prophetic imagination conference 3

The next Thursday session I attended began with Artful Imagining from Andrew Hendrixson, who teaches studio art at the University of Florida, as the first presenter in an excellent, varied group of three. The last presenter in the trilogy was Teri Marcos from not far away from San Diego Azusa Pacific University. In an outstanding presentation, Jesus and the Disinherited she emphasized some aspects of Howard Thurman's life and teaching. Thurman was Preacher to Boston University a while before I attended, but his name and even his presence on campus still was legendary.

and then

In Farmer Wendell Berry's A Call to Agrarian Leadership slide presentation with commentary by Paul Kaak (also from Azusa Pacific) particularly emphasized "placed stewardship" of the church. Careful placed stewardship leads us to be concerned with where God has planted us as wherever we are, wherever the church is reminds us of what we've forgotten about the organic church and that we've forgotten and neglected it.

Paul Kaak paralleled farm with parish—after all, both concepts are geographical; he also told us Eugene Peterson (remember him? The pastor-scholar who did The Message version of the Bible) considers Wendell Berry the best pastoral theologian in the USA! Someone I knew in another life told me when he observed some people who serve in a pastoral capacity, he frequently remembered that pastoral means "rural." Moving along from C. Wright Mills Sociological Imagination to Walter Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination... I especially love observations about agrarianism as a synoptic worldview, as comprehensive vision uniting land—agri-culture and human culture, or ways of being and acting. And oh, yes, too often the Church is all at once 1) not worldly enough; 2) too worldly and 3) needing to be whole, healthy and holy. John 17, Jesus, us and God's glory on earth, where God has "placed" us and placed, planted The Church, calling and enabling it to live as the Presence of Jesus Christ in the world.

Communications media and the individuals, communities and organizational entities of many types we observe and encounter almost daily have been returning to less toxic, simpler behaviors, as have almost all of us. In my own life it's been slow and gradual, yet I can reflect on two or three years back or more dramatically, ten or twelve years ago and even from this close a perspective I can notice small lifestyle changes that have added up to less physical and mental clutter around me and better stewardship of the places – household, neighborhood, city, county, state and world – in which I live.

Paul Kaak more than suggested contemporary industrial economies were founded on "the breaking of all ten commandments" and said the economy, the household law/stewardship of the church has behaved in the same way, also violating all of the commandments. "The organized Church makes peace with a destructive economy" though how can it make peace with the "empires of illusion" scripture forbids? Ephesians 4:18-24 Wendell Berry loves the metaphor of marriage as a model for husbandry of the land - we need to get out of passive consumption modalities and being embodying, incarnating, our own "better" stories.

easter sunday 2010

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

¹O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!
²Let Israel say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
¹⁴The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.
¹⁵There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous: "The right hand of the Lord does valiantly;
¹⁶the right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly."
¹⁷I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.
¹⁸The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not give me over to death.
¹⁹Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.
²⁰This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.
²¹I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
²²The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
²³This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

prophetic imagination conference 2

Feminist Pedagogy as Acts of Prophetic Imagination

I was unable to attend the morning sessions of the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination Conference, but I'll write a few notes and observations about the afternoon events I chose from amongst those that sadly but necessarily ran concurrently.

"Feminist Pedagogy" featured a panel of five women faculty from Point Loma. Predictably they presented, discussed and responded to audience comments and concerns about feminist perspectives regarding power, privilege, powerlessness and (often) pain. Although in most ways the content was familiar to me as much of the conversation almost replicated many classes and a few one-on-ones from undergrad years, hearing it again assured me my perception and interpretations regarding too much of what has been happening over the past couple decades have not been mistaken in the least.

They explained ways refusing to be consoled ultimately can be part of a new creation emerging from the ruins and chaos of an old, dead one. Refusing to be consoled means willingness to spend substantial time without the glib assurances, explanations and rationalizations people in the Church and maybe especially women have gotten to be adept at bringing into any situation whatsoever. Of course the world does not revolve around me, I'm not first cause of anything, God calls all of us to live as servants in the image of the Servant God but of course, also as stewards of our lives, but don't be aggressive, do not presume to impinge on anyone else's prerogative... etc., etc.. this hardly could have been more timely for me.

Someone said to me a while ago, "I am so tired of that 'cultural' excuse," yet at every moment we're backed up and face-to-face with others' culture and with our own. Despite my oftentimes insisting there is no unique human experience, I'm getting that I've been up against walls and roadblocks in my near-countless attempts to have my own experiences understood and validated. I'm getting close to nowhere, and as both writer and talker I'm a pretty good wordsmith, too. But without any doubt whatsoever having the experience, a lively walking in the shoes of another along the exact same road is leveling and brings insight no amount of conversation with the other or reading about them can bring. Observing the prophets and Jesus (the prophet) Walter Brueggemann insists acknowledging, feeling and living with and through sorrow and loss, becoming "acquainted with grief" is an essential precondition for newness - for resurrection?!

A few Thursdays ago, the weekly Ask The Matriarch advice column in the Rev Gal Blog Pals blogring and intentional online community I belong to in many ways was about that same subject. I found the initial blog post and especially the comments about peer and not-peer, collegial relationships and those between those who hold structural and assumed power in any setting or organization highly illuminating. More than anything in the world, more than adequate employment, more than regular opportunities to serve using my gifts, skills and education, I find myself seeking, yearning for and needing a place and a community of recognition, acknowledgment and embrace.

Back to the feminist pedagogy panel: someone suggested that when someone else asks what is wrong with saying "mankind" to subsume all humanity (except these days it sounds so anachronistic) to suggest, "try womankind in its place" and see how well that goes down. Even when a person hasn't been there, done that, they've all heard folks asking but why cannot that person who is - fill in the blanks with almost any fairly common yet not quite universal experience - keep on keepin' on like the rest of us have been doing?

Regarding my own situation, yes, there is no truly one-of-a-kind experience, yet I'm realizing people readily "get" events like divorce, serious illness of self or of another, firings, not getting the longed-for situation or position or opportunities, but no one hears what I'm saying about years without basic social context, without any real "remember whens" loneliness and isolation I've been unable to break into and have found impossible to transcend. And backtracking to structural power, race and/or gender-related authority, those who have it typically to not recognize the fact and frequently do not wield it well or yield graciously to the needs of those around them.

Someone said when you're no longer one of the pastors and you're looking to participate in ministry, another person gatekeeps your access to those opps. On a somewhat parallel note, I will not order from a catalog or website if all the people picture are all White (usually young, thin, gorgeous and affluent-looking). But for the most part the companies selling the stuff and producing the catalogs have not even thought about diversity.

prophetic imagination conference 1

the setting and the setting

A few decades ago, Fortress Press published The Prophetic Imagination by Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann. Whether The Prophetic Imagination or The Land was the very first ever writing of Brueggemann's I read I cannot recall, but throughout all these years both books have kept places of honor and prominence on my bookshelves, in my heart, in (and out of) my mind. Last week from Wednesday, 24 March through Saturday, 27 March Point Loma Nazarene University sponsored a conference focusing on a range of possible ways of Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination.

Psalm 85, with its assurance of justice, an essential for a shalom-filled world and its assurance of health in the land, framed the conference:

You once favored, LORD, your land, restored the good fortune of Jacob.
You forgave the guilt of your people, pardoned all their sins. Selah
You withdrew all your wrath, turned back your burning anger.

Restore us once more, God our savior; abandon your wrath against us.
Will you be angry with us forever, drag out your anger for all generations?
Please give us life again, that your people may rejoice in you.
Show us, LORD, your love; grant us your salvation.

I will listen for the word of God; surely the LORD will proclaim peace To his people, to the faithful, to those who trust in him.
Near indeed is salvation for the loyal; prosperity will fill our land.
Love and truth will meet; justice and peace will kiss.
Truth will spring from the earth; justice will look down from heaven.
The LORD will surely grant abundance; our land will yield its increase.
Prosperity will march before the Lord, and good fortune will follow behind.

...and John August Swanson's vibrant depiction of Psalm 85 illustrated the focus of the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination Conference. Closely in accord with Brueggemann's book and in alignment with much of the writing he has published since then, conference goals included: helping all of us in the church and as the church learn to critique dominant culture and society through a lens of God's call for just, righteous and holy living; acknowledging our share of responsibility for and complicity with the currently less-than pristine condition of the natural and the humanly built environments; an ultimately life-enabling "refusing to be consoled" by glib, easy observations and rationalizations as in a scripturally informed lifestyle grief becomes a precondition of joy; finally, daily living as a eucharistic people, as the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ amidst all creation.

I'll be blogging a few more short ones about the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination Conference, so please stay tuned to this blog spot.

The Threat of Life

...sermons on pain, power and weakness, by Walter Brueggemann

...pure proclamation and holy demands...

It seems to me that re-reading this book after a few years was extremely providential. As usual, Walter Brueggemann brings many ideas that could become teaching and preaching resources, many ideas for anyone to ponder, possibly even more so during this season of Lent. As I've done in my prior book posts, I'll reference some ideas along with their pages.

On pages 59-60, the author describes preparations for the two hundred who typically attended a long-time annual Church Strawberry Festival Social in days of yore along with the two dozen present-day attendees. Like in those days of [the exilic] Isaiah 43:18-20, the Church Strawberry Folks were so completely enamored of the past they neglected and "have completely misunderstood the present tense." What are my own excessive preparations and concomitant misunderstandings these days? I know I'd enjoy—or, I think I might enjoy a Strawberry Festival on Cape Cod, but that doesn't relate to where I live right now. Or does it? I'm trying to capture at least a dozen snapshots of my past, trying to ask myself how I got here from there. For sure the short answer is that unexpectedly I found myself journeying alone and without real community, and for far too long a loneliness. Part of an accurate reply also references the too many excuses I've made for other people and even a few too many for myself. In addition, it's been not so much planning for 50 when only 5 would attend but a related habit of waiting too long in a present that likely would not become fruitful. Those instant pics need to include and can include bountiful and healthy pasts I can duplicate in some form where I currently live.

On page 113 WB talks about "the long wait of Saturday" and observes that most of life is Sabbatarian, but how can Saturday be so persistently lonely and void of community? And are we not supposed to wait together for Resurrection Sunday's Easter dawn?! Throughout The Threat of Life WB reminds us we are baptized, and that baptismal pronoun always is we, us, our, ours and never ever an isolated, atomized autonomous "I, me, my, mine."

Evoking days of cultural anthro classes and later-on conversations in divinity school, when WB insists "You get a whole world with each food, because each food is a social reality in a social context" / "They are big, far-ranging public choices concerning foreign policy and budget and land reform and dreams..." (page 120) I respond with, "indeed, in so many ways." You are what you eat, meaning we actually become in some sense those rapacious grabbers of land, polluters of rivers and exploiters of the innocent. But maybe even more tangible and touchable, during the current economic recession and long before then, although all during my adult life I've eaten low on the food chain though not vegetarian (a little meat, chicken or fish once or twice a week), how clearly economic circumstances and anxieties about future income constrain and restrain the edibles we purchase and prepare and literally prevent us from much eating out in real sit-down restaurants with actual flatware and live wait-staff. You could say circumstances even re-train our palettes and our habits!

I love how in chapter 12, preaching on Psalm 23 for Lent 4, "Trusting in the Water - Food - Oil Supply", WB observes "The journey, with the power and purpose of God, changes the circumstances in which we live. Wilderness becomes home, isolation becomes companionship, scarcity becomes generosity. That is how the life of faith is. It is, to be sure, very different from the life where Yahweh is not at its core." (pages 94-95)

I've read and paraphrased this observation from page 153 related to Psalm 98:1-5 a ton of times:

No wonder that, in that ancient Psalm about God's odd power, the trees and fields and sea sing for joy, because now life becomes possible wherever the power of this God is at work. This power is unleashed in the world. We are left dazzled, because we did not think it would happen. We are threatened, because we do not want our tea party upset. We are invited, and in any case, we cannot ignore the new power.

Preaching on Jeremiah 5:20-29 "God's Relentless 'If'", that became chapter 10 of the book,"Yahweh gets back into the game only because of the poet [Jeremiah] who now 're-speaks' the God of Sinai." (page 76)

Jerusalem had "...long since forgotten the counter-tradition of Moses..." And Yahweh's word from Mount Sinai included a heavy "If"... if you keep my commandments, if you keep covenant, if you have no other gods beside me... As Martin Luther observed, all sin violates the first commandment so that we actually need only a single commandment, the first. From Jeremiah 5:

²⁰Declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah: ²¹Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear. ²²Do you not fear me? says the Lord; Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it. ²³But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away.

in context: Jeremiah 5

WB interprets this as meaning truly fearing Yahweh in the popular sense of terrified, trembling, shaking fearfulness rather than calmer, quieter, awe, reverence and respect. In his Small Catechism Martin Luther begins his explanation to each commandment,, "We should fear and love God..."

As we approach the fifth Sunday in Lent, consider ways typical Lenten disciplines and practice may help achieve the possibility of new life as we abstain from all our idolatries, indulgences and distractions in favor of trusting and encountering the God who tames chaos, orders creation, enacts resurrection, demands our allegiance, and promises life if...

my amazon review: pure proclamation and holy demands

Edison School

Along with my report on Wasatch Elementary School, this article published in the Interfaith Peacemaking Resource Center of Utah’s newsletter.

With these observations about Edison Elementary, we continue our series on Salt Lake City public schools that have a high proportion of at-risk students.

Edison Elementary School
“I believe in kids, I trust kids…if you expect great things, you get great things.” –Dale Harding, Edison Elementary Principal

Edison School in Glendale first impressed me as a Place to Be with—it had a sense of great calm, and it was clean and orderly, without any of the confusion one often expects in an urban setting. Kids’ art covered the walls.

With 517 students in grades K-6, a preschool of 20, and a teaching staff of about 31 – all in a building built for 380 students – Edison is bursting its boundaries, both physically and in the many ways it exceeds the limitations and expectations much of the larger society tends to place upon low income, high mobility persons. Class size ranges from 24 in the lower grades to an outrageous 38 in the upper grades; nineteen classrooms of all kinds as well as two trailers house the classes. A gym, an auditorium and a gigantic playground accommodate sports, arts, cultural, social, and other enrichment activities. 3,000 donated books as well as other resources fill the new, light and airy library.

Volunteerism from the greater Salt Lake community runs extremely high: last year it totaled 14,000 hours! Neighbors of all kinds, senior citizens from all around the greater metro area, businesses (including the Bureau of Reclamation and The Salt Lake Tribune, which has an intense, ongoing involvement with the school), and University of Utah student nurses are only some of the volunteer categories.

Edison is a mini-world where fifteen languages are spoken, with 72% of the students being other-than-white. They include Pacific Islanders, African-Americans, Hispanics of many kinds, various ethnic Asians. To be a minority is to be in the majority! Dr. Harding spoke of the poverty of moral values and the absence of hope that pervaded the school when he first arrived there. Most of the families – 40% with two parents in the home – struggle to survive in every dimension of their lives. But a sense of hope and optimism is beginning to take hold at Edison. Harding and the rest of the staff have been working energetically to make certain these kids will believe in themselves and in each other, that they will be open to a free and meaningful future.

“We have three rules: ‘Respect yourself; Respect other people; Respect property,’” explained Dr. Harding.

Dale Harding is in his fourth year [1995] as principal at Edison. He has had a long, wide-ranging and clearly impassioned career in education. Not only has he been teacher or administrator in Salt Lake City, coming to Edison after a term as principal at Uintah Elementary—he also has worked in Chile, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia and Wyoming. For six years he directed the experimental school at Utah State University. Surprisingly, Harding is the only Edison staff member fluent in Spanish. Four years ago there was no PTA, no community council at Edison; now both organizations are active. Very significantly, Harding has visited every home in the area. And observing the success he and the kids are having, he says, “‘I can’ is more important than IQ.”

In spite of the apparent heavy use of alcohol and other drugs in the families many of these kids hail from, very few Edison students are drug users themselves. “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. Clubs help them resist the pressure to experiment. During 1993-94 there were thirteen gang members – now [1995] there’s only one.

Harding explained although many had learned to use “I’m a minority” as a copout, most no longer use it as an excuse, but take more responsibility for themselves and responsibility for others. There’s also a group of kids at Edison who live in stable settings where they experience a relatively normal, supportive environment without having to contend with overwhelming social pathology; many of those will be at the school from Kindergarten through 6th grade. Dr. Harding is optimistic that about 80% of Edison’s current population will graduate from high school.

The fine arts and the cultural arts are major aspects of life at Edison. I even heard the violin program of 5th and 6th graders in action! Ririe Woodbury Dance Company works with all of the students; the Salt Lake Tribune offers writers’ workshops; celebrations such as Black History Month and Cinco de Mayo help kids find meaning and excitement in their heritage. The arts and cultural assembly was one of the very first things Harding told me about! The assembly is a recurrent event that features the diversity of expression that has helped make Edison a miniature extension of the world beyond its borders.

For fun, there’s reading books from the library, computer games in the 30-computer lab (when the academic stuff has been finished), a donated arcade that serves as a reward system, and of course the playground and sports, many of the sports facilitated by an after-school physical education teacher. Open until 9 pm three days of the week, until 6 pm on the other days, the Edison school building also houses and hosts various adult classes such as parenting, GED preparation and ESL.

As the very low absentee rate absolutely bears out, during the school day the students at Edison Elementary live a good life. Prior to arriving at Edison, many of these kids had been caught in multi-generational layers of ignorance and violence; they’d become what they had seen. With love, affirmation and support, the cycle of ignorance and abuse is breaking down, fear beginning to leave. At Edison, not only do they see an alternative—the environment actually enables them to be that alternative, to become different from what they had been. They’re becoming free, responsible and responsive persons.

They also are learning to live in a world in which diversity and difference is both normative and very good. For them, divergent styles mean learning to live with dissimilarities, and that leads to acceptance of differences. As Dr. Harding mentioned, he will not tolerate violence and aggression, and the question to resolve first always is “What happened?”—not “why?” As they learn from the staff and from each other how to live with diversity and to resolve conflict without fists or violence or any kind, hopefully the young peacemakers at Edison will grow up to become adult peacemakers.

At this point in time and space, Edison students are learning to live in a real community, with an authentic commonality. They’re in the process – just as all of us continue to be – of discovering the challenges and rewards of living together as friends, neighbors and citizens. But what of their futures? Their lives beyond Sixth Grade graduation day?

“So all of us, in union with Christ, form one body, and as parts of it we belong to each other.” –Romans 12:5

These words have become commonplace to many of us: we need to read in them, to feel in them, a live calling to reach out and to be inter-responsive to one another. Just as in great measure we have been created by each other, by one another, that creative process will continue to happen. The students at Edison will continue to need positive influences that will form and shape them into good citizens of their neighborhoods, of their cities, of their countries of this universe and of this galaxy—and even of unknown galaxies!

The students at Edison Elementary are ours, now and in the future. And we belong to them! Let's always remember that, and live our lives in response to it!

Wasatch School

In addition to some restaurant reviews I'd love to begin adding to, another phase of my sometime journalistic career included articles about elementary schools; here’s one of the pair I wrote for the Interfaith Peacemaking Resource Center of Utah’s newsletter.

Good things are happening in the Salt Lake City schools! This month features Wasatch Elementary.


Wasatch School
Faces in the sunshine, students at Wasatch Elementary School in Salt Lake’s Avenues neighborhood are planting theme gardens, with about half the classes involved in this year’s Outdoor Project! It’s an extension of their regular curriculum, as well as an activity in which they claim ownership and learn caretaking, sensitivity, and environmental awareness. The gardens will become part of the neighborhood, and the project’s navy blue t-shirts will carry the endeavor even beyond the school and Avenues boundaries, as a reminder that Wasatch prepares citizens to interface with the world around them and the world beyond them!

Close to downtown, close to the University of Utah, Wasatch is the school of choice for many parents seeking the very best, with students attending from all over the Salt Lake Valley. Abundant diversity includes a 50/50 poverty/affluence ratio, many different races and ethnicities, single parent families, children of university professors, children of university students, kids from House Of Hope and from Ronald McDonald House...a vast range of students in every sense of the word.

"Kids Zone — Future Leaders being built — Enter with care & love" reads the poster greeting front door arrivals. Amy Wadsworth, Wasatch’s principal, speaks of the “global development” of the child. Any learning environment generally assumes advancement in academic and social skills, but this school goes much further and also pays careful attention to physical and emotional development, to awareness and growth in the fine and performing arts. This school is not traditional in the conventional sense of the word—the total approach is far more interactive, giving each one an opportunity to function at his or her optimal level.

How does a grade school administrator who never has taught on that level feel about her credibility as a principal?

Amy Wadsworth believes interest and expertise in teaching and education are easily interchangeable among the various levels. In her third year [1995] at Wasatch, her earlier experience included teaching English and French at Highland High School and serving as Assistant Principal at Clayton Intermediate School. Ms. Wadsworth impressed me as being readily available to the students, but also as someone who doesn’t fill or overwhelm the space that's rightfully theirs. This is a students' school!

Additional staff at the K-6 school total about 40 and includes teachers, aides, art and physical education specialists. There are “lots of good volunteers” (mainly parents), and an active corporate sponsor. Class size averages in the 20s. with three classes for each grade. There’s also a library, a playground, and a gymnasium. Although Wasatch was one of the very first schools in Salt Lake City to have computers, its computers now are among the oldest!

A sense of contentment fills the air at the residential R Street and South Temple location—the school actually feels calm and well organized. This "whole child" approach works well. With serious and usually successful attempts by the teachers and other staff to reach every area in each student’s life, kids don’t often act out in frustration and violence in attempts to be heard and attended to. Because of this, the students get along well with each other and with the adults in their lives.

Ms. Wadsworth observes that blending students from more troubled areas into the lower-risk population helps a great deal to offset at-riskedness. With their acceptance of each other, the kids generally don’t isolate themselves into demographically defined groups.

Usually the kids are polite, respectful, and considerate of others. But despite the all-round success the Wasatch students and their principal enjoy, sometimes there’s dissension. Classroom teachers try to process conflict in a problem-solving modality, and if the discord actually reaches the principal, she applies similar procedures. Ms. Wadsworth feels that in the future these techniques will need to be taught more formally. She says the goal is for peaceable conflict resolution to become a day-to-day practice and not just something occasionally imposed from without.

As these students find peaceful solutions becoming natural to them, they’ll easily take the skills they’ve learned at school into their family setting and into the larger Salt Lake City and world communities. This will be a great and ongoing advantage to all of us!

"Keeping high expectations" in every area helps make sure outstanding results happen. Future leaders are being built at Wasatch Elementary, and they are being treated with care and respect. And as Amy Wadsworth says, they're "such a delight!"

Faces in the sun, Wasatch School students are busy planting gardens to enhance their own lives and as a gift to their community...

spiritual or religious friday 5

spiritual or religious 5 from rev gal blog pals

(on my original post I've since edited) I'm playing partly in purple for Lent and partly in rose for Laetare...MomPriest hosts today:

Yesterday I attended a led conference by Diana Butler Bass. She is presenting new ideas on the state of the church and why there is hope for Christianity. One of her premises is a Newsweek/Washington Post poll from 2005 that states that 55% of the people in this country describe themselves as religious AND spiritual.

Without going into detail about her understandings of religious and spiritual (you may want to attend one of her conferences, if you can) share with us five thoughts ideas or practices that you consider to be "religious." Then share with us five thoughts, ideas, or practices that you consider to be "spiritual." OR are they the same thing to you?

religious, more or less—these activities have an overt binding-back, re-linking function:

1. going to church—whether Sunday worship, a potluck or a committee meeting
2. social activism
3. political activism
4. reading, writing, thinking more or less formally intentional theology: teaching, preaching, etc.
5. ecclesiastical and judicatorial structures: yes, they do help reconnect heaven and earth to some extent and I believe strongly in historical continuity in the practice of sacraments, ordinances and ordination, but at times they get a little in the way and cost too much in time, efficiency and $$$

more or less spiritual...less apparently immediate:

1. prayer in every form: free, liturgical, psalmic, simply felt rather than spoken...
2. music—singing, playing, listening, imagining
3. adventuring and contemplating nature and creation, particularly outside
4. dreaming, both waking dreams and sleeping dreams
5. storytelling and sharing meals and experiences in community

disclaimer: some of this was a little routine and maybe a tad tawdry, but it's a great topic and I was ready to play today!

lent 2010: considerations

Today is the middle of Lent; three weeks ago, Ash Wednesday signaled another start of the 6-week long liturgical season, traditionally and historically a time to remember Jesus' public ministry as well as a time for "giving up" or fasting from pleasurable foods and activities or sometimes "taking up" meaningful service; next Sunday will be the Fourth Sunday in (but not of) Lent. Particularly in Mark's gospel, in his 3-year long public ministry, Jesus sets his face and his will toward Jerusalem and the cross of Calvary, toward redeeming a people and a creation after God's own heart and toward shattering the divisions and divides between heaven and earth. Another exodus from bondage into freedom, another passover from death to life, a final revelation and the ultimate becoming of the New Creation, the New Jerusalem.

A few days ago I re-read The Threat of Life by Walter Brueggemann. On page 95 he insists, "Lent is a time to quit running, to let ourselves be caught and embraced in love... Our life is not willed by God to be an endless anxiety. It is, rather, meant to be an embrace, but that entails being caught by God."

How do we differentiate a toxic Egypt and a past situation, feeling or condition that would be good to return to? Egypt is not always about brick quotas, a proliferation of pixels or paradise lost. Remembering does include the usual default remember how I led you with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of cloud by night and fed you with manna from the sky and water from the rock; we also need to recall the community we had, the way we were and that too often too elusive feeling of relative safety we had as well as a sense of belonging in a community that valued our participation and our presence.

Sara Jensen commented on one of my recent blogs that faithfulness in living out the gospel can be described in a single word: remember. Remembering includes the usual default remember how I brought you out from the land of Egypt, remember I fed you with manna from the sky and water from the rock; remember the gracious gifts of olive and pomegranate and figs; remember you were strangers - you know the heart of a stranger... We need literally to recollect how Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, gave it and told us "do this in remembrance of me. Remember Jesus, recall our baptism, by doing this liturgical action? Jesus, the One Whose biography His people would assume: suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried. On the third day...

on the alien ship or home

During October 2005 I posted a slightly different version of this on my currently inactive testimony blog.

"On the alien ship or home?" Theologically, both on the alien ship and home at one and the same time. Did I ever mention ambiguity anywhere? Maybe I need to blog about aliens and homecoming yet another time... As usual, I'm thinking about the meaning, feeling, reality and necessity of that prized and elusive state known as "home."

A handful of recent and all-too-fleeting experiences of being and of feeling myself fully included have left me pondering, and very grateful, too. But on that always there other hand, the opposite experiences have kept on keepin' on too, but I'm a theologian so I'm supposed to do ambiguity well. In fact, I do ambiguity very fleetly, but in some cases which it were not so necessary. How little it takes to make me sense I'm finally home, but what a plethora of non-inclusions I've been through during the past dozen years!

I'm feeling silly, or maybe closer to creative, and "alien ship" in this blog title brings to mind our dual citizenship as Christians, which includes the familiar bible-speak of resident alien/sojourner. Our double-identity encompasses our call to live out our discipleship in the community of the church while living out our baptism in the excitement and challenge of the world outside the church. This two-pronged church/world is a form of dual citizenship - or citizen ship - too. In sojourning stranger terms, again I'll cite my referring to Abraham's being an Ivri, one from the other side, and Jesus of Nazareth's enfleshing God, One from the exceedingly other side. There's the sort-of dualism in the gospel narratives (especially Mark) of Jesus' taking a boat ride from one side over to the other side, the occasional nautical and very persistent water imagery throughout scripture, and the representation of the Church as a ship—probably you know the classic church architectural pattern of an upside-down ship? Whatever the building's design, it's appropriate to refer to the central part of the sanctuary where the congregation sits as "nave," from which (of course) the word navy derives. In addition, Noah's Ark (Noahic Ark, parallel to Noahic Covenant?) comes to mind.

Paul S. Minear, in Images of the Church in the New Testament, suggests boat/ship is not particularly central in NT imagery! I just linked to the 2005 edition of the book, but I'm quoting from the original edition published in 1960, so I won't indicate page numbers:

Is there an intended analogy between the boat in the storm and the church in the world? ...If this association of church and boat were certain, we might discern allusions elsewhere, as, for example, in those varied occasions when Mark pictures Jesus as teaching the crowd from a boat. It is probably that the first readers of the NT found multiple implications in all these episodes, but it is improbable that modern readers will ever agree on what those implications were. Though the stories suggest certain things about the church, it would be unwise for us to place much weight upon them.

Professor Minear also considers the Ark a minor NT image and includes only a single page about it. Here's a quote:

Thus when Jesus compared the days of the Son of Man to the days of Noah he wanted to emphasize the suddenness, the unexpectedness, and the inclusiveness of God's judgment, together with the urgency of immediate and alert watchfulness. ...

Like the water, Baptism is a means of salvation; like the ark, the church carries the elect through the waters of eschatological crisis. This is because Baptism involved total reliance of the community upon Jesus' death and resurrection...but the NT itself is remarkably free from the vagaries of later typological fantasies. ...the OT antitype had not yet received the power to dictate or to dominate thoughts about the church. So the analogy appears both rarely and marginally in the NT. Even this limited use, however, reflects a communal mind that could see itself in the multiple mirrors of Scriptural tradition.

It's probably the eternal student in me, but before posting I love to get my ideas into almost-finished form, something I still generally aim for on my theology blog. However, sometimes I recall an incident during the time I served in Boston, when the senior pastor I served with commented on my preaching that morning: "Really good this morning—of course, you're always good, but you don't need to wrap it up as tightly as you sometimes do." I'm telling myself all my blogs are good, but I don't need to wrap them up as tightly as I sometimes do! Like a sermon, a blog is for me and for my [listeners and] readers, and I need to leave enough room and sufficient space for the Spirit to break in, engage and reveal what I'm trying to say plus a whole lot more than I've imagined.

Beyond Guilt

I'm continuing my series of book blogs with Beyond Guilt: Christian Response to Suffering, Expanded and Revised - this edition is © 2000; the previous one was © 1989.

A couple weeks before he left a part-time interim pastorate at a very nearby church, Pastor George Johnson gifted me with a copy of this book; inscription to me was Isaiah 58:10-11:

¹⁰if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. ¹¹The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

Here's the context: Isaiah 58

Although the book essentially is about ways to move beyond guilt to scripturally informed, effective social and political action, the insights and techniques are highly applicable to anyone's life as an individual, too. Altogether this is a wonderful resource for almost any kind of church - or synagogue - study group, social action, mission, stewardship or evangelism committee! An individual or group could spend a year or more praying, thinking and working through the two dozen chapters or they could focus on an emphasis that matched their particular interests and needs and run with it for a month or so. Beyond Guilt also would be a wonderful community resource for involving people who don't necessarily identify with a faith tradition but are concerned about the environment and would like to help make changes in effective and lasting ways.

Just as with my other book blogs, I'm including some content I found particularly helpful, hoping my readers may benefit without actually reading the book at this time.

Including afterward and credits, Pastor George divides the book into 5 sections, each with a subjective both/and header:

• chapters 1-6 Discipleship and Celebration
• chapters 7-12 Reflection and Discovery
• chapters 13-18 Feelings and Frustration
• chapters 19-24 Courage and Action

Each chapter - both title and content - represents a continuum of attitudes and behaviors that aren't necessarily mutually exclusive such as (chapter 3) From Silence to Speech; (chapter 7) From Charity to Justice; (chapter 16), From Certainty to Ambiguity; (chapter 23) From Peace to Peacemaker. George's own reflections open each chapter followed by "Other Voices" from well-known and not so famous people; each Other Voices concludes with a scripture quote sandwiched between concluding ideas for Reflection and Action. I especially appreciate how they range from reading suggestions, group activities and possible political actions. The outstanding bibliography includes about 100 items, mostly books.

On page 27, extracted from Desire of the Everlasting Hills - the World Before and After Jesus by Thomas Cahill, the book reminds us how Christianity's assimilation into Roman imperial power structures "seriously compromised" it, but three other early historical developments were far worse:

1. its alienation from Judaism
2. its division into classes structures of clergy and laity
3. its fragmentation into "three feuding branches"" - Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant

The quote on page 30 from Edvard Hambro, "Politics is the art of making possible tomorrow what seems impossible today" reminds me how all of us need to get out their and learn to artfully, forcefully and also even subtly influence everyone from our nearby neighbors to our selectmen... – select persons – (if we live in New England), local town or city council members to the State House to Capitol Hill in D.C.

Since I'm such a Brueggemaniac, I loved the block of text in the intro to Chapter 6 "From Weeping to Singing"; it comes from Prophetic Voices in Exile by Walter Brueggemann:

Only grief permits newness. ... The very structure of the gospel is an argument that pain felt and articulated in God's heart permits new possibilities in the historical process - the good news concerns God's transformed heart.

On pages 42 - 43 - 44, in chapter 7, "From Charity to Justice", among the commonly understood causes of "poverty, hunger and oppression" Pastor George includes "neo-colonialism, militarism, transnational corporations and especially in the church factors include ten "neglect of" items such as neglect of scriptures, neglect of community, neglect of the prophetic, of economics and neglect of the poor.

On page 68 in chapter 12, "From Caring for Humans to Caring for Creation," there's another truly essential list of mainly misconceptions and untruths that have happened as a result of human(!) anthropocentrism; some examples are imagining natural resources as limitless; the lie that greater "material abundance" improves the quality of life and the idiocy that humans are supposed to use and control nature rather than live as stewards.

How about the very idea of asking good questions, Augustana College professor Murray Haar had learned from his father that "questions are holy." He [Murray Haar] suggested "Send the people home [from church] with a question." Would that work for you as preacher or as listener? (in pages 73-74, in chapter 13, "From Answers to Questions")

In the same chapter on page 77 a Pontius' Puddle cartoon: "Sometimes I'd like to ask God why he allows poverty, famine and injustice when he could do something about it." "What's stopping you?" "I'm afraid God might ask me the same question." Let's admit God does keep asking us those same questions... (although I've added the cartoon I've also described it for people who have turned off images or "other" concerns).



in chapter 14, "From Wealth to Partnership" on page 79, check out this idea and give it a spin:

One can begin with the scriptures. But we must remember that we always bring with us to the scriptures our own situation in life, our attitudes, our experiences and our traditions. So why not begin with the context of the world we live in and the history of where we have come from? It will make a difference in the questions we ask as we study the Bible.

As Pastor George reminds us, the early Christians of Acts 2 did not have a Book of Order or a Small Catechism. I'll add they didn't *even* have the Definition of Chalcedon, the Articles of Faith or the Belhar Confession—not to mention, no Canons of Dort whatsoever! What did the early Christians possess? Memories of Jesus and experiences of God's action and presence in their lives and in the world around them possessed them and drove them to faithful action.

On page 84, chapter 15, "From Despair to Hope," Pastor George suggests that exactly like the exiles in Babylon reading, pondering, reciting, chanting or singing Psalm 137 many of us also can ask "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" (verse 4) millions find themselves exiles in their own country in the midst of "their traditional and familiar people and churches."

Still in chapter 15, on page 85 a list of 7 Hope is possibilities including:

• Hope is found in the willingness to embrace pain and to express it.
• Hope is rooted in community and grows as we are present to one another.
• Hope is found in remaining close to nature and celebrating God's creation.
• Hope is nurtured through music and the arts.

Amen? Amen!!!

Reflecting on this book, I especially love Pastor George's emphasis on the integrity and redemption of all creation. In the sovereignty of heaven to be faithful means to keep covenant, which means non-exploitive, "I-Thou" relationships with all creation. In many cases keeping covenant usually means staying put for a while, even when the conversations are pointless, the plans are wonky, the behaviors are wacky and the dreams does not cohere. But staying put for how long?

"a wonderful resource for activism and change": my amazon review

frog blog hymns discussion

Over on her frog blog, 1-4 grace started an interesting discussion about hymns. Her blog's not live any more, so I removed the link.

Tell me your own ideas of hymns which are meaningful, those which are painful or stir other negative feelings. What hymns do you really like? Which ones could you do without?

By the way, I am not doing any actual research. I am just interested in what folks have to say.

Good one! I'll begin with the negative stuff, which includes Amazing Grace. A while back I said to someone "it has no Christology and no theology (not to mention the near-obligatory funereal-sounding bagpipe versions at actual funerals)..." he responded "agreed, but a little soteriology..." to that one I needed to reply, "disembodied soteriology? I do not think so!" Then there's Borning Cry, part of the pain of which I know is John Ylvisaker's typically tawdry tune. The hyper-militant Lift High the Cross almost grossed me out the first time I heard it, but it's still better than Onward Christian Soldiers.

"Among the" (as our cultural anthro teacher tried teaching us not to say) more recent hymns I like a lot, I'll list Marty Haugen's Here in this Place / Gather Us In—I especially love how the harmony undulates between major and modal; Now the Silence with words by Jerry Vajda, music from Carl Schalk; Earth and All Stars, preferably in the original more rhythmically dynamic version. Rise, Shine, You People Ron Klug's text with the tune Wojtkiewiecz, after composer Dale Wood's original Polish name... "He comes to us by sin and death surrounded, with grace unbounded" moves me to tears. I love #524 in the ELCA's new Evangelical Lutheran Worship, What Is This Place and blogged about it all of three years ago. Praise songs? Definitely Shout to the Lord!

For older hymns, I love Gently Raise the Sacred Strain, #146 in the current LDS hymnal. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty – Lobe den Herren a fabulous one to lead from the organ and I have especially wonderful memories of singing it during my first interview weekend in Utah with the Utah PCUSA Presbytery and the Utah UCC Association convening together; singing with a room full of pastors almost always is a great experience. One more for now: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, because What's not to love about it?

Despite my own reasonable sensitivity to inclusive (or not) language, in many cases I don't like the texts of old familiars distorted simply to make a point of being inclusive. I'll probably come back and add a few essentials when I suddenly remember I've left them out, but that's all for now.

Roll of Thunder

This one's for Black History Month 2010.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor has won several major publishing industry commendations and awards including the Newbery Award for 1977; I'd like to bestow my own reader award for the dozen fast-reading chapters in a book originally intended for middle- or high-school ages but that hardly talks down to a more "mature" audience and, I imagine, most of the vocabulary is basic enough for a bright 4^th or 5^th grader.

The story happens in post-emancipation Mississippi USA during the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The author doesn't specify an exact locale but refers to a fictional town of Strawberry as well as the real city of Jackson where, by the way, author Mildred Taylor was born and my own grandfather grew up. Spokane County in Washington State was the only one I found with a Google search, so that's one for the book, as well. And this was three decades prior to the Civil Rights movement that with legal decrees only started initiating the dawn of desegregation followed by sometimes grudging, occasionally truly triumphant integration of Black Americans and White Americans. Interestingly, until mid-20^th century only Blacks and Whites qualified to become American citizens; most of the country remained racially and ethnically suspiciously divided (and still is), with what feels like endless disputes over the international border between California, Arizona, Texas and Mexico.

First-person narrator Cassie Logan is the young teen daughter of Mary, a school teacher and of David, who spends a lot of time away from home laying railroad track in neighboring Louisiana; grandmother Big Ma, Uncle Hammer and a few other elders provide some backstory and lots of historical perspective. Biblical themes of land, justice and peoplehood run throughout the book, punctuated remembering and recounting tales of Southern Slavery punctuated along the way with reflections about injustice and inequalities and hints of daring hope for a truly free future. Each successive generation is willing to settle for less and more able to trust dreams of a different reality down the road--if not now, when? Mildred Taylor has written so skillfully from Cassie's perspective you'd think she'd actually lived the events, though she tells us her own father was very much like David in the book and as a youth he basically was Cassie's brother Stacey. Christopher-John and Clayton Chester, a.k.a. "Little Man" complete the trio of Cassie's brothers. David spends a lot of time away from home laying railroad track in neighboring Louisiana

The Logan family is privileged to own 400 acres of land; in 1887 Grandpa bought 200 acres that by the year 1933 had no mortgage note to pay yet still had taxes; in 1918 he acquired 200 additional acres that during the time of the book had mortgage plus taxes. The Logans and some of their Africa-American neighbors recognize land as gift that further will provide crops that will enable them to pay taxes and the mortgage on the land that will keep them living there and will continue to yield food for their dinner table.

In some ways scripture views land, the earth, as inalienable gift, Leviticus 25:23 famously says, "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers [aliens] and sojourners with me." God is the creator and the original owner but wait, it all belongs to Him, anyway! In Native American culture, too, land cannot be sold. However, access to rich, healthy, well-stewarded ground is essential for our mutual survival, yet during the Jubilee Year, the 50^th year, the one of 7 times 7, the land reverts to its original (human) owner/steward. "They" say land is inalienable gift, yet "they" also observe all wars are about territory and we have the concept of real estate, real property.

The Logan family related to the dominant White-controlled economy sometimes with fear-tinged submission, at times with almost play-acting "yes sir, no sir, of course, ma'am" behaviors amidst finding true refuge and safety in a solid, respectful and respecting family of parents, their offspring and the dad's mother, Big Ma. The church that has given its name and a lot of funding to Great Faith elementary school play major roles, too.

Although earlier on in the novel we find examples of death-dealing and destructive fire, closer to the conclusion of the book, fire becomes redemptive as Cassie's father David torches a portion of his own cotton crop in a prescribed burning that directs the Whites in power from possibly pursuing a handing or lynching because they need to prevents the fire from spreading to their own land; for a while the fire brings along with it the visible reality of White and Black "children of slaveholders and children of slaves" working compatibly side-by-side.

And oh, of course there's a prominent White character who is on the side of the Blacks, the lawyer Mr. Wade. And we have the Wallaces, which sounds like a code name.

My experiences growing up around grandparents heavily influenced by Southern social and cultural practices made me think a lot about what I read in Roll of Thunder. I recognized a bit of the attitudes, though tempered by recognition of mutual humanity and mutual needs. The food was familiar, too; what got called Soul Food for a while was exactly the same vittles as poor(er) White Folk typically ate. By the time my grandparents reached New England they'd owned farms and worked the land in Nebraska and North Carolina, and though they'd become urban cliff-dwellers they retained heavy respect for the land. Need I mention we often enjoyed black-eyed peas, grits, cornbread and biscuits? I attended high school in an inner-city school that imagined it at least could desegregate and maybe even integrate some day and did my second undergrad stint at a university originally formed for non-traditional students that included a lot of African-Americans and other distinctive groups. Later on as an adult I lived and served in a predominantly African-American community, where I discovered my familiarity and relative easiness with African-American cuisine and customs coupled with my relative lack of stereotyping and assumptions was a powerful asset to bring to the situation. If I had doubts about my abilities - and who doesn't at times? - my horror at the words and behaviors of some outsiders who came in for volunteer or paid work constantly assured me.

What have you been doing for Black History Month? Just wonderin...

"reads like a real-life experience" — my amazon review

proclaiming the scandal of the cross

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross brings the reader word and prose "images" of the atonement of Jesus Christ. The book features eighteen authors all told with a tailpiece, a headpiece and one in the center by editor Mark D. Baker. Contributors include big names like C.S. Lewis and Rowan Williams though sadly, only a scant four women. Brief bios in the front of the book show they're mostly Western Protestants, mostly pastors from English-speaking countries. Sadly surprising is the apparent total omission of anyone from a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic perspective, although I especially appreciate the inclusion of Frederica Mathewes Green, who writes from the Antiochian Orthodox tradition.

I found this book to be a helpful resource that I read very quickly. Despite my background, I've been known to get seriously bogged down in densely-written theological tomes - not to say those weren't written well - but this wasn't one of those. I especially like the real-life stories that contextualize each concept and the way each author nuances their atonement concepts a little differently. Each discrete chapter opens with introductory explanations and concludes with a descriptive wrapup of the material just presented.

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross goes beyond the generally popularly acknowledged models of the atonement of Jesus Christ that typically include conflict/victory, legal penal satisfaction, and moral influence/example. In his intro, Mark Baker observes [page 31] "...for centuries, Christians preached and taught the message of Christianity without the gospel leading them to the inescapable conclusion of penal satisfaction." And, "It is noteworthy that Orthodox Christians still read their Bibles without finding this theory."

[page 35, still in Baker's intro] "Through the lens of a Western legal system, anyone is just who meets the standard of the law. But a Hebraic understanding of justice is more relational: anyone is just who keeps one's covenants and commitments to others. Here, we could say that God is considered just ... because God is faithful to his covenantal promise to provide salvation to Israel and through Israel to the world."

I found material from several chapters especially helpful and revealing...

Chapter 9 from Richard B. Hays, "Made New by One Man's Obedience" based on Romans 5:12-19

page 97 "If the apostle Paul had turned this passage in to me as a short theological reflection paper, I would have told him, 'Get thee to the writing tutor.'" ... "so that he can pass my course on Greek Exegesis of Romans."

page 99 "But the Adam-Christ analogy should [page 100] never mislead us into thinking that Jesus Christ merely undoes the effects of Adam's transgression and puts us back at square one with a blank slate. Instead, Jesus has swept us into a new creation in which our identity is now positively redefined by his faithfulness rather than by our own disloyalty to God."

[page 100 continued] "Paul almost never talks about 'forgiveness of sins,' because ... he has a more radical diagnosis of the human predicament and a more radical vision of the new creation. We need far more than forgiveness or judicial acquittal. We need to be changed. [page 101] We are saved because we participate in the new humanity that Jesus, the faithful, obedient one inaugurated. ... this faithfulness not only models a different pattern of life but also actually creates a new kind of family."

chapter 3, "Rising Victorious" by Frederica Mathewes Green clearly and concisely defines the Christus Victor atonement model that remains most prominent in the Eastern Churches.

Doug Frank, in chapter 12, "Naked but Unashamed" lines out an account both psychological and told in the first person as he describes how the cross obliterates the shame, the fears about self-revelation and the self-alienation most of us feel far too often. [page 133] "...since God is so wildly and scandalously for us, who, including ourselves, can possibly be against us?" Historically, obliteration of shame in the cross of Jesus Christ has been a focus of liberation theology, and I appreciated Doug Frank's very real-life contemporary middle-class western world examples.

In another chapter (14) about shame, this one by Mike McNichols, "Jesus, the Ultimate Outsider" on page 147 quotes Dr. Ray Anderson's definition of shame as "...the perceived loss of our place with others. Those who have the power to create our history have the power to make us feel worthy or unworthy at the core of our being. ... We feel shame as loss of being."

[page 149] McNichols describes when "Jesus himself became the ultimate outsider. ...He was banished from the world of homes, family and friends, work and play."

Chapter 11, "The Cross as Prophetic Action" by Brian D. McLaren brings us Hosea 2; and on page 115 he calls the desert "a place of aloneness, trials, and reconstruction" and says "The Valley of Achor, the Valley of Trouble, ... will become a passageway to hope."

[page 116] "[Israel] was already his [God's], but he bought her back anyway." McLaren contrast the money-changers "for prophet status, in contrast to Jesus' for-prophet status."

I love Brian McLaren's asking, [page 117] "Could it be that just as Hosea in a sense exposed God's betrayed heart ... could God be saying, not just with Hosea, 'You're breaking my heart!' but also through Jesus, 'You're torturing me, killing me.'"?

McLaren continues by asking, "How different this gripping understanding of the passion of Jesus is from the formulaic transactional understanding promoted by evangelical pop-atonement theology. ... How must God feel about ... our continuing betrayal of God's heart, our ongoing missing of the point that might be funny if it weren't so sick?"

I highly recommend this book as a teaching and discussion resource; it could be helpful as part of the preaching enterprise, as well. But not including a single currently practicing Roman Catholic troubles me and I particularly consider the omission of a contributor writing from a Lutheran perspective both glaring and puzzling, especially given how central the theology of Martin Luther has been for the Church in the West and given that most of his theology was very specifically "Theology of the Cross." In fact, for Luther, the cross of Calvary formed a Weltanschauung, an all-encompassing worldview.

I'll semi-conclude by first quoting from one of the class handouts I prepared for the theology of the cross course I developed and facilitated during 2007:

The cross of Calvary forms the ultimate type and reality of God’s characteristically hidden and paradoxical, sacramental presence in the commonest things, situations and people. Especially in the cross we learn God totally subverts evil for good, as the death of Jesus Christ becomes a redemptive reality for all creation.

I also paraphrased Luther and wrote:

Theologians of the cross build their theology in the light of God’s own revelation of himself, particularly God’s self-revelation in Christ crucified. The cross of Calvary forms a paradigm and model for God’s characteristically hidden and paradoxical, sacramental presence in the commonest things, situations and people.

Four articles from the Heidelberg Disputation [1518] form my final conclusion for this blog:

19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened [Romans 1:20].

20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

21. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.

22. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.


my amazon review: "a helpful resource despite serious omissions"