kar0ling

“‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.”--Jeremiah 7:21-23 Walk in obedience to all I command you. Given the work I've been doing lately, my first inclination -- to ask, "so, Karla, what does this mean for you; to what tasks and attitudes is the Lord calling you?" -- was quickly superseded with the thought that Scripture was written to and for and delivered to and for people; a group, not merely individuals. (This time I can cite my sources: Tim Geddert, Doug Heidebrecht, and Brad Sumner. See the May 2011 MB Herald .) So while "what does this mean for me?" ...

I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands, and I would not be comforted.--Psalm 77:1-2. This psalm grabbed me, not because I'm in distress, in a desperate situation needing help, but because of the persistence of the psalmist. Stretching out untiring hands.... My guess is those hands are not untired physically, but the weight of supplication behind them gives them strength to carry on. The weight of faith that in due course, an answer will come, and until then, there is a listening ear for the groans of anguish and despair. For such faith was Abraham credited with righteousness. For a faith that could be obedient unto sacrificing the most precious thing is granted justification. (Romans 4:1-5) One does not wish for trouble; in fact, in my pathology, even when it finds me, I avoid it, but there is a sense that true and deep growth is found there. Biding time waiting for an a...

How often we hear the message; how rarely we believe. Or is it just me? This injunction against fear is a thread through today's lectionary passages. Psalm 23 -- the classic psalm of comfort, where "thou preparest a table in the presence of mine enemies." Psalm 27 -- "The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?....Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. " Jeremiah, today, tells us to fear the Lord, but that's a whole different kind of fear than the terror of people and situations that holds us back. The fear of the Lord, rather, is what sets us free from the fear of failure, the fear of others' opinions of us, the fear of not being good enough, fear of the unknown, and the list goes on. Similarly, as Romans talks about the law and how it teaches us to be conscious of sin, teaches also that we have nothing to fear because "our righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ" (3:22). And in John, Jesus wa...

Christians tend to read the New Testament as though we are followers of Jesus, lapping up teaching at his feet then going out to live it fully. All things considered, however, oughtn't we be identifying with the Pharisees and the Jews? Western evangelicals tend to see ourselves a bit like a chosen people, a bit like the law followers, a bit like we've got it all together. And we sure like to point out how others aren't meeting the mark. (We're unaccountably shocked when those who don't profess a particular commitment to Jesus don't act like "good Christians" [there's so much sex and swearing in Hollywood movies!!]. Yet often we're so busy being self-righteous, we fail to be properly ashamed by the true righteousness lived out by others of those who don't profess the right commitment to Christ. The following passage from Romans feels uncomfortably accurate if we change "Jew" to "Christian", and "Gentile" to ...

It's not really insightful to point at the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, and say it shows Jesus' compassion and love for the marginalized. I'm sure it's true, but hopefully any serious reader of the Bible has figured that out already. But it bears repeating because we still have a fair bit to learn about the implications for our lives. Jesus not only gives the time of day to a Samaritan (lower class), not only to a Samaritan woman (lesser human), but to a Samaritan woman who is clearly a social outcast even among her peers, as evidenced by the fact she's fetching water in the heat of the day, rather than at dawn or dusk with the rest of the women. So when do I bother to talk to the outcasts among us? "I don't know what to say; I'm running late; I'm worried it's dangerous" -- excuses come easy. I wish I could just flip a switch and be able to do hard things. But I don't think guilt, or just trying harder is going to...

Second chances are perhaps not so evident in today's psalm ("I now arraign you and set my accusations before you." 50:21), but does not the language of trial proceedings point at a process -- a chance, at very least, to explain -- and not to arbitrary punishment and rage? And though the next sentence has some strong threats, they are framed as a warning: “Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with no one to rescue you: Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me, and to the blameless I will show my salvation.” (50:22-23). In Deuteronomy (9:23-10:5), we see a clear example of second chances, as God turns away from destroying the Israelites, and gives the commandments for a second time. I always wonder about these passages that talk about God changing his mind. Do we believe he really changes in response to human pleading? I'm not sure whether that's an attribute I want in an all-powerful God. In an elected official, a judge, even a paren...

"Who's this Herman Neufeld they keep talking about?" (A cheesey joke about hermeneutics from Katie Funk Wiebe's humour column in the old Gospel Herald, or some such publication. It always gives me a chuckle.) I've been reminded recently (sorry, can't cite the source) that the books, letters, etc., that comprise the Bible were generally written to communities, and that we also, as readers of the Bible, should receive God's word in community, asking not "what does the Bible say to me?" but "what does the Bible say to us ?" It fascinates me that Christianity bestows great value on individuals, but demands community. Some religions prize the collective to the extent that the individual does not matter at all; others prize certain individuals, but not others. Jesus died for each human being, and Paul tells us no human-constructed category of person has more value than another. Yet, in his prayer in the garden, Jesus' foremost concern for...

Ah, the proliferation of metaphors! There are "many rooms in my father's house," and "my house will be called a house of prayer," and now Moses is a house. And we're in the house, or we are the house. And Jesus is over the house. I don't know where I'm going with this -- all these houses just piqued my fancy. Especially since it started out with the high priest. Let's back up and get these houses straight and see if that helps. "“Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory."--Hebrews 3:5-6. Moses, representing a leader, is in the house, bearing witness. We, the community of God's people, are the house, providing structure, shelter, comfort. And Jesus is over it -- literally and figuratively, I suppose. Maybe he...

"He too shared in their humanity."--Hebrews 2:14 This is the common thread I seized upon in today's lectionary readings. He too shared in our humanity and can thus understand what it is to be in the simultaneously vulnerable and powerful position that is humanity. Perhaps it is forced, but this is what jumped out at my from the passages (besides the fact that to this pragmatic Mennonite, the occasional verse in a psalm is beautiful and touching, but most of that content is bewilderingly melodramatic). Psalm 41 goes off on a strange rant, but starts in a surprising but instructive manner: "Blessed are those who have regard for the weak." It goes on to promise them all kinds of good things, which I suppose also speaks to the human condition. We need to be instructed to look out for those not ourselves and our loved ones...and it helps to promise some kind of reward. Instant blessings, however, are belied by the very next paragraph where the psalmist pleads for mer...

"But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,..." Titus 3:4-5. It's interesting how we zero in on a few verses and build our entire interpretations around them. Just like I'm doing here. But I always find it interesting when I stumble across simple statements about salvation expressed in terms other than the usual chosen by evangelicals. He saved us because of his mercy. I suppose it isn't very revolutionary, because after all, what is not wanting us to be punished if not mercy, but so often that language focuses on the punishment and price-paying, instead of skipping past it all, to place all the focus on mercy. We used to be so full of sin and wrongdoing, but with kindness and love and mercy, he saved us in spite of it all. And the next sentence: not through shed blood, not through death, ...

Warning: I rip the lid off a can of words here, and make very little effort to clean up the mess. But somehow, in the midst of it, I think I caught a fish. There are many and varied passages in the daily lectionary today (as every day), and to be frank, most of it is vaguely disturbing. In Deuteronomy, we have God's beautiful promise to keep his covenant of love with Israel. But that is held in tension with a) God's having chosen one people to be set apart and loved above others (so it seems), and b) the speedy retribution to be meted out against any who stand against God. That beautiful covenant of love -- does it not pay a large part in Zionist zeal to be the only ones to occupy land in the territory historically possessed by the twelve tribes of Israel? What's a person to do with such a jealous and hot-tempered God? Then we move to Titus, where Paul effuses graceful words about truth, hope, godliness, salvation, then goes on to not only repeat but affirm slanderous sloga...

Since Lent is a time of repentance, I should start with a confession: I'm not giving anything up this year. Since I began the practice of giving something up for Lent a few years ago, I had the feeling there was probably more to the observance of Lent than petty self-denial, but having been raised in a non-liturgical church where the word Lent was rarely even mentioned, didn't know what it was and didn't have a clear path to find out more. So I didn't. I was just happy to have found a "season" for Easter. Christmas has Advent (practiced with a remarkable degree of ceremony in my decidedly-not-high-church congregation), so it seemed only right that Easter -- the event on which our entire faith hangs -- should be more than one day of celebration. One year, I heard a suggestion that one might add something during Lent instead of giving something up. I tucked that thought into my small mental file on the season's observance. This year, I read a simple but hel...