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Lectionary Thoughts Easter 6

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Acts offers a wonderful opportunity to note that some who speak the gospel aren’t baptized. They may not be Christians, but they have the fire of truth. Consequently, perhaps there are places in the culture that do not engage in “God Talk” that reveal, witness, and represent the faith of Jesus Christ. Such a sermon might lead us to remind people some of the core aspects of our faith: do not fear death; have courage; trust in the dream.

The Psalm is about awe. I would connect the emotive content of praise, which unites the soul, with the sense of awe that we are living creatures. Metaphors that highlight being alive – “flow” – could be useful. Perhaps I would flesh out some nature stories.

There are two places I would explore from the letter from John. The first is the sentence:

”And his commandments are not burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

I would explore what it means that commandments are not burdensome – compared to what? Don’t commandments require some sort of check on self-control? I might use this as an entryway into the problem of self-control, and why it is a virtue: that self-control is not burdensome. There is a New Yorker article about a famous marshmallow experiment. Perhaps faith is a distraction from that which would kill us. And this distraction allows us to find what saves.

The second part of the letter I would want to examine is “water and blood.” This is fairly opaque and deserves a bit of attention. I have in my mind the phrase “blood, sweat and tears.” Water and blood have some relation to “truth.” Perhaps this illuminates the violence that is at the root of all civiliazation, and how Christ’s death reveals it. The truth, in this case, is that we are motivated by desire, and that we desire what other people desire. Perhaps we are invited to continually reflect upon who’s desire is what roots our own: what Jesus desires? (wholeness, liberation, freedom, love, joy), or the cycle of desire that makes us anxious? Perhaps credit cards measure how out of control our desire is.

I admit, there is a mesmerizing, cultic quality to the Gospel reading. The words “abide” and “my love” and “commandment” make it seem much like a chant almost designed to rescribe our neural pathways. Perhaps in order to love one another we have to be able to listen to the music differently. Music, in this way, becomes the key metaphor. We are called, perhaps, to be in harmony.

I might discuss how “loving one another” is like learning to play games together. Another option: the James Alison route and use the word “like” in place of love. “I am giving you these commands that you might like one another.” I think that the constituitive element of love that is most interesting is actually “liking.” In my own parish, one of the vestrymembers said before I was made rector, “we don’t need someone who loves us. We need someone who likes us.”

This Sunday we celebrate two important stories: the parade of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the passion. The passion isn’t about Jesus’ carnal desires, which are the object of literary speculation, but about his suffering. The root of the word “passion” is “to suffer.”

Which sometimes describes the dangers of falling in love.

According to scripture Jesus marched in on a donkey. People were shouting and cheering. They thought it would be an end to empire; that miracles would suddenly become commonplace; that the world would be turned upside down. Little did they know how they would be disappointed.

Whether parading for the Yankees, balloons shaped like people, the Irish, or balloons shaped like the Yankees or the Irish, parades lift the spirit. We get to be a little proud. We wear fancy clothes, or perhaps – as in Brazilian Mardigras – we wear fewer clothes, and we strut and preen or watch those who like to strut and preen. We witness the pride of all those people who like to show off.

It’s one way of celebrating togetherness.

Jesus’ parade, however, is a little different than most parades. First of all, Jesus isn’t exactly royalty. The mount isn’t a clydesdale, its an ass. We’ve all seen parades where people are on trucks; imagine parading on a small thirty year old Raleigh three speed (although I’m sure you can put a few flowers on the basket).

In short, Jesus’ parade seems more like a parade of fools than an imperial parade. Although it doesn’t seem that the crowd quite gets the shift, the notion of triumph is radically trained. It is not merely about status, but a ironic twist upon status. Jesus is busy giving a wave to all his fans thinking, There is more to life than just being on top…. or its the beginning of the end, which is just another beginning.

The second half of the service this Sunday will be the passion: its the central story of the faith. It is not, however, just an intellectual exercise; nor is it meant to be a series of mere facts. The story is about you: being in character in this drama that includes Jesus.

This is one of the reasons we assign people parts in the liturgy. People take the role of Judas, of Peter, of the servants. Although we hope that those who take the role of Judas don’t get too into the character, the hope is that we can understand how at any time we can take such a role. It is the root of making choices: to see how we play in our own personal dramas. And yes, I get to play the part of the HIgh Priest.

I really don’t like it when priests play Jesus.

We change the roles up a bit: but this is a drama where you have a part. You witness the life of Jesus Christ. You shout it out to crucify him, because that is, sadly what you’d probably do. That is the warning for each of us.

The idea, that this week is central to humanity’s story, assumes our lives are more than propositional statements. The art that makes us alive can not be reduced to mathematical propositions about the universe.

This week is a time to look at how we live what we believe. For when people use the word “faith” it seems that we insist about knowing exactly the content of one’s “belief system.”

But there are some days, darkly cynical days, that if someone asked me about my “belief system” I want to offer a big guffaw: “Ha! beliefs? I wish I could say that I knew one thing for all time forever.”

What we can say is this: “let me tell you a story.”

You would be one of the characters.

10:10 pm We are not a nation of quitters.

smart rhetoric.

10:04 And a story about the bank president who had a lot of money and gave it away. It’s like a parable. And a challenge to the elite. Damn. This hits on so many different levels.

Hope is found in unlikely places.

The hero captain gets a shot.

Veterans are going to be making money.

9:59 A dig at terrorists in Pakistan. Kind of easy.

Shot of McCain with a Maine Senator

He’s clarifying the tax cuts. Beautiful.

He’s including stuff in the budget.

9:55 The deficit…

that he inherited…

No earmarks… Got some catcalls.

We’ll see about agribusiness. No more no-bid contracts in Iraq.

Damn.

swiping the DOD.

9:52 Education. No education, economic decline. Insure access to a complete, and competitive education to everyone.

This will go well in the heartland.

9:46 He continues to be the teacher, addressing our highest moral values. Preventative care; curing disease.

“It will be hard. The cost of our health care has weighed down our conscience or our economy.” Yep, this brings me to tears. It cannot wait another year.

No more quitting on your country.

He’s using remarkably conservative rhetoric.

He wants college graduates, but I am skeptical about the worth of college for all people….

9:40 pm “Our job is to solve the problem.”

“It’s not about helping banks. It’s about helping people.” He’s good.

He’s teaching the multiplier effect.

“rewards drive, punishes short cuts and abuse. Make long term investments.”

A budget as a blueprint. Yep: budgets are moral documents.

We will all have to sacrifice.

Barack is getting historical: railroads, public education, the GI Bill, highways, the moon. Government catalyzed private enterprise.

Energy, health care and education.

He uses a little ethnocentrism to justify his government program.

I’d get a little tired standing all the time.

9:23 “I don’t believe in bigger government. I know about the deficit.” If we don’t do anything, we will be weaker.

57 policemen have their jobs.

Obama is expressing care for the people.

He addresses criticism. There will be oversight. By Biden. Good move.

People will be held accountable.

Good rhetoric.

9:30 pm What are people reading?

9:27 He’s teaching. Credit has stopped flowing. I wonder if people are taking notes.

Hilary has jet lag.

Loans to the entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.

Obama is addressing specific policy proposals in a way that is direct.

9:15 “Take Responsibility.” Good use of a moral tone. He’s challenging the people and the congress for not thinking long term.

Pelosi looks distracted.

From the London Times: The move was proposed by Paul Eddy, a lay member from the Winchester diocese, who said that he was aware of the religious and cultural tensions in many parishes in England. He also understood “the distress that talk of the historic Crusades can evoke” and that, to some, sharing the Christian gospel equates to sharing the “values of the West”.

He quoted Mahatma Gandhi’s advice to British missionaries to India: “I would suggest first of all that all of you Christians, missionaries and all, begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Second, practise your religion without adulterating or toning it down.”

He said that the uniqueness of Christ must not be compromised by Anglicans. “It does no harm for the Church to re-state it’s beliefs time and time again and then to go further — in this case commending good practice in making that belief known.”

I’m not sure exactly what “conversion” is. Personally, I think Christians should be converted first. Perhaps toward forgiveness and irony. And then we might want to ask if we are merely inviting people into our cult?

A better view of conversion, perhaps, is to offer a new lens by which people can see their lives. It is less indoctrination than an invitation to a shared experience of the transcendent. When we talk about “metanoia,” the changing of one’s mind, it is always toward truth. And the minimalist truth is that love is what creates meaning, and that this is a creative act, and in these acts, we give life and witness to God’s own power.

Roger Scruton Via City Journal [Via]

What is needed is not to reject citizenship as the foundation of social order but to provide it with a heart. And in seeking that heart, we should turn away from the apologetic multiculturalism that has had such a ruinous effect on Western self-confidence and return to the gifts that we have received from our Judeo-Christian tradition.

…Forgiveness and irony lie at the heart of our civilization. They are what we have to be most proud of, and our principal means to disarm our enemies. They underlie our conception of citizenship as founded in consent. And they are expressed in our conception of law as a means to resolve conflicts by discovering the just solution to them.

Forgiveness, as Scruton argues, is central to how Christians live in the world. It is the heart of redemption and reconciliation; it is what halts war. His discussion of Irony is more novel. It undermines the timber of certainty that grounds most faith. I’m not sure if I buy his distinctions with Islam just yet; perhaps “forgiveness” is under “mercy” in Islam. And I’m generally skeptical that irony is a grand virtue, especially in the midst of suffering. That said, all is vanity.

Read the rest here.

Matt Kennedy and Jan Nunley have a civil discussion about different interpretations of scripture and sex.

Part 2

Part 3

Nunley reorients the discussion away from gender and complementarity. She quotes the Hebrew. Good job.

Via.

Stephen Prothero offers a pretty good reflection about what Pope Benedict is doing, and his general tone-deafness.

He writes When I was a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, I required my students to read Nazi theology. I wanted them to understand how some Christians bent the words of the Bible into weapons aimed at Jews, and how those weapons found their mark in the concentration camps. My Christian students responded to these disturbing readings with one disturbing voice. The Nazis were not Christians, they said. Jesus was, after all, a Jew. This response was in many respects laudable. But in distancing their religion from the history of the Holocaust, my students absolved themselves of any responsibility for reckoning with how their religious tradition might have contributed to these horrors.

After 9/11, Muslims absolved themselves, too. They said the terrorists who hijacked those jets were not Muslims, absolving themselves of any responsibility of reckoning with how Islam might have contributed to these horrors.

Too easily we ascribe evil to other people, when it is also deep in the human heart. If we want to see God, or the devil, we need merely look into the mirror.

Via.

It takes religion to create wealth. As wealth increases, religion decreases. Wealth becomes a god for his own sake.

“To survive all of this it seems capitalism needs a new dose of restraint. But absent a vast religious revival in the West, which seems unlikely, where will a renewal of the virtues of the work ethic come from? That question becomes ever more difficult to consider because as religious practice fades and our institutions reject traditional values, so too does the memory of the role that these elements played in the rise of capitalism.” Steven Malanga in RCM

Take a look at the bottom graph.

Perhaps the money spent never existed…..