What did they go out to the wilderness to see: a man in camel’s hair? What did they go out to the wilderness to hear: a voice crying: Prepare the way of the Lord? What did they go out to the wilderness to taste: locusts dipped in wild honey? What did they go out the wilderness to smell: sweet dusty earth? What did they go out to the wilderness to feel: the sun, the wind, and the dry desert air? Why do any of us go to the wilderness? What do we hope to find? I suppose we go to the wilderness to find ourselves, and hopefully, to find and be found by God.
And often when we get there, we are, in the words of Alfred Delp, “shaken and brought to the reality of ourselves.” No wonder, the scriptures take us to the wilderness in Advent, and then again in Lent. God wants to shake and awaken us to the reality of ourselves, and then fill us with hope and expectation for an uncertain but emerging future.
This morning, we hear from two great spiritual guides of the wilderness: Isaiah and John the Baptist. Isaiah, the prophet of the eighth century BCE, spoke of “a shoot from the stump of Jesse” upon which the Spirit of God would rest. He wrote of that branch growing out of a chopped down tree, a remnant people full of hope and promise for the future who would wear the girdle of righteousness and the belt of faithfulness. Some eight hundred years later, the gospels recall another prophet, a righteous and faithful man who lived in the wilderness and wore such a girdle and belt. He spoke of an axe lying at the very root of the tree, cutting it down and throwing its bad fruit into the fire.
What’s left to say anymore? The Chicaco Consultation officially sets on record and documents the revisionists’ plan to put a lesbian at every altar not only in TEC, but the in world-wide Anglican Communion as well. With Katharine Jefferts-Schori on the Primates Standing Committee, the future looks bright.
Or very, very dark.
Interesting that she uses the secular neologism “BCE,” no?
A [i]sermon[/i] on the “Chicago Consultation?
“BCE” is not a secular neologism but a term gaining wider acceptance in the scholarly world. It is not meant as a putdown of Christianity or Judaism. Having said that, Tracy Lind’s “sermon” on the Chicago Consultation, her Marxist perspective about “oppressed peoples” being pitted against one another, yada, yada, yada makes it all very crunchy granola (I suspect her John the Baptist wore Birkenstocks and socks instead of camel hair and a leather girdle!). How seasonal…if you’re into the winter solstice.
[blockquote]”BCE†is not a secular neologism but a term gaining wider acceptance in the scholarly world.[/blockquote]
[url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/neologism]Neologism[/url]
Since year zero of “BCE” is precisely the same as that of “BC,” the only possible intent here is to secularize the original meaning and to remove Christ from the picture. Fine for secular academics, but not exactly what one would expect from nominally Christian clergy (but precisely what one would expect from a secularlized [url=http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/12/06/abortion-as-a-moral-choice]”religious professional.”[/url]
That is a “sermon”?
More like a chat over a coffee… or did I miss the exegesis?
This preacher wants to be a bishop? Would not make it to sunday school leader in my church….
Anglican problem = there are many people in LEADERSHIP positions who believe and teach very different, even contradictory, things to the mainstream Anglicans and the 39 Articles but still claim to be authentic Anglicans because they accept all and every teaching and they tell us this is the essence of being “Anglican”……. they do not seem to realise that the Lord and his Apostles were not “Anglican” in any way and certainly not in the “anything goes” kind of way…but there I go again, looking at what they said and did rather than on my feelings on what they would do today to please me.
AUTHORITY rests in very different, contradictory places for different Anglican leaders – this is obvious. St Paul faced similar divisions and the problem of inappropriate leaders…..he did not teach us to call endless talking shops to deal with the situation (Gal ch 1)
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Gal+1:6-9
He did teach us to guard to gospel…..and he did not say there were seventeen contradictory ways to understand the gospel……but, again, I am, in my old fashioned way, looking at what he said and did rather than what I would say and do today…
Thanks to the ABC…..eveyone can get together and TALK about how much heresy we can accept in the AC, next year….5 years after TECUSA deliberately tore “the fabric of the Communion” to please some activists- that way, the situation does not change in the AC, no decisions are taken despite the obvious views of the majority of Anlgican Primates and people, the false teaching continues – and, crucially, single issue political campaigning groups succeed in their “one inch at a time” strategy WITHIN the AC……. but never mind, we can get more “sermons” making political points but, of course, vaguely hung on some biblical text as above….it’s so nice to put a religious veneer on this “gospel” of rights, especially at Christmas.
The good news is that a baby born 2000 years ago will be remembered in 2000 years time…..but the hijacking of the AC by a small group of postmodernists will be a footnote in histor…..
Happy Christmas! Forget TEC and doublespeak and false teachers…that is all passing more quickly than people would like to admit……remember that baby in Palestine………remember who he was and is.
Happy Christmas!
“neologism: Psychiatry. a new word, often consisting of a combination of other words, that is understood only by the speaker: occurring most often in the speech of schizophrenics.”
This definition pretty accurately describes the language of the Tracy Lind’s of TEC. “Inclusion” and all of its derivatives means blessing SSR. “Our baptismal covenant” means supporting the left wing secular agenda of higher taxes, global warming, MDG’s etc etc.
The message proclaimed in the wilderness was shalom? Where in heck did she pull that one out of? Last time I checked, and that would be a minute ago, John the Baptist preached the need for repentance. His words were rather fiery and somewhat pointed. I have more to say about the subject, but it will keep. Do some of our preachers even bother reading the Bible anymore?
I was going to comment on “BCE” before but Jeffersonian beat me to it in #2. He is absolutely correct in #5.
I too noticed the pretentious ‘BCE’ and thought it absurd in what was supposed to be a ‘Christian’ sermon. How anyone could sit through this rambling agitprop is beyond me. Besides the customary advocacy of Muslims (what kind of Muslims, I wonder?), Lind goes through verbal gymnastics to avoid saying ‘kingdom of God’ or ‘Father’. And she includes a bizarre reference to “the hopes and dreams of the Eternal One.” What a stupid projection of the human religious imagination, worthy of Feuerbach! The Eternal One – Yahweh, in whom Lind almost certainly does not believe – doesn’t have hopes or dreams.
The statement at the top of the complete sermon indicates that it was delivered the Second Sunday in Advent, 2002. Yet in the body of the sermon, it speaks of “how the LGBT community must have felt in the 2004 presidential campaign when gay marriage was the divisive issue of the day.”
What am I missing here?
Has to be a typo: 2007. The Chicago “Consultation” did not exist until this month.
Jeffersonian – Thank you for that link. Absolutely disgraceful and indicative of how deep the rot has set in. I consider myself increasingly blessed to have found my way to the Orthodox Church where such nonsense (to put it mildly) doesn’t even make it into the parking lot.
#1 – Dave W –
And what would be wrong that that?
Fred,
Nothing, so long as you’re an aging Baby Boomer woman or a homosexual. Of course, your membership won’t be able to reproduce itself and your organization will become increasingly dysfunctional, but I suppose nihilists have to go to church somewhere.
#14 – Fred,
Surely you jest.
#16 – No Dave – I am dead serious. I see nothing wrong with a lesbian or gay priest at the altar. Nor does the Chicago Consultation. Nor the majority of TEC for that matter. And I doubt Jesus does either……so whadda’ say………..let’s make it happen!
The BCE belies her outward appearances and shows her to be a secularist in religious vestments. Fred and Ms. Lind would like to transform the church like they have done in Northern Europe. A whopping 0.5% of Swedes are in church on a given Sunday.
Can a church survive “inclusiveness” (dishonest, spin word for homosexual ordination and blessings of SSU’s)? All evidence points to the contrary. Do Ms. Lind and Fred care?
What, no singing of Kum Ba Yah? Surely the Canons of Liturgy have been violated somehow!
Jenny Te Paa gives us an unintentional howler later in the article:
[blockquote]†We gathered, as what Dr. Te Paa called: “a small portion of the global tribe of God’s imperfect, vulnerable, ambitious, generous spirited, self-serving, sacrificial, complex, contradictory, faith-filled, and to a large extent, (bolding mine) [b]indecently obedient Anglicansâ€[/b] to articulate a path through the wilderness crisis in our beloved and broken church.[/blockquote]
It’s all that “indecent obdience” justified by disregarding Scripture that has us in the wilderness so far off the path!
[blockquote]I am dead serious. I see nothing wrong with a lesbian or gay priest at the altar.[/blockquote]
For the record, nor do I. We had a deacon at our AMiA parish was gay and I prayed that he take over after our rector retires. He was also a brilliant, rock-ribbed orthodox who stayed celibate. To my dismay, he left for Rome after Cardinal Ratzinger was chosen for Pope.
It seems as if there is something about religion that beckons to homosexuals. Why? Or do I think I am seeing a whole when I am only seeing a small but excessively obvious part? Did you read the article in this week’s Newsweek about homosexual clergy in the armed services?
What is the attraction? I can understand the attraction in Catholic seminaries because it meant plenty of sex without anyone spying or tattling. But this phenomenon seems to be everywhere. Lind is simply the most recent and offensive case. And I must say that I am most heartily doubt anyone’s declaration that his deacon stayed celibate. It may well be that some do, but the evidence we have before us, day after day, is that homosexuals are as promiscuous as rabbits (If there is a rabbit reading this, sorry). ( Haggard was rockribbed orthodox, but then…) That is, a homosexual priest is not a risk any church should want to take, the evidence is so one sided and now so clear.
RE: “Nor the majority of TEC for that matter [mind a non-celibate gay or lesbian at the altar].”
Delusional. Fantasy.
#17 Fred-
Sorry, chief. Maybe some other time . . .