Monthly Archives: May 2013

The Disconnect Between Worship and Obedience:Jeremiah 6: 15-21

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn 1630

15 They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the LORD.
16 Thus says the LORD: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, “We will not walk in it.”
17 Also I raised up sentinels for you: “Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!”
But they said, “We will not give heed.”
18 Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them.
19 Hear, O earth; I am going to bring disaster on this people,
the fruit of their schemes, because they have not given heed to my words;
and as for my teaching, they have rejected it.
20 Of what use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land?
Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor are your sacrifices pleasing to me.
21 Therefore thus says the LORD:
See, I am laying before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble;
parents and children together, neighbor and friend shall perish.

Apparently the reality that some people may be faithful church attenders while they live lives that are fundamentally out of touch with God’s desire for their lives is not a new reality. As Walter Brueggemann states:

In place of torah, Israel has substituted cultic action (Jer. 6:20-21): frankincense, cane, sacrifices. Israel has devised a form of religion that reflects affluence, which can be safely administered, and which brackets out all questions of obedience.” (Brueggemann 1998, 73)

It is a nice, safe, easy religion that has allowed the people to slip into a sense of cultic complacency. So long as we have the temple and we keep bringing our offerings to God nothing will happen to us. This is the picture of gods that are common in the ancient world, that you bring pleasing offerings to the gods to entreat their favor and to get them fight for you in your battles, allow your crops to prosper, etc. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship God wants for God’s people. It is not coincidence that the Old Testament prophets frequently rail against the sacrificial system (and Jesus also directly confronts the temple in his own day). The way things are will not continue indefinitely, God is speaking through the prophet. God is taking away the things that people have placed their trust in, and the temple and the priestly sacrificial system is one of these things.

More than Mothers

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Guido Reni (1575-1642)-The Penitent Magdalene

I first want to say that I think Mother’s Day is a fine holiday and that mothers often play one of the most important roles in the lives of their children. That being said, I do think that Mother’s Day can become a time when we see the expectations of women limited to child bearing and child raising and women are more than that. What got me thinking about this was an exchange I overheard between a mother and her grown daughter with another woman. After wishing a happy Mother’s Day to the mother, this woman turned to the daughter wishing her the same, and when the daughter replied that she isn’t a mother the woman’s response was, “Oh, but you will be someday.” I have no idea if being a mother is a part of this young woman’s hopes and dreams for her future, but she is very successful and gifted in her own right. In her late twenties she is both working and working towards and advanced degree in the medical field, continues to remain active within the church and I am sure is active in many other things. I would hope that we can value her, and many other women for who they are as individuals.

There was a time when a woman’s value was tied to her ability to bear children. Countless stories in the Bible rotate around the struggle of women who are barren and have their shame removed through an intervention of God: think of Sarah who in her 90s finally bears Isaac, or the struggles between Rachael and Leah, or Hannah, or Elizabeth just to name a few. Yet even in each of these ancient stories, with a worldview over two millennia old, these women did have value both to God and the people most important in their lives well before they bore children. It was society that placed the expectation upon them that their worth was tied to the future they ensured through children (and in particular male children). I chose the image of Mary Magdalene to start this post because she is one of the women in scripture and tradition never mention bearing children and yet she is valued as one of Jesus followers and becomes one of the first witnesses of the resurrection. One of the gifts of our time has been the greater opportunities afforded to women to define themselves in ways that wouldn’t have been allowed a couple generations ago. I look forward to my own daughter being able to make choices that will help define the life she will live as she grows and to carve out her own role within the world.

One of the gifts of my vocations is getting to know and be a part of people’s stories and valuing people as individuals, for who they are. I do think it is important to value mothers, but I also think it is important to value the 97 year old woman who never had any children of her own, or the fromer teacher in her late 80s that never had a family of any type, the women I know who never wanted to get married or have children, those who may want to have children but infertility or miscarriages have prevented this from becoming a reality, those who at this point in their lives are dedicating themselves to their education or their career, or those who gave a child up for adoption for whatever reason or lost custody of their children. I do think this is an issue where we still treat men and women a little differently, but my plea in the midst of all of this is can we value people first and foremost for who they are, and on days like Mother’s day if they happen to be a mother then celebrate that and if not please don’t make them feel guilty for not being one.

Are we willing to ask the difficult questions?

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As the world continues to change at a dynamic pace and the church continues to attempt to minister faithfully in that changing world it will force us to ask difficult questions, questions that reach right to the heart of our identity. One of the earliest questions we learn as toddlers is “why?” and I think that as the church continues to evaluate what we are called to do going forward we need to be willing to go back and ask that question of why are we doing the things we are doing. Do we even understand why we do many of the actions and say many of the things we do? I am convinced that there is a lot of wisdom in the actions that have been passed down from generation to generation-but if we are unable to ask the why questions what was passed down as a tradition, which to use Jaroslav Pelikan’s famous way of talking about it is the living faith of the dead, can calcify into traditionalism, which Pelikan referred to as the dead faith of the living. Our actions do have meanings but if we find ourselves going through the motions do we have a dead faith? What is the end that we are seeking?
Even Protestant Christians rested for a long time on Cyprian of Carthage’s( a 3rd Century Catholic Bishop) famous dictum “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus” (No salvation outside the church) if not in theology in practice. People came to church because it was a way of earning their salvation (and what people mean by salvation may differ widely, but that is a topic for another time). Attendance in worship was something that people were expected to do, now certainly not everyone attended all the time but there was a societal expectation to attend worship. I remember one of my instructors in Marriage and Family Dynamics at the University of Central Oklahoma whose father had been a minister and who had members of the mob in his community who were at worship every Sunday. That expectation is no longer there in society, and officially in most protestant churches it has not been theologically there since the time of Luther, and so in a time of change maybe we need to be willing to ask the difficult questions of what are people getting out of the time they spend in worship. Reggie McNeal, who I have referred to in other posts, tells of a time when he had to confront the question:

I remember it as if it were yesterday, even though it was over twenty years ago. We had just comleted a midweek leader luncheon at the two-year-old church where I served as founding pastor. Everyone else had left the building. I sat alone in the fellowship hall And the Lord spoke to me. It was in the form of a question: “Are people better off for being a part of this church, or are they just tireder and poorer?” …The question bothered me. A lot. Not only did I not know the answer, I feared knowing! (McNeal 2009, 89)
I am convinced that worship has meaning, that the church as an organization has a purpose and meaning, that we have a mission and things that God calls us to be a part of in the world. Yet, I am also aware that sometimes it is so easy to become distracted by things that are not important. Working my way through Jeremiah, like I am currently, you can’t help but see the disconnect between the cultic practice of the people of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s time and the ways in which they were not living out of God’s vision of shalom (peace, harmony). If we are merely coming to worship out of a sense of duty, doing the same things we have always done then perhaps we are just tireder and poorer, perhaps it is a traditionalism, a dead faith of the living and God is doing what God does in the midst of death. God is creating new life!
There is meaning in the things that we do, the words that we say, but ultimately our work should be an expression of love. The two great commandments, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” should be at least one of the ends of our worship-to help us to learn to love. In a world where spirituality and our religious lives have become one segment of our increasingly busy lives perhaps we as church leaders and members need to be asking questions on how our worship and our investment of time and resources are helping us integrate who we are as people of faith into the rest of our lives. It will not be an easy transition, but the bible itself is concerned with life much more than it is with afterlife. We may be the people who to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s language from his Letters and Papers from Prison are keeping the archane disciplines-these ancient practices that help us make sense of our faith and our lives-in a world that has come of age. As faithful people and congregations we will continue to wrestle with the difficult questions of how to be faithful in our time and place, and hopefully in the midst of that wrestling we will be shaped by the love of the one we come together to worship so that we may be a blessing to the world we are called to serve.

Peace, Peace When There Is No Peace: Jeremiah 6: 9-14

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The Door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg where Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses. The Theses are now engraved in the metal doors.

9 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel;
like a grape-gatherer, pass your hand again over its branches.
10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear?
See, their ears are closed, they cannot listen.
The word of the LORD is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.
11 But I am full of the wrath of the LORD; I am weary of holding it in.
Pour it out on the children in the street,
and on the gatherings of young men as well;
both husband and wife shall be taken, the old folk and the very aged.
12 Their houses shall be turned over to others,
their fields and wives together;
for I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land, says the LORD.
13 For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.
14 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying,
“Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
The posting of the 95 Theses by Martin Luther for debate in Wittenberg touched off a firestorm in Europe that would rage for a century, and most people think of the beginning of the reformation as a theological movement, which it was, but the 95 theses gained the immediate attention they did because they addressed an economic reality. I think it is telling that thesis 92 (which sets up the final three theses) explicitly refers to Jeremiah 6: 14:
92. Away then with the prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace! [Jer. 6:14]
93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!
94. Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their head, through penalties, death, and hell;
95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace [Acts 14: 22] (Luther 1989, 29)

Luther felt that the people had placed their trust in the wrong place; in the reformation context they had placed their faith in the church and not in Christ. In Jeremiah’s context the people have trusted the rulers and the temple, but not God- and the consequences of that misplaced trust are devastating. Rather than making a single pass over the grapevine of Israel, Jeremiah is told to make a second pass so there is very little remaining for the people do not hear the prophet’s warning-others have told them a more pleasant message. The prophet is at the point where he has been the bearer of this message that has fallen on deaf ears, and he feels ready to break, even though he knows the result will be devastation. The litany of children, husband and wives, old and aged, least to greatest, prophet and priest, everyone is to be caught up in the tide of wrath.
We live in a culture that doesn’t deal with God’s wrath very well. Churches in the United States that tend to talk about God’s wrath tend to direct it towards primarily moralistic (and particularly sexual) behaviors. But in the Bible God’s wrath is a function of God’s grief over the turning of the people away from their vocation as the people of God and the ways in which injustice and greed have taken over the narrative of who they are.

The World Turned Upside Down: Jeremiah 6: 1-8

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Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn 1630

Flee for safety, O children of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem!
Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem;
for evil looms out of the north, and great destruction.
2 I have likened daughter Zion to the loveliest pasture.
3 Shepherds with their flocks shall come against her.
They shall pitch their tents around her; they shall pasture, all in their places.
4 “Prepare war against her; up, and let us attack at noon!”
“Woe to us, for the day declines, the shadows of evening lengthen!”
5 “Up, and let us attack by night, and destroy her palaces!”
6 For thus says the LORD of hosts:
Cut down her trees; cast up a siege ramp against Jerusalem.
This is the city that must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her.
7 As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her wickedness;
violence and destruction are heard within her; sickness and wounds are ever before me.
8 Take warning, O Jerusalem, or I shall turn from you in disgust,
and make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.

Things have gone so wrong in the relationship between God and God’s people, and the poetry of pain continues. Things are so bad that a city will become a field again, the urban elite will give way to the poorest of shepherds. There is an undertone of severe economic injustice that it finally coming to its head, and in the coming crisis the poor rather than standing with the leadership will set up their tent against them. Things are so dire that the daytime is not enough for the building of siege works and prosecuting the attack. For unlike the modern U.S. military which does a great deal of its fighting at night, throughout history the setting of the sun meant an end to the day’s hostility. Not so here, “up and let us attack by night and destroy her” says the enemy from the north. Their world has been turned upside down. The Lord is no longer the strength and shield for people of Judah, in fact Psalm 46 is turned on its head for the Lord of hosts is no longer on their side and the God of Jacob is no longer their refuge. God no longer can dwell in the midst of the betrayal of the city.The prophet sounds the alarm in the hope that the people will turn, and yet God still seems to want to avoid this path, this still seems to be a warning, “take warning, O Jerusalem, or I shall turn from you in disgust, and make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.”

There are many who may not know what to do with the picture of the wounded God that Jeremiah presents us with, a God who doesn’t want to turn his people over to the desolation that is coming but can no longer abide with the way things are. God is in the midst of God’s own process of grief, and in one way it seems trivial to anthropomorphize (assign human characteristics) to God-yet the picture of God in the Bible displays a wide range of emotions and has little to do with the Greek philosophical God who is the unmoved mover who is purely rational, nor does the Hebrew mindset trivialize emotions the way modern society does.

Longing for Sabbath-A Poem

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When the city never sleeps and more is never enough
In a world where busyness is substituted for happiness
When the days become weeks and weeks become months
And the joy is drained from vocation making it merely labor
We are longing for Sabbath

When the cruel gods of capitalism
Cast images of a life that cannot be attained
When possessions become objects of our bondage
And we find ourselves bondservants of mammon
We are longing for Sabbath

When we construct prisons of grey concrete and glass
And permanently chain ourselves to our offices
Connected by wireless umbilical cords to the necessity of availability
And there is nowhere we can go to break away
We are longing for Sabbath

Where we can accept the gift of rest
Where we can learn to give rather than to grasp
When labor becomes recaptured as vocation
We are once again stewards of the mysteries of faith
As the world rests with its creator
Accepting the gift of Sabbath

A Love Song for My Muse- A Poem

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Gustav Moreau, Hesiod and the Muse (1891)

She dances at the edges of my dreams
Singing her songs, delighting in the bright corners of imagination
Celebrating the springtime of the mind and shining brightly
She laughs as I reach out for her, knowing once again
I’ll hear her diaphanous voice haunting me
But she’ll not be held or confined
She’ll not come when beckoned
She heeds no time but her own
But she can be enticed
For she loves beauty and laughter
And sometimes in the midst of loss and despair
Her compassionate hand is felt upon my shoulder
Making sense of the sadness and miracle from madness
And sometimes she’ll abide for a time
While pen and paper record the embrace
Of her creativity and my words
Ah, she is an evanescent sprite, but I adore her
She is the playful counterpart to my own diligence
And so to the muse, that spirit of my inspiration
I send out a love song, I read her poetry
I search for beauty and I dwell in the darkness
Waiting again to celebrate her dance, her laugh, her voice
The angel in my mind holding the keys to creativity
And lighting up the corners of my mind’s eye with her smile

Composed Neil White, 2013

At the Century Mark-Post 100 looking back and looking forward

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Fire and Rose by Kondratj on deviantart.com

Back on June 19, 2012 I began Sign of the Rose as a creative space for me to think through many of the changes I was seeing in the church and the world. As I look back I’m pretty proud of the previous 99 posts, there is some pretty cool stuff in the midst of the last 9 months of work. I’ve certainly learned from the process of writing.

Sign of the Rose began with the question of authority and how to approach it, and so last summer I spent a lot of time working with history, what would end up being a much longer series than I anticipated and which I plan to return to. As it stands if you look at the Place of Authority series (under Historical Reflections) it runs from the time of the Judges in Ancient Israel (prior to 1000 BCE) through the time of the early Catholic and Byzantine churches, a span of approximately 3000 years. I still plan to pick up with the time of the emergence of Islam (some of the reading coming up soon on my reading list deals with this) but at the end of July my posts slowed to a crawl, since I had both of my kids for the end of the summer and then the school year started and I needed to refocus some of my energies back into the congregation I served. I also had a lot of other interests that I was neglecting.

In September and October my sporadic posts moved to Philosophy and Psychology. I had been reading a number of things influenced by Postmodern Philosophy, but I wanted to take a little bit of time and try to understand some of the basics of the philosophy itself. Then in one of the most helpful books I have read, Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly I spent a little time on the issues of shame and living courageously. I hit a dry patch as I continued to try to press ahead with the Place of Authority, knowing that I needed to take a break and rethink the direction I was going but like most writers encounter at some point I had a bit of writers block.

In February I rethought and recommitted to the process of writing, and part of that was expanding the horizons of creativity. I began to include my own personal study in going through the bible as a part of my own learning. So beginning with Haggai and Esther (which were chosen because I was going to preach on each of them) and currently Jeremiah I tried to share with you in my discovery process. In this time I also shared some of my poetry I had been writing. I have written poetry for years, but most of it ended up in trashcans somewhere, and I decided to put it out there. I also was at a time, during lent, where I was preaching more frequently and I began including my sermons as well for people to see.

What I am left with after 99 posts is a hodgepodge of interesting work, some more parable like trying to re-imagine what church could be, some historical, some biblical, some sermons, philosophy, culture, music, people who were important to me, but all in all some interesting pieces. There is more to come because I enjoy the process but sometimes it is just nice to look back before moving forward. I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of things that I want to go back to and spend some time with and we shall see together what ends up finding its way on here in the next 100 posts.