Ungovernable and Broken:

California, The Church and Cows

My cousin Lori, a big paper and web reader, turned me on to an insightful blog article about California and our near-death insolvency.  "There's no budget, but California is all over the foreign cow issue" lifts up some terrifying aspects of the train-wreck we all seem to agree our state has become, a place in which the general population seems to becoming not merely depressed and hopeless, but deeply apathetic and uninterested in solving our problems.  "If we all focus on the budget, then we're going to crash [personally and emotionally]" said a congresswoman.  Maybe that's why so many congress members are up in arms about foreign cows being used in a Happy California Cow commercial.  Maybe that's why the governor went an made a bad cult movie with decrepit action stars [The Expendables | TRAILER] while serving our state in the past year.  Nothing better to do, I guess.  Here's the commercial.  You may need to watch it on the original site: LINK

Blogging Towards Sunday October 3, 2010

Luke 17:1-10

This week's passage is the ongoing continuation of what Jesus has been teaching since chapter 13 about discipleship and life of leadership based on following someone beyond ourselves, the tyranny of the urgent and our cultural context.  Leadership implies responsibility.  It doesn't equate earn entitlement.  Rather that in leadership, following the One from Nazareth we are changed as we change the world.  We are held responsible for our actions, not in a subservient, ego-crushing way; but rather in a life-affirming, leadership-maturing and earth-community-awareness-transforming way.  What we say and do and our relationships matter.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

Fun Music Video


It's a great Italian classic I like performed by an Irish Dance Troupe (Up & Over It)

Blogging Towards Sunday, September 26 2010

Luke 16:19-31

"Well I'll be damned!" : a funny sermon title I'm flagrantly plaguarizing for my sermon this week.  It might just be what the rich man in this parable says in the end.  Funny.  Ironic.  Painful.  Fitting.  It's all about perspective, it's what Jesus is talking about.  This rich guy never helped, let alone noticed, Lazarus laying like a sick dog on his doorstep.  He was unimportant until the rich man needed his help.  It's a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge in Dicken's A Chrismas Carol. A wealthy, arrogant man who claims to need no one, or to have anyone worthy of his friendship, until his eyes are opened to life  in general - and his life in particular - by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.  In this parable the scrooge character doesn't get it.  He's read and hear the Torah and Prophets every day of his life as he followed the prescriptions for good faithful living (as articulated in Deuteronomy 6:1-12).  That obviously didn't change his heart or his perspective.  Would the ghosts of Christmas, or someone returning from the dead, make any other change?

Can you leave religion & keep Christ?

Leaving the Church:  Anne Rice

For many Ann Rice isn't a name you often associate with the Christian Church.  Wildly famous for her numerous novels about vampires, she rediscovered her Christian Faith, in the Catholic Context, several years back in a time of deep grief.  She then wrote 2 novels in a planned trilogy telling the story of Jesus in the first person.  A challenging endeavor to undertake: Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt; The Road to Cana and a memoir about her spiritual transformation: Called Out of Darkness.

In August she announced that she was leaving the Church, quitting religion, but in no way renouncing Jesus the Christ, nor abandoning her life-path of discipleship.  [Belief Net Blog]  [NY Times Article]  [Christian Science Monitor Article]  The news came out in early August, yet it seems to have gone much un-noticed, being overshadowed by religious comments and conflicts around Glenn Beck [site].  She claims that she could no longer be identified with a group that she feels has little, or no, identifying links to Jesus of Nazareth, his teachings and his life.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

I saw this one last Sunday in the parking lot behind our church.  Good food for thought at the end of a week filled with debate about politics, scripture, pluralism and sacred texts.

Blogging Towards Sunday, September 19

Luke 16:1-13

The Clever Manager parable is widely regarded as one of the most difficult of Jesus to understand.  Is he wise? Shrewd?  Dishonest?  How are we to interpret it?  Having squandered the property of his boss (as the Prodigal Son scattered the inheritance of his father Luke 15:13) he is lauded as a good manager.  Is this clever steward commended by his boss or by Jesus for having reduced the debts owed to the master?  In doing so he gains favor with the indebted farmers.  He makes his boss to look like a very generous benefactor.  And he secures his position by earning new friends and making it nearly impossible for his boss to fire him without losing face among his grateful debtors.  Jesus talks about children of the world (or this time/age), encouraging children of the light to be clever in their decision-making.  It’s not about dishonesty, deceit, trickery, but rather about recognizing how things work and working in the world with a different view as the goal.  It’s not just about self-preservation or self-enrichment.  It’s about a wider vision of life, a world-view of Jubilee (based on Leviticus 25): a global vision of justice, inter-dependence, solidarity, and peace all both in the name of God and for God.

Blogging Towards Sunday, September 12

Luke 15:1-10 and 1 Timothy 1:17-21

The texts suggested by the Lectionary (a 3 year cycle through which we travel the breadth of the Bible) address the question of discipleship and grace.  We're challenged to love and live as Jesus did.  A radical invitation that seems poignantly a propos in this week of threatened Koran burning by a Florida church as we mark the 9th anniversary of the horrific destruction of September 11th and its consequences.

In the gospel according to Luke, again we see that Jesus is encountered around a meal, a celebration: with the wrong people.  Tax collectors, sinners, maybe prostitutes and gamblers: folks who were considered immoral or wrong because of their economic activities.  At the same time they were the ones with money, enough to host large meals, something that was rare and very costly in the poverty that dominated Palestine in Jesus’ day.  It’s in this setting that the parables of Luke 15 unfold: verses 3-7: the Parable of the Lost Sheep; verses 8-10 the Parable of the Lost Coin; and verses 11-31 the Parable of the Prodigal Son, also called the Parable of the Loving Father.  All follow a similar narrative structure:  something is lost.  It’s sought out.  It’s found.  A celebration occurs to mark that was was lost is found.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

Bumper Sticker of the Week

Bumper sticker of the week

I love bumper stickers:  the opportunity to be funny, ironic or poignantly observant in a phrase or word.  I find that there are a ton of great ones in the East Bay, in particular in certain parking lots such as the Big Longs and Trader Joe's by the Lake.  I'm always looking for good ones to share - one a week - and open to getting ones you've seen by email.   I've noticed that there are a lot less stickers these days: either a sign of the economic downturn, or maybe our political/social malaise.

Thanks go to Nani for this week's.

Blogging Towards Sunday, August 29th

Luke 14:1-14

Jesus is invited to a meal at the home of a prominent religious leader.  It’s like he’s been invited to be watched in some sort of paparazzi religious-examination way.  And yet ironically as the story unfolds we see that it’s actually Jesus who is doing the watching.  Like many of the gospel episodes, this one unfolds around food and the sharing of a meal: the basic experience that flavors and empowers human relationships and community.

Choosing public school      
or at least hoping to

School starts in Oakland, at least for OUSD, next Monday.  A time of excitement and anxiety, eagerness and trepidation.  In our own family our youngest will start kindergarten and has been instensly preparing though play for the big day.  Yet public school, or the challenge of choosing it in the urban jungle of the Bay Area, and Oakland in particular, is one of the things that drives Oaklandites away.  In our own travails of trying to get into a public school, other than the just-above-failing one around the corner from our home in East Oakland, led us to question staying in Oakland, our commitment to the city, public education and our children.  The problems facing urban schools are not black and white.  They can't merely be solved by throwing more money at them.  It won't change overnight.  And yet the cost of change isn't just money and time, but one's children.  The tension of being committed to your children and your city/public schools is one that goes all too often under the radar.  What happens to the middle-class, lower creative-class families in our urban areas that are too monied for help, but too poor for private school, unlucky for a charter school spot or stuck for a move to the burbs?

Blogging Towards Sunday, August 22, 2010

Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 13:10-17

I was driving through the MacArthur Maze on a pilgrimage to IKEA this week and found myself stuck in traffic behind a truck with a bumper sticker reading "The problem with religion is religion."  It got me thinking, in particular about the lectionary texts for this coming Sunday (my first at a new church gig).  HYPOCRISY seems to be the big thing that people comment about in terms of problems with religion, and in particular - in our context - with Christians.  Against abortion but for the death penalty.  For the peace of Christ and the war in Iraq.  For religious freedom, but not a mosque near the former World Trade Center site.  For morality, as long as it doesn't impede one's own personal choices and options.  Where do we find the balance between faith and follow-through; between our egos and our authenticity?  The texts from Jeremiah and Luke invite us to this dialogue.

Back into the blog and a new work gig

This week I started a new job, serving as pastor with the faith community of College Avenue Presbyterian Church in the Rockridge District of Oakland.  A congregation faithfully serving the city of Oakland for over 100 years, which began in the countryside and now is in the mix of the urban context of Oakland, and is seeking to articulate and facilitate the living out of faith in what is emerging as our 21st century context and culture.

I'm reconnecting with my Monteskewed blog which had been dormant for a while as I lived in France and blogged primarily in French at ckoilafoi.wordpress.com.  I'm planning to reestablish the blog, doing what I did before - some writing on the practice of Christian faith and urban life, crazy city images, rantings and ravings and the expression of my sarcastic humor; as well as some soon to emerge new things, in particular aspects of life in and around Oakland.  If you have ideas or suggestions please be sure to share them with me through a comment.

Blogging Towards Sunday, August 1, 2010

Luke 12:13-21

In the wake of 9/11, the the burst of the mortgage bubble meltdown, Bernie Maddock ponzi schemes, and decreasing church membership roles, questions of security dominate our national, cultural  and church psyches.  How can we be safe from future terrorist attacks?  How can we be financially secure when everything seems to anything but?  Can life be sure and secure?  And how does faith through Christ fit into our wonderings.  Trust in God, is the answer.  Yet while it's easy to recite, it's often much harder to live day to day.

Blogging Towards Sunday, July 18, 2010

Luke 10:38-42 | Colossians 1:15-29

We read the scriptures as a community each week as a practice that shapes us and sends us; a big story that frames our way of seeing, being and believing.  What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?  What does that look like?  This week's gospel lesson, as always, offers direction.  Clear, concise, to the point, but also a bit vague, we often tend to oversimplify it in our reading.  Mary is the good one.  Martha is wrong.  She should have listened to the words of Jesus instead of working so hard.  A black and white answer for life that is more grey than two-tone.

Martha is doing what is required, preparing and offering hospitality, fitting of her guest - paramount in the cultural context both then and still today, of the Middle East.  Doesn't Jesus criticize the Pharisee who hosts him yet doesn't wash his feet, leaving the task to the tears of the mysterious woman [Luke 7]?  Doesn't Jesus himself use this task of hospitality (washing the feet of a guest) as a pedagogical experience to show the disciples what it means to serve one another [John 13]?  While we do need to first receive the gospel, it is most often by our actions, presence, relationships - and hospitality - that we reflect what we have received.  So it can't simply be an existential choice of being like Mary or being like Martha.

Blogging Towards Sunday, June 27

Luke 9:51-62 [The Message]

"Discipleship places heavy demands on followers of Jesus.  The way Jesus takes involves and unprotected mission, a clear choice about priorities, and a clean break with the past."  [quote from my studies this week].  Luke 9 is the beginning of the end: Jesus heading towards Jerusalem, knowing that his way of love, life and liberation will most likely lead towards a cross than a coronation celebration.  In a sense it's the beginning (in the next chapters) of what we might call "Jesus' Following Instructions for Dummies and Disciples."

Oakland is gone.

A funny photo I received a while back, portraying the Imperial Power of Star Wars, having vanquished Oakland moving across the bay to attack San Francisco.  I guess that it could be one way to deal with budget cuts that no one wants to tackle.