The High Cost of Child Care

Last week I wrote the last check I will have to write (hopefully) for childcare during the school year.  Once it was entered into Quicken out of curiosity I decided to see how much we had spent for preschool over the past seven years for my two daughters.  The total stunned me.

We have spent $85,050.  Yes, you read that correctly. We spent more than $85000 dollars to have our children taken care of during the week while we were working.  And that total does not include babysitting or meals, those were entered separately, that was just tuition. I should note that this total would be a lot higher had we not moved from New England two years ago, and it would have been lower if we had been in New Mexico the entire time. But our salaries increased and decreased commensurately.

We did not go with the least expensive preschools we could find, as we didn't want McDonalds to be the primary competitor for the labor.  But we also did not go anywhere near the most expensive places we could have gone. We were at the YMCA for a portion of this, and then in a private provider. This total would also be considerably more except that we did receive a scholarship for one daughter to attend a preschool at a church, and my youngest has been in a preschool program at the local elementary school part-time. So this total could be higher.

What this total represents for our household is basically a year's income for my wife and me.  I have written in the past about the high cost of preschool, about how important it is, and wondered why it was not more a part of the national dialogue. And the church is just as responsible for this lack of dialogue as there is nothing about addressing this issue in either the Book of Resolutions or the Book of Discipline.

At a time when there is a group set out to destroy public education as we know it, the education of our children, and its cost, must be addressed more. It is simply unconscionable that we are willing to spend more than $25,000 a year for a prisoner, and sometimes gleefully willing, but complain about the cost of education.  We are going to pay either way, and to me it makes more sense to pay the much smaller amount now, rather than paying for it later.

On Not Interpreting Scripture

My wife and I are in the process of buying a house, and we had the home inspected this week.  It turned out that the home inspector was the son of a missionary, and considered going into the ministry until he was drafted, and was, in his words, "uncalled."  I'm just guessing from the conversation that he grew up on the conservative end of the church, although as an adult he did attend a United Methodist congregation.  But something he said during our time together struck me, although I can't remember what the context was that began it.

He said that one of the troubles in the church is in people "interpreting" the Bible rather than just reading what the Bible has to say.  I hear or read this a lot, most especially amongst conservatives; that we can't bring what we want to the Bible that we have to read and see what the Bible says not what we want it to say.  In some ways I agree with this, that reading ourselves into the Bible, or forcing the Bible to say things because that's what we want, is indeed a true issue to be aware of.

But the problem is that it is impossible not to bring ourselves to scripture.  It is impossible not to have certain lens through which we read scripture.  A comment I recently read by Burton Visotsky, a rabbi, gets to the heart of this for me.  He said "“We don’t have a lot of choice (in how we approach scripture) – the twentieth-century lens is the only one we have.  I study how the church fathers and rabbis read this story, but even as I do that, I’m keenly aware that I’m reading church fathers and rabbis through my twentieth-century lens."

I read scripture with the lens of a twenty-first century over-educated white American liberal heterosexual male who is married with two daughters who didn't grow up in the church.  Being cognizant of those things helps me to see things in scripture that I might otherwise miss, but if I am not cognizant of it than I force myself onto the text, because that is all I can bring to scripture, and assume that it is God speaking.  If I were single, or female, or uneducated, or not-American, or non-white, or if I had sons rather than daughters, I would read scripture differently.  There is simply no way to just read the Bible "as it is."  I cannot remove these lenses because they are who I am.

The problem I find though is that so many people are so unaware they even have these lenses that they therefore bring them to scripture without being cognizant of them and then are convinced that they are reading only "what the Bible says" and not what they want it to say.  Now I know that I want the Bible to say some things, and not say other things, but because I am aware of that I can struggle and be in dialogue and conflict with scripture, which is what has really been going on for millenia.

I can seek to understand the scriptures original context, but I can never read it as a 1st century rabbi or Christian, because that has never been my worldview and it will never be my worldview.  I can only read it as I am, who I am and where I am, and that will invariably impact my interpretation of the text.  I cannot ever not interpret.  But, it is then that I can truly engage in study of scripture and also truly engage in conversation with others who are different than me and who read scripture differently, which is really everyone.

The Flood

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The scripture was selections from the story of Noah and the flood.

A story is told of a young boy who came home from Sunday school having been taught the story of Moses and the Israelites fleeing from Egypt and crossing the red sea.  His mother asked him what he had learned in class, and he told her: “The Israelites got out of Egypt, but Pharaoh and his army chased after them.  They got to the red sea and they couldn’t cross it.  The Egyptian army was getting closer.  So Moses got on his walkie-talkie, the Israeli air force bombed the Egyptians and the Israeli navy built a pontoon bridge so the people could cross.”  The mother was shocked.  “Is that they way they taught you the story?” she asked.  “Well no,” the boy admitted, “but if I told it to you the way they told it to us, you’d never believe it.”

You would be hard pressed to find a children’s Bible in which the Noah story, although greatly redacted, does not find a prominent place, including sometimes being placed on the cover.  If you go into a store that sells items for babies’ rooms, you will find plenty of items based on the Noah story.  But like the boy with Moses we too have completely changed this story around as to make it unrecognizable from what scripture actually says, in order to make it more palatable.  Even in Sunday school I’ guessing that your felt picture telling of this did not include the death of all humanity, except Noah and his sons, or the vengeful and angry God seeking out his retribution on mankind, and if some teacher were to do that I can only imagine all the calls of complaints from parents that the minister would received the next day.

Let’s be honest this is not a nice touchy, feely, cuddly story, full of cute bunnies, lions and giraffes.  When we really look at what this story is saying, this is the story of nightmares, and as I thought about sermons on the stories of Genesis, this is the one story that I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with, or what I could possibly say, because it is a hard one and I’ll be honest I still don’t know what to make of it, but the bad news for you is that won’t stop me from saying something about it.
I think some of the hesitancy in trying to deal with this story is not just because of the destruction wroth by God, and we’ll get to that, because also because of the character of Noah himself.  We are told that Noah was the most righteous person of his generation, which sort of sounds good, but really it’s a backhanded compliment.  It’s like saying someone is the most honest politician.  When the competition is so despicable, what does that truly mean?  One of the things I have enjoyed about preparing for this series on genesis has been reading lots of Jewish commentators, after all they have been interpreting these passages for a lot longer than Christians have, and the rabbis have a nearly universal disdain for Noah.

Cain and Abel

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Genesis 4:1-22a:

Because of the events of two weeks ago I had considered moving this sermon up in response, but the simple fact is while the tragedy in Boston might have been big, it is unfortunately all too common of an occurrence.  We don’t have to watch the news for very long to find the story of someone killing someone else, or committing some other act of violence, because they were upset with the other person, thought they had been slighted, or the other person had something that they believed belonged to them, or that the other person represented something they despised and so it is with Cain and Abel.

There is conflict set to bloom right from the start of today’s passage.  There is quite a bit of information given about Cain’s birth, especially when we compare it to the birth of Abel, about whom all we are told is that he was born, and thus their struggling may have begun when they were infants.  Cain grows up to become a farmer, or agriculturalist, and Abel becomes a shepherd, or herdsmen, and thus begins the age old conflict that marks this as an archetypal story that continues to be played out.  This is the musical Oklahoma writ large, except without the singing cowboys, and no surries with the fringe on top.  And what begins the conflict initially seems fairly innocuous, as Cain decides to make an offering to God, although he has not been told to do such a thing.  Because Cain is a farmer, he brings God an offering of the fruits of the field.  I think it’s pretty amazing, that Cain, without being told to, would be willing to give up some of the harvest to thank God for the creation and for God’s faithfulness.  Presumably seeing his brother giving this offering, Abel then proceeds to give his own offering, but being a shepherd, be brings an animal.

God sees the offerings that are made, and he accepts the offering of Abel, and then we are told “but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.”  There is not an obvious reason why Abel’s offering is accepted and why Cain’s is not, but, of course, there is a lot of speculation.  Some say that Abel’s offering is accepted because it is a blood sacrifice, which were important in ancient religions, not just for Judaism.  From a Christian perspective this has a lot to offer for it for some  because of how some people view the cross, and Christ sort of being the ultimate blood sacrifice, although I do have to make not that this is not the orthodox position of the view of the cross, as the church does not have an orthodox position for this.  In addition, although it’s sometimes troublesome to look forward to scripture and apply it backwards, which we are going to do a lot of today, when the Israelites are given rules about how and what to offer to God, there are rules set up for making agricultural offerings, so it doesn’t seem to be that God rejects one and accepts the other simply because Cain offers fruit and Abel offers animal fat.

The Apple

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Genesis 3:

In his memoir Teacher Man, Frank McCourt, who was a high school English teacher, recounts some of the excuse notes he would receive from his students.  The ones he always appreciate the most were the ones that were clearly forged and told such outlandish stories as to cease being credible.  The notes sometimes got so good, that he began keeping the best of them, and what he found was that the forged excuse notes exhibited the best of American writing.  They were, in McCourt’s words, “fluent, imaginative, clear, dramatic, fantastic, focused, persuasive, useful.”  He began to wonder why it was that his students whined and complained about getting any writing assignment, and tried to avoid them for as long as possible, and when they did them put so little effort into them.  But when it came to forging excuses they suddenly became brilliant and creative.  And to try and capture this untapped potential, he decided to give them an assignment to write an excuse note from  Adam to God or from Eve to God.

“They didn’t look around,” he said.  “They didn’t chew on their pens.  They didn’t dawdle.  Pens raced across paper.  They could do this one… with their eyes closed….  The bell rang,” McCourt says, “and for the first time in my three and a half years of teaching, I saw students so immersed they had to be urged out of the room by friends hungry for lunch….  [The] next day everyone had excuse notes, not only from Adam and Eve but even from God and [the snake].”  And it was then that McCourt said he realized “there was enough material in human history for millions of excuse notes.  Sooner or later, everyone needs an excuse.”

That is most certainly what we find in today’s story, which may be one of the most famous not only in the Bible but even in Western culture.  While it is a story of beginnings that seeks to explain why things are the way they are, such as why snakes crawl and why women experience pain in childbirth, the story is also really about human nature, about who we are at a fundamental level and who we are today is not really all that different from who we are told that Adam and Eve are.  God has created this garden for humans to exist in, and in the garden are trees that of which they can eat, but there are two other trees in the garden as well.  First there is the tree of immortality, and it’s not really clear what this tree does.  Is man in the garden mortal or immortal?  The tendency has been to say that we lose immortality when we are expelled from the garden, but if Adam, and then Eve, are immortal to begin with why is that tree there?  That is a question that is never really answered.

Kudos to Levi's

One of the problem with changes in weather is that I have to buy new clothes for my daughters. Last Friday we went out to buy some shorts for my oldest, and one of them was a pair of Levi's. As I was preparing to wash them today, and stopped to read the washing tag just to make sure they weren't calling for anything unusual. But what I found was unusual.

At the bottom of the tag, it said to remember to donate the clothes when we are through using them. How cool is that? I do enough complaining about corporations for all the things they do wrong, and so I like to also point out when I catch them doing things right. So thanks to Levi's for this corporate message of responsibility.

Second Creation Story: Marriage

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Genesis 2:4b-25.  If I wasn't already reappointed, this one might have gotten me reappointed:

Today we heard the second creation story we find in the bible, which stands in contrast to the story we heard last week and find in chapter 1.  These two stories are very different and cannot be reconciled, and they also have very different meanings.  The first creation story ends by saying “thus the heavens and the earth were finished,” and the second story begins with   “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”  The first creation story starts with the heavens and goes to the plants, animals and then concludes with the creation of humans, both male and female at the same time, from heaven to earth.  Today’s passage reverses that order, and man is created first after the waters begin to flow over the land.  But that’s not the only difference.  God also creates differently.

In the first account, God creates by fiat, God says what is going to happen and it happens, God is transcendent, but this time God fashions man from the dirt by actually forming the man together, and then breathing into him the breath of life, and it is upon receiving the breath of life that he becomes living being, God is immanent.  The word translated here as man is actually Adam, which is the masculine form of the feminine word earth which is adama.  So in the translation we miss a word play from the Hebrew, which we actually find a lot of in scripture, so that adam is created from the adama, or we might say, as Amy Jill Levine notes, that God creates the earthling from the earth or the human from the humus.  But Adam, and Eve, do not get their names until later in chapter 3, here they are simply referred to as the man and the woman, but we haven’t gotten to the woman yet.

Oh Boston, You're My Home

Even though I live in New Mexico now, I spent the prior 8 years in Boston and the surrounding communities.  My daughters were both born in Boston, born in one of the hospitals now treating victims, and since my youngest daughter's birthday is tomorrow, had this happened 5 years ago we would be right in the middle of it.

Anytime there is a senseless tragedy like this it's hard, but when it happens to a place that you have called home it hits even harder.  I know there has been lots of talk on the news now about Patriot's Day and it's meaning to the city, but unless you have been there it's really hard to imagine.  The town in many ways literally shuts down for the day.  Many businesses are closed, and even those that are open have less staffing because many people have taken the day off either for the things that are going on or because it's the first day of spring break and so they are off to be with their kids.

In addition because there is basically 28 miles of roadway shut down it's much harder to get around town, and the crowds who are there for the marathon make mass transit even busier than normal.  We lived in two places close to the route.  One was three blocks away and was about the 24 mile marker.  The second was right on the route, as in I could walk out the front door and watch people run by, and it was the half way mark.

People are lined up along this route in huge numbers.  Even at the halfway mark, people could be 3-4 deep on the sidewalk, and they are there for no other reason than to cheer on the runners.  Sometimes they know someone who's racing, and it's really hard not to know at least one person who's running, but most of the time it's just to cheer on everyone who is there.  Just thinking about it now sort of brings me chills, because it's something the entire city sort of takes pride in and ownership of.  On Marathon Monday many people just know that this is what they are going to be doing.  So for this to happen sort of tears at the heart of the city.

When my father called me yesterday to talk about it, the first thing he said was "did you ever go to the finish line to watch it?"  My response was that I never did because it was way too crowded.  As I said people are 3-4 deep much earlier in the race, and the finish line it's just crazy packed.  And it is that fact which makes the casualty numbers such a miracle.  The fact that there are only 3 dead and 140 or so wounded, as terrible and tragic as it is, is simply a miracle, because it could have so much worse.

If there is a best case scenario for the worst case scenario, which this bombing is, it is that it occurred where it did.  There were doctors and nurses stationed at the finish line who immediately ran to help, there is a large police presence who ran to help, and they have ambulances lined up as well.  Just watch the video and you can see the first responders do what they are trained to do, and do it so well, and you know many lives were saved right there.

And if that is not enough, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital are all almost literally around the corner from there.  These are not just some of the best hospitals in the commonwealth or even in the country, these are rated as some of the best hospitals in the world.

If these bombs had happened to go off in Wellesley where I lived, they might not have hit as many people, but almost assuredly the death rate would have been higher because the victims would not have been treated as quickly as they were.  It would have taken awhile to not only reach them, but to get them to the hospital, and to do so they would have had to have avoided the easiest route because it would have been flooded with runners making entry and egress even more difficult.

But what we also need to understand is that this is not Boston's event, this is the world's event.  Rev. Steve Garnass-Holmes, a former colleague of mine from Boston, said yesterday that all we have to do as look at all the flags representing the nations that had runners that had to be moved out of the way to get to the victims and we know that this is not Boston, MA, or Boston, USA, this is Boston, World.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families, to the witnesses, to the first responders and the race volunteers who responded so valiantly in a time a crisis, and to all the runners, those who crossed the line and those who couldn't.  Boston will recover and go on, just as they did after losing so many in 9/11 (both towns in which I served had memorials to citizens they had lost in planes that day) and undoubtedly there will be other senseless attacks that will follow this.

But as the Boston University School of Theology is saying, may we run to peace rather than to violence and revenge.  May we not start judging and attacking those we think might be responsible, but instead let the investigators do their work, and then when the perpetrator or perpetrators are caught let us not make blanket statements and judgements about everyone else who is like them.  The good always outnumber the bad, and so it is up to us to be the ones who bring light into the darkness.

Every year our church in Wellesley would hang out a banner for the marathon quoting from Isaiah 40:

"those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint."

May it be so.

Yahoos and the Masters

One of the greatest and most historic golf tournaments in the world is the Masters, which was just played this weekend.  The final round was great, concluding in a two hole playoff in which Angel Cabrera came heart-breakingly close to winning it on two different shots, but ultimately lost to Adam Scott.

But even with that, much of the conversation has swirled around a two-shot penalty given to Tiger Woods on Saturday for something that happened on Friday.  Apparently some yahoo, or better a yah-freakin'-hoo, was sitting around watching the tournament and thought he saw Tiger break a rule and so he put down his drinks and chips long enough to call Augusta National to report it.  And not only did Augusta National listen to this yahoo but they decided to penalize Tiger the next day.  The rule official who was with Tiger did not notice it, nor seemingly did anyone else, but let's not trust the people we pay to do this, let's trust ol' Jimmy sitting on his barcalounger who has nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon then sit at home watching golf.

Augusta National, where the Masters is held, is one of the most prestigious courses in the world (and I won't comment on the fact that they have only allowed women in in the past year, and their racial record is just as bad), so why are they listening to yahoos on the phone rather than relying on their own officials?  There are people who walk around with the players whose job it is to make these types of rulings, are they not doing their jobs?  Do you not trust them to do their jobs?  Are there not enough of them to do the job they have to do?

We are not talking about some tournament at the local municipal course, this is the Masters for God's sake.  They makes millions of dollars a year on this tournament, so if you need more officials to walk with each player hire more officials, but do not leave the officiating to some yahoo sitting on his couch watching from home.  Can you imagine if the NFL went back and gave a penalty in the 3rd quarter for something that happened in the 1st quarter because Billy Bob saw a holding penalty that didn't get called?  Or how about if MLB called a batter out in the seventh inning and took a run off the board because the umpire made the wrong call in the 3rd inning, and that runner eventually scored, but Bubba watching at home called in and said the umpire was wrong?  Both those scenarios are asinine and so is this one.

This isn't the first time the PGA has allowed this to happen, and unfortunately it probably won't be the last, but it should be.  Either trust your rule officials to do their jobs, get more of them, or get rid of them and get an entirely new group but do not let your officiating be done by the yahoos watching the tournament at home.

And just so you know, Dan Wetzel reported that he was told by a spokesman from Augusta National,"If you call Augusta National you will be put through to whomever you ask for." So go ahead and give them a call, their number is 706-667-6000.

First Creation Story: Sabbath

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Genesis 1:1-2:4a:

Today we begin a new sermon series in which we will work our way through the Book of Genesis.  Now one of the problems with these stories is that they are ones that most of us know, and we have known them for most of our lives and because of that we sort of become immune to what the stories actually say, and sometimes what the story actually says does not  match what we think the story says, and so today we begin by hearing the first of two different creation stories, and I ask that you listen to it as if you have never heard it before and listen for things that you had forgotten, or never knew, so here is the first creation story:

nasa.gov

We obviously hear a lot about creation stories these days, and it always seems to be pitted between those who believe in the bible and thus a certain view of creation and those who believe in evolution, another view of the creation, and we are told that we cannot believe both, that this is sort a black and white world in which there is no grey.  Well I’m here to tell you that not only don’t you have to succumb to this false dichotomy, but that you can believe both in the Bible and in evolution, as I and millions of others do as well.  But there are several things that we must keep in mind when we are looking at scripture.  The first is trying to understand what the Bible is and what it is not.  It is not a book of science, and was never intended to be a book of science, first of all because the men who wrote it did not understand science, or really anything, the way we do now.  And the second is that they had absolutely no conception of things either being true or false, or fiction or non-fiction.  That is an idea which did not come about until the rise of the enlightenment, so within the last 300-400 years.  Before that no one thought that way and when we try and make things being either true or untrue we again create these false dichotomies.

Roger Ebert and The Boulder Pledge

Yesterday Roger Ebert died after a long battle with cancer, and he will most definitely be missed.  I remember fondly watching he and Gene Siskel every week growing up.  We didn't go and see a lot of movies in our family, but I have a great love of cinema and some of that definitely comes from the two of them.

I knew some of Ebert's background, such as the fact that he was the one who recommended to Oprah that she syndicate her show, and thus made Oprah who she is today.  I did not know that he was an early adopter and promoter of the Internet, including being an early investor in Google.  Nor did I know about his Boulder pledge to save us from spam emails, and more importantly to save us from ourselves.  The Boulder Pledge says:

"Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community."

Consider me a signer, and may it be made so.  Amen and amen.

MLK and Dancing the Night Away

45 years ago today the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  Many people believe that the fact that President Obama could be elected twice proves that we live in a post-racial world, but all we need to do is look around a little to see that's not the case.

In an item strangely appropriate for this day of remembrance comes the story of the first integrated prom at a high school in Georgia.  Now you might think this is a historic recounting of people living into King's dream from a long time ago, but you would be mistaken. Instead this year, 2013, students at Wilcox County High School in Rochelle, Georgia, will hold their first ever interracial prom. Ever since integration took place there have been two proms every year, one for whites and one for blacks. Every year there have been two different proms based on what color your skin was.

If you want to see a fantastic documentary on a similar event in Mississippi, I highly recommend Prom In Mississippi in which Morgan Freeman pays for the first integrated prom for the school at the town he grew up in, although it took them 11 years to take him up on the offer.

It is truly amazing that things like this still take place, but they do and they are all too common.  But let us also not forget that King also had great concern for the poor and those doing jobs for low wages, a problem which has also not gone away.

Marriage and Loving

Today the Supreme Court takes up the issue of gay marriage, and strangely the conservatives aren't arguing for state rights, instead the argument is the opposite.  At the same time, the Supreme Court of Mexico recently ruled in favor of gay marriage, citing two US Supreme Court Cases, including Loving v. Virginia, which I wrote about on it's 45th anniversary.

But today I think it might be worthwhile to reiterate Mildred Loving's words about her famous case and about marriage:

"Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the 'wrong kind of person' for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights. I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about."

March Madness Begins With Madness For Me

Tonight the University of New Mexico, my alma mater, plays Harvard University, also my alma mater, and so I'm left wondering who I should be rooting for, and so I thought I'd try and work this out:

UNM is ranked highest ever going into the tournament, and many think they could make it to the sweet sixteen for the first time, and so maybe I should root for them.

I love rooting for the underdog, and Harvard is decidedly the underdog, so maybe I should root for them.

Most people have closer ties to their undergraduate schools than graduate school, so that would be UNM

Should it be based on amount of time?  I spent more time at Harvard than at UNM.

Money spent and debt incurred? Easily Harvard.

Teams that travel farther tend to be at a disadvantage, so maybe UNM (they are playing in Denver)

Based on mascots?  A lobo is clearly bigger and better than a crimson, so UNM wins.

Both cities are beautiful and great in their own ways.  Albuquerque has better views and food, but Cambridge is also great, so that's a tie.

Beauty of the campus? Harvard, not even close.

Age of the school? Harvard, not even close.

Graduation speaker?  Oprah this year at Harvard, UNM not yet announced, so we're going with Harvard.

Colors? Harvard Crimson, UNM silver and cherry.  Going with Harvard.

I'll be very happy if either team wins, although UNM making it far into the tournament will be better, because Harvard doesn't really stand a chance.  But my daughters went to school wearing their Harvard shirts today, and I'll be wearing mine tonight, but come Saturday, the next game, I will be wearing my UNM Lobo shirt.

People of the Passion: Preparing

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The texts were Luke 7:36-39, 44-50; 19:29-38; 22:7-13:

It seems like ages ago, to me at least, that we began this journey looking at the people of the passion.  You might remember that was when we changed things up and had worship in the fellowship hall because the heater broke in the sanctuary and it was a nice comfortable 53 degrees.  Much has changed since then.  We began at the cross and have been making our backwards to today, and then next week we reverse the process starting at Palm Sunday, making our way to the cross and then the celebration of Easter morning, which we will begin at 6:45 outside in the dark and the cold, although I hope it’s not as cold as I imagine it’s going to be.  But today we look at those who prepared the way, all of whom are unnamed in Luke’s gospel, and unlike those we look visited at the cross, with one exception, tradition has not named them at all.

We begin with the woman who anoints Jesus with oil.  Even though this story which we just heard from Luke occurs way before the last week, it is found as part of the last week in Matthew and Mark, and it is the last thing that happens before Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem in John.  Now there are some significant discrepancies between the telling of these stories, so much so that there are debates among scholars of whether these are actually two different events, or if it was only one event over time the stories diverged in the communities where they were told such that we get two different tellings, and where they are placed in the gospels also give them different meanings and messages.

Now if you’ve been here for a while then you’ve heard me say that although I tendency is to try and combine the gospel texts all into one, to make them tell us the same story, but they don’t each gospel author has a unique story to tell and we have to respect that, and when we combine them we end of creating a new gospel, one of our own creation, not the one we have presented to us.  Now, that being said, I am going to do that which I just said we shouldn’t do, and treat these stories as if they are not only the same, which they are not, but also as if they are the same person doing it, which they are also not.  I will make the differentiations known where they are, but I am going to treat them as if they are the same and treat the story from sort of a 30,000 foot view so that we can learn something from the general more so than from the specific.