Spokesmen For God, by Edith Hamilton

Some Final Reflections on

Spokesmen For God, by Edith Hamilton

1936, The Norton Library

In this thoughtful and progressive book, Hamilton looks out how the 8^th through 6^th Century Hebrew Prophets changed the understanding of God for both Jews and Christians.  In her penultimate chapter, 12, she seeks to summarize not all that the prophets thought, but only what they thought which has value for us today.  Hamilton believes that these prophets were the first to see that love and compassion must belong to the divine.

As we read these prophets, we see that they make no distinction between religion and politics.  This seems to be because they did not think about fitting people for heaven, but about fitting people to make the world a better place in which to live.(p. 234)  “Politics then, was everyone’s religious duty, as was economics.  Problems of poverty and wealth are keenly analyzed in their writings.  Neither did they seem to have much interest in theology:  “they never enunciated a creed or stated a dogma or essayed a definition of anything they believed.  The only test of a person’s religion to which they gave a thought was the way that person acted.”(p. 235)

“Intellectually the prophets’ world is not our world, but that fact does not touch their value to us.  Spiritually they are our teachers.”(p.236). . . . “Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.  Great knowledge does not mean greater certainty. Oftenest the very reverse is true.  We are certain in proportion aw we do not know.”(236)  Even though we have more scientific knowledge than they did in their day, we can learn much from them about the ways we are to relate to God and to God’s people.  “Truths of the spirit are always true and these great teachers of the Hebrew Bible understood them as no others have, and in their works we find ourselves.

Hamilton, believes that the “prophets knew they were spokesmen for God, that they knew that they were nothing before God’s unutterable excellency and glory and yet each one felt that he had come close to God.  “They never entertained the idea of religion as an end in itself, comforting, satisfying aspiration toward inward purity and personal perfection.  And they never said, Believe this and you shall live.  Both of these ways also coud so easily be made substitutes.  Religions way \was different and not easy: Do this and you shall live.  Upon God’s true worshipers rested the tremendous responsibility of making God’s will a reality up on earth.”(p. 238)

What made the prophets different from any others who had spoken for God was that they “saw a world where no man was wronged by another, where the strong shared with the weak, where no individual was sacrificed for an end, where each individual was prepared to sacrifice himself for the end of making what God wished become a realized good.”(p.239)

I close this post by reflecting on what our world would look like today if the Prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Second Isaiah had succeeded in communicating to us God’s Vision for our world.  How would the debt ceiling and debt reduction talks in our country have developed differently than they have?  What would our congress and state legislatures have done differently in dealing with the Immigration issue in our country?  Would the issue have been solved already?   Would we have a Nationwide Health Care Plan that made healthcare available and affordable for all of our citizens?  These and other questions are worth asking ourselves and I believe we have the right to ask these questions of our governmental leaders and expect them to give us answers and to do something about them.  As the prophets believed, I too believe that belief, theology and religion are really about politics, economics and people.

I invite your thoughts on these questions and challenge all of us to seek to live the way of the prophets. 

Ben Alford

Some Brief Reflections on Naked Spirituality

Some Brief Reflections on Naked Spirituality

By Brian D. McLaren

Harper One, 2011

Brian McLaren continues to be a champion of those who have lost their faith, been hurt by their faith, struggle to keep or regain their faith or have reached a point in their lives where faith simply has no meaning for them anymore.  In Naked Spirituality, McLaren begins with the story of Francis of Assisi striping naked in church, in broad daylight, in front of his angry father, as well as in front of the local Bishop.  Francis said to them, “you can have your clothes back, I shall go naked to meet my naked Lord.”

This is a book about meeting our Lord and His Spirit at a time in our history when, for many reasons, this is not always a simple thing to do.  I share with you some of McLaren’s thoughts from the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 1 to give you a sense of how important I believe this book to be.

From the Preface

“This is a book about getting naked—not physically, but spiritually.  It is about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion….and it’s about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin.”(p. vii)

“At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter.  At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more.”(p. viii)

Some reasons a person may want to read this book:

From the Introduction

“You may have come to a point where the word “God” is problematic for you.  You are so dreadfully sick and tired of hearing God’s name overused and abused that you’d rather not add to the commotion.”(p.2)

“You may be spiritually disappointed and wounded; you may feel God has abandoned you, turned on you, left you, and you do not know where to go next.”(p. 2)

You may be, perhaps without admitting it even to yourself, one of the increasing numbers of theologians, pastors, priests, and lifelong Christians who have practically become atheists because of long-standing disillusionment, unanswered questions, and unresolved pain.”(p.2)

“Doctrinal Correctness, institutional participation, and religious conformity won’t suffice anymore.  You need a life centered on simple, doable, durable practices that will help you begin and sustain a naked encounter with the holy mystery and pure loving presence that people commonly call God.”(p.3)

From Chapter 1

“What Many people experience in religious communities on a popular level seems closer to the opposite of love.  Religion as they experience it promotes conflict and selfishness rather than generosity and otherliness.  It teaches them to prioritize their own personal salvation and religiosity over the well being of others.  It reaches practices and beliefs that make some fear, dehumanize, and judge others.”(p. 15)

“A spiritual life is a Spirit life, a life in the Spirit, and Jesus’ life and work come into proper focus when we realize his goal was not to start a new religion—and certainly not to create a new religion that would seek to compete with or persecute his own religion, Judaism!  No, his goal was to fill with Spirit-wine the empty stone jars of religion—his own religion and any other religion.”(18)

When people say, I am not religious, but spiritual, many of them, I think, see what Jesus saw, that the Spirit’s realm of activity can’t be limited to the sphere of religion in general, much less to any particular religion.  The Spirit of God is the fine wine of justice, joy, and peace; the uncontained wind of creativity, comfort, and liberation; the living water of holiness, beauty, and love.  Whenever people encounter justice, joy, peace, creativity, comfort, liberation, holiness, beauty, love and any other good thing, they are in some way encountering the Spirit, or at least the signature or aftermath of the Spirit.  The spirit, then, is bigger than any particular religion, or religion in general.  Nobody has a monopoly on Spirit,

Get that straight and a thousand other things begin to fall into place.  We can put ourselves into the sandals of that woman drawing water from that well, or Nicodemus hearing the wind in the trees, or the disciples tasting that wine drawn from these ceremonial stone jars.  We might just dare to believe that we too can experience the water, the wind, and the wine.”(pp 18-19)

This is an important book for the emerging church of today and if you see yourself in any of McLaren’s descriptions, then I recommend that you jump in to this book with anticipation and hope.

Ben Alford

“How Awesome Is This Place”

“How Awesome Is This Place”

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down. He dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. . . .." Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place--and I did not know it! . . . How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." (Genesis 28:10-19a)

As I read this passage over and over last week in preparation for my sermon on Sunday, I was again reminded that all ground is Holy Ground, all places are awesome and every place we find ourselves has the potential to be “the house of God, The gate of Heaven,”  and every experience an opportunity to know God.  I share two of these places and experiences with you.

Last Saturday, July 16, Lay leaders and clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama gathered at The Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham to worship and to elect a new Diocesan Bishop to succeed our Current Bishop, Henry Parsley.  Our first act was to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, or Holy Communion.  The beautiful Cathedral with red hangings and vestments of the clergy and candles on the altar truly allowed us to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit.  That power of God was so strong that you could feel it and touch it and taste it.  This simple but powerful worship experience confirmed for all of us that “surely the Lord is in this place, it is none other than the House of God.” 

In the powerful presence of God’s Holy Spirit, we then went on to elect our current Bishop Suffragan to become the Eleventh Bishop of Alabama.  A life changing experience of the Presence of God in the lives of all who participated.

The second place and experience I want to share with you is the trip to Zion National Park in Southern Utah which I made with my son, Seth, earlier last week.  The beauty and grandeur of this place named by the Mormons after the Holy mount of God in Israel is overpowering, especially when shared with loved ones.  There is even a court of the patriarchs with peaks named after the same Abraham, Isaac and Jacob referred to in the scripture with which I opened this column.  Seth and I hiked a trial that took us a thousand feet above the floor of the canyon and saw the beauty and felt the power of God’s marvelous creation.  “Surly the Lord is in this place, how awesome is this place, it is none other than the house of God, the gate of Heaven.

My prayer for all of us is that we go through life, always open and expectant of entering the presence of God, even when we least expect it.

Faithfully,

Ben Alford

Fabulous, Friendly, Fun Filled, Freedom Filled Fourth

Fabulous, Friendly, Fun Filled, Freedom Filled Fourth

What a great weekend.  We live in a wonderful country in a wonderful world and God has given us many gifts.  This weekend we celebrated our nation’s independence from England by spending time with friends, new and old, by eating hamburgers and hotdogs and lots of other stuff.  If we were lucky we found some water in a lake or pool or ocean to get into to play and cool off.  Some of us watched the Fourth of July Concert from Washington D.C., some went into town to visit and dance and watch the fireworks and some watched the fireworks on Lake Jordan. 

Our nation was established on the premise that “all men (people) are created equal and that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Our founders set the bar pretty high, and we have not always lived up to these noble standards that we have set for ourselves.  When the declaration of Independence was written, men meant men, and only white men at that.  Since that time we have recognized that this document includes women as well as men, and people of color as well as those who looked like the founders of our nation.  This kind of progress takes time, but as we change and adjust, the United States and the world become better places to live.

We have also become a nation where we recognize the founder’s intent to have a separation between “Church and State.”  One of the greatest gifts our founders gave us is the gift to worship God as we choose, or not to worship at all.  Whatever our religion or lack thereof, we are all Americans, dedicated to welcoming “you’re tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free,” to quote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty that welcomed many of our ancestors to this country.  We are one of the most diverse nations in the world, religiously, ethnically and politically and the fact that we get along as well as we do is nothing less than a miracle and a gift from God.

On this very special day in our country, my prayer is that we look at the gifts God and the natural resources of this land have given us.  That we give thanks for these gifts, reflect on how we have used them wisely, as well as how we have squandered them, that we look at the ways over our history that we have “treated others as we would have others treat us, and at the ways we have not treated others as they have treated us.  This day of celebration and reflection is an opportunity for us to rejoice in the good we have done and to humble ourselves before God and ask forgiveness for the hurts we have caused others in this nation.

Living in a country of over 300,000,000 people is not easy and there are often difficult decisions to make.  Sometimes we make the right decision and sometimes we don’t.  Independence Day every year gives all of us the opportunity to celebrate, make amends and seek strength and guidance from God to be better next year than we were this past year.

Thanks be to God who gives us memory, reason and skill to serve our fellow human beings in God’s name.  As Jesus said, “the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength.  The second is like unto it; love your neighbor as yourself.”

Blessings and Peace,

Ben Alford