Making Heads and Hands of the Mark of the Beast

If there is one aspect of Revelation that has been overused, abused and fallen prey to our constant temptation to make John’s first century letter a document that predicts the future it has to be the mark of the beast. What was the mark of the beast? What does 666 stand for?* There are many questions come up when we read passages like this.

When I read this I automatically gravitate to this unknown feature in the text. What are some of the things you have heard the Mark of Beast represented as?

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Birthmark, Obamacare, Enforced Sunday worship, One world government or The UN, Refers to a specific year, Verichip, Credit Cards

It raises a level of fascination that can be fun to imagine, but there is a problem with trying to figure out the mark: we don’t know the story behind the story. And when we don’t know the story behind the story we begin to read into it our own worldview, our own prejudices, and assumptions and this can really skew our reading and understanding of scripture. So it is essential that when we read this we remember that there is a story behind the story. Continue Reading…

Image from hellojenuine.

“But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.” (Revelation 12:11)

The work of the People

One of the signs of a true artist is a willingness to work patiently and lovingly with even the most inferior materials. -David James Duncan

David James Duncan’s novel “The Brother’s K,” is about a family that lives in Camas. Papa is a paper mill worker who has gone semi-professional in Baseball and does fairly well until he has his thumb crushed in an accident at the mill. Consequently he falls into depression and begins to abuse substances. So in an attempt to regain ground and find life his healing he build a shed. Continue Reading…

This is the message I shared at Camas Friends on Revelation 5.

[Painting by Francisco de Zurbarán — “Agnus Dei”]

Fear, Desire for control and Violence are some of the main qualities that tend to show themselves when our lives feel like they are spinning out of control.

When we first learned about our daughter’s allergies I felt all three of these responses. I was afraid because I didn’t know what it meant for our family. What changes would we have to make? What kinds of things would L. miss out on as a kid? How might this affect her emotionally, psychologically, spiritually? What if she was accidentally given peanuts when she was out of view or away from home: could we lose our child to something like a peanut allergy? Continue Reading…

Unless we are dead we are on a journey. Our journeys might be more inward focused at the moment, they might be more about outward changes, but either way life is filled with journeys.

But the best kind of journeys are the ones that cost us something: where risk is involved, where we are stretched to or beyond our capacity, where we are made alive in the the process of change.

In August 2003 Emily and I packed had one of these life-changing journeys when we moved from Ohio to someplace called Pasadena where there is a little old lady who owns a new shiny red Super Stock Dodge.

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This is the message I gave on Palm Sunday this year at Camas Friends.

A dinner party

When I look at this text I see a very unusual and meaningful dinner party. It is nothing like a dinner party at the White House, or what we might find on Downton Abbey – the mixed company of this group wouldn’t allow for it.

It is far more like the dinners that happen in the servants quarters downstairs.

This is because Jesus’ disciples were a very interesting and strange lot to have over for dinner. Many of whom were not people who would ever be “invited upstairs” to have dinner with the Lord of the manor. They were all a part of the poor working class of their day. Others were hungry to follow him but lacked the theological understanding or appropriate degrees. There were at least a couple of whom said they were his friends to his face but loyalty to them was rather fair-weather and flimsy. Some came from riddled pasts, broken and suffering from what others had done to them or choices they made along the way.

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This is the message I gave Sunday March 17, 2013 at Camas Friends Church and is drawn from Isaiah 43: 16-21.

Holding the Tension

This past weekend I had the chance to go to Philadelphia to participate in a consultation with a Quaker foundation. Not only did I learn a lot by participating in the foundation but I got to see a little of downtown Philly and enjoy the sites. I got to see Friend Mary Dyer, William Penn, some old Friends, see a couple meetinghouses and make some new friends too.

Our Saturday meeting was great. There were 15 young friends invited and the goal was to draw on the excitement and creativity of these Friends to help the Shoemaker Foundation in their discernment about where to invest their money for the future.

One of the things that stood out to me about our time together was the many tensions that have to be held when a group of Quakers get together. Continue Reading…