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29 Thursday Dec 2022
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in29 Thursday Dec 2022
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30 Thursday Sep 2021
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inThe world planners gather.
The young men mixed red blood with blue water
And windy sands covered shattered helmets.
The old men confer with figures
And refashion their empires.
They seek a solution; they have it,
And they know it not.
Once when the world was younger
Some nineteen hundred years,
A quiet man walked the Judean hills
And along Galilee’s shore;
Then men left their nets.
And he spoke to the people
On a mountain with loaves and fishes,
And he entered the city on a burro
And they hailed him emperor—
And they nailed him to a cross.
“The Kingdom of God is among you.”
They worshiped his teaching
But were afraid to live it.
The world planners gather,
They seek a solution; they have it,
And they know it not.
Arvel Steece, “World Planners,” Christian Century, March 20, 1946.
SOURCE: https://archive.org/details/sermononmount0000jord/page/94/mode/2up
26 Thursday Aug 2021
Posted anarchism, Christian Anarchism, Uncategorized
inFrom Raven #25 (1994) is this article, which recognises that some people come to anarchism through religion:
Although it would be going too far to say that all anarchists oppose all forms of religion, we can safely say that nearly all of them would like to do away with the authoritarian versions. Are they justified? Certainly this form of religion has done a great deal of harm, but after taking full account of this we have to add, for a complete picture, that it helped in the emergence of the anarchist movement. It did not set out to do this but it did do it. And, in spite of itself, it is still helping people to become anarchists….
#christiananarchism
17 Tuesday Aug 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inLink below to a conversation on this question:
to christian / catholic anarchists, what is a rebuttal to the argument of “as there is hierarchy in heaven, there should be hierarchy on earth. There is God the father and the son by his side then there are the archangels”
http://scifiaddicts.com/p/Anarchy101/comments/p33x6u/to_christian_catholic_anarchists_what_is_a/
#christiananarchism
08 Sunday Aug 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inThe Mennonites have produced a video series promoting social change through nonviolent direct action, a key aspect of Christian anarchism.
The nine videos can be found here:
https://www.mennonitemission.net/resources/peace/stir-up-peace
27 Tuesday Jul 2021
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inFrom this story in the Washington Post, – https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/mary-mother-of-jesus-returns-as-an-icon-for-pop-stars-and-social-justice-warriors/2021/07/26/439e234c-ee64-11eb-81b2-9b7061a582d8_story.html
Ben Wildflower is a mail carrier by day and artist in his off hours. In 2017, he made a woodcut that showed Mary, her fist raised over her head, feet resting on a skull and a serpent (the former is a motif usually associated with Jesus’ disciple Mary Magdalene, while the latter is in keeping with historical representations of Mary, Jesus’ mother, triumphing over original sin). In a circle around Wildflower’s image are the words “Fill the hungry. Cast down the mighty. Lift the lowly. Send the rich away.” When he posted it on Instagram, it went viral.
Some critics called the woodcut’s message “un-Christian,” protesting that “God loves everyone.” The taunting language, however, was pulled directly from the Magnificat, the gospel writer Luke’s version of a song attributed to Mary, that from earliest Christian times was seen as so revolutionary public readings of it have been banned in the past.
Wildflower, the child of evangelical Christian missionaries, now attends an Anglican church, is committed to living in solidarity with the poor and has been described as a “Christian anarchist.” He finds himself deeply drawn to the mother of Jesus and said he likes Mary’s vision of hierarchies being turned upside down.
For more art from Ben Wildflower visit https://benwildflower.com/
27 Tuesday Jul 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inIn Lent 2021 I hosted a series of six Lenten movies for the community at Wesley House, Cambridge. I selected the following films, all of which are in the Public Domain and therefore free for anyone to watch and broadcast. They are mostly classics of world cinema and aimed at providing spiritual nourishment during Lent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerance_(film)This masterpiece of the silent era covers four historical instances of inhumanity – including the treatment of Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise:_A_Song_of_Two_Humans
A tale of reconciliation, once ranked as the fifth best film ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_ArcOur third Lenten movie was Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent classic “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928), a ground-breaking film based on the actual record of the trial of Joan of Arc. You can watch it online here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_and_the_Badman
Our fourth Lenten movie was the atypical Western “Angel and the Badman” (1947; dir. J.E.Grant) starring John Wayne as an injured gunman who is nursed back to health by a Quaker, forcing a decision on whether to follow the way of violence or nonviolence.You can watch it free here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Thieves The fifth Lenten movie was the Italian classic “Bicycle Thieves” (1948; dir Vittorio De Sica). It was voted the best film of all time in 1952 and the sixth greatest ever made in 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_According_to_St._Matthew_(film)
The final film was “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (1964; dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini). The best movie about Jesus ever – or so said the Vatican newspaper. Roger Ebert wrote about his film that “Pasolini’s is one of the most effective films on a religious theme I have ever seen, perhaps because it was made by a nonbeliever who did not preach, glorify, underline, sentimentalize or romanticize his famous story, but tried his best to simply record it.” – https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gospel-according-to-st-matthew-1964 You can watch here:
26 Monday Jul 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inSharing this valuable post from Robert Graham, historian and anthologist of anarchism.
https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/early-christianity-and-anarchism/
01 Monday Aug 2016
Posted sermon, Uncategorized
in1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
10 Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.
12 When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more;
13 bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17 learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.18 Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
I was not scheduled to be doing chapel today and this is not the scheduled reading either. The original reading assigned for today was one on which I have already preached, so I swapped it for this one from Isaiah.
I imagine that this is not a popular reading in the church, but I assure you that it’s on the lectionary. The reasons why I think this reading is not popular should be self-evident. Why should we gather to worship and praise God and then read that God hates our “solemn assemblies”?
Another reason this text might not be popular is that it might be described as self-preaching – in other words it is a text that preaches itself. The message appears so obvious that, once read, the preacher is left with little to do. But is that really the case?
The prophet does not begin with niceties; he starts by addressing the people as the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah. These are terms of abuse. Yet this form of address sums up the message; these are people for whom condemnation is coming. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt up for their sins. It is worth remembering what sins they were guilty of. To jog our memories, we turn to Ezekiel 16:49, which reads:
“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
This sets the tone and outlines the message to come, that combining pride and vanity with disregard for the poor and needy is sure to gain God’s condemnation.
God rejects the sacrifices of such people. Their feasts are worthless. Their worship meaningless.
The temptation we all face, reading this in our own solemn assembly, is to read this as God addressing bad people who have turned away and who yet strive to be justified by God through worship, rituals and sacrifices and nice words about God. Such harsh judgments are not for us; they are for other so-called “Christians” who have blood on their hands and do not worship with a good clean conscience. We are better than them surely? Aren’t we?
Let’s read further. In verse 12 God speaks “When you come to appear before me”. This is indicative of the attitude of the hypocrites. They come to appear before God as though God is somewhere where we can go to present ourselves to God. But God does not live in some temple or church. God is everywhere, and sees our corruption day by day. God sees both the bad we do and good we left undone.
God also sees how we try to present ourselves in church on Sunday, wearing our best clothes and carrying our Bibles as though God will be pleased that we have ironed our shirt or dress, placed some money in the collection plate, and sung in the choir.
No! God is not impressed by our staged appearances. We are before God all the time. What, then, is the point of all these pretensions and posturing before God?
Is it self-justification? Are we trying to cover up our sins? If so, we take the Lord’s name in vain – we utter the right words, but have instrumentalized worship and in doing so we reduce God to be something less than God. If we do this, we are trusting in our works and deeds more than God. And we have created a reason for worshiping God.
This is should be a great caution in our nations today. There are false prophets and pastors offering reasons to come to their church. “Come to my church and be blessed”, they might say. Or, “Come to my church and be healed”, or “Come and gain a new purpose in life”.
But the truth is that we cannot make true worship serve us and our needs; true worship serves only God, it cannot be made by humans into something that benefits us. To make ourselves into the end or point of worship, inevitably means turning God into a mere means.
This does not mean that we cannot enjoy worship or that we get nothing out of it. But anything we get from worship must not be sought intentionally, even with a good will. Anything we gain from worship must come as the free gift we receive from God when we serve and worship him alone. It cannot be promised, anticipated, or manufactured in advance.
Further on, we read that “bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.” Here we see God making a double criticism of our worship.
Bringing our offerings to God is important. It helps the church and the needy, and puts money in its rightful place as something we can freely part with. But if we are giving to bribe God to turn a blind eye to our sins, we are fools. We cannot bribe God. God sees through such shallowness. God doesn’t want or need our money. God wants our lives. As Jesus said, we should love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind (Matthew 22:37). In other words God wants our whole being to be be focused on God.
Incense, as used in worship, is sometimes thought of as carrying our prayers up to God. But the real use of incense was to mask the stench of a sinful humanity. But incense cannot disguise our sin from God. God sees our sinful hearts directly and cannot be deceived in this way. Incense cannot shield the stench of our hypocrisy or be a smoke screen to hide our iniquities. To think we can hide our sins from God is to only fool ourselves.
When we persist in our hypocrisy God even indicates that God will turn away from our us, even if we reach out to God and say our pious prayers. God will fall silent in face of our hypocritical piety.
But we should not despair, God’s silence can be broken when we return to God in due humility. We can and must try to break God’s silence toward us through repentance and true worship.
How can we do that? In verse 16 we see God demand that we clean ourselves up before he will turn to us. We must repent. The verse reads “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean”.
This poses a theological problem. Can we really cleanse ourselves in such a way as to be acceptable to God? Christians usually say that we are washed clean in our baptism, or by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Isn’t it Christ alone who can wash us clean and make us whole?
Christianity rejects the idea that we can reach up to God through any human means. This is what seems to be denied by the first half of our reading which condemns our human efforts at self-justification. Rather God reaches down to us to bring us to him.
Martin Luther, no fan of salvation through works, simply states that this verse says that we should follow the advice of the Psalmist in 37:27: “Depart from evil, and do good”.
That is what is required. We clean ourselves up by turning from evil and doing good. And we can always make a fresh start in doing so. We must turn from evil. That is the first step – do no harm and refrain from evil. But this is not enough. We must pursue the good and justice. This is obedience to God.
Well I could end here and my message would have been simply that we ought to worship with right intention, avoid evil and do good. We might add at this point that the ancient Israelites were foolish to try to justify themselves and deceive God. We might be tempted to think that we are better than them. But before we pat ourselves on the back, we should make sure that we don’t commit a worse sin.
In their attempts to be justified, the Israelites were addressing God, and in doing so were at least recognizing God’s importance. A potentially worse sin is when we try to justify ourselves in the eyes of other people. It is one thing to try to justify oneself before God. It is worse to ignore God and try to justify oneself before one’s peers, leaving God out of the picture altogether. This happens when we try to keep up appearances and live in line with human values and rules. But adherence to cultural and social norms which place us right in the eyes of our neighbor does not put us right with God.
God is not deceived by this posture. It creates another god to which we give all of our selves. This god could be culture, money, technology, or work. But neither God nor society are deceived by this stance either.
Let’s focus on the one true God with our whole being, avoid evil and do as much good as we can under the continual guidance on God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
30 Thursday Apr 2015
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
5 The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7 When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. 11 This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ 12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”
Our reading today from Acts continues the story we have been reading in this Easter season. It is the story of the healing of the lame man and its aftermath, which results in the arrest of the apostles Peter and John and threat to their lives.
The story begins quite innocently with Peter and John going to prayer hour in the temple. As they approach the temple gate, Peter and John pause and heal the man who they see sitting there. One thing leads to another and they get arrested for preaching the message of Jesus Christ.
It is worth noting that they travel together, as was their habit following their training by Christ. Apostles travel together because you cannot be a Christian on your own, it being impossible to fulfill the commandment to love one another by yourself. Our new life in Christ is not only a personal transformation but should be visible in the our lives together.
The next day Peter and John face their accusers, and when they are surrounded by them, they are asked:
“By what power or by what name did you do this?”
The question is ambiguous. Do what? The healing of the man, or preaching, or converting thousands? Or perhaps all of these?
Peter does not ask for clarification, but takes the initiative and expresses his opinion of the ambiguity in his reply.
In fact, it is not so much a reply that dignifies the question, it is a more a continuation of the preaching that landed them in trouble in the first place.
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, says that it was in the name of Jesus Christ that he was healed, and then goes on to say that it is only through Jesus that we are saved:
“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”
John Calvin in his commentary on this passage reminds us that this is the same Peter who denied Christ and ran from the Cross. He was a timid man and would have usually run from this situation or wilted in front of such a hostile crowd. But with the power of the Holy Spirit he goes on the offensive.
Does he answer the question? He names Christ as both the healer and savior. Christ the healer and the savior are inseparable. This is demonstrated in the apostles’ actions of healing and preaching salvation. The order here should not be overlooked. They perform an act of pity and charity and heal the man, they follow this by preaching the word about Christ. This is a sound missiological approach – act first and then speak.
By what power or name have you done this? The implication of this question of the priests, is that the disciples, as mere men could not have done this miracle by themselves.
In this the rulers are right, but in seeking the name of another power other than the men, their own words condemn them, as they fail to recognize that it is their own God who had done this great thing.
I don’t know why this miracle is not talked about more often. Perhaps it is because the man remains nameless in the narrative. But I think the real reason is that Jesus did not perform this miracle directly.
Yet for us today it remains an important miracle story. This is an example of the imitation of Christ by his disciples. We are closer to Peter than we think, like Peter, we have been called into the discipleship of Jesus, and like Peter we are sinners and Christ deniers.
While the healed man is sometimes forgotten, this passage is justifiably famous for its mention of Christ as the cornerstone that the builders had rejected. This is a quote from Psalm 118, and the Jewish leaders would have known this passage well. Using the passage in this way was inflammatory. But sometimes the truth upsets, such as it did here.
Psalm 118 may also have been returned to later in Acts and in the same story. Let’s read from verse 6:
6 With the LORD on my side I do not fear.
What can mortals do to me?
7 The LORD is on my side to help me;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
8 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to put confidence in mortals.
9 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to put confidence in princes.
The not quite parallel text to verse 9 here is Acts 5:29:
“We must obey God rather than any human authority.”
Psalm 118 continues (reading from verse 10)
10 All nations surrounded me;
in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
11 They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side;
in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
12 They surrounded me like bees;
they blazed like a fire of thorns;
in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
13 I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,
but the LORD helped me.
In the name of the Lord, Peter and John cut their accusers off. In doing they too are exemplars of the faith we confess.
The more I read the book of the Acts I more strongly I believe that it is an underrated book – in the Gospels we learn from Christ directly about discipleship, but in Acts we see how flawed, sinful apostles put this into practice.
Emboldened by the resurrection of their leader Jesus who conquered the power of death, the Apostles remain fearless in the face of possible death at the hands of the religious and political authorities.
Our Christian leaders who in urge obedience to the religious and political leaders and object to civil disobedience or even speaking truth to power, should study this text more closely.
Peter’s speech, which comes of the Holy Spirit, is not a speech of deference. It is one of defiance that attacks rather than defends. When the actions and words of Christ are frustrated by men and women the Holy Spirit can use us to break through the blockages.
This story also shows that the promises of Christ to his disciples were true. Remember what Jesus said in Luke 12:11-12
“When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.”
Some will find in this promise of Christ reassurance that the Holy Spirit will be with us in such times. But we should also wonder that if aren’t being dragged before the rulers and the authorities perhaps we aren’t following Jesus where we should be.
Following the example of Peter and John, on the way to church and chapel we should be looking down to the lame and lonely, not only skyward to the heavens.
Through faith we can follow Christ to the lame at the gate, and we can stand tall as Christians in front of our opponents who are blind to the works of God before them. But wherever God’s leads us, we can be assured of the presence of the Holy Spirit empowering us for God’s work in the world.
This is the promise of God. Amen.