Words 11.12

 Words Twice a Week    11.12

At camp still – water pump froze but didn’t break; water line froze.  Packing up to come home for a couple of days.  And, [qm] = question mark; [ep] = exclamation point.  Not having shift keys that work is getting old[ep]

Some thoughts on some of the lessons for Sunday -

Ps 123 

-  another of the ‘psalms of ascent’ that the people possibly sang on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

-  ‘as the eyes of the servant/maid look to the hand of the master/mistress’ – has a sort of Downton Abbey ring to it.  That’s probably a little softer than the original sense.  Servants and maids were probably more like what we would call slaves.  So would they look to the hand of the master for reward, for chastisement, for orders[qm].  The psalm obviously intends ‘for rescue’.

-  ’we have had more than enough of contempt’ – these are Biden voters[question mark] Perhaps the contempt of the towns they were passing through.

-  Or, ‘the scorn of those who are at ease’.  The ‘undeserving poor’, the Cadillac queens, and all the other derogatory slights those who are ‘at ease’ [and most of us are ‘at ease’] use to label and separate those who are not as well off.

-  the psalm says that God’s mercy can override the contempt of the world.  Does that seem to work out for you[qm]

-  ‘my eyes’ changes to ‘our eyes’ – mercy is communal, which is hard when we are living more and more isolated lives.

Judges 4.1-7   Deborah

-  fitting to have a story about a strong female leader[exclamation point]  Deborah would sit under ‘Deborah’s Palm’ and dispense words and wisdom.  Interesting that she chose a natural setting, rather than a human built edifice.  Is that a female thing[qm]

-  this is part of the whole story of the people moving into and settling in ‘the land God was giving them.’  Of course, when the land already has people living in it, that raises issues, as we have noted before.

-  also, the underlying paradigm is ‘God taking care of them when they behave, God selling them out when they misbehave, God rescuing them when they cry for mercy.’  How does this fit with our understanding of God and reality.  Does a story sometimes get twisted [spun] to explain reality[qm]

-  if Deborah were active today, where would she sit, what would she say[qm]

-  the story goes on beyond the limits of our passage – Deborah tells Barak to raise fighters from the tribes Naphtali and Zebulun and confront Jabin, King of Canaan, by the River Kishon.  [that should tip us off – don’t fight the Israelites near water.  Think Frodo and what’s her name fleeing from the Nine Riders near Rivendell].

-  and then Jael, another strong woman, [wife of Heber the Kenite, just so you know who she is] drives a tent stake through the head of Sisera, enemy general, while he is trying to retreat, is a guest in her tent [an unwelcome guest, but a guest all the same], and is sleeping.  So some issues there.

-  as a story of God’s forgiveness and mercy, it’s nice.  As a story of ‘those who disagree with you are enemies [even enemies of God], not so nice.  All in all, a little hard to embrace if you are trying to follow the Prince of Peace.

-  one writer notes that Deborah and Jael act on faith [and are thus heroes]; Barak stops to consider and calculate [and is thus average] and goes on to say ‘the preacher may wish to reflect on where his/her congregation is merely average, where it is heroic.’  Hmmmm….

1 Thess 5.1-11

-  the Lord will come ‘like a thief in the night.’

-  be ready to be faithful in each new moment.

-  one writer puts it - ‘the Day of the Lord is always Now.’

Matthew 25.14-30  the servants and the talents and the Master’s return

-  note that this follows the wise and foolish girls with their lamps – could this be the wise and foolish servants/investors with [the master’s] talents[qm]

-  again Swanson reminds us that this is a story of master and slave, not employer and employee.  And that a talent is 38 years worth of average income.  He notes that the Talmud says that when a ‘master’ gives a ‘slave’ – who does not even own him/herself – such a huge amount, the safe thing to do is bury it in the ground[ep]  Winning the lottery is not always a safe thing to do[ep]  So how would Matthew’s readers have heard this story[qm]

-  if the ‘unwise/wicked’ servant/slave had given the money to the poor, or invested through Kiva, would that have been different[qm]  Seems like there was a story of a dishonest manager who made friends for himself with the master’s money, and that servant drew praise.

-  How did the ‘wise’ servants double their money[qm]  Does that matter[qm]

-  ‘Everyone who has will get more, those without will have even less’ – especially if they are immigrant farm workers.  Is this simply ‘unregulated capitalism’ or something worse[qm]

-  Swanson also notes again that Matthew’s readers would have heard ‘Rome’ in any story about a ‘master who returns.’

-  Matthew puts this story in a series about ‘last or ultimate things’ [eschatology is the technical word].  Issues while we wait for the end – faithfulness, preparedness, risk.  Love demands, or perhaps entails, risk.  For Matthew’s readers, perhaps the risk of public disclosure.  What risks do we encounter in being a Christian[qm]

-  and another writer notes that the ‘talent = 38 years of income’ suggests that we have been given great riches of skills and abilities to use while we wait for some kind of completion, either to ultimate reality or to our reality.  And this line – ‘grace employed abounds, grace buried does nothing.’   On the other hand, seeds buried grow into food and trees[ep]

-  note the first two slaves gain more responsibility and the joy of the master’s presence.  [that’s presented as a good thing – is it always[qm]]  The third looses the responsibility/joy of being a steward and the joy of the master’s presence. 

-  Swanson – again[ep] – notes that this is the last time we hear about ‘the outer darkness where men weep and gnash their teeth’ until we see Jesus on the cross. [well – it does get briefly noted in passing after the sheep and the goats in vs 46, but…]  He suggests Jesus recognizes abandonment when he experiences it, because he has pronounced it so many times on those who did not measure up.

-  so most writers note that while this often gets wrapped up in the congregational stewardship effort, and that even the word ‘talent’ in the sense of skills, abilities, talent show apparently comes from this Greek word, we should be careful….

A Prayer for this week -

God over all -

you are almighty in ruling not by force or violence but by love.

We lift our eyes to you, to our fellow travelers and pilgrims, and to the hills.

Our help comes from you;

our gifts and skills are at your command;

our lives are laid before you.

At least this is what we say with our heart.

As we stop to consider and calculate, we sometimes hold back.

Today we lift our heads and hearts to you

for guidance, for encouragement, for strength,

and we take these few more steps forward 

following Jesus, Lord of Life and Prince of Peace.

Words 11.8

 Words Twice a Week     11.8

- an abbreviated version this week – heading back to camp to enjoy summer like weather for another day or two, and the shift keys on my computer have stopped working again.  Haven’t heard back from Dell yet.  No internet access for researching days [or inserting links] so I am kind of depending on W Paul Jones’ Eclectic Almanac of the Faithful.  He lists people by when they died.

- and last week’s challenge – I did not yet get through the Leo Tolstoy story.

But a few days from the church calendar -

Nov 14  -  Samuel Seabury was consecrated the first American Episcopal bishop in 1784.

Nov 15  -  the church remembers Francis Asbury and George Whitefield, big name Methodist Evangelists.  Asbury was one of the first 2 American Methodist bishops, consecrated at the Christmas conference also in 1784.  Interestingly, they held a conference of all the preachers and circuit riders at Christmas, which at that time was not a really big event in the churches.

And from the earth/world calendar -

Nov 9 

-  Kristallnacht – ok, I confess I don’t know the specifics of this and don’t have internet access to look it up.  It was a night when Nazi mobs went through Jewish communities breaking windows.  I will look up more about it when I get a chance.

-  Dylan Thomas died on this day in 1953.  A Child’s Christmas in Wales is always part of our Chistmas season.  We have a cd of him reading it.

-  on this day in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.  Walls keep people [and other creatures] in and they keep them out – but not forever.  Walls are not the only barriers we erect.  Roads divide wilderness areas, pipelines disrupt migration patterns, dams block off spawning runs. But on this day we can be grateful for holes in walls that let us through.  Leonard Cohen has a song about ‘there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’  It always seemed more of a Christian idea than his song Hallelujah, which gets more attention.

Nov 10

-  the Gales of November and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Does anyone know where the love of God goes – yes, it goes where the need is greatest.

Nov 11

-  Lucretia Mott died on this day in 1880.  She was involved with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in organizing the first women’s rights convention.  And now we have a woman of color as VP Elect.  I was really impressed by her acceptance speech on Saturday.

-  well, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – we could spend a few moments praying that current wars would end and new conflicts be dealt with non-violently.  Here’s the prayer for peace in the world that I like -

    God of all Creation, 

    let the peace which is in your heart 

    flow into your world, 

    and may all who share your world 

    live together in justice, kindness and humility. 

    We ask it in the name of Jesus, Prince of Peace. Amen.

Nov 13 

-  Karen Silkwood died in a suspicious car accident in 1974.  She was a chemical technician at a plutonium fuels production plant in Oklahoma, and was gathering information about negligence in safety procedures and unexplained radiation exposure of workers.

-  the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982.

Nov 14

-  Booker T Washington died in 1915.  He was principal of Tusgekee Institute, and lectured on education and industrial training as the way to raise he socio-economic level of African Americans.

Nov 15

-  Roque Gonzales was killed in 1628.  While the Spanish conquistadores brutalized the natives of Paraguay, Gonzales led the Jesuits to create politically independent indigenous villages of several thousand persons, excluding all Europeans.  More than 30 such communities were formed, with families owning their own homes and farming collectively. When he tried to do the same thing in Brazil, he and his two helpers were murdered, the first recognized martyrs of the Americas.

Well – that’s what I’ve got for now -

Words 11.5

 Words Twice a Week      11.5

(and I was so happy that the shift keys on my computer were fixed, and now they have stopped working again.  Darn!)

A few notes on a few of the lessons for this Sunday -

Joshua 24.1-3a, 14-25  Choose this day whom you will serve – as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord

+ kind of a bookend with last week’s lesson of Joshua taking over leadership after Moses’ death, and leading the people into the land.  Now they have pretty much settled in and Joshua calls them to decide and declare who, and whose, they will be as they live in he land.

+ they say they will serve the Lord, but Joshua says they are not able.  On the one hand, God is holy and they [we] are not, so as much as we may try, we cannot be perfect/holy (although John Wesley would have disputed that!)  In any case, we are saved by grace, and not by works, so – whew…

+ Or on the other hand, maybe Joshua is simply saying “Look, this is not a decision to be taken lightly – be sure you mean it.”  Does that mean thinking, or agonizing, or searching your heart?  What goes into the decision to serve God?

+ Joshua starts by reviewing the story of salvation, what God has done for them.  What has God done for you?

+ Joshua tells them to put away the gods they brought from Egypt or the gods of the people across the river.  Are there gods that we have carried with us from our past?  Are there other gods we tend to serve and worship from time to time?  Do you remember Bob Dylan singing You gotta serve somebody…?

+ Joshua calls them to consider their allegiance, their identity.  Have we as a country come to such a time – to consider who we are and who [whose] we will be?

Ps 78.1-7   Teach your children well   

+ we had this psalm a couple of weeks ago along with the story of Israel’s testing at Massah and Meribah.  I suppose we are asking some of the same questions again.

+ one writer notes the interplay of story and rule in the teaching of the children, and that the rules grow from the story.  Do you have family or Sunday School stories that have given rise to rules by which you live?

+ what place/role do elders play in your community?  Are they valued for their wisdom, or are they seen as out of date, not up with the times?  What kind of wisdom comes appropriately from elders, what comes appropriately from contemporary teachers, scientists?

+ how many Sunday School teachers do you remember?

+ a haiku

    reaching the milestone -

    when I look in the mirror

     a geezer looks back.

Amos 5.18-24   well this is serendipitous – I did this for the Stewardship Letter -

+ the day of the Lord, is it darkness or light?

+ the festivals and assemblies – is it because we are doing them more for ourselves than for God, or because we are trying to distract (deflect?) from other things that we are doing?

+ as with the Joshua lesson, does this one also call us to consider who we are as a country/

1 Thessalonians 4.13-18  

-  I know not when my Lord may come, at night or noon day fair,

   or if I’ll walk the vale with him, or meet him in the air.

      But I know whom I have believed…

+ we are not souls that die and then come back to life.  When we die we cease to be.  But in Christ, God re-creates us.  “God will not let death destroy the creatures God made and loves.” I just like the sound of that!  Would that be like we build a sand castle, the waves wash it away, and we re-build it?

+ Christian hope is not just resurrection, it is being with Christ.

+ Encourage one another – how are we doing with that?

Mt 25.1-13    the wise and foolish girls

+ Swanson notes that the Greek words for ‘wise’ and ‘foolish’ are perhaps more accurately translated ‘prudent’ and ‘moron’, and that the harshness is intentional.  How does that change the way you hear the story?

+ he also notes that this would be one of the few times that two families or clans would come together, including young, unmarried girls and young, unmarried boys.  Does that add to the way you hear it?

+ is this a story, or a parable, or an allegory?  It has several things about it that are problematic – the bridegroom is late but then the foolish girls are chastised for being late; the wise girls refuse to share with the foolish ones; where do the foolish girls get more oil in the middle of the night; who went with them; why does the bridegroom say “I don’t know you”?  One suggestion is that a parable has been allegorized to fit one or more particular situations and has gotten somewhat confused.  

+ So – some potential ‘meanings’, ‘teachings’   abundance vs scarcity (the New Free Store motto is In God’s economy there is always enough); any time is the right time to be faithful; Be Prepared; would you rather be wise or faithful, wise or kind?

+ this is part of Jesus’ teaching about the future and as such it is meant to reach back to us from the future and shape who we are today.  How do we allow thoughts about the future to shape how we live today; or, what future issues do we think about as we structure our lives today – money issues, family issues, climate issues….

+ Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning...Other verses – Make me a fisher of men…; Give me gas for my Ford…  I think there were more, but memory fails me.

+ the issue of the delay before Jesus returns, and how to live in it.  In the story just before this one, the wicked servant was surprised when the master came home too soon; in this one the master comes to late.  How about the issue of how we live while civilization crumbles around us – as the doomers would say.

A prayer -

God of all times,

our parents and elders and ancestors have told us

how you have taught them and blessed them in the past;

and we have seen your love and grace in our own lives.

Let the promise of a future with Jesus

fill our lives with joy and kindness today.

And may justice and righteousness flood our world

and bring your peace.

Words 11.2

 Words Twice a Week      11.2

Last week’s challenge – write a “ball point pen” haiku  (ok – not as good as a SPAM-ku, but still fun.)

   Forceful strokes weaken,

   Elegant scrolls disappear -

   my ball point pen scrawls

A few days from the church calendar -

Nov 2  All Soul’s Day   We remember all those who have died, maybe especially those who have died this year.  Maybe this year especially those who have died from the virus.  Some people light candles.  Some might make a special dinner or dessert that was a favorite of those who died.  Some might get out pictures of family members from now till Advent?

Nov 3  Richard Hooker   He was a priest in the Church of England in the last half of the 16th century.  Some scholars suggest he was mainly responsible for steering the Church into a middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Nov 6   William Temple  He was a child of an Archbishop of Canterbury who himself became the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942.   Previously, as the Archbishop of York, he was involved in convening and chairing the Malvern Conference (1941) on church and society. The latter proposed six requisites for a society based on Christianity: 

 -every child should find itself a member of a family housed with decency and dignity; 

 -every child should have an opportunity for education up to maturity; 

 -every citizen should have sufficient income to make a home and bring up his children properly; 

 -every worker should have a voice in the conduct of the business or industry in which he works; 

 -every citizen should have sufficient leisure – two days' rest in seven and annual holiday with pay; 

 -every citizen should be guaranteed freedom of worship, speech, assembly, and association.

And a few from the earth/world calendar -

Nov 3

+ in 1868, John Willis Menard became the first African-American elected to the US House.

+ in 1884 the Supreme Court ruled Native Americans were “aliens” – citizens of reservations, but not of the United States.  In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act gave them full citizenship.

So on this day we have to acknowledge that our country captured people from another country, another continent even, and brought them here to be slaves; and then also deal with the idea of our government first denying and then granting indigenous people citizenship.  And then elect a President.  I don’t even know where to start…..

Nov 4

+ Felix Mendelssohn died. (1647)  His full name was Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.  He was born into a Jewish family, but at age 7 was baptized as a Reformed Christian.  Among many other works, he wrote an Overture and incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including The Wedding March.  We sing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing to his music.  He is largely responsible for the renewed interest in the music of J.S. Bach, with his 1829 Berlin performance of the St Matthew Passion.

+ King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922, astounding the world at the achievements of Egyptian culture.

+ Walter Cronkite was born in 1916.

+ in 1925, Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman elected governor of a state – Wyoming.

+ Barack Obama was elected president in 2008

Nov 6

+ Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in 1893.  A few of his many works are Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and the 1812 Overture.

Nov 7

+ Leo Tolstoy died in 1910.  He wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  Then according to W Paul Jones, “out of a growing religious commitment, he abandoned such writing, focusing his works on religious and moral issues.  Practicing what he wrote, he gave up his property for the sake of a simple Christian life, performed physical labor, and threw himself tirelessly into helping the needy in the great famine.  He rejected the miraculous aspects of the Gospels, intrigued instead with teaching and living the Sermon on the Mount.”

+ in 1916, Jeanette Rankin became the first woman elected to the US Congress – from Montana.

+ (1917) the October Revolution   Lenin and the Bolsheviks led an uprising, precipitating the Russian Civil War

+ Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the strongest and most influential first ladies ever, died in 1962.  Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt was a controversial First Lady at the time for her outspokenness, particularly on civil rights for African-Americans. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband's policies. She advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees. Following her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.   (Wikipedia)

+ Steve McQueen (Wanted, Dead or Alive, and a few movies) died in 1980

This week’s challenge – read something by Leo Tolstoy!  Ok, not ready for War and Peace just yet, I’m going to try The Kreutzer Sonata,  “a tale of murder and jealousy, exploring the morality of romantic love.”  (ebook from PWPL!)  Although I do recall way back in the early “Email a Day” series there was a website where you could read a chapter a day.  If we had done it, we probably would have finished it by now!

Words 10.29

 Words Twice a Week     10.29

Some thoughts on some of the lessons for Sunday -

Joshua 3.7-17   Crossing the Jordan

+ this mirrors the Exodus, completing Israel’s Salvation Story of Deliverance from Egypt, wandering/learning/forming in the wilderness, receiving and entering into the Land.  It is begun and completed by God.  How would you tell your own “Salvation Story”?  When did it start?  How was God involved?

+ the experience affirms 2 things for Israel – 1) God is with them (in particular with Joshua as the successor to Moses) and 2) God is giving them the land – they are not taking it by their own strength or cleverness.  Of course, as we have said over and over, it becomes quite problematic when “God gives them land that “belongs” to someone else!”

Ps 107, 1-7, (8,9)?, 33-37

+ I guess it is supposed to be about Israel wandering in the wilderness, but you really can’t read vs 4-9 (“they wandered in a desert land”) without thinking of immigrants on the southern border, at least I can’t!

+ vs 7 says says essentially they were saved when they reached a town.  Is it the assumption that the town would take care of them?  That the town would do God’s work?

+ one writer notes that God “redeems” and “gathers” – it could refer to the Exodus (redeem) and the return from the Babylonian Exile (gather).  Where do we see God’s people today – more in need of being saved/rescued or of being gathered in?  What about you?  

+ Rescue here does not begin in God’s attentive love, but in Israel’s voiced complaint.  (“They cried to the Lord…”)  God responds, but does not make the first move.  “A thinking people first must become an out-loud, candid, complaining people.”  It takes real faith to complain “out loud”, not just to yourself!  Can we complain respectfully?

Matthew 23.1-12   Do what the Pharisees (church leaders) say, but not what they do…

+ Swanson says “First, stop and notice that Jesus says the Pharisees are right.”

+ Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary identifies the issue as “The distance between insight and performance.”  Suggesting that we are not really that different, it goes on -

As believers we may be perplexed by he existence of evil in the world, or we may wonder what in the world we can do in God’s name about a host of problems that are so big we cannot begin to correct them.  But there are many matters about which we have sufficient clarity to take action.  God has commanded us not to kill, but we go on arming ourselves to the teeth.  Christ has told us to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we pay farmers not to grow grain while children starve.  Christ has told us that if we have two coats and our brother or sister has none that we are to give one away, but we live in a world where homelessness increases by the day.  On basic maters such as the provision of food, shelter, clothing, and the making of peace, we fall dreadfully short of the mark to which Christ has pointed us.  Clearly our comprehension outdistances our performance, so that we are all too much like the pharisees in Matthew’s Gospel.

And -

Even our modesty tends to be immodest, so we choose the simplicity of elegance rather than the simplicity of charity.

And -

We suffer from the delusion that what we can accomplish can one day comfort us.  

+ Henri Nouwen reminds us all that really matters is the relationships we share, and knowing that we are each of us deeply loved.

+ ”The greatest among you is your servant.”  Do you hear that as “The one who is greatest should be serving”?  Or “Your servant is really the greatest”?  Or are they the same?  Or that in the Time of God’s Peace, there are no greater and lesser, and that all are servants of each other?

Then just a couple of things to notice from the lessons for All Saints Day, also this Sunday -

(Buechner says “In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief.  These handkerchiefs are called saints.”)

Rev 7.9-17

+ “Who’s that yonder dressed in white….?”  Do you hear Peter, Paul, and Mary belting it out?

+ Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb…?

+ The Time of God’s Peace is discontinuous from our time, at least as John sees it.  Our experience (suffering, presence of evil) is not the final word, and God really can wash something in red and have it become white!  Is that how you see it?  What does that mean for our time?

Matthew 5.1-12   Blessed are you….

+ Jesus goes up a mountain, as Moses did, and these beatitudes begin his Sermon on the Mount just as the Ten Words given to Moses begin the giving of the Law through Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

+ When I look up, what should I see –

    Whoa, Sweet Jesus on the mountaintop bringing everybody peace.   That’s Harry Chapin in The Cotton Patch Gospel.

+ The “you” is in the plural form in the Greek.  These are words for community, not just individuals.  Hard when we are essentially living as individual these days, or in small family groupings.

+ note that the first 8 beatitudes are in something of an A/B/A/B/C/D/C/D pattern, starting and ending with “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”, and the fourth and eighth having a concern for righteousness.  They kind of seem to alternate between active and passive, though maybe not all that clearly. The final, ninth beatitude, in a slightly different format emphasizes the beatitude of the persecuted. How do you respond to lists like this?

And here’s a prayer for All Saints from the UM Book of Worship -

  We bless your holy name, O God,

  for all your servants who, having finished their course,

  now rest from their labors.

  Give us grace to follow the example of their steadfastness and faithfulness, 

  to your honor and glory;

  through Jesus Christ our Lord.