Wandering Elder

I hope that you, dear reader, have a peaceful Christmas. I hope that you, like Mary, can take this story to heart and ponder it.  Who knows where it might lead or into what it might grow. I hope that you can see the light of hope and hear the sounds of joy this Christmas. I hope that you might find calm in the midst of a troubled world. I hope that the words of the angels can be applied to your life: be not afraid. I hope that as we move into another year, it will have opportunities of which we have not dreamed, opportunities for good and not for ill. May God bless you and us and all.

I have touched on this idea before, I am sure, but I find that the more I serve as a pastor the less I can speak my personal thoughts. Some may argue that a pastor should have  no personal thoughts because their thoughts should always be on their congregation (or flock).  Therefore everything is done for and on their behalf.  I have heard some pastors lecture on just that idea - one in particular who stated that we (pastors) have no personal time and that our time should always be other  people's time unless they have no need for us at that moment.  By that he meant that if we were eating with our own family and someone calls needing to talk or whatever else, the meal with our own family becomes less of a priority because the congregational need must always come first. While I understand the argument I find that I am not so persuaded. It is in regards to preaching and teaching, though, that I find I have to be very, very guarded as to what I say.  I have to be not only guarde

With the rise of incendiary language and racial tensions being higher now than I can ever remember, I have found myself thinking about race and questions of ethnic identity. Let me start with what may be a poor analogy, but hear me out. I don't eat at Applebee's all that much any more.  I used  to.  Quite a bit, actually.  I have to say, though, that I had a few bad experiences at one particular Applebee's that left my stomach and I a bit wary of eating there again.  Now, it could be that the particular  Applebee's in question is just a poorly managed example and the food was not up to the standards of the larger chain.  However, and here is the critical part, those bad experiences have left me feeling a bit cool towards the entire chain.  So while my experience in a particular Applebee's could have been an anomaly (or characteristic of that one  restaurant), I have found that I am less apt to trust the other thousands of Applebee's across the country. Wit

During this Advent season, I find myself deeply unsettled.  From the crass, fluffy Christmas specials on television that feature poor mock-ups of decent Christmas movies such as It's a Wonderful Life  to hearing people scream "This is the Christmas spirit!" at a house covered in lights, I find that Christmas has been almost completely stripped of Christ. And I don't mean that "Keep Christ in Christmas" argument.  I mean Christmas as a term has become so absorbed by our capitalistic, materialistic society that Christmas in public  has almost no bearing to the Christian celebration.  It has been absorbed into the  civil  religion of our country which equates Christmas with freedom with the Pilgrims with religious freedom (ironically) with religiosity with Black Friday.  Jesus plays a very small role in Christmas any more. And yet as Christmas becomes more of a civil religious holiday, it holds less and less of its peaceful appeal or call.  Removing the ide

I am a fan of Dr. Who.  I confess I enjoy the old  Doctor programs a bit more than the current ones.  That may have something to do with the fact that when I saw the first ones on PBS back in the early 80's, I was much younger and could more easily suspend disbelief and enter the more imaginative world of the programs than I can now. Yet even in the new version of Dr. Who, there is a trend that is almost jokingly a part of the mythology of the series.  That trend is that the Doctor always seems to find time to say to whomever he is with that he will "explain later."  That later  may be the end of the episode or, in some cases, never.  The Doctor figures it out but can't take the time to explain what  he figured our or how .  Sometimes it is a plot device - time is against the Doctor and he has to move quickly.  Other times it has to do with the process of editing.  Taking time to explain doesn't always work well on television or in movies. Take the movie The F

I am at the age now where I have to recognize a few things about life.  Some are good, some are bad, and some are just kind of there.  I wouldn't call them sad things, but they aren't happy.  They are just...there. Much of those 'there' things I have found have to do with the idea of being on the back side of a wave.  Like getting into real estate just as the bubble bursts.  Though this is more of a professional issue, I suppose.  For me anyway. As a pastor, one of the things I used to count on was the staid and predictable nature of how the church worked.  Change took place within the system but, being Methodists, it took time and committees and meetings and more time.  Now, I look at my denomination and I find that I am no longer a part of the cresting wave, if I ever was.  Instead, I feel as if I am on the back side of the wave that has already begun to dissipate, and those on the back of it are not surfing it but riding it into its slow disappearance. Part of

As I sit on this very rainy day and listen to the sound of the water hitting the roof and rattling down the gutters, I find that whatever regrets I have (or have had) seem to be more easily recalled.  That doesn't always  happen on a rainy day, but something about the gray skies pulls out the melancholy - but it does not pull enough for a total extrication.  Perhaps that comes from some subconscious unwillingness to completely let myself be rid of those feelings of regret. That may be because many of my regrets come from the recognition of poor behavior on my part in the past.  I find that in the midst of a thought, conversation, or walk between rooms or offices, that a flash of memory hits and I am back in high school, or a moment in college, or in some intangible age where I can hear or see myself acting poorly towards someone: making fun of them, saying something mean or mean-spirited, or not acting in a manner becoming of me.  And as far back as some of these go, I find that

We have to acknowledge that our country is going through a difficult time of transition.  I have heard people say that America is dying.  That may be going a bit too far.  It isn't clear what it is  doing, though.  We live in a time where we are well armed, if not overly well armed, and poorly educated.  That is never  a good combination. This isn't to say that there isn't anything good to see.  There is.  There are plenty of avenues of progress being made, but that doesn't capture the news.  That doesn't keep the pundits talking.  What does is a love for decay, scandal, and basic unpleasantness.  As such, what we begin to believe is that the time in which we live is not good. And there may be some truth to that. We live in a time of lawyers, loopholes, and increasing leverage from corporations.  Laws are written and re-written in an attempt to close loopholes on some and open them for others.  The discrepancy between the poor and the wealthy grows at sta

As I mentioned in the last post, I have been re-evaluating some of my positions and thinking.  Not a bad thing to do from time to time.  Not an easy  or necessarily enjoyable thing to do, but one that is needed in order to grow. Faith, theology, and philosophy are topics on which I dwell most of my waking hours.  I realize that this is not the case for most people.  But these topics have a great deal to do with my work as well as being topics I enjoy (this does not mean that I always enjoy my work!).  And it is from those times of musing and pondering that I write. Perhaps one of the common threads I have found in my writing and thinking revolves around identification.  Very often I have written about people claiming to be this or that (and in this case the term Christian), but noticing that in so claiming they identify those who are not  this or that in an effort to expose their fraudulence.  "If they were a real  Christian, they wouldn't have any doubts." Things lik

I have to admit that I have been re-thinking some long-held positions I have had.  That, I suppose, comes from being a pastor/teacher.  Everything you teach has to be researched.  And eventually you come to places where you have to re-evaluate your own ideas.  It isn't always pleasant.  Sometimes it is downright depressing or even frightening.  But I feel it is a duty of life since an unexamined one is not worth the lack of effort. I have been struggling with the ideas of tolerance.  The word is a catch all for people these days - especially people who also wish to advocate peaceful coexistence.  But are the two really the same?  Coexistence doesn't necessarily mean tolerance, and tolerance doesn't lead to coexistence.  I would feel that coexistence (itself a popular bumper sticker with regard to world religions) is a great ideal.  Our collective religious histories demonstrate that we have been reluctant to coexist but  have also learned how to do so - sometimes right ne

I was both happy and sad to hear the Pope's comments to the United States Congress today.  I was happy to know that the Pope made a great representation of himself, the Roman Catholic Church, and displayed a great deal of passion and compassion for the social ills that face our world.  While I am not Roman Catholic, Pope Francis has truly caught my ears over the last few years with his amazing ability to just speak and not pontificate.  And while we may have some theological differences, I feel his representation of the Christian faith is a strong and noble one. What saddened me was hearing Congress applaud him. Not that that in and of itself is a bad thing, but they treated him the same way they treat the president - applaud when he sounds like he is speaking in support of something you are for or that you feel represents your side .  When the Pope spoke, different sides of the aisle applauded at different times.  Always applause, but some were heartier on one side than the ot

Some weeks ago, our church had a fundraising pancake breakfast at a nearby restaurant.  As the morning went along, I was told that there was a man who would like to speak to the pastor of the church.  I went to meet this individual and found him diligently and dutifully studying his Bible and taking pages of notes. After introducing myself, I sat and we began to talk.  He had some questions about scripture, it seemed.  I was intrigued and ready to talk, especially to one who had so obviously been studying and working on notes that indicated some hard work on his part. His question, though, threw me.  "What is your definition of 'reprobate'?" It seemed that his whole morning of study had been to find places in the Bible where the word 'reprobate' was used and to discern the "biblical" definition of the word based on its contexts and usages.  After talking to him about it for a few minutes, he explained that since the Bible was clear on what make

A martyr is one who suffers persecution and/or death for holding or refusing to hold a particular belief.  Many martyrs become symbols of heroism and leadership.  In its original meaning, a martyr meant "witness," as in bearing witness to one's faith. Of course the heroism and exemplary nature of a martyr is conditional to one's point of view concerning the actions of the proposed martyr.  Jesus, on one hand, can be viewed as a noble martyr.  However to the Romans he was just another agitator.  Likewise suicide bombers are venerated by a small group of fanatics who call them martyrs while to a great many more, these people are not martyrs they are murderers. So is Kim Davis a martyr? Certainly there is a question of her exercising her right to express her faith.  Religious liberty is a cornerstone of our country and its self-understanding.  But as Davis' husband Joe stated, "They [referring either to the government or to homosexuals, perhaps both] want

Daniel Boorstin, in describing the reaction of Christian Europe to the work of Ptolemy, writes: The leaders of orthodox Christendom built a grand barrier against the progress of knowledge about the earth.  Christian geographers in the Middle Ages spent their energies embroidering a neat, theologically appealing picture of what was already known, or was supposed to be known. […] These were Ecumenical maps, for they aimed to show the “Ecumene,” the whole inhabited world.  Designed to express what orthodox Christians were expected to believe , they were not so much maps of knowledge as maps of Scriptural dogma.  The very simplicity that offends the geographer testifies to the simple clarity of Christian belief.  […]  At the center of the map was Jerusalem.  “Thus saith the Lord God; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her” (Ezekiel 5:5).  These words of the prophet Ezekiel overruled any trivial earthly needs for latitude o

I am a big fan of the Star Wars movies/universe.  I look with great excitement towards the next installment of the movie series in December.  And as popular as Star Wars is, especially with the excitement about the new movie on its way, I find that my enjoyment of the Star Wars mythology is as much philosophical as it is from the entertainment of the movies themselves. In particular, I have found that a recurring question pops into my head as I watch the movies - especially the original three.  The question is this: why do the Jedi live such solitary existences?  Of course the obvious answer lies in Episode III where the Jedi are infiltrated and betrayed not only by Darth Vader, but by the machinations of the politically ambitious Emperor Palpatine who has been maneuvering the Jedi towards destruction for a long, long time.  After the Empire turns on the Jedi, they become hunted people.  Hence the need to live in isolation. But is that it?  I understand that would certainly be reas

I would like to take this opportunity to provide a review to Richard Hays' book Reading Backwards  which is published through Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014.  It isn't a huge tome through which one has to slog, but it does contain a very interesting reading of the Bible.  My complete review was about 28 pages long, so an abbreviation is appropriate.  I would certainly encourage you to read Hays' book.  I would be happy to talk more about it at length. As I read Richard Hays’ book Reading Backwards , I found myself to be puzzled by his terminology and proposed method.   His basic argument is that Jesus is prefigured in the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament is to be “figurally” read as the manger; the law and the prophets as the cloths in which he was wrapped. [1]   The language he is using is Luther, [2] but Hays point is this:   “Only if we frame the question this way, only if we embrace figural interpretation, can we make sense of the Gospel of John’s asser