Forgiveness Poem

Last night at our last "Cross" study, we talked about how offensive forgiveness is.  Reminded me of this: 

Prayer for the Lady Who Forgave Us
by John Shea
There is a long-suffering lady with thin hands
who stands on the corner of Delphia and Lawrence
and forgives you.
“You are forgiven,” she smiles.
The neighborhood is embarrassed.
It is sure it has done nothing wrong
yet, every day, in a small voice
it is forgiven.
On the  way to the Jewel Food Store
housewives pass her with hard looks
then whisper in the cereal section.
Stan Dumke asked her right out
what she was up to
and she forgave him.
A group who care about the neighborhood
agree that if she was old it would be harmless
or if she were religious it would be understandable
but as it is…they asked her to move on.
Like all things with eternal purposes
she stayed.
And she was informed upon.
On a most  unforgiving day of snow and  slush
while she was reconciling a reluctant passerby
the State people
whose business is sanity,
persuaded her into a car.
She is gone.
We are reduced to forgetting.

A poem about living "in between times"

David Lose - his blog is called In The Meantime, and is definitely worth bookmarking - posted this poem and I want to keep track of it, so I'm posting it here.  It's encouragement for those times in life when you've come too far to turn back, can't yet see the way forward and yet know that where you are isn't going to work for long, either.  Which is pretty much everyday. 

“Interim Time”
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.
John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 2008.

Looking to the Cross. Sermon #2 Atonement as Ransom

OK.  When you read this one, you have to sing two songs when prompted - "Please Release Me"  (try to sound like Patsy Cline when you do this.  She was so good!)  and "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail"  ( you may have to look at youtube if you didn't grow up with Buck Owens and the Buckaroos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBeOddejiGw).  We heard the sounds through the sound system.  So hard to duplicate the full PhiloPres experience.

This Lent we are looking to the cross, the central symbol of our faith.  Christians have, from the very first, struggled to make sense of the cross. We’ve agreed that the cross is essential to Christ’s work of “atonement” - of saving us, or reconciling us, or making a new life with God possible for us. 

But we have not always agreed on how God accomplished that, or what it means for us to be part of a community built around this treasured but puzzling symbol.  There are different ways to conceptualize the cross’s meaning. 

Today I invite you to think about one of the oldest ways to explain it:  the ransom theory of the atonement.

scripture:  Matthew 20: 13-20,  I Peter 1:18-20

Remember how scared we were as children of being kidnapped?  I think this is a common and universal fear.  Adults used to calm it, rather than stoke it, as we seem to do these days.   My parents, and many others, dispelled the childish fear by telling the story of The Ransom of Red Chief.   It is a short story by O. Henry about a little boy who is kidnapped, but who is such a terror that, rather than collect ransom,  the kidnappers eventually pay his father to take him back.  It’s a funny story. 

Well, there is a sort of funny theory of the cross that also involves ransom and in it God turns the tables on a kidnapper.  I’ll try to explain. 

In this understanding, humanity has fallen prey to kidnapping by Satan.  I know.  That’s the first problem.  Satan.  But just put that to the side for a minute, OK?  The idea is less like snatching someone than like the much more common practice of warfare in that time, where members of an army or population would be captured and enslaved by an enemy.  The captured people could be taken and their labor and expertise used by the ones who captured them.  This is far from modern warfare.  This is skirimishes between tribes, who often knew each other.  And if the person who was captured was important enough, or had relatives who were rich enough, sometimes an exchange of either money or goods or other prisoners could be arranged.  This was called redeeming - or buy back - the person.  With me so far?

This is the background to Old Testament verses like the ones we heard in our call to worship.   And it is the background to verses like our scripture texts. 

Now various early theologians had different versions of how human beings got captured by Satan and ended up belonging to and traveling with the Evil One’s tribe.  Most thought it had something to do with people’s bent for disobedience, which was sort of a bad inheritance from Adam and Eve.  It’s not so important how we got into this predicament.  The problem, according to this view, is that Satan has the rights to us.  He’s a kidnapper.  Or a slave owner.  And while he may find it advantageous to use us for awhile, he does not have our best interest at heart, and in the end we are going to end up dead.

Humanity, in this version, is enslaved.  Our theme song is  . . . (Please Release Me, let me go.  For I don’t love you, anymore.  To waste our lives would be a sin.  Release me and let me love)

God wants us back.  Not because we are cute and cuddly.  But because he created us to belong to him and he’s not happy at the loss of what was His.
So he decides to get us back.  But in order to redeem us, He has to pay a ransom to Satan.  And Satan sets the price very high.  He wants something more valuable than human kind.  So God shows him . . . a perfect human.  Jesus comes to earth and Satan sees that Jesus is perfect, and can do miracles.  He can heal people.  He’s a good story teller.  He’s brave and has powers that Satan thinks he could really use. 

Satan plots to capture Jesus, but of course he can’t.  But God offers him a deal - Jesus in exchange for the entire human race.  Humanity is freed from Satan’s camp and gets to come home to God, and in return, Satan can have Jesus for his own. 

This seems like a good deal to Satan. He says, Yes, and suggests that the exchange take place on the cross.  He’s making sure that God is serious about this deal, because if God is going to give him up - the cross is the most God-forsaken place on earth. 

God says Yes.  Jesus says Yes.  He goes to the cross in surrender and Satan has to let us all go free.   He loses all claim to us when Jesus cried out from his pain, and dies that we might live.

But wait!  It gets better!  God doesn’t really surrender Jesus to Satan.  Satan could not capture Jesus, because Jesus is God. It was a trick.  Gregory of Nyssa likens the Devil to a hungry fish who is caught on the hook of Christ's deity when he is enticed to swallow it by the bait of Christ's flesh. Augustine of Hippo says that Jesus used His body as a bait by which Satan was caught like a mouse in a trap.  Satan thought he was getting something good for him, but . . . .(Buck Owens and the Buckaroos - I've got a tiger by the tail, it's plain to see I won't be much when you get through with me Well, I'm a losing weight and a turnin' mighty pale Looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
Well, I thought the day I met you, you were meek as a lamb Just the kind to fit my dreams and plans But now the pace we're livin' takes the wind from my sails And it looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
I've got a tiger by the tail, it's plain to see I won't be much when you get through with me Well, I'm a losing weight and a turnin' mighty pale Looks like I've got a tiger by the tail)  Ol' Satan found out:  He got a tiger by the tail.  And he had to let go. 

And so the gruesome spectacle of the cross is actually a reminder that, because of Jesus Christ, we belong to God. 

And even though this theory has obvious flaws, it may even seem a little silly, I think it still has power because when we come into relationship to Christ and the community of Christ that we know in the church, there is a powerful sense of having been rescued and brought home where we belong.  We go from feeling that we are in the grip of someone or something that we cannot trust, that we are basically doomed to being safe in a loving parent’s arms.  :  Here we are claimed and protected and valuable and beloved.  And we feel that - that we are part of God’s household here.

Baptism is a sign and symbol of that belonging.  When we say the baby’s name and pour the water of baptism on his head, and sign him with the cross, we are saying “You have been ransomed, rescued from the power of evil and death and brought back home to God through Jesus Christ.  This promise is to you and to your children and for all those far away from God who want to come home.”

Looking to the Cross. Sermon One. Atonement as Victory

This was preached on Feb 24, 2013.  I'm planning on preaching during Lent about the various ways to understand the atonement.  This is is the Classic or Victory theory. 
This sermon is, I heard, almost entirely theological and not very entertaining.   If you are into that sort of thing - here it is:   
Text:   I Cor. 1:18 ff

Purpose of Lent:  To ready our hearts and minds to enter into the events of Holy Week and Easter - so that we might experience the power of the death and resurrection of Christ to change lives and indeed, to change the world.

The cross is the central symbol of Christianity.  Look around the sanctuary.  Think about all the places we see crosses:  On steeples, signs for churches, around Christian’s necks, as body art, on T-shirts.   We make the sign of the cross on Ash Wednesday and every time we baptize, or anoint someone to remind them of baptism.  Many Christians, even Protestants, make the sign of the cross as a part of prayer. 

Yet our understanding of the cross is not always very deep.  Imagine trying to explain to an alien, or to a very persistent and intelligent child why the cross is so central to us.  It is a symbol of a torture device, used to humiliate, inflict pain, execute and terrorize.  Why is that a central symbol of our faith?

If we get past our familiarity with it, the cross is a jarring, stark reminder of the shocking way God in Jesus Christ entered and left our world.  And I’m convinced that as we grow in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, eventually we have to face the cross and try to understand two things:
what God was doing, letting his precious Son our Savior die that way? 
What does it mean to belong to a community built around the cross? 

Now, you’d think that after 2000 years, these questions would be all figured out.  That there would be an answer and I could stand up here and preach it, or give you a book to read it, or even a youtube video we could all watch together.  But God is a funny guy.  He seems to have arranged it so that knowing him has more to do with struggling with profound questions than with having a firm grip on pat answers.

Christians have, from the very first, struggled to make sense of the cross. We’ve agreed that the cross is essential to Christ’s work of “atonement” - of saving us, or reconciling us, or making a new life with God possible for us. 

At-one-ment is an interesting word.  One of the few theological words that actually has an English root - it means “At-One-Ment”  or bringing what was broken apart back together.   We affirm that Jesus’ death on the cross was crucial to fixing whatever was broken between us and God.

One way to understand that is that in his death, Christ won a giant victory over the power of death.

The reading from 1 Corinthians focuses attention on the cross as the power of Christ: "For the word, of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (RSV).
Seeing atonement as victory is rooted in the Gospel of John’s imagery of darkness and light. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. There is a struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light.
There are a couple of things that give us pause about this way to understand the cross:  One is that it seems like it’s based on a dualistic view of the world, in which two roughly equal powers vie for supremacy.  If God is good, and God created the world, then where did all that evil come from?  The answer to that gets a little messy and hard to swallow. 
And the second drawback to this view is that it is about good and evil, light and dark, black and white.  And the world just isn’t that way.  It’s mostly shades of grey.  There is so much good in the worst of people and so much bad in the best . . . Even situations where it seems obvious who is right and who is wrong . . . people are doing things they THINK are right and good.  They may be mistaken, but nobody sets out to do the wrong thing. 
Much of being a grown up is understanding that.  And surely God understands it better than any of us.  What evil could be defeated without also stamping out the good that grows entwined around it?   Didn’t Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do?” 
Nonetheless - there is a lot about this view that commends it.  This view takes seriously the darkness and evil of sin and death.  It recognizes that much of what goes on in this world is the product of forces which would crush beauty, creativity, love and life.  And we cannot take a long unblinking look at the world around us without seeing the darkness that often corrupts the human heart.  Mass killings.  War.  Child abuse and neglect.  Violence against those who are different.  It’s a dark world out there. 
And we know how prone we are to participating in the darkness:  How satisfying a cruel comment can be.  How easy it is to ignore a pain that we could fix.  How “worth it” it seems to inflict damage on someone else’s property, or to damage creation itself, for a little extra profit or to save some time. 
This is what sin is - the darkness that wraps it’s stinking hands around our hearts and squeezes the life out of our ability to love and care for one another.  
But Christ, by dying on the Cross, confronts that power of sin and hatred and death head on.  Only Christ - because he is God - is strong enough to enter into the cosmic battle against evil.  And only Christ is strong and good enough to defeat evil.  By going to evil’s home court - the cross is a torture device that kills its victims - there’s nothing MORE evil than the cross - Jesus gives death every opportunity to win.  But the power he displays on the cross is the power to enter into death and then come out victorious on the other side.
Peter’s first sermon: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it" (Acts 2:23-24).
 The cross’ meaning is only made clear in the resurrection.  But once it is clear that Jesus who died lives again, we can see the cross as the final battle that proves once and for all which is stronger.
God overcomes the power of darkness.
Love wins over hate.
Life is more powerful than death.
The most ringing statement of this view of the atonement is Paul’s.  (Which I love and use at every funeral I do.) "‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘0 death, where is thy victory? 0 death, where is thy sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:54-57).
To live as Christians is to live in the midst of a world where darkness and sin still vie for control over lives and hearts - but live knowing that we need not be defeated by those evil powers.  That we share in the victory over these things.  So even when we see their  awful force, we have courage to stand against them, knowing that God will not let them extinguish us utterly. 
This understanding of the cross invites us say with St. Paul in the face of every trial and difficulty, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us . . . Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:37, 39).

A poem by Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…
–Jacques Crickillon
“Litany”
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.
Billy Collins, from Nine Horses: Poems

Throwing out the trash

Yesterday, at 7 am, I quit trying to make the sermon work, threw it out and wrote a new one.  Which was better.  So today I wanted to put the new one on the blog, and found it is gone.  That is, I threw out the old one, but my computer threw out the new one.  Hmmmmm.

On FB:  To Ray Lewis (football player who said of the SuperBowl, "When God is for you, who can be against you?")  - Leave theology to the professionals.  (Paul Rack)

Five Tibetans. Day Three.