Blogging Towards  Sunday, September 2^nd 

The Question of Guilt

Leviticus 5:14-19; 7:1-6 | Isaiah 53:10-11 |
 Galatians 5:15-21

GUILT.  It’s an ugly word.  A feeling that often overwhelms us.  Those that critic Christianity from  Friedrich Nietzsche to modern atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, lift up the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth as something that causes guilt based on unrealistic and inhuman morality.  In Hebrew the word for guilt and that for sin are used interchangeably.  In Leviticus 5 & 7 we hear of the proscribed sacrifices to make restitution for sin or guilt, whether it be consciously or unconsciously committed.  The Law seems to provide a way to remove guilt, to make the one who offers the sacrifice clear, to empower them to experience a before and an after, to continue with the certitude of being no longer guilty.  The twist is that it can happen again, no matter how many rams of the flock are sacrifices on an altar.

Blogging Towards Sunday, August 28^th

Mark 8:31-35 | Mark 11:22-25 | Philippians 4:10-13 | Ephesians 3:14-21 & Galatians 2:20

The Gospel according to Mark begins with a radical affirmation: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” [1:1].  In the original language of the book, Koiné Greek, the word for gospel, euanggelion, also means “good news”.  It means good news as in headlines of a paper, an blessed event like a birth or marriage, a joyous pronouncement like VE-Day at the end of WW II, or a military report of victory.

Louise Hirschman asks, “if we actually believe the good news of the gospel, why don’t our lives show it in wild, crazy, amazing expressions of joy?  If we believed it, we could do anything, knowing that Jesus the Christ has our back!”  So what holds us back?  - holds you back?

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Blogging Towards Sunday, August 7, 2011

Colossians 1:1-23

Chosen by Anne Marie Adams, this  scripture lifts of the awesomeness of who Jesus is.  He is the “visible image of the invisible God”.  WOW!  That says a lot, and potentially nothing (for our secular world today).  The passage points back to the beginning of who Jesus is, spelling it out ontologically (regarding being) and epistemologically (regarding the origin of knowledge).  Yet the passage isn’t just about the past, it moves from this universal proclamation of what has been and what is, to a description of where we’re headed, what the world is becoming alongside, because of, in and through this Jesus.

Blogging Towards Sunday, July 31, 2011

Romans 12:1-8

Today’s scripture, suggested by Sharon Nelson, is the climactic portion of Paul’s theological explanation in the letter to the church in Ancient Rome.  Over the previous chapters, Paul has explained the tension between sin and brokenness and grace and reconicilation.  He’s talked of the paradox that God in Christ saves not just the Jew but also the Gentile.  Now he arrives at the point in his teaching when he moves from theology to ethics.  How do we live a life in community as diverse and different followers of Jesus?

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Blogging Towards  Sunday, July 24^th    

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Chosen by our guest preacher Rev. Jack Buckley who serves First Presbyterian Church Alameda, this teaching of Jesus is quite challenging.   The first verses quote the First Testament and then lift up the common critic of Jesus by his opposition, principally that he’s too much of a party guy always hanging out with the wrong type of folks.

Jesus picks up later and talks about rest and renewal.  A life of faith, a life of following his teachings and example is like the lightest yoke you could imagine.  We rarely use yokes these days, as we drive cars or ride the bus, not a horse.  The yoke is the way in which a beast of burden is guided and directed – controlled in a sense by the weight on his shoulders.  We too often can identify with being driven  around by the heavy burdens of worries, fears, concerns, anxieties and uncertainty on our shoulders. 

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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.