LOUISVILLE -- What would Jesus make of Jerusalem today?
Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), raised that question during the opening worship service of a recent conference on peace in the Middle East -- and his question in some ways spun itself through the entire event.
What would Jesus make of Jerusalem?
And how should Presbyterians view Israel?
Here's a question some folks will be considering carefully in the weeks to come: Just how generous are Presbyterians willing to be?
The year started off with stunning news, as the world struggled to comprehend the catastrophic impact of the December 26 tsunami, which killed more than 150,000 and left survivors strafed with grief and hunger and homelessness. Presbyterians responded with prayer, compassion and cash, contributing $1.5 million so far through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for the relief effort.
That's what a Palestinian pastor from East Jerusalem said during an early session of a national Presbyterian training event that began Feb. 10 on peace in the Middle East.
But the telling of those stories -- painful and personal ones, for example, of the difficulty of teaching one's children love for all people when those children are routinely humiliated by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints -- opens the door to layer upon layer of complications.
Can the Palestinian stories be told without telling those of Israeli Jews? What about Muslims from the region? And how can Presbyterians have fruitful conversations with American Jews if the story the Palestinian Christians tell is so powerful and so negative?
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.
On Presidents' Day and just after the inauguration of President George W. Bush, we might do well to remember the inspiring words of one of our most important leaders. He presided over the country during the Civil War of the 1860s: Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln. In a letter to a Kentuckian in 1855, Lincoln, then a leading politician in the Illinois legislature, put the crisis of the Republic in these memorable words:
You are not a friend to slavery in the abstract. In that speech you spoke of "the peaceful extinction of slavery," and used other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was at some time to have an end. Since then we have had thirtysix years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. ... On the question of liberty as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident lie". ... Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation continue together permanently---forever--half slave and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me--may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.
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).
How strange to end as it began. . . bereft of hope amidst their tears . . . their hope now born..
It's not a new plot idea. Kids languish in an orphanage. New teacher comes and gets them energized. There's no real plot surprise here, it's all in how it's done. And 'The Chorus' is done in such a way that makes it seem real and heart-warming at the same time.There's precious little sugarcoating. It's mostly struggle, and conflict, with just a few moments of tenderness to make it even bearable.
The music teacher Clement Mathieu (Gerard Tugnot) is admittedly depressed as he shuffles into the dilapidated-looking French boys' orphanage in 1949. He's failed at being a professional musician. It seems that nobody really wants to pay to listen to his music. He's put his compositions away, in a leather satchel, and hidden them in the closet of his bare room at the orphanage. Metal bunk bed, wooden dresser, straight chair. The only woman around is the maid, who is seen little and heard from even less.
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.
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."
By Arthur Herman
New York: Three Rivers Press (Random House), 2001, ISBN 0-609- 80999-7, 472 pp. $14.95
The title of Arthur Herman’s book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, has that flavor of a college debate topic: The students are called to show a more confident than comprehensive grasp of some enormous subject, like modernity.
Living on the Borders of Eternity, by Robert Bluford, Jr.; Historic Polegreen Press: Mechanicsville, Va.; 500 pages, paperback. ISBN: 0-9754215-0-6,
Cost: $24.95, shipping and handling included.
Here is a little quiz. Pick out the people who are not Presbyterian in this list: Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, John Foster Dulles, John C. Calhoun, John Witherspoon, John Glenn, Jimmy Stewart, Fred Rogers.
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.
Davidson College Trustee By-laws Proposed Revision
by The Ad Hoc Committee of the Davidson College Board of Trustees
September 21, 2004
ARTICLE I
Number, Election and Qualifications of Trustees
1. The ownership, management and control of Davidson College are vested in the Trustees of the College, who shall be elected for a term of four years and in such manner that, as nearly as practicable, the Trustees will be composed of members elected as follows:
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.
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.
Editor’s Note: This open letter has been written to the Board of Trustees of Davidson College, which meets this week. It is written by James C. Goodloe IV, pastor of Grace Covenant Church in Richmond, Va., and a trustee of the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation.
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.
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