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This is the tract I was handed today by a woman. Funny thing is she didn’t knock at my door. I knocked at hers. Whaaa? Yes, I was delivering home delivered meals today for the local Area Agency on Aging … Continue reading
I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to … Continue reading
I am participating 
in a discussion group (for me online; for others, either online and/or IRL) with the First Lutheran Church of Jamestown, N.Y. on the book, Holy Conversation: Talking About God in Everyday Life by Richard Peace. I was invited to the group by Tara Lamont Eastman, with whom I have become acquainted through the blog Sleeping with Bread and now her own blog Uphill Idealist. This will be my fourth post as part of that group. The first post can be found here; the second, here; and the third, here.
In your own words – tell a Jesus story that is important to you and tell us why you choose it.
He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm, came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us, we are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the seas obey?”
Matthew 8:23-27
Why I chose this story is partially because of the humor inherent in this story: In the midst of the storm, Jesus was asleep. His reaction: “Dudes, relax, my Father, I and the Holy Spirit have it under control.” Then he yawns, gets up, calms the winds and the sea and goes back to sleep, I like to imagine. Their reaction: “Whoa, who is this guy who we’re hanging out with?”
Also I chose this story because I think that often it is our habit to call out to God in those times of storms in our lives instead of realizing he is there all the time. I think of something as simple as a couple nights ago when I was calling out for him after eating hot wings: “Lord, help me!” but when I’ve had a home-cooked meal, I don’t say, “Hey, thanks, dude.”
The footnote in my Bible, The Catholic Bible: Personal Study Edition, on Matthew 8:26 on the phrase: “Of little faith” says to see the footnote on Matthew 6:30 (“If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?”). The footnote reads:
Except for the parallel in Luke 12, 28, the word translated of little faith is found in the New Testament only in Matthew. It is used by him of those who are disciples of Jesus in whose faith in him as not as deep as it should be (see Mt 8, 26; 14:31; 16, 8 and the cognate noun in 17, 20).”
Even Peter was one of those disciples whose faith in God wasn’t as deep as it should have been, as evidenced in Matthew 14 when after starting to walk on the water, he began to doubt (“O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”). Yet it is this same Peter who later will have enough faith to answer Jesus when he asks who does Peter think Jesus is:
“You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”
Then just like that (Bam!), he is, at least, in terms of Catholic theology, made the founder of the Church and, in terms of other Christian traditions, given the keys to the kingdom.
If Peter can change like that, maybe there is hope for us also to change.
So if you are a Christian, what is your favorite Jesus story and why? If you are of another faith, what is your favorite story about a/the major religious figure(s) to your faith: Muhammad, Moses, Buddha, and why? If you are of no faith, what is your favorite story of Nietzsche (ahem, partially said tongue-in-cheek) or another philosophical figure like him, and why?
(After looking through all the music videos of “Walk on the Water,” including songs by Aerosmith and Eddie Money, I decided on this one. Yes, still apropos of nothing, but I always liked the Violent Femmes.)
I am participating in a discussion group (for me online; for others, either online and/or IRL) with the First Lutheran Church of Jamestown, N.Y. on the book, Holy Conversation: Talking About God in Everyday Life by Richard Peace. I was invited to the group by Tara Lamont Eastman, with whom I have become acquainted through the blog Sleeping with Bread and now her own blog Uphill Idealist. This will be the first post as part of that group.
God first “came alive” for me when I was two or three years old. I had burnt my hand on an plug I plugged into an outlet in an upstairs room of our house. My hand, which normally is white (well, pinkish flesh as I was, and still am. Caucasian), turned black. I remember crying out and my aunt Joan, who lived with us at the time and was in the same room, rushing to me. According to my mother, my aunt took me downstairs to where my mother was to get it cleaned under a faucet, prayed for me and my burnt hand, I don’t remember which one. Then afterward as my mother read a book to me, she noticed that my hand was no longer burnt.
This was before I said the Sinner’s Prayer with my mother at the age of four and “accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” Did I know what I was doing? No more than an infant in the Catholic Church knows, but I believe God’s hand was placed on me just the same as an infant who is baptized. Does this mean I was “saved” at that moment in terms of eternal security and all that jazz? I don’t believe so as the choice was, and is, still mine to choose or reject — just as the Israelites in Deuteronomy — did the blessing or the curse.
Regardless of that question, that moment was my first concrete experience with God for better and sometimes worse – since as for those of us who are Christians and even for those of you who are not Christians, but of others faiths, or no faith at all know that God, life, the universe and everything doesn’t always work in such dramatic ways. Often God, life, the universe and everything works in extremely more quiet ways than that, with a whisper and not a shout.
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