Sitting on the Curb Together

Late last week I was at Daybreak on my regular Thursday walkaround. The place closes down at 11 to allow staff an hour lunch, so a number of people collect out back, smoking, napping in the sun, sitting and relaxing. This happens every weekday but I go there on Thursdays.

The volunteer coordinator calls it my "social day" because what I do is wander around in back and ask people how they are. Most times they answer in the affirmative and I might sit with them to catch up on stuff. But when they say "Not so good," I make a point of sitting or squatting with them to hear their story. 

That's all I do, listen to their stories. I'm not a social worker or RN or therapist, I don't have access to any resources and my knowledge of what's available, even a year after moving here, is woefully inadequate. But I can listen and I'm aware from my own time on the road that this is often something not available to lonely people; someone who will uncritically and calmly sit with them and listen to what's going on. I can't solve any of their issues and they're aware of that, but I can make them a little less lonely.

In seminary, this ministry was emphasized to me by the story of Job and his friends. While it's true they try to explain away his mistreatment by God by placing the blame on him, what they do before that is

set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

This is the critical part of ministry for me, that rather than immediately setting out to interpret his suffering, his friends sit with him and share his misery. For a week and silently. That is truly sharing in someone's grief.

I don't try to put myself in the shoes of Job's friends because they are convinced of their own righteousness and eventually give in to judgement. But I do accept the wisdom of their first actions, to sit on the ground and be with the one who is suffering.

So this past Thursday I noticed one of my regulars sitting on the curb away from the property and drinking a beer. She looked unhappy, so when I could I wandered over and sat down, said I was glad to see her and asked how she was. 

Her issue was nothing new to her, it's a problem she's been trying to solve since January, and I'd heard it before at length. But I didn't say anything about that, I just listened. After she finished her beer she stood up to go inside and we walked over together. She said, "Thanks for sitting there with me." I said, "That's what I do, it's about all I'm good at." 

That's when she said something that floored me. At first I was unsure I'd understood her and asked "What?" She turned around and looked me full in the face and said, enunciating every word, "You keep people from ending their lives."

I don't know if she meant overall people who do that or just me, although I'm certain in that moment she meant just me. It pierced me. That is, I believe, the closest I'll ever come to a personal divine message.

 

Just One of Us

There's a debate between Stephen Fry and Gay Byrne on Irish tv in which Byrne askes Fry what he would say to God if he arrived at the gates of Heaven. “I’d say: ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?'" Now Fry, as a roundhouse humanist who doesn't play around, continues, demanding of God "'How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I’d say.”

It's a good question, and as any religious student knows, it's the basis for the study of theodicy, the fact that there is evil in the world and how do we respond to God's role in it. If God is an omnipotent force for good, why do so many good people receive punishment in this life, while so many bad people flourish?

There are, of course, all kinds of answers relying on an afterlife and one's soul, but putting those aside, to say "It's part of God's plan" just doesn't cut it. It shouldn't, because by letting God off the hook, we let ourselves off as well. As an old adage goes, "I dreamt I asked God, Why is there suffering? And God said, I was just about to ask you."

Earlier this week while I was walking, I was singing "One of Us", a Joan Osborne tune I especially like because of the inclusion suggested by it. And there's a wonderful lyric that says, "What would you ask [God] if you had just one question?"

I'm not as pugnacious as Fry, so I'd leave out his How dare you! But my question would be almost word for word: Why do children die painfully from disease?

God's answer, I would hope, would be "I don't know." Which both horrifies and relieves me. Horrifying, because while I've long cast off notions of an all-powerful God, there is enough left in me to say, You mean, no one's in charge?

But my relief would manifest more powerfully. I believe that nothing is outside or not God, and that includes cancer and pain and horrible death. I don't accept the bumper sticker theology "God is good all the time," because God can't be. No one who has read the Bible and paid attention to the annihilation, murder on a whim, child-head-bashing, enforced slavery, and straight out genocide its writers attribute to God, can. My relief would stem from the idea that terrible death is not a part of God's outline, that it doesn't mean God has some ending in mind that requires, for instance, that babies die alone when left in the forest by desperate families hoping to reach a better life. Cancer and hunger and rot and mental illness are not evil. They simply are. To look at them any other way is to accept that God is a cruel son of a bitch who has stacked the deck against us. While I don't believe God is good all the time, I also don't believe God is evil. By answering "I don't know" (assuming God did; I don't have a secret conversation to share), God accepts there are some things even outside God's understanding. Far from meaning there is something greater than God, this is my understanding of God's Mystery. 

There's a lovely meme attributed to Adi Da Samraj running around Buddhist circles that says, "Relax, nothing's under control." I'm all right with that and I like to think God, for all the mystery, is too. 

Try the Best You Can

 

Much of my time lately has been given over to reading rather than writing. But I did produce a service for my facility folks. It was initially meant to reference May 8th but because of misunderstandings at work among the chaplains, it will actually play this coming Sunday. As a result, I removed most references to the 8th being Mother's Day. That version playing at the facility also is a little different in that I produced essentially a slideshow for during the service that meant I didn't need to appear onscreen. (One of the changes I foresee in sermons is the lessening of the preacher's physical presence and the greater emphasis on his or her voice.) 

Service for May 8

 

Song (“Everybody Hurts”) 

 

Welcome. Welcome to this place where we have nightmares, but we also have dreams. Where we feel confused, but we also understand. Where we are afraid, but we also find courage. You are welcome. Together we make it a holy place.

 

Scripture passage

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. ² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, ³ he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley,^[a]  I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. ⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

 

Homily/Meditation

 

          Let’s take that video I showed you by the group REM as a metaphor for what most of us are experiencing. Gridlock. Impasse. Jammed up. For a lot of us, that’s the way life feels often, like just a moment ago we were cruising down the superhighway, windows down, enjoying the swiftly moving air and the excitement that comes with speed. And a moment later, Bam, we’re locked down in traffic. Nowhere we can go. Hundreds of cars in a single boundaried space, like we’re water in a hose and someone has his thumb on the nozzle, just a trickle leaking out so we move forward by inches, a foot an hour.

          The solution for the people in the video is to get out and walk. You see them suddenly, as one, opening their doors and walking together, alone, in pairs, holding hands some of them, in the same direction, like they all know where they’re going. Wouldn’t we give anything to solve our sense of gridlock like that? To just step out of what’s holding us back and walk?

          In reality, of course, even one person getting out of their car and walking away will only make it worse for everyone else. For a solution like this you need everyone deciding beforehand this is how they’ll handle things, and outside a music video there’s not likely to be many people who’ll do that.

          Psalm 23, which I read to you after the video, may be one answer to that. It’s said to be, after The Lord’s Prayer, the most recognized poem in Western literature. Surely its description of comfort resonates with most of us, a sense of bucolic ease and transcendence, imagining us as sheep looked over by a caring shepherd or parent figure, a mother who will refresh and guide us through the harshest, most dangerous terrain, and back into safety and food.

          Pastors often talk about the pastor as the shepherd in this and other psalms. To shepherd also means to guide, and in relation to today, to mother. It’s ironic that the word “shepherd”, has come down to us as a synonym for pastor. Shepherd comes down to us from Old English, as does sheep, two of the few words that have, and a thousand years ago shepherds were buried with wool in their hands to prove their vocation and explain why they hadn’t been to church on Sundays.

          And consider the use that the word sheep has come down to us to mean. Gentle. Oblivious. Obtuse. Stubborn. Most of us experience sheep behind a fence as we zip by on the road. There they are, chewing intently on grass, ignorant as cows. In fact, in the way the portmanteau term “sheeple” has come to us, meaning docile, silly, easily fooled or led, as a derogatory political term for voters on the other side, I don’t think any thinking person would want to have the word sheep associated with them. In a word, sheep are dumb.

          Minnesota sheep farmer Catherine Friend deplores my ignorance. She writes, “Sheep are just steady, reliable, unchanging. Today’s sheep is much like the sheep of 10,000 years ago. They do an excellent job of being exactly what they are…Sheep understand food. They understand danger. They understand caring for their babies…Sheep aren’t born with an understanding of gates or tractors or the knowledge that if they don’t get themselves into the barn right now the farmer will miss the kickoff for the Super Bowl.”

          I want to assert right here that you, by which I mean me too, all of us, can be sheep. Because this is what happens when sheep run into that gridlock I spoke of earlier.

 

Sheep have two flight zones, shaped like cones, that serve as brilliant protection. One cone spreads backward from its head. If you approach a sheep directly from behind or from slightly to the side, you’ll step into this flight zone and the sheep will surge forward…

The sheep has a second flight zone, this cone reaching from its head forward. If you approach a sheep from the front and step inside this zone, will the sheep turn around and run in the opposite direction?

No, she will not…That sheep is going to do the last thing you’d expect. If you step into that forward flight zone, the ewe will shoot straight toward you, a white blurred streak that passes within inches of your useless hands, leaving you standing there, mouth agape. You will both look and feel stupid. You will understand that even though you have more brain cells than a sheep, you have the reaction time of a slug.

         

          We’re all sheep. I don’t mean that as a put down. I’m not talking about sheep as passive but as squirming, lively, noise-making beasts in flight from the problems we’re experiencing, the issues we have, the fears chasing us. There’s no effective shepherd as we’re too fast, too agile, too often do the unexpected thing when we run.

          And boy, do we run. Always running, as babies we hit the ground running, like sheep. And while we may be unable to articulate it, and that’s legitimate because you’ve been running too hard to find words or a definition of what you’re running from or what safety you’re running to.

          Be patient with each other. Breathe. Focus. Be with other people as a nursing mother tending to her children. Walk away from the gridlock however you can and toward one another. Do the best things in the worst times. Try the best you can. But be patient. We are sheep and we are running to find where we belong.

 

 

Prayer

We pause in the stillness to rest for a moment, to quiet ourselves so that we can feel what stirs within us. Each breath draws us closer to the pulse of life and with each exhalation we make room for something new. May we find in this gathering the comfort of those who care. May we encounter patience along our growing edges and compassion in our most tender spots. Here may we find the inspiration and encouragement we need to face our challenges and nurture ourselves. And in the presence of suffering across the globe may we redouble our efforts to practice kindness where we are, with the hope that the light of our actions travels like the light of faraway stars. May our gestures of compassion and generosity seed possibility. May we travel humbly with one another, choosing reconciliation over resentment as we try to live right-sized. When life presses in and shifts us off balance, when pain assails us, when frustration mounts, may the rhythm of our breath steady us and bring us back to a place of gratitude.

 

Benediction

Take comfort, friends. The journey is long. The path is often difficult. And the future is uncertain. But take comfort. Deep down there is another truth. You are not alone.

 

Song (“Optimistic”) 

I'd like to think if I was tested I would pass

This has been a busy, busy month and it's been a while since I've had the time and opportunity to post this second recent message from a service at the facility. This was recorded for the first Sunday in March.  

 Luke 4:1-13

4:1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 4:2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 4:3 The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread. 4:4 Jesus answered him, It is written, One does not live by bread alone. 4:5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 4:6 And the devil said to him, To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 4:7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours. 4:8 Jesus answered him, It is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. 4:9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 4:10 for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you, 4:11 and On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 4:12 Jesus answered him, It is said, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. 4:13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

 Mara Upasatha Sutra

The holy one directed his steps to that blessed Bodhi-tree beneath whose shade he was to accomplish his search. As he walked, the earth shook and a brilliant light transfigured the world. When he sat down the heavens resounded with joy and all living beings were filled with good cheer. Mara alone, lord of the five desires, bringer of death and enemy of truth, was grieved and rejoiced not. With his three daughters, Tanha, Raga and Arati, the tempters, and with his host of evil demons, he went to the place where the great Samana sat. But Shakyamuni heeded him not. Mara uttered fear-inspiring threats and raised a whirlwind so that the skies were darkened and the ocean roared and trembled. But the Blessed One under the Bodhi-tree remained calm and feared not. The Enlightened One knew that no harm could befall him. The three daughters of Mara tempted the Bodhisattva, but he paid no attention to them, and when Mara saw that he could kindle no desire in the heart of the victorious Samana, he ordered all the evil spirits at his command to attack him and overawe the great Muni. But the Blessed One watched them as one would watch the harmless games of children. All the fierce hatred of the evil spirits was of no avail. The flames of hell became wholesome breezes of perfume, and the angry thunderbolts were changed into lotus-blossoms. 

 

 I’m not telling you anything new by saying words have meaning. But when we apply it to scriptures like the Bible or the Koran or Buddhist Sutras, we often use words that have come down to us from centuries of use as meaning something they no longer mean. For instance, in this scripture we hear an important word, “devil,” that conjures up an image our parents might have given it that doesn’t quite match the original word. We think of a guy in red with a pointed tail and horns and a pitchfork. 

But that’s not what’s meant by the Greek word, “diabolos.” While it does translate as devil, diabolos meant a different creature like an accuser or a trickster, one who tests the truth of a statement. Think of the devil here as The Tester, one who is fulfilling an important job, like Coyote in Native American stories or Loki in Norse myth. Think of diabolos, not as someone against Jesus or you, but someone whose job is to make sure you’re up to whatever task is ahead of you. 

Diabolos’ job is not to make Jesus transform stone to bread but to see if he’s learned to control his wants. Similarly, when Jesus is told “You can rule everywhere and everyone and all you have to do is worship me,” he controls his greed. The Tester tells him he could rival God and his response is “Only God is God.” Finally, The Tester gives Jesus an ultimate test: “Jump off this temple roof, let yourself be saved by angels. God  has a lot riding on you, God won’t let you die.” But Jesus says, “Don’t test God. Just accept.” We don’t climb to the roof of a building and jump. We know better than that. 

 When we talk about temptation, we’re talking about an urge to do something we wouldn’t normally do. The word itself comes to us from Old French out of the Latin word temptare "to feel, try out, attempt to influence."  We’re tempted sometimes to do something that helps someone. Holding open a door suddenly for someone we see behind us struggling with a box, or picking up the tab for someone we’ve joined for a drink. 

While we obviously don’t have exactly the same temptations as in Luke’s story, to say we have temptations in today’s world is an understatement. In place of commanding stones into bread, we’re tempted to claim of one thing that it’s another. Like if we’ve insulted someone and they catch us in it we’re tempted to say, “No, it’s a joke. I didn’t mean it.” Instead of worshipping Diabolos to rule the kingdoms of the world, we’re tempted to do something we don’t like or that hurts someone to make more money. Or in place of throwing ourselves from a high spot to see if God will send angels to protect us, we might be tempted to put ourselves in danger by refusing to be vaccinated or taking precautions, certain our faith will protect us.

Dickey Barrett, the singer and lyricist of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the band playing the song I played you earlier, has a wonderful line: “I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested. I like to think if I was I would pass. Look at the tested and think, There but for the grace go I. I might be a coward, I’m afraid of what I might find out.” We test ourselves constantly and sometimes, yes, we prove to be cowards. That’s all right. If you’re tempted to take a bite out of a stone or to jump off the roof, you should be a coward. You’ll only hurt yourself that way. 

Better to test yourself in small ways. This woman’s voice bothers me. Can I be kind to her anyway? My roommate is driving me crazy; can I voluntarily go somewhere I don’t have to see or hear him? I spill juice, I forget my hat sometimes, I misplace my favorite book. Can I be patient with myself about the thousands of mistakes I make daily? It’s in passing the little tests we set for ourselves that we become better people. This is what God intends for us, to become better who we are. 

 [Lord’s Prayer]

 Benediction by Wayne Arneson

“Take courage friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth: you are not alone.”

Are you satisfied?

 

Since I've been at my new work, I've been pressed to write and record a few homilies for replay on Sundays on the units. This is the first written for February 27th, and it's taken a while because it's required both my computer and my work computer to play nicely together when they are probably a decade apart in production, and I don't think either involved 2020 as the decade. 

SERVICE FOR FEBRUARY 27TH, 2022, AT WINNEBAGO MENTAL HEALTH INSTITUTION

First Reading Exodus 34

29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai, carrying the Ten Commandments. His face was shining brightly because the LORD had been speaking to him. But Moses did not know at first that his face was shining. 30When Aaron and the others looked at Moses, they saw this, and they were afraid to go near him. 31Moses called out for Aaron and the leaders to come to him, and he spoke with them. 32Then the rest of the people of Israel gathered around Moses, and he gave them the laws that the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.

33The face of Moses kept shining, and after he had spoken with the people, he covered his face with a veil. 34Moses would always remove the veil when he went into the sacred tent to speak with the LORD. And when he came out, he would tell the people everything the LORD had told him to say. 35They could see that his face was still shining. So after he had spoken with them, he would put the veil back on and leave it on until the next time he went to speak with the LORD.

Second Reading Sura 7 “The Elevated Places”

144[God] said: O Musa! Surely I have chosen you above the people with My messages and with My words, therefore take hold of what I give you and be [among] the grateful ones. 145And We ordained for him in the tablets admonition of every kind and clear explanation of all things; so take hold of them with firmness and enjoin your people to take hold of what is best thereof…

I'm pretty certain we all have heard Bob Marley at one time or another. He was a great man whose death, 40 years ago, is remembered by all of us. We all have, I'm sure, our own favorite Marley song but it's generally agreed that his greatest is "Exodus" from the same titled album. I'm going to take a few minutes to play this for you. 

    

        You know, bouncing around a little up here I'm reminded of a commercial for a beer from Jamaica. The tagline is "Red Stripe and reggae, helping our white friends to dance for  seventy years." You have doubtless heard the song many times, and one phrase that comes through clearly, in tone and in meaning, are the words, “Open your eyes and look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?”

            I want to turn to the scripture reading. In seminary one of the most important clues to interpreting scripture I was taught is the habit of reading the chapters before and after the selected one to put it into context. So here’s what’s happening in this selection. The Jews have left Egypt, they’re on their desert journey, God has given Moses the first set of Commandments. In his absence, the travelers have built a gold image and imbued it with their faith, and in fury Moses has flung the tablets to the ground and ground the calf to dust. Oddly, perhaps, after berating his people, Moses returns to Mount Sinai to ask God’s forgiveness and favor. Surprisingly, he finds it. God gives him another set of tablets, he returns to the travelers. Having spoken with God, his face shows a glowing difference that marks him as someone other, and he goes on to oversee the construction of the Tabernacle.

            Here’s where the song “Exodus” and the book Exodus intersect.

            Marley’s words are a reflection of a simple question we probably all ask ourselves. Does the way I’m living satisfy me? Am I doing the things I ought to be doing? Is this the life I should live? The author Jiddu Krishnamurti put it in a form I like. Does this path I’m following have a heart?

            The response, according to Moses’ people in the book Exodus, is a resounding “No.” The path they’re on might have a heart but after several decades of searching it’s really hard for them to see it. That’s why Moses climbs Mount Sinai to speak with God. God’s response is, “These are the laws you need to follow to live a good life.”

            Millenia later, we still ask that question. We all wonder what we need to do to live a good life. Our answer may lie in the tablets God gives to Moses. They’re great lessons to live by. But for most of us the day to day answer requires a response that’s a bit more complicated. We probably don’t daily have to make a choice whether or not to steal, should we kill or not. It’s likelier we’re going to ask, How should I behave in this situation? I guess it’s an old copout but it’s up to each of us individually what rules we need to follow to lead a life with heart. The sad truth is my path is not the same as yours. Buddhist monks say, “Many paths, one mountain.” So no one else can know what your path is like.

            But, for better and worse, change is our only constant. Everything can change between one day and another. As a result, don’t try to navigate your path alone because you’ll get lost. Find someone you trust and let them see you at your best and even your worst. And start small. Take your time. Smile as genuinely as you can when you see someone you like and acknowledge them. Be angry at people if you must but don’t be mean. We can’t know what’s ahead. We might live 120 years, like Moses, but die within sight of our Promised Land. We might, like Bob Marley, die at 36 from a cancer under our toenail. Whatever our path, it’s ours alone to travel. We should have good companions and comfortable places to rest.

[Lord’s Prayer]

Benediction by Wayne Arneson

“Take courage friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth: you are not alone.”

 

 

 

Making Judea Great Again

This is the text of a sermon I wrote and read this morning when I led worship for a friend who was on vacation. It is a different topic than I would normally write about, or is aimed differently, because she is minister of a Christian church and follows the lectionary. Today was Christ the King Sunday, so a reading from John 18:33-7 is my reference.

Making Judea Great Again

          A couple decades ago, when we were first married, my wife and I developed the habit of describing anything that was garishly colored—cerulean, aquamarine, taupe, copper, any neon hue—as a prom dress. As in, “That’s not a whatever, that’s a prom dress.”

          I was working at a group home for adults with emotional and developmental disabilities back then. One day, one of the residents had the day off from work and I took him shopping. When we parked in the mall parking lot, we were a couple yards from a small car that was colored a lurid lilac color. My passenger, who loved cars, pointed it out to me. “Look at that car!”

          Instinctively I said, “That’s not a car, that’s a prom dress.”

          He looked at me, he looked at the car, looked back at me, looked back at the car. Then he said, in exactly the same slow, deliberate cadence I’m sure had been used more than once on him, “That’s a car.”

          Words mean. They make solid the ephemeral world around us. They can hurt and they can heal. Before I became a full time preacher I was a full time writing teacher so you can perhaps imagine how important getting the right word or choosing the right interpretation of a word can be for me. When I taught technical writing, I had an exercise asking students to imagine I was a knight from the Middle Ages and they had to explain how a car worked to me.

          One of the most important elements of communication, whether written or oral, is to meet the audience where he or she is. To use the language that makes someone’s world real. This means using the terminology or words and phrases that the person you want to communicate with uses to make them mean roughly the same idea you want to get across. In my exercise, this meant using terms like “horse,” “spark,” and “chain,” and avoiding words like “gas”, “combustion”, “engine”, not necessarily because the words were unfamiliar but because their meanings had changed so dramatically from how someone a millennium ago would have understood them.

          The original speaker of what came to us as the Book of John may have used some word or phrase his audience had long since come to understand by virtue of its repetition. But a century later, the writer of John’s gospel, in trying to get across the newness of God’s community without bogging down his readers with questions about what exactly an unfamiliar word means, used words they had heard and understood all their lives. Hence, we get a God who is king, a Jesus who is Lord, and a place below them for the rest of us we comfortably understand.

          “Are you the king of the Jews?” “My kingdom is not from this world.” “So you are a king?” “You say that I am a king.” Why king? The John writer’s Jesus, who’s speaking Aramaic, a now nearly-extinct Semitic language related to Hebrew and Syriac, being supplanted by Arabic eventually in most places a few centuries into the Common Era, uses a word that seems, in nearly everything we understand about his theology, contrary to the freedom he otherwise espouses. If Jesus were to preach this message today, he would use a different terminology. We might get instead a God who is Chief Executive Officer, a Jesus who is our Supervisor. “Thy corporation come, thy will be done.”

To understand this, and why the John writer makes a lot about it, we need to read ahead. In seminary, I was taught two important rules in interpreting selections from the Bible: read the chapters before and after the selection and place yourself in the position of the original hearers of the selection.

          We know the books that comprise the Bible, like all ancient literature, were initially oral recitation for small audiences of believers meeting to hear the Word. These were eventually written down over the course of several hundred years. The oldest scrap of the Gospel of John has been dated to the Second Century Common Era, at least a hundred years after the death of anyone who would actually have laid eyes on the historical Jesus So to make sense of what is said, to hear it fully, we have to place ourselves in the minds of men and women who have heard scraps of the teachings of this peasant killed by an imperial force which was still very much in charge.  

It’s in chapter 19 we are given the ultimate rejection of Jesus by the people he came to Jerusalem to save. Having had Jesus whipped, Pilate presents him to the crowd gathered for Passover, saying “Here is your King!” But the crowd refuses to accept responsibility for Jesus, crying for his execution. Pilate, in John’s account, tries one last time, asking incredulously, “Shall I crucify your King?” Caiaphas and his cohorts answer him, “We have no king but Caesar.”

          The initial listeners of John’s gospel would have heard something very different. At the time of its telling, a common hymn sung during Passover contained the declaration, “We have no king but you [God].” Caiaphas and the high priests’ words make explicit their rejection not only of Jesus but of God. As followers of the Scriptures, intimately familiar with the story known to us as Exodus, the first century listeners would have heard something familiar and frightening.

Caesar is a Latin word, and in Greek is Kaiser, a word we still use. But there is no word for Caesar in Aramaic or in Hebrew, the languages the original hearers might have heard. They would have heard the word malik or king in close relation to Caesar, just as in Exodus they had heard the word Pharaoh. What they hear is a demand to return to the slavery their ancestors had escaped. 

It would be a return to, well, better the devil you know. God may have brought them out of slavery, but the people are electing to return, metaphorically, to Egypt. Knowing full well how badly most of them had it during that period, they wanted to return to that semblance of comfort. Making Judea Great Again, as it were.  

A jaded, servile Pilate famously mocks what Jesus said, that his purpose is to testify to the truth of the new community God will bring about. “What is truth?” Truth is just as malleable today as it was when Pilate said this. We live in an age of “fake news,” of “alternative facts.” We watch a video of a fight and we’re certain we understand who started it and who ended it. But then someone points out that it’s filmed from a perspective ignoring this guy over here, or that the video starts just after the first punch is thrown so we don’t hear what the other guy said. Or it’s been cropped, or speeded up or slowed down, or that the person recording is friends with one of the combatants and shows him in a better light.

Or we listen to a speech and we hear, quite clearly, the speaker make a racist comment. We are certain of what we’ve heard. But when the Pilates who work for Caesar go on TV or the Internet, saying, “That’s not what he said, or it’s not what he meant, or he was clearly joking. You are the real racist for having thought you heard him say something racist,” what are we to believe? When we’re told our eyes or our ears or our intellect is suspect, that our news sources and our schools and history books, the organizations whose intent are to collect what was said and done and tell others, are purveyors of “fake news”, then we have to admit Pilate’s mockery is justified. If Jesus’ intent is to testify to the truth, and the truth is subject to alternative facts, where does the truth lie? Does the truth lie? Scholars have discovered a Gospel of Judas. Will we someday unearth a Gospel of Pilate? 

This is a problem inherent to continuing to use, thousands of years after the event, words that were at the time an approximation of what the writer meant. Pharaohs built monuments to themselves, Caesars named conquered cities and nations after themselves, kings and princes kill people on a whim and declare themselves innocent. They aggrandize themselves, not God.

What’s needed is a different way of looking at the words we bring the world around us to life. Instead of the kingdom of God, perhaps what is to come is the community of beloveds, a phrase popularized by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. The beloved community, however, I tell you already exists. Like the John Gospel’s kingdom of god, it is not a place but an agreement between people to care for one another, to help one another, feed one another, keep one another warm and safe. The beloved community is one of radical inclusivity, where someone looks out not for himself but for everyone, knowing that in their humanity they are all him. “My kingdom is of another place,” Jesus says, locating it not in the world of then or now but to come. It requires a lot of work, and 2 millennia after Jesus, we have barely begun.

But examples of the work of the beloved community are all around us. Last month Milwaukee bus driver Natalie Barnes was on her regular route when a stranger came up to her, told her his house had been condemned, and that he was homeless and asked if he could ride the bus all night to stay warm. She did so, and when she stopped for dinner, she bought him some hot food too. When her shift was over, she bought him clothes and supplies, then dropped him off at a homeless shelter where a friend works.

Will there be a happy ending? Well, I hope so. Barnes says she speaks to him every couple days to let him know someone cares. He was a stranger in need asking for a kindness and rewarded with more than he could have hope for. As that prolific speaker, Anonymous, has it, if you have been blessed by God, build a longer table, not a taller fence.

I'll survive Trump

I'm concerned that, for most of us, Trump's reworking of what it means to be a citizen who needs help in these United States will be, at worst, a minor bump, while for many, many silenced others it will be a destruction of the little they have. I'm not concerned about myself: I survived Reagan, and Bush's I and II. I'll survive Trump. But I'm not a single paycheck away from poverty, I'm not dependent on EBT or SNAP or Social Security, I don't need to keep myself healthy through Medicare or Medicaid, I don't rely on the social safety net we've spent decades erecting so that as few people fall through it as possible. Yet, that is. But there are many who do have to live with his witless, uninformed, and ever-changeable decisions, and for whom even a single day of uncertainty can mean the loss of food, healthcare, housing, income, employment. Jesus said it best: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

258 candles-days 159-165

It may seem a little difficult, shoehorning this reflection by Brian Feldman into my intent to post positive stories during this stultifyingly divisive election, but bear with me. In noting that it celebrates both the best and the worst of the World Wide Web, Feldman tips into a truth about nearly everything, that no matter what the experience might be, it can be seen both in a positive and negative light (sometimes by the same person nearly simultaneously). While it is obviously a negative for Semisonic, which in this case loses credit, at least for people who fall for this delusion, it is not only a positive for Green Day (or potentially so; as a punk-sympathizer, if I were Billy Joe Armstrong I would be offended at the notion I sang such inoffensive tripe in such a louche way), but for the recognition that this is how history works. It's the way we attribute the writing of the Bible to various individual writers or The Iliad and Odyssey to the fictional blind poet Homer, even the various misattributions of quotes, real and made up, to long-dead speakers. They become the future "truth" for those works. Some future generation might venerate Green Day's seminal crossover hit "Closing Time" as the moment when postpunk and pop were tethered together, forming some future clumped musical form, like the moment in 1973 when DJ Kool Herc spun one of two turntables repeatedly back to the break, initiating the melange that would become hip hop.

another list that tears my heart

I am becoming tired of writing about these things, these public murders that lacerate our discourse and give a lie to the belief that we can improve and we can love one another. This short essay, by Charles Pierce, appearing in the online version of a magazine I've long presumed irrelevant, says something I wish I could. I can only grieve. Again.

if someone asks, this is where I'll be

I have had multiple ideas for postings lately but the difficulty has been an inability to get to the main computer at home from which I can post. First world problem, yes. In the meantime, here is a new mashup I've created for chapel services.

when god was a little girl

This is quickly becoming a week of Africa-themed posts. Since yesterday's posting about the lyrics for "Preserve Uganda's Future Hope" (which I retitled "Uganda, the Beautiful"), I've come across David Weiss' project for a book called When God was a Little Girl.

It's not a new idea, the femininity of the devine, the matrilineal deity, because truth be told the confluence of the feminine with creation is probably among the first theological thoughts. And as a pantheistic panentheist, it's one I could certainly be comfortable with. One of the most important words David used in his lyrics is the replacement of kin-dom for the more traditional kingdom. This exchange is old hat for many of us already versed in liberal religion, a de rigeur example of inclusive language. But the notion, despite biblical precedent, can be heretical for others more closely invested in patriarchal terminology.

What if, rather than a patrilineal deity, we acknowleded one that was maternal or, more to the point, one that was absolutely sexless or both sexes? A hermaphroditic god is hardly new either, and certainly if we can accept it in clown fish, snails and flowers, we can accept it in our god. Plato may have been onto something in his concept of the origins of love Aristophenes forwards in his Symposium.

But more importantly, what if we rid ourselves of the notion of a hierarchical god altogether, a god that is part of a kin-dom, with all its resultant relational focus intact, rather than a king- or queendom that relies on a higher order of anything? What if we accepted a horitzontal god rather than a vertical one? A god that is not only open to peer-relationship with reality but is co-created as reality expands. Traditionalists might argue against this idea as it can't exist with a reality that is itself created by god, but that only depends on the acceptance that creation is finished, and I just don't think that's true. That revelation is not sealed is a tenet of Unitarianism. We accept the expansion of the universe. Why not the expansion of reality? There's a legitimate argument to be made, I think, that what I'm really describing is the expansion of our knowledge, that I'm guilty of confusing what is with what we understand. But I'm willing to conflate the two, recognizing as well that god's masculinity and vertical ordering of reality is based on information collected a couple thousand years ago.

resistible revolution?

This book has been a challenge to read. Not because I disagree with its theology, although sometimes I do, or because it is written amateurishly, although sometimes it is, or because sometimes I want to hurl it against the wall, although sometimes I would. It's a challenge for all those reasons, plus Shane Claiborne's occasional lapses into the unbelievable--a page after he tells us he was a student at Wheaton while "they still had that pesky no-dancing rule" he describes himself as having "multicolored hair and...ripped jeans and a Rage Against the Machine shirt sporting a black American flag with the words 'Evil Empire'"--after which he manages to pull out something as honest as this:

We hang out with kids and help them with homework in our living room, and jump in open fire hydrants on hot summer days. We share food with folks who need it...Folks drop in all day to say hi, have a safe place to cry, or get some water or a blanket. Sometimes we turn people away, or play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who answers the door on tired days. We run a community store out of our house. We call it the Gathering, and neighbors can come in and fill a grocery bag with clothes for a dollar or find a couch, a bed, or a refrigerator. Sometimes people donate beautiful things for us to share with our neighbors; other times they donate their used toothbrushes.

We reclaim abandoned lots and make gardens amid the concrete wreckage around us. We plant flowers inside old TV screens and computer monitors on our roof. We see our friends waste away from drug addiction, and on a good day, someone is set free. We see police scare people, and on a good day, we find an officer who will play wiffleball with his billy club...[We] mourn the two people who died in this property...We try to make ugly things beautiful and to make murals. Instead of violence, we learn imagination and sharing. We share life with our neighbors and try to take care of each other. We hang out in the streets. We get fined for distributing food. We go to jail for sleeping under the stars. [My emphases]

This is part of Claiborne's recitation of "an average day" at Simple Way, the community house he's a part of in Philadelphia. The book is full of passages like this. He describes miracles to which he's been witness and then he recounts spending the summer in Calcutta working in Khalighat. He recounts one night when he and some friends sent a demon in the form of a little old grandmotherly type skittering from them in shrieking horror by humming "an old worship tune." Then he describes the patient, gentle, "careful" way he dresses a leper's wounds in Khalighat, and is rewarded with  "Namaste." Of course he has to add that he whispers back, "Jesus."

Perhaps you see why this book troubles me. It's the mix of the true--the tired days when they turn people away, the friends dying, the used toothbrushes--with the stuff in there because the book is published by Zondervan--the miracles, the shrieking demons, whispering Jesus' name. I am having a great deal of difficulty from page to page determining whether to toss the book far away from me or to keep reading.

What is probably most troubling to me is that I suspect this is Claiborne being true to himself, this mix of the worst stereotypes and heartfelt experience. It is a self-image mirrored by both the photos inside the back covers where he is presented as a willowy, do-ragged, barefoot, geeky white boy and on the Simple Way's website where the simple community is composed of Boards of Directors and Chairs and Controllers and Claiborne even has an assistant. It leads me to uncharitably point out that Jesus didn't have an Executive Director. But to be fair Jesus wasn't operating a 501(c)3 either.

rachel jeantel, paula deen and Truth

If I believed in an anthropomorphic god I would think he had brought both Paula Deen and Rachel Jeantel to the forefront of news this week as an example of how she laughs by mixing events together.

I recognize that I speak with a power I may not have earned, primarily because I am a man who is speaking about two women.  I can't know what went through their minds as they testified in separate instances. 

But I give Paula Deen credit.  She did not dance around the truth in her deposition, she spoke what came first into her mouth, and it was not the most considered response but it was a truthful one.  Similarly, Rachel Jeantel, who has received much flack for having said cracker is not a racial term--and while it is to the extent it refers to someone's color, it's not, certainly not on the level of nigger or spic or slant or polesmoker; at worst it's a word that conjures up a specific stereotype, the good ol' boy, but that doesn't reduce all white people to a single attribute like the other terms do--and like Deen's it wasn't the most creditable but it was truthful. 

Is it possible to speak about Truth, not an eternal but a verity we all understand, in the contexts of these instances?  Yes, it is, and we should.  For many of us who are involved with humanity, it is complex trying to navigate the places where these two women intersect.  Some of us have been here before:  we were both burned by the Tawana Brawley fiasco of the late 80s but also understood the legitimacy of Spike Lee's graffitti in Do the Right Thing (and does it say something that I had to go to freerepublic.com, not the most black issues-friendly website, to find the above image?). It's the kind of Truth many black preachers, Biblical moralists, and American Indian storytellers are getting at when they say, "I don't know if it happened that way, but it's the Truth."

This is the Truth of the parable of the Good Samaritan which, whether it happened in the way it's described in Luke or not, is nonetheless True in its conclusion.  Small "t" truth is notoriously slippery and sometimes results in things like what I hope will be an infamous tweet from Don West, George Zimmerman's high-profile murder counsel.  The "stupidity" to which his daughter refers may not be intended as Jeantel, and I don't think he'd want to be thought of as doing that, but it's certainly been taken by many pro-Zimmerman, or they may be more accurately called anti-Jeantel, commenters as referring to her.  Rachel Jeantel speaks Creole, Spanish, and English.  How many languages do many of her detractors speak?

Brittney Cooper, writing in Salon, argues "justice should be no respecter of persons, or it isn’t justice," and she is absolutely correct.  Both women are paying in what we so euphemistically refer to as the court of public opinion.  It is one thing to argue that Paula Deen is paying a high price--the loss of some (not all) of her sponsors--for something she said 27 years ago and may have continued to say(does someone really know the time when they once used or stopped using an offensive word?  I have said "nigger" many times in my life, most often in classrooms as an example of the power we afford to language, mere puffs of air, to determine how we think of ourselves or others.  But have I ever said it when angry or drunk, aimed that word like a barrel at anyone?  I like to think not but I've lived over 50 years and I know better than to profess anything as certain), and it is something else again to blame Rachel Jeantel for repeating in court what her friend called someone over the phone.  As Jelani Cobb points out, Jeantel this week took on the role of defendent in this trial, something I'm certain Zimmerman's legal team welcomes. 

Paula Deen had an opportunity to lie and chose not to do it.  There are inconsistencies between what Rachel Jeantel told police earlier and later.  I don't have reason not to believe her reasons for doing so.  Many of the same people who would give Deen the benefit of the doubt are unwilling to do the same for Jeantel.  It may be because Deen is white or because she is successful but there are no other reasons Jeantel has given so far for them to do so.

We must not become confused:  unlike Paula Deen, Rachel Jeantel is not the perpetrator; unlike Tawana Brawley, she is not even the professed victim.  She is a witness and she is 17 years old in a society that both alienates and confuses her. 

She is not a witness whose lines have been written by Dick Wolf.  What she says will not fit into a neat narrative.  She is a 17 year old black girl who listened to her friend as he was followed and eventually killed.  She is scared and uncertain about her own role in all this.  She has seen the man who killed her friend already released once from police custody.  Why shouldn't she be cynical it will happen again? Why shouldn't she be concerned she could well be the victim next time?