You Anoint My Head With Oil

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There was a healing service tonight for a woman whose cancer has returned, or perhaps never left.  She received the anointing with oil, as well as many prayers for her strength and healing.  Olive oil is an ancient symbol of God’s healing presence: ‘You anoint my head with oil.’ (Ps 23.5)  We held the service in the chancel as people stood in a circle around the altar. There were long periods of silent prayer, and afterward people lingered as if they did not want to part.  During the service we sang an evening hymn.

All praise to thee, my God, this night,
for all the blessings of the light!
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
beneath thine own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for thy dear Son,
the ill that I this day have done,
that with the world, myself, and thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

Teach me to live, that I may dread
the grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die, that so I may
rise glorious at the judgment day.

O may my soul on thee repose,
and with sweet sleep mine eyelids close,
sleep that may me more vigorous make
to serve my God when I awake.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
praise him, all creatures here below;
praise him above, ye heavenly host;
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

It’s one of my favorite hymns, but the third verse was hard to sing in light of cancer.  You can listen to the melody here.

(Image:  The Olive Trees by Van Gogh)

Two Questions About Ordination

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Last Wednesday I attended a meeting of the Committee On Preparation for Ministry (CPM), which oversees persons in the process of becoming ordained as Presbyterian ministers.  A five hour meeting plus travel time on either side made for a full day.

Presbyterians have polity — rules on how the denomination governs itself.  A meeting of the CPM involves lots of polity talk.  You must follow rules, and to find a particular rule you reference handbooks and statements of procedure.  Problem is, I do not have a polity friendly brain.  Polity gives me a headache.  There are good people at these meetings — kind and courteous — but the subject matter is difficult to absorb.  I need a long slow dose of silence afterward to collect myself again.

I don’t talk much at these meetings, but I think a lot.  Two questions about ordination kept bubbling to the surface of my mind.

  1. Why are there ordination exams?  Our denomination requires five ordination exams:  Bible Content, Theology, Worship and Sacraments, Polity (of course), and Biblical Exegesis.  This is in addition to a three-year Master of Divinity program.  Why the extra layer of exams on top of all the exams students take in their course of study?  Why is a theological degree from an accredited seminary not sufficient?
  2. Why is there ordination at all?  Long ago ministry became a profession.  But I see little support in the New Testament for a class (ordo) of religious professionals.  Actually, the ordained clergy in Jesus’ day were outside of his movement and critical of it.  Jesus chose leaders with no theological education or religious credentials.  Proximity to him was the sole qualification. 

These questions aren’t new.  They probably are naive.  But they were in my mind this week during all the polity talk.

Use Your Tall Mouth

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At 8:15 on Sunday mornings I rehearse with our choir, in preparation for the 9:30 service.  Behind our fine director this image of an open mouth hangs on the bulletin board.  I suppose it is intended to remind us to open our mouths widely as we sing.  This is only my second year in the choir, but I have enjoyed my time very much.  Different voices in a choir blend together in harmony to create beauty that touches the heart.  It always helps, though, if you use your tall mouth.

Chemotherapy As a Divine Devouring Fire

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A woman comes to terms with her illness and its treatment:

I have been diagnosed with stage three colon cancer.  I don’t think of myself as being sick: I think of myself as having a diagnosis.  I don’t want to be defined by the cancer, or by chemotherapy.  But whether you like it or not, having it does change your relationships.

I was very careful about how I told my children, but I have been much more relaxed with friends.  Some have been fantastic.  Others are literally shattered by the news, or can’t handle it at all.  I can understand that, but it’s been quite hard when I really wanted a particular friend to be there for me.  She simply can’t do it.

Quite a few people respond by saying things like “You’ll be fine — I know you will.”  On the one hand, it helps me to see a future in which I will be fine.  On the other, of course, they don’t know I will be fine — especially with such a diagnosis.

What has been most helpful is having friends and family who are willing to spend time with me, and being okay with what’s happening to me.

I don’t see what has happened as a punishment or a judgment.  I am frightened of pain, but I am not frightened of dying.  I would like to have a spiritually conscious death — to know I am dying, to be able to say all my goodbyes, and to embrace the dying moment.

I haven’t felt sad either.  I have so much love around me from family and friends.  So maybe I haven’t had time, or I just don’t feel it.  My cancer has instilled a deep sense of gratitude in me.  I am so grateful to have seen my children grow up.  I am also deeply grateful for what I have each day.  It makes me live in the moment.

At the same time, I have had to learn to compromise.  Initially I did not want to have chemotherapy — I have seen what it can do to others suffering from cancer.  But my children and my husband thought otherwise.  I didn’t want them to feel angry with me for not trying to save my life.

Therefore I have had to change my perception of chemotherapy from a toxic poison to a healer.  So when I go for treatments I talk to my cancer, and invite in my healer and surrender to what I call a divine devouring fire.  It makes it much easier.

Alys, age 54
From The D-Word: Talking About Dying

Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed

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Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed.  By Bruce Epperly.  This book is a progressive systematic theology, written by a professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.  It was challenging because the ideas are abstract, but I am less perplexed by process theology now having read it, so the author must have achieved his aim.  Epperly surveys the typical categories in systematic theology: God, Christ, the Trinity, Humanity, Ethics, the Church, and the Afterlife, among others.  He treats each in a progressive, process-oriented way, drawing inspiration chiefly from Alfred North Whitehead, whom he quotes liberally, as well as a range of contemporary process theologians.

Two aspects of this book intrigued me.  First, he portrays God in a dynamic ‘call and response’ relationship with all creation.  Call and response, at least as I have heard the term, is a kind of preaching found in black and Pentecostal churches where the congregation responds verbally and physically to the call they hear in the preaching.  Thinking of God as the divine preacher whose call we are to respond to was a good insight.  Second, I appreciated the book’s treatment of Jesus’ healings, which Epperly considers genuine.  (Although he avoids words like ‘miracle’ since that implies a supernatural intervention foreign to process thought.)  Jesus, for Epperly, had a way of interacting with people in need, drawing faith out of them, and in that joint encounter a field of energy emerged that tapped into the healing powers inherent in reality.

Jesus’ healing power was not coercive, but reflected God’s dynamic power embodied in the synergetic interplay of God’s universal aim at wholeness, the faith of those he touched, and the faith of gathered friends and communities.

In this same vein, Epperly believes in the value of intercessory prayer as a way to make communal contact with these mysterious healing energies.

After finishing this book I was left with a question.  In process theology, can you still speak of God as the Creator, and the universe as the creation?  In its embrace of panentheism, process thought emphasizes the presence of God in all things and the presence of all things in God.  So rather than Creator, it appeared to me that the God in process thought is more First Citizen of the Universe — a universe which has always been in one form or other and which is included in God’s own being.  In process theology, God is not distinct from the universe in the way the Creator and creation are distinct in classical Christian thought.  In line with this, process thought cannot well account for the ‘necessary absence’ of God that a distinction between Creator and creation entails for human experience.  It seems possible to me to maintain a classical distinction of Creator and creation while at the same time seeing a dynamic relationship between God and the universe envisioned in process thought, a relationship in which the Creator draws the creation on toward deeper experiences of beauty, wholeness and love.

All in all, to a novice like me this book was a good introduction to process theology, and I assume its ideas will continue to percolate.

Letters by a Modern Mystic

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Letters by a Modern Mystic.  By Frank Laubach.  Laubach served as a missionary and educator in the Philippines in the first part of the 20th century.  He developed a technique for teaching literacy that is credited with eventually changing the lives of millions of people.  This book is a collection of letters he wrote to his father in the early 1930s in which he outlines his chief spiritual practice.  In the tradition of Brother Lawrence, Laubach sought to keep God in mind every waking moment.  He wanted to live in daily dependence on God, hourly attentiveness to God.  His letters record his attempts at this, his failures and his life-transforming successes.  He saw God in the beauty of nature — sunsets were a particular favorite — as well as in the face of each person he met.  This practice often led him into contentment and joy.  Even in the difficult times, too, he sensed God’s love and nearness:

Tonight, lonesome and half ill with a cold, I am learning from experience that there is a deep peace that grows out of illness and loneliness and a sense of failure.  These things do drive me up my hill to God, and then there comes into my soul through the very tears a comfort which is so much better than laughter.

His hill was Signal Hill, Mindanao, Philippines.  It was the ‘lonely place’ he went to in order to commune with God, as Jesus did (Mark 1.35).  That practice also helped him find God everywhere and in all people.  This is a beautiful book, lyrical and simple to read.  But not easy to put in practice.

Walking In Nook-Land

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Time was when Barnes & Noble was my favorite store, or at least with its cousin Borders it was in the top tier of places to go on a day off.  I loved to wander the aisles and look at all the possibilities.  Preferred sections included Christianity, Bibles, History, Literature and Philosophy.  At times I might also wander over to the music section and browse CDs, or stand at the shelves of blank journals and imagine filling one of them. 

But I have frequented bookstores less and less in recent years, and since purchasing a Kindle e-reader in the fall of 2010 I have hardly browsed the stacks at all.  I do all of my reading on Kindle now, with the exception of professional books already on my shelves or unavailable on Kindle.  My wife bought me a leather cover from Oberon Design, and this offers a tactile feel when I open the Kindle to read.  I don’t miss the touch of pages.  I also like how easy it is to enlarge the font on Kindle, making it gentler on aging eyes.

An old friend stayed with us for Christmas and gave me a gift card to Barnes & Noble.  Here in Adrian you have a choice between the store in Ann Arbor or in Toledo, each an hour away.  I went to the one on Monroe Street in Toledo.  On walking in, I noticed how much B&N is pushing their e-reader, the Nook.  You must walk through Nook-Land to get to the books.  Their advertising proclaimed the Nook as the world’s best selling e-reader, but I know far more Kindle owners than Nook owners.  It felt odd walking in Nook-Land, to be honest, since I am betrothed to its enemy.

The children’s section has spilled out into the main store in row on row of toys.  It was not always so.  I wandered through my old sections, Christianity, History, and the rest, but they have shrunk since I once knew them.  I saw a few intriguing titles, including The Warmth of Other Suns, which is on my reading list.  But each time an inner dialogue began, “I can get this for less on Kindle, and when it’s finished I won’t have to worry about where to store it.”  In the end I conceded defeat and left Barnes & Noble without a book.

The demise of Borders was sad news in Michigan.  I hope Barnes & Noble continues to live.  But the reality is my Kindle has given me little urge to go to bookstores anymore.  My library is in my hand.  Amazon wants me to graduate to the Kindle Fire, but I am resisting that lure because it offers too many distractions to reading.  There is value in a device that limits options and allows you only to do one thing.

The issue remains, though, of what to do with the gift card.  Perhaps I can find a DVD on the Barnes & Noble website.

(Kindle image from Wikimedia Commons)

Old Grave Stones

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There is a cemetery west of Hudson on M-34.  I saw it along the highway on a trip to Hillsdale to visit a parishioner in an assisted living facility.  The row of grave stones rose out of the ground like the tree trunks behind.  Old grave markers have character.

Swan Creek

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Today we went down to the Swan Creek Retirement Village in Toledo where we picked up my mother and took her out for a New Year’s dinner.  Mom lives in an independent living apartment at Swan Creek, but there are times when she has needed the skilled nursing care wing after recovering from surgery.  She enjoys her life and friends there, and it gives us peace of mind knowing she is in a place where her needs can be met.  She will turn 87 next month.  I’ll return to Swan Creek Wednesday to lead their vespers service.

Mystery All the Way Down

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An article on medical research, noting how knowing more information does not necessarily lead to cures for illness.  The body is simply too complex a system to predict what will happen with a certain drug or treatment is tried.  The problem is as much philosophical as it is scientific, since our understanding of cause and effect is limited.

David Hume referred to causality as “the cement of the universe.” He was being ironic, since he knew that this so-called cement was a hallucination, a tale we tell ourselves to make sense of events and observations. No matter how precisely we knew a given system, Hume realized, its underlying causes would always remain mysterious, shadowed by error bars and uncertainty. Although the scientific process tries to makes sense of problems by isolating every variable—imagining a blood vessel, say, if HDL alone were raised—reality doesn’t work like that. Instead, we live in a world in which everything is knotted together, an impregnable tangle of causes and effects. Even when a system is dissected into its basic parts, those parts are still influenced by a whirligig of forces we can’t understand or haven’t considered or don’t think matter. Hamlet was right: There really are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy…

And yet, we must never forget that our causal beliefs are defined by their limitations. For too long, we’ve pretended that the old problem of causality can be cured by our shiny new knowledge. If only we devote more resources to research or dissect the system at a more fundamental level or search for ever more subtle correlations, we can discover how it all works. But a cause is not a fact, and it never will be; the things we can see will always be bracketed by what we cannot. And this is why, even when we know everything about everything, we’ll still be telling stories about why it happened. It’s mystery all the way down.

It is amazing how often I assume that Y must have been caused by X.  Yet do I really know this?  Apparently not.  It makes for more reticence and modesty in speaking of things.

Fresh Sap

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From Rufus Jones (1863-1948), Quaker writer and humanitarian:

When a man’s praying sinks into words, words, words, it means that he is trying to get along with a dead conception of God.  The circuit no longer closes.  He cannot heighten his prayer by raising his voice.  What he needs is a new revelation of the reality of God.  He needs to have the fresh sap of living faith in God to push off the dead leaves of an outgrown belief, so that once more prayer shall break forth as naturally as buds in spring.

[God] is a being who can pour His life and energy into human souls, even as the sun can flood the world with light and resident forces, or as the sea can send its refreshing tides into all the bays and inlets of the coast, or as the atmosphere can pour its life-giving supplies into the fountains of the blood in the meeting place of the lungs; or, better still, as the mother fuses her spirit into the spirit of her responsive child, and lays her mind on him until he believes in her belief.

May you find fresh sap in the new year.

My 5 Best Bits of Writing in 2011

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I looked through the blog and picked the five best bits of writing this year, at least to me, excluding book reviews (many of those) and sermons.

How God Guides Us.  An experience on the way home from Virginia involving car trouble and the need for guidance.

Post Denominational Christian. Going to a presbytery meeting and meditating on struggles with institutional religion.

When I Thought of Suicide.  Remembering a difficult night.

Love In the Ruins.  A mission trip to Detroit with a great group of youth and adults.

Canon, Chaos and Communion.  Serving the sacrament poorly but learning that grace lies underneath it all.

Grief Shatters

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Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry, by Melissa M. Kelley, professor at Boston College School of Theology.  Kelley has written a beautiful and well researched study on the experience of grief.  Rather than see grief as a linear process of stages, she sees grief as a mosaic made up of many bits and pieces unique to each individual.  She looks at the ways grief shatters our natural attachments in life, leading us to despair, lost meaning, and an inability to understand our stories any longer.  At the same time, though, the love of God, embodied in the life of Christ, lies always underneath our journey of loss, holding us up and beckoning us to find healing and wholeness.  Ministers, she says, are uniquely positioned to point the grieving toward sources of hope again.  Along the way Kelley blends insights from literature, case studies and contemporary psychology, but the ‘secure base’ she returns to again and again is the gospel of God’s love in Christ.  This book helped me better understand the grieving, and it gave me a deeper appreciation for my own griefs and losses, which are like small tiles God has included in the mosaic of my life.  This is a fine and thoughtful book.

Alternative Nativities

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Michael K. Marsh, an Episcopal priest in Texas, reflects on alternative nativities in this Christmas Eve sermon:

The image of sweet baby Jesus asleep on the hay has given way to a vision of God who is wide awake, present, among us, concerned and involved in every aspect of our life. A God who longs for humanity and desires that we would share and actively participate in the divine life through Jesus’ birth, has replaced my image of Mary and Joseph as calm, peaceful, and exceptionally holy spectators of the baby in a manger. That God chooses to enter into and experience the messiness of real life, my life and your life, offers me more hope than the image of a manger drenched in the warm glow of candlelight and filled with soft fuzzy animals and gentle shepherds.

At Christmas I often think of Dorothea Lange’s famous Migrant Mother photo (above) as an alternative nativity scene.

Mr and Mrs Santa

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On Wednesday my wife and I posed as Mr and Mrs Santa for two classes of preschool children in Sand Creek, south of Adrian.  She made the costumes a few years ago and plans these outings each December.  It always works best when she comes along because then she can do most of the talking — Santa is shy, you see, and basically afraid of children.  But it is a sweet thing for us to bring Christmas joy to children.  I only have enough introvert energy for one Santa outing per season.  As you can see above, the suit does bring out the playful side in me.  To learn about the origin of the Santa suit, go here.

Longest Night Service Meditation

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Unwanted Journeys (Luke 2.1-7)

In the Tuesday Advent study, we’ve read Adam Hamilton’s book The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem.  For me, the best part of the book was on Mary’s trip to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus.

She wanted to give birth in her home town of Nazareth, but the Roman census made them go to Bethlehem.  There were logistical issues, and Mary gave birth in a stable.  The equivalent now — a garage.

Adam Hamilton says:

“Mary sat on the birthing stool [and] between contractions she must have been forcing back tears.  This was not how it was supposed to be — giving birth in [a] barn.  I imagine the midwife saying, ‘Child, it’s going to be all right.  Trust me.  I’ve delivered in worse settings.  At least you have your privacy.  I’m here, and God is here, and you’re going to be fine.’”

Mary made an unwanted journey to Bethlehem, but she had support, and it turned out all right.

Many years ago I made a journey from Nevada to Michigan.  A church in Blissfield called me to be its pastor.  I didn’t want to come.  I didn’t want to leave my home in Nevada.  I was so scared.

On the trip, the thing that worried me most was where I’d find diesel for the truck.  At the first truck stop, a trucker saw me staring at the pump.  He took the nozzle and said, “Here, let me show you how to do it.”  Like Mary’s midwife, he helped me do something I’d never done.

Once I got to Michigan, I found my calling as a pastor, and I found my wife Linda.  Everything turned out okay.  God was watching over me.

We will take unwanted journeys in life.  Illness is an unwanted journey.  Grief is an unwanted journey.  No one wants to take these trips.

Death is an unwanted journey too.  I’ve seen a lot of people die, but only a few who wanted to die — usually the very old who had waited long enough.  Most of us love the people in our life and don’t want to leave them.

But I know two things about death.  First, we are all dying.  Some more quickly, and most of us more slowly.  Second, faith tells us death is a door.  We step through the door into everlasting life.  Death looks different on God’s side of the door than on our side.  God knows this last journey scares us, so God promises to walk with us every step.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Horse and His Boy.  In the story, one night a boy is walking alone on a mountain road.  There is no moon, no light, total darkness.  He must feel his way forward.  Suddenly, Aslan walks next to him.  (Aslan the lion is Jesus in the land of Narnia.)  They talk for a while, and then Aslan disappears.  In the dark, the boy never sees him but only hears his voice.

The next day the boy is walking back the same road in the mountains.  He sees a sheer cliff on one side.  It would be easy to fall.  He realizes on the night before Aslan was walking between him and the cliff.

If you are on an unwanted journey tonight, feeling your way along in the dark, know that Christ walks beside you.  He protects you from falling, and he promises to bring you safely home.

The Art of Dying

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The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come, by Rob Moll.  The title to this book intrigued me most.  The art of dying, or ars moriendi, is an old practice in the church that Rob Moll is trying to revive and reinterpret for today.  As this book presents it, the art of dying has at least six sides to it.  First, there is awareness.  A hundred years ago most deaths happened in the home, and then the deceased was laid out for viewing there.  These things happen now in hospitals and funeral homes.  Death has become remote to our experience.  With its preoccupation with youth and beauty, too, our culture conspires to hide death and the process of dying.  So the art of dying begins with a willingness to pay attention to the fact of death, the inevitability of death for each of us.

Second, communication.  Talk about death now before the days of crisis come.  It’s hard to have conversations about death in an intensive care unit if the subject has been taboo until then.  Moll sees a place for living wills and the like, but these cannot take the place of heartfelt discussion about the reality of our death and the way in which we wish to die.  Third, there is presence.  When someone is dying, we seldom know what to say to them, and so we avoid them or remain quiet in an embarrassed silence.  But the best way we can care for the dying — apart from the medical attention they require — is simply to be present with them.  Visit them, sit with them, share life with them, and pray with them.  A simple presence can bring grace and peace to the dying.  These visits are also a time to say the last four things one needs to say to the dying:  forgive me, I forgive you, thank you, I love you.

Fourth, ritual.  The book recounts traditional rituals that have accompanied death: visitation with the family (and the dead), a procession to the grave, and a service of worship at the church, among others.  These rituals help share the burden of grief in a wider community.  Moll admires the old church buildings, with the graveyard on the property, so that the community of faith includes the living and those who have fallen ‘asleep in the Lord.’  He urges churches to be creative in finding ways to include the aged and the dying in their faith community so they are not forgotten.  Fifth, lament.  The mourning need generous space to grieve and to weep.  There is a time honored place for lament in the life of faith.  Moll counsels against praising those who have lost loved ones for going back to normal living as soon as possible.  Life will not be normal again.  There will be a new life for the grieving, and it will take time to find it.  And sixth, hope.  The book stresses the hope present now in the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of eternal life.  Death remains an enemy, but a defeated one we need not fear.

Dying is an art only because through it God is at work.  Only in God’s hand can something ugly and terrible be transformed into a thing of beauty and purpose.  In the end death is as mysterious as resurrection.  In our churches we spiritually enter into Christ’s death and resurrection in the waters of baptism.  In the same way, we must practice for our deaths, prepare to care for others as they face it and look for the hand of God who welcomes us through death to life everlasting.

Rob Moll is a journalist and an editor with Christianity Today magazine.  His book is written in an open, accessible style, full of real life stories and devotional warmth.

(picture of Hudson cemetery by Lad Strayer)

Creature Comforts

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Our hot water heater quit on Monday.  The pilot would not relight, nor could I find a way to replace the thermocouple, which may have been the culprit.  But the tank was also cracked and leaking, and so it was time to replace the 18-year old unit.  The new one was installed this morning, a Reliance 606.  It’s lovely to have hot water again.  In the absence of hot water, I worked out a different morning routine.  I put a pot of water on the stove to heat while I washed my hair (brrr) and shaved in cold water.  By then, the water in the kitchen had warmed.  I filled the bathroom sink with it for a sponge bath.  I got clean and probably used a lot less water in the process.  But I missed the ease and comfort of having hot water available at the turn of a knob.  I love my little creature comforts.

John Haught’s Vision

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Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life, by Catholic theologian John F. Haught.  Take a book from the shelf and open to a page.  There are different reasons for the words you find on the page.  At a chemical level, words are there because of the way ink bonds with paper.  At a grammatical level, words are in the order they are because of laws of syntax and language.  At a deeper level, words are on the page because there is an author communicating ideas to you, and a publisher who sponsored the work.  Each level of explanation makes sense in its own sphere and compliments the others.

This analogy appears in Making Sense of Evolution, providing an image John Haught uses to explain how science and theology can coexist on different layers of meaning.  From a scientific view, evolution is a natural process that accounts for the origin and diversity of life on earth; from a theological view, evolution is part of a deeper drama of life in the universe, unfinished and still unfolding, with its ground and goal in the compassionate love of God.  In addition to Darwin, Haught’s dialogue partners are the Bible, Tillich, Whitehead, and above all Teihard de Chardin; as well as, in a negative way, evolutionary materialists like Jerry Coyne, whose militant atheism and materialism Haught finds self-contradictory and self-defeating:

Evolutionary materialism is compelled by the logic of its own belief system to make cosmic mindlessness the ultimate foundation and explanation of the human mind.

Haught saves his most explicit discussion of God and theology for the last chapter, but I found his earlier asides and fragments of his final vision to be more intriging and compelling:

If redemption is a realistic possibility, the series of events that make up the life-story of the larger universe must flow into the bosom of an everlasting compassion that saves it all from final nothingness and rescues it from eventual incoherence.

In spite of the pain, suffering and uncertainties of life, we all flow into the heart of an everlasting compassion, as drops of water collect in a river that flows down to the sea.  The river analogy is inexact, though; the universe does not become God, as a river is absorbed into an ocean.  But in a cosmic timeline, the universe is to be transformed into a suitable dwelling place of God.  This is John Haught’s vision, as far as I could grasp it.

If you are looking for a thoughtful and at times lyrical look at the relationship between Christian faith and evolution, John Haught does not disappoint.

The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem

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The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem.  By Adam Hamilton.  We have been using this book and its companion DVD in a series of studies during the season of Advent.  Upwards of 25 people have joined me in reading the text, watching the video segments (filmed on location in the Holy land), and discussing how the events around the birth of Jesus impact our lives.  All of the material has been very well received.  The book is thoughtful and written for a popular audience.  He takes a traditional approach to the historicity of the events, looking for ways things may have happened; at the same time he is aware of critical questions on the birth narratives, and he will at times allude to them.  He divides his material into five chapters:

  1. Mary of Nazareth
  2. Joseph of Bethlehem
  3. Mary’s Visit to Elizabeth
  4. From Nazareth to Bethlehem
  5. The Manger

Hamilton has a good homiletical eye: he knows what will preach and how to make connections between the biblical story and our everyday life.  This from chapter 4 on Mary’s ‘unwanted journey’ to Bethlehem was powerful to me:

We will each take unwanted journeys in life.  I think of those I know who have been laid off work; those battling cancer; a family who has struggled with drug addiction; people I see whose spouses have left; parents who have lost children.  You know plenty of others, I’m sure.  Life will have its moments of disappointment, its times of overwhelming sorrow and intense pain.  But the good news of Scripture is that God not only walks with us on these journeys; God redeems them and brings good from them.

The five chapters work well as a whole, although it was hard to squeeze them into the four weeks Advent.  Ideally, it should be a five week study.  In addition to the book and DVD, there are a book of daily devotions and a children’s book.  This is an excellent resource for churches, as well as fine inspirational reading for believers of all ages.