Shabbat in Israel

Greetings from Israel!

Yesterday my daughter Karen and I boarded a flight at Dulles about 2:a.m. Israeli and arrived in Tel Aviv about 12½ hours later. We picked up our rental car and drove to our hotel near the Mediterranean Sea just before the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath.

Karen is a professor at the University of Arizona (UA) and the director of the Religious Studies Program there. UA is one of five universities doing research on "Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging."

Tel Aviv University, one of the institutions in the project, is hosting a meeting of representatives from the five schools on June 23-25. Karen, who was being sent to the conference by UA, invited me to go along—and so here we are!

Welcome sign in Tel Aviv airport (June 19, 2015)

As we neither one of us had been to Israel before, we decided to go a few days early in order to do some sightseeing before her meetings begin. Today (Saturday) we plan to drive to Nazareth and then in the evening drive on to Tiberius where we have a hotel booked near the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Mark Levin, a retired Jewish rabbi and active civic leader in the greater Kansas City area, is a new friend/acquaintance. We sat at the same table at a community event last month and had a long telephone conversation after that.

Among other things, we talked about timshel , the key word in Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which I wrote about here (Rabbi Levin confirmed Steinbeck’s interpretation), and about tikkun olam the Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”

I was somewhat familiar with that term tikkun because of Jim Wallis and his friendship/corroboration with Rabbi Michael Lerner in California who is the editor of a quarterly interfaith Jewish magazine by that name.

Rabbi Levin suggested I read the Wikipedia article about tikkun olam. According to that article, “Jews believe that performing of ritual mitzvot (good deeds, commandments, connections, or religious obligations) is a means of tikkun olam, helping to perfect the world, and that the performance of more mitzvot will hasten the coming of the Messiah and the Messianic Age.”

This is closely related to Shabbat. The same article goes on to state,

Some explain the power of Shabbat by its effect on the other six days of the week and their role in moving society towards the Messianic Age. Shabbat helps bring about the Messianic Age because Shabbat rest energizes Jews to work harder to bring the Messianic Age nearer during the six working days of the week. Because the experience of Shabbat gives one a foretaste of the Messianic Age, observance of Shabbat also helps Jews renew their commitment to bring about a world where love and mercy will reign.

I was intrigued by what Rabbi Levin posted on Facebook late last Saturday afternoon: “As another shabbat is about to end, we Jews will pray for the messianic redemption of the world, by invoking Elijah the prophet, who, at least at this moment, did not appear this shabbat. We have to wait another week for a perfected world.”

Tikkun’s website states, “We are committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel.”

So as Shabbat is celebrated here in Israel today, whether the messenger Elijah appears or not, I pray that this will be a part of the perfected world that Jews, and many of us who are not Jews, eagerly long for.

Sunset on Mediterranean Sea (just before Shabbat began on June 19)

Proud/Ashamed of the Southern Baptist Convention

The 2015 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention is scheduled for June 16-17 in Columbus, Ohio. The business will be conducted by Ronnie Floyd, the SBC president whom I recently mentioned.

For many years it was a thrill to attend the SBC annual meetings—and can you believe that June and I even attended the 1957 annual meeting in Chicago on our honeymoon! And we were even called on stage to stand before everyone present as, not surprisingly, the most recently married couple there.

In 1963, I again attended the annual meeting. That year the convention met in Kansas City, and it was a significant one: the Baptist Faith and Message was revised for the first time since its original adoption in 1925. 

The BF&M was again changed slightly in 1998 and more at the 2000 annual meeting. The latter revision was the one that all SBC “employees” were required to sign, pledging “to work in agreement with and not contrary to” it. June and I were forced to retire as Southern Baptist missionaries because we could not in good conscience do that.

As a SB missionary on furlough (Stateside assignment), I attended four annual meetings, the last in 1992. I grew increasingly dissatisfied with them—not so much because I had changed, although I had to a certain degree (for the best, of course!), but mainly because the SBC was moving farther and farther to the religious and political right.

I gradually became ashamed of what I had previously been so proud of.

That right-wing movement and stance in the SBC has continued unabated in the last twenty years and will be clearly seen again at this week’s annual meeting in Columbus.

The “Convention sermon” this year will be given by Rev. Eddie Bumpers, pastor of Crossway Baptist Church in Springfield, Mo. Over the years that church has experienced considerable growth, but it is, apparently (and not surprisingly), a very conservative church.

In addition to summer camps and Vacation Bible School, the only event Crossway BC has listed for this summer is a two-day Answers in Genesis conference in August. As some of you know, AiG interprets Genesis literally and, consequently, affirms “young earth” creationism: on their website they clearly state that the earth is “only a few thousand years old.”

Prior to the Convention sermon on that June 17 afternoon, which is scheduled in the closing hour of the annual meeting, there will be a 25-minute report and presentation by the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, given by its president, Russell D. Moore.

Immediately following, there will be a special “SBC Presidential Panel” with president Floyd interviewing Moore, Southern Seminary president Al Mohler and others. The topic: “The Supreme Court and Same-Sex Marriage: Preparing our Churches.”

This discussion will take place as the Supreme Court is deciding this month whether to strike down same-sex marriage bans in 14 states, including the SBC meeting’s host state of Ohio. It seems as if those who planned this special panel discussion assume that those bans will be struck down.

The position of Moore and Mohler (as well as many other SBC leaders) on the same-sex marriage issue is quite clear: complete opposition. And presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who is an ordained SB minister and was for six years president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, has recently joined many other conservative Christians threatening civil disobedience if the SCOTUS approves same-sex marriage.

Yes, I was once a proud member of the SBC and annual meeting attender. But, sadly, no more.

Treasures in Heaven

Most of you know well Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Matthew 6:19-20, NRSV)

While Jesus was here obviously referring to a realm beyond the visible sky above the earth, “heaven” in the Bible often meant simply that: the sky and the clouds and other things visible in it. For example, when Jesus said “until heaven and earth will pass away” (Matt. 5:18), he was talking about the sky above the earth, not what we usually think of as Heaven.

Certainly we humans are wise to heed Jesus’ words about storing treasures in Heaven. But perhaps it is time to think also about storing treasures in heaven—or wherever the digital cloud is. (If it is not in heaven, the sky, why is it called a “cloud”?!)

On May 31, June and I attended “homecoming” at New Hope Church and Cemetery, my father’s home church in Worth County, Missouri. The land for that church and cemetery was donated in 1877 by his grandfather William Seat’s father. And in March 1878 William’s grandmother, Elizabeth Seat, was the first to be buried in the new cemetery.

Just two years later William died while he was still 30 and was buried close to his grandmother. More than 60 years later, his widow, Rachel Clark Seat who never remarried, was buried beside him.

Gravestone of Alexander Clark (1804-1864)

After looking at many ancestors’ gravestones at New Hope, we drove over to Kent Cemetery southwest of the little town of Denver. We went there mainly for the purpose of seeing for the first time the grave marker for my great-grandmother Rachel’s grandfather, Alexander Clark, who was buried there in 1864.

All this got me thinking about the future of small country cemeteries, of which there are several in Worth County and in rural counties all across the country. I wonder what they will be like 40 or 50 years from now. Who will take care of them? Will they most likely be largely forgotten and seldom visited? Perhaps.

So, maybe the wave of the future is digital memorials stored in the “cloud”—and this is being increasingly done. Five years ago already a book was published under the title Your Digital Afterlife, and there is a helpful website called The Digital Beyond.

The latter maintains a list of more than fifty online services designed to help people plan for their digital afterlife and/or to memorialize loved ones. Putting memorials in the digital cloud—or putting treasured memories in heaven, if you will—seems particularly promising, and maybe better now than putting gravestones in a country cemetery (not that it has to be one or the other).

With digital memorials, not only information about the deceased loved one but pictures, voice recordings, and other treasures can also be stored—and accessed from anywhere. And according to the appeals made on some of the websites reviewed in The Digital Beyond, they will be there “forever.”

Really?

I wondered about the future of small, rural cemeteries. GGG-Grandfather Alexander Clark’s stone is still legible after 150 years. But what do you think? Will what we store in the digital cloud be accessible 150 years from now—and even forever?

Maybe—or maybe not.

So if we are looking for lasting treasures/memorials, taking the words of Jesus seriously is the way to go.

What about Those Who Are Trans Formed?

Things used to be so simple when it came to gender issues. Boys/men were males who liked girls/women and girls/women were females who liked boys/men or at least wanted a good one for a husband and breadwinner/caretaker.

In all the “advanced” civilizations of the world that was how things were—in public and on the surface, at least. Those who did not fit the prescribed roles had to keep their real feelings in a “closet.” Those who deviated from the traditional pattern were thought to be, and castigated as, deviants—and often called even more derogatory names.

In several previous blog articles I have written about LGBT issues, focusing mostly on the LGs (lesbians and gays). I am still at a loss to know what to say about the Bs (bisexuals). But now the Ts are being widely discussed. The Ts, of course, refers to transgender persons, now often just calls trans.

A trans man is a female-to-male transgender person who was identified as a female at birth but whose gender identity is that of a man. And a trans woman is, of course, the opposite—and perhaps the best known trans woman in the world this week is Caitlyn Jenner.

The cover story of the June 1 issue of Vanity Fair magazine was “Call Me Caitlyn,” the tale of Olympic gold-medal (decathlon) champion Bruce Jenner’s transformation from the Male Athlete of the Year in 1976 to a female who looks like a model in 2015.

Jenner says that she was trans formed (my words); that is, born as a female in a male body. Therefore, at the age of 65 she was, finally, transformed from a man to a woman. After her transition, Jenner tweeted on June 1, "I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self.”

But there are those, especially some conservative Christians, who do not approve of what Jenner did and do not believe in trans formation or affirm those who are transformed from one gender to the other. One such person is Ronnie Floyd, pastor of a megachurch in northwest Arkansas—and currently the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Among other things that might be said about him, Floyd is the pastor of the Duggar family, about whom many of you know much more than I. Like most of you, though, I have heard that Josh Duggar, the oldest of the “19 Kids,” has admitted to molesting girls when he was a teenager.

Even before the release of the new issue of Vanity Fair, Floyd made reference to the sins of both Duggar and Jenner, saying they were both sinners: the former because of sexual molestation and the latter because of gender transition.  

According to the Christian Post, Floyd stated that “gender is not fluid” and he emphasized that God does not make mistakes. He is also quoted as saying, “Did God make him this way? Absolutely not.” In Floyd’s view, no one is trans formed—and it is wrong (sinful) to transition from one gender to another.

But more and more conservative Christians are admitting that most gays and lesbians are such by birth and not by choice, and that their sexual orientation is due to “nature” not “nurture.” Thus, reparative therapy is largely discounted now.

So why should it be any different for those who are trans? And if they were trans formed, shouldn’t they be supported and affirmed if or when they transition into a trans man or a trans woman?

Blessings on you, Caitlyn Jenner!