The following sermon was delivered on Dec. 13, 2009, at Trinity’s 8:45 worship service. Because no audio recording was made, the text of the sermon is reproduced here:

There are no known original Bible manuscripts in existence. The Bible as we know it has been pieced together from hundreds of hand-copied manuscripts and fragments dating often from centuries after the books were actually written. Obviously, these many ancient sources don’t match up in every way, so figuring out the original authors’ intentions is a big job.

When faced with two ancient manuscripts of the same biblical passage that differ in some way or another, one rule of thumb that modern Bible scholars turn to in order to determine which version is likely to be the most accurate is that the more difficult reading is preferable to the easier one (a translation of the sermon title, proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua, according to Bart Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why [New York: HarperCollins, 2005], p. 111). Here’s why: scribes, the people who made those handwritten copies of biblical texts, would sometimes change those texts in an attempt to improve them. If they saw something that they took to be a mistake, they would try to correct it. If they saw two accounts of a story told differently, they would try to harmonize them. If they came across an idea that ran contrary to their theological opinions, they would change it to make it more palatable (Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p. 111).

The U.N.C. religion professor and Bible scholar Bart Ehrman gives the example of Mark 1.41: when a leper comes to Jesus begging to be healed, according to most English Bible versions, Jesus is “moved with pity” and he heals the man. Professor Ehrman notes, however, that the very oldest surviving manuscripts of Mark say that Jesus was not “moved with pity” but instead “became angry.” Professor Ehrman believes that later scribes reproducing Mark’s gospel changed Jesus’s anger to pity because pity made more sense to them, and that we have been left all these years later with Bibles that don’t say what Mark originally wrote (Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p. 133f). The more difficult reading is preferable to the easier one—remember that rule of thumb as we turn to John the Baptist.

*               *               *

Would you have been among the crowds streaming down to the Jordan to be baptized by John? Try for a moment to transport yourself back two thousand years and across the world to ancient Israel. Imagine that you are a faithful “mainline” Jew living in one of the towns or cities, maybe even Jerusalem, in the region surrounding the Jordan valley. You hear about this prophet, this preacher, this “John the baptizer” who’s attracting crowds along the river bank. Would you go?

The answer would probably at least partly depend on whether you considered this man John to be a true or false prophet. How would you decide? Well, consider for a moment John’s words to the crowds:

“Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s your life that must change, not your skin. And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as ‘father.’ Being a child of Abraham is neither here nor there—children of Abraham are a dime a dozen. God can make children from stones if he wants. What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.” (Paraphrase of Luke 3.7–9 by Eugene Peterson in The Message.)

How’s that for a little Christmas cheer? But remember: the more difficult reading is preferable to the easier one. John tells no one what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.

*               *               *

Two millennia and light years apart in culture, it’s hard to say what our equivalent to a John the Baptist would be. If there were someone preaching and prophesying and baptizing in the French Broad, chances are none of us in this room would go—we’d probably hear about him on the local T.V. news, shake our heads or laugh out loud, and go about our lives.

Is there a modern-day American equivalent to John the Baptist, even if only in terms of comparable popular impact? Some might see a Rick Warren or a Joel Osteen in that role; others might think long and hard but come up empty. To find someone with a truly society-wide impact who is also a religious figure, you’d probably have to go back to Martin Luther King, Jr., or perhaps Billy Graham.

Then again, given that Palestine in John’s day was a bit of a backwater as far as its place in the Roman Empire was concerned, maybe we need instead to think smaller than a society-wide scale. Maybe our John the Baptists are Barbara Nagy (a Presbyterian medical missionary to Malawi) or our Trinity team that’s preparing to go to Guatemala. Maybe I’m John the Baptist. Maybe each of you is a John the Baptist as you go about your day and interact with the world around  you. Maybe the church, even this one, is called to be John the Baptist to the world out there—whether or not that world comes streaming down to our river bank.

But if so, do we prefer the more difficult words, or the easy ones? Do we tell the story that the world wants to hear, or the story that the world needs to hear? Do we take the easy way, or the hard way?

Fred Craddock tells of a recurring childhood experience:

I lived near a railroad track as a boy, and I remember a number of mornings getting awake, getting up, going into the kitchen to get some breakfast, and there’d be a strange, ugly looking, poorly dressed man at the table eating—just eating away, eating away. And when he left, I would say, “Mom, who was that?”

She’d say, “Well, his name was Henry, and he said he was hungry.”

“Well, where’d he come from?”

“He came down the railroad tracks.”

People called them hobos. They walked the tracks begging, maybe stealing, getting what they could to stay alive. They’d stop by our house, and there, sitting in the kitchen eating what we had to eat, just eating it like they’d never have another meal. And I’d say, “Mama, weren’t you scared?”

She said, “He’s hungry.”

“Well, I was scared of him!”

“Well, he was hungry.” (Craddock Stories [St. Louis: Chalice, 2001], p. 109)

Young Fred, perhaps like the crowds streaming down to the Jordan, was looking for comfort and joy; his mother, like John the Baptist, reminded him that they couldn’t really be comfortable as long as Henry was hungry.

*               *               *

Christmas is a beautiful time of year, and the story of Christmas is a beautiful story. But Advent is not only about the beauty—Advent tells a story that has some hard words. Christmas is about a bright star rising in the east, and that’s a story that we never need to stop hearing. But Advent, while pointing to that star much as John pointed to Jesus, reminds us that life struggles on, even in the midst of the season’s comfort and joy; Advent reminds us that the star in the east is surrounded by the darkness of a night sky.

Thanks be to God that God is with us, both in the light and in the darkness.

—Dwight Christenbury

Following is Fred Van Itallie’s thoughtful and honest reflection on life at Trinity, given on 25 October 2009 as part of Trinity’s Stewardship campaign:

“This year’s stewardship campaign asks us to focus on “Your Response to God’s Generosity.” So let me offer you a few insights into how you might go about answering this “knock on the door” of our hearts.

“First, I must tell you where I am coming from. Jesus, and through him, the Church have been a part of my life for nearly all my life. It has not been always a walk in the park—rather sometimes a pilgrimage through a dark forest.

“He has led me through some strange and wonderous times and rescued me countless times, often from myself and my own shortcomings. He asks for nothing in return but love.

“He has given me friends who have supported me in dark times and strength to endure hardship. Still he asks for nothing in return but love.

“His love is a hardship, too. Sometimes, it seems he loves those I don’t like and wonders why I don’t love them, too. But he forgives me and asks for nothing in return but love.

“He led me to this church over 30 years ago. Sometimes it was very hard and painful to be a member, but his sweetness persisted and I still rejoice with songs of praise each Sunday for all that he has done.

“So, what do I give to the one who loves me so much that he gives me every blessing of peace and purpose, yet asks for only love in return?

“That, friends, is the question. You won’t find it in your checkbook, but in your heart. Praise the Lord!”

—Fred Van Itallie

It’s November 2009, which means that Trinity’s experiment with monthly Taizé prayer services has been going on for just over a year. Chances are, you haven’t yet attended a Taizé service—and with that in mind, here are the Top 10 Reasons Why It’s Time for You to Give Taizé a Try:

10. Lots of candles really do add to the sensory experience of worship.

9. There’s no sermon.

8. We can do neat things with the Sanctuary’s lighting, focusing on the table and creating a small circle of light for worshipers to gather in.

7. It’s an opportunity to meet new people, as some of our most faithful Taizé worshipers are not Trinity members.

6. Our Taizé service is a welcome time of peace and quiet to help us prepare for the week ahead.

5. The lovely Taizé music would sound even better with more people singing.

4. Trinity’s beautiful sanctuary is a different kind of beautiful in the late afternoon.

3. Our Taizé service is “alternative worship” that isn’t watered down or narrowly focused on a particular “target” group.

2. It’s an opportunity to engage in communal prayer and individual prayer, all at the same time.

1. God’s Spirit is present in the silence.

See you at the next Taizé prayer service: Sunday, November 8, 5:00 p.m.!

—Dwight Christenbury

In case you missed it, a powerful and moving (and even humorous) prayer was delivered at today’s inauguration of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth President of the United States—the benediction pronounced by the Rev. Joseph Lowery (you may recognize the first paragraph as the words of James Weldon Johnson’s great hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing, which, yes, was sung last Sunday at Trinity):

“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way; thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand—true to thee, O God, and true to our native land.

“We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we’ve shared this day. We pray now, O Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant, Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration. He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national and, indeed, the global fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hand, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations. Our faith does not shrink, though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

“For we know that, Lord, you’re able and you’re willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor or the least of these and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

“We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union. And while we have sown the seeds of greed—the wind of greed and corruption—and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

“And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

“And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

“Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little, angelic Sasha and Malia.

“We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won’t get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone, with your hands of power and your heart of love.

“Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.

“Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.”

—Dwight Christenbury

[Welcome! This post refers to a previous post, "Blogging Calvin (Yes, Really!)," from 31 December 2008, which describes a plan for reading John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in one year.]

What’s the point, you might well ask, of reading Calvin’s nearly-five-hundred-year-old Institutes of the Christian Religion? Isn’t it out of date? Haven’t the world and the church changed too much for Calvin to be all that relevant any more? Isn’t it almost idolatrous for us to let one man’s views shape everything we believe?

Well, Calvin himself had a ready answer to the question, “Why read the Institutes?” He believed that it would help the reader to better understand and interpret the Bible:

“Although Holy Scripture contains a perfect doctrine, to which one can add nothing, . . . yet a person who has not much practice in it has good reason for some guidance and direction, to know what he ought to look for in it, in order not to wander hither and thither, but to hold to a sure path. . . . Perhaps the duty of those who have received from God fuller light than others is to help simple folk . . . to find the sum of what God meant to teach us in his Word” (“Subject Matter of the Present Work,” p. 6).

(Calvin, as you can probably tell, seems to have had a healthy ego; he tries to be modest from time to time and to ascribe the credit for his brilliance to God, but he often doesn’t bother. For instance, while he “would shrink from seeming to appraise [his] work too highly,” he promises nevertheless that “it can be a key to open a way for all children of God into a good and right understanding of Holy Scripture” ["Subject Matter," p. 7].)

Still, questions of relevance (or at least questions of priorities for busy people) are legitimate; for what it’s worth, here are my answers to such questions:

• Isn’t Calvin out of date? Yes. And no. . . .
• Haven’t the world and the church changed too much for Calvin to be all that relevant any more? Yes, both the world and the church have changed: in matters of science, for example, we’ve long since learned that many of Calvin’s assumptions about the universe and the natural world are not valid; and the church has abandoned some of Calvin’s theological ideas as well. But it’s important that we know where we’ve come from, and in fact the foundational system of belief that Calvin lays out still applies for those of us who consider ourselves Reformed Christians.
• Isn’t it almost idolatrous for us to let one man’s views shape everything we believe? It certainly would be, but Calvin (healthy ego and all) doesn’t claim to be infallible–and even if he did, there’s no reason why we need to consider him infallible. We should read Calvin to learn, not to be indoctrinated. How ever archaic, outdated, and quaint Calvin may seem, he was indisputably brilliant, and it’s good practice for us to wrestle with well-reasoned arguments and ideas, even if we ultimately reject some of them.
• What’s the point of reading the Institutes of the Christian Religion? In some ways, it’s like the familiar question asked of mountain climbers: Why climb it? Because it’s there!

And a final thought: We may choose a church because our friends go there, because we like the architecture of the building, or because our ancestors went there, but these reasons are not ultimately the reasons that different churches exist. Different Christian denominations exist because different ideas about God, about the world, about the Bible, and about the church exist. Whether you’ve been a Presbyterian all your life, for two weeks, or never, isn’t it worth knowing something about what, for better or for worse, makes us Presbyterians distinctive?

—Dwight Christenbury

Ever dreamed of reading John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion from cover to cover? No, seriously—stick with me . . .

I’ve recently discovered, thanks to my wife’s parents, that the Foundation for Reformed Theology, in honor of the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth, has come up with a plan by which one can read the entire Institutes in the course of one calendar year (sort of like one of those read-the-Bible-in-a-year programs), and you can do it by reading only about seven pages per day. (You even get weekends off!) To get a copy of the plan, click here.

Institutes of the Christian Religion is Calvin’s major work—really his life’s work. It is the foundational work of Reformed theology and an important basis (some would argue the entire basis) of Presbyterianism. If you’re Presbyterian and you’ve always wondered who this Calvin character was and what he had to say, then this is your chance to find out!

If you’re interested and could use some help getting a copy of the Institutes, post a comment to this entry, send me an e-mail (dc [dot] trinity [at] mac [dot] com), or give me a call. And if you can’t quite picture yourself actually reading the Institutes but wish that someone else would, I’m going to give it a try and will occasionally post reflections on my reading on this blog.

Happy new year!

—Dwight Christenbury

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

(John 1.1-5)

*               *               *

Forty years ago today, the astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft, orbiting the moon, took the now-famous picture known as “Earthrise.” That day, in The New York Times, the poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish wrote, “To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”

As an editorial in today’s Times points out, such optimism was a bit overstated. Still, if you can imagine seeing that picture of the Earth in space as if for the first time, it’s hard not to be awestruck by the wonders of creation. The writer of John’s gospel had no idea what the Earth looked like from space, but his words are (or should be) awe-inspiring in their own way. The light indeed shines in the darkness. . . .

All the best wishes for a peaceful and happy Christmas!

—Mark Stanley, Joe Gernoske, and Dwight Christenbury

P.S. For another lovely reflection on “Earthrise,” see Oliver Morton’s piece, “Not-So-Lonely Planet.”

In his sermon of December 21 (which you can find here), Mark Stanley referred to nine characteristics of worship in “vital and faithful” congregations, as identified by the preacher and teacher Thomas G. Long in Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship.

In case you didn’t catch all of them, here they are again:

“Vital and faithful congregations

1. “Make room, somewhere in worship, for the experience of mystery

2. “Make planned and concerted efforts to show hospitality to the stranger

3. “Have recovered and made visible the sense of drama inherent in Christian worship

4. “Emphasize congregational music that is both excellent and eclectic in style and genre

5. “Creatively adapt the space and environment of worship

6. “Forge a strong connection between worship and local mission—a connection expressed in every aspect of the worship service

7. “Maintain a relatively stable order of service and a significant repertoire of worship elements and responses that the congregation knows by heart

8. “Move to a joyous festival experience toward the end of the worship service

9. “Have strong, charismatic pastors as worship leaders.”

[Thomas G. Long, Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship (Washington: Alban Institute, 2001), p. 13.]

This list is one man’s opinion, but it seems a good starting point for a congregational discussion of worship. Please share your thoughts in the questionnaires that will soon be distributed, and consider leaving a comment here as well. Thank you in advance for your thoughtful contributions to this important conversation.

—Dwight Christenbury

[Welcome! If this is your first visit to On Faith and Life, note that entries appear on the page with the most recent at the top. Scroll down to our inagural entry, “Trinity 2.0,” for a primer on what this blog is all about.]

The season of Advent begins this Sunday, November 30. As you may know, Trinity Presbyterian Church has participated for at least several years in a movement known as “Reclaiming Christmas,” which asks the pertinent question, “Whose birthday is it anyway?” (You can read more about it on page 9 of December’s Tidings newsletter.)

A similar movement that I’ve recently become aware of is Advent Conspiracy; the concept behind Advent Conspiracy—the “conspiracy,” by the way, is one against Christmas consumerism—is in four parts:

• Worship fully
• Spend less
• Give more
• Love all

Advent Conspiracy has created an promotional video that summarizes the essence of the movement; you can view that video here:

Advent Conspiracy

May your Advent season be blessed, but not too comfortable. Remember, as Jesus says in the Lectionary gospel passage for the first Sunday of Advent, “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13.33).

—Dwight Christenbury

[Welcome! If this is your first visit to On Faith and Life, note that entries appear on the page with the most recent at the top. Scroll down to our inagural entry, “Trinity 2.0,” for a primer on what this blog is all about.]

There are a couple of interesting pieces about Thanksgiving on the op/ed page of today’s New York Times. The first, “Where the Wild Things Were,” by Andrew Beahrs, examines the likely Thanksgiving menu from the 1621 celebration at Plymouth, Massachusetts, as well as a menu crafted by Mark Twain in the late nineteenth century, and traces how our “traditional” Thanksgiving meal has changed over the past four centuries. How do deer, ducks and geese, gooseberries, wild plums, lobsters, and “eels ‘trod’ from the nearby salt marsh” strike you?

The piece, which documents the disappearance of wild food from our dinner tables, ends with a sobering look at part of the reason why:

“The Pilgrims appreciated wild foods for their contribution to survival; Twain, for their taste and their hold on his memory. All saw the foods as fundamental to the America they knew. None would have imagined that many would one day be seen as curiosities.

“But with the exception of fish, today it is vanishingly rare to find wild foods in our marketplaces. The 10 million prairie hens in the Illinois of Twain’s day have diminished to a mere 300 birds; his terrapin struggle to survive amid wounded Eastern wetlands; his titanic Lahontan cutthroat ‘lake trout, from Tahoe’ were killed off by over-fishing and the introduction of invasive species. Tasting some of Twain’s wild things is impossible or illegal, with more limited to dedicated hunters and fishermen.

“Preserving or restoring the wild foods that remain begins with appreciating what they have to offer—extraordinary taste and smell, certainly, but also the joy of experiencing the marshes and mountains and lakes these plants and birds and animals rely upon. We have a great deal to learn from Twain’s instinctive premise: that losing a wild food means losing part of the landscape of our lives.”

*               *               *

The second piece, “A French Connection,” by Kenneth C. Davis, reminds us of a little-known early New World Thanksgiving that preceded the Pilgrims of Plymouth by fifty years. A French Huguenot community, fleeing religious persecution in Europe, settled near present-day Jacksonville, Florida, in 1564, and Davis tells us that they held a service of “thanksgiving” as soon as they landed.

Sadly, these early settlers were massacred just a year later by the Spanish. The Spanish admiral who oversaw the operation hanged a number of the victims beneath a sign reading, “I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to heretics”—and a long early American tradition of stamping out religious dissent had begun:

“Starting with those massacred French pilgrims, the saga of the nation’s birth and growth is often a bloodstained one, filled with religious animosities. In Boston, for instance, the Puritan fathers banned Catholic priests and executed several Quakers between 1659 and 1661. Cotton Mather, the famed Puritan cleric, led the war cries against New England’s Abenaki ‘savages’ who had learned their prayers from the French Jesuits. The colony of Georgia was established in 1732 as a buffer between the Protestant English colonies and the Spanish missions of Florida; its original charter banned Catholics. The bitter rivalry between Catholic France and Protestant England carried on for most of a century, giving rise to anti-Catholic laws, while a mistrust of Canada’s French Catholics helped fire many patriots’ passion for independence. As late as 1844, Philadelphia’s anti-Catholic ‘Bible Riots’ took the lives of more than a dozen people.

“The list goes on. Our history is littered with bleak tableaus that show what happens when righteous certitude is mixed with fearful ignorance. . . .”

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, grateful for the blessings of family, community, and nation, let’s also remember where we’ve come from and use what we’ve learned to work toward a world in which religious violence everywhere might begin to seem as strange and distant as it does here.

—Dwight Christenbury