Existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments (part 2)

This video is great for all those who grew up within the Reformed side of the church, Catholics & Orthodox, and for all those who have lived within the more charismatic denominations.

Reformation of the Grace Revolution

52 minutes long, but so worth watching.

“Slow Your Breath”

This chest is full of memories
Of gold and silver tears
I’ll give you more to own than
All of this
And I’ll give you more than years
For you were once a child of innocence
And I see you just the same
Your burdens couldn’t win or
Lose a thing
Oh, I’d tell you once again
But you’re always on the run

Slow your breath down
Just take it slow
Find your heart now, oh
You can trust and love again
Slow your breath down, just take it slow
Find your smile now, oh
You can trust and love again

If you leave I’ll still be close to you
When all your fears rain down
I’ll take you back a thousand times again
I’ll take you as my own
I would sing you songs of innocence
‘Til the light of morning comes
‘Til the rays of gold and honey cover you
In the sweetness of the dawn
But you’re always on the run

You’re not alone
You’re now a part of me
You feel the cure
I’ll feel the toil it brought you

just relax.

“Love Wins”

This is a good explanation of the difference between the Orthodox view of salvation and the Protestant (post Augustinian) view of salvation.

 

“Taste and See” By Sundar Singh

About four years ago I was talking to a very learned man. He said: “It is very useful to know all about the Bible, and also to analyse every part of it”. Then, as an illustration, he took a cup of milk: he was a chemist. “Now, is it not so much sugar, and so many other things in milk?” He made everything separate. I said: “It is very interesting, I cannot go against it, but I should say that your little child of three years of age is better than you. This child cannot analyze the milk, but he drinks it and knows from experience that it is sweet, and in doing so, gets stronger every day. He does not know how many things it is made of, but he knows two important things: first, that the milk is sweet; second, that by it he is getting stronger. You have analyzed it, and in doing so have derived no benefit, and you have spoiled the milk.” There are many chemists who can analyze the Word of God. They say: “This part belongs to Palestine, this to Greece.” They can explain many things about it in different ways, but they never drink the spiritual milk. They analyse the Word of God but never drink it, they have not strength enough to overcome temptation; that is why there is great danger in criticism, and our Lord knew about these things when He took a little child and said: “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven”. You must be like a child who takes and drinks.

The Sacrament of Confession

“May God who pardoned David through Nathan the prophet when he confessed his sins, and Peter weeping bitterly for his denial, and the sinful woman weeping at his feet, and the publican and the prodigal son, may that same God forgive you all things, through me a sinner, both in this world and in the world to come, and set you uncondemned before his terrible Judgement seat. Having no further care for the sins which you have confessed, depart in peace. “– the response of  Orthodox priests after a confession

When talking about Confession, we either conjure up one of two images: either an awkward accountability group, or sitting in Confession box at a Catholic church. This is so unfortunate because Confession is a beautiful mystery. Sadly, our concept of Confession often places the emphasis on the process or the words by which we recant   rather than the answer that we receive from the Spirit. Simply, it’s more about guilt trip  than a response from God.

But confession wasn’t designed to work that way. The sacrament of confession was never meant to be about what we did, but rather an intimate moment when one comes crashing into the goodness of God. Confession is about the reaction of God to sin. It is a sweet moment when one feels the delight of the Lord and hears the whisper in his soul that says that everything that needed to be absolved has indeed “been finished.” All of our projections of divine anger, disappointment, and/or retribution are now gone and were, in reality, never there, but were illusionary at best. This moment is the passionate hug that welcomes the prodigal home which enlightens us to the reality that he never takes offense to our waywardness. He is simply happy that we are home for the party. He asks us no questions, and we are justified by no apology. The Father simply wants to administer the sacrament of the big bear hug and the sloppy-wet kiss. The mystery of this hug and kiss will take all of eternity to unravel, for with this one touch, he heals us and make us lie down in green pastures.

“But where sin increased, Grace increased all the more”

“The Lorica of St. Patrick”

The Breastplate of St. Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.
Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation

St. Patrick (ca. 377) “Lorica means breastplate in Latin. The story of this prayer is that Patrick and his followers used this most beautiful prayer to protect themselves from the people who wanted to kill them as they travelled across Ireland. It is also called the Deer’s Cry (Fáed Fíada) because their enemies saw, not men, but deer. It may not have been written by Patrick, but is considered to reflect his theological focus on the Trinity.”

 

I love Catholic holidays that become an excuse for heavy partying. My Jesus loves to party. Blissings!

 

–

“The Father Who Lost Two Sons”

“The Father Who Lost Two Sons“
This is about what’s normally called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. That’s only one of the two sons in the parable, the younger boy. The older boy is the one—the other son—who is lost. And the point about changing the name of the parable is that the parables are almost always misnamed. The Parable of the Lost Sheep is not about the lost sheep. All the sheep ever did was get lost. The parable is about the passion of the shepherd who lost the sheep to find the sheep. His passion to find is what drives the parable; and consequently it isn’t the Prodigal’s lostness, wasting all his money on wine, women and song in the far country; and it isn’t the elder brother’s grousing and complaining and score keeping that stands against him. What counts in the parable is the father’s unceasing desire to find the sons he lost—both of them—and to raise both of them up from the dead.

The story, of course, you know. The story begins with the father having two sons and the youngest son comes to the father and says, “Father, divide the inheritance between me and my brother.” What he’s in effect saying is, “Dear Dad, drop dead now, legally. Put your will into effect and just retire out of the whole business of being anything to anybody and let us have what is coming to us.” So the youngest son gets the money and the older brother gets the farm. And off the younger brother goes. What he does, of course, is he spends it all—blows it all—on wild living. When he finally is in want and working, slopping hogs for a farmer and wishing that he could eat what he’s feeding the pigs, he can’t stand it. When he finally comes to himself he says, “You know, I’ve got to do something. How many hired servants of my father’s are there who have bread enough to spare and I’m perishing here with hunger? I know what I’m going to do.”

Almost every preacher makes this the boy’s repentance. It’s not his repentance. This is just one more dumb plan for his life. He says, “I will go to my father and I will say, ‘Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you.'” That’s true. He got that one right. “And I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.” Score two. He gets that one right. But the next thing he says is dead wrong. He says, “Make me one of your hired servants.” He knows—he thinks he knows—he can’t go back as a dead son, and therefore he says, “I will now go back as somebody who can earn my father’s favor again. I will be a good worker or whatever.” This is not a real repentance, it’s just a plan for a life. What it is, is enough to get him started going home, and consequently when he goes home, what happens next is an absolutely fascinating kind of thing.

What happens next is that the father (you must remember this) is now sitting on the front porch of the farm house. The farm house doesn’t belong to him anymore. The front porch doesn’t belong to him. He’s sitting in the rocker that belongs to his oldest son who is now, you know, the owner of the farm. He’s sitting there and he sees the Prodigal, the younger boy, coming down the road from far away. He sees him coming. What does he do? He rushes off the porch, runs a half mile down the road, throws his arms around the boy’s neck and kisses him.

Now, this is all that Jesus does with this scene. The fascinating thing in this parable is that in the whole parable the father never says one single word to the Prodigal Son. Jesus makes the embrace, the kiss, do the whole story of saying, “I have found my son.” The fascinating thing also is that when the father embraces the boy who has come home from wasting his life, the boy never gets his confession out of his mouth until after the kiss, until after the embrace. What this says to you and me who have to live with the business of trying to confess our sins is that confession is not a pre-condition of forgiveness. It’s something that you do after you know you have been forgiven. Confession is not something you do in order to get forgiveness. It’s something you do in order to celebrate the forgiveness you got for nothing. Nobody can earn forgiveness. The Prodigal knows he’s a dead son. He can’t come home as a son, and yet in his father’s arms he rises from the dead and then he is able to come to his father’s side.

What happens next is that the father, saying not a word to the Prodigal, turns to the servants and says, “Bring the best robe, bring a ring for his finger and shoes for his feet, kill the fatted calf and let us eat and be merry for this, my son, was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.” Now this is the point in the parable at which everything is going well. The dead son, the no-good Prodigal Son, is home. He has been raised from the dead by his father’s embrace. He has done nothing to earn it, but now all that matters is that the father has called for the party to celebrate the finding of the lost and the resurrection of the dead.

It’s the party. Every one of Jesus’ parables of grace—not every one, but most of them—end with a party. When the Shepherd finds the lost sheep, he doesn’t go back to the 99, he goes home and has a party with his friends in order to celebrate the finding of the lost. The father’s will to have a party is what the parable is all about. That’s why you must always do, not the human race characters in the parable like the Prodigal and the elder brother, why you must always do the God character first, because it’s the God character who drives the parable.

All right, now, what we’ve got now is everybody dead in the parable. The father died at the beginning, the Prodigal died in the far country: he came home dead and the father raises him. Everything is fine. And now what we’ve got is Jesus’ genius as a storyteller. The party is in full swing, so Jesus brings back in the only person in the story left who still has a life of his own: Mr. Responsibility, Mr. Whining, Mr. Elder Brother. He comes up and hears the music and the dancing and he probably sees the waiters scurrying around with roast veal platters and everything else. And he asks one of the servants, “What is this all about? I didn’t commission a party.” The servant says, “No, no, your brother has come home and your father has killed the fatted calf because he received him safe and sound.” And the older brother is angry and he will not go in. He will not go into the house. He is right out there in the midst of the party. He is part of the party but he will not join the party. And the next thing that happens in this: when he comes in with all this bookkeeping he says, “Look,” to his father, “all these years I served you and I never broke one of your commandments and you never even gave me a goat that I could make merry with my friends. But when this your son (notice he doesn’t say, this my brother) cuts off his relationship, this your son has wasted your substance with riotous living, has wasted your substance with harlots, when this son comes home you kill the fatted calf!”

I think that one of the things you could do with this is make up a speech for the father. The father goes out in the courtyard to plead with the older son. He goes out there in order to find him as he is and to raise him from the dead. He never gives up on any of them. He says to him, “Look, Arthur (let’s call the older brother Arthur), what do you mean I never gave you a goat for a party? If you wanted to have a great veal dinner for all your friends every week in the year, you had the money and the resources. You owned this place, Arthur. You have the money and the resources to have built 52 stalls and kept the oxen fattening as you wanted them to come along, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you do that, Arthur? Because you’re a bean counter, because you’re always keeping track of everybody else. That’s your problem, Arthur, and I have one recipe for you.” (The father is pleading with this fellow to come out of the death of bookkeeping.) He says, “I have one recipe for you, Arthur. That is, go in, kiss your brother, and have a drink. Just shut up about all this stuff because, Arthur, you came in here already in hell, and I came out here in this courtyard to visit you in the hell in which you were.”

This is the wonderful thing about this parable, because it isn’t that there was a Prodigal Son who was a bad boy and who, therefore, came home and turned out to be a good boy and had a happy ending. Then the elder brother—you would think Jesus, if he was an ordinary storyteller, would have said, “Let’s give the elder brother a rotten ending.” He doesn’t. He gives the older brother no ending. The parable ends with a freeze frame. It ends like that with just the father, and the sound goes dead—the servants may be moving around with the wine and veal—but the sound goes dead and Jesus shows you only the freeze frame of the father and the elder brother. That’s the way the parable has ended for 2,000 years.

My theory about this parable is that if, for 2,000 years, he has never let it end, then you can extend that indefinitely, that this is a signal, an image of the presence of Christ to the damned. When the father goes out into the courtyard, he is an image of Christ descending into hell; and, therefore, the great message in this is the same as Psalm 139, “If I go down to hell, You are there also.” God is there with us. There is no point at which the Shepherd who followed the lost sheep will ever stop following all of the damned. He will always seek the lost. He will always raise the dead. Even if the elder brother refused forever to go in and kiss his other brother, the Father would still be there pleading with him. Christ never gives up on anybody. Christ is not the enemy of the damned. He is the finder of the damned. If they don’t want to be found, well there is no imagery of hell too strong like fire and brimstone and all that for that kind of stupidity. But nonetheless, the point is that you can never get away from the love that will not let you go and the elder brother standing there in the courtyard in his own hell is never going to get away from the Jesus who seeks him and wills to raise him from the dead.

Conversation with Robert Capon

Floyd Brown: I always enjoy your dealing with the parables the way that you do, but you always leave questions in my mind and that, of course, is planned. Right?

Robert Capon: Yes, but my whole point is if you give a person an answer without raising the question then they never remember the answer, so you have to raise the question first. You have to be ahead of them. They have to be wondering what does that mean until then you tell them what it means.

Brown: Ok. You got some questions in my mind. I’ve got to ask you a couple of them. You started out saying that the Prodigal came home. He did two things right. What did he do wrong?

Capon: Well, in the far country. You have to distinguish when he was in the far country and then when he came home. When he was in the far country, he made up his confession this way. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” Correct. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Correct. But then the third part: “Make me a hired hand in your house.” Incorrect. Wrong. It’s not a repentance. It’s a plan for life. His father could no more make him a hired hand. He would either be a dead son or a son raised from the dead, a lost son or a found son, but a son, not a hired hand. And the brilliance of Jesus as a storyteller is that the father kisses him, the boy, when he gets home. Before he makes his confession, the father kisses him, embraces him, accepts him. That’s the whole image of grace right there. Then the boy finally, in his father’s arms, makes the confession. He says, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you, and am no more worthy to be called your son.” Period. Jesus has him leave off the clunker the second time around.

Brown: The second time around. Well, what about the other side? First, tell me, a lot of people are confused. What does prodigal mean?

Capon:Prodigal means a wastrel, a person who foolishly and improvidently spends all his money. You know, a sower of wild oats.

Brown: Okay, I assumed as much. Let’s talk about the other brother. You called him Arthur. We’ll call him Art here. Did he really benefit from this experience later?

Capon: I think this is a good question. The trick is the parables were never meant for us to imitate or admire the character of the human race character. What’s there to admire about a lost sheep? The dumb sheep got lost, that’s all. What does it tell me I must do in order for the shepherd, the Divine Shepherd, to find me? Get lost. That’s all. It doesn’t tell me fancy lost, a good lost, an ethical lost. Just get lost, then he will find you. He finds the lost. And the same thing is true of the Prodigal and the elder brother. It’s the shepherd who is the God character in the sheep parable. It’s the father who’s the God character in the Prodigal Son.

So the Prodigal and the elder brother are both us. I can find myself in the Prodigal. I have sown my wild oats. I have wasted lots of time in the world. I have lost all kinds of stuff that would have been better that I kept. And by the same token, I can see myself in the older brother, the whining, complaining, poor me, you don’t understand me, you’ve been mean to me.

Brown: The bean counter. I like that!

Capon: The bean counter keeping score. We are all both of these people and what Jesus shows us in this parable is that it doesn’t matter which one you are; (a) you are lost, and (b) he will never stop finding you.

Brown: We can’t earn it, can we?

Capon: You can’t earn it and the thing is you can avoid it. In all of Jesus’ other parables of judgment, the imagery for hell is separation imagery: out of darkness, kick him out, throw him away. This is the one place where Jesus has a Christ figure descending into hell to visit the damned, the elder brother, in which they’re in the same place. The hell in this imagery, in this parable, is eternally at the party of heaven. Hell is somehow inside heaven. You want to know where I put it? You got a minute? I’ll tell you quickly.

Brown: Half a minute.

Capon: In the nail hole in the left hand of the risen body of Jesus is all the room you need to contain all the zillions and billions of people who ever would be in hell because they are so thin and wispy. They don’t spoil the party in there either. You can find them in that nail hole and if they want some day, maybe they can come out.

Brown: Thank you, for a marvelous, marvelous message.

Capon: Thank you, Floyd.

The Rev. Robert Farrar Capon has been an Episcopal parish priest, a seminary dean, a professor of theology and Greek, a teacher of cooking, and a freelance food writer for The New York Times. He is the author of over 20 books, including works of theology, novels, and several cookbooks. He travels widely as a lecturer and conference leader. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

St. Valentine

“Must You Be Jealous..?”

¹⁶ “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ¹⁷ But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

-Matthew 6:16-18

Friends,

First of all, I don’t want to make a case for or against fasting because I think that would be missing the point of this passage. Next, I don’t care to discredit anyone who has fasted before, but did not keep their fast a secret. Moreover, my desire is not to encourage self righteousness in the minds of those who fast and take their fasting secrets to their graves thinking that they will get a special reward.

Now let me begin:

Who is this God the Father, the God whom Jesus calls “our Father”? Perhaps, he is the father that met the Prodigal on the road (Luke 15), or possibly the wealthy landowner who paid those who worked hardest the exact same amount as those who worked the least? (Matt. 20:1-16) If God is the same father/character as the protagonists in these parables, why would the Father reward those who fast at all?  Why does the orchestrator of the good news that “will bless all nations” seemly only reward those who participate in fast in secret? Why are there rewards at all?

Because his rewards flow from his character and not the sweat of our brow. He rewards because He loves.

Jesus is not endorsing secret fasts over those who declare their fast over the radio. Indeed, all will be offered the same rewards. Yes, the one who gloats about his fast has received his reward in full. Yes, the one who fasts in secret has also received his reward in full. What of those who do not fast at all? Surely, the faster who enjoys the religious publicity will receive a little more of a heavenly reward than one who doesn’t even try to fast? Nope. All get the same rewards, accolades, and gold stars– even those who do not fast. Why?

It’s not about the reward; it’s about the Father. He sends rain on the godly and the ungodly and throws the same party for both the prodigal and the religiously, hardworking older brother. He loves them enough to offer them all the same reward — a reward that all receive whether their hearts were open to receive it or not.

The Father loves his kids enough to spoil them. This is how Grace works. It is not dependent on actions, well intentioned or not; righteous or unrighteous works, but is solely dependent on a Father’s extravagant love–as messy and offensive as it is for all parties.

 “But he replied to one of them, ‘My friend, I’m not being unjust to you. Wasn’t our agreement for a silver coin a day? Take your money and go home. It is my wish to give the latecomers as much as I give you. May I not do what I like with what belongs to me? Must you be jealous because I am generous?’

-Matthew 20:13-15

The nature of Grace is that every single person will get paid the same.  Why are we so offended that God is so generous?

Cameron