February 22, 2012

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Scribbling toward Sunday: Monday morning quarterbacking.

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A few notes on the service yesterday:

The final hymn, “Where Restless Crowds Are Thronging,” is being put on the disabled list.  Just for the record, I don’t pull these hymns out of thin air;  they are used to reinforce, or to work with, some other part of the liturgy.  I tried this at home on the piano and … well, it seemed okay.  In the sanctuary, not so much.

To paraphrase an old Broadway quip,

“I came out humming the paraments.”

On the other hand, the  kids were great.  Singing and rhythm.

Silence before the prayer of Confession and silence before the Pastoral Prayer was long and sweet.

Suggestions?  Comments?

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Scribbling toward Sunday: Jesus in Switzerland.

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

An interesting article from The Guardian ended up in my Inbox this morning, courtesy of my Google Alert for “Jesus Is A Capitalist.”

Leaders at Davos (Switzerland) could do with some religious instruction.

Actually, this article was making a side argument, that capitalism is the de facto religion of the Western world.

Agreed.  (A-greed?)

Some of the money quotes:

The capitalist economy redefines the sacred in ways that destroy the sanctity of life and land. Capital, which is disembedded from social relations and civic bonds, sunders material objects from their moral meaning and symbolic significance. This also has the effect of separating responsibility from both risk-taking and reward. In the pursuit of wealth, capitalism disconnects getting rich from doing good.

(My italics.)

And:

Faiths enjoin their followers to impose ethical and civic limits on the activity of businesses. The prohibition of gambling and usurious interests rates are not merely matters of private choice but must be applied to global finance in the public interest.

The alternative is not automatically socialism, as any critique of capitalism is countered.  The alternative is limits.

“Limits” is a dirty word in current discourse.  But it seems to me self-evident:  left to its own devices, the pure capitalist/Ayn Rand/Tea Party form of capitalism is rapacious and Darwinian.

(Interesting that many of its proponents do not believe in Darwin.)

Maybe Calvin was on to something.

Whole article here:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jan/26/leaders-at-davos-religious-instruction

 

 

 

 

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Scribbling toward Sunday: Tap dancing on the Third Rail

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Scripture reading for Sunday: Mark 1.21-28
Synopsis: Jesus in Capernaum, his home base. He is teaching in the synagogue“as one having authority” and he performs an exorcism.
——
It is hard — extraordinarily hard — not to bring the politic (not Republican/Democrat, but rather our common life, “polis”) into Mark’s account of Jesus and still remain true to the message.

Mark’s Jesus is a revolutionary, always hurrying, everything is “immediately” as if he knew he knew the clock was ticking.

Some consolation: the disciples never seem to get it. Identify there.

Some people have left this congregation when I have ventured to connect the political parts of the gospel with real life. It is the third rail.

——
“The Matrix”

Morpheus:
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system … You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

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A prayer for the place of resurrection.

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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When the lid pops off.

October 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There is, the the zeitgeist now, a sense of history repeating itself.

1968 comes to mind:  the streets of Paris filled with student and workers.  Students taking turns sitting in the dean’s chair at Occupied Columbia University.  The August-heat chaos in the streets of Chicago.

And now, today.  Dictator in the Middle East is not a position with a lot of job security.  Students, of a sort — maybe it’s former students with current student loans — are assembling in cities all over the world with a host of accessory characters.  Even celebrities.  (Which is never a good sign for a protest movement.)

As someone said on a radio talk show yesterday:  what took them so long?

That’s something that has crossed my mind as well.  But the thought has always been blunted by this:  I am seeing this from a different perspective.  I am an old man now.

As an old man, I get to say things like this:  I don’t think history repeats itself.  Similarities between today and 1968?  Absolutely.

But differences as well.  The most obvious one is that money has much, much more power than it did forty years ago.

History is more like a boiling stew on the stove.  Eventually, the lid pops off and steam is released.

How much steam?

Who knows.  But it will not be the same reaction as before.  It’s a different stew.

 

 

 

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