updated opening 1-9-21 b

[This just clips off the opening few paras and offers up a new lead . . . making the whole just a touch shorter.]

Faith Works 1-9-21 second draft

Jeff Gill

Lord, grant us peace

___

While journalism is the "first draft of history," which probably makes column writing the "scribbled notes of the compromised second draft," there's such a thing as too soon. Too soon for my temper, too soon from my pastoral reflexes, too soon to work into specific preaching responses out of the general story as we have it so far.

What I find fascinating is how, as I turn to the New Testament writings that are my primary guide for "how should we then live," I note that Jesus takes relatively little note of the political leaders of his day. We all know "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" showing it wasn't that Jesus wasn't aware of Julius or Augustus, carved on the coinage as they were. Herod, the Greater and his son Herod Antipas each have a role to play in the Gospel story.

But Jesus doesn't spend much or really any time preaching against them and their policies. He does address the abuses in and stemming from the Temple authorities, including making reference to the tax collectors, all of whom were seen as enemy collaborators, if you will. Jewish tools in the hands of the Romans, or those who used Roman power for their own ends as we see in the events of Passion week with the death of Jesus.

Still, there's a political context of a very particular sort inherent in the whole arc of the Gospels. But it's not politics as we tend to frame them. Where we see the world of faith in resistance to the world of power and privilege is most clear when the latter attempts to make claims over and above those of the eternal and everlasting.

An example at the outset: everyone would have known in Jesus's day about how Herod the Great, in his desperation to keep and control absolute power in Judea, killed not one but three of his sons. Augustus Caesar himself, the emperor who kept Herod on his throne as a distant subjected ruler, is said to have observed it was better to be Herod's pig than his son. (The quip is even more ironic in Greek, actually, with the words for pig and son sounding similar.)

So while Herod killed his sons to keep power for himself in Jerusalem, God sends a Son to offer the power of grace and love to work in the world. That would have been a parallel easily heard in that world whether you spoke Greek, Hebrew, or some barbaric outland tongue. A different approach to power.

Then there's the Prince of Peace. Of course, I'm talking about Augustus Caesar. Wait, you didn't think of him first? That's a part of what the victory of Christmas is all about: that we remember Jesus, not Caesar as "Prince of Peace."

Because for a ruler of Rome, that was a goal and aspiration: to be known as the source and vessel of the Pax Romana, along with the titles that being descended from Julius Caesar already got you, honorifics like "King of Kings," "Savior of the World," and yes, "Son of God." The Divine Julius was hailed after his 44 BC death in the Roman Senate at the hands of his peers, when a comet crossed the sky and his adopted son Octavian, soon to be renamed Augustus, declared that his father had been assumed into the heavens just as he had been adopted into the Caesar family. And if your father is divine, then it only stands to reason that you can be called "Son of God."

But what Augustus really craved was the acclamation of a now cowed Senate as "Prince of Peace." While some provincial inscriptions called him that, it's not clear the Roman Senate ever did.

We do, though. Well, not him. But we have just finished a season of adjusting our political and civic and cosmic understandings about whom God has sent, and for what reason. And many of us are still singing about a Prince of Peace who is not in any earthly palace, or buried in any royal tomb.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still in Christmas mode. Tell him about your Christmastide thoughts at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-21-21

Notes from my Knapsack 1-21-21

Jeff Gill

Parking in the garage

___

So last month I did something that I hadn't done since last spring. I put my car in the garage.

Starting at the end of March, I began to bring boxes and items back from Indiana as my siblings & I, under our sister's magisterial direction, broke down and took apart the house our father helped build in 1963, which we needed to sell for our mother's sake after his death. But my basement was already "full" of much deferred decision making from years of camp directing and past book collecting and file accumulation, to the point of ridiculousness. Which meant it piled up in the garage, and my car went out into the drive in April.

While there was some brutal culling and Goodwilling and trashing (Goodwill & similar groups had early last spring reached saturation as much of middle America spent the pandemic doing their own house cleaning) on the Hoosier end, much still came home. Dad effectively added onto our childhood home twice, and it had about the square footage of all three of us kids's homes combined . . . and had most of the contents of my mother's childhood home stuffed into it from Kansas, Illinois (largely unsorted from its arrival in the early 1980s after Grandma's death).

All of which meant there were boxfuls and piles which just got carried home for more leisurely sifting than we could afford to do on our stolen long weekends back in northwest Indiana. We managed a sort-of outdoor memorial service for Dad there in July, then a big push in August and it went on the market, selling the next month.

But in August I also resigned from my full-time position in ministry, as it has become necessary for one or both of us to make frequent trips to Indianapolis to care for my wife's elderly father. Her mother passed five years ago, he lives alone in a house with many stairs, a home he will not leave, and the challenges have slowly but steadily increased: with COVID taking that all to a peak of complication, which we relieved by me stopping with parish ministry. And that resignation meant seventeen more tubs worth of books & papers coming home to the garage.

If you're following the math & geometry, that means I have since the end of August disposed of one vehicle's worth of volume of boxes, bins, and papers, plus an additional seventeen tubs worth, and in fact a bit more because there is now more room to turn around downstairs than there was a year ago, but everything is out of the garage. Call it a car and a half's worth. And I know I'm not done.

What's made this even more interesting is the archaeological process of delving into the 1920s of my maternal grandparents, the 1940s & 50s of my father & mother's young lives, their early marriage & home building, and of course the path of my own life, camp by camp and church by church, picking up and laying aside and often throwing away as gone and done and past and of no further use. My wife is not sentimental, and piles up much less because she just doesn't make emotional connections to stuff as quickly, and a good thing, too, or we'd be drowned in cellulose. She's been patient and supportive as I wrestle and occasionally weep over all these stories and glimpses of pasts that were and might have been.

More to do, indeed. But it was a strange and wonderful experience to get it managed and beaten down to where I have my parking place back under cover, not so much for no longer scraping my windshield, which I did for decades earlier in life, and did me no harm (wasn't great for the car, I'll grant you). It was part of the process of putting my own past in order, and looking towards whatever future it is I yet have to work with, in God's good time.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he like many clergy owns too many books, and yes you can, I regret to report. Tell him about your books at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 1-9-21

Faith Works 1-9-21

Jeff Gill

Lord, grant us peace

___


We've left some things behind in 2020, but political wrangling isn't one of them.

As the new year begins, we had a runoff election in Georgia and an inauguration for Chief Executive ahead in this first month, with politics aplenty. Not having a church coffee hour after worship might be a mercy right now for many faith communities.

Speaking out of a Christian perspective, there's a question that arises from time to time about "how much is too much" when it comes to political content of speaking or preaching or activity. Where are we over a line, theologically or even supposedly legally, with endorsement and advocacy? People of good conscience can disagree, even vigorously, on this subject.

What I find fascinating is how, as I turn to the New Testament writings that are my primary guide for "how should we then live," I note that Jesus takes relatively little note of the political leaders of his day. We all know "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" showing it wasn't that Jesus wasn't aware of Julius or Augustus, carved on the coinage as they were. Herod, the Greater and his son Herod Antipas each have a role to play in the Gospel story.

But Jesus doesn't spend much or really any time preaching against them and their policies. He does address the abuses in and stemming from the Temple authorities, including making reference to the tax collectors, all of whom were seen as enemy collaborators, if you will. Jewish tools in the hands of the Romans, or those who used Roman power for their own ends as we see in the events of Passion week with the death of Jesus.

Still, there's a political context of a very particular sort inherent in the whole arc of the Gospels. But it's not politics as we tend to frame them. Where we see the world of faith in resistance to the world of power and privilege is most clear when the latter attempts to make claims over and above those of the eternal and everlasting.

An example at the outset: everyone would have known in Jesus's day about how Herod the Great, in his desperation to keep and control absolute power in Judea, killed not one but three of his sons. Augustus Caesar himself, the emperor who kept Herod on his throne as a distant subjected ruler, is said to have observed it was better to be Herod's pig than his son. (The quip is even more ironic in Greek, actually, with the words for pig and son sounding similar.)

So while Herod killed his sons to keep power for himself in Jerusalem, God sends a Son to offer the power of grace and love to work in the world. That would have been a parallel easily heard in that world whether you spoke Greek, Hebrew, or some barbaric outland tongue. A different approach to power.

Then there's the Prince of Peace. Of course, I'm talking about Augustus Caesar. Wait, you didn't think of him first? That's a part of what the victory of Christmas is all about: that we remember Jesus, not Caesar as "Prince of Peace."

Because for a ruler of Rome, that was a goal and aspiration: to be known as the source and vessel of the Pax Romana, along with the titles that being descended from Julius Caesar already got you, honorifics like "King of Kings," "Savior of the World," and yes, "Son of God." The Divine Julius was hailed after his 44 BC death in the Roman Senate at the hands of his peers, when a comet crossed the sky and his adopted son Octavian, soon to be renamed Augustus, declared that his father had been assumed into the heavens just as he had been adopted into the Caesar family. And if your father is divine, then it only stands to reason that you can be called "Son of God."

But what Augustus really craved was the acclamation of a now cowed Senate as "Prince of Peace." While some provincial inscriptions called him that, it's not clear the Roman Senate ever did.

We do, though. Well, not him. But we have just finished a season of adjusting our political and civic and cosmic understandings about whom God has sent, and for what reason. And many of us are still singing about a Prince of Peace who is not in any earthly palace, or buried in any royal tomb.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still in Christmas mode. Tell him about your Christmastide thoughts at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.