non-metaphysical stephen

Hmm, didn’t Jesus have a parable about this kind of situation?

Judge blasts bad bank, erases 525G debt - NYPOST.com.

Suffolk Judge Jeffrey Spinner wiped out $525,000 in mortgage payments demanded by a California bank, blasting its “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive” acts.

The bombshell decision leaves Diane Yano-Horoski and her husband, Greg Horoski, owing absolutely no money on their ranch house in East Patchogue.

Spinner pulled no punches as he smacked down the bankers at OneWest — who took an $814.2 million federal bailout but have a record of coldbloodedly foreclosing on any homeowner owing money.

There’s an odd juxtaposition of texts in my online daily Bible readings. Today’s reading includes Ezra 10, the passage in which the people of Israel, having been rebuked by Ezra, agree to put away their non-Hebrew wives.

Before I get to the second passage, let me make a few comments: (more…)

A few weeks back the Sunday morning Gospel reading was the story of the woman with the hemmorhage who touched Jesus’ clothing and was healed. Rev. Bob mentioned that the insertion of this story within the story of the synagogue ruler Jairus is interesting because it means Jesus would have been ritually unclean after she touched him. Yet Jairus brought Jesus back to his house anyway. That’s a pretty powerful story in itself–that Jairus put aside his knowledge of the Law and trusted in Jesus’ purity. I wonder if her healing had any external evidence for the crowd to see.

Then I noticed an interesting variation between the accounts (Mark 5, Matthew 9 and Luke 8). (more…)

The Lectionary readings for Sunday included Jesus’ temptation in the Wilderness, and Renee spent most of her sermon on that passage. It’s material I’ve heard a thousand times before, and yet needed to hear again.

This time, I started to notice my own reactions to God in the Devil’s words:

“IF you are the Son of God, then…”

How often have I demanded that God prove himself by doing something? How often have I told myself that I didn’t know if I could believe in God if X were to happen, in spite of all that God had brought me through in the past. Jesus’ faith protected him from falling for this trick. Like him, we must learn to trust in God’s provision and not demand “if-then” proofs of God’s existence or power.

I also heard myself in something Renee said when she imagined whether Jesus reacted to his time in the Wilderness with “Did I make a mistake?”

Again, how often have I seen signs of God’s faithfulness and provision only to wonder if, in spite of it all, I’ve gone astray somewhere, with no idea how or when? How do I lose faith so easily?

I’m feeling a bit of Wilderness fever right now with my job search. May God preserve me and give me the faith I need to trust that God is preparing me to for a holy service, to minister to God’s people and to live out the reality of God’s kingdom.

Amen.

Some questions I had on reading today’s lectionary passages:

Genesis 16.15-17.2:

• And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
• When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty;walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.”

There’s a thirteen year gap between these two (consecutive) passages, and yet the scriptures pass over them completely. What especially strikes me is that God is not shown correcting Abram of his mistake during this time. Is it not a frightening thing to think that we might misunderstand God’s will and not be told our error for thirteen years?

Hebrews 10.8-9:

• When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second.

Throughout this section on the law, I was thinking of the Reconstruction and Theonomy movements. When the scriptures are so clear about the inefficacy of the Mosaic law and the superiority of the Gospel, why do Christians want to impose the law onto the nation?

John 5.34b:

• I say these things so that you may be saved.

There are a few places in John where Jesus implies that our salvation is prior to his death and resurrection and is instead found in his own words to us. Elsewhere he claims that the disciples are clean because of his words (John 15.3). What is the connection between his words, i.e., his teachings, and our salvation? Could we be ignoring a crucial aspect of our redemption by focusing so much on his Passion?

John 5. 45:

• Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.

It’s interesting that Moses is the accuser here, since accusation is the name and function of Satan. If Moses does Satan’s job, what does that tell us about Satan?

In today’s sermon, Pastor Renee reminded us that after Jesus was baptized, he was led to the Wilderness where he was tempted. What struck me about hearing this again was that Jesus was led by the Spirit of God! He didn’t end up in the Wilderness by being unfaithful or by misunderstanding God’s call. No, it was God himself who led Jesus there.

I suppose for most of us, the Wilderness is something to be avoided. And when we find ourselves there, we wonder 1) where we got off-track and 2) how to get out. But this conception is not biblical. When God led the Hebrews out of Egypt, they had to first go through the Wilderness. And it was in the Wilderness that their doubts and fears got the best of them: they wanted to return to slavery, they tried worshiping other gods, they accused God of leading them to their deaths.

But God was fully in charge during that time. The Wilderness was a necessary place between slavery and the Promised Land. God had great plans for them, untold blessings and freedom. God was their safety and their refuge in their wanderings. If only they had trusted that the God who rescued them from bondage could (and would) provide for them in their journey.

Aren’t we like this today? We want to avoid the Wilderness, when sometimes that is exactly where God would lead us. The Wilderness may look scary, like the Valley of Death, but in God’s hands, we are perfectly safe. Why are we so afraid of the Wilderness? Why do we trust God so half-heartedly?

Do with us as you will, Father. Your Love for us is so great that we know you will never let us be ashamed of following you, even when you lead us into the thickest forests, the most barren deserts and the darkest and coldest of nights. Lead us where you will, that we might be fruitful for the sake of your Kingdom.

In Christ,
Amen.

A short break from Ellul: Our church is doing a summer-long study on the Sermon on the Mount. Tonight we worked through the Beatitudes, and my group was asked to focus on the first verse: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

After talking about the way the Greek term for poor implies being a beggar (I thought it might translate well as “bankrupt” in spirit), we discussed the Amplified Bible’s translation of “poor in spirit” as not making too much of one’s self. And I realized that I’ve been addressing this idea every time I contemplate my createdness (an idea I gained through a Zen reading of John Calvin’s On the Christian Life).

I am nothing more than God’s creation — I did not create myself, nor can I take any credit for my own strengths or talents. I am only here because God created me, because God chose to, because God in his loving-kindness wanted to. This life is only a gift, and I owe everything I am and have to God. Yet I continue to make demands upon God as to how my life should go. How arrogant and ungrateful I am!

However, in those brief moments when I do grasp my own createdness, I sense just how poor in spirit I truly am. And in those moments, I feel God’s reign finally taking a place in my heart.

May I continue to decrease, that God might increase. Amen.

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“Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14.13)

This verse has been in my head the past few days — not sure why. I’m not going to complain though. There’s plenty to pray about, and if Jesus is going to make a promise like this, I’m going to take him up on it.

Meanwhile, it’s a new calendar year. Not a new year for the church (that was 5 weeks ago, on the first Sunday of Advent), but a new number at the end of the date. Really, it’s just a day like any other day (today was windy and cold, and gasoline wasn’t any cheaper than usual). But it does provide a useful opportunity for us to stop and take stock of where we’ve been for the past year, to recognize how much has changed, how much we’ve come through, how far we still have left to go.

This year, let us renew our commitment to Christ, to recall the promises of Psalm 139 that God is always present with us. And let us renew our trust in Christ’s promise that what we ask in his name, he will do. He is faithful and true, if we will believe. Amen, and amen.

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I’ve been pondering this guy the past few days. Luke’s account is interesting for the way it parallels and contrasts Zacharias and Mary: both receive a visit from an angel about a son, and both respond with a question. But the differences in the accounts raise so many questions: Why does Elizabeth not receive the visit from the angel? Why does Zacharias’ question earn him nine months of silence? Why is John the Baptist’s birth announced publicly but not Jesus’?

This passage is Zacharias’ only appearance in the Gospels, and Luke gives him an extremely prominent position in his narrative–he’s the opening figure. To get a sense of the importance this position gives him, consider the other Gospels: Mark and John both begin their narratives with John the Baptist, while Matthew begins with Joseph. Zacharias becomes a crucial figure simply by parallelism with the other narratives. But why him?

I don’t know how to answer that question right now, but I do wonder if we are like Zacharias. Very few of us will be one of the central characters in the history of the church–we will not be the Peters and Pauls, the Marys and Teresas and the Francises and Luthers. We will have a much smaller role in the narrative.

But that role is ours to play, given to us by God in love and for his glory. The role is small but it is neither unimportant nor lacking in honor. For it is a gift of God’s grace and a sign of God’s favor. And even when we fail to understand what God is doing, as Zacharias could not, God can still use us as signs to the people of his love and faithfulness.

We may have no idea how important our smallest actions may be for the kingdom of God. Zacharias was simply fulfilling his purposes as husband and as priest. He didn’t go out of his way to seek greatness, but was faithful in doing his duties. Yet by his faithfulness, he became not only the father of one of the church’s greatest figures, but a public sign of God’s promise to the entire nation.

Like Zacharias, we have no idea what God will call us to later in life. Nor can we comprehend just how much God can do with our faithfulness in our daily duties. We do not need to be the star of the show–even the supporting players must play their part fully. But if we are faithful in our calling, we might find that our small role has crucial importance in God’s amazing work of redemption.

Let us not grow weary in doing what is good. And may it be done with us according to God’s will, no matter how small the part we are called to play.

This passage has been on my mind of late, especially as I ponder my future, what God wants me to do with my life, and how I can help people grow closer to Christ’s Love for them. The lilies don’t do any work–yet I feel like I’m not doing enough. Or more accurately, I feel that I should be more fruitful and that I must not be doing enough.

Such egotism–thinking that I must be destined for greater things than this and that the responsibility lies on my shoulders. De Caussade would say that I may be fruitful even now, simply in fulfilling my duties and even if I feel I have been abandoned by God.

The lilies don’t spin their clothes–they simply abide in good soil. (more…)