Thy Loving Kindness

Here is Sophie in her first Kingdom Singers' performance.

Thomas Long on Pluralism

Thomas Long has a suggestion for those of us who preach to plural congregations - those with many different little groups in them. He bases his comments on a practice of St. Augustine, who would address groups of people at different points of discipleship formation. Augustine might say something like, "this next part is for the baptized (or is not for those baptized)."


By directing portions of his preaching to specific groups, he is able, suggests Long, to disarm those who might otherwise say, "he's not talking to me."


In my context, it might look like the challenge of saying, "This next part is particularly addressed to college students. The rest of you are welcome to listen in, but I need to talk specifically to our students." I could do the same thing with International people, senior citizens, etc.

Let's remember that even in a small congregation, there are people dealing with issues such as going to a nursing home, or facing a surgery. Preaching may need to speak to these issues, trusting that other people may one day benefit from having listened in.

Check it out: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preachingmoments.aspx?video_id=30

MAP prayer journal

The facilitator of our dialogue with God is the scriptures.
Elizabeth O'Connor

Nobody finds time for prayer. You either take time for it, or you don't get it. If I am waiting for it to be given to me, it shall never be given.
Joan Chittister

Everything that one turns in the direction of God is prayer.
Ignatious of Loyola



One of the great and ongoing struggles of my spiritual life has been establishing a discipline of prayer. Learning recently that this is characteristic of my personality type (regardless of which religion is practiced) gave me some relief in the sense of "I'm not the only one," but didn't let me off the hook because the same analysis points out that forms of prayer and meditation can be most powerful for those who are driven in the way many of us are. We need to be reminded that time spent in prayer is time well used, not wasted. The MAP Journal is the way I've adapted Biblical journalling to better suit my approach to scripture.

People who work or volunteer at churches often read the Bible only to fulfill responsibilities for preaching or preparing for Bible studies. This kind of reading is necessary, but it should not be confused with reading for spiritual growth. Reading for work is no substitute for devotional reading where the Bible is concerned.

What scripture can do, if we learn how to let it, is give us direction, which is one reason I use the acronym MAP to describe my spiritual reading of scripture. MAP reminds me that I am engaged in devotional Bible reading in order for God to direct my steps. MAP also stands for Message, Application and Prayer. These headings help me be intentional about letting the encounter between the Bible and me, mediated by the Holy Spirit, lead to some form of positive response.

A mature prayer life involves not only talking to God about what we want, but also ways to let God instruct us about what God wants.

Though I've created a template for printing a MAP journal with the headings pre-printed, right now I'm using a Moleskine Ruled Journal, and I simply write in the headings on two blank facing pages as I start. On the left, I write "Scripture" near the top and "Notes" part way down. On the right page, I allow roughly equal spaces labeled: "Message," "Application," and "Prayer." I work through these more-or-less in order, and am thinking about the following things.

Scripture:
I believe a reading plan of some kind is helpful. It can be as simple as one of the "through the Bible" plans, or you can run a book - a chapter a day. One of the great coincidences of Scripture is that when the New Testament was divided up into Chapters, it was divided into 365. Read a chapter a day. Several denominations have developed "lectionaries," which are plans for reading scripture. I am most familiar with the Revised Common Lectionary which gives 4 readings for each Sunday These could be read during the week in preparation for Sunday (although I suggest that preachers should be deliberate about separating "work" and "devotional" reading). This space in your journal is reserved as a place to write out the verse(s) that, in the words of one of my spiritual guides, "glimmers." Sometimes words jump off the page or the screen for reasons we don't need to fully comprehend. When it happens, let's take notice. It is helpful to activate a different part of our brain by writing it out. Also, when we come back to review this journal in the future, it will be much more user friendly to us if we have written out the verse completely.

Notes:
I imagine people setting off on a Lewis and Clark-like journey. A Bible reading plan of some kind giving some direction along with the goal of growing closer to God. Along the way, they take notes about the discoveries they are making, noting features of the landscape, naming the new life they turn up, writing down the questions that come to them, about which they may want to find answers at a later time (this is not the time to open a commentary. That's a different kind of reading.) This is also the space where you write down those intrusive thoughts that try to pull your focus off of the work of this moment.

Message:
This is where you write down the personal message you have gotten during your time of prayerful reading. It will be clear to you that it comes out of the scripture, but because it is personal, it doesn't need to be obvious to anyone else how it arises from what you have read.

Application:
Research has proven that just knowing the right thing, doesn't usually lead us to change. Remember James 1:24 "Be Doers of the Word and not Hearers only who deceive themselves." The application should be specific and doable. What can I do today to put this new message into practice?

Prayer:
We write out a prayer to God. Be careful of abreviations you won't recognize when looking back at this in two or three years. Ask for God's help in following through on your commitments.

As a perfectionist, often prone to wanting to impress people, I've had to train myself to approach journalling with the idea that it is for my eyes only. I don't need to be profound, make a discovery that has never been made before, or even worry about whether or not anyone else will be able to read my handwriting. This also involves developing a level of trust in yourself that will free your subconscious mind to to surface very private and potentially embarrassing truths. These may be the most important things I have to deal with at present.

God Bless you on the journey - no matter what your journey looks like.

The Carpenter's Son

Of course, the trouble is that the story of Jesus’ childhood does not include a scene of Jesus in his father’s carpenter shop; if, in fact, his father had a carpenter’s shop. Many presume that the title “carpenter” actually belonged to persons who built things - who built buildings and homes and public places. And yet, scenes of Jesus and his father in the carpenter’s shop are popular in art; there are many of them painted by many painters. And this particular scene was chosen to include in Wesley’s “Christ window.” This window, just three foot, four inches wide and 42 feet tall contains twelve panels. And in those twelve panels are eleven scenes from Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Of course, there are many scenes that were not chosen to be included in our window. The same company, the Willett Stained Glass Studios, who created this window for our sanctuary, for another setting and sanctuary created thirty scenes from Jesus’ life. But each of these eleven in our sanctuary was chosen because we are located in the center of a university and reflect in part on what that might mean. We also, of course, when we begin to see Jesus interacting with his family, realize that there are resonances for all of us as we are part of families.

I need to mention that just because stories of Jesus in the carpenters shop are not included in our Holy Canon of Scripture - the scripture that was chosen that constitutes our Bible. There are stories of Jesus and his father in the carpenter’s shop from those apocryphal writings, writings with various titles and names that did not get included in our scripture. One of those is called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And that Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is spectacular reading if you’re kind of interested in that sort of thing, does include a scene of Jesus in his father’s carpenters shop. The writing in just one paragraph describes Joseph as a carpenter and he was asked to make a bed for someone and in constructing this bed he had two pieces of lumber; he needed them to be the same length, but they were not. One was shorter than the other. And his son, who at the time is indicated maybe seven or eight years old, Jesus tells him, “Well, that’s all right. You just take these two pieces of lumber and you hold them at that end and I’ll come up to this end.” And as Jesus takes a hold of the shorter piece of lumber, he stretches it so that the two pieces of wood are the same length. His father, Joseph, embraces him and thanks God that he has such a child as this. I know we have a few woodworkers and crafts people out here who would very much welcome having an assistant who could stretch lumber when you cut a little too much off. You would not have to worry about “measure twice, cut once” anymore, because, you know, well, if you get a little too much, you just call for Jesus and he’ll stretch it a little bit and help you out. Once again we appreciate the restraint of our gospel writers who had all these scenes, all these stories about Jesus’ childhood at their disposal and yet restrained themselves to just a few.

In last week’s scene, the story seen in the window just below the one that we’re looking at, that of Jesus in the temple with a group of scholars and teachers -- if that scene celebrates the role of Jesus formal education in his life, then I think the window that we’re looking at today celebrates the role of another kind of formation that takes place in people’s lives; that sometimes parents are involved in and maybe the place where faith is formed in its most profound way.

About thirty years ago, John Westerhoff, maybe a little more than that now, wrote a book in which, the title of it asks something like, “Will Our Children Have Faith?” and the book was a critique of the way Christian education was being carried out at that time. It’s a critique of the way I received Christian education because I was a child in Sunday School in those days. He criticized the church for buying wholesale into secular education and using that model for teaching religious education in churches. What he was concerned about was that by having a sort of, having our children in a passive mold and adults in a teaching, classroom style, teaching mold, that what we would develop would be children who would know a lot of about religion, and maybe know a lot about the Christian religion, but would not necessarily know how to grow in faith; that some of those lessons are learned in our interactions with one another and in a variety of other settings and certainly in the home. One of the things he worries about, Westerhoff worried about was that the family - parents - would decided that since the church was taking care of Christian education in Sunday School that the family, the parents, would not have that responsibility anymore.

I still have this vivid memory of teaching confirmation class out in Princeton, New Jersey. A couple of faculty members from Princeton, who had a daughter who was a precocious violin player, (I was teaching confirmation class, so she was twelve years old and had already had her Carnegie Hall solo debut as a violin player.) her parents made clear to me that they didn’t do any Christian education at their home and so they depended upon me and our confirmation class to take care of that for them. They were first generation Christians. They had only been Christians for a few years themselves and felt unqualified to train their daughter and bring her up in faith.

Well, let’s take a quick look at this window and some things that we observe going on here. We have two characters relating to each other in the center of the window. Joseph teaching his son in the carpenter’s shop, and then off to the side, about half way down, we see Mary, who is also in this scene. Paul Burt suggested that Mary is engaged in keeping these things in her heart; you know, that’s what scripture says, she kind of observed things and kept them in her heart. But I’ve noticed something else going on in this picture and I happen to have learned a few things about Henry Lee Willet and the Willet Stained Glass studios who put this window together that suggests more is going on in this window than just Mary keeping these things in her heart.

First of all, I’m married and I have a child, and I know from experience that Mary is probably doing more than just sitting passively on the side. One suggestion is she is the supervisor for the carpenter’s shop. She also seems to be holding something in her hand; well, in each of her hands. In her left hand she holds a cloth, reminding us of the scene of holding the swaddling cloths of Christ. Also reminding us of how Mary came to find the empty tomb and just the clothes laying there after Jesus’ resurrection. In her right hand, she’s seems to be holding some kind of a tool. Dan and I studied it even more this morning; we just can’t figure out exactly what tool she’s holding, but I think Henry Willett was trying to subtlety communicate something to us. In the Work’s Progress Administration, Henry Willett was responsible for the stained glass making portion of that, and stained glass was placed in public buildings throughout America under his influence. And one of the great fights that Willett took on was fighting with the trade unions that dealt with stained glass making, and some of the other trades, over becoming more open and inclusive. He wanted the unions to open to include women. He wanted the unions to open to include minorities. He had success in that the stained glass trade union. By the early mid-60s, they opened to include women among their artisans. And I’ve often wondered what role, since I learned this, what role Willett might have had in the work going on at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The Willett Stained Glass Studios were involved in putting the stained glass windows in that cathedral just across a park from Harlem. In that Cathedral, they did something that has always impressed me. Of course, not a lot of cathedrals are being built these days, so in the trades that are involved in stained glass making and stone carving and all those trades that are necessary to build a cathedral, there are very few artisans left in the world in those trades. And so knowing that this cathedral would take years and years to build, they made a choice that because they were in the neighborhood and next to Harlem that they would find young men from Harlem and invite them to become the apprentices to these aging artists, so that now, many years later, in the world of cathedral building and some of the world of the arts that are involved in stained glass, and in carving stone and those sorts of things, many of the world’s premier artisans are those who became apprentices out of Harlem. Anyway, if you look real closely, it looks like the portion of the stained glass window that Mary’s right hand is up against, is not quite finished and up very closely, it looks like she might even be finishing putting the lead in place in that portion of the window. I think Willett may have had a little quiet and subversive comment to make about his own trade.

Something else that’s going on here. I talked to Pastor Rob this morning, who is a pretty good woodworker about the way Jesus is cutting a board in this window. You see, how his right leg is poised and he’s left handed, anybody notice that, anyway left handed folks can celebrate something there, but as he’s cutting this board, there’s not a carpenter on earth who would recommend holding a board in this way to cut it. First of all the board is going to be bending at that point and binding in the saw. Also of course, as he cuts through the board, there’s some danger to his own body if he does it that way. Obviously, Willett knew this, but the awkwardness of this scene just creates a cross in Jesus hand made by this board and the saw. This is one of several passion images that are laying over the scene. Another is the little box that Jesus’ right foot is poised upon which looks to me for all the world like an empty tomb. The fact that his father is poised in a position not so dissimilar from Jesus himself hanging on the cross; that Joseph is holding a hammer, a hammer such as the soldiers used to put Jesus on that cross. I think the passion story is present in a variety of ways in this, reminding us that Jesus even as a young person had the passion overlaying his life and his future. And it’s a reminder to me that those of us who find ourselves as parents, and all of us have a mentoring role and responsibility in this world, which is all of us, have a responsibility to remind young people that the goal of life is not necessarily freedom from pain or ease of life. Perhaps, his father, his mother, had an opportunity throughout Jesus’ childhood to make him aware that pain can be a part of life, is a part of life. That sometimes sacrifice for the right reasons can also be a part of life, as we know it most certainly it was a part of Jesus’ life.

One of the things I look for in each scene is where the yellow-gold light appears, which in many cases seems to represent the presence of the light of God. And in this scene it appears around Joseph, who is the teacher, who is perhaps bringing illumination to Jesus himself. We all embrace will our responsibilities as teachers. One of the great roles of education in the church, suggests Marva Dawn, in another book about Christian education is to help share with young people an alternative to the secular view of life and share what the goals and responsibilities of Christian people are in life. Let us embrace that even as we join together in words of a prayer that the founder of Methodism did not write himself, but shared and invited the Methodist people to share year upon year.

Vengence is yours

http://www.trinitycast.com/2007/11/vengence-is-yours-says-lord-barbara.html

I found this sermon preached by Barbara Brown Taylor that does an exceptional job of naming the issues of hard texts in the psalms and modeling a way to deal with them. On the vengence psalms, she says there are verses that are "not right, but true." There are things in the Psalms which we certainly shouldn't take literally, but which reflect real human emotions. Worth a listen.