By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Previously published October 27, 2012, in The Madera Tribune
I mistook it for a misunderstanding based on poor grammar when I first heard about the controversy over Richard Mourdock, an Indiana Republican candidate running for the U.S. Senate. During a debate Tuesday, he said, “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to believe that life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The copy editor in me cringed at his unclear use of the word “it.” As a fellow Christian, I instinctively realized the first “it” referred to the issue of abortion and the second “it” to new life. The second "it" did not refer to rape. No Christian in his right mind believes God desires rape to happen. I assumed that Mourdock’s poor grammar caused some to misinterpret his statement and the misunderstanding sparked justifiable outrage in Democratic and Republican politicians alike. I guess I’m a bit naive. Mourdock clarified and affirmed what he meant at a press conference Thursday, but by Wednesday some politicians had already made it clear they instead took offense at his belief that human life is always a gift from God. “I don’t know how these guys come up with these ideas,” President Obama told talk show host Jay Leno after the host accurately paraphrased Mourdock’s comment. Obama didn’t need to look any further than scriptures shared by Jew and Christian alike. “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is a reward from him.” (Tehillim/Psalm 127:3) “For it was you (God) who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb… My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my embryo (in Hebrew, “golmi” or “golem”). In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” (Tehillim/Psalm 139:13, 15-16). Similar messages can be found in the words of the Jewish prophets Jeremiah (1:5) and Isaiah (44:2) along with the complaints of Job (10:8-12). Since when does such a basic Judeo-Christian belief disqualify a person from governmental office? Wait. Don’t answer. Apparently the answer is: now. Efforts to denounce and politically isolate Mourdock continue. While it is difficult to imagine a worse origin for a pregnancy than rape, would any Christian or Jewish politician claim God is responsible for the existence of some human life and not of others? Or that God values some humans but not others? It seems the Great Recession was worse than we thought if even God’s unconditional love and omnipotence has been downsized. It has long been said that after God created humanity in his own image we’ve been ever eager to return the favor. But I agree with the great African bishop Augustine (AD 354-430) who said: “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” Or as John, an apostle of Jesus, wrote in a letter: “God is greater than our hearts.” (Cf. 1st John 3:20) In 2007, Jonathan Torgovnik, a photojournalist for Newsweek magazine, co-founded the nonprofit Foundation Rwanda after hearing firsthand of the terrible hardships of women who had birthed children from rapes committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A few of their stories can be read on its website, www.foundationrwanda.org. Don’t expect uplifting tales with happy endings. An estimated 20,000 children resulted from rape during the genocide. One woman, Stella, says of her son, “He is my life. He is the only life I have. I love him. I like him. He is my only kid. If I did not have him, I don’t know what I would be.” Another woman, Valentine, shared how she favored her firstborn girl, born of marital love, over her violently-conceived daughter, who she initially felt no affection towards at all. When the second baby cried she would ignore her. “But,” she said, “slowly I am beginning to also appreciate that this other one is innocent.” Nevertheless the precious hearts of these women are nothing compared to that of God, who promised through the prophet Isaiah: “Can a woman forget the baby nursing at her breast? Will she have no compassion on the child of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget you.“ (Isaiah 49:15).
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By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Previously published September 8, 2012, in The Madera Tribune More than a century ago, local California grapevines allegedly required no irrigation, and a hand pump could draw water from a hand-dug well. Now machines perform the well drilling and liquid lifting, and wells in the San Joaquin Valley may extend 400-800 feet from the surface. A basin of lakes, marshes, and grasslands has become a vale of cities, towns, irrigated farms and orchards, ranches, dairies, oil derricks, and desert. Valley farms have only grown drier as droughts and environmental regulations reduced federal government water deliveries in recent decades. Those deliveries supply water that once flowed freely in natural rivers but now sits behind dams in reservoirs. The last great California dam would be 1979’s New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus River in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It and others were built to provide irrigation, flood control, water for Californians, recreation, and in some cases electricity. But despite them the valley suffers chronic water shortages, especially since the 1980s. Not all valley water comes from reservoirs however. Deliveries from the Sacramento Delta have been problematic for areas with poor drainage. Used for irrigation, it leaves salt behind as it evaporates, and eventually sterilizes the farmland. The Roman Empire allegedly would salt the fields of defeated enemies as a punishment. Without the ability to grow crops, the area would be unlivable for generations. Time will reveal what the future of the San Joaquin Valley holds, but it already shows its partial desertification. In a way, it is the Judeo-Christian story of creation told in reverse. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void…” (cf. Bereishit/Genesis 1:1) The Hebrew word “tohu” (translated here as “without form and void”) signifies a completely empty wasteland. Tohu appears again in Deuteronomy (Devarim) 32:10 and Psalm (Tehillim) 107:40. The Bible starts with a desert, and the desert never disappears from it. Another scriptural word for desert is “midbar,” which means a lively wilderness in which sheep and goats may graze and wild beasts roam. It is used in the book of Exodus (Semot) and elsewhere. A third word, “arabah,” is an arid and desolate desert plain sometimes spoken of by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. A fourth word, “horbah,” is a dry and desolate ruin of a previously inhabited land. A fifth, “jeshimon,” is an untamed land without water, and is mentioned frequently in Exodus. A sixth, “çiyyah,” is a drought region. There are many ways to speak of a desert it seems, and that includes spiritually. In the Jewish scriptures, the prophet Elijah (Eliyahu) retreated to the desert when fearful of execution and despairing, and instead encountered an angel to encourage him and, later, God on a mountainside (Sepher M’lakhim/1 Kings 19). Likewise the princely foster child of Egypt, Moses (Moshe), fled from justice to the desert after slaying an abusive slaveholder (Exodus 2). The Jewish tribes, in turn, would wander in the desert for 40 years after escaping slavery in Egypt. The desert seems a refuge for the desperate — and not just for humans. In the Christian scriptures, the rabbi Jesus (Yeshua) said of demons, “When an unclean spirit is gone out of a man, it walks through waterless places, seeking rest, and finds none.” (Matthew 12:43) Yet Jesus himself had a habit of withdrawing to a desert or mountainside to pray (cf. Luke 5:16; 6:12; Matthew 14:13, 23). His cousin John the Baptist preached primarily in the Desert of Judaea (Matthew 3:1). On one occasion, Jesus spent 40 days fasting and praying in a desert, although the devil did not leave him unmolested there (Matthew 4). But the desert is more than a safe haven for the overwhelmed or a demonic home away from home. In the book of Hosea (Hoshea), God promised to lead his wayward people away from the idols and comforts that preoccupied it and into a thirsty desert. “She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now… Therefore, behold, I will allure her, bring her into the desert, and speak tenderly to her…” (Hosea 2:7, 14) Like a rehabilitation clinic, the desert can be a challenging place of healing — if we turn to God. When we next journey through a desert, will we choose restlessness or renewal? By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Previously published 6/15/12 in The Madera Tribune
A 3-year-old supposedly went with his father to see a litter of kittens. Returning he excitedly told his mother there were two boy kittens and two girl kittens. “How did you know?” she asked. “Daddy picked them up and looked underneath,” he said. “I think it’s printed on the bottom.” What would we do without fathers? Well, technically we wouldn’t do anything, because we wouldn’t exist at all. But as Father’s Day nears in the U.S. it is natural to think of the impact of our own on our lives. The statistics in general seem consistent enough. In 2002, about 8 percent of poor children lived in married-couple families. Without a father at home, child poverty rose to 38 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003). Infant mortality is nearly twice as high for those born of unmarried mothers (National Center for Health Statistics, 2000). Depression is twice as common for single moms as well (Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 2003). U.S. middle schoolers who don’t live with both genetic parents have four times the risk of an affective disorder (Journal of American Academic Child Adolescent Psychiatry, 2005). Children who don’t grow up with both biological parents use drugs more (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2002), and are more likely to be “delinquents” (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2000). Violent crimes by children without both parents at home significantly increased in 39 nations studied (Cross-Cultural Research, 2004). There are so many studies on this topic that I lack the time and space to mention each of them. In the past decade, research has linked the lack of fathers in the home to greater risks of obesity, abuse, neglect, early menstruation, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, repeating grades, alcohol use, imprisonment, and more. But fatherhood doesn’t exist simply to reduce dangers to children. For many monotheistic religions, fatherhood is used to describe God’s loving and authoritative relationship with humanity, so much so that “father” is virtually a universal title for God. Even so, the intimacy and tenderness of God for us has also been spoken of as reminiscent of motherhood too, at least in Jewish and Christian scriptures. “The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representative of God for man,” explains paragraph 239 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.” A month ago I shared a claim by Christians and Jews: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Bereishit/Genesis 1:27) This, I wrote, is the source of human dignity for man and woman alike. But that isn’t all. It also means that man and woman, when united in love, reveal God more fully than either can do alone. There’s nothing greater any parent can share with us than divine love. I’ve almost drowned more than a half dozen times, and never learned to swim properly. I tried to stay in the shallows of swimming pools but sometimes slipped into deeper waters. Before I passed out while sinking on one occasion, I saw a shadow above me. I must have grabbed it, and my father managed to get us both out of the water without getting pulled down himself. I awoke lying on a poolside chair. A handful of years ago I described the incident poetically: Blue water spun around as I stared up / as if the foam and sky did duel that day / only to lose when darkness drank their cup / while in my limbs all fight did drift away. I did not think of death as I sank down / Instead my thoughts took in this stunning view / — a noisy blue glass swirl bereft of sound / that dimmed too fast as beauties often do. A shadow passed before my mind did fade / and I reached out to waken in the light / My father's foot had cast a saving shade / For I -- though gone -- held it with sleeper's might. Years pass and now I drown this time in fears. / They captivate, but God is no less near. By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Previously published 5/25/12 in The Madera Tribune
Many Christians will celebrate the birthday of their religion this Sunday, better known as Pentecost. Appropriately, this holy day has a Jewish origin and a Greek name. Before taking a new meaning for followers of Jesus, it was a harvest festival that recalled when God dictated laws for the 12 tribes of Israel at Mount Sinai (aka Horeb). Foremost of these laws are the 10 Commandments, basic moral laws long revered by Jews and Christians alike. The festival received its ancient Greek name from the timing of that historic occasion, which scripture recorded as on “the 50th” day after the Jews escaped slavery in Egypt. In Hebrew it is known as the Festival of Weeks (Hag ha Shavuot). Christians tend to forget all of that, however. For us, Pentecost evokes images of supernatural fire, wind, and preaching, which are key elements of the day’s description in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. On Shavuot in Jerusalem less than two millennia ago, a clamor like that of a tornado filled a place where perhaps as many as 120 devotees of Jesus were seated. Next, flames appeared to fall on each, resting gently without causing harm. Then, scripture says, they were filled with the spirit of God and began to speak of divine matters in a variety of languages they had never learned. Such a spectacle drew a diverse crowd in the metropolis, which had many expatriates from across the ancient world for the Festival of Weeks. What these visitors heard initially and the preaching that followed — all expressed in their own native tongues — caused the idle spectators to embrace this new religion, a sect of Judaism that quickly expanded beyond it to reach peoples of every nation, ethnicity, and — fittingly enough — tongue. The memoirs of the physician Luke only share a relatively small excerpt of the words voiced that day (Acts 2:14-40), but unsurprisingly they center on the “good news” (aka gospel) revealed by God. This gospel is summed up perfectly and fully in Jesus. In my lifetime, many have tried to express it in easily memorized phrases or citations (such as the ever-popular scripture reference at sporting events, “John 3:16”). But I hesitate to attempt the same, because the task of abridging the gospel daunts me. There is so much to divine revelation, both truth and mystery. I also wonder if sometimes such pithy attempts can lose sight of one of the lessons of Christian Pentecost: what first impressed the onlookers in Jerusalem so long ago was that the Christians talked of God in a language each individual listener could understand. Rather than catchphrases, the hearers needed a personal explanation, and more than that: an introduction to the person of Jesus. This was accomplished by following the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, not a script. That said, imagine a world without shared terms, definitions, formulas, songs, and so on. Life would become a never-ending labor of re-invention and potential errors. Perhaps the ideal is as Augustine — an ancient bishop of Hippo, Africa — once advised: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things ‘charity’ (supernatural love).” His last point is a vital one, because without love for others how could Christians ever reveal God to anyone? Surely the Christians at Pentecost were not only filled with the Spirit of God but supernatural love as well. As John, the cherished disciple of Jesus, wrote in a letter, “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8) With or without words, God surely touches our head and heart. Like us, our minds and hearts are unique, even when the same truth fills them. English poet, novelist, and decorated soldier Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) romanced both sexes after World War I. Yet despite many relationships he spent his last two decades alone, and converted to Catholicism before his death. In his poem “A Prayer at Pentecost,” Sassoon depicted his relationship with God as a two-part performance to be completed not by words but by quiet transformation: “Master musician, I have overheard you, / Labouring in litanies of heart to word you. / Be noteless now. Our duologue is done. / Spirit, who speak'st by silences, remake me: / To light of unresistant faith awake me, / That with resolved requiem I be one.” By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Previously published 4/06/12 in The Madera Tribune
From noon onwards, dark clouds from the Mediterranean Sea had blanketed the metropolis of Jerusalem. For those crammed within the city, bustling with pilgrims, it was a bit cold but tolerably so. For those outside the walls, it must have felt far chillier. Then there were the condemned criminals who hung from crosses on the roadside hill of Golgotha, north of the capital. They were naked except for perhaps an improvised loincloth, the former veil of a mother now grieving for her child. Even the hard justice of Rome could tolerate a mother’s compassion to that extent. This was the first Good Friday. By Jewish reckoning it was probably the 16th day of the Jewish lunar month of Nisan in the year 3791. It was also the second day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The sabbath would begin at nightfall. Using the Julian calendar, Romans would have marked that date as the 7th of Aprilis in the 783rd year after the founding of the city of Rome and the 16th year of Roman Emperor Tiberius’ reign. But the only Romans in Jerusalem were occupiers of a foreign land. About four decades later, Jerusalem would be sacked after a siege by Roman soldiers in retaliation for the Great Jewish Revolt. But for now many in the city were making final preparations for the oncoming sabbath. So many visitors were there for the religious festival, the Passover. Those who were poor came in large groups to ease the burdens of the trip. Yet the practical concerns fell especially on women, so it was likely that mostly men had the time and inclination to attend the spectacle of Roman justice that morning at the open air stone platform outside the Praetorium, the equivalent of Jerusalem’s city hall under Roman rule. At the time, justice under Rome was personified by the aristocrat Pontius Pilatus, the fifth prefect of the Roman province of Judaea. According to the ancient Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria, he was insensitive to Jewish customs, stubborn, a taker of bribes, cruel, and had a fiery vindictive temper. Pilatus once spent money from the treasury of the rebuilt Temple of Solomon to build an aqueduct, according to ancient Jewish historian Josephus Flavius. Such funds were meant for the needs and upkeep of the lavish Jewish temple and its ministers. When a group of Jews protested, Pilatus had soldiers hidden within the crowd beat and kill random members of it to silence them all. In about a half dozen years, Pilatus would be recalled to Rome to respond to a charge that he had suppressed a Samaritan rebellion with excessive brutality. So I expect it wasn’t a complete shock when locals heard he scourged and condemned the popular rabbi Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) to death for the treason of claiming to be a king. Less than a week before, many in the city had heralded Jesus as a messiah with joy, but now the mood had shifted and grown as dark as the afternoon sky above. On the path through the narrow city streets to execution, mockery dominated, and it persisted to the end. Many men may have watched his trial, but it was his female devotees who remained with Jesus on that cold hill for the agonizing three hours before his death, his mother among them. As for his dozen apostles who had journeyed with him for years of ministry, only John — the youngest — could be seen. Compared to most victims, Jesus died quickly. Most of the crucified died after losing days of battles against suffocation, unable to maintain adequate breathing on a cross and tormented by spectators, thirst, and hungry birds. But Jesus had already been severely weakened by his abuse at the hands of soldiers already. At 3 p.m. he died and the earth trembled. Yet on that tragic Good Friday we Christians believe Jesus died not merely as a blameless man but as God incarnate, and that he sacrificed himself in the place of each and every human who has and ever will live. We all have the potential for moral evil, aka sin, and sins are destructive to our own selves, each other, and our relationship with God. Nothing we can do alone can make perfect amends for even the least evil we willingly do. So God, acting as our surrogate, offered himself in the flesh for our sakes. By doing so, Jesus won for us true forgiveness and healing — if we will embrace it. Do we? By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Previously published 3/30/12 in The Madera Tribune
In ancient times, tomorrow was known as Lazarus Saturday. The name refers to the organizer of a supper that Jesus ate in the community of Bethany “six days before the Passover” (cf. John 12:1). That naturally wasn’t the first visit of Jesus, but it would be his last. The Greco-Syrian physician Luke describes the first meeting (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus had arrived in the village of Bethany, which sat a few miles east of the metropolis of Jerusalem, and a woman named Martha welcomed the traveling rabbi into her home. While Martha busied herself with serving her famous guest, her sister Mary sat at his feet and listened. This irked her sister, probably for multiple reasons. For one, Mary’s pose was customary of male students listening to a religious scholar. Jewish boys began their formal education around the ages of 5-7, either in the synagogue or at home. They would first be taught the Hebrew alphabet, the Aleph Bet, and then memorize and study verses from the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Note that I said “boys.” Jewish women received little formal instruction, did not read from the Bible in the synagogue, were not taught Jewish law, could only observe religious ceremonies, and weren’t expected to attend on festivals and feast days. Mary’s adoption of this student role before a rabbi was scandalous. Moreover, Martha didn’t think it was fair that her sister was just sitting around while she was busy with the work of being a good host. So she complained: Rabbi, don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me! Surely to Martha’s surprise, Jesus not only didn’t scold Mary for her revolutionary behavior, he praised it: Martha, Martha, you are full of care and trouble about many things, but only one is necessary. Mary has chosen that good part, and it will not be taken from her. This wasn’t the only time Jesus defied expectations in a radical way. Those unwilling to accept this struggled with his hard teachings. From there, it was only a step onward to reject the teacher too. The memoir of the “beloved disciple” John says that when Lazarus later died of illness Jesus wept, prayed, and called his friend forth from the cave in which his corpse had been entombed (John 11:1-44). Talk of this alleged miracle frightened Jewish religious leaders. It wasn’t the first time a self-proclaimed messiah had arisen. Decades before, a tall and handsome slave of King Herod gathered followers, declared himself king of the Jews, plundered and burned the royal palace at Jericho, and did the same elsewhere, according to Jewish historian Josephus Flavius. The commander of Herod’s infantry led Roman soldiers against this “messiah,” Simon of Peraea, and beheaded him. Likewise a shepherd named Athronges and his four brothers led a flock of rebels against Herod Archelaus. Less than a dozen years later, Judas of Galilee marshaled a violent fight against the Roman census. All these so-called messiahs had ended amidst bloodshed, and Jewish leaders decided it would be better if only one died this time -- Jesus -- instead of many. In this context, Jesus ate in Bethany with his friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary in the house of Simon the leper on the sabbath (Matthew 26:6-13; John 12:1-11). Unexpectedly, Mary washed and anointed his feet with costly scented ointment and wiped them dry with her long hair. This was another scandalous gesture by Mary, and yet once again her teacher praised it. Leave her be, he told his indignant apostle Judas Iscariot, for it is for the day of my burial she kept this spikenard. It was the custom of the day to perfume the newly dead to soften the eventual stench of decay. The next day, which Christians call Palm Sunday, Jesus rode a young donkey into nearby Jerusalem. There was symbolism in the choice of transportation, for a horse was the mount of war and the donkey a steed of peace. He was met with cries greeting him as the king of Israel and you can easily imagine the alarm of those fearful of another disastrous false messiah. So began the time that fourth-century Christians called the “Great Week” (now known as Holy Week). Spy Wednesday was the day Judas joined those plotting against Jesus; Holy Thursday, his last supper; Good Friday, his death; Holy Saturday; and Easter Sunday, new life. By John Rieping | All rights reserved | Published 3/16/12 and 5/04/13 in The Madera Tribune When a catechism teacher supposedly asked her class why they should be quiet in church, a child replied, “Because people are sleeping.” Many, young and old alike, may agree with the late comedian George Burns when he said, “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, and to have the two as close together as possible.” A joke tells of a boy whose eyes wandered during an especially long homily preached at Sunday Mass. Noticing the red sanctuary lamp by the tabernacle, he tugged his father’s sleeve and asked, “Daddy, when that light turns green can we go?” Confusing an altar lamp with a traffic light isn’t really a far-fetched mistake. I sometimes notice a few fellow worshipers mistaking the distribution of the Eucharistic bread as a signal to race to the parking lot and start their engines. Precious indeed must be the minutes they squeeze free. It hasn’t always been so, and indeed isn’t necessarily so now. In ancient times, the apostle Paul captivated the thinkers of Athens when he spoke of God while on the Areopagus (Rock of Ares), a hill northwest of the Acropolis (Acts 17). The greatest minds of the day listened intently… at first. But all too soon they sneered and cut Paul off. I imagine they then rushed to their donkeys so they could avoid the inevitable gridlock when the crowd dispersed. Perhaps that wasn’t the best example. Centuries later, the great archbishop John of Constantinople (A.D. 346-407) would be nicknamed Chrysostom (golden-mouthed) after his death. When he spoke in church, he frequently had to beg people to be quiet. It wasn’t that they were disrespectful — quite the opposite. In his day, preachers were greeted with applause, and polished texts of homilies were in demand. As today, ministers who moved hearts could become celebrities. John wasn’t typical for his time however. Though the public preferred complicated sermons with extravagant language and style, John spoke very simply. He preached in the newly built basilica Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which would be the largest cathedral in the world for a thousand years. But despite the size of his congregation he would often interrupt his homilies to ask questions of those present to make sure they understood. He didn’t strive to flatter those in power though ministering in the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. He repeatedly dared to denounce corruption. His reward, naturally, was being banished twice by the government. He appealed to the bishop of Rome, but the delegates sent by Pope Innocent were not only barred from Constantinople — they were imprisoned. After they refused a bribe, they were sent on a ship whose captain had been ordered to wreck it. Needless to say, John died far from his devoted flock. Hmm… again that may have been a poor example of the honor shown to those who speak of God. In the Middle Ages, people were so interested in good sermons that preachers normally traveled by night so that devotees wouldn’t prevent their departure. In that era, homilies were deeply entwined with scripture, so much so that it appeared that many preachers knew much of the Bible by heart. The sermons were more mystical than academic, adapted to the poor and uneducated. Each were tightly focused on expressing a single idea, and were full of examples from nature and daily life. For those in the pew, such talks were verbal time machines carrying them to days long past. This age of mystics in the pulpit perished by the time of the Renaissance. One historian, Rev. Pierre Batiffol, writes that a famous Renaissance orator preaching in Rome on Good Friday concentrated on praising “the self-devotion of (Roman emperor) Decius and the sacrifice of Iphigenia (of Greek mythology).” Ultimately the church as a whole rebelled against such misguided shepherds — in more ways than one. The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response, led by the bishops at the Council of Trent, later helped renew the precious art of homiletics. Clearly sermons have had their rise and fall many times in the past two millennia. We Christians tend to become devoted or hostile to our better preachers, persecute and venerate our best ones, and lampoon, endure, or ignore the rest. In his Rule, Francis of Assisi told his friars not to preach without proper permission from the local bishop. But he added words we too should follow: “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.” |
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