That’s right. It’s Square Root Day.
Wear the pocket protector and slide rule proudly today, my friend.
3/3/09
You probably already missed 1/1/01 and 2/2/04. So, mark you calendars now for the next occurances so you won’t be caught unaware:
4/4/16
5/5/25
6/6/36
7/7/49
8/8/64
9/9/81 (Can’t wait for this one!)
p.s. – And can you set your cruise control for 26.019223662515374903266289250538 mph???
For the past several months, we’ve been reading through the book of Luke on Sunday mornings. Not a sermon really. I want us to discuss it. Tackle it. Deny it. Spar over it a bit. Take it apart and put it back together. I may bring a few notes and certainly I can always be found to have an opinion about anything, but often the discussions venture down paths I didn’t foresee.
In doing this, I’ve noticed that there are many passages in the Bible that you never hear preached. 2 Peter 3:15-16 says, “ Our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand…”
Don’t you love it that Scripture says Scripture can be hard to understand? Takes the pressure off. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s okay.
“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9)
Yikes! Preach on that!
“The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law. Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.” (Luke 16:16-19)
Hello! Non sequitur. Where did that marriage bit come from? Unfortunately, verses like this can often be pulled out of the context, where Jesus is trying to make a point, and made into hurtful doctrine.
“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you.” (Luke 11:33-36)
I got the first part. Don’t hide my lamp. But the second part… my body full of light… no part of it dark… completely lighted, as when a lamp shines on you. Wha? Kind of Zen-like isn’t it. Also disconcerting. I don’t know about you but I think I will always be found with a few dark corners within me. Either way, it’s fun times breaking these down with a group.
Other times, you may see a passage in a completely new light. Like this past week, for example. Most of us have heard the verse from Luke 17:6, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed [pictured], you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
Sure, in other Gospels it is a mountain instead of a mulberry tree, but without using your hands, it’s still a pretty nifty trick. David Copperfield could build a TV special around it.
Haven’t you normally associated this verse with having more faith? Or with more effective faith? Have you ever said to yourself, If I only had more faith. Or, If I only had that guy’s faith. In context though, this verse reads much differently to me:
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” (verses 3-6)
First, I love it that after being chided for having more forgiveness, the apostles yell at him, “Give us more faith!”
But look at Jesus’ reply. Is he giving them more faith? If anything, he tells them that they could get by with a fraction of faith. The crucial detail here does not seem to be amount. He seems to imply that we already have all we need–maybe even more than we need. Perhaps, instead of sitting on the sidelines waiting for some mysterious package of additional faith to someday arrive, we should be out there using what little we have.
What do you think?
So I guess I originally billed this blog as a commentary on building a faith community (okay, a church, I guess) in the recovering, urban, Pittsburgh neighborhood of Lawrenceville. I haven’t really had much to share on it. Most of the time we feel like missionaries who have dropped into a foreign land to start church building by scratch. This is a very unchurched area that hasn’t really missed church a bit.
Bit by bit, month by month, we have just pounded out the values of community. We now have a solid group of around six, plus my wife and me. These folks are regulars. They see Catalyst, as we call it, as their church. If we stopped, most of them probably wouldn’t go anywhere else. This winter, we connected with Jennifer, a woman who provides family services for the poorer folks of our corner of Pittsburgh. Jenn works for a large medical provider, but they don’t provide her with much help, other than an office and salary. She struggles to meet all the needs… food on family tables, money for the gas bill, school supplies, or kid’s Christmas presents for parents with nothing. She gets some donations, but by December 15th, she’s usually tapped out. This Christmas, our little community was able to put over $400 together for gift cards to grocery stores, Target, and Toys R Us. Not a lot. Our people are far from wealthy. But for Jennifer, it was huge. When I called her, she was in a home, de-licing it. Jenn’s work is very hands on. We will continue to help her when we can.
This last Sunday was special. It was the second visit for our 9th “member.” I’ll call her Lisa. She works at Starbucks with one of our other folks. She was raised in community churches but hasn’t been to any church in over two years. She’s in her early twenties, and her family is self-destructing beneath her with bad choices and toxic behavior. She feel alone and helpless. She has seen the church as “programmed religion.” I think she has wondered if God is even there at all. Or if it is all just a show people put on. Probably still wonders that, to some extent. This Sunday, her second time with us, she found someone else with similar struggles. She broke down as she shared how isolated and betrayed she feels. We prayed. We laughed. We cried. Then we ate together. I think we had church. We definately had community. I think Lisa is going to come back.
We’re at nine. But sometimes, nine can feel huge.
I’m working today and can’t watch the inauguration. Thank God for DVRs! I am thinking about it alot today. I must admit, even though I really don’t trust Republicans or Democrats any farther than I can throw them, I still find myself hopeful and encouraged in government more than ever before. Why??
I know the hero worship has been a bit much—he IS in a major honeymoon period after a president with record low approval. Maybe he will disappoint. Maybe he will have an affair, sell off Hawaii to Indonesia, spy for Al Qaeda, and put a big red star atop the Washington Monument. I fear there are those who are cheering for that. But I don’t think it will be the case. I think it is more fun and less stressful to be hopeful.
Plus, I think more than with Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II—presidents who will fade into the obscurity of the past like Fillmore, Harding, and Taft—we are witnessing something of true historical significance.
I don’t know. That’s just what I’m thinking today.
So I must admit, the cringe factor sets in a little bit when you see corporate America so blatently riding the Obama coattail. Prime example is Pepsi’s new logo. Original or??? Enough to make you CHANGE from Coke?
What a great word:
Morass – noun
| 1. | a tract of low, soft, wet ground. |
| 2. | a marsh or bog. |
| 3. | marshy ground. |
| 4. | any confusing or troublesome situation, esp. one from which it is difficult to free oneself; entanglement. |
How disheartening to wake up on Christmas Day and find that a new war has started. Well, really a continuation of centuries of war, I guess.
Muslim and Jewish organizations considered it a matter of pride to engage in a communications blockade of organizations “on the other side.” The basic line is: “We can’t talk to people we have such fundamental disagreements with.” And so interfaith groups break apart. Friendships between Muslims and Jews are strained. And the news reports revert back to each side shouting their own talking points louder and louder. They dropped the first bomb; they fired the first rocket; they sent the first suicide bomber; they shot the first bullets; they threw the first rocks; they stole our land; blah, blah, blah.
One day, all sides may discover that merely increasing the volume on your own talking points and trying to drown out the other side is not a strategy for getting to a solution.
Some day, both sides may need to talk, and listen, and agree, and apologize, and vow to forge a different path. Until then: insanity – doing the same things over and over in hopes of achieving a different result.
(a resolution prayer for 2009)
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
It was a rough year. The US was mired in a harsh and unpopular war. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were gunned down. Riots were scarring US cities.
But on Christmas week, three astronauts embarked on the Apollo 8 mission. I’m not sure that these guys get their due in the eyes of history. Other space flights have received more glory, but this one was truly remarkable–and frightening. They were the first human beings to leave the earth’s atmosphere. The first to enter another atmosphere and leave it, after circling the moon 10 times.
I don’t care how long you’ve trained; it could not have been easy to be the first person to see the earth get smaller and smaller in the window as you sped away from it. It must have produced some anxious moments when being the first space voyagers to lose sight of the earth (and communication) completely while going around the backside of the moon. This was Christopher Columbus sailing to the edge of the earth where he might or might not fall off.
James Lovall and his crew were the first to have this view of the earth. They took this photo as they came around the moon. It is called Earthrise, and is one of the most reproduced photos in history. It is credited with lighting the fuse for environmentalism. On Christmas Eve, the crew looked down on earth and, in a television broadcast seen by a billion people, read the first ten verses of Genesis:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
On Christmas Day, New York Times columnist Archibald MacLeish wrote of how this photo changed the way mankind would see the world from that day on:
“To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know that they are truly brothers.”
Oh, that it were still true.
If you need a lift this Christmas, read this short article by Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly:
They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.
It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them [Gainesville] to run through. 
Did you hear that? The other team’s fans?
They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, “Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.
It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.
Hooked? Read the whole thing here.
This Christmas season has meant more to me spiritually than many that have come before it. Like many pastors, this time of year can become so steeped in family and secular traditions, as well as rampant commercial materialism, that it becomes hard to remember the spiritual ramifications. It can all be lost in ridiculous legal battles over whether WalMart employees can say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” The church calendar is filled with lots of holiday programming with all the familiar carols, lights, colors, and somewhat flawed, flannelgraph Bible history. Indeed, the Christmas story in the Bible can be reduced to a Sunday school tail of donkeys, a star, no room in the inn, a barnyard, shepherds, and three wise men. I’m not saying none of this happened, but a story told and retold, over and over again, can lead to a rather rote and routine experience. Furthermore, from a spiritual aspect, it can really be seen as just the beginning of the story. It’s a baby who will disappear into obscurity for thirty years until a baptism in the Jordan River. There’s not the take away that there is with the Easter story.
This year, our little faith community has revisited the concept of Advent, something I had grown up with in the Episcopal Church. This has been, I must say, a rather rewarding experience.
This is not, despite what the retailers and cultural mouthpieces say, the Christmas season. On the church calendar this is the Advent season. The Christmas season begins December 25th, and goes for 12 days–yes, the 12 days of Christmas. It becomes a celebration of Emmanuel—God with us. (Notice “Joy to the World” is in the past tense.) Advent is something different.
Advent is a yearning. Advent is about anticipation, expectation, and a crying out. All through the Old Testament, and certainly during the 600 years of silence between the two testaments, the people of God cry out for His presence. The unholy seek the holy. The temporary seek the eternally divine. It is also about a marriage. It is the joining of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, the Creator with His creation, the bridegroom with his bride. (Perhaps it is no accident that Jesus’ first miracle in the second chapter of John is creating wine at a wedding.) For the first time, God enters the play He has created. The kingdom of heaven indeed comes near.
Remember, Advent is part of the word adventure. When the kingdom of God finally arrives, things are going to get interesting.
As each candle on the Advent wreath is lit during the four weeks of anticipation, our expectation of what God’s kingdom will mean for our world grows (various traditions may do these in various orders):
Candle 1 – Hope, for how God’s healing, justice, mercy, and love will affect those who are broken, hurting, and left behind.
Candle 2 – Peace, not necessarily the lack of hostility or stress, but the harmony that accompanies the kingdom… man with God, man with his fellow man, and man with creation. “God and sinner reconciled.” (The lion and lamb lie down together!)
Candle 3 – Joy, not a happiness that is related to our circumstances (or Christmas gifts!), but a deep, heartfelt joy that settles in when you not only read and dream about God, but actually walk with Him.
Candle 4 – Love, a rather meaningless word in our daily lexicon, especially when compared to the burning, white-hot love of God that turns our sense of hierarchy and importance upside-down. It is played out in Matthew 25 by caring for those less fortunate. It is spelled out in 1 Corinthians 13 as other-centered and eternal. It is not an emotion but more a holy cause that rises from the DNA of creation and demands action. It is the instinct of a father to race into a burning building for his child. It is so intense, and at times controversial, that Jesus was killed for it.
In these days of terrorist attacks, reckless warfare, financial upheaval, and hubris-laden corruption, can’t we, too, “join the triumph of the skies” and cry out for God’s kingdom to come? This is not the beginning of the story; this is the culmination of thousands of years of anticipation. This is the invasion. This is D-Day. This is the appearance of the cavalry coming over the hill. Yearning for God is something that the long-time Christian can do, but also something for anyone who feels far removed from any kind of a personal God.
So I yearn to see what more of the kingdom of God will do in my life, in our faith community, in our broken down neighborhood of Lawrenceville, and in our broken down world.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.
