R U M O R S # 499
2008-04-27
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
April 27, 2008
A SET OF FACTS
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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The Story Lectionary & Revised Common Lectionary – the power of a story
Rumors – too much God can ruin you
Soft Edges –
Bloopers – our hearts untied
We Get Letters – time expired
Mirabile Dictu! – who was Jesus anyway?
Bottom of the Barrel – the blind pilot
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – While driving in Pennsylvania, a family caught up to an Amish carriage. The owner of the carriage obviously had a sense of humor, because attached to the back of the carriage was a hand printed sign: “Energy-efficient vehicle. Runs on oats and grass. Caution: Do not step on exhaust.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, May 4th, which the 7th Sunday in the Easter cycle, and the last Sunday before Pentecost. It is also known as Ascension Sunday.
NOTE: The reading proposed for The Story Lectionary covers the same material as the first reading of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Story Lectionary: Acts 1:1-11 (see http://www.story-lectionary.com)
Revised Common Lectionary (Acts 1:6-14).
Some years ago, Charles Templeton (a one-time evangelist turned atheist) wrote a book that had someone finding a skeleton in Jerusalem that turned out to be Jesus. In the book, the church was desperately concerned that such a discovery would destroy Christianity, because it would prove that Christ’s bodily resurrection was fiction.
I remember thinking at the time – what’s the big deal? Such a discovery wouldn’t damage my faith at all. And as I now read this passage from the Book of Acts and remember that book, I find my thoughts haven’t changed.
Like so much biblical truth, the message is contained in the story. Jesus’ earthly ministry is done. Now it is the Christ that works in us through the Spirit.
No, I’m not calling Luke a liar. The “men of Galilee” were Jewish and expressed their convictions in stories rather than propositions. If anything, this truth is more powerful and persuasive because it comes to us as a story rather than as a set of objectively provable (or disprovable) facts.
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
1 In the wilderness, wolves circle around for the kill.
Dispatch them, God!
Scatter them back into the darkness they came from!
2 Disperse them through the forest
like smoke from a campfire;
dissolve them like morning mists burned off by the sun.
3 Then those who do not fear the light can rejoice.
Like bright flowers, we can turn our faces toward God.
4 As butterflies bounce across an alpine meadow,
so we can celebrate the goodness of God.
5 In God's generous creation,
no one needs to be an orphan or an outcast.
6 Every thing has its proper place;
our lives are linked in endless ways.
Only those who think themselves equal with God
will find themselves alone on their own.
7 But we are not alone.
Not in the pounding fear of race riots,
not in the humiliation of soup kitchens,
not in the panic of emergency wards.
God has been with us.
8 We still got wet when it rained;
we still got muddy when we fell –
God didn't protect us from pain.
9 But the rain brought out the flowers;
the mud enriched the earth;
10 And God turned our wintry wilderness
into a meadow of milk and honey.
32 As flowers in God's garden,
we lift our bright and varied faces to the Lord.
33 Our colors reflect the rainbow,
the colors that God flings across the heavens.
34 Who among humans can make a seed sprout,
a flower form, a tree bear fruit?
35 God hovers over the earth,
giving life and strength to all creation.
Give the glory to God.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 – This passage is often used by those in sectarian religions, such as the Jehovah’s Witness.’ It helps them tolerate what they perceive as persecution from mainline Christianity and society in general.
The writer of 1 Peter uses the metaphor of a “roaring lion,” (5:8) that those early Christians had to face. A better metaphor for our day might be a nice, thick, non-allergenic duvet or blanket we wrap ourselves in to be nice and warm and safe from any contact with anything that might hurt us. Or upset us.
Or perhaps one of those children’s play areas where they have a huge container full of ping-pong balls in which the kids can wallow without ever being hurt.
Modern Christians don’t face persecution (at least here in Canada) as much as they face sedation.
We saw that in spades during the recent celebration of “Earth Day.” We turned out our lights for an hour, we car-pooled for one day, we took one very short shower to save water.
Was it an exercise in tokenism? Did we think that by doing these things once we were actually making a difference? Did it raise awareness or lull us into complacency?
John 17:1-11 – I find it hard to believe that the writer of John memorized these words from Jesus and was able to write them down 70 years later. But I do believe that the writer put those words down, convinced that this was Jesus’ intent.
The core message in this somewhat legalistic language is the call to unity. Or at least, that’s the message that speaks to me. And such unity does not mean that we all think or speak or act in the same way.
One of the joys of doing Rumors is that I get gentle, kind letters from folks who disagree with what I have said here. And that is exactly as it should be. If we ever find someone agreeing with everything we say, we know that person wasn’t really paying attention.
One of the reasons I believe so strongly that stories communicate the Gospel more faithfully than theological statements, is that a story does not demand we all hear it the same way or that we express the faith it communicates in a specific kind of language.
A children’s story based on Acts 1 may be found in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 114.
There are children’s stories for every Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary, in “The Lectionary Story Bible,” by yours truly. The marvellous illustrations are by Margaret Kyle. There’s at least one story for each Sunday in the RCL cycle. Usually two, and occasionally three. Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Andy, a longtime friend of mine (so I am obviously not using his real name) had a life-transforming experience when he was in his early thirties. His life had been a mess of drugs and depression and petty crime. He got talked into going to a Cursillo, a type of retreat meant to inspire and renew. There he “met God face to face.”
It turned his life around. Probably, in the long run, it’s made a better person out of him, but his wife walked out when she could no longer stand his insistence that she also have his experience. He moves from one church to another, looking for a “spiritual home” but never seems to find it.
Maybe God knew that Moses could only stand so much of God. Too much God can ruin you. When I think of Andy, I’m glad it hasn’t happened to me, because I could very easily turn into a religious pain-in-the-patusche.
Andy has a problem with idol worship. He has turned his experience, or at least his perception of it, into an idol.
But that’s not the problem with most of the folk I meet in church. They are running scared of overdosing on religion, so they don’t want to encounter God at all, except perhaps in safe, controlled, one-hour doses on Sunday morning. They go to the other extreme and have nothing at all to give their lives meaning.
They can’t go all the way and believe in a literal, physical resurrection of Jesus, so they don’t think about resurrection at all.
Between those two extremes, I know many folks who have been to Cursillo and similar events, and come out of them as lively, fun, active, invigorated Christians who enjoy life and live the presence of God.
“Life is a banquet,” said Auntie Mame, and she might have been talking about the life of faith. But surely we can find a way to enjoy the meal and let it nourish us, without falling into the trap of either anorexia or gluttony.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
What Are Humans For?
When I was a university student, I worked one summer for a company of forestry consultants. I loved the work. I admired my boss. I almost switched my courses to forestry, to follow his example.
But I didn’t.
Many years later, our paths crossed again. We discovered that we agreed on many things. But not about logging. “What good is all that timber if it’s not being used?” he demanded.
I suggested that trees might have value in themselves – as the lungs of the planet, as shelter for animals and other plants, as erosion control – and not just as raw materials for human use.
We haven’t had a discussion since. And I’m sorry about that, because he raises a really important question. What ARE forests for?
For that matter, what are whales for? What are dogs for? What is land for?
The planner for our municipality, Mike Reiley, spoke to the local Rotary Club a few months ago. People from the big cities see our community as a desirable destination, he said, because of its recreational potential. It’s close to wild forests, to rugged mountains, to uncrowded lakes. People are buying and building homes at a record rate.
In ten years, at present rates of growth, all the land currently zoned for housing is likely to be used up. Then we will have to expand. Clearing the forests. Paving farmland. Blasting roads up the mountains. Building marinas on the lakes.
But with the forests gone, the mountains conquered, the lakes congested, what attractions will our community have left?
Does land have value only if you can plant a building on it? Or does wild land have its own value?
A few people are at least asking those questions. And a growing number seem willing to consider them.
But I don’t hear anybody asking what people are for. And yet that’s the most basic question of all.
Is our sole purpose to create more and more of ourselves?
That’s the unstated assumption behind theories of endless growth. We need more people to keep our economies growing, in a kind of global pyramid scheme.
Economists don’t say that, of course. They say that a decline in population will damage our standard of living. We won’t be able to sustain our pension and medical plans. Jobs will go unfilled.
Is our purpose to manage the planet?
If so, we’re doing a lousy job of it. Mostly, we assume that the planet’s resources exist only to serve our own needs. The planet is currently experiencing the highest rate of extinctions of species since the demise of the dinosaurs.
Is our purpose to generate good will and mutual understanding?
We haven’t done a good job of that, either. Even our religions don’t do it. As some militant atheists claim, we’ve been more likely to use religion to create divisions than unity.
Personally, I have no confidence that an absence of religion would incline us to be any more peaceable.
So what ARE we here for?
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Judith Johnson-Siebold of Waterford, New York, noticed in an old church meeting agenda where “the hymn following Ordination” was “Over My Head.” As an ordained pastor of many years I must confess how prophetic that song sometimes feels.”
Kip Smith heard this from Jim McFarland. The bulletin read: “Anthem: The Lord’s Prayer. Music: Albert Malotte. Text: unknown.
Lauren Moore of Lake Village, Arkansas says she caught this before it got to the congregation. “Hymn: Come Sin, O Church, in Joy!”
Lauren, you should have left that in! Martin Luther may have had that in mind when he wrote, “Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.” In the letter from which that quote was taken, Luther also wrote: "God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world."
Beth Hawley of Tofield, Alberta writes: “Our benediction, printed in the bulletin for April 6, read like this: ‘May our eyes be open, our hearts untied, our minds unlocked. . .’
One member of the congregation thought that sometimes a misprint teaches us a greater lesson than the original wording.
Doug Mitchell of Peterborough, Ontario writes: “This line appeared in our Prayer of Confession: ‘. . .call us into new places and challenge us to lie in ways that show that ours is a daring and risky faith’.”
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do." Edward Everett Hale via Sandra Friesen
I find it helps to organize chores into categories: Things I won't do now; Things I won't do later; Things I'll never do.
Erma Bombeck via Evelyn McLauchlin
It is safe to say that everyone fell ill because they had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers and none of them really healed who did not regain this religious outlook.
Carl Jung
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We Get Letters – A number of you wrote pointing out that my comments on Paul preaching to the Athenians were not the only interpretation of that story. I called Paul’s sermon a failure. You offered some very useful thoughts pointing out that there was another way of reading that story.
Point taken. My perspective is in need of updating, and I’m heading back to Acts 17:22-31 with a new set of glasses on my nose. It shows that more than one perspective is always useful when we are reading scripture.
Thanks to those who responded!
Evelyn McLachlan of Missisiiisisiaughuaa, Ontario (never did know how to spell that!) has a bit of “useful” trivia. The Chicago Tribune, she says, reports that we spend six months of our lives sitting at stoplights, and 24 months returning phone calls.
Evelyn, I got out the calculator and discovered that I spent 1,300 hours of my life listening to sermons. Which of course, begs the question – did that do me any good?
Well, yes, because I also figure I’ve eaten more than 52 thousand pounds of food in my life. Without that food, I would be dead. Without those sermons, I would also be dead.
John Shearman of Oakville, Ontario wondered how correct Evelyn M.'s "Margarita!!!" was as the Greek for "pearly gates." “The pedant in me checked my Greek and Hebrew lexicon/concordance just to make sure. Well, just maybe there is some confusion between Greek, Latin and Spanish, no doubt caused by so many Margaritas. In Greek and Latin, "margarités" is the adjective from the noun "margaros" which means "oyster" or "pearl." In Spanish, a "margarita" is a daisy. And as you likely know, the drink is a tequila-based cocktail with orange, lemon or lime liqueur.
How the daisy got mixed in remains to be discovered.
Evelyn seems to have taken possession of this “Letters” section this week. Which is great. She sends good interesting and brief letters.
One of them contained a photo of the grave site of a Barbara Sue Mainire who had asked for a parking meter reading “expired” as a grave marker. She got what she asked for, in addition to a more conventional granite marker. The meter reads “expired,” and “64 year time limit.”
She must have been a wonderful person.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Who was Jesus anyway!?!”)
Jane Ho has some “politically incorrect” ideas to share. We ran these in Rumors some years ago, but I think they’re enough fun to run them again. I’m sure Jesus would enjoy one huge belly laugh over these.
* How do we know that Jesus was Jewish:*
1. He went into His Father's business
2) He lived at home till he was 33.
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin, and His Mother was sure He was God.
* On the other hand, there are three good arguments that Jesus was Black:
1. He called everyone brother
2. He liked Gospel
3. He didn't get a fair trial
* But then there were three equally good arguments that Jesus was Italian:
1. He talked with His hands
2. He had wine with His meals
3. He used olive oil
* But then there were three equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:
1. He never cut His hair
2. He walked around barefoot all the time
3. He started a new religion
* But then there were three equally good arguments that Jesus was a First Nations person:
1. He was at peace with nature
2. He ate a lot of fish
3. He talked about the Great Spirit
* But then there were three equally good arguments that Jesus was Irish:
1. He never married.
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.
* But the most compelling evidence of all. Actual proof that Jesus was a woman:
1. He fed a crowd at a moments notice when there was virtually no food.
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it.
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was still work to do.
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Bottom of the Barrel – This really isn’t a religious joke, but I’ll bet it gets to be a sermon illustration somewhere.
It was a flight from Seattle to San Francisco. The plane made a stop in Sacramento and many of the passengers got off to stretch their legs.
Everybody got off the plane except one gentleman who was blind. His Seeing Eye dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of him. The man was obviously a regular on the flight because the pilot addressed him by name. “Keith, we’re in Sacramento for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?”
“No thanks, but maybe the dog would like to stretch his legs.”
So now picture this, and picture the reaction of the passengers. The pilot was wearing sun glasses. He came off the airplane, through the boarding lounge, led by a Seeing Eye dog.
The hymn might be, “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me.”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
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* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Preaching Materials for April 27, 2008
R U M O R S # 498
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-04-20
April 20, 2008
A WEEPING, LOVING, LAUGHING GOD
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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IMPORTANT: I really appreciate your notes, and Rumors is the richer for them. To protect me from viruses, please be sure that you put something on the "subject" line that lets me know that you are legit. For instance, the word "Rumors" works. And please give me your name and where you’re from. Folks like to know. Thanks.
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The Story Lectionary – how can I forget you?
Revised Common Lectionary – even Paul sometimes bombed
Rumors – mother’s strong arms
Soft Edges – ruthless pruning required
Bloopers – a new mating
We Get Letters – the pearly gates
Mirabile Dictu! – heart attack
Bottom of the Barrel – you gave birth to it
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – The Rev. Fox was driving down the highway at a considerable clip. In fact, he was doing about double the speed limit.
Soon he heard the wail of a police siren, and pulled over to the curb. The officer demanded to see his license, and began to write out the ticket. “I guess you don’t know me,” said the priest. “I’m Father Fox.”
“I don’t care if you’re Mother Goose,” said the officer. “You still get a ticket.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 27th, which is the 6th Sunday of Easter.
Story Lectionary – "How Can I Forget You?" Hosea 11:1-9
Those of you who are, or who have been the parents of teenagers will know this story.
It is late at night. It is long past the time when your teenager had promised to be home. You are lying in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, worrying, wondering, fearing, imagining. You look at the clock every minute or two.
Then you hear the key in the lock. You are out of bed like a shot. You confront the teenager. “Do you know what time it is? Where have you been? Etc., etc.”
The thing is, all your worrying – all the terrible scenarios you imagined – your flare up of anger when the teenager appeared inside the door – all of these are an expression of your love. We could talk about how useful those responses are, but there is no doubt about where they came from.
This passage from Hosea sounds a lot like me confronting my own children – children who are now all middle-aged. For that matter, the words in Hosea sound a lot like my father confronting me when I was that age.
Relationships are hardest with those we love the most. There are few things that need more careful, intentional, sensitive responses, than the love relationships we have within a family – of whatever size, age or shape.
Hosea’s story gives us a glimpse into the heart of God who yearns for our loving response with a depth and passion we find hard to imagine. And when we mess up – and we always do manage to mess up in one way or another – a weeping, loving God is there to embrace us when we open the door to our home.
On the Story Lectionary website (http://www.story-lectionary.com) you can find preaching suggestions from Jim Taylor plus a sung response from Linnea Good.
There’s a children’s version of the Hosea story. It’s called, “When God’s Children Ran Away.” It’s in “The Family Story Bible,” page 138. If you don’t already have it, you can order your copy from the Wood Lake Publications web site which is:
www.woodlakebooks.com
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Revised Common Lectionary – Acts 17:22-31 – I don’t know about you, but I find it just a tiny bit gratifying that even the great Paul of Tarsus preached some sermons that bombed.
Well, not totally. There were two converts – Dionysius and Demaris. But you never hear from them again and there is no record of a church being founded in Athens.
Maybe that’s because Paul doesn’t follow his own convictions. Maybe he’s a bit spooked by all those Greek intellectuals, so he doesn’t preach only “Christ crucified” as he proclaimed in 2 Corinthians 2:2.
In other words, Paul doesn’t tell the story. He tried to use Greek logic. He tried to reason them into the faith. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. Analysis and logic are important and necessary for Christian growth, but don’t work that well as evangelism. And in the congregation where I worship, most of us still need evangelizing. Most of us have not really made a deep, life-changing commitment.
The gospel never was a matter of reasoned argument. It is the passion, the commitment, the desire that is carried in a story (the more personal the better) that does the work of the Spirit.
Psalm 66:8-20 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Companion on the Way
8 We owe our survival to God.
We had run out of our own resources.
9 God kept us alive and struggling;
God shielded us when no one else cared.
10 We have been rejected and despised,
persecuted and punished.
But we have come out of our ordeal stronger.
11 Once, we were simply a flood of frightened individuals.
We had nothing in common but fear.
Now we have become a people with a purpose;
our trials have unified us.
12 We were the eternal victims;
we were captives and oppressed.
Yet God brought us through to this new world.
13 We will repay God for keeping watch over us.
From now on, the best of everything we have belongs to God.
14 We made that promise when we were desperate;
we will keep our promise when we are well off.
15 For without God, we would have nothing.
16 We will tell our children,
and they will tell their children,
what God has done for us.
17 We were lost and lonely,
a wandering people, unsure of our future.
And God responded to our plight.
18 God was not like diplomats and immigration officials;
God did not judge us by our appearance.
20 Even during the toughest of our trials,
we never ever felt that God had abandoned us.
Thanks be to God.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 3:13-22 – We probably have to say it over and over again. God doesn’t send suffering because of our sins. Nor is good health a reward for faithfulness.
Which is not to say that our sins don’t cause suffering. A medical friend once told me that 60% of all deaths are self-inflicted. Not in the usual sense of a suicide but because of our life-style choices – smoking, obesity, over-work, careless driving, negative attitudes, etc., etc.
So the writer of Peter is not preaching one of those silly (and sometimes very destructive) homilies that say, “Believe in Jesus, and you will be healthy, wealthy and wise.” The Christian faith is not a magic charm you wear around your neck. Nor do you earn religious merit points for doing good things or being on a bunch of committees.
Nevertheless, it is true that active church people tend to be healthier. That’s because we have a better way of dealing with the arrows life throws at us and we have a community that helps us in our life-style choices. More than that, we have a sense of the Spirit of God in our hearts and that offers a sense of strength and power.
This is no Pollyanna religiosity that expects everything to go well. But if you have done wrong and you suffer from some affliction, you have two burdens to bear. Your guilt and your affliction.
If you have tried to live the Gospel, then your conscience is clear and you can focus your energies on dealing with your malady.
John 14:15-21 – We’ve usually read this as a reference to Pentecost, and the coming of the Holy Spirit into the community of the church.
Perhaps we need to work on our language a little. If we say the Spirit came at that first Pentecost, do we imply that the Spirit was not there before that?
Of course not.
When we invoke the Spirit during the course of worship, do we mean that the Spirit was absent before that?
Years ago, in the Philippines, there was a big, evangelical crusade called, “Bringing Christ to the Philippines.” But of course we all knew that Christ had always been there.
Perhaps what we are really asking is that God fine-tune our awareness of the Spirit. God’s Spirit is a little like the cell phone network. The signal is always there, but unless we charge the battery and turn the thing on, we receive nothing.
There’s a children’s version of the Acts reading titled, “The God With No Name,” in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 112. Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – This is a piece I wrote when my mother died a number of years ago. I’m offering it here, because my mother – unconsciously but very powerfully – taught me about the presence of God. And about prayer.
Mother's Strong Arms
Mother had aged ten years in 12 months. It's not that there was anything wrong, it's just that everything was wrong.
The fingers that could crochet a pair of slippers in half an hour simply wouldn't move anymore.
The heart that had laughed and cried with all the many people she loved, had developed a malfunction. That never stopped her heart from loving, but last Saturday it stopped her heart from beating.
Mother knew death was near. But she wasn't afraid of death. It was the dying that was so painful, so frightening.
Mother and I had a long talk in the hospital a few months ago. She held my hand very tightly and asked, "You won't abandon me just because I 'm so useless?"
"Of course not, Mom. How could I abandon you?"
"But I'm so useless. I can't do anything anymore. I'm not good for anything."
"Mom, I love you. Of course I won't abandon you. Neither will the rest of your family."
"But what good am I? I can't do anything except just sit here and stare at the walls." At first I thought Mother's fear was of being abandoned by her children. But that wasn't it. She knew us better than that.
Her pain was far deeper. It was the pain our whole society inflicts on us – that teaches us we are valued for what we can produce, by how well we can perform, by what we can achieve. It was a pain we all share.
Of course, deep down Mother knew the greater truth. Earlier we had been talking about the latest great-grandchild. He had been born on Valentine's Day, and we laughed over a photograph showing a heart-shaped birthmark on his bottom.
"I guess babies can't do anything either," she said.
I knew what she meant. Babies are useless, but they are precious. Old people are useless, but they are precious.
In fact all of us, when you come right down to it, are pretty useless. But we are precious. Precious I hope, to other people. Precious at least to God, who sees the sparrow fall and numbers the hairs on our head.
"Mom," I said. "Do you remember how often you told me about the time when I was just a kid, and I'd be playing out in the back yard, and every once in a while I would run into the house and I would leap up into your arms and get a quick hug, and then run right back out again?"
She held my hand a little tighter. She remembered.
"Mom, you had strong arms, and even though I'd take a flying leap at you, you'd always catch me and give me a hug."
She smiled. "I couldn't catch you in my arms anymore, Ralph."
"l know Mom. But I still come running in for a hug. Only now, you catch me with your heart."
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Ruthless Pruning Required
Along the lakeshore, the first leaves burst out of their buds last weekend. I headed home at once to prune my hedge. Because I knew that hedge would soon also burst into leaf and mask the tangled branches of my shrubs.
We planted a mixed hedge, you see. It alternates a bush that has golden-green leaves with a bush that has deep maroon leaves. Don’t ask me their names – I don’t know.
But I do know that these two bushes have totally different personalities.
The golden-green one is aggressive. Wherever its bottom branches touch the soil, they promptly root themselves. Its roots burrow like a mole just below the surface, to pop up with new shoots in the middle of the maroon bush. Its higher branches reach out like a groper at a dance – nothing is safe.
Especially not the maroon bush. By comparison, it’s a shrinking violet. When its golden-green neighbour invades its territory, it shrinks back, like a pin-striped banker recoiling from a particularly smelly drunk.
I do not prune scientifically. I simply act as traffic cop, as referee in an unequal contest.
When I first started pruning, I tried to be gentle. I kept thinking that perhaps plants had feelings. They might not appreciate having their limbs amputated. So I did as little trimming and snipping as I could.
I assumed that with a little positive encouragement, the errant plant would see the error of its ways, and would choose to behave in future.
It didn’t work. The aggressive bush took advantage of my weakness to crowd its more retiring neighbour almost into extinction.
I’ve had to become ruthless. Now, when I see a branch heading for forbidden territory, I don’t just stop it at the boundary – I trace it back to its origins. I saw straying branches off at the trunk. I yank sucker shoots up by their roots.
Maybe there’s a message for us humans here. Anti-social behavior may call for more than gentle re-direction.
Is it fair to extrapolate from plant experience to humans? Why not? Jesus did it, when he told his disciples he was the vine, they were the branches, and God would prune those who failed to bear fruit.
The analogy certainly applies to personal issues. You can’t just scale back gently on addictions to anything from French fries to alcohol, from hard drugs to child porn. You have to excise that branch completely.
The analogy is harder to apply to societal problems. Gang wars. Drug pushers. Fraud artists. Pyramid sales schemes. Domestic violence. Crime syndicates...
It’s not enough to trim twigs here, either. Harassing a few sex-trade workers won’t make our streets safe. Nor will jailing a few homeless transients or a few low-level con artists.
We probably need to get ruthless with the roots of poverty, the main stems of crime, the spreading networks of greed and corruption.
I just wish I knew how. It’s not as easy to visualize as applying pruning shears to a misbehaving branch.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Nancy McClure-Long of Ghent, New York saw this announcement in news letter. “When I know that lay of the land, I will schedule a new mating."
Susan Matticks was checking out the Story Lectionary site. She wonders, “are you going to ‘clean’ the story of Mary of Magdala from many places, or ‘glean’ it?”
Gordon Allaby saw a sign outside a church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan that said: “Gods We Truly Love #6. Bacchus: Gods of Consumption. Noon Thnksgiving Ptluck.
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Wish I’d Said That! – Wherever we are, Jesus is in the boat with us.
source unknown via Nancy Prieb
The older I get, the more insanity I can handle.
Rob Brown
The rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
Mark Russell via Evelyn McLachlan
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We Get Letters – Evelyn McLachlan writes: This afternoon on Midrash [lectionary discussion group] someone sent a note about what the “pearly gates” mean in Greek, or at least “pearly.” Margarita!!! Not too sure how correct that is, but I'm planning on going to a lot of pearly gates!!! Just might go to one tonight!
No, No Evelyn. Margarita is the name of a girl I was in love with for two or three days in high school. And Pearly Gates is Bill’s sister.
Evelyn says that in “that same email, the writer was referring to something Jesus said in the "read-letter edition" of the Bible.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Heart Attack!”)
An archaeologist was digging in the Negev Desert in Israel and came upon a casket containing a mummy. After examining it, he called the curator of a prestigious natural-history museum.
“I’ve just discovered a 3,000 year-old mummy of a man who died of heart failure!” the excited scientist exclaimed.
To which the curator replied, “Bring him in. We’ll check it out.”
A week later, the amazed curator called the archaeologist. “You were right about the mummy’s age and cause of death. How in the world did you know?”
“Easy. There was a piece of paper in his hand that said, ‘10,000 Shekels on Goliath.’”
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Bottom of the Barrel – This from Wayne Seybert of Longmont, Colorado..
If you love something...set it free
If it comes back...It will always be yours
If it doesn't come back...It was never yours to begin with
But if it just set in your living room
Messes up your stuff, watches your TV
Eats your food, uses your telephone
Takes your money and does not appear to realize that you set it free....
Then you either married it or gave birth to it.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-04-20
April 20, 2008
A WEEPING, LOVING, LAUGHING GOD
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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IMPORTANT: I really appreciate your notes, and Rumors is the richer for them. To protect me from viruses, please be sure that you put something on the "subject" line that lets me know that you are legit. For instance, the word "Rumors" works. And please give me your name and where you’re from. Folks like to know. Thanks.
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The Story Lectionary – how can I forget you?
Revised Common Lectionary – even Paul sometimes bombed
Rumors – mother’s strong arms
Soft Edges – ruthless pruning required
Bloopers – a new mating
We Get Letters – the pearly gates
Mirabile Dictu! – heart attack
Bottom of the Barrel – you gave birth to it
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – The Rev. Fox was driving down the highway at a considerable clip. In fact, he was doing about double the speed limit.
Soon he heard the wail of a police siren, and pulled over to the curb. The officer demanded to see his license, and began to write out the ticket. “I guess you don’t know me,” said the priest. “I’m Father Fox.”
“I don’t care if you’re Mother Goose,” said the officer. “You still get a ticket.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 27th, which is the 6th Sunday of Easter.
Story Lectionary – "How Can I Forget You?" Hosea 11:1-9
Those of you who are, or who have been the parents of teenagers will know this story.
It is late at night. It is long past the time when your teenager had promised to be home. You are lying in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, worrying, wondering, fearing, imagining. You look at the clock every minute or two.
Then you hear the key in the lock. You are out of bed like a shot. You confront the teenager. “Do you know what time it is? Where have you been? Etc., etc.”
The thing is, all your worrying – all the terrible scenarios you imagined – your flare up of anger when the teenager appeared inside the door – all of these are an expression of your love. We could talk about how useful those responses are, but there is no doubt about where they came from.
This passage from Hosea sounds a lot like me confronting my own children – children who are now all middle-aged. For that matter, the words in Hosea sound a lot like my father confronting me when I was that age.
Relationships are hardest with those we love the most. There are few things that need more careful, intentional, sensitive responses, than the love relationships we have within a family – of whatever size, age or shape.
Hosea’s story gives us a glimpse into the heart of God who yearns for our loving response with a depth and passion we find hard to imagine. And when we mess up – and we always do manage to mess up in one way or another – a weeping, loving God is there to embrace us when we open the door to our home.
On the Story Lectionary website (http://www.story-lectionary.com) you can find preaching suggestions from Jim Taylor plus a sung response from Linnea Good.
There’s a children’s version of the Hosea story. It’s called, “When God’s Children Ran Away.” It’s in “The Family Story Bible,” page 138. If you don’t already have it, you can order your copy from the Wood Lake Publications web site which is:
www.woodlakebooks.com
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Revised Common Lectionary – Acts 17:22-31 – I don’t know about you, but I find it just a tiny bit gratifying that even the great Paul of Tarsus preached some sermons that bombed.
Well, not totally. There were two converts – Dionysius and Demaris. But you never hear from them again and there is no record of a church being founded in Athens.
Maybe that’s because Paul doesn’t follow his own convictions. Maybe he’s a bit spooked by all those Greek intellectuals, so he doesn’t preach only “Christ crucified” as he proclaimed in 2 Corinthians 2:2.
In other words, Paul doesn’t tell the story. He tried to use Greek logic. He tried to reason them into the faith. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. Analysis and logic are important and necessary for Christian growth, but don’t work that well as evangelism. And in the congregation where I worship, most of us still need evangelizing. Most of us have not really made a deep, life-changing commitment.
The gospel never was a matter of reasoned argument. It is the passion, the commitment, the desire that is carried in a story (the more personal the better) that does the work of the Spirit.
Psalm 66:8-20 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Companion on the Way
8 We owe our survival to God.
We had run out of our own resources.
9 God kept us alive and struggling;
God shielded us when no one else cared.
10 We have been rejected and despised,
persecuted and punished.
But we have come out of our ordeal stronger.
11 Once, we were simply a flood of frightened individuals.
We had nothing in common but fear.
Now we have become a people with a purpose;
our trials have unified us.
12 We were the eternal victims;
we were captives and oppressed.
Yet God brought us through to this new world.
13 We will repay God for keeping watch over us.
From now on, the best of everything we have belongs to God.
14 We made that promise when we were desperate;
we will keep our promise when we are well off.
15 For without God, we would have nothing.
16 We will tell our children,
and they will tell their children,
what God has done for us.
17 We were lost and lonely,
a wandering people, unsure of our future.
And God responded to our plight.
18 God was not like diplomats and immigration officials;
God did not judge us by our appearance.
20 Even during the toughest of our trials,
we never ever felt that God had abandoned us.
Thanks be to God.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 3:13-22 – We probably have to say it over and over again. God doesn’t send suffering because of our sins. Nor is good health a reward for faithfulness.
Which is not to say that our sins don’t cause suffering. A medical friend once told me that 60% of all deaths are self-inflicted. Not in the usual sense of a suicide but because of our life-style choices – smoking, obesity, over-work, careless driving, negative attitudes, etc., etc.
So the writer of Peter is not preaching one of those silly (and sometimes very destructive) homilies that say, “Believe in Jesus, and you will be healthy, wealthy and wise.” The Christian faith is not a magic charm you wear around your neck. Nor do you earn religious merit points for doing good things or being on a bunch of committees.
Nevertheless, it is true that active church people tend to be healthier. That’s because we have a better way of dealing with the arrows life throws at us and we have a community that helps us in our life-style choices. More than that, we have a sense of the Spirit of God in our hearts and that offers a sense of strength and power.
This is no Pollyanna religiosity that expects everything to go well. But if you have done wrong and you suffer from some affliction, you have two burdens to bear. Your guilt and your affliction.
If you have tried to live the Gospel, then your conscience is clear and you can focus your energies on dealing with your malady.
John 14:15-21 – We’ve usually read this as a reference to Pentecost, and the coming of the Holy Spirit into the community of the church.
Perhaps we need to work on our language a little. If we say the Spirit came at that first Pentecost, do we imply that the Spirit was not there before that?
Of course not.
When we invoke the Spirit during the course of worship, do we mean that the Spirit was absent before that?
Years ago, in the Philippines, there was a big, evangelical crusade called, “Bringing Christ to the Philippines.” But of course we all knew that Christ had always been there.
Perhaps what we are really asking is that God fine-tune our awareness of the Spirit. God’s Spirit is a little like the cell phone network. The signal is always there, but unless we charge the battery and turn the thing on, we receive nothing.
There’s a children’s version of the Acts reading titled, “The God With No Name,” in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 112. Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – This is a piece I wrote when my mother died a number of years ago. I’m offering it here, because my mother – unconsciously but very powerfully – taught me about the presence of God. And about prayer.
Mother's Strong Arms
Mother had aged ten years in 12 months. It's not that there was anything wrong, it's just that everything was wrong.
The fingers that could crochet a pair of slippers in half an hour simply wouldn't move anymore.
The heart that had laughed and cried with all the many people she loved, had developed a malfunction. That never stopped her heart from loving, but last Saturday it stopped her heart from beating.
Mother knew death was near. But she wasn't afraid of death. It was the dying that was so painful, so frightening.
Mother and I had a long talk in the hospital a few months ago. She held my hand very tightly and asked, "You won't abandon me just because I 'm so useless?"
"Of course not, Mom. How could I abandon you?"
"But I'm so useless. I can't do anything anymore. I'm not good for anything."
"Mom, I love you. Of course I won't abandon you. Neither will the rest of your family."
"But what good am I? I can't do anything except just sit here and stare at the walls." At first I thought Mother's fear was of being abandoned by her children. But that wasn't it. She knew us better than that.
Her pain was far deeper. It was the pain our whole society inflicts on us – that teaches us we are valued for what we can produce, by how well we can perform, by what we can achieve. It was a pain we all share.
Of course, deep down Mother knew the greater truth. Earlier we had been talking about the latest great-grandchild. He had been born on Valentine's Day, and we laughed over a photograph showing a heart-shaped birthmark on his bottom.
"I guess babies can't do anything either," she said.
I knew what she meant. Babies are useless, but they are precious. Old people are useless, but they are precious.
In fact all of us, when you come right down to it, are pretty useless. But we are precious. Precious I hope, to other people. Precious at least to God, who sees the sparrow fall and numbers the hairs on our head.
"Mom," I said. "Do you remember how often you told me about the time when I was just a kid, and I'd be playing out in the back yard, and every once in a while I would run into the house and I would leap up into your arms and get a quick hug, and then run right back out again?"
She held my hand a little tighter. She remembered.
"Mom, you had strong arms, and even though I'd take a flying leap at you, you'd always catch me and give me a hug."
She smiled. "I couldn't catch you in my arms anymore, Ralph."
"l know Mom. But I still come running in for a hug. Only now, you catch me with your heart."
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Ruthless Pruning Required
Along the lakeshore, the first leaves burst out of their buds last weekend. I headed home at once to prune my hedge. Because I knew that hedge would soon also burst into leaf and mask the tangled branches of my shrubs.
We planted a mixed hedge, you see. It alternates a bush that has golden-green leaves with a bush that has deep maroon leaves. Don’t ask me their names – I don’t know.
But I do know that these two bushes have totally different personalities.
The golden-green one is aggressive. Wherever its bottom branches touch the soil, they promptly root themselves. Its roots burrow like a mole just below the surface, to pop up with new shoots in the middle of the maroon bush. Its higher branches reach out like a groper at a dance – nothing is safe.
Especially not the maroon bush. By comparison, it’s a shrinking violet. When its golden-green neighbour invades its territory, it shrinks back, like a pin-striped banker recoiling from a particularly smelly drunk.
I do not prune scientifically. I simply act as traffic cop, as referee in an unequal contest.
When I first started pruning, I tried to be gentle. I kept thinking that perhaps plants had feelings. They might not appreciate having their limbs amputated. So I did as little trimming and snipping as I could.
I assumed that with a little positive encouragement, the errant plant would see the error of its ways, and would choose to behave in future.
It didn’t work. The aggressive bush took advantage of my weakness to crowd its more retiring neighbour almost into extinction.
I’ve had to become ruthless. Now, when I see a branch heading for forbidden territory, I don’t just stop it at the boundary – I trace it back to its origins. I saw straying branches off at the trunk. I yank sucker shoots up by their roots.
Maybe there’s a message for us humans here. Anti-social behavior may call for more than gentle re-direction.
Is it fair to extrapolate from plant experience to humans? Why not? Jesus did it, when he told his disciples he was the vine, they were the branches, and God would prune those who failed to bear fruit.
The analogy certainly applies to personal issues. You can’t just scale back gently on addictions to anything from French fries to alcohol, from hard drugs to child porn. You have to excise that branch completely.
The analogy is harder to apply to societal problems. Gang wars. Drug pushers. Fraud artists. Pyramid sales schemes. Domestic violence. Crime syndicates...
It’s not enough to trim twigs here, either. Harassing a few sex-trade workers won’t make our streets safe. Nor will jailing a few homeless transients or a few low-level con artists.
We probably need to get ruthless with the roots of poverty, the main stems of crime, the spreading networks of greed and corruption.
I just wish I knew how. It’s not as easy to visualize as applying pruning shears to a misbehaving branch.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Nancy McClure-Long of Ghent, New York saw this announcement in news letter. “When I know that lay of the land, I will schedule a new mating."
Susan Matticks was checking out the Story Lectionary site. She wonders, “are you going to ‘clean’ the story of Mary of Magdala from many places, or ‘glean’ it?”
Gordon Allaby saw a sign outside a church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan that said: “Gods We Truly Love #6. Bacchus: Gods of Consumption. Noon Thnksgiving Ptluck.
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Wish I’d Said That! – Wherever we are, Jesus is in the boat with us.
source unknown via Nancy Prieb
The older I get, the more insanity I can handle.
Rob Brown
The rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
Mark Russell via Evelyn McLachlan
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We Get Letters – Evelyn McLachlan writes: This afternoon on Midrash [lectionary discussion group] someone sent a note about what the “pearly gates” mean in Greek, or at least “pearly.” Margarita!!! Not too sure how correct that is, but I'm planning on going to a lot of pearly gates!!! Just might go to one tonight!
No, No Evelyn. Margarita is the name of a girl I was in love with for two or three days in high school. And Pearly Gates is Bill’s sister.
Evelyn says that in “that same email, the writer was referring to something Jesus said in the "read-letter edition" of the Bible.
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Heart Attack!”)
An archaeologist was digging in the Negev Desert in Israel and came upon a casket containing a mummy. After examining it, he called the curator of a prestigious natural-history museum.
“I’ve just discovered a 3,000 year-old mummy of a man who died of heart failure!” the excited scientist exclaimed.
To which the curator replied, “Bring him in. We’ll check it out.”
A week later, the amazed curator called the archaeologist. “You were right about the mummy’s age and cause of death. How in the world did you know?”
“Easy. There was a piece of paper in his hand that said, ‘10,000 Shekels on Goliath.’”
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Bottom of the Barrel – This from Wayne Seybert of Longmont, Colorado..
If you love something...set it free
If it comes back...It will always be yours
If it doesn't come back...It was never yours to begin with
But if it just set in your living room
Messes up your stuff, watches your TV
Eats your food, uses your telephone
Takes your money and does not appear to realize that you set it free....
Then you either married it or gave birth to it.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Preaching Materials for April 20, 2008
R U M O R S # 497
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-04-13
April 13, 2008
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog so that you can access it any time. And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there.
Thanks.
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The e-mails and phone calls have been coming in. People are “delighted,” “surprised,” “invigorated,” “motivated,” “deeply moved,” by what they find there.
Said Charles Asherban of Hackensack, New Jersey, “since we’ve been using the ‘readers’ theatre’ scripture from the Story Lectionary, people are actually leaning forward in their pews to hear the Bible read. And they’re talking about it afterwards. Not about the method, but about the scripture story itself.”
Check it out at: http://www.story-lectionary.com
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The Story Lectionary – the two week together
Revised Common Lectionary – a parallel to the crucifixion
Rumors – school in the back seat of a Chrysler
Soft Edges – let bygones by bygones
Bloopers – breakfast fiends
We Get Letters – grave marker memories
Mirabile Dictu! – living down to their standards
Bottom of the Barrel – morbus sabbaticus
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – The visiting minister was trying to have a conversation with a child, while its mother was in the kitchen preparing the tea and cookies that would add more pounds to the minister’s already portly posterior.
“What does your mother do for you when you’ve been a good girl?” the minister asked.
“I get to stay home from church,” said the child.
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 20th, which is the 5th Sunday in the Easter Season.
Story Lectionary – Micah 6:1-8
Jesus complains that the people of Israel “stoned the prophets,” but it really isn’t surprising. Micah had the temerity to tell the movers and shakers, “You’re doing it all wrong!”
Nobody likes to hear that. The prophets of Israel didn’t have political handlers who helped them appeal to the widest group of people possible.
Micah’s writing sounds a bit like a court record. And that got me imagining a court room scene with a judge interrogating the accused. (Yes, judges do that in some judicial systems.) The accusation is greed, selfishness, ambition, etc. Says the judge: “You try to make it right with high-profile donations to charity, and prominent church work.” Bit by bit the judge wears down the defenses. The accused breaks down in tears.
And so does the judge. The judge leaves the bench, comes down and embraces the accused.
The two weep together, and then the judge whispers with an almost heart-breaking intensity. “All I need from you, my child, is that you do justice, and you love kindness, and walk humbly with me as we live out our love in this world.”
The judge, it turns out, is parent to the accused.
You can find more helpful materials at the story-lectionary website. Go to:
http://www.story-lectionary.com
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Revised Common Lectionary – Acts 7:55-60
This story really begins at the beginning of Chapter 7. It gets clipped right out of its context with the word “But” if you start at verse 55. At the very least, begin at verse 54, though that phrase about grinding teeth might send the cold clipopeters* running up and down your back.
Nor, for that matter does the story end with verse sixty. It clearly includes the first verse of Chapter 8.
It’s interesting how the story of Stephen’s stoning parallels the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and how it makes Saul (aka Paul) a party to the crime. It could be that Stephen was so filled with the Spirit that he remembered Jesus’ crucifixion and used the words of Jesus in his own death.
None of us can really imagine our own death, especially not if we face the kind of death Stephen met.
I remember, years ago, being urged by a biblical scholar to memorize the psalms. “You need those psalms,” he said. “You need to know them ‘by heart’ so that in the deep dark and painful moments of your life, you can use those words. You can use the words of the psalm when you have no words of your own.”
Perhaps that’s what Stephen did. Perhaps that’s what Jesus did.
* Don’t try to find that word in a dictionary. I just made it up.
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Preparing a place
1 The winds of fate buffet me, Lord.
I cling to you.
2 Gales of temptation try to tear me from my security.
I'm being blown away, Lord. I need shelter.
3 Give me something to hold onto;
don't let all the effort you put into me go to waste.
4 I went way out on a limb for you, Lord;
don't let your foes cut me off.
5 I can't hang on any longer;
I cast my fate to the winds. Don't abandon me now!
15 My life is in your hands.
I've lost control. Only you can save me.
16 Bring back the sunshine and the gentle breezes, Lord.
If you love me, save me!
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 2:2-10 – “Like newborn infants long for the pure, spiritual milk.”
That passage sends me to my friend Julian of Norwich who wrote, “A mother will hold her child to her breast and feed the child with her milk. But our wonderful mother Jesus feeds us with himself, by giving us the food of life through the sacrament of communion.” (from “The Essence of Julian,” Northstone, 2002.)
That’s not 21st century revisionist theology. Julian wrote that 600 years ago. The metaphor of spiritual food, especially a basic, children’s food like milk, is powerful for me.
And that passage is full of images. Living stones, the stone rejected, royal priesthood, God’s people, etc. The writer of 1 Peter knew that the only way we fundamentally understand the gospel is through metaphors, through poems and stories.
John 14:1-14 – This is one of the most familiar, most inspiring, most troubling passages in scripture. We hear it read at funerals, especially the first four verses.
Henri Nouwen cited these verses as his spiritual manifesto. Jesus expected his disciples to do everything he had done because they are one with him and with God.
We’ve also heard these verses used to justify a narrow-minded exclusiveness that is hard to reconcile with the gospel of love that Jesus taught and lived. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” has been used as a bludgeon to beat people into thinking exactly the way the user does, and using exactly the same words and ideas.
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” seems to be the centre of this passage. Or at least, that’s what speaks to me most fully. Knowing Jesus is as close as the human mind can get to knowing what God is like.
But the problem (or perhaps the delight and possibility) with all that, is that there are almost as many ways in which people understand Jesus as there are people who have bothered to find out who he was and what he said and what he did.
But if I listen very carefully to what you see in the man Jesus, and you listen very carefully to what I see, perhaps we will both be closer to understanding the heart of God.
There’s a children’s story based on 1 Peter 2:2-10, and one based on the John passage, in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” pages 108 and 110.
Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – I went to school in the back seat of a Chrysler sedan for five years. I was working in New York at the Interchurch Centre – a place known affectionately as “the God Box,” or “Heaven on the Hudson.” I was a church bureaucrat.
Working in New York, living in New Jersey, I was part of a car pool going back and forth across the George Washington Bridge each day. Route 4 was a slow-moving parking lot sometimes, so we had lots of time to talk.
Bev and I and the four kids lived in an African American neighborhood. I was the only “honky” in the car. The others were, to a person, involved in the black liberation movement which was at its height, with Martin Luther King preaching the gospel of liberation, loudly and clearly.
That was in the 60s. Like most Caucasian Canadians, I lived with the pleasant fiction that Canada did not have a race problem. Often I would think it, and occasionally I would say it. “Look! I am Canadian. What’s happening here is not my fault. Why are you dumping on me?”
The way the car pool pickup schedule worked, I usually found myself in the middle of the back seat between two highly articulate, feminist, African American woman. Let’s just say that there were a number of consciousness raising events in the course of those trips back and forth across the Hudson.
Back in Canada, I was involved in the men’s movement a fair bit. One of the discussions that happened over and over in the various groups was men saying, “Look! I treat women as equals. Why are they mad at me?”
Sometimes we gave ourselves away with phrases like, “I’ve always given the little woman everything she asked for.”
One of the hardest things for the men to realize was that all of us had an investment in the hierarchical assumptions and the structures that gave rise to incidents like the Mark Lepine massacre. Our culture provides the seeds and the soil where such monsters, and many lesser monsters, can grow.
I can understand Paul standing there looking after people’s coats, saying to himself, “Well, I’m not throwing stones. It’s none of my business.”
But everything is connected. “I am a part of all that I have met,” said Tennyson in “Ulysses,” and we can never really distance ourselves from anything, good or bad, that happens in the world. Paul, Stephen, and even all the disciples were in some ways also responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
As was the council. As was Pilate. As are you and I.
So what do we do with that besides grovel in guilt?
Three things. We pray for forgiveness. And then we believe that we actually are forgiven – not only forgiven but loved.
Perhaps most importantly, we develop a sense of humor about it. A sense of humor is a manifestation of a healthy, life-giving humility.
And then, with a little help from our friends (i.e. church) we might actually be able to live so that we are a bit more responsible for the solutions, than we are for the problem.
As Micah told us. It’s not rocket science. We lean our lives into God by the love of justice, kindness, and a life-affirming humility.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Let Bygones Be Bygones
A variety of elected politicians found themselves in hot water last week, as a result of comments they made 16 years ago.
On a private videotape uncovered by the Saskatchewan NDP, provincial premier Brad Wall and federal MP Tom Likiwski made prejudiced comments about Ukrainians and homosexuals. Both have apologized profusely.
I don’t want to defend their comments. But I do want to object to applying current standards to past events.
I grew my beard in the early 1970s as a protest against affirmative action programs that seemed to me to favour women unfairly. I’ve since changed my mind (although I still have the beard!).
I fought against inclusive language around 1980. I lamented the loss of terms like “craftsmanship” and “man-hours.” I have since become a total convert to gender-neutral language.
If a literary archaeologist found some of my writings from those old days, I would be embarrassed. But it would be wrong to assume that I still held those views.
There is, of course, always a risk that one’s prejudices have simply gone underground – that this person still hates gays, or women, or Jews, or, well, we don’t use words like niggers and gooks any more, do we? So there’s no way of knowing whether someone still thinks of black or brown neighbours in those terms.
But it seems to me that we need some kind of Behavioural Statute of Limitations. We need to acknowledge – indeed, to celebrate – that people can change. A Nazi prison guard may genuinely have a change of heart. A crook can go straight. The proof lies in present actions, not past mistakes.
This is, after all, the foundation of evangelism. A sinner can be saved. An adherent of one faith can convert to another faith. The notion presumes not just a new label, but a change of lifestyle, of values, of attitudes.
If we want to apply present-day morality to past actions, we would need to admit that the biblical King David was somewhat less than an ideal role model. He raped Bathsheba. He conspired to murder her husband. He was a terrorist who deliberately targeted women and children in wars against neighbouring tribes. He mutilated his victims.
Nevertheless, by the standards of his time, David re-wrote the rule book for rulers. He spared the lives of enemies; he respected his opponents; he upheld justice.
Applying present standards to past events also ignores the context in which those events occurred. When doctors or undertakers get together, they may release tensions with what’s called “black humour” – jokes at the expense of their customers. In no way does that negate their professional competence.
In private, I may satirize my own views. Ottawa politicians regularly skewered their own foibles at the annual Press Gallery Dinner – until someone violated the unwritten code of confidentiality.
When we judge, we need to judge in the context of the time and the setting. We need to consider how people may have changed.
Otherwise, every one of us will be irredeemably guilty.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Bruce Frame saw this announcement about a Fellowship Breakfast. “Join fiends from around the Cluster for a hearty breakfast . . .”
Bruce, maybe that wasn’t a typo. Have you ever been to one of those breakfasts?
From the file:
* The lovers in the exhaust fan are not working.
* Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles, and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Imagine how happy life would be if we could just allow ourselves the moment we’re in – to learn from it – to taste and savor and lick its depths.
source unknown
A wise person hears one word and understands two. Yiddish Proverb
God is present in the force that makes us restless.
Paul Tillich
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We Get Letters – The item about interesting grave markers triggered memories for a number of folks. Mary Lautensleger of Albemarle, North Carolina sends a note labeled:
“Tomb It May Concern.” Ouch!
These are a few of the inscriptions she uncovered while researching a sermon for “Decoration Day.”
He got a fish bone in his throat,
And then he sang an angel note.
She was not smart, she was not fair,
But hearts with grief for her are swellin,’
As empty stands her little chair,
She died of eating “watermelon.”
Here lies, cut down like unripe fruit,
The wife of Deacon Amos Shute.
She died of drinking too much coffee,
“Anno Dominy” Eighteen-forty.
The grave markers got Stephani Keer thinking of “My mother's favourite gravestone from her youth in England.”
The bugles, they bugle;
The trumpets, they trum.
The Pearly Gates open
And in walks Mum.
Mary Almey of Milton (is that the one in Ontario?) responded to this epitaph.
Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
Only the good die young.
“Where's the problem with this?” Mary wants to know. “Compared to Methuselah, Ezekial Aikle was a youngster!”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Living down to their standards!”)
Why I Don’t Go To the Movies
1) The manager of the theatre never called on me.
2) I went a few times, but nobody spoke to me. They’re not friendly at the movies.
3) Every time I go to the movies, they ask for money.
4) Not all the people at the movies live down to the ethical standards in the movies.
5) I went so much as a kid – I don’t need the entertainment anymore.
6) The movies last too long. I can’t sit still for two hours!
7) I don’t care for some of the people I see at the theatre.
8) I don’t always agree with the things I see and hear at the movies.
9) The music isn’t all that good in the movies.
10) The shows are held in the evening, the only time I can be with my family.
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Bottom of the Barrel – Morbus Sabbaticus: A disease that affects people on Sunday morning. The symptoms are a distinct lack of energy and motivation, which tend to last until it’s too late to get to church.
While the physical morbidity dissipates within an hour or two, the spiritual morbidity tends to increase exponentially with each Sunday morning occurrence.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-04-13
April 13, 2008
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog so that you can access it any time. And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there.
Thanks.
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The e-mails and phone calls have been coming in. People are “delighted,” “surprised,” “invigorated,” “motivated,” “deeply moved,” by what they find there.
Said Charles Asherban of Hackensack, New Jersey, “since we’ve been using the ‘readers’ theatre’ scripture from the Story Lectionary, people are actually leaning forward in their pews to hear the Bible read. And they’re talking about it afterwards. Not about the method, but about the scripture story itself.”
Check it out at: http://www.story-lectionary.com
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The Story Lectionary – the two week together
Revised Common Lectionary – a parallel to the crucifixion
Rumors – school in the back seat of a Chrysler
Soft Edges – let bygones by bygones
Bloopers – breakfast fiends
We Get Letters – grave marker memories
Mirabile Dictu! – living down to their standards
Bottom of the Barrel – morbus sabbaticus
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – The visiting minister was trying to have a conversation with a child, while its mother was in the kitchen preparing the tea and cookies that would add more pounds to the minister’s already portly posterior.
“What does your mother do for you when you’ve been a good girl?” the minister asked.
“I get to stay home from church,” said the child.
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 20th, which is the 5th Sunday in the Easter Season.
Story Lectionary – Micah 6:1-8
Jesus complains that the people of Israel “stoned the prophets,” but it really isn’t surprising. Micah had the temerity to tell the movers and shakers, “You’re doing it all wrong!”
Nobody likes to hear that. The prophets of Israel didn’t have political handlers who helped them appeal to the widest group of people possible.
Micah’s writing sounds a bit like a court record. And that got me imagining a court room scene with a judge interrogating the accused. (Yes, judges do that in some judicial systems.) The accusation is greed, selfishness, ambition, etc. Says the judge: “You try to make it right with high-profile donations to charity, and prominent church work.” Bit by bit the judge wears down the defenses. The accused breaks down in tears.
And so does the judge. The judge leaves the bench, comes down and embraces the accused.
The two weep together, and then the judge whispers with an almost heart-breaking intensity. “All I need from you, my child, is that you do justice, and you love kindness, and walk humbly with me as we live out our love in this world.”
The judge, it turns out, is parent to the accused.
You can find more helpful materials at the story-lectionary website. Go to:
http://www.story-lectionary.com
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Revised Common Lectionary – Acts 7:55-60
This story really begins at the beginning of Chapter 7. It gets clipped right out of its context with the word “But” if you start at verse 55. At the very least, begin at verse 54, though that phrase about grinding teeth might send the cold clipopeters* running up and down your back.
Nor, for that matter does the story end with verse sixty. It clearly includes the first verse of Chapter 8.
It’s interesting how the story of Stephen’s stoning parallels the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and how it makes Saul (aka Paul) a party to the crime. It could be that Stephen was so filled with the Spirit that he remembered Jesus’ crucifixion and used the words of Jesus in his own death.
None of us can really imagine our own death, especially not if we face the kind of death Stephen met.
I remember, years ago, being urged by a biblical scholar to memorize the psalms. “You need those psalms,” he said. “You need to know them ‘by heart’ so that in the deep dark and painful moments of your life, you can use those words. You can use the words of the psalm when you have no words of your own.”
Perhaps that’s what Stephen did. Perhaps that’s what Jesus did.
* Don’t try to find that word in a dictionary. I just made it up.
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Preparing a place
1 The winds of fate buffet me, Lord.
I cling to you.
2 Gales of temptation try to tear me from my security.
I'm being blown away, Lord. I need shelter.
3 Give me something to hold onto;
don't let all the effort you put into me go to waste.
4 I went way out on a limb for you, Lord;
don't let your foes cut me off.
5 I can't hang on any longer;
I cast my fate to the winds. Don't abandon me now!
15 My life is in your hands.
I've lost control. Only you can save me.
16 Bring back the sunshine and the gentle breezes, Lord.
If you love me, save me!
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 2:2-10 – “Like newborn infants long for the pure, spiritual milk.”
That passage sends me to my friend Julian of Norwich who wrote, “A mother will hold her child to her breast and feed the child with her milk. But our wonderful mother Jesus feeds us with himself, by giving us the food of life through the sacrament of communion.” (from “The Essence of Julian,” Northstone, 2002.)
That’s not 21st century revisionist theology. Julian wrote that 600 years ago. The metaphor of spiritual food, especially a basic, children’s food like milk, is powerful for me.
And that passage is full of images. Living stones, the stone rejected, royal priesthood, God’s people, etc. The writer of 1 Peter knew that the only way we fundamentally understand the gospel is through metaphors, through poems and stories.
John 14:1-14 – This is one of the most familiar, most inspiring, most troubling passages in scripture. We hear it read at funerals, especially the first four verses.
Henri Nouwen cited these verses as his spiritual manifesto. Jesus expected his disciples to do everything he had done because they are one with him and with God.
We’ve also heard these verses used to justify a narrow-minded exclusiveness that is hard to reconcile with the gospel of love that Jesus taught and lived. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” has been used as a bludgeon to beat people into thinking exactly the way the user does, and using exactly the same words and ideas.
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” seems to be the centre of this passage. Or at least, that’s what speaks to me most fully. Knowing Jesus is as close as the human mind can get to knowing what God is like.
But the problem (or perhaps the delight and possibility) with all that, is that there are almost as many ways in which people understand Jesus as there are people who have bothered to find out who he was and what he said and what he did.
But if I listen very carefully to what you see in the man Jesus, and you listen very carefully to what I see, perhaps we will both be closer to understanding the heart of God.
There’s a children’s story based on 1 Peter 2:2-10, and one based on the John passage, in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” pages 108 and 110.
Click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – I went to school in the back seat of a Chrysler sedan for five years. I was working in New York at the Interchurch Centre – a place known affectionately as “the God Box,” or “Heaven on the Hudson.” I was a church bureaucrat.
Working in New York, living in New Jersey, I was part of a car pool going back and forth across the George Washington Bridge each day. Route 4 was a slow-moving parking lot sometimes, so we had lots of time to talk.
Bev and I and the four kids lived in an African American neighborhood. I was the only “honky” in the car. The others were, to a person, involved in the black liberation movement which was at its height, with Martin Luther King preaching the gospel of liberation, loudly and clearly.
That was in the 60s. Like most Caucasian Canadians, I lived with the pleasant fiction that Canada did not have a race problem. Often I would think it, and occasionally I would say it. “Look! I am Canadian. What’s happening here is not my fault. Why are you dumping on me?”
The way the car pool pickup schedule worked, I usually found myself in the middle of the back seat between two highly articulate, feminist, African American woman. Let’s just say that there were a number of consciousness raising events in the course of those trips back and forth across the Hudson.
Back in Canada, I was involved in the men’s movement a fair bit. One of the discussions that happened over and over in the various groups was men saying, “Look! I treat women as equals. Why are they mad at me?”
Sometimes we gave ourselves away with phrases like, “I’ve always given the little woman everything she asked for.”
One of the hardest things for the men to realize was that all of us had an investment in the hierarchical assumptions and the structures that gave rise to incidents like the Mark Lepine massacre. Our culture provides the seeds and the soil where such monsters, and many lesser monsters, can grow.
I can understand Paul standing there looking after people’s coats, saying to himself, “Well, I’m not throwing stones. It’s none of my business.”
But everything is connected. “I am a part of all that I have met,” said Tennyson in “Ulysses,” and we can never really distance ourselves from anything, good or bad, that happens in the world. Paul, Stephen, and even all the disciples were in some ways also responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
As was the council. As was Pilate. As are you and I.
So what do we do with that besides grovel in guilt?
Three things. We pray for forgiveness. And then we believe that we actually are forgiven – not only forgiven but loved.
Perhaps most importantly, we develop a sense of humor about it. A sense of humor is a manifestation of a healthy, life-giving humility.
And then, with a little help from our friends (i.e. church) we might actually be able to live so that we are a bit more responsible for the solutions, than we are for the problem.
As Micah told us. It’s not rocket science. We lean our lives into God by the love of justice, kindness, and a life-affirming humility.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Let Bygones Be Bygones
A variety of elected politicians found themselves in hot water last week, as a result of comments they made 16 years ago.
On a private videotape uncovered by the Saskatchewan NDP, provincial premier Brad Wall and federal MP Tom Likiwski made prejudiced comments about Ukrainians and homosexuals. Both have apologized profusely.
I don’t want to defend their comments. But I do want to object to applying current standards to past events.
I grew my beard in the early 1970s as a protest against affirmative action programs that seemed to me to favour women unfairly. I’ve since changed my mind (although I still have the beard!).
I fought against inclusive language around 1980. I lamented the loss of terms like “craftsmanship” and “man-hours.” I have since become a total convert to gender-neutral language.
If a literary archaeologist found some of my writings from those old days, I would be embarrassed. But it would be wrong to assume that I still held those views.
There is, of course, always a risk that one’s prejudices have simply gone underground – that this person still hates gays, or women, or Jews, or, well, we don’t use words like niggers and gooks any more, do we? So there’s no way of knowing whether someone still thinks of black or brown neighbours in those terms.
But it seems to me that we need some kind of Behavioural Statute of Limitations. We need to acknowledge – indeed, to celebrate – that people can change. A Nazi prison guard may genuinely have a change of heart. A crook can go straight. The proof lies in present actions, not past mistakes.
This is, after all, the foundation of evangelism. A sinner can be saved. An adherent of one faith can convert to another faith. The notion presumes not just a new label, but a change of lifestyle, of values, of attitudes.
If we want to apply present-day morality to past actions, we would need to admit that the biblical King David was somewhat less than an ideal role model. He raped Bathsheba. He conspired to murder her husband. He was a terrorist who deliberately targeted women and children in wars against neighbouring tribes. He mutilated his victims.
Nevertheless, by the standards of his time, David re-wrote the rule book for rulers. He spared the lives of enemies; he respected his opponents; he upheld justice.
Applying present standards to past events also ignores the context in which those events occurred. When doctors or undertakers get together, they may release tensions with what’s called “black humour” – jokes at the expense of their customers. In no way does that negate their professional competence.
In private, I may satirize my own views. Ottawa politicians regularly skewered their own foibles at the annual Press Gallery Dinner – until someone violated the unwritten code of confidentiality.
When we judge, we need to judge in the context of the time and the setting. We need to consider how people may have changed.
Otherwise, every one of us will be irredeemably guilty.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Bruce Frame saw this announcement about a Fellowship Breakfast. “Join fiends from around the Cluster for a hearty breakfast . . .”
Bruce, maybe that wasn’t a typo. Have you ever been to one of those breakfasts?
From the file:
* The lovers in the exhaust fan are not working.
* Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles, and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Imagine how happy life would be if we could just allow ourselves the moment we’re in – to learn from it – to taste and savor and lick its depths.
source unknown
A wise person hears one word and understands two. Yiddish Proverb
God is present in the force that makes us restless.
Paul Tillich
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We Get Letters – The item about interesting grave markers triggered memories for a number of folks. Mary Lautensleger of Albemarle, North Carolina sends a note labeled:
“Tomb It May Concern.” Ouch!
These are a few of the inscriptions she uncovered while researching a sermon for “Decoration Day.”
He got a fish bone in his throat,
And then he sang an angel note.
She was not smart, she was not fair,
But hearts with grief for her are swellin,’
As empty stands her little chair,
She died of eating “watermelon.”
Here lies, cut down like unripe fruit,
The wife of Deacon Amos Shute.
She died of drinking too much coffee,
“Anno Dominy” Eighteen-forty.
The grave markers got Stephani Keer thinking of “My mother's favourite gravestone from her youth in England.”
The bugles, they bugle;
The trumpets, they trum.
The Pearly Gates open
And in walks Mum.
Mary Almey of Milton (is that the one in Ontario?) responded to this epitaph.
Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
Only the good die young.
“Where's the problem with this?” Mary wants to know. “Compared to Methuselah, Ezekial Aikle was a youngster!”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “Living down to their standards!”)
Why I Don’t Go To the Movies
1) The manager of the theatre never called on me.
2) I went a few times, but nobody spoke to me. They’re not friendly at the movies.
3) Every time I go to the movies, they ask for money.
4) Not all the people at the movies live down to the ethical standards in the movies.
5) I went so much as a kid – I don’t need the entertainment anymore.
6) The movies last too long. I can’t sit still for two hours!
7) I don’t care for some of the people I see at the theatre.
8) I don’t always agree with the things I see and hear at the movies.
9) The music isn’t all that good in the movies.
10) The shows are held in the evening, the only time I can be with my family.
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Bottom of the Barrel – Morbus Sabbaticus: A disease that affects people on Sunday morning. The symptoms are a distinct lack of energy and motivation, which tend to last until it’s too late to get to church.
While the physical morbidity dissipates within an hour or two, the spiritual morbidity tends to increase exponentially with each Sunday morning occurrence.
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Preaching Materials for April 6, 2008
Apologies!
Somehow, I got myself confused on dates, and this issue didn't get posted.
Blessings,
Ralph Milton
R U M O R S # 495
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-03-30
March 30, 2008
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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IMPORTANT: I really appreciate your notes, and Rumors is the richer for them. To protect me from viruses, please be sure that you put something on the "subject" line that lets me know that you are legit. For instance, the word "Rumors" works. And please give us your name and where you’re from. Folks like to know. Thanks.
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The Story Lectionary – them dry bones
Revised Common Lectionary – a touch of hyperbole
Rumors – Emmaus happens
Soft Edges – feeling left out
Bloopers – shredded families
We Get Letters – free range Easter eggs
Mirabile Dictu! – trespassers will be violated
Bottom of the Barrel – who is the father?
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Fran Ota of Toronto who got it from Janice Henck in Atlanta, Georgia.
A passenger in a taxi leaned over to ask the driver a question and tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window.
For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, and then the still shaking driver said, “I'm sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me.”
The frightened passenger apologized to the driver and said he didn't realize a mere tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much.
“No, no, I'm sorry,” said the driver. “It's entirely my fault. Today is my first day driving a cab. I've been driving a hearse for the last 25 years.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 6th, which is the 3rd Sunday of Easter
Story Lectionary – Ezekiel 37:1-14
African American musicians understood the powerful metaphor of this passage when they sang, “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” And they had fun with it, which is entirely appropriate.
Next time you have a few free minutes, read the whole book of Ezekiel. He’s a delightfully complex person and his various oracles show it. He’s a prophet to a people in exile – a prophet who lets his personality shine through his rants. Like most really good prophets, he sits right on the fuzzy line between genius and insanity. Among other things, he eats a scroll (without even the benefit of a bit of ketchup) and he refuses to mourn for his dead wife. But his central message was always – God is here in exile with us.
The concept of “Sabbath,” one of Judaism’s great gifts, was developed during the exile. Christians have, for the most part, lost that gift and we are much poorer for it.
Zeek’s dry bones metaphor works for us right now. I can see the preacher shouting, “Can these bones live?” with a broad, sweeping gesture that makes it absolutely clear those dry bones are sitting right there in the pews.
In fact, if you are a bit of an actor, or you have a competent actor in your congregation – someone who knows how to yell and foam at the mouth – work this up as a dramatic monologue. It needs no re-writing at all.
Alternately, you can find an “aggada” based on the story of old Zeek, along with lots of other good stuff to make this passage really sing, at the story lectionary website.
Click on: www.story-lectionary.com.
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Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 2:14a, 36-41 – This is probably the world’s most successful sermon. And that in the days before PA systems that actually made it possible to address a crowd of 3,000. Me thinks there may be a touch of hyperbole involved here.
Doesn’t matter. The real problem is that this story is divided into two parts. Last week we heard Peter’s sermon. This week we hear the results. The Lectionary assumption is that you’re preaching to the same gang both days. Ain’t so.
The sentence that leaps out at me is in verse 37. “Brothers, what should we do?” Us comfortable pew-warmers are exhorted and encouraged and informed week after week, but that obvious question doesn’t seem to occur to us. What should we do?
We’ve heard the scripture. We’ve heard the word preached. But nothing happens until those of us who polish the pews with our posteriors ask that question. Until we do, what we have is not a message, but a massage.
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Invite a Stranger to Supper
1 God knows how to listen.
2 Others hear only to their own voices;
they recognize only the echoes of their own empty desires.
But God heard me when I cried out.
I will never forget that.
3 I had given up hope.
4 As a last resort, I called to God.
"Save me," I cried, "Rescue me from this mess!"
12 How can I thank God?
13 Since I owe God every breath of my new life,
I dedicate every breath to God–
every glass of water, every bite of bread.
14 I will not be silenced.
I shall pry open the shells of privacy that people build around themselves;
In crowded elevators and on wind-blown street corners
I will whisper my message into ears stopped up with self-interest.
15 I will say, "God loves each and every one of us.
Every person who believes in God is precious."
16, 17 I have nothing to lose.
All that I am, I owe to God.
18 I don't care what my convictions cost me;
19 From the edges of civilization to the centre of the universe,
I will glorify this God who saves.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 1:17-23 – Peter uses the phrase “born anew” in verse 23, which connects us to the idea of being “born again,” or “born from above,” (NRSV) in John 3:3. Many of us get a bit queasy with the “blood of the lamb” metaphor in this passage, but it had deep meaning – deep connections into Jewish spirituality – for the people who read this letter originally.
In the understanding of the folks to whom this letter was addressed, sacrifice and sacrificer were bonded together. The sacrifice of one is the sacrifice of the other. Both benefited.
I must admit I don’t really understand – at least not in a deep spiritual sense – how that works. And I would not really want to read this passage to a group of folks unless there really was a means of unpacking those ideas. Reading it from the pulpit on Sunday morning might well be counter-productive.
Luke24:13-35 – This is such a strangely moving story. And scholars don’t really know where Emmaus was, of if such a town actually existed. Perhaps it moves us because, like those two disciples, we have the information but we don’t know how to process it. It hangs there, in our consciousness, but doesn’t seem to connect with our perceptions and experiences. It’s like a piece of software buried in the computer. The ikon is there on the screen, but when we click on it, we get some wild graphics but nothing we can immediately pin down and use.
We can empathize with those two disciples. So this Jesus who meant so much to us – in whom we had placed all our hopes – has been killed. Something weird happened to his body, and some say he is still alive. What are we supposed to do with all this? How do we use this information? Or as those folks on that Pentecost Sunday said, “What should we do?”
Preachers keep trying, week after week, to respond to that yearning. They have the toughest communication job in the world.
And I am feeling frustrated because I feel I should have a helpful little formula to offer that would make it all work.
There is no formula. There is only faithfulness.
A children’s version of the Emmaus story is in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 102 which you can find by clicking on:
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Emmaus happens! That would make a good secret code word for Christians, because only they would know what it meant.
Emmaus has happened to me many times, but the incident that comes to mind happened in the sixties. I was one of a group enrolled in a clowning workshop at Naramata Centre, a church con-ed place not far from here. Our clowning week was to conclude with a communion service, with the several hundred people of all ages who were there for a summer week. The communion had been carefully planned by our leader, a Roman Catholic priest.
But just before the communion service, he came down with a bad case of the flue. He had all the logistics in his head, but couldn’t participate at all. I was the only one who had actually seen a clown communion before. The rest had only heard it described. So full of faith, foolishness and bravado, we decided to go ahead.
We did everything wrong. A music tape was to provide the clues for the various parts of the service, but we got the wrong tape on the machine. There wasn’t enough bread or wine. We forgot our cues. The children started running around. It turned into complete chaos. Nobody knew what was going on and eventually we just gave up and let go.
Somehow, that group of worshippers took it over. Or was it the Spirit? It certainly wasn’t me or my classmates.
We didn’t know what we were doing, but some power within that group of assembled worshippers made it happen. It was totally out of control, but in a funny kind of way, it wasn’t out of control at all.
People offered each other bread and wine, and others danced to that wrong music on the tape. There were hugs, laughter, singing, and everyone was fed.
When we stopped trying to direct our inner clown whose mask and costume we were wearing, the clown became the Christ, who was made known to us in the breakup of our plans and in the breaking of the bread.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Feeling Left Out
Having just spent three weeks in Edmonton, I have returned home with a new appreciation for the difficulties of adult education.
We arrived in Edmonton in early March. Massive piles of snow flanked every driveway, and fresh snow every morning added to them.
Spring seemed far away indeed.
But then the weather finally warmed up. The piles of snow started melting. Flattened brown lawns began to appear again.
And so did a lot of things that had been covered up by layer upon layer of snow. Half-eaten slices of pizza. Soggy cardboard containers of French fries. Tim Horton's coffee cups with the rrrrrrims rrrrrolled up. Plastic water bottles. Drink boxes. Beer cans. Styrofoam doggy-packs of unfinished Chinese dinners.
Our dog thought she had died and gone to heaven. She’s supposed to be a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, but she is as a cross between a hyena and a vacuum cleaner. She snarfed up everything remotely edible. And if it was too disgusting for even her taste buds, she rolled in it.
All this debris was less attractive to adult humans. It reminded us of our failings. The cleanups we hadn’t done. The stuff we had forgotten. The things we hadn’t even realized were there.
Which is – finally I get to the point! – exactly what happens when most adults venture into education programs.
Some people gobble study programs right into their later years. They love learning almost anything, for its own sake.
But most people take courses only when they discover that they no longer know how to cope. High school typing doesn’t help them handle the so-called intuitive commands of computers. Amateur mechanics find cars don’t have carburetors any more. A tattered exercise book no longer qualifies for keeping a community organization’s financial records.
So people attend a class already feeling inadequate.
Then they quickly discover how much more they have forgotten. Or never learned at all.
In high school, they learned that cause and effect were predictable. Now there's something called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Not to mention Chaos Theory. And the decay of radioactive atoms somehow determines whether a cat owned by Mr. Schrödinger will live or die.
So sub-atomic particles called quarks can spin six different ways at the same time until someone observes them? Any two-year-old can do that…
This sudden discovery of incompetence particularly afflicts adults who tackle religious studies.
Most adults grew up believing that the gospels were written by Jesus' disciples. Now scholars say that none of them were. Matthew and Luke – whoever they were –plagiarized Mark and some German named Quelle. Paul didn’t write all his letters. The early church had more infighting than a political convention. And a lot of what Jesus said, he probably didn’t – later believers added what they thought he ought to have said…
Bewildered, these adults ask, “When did all this happen? Why didn’t anyone tell me before?”
Little wonder that only about ten per cent of churchgoers, and even fewer non-church-goers, ever bother upgrading their religious knowledge.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Sharyl Peterson of Grand Junction, Colorado saw a newsletter announcement about a “New Ministry: Family Shred Time.”
Sharyl was sure they must have meant “Family Shared Time,” but then on page two she read, “Activities and games – we’ll divide families and teach them to interact in new ways.”
Now she isn’t sure.
April Daley saw this one in the order for the Seder meal on Maundy Thursday.
It was supposed to read "for all the years we were in bondage." Instead, it read:
"for all the years we were in bandages".
Says April, “Must have been quite a fight!”
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Always remember, you are a blessing, and then try to be gracious as you live like it.
Jodi Haier
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
source unknown, via Harvie Barker
Every day the suffering of the world look to the secure of the world to save them from even more disaster. It is not our job to work for miracles, but it is our task to try.
source unknown
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We Get Letters – Wayne Sawyer of Thomaston, Maine writes: “The quote about speakers making their audiences happy reminded me of a wise, old pastor friend who told me he had managed, in his ministry, to make everyone in his churches happy. Some were happy when he came, some were happy while he was there, and the rest were happy when he left.”
Warwick Hambleton of Huntly, New Zealand says he knows of a “politically correct person who went to the supermarket wanting to buy ‘free range’ Easter eggs!”
Ron Shaw of Riverview, New Brunswick writes: “We heard some leading edge theology this Easter Sunday. One of our ministers was asking questions about the resurrection of the small group gathered at the front. He had explained that some of the followers of Jesus had gone to his tomb, found the stone rolled away, and the tomb was empty.
“‘What do you think happened to Jesus?’ he asked.
“One small voice replied enthusiastically, ‘He became a zombie!’"
Rachel Prichard of Sudbury, Ontario, writes about “a man who was visiting a cemetery and tried to strike up a conversation with the local gravedigger.
"Do people die often around here?"
"Just the once," came the reply.
"Have you lived here all your life?"
"Not yet," said the grave digger.
"Can you tell me which road I should take to Toronto?"
"I shouldn't take any" came the reply. They have enough already."
Mary Almey of Milton, Ontario writes: “Yesterday, during the Easter service, as the offering was being gathered, I could see a visiting couple trying to wrestle something from their youngster's hands. Mom won the battle just as the offering plate passed and into it she dropped a crumpled envelope. Immediately their child started to cry and howled out "I want my money back! I want my money back!"
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “trespassers will be violated!”) This from Carl Boyke
Did They Mean to Say That?
* On a New York loft building: "Wanted: Woman to sew buttons on the fourth floor."
* In a New Hampshire medical building: "Martin Diabetes Professional Ass."
* In the office of a loan company: "Ask about our plans for owning your home."
* In a New York medical building: "Mental health prevention center."
* In a toy department: "Five Santa Clauses – no waiting."
* On a New York convalescent home: "For the sick and tired of the Episcopal Church."
* On a Maine shop: "Our motto is to give our customers the lowest possible prices and workmanship.
* At a number of military bases: "Restricted to unauthorized personnel."
* In a parking lot: "Violators will be enforced and trespassers will be violated."
* On a display of "I Love You Only" Valentine cards: "Now available in multi-packs."
* In the window of an appliance store: "Don't kill your wife. Let our washing machines do the dirty work."
* In a funeral parlor: "Ask about our layaway plan.
* On a window of a New Hampshire hamburger restaurant: "Yes, we are open. Sorry for the inconvenience."
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Bottom of the Barrel – Mike Skibinski heard this story told by the pilot of an airplane while coming in for a landing at Vancouver.
A couple of sailors docked in a Swedish harbor, decided to tour the town. For awhile they walked the streets but because they knew no Swedish, they soon became bored.
Along one street, they spied a church and decided to investigate. A service was being conducted, but unfortunately it was all in Swedish. They saw a well dressed man and decided their best bet was to imitate his actions.
At this point, the minister said a few words and the man stood up. The two sailors promptly followed his actions. The entire congregation roared with laughter.
After the service the two approached the minister and said that since they knew no Swedish, they wondered what was so funny?
“Well”, said the minister, “This was a baptismal service and I had just asked, ‘Who is the father of this child?’”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Somehow, I got myself confused on dates, and this issue didn't get posted.
Blessings,
Ralph Milton
R U M O R S # 495
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-03-30
March 30, 2008
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
IMPORTANT: I really appreciate your notes, and Rumors is the richer for them. To protect me from viruses, please be sure that you put something on the "subject" line that lets me know that you are legit. For instance, the word "Rumors" works. And please give us your name and where you’re from. Folks like to know. Thanks.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The Story Lectionary – them dry bones
Revised Common Lectionary – a touch of hyperbole
Rumors – Emmaus happens
Soft Edges – feeling left out
Bloopers – shredded families
We Get Letters – free range Easter eggs
Mirabile Dictu! – trespassers will be violated
Bottom of the Barrel – who is the father?
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rib Tickler – This from Fran Ota of Toronto who got it from Janice Henck in Atlanta, Georgia.
A passenger in a taxi leaned over to ask the driver a question and tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window.
For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, and then the still shaking driver said, “I'm sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me.”
The frightened passenger apologized to the driver and said he didn't realize a mere tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much.
“No, no, I'm sorry,” said the driver. “It's entirely my fault. Today is my first day driving a cab. I've been driving a hearse for the last 25 years.”
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 6th, which is the 3rd Sunday of Easter
Story Lectionary – Ezekiel 37:1-14
African American musicians understood the powerful metaphor of this passage when they sang, “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” And they had fun with it, which is entirely appropriate.
Next time you have a few free minutes, read the whole book of Ezekiel. He’s a delightfully complex person and his various oracles show it. He’s a prophet to a people in exile – a prophet who lets his personality shine through his rants. Like most really good prophets, he sits right on the fuzzy line between genius and insanity. Among other things, he eats a scroll (without even the benefit of a bit of ketchup) and he refuses to mourn for his dead wife. But his central message was always – God is here in exile with us.
The concept of “Sabbath,” one of Judaism’s great gifts, was developed during the exile. Christians have, for the most part, lost that gift and we are much poorer for it.
Zeek’s dry bones metaphor works for us right now. I can see the preacher shouting, “Can these bones live?” with a broad, sweeping gesture that makes it absolutely clear those dry bones are sitting right there in the pews.
In fact, if you are a bit of an actor, or you have a competent actor in your congregation – someone who knows how to yell and foam at the mouth – work this up as a dramatic monologue. It needs no re-writing at all.
Alternately, you can find an “aggada” based on the story of old Zeek, along with lots of other good stuff to make this passage really sing, at the story lectionary website.
Click on: www.story-lectionary.com.
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Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 2:14a, 36-41 – This is probably the world’s most successful sermon. And that in the days before PA systems that actually made it possible to address a crowd of 3,000. Me thinks there may be a touch of hyperbole involved here.
Doesn’t matter. The real problem is that this story is divided into two parts. Last week we heard Peter’s sermon. This week we hear the results. The Lectionary assumption is that you’re preaching to the same gang both days. Ain’t so.
The sentence that leaps out at me is in verse 37. “Brothers, what should we do?” Us comfortable pew-warmers are exhorted and encouraged and informed week after week, but that obvious question doesn’t seem to occur to us. What should we do?
We’ve heard the scripture. We’ve heard the word preached. But nothing happens until those of us who polish the pews with our posteriors ask that question. Until we do, what we have is not a message, but a massage.
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Invite a Stranger to Supper
1 God knows how to listen.
2 Others hear only to their own voices;
they recognize only the echoes of their own empty desires.
But God heard me when I cried out.
I will never forget that.
3 I had given up hope.
4 As a last resort, I called to God.
"Save me," I cried, "Rescue me from this mess!"
12 How can I thank God?
13 Since I owe God every breath of my new life,
I dedicate every breath to God–
every glass of water, every bite of bread.
14 I will not be silenced.
I shall pry open the shells of privacy that people build around themselves;
In crowded elevators and on wind-blown street corners
I will whisper my message into ears stopped up with self-interest.
15 I will say, "God loves each and every one of us.
Every person who believes in God is precious."
16, 17 I have nothing to lose.
All that I am, I owe to God.
18 I don't care what my convictions cost me;
19 From the edges of civilization to the centre of the universe,
I will glorify this God who saves.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 1:17-23 – Peter uses the phrase “born anew” in verse 23, which connects us to the idea of being “born again,” or “born from above,” (NRSV) in John 3:3. Many of us get a bit queasy with the “blood of the lamb” metaphor in this passage, but it had deep meaning – deep connections into Jewish spirituality – for the people who read this letter originally.
In the understanding of the folks to whom this letter was addressed, sacrifice and sacrificer were bonded together. The sacrifice of one is the sacrifice of the other. Both benefited.
I must admit I don’t really understand – at least not in a deep spiritual sense – how that works. And I would not really want to read this passage to a group of folks unless there really was a means of unpacking those ideas. Reading it from the pulpit on Sunday morning might well be counter-productive.
Luke24:13-35 – This is such a strangely moving story. And scholars don’t really know where Emmaus was, of if such a town actually existed. Perhaps it moves us because, like those two disciples, we have the information but we don’t know how to process it. It hangs there, in our consciousness, but doesn’t seem to connect with our perceptions and experiences. It’s like a piece of software buried in the computer. The ikon is there on the screen, but when we click on it, we get some wild graphics but nothing we can immediately pin down and use.
We can empathize with those two disciples. So this Jesus who meant so much to us – in whom we had placed all our hopes – has been killed. Something weird happened to his body, and some say he is still alive. What are we supposed to do with all this? How do we use this information? Or as those folks on that Pentecost Sunday said, “What should we do?”
Preachers keep trying, week after week, to respond to that yearning. They have the toughest communication job in the world.
And I am feeling frustrated because I feel I should have a helpful little formula to offer that would make it all work.
There is no formula. There is only faithfulness.
A children’s version of the Emmaus story is in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” page 102 which you can find by clicking on:
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Emmaus happens! That would make a good secret code word for Christians, because only they would know what it meant.
Emmaus has happened to me many times, but the incident that comes to mind happened in the sixties. I was one of a group enrolled in a clowning workshop at Naramata Centre, a church con-ed place not far from here. Our clowning week was to conclude with a communion service, with the several hundred people of all ages who were there for a summer week. The communion had been carefully planned by our leader, a Roman Catholic priest.
But just before the communion service, he came down with a bad case of the flue. He had all the logistics in his head, but couldn’t participate at all. I was the only one who had actually seen a clown communion before. The rest had only heard it described. So full of faith, foolishness and bravado, we decided to go ahead.
We did everything wrong. A music tape was to provide the clues for the various parts of the service, but we got the wrong tape on the machine. There wasn’t enough bread or wine. We forgot our cues. The children started running around. It turned into complete chaos. Nobody knew what was going on and eventually we just gave up and let go.
Somehow, that group of worshippers took it over. Or was it the Spirit? It certainly wasn’t me or my classmates.
We didn’t know what we were doing, but some power within that group of assembled worshippers made it happen. It was totally out of control, but in a funny kind of way, it wasn’t out of control at all.
People offered each other bread and wine, and others danced to that wrong music on the tape. There were hugs, laughter, singing, and everyone was fed.
When we stopped trying to direct our inner clown whose mask and costume we were wearing, the clown became the Christ, who was made known to us in the breakup of our plans and in the breaking of the bread.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
Feeling Left Out
Having just spent three weeks in Edmonton, I have returned home with a new appreciation for the difficulties of adult education.
We arrived in Edmonton in early March. Massive piles of snow flanked every driveway, and fresh snow every morning added to them.
Spring seemed far away indeed.
But then the weather finally warmed up. The piles of snow started melting. Flattened brown lawns began to appear again.
And so did a lot of things that had been covered up by layer upon layer of snow. Half-eaten slices of pizza. Soggy cardboard containers of French fries. Tim Horton's coffee cups with the rrrrrrims rrrrrolled up. Plastic water bottles. Drink boxes. Beer cans. Styrofoam doggy-packs of unfinished Chinese dinners.
Our dog thought she had died and gone to heaven. She’s supposed to be a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, but she is as a cross between a hyena and a vacuum cleaner. She snarfed up everything remotely edible. And if it was too disgusting for even her taste buds, she rolled in it.
All this debris was less attractive to adult humans. It reminded us of our failings. The cleanups we hadn’t done. The stuff we had forgotten. The things we hadn’t even realized were there.
Which is – finally I get to the point! – exactly what happens when most adults venture into education programs.
Some people gobble study programs right into their later years. They love learning almost anything, for its own sake.
But most people take courses only when they discover that they no longer know how to cope. High school typing doesn’t help them handle the so-called intuitive commands of computers. Amateur mechanics find cars don’t have carburetors any more. A tattered exercise book no longer qualifies for keeping a community organization’s financial records.
So people attend a class already feeling inadequate.
Then they quickly discover how much more they have forgotten. Or never learned at all.
In high school, they learned that cause and effect were predictable. Now there's something called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Not to mention Chaos Theory. And the decay of radioactive atoms somehow determines whether a cat owned by Mr. Schrödinger will live or die.
So sub-atomic particles called quarks can spin six different ways at the same time until someone observes them? Any two-year-old can do that…
This sudden discovery of incompetence particularly afflicts adults who tackle religious studies.
Most adults grew up believing that the gospels were written by Jesus' disciples. Now scholars say that none of them were. Matthew and Luke – whoever they were –plagiarized Mark and some German named Quelle. Paul didn’t write all his letters. The early church had more infighting than a political convention. And a lot of what Jesus said, he probably didn’t – later believers added what they thought he ought to have said…
Bewildered, these adults ask, “When did all this happen? Why didn’t anyone tell me before?”
Little wonder that only about ten per cent of churchgoers, and even fewer non-church-goers, ever bother upgrading their religious knowledge.
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Sharyl Peterson of Grand Junction, Colorado saw a newsletter announcement about a “New Ministry: Family Shred Time.”
Sharyl was sure they must have meant “Family Shared Time,” but then on page two she read, “Activities and games – we’ll divide families and teach them to interact in new ways.”
Now she isn’t sure.
April Daley saw this one in the order for the Seder meal on Maundy Thursday.
It was supposed to read "for all the years we were in bondage." Instead, it read:
"for all the years we were in bandages".
Says April, “Must have been quite a fight!”
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Always remember, you are a blessing, and then try to be gracious as you live like it.
Jodi Haier
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
source unknown, via Harvie Barker
Every day the suffering of the world look to the secure of the world to save them from even more disaster. It is not our job to work for miracles, but it is our task to try.
source unknown
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We Get Letters – Wayne Sawyer of Thomaston, Maine writes: “The quote about speakers making their audiences happy reminded me of a wise, old pastor friend who told me he had managed, in his ministry, to make everyone in his churches happy. Some were happy when he came, some were happy while he was there, and the rest were happy when he left.”
Warwick Hambleton of Huntly, New Zealand says he knows of a “politically correct person who went to the supermarket wanting to buy ‘free range’ Easter eggs!”
Ron Shaw of Riverview, New Brunswick writes: “We heard some leading edge theology this Easter Sunday. One of our ministers was asking questions about the resurrection of the small group gathered at the front. He had explained that some of the followers of Jesus had gone to his tomb, found the stone rolled away, and the tomb was empty.
“‘What do you think happened to Jesus?’ he asked.
“One small voice replied enthusiastically, ‘He became a zombie!’"
Rachel Prichard of Sudbury, Ontario, writes about “a man who was visiting a cemetery and tried to strike up a conversation with the local gravedigger.
"Do people die often around here?"
"Just the once," came the reply.
"Have you lived here all your life?"
"Not yet," said the grave digger.
"Can you tell me which road I should take to Toronto?"
"I shouldn't take any" came the reply. They have enough already."
Mary Almey of Milton, Ontario writes: “Yesterday, during the Easter service, as the offering was being gathered, I could see a visiting couple trying to wrestle something from their youngster's hands. Mom won the battle just as the offering plate passed and into it she dropped a crumpled envelope. Immediately their child started to cry and howled out "I want my money back! I want my money back!"
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “trespassers will be violated!”) This from Carl Boyke
Did They Mean to Say That?
* On a New York loft building: "Wanted: Woman to sew buttons on the fourth floor."
* In a New Hampshire medical building: "Martin Diabetes Professional Ass."
* In the office of a loan company: "Ask about our plans for owning your home."
* In a New York medical building: "Mental health prevention center."
* In a toy department: "Five Santa Clauses – no waiting."
* On a New York convalescent home: "For the sick and tired of the Episcopal Church."
* On a Maine shop: "Our motto is to give our customers the lowest possible prices and workmanship.
* At a number of military bases: "Restricted to unauthorized personnel."
* In a parking lot: "Violators will be enforced and trespassers will be violated."
* On a display of "I Love You Only" Valentine cards: "Now available in multi-packs."
* In the window of an appliance store: "Don't kill your wife. Let our washing machines do the dirty work."
* In a funeral parlor: "Ask about our layaway plan.
* On a window of a New Hampshire hamburger restaurant: "Yes, we are open. Sorry for the inconvenience."
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Bottom of the Barrel – Mike Skibinski heard this story told by the pilot of an airplane while coming in for a landing at Vancouver.
A couple of sailors docked in a Swedish harbor, decided to tour the town. For awhile they walked the streets but because they knew no Swedish, they soon became bored.
Along one street, they spied a church and decided to investigate. A service was being conducted, but unfortunately it was all in Swedish. They saw a well dressed man and decided their best bet was to imitate his actions.
At this point, the minister said a few words and the man stood up. The two sailors promptly followed his actions. The entire congregation roared with laughter.
After the service the two approached the minister and said that since they knew no Swedish, they wondered what was so funny?
“Well”, said the minister, “This was a baptismal service and I had just asked, ‘Who is the father of this child?’”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Preaching Materials for April 13, 2008
R U M O R S # 496
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-04-06
April 6, 2008
A HEAD FULL OF HABITS
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog so that you can access it any time. And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there.
Thanks.
The Story Lectionary – totally insane in the best sense of the word
Revised Common Lectionary – the voice of my shepherd
Rumors – thinking habits
Soft Edges – what makes music religious?
Bloopers – too funny not to pass on
We Get Letters – proof that God is male
Mirabile Dictu! – we planted him raw
Bottom of the Barrel – John the Baptist’s skull
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Bob Scott of Port Rowan, Ontario.
Leroy goes to the revival and listens to the preacher. After awhile, the preacher asks anyone with needs to be prayed over to come forward. Leroy goes up and the preacher asks, "Leroy, what do you want me to pray about for you?"
"Preacher,” says Leroy, “I need you to pray for my hearing."
The preacher puts one finger in Leroy's ear and he places the other hand on top of Leroy's head and prays and prays and prays. After a few minutes, the preacher removes his hands and stands back.
"Leroy, how is your hearing now?"
"I don't know, Reverend,” says Leroy. “My hearing’s not until next Wednesday."
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 13th, which is the Fourth Sunday of Easter.
Story Lectionary – Jeremiah 31:31-34
Jim Taylor once described a mutual friend as “totally insane, in the best sense of the word.” I think that would apply to Jeremiah. Like most prophets, Jeremiah was on that fuzzy line between insanity and genius.
Many of our great artists are there. They have a vision and a passion that is hard for us “ordinary” people to understand. They find small talk difficult and frustrating and casual relationships almost impossible. Which may be why so many of them resort to substance abuse.
Jeremiah would be the terror of coffee time at our church. “How can you do this?” he would bellow. “You sing those songs and you pray those prayers and you listen to that sermon,” but then you come out here and you talk about everything else except the mind-bending, life-changing stuff you’ve just been hearing about. Didn’t any of it filter down below your earlobes? Didn’t any of it tie your stomach in a knot?”
But we are good and kind people, and we would put a hand gently on Jeremiah’s shoulder and tell him, “Hey, it’s going to be OK, fella. Can I get you a sandwich? A cup of coffee?”
“The time is coming,” Jeremiah would shout. “The time is coming when God will write the Holy Word on your hearts. On your hearts! You won’t be able to ignore it any more. You ill either accept God’s love, or reject it. But you’ll never again be able to pretend that nothing has happened.”
Check out the resources for this Sunday at:
http://: www.story-lectionary.com
Lots of folks are checking into the Story Lectionary website. If you haven’t done so, give it a look. If you have, then please also tell your colleagues in ministry about it.
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Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 2:42-47 – That first verse gives us a handy five-point program. Teaching, Community, Sacraments, Prayer, Sharing wealth unstintingly.
We do the first four. Maybe not as well as we should, but we do them.
But in that first Christian community, they “held all things in common,” which most of us think is a nice idea but it simply doesn’t work. It’s been tried in a few places, mostly without success. But there are communal societies, such as in the Hutterite communities.
Our money, the stuff we own, are far more important to us than we are prepared to admit. In my circle of friends, we discuss all kinds of things, some of it very personal, but we never, ever ask, “How much do you make?” Or, “How much do you give away?” Clergy are not supposed to know how much we cough up each Sunday. But we put stuff in the offering plates and parade it up front and pray over it, admitting, by our actions, that our money is the measure of who we are.
One of the things I enjoy about retirement is that the things I do are no longer connected to my income. What if that were true for everyone? What kind of a society would we have if Bill Gates had the same income as my daughter who waits on tables in Vancouver?
Psalm 23 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Few feelings compare with coming home after a succession of hotel rooms, rental cars, and wearying meetings.
1. It's so good to be home,
2. to lie down in my own bed, to play my favorite music, to shed the tensions of travel the way water runs off my shoulders in the shower.
3. Thank you, God. You got me to the right gates in the airports;
4. You delivered me from dangerous drivers; You kept me from getting lost in the concrete canyons of the city. You gave me courage to face my critics.
5. You did not desert me. When I was lonely, you found me a friend; When I was weary, you led me to a welcome. The airline didn't lose my bags.
6. I am at peace. I'd like to live in these familiar walls forever...Come live with me, and let me live with you.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 2:19-25 – The lectionary conveniently ignores verse 18, which tells slaves to accept their lot, be good boys and girls, and do what they are told. Actually, the whole passage is directed at slaves who are told to endure pain and suffering. And since there are no slaves (at least in that classical sense) in our churches, why are we reading this?
The reality is that slavery in the Bible is a given. It simply was a fact of life, and it didn’t occur to the folks that there was something inherently evil in the system. That didn’t really penetrate our consciousness until the 17th century. The Danes were the first country to outlaw slavery in 1792. It was in the churches that the first questions about slavery began to surface.
But of course, there’s more than one kind of slavery. Some of those are still with us.
John 10:1-10 – This passage, along with next weeks (John 14:6 “No one comes to the Father except by me.) have been used to justify the insistence that only the Christian faith can bring us to God. And most often, it’s only a particular interpretation of that faith that makes the connection for us.
I really rebel at that idea, but I also have to admit that probably, the writers of those texts meant exactly that. There’s only one way, and that’s via Jesus. Period.
It simply means, that as in the Peter passage above, there are some assumptions in the Bible that we simply have to set gently aside. Twisting and poking to find another, more acceptable reading may be satisfying, but I would rather simply admit that there are some things said in the Bible that I can’t accept.
However, there is an insight in this passage that I think has a positive message. It’s the idea that the sheep recognize and respond to the shepherd’s voice. Like a newborn baby will respond to its mother’s voice.
My parents were not church-going people, but I was still raised in the Christian tradition. I grew up in a culture that has that tradition woven into it.
I was not raised in a Muslim or Sikh or Buddhist or First Nations tradition. It is not that they are inferior. They are not mine. The Judeo-Christian tradition is the path that leads me to God.
When I hear the stories, songs, poems of the Bible, I hear the voice of my shepherd. And I respond.
A children’s version of the 23rd Psalm and a story based on the Acts and John passages, is in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” pages 105 & 106
To order that book, click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Many of my friends, when they go to the UK, will rent a car. I don’t, because I don’t feel safe driving on the left hand side of the road.
No, I don’t for a moment claim that driving on the right hand side is better or safer. It’s about reflexes.
Everything would be fine most of the time. I can easily see the intersection ahead and decide where I need to go. When there’s time to think, there’s no problem. But if suddenly a loaded lorry came lumbering down the center of the road, my reflex action would be to swerve to the right. And the result would be a most unceremonious meeting.
A recall an analogy from somewhere. A way of understanding our habits.
Imagine a large hill. When it rains, the water runs down the little rivulets and gullies. With each rain, the water erodes them just a little more. But sometimes one of those rivulets is blocked, and the water has to go somewhere else. The water will erode a new path, making it deeper with each rain. Or someone might build a few dams to force the water down a new path. But the water will always follow the most direct path with the least resistance.
Our thoughts slide down through familiar gullies, so that our conclusions are increasingly predictable, even though we don’t realize it. Even though we think we’re being carefully rational. A major crisis – a death, a birth – can result in a major change of thinking. So can slow, careful, self-education.
Unfortunately, it’s also possible that what we say we believe – even what we think we believe – is not consistent with the way we live. That happens far, far more than most of us are aware.
When Jeremiah talks about the Word of God being written on our hearts, he’s talking about starting right at the top of that hill and redirecting those streams so that where they go and what they do is consistent with our understanding of the Christian gospel.
And that is no small project.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
What Makes Music Religious?
A friend handed me a CD – 20 songs by top Christian artists. I was quite eager to hear what kind of music appealed to people these days.
And I have to say, I was disappointed. It sounded like turning on almost any top-40 pop-rock radio station. The music consisted mostly of three chords, and not many more notes, endlessly recycled at high volume.
The words weren’t much better. None of the songs actually mentioned God or Jesus. Most addressed themselves to a generic “you” – who could, just as easily, be tonight’s lover in a secular song.
It raises a question for me. What makes music religious?
Another friend attended two worship services while vacationing in Hawaii. One was like the Christian CD – amplified instruments and vocals, pounding rhythms... The other was a small local congregation, where a line of teenagers interpreted the hymns in gentle hula dance.
Which one was more religious?
Martin Luther salvaged bar tunes and put Christian words to them. Is that enough to transform the melodies into religious music?
Why is almost anything written by Bach considered suitable for playing in church, but hardly anything by Ravel or Tchaikovsky? Granted, Bach wrote many of his pieces specifically for church use – and gave them religious titles – but why is “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” religious, and “Air on the G-String” is not?
If Metallica named one of their imitations of a demolition derby after Jesus, would that make it religious?
Probably not. Both “Ave Maria” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” are about someone named Mary, but they’re hardly comparable.
I’ve been to jazz-based worship services. The connection is usually through the words, not the music. The preacher or speaker refers to rain bringing new life to the desert; the players swing into “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.” Or perhaps “Singin’ in the Rain.” If you didn’t know the song’s title, or some of the words, you’d see no connection.
If you excised all the words, religious or secular, would the music itself move you to worship God? To praise the creator? To feel compassion for the oppressed, the impoverished, the marginalized?
Some pieces do that for me, just by their melodies and harmonies. Faure’s “Requiem.” Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.” Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thais.
Even without words, “The Rose” makes me yearn for, well, for something worth yearning for.
But without words, “Onward Christian Soldiers” would sound like any other militaristic march.
The songs on the CD, I would guess, got onto the Christian hit parade because the performers/composers had declared themselves to be Christians. Does the artist’s religious affiliation become the criterion?
If so, is Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” a Jewish song?
Truly great music transcends its origins. Chopin’s Etudes are more than Polish, Sibelius is more than Finnish.
I remain baffled. If it’s not the composer, the performer, the title, the words, then what does cause some music to transcend time and culture to touch our imaginations and draw our attention to ultimate realities?
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Bob Livingston of Belchertown, Massechusetts writes: “We have a call to worship just before the processional hymn. On Easter morning, about mid-way through, came the line for the congregation, ‘For God brings rainbows after storms, butterflies after cocoons.’ The choir member behind me misread the line and said rather loudly, ‘For God brings rainbows after storms, butterflies after cocoanuts.’
Stephani Keer wonders if this is appropriate for Rumors. It probably isn’t, but as Stephani says, “It’s far too funny not to pass on,” She saw it on Jay Leno. “He held up a bulletin from the Crystal Cathedral, which carried the title of Robert Schuller Jr.'s sermon. "Discovering God's Willy."
Sharyl Peterson of Grand Junction, Colorado heard a story about a grandson who told grandmother what they had done in vacation church school. It seems the children spent all morning talking about guppies. “You know, about guppies and love.”
Confused, grandma asked for clarification. With great impatience, the grandson said, “You know, the love of God.”
To which his “dumb” Grandma responded, “Oh! You mean agape!”
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'mnot so sure about the universe. Attributed to Albert Einstein (which I don’t believe) via Jim Taylor
For those who have tasted God, the thirst for justice burns the heart and will not be dampened, whatever the wait, however high the cost.
source unknown
The message of the Bible is . . .that into the confusion of our world, with its divisions and hatred, has come a message of transforming power, and those who believe it will experience within themselves the power that makes for reconciliation and peace on earth. Thomas Merton
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We Get Letters – Stephani Keer writes: “You have discovered the final, incontrovertible proof for those who worry themselves sick fretting about the gender of God (which sentence would throw my fundamentalists friends into a frenzy). Definitely male. A female would have put restrictions on gravity!”
I’m herniating over those &%$#@ homonyms again. Lyle Phillips of Langley, BC saw my item about the clown communion and the ailing priest. He asks: “Did the priest actually come down with the flue or was he trying to be Santa Claus and come down inside the flue? Either way, it could be quite painful I would think.”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “we planted him raw!”) These come around every year or two, usually with one or two differences. So here’s the latest update, courtesy of Velia Watts of Edmonton, Alberta.
Old Tombstones
* Harry Edsel Smith Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down.
It was.
* Here lies an Atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.
* Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
Only The Good Die Young.
* The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord sent them manna.
Clark Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
* Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me for not rising.
* Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.
* Here lays The Kid.We planted him raw.He was quick on the triggerBut slow on the draw.
* Sir John Strange.Here lies an honest lawyer,and that is Strange.
* Here lies Robert J. Penny.
Reader, if cash thou art in want of any,Dig six feet deep and thou wilt find a Penny.
* On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.
* Here lies the body of our Anna,Done to death by a banana.It wasn't the fruit that laid her low,But the skin of the thing that made her go.
* Under the sod and under the trees,Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.He is not here, there's only the pod.Pease shelled out and went to God.
* Remember man, as you walk by,As you are now, so once was IAs I am now, so shall you be.Remember this and follow me. To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:To follow you I'll not consent .Until I know which way you went.
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Bottom of the Barrel – Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) is writing about the religious relics so prized in medieval times. “The Treasury of Cologne Cathedral seemingly held the skull of John the Baptist at twelve years of age.”
Eco is quoted by Christopher Frayling (Strange Landscape) who says, “The story about John the Baptist’s skull was already something of a joke in the Middle Ages. According to various original accounts, a pilgrim visiting the shrines of France was shown the skull of John the Baptist two days running at two different places. The pilgrim asked how there could possibly be two skulls belonging to John.
“Ah,” said the quick-thinking keeper of the second shrine, “the skull you saw yesterday was obviously the skull of John as a young man.”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ralph Milton’s E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2008-04-06
April 6, 2008
A HEAD FULL OF HABITS
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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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Please put this “blog” address on your “favorites” list. http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/
I post each issue of Rumors on that blog so that you can access it any time. And if an issue of Rumors goes missing, you can go and find it there.
Thanks.
The Story Lectionary – totally insane in the best sense of the word
Revised Common Lectionary – the voice of my shepherd
Rumors – thinking habits
Soft Edges – what makes music religious?
Bloopers – too funny not to pass on
We Get Letters – proof that God is male
Mirabile Dictu! – we planted him raw
Bottom of the Barrel – John the Baptist’s skull
Stuff – (read this only if you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe or are wondering about permissions. That sort of boring stuff.)
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Rib Tickler – This from Bob Scott of Port Rowan, Ontario.
Leroy goes to the revival and listens to the preacher. After awhile, the preacher asks anyone with needs to be prayed over to come forward. Leroy goes up and the preacher asks, "Leroy, what do you want me to pray about for you?"
"Preacher,” says Leroy, “I need you to pray for my hearing."
The preacher puts one finger in Leroy's ear and he places the other hand on top of Leroy's head and prays and prays and prays. After a few minutes, the preacher removes his hands and stands back.
"Leroy, how is your hearing now?"
"I don't know, Reverend,” says Leroy. “My hearing’s not until next Wednesday."
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Next Week’s Readings – These are the readings you may hear in church this coming Sunday, April 13th, which is the Fourth Sunday of Easter.
Story Lectionary – Jeremiah 31:31-34
Jim Taylor once described a mutual friend as “totally insane, in the best sense of the word.” I think that would apply to Jeremiah. Like most prophets, Jeremiah was on that fuzzy line between insanity and genius.
Many of our great artists are there. They have a vision and a passion that is hard for us “ordinary” people to understand. They find small talk difficult and frustrating and casual relationships almost impossible. Which may be why so many of them resort to substance abuse.
Jeremiah would be the terror of coffee time at our church. “How can you do this?” he would bellow. “You sing those songs and you pray those prayers and you listen to that sermon,” but then you come out here and you talk about everything else except the mind-bending, life-changing stuff you’ve just been hearing about. Didn’t any of it filter down below your earlobes? Didn’t any of it tie your stomach in a knot?”
But we are good and kind people, and we would put a hand gently on Jeremiah’s shoulder and tell him, “Hey, it’s going to be OK, fella. Can I get you a sandwich? A cup of coffee?”
“The time is coming,” Jeremiah would shout. “The time is coming when God will write the Holy Word on your hearts. On your hearts! You won’t be able to ignore it any more. You ill either accept God’s love, or reject it. But you’ll never again be able to pretend that nothing has happened.”
Check out the resources for this Sunday at:
http://: www.story-lectionary.com
Lots of folks are checking into the Story Lectionary website. If you haven’t done so, give it a look. If you have, then please also tell your colleagues in ministry about it.
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Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 2:42-47 – That first verse gives us a handy five-point program. Teaching, Community, Sacraments, Prayer, Sharing wealth unstintingly.
We do the first four. Maybe not as well as we should, but we do them.
But in that first Christian community, they “held all things in common,” which most of us think is a nice idea but it simply doesn’t work. It’s been tried in a few places, mostly without success. But there are communal societies, such as in the Hutterite communities.
Our money, the stuff we own, are far more important to us than we are prepared to admit. In my circle of friends, we discuss all kinds of things, some of it very personal, but we never, ever ask, “How much do you make?” Or, “How much do you give away?” Clergy are not supposed to know how much we cough up each Sunday. But we put stuff in the offering plates and parade it up front and pray over it, admitting, by our actions, that our money is the measure of who we are.
One of the things I enjoy about retirement is that the things I do are no longer connected to my income. What if that were true for everyone? What kind of a society would we have if Bill Gates had the same income as my daughter who waits on tables in Vancouver?
Psalm 23 – paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Few feelings compare with coming home after a succession of hotel rooms, rental cars, and wearying meetings.
1. It's so good to be home,
2. to lie down in my own bed, to play my favorite music, to shed the tensions of travel the way water runs off my shoulders in the shower.
3. Thank you, God. You got me to the right gates in the airports;
4. You delivered me from dangerous drivers; You kept me from getting lost in the concrete canyons of the city. You gave me courage to face my critics.
5. You did not desert me. When I was lonely, you found me a friend; When I was weary, you led me to a welcome. The airline didn't lose my bags.
6. I am at peace. I'd like to live in these familiar walls forever...Come live with me, and let me live with you.
From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com
1 Peter 2:19-25 – The lectionary conveniently ignores verse 18, which tells slaves to accept their lot, be good boys and girls, and do what they are told. Actually, the whole passage is directed at slaves who are told to endure pain and suffering. And since there are no slaves (at least in that classical sense) in our churches, why are we reading this?
The reality is that slavery in the Bible is a given. It simply was a fact of life, and it didn’t occur to the folks that there was something inherently evil in the system. That didn’t really penetrate our consciousness until the 17th century. The Danes were the first country to outlaw slavery in 1792. It was in the churches that the first questions about slavery began to surface.
But of course, there’s more than one kind of slavery. Some of those are still with us.
John 10:1-10 – This passage, along with next weeks (John 14:6 “No one comes to the Father except by me.) have been used to justify the insistence that only the Christian faith can bring us to God. And most often, it’s only a particular interpretation of that faith that makes the connection for us.
I really rebel at that idea, but I also have to admit that probably, the writers of those texts meant exactly that. There’s only one way, and that’s via Jesus. Period.
It simply means, that as in the Peter passage above, there are some assumptions in the Bible that we simply have to set gently aside. Twisting and poking to find another, more acceptable reading may be satisfying, but I would rather simply admit that there are some things said in the Bible that I can’t accept.
However, there is an insight in this passage that I think has a positive message. It’s the idea that the sheep recognize and respond to the shepherd’s voice. Like a newborn baby will respond to its mother’s voice.
My parents were not church-going people, but I was still raised in the Christian tradition. I grew up in a culture that has that tradition woven into it.
I was not raised in a Muslim or Sikh or Buddhist or First Nations tradition. It is not that they are inferior. They are not mine. The Judeo-Christian tradition is the path that leads me to God.
When I hear the stories, songs, poems of the Bible, I hear the voice of my shepherd. And I respond.
A children’s version of the 23rd Psalm and a story based on the Acts and John passages, is in “The Lectionary Story Bible, Year A,” pages 105 & 106
To order that book, click the main Wood Lake Publications website at www.woodlakebooks.com, or click on the following address which takes you directly to the “Lectionary Story Bible.”
http://tinyurl.com/2lonod
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Rumors – Many of my friends, when they go to the UK, will rent a car. I don’t, because I don’t feel safe driving on the left hand side of the road.
No, I don’t for a moment claim that driving on the right hand side is better or safer. It’s about reflexes.
Everything would be fine most of the time. I can easily see the intersection ahead and decide where I need to go. When there’s time to think, there’s no problem. But if suddenly a loaded lorry came lumbering down the center of the road, my reflex action would be to swerve to the right. And the result would be a most unceremonious meeting.
A recall an analogy from somewhere. A way of understanding our habits.
Imagine a large hill. When it rains, the water runs down the little rivulets and gullies. With each rain, the water erodes them just a little more. But sometimes one of those rivulets is blocked, and the water has to go somewhere else. The water will erode a new path, making it deeper with each rain. Or someone might build a few dams to force the water down a new path. But the water will always follow the most direct path with the least resistance.
Our thoughts slide down through familiar gullies, so that our conclusions are increasingly predictable, even though we don’t realize it. Even though we think we’re being carefully rational. A major crisis – a death, a birth – can result in a major change of thinking. So can slow, careful, self-education.
Unfortunately, it’s also possible that what we say we believe – even what we think we believe – is not consistent with the way we live. That happens far, far more than most of us are aware.
When Jeremiah talks about the Word of God being written on our hearts, he’s talking about starting right at the top of that hill and redirecting those streams so that where they go and what they do is consistent with our understanding of the Christian gospel.
And that is no small project.
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Soft Edges – by Jim Taylor
What Makes Music Religious?
A friend handed me a CD – 20 songs by top Christian artists. I was quite eager to hear what kind of music appealed to people these days.
And I have to say, I was disappointed. It sounded like turning on almost any top-40 pop-rock radio station. The music consisted mostly of three chords, and not many more notes, endlessly recycled at high volume.
The words weren’t much better. None of the songs actually mentioned God or Jesus. Most addressed themselves to a generic “you” – who could, just as easily, be tonight’s lover in a secular song.
It raises a question for me. What makes music religious?
Another friend attended two worship services while vacationing in Hawaii. One was like the Christian CD – amplified instruments and vocals, pounding rhythms... The other was a small local congregation, where a line of teenagers interpreted the hymns in gentle hula dance.
Which one was more religious?
Martin Luther salvaged bar tunes and put Christian words to them. Is that enough to transform the melodies into religious music?
Why is almost anything written by Bach considered suitable for playing in church, but hardly anything by Ravel or Tchaikovsky? Granted, Bach wrote many of his pieces specifically for church use – and gave them religious titles – but why is “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” religious, and “Air on the G-String” is not?
If Metallica named one of their imitations of a demolition derby after Jesus, would that make it religious?
Probably not. Both “Ave Maria” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” are about someone named Mary, but they’re hardly comparable.
I’ve been to jazz-based worship services. The connection is usually through the words, not the music. The preacher or speaker refers to rain bringing new life to the desert; the players swing into “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.” Or perhaps “Singin’ in the Rain.” If you didn’t know the song’s title, or some of the words, you’d see no connection.
If you excised all the words, religious or secular, would the music itself move you to worship God? To praise the creator? To feel compassion for the oppressed, the impoverished, the marginalized?
Some pieces do that for me, just by their melodies and harmonies. Faure’s “Requiem.” Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.” Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thais.
Even without words, “The Rose” makes me yearn for, well, for something worth yearning for.
But without words, “Onward Christian Soldiers” would sound like any other militaristic march.
The songs on the CD, I would guess, got onto the Christian hit parade because the performers/composers had declared themselves to be Christians. Does the artist’s religious affiliation become the criterion?
If so, is Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” a Jewish song?
Truly great music transcends its origins. Chopin’s Etudes are more than Polish, Sibelius is more than Finnish.
I remain baffled. If it’s not the composer, the performer, the title, the words, then what does cause some music to transcend time and culture to touch our imaginations and draw our attention to ultimate realities?
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Bloopers, Boggles, Typos and Stuff – Bob Livingston of Belchertown, Massechusetts writes: “We have a call to worship just before the processional hymn. On Easter morning, about mid-way through, came the line for the congregation, ‘For God brings rainbows after storms, butterflies after cocoons.’ The choir member behind me misread the line and said rather loudly, ‘For God brings rainbows after storms, butterflies after cocoanuts.’
Stephani Keer wonders if this is appropriate for Rumors. It probably isn’t, but as Stephani says, “It’s far too funny not to pass on,” She saw it on Jay Leno. “He held up a bulletin from the Crystal Cathedral, which carried the title of Robert Schuller Jr.'s sermon. "Discovering God's Willy."
Sharyl Peterson of Grand Junction, Colorado heard a story about a grandson who told grandmother what they had done in vacation church school. It seems the children spent all morning talking about guppies. “You know, about guppies and love.”
Confused, grandma asked for clarification. With great impatience, the grandson said, “You know, the love of God.”
To which his “dumb” Grandma responded, “Oh! You mean agape!”
If you’ve spotted any good bloopers in your church bulletin or newsletter, or anywhere else for that matter, please send them to me. ralphmilton@woodlake.com
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Wish I’d Said That! – Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'mnot so sure about the universe. Attributed to Albert Einstein (which I don’t believe) via Jim Taylor
For those who have tasted God, the thirst for justice burns the heart and will not be dampened, whatever the wait, however high the cost.
source unknown
The message of the Bible is . . .that into the confusion of our world, with its divisions and hatred, has come a message of transforming power, and those who believe it will experience within themselves the power that makes for reconciliation and peace on earth. Thomas Merton
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We Get Letters – Stephani Keer writes: “You have discovered the final, incontrovertible proof for those who worry themselves sick fretting about the gender of God (which sentence would throw my fundamentalists friends into a frenzy). Definitely male. A female would have put restrictions on gravity!”
I’m herniating over those &%$#@ homonyms again. Lyle Phillips of Langley, BC saw my item about the clown communion and the ailing priest. He asks: “Did the priest actually come down with the flue or was he trying to be Santa Claus and come down inside the flue? Either way, it could be quite painful I would think.”
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Mirabile Dictu! – (Latin for “we planted him raw!”) These come around every year or two, usually with one or two differences. So here’s the latest update, courtesy of Velia Watts of Edmonton, Alberta.
Old Tombstones
* Harry Edsel Smith Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down.
It was.
* Here lies an Atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.
* Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
Only The Good Die Young.
* The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord sent them manna.
Clark Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
* Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me for not rising.
* Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.
* Here lays The Kid.We planted him raw.He was quick on the triggerBut slow on the draw.
* Sir John Strange.Here lies an honest lawyer,and that is Strange.
* Here lies Robert J. Penny.
Reader, if cash thou art in want of any,Dig six feet deep and thou wilt find a Penny.
* On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.
* Here lies the body of our Anna,Done to death by a banana.It wasn't the fruit that laid her low,But the skin of the thing that made her go.
* Under the sod and under the trees,Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.He is not here, there's only the pod.Pease shelled out and went to God.
* Remember man, as you walk by,As you are now, so once was IAs I am now, so shall you be.Remember this and follow me. To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:To follow you I'll not consent .Until I know which way you went.
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Bottom of the Barrel – Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) is writing about the religious relics so prized in medieval times. “The Treasury of Cologne Cathedral seemingly held the skull of John the Baptist at twelve years of age.”
Eco is quoted by Christopher Frayling (Strange Landscape) who says, “The story about John the Baptist’s skull was already something of a joke in the Middle Ages. According to various original accounts, a pilgrim visiting the shrines of France was shown the skull of John the Baptist two days running at two different places. The pilgrim asked how there could possibly be two skulls belonging to John.
“Ah,” said the quick-thinking keeper of the second shrine, “the skull you saw yesterday was obviously the skull of John as a young man.”
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Information and Stuff – (Read this section only if you want to know about subscribing, unsubscribing or quoting stuff from Rumors.) It would be nice if you could give Rumors a plug in your bulletin or newsletter. Please invite your friends (and even your enemies) to subscribe. There's no charge: RUMORS is free and it comes to your e-mail box every Sunday morning. Just send your friends the instructions to subscribe [below], and include an invitation to join the list ... perhaps something like this: “There’s a lively and fun newsletter called RUMORS which is available at no cost on the net. It’s for ‘Christians with a sense of humor’.” Please add the instructions to subscribe [below]. If you have a friend you think would enjoy Rumors, and you’d rather not give them the subscribing instructions below, send me an e-mail at ralphmilton@woodlake.com and give me the e-mail address of your friend. If you are using something from Rumors in your sermon, give credit only as appropriate, without stopping the sermon dead in its tracks. I am delighted when Rumors is useful in the life and work of the church. As long as it is within your congregation or parish, you don’t need permission. You are welcome to use the stuff in church bulletins or newsletters. Please say where it came from, and please invite people to subscribe to RUMORS. An appropriate credit line would be; “From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet ‘e-zine’ for Christians with a sense of humor." ... and please be sure to include these instructions to subscribe to RUMORS: To Subscribe:* Send an e-mail to: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com
* Don't put anything else in that e-mail
To Unsubscribe:
* Send an e-mail to: rumors-unsubscribe@joinhands.com
* Don’t put anything else in that e-mail* If you are changing e-mail addresses, and your old address will no longer be in service, you do not need to unsubscribe. The sending computer will try a few times, and then give up..~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Please Write – If you respond, react, think about, freak-out, or otherwise have things happen in your head as a result of reading the above, please send a note to: ralphmilton@woodlake.com
Who knows, I might quote you in a future issue of RUMORS.All material is copyright © Ralph Milton.~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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