Many years ago, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen preached a sermon in which he pointed to the two symbols that are in contention in this world and that vie for our fealty.  Referring to the intersection of 50th Street and Fifth Avenue, he pointed to where the art deco statue of Atlas is located opposite St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  In that statue Atlas bears the weight of the world on his shoulders, laboring to hold up the weight of all the problems of the world.  Opposite Atlas, straining to lift up the heavy world, stands the high altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral where the body of Christ is broken for the sake of the weary world, symbolizing the power of God to overcome the world.  There, above the altar, Christ’s body and blood are easily raised above the table and the question is, “Which do you believe holds the greater hope for the world, the straining Atlas or the triumphant Christ?” 

I am not sure how we solve all the problems that weigh so heavily on the shoulders of humanity, the captive concerns of the Sunday morning news shows, but I do know that we are straining under the weight of it, whether it be the loss of life due to flooding in Pakistan, the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, the challenge of fair immigration policies justly administered, or the groaning of so many people in an economic squeeze that is burdening all of us.  Can we solve all these problems?  We can address them, certainly, and in many cases make improvements, relieve suffering, and move toward a better outcome.  But where will we find hope and encouragement in doing so?  As Christians, we are drawn to the One who was not overcome by the world but who overcame the world through the strength and power of God’s love.  We are people who have seen in the resurrection that God’s love for the world is greater than the worst the world can do.  Because of that, we place our trust in the God who not only made the world but gave us the limitless expression of self-giving love in Christ Jesus.  That is our hope and our faith in the face of  the world’s most troubling challenges, that in life and in death we belong to God. 

                                                                                                                             The Rev. Dr. Jon M. Walton

This year—along with overtures to address same-gender marriage (both pro and con), the need to remove all barriers to the ordination of gay and lesbian leaders in the church, and the right and responsibility of pastors to officiate at marriage ceremonies in those states where same-gender marriage is permitted—there is another issue that will perhaps capture even more media attention.  A study commission known as the Middle East Study Committee (MESC) will be making a report to the Assembly reviewing its two-year study of issues in Israel-Palestine, and making recommendations on what the Presbyterian Church and the U.S. should do in response.  The report rightly expresses concern over the dwindling number of Christians in the Middle East.  It discusses the growing disparity and dislocation of Palestinian people and the problems of living outside the Separation Barrier.  It points to the difficult problems created by Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and expanded settlements in East Jerusalem.  It expresses concern for the aggressive posture of the current Israeli administration toward blockading peaceful materiel from Palestine and hostile actions on the Mediterranean Sea.  On these points many Israelis and American Jews have expressed concern as well. 

But the 173-page MESC report is highly biased and in the end neither a fair analysis of the problems in Israel-Palestine nor a feasible plan for how to move toward a better place.  For one thing, the committee did not consult with American Jewish leaders, spokespersons, or voices.  The breadth and diversity of opinion in this country is influential in Israel, and the committee has overlooked that fact altogether.  The report does not include the Israeli narrative in any meaningful way, and describes certain historical turning points such as the 1967 War in a strongly pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli way.  Because of the many flaws, biased perspectives, and disturbing elements of the report, I have joined eighteen other pastors, seminary presidents, and leaders in the Presbyterian Church in signing a letter to be sent to every commissioner of the 219th General Assembly and to be published in the Presbyterian Outlook.  I don’t know what influence this may have on the Assembly’s consideration of the MESC report.  The letter calls for the rejection of the report.  But if the Assembly decides to adopt the report, I can only hope that its most offensive and biased elements will have been amended or deleted to express a more balanced perspective.  Not being a Commissioner, I cannot speak to the Assembly, but being an Observer, I will be there hoping and praying for a just and helpful outcome.

                                                                                                                             The Rev. Dr. Jon M. Walton

             At the beginning of the film “Horton Hears a Who!” the main character, Horton, who is an elephant, observes a speck of dust floating by him and hears a voice coming from it.  Struggling with his own doubts about what he heard or not, he dashes off to save the speck of dust before it is destroyed by the jungle environment.  Horton places the speck on a pink clover, examines it closer, and wonders if there really is somebody on the dust speck.  While caught up in his thoughts, Horton is confronted by a skeptical Kangaroo who makes fun of him.

             The Kangaroo says laughingly, “Absurd.  There aren’t people that small.”  

             Horton replies, “Well, maybe they aren’t small…maybe…we’re BIG!  …What if there were someone way out there…looking down on our world right now?  And to them, we’re the specks and then maybe someone else will come along and say, oh, there can’t be people that small.”  

             Kangaroo will not concede to Horton’s view.  “If you can’t see, hear or feel something, it doesn’t exist.”

             This film clip was how the Family Ministries Committee launched a new program last September called “Bibles and Bagels” for youth in grades 5 through 12.  Church School for these youth begins in the Roof Lounge with bagels, cream cheese, muffins, and orange juice while youth watch a short film clip.  A ten-minute discussion follows, which is led by volunteers or myself each Sunday that youth Church School meets.  This program was an overwhelming success with the youth and the leaders and it was an easy choice to continue it in the coming year.

             Paul and Horton seem to be on the same page about believing in what we do not see, but our efforts with the youth program are grounded very heavily in what is seen. Take, for example, the integration of Bibles and Bagels into our curriculum and a new part of the youth program for 2010-2011 called “Worship at the Movies.”  This program for youth in grades 8 through 12 will be a once-a-month worship service that will contain the traditional elements of worship—a call to worship, confessional prayer, scripture reading, prayers, and benediction—and also a sermon in the form of a 10-15 minute video clip followed by a discussion of the film’s connection to the scripture.

             We may be putting our hope in what is seen on the big screen, but the youth program’s growth this year has been inspirational.  Leadership from members Anne Gray and Anne Gaines with another new aspect of the youth program called “Youth Service Fellowship” for 5th-12th graders has had numerous highlights this year.  You have most recently seen their work in the Help for Haiti t-shirts that they designed, silk-screened and sold to raise money for earthquake relief.  They also had an amazing event where they cooked dinner for the men staying at the homeless shelter; the fun they had making dinner together, eating with the families and serving the men at the shelter.  We have waited with patience, and are seeing that for which we have hoped. So as we move into next year’s youth program, perhaps Paul’s words from Philippians can be our inspiration: 

             Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen, and the God of peace will be with you.  —Philippians 4:9 

                                                                                                                                The Rev. Barbara E. Davis

The next day, an article appeared in the New York Times describing a Torah scroll at Central Synagogue where my friend and colleague Peter Rubenstein is rabbi.  The article describes how questions came to be raised about a scroll used by the synagogue which purportedly had been sneaked into Auschwitz and saved by a Polish priest after it had been entrusted to him by Jewish prisoners.   But with questions about the authenticity of the Auschwitz scroll, a donor in the synagogue purchased a second scroll for the synagogue’s use whose authenticity is documented and undeniably traceable to the Holocaust.  For Rabbi Rubenstein and his congregants, the Torah’s history adds to the veneration that the congregation feels about the scrolls’ contents.  

What a contrast in the understanding of the value of the printed and hand written page are these two perspectives!  With the exception of a rare manuscript such as the 1382 Wycliffe Bible or the 1450 Guttenberg Bible, Protestants don’t come close to veneration of a printed Bible, and none vested with the same emotional and spiritual power as a Holocaust scroll.  Even so, call me sentimental or call me old fashioned, I think I am far more in the camp of my friends at Central Synagogue than I am those who are e-readers when it comes to Bibles.  Not that there is any suggestion that we go to e-Bibles in worship, but for me there is something that adds to the value of scripture when it is printed on paper. 

Besides, isn’t there something more valuable about inheriting a Bible from the family with worn pages that your mother or grandmother thumbed over the years and has now passed on to you?  If my only choice were between a person not having a Bible to read at all and having an e-Bible, I would say take the e-Bible.  But all in all I’d rather have the printed Bible.  Maybe ten years from now I will read these words and laugh at how old fashioned I was a decade ago, but for the time being, having a Bible with a bit of a history and worn pages in hand beats magnetic dots any day.    

                                                                                                                                              Jon M. Walton

by Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March
 
I thoroughly enjoyed People of the Book, a work of historical fiction that takes its inspiration from the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, a rare codex discovered in 1894.  A Haggadah is the text from which Jews read aloud when they are gathered around the seder table during the annual Passover celebration of the exodus from Egypt .  The books come in all forms — from family heirlooms to cheaply illustrated paperbacks.  This Haggadah is an illuminated jewel which brings the story’s protagonist and Australian rare book expert, Hannah Heath, to Sarajevo in the midst of the Bosnian war in 1996.
 
Her discoveries within its pages – a butterfly wing, a cat hair, a drop of wine – lead the reader back through the centuries to the book’s creation to a time when Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities lived in the sol y sombra – the sun and shadow – of multi-faith medieval Spain.  Chapters alternate between Hannah’s present-day sleuthing and the circuitous and perilous journey the book took over hundreds of years and the many hands it passed through. 
 
Until the codex came to light in the late 19th century, art historians widely believed that figurative painting had been suppressed among medieval Jews because of the injunction in the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness of any thing” a commandment that was echoed in many Islamic, and even some Christian, societies. So where and how was this illuminated Hebrew manuscript created? Equally puzzling – one of the Sarajevo Haggadah’s illustrations depicts a Spanish Seder which includes a woman who holds a piece of matzah, the unleavened Passover bread. Her African features are in stark contrast to the other family members around the table even though she too wears the costume of a wealthy Spanish Jews of the era.  Who is this mysterious woman?  You’ll have to read the book to find out!
 
I listened to some chapters of People of the Book on audiobook and really relished it because I could never lose sight of the fact that Hannah is Australian.  This factor, along with several others revealed through the course of the book, positions her as an outsider who helps us discover the book’s inner life even as we discover her own secrets.  If you read this enthralling tale you will learn as much about the art and science of rare book conservation as you will about the intriguing and beautiful Sarajevo Haggadah. 

Janet Harris

A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels

By

Mary Gordon 

I rarely read a book more than once. I might go back through one, to dig out and enjoy some favorite passages. Yet, I’ve already read Reading Jesus twice, and I just bought it a month ago! What is it about this book that captured me so? Beyond her imaginative and carefully crafted phrases, I guess what appealed to me was the honesty of her approach. Here was a grown woman, a writer, a teacher, a life-long Christian finally sitting down to seriously read the Gospels: chapter by chapter, start to finish; something many of us “enlightened” folk would do well to undertake at this stage in our lives.

The author, Mary Gordon, is a several times published, award winning writer and professor at Barnard College. As the dust jacket reveals, the idea for this book came to Ms. Gordon (while she) is riding in a taxi as the driver listens to a religious broadcast, and she reflects that, though a life-long Christian she is at odds with many others who identify themselves as Christians. In an effort to understand whether or not she had ‘invented a Jesus to fulfill my own wishes’, she determined to read the Gospels as literature and study Jesus as a character”. 

Mary Gordon describes herself as “uneasy calling myself a person of faith, if faith is seen as a synonym for certainty, or even an unwavering trust in what I know”. Growing up Roman Catholic, she realized she had “often been mistaken…about matters that I once believed I had to believe under pain of damnation, an eternity in a hell I took to be literal and real.” 

In the first section of the book Ms. Gordon plumbs the depths of  the Gospels through several stories.: Each story she masterfully interprets. One partial example is her take on “The Beatitudes”

What kind of life, what kind of living is suggested by the Beatitudes? Perhaps equally important, what virtues are not mentioned…elided, simply left out?

Most striking: the bourgeois virtues. There is nothing about honesty, keeping your word, paying your debts, placing yourself in the right place in relation to authority or hierarchy. Mercy, peacemaking, poverty of spirit, purity of heart (the body is not mentioned here). The sexually well-behaved are not given a place.

A pastel palette, tender shades, quiet tones. A world that is safer and more generous. A world that honors the inner intention more than the outward achievement. 

The next section deals with “The Problem of Jesus: Reading Through Anger, Confusion, Disappointment, Loss”. Here Ms. Gordon explores and questions Jesus’ actions and behaviors. For instance, his detachment from his mother and family, about whom he asks, “Who is my mother?” He is not only detached, but his attitude seems very disagreeable when he insists that one of his goals is to “break apart family connections.” Ms. Gordon asks “What happened to the fellow with the little kiddies on his lap?” 

Most disturbing to Ms. Gordon is when a disciple, asked by Jesus to follow him, says “First let me go and bury my father”, to which Jesus replies “Let the dead bury the dead.” Here she disagrees with Jesus and seems to hold him in minimum high regard, stating that she would have buried her father, and she would have known that she was right. 

Finally she examines The Seven Last Words, and the Last Word. The Seven Last Words. They are words, but they are unlike other words. Because they are spoken by a character unlike any other, whom we may believe to be divine, whom we have seen speak wisdom, whose personality  has impressed  itself in a way utterly unique in history. They are not the seven last words of Oedipus or Lear or Alexander the Great or Napoleon or Elizabeth the First or Joan of Arc. They are the seven last words of Jesus. Whose death either has no meaning or creates a meaning unique in the history of the world. 

What Are We To Do with these words, how are we to live with them? Particularly since they are not the end of the story. The end of the story is the empty tomb, the Resurrection. 

I will leave it to the reader of this review to discover Ms. Gordon’s profound conclusions about what we are to do with these words. 

James G. Speer

If faith is dependent on visual sightings, one would more readily choose either Matthew, Luke or John to tell the story of the resurrection.  There is an unfinished quality to Mark’s account that leaves us wanting something more.  We know, from a historical perspective, that the women did not remain silent.  After all, the church exists because people through the centuries, including Mary and the others, did, indeed, tell the story of what they have seen and heard of the risen Lord beginning on that first Easter morning.  So somehow the women found their voice and shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection. 

There is an interesting aspect to Mark’s closing comments, however, words that come from the angel who attends the empty tomb.  The angel reminds the women that Jesus had promised that he would rise on the third day and more importantly, that he would “go ahead of them into Galilee” (16:7).  Which pushes us back to chapter one of Mark’s gospel where Jesus emerges onto the stage of world history in Galilee.  And there he was made known and his works have followed him.  Mark points us to the Galilee of our lives, to the everyday experiences of life, the places where there is hurt and brokenness, laughter and sorrow, illness and healing, children and widows, bread and wine as the places where he is present.  It is there in the everyday of life that he is now, and Mark invites us to go back to chapter one and reread the story, this time looking for the places and the occasions which nearly shout the announcement, He is Risen!  We are Easter people, and ours is an Easter world, where God is present and Christ is Risen. 

Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

                                                                                                                                                 Jon M. Walton

In January of this year the US Postal Service informed us that the folded format of First Notes would cause an increase from forty-four cents per piece to sixty-one cents per piece.  A nearly forty percent rise in mailing exceeds our budget for 2010, so our Communications Committee has had to make some difficult decisions in order to live within our budget.  The result will mean a change in the way the church communicates.  This will be the last issue of First Notes to be mailed to all of our membership.  Beginning with the April issue First Notes will only be mailed to those who request that it be mailed. If you still prefer a mailed copy, please fill out the enclosed insert in this issue and return it to Ian Gibbs, Communications Assistant, The First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, 12 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011. You may also email your request for a printed copy to comasst@fpcnyc.org.  In the future, we will rely more heavily on the online version of First Notes on our website, www.fpcnyc.org.  First Notes can always be accessed there.  If you would like alerts when new issues of First Notes are available online, you may also use the return form with your preferred email address, or email that request to comasst@fpcnyc.org; we will then send you a link each month to the latest version of First Notes.

Printed copies of First Notes will be available at the church at all times.  If you prefer a printed copy you will always be able to take one home on Sunday or when you are in the church building.  In the meantime, the Communications Committee will review the format of First Notes to see if any changes in the way we print, fold, or sort hard copies of the church’s newsletter will help us reduce printing costs.

If you have suggestions or comments, please let us hear from you.  We want to continue to provide all our members timely information about the worship, programs, fellowship, and opportunities for service available at the church.  We are sorry to have to impose these changes, but good stewardship of resources suggest that we spend your financial support in ways that hold down overhead costs and are most supportive of mission.

Jon M. Walton