Sun. Nov. 17, 2013 (Karl Brown)

"My toys! I can't do without my toys!" That was Karl Brown's theme as he showed us the rubber duck with which his granddaughter plays. Karl said he often uses toys to illustrate concepts. When additional toys are acquired, two key questions emerge: Where am I going to put it, and how does this toy change me? (What about how much does it cost?) Toys are instruments of play and are also tools for shaping and changing people. Adults use toys to form social bonds, to understand relationships, and for decorations. Maria Montessori stressed that children playing with toys is children's work; children will be creative with whatever you give them. Karl noted gender preferences in children selecting toys. Karl citied Logo as brand that initially emerged to encourage creativity in children and has developed into a marketing success with "scripted" and more violent toys. Karl left us with the question: How do we spread Christian values of love, of caring for on another by the toys we use? How do our grown up toys shape us? (HN)

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Sun. Nov. 10, 2013 (Barbara Nickel)

Barbara Nickel spoke to us on Peace Sunday in a multifaceted message combining congregational singing and spoken litanies, inviting us to put peace into each others hands.  But how? From the story of the destruction of the city and cathedral of Coventry in 1940, Barb related how the survivors, whose strength was almost at an end, created out of rubble an image of the cross, followed by a service of reconciliation.  Shortly after, the people of Coventry sent money and aid to German cities ruined by Allied bombing, and much later, the  rebuilding of a new church from within the hallowed ruins of the old, married the tragedy of the old  with the hope of the new in one cathedral. In ruins, we can turn to God when our own strength is at an end, and ask God, grant us peace.  On the smaller scale of our own personal relationships, we can also ask God to deliver us up into peace when we can see no other way to accomplish the ends we are called to.  Whether relating our faith to one who does not share it, or giving our talents to the world, and then worrying about whether they are good enough to display; if we but grant God the possibility, He will send to us the comfort and support we need to know that we are valued not just for our many contributions, but for who we are in Her eyes - Her own child. [AP]

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Sun. Nov. 3, 2013 (Robert Daum)

Rabbi Robert Daum, in an overview of Genesis, gave licence to explore the hidden meanings that we impart to the text as we read it. Ronald Hendel in his book The Book of Genesis: A Biography notes that the bible has an “afterlife” - though composed and rewritten over hundreds of years, its interpretative life is what gives it meaning and currency for all cultures. This interpretative life, though perhaps a literary conceit, allows us to seriously consider competing versions of the text of Genesis (such as that found in the Dead Seas scrolls); oral versions versus written versions; and verbatim reproduction versus performance of the text by an interpreter. As an apocalyptic text describing a time beyond our own or a neo-Platonic book describing a place very different from our world, Daum says the book reflects our human desires to return the world to an Edenic state. No literalist reading of these cryptic words - permanently relevant, perfect and complete, and divine in origin - could compete.

Thus, in Genesis we find two creation stories, plus others in Psalms and Job. Woman is created either out of an androgynous being, or out of soil. Different personal names for God are used in close proximity without explanation. In Gen 1:2 our word “the deep” (tehom) is also proper name of an ancient Mesopotamian deity (Tiamaat) in an attempt to supplant the chaos of the manifold pantheon with the one true God. So too the sun and moon as “lights” disempowers the sun-god and moon-goddess myths prevalent at the time. Ruach embodies God’s enigmatic character as wind, breath or spirit depending on context. When Jacob wrestles with an angel and is renamed Israel, the text continues to refer to him thereafter as Jacob. This is not just sloppy editing or a fetishistic attachment to tradition - it’s a deliberate ambiguity to draw us into the text and have us embrace its wideness. Name changes, contradictory versions of important moments, rewriting history in two different chapters - all these give us a sense of the richness and mystery of the book, and we must train ourselves to read carefully to get the full benefit of it. [AP]

Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, November 3rd, 2013 using your browser's preferred media player.