It's a girl!

The Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, Bishop of Nevada and our new PB! God does new things and we are glad!

The Gnostics and Walt Whitman

The Gnostics are a hot news item between The DaVinci Code and the Gospel of Judas. This sermon gives some background on them and what we know about their theology. The reading from 2 Corinthians today includes a kind of gnostic thinking that says that being in a human body separates us from God. To that I say hogwash and called on a friend for help - Walt Whitman. We read some of Walt Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric to be a counterpoint to St. Paul's "while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord." Enjoy!

New favorite CD

Renée Fleming has possibly the most exquisite voice on earth. Her CD Sacred Songs includes two Ave Marias, the Bach-Gounod and the Schubert, the beautiful Fauré Pie Jesu, gems by Handel Mozart, Berlioz, and others. Of particular joy for me, a dear friend of mine, Nicole Chevalier, sang at my ordination. The two songs she sang, Bernstein's A Simple Song and the Mozart Laudate Dominum, are both on this CD. Ah bliss!

As a side note, Nicole is developing quite a reputation in Germany, she is resident with the opera company at Freiburg and is beginning to perform in some of the larger houses. Someday I'll be able to say, "I knew her when..."

The Gospel of Judas

On Sunday I went to a talk by Dr. Marvin Meyer who is part of the team of scholars working on the recent find that is causing such a stir. The story of how the codex or book came to light and the work to restore it in order to translate it is a great story in itself. The Gospel of Judas is obviously one of those book that did not make it into the list of accepted book of the Bible as it was forming. It is written from a very gnostic viewpoint and casts Judas as the only disciple who really understood Jesus. Is it any wonder that an church founded on the legacy of the other apostles would be disinterested in such a text?

Dr. Meyer pointed out that the story of Judas - whose name becomes synonomous with treachery is also a way of casting blame on the Jews. The portrayal of Judas went through a progression from Mark, the earliest gospel until the writing of the latest, John. Judas becomes increasingly more demonic as his story developed over time. The names Judas and Judah are a bit too close to be easily distinguishable - possibly making the name Judas an ugly word game. This is a marvelous time to consider carefully the impact of the anti-semetic content of our scripture, to understand how some of those texts came to be there and rethink how we teach them.

Hope to get a good sermon out of this for Sunday.

The Divine Genogram

Ah, Trinity Sunday - how to preach about the incomprehensible? Well, luckily some friendly voices, like Kathleen Norris and C.S. Lewis came to my rescue. The Trinity is all about relationship. Here's a sermon about the mysterious God who is three and yet one.

To read today's lessons, visit the Lectionary Page.