lent Thursday think
Out here in my forty day lenten wilderness contemplating // Jesus' forty days in the wilderness resisting temptation // Moses' forty years in the wilderness with thousands of maddeningly whining escaped slaves.
Contemplating a favorite Bible scholar and theologian (don't know that he calls himself a theologian), Bart Ehrman, recently retired longTime professor teaching Bible subjects at UNC Chapel Hill, NC.
Dr Ehrman's personal religious history took him on quite a wilderness journey. Starting as a fundamentalist Christian, he evolved as he explored questions and acquired doubts. For a while Dr Ehrman was in the Episcopal Church, until his conscience and integrity triumphed over saying the Nicene Creed and facing the theodicy question, "If God is all powerful and all loving, why is there suffering and pain in the world?" Dr Ehrman chose to be a nonbeliever, atheist, agnostic (not sure what he calls himself). He is a scholar and thinker.
Dr Ehrman's doubts and questions are known to many, including me; though I answer differently in that I choose to stay, sing the songs and say the Creed. I've worked out my answer to the question of theodicy. And in the Episcopal Church we don't check our brains at the door, we can doubt and seek, and we have our Baptismal Covenant that gets to the heart of it: Christianity is less about what we say we believe about God than it is about how we treat God's people. Also, now and then something clicks and I have a saving moment of spiritual experience in spite of myself. The Episcopal Church is my lifelong home. And I love the people. So, I stay.
So did Friedrich Schleiermacher, who, though he pointed out that the Nicene Creed asserts things about God that are beyond human knowing, he also wrote his five essays "On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers."
+++++++
I'm thinking to check out our Propers for this coming Sunday, Lent 2 Year A and comment:
The Old Testament - Genesis 12:1-4a
The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.
The Epistle - Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
+++++++
Focusing only on Genesis and Paul to the Romans. The Genesis reading is YHWH's first of many Times making his promise Abram/Abraham, a promise that eventually seems ludicrous to Abraham ("my servant Eliezer shall be my heir!").
In today's story Abram, trusting God (Abram's trust is the Faith that Paul speaks of) does as YHWH says, thereby establishing the Covenant between Abraham and YHWH Elohim, the Covenant that the two old drinking buddies as my seminary OT professor called them, will renew and renew and renew over the next twenty-five years until YHWH finally comes through with the birth of Isaac - - Isaac, likely conceived not by Abraham the Centenarian, but during the visit of the three strangers under the Oaks of Mamre - - when Sarai/Sarah, "with whom it had ceased to be after the manner of women," was hiding inside the tent giggling about the young stranger, an "anonymous" visitor,
who also visited the mother of Samuel, the mother of John the Baptist, and the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.
Wandered as usual but that's my take on the story of Abram that begins with Sunday's Genesis reading.
Paul picks up on the Genesis passage and says that what Abram did was faith, not works. But the Letter of James says "Faith without Works is dead" with the example that it's worthless in meeting a cold, hungry man to exude, "be warm and filled" (faith) and not follow through by giving him a blanket, a seat by the fire, and a bowl of red bean stew with a loaf of bread (works).
Then, Martin Luther dismisses the Letter of James as a right strawy epistle.
Paul and Luther are both wrong. Luther for dismissing James - - I'm letting Luther go because I'm educated Lutheran but not converted Lutheran.
Paul, though. Paul is wrong for overlooking (or deliberately ignoring) that Abraham's act of obedience (gathering up his household and heading off from Ur into his life with YHWH) was itself a work, a Major Work. A work based on faith, but a work nevertheless, just as our faith statement in our Baptismal Covenant is followed by our promises as to how we will live because of what we believe.
Paul needs to come back and do a bit of revising or clarifying, nomesane?
++++++
Anyway, my contemplation for this morning. Linda has an appointment for an Echocardiogram, then this afternoon we're invited for a tour of the rapidly completing Linda and Tom Weller STREAM Building at Holy Nativity Episcopal School, which promises to be the highlight of our week!I We've been driving by and stopping to check out construction progress a couple Times a week, and wanting to go inside but hesitated to ask. Today we're touring the building by invitation!!
RSF&PTL
T90