Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Long Lost Pictures
Monday, May 30, 2011
Hee Hee
From Charles Williams Decent into Hell
"Don't you think so?" Watteau, whose actual name was Myrtle Fox, asked, "It's what I always feel--about trees and flowers and leaves and so on--they're so friendly. Perhaps you don't notice it so much; I'm rather mystic about nature. Like Wordsworth. I should love to spend days out with nothing but the trees and the leaves and the wind. Only somehow one never seems to find the time. But I do believe they're all breathing in with us, and it's such a comfort--here, where there are so many trees. Of course, we've only to sink into ourselves to find peace--and trees and clouds and so on all help us. One never need be unhappy. Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?"
Which obviously brings to mind a brilliant Wodehouse quip which I've lately been using on my children,
"If it isn't too much trouble, would you be so kind as to stop driveling."
Hope you have a very pleasant Monday and take a moment to thank God and pray for our troops. Thank you Grandpa!
"Don't you think so?" Watteau, whose actual name was Myrtle Fox, asked, "It's what I always feel--about trees and flowers and leaves and so on--they're so friendly. Perhaps you don't notice it so much; I'm rather mystic about nature. Like Wordsworth. I should love to spend days out with nothing but the trees and the leaves and the wind. Only somehow one never seems to find the time. But I do believe they're all breathing in with us, and it's such a comfort--here, where there are so many trees. Of course, we've only to sink into ourselves to find peace--and trees and clouds and so on all help us. One never need be unhappy. Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?"
Which obviously brings to mind a brilliant Wodehouse quip which I've lately been using on my children,
"If it isn't too much trouble, would you be so kind as to stop driveling."
Hope you have a very pleasant Monday and take a moment to thank God and pray for our troops. Thank you Grandpa!
Sunday, May 29, 2011
My sermon from this morning: Colossians 3:18
It’s a pleasure to be here with you this morning for this difficult and probably to some, deeply offensive passage of scripture. If you would all like to turn to Colossians 3 verse 18 you will see why all the men in leadership in this church turned into cowardly custards and refused to preach.
To stand in the middle of a deep strong rushing river of cultural consensus and heartfelt belief and try to either face the opposite direction, or even just stand still, or even just ask a few questions is extremely uncomfortable and so I hope you will award me several truck loads of grace, your open ears and do your very very very best not to take offense because it is not my intention or desire to cause any. Let me also say that this topic is so fraught, so big, and so difficult for this day and age that this morning we will really only be dipping our toes in the water.
So, let’s start by just reading the verse and noticing some interesting things about the Greek and the translation that we have here.
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
First, Paul says, Wives. He’s not talking to any of you single ladies right now. He’s talking to women who are married. If you’re about to get married I encourage you to pay attention. If you are single and carrying on happily in that state you can listen and analyze all your married friends. Just kidding.
In other words, what Paul is saying is not directed to every woman in regards to every man. All women every where are not being told to be submissive to all men everywhere. We’re talking about a particular relationship—marriage, one person submitting to one other person—her own husband. Even if you are dating someone, ladies, you do not have to and ought not, I would say, submit to the guy until he puts a ring on it, just to quote Byonce.
So, wives, submit to your husbands. The greek here actually is better rendered, ‘be subject to’, which to my delicate ears sounds even worse. We’re probably most familiar with the word ‘subject’ as in being subjects of a King or Queen. The word is not ‘subjugation’ but of willingly being part of a country or kingdom with a head leader. It’s a little more passive than the word submit.
Now notice who Paul is talking to in this verse. Wives, you submit, he says, not, as he does in Ephesians, ‘wives ought to submit to their husbands’, it’s a direct appeal. I say appeal because this kind of direct address is an usual occurrence for literature of this time and place in history. Were he following cultural conventions he might rather have said, husbands make your wives submit to you as to the Lord, because why would they even be there to hear the letter? They wouldn’t. And yet, here, in the church, they are there, they are hearing the letter, and Paul is talking to them directly, appealing to them as full, equal members of the Colossian church, able to exercise their own will and volition towards a particular way of life.
Which really lets us get at the guts of this verse if you think about it. Paul is talking to women whose lives would have looked much much more like the average Muslim in the middle east woman’s life now, than like yours and mine. The Colossian woman would have probably worn a head covering, if she was from a decent family she wouldn’t have gone out to the market alone without a man with her, or might not have gone at all. She wouldn’t have ever ever spoken in a disrespectful or critical manner of her husband. As a married woman she wouldn’t have had tons of freedom to organize her own life or fulfill herself in the way that we value and expect. And yet here, Paul is 1. talking directly to the married women in the church and 2. telling them to be subject.
Which says to me that we are talking about something far more interesting and difficult than mere outward behavior. For Paul to require this of women who in every outward form would have met the requirement of ‘submission’ or ‘subjection’ says to me he’s talking about their hearts and minds, not only their actions.
So, wives submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
The 'is fitting' is used in other contexts in the New Testament in conjunction with 'rest' or 'comfort'. We might render it, 'as is comfortable or restful' in the Lord. By that I don't mean, so long as it makes you feel comfortable, but rather in doing the will of God, you will be in a place of rest. But the word 'fitting' also means 'right', if something is fitting, it is right and appropriate, and in this case holy and good. Why is it fitting? Because it is 'in the Lord'.
We might recall that in Ephesians, Paul likens Christian marriage to be a picture of the mystery of Christ and the church. The husband is supposed to be like Jesus and the wife is supposed to be like the church. In modeling himself on Jesus the husband is to look to the love of Jesus for the church, such a great love that he went unto death, even death on the cross, to save, protect and redeem his bride. The church is protected, guided, sustained, given life by Jesus and does his will, carries out his purpose and desire in the world. No marriage, of course, is a very good picture of this mysterious and holy relationship. Some give a vaguely better outline than others. When a Christian woman submits to her husband she is at the same time submitting to Jesus, she is 'in the Lord', and she is submitting to the picture of Jesus, her husband, whether he is a terrible picture or a fairly good one.
Now, before the hair on your necks stands up and the appalling things I've just said, remember with me the relationship between Jesus, who is the second person of the Trinity, that is, God the Son, and his Father, that is, God the Father. There is another member of the Trinity, the Godhead, and that's God the Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all God. As God they are ontologically the same, that is, they are of one substance, one being, one nature. And in this equality of substance, being and nature, the three members of the Godhead, the three Persons, to use a technical word, love one another perfectly and completely. The Son, in perfect love and obedience submits his will to the will of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds, or goes out from both of them.
In other words, both the man and the woman, in marriage, are looking to Jesus for the perfect model of how to be.
Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count Equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:5 Jesus did not want to die. He wasn’t running happily to horrific death. He asked his Father if it could possibly be within his will to not die and his Father said no. And Jesus, in perfect obedience and submission, went up to death, even death on a cross.
Now, we know, that in his life and work on earth, Jesus was an incredibly strong, perfectly fulfilled, perfectly full person. There was nothing lacking in him. His obedience and submission to the Father was something full and holy and beautiful. It brought about the salvation of all of us who believe and trust in him. Obedience and submission to God is not an evil emptying desperate thing. Obedience to God the Father is the source of our life. When you give yourself to Jesus, he gives you everything that he has, himself. And part of that is the ability to trust him and do his will. When you submit yourself to another person, you do this in the power of Jesus and for love of Him.
You might now see why I think this is not just a set of actions but an attitude of the heart and mind. I’m not going to stand here and say, wives, submit to your husbands—do all the housework, cook all the dinners, do all the laundry, uncomplainingly put out your husbands slippers for him when he arrives home in the evening, look deeply into his eyes and say, ‘what now Oh Lord and Master’. For heaven’s sake, that is not the way we function as human beings, certainly not in this culture. But I do, ever so gently, suggest that the way we think of, talk about, talk to, consider, pray for, love, care for, and submit to our husbands should not come from this culture either. So far from submitting to a husband in love, as is fitting in the Lord, we have gone entirely the other direction. A husband is often not even considered an equal, a full human person deserving of respect and consideration. Stupid idiot men, if we didn’t marry them they would be nothing.
One of my all time favorite tv shows, which Matt hates, is Everybody Loves Raymond. Yeah, she stayed home with the kids and he brought home the bacon, but he was an idiot—so funny. So many things he did were wrong. She was always persecuted and over worked and he was always having to worry about what stupid thing he was about to do that was going to get him in trouble with her. Stupid men, can’t do anything right.
That’s not true, or helpful. Paul says so, up above, there is no slave, free, male, female, Jew or Greek. We are equal. Neither men nor women are ontologically superior to each other. When you set out honor, respect and, horror of horrors, obey another person, its not because they are better than you, it is because, in a mysterious, holy and lovely way, when you do the will of God the Father, it gives life. I am speaking, said Paul in Ephesians, about the mystery of Christ and the Church.
So what might this look like, practically?
Well, first of all, it does not include or allow for any any any kind of abuse whatsoever. If you are being misused and hurt by another person please please get some help and get out. If you are misusing this text to control and hurt another person, stop it.
For the rest of us, it means standing in a rushing current of a culture that tells us that we are all that and that our husbands should listen to us and be guided by us and attend to us and that we're persecuted and put upon.
That's just not true. The men here at Good Shepherd are honorable, interesting, knowledgeable, dedicated, strong, deserving of respect and capable of leadership--both here in the church but more importantly, in their homes. But even if they weren't, even if they were awful, it would still be possible to submit to them, as is fitting in the Lord, because it is always always always better to things God's way than our own.
I am so so loath to give even any advice or say anything more at all. This kind of leadership and submission, shocking as it may sound, has come very easily to me and Matt. Matt has a very strong personality. That's why I married him. He enjoys a good fight. He likes to be challenged and argued with, and, on occassion, yelled at when he is being foolish or insecure or something. He does most of the cooking and all of the laundry and changes diapers and moes the lawn and watches the kids All the Time so that I can pray and take a shower by myself or go on a walk. And he is also clear headed about where he thinks we should go as a family, spiritually. He leads us to worship and obey God. On occassion, he exercises headship over me by drawing lines when I've signed up to do much, by encouraging me in my work here at Good Shepherd, by causing our children to respect and honor me when they might rather run roughshod over my plans for the day.
But the way we live this out is one way among many. But we are not the model, Jesus is. Look to him to give you rest, to show you the way, to give you the strength to do his will.
We will both stay up here after the service if you want to get a cup of coffee and come back up and talk about this some more--argue, ask for clarification, just talk--but for now, let's pray.
Holy and Gracious God, you have so loved us, so poured yourself out in humility for us, that we might know you and serve you. Help us be a good and true reflection of your Son Jesus. In his holy name we pray, Amen.
To stand in the middle of a deep strong rushing river of cultural consensus and heartfelt belief and try to either face the opposite direction, or even just stand still, or even just ask a few questions is extremely uncomfortable and so I hope you will award me several truck loads of grace, your open ears and do your very very very best not to take offense because it is not my intention or desire to cause any. Let me also say that this topic is so fraught, so big, and so difficult for this day and age that this morning we will really only be dipping our toes in the water.
So, let’s start by just reading the verse and noticing some interesting things about the Greek and the translation that we have here.
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
First, Paul says, Wives. He’s not talking to any of you single ladies right now. He’s talking to women who are married. If you’re about to get married I encourage you to pay attention. If you are single and carrying on happily in that state you can listen and analyze all your married friends. Just kidding.
In other words, what Paul is saying is not directed to every woman in regards to every man. All women every where are not being told to be submissive to all men everywhere. We’re talking about a particular relationship—marriage, one person submitting to one other person—her own husband. Even if you are dating someone, ladies, you do not have to and ought not, I would say, submit to the guy until he puts a ring on it, just to quote Byonce.
So, wives, submit to your husbands. The greek here actually is better rendered, ‘be subject to’, which to my delicate ears sounds even worse. We’re probably most familiar with the word ‘subject’ as in being subjects of a King or Queen. The word is not ‘subjugation’ but of willingly being part of a country or kingdom with a head leader. It’s a little more passive than the word submit.
Now notice who Paul is talking to in this verse. Wives, you submit, he says, not, as he does in Ephesians, ‘wives ought to submit to their husbands’, it’s a direct appeal. I say appeal because this kind of direct address is an usual occurrence for literature of this time and place in history. Were he following cultural conventions he might rather have said, husbands make your wives submit to you as to the Lord, because why would they even be there to hear the letter? They wouldn’t. And yet, here, in the church, they are there, they are hearing the letter, and Paul is talking to them directly, appealing to them as full, equal members of the Colossian church, able to exercise their own will and volition towards a particular way of life.
Which really lets us get at the guts of this verse if you think about it. Paul is talking to women whose lives would have looked much much more like the average Muslim in the middle east woman’s life now, than like yours and mine. The Colossian woman would have probably worn a head covering, if she was from a decent family she wouldn’t have gone out to the market alone without a man with her, or might not have gone at all. She wouldn’t have ever ever spoken in a disrespectful or critical manner of her husband. As a married woman she wouldn’t have had tons of freedom to organize her own life or fulfill herself in the way that we value and expect. And yet here, Paul is 1. talking directly to the married women in the church and 2. telling them to be subject.
Which says to me that we are talking about something far more interesting and difficult than mere outward behavior. For Paul to require this of women who in every outward form would have met the requirement of ‘submission’ or ‘subjection’ says to me he’s talking about their hearts and minds, not only their actions.
So, wives submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
The 'is fitting' is used in other contexts in the New Testament in conjunction with 'rest' or 'comfort'. We might render it, 'as is comfortable or restful' in the Lord. By that I don't mean, so long as it makes you feel comfortable, but rather in doing the will of God, you will be in a place of rest. But the word 'fitting' also means 'right', if something is fitting, it is right and appropriate, and in this case holy and good. Why is it fitting? Because it is 'in the Lord'.
We might recall that in Ephesians, Paul likens Christian marriage to be a picture of the mystery of Christ and the church. The husband is supposed to be like Jesus and the wife is supposed to be like the church. In modeling himself on Jesus the husband is to look to the love of Jesus for the church, such a great love that he went unto death, even death on the cross, to save, protect and redeem his bride. The church is protected, guided, sustained, given life by Jesus and does his will, carries out his purpose and desire in the world. No marriage, of course, is a very good picture of this mysterious and holy relationship. Some give a vaguely better outline than others. When a Christian woman submits to her husband she is at the same time submitting to Jesus, she is 'in the Lord', and she is submitting to the picture of Jesus, her husband, whether he is a terrible picture or a fairly good one.
Now, before the hair on your necks stands up and the appalling things I've just said, remember with me the relationship between Jesus, who is the second person of the Trinity, that is, God the Son, and his Father, that is, God the Father. There is another member of the Trinity, the Godhead, and that's God the Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all God. As God they are ontologically the same, that is, they are of one substance, one being, one nature. And in this equality of substance, being and nature, the three members of the Godhead, the three Persons, to use a technical word, love one another perfectly and completely. The Son, in perfect love and obedience submits his will to the will of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds, or goes out from both of them.
In other words, both the man and the woman, in marriage, are looking to Jesus for the perfect model of how to be.
Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count Equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:5 Jesus did not want to die. He wasn’t running happily to horrific death. He asked his Father if it could possibly be within his will to not die and his Father said no. And Jesus, in perfect obedience and submission, went up to death, even death on a cross.
Now, we know, that in his life and work on earth, Jesus was an incredibly strong, perfectly fulfilled, perfectly full person. There was nothing lacking in him. His obedience and submission to the Father was something full and holy and beautiful. It brought about the salvation of all of us who believe and trust in him. Obedience and submission to God is not an evil emptying desperate thing. Obedience to God the Father is the source of our life. When you give yourself to Jesus, he gives you everything that he has, himself. And part of that is the ability to trust him and do his will. When you submit yourself to another person, you do this in the power of Jesus and for love of Him.
You might now see why I think this is not just a set of actions but an attitude of the heart and mind. I’m not going to stand here and say, wives, submit to your husbands—do all the housework, cook all the dinners, do all the laundry, uncomplainingly put out your husbands slippers for him when he arrives home in the evening, look deeply into his eyes and say, ‘what now Oh Lord and Master’. For heaven’s sake, that is not the way we function as human beings, certainly not in this culture. But I do, ever so gently, suggest that the way we think of, talk about, talk to, consider, pray for, love, care for, and submit to our husbands should not come from this culture either. So far from submitting to a husband in love, as is fitting in the Lord, we have gone entirely the other direction. A husband is often not even considered an equal, a full human person deserving of respect and consideration. Stupid idiot men, if we didn’t marry them they would be nothing.
One of my all time favorite tv shows, which Matt hates, is Everybody Loves Raymond. Yeah, she stayed home with the kids and he brought home the bacon, but he was an idiot—so funny. So many things he did were wrong. She was always persecuted and over worked and he was always having to worry about what stupid thing he was about to do that was going to get him in trouble with her. Stupid men, can’t do anything right.
That’s not true, or helpful. Paul says so, up above, there is no slave, free, male, female, Jew or Greek. We are equal. Neither men nor women are ontologically superior to each other. When you set out honor, respect and, horror of horrors, obey another person, its not because they are better than you, it is because, in a mysterious, holy and lovely way, when you do the will of God the Father, it gives life. I am speaking, said Paul in Ephesians, about the mystery of Christ and the Church.
So what might this look like, practically?
Well, first of all, it does not include or allow for any any any kind of abuse whatsoever. If you are being misused and hurt by another person please please get some help and get out. If you are misusing this text to control and hurt another person, stop it.
For the rest of us, it means standing in a rushing current of a culture that tells us that we are all that and that our husbands should listen to us and be guided by us and attend to us and that we're persecuted and put upon.
That's just not true. The men here at Good Shepherd are honorable, interesting, knowledgeable, dedicated, strong, deserving of respect and capable of leadership--both here in the church but more importantly, in their homes. But even if they weren't, even if they were awful, it would still be possible to submit to them, as is fitting in the Lord, because it is always always always better to things God's way than our own.
I am so so loath to give even any advice or say anything more at all. This kind of leadership and submission, shocking as it may sound, has come very easily to me and Matt. Matt has a very strong personality. That's why I married him. He enjoys a good fight. He likes to be challenged and argued with, and, on occassion, yelled at when he is being foolish or insecure or something. He does most of the cooking and all of the laundry and changes diapers and moes the lawn and watches the kids All the Time so that I can pray and take a shower by myself or go on a walk. And he is also clear headed about where he thinks we should go as a family, spiritually. He leads us to worship and obey God. On occassion, he exercises headship over me by drawing lines when I've signed up to do much, by encouraging me in my work here at Good Shepherd, by causing our children to respect and honor me when they might rather run roughshod over my plans for the day.
But the way we live this out is one way among many. But we are not the model, Jesus is. Look to him to give you rest, to show you the way, to give you the strength to do his will.
We will both stay up here after the service if you want to get a cup of coffee and come back up and talk about this some more--argue, ask for clarification, just talk--but for now, let's pray.
Holy and Gracious God, you have so loved us, so poured yourself out in humility for us, that we might know you and serve you. Help us be a good and true reflection of your Son Jesus. In his holy name we pray, Amen.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Seven Quick Takes
One
My computer is on the delivery truck. Could be here any minute. Don't know what to do with myself. Have like six or a hundred things I could do but can't focus. Two
Matt and I had strep this week and so we missed the whole last week of school. Sob. Including the end of the year party today. Three
Alouicious: I guess I like this song because of the ninja. Me: Ninja?
Elphine: What a wreck her house is. She's going to have to buy all new dishes. How wasteful.
Me: But such an amazing voice. (h/t Jess)
Four
Gladys singing to the baby:Paddycake Paddycake Bakers Man (how do you even spell this?)
Bake me a cake like Jackie Chan!
And yelling at Romulus: Leave me alone I'm playing Speed Racer!!!
Five
I'm preaching on Colossians 3:18 on Sunday. What a treat for me, and for all women everywhere. Heard a rumor that the Men's Bible Study prayed that I would convince all their wives to submit to them. Wonder what the Women's Bible Study will pray for.Six
This is so so so so funny.especially after watching this (don't watch it if you're a man because its horribly lewd)
Seven
Now I need to go organize a party for a lot of disappointed and crying children. SO HORRIBLE to miss the end of the year party!!!!Go check out Jen!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
A Trick a Trial a Trifle
I have a beautiful trifle dish. I bought it for a dollar at the Christmas Tree Shop in 2007 and made a gorgeous trifle right away. This week I thought it was time for a second trifle.
I instructed Matt on my way out the door.
"Cut up the last bit of delicious Easter bread/cake" I shouted, flinging kids and backpacks in the car, "and pour some brandy on it and put it in the fridge."
He gazed back at me in confusion and wonder. "How big should the chunks be? And how much brandy?"
"Just a splash!" I called gaily and swept out of our drive narrowly missing hitting a school bus. I'm such a great driver.
Five hours later I came home. "How did it go?"
"Well, you didn't say how much brandy. What does 'Just a splash mean?'"
I looked in the dish at the brandy laden bread/cake. Matt had poured almost an Entire Bottle of Brandy on it. It smelled delicious but Too Much.
So I made custard and arranged raspberries all over the top and left it for a while hoping the Trifle Fairy would come and fix it or something (why not? The kids have the stupid old forgetful Tooth Fairy. Why can't there be a Trifle Fairy?). In the face of no obvious improvement, this afternoon I dumped it out of the Trifle Dish into a baking pan and baked it at 350 for an hour. It came out golden, pungent and basically delicious if you ladle it with cream and sugar and take very very very tiny bites and drink lots of water to keep from getting tipsy.
I instructed Matt on my way out the door.
"Cut up the last bit of delicious Easter bread/cake" I shouted, flinging kids and backpacks in the car, "and pour some brandy on it and put it in the fridge."
He gazed back at me in confusion and wonder. "How big should the chunks be? And how much brandy?"
"Just a splash!" I called gaily and swept out of our drive narrowly missing hitting a school bus. I'm such a great driver.
Five hours later I came home. "How did it go?"
"Well, you didn't say how much brandy. What does 'Just a splash mean?'"
I looked in the dish at the brandy laden bread/cake. Matt had poured almost an Entire Bottle of Brandy on it. It smelled delicious but Too Much.
So I made custard and arranged raspberries all over the top and left it for a while hoping the Trifle Fairy would come and fix it or something (why not? The kids have the stupid old forgetful Tooth Fairy. Why can't there be a Trifle Fairy?). In the face of no obvious improvement, this afternoon I dumped it out of the Trifle Dish into a baking pan and baked it at 350 for an hour. It came out golden, pungent and basically delicious if you ladle it with cream and sugar and take very very very tiny bites and drink lots of water to keep from getting tipsy.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Because it just can't be passed up
I expect you're settling in to enjoy a quiet Friday evening and were casting about for just a little something to take your evening to the next level. Here is my gift to you.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Not dead yet
Was just sitting here thinking, "I wonder what I could blog about if I had an inclination to blog" when into my email popped a nice note from some reader wishing I would write. I agree it is disagreeable to click onto someone's blog and see the same old Funeral title there day after day.
I do look at my blog every day. I click on the link and stare at it and think, "what a nice blog. Someday I should write something for it." And then I click on one of the nice blogs on the side and never wind my way back.
Fact is, I have exactly (from tomorrow) one week left of school.
ONE WEEK
...........
and then I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life.
My short term plan is to sleep straight for three and a half days. I was thinking to put a huge box of cheerios, a bag of apples, some loaves of bread, a jumbo sized nutella, and some raisins on the kitchen floor and hope that all the children are still living when I wake up three days later. After that I'm really open to suggestions.
In the very very near term, while waiting to be raptured on Saturday (I mean really, what if he's right? Are you really going to refuse to be caught up just because the guy is crazy?) I am also waiting (really waiting, sitting here staring out of the window watching every car drive by waiting) for a fancy dancy little tiny computer my husband so wonderfully bought me mere hours after my old one refused to be of any further use to me ever.
In the next immediate half hour I intend to watch Word Girl, likely alone because the children have to clean the play room before they can watch it and they are being like molasses on a cold cold day. I love Word Girl.
I do look at my blog every day. I click on the link and stare at it and think, "what a nice blog. Someday I should write something for it." And then I click on one of the nice blogs on the side and never wind my way back.
Fact is, I have exactly (from tomorrow) one week left of school.
ONE WEEK
...........
and then I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life.
My short term plan is to sleep straight for three and a half days. I was thinking to put a huge box of cheerios, a bag of apples, some loaves of bread, a jumbo sized nutella, and some raisins on the kitchen floor and hope that all the children are still living when I wake up three days later. After that I'm really open to suggestions.
In the very very near term, while waiting to be raptured on Saturday (I mean really, what if he's right? Are you really going to refuse to be caught up just because the guy is crazy?) I am also waiting (really waiting, sitting here staring out of the window watching every car drive by waiting) for a fancy dancy little tiny computer my husband so wonderfully bought me mere hours after my old one refused to be of any further use to me ever.
In the next immediate half hour I intend to watch Word Girl, likely alone because the children have to clean the play room before they can watch it and they are being like molasses on a cold cold day. I love Word Girl.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Funerals
My funeral plans are really always in some stage of being planned and replanned. As much as I mentally redesign most rooms I walk into, I replan my funeral when I attend other people's, or run into a new hymn or something. In terms of my profession, on the whole I prefer funerals to, say, weddings. People generally have very fixed ideas at weddings and if one thing goes wrong EVERYthing might as well go wrong. Whereas at a funeral, people are grateful for the liturgy, rather than always trying to change it, and ready to attend to and hear the Word of God.
I generalize, of course.
So it was interesting to see how much attention, today, was paid to the manner and occasion of Ussama bin Laden's burial at sea. He was buried, shouted every possible news outlet, in the manner prescribed by Islam, in the 24 hour period after death, body washed and wrapped in a white cloth.
Among some of the many evils of Islam, the flattening out and wrecking of funeral ceremonies remains one of the highest. Getting the body in the ground in under 24 hours, and then, as far as I can remember, sitting around doing nothing--no party, no dancing, no music, just sitting--is boring and horrible. Where I grew up, your funeral is the biggest party of your life (if you're a reasonable age at death). Everyone who can come does come. The party lasts for many days. The food is amazing. The music is fabulous. The body is danced and danced to the grave site. But if you are so unfortunate as to convert to Islam before you die, and request and require a Muslim burial, all that goes away and your family gets to sit around for long long hours not having a party.
Which is really fitting for the death of a man so few of us mourn.
Which is its own great tragedy.
I hope at my funeral nobody will be able to stop weeping, and will only be able to console themselves with Nigella's Fish Pie, Cream Sherry, and Cake.
I generalize, of course.
So it was interesting to see how much attention, today, was paid to the manner and occasion of Ussama bin Laden's burial at sea. He was buried, shouted every possible news outlet, in the manner prescribed by Islam, in the 24 hour period after death, body washed and wrapped in a white cloth.
Among some of the many evils of Islam, the flattening out and wrecking of funeral ceremonies remains one of the highest. Getting the body in the ground in under 24 hours, and then, as far as I can remember, sitting around doing nothing--no party, no dancing, no music, just sitting--is boring and horrible. Where I grew up, your funeral is the biggest party of your life (if you're a reasonable age at death). Everyone who can come does come. The party lasts for many days. The food is amazing. The music is fabulous. The body is danced and danced to the grave site. But if you are so unfortunate as to convert to Islam before you die, and request and require a Muslim burial, all that goes away and your family gets to sit around for long long hours not having a party.
Which is really fitting for the death of a man so few of us mourn.
Which is its own great tragedy.
I hope at my funeral nobody will be able to stop weeping, and will only be able to console themselves with Nigella's Fish Pie, Cream Sherry, and Cake.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Easter
This has long been a favorite hymn of mine.
Of course I'm sure you all heard it played at the Royal Wedding live on Friday because you woke up at 4am to watch it (didn't you? it wasn't Just me). I woke up my kids and made them be quiet and watch it too. But I'm an Anglophile, unapologetically.
Anyway, I want it sung at my funeral along with this
and this
and this
and Of Course this
Happy Easter!
Of course I'm sure you all heard it played at the Royal Wedding live on Friday because you woke up at 4am to watch it (didn't you? it wasn't Just me). I woke up my kids and made them be quiet and watch it too. But I'm an Anglophile, unapologetically.
Anyway, I want it sung at my funeral along with this
and this
and this
and Of Course this
Happy Easter!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Conversations of the Day
Matt: Its sad that tomorrow all the flood coverage on the news is going to go away.
Me: What's more important?! There will be another flood before you know it. But Prince William is only going to get married once! Well, maybe twice. Certainly not three times.
Elphine: I'm going to get married and have ten children and live next door to Nonni so that she can take care of them.
Gladys: I got married before but now I'm going to eat my chocolate.
Alouicious: I'm going to live next door to Mimi and travel and stuff. Do you think she and Nonni will live that long?
Elphine: People die all the time.
Alouicious: I know! There's tons of dead people around here.
Me: What's more important?! There will be another flood before you know it. But Prince William is only going to get married once! Well, maybe twice. Certainly not three times.
Elphine: I'm going to get married and have ten children and live next door to Nonni so that she can take care of them.
Gladys: I got married before but now I'm going to eat my chocolate.
Alouicious: I'm going to live next door to Mimi and travel and stuff. Do you think she and Nonni will live that long?
Elphine: People die all the time.
Alouicious: I know! There's tons of dead people around here.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Sermon from the Vigil
I preached at the Easter Vigil as I usually do. Well, 'preach' is kind of stretching it. I meandered around in a reflective sort of way. What was that term? A Preach Moment, maybe, even Homily is kind of generous. A sermonette for a Christianette. Anyway, here it is. Today we are going to try and have a proper celebration of Easter at home. Totally discouraged myself by Saturday reading blogs of what other people were planning to do. In the past we've tried to come home from a church and cook lamb and bake a pie or whatever. But reality, six kids later, has finally set in. We just can't go the distance of Holy Week and Easter and then come home and do anything else but sit around in a stupor. Maybe when the kids are older and can help cook. But maybe not. This year Elphine and Alouicious each took a turn to carry the incense boat, and Good Friday turned out to be a family affair--Matt led the stations, I carried the cross and they both carried candles. I have long looked forward to this moment when they can be up on the altar (and want to). They then volunteered for the funeral yesterday and ended up being paid modestly for their trouble. Really puts the 'fun' back in a funeral to be paid, AND there's always lunch afterwards. Yesterday's desert table was positively groaning.
Preach Moment for the Great vigil of Easter
The night before my grandmother died I had an interesting and troubling dream. I don't generally put much stock in dreams. I certainly have never had a prophetic dream—where I dreamed something and then it happened. But a few times in my life I've had a richly vivid dream that colored and shaped not only the light of day I woke up to, but many days and times after it. This dream was one of those kind. I was living in Oregon at the time and in the dream I was driving along the rocky and seemingly precarious curves of the agonizingly gorgeous gray rainy coastline. I was in a convertible car and I had a basket with me with, among other things, my mother's Bible. Of course, in the dream, the car silently and slowly swung itself off the road into the ocean which turned out not to be gray and choppy but to be clear and blue, like I was suddenly in the Caribbean. I floated along under the waves, looking up at the sunlight and sky and then realized with horror that everything was falling out of my basket! My Bible was floating along in front of me, and my keys and an apple and several other items. I tried in vain to gather them and put them back. The effort, though great, was not enough. I woke up startled saying, almost aloud, my basket is empty! My basket is empty!
Mid morning word came that my grandmother had died very unexpectedly, playing the piano at a nursing home for the elderly. She played the opening cord of the hymn, laid her head on the piano, and was gone, suddenly, like Bilbo running out of his house without a pocket handkerchief for the adventure of a lifetime. Most everyone here tonight, I expect, has experienced some kind of loss, some very deep. The kind of loss that leaves you thoroughly and completely empty. I expect Ezekiel, looking out over the Valley of Bones, must have been overwhelmed by the emptiness, the loss.
Certainly the women, on the way to the tomb, were empty and lost. They had gathered together what they could—spices, linen, oil—but nothing that would be enough, that would fill up the great hole that was the loss of Jesus.
I am frequently startled by how very great losses and small mingle themselves together to overwhelm me in grief. If I am very troubled by something, grieved and needy and unhappy, it will be the rice jar being empty, or finding I am on my last egg, or that I neglected to buy flour and butter, that we have no sugar cereal in the house or milk, that brings me to tears.
Come, buy and eat, says the Lord.
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Your basket is empty. You are starving to death. You are dying. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
This is the original question, isn't it? The very moment Eve plucked the fruit, the moment her eyes saw it and that it 'seemed good' that somehow she would be satisfied with something other than what God had provided. Eat from all the other trees, he said, but not that one. So it must be that that one has something better, something more satisfying. That was the original sin, and that is what we do every day. We give everything we've got to chase after what can't give us what we need. We eat and eat and eat and are never satisfied. We strive and work and end exhausted with our baskets still empty. The crown of this sin was the arguing of the disciples On the Night Before he died, about who was greatest. The Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Word made flesh is sitting with them, and its not enough. There must be something more!
But the more only turns out to be a dry ruined valley full of corpses, the ultimate end of all that work—death.
“Listen diligently to me,” says the Lord,
“and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear that your soul may live”
Lean in, listen, attend.
How can He even say this?
How can God, even as Adam and Eve's fingers are yet stained with the fruit of their sin, say this! How can he offer anything to us? Why does he want to? I confess to being often baffled by this question. I don't know why God wants to redeem and save us! Even when God wants to tell us, we still don't know, don't want to know. Somehow So Often, daily, moment by moment, broken sinful rebellious need is better and safer than looking into the face of God, looking really at Jesus and listening to his real voice and hearing what he really says. We run away, argue, distract ourselves, grow busy and strive after anything that we can other than face the voice and face of God. Whether we are a long way a way in the pig pen in a far country, or whether we are close by in the upper room, or on the way to the tomb filled with broken empty grief. This is not only the problem of the wretched unrepentant sinner. It is everyone's problem. We don't see and hear, we don't want to. We don't find because we don't actually seek. We don't seek because we don't want what we know we will find.
I always wonder about Adam and Eve's relationship with God after the garden. Sure, it was hard work, and painful, but probably they felt safer in their broken emptiness, not always having to talk to God, to see him and hear him. Maybe he left them alone and they felt more comfortable. So comfortable that when God speaks to Abraham, no one has heard of him. It is a totally new thing. The trace and memory of his voice and presence has been unreluctantly forgotten. And so on, through the Old Testament, line by line, fall by fall, rebellion by rebellion, the desperate history of a people trying to Get Away from God.
And yet the Lord says, Come.
Come buy at eat. Delight yourselves in rich food. Seek the Lord while he wills to be found. Though you, fully rejected and sinned against would say that's it, I've had enough,
I'm done. The Lord still wills be found. His thoughts are not your thoughts, your ways are not his ways. The heavens are higher than the earth. His ways are higher than your ways.
Rain and Snow fall from the heaven and obey him, watering the earth, bringing forth growth, bread for the eater.
All of creation is obedient to the voice of God, the Word of God. So is the Word that goes forth from his mouth
obedient. Perfectly obedient. The broken and empty body of our Lord, willing in perfect obedience to go to the very end of emptiness, brokenness, sin, and grief, going farther than any of us could ever go, carrying a burden beyond measuring or numbering. Not one small valley of death and destruction but the weight of every small rebellion, every great and terrifying sin, my constant and innumerable selfishnesses, the mass murdering of every horrible thug—all of it accounted for in the broken empty body in the tomb.
The women hurrying forward in the darkness with their hands full of emptiness. But the cavernous rock hewn out of the hill is so full of the glory of God. Death is gone. Destroyed. There is only life. There is only joy.
Do you think your way is higher than his way? Do you think you can go on with your life coping as you want to as if your basket, your jar, your life is still empty?
You Cannot.
The Lord is Risen. The whole earth is full of his glory.
He has succeeded in his purpose.
What is his purpose? To Raise the dead.
To raise you to life.
To chase after you and bring you to himself.
To provide for you with his own body and blood.
To give you everything you need.
To gather you and love you and raise you.
He can because he is alive. Its only up to you to come, join the feast be satisfied with your Lord.
Alleluia. He is Risen.
Preach Moment for the Great vigil of Easter
The night before my grandmother died I had an interesting and troubling dream. I don't generally put much stock in dreams. I certainly have never had a prophetic dream—where I dreamed something and then it happened. But a few times in my life I've had a richly vivid dream that colored and shaped not only the light of day I woke up to, but many days and times after it. This dream was one of those kind. I was living in Oregon at the time and in the dream I was driving along the rocky and seemingly precarious curves of the agonizingly gorgeous gray rainy coastline. I was in a convertible car and I had a basket with me with, among other things, my mother's Bible. Of course, in the dream, the car silently and slowly swung itself off the road into the ocean which turned out not to be gray and choppy but to be clear and blue, like I was suddenly in the Caribbean. I floated along under the waves, looking up at the sunlight and sky and then realized with horror that everything was falling out of my basket! My Bible was floating along in front of me, and my keys and an apple and several other items. I tried in vain to gather them and put them back. The effort, though great, was not enough. I woke up startled saying, almost aloud, my basket is empty! My basket is empty!
Mid morning word came that my grandmother had died very unexpectedly, playing the piano at a nursing home for the elderly. She played the opening cord of the hymn, laid her head on the piano, and was gone, suddenly, like Bilbo running out of his house without a pocket handkerchief for the adventure of a lifetime. Most everyone here tonight, I expect, has experienced some kind of loss, some very deep. The kind of loss that leaves you thoroughly and completely empty. I expect Ezekiel, looking out over the Valley of Bones, must have been overwhelmed by the emptiness, the loss.
Certainly the women, on the way to the tomb, were empty and lost. They had gathered together what they could—spices, linen, oil—but nothing that would be enough, that would fill up the great hole that was the loss of Jesus.
I am frequently startled by how very great losses and small mingle themselves together to overwhelm me in grief. If I am very troubled by something, grieved and needy and unhappy, it will be the rice jar being empty, or finding I am on my last egg, or that I neglected to buy flour and butter, that we have no sugar cereal in the house or milk, that brings me to tears.
Come, buy and eat, says the Lord.
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Your basket is empty. You are starving to death. You are dying. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
This is the original question, isn't it? The very moment Eve plucked the fruit, the moment her eyes saw it and that it 'seemed good' that somehow she would be satisfied with something other than what God had provided. Eat from all the other trees, he said, but not that one. So it must be that that one has something better, something more satisfying. That was the original sin, and that is what we do every day. We give everything we've got to chase after what can't give us what we need. We eat and eat and eat and are never satisfied. We strive and work and end exhausted with our baskets still empty. The crown of this sin was the arguing of the disciples On the Night Before he died, about who was greatest. The Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Word made flesh is sitting with them, and its not enough. There must be something more!
But the more only turns out to be a dry ruined valley full of corpses, the ultimate end of all that work—death.
“Listen diligently to me,” says the Lord,
“and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear that your soul may live”
Lean in, listen, attend.
How can He even say this?
How can God, even as Adam and Eve's fingers are yet stained with the fruit of their sin, say this! How can he offer anything to us? Why does he want to? I confess to being often baffled by this question. I don't know why God wants to redeem and save us! Even when God wants to tell us, we still don't know, don't want to know. Somehow So Often, daily, moment by moment, broken sinful rebellious need is better and safer than looking into the face of God, looking really at Jesus and listening to his real voice and hearing what he really says. We run away, argue, distract ourselves, grow busy and strive after anything that we can other than face the voice and face of God. Whether we are a long way a way in the pig pen in a far country, or whether we are close by in the upper room, or on the way to the tomb filled with broken empty grief. This is not only the problem of the wretched unrepentant sinner. It is everyone's problem. We don't see and hear, we don't want to. We don't find because we don't actually seek. We don't seek because we don't want what we know we will find.
I always wonder about Adam and Eve's relationship with God after the garden. Sure, it was hard work, and painful, but probably they felt safer in their broken emptiness, not always having to talk to God, to see him and hear him. Maybe he left them alone and they felt more comfortable. So comfortable that when God speaks to Abraham, no one has heard of him. It is a totally new thing. The trace and memory of his voice and presence has been unreluctantly forgotten. And so on, through the Old Testament, line by line, fall by fall, rebellion by rebellion, the desperate history of a people trying to Get Away from God.
And yet the Lord says, Come.
Come buy at eat. Delight yourselves in rich food. Seek the Lord while he wills to be found. Though you, fully rejected and sinned against would say that's it, I've had enough,
I'm done. The Lord still wills be found. His thoughts are not your thoughts, your ways are not his ways. The heavens are higher than the earth. His ways are higher than your ways.
Rain and Snow fall from the heaven and obey him, watering the earth, bringing forth growth, bread for the eater.
All of creation is obedient to the voice of God, the Word of God. So is the Word that goes forth from his mouth
obedient. Perfectly obedient. The broken and empty body of our Lord, willing in perfect obedience to go to the very end of emptiness, brokenness, sin, and grief, going farther than any of us could ever go, carrying a burden beyond measuring or numbering. Not one small valley of death and destruction but the weight of every small rebellion, every great and terrifying sin, my constant and innumerable selfishnesses, the mass murdering of every horrible thug—all of it accounted for in the broken empty body in the tomb.
The women hurrying forward in the darkness with their hands full of emptiness. But the cavernous rock hewn out of the hill is so full of the glory of God. Death is gone. Destroyed. There is only life. There is only joy.
Do you think your way is higher than his way? Do you think you can go on with your life coping as you want to as if your basket, your jar, your life is still empty?
You Cannot.
The Lord is Risen. The whole earth is full of his glory.
He has succeeded in his purpose.
What is his purpose? To Raise the dead.
To raise you to life.
To chase after you and bring you to himself.
To provide for you with his own body and blood.
To give you everything you need.
To gather you and love you and raise you.
He can because he is alive. Its only up to you to come, join the feast be satisfied with your Lord.
Alleluia. He is Risen.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Happy Easter
We have a funeral this morning and a completely filthy house plus a huge pile of laundry. So, um, well, I thought I would spend the week blogging but its looking more like I'll be cleaning and folding laundry.
He is Risen!
He is Risen!
Friday, April 22, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Holy Week
That's what it is. Holy Week.
I have got to arise and quickly get the children moving so that I won't be late for New Baby's two month well baby at which time I expect to be told that she weighs a gagillion pounds. Nobody (at least amongst my children) ever wants to hold her because of the immediate back ache. Poor child. She is the first of my babies to definitely and completely have her hair rub off the back of her head from sitting so much.
And then I've got to run around and get ready for school.
And make some phone calls to fill those last slots of readers and one more acolyte. The vigil is well in hand, and Maundy Thursday. Thought that Tennebrae was fine until Matt said yesterday (Yesterday! mind you) "wouldn't it be great if I didn't do all the readings".
Well, yes, that's a sensible and fine idea but that means a bunch more phone calls.
I really love Holy Week for the church, but I do always come out on the other end needy for lost time with the kiddos and an actual complete conversation with Matt. I'm delighted that Elphine will be in most of the services this year, as a boat bearer and regulate acolyte. She finally decided she likes it because older girls she loves thinks its cool.
I ALREADY have Five Fat Easter Baskets filled and tucked away. I'm going to iron Easter dresses this evening. And we're going to more carefully plan all our Easter eating in such a way that we're not ruined from exhaustion. Easter day will just be something nice in the Crock Pot and then probably Tuesday of Easter Week we'll roast a large piece of paschal lamb and have lemon pie, or something.
Gratuitous Pictures
Gladys holding New Baby ("Can I hold the New Baby I'm sitting down" she says every few days.)
Alouicious a few days after turning 7. Think we lived up to his hopes and dreams but not totally sure.
Have a Blessed and Holy Remembrance of our Lord's Passion, Suffering, Death and Resurrection!
See you on the other side.
I have got to arise and quickly get the children moving so that I won't be late for New Baby's two month well baby at which time I expect to be told that she weighs a gagillion pounds. Nobody (at least amongst my children) ever wants to hold her because of the immediate back ache. Poor child. She is the first of my babies to definitely and completely have her hair rub off the back of her head from sitting so much.
And then I've got to run around and get ready for school.
And make some phone calls to fill those last slots of readers and one more acolyte. The vigil is well in hand, and Maundy Thursday. Thought that Tennebrae was fine until Matt said yesterday (Yesterday! mind you) "wouldn't it be great if I didn't do all the readings".
Well, yes, that's a sensible and fine idea but that means a bunch more phone calls.
I really love Holy Week for the church, but I do always come out on the other end needy for lost time with the kiddos and an actual complete conversation with Matt. I'm delighted that Elphine will be in most of the services this year, as a boat bearer and regulate acolyte. She finally decided she likes it because older girls she loves thinks its cool.
I ALREADY have Five Fat Easter Baskets filled and tucked away. I'm going to iron Easter dresses this evening. And we're going to more carefully plan all our Easter eating in such a way that we're not ruined from exhaustion. Easter day will just be something nice in the Crock Pot and then probably Tuesday of Easter Week we'll roast a large piece of paschal lamb and have lemon pie, or something.
Gratuitous Pictures
Have a Blessed and Holy Remembrance of our Lord's Passion, Suffering, Death and Resurrection!
See you on the other side.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
now in the fading light of day
The boys are riding scooters down the walk and banging into the back door.
The two oldest girls are sitting on the roof of the playhouse squabbling.
The baby's been working on smiling.
Marigold is wandering around trying to remove her diaper.
Matt is vacuuming so wonderfully because I haven't been able to face it for so many days.
I'm supposed to be making supper in a short break from the Great Easter Clothes Exchange (wherein I get all the bins of clothes out and figure out who can wear what for the next season--gasp) but am really praying and fretting about the wretched and horrible conditions in Ivory Coast.
Thought this was really beautiful. (hat tip Simcha Fischer)
Earlier was complaining desperately about having nothing to wear due to being still fat from just having had a baby. "I just want to be really really thin!" I yelled.
"Why" asked Alouicious.
"Because," I said, "I just want to super rail thin."
"As thin as Daddy?" he asked, wide-eyed.
"I'm thin" said Elphine, "Am I thin?"
"Yes!" I shouted. "I don't want to talk about it any more."
So maybe after I make supper I'll do some sit ups. But probably not.
Have a blessed Sabbath!
The two oldest girls are sitting on the roof of the playhouse squabbling.
The baby's been working on smiling.
Marigold is wandering around trying to remove her diaper.
Matt is vacuuming so wonderfully because I haven't been able to face it for so many days.
I'm supposed to be making supper in a short break from the Great Easter Clothes Exchange (wherein I get all the bins of clothes out and figure out who can wear what for the next season--gasp) but am really praying and fretting about the wretched and horrible conditions in Ivory Coast.
Thought this was really beautiful. (hat tip Simcha Fischer)
Earlier was complaining desperately about having nothing to wear due to being still fat from just having had a baby. "I just want to be really really thin!" I yelled.
"Why" asked Alouicious.
"Because," I said, "I just want to super rail thin."
"As thin as Daddy?" he asked, wide-eyed.
"I'm thin" said Elphine, "Am I thin?"
"Yes!" I shouted. "I don't want to talk about it any more."
So maybe after I make supper I'll do some sit ups. But probably not.
Have a blessed Sabbath!
Monday, April 04, 2011
Sermon: Colossians 3:11
I was going to take out all the line breaks but I'm too tired. Don't count this up to pretension, its just easier to see the text on the page this way. I wasn't on the schedule to preach, I was just in the right frame of mind to help out at the last minute. Enjoy!
As we've said often in many different ways
the human condition is characterized by the desire to be God.
Not to be with God or know God
or understand God,
but to be God.
When the serpent slithered up to Eve
in the beauty of the Garden
and the cool of the day,
he tempted her not with riches,
knowledge
or power
but with the chance to be ‘like God’ knowing good and evil.
From the Garden to the first murder to the flood was a simple matter of time.
We can tease apart the difference in every kind of sin,
every kind of falling away,
but they all find their root,
their core in Pride,
the desire to Usurp the throne and power of God and be ‘like him’.
This pride is on crude display in the account of the Tower of Babel.
1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.3And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.4Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.6And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech."8So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
I want us to notice a couple of things from this text.
Verse One
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
This was post flood.
Noah and his family survived alone
and were 'fruitful and multiplied’ as they had been commanded to be.
But their descendants,
instead of dispersing over the face of the earth to fill it,
decide to gather together,
to pool their resources,
to build a big tower--
probably something along the lines of a Mesopotamian Zigurat
if you want to google it to see a picture.
They want the tower to have its ‘top in the heavens’
so that they can ‘make a name for ourselves’.
They're not just interested in living in community
and fulfilling the purposes God has for them,
glorifying him and worshiping him alone.
No, they want to make a name for themselves.
The choice of the line 'make a name' isn't inconsequential.
The name of God, as the rest of Genesis will show,
is a name so holy,
so powerful,
so important that it wasn't to be spoken.
When you came to the name of God, in Holy Scripture,
you stopped and said 'The Lord' instead of pronouncing the name.
You didn't write the name with your old pen if you were copying scripture.
You stopped to make a new pen to write the name of God.
There is only One Name.
The making and acclaiming of other names is the path to idolatry.
“You shall have no other gods before me”
said the Lord God to Moses and then he said,
“Do not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain.”
They were trying to be 'like God'
having a name
being self sufficient
trusting in their own power.
So God, seeing what the people are intending to do,
is not afraid that they're going to become bigger and stronger than him.
You might think that's what it looks like in verse 6.
But that's not what's going on.
Idolatry doesn't lead to bigger and better and more beautiful things.
It paves the road for human descent into utter evil.
The 'nothing they won't be able to do'
is a foresight into the great evil the human heart can descend to.
If everyone is united
and everyone is sinful
the capacity for destruction and evil is very very great.
God's action here is one of mercy.
Lest they destroy everything, I will scatter and disperse them.
And the confusion of speech is a perfectly logical and just consequence
for the rivaling of the name of God,
for purposeful and organized idolatry that is taking place on the plane of Shinar.
The people are suddenly and momentously unable to understand each other,
unable, then, to cooperate
and therefore scatter in anger and confusion.
The legacy of Babel is with us in a myriad of ways, but there are three ways in particular I want to mention.
The first is in language itself.
If you a living breathing human person
you have probably suffered the pain and difficulty
of broken and fractured human communication,
either within your own language or across cultures.
Indeed, it is more fundamental and basic than that.
How many of you have struggled within yourself
to find words to express what you are feeling
or thinking?
Language slips,
it is often imprecise,
it is easily misused.
Very often it is utterly confused.
The second is the hating and despising
that groups of people indulge in against other groups of people.
We might call this racism or ethnocentrism.
There id s brutal war going on in Ivory Coast right at this moment.
It is a conflict between north and south,
one ethnicity versus another.
One group prepared to hate another because of their geographical location and ethnicity.
Ivory Coast is by no means alone.
The world is rich with ethnic and racial conflict.
Closer to home, we still find racism in our own neighborhoods,
in the halls of schools,
in our unexamined human hearts,
sometimes even in coffee hour.
Its not our new particular problem.
Its roots are on the plane of Shinar.
The third is man made unity.
We haven't,
even with the confusion of language,
lost that first desire to gather ourselves together and be one.
This is going to lead us to the New Testament.
But first we have to be careful.
The one language and one people was given by God before Genesis 11.
And also, the dispersing and scattering of people was given by God in Genesis 11.
In other words,
the desire for unity and oneness among all people is not evil,
but the erasing and flattening of all difference is.
All that difference,
the myriad cornucopia of language,
culture
and ethnicity
was given by God.
It was his act of mercy to save us from a great overwhelming tide of evil.
So often,
as we try to join ourselves together,
in our human sinful hearts we
One, try to make everyone like us and
Two, therefore try to make a name for ourselves.
We do this institutionally,
we do it through the subtlety of peer pressure,
gently making someone else feel bad by a swift glance
or a tossed off remark
singling out their difference in a vaguely negative way.
The church has done it sometimes in the name of spreading the kingdom of God
These three consequences of Babel,
like all human sin,
were always accounted for in God's perfect plan to rescue and save us.
Language,
so broken and confused in our humanity,
is made whole and perfect in the very Being of God himself,
the Word,
who dwelt among us that we might see the glory of the Father.
And from there, at the moment of Pentecost,
the church experienced the reversal of Babel.
Instead of confusion, the perfect Word of God was communicated in every language.
And for the effects of ethnocentrism
and man made unity,
we see God's power and glory on display in Colossians 3:11
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Verse 11 is embedded in the practical outworking of Christ's cosmic transformation of the world.
The church is THE place where the future kingdom is made present on earth,
where God's will is done, where his name is above every name,
where we become like him—
not in power and knowledge and person, but IN Christ—
having the mind of Christ,
being found in Christ,
having the love of Christ.
The church is THE place where the future kingdom is made present on earth,
where God's will is done, where his name is above every name,
where we become like him—
not in power and knowledge and person, but IN Christ—
having the mind of Christ,
being found in Christ,
having the love of Christ.
Now, in putting off the things of the world
anger, malice, pride, hatred
we put on Christ who gives us a new identity, a new purpose, a new name.
No longer defined by our ethnicity or race
Greek or Jew
Social Status or class
slave or free
culture and language
barbarian, Scythian,
Our identity is in Christ.
Does difference no longer matter?
By no means!
Our unity in Christ is made rich and perfect
by every difference of language, culture and race.
Our foundational unity and identity in Jesus
makes real unity possible
makes real communication guaranteed.
How else do you think this room of people could get along?
In along term sustained way?
And manage to share the good news of Jesus to this town?
Do you think we do in our own power?
That we all get up early on a weekend
and come here to hang out together
and drink coffee
and listen to a long talk
and eat a little tiny piece of cardboard bread
and have a sip of wine at 11 in the morning
and then cooperate on ways to do the normally very difficult thing
of telling other people about the person we all love most,
by whom I mean Jesus.
The local church, Sunday by Sunday,
day by day
is the visible evidence that Christ is our unity,
our name,
the Word on our lips and in our hearts.
He is all and is in all.
Give yourself to him, this morning.
Let him be your tower
Let his name be on your lips and in your hearts and in your understanding.
Let him bind you up and make you whole.
Let us pray.
Let him be your tower
Let his name be on your lips and in your hearts and in your understanding.
Let him bind you up and make you whole.
Let us pray.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Episcopal Oversight
We're halfway through our time with the bishop.
("Is the good bishop or that bad bishop coming to visit?" Alouicious asked on Thursday as we were cleaning.
"The good bishop," I said.
"Oh" he said disappointedly. Think he probably wanted to practice awesome "kung-fu" moves on a bad guy and so I pulled him back to remind him to pray for the bad bishop which disappointed him even more. Romulus then wandered in to inquire why we were cleaning.
"Because!" said Matt, "we enjoy a clean house, Cleaning is a regular integrated part of our lives." Nobody believed him.)
Today will be various workshops and training. Tomorrow will be baptism, confirmation, chrismation (I don't even know how to spell this or anything--someone, enlighten me, what will he be doing?), and, said the bishop, "raising of the dead". I look forward to it immensely.
("Is the good bishop or that bad bishop coming to visit?" Alouicious asked on Thursday as we were cleaning.
"The good bishop," I said.
"Oh" he said disappointedly. Think he probably wanted to practice awesome "kung-fu" moves on a bad guy and so I pulled him back to remind him to pray for the bad bishop which disappointed him even more. Romulus then wandered in to inquire why we were cleaning.
"Because!" said Matt, "we enjoy a clean house, Cleaning is a regular integrated part of our lives." Nobody believed him.)
Today will be various workshops and training. Tomorrow will be baptism, confirmation, chrismation (I don't even know how to spell this or anything--someone, enlighten me, what will he be doing?), and, said the bishop, "raising of the dead". I look forward to it immensely.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Prayer, if you have a moment
While Libya and Egypt apparently spiral down from bad to worse, and Japan continues to generate news and need, Ivory Coast is barely a blip on the screen. Its so interesting and horrible to review geography week after week (right now we're studying the whole continent of Africa) and put your pencil on a whole country quickly before the next name is called out, and have a whole array of actual places flash quickly through the mind's eye. And of course, actual people--people with chaos overwhelming and with no possible end in sight.
Lord have mercy.
Lord have mercy.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The Bishop is Coming! The Bishop is Coming!
I always wanted to say that after seeing the Far Side cartoon about the anthropologists. This congregation is So diverse in denominational backgrounds that it seems like many people have no idea what this is all about. And I'm finding an appalling lack of vocabulary to be able to talk about it. My conversation with our wonderful church secretary went something like this.
Me: There are so many changes for the service next week perhaps I should just putting everything in order in a new document for you.
A: Are we not doing it right now?
Me: Oh no! We're doing everything right. Its just there will be some new things. And some other stuff.
A: Oh. Um ok. (looking very quizzically like why are you waving your arms and becoming agitated)
Me: I just want to make sure that everything is right for that week. (beginning to babble incoherently) Not Morally right. We're just talking about the service and the whole week. It's not a matter of sinning or not sinning, just being properly Anglican.
A: Properly Anglican. Ok.
Me: Well, that sounds weird. Scratch that. Just ask Matt what I mean.
Or my conversation with Matt:
Matt: Make sure everything is in the bulletin next week please because you messed up this week.
Anne: I'll write that line in your bulletin that I forgot. You'll be fine.
Matt: I don't want to say it if its not in the bulletin. Everyone will be confused.
Anne: No one will be confused. It will be fine.
Matt: I don't want to say it if its not in the bulletin.
Anne: The bulletin isn't the Bible.
Matt: (laughing hystically) Yeah but sometimes the Bible quotes the bulletin so we have to be careful.
That was a joke! All non-Anglicans please don't freak out.
And then there's my running internal list of things to do that I'm afraid no one else will think about. Things like
1. Putting the fear of God into the acolytes so that they will slow down and not shoot themselves down the aisle after the service like all the donuts will be gone before they get there and by gum thy will get a donut so Get Out of the Way Everyone! They can't do that.
2. Finding out who the acolytes are ahead of time.
3. Putting a word in to the altar guild to make sure the purple altar frontal is swapped out for white because of baptism, even though its Lent.
4. Reminding the choir to wear white instead of purple.
5. Conferring with the altar guild about the whole chrism extravaganza--getting oil, having something to put it in. Its been so long since we've had proper chrism who even knows what we did before.
6. Trying to get Matt's attention about the schedule of the weekend so if we need to get a babysitter we'll have plenty of time.
7. Cleaning my House!!!!! Just in case someone wanders in.
8. Cleaning all the Sunday School rooms (but maybe someone could help with this).
9. Finding that wretched baptismal dress because we might as well have the baby baptized while he's here. Where on earth did I put it?!?!
etc. etc. etc.
Me: There are so many changes for the service next week perhaps I should just putting everything in order in a new document for you.
A: Are we not doing it right now?
Me: Oh no! We're doing everything right. Its just there will be some new things. And some other stuff.
A: Oh. Um ok. (looking very quizzically like why are you waving your arms and becoming agitated)
Me: I just want to make sure that everything is right for that week. (beginning to babble incoherently) Not Morally right. We're just talking about the service and the whole week. It's not a matter of sinning or not sinning, just being properly Anglican.
A: Properly Anglican. Ok.
Me: Well, that sounds weird. Scratch that. Just ask Matt what I mean.
Or my conversation with Matt:
Matt: Make sure everything is in the bulletin next week please because you messed up this week.
Anne: I'll write that line in your bulletin that I forgot. You'll be fine.
Matt: I don't want to say it if its not in the bulletin. Everyone will be confused.
Anne: No one will be confused. It will be fine.
Matt: I don't want to say it if its not in the bulletin.
Anne: The bulletin isn't the Bible.
Matt: (laughing hystically) Yeah but sometimes the Bible quotes the bulletin so we have to be careful.
That was a joke! All non-Anglicans please don't freak out.
And then there's my running internal list of things to do that I'm afraid no one else will think about. Things like
1. Putting the fear of God into the acolytes so that they will slow down and not shoot themselves down the aisle after the service like all the donuts will be gone before they get there and by gum thy will get a donut so Get Out of the Way Everyone! They can't do that.
2. Finding out who the acolytes are ahead of time.
3. Putting a word in to the altar guild to make sure the purple altar frontal is swapped out for white because of baptism, even though its Lent.
4. Reminding the choir to wear white instead of purple.
5. Conferring with the altar guild about the whole chrism extravaganza--getting oil, having something to put it in. Its been so long since we've had proper chrism who even knows what we did before.
6. Trying to get Matt's attention about the schedule of the weekend so if we need to get a babysitter we'll have plenty of time.
7. Cleaning my House!!!!! Just in case someone wanders in.
8. Cleaning all the Sunday School rooms (but maybe someone could help with this).
9. Finding that wretched baptismal dress because we might as well have the baby baptized while he's here. Where on earth did I put it?!?!
etc. etc. etc.
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