Sacred, Abundant, Life. - Kurt Nelson

Kurt Nelson
Rollins Chapel, 1/22/11
Romans 8: 14 - 22
“Sacred, Abundant, Life.”

Many popular novels these days –

at least, novels which are deemed “deep” or “about something” –

contain at the back,

 a question and answer with the Author.

Honestly, they’re not usually terribly interesting.

But it would be nice, I think,

if our scriptures contained something similar.

A little back and forth between the Harper Collins Editors,

and Jesus.

Or God.

Or even Paul.

“Grace seems like an important theme in your work.  Say more about that.”

Or

“Where exactly is this 'Kingdom of God'?

or

“Not just life, but abundant life?  Is that this messy thing we’re living now?

Or something else?”

Sadly, no such Q&A exists.

So we’re forced to muddle through on our own.

Wading through centuries of commentary

and scholarship and theology.

Plumbing the depths of our minds and hearts,

praying,

and gathering together

to ponder the question of life.

“Choose life” says Deuteronomy.

It is set before us.

And not just life,

but abundant life, says Jesus.

And we are left to wonder,

what exactly might that mean.

Two weeks ago Richard,

channeling his great spiritual forebear William Jewett Tucker,

reminded us that so often,

we equate “abundance”

with success.

Martin Luther King Service

Benediction
MLK Multi-faith service
Rollins Chapel, Dartmouth College
Richard R. Crocker, College Chaplain
January 15, 2012

Dr. King did not often speak about mathematics, except in this statement, which he often quoted:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

This was a quotation from the nineteenth century abolitionist/pastor Theodore Parker.

About 100 years ago, our own President William Jewett Tucker, standing at this spot in this chapel, said to the assembled student body, regarding the relationship between faith and reason:

“If you have found the arc, you can cast the circle. That is the business of faith. Reason traces the line inch by inch. Faith discovers the curve and projects it.” (William Jewett Tucker, Personal Power, 1920, pp 173-4.)

So let us leave today, with faith that the arc of justice in human history projects a circle that includes us all, and that the circle will be unbroken, by and by.

Christmas and Consumption

Kurt Nelson
Rollins Chapel, 12.4.11

John 1: 1-5, 14, 16

Advent is a season,

as today's scripture reminds us,

 of light and life and grace upon grace.

And there's much to love:

family gatherings.

lights shining in the darkness.

the end of academic terms.

But each year I watch advent unfold,

in our broader culture,

with a mix of horror, fascination, and despair.

In theory, this is a season of waiting.

A time of contemplation, and anticipation.

A time of delayed gratification,

A time to ponder the good news of the idea of God living among us,

and what that means for the future of the world.

But, of course, in practice

it’s not really a time for any of those things.

More than anything,

it’s a season for rampant consumption.

A season for Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays.

For frenzied arguments over whether stores should open at midnight,

the day after thanksgiving.

or  do the civil thing, and wait until 6 AM.

A time for constant advertisements

featuring bows on the top of luxury automobiles,

and joy

provided by electronics and jewelry.

fat men with large, white beards,

I try to avoid the commercials.

Try to sidestep the headlines from black Friday mobs,

and shopping freak outs.

But I can’t.

And so I watched this year,

as a pack of seemingly normal people,

screamed and pushed and clawed,

for $2 waffle makers at an Arkansas Wal-Mart.

Fighting as if they had staked their very souls,

on the procurement of a cheap means by which to make waffles.

Sexual Ethics at College - Richard R. Crocker

Sexual Ethics in College
Richard R. Crocker
Rollins Chapel
November 20, 2011
I Corinthians 9:9-20

During the past weeks, the press has given a good deal of attention to sex on campus – the national press covering the scandals at Penn State, the local Dartmouth press printing its annual “Sex Issue”. Since the topic of sexual behavior is so central to many conversations at Dartmouth and elsewhere, or perhaps because the topic of sexual ethics is so absent at Dartmouth and elsewhere, I think it is important for us to consider it in this series on the Bible and the newspaper.

I have chosen to read from scripture tonight a passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians which is, perhaps, the most used and ab-used scripture passage on sexual ethics. In it Paul gives us a list of “wrongdoers” who will, in his words, “not enter the kingdom of Heaven.” Although there is dispute about how some of the Greek words should be properly translated, the list is nonetheless a list that, however we wriggle, delights the hearts of some Christians and appalls many others. “Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.’ So declares Paul, without qualification. The presence of several sexually related words on this list – fornicators, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites (Greek words which almost every English version translate differently) – has fueled so many blatant condemnations of so many by so many for so long that the presence of greed and drunkeness and revilers in the list has been almost forgotten.

Many of us wish that Paul had been a bit less specific in his list of sins, or that he had been a bit more charitable. Most of us, finding this passage quite problematic, simply ignore it.

Merit, Entitlement, and Grace - Kurt Nelson

Mark 10: 17-27

Rollins Chapel, 11.13.11

This term has been for me,

if nothing else,

an exercise in forcing myself to read the news theologically.

And sometimes an idea takes hold,

which simply will not let go.

Even if I want it to.

I was taken by a very strange op-ed piece by NYTimes columnist Ross Douthat,

called “Our Reckless Meritocracy.”

His article calls out our near-worship of merit,

and the ways it has pushed us to the brink.

And ultimately I was convinced,

convicted.

That I too am a worshipper of merit.

Even thought I'd prefer not to talk about it.

It’s been a big week, after all, for important news.

Friday was Veterans Day.

A day forged by those wishing never to fight again,

since become, in some corners,

a celebration of valor and American exceptionalism.

But thankfully voices ring out

reminding us that this is a holiday

of grief for the horrors war,

and prayer that war should cease.

Even as we remember those who serve so honorably.

The week’s biggest story, probably,

is the unfolding scandal at Penn St.

Why the Church is Divided - Richard R. Crocker

Why the Church is Divided
Richard R. Crocker
Rollins Chapel
November 6, 2011
John 17:20-23

Despite the prayer of Jesus that all his followers might be one, the church is deeply divided. And it is not divided chiefly by denominations (though those divisions are real), but by fundamental attitudes. As is shown by the careful research of Robert Putnam and his associates, in their book called American Grace, conservative American Catholics seem to have more in common with conservative evangelical Christians than they do with Liberal Catholics, and liberal Protestant Christians in some ways have more in common with liberal Catholics than they do with conservative Protestants.[1] Although the words conservative and liberal do approximate the differences in fundamental attitude, they do not adequately describe it. I would say that the divide is more accurately described as those who see the church as the bastion of order and personal morality on the one hand, and those who see it as the advocate of justice on the other.

This conflict is nowhere more clearly and poignantly revealed than by the story, which you might have missed, in this week’s New York Times about the protest occurring at the entrance to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

On Faith and Science (and Zombies) - Kurt Nelson

Rollins Chapel 10/30/11

1 Corinthians 13: 1-2
Psalm 8: 3-6

Two events of cosmic significance occurred,
since last we spoke:
Richard Muller, one of the last good, scientific skeptics of global warming,
concluded a massive, 2 year study,
funded in large part by the Koch brothers
and other oil concerns.
And Muller said to the world
that we no longer have reason to be skeptical.
The world is, in fact, warming.
Some of us, of course,
already believed that.
But it’s nice to be affirmed.

And AMC’s Show “The Walking Dead”
set just after the zombiepocalypse,
began its second season,
opening to the largest audience in the history of basic cable.
As I said, two events of cosmic significance.
worth mentioning together.
And worth mentioning in the context of our term’s discussion
of the Bible and the Newspaper.
Pulling, if we can,
our attention away from
violence on the streets of Oakland and Denver,
and immanent troubles in Thailand, Pakistan, Iraq, and elsewhere,
to ponder briefly the relationship between faith and science
(and zombies.)

Public discourse about faith and science has,
in recent memory,
been dominated by two camps.
Who push mirror images of the same essential idea:
That there is not only a singular truth,
but a singular way of knowing.