For the eighth day, resurrection day, God's Holy Day for Christian worship:
Nederland Zingt - Kyrie
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
About Israel...up-date
I wanted to put up something light for the weekend, but given what is happening in the UN Human Rights Council I don't feel much like lightness. A friend on Facebook said yesterday:
"There is a deadly, run-away truck rolling down the hills of our generation…Some refuse to learn from history, and stand on the sidewalks of our time and simply watch in a paralyzed, silent stupor."
After referring to the Christian Zionist movement that he is a big part of he wrote in a comment. "I'm thinkin' we step in front of the truck and shout "STOP!! YOU CANNOT PASS NOR GO ANY FURTHER!"
I am not a Christian Zionist but I am a Presbyterian who is pro Israel and I think Victor Styrsky's words should burn the conscience of every mainline Christian.
Col. Richard Kemp on the Goldstone Report
UP-Date:
A good article because it looks at the different countries and how they voted:
"UN Human Wrongs Council it is by David Harris the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. The beginning:
"Some votes are eminently forgettable. Others are not.
Today's vote in the mistakenly-named UN Human Rights Council is the latter. Although denunciations of Israel have become commonplace in the Council, this vote provides a window into the souls of those 47 member states that currently belong to this Geneva-based body, and what we see will be long remembered."
There is also this: Goldstone Attacks UN Resolution On His Gaza War Report. The UN Human Rights Council used the condemnation of Israel in the Goldstone report but not its condemnation of Hamas.
"There is a deadly, run-away truck rolling down the hills of our generation…Some refuse to learn from history, and stand on the sidewalks of our time and simply watch in a paralyzed, silent stupor."
After referring to the Christian Zionist movement that he is a big part of he wrote in a comment. "I'm thinkin' we step in front of the truck and shout "STOP!! YOU CANNOT PASS NOR GO ANY FURTHER!"
I am not a Christian Zionist but I am a Presbyterian who is pro Israel and I think Victor Styrsky's words should burn the conscience of every mainline Christian.
Col. Richard Kemp on the Goldstone Report
UP-Date:
A good article because it looks at the different countries and how they voted:
"UN Human Wrongs Council it is by David Harris the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. The beginning:
"Some votes are eminently forgettable. Others are not.
Today's vote in the mistakenly-named UN Human Rights Council is the latter. Although denunciations of Israel have become commonplace in the Council, this vote provides a window into the souls of those 47 member states that currently belong to this Geneva-based body, and what we see will be long remembered."
There is also this: Goldstone Attacks UN Resolution On His Gaza War Report. The UN Human Rights Council used the condemnation of Israel in the Goldstone report but not its condemnation of Hamas.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
More on the bad links that the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) posted but by a different author
Just a few days ago I posted an article I titled, Bad links posted at Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. . Now I find that Dexter Van Zile of Camera also saw the awful links and did a better job of investigative reporting than I did. (Sometimes I get too upset to do proper investigation.) His article is Presbyterian Peacemakers Promote Hezbollah Website and Anti-Israel Incitement. He left a comment and link on my posting. I encourage all to read his article. It begins:
“The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is promoting anti-Israel incitement from a number of different sources, including Al Manar, a Hezbollah-controlled television station which was designated as a “Global Terrorist Entity” by the U.S. Department of Treasury in 2006. The Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) was established by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2004.
In addition to mainstreaming Hezbollah's Al Manar to Presbyterians and to the general public, the IPMN is also promoting false allegations about Israel tunneling beneath the Temple Mount – allegations which in the past have incited violence. The IPMN is also relaying a false report of Palestinians attacking right-wing Jews who had entered the Temple Mount to pray the day before Yom Kippur. In fact, Palestinians had attacked non-Jewish French tourists.
IPMN promoted the articles in a blog entry dated Oct. 11, 2009. The entry reports on the alleged “decline of sovereignty by Palestinian Muslims over the Haram al-Sharif Mosque on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.” The entry depicts the presence of Israeli Jews in Jerusalem as an alien intrusion that results in the “culture of Palestine slowly being displaced by immigrants from Europe and the US.”
Accompanying this thinly disguised xenophobia were links to ten articles, most of which dealt with the recent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police near the Temple Mount. The IPMN encouraged its readers to view the articles under the heading "Articles of the Week."” …
Please read the whole article.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A prayer for friends
This is for two friends Brad and I had dinner with two Saturday nights ago. We talked about many things including the state of the Presbyterian Church, blogs and yes opera. These two singers, Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade, were praised in our conversation and my husband has tuned for both. This is the "Evening Prayer" from Hansel and Gretel. The words are:
Evenings, when I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels with me keep,
Two stand at my head,
Two at the foot of my bed,
Two are at my right hand,
Two are at my left hand,
Two in covers tuck me,
Two at morning wake me,
Two that point the way to rise
To heaven's paradise.
May angels surround my friends and the presence of the Lord be with them.
Evenings, when I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels with me keep,
Two stand at my head,
Two at the foot of my bed,
Two are at my right hand,
Two are at my left hand,
Two in covers tuck me,
Two at morning wake me,
Two that point the way to rise
To heaven's paradise.
May angels surround my friends and the presence of the Lord be with them.
Bad links posted at Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) has a place on their web site where they place news articles about Israel and the Palestinians. The articles come from a variety of sites and they link to all of them. Each week there is a new list of articles.
This week they are linked to quite a few including one titled, “Al-Aqsa Foundation: A New Israeli Tunnel Built under the Aqsa Mosque. That can be found at the Voice of Palestine or the Palestinian Information Center. That site has some truly awful articles, like the one linking Israel to the selling of Palestinian organs that the Swedish Newspaper published. The article is used as a means of fighting with the Palestinian Authority, something most of th
ese sites seem to be involved in.
Probably the worst part of the site is its article, The Terror that Begot Israel, with picture, of “Zionist Terrorism.” Picture is from the Palestinian Information site.
But there is also a link on the Palestine Information Center to a you-tube video of Richard Falk shaming the PA for discouraging the UN from voting on the Goldstone Report. I saw that video earlier on the news at Google. Interested in who Falk is, I went looking and found some interesting material at Wikipedia.
It seems besides being “American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories” he wrote a recommend in the preface to David Ray Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11.” He wrote, "There have been questions raised here and there and allegations of official complicity made almost from the day of the attacks, especially in Europe, but no one until Griffin has had the patience, the fortitude, the courage, and the intelligence to put the pieces together in a single coherent account."
Wikipedia writes, “Falk called for an official commission to further study these issues, including the role neoconservatives may have played in the attacks. He also signed a statement released by the organization 9/11 Truth in 2004 that calls for a new investigation into the September 11 attacks. Falk confirmed his support for the statement in 200.
The Israel/Palestine Mission Network did link to a Forbes’ article on a related subject which was much more balanced but some of their other links are extremely radical and anti-Semitic.
The territory that Israel/Palestine Mission Network is swimming in has a lot of hidden sharp rocks.
This week they are linked to quite a few including one titled, “Al-Aqsa Foundation: A New Israeli Tunnel Built under the Aqsa Mosque. That can be found at the Voice of Palestine or the Palestinian Information Center. That site has some truly awful articles, like the one linking Israel to the selling of Palestinian organs that the Swedish Newspaper published. The article is used as a means of fighting with the Palestinian Authority, something most of th
ese sites seem to be involved in.Probably the worst part of the site is its article, The Terror that Begot Israel, with picture, of “Zionist Terrorism.” Picture is from the Palestinian Information site.
But there is also a link on the Palestine Information Center to a you-tube video of Richard Falk shaming the PA for discouraging the UN from voting on the Goldstone Report. I saw that video earlier on the news at Google. Interested in who Falk is, I went looking and found some interesting material at Wikipedia.
It seems besides being “American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories” he wrote a recommend in the preface to David Ray Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11.” He wrote, "There have been questions raised here and there and allegations of official complicity made almost from the day of the attacks, especially in Europe, but no one until Griffin has had the patience, the fortitude, the courage, and the intelligence to put the pieces together in a single coherent account."
Wikipedia writes, “Falk called for an official commission to further study these issues, including the role neoconservatives may have played in the attacks. He also signed a statement released by the organization 9/11 Truth in 2004 that calls for a new investigation into the September 11 attacks. Falk confirmed his support for the statement in 200.
The Israel/Palestine Mission Network did link to a Forbes’ article on a related subject which was much more balanced but some of their other links are extremely radical and anti-Semitic.
The territory that Israel/Palestine Mission Network is swimming in has a lot of hidden sharp rocks.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Disregarding the Hebrew Bible/ the effect on two subjects: homosexuality & the Jewish people
In my last posting on the Reformed Faith and the Jewish people, Writing about the Jewish people and Christian theology - 2 I stated that I would look at the use Christians have made and must make of the Hebrew Bible in regards to the Jewish people. This is not that posting but it will do for a lead in to the subject.
As the next General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) nears the overtures will start piling up and we are all fairly certain that one very large issue will be homosexuality. But another issue, that is rarely connected to the first one, will also contribute to the work at GA. That is, Middle East concerns. And I suggest, with this posting, that they are connected.
Many of the issues surrounding the ordination of those who are practicing homosexuals have to do with scripture and its authority. All of that authority is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
For instance Jesus refers to the creation account of the Hebrew Bible when he speaks of marriage. He reminds his listener’s that God created the first two people as man and woman and brought them together as husband and wife. All New Testament ethics are Hebrew.
In the same manner the Christian connection to the Jewish people is tied to the Hebrew text. Every promise that anchors the Christian in the kingdom of God finds its foundation in the Hebrew Bible. Without the historical account of ancient Israel, the ancient people of God, the Christian’s faith floats in an uncertain universe tied only to whatever cultural milieu exists. Christ is no longer the promised one but simply a surprising creature arising out of anyone’s myth.
And so both become problems when those who proclaim the word begin to disconnect Christianity from the Jewish scriptures. And I have seen this happen lately. On homosexuality it was evident in the preaching of several women at the Presbyterian Women’s gathering. Most speakers were not pushing for homosexual ordination, but those who were either discredited some of the main texts of Joshua or misused the text for their own particular agenda.
For instance one speaker used the command in Joshua for the tribes to sanctify themselves as a means of insisting that part of that sanctification process means following God into “new landscapes and unknown territory.”Sanctify Yourselves
But in order to be faithful to the text as well as the history of the Jewish people one must be honest about what it meant to sanctify or as my translation puts it consecrate. And like the Israelites who came to the mount where the law was to be given the people were to separate from the unholy or even from the mundane; circumcision was a part of that. Yet the speaker led with her idea of a ‘new landscape’ until she was able to connect sanctification with the ordination of practicing homosexuals. She stated:
“A marvelous wonder will occur the day when the Church no longer needs to sort believers into specific boxes, because everyone is fully welcomed at the Baptismal Font and the Communion Table; and because everyone’s gifts are affirmed through the outpouring of baptismal waters and ordination oil; and because everyone’s ministry is empowered though the sharing of opportunities and resources.” (My emphasis)
Another speaker detached Jesus from the promises that arise out of the sacrifices and rituals of the Jewish Temple. She too called for the ordination of practicing homosexuals by suggesting we start kicking in some roofs. “Meddlin’”
On the other hand such groups as the Israel/Palestine Mission Network detach the Hebrew Bible from the Jewish people of today. They do this by either denying the text of the Old Testament or by denying the ethnicity of the Jewish people.
There is a need to return to the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible. First one reads and studies in the Hebrew Bible the histories of the Jewish people as true and important. Then the fleshing out of Jesus Christ as he is found in all the promises, theophanies, shadows and types will allow once again our faith to rest in the Old Testament as it so securely does in the New. If Jesus the Christ is secured in the Old he is Lord of the Old. The commandments are his; the call for holiness is his. And the Christian is not disconnected from the Jewish people.
As Karl Barth puts it “… it is the unanimous opinion within the Church, that God is never for us in the world, that is to say, in our space and time, except in this His Word, and that this Word for us has no other name and content but Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is ever to be found on our behalf save each day afresh in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. One is not in the Church at all if he is not of a mind with the Church in these things.”
Instead the Church is being fed morality disconnected from the promised Messiah of the Hebrew Bible. At the same time Christ himself is anchored in our various cultural stories and disconnected from the Hebrew Bible. I believe we can expect a continuing barrage of unholy overtures on both issues which will grow steadily worse as Christ is moved further and further away from the Hebrew Bible, and as the Old Testament is further eroded by progressive exegesis.
As the next General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) nears the overtures will start piling up and we are all fairly certain that one very large issue will be homosexuality. But another issue, that is rarely connected to the first one, will also contribute to the work at GA. That is, Middle East concerns. And I suggest, with this posting, that they are connected.
Many of the issues surrounding the ordination of those who are practicing homosexuals have to do with scripture and its authority. All of that authority is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
For instance Jesus refers to the creation account of the Hebrew Bible when he speaks of marriage. He reminds his listener’s that God created the first two people as man and woman and brought them together as husband and wife. All New Testament ethics are Hebrew.
In the same manner the Christian connection to the Jewish people is tied to the Hebrew text. Every promise that anchors the Christian in the kingdom of God finds its foundation in the Hebrew Bible. Without the historical account of ancient Israel, the ancient people of God, the Christian’s faith floats in an uncertain universe tied only to whatever cultural milieu exists. Christ is no longer the promised one but simply a surprising creature arising out of anyone’s myth.
And so both become problems when those who proclaim the word begin to disconnect Christianity from the Jewish scriptures. And I have seen this happen lately. On homosexuality it was evident in the preaching of several women at the Presbyterian Women’s gathering. Most speakers were not pushing for homosexual ordination, but those who were either discredited some of the main texts of Joshua or misused the text for their own particular agenda.
For instance one speaker used the command in Joshua for the tribes to sanctify themselves as a means of insisting that part of that sanctification process means following God into “new landscapes and unknown territory.”Sanctify Yourselves
But in order to be faithful to the text as well as the history of the Jewish people one must be honest about what it meant to sanctify or as my translation puts it consecrate. And like the Israelites who came to the mount where the law was to be given the people were to separate from the unholy or even from the mundane; circumcision was a part of that. Yet the speaker led with her idea of a ‘new landscape’ until she was able to connect sanctification with the ordination of practicing homosexuals. She stated:
“A marvelous wonder will occur the day when the Church no longer needs to sort believers into specific boxes, because everyone is fully welcomed at the Baptismal Font and the Communion Table; and because everyone’s gifts are affirmed through the outpouring of baptismal waters and ordination oil; and because everyone’s ministry is empowered though the sharing of opportunities and resources.” (My emphasis)
Another speaker detached Jesus from the promises that arise out of the sacrifices and rituals of the Jewish Temple. She too called for the ordination of practicing homosexuals by suggesting we start kicking in some roofs. “Meddlin’”
On the other hand such groups as the Israel/Palestine Mission Network detach the Hebrew Bible from the Jewish people of today. They do this by either denying the text of the Old Testament or by denying the ethnicity of the Jewish people.
There is a need to return to the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible. First one reads and studies in the Hebrew Bible the histories of the Jewish people as true and important. Then the fleshing out of Jesus Christ as he is found in all the promises, theophanies, shadows and types will allow once again our faith to rest in the Old Testament as it so securely does in the New. If Jesus the Christ is secured in the Old he is Lord of the Old. The commandments are his; the call for holiness is his. And the Christian is not disconnected from the Jewish people.
As Karl Barth puts it “… it is the unanimous opinion within the Church, that God is never for us in the world, that is to say, in our space and time, except in this His Word, and that this Word for us has no other name and content but Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is ever to be found on our behalf save each day afresh in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. One is not in the Church at all if he is not of a mind with the Church in these things.”
Instead the Church is being fed morality disconnected from the promised Messiah of the Hebrew Bible. At the same time Christ himself is anchored in our various cultural stories and disconnected from the Hebrew Bible. I believe we can expect a continuing barrage of unholy overtures on both issues which will grow steadily worse as Christ is moved further and further away from the Hebrew Bible, and as the Old Testament is further eroded by progressive exegesis.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
For the Lord's Day
For praise on the Lord's Day:
Holy is the Lord
Holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord.
Holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord.
Holy is the Father, Holy is the Son,
Holy is the Spirit: Blessed Three in One.
Franz Schubert
Holy is the Lord
Holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord.
Holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord.
Holy is the Father, Holy is the Son,
Holy is the Spirit: Blessed Three in One.
Franz Schubert
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