Today's Scripture Reading
Matthew 21: 12-22 (NRSV)
Blog Reflection
One day while I was looking up blogs to find ideas to help me write my own blog, I came across one with a photograph that struck me.
The photograph to my left was found on Heaven and Earth along with the title: "Guess Who's Coming to Wall Street". The blog author Fr. Paul Bresnahan writes exceptional blog posts about the Church being a house of prayer for all people. He has written passionate posts about why the Church needs to include LGBT people in our houses of worship.
The sign that this individual dressed as Jesus is holding reads: "I Threw Out the Money Lenders for A Reason." The sign makes a reference to the Gospel used in today's Daily Office. The figure and words are there as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
One explanation of this Gospel is that Jesus chased out the money lenders because he was angry that money had become more important than worshiping God in the temple. Jesus was making a statement that God's House was a place of prayer, not a place where thieves get away with stealing.
The Occupy protestors are calling on those who make quarterly profits higher than 3 family units make in a year, to allow those families who don't make quite that much money to have a shot at a better life for themselves and those they love.
What Jesus is saying in the first part of this Gospel is let the House of God be a place of prayer where all people can come and worship. Let everyone who wants to come pray, sing and rejoice in the presence of God without taking the dignity away from the people who come there. When people from all walks of life come to pray in God's Holy Place, they come with burdens all ready too heavy to carry alone. The Church is challenged in this 21st Century to allow individual people to come to God as they are, with their own unique ways of thinking, believing and even behaving without high expectations.
Included in today's Gospel is the story of Jesus interacting with children and praying with faith so that we may receive what God wants for us. In each situation, we see and hear Jesus telling us to let children come and offer their praise to God, and pray to God with the willingness to accept God's will so that good things can happen.
It is a very difficult experience for a young woman or man to grow up in a world and be taught in local church communities about God and their faith, and then discover in their youth years that she is a lesbian and/or he is gay. When a woman or man knows that she is attracted to both women and men, or a man is attracted to both proves to be bisexual, their greatest fear is their attraction to a person of the same sex. As youth wonder what is going on in their minds and bodies as they react very differently compared to their peers, they risk harassment the possibility of violence that is so self destructive. And if that is not enough, to hear sermons about how God condemns all homosexual acts, while many pastors ignore their own crimes of misappropriation of Parish funds, etc, is so confusing to an LGBT youth who just wants to better understand who they are, and who they love. Many are told to pray with faith so that God may change them from gay to straight, or go to an ex-gay group. Parents of LGBTQ youth are told to attend PFOX or Encourage (The Catholic churches' companion ex-gay group for parents of LGBTQ people) to change.
LGBTQ youth can give praise to God, because God gives all children a heart to sing and rejoice in God's gifts. The Church can play a vital active role in helping all children learn to accept and embrace different kinds of people. When the Church embraces all children including LGBTQ youth, the lessons of inclusion can help them through life's toughest challenges.
What LGBTQ people often grow up to understand that their prayers for God to change them are answered. Their faith has not mislead them. The theology of their Parish Priests have been misleading them.
In today's Forward Day by Day there is a great meditation on the ending for today's Gospel.
Even though Christianist organizations such as NOM, FRC, AFA and others continue to turn churches and our government into a den of thieves through billions of dollars in lobbying money and breaks the commandment to not "bear false witness against thy neighbor", God continues to bless this world with loving and holy LGBT people, relationships and families.
Among the many challenges for the Church in 2011 is to understand that God works with and through people regardless of whether we like how they live, worship, love and think. The Christian Faith through it's various expressions is not a religion of one group has it totally right, while others are completely off center. The Christian Faith also "does not hold a monopoly on truth" for those who do not share what Christians believe. All of the preaching and targeting of other people and religions that do not participate in ultra-conservative Christianist ways, do not help the Christian religion maintain our greatness. If anything, it is taking the name of Jesus Christ in vein to mean something Jesus never conveyed in his words and/or actions.
Matthew 21: 12-22 (NRSV)
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, ‘How did the fig tree wither at once?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea”, it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.’
Blog Reflection
One day while I was looking up blogs to find ideas to help me write my own blog, I came across one with a photograph that struck me.
The sign that this individual dressed as Jesus is holding reads: "I Threw Out the Money Lenders for A Reason." The sign makes a reference to the Gospel used in today's Daily Office. The figure and words are there as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
One explanation of this Gospel is that Jesus chased out the money lenders because he was angry that money had become more important than worshiping God in the temple. Jesus was making a statement that God's House was a place of prayer, not a place where thieves get away with stealing.
The Occupy protestors are calling on those who make quarterly profits higher than 3 family units make in a year, to allow those families who don't make quite that much money to have a shot at a better life for themselves and those they love.
What Jesus is saying in the first part of this Gospel is let the House of God be a place of prayer where all people can come and worship. Let everyone who wants to come pray, sing and rejoice in the presence of God without taking the dignity away from the people who come there. When people from all walks of life come to pray in God's Holy Place, they come with burdens all ready too heavy to carry alone. The Church is challenged in this 21st Century to allow individual people to come to God as they are, with their own unique ways of thinking, believing and even behaving without high expectations.
Included in today's Gospel is the story of Jesus interacting with children and praying with faith so that we may receive what God wants for us. In each situation, we see and hear Jesus telling us to let children come and offer their praise to God, and pray to God with the willingness to accept God's will so that good things can happen.
It is a very difficult experience for a young woman or man to grow up in a world and be taught in local church communities about God and their faith, and then discover in their youth years that she is a lesbian and/or he is gay. When a woman or man knows that she is attracted to both women and men, or a man is attracted to both proves to be bisexual, their greatest fear is their attraction to a person of the same sex. As youth wonder what is going on in their minds and bodies as they react very differently compared to their peers, they risk harassment the possibility of violence that is so self destructive. And if that is not enough, to hear sermons about how God condemns all homosexual acts, while many pastors ignore their own crimes of misappropriation of Parish funds, etc, is so confusing to an LGBT youth who just wants to better understand who they are, and who they love. Many are told to pray with faith so that God may change them from gay to straight, or go to an ex-gay group. Parents of LGBTQ youth are told to attend PFOX or Encourage (The Catholic churches' companion ex-gay group for parents of LGBTQ people) to change.
LGBTQ youth can give praise to God, because God gives all children a heart to sing and rejoice in God's gifts. The Church can play a vital active role in helping all children learn to accept and embrace different kinds of people. When the Church embraces all children including LGBTQ youth, the lessons of inclusion can help them through life's toughest challenges.
What LGBTQ people often grow up to understand that their prayers for God to change them are answered. Their faith has not mislead them. The theology of their Parish Priests have been misleading them.
In today's Forward Day by Day there is a great meditation on the ending for today's Gospel.
Here’s a promise from the mouth of Jesus that has perplexed people. I’m probably not the only one who, having heard these words as a youngster, thought to myself: If I just pray and believe hard enough, I’ll get whatever I ask for. Some adults may have thought the same way. To do so is to ask to be disappointed or disillusioned. Just what did Jesus mean when he said those words?
The key word is faith. Faith isn’t just believing something (or, as Mark Twain said, “believing what you know ain’t so”). It’s not about what you believe, but a relationship based on trust and surrender. Sometimes people of faith believe things that are mistaken, including things about God and the ways of God. But their prayers are acts of trust and surrender to a God whom they may understand only slightly. A faithful prayer is one that accords with God’s will and aligns the will of the pray-er to the will of God. When such a prayer includes a request (and it is appropriate to ask God for things), it is a request that God bring his purposes to fruition and that nothing in us will stand in the way.
The reason God does not change LGBTQ people is because God has created, redeemed and continues to sanctify us for God's purposes. God performs God's work of salvation in and through LGBTQ people to love ourselves and others around us as God joyfully and wonderfully made us to do. (See Psalm 139: 14).
Even though Christianist organizations such as NOM, FRC, AFA and others continue to turn churches and our government into a den of thieves through billions of dollars in lobbying money and breaks the commandment to not "bear false witness against thy neighbor", God continues to bless this world with loving and holy LGBT people, relationships and families.
Among the many challenges for the Church in 2011 is to understand that God works with and through people regardless of whether we like how they live, worship, love and think. The Christian Faith through it's various expressions is not a religion of one group has it totally right, while others are completely off center. The Christian Faith also "does not hold a monopoly on truth" for those who do not share what Christians believe. All of the preaching and targeting of other people and religions that do not participate in ultra-conservative Christianist ways, do not help the Christian religion maintain our greatness. If anything, it is taking the name of Jesus Christ in vein to mean something Jesus never conveyed in his words and/or actions.
Prayers
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (First Sunday of Advent, Book of Common Prayer, page 211).O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer, page 815).
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