Luke 18:31-43 - Quinquagesima (Feb. 22, 2009)

Do you know yourself? Simple question, isn't it? When you leave here today will you know who you are and in terms of your relation to friends, family, the community?

So much of Jesus' ministry in those ancient times was in trying to make people see things differently. A business psychologist in college once stated the definition of what it takes to be great to us, his students.

He stated that a great person makes the whole world turn around and look at the world differently. Great men and or great women move the world. They change the world. My teacher cited the examples of Einstein, Gandhi, Darwin, Buddha and of course Jesus to name a few.

It is a crowded field for great people. The world is changed not every decade these days but every day. I detest the term 24/7 because it connotes business every hour of the day, seven days a week. When do we rest from the labors of our life? Even God rested on the seventh day.

Indeed, the secular nature of our culture pushes out, eradicates or even discounts the value of things that some of us can remember. Half a century ago, there was little or no business done on a Sunday. Sunday was for family and a rest from the everyday workaday world and a day for church. God is not that important anymore to the secular world. God and or Jesus have to be in the secular rat race of life everyday to get any recognition or respect. It is a sad commentary on our times.

I look back at the past and am not all that nostalgic for it. Rather, I am looking down the road to better days ahead. What we here today are doing is recognizing the greatness of God and his Son and his mission to earth. How great thou art. How great thou art indeed.

In the opening reading from Samuel, it would appear that God was not happy with King Saul and he is telling Samuel to go to Bethlehem and seek out a son of Jesse. Samuel is to anoint this son of Jesse with oil. God is looking for a new ruler of his chosen people. And going back to my opening question - do you know yourself? - I think that perhaps God saw beyond Saul's great abilities to be a king and warrior. Perhaps he saw into the heart of the man and knew that Saul was not fit for the job or was losing his grip.

Time for change is coming down the road. Why not let a few people starting with the prophet Samuel know that change was coming in the form of King David. King David would one day lay the foundation stones of the first temple not by building the temple itself but by choosing Jerusalem as a permanent Jewish city and a permanent home for the wandering Ark of the Covenant. His son Solomon built the temple. David picked its location.

Jesus, perhaps in his temporary role as prophet, is standing there in front of his apostles and telling them what is about to happen to him. He is to be taken by gentiles, mocked and killed. And in three days he will rise. Their eyes glaze over. They do not see what he sees. No doubt Jesus might have been thinking this about his Apostles - Do you know yourself? Do you know who you are? Do you really know who I am?

Communication then was as difficult as it can be today. There is the theme of the great man to make others see the world differently. Besides predicting the future, Jesus is trying to make people to stop looking at outward appearances. He is in so many ways trying to appeal to people to look inside to what their hearts tell them. He is in so many ways trying to tell people to change religious beliefs from rules and outward appearances and obsolete rituals.

Saint Paul in first Corinthians thirteen is evaluating perhaps his own person and the human condition as well. It is difficult to turn around and to see ourselves differently. But in Jesus, in his teachings, in his grace from on high, we can change our lives in so many ways. Go thy way and sin no more. Recognize our faults, our sins, ask forgiveness, receive forgiveness. Change the way the world sees us. Move the world! Be a great new person.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels - and have not love, I am nothing.

Jesus is traveling and there are the crowds following him. The quiet of the country side is disturbed. Crowds, noise, talking, shouting. The circus has come to town? No. Just Jesus. Just Jesus?! More like the most truly greatest show on earth that has ever been or ever will be this side of eternity.

A blind man hears the hubbub and asks who is in town? To which they reply Jesus of Nazareth. The man is excited. Jesus' reputation has preceded him. Like Samuel looking to anoint a new up and coming king, most of the prophets of the old testament talk in some futuristic way of this man and his mission, of this special anointed by God man, of this Jesus.

The blind man is shouting. He wants attention. He wants something from Jesus. The blind man who cannot see shouts and anoints Jesus with a proper title - "Jesus, Son of David". Finally the blind man gets the direct attention of Jesus. And Jesus says something remarkable as far as I am concerned. He asks the blind man what he wants from Jesus.

"What do you want me to do for you?"

It should be obvious. The blind man wants to see. Right? Or does he? Do you know yourself? Does the blind man know himself? Jesus does not assume that the blind man wants to see. So he asks. The blind man might want forgiveness for some wretched sins from his past. He might have wanted something for his child or grandchild.

Jesus looks the blind man in the eyes and asks. What do you want me to do for you? The blind man asks to be able to see. Jesus restores his sight with the words "You are healed because you believed".

Do you know yourself? Do others know you? What do they see? What do you feel? What is inside of you? What do you want from Jesus? These are fair questions. Only you have the answers. Faith can cure you. Restore you. Change the way you look and see the world.

From Jesus today I want the whole world to turn around and look first at themselves and to see themselves inside and out in a different manner. I want you to be great people. I want you as Christians to change the world. That is what Jesus wants from each and every one of us. Not too much to ask. Is it?

How great thou art! How great thou art!


For more homilies: http://www.amazon.com/Lenten-Homilies-Lectionary-Cycle-ebook/dp/B0077QUHA8/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329408622&sr=1-3

Benedict's March Back to Medievalism ?

I ran into two articles on the web yesterday that in some ways disturb my faith in the R.C. Church's ability to deal with reality and what appears to me to be fissures in the dam of fatih with what appears to be an about face on the 20th century and its seemingly march back to Medievalism. Just when you thought that the R.C. was going to be user friendly, it invents or is it reinvents some weird sized batteries to use on their brand names and products.

I suppose my title for this had to do with Nicholas Blincoe's article in the Guardian UK.

Don't get medieval on me, Holy Father

"Pope Benedict's decision to reach out to the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has caused consternation in Israel, where They are asking why the Pope would want to rehabilitate a cult of Holocaust revisionists. The controversy will almost certainly set back the chances any deal on the status of Catholicism within Israel – a deal affecting the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinian Catholics and a vast property portfolio in Israel and occupied Palestine.

This scandal affects me intimately. I have a home in Bethlehem, where my Palestinian Catholic wife is the Director of the save the city campaign, Open Bethlehem. Ten years ago, the Israelis razed one of Bethlehem's two forests to build the settlement of Har Homa. The last remaining forest is the property of the church. As the Israelis build an eighteen foot concrete wall around its circumference, our nature treks and family picnics have become a memory. So it is understandable if I am more concerned with the workings of the Pope's mind than most Anglicans. But I also lean towards the pro-Catholic wing of my church. I want to see the church reunited. The question is, what kind of church? The Pope's decision to reach out to SSPX is part of a wider reform programme. So what kind of a church do the Benedictine reforms envisage?"

A whole set of diplomatic soldiers have dominoed into the ground because of the recent Bishop Williamson scandal. Mr Blincoe is of course hoping for some political and religious relief for Catholics under Israeli occupation. And I, being green, was offended by the treating of forests in Isreal like Arabs. (sarcasm)

The thing that really put a bug up my butt was the NYT times article below about the resurrection of Indulgences for fun and profit in the R.C. Church. Of course I am all for the Latin Mass on a small scale as nostalgia for the old farts. Now I would imagine the indulgnce thing is on a small scale for the older Catholics as well.

For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened

"In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.” "

If you have to go to confession to qualify for an indulgence, what was confession good for? Let us not get back into the semantics that caused centuries of bloodshed after the start of the Reformation. (But) How many times does Jesus have to die to save you etc??? How many indulgenges does it take to get into that heaven thingy?

Indulgences and other Relevant Fees

"I also remember being told by the nuns that civil marriage doesn’t count in the eyes of the Church. The eyes of God is always another matter.

Fast forward two or three decades. I want to get married. I don’t have any religious affiliation. We both were raised in the R.C. church and we want to do the R.C. marriage thing. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Bad idea. People with limited options only have limited prospects.

Then you go to the local rectory and the local priest, well passed retirement age, gives us the long spiel about how my wife’s previous civil marriage and civil divorce were not recognized by the church. Okay.

Next. The clerics in the Vatican have to examine your request to be readmitted into holy mother church. Time, paperwork, research, official approval. Bottom line - six months minimum to wait and a $2,500 donation to the church. Clerks have to eat too. Excuse me. Could you repeat that?"

The thing that keeps me Lutheran Catholic are these little odd touches like the resurrecting of Indulgences.

What next Joe? Let's resurrect the boogie man saints, you know the ones decommissioned and discarded after that nasty Vatican council thingy. Among those saints decommissioned were a whole bunch of saints supposedly sent to their eternal reward for being dissed or done in by Jews. There is a back door to anti-Semitism and I believe that Bishop Williamson is emblematic of that.

What next? Burning heretics at the stake your holiness? Rhetorical perhaps but this fool wants to know.

Luke 8:4-15, Sexigesima (Feb.15, 2009)

There is a lot of energy and motion mentioned in the opening reading of Isaiah 55:12

"So you will go out with joy and be led out in peace.
The mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
And all the trees in the fields will clap their hands." NCV

All this energy and after the preceding verse:

"The same thing is true of the words I speak.
They will not return to me empty.
They will make the things that I want to happen,
and they succeed in doing what I send them out to do." NCV

Lots of energy. Lots of joy. There is lots of expectation from God, the author of the universe. There is lots of expectation for God for the words that his Son Jesus is to deliver to the crowds in his preaching.

In Psalm 84 lines like "My whole being wants to be with the living God", "...Happy are those whose strength comes from you...", "...and everyone meets with God in Jerusalem,,,", - these lines reflect more energy, more joy, and more expectation. You want to see and touch God in his Temple as it stood in Jesus' time. We all want to see and meet God and Jesus at the end of our days. By why wait? Stand up. Sing. Shout praise. Stir the heart to joy. Stir the mind to song. Be a part of the oneness of God and his creation.

We are stirred. In Hebrews 4:13 "God's word is alive and working and is sharper than a double edged sword..."

Think about it. God's word is alive and it has been since the beginning of time - before the beginning of time - "in the beginning there was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God." And his word and his world will have no end. We as Christians will have no end. That is the promise and the expectation.

Alleluia!

Then there in Luke 8 starting with verse four Jesus starts to tell his parable of a farmer planting seeds. These are ancient times and there are no machines to help you plant seeds. You throw them every which way. In a way it is a gamble. You have expectations of a bumper crop to feed your family and excess bounty to sell in town. There are infinite possibilities as to what can happen when we sow the seeds of a crop full of this human expectation.

Life is what it is. A certain portion of seeds fall on the road and are lost under foot. A certain portion is consumed by birds. Still others fall on rock, start to grow but die for lack of ground water. Others fall among weeds and cannot compete for the first place prize of survival.

And many more of the seeds fall on good ground. The temperature, ground and moisture conditions promise the expectation to produce a good, large, sturdy harvest of grain. Everyone will eat in the coming year.

Think about it though. Everyday that farmer must be worrying if the good conditions will continue. Will rain come? Just enough -not too much. Will the temperature stay balanced - not too hot - not too cold - and so on and so forth? The harvest is ready. The crops are cut and stored. Many worries disappear as the bounty of God's earth brings forth the continuation of the human family.

We have heard this parable before. Here in this particular Gospel, Jesus adds some commentary and tells everyone what the parable means. Maybe he had been preaching to too many farmers or day laborers who were tired at the end of a long hard back breaking day. Rather than tax their mental processes, he helps the parable along.

In fact here in the Gospel of Luke I hear the echo of some other Gospel, not an official gospel, one of those piles of parchment that were found in the middle of the last century in Egypt. These documents, though much later in date than the four Gospels, have many lines and references that a seasoned reader of the Good News might recognize. What I hear in Luke is Jesus telling everyone to listen. He wants them to hear. Any of you listening, you better have two good ears, and learn.

The simple story of seeds and the expectation of good crops illustrate how many of us have promise, great expectations in life and in the salvation of our souls.

Everybody here. Any of you listening? You better have two good ears. Hear me.

Oh how Jesus must have been sad on the days he preached to a bunch of tired and or slow brick walls also known as farmers, country dwellers, itinerates, travelers. How he must have wondered how his expectations to save the world would fall on deaf ears and the blind among the people who with a little common sense or an elevated sense of humanity would, if they could, stand on the mountaintop so to speak and see the promised land of humankinds' salvation.

The crowd can take his, Jesus' word away with them from that meeting that day. They can embrace the word at first and then let it fall away. They can forget it. They can give lip service to it. They can let their worries about crops and other human matters cloud out the message and the word of God along their road of life. And there are those who "like the seed that falls on good ground ...hear God's teaching with good, honest hearts and obey it and patiently produce good fruit."

Let those of you with two good ears - listen - understand - learn.

All this - this structure - many structures - many churches - cathedrals - many Christian communities all have sprouted out of seeds that have fallen on good ground. Our hope, our faith, our expectations have carried the seed along, found a good home for it, nurtured it and in good time we have seen the good fruit of our labors here as we expect to see the fruits of a life lived in Christian faith and harmony be carried over into the next world.

It is a good crop. It is a bumper crop. It all depends on each and every one of us.

That, and with God's blessings, the people of God endure in this life and the next.

Amen.

So-called bishop Richard Williamson - Heretic?

“…Bishop Richard Williamson of the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine that based on research he did in the 1980s, he became convinced of his views about the Holocaust, which historians say resulted in the deaths of six million Jews.

Williamson is quoted by Der Spiegel as saying he would re-examine "everything again and look at the evidence." However, he said he won't be visiting the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

"Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence," the British bishop was quoted as saying.

"It is about historical evidence, not about emotions," he added, according to the report.

"And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time."…

("Holocaust-denying bishop promises to review evidence" CBC.Com Feb.7,2009)

In the worst sort of Cafeteria Catholicism, so-called bishop Richard Williamson is taking his good old pedantic time in filing his nails and telling the Pope to chill while he reviews his beliefs on the Shoah or Jewish Holocaust.

He refuses to go to Auschwitz. There are living witnesses and he wants to drag out his old hate magazines and books to review his views that do not reflect reality or the modern age.

I feel sorry for this man who in his closed minded way thinks that Pius XII is still Pope and the Holocaust can be swept under the rug of Catholic, Christian Europe.

I read once in a book by the Traditionalist and ex-Jesuit Malachi Martin how Pius XII in the grand tradition of obedience to the Pope used to insist that bishops and cardinals get down on their hands and knees and kiss his foot in submission to his grand role as Head of the Roman Catholic Church.

If the traditionalists, sedevacantists insist that Pius XII was a real pope, what is Benedict XVI ? If you accept release from excommunication, it was by order of the Pope. Why aren’t you groveling before the Bishop of Rome and recanting your gloriously ignorant view of history???

If this were 70 A.D., 70 C.E. and Jerusalem was in ashes and thousands of Jews were in chains, would bishop Williamson if he were an early Christian scholar, would he write a gospel based on eyewitnesses to Christ or would he pull out his research, his scrolls and review what this Jew Jesus supposedly said or did. Then pick and choose. Probably!

It was the Jews in chains that built the Coliseum in Rome and brought Judaism and early Christianity to Rome in a big way. No Jews. No Jesus. No Christianity.

Jesus was real. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus’ first mission was to the Jews.

The secondary mission to the gentiles came later under the Apostle Paul and other gentiles. What came later after Jerusalem is less Jesus and more strange than it was human - kind of like you Richard Williamson.

I believe that this recent disgraceful episode is ordained by God to expose this so-called bishop's belief system, to bring it out of the shadows of ignorance and into the light of day and reason.

Get real. Get a life. Get a soul!

The New Ethics vs. The Classic Ethics

The standards of conduct that we grow up with, that we learn from our family and community, that we embrace could be called moral values or ethics - "ethics" as “a theory or system of moral values” as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

In his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, Isaac Asimov described how his father, an atheist, would not steal, not because it had a moral value, but because his father did not want his peers and his community to label him as a thief. Pride, respect, and social interface count for a lot as the glue that holds our secular society together.

I am thinking of scales for early 21st century thinking in America and perhaps the global world too in general.

First, I am thinking of human scales, the size of a house, the height of a tree, the relationship of man to his environment.

Next, I am thinking American and or global business and thinking that CEOs make hundreds of times the wages of the average American worker. That if you grow up in rich burbs, and you get educated in Ivy League comfort and rise up the corporate ladder, you have never known or can know what average Americans or average wages or street scale ethics might be. You are in whole different league from the rest of the majority of the realm of mere mortal beings.

A recent number of secular things hit me from the daily media assault on my senses that stuck to the wall of my consciousness.

One has to do with $50 million dollar corporate jets for failed executives at failed financial institutions and paid for by taxpayer’s money. The other has to do with $18 billion dollars of commissions and or bonuses being paid out by failed executives in failed financial institutions and paid for by taxpayer’s money.

At one point in time, there were reality checks on executives at large corporations. Reality checks? The stock holders might object to your questionable expenditures.

Stockholders? Thirty seconds on the stock exchange of a municipal pension plan invested for those critical thirty seconds and then sold for a profit or loss thirty seconds later – those stockholders I do not believe knew that they had these assets.

Those nanosecond stockholders perhaps did not know that they had responsibilities as stockholders and they did not exercise their options of oversight to the corporate system. And if not the stockholders, than ethics would dictate…

Do I sound like some nineteenth century school master or boring country itinerate preacher? YES!

Reality check, stockholders, investor, ethics? Do some of these words sound like they are from a Latin Bible and you cannot read Latin?

There are an awful lot of untouched, unrefined, under-defined, misunderstood touch points – sound bite clichés – words –concepts -that roll off the lips of the divine Public Relations talking head.

What am I talking about?

Too much of the communication in the hardened artery media is archaic, charmed and sounds too much like a good snake oil sales pitch of half or a whole century ago. Upon examination, our ways of doing business and government do not reflect reality and or human scales.

Enough said. In the months and years ahead, I pray that our national government gets a life, scales back and learns to spend and tax along the simplest and most efficient human scales possible.

As for American business, if you have to teach a course in college in ethnics, then you probably don’t have any to begin with. That is not my original idea. I believe I read in once in connection to something said by some British philosopher. Correct me and or tell me the right quotation please.

The new ethics of failed economies, private and government, are nothing new. They are part of human nature. Prudence dictates that future endeavors in business and government takes a logical and semi-regulated approach to everything to counterbalance the ruthlessness and lawlessness now decaying in the streets – Wall Street and Main Street – in America – fossils of the recent age of no ethics.

The new ethics of the past generation is like the New Coke; forget it – a bad product from visualization, inception all the way up to hyped and forced onto the public introduction.

I want the classic drink and the classic form of ethics, old fashioned, and scaled to things human and average.

Gerhard Wagner - no friend of Humanity!

Gerhard Wagner is no friend of humanity in my humble opinion. He is it would appear to be a highly thought of German speaking crony of the Pope.

This is the best you can find for management Joe???

"The Vatican yesterday announced that Gerhard Wagner has been appointed as auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria.

Wagner has served as the pastor of a church in the Austrian town of Windischgarsten since 1988, and received a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome.

In 2005, the 54-year-old was quoted in a parish newsletter as saying he was convinced that the death and destruction caused by Katrina that year was "divine retribution" for New Orleans' permissive sexual attitudes and tolerance of homosexuality.

Kath.Net, a Catholic news agency in Austria, said the newsletter quoted Wagner as saying that Katrina had destroyed not only nightclubs and brothels in New Orleans but also abortion clinics.

He first attracted international attention in 2001 when he described JK Rowling's best-selling Harry Potter novels as "satanism" and warned against the magical spells and formulas used in thenovels." Feb1,2009, Guardian Uk World, Mark Tran

It would appear that a reckless, irresponsible and or senile Benedict XVI administration is right on the mark in appointing Gerhard Wagner as Bishop of Linz a week after rehabilitating the accommodated Jew Hater Bishop Richard Williamson.

It would appear that Gerhard is no friend of humanity. I took the above photo from the Internet listed as victims of Hurricane Katrina for Gerhard’s viewing pleasure. Gerhard is no doubt a good and obedient Catholic. The quote below is from the bible for Gerhard to read if he cares to translate.

Matthew 25:41-46 (New International Version)

41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Keep up the good work Joe, Gerhard and Richard. I hear the vacancy sign in Hell is coming down due to your booked in advance reservations.

God loves the fool. In this case, I claim that title. Somebody has to play court jester and or Christian around these incompetent, cold, distant, uncaring senior management types of the RC church. The Emperor is butt ass naked and people are starting to talk!

God bless all the victims of Hurricane Katrina! Without exception!!

Jesus loves them all !!!

Matt 20:1-16, Septuagesima (Feb.,8, 2009)

I remember today’s gospel reading from my youth. It is a simple story. The man goes out and hires day laborers. He goes out early and promises a day’s wages to the first who come to labor and harvest in his vineyard. The man goes out later, finds idle men and tells them to join his harvest. He will do right by them when he pays them at the end of the day. It sounds like he will work out an hourly amount to equal their labor. At the end of the day he finds a few more idle men standing around and they join in the harvest but for little more than an hour.

It’s the end of the day. It is time to pay everybody and wrap things up. I have an idea about what the economy of first century Judea was about. The story is about coins. It is about measuring labor in terms of a metal coin and not in barter. No bushels of wheat for your labor or sheep but a coin. For many of these day laborers, the one coin promised will pay for bread and cheese for a family for a day or two.

I dare say, considering that way Judea got sophisticated, with first the Greeks and then the Romans dominating the culture, money had replaced barter. The tax man he comes around and he wants coins. Copper. Silver. Gold. I am certain that land owners could deliver as barter an acre or two of wheat to the tax collector’s grain house. The common man without land, he needs money. He needs money everyday to eat. He needs money for the tax man too.

The coins, the sophistication, the change in society makes a difference in how new generations see their obligations. I dare say, somebody like Jesus and his older brothers stopped helping out in the carpenter’s shop to go out and do day labor at harvest time. What for? The coins - to give the coins to the head of the household for taxes. The price of keeping big brother, big government and the tax collector out of your life was the same then as it is now. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Well anyway, I cannot read into the mind of the master of the vineyard in this story. He pays all his workers the same wage, one coin, whether they have worked twelve hours or one hour. Of course I have thought that maybe those who have labored all day got a little tired about midday and picked fewer and fewer grapes. That maybe those hired at midday did as much work in half a day, coming in well rested, as those who labored all day. But paying a day’s wages for an hour’s work, that sounds unfair and perhaps it is even charity. The owner of the field states that he can do what he wants with his money. So true.

Of course this is a parable and Jesus is trying to teach a lesson. He goes into a farming community. He tells a farming story. He has their attention and then he tries to kick the story up a notch or two into the realm of spiritual understanding. Smart guy, this Jesus fellow.

In life you have to do certain things that can be measured. Measured in this Earth. “Man is the measure of all things” to quote an ancient philosopher.

You have to do certain things that can only be measured in heaven. Measured by God. There are things we cannot measure but God does – our faith, our hope, our love. God gives us grace as an invitation to sit down and communicate with the Divine.

God invites us into his spiritual vineyard. For many of us, he measures all that we do. And maybe for others, he measures some of what they do in life. Like some who only show up once or twice at church in one’s lifetime or who have an epiphany on one’s death bed – who realize all the nasty things that one has done in one’s life – and asking quite selfishly for forgiveness of those things human that were not divine in a not well lived life.

And sadly, reflecting and regretting, but knowing there in the end of life, things of the true human heart – of love – of caring – of having faith – of finally hearing the owner of the vineyard telling us to make a little or even a great effort to get right with God.

I have known some people who do not know God -- non-believers. Some turn away from faith – some have never had the opportunity to understand or embrace faith. Atheists breed atheists you know. I know of such a person. A child of atheist parents. This person when I was acquainted was very unfair and very unscrupulous in their dealings with others. That, if I approached them to explain my faith, my beliefs, that person would put their ignorance of God into a poetic or a philosophical frame of reference. They told me that death and what happens passed death is the grand and ultimate mystery of life.

No mystery to me. If I have cheated or stolen from other people, if I have victimized others, I believe I will be judged accordingly to my deeds before the throne of God with Jesus Christ sitting right up there on the Big Guy’s right hand side. A place of honor.

Any why is Jesus there? You know the answer to that. He earned it. He earned it for his caring enough for you and for me and a trillion others throughout the ages. He earned it by becoming a sacrifice on the altar of God – by dying on the cross and by dying – to give up all his mystical powers bestowed on him at birth and in ages before his birth, by doing his duty, by surrendering his total being to the will of God.

Jesus is no con artist. Not like some of us. Many of us. You cannot fake your way into heaven. God gives us the means. We are all asked to labor in God’s vineyards. Some of us give it our all. And still some of us try as hard as we can. Still others – picking grapes – dropping grapes – get in other people’s way as they strive to do the great labor of God which is truly on this earth to do.

The bottom line of all this is that salvation has tremendous value. Salvation is salvation. What is it worth to you?

God chooses what he wants to do in his own time and in his own way – and most importantly of all – he does reach out a hand to each and every one of us.

All our labors in the vineyard of life are equal in the eyes of God – in the eyes of God we are all his children. We may whine for many things like the Hebrews in the desert with Moses as mentioned in the Exodus passage earlier. We whine for water in the desert of life – we can be difficult children at times – but Moses struck the rock at God’s command and waters rushed forth for them and ultimately for us to drink.

Those grapes we have picked in life are for the spiritual wine that is to be made in heaven and shared around the table along with the bread of Our Lord’s Supper.

Come. Labor. Be glad of toil and of faith. Know that the rewards not received here on earth continue into heaven. We are saved by our labor but also and more importantly by labor done at the bidding of the author of life and the universe.

To thee we pray. God be praised.

The Laughing Pope ?

This concept of Holocaust Denial has flashed across the media pages and screens in the past 72 hours because of the bringing back into the fold of some four bishops consecrated by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, head of a Traditionalist Catholic Sect that among other things denies the validity of the Vatican II Council.

These bishops were excommunicated, and now after they have consecrated priests and presumably more bishops, the schism is turning it into a disease as far as the Vatican is concerned. Better to rein in the bad boys, keep a closer look on them. Better than let them sell off that valuable real estate in their local portfolios and or start a new church. The days of Papal armies and burnings at the stake are just so uncool and non-PC these days. Don’t you agree?

One of these rehabilitated bishops, Richard Williamson, has stated his possibly anti-Semitic opinions in the past:

“Williamson has expressed controversial views about Jews. He called Jews "enemies of Christ" and urges their conversion to Catholicism. He claims that Jews and Freemasons have contributed to the "changes and corruption" in the Catholic Church He has also stated that Jews aim at world dominion and believes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be authentic. Williamson has denied that he is anti-Semitic, stating that he goes against "adversaries of Our Lord Jesus Christ"…(wikipedia)

Anti-Semite? You better believe it.

A news worthy notation on the global stage for examination. No doubt the Vatican sends out its unpleasant news releases on weekends just as the press office in the White House has been known to do.

No doubt in rehabilitating a lost bishop for his Catholic dogmatic views is the primary reason to cover this gaping schismatic wound as quickly as possible. Deal with collateral damage later on.

I have restrained myself until now from knocking the present pope. Going back to my Sede Vacante Temporis article, I don’t think that senile old men should be elected to important diplomatic and or religious posts. Maybe it is time for new outlooks. Maybe it time for kids under fifty to try and run the world and or the Vatican City State.

Going back to this pope’s recent wanting to stop interfaith dialogue and his trashing Islam in one of his pastoral papers connotes senility and or too many adorable sycophants sitting, lounging around the papal throne. He no doubt rubberstamps whatever his handlers give him to sign or read out loud.

I look at the guy and I like Joe the Pope. He has a warm friendly smile. He is a lifelong rubberstamp meal ticket Catholic bureaucrat. I am surprised that underneath his papal seal it does not say something like “…and they pay me for this job too…” kind of gullible rhetoric.

Benedict XVI of late reminds me of some lines of the British dance hall song “The Laughing Policeman” by Charles Penrose.

And to paraphrase a parody that might be entitled “The Laughing Pope” and borrow some lines of the famous song.

“He never can stop laughing.
He says he's never tried.
But once he did (save) a man.
And laughed until he cried! “

Oh God of our many understandings

"O God of our many understandings..." -

That phraseology from Bishop Robinson of New Hampshire says many things.

Without being in the know of the latest PC thoughts from a Jesus Seminar or an ivy league divinity school, these words reach out for intelligence and tolerance and empathy. These words say that what we each may believe, though our various cultural contexts may be varied, we all, most of us, basically believe the same thing in the concept of the One God.

I am sometimes disheartened when on the news I see the lack of tolerance or understanding between the various monotheistic religions. Too many centuries of comfort in a region and too little reaching out makes for present friction between those who to this day will say that the God of the Jews or the God of Jesus or the God of Mohammed are not one and the same God.

Different names, different understandings but in truth, in our hearts, they invoke the same God.

There is local and there is global. There is sacred and there is secular. There is God and the inability of many who do not try to walk a mile in their brother’s shoes. There are those who do not realize how God has revealed himself in the same way many times throughout the ages but with different accents, and interpretations of the same language and same message from the Source of the Universe...
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(there is some hype on TV commercials about what do you tell your grandchildren about where you were when Obama was sworn in)
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I began to write the preceding early this morning. It was left unfinished and before the Inaugural of President Barack Hussein Obama. I had been out driving and doing some necessary urgent errands. I caught his swearing in oath on the car radio. I heard the oath of office just before turning onto another road here in Staten Island. Half a block away I saw the minaret of a mosque recycled from an old factory up ahead. The Muslims there of that particular congregation are from Albania. America has changed. The world is changing. We of necessity must change in those things that brings forth more tolerance and understanding to all matters local and global.

I saw the later part of President Obama’s speech on television and was struck by one line as part of a larger paragraph. It was: “…that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace…”

Perhaps our common humanity as it is uniquely blended in the USA will help form the comfort of our using some words first that elsewhere will one day be used that will help thaw cultural differences by their use and in faithful translation. Words and or phrases like “O God of our many understandings …” is a good start.

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama

By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire

Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

Temple Mount / Noble Santuary Compromise

With all the current bloodshed in Israel/Palestine these days, I am thinking of the future. Where do two cultures, political states, religions go from here?

I do not wish to document past hopes or failures. I wish to consider how hard it will be for both sides to sit down and negotiate in good faith for the future of the immediate nation state and the greater region. Examples about the end of the cold war between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. or the falling down of apartheid in South Africa are not good examples to use or learn from. Those scenarios fit other times and places in other parts of the planet.

I have pondered this situation and think that some symbolic gesture(s) by both sides could pave eons of highways to the future. I use one example here. I am certain that those directly responsible will have better and more practical ideas than my own. That is okay. The important process is the beginning of visualization of a peaceful, prosperous Israel/Palestine in the future by all parties concerned.

I do not wish to intrude on the two cultures and religions but I have some observations. I do not think that a bi-cultural country is immediately possibly. In a global village sense, maybe a hundred years from now nobody will care who your neighbor is across the street in terms of culture or religious background. In an immediate sense I see a divided geography perhaps with walls but a reduction of violence and an escalation of trust between all parties of the region. A successful peace in Israel/Palestine will deflate political agendas in the region and hiding behind religious masks at the present time.

Picture Israel/Palestine or Palestine/Israel whichever way you want to look at the coin. Picture joint economic ventures, common public utilities, high standards of living.

The thing that sticks in a lot of Israeli throats is the division of Jerusalem with a joint political state sharing a joint capital. This is something nobody from the outside can impose. This is something the two parties have to agree upon and work together on to make it work. It is not impossible but it will be extremely difficult to maintain if the current levels of friction and mistrust continue.

I say take the Temple Mount or Haram-esh-Sharif (noble sanctuary) and borrow a page from the wisdom of Solomon. If there is to be a divided capital of Jerusalem then I think that this elevated property gets cut down the middle. The price for peace for the Palestinians should exact a price or such. They at the moment do not have the upper hand in the military equation of the situation. The Israelis are looking at their enemies, though in facts their neighbors, getting up front and personal in a very ancient symbolic piece of Israeli identity in the form of the city of Jerusalem.

This is not easy. But what if the Palestinians say okay, cut Harem-esh-Sharif down the middle if that is what it takes to make a permanent, stable, universally recognized state and capital for Palestine. I think that the Palestinians will opt to keep the half of Temple Mount that has the most symbolism in a structure for them, the Qubbat al-Sakhra or Dome of the Rock. If that happens, then the plain structure or Al-Aqsa Mosque is now on Isreali territory. I do not think that the Israelis will stop the function of this mosque but what if in the terms of binding eternal peace treaty Israel can turn the mosque into a synagogue or even tear it down to build a Third Temple.

A lot of hot points here. Al-Aqsa mosque is the big work horse mosque of the Noble Sanctuary area on Temple Mount.

Israel, if you look close enough, is more a secular state than a theocracy that it had ideally been in the ancient past. A Third Temple is only a dream for a handful of the extreme religious community. If we cannot do these things mentioned above, what can both sides do to show good faith, both literally and symbolically.

I believe that the two mosques could stay in place. A joint police force in the city of Jerusalem could administer control the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary and - and somewhere in the middle of this joint historic site, archeology and research could start on a small scale, a few square meters a year, and could go on for decades and fill a yet to be built museum for artifacts found that touch the history of two nations, two cultures, and two religions on common ground - the Earth.

It is just a thought for a possible win-win compromise for peace to accidentally break out and spread throughout the region and on to the planet as well.

Anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson Style

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I am not comfortable talking about anti-Semitism. I do not feel qualified to talk about the subject and will not attempt to do any lengthy essay. I would like to focus on one slice of publicly displayed anti-Semitism and surrounding the public figure of Mel Gibson with his remarks in July 2006.

Without even going after remarks by his father Hutton Gibson or his own words in a drunken stupor, the basic fact of Mel's anti-Semitic remarks originate with the Constantine Bible - a bible written for a Roman General/Emperor and for the political agenda of that political person - written, assembled three hundred years after the death of Jesus. The Jews and not the Romans supposedly killed Jesus. Whatever.

What I attack here in my simple Christian belief system is the logic or lack of it regarding what this Jesus story means in terms of hating a race for the actions of some individuals, the high priests in Herod’s temple bureaucracy.

My argument is this. Who did Jesus preach to in his three year ministry? I have to say mostly Jews. They were poor working class Jews. Oh there were a few Romans and a few Samaritans but 100% percent of Jesus’ ministry on earth was to 99.9% Jews.

Did Jesus preach his Sermon on the Mount to an empty mount? Did he feed 5,000 non-Jews with loaves and fishes? Did he go to Roman wedding to change water into wine? NO! There were a few Jews present at all these mentioned events. If you look at the Gibson family mindset, they must wonder why Jesus wasted all his time with the - the - the Jews!

How do you separate Jesus from his roots and then say that his roots were not the important part of his ministry? It is all a bit twisted.

Jerusalem and Judea as a political state went out of existence about forty years after Jesus’ time.

Christianity as it got recycled with Greek and or Roman religions lost its Jewish flavor or origins. Or did it?

Did Jews who became slaves after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. go to Rome and then buy their freedom after they helped build the Coliseum in Rome? Did they stay in Rome? This scenario has been suggested by the TV history presenter Simcha Jacobovici.

Jesus planted the seed of faith and of the new faith through Jews who ended up on the other side of the planet and without a homeland.

There are so many rich possibilities for the flowering of faith and continuation of tradition and even with paradigm shifts on a religion and a culture in transit in the first century of the common era.

When some ignorant Irish Mick spouts his mouth off and reiterates the hate of his parents, well maybe that is anti-Semitism.

I think the religious ignorance of who and what Jesus was - and was about for his people, the Jews, is something greatly monumental in the depth of stupidity and vice.

And then again maybe the anti-Semitic remarks were solely and conveniently used as a deal breaker on the proposed Gibson movie about the Maccabees. He just did not have it in him to do a great movie or do justice to that historic era.

Forget about the ministry of Jesus. Just hate a race that everyone wants to make extinct. Well, I do not think that will ever happen. There is something internal about the nature of man and culture and this indirect hated of the imperfectly formed and recycled religion called Christianity. Better to hate its origins than reform its present mess.

As for the Maccabee Movie, better that old Mel could not do it. Who would want to watch Apocolypto with a yamaka on it?

Prayer for a New Year

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May the power above
Grant you a new year
a new start if needed
filled with many blessings.

Days come and go.
Blessings come and go.
Both can be sorely missed
When unnoticed or gone.

Keep in mind perspectives.
The need to live, work, play,
Reflect, construct, learn-
Take some time to pray.

We are not alone.
And yet we can be lonely.
Patience, courage, love,
Are virtues needed these days.

Touch nature and its beauties.
Bring the richness of creation
Into your daily living and drink
Freely of the waters of life.

Always remember,
Never forget,
Count your blessings
All of the time.

The Prize is the Journey

Caroline Kennedy recently said that an event like 911 made her want to get more involved and have a more active part in the whole fabric of American life. Good for her.

Myself, looking back, I see how 911 poked a hole in my political view of the world. I also had to stand back and decide what I believed in terms of religion. The other side was using, misusing religion as an arm of some political agenda.

This blog, with its readers, has been an education. In terms of my spiritual progress, I have figured out at where I might be at this present time on the road of life.

Perhaps I am more a nineteenth century Unitarian in my private belief systems on more things than anything else. I elect to change my opinions and beliefs as I go along if I so choose. Nothing, like beliefs, in this modern age should be set in stone.

Heaven and hell are here upon this earth. Some of us are lucky enough or blessed to have a choice to seek the former.

I am not a religionist. I do not addicted to religion. I do recognize that religion has been part of the social glue for thousands of years. Secular functions have replaced many previous sacred functions in society. Where religion stands in the rest of the world is entirely different than the way it is going along in the United States.

I am a secularist. I believe in the separation of church and state. I am saddened that so few in America have a rich appreciation or knowledge of true or good religion practice. While I know the average evangelical is probably a good intentioned Christian, I also know that the road to an imagined hell is often paved with good intentions.

That to burn books, symbolically, or in reality, of science is the worst kind of fascism. That this wanting to return to an early nineteenth century mentality whereby the only book in town is a bible is a path that leads to the disasters and misused emotions that turn to anger, hate and days like 911.

I recently got some feedback that said that religion is very, very dead in Europe or at least the organized Christian form is quite dead. We in America do not know or taste and feel our European brothers’ and sisters’ culture unless we travel and experience from those travels. I have to travel more.

That the only energy in religion in Europe these days may ironically be Islam and of the faith of so many immigrants to that social political economic state.

Where religion goes I do not know. I am an anti-religionist. I have my private beliefs but think that in out global mindset, which is the future, the secular side of the equation blots out any or all religious calculations.

Luckily. I have enriched myself and I hope you too the reader by what I have said in writing this year. It has been an interesting year.

The journey is the prize. The prize is the journey. For those of you lucky enough to enjoy thinking, march on.

Age of a Coming Rainbow

For forty years
I repeated the tape
I sat and saw TV -
shadows -
the human struggle
its rise and fall, on
black and white and
then color TV.
The rainbow was gray
on the little b & w TV
in the high school
music room (1968),
no music that day.
Only the echo of
thunder.
Those who would, could
move us - lead us
to a better place
their voices were stilled
- silent.
And the music teacher
procalimed "Gentlemen,
we are living in very
sick - sick country".
Rainbows of the human spirit
fled - ran - hid away
that day, not to be
seen since.
Oh color survived
but the techno rainbow
is not a child of nature.
Forty years of color TV.
Forty years of b & w
memories.
Gray silence gave way,
witness in fact, to a
rage of a man
not a sage of a man
with new (low) standards

of leadership met, set for
decades to come.
Rage on tapes,
still spewing hate,
rave on beady eyed man -
leader - the world survived
without you - Thank God!
But it was still
an age without rainbows until
the drought of the human heart
persuaded a cleansing rain
to descend here below.
And to some it might
seem a flood -
the people's age
to replace the corrupt
Age of the CEO.
Obama -
stands to be sworn in (2009).
Blessings upon us all
(we deserve them, earned them).
Forty years of no rainbows.
(Era sin arcos iris)
Gives way to great floods
("Et Grands Deluges"...)
of the human spirit.
Life giving water descend.
Purify a bygone age.
Arrive to announce
not a golden age
but a rainbow multi-colored
age of mankind. (dawning)
-

(My thanks for inspiration to Michel de N. Century One, Quatrains 17, 76)

Sede Vacante Temporis

I thought I was finished with this blog but something kept nagging at me. It was the concept of the Latin Mass in the R.C. church and Vatican II.

I thought that maybe if John XXIII was Pope and official head of the R.C. church (CEO) that he could have merely stated that a vernacular language Mass could have been used in any parish that asked permission of the local bishop to do so. The Pope of tradition is supposed to have power to do something like that. Ecumenical sentiments could have grown from local vines and worked its way up to major importance.

To most Protestants the Papacy ended in 1517 with Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. Not so. The priest Luther was petitioning, going through channels, with grievances against spiritual abuse. Rome was so corrupt that it went into bunker mode and has been in such ever since.

Luther was no saint and his Augsburg Confession is still half valid truth and in perspective it is half doubtful propaganda with time.

There is a movement in modern times that states that no Pope has in fact been a valid head of the church since 1958 and the death of Pius XII.

The Chair – the seat of Peter - is vacant to some.

A Latin term used by Catholics who think that the R.C. is in heretical freefall since the election of John XXIII and the calling for a church council Vatican II is sedevacantism – boy, what a mouth full.

This group of Catholics think that Vatican II was nothing more than a modernist Public Relations display and an invalid crutch to John XXIII to permit the vernacular language Mass or Common Service to flourish where it was wanted within the sacred body of Christ and or the church.

I do not think that on this point. I think that John XXIII was asking for an open council in which Protestant observers were invited to witness an opening of windows on faith to all Christians. He was asking for consensus from all his bishops.

John XXIII died at age 81 and the bureaucrats took over. Some think that this succeeding clique interpreted Vatican II and resulted in a cabalistic like bubble version of spirituality.

Alas, I am no longer in the R.C. Church but I think I am in grace to Christ and his message. I feel I can make these observations from a slight distance to the matter.

Sede Vancante Temporis.

The Chair is temporarily vacant.

I personally after much thought - think about the long drawn out death of John Paul II. I thought it vain and out of date. The man in ill health should have been able to retire to a cloistered environment and finish his days in privacy and with dignity. Instead he put his death and importance on display like a Rock Star/Modernist cultist personality.

What I say and I do not wish to sound fanatical is that if the R.C. Church elects bishops/cardinals past the age of 65, they are in fact admitting that this election is an honorary thing for some R.C. bureaucrats with good crony connections.

That if you use the modern realistic age bracket of 65 – 70 as an understood retirement age for most human beings – at 65, there has been 7 years of valid working aged years input to the bureaucratic job of pope since 1958.

That if you push the envelope of retirement age to the age of 70 – then in the fifty years since the death of Pope Pius XII, only sixteen odd years of able bodied adherence to a job description has been accomplished in the job description of Pope – Bishop of Rome.

Sede Vacante Temporis

The chair is a part time position for some (other than the totally honorary title guys).

The chair seems more like a honorary title and in a real sense – functioning like the out of touch, performing for the public, obsolete British Crown.

Once Vatican II came along and the Pope as a photograph came down off the wall or the Pope in your hand as a holy card disappeared - the whole office and concept of the centuries old function of the job changed forever. The office of pope no longer exists or functions in line with any true historic sense - it is now like a TV style illusion. It is a now primarily a modernist entity and function.

Interesting idea and or schism. Where does the R.C. church go from here on that one?

New Jerusalem – the new Global Capital

The recent attack on the global city of Mumbai (Bombay) in India illustrates how as the world’s population expands, the land does not match the needs of a growing population. You can talk about finances and universities and commerce – the free market system can accommodate some of this global flow but it cannot accommodate fanatical religious beliefs that mask political agendas.

While you can expand enterprise in a global sense, you cannot perpetuate that old timed bubble to protect your old time religion in a shrinking land bubble.

I can presume that the recent bloodshed is over the decades old disputed territory of Kashmir and the dividing line in politics which happens also to be a dividing line in religion.

In the decades to come as we adapt to the new needs of a global population in a global economy, we can expect more bloodshed sad to say.

Land was the basis of the recent worldwide fraud of American securities packaged and sold as valid with a MBA Imprimatur. In the end, the land with improvements was not as valuable as the inflated promise of return. Land is not the answer to much of the future’s problems so much as cooperation of all peoples globally.

You reap what you sow. If your government and your religion and or your government/religion cannot promote tolerance and win-win negotiation, the global equation is not doomed. Innocent bystanders will be collateral damage of imperfect human thinking – intolerance - clinging to outdated ideas from the past. These are unbending ideas that refuse to be groomed in the possibilities of a new global way to look at all things in a new way - and deal with them accordingly.

The heart of most religions preach and practice the tolerance necessary to arrive at a new global future. It is the fringe edge of reality that clings to a local view in a local bubble going up against global reality and with violence. There is a place for both local and global ideas in the future.

Like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, if they don’t want a Third Temple, fine, build it elsewhere. Ideas are more important than armies or mere square footage of land.

The New Jerusalem, the new Global Capital of Earth will be built one day. It will not be built on land. It will be built on faith, hope, love and the good will of all men and all women on this one planet.

Third Temple

As I have said elsewhere here, God works in his own time and in his own way.

I have spent many hours reading and researching the concept of the Third Temple.

The first Temple was built by Solomon. It was rebuilt or restored after the Babylonian captivity.

Then you have the aftermath of Alexander’s world empire collapsing on itself and the Jews in Judea being in the middle of politics and religious persecution at the hands of Hellenistic rulers which results in more revolt and lack of peace in the Middle East and this happening a hundred and fifty years before the time of Jesus.

The rebellions against the Greek rule resulted in a short peace and headed by a family dynasty called the Hasmonean Dynasty that lasted until the so called Herod the Great. Herod of course is mentioned in the Gospels and he was as nasty as King Henry VII of England who married an heir to the throne and then killed off all rivals or pretenders to the throne (his throne).

This favored son of Rome was able to seize power and crown himself as the King of Judea with his Roman puppet master’s approval.

Herod the great took the Hellenistic Alexander the Great view of the world and started to build and rebuild on a scale only rivaled in the city of Rome itself. No amount of taxes or slaves’ sweat or blood would keep Herod from trying to outshine the not forgotten with the people Hasmonean Dynasty. It had been they that recaptured Jerusalem and the defiled Temple and the story of Hanukah comes from this period and the miracle of oil in the Menorah, the ultimate symbol of Judaism, which burned for eight days.

In the end Herod’s cutting edge technology port part of the city of Caesarea fell back into the sea. The rebuilt expanded second Temple disappeared in several waves of recycling and eradication. His Xanadu, his Masada Palace, is remembered not for its builder but for the courage of the last vestiges of the Revolt of 66-73 C.E.

I have no doubt that Herod the Great ordered the death of many innocents in many places including Bethlehem in his syphilis crazed paranoid rule of Judea that was signed off on by the elites of Rome.

Fast forward on the timeline and in the Six Day War the Israeli Army takes all of Jerusalem but not Temple Mount. The Islamists have a thirteen hundred year real estate claim. In real time and real money and real estate, their claim is legitimate.

The Temple Mount remains a sore thumb in any perception of or resolution of present political tensions between Israel and Palestine.

Putting aside the political issue, nobody is quite certain where the second temple was located and of course saying that the Dome of the Rock mosque is the exact place puts a lot of stress into any formula for archeological research or digging. The Islamists will never concede any territory atop the Temple Mount. Barring a massive earthquake or an act of God, the Temple Mount is likely to stay the same for decades or centuries to come.

This brings me to an idea. Why does the Third Temple, as many Jews want to build, have to be built on the present Temple Mount in Jerusalem? Build it nearby. Extend Temple Mount and build. There is no eminent domain in the state of Israel to build next door??? If the Third Temple is inches or mere feet from the original Second Temple, what really matters ? - location, location, location or the heart and desire to build and to please the Lord.

Of course if they actually were able to build a third Temple anywhere in the vicinity of the present Temple Mount I think that looking back is a bad idea. I for one would have to side with animal rights advocates on the number and frequency of the slaughter of animals as sacrifice to God. I believe that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was the whole idea of Christianity moving forward out of a primitive pagan like era of blood sacrifice.

Another suggestion - Why not just build a replica of the second Temple on a mountain top in a desert somewhere and treat it with respect and a place to acknowledge the idea of a sacred place dedicated to the one God?

And if politics and bureaucratic inertia stops the rebuilding of the Temple in the middle east why not build it elsewhere on God's planet?

There are many mountain tops in the desert southwest United States and northwest Mexico that could accommodate a second Temple replica to become a place of pilgrimage both as a museum and a functioning place of worship. I think of the suggestion of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and his idea to build a Mosque, a Synagogue and a Church together on the top of Mount Sinai. That idea died with the man and got entangled in politics. And these days, the meal ticket academics would dispute where the real Mount Sinai is located, it being the place where God handed down his laws to Moses.

Don’t make it a tourist trap, make it a place of pilgrimage, walk up a mountain and limit parking at the base and put the food court at the base with the parking. Imagine it, a second temple replica and a simple basilica like church and a mosque. It would be unique and more importantly than that it would be a universally recognized sacred place.

There are so few sacred things truly left in this growing secular global world. Why not create a new one?

Just a thought.
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Thanksgiving USA

It is Thanksgiving this week in the United States. It is without a doubt a totally secular holiday centered on the family. Very little direct commercialism is connected with this holiday other than the infamous turkey dish and as the gateway date to the very commercial Christmas season.

The roots of the holiday go back to the harvest festival brought over by the Europeans almost four hundred years ago.

Putting food aside, both Washington and Lincoln asked for days of prayer and thanksgiving during the War of Independence and the very bloody Civil War.

Lincoln had fixed the last Thursday of November as the official time of prayer and thanks to the Creator for the bounty and blessings of the nation. Lincoln’s call for a thanksgiving day in 1863 was set one week after his Gettysburg Address, at the dedication of a military cemetery at the battlefield as tribute to so many who gave so much at a critical turning point of the Civil War.

FDR named the fourth Thursday in November in 1939 to be Thanksgiving, pushing the date up slightly in order to promote Christmas sales during the depression. The fourth Thursday in November has more or less stuck these last three quarters of a century.

No need to mention that when you get relatives and friends together to gather and pray, you are likely to have a community meal thrown into the equation.

On a scale of one to ten with 1-4 as secular, 5-6 overlapping with the secular and 7-10 as sacred – Thanksgiving is a 6.

I have a mixed bag of memories of family Thanksgiving gatherings - meals, people, and friends – one day for many when the crazy American quilt work of people, cultures, religions come together in a seemingly singular ritual.

Traditional prayers of thanks on this day are Psalms 100, 111, the Our Father or any others you may feel to be appropriate.

Green Apocalypse

I speak perhaps of a personal epiphany and it has to do with the Book of Revelation/Apocalypse. If you have read this blog in bits and pieces you will no doubt know how I do not like or understand why the Book of Revelation got tacked onto the Greek Testament. It seems more like hateful propaganda than anything that would have come out of the mouth of Jesus.

There is an entertainment show on Cable TV called the “Naked Archeologist” hosted by one Simca Jacobovicki who is not an archeologist. Mr. Jacobovicki is no doubt well read and self taught which I hold in higher esteem than all the diplomas that rich people can afford to buy their children these days.

A quote from the show’s website:

“My goal,” says Jacobovici, “is to demystify the Bible in general, and archaeology in particular, to brush away the cobwebs and burst academic bubbles.”

I have disagreed with many of his quaint and or crackpot theories. One is that the Jewish Exodus coincided with the volcanic destruction of Thera/Santorini about 3500 BPT (before present time). Thera is or was a good candidate for the basis of the Plato fable about a place called Atlantis.

Never the less, looking at something from a fresh or unprejudiced and not prejudiced academic point of view is something I look for in this present stifling infant global world with its lack of creativity and growing non-open economic, religious and cultural points of view.

My personal epiphany came last night on a show about the Jewish community in ancient Rome. Simca is standing in a Jewish catacomb and sees what he thinks is a Christian symbol amidst the seemingly exclusive Jewish burial place. His guide and professional academic refuses to acknowledge the possibility of the symbol being Christian. Simca has to make a living and is looking for sellable tangents to add to and in accordance with the flavor of his show.

I know that feeling. You don’t have a Doctor of Divinity from Yale or Harvard. What makes unimportant you think you have any interesting theological question to ask me on my divine academic pedestal?

Enough with background and with some thanks to Simca helping me break through a wall regarding the book of Revelation and my opinion that it is originally a Jewish document or fragments of many Jewish end of the world themed documents not unlike the bulk of documents found and labeled as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Book of Revelation, as Protestants call it, or the Book of the Apocalypse as the R.C. and Orthodox Christians label it, seems to me to be a green or recycled text co-opted for Constantine’s official Christian Church. That maybe the true break between Christian and Jew was not a religious break among brothers. Maybe the split between Christian and Jew was an official political decision for the greater glory of the Roman General/Emperor Constantine.

Not being a professional academic, I base my logic more on timelines and critical symbols in the book of so called revelation.

The biggest symbol in the book is the “666” figure of the anti-Christ with most scholars these days agreeing that the numerology is about Nero.

You have this story that the Christians tell about how an incredibly small unknown cult of Jews called Christians got singled out as the scapegoat for the fire in Rome 64 C.E.. The Christians are so important in Roman propaganda and in a state that eventually elevates the Christian Messiah to the level of a Roman god under Constantine.

Before Simca, I had already thought that maybe it was the Jews, with a few Christians mixed in, that Nero went after in 64 C.E. That maybe those tensions and aftermath and backlash worked its way back to the holy land and was the basis of the start of the great Jewish Revolt starting in 66 C.E.. That revolt led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the second Temple in 70 C.E.. Look at the timelines.

I think that until the time of Constantine, Jews and Christians are inseparable in terms of shared traditions and living in the same part of town, towns.

There is a great deal of recycled Old Testament prophetic symbolism in the Book of Revelation and the thought occurs to me that when there is a warning to seven churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, that before it was a warning to Christian basilicas, maybe it was first a warning to the Jewish communities in these cities just as or right after the destruction of Jerusalem occurs. Like there were no Jews in the biggest cities of Asia Minor – yeah right – and that only the Christian communities existed there alone - sure.

And of course the end of the book has the supreme Jewish symbol of a New Jerusalem topped off with the second coming of Christ as Messiah at the end of this very long, tedious, nasty, symbolic pile of possibly green recycled words currently known as the Book of Revelation.

Oh well. Just a thought. Thank you Simca for part of the inspiration.

King David's Fall from Grace

There is an artist, who is a bit off the wall from what I hear, but I am absolutely moved by the artist Rufus Wainwright and the song he sings “Hallelujah”.

The background to the song is David and his seduction of Bathsheba and the Watergate like cover up of King David’s sins of covetness, adultery and possibly murder. It is he, as king, who comes to terms with the consequences of his own actions. The people and his court officials were no doubt whispering the truth long before the king understood the magnitude of his going off course in his life. They say he wrote Psalm 51 as a result of his fall from grace - asking God’s forgiveness.

The song in modern secular terms is Art Imitating Life and reflecting man’s capability, capacity to do the wrong thing at the wrong time and to hurt the ones you love including yourself.

The Psalms are songs that David supposedly wrote and sang to the music of a lyre. Was David an artist and a singer? I cannot say for certain.

I can say that the Hebrew Testament is filled at times with a lustiness and brutal reality not similarly displayed in the Greek Testament.

Wainright’s song also has an allusion to Samson and Delilah with the cutting of hair lyrics. It is a bit like an historical movie with a lot of good bits mixed together to make a better story.

Sometimes good comes out of evil. Perhaps the megalomaniac of David slowed downed, consolidated his base and made it possible for his son Solomon to eventually build the first great Temple. In reality, I think David did not want to give up the military budget to build a temple but that is just my opinion.

The rest is history and the timeline that comes straight down to us to this day.


“ I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty
in the moonlight
overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne,
she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah”


Live and Learn. Live and Learn.

Face of God

What does God look like? Does he have to look like anything? Does man’s visual ability apply passed death when the spiirit separates from the body?

There are a thousand different questions about the basics of religious and or spiritual beliefs. If you sat down and had the average Christian, asked them to fill out a questionnaire, you would likely get many different answers to the same question.

While I know what traditional Jesus looks like with his Nordic ashen blonde hair, blue eyes and perfectly chiseled face, it might not be the person I get to meet in the afterlife. What if I walk up to the gates of heaven and see a long line and sit down on a cloud and then start shooting the breeze with a stranger taking a smoke (smoking is forbidden in Heaven – don’t you know that?), then the stranger walks back inside the employee’s gate without having to slide his ID card through the gate-key and then I find out that that was Jesus (for Christ’s sake!). And then I have to go through St. Peter’s gate and metal detector. What if Jesus talks about my contempt for organized religion? What if my name magically appears on a “do not admit” list? All this because I did not know what J.C. looked like?

Of course anybody might get the boss’s son wrong in a line up but what if I encountered God up there or even down here.

There is this concept of a “personal God” I have heard about for many years and I never looked up the definition because I thought I knew what it meant. The definition is something like giving human attributes to a non-human entity. It is not unlike making cartoon characters and giving them animation and voices and well you can fathom what I am talking about.

I always thought that a personal God was the person, God, I was talking to inside of me when debating the direction of my moral compass. Heresy you say. Well let me say this. There is an awful lot of money and power out there in the name of the creator of the universe. There is not a lot of heart among the bureaucrats feeding off the good life in God’s name. I think I can at least trust the good inside of me and not the wolves in sheep’s clothing out there.

Going back to something I have probably said before, faith in somebody else’s faith is extraordinary faith indeed. I may be standing alone on a street corner so to speak in my quest for spirituality in a very non-spiritual materialistic world. The organized meal-ticket christians may sneer at me but do you know what?

The divine spark within me is lot more comfortable and real than the whole cacophony of religions today. I may only have my own faith in what I perceive to be the divine things of this world. I am not worshipping the personal Gods and obsolete insights of long dead prophets, biblical kings and saints.

I know what God looks like. He, or she if you prefer, looks a little like every one of us.

What If Simple Prayer Departs? (with the Death of the Whales)

-
What if simple prayer departs?
(with the death of the whales)

What if -
the largest creatures left
in the sea, in the sea
disappear for the sake
of imagined enemies?
Sonar, Sonar,
Ping, Ping,
Bang?
-
What if -
the sound of the large creatures
makes a heavenly noise
that only God hears first
coming from the planet?
Prayer to you. Prayer to you.
Thou whom are greater
than me.
-
What if -
the survivor of the Age of Saurs
the little mammal rodent
and now a monkey king
forgets or does not know
a similar sweet sound
to offer the great figure
in the sky?
-
What if -
monkey prayers are mixed
with the mighty whales'
and when the whale departs
forever - sounds to heaven
will be drowned out as
in silence and heard
no more above?
-
What if -
the great fathers of justice
slam the door on the whales
and the upward spiral
of thought, prayer, being -
slam the door shut on
the beauty of possibilities?
Slam!
-
What if -
the whales appeal
and the monkey fathers
shout "Get over it!"
your day has passed
is not important
in the present monkey
scheme of things?
-
What if -
one last whisper goes up
and is not heard.
But God to his assistant says.
"Funny I thought I heard
what once sounded like Saurs
at play and in prayer
to me?"
-
What if -
yesterday - 65 million years
turns full circle?
What is left to master?
And perhaps the monkeys
will finally learn to sing,
to swim - in the sea -
again?
-
(This in order to re-establish a balance
- and to be truly heard above again?)

American Fear, Hate and Jesus' Love

There is an awful lot of friction in California and Utah over Proposition 8 which was a referendum on the concept of Gay Marriage.

I personally do not see the need for marriage for gay people but if two consenting adults want to be bound in the traditional marriage contract, well, it is uncomfortable to me at first and over time I guess I will get over it. The future has arrived. Hey, was getting over slavery a hundred years ago anything like this?

The Mormons and their giant Joseph Smith cult that hid out in the wilderness until civilization reached them in that wilderness; it saw Jesus in it's own particular light and interpretation. They were pretty much your average fanatical fringe christian religious group that also practiced polygamy.

The polygamy started in time of war when troop numbers were down so why not get more bang and soldier for the buck. Same thing happened in Islam in the beginning. The temporary need to produce safety in numbers never quite got wiped off the books.

The Mormons of course had to officially renounce polygamy to get U.S. Statehood in the 1890’s but it still is practiced by many to this day off the books so to speak. I don’t see any referendums on getting rid of the last vestiges of the medieval concept of polygamy. Which leads to the cliche about people in glass houses throwing bricks at their neighbors.

Well the Mormons have got a holier than thou bug up their ass and who have this peculiar thing about sex and marriage and whatever - spent $18,000,000, 4 out of every 5 dollars spend on promoting or opposing this California Gay Marriage thing.

The Gays are protesting all around California and in Salt Lake City. Now I see from today's news that Gay Protestors have also picketed the mini-pope Rick Warren’s mega church and their opposition to this minority seeking basic civil and human rights.

Jesus did not hate the people and the amazing thing about the four Gospels with all the hands and committees that touched the official propaganda story of Jesus - Jesus the man, Jesus the mensch never condemned homosexuality.

Enough said.

Jesus loves!

All Beliefs are Local

I go back to a discussion I had some years ago about Christianity in it’s alphabet soup days and the sacred text “Acts of the Apostles” with a friend – not a scholar – he had mentioned how Christianity has splintered from the beginning and going all the way to the present.

I suddenly see his point as I look at least at the American point of view. Many splinter groups call themselves “Christian” – cling to obscure passages and interpretations of sacred text and well – Alphabet Soup Christianity is the best you get some days – most places - these days. The only glue holding the old Chi-Ro thing together is perhaps the ancient Constantine creeds.

If I had to categorize Christianity today, perhaps it could be as a multicolored beach ball bouncing around here and there. It is a franchise product so to speak and marketed differently from country to country and within countries as well. When I hear the term Christian I have to be wary and recognize that a one size fits all bill on the protestant side of the equation is not much different than the catholic equation fitting into every culture as best it can and absorbing local pagan customs and turning local deities into born again saints.

I choose to paraphrase the late Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. His assertion was that “All politics is local”. So too I see that all beliefs systems are local as well. You believe what you feel comfortable with to yourself, with your family and within your community, culture, region, country. “Paris is worth a Mass” Henry IV said when he renounced his protestant beliefs in order to ascend the catholic throne of France.

In that light, many variations of Christianity exist all over this planet. Whether the message of Jesus in the Gospels is taught correctly, or is PC or relevant to social norms is another matter entirely. That the American Catholic Church in perhaps too much zeal, to make brownie points, to conform to Vatican policies in the sixties turned off a whole generation of church goers with iron fist tactics. The response in Italy or France to the ideas of birth control were no doubt dealt with and received differently by the local community.

In any case, the secular world is of primary purpose and dominant to many westerners today more so than any ancient sacred concepts of world order.

The multi colored beach ball is as good as any metaphor beyond the traditional cross to describe the ever rich but still alphabet soup of Christian beliefs and scholarship.

Maybe this is a good thing.