Sermon: The Trouble with Mishnah--Matthew 15:1-11 (1/22/2017)

Choruses from the Rock (VI), By T.S. Eliot

[I know that I promised blog entries that I haven't delivered yet. I've got plenty of ideas in my head, it's just a matter of finding the time and the motivation at the same time. Anyway, I expect that I'll be ready to write relatively soon, but until then I thought I would tide you over with a section from T.S. Eliot's excellent poem, Choruses from "The Rock". Enjoy!] It is hard for those who have never known persecution, And who have never known a Christian, To believe these tales of Christian persecution. It is hard for those who live near a Bank To doubt the security of their money. It is hard for those who live near a Police Station To believe in the triumph of violence. Do you think that the Faith has conquered the World And that lions no longer need keepers? Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be? Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments As you boast of in the way of polite society Will hardly surv...

The Massacre of the Innocents [By W.H. Auden]

[From For the Time Being, by W.H. Auden] HEROD One needn’t be much of a psychologist to realize that if this rumor is not stamped out now, in a few years it is capable of diseasing the whole Empire, and one doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict the consequences if it should. Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, and the same for all, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions—feelings in the solar plexus induced by undernourishment, angelic images generated by fevers or drugs, dream warnings inspired by the sound of falling water. Whole cosmologies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of school children ranked above the great masterpieces. Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Priapus will only have to move to a good address and call himself E...

Works of Love XI: Love Believes All Things

[From Part II Chapter II, " Love Believes All Things and Yet is Never Deceived "] “Love… believes all things.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:7 “ Love believes everything—and yet is never to be deceived. Amazing! To believe nothing in order to never be deceived—this seems to make sense. For how would a man ever be able to deceive someone who believes nothing! But to believe everything and thereby, as it were to throw oneself away, fair game for all deception and all deceivers, and yet precisely in this way to assure oneself infinitely against every deception: this is remarkable.” [1] When it comes to trusting people, we modern Americans tend to be very careful. We consider it an essential skill, knowing who and when to trust. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” That proverb teaches us that if I allow myself to be deceived because I trusted when I should have known better, it’s really my fault, not the deceiver’s. And we desperately don’t want to be deceived ...

Theological Fragments

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