Thought for the Day: I am rereading Derek Penwell’s book, “Outlandish: An Unlikely Messiah, a Messy Ministry, and the Call to Mobilize.” He has some very thought-provoking lines, and the following caught my attention last night: Jesus calls us to go on an adventure, not a church picnic. And if we’re going to follow his example, we should be honest about the fact that the cost of discipleship is steep. Too often we have made following Jesus into a feeling or a heavenly prize at the end of the race. Those might be a part of it, but in reading the Gospels, they make a very small part of this thing called discipleship. In the last couple of years, I have had people say to me, “You’ve taken some real risks in your ministry.” That feels good, but it is also laughable. At no point have any of my choices jeopardized my life or the life of those I love. I might lose a job or a friendship, but that ain’t real risk when we look at the long arch of eternal love working in the lives of humble servants throughout history. I don’t know exactly what risk looks like for a white middle-class male with a pension and medical insurance through the Exchange. Maybe I’m missing an opportunity to be like my teacher who gave up everything. Prayer: O Jesus my friend, continue to teach and prepare me for a life that might resemble your life. I’m not too sure if I am really ready for it, but wherever you need me to go, I will try. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/328RHaN ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS via WordPress https://ift.tt/2STfEyP ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 17, 2020 Prayer for the Week: Your Spirit has come to set us free. Jesus declared the blessing and indwelling of the Spirit as his empowerment for the work of liberation. O God who called forth Moses to guide an enslaved people to freedom, we notice a reoccurring theme wherever your Spirit is received by those who yearn to do your work. Too many sisters and brothers are shackled and crushed by the powers of addiction, the sin of bigotry, the depravity of exploitation, the suffering of illness, the systems of injustice, the affliction of guilt. No matter how people find themselves fettered by these painful restraints of their dignity and hope, you find a way of coming alongside and conceptualizing a vision of your deliverance in the incarnation of love. May those of us who claim to believe and to belove this vision find a way to assimilate it into our daily lives. Allow for it to take on flesh in us for the work of freeing the captives and liberating the oppressed. It is what your Spirit has been working to do in every generation, and this moment is no different than any other moment. Come, Holy Spirit, and empower us for this good work. This is a holy request offered in the name of Jesus. Amen. __ via WordPress https://ift.tt/38ASsMi ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 16, 2020 Scripture: John 14:26 The Companion, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I told you. Thought for the Day: Interesting, John’s Gospel tells us how the Holy Spirit will teach us “everything” we need. Now I believe the Spirit works in a multitude of ways, but it appears that most Christians would place the Spirit’s educational activity further down the list. We tend to want something much more tangible, something we can hold in our hands or see with our eyes. Plus, a lot of folks over the years have suggested some pretty outlandish and self-serving ideas that supposedly came from the Spirit. How do we “test” the Spirit? In 1st John, there is a discussion regarding the examination of the Spirit, and the author suggests how the Spirit will Homologeo (the Greek word = together + speak/word) with Jesus. It won’t be perfect, but if what the Spirit is attempting to teach does not align or agree with the Jesus of the Gospels, then pausing and reconsidering might be in order. Take a handful of stories from the life of Jesus, include his interactions with the marginalized and the sick, his attitudes of abundance and mercy, and then ask: Does my perception of the Spirit’s teaching align with those stories? Prayer: Continue to speak fresh and transformative words, O God, as there are new ideas emerging about life, faith and the Gospel. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/31W4KfK ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 15, 2020 Scripture: Jude 6-7 And the angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day. Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Thought for the Day: Here we have a rather obscure passage in the very small second to last book of the Bible. The author begins by referencing another odd passage of scripture from Genesis 6 where we have a story about divine creatures lusting after humans, and having children by them. It sounds very similar to stories from Greek Mythology. Though Jude makes a quick turn to Sodom and Gomorrah, speaking of their sin and an “unnatural lust.” A better translation of that last phrase would be: pursued different flesh. Once again, Jude is not speaking about homosexual behavior, but the pursuit of angelic or divine beings. You may know the story of the Tower of Babel, where people were attempting to build a tower that would reach to heaven so that they might “make a name for themselves.” The Hebrew word translated as ‘name’ is Shem. Psalm 5 speaks of loving the divine name (Shem). Like the Tower of Babel story, Jude is speaking of the human desire to be made a little more god-like… in that not so good way. As the New Testament scholar, Eugene Boring, writes: “Union with the divine through sex was a claim in many ancient fertility rites…” To read this as a vilification of sexual behavior is to miss the point entirely and to let many of us off the hook. We need to hear the challenge of this passage clearly – where is our arrogance, our thirst for power, attempting to push God aside? That’s where God is wanting us to feel the rub of the Jesus-message. Prayer: Let me be challenged by your gracious message, O Lord, even when it is holy uncomfortable. Amen. __ via WordPress https://ift.tt/39vJ38K ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 14, 2020 Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:10-11 …fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. Thought for the Day: What is a sodomite? It is a word that the translators along the way simply conjured up. The Greek word translated here has nothing to do with the Hebrew word for the city of Sodom or the Greek word associated with that city. The word literally means: Male + Bed, and it appears no where in Greek literature prior to its use here. In fact, the translators didn’t have a clue what the word meant, but based upon a very poor reading of the Genesis story of Sodom, some imposed a meaning on the word. In doing so, it dramatically shifted our understanding of homosexuality and Christianity. In this section of 1st Timothy, there are groupings of things contrary to the Gospel. To understand what the author might have intended, you cannot read a word separately from that grouping. The three words in the grouping are: fornicators, sodomites and slave traders. Fornicators was probably someone who was sold into slavery for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Sodomite (Greek word = Andrapodistes) probably described a man who was enslaved for sexual purposes. And slave traders is probably better translated as someone who kidnaps. When you read that grouping of three words, what comes to mind? It sounds a lot like what concerns our LLIFE Ministry that focuses on Human Trafficking. Do you see the danger of immediately pointing to this 1st Timothy passage and announcing how it is opposed to same-sex relationships. What we have described here is not a relationship. It is abuse sanctioned by a system that is structured around the idea of one group of people owning another. I feel confident in saying that all of us would oppose such mistreatment. Yet sadly, it has been much easier to declare one word as a clear statement against homosexuality. Prayer: You want nothing less than for us to treat every human being with dignity. Teach us, Good and Gracious God, how to look past all that culture, history and poor interpretations that hinder our perception of people. Teach us, and we will learn. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/31WTPSO ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 13, 2020 Scripture: Deuteronomy 22:23-25 If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. But if the man meets the engaged woman in the open country, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. Thought for the Day: I was rereading this passage, only to be caught off guard by the way it places blame and responsibility upon the woman. If the woman screams in town, then she won’t be put to death, but if she is silent, then we can only assume she “wanted it.” If it occurred in the countryside, where no one would hear her screams, she does receive the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that’s gracious. But to understand this passage in context, we must understand that the man is put to death for “stealing” another man’s property. There are so many things wrong with this that it is hard to organize them in my brain. I’m sure you see many of them yourself. For people who suggest that our culture would be better off if only we returned to some good Biblical teachings and morality, I am going to suggest we not in the case of this passage. First of all, I am not a big fan of stoning people. I am also not real excited about sitting in judgment of another person, especially when the rule of judgment is based exclusively on geography of an event and whether or not someone screamed. I am also really nervous about assuming that a scream or a lack of a scream indicates a person’s willingness. We know that many, during a sexual assault, freeze and then later feel guilty for not fighting back. Such victims should never be made to feel guilty as the blame full falls on the one who instigated the attack. This is all to say that the Bible has some amazing passages that speak to love, mutuality, healthy relationships and life-giving joy. There are other passages, like the one above, that were probably written with the best intentions of those who simply viewed their betrothed or spouse as their property, and they wanted to put forth some drastic rules that might cause someone to think twice before stealing their property. Yet no real attention was given to the woman’s humanity. It is hard to provide a good ethic of sexuality, commitment and love based upon this passage. Prayer: Good and Gracious God, assist us as we grow into the beautiful and amazing images of life and commitment found within scripture, while also being mindful of passages that speak to cultural values that no longer align with the sense of value and dignity we believe you offer to every single human being. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/2vrKRks ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 12, 2020 Scripture: Matthew 7:4-5 Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” Thought for the Day: If we are honest with ourselves, I think we can all think of a time when we went after the speck in our neighbor’s eye without pausing to acknowledge the log in our own. We are much better at evaluating our neighbor than we are at doing self-reflection. The question that comes to mind, a question that is painful to ask, but one that needs to be asked – how often have we gone digging for the speck in our neighbor’s eye when, in fact, that speck never existed? I’m not suggesting there are folks without sin, but have we ever convinced ourselves about the specific nature of another person’s sin? In this misguided confidence, have we destroyed that person for a speck that was nonexistent? Lives have been destroyed again and again by those who felt incredibly confident in their capacity to determine another person’s sin. Let’s be the people who, with humility, do the necessary work to change ourselves so that we can be the best witnesses to God’s love and mercy… instead of being poor examples of speck inspectors. Prayer: Change my heart, O Lord of Grace, from searching for specks in others to the naming and removing of logs that are really close to home. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/3bw989E ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS February 11, 2020 Scripture: Genesis 19:4-5 Before they went to bed, the men of the city of Sodom—everyone from the youngest to the oldest—surrounded the house and called to Lot, “Where are the men who arrived tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may have sex with them.” Thought for the Day: This Sunday, we are going to have a serious conversation on same-sex attraction – what the Bible says and what it does not say. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the passages people are quick to uphold as a clear expression of how unethical homosexuality is. In fact, I was flipping through the channels two or three weeks ago only to hear the words “evils of Sodom,” and so I returned to the channel to hear a minister retell the story in such a way that he ignored 90% of the story. Sadly, this is one of the great tools of preachers. First, it is a story of hospitality to the stranger. Hospitality is a central belief within Judaism and most all cultures in that part of the world. So when divine messengers appeared (possibly angels), Lot did what his faith required – he opened his home. In that part of the world, having sex with someone – as the dominate one in the relationship – you were showing your power. In fact, it was thought that you were taking power from the other. The scripture says all the men of the community came to Lot’s house. Is every male in this city gay? I doubt it. What we have is a gang attempting to rape the strangers as a way of showing their power and to drain the power of these outsiders. Ezekiel 16 called out the sin of Sodom. The sin had nothing to do with sex. It was arrogance and a refusal to help the poor and the needy. And even more troubling was how Lot, in trying to protect the strangers under his care, offered his daughters to the crowd. It is very difficult to hold up this story as a model of any ethical idea when a father says to a mob, “Here, take my daughters, they are virgins.” I don’t know about you, but I cannot imagine any father suggesting such a thing. Why didn’t he offer himself? Let’s be very careful how we use scripture, especially when it is used to injure and marginalize people. We will talk about some other passages in the days ahead. Prayer: Teach me the way of your divine life, O Holy One. Provide me space to wrestle with scripture, and not simply take the word of anyone who seeks to simplify a rather complicated text. May I always recognize the danger of taking a few words out of context and creating an entire ethical system that condemns some of your beloved. Amen. ____ _ via WordPress https://ift.tt/2SxTn9z |
AuthorRev. Bruce Frogge Archives
April 2024
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