Honored in the Absence -Christian use of Scripture

The whole religious climate in this country is getting very depressing and dangerous.  We have a very strong Christian religious fanatical element. We have a strong Roman Catholic tradition that has lots of rigid and dogmatic positions. The Pope seems to be trying to bring the "ship" around a bit, but that is slow. We have a growing faithful Muslim community and some rabid fundamentalist Muslims as well.  The Muslim fundamentalists have a lot of mixed motives and reasons for their attacks upon the West.

Today while sitting in a worship service, the name of William Stringfellow came back to me.  William Stringfellow was an American lay theologian. He was a Harvard educated lawyer. He was  a civil rights activist.  Stringfellow was convinced at Baptism one entered one into a lifelong struggle against the "powers and principalities" of systematic evils. This is what the New Testament calls the powers of death.   This is larger and more devious than individual sins. This is the power and authority that institutions, government. international corporations, and even church denominations. From his convictions Stringfellow insisted on the primacy of the Bible for Christians.

I remember reading of one of his experiences. It seems he was working in Harlem with Dorothy Day. He was working out of a church that had a swimming pool. It was one of the few swimming pools in the neighborhood.  In order to be able to use the swimming pool, youth had to come to Sunday School. Stringfellow was asked to teach the class of high school youths. He tried to follow the church literature for a while, but it was so deadly. He decided that he would resort to Scripture. Every Sunday morning he would simply read them the book of Romans.  The students just sat there and looked bored.  But every Sunday morning he would re-read the book of Romans. Finally after six or seven weeks some of the students began to ask him questions about the book and about the message. He had some significant life changing experiences with those young people.

Almost every Christian Church I know talks about the primacy of Scripture, but you really have to wonder what that means.  So many of the places I visit have an hour or more of worship service, but there is no more than two or three minutes of attention give to the "hearing of the Word."  There are worship services where they read two or three passages of Scripture, but the person who is reading the scriptures does it so poorly that no one can hear the words.  Of course, there are services of worship where the scriptures are so mistreated. They are not even given serious intellectual examination. Poetry is taken as history.  History stories are taken as prophecy.  Events in the Old Testament are supposed to be predictive of events in the 21st century. Symbolism is taken literally.
Cultural traditions are made into divine commandments.  As so often is said one can make the scriptures support anything you want.

The Bible is a collection of reports, conversations, witnesses, personal testimonies, poetry, songs, and memories about God and what he has done in the lives of those people.  We are invited to join in that conversation. It obviously suggests that God may be active in our history in our lives in unique and unexpected ways, but the ways and the circumstances of the past are not the divine requirements.  If God enables Samson to kill lions with a jaw bone of an ass, does not mean that his disciples now ought to all carry jaw bones for protection. It may suggest that God will equip his servant with the items she needs when confronting danger, but it is not always a jaw bone.

For the Christian religion, and Presbyterians are Reformed and one of our mottoes is "Sola Scriptura" to be so dogmatic about the Bible and then to spend so little time on honest serious study and discussion of it,  denies its own affirmations about the role of scripture in their thinking.

So Lucky - So Blessed -So Thankful

I do not claim to be a very gifted or unique person. In fact, there have been personnel committees that thought I should be Richard Bland.  I have never been the "hare" and jumped and rushed off to do stuff. In my positions in work and hobby I have generally preferred to be part of the arrangement and management team rather than on the speaker's platform.  I recognize that is strange for one who was a preacher for 40 years.  The sermons were probably more serious reflections than emotional stem winders. But I was also never willing to refrain from taking a stand on important issues. An Open Letter to Anita Bryant, Letter of support in the paper for McGovern, opposition to the Vietnam War and campaigning against the war in Iraq.  Of course the reaction of my congregations were mixed depending on their view.  I do know that members of churches do not mind if you mix religion and politics together as long as you are on their side.  My persistence in following a decision has generally meant my term of service on community agencies has been one term. When the agency went through the process of developing a five year plan, I would ask each meeting how that plan was being worked. Of course, nobody really wanted to work the plan, it was only to fulfill the by laws to have one.

Still as I enjoy my retirement, I have to confess that I have been very blessed. My father died of a heart attack watching Ed Sullivan one of his favorite TV program. My mother's death was a bit more difficult as she had liver cancer and had to have hospice care. But my children are both grown and responsible adults. One has married and has two children, a boy and a girl.  We have had our share of medical issues, but they have not impacted our lives the way so many others have suffered. Some car wrecks but no one was injured in any of them. I have not been unemployed as long as I wanted to work.  I look around and listen and hear so many tragic stories, so many people with flooded homes, so many people with lost limbs, so many college students without jobs and high debt.  The dark side of life has invaded so many people, drug addictions, long term cancer, drive by shootings. I have not been forced to experience any of that.

I remember a woman once was quoted that sometimes you look around and you suddenly feel so thankful and grateful for all that has been in your life and in your experiences and you feel you ought to say thank you, thank you, thank you to someone or to something.  That is why we have Thanksgiving.  To say thank you to the One who created the world, who created life, and who has given you life and allowed you to have such a long and gracious life. Thanks be Unto God who gives us the gifts.

I Did It My Way

I DID IT MY WAY!

Frank Sinatra may have made a fortune singing that song among others, but it seems to me that that idea has become the greatest obstacle to our common life together. 

It appears to me that more and more of us are rejecting the mega narratives and living in our own narrow personal narratives.  What I have in mind is  best suggested by the story of the mother who complained to the school board that the Social Study teacher was infringing on her daughter’s religious faith by just teaching the history and tenets of the Muslim faith.  The “in coming” freshmen at a college refusing to read the assigned book because they did not agree with the author’s purpose. The Clerk of Court refusing to issue marriage licenses to all people because she felt that giving licenses for homosexual marriages was contrary to her religious faith.  The refusal of people to accept as fact the information from authoritative figures. For example, the refusal of leaders to accept the reality of climate change.

People have become more and more separated from the common narrative. The dramatic rise in the number of home schooling children and the ever growing number of religious and charter schools means that parents now can pick the education they desire.  The parent who does not want her child to know about the history of this country with Native Americans can pick a school that “white washes” American history.  The family who does not want their daughter to read Slaughter House Five will go to the school board and get her child exempted from that assignment. 

The multiplication of news sites adds to this problem as we can now pick the news media that gives us the facts that fit our assumptions rather than the media that gives us facts that challenge what we know.  There seems to be very few media outlets now that we tell you both sides of the facts.  One source will repeatedly tell you that the economy is horrible, as it is in certain locations and for certain kinds of skills that have become obsolete because of robots and technology, and another will tell you that the stock market is at an all time high and unemployment is at record lows. 

We pick the information and the source we like and refuse even to hear or listen to other information.  There does not appear to be mutually accepted authorities on the major questions of society.  The collapse of “universals” that all of society accepts as a starting point seems to have become total.  The poet wrote, “things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”  The recent election present a very clear example of each side picking the facts and reality that want to hear and not hearing anything the other side was saying.