Like the Bible Says… | The Congregational Church of Westborough
My friend (and fellow Andover Newton graduate) Pedro S. Silva is right on target with this meditation on the lack of knowledge that most of us have nowadays (including ministers!) of what’s really in the Bible; and the net of mis-appellation and misinterpretation we build around it as a result of that illiteracy.
Some thoughts on the tension between Certainty and Hope, inspired by’s book “The Prophetic Imagination”…
“I have a dream!” said the Preacher.
A dream implies hope: hope for a better life, for redemption, or justification, or perhaps vindication. Hope is the conviction that the future holds the promise of better things to come, that the future is a better place than the present.
And the Preacher, representing a people who had endured centuries of oppression, terror, bondage, and worse, gave voice to their hopes that hot afternoon, more than 50 years ago.
“I have a dream!” he said. And yet, the hundreds of thousands who first heard those words had little else but those words.
Hope flourishes in the forgotten corners of human existence, in those places where certainty either does not exist, or where the only certainty to be had is dark and painful. Hope flourishes where human voices are not given the chance to speak, where human hands are not allowed to build a future for themselves, and quite often where those with power and wealth have done all within their power to eliminate the future.
Stop! …Say that again? Eliminate the future?
Yes.
Recently I saw a news article on a local TV channel about a family here in a Boston suburb that has been celebrating Christmas for decades with an extravagant display of lights. This year, for the first time, an anonymous “neighbor” sent them a letter claiming to be insulted by the display.
Now it is true that there are many who react negatively to such celebrations of Christmas. Comments I’ve heard and read include people saying they feel insulted, offended, disgusted, oppressed and/or marginalized because of this Holiday, and this letter writer certainly sees the display as a statement of exclusion – Christians celebrating their cultural dominance in an insensitive way. And, they’re not alone, many have written similar anonymous letters (some with threats) in the past.
OK, Let’s accept that: many do feel this way, including our anonymous letter writer, just as the owners of that home, and many others, are feeling hurt and insulted by what the anonymous letter writer had to say. Such feelings are a reality and cannot be denied. But I wonder, was this letter a healthy way of expressing one’s feelings about the display of lights? (In this case, given what they said, I’d say not!) But, it does raise the issue: is such a display of Christmas lights as insensitive and insulting as this person claims it to be, and how should we react when such concerns are raised?
The following was a “Letter to the Editor” written by Heidi Mario, a member of Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, VT and published in the August 17th Issue of the Brattleboro Daily Reformer. I was so impressed with the letter that I asked Heidi for permission to republish it here in my blog, which she granted. The original article can be found here. – Allen
I am curious to know on what Dean Lynch bases his statement “More people have been killed over the history of religion than any other” (Letter Box, Aug. 8). While it is true that over the course of human history the worship of gods, or God, has been used as an excuse and justification for much evil, the vast majority of wars have been political, not religious. Most murders are committed for reasons of passion, anger, sex or drugs, and most of the horrific mass killings of recent years, such as Columbine, Aurora, Arizona and Newtown, were perpetrated by disturbed individuals with no axe of faith to grind.
To make a statement such as “Organized religion is a bad thing: a dogmatic system of conduct sold by clergy/true believers as the only path to the Divine,” is tarring progressive mainstream Protestants, Bible-thumping Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics, Buddhists, Islamic extremists, Islamic moderates, Hindus, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Reform and Conservative Jews, Taoists, Wiccans and a dizzingly vast array of other faith practices, all “organized” to one degree or another, with the same brush. That is as bigoted and ridiculous as declaring that all persons of a particular ethnic group or culture are inclined to violence, or are lazy, or stupid.
I wonder if Mr. Lynch is aware that if churches were taxed, as he proposes, all but the largest and wealthiest would most likely be forced to close their doors. Using my own church as an example, the free meal program that feeds hundreds each week in our building would shut down. The AA groups that meet several times a week would have to find somewhere else to go. The day care center, which serves many lower-income families, would close. The monthly non-sectarian Moment for Peace would be homeless. Community musical events, including the Messiah Sing, which raises money for the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center, would have to find another venue. The graceful, historic sanctuary, where countless weddings, baptisms and funerals have been held over the last two centuries would stand silent and empty. And the Baptist church across the street could no longer provide meals and shelter to the homeless.
And there are many elderly, disabled and just plain lonely, for whom their church family is their only family. To say that the government would use the increased tax revenue to “feed the hungry … help the sick … teach the children,” is laughably naive.
If Mr. Lynch chooses to tread his own spiritual path alone, that’s fine. More power to him. But others of us find our our faith journeys require, at least partly, the enrichment of a faith community. We find inspiration, joy, hope, courage and peace in the words of a sermon and in Scripture, in the guidance of a wise and compassionate pastor, the beauty of music and the love and support of sharing that journey with others.
Our pastor told us recently about a young woman from North Carolina who had come into the church, seeking help. A “friend” had convinced her to take an impromptu joy ride to Vermont, and then promptly abandoned her. She had no money. She knew no one here. She didn’t know her mother’s or father’s phone numbers, or street addresses. She was illiterate. But she saw a building that looked like a church, and knew that churches were supposed to help people. The pastor spent the rest of her day playing detective, eventually managing to contact her family and then getting her on a bus for home.
This was, sadly, not a particularly rare event. We frequently get requests from people in our community in desperate circumstances requesting help, who have never attended a service, never dropped a quarter in the collection plate, asking for gas money, to pay a utility bill, or for groceries. And we do what we can, because we are an organized religion, a church, and that is what churches are supposed to do.
I would like to invite Mr. Lynch to attend services at local churches, to see for himself if indeed, organized religion is such a bad thing as he has posited. Possibly he will feel himself justified. But then again, he may find his horizons broadened and meet some pretty nice people. As far as “what would Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, whoever, do?” I do know that for most major religions, meeting together, and sharing faith, is an intrinsic, indeed, required, part of practice. As Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
I agree. For me, Baptism is about relationship – a statement of our commitment to each other and our common devotion to God. I do not see it as a prerequisite for salvation.
There’s a family story about my birth that, like a lot of family stories told and re-told over the years, is probably only tenuously true, but it’s a good story all the same. This is how it goes:
My parents had decided that if they had a girl, they would name her Janice. This was a merciful way of naming a child for my grandmother without actually saddling the child with my grandmother’s name, which was Janetta. But my mother’s labor was long and my head and shoulders were big, and her pain was great, and at a particularly difficult moment, she—who had never been particularly devoted to the Mother of Jesus—was heard to scream, “Get me out of this and I’ll name her Mary!”
But there’s another story about my birth that I cherish more than this one. It seems that when I finally did come out, I came…
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One of the things I love doing with my 3 year old son is to take him to the grocery store.
My little guy loves to get one of those “toddler shopping carts” with a steering wheel, and we wend our way through the store, him “steering” and me acting as the “engine,” brakes, and sanity check.
He is very serious about his job of steering the cart: energetically spinning the wheel this way and that to guide the cart towards his intended destination of the moment; pointing at and commenting about various things he wants daddy to see (or procure); and making sure no food sample is missed.
It’s a fun voyage, and one that often ends with us hitting the hot food and salad bar to select a meal, usually consisting of (for him) chicken, potatoes, corn, cauliflower and a small bottle of either cranberry juice or goat milk. We then sit down in the store’s dining area and enjoy our meal together, watching the “cart person” dashing this way and that in the parking lot, and seeing shoppers of every description rolling by with carts full of groceries.
One thing I think about as we roll along with him “piloting” our cart through the aisles is that this could be a good metaphor for the nature of free will in our lives. Yes, we do define our own path in life – steering this way and that: observing and participating in all the wonderful variety of this world in which we live. But, the entire environment, and all the rules that constrain where we can go and how we get there have been designed and implemented by God. Even the bodies in which we live, the mind with which we observe the world, and all of our senses, are God’s creations. All that we think, see, hear, feel, touch, smell and experience are constrained by the very design of the Universe.
So, in seeing my son “drive” his cart, I think of how yes – he believes he’s doing all the work, making all the choices. But it is others who designed and stocked the store, and ultimately even where he can go within that environment is constrained by whoever is pushing the cart. My son believes his voyage is directed by his own free will; but in looking at the larger picture, we realize that things are not always as they seem, especially when we think we’re in the driver’s seat.
Copyright (c) 2013, Allen Vander Meulen III, all rights reserved. I’m happy to share my writings with you, as long as you are not seeking (or getting) financial benefit for doing so, and as long as proper credit for my authorship is given (via a credit that gives my full name and/or provides a link back to this site).
… it is OK to feel that anger, it is OK to allow ourselves to experience it, just as it is OK to experience the grief and sadness. It is part of what being human is all about. Our emotions are a critical part of who and what we are. Without emotions, we could not love, without emotions we could not create, and we could not grieve; but also, without emotions, we would not destroy and we would not hate.
One of my favorite songs of all time is Don McLean’s rendition of “Waters of Babylon” – a beautiful, haunting, sad three part canon that mourns the loss of Zion and the captivity of the Jews following the Babylonian’s destruction of all they had known and loved, including the Temple and the City of Jerusalem, in 586 BCE.
The lyrics are taken from Psalm 137 in the Bible, which I quote in full here (using the New Revised Standard Version):
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!’
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!}
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
It is times such as the recent shootings in Newtown and this week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon that bring back this song into my mind in all its power and beauty – the events and the music working together to forcefully remind me of how frail and fragile our human existence is; that our time on earth, and the lives of us and all of our fellow human beings, are far too precious to waste.
We aren’t called to be passive in our faith, but to be active, to look for Christ’s presence at all times, for it is always there. We are to employ our hands in the service of the Body of Christ, for it is then that we will enjoy the fullness of all he has set before us. Christianity is not just a faith of introspection and meditation, it is also a faith of service and action, of making a difference.
The last chapter in the last of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John, is the final statement in the narratives of Jesus’ walk among us here on earth. And so, as such, we can imagine that it has much to tell as we voyage forth into the world, leaving behind the physical presence of Jesus, just as a child ventures forth from home, eagerly heading to school on their own for the first time.
John is unique among the four Gospels. It was written a few decades after the others and has a great deal of material not shared with the other three. And unlike the so-called Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, John is very much focused on the future of the community of believers.
John 21 focuses on our role as believers living and working in the world: Are we to be active or passive agents of the Body of Christ? How will Christ be present in us in this role? How will our own strength and faith be sustained as we do so?
I was sitting at my soundboard one day, running sound checks and preparing for worship, when a young woman, perhaps 16 years old, came in with her friends and sat down right in front me, such that I could plainly see what was printed on the back of her shirt in large white block letters: “I WASN’T EDUCATED IN NO F***ING WHITE MAN’S SCHOOL.” I was a bit shocked, as you might guess…
I’ve always been a strong proponent of equal rights and justice for all, but how that has been expressed changed radically one day in the fall of 1995, as a result of an encounter in an all-black church I was a member of at the time, and where I was the chief sound technician for the church’s worship services. …It was (and still is) a transformative moment for me…
I was sitting at my soundboard that morning, running sound checks and preparing for worship, when a young woman, perhaps 16 years old, came in with her friends and sat down right in front of my position in the church’s sanctuary, such that I could plainly see what was printed on the back of her shirt in large white block letters: “I WASN’T EDUCATED IN NO F***ING WHITE MAN’S SCHOOL.” (Well, OK – I added the asterisks!)
Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV)
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
In my ten or so years as a Project Manager and Software Developer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, I was frequently involved in discussions with physicians about what limits to incorporate into system designs.
Software development, and any sort of engineering or design for that matter, focuses to a large extent on limits. We often needed to address questions like:
At Mayo, the underlying attitude was always “Limit our options and flexibility as little as possible.” This was because physicians are dealing with people’s lives. They absolutely do not want anything getting in the way of their ability to provide the best possible care for their patients. Is our “Great Physician,” Jesus, any different?
People constantly come to Doctors with all sorts of symptoms and issues that were well outside of what is expected, and so the tools they use in caring for those patients cannot limit their ability to provide the care that is needed. Since we cannot accurately predict what situations the future will hold, we must provide tools that “flex” well in unexpected situations, and that do not needlessly place restraints on what can be done.
This same logic applies when talking about moral issues in everyday life, things like abortion, or gay marriage, or adoption across cultural or ethnic boundaries. In all of these situations, people are involved. Therefore, each such situation has its own unique circumstances. Each one involves difficult, sometimes painful choices and adjustments. Like a physician’s care of a patient, all of these situations involve decisions that these people will have to live with for the rest of their lives. They are not choices that are made lightly. Further, they are not choices made in isolation: the choice that is made impacts not only the person making it, but others as well, whether that is an unborn infant, or a same-sex partner, or a child who needs a family. Their choices also impact and involve the “community” of which they are a part – family, friends, co-workers, and so on.
I’ve been percolating on the third of the ten commandments [or second, depending on how you count] (Exodus 20:7) for a few weeks now. Here it is in the King James Version, with which many of us are most familiar…
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain…”
And here is the same passage in the New Revised Standard Version, which I think evokes a broader and deeper understanding of the intent of the original text…
“You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God…”
What I find interesting about this passage is how we look at it. Many of us (thanks to how King James presents it) see it as a prohibition against swearing with the name of God. But really, that’s only a tiny part of it, as the Jews demonstrate with their avoidance of using the name of God at all. (To the point where, for millennia now, no one has known how to say the Lord’s name in the original ancient Hebrew!)
The NRSV version helps us see some of the reason behind this Jewish interpretation of the third commandment: it’s not just about swearing, but that we are not to make wrongful use of it in any form or context.
After service, during fellowship hour this past Sunday, I noted something I often see during any time when we share food and companionship – one last lonely little bite of food, sitting all by itself on a serving tray.
Now, I’m sure we’ve all seen this, often in the workplace: someone brings in some cake, or donuts, or some other treat. Everyone digs in until there’s just one piece left. Then eventually, half of that piece disappears, then half of that, then half of that, and this goes on and on until there’s such a tiny piece left that it is indistinguishable from the left over crumbs; or else the microscopic remnant finally turns stale and gets tossed out.
Why do we do this? Why are we reluctant to take all of the last bit, even when the portion we take is so small that we can hardly taste it, and leave an equally small portion for the next person!? It’s a very human thing to do, but also really kind of silly when you think about it. And yet, we all do it.
The Here and the Hereafter 