Recent travels:
Early last month, I spent four days on Hilton Head Island attending a Theology Matter’s Conference. It was good to be back in the land of good seafood. I saw several sunrises (the only day I missed was when we had tropical storm winds and rains). The only downside to the trip was missing a wonderful show of the Northern Lights. While I was able to see them faintly on Hilton Head (see photo), from what I heard and saw from friends’ photographs around home, things were amazing in the sky in the mountains.
Despite not seeing an amazing aurora, the lectures were stimulating, and it was good to meet up with old friends. I especially enjoyed after hours with Jeff Newlin and Steve Crocro at Hinchey’s Chicago Bar and Grill. (If you ever go there, be aware they serve a stiff drink and one an evening was more than enough.). It was also good to introduce Jeff and Steve, as I was the common contact. Jeff was our consultant for church building campaigns when I was in Hastings. While he’s now retired, I think our campaign remains the largest (membership/funds raised) campaign he conducted in his career. Steve started as the librarian the year I began seminary at Pittsburgh. He would go on to later serve as the theological librarian at Princeton and Yale as well as an interim librarian at the United States War College.
In Wilmington
When the conference was over, I drove up to Wilmington, NC, where I stayed with my sister and preached at Cape Fear Presbyterian Church’s 80th Anniversary service. It was good to be away for a week and to see old friends both at the conference and in Wilmington and eat some good seafood along with Vietnamese and Indian food. I also helped my sister by going through 1000s of photos from my parents (and we have yet to tackle the slides). I found a photo I thought was long lost, which I took of my grandparents on my mother’s side on Christmas Day 1966. This was the first photo taken on my first camera (Kodak 126) and probably the last taken on my grandfather, who died three weeks later. A few years ago, I wrote this poem about him and this photo!.
The anniversary service went well, and it was nice to see such a crowd in the church where I attended with my family from the fourth grade through college. I got to spend some time out with my brother on his boat. And then, on Monday, before driving home, I had coffee with Wayne Dunlop, a friend from High School, and dropped by to see my parent’s grave.
Highlights of the conference:
Instead of giving a run-down of all the speakers and preachers, I am going to highlight three speakers and an idea they presented.
John Burgess, “For the Next Generation”
John is a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (from which I graduated a decade before he arrived). In his first lecture, he combined two of his interest: Christian formation and the Russian Orthodox Church. John has published books on both. I reviewed his book, After Baptism: Shaping the Christian Life a few years ago and have just read his book Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia. You can look for a review in a few weeks when I review three recent books I’ve read about Russia.
In his first lecture, John introduced us to Pabel Floresky, a Russian Orthodox priest and scientist killed during Stalin’s purges in the late-1930s. While he was in the Gulag, Floresky was interested in passing on to his family what he valued. These letters are available in a book (in Russian) titled; All My Thoughts are about You. Floresky felt an obligation to three areas.
- His family’s unique heritage
- To familiarize his children with important cultural achievements
- And to encourage them to spend as much time as possible in creation.
While he was deeply devoted to his faith, he knew writing about God would catch the eyes of the censors and his letter would never make it home, so he used coded words for God and faith. Interestingly, all five of his children became major scientists in Russia.
John ended his lecture by asking what God has prepared us to pass on? What is our legacy?
Han-Luen Kantzer Komline, “Augustinian Insights on the Law of Double Love”
Kantzer Komline is a professor at Western Theological Seminary in Holland Michigan. The Double Love Law comes from Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40 and Mark 12:38-41). I particularly enjoyed her lecture having devoted much of the past summer to Augustine’s City of God.
She speaks of Augustine as a man on the margins (in time, space, politics and the church) as he wrote during the collapse of the Western Roman world. Love mattered for Augustine for three reasons:
- You are what you love
- Love makes Christians, Christan
- All you need is love (with a nod to the Beatles)
Augustine believed that everyone loves, but sometimes our loves are misdirected. The question is the object of our love. Is it toward God or toward self? The later creates a destructive environment while the love of God allows us to properly love ourselves and our neighbors. Love makes us Christians, for if we do not love, how can we be a follower of Christ? And finally, although Augustine was a theologian and interested in knowledge, knowledge is not enough to make us Christian. We must show love and charity.
Richard Burnett: “Learning to Say No for the Sake of God’s Yes”
The evening sessions at the conference were more sermon-like than the day sessions. Richard Burnett spoke on the second evening using Mark 2:13-17, the call of Levi” as his text. As he worked through the text, Richard emphasized the need for parties when we say yes to Jesus (as did Levi). In these parties, we celebrate God’s love. But then Richard changed direction and spoke how saying Yes to Jesus means there are things to which we must also say no. Of course, saying no is never fun, but is necessary. Richard then began drawing upon the Barmen Declaration, a part of the Presbyterian Church USA confessions.
The Barmen Declaration was made by a group of German Churches at the time of Hitler’s rise. It addresses the idolatry of nationalism (Christian nationalism), which attempted to place the allegiance to the state over the church’s allegiance to her Lord. Barmen is unique in that it not only professes what it believes (Jesus is Lord, etc.), it also has a series of negations. These deal with things we can’t accept because we accept the Lordship of Christ. While Richard focused on one an overture from the General Assembly being currently debated within the presbyteries of the denomination, I couldn’t help but think of the upcoming election and why I could never support one candidate for President. “Our ‘No’ is only for the gospels and God’s yes,” he proclaimed, “not to be hateful or spiteful.”
