Sunday
December 3
The Adventure of Faith
By Marsh Chapel
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Prophetic Vision…
The adventure of faith is a shared adventure of a common faith.
We today enter Advent, a season of preparation, in which we celebrate, and share the adventure of faith. A shared adventure, a common faith.
A prophetic vista…
The world can work.
Isaiah 64 shows us a post-exilic communal conflict. 587bce. Now 510 or so bce.
They returned from exile with the Bible. Exile can be uncannily, eerily, unexpectedly fruitful. Keep that in mind for a decade or so.
Visionaries and realists, dreamers and doubters. Realists. Visionaries. Zadokites. Levites. Justice. Temple.
Visionaries: like those in 2 Isaiah, Levitical priesthood, those ‘left behind’ in Judah. Utopian vision.
Realists: Zadokite priests who control temple now. They want to repair the roof and boiler. Restoration, for them, means restoration of the temple.
Hope in this bitter conflict gets unhinged from history. Visionaries and realists separate, as prophecy applies less to daily politics, hope takes flight from history. This is the Dawn of Apocalyptic.
See Paul Hanson’s old work from across the river.
We know this kind of trouble. Not just from the ferocious inter and intra party conflicts in 2016.
See Mark Lille, The Once and Future Liberal. Academic liberal failures: forms of identity politics that are broadly off-putting; nearly complete absence from actual political activity.
A communal connection…
1 Cor: 53/ethical pastoral/work with nascent congregation/first urban Christians.
Every heart has secret sorrows.
My November Guest.
Royal Couple: is he kind?
R Scroggs, Paul for a New Day.
There is no substitute for gathering in the same space (house of cards).
Our endless celebration of the petty narcissism of small religious differences. Post-modern politics of differences.
Shared adventure. Common faith.
Ease of anonymity to power of connection.
Humanity and technology: Hillary and E-mail; Donald and Twitter; German Right and Facebook (350,000); North Korea and Cyber Theft. Two hands clapping out a sorrowful beat. One of the forces normalizing hatred on a global scale.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
And what would Paul say to the famous, many religious, gentlemen, who are accused of harassment and abuse? Where is the influence of the Christian Gentleman today?
Lillian Ross (b Syracuse 1918): the act of a pro is to make it look easy. Fred Astair didn’t groan when he danced to let you know how hard it is.
Many helpings of faith, first helping.
Apocalyptic Admonition…
A ‘little apocalypse’
Mark 13: its history/70ad/cataclysm like that of 3 Isaiah/never rebuilt
New religions, Judaism and Torah, Christianity and Church.
We are not the first generation in faith to face cataclysm, in this looming decade of humiliations.
In which there arises the temptation to substitute political opportunism for moral judgment.
The cataclysm of:
Distortion of Truth and Falsehood
Mocking of Nuclear Opponents
Hideous Anti-Muslim, meaning anti-religious, videocasts
Mistreatment of women with impunity
Disdain for diplomacy
Indirect discourse of racism (sometimes not even indirect)
Daily Presidential\Journalistic game of go-fetch
Watch. From eschatology to ethics, here. You know neither the day nor the hour. You watch. You keep your chin up. You keep your head high. You keep faith in relationship, in worship, in stewardship (your body, your time, your money). Beware a growing accommodation of totalitarianism.
Three plural imperatives (shared, common)
Nightime arrival. Why? Danger of eschatological slumber. Don’t be caught napping at the Parousia. Eyes open, eyes open.
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover
A fisherman mends a glimmering net
Happy porpoises jump in the sea
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be
The voice of the violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night
On the day the world ends
-Cselaw Milosz
Coda
Sawdust Trail Altar Call
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent
We believe in God
– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.
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