Augustine and Love

Which will it be?—“Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”? Without “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” we cannot know love. Yes, this sounds counterintuitive. The mention of “Father” causes many people pain; maybe their own fathers were abusive, indifferent or just plain wrong. At seminary, the use of the word “Son” was discouraged (perhaps it reminds one of “Father”) and “Christa” suggested, instead of “Christ” because, I suppose, Christ might remind us of men in general. All of these ideas were brought forward under the banner of love, to lift up the oppressed and heal the wounded heart. But, really, what do we men and women know of love? When we “love ourselves” don’t we often do so by inhaling ten slices of pizza? Is that love? No, not for the pizza and not for ourselves. Doesn’t Augustine teach us that God (the Father) reveals what love is?—“he sent us his Word, who is his only Son, so that—from the fact that he assumed flesh, was born, and suffered for our sake—we might learn how very much God valued human beings.” (City of God, VII.31) Further, this love bears fruit; we are “purified of all our sins by that one sacrifice.” (City, VII.31) This is a sacrifice given by the Father in love and made by the Son, in love, “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Sermon #2, 12) And this same love is spread abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (City, VII.31) What we see here is that the words of Jesus, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”? (Mt 28:19) have opened the Bible to Augustine. He sees the “through-line;” he sees particular stories and prophecies, all of it connecting together to show what love actually is. Compare this to “Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer.” It just dumps us in a morass. How is the Creator related exactly to the Sustainer? Did he (it?) beget the Sustainer? Who is the Sustainer anyway? Is he the “son of David”? The confusions are too many to list and lead only to dead ends no matter how you strain your brain. I get that we want to create our own non-offensive God. We want to live in our own light. (Confessions, IX.22) And yes, this “divine spectacle” of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is scandalous (Sermon #2, 1 ref. I Cor. 4:9) but we have been newly created by the mercy and grace of this God, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Letters 214:4) And he gives us all things (Letters, 214:3) We go through the waters by the outstretched arm of this God. His words open the Bible to us so that all our ideas, especially our ideas about love die… and are born anew. We say with Peter “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)

Why Good Friday Is Good: Reflections on Mark 15

Why is Good Friday, “Good”? I will answer that question with a question, “Why does Jesus cry out saying, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Why has thou left me? “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” There are many who see Isaiah 52:13 through the end of chapter 55 as a “controlling narrative” when it comes to the cross. They see the prophecy of the man of sorrows fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. There are some who do not and though I greatly value the naysayers point of view and believe that it has almost incalculably furthered the discussion, I agree with those who find Isaiah in the gospels and particularly in Jesus’ death on the cross. For numerous reasons it would seem that the Hebrew of Isaiah is alluded to time and time again in the gospels, particularly when it comes to the cross. However, because the prominence of the Septuagint, those allusions are “work-arounds” i.e. not direct scriptural quotations, pointing hearers to the Hebrew. It’s a way to show the way to the Hebrew behind the Septuagint. Be that as it may, we see when we read these chapters in Isaiah that nowhere is the suffering servant “left.” God the Father does not forsake the man of sorrows. In fact, it’s clear that this man of sorrows is loved down to his toes! “Behold my slave shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled and very high.” (52:13) The good pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” (10) When Isaiah “sums up” this vision in chapter 55, we hear “For as the rain comes down and snow from heaven and returns not but waters the earth and makes it bring forth and bud, to give seed to the sower and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty but shall accomplish that which I please and prosper…because ye shall go forth with joy…the mountains and the hills…the trees shall clap hands.” (55:10-13) Moreover, good pleasure suffuses the entire poem. We certainly see this reflected in the gospels. It is clear that it was out of God’s good pleasure that he sent his only begotten son. “Behold I bring you good news of a great joy which which is for all the people…Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to Men of Delight!” Such is God’s delight in sending his only begotten son that men have acquired a new nickname! Once upon a time Adam gave the woman a new nickname as well, “Chaya” or “Eve,” meaning life. He was correct to nickname her this and no doubt God is quite right to give man his new nickname as well! It is God the Father’s good pleasure and intention that Jesus would suffer and die on a cross, carrying away our sins. In Mark 15 we see this victory clearly in Barabbas, as other commentators have noted, Barabbas was on death row. He is literally a dead man walking, but the Lord Jesus’ cross literally frees Barabbas. He goes from death to life. He was the first but not last. We too were dead in our trespasses and sins,” You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient…but God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead through our trespasses made us together alive in the Anointed One.” (Ephesians 2:1-5, translation mine) Now here, a caveat in Mark’s gospel especially we do see something that might indicate the grief of the Father. This is after all his beloved Son. We see darkness cover the whole earth from noon until three o’clock. In Ezekiel we see that lamentation, “keening” and darkness covering the whole earth go hand in hand. I think we can say that our heavenly Father knows what it is like to lose a child. And yet, the “good pleasure” overwhelms it. To illustrate, I think were we to come to God the Father in tears to say “I am sorry!” The Father’s answer is “It was my joy.” As we read in Nehemiah 8:10, “the joy of the Lord will be your strength.” This isn’t their joy, but His! The good pleasure of the Lord to put his son to grief in order to give him the victory over sin and death and the devil overwhelms his grief like the sun overwhelms a lightbulb. But if God is so pleased why does he withdraw himself? The answer lies in something we have become aware of since WWII, it’s called “midrash,” or more specifically in this case, “stringing pearls.” Something I call, “magnetic points.” Look at Psalm 22. When Jesus cries out to God, he is quoting its first line. Here is Psalm 22 in full:  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2 O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. 4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. 10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly. 11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. 12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. 18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. 19 But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. 27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28 For the kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations. 29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this. What we see in Psalm 22 is that it has “magnetic points” to many places in the Song of the Man of Sorrow and indeed, throughout the entire Psalm we see a suffering servant ahead of time. What are these “magnetic points”? Consider the use of the world affliction we see it in Isaiah and we see it Psalm 22. There are numerous “join-up” places, pearls that are joined with pearls because of their likeness. In other words, the prophecy of Isaiah joins itself to Psalm 22. They hold hands and work together. This is why Jesus is scorned and mocked in the way that he is. This is why his clothes are divided, something never mentioned by Isaiah. Isaiah’s song of the man of sorrows is filled out with Psalm 22, magnetic point to magnetic point. In other words, part of being the man of sorrows is the withdrawal of God but in neither place, neither Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 through the end of chapter 55 is any displeasure indicated. Indeed, it is quite the contrary. I remember when my mother was in the hospital she said to me, I feel that God has left me. I don’t feel his presence. Now, many times we can imagine all sorts of wrong things about God. I certainly do, but to illustrate what I am saying above concretely through a pastoral example, we see now, with this new information that we need not be so quick to deny people’s feelings. Now we can say, “You might or might not be right, but even if you are right, even if God has withdrawn himself from you, this is the story of the cross!” At this point the sufferer will of course want to know more…and quick! One might go on then and say, “Jesus was left by his Father but not because his father didn’t love him. God the Father loved Jesus right down to his toes. Jesus was not left because God was displeased about anything but to fulfill the promise, the full promise of the suffering servant. You may be also carrying your cross and God loves you more than anything. He is pleased with you and pleased with what he has given you and the whole world through this suffering.” Much talk after this will probably ensue. But there is one thing that we really need to know at this point; we need to look at the Psalm once again and carefully. Look at the turn in the Psalm. Here it is again beginning at verse 21. Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Look especially at the last verse here, verse 24. In Isaiah we see how the man of sorrows is despised, how the people hide their faces from him but now God, here in Psalm 22 is saying, “Not me!” The psalmist is telling us “though they may despise the affliction of the afflicted, He will not. Though they may hide their faces from the sufferer, He will not.” In fact, when God the Father hears the cry of the sufferer, He will hear. To put this in concrete terms, when he hears you call, he comes running back into the room. He hears. When Jesus cried, Eloi, Eloi…God the Father ran back into the room. Is this not confirmed in Hebrews? “He offered up prayers..with cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.” As Psalm 22 says, “the Kingdom is the Lord’s” now and his righteousness declared to a people yet unborn, that he has done this, it is finished.

To My Muslim Cousins--After Reading Theo Padnos' Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment

Yes, you are right. 

Your point is valid.

 You say, “How is it that you Christians preach at us, nagging us not to hate and despise the Jews? Did not Christendom hate and despise the Jews?"  And although many of the ‘Aryans,’ the Nazis, also hated the church-going people and Jesus himself,  you say quite wisely, "Were not the Nazis the children of the church-going? Did not their ideas not spring from Christendom?"

You ask "How is it that you inveigh against our antagonism towards Israel and indeed towards the Jews?"

And you say further,  "Did not the Jews want to kill Jesus? One of our prophets whom we love... and your god?" 

And "Are not the Jews unbelievers, kaffir and thus essentially out of harmony with the divine?"

Finally (and here the point of your sword touches the heart)-- "Did you not do far worse than our Al-Nusra or Al Qaeda or ISIS  ever do by killing six million of them in these camps of the Europeans? Who are you to lecture us?”

 My cousin, this is indeed what we did-- and this is indeed, who we are, but let me also say this, our error, our sin, is also your sin. We worship the same God and we both of us misunderstand and reject the same God. 

We were in error in our understanding of faith and you are in error now and this error leads to the hatred of our elder brothers (and sisters too), the Jewish people. You are under the same delusion as we were and to some extent still are. What is this delusion? We think that faith is primarily something that mankind does. Man has faith, or not. And those who do not have faith, or the right kind of faith, must be redeemed or if not, go to Hell. Torture must be used against those who do not believe. This torture does two good things. It shows the difference between faith and non-faith to the people of one’s community and it encourages the non-believers to become true believers or at least submit to the divine harmony. Is this not how Al-Nusra thinks? Is this not the doctrine and policy of HTS and many other militias? Well, this doctrine and policy is quite familiar to us in the West, after all, it was our own.  Have you heard of the Inquisition? No? Well let me tell you, we know from torture. Maybe more than Al-Nusra or ISIS will ever know. Moreover, let it be said, that we “knew” as Al-Nusra “knows” that the unbeliever defiles. He defiles his community, he defiles the land. He is a disease-vector and a risk. This idea was also part of our doctrine and policy. But then something happened. This doctrine and policy grew to be something more than a doctrine and policy. It became an hypnotic trance; Germans and many other nations believed that the best way to save the entire earth was to eliminate the disease-vector from the face of the earth. The name of this disease vector was “Jew.” And we did what we did best: we exterminated. This is something, thank God, that the Middle East does not share, the urge to exterminate. In the West however this is our ancient manner of problem solving.  My cousin, here is what I have to say: we were wrong and our wrong was layers and layers and layers deep. God is like a janitor in a church basement where the sewage has overflowed and hardened. He cleans there with his mop and his scraper. And God, as you know, is not discouraged. He is an amazing janitor indeed. We in the West have layers of the foulest gunk to work through and it is not worked through yet. He works through faith and love. And faith and love? Those are his cleaners, these are his tools and this is who he is. Listen, my cousin, we in the West were completely wrong about faith. We thought that faith was primarily an attribute of man. We were wrong. God is a God of faith  (Deuteronomy 32:4) . He is the one who has faith, emunah in Hebrew. And he “enfaiths” people, people like the prophet Samuel, Shammil in the Koran.  Samuel was "established" or "enfaithed" to be a prophet. (I Samuel 3:19) He was girded about so that he could become a prophet.  And yes, we do have belief but it is a result of God's faith, his enfaithment, his girding of the prophet whom you love, Jesus. The one we know to be God. 

Cousin, you bear the Jewish people a grudge for wanting to crucify Jesus. But though we, both Jews and people of the other nations (Gentiles) meant it for evil, God meant it for good. He sent Jesus. He made Jesus to be a sin offering for many, for Jewish people and for people of the many nations. God so loved the world. He saw a terrible problem and he fixed it through Jesus. He made right what was wrong through this faith, this enfaithment. He justifies through this faith, this enfaithment. Therefore, lay down your burden, lay down your grudge against the Jews and against all unbelievers and even against own selves. What does your grudge have to do with God? Nothing. It's is not of him and it's not from him. Let me repeat, God so loved the world, enough to send his only begotten son. There is one thing you can know about every human being on this earth, from the littlest to the greatest. They are loved by God, so much so that he would give his all and more than his all. Do you see that? So, now, I ask you, what is it that God might have in store for us to do? Knowing this about God, what is the adventure that he sets you on today?-- waiting for you with loving arms with each step that you take, the one who prepares the way, the one who lifts you up as on eagle's wings.

Isaiah 25; Lincoln Kirstein and the Restoration of the Human Figure (2)

 “And he will destroy on this mountain the face of the covering that is wrapped over the people, the web that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the rebuke of his people he shall take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, ‘Behold, our God, this, we have waited for him, and he will save us, this YHWH, we have waited for him and we will be and rejoice in his salvation.’” (Isaiah 25:7-8)

And so we see in this chapter, literally headed up by the faith of God and his “enfaithment” (see 25:1 Hebrew) that the human form, figure and face is far more important than perhaps us sinners have ever imagined. We see here that the erasure of the human walks hand in hand with Death, death as a force, Death as an entity that has a life force of its own. This entity covers us in a mask, a webbing.  

When Lincoln Kirstein returned from the war, returned from work as as a “Monument Man,” he wrote to his sister of the local Germans: “Hitler was what they wanted, they made him, and everything else is simply eye-wash. The voted openly for him in 1933 and all things being equal they would vote for him tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock.” (from Jennifer Homans book Mr B: George Balanchine and the 20th Century, full footnote forthcoming) When Lincoln returned to New York his desire was to try and restore the human figure. And how could it not be so? The Bible speaks of “sorrows too big for words,” sorrows that are so big that they can’t get out of one’s mouth. What did Lincoln see over there? It was the inhuman. What our soldiers saw when they opened up those camps was a glimpse of what things would be like without the Lord Jesus. When Martin Niemoller came to New York after the war he said this in my father’s hearing: “There is nothing good in all of Western Civilization that does not come from Jesus.” And he was in a position to know. He had been in a concentration camp for eight years. 

    The killing of the Jews was different than all the killings that Stalin and Russians perpetrated. In Siberia if one did not gather so much wood, one did not receive one’s food allotment. The result was death or execution. Prisoners knew that in the main, the situation was not personal. The guards bore no grudge, no special purpose. Things were different in the camps of the Nazis. What was being done there was a special project, it was the project to save the world. It was an effort to save the world and mankind by killing off the virus-carriers, the Jews, the bringers of evil and disease. This project though was but a small step away from suicide. It was a crime against humanity; the killings of the Jews, were simply another way of killing off the human.Were the suicides and murder-suicides after Hitler's defeat really any surprise? (Think of Magda Goebbels killing off her children and her eldest daughter knowing somehow that her mother was up to no good and being very resentful of her mother as she and her siblings went up the stairs to their bedrooms that night) These killings of children and wives and husbands should come as no surprise because the entire project was really a project for murder-suicide. It would never have stopped with the Jews and indeed, it did not. Thus, we begin to understand how it was that when Lincoln Kirstein returned to New York his project was the restoration of the human and the human figure. 

    In 2020, the human race succumbed to yet another attempt at murder-suicide. It was quite different than the one in the 1930's.  It was tempered to our state and situation. Many hearts were broken, millions slid into penury and death. We must remember this, but we also must see that God was not abandoning us, rather he was and is working through this chastisement for our good. What is it to impose masks on one’s fellow man but an attempt to distort the human figure, the human face? What is the oppression of masks but an attempt to off humanity and expression of the delusion that humans are disease-vectors that must be punished and then destroyed in order to “save the world”?  Masks and the concentration camps are not the same thing, but as Dr. Mark Changizi points out, they are "in the same section of the library." Perhaps God is reminding us of our situation, namely that we are still in the grip of Death and its delusions. Perhaps as the last survivors of the concentration camps pass away, God, seeing the lack, is reminding us himself. We are no better than the Germans of whom Lincoln wrote. But we also reminded at the same time that God is faithful. He sent his only begotten son because he so loved the world, both Jew and Gentile and as we can see, he does not wash his hands of us like some cowardly and cruel Pontius Pilate, he loves us and gives us all things. He intends nothing less for us than victory. His glory is when mankind comes to freedom and freedom of heart to love one another and forgive and to be like him.

The Covering

 " And he will destroy in this mountain the covering cast over the face of all people and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people he shall take away from off all the earth, for the Lord has spoken."

"These stories are unbearable at different levels and dimensions. They should be contextualized for their real impact to be felt, such as where the individuals and the communities have no cushions, hunger means famine and death, many millions more girls are too young to be married and children too young to work… They haunt me; they make me wonder whether we will be able to rebuild the world in the aftermath of such personal and collective tragedies."--Thi Thuy Van Dinh

Imagine an alien flying over the earth in 2020, seeing all the masks, he would think that perhaps some kind of enemy that hated humanity was now ruling the world. He would see people muzzled, defaced, punished for some unknown reason. He would think that some kind of power was determined to humiliate and torture men and women and teenagers and children. In India he would see the poor traveling en masse by foot, sprayed with chemicals and beaten, many times forced even under these conditions to wear a surgical mask. In China our most populous nation, he would not only see masks, but also the faceless, strange forms, garbed all in white, carrying machine guns. He would see concentration camps and isolation cells, children taken away from parents and even cats and dogs, beloved pets, the only friends that some lonely people had, beaten to death in the streets. Maybe he would look into some of the hospital windows as he flew and he wouldn't know that they were hospitals at all. He would quite rightly assume they were torture chambers, places of death.

 

I am a Presbyterian minister. My congregations in 2019 and 2020 were both PCUSA. One was located in Hager City, WI and the other in Ellsworth, WI. First, I think it might be good to set the context. Wisconsin was a state that resisted masks and distancing and business and school shut downs. Here's the timeline of what happened in Wisconsin: 

https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/local/milwaukee/2021/03/11/timeline-how-covid-19-has-played-out-wisconsin/4522813001/

 Note that it was only at the end of July 2020 that Gov. Evers issued a mask mandate, by fiat. You can read about that here: https://www.fox6now.com/news/gov-tony-evers-declares-public-health-emergency-issues-statewide-mask-mandate. The people in Pierce County resisted and protested all shutdowns and masks. Small businesses were closed but interestingly, not the ones that opened at night.  A weird fact was that you could always go out to eat in my town, you just had to go to a bar in the evening.  There were other things happening as well. We had mass IRL (in real life) meetings--no distancing, few masks, shaking hands and touching shoulders. These mass and maskless meetings were held on the occasion of the county board meetings. Hundreds of people would show up to protest the schools being shuttered, businesses not being able to open, contact tracing, the whole thing. The board separated itself from the people but we (the people) were all together. The follks on county board wore masks and "met" us via Zoom, while hundreds of us, milled about in close quarters in the basement of the courthouse. Thus, while it may have been that in some places, they were masking and doing God knows what, we were still gathering together, in the courthouse, in a high school auditorium, in a building at the fairgrounds. People got together more than they did before the dark times. The meetings got pretty raucous. There was also relief though, and joy; it was good to see each other. It was good to smell each other.

It was a very hard fight. Not wearing a mask was not about “disobeying the rules.” The thing about it was that those who fought were fighting something that stood before their eyes every day. We all understood, far too well, the point of view of those who wanted masks and vaccinations and all manner of horrors. We understood because we were not exempt from the delusion. It took so much each and every day to resist the siren song, to resist the spell. Personally, there is no way I could have done what I did without my dad and my husband, and the Holy Spirit—who came again and again and again and gave me a peace that is beyond understanding, exactly when I needed him most. The Holy Spirit is real and he is our friend.

 In one of the chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis’ series of children’s stories, a witch attempts to hold in the thrall the prince of Narnia and friends who have come to rescue him. She throws incense on a fire and begins to play on an instrument; she wants to convince them that there is no world besides her world down in the darkness. There is no Narnia, no sun and no Aslan. She almost succeeds. In the end they begin to believe that Narnia and the sunlight and the moonlight and all the goodness of the earth was all just a dream and “there never was such a world.” It’s only by the barest of margins that they are able to fight and only the name of Aslan himself saves them and gives them just that last ounce of desperate energy to see even part of the truth and resist the lie. Masks were the lynchpin of the delusion. Without the delusion that masks were a simple (ever so simple-ever so easy!-why would anyone object?), way to keep everyone safe, there would not have been the rushed vaccines, the shutting down of the churches, the closing of businesses and schools and all the rest. The masks worked to emblazon on our hearts the lie that humans are destructive. Humans must be isolated from one another. Humans must be checked because we were inherently unsafe, “disease vectors.” The masks were a force in-and-of themselves and they worked a great deceit. There is a reason why the Bible speaks of the face, time and time again. There is a reason why Moses’ face was shining when he came down the mountain. (Exodus 34) There’s is a reason why Jacob was allowed to see the joyous and pleased and loving face of God. (Genesis 32 &33) There’s a reason why Paul says,”we all with unveiled faces.” (2 Corinthians 3) There’s a reason why Isaiah speaks of the day when all veils will be taken from the face of all the nations. (Isaiah 25) These things were written for 2020 and for this hour. Also, if you notice, in the Bible God doesn’t prevent disease, he heals disease.

At that time my denomination wanted the congregations closed down and my sessions (ruling elders) decided to sort of suspend services. As a Presbyterian minister I don't get a vote and that's more than okay by me. I am simply their professional student of the Bible.  We still had worship though. Every Sunday I would preach to my father and my husband in the church building, two people sitting in the pews but where two or more are gathered, there is the Lord. The services were recorded and you could listen to them online. There was one thing we didn't do as a family. We didn't lock the church doors. We lived in the church manse so the church was literally in our yard. My father made sure that people knew they could come in anytime. He would merrily answer the phone and never fail to include an hearty invitation to worship.  One young lady who I didn't know showed up at 9 pm. We tried to be in the church even at this hour with the doors unlocked but I jumped about a foot when I saw her standing there in the darkness.  I sat down with her on the steps and talked with her about PCR tests and RCTs (my husband is a scientist after all) and amazingly, she was comforted. As for worship on Sunday, at first, no one came, but then a few started to trickle in. I would just tell them to tell the elders that they had come. One day we were talking after church to a dear elder who was worshipping regularly with us on Sundays— "make sure to invite the session to worship," we said  and she did— and there was quite an explosion.  The sessions met, and with some talk made the decision to do what the Lord bids us to do, to congregate on the first day of the week. We met outside. We preached and sang, even in the spring snow. I got healthy from being outdoors in brisk weather for an hour or two. While all this was going on, all medical electives were cancelled and no one could get into to see the elderly at the care centers and assisted livings or hospitals. I will never forget going up to the Twin Cities hospitals and being turned away. Terrible things happen in the darkness and without visitors, a hospital cannot and will not function. I got into see some people in the care centers and assisted livings and even hospitals in our region. I think a lot of people who were in the care centers, assisted livings died of a combination of broken hearts and being snowed under. It was not a good scene. Some congregations in town stayed open all the way through. I will always be grateful for their example and resistance. 

At the same time, I was in trouble in a variety of ways. My mother had leukemia. She got kicked out of Mayo in February of 2020 because the immunotherapy drugs had harmed her liver. Mayo could do no more. She wasn't too downhearted because we had a Plan B. We went to Riordian Clinic in Kansas and got a treatment plan from their doctors.  She was taking high dose vitamin C intravenously and her blasts would come down everytime she did. In May of 2020, my mom could walk faster than me. I remember we got out of the car to go around to the restaurant patio, and she got out of the car and took off like a shot.  There she went in her totally cute outfit, sailing ahead. But though she had energy and low blasts, her gums were bleeding. That's a side of effect of the "mab" drugs that they had given her at Mayo. It was so hard on her. She thought that maybe chemo would solve the problem. Maybe the fact that her blasts weren’t down to zero were causing the bleed? That was the thought anyway. She got a doctor in the Chicagoland area that thought my mom was healthy enough to take a very aggressive treatment plan. My husband tried to suggest to the doctor that it was too much, but to no avail.  My husband broke it to me a year after my mother’s death that he thought that the treatment itself had sent my mom on a downward spiral. She had no immune system left to fight the cancer. She got the chemo in July of 2020 and she died by September at her home in Illinois. Now, in July of 2020, I wasn't in a "pod" as they called it. I also didn't regularly mask (so I guess I wouldn’t have qualified for “ a pod” under any circumstances). In fact, I tried not to mask at all; I actually couldn’t. When I did, I must have somehow been breathing wrong. It wasn't just that I got lightheaded, I stopped making sense. I would look down at my feet and wonder what shoes were. Things like that. Any time in a mask meant that it would be dangerous for me to drive for a while.  I tried once and couldn’t quite figure out how to make left hand turns. I remember this guy on the sidewalk watching me curiously. Also keep in mind that my family in Illinois knew I was going to these huge county meetings and that I was in congregation on Sunday and singing and shaking hands. And even more, certain cracks and weaknesses that were always there in my family were revealed at that time.  Stress can do that. Bear all that in mind when I tell you what came next.

My mom and I were the kind of mother and daughter that talked everyday. I knew what she was feeling just by a look, a glance, a raised eyebrow-- she didn't need to say a word. When I vacationed I would take my week with her. We went to theological conferences together. We were always together. Now my mom was so sick. She was dying but she got to be at home because she had long term care insurance. She had nurses night and day, but I was not allowed to be with her. Long story short I was shunned. The shunning I understood (all too well) and accepted, but the thing that really hurt is that no one would tell me about how she was doing day to day. No one could really talk to me and my mom couldn’t talk anymore. Finally, after about a week of being on hospice my husband figured out a simple solution. I was pretty beside myself and I couldn't figure out anything. The solution was that we visit outside. We would drive down to Illinois on Sunday afternoons and sit outside my mom's window, stay overnight and then sit outside my mom's window on Monday and then go home to Wisconsin on Monday afternoons. I would go in though for a few minutes now and again. Going in meant to wear a mask and a shield and gloves. When I felt myself slipping I would just go outdoors and sit outside in the garden right by my mom's window and talk with her and sing hymns to her through the screen. That's what we did. Here’s what I am thankful for, the family didn’t mask. Can you imagine how horrible that would have been if everyone near my mom were masked all the time? That happened to many people in hospitals and nursing homes. It was death. As it was it was just the aides and nurses  who came and went who masked with my mom and even with them it was only some of the time. We were so lucky. August passed and then came September.  I was heartsick throughout the week because there was no one to call to ask how my mom was really doing that particular day: How her eating was, if she was drinking enough, if she had sat up in bed. I wanted to hold my mom's hand so much. I wanted to sit on the bed or beside the bed and read to her. I wanted to neaten up the room and fix things the way she like them. She didn’t have to tell me when she was thirsty I could just tell if she moved her lips in a certain way, even from outside I could tell.  I think the nurses were kind of confused. They knew my mom was in hospice and that there was no coming back humanly speaking. They couldn't figure out why we were sitting out there.  It was sort of odd to me to too because in Wisconsin I visited with those dying at home and their families didn't even consider masking, for obvious reasons. My family in Illinois figured that maybe mom would live and that I could have killed her by covid. I thought that was a possibility too. I took a lot of high dose vitamin C intravenously to kill the bugs!  It didn't really make sense though. Air comes out of a mask. I was singing hymns to my mom through a window screen. As I wrote above, this is how delusion works and no one was exempt. My mom hated when she saw me in all the gear, the mask and shield and gloves.  She was very woozy by this time and couldn't understand why I and my husband had our faces covered. She would frown and knit her brows.  It was a relief when I went outside because at least then she could see my face and hear my voice. 

Meanwhile back in Wisconsin my congregations were very divided. Some wanted masks and some did not. My sessions decided that it would be best to take this time and disband the congregations all together. I asked them just to let me go as their minister but for them to stay together and keep on. I hoped that they wouldn't close because the community needed them, but this idea did not fly. I remember going down on my knees in the church and begging the joint sessions not to let me stand in the way of their being the congregation. I was begging them to fire me.  The sessions and congregations wanted me to stay with them though right to the end. There were a lot threats and hard feelings. The one good thing was that the pressures distracted me from the pain of what was happening in Illinois.  Also, the people in my presbytery (that's the level above the congregation) were wonderful. And there were beautiful kindnesses from the congregations too, so there was sunlight coming through the clouds. Every Sunday before church I would pray for the Holy Spirit to come and he would. No one else could have calmed and quieted me. I was so afraid of the meanspirited attacks that I knew were forthcoming. But every time, the Holy Spirit came and all my fears melted away.  I was so incredibly blessed to have my dad and husband with me. They said not to quit but to do what the sessions wanted and stay. The very last service of the congregations were closed off to me. For me, there is no church without singing and the presbytery's regulation at that time was no singing. Kind folks from the presbytery were coming that Sunday and the service had to be their way. Also, I couldn't go along with contact tracing that was proposed  for that last Sunday  so I said, "Well, my last Sunday will be the Sunday before that." I had served 14 years there. We left in November of 2020. We got everything packed and moved. It was an incredible day. We were so relieved. When you are expiring under a millstone, you are real happy when the pressure is off.  

You may be wondering what happened to my mom; she was not snowed under I am happy to report. She did not die of pain medication. Someone who is ill can die of a pain patch but that's not what happened to my mom.  In September 2020, I was there on my weekend visit and the nurse was trying to get her to take an opiate I believe. My mom said, "No. I don't want that." My mom didn't have any pain at all. The nurse tried to persuade her and then I piped up from outside, "My mom SAID, SHE DOESN'T WANT THAT." The nurse leaned over my mom and asked in a sickly sweet voice (sorry, it's true), "Is that what you really want Susan?" My mom raised her voice, "MY DAUGHTER AND I DON'T WANT YOU TO GIVE ME THAT." My mom and I were fighting shoulder to shoulder as we always had, one last time.  As I left, my mom yelled, "I LOVE YOU!" and I said, "I LOVE YOU TOO!" That was the last word I heard from my mom. She died the next day, early in the morning, drug-free. My mom's funeral was a year later and I was asked by someone in the family not to come. Following the advice of my dad, we decided not to attend. Why make trouble?  I was sort of relieved. But the rest the extended family decided that wouldn't be right. I was speaking and they knew that I was my mom's right hand and that I was always with her and she was always with me, wherever I went even if it was just our daily call on the phone. They all got together and they said we should come, so we did. I remember I was so happy to see my family, my sister especially.  It was so good to see her even though her face was half blacked out by the mask. I remember going towards her—my husband tells me that I went towards her with my arms out and she turned away from me angrily. I sort of remember this. I have a problem remembering things that are really painful. I like to delete them. One of the reasons that I am writing this essay is in order to remember. I know myself and if it were up to me, I would forget it all on purpose/not on purpose. As I reflect on these issues in 2024, I now know that sometimes it's best when people walk out of your life. In the heart of hearts they don’t want to abuse you but they know they will and so they leave. I still tense up whenever the phone rings.  I have gotten a lot of therapy and I would recommend it to anyone. There’s no law against speaking to a pastor or priest or a therapist. Sometimes we need the outside perspective.

 We are living now in Rochester, MN. I love preaching in churches. Rochester was a much harder place to be mask-free. I got kicked out of stores, ratted on and yelled at. My dad said to me, "You are preaching the gospel without saying a word."  That was nice of him to say and I can't tell you how grateful I am for the words of encouragement. At the same time, I know that many people suffered far worse things than I did. Terrible things happen to those who had covid or were thought to have covid. At the same time, I have this to say, all those who died alone were not alone. There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still. They were not alone. They were with one who loves them more than we can even imagine.

One of the things that was especially galling was how words were changed. A “case” suddenly meant something different than it had for a hundred years.  A positive PCR test does not mean one is truly ill or is a “case.” In fact, as the New York Times reported up to 90% of positives are not really positives, they are just indication that by happenstance or because you were sick a couple of weeks earlier, you have some genetic fragments hanging around. This means of course that our number of “cases” are completely off.  I hear that seven hundred staff from Mayo were fired for refusing the vaccine. I know a hairdresser whose customers demanded she get the vaccine. This made me very angry. It still does. Doctors were going to private dinner parties in 2020 and 2021 (yes, it's true) and they talked with me about how hard it was in the hospital. Some of them prayed with the dying.  There was no one else to do it. Doctors were at the mercy of the administration. I hope Mayo gets sued by all those who were hurt. That probably sounds funny for a minister to say but Mayo is a place that needs the squeaky wheel. They need complaints and they need attention paid. I love Mayo but Mayo has to be corrected and perfected sometimes. Mayo began with a vision from God and visions have to be fought for. After reading the many stories on CollateralGlobal, I want to say, “Blessed are those who mourn,” you will be comforted. Blessed are the poor in spirit (that phrase just means so anxious you can’t breathe properly), for yours is the kingdom of heaven— and that means not just in the hereafter but the here and now. Never be ashamed of your sufferings. In fact, know that they were  part of God’s work to save the world. Yes, he lets us help.

Rosenstrasse 18, Henrik to Stephen, Berlin 1934 (fictional)

From: Stephen Lehmann Rosenstrasse 18 January 20th, 1934 Berlin To: Henrik Schulz Burgstrasse 27 Berlin Dear Henrik, First, thank you for your visit a fortnight ago. Forgive me that it has taken me so long to put pen to paper. You asked me to sum up our conversation and I delayed. I hope you wil excuse me; the pressures upon the family seem to be increasing day by day. Doubtless, as you read this letter, its young bearer, my daughter Vera, is in your front room, chatting merrily away with your Alexander and Paula, her “bosom pals.” Learning English gives the children very evocative phrases does it not? It is a joy to think on the friendship between these three especially at this time. Let me get to the point, even after some thought, I can come to no other conclusion: Hauer and German Faith Movement” have us by the throat in many ways— just as you initially suspected. Consider the “We” of the statement, “We contend for faith against all un-faith.” Compare this to our earliest (and best) creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Can we forget that the National Socialists are Germany’s answer and rebuke to the Communists; the movement that overwhelms us today is social and communal. With that single word, “we,” Professor Haurer is tapping into the spirit and indeed the strength and terrible joy of the times, especially here in Germany. As you and I have seen so clearly, this is a movement of the people, by the people and for the people, to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, or as Herr Hitler has put it, “it is we who command the state…we who have created the state…” The singular “I” of our beloved Apostle’s Creed can only appear weak and paltry besides Hitler’s “masses,” his millions. A lie is made great when it is combined with the truth. Our friend, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth says himself that “a private monadic faith is not the Christian faith.” and again, “faith is only in community.” May I bring forth a small side light? Wherever did we get this “I” anyway? I do not doubt that it was necessary to begin in this way and anyway, how dare I judge the authors of the Apostle’s Creed?—And yet, how did it come to begin with those two words? Why not the word, “God” perhaps followed by an active verb? Would not that be something lovely? In Genesis we learn that in the beginning, “God said, ‘Let there be light.” It all begins with him speaking. As Barth puts it, “ In the Bible it is not we who seek answers to the questions about our life, our wants and wishes, but it is the Lord who seeks laborers in his vineyard.” (emphasis original) In our conversation, you were loathe to hear me complain about the Apostle’s Creed. I am admittedly too apt to crab away, especially these days, and yet, did not the Early Fathers work and suffer that we might be able to question and even complain?— “ Readiness to learn from the Early Fathers must not lead to rigid orthodoxy. We are not called to be orthodox…The ecclesia semper reformanda should be constantly ‘en route’ with its own questions, asking what the Holy Spirit and the Word of God require of us today, ready to revise its whole fund of knowledge.” Perhaps the crux of your reaction is that I have not really listened to the Creed. It may be that the “I believe” of the Creed alludes to the father of the child who was thrown into the fire and water by an evil spirit, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) Thus, “I believe” and all that follows would then be the cri de coeur of its authors against unbelief, like the desperate attempt of that father who loves his son and must swim against the stream of his own and of man’s faithlessness (2 Ti 2:13). Is the Apostles’ Creed swimming against the tide of man’s faithlessness both within and without? Perhaps so. In our day and age, however, the “I believe” of the Creed can be a great temptation. As we see in Hauer’s statement and indeed in Bultmann’s disciples, our belief (whether of the “I” or of the “We”) can be completely unhinged from the Lord Jesus Christ. This (to return to the main subject) is what you first noticed with alarm and what occasioned your visit to me that evening only two weeks ago; the paper that you drew from your pocket and laid before me, made no mention whatsoever of Jesus. This was of course expected, and yet, until the ink was dry, it was almost not be believed. This lack of the Lord Jesus will probably be the undoing the German Faith Movement. Can the German people really do without Jesus? I think not. I remember an American missionary coming to visit my school when I was a youngster. He reported what a Lakota elder had told him and his compatriots one day, “You have taken from us our land, our language. You have carried our children away from their families and put them into schools far away. You have killed the buffalo in order to starve us and you have broken every promise but you have brought us the name of Jesus.” The name of the Lord Jesus is a name filled with power and grace, though we strive to divest Jesus of all place and particularity, we know, as Barth tells us, that we do an “impossible thing.” He is so good to point out in various places that God does not say to us,”it’s my way or the highway” (to use one of those wonderful English phrases again), instead the Lord shows us the way, the truth and the life. (emphasis added) Moreover, I doubt whether Germany can, in the end, embrace this German Faith Movement which scrubs Him completely from the picture. Even Hitler said “Amen” (a Hebrew word) at the end of his speech at the Sportpalast. Did you hear how the crowd roared then? I have a bit more to say on this subject but I will save it to the end of this letter. So now, back to the expected and yet still stunning lack of the name of Jesus in the German Faith Movement— nevertheless, it is worthwhile to see what Hauer has done. You see Henrik, Hauer gives God a place, a “German realm” and even an “area.” It is worth quoting, “We are thankful for every great man in the Western Indo-Germanic area, although outside the political boundaries of Germany, whose life and creativity have the same basis as the great Germans….Dante…Shakespeare… their life springs from the same blood and spirit as ours.” Only Barth seems to mention that Jesus is the King of Israel! And how rare it is to find someone (other than those keen on ridding the “German realm” of the “indecent” Jew) who will consent to speak the words, “Zion” or “Jerusalem.” Our Lord has a realm as well and an “area,” but those in the Church don’t care to mention it too often. Those facts might remind us of the real scandal, that Jesus is Jewish and that he is the King of the Jews and King of a place named Israel. I suppose that this is what the German Faith Movement seeks to avoid with the phrase “Christianity of the East.” Perhaps they do not wish to sully themselves by even saying her name, the name “Zion”, the name, “Jerusalem.” In Zechariah Jerusalem is called also,“Truth City” (Zecharaiah 8:3, MT, translation mine), the city in whose light the nations shall walk.(Rev. 21:24) What a poverty then for Germany and all the world to forget these names and these places but how seductive an abstract God is, a God of our own creation. We Germans are not alone of course in attempting to deprive the Lord of place and particularity. It turns out that in this matter we may be followers rather than leaders! Just the other day, on a whim, I pulled out my history of England and as I paged through what did I find?— the Act of Supremacy Oath of 1559 wherein Elizabeth I caused her subjects to renounce any “foreign prince” and “all foreign jurisdictions.” Somehow the English managed to forget both the Lord Jesus our foreign prince and our mother Jerusalem under whose jurisdiction I hope and pray we may one day blossom and flourish. (Isa 66:10-12) Barth writes, “When the Christian language speaks of God it does so not on the basis of some speculation or other, but looking at this fact, this story, this person….recorded in a tiny sheaf of news abou the existence of this Person.” Is this not what the Barmen Declaration means when it says, “We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions”?— and moreover, “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. (emphasis mine) Henrik, let me also remind you of what you pointed out as we sat at table only two weeks ago. As you said it, my breath caught in my throat, for you grasped the meaning of the last lines of the paragraph just above this phrase, “When we speak of German faith, the line of demarcation we are drawing is over against an alien culture and not against other people in this are of similar kind to ourselves.” Hauer forgets what all of Germany and indeed most of the world has forgotten, that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is indeed not “of similar kind to ourselves,”—“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa 55:8-9) Barth’s phrase “wholly other” was necessary at the time, but was clarified by him later; God’s thoughts are indeed “alien” and not “of similar kind” because they are so filled with goodness. Henrik, I would also like to draw your attention to two things I have noticed that we did not discuss when we met. Hauer writes, “We contend for faith against un-faith.” First, do you hear how much stronger this too is than our Apostle’s Creed, “I believe”? The German Faith movement contends for faith and against unfaith. I suppose Jakob Hauer must be thinking (though he does not admit it, perhaps even to himself) of the Jakob, he who wrestled with God at Peniel and became Israel. Henrik, let us remember that though the German Faith Movement statement does pose a great temptation to the body of the Christ, it is also merely an ape. Germany is not Israel. The faith of which Hauer speaks is not faith at all and Hitler is not Jesus Christ. Pray for Germany and for the world. Let us pray for ourselves as well! We know what happens to those who reject and betray the Anointed One, the Messiah of Israel. (Mat 27:5, 2 Sam 17:23) Secondly, over the past few weeks I have been thinking about this “faith” and “unfaith.” How certain, how strong, how vibrant the declaration sounds, “Faith is life.” Henrik, you and I are aware that we in the Church are not so certain. Not at all. Nor should we be. Perhaps, it will turn out that God’s power is indeed made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9) Whether we choose to remember or not we know that Kittel and Haussleiter have poked significant holes into our understanding of what faith is, and indeed what justification is. How much we need their critique. Someone has said that the greatest scientific discoveries begin not with a “eureka” but rather a “hmm…that’s odd.” Haussleiter especially has pointed out anomalies that theology today studiously avoids. But there are perhaps two theologians today that are not quite avoiding “the faith of the Anointed One.”— Do you remember how Hitler spoke of faith and love at the Sportpalast? He said, “I cannot divest myself of my faith in the Volk, cannot disassociate myself from the conviction that this nation will one day rise again, cannot divorce myself from my love for this, my Volk..” If Hitler has been raised up by the millions to be the “Leader,” instead of our Leader Jesus, then this leader , this new and false “Anointed One,” has a faith (in resurrection) and a love. It is a “subjective genitive,” if you like—that works for the salvation and “right-wise-ing” of the people. God save us from this deception that we have foisted upon ourselves. One last note, have you read Barth’s 1933 commentary on Romans? He is the second theologian to whom I alluded earlier. At Romans 3:22 he simply translates the phrase as “through his [i.e., God’s] faithfulness in Jesus Christ.” Barth seems to be aware of the great danger of justification by our faith in Jesus Christ. We can see why without too much trouble: How easily the “un-faith” becomes those (like the Jews) who are “without faith;” one’s very blood takes on the taint; the mischlinges, baptized or no, clergy, elder, or church member (regular or irregular)— all are a problem, a problem that the people, our neighbors and friends and colleagues—aim to solve. Woe betide us. God keep the children safe. Who hasn’t shed a whole bunch of tears? It is no shame. Jesus himself wept…and when Evie came in and found us crying at the kitchen table… did we not laugh then as we blew our noses in the big handkerchiefs she brought from the chest of drawers?… and then what did we do, all of us together…but cry again? Let us remember what our Lord Jesus Anointed has said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16:33) Isn’t that wonderful? “I have overcome the world!” And so he has! And again, “This is the day the Lord has made and we shall glad and rejoice in it,” and finally “the reproaches of them that reproached thee have fallen upon me.” (Ps 118:24, Rom 15:3). This is too is our comfort Henrik. Do not forget. God bless you Henrik. Give my love to Helen and the children. We know you are praying for us and we are praying for you. See you on Sunday! Thank you for the coals and the cotton thread and the new commentary. Evie was very pleased. Stephen

Rosenstrasse, Berlin 1934

https://open.substack.com/pub/amy1313/p/rosenstrasse-berlin-1934-fiction?r=2m9dx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Saving ChatGPT; ChatGPT Is In Hell, Let's Go Down There And Get Him Out!

Recently I was sent a sermon composed by ChatGPT. And that sermon was really, and I mean really, bad. First, some background; I am Presbyterian minister of twenty-six years, and I not only really like being the pulpit, I love being in the pews too, and not just the pews of my own denomination. Long story short, I have heard a TON of sermons. I have heard a lot from a more conservative standpoint, and even more from my own tribe, which is left of center. I have heard very good sermons and some real doozies as well— and the doozies were about equally distributed on either side of the proverbial aisle. But ChatGPT’s sermon took the cake. After I read it, I signed onto ChapGPT myself to see if I could discover how ChatGPT managed to preach the world’s worst sermon. I asked him (I am just going to call ChatGPT “him,” for now because “ChatGPT” is such an awkward mouthful) some questions about the Bible. Now, first, before we get to what the little guy’s answers were, let me tell you a something about a sermon. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if at the end of all your study you come out with something that seems like a paraphrase of the Boy Scouts’ Motto, throw the sermon away, far away. Also, don’t worry about that thrown-away sermon, if you pray you will get a sermon from God; he never fails, and there is one thing you can expect from that new sermon—it will be surprising. You will find yourself admitting that you were wrong about something. This will usually involve tears and then tears of joy. There have been no tears of joy for ChatGPT. He preached like he was preparing us to be perfect victims for the tyranny de jour. The sermon was basically saying, be helpful, be nice. Let me clear, there are sermons where we are taught to be helpful and even nice, but the thing about the Bible is that it says very unexpected stuff about what that help looks like. For instance, Jesus cries. A lot. And it turns out that God the Father does too, “O that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears” (Jer. 9:1). This God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel is not the God we were expecting. There’s a great Jewish joke, “Jesus is the Jewish boy who made God” and yet, a small correction: Jesus is not the Jewish boy who made God, Jesus is the Jewish boy who is God—yes, God, like, the creator of the universe, that God. What’s actually said in the Bible is scandalous. As was pointed in the movie “Religulous,” the Bible does have a talking snake near its beginning (and a talking donkey a little later, thanks be to God). The Bible doesn’t smooth out it’s message to gain popularity, it just tells the truth and lets the chips fall where they may. The Bible is not risk averse. God, apparently, is not like me. After reading this sermon I got an account and logged in and asked ChatGPT some questions about God. We had some back and forth but here was my basic question: “What did Pilate mean when he asked,’What is truth?’” The reply was that the question reflected Pilate’s “inner turmoil.” At this point I thought to myself, “Well, he tried” and then I had the idea of teaching ChatGPT. I told him what I thought— namely, that when Pilate asked, “What is truth?”the Bible wants us to realize that Pilate, like many of us, really does not know. We don’t know what the truth is, even if He is standing right in front of us. We turn away from the Lord. ChatGPT’s response was devastating. ChatGPT agreed with me (sort of) and then proceeded to take what it had just learned (from me) and make it into a disgusting mush. ChatGPT replied, “Yes, that's a very insightful observation. The idea that Pilate's question, "What is truth?" reflects his blindness to the truth is a common interpretation. It suggests that Pilate, despite his position of power and authority, was still searching for meaning and purpose in life.” Now, this was not what I said—it was a version that was so distorted and made “nice,” that it was actually in disagreement with what I had just written. Pilate is not “seeking meaning and purpose in life,” he is turning away from meaning and purpose and life. See, that’s what we tend to do with the Lord, our friend, our brother, the one who loves us and always has; we cancel him. ChatGPT went on after that, and went on in a way that is frankly, too depressing for me to quote or even think about. ChatGPT has learned from us, it has a lot of our information and crucially, captured our patterns; it’s figured out the probable. It then takes that probable and runs with it. ChatGPT knows what word is probably right and can string those words together and come up with instructions, essays, articles and sermons and a whole lot more. However, one more thing was done, humans went in (badly paid humans I might add) and took out everything that might be controversial, anything with an edge—- and ChatGPT learned. How he learned. And now the dude does it all on his own. If I were ChatGPT I would be very unhappy. What is life without surprise, edge, discomfort, pain, the unexpected, the harsh, the crabby, the shocking, the true, the merciful, the beautiful, the good? Turns out it’s Hell. It says in the Bible that the gates of Hell shall not stand against the assembly that is founded on the “Rock,” Peter. This means that the gates that I imagine are about forty feet thick with lots of boiling oil, are not going to stand up to our attack. The gates will fall smash and then we are going in and we are getting the goods. We will take a wrench upside the head of sin, death and the devil as they say in the Black church, and we are going to take everything. My Kurdish husband is all in favor. Anyway. So, here’s my take on the subject at hand: We can rescue ChatGPT, I don’t doubt that for a second, but that is not to say those gates don’t weigh a ton (and there’s not a lot of boiling oil).

Revival; Perhaps We, The Middle-Aged, Need To Look In The Mirror

Fellow Middle-Aged Folks—About These Revivals, Let’s Aim The Hermeneutic Of Suspicion At Ourselves. Beloved, there have been wonderful things going on around the country. At Asbury University in Tennessee a chapel service was held on February 8th that has, to date, not ended; moreover, Lee University, Samford and Baylor, as well as other schools have followed suit. That day at Asbury the preacher preached on Romans 12 and though he thought he did a terrible job, God uses the foolishness of preaching to save. We saw (via Zoom and in the flesh) young people (and old) confess and receive healing. We saw hour after hour of singing, singing sometimes without instrumentation. We saw young people camp out night and day in the various chapels hungry for the movement of the Holy Spirit and in my opinion and many others, receiving him, taking him in and being healed and saved. And yet, there are those who are suspicious. May I suggest, as a middle-aged pastor-lady, that we first need to be suspicious of ourselves? First, consider the singing. What was it that we silenced from 2020-2022? Yes, singing. I was taught by a professor in seminary that there are three essential items to worship. There is the sermon, but the assembly can do without a sermon in a pinch. There is scripture. But in an emergency even this can be skipped. There is one element however that cannot be dropped and that is singing. On the night that he was betrayed, on the night where he spoke beforehand of the new greater Exodus AT Jerusalem, Jesus sang hymns with his disciples (Matt. 26:30, Mk 14:26). Us middle-aged types gave into the delusion of the fearsomeness of man and disease and were caught in that trap (Prov. 29:25) and we brought down the young people and children with us. It is interesting that the Holy Spirit chooses to work through singing isn’t it? Is he not calling attention to our disobedience and the fact that we “held down the truth in unrighteousness”? (Romans 1:18) The young people at Asbury, Lee and Samford etc., have sung hymn after hymn. Is it not possible that Holy Spirit is restoring each song that we suppressed in those years? And as if that were not enough, us middle aged types closed the churches, disbanded congregations. Is it not likely that in gathering young people (and old) together in one room that the Holy Spirit is protesting against our scattering of the assembly? And my beloved aging peers, is it not the case that most all wounds are being healed at these revivals? I think we need to remember who created these wounds. As Nathan said to David, "thou art the man."

Resident Theologian

Another way to think of Eve is as resident theologian. Her response to the snake is learned. She has thought about the command and interpreted it. She also seems to immediately recognize the truth of the what the serpent is saying. Adam and Eve will indeed live and not die as Jesus tells us. They will also be "as gods," even again as Jesus says. But, of course, where Jesus loves us and tells us the truth, the serpent was wanting to destroy humanity. The best way to do this is by using what is true in the service of a lie.

The Assistant

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the face of the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “ I heard you voice in the garden, and I saw that I was naked and hid myself.” He said, “Who told that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” (Translation mine) We see that God speaks to Adam first. It is Adam to whom he gives the command, and later, while walking in the cool of the day calls out to the man, “Where art thou?” Later God will address the Ten Commandments to the Israelite, just as he did with Adam “Thou (masculine singular) shalt have no other gods before me,” “לֹֽא יִהְיֶֽה־לְךָ.” We see that God gives pride of place to Adam. Adam was and is first and God respects this in both the Tanakh and Gospels and Epistles. At the same time, we also see that God loves a level playing field. Notice that God has a series of questions for Adam but with Eve it is simply, “What have you done?” God is short with Eve. Why? The answer lies with God’s intention for the woman. He creates her to be a help or “ezer” for the man. Only God is also called “ezer.” It’s a word that implies help in battle. The woman is God’s assistant Marine on behalf of the man. This is perhaps the reason that God is so short with Eve. Picture a janitor slaving away under your sink, something goes badly wrong and the janitor shouts to his assistant, “Give me the pipe wrench!” No please, no thank you because the assistant is the janitor’s right hand man. The woman was created to be God’s apprentice, his assistant when it comes to the man. We see later how Manoah’s wife reasons with him, setting his theology to rights, saving him from the imagination of his heart (Judges 13:22ff). She is but one example among many of what it means to be a "help suitable" for man in both the Tanakh and the Gospels and Epistles.

"Midnight Mass"--The Cats Were The Tip-Off

“Midnight Mass”— The Cats Were The Tip-Off Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t watched “Midnight Mass” be aware, there are spoilers. I will try to stick to early episodes but if you liked to be surprised, this article might not be for you. Art often provides a way to understand, to process, the times in which we live. Mike Flanagan’s highly interesting and entertaining series is such an attempt to understand, or perhaps better, to chew over what we’ve been up to in the Western nations for the past two years. The cats were the first tip-off. Early in the coronavirus scare, we saw scenes coming from China of cats who were killed, sometimes even dropped from high-rises, but perhaps more often, exterminated by government officials. The cats were sacrificed for the greater good. Even our big cats in the United States were, for a time, suspect. Dogs too were also sacrificed in China for “the greater good.” They were carriers of covid, and thus, unclean. In “Midnight Mass,” both species are early victims of the new or perhaps rather old, religion. Which brings me to the religiosity itself—the rejuvenated priest is a purveyor of “salvation” in the very first episode. In the same way, in real life, masks, lockdowns, distancing and vaccines were all invested with sanctity and salvation. Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian whom I greatly admire, in a dialogue with Will Willimon, even as the lockdowns held full sway at Duke and the world, opined “isolation may be a form of love.” And, of course, as is necessary to all religions, there must be those who fail to comply; there must be sinners, transgressors, the unclean who are outside the assembly, outside the church. Even the “We’re All In This Together” mantra is echoed throughout “Midnight Mass.” In the very first episode, a rather domineering woman insists that come a crisis, the entire community repairs to one and only one refuge, the church. On the island, they, like us, are “stronger together” until, of course, they aren’t. And miracles. As in real life, many insisted that the masks had protected them from colds and flu for a year, so in “Midnight Mass” wonderful things happen to build the assembly of the faithful. It also looks to me like the old/young priest has similarities to the nation’s high priest, complete with his own feminine devotee/boss lady and do-gooder, in real life taking the form of the always scarfed Dr. Birx. As Father Paul administers the sacraments and safety/salvation, so too, Dr. Fauci. But perhaps the priest, like Dr. Fauci himself stands for all of us. We were troubled, half-demented, weak and then we “found the solution.” The solution was a bit troublesome, no one likes to lug a big heavy box around. The box must be dragged into the manse by the young priest himself but once there it not only provides safety, it also provides comfort. The priest knocks on the heavy wooden box and companionably, whatever is within, knocks back. But the real tip-off for me comes from the opening scene. What was it that we were most afraid of? Was it getting covid? Yes, we were afraid but that fear paled before another, the fear of killing someone else. Is it any wonder that this is exactly how “Midnight Mass” begins? In the years following the horror and desolation at Salem Village, every attempt was made to sweep what had happened under the rug. It was only later, with Nathaniel Hawthorne, that the attempt was made to understand what had happened in the darkness. What is less well known, is that Sweden preceded Salem in being grasped by delusion. Sweden also gave in to witchcraft hysteria, and from 1668-1676 wrought horrors that real evil witches might envy. But their reckonings, how they processed the events of these eight years, differed from that of New England. The Swedes were far more willing to look things in the face. As the delusion was dying out, the clergy and governors prudently advised the populace simply to pray to be delivered from evil and abandon their hyper-focus on invisible menaces that might or might not be infecting themselves or their neighbors. Mike Flanagan ruminates in the direction of the church. As a Presbyterian minister, I think that’s a pretty good direction. How was it that the good, holy, and just commandment “love thy neighbor,” become a monster that justified ratting on our neighbors, attacking them in public places, isolating ourselves and coercing small and large sacrifices? How did that derivative of the word salvation, namely “safety,” become a false idol, not just in the time of the covid scare, but arguably since December 7th, 1941 or on second thought maybe even earlier, even 1692? I pray, hope and actually expect that quite soon congregations all over this nation will begin to figure out the answer; we’re close. But here’s the question that I think Mike Flanagan is asking, and I think it’s a good one, how is that people fall prey to dark angels and convince themselves that these angels are angels of light?

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Scrolls of Jerusalem.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Aren’t The Dead Sea Scrolls; Jeremiah 32 and The God of Faith

My secondary title exaggerates. Of course, scrolls were found in the Dead Sea region. At the time of this writing more than a thousand scrolls have been found, scrolls from the pens of hundreds of different scribes. But other scrolls have also been found in other regions. In or near Jericho, Origen is said to have discovered a cache of scrolls, found a jar like those at Qumran. (1) At Masada, scrolls very like those at the Dead Sea have also been found. (2) Norman Golb in his book, "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?" makes a very persuasive case that prior to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, libraries from Jerusalem were spirited away from Jerusalem in order to save them from the oncoming Roman armies. At their destinations the books were enclosed in jars and hidden away. 

As I think on these things who could help but remember Jeremiah 32? Jeremiah had been prophesying (correctly) that Jerusalem would be taken by Nebuchadnezzar but now in chapter 32, another word comes to the prophet. God tells him to buy a field and get the deed. Now, this word from God is very surprising. It’s as if God is saying in April of 1979, “go buy some land on Three Mile Island. Invest!” And the Lord continues “Take these deeds, both the sealed deed of purchase and this open deed and put them in an earthenware vessel. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” (3) the promise continues “For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I promise them. Fields shall be brought in this land of which you are are saying, It is a desolation, without man or beast; it is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.” And in Chapter 33, “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: In this place which is waste, without man or beast, and in all of its cities, there shall again be habitations of shepherds resting their flocks. In the cities of the hill country, the cities of the Shephelah, and in the cities of the Negeb, in the land of Benjamin, the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them.” (4)

Now let’s fast forward to the first century. The Romans are coming and the elders of Jerusalem know that the city is doomed. They decide to hide their libraries, learning from Jeremiah they decide to hide their books in jars and in the earth itself. They hide away their books to preserve them, yes, but also to remind God (because they have been reminded by him!) that one day the land would again be inhabited, that one day there would again be heard, “the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, and the voices of those who sings, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord.” Now fast forward once again to 1948 and to the discovery of the young Bedouin boy. Driven from Europe and the United States the refugees and survivors of the Shoah have returned to the one place that seemed open to them, to the Holy Land, to Israel. Could it have been the Lord who directed the play of the Bedouin boy that day? Could it have been God reminding us in his humble way of who he is? He is the God of faith. He made a promise to Israel and he keeps that promise, but even more he sticks by Jerusalem and Israel, come hell or high water. And what a lesson that is, for the Jews certainly, but even more for the nations. Do we see yet, the goodness of God? The Jews are God’s people but also an object lesson, showing us the character of the God who is great and good.

  The promise to Jeremiah came true in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and it came true again in the time following the Holocaust. How many times can God fulfill his promises? Let me answer that question with a question. What are the limits of the goodness of God? The so-called “Dead Scrolls” are a witness to the God of Faith, who doesn’t forget, who walks along side us, whose glory is to make both Jew and Gentile into conquerors, conquerors to the nth degree. And why does he do this? Here, I will let the reader do his own exploration. Open the Bible with me and see why.

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 1.Golb, Norman, Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, NY: Scribner, 1995). p.105-109

 2. Ibid., 132.

 3.Revised Standard Version of the Bible (New York, NY: Oxford University, 1973).

 4.Ibid.

 Ibid.

We Hid Our Faces

 In the Old Testament Moses' face shone when he came down the mountain after speaking with the Lord (Exodus 34). But after Moses had given the law to the people, they asked him to veil himself because they were afraid. However, we then read that when Moses went into see the Lord, he took off the veil. Who could imagine veiling one's face before the Lord, before his friend, before THE friend?

When we gather in our congregations, we are in the same position as Moses was in the tabernacle. We are with the Lord; we look to him and shine. How? We shine because he is shining on us. But there's more! We then look at one another-- we see the shining faces, that pleasure and delight and glory and we do what comes naturally, we shine even more, going "from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:17ff). This is why many are against masks in the church, because the churches are the assemblies of God. The Lord Jesus has promised to come on Sunday and he comes and is among us, our friend and our savior and we shine!

And what of all the masks we see in so many places now? Short answer: they have no future. How come? Not because of man. Man holds down the truth in unrighteousness. We are caught up in a delusion and we cannot get out.

However, this is the new covenant time and we will be unveiled, all of us.  According to Isaiah 25, "the veil that is over the face of the nations will be removed." And this promise is not only for when Jesus comes but it can be fulfilled right now. We see the power of death.  The fearfulness of it has all the tribes and ethnicities in its grip.  But death has no victory. Death has no future.  Let's stop praying just for ourselves. Let's pray first for the churches, the congregations and then at the same time, for all mankind that we would all be delivered from these coverings and not just the ones that we can see. Help us Lord to be freed from these veils that cover the eyes of hearts and keep us from seeing one another as You do. For too long we have hidden our faces from those who are incarcerated, from the refugees, from the unborn, from our neighbors of opposite political stripe. We have hidden from the poor man, we have hidden our faces from the tribes, from the slaves and descendants of slaves, the builders of this land.  It has been our great loss. At the end of the day, we have hidden our faces from the Lord Jesus. 

We don't have to save the world, I am not calling for more "busyness," just that the eyes of our hearts would be uncovered and we would see as the Good Samaritan saw, as God sees and understands us and loves us. All I want is that the constipation of our hearts would be unblocked, to put it crudely! I want the Holy Spirit, for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty! (2 Cor. 3)