The UmBlog

source Luke 16 The Message (MSG) The Story of the Crooked Manager  1-2 Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’  3-4 “The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do . . . then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’  5 “Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ “The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here—quick now—write fifty.’ 7 “To the next he said, ‘And...

Today's gospel reading in the lectionary got me thinking about this problem I used to have with the Bible. Mark 12:28 One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”  29-31 Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”  32-33 The religion scholar said, “A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!” 34 When Jesus realized how insightful he was, he said, “Y...

This story is the context for my thoughts on President Trump. Luke 18:9-14  (NIV) The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector 9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” In the King James English, a "publican" is a tax collector. In Jesus' times, the Romans recr...

There is a lovely chap on Twitter, Blake Chastain , who I first heard use the appellation "exvangelical." He even has a podcast about it. I find it a helpful term and want to explore it in my own experience. This has been a long evolution and I will use my blog to look back on my spiritual journey out of white american evangelicalism. I have written 359 book reports. I have read more books than I have written about, but I read a great deal on genocide, inspired by the atrocities recorded in the bibilical story of Joshua, conqueror of Canaan. In his story, his god tells him to have no mercy and kill men, women and children. This was explained to me by my evangelical leaders that it was more merciful to kill the kids then raise them as their own. via GIPHY Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real. To be widely read is dangerous in a small minded theological construct. Studying genocide makes such absurd explanations even harder to swallow. Even then I found...

The gospel of Matthew has this well known tirade of exasperation against the religious leaders who opposed Jesus. It's sometimes referred to as the "seven woes." He's furious with their religious duplicity. We get famous metaphors from this like "straining a gnat and swallowing a camel," and "you all are like white-washed tombs, pretty on the outside, full of rot on the inside." One of the outstanding admonishments is, v.23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." In other words, the religious leaders were too busy with weighing out their spices for the church to be bothered with justice, mercy, and faith. Their priority was retaining the power they enjoyed over serving others, as God's representatives. Jesus calls them actors (the translation of ...

On Thursday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders endorsed this interpretation of Trump’s remarks, saying that “I don’t think the term the president used was strong enough...it took an animal to stab a man 100 times and decapitate him and cut his heart out,” referring to a particularly gruesome murder committed by MS-13 gang members. - Vox We once kept runner ducks in our backyard. I woke one morning to let the ducks out of their overnight shelter and found the plywood and cinder blocks shoved aside. The ducks had been killed but not eaten. It was possible a fox, a fisher cat, or a bobcat. It's as if the ducks were killed for fun by the predator. What the predator did not do was arrange a display of the victimized ducks. Unlike MS-13, their hearts were not cut out. Unlike some Mexican cartels, the victims were not hung on an overpass as a warning to others. Animals are not intelligent enough to "send a message" to rivals or snitches.Animals do not keep body parts o...

Jesus said. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18 The United States is known as a Christian nation. The united States has the highest incarceration rate in the world . Both of these statements cannot be true at the same time. Cuba and Russia and China have lower incarceration rates than the US. Post genocide Rwanda has a lower incarceration rate than the US. Racially-divided South Africa has 1/2 the incarceration rate of the US. Post-Christian Europe, the bogeyman of fundamentalist preachers has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Egypt has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Indonesia has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Non-religious Japan has 1/10th the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Pakistan...

Three of the things I'm really grateful for from my experience in the Vineyard churches was the emphasis on the unconditional love of God, the grace of God, and the loving, fatherly heart of God. These principles undid a lot of the spiritual damage I had acquired in my upbringing. However, one of the things I had to hold with cognitive dissonance was the condition placed on God's unconditional love. Here are a few analogies I was told to explain this. It's a free gift, you just need to unwrap it. It's a blank check, you just need to sign it. Will you consent to be loved? I turned to Calvinism for a while to break this log jam in my brain. Today's Calvinists will say something along the lines of, God knew I would unwrap/sign/consent from eternity past so I really had no choice it was all God's work. But Calvinism creates so many more problems than it solves and I eventually dropped it. One of the pushbacks from non-Calvinists is the analogy of divine ...

farewell discourse John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love . 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love . 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you . 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other . Unique to John's gospel is the upper room discourse. As I prayed t...

DaVinci's Ultima Cena At the last supper, recognized today during the Holy Week before Easter, Jesus ate with a dozen friends. He knew 10 would flee into hiding after his arrest, one would betray him for money, one would deny him for safety, and only one would follow him all the way to the cross, where his women friends would not abandon him. Anticipating all of this, he not only dined with them, he took on the role of a house slave and washed each of their feet, saying this is what leadership looks like in the kingdom of love. The church has an unloving history of table fellowship. It continually tries to keep "bad" people away from the table. Some of the bad people it tries to keep away are those churches who keep adding another leaf and pulling up another chair. If Jesus welcomes to the table two cowards who denied him for profit or for fear, abandoning him to a torture then a lynching, who is worse than Peter or Judas? Are you not-white? Neither were the discip...

The judgment of the sheep and the goats Definition of  worship from Merrian Webster worshipped   also   worshiped ;  worshipping   also   worshiping transitive verb :  to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power 2 :  to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion  a celebrity  worshipped by her fans intransitive verb When one worships, one regards another being with respect, honor and devotion. Now consider this parable of Jesus. Matthew 25:31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left. 34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you i...

Equally Wed Luke 6:22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. I am reading Richard Beck's book, Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted . As a progressive believer and professor of psychology, Beck reconciles the concept of the devil/Satan/Old Scratch with the evil systems in this world and our own selfish ways. One of the outworkings of his thinking, as I read last night, is the falsehood of separating Jesus' two commands, love God and love your neighbor as yourself as two loves, instead of one. He writes, ...loving human beings is loving God and loving God is loving human beings. Only one love is at work, with n...

Luke 6:21b, 25b "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh....Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep." One of the weirdest things going on in our society today is the refusal of those who will not empathize with the students who have lost friends and classmates to school shooters. This is an extension of the racist refusal to empathize with African American men, women, and children who have been shot in cold blood by American police forces. In the first circumstance, which I saw first with Sandy Hook, and now with Marjory Stonemam Douglas, the accusations of "crisis actors" portraying grief and horror instead of real students and real parents and real teachers and real first responders actually witnessing mass murder and suffering horribly from it. Then I see media figures mocking the appearances of these survivors; adults are actually bullying children from their high profile positions. Instead of mourning in sackcloth and a...

source In John ch. 4 we learn a story about Jesus meeting an ostracized woman who was alone at the community well. They have a conversation about water, religion, and her background of having multiple husbands and currently living with the 6th man in her life. There are many beautiful theological nuggets in this story, but there is also theological actions of note as well. He crossed gender norms to speak with her. He crossed religious norms to speak with her. He did not exploit the opportunity to harm her. The last one may come across as slightly odd. Why would we expect Jesus to take the opportunity to exploit a woman while he was alone with her, someone who did not have a reputation to defend her if she were assaulted, having been with six different men over the years. There is another reason to not expect this behavior from Jesus. His own mother faced accusations of her own, while pregnant and unwed. Those accusations are still flung at her, raped by a Roman soldier...

Luke 9:61 Then another said, “I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.”  62 Jesus said, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.” source: Prose and Poetry blog As I look at all these facets of love I get overwhelmed with how much God's love does. I find myself making mental checklists of all the things I have to do to love like Christ loves. Pondering on this topic can be overwhelming, so much so it crowds out the actual work of loving my neighbor. In this moment, right now, my neighbor is not destitute, but a lab partner who depends on me providing high quality work and keeping the lab clean. Last night it was helping an excessively intoxicated homeless person get a safe and warm place to sleep for the night at the homeless shelter I volunteer at. Sometimes I put myself out there. Sometimes out there comes to me. It means nothing to love humanity and not lov...

1 John 3:17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. The previous two posts on love, Love blesses the poor and Love feeds the hungry come from Jesus' sermon on the plain in Luke 6. I will continue through those beatitudes, but I wanted to pause here and look at John's commentary on love in action. The needs of the poor are so great. I can do a little. My church can do a little more. A mission organization can do a little more. But a government that represents me as a citizen can levy taxes, not plead for donations. With taxes and laws, a citizen can be provided health care at a price they can afford. With taxes, a family can be given some money to help feed them for a month. With taxes, an laid off person can have enough time to find a job before they lose their home. With taxes, a person injured on the job will ...

Luke 6:21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied...25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. In larger societies, people go hungry because of policy. The world produces enough food to feed every hungry person, but some governments do not care if people starve or actively hope their people starve. In the United States we throw away 40% of our food supply ! I grew up never wasting food. It was my grandparent's experience of the Great Depression that influenced my parents' use of food and leftovers and mine as well to this day. My wife and I always encouraged our kids to be part of the "Clean Plate Club." In my life, satiation was not a given in life, so I need to get it whenever I can. As an older guy, my metabolism can no longer keep up with that philosophy, meaning I need to modulate what I consider satiation. Jesus tells me I am missing out on the blessing of hunger. What is that blessing? I used to practice fasting ...

Luke 6:20 Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God...24 But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. In Luke's account of Jesus' sermon on the plain, Jesus speaks plainly here about economic disparity. It's hard to spiritualize the blessing when the woe to the rich is so stark. It makes no sense to say those who are spiritually rich should live in woe when he is trying to bring spiritual abundance to his audience. Jesus is clearly speaking in the tradition of the Jewish prophets who condemned the oppression of the poor by the rich, and the neglect of the poor by the rich, and the mistaken belief that one's wealth is solely due to God's blessing. In fact, Jesus makes the opposite assertion; God blesses the poor with the spiritual wealth of God's kingdom. Elsewhere Jesus states it is very hard for the wealthy to enter into God's kingdom, which the poor are blessed to already own. In 258, during the R...

Philippians 2:1 If you find any comfort from being in the Anointed, if His love brings you some encouragement , if you experience true companionship with the Spirit, if His tenderness and mercy fill your heart ; then, brothers and sisters, 2 here is one thing that would complete my joy—come together as one in mind and spirit and purpose, sharing in the same love . 3 Don’t let selfishness and prideful agendas take over. Embrace true humility, and lift your heads to extend love to others . 4 Get beyond yourselves and protecting your own interests ; be sincere, and secure your neighbors’ interests first . 5 In other words, adopt the mind-set of Jesus the Anointed. Live with His attitude in your hearts. Remember: 6 Though He was in the form of God, He chose not to cling to equality with God; 7 But He poured Himself out to fill a vessel brand new; a servant in form and a man indeed. The very likeness of humanity, 8 He humbled Himself, obedient to death— a merciles...

*trigger warning* I used to be a "Biblical" Christian. But as I've written before, I now consider myself a "compassionate" Christian. Here is how Biblical christianity plays out. Can a couple make love when the wife has her menses? - Not according to Moses see Leviticus 15:19. Can gay people have a loving marriage? - Not if they are men, God hates that. Leviticus 18:22, see also 20:13, 15 - 16 and Romans 1:24, 26 - 27. Can healers help people on the Sabbath? - No, you have 6 days to work, you must rest on the 7th day. Exodus 31:13; Jeremiah 17:21-23 ; Nehemiah 13:19 But Jesus ignored the book when it interfered with compassion. He healed on the Sabbath. In fact he did it so much his "by the book" religious opponents got infuriated with him and accused him of violating the book. Here is one story from Luke 13. 14 But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the w...