Maggie's Farm

John 20:19-31

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” ²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” ³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Image: Caravaggio's (1571-1610) The Doubting Thomas

From the pulpit:

A guy and his wife are tourists in Israel when the wife up and dies. He is kindly offered the opportunity to have his wife buried in Israel.

"No, thanks" the guy replied. "I heard there was some fellow who was buried here some time ago, and came back from the dead....I don't want to take that chance." 

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live, even if he dies."

Jesus to Martha, about Lazarus. John 11:25.

John 15:18-19

"If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love his own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, reviewed at Times Online. A quote;

The probability is that we shall never have an answer to the question how the Gospels came into existence in their present form that is more than a partially tested hypothesis.

Our friend Dr. Bob has published Part lll of his series on Moving the Ancient Boundaries.

All three pieces are worth reading on a Holy Saturday. He always begins with this quote:

Do not move the ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers. Proverbs 22:28

Bob combines a conservative instinct - be careful about altering things which have worked, and which have had meaning for thousands of years - with an attack on radical individualism (eg narcissism). One quote:

The life lived in self-absorption is pervasively corrosive, dismantling the foundations of free democratic society in its blind pursuit of pleasure at the expense of principle, comfort at the cost of character. We are increasingly ungovernable because we refuse to be governed. We are receiving what we have demanded — and it will never satisfy us, and threatens to destroy us.

The Mediterranean photo is borrowed from Dr. Bob's series.

Re-posted from April, 2006

"Now the bricks lay on Grand Street,
where the neon madmen climb, they all fall there so perfectly; it all seems so well-timed..."

Photo yesterday, at Ferrara's on Grand St., NYC, to pick up some Easter wheat pies. Creamy, with just the right amount of Citron. Not exactly Yankee food.

Kind of sad to see Little Italy slowly being absorbed by adjacent Chinatown - but Chinatown is great, too. In fact, wonderful. Feels like Asia. Any woman who carries a genuine Gucci or Prada or Kate Spade bag is a big sucker. This is knock-off city, for the folks with brains.

These days, the third-generation Italians have taken the Holland Tunnel and moved out to Soprano-land to try to capture the American Illusion of suburban bliss. But the suburban kids all come back to NY, not to mention the ambitious rural kids from across the USA, and across the world.

What fun it would be to own a little pied a terre in Little Italy, or on University Place, or in Gramercy Park, or anywhere near Zabar's. Thanks to Rudy and now to Bloomberg, NYC is as good as it has ever been - probably better.

Why? The parks have all been re-done, and are welcoming, friendly, with all sorts of stuff going on. The tourists, and the "bridge-and-tunnel" crowd, are back with a vengeance. Interesting things to do and places to see - endless. Places to eat - fuggedaboutit: good everywhere. The cops - out of their patrol cars and just walking their beats like the old days, and seeming reasonably friendly although they have to maintain their NYC cool. The whole place is gleaming, busy, happily crowded, ethnic as anywhere in the world, and full of the usual new construction everywhere. One heck of a town. (Only complaint: Bloomberg says we can't smoke in bars. That is truly nuts, as bad as the UK. If I can handle life, I ought to be able to smoke in a bar without a Mommy telling me what to do. How about having smoking and non-smoking bars? Hmmm, I predict the non-smoking would go out of business.)

We did not forget the cannolis.

And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee..."

Exodus 3:11-12

How often, in the Bible, does God call the most humble and ordinary people to serve Him?

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ²make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

¹²Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Re-posted from April, 2006

From a piece by Brian at Real Meal Blog:

As we approach Holy Week and focus on the death of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection, let us reflect on the implications of the Cross for those who seek to follow Jesus. My daughter’s argument for the safety of a life in captivity over the risk of a life freedom brought to mind the words of Jesus.

In Matthew, Jesus’ most powerful challenge to his followers comes in chapter 16. Consider these two verses:

NIV Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

Most of us read these verses only in the negative: self-denial, hardship, etc, but this is a distortion of Jesus’ point. Yes, the way of discipleship is hard. Let’s be clear about this.
Following Jesus Christ is a profound counter-cultural action. It is a life of risk. It is not about safety. But it is the opportunity to live a full life in the service of our Creator. It is an opportunity to live for that which we were made. Nothing could be more exiting nor, dare I say it, fulfilling. It is about following Jesus into the places that only those who have lost the fear of living can go. Jesus invites us to consider ourselves “dead men [or women] walking” precisely so that he can unleash us into a world that desperately needs women and men who are not afraid of uncertainty, danger, and trials because they know that their true Master is with them always (28:20).

Image: Duccio (1255-1319), Entry into Jerusalem

The Very Reverend Jeffrey John, Dean of St. Alban's, claims Christ did not die for our sins. The Telegraph. I think this guy is inventing his own religion. There is a term for that.

Dobson acts like a real jerk. I wish he would stick to his knitting. Much of his family stuff is very good, but when he gets into politics he makes a fool of himself.

The New Atheists vs. the Old Atheists. The Tennessean. And who knew Harvard had a Humanist Chaplain. What's that, exactly? (h/t, News for Christians)

A Maggie's Farm reader was presented with the following "version" of The Lord's Prayer at her Episcopal Church:

My Creator (soul's Source, spirit's Destination, Ground of Our Being, etc.)
in whom/which is heaven, or within which we can find heaven (as co-creators)
we revere/respect you
We will work to see your divine intent become a reality where we live.
We will work to see that everyone has the food they need to live and have health and energy to contribute to the welfare of Earth and its life systems.
We sense that we are forgiven for our admitted shortcomings to the extent that we art able to forgive others their failures.
We recognize the presence of evil in our world and strive to avoid being a part of it as well as pointing it out whenever we are aware of it.
We work for these changes in our lives and in the lives of others in the spirit of Jesus who cared for all those who were unjustly treated or oppressed.
May we make these things so.

As Rick Moran would say, I am speechless.

You cannot be culturally literate - or an educated person - in Western Civilization without knowing the Bible. It's our culture's taproot. It's therefore interesting to see that public school courses in the Bible are growing in popularity.

David van Biema has a very fine piece in the usually-disappointing Time Magazine discussing this new trend, and the issues around it.

It begins thus:

Miss Kendrick came ready, with props. The day's topic was the Gospel of Matthew. "You can divide all the Beatitudes into two parts," Jennifer Kendrick explained to her teenage audience. "The 'Blessed are the whatevers,' like 'the meek,' and then the reward they will get. So I've made some puzzle pieces here." She passed out construction-paper sheets, each bearing either the name of a virtuous group or its reward, in black marker. "And you've got to find the person who has the other half. What's the first one in the Bible?"

"The poor in spirit," mumbled a crew-cut boy.

"O.K. What goes with the poor in spirit?"

A girl in the front of the room replied, reading from her sheet, "For they will see God."

"Nope," chirped Kendrick. "O.K., find the person that matches yours. I'll take the roll."

Read the whole thing (4 pages).

^{2 Corinthians 5, 16-24}

¹⁶From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The bogeyman Christian is gonna getcha. A quote from Sam Harris in the LA Times piece, titled God's Dupes (h/t, Villainous):

Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists — men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin's Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.

Dang. That clever Sam Harris figured out that we Christians really want a theocracy, and want nothing more than to behead all those who will not kneel to Christ and his right-wing mission in America.

It is astonishing how much he understands about the covert machinations of the Christian faith, and our intentions for America. Who spilled the beans? Who was the leaker? Armitage? Rove? Bush himself?

We do indeed hide behind nominal Christians like wolves in sheep's clothing - that is how diabolically sneaky we are. And Bush is our secret Dear leader, but shhhh - don't tell anybody about our ultra, ultra Secret Plan to sneak sharia God's law into the US, like hanging all gays and banning abortion and stoning for adulterers and all that other cool stuff.

Read Sam's brilliantly penetrating, earth-shaking, Pulitzer-worthy expose of the dastardly Christian plot against good, old-fashioned, pagan, communitarian America here. 

My questions: Why doesn't he wonder what we evil ones are waiting for to institute the theocracy we desire? And why haven't we done it already, since we already have Bush as a dictator? And, third, what planet does this dude live on? Is Pluto still a planet? No, I guess not anymore.

Tell me, Dr. Sanity, or Dr. Bliss - does this guy qualify as paranoid? Or just plain ignorant? His lack of tolerance for others seems positively hostile...

OK, it's a cold, sleety, soon-to-be blizzardy night in Yankeeland. Stoke up the fireplace or the wood stove, and ask the wife or hubbie to bring a keg over to the computer because this piece by Lanza in American Scholar (to which I recommend subscribing ) - h/t, A&L Daily - will take a few minutes to untangle and absorb. It is either an exercise in solipcism, or else very cool and fun. Lanza is a Professor of Medicine.

It's about consciousness and the real world, which is a subject which tends to require a touch of alcohol - or should I say ethanol, these days? Is reality a biological epiphenomenon?

It begins with this quote from the great Loren Eisley:

While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. “He doesn’t know,” my friend whispered excitedly. “He’s passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He’s in another play; he doesn’t see us. He doesn’t know. Maybe it’s happening right now to us.”

and ends thus:

Physicists believe that the theory of everything is hovering right around the corner, and yet consciousness is still largely a mystery, and physicists have no idea how to explain its existence from physical laws. The questions physicists long to ask about nature are bound up with the problem of consciousness. Physics can furnish no answers for them. “Let man,” declared Emerson, “then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind.”

Space and time, not proteins and neurons, hold the answer to the problem of consciousness. When we consider the nerve impulses entering the brain, we realize that they are not woven together automatically, any more than the information is inside a computer. Our thoughts have an order, not of themselves, but because the mind generates the spatio-temporal relationships involved in every experience. We can never have any experience that does not conform to these relationships, for they are the modes of animal logic that mold sensations into objects. It would be erroneous, therefore, to conceive of the mind as existing in space and time before this process, as existing in the circuitry of the brain before the understanding posits in it a spatio-temporal order. The situation, as we have seen, is like playing a CD—the information leaps into three-dimensional sound, and in that way, and in that way only, does the music indeed exist.

Go ahead and read the whole thing.

Luke 13: 1-9

1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. ²He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? ³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. ⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ ⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Image: A fig tree. We can grow the Brown Turkey fig in New England, if it is given good protection over the winter. It grows like a shrub.

Romans 10: 5-15

⁵Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” ⁶But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) ⁷“or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”

¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. ¹³For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” ¹⁴But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? ¹⁵And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

^{Psalm 37, 1-18}

¹Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers,

²for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.

³Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.

⁴Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.

⁶He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday.

⁷Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices.

⁸Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil.

⁹For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.

¹⁰Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there.

¹¹But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

¹²The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them;

¹³but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that their day is coming.

¹⁴The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to kill those who walk uprightly;

¹⁵their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.

¹⁶Better is a little that the righteous person has than the abundance of many wicked.

¹⁷For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous.

¹⁸The Lord knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will abide forever.

Try the Battleground God quiz, which intelligently tests the theological and logical consistency of your thoughts about God. Gives feedback, too. (h/t, reader)

God transcends our tests and our theology and our consistency - or lack therof but, since He gave us a brain, we may as well use the darn contraption as best we can.

Bob at One Cosmos says that science aspires to demystify the world, while religion aspires to remystify it. A couple of quotes:

When you have successfully demystified the world, your soul is officially dead. This is why it is a chore for me to read the words of the scientists referenced above, for these are dead men talking. It is as wearying as communist or leftist boilerplate dogma that explains everything, and therefore, nothing. It is such a ham-handed and oblivious misuse of language, that it offends the sensibility of someone with even a rudimentary acquaintance with spirit. It is also a kind of psychic "bullying," trying to push people around with coarse and blunt language that is entirely disproportionate and inappropriate to its subject -- like an illiterate boob talking about Shakespeare.

and

I'm trying to think of an example that even a materialist with a blunted sensibility might understand. For many people who have successfully demystified the world, the only time they are able to unwittingly appreciate the sacred is when they are directly confronted with it in its most vivid form: death, the birth of a child, marriage, etc. Imagine being so spiritually insensate that you had the courage of your convictions and successfully drained the world of its sacred dimension. Upon the death of a loved one, you would simply put them in the garbage. After all, it's just a sack of meat. The birth of a child would be no different than termites hatching in your backyard. Marriage wouldn't exist, because there would be no recognition of the sacred dimension of male and female sexuality. Euthanasia would not just be legal, but mandatory, on grounds of common sense -- as would the abortion of youth in Asia -- as in China.

Read the whole thing. I could quibble with Bob, and argue that he blends capacity for relationships with capacity for life of the spirit, etc., but I agree with his general direction - and with his attitude and his altitude. Life in abundance: it is Christ's promise.

Image: William Blake's Ascension

The gals are back from this year's Vision New England, in Boston. They learned that 1% of New England men are evangelical Christians. I think that's pretty good, really. Many are called, etc.

Among other things, they loved a group that sang for them - Confirmations.  Blues/gospel. Gritty, not sweet, and not old-fashioned.

I will buy one or two.

From stem-cell harvesting, to abortion on demand, to triage (as in the UK: "too expensive to bother treating"), to physician-assisted suicide for the terminally-ill, we see the steady march of a soul-less scientific rationalism.

I believe it is fear of that march which energizes the "crazy fundamentalists" who are not comfortable with treating human life as a disposable object.

Now we see the practical Swiss planning to add mental illness to the list of diseases which will have physician-assisted suicide available. "Suicidally depressed? Hey - we can help!" Who's next on their list? Diabetics? Drug addicts? The unemployed?

Sometimes a slippery slope is a slippery slope. How soon until Denmark and Holland have suicide teams roaming the hospitals (now often called "Death Services"), urging ill people to unburden society of their expensive and inconvenient problems? I can even see the ads: "Do it for the greater good", with some sort of happy, serene image of a smiling middle-aged lady floating on a fluffy cloud. Harp music, of course.