June 23, 2017

photo-1462219157779-8a35f2687626_optPsalm 119:129-136 (letter pe) expresses two things: various words of the Bible (seven different ones) and the wonderful delight the psalmist finds in them. The first word mentioned is “statutes” (‘edot). He finds the edot of God wonderful and therefore he delights to obey them.

Statutes are extolled as wonderful — they generate wonder.

Torah is clarified in this word edot as “witness” as in Deut 31:26: “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God. There it will remain as a witness against you.” To call the Torah a “witness” is to see it as revelation from God, objective standard over against God’s people, the word from God that tells God’s people how to live and by which they are assessed.

This “witness” is also “covenant”: if one compares Exod 32:15 and Deut 9:15 we see that edot and berith (covenant) are nearly synonymous.

Here’s the point: God’s testifying statutes that are inherent to the covenant God has made with his people are the delight and wonder of the psalmist. As God’s acts in history cause wonder and awe, as they are marvels, so the Torah is to the psalmist. The very testifying words of God to his people are a source of wonder.

The Bible is our treasure. In it and through it and with it God speaks to us. We can pause today for this great gift, now made available in more ways than anyone in history could imagine — on DVDs and CDs and iPods and with notes and with pictures, is God’s communication with us.

In Psalm 119:129-136 the psalmist uses seven different words to describe the Torah: today we look at the second word. It is “word/s” (devar). Psalm 119:130:

“The unfolding of your words gives light;
it gives understanding to the simple.”

If the statutes of v. 129 generate wonder, the words provide light.

Words — sometimes I think my life is full of words. Kris and I and the kids talk to one another with words. I teach with words, I write with words and my day is spent reading the words of others. And the Bible is filled with words — Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek. What are words?

Let’s not enter too deeply into philosophy but words are a linguistic set of symbols that create a meaning-world by a person with the intent of expressing one’s mind and heart so that the Other can understand those words.

The Bible is words: devarim. God speaks to his people in words. Not just with words — for there is aesthetic art in the tabernacle and Temple, and there is vision and there is miracle and there is pillar of cloud by day and fire by night — but often with words.

Ponder this: the Torah, the psalmist says, is a collection of God’s words to humans. It is God filling words with meaning so that humans can comprehend. These words are made alive by the Spirit and by faith and they come home and we hear God and we say “they give me light and they grant understanding to the simple.”

Most importantly, John tells us that the Word became flesh — actual person — and the writer of Hebrews said God used to speak in all kinds of words but in the last days he has spoken to us in Son. All those words in Torah anticipate the Final Word — and that Word is Jesus, a living breathing person. Words, ultimately, are person symbolized in little letters.

As Eugene Peterson calls his book, “eat this book.”

The third word used for Torah in Psalm 119:129-136 is “commandments” (mitzvot; v. 131). Attached to v. 131 is v. 132: because the psalmist longs for God’s mitzvot and because that longing expresses the psalmist’s love (v. 132b), he implores God to turn to him.

If the statutes of v. 129 generate wonder and the words provide light (v. 130), then the commandments create longing. (I don’t believe it is contextually sound to think of 131’s longing leads to discovering that one is a sinner and then begging for mercy in v. 132. The whole section is a positive embrace of the Torah as instruction that is encountered as wonder and joy.)

He sees in the Torah the very stuff of life — he pants for it, he opens his mouth — as do baby birds in the nest when they sense a parent arriving with food — and asks God to fill him up with the ways of the mitzvot.

The psalmist knows God’s ways: the TNIV obscures this slightly. V. 132b says (TNIV): “as you always do.” This expresssion, from kemishpat, expresses God’s ruling, judging ways. “Always do” is fine; I like the JPS a bit better here: “As is Your rule.” God’s order of operating is that those who love his name — YHWH — and who honor that name by obedience, find that God turns to them and has mercy on them because they long to know him and to be in his presence.

Psalm 119:133-134 uses two more words for the Torah: promises (imra) and precepts (piqud). Imra can mean “word” but “promissory word” is a little better. Implications are obvious: Torah is promissory word and preceptual word in order to guide the behavior of God’s people.

If the statutes of v. 129 generate wonder and the words provide light (v. 130) and the commandments create longing (v. 131-132), then the promises create guidance (v. 133) and the precepts guidelines for behavior (v. 134).

Knowing God’s Torah as promissory means the psalmist can have firm feet and clear guidance for those feet; the path is secure because it is God’s way. Knowing God’s Torah as precept means the psalmist knows how to behave when he has the freedom to do so. So, he prays to be “ransomed” from oppressors, perhaps indicating that he is right now in captivity of some sort. No way to know.

Torah is guidance — read it, listen to it, and learn from it. What we learn is how to live — how to love others, how to work for justice, and how to bring peace.

The sixth word for Torah in this section of Psalm 119 is “decrees” (huqqim), words of binding force and permanence — inscribed forever now that they are written in the Torah. Commitment to such permanence brings the psalmist the sense that his own commitment brings the good pleasure of God.

If the statutes of v. 129 generate wonder and the words provide light (v. 130) and the commandments create longing (v. 131-132) and the promises create guidance (v. 133) and the precepts guidelines for behavior (v. 134), then the “decrees” (v. 135) provide God’s pleasure.

I like this line: “Make your face shine on your servant
and teach me your decrees” (v. 135).

God’s face shining on the servant of God is a Hebrew way of expressing God’s pleasure. When the Father says “this is my Son in whom I am well-pleased” at Jesus’ baptism, that is the face of God shining on Jesus. The face of God, so ably explored by LeRon Shults in The Faces of Forgiveness and now being blogged about, when it shines, is all about God’s good pleasure and delight in someone. Here the psalmist knows God’s delight in his obedience.

Furthermore, he simply asks God to shine his face on him by instructing him in “decrees” (huqqim). God, he says, grace me with your good pleasure by teaching me. I am listening.

The final verse of this section of Psalm 119 (v. 136) takes into uncharted water for this section: the psalmist, so committed as he is to God’s Torah, is grieved that others do not follow the Torah (the seventh and final word for Torah in this passage). Clearly a contrast with v. 135: God’s shiny face brings the psalmist intense pleasure while neglecting the delight of God in instruction grieves him. If you know this God, you sympathize with the psalmist.

June 22, 2017

photo-1462219157779-8a35f2687626_optIn the next paragraph of Psalm 119 (vv. 121-128, each beginning with the Hebrew letter Ayin), the psalmist considers his own integrity before God from a variety of angles. He appeals to God on the basis of his own integrity, he yearns for God on that same basis, he opens himself up to God, he requests God to act, and he identifies himself on the basis of his integrity. It strikes many today as inappropriate — especially if we are nurtured in Reformation theology. But, the psalmist doesn’t back down and we can learn something from him.

Are you uncomfortable with the psalmist’s disposition here?

Let me back up: what I mean by being nurtured in Reformation theology, as I was myself, is that we think of ourselves as sinners who have no claim on God. Not so the biblical characters who pray. Think of Job, think of the many psalms. It’s noticeable how convinced they are at times of their own integrity. Perhaps we can lay blame on them for thinking this. I think that would be a mistake. There is more to learn beyond the claim of integrity, but true humility is to know who we are before God. It is not pretending to be worse than we are. False humility tempts; true humility knows the truth. I think of this psalmist in the latter category.

And he appeals to God not to abandon him and not to let the arrogant oppress him because “I have done what is just and right” (119:121-122).

Notice he asserts his integrity — that he does what is right before God — and makes three petitions on that basis:

1. Do not leave me to my oppressors.
2. Ensure your servant’s well-being.
3. Do not let the arrogant oppress me.

Something should be observed: The TNIV’s “well-being” is the goal unto which the psalmist asks this protection: “for the good.” It could mean health and survival, but it is probably more comprehensive and means “so that I might do that which is good for more days.”

Still, moral integrity can be a comfort for the follower of Jesus and it can be used as a fulcrum on which we base an appeal to God to deal justly in this world.

Psalm 119:123 is a little tricky: “My eyes fail, looking for your salvation, looking for your righteous promise.” Is the psalmist despairing and at the end of his hope or is he yearning intensively? The Hebrew word here (qalah) can mean either “completed” and could connote “totally focused on” or, which is how most translations proceed, “exhausted, come to the end.” I think the latter sense is probably right.

The psalmist yearns in hope and he is coming to the end of his strength. He isn’t sure how much longer he can go on.

His focus and yearning, in the midst of his oppression, is on the just word of God — God’s promise to bless those who observe his Torah. How much longer can he go on? He’s pressed on to the end to see the “just word” — the promise of victory.

I like this: in vv. 121-122, we see a confident appeal on the basis of his integrity; in v. 123 he comes to the bottom of himself, he recognizes that he can’t go on without God’s help. Not in the sense that he finds his disposition in 121-122 wrong, but in the sense that he is wearing down, admitting that it is hard at times to press on in a forward direction.

The psalmist’s integrity comes from God because his disposition before God is that of a “servant” (ebed; see vv. 122, 124, 125):

124 Deal with your servant according to your love
and teach me your decrees.
125 I am your servant; give me discernment
that I may understand your statutes.

It is his to walk; it is the Lord’s to tell him where to walk. He is a servant. I doubt one should toss the barbs of synergism at the psalmist, but recognize that he knows he is responsible to obey but his obedience springs from God’s gracious teaching.

It’s not our kind of syntax but it is a Hebrew kind of syntax: “Do unto your servant according to love.” That is, to turn it into colloquial English: “Love me, treat me in a loving manner.” How about “Give me some love!”

This psalmist kind of love is one that leads to his being instructed and to discernment.
The vulnerability of the psalmist is palpable: he’s open to God, he has faced God, he wants to hear from God, and he simply requests that God teach him. He’s listening to God. He is before God as a servant.

In Psalm 119:126, the psalmist informs God that “It is time for you to act, YHWH.” Why? “Your law is being broken.” We are back to the integrity of vv. 121-122 and the appeal he made there: now his appeal widens.

Get up and do something, he tells God. People all around me are violating the covenant by disobedience; the just (like him) are doing God’s will and it is not getting them anywhere. It would not be inappropriate to see the psalmist making a demand on God.

I doubt there is a more common theme to the Psalms than this one: God is summoned to act in accordance with his promise and, in so doing, to save the faithful from oppression.

It takes some chutzpah to make demands on God, but as I said on Monday, this psalmist is convinced of his own integrity because he knows he has obeyed God. Like Abraham or Moses or Job, he knows he has done God’s will. He knows God’s promises. He stands up and asks God to act. It will, I assume he thinks, glorify God to act out his promises and his justice to make his ways known and his judgments clear.

Christian conversion is the transformation of one’s own identity in relationship to Jesus Christ. One “self-identifies” in relationship to Jesus Christ. The psalmist self-identifies as:
One who loves God’s commands (119:127) and who considers all God’s precepts as right, or smooth and straight (v. 128).

He loves God’s mitzvot and piqudim, commands and precepts, “more than gold, more than pure gold.” He self-identifies as a lover of all of God’s ways: which of course means he not only likes them but follows them.

Again, we are back to the integrity claim of vv. 121-122.

It is possible, as Samuel Hirsch points out, that v. 128 indicates some thought parts of the Torah were wrong or of no use for Israel. The psalmist, a radical if there ever was one, was committed to every word and every command.

Because he loves God’s commands and precepts, he hates “every deceptive path.” He’s clear in his thinking: he knows what is right and he knows what is wrong. He has chosen the former; he’s turned his back on the latter.

June 15, 2017

photo-1475154404624-07909433bbfb_optIt might not be our image today, but it was the psalmist’s image: “I am like a wineskin in the smoke” (119:83). Or as the JPS translator has it: “Though I have become like a water-skin dried in smoke.” What does this image evoke, for it is from this point that this section (kaf, or K) of Psalm 119 takes its departure?

Dried up to the point of cracking.
Hard to the point of no flexibility.
Parched to the point where moisture is the only hope.

What makes you dry up? What hardens you? What parches you? Do you know what it is that leads you into such a condition? But this psalmist is beyond simply recognizing his personal condition and clear needs — in spite of being dried up and parched, “I have not neglected your laws.”

My favorite commentary on all things Psalms? John Goldingay, Psalm 101-150

Two observations:

Sometimes our personal condition absorbs us; we can think of nothing but ourselves; we become self-preoccupied to the point of obsession. We need self-awareness; self-absorption we don’t. In spite of our needy condition, the psalmist reminds us that even when we are parched to the point of cracking, we are to have a wineskin hope — the hope of a wineskin parched and drying but still pining away for some moisture, and that moisture comes from the Water who is God.

The psalmist is parched and his only hope is moisture if the skin is to survive. How does he cope? What can he do? Notice these words:

He longs for God to deliver (119:81a).
He hopes in God’s Word (119:81b).
He does not abandon God’s precepts (119:87b).
He petitions God to preserve him (119:88a).

The image the psalmist uses, the drying, parching wineskin, impresses me: it is so evocative of sterility and frigidity and apathy and depression and hopelessness. In spite of his condition, the psalmist has the hope of a wineskin — which (of course) has no real hope, but it can signify (by metaphor) a condition of serious need. He longs for God’s deliverance. One thing strikes me about the Bible: living by faith occurs when there is a challenge beyond our capacities, living by hope occurs when we are hopeless. It is easy to talk about faith and hope; it is hard to live by faith and to live in hope. The psalmist points the way.

The psalmist depicts himself like a parched wineskin being dried out in a smoker. What are his problems? People. Notice these:

He lacks comfort (119:82b).
He wonders how many days he has to live (119:84a).
He is persecuted (119:84b).
The insolent are digging pits (for his burial) (119:85a).
The persecutions are without cause (119:86b).
They tried to wipe him from the earth (119:87a).

Put succinctly — his opponents are trying to kill him. Now we don’t live in a world much like this (at least most of us don’t). But, the world of this psalmist wasn’t tolerant and pluralist: the way to deal with dissent was to put people away — exile them or assassinate them. He feels the threat of death over his shoulder and behind his back, and it wasting him away. And in the middle of these problems, the psalmist pauses to record his reflections and points himself toward God in prayer.

I don’t know much about wineskins, but I know this wineskin, our psalmist, was resolute. If he sees himself as an exhausted, depressed wineskin, he is one tough wineskin.   In spite of being hunted down and at the threat of death, he:

1. Has not neglected God’s laws (119:83b).
2. Has not abandoned God’s precepts (119:87b).

Resolution: the hope of this persecuted wineskin is to find a way to live obediently. His strategy is to live obediently in the midst of persecution.

I can imagine him in a pit, with dirt falling on his shoulders from the shovels of his death-wishers, realizing it is time for his morning prayers and falling to his knees in prayer. I can imagine him being chased and finding a way to be observant. I can imagine his opponents thinking his pious practices are the problem and he maintains that his pious practices are the solution to their insolence.

This psalmist loved God, he loved the Torah, and doing God’s will is what mattered to him the most.

The psalmist, who depicts himself as an exhausted wineskin in his persecution, asks two questions that are at the heart of this section (kaf) of Psalm 119. They are found in v. 84, and they are not questions of doubt and they are not questions of certain triumph. They are real, genuine questions:

How long must your servant wait?
When will you punish my persecutors?

He doesn’t know the answer to either, and it is important to begin there. Maybe he sat down and wrote this psalm years later; maybe he didn’t. But for this psalm to work these can’t be feigned questions. He wonders how long he has to wait before God delivers (v. 81) and he wonders if he will be preserved (v. 88), and he wonders when God will act with justice toward his persecutors. And because he doesn’t know, the psalms speaks to us yet today: it is when we don’t know, it is while we are yearning for justice, it is when we wonder if God will ever bring the bad guys down, that we learn to trust, we learn to hope, and we learn to live obediently in the midst of opposition.

April 29, 2017

The Jesus CreedUnfortunately, this has become far too often the experience of coaches (and I coached HS basketball for ten years — sophomore level):

A Michigan high school basketball coach, who earlier this year was named best coach in his class, has resigned. And he calls parents the No. 1 reason for his departure….

Here are Castor’s comments, as reported by the Daily Press:

“I have a lot of different reasons why I wanted to resign and only a few reasons to stick around.

“I thought our administration at Gladstone was really supportive of our program and they did a great job. But I thought there were some things early on in the year, small situations that were mind blowing … I dealt with our fan club. I ended up having a meeting with them. I thought the meeting was out of line.

“At the end of the day, the reason why I am resigning is because of parents. I don’t want to deal with them. The last five years I have coached at Gladstone I have given it my life. My time could have been better spent doing other things.

“I really, really enjoy this. But parents have taken the fun and enjoyment right out of it. Maybe some of this is on me. I just don’t have thick enough skin or the will to put up with it. For that amount of time, it’s just not worth it.”

Combative parents consistently rank in the top five of our annual survey of “most concerning issues” in interscholastic sports. We offer a number of resources on handling parents and developing working relationships with moms and dads.

Fortunately, our world is made of folks like this too! Jamie Sotonoff:

Isaac Vatkin always cared for his wife, Teresa. Even as his own death approached, he clung to life as his wife’s health, too, began to deteriorate.

On Saturday, when they were both unresponsive and breathing shallowly, the staff at Highland Park Hospital wheeled the longtime Skokie residents, who had been married for 69 years, into the same room and put their beds side by side.

Family members positioned their hands so they touched.

“I didn’t want them to be scared,” their granddaughter Debbie Handler said. “I thought maybe if they knew the other was there, it would help.”

Teresa, 89, died first. Minutes after they separated the couple’s hands and removed Teresa from the room, Isaac, 91, passed. They died 40 minutes apart.

“Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other,” their daughter, Clara Gesklin, said during their joint funeral service Monday at Shalom Memorial Funeral Home in Arlington Heights.

Saw this at Reuters for a title to an article:Visas to citizens of Trump travel ban nations drops [?!!??!?!!]

Bob Robinson begins his analysis and critique of the APEST proposals of Alan Hirsch and others:

When I first read Alan Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways (Brazos Press, 2006. 2nd Edition pubished by Baker, 2009), I was enthralled. The first five chapters had me rethinking the mission of the church in foundational ways. But then came chapter 6, in which he introduced the “apostolic environment” that feeds into a paradigm “APEPT,” the five words found in Ephesians 4:11-12 that describes gifts God gives to the church in order to equip Christians: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers. (Since this book was published, the second “P” for “Pastor” has since been replaced with an “S” for “Shepherd,” and thus it is now called “APEST”).

As I first read this proposal, I found it wanting – exegetically, theologically and ecclesiologically. I figured that others would just as easily see the problems with such a paradigm and we’d all move along.

But, the Missional Movement has latched heavily onto Hirsch’s paradigm and many churches are now using it as the means by which to identify leaders for the sake of advancing the missional church beyond what they see as an old, biblically ill-informed institutionalism that has ruined the modern church in American evangelicalism. Alan Hirsch further defined APEST in his 2012 book written with Tim Catchim, The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century Church and is now about to release a new book entitled 5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ, which is getting a lot of pre-publication hype.

More and more churches I know are giving a short survey to help each person figure out which of the APEST he or she might be (see the survey at fivefoldsurvey.com). The goal is to better utilize people and their gifts for the mission of the local church. I will dive into criticizing this survey in a later post.

In this post, I will review the exegetical issues. Then in the next posts, I will review the theological and ecclesiological issues.

Darryl Hart at it again:

What if we only knew more about evangelicalism, however, thanks to editors and publishers willing to produce books on evangelicalism thanks precisely to a desire to figure out the Religious Right? At the risk of self-promotion, almost fifteen years ago I noticed the coincidence of an outpouring of scholarship on evangelicalism precisely at the same time that born-again Protestants were making headlines and magazine covers thanks to their association with the Republican Party:

A funny thing happened to the study of evangelical Protestantism in the decades after Newsweek declared 1976 “the year of the evangelical.” A religious movement largely in obscurity since the Scopes Trial emerged as a source of inspiration for millions of Americans and a formidable lobby in electoral politics. Even so, the early scholarly returns on evangelicalism were not encouraging. Martin E. Marty declared that, by 1980, “there was a paucity of good research” on evangelicalism or its related subjects, fundamentalism and pentecostalism1—one indication that the so-called recovery of American religious history, lauded by Henry May in 1965, had yet to pay dividends for Protestants outside the mainline
denominations.

In 1992, within a decade of Marty’s assessment, Jon Butler of Yale University claimed in a provocative paper delivered to the American Society of Church History that the tide had turned into a tsunami of historical writing on evangelicalism and its influence on American society, drowning other perspectives and interests. In response to Garry Wills’ Under God: Religion and American Politics, which faulted academics and journalists for ignoring faith’s importance, Butler asked, “Are we looking at the same subject?” He claimed that historians, especially Americanists, could scarcely pay more attention to religion: meetings of the Organization of American Historians and the American Studies Association offered countless sessions on religion, and books on American religion were published in record numbers despite the decline in publishers’ interest in New England Community studies. The publishing boom in particular drew Butler’s interest. The books described the importance of American religion, especially evangelical Christianity: “They often describe religion as a cause—sometimes the cause—of what is distinctive and important in America, American culture, politics, even identity…. They are, in the main, books about evangelical Christianity’s dominant position in American religion and its shaping of American identity from the Puritans to the Reagans.”

This is not to suggest that evangelicalism equals a certain kind of political activism, though the notion that personal faith must inform all of life makes it hard to separate religion from politics. But it does mean that the study of evangelicalism would be substantially less prominent if most Americans assumed that born-again Protestants were simply a curious group of Christians who somehow clung to the experiences that Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield first cultivated. After all, if evangelicals were not political would they generate any more attention than the Amish?

John Mark Reynolds is right about teaching great books:

Constantine Comprehensive Classical Strategy
1. Read the Book.
2. Think about the Book.
3. Ask a good question.
4. Listen and respond to students.
5. Go to step 1 and repeat (even in class).

Not good.

The U.S. military has started moving parts of the controversial THAAD anti-missile defense system into a planned deployment site in South Korea, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, amid high tensions over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.

The United States and South Korea have agreed to deploy THAAD in response to the threat of missile launches by North Korea but China says it will do little to deter the North while destabilizing the regional security balance.

Trailer trucks carrying parts of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system entered the site on what had been a golf course in the county of Seongju in a southern region of South Korea, Yonhap news agency and YTN television reported.

South Korean defense ministry officials and U.S. military officials could not immediately be reached for confirmation.

The United States began moving the first elements of the advanced missile defense system into South Korea in early March after the North test-launched four ballistic missiles.

But the U.S. and South Korean militaries have been reluctant to publicly discuss the progress of the deployment as candidates in a May 9 presidential election debated whether the move should go ahead or be delayed until after the vote.

South Korea has said China has discriminated against some South Korean companies in retaliation against the deployment.

By John Lloyd

All western governments oppose anti-Semitism. Yet the old hatred continues. How toxic is it? And are recent eruptions of anti-Semitism expressions of momentary irritation, misunderstanding, or plain ignorance?

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer could, on a kindly view, fall into the last of these categories. His remark that Hitler used no chemical weapons, made at his Tuesday press conference, was followed by outrage and instant contrition.

Spicer meant that Hitler did not drop chemical bombs from airplanes – an accurate observation, and one made later in the day by Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Nazis used Zyklon B in their death camps: Hitler may have refrained from using chemical weapons in the battlefield for tactical reasons. …

The conflict illuminates a split in the left everywhere in the west. On one side are those who see Israel as the largest problem in the Middle East and who, to some degree, agree with organisations like Hezbollah and Hamas, both dedicated to destroying Israel.

On the other side are those who, even while condemning the current Israeli government for its settlement and other policies, support the continued existence of the Jewish state. Current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had belonged to the first group, and has called both of the organisations “friends” – a characterization he later said he regretted.

 

April 1, 2017

The Hum of AngelsGo Julia, by Jenny McCoy:

Louisiana native Julia Hawkins became a competitive cyclist at age 81. Last year at age 100, seeking a new challenge, she decided to pick up competitive running for the first time. She registered for the 50-meter dash at the Louisiana Senior Olympic Games, completing the race with a PR of 19.07 seconds.

Now at 101 years old, Hawkins is adding another distance to her belt, training for both the 50- and 100-meter dash as well as the 5K bike race at the National Senior Games to be held in Birmingham, Alabama, this coming June.
“I’ve always liked competition,” says Hawkins, a great grandmother, retired teacher, and four-time participant and two-time cycling gold medalist in the games, also known as the Senior Olympics. She enjoys biking around her Baton Rouge neighborhood nearly every day, but has found a different type of freedom in running. “With running, it’s just me and my body. I can just go out and do the best I can and not depend on anything else to help me.”

Though she’s only started competing recently, Hawkins had no anxiety about whether she’d be good. “I knew I could run because I’m always in the yard working, and when the phone rings, I go running inside to answer it,” she says. Hawkins is an avid gardener and tends bonsai trees in the backyard of the house that she and her late husband built in 1949. Her success in the 50-meter dash inspired her to set her sights on an even loftier target for the upcoming 2017 Senior Olympics: the 100-meter dash. “I thought it’d be fun to run 100 meters since I’m more than 100 years old,” she laughs.

The Hum of Angels
Andrea Rodriguez:

HAVANA (AP) — Fidel Castro’s government sent the Rev. Juan Francisco Naranjo to two years of work camp in the 1960s for preaching the Gospel in a Cuba where atheism was law and the faithful were viewed as suspect. For years, Naranjo’s church was almost abandoned, with just a handful of people daring to attend services.

Naranjo died in 2000 but on a recent Sunday, his William Carey Baptist Church was packed and noisy. Government doctors treated disabled children at a clinic inside. A Bible study group discussed Scripture in one corner of the building before a service attended by 200 of the faithful.

“In the 1960s, the few brothers and sisters who came here had to hide their Bibles in brown-paper covers,” said Esther Zulueta, a 57-year-old doctor. “It’s night and day.”

Trump administration officials have repeatedly said religious freedom is one of the key demands they will make of Cuba when they finish reviewing former President Barack Obama’s opening with the island. The administration has never been more specific, but outside groups have accused Cuba of systematically repressing the island’s growing ranks of evangelicals and other Protestants with acts including the seizure of hundreds of churches across the island, followed by the demolition of many.

An Associated Press examination has found a more complicated picture. Pastors and worshippers say Cuba is in the middle of a boom in evangelical worship, with tens of thousands of Cubans worshipping unmolested across the island each week.

While the government now recognizes freedom of religion, it doesn’t grant the right to build churches or other religious structures. It has demolished a handful of churches in recent years, but allowed their members to continue meeting in makeshift home sanctuaries. And like the Roman Catholic Church, the island’s dominant denomination, evangelical churches have begun providing social services once monopolized by the Communist government.

“There’s a revival of these churches, of the most diverse denominations in the country, and all of them are growing, not just in the number of members, but in their capacity to lead and act in society,” said Presbyterian pastor Joel Ortega Dopica, president of Council of Churches of Cuba, an officially recognized association of 32 Protestant denominations. “There is religious freedom in Cuba.”

Darryl Hart’s right.

David Moore:

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was a giant among giants during this period. In 1837 he gave a Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard titled “The American Scholar,” which Oliver Wendell Holmes called America’s “intellectual Declaration of Independence.”

Emerson was already troubled by institutional religion when he gave the lecture. Having stepped away from pastoral ministry among Boston’s Unitarians, he would help launch a movement of sorts called Transcendentalism.

Without getting into all the various ways Transcendentalism was understood, we can simply say the individual supplanted religious traditions and institutions. The “divine self” was given permission to both assess and access truth on its own. Institutions, especially those upholding the importance of doctrine, had to be sloughed off. Boston’s Calvinists were “exhibit A” for what was wrong with religion. But for Emerson and many others, Unitarian belief wasn’t much better. Anyone or anything that stifles the self from discovering its own truth is not worthy of followers.

Emerson’s influence on America’s self-identity is huge. I’ve heard historians say he and Twain are indispensable for understanding the uniqueness of the American spirit. Emerson is everywhere. Not his name per se, though it does crop up from time to time even in pop culture. (Reebok used to feature quotes from Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” in a commercial.) …

Like Emerson, Transcendentalism may no longer be in the lexicon of most Americans, but its influence lives on. Whether we know it or not, the 19th-century writer broke the dam, and we Americans now swim in Emersonian waters. The water feels refreshing to hyper-individualized Americans, which sadly includes many Christians.

Transcendentalism lives on in the ways we see Christianity facing present challenges. One example would be the “nones,” that growing group of Americans no longer affiliated with any religion. For many, there simply isn’t enough room for organized religion because the “self,” as Walker Percy memorably put it, is “stuffed with itself.” What Percy found troubling, Emerson deemed virtuous.

Emerson’s ghost still prowls among our fruited plains. Perhaps America is more haunted by him than we previously thought.

The 2-foot hot dog, where else?

The Texas Rangers have developed a reputation for producing jaw-dropping, gut-busting, over-sized food items at their ballgames, and this season will be no different.

Actually, there will be something new this year that is worth a headline — their 2-foot long, $27 tamale hot dog.

GuideLive.com says the Rangers will be selling an “MVT” at games this year that will feature their 24-inch “Boomstick” hot dog inside of a tamale. The “Most Valuable Tamale” as it’s known is topped with chili, nacho cheese and sour cream.

Nick Roen examines this progressive argument:

The argument, as fairly as I can put it, goes like this: The progressive interpretation of the Bible’s sexual ethic bears good fruit in people’s lives. Progressives claim that affirming same-sex marriage and monogamous same-sex relationships produces the good fruit of love, relational care, intimacy, and a hundred other benefits. The historic interpretation, they say, does not produce any of these things; rather, it often bears the bad fruit of pain, discouragement, and even despair.

Affirming theology gives. Non-affirming theology only withholds. That is the argument.

It’s true that historic biblical interpretation teaches that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4–5), and that “men who have sex with men” is a sin listed alongside drunkenness, greed, and slander as worthy of exclusion from God’s kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). So, the traditional sexual ethic does restrict in a way the progressive ethic does not.

But does this necessarily lead to bad fruit? And do progressive interpretations have a corner on good fruit? Far from it. Consider three counterarguments to the progressive claim that the traditional ethic produces bad fruit.

From Bleacher Report:

Former St. Louis Cardinals and Cleveland Indians pitcher Anthony Reyes is now a Los Angeles County firefighter.

Reyes pitched for the Cardinals and Indians from 2005 to 2009 and finished with a 5.12 ERA and 1.377 WHIP in 293.1 innings.

He is best known for his performance in the 2006 World Series when he led the Cardinals to a Game 1 victory over Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers by allowing just two earned runs and four hits in eight innings of work.

Maureen Pao:

For Jernica Quiñones, the reality of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, hit close to home this year when a friend woke up on New Year’s Day and discovered the lifeless body of her baby girl.

That’s why Quiñones’ 4-month-old son, Bless’n, has spent a lot of his life so far sleeping in a cardboard box.

The 33-year-old mother of five took part in a program in New Jersey that promotes safe sleep education through the distribution of “baby boxes” that double as bassinets.

“Some mothers can’t buy a Pack-n-Play or a crib,” Quiñones says. And that can lead to bed sharing, a risk factor for SIDS.

The program is a riff on Finland’s well-known baby box, or maternity package, which the government gives to expectant mothers who get a prenatal checkup: It’s the box, plus clothing, blankets and other supplies.

Now that Finnish model is making inroads in the U.S., but with a twist. Instead of being a prenatal incentive, it’s being used to deliver a postpartum safe sleep message.

An editorial:

God help us.

Moving forward with a campaign pledge to unravel former President Obama’s sweeping plan to curb global warming, President Trump on Tuesday is set to sign an executive order that will suspend, rescind or flag for review more than a half-dozen measures in an effort to boost domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels.

As part of the roll-back, Trump will initiate a review of the Clean Power Plan, which restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants.

The regulation, which was the former president’s signature effort to curb carbon emissions, has been the subject of long-running legal challenges by Republican-led states and those who profit from burning oil, coal and gas.

Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax” invented by the Chinese, has repeatedly criticized the power-plant rule and others as an attack on American workers and the struggling U.S. coal industry. The contents of the order were outlined to reporters in a sometimes tense briefing with a senior White House official, whom aides insisted speak without attribution, despite Trump’s criticism of the use of unnamed sources.

The official at one point appeared to break with mainstream climate science, denying familiarity with widely publicized concerns about the potential adverse economic impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels and more extreme weather.

Now to the trivial, but still fun:

PHOENIX — In the year’s second franchise move valuing facilities over fans, NFL owners voted overwhelmingly Monday to approve a move of the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas for the 2020 season.

OAK-land RAI-ders” chants from desperately hopeful fans serenaded owners around the posh Arizona Biltmore complex, but to no avail. The vote was 31-1, with Miami owner Stephen Ross the only negative voter. He was reportedly concerned about the drop in market size from sixth (the Oakland/San Francisco market) to 40th (Las Vegas). But in the end, an avalanche of owners felt the fact that more than half of the $1.7-billion stadium would be publicly funded was too big an advantage to pass up.

But this isn’t going to be easy. They won’t be the “Las Vegas Raiders” until they leave Oakland. Commissioner Roger Goodell said the team would remain the Oakland Raiders for at least two more years, while the new stadium is being built just off the Strip in Las Vegas. And the Raiders, as of today, do not have a scheduled home for 2019 and may be forced to play in Vegas’s 35,500-seat Sam Boyd Stadium, home of UNLV (and currently not suited for NFL games) while the new place is being finished.

March 24, 2017

Screen Shot 2016-10-15 at 9.10.12 AMBy John Frye

I was meditating through John 13-17 recently and a startling question popped into my head. Did Jesus in his humanity ever have an inkling of his pre-incarnate life? We know that at the age of 12 Jesus had some idea of his special mission: “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49) Surely, Jesus didn’t mean Joseph’s house. At his baptism when he was about 30 years old, Jesus was anointed by the Spirit and heard a loving affirmation of the Father (Luke 3:21-22). Jesus’s mission was made clear in his hometown synagogue (Luke 4:17:21). These messianic stirrings, I understand, may be considered realities that Jesus grew into. I have no problem with that.

In John 13:1-4 we are introduced to Jesus’s knowledge. He knew his special time (hour) had come, v. 1. In v. 3 Jesus …ειδως οτι …απο θεου εξηλθεν… . “Jesus knew…that he had come from God…” He also knew he was returning to the God. It might be said, “That’s true of all believers.” I don’t think John would clutter up this important text with what is common to all Christ-followers. Is this “came from God” knowledge based on stories about his birth learned from his mother Mary? Moreover, added to this knowledge about his origin is Jesus’s awareness of possessing present cosmic authority: “the Father had put all things under his power.” I’m just asking: could these be inklings of his pre-incarnate life?

Why ask? I am not implying that Jesus walked through life with an eternity-past memory bank in his frontal lobe. I think Paul’s description of Jesus’s humiliation counters that idea (Philippians 2:5-8). If Jesus relied on a resource like that, we could never be conformed to his likeness. I have no eternity-past memory bank. But what about inklings; about darting hummingbird-like, lightning flashes of awareness? Does John, the Apostle, struggle with kenotic understandings?

In John 17 Jesus offers his majestic prayer for his disciples and for all who would believe in him because of their witness (John 17:6, 20). Toward the end Jesus’s prayer moves to the brilliant reality of glory (v. 24). Jesus wants us to “see” his glory. The word “see” means to participate in. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless he was born again he would not “see” the kingdom of God (John 3:3). To see Jesus’s glory. What a future! Is this glory in verse 24 comparable to the Father’s love which is noted as “before the world began”? Is Jesus hinting that he had great glory, then he set it aside in the humiliation, and will regain it though the cross and resurrection? Is this, too, an inkling of his “memory” of his glorious pre-incarnate status?

Jesus is going to embrace his greatest challenge: enduring the rejection, abandonment, mockery, shame, and agony of the cross. He will wrestle with the Father’s will and finally surrender to it.

He will sweat blood. In his deep agony, an angel from God will appear to Jesus and strengthen him (Luke 22:43). Did strobe light flashes of his eternal past also strengthen Jesus in those final hours before his cruel death?

Jesus repeatedly declared his death and resurrection ahead of time (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34). We know he was driven by an incredible eschatological vision. “For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.” We have that hope, too. Could there be buried in our own past some inklings of glory? Might those darting memories, if we may call them that, strengthen us for what lies ahead? I’m not suggesting any kind of preexistence like Jesus-the-Logos-made-flesh had. I’m asking simply if there might be flashes of past reality that blink in our memory in which God says to us, “I’ve been here all along. I got you. Face the challenge. Face the pain”?

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

March 4, 2017

Adam and the GenomeGood read of the week, by Tim Carman, with HT: LNMM:

In the military-style hierarchy of U.S. restaurant kitchens, a dishwasher ranks near the bottom, even if chefs, given half a chance, will loudly sing a good pot-scrubber’s praises. (These hard-working men and women, often immigrants, would probably prefer a living wage over songs of praise, but that’s another story.)

But over in Copenhagen, Rene Redzepi, the chef and co-owner of Noma, did something extraordinary last week for the restaurant’s longtime dishwasher: He made Ali Sonko a partner in the Danish gastronomic temple that regularly ranks among the world’s best.

Sonko, a native of Gambia, was one of three new partners named during a party on Noma’s last day at its waterfront space in the Christianshavn neighborhood. Noma is expected to relocate in December to its new urban farm near Christiania, Copenhagen’s famous “free town” known for its boho lifestyle and ample drugs.

When Redzepi made the announcement to an assembled crowd of 250 staffers and friends of the house, he “never expected it to be the big story that it’s become,” the chef says from Tulum, Mexico, where Noma will operate an open-air popup in the jungle, starting in April. Since the announcement, Sonko has been interviewed on just about every TV channel in Denmark, Redzepi says.

Thanks again to Kris for finding so many of these links.

Fun to get emails from high school friends of my son who are reading Adam and the Genome.

We are very proud at Northern of our history with women students and ordination of women so we at Northern are glad to hear of what his going on here: Marianne Meye Thompson and Joel Green have an interview-like post on women in ministry and Fuller Seminary. Here’s the opener:

MMT: The words that come immediately to mind are partnership, mutuality, interdependence, and the like. Fuller’s statement of purpose describes the seminary as “dedicated to the equipping of men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his church.” We construe “ministries” to encompass all that our three schools—Theology, Psychology, and Intercultural Studies—equip our students to do: teach, pastor, counsel, write, lead worship, engage in artistic endeavors, and many other vocations, too. We believe that the ministries of Christ happen inside and outside the walls of the church—in banks and schools and theaters and hospitals as well as in congregations. And we believe that men and women are equally called to and gifted for all these ministries: gender is no barrier when the Lord calls and equips someone for service, whatever it might be.

We also believe that “men and women” are called to minister and serve together; that men and women together constitute the body of Christ and are called to serve as its leaders and servants. In other words, we want to emphasize the mutuality that men and women share in carrying out the “manifold ministries of Christ and his church.” We don’t want to replace men with women. We don’t think male and female should be done away with, or that men and women are simply interchangeable in God’s creation. So we believe, for example, that marriage is between a man and a woman.

We acknowledge and celebrate the differences that may arise from our varied experiences in the world as men and women, believing that our mutual service enriches the body of Christ. Perhaps our commitment to mutuality can be summarized in the words of Paul: “in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman” (1 Cor 11:11). If others emphasize hierarchy and distinctions in gender roles, we emphasize the ways in which men and women are “joint heirs” of the grace and the call of God.

JBG: I think of Fuller not only as the world’s preeminent evangelical seminary, but as a seminary that insists that the evangel, the gospel, embraces women and men as full partners in the good news of Jesus Christ and as equal recipients of God’s grace for salvation, ministry, and mission.

This means for us that the gospel is realized among God’s people such that we might take for granted that (of course!) both women and men have received gifts and graces for all sorts of ministries, for all kinds of ministry positions, for the full range of ministry roles in the church and world.

Together, women and men reflect God’s image. Together, women and men are clothed in Christ at baptism. And God gives both women and men as prophets and evangelists and teachers and pastors to equip God’s people for ministry.

Teaching at Fuller Seminary means that I needn’t regard these as contested claims, but can simply affirm them as central to the good news of Jesus Christ.

Speaking of which, our diocese — C4SO with Todd Hunter — has a good story to tell:

When two dioceses join hands, a husband-wife team finds a parish to pastor.

Last year, The Rev. Kevin and the Rev. Karen Miller of the Diocese of the Upper Midwest felt God calling them to preach and pastor as a husband-wife team. But there were no churches in their diocese with a position available. So they continued to attend Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois, and pursue other employment.

Around the same time, their longtime friends the Rev. Bill and Linda Richardson of the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others were preparing to retire from nearby Church of the Savior. They had quietly been thinking of replacements, but didn’t consider the Millers as they belonged to a different diocese. Moreover, Church of the Savior is only 10 minutes from Church of the Resurrection.

The ships nearly passed in the night, but the Millers’ rector and bishop, the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch, called a few of his fellow bishops, including Bishop Todd Hunter, to ask if their dioceses had any churches in search of a rector couple.

Bishop Hunter quickly thought of Church of the Savior. He asked the Millers, whom he had known for years, if they would be interested in candidating for the position. When the Millers asked Bishop Ruch about the possibility, he replied, “I’m supportive. We’re going to bless you if you go, and if people decide to go with you to Savior, we’ll bless them too.”

Bishop Hunter was thrilled at the resulting kingdom collaboration.

“Bill and Linda created a unique and beautiful community of faith at Church of the Savior,” he says. “Kevin and Karen have the vision and leadership to move the church forward. This transition allows The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others and the Diocese of the Upper Midwest to partner in a way that we all hope makes future collaboration possible.”

After a national search by Savior’s vestry and discernment team, led by Alexis Olsen and Steve Mead, the church chose to hire the Millers. The couple started in January as Rector and Associate Pastor for a congregation they describe as “gentle and loving.” The transition was a peaceful one, as the Millers were able to spend several months attending Church of the Savior, assisting the Richardsons in leading worship, and getting to know the parishioners before they officially started on January 1.

Quite the piece on Margaret Mead by Elesha Coffman:

“These pro-lifers are headed to the Women’s March on Washington,” the Atlantic announced. “Is there a place at the Women’s March for women who are politically opposed to abortion?” the Washington Post inquired. “Can you be a ‘pro-life feminist’?” asked Vox. “I’m a pro-life Christian who proudly attended the women’s march,” one woman told Self. “Feminism’s big tent isn’t big enough for the anti-abortion movement,” countered a writer for Religion Dispatches.

Margaret Mead, the subject of my next book project, was a Christian, pro-life, and a feminist, but she is typically remembered as none of these things. Both the way she combined these identities and the reasons she gets no credit for the combination speak to our historical moment. Not only is it possible to be a pro-life feminist, she would argue, but it is unchristian—and frankly irresponsible—to be anything else.

Mead’s Christian bona fides were clear. Although her parents were atheists, they allowed young Margaret to explore religion for herself, and at age 11 she chose to join the Episcopal Church. “I enjoyed prayer,” she wrote in her autobiography, Blackberry Winter. “I enjoyed church. I worried over the small size of our congregation.” She remained committed to the church throughout her life. Her first husband was a minister. She taught Sunday school. She served on church-related committees from at least 1927, when she participated in the Women’s Committee on Race Relations (affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches), to the 1970s, when she worked on revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. Following her death in 1978, the House of Bishops approved a Resolution of Thanksgiving for her life and work, noting “her thoughtful service to the Episcopal Church” and “the model of obedience to the will of God as she perceived it and which her life represented.”

[HT: JS]

Surprise surprise: Rick Maese:

The senator leaned in closer, sharing a sheet of paper with the oversized extern seated next to him. Listed was the day’s schedule, groups coming through the office, committee hearings on tap and policy matters that needed to be explored.

“The ones that are highlighted in blue are ones where I’ll be making the full meeting,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., explained. Will Pericak, an offensive lineman for the Seattle Seahawks, nodded. At 300 pounds, Pericak is the biggest person working in Gardner’s office.

Outside the office, official Washington, D.C., was consumed Thursday morning with reports that the attorney general might have met with a Russian ambassador. For at least a moment, though, Gardner’s office was much more focused on the staid details of the day.

“If you follow all the media, you’d think they’re throwing grenades and launching rocks from windows out here,” Pericak said. “Like, everybody’s at each other’s throats. But really, there’s nice people who are working their tails off to make things better.”

Pericak, 27, is one of three NFL players who have been working on Capitol Hill as part of a crash-course three-week externship program run by the NFL Players Association. The union encourages players to spend part of their offseason exploring other career fields, and last month, 41 NFL players were planted with 15 different organizations. While Pericak, Titans‘ lineman Karim Barton and Dion Bailey, a free agent defensive back, are working with elected members of Congress, others are assigned to businesses such as Marriott, Under Armour and Comcast SportsNet.

The trio of football players on the Hill arrived at a particularly unique time in Washington: shortly after President Donald Trump‘s inauguration, as the Senate held confirmation hearings for appointees and the House opened a new session. There’s turnover and change every two years, but the frenetic pace and the political bombast and drama has been turned up several notches.

Bibliotherapy by Ceridwen Dovey:

I worked my way through the books on the list over the next couple of years, at my own pace—interspersed with my own “discoveries”—and while I am fortunate enough to have my ability to withstand terrible grief untested, thus far, some of the insights I gleaned from these books helped me through something entirely different, when, over several months, I endured acute physical pain. The insights themselves are still nebulous, as learning gained through reading fiction often is—but therein lies its power. In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks. Reading fiction makes me lose all sense of self, but at the same time makes me feel most uniquely myself. As Woolf, the most fervent of readers, wrote, a book “splits us into two parts as we read,” for “the state of reading consists in the complete elimination of the ego,” while promising “perpetual union” with another mind.

Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run by an acquaintance, Bagster, in the basement of his church, from where he dispenses reading recommendations with healing value. “Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.”

Today, bibliotherapy takes many different forms, from literature courses run for prison inmates to reading circles for elderly people suffering from dementia. Sometimes it can simply mean one-on-one or group sessions for “lapsed” readers who want to find their way back to an enjoyment of books. Berthoud and her longtime friend and fellow bibliotherapist Susan Elderkin mostly practice “affective” bibliotherapy, advocating the restorative power of reading fiction. The two met at Cambridge University as undergraduates, more than twenty years ago, and bonded immediately over the shared contents of their bookshelves, in particular Italo Calvino’s novel “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller,” which is itself about the nature of reading. As their friendship developed, they began prescribing novels to cure each other’s ailments, such as a broken heart or career uncertainty. “When Suse was having a crisis about her profession—she wanted to be a writer, but was wondering if she could cope with the inevitable rejection—I gave her Don Marquis’s ‘Archy and Mehitabel’ poems,” Berthoud told me. “If Archy the cockroach could be so dedicated to his art as to jump on the typewriter keys in order to write his free-verse poems every night in the New York offices of the Evening Sun, then surely she should be prepared to suffer for her art, too.” Years later, Elderkin gave Berthoud,who wanted to figure out how to balance being a painter and a mother, Patrick Gale’s novel “Notes from an Exhibition,” about a successful but troubled female artist.

My friend Ted Gossard offers us all a good reminder:

February in the United States and Canada is designated Black History Month (October in the United Kingdom). It is important to remember the history of African-Americans, whose recent ancestors were stolen, enslaved, and all too often killed. It is a great error to see this as being “politically correct.” We need to recognize the achievements of those in our family who are African in their origin, as well as the difficulties and evils they encountered, more or less front and center at one time, but now often much more hidden, yet just as real. An example of what is especially a hidden, subtle form of racism is the part of the story in the film Hidden Figures, which wasn’t told.

At the heart of the outcome of the gospel is the destruction of all divisions within humanity, while celebrating the differences through God’s creation (see the book of Revelation, in which every tribe and nation in all their diversity worship God together). The fact that the church seems to make either little or nothing of this at all seems to me to be a grave mistake which needs prayer and correction. The good news of God in Jesus and through his death means a completely open access to God, and also to each other in the sense of living out our oneness as one family in him. There is only one human race, and the difference in ethnicities among us enhance humanity. We need each other, every part of the whole of the one family of humanity.

Now golf rules, and a commentary by Kermit:

The USGA and the R&A announced today that there will be a wholesale change in the Rules of Golf to be implemented at the beginning of 2019. They say there has been no such change of this magnitude for over thirty years. Suggestions will be received until the end of August this year. Then officials will take time in crafting the new rules. Their three main objectives will be to reduce the number of rules, simplify them so that they will be more understandable, and speed up play.

The United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club are the only two rules-governing bodies in golf world. They have been working in tandem together on the Rules of Golf for about half a century. Before that, it wasn’t so. Now, they have proposed some important new rules changes which are not yet permanent. There are presently 34 rules in the rulebook, and they intend to reduce them to 24. Some of the more prominent changes will include the following, with my comments appended…

In the locker room at my swimming pool when I was a kid: “Don’t pee in our pool and we won’t swim in your toilet.” Here’s why.

January 14, 2017

Screen Shot 2017-01-12 at 6.43.14 PM

I was wondering the other day if we ought not to think of election results the way we think of seasonal changes. Up here in Chicago we get Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. For some we are in Winter this presidential election while for others we are in Spring or Summer. Just a thought. Thinking of which, I wonder if four parties might not be better!

Wondering if it worked, aren’t you?

A Brazilian grandmother has been praying to a figurine from Lord of the Rings for years without realising.

The woman thought she was praying to Saint Anthony but it turns out the figure was Elmond, Lord of Rivendell.

Her relative Gabriela Brandao made the discovery and posted it on Facebook with the caption: “The funniest discovery of 2016.”

The post reads: “My daughter’s great-grandmother prays to Saint Anthony every day.”

Image from Facebook/Reader’s Nook

Dear Seth, you’ve got it completely backwards: not part time students, but part time athletes and full time students.

Given players’ rigorous schedules, it is almost impossible for them to get a serious education. In my one season of junior varsity basketball at Penn in 1987–88, my GPA dropped to nearly 2.0. I had never been below 3.0 in my life. And this was almost 30 years ago! A D-I coach I’m friends with sent me a sample schedule for one of his players. Tell me: When would you study?

Nice story of the week, by Andrea Mandell:

Prince William shared his own experiences losing his mother, Princess Diana, when comforting a bereaved child on Wednesday.

During a visit with children and families who have suffered bereavement, William comforted a little girl grieving for her father, telling her he “lost my mummy when I was very young too,” reports People and the Daily Mail.

He and Duchess Kate made the visit to Child Bereavement UK, one of his key causes, in Stratford to mark the center’s one-year anniversary. The center provides support for children and families experiencing the loss of a loved one.

When comforting 9-year-old Aoife, who lost her father to pancreatic cancer six years ago, the prince shared his own story of losing Princess Diana in 1997.

“Do you know what happened to me?” he asked the young girl, according to reports. “You know I lost my mummy when I was very young too. I was (15) and my brother was 12. So we lost our mummy when we were young as well. Do you speak about your daddy? It’s very important to talk about it, very, very important.”

Aoife’s mother, Marie, told reporters she became emotional listening to the exchange. “I couldn’t believe it when he started to talk about his mother. It was very emotional and I was willing myself not to start to cry. I almost did,” she said. “I am telling my children that if they take anything away from this day, it is what he said about how important it is to talk. Kids do not forget that. Sometimes it hurts but we can remember the happy things too. It is so important to talk.”

Helen Ingram, a plea for some sanity about overly zealous feminists:

A couple of years ago the department was called to a meeting to discuss harassment in the workplace. It wasn’t prompted by or directed at anyone in particular, just a friendly chat with a professional on how the male members of the department should behave around women and how they could offer support and encouragement to their female colleagues. The meeting was very cordial and we all agreed that we shared the same desire to support everyone equally and we would strive to ensure that no-one felt disadvantaged, but, by God, things felt awkward afterwards. Some male members of staff, particularly the older members of the department who had known their female colleagues for many years, became so over-sensitised to causing offence that the simplest actions and conversations were painfully awkward and stilted. Colleagues that regularly dealt out mutually received and well-meaning banter began apologising after making the most innocent of comments, they overcompensated to the point of sounding patronising when genuinely attempting to be supportive and they didn’t know whether it was acceptable to enquire about family issues, illnesses or, in one case, congratulate a member of the department on her pregnancy. Far from clipping the wings of Dr. Wandering Hands or Prof. A Women Should Not Have A Profession, the advice that these individuals received caused confusion, it completely killed the relaxed atmosphere in the department and it turned the loveliest of people into socially bungling, terrified bundles of nerves.

I realise that I am lucky to work with a respectful group of people who do not require close scrutiny and criticism of their behaviour while other departments and universities are in desperate need of close attention and direction in order to make their working relationships bearable, however some women in academia take a disproportionately aggressive approach and they produce exceptionally venomous material that is directed towards male academics in general. This approach sits very uncomfortably with me and, if I am honest, their indefensible generalisations make me question whether the issue is as prevalent as they claim or whether they hold university positions or carry out research that relies heavily upon misogyny and harassment existing in the workplace, to which a successful eradication of these behaviours would put them out of a job. If I was a man I would take great offence upon hearing these generalised attacks however it must be extremely difficult to engage with this material as a male, hence I suspect why I am increasingly encountering women working in university departments who, like me, feel sympathy towards our male colleagues who endure criticism by virtue of assumptions made about their gender rather than from their observed behaviour. [HT: JS]

Speaking of universities and professorial sensibilities, this one at Georgetown is ugly:

A former Georgetown professor who wrote an opinion article in support of President-elect Donald Trump has asked the university to intervene after a current Georgetown professor responded with insults and an obscenity on social media.

After Trump was elected in November, Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and a co-founder of a Muslim advocacy group, wrote a Washington Post article titled, “I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump.” On Thursday, Nomani filed a formal complaint with the university, alleging discrimination and harassment after comments made by Christine Fair, an associate professor in Georgetown’s School for Foreign Service.

“I am a single mother who can’t afford health insurance under Obamacare,” wrote Nomani, who taught at Georgetown from 2008 to 2012. “As a liberal Muslim who has experienced, firsthand, Islamic extremism in this world, I have been opposed to the decision by President Obama and the Democratic Party to tap dance around the ‘Islam’ in Islamic State.”

On Nov. 22, Fair responded to the post on Twitter.

“I’ve written you off as a human being,” Fair wrote in one message detailed in the complaint. “Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don’t you understand, you clueless dolt?” Fair wrote, later adding: “YOU publicly voted for a sex assailant.” She went on to say that Nomani “pimped herself out to all media outlets because she was a ‘Muslim woman who voted for Trump.’ ” [HT: CHG]

Sean Rossman:

Who did the better impersonation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon or 8-year-old Michele Threefoot?

Sorry, Kate, but the Washington, D.C.-area third grader slayed so severely in her RBG get-up that the 83-year-old judge sent her a letter.

Krista Threefoot said her daughter had read and re-read, “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark,” a picture book of the justice’s lifetime of standing up for what she believes in.

“Michele really identified with many of the stories related in the book,” Krista said. “She gets fired up over injustice, especially when it has to do with girls not having the same opportunities as boys do.”

So when Michele’s school hosted Superhero Day, she forewent the traditional imposing female characters and decided to go with the pint-sized justice, complete with her thick eyeglass frames.

“When superhero day came around, it just clicked,” Krista said. “She isn’t really interested in Marvel or other superheroes, but she knew of a real life superhero so she went with that.”

Interesting research on the election.

This simply makes no sense: elected government officials actually do reflect the voter base and its choices. That’s how it works. This writer, Amanda Marcotte, wants some kind of proportional representation, which means she doesn’t want the voting mechanism of our democracy.

Most people know that Congress, unfortunately, doesn’t look like the country. It’s more male, it’s whiter, it’s more Republican. But a new Pew Research Center reporthighlights another way that Congress doesn’t accurately reflect the people they are sent to represent: Congressmembers are far more Christian than the nation at large.

Only 71 percent of Americans now identify as Christian, but a whopping 91 percent of elected members of Congress members, according to the Pew report, consider themselves Christian. The gap between Christian and non-Christian isn’t due to underrepresentation of faiths like Islam, Hinduism or Judaism, however. The gap appears to stem entirely from underrepresentation of the religiously nonaffiliated.

“The analysis finds that some religious groups, including Protestants, Catholics and Jews, have greater representation in Congress than in the general population,” Aleksandra Sandstorm writes in the Pew Research Center explication of the findings. “The group that is most notably underrepresented is the religiously unaffiliated. This group – also known as religious ‘nones’ – now accounts for 23% of the general public but just 0.2% of Congress.”

There’s only one member of Congress, Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who identifies as religiously unaffiliated.

“It’s very dismaying to see this gap between representatives and the people they represent,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, the co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said over the phone. “A quarter of the population that has one person that supposedly represents us.”

[If she pays attention to the pretense of politicians when it comes to piety, she might just be more satisfied for plenty are piety-in-political-rhetoric but nones-in-practice. Her model might H.L. Mencken.]

December 28, 2016

Jesus Creed Book of the Year

Screen Shot 2016-12-03 at 9.14.17 AMJon M. Levenson, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

I have not yet blogged about this brilliant Jewish scholar’s book but I read it recently and it zoomed to the top of the list for this year’s award. The book zeroes in on the significance of connecting love (in the Shema) to the covenant, the covenant to ancient near eastern treaties, but even behind that treaty to family relationships — hence, love is not only the active life of living up to the covenant but also affective. Levenson is one of the masters of biblical scholarship; he’s a master of not only of the Old Testament but also of rabbinic studies so that he takes the idea of love from the origins all the way into helpful clarifications in the rabbis. Loved this book; I’m sure you will to.

My second Book of the Year is Ruth Tucker, Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife: My Story of Finding Hope after Domestic Abuse. I cannot say I loved this book; I can say it mesmerized me and pierced me about what the church needs to be doing more and more. It made me admire Ruth for finally telling her story. One cannot read Ruth’s book without being changed and challenged.  It is in other words the Worst Great Book of the Year for the Jesus Creed blog.

Church History

Enter the Bible, and in particular, the American Bible Society, and it should not take long to see in the picture to the right an open Bible in one hand and American flag in the other. A recent and exceptional book by Messiah College historian, John Fea, called The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society, tells this story through one institution — the American Bible society — but in so doing Fea demonstrates the constant intersection of Bible and nation building. I recommend this book for all churches and for all schools, colleges and universities. The impact of the ABS is of magnitudes and often enough totally unknown. Fea is an exceptional historian of the church in America. His expertise in connecting ABS to American church history is all over this book. Those who read the New Testament in Greek or the Old Testament in Hebrew or the Septuagint in Greek read from an ABS or United Bible Societies produced edition. Many of the most important tools used in Bible studies today were produced by or in cooperation with the ABS. Every major translation of the Bible today translates the Hebrew and Greek texts produced in conjunction with ABS and UBS. This alone justifies the importance of knowing the story told by Fea.

Biblical Studies

Screen Shot 2016-12-03 at 9.26.47 AMThree books battled my mind for top billing in Biblical studies, and I chose to exclude all commentaries for this category of books. But one book rose to the top because I think it shed light not only on the Bible but the first 2-3 centuries of church history, and that is Larry Hurtado’s Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. Here we find Hurtado exploring what made the Christians distinct — not unique for they always were like their environment in so many ways — and he explores such topics as faith, identity, bookishness, and behavior (or ethics). Destroyer of the gods is simply a delight to read. My thanks too to Carey Newman at Baylor University Press for acquiring and publishing books like this.

How we read the Bible, which also entails how we connect Bible to the world and to the state (in this election year especially), ought to shape our theology more, and because he has done this well I give special mention to John Nugent, Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church. This book creates a special new shape to the Bible’s narrative while it keeps its eyes on the implications of how we read that narrative for how the church is understood. Nugent courageously keeps his eye on the centrality of the church.

This year I became aware of Vashti McKenzie’s excellent examination of the African American woman’s experience in the church, Not Without a Struggle: Leadership for African American Women in Ministry. The white evangelical woman’s struggle for a voice in the church is not the same as the African American woman’s or the Asian American woman’s or the Latin American woman’s. I don’t believe the African American church is part of American evangelicalism, and I believe that American evangelicalism is a white church movement that at times (and only at times) includes African Americans. Especially when it wants to look inclusive. But dig into the back rooms where decisions are made and where cultures are formed and you discover that, no matter how hard some white leaders try, the culture formed is a white evangelical culture.

Every year Tom Wright writes something that everyone talks about and reads, and this year it is his reframing of the doctrine of atonement into a Passover-shaped narrative. The book is The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Many pastors and lay folks loved Wright’s Surprised by Hope and this book matches that book in connection to the troubled mind of many on how we talk about the cross. As always, a fairly easy read while Wright seeks to undo the damage of some unfortunate moves in the history of atonement theory.

One must send up a bright flag for the sudden appearance — Marilynne Robinson-like — of two new books by E.P. Sanders: both Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters and Thought as well as his Comparing Judaism and Christianity: Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and Outer in Ancient Religion deserve pride of place. But, too, Fortress reprinted his amazing study Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE — 66 CE. I read everything Sanders writes so these are a feast for me.

Beverly Gaventa has whetted my appetite for her forthcoming Romans commentary by putting her Earle Lectures into print in the aptly titled When in Romans. Here are three well written studies/chapters, each of which illustrates the potency of the apocalyptic Paul approach to reading Paul. I will be doing more with Beverly’s book on this blog shortly.

Jesus Studies

I am not as conversant with the constant publication of books in historical Jesus studies anymore, but I was asked to read one for review in Interpretation and I found Brant Pitre’s Jesus and the Last Supper a delightful read, but even more both a precisionist’s delight when it comes to methodological proposals as well as a theological adventure. I had a good conversation with Brant and Matthew Bates (whose Salvation by Allegiance Alone is coming out this Spring — and it is one worth ordering in advance and reading as soon as it hits the mailbox) in San Antonio, two young scholars with gobs to offer to the church and academy. I confess I have not yet read Bates’s new The Birth of the Trinity, though I will in 2017.

Commentary of the Year

Screen Shot 2016-12-03 at 9.29.09 AMIt is all but impossible to blog through a commentary without it becoming a 40 part series, but all year long Marianne Meye Thompson’s exceptional New Testament Library commentary on John has been percolating on my desk waiting to be mentioned. But John: A Commentary has been the best commentary I’ve read this year. Exquisitely written, theologically sensitive, conversant with the literature without letting it get in the way, useful for the pastor, the student and the serious Bible reader — well I could go on but this is one for your shelf and you can remove two or three others if you have this one!

Three, OK four, more commentaries get my commendation, beginning with the re-issue of my teacher’s, James D.G. Dunn’s splendid, readable and brief commentary on the Acts of the Apostles: The Acts of the Apostles. (I wrote the foreword.)

Along with Dunn, mention needs to be made of three new Story of God Bible Commentaries on the Bible. Michael Bird’s robust and path-finding-between-the-options Romans, Mark Roberts’ pastorally ready and theologically excellent Ephesians, and Tremper Longman’s judicious study Genesis.

I make no pretense of saying “these are the best books of the year” but only “these are the best books I read this year.”

Science and Faith (RJS)

For those who wonder why most scientists (including Christians) are adamant about the vast age of the earth, a group of primarily Christian scientists have crafted a book with full color pictures and essays presenting their scientific and Christian view of the canyon, The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon? The book is easy to read (not heavy in scientific jargon), with abundant pictures and diagrams to educate Christians about geology and the shortcomings of flood geology.

How to Read Job by John Walton and Tremper Longman III. Although technically not a “science and faith” book it does contain a nice discussion of ancient cosmology and the problems arising from natural processes such as genetic mutations in creation.  I have been leading a discussion using this as a guide – with excellent response … comments like “finally the book of Job makes sense.”

December 27, 2016

How to Read Job (2)We’ve been looking at How to Read Job by John Walton and Tremper Longman III. The first three sections of the book focus on Job in its ancient Near Eastern audience. As Old Testament scholars, both Longman and Walton agree that a meaning detached from the ancient context will necessarily go awry. As Christians, however, we believe that there is more to the text than the ancient audience realized.

After all, now Job appears in a broader context – the canon – and we need to read the book in light of the whole canon, including the New Testament. The New Testament gives us an inspired continuation of the story of redemption that goes back to Genesis; thus we can look back on the earlier story in the context of its continuation. (p. 148)

This is something like reading a novel, especially a good mystery novel or watching a movie or TV show.. The clues present in the early part of the story make more sense when the outcome is known. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets (i.e. the Old Testament). Luke 24, along with other passages in Paul and the Gospel’s make this point. Thus, for Christians it is important to consider the Old Testament in the context of this fulfillment. Walton and Longman give some guidelines. (These are paraphrased from p. 150-151.)

  1. Always begin by reading the Old Testament passage in the context of its original setting before reading it from the perspective of the New Testament.
  2. Christ’s relationship to the OT is more than a handful of Messianic prophecies – but we should also be careful of seeing Christ everywhere.
  3. There must be an organic connection between the OT and its christological significance. (“Organic” needs some discussion.)
  4. The NT citations of the OT are not always based on a historical-grammatical reading of the OT. These are in keeping with first century methods of interpretation.
  5. Different books and even different parts of the same book may point to Christ in different ways.
  6. The connection can be on a thematic level – like the connection of Christ with wisdom and the importance of wisdom in Job.
  7. We must reflect intellectual humility when describing connections not clearly expressed in the NT.

762px-The_Vision_of_Christ_Butts_setI know that my redeemer lives? Well, yes … but not in connection with Job. Both Longman and Walton argue that it is not correct to identify Jesus with the redeemer desired by Job. Jesus is not an advocate arguing a case before an angry God (Job’s desire) … he is God’s Messiah to redeem the world.

An important connection between Job and Christian faith is found in the answer to the question “do we fear God for nothing?” Do we worship and follow God’s ways for the good we get or because he is God?

God never promises that those who follow Jesus will live pain-free lives. Indeed the Christian disciple is one who will follow the example of the sufferings of Jesus and be willing to “take up the cross” of sufferings in this life: “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:38-39) The Christian life, according to Paul, is one of joy, but a joy in the midst of suffering. … Paul models proper discipleship, which is relationship with God, not for the goodies but because of his love of God. (p. 154)

Who is wise? The book of Job, in the wisdom literature of the OT, addresses this question.

Only God is truly wise, and that is his point when he confronts Job from the whirlwind in Job 38-42, a conclusion that is anticipated in Job 28 and that is recognized by Job when he sees rather than simply hears Yahweh. As a result, in the midst of suffering Job submits to the wisdom and power of Yahweh (Job 42:1-6). (P. 156)

In both the Gospels and the epistles we read of the connection of Jesus with the wisdom of God. Here we should understand a connection between the book of Job and Christian faith.

Jesus is the very epitome of God’s wisdom. Jesus is the answer to the question of where we find wisdom. When the book of Job asserts the wisdom of God, the Christian understands a that Jesus displays God’s wisdom in all its abundance. (p. 157)

Although Job is righteous and an innocent sufferer (the prologue and epilogue make this clear), the comparison with Jesus is incomplete. Jesus was righteous in everything, not in need of sacrifice and repentance. In addition, Jesus suffered voluntarily for the sins of the world. Job’s suffering was involuntary and individual.

Jesus is the ultimate answer to suffering. But this answer, other than trusting in the wisdom of God, is not expressed in the book of Job. Job teaching us that suffering can originate from sin (our own or that of others), because the world is fallen, or can simply originate from the nature of the unordered world. Suffering can have purpose – but not necessarily. We, like Job, are to persevere with the steadfast endurance of Behemoth.

The book of Job teaches us that we should not always expect easy answers; that we should not put ourselves in God’s shoes expecting to understand all of his ways. In his preeminent wisdom, God does not rule the cosmos according to his justice. The retribution principle is not some absolute law according to which the cosmos operates. Our appropriate response is to trust in God’s wisdom whether we understand or not, and to follow his ways because he is God rather than for some anticipated benefit.

What messages do we, as Christians, take from the book of Job?

How do these differ from the message understood by the original audience?

What answers should we expect from Job?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

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