Ash Wednesday: What is it?

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NOTE: This educational essay was orignially published here on Open Salon, FEBRUARY 20, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series. This is an edited version for 2010.

Christian liturgy, ritual and most of Christian theology change little from year to year. The reason for the Christian Calendar is to encourage Christians to rehearse, ponder and reflect on, year after year, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that His life becomes part and parcel of our family history.

The story of Christ changes little, but we, His disciple, change and grow, become ill, or face death, our own or a loved one's, and in so doing we come each year to view the events of Christ and the traditons of His Church through different eyes, and we may see different, perhaps deeper meaning in God's message to us. Hopefully, what I write in this series will have a certain timelessness, updated slightly each year to improve clarity and thereby open more deeply our understanding of aspects of the events celebrated during the Christian Year.

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Ash Wednesday: What is it?

This year the movable Holy Day known as Ash Wednesday is February 17. Ash Wednesday is the first day of the Season of Lent. Protestant Christians often don't know much about Ash Wednesday. Some know its the day that Catholics get that smudge on their foreheads. But, increasingly, in Protestant denominations, ashes are imposed.

A few know that we get the smudge as a reminder that we are all mortal and will die. That is true. But how does that fit into Christian faith? This post hopes to help us figure that out. This post is not a "Reflection." It essentially offers a teaching moment to remove some of the mystery from Ash Wednesday.

For those who do not understand the symbolic importance of ritual and liturgy in worship, most of what is written from here on may seem odd; so I invite you to learn something with a positive and tolerant attitude, or to just avoid this post and move on to something you do enjoy.

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There is something about Ash Wednesday that people tend to shy away from. In fact, in America the beginning of Lent is upstaged by the day before: Fat Tuesday. Never heard of Fat Tuesday? Try it in French: Mardi Gras. Ah! Of course!

Mardi Gras arose as a big party for all those folks who were getting ready to give up Starbucks, or any of a multitude of things they like, and eat fish on Fridays, and other types of fasting, all as a proof that we can give up worldly things, show repentance, and return to God during Lent. And, generally, it is true that Mardi Gras is a whole lot more fun than Lent, and certainly a lot more fun than Ash Wednesday, particularly if you are hung over from Mardi Gras.

Let's take a look at this uniquely Christian Holy Day, this Wednesday before the first Sunday in Lent, and take a bit of the mystery out of it.

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First, what is it with the ashes? Biblically ashes are sometimes used in purification rites, but, much more commonly, in a rite of penitence. There are many scenes in the Bible telling of the tearing of garments and the heaping of ashes on oneself as a sign of repentance.

The ritual of the application of ashes on Ash Wednesday symbolizes this penitential recognition that we are but human and cannot live without God. This ritual has been used in the church since the tenth century.

The ashes are traditionally made from the dried palms leaves which were the fresh green palm leaves that were handed out the previous Palm Sunday. Like us, the palm leaves wither and die. That is the symbolism of using the palm leaves.

In churches I served none of them dispensed ashes on Ash Wednesday when I arrived. But they all embraced the idea once they understood the symbolism of the act. The members would save the palms that they received on the last Palm Sunday and bring them to the church on the Sunday before Lent. I would burn these palms and filter the ashes, and then mash them into a very fine powder for use in the application of ashes to the foreheads of the faithful.

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After the Reformation most Protestant church denominations, while recognizing Ash Wednesday as a holy day, did not engage in the imposition of ashes. Many Anglican, Episcopal and some Lutheran churches did continue the rite, but it was mostly reserved for use in the Roman Catholic Church.

During and after the ecumenical era that resulted in the Vatican II proclamations, many of the Protestant denominations encouraged a liturgical revival in their churches and Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes was encouraged. Today the imposition of ashes in Protestant churches is generally left to the discretion of the pastors of the individual local churches.

Having come from an Episcopalian background before going to a United Church of Christ seminary, and being used to the meaningful symbolism of the imposition of ashes, in the churches I served I always had an evening Ash Wednesday service that includes offering the imposition of ashes.

Because Ash Wednesday has been so poorly understood, I decided about 15 years ago to create a liturgy for the Ash Wednesday evening service that actually explains the origin of the day and the season of Lent.

I used traditional language from Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, UCC and Roman Catholic services, redacted and edited, adding my own language to make the liturgy flow and to update some language to clarify its meaning. I also added explanatory words to the ritual. Thus, the entire service is deliberately informative of what makes it holy and why we are doing what we are doing.

It can be surprising to learn how many people go through the motions of church for years and years without knowing why they are doing what they are doing. Those folk appreciate participating in a service that tells them.

So now we will walk through an Ash Wednesday service, using my actual liturgy which is printed in the Ash Wednesday Bulletin as a guide. I will explain the meaning of various parts of the liturgy that might be unfamiliar to you.

[Comments will be in bold italics and enclosed with these parenthetical brackets.]

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An Ash Wednesday Liturgy,

redacted by the Rev. Dr. Monte Canfield.

A Service of The Word and Sacrament

[an asterisk * indicates that those who are able should stand. Pastor's words are in bold.]

Preludes

Introduction

Pastor: Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create in us new and contrite hearts, that we, lamenting our sins and acknowledging our sinfulness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Reading from the Holy Scriptures [chosen by the pastor, often is Psalm 103]

* A Hymn of the Passion [ normally a hymn about the Cross of Christ]

* Our Confession of Sin [This long pastoral invitation to Confession concisely explains the ancient history of the season of Lent, the reason for the season, and the symbolism of the imposition of ashes. In most churches this information is not printed in the bulletin.]

Pastor:

Dear People of God: the first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting.

This season of Lent provided a time in which the converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.

Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Christ, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s Holy Word,.

And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as mark of our mortal nature, to confess your sins and to receive the ashes of repentance.

Let us pray. Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that our confession and the imposition of these ashes may be to us a sign our own mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

Let us now together confess our sin before God and one another.

All: Almighty God, maker of all things, judge of all people: we acknowledge and confess our manifold sins, which we from time to time have committed, in thought, word, and deed, against thy divine majesty. We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry for these, our misdoings. The remembrance of them is grievous to us. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful God; for the sake of our Lord, Jesus Christ, forgive us all our sins and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please you in newness of life, to the honor and glory of your Name. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

* Pastoral Assurance of Pardon

* The Imposition of Ashes

[ The assembled congregants come forward to receive ashes. Imposition of ashes is optional in all Protestant churches. It was my experience that when the reasons for and symbolism of the ashes was explained almost all came forward. Those who could not come forward because of physical limitations were taken the ashes by the Pastor.

Then I would apply the ashes, dipping my right thumb into the small bowl of ashes held in my left hand, and apply the ashes on the forehead, making the sign of the Cross with the ashes, and saying, by name, like this: "Helen, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." That language is from Genesis 3: 19.]

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[This is the symbolic low point in the service. At this point, powerful symbolism, in which you participate, has pointedly reminded you of your coming, inevitable death.

I have always felt that services that end with the imposition of the ashes lose all of the positive aspects of the faith. If we are merely dust to which we return when we die then the joy of the Gospel remains unspoken.

For this reason every Ash Wednesday service I have ever lead ends with Holy Eucharist: (Eucharist means "thanksgiving;" it is also called "Communion" or the "Lord's Supper".)

The Holy Eucharist is the most important sacrament of the Church. It is the recognition that Christ has offered for us His Body and Blood upon the Cross, which reconciles us with God, who promises, through our faith in Christ, total forgiveness of sin and redemption for the sake of Christ.

By the sacrament of Holy Eucharist Christians share once more in the belief that death is overcome and that eternal life is assured to the believer.

So symbolically, in this Ash Wednesday service, by the imposition of ashes we go through the valley of death, returning to dust. And from there the Eucharist lifts us up as heirs to the Kingdom of God and inheritors of eternal life. We go from the lowest low, death, to the highest high, life.

Thus the service continues with the Eucharist ]

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The Eucharistic Feast,

redacted by the Rev. Dr. Monte Canfield

The Holy Eucharist - Ritual for Year A*

(Please remain standing for the beginning.

The Children may come forward.#)

[ * Ordinarily the Eucharist begins with a Confession of Sin, but that has already been done prior to the imposition of Ashes, so we begin with the introductory Praise of God. I have created four separate Eucharistic liturgies, one for each of the years recognized in the Revised Common Lectionary adopted by Protestant ecumenical partners after Vatican II.]

[ # In most Protestant churches the children do not take Communion before they go through Confirmation at about age 12. I allow Communion by any child whose parents approve. However, since most parents will not allow it, I encourage all children to come and gather around the communion table for the beginning of the Eucharist. This integrates the children into the service, instead of ignoring their presence, which I find intollerable. Jesus said, "Let the children come."]

Pastor: Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and blessed be His kingdom, now and forever. Amen. Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Pastor: Lord have mercy.
People: Christ have mercy.
All: Lord, have mercy upon us. Amen.

Pastor: Jesus Christ, our Lord, on the first day of the week overcame death and the grave, and by His glorious resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life. Therefore we praise you, Almighty Father, joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name:

* All:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might,
Heaven and earth are full, full of your glory;
Hosanna in the highest; Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is he who comes, in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest; Hosanna in the highest!

(You may all be seated.)

Pastor: Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself; and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all. He stretched out His arms upon the cross, and offered Himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.

(Raising the bread) On the night He was betrayed, Jesus took bread; and when He had given thanks to you, He broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying, "Take, eat. This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." (Raising the cup) After supper He took the cup of wine; and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, "Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me."

Therefore, we proclaim the mystery of our faith:

All: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again!

Pastor: We celebrate this memorial of our redemption, O Father, recalling His death, resurrection, and ascension; and we offer you these humble gifts. (Touching the bread and the wine) Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the body and blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in Him. Sanctify us also, that we may faithfully receive this Holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and, at the last day, bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom. This we ask through your Son, Jesus Christ, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Pastor: (Raising the Bread and Breaking the Bread) This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven.

Pastor: (Raising the Cup) This is the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

Pastor: Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us!

People: Therefore, let us keep the feast!

Pastor: The gifts of God, for you, the people of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.

Sharing the Bread and the Wine (The bread and the wine will be served separately; please hold them and we will consume them together.)

[There are many different ways to actually serve the Communion elements. In the Moravian tradition the Pastor takes the bread into the congregation and hands the host to each individual communicant. It is my habit to hand out the elements, identify each person and address them by name where possible and say one of several statements, such as "Bill, this is the body of Christ, broken for you and for many; whenever you eat it remember that Christ died for you," The members hold the bread; and the wine is served in the same way. When both are served, the congregation stands and the Pastor invites them to consume the elements together.]

Pastor: (Raising a piece of the bread) This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven. Take and eat. (All eat)
Pastor: (Raising the Chalice) This is the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation. Take and drink. (All drink)

Our Prayer of Thanksgiving (In Unison, standing)

Eternal God, heavenly Father: you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ; and you have fed us with spiritual food in the sacrament of His Body and Blood. Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you - with gladness and singleness of heart. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Pastor: Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit!

People: Thanks be to God!

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I hope that this takes a bit of the mystery out of Ash Wednesday. Because it happens in the middle of the week the number of people attending Ash Wednesday services in Protestant churches is usually relatively small.

In my last church Sunday worship varied between 100 to 140. Ash Wednesday services were about 40 to 50. But for those who understand its symbolism and who intend to actually spend Lent in repentance and reflection on the importance of turning back to God it is a service of great liturgical significance with deep symbolism.

Monte

Filibuster Fears: Why are the Dems So Afraid?

Filibuster Fears: Why are the Dems So Afraid?

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I know I am old. I am old enough to remember real filibusters, not procedural filibusters, and how stupid those filibustering Senators looked to the public. It is not likely that the Senate is going to change its archaic procedures. So be it.

While the filibuster is undemocratic the filibuster is also a grand old tradition within the Senate. It has been used by both sides. We tend to forget that the individual or party filibustering gets a great big gobsmack of stupid laid on him/her/them under the full light of the national media. I have seen that happen even to filibusterers who were holding out for a position I favored. It didn't matter. People don't mind our leaders talking about obstructing action by saying that they have a better solution --- unless they actually do it in plain sight, hour after hour, day after day.

Now, I admit that exposure in the media has not stopped all filibusters. But procedural filibusters get almost no exposure in the media. They are a big yawn to the press. It all takes place under the table. That is because the procedural filibuster which has been in place since 1975 requires that 2/5 of the Senate can simply indicate that they intend to filibuster. They don't even have to vote, or to actually filibuster, or even to say a word.

But what the Democratic leadership never says is that the power to compel a vote remains with the Majority Leader. So why is Reid not using it? Why does he not call for cloture and let the Republicans talk it to death? Bring the obstructionism into the light. Every single time they threaten a procedural filibuster, let them prove they have the votes to prevent cloture, by calling for cloture when they obstruct.

Let the Republicans stand up and defend why they are holding up all legislation and all activity in the Senate, rather than seeking compromise to get important legislation passed. Do the Democrats really not have better reasons that they can argue for passing it?

Do the Democrats really think that it is better to let the Senate pass some minor legislation so it can say it is "doing" something, than it is to bring the obstructionists into the light once and for all? They do not have to expose health care to a big fight. That has already passed the Senate.

Pick some other important legislation that the Republicans are just obstructing out of "principle," however they define that. Pick something that will make them look especially bull headed and narrow minded. That shouldn't be all that hard.

But Reid does not have any testicular fortitude. And so the 60, now 59, person Democratic coalition runs in mortal fear at the threat of a filibuster if it is even whispered by the Republican leadership. Of course, the Republicans don't whisper, they shout and the louder they shout the faster the Democrats run.

Does no one else see the madness in this Democratic "tactic" of running in fear from the minority? Just how does this help Democrats win in the Fall elections? Are Americans supposed to vote for spineless leaders who are not willing to throw the light on the obstructionists in the Senate?

Do the Democrats actually think that they will have no way to defend allowing the Republicans to out themselves as the "Party of NO" that they actually are. That is not just a name. It is the truth.

Now one point that needs to be made, urgently, is that essentially NOTHING is getting done in the Senate anyway given the Republican positioning and it will only stagnate more with 41 members in opposition. There is no sensible reason for the country to continue to see the Democrats as weaklings, spineless in the face of the seeming "Moral Minority."

Finally, considering the botched job both parties are doing in both houses of Congress it might be better for the country if they just did nothing for a while. Someone wrote in our local newspaper today that "We ought to pay Congress to just go home." I think that is the mood of many in this nation right now.

It is time for the Democratic Senate leadership to take on the Republicans, and just let them put their own feet in their own mouths.

Do not covet, Commandment Ten

Originally published in Open Salon, FEBRUARY 2, 2010 3:13PM

The previous essays in this series can be accessed through the links in the left hand column of this page.

As with the other Commandments please remember that they are intended to apply to practicing Jews and Christians. Those who would apply them to others who have not chosen to follow them abuse the original intention of the Commandments. This essay is written from an orthodox Christian perspective.

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We come now to the final essay on the Ten Commandments: You Shall Not Covet. In many ways the 10th Commandment is the most difficult for us to deal with because it obviously concerns what goes on inside of us, what no one but God can see; and therefore we might be tempted to think that we violate it because no one will know when we do. Of course, God will know, but we often think that we can take our chances with that.

The 10th Commandment deals with our attitudes, our motives. The actions that may well follow our coveting, that is, actually taking something belonging to someone else, are also prohibited. But this commandment prohibits the INTENTION to take something of another, to even to WANT that something.

In Hebrew the word for covet, hamad (hay-mad), means "desire" or "lust after." In other words, "You shall not DESIRE, or LUST AFTER a neighbor's things."

While this Commandment specifically deals with our interior thoughts, by now you know that I believe that ALL of the Commandments ultimately come down to our motives, even when, technically, they instruct only against what we DO.

That is simply because most of the things we do, both for good and for evil, are done because of our motives. We do them because we WANT to do them. To argue otherwise is to argue that we simply don't know, or can't control, what we are doing. While that can sometimes be true, usually it is a cop out, a convenient excuse, not a reason.

In a song from West Side Story, "Officer Krupky," the delinquents tell him that they should be released because "we are so misunderstood," but the next line, spoken only to themselves out of Krupky's hearing is, "but deep down inside we're no good!"

We may well blame our failures on the system, our parents, our biology, our environment, and a host of other convenient targets, but Christianity ultimately places the responsibility for our doing of good or evil on us. Jesus clearly tells us that we are responsible for our MOTIVES, our intentions, our desires, our lusts; in other words, we are responsible when we COVET!

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Here is the Commandment in full.

17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Clearly it prohibits coveting things that belong to another, to "your neighbor." And the list here deals with property; that is, coveting the property of your neighbor. Yes, I know that the list says "your neighbor's wife." And, to us, that sounds like some sort of sexual prohibition - which it is, but not for the reason you might think.

Clearly, the "you" here that the Commandment originally addressed was male. But this is not primarily a sexually oriented commandment. The Commandment against adultery is more of a sexual prohibition, but it too was originally seen not primarily a sexual violation but rather as violating someone else's PROPERTY.

There was originally an unmistakable double standard at work here, as in several of the other Commandments as we have seen. In that day and age a "wife" was seen as the property of the husband, just like the house, or slaves, or livestock listed in the commandment. Today I hope that we find the idea of a wife as mere chattel, as a "thing" owned by her husband, to be a thoroughly repugnant idea.

There are places in the Bible where the wife is held in higher esteem, and there are places where she is held to be equal to the husband. Jesus clearly treated men and women, husbands and wives, as equals. But not here. This was a blatantly paternalistic society and wives were property.

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But, however wives were thought of in that time, the issue that we need to focus on today is that we are not to covet, to desire, what belongs to someone else. And the reason for that, while not stated here, but which comes out in numerous other places in the Bible, is that, to covet, to envy, to want, to desire what another has, is to be dissatisfied with what God has given to you, thereby showing your lack of faith in God's love and provision for you.

And the envy which coveting generates can, and often does, lead to your doing something - if nothing else to your slandering or bad-mouthing - which will hurt your neighbor. And that is clearly inconsistent with God's command that we love one another.

It doesn't take a very big leap to realize that this Commandment is dealing with the very interior motives that precipitate violation of many of the other commandments, that, in turn, lead to violations of God's faith and trust in almost all walks of life. And that is why this commandment may well be the most violated of them all.

To truly obey this commandment we not only have to avoid certain actions which harm others, but we have to avoid even ATTITUDES and DESIRES which might lead us to harm others, attitudes like envy, greed and lust.

Coveting, by its very nature, is a basic source of social disorder and of trouble in inter-personal relationships. It can easily arouse such massive discontent in a person that it can lead to the personal abuse of others and even to crime.

Our modern affluent society is designed to encourage coveting, and is certainly driven economically by it. We are told now that we are in a recession that the nation will fold if we do not consume more and more; and so the ad mavens encourage us to not let our neighbor get ahead of us in the race for the next bigger and better thing. Of course we were also told that when we were not in a recession. And, we have been taught that the more something costs it simply must be better. And we are encouraged to lust after it until we get it.

Now that I own a 27" TV I can hardly imagine how I got by with the 13" and then the 19" that I had before. But seeing a 56" high definition set at a friend's house I realize how puny my 27" is and how much more realistic my sports shows would be if I only had a set like him.

I have a perfectly fine motorcycle, a 2005 Triumph Bonneville. But you should see the new 2010 Bonnevilles with bigger engines, cast wheels, and electronic fuel injection. Wow! Lots of my friends who ride Triumphs are going into debt for those!

The modern American's appetite for more and better - for AT LEAST keeping up with the neighbor - and preferably BESTING him or her in the acquisition wars - is apparently insatiable. We want what she has! We desire what he has! We lust after what she has. And, more and more, we find that we will do whatever it takes to get it! Even if it means going into enormous debt.

I have no idea what will turn off or at least turn down this faucet of lust, of craving, of coveting. But somehow, if we are to be even remotely true to God, we must learn how to distinguish between desiring what is wholesome and good and beneficial and that which feeds an insatiable hunger for more, much more, than we will ever need.

The danger is, it seems to me, all too clear. In our lemming-like run to the cliff of coveting we run the real risk of coming full circle from violating the Tenth and last Commandment to violating the First.

First and foremost our God tells us that we are to have no other god but Him. Yet when we pursue THINGS with far more passion and fervor than we can even conceive of pursuing a relationship with God, then we have certainly substituted the God of coveting and lust for the God of Israel.

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I hope that you have found this exploration of the Ten Commandments to be of real benefit to you in your life. I tried very hard to be as clear as possible in showing you that these are not just abstract theological ideas, but that they can an do apply to us in our everyday lives. Hopefully this series has given you an opportunity to reflect on how they apply to you personally.

I also hope that you will remember that we cannot always obey all of the Commandments. If Christianity teaches nothing else it teaches that humans cannot NOT sin. Christianity also teaches that is why Jesus Christ came to us, to save us from ourselves through faith in him. There is an old saying that "confession is good for the soul." And it is. So is forgiveness.

God bless.

The Epiphany: Speaking the Word of God

Published on Open Salon on JANUARY 25, 2010 12:47AM

Edited from my original publication dated JANUARY 9, 2009

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Note: the is a substantially edited repost. It is part of a series which I am continuing to write covering the key events portrayed in the Christian Calendar. The Season of Epiphany this year started on January 6, which it does every year, and runs until Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, which this year falls on February 17.

This post, then, deals with both Christian theology and Christian ecclesiology, with, in other words, the reasons for an aspect of the faith and how it relates to the Church, which Christians believe is the Body of Christ. It is therefore written for Christians and for those who wish to know a bit more about Christianity and the way its worship life is structured.

One final prefatory note: the use of masculine pronouns for God is traditonal. God is neither male nor female. God is spirit. Feminine pronouns for God are equally valid.

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Epiphany means manifestation, appearance or, sometimes, unveiling or revealing. An epiphany is when something is revealed to us that was previously hidden. In the Bible the epiphanies that have been noticed by commentators from the beginning, including the writers of the Gospels, are those where God takes the initiative and does the manifesting, appearing or revealing.

There are many Biblical epiphanies recorded. The coming of the three magi to the Christ child is the most well known one to Christians. It is seen as the first revealing of the Christ child to the gentiles, a manifestation of things to come, when the Word of God would be offered directly to others and not only to the Jews.

The Transfiguration is another epiphany. The Transfiguration is that other-worldly experience when Jesus took three of his disciples up on the mountain and was transformed before their very eyes, when they saw Him in a blinding white visage talking to Moses and Elijah and heard the voice of God telling them that Jesus was God's own Son, and, most importantly, ordering them to "Listen to Him!"

Now, there was a dramatic epiphany if there ever was one! If it happened to any modern Christian I dare say that any doubts we had about Jesus would be blown away.

But there is another type of epiphany that is seldom discussed but is likely more important than the ones we highlight in the Bible. That is the epiphany that occurs in the hearts of men and women. It is that “Ah Ha!” moment when something which was hidden from our mind or heart becomes clear, when we realize some truth that had eluded us, perhaps for years.

An epiphany is that moment of bright clarity where the fog is blown away, the unknown suddenly becomes known, the baffling becomes obvious. Such epiphanies for too many of us are, unfortunately, rare events.

The truth is that most of us don't experience mind-blowing epiphanies in our lives; and, when we do experience epiphanies we might not recognize them as such until long after the fact, when we finally wake up and realize that God was working in our lives doing miracles by the dozen that we were too blind or too distracted or too tuned out to see when they happened.

Christians might, given our general blindness to our own epiphanies, spend just a little time looking at the basis of all epiphanies that Christians may ever hope to experience in our lives. Without this basic something a Christian has almost no chance of experiencing an epiphany. And that something is what we call “the Word of God.”

The term, Word of God, is often used two ways. The most familiar, and incorrect, way is that people often call the Bible the Word of God. The other, more important and correct, but often neglected, use of the term is that Jesus is the Word of God.

When that definition is understood then the Bible becomes understood not to be the Word of God, but rather the witness to the Word of God. It is a huge difference. To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to find ones self on the slipery slope of worshiping a book rather than the Messiah. This is not just semantics, but many pastors tell their congregations that it is.

When I taught I was always asking my Sunday School classes some simple questions. One was “What brings us together here every week?” Another was, “Why are we here today, on this particular Sunday? The question was not fair because the answer was so obvious, and so neglected, that the class members seldom got the answer.

The answer, the glue that bound us, and binds us still, is God. I taught them that “We are here because of God. We come to worship Him.” And that led to more questions: “But, how does he convene us?” After all, God would still be God if we never got together.

And I would then tell them that force that draws us and binds us together is the Word of God. God convenes Christians every time they meet on the basis of his Word. In fact, if you think about it, God has always done just about everything He does by His Word.

Go all the way back to Genesis, to the beginning of the beginning, when he convened everything, brought it all together. How did He do that? Through his Word. "And God said, 'Let there be light'." And, there was light. That's how He did all of it, all of creation. He spoke it into being. He spoke it, and it was.

Go back and read about it again sometime; it's really something. Read it through whatever lens you wish, as a literal truth, or, as I do, as a beautiful metaphor for something we are not wired to totally comprehend. He speaks and there it is, all of it.

And then, throughout the history of the Bible, God continued to speak. Things aren’t going so well for the people of the world, and one night he speaks to an old man, "Abraham, wake up. I know you and Sarah are pretty old, but I just thought I ought to tell you that I'm going to make you the father of a great nation."

And what happens? Out of these two nobodies who believe him and act on that belief, a great nation is born; a great nation that God says will not exist for itself but will exist to be a blessing to all the nations.

And so on and on it goes, God keeps speaking His Word to His people, doesn't give up on them even when they are truly disgusting. He just keeps speaking, prodding them along. But, basically, after a couple thousand years they still haven't figured out how to live by his Word, so God intervenes again, sending His Son, Jesus, to save the people from themselves.

John the Baptizer sets the stage, telling the people, "Don't talk to me about your pedigrees, about Abraham, about how any of that can save you from your sin, why folks, your God is too small. You've shrunk him down over the centuries; you’ve tamed him, made him your play thing; you use him as a consultant, a part time nurse of physician, a servant who comes at your whim.

You have gotten so far away from the true understanding of God that the God you now worship is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But the true God of Abraham, the true God of Israel, can raise up a people out of these stones in this river should he wish to do so!"

How could he say such an outrageous thing? Well, John believed that God had done it before. Raised man right out of the stones of the earth, out of the very dust, which He created with a simple word. Sure, he could do it again, and it didn't depend on whether or not anyone believed he could. He was, after all, God, and they weren’t. John believed that God is not to be tamed or made small by the imagination of mere mortals.

John preached that God could start over if he wanted to. He could answer Isaiah’s prayer and tear open the heavens and come down. And, with Jesus, in essence, Christians believe that he did that very thing. He started all over. And He did it the way he always did it. He did it with his Word, but with amazing twist. Listen to St. John as he captures the essence of it at the beginning of his Gospel.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

The "Word" described here is a person, Jesus of Nazareth. In the whisper of an angel to a young woman-child, God sent his Son not only to preach the Word, but to BE the Word. Jesus himself IS the word of God.

The question for my fellow Christians is,"Do we get that? Do even long time Christian believers understand that essential truth of our proclamation?"

Can we Christians wrap our minds around that idea, even for a little while? Can Christians understand that Jesus is the very Word of God made flesh. There are huge implications in that simple belief, such as that all the power, all the goodness, all the grace, and, yes, all the judgment of God rest in Jesus, the Christ.

It is such a huge claim, such a huge proclamation, that some people become uncomfortable with it and fall away from the faith, while others experience a personal epiphany because they believe it and lean in ever closer to the Christ. Free will demands that individual choice and God would have it no other way.

It is a hard row for many people to hoe. Listen to John again, only three verses later. John understands the staggering challenge in the claim that Jesus is the Word of God.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

You think it is any different today? Not much.

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So, here we are, in the Season of Epiphany; coming together by reading this post about what we might hear when God speaks to us. Often he speaks to console us, to help us through another seemingly unbearable week, to speak to us even as Jesus spoke to the folks in his home town in Nazareth. And how do we react? Do we get so upset that we lead him to a cliff and try to throw him to his death? Or does a light go off within us and we accept the claim and in so doing accept Him?

The interesting thing is that even Christians do not react the same way. Yet God continues to offer his Word to us regardless what we think or do. Whether we care, or even whether we listen and reject, still the Word of God, the very Word made flesh in Jesus, the Christ, comes to us, calls us, with comfort and with criticism, with grace and with judgment.

And sometimes we Christians respond to His coming. We come Church to hear His Word, preserved for us in the Bible, to hear the truths that we can't find in the world. We come to hear and hopefully to learn, and having learned, to believe; and having believed, to trust and obey. Some find that Word in church worship, others on a mountain trail or sitting by a flowing stream.

My wife, Sue, and I find it both in communal worship and in other hardly "religious" ways. Sue finds it walking alone with God on the beach when we go down to Myrtle Beach for a little R and R. We both feel God close when we ride our motorcycles in the beautiful hills and valleys of this lovely place we call home.

One of the reasons that Christians pull themselves out of a warm bed on a cold winter morning and go to church is that, deep down, they know something that they cannot express. They know that they need the Word. Christian faith needs the strengthening, the encouragement, the sustenance that comes from hearing the Word spoken, and preached, and sung.

Our faith needs it because that is precisely the way Christian faith arises: out of the Word of God. Without it Christians wouldn't be Christians and they wouldn't bother. The Word, described in the Scriptures, reaches out to touch you, to mold you, to grasp your life, and, if necessary, to re-direct it.

In reading it, hearing it, singing it, listening to it preached, Christian faith is re-confirmed. We Christians live by the Word of God. And millions of non-Christians who share our heritage in the one God, but not our belief that Jesus was the Son of God, also uphold the truth of God’s Word.

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Will Willamon tells a true story of one such believer, a Jew. He tells about a time in Prague after the Nazis had overrun the country and were about the task of rounding up all the Jews to take them to the death awaiting in the concentration camps. In one of the Prague synagogues, just before they were to torch it and burn it to the ground the Nazis spied an old Rabbi sitting in his study preparing his sermon for the next Sabbath.

Deciding to utterly humiliate him, they dragged him into the synagogue, into the holy area of the chancel and made him strip naked, but for his yarmulke. And then they made him stand up in the pulpit. They called in people to fill the synagogue. And they ridiculed him and mocked him and told him, "Say something, old man!" And they taunted him, "Yeah! Preach to us! Preach what you were going to preach at your service. Preach!"

And then he began to preach, to preach something that none of his Nazi tormentors could understand. He spoke the words that, from the beginning, gave life to Israel:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.

And then, in that instant, power shifted from the Nazis to the old Rabbi. In speaking the Word, just in speaking the words, the Rabbi was assaulting, dismantling, all that the Nazis believed. There, in that soon to be torched synagogue, by an old man of the Word who would soon be killed, a new world was being claimed, formed by the Word of God, reclaimed for his Kingdom in the face of every evil.

Nothing those Nazis could do, no reign of terror, no twisted hatred, not even death itself, could overcome the faith of that one who spoke the Word of God. Nothing that day, nor in any day to come, could negate the God’s Word to the world. No sword could stop it; no sin overcome it; no evil destroy it.

In the beginning was the Word; and, in the end, God will have the last Word.

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I pray that all have a blessed Season of the Epiphany. It matters not whether you are a Christian, or are one of another faith or of no faith at all. God’s blessings fall on us all. For in the end we are all God’s children, even those who do not know him, or have rejected him. That is part of God's plan too. He knows that if love for him is to be a true love, truly given and truly received, there had to be free will to allow humans the choice to receive or to reject. That free will is offered as a gift, a grace to all of us.

Monte

You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor: Commandment #9

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We near the end of our series on the Exodus and the Ten Commandments. The previous essays in this series can be accessed through the links in the left hand column of this page.

As with the other Commandments please remember that they are intended to apply to practicing Jews and Christians. Those who would apply them to others who have not chosen to follow them abuse the original intention of the Commandments.

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Today we look at the Ninth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." In Hebrew, the actual words are blunter. Ed Saqer literally means do not be a "lying witness."

Most modern dynamic translations of the Bible translate the Ninth Commandment simply "You shall not lie," which, I think, is the appropriate thrust of the Commandment for us today, even though that translation likely is broader than the original meaning of the Commandment.

Originally, the Commandment was a prohibition against a very particular kind of lying: lying in court against a fellow Israelite. It was not likely a prohibition against lying in general, although it clearly soon became that for the Israelites, and is still for modern Jews and Christians.

If you read the Old Testament closely you will notice that almost all crimes, even the most trivial ones, were usually punishable by death. Obviously, the people then did not have video cameras and forensic experts or any of the modern devices and methods we take for granted in building a case against a criminal.

Rather, cases against alleged criminals were largely decided upon by the testimony of witnesses. In other words, the foundation of justice was based upon the truthfulness of the accusing citizens.

The Israelites were well aware of the potential for abuse of such a system and built numerous safeguards against lying witnesses into their judicial system. These safeguards are all recorded in the Bible.

Because a lying witness could literally commit murder by lying in a capital case - and remember, almost all cases were capital cases - the witness had to also be the executioner if the accused was found guilty. Death was by stoning, and the accusing witness was the one who was required to "cast the first stone."

This was because, if he were lying, by casting the first stone he would himself be guilty of "blood-guilt" before God, which was considered a most heinous crime against God, not just against a fellow human.

In the same way, no one could be found guilty upon the testimony of one witness alone. And while this no doubt allowed some who were guilty to go free, it also guaranteed that at least two or three witnesses would have to be against the accused for him to be condemned. There were also prohibitions against joining others in a conspiracy of lying witnesses.

And, finally, the punishment for witnesses who were found to be lying was that they would receive the punishment that the accused would have received; in other words, that they themselves would be put to death by stoning. It was no casual thing to perjure oneself in those days!

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Yet, while the original Commandment was probably fairly narrowly focused we see elsewhere in the Old Testament that it quickly was expanded to cover many other types of failure to be truthful.

As early as Chapter 23 of Exodus, God prohibits spreading false reports, joining hands with the wicked in malice against another, even in following the majority in wrong doing, and siding with the majority when you know they are lying and trying to pervert justice.

And in Leviticus, telling idle tales (gossip), and bearing false tales told by others (rumor mongering), dealing falsely with others (deception), lying in general, and swearing falsely in the Lord's name (blasphemy) are all prohibited.

Further expansions to cover any and all types of lying are found in Deuteronomy, Joshua and Hosea, including any deceptive, slanderous, idle or empty talk about others. In fact, any talk that would undermine the reputation of others, or cast them in a bad light, including deliberate efforts to deceive as well as casual gossip and rumor mongering that damages the esteem in which another is held was condemned.

And in many parts of the New Testament lying, gossip, slander and malicious talk is condemned as well, including St. James' scathing attack on the loose tongue, which is found in Chapters 3 and 4 of his Letter. Lying, in any form, has long been condemned as loathed by God.

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While we naturally tend to focus on the harm done to the individual when we think about the consequences of lying - and that harm can be devastating and irreversible - there is, and always has been, a larger issue at stake here.

And that is that God has designed justice to depend upon the truthfulness of the people of the community. Without truth, justice crumbles; and the society with it.

There is, of course, a positive side to all of this when we choose to commit ourselves to the truth and to enhancing the well-being of others. But it is our choice. God always gives us the right to choose between good and evil.

In his glorious diatribe against the lying, slandering, maligning, deceitful, judgmental tongue, St. James clearly recognizes that it is the same tongue which lies that praises God, with which we bless God, and with which we ask blessings upon our fellow men and women. It is the same tongue that builds up and destroys.

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And so, once again, with this Commandment as with all the others, it all comes down to motive. We can, and often do, tell the literal truth about another with the intent of doing them harm. Truth is elusive when there is mischief and deceit in the soul.

And truth itself is not always found in the facts, contrary to what our culture tries to tell us. Will we use factual truth for evil or for good? That is the question that is always presented to us by God.

Let me make up just one example from the hundreds that any of us could come up with to illustrate the point that motivation is the key. God, after all, has told us that he will look beyond the "facts" and see the truth. And we would do well to remember that.

Let's say that you are driving home very late one night, about 2:00 in the morning, in fact, and you see Henry coming out of John and Mary's house. And as you drive on it dawns on you that John is in Chicago all week on business.

And so, the next morning at a weekly coffee and cookies meeting at church, when things are a bit dull, you happen to tell the truth. "You know, I saw Henry coming out of Mary's house last night at 2:00 in the morning."

What have you done? Well, nothing. Right? I mean, all you did is tell the truth. And all present get that profound look on their faces that says, without words, "Well, you know what that means!" And, after the meeting, each goes about her and his business, which is to pass on this little tidbit of "factual information."

Now, as these "facts" get ground finer and finer in the gossip grist-mill a couple of days later someone who was not at the church coffee meeting decides to repeat to you what he has heard - which is, unbeknownst to him, of course, your original story, slightly skewed. He says, "I heard it from a reliable source that Henry and Mary are having an affair behind John's back."

Now, of course, it wouldn't occur to you that this is your rumor coming back to you. Rather, this is confirmation of your suspicion. This explains why Henry was coming out of Mary's house, sneaking out, come to think of it, in the middle of the night.

And you decide right then and there that this is something that the Pastor had better do something about. So, the next morning you go to him and tell him, "Pastor, I just thought that you should know that Henry and Mary are having an affair. Everybody knows it, and I even caught him sneaking out of her house the other morning before dawn."

The Pastor takes your information, thanks you, changes the subject, and finally ushers you out of his office. And you never hear word one from him about it again.

So what are you to do? Well, there is only one thing to do. At the next coffee and cookies meeting you tell everybody, "I found out from a completely reliable source that Henry and Mary are having an affair, which is why I caught him sneaking out of her house the other morning. And, as a good Christian I did my duty and told the Pastor about it. But he refuses to do anything about it. How can a so-called "man of God," when confronted with the facts, ignore this sin going on right under his nose!"

End of story.

What has happened here? Who has been built up? Who has been encouraged? Who has been hurt, maybe irrevocably, by this gossip, by this "innocent" recitation of "the facts?" Who has been given the benefit of the doubt? Who has been Christ-like?

Listen to St. James:

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?"

Who indeed?

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Next: the Tenth and final Commandment: thou shalt not covet.

God bless.

You Shall Not Steal: Commandment Eight

First published January 13, 2010 8:10PM on Open Salon

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We return to our series on the Exodus and the Ten Commandments. The previous essays in this series can be accessed through the links in the left hand column of this page.

As with the other Commandments please remember that they are intended to apply to practicing Jews and Christians. Those who would apply them to others who have not chosen to follow them abuse the original intention of the Commandments.

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The Eighth Commandment, "You shall not steal," sounds simple enough. Hopefully, by the end of this essay you will realize that, like the other Commandments, it is not as simple as it sounds.

This Commandment probably originally related to two very different things, only one of which we think of as "stealing." Exodus Chapters 21 and 22, part of the "Covenant Code," which expands upon and applies the Ten Commandments to everyday situations, clearly indicate that this Commandment applies to the unauthorized taking of another's animals and other property. That much we can clearly understand as "stealing."

But it also applies to kidnapping (21:16); that it, "stealing a man," or, more literally in Hebrew, "stealing a soul." Kidnapping someone for slavery was a fairly common practice of the time, (Remember Joseph?) and was punishable by death.

This type of theft was the only kind of "stealing" punishable by death. All other stealing was generally covered by making restitution to the owner, sometimes "overcompensating" the victim up to double the value of the stolen property.

Like the other Commandments, the prohibition against stealing was designed to guard the fellowship of the community, to insure stability of the nation, and to promote peace among neighbors.

Israel understood property as many still do today: as an extension of one's "self." Then, as now, people were often valued by what they had more than by who they were. We are not so unlike them as we might think! Theft of property was seen as a violation of the person, an idea not so foreign to anyone who has been the victim of theft.

In Deuteronomy, at 25:16, the Commandment is extended to all forms of dishonesty, an important point which will become more clear as we continue with this essay.

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Theft was viewed as an attack on the integrity of the human being by depriving one of the fruits of one's labor. After all, as we know from Genesis, work is part of God's plan for creation. God intends for people to work, and to receive the fruits of their labor.

And a thief does not respect this intention. Nor does a thief respect the gifts or talents that we use when we work, gifts which are blessings from God. Theft, then, makes a mockery of how God intends us to use creation: through the honest use of our time and our talents, as well as the resources of the planet.

Although I am not a great proponent of a "free market" economy, we should be clear that this is not an argument in favor of any particular form of economic system. Nothing in God's plan forbids communal ownership, as we can see by reading the Acts of the Apostles.

In fact, there the withholding of private property from the common use of the early Church resulted in a husband and wife, Ananias and Sapphira, dying - allegedly at the hands of God. In that story the withholding, the hoarding, of property from the good of the community was a type of "theft" that was described as abhorrent to God.

The question there was to do the will of God and to not test the Spirit's intention for the struggling new Christian community. By withholding valuables that were supposed to be pooled to benefit the entire community, this couple "stole" from the community and paid a very high price, indeed, for their "theft."

And while I do not believe that God would order such deaths, the question for us today is similar, but in many ways it is an even more difficult one. How do we apply this Commandment to our lives?

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Most Jews and Christians understand the prohibition against stealing in its most obvious forms. We know not to steal something outright. And we know not to condone those who do. Even if we don't, there are laws that do, and that punish obvious theft. It is not the obvious theft that is the big issue for us today, although there is plenty of that going around.

Rather it is the subtle theft that should concern us. It is the kind of theft that we sometimes try very hard to call anything else but stealing, that we try to justify to ourselves, that should worry us. When we become like Pharisees, using the letter of the law, bending it, to do what we want, yet knowing that it is against God's intention, then we violate the Law just as surely as if we steal outright.

I did an essay not so long ago about how God promised to help us understand the Torah because he said that he would write what we needed to know on our hearts. Right and wrong today are still "Written on our Hearts." We all have a conscience. And we ignore it to our moral detriment.

Take taxes. We may hate to pay taxes. Yet, if we knowingly cheat on our taxes, even though we do not get caught, and we know that the chances of getting caught are slim, and we know that "everyone else" does it, we are still stealing.

Take contributing to the or synagogue or church. We know what God expects from us in giving back in thanksgiving for the gift of life God has given to us. Yet, if we have a plan to give a certain amount, but we chose to spend the money on a new "toy" that we don't need, but we really want, instead of giving our fair share to God, then what do you think God calls that?

What about when we sell something to someone and we know that it is defective, but we don't tell them? Or if someone offers to pay us far more for something we have than we know it is worth? Or if the clerk at Wal-Mart accidentally gives you an extra $20 on a busy day, and there is no way she will remember who she gave it to, or, if she did, how to track you down, what do you do?

What about, when you are at work and your boss goes out of town? Do you take advantage of the fact to slack off and fiddle around instead of doing the job for which you are paid? Do you even think that loafing on the job is a form of theft?

There are thousands more examples of how we, day after day, are confronted with decisions, choices, about whether to do the right thing, or to steal. We don't want to call it that, but that is what it is.

And I am less concerned when we aren't even bright enough to know we are stealing, than when we feel our conscience telling us that we are dead wrong, and we go ahead and rationalize our actions anyway. Just how do we honor God when we do that?

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But we need to look even further, beyond the petty - and not so petty - thefts that we engage in through our own spiritual dishonesty to the thefts that we see going on all around us on a world-wide scale and either think nothing of or do nothing about. It is this subtle form of dishonesty that the extension of the Commandment in Deuteronomy seeks to confront.

We need to look at the structures of our corporate life together, locally, nationally and internationally, that we are ready and willing participants in, and ask ourselves just what God must think of them, our participation in them, or our indifference to their existence.

And to do that, we need to look first at American affluence. Now, don't laugh. By any economic standard of wealth as it is distributed in this world, most of us are affluent. And, if you literally are not affluent, if you have fallen victim to the economic crisis, have little or no income, and lost all or most of your valuables, then you can attest personally to how "affluent" the middle class family looks when viewed from the bottom of the economic bucket.

So we must ask ourselves about our attachment to the "things" of this life, about the extravagance of our lifestyles, about the mountains of waste we generate every year. How much food do you think is thrown away every day by the restaurants of this country, by the grocery stores that dare not display anything that is not "perfect"?

How many clothes do you already have in your closets that you seldom wear? Are they so bad that you are compelled to go out and buy more, over and over, as they stack up, hardly worn at all? Do we need, really need, all the things we have? But, worse, do we have to replace perfectly good "things" with other "things" just because they are "new"?

How do we justify how we spend our money in the face of the unbelievably wide-spread hunger and poverty in the world, in this country? I don't think that we can, that I can. I think we, you and I, if we are not out of work, homeless, or just plain broke, are stealing from the mouths of others.

Don't you find it sad that people in the lowest economic strata in the USA give more as a portion of their wealth than those in any other bracket? Is it true that you have to have known poverty to understand poverty? Aren't we smart enough to know how bad it must be to live that way without experiencing it ourselves?

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Which brings me to the largest point of all. One that you may not even agree with. But that's all right, because it needs to be said, and we all need to think about it. That is all I ask. Think about it. Don't just react, think. We are going to talk a little theology, to tie together how all this gluttony affects our faith; because I think that God must be shaking His head in dismay at our ostrich-like attitude about the plight of others.

The goods, the resources, of this good earth were put here by God to be shared: by all of the people on it and all of the creatures of it. God created this earth for our use, not our abuse. It, and all the resources of it, are ON LOAN to us.

We may think we "own" it. We may even think that we "own" all the things that we have in our possession; but we don't. God does. God tells us, "The earth is mine." And he means just what he says.

The fact of the matter is that we have done a lousy job in distributing the wealth of the earth, God's wealth. When St. Paul talks about the principalities and powers, the rulers and dominions of this world, he is not talking some abstract theological nonsense.

They exist. And we allow them to exist. And we need to, in Walter Bruggemann's terms, "probe even the subtle forms of 'theft' that rob persons of their future." He points to kinds of "theft" that Jews and Christians too often have turned a blind eye to, things we may not have focused on as "stealing".

First, there is a terrible inequity of "haves" and "have nots" in our society. Babies born into acute poverty are, at the outset of life, denied any realistic chance of "becoming all they can be" or, in secular terms, "living the American dream." Where you are born, and who your parents are, can determine whether or not you have any reasonable chance at living a good life.

Yet those children have every bit as much a God-given right to live Christ's promised "abundant life" as do our own children. Very often those children are robbed of their future, not necessarily by "bad people," but rather by power arrangements and social structures that long ago relegated them to a permanent underclass in our society.

It is true, as Jesus said, that "the poor will always be with us." But do not misinterpret what He said. He was stating a fact; not a preference. As Christians, should we be contributing to the theft of the birthright of millions of children, even if we contribute to that theft only through our indifference?

Second, a major theft began to run rampant in the nineteenth century by the developed nations of the resources of the undeveloped nations. We always called it something else: "colonialism," "the white man's burden," "saving the world for democracy," "manifest destiny."

But whatever we called it then, or call it now, the fact is that the rich nations and companies often stole the resources of Africa, Asia and Latin America while giving them only a fraction of the value of those resources. Nor did they develop the infrastructures in those poor lands to allow the people there to become self-sufficient in the future.

And the sad truth is that the developed nations, seldom through direct action, but through the actions of our unchecked giant banks and corporations, continue this rape of smaller, dependent nations while turning a blind eye to corporate greed, and often aiding and abetting that greed through laws and regulations that encourage such stealing.

And while that is bad enough, current credit arrangements, military alliances, and the weakness of international cooperation keep those same countries in abject poverty even now, over a hundred and fifty years later. Thus the world watches a self-fulfilling prophecy as predictable wave after wave of violence, poverty, hunger, illness and plague sweep through those lands.

And what do we do? We soothe our collective conscience by coming in when it is all but too late, with disaster aid, which is, of course, better than nothing. But the root of the problem is institutional, and we do little or nothing to change those institutions. And so the principalities and powers, rulers and dominions of Paul's day are alive and well in our own.

When the theft is raw and obvious we raise our voices in sincere complaint for a day, a week, a month or a year. And then we move on to the next "interesting issue."

But the theft goes on, long after our sound bite attention span has moved on to yet another thing we can cluck our tongues at and shake our heads, "amazed" at the greed of others. Are we really all that amazed, or are we really not all that interested as long as we are not directly doing the raping of resources ourselves?

In our own nation we sit back and watch, and cluck our tongues as corporate executives rob and rape our greatest companies, executives who pay themselves at rates hundreds of times what they pay their employees.

We watch as government leaders turn their heads with indifference, or cluck their tongues, or blame it on someone else, or appoint yet another commission to investigate the greed of the nation's largest financial institutions, even as we give $700 Billion dollars to them to insure that nothing changes.

We support sports teams owned by arrogant billionaires who argue with spoiled millionaire players over who will get our money, all the while the costs to the fan skyrockets to where an ordinary family cannot afford to attend the games.

We think nothing of the fact that a baseball player can make $5 to 20 thousand dollars for every time at bat; a basketball player $3000 and more for every basket attempted, or a golfer more than a million dollars for winning just one match.

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Where am I going with this? Just here. Our values are warped, my friends. And include me when I say "our." My values are warped. We, you and I, know what is right. We know the right things to do.

And if we cheat in our day-to-day lives with all the little thefts that we either commit or ignore, then how can we even begin to look seriously at the really huge thefts going on in the world at large? Aren't they just doing the same thing but on a more massive scale?

We might take a quick glance at the Eighth Commandment and think that it is simple and that obeying it is not all that hard. Well that is wrong headed thinking. It is not simple; applying it to your life is not simple; applying it to the principalities and powers that rule this earth is even harder; and, sometimes, obeying it seems almost impossible.

But what is impossible for man is possible for God. If we cannot stop ourselves from stealing without God's help, then we need to turn to God for the strength to "do the right thing."

If we cannot look at the structures of evil which distribute the wealth of this world so unevenly that vast numbers of people have no chance at the "abundant life," then we need to turn to God for the strength to look at the reality of the stealing of the life blood of others that we allow. And we need to do it now.

God bless.

Lewis "Satchmo" Armstrong

There are certain singers and players that had great influence on my preferences for music. None had a greater impact, with the exception of Sinatra, than Louis "Sachmo" Armstrong.

Since the purpose of this post is to allow you to listen to a master, I do not want to try to reinvent the wheel while giving you a brief history of his life and work. What follows is the short bio available at answers.com.

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* Born: 4 August 1901
* Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
* Died: 6 July 1971 (heart attack)
* Best Known As: The charismatic jazz trumpeter who recorded "Hello Dolly"

Louis Armstrong was the most famous jazz trumpeter of the 20th century. Like Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong began playing in New Orleans clubs and saloons in his early teens. By the 1920s Armstrong was touring the country and leading his own band, the Hot Five (later the Hot Seven). He continued to tour and record throughout his life and was particularly famous for his innovative, loose-limbed improvisations; some call him the first great jazz improvisor. His gravelly voice and sunny persona were a hit with the non-jazz public, and later in his career he became a sort of cheerful ambassador of jazz, even appearing as himself (more or less) in movies like High Society (1956, with his good friend Bing Crosby and starlet Grace Kelly) and Hello, Dolly! (1969, with Barbra Streisand). The theme song from the latter film became his most widely-known recording.

Armstrong's nickname Satchmo was an abbreviation of "satchelmouth," a joke on the size of his mouth... He was also nicknamed Gatemouth, Dippermouth, Dip, and simply Pops... Armstrong was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1990... In 2001 the city of New Orleans renamed its airport as Louis Armstrong International Airport... Armstrong is credited with influencing trumpeters as diverse as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis.

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That short bio just skims the surface of the life of the one who became known as The Ambassador of Jazz. But his popularity with the general public came from his singing of American Standards and other popular songs on early television and appearing many, many times on all of the popular variety shows of that era. And he had many motion picture credits, often small parts in romantic comedies from the 40s up almost the time of his death in 1971.

A solid, more detailed biography is available in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong

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But you can read that later. Now you need to hear some great music by this master or jazz, standards and pop.

Here is, first, a Playlist of 20 of Lewis' greatest recordings that you can just listen to. You can also open another tab on your browser and go about your business on the internet. You will see how versatile Satchmo was: playing jazz, pop and ballads on the trumpet, and occasionally on the cornet; singing in that inimitatable gravelly voice of his; and adapting to the music of the day without giving up one ounce of his personal touch on the music as only he could play and sing it.

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I have also provided an old grainy video clip, for those of you who are too young to have a good mind's eye of what Lewis looked like when he performed: his signature, ever present white handkerchief, his eyes which went from sleepy to wide open astonishment as he sang, and the glory of music that shone from him every time he stepped on a stage, whether at a bar on Bourbon Street or on the Ed Sullivan Show.

This song that became one of his sigaiture songs late in his career because it captured the hearts of the American people.

Let us salute Louie Armstrong, legend of American music.

Commandment Seven: You Shall Not Commit Adultery

Now that the holidays are behind us we can return to the completion of our series on the Exodus and the Ten Commandments. The previous essays in this series can be accessed through the links in the left hand column of this page.

As with the other Commandments please remember that they are intended to apply to practicing Jews and Christians. Those who would apply them to others who have not chosen to follow them abuse the original intention of the Commandments.

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The Seventh Commandment is another terse statement of prohibition:
(Exo 20:14 NRSV) You shall not commit adultery. It is concerned with the physical act of adultery.

The first things I would like you to understand about this Commandment is that it is more narrowly conceived than most moderns realize. And it is difficult for us to understand its original meaning because the rules of the society then were so utterly different than our rules.

Likewise, we need to resist the temptation to read back into the original Commandment our understanding of what it means. To do so is to indulge ourselves in anachronistic thinking that perverts the original meaning.

There are responsible modern interpretations of the Commandment which we will discuss, and they are far different than the ancient interpretations. We must rigorously, however, not confuse the two.

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First, let us look at the original application of the Commandment in ancient Israel.

One thing we need to understand before we can intelligently discuss this Commandment is that it was designed primarily to protect the stability of the family, the community and the nation. Issues of marital disloyalty struck at the very fabric of Israelite society.

Maintaining the family as the core of social order was considered so vital to the nation that adultery was punishable by death in the Covenant Code which applied the Commandments to the ancient Israelite society.

Adultery, as described in the Bible, applies to both men and women. It applies only to married persons, and to those who are betrothed to be married.

There is, however, a distinct "double standard" expressed in how this commandment was interpreted, since married men could commit adultery only with married women, while a married woman was said to have committed adultery if she had sex with any man.

Consensual adult sexual activity between unmarried persons was not expressly prohibited in those times, although many specific sexual acts are prohibited in later elaborations and applications of Torah.

For instance, the entire 18th chapter of Leviticus deals with prohibitions against several specific forms of incest, and includes many other sexual prohibitions, such as having sex during a woman's menstruation period, having intercourse with a relative's wife, homosexual sex between men, and sex with animals.

Men, however, are nowhere forbidden to have sex with prostitutes, and, consensual sex between a man, married or not, and an unmarried woman who was not a prostitute was not prohibited, provided the man then married that woman. Remember, a man then could have many wives.

If there was sexual intercourse between a man and an unmarried woman, whether or not the man was married, he was expected to marry the woman, but he was not punished for having sex with her before marriage.

In fact, it is clear that even the rape of a woman by a man was not specifically condemned, although it was frowned upon. But it was not condemned, provided the man married the women he raped.

The Bible story of the rape of Tamar is a story of the frustration of a raped girl and the revenge she and her brother took for the rape, when the King David, the girl's own father, did nothing about it.

The story tells of David's oldest son, Amnon, who raped his half-sister, Tamar, who begged him to marry her to take away the stigma. [There was no law against the marriage of siblings at that time.] But Amnon drove Tamar away, and while David felt disgraced and was saddened upon learning of the rape, he did nothing. Tamar then went to her full brother, Absalom, who had Amnon killed.

Clearly the biblical redactors saw this act of revenge as a form of justice or the story would not have survived in the Bible.

In a similar way, the Seventh Commandment was not a prohibition against polygamy, that is, a man having multiple wives, which was common practice in Old Testament times. Interestingly, polyandry, a woman having multiple husbands, was prohibited. This is simply a further example of the rampant double standard in those times.

Such ideas regarding the status and treatment of women are, of course, totally foreign to us; and they should be repugnant to thinking men and women today.

This double standard stemmed from the patriarchal nature of the society then. And while our society still has a long way to go in recognizing and enforcing equal rights for women, it has come a long way from the patriarchal society of ancient Israel.

Women had almost no rights in those times. Wives were considered the property of their husbands. They were chattel. If a woman were raped, for example, it was considered a big deal only because the rapist "used" another man's property without proper payment! But, if the rapist married the woman and paid an appropriate sum to the father of the woman, then the offended "owner" was compensated for his loss. The violation of the woman's very being was not an issue. That should be appalling to our ears today.

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Let us now look at modern interpretations of the Commandment.

From this point in this essay the discussion focuses on modern Christian interpretation of the Commandment.

[It would be helpful if a Jewish reader of this series would, in comments here or in a separate post, give a brief explanation of modern Jewish interpretation of the Commandment.]

Modern Christian interpretation is based upon statements made by the founder of the Christian faith, Jesus of Nazareth.

I invite us now to focus on the very sharp contrast between the Seventh Commandment as interpreted in ancient Israel and Jesus' interpretation of it. Jesus says, (Mat 5:27-28, NRSV) "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Jesus is not saying that the prohibition against adultery is not applicable. It is. Jesus is against physical adultery. But Jesus is also saying that our understanding of adultery as simply a physical act is too narrow.

In its most obvious form, adultery is a physical act. But Jesus raises the stakes for all Christians smug enough to look down on those who have succumbed to physical adultery, by telling us that lusting after a woman is also committing adultery.

The only difference between President Jimmy Carter's admission of looking at a woman other than his wife with lust in his heart and the vast majority of men in this world is that he admitted it. And he knew it was a sin. Carter knew he had sinned and wanted to use his sin as an example of what other men also do but never admit they do it.

It never occurs to most Christian men that they are, in fact, sinning by lusting after women who are not their wives. Rather most would deny it to be a sin at all, saying that "it is only natural" and that "all men do it." The fact that neither of those excuses address an issue that Jesus clearly says is a sin does not cross their minds.

But Jesus has raised the bar. Just as he included angry thoughts in the prohibition against murder, so too here he includes lust filled thoughts in the prohibition against adultery. He tells us that what goes on in our hearts and minds is every bit as important as what we actually do.

Jesus here, as in all of his teachings, is interested in our motives, our inner-most intentions, our thoughts, our desires - many of which we shamefully hide from the rest of the world. But we do not hide those things from him. An ancient prayer describes God as the one "from whom no secrets are hid." Well, the Christ, Jesus, is the one from whom no secrets are hid.

Knowing this, it seems to me that Christians need to take a step back from the false pride in which we so often indulge. Such pride only layers one sin upon another. It comes from thinking that we are righteous because we do not actually do things which are clearly against God's commands.

Worse, it can come from thinking that we have gotten away with cheating because nobody has caught us in the act. Pride like that is a terrible sin. When we think that we are better than those who have been caught, or those who have recognized and confessed their sin, we fool only ourselves. We do not fool God.

Our faith teaches us that those who have sinned, be it adultery or some other sin, and have recognized that sin and sincerely confessed it, intending not to commit such a sin again, are far better in God's eyes than are those who sin, either in their hearts or by their actions, and have no intention of ever admitting that sin. God considers those who have confessed their sin to God, and have asked for forgiveness, to be righteous.

Yes, Jesus condemns physical adultery; but he has chosen to use the prohibition against adultery to call us to a higher standard which includes examining our own lusts and desires.

And he has introduced compassion for sinners along with self examination into the equation when addressing the sin of adultery.

When the people wanted to stone the woman who was found in adultery,to kill her, he did not condone her sin. Nor did he condemn her. His focus was not on her sin; rather, it was on those who would kill her: "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone," was his response to what they proposed to do.

He knew their hearts, and He knew that none was without sin. He also knew that there is no hierarchy of sins. Sin is sin. And yet we so often consider our own sin small and another's sin large. But Jesus did not say "those who are without the sin of adultery." He said "those who are without sin," for he knew that all sin makes us unrighteous in the eyes of God.

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In summary, while it is not valid to take anachronistically the interpretation of ancient Israel of the Seventh Commandment and apply that to our own lives, there are some things that we do know about applying it to modern practicing Christians.

Adultery is still a sin and when we commit it we violate God's law. But Christians also believe that through the love of God in Christ, we can take our sins to him and that he has covered those sins with his love. We can be forgiven.

By the same token, however, Christians are not given license to go right on sinning and confessing, sinning and confessing, over and over again. Confession is not a game. Jesus knows our hearts and our true intentions, and when we abuse the grace of forgiveness he knows it. He knows when we are walking in darkness, away from the light of God.

And we have learned that Jesus has raised the bar, changing the meaning of adultery from simply a physical act to a sin of the heart as well.

Whatever loopholes we might think there were before, since Jesus there are no loopholes for Christians. And because Jesus looks at the habits of the heart, he knows that none of us is without sin, be it adultery or pride or a host of other sinful intentions.

We are human and the truth is that, try as we may, we simply cannot not sin. But the good news is clear as well. God, through Jesus, has provided an answer to our sin. We can never be wholly righteous, but Christ is. And through his righteousness, when we confess our sins, seek forgiveness and mend our ways, we are made right with God.

If you are a Christian, your task is to constantly monitor not only your personal behavior but also your thoughts and intentions, doing your best to conform them to the instructions of God. And, when you do not, your task is to turn in confession and repentance to the one who can and will cover your sin with his love.

God bless.