email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
April
2007
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Jonathan Edwards “unreliable sign,” “Much
eloquent talk about God and religion.”
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Jonathan Edwards “unreliable sign,” “come with
texts of Scripture, remarkably brought to the mind.” |
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Jonathan Edwards “unreliable sign,” “It is no
evidence that religious affections are saving, or that they are otherwise,
that there is an appearance of love in them.” |
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Jonathan Edwards “unreliable sign,” “It is no
sign that affections have the nature of true religion, or that they have
not, that they have great effects on the body.” |
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Jonathan Edwards “unreliable sign,” “It is no
certain sign that the religious affections which persons have are such as
have in them the nature of true religion , or that they have not, that
they dispose persons to spend much time in religion, and to be zealously
engaged in the external duties of worship.” |
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Dancing saint Maria Skobtsova |
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Prayer is rattling God’s cage |
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The power of song, dream or Spirit |
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Responses to Virginia Tech shootings |
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Earth Day: Earth
as God’s Body |
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Chittister on Hope |
This year’s Holy Week reflections come from Jonathan Edwards, an early American preacher and theologian, from his book “The Religious Affections,” The Banner of Truth Trust, first published in 1746, reprinted 2004. He asks what the nature of true religion is and what visible marks of true religion we might show or observe in others.
Today’s “unreliable sign” is “Much eloquent talk about God and religion.” This is much like the first unreliable sign that I chose for last Friday’s email. Sometimes those who speak the most about God and religion are those who are trying to convince themselves, or to convince others because they are so unsure themselves. These signs can be dangerous when all we do is look to the faults and unreliable behaviors of others. The more important part of a deep Christian spirituality is to look into one’s own heart for the evidence of unreliable signs of faith.
Are we inclined to talk much about God or our faith? We may be so profoundly moved by our experience of God that we just cannot help but talk about it. Or we may feel that someone else’s behavior or attitude needs the correction of true faith. Either way the danger is that the conversation turns to ourselves and turns away from God. This is a fine line to walk, for we are called to witness to our faith and to call others to account. But this sign is unreliable because of the potential for self-aggrandizement. See Matthew 6:1-8, 16-18 for Jesus’ words in this direction.
As we watch the unfolding events of Holy Week, let us look deeply into our own hearts, at our motivations and the depths of our faith.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Today’s Holy Week meditation from Jonathan Edwards deals with another unreliable sign of religious affections, from “The Religious Affections,” The Banner of Truth Trust, first published in 1746, reprinted 2004. I’m also aided by the modernization of Edwards’ work found in “Seeing God: Jonathan Edwards and Spiritual Discernment,” Regent College Publishing, Vancouver, Canada, 1995.
Today’s unreliable sign is that religious affections “…come with texts of Scripture, remarkably brought to the mind.”
Have you ever heard someone preaching or had someone confront you with Biblical citations, trying to get you to join their group, or to side with them on some issue or another, and felt uneasy about it? That uneasiness may come from the feeling that you are being manipulated, or that the scripture might be being misused. Remember that in Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, in Mark 4 and Luke 4, the devil quoted scripture. Often times we need to trust our feelings in such a situation.
But a Christ-centered spirituality reminds us that we need to examine those feelings and be honest with ourselves. Are we uneasy because we do not know our scriptures well enough? Then maybe we need to study more. Is our uneasiness because we know that we are not being faithful to God as the scriptures inform us? Then repentance is called for. But there can also be the uneasiness of feeling manipulated or that the scripture is being twisted in un-Christ-like ways. That someone can easily quote scripture is an unreliable sign of the depth and purity of their faith, or ours.
Our Holy Week task is to purify our hearts in light of the story of these last days of Jesus’ ministry. May you find the grace you need to purify your heart.
That grace, and peace to you
Geoff
Our Holy Week reflections from Jonathan Edwards continue, from his book “The Religious Affectations,” The Banner of Truth Trust, first published in 1746, reprinted 2004. He asks what the nature of true religion is and what visible marks of true religion we might show or observe in others.
Today’s “unreliable sign” is “It is no evidence that religious affections are saving, or that they are otherwise, that there is an appearance of love in them.”
This is Maundy Thursday, the day we remember wonderful love shown by Jesus as he washes the Disciples’ feet, and we remember the false love of Judas, as he betrays Jesus with a kiss. So too do we see Peter professing undying love for Jesus, only to deny him a few hours later. How unreliable human love can be!
When we see how unreliable the human love in our hearts is, we can see the deepest truth about ourselves. Perhaps only then can we begin to believe the grace of God that reaches through our unreliable-ness to touch us in the deepest parts of our selfishness, fear and pain. Let us admit our unreliable-ness and find the depth of forgiveness that God offers us in Christ.
Grace & peace
Geoff
The Holy Week reflection for Good Friday has to do with the body. On the day Jesus’ body hangs from the cross, we can reflect briefly on faith and our bodies. Jonathan Edwards, in his “The Religious Affections,” The Banner of Truth Trust, first published in 1746, reprinted 2004, asks what the nature of true religion is and what visible marks of true religion we might show or observe in others.
Today’s unreliable sign is “It is no sign that affections have the nature of true religion, or that they have not, that they have great effects on the body.”
We sometimes need to be reminded that our spiritual life is intricately interwoven with our body. Personally, I struggle with “being in my head” and not in my body, that is, I do too much intellectual work and don’t feel enough. I need to let my body be more effected by my prayer life. On the other hand, I cannot ‘manufacture’ bodily responses because I think I will pray better as a result. I think that is part of what Edwards is talking about, making too close a connection with bodily responses and depth of faith. Sometimes we don’t make enough bodily response, sometimes we overdo it. That’s why Edwards calls these kind of things “unreliable.”
ON this Good Friday, as we watch Jesus make a response with all of his body, let us rededicate our whole selves to our faith.
Grace & peace
Geoff
The last Holy Week reflection from the unreliable sings of religious faith, developed by Jonathan Edwards, pertains to religious activity. Edwards says “It is no certain sign that the religious affections which persons have are such as have in them the nature of true religion , or that they have not, that they dispose persons to spend much time in religion, and to be zealously engaged in the external duties of worship.” That’s a mouthful! Here’s a more modern wording from Gerald McDermott in “Seeing God: Jonathan Edwards and Spiritual Discernment,” Regent College Publishing, Vancouver, Canada, 1995: “Zealous or time-consuming devotion to religious activities.” The best Biblical reference for this is Matthew 7:21-23 and I Corinthians 13. It is easy to lose the spirit of God in church activities and I’d bet many of us have done so over the years. Yet, on the other hand, religion without any external signs is probably dead religion. So “much time in religious duties” is an unreliable sign of the depth of one’s true faith. As Paul says in I Corinthians 13, the truest and best sign of the depth of one’s faith is love, genuine love, not just the appearance of love.
As Holy Week draws to a close, may your faith have been strengthened by these reflections with Jonathan Edwards. May your devotion to Jesus deepen through your own personal faith practices. May your Easter worship tomorrow, at the church of your choice, be all the more joyous for your having walked with Jesus this week.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I hope you all had a fulfilling Easter. Back in January, while I was in the SF Bay Area, I happened to attend church at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church. This church is known as the church of the dancing saints. Go here for more, http://www.saintgregorys.org/. Their monthly newsletter has a brief article about some of the saints that are depicted at the church. Here is one that caught my attention.
Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945) was a divorced woman and Russian intellectual who became a nun, worked with the poor in France and was martyred by the Nazis for hiding Jews. She was known for being outspoken, pragmatic and daringly funny. Metropolitan (archbishop) Anthony Bloom noted that as a young priest “it offended me then that she liked to sit in Paris bistros in her nun’s habit, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and talking with simple workers. I am ashamed to say I kept my distance from that woman because she was doing just what Christ did.”
Now that we move into the post-Easter season, we can begin to reflect upon the enduring attitudes and behaviors that reflect our faith in Jesus Christ. May you be opened to new visions of Jesus in our world.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I had reason to review the book “The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium” by Walter Wink, Galilee/Doubleday, 1998 and found these words on prayer that I thought I’d pass along to you.
“Praying is rattling God’s cage and waking God up and setting God free and giving this famished God water and this starved God food and cutting the ropes off God’s hands and the manacles off God’s feet and washing the caked sweat from God’s eyes and then watching God swell with life and vitality and energy and following God wherever God goes.”
“Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the name of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present.”
Now there are some resurrection images for this Easter season!
Grace & peace
Geoff
I ran into this quote on a CD of music by Juliet Turner, an Irish singer/songwriter. The quote comes from Nick Cave, about whom I know only that he is a singer and songwriter in his own right. But the quote struck me.
Just as it is our task to move forward,
To cast off our past…in short to
Forgive ourselves and each other,
The song holds within itself an eerie
Intelligence all of its own –
To reinvent the past and to lay it
At the feet of the present”
The quote references the power of a song to do certain things. One could substitute the word “dream” or “Spirit” and get the same idea. I believe “reinventing the past” means more “reinterpreting” the past, not rewriting it. We cannot change the past, only the way we look at it and incorporate it into our present. God is in the business of making the best life for us. Most of us have events in the past we would like to change. God can help us change how we feel about such events, or help us grow into a more complete understanding of them. What events in your life might benefit from such a reevaluation?
Grace & peace
Geoff
Two of my DASD classmates sent around material in response to the killings at Virginia Tech. One was a copy of the lyrics to “Pilgrim” by the Irish singer Enya, from her CD “A Day Without Rain.” You can look that up at your leisure. The other is the poem included here. It comes from something called “The Terma Collective.”
May
our eyes remain open even in the face of tragedy.
May
we not become disheartened.
May
we find in the dissolution
of
our apathy and denial,
the
cup of the broken heart.
May
we discover the gift of the fire burning
in
the inner chamber of our being --
burning
great and bright enough
to
transform any poison.
May
we offer the power of our sorrow to the service
of
something greater than ourselves.
May
our guilt not rise up to form
yet
another defensive wall.
May
the suffering purify and not paralyze us.
May
we endure; may sorrow bond us and not separate us.
May
we realize the greatness of our sorrow
and
not run from its touch of its flame.
May
clarity be our ally and wisdom our support.
May
our wrath be cleansing, cutting through
the
confusion of denial and greed.
May
we not be afraid to see or speak our truth.
May
the bleakness of the wasteland be dispelled.
May
the soul's journey be revealed
and
the true hunger fed.
May
we be forgiven for what we have forgotten
and
blessed with the remembrance
of
who we really are.
I could not find out what, where or who The Terma Collective is or was. I did stumble on this interesting web site, which had among its materials this same poem.
http://www.yogajillian.com/wisdom.html
If any of you know what, where or who The Terma Collective is, I’d like to know. Regardless, this poem speaks to our need to wrestle with such evil as the shootings at Virginia Tech. I was pleased to note that one of the channels on our cable TV system ran “Bowling for Columbine” last night. Such a timely film, regardless of what you think of Michael Moore.
May you find grace amidst tragedy and an opportunity to reach out in compassion to someone close to you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
This last Sunday was Earth Day, and I chose that topic for my sermon, as you may have noticed in the publicity for worship. The sermon title “Earth As God's Body” could be interpreted as a heretical statement about the earth itself being God’s body. That was not what I was speaking about. We make a huge mistake thinking that the creation and the creator are the same thing. What I was referring to was the analogy between the way we treat the earth and the way we treated the body of Christ, who for us Christian, was/is God. The way Christ was betrayed, tortured and killed has great parallels in the way we treat the Earth. That is a Christian way we can connect to a worldly event like Earth Day, if we need to be more grounded theologically as we participate in such observation.
What helpful things did you find for Earth Day, either before or since? I’d appreciate hearing about them, as I already have from a couple church members. Simply reply to this email. Thanks.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I’m getting much delight and insight from the book “The Psalms: Meditations for Every Day of the Year,” by Joan Chittister, OSB, Crossroad Publishing, 1996. It consists of brief readings for every day. Here is one that reflects one of my coping techniques for facing difficulties. I’ve used this kind of logic as a sermon illustration for years.
The problem is that we always think of hope as grounded in the future. Wrong. Hope is always grounded in the past. Hope simply challenges us to remember, always that we have survived everything in life to this point—and in even better shape often than we were when our troubles began. So why not this situation too? Hope. You have no reason not to.
The way I say it in sermons is that God has gotten me through difficult times before, so God should get me through this difficulty as well. Sr. Chittister says it more articulately than I do. What similar coping mechanisms do you have?
May God help you face and cope with whatever difficulties you might face.
Grace & peace
Geoff
