A Helpful Explanation

“We objectify everything and begin to think of our bodies as an achievement… We see the body as a problem, as a hindrance to spiritual life – in order to get to the true self, who we really are, we have to somehow control the body and make it do what we want it to do.  In that way we will finally be who we’re ‘supposed to be’,  ‘who we are’.  Previously secular women have a lot of interest in spirituality.  And what drives this is the idea that spirituality is a way to find your ‘true, inner self’ as seen in opposition to your ‘bodily self’.  In other words, we want to escape the body and the limitations of our bodies by becoming spiritual in a disembodied spirituality.  This comes from Descartes’s mind/body opposition.  What happens when you do that is everything done immediately through the body – your eating, your work, your sexuality - becomes meaningless.  So you can do anything you want to, sexually, or through surgery, or manipulation of any kind that you want.  These things are considered acceptable because you’re just trying to get down to ‘who you really are’ your ‘inner self’.  Now, we are more than our bodies, but we are our bodies.  And we need to think of ourselves and other people holistically – not think, ‘Well, there’s somebody in there who really is who you really are’.  In the Christian paradigm, this is how our faith is supposed to be lived out.”

Lillian Calles Barger, author of Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body and President of the Damaris Project

"Widerstehe doch der Sünde: Stand strong against sin." BWV 54

Glenn Gould once said that Bach was the greatest architect of sound to ever live.  Here he takes us on a guided tour of Cantata 54.  Written to accompany the Lenten reading for "Oculi Sunday" from Ephesians 5.1-9.  As Gould notes, these are probably the words of our elder brother in the Faith, Johann, himself.  In it we hear and feel the swelling seduction of temptation along with the struggle and tension of dissonant chords, but then, through it all cuts the clear voice of the Spirit calling us to stand strong and overcome our enemy.

“Stand firm against all sinning, or its poison will possess you.. Those who commit sin are of the devil, for he has invented sin, but if one resists his vile shackles with true devotion, sin will straightaway take flight.”

Zeitgeist as Fog not Wind

"We live in an age that keeps authoritative institutions, philosophies, and religions at arm's length, mixing and matching and analyzing them with a market-place mentality.

There is a fear of change, but who wouldn't be afraid of change?  St Augustine in The Confessions is a freshman in college and reads this book by Cicero that is a call to pursue wisdom for its own sake, so he says it changes his life and he goes after wisdom, but at the moment of his conversion, he looks back on the previous ten or twelve years and, although he set off to pursue wisdom, he realized that nothing really changed, because he didn't really want to be different.

It's scary.  Our habits whisper in our ear and tell us that without them we wouldn't be who we really are.  And Augustine says that in the end that's right.  We wouldn't be who we are.  Part of the genius of The Confessions is to affirm that the journey of faith really is a death to self; it is a really disjunctive and wrenching kind of transformation.  Who wouldn't be frightful in the face of that?"

R.R. Reno, author of "In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminishing Christianity"

Begbie, Music, and the Problem of Evil

Enjoy

[link: 5809909]

Worship Music and Immaturity

Musical Reformation and Emotional Maturity

Imagine a man dying of kidney failure.  Tests confirm that his cousin is a potential match.  So at the last minute, his cousin undergoes the risky procedure to donate a kidney with the hope that it will save the man's life.  It does.  And ever since, every Sunday, the two of them meet for an afternoon meal, the joy of each other's company, and to share in the experience of their "second/new" life together.

It has been many years since the surgery - several decades, in fact - and one Sunday, the cousin invites you to join them for their meal and time together.  Much to your surprise, as you pull into the driveway with the cousin-donor you see the formerly-healed man fling open the door with an ecstatic look on his face and his arms upraised in celebration.  He flies out of his house with leaps and bounds shouting at the top of his lungs and dancing in jubilation toward you.  Before your companion can fully open his car door, the man has boisterously pulled him from the vehicle in an explosive bear-hug.  He then looks at you wide-eyed and in a yelling voice recounts the basics of the story that you know already - "This is the man that saved my life by his sacrifice! He gave me his kidney!"  His shouts appear to startle the neighbors and a man down the street walking his dog.

Now remember - the surgery was over a decade ago.  And they have met every Sunday since.  So here is the question: wouldn’t you think this man's behavior odd, contrived or rehearsed, or even, in some way, inappropriate?  Yes, you would.  Why?  Because gratitude, as it deepens over time, takes a shape and expression that differs from momentary exhilaration like an old-vine Zinfandel differs from cherry Kool-aid.

Real Churches & Fake Ones

"The fact that some churches become dysfunctional should be grieved but is not a surprise to those who truly live in community.  True community is always messy, for it seeks life in the friendship of embodied living persons.  A church with no discord, a church that has climbed to the mount beyond the possibility of dysfunction, is no longer a community but an ideal facade where the preaching becomes only principles and worship just Muzak.  
There is no way to avoid discord, and the Christian leader that wants community without discord wants not true community but to drug himself with a needle of the ideal to the vein.  The leader who wants the ideal of community does not want community at all, for the ideal is community without the humanity of physical bodies in relationship.  The leader who wants the ideal community has turned community into an idol."  

- Andrew Root, Bonhoeffer As Youth Worker
 

Good Friday Devotional Prayer

Good Friday Prayer

Oh Christ, You are the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. 

You were sent from Heaven through a virgin womb to be our manna in a barren desert.

You, Who were anointed with burial oil at Your birth and again at Holy Week when You walked through Jerusalem smelling of a spiced tomb. 

By the sweat of Your brow you labored to feed Your bride the bread of Your own flesh, great drops as of blood falling to the ground, crying out to God, not for vengeance, but mercy - Father, forgive them.

At the sound of Your coming judgment You did not hide, but welcomed those who sought You with torches and weapons.  You were driven out of the garden by their fiery swords. And on that day, You surely died for us.  

You became shamefully naked and were found in the middle of the trees.  

But by Your death, we were clothed from on high.

Now men may once again walk with their Lord in Paradise, as You promised the thief at Your side.

You took our place on the altar, as the ram whose horns were caught in the briars.  You took our curse upon Your head with a crown of thistles and thorns of iron pierced Your hands and feet. 
On the wooden cross, that sharp iron was redeemed as if to float in the flowing streams and we who were lost and sinking deep were drawn out and returned to You.
By Your cross our bitter waters have been made sweet.

You were suspended in midair, between Heaven and Earth, our bridge; the Mediator between God and men.

Blood and water flowed from the rock of Your split side and from the cursed labor pain of Your belly, the Church was born of water and blood; Your Bride from Your rib.

Our first father Adam failed to look after the woman You gave him, but You remembered Mary and made provision for her even as You died on that tree, where the centurion's eyes were opened to understand good and evil.

You were lifted up like Moses’ brass serpent, so that he and every fatal sinner might look to You and be healed.  And it is by Your blood in the sign of the cross on our door frames, that our judgment passes over us. 
Like Moses between Aaron and Hur on the hilltop and like Samson between the pillars, You stretched Your arms wide to sacrifice Yourself and deliver God's people, gaining us the victory.

At Golgotha, You tread upon the skull of death and under Your pierced heel the head of the serpent was crushed.

Precious Jesus, You have made the Cross to be our Tree of Life, blooming with the fruit of Your own body, which by glad faith, we take, eat, and live.
You have made every day Good Friday, for  every day we live in the blessed joy of Your bitter Passion and death, the remedy of our sin. 
So we join our hearts and voices in the angel song:

Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise, now and forevermore.

Amen.