Perspectives: Reflections

 What are your reflections today?

Can you believe that we are already one quarter through this year? That tomorrow is April?

Love

In Sunday school today, we examined 1 John 4:7-21.  This part of the chapter talks about love. It’s a good one: go and read it.

Here is a sample:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. (Verse 7-8)

The person teaching the class told us that the author of the curriculum said that we can love someone who we do not like. I would take that even farther to say that we can love someone we have never even met.  There are those of us who can even love someone we desperately hate for what that person has done.

I think we link together the idea that love is a feeling with this verse.  Love can certainly be a feeling, but I don’t think that is what John was talking about.  I think love is an action.  It is an action motivated by God who loves us without condition.  Because of that love - because God loved us first - we can love others.  That love isn’t linked to who they are, what they have done, or how we feel about them.  It is independent of all of that.  The love is motivated by God, and we love through how we treat others - with respect, kindness, and compassion.

Don’t get me wrong - there are people who I do not want to love.  There are people who I cannot love.  And yet, I know that they are loved by God.  (By the way, the opposite is true, too.  There are people who cannot or don’t want to love me, and yet I am loved by God). 

As a side note: I always worry when I say something like this because I never want this - this idea that I think is truth - to be the motivation for someone to stay in a relationship where they are being hurt by someone else.  You don’t have to stay in a position to be hurt because you think God wants you to be loving.  Maybe the way God will help you love that person is to eventually (with God’s help) forgive that person - far way from them.

Sorry - rambling post.  My point is that love is an action, independent of the person who receives it.  It’s not a reward for good behavior.  

Beauty

In the book Always a Guest by Barbara Brown Taylor, she shares a sermon called Errors about Beauty.  I wrote about it earlier. 

In this sermon, she shares three of Elainse Carry's ideas about beauty (from On Beauty and Being Just)

1. Beauty prompts a copy of itself.  We see a sunset, and we grab our iphone and snap its picture.  For me, I see a lovely handmade greeting card, and I want to replicate it.  What is so beautiful around you that you want there to be more of it?
2. Seeing beauty awakens in the seer what is not beautiful.  Wendell Berry said, "There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." For example, you might see the beauty in the wonder of a child's face, laughing at a story someone has read to him. That beauty will help you to see when a child is hungry, crying, or hurting, and you are moved to do something about it.  What around you is desecrated and needs your work?
3. Beauty has the power to remove us from the center of the universe like nothing else can.  What in your life is so beautiful that it has removed you from the center of your world? What has made your less selfish, less self-center, less "me first?" Taylor says that Christians call this power of "redemption" or "salvation." We are called as Christians, aren't we, to remove ourselves from the center of our world.

I love this description of the effects of beauty. Have you ever been surprised by beauty? I wrote a few weeks ago about North Bend State Park in the rain.  I had the same experience in the West, when visiting our son in Nevada.  I live in West Virginia, where the mountains are green (or a patchwork of autumn colors), and I think it is beautiful. Out West, it looks so different!  And yet, if you open your eyes to what is around you, I think you can see - at least I did - that it is beautiful in its own way.  That kind of awareness of beauty can lead us to seeing what is not beautiful, too, and moving ourselves out of our selfish locations as the center of the world and acting to redeem it.

Perspectives: Hidden Light

I like this because you can just see the Christmas tree through the other trees. 

Do we sometimes hide our light?

Amazing Grace in Action

The following is a devotional I wrote for the West Virginia Annual Conference Lenten 2023 Devotional Ministry based on John 9:1-41.

He answered, I do not now whether he is a sinner.  

One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see (John 9:25)

When I was a junior in High School, a friend invited me to her church.  I went that Sunday, and the next, and never stopped.  I always remember being a person of faith, and I remember being baptized as a child, but I had never had an experience like the UMYF would give me.  Among other ministries, our group spearheaded the “tape ministry” for the church.  Youth copied the service onto cassette tapes and delivered them each week to those we called “shut ins.”  Twice a year we would go as a group and visit all of the shut-ins.  I particularly remember going in one day to about 20 different homes, and joining as the youth sang Amazing Grace with each person we visited.  

In this chapter of John, Jesus heals a blind man.  He does so in a way that alarms the religious leaders because they think Jesus has broken the Sabbath.  They call the man to testify about what happened to him.  “I was blind; now I see.” Jesus healed a physical problem the man had had since birth, but Jesus also brings him to faith.  If you read the entire passage, and pay special attention to they way the healed man referred to Jesus, you can see that at first he called Jesus a man, then a prophet, then a man from God, and finally he tells Jesus, “Lord, I believe.” Amazing  grace in action.

Verse 25 of the 9th chapter of John is said to be the basis of the lyrics of the hymn Amazing Grace.  The lyrics were written by John Newton, who was involved in the Atlantic slave trade.  One day, a terrible storm threatened his ship, and he prayed to God for mercy.  Eleven hours later, they were safe from the storm.  He considered this his spiritual conversion, and though he didn’t end his work in the slave trade immediately, he did eventually change his life.  I imagine if asked, his words for Jesus would have echoed the healed man’s words: a man, a prophet, a man from God, and then Lord.  Amazing grace in action.

I know I wasn’t blind to God before a friend invited me to church, but her invitation started me on a path that would not just change my life, but shape it into what it has become.  I believed in God, but until I was a junior in high school, I didn’t understand what it meant to belong to a faith community – to find support and hope through other members of the church and to reach out to the world in service.  Amazing grace in action.  How have you experienced God’s amazing grace? Who can you invite to join you?

Prayer: Surround us with your grace and move us to invite others to join us.

Don't be Foolish

Amy-Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories by Jesus, writes in reference to the understanding of parables:

As  much as we might respect the idea of divine freedom and mystery, we are ultimately more comfortable with answers rather than questions, with the tried and true rather than new thoughts.  Debate can be messy; it can lead to disagreement, or words.  Better than everyone remain on the same page.  (page 300)

I think this is true as we seek to interpret scripture (and don't give me that look - all reading of scripture requires interpretation).  But beyond that, do you think it is true in life in general?  Are we more comfortable with answers? So much so that we are willing to overlook lose threads, misrepresentations, and downright lies in order to have them?  Not only that, but are we so eager for confirmation of what we believe that we give no thought to accepting that which is so clearly wrong?

There is so much misinformation deployed in our society, and we seem eager to grasp onto it, and believe it without logical thought.  I can see it happening in the United Methodist Church, so much so that there is an effort to help people to intelligently review everything that is being thrown at them.  This series from the United Methodist Communicators is one such tool.

I also see this in the world at large.  Sometimes we are so eager for our "side" to be proven "right" that we don't apply any logic at all to the information we take in - we just believe it blindly. 

Please stop and think.  Approach what you read and hear - whether it is biblical interpretation or "news" stories - with the proverbial grain of salt.  Do you REALLY believe it? It is logical based on what you already know? Does it make sense at all?  It is all of our responsibility to examine "facts" before we share them.  In church, in faith, and in politics.  Don't be foolish.

 

Perspectives: Ocean and Chair

 

I'm posting this for no other reason than it is cold and dreary here today, and getting colder.  I wouldn't mind if I were sitting in that chair.

Genesis Touch

I'm currently reading a book by Barbara Brown Taylor called Always a Guest.  It's a book sermons she has delivered in various places across the country as a guest preacher.  So far, and I'm on chapter 4, it's wonderful - but I expected that to be the case. 

In a sermon called Errors about Beauty, she writes (or preaches):

The Creator made us to co-create, and there is little that gives us as much pleasure as making beautiful things; not just painting, poems, sculptures, and symphonies, but also gardens, cakes, perfect designs in new-mown grass, and babies  When we put something beautiful into the world, it is Genesis all over again  We are engaged in divine work.

We are created to co-create?  Who is or are our co-creators?  First, I think God.  Made in God's image, we are granted creativity.  We are creative in concert with God - and I like that word, because it can feel like dancing and music. When you pray, you step into the dance, asking God to allow you to join in the creative force - asking God to join you in the creative force.  And, together, you create love, healing, comfort, justice, beauty, and an abundance of other wonderful aspects of God's kingdom.

Who else is your co-creator?  I believe the people God would call your neighbors.  You create with other people.  We are the church, and together, we can work to change the world.  It is the creative kingdom work that God has called us to do.

What is God calling you to do with God today? What is God calling you to do with someone else today? What creations await your genesis touch? What divine work is left undone that needs your God-given creativity?

 

Book Review: Short Stories about Jesus

 Information about the book
Amy-Jill Levine.  Short Stories about Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi.  Harper One. New York. 2014.  (Cokesbury / Amazon).  For those interested in using this book as curriculum, there is a Leaders Guide and video on Cokesbury.

Summary

From the Amazon description: Jesus was a skilled storyteller and perceptive teacher who used parables from everyday life to effectively convey his message and meaning. Life in first-century Palestine was very different from our world today, and many traditional interpretations of Jesus' stories ignore this disparity and have often allowed anti-Semitism and misogyny to color their perspectives.

In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus' narratives. In Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes these "problems with parables", taking us back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables' connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures, and Roman culture. With this revitalized understanding, she interprets these moving stories for a contemporary listener, showing how the parables are not just about Jesus, but are also about us - and when understood rightly, still challenge and provoke us 2,000 years later.

Impressions

I found this book to be excellent!  It was so full of ah hah moments that I can't begin to list them.  Each chapter is a different parable.  Levine begins with some traditional interpretation work, and then looks at the scripture in sections, sharing information about the audience to which the parable was told and how they would have heard and reacted to it.  At the end of each chapter, she offers interpretations that often mesh better with the original purpose and intention of the parable. 

In the last "epilogue-like" chapter, she offers advice that if a parable is interpreted as allegory, platitudes, based on a negative stereotype of Judaism, or does not raise questions, then our interpretation needs a second look.  Her insights are fresh and authentic; she is a professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt, and she is a Jew.  The combination of those two characteristics provide an outlook that is baked in knowledge. 

I highly recommend this book.

Posts about book

Posts on my blog that reference this book will be tagged with Levine Short 

Perspectives: Nonconventional Abundance

 Make of this what you will.  I call it "nonconventional abundance." And ugly.

Baptism of Infants

A few years ago I was part of a team for a Walk to Emmaus.  I was sitting at the table with some of the pilgrims, discussing baptism.  As I remember the conversation, one of them asked me about my sons’ baptisms.  I explained that they were baptized as infants.  Her response implied not only that they were not “saved,” but also that I had somehow endangered their eternal life with God. A table at a Walk to Emmaus was not the place for me to defend my personal faith, but I remember very much resenting her comments.  I think I responded by saying something  like, “I know my boys are claimed by God.”  Her comments reflected the belief that baptism was both essential and sufficient to salvation and that it is, at heart, an offering of ourselves to God – an act of our own.

 

I treasure the United Methodist Church’s belief in infant baptism.  For me, it is an undeniable illustration of how God works in us and through us.  I think if our beliefs were different, and that we only offered baptism to adults, we could allow the sacramental and grace-filled nature of baptism to become secondary to our own act of acceptance.  It is our nature to think that everything is all about us; it would be easy for us to slip into the idea that we are the major actor in baptism – not God – without the example of an infant brought into God’s family through no act of their own.

 

The Value of Context

Take a look at this passage.  It is Luke 16:20-21, listed in four different versions.  The last one is from Short Stories by Jesus (Amy-Jill Levine)

And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,  who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. (New Revised Standard Version)

“There once was a rich man, expensively dressed in the latest fashions, wasting his days in conspicuous consumption. A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived for was to get a meal from scraps off the rich man’s table. His best friends were the dogs who came and licked his sores.  (The Message, 19-21)

At his gate lay a certain poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores.  Lazarus longed to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Instead, dogs would come and lick his sores. (Common English Bible)

And some poor person, named Lazarus, was lying by his gates, being (covered with) sores.  And he was wishing to be fed from the things falling from the table of the wealthy, but rather the dogs, coming, were licking his sores. (Amy-Jill Levine)

What is your first reaction when you read these passages?  Mine is "Yuk" - dogs licking his sores.  Poor man - he can't even get something to eat, and now he is subjected to dogs licking his sores.  Does it feel the same to you as one of those commercial fund-raisers for charities that feed people in famine-suffering countries, where the child is covered with flies, too weak from hunger and illness to even swat them away?

Levine paints a different picture, and I thought it was a good illustration of the necessity of understanding who Jesus was speaking to in order to truly "get" the scripture.  There is historical evidence that the people in antiquity saw that saliva had healing properties.  One might think that Lazarus is unclean (with Leprosy) because of the sores, but we don't have evidence to support that.  Also, there is some evidence that some Jews at the time kept dogs as pets - they were not considered unclean. 

Dogs are not sources of uncleanness- that is not the image Jesus's audience would take from the description of Lazarus.  Rather, they would realize that the dogs provided him with his only comfort.  The dogs realized what the rich man did not - that people in pain need help.   

We need to remember when we read scripture that it is not our reactions to what is written that is important in interpretation - we need to do some work to understand the reactions of the people who were listening at the time. This will tell us more about what was originally meant.

Perspectives: lighted path

 

What are we looking for?

I preached on January 15.  For a couple of weeks before the worship service, I was thinking about the sermon.  Lectionary for that week was John 1:29-42.  I thought about that scripture a lot, but I was never able to say, “I have the sermon.”  I preached instead on John 2:1-11, which is the passage where Jesus turned water into wine.

However, there was a phrase in the John 1 passage that felt like it could be a kernel of a sermon.  It’s in verse 38.  Some of the John the Baptist’s disciples are following Jesus, and he turns, and says, "What are you looking for?"

What are you looking for?  John the Baptist’s disciples, who become Jesus’ disciples, say they are looking for a rabbi, a teacher.  What are we looking for?

I still don’t have the sermon from that, but I think it could be one.