The View from the West Mesa

The latest hubub at church has to do with reflections prior to the Lord’s Supper. Last Sunday, the speaker used an illustration of St. Patrick and how the attention paid to him has shifted over the centuries from his accomplishments in the Kingdom of God to green beer, rivers, and clothing. The speaker’s thrust was that we humans often forget the point of our faith and the purpose of our God in coming to the earth. Just as St. Patrick’s memory has shifted from hard and self-less evangelistic work to beer parties on the local college campus, we often lose track of the point of our calling and our God’s death for us. We are too often distracted by life, by work, by ourselves, that we forget who we were made and called to be. The Supper is not just a remembrance, but in that remembering, a rededication and a proclamation of faith. A faith that is supposed to lead to our very transformation into different people, with different values and goals. The importance is not in how we do it, but r...

The topic on the radio talk show’s nine o’clock hour was forgiveness. The host related a story of a lady who said that she had forgiven the people who had killed one of her daughters and severely wounded another. Her daughters were twin twelve year olds, shot by a drive-by shooter last week. The host of the show didn’t know whether or not he could forgive someone so quickly if they had killed his daughter. As you can imagine, there were phone calls galore, ranging across the spectrum of possible responses. There were those who said they would forgive someone after they had been punished, and there were those who said that the only one who can forgive is the victim and since one of them is dead, that’s not possible. Still others said they’d forgive the shooters only after “taking care of them.” Others seemed more willing to forgive. A couple folks called in to say that they would forgive the shooters because that’s what their faith said they were supposed to do, and one caller said if J...