Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • First UMC ICON Service

    A few days ago I posted a video about the new service being offered at my home church, First United Methodist Church of Pensacola.

    Yesterday I attended the first service. We ran out of standing room and about 80 people had to be sent to the other service. I am very interested in the concept of the service, which combines strong traditional elements of liturgy with technology and contemporary music and art. In fact, one of the characteristics claimed for the service is “art embracing.”

    I will confess that “art embracing” isn’t at the top of my personal list, but I think it must be a priority in a service that will serve the generation after mine, and also people who are more visually oriented than I am in my own generation.

    The preaching continues to be great, and the preaching was one of the reasons I joined First UMC. Dr. Wesley Wachob and Rev. Geoffrey Lentz (who is kind enough to remind everyone that I was his first Greek teacher, even when I forget to!) are both very adept at the sermon form.

    I was most impressed, however, with the was the program came together logistically. It looked to me a great deal like accomplishing several impossible things before breakfast, and then piling on a few more before lunch. The only major issue was one that resulted from the overwhelming success–it was crowded. I’m guessing that the leaders will have their own long list of things to make better; that’s just who they are. But I’m just impressed with what was accomplished.

    Well done!

    PS: I wrote the devotional for my wife’s list this morning, also about this service. She was unable to attend due to work, and so asked me to write a response.

  • Baptism and the Water Metaphor

    Baptism of our Lord, Cycle B

    When we hear the word “water” in our modern world we generally think of nice things–a thirst-quenching drink, a nice shower or bath, fun in a swimming pool, or perhaps a fine ocean cruse.  Thus when we think about baptism we tend to think mostly about cleansing or even refreshment.

    This week’s lectionary texts are all about baptism, which is fitting, consider it is the Sunday to commemorate the baptism of Jesus.  Considering that the texts are Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 29, Acts 19:1-7, and Mark 1:4-11, you might wonder that I say that all the texts deal with baptism.  But that’s my point here.  These texts provide a very good way to help us understand what “water” and “baptism” might have meant to those in the ancient world.

    First, we have the waters that are the chaos prior to creation.  The people of the ancient world didn’t think of the ocean as a nice place.  Even the seagoing ancients were very careful and very conscious of the dangers.  Shipping tended to be coastal.  The sea represented the chaotiic and unknown.  It was only the working of God’s spirit over the water that made any sort of order possible.

    Second we have the waters of judgment as seen in the flood, which are closely related to the pre-creation chaos.  Sin in scripture separates us from God’s creative power, and the results of sin can be represented in the same way with water, in this case floodwaters.  Genesis 1:2 and 7:11 share the Hebrew term “tehom” which is the “deep” of Genesis 1, while Genesis 7:6 and Psalm 29:10 share the term “mabbul” meaning flood.  The key element is that God is in control even of the flood.

    In our passages in Mark and Acts, however, we extend this metaphor to the action of the Holy Spirit on those who receive baptism.  Baptism is more of a symbol–it is a sacrament.  It represents something that truly takes place in the person.

    This brings us to waters of cleansing and also empowerment.  Note how the metaphor changes as we see the action of the Spirit illustrated through the action of water.  God’s creative power is the key in all these passages.

    If in teaching or preaching you get across the idea that water has a much broader range of meaning than we would normally think.

  • Why I Like the Gospel of Mark

    For many Christians, especially those who love theology, the Gospel of John is a favorite.  There’s a good reason why it is used in the lectionary on high holy days–it reflects on the meaning of the events in the life of Jesus.

    For me, however, the gospel of Mark has always had a special place.  I like the fact that it skips over all the complex birth issues and just gets right down to the meat.  Here’s Jesus.  He’s proclaiming the word.  Demons argue, but then flee.  Disease must give up.

    In Mark, it’s a story much more than a theology.  Of course there are always theological considerations–that’s what gospels are for.  But there is a bright, crisp, sense of Jesus on a mission and what that did to the people around him.

    When I had been out of the church for a number of years and then returned (see my testimony), one of the first things I did for devotional reading was to go through the gospel of Mark with an Upper Room guide.  It was so much fun and so refreshing to read the story of Jesus in short form.  Who was he?  What did he do?

    Of course, one can’t answer all those questions from just one gospel, but one can get a good outline.  That is what the gospel of Mark is for me–the introduction to Jesus–in action.

     

  • Gospel of John: Baptism to Ministry

    This is the relevant presentation from my audio series on the gospel of John for Epiphany 1B.  Though the scripture reading ends at verse 41, the presentation covers the transition from the baptism to the wedding feast at Cana.

     {audio}2-1-baptism_to_ministry.mp3{/audio}

  • Seat Roland Burris

    Why would I suggest this? Is it because I don’t think Governor Blagojevich is not corrupt? Do I think he’s “worthy”? Is it because I think Roland Burris is particularly well-suited to the job and somehow has a “right” to be in the Senate?

    In fact, I have a very low regard for Governor Blagojevich, and Roland Burris has been unimpressive. I’ve been especially unimpressed with the claim that there is racism involved in the refusal of the Senate to allow him to take his seat. I’m certain that race played a role in his appointment precisely because of the imagery that would be evoked when he was refused his seat. It strikes me as questionable judgment on Burris’s part to accept the appointment under the circumstances.

    But I am more concerned with law and procedure. We like to remake the law to suit the desired response. The Illinois legislature had an excellent opportunity to fix this situation by changing the way a replacement is selected to fill the term of a senator who leaves office, but they failed to do so.

    I would note that I would oppose even that option unless one determined that the new method was a better way to handle the situation at all times, and was not just a means of avoiding a particular set of circumstances.

    But for some very good reasons, the law doesn’t convict without a trial, and a governor is not impeached because he is accused. There is no “partial governor” provision in the law. Rod Blagojevich is the governor until he’s not any more.

    Thus the law says that Roland Burris is entitled to a Senate seat because the legally elected and still legally in office governor says he is, and he should be given that seat. If Burris himself were convicted of something besides being boring and having lousy judgment, there would be a reason to either expel him or refuse him his seat. As it is, there he is.

    We Americans have a real difficulty with procedural issues that get in our way. In the election of 2000, the Republicans, who would normally talk about states’ rights, were quick to go to the federal courts. Why? Because they were losing in state court, where such issues would normally be decided. I have no doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot, the Democrats would have been happy to go to the feds. In either case the idea would be to change the normal procedures in order to get a different result.

    (As a note to those who would claim that Florida was violating those procedures, the proper forum for interpreting and applying Florida law was and is the Florida courts. The federal constitutional issue here was contrived.)

    In this case most of us would prefer that Blagojevich not succeed in any of his little games. But there’s good reason that we have impeachment followed by trial. It’s to determine whether the person in question is actually guilty. We could have some form of temporary removal from office, but we don’t.

    So for now the best option, in my view, is to follow the law and the established procedures, and not try to reorganize them to make the result be what we would prefer it to be.

  • And Yet Again, Rick Warren

    If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Now he says that physical abuse is not a sufficient reason for divorce, according to this Christian Post story.

    I feel his pain, in a sense, as he says that he wishes the Bible included such a reason for divorce, but that in fact, it does not.

    He is also quite correct that the explicit text of the Bible does not include physical abuse as a reason for divorce. On the other hand, I would suggest that a theological system that doesn’t allow you to find such a reason is seriously flawed and even dangerous.

    Warren, according to the article, also recommends:

    But while Warren believes divorce is not a biblical option in cases of domestic violence, he strongly recommends the couple to separate. During the separation, the couple should undergo counseling and try to mend the marriage, he said.

    I think that there can be danger in the idea of mending a physically abusive marriage, especially where the alternative of divorce has been ruled out, leaving only permanent separation or a restoration of the marriage as options. I appreciate that Pastor Warren says there is no Biblical injunction to continue to live under divorce, while at the same time being concerned that people, in our society especially women, will feel trapped by the alternatives allowed.

    As I do with the complementarian/egalitarian debate, I would suggest building a doctrine here rather on the ideals of scripture. What is it that God intended a marriage to be? How can we best support and maintain such marriages? This will allow us to extend the principle of adultery to include other activities that are diametrically opposed to the very concept of marriage.

    Now please understand that I don’t accuse Rick Warren of supporting physical abuse. Rather, I think that he, and others who use a rule-book approach to Christian marriage and divorce, place themselves in a position where they cannot recommend the best course of action in many cases. It concerns me that an abused spouse might return to an unreformed abusive spouse because the only alternatives were unthinkable.

  • Back in Action – 2009

    Well, I fell behind during the Christmas break and didn’t keep up with posting.  I did keep up with reading, and I may even post some of my thoughts on the older passages as I have time.  I hope you won’t mind finding those in the feed. Today I will post some overviews of the lectionary passages for the Baptism of Jesus.

    But there is one useful feature of this site that works even when I’m not posting myself.  Each day I scan hundreds of blogs and feeds that relate to the Bible, Christianity, religion in general, and how these interact with society.  I tag various ones of them.  One of the groups I tag is those that are related to the lectionary and appear useful.

    You will find two lists in the right hand sidebar.  The first lists those posts on the lectionary that I have written elsewhere.  In general, I will link to these here in specific articles, but this provides a summary.  But below that you will find my selections of lectionary passages.  I don’t take these by any automatic tagging system.  If a post is there it means I at least scanned it, and thought it would be useful to those who teach, preach, or write on the lectionary.

    Watch here also for links that will offer you the chance to discuss the passages in the forum at Energion.net.

  • Experimenting Methodists

    OK, as this is an experiment, and it involves the United Methodist Church and Wesleyan theology, I’m going to play along. I have serious doubts about the validity of the results. The question is this: If some agency of the UM church put out a video and it wasn’t an experiment, would I be on board to publicize it? The answer would be “maybe.” It would depend on whether I thought the message deserved sharing, and origin in a Methodist agency is no guarantee of value.

    Kevin Watson at deeplycommitted has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methodist bloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly on-line. So, he wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methodist bloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks.

    If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week.

    Based on the results of the experiment, Kevin will get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and let them know the ways in which Methodist bloggers are often an underused resource.

    Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISKTrScpzQ

    HT: Adventures in Revland

  • The Great Akkadian Final Exam

    While I was writing about my mother reading Hebrew yesterday, I recalled another person who was substantially involved in my Biblical Languages training, Dr. Leona Glidden Running.  She was a Biblical Languages professor at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary when I took my MA from the Andrews University graduate school and was my academic advisor.

    But this short story has to do with her as a languages teacher.  I wanted to take Akkadian as part of my program, but there were no other students taking it, so I got my program one on one.  It was a one quarter course that should have been a one year course.  It turned out that there was only one test, the final, which would be open book.

    Come the day of the test,  she walked in, put before me a legal size sheet of paper crammed with cuneiform text front and back and told me I had two hours.  The print was medium smallish, and with my one quarter of work, I was relatively certain I couldn’t come close to translating this.  There was, however, no point arguing with Dr. Running.  One just dug in a worked.

    So I plowed forward as fast as I could, not spending the time rechecking some signs that I would have liked, and making the best sense of the inscription that I could.  I can’t even remember what it was, though I’m thinking it was something from Ashurbanipal, and had some narrative sense to help me.  Nonetheless I only got done half of one side, which will tell you just how far I had gotten in learning Akkadian–hardly reading knowledge!

    Well, I turned in the test, thinking it was an abysmal performance.  A couple days later I got it back with only a few corrections and a grade of ‘A’.  With more curiosity than good sense I asked just how I could get an ‘A’ for translating about a quarter of the assigned text.

    “Oh, I never expected you to translate it all.  I just didn’t want you to have time to check and revise your work!”

    Oh.

    Well.

  • My Movie Rating

    . . . and it is to laugh

    OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

    Created by OnePlusYou – Free Dating Site

    What’s to laugh about?

    It says this rating is based on the presence of the words “dead” (2x) and “torture” (1x).

    Hat Tip: C.Orthodoxy and a crowd of others.