“Managing What Belongs to Another”

(note: In my intro to the scriptures, I told folks that according to scholar Brain Stoffregen, the English translation of Mark 12:41 leaves off a crucial word — “how” — the verse in the original says that Jesus watched HOW the crowd put money into the treasury.)

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
1 Kings 17:8-16; Mark 12:38-44

This morning we have heard two stories about two poor widows. Stories we know well, especially the one from Mark, which is also told by Luke. As with all the Bible stories we know well, it is important that we ask ourselves what these familiar stories actually have to say to us – because, frankly, the Bible is such a subversive document that our tendency is often going to be to edit and rearrange its stories in our own minds, in order to avoid them.

These are stories about giving, for sure. But what are they telling us that we can apply to our own lives, to our own giving? If the point of our story from the Hebrew Scriptures is – “Be so obedient to God that you can give up everything you possess;” and if the point of our story from Mark’s Gospel is – “Worship God so much that you can give up everything you possess.” — and these are traditional understandings of the points made by these scriptures — then these stories are not relevant to us. And we will avoid them. They give us nice moral adrenaline shots – moral adrenaline in the sense that they cause strong reactions in us — guilt and defensiveness about not giving up everything for God; rebellion and resentment about it even being implied that we should; self-congratulation that we can listen calmly to ourselves being taken to task by the stern demands of the bible – nice moral adrenaline, but not calls to action. Not calls to a deeper walk with God. And, frankly, we don’t really need to come to church merely to have strong feelings. We need to come to church to change ourselves and the world! That’s what Jesus is always talking about – changing ourselves and the world.

The fact is that, unless some unforeseen cataclysm comes, we can never be as poor as the people in these stories, and so we can never give in the ways that they do. We can never know what it is to prepare a meal for ourselves and our child from the last handful of meal and the last drop of oil ANYWHERE around – a meal to eat as our last act before our death from starvation. We can never know what it is to carry our whole living in our hands, let alone put it into the collection plate. Even if we have very limited incomes, we are wealthy far beyond the wildest dreams of the people who came out to hear Elijah or Jesus preach and teach and feed and heal. No matter how poor we are, we benefit from the infrastructure that the global economy and our own nation’s wealth has created – roads, telephone and electric lines, good sewage disposal, clean water, the internet, all kinds of discoveries in technology and medicine. Laws governing taxes, sales, property ownership. A postal service. Interstate highways. The simple fact that we can read — and write, and add numbers — is a luxury. There certainly are desperately poor and vulnerable people in our communities – but very few who are completely out of the safety net. What we know of the kind of desperation that the people in these stories have, we know from TV pictures of Gaza or Darfur or Bangladesh. Places and circumstances to which we send money, for which we pray, and which are utterly unlike the places and the circumstances in which we live.

But does that mean that there is nothing for us in these texts? That they are artifacts from such a different world that they are useless to us? That our best choice is to water them down so that they describe some palatable way of giving? I don’t believe that for a minute, and I bet you don’t either. I think the key for us is in that “how” which Brian Stoffregen tells us is left off in the English translation – how do we give? — what is our attitude when we give? Not just on the simple level of – Do we give grudgingly or wholeheartedly? — but on the more complex level of — Do we give trustingly and happily? Do we believe that everything we have is God’s anyway, and that we are just managing it for the span of our lifetimes? Or do we think we OWN it? Stoffregen says, “It is significant that [the widow] had two [emphasis added] lepta. She could have put one in the treasury and kept the other for herself — thus giving 50% to the church. It is a mistaken stewardship concept that 10% of our income belongs to God. 100% of our income belongs to God and God has given it to us to manage as best we can. That’s what stewardship means — managing what belongs to another.” [http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark12x38.htm]

I think it would be impossible for me to get up here on a Sunday morning and tell you that you should give to this church until it hurts – give not from your abundance but from what you cannot spare. That is just not realistic. So, what is the point of holding that up as a model? All that will do is either alienate you or bore you – me up here scolding, spouting empty words. And the fact is that I am not giving until it hurts me – I am as generous as I think I can afford to be. And I am able to be generous at all because of your generosity to me as your pastor – so it would be very odd indeed for me to say to you – “Give until it hurts!…. and now let’s talk about my ‘package’ for 2010…”

There is also the question as to whether giving to the church is the best way to give to God – once there would have been no question of that. But once churches were also the only real source of charity to those in need – who our Bible tells us are the ones whom God wishes us most of all to serve. Now there are many, many ways to help the needy – and you could question whether keeping a lumbering big church building going, or providing for paid ministry is the best use of your money. The church is so imperfect!

Stewardship – “managing what belongs to another.” We don’t own our church – well, technically, we do, because that is how the United Church of Christ is set up — we own the buildings, they don’t belong to the denomination. But, the buildings are here for us because of the hard work and dedication of our ancestors, and they will be here for our great-grandchildren, we hope, because of our hard work and dedication. Our church belongs to the community. Our church belongs to history. Our church belongs to the spirit of the living God.

“Managing what belongs to another.” That is really a way of talking about the whole of our lives. We don’t own our health. We don’t own our faculties. We don’t own our loved ones. We don’t own the air, the daylight, the aquifers, the weather, the geology. We don’t really own anything, except a bunch of material stuff that breaks and rusts and chips and gets lost and wears out. At the same time that we don’t own anything, we have all we need, at least potentially. It is true that because some people hoard or steal or clutch or grab or feel entitled or what have you, there are often situations where there is not enough to go around – not because there is genuinely not enough, but because what there is, isn’t shared. But the good God-given world in which we live has plenty for all.

Our present-day culture urges us to believe otherwise. There is not enough to go around, and you’d better make sure you get yours first! Your neighbors will be unreliable in a pinch. Don’t trust anyone. Look out for number one. You have a right to whatever you can buy. You earned it by your hard work! That makes you a better person than one of those slugs who can’t make ends meet. How do we work on modifying the illusions that our culture thrusts upon us? Some of the laboratories we once had are gone. We don’t pasture our cows on a common field anymore. We don’t husk each other’s corn, work together to bring in wood for the winter. We don’t raise one another’s barns or houses. If we don’t like the school or the teacher our child has, we can go elsewhere. So our church is one of the few places left where we can learn by experience how to work together with our neighbors, and where we can learn by experience that there is plenty to go around. Our church is one of the few places where we give ourselves over to the discipline of service to the future of people we will never meet, who are not related to us. Our church is one of the few places where we can get on with the business of commitment to imperfection – here we have the joy of surrendering to the messy ambiguity of fully revealed humanity as it reveals the unambiguous and bountiful love of God.

So, what can we take from these two stories as we think about stewardship? First of all, no matter how much we each have of material wealth, what God gives to us every minute of every day is vastly more plentiful and rewarding. The rain, the dawn, the gold of autumn leaves, the sound of a seagull, the baby laughing with delight, the insight of an elder. On the most profound metaphorical level it is true that the jar of meal, the jug of oil, will never be emptied. There is always, always more love, more light. “Do not be afraid; make a little cake, share it with your neighbor.” Trust God, trust the future, trust your fellow residents of Planet Earth.

Second, think about how and why you give to the church, so that your giving will truly be part of your life in God – not an obligation about which you worry, but an exercise in letting go – let the riches of this moment pass through your hands as an exercise in understanding that that is how life is – it passes through your hands. And that is the way of this good God-given world.

These stories are not only about giving. If we open ourselves up to them, we see that they are also about receiving. I think that if people really knew what goes on in our church, they would be lining up to come inside! They would be climbing in through the windows! Standing room only! One of the few places where abundance reigns supreme! One of the few places where we celebrate and revel in mystery, where we specialize in awe! Where we study the only discipline I know of that will change the world – love of enemies as well as of neighbors. And most of all, one of the few places where we discover joy not in what we get to choose, but in what chooses us. The Holy Spirit of the living God. Amen.

“Wherever You Go, I Will Go”

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
November 1, 2009
Ruth 1:1-18, 22, 2:1-2,17-23, 3:1-5, 4:13-17

What is most important about the story of Ruth and Naomi is that it is a story – and it is their story. It is not propaganda about national stature, it is not an apologia for the misbehavior and poor rule of kings and statesmen; it is not even “quotes” from the voice of God. It is not a man’s story, unlike most of the stories in the Bible, even though Boaz has an important role in it. It is a story about two women, who manifest God’s loving kindness towards each other.

Naomi is a Jew. She was married. She had two sons. What could be better for a woman in ancient days. But good things turned bad. There was a famine in Israel; and Naomi and her husband and sons had to leave their hometown of Bethlehem and travel to the nearby country of Moab, seeking food. In Moab the father of the family died, leaving Naomi, to raise their two sons. These two young men marry Moabite women, but both men die before they have any children of their own. Naomi was left a widow with no descendants. What could be worse for a woman in ancient days. It is hard for us to imagine the seriousness of the situation. In ancient days, in a patriarchal culture, a woman was completely dependent upon her husband. Without a man, a woman had no rights, no identity whatsoever. For Naomi, things were even worse; she was a non-citizen, a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land. So when she hears that the famine in Israel was over, she prepares to go home. Her daughters-in-law start out with her. They are all in a bad way — Naomi because she is old with no husband and no sons; the daughters-in-law because they are also childless widows; if they go with Naomi to her home in Israel, they will be scorned as Moabites. Naomi urges them to go back to Moab — maybe there they could start over. Orpah leaves. Ruth stays with Naomi.

Ruth’s refusal to go home is the most poignant part of the whole story. Ruth pledges her loyalty to an old woman who can give her nothing. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people; your God, my god, and where you die, I will die; and there I will be buried.”

Enter Boaz. He’s an older man, a man of some means, a man with a little status and influence, a man who owns fields that are being harvested. Ruth, at considerable risk, goes into his fields to glean — that is, to scrape from the ground whatever grains have fallen there after the harvesters went through. It is her only hope of food for herself and Naomi. While in the fields, Ruth meets Boaz, come to inspect the harvest. He tells her to glean only in his field, where he can instruct the other young women to help her, and the young men not to bother her. When she asks why he is being so kind to her, a foreigner, he tells her that he has heard of all that she has done for Naomi, a distant relative of his. He says, “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”

When Naomi hears that Boaz has been kind to Ruth, she instructs Ruth to approach him and ask for further protection. He responds positively, and with a generous gift of food for Naomi. The final chapter of Ruth begins with legal negotiations for the marriage of Ruth and Boaz. And here the story is suddenly revealed as much more than a simple tale about loss and generosity, faithfulness and blessing. The Book of Ruth ends with the birth of Ruth and Boaz’s son Obed, who will become the grandfather of David; and, of course, from the house of David, the Messiah comes. Ruth is the great-great- great-for forty-two generations or so, grandmother of Jesus.

Out of great compassion, and with great risk, a young woman embraced an old woman who could promise her nothing. Out of great compassion, and at risk of alienating his own people, an Israelite man embraced a woman from away. In these acts of generosity and love, God was able to do what God does. The coming together of strangers who could have been enemies made it possible for the Messiah to be born. As it always makes it possible for the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Messenger, to be born. In our hearts, yes, but also in real life, in real time – God’s Messengers are born throughout the generations, wherever there is love, and justice, and compassion, and generosity, and mercy. Whenever the stranger is embraced, whenever we see the full humanity of the person we have been taught to hate and fear and judge. Whenever we understand our oneness with each other. Whenever we make and keep commitments to the powerless. When we solve insoluble differences, when we break down barriers. When we open our hands. When we open our minds. When we open our souls. Amen.

“Look to God, and Be Radiant”

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
Psalm 34:1-13, Jeremiah 31:7-14, Mark 10:46-52

Did you know that at this very moment you are in paradise? I don’t mean Vacationland, I don’t mean, “Maine: the Way Life Should Be.” I mean, the absolutely best of all possible worlds, physically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally, far beyond dreams of a one or two week summer idyll. For centuries, that’s what “church” was – a community whose members lived in paradise. Or at least, were meant to. I’m sure that in actuality, affirming the abundant, overflowing goodness of life was just as challenging for folks in the first millennium of Christianity as it is for us today — perhaps even more so, given their lack of scientific knowledge about nutrition, sanitation, medicine, and so forth, which left them powerless to illness and injury which we can avoid. But, nonetheless, the rituals of baptism, Eucharist, the liturgies, the images, all were meant to help average, little guy Christians like me and you live our moment-to-moment lives in paradise with Jesus and the saints. However, over the centuries, paradise became a concept instead of a place. And while that was happening, paradise left the living and left the earth. Left the church. How did that happen? Why? Most importantly – can we go back? Can we live in paradise in our churches again?

The idea of the church as paradise might strike you as incongruous. Isn’t that just a little bit self-indulgent? Aren’t churches supposed to make you feel ashamed and guilty? Aren’t we the ones who disobeyed God and ate the apple, or at least, the spiritual descendants of the ones who did that? Who have defied God, and broken God’s laws over and over again? Aren’t we the ones who crucified Jesus? According to Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker in Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, all that guilt and shame was NOT the focus of the church for many, many centuries. Churches focused instead on the generosity of God, the glories of the Risen Christ, and the life made possible on earth by Christ’s time on earth among human beings. By the life and work of Jesus.

Brock and Parker went on a quest through the Mediterranean and Eastern European lands of early Christianity, visiting churches, monasteries, cathedrals, and ruins, studying the ancient works of religious art carved in marble and wood; depicted in mosaic; painted onto plaster-lined walls of tombs; seeking images of Jesus’ suffering and death – imagistic representations of what has been the central theological focus of Western Christianity forever. Forever — or so they thought. They had learned from art historians that there were no images of Jesus’ dead body in churches until the tenth century, and they couldn’t believe that that was true. So they set off on their journey – and indeed, found no crucifixions in the early art. What did they find instead? Paradise. That was the defining visual metaphor of the early church – not suffering, not death – not atonement, not sacrifice – but Christian life as life in paradise. Jesus as giver of paradise, and not paradise in our sense of the word, an other worldly place – but paradise in the here and now. “[T]his world, permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God.” [p. xv]

The word “paradise” comes from the Persian: “pari”—around; and “daeza”—wall. A garden surrounded by a wall. “The Persian kings [built] huge paridaida, walled gardens with trees, streams, vegetation, and animals for hunting.” [p. 11] Paradise began as a word for a special kind of garden, a beautiful, well-tended garden, pleasing to the senses in every way – sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. A very earthly place, to please very flesh and blood people. The Hebrew word for paradise is only used three places in the Old Testament – in the Song of Solomon, (4:12-14), Ecclesiastes (2:5), and Nehemiah (2:8), and in each case it clearly describes a very physical, beautiful, lush place, a place of earthly delight, for earthly people to take pleasure in. In the first Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, the Greek word meaning “paradise” was used in those few places where the Hebrew said “paradise”, and also wherever the Hebrew word for “garden” had been used – so paradise ended up liberally sprinkled through the holy texts, and through people’s reflections on them. Paradise became a household word, a common word, for religious thinkers.

Our ancestors lived in much more mysterious world than we do. Not just because they didn’t have science to explain things, but also because they didn’t have interstate highways, satellite phones, jet planes, TV. They didn’t even have books, let alone the internet – if something wasn’t within walking distance, most people never saw it. So, it was easy to believe that what the Hebrews called gan-eden, “garden of delight,” and which came in the Greek to be called, “paradise,” was still in existence somewhere on earth even if Adam and Eve had been booted out. Here is the geography of Eden, from Genesis 2:10-14: “A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah … The name of the second river is Gihon…The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” Christian scholars of the first three centuries believed it was the Jordan River which flowed outward from Eden; the Tigris and the Euphrates, which many people lived on, were obvious. And the other two rivers, the Gihon and the Pishon, which were not geographically recognizable, were variously identified as the Nile, the Ganges, or the Danube, depending on the location of the Christian considering it. Paradise was somewhere nearby, just around the corner; it was physically everywhere. And then, in the fourth century, great Christian thinkers like Augustine expanded that concept of paradise everywhere on earth to include the idea that paradise was also a spiritual place – a way of being in the world, a way of living – and that way of living and being was most present and obvious in the church.

A church like ours is not heavy on ritual; our Congregational forbears saw to that. When the Protestant Reformers looked at the rituals of the church they knew, the European Roman Catholic Church, 1500 years old in their day, they saw meaningless repetition and cynical manipulation rather than reminders of how to live in paradise. They saw worship of pomp and glory – false idols — rather than of God. They pared things down. And of course, that very act of paring can become a new ritual, and the minimalist creation can become a new false idol. So then, over the centuries we have added things back. We are 2000 years old – we have stained glass windows, we have candles and flowers, we have a golden cross. We have heat and lights! (And running water and two bathrooms – paradise indeed!) In our children’s time today, I told the children about some of the special things we have physically present here in this worship space, this sanctuary, that make it different from other spaces; as adults, many of whom have been coming to church for a long time, we may not “see” those things anymore. But I think that we are aware of them, nonetheless. When people enter here, we want them to feel comfortable, un-intimidated by the space – and we want them, we want us all, to feel it as holy ground, a thin place, where God is easy to feel and know. Paradise.

You have heard me say this before, I think. Ministers supposedly only have three sermons – and they preach them over and over again. I don’t know what you think my three are – hopefully there is not something that I say that causes you to think, “Oh no, here she goes again!” I hope that my three sermons, if that is a true observation of ministers and their preaching, are more like the motifs in a poem, a ballet, a symphony – theme and variations. Or country and western ballads – “Boy meets girl – loses girl – finds dog.” (and there’s usually a prison, a train and a jukebox somewhere in there, too) So – my theme – this world is good and holy and full of God – full of God’s goodness and God’s essence, and there is enough, more than enough to go around. God is everywhere present and alive, God is with us, we have all we need, we are here on this earth to live in peace and harmony and gratitude and joy. We participate in God’s goodness, and even more, we participate in God’s being. I never knew until I read this book that that is “theosis.” – human divinity – not in the sense of, “Oh goody, I get to be boss and I am GOD!” but rather in the sense of – “All of creation expresses God and I am part of that. I am completely one with God.”

The psalmist says, “Bless God, at all times!” “God hears our cries, and delivers us
from our fears.” “Look to God and be radiant!” “O taste and see that God is good – take refuge in God and be happy!” “Those who seek God lack no good thing.” This week, as you go through your days, look to God – and discover what all this means. Live in paradise. Be radiant. Amen.

“As a Little Child”

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
Mark 9:30-37, 10:13-16

Like most of you, probably, I have always thought that what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” was: whoever is not open and innocent like a little child will not receive God’s Kingdom – will not enter it. Last weekend, at the annual meeting of the Maine Conference of the UCC, I heard a different take on the passage – whoever is not willing to give up privilege, prestige, and power — give up the status of an adult and have instead the status of a child — will not receive God’s Kingdom, will never enter it.

What does it mean to receive the kingdom, or to enter it? A lot of the time we have been taught to think of it as mostly referring to the state we hope to achieve in death – suffering through this vale of tears during our lifetimes in order to eventually get to rest in heaven with God. But, in actuality, what Jesus is offering is the chance to live in God’s kingdom right now. What Jesus is teaching us to ask for when we say “thy Kingdom come,” in the Lord’s prayer is God’s reign of justice, and mercy and love, where people live in peace together, here and now. It’s not asking for something that will happen for us in the hereafter, in our eternal lives – it’s about asking for something that can and does happen now, in our very temporary lives.

Jesus is an extremely here- and-now kind of guy — scholars use the term “the present-future” to describe the sense of Time we are meant to have when Jesus speaks about God’s kingdom coming – it is here right now, it is all around us, we just have to look, to notice it — IT IS HERE, AND IT’S ALL GOOD! But, in case you can’t quite get there to that realization, that experience, can’t quite do that, can’t quite rejoice and live in the kingdom at this very moment, then there is always the NEXT moment, when you WILL be able to do that! The present-future. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “The hour is coming, and is now here…” (John 5:25) God’s love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, compassion, power, generosity, abundance – all around us, at every moment. God’s kingdom.

To receive the kingdom of God, to enter God’s kingdom, means to receive all of that, to enter into that state of awareness – to live in the reality of God’s love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, compassion, power, generosity, abundance – and receiving it like a little child means receiving it in a vulnerable state. A little child is completely dependent upon his or her caregivers. A little child can’t pick and choose what looks helpful or interesting or fun to receive from a caregiver – a little child’s entire world is defined by the caregiver. A little child can’t hold back from participating in being completely dependent – a little child has no choice but dependency. That’s the state we are to be in if we are truly going to be able to receive the kingdom of God.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ first use of the image of a little child as our exemplar comes just after he has told the disciples, not for the first time, that he is going to be betrayed and killed, and then will rise again. “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him,” says Mark. They so much don’t understand the deep importance of what he has said, they are so easily distracted, that as soon as he goes on ahead of them they begin to argue about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus is saying, look, the price of my faithfulness, of my commitment, is going to be pain and loss and death – I will be abandoned by you and all my friends, I will die – and then the story will go on, and I will rise from the ending of death into new life. They say, “Hunh…. (what’s he talking about? Now look, Peter/ James/ John/ Maude/ Harriet/ fill in the blank…. I know that I’m better at this disciple thing than you, in fact I know I’m best at it! I’m the favored one! I get the goodies! Me first! Me most of all! Me! Mine! ME…) And Jesus, who, even though they won’t ‘fess up, knows what they’ve been squabbling over, says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

What would that look like if we applied these teachings to the issues challenging our society, our world right now? Fort example — what about the health care debate? What if instead of saying– “Well, I’ve got good health insurance, which I don’t want changed in any way, and I deserve it because I worked hard and earned it, and it’s not my problem that there are people who don’t have health insurance,” we said something like, “I don’t deserve to have more access to health care than anyone else does just because I have been fortunate in life. The opportunity to have medical treatment should be universal, for all people, no matter what their status. How can I help make that a reality?”

We are very willing to raise money for a community person who is injured or ill and has no health insurance, we are very generous to that person – and that generosity is a very good thing, and a necessary thing – but when we have handed over the $5000 check from the public benefit supper to the person facing $1,000,000 worth of treatment for cancer, what then? In Maine there are more than 125,000 people who have no health insurance, including nearly 19,000 vulnerable, powerless, innocent children. (handout from Southern Maine Workers Center). What are we going to do about that, people of God? It’s not good enough to let the politicians duke it out as though it were merely a policy issue. It’s an issue of making the Kingdom of God real, right here, right now. In Matthew’s Gospel, (in the King James translation), Jesus says, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Mat 25:40)

It’s not good enough for us to reserve gold-plated health insurance for those with political clout and plenty of money, mandate health insurance for everyone without figuring out how they will actually be able to pay for it, and then say the market will sort it out. We call ourselves God’s people. What is God calling us to do? Since I have more than enough money to meet my basic needs, how can it possibly hurt me if some proportion of my tax dollars goes to making sure that even an illegal immigrant with cancer gets medical treatment? How can it possibly hurt me? What will hurt me is to hoard my good fortune and turn my back on the poor.

Jesus tells us that as his followers we are invited into a family where the most important person is the one with the least power. Jesus tells us that we won’t really ever be able to know the reality of life in God’s kingdom unless we are the loving servant of that powerless person – and that by laying aside our preoccupation with our rights, our status, our entitlements, by letting go of all that, we will be freed to enter God’s kingdom. We will be able to recognize that we are already there. Amen.

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I will be away on study leave the next two Sundays, so there will be no sermon posts until October 25th.  I’ll be reading and writing about Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker.  According to its website, the book “restores the idea of Paradise to its rightful place at the center of Christian thought.  [The authors] offer a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution.” [http://savingparadise.net/]

Have a good two weeks!  Alice