Looking for signs of Christ’s Coming: A Sermon for Advent 1, Year B

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November 27, 2011

 Apparently, Harold Camping has given up. He’s retired, quit preaching, and quit setting dates for the second coming. You remember Harold Camping. He’s the guy who predicted the world would end on May 21. His followers bought advertising all over the place, hyped it up, and stoked a media frenzy. When May 22 dawned, Camping regrouped, said that he had got his calculations wrong, and said, no the real date was October 21. After that, he threw in the towel. He has decided that whatever God was telling him, and is continuing to tell him, he will no longer announce to the world that date of Jesus’ return. Continue reading →

The Spirituality of Reading

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Gary Shteyngart recently gave a talk in which he likened reading to religious or spiritual experience. An agnostic himself, he sees the writing (and reading) of books as close to spiritual experience as anything. Responses here and here.

But technology also is something of a religion:

technology possesses a similar strain of divinity as literature: it enables us to overcome our physical existence and to connect. It offers the possibility of transcendence.

In response, Julia Jackson pondered the different experiences of reading physical books and an ipad:

When I read a real book, on the other hand, I leave my cell phone and laptop in the other room and sit on the couch, and suddenly it’s just me and the book and the characters in it. I am truly alone yet truly connected. When I read a real book, I am forcing myself to follow one stream of thought—that which the author committed to paper. In today’s world, this simple act is meditative, even transcendent. I am able to do something that feels very futuristic—cross space and time and peer right into the author’s mind—with a technology that has been around for thousands of years.

In the New York Times, John Schwartz muses on the difference between reading “real” books and “reading” audiobooks, or one supposes, an ipad or kindle:

The truth, it seems, is that the way we read, and our reasons for loving or disliking audiobooks, are deeply personal. They are expressions of self, so tied to who we are. If you belittle the way I read, you’re belittling me.

A couple of things interest me here. First of all, what does this mean for religions of the book like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam? If one’s religious life is no longer centered on the physical reading of a text (and I rarely pick up a Bible to read it–I do almost all of mine on line), what is the impact on one’s faith and experience? Second, scholars have argued that it wasn’t only the relationship of individuals with the text that mattered, but rather that, in Christianity communities were shaped by texts, that Christian communities were reading communities (even when the reading was done aloud).

In the midst of this technological revolution, with all of its implications for religious faith and religious community, we may also need to rethink how we approach the sacred text.

Advent

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It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming, so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God, whereas the world fell into trembling when Jesus Christ walked over the earth. That is why it is so strange when we see the marks of God in the world so often together with the marks of human suffering, with the marks of the cross on Golgotha. We have become so* accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in our Midst”

From a sermon Bonhoeffer preached on the First Sunday of Advent, 1928, in Barcelona; from The Living Pulpit

Want Catholic art? Fundamentalist Bob Jones University has it

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An article in the Washington Post on the collection at Bob Jones University brought back to mind the odd experience of visiting that gallery in the heart of Greenville, and BJU’s campus. It really is a remarkable collection of Renaissance and Baroque religious paintings and a wonderful teaching tool.

The article leaves one important question unasked, concerning the provenance of the paintings. Given the controversy over the last couple of decades about art that was owned by Jews until the rise of Hitler, I would think the question of how Bob Jones, Jr. was able to amass such a large collection at bargain-basement prices ought to be asked.

There’s another important question asked, but not answered adequately: How is the collection used as a teaching tool? One of the most amusing aspects of visiting the gallery on a Sunday afternoon (when admission was free) was encountering Sunday School classes and other groups from fundamentalist churches touring the gallery. They would approach a painting and compare the artist’s rendering of the scene with the biblical account, interested primarily in whether that depiction was true to the text. There are also several fairly lengthy posted comments (or were the last time I visited) that offered a strongly theological lens through which to view the images. I recall especially a pointed attack on images of the suffering Christ. A “weak” Christ seemed to be against the fundamentalist message.

Still, it’s a great collection. More on the Museum and Gallery here.

Thanksgiving, 2011

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Giving thanks in difficult times.

The Lectionary for Thanksgiving, Year A

We have a noon Eucharist at Grace on Wednesdays. Typically we follow the calendar of commemorations in Holy Women, Holy Men although I am rather free in my adaptation of the calendar. I begin by looking at the commemoration of the day, and then if that doesn’t strike my fancy, I look further afield. In part, I look for a figure about whom I can say something with a minimum of research, so that means I’m more likely to draw on traditional figures than on some of the new (and trial) figures.

November 23 is Clement of Rome and for a few minutes I pondered whether I might go there. Then my mind turned to Thanksgiving. The richness of the texts beckoned to me. I went back through my files, looking for sermons I preached on Thanksgiving, or on its eve, and came across the one I gave in 2008. Reading even the first paragraph was shocking:

Our national mood is very different this November than it has been in the previous few years. The global financial crisis in which we find ourselves has created tremendous anxiety, even fear. No one knows how bad things are going to get and no one knows how long it will last.

We are anxious and fearful, but as a nation many of us are also wondering whether our best years are behind us. In addition to the financial crisis, there is the meltdown in the auto industry and the shock this summer and fall when gas prices topped $4.00 a gallon. We wonder whether we will ever again enjoy the lavish and profligate lifestyles most of us led only a few months ago. There is belt-tightening all around. We are in a somber mood.

As I read that, I was surprised both by the negative tone with which I began, and by the fact, that three years later, our national mood is, if anything, even more somber.

How can we give thanks in such a context? The lessons for Thanksgiving in year A don’t ask that question directly, but when their contexts are considered, that question may be at the heart of the lections. In the first place, Deuteronomy: first written centuries after the events it recounts, it is a call to faithfulness, a reminder of the covenant with God, of God’s promises to God’s chosen people, and of the response to those promises that God demanded. They were given a rich and fruitful land but their possession of it was dependent on their faithfulness to God.

Deuteronomy reached something of the form we have it today in the Exiliic period, when the descendants of the Israelites were living in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem and the defeat of Judah. They no longer possessed the land and they were having to rethink their faith in God. It would have been easy to abandon Yahweh in that context, but instead they developed a theology that explained their plight and offered hope for a different future.

In the gospel, we hear the story of the cleansing of the ten lepers. It’s a wonderful story, full of drama and puzzling detail. The miracle itself takes place off-stage. Jesus does nothing except tell the ten to present themselves to a priest, in keeping with Mosaic law. As they go, they discover that they are cleansed. One turns back and thanks Jesus. It turns out, he’s a Samaritan. The wonderful bit of this story is that while we are led to believe he turns back out of faith and gratitude, a moment’s reflection reminds us that he had no place to go. As a Samaritan, it didn’t matter if he was cleansed of leprosy, and no priest would certify him so. As a Samaritan, whether or not he was a leper, he was profoundly unclean in the eyes of Jews.

We have a great deal for which to give thanks and these lessons remind us, that whatever our circumstances, it is appropriate, even necessary, to be thankful to God. In these difficult times, we need to remember that God has given us so very much, that it is because of God’s love that the universe was created and us in it, because of God’s love that his Son’s love has restored us to right relationship with one another and with God, that all we have comes from God, and that in the end, all we can do, is be thankful.

 

There will be a day shelter in Madison!–at least for this winter

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Thanks to the hard work of Steve Schooler, executive director of Porchlight, and many others, there will be a place for homeless people to escape the elements during the winter months. The City of Madison has agreed to make space available in a former auto dealership on E. Washington Ave. More on the story here and here.

As important as this development is, and as welcome it will be for those who need it, it will not be open until December 14 at the earliest, and it doesn’t solve the long-term problem of providing adequate facilities for homeless people in Madison.

More lists anyone?

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Last week, I posted about “25 books every Christian should read.” Tony Jones has come up with an alternative that is more “theological,” he says. It also includes some of the authors I thought should be included.

If lists are your thing, you love Slate’s (rather premature) list of cultural items from the twenty-first century “that will stand the test of time.” Uggs? Ugh! Not to be outdone, The Guardian offers its take.

If, like me, you think one needs a little more historical distance before judging something a classic, you might appreciate Jeffrey Brenzel’s criteria for determining what constitutes a classic. One of them is “a classic requires strenuous intellectual engagement.” Well, that excludes uggs, and pretty much everything else on Slate’s list. The video down the page includes Brenzel’s reflections on some of the Christian classics and the development of the Christian tradition through the “speculation and collision” of ideas, beginning with Plato and Aristotle.

Stephen Greenblatt tells us what books he would like to have on his desert island:

Advent 1, Year B: Let’s celebrate the Gospel of Mark!

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This Sunday’s Lectionary readings

November 27 is the First Sunday in Advent and the first Sunday in the new liturgical year. That means we are reading from the Gospel of Mark for the next year (except for lengthy digressions into John).

I love Mark. It was probably the earliest Gospel to be written, so in a sense, Mark invents the genre of Gospel. It’s a challenging and puzzling gospel and not just for 21st century readers. We can tell that Matthew, who usually follows Mark quite closely alters some of Mark’s most difficult passages and seems to misunderstand or deliberately reinterpret him at some points.

Mark is challenging for the 21st century reader familiar with the other gospels because we want to fill out his story with details from the others. But we should avoid that temptation. Mark lacks an infancy narrative and concludes with the empty tomb (the earliest and best manuscripts all end at 16:8). Those two facts in themselves challenge our understanding of Jesus, invite us to explore what Mark is getting at. Even more strange is the Jesus who emerges from this gospel. That is something I will have a great deal to say about in the coming year.

Mark is strange, other. To preach the Gospel of Mark faithfully means confronting and being confronted by that otherness. We have to ask what is the good news for God’s people today conveyed by this text from a radically different context, written for a radically different audience. Because of its otherness, Mark resists attempts to domesticate it or make it more accessible.

Before embarking on our year-long reading of Mark, it might be useful to read the whole gospel in its entirety. Here’s a link to chapter 1 (with links to the other chapters).

More evidence of the moral bankruptcy of Higher Education?

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We are learning, day by day, more about the rotten core of higher education (at least its administration). The corporatization of higher education, the constant need for more money and “better” students has have taken a lasting toll. My stomach turned watching the video of events at UC Davis. If you haven’t seen it, here’s video of the assault.

The students’ response shows that there is hope yet. Their resolute non-violence during the attacks, and their actions after the Chancellor’s press conference (which was breath-taking in its venality), prove that whatever they’ve learned in college so far, it isn’t the immorality of their institution’s administrators.

Video of the chancellor’s departure from a news conference. It turns out she was accompanied by a campus minister.

One Assistant Professor has not succumbed to the rule to lay low until you have tenure.

A new translation of the Roman Missal

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For those out of the loop, that would be the Latin Mass. It’s been in the works for some time, but next Sunday marks the beginning of its official use. The controversy has already begun among Roman Catholics, and perhaps not too surprisingly, among Anglicans as well.

Some background and early reactions to the new translation are here. A video providing some in-depth material is here. The full list of changes is here: peoplesparts

It’s interesting that the CNN piece refers to “confusion” in the pews. We’ve been dealing with “confusion” in the pews for decades now, in the Episcopal Church as well as with conflict over the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which many people call “new” although it’s over 30 years old.

One of the most significant aspects of these changes is that it marks another break between Roman Catholics and other Christians in the English-speaking world who had relied on similar translations of many of the key liturgical texts (the Lord’s Prayer, the creed, et al).

Here is one person’s response to participating in its use in a parish already.

There are some significant changes, like the people’s response to the celebrant’s “The Lord be with you.” It becomes “And with your spirit.” That’s a more literal translation of the Latin, of course, and exactly the same as Rite One in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Other changes are less obvious, and more controversial: “consubstantial” replaces “of one being” in the Nicene Creed. Again, it’s more literal, but what person lacking a theological education understands it; and what person with a rudimentary theological education will not immediately think of Lutheran Eucharistic theology.

The Bishop of London (Church of England) has had to warn his clergy not to use the new missal in Anglican worship.