Too Far Off

The prophets of our day are the scientists. They see the climate changing. They tell of the waters rising. They report the population growth. They tell of the wars over water.  The prophecies of the scientists are given in decades not minutes. They talk of events that will happen in twenty or thirty years.  Their prophecies get very little attention from the people who are now making decisions. The CEO's who are focused on the bottom line today. The politicians who are focused on the next election.  They may hear the prophecies but these prophecies are not as important to them as the decisions of today.

I suspect that the same reaction may have been given to the prophecies of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah has some short term prophecies that are not very pretty.  Jerusalem and the people are going to be sacked by the Babylonians, taken into captivity, the temple is going to be stripped of its treasures and all the "brightest and best" are going to be made slaves of the Babylonians.

Then Jeremiah says, "The Lord proclaimed:  When Babylon's seventy years are up, I will come fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place (Jerusalem)" (Jeremiah 29:10)  Judgment, punishment, pain and sorrow will last seventy years, but don't worry, at the end of seventy years, you will be brought back.

Who would find any comfort in that in our day and age?  At my age the fact that in seventy years things will be better is not a good message for me. I will be dead.  All the people who are taken into captivity now will be dead. That is why Jeremiah tells them they have to have their children marry, have babies, and make a living in Babylon so that there will be people to be brought back.

The people who hear and can accept Jeremiah's good news are people who are more concerned with their corporate identity, the existence of the people of God, the national concept, who care more about the survival of their group than about themselves.  They have a very solid identity as a people. The individual is only a part of the whole.  The way fans look at a college sports program.  It is more about Kentucky basketball than about any individual player.

It seems to me that there is a small sense of corporate identity in our culture.  We may care about our country, but I suspect that if you had told those people in the great depression that in seventy years the stock market would recover they would not have found that much good news. If we were to say that in seventy years we will have found a cure for cancer, I am not sure that that would bring joy to the cancer people now.  I think our society has a lot more focus on the immediacy and the individual satisfaction than we have on our corporate survival and success.   Pie in the sky bye and bye is not a big seller any more and I doubt if pie in the future (three generations) would be a big hit either.

Christmas sonnet, 2014

I put the Christmas poem of 2013 on this blog and forgot to put the Christmas poem for 2014

So better late than never.

                                THE CHRISTMAS  SONNET, 2014

The paper's full of blood and guts.
The whole damn world's jut going nuts.
School children slaughtered at their desks.
A Sydney siege just turns grotesque.

Cheap gas gives auto sales a boost
As Putin's "bucks" tank through the roof.
But sales are said to still be good
So Santa's doing what he should.

There is a battle raging here.
It seems more vicious than past years.
Which Savior should we welcome here:
ISIS, Santa, Guns or Beer?

A messy baby in some straw
Contends that God has love for all.

Passed By

     When they went around the room in the parlor to introduce the members of the commission to ordain a young woman who had grown up in the church while I had served there, I introduced myself as the "has been."  That always seems to get a laugh, but it is more true than joke.

      The church, the culture, the religious landscape has passed me by and I do not know what is needed or what would be nourishment and blessing for a congregation.  The little congregations I supply from time to time are not willing to make any changes and so what I give them they welcome, but it is not the "bread of life" that a congregation in a major urban area would like

       That the worship has passed be by has been demonstrated to me very clearly in the last two sermons I have heard from two very high steeple churches in New York City.  Both preachers were well known preachers and they gave very strong messages and were, of course, well delivered. I get that.  They were very much like dramatic monologues, with all the gifts of good drama.

       What struck me so strange was that both congregations broke out in applause after the pastor finished.  Applause like it was a performance on a stage.  Applause like going to a concert and hearing a singer perform.  I was nurtured in the tradition that congregations were not supposed to even applaud the choir or the soloist.  We even thought it was unseemly for people to say "amen" in our congregations to good point in a sermon.

        What that suggested to me was that more and more the congregation does not see itself as part of the drama. That they do not understand that they are the Greek chorus and the whole worship is the play for the benefit of the world outside.  The congregation has speaking parts, confession, hymns, prayers, affirmation of faith, and the choir and preacher have other parts. The very coming to worship is a part of the drama which is conducted for the purpose of giving God praise and for witnessing to the world.

       The applause for the sermon is another step towards seeing the congregation as the audience and the preacher and choir as the actors on stage putting on a show for the crowd. It is not what I understood as worship.  But as I said, I am a has been and the new reality in religious worship has passed me by.