There she goes again, bashing guys who drive pick up trucks with American flag stickers. Not really, but she could have left out those two modifiers to the picture she painted.

Did I read in there a suggestion that we imagine the 9/11 terrrorists sitting comfortably in heaven?

Islam may share the root word for peace, but the word in Arabic means “submission.”

Gag

“Are we willing to recognize and then proclaim that as children of Abraham, Chrstians, Jews, and Muslims share that vision of a healed world that Micah paints for us?”

No they do not - for Christians believe that the world is healed through Jesus Christ and his life, death, and resurrection, and that all who entrust themselves to his mercy and care will be healed and live in peace. Jews believe that peace comes through the actions of God’s Messiah, for whom they still wait (although many now know Jesus as that Messiah).  Muslims, however, see peace as coming through submission to Allah and his prophet, Mohammed - forced submission, if necessary.

For someone who has supposedly received an education, she is remarkably ignorant.  I cannot tell if she is wilfully ignorant, or if she simply cannot learn, but her ignorance is spectacular in either case.

This woman lives in a make believe world of feel good.  She denies the revelation of God and then stands and speaks as if she has autority to speak for God? She knows nothing of reality and hopes for her own version of the future that is so out of touch with reality I am amazed that anyone will even listen to her tripe anymore.  As was said above, “For someone who has supposedly received an education, she is remarkably ignorant.  I cannot tell if she is wilfully ignorant, or if she simply cannot learn, but her ignorance is spectacular in either case.”  Where was it said that there are none so blind as those who will not see?

Wanted to stop reading after the title of the piece, ““When we can love our enemies enough to see a different possibility, our own hearts have indeed begun to heal – and God’s kingdom is coming”.

Since when is the coming of God’s kingdom dependent upon human action??  Isn’t His kingdom already here in part?  And isn’t that due to Jesus Christ’s appearance on earth some 2000+ years ago? See Mark 1:14-15.

Jesus calls us to love our enemies.  See especially Matthew 5:44.  Seeing “a different possibility” is yet more leftist code-speak for what previous PB Frank Griswold spoke of when quoting the Sufi Rumi on going to plains “beyond good and evil”.  Code for syncretism.

The current PB Jefferts Schori needs to get over herself and just state plainly that the intent of all “progressives” in the church is to bring about wholesale syncretism, full stop.  She can keep “preaching” this crap as long as she can claim an audience.  That audience never ever did include nor never ever ever will include the orthodox.

What kind of peace is does she have in mined? The Christmas angels proclaim the coming of peace in the middle of the Pax Romana. Is there a a difference? The motto of the Strategic Air Command was “Peace is Our Profession.” Much of Islam would agree with this concept.

Reading her “sermon” made me feel ill.  What a mess of pottage!

And, to pile on here, note the sentimentalism of it (a verse on a mirror begins to change the world, forgiveness by imagining a baby in a mother’s arms). As with alll or most forms of sentimentalism there is a grain of truth or insight, but also a stuntedness, a refusal to grow up.

I’d probably like it better if I took a quaalude; then I could properly blur fantasy and reality, as this address does. 

These are the words of someone who cannot accept a broken humanity.  And, if you are a Christian with an understanding of the Fall and a broken humanity, your next thought goes to the love and redemptive Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Not to the peace/God/Deism/all-sit-under-your-own-fig-tree thingy. 

“I saw a pickup truck a couple of weeks ago with a waving American flag painted on its rear window.  As I walked through the parking lot, I realized there was something written on the tailgate – the word ISLAM stood out first.  Finally I saw the whole sorry slogan, “everything I need to know about Islam I learned on September 11th.”  How will we change hearts that seem closed to learning more about peace?”

Well, I don’t know.  Peace is a tough concept for some.  Especially peace that comes on the other side of war, even though war is no picnic and a last option for most.  Maybe one definition of “peace” could be the blessed reality of giving this “sermon” in English; when, had the tide turned differently after 1941, she could be giving it in German instead. 

God bless our troops and veterans.  And may He grant misdirected armchair pacifists a deeper understanding.

The transcendent plays such a diminished role in her thought, which seems largely moralizing, that she relentlessly staggers towards Pelagianism, saved only by the vagueness of her own formulations.

On what she saw written on the back of the pick-up truck: There are still a lot of older folks in Britain, the US and Canada who can’t quite let go of their mistrust of Germans and Japanese. That, I think, and the line on the truck suggests a big hurt that needs time to heal, rather than dumb ignorance. For her to immediately jump to the conclusion that the owner is the latter, thus demonstrating that she is herself willfully ignorant of other possibilities. cf Jude 17-21.

This is willful naivete and ignorance.  The foundations of Islam, the Qur’an and the sunna, do not carry the same vision of a healed world as do the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.  There are, for sure, Muslims in both the Muslim lands and in the West who hold to a vision more nearly like ours, or at least not so radically different as that held by hundreds of millions of strict Muslims around the world.  The Islamist vision is not a minor offshoot, alas.  It is the modern Muslim who is in the distinct minority.  “Love your enemies, and pray for them” includes the prayer that those hundreds of millions will be freed from the ideology which can produce, by design, wars and atrocities like 9/11.  Pretending that ideology is just like ours is dangerous foolishness.

Apart from its content, it simply doesn’t impress me as being a well-constructed, properly thought-out sermon.

Going back to yesterday’s lessons - I don’t know if I have the authority and power to forgive the 9/11 terrorists. I didn’t lose anybody in the attacks.

But if I were to forgive anyway, well…

Many of the terrorists died in the attacks with their victims. Others have died since, notably Osama bin Laden.

God has already sorted all of them out, according to His criteria. Not mine.

I agree, Ralph, that final judgment is not ours to make.  But this was not a personal attack on those who died.  It was an act of war against the entire nation.  Those were my people who died, even though I didn’t know any of them personally.

I don’t believe TEC’s CEO actually saw a pickup truck with that bumper sticker while walking through a parking lot. I’m surprised she didn’t claim there was a gun rack, a Tea Party sticker and a Confederate flag, too.  It sounds like one of the unbelievable stories used by that other self-satisfied, self righteous TEC liberal woman priest Elizabeth Keaton.  Well, not quite as elaborate, but just as scornful of white, rural, working class Christians.  Anybody else reminded of the president’s characterization of rural folks clinging to their guns and religion?

I need to go read something by a real bishop and a real theologian to clean my mind of her garbage.  I think I’ll reach for anything by Benedict XVI.

Something from a more learned direction “http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/ministry/thinking/is_allah_yahweh/”

I find it interesting that she jumped to the conclusion about the owner of the pickup truck that he was somehow ignorant and closed minded. Perhaps he learned that Islam was peaceful on 9/11.

The PB must live in a happy little world.
But then again, she never smiles.

The pick up truck is obviously a story. Just like those bible stories we all love.