Sunday, July 12, 2009

John Calvin 500

I got away with the following in my sermon today about Calvin.
(Please keep in mind that punctuation is not my strong suit!)

One thing to keep in mind as we wrestle with Calvin and his ideas is that while, yes, he is known as the Father of the Reformed tradition; he is not God the Father. And, like my earthly father, whom I accept and admire and respect, I don’t always agree with him. I wrestle with his ideas and find myself oftentimes landing in a different place.

And you know, I’m okay with that. In fact, for me, this is one of the enduring legacies of John Calvin for the church today- we need not check our brains at the door of the sanctuary.

Here are some pics of our celebration...



It wasn't the intention to make these look like
ghost John Calvin masks!
Boo!


The kids worked this up.
The "Picasso" Calvin in the upper left is my son's!
This tasted even better than it looked!
mmmmmm......

9 comments:

Unknown said...

I gasped, and Mary Beth is *hurting* herself laughing!

MaineCelt said...

Brava, brava, brava!!! What a gutsy, brainy minister you are!

Iris said...

SB, at the Clavin masks or my sermon excerpt? :)

jacob said...

If you want to read about John Calvin from the Jewish perspective and his assault against the true messiah of Israel Marcus Julius Agrippa read Stephan Huller's blog entry at www.stephanhuller.blogspot.com entitled 'the Day of John Calvin the accursed, may his bones be ground into the dust.' It will help round your opinion of this accursed man.

May his bones truly be ground into dust

Jacob

Terri said...

Having never attended a Calvin denomination I only know the bit I learned about him in Church history....love the pictures!

Rev Kim said...

Love the masks!

We're at the Institute for Ministry at Whitworth, and the opening workshop was "The Humanness of John Calvin," delivered by a prof here who was a Ph.D. student and one of my TAs at seminary. It was an excellent presentation.

revkjarla said...

your words, gorgeous,
the masks...oh my!

Crimson Rambler said...

do you know Marilynne Robinson's essay on Calvin in "The Death of Adam"? She sees him as a prime sufferer from the mindset that says you never actually have to read anybody, you just read "about" them until you have something derogatory that you can remember to say in dismissal...and so you miss all the truly edifying and inspiring things that they DID say. All same Marx, Jefferson (and I would say, probably Aquinas too).

Iris said...

CR, I haven't read that essay, but I agree!