An except from Companion to the Book of Common Worship (Geneva Press, 2003, 117-119).

…on the Day of Pentecost, we celebrate God’s gift of Holy Spirit which draws us together as one people, helps us to comprehend what God is doing in the world, and empowers us to proclaim, in word and in deed, God’s plan of reconciling all people in the name of Christ (Ephesians 1:10).

Without the gift of the Spirit, Christ’s church dries up and withers away, and we are left with only our broken selves. With the gift of the Spirit, all things are possible. A spirit-filled community of faith opens eyes to needs in the world and sees its missing as God’s new people. The Day of Pentecost is the climax of the Great Fifty Days of Easter, celebrating as it does the gift of the Spirit to the body of Christ — the church.

As long as this exists,” I thought, “and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts, I cannot be unhappy.” The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. ”As long as this exists…” by Anne Frank, excerpt from The Diary of a Young Girl. © Bantam Books.

Anne Frank ’s diary was first published in English on this date in 1952.  What’s now known as Diary of a Young Girl was first published in Dutch in 1947, under the title The Secret Annex (Het Achterhuis in Dutch). Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp about two weeks before the camps were liberated in 1945.  After the war, Anne’s father, Otto Frank, was given the diary, along with some other papers, which had been left behind when the family was taken in 1944. He wasn’t able to read it for a while because it was too painful, but when he did, he believed that his daughter meant the diary to be published. From: Writer’s Almanac April 30, 2012

Learn more at the Anne Frank House and Museum

If you think a church and its members ought to be about community, about caring for one another, about taking Christ’s gift of grace out into the world and sharing it, then join us. Whatever gift God has given you, we’ll help you find a way to share it.  If you haven’t figured out what that gift is yet, well, we can help you with that too.

Thinking Outside the Pews: Communion 

]]> http://fpcshreveportblogs.org/taking-christs-gift-of-grace-out-into-the-world-and-sharing-it/feed/ 0 http://fpcshreveportblogs.org/holocaust/ http://fpcshreveportblogs.org/holocaust/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:58:55 +0000 Musings http://fpcshreveportblogs.org/?p=3810 It is impossible to think about the Holocaust.  It is impossible not to think about it.  Nothing in history equals the horror of it.  There is no way to imagine it.  There is no way to speak of it without diminishing it.  Thousands upon thousands were taken away in Nazi Germany during World War II.  They were gassed.   Their corpses were burned.  Many were old men.  Many were small children.  Many were women.  They were charged with nothing except being Jews.  In the end there were apparently something like six million of them who died, six thousand thousands.

Anyone who claims to believe in an all-powerful, all-loving God without taking into account this devastating evidence either that God is indifferent or powerless, or that there is no God at all, is playing games.

Anyone who claims to believe in the inevitable perfectibility of the human race without taking this into account is ether a fool or a lunatic.

That many of the people who took part in the killings were professing Christians, not to mention many more who knew about the killings but did nothing to interfere, is a scandal the church of Christ perhaps does not deserve to survive.

For people who don’t believe in God, suffering can be understood simply as part of the way the world works.  The Holocaust is no more than an extreme example of the barbarities that human beings have been perpetrating on each other since the start.  For people who do believe in God, it must remain always a dark and awful mystery.

If Love itself is really at the heart of all, how can such things happen?  What do such things mean?  The Old Testament speaks of the elusive figure of the Suffering Servant, who though ”despised and rejected of men” and brutally misused, has nonetheless willingly “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” and thereby won an extraordinary victory in which we all somehow share.  (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).  The New Testament speaks of the cross, part of whose meaning is that even out of the worst the world can do, God is able to bring about the best.

But all such explanations sound pale and inadequate before the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Ravesbrück and the ovens of Treblinka.

Excerpt from Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

Never.

Never Shall I Forget from Night by Elie Wiesel.

WHY WE REMEMBER THE HOLOCAUST

This video describes the Holocaust, Days of Remembrance, and why we as a nation remember these events

http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/video/?content=whyweremember

David Barnouw is the premier scholar on Anne Frank and head archivist and critical editor of her surviving writings. He holds an appointment at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and works at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. He has published extensively on the Occupation period. Barnouw is frequently invited on national and international radio and television to speak as a World War II expert.

Over the next few days we will posting material related to the remembrance of the Holocaust.  Today we feature two poems that give us potent reminders of why we must remember.

You Who Live Secure

You who live secure
in your warm houses,
who return at evening to find
hot food and friendly faces:Consider whether this is a man,
who labors in the mud
who knows no peace
who fights for a crust of bread
who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
without hair or name
with no more strength to remember
eyes empty and womb cold
as a frog in winter

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
when you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
when you go to bed, when your rise.
Repeat them to your children,
or may your house crumble,
disease render you powerless,
your offspring avert their faces from you.

Primo Levi

In the Presence of Eyes

For decades, Americans have been turning toward spirituality as a protest vote against conventional religion… The bored and wounded have fled religion seeking new spiritual connections. Some 30 percent of Americans now identify as “spiritual but not religious,” around 9 percent are atheists and post-theists. But the growth of these two groups is not news. Their numbers have been rising for thirty years.

What is new? In my research, it’s the “ands.” Those who say they are “spiritual and religious.” In 1999, 54 percent of Americans said they were “religious but not spiritual,” while six percent said “spiritual and religious.” By 2009, the percentages had reversed: “religious but not spiritual” fell from 54 percent to nine percent as the “spiritual and religious” rose from a mere six percent of the population to nearly half, an astonishing 42 point change.

“Ands” want religion revolutionized by spirituality; they want spirituality grounded upon (but not guarded by) ancient wisdom, theologies, and practices. They demand more authenticity, meaning, justice, and community from religious institutions, not less. In these longings, the “ands” voice an older way of understanding religion, where faith should and must be an experience of God that transforms one’s life for the sake of the world. If the “ands” are the vanguard of change, then the great religious recession is about to give way to a great spiritual awakening. Is this the end of religion or only the beginning of a new, and better, form of faith?

The issue before us today is whether we can love the church. It gets so little love, and perhaps deserves less than it receives. It is so easily despised, especially for its manifold shortcomings, its weak and timid witness, its halting and vacillating call to discipleship, its own failure to live out what it professes. The church is a clunky thing, not nearly as sexy as a protest movement or as effective as a political campaign or as successful as a product placement. The church has baggage. And in truth, it is not and never will be an end in itself. There is no temple, according to St. John the Divine, in the heavenly city, “for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb” (Rev. 21:22). But the mystery of the church is that the Lamb is never without his people, never without his bride. The great mystery of the church is that Jesus Christ loves the church.

“Road to Emmaus” COPYRIGHT DANIEL BONNELL WWW.BONNELLART.COM

On the resurrection:

I have no idea what happened except, as I say, what really matters is not so much what happened there as what happens now — what happens in your life and my life, what happens in the world, what happens the next five days, five years of human history. Is God making himself known in some powerful and saving way among people, even [people] who don’t give a hoot about God? Is this still a reality which is part of the madness and self-destructiveness and darkness of the world? That’s what really matters.

From: An Interview with Frederick Buechner

“Resurrection” COPYRIGHT DANIEL BONNELL WWW.BONNELLART.COM

The writer and minister Frederick Buechner speaks about the Easter message. From: An Interview with Frederick Buechner.

The essential message is that nothing, no horror can happen that can permanently, irrevocably quench the presence of holiness that is always there “underneath the everlasting arms.” No matter what dreadful things take place, that remains the heart of reality. There is that wonderful thing from the British saint, Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.” That somehow remains true no matter what. That’s, I think, the message of Easter.