A Great Message from the President of the United States to Our Young People

For all the drama that has preceded the speech that President Obama is scheduled to give to the students of our country tomorrow, the address itself turns out to be an entirely unexceptionable call to education, studiousness, responsibility, and love of country.

Under the Constitution, presidents aren't just political heads of government, they're also chiefs of state, meaning that they represent all of us, the sovereignty and interests of the entire country. It's in this capacity that presidents throw out pitches to open baseball seasons and recognize heroes.

It's also in this role that past presidents, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have spoken to children during their school days.

Thanks, President Obama, for a great message for our children. If just one kid hears it and takes its message to heart, it will have made a huge difference.

Here's the speech, care of Justin Gardner:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

My Three Kid Sisters

No, that's not the name of a sitcom from the 60s. This really is a picture of my three kid sisters, snapped during a party we had for my father's eightieth birthday yesterday.

You're going to have to click on the image to enlarge.

Magnificent

U2's hymn of praise to God as performed on the Letterman show in March.



If you go to the U2 discography site, the words of Magnificent are the current featured lyrics.

Facing Evil: When We Can't, Jesus Can

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 7:24-37
I was a young pastor. I’d received what I thought was a solid seminary education. I believed in the Bible. And I accepted the Lordship of Jesus with all my heart. But whenever I ran across passages in the Gospels telling about Jesus casting out demons, I didn’t know what to make of them.

I had never met anyone that I thought to be demon-possessed. And many Bible scholars who comment on such passages say confidently that those people the Bible describes as having demons really were mentally ill or suffering from some other affliction.

Then, I met a husband and wife missionary team supported by the first congregation I served. The couple was in the States on furlough and had come to speak at our church’s annual outdoor mission festival. They served in India and most of their work was with a leper colony they had founded there. One day, while speaking with them privately though, I was surprised when, after they told me about worship services, many conversions to Christ, and the medical clinic they ran, this couple also said that occasionally, they performed exorcisms.

I tried to conceal my shock behind a poker face. “Exorcisms?” I thought. “You mean, like in the Gospels, like in the movies, you cast out demons?”

I guess that they could see my unspoken questions and began to explain that sometimes, people would be brought to them who displayed a cluster of symptoms that might include depression, violence, self-destructiveness, convulsions, or explosive rage. When medical treatment and counseling proved ineffective, the missionaries told me, they were fairly certain that the problem wasn’t psychological or medical; they were dealing with demons.

It was then that they would call on the Name of Jesus to cast evil from the people brought to them. They told me about people whose lives were totally turned around, all their former disturbing symptoms gone, because their demons were exorcised or removed by the power of Jesus Christ.

I found that I had to believe them. They weren’t nut cases. They were well-known to all the people of my first parish; the wife, a nurse, had been raised there. And they claimed to have met demon-possessed people and seen Jesus cast the demons out.

So, I thought, trying to make sense of it all, demon possession and the possibility of exorcising demons from people must be real. But, I reasoned, this whole phenomenon must be something that in today’s world only happens in primitive settings more like first-century Judea where the Bible tells us that Jesus cast out demons. The teeming, impoverished section of India where those two missionaries served would have been more like that than would the United States.

That line of reasoning, I suppose, was comforting for me. Nobody wants to run into a demon. So, I told myself that they weren’t to be found in the good old US of A.

But truth be told, I think I was only whistling in the dark. If you believe in the existence of evil—and who can watch a TV news report or read the news online and not believe that there is evil?—then how can you deny the possibility that evil may so fill a person’s mind and life that they become possessed by that evil?

And besides, if I believed in the Bible and if, when reading it, I ran across incidents like the one recounted in today’s Gospel lesson, in which a desperate woman asks Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter and Jesus, in response to her faith, does just that, how could I keep whistling in the dark?

I soon learned that it isn’t just Christian preachers who wrestle with such issues. Psychotherapist R.D. Laing gained prominence in the late-1960s with his cutting edge thoughts on human psychology—some of it kooky, some of it right on. In his book, The Divided Self, published in 1964, Laing noted “a…curious phenomenon of the personality…is that in which the individual seems to be the vehicle of a personality that is not his own. Someone else’s personality seems to ‘possess’ him, finding expression through his words and actions, whereas the individual’s own personality is temporarily ‘lost’ or gone…”

But even if references to demon-possession sound like way-out psychobabble or kooky preacher talk to you, I think you’ll agree that evil—active opposition to the will and commands of God, refusal to reverence God, and resistance to loving others—is increasing in our world today.

That’s because evil fills up the vacuums, the empty places of our lives, our institutions, and even our churches.

In the New Testament’s last book, Revelation, the risen and ascended Jesus tells one church that though their congregation is commendable in lots of ways, the members had forgotten their first love.

In other words, that congregation had become a social club, not a family of believers who sought to give God thanks for Jesus’ death and resurrection through changed lives.

It didn't seek to share Christ with others.

Churches that forget that Christ is to be their first love stop being churches and seem not to pray, “Change my heart, God,”* but, “God, You need to change with the times.”

We leave room for evil when we put ourselves first in life and when we forget that Christ is to be our first love.

People also leave room for evil when they fail to maintain personal contact with God.

Week before last, I went to Columbus to have lunch with my best friend from high school, a fellow I’ve known since the fourth grade, who lives in Arizona and only gets back this way once a year. On the way up to Columbus, I wondered what his mood would be. He’s going through the breakup of his marriage of thirty years.

“I’m keeping my life simple right now,” he told me. “No TV. A one-room apartment. I go to work. I read my Bible and pray every day. I go to men’s Bible study at church. I go to worship on Sunday. [And pulling out a card, he told me] I’m an agent of the FBIC, Mark: Fully Believing in Christ.”

When I left Bill that day, I knew he would be OK. He had invited Jesus to participate in his life. His relationship with God is personal.

Evil goes where Jesus Christ has not been invited. That’s why it’s so critically important for you and me to pray for our spiritually-disconnected friends, neighbors, coworkers, and classmates.

That’s why it’s central to who we are as Christians to invite those who aren’t in relationship with Christ and the Church to get to know Jesus Christ, to worship with us, to dig into God’s Word with us.

It’s why you and I need, in the words of Martin Luther which you’ve heard me cite many times, to live in daily repentance and renewal, daily surrendering to Christ so that evil cannot get a decisive foothold in our lives or in the lives of those for whom we pray.

And it’s essential that we pay attention to who hasn’t been worshiping with us lately, to pray for them, and, in simple Christian love and friendship, call them up and find out how they’re doing.

Just how the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman in today’s Gospel lesson came to be possessed by evil isn’t said. Of course, she was, like the deaf mute man Jesus also heals in the lesson, a Gentile, a non-Jew, who may never have heard the story of the God of all creation who had made the Jews His chosen people and, over long centuries, had prepared them for the arrival of the Messiah, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

But the actions of this mother should be a lesson to all of us. She didn’t give up hope. She went to Jesus on behalf of her demon-possessed daughter. As Luther reminds us in A Mighty Fortress is Our God, “hordes of devils fill the land, all threatening to devour us.” But we can, as the hymn also says, “tremble not, unmoved we stand,” knowing that evil cannot overpower us.**

Once, I met a Lutheran pastor who told me about his childhood and youth lived in North Dakota, near a small town that had little for young people to do and offered few opportunities for the future. He had more than a few run-ins with the law and his life seemed to be spinning inevitably toward dysfunction and evil.

One day, he passed the bedroom of his grandfather, in his nineties, then living with his family. The old man was praying for children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and neighbors. He prayed for blessings, guidance, and healing.

Then this troubled teenager heard his grandfather begin to pray for him. The grandfather’s voice choked and the boy could see that he was sobbing softly as he asked God to intervene in the young man’s life, to guide him, to help the boy follow Jesus and live, rather than give in to the sin of this dying world.

At that moment, the teen thought his grandfather was silly. But, as the years went by, increasingly, when he contemplated doing wrong or stupid things, something or Someone, seemed to steer him elsewhere. His grandfather’s prayers were answered. That’s how that felow ended up following Christ, ended up in seminary, ended up a pastor.

The power of evil is huge in our world today. But as the Syrophoenician woman in our Gospel lesson learned when she prayed for her daughter, Jesus is able to overcome all and give us new life.

Today, tomorrow, everyday, put your life—put the life of the world—in the hands of Jesus.

When we fall, Jesus lifts us.

When we die, Jesus gives us life.

When we can’t, Jesus can. Always.

AMEN

*"Change my heart, O God" is the opening line of the praise song featured in the video below. It's based on imagery of God as the potter to whom the believer is called to willingly submit, allowing God to make them new. Check out this list of Scripture passages (and their contexts) to see how the terms "potter" and "clay" are used in both the Old and New Testaments.



**Below is a performance of A Mighty Fortress is Our God by the Pacific Lutheran University Choir of the West.

I'm happy because...

...the Ohio State Buckeyes won their season opener today against the Naval Academy, 31-27. Granted, it was a somewhat lackluster performance on OSU's part. But I'm less concerned after this year's first game than over last season's opener. Then, the Buckeyes were nearly upset by the Akron Zips. The Midshipmen this year are clearly a better team than the Zips were last season. Also, the Middies feature an offense scheme which the Buckeyes won't face for the balance of the system.

There are legitimate concerns about the OSU offensive line, partuclarly as we look ahead to next week's faceoff against USC. But I feel more confident about Ohio State's 2009 encounter with the Trojans in Columbus than I did leading up to the Buckeye-Trojan matchup in LA last year.

Go, Buckeyes!

...also the Reds, who have been decimated by injuries throughout this season are doing some winning lately. I have to believe that had the Reds suffered fewer personnel losses over extended periods of time in 2009, they would be more in the thick of things for a post-season run. Hope does spiring eternal in the spring...and in old fans grasping at straws in the fall.

Go, Reds!

Life IS Good

A few nights ago, my wife and I found some Life is Good T-shirts on a clearance rack at a local store. Like lots of people, it seems, we love these simply illustrated, comfortable shirts with their messages of realistic optimism.

The popularity of the Life is Good product lines can, I think, be rightly read as something of a backlash against the cynicism, negativism, pessimism, and even hatred, that seems to fill so much of contemporary culture. You can see these latter qualities in TV commercials that celebrate selfishness, in reality shows that elevate narcissism and nastiness, in movies that don't blink at showcasing dehumanizing coarseness, and even in the refusal of schools to show their students a "stay in school" message from the President of the United States.

But life is good. Not because T-shirts say it is. Not because there aren't bad, sad, even tragic things that happen. And not because there aren't cynical people trying to shaft others.

Life is good because the God Who made us hasn't given up on us and, so long as we never give up on Christ, never will. Please read this passage from the New Testament (which I've told my wife must be read at my funeral or else I'm popping out of the box to read it myself), then go read this outstanding reflection by Julie Ackerman Link:

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Life is good. Amen!

"Welcome back, pastor. Watch out for the demons."

So, you're a mainline pastor, part of that group of Christians often dismissed as "God's frozen chosen." You could be Methodist, Lutheran, UCC, or Presbyterian...whatever. You've just come back from sabbatical when a woman you've never met approaches you on the church parking lot to say that she's come from far away to strengthen you against demons.

Now, demons aren't really something you talk about much in mainline circles. But this woman doesn't care about that. She holds your head in her hands and begins to shout prayers. Then, after a few words with you, she gets into her rented car and drives off.

You might think to yourself, "That was weird." And you'd be right, I guess. But if you were this particular mainline pastor, you might remember a previous encounter you'd had with someone striving to fortify you against demons just as you'd ended a previous sabbatical.

Presbyterian pastor Jan Edmiston writes about this experience on her blog and concludes:

I believe in demons. I hesitate to say this because people tend to ridicule or peg those who talk this way. Mainliners tend not to talk about Dark Forces unless we are talking about old Star Wars movies.

But I believe that when God is working in amazing ways, dark forces are going to come out and mess with us. I'm not saying that people who disagree with me in ministry are evil. Not at all. But I do know that when personal power gets in the way and people become confused . . .

So, I'm girding up against the demons confident that God always wins.

When you see God doing great things in your church or in the lives of those for whom you've long prayed, bank on it: Satan and the demons of hell will attack.

That's why Paul tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Reflections on Kennedy Memoir's Frankness

Here.

One of the Most Interesting, Effective Members of the US Senate

Olympia Snowe.

Were "Moses & Co." Right to Go After the Canaanites: Inquiring Minds Want to Know

In response to my link to an article about a newly discovered ancient fortification in Israel, one built by the Canaanites, Specer Troxell wrote this in the comments:

Do you think that Moses & co.'s actions against the canaanites in the old testament was justifiable?

I suppose the bottom line of the question is, if you heard a voice telling you it was God, and it wanted you kill someone to honor it, would you do it?

In fact, I do think that the ancient Israelites' actions were "justifiable." Some months ago, I wrote a piece here in which I talked about how my thinking had changed regarding the link between ancient and modern Israel. There, I mentioned that while God's gift of the land to Israel was, if you will, perpetual, it was also conditional. God's people were to have the land only so long as they were just, not only to their own people, but also to the strangers and foreigners among them.

According to the Old Testament, Israel was to live side-by-side in peace with other peoples, so long as they acted justly. It was only when those nations routinely practiced injustice that God instructed the Israelites to make war and take lands forcibly.

What's interesting to note is that Israel was never exempted from God's command to be just. The prophets risked rejection and martyrdom for constantly reminding the people of God of this fact.

• Micah famously wrote, for example, "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8).
• A reluctant prophet, Jonah, was sent to announce God's impending wrath on the capital city of an empire Jonah hated, Nineveh. He didn't want to give the Ninevites warning that their unjust, materialistic, self-centered life style was about to bring their destruction because he feared that exactly did happen would happen, that the people would repent and God would forgive them.
• Condemning both Israel and its neighbors for their injustices, the prophet Amos cried out, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24).

Israel's accrued injustices were, according to the Old Testament, the reason that foreign armies were able to take the land God had given to His people away from Israel, taking many as slaves, and dispersing God's people.

I don't think it's quite accurate to say that Moses et al "heard a voice" a la "son of Sam," which seems, whether intended or not, to inhere in Spencer's second quoted sentence above. God's communication with us isn't a purely psychological phenomenon.

Nor is it disconnected from previous or later self-disclosure. In other words, the God of Genesis is demonstrably the same God in character, will, justice, power, and love that we find in the Gospels. And, by Moses' time, those who paid attention had enough of a track record of communication from God to know that an order to go after the Canaanites wasn't just a voice inside their heads or attributable to what they'd eaten; they were being given impulse for certain actions by the God Who wants the human race to live justly.

One other thing. Strictly speaking, in the original Hebrew, the fifth commandment is, "You shall not murder." Taking a life is a horrible thing. In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther says of this command, "We are to fear and love God so that we do not hurt our neighbor in any way, but help him in all his physical needs." Jesus says that we violate this commandment not only when a person's physical life is taken from them violently, but when they are hated. So, God has a rather expansive view of this commandment.

But what's to be done when the neighbor is oppressing and murdering the neighbor?

Today, the great powers of the world stand by idly while a violent regime in Sudan exterminates thousands in Darfur, just as seventy years ago, they stood by while the Nazis murdered Jews. A similar tragedy unfolded little more than a decade ago in Rwanda.

Is it a violation of the fifth commandment to stop murderous oppressors from doing their worst? The answer to that question may not always be clear. But at the very least, one might be tempted to say, "No."

Yes!

"For the Christian, what looks like a detour may actually be a new road to blessing."

For some of my short takes...

Go to my Twitter site. You'll find a link to a great video on the motivations of the Pelotonia bicyclists from the Ohio State James Center, among other things.

Tressel Defends School Up North

Make note of it on your calendars. It may not happen in the rest of the Ohio State football coach's career.

Interesting

Here.

Women: You Don't Have to Take Domestic Violence!

Here. (Thanks to my son for sending this link to me.)

A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons

[Each week, my aim, not always hit, is to present some comments on the Bible lessons assigned for the subsequent Sundays. My hope is to help members of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for Sunday worship. Because we basically follow the Revised Common Lectionary used by many other churches, I hope that others will find the comments helpful, too.]

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 6, 2009

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 35:4-7
Psalm 146
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

The Prayer of the Day
Gracious God, throughout the ages you transform sickness into health and death into life. Open us to the power of your presence, and make us a people ready to proclaim your promises to the whole world, through Jesus Christ, our healer and Lord.

General Comments
1. Isaiah 35:4-7: If modern scholars are correct, this section of Isaiah was originally addressed to God's people during their exile in Babylon.

Here, God promises that His people will return to the land He gave to them and those who have harmed them will be punished.

The promise that the blind will receive sight, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap, and the dumb will sing is alluded to in the Gospel lesson from Mark.

The mention of waters in the wilderness reminds me of the water from a rock provided to the ancient Israelites as they moved from slavery in Egypt to the promised land. (It also echoes of the second creation account, found in Genesis 2 and 3.)

2. Psalm 146: The psalmist talks to himself, or his "soul." The word for soul in Biblical Hebrew is nephesh, literally throat. As used here, nephesh has in mind the entire human being.

The use of nephesh bears a connection to the passage from Isaiah. Without the living water God provides (see John 4), we're left parched and dead. God refreshes those who turn to Him and are given life.

The psalmist resolves to never stop praising God.

One reason for elevating God above anything else is that mortals--not even the most powerful of people or armies--can provide us with the help--or the life--our thirsty souls crave and need. Only God can do that.

3. James 2:1-10, 14-17: James, ever committed to living out the faith we confess, chides the first-century Christians for giving preferential treatment to the wealthy with which it comes in contact. Meanwhile, James says, they ignore the poor among them. And they do this, he points out, when the poor--living life closer to reality--have always been likelier to embrace faith in God than have the wealthy. The wealthy, he says, delusionally think themselves self-sufficient and, on top of that, oppress the poor.

James commends the Golden Rule--what he calls "the royal law": "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Preferential treatment, James says, is a sin, a violation of God's law, and when we violate one of God's laws, we are liable for violating them all.

What good, James asks us, is unlived faith? Can inauthentic faith save us? If, by our behavior or preferential treatment, we honor Jesus with our lips and deny Him with our lives, what sort of faith do we really have?

James' condemnation of giving preference to some people over others sets the table interestingly for our Gospel lesson.

Gospel Lesson: Mark 7:24-37
First of all, it's important to put the two incidents recounted in our Gospel lesson into context.

Context #1: Jesus seeking respite. As early as Mark 6:31, after the apostles have come back from the mission of preaching repentance and casting out demons, Jesus is reported as wanting to go away to a quiet place with the twelve. But in the time between then and our lesson, Jesus has been compelled by compassion to feed the 5000, heal the sick in Gennesaret, and set the Pharisees and others right on what is clean and unclean.

Now, it appears that Jesus is so desperate for some down time that He takes the apostles with Him into Gentile territory. Even there, we're told, His fame as a wonder-worker precedes Him and when, in response to a Gentile woman's faith, He casts out a demon, He feels compelled to travel some distance away, to The Decapolis (the Ten Cities), a Greek-speaking, Gentile enclave.

Jesus needed rest. We need rest. But even our time of rest is not "me time," it's "God time." Jesus sought rest in order to be alone with the Father (Mark 6:46). God can give us rest. Only God can slake our thirsty souls, fill our empty hearts. This is why Jesus was always "interruptible": open to doing God's will, even when He was "off the clock." I am, I confess, a hard-headed student when it comes to living life Jesus' way!

Context #2: Clean/Unclean. As mentioned above, just before our lesson, Jesus has been challenged by the Pharisees for allowing His disciples to eat dinner without going through the process of ritual cleansing that their traditions held to be religiously essential. Jesus said that it's what comes out of us--things like sexual intimacy outside of marriage, theft, murder, and so on--that defile us, not the things that enter us from the outside.

Now comes our Gospel lesson in which Jesus goes to a Gentile country which would, by definition, have been seen as "unclean" by the Pharisees. He enters a presumably Gentile house, also "unclean." A woman approaches Jesus, an "unclean" thing for her to do. Jesus speaks with her, an "unclean" thing for Him to do in a society which forbade males to publicly speak to anyone other than wives, mothers, or sisters. The woman petitions Jesus on behalf of her daughter, demon-possessed, unclean.

Obviously, Jesus is bent on turning traditional ideas about what is clean and unclean on their head. While Jesus' earthly mission is to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the two incidents in our Gospel lesson foreshadow what will become the mission of the Church: Calling the entire world to repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

²⁴From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,
(1) Tyre sat on the Mediterranean coast in what was then part of Syria, like Judea, under the dominion of the Roman Empire. It is Gentile.

(2) There's no explanation of whose house Jesus entered, if its occupants were known to Jesus, or if He and the disciples paid to stay there.

(3) Jesus was so celebrated as a wonder-worker, He could go nowhere undetected. The question always was, of course, were these people following Jesus just to get what they wanted or because they saw in His wonders, the signs of His Lordship. I have watched the faith of many people crumble when they realized that Jesus wouldn't say yes to their every prayer. It was largely because Jesus wouldn't be the sort of Messiah they expected that eventually, the crowds who had once flocked to Jesus cried for His execution.

25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.
(1) As indicated above, this was considered damnably forward behavior. In Matthew's account of this incident, the disciples ask that Jesus send the woman away.

26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
(1) Mark underscores the woman's uncleanness by pointing out that she was a Gentile, a non-Jew, one who could have no claim on the mercy of God. All of us who are non-Jewish Christians must realize that we have no right to the grace and mercy of God--in fact, nobody does. But like this woman, we can, if we pay attention, see the gracious loving intentions of God for all who dare to turn to Him.

(2) Matthew drives the reality of this woman's "uncleanness," her distance from God, by referring to her by the more ancient name of her people, Canaanite. The Canaanites had been enemies of God's people, workers of injustice unwilling to share the land with the ancient Israelites.

(3) The daughter of the woman is demon-possessed. What to make of this in our post-modern world?

When I was a younger Christian, passages like this embarrassed me. Demon-possession? Mightn't this just be the way pre-modern peoples described things like mental illness? Today though, after several personal experiences and reading several books, including psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie, I've become convinced that demon-possession is a real phenomenon, one that even exists today. (I may write or preach more about this later.) I no longer blush when I read passages like our Gospel lesson.

27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
(1) This passage has occasioned much debate among Bible scholars.

Some say that Jesus satirizes His people's usual racist dismissal of non-Jews as "dogs," by using the term which would come to mean "house pet." The problem with this contention is that in Jesus' day, people didn't keep house pets.

Others claim that Jesus undergoes a kind of "conversion" experience as it relates to His people's chauvinism in the face of this woman's faith. The problems with this idea are that (a) Jesus had, according to the other Gospel-writers, already had a number of positive encounters with foreign people; (b) this interpretation would mean that Jesus was guilty of the sin of preferential treatment, thereby rendering His cross and resurrection meaningless. Only a sinless Savior can save us. Besides, it's obvious that Jesus didn't accept traditional notions regarding the uncleanness of non-Jews, else He wouldn't even be where we find Him in Mark's narrative!

No, I believe that Jesus is underscoring the teaching about the absurdity of thinking that uncleanness is an outside, rather than an inside phenomenon (Mark 7:20-23). The woman wasn't unclean because she was Syrophoenician.

Jesus wanted this to be clear before He proceeded to violate a traditional taboo by responding to the pleading mother's request.

28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
(1) The woman doesn't argue about her status. She realizes that she is, in the eyes of the Judeans, a dog, an outsider to God's promises, not a member of God's people. But she apparently knows enough about this God to also know that He delights in showing mercy to those who come to Him. The Old Testament tells the stories of many foreigners who benefited from the mercy of God: the people of Nineveh in Jonah's time; Ruth, who would become a descendant of King David; and Naaman, the Syrian commander, to name a few.

Pious Jews knew that there was nothing special about the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God simply chose the Israelites because God chose them, as an act of grace. And He did it so that Israel would cast God's light on the nations, becoming, we know, the birthing place of the Savior of the world, Jesus.

(2) The woman exhibits persistent, submissive faith, an example to all of us.

29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
(1) Clearly, Jesus regards her statement as a confession of faith. "I'm not entitled," she says, "But I believe." This is the sort of faith I pray that God will build in me!

30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.
(1) We're presented with an odd picture of Jesus. Clearly, from the miracle that precedes this one, Jesus didn't have to touch the affected portions of the deaf-mute's body. But He did. Here, Jesus is doing the very work God had promised to do for the exiles some seven-hundred years before.

34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
(1) Ed Markquart says that the words, "he sighed," give Mark's narrative an immediacy that reads like a first-hand account. Markquart attributes this to Peter, whose account of Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection, have traditionally been thought to be Mark's primary source.

35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
(1) An allusion to Isaiah 35:4-7, our first lesson.

36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
(1) Throughout Mark, we see Jesus trying to keep the lid on "the Messianic secret," the secret that He is more than a wonder-wokrer, but also the Messiah and Savior. Until people understand that Jesus has come to deal with sin by dying on a cross and to invite people to die to their own sins in order to have a claim in His resurrection, they're too likely to see Him as a genie who does their bidding.

But it's no use. Jesus' reputation--and the pressure on Him to be puppet king for people's selfish desires--grows with every miracle. And, of course, the disappointment people feel that Jesus isn't a messiah they can control contributes to the opposition to Him and to His crucifixion. In killing Him, the known world--Jews and Gentiles--who murdered Jesus, were, without realizing it, advancing the very plan of God.

37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”