Sunday, August 31, 2014

Sunday August 31, 2014 

Matthew 5:1-12:  The Beatitudes

Along with the Ten Commandments, the Twenty-Third Psalm, and a few others, the Beatitudes are one of the best known passages in the whole Bible.  Hundreds of books have been written about them and the Sermon on the Mount they introduce (Matt. 5 – 7), and there are at least as many opinions as there are books.  Some authors think the Sermon on the Mount was meant only to make us feel guilty because we cannot possibly obey it, or it only intends to drive us to our knees confessing our sins, or perhaps (if we’re up to the challenge) it will inspire us to lofty heights of sainthood.  Some books water down the message into such simple platitudes that no one can disagree and no one is challenged.  Some authors think the Sermon was never intended for us, but either (authors disagree) for some past time that never came or some speculative future age (or both).  With such confusion, how can we possibly hope to do more than see in the Beatitudes worthy, noble precepts that are impossibly beyond our reach?

But Jesus was down to earth, and we can be quite sure he intended his first hearers (if they thought hard) would make good sense of the Beatitudes.  And these hearers were ordinary people, working all day long for a very modest living.  They were certainly not professional theologians with the time and ability to argue over subtleties of interpretation.  Jesus’ disciples must indeed have made sense of the Beatitudes, and surely found them important, as well as surprising and disturbing, since they remembered them for decades until Matthew (or his source) first wrote them down.

When a Bible story is hard to understand, it is often helpful to try placing it into its original context.  Let’s do so, concentrating only on the first Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus was just starting his public ministry, after the arrest of John the Baptizer.  Jesus proclaimed the same message as John, “Change your life.  God’s kingdom is here.” [The Message, Matt. 3:2, 4:17]  Large crowds were attracted to Jesus, as he taught in the synagogues and healed many people.  Jesus was in Galilee, his home area where he was known and many people came to hear him, see his miracles of healing, and would start to follow him.  In Galilee almost all the people were dirt poor, working as hard as they could to stave off starvation, often sharecropping or paying rent to rich landowners, many of whom lived in Jerusalem or elsewhere.  There was effectively no middle class, only a few better educated, more prosperous people such as the scribes and Pharisees who ruled the synagogues and told the masses what they needed to do to keep God’s law (as understood by the scribes and Pharisees) and stay out of trouble.

But the Sermon on the Mount was not given in a synagogue where the scribes and Pharisees were in charge; it was outdoors up a mountainside.  Jesus addressed his disciples primarily, and the crowds came along too (see Matt. 7:28).  I wonder what they all would have thought when Jesus began, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  What a strange statement.

Some people, you see, appear to have it all together, spiritually speaking, while others don’t have a clue.  Those first listeners must have generally thought the Pharisees were the people who had it all together.  They knew all about God; they read the scriptures; they kept all God’s requirements.  Most of the people were too poor and uneducated to master all that; it was so hard for them, working long hours just to keep body and soul together, that they couldn’t possibly understand everything God wanted them to know; it was all they could do just to go to synagogue on the Sabbath and listen to the Pharisees,  Even so, they would usually go home feeling confused and more guilty than they started, because they knew they couldn’t keep up.  Many of them lost interest; they just gave up on spiritual matters because they were complete failures.  Surely the scribes and Pharisees were the ones who were rich in spirit; the poor masses felt that they were poor in spirit for sure; they felt like complete spiritual zeros.

Now Jesus starts by saying the kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven, which means the same thing) belongs to the poor in spirit.  What a strange kingdom this is!  Could it really be that God actually cares about people who are spiritual zeros?  If they are to be the ones in the kingdom of God – the ones to whom the kingdom belongs – what an amazing surprise!  It must be that God gives his blessings solely out of his generosity and love, not because people deserve it at all.  The people who thought God had forgotten them completely are the ones who find themselves especially blessed and in the center of God’s love and mercy, God’s kingdom.  Could what Jesus is saying actually be true?  They had seen him healing people, casting out demons, and surely such miracles were a mark of God’s special authority on him.  So perhaps those people, the scribes and Pharisees, who thought they were pretty good, who were proud they kept all the rules and felt superior to other people, who were so critical of Jesus – perhaps they will find themselves on the outside looking in.  This sounds like good news for the poor and not so good for the proud rich.  Indeed, this is an upside-down kingdom, where the last shall be first, the poor shall be rich, notorious sinners are welcome, and those who think they have it made discover they are no longer first but are last.  Maybe the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, too, is what really describes how God wants us all to live.  Maybe the crowds were right to be astounded at Jesus’ teaching, because he taught them as one having authority, not like their scribes.

How about us?  Do we find the teachings of Jesus astounding, or are we so familiar with them we are no longer surprised?  Do we pay any attention, or have we come to ignore what Jesus teaches?  Do we find that Jesus teaches with authority, or is he just one of many voices clamoring for our attention?  

[Note: Of the few books I have read on the kingdom of God and Sermon on the Mount, three I have found especially helpful are:

• The Kingdom of God is a Party, by Tony Campolo, 150 pages, Word Publishing, 1990.
• The Upside-Down Kingdom, by Donald  Kraybill, 320 pages, Herald Press, 2011.
• The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard, 428 pages, HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.]

- Robert Kruse

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Saturday, August 30, 2014 

Acts 11:1-18

How often do we look at others who are different from us and make a  judgement that excludes them from our company because their ways are strange. In a sense, today's passage is from an early page of the Church's history when the membership consisted of followers who had been raised within Judaism and it was taken for granted by the rank and file of these members that this was a norm: that to be a Chrisitan,you would have to had a Jewish background and probably followed many of the Jewish guidelines regarding conduct and diet. So when others who were not Jewish also fell the call of Jesus, at first this caused some consternation by the Church members in Jerusalem because  potential gentile Christians  didn't have a familiarity with the history of the Law & the Prophets, nor  a need to follow Jewish dietary guidelines. Peter's vision from God dispels the dietary requirements and his hospitality to these Gentile Chrisitans and the  observance of God's Holy Spirit upon them as well was a wakeup moment for the Church, as it expanded beyond Jerusalem into the Gentile world beyond.

Today when we live in a time when many live good lives yet maybe worship God by other names, hailing from other parts of our global village, it moves those of us who are Christians to search out any common ground where the Spirit of God is moving in all of our lives and to recognize that we are all children of this Spirit.  It may well be that some just haven't yet achieved that sense of awareness that allows us to see the goodness in each other, and so at times we may need to be just present and available in a quiet gentle way, and yet not intrusive nor exclusive.

Archdeacon Ken Cardwell

Friday, August 29, 2014

Friday, August 29, 2014

Psalm 102

I am writing this the day after the death of Robin Williams. The media is full of the story of his deep depression leading to an alleged suicide. As I read the verses of Psalm 102, I can see poetic descriptions of human depression. Depression is a nasty mental illness. It causes the afflicted to believe there is no exit, no remedy, no way out of suffering and loneliness, except death. We have all experienced depression to some degree, so these verses echo personally in our hearts. At the same time, these verses also reflect the thoughts some seniors have in their quiet end-of-life moments. 

v4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food.
v5 In my distress I groan aloud and am reduced to skin and bones.
 v9 For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears
v11 My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

The singer believes his days are at an end. Perhaps his arthritic pain is too great. v3 For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers. He believes that God, in his anger has abandoned him “you have taken me up and thrown me aside”. This causes his enemies to mock him all day, using his own name as a curse. This attitude sounds like the paranoia that accompanies depression. Shakespeare gives Hamlet such a line “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!” (1:2:133-4). This talk is all too familiar! This is the dark place few talk about, but all of us recognize.

Yet this Psalm opens with a humble plea:  

1 Hear my prayer, Lord; let my cry for help come to you.

2 Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress.

In the face of death, a death the singer believes will come upon him soon, he still begs God to listen. In his pain he urges God to “answer me quickly”. But the singer does not continue a litany of his complaints. This is not a Woe is Me Blues song from long ago. 

In a brilliant stroke of poetic reversal, he turns the song into a great statement of the endurance and eternal power and glory of God. The singer imagines a time after he is gone, when God will raise up Zion, rebuilding her to her former glory, not for Zion’s sake, but to bring all nations into the fear of the Lord. And in classic Hebrew poetic style the images are echoed in two varied statements, as in v15: 

“The nations will fear the name of the Lord, all the kings of the earth will revere your glory”.

The singer describes the future, when a generation not yet born will praise the Lord. He describes release of the prisoners and relief of the destitute such as himself. He finishes the Psalm with a series of contrasts. God has cut him off in the middle of his days, but God’s days go on forever. The people of the earth will perish and wear out like a garment, but the earth God created will stand. God never changes. The singer finishes with a line of great praise for God:

v28 The children of your servants will live in your presence;

Their descendants will be established before you.”

It begs the question that a singer so deep into despair over his own pain, mortality and death would sing a song of such unfailing faith and vision, looking to the Eternal God to go on forever. His thoughts remind me of a song from the early 60’s, “Get Together”, originally composed by Chet Powers and made famous by The Youngbloods. Again, the singer accepts his mortality: 

We are but a moment’s sunlight / Fading in the grass

The contrast in images in Psalm 102 is powerful and compelling. No doubt these images lead us to reflect on our own fragile mortality, our own few fleeting years on this earth, and our own prayer that the God we trust will love and embrace those who come after us. 

Peter Mansell August 12, 2014  

Thursday, August 28, 2014 (Saint Augustine of Hippo)

Thursday, August 28, 2014

1 John 4:7-16 (Saint Augustine of Hippo)

This passage has underscored the often repeated notion that “God is love.” Love and God are inextricably linked such that one who loves is born of God and loves God. The author states that when people love each other, God lives in them.

It is important, however, to place the passage in the context of the early church, where, from the beginning, debates arose about all sorts of theological issues. In 1 John it is evident that a heated debate had arisen about the nature of Christ and the community has experienced fracture and dissension. Some have left (see 1 John 2:18-19). The writer thus attempts to stress love as a way of consolidating the people that remain.

        Today commemorates of St. Augustine, a North African bishop from the 4^th -5^th century whose ideas and writings have been central in the development of Christian theological traditions, especially in the West. One of Augustine’s writings is a personal memoir of his own struggles with the Christian faith, which he resisted for many years despite being raised as a Christian. The book is called the Confessions and has become a classic of spiritual autobiography. Although to what extent everything in the memoir is accurate is debatable, it is very helpful to have a text that reveals the emotional, physical, moral and theological struggles that such an influential Christian thinker has had.

- Alicia Batten

Wednesday, August 27, 2014 (Monnica, mother of Augustine)

Wednesday August 27, 2014 

John 16:20-24

St. John, Chapters 13 through 17, gives us a glimpse into one of the most precious, private times in Jesus’ life and ministry.  The crowds are gone, all the religious scholars and rulers are gone, all the people seeking miracles are gone; Jesus is alone with only his closest disciples, during this final day or two before he is arrested, tortured, and put to death.  The author introduces this most intimate part of the fourth gospel by observing, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father.   Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” [John 13:1]  As always, Jesus is concerned for others, consoling and strengthening his disciples even as he suffers great distress.  He humbly serves his disciples, washing their feet, and he teaches them about the One who will always walk with them: the Helper, Advocate, and Comforter: God’s Holy Spirit, who will represent Christ and constantly abide with and in every believer.

Today’s short reading, only part of one paragraph coming near the end of this private, loving time Jesus had with his disciples, brings them face to face with the horror he and they must now endure, and with their overwhelming joy that will follow:

“Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.” [v. 20a]

Along with the first disciples, we need to face the horror in this sentence.  Jesus, who had given his whole life for others, who had always shown God’s love, mercy, and righteousness, will now be tortured and executed publicly as a notorious criminal.  Public execution in the midst of a bloodthirsty mob is barbaric.  Added to the victim’s fear and terror of torture and death is the fierce rejection and spite expressed by the mob, as they rejoice and mock and delightfully celebrate the miserable fate of the friendless, condemned person they hate.  How much worse it must be when it is the wicked who condemn the righteous and joyfully celebrate the triumph of their evil ways.  Jesus faced just that, affirming, “the world will rejoice.”

“You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” [v. 20b]

When Jesus predicts his death he generally speaks as well of his resurrection that will soon follow.  Now, this last day, as his suffering intensifies, he speaks of the joy that will follow.  Even so, the disciples are too weak really to believe, although they want to.  Instead, overwhelmed by fear, most of them will soon run away and desert the Master they love.  Only a very few, all of them women, will stay with Jesus faithfully until he dies and is buried.  Then they too mourn in overwhelming grief, grief so great all the disciples’ faith and trust in Jesus’ promise seems lost.

Even now, Jesus, always the patient teacher, gives his disciples an illustration: a woman suffering the anguish of labor pains and childbirth, for whom it all turns to great joy when her baby is delivered.

“So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” [v. 22]

It is at this point, after this explicit personal affirmation of the resurrection (“I will see you again”), that Jesus makes one of the most astounding, sweeping promises in the whole Bible:

“In that day, you will ask nothing of me.  Truly, truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.  Until now, you have asked nothing in my name.  Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” [vv. 23-24]

What a promise! – It is for us who have put our trust in the Lord Jesus, who follow him as his disciples, who believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead.  We are the people in whom, Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit will lead and guide, and in this guidance our prayers, the burdens we carry, will be in accordance with God’s will.  We may, indeed we will have great sorrow in this life, and the burden of unanswered prayer may often overwhelm us.  But, in God’s time and in God’s way, as we ask in the name of Christ Jesus, his promise is that we will receive what we have asked, and our joy will be full.

Today, we commemorate Monnica, mother of the great theologian Augustine of Hippo.  She, with many other mothers through the centuries, exemplified this kind of prayer.  Monnica was a devout Christian, fervent in her prayers and careful in raising her children to follow Christ.  Augustine, however, in his youth rebelled against Christ.  Monnica refused to give up on her son, but was constant and faithful in praying for him.  Even though Augustine considered his mother an embarrassment, she continued to importune bishops and church leaders who might influence and reach her son for Christ.  Eventually, not long before her death, Monnica had the supreme joy of seeing her prayers fulfilled, as, at the Easter Vigil of the year 387, Augustine was baptized in the basilica of Milan.

Collect for the day:

O God, who heard the prayers and gathered up the loving tears of Monnica for the conversion of her child Augustine,

Deepen our devotion, we pray, and help us to work in accordance with your will,that we may bring others, even our own kindred, to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ;

Who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

- Robert Kruse

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Job 6:1-4, 8-15, 21

“In truth I have no help in me, and any resource is driven from me.”

In my college days, I was obsessed with the problem of suffering. I read every book and took every philosophy course I could to find answers to the kinds of questions that torment Job. As I’ve grown older, I’ve been drawn to the drama of art instead of the logic of philosophy to grapple with the world’s suffering. In my reflection today, I offer Picasso’s Guernica, a work he painted in reaction to the 1937 Nazi bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in Spain.

http://www.museoreinasofia.es/coleccion/obra/guernica?id=322

I find no answers as I meditate on the painting. Instead, the work allows me to give voice to the fragmentation I can discover in myself and in the world. Guernica resists our desire to bring order and wholeness out of situations that make no sense. By honestly confronting the chaos, we can experience moments of transcendence reminding us that God’s love embraces all our brokenness.

-David Shumaker

Monday, August 25, 2014

Monday August 25, 2014  

Psalm 91

I can’t help hearing this Psalm as a hymn: “He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, Bear you on the breath of dawn, Make you to shine like the sun, And hold you in the palm of his hand.”

That was one of the hymns we chose for my father’s funeral in January of 2014.  We sang it in the church and then around the gravesite.  I had known it from earlier, introduced probably at Renison or 53rd weekend, and I associate it with people like Patti Carlisle and Morse Robinson.  So this Psalm has a lot of resonance for me.

The clear message of the Psalm is that no harm can come to me - I shall be protected.  My experience is that pain still happened; I was not saved from the experiences of death of loved ones, of illness, of worldly troubles.  However, when I read it with that knowledge, I hear God say to me, “But Ann, you were safe in my arms.  Your spirit, the real you, the essential you, the eternal you, always has been and always will be safe.”

This Psalm reminds me of part of the Lord’s prayer: Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil. Trials will come, evil will attack, but if I hold on to God for dear life (14) I can count on his presence and protection.  Sometimes I may not recognize what the true trial or evil is: it may not be the physical circumstances that are the real danger, but the spiritual ones.  I may risk falling into despair; to believing I am alone, unloved; to missing out on God’s gifts.  I may be so focused on the physical challenges that the hidden traps catch me.  I realized this earlier, when writing another reflection, noting that being overly afraid of having (or not having) enough money for the future (even though I have no true idea of the future!!) can result in holding on to money or things too tightly, to being afraid to be generous.  That can be a hidden trap, a deadly hazard. (3, The Message)

The visual pictures in the Psalm are beautiful: spending the night in God’s shadow (1), huge outstretched arms protecting me (4), standing and watching, untouched, from afar (8), guarded by angels (11).

That last picture is also an echo from my youth: He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.  (King James translation)  Now from The Message: He ordered his angels to guard you wherever you go. If you stumble, they’ll catch you: their job is to keep you from falling.  I really find comparing the two translations enriches my understanding.  In this case, I also remember that this was one of the temptations in the desert: truly the angels protected Jesus from stumbling - he saw clearly where the danger lay and so was able to avoid it.  How wonderful to know that I am offered the same protection!!!

And so I end this reflection singing the Psalm:

You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord,

Who abide in His shadow for life,

Say to the Lord, "My Refuge,

My Rock in Whom I trust."

CHORUS:

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

The snare of the fowler will never capture you,

And famine will bring you no fear;

Under His Wings your refuge,

His faithfulness your shield.

CHORUS

You need not fear the terror of the night,

Nor the arrow that flies by day,

Though thousands fall about you,

Near you it shall not come.

CHORUS

For to His angels He's given a command,

To guard you in all of your ways,

Upon their hands they will bear you up,

Lest you dash your foot against a stone.

CHORUS

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

Blessings

Ann Kelland

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Revelation 4:1-11 

One of the most challenging elements in the study of Scripture is

the quest for meaning in the Book of Revelation. It is not that the

content of the last book of the Bible is devoid of significance, it

is because the book of the Revelation of John is chock full of

signs and symbols which are laden with meaning, that the reader

is often left with the question, “What does this all mean for me ?“

The opening verses of the fourth chapter are filled with images of

a vision of Heaven. The writer is in awe of what he senses being in

the presence of God could be like. The reader is presented with a

scene where God is surrounded by, and is the focus of worship.

The elders and the heavenly creatures who are engaged in worship are described in detail. They focus their attention on a being whose presence is described in dynamic and bright images of colourful light.

In all probability, the images which we know best, are the

four living creatures. Their familiarity to us, here at St. John’s, is

simply because they are depicted in the reredos and on the kneelers at the High Altar. Linked with the Four Gospels, the images have their unique connections with the Gospels they represent. Matthew, is the lion because of the depiction of Jesus in scripture as the Lion of Judah. Mark is represented by the figure of the man , because of that Gospel having its focus on the human and earthly ministry of Jesus. Luke’s Gospel is linked with the image of the ox, as Jesus is presented as a sacrifice for

all. Finally, our parish’s patron saint, John, is represented by the eagle, because of the lofty concepts of the divinity of Jesus offered in that Gospel record.

In recent days a number of books have been written by those who have gone through what have been called,” near death experiences”. As they have shared their stories people have wondered what Heaven truly is like.

Is it the place of worship described by John ? Is it the place of reconciliation and peace which others describe ? Or is it………?

In a world where we like to have everything outlined for us in stark and graphic detail, I suggest that Heaven continues to be, a mystery. The Revelation of John allows us to view Heaven through the eyes of a writer whose use of sign and symbol gives us a glimpse into a place which is beyond our experience

or imagination.

We yearn for Heaven to be a place of reunion with those we love. We pray that Heaven is a place where all will be freed from the pains and anxieties which beset us in this life. We have faith that as much as we use words to describe it, the reality of God and the reality of Heaven will never be able to be encapsulated or captured within a net of words. Even if those words

are the words of Holy Scripture.

- The Reverend Canon Christopher Pratt

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Saturday, August 23, 2014

2 Samuel 23:1-7

“For he has made with me an everlasting covenant...”

These words of an aging King David are beautiful. As he nears the end of his life, he is confident that God’s mission through his family will continue because God has “made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.” He paints a wonderful portrait of his dynasty: “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.” 

On the one hand, David’s speech is inspiring because it points to God’s faithfulness, God’s blessings and God’s desire for justice. Yet reading this sort of religiously inspired confidence makes me nervous. David's confidence extends to a description of those outside of God’s favor: “But the godless are all like thorns that are thrown away.” Motivated by his divine assurance, a faith-filled person too easily carves up the world into insiders and outsiders, laying the foundation for violence against those outside your own clan.

In a recent radio interview, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom, the National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., spoke about his ministry in the light of ongoing violence in the Middle East. As a faith leader, he feels he has two roles. First, he says, he stands with solidarity with his brothers and sisters in Israel because it is natural to feel closest to our own family.

Second, he feels called as a religious leader “to speak in a voice of universality - to speak about common values that we share together, to against efforts to dehumanize people. And when there's violence, the worst side of people's rhetoric comes out. We have to try and remind our friends and our congregations that now is the time to speak in a voice of God and remember that the fundamental teaching of religion is that we're all created in the image of God.”

According to Rabbi Herzfeld, “speaking in the voice of God” is speaking a “language this is responsible. It’s also a language that’s welcoming and inviting rather than a language of hate.”

This is the challenge for us today as a faith community. How can we share King David’s confidence that God’s love is everlasting and speak that love to the world in a welcoming and inviting way?

To hear the full interview with Rabbi Herzfeld or to read a transcript, follow this link:

http://radio.wpsu.org/post/rabbi-during-transition-look-back-accomplishments

- David Shumaker

Friday, August 22, 2014

Friday August 22, 2014 

Acts 9:1-9

This account from the Acts of the Apostles tells of the conversion of Paul, formerly called Saul, of Tarsus.  In terse phrases, the author describes this moment in the life of the first missionary for Christianity when all that is real changes.  Formerly a persecutor of the “people of the Way”, Paul encounters the risen Christ on the Damascus road, and is forever changed.

This description of conversion has often been mistaken for the norm in conversion experiences.  Perhaps you have been asked by a well-meaning friend or acquaintance if you have been “saved”, or words to that effect.  This Damascus Road experience, with flashing light, and an ethereal voice, and a resultant temporary blindness, is just that – one experience.  We may well have experienced the presence of God, or the Christ, or the Holy Spirit, in far more subtle ways in our lives.  And, like Saul/Paul, we go on experiencing God’s love and mercy and compassion day by day, moment by moment, if and when we are open to that experience.

In Great Lion of God, a book written in 1970, prolific author Taylor Caldwell took on the life of Paul in a fictional account.  She describes Paul’s conversion experience thus:

Saul lifted his hands and his mouth opened and he knew, at last, for Whom he had been searching, with longing and despair and hope and love – and with vehement denial.  His eyes, though filled with that splendor which shone upon him did not blink, did not turn away, did not scorch.  A quietude, as immense as the ocean, fell upon him.  His heart bulged in his breast, shaking.  His flesh quailed.  But the ecstasy increased moment by moment, and he tried to speak, to whisper, and finally it was enough for him to see. (p.413)

It was enough for him to see   It was enough. 

Is our relationship with the One who cares for us, and loves us beyond all measure, enough?  How do we foster that relationship, care for it, how do we share it with others?

- Reverend Paul Kett

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Thursday, August 21, 2014
Job 1:1-22

     Today we take a small step into the book of Job, a book that probes the issue of undeserved suffering. The style of the writing lends itself to be understood as a mythological story. Throughout history commentators have thought of Job as a Gentile contemporary of figures such as Moses and Abraham, though a worshiper of the same God. Others consider Job to be a literary creation. The book is grouped in with wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible, and while it precedes the Psalms in Christian Bibles, it comes after the Psalms and Proverbs in Jewish editions of the Bible. With this latter ordering we can see how the struggling with the issue of suffering that we find in the book of Job builds upon the honest wrestling with the same issue that we find frequently in the Psalms. 

William Blake, "Job is rebuked by his friends" [http://lentengallery.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/job/]

          You'll probably note the interesting role that Satan plays in this story. The Satan ("the Accuser") in Job is depicted not as an evil spirit so much as a tester and observer of humanity, and as one who is part of God's court. Perhaps worse than Satan are Job's finger-pointing friends. 

     The presence of this interesting story in our scriptures testifies to the universality of questions about suffering, and I'd add, the input of Job's friends is perhaps a commentary on our tendency to jump to quick answers and blaming. Contemporary writings on congregational development highlight the importance of non-anxiety and creativity in overcoming challenges. I hope that in delving into this marvelous story we can learn something about approaching our problems with imagination.

- Matthew Kieswetter

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Wednesday, August 20, 2014 

John 6:1-15

Today's reading is account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. I  have come to realize that this event is not about Jesus being a possible miracle worker as some might suggest. Yes , Jesus was moved by the hunger of the group gathered there , and there was an apparent absence of food, but you will recall that Jesus in resisting the Devil in the wilderness, did not want to base his ministry and message that would have made people follow him because  they thought he had supernatural powers and could perform miracles not available to the ordinary person. So he rejected this course of action for his life and work. 

So what is important here? If Jesus wanted to share something of God and the way God is present, he showed them a way that they too might engage and share. With 5 loaves and 2 fish, after he had given thanks, he distributed them. and when all was said & done, after all were feed, 12 baskets of food were left over. Did the people, after seeing what a boy with 5 loves and 2 fishes had shared, did some of them also do likewise, moved by the actions of that young lad, such that not only was their  physical  hunger met, but that a spiritual hunger had also been addressed.

And Jesus saw fit to slip away, before the crowd could do an action which might give the authorites at large an excuse to size him.

Archdeacon Ken Cardwell