Slow, steady, resiliant

Yes, this is a photo of part of the group

There are a number of solid progressive advances made in the midterm elections--and for those without a historical memory, I'll tell you of the steady incremental election strategy of the Moral Majority, whose elevation of populist Xian "values," most of which are about exclusion rather than inclusion, and its tremendous continuing success under other names and leadership--that most of us may be unaware of or that are buried in the back pages of local outlets. But it is those small, solid, progressive victories that we must build on if we want to make lasting change at any level.

Last evening I joined a number of like-minded progressives on a street corner in downtown Sheboygan in the cold and early darkness. I was surprised by two things. One was the number of people who had shown up. When I had signed on as a participant the night before, there had been about 8 others in solidarity. As I drove there, I vowed that if I was the only one to show, I would at least stand at the corner myself (I was thinking specifically of this example). But between 40 and 50 people, ranging in age from late teens to early 90s, appeared, some with signs, some with kids, one with her dog. We made noise and we were a presence.

And it was the reaction to this presence that supplied me with my second surprise. Unlike most protest marches or rallies where I've walked or stood, the response from people passing, both walking and driving or cycling, was overwhelmingly positive. Horns honking, hands waving out of windows, shouts of encouragement and support, a few walkers and cyclists who chose to stop and stand with us, swelling us beyond the 50+ mark. Negative responses? One or two shouts of "Go home!" delivered from cars that had already passed us.

My takeaway? We are on the right side of both history and a majority of the American people. At least that sample passing through a main thoroughfare of Sheboygan at ~6PM on a Thursday.

The Women's March at human scale

I could not make it to the March, as I've reported, but the host I was going to stay with took several photos and gave me permission to post them here. And while they are not as staggering as the aerial pictures in breadth or scope, they help bring the event to human scale.

Democracy wears pink

Listening to the speeches during yesterday's coverage, I heard this conclusion to one that turned out to be by Van Jones: "[Trump's supporters] came to this town yesterday. They had red hats on. They were proud of their accomplishment. And they thought they had taken America back. What they never counted on was a million women in pink hats that are going to take America forward." 

Your silence will not protect you

To say I remember Audre Lorde fondly may seem like an odd thing--her messages were intended to generate nearly every kind of feedback except fondness--but in her I had the sensation of a fellow-traveler, a black, lesbian me who could write better and had a better sense of what it was she fought. She wrote in 1977 in "The Transformation of Silence into Languge and Action":

To question or to speak...could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly now [she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and then with liver cancer], without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words.

 I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.

258 candles-day 136

It's the sort of picture that becomes iconic, although whether it becomes as much so as the ones it's being compared with, like Tank Man in Tienanmen Square or Walter Gadsden at Birmingham, is up to history. Nonetheless, it's a powerful image, so much so I don't think anyone needs to explain it. Johnathon Bachman, the photographer, reported, "It wasn’t very violent. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t resist, and the police didn’t drag her off." There are reports that the woman, who was arrested Saturday and released Sunday evening, is named Iesha Evans, and that she's a nurse and mother, although I stress that even that simple information, so soon after the event, is uncertain. What is certain is this: That the photo evokes both what we are fighting against and exactly the way and the manner in which we need to do it.

258 candles-day 126

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: I might have chosen a few other examples--the West African Muslims and Christians who protected each other's congregations on holy days, the spontaneous response by airline passengers to a grandmother's grief, or even my own denomination's Standing on the Side of Love--but this is a good beginning. 

the cry goes up, "how can we survive?"

Progressives...see feeding the body as an act of hospitality.  We give aid because we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, because each person is made in the image of God and is a person of dignity, because we are trying to be servents of God.  We maintain that proselytizing the needy in conjunction with helping them can lead to the cruel manipulation of vulnerable populations.  We would never ask anyone to listen to a sermon or recite a prayer before they could get a shower and a hot meal.

The understandable outcome is that the poor we help rarely become the poor alongside whom we worship.  We are used to working with the poverty "out there," but sometimes our only real contact is the benevolence check that we write.  By the time a person walks into the door of a mainline church, he usually has his financial portfolio in pretty good order.

Another awkward truth is that some members of mainline churches can show subtle but harsh intolerance toward middle and lower classes.  I joined the Presbyterian Church in my early twenties while I was employed in a retail position, and...I'm surprised that I stayed...I'm [surprised] the front entry on that presitigious downtown church [didn't] become a revolving door, spitting me out as fast as I'd come in...

I have learned, after some embarrassing experiences, to be careful taking minister colleagues to a restaurant where I am friends with one of the wait staff, because I'm afraid I'll leave in shame at how the employee was treated.  Somehow the mainline church's healthy passion for education can become a boorish disdain for those who never attended college, or for those who have a PhD and yet find themselves waiting tables.

These notions drown out Jesus, standing on the Mount, telling us that the poor are blessed.  Instead, we have the idea that anyone who does not make it into the upper-middle-class is undisciplined, vaguely immoral, and needs to put in some more hours to make ends meet.  We see poverty as an issue of personal responsibility, not a systemic problem, and if a person is struggling, then it is she who must be bad or lazy, not the social system.  There must be an easy solution to the problem, we think.  If only she'd cut back on the lattes or quit spending so much with her credit cards.  She needs to look at her budget and stop thinking about that iPod.  She just needs to work a little harder--like the rest of us.

--from Tribal Church:  Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt (my emphasis)

Now that I have completed my seminary education I'm rereading this book in light of what my future might involve.  When I read it the first time, about four years ago, it was with the expectation that I was heading for parish work.  But now I am looking at chaplaincy as my practice and ministry and thinking about some of the ideas from that perspective.  (Oddly, and this is not to take a dig at Howard Merritt, but the book has taken on a different life in my memory, full of more examples and greater emphasis on change there than it has on the page.  I suspect it's my filling in gaps with what I have learned and thought since.)

I take issue with a couple things in this passage--that "never" in the first paragraph is belied by the history of the Social Gospel which did exactly that (and lives on in the Salvation Army, hardly a bastion of liberalism any more); I think she presumes too much about the order most Protestants (or anyone else) find their portfolios in today; and I would hope she'd leave any restaurant or establishment, indeed any church office, feeling shame at the way some ministers treat people, not only those where she knows the offended person--but in the main she is correct.  One of the great shames of today's churches are their insularity, a situation that makes no distinction for denomination or belief.  People of faith already tend toward a propensity for navel-gazing and add to that the problems we experience in the larger community and economy, and the cry goes up, "how can we survive?" 

Not "how can the single mother working at the convenience store survive."  Not "how can the immigrant father who came to collect a week's worth of food at the food shelf this afternoon survive."  Not "how can the Libyan family that miraculously lived through the waterlogged journey in a leaky boat to the Italian coast, only to be packed off to Germany where they now expect repatriation back to their dangerous homeland, suvive." 

This emphasis on ourselves is understandable but doesn't speak well of our compassion or our understanding of our place in the world.  To experience those it may be necessary that our congregations and churches and faiths don't survive.  If the Christian message is that death is necessary to a greater rebirth, then perhaps Christian churches, and by analogy all progressive congregations, need to die.

saturday night reading

in a short essay on the ezine he co-founded, gary kamiya has articulated some of the feelings many of us in the religious community have felt but have thus far been unable to communicate. I am in awe of his ability to simply and coherently wrap up one of the most important ideas about what occupy america is about.

"Yes, the Occupy San Francisco tent village is illegal. Yes, it is unruly. Yes, there are homeless people there. The movement is filled with oddballs and dropouts and nuts, and based on my own visits there, they outnumber the “respectable” types, the unemployed workers and students and housewives. And if real problems arise, violence or vandalism or disease, the city has the right
and obligation to take steps to remedy them. But since no such problems have arisen, it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that the hand-wringing about the tents is all about image. The Occupy San Francisco movement is flawed and unsightly, like panhandlers and street people. The tourist-friendly solution: clean it up.

"But the crazies and dropouts and street people who are part of the movement deserve to be there, deserve to be seen. For they bear inarticulate witness to the inequities the movement is protesting. Of course, they didn’t all end up there because of society’s sins; bad choices and personal responsibility also played a role. They’re not the best spokesmen for the movement. But they, too, are part of the America that the movement is trying to make better. They, too, are our brothers.

"That isn’t liberal swill. It comes from a book called the Bible."

a brief report from a (brief) time on the barricades

I spent a couple hours on one corner of government/people's plaza in downtown minneapolis, heart of the hub, last evening with an able complement of fellows from my liberal ecumenical seminary and luther seminary. I dubbed us the amen corner, as all of us are future pastors in our different faiths. we were representative of the faith contingent of people in solidarity with the 99%, a crowd of which we are both members and to whom we minister. (neither were we the only ones; several other pastors and students, some in collars, had been there earlier in the day and earlier in the week.)

I had to leave earlier than I'd intended as the fellow clinician I'd taken responsibility for had another obligation. but in my time there we were constantly and consistently honked at and waved at and given thumbs up and shoutouts by commuters in agreement with our signs--most of which had been penned by 2 women, one lutheran and one uu, and most of which were biblical quotations--without a single negative response to them. I was told the only time any of my compatriots had gotten a negative response was on the previous sunday and it seemed to all be from people wearing vikings paraphernalia. I hesistate to repeat that was not the reaction of everyone in vikings paraphernalia.

I had a couple especially good conversations. one was with a young bhikku in a knit cap and pajama trousers who had graduated high school last year and made arrangements to fly to africa and from there to ship out as a cook on a mercy ship. he wasn't a xian he said, or at least not a very religious one, but he wanted to be part of something bigger than himself and he was frightened and excited by what he expected and hoped for. the other was with a sister who works parttime for a tax preparation company and operates her own online design business. she was just overwhelmed by the number of people in plaza that week--her parttime job was in the tower in front of where we were standing and she looked out on the plaza several times a day--and had also felt overwhelmed by the ways life had gotten tougher and less friendly (my words, I can't remember hers) and knew she needed to make some comment on them. she'd been playing around with making a design but that would make no impact, so she'd been inspired by the protesters on the plaza to decide to come down each day she was at work and join them for a few hours a day, just to be there in support, maybe to hold a sign, maybe to march, maybe just to be there among other people.

on our way off the plaza I swapped thumbsup with several of the people who are actually sleeping under the concrete buttresses and overheads of the government building and told them, "stay warm." because of other responsibilities I may not be able to rejoin them physically, unless the occupation goes on as long as the main one in wall street does, but I will be there in contemplation and spirit and solidarity.

"with hosea from the right..."

for my midterm exam in older testatment prophets, I was given the assignment to come up with how I would introduce a 3-week adult religious education forum on the prophets, focusing on a specific 1 to present at the 1st meeting. I had 2 hours to write it up, which is why it's longer than my usual essays--as I mentioned to a classmate last night, I didn't have time to write fewer than 5 pages. (I had to cut out, in the interests of keeping it fewer than 6 pages, the 2 paragraphs making more explicit the analogy between hosea and pat buchanan; I also cut it out because I think if buchanan were to read this, he might be flattered by the analogy, and I don't want to flatter pat buchanan.)

“CROSSFIRE”, WITH HOSEA

[My context: The forum I’ve been asked to teach is centered on a mid-sized Unitarian Universalist congregation in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. As such, the class will be composed of people who are mostly retired, primarily from teaching or engineering backgrounds, with a smattering of younger adults with small children. Almost all of the participants will be white with a few younger Hispanics. Some identify as Christians. All will have had at least some college and consider themselves literate and informed. All will see the Bible as a form of literature but not all will see it as relevant to their lives or to contemporary society. All will have access to an NRSV or NIV Bible and I’ll furnish other texts they may thumb through. This is my introductory lecture.]

The world is full of frightening things. The earth quakes, tsunamis wash out whole towns and families; tornadoes uproot communities as well as individuals; floods engulf coastal areas and people too poor or too frail to evacuate are devastated; regimes that people have learned to live under for generations shift suddenly, it seems overnight, leaving chaos and fear in charge; volcanoes erupt, spilling lava and blotting out the sun with ash, oil leaks and decimates whole bioregions, blizzards freeze animals and people and entire economies, and when it happens everything we have ever known and trusted and counted on is smashed within moments so we don’t know what is up and down, who we can trust or where to turn for solace.

If we’re bent toward Buddhism, we reflect that being alive is suffering and our suffering is no more or less important than anyone else’s and no more or less is asked of us than is asked of anyone else. If we’re bent toward Hinduism, we recognize that this is simply the last turn of the wheel for us in this life and take comfort in our having lived lives that allow us to return for another go. If we’re bent toward paganism, we accept that this is the result of massive disturbances in the ecosystem, some of which we had a part in, and the result of our suffering may be a lesson for others. If we’re bent toward an Abraham religion—Judaism, Christianity or Islam—we may see the hand of a mysterious God that has decided, for reasons we may never understand, to touch down in this way at this time in this place.

The ancient Jews, from whom the Older Testament of Abraham religions derive, looked to their prophets, their seers, their men and women of God, to explain why such things occurred to them. After all, weren’t they the beloved of the Creator? Didn’t they benefit from the covenant with God which lay out in legal terms what God gave to God’s people and the fidelity God’s people returned? Unitarian Universalism is a result, however we might like to deny or ignore it, of Abraham thinking, for good and for bad, and as a result looking to the prophets and their answers resonates with us as it did for the people of ancient Israel. In this course we’re going to examine how the prophets responded to the physical, social and political upheavals of their times so to keep the people faithful to God at the same time recognizing that real people were being hurt and killed in real ways. Tonight we’ll look at what a prophet was in general and at one prophet, Hosea, in particular.

When we talk about someone today as a “prophet,” we generally mean that she sees the future somehow, not necessarily in specifics but maybe in broad strokes. Brother R.G. Stair of the Overcomer Church in South Carolina thinks of himself as this kind of prophet, or Madame Helena Blavatsky of Theosophy or Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Ohio Representative John Boehner was called a political prophet when the midterm elections of last year swept many conservative Republicans into major offices. We call speculators like Jim Cramer economic prophets when their predictions about minor blips and dips on the stock market pan out and charlatans when they don’t. Prophets are people who’ve already seen the movie and know how it’s going to end.

But that isn’t what prophets in the sense that the term is used in the Older Testament means. “Older” and “Newer,” by the way, are the preferred terms in contemporary Biblical scholarship since they’re less suggestive of out-datedness or replacement. Prophets, from what we understand of them, had a complex relationship with their communities. Some, like Samuel, prophesied for individuals for a fee in addition to their more communally based prophecies; some, like Elijah, were marginalized members living on the forbearance of the community, while others were in privileged positions of authority, like the female prophet Huldah or Isaiah; some were members or founders of schools, like Elisha. What they shared in common was an ability, not to foresee the future, but to read the signs of the present.

While some were called “seers” and others called nabi “speaker, messenger,” what they did was to pay close attention to events, reflect on the meaning of those events, and then explain those events for the community. Their role was political—Martin Buber even calls them “theo-politicians”—whose position as messengers of Yahweh allowed them to focus on the bigger picture of political and social events and whose pronouncements were an articulation of the action Yahweh expected Yahweh’s people to take. To a degree, you can think of the ancient prophets Elijah and Samuel and Huldah and Ezekiel as the Rush Limbaughs and John Stewarts and Rachel Maddows and Glen Becks of their time.

In this analogy, the prophet Hosea is the Pat Buchanan of 6th Century BCE. He is convinced of the inevitability of decline and judgment. The people have strayed, he explains: like Hosea they have taken for themselves “a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (:2). After Hosea’s wife Gomer (representing Israel) gives birth to a daughter Yahweh tells him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity on the house on Israel or forgive them” (:6); when she conceives a son, Yahweh says, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not my people and I am not your God” (:9).

Hosea, probably a contemporary of Amos, for whom another book we’ll look at is named, was one of the longest-working prophets. The events he commented on took place over three decades; and while it’s true Hosea is not himself the author of the book for whom he’s named, it was probable that the book, redacted or edited and added to over the course of centuries, was the product of his followers and sympathetic later editors. He rails against the ease with which life under King Jeroboam II, then ruler of the northern kingdom of Israel, has degenerated, and follows Amos who had prophesied the kingdom’s mistreatment of the poor and indifference to justice. Israel, he says, has forgotten Yahweh: “Hear the word of the Lord, O People of Israel…There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish…” (4:1-3).

For Hosea the awful judgment of Yahweh is unquestioned. It will come, it will be terrible, and it will be just. “[Yahweh] will become like a lion to [Israel], like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart…” (13:7-8). Swift, punishing retribution is what the people deserve for turning away from Yahweh.

But there is a second, equally strong current in the prophesies of Hosea. Yahweh continues to feel compassion for Yahweh’s people, despite their sinfulness. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son…I took them up in my arms…I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks…How can I give you up…How can I hand you over, O Israel…My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (11:1-8).

This is a God who would be merciful (hesed) in remembering God’s covenant with God’s people. Even within the boundless and justified rage of Yahweh’s judgment, punishment is not for punishment’s sake. Like the Great Flood of Genesis, it is Yahweh’s way of erasing the corrupt and troubled worship and attention by past administrations so that the people, chastised and humbled, will return to their true god. “For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar…Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God…they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days” (3:4-5).

Here we see the primary emphasis of Hosea’s prophetic passion. The people have turned away from their true path and are being punished justly for it. But the punishment is meant to punish Yahweh’s people the way a parent spanks a child, as a method by which the parent reminds the child that there are rules by which the child must live and that acting contrary to those rules has consequences. Don’t be confused that this simple analogy, bloodless and petty as it seems to us, was what Hosea was offering. After all, he would have seen up close the suffering and destruction that political change wrought. He saw the assassination of four kings over the course of his work, and for every king killed we can assume hundreds or thousands more died violently in the upheavals, sieges and campaigns in the wake of political turmoil. We are inured by the bloodless shifts of political parties into thinking that it was always this way. For the people of Hosea’s time, a change in leadership often swept away as many people as the recent Japanese tsunami did, and about as effortlessly, about as mercilessly. The mercy available in such an event, Hosea suggests, is in the response of his people after the destruction.

Two questions, then, for discussion: Is this the message we ought to take away from Hosea’s prophecy, that the response to disaster of any kind is humility and acknowledging there is a greater power? And if this is so, how should we behave toward that greater power?

"I have no pleasure in the death of anyone"

“I Have No Pleasure in the Death of Anyone”

Context: It is worth asking ourselves if disastrous events are Yahweh’s punishment. And if they are, are they fair or just punishments? This is not an academic or moot question. Only a few days ago Japan was subject to a magnitude 8.9 earthquake, the equivalent force of 240 megatons of exploding TNT, followed immediately by a nearly 25-foot tsunami, that left thousands of people dead and tens of thousands missing and injured. Aftershocks of the earthquake continued to register as magnitude 6 and above, volcanic activity has been reported, and every hour brings greater certainty of some disaster relating to the compromise of the nuclear power plants Japan’s energy depends on. If a plague of frogs can be said to be a punishment by Yahweh (Exodus 8:1-15), then surely if there is contemporary divine punishment, this would qualify.

Putting aside the argument what Japan might be punished for, could Ezekiel’s lament of chapter 18 be updated to answer the results of this modern disaster? As a college teacher focusing on the Bible as literature or as a minster leading a study group on faith texts that seek to justify the ways of gods to people, this is a patently legitimate question. The prophets of the Older Testament seek, if not justification for Yahweh’s actions, then to make clear why things have happened as they have. It is axiomatic in their world that there are no coincidences and that the wicked suffer for their behavior. Contemporary prophets, to remain true to this Biblical intent, should insist the same. If we take the words of Ezekiel and what he is trying to articulate seriously, then asking the same question of contemporary disasters that Sixth Century BCE Israelites did of their Babylonian exile is necessary and respectful. Would a contemporary Ezekiel locate the recent disaster in Japan as the fault of its people?

Exegesis: Ezekiel’s Yahweh (and we can call Yahweh “Ezekiel’s” here because there is evidence that this book, in contrast to the oral backgrounds of most Biblical prophecy books, was written, edited, expanded on and preserved, possibly during the prophet’s life and so is a literary construct) begins this chapter by chastising his people’s use of a proverb to explain the suffering of people as payment for their forebear’s misdeeds (:2). “Know that all lives are mine…it is only the person who sins that shall die” (:4).

Brueggemann (2003) argues that the text is not intended to set up a false dichotomy between individual and corporate morality. Paul Joyce (whom Brueggemann quotes) writes, “Ezekiel certainly rejects the idea that the present disaster is a punishment for the sins of previous generations [and] he is not concerned here with the moral independence of contemporary individuals. He takes for granted the general principle of ‘individual responsibility’…but the possibility of Yahweh judging individuals in isolation from their contemporaries is not considered…[The] question at issue is a different one, namely, ‘Why is this inevitably communal, national crisis happening?’”

Ezekiel’s Yahweh goes to great lengths to distinguish between three generations: the first is “a man [who] is righteous and does what is lawful and right” (:5); but “he has a son who is violent, a shedder of blood…” (:10); and if that “man has a son who sees all the sins that his father has done, considers, and does not do likewise…” (:14); each will have a different end. The first “shall surely live” (:9), the second “shall surely die” (:13b), and the third “shall not die for his father’s iniquity; he shall surely live” (:17). Unspoken but assumed is the idea that the sins of the second generation will also not be forgiven by the goodness of the first and third: “[Each one’s] blood shall be upon himself.” (:13c).

While Brueggemann uses this to forward his argument that, because “the destiny for and verdict upon each generation depends upon adherence to Torah in terms of (a) avoiding idolatry and serving only YHWH, (b) obedient sexuality, and (c) obedient economics” (206), he also explains that the generations are not theoretical but refer to Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiachin, on whom “the verdict is still out…Thus it is probable that…Ezekiel 18 concerns the destiny of and the theological verdict upon…the generation of exiles led by Jehoiachin” (206).

Locating the text in a specific era does not mean we shouldn’t draw from it to determine contemporary lessons, however; the disaster of the exile is the fault of the second, wicked generation and it is up to the third, exilic generation to expiate its predecessor’s guilt. Yahweh states that “if the wicked turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statutes and do what is lawful and right…[none] of the transgressions they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live” (:21-2). There is, of course, no way of knowing if the victims of Japan’s tsunami “lived” or “died” as Ezekiel means the words—that is, whether they lived forever (chayah) or perished (as a nation: muwth)—the reality is that their bodies died, some horribly, but Ezekiel would recognize their deaths as part of a corporate body. As individuals they are not important. While he “echoes Jeremiah’s emphasis on personal responsibility for one’s actions before God…Ezekiel’s work of bringing individuals to repentance and conversion…will begin to build the new community by preparing its individual members to take part in that rebuilding” (Ceresko: 254-5). In other words, individual fates do not sway Yahweh’s decisions about Yahweh’s people, but leaving “behind the pride and pretensions associated with a political state, this community will find a new identity as a people” (255).

“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked…and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?” exclaims Yahweh (:23). No one generation is all good or all evil (Michael Coogan’s textual note reads, sardonically, “Ezekiel’s audience is far from an innocent generation”). Individuals who take responsibility and turn from sin will be forgiven. But Ezekiel’s Yahweh recognizes peoples, not people, and for a moment, Ezekiel suggests that Yahweh’s mercy will overtake his judgment. “But when the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity and do the same abominable things that the wicked do…None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die” (:24). There is no forgiveness for the wicked. (Presumably the sins one turns away from into righteousness are venial rather than mortal.) When the wicked protest Yahweh’s unfairness (takan, “unmeasured, unregulated, uneven,” suggesting commerce), Yahweh responds, “When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it…Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed….they shall not die” (:26-8). Yahweh holds to Yahweh’s self the right of judgment and urges Yahweh’s people, “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O House of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone…Turn, then, and live” (:31-2).

Lesson Outline: Presenting this in a classroom setting would require a class or study group that has a good deal of previous experience with Biblical texts and with ethical considerations of them. I would assign Ezekiel 16-19 to place the reading in context and ask the question “Is Yahweh justified in bringing disaster on a people who broke covenant with him?” On the day for discussion, after a short discussion—the answer to which I’d expect everyone would agree is “yes”—I’d share background about the Babylonian Exile and a few Hebrew words and expand the question. “Ezekiel and his followers believed that Yahweh had control not only over Yahweh’s covenanted people but over the whole world. Is this true for contemporary Christians? If it is, would a contemporary Ezekiel say that Japan’s earthquake and tsunami were Yahweh’s punishment against the Japanese people for some transgression, perhaps known only to Yahweh?” My follow-up questions would include, paraphrasing Paul Joyce, “From a Biblical perspective, why is this national tragedy happening?”

WORKS CITED
• Brueggemann, Walter. (2003.) An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY.
• Ceresko, Anthony. (2005.) Introduction to the Old Testament: A Liberation Perspective. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY.
• Coogan, Michael, editor. (2007.) New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV). Oxford University Press.

o house of israel: fallen

as I'm not christian it's not often that I indulge in biblical exegesis, except for class. this is a short piece I've been working at that I'm somewhat proud of (as I would argue everyone ought to be at least somewhat proud of everything he or she produces).

“O House of Israel: Fallen”
Exegesis of Amos 5:1-14

Identifying his audience as the peoples of Judah (2:4) and Israel (2:6) and Amos as Yahweh’s prophet (most recently in 4:11), the Amos author, midway through his denunciation of them turns to lamentation “take[n] up over [the] house of Israel” (5:1). Unlike his contemporary author in Hosea 4:15, Amos mourns his peoples’ fall, calling them “maiden Israel, forsaken… with no one to raise her up” (:2b), sounding a rueful note for a people soon to return to exile.

Amos prophesies doom for the nation that has turned away from its former glory and for which there is only punishment (3:2). But Amos’ funerary lamentation holds out hope for “maiden Israel”: “Seek me and live…Seek the Lord and live…” (4b and 6a). You, that is Israel, “that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground” (:7), “[s]eek good and not evil, that you may live…” (:14a) This call is reminiscent of the earlier command of Deuteronomy 30:19: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore, choose life…”

Yahweh, who created the stars in their courses (:8a) and operates the world for the people’s benefit (:8a & b), and who operates justly (:9), takes offense at the misuses that Israel and Judah have put their strength: they have trampled “on the poor and take from them [unjust] levies of grain…[they] afflict [and bribe] the righteous…and push aside the needy…” (:11a & :12b). Amos, “the one who reproves in the gate…the one who speaks the truth” (:10), who knows “how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins” (:12), knows “the prudent will keep silent in such…an evil time” (:13); but he can’t remain so. Yahweh still cherishes Yahweh’s people (foreshadowing the visions of :7-9) and gives them via Amos’ lamentation an opportunity for repentance if only they will “Seek the Lord and live…”