Late Night TV

 
Below you will find the sermon I wrote for my Psalms class. Psalm 46 is one of my favoirte psalms and I loved learning more about it, especially from a scholarly persepctive. While this sermon didn't end up where I thought it would, I think it still conveys the journey I have experienced living life through this psalm...I think I will capture the text a little better next time I get a chanc but for now here it is! 
 
Shalom,
Lindsey

Psalm 46

¹ God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
⁵ God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

⁷ The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

⁸ Come and see what the Lord has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
¹⁰ He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

¹¹ The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

 

^{___________________________________________________}

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our Strength and our Redeemer, Amen.

Have you ever had one of those nights where you just could not fall asleep? I don’t have them often but sometimes in moments of high stress I have trouble sleeping. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of coffee I have consumed throughout the day to stay alert, or perhaps it is just my minds inability to fully shut off. Either way I eventually find myself, after hours of tossing and turning, sitting in front of the television at some unmentionable hour, hoping that it will preoccupy my racing mind, or in the least tire my eyes. If you have ever had the misfortune of watching late night TV you will know you are faced with limited viewing choices:

-Sitcom reruns from the 1980’s

-Infomercials

-Or channels chiming their off air signal

As the world of 1980’s sitcoms rarely tempt me, I am usually left to watch the endless string of infomercials on TV at that hour. As I turn on the television, and the screen comes into focus, I am invited into warmth of a kitchen where the host seems to know everything I could have ever wanted to know about mincing onions. In the midst of these sleepless moments, the host of this show will become my new best friend, wooing my eyes to close and my brain to sleep as they slice and dice their way to commercial glory.

If you have ever had the misfortune of watching these channels for long enough you will notice that a distinct change eventually occurs in the infomercial programing, especially if you are watching an American broadcaster. Your TV will cease showing you the wonders of the slap chop, whisking you out of the warmth of the kitchen and into a large conference center hosting some kind of revival church service. Instead of the host showing you the 17 ways you can dice and chop your onion, your TV screen is now occupied by a cleanly dressed man with the last name of ‘Dollar’ proclaiming that your day of healing is upon you. The room you see is packed with thousands of men, women, and children who are all fighting for their chance to tell their story before the camera. Before long your screen becomes filled with Americans from the South West proclaiming their testimonies of  this miracle “holy land holy water” and how it has cured them of everything from eczema to cancer and in some cases has even managed solved their financial difficulties. After watching the program for a few minutes one thing becomes apparent, these individuals do not appear to be acting. It seems they have found the miracle cure they have always been looking for, and are rejoicing in a manner that is usually only seen when someone wins the lottery.

As I watch on in stunned disbelief, I start to wonder if the people on these infomercials are indeed genuine and if they are, when did they decide to place their hope in 19.95 dollar bottle of holy water rather than turning to the God who brooded over the same waters in creation. When did they choose to put aside the healing power of the one who hangs from the golden cross around their neck, and opt instead to place their trust in the healing power of a slick man in an Armani suit?

As the program continues I wonder who else is watching this infomercial and why it seems to only ever be aired in the late night hours, when only the sleep deprived nation is able to consume its contents. I begin to wonder what was keeping the rest of the programs viewers up at night?…and what could be weighing so heavily on their minds that they felt they needed to turn to the healing power of this mystery holy water? Perhaps like many of the people featured on the screen in front of me, they were sick. Maybe they face a painful and incurable disease and struggle to make it through the motions of their day. Maybe it’s the cancer that has come back for the third time and they just can’t face the thought of yet another round of chemo. Maybe it’s a pain so deep only they can feel it, a depression that is robbing them of their will to live on. Or perhaps they are feeling financially beaten, over worked with nothing to show but mounting debt with no end or solution in sight. These are just a few signs and symptoms that have come to mark our daily lives as we attempt to walk on in a world saturated by worry and fear.

While I tend to see my own stress and worries outside of the gravity of such concerns, the reality is, when all is said and done, we are all unglued by the harsh realities of this world. Whether large or small we are undone by the sin created in the world around us, done to us, and done by us. We are told by society, our friends, and maybe even our families, to pull ourselves together, to brush it off and carry on. That for some reason, our troubles, worries, and fears should be ours alone to bear. Perhaps this is why, in the middle of the night, so many people find themselves glued to their television sets, looking for a glimmer of hope in a world that has little hope to offer at times…  

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult…

God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

In the midst of our fear and our worry God meets us in Psalm 46. In the center of the storms both great and small, God is with us. We may wonder why we have to face the problems that we do, why our loved ones get sick, or why layoffs seem to come at the most inopportune times. It is tempting to become impatient in moments like this, when we are tired and worn-out, and we just want the answers. We have the tendency to want immediate action, for God to swoop down and calm our storm, or to save us from our trial entirely. Maybe this is why so many people turn to answers they feel will solve their problems in the here and now. Why they go searching in the middle of the night for that miracle holy water to make things right in their lives once again.

The truth of the matter is, no matter how hard we work to solve the problems of our lives, only the Lord has the power to provide a safe refuge in the midst of our storm. The Lord proclaims “Be still and know that I am God” I am what you have been searching for, I have been with you, in the midst of life from the beginning of time, when I moved over the waters of creation, calming the chaos of this world, and forming and claiming a new creation by the works of my mighty hand. “Be still and know that I am God” stop striving to make things right, bring your burdens to me, and I will lay them down.

With God, what we have been promised is so much greater than an escape, the Creator of the universe has promised to walk with us through our storm, to be in the midst of our pain, in the midst of our sorrow, and to join with us in joy when the morning breaks through the darkness of our night. This is the hope that is proclaimed by the psalmist for us today, that we will not fear though the Earth should fall into the heart of the sea. God has named and claimed us in the waters of baptism, conquering the raging waters of this life by his death and resurrection. This is a claim that neither any storm can shake, nor anyone on heaven or on earth could ever falter. Amidst the chaos of this world God is still sovereign over creation, abiding with us in the midst of our storm, now, and in the time yet to come. All we have to do is bring our burdens God, who will hold them, and journey with us, till the day we can meet our Lord face to face.    

May this be so among us.

Amen

 

Reading break

 

 

While I had a pile of work to do, I was greatly looking forward to reading break. I greatly missed my Andi, my family, and my church family, and I was quite anxious to see them all! The drive out to Calgary could not have been better. I was greeted with the most beautiful sunset as I entered the city and soon found Andi and the kids happliy waiting for me. I then traveled down to Lethbridge to see my family down there. It was great to see my parents, sister, and grandma, even if it was just a short 2 day stay. I think mother nature attempted to make me stay longer as the night before I was to set out for Calgary again I work up to 13 inches of wet snow! It took me an hour to dig my car out and then another 3.5 hours to reach Calgary (a trip which would usually take 2 hours tops).

 

This having been said, the weather was not the worst part of my trip...it was the partial death of my Macbook pro. Yes, thats right, I am not writing this post from my beloved mac...I am back on a windows gateway laptop my Dad got me to help me get through the remainder of term till I can get my Macbook running once again. I was saved...and I do say saved! By a member of the staff at the seminary! Pamela is a Mac superhero as far as I am concerned!  She was able to analize the problem with my computer (the hard drive had gone), she was able to retrieve all my information, and was able to do this all within a short span of hours! She is awesome! I totally owe her big time as she has saved me from hours of re-research for a major term paper!

 

While it was great to see my family and Andi, it almost made coming back to saskatoon that much harder. I love it here, I love my new found community, I have great friends in the city, However it is not the same as home.  

 

Well must get back to reading! Those papers wont write themselves! I will be posting a sermon I had to write on psalm 46 soon so stay tuned for that!

 

Shalom

Skakes

 



SAME LOVE 

A very powerful video just in time for National Coming Out Day. So glad to see the world of Rap/ R&B/ Hip Hop getting behind the equality movement. It has been a long time coming.  

Enjoy! 

Shalom, Skakes

National Coming Out Day 2012

Because when Jesus said he came to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free, I believed him...

Last blog I posted the art work based on the eighth Psalm I was required to create for my class. This was the second piece of the two part assignment, the first piece of the assignment was to write our own Psalm. The psalm could be a psalm of lament, thanksgiving, praise, and could be on any topic of our choosing. The only parameter of the assignment was that we needed to compile the psalm using the textual methodology we had been learning about. 

After much thought I decided to turn an old journal entry into a psalm of lament. The journal entry was from the summer of 2009 and was my only way, at the time, to deal with the realization that I was a Lesbian Christian. I decided to hold off on this post until today because it is National Coming Out Day. While a psalm of lament is not necessarily encouraging at first glance, I would like to make a case for why I wish I could have read something like this in 2009. 

While going through the process of coming out you often feel very alone at first, unsure of how anyone will react, how you will be perceived, if you will find love and community, or if you will be left alone. For anyone of faith these questions are surmounted by the all encompassing weight of judgment from your faith tradition. For me, It was never so much a judgement from God that I feared, it was more the judgement of the faith community I had grown up in, the pastors I knew and trusted, and my friends and family that I feared most of all. I can remember feeling utterly alone and frozen in these fears. Had I read something like the psalm I have written below, I would have had words to describe to God what was happening for me, I would have had the feeling that I was not going through this alone, and that for me, like many other people, would have made all the difference in the world.

The psalm I wrote, as my professor commented, ends in lament but with confessions of trust through that lament. While I would have liked to have ended the psalm on a note of praise, I knew this would have been a lie, because as that time praise was too hard a word to form on my lips. If you read the psalm closely enough you will see that there are several instances of a confession of trust in God, hoping to feel a sense of God's all encompassing love and peace. I hope someday when the things of school and life slow down, to write a psalm of praise based on coming through the other side of this psalm...but for now this is all I have to offer.

I feel the psalm I wrote accurately describes the way some LGBT Christians feel when they are in the closet. It is my hope that it will give voice to those heart breaking moments of faith, when you bear your soul to God, unsure of what the response may be. It is my prayer that it will make others feel less alone and perhaps give them words to use when they are unsure of what even to say.

Psalm 208
For the Director of Music. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” Of Lindsey. For Tyson and for all those “whosoever” who have suffered. 

¹Hear, O Lord, my plea,
listen to your child's heartfelt cry.

²As a slave in Egypt, I have yearned to be set free;
against the bounds of Pharaoh I have been beaten. 

³ In your name, O God, they have denounced me; 
the words of their mouths lash against me as whips, 
⁴“A blemish on the face of God's creation, 
an evil abomination in the eyes of God!”

⁵If you, O Lord, have called me by name,
If you have placed this cup before me;
⁶Why then, O Lord, do you allow your servants heart so much pain;
Why do you allow your child to sit alone in anguish.

⁷Even my closest friends, in whom I have trusted, 
and with whom I have praised your Holy Name;
⁸have lashed out against me,
their tongues  swords to slay,
their mouths open tombs,
burying my soul into the depths of Sheol. 

⁹ I turned to you O Lord,
Your face, I did seek. 
¹⁰ I abided within your will,
but my cries have been met by deaf ears;
condemnation becoming the ground beneath my feet. 

¹¹ I have faced many a storm already,
But why O Lord, why this storm?
¹² Of all else I would rather take claim of my life and my love,
Anything but this thorn.

¹³ I am tortured by the very thought;
while I know how I am seen in your eyes,
In the eyes of others, I will not appear white as snow.

¹⁴ While your countenance falls upon me now,
Will it if I act?
¹⁵ The thought of this makes my mouth run dry,
and my heart race with expectation.

¹⁶ I need to know O Lord, what is your will?
What have you meant by your Holy Word?

¹⁷ Teach me what is right, 
hold me close, 
never be far,
I will await your beckoning call.

¹⁸ Write your love on my heart, and make it beat for you alone.
For only you have the power to keep me going 
when my heart breaks in despair.
¹⁹ Allow me to hear your still small voice in the midst of this storm.

²⁰ Give me hope,
Give me grace,
Give me peace.
²¹Forgive me father and take from me this thorn. 

Shalom

Skakes

Sometimes homework isn't that bad!

This week Psalms brought with it a flare of creativity, soul searching, and fun! Our professor gave us all two creative assignments this past week, the first of which was to write our own psalm using the conventions we had been studying, and the second was to create an artistic representation of Psalm 8. Below you will find the second of the two projects, my artistic rendering of Psalm 8. 

The eighth psalm is one of thanksgiving and praise for God's acts of creation. In reading the psalm you can really get a sense of awe the author is experiencing through the description of the many aspects of creation, "how majestic is your name in all the earth!" For me, this psalm speaks of God's creative acts as they have happened, and as they continue to happen "what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" God did not just create the world, set it spinning on its rotational axis, and then walk away. God continues to walk with creation, caring for it through the work of his hand and the hands of his created children. 

 In my previous class on Pentateuch one of the points of emphasis for my professor was that in the creation God chooses to make humanity in his image. This act has divinely distinguished humanity from the rest of creation as we bear the image of God. We are living breathing icons of the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and as such we have been created with dignity and respect woven within the depths of our soul. As such humanity became the only element of creation to bear Gods image to the natural world, intrinsically being created with dignity in that same moment. A dignity that was affirmed when God enters into the creative process with Adam allowing him to name all the creatures of the land and the air in Genesis. Psalm eight touches on this point when it states "Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet."

For me the love of creation and the emphasis on the stewardship of creation has never been stronger felt then when I was in Mexico. As such I decided to depict this psalm in the style of the Mexican Iconography I saw when I was there. While the Son of man is not mentioned in the psalm I felt that Jesus did have a place in God's continued act of caring and sustaining creation (and symbolically it was the best thing I could come up with at the time). The tree is the tree of life from the garden of Eden which contains not leaves but the entire universe as depicted within the psalm.  The waves of colours depict the creative power and energy of God within the world, and the yellow section in the middle contains the words of this psalm, paying homage to the word of God spoken at the dawn of creation calling everything into being. 

It was a lot of fun to make and really gave me a new perspective on the Psalm. I think I will be doing more of these in the future as it was a great practice. below you will see the work in steps! hope you enjoy it!

I will be posting the psalm I wrote and a short explanation of it in the near future! So stay tuned for that. 

Shalom,

Skakes

and it all starts again

The picture above is from a chapel service that was held a few weeks back. As the chapel is extremely cold at all times of the year we decided to move the service outside in the warmth of the sun. It was a wonderful day and now that fall has offically hit and the leaves are releasing their golden stems from the trees, I am trying to hold on to those last few moments of summer. Weather reports tell me it may snow this Wednesday...I am choosing to ignore this fact and wear shorts for as long as possible. 

I can hardly believe that I have "finished" my first class of seminary. I say "finished" as I still have yet to write my major exegetical term paper on the Pentateuchal passages I had chosen.  One may assume this is due to procrastination however, let me assure you this is not the case! As the seminary courses are in 3 week blocks you are left with little time to breath and sleep let alone get all your daily assignments, reading, and other writings done. That having been said I have managed well thus far and have received great marks.  So overall I am not too worried about my one remaining looming paper deadline...not yet at least.

Pentateuch was a great class and I was excited to have Dr Kristine Ruffatto as she is an excellent teacher and scholar on the subject.  Much of the material was a review of previously learned texts and ideas from my under graduate but Kristine brought it back to life in a way that made it new and exciting again. This is something I was greatly thankful for. One of my favourite Anglican Priests let me borrow a few of her texts on the subject and they were extremely helpful and informative! I was so stoked to have the extra resources at my fingertips! So here is a HUGE shout out and thanks ERIN!!! YAY!!! I am sure the rest of the books you sent me with will be of help when the time comes to use them

This morning marked the start of my second 3 week course which is on the Psalms It is with Dr. Ruffatto and will likely be one of the largest classes of this year at LTS with 11 students. It is nice to be in a larger class with some senior students to have a fuller class dialogue.

Well I must run off to Liturgy! Hope to write again soon.

Shalom,
Skakes