It's ironic that in the passage of the Acts of the Apostles there is the account
of the martyrdom of Stephen and that in today's Gospel, on the other hand, we
are reassured that everything that we ask in Jesus' name will be
granted.
Death by stoning is a very cruel way of dying because it depends
on the good aim of the insane mass. Stoning does not only try to eradicate
someone's life, but it tries to erase the memory and meaning of the person.
There is an implicit communal repudiation in the act of dealing a death by each
participant taking the instrument of performance: a stone. And there is also a
share of the blame among the perpetrators, and it makes the entire community
directly responsible for implementation.
"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"Is one of the crucial questions of human history that hides our perplexity at misfortune or luck. The answer to this question then is conditional on two things, the culture of respondents and the intention to respond to these or these.
The question is not new, I think that has been in the consciousness of human beings since we started talking and we started to be religious (Rappaport), back in the archetypal cave.
It is well to remember that it was not until the development of speech that we could escape the here and now. Before the ability to communicate our world was rather boring, it began and ended every day. There was no way to retain, let alone communicate the experiences of the previous day, and thus there was no way to make meaning. Time was always present, no yesterday and no tomorrow. There was no way to solicit the help of others in the process of problem solving.
As we begin to communicate, we were able to escape the here and now, and we consider the possibility of tomorrow or yesterday. The time I leave to be on time and created a complex web of meanings. Northop Fry, Canadian theorist and literary critic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Frye Says that this web of meanings it is responsible for a lot of human advancement and also ironically for much of the destruction and hatred in the world. It is the web of meanings that allows us to work together to solve problems.
However, the web of meanings in which we live and which is the result of the creation of speech, say such concepts as homeland / nation, true / false, life / love / death, fortune / luck, we can not escape. This web of meanings that most often governs our actions, no one can escape, thus solving our common problems will be negotiated within the benchmarks of that invisible but real web in which we all live.
The question of evil, as the question of God belongs to the web of meanings, in a complex and unclean process where we have sought to find answers to the experience of life and death, luck and misfortune.
Therefore the answer to the question "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" will be spun in within a web of specific meaning, in this case rabbinical Judaism of the first century and from the person and ministry of Jesus.
Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.
For that there is disgrace in the world, that a loving God allow children born blind, children who do not know color or light?
The answer of Jesus is presented within the intentionality of the Gospel of John, where all history is interpreted theologically. The gift of sight or deprivation of the same is then raised in categories much more expansive, going beyond the physical or historical. As for John the important thing is not to explain away personal suffering, or resolving theodicy, but to say that in Jesus there is a new light, like nothing has seen in Human history so far.
In Canada while visiting a high school
as part of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto
together with a rabbi
we were ready to respond to questions
The young people had submitted previously.
And very weighty questions they were,
ranging from concerns about sexual morality to mysticism.
At the end, one young woman raised her hand and asked,
"If science proves that there is no God, how would you view your life work?"
Rabbi Cohen started by saying,
"Science can never prove there is no God just as science cannot prove there is a God.
It is the nature of God to transcend proof.
A God defined is no God at all.
If you prove it, you've lost it."
"Good answer," I thought.
(Not a formal text for a sermon, mostly notes to myself, preached at St. George's Astoria, Lent 1 2008)
Theme
of hunger is important, The French revolution was produced in part by hunger,
we do not rebel against the government among other things because we are
overfed, much of the instability of the world depends on the question of hunger
40
days/nights connect Jesus with the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt to Palestine.
The Jews spent 40 years wandering in the desert where they were fed by God with
manna and quails. Jesus is suffering hunger at the end of his 40 days
Jesus himself is in a wandering
process but within himself and places himself in the extreme that the founding
myth of the people of Israel was, he goes back to the historical source and is
presented with the question who is going to feed you?
The devil gives him three
optionsyourself, things or people
If
the voice and the dove of Jesus' baptism tell us that he is the Son of God (a
fact that the devil knows well) the temptations in the desert is his test as a
human …….he was famished it is very important because Jesus as a model is not beyond reach for any of us, that is the core of his mission,
allowing people to come closer to God and God becoming closer to people so the
hunger question here is very important, because puts him within reach of our
own experience
The desert experience can gives
pointers in developing skills for living
In some church traditions today is the funeral of the Alleluia because it is the last time we sing it before the long Lent of 50 days Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, interpreted by Jeff Buckley a singer who made his fame playing in bars in Lower Manhattan is a haunting dialogue of the composer with David, the quasi-mythical rudder shepherd, king, psalmist and wife cheater, traitorous murderer, man of faith and the dialogue includes himself the now deceased singer and composer but more importantly all of us
David, a country singer himself, whose rise from Shepherd to King, our Tiffany window celebrates, also fell for the beauty of Bathsheba,
Sings Jeff
Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
And she tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and afterward of David, who seduced her while watching her bathing from the roof and in order to become her husband. He sent her husband Uriah to a certain death in battle. In II Samuel 12 you have the whole story
Speaking for David, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah then voices the painful result of sin, estrangement of God
Well there was a time when you let me know What's really going on below
Blog 
