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Blogging Towards Sunday, July 17, 2011

Romans 8:31-39

Chosen by our guest preacher Rev. Nancy Walters, formerly on staff at the Westminster House Ministry at Cal Berkeley, this portion of Romans is among the climactic words of this pastoral letter.  Paul has been writing to the church in Rome, explaining faith in Jesus as the Christ.  He’s articulated how the death of one man – Jesus – can bring life to all humanity – US! Paul has tied faith in Christ into the historic Jewish faith in Jehovah lifted up in the story of Abraham and Sarah’s radical journey from nowhere to where God wanted them to be.

Faith isn’t merely historical, it’s not merely a moral compass for our lives.  It is life itself, a new way of being, of being with others and of being with God.  Paul in Romans 8 writes of a new life that we know through the presence and inheritance of God’s Spirit among and in us.  It’s not just genetic or given to a particular people or ethnic tribe, God’s presence is freely given, actively present, grace-fully loving us and winning us towards love.  Paul ends his development of this vision of how life, faith and love are indistinguishable with this ecstatic proclamation of how much God loves us.  Hauntingly beautiful, philosophically challenging, it’s a radical reminder of the hope that we have in the love of God that we know in Jesus – not just in ancient Palestine, but here, now, today in the urban jungle and metropolitan mix of the East Bay.

·       What word, image or phrase in this passage grabs your attention?

·       How does that word, image or phrase touch your life and what you’re living or wrestling with these days?

·       How do you hear the Spirit of God inviting you – or us as a church – to act, speak or be through this passage?

·       How do you struggle to believe, accept or acknowledge God’s love for you?

·       How has this conquering love healed or transformed you?  How do you need God to liberate you today from the things that can separate you from that love?

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Blogging Towards Sunday, July 10, 2011

John 11:17-45

Chosen by a member of my church community as a challenging Bible passage, this story contains the shortest verse in the whole Bible: John 11:35  “Jesus wept.”  In this story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, we also see the encounter of Jesus with Lazarus’ sisters.  The story points to the power of Jesus over death, to Jesus as more than just a human being – as the power of God divine incarnate in the human condition.  But the text just might ask more questions of us and our faith, then supply us with answers.  Why does Jesus weep?  Why didn’t he heal Lazarus before he died?  If Jesus was divine, wouldn’t he also know what would happen? 

Summer Camp 2011

We've been at summer camp at Westminster Woods this week, brining children from our church community to camp for the week, and for me to be speaking in the Forest 4th-6th grade camp.  It's nearly the end of the week, and as I walked back from an early morning meeting today I found myself thinking about what constitutes a day in the life this week: the pool, pudding cups for desert, campfire, the craft shack, Robin Hood dueling with the Sheriff, Ro-Sham-Bo about the life cycle of a salmon with Chimi & Changa, Free Time, not taking a shower, new friends, old friends, dumb body tricks, and mosquitos, trying new things, reveling in old favorites, getting a bit homesick, or just plain tired.  That’s what camp is about it.  All of those things in a brief span.  Comfort and challenge, joy and frustration, living with others and learning to stand on your own with your parents not nearby (unless your Dad is the camp speaker).  

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Blogging Towards Sunday, July 3, 2011

John 1:1-5

Chosen by a member of the church I serve as one her favorite Bible passages, these opening verses of John’s gospel are hauntingly powerful.   The words are carefully chosen by their author.  John copies and tweaks the original sentence structure of the creation story in  the first verses of book of Genesis.  The other gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) start with the birth of Jesus (Matthew & Luke) or with his baptism (Mark).  John however chooses to start at a different beginning, the beginning of the story of God’s relationship with humanity and creation.  It’s not by accident that he does that, calling Jesus the LOGOS – the Greek philosophical word used by philosophers from Socrates to Aristotle for divine wisdom, the intelligence that isn’t humanly attainable, a living word that makes life possible.  He doesn’t do it on a whim, but with carefully crafted intention.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, June 26 2011

Mark 5:21-43

This story within a story is one of my favorite Bible passages about Jesus.  For me it’s so real, easily pictured in my imagination and carries such a clearly challenging message of the radical aspect of Jesus’ love, power and person. 

Jesus is interrupted in the midst of doing his business.  On his way to visit the dying daughter of a well-known religious leader, Jesus is interrupted by a nameless woman who audaciously touches him in the midst of a jostling crowd.  His response must have been comical.  Surrounded by throngs of people, Jesus asks aloud “who touched me?” Yet he’s insistent.  The text tells us that she’s broken: physically as she’s be bleeding for 12 years, well beyond the normal timeline of a menstrual cycle.  She’s broken financially as she’s been bankrupted seeking a medical solution.  She’s broken personally and relationally, as she is considered unclean by the purity laws practiced by the Israelites (see Leviticus 12:7, 15:19-22 and 20:18), similar to how we treated those with AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s.  She’s looking for a quick fix, a remedy; yet Jesus won’t settle for just a band aid.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, June 19, 2011

Jeremiah 29:1-14

This passage from Jeremiah contains several verses (11-14) commonly quoted as a favorite by many readers and hearers of the Bible.  It’s a radical affirmation that God doesn’t leave us, abandon us to the cruel contexts in which we may find ourselves.  But rather God is present – even when it doesn’t seem to be so – working underneath what we see, behind the curtain, preparing, calling, healing, delivering all with a divine intention.  Isn’t that the real challenge of faith?  It’s not all that impossible to believe in a God that infinitely loves us, but it is difficult to believe and live that when life is in its most difficult, when it seems that there is no rhyme or reason for what happens, that there could not be a divine being behind it all, urging the universe towards peace, blessing and a future.

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Blogging Towards Sunday,  June 5

John 17:1-11 | Community

This prayer of Jesus, at the conclusion of John's gospel story of his life and relationships, is for unity among those that he calls his community in his day and in days to come.  As I thought about community in the text, in my life and it's changing implications in our urban, multicultural, technologically-flavored city characterized first and foremost by its diversity I wondered at the current definition of COMMUNITY:  according to wikipedia it's:

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing a populated environment. In humancommunities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

End of the World +1

John 14:1-14 | 1 Peter 2:1-10

According to the billboards I've seen around the Bay Area for the past 2 + months Sunday most likely won't come for those that follow Jesus of Nazareth, calling him master, and Lord.  And yet I suspect I'll be here come Sunday.  Guess I'll need to write a sermon.  As I think about those signs proclaiming God's judgement on May 21st and wrestle with the words of Jesus in John 14, responding to Thomas' uncertainty and questions by asserting that Jesus is "the Way, the Truth and the Life" I just can't accept that it will all end come Saturday night at 6pm in an earthquake.  I'm stuck with 2 thoughts: 1) Jesus says himself that no one but God the Father will know when that hour of radical world transforming revelation (or apocalypse in Greek) will appear [Matthew 24:36] and 2) Jesus seems to teach those that follow him to live in the world, not to flee the world.

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Blogging Towards Sunday, May 15 2011

Psalm 23 | John 10:1-10 | Acts 2:42-47

The major theme of the scriptures proposed to us by the Lectionary Cycle after Easter wrestle with what it means to be sent out into the world as disciples, followers of Jesus, in his name.  The lift up the paradox that we're sent out and that Jesus goes with us.  We're sent with authority that he had and gives to us.  We're sent not just to proclaim, but to build community, to testify to how our lives have been changed, to point to the birthing pains of an emerging new thing in the universe, begun in the resurrection.

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Blogging towards Sunday, May 8^th  

Luke 24:13-35

Being sent into the world is a major theme of the scriptures that we read after Easter. As we listen again to the testimonies of those that experienced the great teacher as the resurrected One, we have to ask ourselves how is it that we experience him as both teacher and resurrected Lord today, here in the context of the 2011 East Bay?

This story is unique to Luke.  Some say a faint echo of it can be found in Mark 16:12-13.  This pilgrimage story follows Luke’s telling of the resurrection encounter at the empty tomb (Luke 24:1-12).  These two followers of Jesus are heading towards Emmaus.  They’re on a journey – not just to a village 7 miles away, but also on the journey of faith.  They’ve heard the report of the women, and wonder at what it means. 

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