Miranda Writes

For more thoughts on the same subject, see my friend and colleague Kurt’s sermon based on the same texts, and our Bishop’s recent reflections.

This Sunday’s lessons drop us right into the middle of one of the biggest and stickiest questions for people of faith. Why do bad things happen to good people? For that matter, why do bad things happen to ordinary people, neither particularly good nor particularly bad?

Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, thinks he has it figured out. Bad things happened to the Israelites because they worshiped false gods – indulged in immoral behaviors – and complained when things weren’t going well. And if we act the same way, we should expect the same outcome – sudden and violent death.

Jesus, speaking in Luke’s Gospel, complicates this a bit. Those Galileans murdered by Pilate’s men? They weren’t worse sinners than any other average Galilean. And those people crushed when that tower fell – remember that? – they weren’t worse sinners than anybody else living in Jerusalem in these days. The victims of sudden and violent death aren’t especially evil or sinful. They are likely to be just like everybody else.

But then, what explanation can we find? Why do bad things happen to ordinary people? Why do bad things happen at all? And how can we believe in a good and loving God, when the world is so full of suffering?

The bad news is, there’s no tidy answer. The good news is that struggling with this question can lead us deeper into faith,  and give us a clearer vision of God’s nature – and God’s love.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read this wonderful, provocative conversation with Sara Miles, an Episcopal writer. There’s much to ponder here. I find the section excerpted below to be particularly thought-provoking. Several of the folks at St. Gregory Nyssa, the parish where Miles works (and where she came to faith), occasionally teach workshops on liturgy. When I attended one in 2006, one idea I carried away was that church should be “safe but not comfortable.” Church should be a safe space, where all our questions, our gifts, our wounds, our personality quirks and our noisy children are welcomed and loved – but comfort means nothing is challenging us or changing us. I’m sure Miles has that idea in mind here, as she talks about the danger in aiming to make our churches comfortable.

People want to change and people don’t to change. People profoundly want to be made new, and people profoundly want to be clothed in Christ, to be born again. And they profoundly want to cling to everything old – about the world, and about themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Are our cultural conflicts in this country between “traditional religious views” and “secular progressive views”? That’s the way moral and religious conflicts are often portrayed – and it leaves moderate and progressive Christians (and other people of faith) with nowhere to stand. By that logic, either we’ve sold out to a secular mindset and aren’t really following our faith, or we mean well but misunderstand our faith – if we really followed Jesus, we’d be fighting for the other side.

Professor Mark Jordan of Harvard Divinity School recently wrote a short piece  that tackles this way of describing our divisions. He points out that a lot of the progressive views that have emerged in the past century, like anti-racism and women’s rights, have been advocated by Christian leaders re-reading our tradition and finding new light there. Moderate and progressive views can be just as faith-filled as “traditional” views – and moderate and progressive people of faith should claim that ground.

What’s more, the definition of “tradition” itself is pretty open-ended. When we talk about the “traditional” way of doing things, are we thinking of the 1950s? the 1500s? the 300s? Those different historical touchstones are associated with very different mindsets and practices, so “tradition” is not at all clear-cut.

Much to think about here! Take a look (don’t worry if you don’t know who Peter Steinfels is; I didn’t either – and it’s not necessary to understand the article) and share your thoughts.

Our daughter was born yesterday evening, at the Concord Birth and Wellness Center. She is healthy and delightful! We are all home, resting & enjoying our family time. Thanks for everyone’s help, prayers, and support!

I have a general policy against using stories about my own kid(s) as sermon (or blog post) material. But I want to tell this one, because it illustrates one of the reasons I love the Godly Play approach to Sunday school: the way the stories offer language and images that even young children can carry away and work with in their own thinking, talking, and storytelling. Our son has something of an advantage, because when one of his parents is going to tell a story, he gets to hear it several times and has more of a chance to absorb the story. But I think that even on one hearing, a lot can sink in.

This past Sunday, our Godly Play classes heard the story of the Great Family – Abraham and Sarah, and their covenant to be the ancestors of God’s people. The story ends by pointing ahead to all the generations of Abraham’s descendants, right down to the grandparents and parents of the children listening to the story, and to the children themselves. As God promised Abraham, his family has become as numerous as grains of sand in the desert, or stars in the night sky (Genesis 22:17).

This morning, our son asked me, “Did you know I’m part of everybody’s family?”

I said, “How do you figure that?”

He answered, “Because everybody is part of God’s family.”

I answered, “Oh, like in the Abraham story? The Great Family story?”

“Yes,” he said. “His family was as many as the sands of the desert and the stars in the sky.”

I remarked, “That’s a pretty big family, huh? All the people in the world?”

Laughing, he said, “It would have to be a really big table!”

A “really big table” indeed – big enough for God’s whole family to sit around together. As Jesus said in this Sunday’s Gospel, for mortals such a thing is impossible – but for God, anything is possible!

After the beautiful baby shower this past Sunday afternoon, after that outpouring of gifts and affection and support, after all the kind words from so many of you over the past weeks, sympathetic with my discomfort and excited about the weeks to come – it seems like I should have something more eloquent to say… but really, this is just about all I can find: Thank you.

I am looking forward to my maternity leave – to having some time to rest at home with my family, and begin getting to know the new person who will be joining us so soon now. I am also looking forward to sharing this baby with all of you, once we’re ready to return to parish life. We know that this community will love this child well, and will support us as we embark on this new chapter of parenthood. It feels good to move into these final weeks of pregnancy, knowing that all that love and support is there for us. Thank you.

How can we make sense of some of the stories in the Old Testament in which God orders the complete destruction of Israel’s enemies, including not just soldiers but civilians and even livestock? Here’s one answer: Look elsewhere in the Old Testament for a different perspective – one more in keeping with the merciful God we encounter in the New Testament. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, a Christian humor website called Ship of Fools solicited readers’ suggestions of the “worst” verses in the Bible – the most oppressive, distressing, or difficult to wrestle with. Recently the Telegraph, a UK newspaper, published a list of the “Top 10 Worst Bible Passages,” based on responses at Ship of Fools. When the Episcopal Church shared this article via Facebook, a few folks got upset. Here’s a great blog post about the whole kerfuffle.

I tend to agree with this blogger – for the Episcopal Church to share this article publicly amounted to raising it for discussion, not endorsing it (in any event, the only position here to endorse would be that some verses and stories in the Bible are pretty grisly or otherwise hard to take – not many would disagree with that!). And it’s true that many folks feel alienated from Christianity because of “texts of terror” like these; it’s good to send the message that people of faith wrestle with the sticky bits, too. What do you think?

(By the way, when I read about the call for least favorite verses, I immediately thought of the end of Psalm 137 – #4 on the Telegraph list.)

This summer as many as 15 of us met weekly to talk together about Michael Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food. In this book, Pollan outlines many reasons to be wary of processed foods and the industrial food system, arguing that many aspects of our current food system are bad for both human and ecological health. We found a lot to talk about, and argued with Pollan on occasion, but we all found something valuable in Pollan’s basic rules of thumb: Eat food (by which he means simple, whole foods – nothing highly-processed, or with too many ingredients, especially ones you can’t pronounce); not too much; and mostly plants. (And when you eat meat, eat local meat if possible – both Pollan and the movie Food Inc. offer many good reasons to avoid the industrial meat production system!)

What does all this have to do with faith? (What would Jesus eat?) When we spent time with this question in our final session, a couple of wonderful answers emerged. Several people spoke about how they have experienced God, God’s creation and God’s time by being outdoors, working in a garden, even coming to a farmer’s market or pick-your-own farm to experience the bounty of the season. God’s grace grows slowly, secretly, day by day, then bears astonishing fruit, just like blueberry bushes and peach trees. Supermarket shopping hides all those processes from us. We find God too in the relationality and connectedness of “short food chains” – of knowing the people and places our food comes from.

Reading and talking together left us eager to continue to build a network of mutual support, to help ourselves and each other find and use as much locally- or regionally-produced food as possible (“short food chains” are beneficial in lots of ways), and share ideas, resources, and skills (like pickling or canning) for eating and living sustainably. We plan to establish a “Sustainable Living” email list for this purpose, which will be open to anyone who’d like to be part of it. If you’re interested, talk to Miranda Hassett or keep an eye out for an announcement when we launch the new list! And if you have an idea or skill (or an oversupply of seasonal produce) to share, please let us know!