MEMO FOR FEB 14
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
What kind of God is this--Indeed?”
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Can you believe it? Transfiguration Sunday is upon us and we have another seven inches of snow.
I don?t know who puts these lessons together, but I think that Deuteronomy 34:1-10, the account of God showing Moses the promised land and then telling him that he can?t go in would have made a better parallel for the Gospel for this day. Remember, after God takes Moses to the mountain and shows him the promise land. God refuses to let Moses cross over. Just rules him out on a technicality and gives him an unmarked grave. What kind of God is this-- indeed? Three of my saints got unmarked graves, Moses, Mozart and Calvin. (Some would say that Calvin deserved his!) but, certainly not Moses.
When we read the Luke passage, we find Jesus and the disciples up on the mountain of transfiguration, and Moses is conferring with Jesus. Moses if you are back there in that unmarked grave, how is that we find you in the future that God is preparing? What kind of God is this-- indeed?
If we read further in the Gospel text for today, we discover a demon fleeing from Jesus. It would seem that Luke?s Jesus is the enemy of all things broken and lost, the one who restores. I found 26 healing stories in Luke. What kind of a God is this--indeed? I think all of this tells me that God is the one who restores our broken dreams and lives, even so Moses. But God?s ways are certainly not our ways--thank God!
Abraham Heschel reminds us that some see a single flash of light in the entire night of their lives. With others there are long or short intermissions between the flashes of illumination... He continues there is a loneliness within us that hears. When the soul parts company with the ego and its petty conceits; when we cease to exploit all things but instead pray the world?s cry, the world?s sigh, our loneliness may hear the living grace beyond all power. We must first peer into the darkness, feel the ...hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of God?s living light. God in Search of Man, A philosophy of Judaism, The Jewish Publication Society of America. 1956,
Monday, February 8, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Memo for Sunday, Feb 7, 2010
Luke 5:1-11
"Going fishing"
The Luke passage has Jesus showing the fishermen where to catch the fish. As I read my Bible it would seem that the fishers never caught any fish without Jesus? help. Maybe there is a sermon in there somewhere. I have preached lots of sermons on Jesus calling those fisher folk and telling them that they shall become fisher of men. When the Church, especially the Methodist Men, picked up on this text they formed fishermen?s clubs as a form of evangelism. I think this was a good use of the text but there is more here .
Rudolf Bultmann has written that the fishers of men text referred to Jesus knowledge of a greek god who would capture men and imprison them in water. Thus to become a fisher of men was to set the prisoner free. I like it, but for the life me I cannot find the Bultmann reference. (I probably gave my Bultmann books to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale when He went out of vogue.) His thought does make sense because water, the deeps, was a place of great fear and foreboding in the first century, and to live in fear is indeed to be in prison. As I recall, Wesley wrote a hymn about setting the prisoner free.
I Corinthians 15
Paul and the Resurrection
If you are not into fishing this week then take a look at I Corinthians 15. This writing is one of the earliest sermons in the New Testament. It predates the Gospels. Paul writing to the Church at Corinth wishes for them to know of his mystical experience on the Road to Damascus. He is trying to help a skeptical world understand the Resurrection and in doing so provides us with that first list of eye witnesses to the risen Christ. (Please note that the key witnesses to the Resurrection, namely the women, are left off the list. ) Why did Paul leave them out? Was it because he had not yet read, or heard Mark preach his Gospel? Or could it be that in the very first stages of formation, the church already was practicing exclusion? This passage is important for me for three reasons. 1) We can correct the sin of the church by setting the record straight regarding women in the church. 2) Paul tells us that he experienced the Risen Christ as one untimely born, meaning he did not get to walk and talk with Jesus as Peter did. I too, and all of us, are untimely born. I take it to mean that we too can experience the risen Christ. I must admit that the Damascus experience was a tough one, but that may be the first step for many of us. 3) Paul puts the emphasis of the resurrection where it belongs, not on some empty tomb, but in the work of the risen Christ who creates hope for each of us. And we discover that Paul?s idea of Resurrection is about finding new and true life right now.
Worth Pondering
“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is replaced with creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the spender of the past, when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority, rather than with the voice of compassion--its message is meaningless. Abraham Heschel. From God in Search of Man The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955, p.3
Luke 5:1-11
"Going fishing"
The Luke passage has Jesus showing the fishermen where to catch the fish. As I read my Bible it would seem that the fishers never caught any fish without Jesus? help. Maybe there is a sermon in there somewhere. I have preached lots of sermons on Jesus calling those fisher folk and telling them that they shall become fisher of men. When the Church, especially the Methodist Men, picked up on this text they formed fishermen?s clubs as a form of evangelism. I think this was a good use of the text but there is more here .
Rudolf Bultmann has written that the fishers of men text referred to Jesus knowledge of a greek god who would capture men and imprison them in water. Thus to become a fisher of men was to set the prisoner free. I like it, but for the life me I cannot find the Bultmann reference. (I probably gave my Bultmann books to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale when He went out of vogue.) His thought does make sense because water, the deeps, was a place of great fear and foreboding in the first century, and to live in fear is indeed to be in prison. As I recall, Wesley wrote a hymn about setting the prisoner free.
I Corinthians 15
Paul and the Resurrection
If you are not into fishing this week then take a look at I Corinthians 15. This writing is one of the earliest sermons in the New Testament. It predates the Gospels. Paul writing to the Church at Corinth wishes for them to know of his mystical experience on the Road to Damascus. He is trying to help a skeptical world understand the Resurrection and in doing so provides us with that first list of eye witnesses to the risen Christ. (Please note that the key witnesses to the Resurrection, namely the women, are left off the list. ) Why did Paul leave them out? Was it because he had not yet read, or heard Mark preach his Gospel? Or could it be that in the very first stages of formation, the church already was practicing exclusion? This passage is important for me for three reasons. 1) We can correct the sin of the church by setting the record straight regarding women in the church. 2) Paul tells us that he experienced the Risen Christ as one untimely born, meaning he did not get to walk and talk with Jesus as Peter did. I too, and all of us, are untimely born. I take it to mean that we too can experience the risen Christ. I must admit that the Damascus experience was a tough one, but that may be the first step for many of us. 3) Paul puts the emphasis of the resurrection where it belongs, not on some empty tomb, but in the work of the risen Christ who creates hope for each of us. And we discover that Paul?s idea of Resurrection is about finding new and true life right now.
Worth Pondering
“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is replaced with creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the spender of the past, when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority, rather than with the voice of compassion--its message is meaningless. Abraham Heschel. From God in Search of Man The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955, p.3
Memo for Sunday, Feb 7, 2010
Luke 5:1-11
"Going fishing"
The Luke passage has Jesus showing the fishermen where to catch the fish. As I read my Bible it would seem that the fishers never caught any fish without Jesus? help. Maybe there is a sermon in there somewhere. I have preached lots of sermons on Jesus calling those fisher folk and telling them that they shall become fisher of men. When the Church, especially the Methodist Men, picked up on this text they formed fishermen?s clubs as a form of evangelism. I think this was a good use of the text but there is more here . Rudolf Bultmann has written that the fishers of men text referred to Jesus knowledge of a greek god who would capture men and imprison them in water. Thus to become a fisher of men was to set the prisoner free. I like it, but for the life me I cannot find the Bultmann reference. (I probably gave my Bultmann books to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale when He went out of vogue.) His thought does make sense because water, the deeps, was a place of great fear and foreboding in the first century, and to live in fear is indeed to be in prison. As I recall, Wesley wrote a hymn about setting the prisoner free.
I Corinthians 15
Paul and the Resurrection
If you are not into fishing this week then take a look at I Corinthians 15. This writing is one of the earliest sermons in the New Testament. It predates the Gospels. Paul writing to the Church at Corinth wishes for them to know of his mystical experience on the Road to Damascus. He is trying to help a skeptical world understand the Resurrection and in doing so provides us with that first list of eye witnesses to the risen Christ. (Please note that the key witnesses to the Resurrection, namely the women, are left off the list. ) Why did Paul leave them out? Was it because he had not yet read, or heard Mark preach his Gospel? Or could it be that in the very first stages of formation, the church already was practicing exclusion? This passage is important for me for three reasons. 1) We can correct the sin of the church by setting the record straight regarding women in the church. 2) Paul tells us that he experienced the Risen Christ as one untimely born, meaning he did not get to walk and talk with Jesus as Peter did. I too, and all of us, are untimely born. I take it to mean that we too can experience the risen Christ. I must admit that the Damascus experience was a tough one, but that may be the first step for many of us. 3) Paul puts the emphasis of the resurrection where it belongs, not on some empty tomb, but in the work of the risen Christ who creates hope for each of us. And we discover that Paul?s idea of Resurrection is about finding new and true life right now.
Worth Pondering
“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is replaced with creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splender of the past, when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority, rather than with the voice of compassion--its message is meaningless. Abraham Heschel. From God in Search of Man The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955, p.3
Luke 5:1-11
"Going fishing"
The Luke passage has Jesus showing the fishermen where to catch the fish. As I read my Bible it would seem that the fishers never caught any fish without Jesus? help. Maybe there is a sermon in there somewhere. I have preached lots of sermons on Jesus calling those fisher folk and telling them that they shall become fisher of men. When the Church, especially the Methodist Men, picked up on this text they formed fishermen?s clubs as a form of evangelism. I think this was a good use of the text but there is more here . Rudolf Bultmann has written that the fishers of men text referred to Jesus knowledge of a greek god who would capture men and imprison them in water. Thus to become a fisher of men was to set the prisoner free. I like it, but for the life me I cannot find the Bultmann reference. (I probably gave my Bultmann books to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale when He went out of vogue.) His thought does make sense because water, the deeps, was a place of great fear and foreboding in the first century, and to live in fear is indeed to be in prison. As I recall, Wesley wrote a hymn about setting the prisoner free.
I Corinthians 15
Paul and the Resurrection
If you are not into fishing this week then take a look at I Corinthians 15. This writing is one of the earliest sermons in the New Testament. It predates the Gospels. Paul writing to the Church at Corinth wishes for them to know of his mystical experience on the Road to Damascus. He is trying to help a skeptical world understand the Resurrection and in doing so provides us with that first list of eye witnesses to the risen Christ. (Please note that the key witnesses to the Resurrection, namely the women, are left off the list. ) Why did Paul leave them out? Was it because he had not yet read, or heard Mark preach his Gospel? Or could it be that in the very first stages of formation, the church already was practicing exclusion? This passage is important for me for three reasons. 1) We can correct the sin of the church by setting the record straight regarding women in the church. 2) Paul tells us that he experienced the Risen Christ as one untimely born, meaning he did not get to walk and talk with Jesus as Peter did. I too, and all of us, are untimely born. I take it to mean that we too can experience the risen Christ. I must admit that the Damascus experience was a tough one, but that may be the first step for many of us. 3) Paul puts the emphasis of the resurrection where it belongs, not on some empty tomb, but in the work of the risen Christ who creates hope for each of us. And we discover that Paul?s idea of Resurrection is about finding new and true life right now.
Worth Pondering
“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is replaced with creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splender of the past, when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority, rather than with the voice of compassion--its message is meaningless. Abraham Heschel. From God in Search of Man The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955, p.3
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