Good advice is readily available on almost every topic. But when it comes to our church I am not so sure.
Some speak to us in hearty voices assuring us that all is well. Others are more strident, drumming their cadences out as though calling us into a campaign. And some speak so quietly that it is almost impossible to tell if they have something to say at all.
One of the quietest voices is that of a relatively obscure Benedictine monk named Adalbert de Vogüé. He lives in the abbey of La Pierre-que-vive, and he has thought about The Rule of Benedict for nearly fifty years. He has really thought about it, not quite in the same way that we have thought about the Westminster Confession of Faith. First hearing it read aloud daily as a novice, once in Latin and then later in French, he has become as adapt at listening to it as a doctor with his stethoscope upon a bared chest.
Several years ago, an article in the PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK described how the Rev. James Smith, a Presbyterian pastor in Springfield, Ill., played a key role in converting Abraham Lincoln out of his original skepticism toward a greater confidence in Biblical faith.
Reflections on Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, Second Sunday in Lent
The Epistle reading for Lent 2 is Paul’s most extended discussion of Abraham. Paul points to Abraham to illustrate his doctrine of justification by grace through faith. The faith of Abraham is witnessed in his trust in the promise of God. (4:20).
I walked down Grace Street in Richmond twenty years ago, and about two blocks away from St. Paul's Episcopal Church I began to see people with dirty foreheads: all sorts of people, some smartly dressed for work on their lunch hour, some rather shopworn and tired. It wasn't until hours later that I realized that the source of the "dirt" was Ash Wednesday worship, so distant was this day in the liturgical calendar from my Presbyterian experience. Now Presbyterian churches galore, including our own, have Ash Wednesday worship. We ministers smudge the foreheads of worshipers and say: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Presbyterians have begun to reclaim the tradition of Ash Wednesday, using it as a way to focus on our mortality and prepare us for Easter.
Lent 1: Genesis 2:15-3:7
Prayer after reading of the garden’s Keeper
Maker:
for gardens and walls;
for Eden and our homes to the east;
for your talk with us and ours with you;
The water that overwhelmed Indonesia, Sri Lanka, parts of India and Thailand, and killed thousands of people caught the attention of the world. The immensity of the tragedy was difficult to comprehend. The power and strength and force of the water were overwhelming.
What have people been saying about God and the Indian Ocean tsunami? I have seen quite a few “Why did you let this happen, God?” articles, from both inside and outside the church. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such pieces: such accusatory questions have precedent, even in the Scriptures. To ask this question of God in a time like this is not an impiety, but an understandable longing to see more clearly in the often-murky pool that is human existence.
Reflections on Matthew 4:1-9, First Sunday in Lent
I am haunted by the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. So was the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Early in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan tells Alyosha of a poem he has written he calls "The Grand Inquisitor." In the prose/poem Jesus returns to earth in human form, but it is not to Nazareth in Galilee. It is to Seville in Spain in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition of the 16th century.
We may look at the contributions of Shirley Guthrie to the Presbyterian Church, to the church catholic, to his students and colleagues, and to his family and friends from many angles. In the appreciative articles honoring him and his work, the Outlook, with the advice of his colleagues at Columbia Seminary, has represented those angles of approach to this profound thinker and teacher of great simplicity, who by God's grace (he would most certainly say) had a beneficent and transforming effect upon multitudes. Wherever his students preach and teach, Shirley's influence is spread to people in the pews, who themselves begin their own theological reflection -- even if they are shy to call it that.
Shirley Guthrie was, in my opinion, one of the great theologians produced by American Presbyterianism. He did not do the things that theologians often do to gain national and international fame. He did not, by saying things that had never been said before, found a “new school of theology” with its own distinctive label.
“He taught us how to live and how to die.”
Charles Cousar
In early summer 2004, it became apparent to family and friends that Shirley Guthrie was not feeling well. He was having some digestive problems and had limited his eating to soup and light food in the hope that this would be of help.
Those of us who entered seminary in the latter years of Shirley Guthrie’s career are grateful that this teacher never relinquished his passion for sharing his gift with the church. Already a professor emeritus by the time I entered Columbia Theological Seminary, Shirley gave little evidence that he had laid aside his calling to instruct. Indeed, his beloved wife Vivian knew that, in many ways, the seminary classroom was his first home.
In the fall of 1963, I entered Columbia Theological Seminary right after finishing Presbyterian College. Professor Felix Gear’s favorite phrase for us new students, “theological tadpoles,” was a compliment in my case. Shirley Guthrie took me under his wing as he did for the other 100 new “tadpoles” who wanted to learn what it means to be a Reformed theologian.
Professor Edward Dowey occasionally remarked that Karl Barth’s theology “is a secret known only to God and a few seminary professors.” Dowey attributed the comment to Leonard Trinterud, who, along with Dowey, served on the committee that wrote The Confession of 1967, and in part the comment may reflect the resistance they both encountered in the church to the Barthian perspective in the confession.
Harrowing images assail us; newspaper reports tell of mega death, miraculous rescue, fragile hope. The peoples of earth offer assistance to nations devastated by earthquake and wave. No one asks how such a thing could happen in a world created by God.
We live with the uneasy assurance of science that unstable tectonic plates produced an earthquake eight times more powerful than the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. Yet what do we say about the Creator of the rolling spheres, and of the roiling deadly seas.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains tremble with its tumult. (Psalm 46:2 -- 3)
It is fitting for The Presbyterian Outlook to salute the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by remembering what tireless advocates Dr. E. T. Thompson and Rev. Aubrey Brown were for racial integration and justice. (Thompson was the Outlook's first editor and professor of church history at Union Seminary in Virginia; Brown was editor from the 1940's to the 1970's.) This paper stood tall on these matters when such beliefs were dangerous to espouse.
When Thompson was tried for heresy in Mecklenburg (now Charlotte) Presbytery, everyone understood that the sub-texts of that trial, ostensibly about the faithful interpretation of Scripture, were his positions on integration and ethics. Because of the malign interweaving of biblical inerrancy with segregation in the South, people who agreed with Thompson and Brown were labeled communists by fundamentalist Presbyterians.
The 50th anniversary celebration of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision was a necessary spotlight on that ruling’s profound contribution to goodness in this nation. With the commemoration over, that spotlight becomes a searchlight, seeking us out in the darkness where in an audience we sit, comfortably, when it is our turn to take the stage.
"What time is it?" is one of the most frequently asked questions, and no one wearing a watch has difficulty answering it. But change the wording slightly and mystery abounds. "What is time?" has been pondered through the ages and we think about it especially at the coming of a new year. Time is elusive--you can't smell, taste, hear, or see it even though you may have a lot of it on your hands!
Two quotes I saved from a piece in the New York Times called "The New Designer Despair," take issue with a destructive tolerance that leaves souls shriveled and minds tired. The subject was education in moral judgment. The writer quotes the principal of his daughter's school: "We encourage our children by telling them that there are no bad ideas." He also references Modern Times by the English, Roman Catholic historian, Paul Johnson: "the church is the last place in the world where we make the distinction between good and bad ideas."
If the biggest, baddest, and best story of 2004 is religion, religion in politics and public life, then the designer despair generated by too much tolerance is gone. There are scores of religious people who tell us what is good or bad. The presidential election was shamelessly religious. Jerry Falwell ran a partisan voter registration campaign in countless congregations, and Democrats cast their usual nets into African-American churches.
Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 8:1-3, 6-10, 17-20; Psalm 65:9-14; James 1:12-18, 21-27; Matthew 6:25-33
”You crown the year with goodness, O God, and your paths overflow with plenty.” Amen.
How long do you suppose it has been since we have talked about – or even allowed ourselves to feel – a sufficiency of anything?
The morning routine at our house calls for reading the letters to the editor of the New York Times. Since the election, that’s become something of a trial. More often than not, the letters have to do with the role of “religion” in politics. Many letter-writers see the nation divided between the devout, who are concerned for “moral values,” and the secular, who are presumably interested in issues that have nothing to do with “morality,” such as war and peace, and the obligations of the rich toward the poor.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Is peace possible?
I have been increasingly troubled by our continued reliance on the “just war” theory as a path toward credible peacemaking. In the last three years, my chagrin has grown to an almost visceral discomfort with the rhetoric and the reality of the “war on terrorism.”
Union Seminary had let out for the 1957 Christmas holiday, and I had come home, looking forward to being with my parents, and to sharing the good news that I had "met someone" with whom I might get serious. As I looked about the neat little house my parents had just built in the York County, S.C. countryside, I noticed that there was a new woman keeping watch over the modest Christmas display.
As the first faint light of Christmas cast its imperceptible glow around the celebration of Thanksgiving, I preached and celebrated the Lord’s Supper in the renovated chapel at an ecumenical Christian community, Richmond Hill.
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