Bible Sermons Online

Archive for September, 2009

There’s a secret to enjoying worship services. Some folk know the key, and they leave church uplifted and comforted. Others are indifferent. The difference is that the 1st group knows a technique to hear what they are hearing. We should enthusiastically predict listening to Scripture. It is hard to be excited if we’re of the opinion a sermon is targeted at a general crowd. God does not work that way. Each time you hear from the Bible, God has something particular and personal to identify to you. Essentially the once-captive Israelites thought that or they would not have gathered with such anticipation to hear Ezra read. ( verses 5-6 ) additionally, the people listened attentively. With no writing tools, they needed to commit as much as is possible to memory. We frequently sit thru a service, contemplating the time and what’s for lunch, when all of the while God is showing Himself thru the Scriptures. Our attention span is set by our real interest in the topic. Why is it some people can watch a three-hour flick with rapt attention and yet fidget after only 5 mins of Bible reading? We expect a film will be entertaining, but we constantly approach church with no expectancy in any way. If God needs to chat to everyone thru His Word, then we should be with bated breath listening. He has got a note of support, strength, or comfort. It is the great puzzle of evangelizing a person can give a message about one truth from Scripture and everybody in the place hears something else – the exact point God knows each person wishes. About Rodney Howard Browne priest Rodney Howard Brownebrings you closer to God. Learn more about his mission and hear about the thousands whose lives were he touched and change. The internet site also has many of the teachings of Christ that are heavy for everyday Christian living. .

Tithes and The Prosperity Gospel – Christianity’s Deception

Joseph Ho, February 18th, 2009.

The world has never seen such great commercial profiteering in the body of Christ until the turn of this century. What is going on? Jesus has already said a long time ago that his Father’s house shall be a house of prayer, in the book of Matthew, Matthew 21:13, “
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” The people in God’s temple of old were selling sacrifices of animals for a price and that has turned a Holy Site into a market place. Does this resemble what is happening to the Church today? Now people are selling the Material Prosperity blessings for a price, they say, give and it shall be given onto you. So if you give money you get money. Strangely enough, in Asia, we call it the 4D, Toto and the Big Sweep. That’s what one gets when you buy a $3 dollar ticket and then you may get the big price on the date of draw.

“4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead [a] us, such as all the other nations have.”

6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”

10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle [b] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. 22 The LORD answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.””

The ten percent Tithe which was given to the High Priests is now given unto the king. Now who are the kings of the world today, they are now called Governments and Monarchs. And where is the Tithe now being paid? It’s to the Government of each country that every citizen has to pay this Tithe.

So what is this Government Tithe?

It’s called the INCOME TAX guys. Simple as that, we do not need to burden ourselves by paying another tax to the church. Now the Pastors of the modern church calls this “PROTECTION MONEY”, since if you pay this Tithe, you will never get your money stolen nor loose your Job which gives you income nor will you loose your possession to scams and conmen. When you paid this Tithe as preached, it’s an INSURANCE against the devourer, and God will ensure this devourer will not steal from you ever again. It’s a promise as preached.

Isn’t this Pay Back Time?

In time of wealth and prosperous economy this Principle of Tithe works. But when the entire world is under severe economy recession and crisis, I would love to see how these pastors and preachers of prosperity are going to ensure this devourer never affect the Tither’s piggy bank. Now its time to test this principle as preached. For God will bring every works to the Test of FIRE. The “HOLY INSURANCE” sales guy must now prove that their product is going to work for all Christians. They did not say if you Tithe and Sin God will not bless. No, they say if you Tithe God have to bless. If you don’t mean what you say don’t say it, for we all have to give an account of all our words before the Lord God on the day of Judgment, as mentioned in Matthew,

Matthew 12:36, “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”

As far as I know, everyone will be affected by this Economy Crisis in 2009; even the Christian who Tithes. Because the pagan are also bosses of the Christian so if God will not bless them since they do not Tithe, their business will suffer and then it will affect their Christian employees. Jesus says do not remove the weed from the wheat until the time of Judgment, so I don’t think this will work as well. Pagans and Christians coexist and prosper materially in this world because money is not a Spiritual Fruit.

Imagine if you tithe constantly and monthly yet you bear false witness against your brother, yet you steal, yet you rape, yet you beat your wives, will God still bless you when you Tithe? If not, the Tithe can not be a blanket guarantee of you not loosing your materials possessions and even your money during times of crisis. What is you best hope then? The Lord is our Shepherd and Provider, Psalms 23:1-3.

So should you Tithe or not Tithe that is the question?

Dear people, we have to know that God’s priests do not do any industrial activity but they teach and preach, so they have to eat. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 9:9-12,

“9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. “Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?”

So Paul expects the people in the church who were fed Spiritual Food to share with them material needs. That is to say, we are to give unto the Priests and Pastors a Free-Will Love Offerings to sustain them in their work, while the Tithe is already paid to the Government of each country in the terms of PERSONAL INCOME TAX. Surely a good God will not burden his people again by requiring them to pay double taxation. When God does not even require of us to be circumcised, why then would God require us to pay such heavy duty tax to both the Government and to his Church. The bible says, God loves a cheerful giver and we are to give according to our means and be happy about it. So how to be a cheerful giver when we are required a fixed amount, we must give from our hearts.

So why are the Prosperity Churches growing when they deceive the world?

Martin Luther was a noted Christian theologian whose unorthodox teachings not only inspired but also influenced the doctrines of Protestant and other Christian traditions. Martin Luther was born to Hans and Margaretha Luder on 10 November 1483 in Germany and was baptized the next day on the feast of St. Martin of Tours and he was thus named Martin.  Luther’s clarion call to the Church to return to the teachings of the Bible led to the formation of new traditions within Christianity and the Counter-Reformation in the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1505, Martin Luther received his Master’s degree and in keeping with his father’s wishes, he enrolled in the law school of that university. But his destiny was rewritten when a lightening bolt struck near to him as he was returning to school. Terrified, he cried out, “Help, St. Anne! I’ll become a monk!”.  Martin was saved of his life, but regretting his words, Martin Luther dropped out of law school and entered the monastery. Martin fully dedicated himself to monastic life and began his efforts to noble deeds to please God and to serve others through prayer. He indulged in fasts and long hours in prayer, undertook pilgrimages, and constant confession. The more he tried to devotedly work for God, the more aware he became of his own sins. In 1507 Luther was ordained to the priesthood. In 1508 he began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. Luther earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies on 9 March 1508 and a Bachelor’s degree in 1509. On 19 October 1512, the University of Wittenberg conferred upon Martin Luther the degree of Doctor of Theology. After earning the doctorate in theology, Luther instead of settling down to a scholarly monkish life or an uneventful university career teaching theology, began to develop his own personal theology, when he protested the use of indulgences in his ‘95 Theses’.

Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a former nun and with it began the tradition of clerical marriage within several Christian traditions.  Luther’s translation of the Bible also helped to develop a standard version of the Bible in German language.  Luther’s hymns were responsible for the development of congregational singing in Christianity. The compulsion of priesthood and the demand for delivering lectures prompted Martin Luther to study the Scriptures in greater depth. Luther engrossed himself in the teachings of the early church and began researching on them.  The uproar and tumult started with the publication of his 95 Theses and the controversy that was let loose brought even more pressure on Martin Luther to more intensely study the Bible. This intensive study convinced him that the Church had lost sight of several central truths the Bible contained.

Luther’s first writing was ‘The Sermon on Good Works’, in which he argued that good works do not benefit the soul but only faith could do that. Things took a turn for the worse when Pope Leo declared 41 articles of Luther’s teachings as heretical teachings, and Luther’s books were publicly burned in Rome. This made Luther more indignant in his effort to reform the church. His treatise, “Address to the Christian Nobility of Germany,” exhorted the German people to use military means to force the church to discuss grievances and reform. Luther initially saw himself as a great reformer of the Catholic Church, and though a simple monk thought the force of his ideas would redirect the Leviathan of the church. But in the end, however, he divided Christianity into two separate churches and the second division came to be known as Protestantism.

It’s very graphic – the book of Hosea – and full of passion. For what is at stake, Hosea believes, is not simply a nation that is breaking a few commandments, but rather an entire people who have forsaken the lover of their souls.

“Plead with your mother, plead – for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband – that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.” (Hosea 2:2-3)

No, we’re not at Sexpo, but you could be forgiven for wondering what place words such as these should have in the church, or, moreover, in the Bible! Ah, but we are in the book of Hosea, which has to be one of the most bizarre books in the Bible, and certainly contains one of the most bizarre stories.

Last week we looked at Amos – my favourite prophet. This week I get to introduce you to his bizarre mate, Hosea – another character who prophesied a message of judgement to Northern Israel, in the 8th century B.C.

These men may actually have been mates! Certainly they were preaching in the same place to roughly the same group of people at the same point in Israel‘s history. Many scholars think that Hosea might have started his work just as Amos finished his. Even so, there may well have been some overlap.

Certainly they were speaking to the same generation of people in the same place, and both were delivering equally grim messages of doom, though, despite all these similarities, there is no mistaking one prophet for the other!

Amos, you will remember, was a farmer from the South, who felt called to go and preach to the people of the North, after which he presumably returned to his farm. Hosea seems to have been a northerner to begin with, and we don’t know what his vocational background was, but he certainly seemed to have had a strong connection to the sex industry!

Hosea indeed married to a sex worker. That is clear. What is not so clear is whether, after divorcing his first wife, he then went on to marry a second sex worker, or whether, as most scholars who have tried to reconstruct his story suggest, he went back to his first wife and married her again – plucking her directly from the brothel, it seems, to take her back home!

However we piece together the details, two things about Hosea are uncontestable:

That he had a highly dysfunctional family life.

That his life, and most especially his tragic marriage, was his message!

Christian couples who give a priority to ministry have always recognised that there is no shielding your family from the work, and I don’t only mean persons in the ordained ministry. Any family that gives priority to ministry and mission recognises that giving yourself to God and to other people cannot be constrained within a nine-to-five framework. All your family will be effected.

Every couple in mission drags their children with them. It is inevitable! But no one in the history of the missionary work of the people of God, so far as I know, has ever pushed the envelope further in this regard than did Hosea!

Hosea did not just drag his family with him into battle (so to speak) while doing his best to shield them. Rather, he more or less threw his family out in front of him and stood behind them! He did this not only to his wife – his living sermon illustration of unfaithfulness. He did it equally to his three children, each of whom received a horrible symbolic name!

I admit, I did at one stage feel tempted to call our baby son, ‘Doom’, but that was because I really loved the game (the world’s first 3D shooter).

Hosea named his son, ‘Jezreel’, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that Jezreel was the place where Jehu, after killing King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, butchered their entire household – children, family, friends, associates, and really anybody who had even been rumoured to have had a friendly conversation with the deposed royal family. Each had his or her head thrown into a basket at Jezreel.

Calling your son Jezreel was like calling him, ‘9/11’ or even ‘Auschwitz’ – a name that evoked memories of violence and judgement. And the two girls didn’t fare much better. The first was named, “not pitied”, and the second, “not my people”. Admittedly, their names don’t sound too bad in Hebrew – Lo’-ruhamah and Lo’-ammi – but I’m still guessing that they had a hard time at school. Indeed, I can’t imagine their teacher keeping a straight face during roll-call:

Jessica (here sir)

Jacob (here sir)

Not my people …

It is Hosea’s wife, Gomer, though who was the real focus of the prophet’s message, for in her waywardness, Hosea believed, she illustrated the essential problem in the relationship between Israel and her God.

It matters not whether Hosea’s tragic marriage only started after he received his prophetic calling or whether he and Gomer had always struggled, as a couple and as individuals. What is clear is that Hosea saw Gomer’s inability to remain faithful to him as mirroring his nation’s failure in faithfulness towards their God. Gomer flirted and played and got sexually involved with a variety of partners. So likewise, Hosea said, Israel was flirting with the ‘Baals’’, and waking up in bed with even the most vile of foreign deities!

It’s very graphic – the book of Hosea – and full of passion. For what is at stake, Hosea believes, is not simply a nation that’s breaking a few commandments, but rather a people that had forsaken the lover of their souls. They had turned their backs on the one who loved them and who had always loved them.

“But I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no saviour. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought; but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.” (Hosea 13:4-6)

Hosea prophecies judgement, but it is judgement with a purpose. The punishment of the people, the prophet hopes, will awaken them to the fact that they have abandoned their true partner and God, and so it will lead them back to Him.

[Israel has] “played the whore … For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’“ (Hosea 2:5-7)

The essential problem, Hosea says, is a lack of commitment to the relationship on the part of Israel – a steadfast marriage-like commitment, embodied in the Hebrew word, ’hesed’, normally translated as ’covenant faithfulness’ or ’steadfast love’.

“For I desire steadfast love (ie. ‘hesed’),” says the Lord, “and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)

Religion, as a set of empty rituals, he says, is not enough. Sacrifice and sacraments do not in themselves constitute a relationship with the Almighty any more than a wedding ceremony constitutes a meaningful marriage! It is love that is needed: real love, faithfulness, sacrifice, commitment, ‘hesed’.

Now I’m not going to plough further through Hosea today. You can read it yourself in about half an hour, and it really is a book with a single theme and a single message. What I want to conclude with is rather to think a little more about how this prophet, Hosea, compares with his contemporary, Amos.

For the two were, as I said, addressing roughly the same group of people at roughly the same time, and certainly in exactly the same place! Yet if you didn’t work that out, by looking at the timelines they each supply, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are addressing entirely different situations!

Amos’ message seemed to be basically a call to social justice! His words of judgment and doom came in response to the systematic oppression of the poor that was taking place in Israel. The people of the north had developed an unjust system whereby the rich and the powerful were crushing the poor and the weak. The judges were being bribed and there was no justice in the courts. The bottom line had become the bottom line, and all morality and human need had been set aside for the sake of good business!

Hosea barely mentions any of this. Indeed, he barely mentions the social situation at all. Instead, his focus is almost exclusively on the personal relationship between the people of Israel and their God, who is depicted as their lover, their husband, and their true and only life-partner.

So we must ask, were the two prophets just talking about totally different things? Did they have complimentary ministries – one focusing on the secular issues of the people and the other on their spiritual needs? Would it be correct to say that Amos and Hosea cover different issues within Israel – injustice and oppression on the one hand, idolatry and unfaithfulness on the other. One prophet challenges the priests and clergy with spiritual issues, the other challenges politicians and businessmen with economic issues.

This is how this pair of prophets have often been depicted, and I think that this is a mistake, for I believe that the distinction we like to make, between religious issues and justice issues, between the spiritual and the economic, is a distinction that is alien to the Bible itself.

In the Bible, the love of God and the love of neighbour cannot be easily separated. As the Apostle John would later say, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar” It’s not that the two are simply inconsistent. They are contradictory. “for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1John 4:20)

When we work for justice and uphold the cause of the needy, we participate in a spiritual and religious act.

“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD”, says the writer of Proverbs (19:17). Likewise, to stand up for someone who is weak is an act of love not only towards that person but towards his or her God! Conversely, to neglect your neighbour, even the least of your brethren, is Biblically understood as an act of unfaithfulness towards God Himself!

What we see in the prophecies of Amos and Hosea are not two men seeing two different dimensions to a national problem. They are seeing the same problem, but they describe it differently!

When Amos decried those who “sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2) he wasn’t upset because it was unconstitutional! Amos saw this as an offence against God, who took it personally, and would not tolerate a society where one segment of the population exploited another.

Likewise, when Hosea laments the loss of ‘hesed’ (ie. divine love) in the land, this is inextricably tied in to the crimes of violence he sees around him.

“There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” (Hosea 4:1-2)

Friends, if there’s one thing I would like you to take home from our two-week venture into the 8th century prophets, it is this: that there is no distinction between sacred and secular worlds. There is no dividing wall between physical and spiritual, between the religious and the economic, between human issues and divine issues, between faith and politics.

All truth is God’s truth! All love is God’s love! All acts of mercy and justice are spiritual and religious acts, and genuine worship of the God of the Bible will always be embedded in communities that exude justice, mercy and love.

As Amos would say, if you want to genuinely worship the God of the Bible, then “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like and ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24), or as Hosea would put it, while those who “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind” (8:7), if you “sow for yourselves justice, you will reap steadfast love”. (4:12)

Conversation with Aged by Peter Menkin

I recite a long Psalm, 119, beginning as a confession but lending my thoughts and opening my heart. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, And I shall keep it to the end Give me understanding, and I shall keep your law; I shall keep it with all my heart. Be gentle to memory: of failure to seek God, and desire good creates a long list of weakness and mindless concerns that ignore God for so many years. Let your loving-kindness come to me, O Lord, And your salvation, according to your promise. Old ones I talk with as I read, speak of their youth, and I think “Is this what is on their minds?” So I soothe and open my heart to let in healing to younger times in my life. Even to childhood. Happy are they whose way is blameless, Who walk in the law of the Lord! Happy are they who observe his decrees And seek him with all their hearts! I say words for them, these old people, and for others: in thought before words, in mind before thought, present in the heart, and I listen, always desiring to hear. This talk with old people leads me to gentleness with myself. This is their message. They say to me, “I am living so long. I hardly think about it.” I continue my reading Psalm 119. I am a stranger here on earth; Do not hide your commandments from me. Let my cry come before you, O Lord, Give me understanding, according to your word.

These notes about poetry I write were originally made for The Academy of American Poets writers workshop. As artistic statements, they are more that than they are apology. Thank you in advance for reading them. One reason for posting them with this particular poem, which is new, is that the poem uses quotations from the Psalms. The poem about the presence of Christ, in the previous post, also references the Bible. As well, just recently, this last Sunday, yesterday, I talked with Deacon Betsy Rosen on some of my reasons for writing religious and spiritual poetry. In a way, these artistic notes and statements touch on my intention to write poetry of praise and gratitude. Artistic notes, a series of statements (referencing “Christ’s Presence”): A Biblical set of words enlarges the meaning of the poem by providing a larger sense of “generation to generation,” at least to me, and has a kind of finality. I do hope it does these things, and I am working on that still. As in the Psalms, used in this poem posted here, and the “Dust to dust” reference in the posting just before this one, they have resonance. It is as a statement, for me as someone familiar with some of the Bible, a resonance of God, and emphasizes that this poem is religious and spiritual with a given discipline and basis of concern and point of view, expressing as well some of the insight of Christian living, and an aspect of the visitor’s reason for visiting, implied as a visit to the sick, or the aged, or the dying. This charitable act indicates a certain kind of stance, specific to practitioners of Christianity, and certainly of my denomination, and demonstrates a kind of compassion and mercy with which the writer believes we live in the light and life of a God of goodness. This is a Christian poem, and a poem of religious and spiritual dimension, as much as it may need some help and may be lacking. That is the effort. To avoid the Bible would be to deny some of the authority, purpose, and strength of the statement. At least for this writer. I am not making apology in the work. The work may lack, but the intention of the writer is hopeful for the work. There you have my rant on the subject, and I could go on with a statement of my own personal intentions in poetry of this kind, but I wanted to stick with this specific piece and the use of the Bible in it. Though I do use various words or phrases, ideas of Biblical kind, including the Psalms in my poetry. At least I try. You’ll see in my poem about an aged person, also posted on the site at the same time, I quote hymns. I think that works, hopefully, and is appropriate to the work. But I am grateful to you for commenting. For you are not the first to raise the issue, not only of the use of the Bible in a poem, but also the need and correctness of form of a poem containing a Biblical sense, or religious and spiritual one that makes a statement. Hopefully, I’m in the realm of the okay with this kind of work. Another artistic statement (referencing “Christ’s Presence”): You’ve hit a nerve with that one, how a reader may pass over the words, “Dust to dust,” (in the poem posted previous to this one with its references to Psalms, also Biblical), because they have little in them to catch their imagination. I am looking for a way in my response to say that may be a problem for me, and I would like to think in context of the poem a reader’s problem. For “Dust to dust” brings up thoughts of death and burial, at least for me. Age is certainly a thought, but in the context of the poem the certainty of mortality. In other words, I hope that the context of the poem brings out some kind of unpacking of the few Biblical words. I think what I am trying to prove in my comments, or at least convince myself of if no one else, is that “Dust to dust,” and in this poem posted here with quotations from Psalm 119, are good in the context of the poem. I did not think it would be a larger issue, but because we enter what is for me a realm of Biblical and religious concern, the vision as it were, of the poem, I am willing to focus more on Biblical resonance. In the event you are interested in the Bible, and I hope I am not turning you off, I’ve discovered a wonderful paper by a British Bishop named Tom Wright. The link to his sermon, really an address before the Anglican Lambeth Conference 2008, is below: http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=334 I can’t but help to advertise these wonderful remarks, which I find instructive, since my own work in Poetry is part of my relationship with God. I like to think, and do think, my motivation for writing religious and spiritual poetry is as praise for God, and in my wild imagination I think that others who write similar works are similarly inclined in their way to engage their spiritual relationship more fully. Again, an artistic statement (referencing “Conversation with Aged”): I did go with a number of other quotations than the one you suggested (from the dialogue on the poem), and they aren’t in a particular sequence, as in sequence from Psalm 119. I chose to explore the text of the poetic statement, and maybe in its way, explore the texts I chose from Psalm 119. I considered a number of translations: King James Version, Grail version, Vulgate, RSV, even the NSRV (because it is so modern). I decided to go with the Psalms as they are printed in “The Book of Common Prayer,” the prayer book of the American Episcopal Church (Anglican), mostly because I use it when visiting the elderly. But also because the language seems more suited in its way of manner to the poem. I do use other sources when reading the Psalms, most often the second choice is King James, since the elderly I visit are more familiar with it. I think that is a good thing. More artistic statement on the poem, “Conversation with Aged:” This brief note is a response to my friend Jan Robitscher’s comment that the poem seems to be two poems in one. Jan Robitscher was a teacher of mine when I attended The Episcopal School for Deacons. The School for Deacons is located in the buildings of Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP), an Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, California USA. Jan has been on the faculty there since 1991. She holds a B. Music (DePauw University), an M.A. in Liturgy (Notre Dame) and an M.Div. (Nashotah House Episcopal Seminary). She is my friend. The response to her comment, sent to her home in Berkeley near the seminary, and UC Berkeley’s North Gate area, by email today, Tuesday:

Hi Jan: I am so glad you like this poem ["Conversation with Aged"]. Just recently, with this current poem just sent you, and the one previous (“Christ’s Presence”) I’ve been making more extensive artist’s notes, in particular a statement on Biblical reference in the two poems. I did this as a result of discussion prompted on the Academy of American Poets writers workshop. Your thought that I’ve two poems does strike a chord with me, and I thank you for taking the time to comment. It is helpful. In my same day response, not considering it longer (though I will consider your suggestion some more in days to come), I intend the poem to be a dialogue of sorts, as a statement of the relationship with the elderly, as well as a poetic dialogue of their own. In short, the experience is two way, and I believe the relationship described in the poem, “Conversation with Aged” opens the way towards the generational experience. It also demonstrates that the visitor is also undergoing thought and expression, even if in a different way because of age, and yet in a similar way because both are human and engaged in what some call the “God experience.” Christ is relational, one could say. Is this a good answer to your comment, and it is intended as my considering what you’ve said rather than a conclusion? Thanks for the opportunity to make a return comment. Yours in faith, Peter Menkin, Obl Cam OSB