WORLDS ARE FORMING

THE PEACE OF CHRIIIIIST!

This morning in church, as we were passing the peace, a seven year old boy on one side of the balcony shouted to someone on the other side: "THE PEACE OF CHRIIIIIST!"  It was awesome.  Of course, his mom gave him a big old New Jersey shushing, but I say: keep shouting, dude.

Getting over myself.

Sometimes Scripture feels all too familiar and old, and I let it become cliche. This is natural...if you have read a novel three (or three hundred) times, things will sound familiar, and it is easy to gloss over it and say, "Oh ya, I've read that" and move on.   So it is with Scripture. 

I go through periods when I like certain passages and am tired of others.  (It is a good thing that my stubborn preferences don't change God's Word.)   To be sure, God stays the same as I travel through seasons of life and faith.  This morning, I read Psalm 139, which is arguably an important text in Scripture.  I was about to roll my eyes and skim over it, but decided to get over myself, read, and soak it up: "O LORD, you have searched me and you know me..."

I hope I never let that one get old again.  But if I do, I'll give myself some grace, and trust that God will bring it (and me) back around at just the right time.

Life Together: How Good and Pleasant it is!

"It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.  Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.  At the end all his disciples deserted him.  On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers.  For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God.  So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in the thick of foes."  -Bonhoeffer, Life Together

I am preaching in the seminary's chapel in a few weeks, using Psalm 133... "How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity!"  I think I am going to be very Bonhoefferian.  The message and the text are marinating in me, and I think God is giving me some words to say.  Since I haven't been in preaching class, and haven't preached in a church this year, I have missed this preparation process!  I love it.

Rouault's Christ Mocked by Soldiers.

I first saw an image of this painting at a small bookstore that smelled of glorious old books in Tillamook, Oregon.

It was in a pile of prints ripped from old books, and each print was sold for $1.  I had no clue who the artist was, but I was drawn to the image and could not take my eyes off of it.  After some research, I learned it was a piece called Christ Mocked by Soldiers, by Georges Rouault.  I have since been to a few museums and have stood in front of Rouault's work, always in awe of  his ability to express complex things through a simple medium. 

I am in an aesthetics philosophy class with Dr. Gordon Graham this semester, and to be honest, I don't quite speak the aesthetic language.  What I can say is that I experience this painting as beautiful, as powerful, and as a reminder of the Jesus I know.  This print is framed and resides upon the wall above the head of my bed.  I see it every day, and I am struck by something new each time. 

So it is with Jesus: I see and experience him each day, and am struck by something beautiful and new in each encounter.  What work of art moves you?

Ash Wednesday.

On this Ash Wednesday, I am reminded of the benefit of having forty-some-odd days to prepare for Easter.  One can never quite be ready for all that God is up to.  Perhaps in the Lenten days to come, I will be reminded more and more of my finitude and God's great love in Jesus. 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return...

Buechner on Love.

My daily reading of Frederick Buechner sermons continues to do amazing things for my heart and mind. A few days ago, I read his sermon, Love, in Secrets in the Dark.  His texts are Deuteronomy 6:4-7 and Matthew 27:45-46.  I continue to appreciate Buechner's word-craft and creativity as he engages the life he lives and the Scripture he treasures. 

In the following excerpt, I gravitate to his reading Deuteronomy 6 as not just a command, but also a promise.  I haven't looked at the Hebrew text, but I have been comforted by that thought in recent days...on days that I don't feel I am loving God particularly well, perhaps I am given the promise that "Someday, Josh, you shall love me with all you've got."

"Nobody ever claimed the journey was going to be an easy one.  It is not easy to love God with all your heart and soul and mind when much of the time you have all but forgotten his name.  But to love God is not a goal we have to struggle toward on our own, because what at its heart the gospel is all about is that God himself moves us toward it even when we believe he has forsaken us.

The final secret, I think, is this: that the words You shall love the Lord your God becomes in the end less a command than a promise.  And the promise is that, yes, on the weary feet of faith and the fragile wings of hope, we will come to love him at last as from the first he has loved us -- loved us even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, because he has been in the wilderness with us.  He has been in the wilderness for us.  He has been acquainted with our grief...

[And we will rise] out of the wilderness, every last one of us, even as out of the wilderness Christ rose before us.  That is the promise, and the greatest of all promises..."  (pp. 103-104)

That'll preach.

Buechner on Hope.

I have recently been reading a sermon a day from Frederick Buechner's Secrets in the Dark, and am loving it.  His word craft and authentic experience of faith, as well as his theology, all draw me in deeper. 

Hope tends to be a central theme in my life of faith, and Buechner writes often of this.  His sermon, Hope, resonated well with me.  An excerpt:

"I think it is hope that lies at our hearts and hope that finally brings us all here [into the church].  Hope that in spite of all the devastating evidence to the contrary, the ground we stand on is holy ground because Christ walked here and walks here still.  Hope that we are known, each one of us, by name, and that out of the burning moments of our lives he will call us by our names to the lives he would have us live and the selves he would have us become.  Hope that into the secret grief and pain and bewilderment of each of us and of our world he will come at last  to heal and to save." (81)

Other things matter, too.

On a day in which I am feeling grateful to be done with my Ords, I am also feeling tired and cranky and stressed, knowing that I am done with a hard stretch, and am already behind in the new semester.  Again, I am grateful for your support!

However, I am also reminded that other things matter, too.  Even more than my busy schedule and self-centered feelings.  Today is the 5th birthday of Shaluda, a Ugandan girl I have been praying for since World AIDS Day on December 1st. 

Her picture is on my door and I see her face every day. 

While Shaluda is in good health, she is not in school and lives in a community severely affected by the AIDS crisis. 

I'm going to choose to say and believe that while my issues matter, the issues in Shaluda's life are more important today.  Thanks for your prayers...please pray for Shaluda, too.

Book of Order, W-6.4000.

Just so I don't forget, I think I am going to tattoo this backwards on my forehead, paint it on my wall, stitch it into my pillowcase, etc...

W-6.4000    Worship and Ministry

"The worship of God in the Christian community is the foundation and context for the ministry of pastoral care as well as for the ministry of nurture in the faith."

Now that is a good word.

Feeling Very Presbyterian These Days.

The Ords. Just mention the word to most Presbyterian pastors-to-be, and you can see the hair on their arms rise, and hear their Reformed spines shiver in fear as they think about the ordination exams.  Me?  Eh.  I am refusing to stress out.  (Really, refusing.  I've learned.  It is just not helpful.)

I'm studying for all four tests (Theology, Exegesis, Polity, Worship), and as of today, I am really enjoying it...it actually feels like an act of worship.  Really!  Jesus has been very present to me, and there is some really good stuff in the PC(USA)'s structuring.  I'm feeling very Presbyterian.  A few times today, I sat and wondered what it would be like if all PC(USA) churches took our polity seriously and lived it out.  Faithful and exciting things would happen.  (While God is certainly doing great things in our churches now...it is fun to imagine.)

So, I continue to study while listening to a compilation of great music, and as with all things...this studying will get done, the tests will be taken, God will still be good, and I will still be loved and called to ministry. 

All of that, I can handle.  (I admit, this is me we are talking about, so these feelings will quite possibly change from day to day.  I'll let you know.)