Prophetic Imaginations, Past and Present

Yesterday afternoon, in the midst of news of the separation between Trump and Musk, I heard that the theologian Walter Brueggemann had died.  It wasn't exactly unexpected; he was 92 years old.  From what I've read, his death was peaceful.  And then I went to a picnic with the camp counselors for this summer--they're an inspiring group.

This morning, my thoughts turned to Brueggemann again, as I revised my Pentecost sermon.  I went back through some seminary papers; it's the rare theologian that I turned to again and again, the way I did Brueggemann's work, especially The Prophetic Imagination.  It has been especially interesting this morning, thinking about ancient prophets, thinking about Pentecost, thinking about our own time which is so full of nonsense and babble.  I tweeted this morning:  "Here for #5amwritersclub, here to work on my Pentecost sermon about God speaking in languages we each understand, while all around me, men spew nonsense and artificial intelligence hallucinates, and perhaps I'll also write a blog post about these juxtapositions."

I'm not sure I'm doing that, but I did think about the Brueggemann idea that I used most often across seminary papers:  the prophet shows us a world in which God can act and that God has a plan and a purpose (The Prophetic Imagination, p. 218).  And here's another Brueggemann quote that shows up periodically in my seminary papers:    “Clearly Jesus cannot be understood simply as prophet, for that designation, like every other, is inadequate for the historical reality of Jesus. Nonetheless, among his other functions it is clear that Jesus functioned as a prophet. In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal consciousness. He has, in fact, dismantled the dominant culture and nullified its claims” (The Prophetic Imagination, 81-82).

Here's how I used these ideas in my Pentecost sermon:  We have the promise of the ancient prophets like Joel that if we can use our power to align ourselves and our societies to right relationship with God and with each other, we can turn ourselves and our societies in a new direction, one where we can discover a true path to flourishing.

Brueggemann's theology has inspired so many of us in so many ways.  I hope we can continue to inspire others with these ideas.

Can You Be a Christian If?

So far, Systematic Theology class has been studying the incarnational aspect of God--in short, Jesus Christ, or the even fancier term, Christology.  We will study doctrines of Christology, the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology), the Trinity, and Salvation.  My professor says that Systematic Theologians see all these doctrines as so intertwined/entwined/interrelated that they can't be separated.  His metaphor is the Jazz quartet where each instrument listens to the others; they are distinct, yet they need to be heard together to get the full effect.

We cover a lot of ideas in class, many of them coming from the field of Systematic Theology, some of them heretical on some level.  Of course, depending on one's view of theology, of church history, of Biblical interpretation, one century's heresy is another century's doctrine.

Last night, my professor said, "You don't have to believe in the Trinity to be a Christian," and this morning I work up thinking about that idea.  I also thought, what if Jesus wasn't Divine?  And then I wondered, can I be a Christian if I don't believe Jesus was Divine?  The earliest church was divided over the idea of who Jesus was, and the question Jesus asked is still very relevant:  "Who do you say that I am?"

Some theologians settle on the 2nd person of the Trinity and leave it there.  Other theologians focus on the fact that Jesus came to the marginalized.  We've spent at least a week trying to discern if Jesus came as a full partner in the Trinity (what does it mean to be begotten?).  Maybe the Spirit was the one shaping Jesus--but is that after God took on human flesh or was it the Spirit, choosing a human and shaping that human to become Divine?

Theologians have spent centuries thinking about this issue of equality, and I suspect very few of them would adopt the idea of Spirit choosing a human to create into a sacrificial aspect of the Divine.  It is interesting how many theologians focus on a 2 natures Christology to solve the problem--but it creates other problems.  How much of Jesus is human and how much Divine and what is the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this?

I don't have easy answers, but I am interested in the aspects that snag the interest of my fellow students.  For example, early in the class, we spent a lot of time on the crucifixion and whether or not Jesus was allowed to have broken bones (the spear in the side instead of the breaking of legs, which would be traditional).  

You might ask why anyone would care about broken bones, and you would be surprised at the ways in which that issue might be important, might be framed in terms of the prophecies of Isaiah and the Psalms.  I wrote more about this class session in this blog post. 

Can You Break the Bones of Jesus?

My Systematic Theology class has been very different so far from what I was expecting.  We are doing a deep dive into the three parts of the Trinity and the Church History behind it.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but last night's class went in ways I wasn't expecting.

We spent far more time talking about the unbroken bones of Jesus on the cross than I would have ever thought possible.  It was clearly important to some of my fellow students.  They wanted to prove that his bones weren't broken by reaching back to ancient Hebrew prophets.

I've said before that I don't think that Isaiah had a vision of Jesus and then proceeded to write about him hundreds of years before he would appear.  The book of Isaiah isn't talking to us or to first century Rome--it's talking to contemporaries of the prophet, telling them what needs to happen now, not what will happen far in the future.  It's not sorcery, after all.

One of my professors last year talked about those first Christians who had seen so much in the life of Jesus that challenged them in every way and so to understand, they reached back into their sacred texts to help them make sense of it all.  But that's not necessarily what we should be doing.

In fact, I think it's insulting to those texts to treat them as a prelude to Jesus.  They have much to teach us, but it's not about predicting the arrival of Jesus.  

It's clear that some of my fellow students are coming from a very different tradition than mine--but some of my future parishioners may be too.  I'm trying to keep an open mind as we talk about whether or not Jesus had bones that could be broken.

It all leads back to a much larger question:  what does it mean to be both human and divine?  And that's an issue that clearly we're all still struggling to comprehend.

Poetry and Climate Change and an Acceptance

 In a week where southern California is under a tropical storm watch, with storm Hilary expected to dump as much rain in 2 days as some parts of the southwest get in 2 years (2 years!!!), and wild fires continue to blaze across northern Canada, and a heat dome will break all sorts of records across the nation--I began this week of historic weather by getting my contributor copies of this book, Dear Human at the Edge of Time:  Poems on Climate Change in the United States:

I'm very pleased that "Higher Ground," one of my Noah's Wife poems was selected.  When I read this poem, I remember clearly its genesis:  the flood of 2019 just before Christmas that wiped out one of our cars that was parked on the street.  There wasn't a tropical system or any warning at all.

This week was also the week where another one of my Noah's Wife poems was chosen for publication:   "Noah's Wife Gets to Work."  One of the joys of blogging is that I have an easy way of looking up my writing process, at least for this poem.  This blog post tells the genesis of this poem, the day in January of 2020 when my boss insisted that the registrar put unqualified/uninterested students in classes so that we would meet our ARC goal, which brought the wrath of Corporate on us, which made our boss enraged, an unpleasant day all the way round.

I look back and think about the ways our lives and our school were about to unravel, all of the power struggles that would mean so little in the end, as the pandemic unspooled, and new owners arrived to change the school in ways that meant that very few of us would still be employed there.  I think back to days like the one in January of 2020, and I'm amazed that I could tolerate that work situation as long as I did.

But back to the current publication.  I am pleased with the variety of poems that are included in this book.  One contributor and poet friend of mine, Dave Bonta, made this Facebook post, giving this review, an elegant expression of the beauty of this book:  "I got my contributors' copies of this, and have been extremely impressed by the variety, including poets from various walks of life, not just the usual suspects - everyone from a high school kid to a climate scientist to the current US poet laureate. It's also fun to share space with social media pals like Caitlin Gildrien, Kristin Berkey-Abbott, and Lesley Wheeler, not to mention folks I've met through qarrtsiluni and such. The topic is dire, but the fellowship is real. I suppose there's a lesson in that..."

Here's the poem that appears in the book:

Higher Ground


On the last day of the year, Noah’s wife waits
for the insurance adjuster.
She thinks of the Christmas flood
and the larger flood before it.

Her husband’s god speaks
in terms of measurements and building
instructions. Her husband’s god gives
out directions and punishments.

Noah’s wife has always heard
the subtle messages, the daily
communications that the men
ignore: how to feed
the family, how to comfort
the forsaken, which breaches
need repairing.

Noah’s wife studies
real estate listings and elevation charts
while she waits
for the insurance adjuster.
She should be researching
vehicles. She already knows
what the adjuster will tell
her about the drowned car.
She seeks answers
to the larger question
of how to find
the higher ground.

A Pop Sermon

 Last night, in my Women and the Preaching Life class, we had a "pop sermon"--like a pop quiz, but not a quiz.  I would much rather have a pop sermon.  We had 5 minutes to choose a Bible passage, decide on a message, and prepare a one minute sermon.  And then we stood up and gave those sermons.  We had to turn off our phones, close our laptops, and give full attention to those who were giving the sermon.

At first I thought I would write about the Psalm that tells us that weeping may spend the night but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30: 5).  But I decided that I didn't really have much to say beyond the basic meaning:  we can cry all night, but eventually joy comes again.

I thought about the verse about God's hands stretching across the sky, and when I Googled it, I got Isaiah 49:16:  "See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."  I thought about the time I went to see Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and he talked about this verse and about what it means that God has our names inscribed on God's hands.  And voila, I had my sermon.

I read the verse and talked about how I read the verse, and at first I don't think of my hands, but instead of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's hands reaching out as he read this verse to us.  I think of my own hands.  Until recently, I would have written notes of what I needed to remember to do on my hands--and these days, I'd have notes extending up my arms, since we're in that busy time of the term (several of my classmates alluded to our heavy to-do lists).  Why didn't I make notes on paper?  Because my hands traveled with me all the time; paper can be lost.  And then I finished with a few sentences with my arms outstretched, asking the listeners to take heart that God has not forgotten us; on the contrary, we are written on God's hands, we are on God's list of what needs attention.

I felt like it was a powerful 1 minute sermon, and one of my classmates told me that she found it enormously moving.  But I found many of the sermons moving, and every single one of them had something profound to say.  It continues to amaze me of how much content one can pack into a very short delivery time:  5-7 minute sermons in Foundations of Preaching (with weeks of prep time) and last night, a 1 minute sermon with very little prep time.

It also seems like an idea that could be used in a variety of settings:  finding a central idea in a text and presenting it, writing an introductory paragraph/thesis/conclusion/main point and presenting it, writing a line of a poem or a line of dialogue in response to a prompt--on and on I could go.

It seemed less punishing than a pop quiz, and for me, I felt more engaged than I would with a pop quiz.  It also showed us a different approach to developing a sermon, which is one of the main purposes of a class in the Preaching discipline (which last night's class was).  

We did it at the beginning of class, which for me was a great way to start.  I could see it working well at any point of the class.  When I've taught in person, I've always looked for ways to shake things up a bit, whether it's showing some video or doing some reading (individually or out loud).  And while it did take us over an hour, between prepping, delivering, and analyzing the process, it wouldn't have to take that long.

It was worth every minute.

Seminarians at a Synagogue

I am taking a World Religions class this term.  It's experiential, meaning that we go places and interact with people of different faiths, in addition to reading about the different faiths.  It's the kind of opportunity that might not always be mine to seize:  the professors might not always teach it, the hospitality from other faiths might not always be extended, and I live on campus, which makes it easy in a way that it might not be in the future, if the class is offered again.

Last night, our class went to the nearby Washington Hebrew Congregation, which we learned is one of the largest ones in the U.S. and the world.  We celebrated Shabbat in the smaller worship space, which is larger than many movie theatres in terms of seating.

Before we did that, we went to a Torah study that happens for a half hour before worship every Friday.  What a treat.  Here is the passage we studied, Exodus 13:  17-18:   "17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” 18 So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.[a] The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle."  There was a larger portion on the handout, but that's all we had time for.

We talked about how the people's hearts needed to change, otherwise they would go back to what was safe and familiar, even if it was a state of slavery.  We talked about how we are not unlike those ancient people.

Then we filed into the worship space and I did my best to follow along.  I did not try to sing, even though I had a sense of what we were doing in the prayer book.  I couldn't make sense of the Hebrew words on the page and the sung words.  I enjoyed it, and spent perhaps too much time wondering if the musicians were paid professionals and if this music would be the music I would hear at a Shabbat service at a different synagogue.  The service had familiar elements:  a sermon, readings, music, time with children, praying for those who needed prayers, offering up our joys.

There was food before and after the service, and not just food, but several tables full of serving stations of hot food, a table of non-hot food (crackers, cheese, fruits, veggies), and a tureen of soup (last night's soup was carrot ginger, and it was delicious).  There was also a full bar, including hard alcohol, with lots of choices.  It felt amazing to me, and I asked the rabbi if they eat like this every week.  He said, "We try to."  

After the service, my seminary group met with the rabbi for a bit of conversation about the differences between Jews and Christians.  We focused on the order of the books of the Scripture.  The highlight of the night, though, is when the rabbi took us to the much larger worship space and showed us the Torah scroll.  Here's where they are kept.

And here's one of the scrolls rolled out.

The glowing aspect above is because of the lighting and my older cell phone camera--but I kind of like the effect.

And here's the tool used to help read the Torah:

The rabbi said that Moses went up to the mountain, talked to God, and what did he come down from the mountain with?  I said, "A sunburn," an answer which surprised everyone.  The correct answer was the stone tablets.  It was such a correct answer that I thought it was too obvious and went with my sunburn reply, which I just blurted out without really thinking about it.

We asked a few questions, and then we adjourned for the night.  It was so fascinating I could have stayed and talked for several hours, despite the fact that it was past my preferred bed time.

Today we have time in the classroom this morning, and this afternoon we go to a mosque.  Tomorrow, I'll report back.

A Time, and a Psalm, for Lament

It's been a week of shocking violence.  There were 2 mass shootings in California, right on top of each other, to the point that when I read about the latter one, it took me a few sentences to process that I wasn't reading about the first one, that there had been a second shooting.

And then there was the release of the footage of what should have been a routine traffic stop in Memphis, the revved up violence of the police, the death of a young black man.  The footage was released yesterday, in the early evening, to give people time to get home ahead of expected demonstrations.

I'm not sure I understand why we need to release this kind of video evidence to a wide audience.  Save it for the court room and then release it if necessary.  There was talk of transparency, but who needs this kind of transparency?  I don't think the parents of the murdered man demanded its release.  Most of us in the community don't need to see it; if the police chief says it's the most sickening thing she's ever seen, I'm willing to take her word for it.

I understand the need for demonstrations, and I'm glad that the demonstrations that happened around the nation last night remained mostly peaceful, from the news coverage that I've seen.  I wasn't too worried about my personal safety, since my seminary apartment is far from where violence would erupt, if it erupted.

Last night, I wrote this Facebook post, which I want to preserve here:  "Somewhere in this seminary apartment building, I hear a baby crying, and a parent singing. On this night when we get another recording that shows us how we can be so brutal to each other, I am grateful for babies who cry and parents who soothe, and I sing my own prayers to a God who can transform all sorts of brokenness into beauty."

I had been thinking of a poem possibility before last night.  In the wee small hours of the morning earlier this week, I had awakened to the sound of someone singing.  Sounds travel in strange ways in this building, so I'm not sure who was singing or why.  I'm fairly sure it was a human singing, not a recording.

This morning, I turned my attention to my prayer book, as I do every morning.  I use Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours, which is rooted in the lectionary that comes to us from the ancient monastic tradition.  One of this morning's passages leapt out at me:  "The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed" (Psalm 103: 6).  

It's not the first time that a passage seemed chosen for our particular day and time, and I do realize that the beauty of the Psalms rests in the broad scope of them, everything from mourning/lament to joy to anger and all the emotions in between.  

This verse bears repeating:   "The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed" (Psalm 103: 6).  

Sacred Texts, Past and Present

I was on a Zoom call on Saturday, two Zoom calls actually.  The second one was a Bible study with my old South Florida church, a Bible study published in Gather magazine that looks at the ten commandments (yes, those ten commandments in the book of Exodus).  We talked about the language in the text, the language that suggests that we follow these commandments so that God doesn't wreak vengeance on us and on our descendents.

As you might expect, our talk turned to the difference between this depiction of God and the God we meet through Jesus in the New Testament.  The leader said, "Kristin, you're in seminary.  How are you learning to talk about this?"

I talked about the ancient arguments about the status of the 3 members of the Trinity; it was clear that some of my congregation has a view that God came first and then created Jesus, which was a view hotly debated, a debate that led to the Nicene Creed which claims that Jesus and God are equal and have existed together since the beginning.  I didn't linger on this statement, but jumped to the point I feel is most important.

We have a variety of views of God in the Bible, and they don't all mesh well.  Instead of thinking about the Bible as the one, true view of God, the unified story of God, it's better to view the Bible as a record of ways that various people in various places and times have seen God.  Rev. Sarah Locke has called the Bible "fan fiction," which is an interesting way to approach the Bible, which is a different way of saying something similar. 

One thing that I didn't mention is that I think that other pieces of writing can do much the same thing.  I have learned more about God through the works of Madeleine L'Engle than through the works contained in the Bible.  I didn't want to push people's boundaries too much on Saturday, particularly not in the context of a Zoom Bible study.  I'd love to be on a retreat where we talked honestly about the idea that modern theologians might be a better way of understanding God than an ancient text like the Bible.

I know that many of us are taught that the Bible has the truth, that it's one truth, not a collection of truths.  I pointed out that it's impossible for one book to have a complete picture of God.  I said, "Imagine how big that book would have to be to contain the totality of God."

I don't expect people to change their concepts of God or the Bible based on a few comments.  But I'm glad to be part of a group that won't shun me for having a more expansive concept of God and the Bible.

Video Sermon on Isaiah 2: 1-5

 About a month ago, my pastor from my South Florida church asked me if I wanted to do an Advent sermon; it would be recorded, of course, because making a trip to South Florida isn't feasible in these days of the end of the semester.  At first I said no, but then I realized I was creating a sermon from the Advent lectionary (on Isaiah 2:  1-5) for my Foundations of Preaching class--so I proposed that I deliver that sermon, only a bit later than it comes in the lectionary.  My pastor said yes.

I had in mind that I would read at my laptop, recording, and that would be that.  But as I worked on the sermon for class, a theme emerged.  The sermon went from leaves in their full autumnal glory

to leaves slick and slimy on the sidewalks

to birds' nests visible in trees with no leaves.

I thought about the types of sermons I used to create, me speaking over images.  I had a bit of extra time yesterday, and I thought it wouldn't take that much more time to create a sermon with images to enrich the words.

What I didn't count on is that the Windows Video Editor has changed, so it took me awhile to make the sermon.  Then I thought of some changes I wanted to make, so I made a second draft. I could keep making draft after draft, but it was time to be finished.  I have other work to do as the semester keeps marching towards the end.

If you would like to experience my work, which will take less than 8 minutes of your time, you can go to my You Tube channel and watch my sermon on Isaiah 2:  1-5.

Isaiah, Jesus, and the Issue of Prophecy in an Advent Season

I knew that going to seminary would challenge my faith in all kinds of ways.  I knew that a seminary education might make it hard for me to have conversations with people who had different kinds of learning/training.  But Advent has challenged my faith in ways I didn't expect--so far, nothing earthshattering, but strange, nonetheless.

I wrote an earlier post about the Foundations of Preaching class approach to preaching the ancient prophets:  "Several times our professor reminded us that if we're preaching the Hebrew Scripture passages, the answer to the prophets question is never Jesus. In other words, we think that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by ancient prophets, but those prophets would not have thought that. The first Christians knew that something earthshattering had happened in the ministry of Jesus, and to make sense of it, they turned to their scripture, which would have been the Hebrew Scriptures. They had to decide if they were at a hinge moment when they created a whole new approach to God that would require abandoning past scripture or if they could use what they had been taught to make sense of it."

My Hebrew Bible class (what an earlier generation would have called Old Testament class) professor said something similar.  Isaiah, to whom we turn in many an Advent reading, is not predicting Jesus.  Prophecy is not fortune telling, not future forecasting.  I understand why so many people think the prophets who lived hundreds/thousands of years before Jesus were telling everyone that Jesus would arrive, Jesus specifically, not a general savior.  I was taught that too, in Sunday School, by people who had never heard differently, kind, older people who taught the classes based on what they were taught.  These same Sunday School teachers of my youth thought/taught that the Gospels were factual histories written by people who were there to witness it all.

So far, my seminary studies haven't challenged my faith here.  I came to seminary accepting parts of  the Bible as truth, but not fact.   I see sacred texts as inspired by God, not dictated by God.  And I see more sacred texts than just those collected in the Bible.  I have assumed that those of us who have gone to seminary in the past 10-20 years will have come across these ideas.

So it's jarring to hear Advent sermons and blogs and tweets that still talk about Isaiah as predicting the coming of Jesus.  I accept that older theology and music will have those ideas.  But if you've gone to a mainline seminary recently, why are you still preaching that the Hebrew prophets told us about the coming of Jesus?  Why are you preaching that Isaiah was talking to us in the 21st century?  The ancient prophets were concerned with the people in their own time, not centuries into the future.  The salvation that concerned them was not my personal salvation--or anyone's personal salvation--but the salvation of the whole community.

As I said, not a huge deal, and certainly the larger church community would not see this as particularly interesting.  But it's leaping out at me this year, in part because I had to preach on a text from Isaiah, and my professor was very clear that if we made the classic mistake of saying that Isaiah was predicting Jesus, we would fail the assignment.  

Here's the one reference to Jesus that I kept:  "In this time of Advent, I encourage us to think about Jesus who comes to tell us that the kingdom of God is inbreaking, happening right here and right now. . . . In this time of Advent, as we prepare ourselves to welcome the inbreaking kingdom of God, let us develop a prophetic imagination for our own day. Let us walk in a world illumined in ways that dictators can’t imagine."

(I will be recording this sermon for my S. Florida home church, so more will be coming soon).

Community Prophecy, Community Salvation

 I chose Wesley Theological Seminary for just one reason:  it had a track in Theology and the Arts, which very few MDiv programs offer.  For example, no Lutheran seminary offers that focus for the MDiv.  Maybe I won't graduate into a crowded career field.  But I'm not terribly worried about my future career.  I just want a chance to study the intersection of creativity and spirituality as part of my theological training, and I didn't want to have to create my own independent study.  I've been creating my own independent study opportunities for over 2 decades now.

It was only later that I researched the academic training of the faculty and the approach to the Bible that the campus takes.  Before I enrolled, I went to a Zoom meeting with the academic dean, who told us that Wesley took the Bible seriously but not literally; if we came out of a Bible literalist tradition, we'd be welcome, but we'd be expected to think about other approaches.  I do not come from a Bible literalist tradition, and I took a moment to think about how I hadn't even considered the theology of the school I selected before the academic dean's Zoom session.

I thought of these moments last night in my Foundations of Preaching class.  We spent the first half of the class getting ready to write a preach a sermon based on a New Testament passage.  Now for the hard part--a sermon based on a Hebrew Scripture passage.  Our professor uses the Revised Common Lectionary for the weeks we'll be preaching.  In some ways, that's a great approach--we're not preaching on hand selected passages.  This year, the timing makes for an interesting element:  we'll be preaching on Advent texts.

Several times our professor reminded us that if we're preaching the Hebrew Scripture passages, the answer to the prophets question is never Jesus.  In other words, we think that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by ancient prophets, but those prophets would not have thought that.  The first Christians knew that something earthshattering had happened in the ministry of Jesus, and to make sense of it, they turned to their scripture, which would have been the Hebrew Scriptures.  They had to decide if they were at a hinge moment when they created a whole new approach to God that would require abandoning past scripture or if they could use what they had been taught to make sense of it.

So far, the conversation didn't seem terribly radical to me, but based on my professor's comments, I realize it might be very different for other students.  And based on her comments, I'm guessing that some past students went ahead and preached Jesus as Messiah foretold by Isaiah, a mistake I would not risk making, even if I believed it, which I don't.

Our teacher talked about Jesus, who steeped himself in ancient scripture.  She said that he lived into Hebrew Scripture so intently that first century Christians came to believe that casting him as the Messiah is the only way possible to see and understand him.  Who else could he be with this behavior?  He had so many opportunities to choose another path, and he stayed consistently on the ministry path that made sense to him and had a chance to change our sense of God at work in the world.  [when the recording of last night's session gets posted, I'll go back to check and make sure I've captured what she said].

We also talked about what those ancient prophets were doing, which was not forecasting a distant future which is why I don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by Isaiah--a Messiah, yes, but the ancient prophets had a different agenda.  Those ancient prophets were talking to a community.  We tend to think of prophecy as about a certain individual, especially if we come from some church traditions.

The prophets were talking to a whole community, not a subgroup that needed to change.  It was a whole society that needed to change.

I raised my hand near the end of class, and I said, "Maybe in a way that we've been getting ancient prophecy wrong, in thinking it's about an individual and not the larger community, maybe we've also been getting salvation wrong.  We say that Jesus died for each one of us as an individual.  But maybe Jesus didn't come to save my individual soul.  Maybe Jesus came to save the community by showing us how we need to transform it."

My teacher was nodding as I spoke, and when I was finished, she said, "Absolutely right."  After class, she said, in an aside to those of us still taking some extra moments to collect our things and file out, she said, "I can see it now--next class I'll have to reassure students that I actually am a Christian.  The born again kind."

She is the kind of professor who gives lectures that I spend days thinking about, giving us nuggets of wisdom that I return to again and again.  I know how it could have been otherwise.  I know how lucky I am.

Psalms of Lament and Imprecatory Psalms

This morning I came across a series of tweets by Diana Butler Bass, where she reminded us that imprecatory Psalms come from a different tradition, that Christians shouldn't appropriate them. She told pastors to stay in their lanes.

I thought, well, I have a seminary assignment that requires me to write in this vein.

Here is the assignment, which is a really cool way to help us understand this type of Psalm:

This assignment has 2 parts (Please post as ONE document):

1) Write your own lament, either individual or communal, following the structure of the lament psalm as discussed in the videos, assigned readings, and power points.

There is no specified length for your lament. 

2) In one paragraph, discuss why you would or would not preach from an angry lament in your ministry setting.

Due Sunday, March 20 by 11:59 p.m. No attachments please. Cut and paste a previously written Word document with both parts in it.

I've been thinking about the assignment for days, but I feel a bit of hesitancy.  My main hesitancy is that there are so many possible laments:  climate change (it's 70 degrees warmer than normal in Antarctica, an event which would have been declared as impossible, until it happened--see this story in The Washington Post), the pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, various refugee crises, so many of my friends moving away, and that's just the immediate list.

There are advantages to each one, and disadvantages too.  Part of me imagines that all of my classmates will be writing about Ukraine, so part of me wants to do something different.  But Putin is such an easy subject for a Psalm of lament--too easy?  And does climate change have an obvious enough villain?  Could my Psalm of lament ask for a planetary reset?  That's probably not a good idea for humans, depending on how far back we go. 

I have a bit of time before the due date, and this is the kind of writing assignment that won't take as much time as the writing assignment that asks for secondary sources--so I'm not panicked.  But it is time to make some choices.

As I move through seminary, my student mind is most engaged.  But there's always in the background my teacher mind and my writer mind.  My teacher mind evaluates assignments, and happily, so far, my teacher mind has been pleased and impressed.  My writer mind is always thinking, how could I recycle this work into other kinds of writing.  Some assignments don't lend themselves to much else, but this one has potential.

I started working on this assignment yesterday, and I decided on refugees and the Ukraine invasion as my subject.  Today I'll read the Psalms assigned for this week's class and assignment to make sure my writing follows the model.  I'll make a few revisions, and then I'll upload my response. 

I'll be very interested to get the feedback of my professors.  I often do better with my creative responses than with the assignments that require a more strict exegesis.

Return to the Garden

This week, we turn our attention to the creation story in Genesis 3: 1-7. We've heard these stories so often that we often think we know what's there, only to find that it's not. Many of us think that Eve ate an apple, but it wasn't until John Milton wrote Paradise Lost in the year 1674 that Eve eats an apple. If we read all of Genesis, we might be surprised to find two creation stories. In the earliest one, God creates each part of the world and declares it good, and very good. It's in the second creation story, written much later, that we get this story of judgment.

 
Many of us have been taught that this story tells us how evil entered the world, but that's much too simplistic. In her meditation for A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Dr. Wilda C. Gafney says, "In the garden God offers life, provision, knowledge (conditionally) and boundaries. . . . It is useful to consider the serpent apart from the crutch of postbiblical misidentification with Satan. . . . Perhaps rather than 'tempter,' the serpent is 'tester.' What will humanity do in response to boundaries? Test them, bend them, break them" (p. 80).

How would our current life be different if we had been taught to see Eve as someone who tested boundaries, not someone who disobeyed? She makes a choice and faces the consequences. There's a long line of thought that would argue that she makes it possible for full human expression. With the knowledge that she secures for humans, humans have more options--some of them will be wonderful, and some of those options will be horrible. There's a long line of intellectual thought that says that having those options is better than being puppets in a garden.

I think about our approach to Eve, and I compare it to our approach to Jesus. Jesus also broke the rules of his society--and they were rules that God gave the Israelites centuries before Jesus lived among us. But we celebrate Jesus. Eve, on the other hand, has been used to justify the oppression of women, because if she hadn't disobeyed God, we'd all still be happy in the garden. Men have used this argument to prove that they should be in charge. In an essay that appeared decades ago, feminist scholar Phyllis Trible says that men having dominance is a punishment, not the way that life should be. We've taken the punishment and used it to shape our society into a one that is far from what God intended.

However, Trible still sees this story as one that can give us hope: “The Yahwist narrative tells us who we are (creatures of equality and mutuality); it tells us who we have become (creatures of oppression); and so it opens possibilities for change, for a return to our true liberation under God” (81).

Prophetic Street Theatre

I began yesterday feeling a bit of despair knowing that I had to write a short discussion post on Ezekiel and feeling like I had absolutely nothing to say about that prophet.  The assignment also included this bit:   "Where do you find prophetic street theater today?"  I knew what I wanted to say about that part, but Ezekiel?  Happily, once I looked at the passages from the prophet and looked back over my class notes, I was able to formulate an approach.

I was buoyed by getting my grade for my Jeremiah project, which required us to imagine ourselves as a talk show host like Ellen or Oprah and how we would interview Jeremiah.  This discussion post required a video, not a piece of writing.  I created a very short video, posted it, and spent time worrying that I had done it all wrong.  I imagined my professor saying, "Well, as a piece of creative writing, this is great, but as a response to this assignment, she's out of her depth.

Happily, my professor did not feel that way.  Here's the response that I got, along with the score of 100/100:  

"This is good, creative work, Kristin. Your video demonstrates understanding of the nature of prophets and prophecy. It also considers the larger social context of Jeremiah where you reflect on how "the geopolitical business" is a blunt instrument.

Good use of Brueggemann about grieving coming before resurrecting."

I spent some time yesterday trying to figure out how to export the video out of Blackboard (Wesley's Learning Management System) so that I could share it or keep it.  Alas, so far, I haven't figured out how to do that.  I was able to download a transcript, so at least there's that.

In the middle of the day, my spouse's brother and his wife came over for lunch.  Our grown niece (daughter of spouse's sister) came over too, and we had a delightful time.  When they came in January, we made a burrito/fajita buffet, and that worked so well that we just did a repeat.  It's a great way to feed people with a variety of food needs and preferences.  And it leaves us delicious leftovers!

When we went out on the parking deck to watch the sun set (and for me to sing silently "Dona Nobis Pachem"), I heard lots of horns honking, sustained honking, which I thought was odd.  When I went out onto our balcony a bit later, I continued to hear honking, so I went back to the parking deck, which has a better view.  I heard some chanting.  Was there some kind of demonstration in the Arts Park?

My spouse and I decided to go see.  Lo and behold, there was quite a gathering:

There was a presentation from the stage, mostly in Ukrainian.  

There were people draped in Ukrainian flags and wearing sky blue and yellow:

I saw a wide variety of signs.  I did wonder if they were all saying the same things.  The "Choose Peace" and "No war" signs--what did they suggest that Ukraine do?  Or was it about the U.S. not sending troops?  I did not engage in this kind of conversation.

I was most enchanted by the art project.  People brought sidewalk chalk for the children and the children got right to work decorating the pavement.

 

As I watched the festivities/protest, my mind went back to the discussion post I wrote earlier.  I thought about writing an additional post to talk about the street theatre that I was seeing, but I decided against that path.

Still, I thought of my professor's question as I walked back through the empty Arts Park this morning.  I went out for my walk and felt a few sprinkles, and I knew the chalk marks wouldn't last for long.  I walked through the pleas for peace, the flowers and the flags, the vow to stand with Ukraine.  As I prayed (for peace, for wisdom, for courage), I thought of the promises of some of the ancient prophets, like this one, in Isaiah 61: 4:

"They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations."

New Year, Yearning for New Prophets

I have spent this Christmas break going to my seminary's website, looking to see if my grades were posted.  So far, so good.  

I got mixed feedback for my final exam in Hebrew Bible, mixed meaning that I got compliments for some work well done, along with suggestions for improvement, even though we are at the end of class.  I am always happy for the feedback of that teaching team, especially since I am taking the second half of Hebrew Bible in the spring.  I particularly liked this feedback, since I wasn't sure of that writing:  "Good, thoughtful reflection on the 2 tasks of a prophet."

That last chunk of final exam seems a worthy post for New Year's Day.  

"Like those during the reign of Solomon, we here in the 21st century yearn for something different, a better world that isn’t breaking the backs of so many of us, a world where everyone has enough, a God who comes to live with us again. We yearn, even though we may not be able to articulate what our hearts truly desire.

A good prophet can articulate our yearnings. A powerful prophet can inspire us to be brave enough to make our yearnings take flesh and shape and meaning--and by doing so to transform society."

Happy 2022!  And here's hoping for prophets that can call us to our better selves and better societies!

Psalms of Lament

In the pre-Christmas season, is it unusual to find our mind turning to lament?  Perhaps not in this pandemic season--and perhaps every holiday season brings with it an undercurrent of sorrow.

My seminary class, Spiritual Formation for Ministry, ended with a module on mourning as a spiritual practice.  Most of us hadn't thought of mourning as a spiritual practice before, but it led to interesting conversations.  We did the module in early December, which is an interesting time to talk about mourning and grief.  Those of us who have been alive for any amount of time are aware that holidays bring pain along with the joy.

Our professor reminded us that even when we feel like we don't have words, we can probably find the words we need in the Psalms.  Most of us are more familiar with the happier Psalms, but the Psalms go through every emotion.  In times of grief and mourning, she recommended that we turn to these Psalms of lament:  44, 74, 79, 89, 102, 106, and 137.

In these days just before our second Christmas in a time of pandemic, I thought I'd list them here, for those of us feeling sorrow and grief and needing words to pray our lamentations.

Rahab Results

This morning, I have good news to report: I made 95 out of 100 points possible on my Rahab paper! I am so relieved. Although I had worked hard on it, I am aware of all the ways it might not have been what my professor wanted.

On Monday, November 29, I turned in my Rahab paper. Part of that submission process is a plagiarism check, where my paper is compared to all sorts of databases. The student gets the report too, and can resubmit if changes are necessary.

The software flagged some of the material I quoted, which isn't unusual, and I knew I had documented correctly, so I wasn't worried about that. I did wonder why it didn't flag all my quoted material. It also flagged this sentence, "Why did Rahab take the Israelites in for the night?" It saw my words as a match to this original source: "Why did Rahab protect the Israelites"; I don't see these as close at all, and certainly not an idea that one would plagiarize.

I fretted a bit and wondered if I should write to my professor. Having seen numerous originality reports myself on the teacher side, I knew that I wouldn't worry about this "match." I decided that writing to my professor might be more problematic than not. Plus, when I clicked through to see the original source material that was contained in a blog post, I couldn't even find the words that the software had found.

I continued to check my grades, even though I knew it would take some time for my teacher to do all that grading. As I was checking, I worried that I didn't revise enough. We had been told that if we didn't revise the earlier parts of the project, the two papers we'd already turned in, we'd get a significantly lower grade. I worried that I revised out the parts that my professor had liked. I worried that my paper was too long, a page and a half over the 7 page limit.

And is often the case with me, I thought of new ways of saying what I had already said, ways of strengthening connections that I hadn't done. It's interesting to see this process work in my brain, especially after decades of teaching Composition and the writing process. We are never finished with a draft--there are always ways it could be improved.

The feedback I got was good, and I don't disagree with anything my professor said about the content. It's hard to do what she wants in 7 pages, but she has a solid rationale behind making us limit ourselves. She points out that the majority of us are training to do exegesis so that we can deliver a powerful sermon, and nobody wants to hear us blather on and on. We need to find the point and come to it quickly and powerfully. She's not wrong.

I am glad to be done with this Rahab paper. I still have writing to finish, and I'm glad to have gotten some encouragement with this paper grade. Now, onward to finish the rest--I'm in the home stretch!

Exile as Metaphor in a Time of Upheaval

On Saturday, I was part of a Bible study that did a deep dive into Isaiah 55:1-13, which I wrote about in more detail in this blog post.  Our Bible study leader was a seminarian who focused on exile and homecoming.

How strange to study Isaiah 55: 1-13 at a retreat, after a global summit on the climate changes that will exile so many of us, while also working my way through a module for seminary class on the first forays into the Promised Land, the book of Joshua written during a time of exile.

It was also strange to be discussing homecoming during a time of so much personal upheaval.  I sometimes--well, actually, always--discount my stress, because it could be so much worse and some of the upheaval we chose to undergo in the hopes that we will emerge in a stronger place.

I am talking about selling our house in South Florida.  We have seen a steep run up in house prices, and we know (and have experienced) the roller coaster that the housing market in Florida can be.  We held onto a condo for 8 years waiting for the market to come out of a deep crash, and the Florida real estate market has more deep crashes than the rest of the nation.  We decided that now was the time to sell.

On Friday night, our sale fell to pieces, just a few days before we were set to close.  The happy news:  we put the house back on the market on Saturday, accepted a new and better offer on Sunday, and with luck, the house will be someone else's by the end of the year.  But it was strange listening to a Bible study on exile and homecoming while having the current housing market on the brain.

I have been thinking about literal exile, since I live in a part of the country where I meet so many exiles, like my colleagues at work who fled Venezuela and won't be going back.  I've been thinking about modern exile and ancient exile and the way that a disease can come along and shut borders we thought would always be open--but of course, the borders were only ever open to some people.

I have also been thinking of the exile of aging:  friends that have died, landscapes that have altered beyond recognition, places where we can't return.  Exile works on both the metaphorical and sometimes the literal level in so many aspects of modern life.

Beyond God the Patriarch

 In my Hebrew Bible class, we've just finished Genesis (we're reading the Hebrew Bible, but not reading the Bible in the Hebrew language).  Our discussion thread prompt has prompted me to keep thinking.  Here's the prompt:  "What/who was Jacob wrestling with at the Jabbok River? Please make reference to the assigned readings and videos in your post. In your relationship with God, do you tend to wrestle like Jacob or quietly accept? Why?"

As I thought about the question, I realized that I don't see my relationship with God in either of those ways.  I don't feel like I wrestle or quietly accept.  I don't see God that way at all.

I wrote a longer discussion post, but I don't want to paste it here, because my work hasn't been graded yet.  I don't want the anti-plagiarism software to flag my work, which it might, if it finds something similar out there, even if the something similar is my own work.

Yesterday morning, I woke up thinking about how many of our stories in the Bible have the hero, usually male, wrestling with God.  There's Jacob, the obvious choice.  Others come to mind:  Moses, various prophets, Job, Paul.  How many chosen ones quietly accept?  We might list Mary, the mother of Jesus.  The quiet accepters don't command our attention in the same way; it's not the same kind of compelling story.

Yesterday morning I was wishing that I had a friend who was a rabbi who could meet me for coffee and analyze this pattern.  I'd like to get a Jewish take on these stories, from someone who's been trained in theology.  I have a sudden vision of a book club, one with people theologically trained in different traditions.  I would never want to leave that coffee shop!

What if we had a different story about God?  What if we saw God as the best kind of boss, the kind who knows how to bring out our best qualities?  What if we saw God as the best kind of teacher, the one with skills that we didn't even know we needed, until we were taught them?  What if we saw God as the patient, kind, and wise type of animal trainer, the one who knows how to help us move beyond our fears?

I thought about how our societies might have been so different if we had these kinds of different theology.  It's too late to change the past--can we change the future by adopting a different theology?

Limping and Seeing the Face of God

I have spent the better part of the last hour watching my professor's wonderful lecture on Jacob for one of my seminary classes.  One of her conclusions struck me:  "We all come away limping in our relationship with God both in ways we can see and in ways we can't."  I will continue to think about that idea, since I see limping as a bad thing.

But what if limping isn't bad?  What if limping forces us to slow down in ways that are good?  Maybe limping helps us develop compassion.  I know that it has for me.  I think of days of arthritis flares in my feet.  One day, as I left a building and thought with despair about how far away I had parked, I reflected on all the times I've felt disdain for those who will circle the parking lot, waiting for the closest spots to come available.  As I limped back to my car, I felt new empathy for those people.

My professor finished her lecture by talking about faces throughout the story of Jacob.  Early on, Jacob puts on a persona; he hides behind a face that isn't authentic.  At the end of the story, he is able to be fully present, as he reconciles with his brother Esau.  This ability to be present opens up new possibilities.  Jacob moves from persona to presence to possibility.  The poet in me loves that repetition of the letter p.

My professor also talked about how she approaches this story when she preaches it.  She has the members of the congregation turn to their pewmates, to people who aren't their families.  She has them say to each other what Esau says to Jacob:  "Truly to see your face is to see the face of God."  She talked about how moving it is for people to hear that said to them.

I would love to experiment with varieties of that experience when it's safe to be that close together again.  Maybe in the intervening time, we could do it with mirrors, although I shudder at the cost if the congregation is large.

I am also imagining how the world might change if more of us trained ourselves to see the face of God in everyone, not just hearing that our own face reflects God.