March 1st, 2009
By Bryan
Society in the United States in 1917 was one filled with much fear and misunderstanding. The end of the Progressive Era and its Social Gospel message of reform, the onset of World War 1, and the Bolshevik Revolution raised anxieties in the minds of many Americans. One significant manifestation of this fear was the rise of xenophobia; Americans grew more and more wary of outsiders. This nation, which was built on the sweat and blood of immigrants from many different countries, now turned its back on these very same people. Beginning as early as 1882, ideas of immigrant restriction had been circulating with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. A decade later, the Immigration Restriction League, founded in Boston in 1 8 94, argued that the best way to keep out “undesirables” was a literacy test. Their campaign bore no real fruit at the outset as the various initiatives passed by Congress in 1896, 1909, and 1915 were vetoed by presidents Cleveland, Taft, and Wilson. It wasn’t until 1917 that a literacy bill was finally passed and made to law over the veto of Wilson. The United States had created in essence a situation where immigrants had to pass a litmus test in order to gain entrance. There were already in the law books litmus tests for African Americans and former slaves. Now anyone wanting to become a citizen of the United States had to pass a test.
The immigration policy of the United States in the wake of World War 1, which was capped with the passage of the Johnson-Reed National Origins Act in 1924, presents a situation all too common in our human history, both personally and communal in. Similar situation said existed through out human history and still exist even today. We hear the echoes of these feelings articulated in the first lesson that we heard today from 2nd Kings.
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March 1st, 2009
By Bryan
One of my favorite places is a mountain top in Western North Carolina, nearly every summer when I went to church camp there I would climb it. It was there that I first felt the presence of God. Sitting there on the rocks looking out the valley below, listening to the wind, and watching the clouds slide slowly across the afternoon sky I would feel that I was in another world, in another place, another time. I could sit there for hours, but always had to come back down to the everyday routine of camp life. I’m sure we’ve all had those moments when we are closest to the divine mystery, the presence of God. Sometimes it is on the mountaintop, sometimes it’s in the valley, sometimes it’s in even the most mundane everyday activities of our lives.
Kenneth Grahame in his wonderful little book “The Wind in the Willows” tells of a time when Ratty and Mole were called upon to search for a little hedge pig that had gone missing. The two best friends who lived along the river’s edge had taken their boat out onto the water to search the riverbanks for the missing hedge pig. As they searched, they found themselves on a part of the river they had never seen before. The trees and bushes overhung the river, dappling the water with their reflections. The air with heady with the perfume of the flowers and bush’s that surrounded them. As they moved slowly up the river the air began to change, the light became brighter and the music of the insects and birds became louder. Ratty, who was sitting in the front of the boat, was filled with awe and wonder if the sound of this strange and beautiful music. He asks Mole if he can hear this beautiful sound. At first, Mole could not hear it, but then as they approached an island in the middle of the river, Mole was suddenly overcome with the joyous sound of music. At that moment, as they stepped out of the boat onto the land, they were surrounded with a brilliant white light, and the music intensified. Suddenly they came upon a sight too beautiful to behold, they saw the Great God Pan standing in the midst of the glade with the tiny hedge pig curled up asleep his feet. As they approached the sight, the vision vanished, leaving them filled with awe, wonder, and fear. They had witnessed a theophany, a manifestation of the presence of God.
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February 2nd, 2009
By Bryan
Bless thou, the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts
that they be of profit to us and acceptable to thee, oh our rock and
our redeemer. Amen
Today I want to tell you a whale of a tale, it is about the prophet Jonah, and perhaps it too is about us.
Jonah was a man of faith, a man who loved his God and his people, yet Jonah got himself into a mess of trouble.
It all began when the word of God came to Jonah in a dream.
In this dream God told Jonah to leave Israel and to go to the great city of Ninevah and to preach against it because of its great wickedness.
God’s opinion of Ninevah did not come as a great surprise to Jonah, the evil of Ninevah was known throughout the world.
Ninevah was an ancient city, built in the dim recesses of time by Nimrod, the mighty warrior, and the violence of Nimrod seemed to have been stamped upon his city – it was a den of iniquity and the source of much suffering upon the face of the earth.
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