Some things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving:
For not needing too many of the things that are safely stored in a warehouse in South Carolina, and for being able find - fairly quickly - the couple of things that we did need to retrieve while we were back on campus recently!
For the opportunity to visit with classmates and friends on campus at this point in our internship year. Sometimes we need to be reassured that we are not the only ones challenged by this process! The fellowship and community we find with our classmates and in the church are certainly signs of God’s grace.
For patient tenants, since the much-needed new dishwasher won’t fit without some modifications to the kitchen counters. (The previous owners didn’t plan ahead sufficiently when they remodeled the kitchen.) I am reminded of how often my plans don’t take into account the bigger picture or the long-term view.
For a precious two year old who reaches up her arms to me and says “I want to hold you.” She reminds me of how I reach out to God to be held and comforted, trusting that he will indeed reach down and pick me up and hold me close in love.
For children who are patient and generous even though some of our roles have been reversed. (Now we visit them when we are in town!) I suspect that “Honor your father and mother” has taken on a significantly new meaning.
For thirty years of marriage to a loving, supportive spouse who shares not only so much of my past but also looks forward with me to an exciting future as we continue to discern God’s plans and prepare for ordained ministry.
For friends and family who read this blog and stay in touch via phone or email, even though we are far away on internship. Your love, encouragement, and support make a huge difference.
This is certainly not an all-inclusive list, but simply things that came to mind as I contemplated the meaning of Thanksgiving this week. Hope we can each take time to contemplate the things - both large and small- that we are grateful for and give our heartfelt thanks to God.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
The Shema
I am not usually one to post full sermons, but this one received some strong (favorable) reaction, so I though I would post it for your reaction. As a student, it is always interesting to hear the reactions of others – to see if the same points that strike me affect others. The texts for this day are the LBW lectionary for the 24th Sunday in Pentecost.
Mark 12:28-31 28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. {29 Or the Lord our God is one Lord} 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' {30 Deut. 6:4,5} 31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' {31 Lev. 19:18} There is no commandment greater than these." (NIV)
In our Gospel text for today, Jesus is asked one of those questions – one of those questions that, under some circumstances, might be considered a trap. In this case, a scribe is actually agreeing with Jesus. He knows that Jesus has answered correctly – according to scripture, if not according to current politics. Since Jesus seems to be on a roll, the scribe asks him a question of his own – what is the greatest commandment?
Jesus, having been raised as a good Jewish boy, answered in the way he was taught – by reciting the Shema. Listen to this in Hebrew. Jesus may have said it in Hebrew, or in Greek, but most likely in Aramaic.
Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4 )
This is the beginning of the Shema.
Sh'ma Yisrael – Hear, O Israel –means to hear and listen, hear and obey.
Listen up! This is important!!!
This is important to hear – and to obey –
to not hear and obey is to imperil your very life!
Adonai Elohaynu – the LORD is our God
Not Baal, not the goddess – the great I AM is our God
Adonai Echad – the LORD alone
There is only one God, and Him alone do we serve.
The Shema was, and is, a profession of faith – to be taught in the synagogue, to be taught and recited at home, to be written on the hearts of each son and daughter of Israel. Not only on their hearts, but on their houses, and written on tiny scrolls and bound to their hands and forehead. The Shema is so important that every person who professed faith in the God of Israel was to know this, to memorize it, and to live by it.
The Shema includes two commandments – what Jesus calls the most important. The first is to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This command – to love with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, is a command to love with all of your being, all of your existence, all that you are. Nothing less is acceptable.
When Martin Luther first began visiting neighboring parishes, he discovered that no one knew the commandments – no one knew the creeds of the church – many did not know the Lord’s prayer. He wrote, in his preface to his Small Catechism:
"1] The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare [publish] this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form.
2] Mercy! Good God! what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach [so much so, that one is ashamed to speak of it]. 3] Nevertheless, all maintain that they are Christians, have been baptized and receive the [common] holy Sacraments. Yet they [do not understand and] cannot [even] recite either the Lord’s Prayer, or the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live like dumb brutes and irrational hogs; and yet, now that the Gospel has come, they have nicely learned to abuse all liberty like experts. "
This is the nicer part of what Luther wrote on the subject. Like the Shema, Luther wanted the basics of the Christian faith written in a simple way so that everyone could learn them, pastors could teach them in church, parents could teach them at home, so that all would know and live by the most basic of all Christian doctrines – the 10 commandments, the Creeds, and the Lord’s Prayer. For almost 500 years, Luther’s Small Catechism has been our way of writing God’s commands on our hearts, and on our doorframes, our way of binding the Word to our hands and our foreheads.
This first commandment – to love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength – this is to know the commandments that God gave us, to remember all that God has done for us, to remember the covenant he made with Abraham.
The second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. This might be the more difficult of the two commandments. It brings up questions of who is our neighbor? Is it that guy next door who plays loud music all night? Is it the woman in the next apartment who always takes my parking space? Is it that co-worker that you just can’t seem to get along with?
How much do I love myself? If I don’t even like myself very much, how can I love my neighbor? If I don’t like my neighbor, how can I love him or her?
What does it mean to love my neighbor? Do I have to like them? Do I have to speak to them? If I just put on my best suit and find my neighbor out on the street, struggling to change a flat tire, do I have to stop and help them? If my neighbor needs money to pay a bill, do I have to help him? If my neighbor is starving and I have food, do I have to share?
These, and many other questions come up. What is the answer?
One of my jobs in my former life was as a customer service manager. As with any profession, there certain maxims that go with the job. In customer service, there are two rules: Rule number one – the customer is always right. Rule number two – if in doubt, see rule number one.
When Jesus talks about the Great Commandment, he gives it to us in a similar fashion. Rule number one: Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Rule number two: Love your neighbor as your self. If you don’t understand how to do this, see rule number one.
To love the LORD our God with all of our being is to love so much, that loving our neighbor is automatic. When we see someone in need, we reach out and help. When we see someone who is hungry, we feed him or her. When we see someone in need of clothing, we clothe him or her.
This is what Jesus meant when he told the scribe that he was not far from the kingdom of God. When this kind of love becomes automatic, when we help without asking why, when we give because we can, then – and only then – are we “not far from the kingdom of God.”
As we gather with family and friends today, and again on Thanksgiving Day, remember that God has commanded us to love him – with all of our being – and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
God does this because he first loved us – so much that he sent his only Son – Jesus – the messiah – to die on the cross for our sins, and to be raised up on the third day.
We can be thankful because God first loved us, came down and became flesh, and lived among us. We can be thankful because in the waters of baptism, we are washed clean, our sins forgiven. We can be thankful because we can come to this table, receive the body and blood of Christ Jesus, and be renewed. We can be thankful because of all that God has done for us – not be cause we deserve it; not because we asked for it; not because of anything we have done; but because God first loved us. Thanks be to God!
Mark 12:28-31 28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. {29 Or the Lord our God is one Lord} 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' {30 Deut. 6:4,5} 31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' {31 Lev. 19:18} There is no commandment greater than these." (NIV)
In our Gospel text for today, Jesus is asked one of those questions – one of those questions that, under some circumstances, might be considered a trap. In this case, a scribe is actually agreeing with Jesus. He knows that Jesus has answered correctly – according to scripture, if not according to current politics. Since Jesus seems to be on a roll, the scribe asks him a question of his own – what is the greatest commandment?
Jesus, having been raised as a good Jewish boy, answered in the way he was taught – by reciting the Shema. Listen to this in Hebrew. Jesus may have said it in Hebrew, or in Greek, but most likely in Aramaic.
Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4 )
This is the beginning of the Shema.
Sh'ma Yisrael – Hear, O Israel –means to hear and listen, hear and obey.
Listen up! This is important!!!
This is important to hear – and to obey –
to not hear and obey is to imperil your very life!
Adonai Elohaynu – the LORD is our God
Not Baal, not the goddess – the great I AM is our God
Adonai Echad – the LORD alone
There is only one God, and Him alone do we serve.
The Shema was, and is, a profession of faith – to be taught in the synagogue, to be taught and recited at home, to be written on the hearts of each son and daughter of Israel. Not only on their hearts, but on their houses, and written on tiny scrolls and bound to their hands and forehead. The Shema is so important that every person who professed faith in the God of Israel was to know this, to memorize it, and to live by it.
The Shema includes two commandments – what Jesus calls the most important. The first is to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This command – to love with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, is a command to love with all of your being, all of your existence, all that you are. Nothing less is acceptable.
When Martin Luther first began visiting neighboring parishes, he discovered that no one knew the commandments – no one knew the creeds of the church – many did not know the Lord’s prayer. He wrote, in his preface to his Small Catechism:
"1] The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare [publish] this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form.
2] Mercy! Good God! what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach [so much so, that one is ashamed to speak of it]. 3] Nevertheless, all maintain that they are Christians, have been baptized and receive the [common] holy Sacraments. Yet they [do not understand and] cannot [even] recite either the Lord’s Prayer, or the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live like dumb brutes and irrational hogs; and yet, now that the Gospel has come, they have nicely learned to abuse all liberty like experts. "
This is the nicer part of what Luther wrote on the subject. Like the Shema, Luther wanted the basics of the Christian faith written in a simple way so that everyone could learn them, pastors could teach them in church, parents could teach them at home, so that all would know and live by the most basic of all Christian doctrines – the 10 commandments, the Creeds, and the Lord’s Prayer. For almost 500 years, Luther’s Small Catechism has been our way of writing God’s commands on our hearts, and on our doorframes, our way of binding the Word to our hands and our foreheads.
This first commandment – to love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength – this is to know the commandments that God gave us, to remember all that God has done for us, to remember the covenant he made with Abraham.
The second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. This might be the more difficult of the two commandments. It brings up questions of who is our neighbor? Is it that guy next door who plays loud music all night? Is it the woman in the next apartment who always takes my parking space? Is it that co-worker that you just can’t seem to get along with?
How much do I love myself? If I don’t even like myself very much, how can I love my neighbor? If I don’t like my neighbor, how can I love him or her?
What does it mean to love my neighbor? Do I have to like them? Do I have to speak to them? If I just put on my best suit and find my neighbor out on the street, struggling to change a flat tire, do I have to stop and help them? If my neighbor needs money to pay a bill, do I have to help him? If my neighbor is starving and I have food, do I have to share?
These, and many other questions come up. What is the answer?
One of my jobs in my former life was as a customer service manager. As with any profession, there certain maxims that go with the job. In customer service, there are two rules: Rule number one – the customer is always right. Rule number two – if in doubt, see rule number one.
When Jesus talks about the Great Commandment, he gives it to us in a similar fashion. Rule number one: Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Rule number two: Love your neighbor as your self. If you don’t understand how to do this, see rule number one.
To love the LORD our God with all of our being is to love so much, that loving our neighbor is automatic. When we see someone in need, we reach out and help. When we see someone who is hungry, we feed him or her. When we see someone in need of clothing, we clothe him or her.
This is what Jesus meant when he told the scribe that he was not far from the kingdom of God. When this kind of love becomes automatic, when we help without asking why, when we give because we can, then – and only then – are we “not far from the kingdom of God.”
As we gather with family and friends today, and again on Thanksgiving Day, remember that God has commanded us to love him – with all of our being – and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
God does this because he first loved us – so much that he sent his only Son – Jesus – the messiah – to die on the cross for our sins, and to be raised up on the third day.
We can be thankful because God first loved us, came down and became flesh, and lived among us. We can be thankful because in the waters of baptism, we are washed clean, our sins forgiven. We can be thankful because we can come to this table, receive the body and blood of Christ Jesus, and be renewed. We can be thankful because of all that God has done for us – not be cause we deserve it; not because we asked for it; not because of anything we have done; but because God first loved us. Thanks be to God!
Friday, November 17, 2006
Lost in space...
I tried to post to the blog the other day, but lost it between one mouse click and the next. It seems, that for as technical as I am, to be my curse to discover new ways of losing electronic documents in new and exciting ways.
The worst part of it is that I really don’t remember all of what I wrote. It was late, I was on my son’s computer, and when the words were deleted from the screen, they were apparently deleted from my brain as well. Based on conversation with another blogging friend, I will write post in a new way – they will be written in a Word document (with frequent saves) and then copied and pasted into the blog entry screen. This may take some of the challenge out of it, but it will hopefully remove some of the frustrations as well.
As to why I was trying to post the other night – mostly because it has been awhile. A couple of phone calls, a run-in with someone who reads the blog and commented that we had not posted anything new recently, and the realization that it is almost Thanksgiving and we have not done an update for a while. Yes – we have been busy. Our internship project has meshed well into a project we are doing with LDR – Congregational Preparedness, but it is also turning out to require a lot of time. While the terms of our project (as far as the seminary is concerned) are for us to finish it this year (before Aug 07), the reality is that we need to finish most of the work by the end of November (in just a couple of weeks).
The nature of our internship with LDR is that we are working in multiple departments, so that we gain experience in several areas of disaster response. For October and November, the focus has been on congregational preparedness – which is also our project. Hence, a lot of work has been done on the project. In addition, we are doing the first trial run of our presentation on congregational preparedness the week after Thanksgiving! That means that most of our research has to be done and our presentation has to be in a pretty complete first draft – Power Point slides, handouts, and all by Nov 28! The part of the project that goes to the seminary is a written paper discussion the project, how it went, results, etc. That part does not have to be done for a while, but since letters starting going out to congregations this week, asking them to let us come and do the presentation, we have to be ready to go soon.
I would like to think that once the presentation is ready, things will slow down a little, but the reality is that then we begin Advent, along with a new department at LDR, holiday preparations, etc., etc. We might even be doing some presentations in early December! I don’t think we will slow down again until next August – just in time to start classes again.
The worst part of it is that I really don’t remember all of what I wrote. It was late, I was on my son’s computer, and when the words were deleted from the screen, they were apparently deleted from my brain as well. Based on conversation with another blogging friend, I will write post in a new way – they will be written in a Word document (with frequent saves) and then copied and pasted into the blog entry screen. This may take some of the challenge out of it, but it will hopefully remove some of the frustrations as well.
As to why I was trying to post the other night – mostly because it has been awhile. A couple of phone calls, a run-in with someone who reads the blog and commented that we had not posted anything new recently, and the realization that it is almost Thanksgiving and we have not done an update for a while. Yes – we have been busy. Our internship project has meshed well into a project we are doing with LDR – Congregational Preparedness, but it is also turning out to require a lot of time. While the terms of our project (as far as the seminary is concerned) are for us to finish it this year (before Aug 07), the reality is that we need to finish most of the work by the end of November (in just a couple of weeks).
The nature of our internship with LDR is that we are working in multiple departments, so that we gain experience in several areas of disaster response. For October and November, the focus has been on congregational preparedness – which is also our project. Hence, a lot of work has been done on the project. In addition, we are doing the first trial run of our presentation on congregational preparedness the week after Thanksgiving! That means that most of our research has to be done and our presentation has to be in a pretty complete first draft – Power Point slides, handouts, and all by Nov 28! The part of the project that goes to the seminary is a written paper discussion the project, how it went, results, etc. That part does not have to be done for a while, but since letters starting going out to congregations this week, asking them to let us come and do the presentation, we have to be ready to go soon.
I would like to think that once the presentation is ready, things will slow down a little, but the reality is that then we begin Advent, along with a new department at LDR, holiday preparations, etc., etc. We might even be doing some presentations in early December! I don’t think we will slow down again until next August – just in time to start classes again.
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