A Taste of the Faithful Life
James Hopwood James Hopwood

Are we ready yet?

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. You’ll often hear Advent described as a season of preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas.

It is, but that’s only part of the story. The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming.”

Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Christ. But not just at Christmas. Advent is a three-dimensional season.

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 Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.

 You’ll often hear Advent described as a season of preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas.

 It is, but that’s only part of the story.

 The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming.” Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Christ.

 But not just at Christmas. Advent is a three-dimensional season.

 Remember how it goes in the Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol? Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts: the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas future.

 Those are the three dimensions of Advent: Christ’s coming in the past, in the present, and in the future.

 The first dimension the easiest to grasp. During Advent we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus more than 2,000 years ago. We prepare by considering the familiar stories leading up to Jesus’ birth, the scriptures and the prayers that can open our hearts for the coming of Christ anew in our lives.

 The second dimension is the celebration of Christ present at Christmas. We celebrate by decorating our homes, getting together with family and friends, exchanging gifts, worshipping with others and continuing to celebrate in some way during those fabled Twelve Days of Christmas.

 If we celebrate well enough, we can feel the presence of Christ renewed in us. It’s as if Jesus were being reborn in us every year. It’s a wonderful feeling, the most magical of all the joys of Christmas.

The third dimension of Advent may be hardest to understand. This is preparation for the return of Christ in the future – the Second Coming, as it were. Despite the ravings of those who claim to know when this will happen, in truth we do not know. All we know is that Christ will return, and he said we ought to be ready.

We ready ourselves by living in obedience to Christ’s direction for how we ought to behave day by day by day. As hard as it is to practice, this is really quite simple. We are  given no timetable for when anything will happen because the point is that it could happen at any moment and we ought to live always in anticipation of that moment.

So Advent is a time of anticipation and celebration and deeper anticipation. We look forward to celebrating the first coming of Christ and the renewal of Christ’s life in us, and we look forward to receiving Christ when he returns at the consummation of history to renew the promises of God for all creation.

Scrooge feared what the ghost of Christmas future might bring. If Christ lives in us, we need not fear the third dimension of Advent. It’s another thing to celebrate this time of year.

One of my favorite sayings of advent comes from Gertude Muller Nelson, author of To Dance With God. She says: "It is Advent, and we the people of God are pregnant.” We are pregnant three ways: pregnant with anticipation of the celebration of Christmas, pregnant with the renewal of Christ within us and pregnant with our hope for the future.

Have a blessed Advent!

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

Here’s the buzz

My blog has gone silent for too long, but I have several excellent excuses.

 1. The name’s the same but just about everything else about it has changed. It has a new look and some new content. And we’re just beginning. More about that later.

 2. I have finished reviewing the page proofs of my new book. The title is Change of Heart: A Wesleyan Spirituality. The publisher is Wipf and Stock. It should be out around the end of the year, though not likely before Christmas. (And that was such an easy gift idea for all your friends and relatives!)

 3. Linda and I recently spent more than a week on an Aegean Sea cruise following two of the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. We had a wonderful time, and my view of Paul has shifted substantially because of it. I’m still processing it all, but you can expect to hear more about it than you probably want to know.

 4. As part of the new website, you’ll be receiving notices of my blog differently than before. This is the first post under the new regime, so we’ll see how well it works.

 Blog topics in the near future:

 *  Advent has three dimensions, not just one.

 *  Fighting in the Mideast produces the usual end-times twaddle.

 * Whining all the way, George Santos is expelled from the House – and the national press is there to magnify every wail. These are troubled times indeed.

 * On our cruise, we learned about several major holidays we’d never heard of before, including “It’s national let’s all visit the Parthenon day!”

 More soon. Feels good to be back!

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Anna Spencer Anna Spencer

NEWS!

NEWS! NEWS!

Bulletin #1: I have signed a contract for a new book. It’s about Methodism and Wesleyan theology.

It’s still in early stages of publication – proofreading of manuscript and typesetting – so I don’t know about a release date. Details when I learn them.

Bulletin #2: This primitive blogsite will soon be transformed into a full-fledged website with features I have long wanted to add here but didn’t know how. No release date on this either.

I offer both these items as a partial explanation for why I’ve posted here so infrequently of late. I’ll be offline for a couple more weeks as I work through some other projects.

I never envisioned retirement to be so busy, but I’m not complaining. The last couple of weeks have been a lot of fun.

I hope to post much more regularly when the new website is up and running.

I also have tentative plans to publish another book on the website, one chapter every week. (Publishers don’t want it, so I’ll offer it free.)

We’ll see how these things pan out. Meantime, grace and peace from the God who works marvels in all our lives, even when we least expect them.

NEWS! NEWS!

Bulletin #1: I have signed a contract for a new book. It’s about Methodism and Wesleyan theology.

It’s still in early stages of publication – proofreading of manuscript and typesetting – so I don’t know about a release date. Details when I learn them.

Bulletin #2: This primitive blogsite will soon be transformed into a full-fledged website with features I have long wanted to add here but didn’t know how. No release date on this either.

I offer both these items as a partial explanation for why I’ve posted here so infrequently of late. I’ll be offline for a couple more weeks as I work through some other projects.

I never envisioned retirement to be so busy, but I’m not complaining. The last couple of weeks have been a lot of fun.

I hope to post much more regularly when the new website is up and running.

I also have tentative plans to publish another book on the website, one chapter every week. (Publishers don’t want it, so I’ll offer it free.)

We’ll see how these things pan out. Meantime, grace and peace from the God who works marvels in all our lives, even when we least expect them.

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Anna Spencer Anna Spencer

No Grace Here

United Methodist Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño has been acquitted of all charges after a four-day trial and the unanimous vote of 13-person panel.

She was the first bishop in church history to face such a trial, the first bishop to be suspended from active service while facing a complaint, and – oh yes – the first Latina to be elected bishop in the church.

For a year and a half, while she awaited trial, she was banned from United Methodist churches and therefore banned from receiving Holy Communion in her own church.

She also was forbidden to speak publicly about the charges, which were never publicly revealed, allegedly to protect confidentiality in the case. She was never allowed to meet her accusers until the trial.

When the charges were finally revealed in church court, it was clear that she was not guilty of inappropriate conduct but at most was guilty of failing to communicate her intentions and her actions to people who appeared all too eager to think the worst of her and respond accordingly.

She will now serve out another year or so as bishop in the Western Jurisdiction and retire at the mandatory age of 70.

I did briefly once know one of the complainants, but otherwise I know nothing of the personalities involved. I also know little about the cultural and political forces that contributed to this fiasco. But I deeply deplore the whole thing. Placing a person in purgatory for 18 months is beyond conscience. We Methodists supposedly believe in grace, but no grace was shown here.

Speaking of disgusting…

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall had this to say about the possibility of a government shutdown sponsored by right-wing Republicans in the U.S. House.

“I think when you take a job with the federal government, you realize that there’s pros and cons and this is one of the cons of it, that every five or 10 years, there’s a government shutdown. They have incredible pay, they have easy hours, only a fourth of them are actually back working in the office right now. So we all have to, you know, sacrifice.”

Hey, Roger, where’s your sacrifice? You would still get paid during a shutdown, wouldn’t you?

Look at it this way, doc, there are pros and cons of being a physician, and a senator as well. You have incredible pay and benefits, easy hours, and every 5 or 10 years you get sued for malpractice. So we all have to, you know, sacrifice.

He voted against the bill that finally kept the government open. He claims it’s all about the federal deficit. Interesting how Republicans only care about the deficit when there’s a Democrat in the White House. Interesting how Republicans keep voting to give rich people more money while ignoring the fiscal consequences, and how they … oh never mind. You know the hypocrisy here. And yet dummies like Roger keep getting elected.

It may be true that we get the government we deserve – or lack of it.

United Methodist Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño has been acquitted of all charges after a four-day trial and the unanimous vote of 13-person panel.

She was the first bishop in church history to face such a trial, the first bishop to be suspended from active service while facing a complaint, and – oh yes – the first Latina to be elected bishop in the church.

For a year and a half, while she awaited trial, she was banned from United Methodist churches and therefore banned from receiving Holy Communion in her own church.

She also was forbidden to speak publicly about the charges, which were never publicly revealed, allegedly to protect confidentiality in the case. She was never allowed to meet her accusers until the trial.

When the charges were finally revealed in church court, it was clear that she was not guilty of inappropriate conduct but at most was guilty of failing to communicate her intentions and her actions to people who appeared all too eager to think the worst of her and respond accordingly.

She will now serve out another year or so as bishop in the Western Jurisdiction and retire at the mandatory age of 70.

I did briefly once know one of the complainants, but otherwise I know nothing of the personalities involved. I also know little about the cultural and political forces that contributed to this fiasco. But I deeply deplore the whole thing. Placing a person in purgatory for 18 months is beyond conscience. We Methodists supposedly believe in grace, but no grace was shown here.

 
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Anna Spencer Anna Spencer

The Craziness Must Stop

Guns and US - part 5

Something is clearly wrong in this country. Too many people are dying from gunshot wounds.

In this series of brief essays, I am exploring some facets of the issue and pondering possible solutions. I don’t expect to make many friends with this venture.

This is the final part of the series.

I have circled long enough. Now it’s time for me to take a stand. If you’ve read previous installments in this series, you probably realize that I sympathize neither with gun nuts nor anti-gun nuts. A plague on both your houses!

Before I proceed, a query. Why am I, allegedly a faith-based commentator, even talking about this issue? Because it’s a faith issue. Every issue of human behavior at its heart is a faith issue. Maybe especially this one, because it deals with life and death. Maybe especially this one, given the claims by a few (nuts) that God gives them the right to carry a gun and to use it as they like.

Do you know what a brief burst of gunfire from a rapid-fire weapon such an AR-15 does to a human body? Do you know what it does to a child’s body? Some of the victims of school shootings had to be identified by their shoes because there was so little recognizable left of their bodies, beyond DNA.

This craziness has to stop. It cannot be defended on account of the “sacredness” of the Second Amendment.

America’s high rate of gun violence is not natural, and it can be better controlled. It won’t be controlled by one or two “magic bullet” solutions but by several partial solutions, pursued together.

It is often claimed that guns don’t kill people; people kill people. That is a clever non sequitur, an irrelevance. The best way to stop the mayhem is to take guns out of hands of shooters. Carefully. But firmly.

It has to be a national effort. Since the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, it has been obvious that states can’t be trusted to get much of anything right – and since 1861, it’s been obvious that some states don’t want to get much of anything right. (Look at Alabama today.)

National legislation should include:

Criminal background checks for purchases of guns and ammunition.

Mandatory training for purchasers (and maybe even gun safety training in schools).

Minimum age of purchase set at 21; gun use allowed for those younger only under adult supervision.

“Red flag” laws to keep guns from those likely to murder. (Gimme a break, gun nuts. It’s not that hard to safeguard against abuse of such laws.)

Limits on weapons that may be owned by individuals. I’m thinking mostly of tanks and bazookas and land mines and armed drones and “phantom” guns that can’t be traced. “Assault-style” weapons (let’s not play coy with definitions of what they are) might fall here, too. There have to be limits. Even in the “Wild West,” you had to check your guns with local law enforcement.

We also might consider registration of gun owners. Not guns, gun owners. A database of owners could simplify background checks. (I still have my ID card from Illinois when I owned a couple of black powder guns.)

Gun owner registration is no more a step toward a fascist state than auto and driver’s licensing. It’s a way to organize a sane society and guard against bad actors.

Do such proposals “infringe” upon “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”? Gun nuts say that any restrictions do. This is nonsense. Anti-gun nuts say that even more restrictive measures are necessary. Most likely more nonsense.

We can argue about specifics endlessly – and of course we will. Beyond them:

We need a national dedication to curbing the scourge of gun violence.

We must stop glorifying guns and selling them as a solution to our problems.

We must learn as a people that violence is a poor way to solve problems, and we must repudiate those who promote violence in word or deed.

Given the depth of our national division, as we work toward becoming a saner society, we must earnestly pray – because only God can lead us to real freedom. Amen.

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It’s already been rejected by Abingdon Press, the United Methodist publishing house. It says it has other similar works already in process. I’ve always given Abingdon the right of first refusal on all my book proposals, and I’ve always been rejected. I think it’s time to put some other publisher at the top of my query list.

* * * * *

Three KU profs are under fire for allegedly faking their Native American ancestry. Kansas City Star columnist Yvette Walker confesses that her family also had unconfirmed stories about a Blackfoot ancestor.

“For as long as I can remember, I believed I had Native ethnicity,” she writes. “I even thought I knew which tribe I supposedly belonged to because it was a part of my family’s oral history.” To test the family memory, she took a Family DNA test. Turns out family oral history was wrong.

My family also has an oral tradition that a woman several generations back was Native American. Not exactly the classic “Cherokee princess” story, but close enough.

I’m about all who’s left to carry on family oral tradition, and my searches on Ancestry.com have found nothing to corroborate this story. I once assumed that it was because racists in my family conveniently “forgot” about the Indian ancestor until it became more socially acceptable to claim her, but by then all details were lost in time. Maybe it was a myth all along.

I did have an uncle who was Native. He married into the family. Sadly, he died relatively young as an alcoholic.

Whether I have any “Indian blood” in me matters less than how I view and treat Native Americans. Since childhood I have been fascinated by various Indian cultures. The more I learn about the genocide campaign against Native tribes, the more I am appalled by the tragedy of racism.

If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest reading The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk. Actually, I wasn’t capable of reading all of it. I had to skim parts. It’s well written, but many parts will simply break your heart.

* * * * *

Back to school time nears already. Where did the summer go? Weren’t summers longer back in the “good old days”? Granted, summer child care can be a chore for busy parents. Maybe advancing age fools me on the passage of time, but I wonder if today’s kids suspect they’re being cheated of days in the sun.

Linda and I just bought school supplies for a Spring Hill 9th grader. We deliberately did not keep track of how much it cost. I can’t imagine the expense of having two kids in high school right now, let alone one. Tell me: Why does any high schooler need five two-inch three-ring binders?