Showing posts with label Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Show all posts

Sunday, August 21, 2011

How Was Church?




I'm glad you asked! The choir, (read Pink Floyd), sang through a rousing rendition of the album Animals and then proceeded to call down heaven, as they say, with a glorious romp through Dark Side Of The Moon.

I sat comfortably enthroned, (or is that entombed), on my pew, i.e. coffee house easy chair. The sacraments went down easy this morning, double espresso and a sensible bran muffin, less guilt, less repentance than that ever-tempting cinnamon roll.

The sermon, a disjointed ramble through the day's headlines- the miseries and malfeasances of the night before, until the Spirit Himself gave voice to the Father's heart. Let's just say, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

What was on the Father's mind this morning? The famine in Somalia apparently....

Above, an internally displaced Somali woman attends to her malnourished son at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Ismail Taxta / Reuters. Below, Relatives of Hassan Abdulkadir Adan, third from left (rear), help to lower the body of his 7-year-old son into a grave in a refugee camp in Mogadishu. Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.


Above, Aden Salaad, 2, looks up at his mother as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / AP. Below, a mother mourns the death of her son at the Banadir hospital. Photo by John Moore / Getty Images. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.



Above, a malnourished child from southern Somalia is weighed in Banadir hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP. Below, a doctor examines Mihag Gedi Farah, a seven-month-old child with a weight of 7.5lbs (the average weight of a first world newborn), in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee. Photo by Schalk Van Zuydam / AP. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.



Osman Ali Aliyow Mursal digs a burial plot for his four-year-old son, Aden Ibrahim, as men prepare to pray over the boy's body, wrapped in a plastic mat. Doctors were unable to save Aden, who died of diarrhea-related dehydration after four days of inpatient care. U.N. Refugee Chief Antonio Guterres says that drought-ridden Somalia is the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / AP. Below, A woman from southern Somalia builds a makeshift shelter from tree branches at a refugee camp in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo by Mohamed Sheikh Nor / AP. Photo text courtesy of MSNBC.com.



Mulmillo closes the eyes of her two-year-old son Mahmud moments after he died from malnutrition and related complications at a local hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images, text by MSNBC.com.

So political BS aside, and no religious posturing needed. There will be no altar call this morning, the Christian response to hunger is explicitly mandated in scripture. Here's how we can help.

Whatever we haven't done for the least of these...



Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Gospel According To Nietzsche (part 2)


"What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" so lamented Nietzsche's madman.


Church Of The Holy Sepulcher

I mean if we really believed we were made for the next world, if we really believed He was our reward.....




If we really believed that we were the temples of the Holy Spirit....


If we really took Him serious about justice, and mercy, and our responsibility to the poor...



Mega Churches

If we really believed we serve a risen savior....Would we build these megalithic monuments to the material world. I mean it's not like we use them to house the 145 million orphans in the world or the 180 million homeless. And it's not like God needs a vacation home.

God must be dead, entombed in our churches. For I think, if He lived, men would fear Him. And take Him at His word. That whatever you haven't done for the least of these...



The children who live on garbage dumps....



The children trapped in forced slave labor....



And the ones that starve in an age of excess....


....we haven't done for Him.