Lost Loyalties, But.....

Cleaning out the store-room after a death in the family, in the very back corner was hidden a large, framed, formal document.  Elegant script and decorations, it was a 33rd degree Masonic certificate.  That degree is given as a special recognition, I discovered, not like the earlier earned degrees.  The certificate told no story of what was recognized, or what the holder of that degree had done or contributed to generate the honor.  But it did generate the curiosity!

Digging a bit, I found that my ancestor had been a "withdrawer" from several things.  He withdrew from the local medical association after a bitter malpractice contest in which he supported a woman badly burned by a competitor/doctor who had improperly used X-Ray when it was a totally new technology.  He retained membership in the AMA.  His medical work was a passionate commitment for him, over and over again.

He had withdrawn from the church, upset over the inter-locking of city government and church leadership, and what he felt was a lack of ethics in the group controlling both.  But the withdrawal was not from boredom, but from a passionate expectation of better things from the organization.

And the Lodge?  he had moved his membership from his East Texas town of residence, returning to the very small town of Moscow, over similar issues.  And in Moscow, there was a Masonic school (back in the prosperous times), which he highly supported.  Was that the source of the 33rd Degree?

Almost no way to answer the questions.  By 1950, the school had been disbanded.  By 1980, even the oldest men who played dominoes on the front porch of the old, closed pharmacy no longer played there.  The town, shrinking away, held no memories of the great and passionate civic efforts of the 1920's and earlier.

But the today's ghost town was once a place where lumber brought wealth, the money flowed, and there was a passion for education.  Bits and pieces remain.  But the biggest heritage of the town is that inherited passion.  (There are families who have impacted Texas:  Hobby for one!)  There are unknown practitioners of various professions who would now be the third-generation inheritors of the passions that built the Masonic School.

There are grandsons now grandfathers whose whole perspective on the world has been shaped by those who passionately withdrew from one allegiance for the sake of forming and honoring another allegiance.  History sometimes harvests slowly, but it does come to the harvest day.

Thank God for loyalties that found a new home one day, and generated an entire new wave in the process.

The Big Thankful

We are grateful for privileges so fundamentally "ours" that we think them to be rights.  Which they are, so long as we maintain them.

I am grateful today for freedom of speech.

A key understanding of the American Revolution is this oft-repeated and oft-modified fundamental:

"I despise your opinion but will defend to the death your right to speak it."

Is freedom only for my friend?  Is freedom of religious expression only for those who agree with me?  Some of those who came to these shores long ago immediately set up governments that would guarantee their own freedom, and suppress the free expression of conflicting views.  The founding fathers saw the thing more wisely.

I defend freedom. I like people who disagree with me, 'cause it challenges me to think more thoroughly.

But we live in a time when people who disagree may be ostracized, or ignored.  Or suffer at least the "rolling of the eyes and making of strange sounds", the social separation that creates peer pressure.

The defense of freedom begins with the receptive listening to people of different opinions.

And when it gets really good?  I am absolutely committed to the defense of freedom of speech for people with whom I disagree politically and theologically!  I WANT them to be on radio, on talk shows, writing books, and articles, having  maybe their own television shows.

Why?  Because I truly believe that the open expression of all the opinions lets everyone see for themselves where the truth lies.  The longer you listen, the more the false falls away.

Under it all, I believe God made it that way when He designed human nature.  It's not up to any select group to suppress opinions - - truth will out, and thank God for that!

Christmas Adoptees

Part of the celebration of Christmas is the celebration of beautiful branches grafted onto the sometimes-older vine.  Things such as evergreen Christmas trees, St. Nicholas, even the December dating, are all "add-ins" to the original story, each bringing/brought by believers who were then new to the faith.  Some of the things are older, some younger, but all are gifts to you and me in our time.

If you were to count the religions that interpret winter solstice as a significant promise of new life, first harbinger of spring, it would be the whole list.  If the most insightful psychology says that we are hard-wired for faith in God, then surely this is one of those points built into us.

As the days stop their shortening and slightly begin to lengthen, astronomers ancient and modern have pointed to the event.  From the astronomical observatories at Chaco Canyon to the Central American religions, to the Egyptians and Greeks, ancient astronomy was hardly primitive on this point.  And it has fascinated the children of God in every age.

On what day was Jesus actually born?  I don't know.   On what day did the early Christians decide to celebrate His birth?  Within the solstice festival.

Over and over, festival days, heroes, and theology come to be grafted into the story.  Thank God for that.

Count the Context

Take Isaiah 61, or actually most of the poetry of Isaiah.  Imagine a rather plain man with an exciting message, walking in the dust just like he was processing into the Temple, full of a message that trumped the circumstance!

Isaiah is preaching to refugees.  People who are exiled, and have been for a long time.  People in refugee camps longing to go home.

Consider the Advent/New Year messages:  every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill made low, the road prepared for the way home.  The road that was brutal getting here is the road that God will make accessible for homeward travel.

Great and powerful poetry, to WHOM?  To the prosperous?  To the comfortable IN their homeland?  To the ones all well-spoken-of?  Not at all - to the ridiculed, the down-played, sometimes vilified foreigners in a sophisticated land.  God did not ADOPT the Babylonians;  God USED the Babylonians, and Cyrus the Persian, unbelievers to accomplish what he wanted.

Anything to do with our contemporary situation?  Has God decided to side with the prosperous who use the right labels, instead of the helpless, the outcast, the downtrodden who are children ALSO of Abraham who succumb to hate instead of love?  Has God decided to do a strange thing, loving those we love and hating those we hate, instead of insisting that we do a new thing, loving those whom he loves and hating no one?

Worth pondering.  Worth praying over.  Worth using as a corrective to the easy arrogance that comes to us, and upon us, so easily.  God's good news through Isaiah may be better good news than we sometimes give credit to.

Remembering the Rabbi

Rabbi Goldstein.  Port Arthur minister's association.  The Rabbi was to talk on the Christian communion.

Holocaust survivor, Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of History, and working on a fifth.

80 years old with the energy of an athlete at 40!  Deep sense of history.  Always drove that insanely long Chrysler, often a little careless about things like traffic lights.  Always in a hurry.

Why write about him?  Because at least once a year, it is worth tapping into the beliefs of every ancient religion:  the "remembered" live.

Why write about him?  Because a very provocative realization crossed my desk yesterday!  If Jesus was (and is) "the Word made flesh", and the Word was available within the Old Covenant, and to know the Word is to know God, and no one comes to God except through Jesus who IS the Word, then...............

What do I "do" with the Rabbi?  He doesn't fit the language with which I was brought up.  The Rabbi is "brother" in some difficult to express manner.  I don't understand it all, but there is a clear sense that I should remember him with a special kindness, because that's how God deals with all of His covenant people, whether I understand it or not.

The "family of God" is chosen by Him, without consultation with me.  Like Jesus said, He has other sheep in other folds.  In all of this, there is the sense of a very large door swinging open, almost soundlessly.  And behind that door?  So big!

And there is a peace in that!

Only Through Jesus, and Better Than You Thought

"If Jesus is THE WORD made flesh, and THE WORD was with the JEWS BEFORE He became flesh, and no one comes to the Father but through Him (THE WORD), then what kind of ideas might we come up with?"


This provocative line is from one of the responders to a blog I follow:  http://rachelheldevans.com and just one of many thought-provoking elements there.  


I find great comfort in those who point out that God holds the door WIDE OPEN, even as some of His children seem to want to push it closed at least a little bit.


The lectionary readings for this Sunday before the start of Advent include the "shepherd's warning" passage:  Jeremiah 23:1-6.


Required reading for all who audaciously stand to preach.

Old Words, Italian

Listening to "Way with Words" on NPR yesterday (a show about where do words come from), a caller asked about an old expression his wife used:  "I can put my hand on the fire!"  It says, this is absolutely true, I'll stake everything on it.

Where did that come from?

From old Italy, from a pre-Christian temple truth-testing ritual, where apparently there was a flame always present, and as a "spiritual" test very like the medieval water tests or combat tests, it was a way to swear to the truth.  If you could hold your hand over the flame, you were innocent of any falsehood.  Even swearing that you COULD do it was convincing.

Other things from old Italy?  When Catholicism became the religion of the Empire, some elements of other religions were sort of swept into the theology of the area.  This is pretty much the missionary equivalent of "love me, love my dog" thing, in which we accept the opinion with the one who holds it.  The same has happened in every century:  easter eggs, Christmas trees, the DATE of Christmas celebrations, naming the months of the year, etc.

You can probably think of some examples of cultural beliefs becoming articles of faith.  On the second Sunday in a new pastorate, I was met by a small delegation after church.  Their request:  "We need to sing the old, familiar hymns, and you need to pick them!"  It did take another meeting or two to realize what were THEIR old, familiar hymns.  Actually, you could have divided the church into five groups (having moved in from elsewhere), based on their definition of "old, familiar".

Culture - - - faith - - - always mixing together, and the wise Christian always wants to know the source of the "absolute belief" that slides into the conversation.