Gather us in

Last Sunday in worship we sang the song Gather us in. In the lyrics are the lines:

Give us a heart so meek and so lowly

Give us the courage to enter the song

As I was singing the song, questions came to my mind.

• What is the song? It reminds me of the song The Lord of the Dance.  I think the song and the dance are the same. The song is the work of the kingdom of God, maybe.
• Why do we need courage?  What are we afraid of? What area we always afraid of? Loss of control? Loss of comfort? Failure? I included line just before the line that caught my attention because I think it speaks to this question. A meek and lowly heart would give up control and comfort. It would give us the courage to enter the song.

May we do so.  Gather us in - gather us all in.

 

Is God Limited?

 Is God in any way limited? Were there any limitations upon God as creation occurred?

I don’t believe God is limited by anything external to God except that I think God has limits that God has created. When God created the universe, for example, God limited himself to use the physical processes to create and maintain the world. God grants freedom to creation and to creatures (such as us); that freedom, created by God, limits what God will do. I assume there are exceptions, when God chooses, for miracles.

______

In my Religion and Science class, we view a video lecture in two parts, and then we respond to four questions for each part of the video lecture. We are then asked to post the answers to two questions in each section for Discussion with the class.  I always answer all four questions on my own, and then select two of them to post.  I did post this one.  One of the responses and my response to the question are posted below.

Question: So, would you say that God is self-limiting, but is not limited by any external sources? Could God do evil? Could one say "Yes, but God always chooses not to."

My Answer: I think if we say God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then we have to say that God limits God's-self.  I think, as I type this, without God's self limiting choices, we would be living in chaos.  For example (and this is going to be a bad example), if Tom's neighbor is killed, and Tom becomes the suspect, someone might give a character witness that Tom "could never have done that."  When in actuality, Tom could have made the decision to murder his neighbor, but Tom's character would never have allowed it. 

Perspectives: Traveling Bear

 

Book Review: The Gospel of Mark

Information about the book

Amy Jill Levine. The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner's Guide to the Good News.  Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2023. Cokesbury / Amazon.  Leader's Guide

Summary

From Amazon: Walk through the Bible’s earliest source for the life of Jesus with scholar Amy-Jill Levine as she examines John the Baptizer, the Little Apocalypse, the Transfiguration, and several of Jesus's most notable stories and parables. The Good News of the gospel message comes alive in this book as readers see Jesus as divine and human, powerful and weak, approachable yet mysterious. The book features an in-depth study of select passages and illuminates the Gospel in its historical context and as a source for the other gospels.

Impressions

I have read other Amy-Jill Levine books, and I always find them eye-opening. Her thoughts and writing open new pathways for me and provide new ways to see God's word in scripture.  She describes herself as "an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue..." One of the gifts she brings to her scholarship is a Jewish background. Her writing often (rightly) challenges our anti-Jewish assumptions about the scripture.

In this look at Mark, I especially appreciated how Levine brings us along through her exploration of the scripture. She is expertly searching for Mark's purposes in the Gospel and how it impacts our reading and understanding of the Word (something we should always do). She often shared multiple options for interpretation, and why each one rings true for her or not.

I highly recommend this book and will be adding other Levine books to my TBR.

Posts about book

Posts about this book are tagged with Levine Mark.

What will we do?

Peter said to him, "Even though all become deserters, I will not." Jesus said to him, 'Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times."  But he said vehemently, "Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you." And all of them said the same.

Mark 14: 29-31

I like Peter.  I want to know more about Peter. He is so passionate about what he believes in, and so impulsive. When I read the passage above from Mark, I feel for Peter. He is so certain he will not betray Jesus, and we know how wrong he is. And we know how desperate sorry he is later, and how grateful he must have been to Jesus after the fire on the shoreline.

I also thought about us. We are pretty quick to judge. If we only saw Peter and his betrayal, we would condemn him - how could he betray the one he followed?

And how quick we are to say, when we look at the lives of other people, "If I were in that situation, I would behave differently." I think none of us really know how we will react when faced with fear and danger. We can't predict our responses, even when we are vehement that we will react a certain way. Maybe we will do what we are certain we would do - maybe we will not. Maybe we will betray that which is most important to us.

Maybe when injustices happen, we will remain silent. Maybe when the racial joke is shared, we will say nothing, rather than call the person out for their bigotry. Maybe when our child behaves in an unpredictable and inappropriate way, we won't have the perfect response. Maybe we should stop judging others.

 

Perspectives: Red Rock Canyon

 This is Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Las Vegas.  It would probably be a great place to hike - we've only done very minimal walking in the area. There is a great drive through tour where I pushed my family to stop at every scenic view point. Lovely, and so different from where we live. 

Notice that some of the rocks ARE red; others aren't. It makes for great scenery.

Abomination

In the book The Gospel of Mark, Amy-Jill Levine talks about Mark 13, the Little Apocalypse. 

Verse 14 says, "“But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains;"

What is the "desolating sacrilege?"  No one really knows, but it does invite us to speculate on what would be a desolating sacrilege to us.  Levine talks about attending the Oberammergau Passion Play with friends who were involved in translating the into German the Jewish Annotated New Testament.  While on intermission, they went to a nearby Protestant church where they saw "a stained-glass window depicting the 'mockery of Jesus' with stereotypical demonic images of Jews."  She and - and even more so - her German friends were horrified. There are efforts at work to remove the window or place a notice of apology with it.

She asks the important question: "When we see an abomination, what do we do with it?"

In December, 2021, the statue of John C. Calhoun was removed from downtown Charleston, South Carolina.  He had been a statesmen and the vice president of the United States, but he was a staunch defender of slavery. Ironically, they can't find a place to display the statue, even four years later.  All plans of sending it somewhere else have been refused by the recipients.

A neighbor of ours flies both a United States flag and a Confederate battle flag. What do we do about it? I understand that he has the right to fly whatever flag he chooses in his own yard, but I can hope that he would come to see what an abomination it is. It saddens me; it infuriates me. His house is at the top of our entry way hill, so it is what greets visits when they enter the subdivision; it is what our neighbors of color see when they drive home.

When we see an abomination, what do we do with it?

 

Resurrection

What is “resurrection”? Is it the same thing as eternal life? Does anything in Dr. Ward’s presentation make it easier for you to believe in the possibility of a life beyond death?

The video in our class material states that death is the way to life. This is resurrection – life that follows death. It can be the glorious resurrection of Jesus, but there are other ways we experience resurrection. When my mother-in-law died from the effects of Alzheimer’s, we met with our pastor as he was planning the funeral. He asked us questions about her, and the conversation brought her back to life in the room with us. I don’t mean that she came back to physical life, but the memories of her – her photography, her lists, her lively existence with us – was returned to us as we talked to our pastor. It felt like a resurrection. Death bringing life.  It isn’t always the same thing as eternal life, although it can be, as it will be (we hope in our faith) for us.

 

As I think about the universe Dr. Ward explains – matter created and held together in the mind of God – I can see how eternal life with God could work (or at least a little bit). We won’t be the people we are now (Jesus tells us that), but we will be the children of God that God created, existing in the consciousness of God, like the universe. Of course, that is also the case now, as we exist in this world.

Perspectives: Murrell Inlet

 Murrell's Inlet

Resurrection

What is “resurrection”? Is it the same thing as eternal life? Does anything in Dr. Ward’s presentation make it easier for you to believe in the possibility of a life beyond death?

The video in our class material states that death is the way to life. This is resurrection – life that follows death. It can be the glorious resurrection of Jesus, but there are other ways we experience resurrection. When my mother-in-law died from the effects of Alzheimer’s, we met with our pastor as he was planning the funeral. He asked us questions about her, and the conversation brought her back to life in the room with us. I don’t mean that she came back to physical life, but the memories of her – her photography, her lists, her lively existence with us – was returned to us as we talked to our pastor. It felt like a resurrection. Death bringing life.  It isn’t always the same thing as eternal life, although it can be, as it will be (we hope in our faith) for us.

 

As I think about the universe Dr. Ward explains – matter created and held together in the mind of God – I can see how eternal life with God could work (or at least a little bit). We won’t be the people we are now (Jesus tells us that), but we will be the children of God that God created, existing in the consciousness of God, like the universe. Of course, that is also the case now, as we exist in this world.

Now and Not Yet

Years ago, when I still worked at the VA Hospital, a couple I knew, both of whom worked at the VA, was talking about the future. They were both very conservative Christians, and what they shared with me was that they didn't understand the need to save for retirement because Christ was returning soon, and they wouldn't need pensions.

On another topic, our office is undergoing renovations. The changes - paint, carpet, ceiling replacement - means that we have to pack up much that is in our offices. I had a plan. You can imagine that I have lots of books in my office. I have been consistently packing up a box or two of books each day so that when the need to have the packing done arrived, I wouldn't have to rush around, throwing items in boxes.  The problem is that our landlord came into the office last Thursday to tell us the painters had asked to start painting the next day, and my office was on the list. My careful plan was not finished, and I was not ready for this. I spent the next hour (she told us at 4:00) throwing items in boxes, and not only that, but the many of the smaller boxes I had packed had been stored on my mainly empty bookcases. They were painting the wall behind the bookcases, so all of those boxes had to be moved.  I had to pack up my files, my cabinets, etc. 

I'm reading Amy-Jill Levine's book, The Gospel of Mark. The chapter I'm reading today is about Mark 13 - the little Apocalypse. She writes, "For Jesus, the salient question in not the "when of the end-time, but the "how of living with this expectation."

Moving the question away from the return of Christ, how do we live a life with a careful plan to do the ministry to which we have been called - living a life following Christ, while at the same time being prepared for the spontaneous and unexpected surprises this kind of life will bring? How do we live in the kingdom that is now and the kingdom that is to come. It's a fine balancing act.

 

Perspectives: Zion

 

Of Justice and Blame

In the book The Gospel of Mark by Amy-Jill Levine, she spends some time writing about the beheading of John the Baptist.

To set the scene, we need to know about Herod Antipas, who was the ruler of Galilee. Also in the passage are his wife, Herodias, and his niece, Salome, who is his wife's daughter. Yes, there you catch part of the issue - Antipas was married his brother's wife, and he divorced his previous wife to do so.  John, according the Mark, has been preaching against this, implying it was incest. On top of that, word of Jesus' activity has reached Herod Antipas. Also, Josephus, an ancient historian, recounts that Herod Antipas was concerned about the popularity of John the Baptist, worried that John could lead the people to rebellion.  Let's just say the situation was complicated.

Antipas holds a party to celebrate his birthday. As part of the entertainment, Salome, who was probably about 12 years old, dances for those attending. Levine writes, "Herod Antipas and Herodias are well matched. He, inappropriately, lusts for the girl; she, inappropriately, uses the girl to achieve her own ends.  Caught in the middle is John, who loses his head.

Levine also writes, "While history tends to blame Herodias - blaming the 'evil woman' is an easy and common move - the person finally responsible for Johns' death is the tetrarch (Herod Antipas) or, in Mark's account, the king. His oaths, and the co-recliners, that is his guests, are more important than justice."

When, in our lives, do we place our reputation, our belongings, or our own plans above the work of justice? When, in our society, do we do that? And isn't it easy to blame someone else?

 

Religious Experiences

What elements would you include if you were describing a profound religious experience to a friend?  Would your description be any different if your friend happened to be a scientist?

When my husband and I were youth counselors, we took our youth group to a Conference Camp for a retreat. After we had packed the two vans to leave and head back home, we circled up the field outside the cabins with the cross in the background and shared a closing prayer.  As my husband led the prayer, a wind came across the field and surrounded us. It felt like the presence of God. 

 

When I tell that story to people, I include what we were doing at the time, who was there, the fact that we were praying together after a meaningful retreat with the youth, and then how the elements of nature – the wind and the field – contributed to the profound experience of the presence of God among us.  I would use the same elements of the story if I were telling the story to a friend who was a scientist because my purpose is not to explain the science of the wind but presence of the holy.