By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The really nice thing about Easter is — you get to sing. Good and loud. And if you go to my church, you get to sing the Alleluia Chorus from “The Messiah,” which if you’re me, you learned as a kid in the Cecelian Choir at the First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, Michigan.

I was a soprano then.

I think I’m tending toward alto these days, but since the only part I know is the soprano, with notes scraping the top of the staff, that’s what I sing. Good thing people belt it out at my church: I get a little screechy, but nobody can hear me.

Why is it that there are so few opportunities to sing in our culture today? Church and baseball games, and that’s about it. Unless you don’t like church or the National Anthem, in which case you’ll have to turn your car radio up real loud and sing along with J-Lo and the Pit Bulls.

Alleluia!

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

In the late 1990′s, Georgetown professor John L. Esposito was working on a book about the future of Islam. After 9/11 he put that book aside in favor of more pressing topics — “Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam” (2002) and “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think” (2009) are just two.

Now, nearly a decade later, Esposito finally returns to his subject with the publication of “The Future of Islam” from Oxford University Press. About 50 percent of the book was written before 9/11, he told audience of 200 last weekend who were attending an “Islam and Authors” series at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in Oakland. The rest is informed by the post-9/11 political and religious tensions around the world.

One of the most intriguing chapters in Esposito’s newest book addresses the topic of reform in Islam. People have been asking Esposito, who has been studying Islam and teaching Islamic studies for more than three decades, whether Islam is capable of change. They wonder, is it compatible with Western notions of rule of law, human rights and gender equality?

“When people ask a question about Islam, they assume there is only one answer,” an exasperated Esposito told his audience. They ask questions like, “What does the Qur’an say about violence?” “Is Islam capable of modernity?” “Can it change?” There are many, many answers to those questions, he said, and the answers are constantly changing.

With an estimated 1.57 billion adherents, the world of Islam is no less complex and varied than than the world of Christianity, which includes such radically differing elements as Pentecostal, Quaker, Unitarian and Coptic Christians. But many Westerners fail to see that diversity and, out of fear, tend to perceive Muslims as a single homogeneous — threatening — mass.

“When a Christian blows up an abortion clinic, we don’t say, ‘There go those Christians again,’” Esposito said. “But if it’s a Muslim [blowing something up,] we call them ‘Islamic terrorists.’”

In fact, Esposito noted, Islam holds reform and change as a founding principle. Mohammed was a social reformer as well as a prophet, securing rights for women that were radical in the Arab world of his time. Islam calls upon Muslims to follow Mohammed’s example and reexamine their practices regularly, making changes where necessary.

Of course, what those changes, if any, should be is a matter of heated discussion among Muslims today — and throughout history. “Some people are conservative,” Esposito said. “Some people think there is need for adaptation and change.”

How various Muslim groups perceive the past is often a point of conflict. Some Muslims look to past practices and traditions as authoritative. Others view them as interpretations of scripture appropriate to particular contexts, but susceptible to reform.

Reared in Brooklyn in an Italian Catholic family, Esposito spent ten years in a monastery. Since the Seventies, he has devoted himself to the study of Islam and to promoting healthier relations between Muslims and Christians. At Georgetown University, he teaches religion and international affairs as well as Islamic studies.

Esposito founded the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown and is its current director. He has served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, as president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, and on the board of directors of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy.

(Want to know more about Islamic law? Sumbul Ali-Karamali is a writing buddy of mine from the Religion Newswriters Association. A neat lady and an attorney, Sumbul’s book, The Muslim Next Door, takes a thoughtful look at Islamic law. )

The Future of Islam, by John L. Esposito, with a forward by Karen Armstrong, Oxford University Press, 2010, 256 page, $24.95.

If this report interested you, you might want to visit BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com and see my post “My Search for a Muslim Woman to Interview

I know way too many people whose impression of Christianity has been shaped either by media accounts of the (noisy) Religious Right or by books written the (equally noisy) New Atheists.

As the saying goes, where religion in America is concerned, the loudest noise is coming from the shallow end of the swimming pool.

So many of my otherwise well-informed friends seem to be  unaware of the vibrant progressive movement that is alive and well today in America’s Protestant churches.

Open James A. Forbes Jr.’s new book, Whose Gospel? for a brisk tour of the progressive Christian take on sexuality, gender, race, justice and war.

Whose Gospel? A Concise Guide to Progressive Protestantism, by James A. Forbes Jr., with a forward by Bill Moyers, The New Press, 2010, 176 pages, $23.95.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

That the last Sunday of the liturgical year celebrates the Feast of Christ the King tells me that, when all is said and done, we Christians believe Jesus Christ reigns over all that is.

And that would include the Jews, Muslims and Buddhists who live alongside us. What then do I say about Christ’s kingship to my non-Christian friends? That God has “put all things under his feet” — them included? (Eph 1:21,22)

Matthew limns a powerful Christ the King, who sits on a throne of glory before all the nations. But when Christ sorts the people before him it is not by nationality or religious belief, but by how they treated God’s forgotten: the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. (Matt 25:31-46)

“Truly I tell you,” he says. “Just as you did it to one of the least of these . . . you did it to me.”

That’s a king?

Pentwater, Michigan. Photo 2007 Barbara Falconer Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

As I made plans for my mother’s memorial mass at the tiny St. Vincent Catholic Churchin Pentwater, Michigan, last summer, I asked my brothers and my mother’s grandchildren if they’d like to participate in the service.

There were the Prayers of the Faithful to be read, as well as two passages from scripture, and the bread and the wine to be carried to the altar.

My nephew, an evangelical, jumped at the chance to read from Romans. My son and daughter, who grew up in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland and are now an agnostic (an apatheist to be more precise) and a beginner Buddhist respectively, agreed to take on Isaiah and the Prayers of the Faithful.

But my brothers and some of the grandchildren were uneasy at the thought of standing up in front of a bunch of people to read from a document they didn’t believe in. One granddaughter thought she might be able to read a passage, but only if it didn’t mention God.

Exasperated, I sent out an email. “It’s not necessary to ‘believe’ the scriptures!” I declared. “‘Belief’ is seriously overrated!”

Between my nephew and my own children, I had enough readers to fill all the reading slots, so I offered the two “non-believer” granddaughters the wordless roles of carrying the bread and wine to the altar. They accepted happily.

Peter reading from Isaiah at his grandmother's memorial mass. Photo 2011 Barbara Falconer Newhall

What I didn’t tell my nieces was that, to my mind, while the offering of the bread and wine doesn’t involve words of assent to – belief in – any kind of doctrine, the act does reflect another kind of belief, the faith and trust kind. It is the bringing of a hopeful heart to that which is. (Or as Christians would put it, to God.)

Next Sunday’s gospel is the much-quoted John 3:14-21. The first part goes down easily enough for most people. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

That verse has a nice universalist ring to it: God loves the world. But for some, the verses that follow blast a judgmental, exclusionary message:

“ . . . those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”

I want to argue that my “unbelieving” nieces are not unbelieving at all. They are full of trust and love and light. They showed up for their grandmother. They carried the bread and the wine to the altar of a tradition they neither understood nor subscribed to. As I see it, they did all this with a great deal of hope. Their deeds were “done in God” – whether they thought of it that way or not.

To qualify for God’s love, to enjoy a full and loving life, do we have to sign on the dotted line that we “believe in the name of the only Son of God”?  I don’t think so.

What John 3:14-21 is saying to me is that we must trust – believe – that we live in a loving universe. That, in turn, enables us to do our deeds in goodness.

Otherwise we are in a dark place indeed.

LECTIONARY, Fourth Sunday in Lent:

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent4_RCL.html

Numbers 21:4-9

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Ephesians 2:1-10

John 3:14-21

My mother several months before she died. Photo 2010 BF Newhall

“Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’”   – John 3:14-21

A pinecone along Lake Michigan. Photo 2007 Barbara Falconer Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

A very touching story on Patheos by author Jana Riess about how Facebook helped her grieve.

Apparently, FB has a policy of shutting down a FB account if it hears that the owner has died — much to the distress of friends and family members who have grieved together on the deceased person’s FB site.

Your thoughts? Have you had this experience?

Ferns growing wild near Lake Michigan

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

By the looks of this week’s scripture, God has high hopes and standards for the human race.

There are the Ten Commandments, of course. Our lives – spiritual and earthbound – will go a lot better if we love God heartily, banish our idols, keep the Sabbath, honor our elders, and eschew murder, theft, adultery, lies and covetous scheming.

And there is Jesus – applying an angry whip of cords to all that distracting worldly commerce going on in in the temple at Jerusalem, which is supposed to be a sanctified, set-apart place where, like the Sabbath, God and humanity can take time out to encounter each other.

But there is yet another, subtler commandment tucked away in today’s scripture. I spotted it the closing verse of Psalm 19:

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.”

Let the meditation of my heart – my thoughts and opinions! – be acceptable to the Lord?

Does this mean it matters what we think?

Aren’t our thoughts our own and perfectly harmless as long as they don’t involve plotting to steal somebody else’s sheep or oxen or place in line at the coffee shop?

Maybe we could think of our meditations this way: They are what we say to ourselves when we are alone. They reflect our deepest beliefs about the human condition in general and ourselves in particular. They are how we diminish or grow ourselves and others in our most private moments.

It’s Lent, and I wonder, what kind of thoughts might God wish for us during this season?

LECTIONARY, Third Sunday in Lent, RCL-B:

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent3_RCL.html

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19 1

Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight,   O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14

“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”  — John 2:13-16

Photo 2011 BF Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

What does it mean to take up one’s cross and follow Jesus? What does it mean to imitate Abram who said yes when God Almighty asked him to leave home and family and “walk before me, and be blameless”?

Are we supposed to quit our jobs and join the Peace Corps? Take monastic vows? Give all our money to Save the Children? Turn our guest rooms into homeless shelters?

That’s the feeling I get from Jesus’ stern words to his disciples and the crowd, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

When I was in my twenties, I dropped out.

I quit a promising magazine job in New York and moved to San Francisco, where I acquired a pair of handmade leather sandals and let my hair grow down past my armpits.

I joined the Women’s Liberation Movement, marched against the Vietnam War, and lived frugally on a few hundred dollars a month, which I earned by freelancing to a local newspaper. I rejected mainstream American society – Rome – and all its perks. I took to the moral high ground.

But was that taking up my cross and following Jesus?

Or is following Jesus much harder than that? Is the way of the cross in the small, difficult, daily things? Is it apologizing when I’m shamefully in the wrong? Is it getting on a plane and flying to Phoenix to risk telling my cranky 97-year-old aunt that I love her? Is it something as simple as summoning the wherewithal to thank my husband for buying the frozen blueberries for my morning oatmeal?

How do we know the divine things when we see them?

LECTIONARY, Second Sunday in Lent:

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’”  — Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?’”   – Mark 8:36-37

Peter at 6. Photo 1987 Barbara Falconer Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

God is a lot like my son Peter.

When Peter was four or five years old, he spent an afternoon with a little friend who was developmentally disabled. Peter was ready to play that afternoon. That is to say, Peter was ready to play – with somebody.

I watched my son try strategy after strategy to engage the other little boy. Patiently, he put aside one superhero figure after another, one truck, one train, one pile of blocks until at last he found something that held the other boy’s attention and allowed him to interact genuinely with Peter as his friend.

A few years later, Peter discovered Monopoly. He was good at the game and, if he was playing with me, Park Place and St. James Place soon fell under his purview and my stack of bills quickly dwindled to a few tens and a couple fifties.

At this point, I’d be ready to quit and get back to the kitchen, but Peter wanted to keep on going. He wanted to play – with somebody.

To keep me in the game, my son would stake me to atrociously large loans. His generosity was beyond reason – but it kept the game alive until dinner time or bedtime finally intervened.

God is a lot like Peter. God wants to be in relationship.

In Genesis, for example, when human beings mess up, the Creator sends a massive flood and gives creation a fresh start. But God quickly recognizes that the humans are bound to mess up again. It won’t be long before humanity is reduced once more to the moral equivalent of a few tens and a couple fifties.

To keep creation in the game, God ties one hand behind God’s back – and promises never to use the flood punishment again.

God, like Peter, doesn’t give up easily.

I  can’t say that God much resembles my son in many other ways – except that I love them both more than I can say.

LECTIONARY, First Sunday in Lent: http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent1_RCL.html

Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

The Helix Nebula, NASA photo

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I like to think of God as nice.

Nice as in helping out with some extra wine at a wedding when the host’s supply runs out. Nice as in “Suffer little children . . . to come unto me.” Nice as in forgiving everybody’s sins, Jacob’s, David’s, an adulteress’s, mine.

In the 2 Kings passage, a chariot and horses of fire descend to the earth as the prophet Elijah is taken up to heaven in a powerful whirlwind. It’s all the loyal Elisha, standing by his mentor till the end, can do to hold his ground and keep his eyes on the disappearing Elijah.

In the Mark passage, Jesus invites three of his disciples to accompany him to a mountaintop, where they are subjected to an unearthly theophany.  Jesus’ garments dazzle. Moses and Elijah appear. A cloud overshadows the disciples. The voice of God booms. The disciples are terrified.

What I like about the nice God is, it’s very human. I can understand it. What discomfits me about the other God, the God of whirlwinds and dazzling garments and big voices echoing from the heavens is – it is beyond my ken. It is reaching into my world from an alien place that may or may not be hospitable. And that God is frightening.

Like Peter, I want to tame the fierce God into niceness – build little dwellings for Jesus, Elijah and Moses. Domesticate them.

Can they be domesticated?

LECTIONARY: Last Sunday after the Epiphany, The Transfiguration

2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

“As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, ‘Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.” – 2 Kings 2:11-12

“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” – Mark 9:2-8

Accepting a gift isn’t easy for me, whether the gift be one of love, friendship or healing. For me, pride gets in the way.

Like the King of Israel and the mighty warrior Naaman, I often find myself keeping friends, spouses, children, admirers (and God?) at arm’s length lest –

Lest what?

Lest the gift be too good to be true – as the king of Israel suspects when he is presented with ten talents of silver, six thousand sheckels of gold, and ten sets of garments.

What a treasure! But the king cannot trust this generous overture of friendship from the faraway king of Aram. He assumes the worst, that “he’s trying to pick a quarrel with me.”

At other times the gift requires us to humble ourselves, as it did the warrior Naaman. Wash seven times in the Jordan? Humiliate myself by taking a bath in someone else’s river? I don’t think so. I’ll keep my sores and lesions, thank you.

Which brings us to the leper in Mark 1:40. He comes to Jesus begging and kneeling. More than that, he relinquishes the power to be healed – or not to be healed – to Jesus. “If you choose,” he says, “you can make me clean.”

If I were in that leper’s sandals, I’d have hedged my bets, done a little circumlocution, said something like, “I hear you heal people sometimes. Does that ever include leprosy?”

That way, if Jesus refused me, my pride would still be intact: I didn’t really ask, therefore, I didn’t really get turned down.

But the leper risked everything. He asked, and Jesus acted. “I do choose. Be made clean.”

How do the king of Israel, the mighty Naaman – and I – get to be more like that leper?

LECTIONARY, Epiphany 6:  http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi6_RCL.html 

2 Kings 5:1-14 1

Corinthians 9:24-27

Mark 1:40-45

Psalm 30

“Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.’

“He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’

“But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.’ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?’ He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”  – 2 Kings 5:1-14

“A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’”   – Mark 1:40-41

Joshua Tree National Monument

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

For most of my adult life I wasn’t so sure about God. That such a thing could exist seemed far-fetched, too good to be true.

But now that I’m firmly located in the second half of my life – okay, okay, the third third
of my life (And no, I’m not calling it the last third of my life – I’m not ready to go there – yet) . . . now that I’ve moved along in my life, past the time when I have to make my mark on the world, produce those babies, get them raised to adulthood, achieve some success and glory as a writer, stash away some money for retirement . . . now that the gotta-do part of my life is behind me – I find that God’s existence is right there for all to see.

You can’t miss it. Something is going on out there. Of course it is. It’s common sense. How else could things be?

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

and spreads them like a tent to live in . . . ”   – Isaiah 40:21-22

The aspect of God that I’m still not so sure about – yet – is the immanent, ever-present, caring God, the one “who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name.” The one who answers prayers. The one who, in Mark 1:31, takes Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifts her up.

But maybe one day the immanent, caring God who knows our names will feel as obvious to me as the foundational Creator God who upholds the world and keeps things from falling apart. And maybe that will be the same day I’m ready to concede that, indeed, I have reached the last third of my life.

LECTIONARY, Epiphany 5: 

Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-12, 21c

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39 

“Jesus left the synagogue at Capernaum, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”  — Mark 1:29-31