On the Last Day of the Year...

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been on my whirlwind tour of the west, having spent not quite four days in New Mexico and then moved on to California. Below is the sermon I preached at my home church this past Sunday; enjoy.

Grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them a light has shined.” Listen to the words of Isaiah’s prophecy. “You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.” The nation of which Isaiah speaks has the joy of abundant harvests and military victories—no sign of famine or defeat. Indeed, all their foes and oppressors have been defeated by God. But even more than military victory, this people enjoys an end to all war—“For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.”

For the kingdom of Judah, to whom Isaiah is speaking, this is the most wonderful vision of peace and prosperity they could imagine. Isaiah does not even say this will happen, in some distant future; he speaks in the past tense. The people already has seen a great light. For Isaiah, their hope is already present. And what is the reason for this hope? “A child has been born to us, a son given to us; authority rests on his shoulders.” Though the word is not used here, this is usually referred to as a Messianic prophecy, from the Hebrew mesiach, meaning “anointed”. Just as David was anointed by Samuel, the mesiach is the king, set apart by being anointed. This child,with authority resting on his shoulders, is a king and the hope of the kingdom.

But what happens in the years after this prophecy? The Northern Kingdom, Israel, is conquered by Assyria. Then Judah, the Southern Kingdom, is conquered by the next great empire—Babylon. Jerusalem is captured, and the very Temple of God is destroyed. The people are taken into exile in Babylon. A generation later, Babylon falls to Persia, and though the exiles are allowed to return home, they are still subjects of a foreign empire. They are certainly not permitted to have a mesiach, for anointing a king would be tantamount to rebellion. So it continues: after Persia comes Greece and after Greece, Rome.

With Rome, we find ourselves at the reconstructed Temple with an old man who hopes for the consolation of Israel—Simeon. Like the other Jews under Roman rule, Simeon remembers the prophecies of Isaiah and still trusts in God’s promises. Indeed, Simeon has received a promise of his own—the Holy Spirit of God has made known to him that he would see the promised mesiach with his own living eyes. Can we even imagine what this meant to Simeon? The words of Isaiah, spoken as though they had already come to pass, have been waiting in the hearts and minds of the Jews for more than seven hundred years. Now Simeon is going to see them fulfilled in his own short remaining span of life.

With the history of that prophecy behind him, Simeon looks forward in the hope given to him by the Holy Spirit, and guided by that Spirit, he goes to the Temple on the same day that Mary and Joseph arrive to present Jesus. Now, imagine you were those new parents—you go to a public place with your baby son, and some old man, a complete stranger, grabs him out of your arms and begins shouting: “Now I can die!” No wonder Mary and Joseph are “amazed” at Simeon’s words! But Simeon is looking forward, seeing in a tiny child the hope of a people—the hope of the whole world. Though his own life is nearly over, Simeon praises God for fulfilling the promise in this child.

Simeon looks forward, and this forward perspective, from the older generation to the infant child, is paralleled in Luke by the promise made to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. God tells Zechariah that his son will “turn the hearts of parents to their children.” The parents now look to the children, the old to the young. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth receive a child in their old age; Simeon has waited his whole life; likewise, Anna, the prophet also in the Temple this day, is either eighty-four, or she has been a widow eighty-four years—making her over a hundred. All of them look to the child Jesus for hope, even though they will be long gone by the time he reaches adulthood.

In Simeon’s words over Jesus, we hear another kind of looking forward—Simeon looks forward to the kind of Messiah this will be. Simeon praises God, saying that salvation has been “prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” Jesus will be more than the king promised to Judah; he will bring salvation to all peoples, Jew and Gentile alike. Though Simeon hopes for the consolation of his people, he looks beyond them and sees the hope of the Gentiles—even the Romans, who oppress him—as well. But Simeon also recognizes that Jesus’ salvation will be a source of conflict; he warns Mary of the discord and strife that will come from Jesus’ life. Jesus will be a “sign that will be opposed.” It is with Simeon that we see the first signs of how divisive Jesus will be, even among his own people; but that is the kind of Messiah that God has provided. Our Christmas story is always connected to the Good Friday story. Even though Simeon’s foresight reveals a Messiah perhaps very different from the king promised in Isaiah, Simeon knows that God’s promises have been fulfilled, and that he may indeed be dismissed in peace.

And what of us, today, another two thousand years further away from Isaiah? Are we not like Simeon, having waited and hoped for the promises to be fulfilled? Do we not look at the world around us, and wish for the world described in Isaiah? Does it seem sometimes that those promises will never come to pass? Perhaps the real question is—do we, like Simeon, maintain our trust in God’s faithfulness and stay steadfast in our hope?

Simeon recognized in a poor family, in an infant baby, the mesiach God had promised to his people. He saw that Jesus would not be just the king of Judah, but would fulfill those promises in a new and unexpected way. Simeon did not live to see Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and miraculous resurrection; but he did not need to. He had seen enough in the baby to satisfy all his hope and longing. The promises were fulfilled, though they had not come to fruition; the Messiah had come, though he was yet just an infant. We, too, are in this place of already-but-not-yet. The famines have not yet ended; the boots of the tramping warriors have not yet been burned; the kingdom of God still seems far away. But like Simeon, we have seen enough. The Messiah has come to us; he has lived and died and lived again; and we have died and risen with him. When we gather at this table, we both hope for and experience the meal of that kingdom over which our Messiah rules. So let us, with Simeon, with Anna, with Mary and Joseph, rejoice now in the fulfillment of our hope, even as we wait for its completion.

Christmas Eve

Well, it's Christmas Eve. I was supposed to be back in New Mexico by now, but thanks to some miserable ice, I'm still in Gettysburg. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't upset about being stranded away from my family on Christmas Eve... but at the end of the day, Christmas is still Christmas even without the family and the traditions.

So Merry Christmas to you. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, then have a blessed Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid, or just happy winter.

*sigh of relief*

Well, the semester is over now. I took my four finals, turned in one last paper, and—miraculously—didn't die in the process. I did let you all down on the blog posts, and for that I apologize. Time to get back to our regularly scheduled program.

One interesting thing that came up in Church's Worship this semester is the practice of private confession. Now, most Lutherans are familiar with corporate confession, which is usually said at the start of every Sunday worship service. Corporate confession is held in contrast to private confession, which tends to be associated with Roman Catholics and those tiny confession booths. I think many Lutherans (myself included) think of private confession as one of those things we threw out during the Reformation. While the practice of requiring private confession before someone could receive the Eucharist would certainly be problematic for Lutherans, private confession itself is actually a valuable form of pastoral care. You may be surprised to discover that there is an order for private confession in both the ELW (the new red hymnal) and the old LBW.

I think the advantage of private confession over public confession is simply how personal it is. When you say the words of confession in a group, Sunday after Sunday, it can begin to feel like you're going through the motions. I can practically recite the order for confession from memory; and if you've got it memorized, you can use that time to see who else has arrived at church that Sunday (not that I'd ever do something like that...). In any case, corporate confession, while it certainly has many advantages, runs the risk of not actually being a confession of sins. If a person chooses to make private confession of sins, however, there is no chance of their mind wandering to other things. And for a person who is deeply troubled about something, they may need to use their own words to describe exactly what it is they need to be forgiven. To then hear a word of forgiveness touches that person much more deeply than when the pastor speaks it to the whole congregation.

I'm not by any means saying that corporate confession is a bad thing; simply that it runs the same risk of all liturgy—the words can lose their meaning. Private confession can act as a counter-balance to corporate confession. I'm just pointing out the advantages of private confession because it seems to be so little known in the Lutheran church. And now you know.

Finals Week

Have I mentioned it's the end of the semester? Perhaps that I'm swamped, with one final down and three still to go, and that I was up very late last night (or, truth be told, early this morning) finishing my last paper of the semester? Does that sound familiar to anyone? Well, I didn't get around to updating the blog yesterday, and while I dearly wish I had a real post to put up today to make up for it, I don't. So instead, I commend to you the wise words of 1 Kings 19, which we translated for our Hebrew final (this is my translation, and therefore a bit rough around the edges):

9 [Elijah] came there, to the cave, and he stayed the night there. And behold! the word of the LORD said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 And he said, “I am surely zealous for the LORD, God of Hosts, because the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant; they have destroyed your altar; they have slain your prophets with a sword. I remain, I alone, and they seek to take my life.” 11 And he said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the LORD,” and behold! the LORD is passing by, and a great and strong wind is tearing away mountains and breaking rocks before the LORD. The LORD is not in the wind; and after the wind, an earthquake, and the LORD is not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake, a fire, and the LORD is not in the fire; and after the fire, a roar of sheer silence. 13 As Elijah heard, he wrapped his face with his mantle and went out; and he stood at the opening of the cave. And behold! a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 And he said, “I am surely zealous for the LORD, God of Hosts, because the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant; they have destroyed your altar; they have slain your prophets with a sword. I remain, I alone, and they seek to take my life.” 15 And the LORD said to him, “Go, return to your journey in the wilderness of Damascus. You will come in, and anoint Hazael as king over Aram. . . 18 I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed down to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

More on the Old Testament

It's the season of Advent in the church year right now, and we all know what that means: lots of readings from Isaiah. The prophecies of Isaiah, perhaps more than any other part of the Old Testament, have been read by Christians as being about Jesus Christ. The most famous examples are related to Christ's death (the "suffering servant") and to his birth ("The virgin is pregnant and bearing a son, and she will call him Immanuel"). This raises some complicated questions for me about how to read the Hebrew Scriptures. There are a few clear facts: the writer of Isaiah, and the Israelites to whom he wrote, did not believe that this prophecy was about some baby to be born more than five hundred years later. The language of the prophecy is very immediate. It is supposed that Isaiah was referring to Hezekiah, who would later be king. The other clear fact is that early Christians did read Isaiah's prophecies in light of the events of Jesus' life and death. Their interpretation is clear in the Gospels, especially in Luke and Matthew.

The issue is further complicated by questions of translation. The Hebrew word in Isaiah 7 literally means "young woman," not "virgin". In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, the word is "virgin," which was obviously picked up by the early Christians as sounding like the miraculous birth of Jesus. So how should modern Christians read this text? I am inclined to try to be true to the original meaning of the text, being sensitive to its historical context; but at the same time, this passage bears a powerful meaning for Christians. Saying that it is a prophecy about Jesus seems unfair and disrespectful of the Jewish tradition from which it comes; but saying that it is not about Jesus might offend Christians who love this passage. How can we be honest to both traditions?

My Old Testament professor gave a powerful answer to this question. She talks about reading the Scriptures in the context of faith claims. To read a passage in the Bible a certain way is to make a certain faith claim about it. This perspective applies to any Biblical passage, but consider it in this particular case: to say that this prophecy is about God's action in the political situation of ancient Israel is to make one faith claim, and to say that it is about the birth of Jesus Christ is to make another. It's not so much a question of right or wrong; but in the interest of respect, it's important to recognize that one is making a faith claim. When we read Isaiah in church during Advent, we should realize that this book has been read in different ways by different people and at different times; our reading is one of several, and we cannot claim absolute validity for our perspective. Nevertheless, our reading has a long tradition behind it and it contributes to our understanding of the stories of Jesus that have been passed down to us. In this way, we can read the Old Testament with respect to the people for which it was originally written, without being forced to completely agree with their interpretation.

Wisdom and Protest Literature

My introductory class on the Old Testament is almost finished. One of the final topics we covered was wisdom and protest literature, two genres in the Ketuvim, or Writings, of the Hebrew Bible. Wisdom literature is most clearly exemplified in the book of Proverbs, and protest literature in Ecclesiastes, Job, and Ruth.

Wisdom literature is, unsurprisingly, focused on wisdom. It was presented to us as the third way in the Hebrew Scriptures of understanding humanity's relation to God. The first was that of the priest, where God is reached through ritual and purity and the tabernacle or temple was the focus. The second was that of the prophet, where God is found in God's word, which thus becomes the focus of piety. The third is that of the sage, or seeker of wisdom; the premise being that God can be found all around us, in the everyday experiences of our life. Seeking wisdom in the world, then, is seeking God. There is confidence that God can indeed be found this way. Now, no one of these three ways is superior to another, but all three can be clearly seen in the Scriptures, and there seems to be a chronological development (at least, it is clear that the sage comes last).

The outlook we find in Proverbs and other wisdom writings is a very optimistic one. In the world, one can find folly and wisdom; and if one is careful to distinguish between the two, one can choose to follow wisdom. Following wisdom leads to life, while following folly leads to death (see the powerful image of Wisdom and Folly personified in the first section of Proverbs). Wisdom can inform proper action in all aspects of life, especially in the family. Underlying this focus on wisdom is a belief that those who make good choices, who live good lives, get good results; and those who make poor decisions face the consequences. In short, everyone gets what he or she deserves; the order of things is just. There is a right course to follow, and wisdom allows one to discern that course.

Protest literature takes a variety of forms, but all writings in this genre are speaking out against the accepted order of things, rejecting the orthodox opinion. The story of Ruth, for example, is defying the belief that all foreigners (Ruth is constantly identified as "the Moabite") are impure and wicked. Some protest literature speaks against wisdom literature; Ecclesiastes and Job are both in this vein. Ecclesiastes rejects the idea that wisdom can be found in the everyday events; rather, all is "vanity" (the Hebrew word appears nearly 40 times in the book of Ecclesiastes), and the wise are a sham. Though the events in life are cyclical ("To everything there is a season"), it is difficult to discern the right time (when is it time for war, and when time for peace?). The claim that wisdom teaches the right course of action is denied. The idea of justice–namely, that each gets his just desserts—is also rejected, because good and bad alike die. Ecclesiastes points out the simple fact of life that sometimes, the bad are rewarded and the good punished; this recognition leads to a fatalist attitude. In the end, all that one can do is eat, drink, and be merry, although there is a nuance here—Ecclesiastes is not simply a call to hedonism; the author believes that God approves of life: "There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God" (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

Job is also a protest against wisdom literature. We can see this from the very outset of the story: Job is a pious man, almost absurdly pious, but yet he loses everything (except his life, which he wishes could also be taken away). However, there is a textual point which affects the reading of Job: as is clear from looking at the text, there is a prose envelope (beginning and ending) surrounding about 40 chapters of poetry. The prose story probably stood alone at one point, telling of the pious man who is tested, passes the test because he refuses to curse God, and has everything restored to him. The poetry added into the middle of this story completely changes its meaning; although Job never does curse God, he curses just about everything else, and he is not rewarded at the end, but rebuked by God himself. The outcry of the character Job is the outcry of human experience against the optimism of the wisdom literature: I am suffering, and I did nothing wrong! Job's friends act as the voice of orthodoxy here, arguing that Job must have done something to deserve this punishment. Job can find no answers in these arguments, because he knows his own innocence. It is only in the face of God's awesome power that Job finds any kind of closure. For Job, there is no wisdom or justice; there is only the experience of God: "I had heard you by the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you."

Monday, Monday

So it's the second-to-last Monday of the semester, and I'll be honest with you: I don't feel like writing a blog post. I've got two quizzes, a paper, and four finals still to go, and I am burnt out. Still, it seems unfair to you, my devoted audience (read: my family and college friends), to skip out entirely.

So here are two "fun" (I use the term loosely) facts from my Hebrew studies. First, the word "Armageddon" comes from the Hebrew "Har Megiddo," meaning "Mountain of Megiddo". Second, and in keeping with the season of Christmas, the word "Ebenezer" comes from the Hebrew phrase "even haezer." (In Hebrew, "v" and "b" are the same letter.) "Even" means rock or stone, and "ezer" means hope. The phrase thus translates as "the rock of hope," or more loosely, "the foundation of hope".

And now you know...

Liturgy: What's the point of all this, again?

As promised, a run-down of my class this week on Eucharistic liturgy. But first, a word of explanation: I like liturgy. I really do. But it worries me—especially when seminarians and their professors put so much time and thought into liturgy that it leaves the people in the pews behind completely. The thing that bothers me is when pastors, professors and seminarians get so caught up in their ideas of how liturgy should be practiced, how it should be understood, that we forget about how it actually is practiced and understood. Take an example from my class this week; we discussed how it's very important not to give the impression that some magic is happening during the Eucharistic prayer. In other words, when the pastor speaks the Words of Institution ("In the night in which he was betrayed...") or invokes the Holy Spirit, he or she is not, by those words, causing a mystical change in the bread and wine. God's promises, through the action of the Holy Spirit, are what makes the bread and wine become something extraordinary at Communion. I agree with this idea... but then, why are we so careful about the words we speak? If the words of the pastor are not the essential thing, why are we all so uptight about making mistakes? I think the answer to this question is fairly simple: we get stage fright. We don't want to mess up, don't want to be seen making mistakes. It's very personal and natural. But—and here is the heart of the problem—it doesn't matter what the pastor believes; if he or she is uptight about saying the right words, the people in the pews are naturally going to be led to believe that the words themselves are the important thing.

I'm not saying by any means that the people who sit in the pews on Sunday morning are not as intelligent as the clergy. But the clergy get so lost in their ideals and theology and theory, that they forget the experience of the people who haven't gone to seminary. So we talk at length about how the Eucharist should be, but not about how it looks from the other side. That's why I'd like to talk about Eucharistic liturgy in this post, because I think if we're doing something for a certain reason, we should just tell people what the reason is, instead of hoping they'll pick up on the signals we're sending.

Okay, now that my rather lengthy introduction is out of the way, I'll actually talk about Eucharistic liturgy. The liturgy that's being taught in Lutheran seminaries and practiced (to a greater or lesser extent) in Lutheran churches is based on the movement of liturgical renewal. In short, liturgical renewal is an attempt to return to the roots of Christian practice, and as such relies on the documents of the early Christian church. In even the earliest accounts of Communion meals (going all the way back to the New Testament), there is a discernible "four-fold shape". This four-fold shape is described by the terms Bring, Bless, Break, and Share. Current liturgy attempts to reflect this shape. The first part, Bring, refers to the offering; this offering is not primarily gifts of money (though it may often appear that way in many churches), but it is the bringing forward of wine and bread by the community, for the community. In the understanding of Communion as truly a meal, the offering is the same as people bringing food together to share with one another.

The second part of the four-fold shape is the most predominant: the blessing of the bread and wine. This is, in its most basic sense, saying grace over the food just as you would say grace at the dinner table. Thanks and praise are given to God for giving us the food that we eat. In addition, the Last Supper is remembered in the Words of Institution, and the Holy Spirit is invoked. The third and fourth parts, Breaking and Sharing, are more utilitarian; the bread has to be broken before it can be eaten, and the sharing is the act of distributing the food to the people.

The important idea in this view of the Eucharist is that it is a meal. Just as Jesus ate with his disciples at his Last Supper, just as the crowds ate when Jesus fed them, and especially just as Jesus met his disciples over meals after the resurrection, Christians today come together to share a meal on Sunday mornings. To be certain, it is an extraordinary meal, because Jesus is present with us in it. The point is, it's not a bizarre ritual; it's based in our real experience. The liturgy surrounding the Eucharist may seem unnecessarily ritualistic, but it's there to preserve the important aspects and shape of Communion.

The Ol' Alma Mater

I had an interesting class this week on Eucharistic liturgy that I'd like to talk about, but I think I'll put that off until Friday in the interest of time (and the paper I need to finish tonight). So instead, I'll regale you all with the unofficial anthem of St. John's College: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters".

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the eidos of the Good,
Which is not the same as pleasure, I have clearly understood,
And I wouldn't take the tyrant's power, even if I could—
I'm marching from the cave!
Marching, marching towards the sunlight,
Marching, marching towards the sunlight,
Marching, marching towards the sunlight,
I'm marching from the cave!

The fool conceives of God but thinks the faithful are deceived,
But a greatest being whose reality is not belived,
Is a being through which something greater still can be conceived,
Which contradicts itself!
Ontological rebuttal,
Ontological rebuttal,
Faithlessness will ever scuttle,
For it contradicts itself!

The state of nature's character we know from good report
To be very solitary, nasty, brutish, poor and short,
So we'll give the sovreign all our rights and all the guns and forts,
And then we'll all survive.
Ratify the Social Contract, (3x)
And then we'll all survive.

Deterministic limits on my freedoms are erased
By the transcendental ideality of time and space,
So my atoms are determined but my will a different case,
It's pure autonomy!
Hail the Transcendental Ego, (3x)
It's pure autonomy!

I've been through all the steps in my phenomenology,
Whether Master, Slave, or in between, it's all the same to me,
I'm unhappy and I know it so I'm absolutely free,
I'm fully synthesized!
I've undergone the dialectic, (3x)
I'm fully synthesized!

As you can guess, it's sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", so you can sing along yourselves! The Republic of Letters is a reference to Plato, as is the first verse. The second verse is Anselm's ontological proof of the existence of God. The third is a conflation of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. The fourth is based on Kant, and the fifth on Hegel (with maybe a little Nietzsche, too). It's hysterically funny to Johnnies, and completely lame to everyone else. Although, we did sing the Anselm verse in Early Church and Its Creeds today, so at least that professor is amused by it.

Stay tuned for Friday's post on the liturgy of the Eucharist!

Hosea and the Story of Jacob

In lieu of writing of real post today, I'm going to post the paper I just wrote for my Old Testament class. The assignment was to write a paper on the inner-Biblical use of a text. I chose to write on the prophet Hosea and his use of the story of Jacob from Genesis. Here's the paper:

The prophet Hosea uses numerous images to illustrate his message to the people of Israel. Some of these images are acted out by Hosea himself (as in the wife he takes and the names of his children); others are purely metaphorical. Hosea also makes references to Israel’s history and its stories, reinterpreting the characters and events in terms of what he sees in his own time. One example of this use of story from Israel’s past is found in chapter 12 of Hosea. In this chapter, Hosea makes reference to the story of Jacob, repeating details now found in chapters 25 through 32 of Genesis. As in many parts of the Old Testament, in Hosea Jacob is seen as a symbol for the whole people who claim him as one of their patriarchs. The name Jacob is given in Genesis 32, Israel, is also the name of the people who descend from him. However, Hosea does not view this patriarch in a positive light, and he indicts the people of Israel by indicting the man himself. This re-visioning of the story of Jacob in the context of God’s punishment of the unfaithful Israelites is a striking example of Hosea’s use of the Scriptural tradition he had inherited.

The references to Jacob are in verses 3-5 and 13 of chapter 12. Hosea begins with the claim that “The LORD once indicted Judah, and punished Jacob for his conduct, requited him for his deeds” (12:3). He goes on to mention several details from the Jacob story—his conflict with Esau in the womb (v. 4), the struggle with the divine being and the encounter at Bethel (v. 5), and the flight to Aram and Jacob’s labor for Laban (v. 13). These details from Jacob’s life are all interpreted by Hosea in the context of God’s punishment, which is markedly different from how they are usually understood in their own right. The story of Jacob in Genesis, while the story of a trickster who gets the best of everyone around him, is also the story of one of the great patriarchs of the Israelites. The fact that it is this patriarch who lends his name to God’s people is also significant—in some sense, Jacob is Israel more than any of the other patriarchs. His experience of struggling with God is symbolic of Israel’s own struggle with God. In the events of his life, Jacob receives the blessings of his father and God, and it is Jacob who first experiences the reality of the many nations promised to Abraham in his twelve sons. These stories do not include divine punishment for Jacob’s action, nor indeed a claim that such punishment is necessary.

Hosea takes these details from Jacob’s life and spends the remainder of chapter 12 reinterpreting them as stories of the people of Israel. In verses 4 and 5, Hosea recalls Jacob’s struggle with men and with the divine and his encounter with God at Bethel: “In the womb he tried to supplant his brother; grown to manhood, he strove with a divine being, he strove with an angel and prevailed—the other had to weep and implore him. At Bethel [Jacob] would meet him, there to commune with him” (12:4-5). For Hosea, this communion with the divine is wrong: “Yet the LORD, the God of Hosts, must be invoked as ‘LORD.’ You must return to your God! Practice goodness and justice, and constantly trust in your God” (12:6-7). Although Jacob met God at Bethel and set up a stone there to mark the place, Hosea sees his actions as culpable. In spite of God’s promises, Jacob does not trust him, and certainly does not practice goodness and justice in his dealings with Esau and Laban. Instead, Jacob tricks both his brother and his ailing father in order to secure his place as heir. He then tricks Laban in spite of the assurance from God at Bethel that “I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:15). Hosea calls for honoring God and acting justly, which in his eyes Jacob did not do.

Likewise, the people of Israel have followed in the footsteps of their patriarch. Hosea says of them, “A trader who uses false balances, who loves to overreach, Ephraim thinks, ‘Ah, I have become rich; I have gotten power!’ . . . As for Gilead, it is worthless; and to no purpose have they been sacrificing oxen in Gilgal: the altars of these are also like stone heaps upon a plowed field” (Hosea 12:8-9,12). Like Jacob, the people of Israel use trickery and deceit to gain power and wealth, and they set up stone altars that are worthless in the absence of just behavior. They also fail to trust God; through Hosea, God says, “I the LORD have been your God ever since the land of Egypt. I will let you dwell in your tents again as in the days of old, when I spoke to the prophets; for I granted many visions, and spoke parables through the prophets” (12:10-11). Although God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and gave them everything they would need, and made the divine presence known to them, they still do not trust. Instead of relying on God to provide for their needs, they grasp for more and cheat those around them; instead of listening to the words of the prophets, they set up altars of sacrifice. Though God promises to them that they will be cared for as they were in the desert (“I will let you dwell in your tents again”), the people of Israel—like Jacob—do not trust God’s promise, and instead seek to make their own fortunes.

The final detail from Jacob’s life that Hosea refers to in this chapter is found in verse 13: “Then Jacob had to flee to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, for a wife he had to guard [sheep]” (12:13). In Hosea’s eyes, this seems to be the punishment Jacob faces for his actions; having tricked his father and brother, Esau comes after Jacob in a murderous rage. Jacob must flee the country, and goes to his relative Laban. There he does not receive a warm welcome or easily find a wife, as his father Isaac did when he was young; instead, Jacob works fourteen years under Laban to get Rachel, finding himself on the receiving end of some trickery for once. Hosea sees these events as a punishment for Jacob’s actions (although Jacob does not seem to learn his lesson, since he tricks Laban in return). Nevertheless, God punishes Jacob for his greed and trickery.

If exile and bound service were Jacob’s punishment for his sins, then it is easy to see how Hosea continues the analogy for the people of Israel. They, too, will face exile from their homeland and service to foreigners. Hosea sees the people of Israel setting themselves up for the same fate as their namesake: “But when the LORD brought Israel up from Egypt, it was through a prophet; through a prophet they were guarded. Ephraim gave bitter offense, and his Lord cast his crimes upon him and requited him for his mockery” (12:14-15). Again, the Israelites do not trust the prophets or the God who rescued them from slavery and cared for them in the desert. If they continue to behave in this way, persisting in injustice and selfishness, God will punish them, as well.

Hosea’s message is primarily one of rebuke and warning for the people of Israel. They have rejected their God and just behavior. They cheat one another in order to gain wealth and power, and they do not trust in God or the prophets who speak God’s word. Hosea delivers his message to the people of Israel through symbolic action, metaphors, and appeals to Israel’s stories. In chapter 12, Hosea uses the story of Jacob to explain the wrongs that Israel has done and to give them a hint of the punishment that is to come if they do not change their actions. He interprets the events of Jacob’s life and draws parallels to the state of Israel and Judah in his own time. By making use of the earlier tradition of the patriarchs, Hosea brings a new message to the people of Israel.

Faith and Works

As promised, a post about everybody's favorite topic: semi-Pelagianism! I know you're excited.

Before I talk about semi-Pelagianism, it's worthwhile to talk about regular Pelagianism. Pelagianism was a heresy in the church that basically claimed that human beings could (and indeed, had to) earn their salvation by doing good works. The argument went like this: God is just and fair. Therefore, God would not command us to do things that we were incapable of doing. Therefore, it must be possible to fulfill all of God's commandments. Therefore, we must fulfill all of God's commandments. (Therefore, etc, QED.) This heresy was put down, but its descendant, semi-Pelagianism, challenged the church as well. This form of Pelagianism is still present in the modern day. Semi-Pelagianism is willing to deny almost everything in Pelagianism, but holds on to one little point, and by that point falls into the same problem. In short, semi-Pelagians argue that God does everything necessary for our salvation except (and this is the problem) for taking the step to make it effective. In other words, God does everything for us, but we have to accept it through faith. It's described nowadays with images like, "God has done everything for you, he's opened the door, now you just have to walk through" or "God has done everything, it's all there, the water is hooked up to the faucet, you just have to turn the faucet on." The problem is, any formulation of salvation based on this model (God has done everything except...) boils down to the old heresy of Pelagianism, or what Lutherans call "works righteousness".

Why is this a problem? There are a lot of arguments that can be brought against Pelagianism, but I like this one: if there is any human action necessary for salvation, then God could come to a person and say, "I want to save you," and the person could respond, "No. I don't or can't believe or do what you want me to." In short, it makes God's power and will subject to human power and will; and while we don't have to accept that God is omnipotent (see my earlier post on the Greek view of God), we do affirm that God's power is incomparably greater than our own, so it cannot be subject to anything created.

In short, the opposition of faith and works is flawed in semi-Pelagianism because faith becomes a work. As Luther says (and Paul before him, of course), human beings are justified by faith, not by works—but that necessitates that faith must not be a work. Faith is not the result of human will; it is given by God. Now, if we ask why God gives faith, we get into another debate—whether faith is given to those whom God chooses to save, and not to others (predestination), or whether salvation is universal, and faith is given to some for the assurance of salvation (universal salvation). I'll leave that one up to you.

East Versus West

I grew up in New Mexico, and my closest connections in the Lutheran church are in New Mexico and California. So it was a bit of a shock to move to the East Coast, as you might expect. The weather hasn't actually been that big a transition, nor the landscape. Sure, there are differences, but they are overwhelming.

The biggest difference I've noticed—and granted, this is as a seminary student, so it's kind of a unique change that I'm adjusting to—is the difference between East Coast and West Coast Lutheranism. The vast majority of my fellow students are from this area, or from such far-flung locales as North Carolina and Ohio. There's actually only one student I can think of who's from further west than the Midwest—he's from Colorado (there's also one person from North Dakota and one from South Dakota, but that still seems like the Midwest to me). At some point early in the semester, I talked to a few students from the East Coast who had visited Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (the "western" seminary, located in Berkeley, California) before deciding to come to Gettysburg. They mentioned that the people at PLTS had talked about the difference between East Coast and West Coast Lutheranism, but these students had been confused about what this difference actually was.

I've thought about this a bit, and I decided to share my insights. If I sound overly biased towards my western roots, I apologize—but, well, it's what I'm used to. At the end of the day, I don't really believe that one is better than the other; each has its unique challenges and its unique advantages. There are certainly differences, for good or for bad.

A little history is helpful to understand the difference. Lutheranism obviously had a long history in Europe before it came to America, but when it came, it primarily came to the East Coast (and Midwest, of course). In the west, the predominant religion historically was Roman Catholicism, and that is clearly evident in New Mexico, and from what I've seen, in California, too. As a result, Lutheranism in the west is relatively new. In the west, you don't see any 150- or 200-year-old Lutheran churches; there simply isn't that long history in the west. As a result, there seems to be less of a sense of dynasty or "this is how we've always done it, my family has been in this church for four generations". As a result, churches out west seem to be slightly more flexible (churches are always stubborn and resistant to change, but there are degrees within the trend). There's less resistance to change because there's simply less history providing inertia to the church.

The other big difference is simply the density of Lutherans. Again, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, there are enough Lutherans to kill an army of cod (sorry, lutefisk joke). The east coast generally has more Lutherans than there are out west. It seems that on the East Coast, this breeds a certain complacency—there are tons of Lutherans, there will always be Lutherans, we can be as Lutheran as we want to, and we don't really need to branch out and reach other people. This is an exaggeration, of course, but this is the direction that churches seem to tend out here. In the west, Lutherans are faced with a world of challenges; I remember going to a synod assembly in Colorado, and all the Lutherans from Utah were primarily interested in dealing with the Mormon church. That was their challenge; they seemed almost desperate to figure out how to be Lutheran in a Mormon state. In New Mexico, again, the predominant force is Roman Catholocism; not that it is a threat, but simply that it pervades the culture. You can't get away from it. At least my home church responded to these challenges with consistent and determined ecumenism. They worked with all the other churches—they had to. There were no other Lutherans around. Personally, I appreciate that ecumenism, because I think our similarities are far more important than our differences.

So that's my two cents on the East-West divide. Like I said, I'm biased toward what I know, but I don't mean to be dismissive of East Coast Lutheranism, and certainly not of East Coast Lutherans. And I'm grateful for this learning experience, because I think it's important to get out of your comfort zone and see what different people do in different circumstances.

Trinity and Christology

As you might expect from the name, my class on the Early Church and Its Creeds is concerned with the development of the creeds in the first several centuries of Christianity. The two major issues defined by these ecumenical councils (Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon) were the nature of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. The outcomes of these councils are familiar to many Christians—that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct from one another but all equally God, and that Christ was fully human and fully divine.

But the history behind those conclusions was anything but simple. People were killed over these controversies. The debates were long and drawn-out, and turned on the most minute of semantic distinctions. Political intrigue played a role, as did regional loyalties.

I'm not going to discuss the details in this post. You can look them up easily... probably on Wikipedia. I wanted to address a broader question, namely—why should anyone care? If we figured it out, why do all those details and all that history matter? I bring up this question because it's a pretty accurate summary of my thoughts going into this class back at the beginning of the semester. I know the doctrine of the trinity and that pertaining to Christ's nature; why do I need to know the arguments and dissention that it took to reach those conclusions?

I think I'm beginning to understand the answers to those questions. The truth is, the basic sense of the trinity and Christ's nature were present among the earliest Christians, and are reflected in the New Testament. For the trinity, the liturgical formula used for baptism "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" contained the essential understanding of the equal importance of all three. As for Christology, the Gospels point over and over to the dual nature of Christ. The reason the debates over these issues were so heated was that there was already a deep-seated understanding which was threatened by various heresies. What was being debated in the councils was how these things could be true; and although the theological arguments are hard to wade through, their basic concern is still important.

While I don't think that everyone needs to know the twists and turns that led up to the ecumenical councils, I do think that it's important to know that they happened and why. These debates were matters not just of life and death, but of salvation; if it was asserted that Christ was not fully human and fully divine, then his saving work would not be effective. For those who are interested, learning about ousia and hypostases can be informative; but what I think is more important is the recognition that this seemingly esoteric theological debate was actually based on concerns for people's well-being. In the same way, we talk a lot in seminary about the specific details of theology or liturgy or Biblical interpretation, but we also always consider the "pastoral concerns," namely—what should be said to someone who needs to hear the assurance of salvation, or needs to know the essential message of the gospel? It is these concerns that ultimately drive our work in the church.

Rainy Days and Mondays...

I think I'll go for a short post tonight, since I don't feel like putting in a lot of effort.

My Introduction to the Old Testament class has been more interesting than I expected, and perhaps interesting in different ways than I expected. A lot of what we've covered I had picked up along the way—from source criticism, which I learned about when I took EfM in high school, to the formative nature of the exodus narrative to the people of Israel, which was a subject in my sophomore seminar at St. John's. What's been most helpful to me has actually been the immersion into the Old Testament. I've always found it difficult to get a broad sense of what the Old Testament was about... how all those genaeologies and stories about kings and those weird lesser prophets fit together. Our course has focused a lot on the historical shape of the narrative; we have discussed both the narrative as it appears in the Scriptures, and also the historical context as it's been put together from other sources. This broad view has helped me to integrate my understanding of the Old Testament into a more cohesive picture of the whole. I'm starting to see how the law relates to the histories, and the prophets to them both. Taking Hebrew at the same time has certainly contributed to my understanding; knowing a little something about the language allows me to see the perspective of the authors a little better.

The Greeks and the Bible

There's a pervasive issue that seems to come up again and again in my classes this year. It's most pertinent to Early Church and Its Creeds, but it also influences my Biblical studies classes and all our discussions of theology. It even comes up in the context of worship and liturgy. The issue is that of the Greeks. Simply put, the problem is this: a long-standing Biblical (and Hebrew) tradition, with all its understanding of God, crashed headlong into a powerful philosophical tradition coming out of Ancient Greece. You can see it in Paul's preaching in Athens, recorded in Acts 17. When the early Christian church accepted that Gentiles could be accepted along with Jews, there was a clash of ideas and ideologies which has affected the church ever since.

So what's the big deal? The God of the Israelites is, so to speak, a God who gets down into the mud and muck of his creation. He is actively involved; he participates with humanity in time and space; he changes his mind. An argument can even be made that he is not all-knowing. In contrast, the Greek idea of god (note here that I'm not referring to the pantheon of Homer and Greek mythology, but to the philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle and their schools) is exemplified by the "unmoved mover". According to the Greeks, the divinity is unchanging, unmovable, and eternal; it is separated from the corrupt world of our experience. In fact, god cannot even be associated with lower, corrupt nature.

Likewise, the view taken of human nature is very different. The Biblical view is that the human race, while it is certainly sinful and disobedient, is part of God's creation, which is described in Genesis as "very good". Humanity, though it can reach the absolute depths of cruelty and sin, is still presented with the hope of meeting God (through God's gracious faith to his covenant). For the Greeks, on the other hand, anything changeable is bad and anathema to the divine. It is only the soul, which is eternal like god, that is viewed positively. Humankind's only hope of participating with the divine is through the elevation of the soul to the level of the eternal god; this is best seen in the later Platonist, Plotinus.

It seems hard to fathom how these two ideologies could come together in Christianity. Indeed, it seems to me that this tension is the source of some of the most difficult theological and Biblical questions. It was in trying to lay the Greek ideal onto the Biblical account that real problems and schisms happened in the church—just as one example, the claim that Jesus was truly God seemed impossible to many because God cannot be born, grow up, suffer and die. Even today, we are faced with this tension. If God knew from the outset that Adam and Eve would fall, why didn't he stop them—or, even more troubling, in what sense did they have free will? If Jesus was God, and knew he would suffer, die, and yet be raised to glory, how were his actions humble obedience? If we're supposed to become like God, heirs of the kingdom, then don't we have to deny everything on this plane of existence?

These questions, and others, are incredibly complex, and I have no intention of answering them. All I want to suggest is that they may be easier to understand if we recognize the tension inherent in all our thinking about God and creation, a tension which comes from our dual heritage. In the end, I believe we should lean on the Biblical account and deny the Greek philosophical claims when we see them contradicting the Bible; and in fact, many of the heresies the church has faced (heresies might be a worthwhile subject for a later post) can be understood as affirming philosophy over scripture.

It seems to me that the early church tried to use Greek philosophy as a way of protecting their image—when the Roman world believed that they were cannibals (they ate body and blood at communion) and engaged in incestuous orgies (they talked about loving brother and sister)—Christian apologists tried to show that Christianity was in fact perfectly reasonable and not as crazy as it sounded. Justin Martyr was the best example of this: he claimed that the logos of the Greek philosophers (logos, or reason, being so vitally important in that philosophy) was identical with the logos of Christianity (logos, or Word, John's description of Christ), and that anyone who followed reason actually followed Christ (including Socrates). This was an important and necessary work for the early church, and I think they were right to do it. However, in the church today, we are not faced with such challenges, and it remains for us to try to separate out again philosophy and gospel, insofar as they contradict one another.

Blind Leading the Blind

Whew. This weekend has been one of the longer ones of my young life. Down at Grace Lutheran, Pastor Kevin and Pastor Martha took some well-deserved time off, leaving Steve and I at the helm, with the excellent help of a guest preacher/presider, Linda Fernandez. Unfortunately, Steve came down with some sort of miserable head cold Saturday morning, which meant that instead of he and I splitting up the work, I ended up taking the lion's share of it. Doing four worship services in less than 16 hours is really, really exhausting. Also, between the third and fourth services, I lost the Prayers of the Church we had written, so I had to ad lib them at the final service. Oh, and did I mention I was also teaching the Confirmation class this week?

Talk about the blind leading the blind. In any case, after coming home, collapsing into bed for two hours, slowly oozing back out of bed again, and getting myself woken up again by sheer force of will, I'm back, and it seemed like as good a time as any for a blog post (especially since it's been over a week since the last one).

This past Wednesday, at chapel here at the seminary's Chuch of the Abiding Presence, we had an installation ceremony for Pastor Vickie Brown, who works here at the seminary. Her husband, also a pastor, preached the sermon for the service, and he preached on the passage from Matthew 23 where Jesus tells his disciples: "You are not to be called Rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant." He looked out over the seminary chapel and asked, "How many of you are instructors? How many of you are professors?" He argued that Christians are all supposed to be followers, and the so-called "leaders" of the church are really supposed to be super-followers, examples to those around them. He said that the church should always have one leader, Christ, and we should all be followers.

That got me thinking about leadership, especially in the academic environment I've known my whole life. It's been a rough transition for me, coming from St. John's, where the faculty are not called professors, and where faculty and students alike are addressed as Mr. and Ms., to come into a "real" academic environment, where I—in spite of my bachelor's degree and the many years of learning behind it—am "Jennie", while my professors are Dr. Stevens, Dr. Oldenburg, and so on. It truly is an environment of leaders and followers, and those roles are enforced in every aspect of our lives here. That's why it was so intimidating for me to assist at worship in the chapel; because even as a supposed "leader", I knew who the real leaders were.

Now, that's not to say (however homesick I may be) that St. John's gets it all right. The respect and equality at St. John's were incredibly valuable to me, both as a learner and as a teacher. It taught me that my interpretations of the Great Books were just as valid as that of the tutors, and at the same time, that I owed just as much to the "bad" students in my classes as I did to the faculty. The point was, we were all learning together. The problem with this model is, we had no leader. Of course, in every class, leaders made themselves known, and we all knew the tutors were actually not equal to us, even though we said they were; but at the end of the day, there was no authority over all of us.

What Pastor Chris said in chapel on Wednesday made me realize that both St. John's and LTSG are getting it wrong. In the one case, we have the blind leading the blind; all are both followers and leaders, with no true "teacher". In the other, we have the traditional roles of academia enforced, where the opinions of the students bear less weight or validity, and the faculty sometimes seem to speak as if they had the voice of God. In the perfect world, we would be doing what Jesus tells us to do; we would all be followers, and acknowledge our him to be our one leader, our one teacher, our one authority. After all, in Christ all distinctions are erased; there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither professor nor student.

Another Sermon

Well, I'm relieved that today is over. Today was a big day for me; I assisted at worship in the seminary chapel for the first time, and I preached a sermon for my Homiletics class. Assisting worship was nerve wracking, although I've helped with worship many times before—it's a little harder when all your seminary professors are there.

As for the sermon, it seemed to go over pretty well; I'm just happy it's done. I've posted it below, for your reading pleasure. We were supposed to remain under five minutes of time (although I went a bit over), which is why it's quite short. The text I was assigned to preach on was Matthew 14:22-33, Jesus walking on water.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I don’t like scary things. Ghost stories, scary movies, and nowadays even horror video games—they’re not for me. I don’t like being scared. You see, the key to all these scary things is suspense. Someone jumping out and startling you is only scary for a moment; waiting for someone to jump out and startle you—now, that’s fear that can last for hours.
If you’re like me, and you don’t like scary things, then you have probably made the same mistake I have. It’s some windy night, you’re sitting in front of the TV alone, and some horror movie comes on. “How bad can it be?” you think to yourself, and start watching. Half an hour later, you’re curled up in a blanket, looking at the immense distance between you and the nearest light switch, and praying someone will come home and turn off the TV for you—not that that would do any good, because you can’t stop a scary movie halfway through. Either way, you’re going to have nightmares.
The disciples had it way worse than I ever did. They didn’t just get swept up listening to a ghost story; they found themselves in the middle of one. Jesus remains behind, sending them on without him. Night falls. Caught out on the sea, the wind blowing around them, the water getting rougher, unable to get back to land, they see a figure walking across the water toward them. They cry out, “It’s a ghost!”
Now, if this were really a ghost story, the figure would vanish, maybe with a bone-chilling laugh, leaving the disciples awaiting its reappearance with rising panic. Or maybe it would pick them off one by one. But that does not happen. What do we hear in the gospel? Immediately Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” He turns on the lights, so to speak, banishes the imagined ghosts, and he does so immediately, not leaving the disciples waiting in fear.
The strange events do not end there. Peter speaks up, saying, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus calls him out onto the water, and Peter follows; but when Peter notices the wind, he begins to sink. He cries out for help, and again, Jesus responds immediately, reaching out to catch the sinking Peter. The two return to the boat; the wind dies down; and the disciples worship Jesus as the Son of God. Just think of the relief, awe, and wonder the disciples must have felt, seeing Jesus taking care of them in their times of great fear. If only my experiences watching horror movies had ended this way! If only someone had come in the moment I began to be frightened and reassured me, destroying at once that fearful anticipation.
Indeed, in these two instances—verse twenty-seven, when Jesus reassures the disciples, and verse thirty-one, when he catches Peter—the immediacy of Jesus’ response is key. In the Greek, the word translated “immediately” is placed first in each of these verses, emphasizing its importance. Clearly, it was important to the disciples, too—though they have seen Jesus perform many miracles, it is in response to this episode that they worship him as the Son of God. Walking on the water, calling Peter out of the boat, and saving him from sinking are all miraculous, but perhaps it is not the events themselves that inspire the disciples; perhaps it is the immediacy with which Jesus responds to them. It is not merely that Jesus can do miracles; it is that the miracle worker is there and then, immediate to the disciples. The greatest miracle, in fact, is that God became flesh and blood and lived in the world with these people.
Where does that leave us, two thousand years later and on the other side of the world? Are we able to have the same experience as the disciples of an immediate God? Of course, we know that our God was both there and then as well as here and now. Jesus is as immediate and present to us as he was to his disciples. Especially at Advent and Christmas-time, we proclaim Jesus as Emmanuel, God With Us. Our God is incarnate; we do not have to seek God in some distant reality, but we find God here among us. Like the disciples, even when we feel most alone and afraid, we discover that God is there with us. That does not mean that we will never feel frightened, or find ourselves driven across a stormy sea. But we, like the disciples, will always hear that voice in the darkness saying to us, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

It's true. I can't deny it any longer. I made salsa this weekend. I got weepy watching a Travel Channel show about Santa Fe. The most exciting thing I'm looking forward to in December is the prospect of eating posole. Heck, I got excited watching a balloon from the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta hit power lines and explode on the Discovery Channel. I'm homesick.

People in Pennsylvania do not understand my predicament. I met a woman at Teaching Parish this past Sunday who grew up in Albuquerque, and within fifteen seconds we were exchanging stories about our Christmas Eve traditions and bemoaning the lack of green chile cheeseburgers. New Mexico is a strange place, and outsiders just don't get it. What's the big deal about Santa Fe? Why would you put green chile on everything you eat? Who is this "Zozobra" character? People here don't know what posole is, or who Georgia O'Keeffe was, and they think that "spicy" food is made with onions and garlic. They don't seem to have a word for food made with capsaicin. And they look at you really funny if you try to explain that every restaurant and bar in the state of New Mexico will serve you a burger with green chile on it.

I miss the food, I miss the art, I miss the history, I miss the architecture. I miss the aspens turning yellow at the Santa Fe Ski Basin. I miss Zozobra and the Balloon Fiesta. I miss the food some more. I miss seeing chile ristras hung up as a form of decoration, and I miss luminarias. So Daddy, if you're reading this, make sure there's posole on the stove when I come home for Christmas. And we might not see you right away, because we'll have to stop at our favorite restaurant on the way home, the Flying Tortilla.

In the meantime, I still have a quart and a half of salsa in my refrigerator to eat...

Sermon

Well, you may remember a few weeks ago I said I might post the sermon I wrote for Homiletics, if I liked how it turned out. As my silence on that subject indicated, I was not very happy with the end result. But lo and behold, I had to write another sermon two weeks later, and I turned this one in on Friday. I'm much happier with it than I was with the last one, so I thought I'd post it.

The reading is Matthew 16:21-28, Jesus' infamous "Get behind me, Satan!" rebuke. Enjoy!

In the film Bruce Almighty, God gives a self-centered, down on his luck guy, Bruce, the powers of God. In one scene in the film, Bruce is trying to answer prayers, but there are vastly too many prayers for him to answer. Utterly overwhelmed, he chooses to reply to all the prayers with the same response: YES. In the next scene, we learn that a character who has prayed to win the lottery has finally won: “But get this, there were like 433 thousand other winners, so it only paid out 17 dollars. Can you believe the odds of that?”
What did all these people, the characters in the movie, think of God? Each and every one of them prayed to win the lottery; the joke in the movie is that, since they each got what they wanted, no one really wins. Obviously, each individual expected God to answer his or her specific prayer, instead of the prayers of all the other people who wanted to win the lottery. Each one wanted God to take care of him, to take care of her, without considering all the other people who wanted the same special treatment. In turn, these people were assuming that God was a God interested in solving their particular problems, without considering the needs of all people. Their own selfishness was projected onto their idea of who God is and how he acts.

In our reading for today, Jesus reveals to his disciples that he must go into Jerusalem, suffer, and die, and rise again on the third day. Peter, flush from his success in recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, now tries to scold Jesus: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Jesus, however, who just a few verses earlier praised Peter, now sharply rebukes him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.” Jesus’ words are harsh, and sound even harsher coming on the heels of his praise of Peter and his promise of the keys of the kingdom. Indeed, this rebuke shows Jesus at his most sharp in the whole gospel story; clearly, Peter has made a grave error.
The heart of Peter’s attitude lies in his outburst to Jesus: “This must never happen to you!” Though we may wonder what Peter believes about the promised resurrection, it seems that he is primarily concerned with Jesus’ suffering and death. The disciples all know how volatile the situation is between Jesus and the church leaders; to go to Jerusalem would be to go into the lion’s den. And then: to see Jesus tortured and killed at the hands of the chief priests and scribes. It’s almost too much to imagine. The very idea of it is painful. “This must never happen to you, Lord!” We must never see someone so wise, so good, so truly great, the very Son of God, be treated this way. We can’t allow it. We won’t accept it. Peter cannot even restrain himself from telling Christ what to do, or rather what not to do. We might sympathize with him—Peter wants to protect the person nearest and dearest to him. He wants to save Jesus.

At first glance, Peter’s mistake in the Gospel of Matthew seems very different from the attitude of the people in Bruce Almighty. After all, those characters in the movie are just being selfish! All they want is a big payout in the lottery. Peter’s not like that—Peter is trying to protect the greatest gift God had given him, or any of us, the Messiah. Peter’s concern is truly a worthy one, even a holy one... isn’t it? “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Peter’s error is to be too human, even in the face of his recognition of the divine. Peter believes he understands what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah, but he is shocked to hear Jesus’ foretelling of his own suffering and death. Peter is trying to force his own understanding of how God ought to work onto Jesus. He is being just as selfish as the people who expect God to help them—and only them—to win the lottery. Peter in the Bible, and the characters in the movie, are setting their minds on human things.
Although the characters in the movie are a caricature, we are often not much different. Of course, we pray for our personal fears, hopes, and concerns, and we are right to do so. But too often, that is all we do. We forget about the bigger picture, about God’s saving work for all creation, instead letting ourselves get stuck on the little personal problems we each face. Like Peter, we try to limit God’s saving work to just us, just the particular sphere we see every day. If Peter had his way, Jesus would never die for the sake of all creation; he would remain a teacher for this particular group of disciples, never truly doing what he came to earth to do. We, too, sometimes believe that God’s scope is the same as our scope. If we limit God to lottery tickets, or limit him to being a teacher, we don’t leave room for God to do God’s work.

Jesus has different ideas. And he doesn’t just leave Peter, or us, with a rebuke. In fact, as soon as he has spoken his harsh words to Peter, he immediately begins to answer the question that must have been on the minds of all the disciples: “Well, if Peter just got it wrong, what are we supposed to be doing? How can we follow a master who is walking into his own grave?” Jesus answers his disciples and speaks to us at the same time: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” It is not enough to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God; true disciples must accept what that means and follow him, even as far as taking up a cross. It seems like madness, to fall into step behind a troublemaker on his way to execution; but it is only madness in the human way of thinking. For God, lowliness, humiliation, and death are the way of true greatness. Indeed, we must act in this way; because attending to the self, focusing on our personal problems, and expecting God to follow us causes us to lose our lives. It is only when we give up the self to Christ, and become part of his greater work, that we truly find life.
To make that sacrifice, to give up ourselves to follow Christ, necessitates that we also give up our ideas of who God is and how he works. We can no longer force God into a mold of our choosing; instead, we must accept that we are created and recreated in his image. When we allow ourselves to see God’s new and unexpected ways of working, we truly see Christ, the Son of Man, in all his glory. To do so, we must get behind him, letting him be the leader, following whatever path he might choose.

That's All, Folks

Did you know that there are only three cognates between ancient Hebrew and English?

Alleluia, Amen, and sack. The bag, not the verb.

Yup.

Highlights

This week has been long, as always, but also quite interesting. I thought I would treat you all to the highlights, since there's no single thing I thought was most suitable for this post.

Our first sermon is due tomorrow for Homiletics. We were allowed to choose any of the Matthew texts in the lectionary, with a few exceptions. I pulled up the lectionary readings and picked one at random. Perhaps not the wisest decision I've ever made; the text I chose was Matthew 10:24-39. If you don't want to look it up, I'll just tell you: this is the passage in which Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother" etc. Not the most cheerful or easy passages to preach. Still, I've decided to stick with it and write the sermon anyway. We'll see how it turns out. If I'm happy with the end result, I'll post it here. That's the advantage of writing a sermon to turn it to a professor; no one else ever has to see or hear it.

In our Old Testament class this week, we covered Genesis. Actually, we spent almost the whole class on the first eleven chapters of Genesis and then ran out of time to cover the rest. One very interesting idea that came up was about the passage in the second creation story (Genesis 2 and 3), regarding the creation of woman out of Adam's side, or rib. The translation "rib" here is a Christian one; Jewish translations always use the word "side". Dr. Stevens indicated that there is an interpretation of this passage in Jewish thought that suggests that the first human, 'adam (the term is gender inclusive, like the Greek 'anthropos'), might actually be a conjoined male-female figure, and the two halves are separated into man (ish) and woman (ishah). Sound familiar? Readers of Plato's Symposium will understand my reaction: holy crap, Aristophanes was right! That's right... the Hebrew tradition suggests an origin of the sexes surprisingly similar to that of Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium. Cool, huh?

In Early Church, our lecture this week was on baptism. As you might imagine, the questions quickly turned to baptism and salvation: is it necessary? Why would it be necessary? What about people who never have the opportunity to be baptized, or who are baptized but then commit terrible sins? Dr. Christianson gave the best explanation I have ever heard, which was simply to say, "Baptism may or may not be necessary for salvation, but it is necessary for the assurance of salvation." I'm sure he's not the first person to come up with this formulation, but it's the first time I have heard it, and it makes far more sense to me than any other explanation I've been offered. It solves so many issues, and clears up so much confusion I've had about baptism in the past. Now, it's not a perfect explanation, of course, and I still have unanswered questions, but it helped a lot.

In Integrative Seminar, we talked about religious illiteracy, which is a scary, scary subject. For a country that thumps its Bible so prodigiously, and that allows religion to influence so many aspects of our society and politics, Americans know shockingly little about their own religion, and even less about other religions. A few years ago, a book was published titled "Religious Literacy"; it sharply pointed out the problem. The author, Stephen Prothero, administers a basic quiz on religion to his undergraduate students. They fail consistently. Check it out to see how you do. I passed, but not with flying colors—I don't know the four noble truths of Buddhism, and I can never remember all seven sacraments (good thing Lutherans only have two!). The answers are at the end of the article, so you can score yourself.

So that's the week in review. Stay tuned for a sermon (maybe) and more news from the Ridge, as they say.

Time flies when you're having... fun?

It's been almost two full weeks since my last post. I actually had to count the days to convince myself, because I was sure I had posted just last week. Oops. Sorry, everyone.

My virtual absence was not a sign that I had fallen off the face of the earth; I've just been extremely busy. The academic work here is easier than St. John's was, but there are a lot more demands on my time. From teaching parish (which has taken about eight hours each of the three Sundays we've gone so far) to time in class and doing homework, to attending chapel during the week and (in my case) choir rehearsals, my days are very full. Add on to that the fact that I'm living in an apartment for essentially the first time in my life, which means I have to take the time to do all the cooking and cleaning as well, and... well, let's just say I miss the carefree and youthful days of college. No matter how much we complained about the terrible cafeteria food, it cannot be denied that we were saved the trouble of both cooking and cleaning up. The point of all this is that I feel rather overwhelmed by all the different commitments that seem to have devoured my free time.

So what, exactly, have I been doing with myself the past two weeks? Classes have been going well, although some are certainly going better than others. Hebrew has been difficult but also rewarding; I can read (albeit slowly) the Hebrew text, and am learning the rudiments of Hebrew vocabulary and grammar. Old Testament thus far has been a rehashing of a lot of things I had learned previously, mostly in the EfM (Education for Ministry) class. Church's Worship is going well, although the lectures are much more engaging than the required readings. Early Church at the moment is the St. John's revival class, with its primary source readings and discussions of Greek philosophy. Homiletics is my least favorite class; I'm finding the required reading useful but the lectures unhelpful. Hopefully it will improve with time. As for Integrative Seminar, the field education is going great—I am very excited about working with Pastor Kevin and Pastor Martha, and the congregation is very friendly to us. We certainly have a lot to learn from all of them.

The readings, quizzes, and written assignments are coming thick and fast now. I'm staying ahead of the curve, but most of the time it feels like only barely. As a result, I'm feeling tired and overwhelmed—but not sorry to be here. There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm settling into the routine more and more each week, and I look forward to what I have ahead of me.

I'll do my best to post again more quickly this time around. Stay tuned!

The Age-Old (Illusory) Debate

Before I get to the age-old debate, I promised I would say something about my first Sunday at Grace Lutheran. If I could describe it in two words, those words would be "great" and "exhausting". Steve and I were there for six hours, not counting our 45 minute drive each way. It didn't help that we had stayed up late the night before. Now we really know what we're in for as regular worship leaders... long, long Sundays.

Grace is also exhausting simply because they have so much going on. Four services every weekend (of which we only went to two), education hour (Sunday school and adult ed), feeding the homeless, confirmation, choir and band, a preschool with over a hundred students, and so on and so forth. It's a large church, at least by Lutheran (i.e. not megachurch) standards. The largest worship service is contemporary; the other three are smaller, traditional services. After going to worship and the education hour and then worship again, and having our picture taken by the self-proclaimed "unofficial" church photographer, and getting the tour of the labyrinthine facilities ("And down these stairs are more classrooms! And up here are more offices! Oh, and this is the other worship space! This is where the choir practices!"), we went out to lunch with Pastor Kevin and Pastor Martha to look at the shape of the semester and get oriented. That meeting sums up the two most exciting things about Teaching Parish right now: working with Pastor Kevin and Pastor Martha, and getting free lunch every Sunday. (I'm being facetious about one of these. Guess which one.) All in all, it should be a great experience, although next week we're going to bed early.

Now for that debate I mentioned: science and religion (cue dramatic music). Now, I realize that my perspective on this one is a little screwed, having one grandfather an engineer and the other grandfather a physicist, my parents a physicist and a mathematician, and growing up in the town that built the atomic bomb—while simultaneously being raised in a very active church life with excellent preaching, thoughtful study, and serious consideration of ministry. But really, why does everyone seem to think that science and religion are so opposed? I'm not talking here about arguments over whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice versa, I'm talking about the fundamental schism everyone seems to identify between the scientific way of viewing the world and the Christian one.

This issue is on my mind because of the book I'm reading for Church's Worship at the moment, titled Inside Out: Worship in an Age of Mission. Let me just say to begin with that I like the book a lot; it has a very interesting perspective about how worship and mission are connected. But in both of the essays I've read so far, the authors take pot shots (it seems to me) at science. In the first essay, Thomas Schattauer says of the thanksgiving (eucharistic) nature of worship, "It orients us to the source of all things, to the almighty and everlasting God, who has created and continually sustains the world and everything in it. [So far, so good, right?] Such a recognition is diminished, if not altogether eliminated, in the scientific rationality that permeates the daily existence of most people." To which I eloquently responded in the margin, "Nuh uh!" Again, in the second essay, Jann Fullenwieder says, "Do we really expect to see God? Because we are versed in scientific and psychological explanations for many of life's questions, many North Americans do not think God is acting in the world."

Now, I don't pretend to understand what these writers meant by "science" in this context. And I certainly appreciate the problem in the attitude held by some (though perhaps we only assume that it is held by some) that science has all the answers, and that having science removes the need for Christianity. Still, I think the language these authors are using goes beyond that radical "scientific" attitude—which, again, I don't think is really a mark of good science at all—to say that any kind of rationality or understanding of science is detrimental to religion. I have found that studying science is almost a kind of worship, that the more I learn about the world (or at least our theories about the world) the more amazed I am. Why should I not say, "Praise God that we could discover from tiny drops of oil that electrical charge has a discrete unit" instead of "Praise God for bunnies"? Why shouldn't our growing knowledge of God's creation make us ever more aware of his role as creator and sustainer of the world? What is the conflict between science and religion that everyone is so worried about? I posit that science and Christianity, when both are understood not as blind following of a principle but as eager and vital exploration, are highly complimentary; they are not opposed at all.

Liturgy, etc.

In Church's Worship this week, we talked about liturgy. Usually, when we use the word liturgy, or say that a church is liturgical, we mean that it has a well-defined order for the service, a template that every worship service follows. Because of that, liturgy can have a pejorative sense of being strict and boring.

However, as many of you may already know, the origin of the word "liturgy" actually means "the work of the people". So in fact, what makes a service liturgical is not how formulaic it is, but rather how participatory it is. As Dr. Oldenburg pointed out, in the original sense of the word, the most liturgical churches in early American history were actually the black churches and the Quakers.

Obviously, Lutheran churches today are liturgical in both senses, but in Church's Worship we're emphasizing the original meaning. As a leader of worship, I could follow the order of the service to the smallest detail, but if the people are not participating, I'm not doing my job. That makes the order of worship a little less intimidating. As Pastor Steve told me about the worship service at ITS, "The Word of God needs to be proclaimed and the Meal shared. Everything else is just details."

In other news, I've received my Teaching Parish assignment. Steve and I are going to be at Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church of Westminster, MD. We're being placed together, which is unusual, because we are a couple, and Grace has a clergy couple, Kevin and Martha, serving as co-senior pastors. We start Teaching Parish tomorrow, and I'll give my impressions of Grace in my next post.

And Thus School Begins Again...

That's right. Another autumn, another academic year. Aside from the first few, there haven't been any years that weren't academic in my life. It's a bit disheartening (or maybe it's just the rainy weather today) to think that I have another four years of school ahead of me, although one of those years will not be strictly academic.

Still, I'm here, I registered for classes, I've been billed for tuition, so I might as well dive in. So far, I've had five of the six classes I'm taking this semester. The last one will begin on Tuesday, but I think I have enough impressions to make my report. As I mentioned in my last post, there was some last-minute shuffling of my schedule, so disregard the course list I posted earlier in the summer. I'm taking Introduction to the Old Testament (this is the one I haven't had yet), Biblical Hebrew, Church's Worship, Integrative Seminar, Early Church and Its Creeds, and Foundations of Homiletical Theory. I'll talk about each one briefly.

Both Intro to the Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew are taught by Dr. Stevens. Hebrew, I can already tell, is going to be my hardest class this semester. Actually, the first three weeks are probably going to be the worst part, as we learn the Hebrew alphabet and learn to read the text aloud. At the moment, my brain is on a constant loop saying, "Aleph... bet... gimel... dalet... he..." and so on. As for Intro to the Old Testament, I haven't had that class yet, so I'll give my impressions sometime in the next week.

Church's Worship is taught jointly by Dr. Oldenburg and Dr. Christianson. It looks like a very interesting and enjoyable class. I'll have it next semester as well. The purpose of the class is to cover all aspects of worship, from music to prayer to the Eucharist to the church building itself. Dr. Oldenburg is truly passionate about worship and also serves as the Dean of the Chapel. It's easy to be infected by his enthusiasm. As for Dr. Christianson, he's also teaching Early Church and Its Creeds, so I'll mention him in a moment.

Integrative Seminar is the class which ties in our field education work with our academic work. This year, we'll be doing Teaching Parish, for which each student is sent to a local church to learn about the congregation and to spend time with its pastor. Dr. Erling and Dr. Avery teach this class together. Dr. Erling indicated to Steve and I that we are actually going to be assigned to a church together, which is somewhat unusual, but they want to assign us to a church which has a clergy couple. I'm excited about that opportunity, although it means Steve and I are literally going to be doing everything together this semester—both classes and Teaching Parish.

Early Church and Its Creeds is a history course primarily. It's taught by Dr. Christianson, who has been teaching at the seminary for over 40 years, so he's obviously a very knowledgable and able professor. The idea of the class is to cover the history of the creeds and the development of the early church, but also to talk about why creeds are important now and how they fit into the worship of the modern church. In that way, it dovetails with Church's Worship.

Last but not least is Foundations of Homiletical Theory—the preaching course. We'll be studying the theory of preaching and applying that knowledge by writing three sermons this semester. Dr. Hedahl is the professor for this course (and, interestingly, she's also the author of one of our required textbooks).

So that's the course load. As I mentioned above, Steve and I are taking all the same classes, and it looks like we'll be at the same Teaching Parish church, so we're seeing a lot of each other these days. Not that I'm complaining, of course, but it's a new experience for us after St. John's, where we never had class together. As the semester progresses, hopefully I'll learn a few interesting pieces of information I can share with you all.

Convocation

Another hurdle down: I've officially been oriented and convocated. Tuesday was a long and overwhelming Presession, and the Convocation ceremony was Wednesday. I've discovered that one of the interesting perks of going to a Lutheran seminary with a long history is that you get a seminary hymn: (for those of you extremely familiar with hymn music, the tune to this is AURELIA)

Serene upon her hill-top,
She reigns these many years,
A mother of God's prophets,
Preceptor of God's seers.
Afar her couriers journey,
Her watchword on each tongue:
"Ecclesia Plantanda,"
From sea to sea is sung.

About her walls the thunders
Of warfare filled the world,
Among her circling treetops,
The smoke of battle curled,
But at her pitying threshold
She bade all strife to cease
Within her walls ruled mercy,
Within her gates dwelt peace.

In love her children gather,
Upon her wooded hills,
And with the oil of wisdom,,
Their lamps again they fill,
O, may they ever find her,
When seeking her they come,
A fount of life and blessing,
Their mother and their home.

-Elsie Singmaster Lewars, 1926

(As an aside, the phrase "Ecclesia Plantanda" means "The church is always being planted," the motto of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, patriarch of American Lutheranism. This information was provided to me along with the hymn in the good Lutheran tradition of leaving no Latin untranslated.)

Classes have now begun at the seminary, although I'm not taking exactly the schedule I signed up for. I'll give a rundown of the classes and professors in my next post.

A new member of our family

Somewhere, my dad is having a heart attack as he reads this. No, it's not what you think. Children, if we have any, are a long way off. The new member of our family is small, four-footed, and covered in white fur. Her name is Kabegami, and we took her home from the Frederick Country Animal Shelter about a week and a half ago. She's a beautiful flame-point Siamese mix, meaning that she's got cream colored fur which goes to orange on her ears, nose, and tail. She also looks like she's got some orange tabby in her, because her tail has these great stripes.

She's a real sweetheart, too... very shy and cautious when we brought her home from the shelter. Although we had expected that, I think we were a little worried at first that she'd never stop being scared of everything. The shelter said she came from a house with 22 cats, all of whom ended up at the shelter when the owners' home was foreclosed. As a result, she's got some personality quirks. She's very needy... if you ignore her for more than a few minutes, she starts crying like she's been abandoned. It also seems that her previous owners must have scolded her by swatting her, because every time Steve or I scolds her for something (we use a squirt bottle), she always flinches when you try to touch her afterward. Still, she's really opened up as she's gotten used to us, and it turns out she's a total goofball. She's still an attention hog (but then, what cat isn't?), but she keeps us laughing with her antics. She's also very good with strangers—instead of running and hiding when new people come over, she demands their attention as eagerly as she demands ours.

So that's about it... no insight this time around. I'm just happy to have a new member in our family.

Small Lessons

I've got a short story this time, but one which I've been keeping in mind during our big transition. As I mentioned in my last post, our apartment was less than ideal when we first arrived. We're pretty happy with it now, and I'm sure it will suit us well over the next year or two. But as I was in the throes of feeling sorry for myself over it last week, I had an encounter with one of my new neighbors.

This lovely woman is living with her husband directly across the hall from Steve and I, in an apartment which is the mirror image of ours. When Steve and I were still furniture-less and I was feeling pretty bad about the apartment, I ran into this neighbor (I think I went over there to borrow a can opener, actually). Now my neighbor is considerably older and wiser than I am, and probably owned a house before she uprooted herself to come to seminary and move into the apartments here. What I'm trying to say is, she (unlike me) is not in her early twenties and living in her first apartment. She probably has the right to expect a lot more from her living space than I do--keep in mind that the last place I lived was a dorm room. So I went next door to borrow a can opener, and my neighbor began praising her new situation. "These apartments are so great! They really did a good job of using every last inch of space." I admit, I was a bit taken aback. Peering suspiciously into her apartment (Did they get a better apartment than we did? Had we been short-changed?), I said cautiously, "Yeah, they're okay. I don't know about yours, but ours is pretty small." She responded enthusiastically, "Sure, they're small, but we have so much cabinet space! And a coat closet--I love having a coat closet!"

Though she had certainly not meant her comments in this spirit, I felt quite ashamed of myself. What do I have to complain about, after all? We have the space we need, and the rent is really good, and yes, we do have a coat closet. I should be trying to foster the same attitude of enthusiasm and grace my neighbor shows. Perhaps it's grace that comes with age, not a better apartment. And it's these role models who make me really glad I've come here. I have a lot still to learn, and learning often doesn't need or want a classroom. Sometimes all we need is a really good neighbor.

Moving

As promised, a rundown of the moving process, now that things have finally come together here in our new apartment.

Steve and I got a moving cube through ABF shipping--the company drops it off at your house, you load it up, they move it for you. Our cube was delivered last Tuesday, and of course it was delivered three hours late. We were only able to start loading around 1:30 in the afternoon, finished around 3:00, and then had several other errands to run. In the end, we left Santa Fe at 5:30 in the evening and still drove five hours, which took us to Vega, Texas.

Wednesday was a long driving day on I-40 and then I-44 all the way through Oklahoma and Missouri. We stopped just outside of St. Louis Wednesday night. Thursday we went across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, stopping in western Pennsylvania. Then Friday we just had a short three hour trek into Gettysburg.

When we arrived, our apartment was... well, perhaps the best word for it is depressing. It's quite small, but we knew it would be; the real problem is how blindingly unattractive it is. The design style for the apartment is something like country rustic meets seventies, which is a problem when Steve likes Asian decorating styles and I like New Mexican. The carpet is green. If you're designing an apartment which will see many tenants over the years, wouldn't you put in a neutral color of carpeting? Maybe? Likewise with the hideous blue-green tile in the bathroom. To walk in the door of the apartment and see literally nothing but green carpet, blue-green tile, and fake wood cabinets was hard on the psyche.

Since then, it's been nonstop work for us. We've made two trips down the Baltimore (an hour and a half drive) to get to the nearest IKEA store to buy furniture. (If it weren't already obvious that this is our first apartment, that would give it away.) It seems that every day we come up with some day-long project that sends us wandering over the countryside of south-central Pennsylvania and Maryland. One big project was buying a mattress and box spring (no bed frame as yet), which was a high priority since we were sleeping on the floor until then. On Monday, we rented a U-Haul and went to pick up our things from the moving cube, and the boxes are finally all unpacked. That means we actually have pots and pans to cook on in our kitchen, and a bed to sleep in. After our most recent trip to IKEA and a long night of furniture building and rearranging, the apartment is finally coming together. We covered up a large portion of the carpet with an area rug, bought a lamp to lighten up the room, and a few pieces of furniture to make it more livable. Once we get curtains over the windows and pictures on the walls, it should be just about perfect.

Classes start after Labor Day, since we're not doing summer Greek with the other new students. Coming up soon: getting a cat and buying books for class. Stay tuned!