Prayer for the Day

O blessed Lord, who has commanded us to love one another, grant us grace that having received your undeserved bounty, we may love everyone in you and for you. We pray for your clemency for everyone; but especially for the friends whom your love has given us. Love them, O fountain of love, and make them love you with all their heart, that they may will and speak and do those things only which are pleasing to you.
--Anselm

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Thought for the Day

To be reduced to a consumer is to leave out most of what I am, of what makes me me. To be treated as a consumer is to be reduced to being used by another or reduced to a product for someone else's use. It makes little difference whether the using is in a generous or selfish cause, it is reduction. Widespread consumerism results in extensive depersonalization. And every time depersonalization moves in, life leads out.
--Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

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Eroticization of Middle School

Today's New York Times contained an editorial, Middle School Girls Gone Wild, by Lawrence Downes that caught my eye. He recently attended a student talent show at the Middle School where his 10 year old daughter attends. He wasn't prepared for what he observed: "They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps...As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud."

Noting that this was an official school function, he struggled with comprehending not only the rationale for such an event, but at the way that parents appeared to see nothing wrong with the performances that unfolded before them. He writes,

It is news to no one, not even me, that eroticism in popular culture is a 24-hour, all-you-can-eat buffet, and that many children in their early teens are filling up. The latest debate centers on whether simulated intercourse is an appropriate dance style for the high school gym.

What surprised me, though, was how completely parents of even younger girls seem to have gotten in step with society's march toward eroticized adolescence--either willingly or through abject surrender. And if parents give up, what can a school do?

I think that Downes observations are "spot on" as the British say. What do you think about his observations and what solutions do you see as a way of addressing this problem?

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Thought for the Day

Big ideas are not enough, because personalities and circumstances intervene. What matters is the bearer of an idea.
—Maureen Dowd, New York Times, 6/21/06

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Thought for the Day

The Ten Commandments might be thought of as trail markers. They are there to point us in the right direction, to tell us which line of the fork to follow. They are lines laid down to tell us how we should decide: lines that urge us to put God above everything and everyone, to revere life and respect the dignity of others, and not to long for and take what belongs to someone else. Good and helpful lines for God's people.
--Carolyn Westerhoff, Good Fences

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Thought for the Day

The physicality of the religious poets should not
be taken idly. He or she, who loves God, will
look most deeply into His works. Clouds are not
only vapor, but shape, mobility, silky sacks of
nourishing rain. The pear orchard is not only
profit, but a paradise of light. The luna moth,
who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few
hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a
musical notation. Have you noticed?
--Mary Oliver from "Musical Notation," in Thirst

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Thought for the Day

Christmas calls a community back to its origins by remembering Jesus' own beginnings as a human child, a prophet of God's reign, a judgment on the world and its projects. What the parish celebrates during this season is not primarily a birthday, but the beginning of a decisive new phase in the tempestuous history of God's hunger for human companions. The social concerns of the season are thus rooted in Jesus' proclamation of God's reign: the renunciation of patterns that oppress others (holding, climbing, commanding) and the formation of a new human community that voluntarily embraces those renunciations. It is an adult Christ that the community encounters during the Advent and Christmas cycles of Sundays and feasts: a Risen Lord who invites sinful people to become church. Christmas does not ask us to pretend we were back in Bethlehem, kneeling before a crib; it asks us to recognize that the wood of the crib became the wood of the cross.
--Nathan Mitchel
Place full text here

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Thought for Christmas Day

What you do not understand, treat with reverence and be patient, and what you do understand, cherish and keep.
--St. Augustine, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany

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A Thought for Christmas Eve

Christ is the Morning Star,
who, when the night of this world is past,
gives to his saints the promise of the light of life,
and opens everlasting day.
--Venerable Bede, Eighth century

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Looking Forward

The text for this Sunday's sermon is Luke 2:21-40 and the title of the sermon is "Waiting for What?" The text for Christmas Eve is Luke 2:1-20 and the sermon title is "The DNA of Christmas."

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Thought for the Day

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God--for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.
--Oscar Romero

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Mary, Woman to Remember

In the last chapter of The Real Mary McKnight pulls together the treads with which he has been stitching his argument together. I agree with him when he writes,

It is time for us to give the real Mary her due, to honor her for who she is. The real Mary was an ordinary Jewish woman with and extraordinary vocation who struggled, as all ordinary Jews did, with who Jesus was. Through her struggle, she came to terms with the difficult reality that the Messiah's mission--unlike Mary's expectations--was to die for others. This real Mary, the one who struggled to embrace Jesus' mission, is no offense to Protestants, but rather she is a woman for us to honor (pp. 143, 144).

He then recommends that Protestants should pick one day a year and call it "Honor Mary Day."

McKnight proposes that we focus on five themes in Mary's life: 1. Faith leads to Jesus, 2. Faith is uniquely personal, 3. Faith is real, 4. Faith develops, and 5. Faith is dangerous and courageous.

For me Mary has come alive perhaps for the first time in my faith life. I have a far better understanding of the Roman Catholic position as well. I hope that over time I will make further progress in integrating Mary, her faith, and obedience into my own life.

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Thought for the Day

Poetry is prayer, it is passion and story and music, it is beauty, comfort, it is agitation, declaration, it is thanksgiving. Some poems are radiant and oracular, some are quiet and full of tenderness, like a letter written to a friend. Often poetry is the gate to a new life. Or, sometimes, the restoration of an old world gone. It brings new thoughts or the welcome remembrance of old ones. It offers simple pleasure, complicated joy, and even at times, healing. Poetry does not work for everyone, but works for the many who open themselves to it. As the world changes from the long winter into spring, and everything takes on a freshness and a spiritual meaning, just as poetry can quicken, enliven the interior world of the listener.
--Mary Oliver, At Blackwater Pond

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Mary, Woman of Controversy, Con't

McKnight addresses three of the most controversial issues between Protestants and Roman Catholics in chapter 13: the immaculate conception, the glorious assumption, and the mediatrix. I thought that he tried to represent the Roman Catholic side respectfully and fairly.

The immaculate conception is a phrase that refers to God supernaturally preserving Mary from sin from the time that she was conceived in the womb. He notes that this did not become the official teaching of the Roman Catholic church until Pope Pius IX's declaration in 1854. He then quotes the pope's declaration. McKnight summarizes the doctrine of the immaculate conception by saying that it "is the belief that Mary was by God's gracious work cleansed so she would not pass on a sinful nature to her son" (p. 130). He then notes that in all of his study, he has not found with the biblical writer's a connection between Mary's virginal conception with Jesus' sinlessness: that is a connection made later by theologians. In other words, this dogma is "unnecessary" to believe in Jesus' sinlessness.

The glorious assumption is the belief that while Mary died while in the presence of others, when they checked her tomb she was gone: her body had been taken up to heaven. Pope Pius XII made this the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in 1950. There is precedent for this belief. In Genesis Enoch was "assumed" into heaven, and in II Kings, Elijah was "assumed" into heaven. McKnight notes that there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that she was assumed into heaven, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she wasn't.

The last doctrine that McKnight focuses on and on which he spends the most time is Mary's role as mediatrix. He writes,

Roman Catholicism has for centuries taught that Mary was in some sense the Mediatrix, the female mediator between sinful humans and an all-holy Son. In so teaching, however, Roman Catholics have never argued that Mary was divine or that the Trinity really was a Quadrinity (Father, Son, Mother, Spirit). And they do not believe the Son of God can be manipulated by his mother (p. 133).

According to McKnight, Roman Catholics arrived at the idea of Mary as the mediatrix through the notion that we are co-workers with God (This idea is found in I Corinthians 3). Mary's role as co-worker is unique because as Scott Hahn, A Roman Catholic theologian has written, "...the Father willed that His son's entire existence as a man would hinge, so to speak, upon the ongoing consent of Mary" (p. 134). He is referring to Mary's "may it be."

While McKnight acknowledges that official Roman Catholic teaching is clear about Mary's status as a human being, his major concern with this doctrine is "a tendency--or, as many see it, more than just a tendency--to elevate Mary so high that she becomes and idol" (p. 136).

After discussing issues around devotion to Mary, and his concerns that for many devotion is often eclipsed with worship, he ends on an irenic note: "In an age such as ours is today, when cooperation between Christians of all sizes and shapes will be required, we can begin today...to converse thoughtfully with one another if only we will take the time to understand what each segment of the Church believes" (p. 140). I say "Amen" to that.

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Competitive Generosity

A recent study at the University of California in Berkeley found "that people--when observed--are conspicuously generous in their giving and will even compete in the bigheartedness department to win favor and make friends."

One of the coauthors of the study, Robb Willer, assistant sociology professor at Berkeley, said, "I think it's a dynamic you see a lot around the holidays. Some folks spend time worrying about how their gifts stack up relative to others, and people seem to compete to give better gifts than others to develop a reputation as a generous person."

Initially the 31 women and 23 men involved in the study were each given 10 "lab dollars." They were given the instructions that they could give as little or as much of the lab dollars to their partners as they wanted. The study found that participants gave more money when others were observing them than when they gave privately. Furthermore, when they shifted the rules so that the participants could choose their partners, "contributions increased dramatically as participants sought to become desirable partners."

As I read the summary of this study I was reminded of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount:

Whenever you give alms, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand in the synagogues and at the street corners in order to be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

I wonder what thoughts you might have about the findings of this study? It makes me ask the question, if the motivation to give is how others perceive you, is that really generosity? What do you think?

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Thought for the Day

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world live in you. You are a world.
--Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth

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Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Mary

McKnight summarizes the areas of agreement and disagreement between Protestants and Roman Catholics in chapters 12 and 13. In 12, which I am summarizing here, McKnight discusses areas of agreement as well as areas of difference based upon early developments in the church. In chapter 13 he covers differences based upon later developments in the church.

The major area of agreement is the supernatural conception of Jesus which McKnight notes is no small matter. But a major difference that has big implications is that Protestants restrict their theology for the most part to what is recorded in the Bible, while Roman Catholics base their theology both on the scriptures and on the ongoing development of sacred Tradition.

This has led to several doctrines accepted by Roman Catholics which Protestants do not accept. One of these doctrines in Mary's sinlessness. McKnight is quick to point out that her sinlessness is not because she is divine, but is the sole result of God's grace and not "Mary's meritorious work" (p. 121). He notes that this belief developed early in church history and was expounded by St. Augustine in the fifth century.

Another point of disagreement is the phrase for Mary, "Mother of God." This phrase became important in the fifth century at the Council of Nicea. As a way of preserving the two natures of the Son of God fused into one person, Mary was referred to as "God-bearer," not only "Christ -bearer." McKnight writes, "If 'Mother of God' means 'God-bearer' as the one who gave birth to the human Jesus who, as a single person was the God-man, then we can also stand together with Roman Catholics in affirming Mary as the 'Mother of God'" (p. 125). Protestants' concerns are that the term leads to misunderstanding and the worship of Mary as opposed to honoring her.

The last point of disagreement that developed relatively early in church history is the perpetual virginity of Mary. Protestants do not believe this and Roman Catholics do. McKnight writes, "It's important to note that such a belief about Mary arose alongside a commitment to celibacy as the noblest form of the spiritual life" (p. 126). He does say that this belief was widespread from the time of Jerome (345-419).

In the next and second-to-last-chapter, McKnight will turn to controversies that developed much later in church history.

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Thought for the Day

Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased. The difference was established long ago, when “I believe,” the cry of the ascetic, lost precedence to “one feels,” the caveat of the therapeutic. And if the therapeutic is to win out, then surely the psychotherapist will be his secular spiritual guide.
—Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic

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Mary, Woman of Influence

The last mention of Mary in the New Testament is found in Acts chapter 1: 'They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary mother of Jesus, and with his brothers." What this means is that Mary was in the inner circle of the disciples. McKnight argues that Mary, therefore, had a great deal of influence in the early church.

McKnight delineates several spheres where Mary had influence. First, she had it with her own family, with Jesus' own brothers and sisters. (McKnight notes that Roman Catholics read "brothers and sisters" as "cousins" or "relatives." This is a function of the doctrine that Mary was perpetually virgin and so did not have any biological children. He spends a page or two addressing the issue and concludes that there is no reason to interpret the passage other than "brothers and sisters.")

Mary (and Joseph) had influence on Jesus. Jesus learned the scriptures and learned about righteousness through his parents. They no doubt were significant molders of his character by their modeling and their teaching.

Mary is a significant character in the New Testament. As McKnight points out, Mary is referred to in approximately 217 verses in the New Testament, more than any other person except for Peter, Paul, and John.

Mary had influence on the early church because she was a primary source for the story. McKnight writes, "In a real world, mothers tell stories about their sons. Mary did too...She was in the middle of the earliest Christian community as a source of information about Jesus" (p. 107).

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Thought for the Day

You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, cause only tomorrow can today's human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope. But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment--really live it, not just endure it--because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.
--Walter J. Burghardt

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Mary, Woman of Faithfulness

We come to Mary at the foot of the cross. She along with her sister, Salome; Mary, the wife of Clopas; and Mary Magdalene stand as disciples of Jesus. Mary was not just there as his mother. According to McKnight, Mary may not have completely understood what was going on, but she "was faithful to her son--as son and as Lord--even if it meant absorbing the humiliation of the crucifixion" (p. 90).

As Mary stood at the foot of the cross, she

began to realize not only what Simeon's "sword" meant but also how God planned to make the Magnificat real...Jesus would not wear the crown of Caesar Augustus or the fine apparel of Herod Anitpas. He would hang there, naked and beaten, and give to Mary and the world a radically new view of what it means to reign in this world. To reign in this world, Mary began to learn, was to give one's life for others as Jesus had given his (p. 95).

Throughout all of this, Mary was faithful and was to remain faithful.

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Thought for the Day

Jesus’ teaching does not lay out safe generalizations by which we can engineer a happy life. Instead, it is designed to startle us out of our prejudices and direct us into a new way of thinking and acting.
—Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

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Prayer for the Day

Late have I love you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you. For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me to break open my deafness and you sent forth your beams and you shone upon me and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant fo you. I tasted you, and now hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I have burned for your peace.
--St. Augustine

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Thought for the Day

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplisehd alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

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Data That May or May Not Interest You

The New York Times reported today on some of the data collected in over 1367 tables in the new 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States released today by the Census Bureau. I share some of the facts.

--Americans are getting fatter (so what else is new?), but now drink more bottled water per person than beer.
--There are more injuries caused by wheelchairs than by lawnmowers (bet you didn't guess that one correctly).
--The consumer product that is involved in the most accidents is bicycles. (Beds are not far behind.)
--On average adults and adolescents 1) spend in excess of 64 days a year watching television; 2) 41 days listening to the radio; and 3) a bit more than a week on the Internet. (We know where our free time goes!)
--The national divorce rate of 3.7 per 1,000 was at its lowest since 1970. ( This is encouraging but I suspect that the great increase in the number of people cohabiting is partly responsible for this.)
--The amount or solid waste that Americans produce has risen from 3.7 pounds per day in 1980 to 4.4 pounds (There's something to be proud of!)
--Concerning college freshman, 79 percent described their primary goal as developing a meaningful philosophy of life in 1970. In 2005 75 percent said it was to be financially well off. (A data point, perhaps, about the increasing materialism of our society?)

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Mary, Woman of Ambivalence

Chapter nine in The Real Mary deals with the story found in the third chapter of Mark. Jesus was in his house and so many people had gathered around him that he and his disciples couldn't even eat. The people who were gathering around him were not, it is important to note, the righteous, those of good standing and birth; on the contrary they were for the most part the marginalized in and excluded from society.

Verse 21 of chapter three says that Mary and Jesus' brothers and sisters were coming to get him because they thought that he might be a little over the edge. McKnight suggests that Mary must have been concerned because the way that he was acting was not what she and other Jews were expecting from the Messiah. He writes, "Everyone knew the Messiah was to purge Israel of sinners, not mix with them" (p. 80). Perhaps Mary thought that Jesus needed help from his mother to get him back on track. "Mary's ambivalence is clear: She believed her son was the promised Messiah and, at the same time, she knew what he was doing was contrary to what the Messiah was promised to do. Something had to change" (pp. 81, 82).

Starting in verse 31, when Mary and Jesus' siblings arrive to take him back with them, he further shocks Mary by responding to the news that "your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you," by redefining the nature of the family in the kingdom of God as those who do the will of God. No doubt it was a bracing moment for Mary. We are not told how Mary responded. In fact, this is the last time we hear about Mary until the crucifixion. McKnight believes "she also joined the new family of Jesus at that time" (p. 85).

He concludes this chapter this way:

We can understand Mary's struggle. No one, including Mary, anticipated the kind of Messiah Jesus would become. Following Jesus proved as difficult for Mary as for Peter and for John the Baptist (who himself had plenty of ambivalence about Jesus) and for the siblings of Jesus...While the two visions of the Messiah--the one in the Magnificat and the one guiding Jesus' public ministry--didn't seem to fit, it was hers to trust that Jesus really was the Messiah" (p. 85).

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Thought for the Day

The Christian faith is best defended, I believe, on the joint bases of a confidence in its truth and an openness to the reception of criticism and truth from whatever quarter.
--Colin Gunton in The One, The Three and The Many

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Looking Forward

Beginning today, I intend to give my scripture texts and sermon title for Sunday's sermon on my Thursday blog. That way you those that are interested can "prepare the soil" for Sundays service. The texts for the this Sunday's service are Isaiah 12:2-6 and Luke 1:39-56. The sermon's title is "Christmas Lite," and is based on the Luke text, Mary's Song commonly referred to as "The Magnificat."

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Thought for the Day

The Holy Spirit always proceeds quietly and softly, manifesting himself, not to the one who makes a dramatic show of disputing with God, but to him who is ready to follow the slightest and most discreet indication of where love is to be practiced...
--Hans Urs von Balthasar in Prayer

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Searching for the Mind of God

I found an interesting article in the 12/18/06 issue of Newsweek in the "Persicope" section having to do with science and religion. Paul Davies, a physicist and author of more than 20 books has recently been chosen to head a new think tank on cosmology named Beyond at Arizona State University.

The article describes him as a person who is neither religious in a traditional sense or dogmantically atheist who "has devoted his career to searching for the equation that will reveal what he calls 'the mind of God,' the metaphysical foundation for everthing there is." Last month at a cosmology conference attended by avowed atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris he noted, "Scientists proceed on the asumption that there is a coherent scheme to the universe to be uncovered. That's also an act of faith." He sounds like a breath of fresh air to me. To learn more about Richard Dawkin's recent book which I mentioned in a previous blog, check out Scot McKnight's blog where he and a scientist are reviewing it.

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Mary, Woman of Surrender

McKnight focuses on Jesus' interaction with Mary at the wedding in Cana as recorded in the Gospel of John in this chapter. He sets the stage by noting that the world of Jesus and Mary was a world in which honoring one's parents was a top priority. As children matured and parents aged, the children were responsible, as McKnight writes, "to secure their freedom from their parents in a way that neither humiliated nor impoverished their parents." Honoring one's parent's shaped their society. Unlike our own culture which focuses on rights, Jesus and Mary lived in an age when doing one's duty was of utmost importance.

But Mary was challenged by Jesus' interaction with her at the wedding. The bride and groom had run out of wine which was in that society a faux pasthat could besmirch the wedding family's honor. (Depending on social status and wealth, a wedding celebration could last a week.) Mary, noticing the problem, tells Jesus to do something about it. As McKnight notes, "it is clear that Jesus understood his mother's words as carrying an honor code, fifth-commandment-claim- as-a-mother on him to do something about the wine." He notes that Jesus response to her beginning "Woman..." is not as harsh as it sounds to us because in Jesus' day "woman" and "mother" could be used interchangeably.

It was Jesus' question to her, "Why do you involve me?" that let her know that she was intruding "into his space and into God's plan of his life." Apparently, according to McKnight, Mary's request conflicted with what Jesus understood his Father's expectation of him. He writes, "Jesus challenged Mary to honor God the Father by honoring the Son, and by honoring God she had to let Jesus do what his Father sent him to do when the Father wanted it done."

The long and short of all of this, in McKnight's view, is that "Jesus was summoning his mother to surrender to him and to learn just as his disciples had learned when he commanded them: 'Follow Me!'" Mary had to learn that she had to honor her son, and McKnight argues that she had to "stumble into this," even as many of us "stumble into faith."

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Thought for the Day

...Christian love grants the beloved all his imperfections and weaknesses and in all his changes remains with him, loving the person it sees.
--Soren Kierkegaard in Works of Love

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Mary, A Woman of Wonder

The focus of chapter seven is Jesus' trip to Jerusalem when he was twelve years old. McKnight sets the context by describing the importance of Passover to the Jews and stating that its central theme was liberation. He writes, "For Mary especially, Passover would have been an opportunity to wonder about the promised liberation her son would bring. Everything she had witnessed indicated her son would bring that liberation..."

McKnight recounts Luke's story in which Joseph and Mary upon discovering on the return trip from Jerusalem that Jesus was not present, returned to Jerusalem and found Jesus in the Temple courts surrounded by the teachers. What Mary witnessed when she found Jesus was her twelve year old son in the middle of these scholars listening and answering questions. McKnight writes, "The posture of Jesus was not that of a student listening; instead, he had assumed the posture of teaching--the leaders were listening to Jesus..."

Mary, do doubt, wondered about this incident and how it connected with the other unexpected incidents that had occurred up to this point in time. The Jewish messianic hope was that the king who would liberate Israel would be anointed with the Spirit of God and wisdom. Mary observed that day although it took her time to digest it was her son as the "messianic king of wisdom." She had a lot to wonder about.

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Thought for the Day

When we forgive those who have wronged us, we make God's miracle of forgiveness our own.
--Miroslav Volf in The End of Memory

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Mary, Woman of Sorrow

Chapter 6 refers to Jesus dedication at the temple. As the Torah prescribed, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple for his dedication as the first offspring and Mary's purification. As they entered the temple, though, and elderly man named Simeon took Jesus in his arms and said, "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." These words, as McKnight notes, basically confirm Joseph's and Mary's beliefs about their son.

But Simeon finishes with these words: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too." This is the first time that Mary has heard anything like this, and McKnight believes that it stunned Mary. McKnight writes,
Simeon's words meant that the much-anticipated overthrow of Herod the Great and the routing of Caesar Augustus would come at great cost--to her son and to herself. Her son was born to be king, but the crown her son was to wear would be a cross. The story Mary was learning to tell about Jesus had to change.
It must have been difficult for Mary as well as others to put the pieces of Jesus' story together in a way that made sense. Simeon's prophecy was one indicator that Jesus life would not turn out the way they expected.

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Thought for the Day

When it has any use of belief, our age presses religion into the service of power. The rest of the time, it banishes faith from any position of authority. Once the lifeblood of intimate, social, and civic life, the sacred makes its appearance now as a mere distraction--whether embraced or condemned--from the main event. Ignoring previous counsel and reflection from Aristotle to Freud, we embrace a gospel of personal happiness, defined as the unbridled pursuit of impulse. Yet, we remain profoundly unhappy.
--Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn in the "Introduction" to The Triumph of the Therapeutic by Philip Rieff

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Prayer for the Day

Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you. For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me to break open my deafness and you sent forth your beams and you shone upon me and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for you. I tasted you, and now hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I have bunred for your peace.
--St. Augustine

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Thought for the Day

The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions.
--N. T. Wright in Simply Christian

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Mary, Woman of Witness

The fifth chapter of the book focuses on what Mary witnessed concerning Jesus. Together, the things which she witnessed, McKnight notes, led her to the conclusion that "God would soon set her son on David's throne in Jerusalem, defeat the Romans with their own swords, escort them to a Roman road in their own chariots, or send them back to Italy in their own boats."

What did Mary witness? First she witnessed Jesus' real body. Unlike the sentimental words of "Away in the Manger," Jesus had a real birth and a real body. Babies cry. Jesus cried like all babies cry. The most striking thing that McKnight says in this chapter concerns Jesus physicality:

God didn't just use Mary as a "rent-a-womb" but actually became DNA--Mary's. The theological expression at work here is "incarnation," and the underlying principle is this: What God becomes, God redeems. God becomes what we are--with a real body--so we can become children of God. That's why Jesus' real body is important for our faith.

Second, Mary witnessed the Magi. We don't know what Mary thought of their visit, but she did observe them bowing down and worshipping her son as well as bringing him gifts. She may well have understood that her son's influence would make its away to Rome and beyond.

Third, Mary witnessed the star. McKnight notes that celestial events were often harbingers of the birth of a king. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that the "general believe is that a comet means a change of emperor." Whatever the cause of the star, it's significance, do doubt, further impressed upon Mary the uniqueness of her child.

The last witness was that of the angel. The angel appeared to Mary at the annunciation, appeared to Elizabeth and Zechariah, and to Joseph before they fled to Egypt. As McKnight writes, "From the first word out of Gabriel's mouth to the arrival of the Magi, everything added up in one direction: Jesus would become king and neither Herod the Great nor Caesar Augustus would be."

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Thought for the Day

Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run--in the long run, I say!--success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to thin of it.
--Victor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning

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Mary, Woman of Danger

McKnight begins the fourth chapter with, "The real Mary was a dangerous woman. " I don't think we tend to think of Mary as a dangerous woman: pious, yes; obedient, yes; dangerous, no. Why does McKnight believe that Mary was dangerous? Her claim that her son was the future ruler made her dangerous to the established powers.

According to McKnight, at the time that Jesus was born, there was a "gospel of Rome." What was this gospel? Caesar Augustus was the adopted son of Julius Caesar. After Julius Caesar died, he was pronounced to be a god, which made Augustus the "son of god." Furthermore, after Augustus won the war for succession and took power as the emperor, he created peace in Rome, what was known as the pax Romana, and thus became known as Rome's savior. Finally, Augustus' ascendancy to the throne was declared as "good news." Therefore, as McKnight writes, "The gospel story out of Rome was this: Caesar Augustus, son of god, our savior, has brought peace to the whole world."

As he notes, it cannot be coincidence that the angel's announcement to Mary about Jesus contained the same four words used of Caesar Augustus: Jesus, son of God, is the savior, and will bring peace to the whole world. "That could mean," McKnight continues, "only one thing: Caesar August was not. That's dangerous."

When the scriptures say that "Mary pondered these things..." McKnight believes that she was working to put things together.

Instead of imagining Mary sitting quietly meditating in some corner all alone, while everyone else was singing and dancing and clapping and dreaming of the end of Augustus' rule, Mary was actively figuring out what in the world God was doing in the world...The gospel story Mary announced was the dangerous story that Jesus was King and Augustus was not.

I must admit that I liked the challenge of this chapter. I certainly haven't thought of Mary as dangerous, and need to rethink this image that I have. How about you? Do you think Mary was dangerous?

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Thought for the Day

Christ does not wish to change things for the sake of our peace and quiet; still less can we do that for ourselves. Discipleship stands entirely on simple faith, and faith is real only in discipleship.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Mary, A Woman of Justice

In the third chapter of The Real Mary McKnight focuses on the Magnificat, Mary's Song, found in Luke 1:47-55. Luke informs us that when Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, Mary burst forth with this song not only because she is pregnant and will bear a son, but this son, according to the angel's words, will become the Davidic king who will bring justice and righteousness to a world filled with injustice and evil.

It was an act of political courage because she was challenging the powers of Herod and behind him Caesar. When she sings that God "has brought down rulers from their thrones," she has in mind real rulers who were ruling at the time. He notes that in Guatemala in the 1980's the Magnificat was banned from public reading because it was considered of a politically subversive nature. It was, no doubt, just a politically subversive on Mary's lips.

McKnight believes that we can learn a great deal about Mary's character through this song. He writes,

If this is what Mary's song was really like, the image we have of Mary needs an upgrade. We need a Real Mary 2.0. When we think of Mary, the first thing that should come to mind is the kind of courage we find among informed protesters--and, by reading the Magnificat in context, we can imagine Mary to be wiry and spirited and resolved and bold and gusty. Maybe we should call her the Blessed Valorous Mary instead of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Some think of her as tender; we might instead think of her as tenacious. Some think of her song as a splendid piece of spirituality that could be tucked away in a pew hymnal, but her song belongs instead on the shelf with socio-spiritual songs of protest against unjust rulers.

McKnight actually compares her song favorably with the song "We Shall Overcome" sung by the African American community as it addressed the injustices of the civil rights era. He says specifically that Mary's song is that kind of song. He asks, "Have we tamed Mary into the passive, pious mother of Jesus?" What do you think?

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Thought for the Day

Science gives us knowledge, a gift that is surely always welcome as providing a better basis for decisions than ignorance. But then science's lusty offspring, technology, uses that knowledge to give us power, the ability to do things not previously thought to be possible. This is a more ambiguous gift, since not everything that can be done, should be done. Therefore humanity needs to seek the further gift of wisdom, the ability to discern and choose the good and to discern and refuse the bad.
--John Polkinghorne in Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion

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A Woman of Faith

The second chapter in The Real Mary focuses on Mary's courage and the stakes that were involved with her role to bear the Messiah. When Mary responded to the angel's announcement with "May it be," everything changed for her, and the change was potentially not a good one.

In Mary's culture, for her to be engaged meant that Joseph and her were legally husband and wife except for sexual relations. As McKnight notes, "She was young [probably between 13 and 16] and she was engaged, but the hard fact for Mary was that she was already pregnant." This would have made her a sotah, the Hebrew word for suspected adulteress. A woman labeled as a sotah was likely to face a humiliating public trial; if convicted, stoning was the prescribed punishment.

As McKnight notes, "With the scent of the angel still in Mary's presence, she had little idea how Joseph might respond to her claim of a virginal conception." Joseph had the right to divorce her which would have left her without financial means. Her son would be known as mamzer, the Hebrew term for illegitimate child, and might well be ridiculed and ostracized by the community. Yet knowing this was a definite possibility, Mary said, "May it be."

"Mary, in faith, consented to God's plan. Mary, in faith, began to carry a cross before Jesus was born. Mary began to suffer for the Messiah before the Messiah suffered." Everything changed for Mary with that simple, "May it be."

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Thought for the Day

Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite...The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
--G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

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Fundamentalist Atheism

Nicholas Kristof had an interesting Op-Ed piece in yesterday's New York Times with the title, "A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion." He refers to the number of books and websites which are dismissive of religion. Concerning Dawkins book and website he writes, "It's a militant, in-your-face brand of atheism that he and others are proselytizing for." Noting that approximately 1-2% of Americans describe themselves as atheists in polls, another 15% report that they are affiliated with no religion, and in some literature this category is described as the religious group that is growing the fastest.

Kristof writes,

...the tone of this Charge of the Atheist Brigade is often just as intolerant--and mean [as the rigidity and discrimination of religious fundamentalism]. It's contemptuous and even...a bit fundamentalist.

"These writers share a few things with the zealous religionists they oppose, such as a high degree of dogmatism and an aggressive rhetorical style," says John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "Indeed, one could speak of a secular fundamentalism that resembles religious fundamentalism. This may be one of those cases where opposites converge."

I mentioned in a blog several days ago that I find all kinds of fundamentalism in society--the right is not the sole possessor of this type of thinking. I am reminded of a metaphor for the mind as a window: a window stuck open is as worthless as a window stuck shut.

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The Real Mary

As I mentioned in my Beacon article, I want to review Scot McKnight's new book, The Real Mary during Advent. Many Protestants are reassessing their understanding of Mary and her important place in the gospel stories. I am one of those as well, and for this reason was eager to read Mcknight's new book on her.

In the first chapter of his book, McKnight gives the rationale for his writing the book in the first place. He begins this way: "'Why are you --a Protestant--writing a book about Mary?' I've been asked this question many times. In fact, one person asked me the following question: 'Wasn't Mary a Roman Catholic?' (No kidding.)" He then gives several reasons for researching and writing his book. The first one is that he believes Mary's story has never been told well. He finds that she is more like a Rorschach inblot onto which people project their own feelings and ideas, many of which have little or nothing to do with the real Mary. Second, he believes that Mary's story is the story of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary vocation. As such, she has much to teach you and me. Third, "Because for years the view of Mary in the Church has been made unreal. Mary has become for many little more than a compliant 'resting' womb' for God, and she has become a stereotype of passivity in the face of challenge, of self-sacrifice at the expense of one's soul care, and of quietude to the point of hiding in the shadows of others." Fourth, because she was, afterall, the mother of Jesus and this alone should qualify her for special attention. Fifth, "because the Magnificat, her song in Luke's first chapter, is the Magna Carta of early Christian songs and a mosaic of what God would do when Jesus, the Messiah, came..." Sixth, because of Mary's treatment in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches and Protestant identity historically as rejecting much of these theologies, Mary has virtually disappeared from our radar scopes. Seventh, McKnight doesn't believe that there are any good books to reassess Mary from a Protestant viewpoint. Eighth, since their is a rapprochment between Roman Catholics and Protestants, it is worthwhile reassessing Mary's place in Protestant theology. Finally, it is appropriate to relook at Mary because, "the real Mary always leads us to Jesus."

I hope that you will feel free to weigh in on this look at Mary, and that we can learn from one another.

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Thought for the Day

In recognizing and holding ever before our eyes the dignity of the human person created in God's image, one is called to articulate and to work to achieve a common good, not as enforced homogeneity but as a type of community that turns on and recognizes the particular gift each brings to the banquet table of life.
--Jean Bethke Elshtain in Who Are We?

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A Hymn of Praise

Blessing and brightness,
Wisdom, and thanksgiving,
Great power and might
To the King who rules over all

Glory and honour and goodwill,
Praise and the sublime songs of minstrels,
Overflowing love from every heart
To the King of Heaven and Earth.

To the chosen Trinity has been joined
Before all, after all, universal
Blessing and everlasting blessing,
Blessing everlasting and blessing.
--from A Celtic Psaltery compiled by David Adam

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Deliver Us From Evil

The last chapter of Wright’s book has the title, “Deliver Us From Evil.” Frankly, I was surprised by the direction that he took in this chapter. His central thesis is that forgiveness is a key in deliverance from evil and it is an absolutely essential aspect of the fullness of God’s kingdom. Without forgiveness, the evil from the past will have a hold on us and prevent us from entering fully into the joy of the Lord.

He writes,

Thus, just as when we offer genuine forgiveness to someone else we are no longer conditioned by the evil that they have done—even if they refuse to accept this forgiveness and so continue in a state of enmity—so when God offers genuine forgiveness to his sinful creatures he is no longer conditioned by the evil they have done, even if they refuse to accept his forgiveness.

He continues by saying,

But the point—and this is really the central point of this book, the ultimate answer to this aspect at least of the problem of evil [i.e. the hold that evil from the past can hold over us]—is not only that in the new world God himself will be beyond the reach of the moral blackmail of unresolved evil, but that we shall be as well.

According to Wright one of the joy’s that those rescued and redeemed by God is that they will have the ability to give complete forgiveness to those that have wronged them so that nothing from the past might in any way diminish their experience of joy.

In the meantime, we are to practice forgiveness in the hear and now because it is God’s way, and the way ultimately of releasing us from the hold with which evil grips us. Forgiveness

releases not only the person who is being forgiven but the person who is doing the forgiving…forgiveness can mean not only that I release you from the threat of my anger and its consequences, but also that I avoid having the rest of my life consumed with anger, bitterness and resentment.

Included in the forgiving is ourselves. Wright notes that sometimes forgiving ourselves is the hardest task of all. How many times I have heard the statement that runs something like, “I know that God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.” He writes, "Part of the answer to the prayer ‘Deliver us from evil’ is that we learn to forgive ourselves, both for our own sake and for the sake of those around us.”

I must confess that this book wasn’t what I expected it to be. I was expecting it to be a book of theodicy [the justification of God’s goodness and justice in light of the evil and suffering in the world]. He begins by saying that he is not addressing the “why” question. His intention is more practical and wants to help us deal with the evil that exists in the world and in our lives.

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Thought for the Day

The understanding and honoring of time is fundamental to the realization of who we are and how we live. Violations of sacred time become desecrations of our most intimate relations with God and one another. Hours and days, weeks and months and years, are the very stuff of holiness.
Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

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Imagine There's No Evil

The fourth chapter of Wright's book, Evil and the Justice of God, focuses on how the crucifixion and the resurrection affect the world in which evil exists and does its damage. He believes the key is understanding that in Jesus the future has come forward into the present and the churches' task is "implementing that achievement and thus anticipating that future," the future where evil no longer has a place to do its destructive work.


I found his interlude in this chapter where he discusses in more detail his understanding of evil one of the most interesting parts of the book. Referring to an earlier comment on "thesatan" (meaning accuser) a phrase used several places in the Old Testament, he writes, "The satan, it seems, is a nonhuman being, a type of angel , perhaps in some accounts an ex-angel or fallen angel, and he or it...comes to be opposed to humankind, and then to Israel, and hence, not surprisingly, to Jesus." The satan not only opposes humans, but is fundamentally against creation itself and wants to undo God's good world. Above all, satan wants to deliver death to everything. Wright continues,

The biblical picture of the satan is thus of a nonhuman and nondivine quasi-personal force which seems bent on attacking and destroying creation in general and humankind in particular, and above all on thwarting God's project ofremaking the world and human beings in and through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Wright believes that we tend to fall into two errors. The first is thinking of the satan and evil as a myth. The second is thinking of the satan as personal like Jesus. "I prefer to use the term "subpersonal" or "quasi-personal" as a way of refusing to accord the satan the full dignity of personhood while recognizing that the concentration of activity...can and does strike us as very much like that which we associate with personhood."

When discussing evil further, building on the theology of Thomas Aquinas who defined evil as "the absence or deprivation of good," Wright says, "Evil is then the moral and spiritual equivalent of a black hole." He also refers to evil as a Negative Force.

Having made that digression concerning the nature of evil, he then returns to his central thesis for this passage that we need to imagine a world without evil and work backward from there. He writes,
The New Testament invites us, then, to Imagine a new world as a beautiful, healing community; to envisage it as a world vibrant with life and energy,incorruptible, beyond the reach of death anddecay ; to hold it in our mind's eye as a world reborn, set free from the slavery of corruption, free to be truly what it was made to be. This is the pole by which we must set our compasses so that we may find our way along the intermediate paths that lie before us.
What are the intermediate paths that lie before us according to Wright? "there are five quite disparate ways in which, I suggest, we should be working in the present time to put into practice--on the basis of the victory of Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection--the beginnings, the advance signs of that new world which we are called to imagine.

The first sign is prayer. By calling the invitation and summons to pray we become "more truly human" and we intercede for this world which God so loves. The second sign is holiness which is really living the present life according to the rule of the ultimate future. By politics and empire, the third sign, he means that we are "under obligation both to honor the ruling authority, whatever it may be, and to work constantly to remind that authority of its God-given task: to do justice and love mercy, to ensure that those who are weak and vulnerable are properly looked after." The fourth sign, penal codes, means working toward restorative justice not retributive justice. Concerning the fifth sign, international disputes, Wright notes, "There is such a thing as evil, and it is to be addressed and defeated not by ignoring it on the one hand or by blasting away at it with heavy artillery on the other--even with all the smart bombs currently available, still when the shooting starts hundreds of thousands of civilians get killed--but addressing it with the message and the methods of the cross."

He believes that an important aspect of capturing the Christian imagination is through art as well. He notes that art is a response to the creations goodness and beauty and is thus a pointer to God. "art at its best not only draws attention to the way things are but to the way things are meant to be, and by God's grace to theway things one day will be, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."

He concludes the chapter with the statement that Christians are not only to understand the nature of evil, but, indeed, are to be part of God's solution.

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Thought for the Day

Don’t raise your voice; improve your arguments.
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, quoting advice from his father (WCC Ninth Assembly, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

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