March 27, 2011
This is the sermon I didn’t give this morning in Fort Bragg:
This morning, we hear the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Like many stories of Jesus’ life, this is a story about expanding the boundaries of who counts with God. (more…)
March 21, 2011
A lot of the daily office readings from the Hebrew Scriptures for Lent are from Jeremiah. He began his work as a prophet during the reign of the reforming king, Josiah, and in these Dueteronomic reforms, the cult was to be centered in the Jerusalem Temple and justice was to be done for the widows, the orphans and the oppressed. At first Jeremiah supported these reforms. But over time, it came to be about a kind of cultic legalism, a personal purity, and concerns for justice for those in need fell away. (more…)
January 21, 2010
One of the blogs I follow is The Sarcastic Lutheran. And she recently posted a sermon on Haiti and where God is in this picture in which she said:
This week’s events bring with them a lot of questions about God, and none of them have to do with parties. One atheist blog I read this week sneeringly used the earthquake to make a case against believing in God at all. The writer implying that he could not believe in a God who would inflict such suffering on so many people, which made me admit that according to that definition I must be an atheist too because I don’t believe in that God either.
She goes on to talk about the marriage feast as Cana and what kind of God Jesus shows himself to be. If you are interested, you can find Nadia’s sermon here.
January 20, 2010
I’ve always had a bit of trouble with the story of Noah’s drunkeness (one of the readings in today’s lectionary). The flood’s over. He plants a vinyard. He makes wine. He gets drunk, and passes out naked in his tent. His son, Ham, goes in and sees him naked. This is apparently a terrible crime. He tells his brothers. This is admittedly a bit disrespectful. Noah’s behavior is seemingly praiseworthy (from the point of view of the biblical writer). Ham’s son Canaan is condemned to slavery for his behavior. It just doesn’t seem right. (more…)
January 19, 2010
We heard God’s covenant with Noah and all living flesh today in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. And at first I was contrasting, as I read about how Noah was given all flesh to eat (excepting the blood, the life, which belongs to God), I was contrasting this in my mind with the garden, where Adam was given all the plants to eat. It was only after the fall that people were no longer vegetarians. Eating meat was not part of God’s original plan for us.
And even here, the blood, the life, belongs to God. Human life blood, if taken, is singled out for special retribution. But all life blood is God’s. It is all talked about together in the same context. And God’s covenant is made with all flesh, Noah and his descendants and all living creaatures.
So, we can eat animals. But their lives always belong to God. They are in this sense sacred. And their welbeing is part of our care as God’s stewards of creation. They are not just for our use (and abuse) as we see fit. They have their own place with us in our covenant with God.
January 6, 2010
And once again, from Roshi Doshi, something on the Magnificat (and the reality of suffering):
Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55)
[This post was inspired by a question from Pastor Nadia this morning]
“He hath filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich he hath sent empty away.”We sang the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) last night as part of Holden Evening Vespers at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. (more…)
January 2, 2010
This morning’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures was I Kings 19:1f. Elijah has just had the greatest triumph of his prophetic career. Ahab let his wife Jezebel pick the religion of his country, the northern kingdom of the divided Isreal. She was a follower of Baal. Worship of Yahweh went largely underground. In protest, Elijah called a drought upon the land. Then he went off and hid. First he hid accross the Jordan from his country. But when the drought dried up his source of water there, he went and hid in Zerepath, a coastal town in Sidon, the stronghold of Baal. Talk about irony! (more…)
October 14, 2009
Scattered thoughts on this mornings office … (more…)
October 10, 2009
I read Psalm 137 this morning at Morning Prayer. It is both moving and disturbing. The first third of the psalm, roughly, goes like this:
By the waters of Babylong we sat down and wept *
when we remembered you, O Zion. (more…)
October 6, 2009
Well, the daily office always gives me things to ponder in my life. Yesterday, we heard about king Manasseh of Israel in the 21st chapter of II Kings. He ruled from age 12 (I believe the year before he would have reached his majority – but maybe that’s a later tradition). I wonder if his mother, or others, set the tone for his rule. In any case, he ruled until he was 67 – quite a respectable age in those days. (more…)
