Category Archives: Theology

An Acrostic on Jazz improvisation

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Steve Shoemaker sent this today after learning that Ted Godbout, an outstanding jazz pianist, is joining us at Shepherd of the Hill Church in Chaska.

PENTECOST
(TO BE READ ALOUD)
An Acrostic

Perhaps a jazz improvisation says

Exactly what is thinkable about

New life, fresh breath…the Holy Spirit. Has

There ever been a music without doubt

Except jazz? Faith, improvisation cause

Circles of sound to rise and fly throughout

Our cosmos. Tongues of flame are seen on heads

Singing or playing solos. Then without

Time passing–a new language: Jesus! Jazz!

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL

Thick heads and the deeper truth

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Micah 6:8

“God has told you people what is good–
and what the Lord requires of you:
do justice, love mercy,
and walk humbly with your God.”
…
One third of the Jewish Bible
is in poetry:
all the prophets, all the proverbs,
Job and all the Psalms.
Fables, sagas, metaphors–we
take it literally?
No, its truth is deeper, wider
than the sea. Our souls
leap or cry, our hearts sing or sigh.
…
We are called to act by holy
words in parallel:
every idea is repeated–
image, example,
contrast…thick heads hit again and
yet again. As sheep
we need a good shepherd or we
stray. For us to keep
ten commandments we need poetry.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 4, 2013

Of humanity, earth, and teshuvah

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by Gordon C. Stewart, Feb. 27, 2013. Copyright

The Gospel reading for next Sunday tells of Jesus speaking about terrorism and violence, and an urgent invitation to turn.

Some people tell Jesus “about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” The speakers seem to be contrasting the Galileans – known for their armed resistance to Roman rule – and the Jerusalemites. Jesus himself is a Galilean! As often happens, the non-Galileans are putting him to the test, and as he does so often and so ably, Jesus the Galilean Jewish rabbi begins by appearing to agree with their prejudice. He asks whether these violent Galileans were any different from the rest of the Galileans. One can almost hear the applause from the more sophisticated Jerusalemites.

Then he quickly shifts ground to a scene in Jerusalem. He asks them whether the eighteen saboteurs “upon the tower of Siloam fell, and slew them, do you think they were worse sinners than all others in Jerusalem? No,” he says, “but unless you (plural) reform/ repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Here is the text in an unfamiliar form from The Orthodox Jewish Bible (OJB) Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2011 by Artists for Israel International.

Lukas 13:1-9

1 Now on the same occasion there were some present reporting to Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach about the men of the Galil whose blood Pilate mixed with their zevakhim (sacrifices).

2 And, in reply, Moshiach said, Do you think that these men of the Galil were greater chote’im (sinners) than all others of the Galil, because they suffered this shud (misfortune)?

3 Lo (no), I say, but unless you make teshuva, you will all likewise perish.

4 Or do you think that those shmonah asar (eighteen) upon whom the migdal (tower) in Shiloach fell and killed them, do you think that they were greater chote’im (sinners) than all the Bnei Adam living in Yerushalayim?

5 Lo (no), I tell you, but unless you make teshuva, you will all likewise perish.

6 And Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach was speaking this mashal. A certain man had an etz te’enah (fig tree) which had been planted in his kerem, and he came seeking pri (fruit) on it, and he did not find any. [YESHAYAH 5:2; YIRMEYAH 8:13]

7 So he said to the keeper of the kerem, Hinei shalosh shanim (three years) I come seeking pri on this etz te’enah (fig tree) and I do not find any. Therefore, cut it down! Why is it even using up the adamah (ground)?

8 But in reply he says to him, Adoni, leave it also this year, until I may dig around it and may throw fertilizer [dung] on it,

9 And if indeed it produces pri in the future, tov me’od (very well); otherwise, you will cut down it [Ro 11:23].

The “mashal” (a familiar proverb or parable) he re-interprets is already part of his and his hearers’ self-understanding from Yeshayah (Isaiah) 5:2; Yirmeyah (Jeremiah) 8:13.

Reading the text in a form much closer to the original context of Jesus’ linguistic-religious-cultural-political-economic context serves to awaken me to hear it with new ears.

Jesus is speaking about collective social life – politics, economics, religion, resistance, keeping the faith. He is calling for thorough-going societal transformation – from blaming others (the Galileans) to looking in the mirror to be startled by the log that is in one’s own eye, individually and collectively: the underlying violence in our way of being in the world, taking up “ground” on this beautiful planet.

In Hebrew Scripture the human species, Adam, is derived from Adamah – earth, soil, dirt, ground. We, the fig tree, are here to produce sweet figs.

The Owner of the vineyard with the barren fig tree shows two traits in this Mashal: disappointment and frustration (“Why is it even using up the ground?”) and the extraordinary patience that allows it more time to produce the sweet fruit for which it was created.

As I look out to the world outside, and as I look in the mirror in the morning, I feel a tiny shiver of G-d’s frustration and long-suffering with the likes of us. I wonder what it will take before we see the reflection of ourselves and our way of the violence of terrorists. Are they any different from the rest of the people in the Galil, Yerushalayim, Chaska, or Washington, D.C.? When and how shall we make teshuvah?

Stand and Fight?

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“Views from the Edge” exists to promote public discussion of critical public issues. It’s not often that we post something from the NRA, but this one needs to be read by everyone who cares about the future of the United States of America. The “Stand and Fight” campaign announced in this piece is a call to arms. It assumes impending chaos. Readers of Views from the Edge rarely hear it from the horse’s mouth.

I invite readers to listen very carefully to what is said and what is not said – what is written between or below the lines – and the tone of how it’s said.
If you haven’t already read today’s earlier post – “The Common Ground Beneath the Gun Debate” – you might want to swing by it before or after you read this column by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Click “Stand and Fight” to read how the NRA sees responsible life in our times.

Then post on “Views from the Edge” what you think you saw and heard. Thanks for coming by.

Into the Cocoon of Sorrow

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The return of the prodigal son - Rembrandt drawing

The return of the prodigal son – Rembrandt drawing

During seven years as Executive Director of the Legal Rights Center, Inc. a nonprofit public defense corporation founded in 1970 by American Indian and African-American civil rights leaders, there were sacred moments when the lawyers would call me in to meet a suicidal client in a jail cell. Sometimes the person in the cell was guilty of murder or manslaughter. They were beside themselves. All I could do was be there with them as a kind of quiet presence of hope and the possibility of forgiveness and new life.

I knew then that we were sitting right in the middle of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Gospel of Luke 15:11-32). In Jesus’ parable, the son, who has convinced his generous father into giving him his inheritance before his father’s death, has squandered it all, and, after finding himself in desperation, eating the left-overs in the pig sty of “the far country”, he staggers home to his father. He comes beating his breast with remorse and shame. “But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him,” and orders the finest robe for him and a magnificent feast to celebrate his son’s return from “the far country.” When the older brother who has stayed home obediently objects, the father of the two sons declares: “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, but is alive, was lost, and is found!”

Only after returning to parish ministry did I discover The Book of Common Prayer’s rite for the reconciliation of a penitent that is constructed on the story of the return of the son to the father. For those in the bowels of despair, remorse, and guilt, there is no word from inside one’s own self that can crack open the cocoon of horror, self-disgust, and condemnation. When I found this rite, it moved me deeply. I adapted parts of it for the Prayer of Confession in morning worship at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.

RITE FOR THE RECONCILIATION OF A PENITENT from The Book of Common Prayer (The Episcopal Church)

The priest and penitent begin as follows

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness;
in your great compassion blot out my offenses.
Wash me through and through from my wickedness,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions only too well,
and my sin is ever before me.

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One,
have mercy upon us.

Penitent: Pray for me, a sinner.

Priest: May God in his love enlighten your heart, that you may remember in truth all your sins and his unfailing mercy. Amen.

The Priest may then say one or more of these or other appropriate verses of Scripture, first saying:: Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him.

Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Matthew 11:28

This is a true saying, and worthy of all to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I Timothy 1:13

If any man sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and nor for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. I John 2:1-2

The Priest then continues:

Now, in the presence of Christ, and of me, his minister, confess your sins with a humble and obedient heart to Almighty God, our Creator and our Redeemer.

The Penitent says:

Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed me from the dust in your image and likeness, and redeemed me from sin and death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ. Through the water of baptism you clothed me with the shining garment of his righteousness, and established me among your children in your kingdom. But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and I have wandered far in a land that is waste.

Especially, I confess to you and to the Church . . . . (Here the penitent confesses particular sins)

Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance. Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Priest may then offer words of comfort and counsel.

Priest: Will you turn again to Christ as your Lord?

Penitent: I will.

Priest: Do you, then, forgive those who have sinned against you?

Penitent: I forgive them.

Priest: May Almighty God in mercy receive your confession of sorrow and faith, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life. Amen.

The Priest then lays upon the penitent’s head (or extends a hand over the penitent) saying:: Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you all your offenses; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins; in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Priest concludes: Now there is rejoicing in heaven; for you were lost, and are found; you were dead, and are now alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. Go (or abide) in peace. The Lord has put away all your sins.

Penitent: Thanks be to God.

Pardon

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The Prayer of St. Francis is a well-known. Here’s the Prayer, followed by a reflection for today (Feb. 20) on “pardon” from a Lenten booklet prepared by members of the United Church of the San Juans in Ridgway, CO.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

“Part of my job, when I was on staff at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder was to prepare ‘messages’ on a twice monthly basis. These were to be shared in our huge singles Sunday School class. Some Sundays, we would have upwards of 100 single adults in our group; many ere just separated, some post-divorce, others recently widowed. All were seeking advice or encouragement about getting on with life, in most cases a life-style change that had not been chosen by that person. A second part of my job was the coordinator for the Divorce Recovery Program. This is where I ran into the word ‘pardon,’ used differently than the legal usage more familiar in society today.

“I have always loved words; when I run into an unfamiliar one, I generally stop what I am doing and look up the meaning. The computer has made my lifelong affair with words much easier! I used to haul my huge old five pound unabridged version (1940) of Webster’s Dictionary down off the shelf, turn the onion skin tot he right location and study the pronunciation, origin and usage of these unfamiliar words. Some words I managed to remember and use myself to reinforce the memory, but others faded away quickly because they were not that useful. The word pardon has an interesting origin; it stems from the Medieval Lation perdonare, meaning to remit, overlook, or literally ‘to forgive.’ The Latin was then adopted into a Germanic ancestor of our English, where it was translated piece-by-piece. Linguists call this process a ‘calque’, a tracing or copy. ‘Per’ was replaced by ‘for’, a prefix that means ‘thoroughly’, and ‘donare’ was replaced with ‘giefan’ meaning to give. The Germanic result was ‘forgiefan’ which showed up in Old English meaning to ‘give up’ or to allow.

“It isn’t just divorced or widowed parties who might need to deal with the concept of pardon or forgiveness; most of us have experienced hurt, deliberately or not, by the thoughtless or painful words and actions of others. The most difficult concept to explain is that pardoning or forgiving is not about saying what happened was ‘alright’; rather, the act of pardon or forgiveness allows the injured party to let go or give away the hurt and release the hold that kept that person stuck in the past.”

– Member of United Church of the San Juans

Thanks to dear friend, former classmate and colleague Harry Strong for sending “Lenten Devotionals” complied by members and friends of the United Church of the San Juans in Ridgeway, Colorado.

Here’s the entire Prayer of St. Francis:

Ashes

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On our campus the Priests go where
the students are, so ashes were
imposed right on the Quad as Lent
began. Fat Tuesday was last night,
…
and at the bars we danced and drank
and some hooked-up, so that we stank
of booze and sweat (and worse) if we
slept through our shower-time. Did we
…
imagine penance washed our souls
clean after pushing homeless men
aside on our way home? Or that
…
the school kids we ignored were fools
beyond all help? Forget that when
we failed third grade, some set us right?
…
Perhaps the filthy cross we see
in mirrors all day above our eyes
shows hearts we seldom recognize.

– A Verse by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, Illinois, Feb. 20, 2013.

NOTE: The university is the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana
where Steve still walks the mall after many years as a campus
minister with The McKinley Church and Foundation and as Executive
Director of the Campus Y.

God’s Countin’ on Me

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The Meth Shows

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Gun show

Gun show

Gordon C. Stewart, February 15, 2013

Had I grown up on a farm or a ranch, I might see things differently. Had I had a good use for a gun – to protect the sheep from the coyotes or to put down an injured horse – I would likely feel differently.

We all see things through our own eyes. It’s difficult to see through someone else’s eyes when talking about the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Walk into a gun show or a gun shop. What do you see? Do you see the arms of a well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state?

The photos of gun shows send chills up my spine. What I see is a drug store for addicts – precision, man-made machinery. Do the tables have on them the equivalent of Methamphetamine or crack cocaine to a gun aficionado?—ready to take the shopper into the illusionary highs of power and invulnerability, the cocoon of god-like power over life and death?

A bow and arrow is a hunting instrument. One shot at a time is all you get or need. The well-regulated militia seen as “necessary to the security of a free state” assumed arms like that: load, shoot…re-load…. Equally important, the “well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment was a concession to the demands of the slave-holding states whose plantation economies were threatened by slave revolts. Those “states” insisted on the right to state regulated militias. Once the slaves were freed, the militias took another form: they moved under the white sheets and hoods of the not-so-well-regulated militias of the Ku Klux Klan, burning crosses on the lawns of uppity blacks, and of whites who had forgotten who they were as members of a superior race. “The people” were white supremacists then—are they white supremacists still? Their weapons were midnight torch parades; burning crosses left on unbelievers’ lawns; rifles; and the white militias’ hanging nooses and trees that secured their sorry state of mind.

My experience with guns is shaped in no small part by playing cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians with the neighbors in the back yard of the small town where I grew up. The closest we came to a gun was a water-pistols or a cap-gun. “Bang, bang! You’re dead!” and the victim would fall down playing dead…and then we’d get back up to play again. We were also trying to make sense out the world of cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers – shorthand for “good guys” and “bad guys” but even then we sometimes wondered whether maybe the Indians with their bows and arrows were better than the better-armed “good guys” who had conquered them and their land.

When I see a convention center filled with tables of every imaginable pistol, rifle, and semi-automatic, I see an unregulated drug store filled with shoppers sorting through the different brands of methamphetamines. I see a form of legal insanity: the fascination with power and the worship of power over another life.

A friend posted on Facebook a photograph of a hunter posing proudly with the wolf he had killed with his bow and arrow. The arrow was still protruding from the wolf’s left eye. The wolf was dead. The archer was alive and smiling.

What would a shaman say about this picture? Would the totems of a tribal people use the image of the conquered wolf with an arrow protruding through its left eye as a symbol? A symbol for what? Their bravery? Their marksmanship? Where is the sacredness in this picture?

I have no answers, just images to share: The picture of tables with addiction written all over it? “Good guys” protecting themselves from the “bad guys”? “Cowboys and Indians”? The bow and arrow in the wolf’s eye? A well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state?

Loneliness and Love

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George Matheson wrote this hymn. Matheson (1842-1906) was one of Scotland’s great preachers. Most people didn’t know that he was blind. When the sister on whom he had depended to be his eyes and his companion was married, he was left alone to fend for himself. He wrote “O love that wilt not let me go” the night he had “celebrated” the joy of her new life. The rendition in the video captures the emotion and the faith of the hymn-writer, whose faith and poetry still encourage later generations in times of personal loss and loneliness.