury of The Brothers Karamazov comes forth as a single metaphor which enable us to participate in the depths of that experience as no academic disquisition could ever do.
and what is the effect upon us, as readers, of sharing that experience? in what way and to what end does that work of literature speak to our lives out of D's life? the book could hardly be less didactic in any narrow sense. it is full of darkness and ambiguity. the characters are continually lacerating themselves and each other through their terrible pride. ivan's devastating attack on belief in an all-powerful and loving God nearly overwhelms us as it nearly overwhelms his brother Alyosha, and Al himself, whose whole live is supposed to speak for the defense, is in many ways the least convincing character in the book. it teaches no easy lesson about virtue and nobility and yet to read it as seriously as it asks to be read and as it it was written, is to emerge from it in some profound way the better for it in the sense of closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit that Trollope names. and so it is, i think, with any work of literature that is worth the time it takes to read it.
...words written (note: spoken) 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alived within ourselves. that, i suppose, is the final mystery as well as the final power of words: THAT NOT EVEN ACROSS GREAT DISTANCES OF TIME AND SPACE DO THEY EVER LOSE THEIR CAPACITY FOR BECOMING INCARNATE. and when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we b ecome fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again
178 i have always desired to 'hew out some lump of earth' and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us-with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated baseness-so that my readers might recognized human beings like to themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. if i could do this, then i thought i might succeed in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure and sweet and unselfish; that a man will be honored as he is true and honest and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious and things nobly done beautiful and gracious...there are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility - those, for instance, who regard the reading of novels as a sin and those who think it to be simply a pastime. they look upon the tellers of stories as among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a wicked world. i have regarded my art from so different a point of view that i have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons and my p0ulpit as one which i could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience. i do beleive that no girl has arisen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was before and some may have learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. i think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness; but some may have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a gentle spirit.
words like Trollope's are in many ways out of fashion now. to speak of women as pure, sweet, unselfish and to be loved and of men as tru, honest, brave of heart and
179 to be honored smacks of a view of things that we no longer find palatable. for a novelist to speak of himself as a preacher of sermons puts everybody off. but when Trollope-than whom i believe there is no greater novelist in english-says that the calling of a writer is to teach virtue and nobility and when he expresses the hope that people will learn from his words that true manliness, true humanness, is to be found not in falseness and flashness but in truth and a gentle spirit, that is something else again.
the truth of it seems to be that it is not only that literature contains metaphors but that literature essentially IS metaphor. writers (note: or speakers) travel through life like the rest of us, seeing the sights and responding to them in all sorts of inner ways and then, like the rest of us, they need, in their loneliness, to put it into words. like God saying 'Let there be light' so that by nameing it He can bring it into being, the writers of literature (note: and all speakers of words!) say, 'let there be this -this putting into words of their experience of (note: or response to) life - so that it can more fully and effectively be both for themselves and for the rest of us.
in a letter to a friend about The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky wrote, 'the chief problem dealt with throughout this particular work is the very one which has, my whole life long, tormented my conscious or subconscious being: the question of the existence of God. clearly the question was not an academic one for D but a question that arose out of what he calls his tormenting experience and to put that experience into words he did on a far larger scale what Shakespeare, for instance did when he wrote 'How like a winter hath my absence been from thee'. my experience of God and of no-God, D says, is like...and then the whole
180 complex structure and treasury of The Brothers Karamazov comes forth as a single metaphor which enable us to participate in the depths of that experience as no academic disquisition could ever do.
and what is the effect upon us, as readers, of sharing that experience? in what way and to what end does that work of literature speak to our lives out of D's life? the book could hardly be less didactic in any narrow sense. it is full of darkness and ambiguity. the characters are continually lacerating themselves and each other through their terrible pride. ivan's devastating attack on belief in an all-powerful and loving God nearly overwhelms us as it nearly overwhelms his brother Alyosha, and Al himself, whose whole live is supposed to speak for the defense, is in many ways the least convincing character in the book. it teaches no easy lesson about virtue and nobility and yet to read it as seriously as it asks to be read and as it it was written, is to emerge from it in some profound way the better for it in the sense of closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit that Trollope names. and so it is, i think, with any work of literature that is worth the time it takes to read it.
...words written (note: spoken) 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alived within ourselves. that, i suppose, is the final mystery as well as the final power of words: THAT NOT EVEN ACROSS GREAT DISTANCES OF TIME AND SPACE DO THEY EVER LOSE THEIR CAPACITY FOR BECOMING INCARNATE. and when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we b ecome fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again
12.7.2015 DERELICTION by frederick buechner
...taken from 'a room called remember' uncollected pieces, #12
115 psalm 74. 1-16 O God, why dost Thou cast us off forever? why does Thy anger smoke against the sheep of Thy pasture? remember Thy congregation, which Thou hast gotten of old,...direct Thy steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary! Thy foes have roared in the midst of Thjy holy place; ...at the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. and then all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers. thy set Thy sanctuary on fire; to the ground they desecrated the dwelling p0lace of Thy name. we do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long...yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth...Thine is the day, Thine also is the night.
john 16.7-8 nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. and when He comes, He will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
according to the book of Kings, it was 'in the 5th month, on the 7th day of the month-which was the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon' that the babylonian forces entered jerusalem and, among other things, destroyed the great temple of solomon in
116 all its glory. 't the upper entranced they hacked the wooden trellis with axes, says the 74th psalm, 'all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers. they set Thy sanctuary on fire'. you can all but hear the chaos and din of it - the falling masonry and splintering wood, the massive cedar beams overlaid with gold thundering to the floor, the crackle and hiss of flames as they swept up the walls all carved with pomegranates, palm trees, lilies, as they feathered with fire the great olivewood cherubim with their outstretched wings who can ever forget it - the burning embers floating through the sky and the terrible heat of it as the priests scattered before it like dead leaves before the wind?
'to the ground they desecrated the dwelling place of Thy name, says this horror-struck psalm. 'the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary! Thy foes have roared in the midst of Thy holy place'. and that of course was close to the worst of it: that the place which was destroyed was not just the pride and glory of jerusalem but was also God's place. thy didn't exactly say it was the place where God dwelled because at its wisest israel alwayhs stopped just short to saying that God dwelled anywhere is space, but it was the place where God tabernacled at least, where He pitched His tent, camped, to hear prayer and accept sacrificed, the place where his secret name was spoken and heard, where his glory was at least glimpsed as isaiah had glimpsed it in the year when king uzziah died. so of all the places anywhere, the Temple was the holiest place. if God made Himself known anyplace, that was where He did it. and now that place was a shambles, a smouldering ruin, an unholy mess.
there are many things you could say about it and one
117 of them is simply that king nebuchadnezzar put king Yahweh to rout and took His temple the way Grant took Richmond. you could say that when it came to a direct confrontation, not even God in His holiness was a match for babylonians in their might with their hatchets and axes and flaming torches. you could say, if you dared to say it, that God is only a dream, a shadow, a word, whereas hatchets are solid and real the way babylonians and bombs are real; and that on the day when this whole planet is finally chopped down, burned up, the dream of god will vanish with it as surely as the Temple did on the 5th day of the 6th month with king nebuchadnezzar standing by at the hotline to get the good news. that is one thing you could say and my only guess is that there were probably more than a few in jerusalem who were saying it in 586 BC just as there are more than a few who are saying it today. Neb routed God because God is of no substance and reality in Himself, and thus eminently routable. Neb was able to dispose of God and His temple, both, with comparative ease because God, if He had ever existed at all, was dead and gone before Neb got there.
but needless to say, that was not what the prophets were saying. what the prophets were saying was that the reason Neb was able to destroy the temple of god in all its holiness was that God had long since left the Temple to its fate in anger and despair and taken His holiness with Him. the prophet Jeremiah went and stood right in the court of the temple itself on the eve of its destruction and said it - in the terrible candor of his calling blurted it out with such force that his eyes bulged in their sockets: 'do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is
118 the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord'. he shouted it three times in a row so nobody would miss it. and then he spoke what he believed was the word of God himself: 'will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, ...go after other gods...and then come before Me in this house, which is called by My name and say, 'we are delivered'? for Jeremiah, in other words, the Temple fell to the babylonians like a house of cards not because God was a pushover but because a house of cards was what God's people had made of it.
'we are delivered, they said in their temple while it was still in business. they had been delivered at the Exodus and many a time since. they had left behind them in egypt the worst bondage of all which was bondage to themselves. they had been shown the way to get the hell out, but they were still in hell because by letting their faith become mainly a matter of ritual and busyness inside the Temple and by living their lives outside the Temple as though there was no God at all to give a hang how they lived them and thus was really no God at all, hell was what they had made for themselves and within themselves. it was they themselves who had desecrated the temple, Jer said, and the babylonians had only delivered the coup de grace. now they were on their own. God was no longer to be found where for centuries they had expected to find Him. and the 74th psalm begins like a dog howling at the moon: 'O God, why dost Thou cast us off for ever?...remember Thy congregation, which Thou hast gotten of old'. but as far as the psalmist can tell, God did not remember them. 'we do not see our signs', he says. 'there is no longer any prophet and there is none
119 among us who knows how long'. that was the worst of it all, the people of the exodus, the people who had been delivered, were lost, and their cry is a cry of dereliction that even after two and a half thousand years has still such a ring of reality to it that it is hard to hear it and remain unmoved, hard to think of it as having mere historical interest. 'O God, why dost Thou cast us off?' is there anyone who has not only heard that cry but at times also cried it?
there is a restaurant in a city somewhere, a sort of quick lunch place with no tablecloths on the tables, just the ketchup and mustard jars on the bare wood. it seems to be raining outside. an elderly man with a raincoat and umbrella has turned at the door. another man glances up as he sits there smoking a cigar over a newspaper and the remains of his coffee. tow teenagers sit at a table, one of them with a cigarette in his mouth. they are all looking at the same thing, which is an old woman and a small boy who are sharing a table with the teenagers. their heads are bowed. they are saying grace. the people watching them watch with dazed fascination. the small boy's ears stick out from his head like the handles of a jug. the old woman's eyes are closed, her hair untidy under a hat that has seen better days. the people are watching something that you feel they may have been part of once but are p0art of no longer. through the plate-glass window and the rain, the city looks dim, monotonous, industrial. the old woman and the boy are saying grace there, and for a moment the silence in the place is fathomless. the watchers are watching something that they've all but forgotten and will probably forget again as soon as the moment passes. they could be watching creatures from another
120 planet. the old woman and the boy in their old fashioned clothes, praying their old fashioned prayer, are leftovers from a day that has long since ceased to be.
it is not fashionable to praise Norman Rockwell overmuch, that old master of nostalgia and american corn, but we have to praise praise him at least for this most haunting and maybe most enduring of all his Saturday Evening Post covers which touches on something that i think touches us all. it was some 30 years ago that he painted it, but the likeness remains fresh and true to this day and or course it is a likeness of us and of a world not unlike the one the 74th psalm describes.
for us the Temple still stands, to be sure. the great cathedrals still stand. the churches still stand, big ones and little ones, some that are almost full every sunday and others that are almost empty. the Church is till in business, in other words, but the question is, what is that business, what goes on in these strange buildings scattered thick over the surface of the earth? why do people continue to go there? what do they find when they get there? what do they fail to find? why do people go to them no longer? fundamentalists, liverals, evangelicals, humanists, charismatics, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses - are all of them doing the same thing or are they doing different things? are some of them doing it right and others doing it wrong? is there any sense in which you can say that God is present in any of them or all of them? these are not rhetorical questions, questions whose answers i plan to pull out of the hat at the end of my sermon. it's because i don't know the answers that i'[m asking them both of you and of myself. and it's because some of you may share my confusion and uncertainty that it seems crucial
121 to ask them also of God. maybe at least part of our business in a church is to ask what is going on in it. is there anything more or less important, real, holy, going on there than anyplace else?
as a church we have not been demolished with hatchets and axes and torches and the foes of God have not roared in our sanctuary except insofar as from time to time you and i are His foes. the church is intact. the plumbing and furnace work, at least most of the time. the sunday school rooms are clean and adequately lit. the bills are paid. the ministers by and large earn their keep. sermons are preached, the young are baptized and married, the old buried. the sick and lonely are visited and the poor remembered and the congregation more or less does its share too. the wine is poured and the bread eaten over and over again. 'drink this, eat this, in remembrance of Me', and He is remembered here and we come to remember and be remembered. we pray. we worship. sometimes we even open our hearts a little to the one who promises to lead us out, to deliver us and who has delivered us at least as far as this place itself where with such faith as wee have, we sometimes yearn above all things for full deliverance and sometimes, i suspect, would turn it down cold if the chance came because with part of ourselves we cling to things as they are even when they are killing us and we are far from eager to find out what full deliverance might mean.
the church is intact in many ways and at their best most of the things the church does serve their purpose - sometimes, we pray, serve even Christ's purpose - and at their worst are probably at least harmless. but is it possible that something crucial is missing the way something
122 crucial was missing in the Temple at Jerusalem in 586 BC, which is why it fell like a ton of bricks? 'you are the body of Christ, paul said, and if you stop to think of it at all, that is a most fateful and devastating word. Christ on this earth was the healer of the sick, the feeder of the hungry, the hope of the hopeless, the sinners' friend and thank God for that because that means He is also our hope, our friend. thank God for every time the church remembers that and acts out of that.
but Christ was also a tiger, the denouncer of a narrow and loveless piety, the scourge of the merely moral, the enemy of every religious tradition of his day, no matter how sacred, that did not serve the Kingdom as He saw it and embodied it in all its wildness and beauty. where he was, passion was, life was. to be near Him was to catch life from Him the way sails catch the wind. He was the prince of peace and when he said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword', what He presumably meant was that it was not peacefulness and passivity that He came to bring but that high and life-breathing peace that burns at the hearts only of those who are willing to do battle, as He did battle, to bring to pass God's loving, healing, forgiving will for the world and all its people.
in these ways too the church is called, you and i are called, to be Christ's body, to be life-givers and when i think of that, i think of a new england college where i preach from time to time in a vast Gothic chapel that is used only once or twice a year and the rest of the time stands empty. and i remember how the last time i was there and looked out into all that great vaulted space which month after month is full of nothing but shadows, it struck me as saying such what the Rockwell cover is saying. the other people in the restaurant look with dazed
123 astonishment at the old woman and the small boy at their prayers because something seems to be alive and real inside them in that unlikely place, something that in many a place where you would expect to find it seems scarcely alive at all. even when churches are full to overflowing, it is often hard not to sense an inner emptiness as great as the emptiness of that college chapel - the sense that though the great feast is still in progress and many of the guests still in their seats, the heart has somehow gone out of it, the passion, the adventure have been replaced by shadows, and the host himself no longer there.
is that the truth of it - the church as museum, as echo? many would say so. in the part of the world where i come from, the people who say so are apt to be some of the wisest, most concerned people there are. they have little or nothing to do with the church because for them the church speaks a dead language, is for them a dead-end street. and if we are honest, you and i - we who are the church and try to hold on to whatever there is to hold on to in it - i think we have to admit that often they are right. often, i'm afraid, the church is a place where preachers preach not out of their depths but out of their shallows, and who, when they try to show forth the great transforming truths of the faith that once set the world on its ear, speak not out of the experience of those truths in their own lives but speak instead like american tourists abroad who believe that if only they say the hallowed old words often enough and forcibly enough, everybody will be bound to understand whether they know the language or not. often, i'm afraid, the church is a place where bread and wine and prayers and hymns and worship have little more significance than the secret rites of a Greek-letter fraternity. sadder still, the church often seems to be a gathering124
of men and women who, whatever they find there, take so little of it out into the world with them that if one of them were to sit down at McDonald's and say grace, or say or do anything to suggest he or she is a christian, the golden arches would sake with astonishment-and so, i suspect, would we. i think of an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous, which has no building, no budget, no priesthood, but only people who come together wherever they are to seek help in their helplessness from each other and from God and who are ready at any ungodly moment of day of night -which is to say, of course, at any godly moment-to go to each other's rescue, whereas you and i, who are called above all things to be Christs to each other, tend to pass like ships in the night. in our own genteel and unobtrusive ways will we 'steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, go after other gods, and then come before (Him) into this house which is called by (His) name and say, 'we are delivered'? the one who asks that question is Jeremiah, and there can be no great mystery as to whom he asks it of.
125 there is nothing the world can't destroy if it puts its mind to it, including the world itself. the temple of solomon was destroyed as much by the jews within as by the babylonians without. and the church as the body of Christ is destroyed not just from without by a world that sees it as a dead end street but by people like you and me who destroy it from with9in by our deadness and staleness, our failure to be brave, to be human, to take chances; by the sterility and irrelevance and sup0erficiality and faddishness of so much of our churchly business and by our tragic-comic failure to move around in the world as though being a christian makes not just a nominal difference but all the difference in the world. but if the Temple can be destroyed
126 and maybe deserves to be destroyed, God is not destroyed, Jeremiah says. even if the temple lies in ruins, God will find a new place to pitch His tent and that place is the human heart: the law to be put within us, the Counselor to come, the breath of life.
which hearts and where then? in whose hearts does something of "God well up, something of new life start to live...
sisters and brothers, we must love one another or die. surer than the law of gravity is sure, that is the law. and in those hearts where that law is written and kept, there the Counselor has come and God dwells and the world itself begins to become the Temple. 'O God, direct Thy steps to the perpetual ruins' that can never ruin Thee. direct Thy steps to us to to Thy church in its emptiness and darkness. Thi9ne is the day, but Thine also is the night. Thine also is the night.
115 psalm 74. 1-16 O God, why dost Thou cast us off forever? why does Thy anger smoke against the sheep of Thy pasture? remember Thy congregation, which Thou hast gotten of old,...direct Thy steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary! Thy foes have roared in the midst of Thjy holy place; ...at the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. and then all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers. thy set Thy sanctuary on fire; to the ground they desecrated the dwelling p0lace of Thy name. we do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long...yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth...Thine is the day, Thine also is the night.
john 16.7-8 nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. and when He comes, He will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
according to the book of Kings, it was 'in the 5th month, on the 7th day of the month-which was the 19th year of king nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon' that the babylonian forces entered jerusalem and, among other things, destroyed the great temple of solomon in
116 all its glory. 't the upper entranced they hacked the wooden trellis with axes, says the 74th psalm, 'all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers. they set Thy sanctuary on fire'. you can all but hear the chaos and din of it - the falling masonry and splintering wood, the massive cedar beams overlaid with gold thundering to the floor, the crackle and hiss of flames as they swept up the walls all carved with pomegranates, palm trees, lilies, as they feathered with fire the great olivewood cherubim with their outstretched wings who can ever forget it - the burning embers floating through the sky and the terrible heat of it as the priests scattered before it like dead leaves before the wind?
'to the ground they desecrated the dwelling place of Thy name, says this horror-struck psalm. 'the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary! Thy foes have roared in the midst of Thy holy place'. and that of course was close to the worst of it: that the place which was destroyed was not just the pride and glory of jerusalem but was also God's place. thy didn't exactly say it was the place where God dwelled because at its wisest israel alwayhs stopped just short to saying that God dwelled anywhere is space, but it was the place where God tabernacled at least, where He pitched His tent, camped, to hear prayer and accept sacrificed, the place where his secret name was spoken and heard, where his glory was at least glimpsed as isaiah had glimpsed it in the year when king uzziah died. so of all the places anywhere, the Temple was the holiest place. if God made Himself known anyplace, that was where He did it. and now that place was a shambles, a smouldering ruin, an unholy mess.
there are many things you could say about it and one
117 of them is simply that king nebuchadnezzar put king Yahweh to rout and took His temple the way Grant took Richmond. you could say that when it came to a direct confrontation, not even God in His holiness was a match for babylonians in their might with their hatchets and axes and flaming torches. you could say, if you dared to say it, that God is only a dream, a shadow, a word, whereas hatchets are solid and real the way babylonians and bombs are real; and that on the day when this whole planet is finally chopped down, burned up, the dream of god will vanish with it as surely as the Temple did on the 5th day of the 6th month with king nebuchadnezzar standing by at the hotline to get the good news. that is one thing you could say and my only guess is that there were probably more than a few in jerusalem who were saying it in 586 BC just as there are more than a few who are saying it today. Neb routed God because God is of no substance and reality in Himself, and thus eminently routable. Neb was able to dispose of God and His temple, both, with comparative ease because God, if He had ever existed at all, was dead and gone before Neb got there.
but needless to say, that was not what the prophets were saying. what the prophets were saying was that the reason Neb was able to destroy the temple of god in all its holiness was that God had long since left the Temple to its fate in anger and despair and taken His holiness with Him. the prophet Jeremiah went and stood right in the court of the temple itself on the eve of its destruction and said it - in the terrible candor of his calling blurted it out with such force that his eyes bulged in their sockets: 'do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is
118 the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord'. he shouted it three times in a row so nobody would miss it. and then he spoke what he believed was the word of God himself: 'will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, ...go after other gods...and then come before Me in this house, which is called by My name and say, 'we are delivered'? for Jeremiah, in other words, the Temple fell to the babylonians like a house of cards not because God was a pushover but because a house of cards was what God's people had made of it.
'we are delivered, they said in their temple while it was still in business. they had been delivered at the Exodus and many a time since. they had left behind them in egypt the worst bondage of all which was bondage to themselves. they had been shown the way to get the hell out, but they were still in hell because by letting their faith become mainly a matter of ritual and busyness inside the Temple and by living their lives outside the Temple as though there was no God at all to give a hang how they lived them and thus was really no God at all, hell was what they had made for themselves and within themselves. it was they themselves who had desecrated the temple, Jer said, and the babylonians had only delivered the coup de grace. now they were on their own. God was no longer to be found where for centuries they had expected to find Him. and the 74th psalm begins like a dog howling at the moon: 'O God, why dost Thou cast us off for ever?...remember Thy congregation, which Thou hast gotten of old'. but as far as the psalmist can tell, God did not remember them. 'we do not see our signs', he says. 'there is no longer any prophet and there is none
119 among us who knows how long'. that was the worst of it all, the people of the exodus, the people who had been delivered, were lost, and their cry is a cry of dereliction that even after two and a half thousand years has still such a ring of reality to it that it is hard to hear it and remain unmoved, hard to think of it as having mere historical interest. 'O God, why dost Thou cast us off?' is there anyone who has not only heard that cry but at times also cried it?
there is a restaurant in a city somewhere, a sort of quick lunch place with no tablecloths on the tables, just the ketchup and mustard jars on the bare wood. it seems to be raining outside. an elderly man with a raincoat and umbrella has turned at the door. another man glances up as he sits there smoking a cigar over a newspaper and the remains of his coffee. tow teenagers sit at a table, one of them with a cigarette in his mouth. they are all looking at the same thing, which is an old woman and a small boy who are sharing a table with the teenagers. their heads are bowed. they are saying grace. the people watching them watch with dazed fascination. the small boy's ears stick out from his head like the handles of a jug. the old woman's eyes are closed, her hair untidy under a hat that has seen better days. the people are watching something that you feel they may have been part of once but are p0art of no longer. through the plate-glass window and the rain, the city looks dim, monotonous, industrial. the old woman and the boy are saying grace there, and for a moment the silence in the place is fathomless. the watchers are watching something that they've all but forgotten and will probably forget again as soon as the moment passes. they could be watching creatures from another
120 planet. the old woman and the boy in their old fashioned clothes, praying their old fashioned prayer, are leftovers from a day that has long since ceased to be.
it is not fashionable to praise Norman Rockwell overmuch, that old master of nostalgia and american corn, but we have to praise praise him at least for this most haunting and maybe most enduring of all his Saturday Evening Post covers which touches on something that i think touches us all. it was some 30 years ago that he painted it, but the likeness remains fresh and true to this day and or course it is a likeness of us and of a world not unlike the one the 74th psalm describes.
for us the Temple still stands, to be sure. the great cathedrals still stand. the churches still stand, big ones and little ones, some that are almost full every sunday and others that are almost empty. the Church is till in business, in other words, but the question is, what is that business, what goes on in these strange buildings scattered thick over the surface of the earth? why do people continue to go there? what do they find when they get there? what do they fail to find? why do people go to them no longer? fundamentalists, liverals, evangelicals, humanists, charismatics, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses - are all of them doing the same thing or are they doing different things? are some of them doing it right and others doing it wrong? is there any sense in which you can say that God is present in any of them or all of them? these are not rhetorical questions, questions whose answers i plan to pull out of the hat at the end of my sermon. it's because i don't know the answers that i'[m asking them both of you and of myself. and it's because some of you may share my confusion and uncertainty that it seems crucial
121 to ask them also of God. maybe at least part of our business in a church is to ask what is going on in it. is there anything more or less important, real, holy, going on there than anyplace else?
as a church we have not been demolished with hatchets and axes and torches and the foes of God have not roared in our sanctuary except insofar as from time to time you and i are His foes. the church is intact. the plumbing and furnace work, at least most of the time. the sunday school rooms are clean and adequately lit. the bills are paid. the ministers by and large earn their keep. sermons are preached, the young are baptized and married, the old buried. the sick and lonely are visited and the poor remembered and the congregation more or less does its share too. the wine is poured and the bread eaten over and over again. 'drink this, eat this, in remembrance of Me', and He is remembered here and we come to remember and be remembered. we pray. we worship. sometimes we even open our hearts a little to the one who promises to lead us out, to deliver us and who has delivered us at least as far as this place itself where with such faith as wee have, we sometimes yearn above all things for full deliverance and sometimes, i suspect, would turn it down cold if the chance came because with part of ourselves we cling to things as they are even when they are killing us and we are far from eager to find out what full deliverance might mean.
the church is intact in many ways and at their best most of the things the church does serve their purpose - sometimes, we pray, serve even Christ's purpose - and at their worst are probably at least harmless. but is it possible that something crucial is missing the way something
122 crucial was missing in the Temple at Jerusalem in 586 BC, which is why it fell like a ton of bricks? 'you are the body of Christ, paul said, and if you stop to think of it at all, that is a most fateful and devastating word. Christ on this earth was the healer of the sick, the feeder of the hungry, the hope of the hopeless, the sinners' friend and thank God for that because that means He is also our hope, our friend. thank God for every time the church remembers that and acts out of that.
but Christ was also a tiger, the denouncer of a narrow and loveless piety, the scourge of the merely moral, the enemy of every religious tradition of his day, no matter how sacred, that did not serve the Kingdom as He saw it and embodied it in all its wildness and beauty. where he was, passion was, life was. to be near Him was to catch life from Him the way sails catch the wind. He was the prince of peace and when he said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword', what He presumably meant was that it was not peacefulness and passivity that He came to bring but that high and life-breathing peace that burns at the hearts only of those who are willing to do battle, as He did battle, to bring to pass God's loving, healing, forgiving will for the world and all its people.
in these ways too the church is called, you and i are called, to be Christ's body, to be life-givers and when i think of that, i think of a new england college where i preach from time to time in a vast Gothic chapel that is used only once or twice a year and the rest of the time stands empty. and i remember how the last time i was there and looked out into all that great vaulted space which month after month is full of nothing but shadows, it struck me as saying such what the Rockwell cover is saying. the other people in the restaurant look with dazed
123 astonishment at the old woman and the small boy at their prayers because something seems to be alive and real inside them in that unlikely place, something that in many a place where you would expect to find it seems scarcely alive at all. even when churches are full to overflowing, it is often hard not to sense an inner emptiness as great as the emptiness of that college chapel - the sense that though the great feast is still in progress and many of the guests still in their seats, the heart has somehow gone out of it, the passion, the adventure have been replaced by shadows, and the host himself no longer there.
is that the truth of it - the church as museum, as echo? many would say so. in the part of the world where i come from, the people who say so are apt to be some of the wisest, most concerned people there are. they have little or nothing to do with the church because for them the church speaks a dead language, is for them a dead-end street. and if we are honest, you and i - we who are the church and try to hold on to whatever there is to hold on to in it - i think we have to admit that often they are right. often, i'm afraid, the church is a place where preachers preach not out of their depths but out of their shallows, and who, when they try to show forth the great transforming truths of the faith that once set the world on its ear, speak not out of the experience of those truths in their own lives but speak instead like american tourists abroad who believe that if only they say the hallowed old words often enough and forcibly enough, everybody will be bound to understand whether they know the language or not. often, i'm afraid, the church is a place where bread and wine and prayers and hymns and worship have little more significance than the secret rites of a Greek-letter fraternity. sadder still, the church often seems to be a gathering124
of men and women who, whatever they find there, take so little of it out into the world with them that if one of them were to sit down at McDonald's and say grace, or say or do anything to suggest he or she is a christian, the golden arches would sake with astonishment-and so, i suspect, would we. i think of an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous, which has no building, no budget, no priesthood, but only people who come together wherever they are to seek help in their helplessness from each other and from God and who are ready at any ungodly moment of day of night -which is to say, of course, at any godly moment-to go to each other's rescue, whereas you and i, who are called above all things to be Christs to each other, tend to pass like ships in the night. in our own genteel and unobtrusive ways will we 'steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, go after other gods, and then come before (Him) into this house which is called by (His) name and say, 'we are delivered'? the one who asks that question is Jeremiah, and there can be no great mystery as to whom he asks it of.
125 there is nothing the world can't destroy if it puts its mind to it, including the world itself. the temple of solomon was destroyed as much by the jews within as by the babylonians without. and the church as the body of Christ is destroyed not just from without by a world that sees it as a dead end street but by people like you and me who destroy it from with9in by our deadness and staleness, our failure to be brave, to be human, to take chances; by the sterility and irrelevance and sup0erficiality and faddishness of so much of our churchly business and by our tragic-comic failure to move around in the world as though being a christian makes not just a nominal difference but all the difference in the world. but if the Temple can be destroyed
126 and maybe deserves to be destroyed, God is not destroyed, Jeremiah says. even if the temple lies in ruins, God will find a new place to pitch His tent and that place is the human heart: the law to be put within us, the Counselor to come, the breath of life.
which hearts and where then? in whose hearts does something of "God well up, something of new life start to live...
sisters and brothers, we must love one another or die. surer than the law of gravity is sure, that is the law. and in those hearts where that law is written and kept, there the Counselor has come and God dwells and the world itself begins to become the Temple. 'O God, direct Thy steps to the perpetual ruins' that can never ruin Thee. direct Thy steps to us to to Thy church in its emptiness and darkness. Thi9ne is the day, but Thine also is the night. Thine also is the night.
Monday, November 23, 2015
SWITZERLAND IN ENGLISH PROSE AND POETRY by arnold lunn.....an englishwoman writes from switzerland (eveline amstutz)
232 some time ago i read Mountain Jubilee by arnold lunn in which his nostalgia for switzerland and the mountains and snows of switzerland flows out on almost every page. this is all very flattering for switzerland, but i wonder how many people who have been privileged to 'see the war through' in england realise the nostalgia for england which people - chiefly women like myself - have endured all these years. nostalgia, not just to be home, but to be able to pull our weight with all the others in england.
i use the word 'privileged' advisedly because i feel that it has been a privilege to witness at close quarters the resurrection of england, of english tradition, of all that made the english what they have been and what they will always be. it looked, to many of us who saw the view from the distance and who did not live in it, as if england was losing something, and we yearned over our country and clung fast to our belief that it couldn't really be happening.
and then the war came and all our beliefs were justified, for england showed herself to be what she has always been - superb! we who have made our homes in other countries have -at least, i have -longed to be home during this resurrection and to do something! i don't mean that i longed for honour and glory, at least not the bombed out of house and home kind of honour and glory, but just to feel that i was doing my share with all the other women of england. i felt i wouldn't mind coping with food shortage, difficulties of transport, danger, lack of fuel, national work, anything, if i knew that whatever the discomfort was i was putting up with it quietly and as a matter
233 of course - for england! letters i had from england did not help. there were things waiting for me to do there, i was wanted. one letter ran: 'why aren't you here now? we need women like you'.
however, i am still here and i found things to do, later. none of them the least heroic or important, but i am still doing them. there was 'Digging for Victory' to be done, which has played and which is still playing, such an important role in switzerland. every corner, every sloping bank, every inch of land must be made to produce. i could dig and i dug with a will, joining the big cultivation plan put into action throughout the country. public parks became vegetable gardens, potatoes adorned the squares in our town and corn waved where corn had never waved before. there were the refugees, civil and military, pouring into the country. no public body could cope with them all at once and it was up to private people to do what they could. in my letter of last year i may have told what happened when i started to beg for the french soldiers in murren. within ten days i was able to fit out 250 men with clothes, thanks to the Swiss! that's the way the swiss give. everyone i asked, asked someone else and things came pouring into the house till it looked like an old clothes shop. one woman in the village took two shirts off her washing line and gave them to me, saying: 'i must just wash a little oftener'.
the red cross is always needing help and getting it; organisations which provide clothes, food, parcels, comforts for prisoners of war, exist in every town. we sew, collect books, anything and everything and since the capitulation of italy, has come another influx of refugees, english and american soldiers and italians, civil, military and political refugees, from the highest in the land to the poorest and meanest. they all have to be cared for. in the beginning many italians came in with permission from the swiss government, but the only way open to them now is the 'black' route, slipping between german guards, braving the mountains or the dangers of being smuggled in somehow by italian partisans. i have just come back from a little place on the italian-swiss frontier, where i was in touch with these brave men and women and knew as much of their activities as their trust in me allowed them to tell. their lives are in their hands every moment of the day and
234 night and they are still bringing italians, british and american soldiers over the frontier at an incredible rate. they brought 27 british officers up to within sight of the frontier whilst i was there, but when these men decided to join up with their own forces instead of crossing into internment in switzerland, the partisans took them and handed them safely over in an amazingly short space of time. many of the tales i should like to tell must wait till after the war, because quite a few of these italian partisans are living in switzerland as respectable citizens and those of us who know anything - just don't know anything at all!
we women who have our relatives in england are in constant anxiety, often without news and with no hope of reunion till after the war. true, we, our husbands and children are safe and that is a great deal for which to be thankful. life is complicated, housekeeping is difficult, little food can be bought without coupons and clothes and footwear are rationed. we have all we need if not all we want, and when one remembers that we are feeding and clothing 80,000 refugees as well as ourselves, it is a miracle of organisation that we are all fed and clothed, particularly when one looks at the map and studies the position of switzerland for a moment!
for the last 10 months i have had two italian children in my home and they will remain for the duration of the war. the extra coupons i have had given me for them has enabled me to see that they have had not only all they need, but all they want. and the first to give was a village woman who slipped coupons into my hand, saying: 'we don't need it. give it to thee little ones, they need feeding up'. strict as the rationing is, everyone can spare something where they see refugees.
difficult times bring out character and i have seen many surprising things in this country. i have seen true heroism in the little, irritating affairs of everyday life and i have seen a lot of sad exploitation of circumstances. i have heard grumbling from people whose position certainly does not entitle them to grumble and i have seen stoicism where i least expected it. generosity and open heartedness have come from people whom i never suspected of possessing either and men behaviour from people i had believed to be made of different stuff.
we have had our alarms and excursions, of course. how could it be otherwise, situated as we are? our men are mobilised, our
235 frontiers fortified and manned. but inside those frontiers, no matter what happens outside them, is switzerland, safe, her people pursuing their normal lives as far as possible, eating their daily bread in confidence and trust, the children secure, homes undamaged and the future - we hope and trust - assured. and in this hope and trust we can look proudly at the three flags which fly side by side over swiss soil. three flags very much alike in shape and form, since all are crosses. the cross of christianity, oldest of them all, which has never been torn down to make room for any other emblem; the white cross on the red ground, our national flag which has flown over free switzerland since the middle ages; and the red cross on the white ground which henri dunant, swiss founder of the society of the Red Cross, made by reversing the flag of his country. as long as we can keep these in our hearts, i think we need little else, the cross of Christ for faith, the cross of switzerland for hope and the red cross of charity, the charity which out of our own security we give with both hands in thankfulness that we have it to give.
thank You Lord for the many delightful things in this little book and, for me, a bit of an introduction to switzerland which i have loved and been intrigued with since reading of Your followers, the waldensians who lived, though often hunted, there for centuries....o keep us from thinking well of ourselves, Lord. only You are good and all true good flows from Your lowly grace. amen.
i use the word 'privileged' advisedly because i feel that it has been a privilege to witness at close quarters the resurrection of england, of english tradition, of all that made the english what they have been and what they will always be. it looked, to many of us who saw the view from the distance and who did not live in it, as if england was losing something, and we yearned over our country and clung fast to our belief that it couldn't really be happening.
and then the war came and all our beliefs were justified, for england showed herself to be what she has always been - superb! we who have made our homes in other countries have -at least, i have -longed to be home during this resurrection and to do something! i don't mean that i longed for honour and glory, at least not the bombed out of house and home kind of honour and glory, but just to feel that i was doing my share with all the other women of england. i felt i wouldn't mind coping with food shortage, difficulties of transport, danger, lack of fuel, national work, anything, if i knew that whatever the discomfort was i was putting up with it quietly and as a matter
233 of course - for england! letters i had from england did not help. there were things waiting for me to do there, i was wanted. one letter ran: 'why aren't you here now? we need women like you'.
however, i am still here and i found things to do, later. none of them the least heroic or important, but i am still doing them. there was 'Digging for Victory' to be done, which has played and which is still playing, such an important role in switzerland. every corner, every sloping bank, every inch of land must be made to produce. i could dig and i dug with a will, joining the big cultivation plan put into action throughout the country. public parks became vegetable gardens, potatoes adorned the squares in our town and corn waved where corn had never waved before. there were the refugees, civil and military, pouring into the country. no public body could cope with them all at once and it was up to private people to do what they could. in my letter of last year i may have told what happened when i started to beg for the french soldiers in murren. within ten days i was able to fit out 250 men with clothes, thanks to the Swiss! that's the way the swiss give. everyone i asked, asked someone else and things came pouring into the house till it looked like an old clothes shop. one woman in the village took two shirts off her washing line and gave them to me, saying: 'i must just wash a little oftener'.
the red cross is always needing help and getting it; organisations which provide clothes, food, parcels, comforts for prisoners of war, exist in every town. we sew, collect books, anything and everything and since the capitulation of italy, has come another influx of refugees, english and american soldiers and italians, civil, military and political refugees, from the highest in the land to the poorest and meanest. they all have to be cared for. in the beginning many italians came in with permission from the swiss government, but the only way open to them now is the 'black' route, slipping between german guards, braving the mountains or the dangers of being smuggled in somehow by italian partisans. i have just come back from a little place on the italian-swiss frontier, where i was in touch with these brave men and women and knew as much of their activities as their trust in me allowed them to tell. their lives are in their hands every moment of the day and
234 night and they are still bringing italians, british and american soldiers over the frontier at an incredible rate. they brought 27 british officers up to within sight of the frontier whilst i was there, but when these men decided to join up with their own forces instead of crossing into internment in switzerland, the partisans took them and handed them safely over in an amazingly short space of time. many of the tales i should like to tell must wait till after the war, because quite a few of these italian partisans are living in switzerland as respectable citizens and those of us who know anything - just don't know anything at all!
we women who have our relatives in england are in constant anxiety, often without news and with no hope of reunion till after the war. true, we, our husbands and children are safe and that is a great deal for which to be thankful. life is complicated, housekeeping is difficult, little food can be bought without coupons and clothes and footwear are rationed. we have all we need if not all we want, and when one remembers that we are feeding and clothing 80,000 refugees as well as ourselves, it is a miracle of organisation that we are all fed and clothed, particularly when one looks at the map and studies the position of switzerland for a moment!
for the last 10 months i have had two italian children in my home and they will remain for the duration of the war. the extra coupons i have had given me for them has enabled me to see that they have had not only all they need, but all they want. and the first to give was a village woman who slipped coupons into my hand, saying: 'we don't need it. give it to thee little ones, they need feeding up'. strict as the rationing is, everyone can spare something where they see refugees.
difficult times bring out character and i have seen many surprising things in this country. i have seen true heroism in the little, irritating affairs of everyday life and i have seen a lot of sad exploitation of circumstances. i have heard grumbling from people whose position certainly does not entitle them to grumble and i have seen stoicism where i least expected it. generosity and open heartedness have come from people whom i never suspected of possessing either and men behaviour from people i had believed to be made of different stuff.
we have had our alarms and excursions, of course. how could it be otherwise, situated as we are? our men are mobilised, our
235 frontiers fortified and manned. but inside those frontiers, no matter what happens outside them, is switzerland, safe, her people pursuing their normal lives as far as possible, eating their daily bread in confidence and trust, the children secure, homes undamaged and the future - we hope and trust - assured. and in this hope and trust we can look proudly at the three flags which fly side by side over swiss soil. three flags very much alike in shape and form, since all are crosses. the cross of christianity, oldest of them all, which has never been torn down to make room for any other emblem; the white cross on the red ground, our national flag which has flown over free switzerland since the middle ages; and the red cross on the white ground which henri dunant, swiss founder of the society of the Red Cross, made by reversing the flag of his country. as long as we can keep these in our hearts, i think we need little else, the cross of Christ for faith, the cross of switzerland for hope and the red cross of charity, the charity which out of our own security we give with both hands in thankfulness that we have it to give.
thank You Lord for the many delightful things in this little book and, for me, a bit of an introduction to switzerland which i have loved and been intrigued with since reading of Your followers, the waldensians who lived, though often hunted, there for centuries....o keep us from thinking well of ourselves, Lord. only You are good and all true good flows from Your lowly grace. amen.
Monday, November 2, 2015
11.2.2015 REQUIEM by thomas nash
briefly this book, by a professor from drew university, says that seminaries have largely become bastions of non-Biblical thinking/teaching/practice(?!) but that there is a young group of men and women who are rejecting-challenging this by moving to ground their beliefs in a renewed study (and imitation?) of the church Fathers of the first five centuries focusing on their understanding of scripture. very enlightening..encouraging...hopeful.
9 without a story we do not know who we are.
10...speaking of current theology..'their inventions have been invented many times before and...were typically called heresies. ('heresy' has mostly disappeared today...)
..chesterton observed that the trouble with someone who does not believe in God is not that he will end up believing in nothing; it is, rather, that he will end up believing in anything.
11 ..the circus that is theology today...
33 ..an interloper who steals property must be caught and fairly charged as an expression of justice. secularization is such an interloper. we have witnessed the theft of church property by forces alien and inimical to the church. stolen property must be reclaimed. thieves must be brought to justice.
there are times when a counterthesis needs to be put sharply over against a prevailing thesis. if the countervailing argument is not put pungently against a harsh, insensitive taskmaster, it will be easily dismissed.
the rhetorical assignment under those circumstances is to enter in good humor the arena and strike telling blows. the plaintiff must sometimes make a case that refuses to be disregarded. if i hit had rhetorically, it is because i have seen innocent persons being hit much harder.
34..by liberated i mean those persons who are the sexual experimenters, the compulsive planners of others' lives, the canonical text disfigurers, and ultrafeminists (as distinguished from the great company of godly women..the liberated characteristically understand themselves to be freed from oppressive, traditional constraints of all sorts and shapes. liberated is not a term applied to them from outside their self-understanding, but a term they frequently apply to themselves. by liberated, they usually imply:
doctrinally imaginative
liturgically experimental
disciplinarily nonjudgmental
politically correct
multiculturally tolerant
morally broad minded
ethically situationist and above all
sexually lenient, permissive, uninhibited
...an engulfing attitude that we have been liberated from our classic christian past, from the patriarchalism of christian scriptures, from benighted jewish and christian traditions and from their oppressive social systems.
9 without a story we do not know who we are.
10...speaking of current theology..'their inventions have been invented many times before and...were typically called heresies. ('heresy' has mostly disappeared today...)
..chesterton observed that the trouble with someone who does not believe in God is not that he will end up believing in nothing; it is, rather, that he will end up believing in anything.
11 ..the circus that is theology today...
33 ..an interloper who steals property must be caught and fairly charged as an expression of justice. secularization is such an interloper. we have witnessed the theft of church property by forces alien and inimical to the church. stolen property must be reclaimed. thieves must be brought to justice.
there are times when a counterthesis needs to be put sharply over against a prevailing thesis. if the countervailing argument is not put pungently against a harsh, insensitive taskmaster, it will be easily dismissed.
the rhetorical assignment under those circumstances is to enter in good humor the arena and strike telling blows. the plaintiff must sometimes make a case that refuses to be disregarded. if i hit had rhetorically, it is because i have seen innocent persons being hit much harder.
34..by liberated i mean those persons who are the sexual experimenters, the compulsive planners of others' lives, the canonical text disfigurers, and ultrafeminists (as distinguished from the great company of godly women..the liberated characteristically understand themselves to be freed from oppressive, traditional constraints of all sorts and shapes. liberated is not a term applied to them from outside their self-understanding, but a term they frequently apply to themselves. by liberated, they usually imply:
doctrinally imaginative
liturgically experimental
disciplinarily nonjudgmental
politically correct
multiculturally tolerant
morally broad minded
ethically situationist and above all
sexually lenient, permissive, uninhibited
...an engulfing attitude that we have been liberated from our classic christian past, from the patriarchalism of christian scriptures, from benighted jewish and christian traditions and from their oppressive social systems.
11.2.2015 APPENDIX B (taken from Thomas Nash's 'requiem')
152 according to the last five quadrennial editions of the United Methodist Book of Discipline, homosexuality is declared 'incompatible with Christian teaching'. ..
since McGovernization, every mainline protestant denomination (presbyterian, episcopalian, united methodist, united church of Christ, disciples of Christ, among others) have faced a repeated challenge from proactive advocates of the moral legitimacy of self-avowed, practicing H. it is sometimes argued that any genitalia of any sex interfacing with any body orifice is compatible with christian teaching, just as long as a condom is used.
in response to claims for moral legitimization of behaviors widely though displeasing to God, each of the mainline denominations has dutifully appointed elaborate study commissions to report back to the general legislative body on how the church might respond to this for of sexual orientation practice and advocacy. the typical procedure has been, first, that a study commission had been formed McGovernistically
153with an assumed race and gender balance of moral and biblical experts. second, these study commissions typically report back to the general body in favor of relaxing moral constraints on H. usually they are confident of winning a majority. third, the general legislative body then promptly rejects the recommendation of the study commission. no mainline denomination better illustrates this recurrent pattern than the beleaguered united methodists.
every general conference..since 1972 has been tested..
the report rightly pleaded once again, as have christian traditionalists repeatedly pled, for a stop to violence against those who practice same sex intercourse. the civil rights of those with 'alternative sexual orientations' must be vigilantly protected without conceding the moral viability of their claims to social or moral legitimation. 'chistian gay-bashing' is no more excusable than the 'homophobe-bashing by gay rights advocates...
the fact that H practice is not a weighty moral matter was asserted by the united methodist sexuality report as a 'consensus among christian ethicists', yet without any evidence to support this...all the conspicuous christian teachers who have resisted same sex intercourse (john chrysostom, augustine, thomas aquinas, martin luther, john calvin ...) ..are weighed in such a debate less heavily than selected modern proponents of moral relativism and utilitarian permissivism.
154...the normative moral force of all biblical texts on same sex intercourse may be explained away by their cultural context. this leads to the conclusion that any statement in the bible can be reduced to culturally equivocal ambiguity and indeterminacy on the premise of cultural relativism...an..evasion of the normative character of scripture
157..ordinary christian laity know that any behavior is incompatible with christian teaching insofar as it blatantly defies clear scriptural mandates.
158 they wonder why this is so difficult for the professional exegetes on the sexuality study to grasp. (note: every man to his bible, his knees...his house fellowship!)
..suppose a caucus of fornicators was to petition the church to legitimize fornication as a sexual orientation and a lifestyle toward which many christians are prone...
..both homosexual and heterosexual sinners are invited to the Lord's Table on the same basis: repentance and trust in God's forgiving grace and the determination to amend, insofar as possible , by acts of reparation, injuries done ..
..shall a child molester who has no intent whatsoever of changing his predatory behavior and who views his behavior as quite inoffensive to God also be welcomed again and again to the Lord's Table?
159...i am tempted to quit using the term homosexuality altogether, rather, i think that a more graphic phrase would be same-sex oral or anal intercourse, or more inclusively, anal/oral/-either/or-both/and-any-gender-all-orifice orgasm.
since McGovernization, every mainline protestant denomination (presbyterian, episcopalian, united methodist, united church of Christ, disciples of Christ, among others) have faced a repeated challenge from proactive advocates of the moral legitimacy of self-avowed, practicing H. it is sometimes argued that any genitalia of any sex interfacing with any body orifice is compatible with christian teaching, just as long as a condom is used.
in response to claims for moral legitimization of behaviors widely though displeasing to God, each of the mainline denominations has dutifully appointed elaborate study commissions to report back to the general legislative body on how the church might respond to this for of sexual orientation practice and advocacy. the typical procedure has been, first, that a study commission had been formed McGovernistically
153with an assumed race and gender balance of moral and biblical experts. second, these study commissions typically report back to the general body in favor of relaxing moral constraints on H. usually they are confident of winning a majority. third, the general legislative body then promptly rejects the recommendation of the study commission. no mainline denomination better illustrates this recurrent pattern than the beleaguered united methodists.
every general conference..since 1972 has been tested..
the report rightly pleaded once again, as have christian traditionalists repeatedly pled, for a stop to violence against those who practice same sex intercourse. the civil rights of those with 'alternative sexual orientations' must be vigilantly protected without conceding the moral viability of their claims to social or moral legitimation. 'chistian gay-bashing' is no more excusable than the 'homophobe-bashing by gay rights advocates...
the fact that H practice is not a weighty moral matter was asserted by the united methodist sexuality report as a 'consensus among christian ethicists', yet without any evidence to support this...all the conspicuous christian teachers who have resisted same sex intercourse (john chrysostom, augustine, thomas aquinas, martin luther, john calvin ...) ..are weighed in such a debate less heavily than selected modern proponents of moral relativism and utilitarian permissivism.
154...the normative moral force of all biblical texts on same sex intercourse may be explained away by their cultural context. this leads to the conclusion that any statement in the bible can be reduced to culturally equivocal ambiguity and indeterminacy on the premise of cultural relativism...an..evasion of the normative character of scripture
157..ordinary christian laity know that any behavior is incompatible with christian teaching insofar as it blatantly defies clear scriptural mandates.
158 they wonder why this is so difficult for the professional exegetes on the sexuality study to grasp. (note: every man to his bible, his knees...his house fellowship!)
..suppose a caucus of fornicators was to petition the church to legitimize fornication as a sexual orientation and a lifestyle toward which many christians are prone...
..both homosexual and heterosexual sinners are invited to the Lord's Table on the same basis: repentance and trust in God's forgiving grace and the determination to amend, insofar as possible , by acts of reparation, injuries done ..
..shall a child molester who has no intent whatsoever of changing his predatory behavior and who views his behavior as quite inoffensive to God also be welcomed again and again to the Lord's Table?
159...i am tempted to quit using the term homosexuality altogether, rather, i think that a more graphic phrase would be same-sex oral or anal intercourse, or more inclusively, anal/oral/-either/or-both/and-any-gender-all-orifice orgasm.
11.2.2015 SOPHIA from Requiem by Thomas C. Nash (1995)
27 ...i come from a strong tradition of liturgical toleration that views Holy Communion as a uniting and converting sacrament - uniting the Body of Christ and converting the heart. in all my years of coming to the Lord's Table, i have never once seriously considered withdrawing from a Communion service because of a scrupulous conscience.
SOPHIA WHO?
yes, i had read Wisdom's Feast, coauthored by our guest homilist, so i knew in advance that she had frequently spoken of Sophia as a goddess to be worshiped. in that book, Sophia is referred to as 'a strong, proud, creative goddess within the biblical tradition'...who
28 is this goddess? 'S is, in fact, the God of Israel expressed in the language and imagery of the goddess'.
S wo4rship is not designed to be merely a transitory liturgical experiment, but the fabrication out of whole cloth of a feminist goddess who might be imported into christian worship. the practical question that religious feminists are pressing is 'how can the image of the goddess become accessible to a broad range of women?...since the chapel service was taken verbatim from this book, it is impossible to pretend that this particular service had no relation to this particular book, one of whose coauthors was our homilist.
the introduction of S worship into the liberated old line churches was by a deliberate strategy designed to proceed by a series of calculated stages through which the goddess character of S would be recognized only gradually. in a 5 tier process the homilist had proposed that feminists gradually might bring a congregation to invoke S by taking these steps: 'these stages are: 1. basic and unobtrusive reintroduction of S...2. addressing issues of women's identity in relationship to S; 3. celebrating and deciphering the Jesus-S connections; 4. exploring and celebrating S's presence in all things; 5. invoking S to address questions of human suffering'.
the intent is to legitimize the goddess: 'we must find a way to mainstream the goddess into the universe within which women are actually living their lives'. but car must be taken that the S worship and preaching not offend too abruptly, for 'in our experience, the best way to begin talking about S is to address a meaning of the text that does not concentrate on the goddess character of S'. hence a strategy of incremental homiletical duplicity is recommended: first conceal the 'goddess character of S', then later introduce her overtly in the Eucharist.
i approached the service with some disquiet. i wondered whether it would be best not to attend at all. i might be tempted to do or say something rash, due to my apprehension and annoyance. ...
29 anyway, this still is my worshiping community, so i felt that i had a right to receive the sacrament duly administered. i wanted meekly to come to the Lord's Table without political posturing or ideological skewing. so i decided not merely that i could go. but that i must go and hoped for special wisdom in responding...
our first hymn was entitled 'S', in which was sung the praise of S, vagely objectified into a deity distinguishable from the Triune God. it is S who 'ordains what God will do':
she's the teacher we esteem
and the subject of life's theme.
lover, counsel, comforter,
life is gladness lived with her. ...
with this imitation hymn i began to feel more queasy and manipulated. i wondered whether i was in a place where some other lord than Jesus Christ was being worshiped. i felt just a little (for the first time in my life) like the apologists of the 2nd century must have felt when confronted with the challenge of attesting the Lordship of Christ amid a pagan pantheon of Greco-Roman deities.then came the homily, which was addressed to a highly targeted audience- mostly true blue feminists and maybe a few pale blue hangers on, but no one who might possibly have any critical resistance to feminist rhetoric. in the name of inclusiveness, all other audiences were excluded, disregarded and to some extent demeaned.
the homilist took some time to recount an event of a stormy experience of a combat weary feminist cleric. it was a victory story in which a pious United methodist lay leader and other members were counseled out of participating in her church and invited to change their membership
30 to another church. using the rhetoric of inclusiveness, she recounted how the preacher had proclaimed the virtues of doctrinal diversity, yet specifically invited all who did not agree with her to leave and look for another church. she was apparently oblivious to the inconsistency that exclusion and divisiveness were being practiced precisely in the name of inclusiveness and doctrinal pluralism. there was not the slightest recognition in her demeanor of any inconsistency. her language was filtered carefully through the sieve of egalitarian exclusionary rhetoric. she did, however, tip her hand enough to reveal the value commitments of the lay leader who was driven out: he believed in the confession that Jesus is Lord, in monogamous covenant sexual fidelity and in protecting the life of the unborn.
...the spare scriptures imported occasionally into the service were carefully culled chiefly from the Apocrypha and some Wisdom literature (proverbs 8-9; psalm 104). ben sirach was quoted, but not in any way that would give offense to feminists - only those passages that seem to reify Wisdom into a deity distinguishable from the Triune God. to reify is to objectify, to make an object or think of an idea or symbol. to reify the idea of sophia (the greek word for 'wisdom') is to treat that idea as a personal deity differentiated from the holy trinity...
31...i pondered whether i could in good conscience stay to receive Holy Communion. this was my first experience ever in thinking about withdrawing from a communion service because something offensive to the Lordship of Christ was occurring right there at the Lord's Table. it was becoming clear to me that the god worshiped in this fantasyland was not the triune God made flesh in Jesus Christ, but the reified persona of S, distinguishable from the Trinity. i began to consider how i might inconspicuously withdraw from the service without making a scene.
nothing seems more unbecoming at the Lord's Table than a public demonstration of outrage or divisiveness or pique or politicized commotion...
32 Communion. i was coming to the conclusion quietly that in good conscience i was going to be forced to absent myself somehow. but how?
i prayed for wisdom...just at that time the homilist herself gave me the decisive clue. she urged the gathering not to delay in asserting their convictions. she said that the longer feminists delayed asserting their authority in worship, the more difficult it would be. she then offered the invitation to come to the Lord's Table, not in the Lord's name, but in the name of the goddess who was speaking through Jesus. this was a very carefully worded rhetorical device. the inviter was not was not the crucified Lord of glory but the Sophia figure who was speaking through Him, by her own authority. ironically, we were being invited to His table, but only so in her name.
that did it...
SOPHIA WHO?
yes, i had read Wisdom's Feast, coauthored by our guest homilist, so i knew in advance that she had frequently spoken of Sophia as a goddess to be worshiped. in that book, Sophia is referred to as 'a strong, proud, creative goddess within the biblical tradition'...who
28 is this goddess? 'S is, in fact, the God of Israel expressed in the language and imagery of the goddess'.
S wo4rship is not designed to be merely a transitory liturgical experiment, but the fabrication out of whole cloth of a feminist goddess who might be imported into christian worship. the practical question that religious feminists are pressing is 'how can the image of the goddess become accessible to a broad range of women?...since the chapel service was taken verbatim from this book, it is impossible to pretend that this particular service had no relation to this particular book, one of whose coauthors was our homilist.
the introduction of S worship into the liberated old line churches was by a deliberate strategy designed to proceed by a series of calculated stages through which the goddess character of S would be recognized only gradually. in a 5 tier process the homilist had proposed that feminists gradually might bring a congregation to invoke S by taking these steps: 'these stages are: 1. basic and unobtrusive reintroduction of S...2. addressing issues of women's identity in relationship to S; 3. celebrating and deciphering the Jesus-S connections; 4. exploring and celebrating S's presence in all things; 5. invoking S to address questions of human suffering'.
the intent is to legitimize the goddess: 'we must find a way to mainstream the goddess into the universe within which women are actually living their lives'. but car must be taken that the S worship and preaching not offend too abruptly, for 'in our experience, the best way to begin talking about S is to address a meaning of the text that does not concentrate on the goddess character of S'. hence a strategy of incremental homiletical duplicity is recommended: first conceal the 'goddess character of S', then later introduce her overtly in the Eucharist.
i approached the service with some disquiet. i wondered whether it would be best not to attend at all. i might be tempted to do or say something rash, due to my apprehension and annoyance. ...
29 anyway, this still is my worshiping community, so i felt that i had a right to receive the sacrament duly administered. i wanted meekly to come to the Lord's Table without political posturing or ideological skewing. so i decided not merely that i could go. but that i must go and hoped for special wisdom in responding...
our first hymn was entitled 'S', in which was sung the praise of S, vagely objectified into a deity distinguishable from the Triune God. it is S who 'ordains what God will do':
she's the teacher we esteem
and the subject of life's theme.
lover, counsel, comforter,
life is gladness lived with her. ...
with this imitation hymn i began to feel more queasy and manipulated. i wondered whether i was in a place where some other lord than Jesus Christ was being worshiped. i felt just a little (for the first time in my life) like the apologists of the 2nd century must have felt when confronted with the challenge of attesting the Lordship of Christ amid a pagan pantheon of Greco-Roman deities.then came the homily, which was addressed to a highly targeted audience- mostly true blue feminists and maybe a few pale blue hangers on, but no one who might possibly have any critical resistance to feminist rhetoric. in the name of inclusiveness, all other audiences were excluded, disregarded and to some extent demeaned.
the homilist took some time to recount an event of a stormy experience of a combat weary feminist cleric. it was a victory story in which a pious United methodist lay leader and other members were counseled out of participating in her church and invited to change their membership
30 to another church. using the rhetoric of inclusiveness, she recounted how the preacher had proclaimed the virtues of doctrinal diversity, yet specifically invited all who did not agree with her to leave and look for another church. she was apparently oblivious to the inconsistency that exclusion and divisiveness were being practiced precisely in the name of inclusiveness and doctrinal pluralism. there was not the slightest recognition in her demeanor of any inconsistency. her language was filtered carefully through the sieve of egalitarian exclusionary rhetoric. she did, however, tip her hand enough to reveal the value commitments of the lay leader who was driven out: he believed in the confession that Jesus is Lord, in monogamous covenant sexual fidelity and in protecting the life of the unborn.
...the spare scriptures imported occasionally into the service were carefully culled chiefly from the Apocrypha and some Wisdom literature (proverbs 8-9; psalm 104). ben sirach was quoted, but not in any way that would give offense to feminists - only those passages that seem to reify Wisdom into a deity distinguishable from the Triune God. to reify is to objectify, to make an object or think of an idea or symbol. to reify the idea of sophia (the greek word for 'wisdom') is to treat that idea as a personal deity differentiated from the holy trinity...
31...i pondered whether i could in good conscience stay to receive Holy Communion. this was my first experience ever in thinking about withdrawing from a communion service because something offensive to the Lordship of Christ was occurring right there at the Lord's Table. it was becoming clear to me that the god worshiped in this fantasyland was not the triune God made flesh in Jesus Christ, but the reified persona of S, distinguishable from the Trinity. i began to consider how i might inconspicuously withdraw from the service without making a scene.
nothing seems more unbecoming at the Lord's Table than a public demonstration of outrage or divisiveness or pique or politicized commotion...
32 Communion. i was coming to the conclusion quietly that in good conscience i was going to be forced to absent myself somehow. but how?
i prayed for wisdom...just at that time the homilist herself gave me the decisive clue. she urged the gathering not to delay in asserting their convictions. she said that the longer feminists delayed asserting their authority in worship, the more difficult it would be. she then offered the invitation to come to the Lord's Table, not in the Lord's name, but in the name of the goddess who was speaking through Jesus. this was a very carefully worded rhetorical device. the inviter was not was not the crucified Lord of glory but the Sophia figure who was speaking through Him, by her own authority. ironically, we were being invited to His table, but only so in her name.
that did it...
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