NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

I heard some stories lately and they went like this…. A while ago while we were at a group home celebrating a communion service with the residents, one of the consecrated wafers fell on the floor.  No one knew what to do, and so we looked to the priest for guidance. “Throw it outside on the ground,” he said.  “Let the animals eat it.” A choir member noticed a wafer had fallen into the hot air register and wondered aloud, “What should we do about that?” One chancel guild lady was talking to another before an adult education class, and I overheard her saying in a worried tone, “I’m always afraid I’ll get the bles wafers mixed up with the unblest.” My immediate reaction to all of these stories was, “Does it really matter?” That was enough to start me thinking… The words of the Eucharistic prayer are not magical, nor does being said by a clergy-person make them so. The wafers and wine, over which they are said, do not have special properties. In...

 Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus never met face to face, but if they have done so in another dimension, the meeting might well have gone something like this.... Jesus: “I’m so glad to finally get a chance to talk to you.  The two of us have a lot in common! We both have other people telling our story – as if they caught it all on camera.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all say they are telling my story – but they [whoever they really were] wrote many years after you wrote to your churches, and they can’t agree on what to say. Your problem is a little different, what you wrote in your letter to the churches in Galatia about your conversion experience is very different from what Luke wrote about that experience of yours in his book ‘The Acts of the Apostles’.  Even your actions following the experience are different! And what about your problem with Peter about following the food laws of my people? Obviously, from your writing you had never heard of Peter...

“And they almost got away with it!” This phrase was used passionately  and often by John Dominic Crossan as he lectured on “What happened between Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday” at College Street United Church in Toronto early in April of this year. He said he likes to think of the supper held on the Thursday night as being a celebration. The demonstrations of the entrance to Jerusalem riding on a donkey and the cleansing of the temple were over. Because of the mood of the crowds in Jerusalem the authorities hadn't moved against Jesus. ( “Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.” Matthew 26: 5 ) Had they really gotten away with it? We all know how the story ended. We are all aware of how it has been understood over the intervening years. But what would it have looked like had Jesus and the disciples actually gotten away with it? Imagine if the events of Good Friday had never happened. Imagine if that little group of friends had returned ...

‘Precious Moments Christianity’  Theologian Roger Olson uses that term to describe many current churches.  They "specialize in comforting the afflicted and present the gospel as all calm, fitness and light with no conviction or accountability". On the official website for Precious Moments, it says “It started with a man who had a gift and vision to share love and life’s unforgettable moments with the world.” On that website you can find porcelain figurines commemorating the ‘high points’ of a Christian life; things like baptism, Christmas, communion and  a series called chapel exclusives. I’m sure we all have pictures in our mind of a baby being baptized at the font, of a child at the communion rail, or of the sanctuary glowing with candles on Christmas Eve. These are indeed ‘precious moments’ in our Christian journey, moments we will relive over and over in our memories. The problem, according to the quote from Olsen above, is when this type of mo...

Clarke was reading my latest blog on his iPad at the kitchen window this past week and I was anxiously waiting for his comments…if any.   It was taking an awfully long time!   Finally he said, “I can’t concentrate. That squirrel keeps interrupting me!” Now ‘that squirrel’ was on the other side of the closed window. However given that the sun was shining and the temperature was hovering just under the freezing point, three squirrels, thinking it was Spring, were playing chase, darting up to the window and away. Jokingly, I said, “I could write a blog about this!” and then I began to think….. “How often do extraneous things divert us from doing what we plan? How often do we stop doing something for just an instant, never to take it up again? How often does that momentary distraction take us away from our path?”I suspect it has happened to all of us from time to time.  One of the best know cases of being distracted, is when Jesus, in the story of Martha and Mary [L...