How's This for an Opening Sentence?

"The following essay is—whatever its errors or other faults—at least timely."

Thus begins Robert W. Jenson in "Can Ethical Disagreement Divide the Church?" the lead paper in The Morally Divided Body: Ethical Disagreement and the Disunity of the Church, the just published book from the 2010 Conference of that same title sponsored by Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

FWIW, the essay is more than
just timely.

Justice and Mercy

The Rev. John A. Fale writes:

Yesterday I overheard three pastors seated across from me at a pastoral care conference in Washington, D.C. One of the men remarked, "I'm trying to get my congregation involved in justice ministry. I just can't get them going." Another responded, "When I talk to my people about what they want, they say they want mercy, not justice." After a brief pause, he continued, "Because they know what they'll get if they ask God for justice."

Pastor Fale is the Interim Co-Executive Director, Office of International Mission, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The above quote begins his message in the March/April 2012 LCMS World Relief and Human Care Sharing newsletter.

Sin Clings

The conclusion of Zion's Lenten Midweek series, By Faith: the Assurance of Things Hoped for; the Conviction of Things Not Seen (from Hebrews 11), brought us to Hebrews 12:1-2:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The Early Church Father Theodoret of Cyr says:

The models of godliness are set before us on all sides, he [the author of Hebrews] is saying, in such vast numbers as to resemble a cloud in density and and testify to the power of faith. Accordingly, let us keep our eyes on them, be light on our feet and rid ourselves of teh burden of unnecessary worries, in this way being able also to avoid sin that is easy to contract.

Then comes this exquisite sentence:

Before everything else we need perseverance to succeed in the course ahead of us. He said sin "clings" because it is easily contracted and committed: the eye is fascinated, the ear charmed, touch titillated, tongue easily loosened and thought quickly directed to the worst.

From Theodoret of Cyr, "Interpretation of Hebrews 12", as found in The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT X: Hebrews (p. 209).

That about nails sin, doesn't it.

Doubting Confessing Thomas

The Gospel reading for today, the Second Sunday of Easter, is always St. John 20:19-31, from whence comes the term "Doubting Thomas." Pope St. Gregory the Great offers a different perspective.

When the apostle Paul says that "faith is the ground of things to be hoped for, the proof of things that are not evident" (Hebrews 11:1), it is clear that faith is the proof of those things that cannot be made evident. Things that are evident no longer involve faith but recognition. Why then, when Thomas saw and when he touched, was it said to him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed"? Because he saw one thing, and he believed another; divinity could not be seen by a mortal person. He saw a human being, and he confessed him as God. . . . But we also rejoice at what follows, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." Certainly this saying refers to us who keep in our minds one whom we do not see in his body. It refers to us, but only if we follow up our faith with our works. That person truly believes who expresses his faith in his works.

From Gregory the Great, "Forty Gospel Homilies 26", as found in The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT IVb: John 11-21 (p. 373).

Or, as this ACCS volume's editor, Joel C. Elowsky, subtitles the comments on John 20:29, "Seeing is not believing" or "Thomas sees one thing, believes another."

I just love reading the Fathers: "[H]e saw one thing, and he believed another; divinity could not be seen by a mortal person. He saw a human being, and he confessed him as God."

It's About the Teaching

On Wednesday, Lutheran CORE announced -- among several other matters -- that it "will aid in the formation of a Lutheran church body for those congregations and individuals that choose to end their affiliation with the ELCA." (No, I'm not particularly interested in that.)

Yesterday, Lutherans Concerned/North America "responded with sadness" to that announcement. Said LC/NA's Emily Eastwood, "It seems with yesterday's announcement that some ELCA Lutherans cannot even tolerate being in the same church family with congregations who accept us. Anger and fear have overtaken the great commandments from Jesus himself: to love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself."

This morning on ALPB Forum Online, my brother in the Holy Ministry and friend Pr. Marshall Hahn replied more appropriately than my one-word initial reaction (note: I've added the emphasis):

People are not leaving the ELCA because they cannot stay in the same church with homosexual people. They are leaving because they cannot stay in a church which teaches error. They are leaving the ELCA because they cannot agree with blessing what they understand to be sin. Either Emily Eastwood knows this - and is mischaracterizing people on purpose - or she does not know this - and clearly is the one who has not been listening to those with whom she disagrees.

Remember that. It's about the teaching of the Church. Sounds kind of Lutheran, doesn't it.

Remembering Farrah

Tuning CBS News on the radio at Noon yesterday: "Farrah Fawcett is dead."

I think The Poster hung in our (Richard's and my) bedroom. My memory of that is a bit hazy as I was usually too cheap for such things when I fell for Farrah at 16. My brother would have been the more likely of us to actually buy it, but all I clearly remember is his poster of Catherine Bach from The Dukes of Hazzard. (Cute in her own way, but no Farrah!)

Regardless, my, uh, appreciation for Miss Fawcett was sufficiently public that among my 17th birthday gifts from my school chums was the then-recent January 19, 1976, issue of People Weekly magazine, with Farrah and Lee Majors on the cover as "The $6 Million Couple: TV's bionic beefcake Lee Majors and wife Farrah Fawcett" -- that I just found in my Library. (This was well before Charlie's Angels.) Inside of which I find a "Tiger Beat Super Poster" of Farrah on one side -- that would have been on my wall, likely courtesy my sister -- and all three of the original "Charlie's Angels" on the other side. And a cut-out from some other magazine of those same "Angels" in red evening dresses.

(By the way, have you heard about the entertainer who was described as a combination of the non-Farrah "Charlie's Angels," Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson? Yup, her name is Kate Smith.)

Anyway, wrote People's Lois Armstrong:

Majors came into Fawcett's life as peremptorily as he now runs it. That was in 1968, during her second week in town. The good Catholic daughter (she still says her rosary every night) of a Corpus Christi oilfield contractor, Farrah Fawcett (that's really her name) had been voted one of the "Ten Most Beautiful Coeds" at the U. of Texas. A flack spotted her picture and invited her to Hollywood, and two years later she came, driven by her folks. Then someone else spied a Fawcett glossy—Majors' agent. That same day, Lee left a terse message at her all-girl rooming house: "Tell Farrah Fawcett that Lee Majors called and will pick her up at 7:30 for dinner."

"How dare he?" Farrah recalls reacting. "Who does he think he is?" Majors was, as it happened, a Kentucky boy, orphaned before he was 2. Football got Lee through Eastern Kentucky State College, but injuries (knee, shoulder and a nose busted five times) precluded a pro career. He came to L.A. to become a high school coach and fetched up with the recreation department, where he got turned on to acting by some touch football buddies.

So after two years of studying and scrambling and by the time Lee importuned Farrah, everyone knew damn well who he was—Barbara Stanwyck's bastard son Heath on the hit ABC series The Big Valley. But Majors phoned her back to apologize for his brashness, and she still remembers "melting into a thousand pieces" when he arrived and crooked his finger at her like a gun. "It was love at first sight, I guess." But awkward. "We got in the car," Farrah continues, "and there was complete silence for about 10 minutes. He didn't even ask me any stupid questions—like where did I come from. He said something once, but I couldn't hear it, so I just smiled." "What I'd said," Lee carries on, "was 'You're really beautiful'—and she missed it." Then, at a discotheque, she ordered Scotch and Coke, didn't drink it but disappeared, under the weather, for 30 minutes. "I didn't know if she was really sick or if she just didn't like me," he reports, but the next day Majors sent her 13 yellow roses, and they've been together the seven years since, the last two as Six Million Dollar Man and wife.

Part of her charm is that she seemed sweet and innocent, though I missed the hint (sigh! it was a more innocent age) that Lee and Farrah had shacked up for a few years before they married.

Alas, the marriage didn't last and Farrah spent the rest of her life unmarried to Ryan O'Neal in a, uh, stormy relationship. Still gorgeous and much more accomplished as an actress, her appeal as anything other than a pleasant memory of 16 was long gone. A memory I enjoyed last spring watching the first season of Charlie's Angels on DVD (a gift from my sister and her family). I also liked, as the TV last night showed a film of her about to enter an MRI (?), that she made the sign of the Holy Cross. Which is why her companionship with O'Neal still bothers me.

But I still like The Poster.

Tuning NPR News on the radio at 6 pm yesterday: "Michael Jackson is dead."

Not a good day for '70s teenager.

May God rest both their weary souls.

50!!!

Here I am showing off the cake (chocolate) that Shirley made during Sunday's birthday party at Zion.


And this courtesy the "ECULAUGH" meeting on Ecunet:

From the inside of a Birthday card where the outside says:

"Inside this card is a special message from God"



"See you soon!"



Hey, I am starting my sixth decade...

Let the Government solve your problems

That's the subject line in an advertising e-mail from a "Grant Resource Center" Mac Mail stuck in my Junk file.

This at the end of a week in which we're watching a panic-stricken federal government trying to bail out as its past "solutions" to financial matters are simultaneously collapsing.

It was some 30 years ago that Howard Ruff described

the Twentieth Century's three greatest lies in ascending order of immensity: (1) My wife doesn't understand me, (2) my check is in the mail, and (3) I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.

For the results of some of that help, see the results of government "help" in the housing markets to the banking industry in this New York Times graphic.

He Was a What?

Okay. Pastor Zip can understand how some people didn't appreciate Gov. Sarah Palin's take on community organizers during her speech at the Republican National Convention last week. I have friends -- good, solid Lutheran pastors -- who have been heavily involved in such efforts and speak well of what they accomplished.

So for the moment I'll set aside my own experiences when the Gamaliel Foundation's guy in the Quad Cities tried to stir up interest in organizing here in Peoria -- where I went to a big Quad Cities Interfaith convocation and saw just how much of "the community" bothered to show up to set QCI's agenda for the coming year. That would make it easy enough to belittle Sen. Obama's experience -- though if they intend to be victorious in November Sen. McCain's people had better not forget that our junior senator came out of nowhere to defeat the mighty Clinton machine. But this is Pastor Zip's Blog, not my 21st Century Whig blog, so we'll step around the "political" side of this.

I find the following quip gaining popularity with my more, uh, progressive connections within the Church:

"Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor."

And while I like a good quip, I've also read the Gospels. So...

Just how was Jesus a "community organizer?"





(Well, there was his disciple Simon the Zealot...)

Big tents are for circuses.

Early this morning (while also watching news reports of the Republican National Convention) I was reading an ALPB Forum Online discussion that had started with responses to the Speaker of the House's mangling of Catholic thought on abortion but had turned into another debate over ELCA vs. LCMS communion practices. I read from an ELCA pastor,

"We are the 'big tent' denomination."

Now, "big tent" --whether it be from political or churchly pundits -- got old for me a long time ago. It just seems a nonsensical thing for anyone who cares about political principles (which the United States of America were founded upon) or a confession of faith (which is what Lutheranism was founded upon). But only early this morning, upon reading once again that sort of nonsense, did words immediately jump into my head. And so I posted them:

"Big tents are for circuses."

Jesus' Body Found!

It's Lent, the season Christians prepare for the remembrance of Christ's Passion and a time for the media go wild over the "latest new find" showing that the death and resurrection of Jesus are nonsense. This time it's a Discovery Channel "documentary," The Jesus Family Tomb, along with a book, brought to us by the director of The Titanic.

James M. Kushner over at Touchstone magazine's Mere Comments offers a most succinct response:

Funny that when evidence against Jesus's Resurrection was most needed--during that time when several hundred witnesses were openly squawking about it--those interested in such evidence (his alleged bones in a box even conveniently labelled as such) somehow missed the boxes right under their noses. They could've nipped his religious movement in the bud, having failed the first time on Good Friday.

Unbeknownst to James Cameron, but obvious even to Time magazine Christians have been visiting the tomb of Jesus since the days of Roman Emperors. I visited it myself in 1985!

As for His Body, you will find it at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peoria and lots of other churches. Come on by, Mr. Cameron, and I'll show you.