|
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label eternal life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eternal life. Show all posts
08 January 2026
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS AFTER THE MURDER OF RENEE NICOLE GOOD BY ICE IN MINNEAPOLIS, MN ON 7JAN26 8JAN26
16 December 2025
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 16DEZ25
| |||
|
|
03 January 2013
A WISH TO LIVE FOREVER
A WISH TO LIVE FOREVER
I met a fairy who said she would grant me one wish.
Immediately I said, "I want to live forever."
"Sorry," said the fairy, "I'm not allowed to grant eternal life."
"OK," I said, "Then, I want to die after Congress gets its head out of its ass!"
"You crafty bastard," said the fairy.
30 August 2012
“This teaching is HARD, who can accept it” – a sermon on the Eucharist by Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber 26AUG12
I was just having this kind of conversation with one of my coworkers after work yesterday (and I told her about Rev Bolz-Weber's sermons and that she should check them out) about how I am thankful, as a believer, that I was raised in a Church that doesn't restrict access to communion or salvation. She said she was going to check out Rev Bolz-Weber's site, I hope she does and this is the first of the good reverend's sermons she reads...
NBW Sermon 8-26-2012 <CLICK
HERE to listen along. Sermons are a spoken event!!
In the last couple weeks, many of us here have been lucky enough to see a musical called The Book of Mormon. It’s an irreverent and profoundly funny look at the culture of religion in general and the origins of a distinctly American religion in particular. I personally thought it was hilarious and found myself snickering at what feels like some of the crazier ideas of Mormonism – things like, and I could be wrong about this, but the belief that good Mormon men get to eventually have their own planet. But it didn’t take long for me to stop snickering and lean over to my husband Matthew and say…yeah but the thing is, we claim to eat the flesh and drink the blood of a guy who lived 2,000 years ago. Who’s crazy now? I mean, all religions are weird, we’re just used to ours is all.
Every 3 years the assigned readings during the Summer include 5 weeks working our way through the 6th Chapter of John and what is called the Bread of Life Discourse. And let’s just say that if Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote a musical called the Book of John they’d have plenty of material from just this chapter alone.
In the last 5 weeks we’ve gone from the feeding of the 5,000 to Jesus walking on water in the middle of a storm at sea, (by the way, Jesus walks on water during a storm at sea so often in the gospels that I’ve started thinking it was less about being miraculous and more about just getting in some cardio), anyhow, then the crowd chased him down demanding more bread and then he goes and says that he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven which angered the nice religious folks, and rather than backing off he makes it even weirder by saying whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life. Which is where we pick up today when some of his disciples are like “Uh Jesus, That teaching is HARD…who can accept it?” And many of them leave. And I have to say, I don’t really blame them.
This teaching IS hard. But honestly, Jesus had a lot of sayings that were HARD. Sayings like, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, You who are without sin cast the first stone, sell all you have and give it to the poor, The first shall be last and the last shall be first and if you seek to save your life you will lose it. I totally understand the reaction of these disciples who say these teachings are hard, who can accept them.
But this week I started to wonder if maybe those disciples didn’t have to leave Jesus…I mean, when we make the accepting of hard teachings the litmus test for being a follower of Jesus I wonder if we are perhaps missing the point all together. Recently I was describing how many different types of people come to this church and was asked by a colleague what it is that unites all the people here at House for All Sinners and Saints. Is it a certain belief, they asked? I looked at them and was like, What, in a doctrine? Of course I answered No. I mean, I have a very clear and perhaps shockingly Orthodox Lutheran theological perspective, but honestly, you guys believe all sorts of stuff. Trust me on that. A few of you are theologically Lutheran, but the rest of you guys are everything from Agnostic to Evangelical and strangely I think some of you are both at the same time. So while we are pretty Christocentric here, I mean, pretty into Jesus, accepting a certain doctrine is ultimately not what unites us. /// I think what unites us isn’t a doctrine, it’s a table – a table that is open to all in which we receive this Bread of Life come down form heaven. The body and blood of Christ is what unites us and makes us a church. Hopefully not in a prideful see how inclusive we are way, but in a Lord to whom shall we Go? You have the words of eternal life way.
We are all welcomed each week with the news that we have an open table at House for All and that means that everyone without exception is invited to receive the bread and wine which for us is the body and blood of Christ. And some of us have perhaps grown so used to this that we don’t realize how radical that is given the history of Christian practice. For as much difference there is in the Christian church…Roman Catholicism, snake-handling Pentecostalism, polite Presbyterianism, emotional Evangelicalism, Intellectual Lutheranism – for as much as we differ, the one thing most Christian traditions actually have in common is some form of communion… which makes it all the more ironic that the very thing we all seem to have in common is the thing that so often divides us. A lot has been spilled in the history of the church over issues of who gets to take and serve communion…a lot of ink and a lot of blood.
Sadly, the way we as Christians have historically responded to the gift of the Eucharist is to make sure that we understand it, then to make sure we put boundaries around it and then to make sure we enforce both the correct understanding and the correct boundaries. But on the night Jesus was betrayed he didn’t say “this is my body broken for you…UNDERSTAND this in remembrance of me….he didn’t say ACCEPT this or DEFEND this or BOUNDARY this in remembrance of me he just said do this in remembrance of me.
It IS a hard teaching. That God would be made human and walk among us, that this Christ would offer his own flesh for the sake of another world, that he would do this knowing what scoundrels sat around his table the night he was betrayed and that he would do it anyhow saying take and eat this is my body broken for you do this in remembrance of me. And when we at House start to feel even slightly self-congratulatory about our inclusivity, we might do well to remember two things. One: the 12 disciples who sat around that table included Judas the Betrayer and Peter the Denier and the reason Judas and Peter makes us cringe is that there is that of the Christ betrayer and the Christ denier in all of us and it is precisely THAT part of us which Jesus seeks to make whole with his own broken body. And 2, every time we enter this space we pass that mural of the Last Supper that we created last year and that the disciples in the mural were created out of images of people or that within ourselves that we wish were not invited to the table.
This teaching is HARD. Who can accept it.
It is hard to accept that our enemies receive the same forgiveness and grace and redemption as we do but sometimes it’s even harder to accept not just that God welcomes all, but that God welcomes All of me, all of you. Even that within us we wish to hide: the part that cursed at our children this week, or drank alone, or has a problem with lying, or hates our body, that parts within us that suffer from depression and can’t admit it, or is too fearful to give our money away, or is riddled with shame over our sexuality or cheats on taxes …all these parts of us we wish Jesus had the good sense to not welcome to his table are invited to taste and see that the Lord is Good….all of who we are is welcomed to his table to see that the gifts of God are free and for all and for all. This teaching is Hard…who can accept it.
As your preacher today, please hear that I am not asking you to accept it. I’m only asking you to do it. Because here at this table, you can bring the most broken pieces of your life, here you can bring the most broken pieces of this world, here you can bring the most broken pieces of yourself, and you can receive with no payment or worthiness on your part, the equally broken body of Jesus Christ. You need not understand it or accept it. You need not put boundaries or defenses around it. You need only do it. So come with all of who you are and receive the living bread come down from heaven. Receive life and forgiveness and salvation with all the other broken saints and gleaming sinners for it is this that unites us in the love of a powerful God. Amen
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/08/this-teaching-is-hard-who-can-accept-it-a-sermon-on-the-eucharist/
The Last Supper – made by House for All Sinners and Saints 2011
In the last couple weeks, many of us here have been lucky enough to see a musical called The Book of Mormon. It’s an irreverent and profoundly funny look at the culture of religion in general and the origins of a distinctly American religion in particular. I personally thought it was hilarious and found myself snickering at what feels like some of the crazier ideas of Mormonism – things like, and I could be wrong about this, but the belief that good Mormon men get to eventually have their own planet. But it didn’t take long for me to stop snickering and lean over to my husband Matthew and say…yeah but the thing is, we claim to eat the flesh and drink the blood of a guy who lived 2,000 years ago. Who’s crazy now? I mean, all religions are weird, we’re just used to ours is all.
Every 3 years the assigned readings during the Summer include 5 weeks working our way through the 6th Chapter of John and what is called the Bread of Life Discourse. And let’s just say that if Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote a musical called the Book of John they’d have plenty of material from just this chapter alone.
In the last 5 weeks we’ve gone from the feeding of the 5,000 to Jesus walking on water in the middle of a storm at sea, (by the way, Jesus walks on water during a storm at sea so often in the gospels that I’ve started thinking it was less about being miraculous and more about just getting in some cardio), anyhow, then the crowd chased him down demanding more bread and then he goes and says that he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven which angered the nice religious folks, and rather than backing off he makes it even weirder by saying whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life. Which is where we pick up today when some of his disciples are like “Uh Jesus, That teaching is HARD…who can accept it?” And many of them leave. And I have to say, I don’t really blame them.
This teaching IS hard. But honestly, Jesus had a lot of sayings that were HARD. Sayings like, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, You who are without sin cast the first stone, sell all you have and give it to the poor, The first shall be last and the last shall be first and if you seek to save your life you will lose it. I totally understand the reaction of these disciples who say these teachings are hard, who can accept them.
But this week I started to wonder if maybe those disciples didn’t have to leave Jesus…I mean, when we make the accepting of hard teachings the litmus test for being a follower of Jesus I wonder if we are perhaps missing the point all together. Recently I was describing how many different types of people come to this church and was asked by a colleague what it is that unites all the people here at House for All Sinners and Saints. Is it a certain belief, they asked? I looked at them and was like, What, in a doctrine? Of course I answered No. I mean, I have a very clear and perhaps shockingly Orthodox Lutheran theological perspective, but honestly, you guys believe all sorts of stuff. Trust me on that. A few of you are theologically Lutheran, but the rest of you guys are everything from Agnostic to Evangelical and strangely I think some of you are both at the same time. So while we are pretty Christocentric here, I mean, pretty into Jesus, accepting a certain doctrine is ultimately not what unites us. /// I think what unites us isn’t a doctrine, it’s a table – a table that is open to all in which we receive this Bread of Life come down form heaven. The body and blood of Christ is what unites us and makes us a church. Hopefully not in a prideful see how inclusive we are way, but in a Lord to whom shall we Go? You have the words of eternal life way.
We are all welcomed each week with the news that we have an open table at House for All and that means that everyone without exception is invited to receive the bread and wine which for us is the body and blood of Christ. And some of us have perhaps grown so used to this that we don’t realize how radical that is given the history of Christian practice. For as much difference there is in the Christian church…Roman Catholicism, snake-handling Pentecostalism, polite Presbyterianism, emotional Evangelicalism, Intellectual Lutheranism – for as much as we differ, the one thing most Christian traditions actually have in common is some form of communion… which makes it all the more ironic that the very thing we all seem to have in common is the thing that so often divides us. A lot has been spilled in the history of the church over issues of who gets to take and serve communion…a lot of ink and a lot of blood.
Sadly, the way we as Christians have historically responded to the gift of the Eucharist is to make sure that we understand it, then to make sure we put boundaries around it and then to make sure we enforce both the correct understanding and the correct boundaries. But on the night Jesus was betrayed he didn’t say “this is my body broken for you…UNDERSTAND this in remembrance of me….he didn’t say ACCEPT this or DEFEND this or BOUNDARY this in remembrance of me he just said do this in remembrance of me.
It IS a hard teaching. That God would be made human and walk among us, that this Christ would offer his own flesh for the sake of another world, that he would do this knowing what scoundrels sat around his table the night he was betrayed and that he would do it anyhow saying take and eat this is my body broken for you do this in remembrance of me. And when we at House start to feel even slightly self-congratulatory about our inclusivity, we might do well to remember two things. One: the 12 disciples who sat around that table included Judas the Betrayer and Peter the Denier and the reason Judas and Peter makes us cringe is that there is that of the Christ betrayer and the Christ denier in all of us and it is precisely THAT part of us which Jesus seeks to make whole with his own broken body. And 2, every time we enter this space we pass that mural of the Last Supper that we created last year and that the disciples in the mural were created out of images of people or that within ourselves that we wish were not invited to the table.
This teaching is HARD. Who can accept it.
It is hard to accept that our enemies receive the same forgiveness and grace and redemption as we do but sometimes it’s even harder to accept not just that God welcomes all, but that God welcomes All of me, all of you. Even that within us we wish to hide: the part that cursed at our children this week, or drank alone, or has a problem with lying, or hates our body, that parts within us that suffer from depression and can’t admit it, or is too fearful to give our money away, or is riddled with shame over our sexuality or cheats on taxes …all these parts of us we wish Jesus had the good sense to not welcome to his table are invited to taste and see that the Lord is Good….all of who we are is welcomed to his table to see that the gifts of God are free and for all and for all. This teaching is Hard…who can accept it.
As your preacher today, please hear that I am not asking you to accept it. I’m only asking you to do it. Because here at this table, you can bring the most broken pieces of your life, here you can bring the most broken pieces of this world, here you can bring the most broken pieces of yourself, and you can receive with no payment or worthiness on your part, the equally broken body of Jesus Christ. You need not understand it or accept it. You need not put boundaries or defenses around it. You need only do it. So come with all of who you are and receive the living bread come down from heaven. Receive life and forgiveness and salvation with all the other broken saints and gleaming sinners for it is this that unites us in the love of a powerful God. Amen
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/08/this-teaching-is-hard-who-can-accept-it-a-sermon-on-the-eucharist/
13 August 2012
Sermon on Eternal Life and Living Like Liberace With Your Mom and Her Friends Forever 12AUG12
Here is a beautiful life lesson, one that reaffirms hope and faith and life now and forever. From Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber...
Jesus said to them, 7Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life.
When I was in my twenties and totally out of control and pretty much estranged from my conservative Christian parents I used to joke about how my mom would try and guilt me into connecting with them more often by saying in her Kentucky accent “Nadia, the least you could do is come visit us more often…since we won’t be spending eternity together”. Which made me wonder if the church she went to realized that the promise of spending eternity with my mom and her friends wasn’t exactly the best selling point. At least not for a 21 year old.[1]
But that’s kind of what I was taught: that being a Christian was all about where you will spend eternity after you die – kind of like purchasing a life-insurance plan for the hereafter. And if you manage to be good enough here on earth then when you die you get to go to heaven and be like the spiritual 1% for eternity and live in big mansions with Jesus and wear awesome jewels and walk streets of gold. Which made it sound like eternal life is basically about getting to live like Liberace Forever.
So even now when I hear the phrase “eternal life” it’s hard to not just think of it as life after death. Don’t get me wrong, it is true that to have eternal life means that death is not the final word…that beyond the death of these human bodies is a life with God everlasting, That’s beautiful, and yes, it is good news. But I dare say that it’s not the whole picture.
Because I need eternal life to be about more than just what happens after I die. I need eternal life to also be about life before death. Eternal life can’t just be about time that never ends – because my relationship to time is in some ways, the very source of a lot of fear and anxiety in my life. The philosopher Kierkegaard knew about this. He wrote about how our anxieties are about how we relate to time – See, The fixed nature of what has already happened can feel terrifyingly final. But the unknowable and vast nature of what can happen in the future is also frightening. It seems a simple enough truth – that we can’t change the past and we can’t control the future. Yet this is what haunts so many of us.
So, too often we spend our time, our present time, the actual moments we will never get back again, and we squander them regretting what we’ve done or what’s been done to us in the past, or fearing what will or won’t happen to us in the future. And seriously, we might as well just take all those present moments we spend doing that and just throw them in a dumpster instead because in effect that’s what we are doing anyhow.
So this week I started to feel that if the promise of eternal life that Jesus speaks of in our reading for today is only something that happens after we die, then it just doesn’t feel like good enough news to me. But then I realized, that if eternal life is related to the imperishable truth of Who God is in Jesus, then this does actually have something to say about our resentment about the past and our anxiety about the future. Because when it comes down to it, all our regrets and fears that rob us of the present moment …all of them when it comes down to it are actually about the fear of death. Whether it’s a conservative Christian mother who fears the loss of her wayward daughter and wishes she’d call more, or a desperate housewife in Orange County who is injecting Botox into her poor forehead. All fear is fear of death.
So if fear and regret are the things that rob us of the present moment then when Jesus speaks of eternal life, it isn’t just about what happens when we die. Eternal life is life that is available now and it’s life that comes from knowing that death has finally been put in it’s place. Everlasting life is available now to those who believe that the God of the universe whose love we are drawn into in Christ – that this God is the source and ground of what is more real than any mistake or mistreatment of the past and more real than any hypothetical possibility in the future. This isn’t about just when we die… because this God is present to you most especially – not in the past or future – but in the present moment. Jesus said I AM the bread of life not I was or I will be but I AM and that I AMness of Jesus transcends time so that his I Amness is available to us in the present moment. Kierkegaard was right when he said that Christ’s presence on Earth is never a bygone event. The IAmness of Christ is not something that we remember from ancient history –it is always a present reality.
Life everlasting is always about the present. It’s about a promise in Christ made in the past, which continues in the future but is most especially for right now in the present.
I think this is why all the great spiritual leaders teach mindfulness. Because the gift of the present is the only thing that is real.
This is how the great saints and martyrs of the church survived whatever came their way. They weren’t saints because they didn’t have the same amount of things in their past to resent or regret as you do…it’s not because they didn’t have the same number of possible bad things that could happen in the future…. I think they knew the imperishable truth of Christ in the real and present moments of their lives and they trusted this more than they trusted all other competing ideas. They trusted this more than they feared death.
I think the saints of the church have always known that I AMness of Christ as the way, the truth and the bread of life is about NOW. This is why every week when we introduce the peace at House for all Sinners and Saints we do so by saying Christ is among us making peace right here, right now. The peace of Christ be with you.
Maybe you live in a place of resentment or regret for what has happened in the past. Or maybe you live in anxiety or fear of the future, and if so, please know that this imperishable truth of the I Amness of Christ is present to you. Right here. Right now.
So I’ll take a page out of our contemplative-in-residence James Wall’s book and invite you to mindfulness. I invite you into the reality of this very moment. God is here. The eternal imperishable truth is found in the way God is present to us in each moment. This present moment is a gift to you from God. Because here’s the thing: God has already redeemed your past and is already present in the future that you keep worrying about. And the life that God brings us is life eternal. It is happening right now and it is more real and more powerful and more eternal than anything you have to fear or resent or regret. So welcome to life eternal. Amen
Liberace in his heavenly palace. (not really)
When I was in my twenties and totally out of control and pretty much estranged from my conservative Christian parents I used to joke about how my mom would try and guilt me into connecting with them more often by saying in her Kentucky accent “Nadia, the least you could do is come visit us more often…since we won’t be spending eternity together”. Which made me wonder if the church she went to realized that the promise of spending eternity with my mom and her friends wasn’t exactly the best selling point. At least not for a 21 year old.[1]
But that’s kind of what I was taught: that being a Christian was all about where you will spend eternity after you die – kind of like purchasing a life-insurance plan for the hereafter. And if you manage to be good enough here on earth then when you die you get to go to heaven and be like the spiritual 1% for eternity and live in big mansions with Jesus and wear awesome jewels and walk streets of gold. Which made it sound like eternal life is basically about getting to live like Liberace Forever.
So even now when I hear the phrase “eternal life” it’s hard to not just think of it as life after death. Don’t get me wrong, it is true that to have eternal life means that death is not the final word…that beyond the death of these human bodies is a life with God everlasting, That’s beautiful, and yes, it is good news. But I dare say that it’s not the whole picture.
Because I need eternal life to be about more than just what happens after I die. I need eternal life to also be about life before death. Eternal life can’t just be about time that never ends – because my relationship to time is in some ways, the very source of a lot of fear and anxiety in my life. The philosopher Kierkegaard knew about this. He wrote about how our anxieties are about how we relate to time – See, The fixed nature of what has already happened can feel terrifyingly final. But the unknowable and vast nature of what can happen in the future is also frightening. It seems a simple enough truth – that we can’t change the past and we can’t control the future. Yet this is what haunts so many of us.
So, too often we spend our time, our present time, the actual moments we will never get back again, and we squander them regretting what we’ve done or what’s been done to us in the past, or fearing what will or won’t happen to us in the future. And seriously, we might as well just take all those present moments we spend doing that and just throw them in a dumpster instead because in effect that’s what we are doing anyhow.
So this week I started to feel that if the promise of eternal life that Jesus speaks of in our reading for today is only something that happens after we die, then it just doesn’t feel like good enough news to me. But then I realized, that if eternal life is related to the imperishable truth of Who God is in Jesus, then this does actually have something to say about our resentment about the past and our anxiety about the future. Because when it comes down to it, all our regrets and fears that rob us of the present moment …all of them when it comes down to it are actually about the fear of death. Whether it’s a conservative Christian mother who fears the loss of her wayward daughter and wishes she’d call more, or a desperate housewife in Orange County who is injecting Botox into her poor forehead. All fear is fear of death.
So if fear and regret are the things that rob us of the present moment then when Jesus speaks of eternal life, it isn’t just about what happens when we die. Eternal life is life that is available now and it’s life that comes from knowing that death has finally been put in it’s place. Everlasting life is available now to those who believe that the God of the universe whose love we are drawn into in Christ – that this God is the source and ground of what is more real than any mistake or mistreatment of the past and more real than any hypothetical possibility in the future. This isn’t about just when we die… because this God is present to you most especially – not in the past or future – but in the present moment. Jesus said I AM the bread of life not I was or I will be but I AM and that I AMness of Jesus transcends time so that his I Amness is available to us in the present moment. Kierkegaard was right when he said that Christ’s presence on Earth is never a bygone event. The IAmness of Christ is not something that we remember from ancient history –it is always a present reality.
Life everlasting is always about the present. It’s about a promise in Christ made in the past, which continues in the future but is most especially for right now in the present.
I think this is why all the great spiritual leaders teach mindfulness. Because the gift of the present is the only thing that is real.
This is how the great saints and martyrs of the church survived whatever came their way. They weren’t saints because they didn’t have the same amount of things in their past to resent or regret as you do…it’s not because they didn’t have the same number of possible bad things that could happen in the future…. I think they knew the imperishable truth of Christ in the real and present moments of their lives and they trusted this more than they trusted all other competing ideas. They trusted this more than they feared death.
I think the saints of the church have always known that I AMness of Christ as the way, the truth and the bread of life is about NOW. This is why every week when we introduce the peace at House for all Sinners and Saints we do so by saying Christ is among us making peace right here, right now. The peace of Christ be with you.
Maybe you live in a place of resentment or regret for what has happened in the past. Or maybe you live in anxiety or fear of the future, and if so, please know that this imperishable truth of the I Amness of Christ is present to you. Right here. Right now.
So I’ll take a page out of our contemplative-in-residence James Wall’s book and invite you to mindfulness. I invite you into the reality of this very moment. God is here. The eternal imperishable truth is found in the way God is present to us in each moment. This present moment is a gift to you from God. Because here’s the thing: God has already redeemed your past and is already present in the future that you keep worrying about. And the life that God brings us is life eternal. It is happening right now and it is more real and more powerful and more eternal than anything you have to fear or resent or regret. So welcome to life eternal. Amen
[1] Peggy is awesome and loves me and my church and yes, is quite grateful I came back to Jesus
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/08/sermon-on-eternal-life-and-living-like-liberace-with-your-mom-and-her-friends-forever/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/08/sermon-on-eternal-life-and-living-like-liberace-with-your-mom-and-her-friends-forever/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)