Second Friday after Pentecost
St. Barnabas Day. Color: Red
I am seeing Red today, the beautiful stole just to my right, that my friend Frances gave me. St. Barnabas was a traveling companion of Paul on Paul's first missionary journey. You can read about him in Acts 11-16.
Friday is reply to comments day. I suspect it will consistently be the day of the longest blog. So hang in there readers. There is some good stuff in these comments, and perhaps even some good stuff in my responses. Thanks to Jerry, Joe, April, Chris, and Jennifer for their comments.
1. First was Jerry's comment:
"Good morning Christian,
One of the reasons I don't post many comments is that in response to your wise and well reasoned essays, I feel like I have to research and support carefully anything I say and then I get distracted or busy and never get around to it. Well, that all ends today. :-)
In response to the "Then what's the point of being a Christian?" question, I say "to experience the joy and connection of God's love and to share it with others." But the "share" here is not the act of verbal testimony necessarily in order to "save" others, but the act of loving others in as close to the way God would love them (which of course we can't come close to, but we can try). Just a more folksy way of saying that first line of the catechism. :-)"
Jerry,
I'm overjoyed that your reticence has ended. You don't have to do any research or support carefully anything you have to say. Some of my dear daughter April's lighter comments show clear evidence of that.
I think most United Methodists would see it the way you do: that our best testimony is love, not verbal testimony. But there are some who say that our lack of verbal testimony is the reason our church is in such long term decline. At this point my thinking is that different ones of us have different gifts. Some of us do have a gift and a calling to verbal testimony. If we do, God will provide opportunities for us to use that gift. When those who don't have that gift are guilted into doing verbal testimony anyway, it usually fails. I think it's best for us to know our gifts and use them. There are actually spiritual gift inventories, but I've never used them. Jerry, those who know you know that you have a wonderful gift for hospitality. Not only have you intentionally opened your home to our church but you have graciously made everyone welcome. I find that whenever I go into your house, my body automatically relaxes. You make everyone feel at home in your home. You have other gifts as well. I could not be doing this blog without your skill in setting it up for me. You also had a gift, shall I say a knack, for asking me questions in Sunday School about things I never thought of but should have. Alas, your gift of hospitality has been limited by the Pandemic. I'll have more to say about verbal testimony in a future blog.
2. Here is one of April's comments. I've printed it in full. If you haven't read it, please do:
I know this is weird (I'm the weird kid, for the record), but Jesus really came to me in the form of our golden retriever, Sunny, who went to be with God two days ago, on June 8. She was almost 16, ancient for a golden, and lived her entire life on a beautiful 44 acre Christmas tree farm. She was the dog of Jean, my mother's landlady and dear friend, who was the third generation owner of the farm and became ordained as a pastor in the United Church of Christ at the age of 65. A year and three months later, Jean was dead of aggressive rectal cancer, just four months after diagnosis.
Sunny was Jean's son's puppy when he was in high school. She was a farm dog who didn't understand the concept of a leash, a fierce lover of her family and anyone who came to the farm, an excellent salesdog of Christmas trees at the season until she got a little old and confused and tried to get into the customers' cars. She loved hiking with me all over the beautiful hills of trees here. I was the only one young enough to hike with her, and we would do hours and hours. She also loved to swim in the pond, and my mother and I spent a great deal of trying to turn her back into a golden retriever when she had gone for a swim in the algae covered pond and come back a green retriever.
Sunny, to me, was absolute love. She had no evil. She stood by her humans. She knew who was sick, who was sad, who was dying. She slept by my mother's side. She hiked with me when I was at one of the lowest points of my life, and she showed me that I could literally, not just metaphorically, climb straight up hills that most people wouldn't even dream of tackling.
She was with Jean until the end, and Jean entrusted my mother with the care of Sunny and Georgia Kitten (who is now three but will always be our kitten.) Mom will have to move out sometime soon, and for Sunny to have to leave her farm or my mom, who had become her human, would have been heartbreaking.
Sunny made her own choice of when to die. On her own terms. She went to sleep peacefully as kidney failure caused her body to shut down, peacefully in the garden at the vet's office, as my mom and I held and petted her and cried. There was no pain. We saw her run across the Rainbow Bridge to meet Jean, her grandfather Tom, and all the generations of farm dogs who came before her here.
Sunny was love. She still is love. She knows no blame, no anger, no revenge. She knows chicken thighs and turkey skins, and she knows ear scratchies and how to sit at the foot of the steps if someone upstairs is feeling sad or ill. She is God's love made flesh, even now that she's not flesh.
So to me, Jesus does not look like a man. Jesus is a golden retriever.
April, I saw lots of pictures of you with Sunny over the last two years. I'm sorry I never got to meet her. She had a good and long life and showed God's love. Love you, Dad.
3. Here is a comment from Jennifer:
"Good morning Christian,
One of the reasons I don't post many comments is that in response to your wise and well reasoned essays, I feel like I have to research and support carefully anything I say and then I get distracted or busy and never get around to it. Well, that all ends today. :-)
In response to the "Then what's the point of being a Christian?" question, I say "to experience the joy and connection of God's love and to share it with others." But the "share" here is not the act of verbal testimony necessarily in order to "save" others, but the act of loving others in as close to the way God would love them (which of course we can't come close to, but we can try). Just a more folksy way of saying that first line of the catechism. :-)"
Jerry,
I'm overjoyed that your reticence has ended. You don't have to do any research or support carefully anything you have to say. Some of my dear daughter April's lighter comments show clear evidence of that.
I think most United Methodists would see it the way you do: that our best testimony is love, not verbal testimony. But there are some who say that our lack of verbal testimony is the reason our church is in such long term decline. At this point my thinking is that different ones of us have different gifts. Some of us do have a gift and a calling to verbal testimony. If we do, God will provide opportunities for us to use that gift. When those who don't have that gift are guilted into doing verbal testimony anyway, it usually fails. I think it's best for us to know our gifts and use them. There are actually spiritual gift inventories, but I've never used them. Jerry, those who know you know that you have a wonderful gift for hospitality. Not only have you intentionally opened your home to our church but you have graciously made everyone welcome. I find that whenever I go into your house, my body automatically relaxes. You make everyone feel at home in your home. You have other gifts as well. I could not be doing this blog without your skill in setting it up for me. You also had a gift, shall I say a knack, for asking me questions in Sunday School about things I never thought of but should have. Alas, your gift of hospitality has been limited by the Pandemic. I'll have more to say about verbal testimony in a future blog.
2. Here is one of April's comments. I've printed it in full. If you haven't read it, please do:
I know this is weird (I'm the weird kid, for the record), but Jesus really came to me in the form of our golden retriever, Sunny, who went to be with God two days ago, on June 8. She was almost 16, ancient for a golden, and lived her entire life on a beautiful 44 acre Christmas tree farm. She was the dog of Jean, my mother's landlady and dear friend, who was the third generation owner of the farm and became ordained as a pastor in the United Church of Christ at the age of 65. A year and three months later, Jean was dead of aggressive rectal cancer, just four months after diagnosis.
Sunny was Jean's son's puppy when he was in high school. She was a farm dog who didn't understand the concept of a leash, a fierce lover of her family and anyone who came to the farm, an excellent salesdog of Christmas trees at the season until she got a little old and confused and tried to get into the customers' cars. She loved hiking with me all over the beautiful hills of trees here. I was the only one young enough to hike with her, and we would do hours and hours. She also loved to swim in the pond, and my mother and I spent a great deal of trying to turn her back into a golden retriever when she had gone for a swim in the algae covered pond and come back a green retriever.
Sunny, to me, was absolute love. She had no evil. She stood by her humans. She knew who was sick, who was sad, who was dying. She slept by my mother's side. She hiked with me when I was at one of the lowest points of my life, and she showed me that I could literally, not just metaphorically, climb straight up hills that most people wouldn't even dream of tackling.
She was with Jean until the end, and Jean entrusted my mother with the care of Sunny and Georgia Kitten (who is now three but will always be our kitten.) Mom will have to move out sometime soon, and for Sunny to have to leave her farm or my mom, who had become her human, would have been heartbreaking.
Sunny made her own choice of when to die. On her own terms. She went to sleep peacefully as kidney failure caused her body to shut down, peacefully in the garden at the vet's office, as my mom and I held and petted her and cried. There was no pain. We saw her run across the Rainbow Bridge to meet Jean, her grandfather Tom, and all the generations of farm dogs who came before her here.
Sunny was love. She still is love. She knows no blame, no anger, no revenge. She knows chicken thighs and turkey skins, and she knows ear scratchies and how to sit at the foot of the steps if someone upstairs is feeling sad or ill. She is God's love made flesh, even now that she's not flesh.
So to me, Jesus does not look like a man. Jesus is a golden retriever.
April, I saw lots of pictures of you with Sunny over the last two years. I'm sorry I never got to meet her. She had a good and long life and showed God's love. Love you, Dad.
3. Here is a comment from Jennifer:
I
have a framed print in our front hall with the scripture “As for me and
my house, we will serve the Lord”. In my office I have the doxology and
a glass front cabinet that has all of my study books and Bibles and a
small icon that I bought in Oxford last year. A basket in my bedroom
holds my study Bible and current study books. Not every room but some of
my favorite things.
Great, Jennifer. Keep it up. And keep sending me comments. I've really appreciated them. I don't think I know you. Jennifer Reece is a reader of this blog and a long time friend, and has posted a comment or two, but she didn't go to the two Christ UMC's you went to. I did some detective work. My source thinks you're Jennifer Christenberry. Is that right?
4. Here is another comment from April:
I hope I am not going too far into politics, but I wonder if a sort of
second coming of Christ can be seen in every major world even that
brings about great change. World Wars, pandemics, revolutions... we see
Christ when business is not as usual. A lot of people are seeing this as
the Armageddon... is it also the Second (or fourteenth - I've lost
count!) coming?
April, you're clearly operating from the second of my three options of belief about the second coming. That can work. I'll still go with the third.
5. Here's a comment from Chris:
April, you're clearly operating from the second of my three options of belief about the second coming. That can work. I'll still go with the third.
5. Here's a comment from Chris:
Christian,
it is fascinating to think about how the concept of a "long time" must
have changed as people began to accept that the planet was much older
than thought, and thus, civilizations. The current >4.5 billion year
age measurements are hard to envision, even now with a good
understanding of the dating methods (by the way, a piece of the planet
that old has not yet been found; the 4.5 BY age is from meteorites
thought to have formed at the same time as the earth). I'm assuming that
people used to think that five, six or even ten generations of people
was a really long time whereas now we go back thousands of years,
sometimes even on Ancestry.
In NT Bible passages where the topic of a Second Coming is mentioned, are there any notable differences among writers that suggest different understandings about the longevities of civilizations such as those in ancient Egypt?
In NT Bible passages where the topic of a Second Coming is mentioned, are there any notable differences among writers that suggest different understandings about the longevities of civilizations such as those in ancient Egypt?
1 comment:
Thank you for your kind words about Sunny, Dad. She was about eight times as big as Pretzel (dad and Marianne's beautiful dachshund), but she was no threat to anyone... always loving, gentle, and as I said, just like Jesus. We miss her but we can feel her among the trees, with her Mother.
As to your comment about not having to research things to have a reaction, as your daughter's comments clearly show, I'll have your readers know that while I may not be a Biblical scholar, I did study history with the world's foremost church historian, Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, at Yale. I was one of his favorite students ever (Dad can, and will, confirm) and he said, "April isn't an academic - she's a teacher." So I have been, all my life, in various forms.
One of Dad's greatest days was eating lunch with Dr. Pelikan at Mory's, the private club at Yale that was a great tradition and the only union restaurant in New Haven by that time. Dr. Pelikan was delighted to meet my Dad. I think my Dad nearly fainted. He seems okay now, about 21 years later.
I'll also want to make sure you know that while we took the GRE (that hideous thing you have to take to get into graduate school) thirty years apart, our math scores were identical. But I beat him in verbal. By a lot.
Love you Dad!!! :)
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