 Mid-Week Lenten Thoughts from Jamie
A few more thoughts about Bible (a few more thoughts about the March 23, 2025, sermon) The Bible is a library, a written collection of how people understood God’s interaction with them in the world. Much of it is history: even the prophets’ writings reflect what was happening in their world. It’s not all history, though. Stories from the earliest days were handed down from the old to the young, from religious leaders to those who followed the religion. Word of mouth was the conductor of these tales of the earliest parents of our faith, until they began to be collected in writings. Even the books attributed to Moses show signs of being tampered with somewhere along the way, with different linguistic styles and even different names for God (for example, the names for God, Yahweh and Elohim, demonstrate two different strands of origin, one being a bit more “priestly,” and the other being more “folksy,” respectively). When it comes to the Law, or what we call the 613 commandments, we find the basis for many of our laws even today. Called the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, ideas like equity for all people under the law and punishment that fits the crime are both found in these commandments. I don’t believe that there is any such thing as a “biblical literalist.” First, to believe the Bible literally would mean that one would have to have access to the original document(s); then, one would have to read Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic fluently enough to understand them 100% of the time; and one would also have to have a strong working knowledge of the cultures from which the biblical writings emerged. I know there are even more conditions than these, but those are nit-picky compared to these three big ones. Our Jewish parents in faith had a much more flexible understanding of the scriptures. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School, argues that rabbis were used to approaching the scriptures from a less literal standpoint, finding explanations for questions in a creative fashion. For instance, how did Adam and Eve’s sons find wives? The rabbis said, “Well, God created this other woman, Lilith, and she gave birth to the daughters.” Of course, the rabbis argued about this, and there were other explanations as well. The thing is, biblical discussions did not hinge on absolute answers. Levine also says, “The Bible teaches us which questions to ask.” You have heard me say many times that I believe the Bible to be a conversation between God and us. Sometimes, the conversation seems irrelevant to our lives; at others, the conversation never takes place at all, because we don’t bother with it, deciding that “the Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it:” and at still others, we wonder if the Bible should be interpreted a little more loosely (or not at all). Two examples of this: Jesus taught that we should “turn the other cheek.” I had a Sunday School teacher who actually said, “Jesus doesn’t expect us to do this.” Yikes! Jesus also taught that divorce was a sin: I still recall how upset my family was over the impending divorce of good friends of theirs, even stating that they would not be able to come back to church (and, as I recall, they didn’t). Yet over the years, because of society’s acceptance of divorce, we have, in our hearts, re-written, if not Jesus’ commandments, at least our understanding of these two sayings. I love the Bible. Being a historian at heart, the stories themselves keep me enthralled. I’ve never been a legalist, so the Law doesn’t interest me. St. Paul says that the Law came to fulfillment in Jesus, and I was taught that he supersedes all laws (I am thankful for this, as I eat shellfish as often as possible – against the Law of Moses – and have been known to eat swordfish as well as escargot). The example of swordfish, by the way, shows how the rabbis changed the Law when it was discovered that swordfish only had scales (scales were what defined “fish,” which were Kosher to eat) when they are young; mature swordfish don’t, which meant changing the Kosher – read “part of the 613 commandments” – to exclude the eating of swordfish. Reading the Bible is never enough. After reading it, we consciously or unconsciously decide how then we are going to live. I believe that God allows us to expand our understanding of how we are to live rather than condemning us Sfor trying to live faithfully within whatever culture we live and work and play.
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 A few more thoughts about Church
(a few more thoughts about the March 16, 2025, sermon) When I was in college, “church” referred to an institution whose identity and practices were pretty much set in stone. However, for many of my peers and I, “church” should not have been some of the things it had become. When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the legal religion of the Roman Empire in 313 via the Edict of Milan, he set the stage for leaders for centuries to come: the use of Christianity for political purposes. Many scholars find Constantine’s reasons for the legalization suspect; Christians of his own time left the churches in the cities to join monasteries, especially in the north African and Palestinian deserts, because they felt that legalization would “water down” the church and cause it to compromise its more radical beliefs in order to “fit in” with the rest of society. People would become Christians not because of their convictions but because it was the thing to do. One of the things that the church is always called to do is to speak truth to power, no matter who that power is. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other German ministers stood against Hitler in spite of the danger to their lives. Ministers in the old USSR and communist China lost their freedom and sometimes their lives as they sought to practice faith in spite of their governments’ denial of religious rights. H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic book, Christ and Culture, examines five possible ways that the church has related to culture. I have “adjusted” his definitions because ultimately, “church” stands for Christ in the world. Sorry for it sounding so much like a seminary paper: it was! 1. Church against culture: loyalty to Christ and the church entails a rejection of culture and societal values. The church stands against culture to the extent that it judges it and finds it wanting, offering an alternative in keeping with the teachings of Jesu; thus, monasteries and other communal living styles developed along the lines of the early church depicted in Acts. 2. Church of culture: loyalty to culture trumps loyalty to Christ, to the point the New Testament Jesus gets replaced with an idol that shares his name. The church becomes so ensconced within culture that it creates a completely different religion from that of Jesus of Nazareth. 3. Church above culture: Niebuhr says that this is the dominant voice of church history, in which the problem is between God and humanity rather than God and the world. This is a little confusing. What it basically means is that the church deals with human sin in individuals rather than the sin of the culture and society. The downside to this view is the institutionalization of Church and gospel, as well as the tendency to make absolute what is relative, reduce the infinite to finite form, and materialize what is dynamic. In other words, church shapes itself somewhat to culture rather than standing as a separate entity all the time – there’s a synthesis of church and culture, some of it good, some of it not. 4. Church and Culture in paradox position: humanity is living in sin, but grace comes from God. St. Paul speaks some of this, and Martin Luther and Soren Kierkegaard followed him. The two opposites, sin and grace, are found in tension with each other, although God ultimately wins. But sometimes, the church can almost go back to the “church against culture” model. 5. Church as transformer of culture: all of culture is under the judgment of God, and yet culture is also under God’s sovereign (and benevolent) rule. Emphasizing the goodness of creation, this “conversionist” approach affirms what can be affirmed in culture and seeks to transform what is corrupted by sin and selfishness. I think it’s important to understand that the church exists in the world. How we see our relationship to worldly values depends on where we fall in one of these 5 categories. I have found myself holding almost all of these at one time or another. The church should always be in flux, seeking ways to be faithful in the world while adhering to higher values and standards. Rev. Jamie  Mid-Week Lenten Thoughts from Jamie
A Few More Thoughts about God One of the things I usually say about God is that God is not an old, white man. God is, especially, not Santa Claus in a robe instead of in a red suit. God is not a man or a woman, for that matter. One of the ways that we can think about God in a realistic sense is to go beyond our images of people and try to consider that God is spirit. Of course, that makes God really hard to visualize, but it also frees up our concepts of God to allow them to be bigger and deeper than what we may have considered before! God is love. Even in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), while God is sometimes portrayed in the human style of being angry, there are plenty of references to God’s love for people. God is referred to as a shepherd, for instance; it’s one of the most endearing and attractive pictures of God in the whole Bible! The prophets, admittedly, talk about God’s anger with people’s failure to treat each other with justice, fairness and kindness, but they also portray a deity who is angry because of offered love that is rejected time and again. However, forgiveness is always possible in these depictions of God. I try to remember that God is omniscient, that God knows everything. When we pray, if we can remember that God knows what we are talking about even before we utter anything, perhaps our prayers could look more like a comfortable friendship where not many words are necessary, where just “being with God” is enough. God is more than we can imagine! Theologians have argued for centuries about whether or not God changes. I don’t see what the attraction is to a stagnant being who doesn’t ever change its mind! If God doesn’t change, why do we pray? Don’t most of us at one time or another ask God to change, to ease up on us or those we love, to bring peace to the world, to help the poor? Our understanding of God must grow with us. God is revealing things to us all the time if we are awake and aware. Go stand outside on a clear, starry night and see if you don’t experience some of the hugeness of God. Stand on a mountaintop with waves upon waves of mountains before you and realize just how big God is. Walk on a dark beach at night, with the deafening sound of waves crashing and feel what it is to be in awe of power and might. Our vision of God needs to grow and change. It’s a constant challenge in our spiritual walk. There’s so much more to say about God than you want to read here. This Lent, one thing to give up is a limited understanding of God. If God is doing a new thing, as Isaiah 43: 19 says, then possibly, that new thing is continuing. The old has passed away, St. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians. If God is doing it, we can be part of it!  It's Lent.
Many of you lifelong Disciples know that until the late 60's, Disciples didn't think much of Lent, unless we had Roman Catholic friends and coworkers who discussed it around us. My friend, John Gardner, was a serious Catholic who took all of the major holy days and seasons quite seriously, so each winter I got a dose of John "sermonizing" about why we should all observe Lent. When I reached the 9th grade, though, we had a new pastor who worked hard to bring us into line with the rest of the Church and teach us about Lent as a spiritual practice. Since that time, I have rarely missed out on this holy time. I tend not to think of it as work, but as an opportunity to practice, privately, a more strenuous spiritual discipline. Sometimes, I fail miserably (like whenever I convince myself in midFebruary that a 24-hour fast once a week is a thing I can do!); at other times, I seem to breeze through praying all the Psalms twice or more during the 40-days! Often, though, I forget the first rule of Lent: talk to God about what and why you are doing what you're doing! The success of Jesus' time in the wilderness (if it can be called "success") was that he kept God right in front of him. That's more the point than anything else: Lent should bring us closer to God, not help us rack up self-esteem points by what we are able to do on our own. Observances that we can do: daily Bible reading (learning not to study the Bible only, but to converse with it, asking our questions and listening and reading for answers); daily meditation (sitting silently and letting ourselves be aware of being surrounded by God); giving up foods that maybe aren't that good for us anyway (and praying every time we start to waver in our discipline); fasting (again, be careful about this!), even if it's only a partial fast (maybe only water and crackers or a piece of bread for lunch); keeping up with social issues - hunger, racism, war, violence, environmental changes, etc. - and offering prayers or educating ourselves about the issue or issues; being kinder to people as you wander around Wilson doing your daily chores. You get the idea! Whatever you and I do, though, let's be sure and take it to God daily. That's the only reason for Lent, really: to draw us closer to the One who loves us, and everyone, unconditionally! -jamie |
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UPDATEDNovember 12, 2025
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ABOUT USFirst Christian Church is a part of the larger protestant denomination Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Our denomination emphasizes Christian unity, open communion, and a commitment to justice and inclusion. Disciples value freedom of belief, encouraging individuals to study scripture and follow Christ according to their own conscience. With the motto “A movement for wholeness in a fragmented world,” the denomination seeks to be a welcoming and compassionate presence in both local communities and the wider world. |
CONTACTChurch office: 252-237-4125
Email: [email protected] 207 Tarboro Street North | Wilson, NC Office hours: Monday-Thursday, 9AM-2PM 
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