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Father’s Day Pancakes

Every father’s day I miss my dad terribly. I lost him was I was 20 (he was 44). I say “I lost him”, not because we had a mix up, and misplaced him in the Amazon jungle. I say “lost” because he suffered a sudden stroke and stayed comatose for over a decade. It was a bad loss. It happened in December, when I was away at college, and I hadn’t seen him since August. He was my biggest ally, and we had grown very close.

If you still have your dad, I hope you do something nice for him this Sunday.

Gwyneth Paltrow lost her father a few months before mine left for the next world after his long fight, at age 54. She has got in the habit of sending me email. Well, I admit we’re not super close, since she named her daughter Apple against my advice. Still, I get her GOOP newsletter, and it’s nice. So, in this month’s GOOP newsletter she features one of her foodie father’s recipes included in her cookbook My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness. Maybe you can make them for your dad.

Bruce Paltrow’s World Famous Pancakes

Total Preparation Time: 20 minutes + overnight resting

3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons fine salt

3 cups buttermilk

6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled, plus more butter for cooking

6 organic large eggs

Up to 1 cup milk, as needed to thin batter

Real Vermont maple syrup, warmed.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk together the buttermilk, butter and eggs together in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones whisking just enough to combine (small lumps are okay). Let the batter sit, covered, overnight. The next morning, heat up your griddle or favorite nonstick pan and slick it with a little butter. Add enough milk to the batter to thin it to the right consistency—the thicker the batter, the thicker and heavier your pancakes; the thinner the batter, the more delicate your pancakes—neither is wrong. Cook the pancakes on the griddle, flipping them after bubbles appear on the surface of the uncooked side. Let cook 2-3 minutes more, then remove, and eat with lots of warm maple syrup.

Have you ever made your dad breakfast in bed? What is one of your dad’s favorite foods?

Tell us what you like best about your dad.

Featured Writer: Dr Doug Jackson on Trinity Sunday

I wanted to feature this fine Sermoneutics article because I’ll be bringing the concept of Trinity to my class this Sunday.

Sermoneutics is a weekly column authored by Doug Jackson. Before coming to South Texas School of Christian Studies, Dr. Jackson pastored churches for nearly twenty-five years. For more from Doug Jackson, check out his blog at djackson.stscs.org.
Click here for the Sermoneutics archive.

by Doug Jackson
Trinity Sunday,
2 Corinthians 13.11-14

The good news is that the Western church has conspired to disobey the clear command of Scripture. The bad news is that our disobedience obscures our doctrine.

Augustine warned that anyone who disbelieves the Trinity is in danger of losing his salvation . . . and that anyone who attempts to understand it is in danger of losing his mind! Actually the Trinity is one of those things, like fried crawdad tails or dancing or being in love, that one understands not by pondering but by experiencing.

“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.” Athanasius puts it rather neatly but perhaps leaves us wondering how to pull off the tricky business of inhabiting what we believe. The doctrine makes us psychological heretics whose nerves don’t connect with our confession.

Paul takes a more practical tack, perhaps because he writes as a pastor and not as a theologian. Just before rapping out one of the clearest Trinitarian statements in all of Scripture, he lays a command on us: Greet one another with a holy kiss. That’s the injunction I am so glad the Church exiles to the exegetical antipodes along with head coverings for women and not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.

I don’t like it when people hug me; you can imagine how I feel about kissing. And I claim apostolic authority on this one: C. S. Lewis shared my aversion. “It is one of my lifelong weaknesses,” he writes in his autobiography Surprised By Joy, “that I never could endure the embrace or kiss of my own sex.” But there it is, right in the Bible and everything.

See, the problem is that the Trinity states, not an abstract mathematical puzzle but a common-sense relational truth: God is love, and either the Almighty is the ultimate cosmic narcissist eternally self-involved, or God has eternally had Someone to love. And since only God is eternal it must be that the Father has eternally loved the Son, the Son has eternally loved the Father and the Spirit has eternally been that love. And therefore Christians can only study the Trinity by risking the sloppy business of loving one another. And because God makes us bodies we can only love with our bodies. Every hug that breeches my barriers brings me closer to inhabiting the unity of Trinity. Amplexo ergo creedo: I hug, therefore I get it.

In this light, it is interesting to note that this year Trinity Sunday falls on the same day as Juneteenth, a nationwide observance for African-Americans commemorating the day the Emancipation Proclamation actually took effect. Perhaps instead of breaking our brains over the complexities of cosmic calculus, we could study the Trinity by repenting of past segregations and handing out a few hugs across the barriers we have built throughout Christ’s body.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

-Doug

Collect

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, You are love from all eternity. Make us one as You are one, that in us the world may see the grace, love and fellowship of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May you be broken enough to help one another,
For wholeness comes from healing.
May you disagree enough to hear one another
For oneness comes from listening.
May you be lonely enough to hold one another
For touch defeats division and discord.
In the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
The love of God,
And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
Amen.

Derek Sivers: The 1st Follower=Linchpin for Leading a Movement (video+info)

I don’t think of myself as much of a leader, but actually since I place my ideas and writing “out there,” I don’t have much of a choice in the matter. Most likely, I will, somehow, lead someone. Is this my goal? Nope. I enjoy being a galvanizer, instead. Yep, A good natured provocateur. So, really a person with some unique information, ideas, and know how that fosters and encourages good leaders and good followers (a.k.a. cooperators). As you will see, a good leader is just a looney loner, until a few key people help him or her to build momentum. As a certain kind of trust is built, it is these linchpin people who “make it happen”. I think of it as sort of the knife and needed friction on the flint that produces heat and spark.

If you’ve been faithfully reading my blog, I’d like to thank you very much. I really appreciate you, and I ask that you can help me be more than a “lone looney,” or lone loser. This funny video below will unpack that.

In some respect, we all need followers, even as much as we need to be followers. It helps to link up with people who like you and what you do. People will will invest in your growth. They transmit your message or product for you. It’s just not enough to have an idea, even a great idea. A faithful network is more important because it is the fuel to share something. I found this video on Guy Kawasaki site alltop.com. It’s from the TED conference. Derek Sivers, of CD Baby fame, delivers a great and useful message.

Questions to ask yourself:
Who am I helping by following and building a bridge of trust to other followers?
Who can I partner with who understands the importance of both leading and following?
Who needs to hear my message?
Who’s message do I enjoy hearing?

So, let’s help each other. Let’s build momentum. Who do you follow, and what kind of followers to you need? Let us know.

Thank you.

18 Seconds of Funny

It’s a Tuesday that feels like a Monday. So, to brighten your day, I’m sharing this tiny movie from our picnic, Sunday. (It was a Games2U party.)

Warning: Human-sized hamster balls BOUNCE.

Video is public on facebook, here.

Would you give this a try?

If you like it, Tweet it / share it.

What Laws did Christ Fulfill? (Or, should we follow ancient Hebrew laws?)

Have you ever heard someone say, “The Bible says you can’t get a tattoo.” or “God’s law says women shouldn’t dress like men,” or made some truth statement about Christian conduct based on The 10 Commandments, or one of the laws from Leviticus or Deuteronomy?

Can New Testament Christians (most of us reading this) spurn these laws, since they were written for West Semites of long ago? Or, on the other hand, which Biblical laws must apply to Christians today? I’ve noticed a bit of a pick and choose sort of thing, have you?

Paul says Christ fulfilled the law…but how does this play out practically in Christian living?

Opinions vary. Culture or our experiences can overshadow our decisions on this stuff. It doesn’t just break down into categories of legalist vs. lawless.

I’d like to address that today.

I won’t do it alone. Instead I’ll defer to a far smarter person than me. A helpful PDF document here, from my professor at ETS, Dr. David Dorsey, may inform your study of God, and improve your Christian living or outlook.

Try to muscle through the academic nature of this excerpt. Highlighted words are linked to definitions, if you need them. And please comment or respond in some way.

David Dorsey– An excerpt from last page of article:
[JETS 34:3 (September 1991) p. 312-322]

I would suggest the following theocentric hermeneutical procedure for applying any of the OT laws, whether the law be deemed ceremonial, judicial, or moral:

1. Remind yourself that this law is not my law, that I am not legally bound by it, that it is one of the laws God issued to ancient Israel as part of his covenant with them. When I look at this law I am looking over the shoulder of the Israelite (just as I am, for example, when I consider one of God’s messages through Jeremiah to the inhabitants of Jerusalem during the final days before the city’s fall).

2. Determine the original meaning, significance and purpose of the law. What was its point? Why did God issue it? What apparently were his motives in giving it? (Allegorizing, spiritualizing and typologizing here are counterproductive, succeeding only in obscuring the original significance and purpose of the law.)

3. Determine the theological significance of the law. What does this law reveal about God and his ways? A law, as mentioned, reveals a great deal about the lawgiver. What does this law reflect about God’s mind, his personality, his qualities, attitudes, priorities, values, concerns, likes and dislikes, his teaching methodologies, the kinds of attitudes and moral and ethical standards he wants to see in those who love him? In spite of the fact that these 613 laws were issued to another people who lived at another time under very different circumstances than ours (again, like the prophetic oracles of Jeremiah), they come from the God whom we too serve, and they represent a vast reservoir of knowledge about him and his ways.

4. Determine the practical implications of the theological insights gained from this law for your own NT circumstances. To take an example from the civil laws, Exod 22:25 states: “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest.” First, this law is not my law. It was part of Israel’s covenant with God (Christian bankers can relax—for a moment). Second, as far as the point of the law is concerned, it forbids the charging of interest when lending to a poor person, presumably to assist the person who is in a financial crisis in such a way that his recovery will be possible and the repayment will not be overly burdensome. A second purpose is undoubtedly to encourage the individual Israelite to be openhanded and generous, to be sensitive to the needs of the poor, and to be ready and willing to help needy people in practical ways even when it will not result in one’s own financial gain.

What theological insights come from this law? The Person who issued this law is obviously concerned about the physical and emotional well-being of the poor. Moreover he apparently wants his people to have a similar sensitivity toward the poor, to be willing to help the needy sacrificially.

If you are interested, read the full document here. (10 pages)

Have you thought about the Bible this way? Share something.