#RejectedSermonTitles : this week Song of Solomon is about #Sex

Why is Song of Solomon in the Bible?
Seriously, what is with the Bible having a book that is written by a human to a human being?

(There used to be a Jesus as the Bridegroom and Church as the Bride interp. but its frankly sexist and old fashioned)

Here are two people expressing love for one another. At one point I spent a seminary class translating and interpreting the text, and like Shakespeare the more you study it the more you understand the physical attraction in the text.

Song of Solomon 2:10-13; 8:6-7
0 My beloved speaks and says to me:
‘Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
11 for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle-dove
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
6 Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
7 Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.

This is because, love is such an all encompassing thing, a part of it is physical, so I think its important that those words are a part of the body. Love is intense, its more than the cutesy-niceness of life. Little pink hearts and precious moments angels are not what the Bible is about. Angels, love-beings, are so intense that they have to tell us mere humans “fear not” every time they appear. (Cupid and Psyche is a much more accurate portrayal in my mind).

I also think that Song of Solomon is included because Love is one of the human languages, one of those experiences we try to describe again and again.

Love Songs are amazing that way. They always have been written, from the time of Song of Solomon, and each of us prob. experienced a love song that “got it.” (ex: Breaking Up is Hard to Do) A love song that was perfect for what we are experiencing. Love songs will always exist, because love opens us to see the world in a new way. (Fill the world with Silly Love Songs)

It is here that we begin to see the strength and power of love that can withstand fire and water. Love opens us up to be changed. It is the thing we hang onto, but also that which holds onto us when all else fails.

Love allows us to be melded, and every relationship we enter into holds that potential for change.

Anger and hatred, not so much. When I’m angry or hate-filled I cannot hear the other person, I cannot change my mind. There are times, when I’m arguing something that I realized mid-arguement that I am wrong, but at that moment I can’t let go of my argument, because I’m too angry to be wrong, I have to win. Its not about love or being right, its about winning.

Its for this reason when I’m at a contentious session or Presbytery meeting we pause for prayer. We stop everything (which is really hard, because everyone wants to finish their thought) and pray. We focus on God, love and community, we remember that its NOT about winning, and we are then more open to have a real, listening conversation. (and that folks is the true power of prayer). Love opens us up.

And here, in Church, we strive to be in relationship with every single person in this room. We open ourselves to be changed here, with these people. We are doing it not for money, not to feel good, not to be fit or healthy or popular. We do it, because love opens our eyes and is just that powerful.  (Theme Song: The Power of Love). We do it to follow Jesus, and that openness to be relationships changes our lives.

Achoo! What I catch from #Christianity (more on what it means to me)

The thing about Christianity is that its easy to make it about gentle-ness and being nice. Smiles and happyfaces.

In fact most faith organizations deal with this prob. What are we meeting for? Aren’t we all here to be nice to each other. Isn’t being nice enough?

If you’ve taken a look at the real poverty and violence in the world: i.e. the inability for so many people to experience sanctuary, then I would say, no. Being nice is not enough.

Funny thing I have talked to friends in Yoga communities, Sci-Fi/Fantasy Communities, and atheist communities. Eventually 2 different questions come up. Where are we meeting and for what are we meeting (Building & Belief Questions).

For me Christianity is (w)holistic life choices and it takes ongoing hard work. It is way more than buildings and beliefs. Its about creating community and practicing openness and love.

Katy’s Practices of Christianity

1. People are adults: This is really tough, it calls us to be in community with one another and to trust that they are making the best decisions they can. This means that we do not judge them for said decisions, nor is it our job to “rescue” people from making bad decisions. It means loving them, listening carefully to them, supporting and empowering them. Judging, shaming, scolding, yelling, etc. at people sometimes happens but it is not the most effective means to communicate with them. It calls both for having good and safe boundaries with how people exist in your life and yet still being open to being in relationship with them in some way.

2. If people aren’t adults, Figure it out: I have also worked with children, mentally ill psychiatric patients and others who might not be able to function as an adult. First I figure out whether this condition is ongoing or temporary, then I figure out what decisions they are trying to make and then I try to empower them (thru support, resources, Spiritual coaching) to make that decision–my husband likes to joke that I treat everyone like children, I prefer to think of it as I treat children as seriously as I treat adults and vice versa.

3. Look for the bigger problems: As a Christian I am in a unique position where I can imagine a better world painted by Christ, and can step back from the ongoing strife and address problems as human problems instead of just an individual’s problems. From that I am able to better see symptoms and work more on far-ranging solutions.

4. Ask Questions: Jesus did an awesome job of answering questions with questions. Delving deep into an individual’s problems until they reveal who they really are. The Samaritan Woman is a foreign woman without a husband, who is lonely and thirsty for life. Zaccheus is a tax collector who feels outside of society and that he can never be redeemed. James and John are fishermen who are looking for a job to do (and its not just catching fish).

5: Call People by Name: Jesus’ holds great power in seeing people calling to them by name and through the recognition empowering them to go forth to do what God wants them to do. In our best moments, we humans do the same. Its like when the teacher calls on us and we know the answer, or we get drafted for a trip we always wanted to do. True ministry is cultivating those moments so they can be a part of the faith lives of those who are around us, so that when we are called by name we feel free to say “Yes, Lord, Here I am” to do those things.

#church and #risky behavior

I know that this sounds crazy, but to me the Church is the risk-taking entity in the universe.

We opens our doors and lets anybody, I mean anybody walk in.

We concocts a budget based on what people try to promise to give

We employ people based on that budget

We try to help people without knowing what the results are going to be…and sometimes we never know what the results are going to be and they STILL give help

We do things based off of squishy intangibles (See Miracle on 34th St for more): like love and faith and theology (which is a fancy way of saying Christ based mission statement)

We empower people, young people who aren’t fully educated, old people who are too fragile to do other things.

This is what the church is about people, the Church is ITSELF an act of Faith.

We are faith in action, and taking risks and trusting in God is an Act of GOOD NEWS

Who doesn’t want to work for that sort of entity?

Being James Ian Tyson @breeNewsome

I have been thinking deeply of Bree’s brave action taking down the Confederate Flag, a symbolic triumph over a symbol of what is all to often used as a sign of hate.

And the burning of the African-American Churches proves racism to be a real and prevalent problem, one which Bree has shown some light on.

In light of the Marriage equality and racial injustice discourse that have been a part of most of my adult life, and as a graduate of the very progressive Oberlin College, I am aware of my privileged “normalcy” as some might call it.

I am a white, Cis, hetereo, Protestant (a Presbyterian no less which is as close to the historic religion of the US as anything else), middle class, well-educated, reliably married woman (that last thing is the piece that I suffer the most from). From the small taste I’ve had of stereotyping and assumptions based on my gender are unpleasant enough for me to know that others suffer way more and, despite our hope to be the best nation in the world, systematic hatred still exists.

So here I am, my church will send some money to the African-American Churches and I will continue to listen carefully to my queer and African-American brothers and sisters as I have through #slatespeak #freebree and all of the many conversations about homelessness for LBQT, imprisonment of African-Americans, the safety of queers in bathrooms and the like, the threatening letters sent to women African-American Pastors in the South and so so much more. Listening because (altho I love to talk) it would be a little to “White Man’s Burden” of me to try to lead a movement that isn’t about me

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Instead, I’d like to be like James Ian Tyson.

“”It was decided that this role should go to a black woman and that a white man should be the one to help her over the fence as a sign that our alliance transcended both racial and gender divides. We made this decision because for us, this is not simply about a flag, but rather it is about abolishing the spirit of hatred and oppression in all its forms. ”

I liked the symbolic roll he played helping with the equipping & supporting, holding the line when its needed, standing there, listening, witnessing…..walking with those who are troubled, saying your people are my people, your God is my God, doing my best to be present. I know its not enough, but its a good start

#Christianity, you keep saying that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means

1. Christianity to me isn’t about finding all the answers, but asking the essential questions (look at the Gospel its people asking Christ ?s and Christ asking people ?s) gathering together and acknowledging that God is bigger and greater than our understanding of things, and we’d rather see thing more God’s way than our own way, because our way is too small

2. Church is a the practice of community and worship so that when moments of extreme trouble come, you have a healthy way to bring them to God and process them. (Like fire drills). Every week isn’t revolutionary but every week is important.

3. Church is about community, there are few places where we commit to practice community with whoever comes thru the door Church is a practicum in faith just as its a place to explore spirituality.

4. Prayer is the ongoing conversation between you and God. As it is an ongoing, unique and individual conversation, my job as pastor is to act as mentor, guide and/or teacher. Where you are with God is based upon who you are, that’s why relationships with God can change a person because the two are so intertwined. This is why mature Christianity is (w)holistic Christianity. The kind where the Bible doesn’t necessarily tell you how to vote, but you have an evolved understanding of learning what God’s purpose is for the world and you apply that purpose wherever you are and as much as possible.

5. Faith is about seeking out relationships with God, people and the world. Loving things into a more real, truthful and essential existence than what they have before that love. Its not about controlling another person, quite the opposite, its freeing them to be who they are.

Grading & Grace: Prayer about how to be Christian

You Lost Me at “Totally True”: Some VBS Hand Wringing

In which VBS is pondered 🙂

Rocky Supinger's avatarYoRocko!

My job at VBS this week is to tell kids some of the “amazing, incredible, and totally true adventures” found in the Bible.

Actually, I’m leaving off the “totally true” part. What better way to ruin an adventure than to insist on its veracity? I don’t believe all of the Bible to be “totally true,” at least not in the sense that this curriculum wants kids to understand that term. Besides, what does “totally true” mean to children who are being treated to dramatized gimmicks like trying to create an iPad out of thin air (you know, the same way God created the world)?

My little editorial decision points up a quandry: progressive churches that run this summer programming staple must either invest scads of time and energy writing their own curriculum or else purchase one from an evangelical publisher like Group or Lifeway or Standard that almost certainly will need to…

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Don’t Call Me An Ally: Getting to Work

Mihee's avatar

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I didn’t come into an awareness of my racialized self until late college, and didn’t really engage the issues around it until seminary, and even then wrestled with whether there was a third way beyond the black-white paradigm of racism because it felt like there wasn’t space for me. For my parents. For my siblings and cousins. Stories of picture brides,Vincent Chin and the LA Riots haunted me.Where do we fit in? I would often ask myself. We’renot white or black but the whites treat us like we’re black unless we “act” white and the blacks treat us like we’re white unless we “act” black.It wasn’t until the murder of Trayvon Martin that I began to realize that it is undeniably – black and white. That anti-black racism is the root of all racism.

It took me a while to get there but it’s all…

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Many Waters, #love, #lament Psalm 69

Recently the curator of the achurchforstarvingartists spoke at our Presbytery Retreat, to discuss counter-intuitive thinking for ministry.

Last Week the Psalms of Praise lead to thinking about the position of kneeling/servanthood as how we will ultimately be kneeling to Christ in order to be next to him, for that is obviously the position he will be taking in the 2nd coming (as opposed to a more victorious, glory-to-God-fear-inducing or otherwise judgy-type-stance)

So it makes an odd kind of sense, to me at least, that this week’s Psalm of Lament would induce and encourage the opposite position, the one of standing up and shouting.

Psalm 69 and Matthew 7 both encourage bringing our troubles to God. Not skulking or hiding them, not muttering them under our breath, but full out yelling. Standing up and crying out to God, Saying the words Hosanna! Save us! Save me! ” Save me, O God,
   for the waters have come up to my neck.” “I have come into deep waters,
   and the flood sweeps over me.”

Lament is a unique feeling it is somewhere between mourning and anger.

It is the energy of loss.

Lament is important, because when we do not name loss it consumes us. Madeline L’engle describes it in her book The Wrinkle in Time as being Xed. The nothingness, the loss of love and feeling of powerlessness starts to erase personhood. It makes your feelings look like *just nothing.*

Quotation-Madeleine-L-Engle-people-Meetville-Quotes-185385

If you’ve ever had a conversation with a loved one who makes a claim about what is bothering them, and you state that its *nothing* you might have opened a can of worms, because that *nothing* value you assign to the problem might make the person feel like their problem is *nothing* because they are *nothing.* This is a dangerous write off of others’ experiences and feelings, furthering the Xing process.

Lament can be different from just anger or mourning, because it is the energy behind naming and crying out for that which is a part of being human–for love, for laughter, for companionship, for safety and stability and beauty.

“But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
   At an acceptable time, O God,
   in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me.”

For the right to make mistakes and to seek forgiveness, for the right to call out the heirachical and bigotted structures that make one feel unsafe, from the fact that women are interupted for speaking during CEO meetings (and men aren’t), to the fact that young African-Americans are seen as more suspicious than young Caucasians, its the facts that Transsexual people cannot feel safe in either men nor women’s bathrooms, its the fact that sexual abuse is insufficiently prevented and addressed, its in the fact that some children go to bed hungry at night, the fact that some people have daily painful realities to deal with in violence or addiction or physical ailments or mental illness. It is the fact that life is not fair, and who has not lamented that one true fact?

God does not want us to paste our smiles on and live our life ignoring its problems. God acknowledges there is real and harmful evil in the world, real difficulties that are a part of everyday life and that fact means that lament is a necessary part of our existence.

Lament is the deep mourning for those things that the soul needs to survive and thrive. It is for that reason that standing up and naming what is going out, and calling on God for it, can be a creative and healing act.

Whenever there is anger in a system, be it a church or a school or the government, that means there is energy, and when named and processed that energy can be used for change. Love

Lament is a just form of prayer, and one which the church too often forgets or glosses over, but God invites you to pray, reminding us that when our children ask for bread, we do not give them snakes. We give them bread (or even sometimes cupcakes) How much more will God Give us.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7


Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.

P.S. Might I recommend Madeline L’engle’s less known books “Many Waters” (about Noah and the twins) and “An Acceptable Time” (about time travel and the role of evil) ….as you guess the names are from scripture 🙂