Reformation with Kathy

Reformation Sunday 

"We tell our Lord and God plainly, that if God will have the Church, God must maintain and defend it; for we can neither uphold nor protect it. If we could, indeed we should become the proudest asses under heaven." This is “Tischreden CCCLXII ” one of the Table Talks, Luther’s famous pronouncements at the dinner table. Luther was a down-to-earth and witty entertaining speaker and writer. At home, at his table, he was relaxed and immediate and captivating. Luther was indeed a child of medieval superstitious and prejudiced thinking, but by the grace of God he was given a chance to glimpse a spark of the divine light of freedom. He stuck with it stubbornly, and regardless of his idiosyncrasies and flaws, that made him great. At the table he was not alone; he had the company of interesting interlocutors and above it all he had Katie, his beloved wife who kept that table in place and well supplied for all his friends and guests. Without Katie, we would not have Tischreden and there would not have been any reformation as we know it. At Katie’s family table we may observe the birth of a new culture, theology and mentality.

     Join us this Sunday for worship and a unique and almost revolutionary celebration; liturgical dance based on a hymn by Martin Luther -- "A Mighty Fortress" after the famous Cantata 80 by Johan Sebastian Bach. The dance and the homily will center on the wife of reformer Martin Luther, Katherina von Bora, an unsung heroine of the Reformation.

Friday Message from Rutgers Church 2011-10-21

Do you have impression that people (our global civilisation) have been getting progressively less and less brutal over the past centuries and even more so in most recent decades? I think that we would need some serious convincing, and that is exactly what Steven Pinker wants to do in his new book “The Better Angels of Our Nature, Why Violence Has Declined” which is causing quite a stir in intellectual circles. This Harvard professor of experimental psychology needs no less than seven hundred pages to make this point thus indirectly acknowledging that his claim is not that self evident.

    I have read about half of the book and it seems to be well-written, well-researched and full of statistical data. Even when the atrocities of recent genocides and world wars are counted in, Pinker observes that the general level of human violence has been declining. He claims that this process has been propelled by the social and cultural development of our species.

    At this moment I don’t think I am ready for any detailed argument. Yet, I would like to make two meta-observations.

    First, I am concerned. Whenever we humans start to speak loudly about our cultural, civilizational or political progress in eradicating violence, soon afterwards something bad has happened. For instance, the era of self-confident progress at the end of XIX century was followed by World War I. Thus, whenever we speak about eliminating violence I fear that it is just our wishful thinking; we might be subconsciously trying to persuade ourselves about our changing, developing and maturing nature.

    My second observation is positive and connected with our Sunday lectionary reading. Steven’s book indirectly documents that violence has a contagious nature, violence breeds violence directly and indirectly. How could this observation be positive? Because it implies that violence can be discontinued! The circle of violence can be interrupted. Anything we do which removes any form of violence from circulation will have a great positive impact down the road. This Sunday the apostle Paul and Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew will encourage us and teach us exactly that - how to model God’s motherly loving nature in our macho world and society.

Coinage of blasphemy and coinage of hope

Coinage of hope.
This Sunday will be about money.
I hear it in my head:
     Click clank, swish,
     Click clank swish,
     Moneyyyy!, Get back!...
Now you know.
I grew up in the seventies
with Pink Floyd in my first cassette player.

This Sunday will be about money,
but differently, not about mammon,
not about those signifiers of value.
This Sunday will be about money
and its service to the ideology of power,
about its use for propaganda.

Just look at our own currency,
a directory of power-possessed males,
generals, politicians, wagers of wars.
And all of it is sanctioned, God forgive,
by “Trust in god”?!
This is a quandary not unlike the one faced
by biblical Jews and early Christians alike.

Can we live without this blasphemy?
Using plastic money? Is it any better?
Is there any way out of these snares?
I believe there is!
This Sunday we will hear
about a different coinage of God,
the ancient-new coinage of hope.

Jesus will teach us
how to deal with this manipulation,
with these imposing socio-cultural images.
They present themselves as the only truth,
and force us into binary options
of obedient soulless robots or exaggerated rebels.
This Sunday we will hear about another option,
God’s option,
about the divine coinage of hope.
Together we will return it into circulation.
        (Mark 12:13-17 and Genesis 1:27+28)

Friday Message from Rutgers Church 2011-09-30

Church of open commensality 

Jesus was accused of being “a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and other sinners.”(Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34). 

It was a hostile attack, meant to be dismissive and undermining. But it was anything but that. This comment was true, and on Jesus' side his behaviour was intentional! 

This observation marvelously grasped the essence of his ministry. Just look up all those parables about eating, feasting and preparing food. 

Then, even more importantly, look at how often the gospels speak about eating or feasting with Jesus. Even that famous miracle of turning water into wine in Cana of Galilee: it was not about a bottle or two, it involved no less than 100 gallons of choice wine: 100 gallons!

       Eating and drinking with others was at the center of Jesus' ministry. Jesus intentionally and provocatively gathered people around his table who would otherwise hardly ever sit together. 

A prostitute in the family living room of a city mayor. The homeless and beggars at the table with the business elite (those famously corrupt state contractors and bankers). Who could be surprised that so many people felt uncomfortable?! This radically egalitarian table community stood at the center of Jesus’ ministry. This was his primary way of modeling, anticipating and beginning to create a new order of divine rule (Kingdom of God). 

       Clearly, many people did not like it. They disliked it so intensely that they thought they could eliminate this vision by getting rid of this provocative visionary. Thank God their murderous plan did not work! Every time we celebrate Holy Communion we dine with the resurrected. We personally perpetuate and participate in this revolutionary salvific vision of a new divine order, where there is enough sustenance, enough hope, enough forgiveness and enough welcome for anyone willing to enter. 

Friday Message from Rutgers Church 2011-09-23

Dysfunctional Biblical Family Values

Have you ever noticed how the Bible portrays family life? Abraham almost “sacrifices” his son in some kind of religious delusion. We hear about the tormenting and desperate escape of a pregnant surrogate mother, soon followed by her expulsion to the desert. Then there are several examples when mothers of faith are being “pimped” by their husbands for political and material profits. Or consider Rebecca’s misleading her elderly and blind husband to push forward her favorite son. There are siblings conspiring to murder their brother and settling on a “humane” solution of only selling him into slavery. We see a long history and well-established practice of dangerous intermarriages with close blood relatives. Remember the notorious love life of alpha-male David and the incest between David’s children? Or the Oedipean behavior of Absalom, or Solomon’s diplomatic harem, or his “the Arabian Night” affair with the Queen of Sheba? Oh, did I mention prophet Hosea with his strange style of preaching through his family life and names of his kids?  

It does not stop with what we call the Old Testament. We can continue with not unsubstantiated rumours about Jesus’s own parentage, or the attempts of Jesus’ family to have him declared insane and his reaction in disowning them and replacing them with a commune of his own making. We know about Jesus’s own blatant disrespect for the responsibilities of a son towards a dying father. Then there is Paul almost amusing family, and sexual advice hardly derived from any real family experience, tragically taken by some as a center of his religious genius and the holy writ itself. And all this menagerie of pathologies and dysfunctionality is just a short and brief list which I created almost in an instant and of the top of my head!

How is it possible? First, I think it is naked biblical truth-telling. Even the greatest and most celebrated heroes (to some extent even Jesus himself) are portrayed with honest realism. Second, it is the logic of storytelling and the means for stories to survive; only unique and somehow “ticklish” stories can make it down through the ages and generations. There is also a pedagogic reason - it is better and safer to learn from the mistakes of others. Finally there is a whole bunch of psychological, religious and theological reasons. As we observe models of behavior, and archetypes in action, our sense of morality is broadened; as we observe human merits (rather demerits) and divine grace in action, with Luther we can exclaim - “Sola Gratia” - By Grace Alone!

        This Sunday we will hear a unique intertwined, two-gospel parable about God’s own dysfunctional family (Matthew 21: 28-31 and Luke 15:11-32). Thus it is about us, about our families, about our society, but primarily about God and about the divine medicine of love and grace.

Preparing the New Rutgers' Book Discussion Group

After successful summer book discussion group when we read Gerd Theissen's The Shadow of the Galilean  I am now thinking about opening a new book discussion group.
All of the books are either short or easy to read or they share both of these characteristics.
The books are not selected because I swear by them, but as a trigger for our discussions.
Most of these books I have already "tested" in a small group/seminar setting and they generated interesting discussions. If you like to join us and/or have preference let me know - ostehlik@rutgerschurch.org
Andrew

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Cost of discipleship - very interesting and important theological and political text. Can be accompanied with several films/documentaries on D.Bonhoeffer. Can be accompanied with discussion of the Barmen Declaration - part of the Presbyterian Book of Confessions, can be accompanied with selected Letters from Prison - an exposition of further radicalisation and deepening of Bonhoeffer’s theology.

Martin Buber: I and Though - we can have interesting discussion about Jewish hermeneutics and linguistic philosophy. Tangentially this can be accompanied with discussion of his interest in Chasidism and about our modern idealisation of exclusivisitic or esoteric movements. Even further tangentially as one of the very early Sionist Buber can offer very interesting insights in Near Eastern situation.

John Caputo: What would Jesus Deconstruct? - discussion about Social Gospel, Evangelism and evangelicalism, postmodern philosophy (please don't confuse with religious postmodernism which is just a religious mush) and Derrida etc.I only recently discovered this Syracuse professor of philosophy, very engaging thinker, can help us provide some clarity to thinking about our faith.

Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene (can be accompanied with a PBS film on evolution) discussions about faith and science. Might be interesting to discuss an early book of an author who later became vociferous critic of religion. Possible discussion about the difference between faith and religion.

Carl Gustav Jung: Terry Lectures (Psychology and Religion) or Analytical Psychology : Its Theory and Practice (The Tavistock Lectures) - Opportunity to discuss Jungian psychoanalysis, import of Jungian psychology for the study of religion, Jungian interest in Gnosticism.

John Shelby Spong: The Sins of the Scripture - episcopalian bishop and biblicist grappling with biblical fundamentalism, can be accompanied with some films - Selling God or an episode from Red Dwarf (on religion and fundamentalism)

Slavoj Žižek: The Fragile Absolute (Or Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for?) - an international celebrity Marxist philosopher and psychoanalyst originally from Post-Yugoslav Slovenia. Very challenging an amusing writer, in this book defends Christianity and attempts reconciliation between Marxism and Christianity.

God is not a free-market-capitalist

The picture: Rising unemployment, chronic underemployment, people trapped in the vicious cycle of loans and morgages, crushing fear and the devastating reality of loan defaults and repossession of property, unfair and out of balance taxation, disproportionate emphasis on defense and military spending, poverty driven work migration, homelessness and near homelessness, use of modern tools of communication to control people’s minds and project official propaganda, astronomical and growing difference between haves and have-nots, official religious structures offering cheap and emotional fixes or short escape trips. 

     I am not speaking about our society, this is an image of Jesus’ Galilee and one way or the other an image repeated throughout the Roman Empire.

     For several decades a new generation of archeologists dedicated themselves to diligent and meticulous unsung work and techniques, such as the tedious canvassing of the countryside for every shard of pottery or remains of little farmhouses and farm installations. “There is no question that we now know more about the world of early Christianity than any previous generation since the end of Antiquity.” (Quotation from R.Hosley and N.Silberman - biblical historians and interpreters of archeology.)

     And for all those who are prepared and keen to listen and to have their eyes opened, it is a deeply transformative knowledge. Liberated from religious sentimental and ritualistic baggage, the biblical message suddenly starts to speak to the real world in which we live, and it starts to address our fears and our dreams, first by verbalizing them, and secondly by offering models of alternative thinking and living. It is a process of re-unifying and healing our faith and our lives again. This Sunday Jesus will talk to us about unemployment, how the economy of scarcity breeds crippling greed, and why God is not a free market capitalist. To paraphrase and combine Martin Luther or Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Divine grace is costly, but free and certainly not for sale!