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Rector's Blog
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Does talk about money and faith turn your stomach? Make you feel a little queasy? Maybe a little dizzy?
The issue stimulates some of my best thinking. It got Jesus thinking too. Listening to Jesus helps me get clear in my own head about the proper role of money in my life.
Here is Jesus talking about money:
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
"The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all he has and buys that field."
There is a lot going on here. A lot to think about. Here are questons worth pondering.
Maybe Jesus knows something we don't know? Where my treasure is, their my heart is also. So where is my treasure? Where is it really? Or better, What is my treasure? How can I find more of life' genuine treasure? How does my society prevent me from finding life's genuine treasure?
Have you noticed how freaked out some people get talking about money and faith?
My own personal experience teaches me that money-love hinders the genuine freedom of faith. Other people of faith who have broken through to freedom say the same thing. Tithing has always been a part of the journey.
I have asked Sara our webmaster to create a formwhere people can anonymously email me questions they may have about money and faith. It's not that I will answer the questions. Not at all. I simply want to engage the issue.
Is anyone else interested in discovering where genuine life is found?
We'll see.
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Monday, September 12, 2005
This month we are exploring "foundations of faith." In sermons over the past two weeks I have talked about our faith in God as Creator and Savior. These are big themes. As I have thought about our generation and its struggle for faith, it seems to me that faithful confidence in God as Creator and Savior are both being undermined by foolishness from within the church.
People sometimes confuse the notion of Creation with the more polemical movement known as Creationism. Creationism compromises serious-minded consideration of Creation by framing the discussion as an argument against the theory of evolution. Creationists shame faith by absurd distortion of scientific discipline. Genuinely important themes get neglected.
Instead of talking about the human need to find an ultimate source of human meaning, we talk about dinosaurs. Instead of talking about our ecological stewardship of creation, we talk about whether or not there is evidence of a cataclysmic flood to support the historicity of Noah. Instead of securing the notion of human rights in eternity -- rooted in the faith statement that we are all created equal -- some dispute the age of the earth. People of faith appear to be idiots.
In a similar way people confuse the notion of salvation with another polemical movement. It often goes by the term evangelism, but it lacks the richness of the witness of the origional Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Pseudo-evangelism often involves confronting people with a simplistic question: Are you saved? It is formulaic and manipulative. It lacks qualities of grace it claims to offer to the world.
At its best, "saved" language expresses in short-hand a life-transforming experience another person simply cannot understand who has not experienced the genuine grace of God in this way. At its worst, it is deeply alienating. It turns the Gospel of Jesus into a magic trick. Missing is the investment of time exploring with one another the profound human need for self-transcendence.
Creation is a much richer concept than that presented by creationists. Salvation is a much richer concept that that presented by pseudo-evangelists. The challenge is to engage the reality of our Creator and Savior in ways that honor the genuine mystery of God.
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Thursday, September 01, 2005
Hurricane Katrina has been a natural disaster of, I hate to say it, "biblical proportions." The category 4 hurricane, coupled with the failure of levees around New Orleans has destroyed one of America's most celebrated cities. Rescuers in aluminum fishing boats pushed along by outboard motors tend to those stranded on rooftops while bodies float by face down in the water.
Meanwhile, looters break windows and walk away with flat-screen plasma TVs and Sony PlayStations. Authorities are too busy saving lives to police neighborhoods. Some shopkeepers have taken up vigil with shotguns on their front stoop beneath signs that read, "You Loot. I shoot."
Meanwhile, 30,000 refugees in the hot-house of a Superdome endure 100 degree temperatures while toilets overflow, garbage piles up and tempers burn on short fuses. Supplies of food and water run out before the long lines of hot, hungry, thirsty people do. There have been rumors of rape among the refugees.
And in some parts of the country some people complain about how the destruction of Gulf Coast oil refineries is driving up the price of their precious gasoline above $3.00 a gallon.
Nature does its worst. Humanity responds. . . how? Manifesting both the best and the worst of our nature.
The "biblical proportion" is most often a reference to the Bible's graphic presentation of periodic catastrophe: Noah's flood, Egyptian plagues, the destruction of Jerusalem. But if one's notion of the "biblical proportion" stops here, it is incomplete.
The "biblical proportion" of the biblical narrative always includes a challenge to the human response. In the midst of the crisis of our neighbor, what will we do? Will we loot? Will we shoot? Or will we reach out to others with whatever gift God has given us to give?
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Archive:
12/01/2004 - 12/31/2004
01/01/2005 - 01/31/2005
02/01/2005 - 02/28/2005
03/01/2005 - 03/31/2005
04/01/2005 - 04/30/2005
05/01/2005 - 05/31/2005
06/01/2005 - 06/30/2005
07/01/2005 - 07/31/2005
08/01/2005 - 08/31/2005
09/01/2005 - 09/30/2005
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