Thinking Faith

The Guy in the Flannel Shirt

2012-01-26T07:17:00.000-08:00

For the LORD
takes pleasure
in his people;
he adorns the humble
with victory.
Psalm 149:4

Today I am wearing a red plaid flannel shirt in honor of Joe Garrahy who passed away yesterday at the age of eighty-one.

I was not a big fan of Governor Garrahy when he took office in 1977. The idea that our governor was a former beer salesman who never finished college, and worked his way up the political ladder by not offending anyone seemed like the punch line to a bad Rhode Island joke. Looking back, the ability to get along with people seems more valuable in a politician now than it did then.

Those of us who were here for the “Blizzard of ‘78” remember Governor Garrahy’s daily updates on television wearing a plaid flannel shirt. His steady and reassuring presence was an important part of guiding the state through that emergency and that is the image that most Rhode Islanders will remember.

Possibly in the spring of that same year, I was in my office at Mathewson Street Church in Providence late in the afternoon when the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, “Hi, this is Joe Garrahy, is this Reverend Trench?” At that time, I chaired the Social Action Department of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. We had taken a stand in opposition to something that the Governor was advocating, and he called to discuss the issue. He explained why he was taking the position that he did and I explained the concerns raised by the Council of Churches. He did not change my mind, but he did change how I thought about him, and the conversation led me to reflect more deeply on the issues.

In an overwhelmingly Catholic state, the Council of Churches has never been a big player in state politics, so I was amazed that he would call at all. And he didn’t have is secretary set up the call. And he did not introduce himself as “Governor Garrahy.” He was just “Joe.”

Later the Council worked with the Governor to pass a hand-gun safety bill and I was invited to his office for the signing. On that issue he stood up to considerable pressure from the gun lobby and went against many in his own party. In many ways he was the ultimate political insider and the consummate party politician, but he had principles and he did not like the wheeling and dealing that goes with the political games.

As he prepared to leave office in late 1984, he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. He said that he hoped Rhode Islanders would remember him as "conscientious" and "sensitive."

"I hope they remember me as a governor who worked hard and tried to do the best he could for his state, and that when I made decisions, I always tried to make them in what I thought was the best interest of the entire state."

I have seen Governor Garrahy twice in the last few years. Both times he was attending funerals for former members of our church. On each occasion he was careful not to call attention to himself. With his wife, Margherite, he was there for friends. It was not about him.

Joe Garrahy was not a great political theorist. He was not a policy wonk. He was not a charismatic public speaker. He was not a crusader. And he was not without his faults. But if we remember him as just “a nice guy,” we miss the point. He was a good person, who simply wanted to do the best he could for his state. He did good things, and he had no great sense of his own importance, and that is rarer than it should be.

A Lament for the Kicker

2012-01-23T09:06:00.000-08:00

Turn to me, O LORD, and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
Relieve the troubles of my heart,
and bring me out of my distress.
May integrity and uprightness preserve me,
for I wait for you.
Psalm 25:16-17, 21

For real football fans the two weeks between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl are a secular version of Lent or maybe Purgatory, only worse. We enter into a wilderness of inane chatter and silly predictions. The history of every player will be presented as a morality play and the GAME will be talked about as if it had cosmic consequences. And in the end, most of the time, when we finally get to the Super Bowl it will not live up to the hype and the football will be lost in an avalanche of long (but clever!) advertisements, and a half-time show that will seem to go on for eternity.

Why can’t they just play the game?

But yesterday was wonderful.

And sad at the same time. The games were close and they were exciting. But in the end they were won on mistakes rather than accomplishments. The Giants won because of a fumbled punt return. And the Patriots won because of a missed field goal.

When he was asked about the missed field goal, Raven’s linebacker Ray Lewis said, “One play didn’t win or lose the game. There is no one man who has ever lost a game . . . It happens. Move on, move on, because life doesn’t stop.”

And it’s true. The Ravens had many chances to win. And the Patriots had many chances to put the game out of reach. But the missed field goal was the one that ended it. And that is the one that will be remembered.

Years ago there was a study of fan reactions, and one of the conclusions was that the pain felt in losing lasted longer than the joy felt in winning. I think it was a study of Pittsburgh Steeler fans. And I think it was during their great Super Bowl years in the mid-seventies. (And I could be just remembering it that way because it fits my narrative.) In any case, it rings true.

And within all of that, field goal kickers have a special place. Most of the time, we can’t see the missed assignments. We don’t know what a defensive scheme was really supposed to look like. And we don’t know how a play was supposed to be run. But we can see the kicker. And we can see whether he makes it or misses it. And it does not look as hard as it is.

So Billy Cundiff will be remembered as Scott Norwood is remembered.

A year or two ago he was in the Pro Bowl. And this year he was very accurate inside of forty yards. But none of that mattered on Sunday.

He answered the inevitable questions with class and dignity. The field goal was makeable. He just missed it. There were no excuses.

“It’s one of those situations that will strengthen me in the end,” Cundiff said. “Throughout my career, I’ve had challenging situations and I’m still standing here today. It’s something that is going to be tough for a while, but I’ve got two kids and there are some lessons I need to teach them. First and foremost is to stand up and face the music and move on.”

I would have been happier if the Patriots had just made a couple of first downs on their last drive.

All or Nothing

2012-01-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put met to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by you or laid aside by you,
enabled for you or brought low by you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
you are mine, and I am yours. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer is a response to the invitation Jesus gives to everyone who wants to be a disciple, “to deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

In many Methodist churches, it is a tradition to begin the New Year with a service of Covenant renewal which centers on this prayer. But for Wesley, the prayer was more than an annual tradition, it was a daily commitment.

It is hard for us in the context of the modern world to relate to a prayer which seems so strangely worded. And if we are honest we know that the problem is not just that the words are archaic. If we understand it at all, we know that it runs counter to everything we value.

We want self-affirmation, not self-denial.

When we seek God’s blessing, we are seeking God’s approval for our lives as we choose to live them. We are not seeking God’s purpose for our lives.

It is good, once in a while to sit still and center ourselves in the uncomfortable presence of God and ask ourselves what it means to submit our will to the purposes of God.

In the words of the Prophet Micah, “He has told you, O people, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Tim Tebow's God

2012-01-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Luke 11:1

The Tim Tebow debate continues.

An extraordinary number of people are offended by his public piety. I am not a big fan of public piety. And, as I have said before, I doubt that I would agree with him on theology or social issues. But I am much more concerned about the language of the debate, which reveals that a large number of supposedly educated people don’t know very much about Christian theology.

A common statement from Tebow’s “defenders” is that he has every right to “pray to his God.”

It sounds like Tebow is praying to his personal Lares and Penates, the Roman household gods who protected hearth and home. Every Roman family had its own guardian deity, called the Lar familiaris to protect them. Statues were placed on the table at meal times and special family events, and kept in a sacred family shrine. The gods were convenient, portable, dependable, and uncomplicated.

Does it matter? I think it matters a lot.

Consider the difference in these two statements:
Tim Tebow has every right to pray.
Tim Tebow has every right to pray to his God.

Isn’t the second statement more limited?

Matthew says that Jesus went up to the mountain alone to pray. He didn’t pray “to his God.” He just prayed. And the same is true for us. We just pray.

Of course, we pray to God, but we don’t pray to our own personal “god.” (Okay, some people really do pray to their own personal “gods,” but that’s not considered a Christian practice.)

When Jesus instructs his disciples to say, “Our Father,” it is a universal reference. It does not limit God, but expands our understanding. We are all sisters and brothers. When the prophet Micah says what the Lord requires, “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God,” it is a universal reference. The point is not that God belongs to us, but that we belong to God. We don’t possess God. God possesses us. As the Psalm says, “We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”

To speak of Tim Tebow’s right to “pray to his God,” diminishes and limits our understanding of what prayer is and who God is. It makes God (seem) smaller. It is like speaking of God with a small “g.” God is the Ground of our Being and the Ultimate Reality in our lives. You can’t put that in your pocket or carry it on a key chain.

We Don't Know How to Pray

2012-01-09T07:25:00.000-08:00

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Romans 8:26-27

Yesterday in worship, as we were sharing our celebrations in preparation for our prayer time, one of our folks gave thanks that he was leading in a family football pool organized by another member of the church. This led me to share my dismay that it appeared that the Steelers would be playing our Patriots next week. “I’ll be praying for Tim Tebow,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Obviously, our worship service is fairly casual.

It was all in good fun. Though I did worry a little that someone might think I actually prayed about football games. And I worried a little more after Denver pulled off what seemed a miraculous win.

But in a larger sense, it got me thinking about prayer. It is the most common and probably also the most misunderstood of Christian practices.

In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul makes an amazing confession. He says that we do not know how to pray.

Although the Gospels had not been written when Paul wrote his letters, it is almost certain that he would have known the story of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. And he would have known the prayer that Jesus taught them, which we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” And he would have known all of the Jewish prayers by heart and used them daily.

But Paul is talking about something that is much deeper than the words we use. He is talking about the nature of prayer itself.

In his wonderful sermon on this text, Paul Tillich explains that, “According to Paul, it is humanly impossible. This we should never forget when we pray: We do something humanly impossible. We talk to somebody who is not somebody else, but who is nearer to us than we ourselves are. We address somebody who can never become an object of our address because he is always subject, always acting, always creating. We tell something to Him who knows not only what we tell Him but also all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow. This is the reason why prayer is humanly impossible.”

From this insight into the impossibility of prayer, Paul gives us a mysterious answer. God intercedes for us. It is God to whom we pray, and it is God who prays through us. Paul gives us a picture, which is absurd if we take it literally, but profoundly true if we understand the symbolism. God intercedes for us before God. Through us, God speaks to Godself.

Like most pastors, I work hard to craft a pastoral prayer for Sunday worship. I want it to be profound and poetic and moving. Parts of the prayer are intercessory, meaning that in a formal sense we “intercede” for one another before God.

But in a deeper sense, the language of public prayer is for the congregation rather than for God. What we hope is that the words we use will help individuals open themselves to God in prayer. The words themselves are not the prayer; they are the invitation to prayer. The real prayer is what happens “when the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

The Darkness Brings on Blindness

2012-01-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates a brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.
I John 2:9-11

Today is Epiphany, the first day of the season of light. We celebrate the light of the world, which we see in Jesus. And we remind ourselves that we believe in light rather than darkness.

It is a powerful image, which speaks to the heart of our spiritual journey. We are always seeking more light; always doing our best to choose light over darkness; reminding ourselves that we can trust the light.

It is a struggle, because we are tempted by the darkness. Often the world seems to love darkness more than light. And there are some who will try to make us believe that darkness is light, and light is darkness.

Sometimes the campaign against the light is led by people who call themselves Christian.

One such campaign is led by a group which goes by the ironic acronym, “FACT.” The Family Action Council of Tennessee is promoting a bill to amend the state’s anti-bullying law to provide an exemption for expressions of religious belief.

The amendment would do two critical things. First, it allows an exemption for religious and philosophical statements of belief, as long as no physical harm is threatened. Students would be permitted to say that God hates gay people, or that gay people are going to hell, as long as they didn’t threaten physical violence. And second, it forbids teachers and administrators from naming protected groups. In other words, a teacher could not tell the class that bullying a gay student was wrong, only that bullying was wrong.

It only takes a nanosecond to realize that both ideas are designed to take away any protection for LGBT students. The amendment is darkness rather than light. It is also mean and stupid.

Epiphany is a good time to remind ourselves that Christians are always called to walk in the light, and choose light over darkness. Bigotry is always wrong. But Christians have a special responsibility to reject bigotry in the name of God. It is blasphemy.

whoever hates a brother or sister is in the darkness,
walks in the darkness,
and does not know the way to go,
because the darkness has brought on blindness.

You can read the proposed bill at this link:
http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/107/Bill/SB0760.pdf

The Numbers Tell the Story

2011-12-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Matthew 5:9

Yesterday in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, I was leafing through an old news magazine and listening to the conversation around me. A woman was speaking to a man on the opposite side of the room. “How old do you think I am?” she asked. The gentleman demurred, wisely saying that he was not very good with ages. “I’m eighty-one,” she said proudly. “Do I look it?” The gentleman told her that she looked very good.

After a few minutes of silence, she asked again, “How old do you think I am?” Her son, sitting next to her, said, “Ma, you just told him how old you are.” But she was undeterred, “I’m eighty-two,” she said. Before anyone could point out that less than five minutes ago she had told the man that she was eighty-one, she explained, “I just turned eighty-two.”

Apparently, I thought to myself, I really have been here for a long time. But the son chimed in, “You’re right, Ma, you turned eighty-two last Sunday.”

As the conversation was going on, I was looking at a section in the magazine called, “Numbers,” and half-way down the page I saw this:

104,295
The number of Vietnamese
killed by abandoned landmines
or explosive devices since
the end of the Vietnam War.

I scribbled down the number just before I was called to see the doctor.

It seemed impossible. I had heard of the dangers of landmines. Remember Princess Diana? But I could not imagine that scale. By contrast, there have been about 4,500 United States Military deaths in Iraq since the war there began in March of 2003. How could civilian deaths in Vietnam since the end of the war possibly be more than twenty times the (U.S.) military deaths in the Iraq war?

So I checked. And I received a brief but shocking education.

104,295 is not the number of deaths; it is the number of casualties. Right now, the casualty number is actually a few hundred higher than that.

The number of landmine related deaths in Vietnam since the end of the war is a little less than 40,000.

Still, it is a staggering number. And we hear very little about it. When one of our soldiers is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan by an I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Device) we hear about it. But when a child is blown up by an abandoned landmine in Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Angola, or Rwanda, or a host of other countries, it does not make the news.

A recent UNICEF report explains the geography of this destruction: “Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia have suffered 85 per cent of the world's land-mine casualties. Overall, African children live on the most mine-plagued continent, with an estimated 37 million mines embedded in the soil of at least 19 countries. Angola alone has an estimated 10 million land-mines and an amputee population of 70,000, of whom 8,000 are children. Since May 1995 children have made up about half the victims of the 50,000-100,000 anti-personnel mines laid in Rwanda.”

And the report goes on to say that “Children are particularly vulnerable to land-mines in a number of ways. If they are too young to read or are illiterate, signs posted to warn them of the presence of mines are useless. Also, children are far more likely to die from their mine injuries than are adults. Of those maimed children who survive, few will receive prostheses that keep up with the continued growth of their stunted limbs.”

The UNICEF report speaks of landmines as “contamination” and “pollution.” But isn’t it more accurately called a form of terrorism?

Landmines are widely used because they are incredibly cost-effective. They can be produced for as little as $3, and they can be dispersed at a rate of up to 1,000 per minute. They are always on duty. They never sleep. And they never give up. Actually that last one is an exaggeration, apparently they typically remain active for up to fifty years. That’s not really forever, but it is a long time.

Getting rid of them, on the other hand, is extremely expensive and time consuming.

Jesus tells a series of parables about the cost of discipleship. In one of them, he talks about a king’s rash decision to go to war without counting the cost and gauging the strength of his enemy. But as the great Christian pacifist A. J. Muste said, our real enemy is not another king, our real enemy is war itself. In a pamphlet titled, “War Is the Enemy,” Muste argues that we believe that non-violence is too costly, but we never really consider making the same investments in peace that we make in war.

And, we might add, when we consider the cost of war we seldom account for the collateral damage that may occur decades after the fighting is over.

The Cost of Christmas

2011-12-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
Luke 1:51-53

Last year Americans spent about $450 billion on Christmas presents. In round numbers, that comes to $1,500 for every man, woman and child. In a reversal of Mary’s song of praise, with few exceptions, that money has been spent to fill the rich with good things.

I’m guessing that when Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The Cost of Discipleship,” this isn’t what he had in mind. We spend a lot more on Christmas than we do on discipleship.

What does that say about us as Christians?

In the fourth verse of her Christmas Carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Christina Rossetti writes,

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
yet what can I give him; give my heart.

But the reality is that the vast majority of the people singing that carol are not poor. And we are capable of giving much more than a lamb. When we sing about giving him our hearts, it touches us deeply, but we are not really serious about it. If we were serious about it, then we would live differently.

We will never close the gap between our lives as they are, and our lives as we know they ought to be. And there will always be a disconnect between the message of Christmas and the way we live that out. But we can make a start.

Howard Thurman, who was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University for many years, wrote a wonderful poem about what it means to take the Christmas message seriously. It is titled, “The Work of Christmas.”

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoners,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

Boogaard's Brain

2011-12-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
I Corinthians 9:24-27

Derek Boogaard was known to hockey fans as one of the fiercest fighters ever to play in the NHL.

He died last May at the age of 28. He killed himself. We don’t know whether he did it on purpose or by mistake, but he died of a drug and alcohol overdose.

His brain was examined by researchers from Boston University. The results came in a conference call to the family in October. Derek Boogaard had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as C.T.E., a disease related to Alzheimer’s. Positive diagnosis can only be made posthumously, but researchers say the symptoms include memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, and addiction.

More than 20 former professional football players have been posthumously diagnosed with C.T.E., as well as many boxers. What makes the Boogaard case different, and very troubling, is that he was still in his 20’s, in what should have been the prime of his career. The researchers told Derek’s family that they were shocked to see such advanced disease in someone so young.

The results set off a flurry of investigations, hand-wringing, and well-intentioned pronouncements from people in the hockey world. Almost everyone agrees that something must be done. What is surprising to me is the almost unanimous agreement that whatever is done must not change “the character of the game.” What they mean by that is that fighting is and will remain integral to NHL hockey.

Fighting is not permitted in youth or high school or college. It is not permitted in European hockey or in the Olympics. And everyone loves Olympic hockey. But it belongs in the NHL.

Which causes me to wonder if Derek Boogaard isn’t the only guy who took too many shots to the head.

Fighting is not the only cause of head injuries in hockey. It may not even be the major cause. Players are bigger and faster, and the collisions are more damaging.

And all of this is part of a larger pattern in sports.

More than ever, players talk about intimidation. It’s not about checking, it’s about “hitting.” And in football, no one tackles anymore; they “hit” the guy with the ball. If one player hits another with enough force, it is referred to as “blowing him up.” Even basketball coaches and analysts talk about one team intimidating another.

Football helmets, which were introduced to prevent injuries, and began life as leather padded caps, are now used as weapons. The highlights shown over and over are not of tackles, they are of flying bodies and huge collisions. It’s exciting and it sells.

Do you remember Ted Johnson? He played linebacker for the Patriots and he was once a Super Bowl champion. But repeated concussions turned him into a shell of his former self. He lost his career, his wife, and his whole life collapsed.

The NHL and the NFL are both concerned about concussions. And they should be. They are looking at rule changes, and they should look at rule changes.

But in a broader perspective, this is about our vision and our values as a culture. Why do we find the violence so appealing? How many Derek Boogaards or Ted Johnsons will it take before we decide that we have had enough?

Tim Tebow's Very Public Faith

2011-12-14T07:12:00.000-08:00

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
Psalm 1:1-3

The most hated man in the National Football League right now is Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Denver Broncos, who has led his team to seven improbable, almost miraculous victories, in the last eight games.

It seems like every other caller on the sports talk shows is phoning in to say how much they despise him. Hating Tim Tebow has become a national pastime.

Callers are irate that Tebow seems to begin every interview by saying, “First, I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” And they hate it that almost every success is quickly followed by dropping to one knee in prayer. This act of spontaneous prayer has been labeled, “Tebowing.” The Global Language Monitor, a website which monitors global language trends, has announced that “Tebowing” has officially entered the English language. One definition says that Tebowing is getting down on one knee and praying even if everyone around you is doing something completely different.

I don’t share Tim Tebow’s theology, and we would disagree on a wide variety of social issues, but as a football player, he is fun to watch, and I think the world could use at least a little more “Tebowing.” Wouldn’t it be great if more people would get down on one knee and pray when everyone around them was doing something completely different?

Given the variety of unpleasant things professional athletes have said in post-game interviews and the number of unpleasant gestures we see at football games, it is hard to see how Tebow’s public profession of faith can generate so much hostility. Praying on one knee is way better than a lot of the touchdown celebrations we see.

But the irate callers insist that it is simply not appropriate at football games. They don’t go to football games to see people pray. And they don’t need a football player telling them what to believe.

For his part, Tebow seems unfazed by the furor. When a reporter asked him how he felt about so many people saying they hated him, he said simply, “I’m living my dream. I’ve dreamed of playing professional football since I was seven years old. I don’t care what they say.” He is cheerful and respectful and polite.

Tebow’s pastor, Wayne Hanson, who pastors the Summit Church in Suburban Denver, says that the Broncos are winning because of their quarterback’s faith. “It’s not luck,” Hanson said. “Luck isn’t winning six games in a row. It’s favor. God’s favor.” He believes that the Broncos would not be winning if God had not decided to reward Tebow for his faithfulness.

Tebow himself seems to have a more mature theological understanding than his pastor, and he has consistently rejected those sorts of pronouncements. He is happy and he clearly delights in his faith. But he does not claim divine favor in his successes. He talks about a team that believes in itself and teammates who believe in each other. He talks about the strength of the Denver defense and about how he is just trying to do his part.

In the strange world of talk radio, callers at one end of the dial were calling the sports show to say how much they despised Tim Tebow’s religion on the football field, while at the other end of the dial callers were phoning the public affairs show to say how much they despised Lincoln Chafee for keeping religion out of the tree lighting at the State House.

How weird is that?

Gay Rights Are Human Rights

2011-12-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Genesis 1:1-5

One of the most fundamental biblical observations is that words matter.

God speaks and things happen. The heavens and the earth are created by the Word of God.

The Bible is clear that there is a difference between divine speech and human speech. Our words are limited and finite. We cannot speak the world into being. But human speech carries within it echoes of the divine.

On Tuesday, in Geneva, Switzerland, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a remarkable and important speech in recognition of International Human Rights Day.

She noted that the Declaration was enacted when the world was still reeling from the horrors and atrocities of World War II. The document was drafted over a two year period, culminating in one last long night of debate with the final approval coming at three o’clock in the morning on December 10, 1948. Forty-eight nations voted in favor of the Declaration; eight abstained, but no nation voted against it. The Declaration proclaims a basic truth, that all human beings are born with basic rights. These rights are not conferred by governments, they are inherent in our common humanity.

Over the years since that declaration, the world has made great progress. Barriers to liberty and equality have been dismantled. Racist laws have been repealed. Laws relegating women to second class citizenship have been abolished. Religious minorities have been protected.

After looking back, Secretary Clinton looked ahead. “Today,” she announced forcefully, “I want to talk about the work we have left to do to protect one group of people whose human rights are still denied in too many parts of the world today. In many ways, they are an invisible minority. They are arrested, beaten, terrorized, even executed. Many are treated with contempt and violence by their fellow citizens while authorities empowered to protect them look the other way or, too often, even join in the abuse. They are denied opportunities to work and learn, driven from their homes and countries, and forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm.”

The human rights challenge to which she called the delegates was for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.” The Secretary was quick to confess that “I speak about this subject knowing that my own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country. Many LGBT Americans have endured violence and harassment in their own lives, and for some, including many young people, bullying and exclusion are daily experiences. So we, like all nations, have more work to do to protect human rights at home.”

It was an historic speech.

Secretary Clinton acknowledged that sixty years ago when the original Declaration was adopted, no one thought of the rights of LGBT people. And she acknowledged deeply held beliefs and traditions that opposed those rights.

Hillary Clinton is a United Methodist Christian, and she has on many occasions spoken of how her Methodist upbringing and the teachings of John Wesley have influenced her life. In calling for change she used a classically Wesleyan argument. She observed that our understanding evolves. Once we believed that slavery was ordained by God. Once we believed that women ought to be second class citizens. Experience changes us. We learn and grow.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. popularized the insight of the Rev. Theodore Parker, used first in the debates about slavery, that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. John Wesley never used that language, but he understood that insight. Secretary Clinton did not speak of a moral arc, but she did talk about being on the right side of history.

And Secretary Clinton also announced that the rights of LGBT people will be a factor in decisions about United States foreign aid.

One speech, even an historic speech, will not change the world. But it is an important first step. And eventually, the world will change.

To read the full address, use this link: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/12/178368.htm

The Real Meaning of Christmas

2011-12-07T06:40:00.000-08:00

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:1-7

After Governor Lincoln Chafee issued an invitation to the annual tree lighting ceremony at the State House, his office received about 3,500 calls in protest. Seven hundred were from Rhode Islanders, and the rest were from out of state. The callers were upset that the Governor called it a “Holiday Tree” rather than a “Christmas Tree.”

As far as we know, when Governor Don Carcieri issued the same announcement in 2009, and called it a “Holiday Tree” no one said anything. The same for Lincoln Almond many years earlier.

But this year our Holiday Tree was in the news from coast to coast.

Yesterday, protestors crashed the Holiday Tree lighting ceremony in the State House Rotunda. One man carried a large sign that announced, “Saving Christmas, One Tree at a Time.” And a few dozen “Christmas Carolers” interrupted a Children’s Chorus to sing “O Christmas Tree.” I’m sure the children will remember that as a wonderful witness to the true meaning of Christmas.

As Tiny Tim said, “God bless us, everyone!”

(And just for the record, “O Christmas Tree” is not really about the birth of Jesus, it’s about the evergreen tree.)

Further down Smith Street, Bishop Thomas Tobin led a Christmas tree lighting at a Roman Catholic Church. He compared Governor Chafee to the innkeeper in Bethlehem who turned away Mary and Joseph.

That seems a little harsh. At the least, it’s unfair to the innkeeper, who didn’t turn them away at all. He did the best he could. Because there was no more room in the house, he invited them to stay in the stable beneath the house.

A Cranston man, who came to the State House to protest calling it a Holiday Tree, said of the Governor, "He's trying to put our religion down. It's a Christmas tree. It always has been and it always will be, no matter what that buffoon says it is."

For his part, the governor stood by his decision. "If it's in my house it's a Christmas tree, but when I'm representing all of Rhode Island I have to be respectful of everyone," he explained after the tree lighting. "Now we can get back to next year's budget ... with pleasure."

The ironies in the story are wonderfully amusing. And it’s all mostly harmless fun. But I do wonder about the children, whose performance was interrupted. What did they learn about Christians and about Christmas?

Governor Chafee and the "Holiday Tree"

2011-11-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’”
Matthew 7:21-23

The important thing, according to Jesus, is not that we call him “Lord,” but that we follow his teachings and do the will of God.

He was strangely silent on the importance of saying, “Merry Christmas,” or making sure that the evergreen tree with the lights and ornaments is called a “Christmas Tree.”

Governor Lincoln Chafee found himself at the center of a national news story when critics took him to task for issuing a press release announcing that, “Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee and First Lady Stephanie Chafee will host the annual State House holiday tree lighting in the State House Rotunda on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. All Rhode Islanders are invited to attend and see the 17-foot Colorado Blue Spruce lit for the first time.”

Last January Representative Doreen Costa of North Kingstown sponsored a “symbolic resolution” declaring that the tree customarily erected in the State House at this time of year be referred to "as a `Christmas tree' and not as a `holiday tree' or other non-traditional terms." In his press release, the Governor ignored the non-binding resolution and called it a “Holiday” tree.

Roman Catholic Thomas Tobin called Chafee’s failure to use the word Christmas “most disheartening and divisive.” He said it was “an affront to the faith of many citizens." He went on to say, "For the sake of peace and harmony in our state at this special time of the year, I respectfully encourage the Governor to reconsider his decision to use the word Christmas in the state observance.”

Former Governors Carcieri and Almond had issued similar press releases in the past, so the designation of “Holiday” tree lighting is not new. But critics reacted as if it were a sign of the apocalypse. The Governor responded by pointing out that he was following past precedent, and honoring Rhode Island’s heritage of religious tolerance. He went on to say, “I would encourage all those engaged in this discussion – whatever their opinion on the matter – to use their energy and enthusiasm to make a positive difference in the lives of their fellow Rhode Islanders.” He suggested that an initiative to feed the hungry might be a good place to start.

When it comes to traditions, we tend to have short memories.

The Governor’s critics could not remember what previous governors had said or done. But in a larger sense, we tend to think of Christmas as something Christians have celebrated since the days of the early church. In fact, it is a relatively recent tradition.

Biblical scholars have known for centuries that Jesus was almost certainly not born anywhere near December 25, but the church originally focused on that date as a way to combat the pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. The blending of pagan and Christian themes was problematic from the start.

In the Puritan colonies, there were prohibitions against any but the most solemn observances. They banned wreaths and trees and other “pagan symbols.” Christmas first became a national holiday under President Ulysses Grant in 1870, but up until that time the public schools in Boston held classes on December 25.

Yesterday I was at a meeting focused on how the United Methodist churches in Rhode Island could come together to support the work of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless in Providence and Woonsocket. I could not help thinking that if all the people who are so concerned about the Governor’s omission of the word Christmas were busy doing what Jesus clearly told us to do, the problem would be solved.

Governor Kitzhaber and Jesus

2011-11-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not use violence to resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”
Matthew 5:38-39

On Tuesday, Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregan announced that Gary Haugen, convicted of two separate murders, one in 1981 and another in 2003, would not be executed. “It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach,” he said. “I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am governor.”

Oregon has executed two inmates since voters reestablished the death penalty in 1984. In announcing his decision, Governor Kitzhaber noted that both of those previous executions were carried out while he was serving two terms as governor from 1995 to 2003. “They were the most agonizing and difficult decisions I have made as governor and I have revisited and questioned them over and over again during the past 14 years,” Governor Kitzhaber said. “I do not believe that those executions made us safer; certainly I don’t believe they made us more noble as a society. And I simply cannot participate once again in something I believe to be morally wrong.”

The governor could have commuted Mr. Haugen’s sentence, but he chose not to do that. Nor did he commute the sentences of any of the other inmates on death row in Oregon. The reprieve will last only as long as he is governor. In the meantime, he called on the legislature and the people of Oregon to “engage in the long overdue debate that this important issue deserves.”

Public opinion across the country is shifting against the death penalty and recent polls show that support for the death penalty is now at the lowest level in four decades. More than six in ten Americans still support it, but that is down from eight in ten two decades ago. Only 27 states have executed someone in the last ten years. Over that time, the number of executions has declined by about fifty percent. Governor George Ryan of Illinois stopped all executions in that state in 2000, and as he was leaving office he commuted the sentences of all death row inmates. The Illinois legislature banned the death penalty this year. New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009, and New Jersey ended the death penalty in 2007.

In his announcement on Tuesday, Governor Kitzhaber, a physician, noted the oath he had taken to “never do harm.” When asked whom he had consulted before making his decisioin, the governor answered, “Mostly myself.”

As I read his statement, I did not see a reference to any moral authority beyond his conscience and his oath as a physician. I don’t know whether he belongs to a community of faith, and I don’t know whether he would call himself a Christian.

But on this point, his actions and his statement, identify him as a follower of Jesus.

In the verses from the Sermon on the Mount quoted above, verse 39 is often translated as, “Do not resist evil,” or “Do not resist an evildoer.” And it appears that Jesus is calling for “passivism” as well as “pacifism.” The translation I used is probably closer to the original meaning of the text. Jesus is against revenge, but he is also against indifference or passivity. He is inviting his followers to oppose evil with creative non-violence.

It is not easy to think creatively about resisting evil without participating in the cycle of violence. Jesus did not oppose violence and revenge because he thought that “evildoers” were not really evil. He believed that ultimately we could not establish peace by violence.

As the great Christian pacifist A. J. Muste said, “There is no way to peace – peace is the way.”

Occupy the Bible

2011-11-21T10:14:00.000-08:00

The LORD rises to argue his case; he stands to judge the peoples.
The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people:
It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the face of the poor?
says the Lord GOD of hosts.
Isaiah 3:13-15

There are lots of things wrong with “Occupy Wall Street.” As a social vision, Anarchism, even Pacifist Anarchism (even Christian Pacifist Anarchism) has its limits.

Phil Wogaman describes the oddly naïve combination of pessimism and optimism found in anarchistic movements as “utter pessimism about any redeeming possibilities withn the present forms of social organization combined with stupendous optimssm about the goodness that will simply blossom forth, unaided, after the present social organization is smashed.” The OWS message seems to be that if we can get rid of the oppressive collusion of business and government, then “the people” can create a society ruled by consensus and everyone can live in peace and harmony.

On the other hand, the Occupy movement has done some important things. In his Sunday column, called “Occupy the Agenda,” Nicholas Kristof reports that use of the words “income inequality” quintupled in news reports after the protests began. That is no small achievement. For more than three decades, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer (relatively), and no one has seemed to care. Now, at least people are talking about it.

The top one percent of Americans have more net wealth than the bottom ninety percent. That doesn’t seem possible, but it is true. We have been redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top at an alarming rate.

I think this is what Isaiah meant when he said that “the spoil of the poor is in your houses.” And this is what he called, “grinding the face of the poor.”

Kristof reports on a new study by Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University. In their study they asked Americans how they believed wealth should be distributed across income groups. Respondents thought that the richest 20% should control about one third of the wealth, and the poorest 20% should have about one-tenth.

Most people are surprised to learn that the richest 20% of Americans actually possess more than 80% of the nation’s wealth, and the poorest 20% own one-tenth of a percent. Again, the real numbers are hard to believe.

Wealth is power. The concentration of wealth has led to a concentration of power, and those who have wealth use their influence to keep on the government on their side. In a recent speech the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, James M. Stone, said that before the economic collapse of 2008, congressional leaders knew that the banks needed to be more closely controlled. And he asked rhetorically, “So why was this not done?” One obvious part of the answer, he said, is that “both political parties rely heavily on campaign contributions from the financial sector.”

The Bible is relentless in opposing oppression and zealous in advocating for the poor. It sees an implicit injustice in a growing gap between rich and poor. But it does not give us a political program. That is up to us.

The Occupy movement has brought critical biblical issues into mainstream conversation, and for that we can be grateful.

Specks and Logs and the Illusion of Moral Superiority

2011-11-15T12:10:00.000-08:00

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
Matthew 7:3-5

I think I was in Junior High School when I first encountered Jesus’ teaching about the speck and the log. I had probably heard it when I was younger, but it was in the early teen years that it first made an impression.

I loved it immediately because it was the clearest and best description I had ever seen of what was the matter with my parents. They were trying to correct me. All the time, it seemed. And yet they were blind to their own faults.

I did not take it to them and confront them with the biblical explanation for their poor parenting because I knew it wouldn’t work. They had logs in their eyes. And I knew that they would not be able to see the truth even if I could show them that it came from Jesus.

It was only years later that it dawned on me that Jesus was not speaking to my parents, he was speaking to me.

One of the perverse truths of human nature is that we are always much more adept at seeing the specks in the eyes of our neighbors than we are in seeing the logs in our own eyes.

In a recent column in the New York Times, David Brooks commented in the Penn State scandal, the news of the atrocity of the (alleged) sexual assaults was quickly followed by the what he called, “the vanity.” He explains:

“The vanity is the outraged reaction of a zillion commentators over the past week, whose indignation is based on the assumption that if they had been in Joe Paterno’s shoes, or assistant coach Mike McQueary’s shoes, they would have behaved better. They would have taken action and stopped any sexual assaults.”

According to Brooks, research suggests that is a fiction. Ironically, some of the research was done at Penn State, where students were asked if they would speak up if someone made a sexist remark in their presence. Half of those surveyed said that they would. When researchers arranged for that same group to actually hear someone make a sexist remark, only 16% said anything. At another college 68% of students said that they would refuse to answer offensive questions during a job interview. But when they encountered a (seemingly) real stiatuion, none of them objected.

We are very good at self-deception.

We judge Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno, and the Penn State administrators by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our good intentions.

Moral outrage feels like virtue, but we deceive ourselves.

We can see the speck in the eye of another, but we simply cannot see the log in our own eye.

Choosing Sides

2011-11-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any sharing in the Spirit, any sympathy, complete my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, being united and agreeing with each other. Don’t do anything for selfish purposes but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others. Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:1-5

The Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church released a letter to “members of the whole church” following at their November meeting. In the letter they urge their sisters and brothers in Christ to give witness to “a more excellent way” as we confront the issues that divide us as a church.

Then they write:

“One of the deep disagreements and divisions within the church is over the practice of homosexuality, recently heightened by a group of clergy who have declared that they will perform holy unions in opposition to the Book of Discipline. This has caused different experiences of deep pain throughout the church.”

The words are carefully chosen. The Bishops want to insist that the issue is “the practice of homosexuality.” It is about behavior, they say, not about sexual orientation. They concede that sexual orientation may not be a choice, but behavior is a choice. This, in their minds, removes it from civil rights.

And on the other hand, they do not speak of clergy being in defiance of the Discipline, but of “opposition.” It is a more conciliatory phrasing. Citing the Book of Discipline, they "implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons" (par. 161F). And they promise to “continue to offer grace upon grace to all in the name of Christ.”

Then they go on to say that they will be faithful to the covenant they have made as Bishops to uphold the Book of Discipline. In other words, clergy who officiate at same sex marriages or civil unions (or blessings of any kind) will be held accountable.

Clearly, they are trying to thread the needle. In their minds, there is pain on both sides of the issue and they want to be sensitive to both sides. I believe they are sincere. And I know that it is painful for them, and I know that they are trying to be faithful. I also know that within the Council of Bishops there is disagreement on the issue of how the church relates to gay and lesbian persons.

There is a group within the church which is outraged that any of us might oppose the Book of Discipline. But the reality is that pastors and lay people act contrary to the Book of Discipline all the time on issues as diverse as a woman’s right to an abortion, which the Discipline supports, to all forms of gambling, which the Discipline opposes. There are probably very few Methodists who do not disagree with the Discipline on something large or small. The Discipline is not a Methodist version of Papal Doctrine. It does not carry any sense of Divine authority. It is no more and no less than what a majority of the Church’s elected delegates believe at a point in history.

At one time the Discipline condoned slavery. And then later it condoned segregation. For a long time it prohibited the ordination of women. It is a human document. It has changed many times and it will change in the future. The exclusionary statements on homosexuality will be overturned. And we will all be embarrassed that it took so long.

The Bishops are attempting to speak pastorally. And I applaud them for that.

But I cannot see the moral equivalence in the pain that is felt on both sides. Gays and lesbians feel the pain of exclusion. Those on the other side of the issue feel the pain of potentially having gays and lesbians fully included in the life of the church.

One side is oppressed. The other side worries that the oppression will end.

I don’t think it’s hard to choose sides.

The full letter is printed below:

Letter from the Council of Bishops
As noted in the recent summary of the Council of Bishops November meeting, the Council of Bishops has released the following letter to members of the whole church:

November 10, 2011

Dear United Methodist Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

Grace and peace to you from Jesus Christ who calls us to faithfulness during a time of great and unsettling change around the world that God loves so deeply and also within the Body of Christ where Jesus is both head and redeemer.

We give thanks for each one of you as you seek to be faithful witnesses and fruitful disciples wherever God has called you to live and share the grace that offers salvation to the world. Your faithfulness brings encouragement, inspiration and hope to us and to all who live in the influence of your witness.

In a time when the world seems to be torn apart with division, inequality, injustice, hatred and violence, as Christians we bear responsibility to give witness to "a more excellent way" (1Corinthians 12:31). The church is not exempt from struggles. We are not the first to experience upheaval in culture and church and we are not the first to have serious and deep disagreements about issues of great importance.

One of the deep disagreements and divisions within the church is over the practice of homosexuality, recently heightened by a group of clergy who have declared that they will perform holy unions in opposition to the Book of Discipline. This has caused different experiences of deep pain throughout the church. As the bishops of the church, we commit ourselves to be in prayer for the whole church and for the brokenness our communities experience. Furthermore, we "implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons" (par. 161F). We will continue to offer grace upon grace to all in the name of Christ.

At times like these we call upon each other to remember and renew our covenant with God and with one another as United Methodist Christians. As bishops chosen, consecrated and assigned by the Church, we declare once again our commitment to be faithful to this covenant we have made. As the Council of Bishops we will uphold the Book of Discipline as established by General Conference.

Even in the midst of our differences, we believe that we can together be about our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We invite all United Methodists, lay and clergy, to join us in strengthening our congregations unto greater vitality for the sake of our mission.

To that end, may we continue to live together in the spirit of Philippians 2:1-5:

Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any sharing in the Spirit, any sympathy, complete my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, being united and agreeing with each other. Don’t do anything for selfish purposes but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others. Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:1-5).

Your brothers and sisters in Christ,
The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church

Penn State and the Millstone

2011-11-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
Luke 17:1-5

At the close of the ordination service at our United Methodist Annual Conference the Bishop invites anyone who is considering ordained ministry to come forward. We sing while they kneel in prayer. Pastors who are close to these potential candidates for ministry come forward to kneel with them. There are hugs and tears. And then the Bishop prays.

One year several young women made their way to the front of the sanctuary. There was a buzz as we realized that they were all from the same church. As their beloved pastor greeted them one by one, we were amazed that his ministry had so inspired them. The pastor was leaving that church to become a District Superintendent, and the young candidates for ordained ministry were the final signature of his effectiveness.

We were impressed.

Later that summer we received a new Bishop. And shortly after that, the new pastor who had replaced the beloved pastor went to the new Bishop with allegations of sexual misconduct by the beloved former pastor. If that same scenario played out today, I don’t think I would be surprised. But it happened thirty years ago, and I could not believe that the allegations were true. The pastor was known and loved. He was, we thought, a person of integrity and faithfulness.

To me, and to many of my colleagues, it looked like a rush to judgment. There were rumors that the new Bishop was reacting to a threatened lawsuit. We worried that he did not know this trusted pastor as well as we did. In the back channels of clergy communication, it was portrayed as a disgruntled parishioner with a grudge against his pastor. A friend and I went to see the Bishop on behalf of our colleagues. We asked about the process and we asked if this beloved pastor was being sacrificed to avoid legal complications.

Our new Bishop was open to our concerns, but firm in his resolve. He explained how the new pastor had begun asking questions when he noticed that none of the young people in the youth group wanted to be in his office. It did not take long to find someone who would tell him the story.

When he investigated the allegations brought by the new pastor, the Bishop found that they were not new. The previous Bishop had heard the complaints, but had tried to resolve them by making the beloved pastor a District Superintendent.

We spent at least an hour with the Bishop. It wasn’t about one disgruntled parent or the unsubstantiated allegations of one young woman. There were multiple victims. Without revealing confidences or compromising any of the potential legal issues, he walked us through the sequence of events. We were shocked. It was unbelievable and yet it was clearly true.

Later another colleague told me that he had suspicions decades earlier, but had no way to act on them, and he believed the beloved pastor’s explanation that it was all just a misunderstanding.

Today my office has a large glass window in the wall. Next to my office is a conference room, and it also has a large glass window. All of our classrooms have glass panels in the doors. We require every volunteer to have a criminal background check and we have strict guidelines about how adults and children can interact. And every pastor in the United Methodist Church undergoes a criminal background check every five years.

We call this program and process “Safe Sanctuaries.” It is built on the fundamental conviction that the church must be a safe place for our children. It is not enough to tell ourselves that we all know each other and we all trust each other. The kids have to come first.

As I think about the wreckage of the Penn State scandal, experience tells me how easy it is to be deceived by someone we think we know. Sadly, no one is above suspicion. I knew that before the Penn State story unfolded, but I still find it a very uncomfortable reality.

Hope for Some

2011-11-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. . . . Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
I Corinthians 12:12-14, 27

Last week I received two mailings from a new church that is just starting in our community. They were identical except for the color scheme. In bold letters they announced their vision:

HOPE FOR EVERYONE

And on the other side of the postcard, they explained:

"There are many places in this world where we feel insignificant, used and even invisible. However, God says that each person is extremely valuable. What if there was a church that reflected that by welcoming others, being generous, serving the community and bringing hope to the hopeless?

"New Hope Christian Church is a brand new church that seeks to do just that. We are a church for people who may have given up on church, but haven’t given up on God. Come join us and give hope a try!"

I changed the name. They don't call themselves "New Hope." The actual name is non-biblical and generic, (and sounds very modern) and connects them to another church with a similar name in the northern part of the state.

Aside from the fact that they are new and they are meeting in a movie theater, their vision is the same as every other church. Don’t all churches try to provide hope for the hopeless and teach people that they are valued by God? And doesn’t every church wants to be a place “for people who have given up on church"?

We are, as Paul says, the Body of Christ. At least that is what we are trying to be.

When I looked more deeply to find out what this church actually believed, I found that the message wasn’t really for everyone. And it wasn't new. The paragraph describing what they believe “About Jesus Christ,” concludes with this sentence, “At the appointed time in the future, He will return to take those who belong to him to live with God for eternity in heaven.”

Those who “belong to him” will go to live with God for eternity in heaven. The others will be lost. Heaven for some and hell for others.

The section “About Man” says that human beings “are open to Satan’s influence, unable to please God, and are hopelessly condemned to spend an eternity without Him.”

“Hopelessly condemned.”

That doesn’t sound like “good news” to me. The best marketing in the world will not make that good or true or Christian.

So the new church “for people who may have given up on church” just repackages bad theology and markets it with new graphics and digital imagery. And the task of explaining the faith in the world gets a little harder.

A Growing Chasm

2011-10-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’”
Luke 16:19-26

Jesus was teaching about wealth and poverty and justice and the grace of God in a series of parables when he was interrupted by some hecklers who ridiculed him because, Luke says, they were lovers of money. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.” And then he went back to talking about the Kingdom of God, and he told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

In many ways, Jesus’ teachings on wealth and poverty are an extension of the witness of the Hebrew Prophets. He makes it more personal and his teaching is more emphatic, but the theme is consistent across the centuries of biblical witness. Explaining God’s judgment on Sodom, Ezekiel said, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16.49). Jesus calls this “an abomination in the sight of God.”

Against this biblical background a new report from the Congressional Budget Office should raise serious concerns (http://cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485). The CBO found that from 1979 to 2007 the average income of the top one percent of the population grew by 275% in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The rest of the top 20% grew at less than a quarter of that rate. In the middle quintile, the growth was only about one eighth of the top rate. And the lowest twenty percent grew at less than one fifteenth the rate of the top one percent. Those are rate differences. The actual dollar differences are enormous.

Yesterday in the Providence Journal they applied their “Truth-O-Meter” test to a sign held up by one of the “Occupy Providence” people claiming that a person working at minimum wage made $16,000 per year while the CEO of Goldman-Sachs made $16,000 per hour. Calling the claim “False,” the Journal pointed out that the minimum wage earner would have an annual income of closer to $15,000 and the Goldman-Sachs CEO actually earned less than $10,000 per hour.

Call me crazy, but I don’t see how that really makes a difference.

A little research reveals that the sign-maker had the wrong company. The company was Lehman Brothers. The CEO was Richard Fuld. He made $17,000 per hour in 2007 while driving his company and the whole economy over an economic cliff (see Nicholas Kristof, September 17, 2008 in the New York Times).

There are places where the Bible seems to advocate income equality (Acts 2:44-46, Matthew 20:1-16), but that is not a dominant theme. There are many examples throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the history of the early church, where people of wealth are held up as positive examples. Sometimes they are praised for how they use their money to help others. Other times they are praised for virtues that may be unrelated to their economic status.

And the Bible never holds up poverty as a virtue. There is no suggestion that the poor are better than the rich.

The problem is in the gap between rich and poor. Jesus does not give us hard numbers and he does not give us a formula for how much is too much. When the rich man dines sumptuously and the poor man begs for crumbs, the gap is too great.

Reasonable people may differ in how much we think is too much. And we may differ on what we believe is the best way to reverse course. But we are going in the wrong direction.

Faith is Not the Rejection of Reason (or Science)

2011-10-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.
Matthew 14:23

The first time I heard of the Nazarene Church, I was in grade school. A young man from that denomination who was studying for the ministry, was dating the daughter of the pastor at the Methodist Church where I grew up. I don’t remember very much about him, but the police were called once because he was praying too loudly.

He had gone out to a hill behind the parsonage to pray by himself, because that’s what Jesus did. We don’t know from the Gospel passage whether or not Jesus prayed aloud, but the young man did. The hill he climbed is a long way from the nearest house, so he must have been praying very loudly.

But in the end there was no arrest. Just a warning.

In the New York Times last week there was an essay by Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens titled, “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason.” The dateline was Quincy, Massachusetts.

Quincy?

One is a former professor and the other is a current professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The article does not break new ground. They observe the obvious, that evangelical Christians have recently shown a disturbing trend toward anti-intellectualism and a broad rejection of scientific theory and research. Evangelical Christianity has always had its share of anti-intellectualism, but historically that has been balanced a strong and rigorous pursuit of knowledge. Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, is an example of someone who blends traditional evangelical faith and rigorous scientific investigation. But scientists and intellectuals, like Dr. Collins, are now increasingly marginalized by the dominant anti-intellectualism of prominent evangelicals.

Giberson and Stephens argue that “evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism.” It is possible to be an authentically evangelical Christian without rejecting science and reason.

I’ve heard that argument before. I’ve even made that argument before.

What struck me was that this was now being said by people from Eastern Nazarene College. The Nazarene denomination has roots in Wesleyanism, especially the Wesleyan holiness tradition, as well as in Pentecostalism. They are at the far end of the Wesleyan spectrum. And even from that vantage point, they think that things have gone too far.

They point to David Barton of “Wall Builders” and James Dobson of “Focus on the Family” as prime examples of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Barton has dedicated himself to the proposition that the founding fathers were evangelicals whose vision was of a Christian America. Dobson champions the idea that homosexuality can be cured and that gay people can “pray away” their sinful and unnatural desires.

As Giberson and Stephens observe, “Charismatic leaders like these project a winsome personal testimony as brothers in Christ. Their audiences number in the tens of millions. They pepper their presentations with so many Bible verses that their messages appear to be straight out of Scripture; to many, they seem like prophets, anointed by God.”

But their anti-intellectualism is toxic to the national discussion of such important issues, and it tends to discredit evangelicalism as a whole. And by extension, it tends to discredit Christianity.

Within the rich intellectual tradition of Christianity, there is an important place for evangelicalism. We need that deeply personal faith connection. But when “faith” calls for the rejection of reason, Christians need to speak up.

A Midrash on Creation

2011-10-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 1:20-22

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century, once wisely observed that the Bible is a Midrash on creation.

Heschel’s wisdom came back to me as I read the weekly Midrash commentary from the Jewish Theological Seminary, by Rabbi Abigail Treu. One of the ways in which Jewish Bible Study differs from Christian Bible Study is that in Judaism there is a greater self-consciousness about the layering of commentary on commentary. Christian scholars tend to comment on previous work by referring back to the original biblical text. In Judaism (as I observe it) the layers build on top of each other with each insight leading to another new insight.

In commenting on a Midrash (commentary) on the creation story in Genesis, Rabbi Treu refers to a recent theological work by Rabbi Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition. Green opens the book with the claim that, “the evolution of the species is the greatest sacred drama of all time.” He writes:

“There is a One that is ever revealing itself to us within and behind the great diversity of life. That One is Being itself, the constant in the endlessly changing evolutionary parade. Viewed from our end of the process, the search that leads to discovery of that One is our human quest for meaning. But turned around, seen from the perspective of the constantly evolving life energy, evolution can be seen as an ongoing process of revelation or self-manifestation. We discover; it reveals. It reveals; we discover.”

Life is a process of revelation and discovery.

Technically, Midrash is commentary on the Hebrew Bible. It has two parts: Midrash Halachah, which deals with interpreting the legal portions of the Torah, and Midrash Aggadah, which deals with the non-legal aspects and is filled with morals, legends, parables, and stories. When most people refer to Midrash, they are referring to the parables and the stories.

When Heschel speaks of the Bible as a Midrash on creation, he is not referring to the technical meaning, but to a broader understanding of commentary. In that same sense, one might say that the Gospel is a Midrash on Torah.

And if we wind our way down that road, then we could see Darwin’s theory of evolution as another layer of Midrash. It is both discovery and revelation.

And the evolutionary process, with all of its amazing and miraculous complexity, is the subject of more Midrash.

God Bless Harry Bronkar

2011-10-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

Something Is Broken

2011-10-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
James 5:4-6

All demonstrations share one constant. There are always crazy people.

Always.

So it’s not surprising that the Wall Street protests have attracted their share of strange folks.

Another constant in demonstrations is that they tell us something is broken. We may not agree with the cause or causes advocated by the demonstrators. And we may not agree with their definition of the problem or their proposed solution, but their very presence tells us that something is wrong. Not unlike the biblical prophets.

The Wall Street Protestors lack a coherent message, but they are generally upset about the economy. They claim to represent the 99% of Americans who (they claim) were left behind in the economic gains of recent decades, and have suffered most since the collapse of 2008.

We can argue about the details, but the basic picture is depressing. Poverty is increasing. Middle class wages have been stagnant for decades. Long term unemployment raises the specter of creating a permanent underclass of jobless people. The unemployment rate for college graduates under age 25 is 9.6%, and for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6%.

The numbers are appalling. And that doesn’t count the young people who have gone back to school in the hope that one more degree will help them get a job. Or those who have taken minimal jobs just to survive. As the New York Times observed in an editorial, “Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings — the very definition of downward mobility.”

The problem is not that rich people are getting richer. The problem is that poor people are getting poorer. And the middle class is barely hanging on. Over the past decades we have been redistributing income from the bottom to the top at an alarming rate.

W. Edwards Deming, the late great guru of business systems theory, whose analysis was a major factor in developing the Japanese auto industry, famously observed that “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” If our economic system is increasing economic inequality, it’s because it is designed to increase economic inequality. If it is increasing unemployment, then it is designed to increase unemployment.

This does not mean that business leaders and politicians intentionally conspired to favor the rich at the expense of the poor. But if that’s what the system has produced in recent decades, then that’s what the system is designed to produce. If we want different results, we will have to make changes in the system.

This is not impossible. This is not the first time that our nation has confronted great disparities of wealth and poverty. In the past, we have made corrections and moved on. We did this without confiscating wealth or nationalizing industries. We used sensible regulation and oversight to channel our creative and entrepreneurial genius. Our greatest economic gains were made during a time of shared prosperity and relative economic equality in the decades after World War II. In those years we all grew together. There is no reason to believe we cannot do that again.

In the meantime, New York City has already spent $1.9 million on security costs related to the demonstrations.

most this amazing day

2011-10-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e.e. cummings

If we were assembling the Bible today, we would have to include some e.e. cummings. It is as sacred as anything ever written. The poem has an Easter theme, and it is probably intended for springtime rather than fall. But today is a most amazing day.

Faith begins with wonder. And cummings was a master at expressing wonder.

Today in Georgetown, Maine, we may have had the best October 8 in the history of the universe. The marsh grass was golden in the sunlight. The sky is deep blue. The ocean was blue green. The sun was bright. There was a gentle breeze and it was 75 degrees.

As they used to say on “Magnum P.I.”, “Just another day in paradise.”

It was almost too wonderful. Too amazing. It was a day to savor.

It was a day, on which we might ask, as cummings does,

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

As Paul Tillich articulated so brilliantly half a century ago, God is not “a supreme being,” God is Being Itself. This is not a new thought. When Moses demanded to know the name of the One who called him to lead Israel out of slavery, the response was, “I Am who I Am.”

The Bible begins with the story of Creation. It's not a scientific explanation of how the world began. The question is not, "How did this happen?" but "What does it mean?" What does it mean that there is something rather than nothing? When we say that Creation speaks of the Creator, we do not necessarily mean that we believe in a supernatural being outside of the universe, who created everything (although some may hold that belief). We mean that there is a Creative Spirit within the universe, in it and through it, that has created and is creating. We mean that there is purpose and meaning.

We who are “lifted from the no of all nothing,” are surprised and amazed by the gift of life. Especially on those “most amazing” days of “leaping greenly spirits of trees, and a blue true dream of sky.” And we are thankful “for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”

October 5, 1947: A Moment of Greatness

2011-10-05T08:46:00.000-07:00

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help,
and he will say, Here I am.
Isaiah 58:6-9

On October 5, 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered the first presidential address ever broadcast on live television.

And that first address may also be the greatest.

His address followed a presentation by the Citizens Food Committee concerning the starvation in Europe and the need for Americans to sacrifice in order to save their European sisters and brothers.

After the Second World War the United States embarked on one of the greatest achievements of world history, the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after the devastation. The Marshall Plan prevented economic collapse and led to a world-wide economic expansion and shared prosperity.

But when President Truman addressed the nation, the rebuilding of Europe was faltering. “The situation in Europe is grim and forbidding as winter approaches,” he said. “Despite the vigorous efforts of the European people, their crops have suffered so badly from droughts, floods, and cold that the tragedy of hunger is a stark reality. The nations of Western Europe will soon be scraping the bottom of the food barrel. They cannot get through the coming winter and spring without help--generous help-from the United States and from other countries which have food to spare.” If we do not act, said the President, all of the rebuilding efforts may be wasted. “I know every American feels in his heart that we must help to prevent starvation and distress among our fellow men in other countries.”

Truman called on the nation to give up meat on Tuesdays, to give up poultry and eggs on Thursdays, and to give up one slice of bread per day. He also called on distillers to save grain by stopping the production of alcoholic beverages for 60 days. And he called on the Commodities Exchange Commission to tighten regulations and reduce the “gambling” in grain futures which resulted in even higher prices.

He told the country that Mrs. Truman had directed the White House staff to follow the food conservation measures. And he said that the same policy would be followed in all government restaurants and cafeterias throughout the country. “As Commander in Chief,” he said, “I have ordered that the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force shall also comply with this program.”

This morning, as I read Harry Truman’s address, I reflected on the present state of the world, from the debt crisis in Europe to the unrest in the Middle East and the starvation in Somalia, as well as the painfully slow recovery of our own economy. It is hard to imagine any leader, here or abroad, calling for the level of shared sacrifice that President Truman called for after World War Two.

And we need to remember, that was after the great sacrifices required by the war itself.

The food measures did not last long. With increased American help, the European recovery soon made such radical conservation unnecessary. Europe and Japan were rebuilt and America entered a time of unprecedented prosperity.

Colbert Isn't Kidding

2011-10-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and his anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.”
The one who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision.
Psalm 2:1-4

Reinhold Niebuhr held those verses from the Psalms among his favorites.

There is no shortage of leaders plotting and conspiring, and in the short run they can succeed. But in the end history will bend toward justice. In the present moment, we may doubt the truth of that fundamental biblical insight, but over the course of human history, we can see how the arc has bent.

Niebuhr, like the ancient Psalmist, imagined God’s amusement at the human foolishness of plotting against the inevitability of that great historical march.

My guess is that Niebuhr would love the humor of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They see and expose the deep irony of those who set themselves up to take counsel together against what is just and right for the most vulnerable among us.

Recently, a Colbert quotation has been popping up repeatedly on Facebook. In a commentary some months ago about whether or not the United States is a “Christian Nation,” Colbert said,

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it."

His point was not that we don’t help the poor, but that many who want to call America a Christian Nation also want to limit what we do for our poorest sisters and brothers.

It is worth noting, that though Colbert intended his remarks to be funny and amusing, he really isn’t kidding. He is a serious Christian who cares deeply about following Jesus.

Red Sox in September

2011-09-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks."
Luke 6:43-45

Yesterday afternoon, in my car, I was listening to sports talk on the radio. It was all about the collapse of the Red Sox this September.

The question, of course, is how this team, which entered the season with an embarrassment of talent, could possibly play this badly. Going into last night’s game, their September record was something like 1 and 19 in games where they scored less than 12 runs. And their pitching was the worst in all of Major League Baseball. It is epic stuff.

The program hosts repeated endless lists of statistical improbabilities and then narrowed the problem down to two causes: their “ace” pitchers, Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, “have not done the job,” and the team “has no ----- [crude reference to male body parts].” One host made the observation and then each of them repeated it. “That’s their problem! They have no -----!”

Yikes! Have we lost all ability for civil discourse? How have we come to the point where a radio host does not even pretend to maintain a polite tone? At that time of day there must have been some kids listening. Is this what we want to teach them? It’s not just about the language; it’s about respect for human beings.

(And can you imagine one of those guys saying that to Dustin Pedroia?)

To use an over-used phrase, I don’t get it.

Major League ball players are remarkable athletes. They are at the top of their profession. They reach that level because they have great talent and because they are incredibly disciplined.

Last summer, when Jacoby Ellsbury was hurt and couldn’t play, all of the talk show guys (and many ordinary fans) would have been glad to send him packing. The problem, they said, was that he lacked character. This year, he’s not hurt, and he is an American League MVP candidate.

Talk radio only works with negative energy. Sometimes the energy is all negative, from the callers and the hosts. Other times there is some tension. But there is always negative energy.

All of this left me wondering, “Is it possible to be a fan and not be a jerk?”

Is it healthy to believe, as most fans seem to believe, that success is only measured in championships? There is only one winner. Everyone else is a loser. I love sports, but I don’t love that attitude.

On WGBH this morning (I don’t always listen to sports shows) they had a story about the epic collapse of the Red Sox. And the basic explanation for their losing was that they lacked character.

Fans know that athletes have great ability, skill and talent. And fans know that they could never match the athletes at a skill level. But what they (we) want to believe is that if they had the same skill as John Lackey, their character and discipline would make them twenty game winners.

But the truth is that a baseball game is not a morality play. The winners and the losers both play hard. The margin between success and failure is razor thin. Through the month of August, the Red Sox had the best record in the American League. Take away their miserable April and this horrible September, and in the middle they were the best team in baseball.

They could still make the playoffs. And the boys of summer could suddenly reappear.

This September has been painful to watch. But if they do lose and the season ends, “not with a bang, but a whimper,” it won’t be because they lack character. It will be because the other team scored more runs.

How Many More?

2011-09-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Matthew 5:21-22

The Greek word translated as “hell” is “Gehenna.” It refers to a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, a place where literally, the fires never went out. And those walking by could hear wild dogs gnashing their teeth as they fought over the scraps. If you insult a brother or sister, says Jesus, you deserve to be thrown into the garbage dump outside of the city.

He is speaking metaphorically, of course. He doesn’t really want people thrown into the garbage dump. But the point is that words matter and attitudes matter. We should not commit physical violence, and we should not commit verbal violence.

Some scholars argue that the obscure Greek word “raca,” typically translated as insult, is actually an ancient epithet equivallent to the “f” word as a derogatory reference to homosexuals.

Last May a young teen named Jamey Rodemeyer posted a video as part of the “It Gets Better” project, appealing to younger kids to recognize that life will get better. You will accept yourself and others will accept you, and life will get better. The project was launched by Dan Savage, in an attempt to convince GLBT youth, that suicide is not the answer. Though they may feel like outcasts now, life really will get better.

Somehow, between last May and last week, something went terribly wrong and Jamey Rodemeyer, who had spoken so eloquently of hope for the future, took his own life.

He had gone to his parents and he had spoken to teachers, and he was being helped by a therapist. But it wasn’t enough. The bullying which had seemed under control in the spring, increased over the summer through an internet outlet called Formspring. Among the messages he received, were these:

“ JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!”

And, “I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!”

We should be cautious in linking Jamey’s suicide directly to the bullying he received. Bullying, by itself, is usually not enough to “cause” a suicide. Ninety percent of all suicides are connected to mental health or substance issues, and those percentages are true for youth as well as adults.

But that does not change the fact that bullying is a major problem. And the bullying of young people thought to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender is a significant part of that larger problem. And it has to stop.

Last winter, when I testified in favor of marriage equality at the State House, it was painful to listen to the testimony of other professed Christians who talked about how they really loved everyone, but the lives of the gay and lesbian people in the room were “an abomination.” Some went on to say that they were sick. As I listened to those adults, I wondered what their children were saying. Isn’t that precisely the message that the cyber-bullies sent to Jamey Rodemeyer?

This summer I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said, “I BELIEVE IN THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND HATE.” So do I. But how sad it is that such a bumper sticker could be necessary.

How many deaths will it take 'till we know
That too many people have died?

Troy Davis and the Death Penalty in America

2011-09-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not use violence to resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”
Matthew 5:38-42

Tomorrow evening Troy Davis will be executed in Georgia, for killing an off duty police officer over twenty years ago in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah. There is considerable doubt that he actually committed the crime. Witnesses have said that they were pressured by the police to implicate Davis, and there is no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

There is a huge world-wide movement for clemency. As the campaign says, there is “Too Much Doubt” to take his life. But honestly, I would be against the execution even if I were certain of his guilt.

In the late 19th century a mid-western preacher, educated at Brown University, preached a Sunday evening sermon series about a young man in tattered clothes coming into a church and confronting parishioners as Jesus confronted his listeners. Henry Sheldon's sermon series became a best-selling book called, “In His Steps,” and it launched the classic question, “What Would Jesus Do?”

As an ethical system, that question may often seem naïve and simplistic. But as a starting point, it is hard to improve on it. When it comes to the death penalty, we know the answer before we have even asked the question.

It is ironic that the United States, which claims to be a “Christian” nation, is one of the last countries still allowing executions. The undisputed world champion in executions is China. The statistics are a closely guarded secret, but they execute thousands per year. Over the past four years, Saudi Arabia is second in executions, followed by Iraq. We come in fourth, just ahead of Pakistan.

It’s hard to feel good about our place on that list.

In case you are wondering, we are number one in the rate of incarceration. We have 743 people in jail for every 100,000 in our population. Russia is number two, but at 577 they trail us by over 22%. In fairness, I don’t think the Chinese are on the list because, as with executions, they don’t make the data public. One of the reasons we have so many people in jail is that we keep them there longer than other countries do for the same offenses. Another reason is that we have more murders (mostly with guns) than other “civilized” nations.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus specifically rejected “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” but the next verse frequently leaves modern readers confused. It is often translated as, “Do not resist an evildoer,” which gives the impression that in the face of evil Christians should either passively accept the evil or run away. But the more correct translation is, “Do not use violence to resist an evildoer.” Disciples are called to reject passivity and indifference as well as violence. Instead, we are called to non-violent resistance. In his life, Jesus gave witness to the power of non-violence to confound the powerful and restore dignity to the poor and oppressed.

We need a system of justice that aims at restoration rather than retribution. In the meantime, there is "Too much doubt" to execute Troy Davis.

You Will Always Have the Poor

2011-09-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”
Deuteronomy 15:10-11

Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.” (Mark 14:7.)

Shortly before his crucifixion, as he was enjoying a meal with friends, a woman came to Jesus and anointed him with a jar of costly ointment. When some at the table were appalled at the apparent waste and said that it would have been better if the ointment had been sold and the money given to the poor, Jesus responded by praising the woman’s generosity and told the group that they would always have the poor, but they would not always have him.

The episode has often been recounted as evidence that we should focus on worshiping Jesus rather than on helping poor people. Of course, that interpretation turns the commandment from Deuteronomy upside down and totally misses the point. In the Gospel stories, Jesus is quoting the commandment from the Torah. He is praising the woman for her generosity and reminding his listeners that they have not yet eliminated poverty and they need to keep working. They (and we) need to “be ungrudging” because there will always be people in need.

The latest figures from the census bureau remind us of the truth of the biblical observation. Unfortunately, those figures also show that we are not doing very well at fulfilling the commandment to help move people out of poverty. Between 2009 and 2010, the number of Americans living in poverty grew by 2.6 million, to 46.2 million. Over 15% of all Americans are living in poverty, the highest percentage in two decades.

This will not be another blog on the gap between rich and poor, but it is worth noting that the median income fell by 2.3%, to $49,455. In constant dollars, that is $3,800 less than the peak achieved in 1999. So the Middle Class is also hurting.

The poverty level is even worse if we go back to the original formula for what we call “poor.” By the standards we used in the 1960’s, about 22% of Americans are now poor.

The good news is that Social Security lifts many elderly out of poverty, and the rate of poverty among seniors did not increase. The bad news is that numbers are skewed toward more childhood poverty. Without unemployment benefits and food stamps, the numbers would be much worse.

Our short term economic need is for job creation. Long term, we will need to deal with the deficit, but short term we need jobs. We can argue about how to get that done. And we should argue about how to get that done. But the census numbers remind us that we need to face the issue and we need to work together to find solutions.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT

2011-09-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Luke 21:20-28

(This is the sermon I preached on September 16, 2001, the Sunday after 9/11.)

"When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near."

The Scripture reading this morning is actually an advent text in our lectionary. It is also a Holy Week text, since it comes from the last week of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem. He is talking about the second coming. I chose it for today because it speaks of disaster and catastrophe, and I believe it is useful to remind ourselves that this is not the first time that people of faith have faced such things. It is useful to remind ourselves that such catastrophe was not unknown or unanticipated in biblical times.

The events of this week have been tragic and catastrophic. The pain endured has been immense. Our lives have been shaken. there is a real sense in which this kind of war in our global village has changed our world forever. What Jesus tells his disciples is that in times such as these, precisely in this kind of situation, we are called to respond with faith and courage. In the last verse, he tells them, "When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Stand Up

This is a time for people to stand up; to stand up and think; to stand up and question; to stand up and pray. People have a lot of questions. Obviously, there are a host of questions. There are questions of security and politics, but I am thinking about theological questions. I hear people asking, “How could this happen?”

That question has been asked of many religious leaders in television interviews this week, and most of the answers have been awful. I understand that Billy Graham did a great job at the service in Washington, and I thought the Roman Catholic Bishop of New York was wonderful, but most of the responses were poor. The low point for me came when a woman preacher was asked how God could let this happen, and she said, “You have to understand, we have spent years driving God out of our lives,” and she went on to talk about taking prayer out of our schools. Apparently, she believes that God killed more than five thousand innocent people to teach us that we ought to make kids pray in school. I don’t know what kind of barbarian god she worships, but that is not the God that I know.

Some of us wish that God would work the way King Kong did in the old movie. Do you remember King Kong on the Empire State Building, grabbing the planes out of the air and smashing them on the ground? Some of us wish that God had done something like that last Tuesday, perhaps snatching the planes out of the air and then setting them gently on the ground. But God simply does not work that way.

As I contemplated the events of last Tuesday and began to think about coming together on Sunday morning, I asked myself, “What can I possibly say? And what difference does it make anyway? After something like this, what’s the point?” And then I remembered that this is not the first time that something like this has happened. Twenty-six hundred years ago, when Jerusalem fell and many of the people were carried into captivity in Babylon, the people of Israel still gathered to sing and pray and worship. The faithful gathered for worship after Gettysburg and during the London Blitz. We can think of dozens of examples. People of faith have gathered for prayer and worship in crises large and small all across the centuries.

For many years, we Americans have enjoyed an unprecedented sense of personal and national security. For more than twenty-five years we have been almost untouched by the threat of war. Desert Storm happened far away and with few American casualties. The threat of nuclear war has been almost non-existent for more than a decade. This week we have suffered a huge loss in that sense of security. And some of us have been tempted to equate that loss of personal and national security with a loss of God’s presence. But that is not the security that God provides. At the end of his life, Moses blessed the people of Israel with the promise that “underneath are the everlasting arms.” The promise is not that God will protect us from every evil deed, but that God will always be there.

The reality is that God gives freedom to human beings, and we can use that in a variety of ways. Today I wore my “Palm Sunday” tie. You can see the handprints or palm prints of children. I wore it in part because it feels to me like Palm Sunday. I feel that somber sense that I experience in Holy Week. I also wore it because I have been thinking about what hands do. God gave us hands, and we can use them to do good things or evil things. We have seen both this week.

And Raise Your Heads

"When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads . . . ." This week we have seen human beings at their best and at their worst. Obviously, what the terrorists did on Tuesday was beyond the scope of what most people had contemplated. When I heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, I immediately assumed it was a tragic accident. Even after the second plane, my mind was searching for an explanation. It was literally incomprehensible.

We have also seen people at their best. What amazing courage it must have taken for people to crash that plane near Pittsburgh, rather than let it go on toward a major population center. The heroism of the rescue workers was magnificent. And was it not a minor miracle that the evacuation of the towers was as orderly as it was. In the face of imminent danger, reports say that people were polite and brave. If even a small number had panicked, the death toll might have been doubled or tripled. One man fell and broke his ankle, and four strangers picked him up and carried him down fifteen flights to safety. Seldom have we seen so many individual acts of caring and kindness in such a small space and time.

We have seen people at their best in our nation, but we have also seen them at their worst. There have been hundreds of attacks on Arab-Americans and on people who looked like Arabs. Molotov cocktails have been thrown into business, guns have been fired, threats and epithets have been shouted.

That is not who we are and that can never be who we are. To put it crudely, we are not them. (To be grammatically correct, I should say, “We are not they,” but it doesn’t sound right.) We are not terrorists and we must not let this tragedy turn us into something less than what we are called to be, as Christians and as Americans. We have an obligation to raise our heads, to lift our vision, and to raise our standards.

The Apostle Paul said that we must “hate what is evil and love what is good.” And he’s right. If we only love the good and do not hate the evil, we become merely sentimental. But William Sloan Coffin was also right when he said that we must love the good more than we hate the evil. If we do not love the good more than we hate the evil, we will simply become good haters. We must not become good haters. We must love the good more than we hate the evil.

Because Your Redemption Is Drawing Near.

"When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." After describing a great crisis in the most vivid language, Jesus then tells them that the time of crisis will also be a time of redemption. He can speak with confidence about the future because he knows this has happened in the past.

When Jerusalem fell and the people of Israel were taken into captivity, the prophets and great religious thinkers asked themselves, “How could this happen? How can it be that the holiest city of the very people God has chosen to bring his message to the world has fallen? If this can happen, then how can we trust God?” This was the greatest challenge that Israel had ever faced.
Israel responded to this theological crisis with some of the most brilliant and beautiful literature that human beings have ever produced. The wisdom and depth of thought were amazing. Israel responded, in the words of Professor Walter Brueggemann, “precisely against the data.” It was out of this crisis, says Brueggemann, that Israel gave birth to the concept of hope. It was in these great reflections on the crisis of exile that the concept of hope was first introduced to the world. Hope was Israel’s gift to the world.

Hope is always “against the data.” It is not an analysis which says that things will get better. It is not the cheerful assertion that every cloud has a silver lining. Hope says we trust in God, regardless of the data; regardless of the presence or absence of a silver lining.

You and I are called to reaffirm our hope: our hope in human beings, our hope in our nation, and underneath it all, our hope in God. One of the many posters placed near the destruction at ground zero quoted Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things.”

This is a time for people of faith to stand up and raise our heads. This is a time for people of faith to raise our standards higher than they have ever been. This is a time for us to reaffirm the gift of hope and this is a time for us to love the good.

Truth, Sacrifice and Collective Action

2011-09-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

Then Jesus said to those who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

The truth may set you free, but it will not make you popular.

My colleague Stacey Lanier writes a blog called, “The Truth Shall Make You Odd,” which she takes from Flannery O’Connor’s revision of the Gospel line: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”

The Gospel will make you odd. At least it will put you at odds with the popular culture. You could, for example, discover that you are the only person in the room who isn’t clapping after a governor tells the audience how many people his state has executed during his tenure.

Knowing the truth (and let’s admit that there is a certain amount of arrogance in believing that one really does know the truth) will make you feel odd. Speaking the truth (as best one can) is never popular.

To quote Colonel Jessup (take a minute to imagine the scene and picture Jack Nicholson), “The truth? You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

Thomas Friedman’s recent column in the New York Times is titled, “The Whole Truth and Nothing But.” In it he writes about an essay by Kishore Mahbubani, which asserts that dictators are falling and democracies are failing for the same reason, they have not been telling truth.

Moral equivalence is always a slippery slope. In this case, it’s a cliff. Do we really want to equate the big lies of Gaddafi and Mubarak with the failure of the European Union to fully disclose the possible drawbacks to monetary union and fiscal independence? And to be fair, Friedman acknowledges the differences.

Focusing specifically on the United States, Friedman quotes Mahbubani’s observation: “No U.S. leaders dare to tell the truth to the people. All their pronouncements rest on a mythical assumption that ‘recovery’ is around the corner. Implicitly, they say this is a normal recession. But this is no normal recession. There will be no painless solution. ‘Sacrifice’ will be needed, and the American people know this. But no American politician dares utter the word ‘sacrifice.’ Painful truths cannot be told.”

That’s actually not true. Several politicians have called for sacrifice. What they mean is that they want someone else to sacrifice. The most common conclusion is that we can no longer afford programs that benefit our most vulnerable citizens and those programs must be cut back.

But Friedman and Mahbubani are right in saying that no one has really called for shared sacrifice. And my guess is that no one really will. Not really.

For a case study is why that is not a likely political strategy we can go back to Jimmy Carter’s famous energy speech on July 15, 1979. He told the truth about the energy crisis and he called for shared sacrifice. And the initial response was very positive. But it was not long before the call for sacrifice had been re-named “The Malaise Speech,” though he never used that word. Carter was accused of “blaming the American people.” If you read the speech, you will be amazed at how wise and measured and totally non-political it sounds. And if you review the history of the political fallout it precipitated, you will know why no one is likely to go that way again.

Friedman concludes by focusing on President Obama’s jobs speech, which is scheduled for this evening: “My fervent hope is that on Thursday Mr. Obama will set an example and tell the cold, hard truth — to parents and kids. I know. Honesty, we are told, is suicidal in politics. But as long as every solution that is hard is off the table, then our slow national decline will remain on the table. . . . For once, Mr. President, let’s start a debate with the truth. Tell us what you really think will be required to get us out of this stagnation, what kind of collective action and shared sacrifice will be needed and why that can lead not just to muddling through, not just to being O.K., but to restoring American greatness.”

That would be great. Our infrastructure is crumbling and millions of people are out of work. And that might give us a clue about what we need to be doing. But I am not expecting the Hoover Dam, or the Interstate Highway System. Maybe we could fix the I-95 bridge in Pawtucket.

And It Was Good: A Theology for Facebook

2011-09-05T06:31:00.000-07:00

First Things First

2011-09-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Once Jesus was asked when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Luke 17:20-21

Last Sunday was the First Sunday in Kingdomtide; at least that’s what it was when I was growing up. In the old United Methodist liturgical calendar the Sundays from the end of August to the beginning of Advent were known as the season of “Kingdomtide.” It was a time to reflect on the biblical promise of the Kingdom of God and to ask ourselves what the world would look like if we were serious about building the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus preached the “good news of the Kingdom of God.” For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was the Gospel. He announced that God was already at work in the world, and we were invited to live in the new reality that God was creating.

The idea of Kingdomtide as a liturgical season began in 1937 and lasted for barely half a century. Kingdomtide just never caught on. Initially, it seemed to have a lot going for it, not the least of which is that stretching out Pentecost, and counting the Sundays after Pentecost, is pretty boring. It also made sense because the fall lectionary texts emphasize building up the Kingdom of God. And after all, Jesus’ whole message was about the Kingdom of God. That was what he called “the good news.” But the season of Kingdomtide was doomed by the combined weight of liturgical purity and the concern (which I share) for looking beyond exclusively masculine terms for God. God is not a King.

When the “new” United Methodist Hymnal was published in 1989, Kingdomtide was gone. I didn’t notice the change for several years. When I saw my error, I briefly surrendered to liturgical conformity and abandoned the season. But it was not long before I changed my mind.

How can we abandon the only liturgical season that is focused on what Jesus actually taught?

Whatever we call it, we need to do it.

Some time in the middle of the last century one of the great preachers said that our greatest task is keeping the idea of the Kingdom of God alive in the human spirit. In the hyper-competitive winner-take-all culture of the twenty-first century, that task is even more urgent. Notions of economic justice, concern for the poor, non-violence, and simplicity are often seen as naïve or un-American. We need to reclaim the language of Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is a profoundly political idea. But it does not translate directly into what we popularly associate with “politics.” It is not about political parties or political labels. As Robert Bellah wrote, "Politics are never ultimate, never absolute. We can and must fight the good fight for a better republic and a better world. But our hope does not depend on any political outcome. Our faith and our hope derive from Jesus Christ, who survives all nations and all politics."

When his disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he told them to pray first for the Kingdom of God to come on earth. Two thousand years later, that should still be our first concern.

Class Warfare

2011-08-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Mark 10:21-22

In our current political discourse, there is no shortage of politicians who want to turn the Gospel upside down.

We used to have the "war on poverty," now we have a war on the poor.

Some politicians are concerned because 47% of Americans do not pay income tax. So am I. But not for the same reason. As Christians, we need to be concerned about the roots of that problem. The root problem is that the bottom half of the country has so little money. The gap between rich and poor has been growing for decades. Since the 1970’s we have been redistributing income from the bottom to the top.

The top 1% of the population has an average household income of over $1,000,000.
The top 10% has an average income of over $160,000.
The bottom 90% averages just over $30,000.
That’s per household, not per person.

The wealthiest 1% pays about 40% of all income taxes, which sounds like a lot until you realize that they also have about 40% of the wealth. So their tax burden is really about average.

Poor people do pay taxes, of course. They pay sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, and payroll taxes. On average, the lowest income group pays over 16% of their income in taxes.

But there are lots of politicians who want poor people to pay more in income taxes. Senator Dan Coats of Indiana has said that everyone should pay some income tax so that “everyone has some skin in the game.”

Some are upset with the earned income tax credit, introduced by President Reagan, which provides tax “refunds” to the working poor in excess of what they paid in taxes. But the earned income tax credit is one of the most effective antipoverty programs, because it provides an extra incentive for working, as well as thousands of dollars to poor families each year.

The earned income tax credit and the child tax credit lifted 7.2 million families out of poverty in 2009. And they provide an on-going economic stimulus because almost every dollar is immediately pumped back into the economy in the form of consumer spending.

When Jesus told the rich young man that he “lacked one thing,” the disciples were shocked. Mark reports that then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And again, the disciples were perplexed, so Jesus repeated himself, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

“To enter the kingdom of God” is to live into God’s presence, to live as God calls us to live, and to be part of making the kingdom of God come “on earth as it is in heaven.” That is the prayer that Jesus taught us and that is the work to which he calls us.

Natural and Unnatural

2011-08-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
Romans 1:26-27

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
I Corinthians 6:9-10

This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching
I Timothy 1:9-10

Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 1:7

This is the third in a series of three commentaries on the seven biblical passages typically used to “prove” that the Bible condemns homosexuality.

As a Christian, I find the New Testament passages more troubling. We claim the whole Bible as our sacred story, but we also want to believe that Jesus brought a cosmic change in our thinking. Rightly or wrongly, I think we expect more enlightenment when we read the New Testament.

The passages from Hebrew scripture are more easily dismissed. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is clearly primitive. And no one takes Leviticus seriously.

Although Christians sometimes over-emphasize the uniqueness of Jesus’ teachings, he did bring a new perspective on many issues. He also deepened and expanded insights previously found in the Prophets. And he revealed great truths about human beings. But he did not change human nature.

Regardless of what we may believe about the inspiration of the biblical writers, we know that the actual words were written by human beings. The people who wrote the Bible (who put the letters and words on the page) were not perfect. And they were subject to the influences of the surrounding culture.

When Paul wrote his letters, he did not write them as sacred scripture. He was writing to specific people in specific places, offering advice and counsel intended for their situation. He did not know that two millennia later Christians would be studying those letters and reading them in worship as sacred texts. And the same is true for the unknown authors of the other New Testament epistles.

Of the four texts cited above, the last three can be dismissed rather easily. The last two, from the First letter to Timothy and from the Letter to Jude, were written fifty to one hundred years after Paul’s death, and do not carry the same authority as a letter from the Apostle. The Corinthians passage, like the passages from Timothy and Jude is written with ambiguous language which makes the meaning unclear. These texts are talking about some sort of inappropriate sexual behavior, but it is not clear what it is. What is certain, is that they are not talking about a loving, consensual, committed same sex relationship between two adults.

The Romans text is more difficult. We know with nearly one hundred percent certainty that it was written by Paul. That makes it hard to ignore if you believe as I do that Paul was the greatest Christian theologian, that all subsequent Christian theology is a footnote to Paul, and that his inspiration and brilliance were the driving force behind the spread of Christianity in the ancient world.

These two verses from Romans have probably done more to harm Christian attitudes toward homosexuality than anything else in the Bible. So what do we make of this?

First, Paul’s primary interest in this passage is not homosexuality, he is writing about what happens when we turn away from God. When we turn away from God, says Paul, we do “unnatural” things. The sexual relations which Paul describes are the result and not the cause or our turning away.

Second, his apparent reason for rejecting same sex relations is that they are “unnatural.” But our sense of what is “natural” is not fixed. In the nineteenth century, it was thought “unnatural” for blacks to be equal to whites. A hundred years ago it was “unnatural” for children with learning disabilities to be in public school. Fifty years ago a majority of Americans believed that marriage between blacks and whites was “unnatural.” Our sense of what is natural has changed. Is it unreasonable to believe that if Paul were alive now, he would see things differently?

Paul wrote about what he saw in the context of his own time and place. What may have been true in his time is not necessarily true in our time. One of the great biblical truths from Abraham and Sarah onward is that God always calls us into the future. As Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward for what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus.”

An Abomination

2011-08-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
Leviticus 20:13

Little Good Harbor sits on the southeastern coast of Georgetown Island. It is a charming place with an equally charming name. It is a small harbor, but contrary to what one might expect from the name, it is not very good. It is too shallow and has too many rocks. Though it looks inviting, it is almost useless. So it is of “Little Good.”

The Priestly Code of Leviticus is in many ways the Little Good Harbor of biblical wisdom. It is not as shallow as Little Good Harbor, but there are lots of rocks. In the storms of life it does not provide safe haven. The idea of a guide for living that sets God’s people apart, is a good one, but the actual code is deeply flawed.

This is the second in a series of three comments on the seven biblical passages typically cited to “prove” that the Bible condemns homosexuality. The first commentary was on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Our focus now is on two almost identical passages in Leviticus. The first passage, verse 22 of chapter 18, says simply, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” The second passage, printed above, adds the penalty of death, and notes that those who commit such acts are responsible for their fate; “their death is upon them.”

The condemnation is clear and unmistakable.

Here, as in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, we see reflections of a patriarchal and misogynistic culture. To lie “with a male as with a woman” was to treat the male as if he were female. This was the ultimate humiliation. Judaism and Christianity have moved toward gender equality, but the subjugation of women remains deeply imbedded in Middle Eastern culture. The condemnation of male homosexuality is a reflection of the patriarchal devaluation of women.

“Abomination” is a strong word. And it is not used often. In the Priestly Code of Leviticus, it is an abomination to eat an eagle, an osprey, or a vulture. It is an abomination to eat a burnt offering after the second day. And it is an abomination to eat anything unclean. Eating such things may be unappetizing, but it hardly seems “an abomination.”

The death penalty is serious. In Leviticus, it is mandated for murder, for adultery, for blasphemy, for cursing one’s mother or father, and for “wizards and mediums.” In Exodus and Deuteronomy, the death penalty is invoked for breaking Sabbath, as well as for outsiders who come near the Tabernacle. Looking back across the millennia, that seems a little harsh.

We know from historical research that the death penalty was seldom used for these crimes. At this point, the Torah uses the language of death, not literally as a legal sentence, but metaphorically, to indicate the seriousness of the offense. Just as in our less enlightened moments we might say, “anyone who does that ought to be shot!”

When we read that it is an abomination and that it calls for the death penalty, we read it as a very strong condemnation. But that reading is at least somewhat tempered by the recognition that many of the other offenses that are described with that same harsh language do not seem as “abominable” to twenty-first century readers.

Leviticus is tough going. More than one well-intentioned and sincere Christian setting out to read the whole Bible from cover to cover has struggled through the long narratives of Genesis and Exodus, only to come to a grinding halt when confronted with the strange list of arcane laws that make up the Priestly Code of Leviticus. In order to understand it, we need to avoid getting lost in the details.

If we set out to construct a sexual ethic on the foundation of the two condemning verses in Leviticus, then we need to explain why we are picking and choosing those verses and not also including the admonitions about the ritual purification of women after menstruation and many other similar laws. And we need to explain our use of a code which is patriarchal and misogynistic. Its purpose is to set the people apart from the surrounding pagan culture, yet in its attitudes toward women is generally reflects that culture.

The premise of the Holiness Code is that God’s people should be holy as God is holy; that in our daily living we should remind ourselves of who we and whose we are. When the rabbis read these laws, they read them with that end in mind. The details are flawed, the product of a primitive world view and a pre-scientific understanding. But if we can focus beyond that, on the vision behind the details, then we can find light for our journey.

Paul told the church in Corinth that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. When it comes to the study of Torah, Rabbi Paul echoes the ancient rabbinic insight that God is found in the white spaces. Leviticus is about a people set apart and called to be different. The details may confound us, but the greater vision is of a life shaped by the calling of God.

The Sin of Sodom

2011-08-13T04:22:00.000-07:00

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
Ezekiel 16:49

My guess is that when most people think about the sins of Sodom, they do not think about having “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease,” and an unwillingness to “aid the poor and needy.”

But there it is.

We go to the Bible, looking for self-righteous moralisms and end up with social justice. Again. When it comes to the question of how we should be living our lives, it’s always about social justice. Or as Jesus summarized it in the Great Commandment, it’s about loving God and neighbor. (Loving God means loving your neighbor. And loving your neighbor is loving God.)

My plan, before I was distracted by the Prophet Ezekiel, was to write a series of blog posts on the seven biblical passages usually referenced to “prove” that the Bible condemns homosexuality.

It is in many ways a flawed enterprise. The late Walter Muelder, who was Dean of the Boston University School of Theology for many years, and a pioneer in the discipline of Christian Social Ethics, was adamant that when we go to the Bible for ethical direction, we cannot pick and choose. Seven passages are not enough to construct an ethic. They are not irrelevant. But they cannot be determinative. On the other hand, if you believe in biblical inerrancy, and you believe that each verse is equally inspired and authoritative, then you cannot question the authority of even a single verse, let alone seven passages. But I think it is a useful exercise, just to be clear on what those passages actually say and mean, rather than to assume that we know.

The first, and certainly the best known passage, is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The story begins with a happy episode. Three strangers come to visit Abraham and Sarah, who are living in a tent by the oaks of Mamre. The men are messengers from God, angels, who have come to reaffirm the promise that Abraham and Sarah will have a son. They speak with Abraham outside of the tent. Inside the tent, Sarah laughs, because it seems preposterous that at her age she could have a child. And there is a wonderful interchange in which the men chastise her for laughing. She insists that she did not laugh and the episode ends with one of the men saying, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

Then the men set out toward Sodom, and Abraham goes with them to show the way. God tells Abraham that the men are going to Sodom and Gomorrah to destroy the cities, because there has been such a great outcry over their sin. Abraham then begins to bargain with God. What about the righteous who live in those cities, will the LORD sweep them away with the guilty? Abraham drives a hard bargain, and God agrees that if they can find ten righteous, then the cities will be spared.

After the bargain is struck, “the LORD went his way,” and Abraham returned home, and “the two angels came to Sodom.”

At this point, things go downhill in a hurry. The strangers (angels) are met at the gate of the city by Lot, who insists that they spend the night with him. He makes them a feast, and they enjoy the meal together, but before they can lie down for the night, a crowd gathers outside. “The men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house.” The crowd demands that Lot send out the strangers, “so that we may know them.” In other words, so that we may have sexual relations with them.

Lot goes out to argue with the crowd and even offers to let them rape his two virgin daughters, rather than give up the men who have come “under the shelter of my roof.” But the crowd is undeterred and threatens to do even worse to Lot if he does not give up the strangers. At that point, the strangers reach out and pull Lot back into the house with them, and strike “with blindness” all those in the crowd, “so that they are unable to find the door.”

In the morning the strangers send Lot and his family away to safety, and fire rains down on the cities, and they are destroyed.

It is a dark tale. There are rays of light, but they are not easy to find. No one would count this among their favorite Bible stories. It is not the Sermon on the Mount, or the Good Samaritan. It isn’t the Twenty-third Psalm, or the Ten Commandments. It isn’t Micah or Amos or Hosea or Ruth. It isn’t even on a par with Esther.

The story is not just Patriarchal; it is deeply misogynistic. It’s good that Lot offers hospitality to strangers, and it’s good that he tries to protect his guests. But in his attempts to dissuade the men of Sodom from attacking the strangers, Lot offers to let them rape his daughters. And the story implies that the gang rape and humiliation of women is not as bad as the gang rape and humiliation of men.

It is difficult to claim ethical guidance from a story which is fundamentally immoral. One of the challenges in reading and interpreting the Bible is separating the timeless truths from the stories that simply reflect the prejudices and limited perspectives of a primitive people. The story of Sodom clearly falls into the latter category. We need to recognize it as such, and let it go.

Alternatively, we can focus, as Ezekiel did, on the guilt of Sodom that (apparently) first led to God’s judgment: “she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” That is a biblical truth which stands the test of time.

Science, Social Justice, and Bible Study

2011-08-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Oh how I love your Word!
It is my meditation all day long.
Your commandment makes me wiser, for it is always with me.
I have more understanding, for your decrees are my meditation.
I understand more by following your way.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Psalm 119:97-105

For secularists, as well as for many Christians, the stereotype is that people who engage in frequent Bible study tend to be judgmental, rigid, narrow, and anti-intellectual.

Those of us who interpret the biblical message as a promise of grace and a call to social justice sometimes feel like we are in the minority.

Turns out, the stereotype may be wrong. My colleague Cheryl Meachen posted a link to an article in the Huffington Post about a study by Baylor University researcher Aaron Franzen, which contains some results that may surprise you.

True to expectations, people who read the Bible frequently are more likely to be against gay marriage and against abortion.

But other findings run against the tide of stereotypes.

Those who read the Bible regularly are more concerned about social and economic justice, and generally more concerned about poor people and the issues of poverty. Within that group, liberals and conservatives differ on what needs to be done, and they differ on how they understand the role of government in eliminating poverty, but they agree that we need to help poor people and we need to reduce poverty.

Frequent Bible readers are also more likely to be against the death penalty and concerned with more humane treatment of prisoners.

Perhaps most surprising, those who read and study the Bible regularly are less likely to see a conflict between faith and science. They come to see all truth as God’s truth and they value scientific understanding.

Even biblical literalists, who tend to be the most rigid, find their thinking expands as their Bible study increases.

We know that Bible study ought to be transformative. It ought to open us to the world and to one another. It ought to make us more concerned about our fellow human beings. It should open us to a vision of the Kingdom of God and make us committed to economic and social justice.

The amazing thing is that this apparently tends to happen whether we want it to or not.

This brings us back to an old truth. There are lots of people who will tell you that they believe every word in the Bible. And they will not be shy about telling you what it all means. But a great many of those people don’t actually read the book they claim to believe with such fervor.

There are plenty of rigid and narrow-minded Christians in the world, but they are that way in spite of the Bible, not because of it.

The Word really is alive. If we are willing to listen, it will speak to us. And if we pay attention, it will change us.

It's the Values, Stupid!

2011-08-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

“Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, work for the Kingdom of God, and these things will be given to you as well.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the poor. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Luke 12:29-34

When it comes to Presidential elections, James Carville was right, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Sometimes elections are about war and peace, but most of the time they are about the economy.

But the economy is about values.

We often talk about the economy as if it had a life of its own, as if it were an independent being. But the economy is a human construct. We designed it and built it, over the centuries. And we have modified it many times. Some times the changes have been intentional and other times the changes have been the unintended consequences of other decisions. Some changes have been good and others have not.

When Jesus says that your heart will be where your treasure is, he sets forth a fundamental economic truth: the economy is a reflection of our values. Our individual spending is a reflection of our individual values, family spending reflects our family values, and national spending reflects our national values.

Last night I heard Dave Ramsey, who presents himself as a Christian financial adviser, commenting on the debt ceiling compromise. He said that although we all get things from the government that we like, the math tells us that our growing debt is unsustainable. We can’t afford it, he said. We can’t afford Social Security (in its present state) or health care, or a host of other programs. I often find myself agreeing with Dave Ramsey, but his pronouncement left me wondering.

It is true, of course, that we cannot indefinitely spend more than we take in.

But why is it that the democracies of Western Europe can afford guaranteed pensions and universal health care, and we can’t? Why do they have lower unemployment, longer vacations, and paid maternity/paternity leave? Why can Germany maintain and grow manufacturing jobs and we can’t? Why do they have a lesser gap between rich and poor?

And maybe the biggest question of all: why aren’t we asking these questions on a broad scale? Thomas Friedman has written extensively on these issues, but he remains a solo voice.

The issues are complex. There are no easy answers. One reason that Western Europe prospers is that they do not spend even a significant fraction of what we do on national defense. And one reason they can do that is that we provide defenses for them.

The mathematics of our economy are critical. And the calculations are complex. One of the fears expressed by many economists is that when we cut government spending we will slow down the economy and actually increase the deficit.

But our values are also important.

Jesus argues that if we get our values right, then everything else follow.

Wrestling with Scripture

2011-08-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
Genesis 32:22-31

Sunday’s sermon was about wrestling with God.

Leading up to the passage above, Jacob is fearful of what will happen when he reunites with his brother Esau (whom he cheated out of his inheritance, and who consequently threatened to kill him). After sending servants and his family to bring gifts to his brother, Jacob spent the night in solitude. And he wrestled with God. In that struggle there was both pain and blessing.

After the sermon, I received a friendly email asking a question:

“I wondered if you would mind briefly explaining the difference between the "traditional" view of Jacob's all-night struggle with God or an angel... and your not unreasonable proposition that his struggle was, perhaps, a dream (This may require some consideration of Jacob's hip-injury and resultant limp).”

The question assumes that the “traditional” view would be that Jacob encountered a supernatural being. Actually, the traditional view is that it is a mystery. Maybe it was a dream and maybe it was something else. Certainly, the idea that Jacob was literally wrestling with God would be impossible in any traditional Christian or Jewish theology.

Jacob could have wrestled with a pagan god. He could not have wrestled with the mysterious “I Am” who encounters Moses, or the One whom Jesus describes as a Spirit. You can’t literally wrestle with the Infinite and the Eternal.

But still, it could be a literal description of a supernatural encounter, couldn’t it?

Again, apart from the theological problems, the answer is: it could be, if you believe it could be.

But the supernatural interpretation presents an unnecessary barrier to understanding the truth of the story.

The struggle is real.
The pain is real.
The blessing is real.
And the transformation of Jacob is real. In the struggle, Jacob the deceiver becomes Israel, the one who wrestles with God.

The truth of the story does not in any way depend on a supernatural explanation of the encounter. And if we interpret it supernaturally, then we imply that believing the supernatural explanation is necessary in order for the story to be “true.”

So what about Jacob “limping because of his hip”?

One narrowly rational explanation would be sciatica. (As one who has suffered with sciatica, I can sympathize.)

But the problem with a narrow rationalism is that it denies the mystery of what Jacob experienced. In the narrative, the limp is important because it reminds us that something really happened. When we speak of it as a dream, that cannot mean that it was only imaginary. The limp reminds us that what happened was real. The struggle, the pain, the blessing, and the transformation of Jacob, were all real.

Uncomfortable Thoughts about Privilege

2011-07-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions.
Deuteronomy 8:11-15

The recent heat wave was unpleasant (some of us think it was very unpleasant) in Rhode Island, but it was much worse in other parts of the country. After enduring several summers in Philadelphia without air conditioning, my daughter, Carolyn purchased a small room air conditioner last week. That evening she described her Facebook status this way:

"It's so hot, and I am so relieved to finally have AC. This kind of extreme weather reminds me of how privileged I am to have good shelter. Safety from the elements should be a right, but unfortunately it is often a luxury..... (This sermon brought to you by my heat-addled brain - apologies, Facebook friends)"

Privilege is a word that grates like fingernails on the blackboard. When I was in grade school, if someone seemed to be claiming an unfair advantage, someone else would ask sarcastically, “What do you think you are, privileged?” To be “privileged” was not a good thing.

It is ironic; of course, everyone (almost) wishes to have special privileges without being thought “privileged.” We want people to know that we have worked hard for the things we have.

But it is a good thing sometimes, to reflect on how privileged we are.

One of the young families in our church is expecting another child at any moment. Last Sunday in our worship service, during the announcements, we had a good laugh when I called out to the two physicians in the congregation to be on alert in case the baby decided to arrive during worship. I have several friends who are physicians and are always willing to help me navigate the healthcare system. I do not call them often, but when I do I am aware of how different my life is from millions (billions) of other people.

That’s what it means to be privileged.

Acknowledging privilege is not denying hard work. It’s just being honest about where we are.

Years ago in another church I was counseling with a teenager who was planning to drop out of school as soon as she could, because it seemed to her a waste of time. As I talked about the value of education, I mentioned the practical applications of what she was learning. I told her that without learning fractions it was impossible to know how much things cost (this is even more important when the “unit prices” are so often wrong or misleading).

She had no idea what I was talking about. “We just buy whatever is cheapest,” she said. I was confused. How can you know how much something costs unless you can compare pound for pound, or gallon for gallon? She repeated her answer, “We just buy whatever costs the least.” They were buying milk by the quart, because a quart cost less than a gallon or a half gallon.

Between my life and hers, there was a vast socio-economic gulf. Some of it can be explained by choices, and some of it can be explained by effort. But part of it was the result of where we started. I did not grow up with money. Our family was on the lowest rung of the middle class. (We pause now to reflect on how I am writing about privilege and I cannot help saying that my family did not have much money. If you press me, I will engage in a spirited but highly refined game of “one down-manship” in which I will attempt to prove just how far I have advanced beyond my humble beginnings.) But I grew up in a stable family, with secure food and shelter, and I was blessed by parents who believed in education and taught the values of thrift and hard work.

If you are reading this, then you have access to the internet. And you can read. And you have time to read on the internet. And if you have that access and can read, and have time, then you are privileged.

Some of us are more privileged than others. And we should be aware of the differences. But when we reflect on our own privilege, we reflect on the ways in which we have more than others, and our concern is directed toward those who have less. When we reflect on our privilege, we don’t worry about those who have more than we do, we worry about those who have less.

We do not reflect on our privilege to make ourselves feel guilty, but to help ourselves live with gratitude and compassion.

A Building Is Not Just a Place to Be

2011-07-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable,
always excelling in the work of the Lord,
because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
I Corinthians 15:58

On Sunday morning August 31, 2008, after an all night prayer vigil, we began worship at 214 Main Street and concluded the morning in our new church at 1558 South County Trail. It was a bittersweet moment for many of us, saying good bye to the building that had been our church home for 175 years, and beginning a new journey in a new place.

As the song says,
The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple,
the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.

“We Are the Church.” But buildings matter. The church is not a “virtual” reality. It is flesh and bones. It is a body, which we believe is the body of Christ. And it exists in time and space. It is concrete (or wood, or brick . . .). The building is just a building. If there is no congregation, then it is not a church. The people, on the other hand, are a church even without the building. But buildings matter.

After three years, it is clear that our new building makes a difference. We knew it would be modern and convenient. We knew that we would enjoy accessibility and function of the new space. And we knew that it would be wonderful to have acres of parking. But in so many ways it has been more than we expected. The narthex is a welcoming space that is even more inviting than we imagined. The sanctuary, with the wonderful blend of stained glass, warm tones, sacred symbols, flexible space, excellent acoustics, and high tech audio-visual capability, is a sensory delight. The Education area is designed for easy flow into and out of the sanctuary, and the room decorations and Bible verses remind us who we are and whose we are.

And we are not the same people we were three years ago. The great architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, once said, “A building is not just a place to be. It is a way to be.” The welcoming design both reflects and supports who we are. Our new space is comfortable and sacred at the same time. We can feel at home here.

Our new street address at 1558 South County Trail reminds us of what we have claimed as our biblical address. In I Corinthians 15:58, Paul summarizes the meaning of the resurrection. Because Christ lives our labor is not in vain. In the economy of God’s love, nothing is lost. What we do matters, not just for now, but forever. This has been a good lesson for us as we have worked through the long and difficult journey that brought us to this place. We can be faithful and steadfast and do our best to excel, knowing that it makes a difference. Nothing will be lost.

This is a good reminder, because the way is not easy. This is a challenging time to be the church in America. But we can move into the future with faith, knowing that nothing will be lost.

Sounds Crazy to Me

2011-07-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”
Matthew 3:21-22

Jesus was preaching the Kingdom of God and casting out demons, and his family thought he was crazy. The scribes in Mark’s Gospel were collaborating with the Roman occupiers, and they were quick to support the idea that Jesus was crazy. What other explanation could there be?

At this point, as I imagine the scene, there were drums and loud guitars and Jesus sang a cover of the Billy Joel song, "You may be right, I may be crazy. But it just might be a lunatic you're looking for." (You have to sing it in your head.)

Last I knew, my colleague, Rev. Stewart Lanier was waiting outside a home in Randolph, Massachusetts, trying to prevent Fannie Mae for foreclosing on the residents. Stewart and three others have committed themselves to peacefully blocking the eviction, even if it means being arrested.

I am reasonably sure he believes he is casting out demons and preaching about the Kingdom of God.

Sounds fairly crazy to me.

I don’t know very much about the case. I understand that they have a Community Bank prepared to purchase the residence at fair market value and then sell it back to the family under a new mortgage agreement. And I understand that the family has been trying to pay rent and that their payments have been refused.

And I know that this story, of the mortgage holder refusing to accept payments, is like one I have heard in our congregation.

Mortgage defaults and foreclosures and bankruptcies are complicated. And they raise serious issues. Is it fair to let some people renegotiate their mortgages at lower rates with a reduced balance, when those who have also struggled but have never gotten behind in their payments get no relief? It’s not a simple matter.

So I will sit in my air conditioned office and think about it. And I will remind myself how complicated it all is, and I won’t even have to try very hard not to feel guilty. And Stewart will wait to be arrested.

I want a comprehensive solution. I want something that is fair to everyone (including the banks). The Barzolas family just wants to stay in their home.

And we do need to do something about the foreclosure crisis. Mortgage debt is a major drag on the economy, and there is a huge price being paid in the suffering of families.

Below is a copy of the letter that Stewart wrote to Fannie Mae, explaining his intentions:

Stephen L Harris, Fannie Mae

Dear Mr. Harris:

This is to inform you that on Monday morning July 18, as a direct result of your decision regarding the property at 7 Canessa St., Randolph MA, I will participate in an eviction blockade led by City Life Vida Urbana. I will peacefully block the constable from evicting the Barzolas family and will be arrested if necessary to defend them. I am an ordained United Methodist pastor, and will participate in this act of civil disobedience because of the flagrant immorality of Fannie Mae’s action. I will bring my action, and that of dozens of others, to the attention of faithful United Methodists in the New England United Methodist Conference and to news outlets.

If you are not familiar with this case, Boston Community Capital has offered to buy this property at a fairly appraised market value. Additionally the Barzolas family has attempted to pay fair market rent to Fannie Mae since their foreclosure, while the property is on the market.

You may not know that CBS news did a story on July 14 about Boston Community Capital’s work of buying foreclosed properties and then reselling them to their former owners at current rates. The CBS story was of a family who was able to buy back their home as a result of Boston Community Capital offer. This story had a happy ending.

If Fannie Mae proceeds with the current plan to evict the Barzolas family Fannie Mae will be entirely responsible for a story with an unhappy ending: a family homeless, another empty property on the block, and people who resist based on moral conviction, jailed.

I ask that you kindly reconsider your decision: accept the Boston Community Capital offer, or at least engage with them in good faith bargaining, and/or allow the Barzolas family to pay you rent. Allow this family to live in their home, keep their children in the same schools, and return to a life without daily fear of eviction.

Thank you for your consideration,

Sincerely,
Stewart Lanier

Taxing Billionaires

2011-07-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
James 5:1-6

The Bible is hard on rich people.

The Letter of James is especially hard, but the theme is consistent. When Mary announces the coming of the Messiah, she sings about the poor being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. Jesus says that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the story of “The Rich Man and Lazarus.” The rich man does not directly refuse to help poor Lazarus, he simply ignores him. And for that he is consigned to eternal darkness.

The problem is not wealth, but the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty, and the disparity between rich and poor.

There are warnings about focusing too much on possessions and not enough on justice, and it’s clear that we don’t really own things; we are only stewards of what ultimately belongs to God. But the biblical ideal is for everyone to have enough, “every man under his vine and fig tree.” No one should have “too much,” but the definition of “too much” is flexible and the emphasis is really on “enough.”

All Christians live with a certain amount of tension on this. We are not called to renounce everything and live in poverty, although some embrace that calling. We are called to live life fully and abundantly, to accept and rejoice in the good gifts of life. But if we are sensitive to issues of global poverty and inequality, then our thanksgiving for our own comfort includes a concern for those who have less. And we need to be good stewards, setting aside a portion of what we have to do God’s work in the world.

Within the United States, the gap between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the past three decades. Almost all of the gains in economic growth over that time have been funneled to the wealthiest among us. The middle class is stagnant. The poor have less. And the rich have more. We have been redistributing income from the bottom to the top.

The richest 1% of Americans have as much wealth as the total combined wealth of the lower 90%. At the same time, the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans are lower than they have been in decades.

Increasing the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans would be a good idea even if we did not have concerns about debt and deficits. A tax increase would slow the rate of increase in the gap between wealth and poverty, and reduce the upward redistribution of income.

Opponents of increasing the taxes of billionaires point out that the richest one percent of Americans now pay approximately 40% of all income taxes. That sounds like a lot until you realize that the richest one percent also have 40% of the wealth. In other words, the amount they pay in taxes is about average. They pay more dollars but they don’t pay at a higher rate. The tax rate for billionaires is about the same as for average Americans.

Raising the marginal tax rate for the richest Americans would make a significant contribution to reducing the deficit. It would be fairer. But it would also be good. And it would be good for the rich as well as for the poor. In the words of the prophet Isaiah:

If you offer your food to the hungry,
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Isaiah 58:10-11

Social Security and the Deficit

2011-07-11T07:43:00.001-07:00

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
Luke 10:25-28

Early in the Genesis story, when God asks Cain where his brother is, he responds with what he thinks is a rhetorical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” According to the rabbis, the rest of the Bible is an answer to Cain’s question. And the biblical answer is that Cain is supposed to be “his brother’s keeper.” We are responsible for one another. Developing the meanings of that mutual responsibility is the work of prophets and teachers throughout the Bible. And for Christians, it culminates in the teachings of Jesus.

I am my brother’s keeper. And I am supposed to love my neighbor as much as I love myself.

Social Security holds a special place in American politics and policy in part because it is one of the most important ways in which we live out our mutual responsibility to one another. It grew out of the Social Gospel commitment to make public policy more in line with the teachings of Jesus.

I realize that for those who fear a theocracy above all else, this makes them very nervous. But I am one of the people who still believes that Jesus’ teachings are our best ethical guide, and I believe it is the duty of Christians to put those teachings into practice. In the public square, others can make the case from other perspectives and on other grounds. And in the public square, we don’t expect our argument to prevail because it is what Jesus taught. But that’s where we get our direction.

Recently, White House sources have suggested that President Obama would be willing to accept cuts in Social Security as part of a deal to reduce the deficit in order to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling.

(In our hyper-partisan political culture the debt ceiling debate has become dangerously overheated, but it has always been contentious. The party that does not control the White House is always against raising the debt ceiling, because they are not directly responsible for governing and can strike a pose against government spending. This time we have the normal partisanship on steroids. But it has always struck me as an odd thing to vote on. Congress first makes the laws on taxes and spending which cause the debt to increase, and then they vote on whether or not they will allow that increase. It’s like deciding to buy a new car and then deciding whether or not to pay for it.)

Cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit may sound like a reasonable idea, until you realize that Social Security is not part of the deficit. Right now Social Security is in the black. There is a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund. Of course, it’s a “virtual” surplus, because they money isn’t kept in a separate vault. But right now we are borrowing against Social Security to pay for other government expenditures.

Eventually, we will have to do something about Social Security. According to the current actuarial tables, the fund will be paying out more than it takes in some time within the next decade. And around 2025 payments will have to be significantly reduced in order to avoid bankrupting the system. But it isn’t part of the deficit.

The Wall Street Journal suggested a year ago that the Social Security problem could be solved for the next quarter century by raising the ceiling on Social Security taxes to reflect the increased income among the richest Americans.

Social Security has been the most successful anti-poverty in American history. It is the principal source of income for two-thirds of older Americans, and it provides almost all of the income (90% or more) for a third of all seniors. Over half of all Social Security recipients live on total incomes of $22,000 or less.

Of course, we could just cut the benefits for wealthy Americans. But one of the things that makes Social Security so successful is that it represents shared benefits and shared responsibilities. It is not a welfare program; it’s a retirement program. It’s part of how brothers and sisters, and neighbors take care of each other.

Roger Clemens and Telling the Truth

2011-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
Matthew 5:33-37

Have you heard the latest on the Roger Clemens trial?

Me neither.

In an article in the New York Times, William C. Rhoden asks, “Where is the outrage?” I didn’t read the article but I think he is upset that fans are not as critical of Clemens as they were (and are) of Barry Bonds.

Neither Clemens nor Bonds have ever been beloved by the fans, and neither one has ever tried very hard to cultivate a relationship. But Bonds’ great crime is that he broke the home run record, which is something that baseball fans care about. Passionately. He flew by Babe Ruth’s 714 and broke Henry Aaron’s record of 755 career home runs. Those records matter, or they used to matter. No one cares which pitcher won the most games. That’s not true, some people do care, but the records are not as important.

If Barry Bonds had not taken steroids, he would be embraced by the baseball world in spite of his unwillingness to act like a nice guy. The records would speak for themselves. But he did (or at least we think he did). And now those records are forever tainted and we will never be able to make real comparisons.

But back to Clemens.

There was a time when I thought that Roger got a lot less credit than he deserved for the magnitude of his achievements. How many Cy Young awards did he win? And no one ever voted for him because they thought he was a nice guy.

But Clemens’ unpleasant side was revealed early in his career, when he threatened to quit baseball and complained about how hard things were for the players who had to CARRY THEIR OWN BAGS at the airport.

One of the reasons that no one cares about the trial is that there is no one rooting for Roger. And that’s sad.

But as a citizen, I have to wonder about the wisdom of spending millions of dollars on this. Aren’t we worried about the deficit? How can this possibly be a priority?

Roger is charged with lying to Congress.

Is that not the most absurd thing in the world? If the members of Congress did not lie to each other on a regular basis, Jon Stewart would be out of business (that observation comes from daughter Carolyn).

Two points on this. The first one is social and political commentary, and the second one is theological and biblical.

First, Roger Clemens would not have lied to Congress if a Congressional committee had not been investigating the use of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball. Why was Congress investigating steroids in baseball? How is that in the national interest? Don’t they have enough to do?

Second, his alleged crime is not simply lying, but lying under oath. It isn’t a crime to lie to Congress (or to anyone else). It’s only a crime to lie under oath.

For Christians, truth telling is a fundamental moral imperative, regardless of whether or not we “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” It’s not an absolute. We can all think of multiple examples of situations in which telling the truth is just plain wrong. But it’s not about whether or not we are “under oath.” We are called, as Paul said, to “speak the truth in love.” Because truth matters, and it may matter much more in those times when we are not asked to “raise your right hand, and repeat . . .”

Context

2011-06-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
II Timothy 3:16-17

The question recently came up in a Bible Study group: Can scripture passages be applied out of context? It is an interesting question, because it focuses on the very heart and soul of how we approach the biblical witness.

Since the Bible was written across many different centuries by many different writers, the original contexts are complex and varied. When we apply any biblical passage to a current situation, we are taking it out of historical context. Whether we are looking at a short phrase, or a verse, or a particular episode, or a book, or a testament, or the Bible as a whole, we are taking it out of historical context.

The goal of biblical interpretation is to determine what a particular passage means to us, nineteen hundred to three thousand years (give or take) after it was written. Which ideas or concepts or teachings are time-bound, and which ones have universal and timeless application? Understanding the original context can help us better understand what the passage might mean to us today.

The text does not change, but our understanding of it does.

At the same time, there is a long tradition of rabbinic interpretation which holds that even the smallest phrases can be taken out of context and stand alone. In the smallest detail, there is still a measure of inspiration from which we can learn.

The passage above provides a wonderful illustration of the relationship between context and meaning. It is sometimes used as “proof” that the whole of the Bible is literally and directly inspired by God, as if God dictated the text to the biblical writers. Among the many problems inherent in that interpretation is the fact that it was written long before what we call the “New Testament” was part of the Bible. Taken literally in context, it says that the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the “Old Testament” is inspired by God, and it makes no claim about the New Testament.

And then there is a larger point that transcends the historical context: the passage is about the purpose of studying scripture. The purpose is, or should be, to open ourselves to the message so that we will be “equipped for every good work.” That idea works, even out of context.

Rev. Amy DeLong: the Verdict

2011-06-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”
Matthew 10:16

It’s over.

The strange and sorry and embarrassing trial of the Rev. Amy DeLong is over. And in the end it was a victory of sorts for the forces of light; a reminder that the moral arc of the universe does bend toward justice.

And congratulations to my friend and colleague, the Rev. Scott Campbell, who was Amy’s defense counsel, and the person most responsible for bringing a measure or grace to this strange episode.

Rev. DeLong was charged with two instances of violating the United Methodist Book of Discipline, by officiating at the Holy Union of a lesbian couple, and by being herself a “self-avowed practicing homosexual.” She was found guilty on the first charge and innocent on the second, and she was sentenced to a 20 day suspension of her clergy credentials and required to write a reflection on how what she had done affected the clergy covenant.

The first part was a slam-dunk for the prosecution. Amy had reported performing the Holy Union in her annual report to the District Superintendent and the Bishop. And Scott stipulated the same in his opening statement.

One might think that the second part would also have been just as clear. Amy and her partner Val have a “domestic partnership” under Wisconsin law. They are in a committed same sex relationship. They have been honest about their love for each other.

But it’s not that simple. Under the Discipline, it’s the practice of homosexual sex that is banned and it is the practice which must be “self-avowed” for conviction. It is not surprising that Amy never said anything about that in her reports on the relationship she shares with Val.

At the trial, the counsel for “the church” tried to overcome this obstacle by asking Amy if she and Val ever had “genital” contact. Honest, that really happened. Amy’s response was that she would not share the intimate details of her relationship with someone whose only purpose was to do her harm.

So the jury of 13 clergypersons from the Wisconsin Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church found her “not guilty.”

On one level it defies common sense. And it seems like a bizarre technicality.

At a deeper level it represents the triumph of rabbinic argument. Traditionally, Christians have made great sport of rabbinic arguments, which often seem to us to be based on strange and arcane analyses of what appear to us to be insignificant details. But the genius of rabbinic reasoning is that God is in the details, that justice is sometimes found in the most obscure places.

One simple interpretation of that “not guilty” verdict would be that those who wrote those prohibitions into the Discipline a few decades ago left a loophole. A different interpretation might be that the loophole was itself one of the best examples of the Methodist soul: the gift of grace. In the loophole we see not a mistake, but what ought to be. It is the truth. Unintentional, to be sure, but still the truth.

To use a Scott Campbell phrase, it is “an open door.”

And maybe by exposing the whole policy for the embarrassing sham that it is, this verdict will bring us closer to a vision of grace and truth that represents real faithfulness.

Where Are the Jobs?

2011-06-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.

“And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’

“When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

“But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Matthew 20:1-16

The traditional interpretation of the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard is that it is about the grace of God. It is also about what Luke presents as “the great reversal,” the idea that in the Kingdom of God, the first shall be last and the last shall be first; the poor are lifted up and the mighty are cast down.

But at its most basic level, it is a story about jobs and employment.

In his commentary on this passage, William Barclay observes, “There is nothing more tragic in this world than a man who is unemployed, a man whose talents are rusting in idleness because there is nothing for him to do.” He notes that a great teacher used to say that the saddest words in all of Shakespeare’s plays are the words: “Othello’s occupation’s gone.” Workers stood idle in the market place in the late afternoon because no one had hired them, and in his compassion the owner of the vineyard hired them “because he could not bear to see them idle.”

The owner agreed to pay the first workers at the prevailing rate for a day’s labor. Those hired later in the morning were simply told that they would be paid a fair wage. And those hired at the end of the day were given no promise.

But in the end each of the worker’s was paid for a full day. Barclay writes, “The master well knew that 4p a day was no great wage; he well knew that, if they went home with less, there would be a worried wife and hungry children.”

Barclay concludes that the parable sets forth “two great truths which are the very charter of every working man—the right of every man to work and the right of every man to a living wage for his work.”

In his time, in the middle of the last century, William Barclay was the standard for biblical commentary. He seldom broke new ground, but he presented the biblical truths with simple and forceful clarity. His was the consensus of traditional Christian opinion.

In our time, I’m not sure that we have consensus on the two great truths of the parable:
1. The right of every man [person] to work.
2. And the right of every man [person] to a living wage.

Economists tell us that the recession ended almost two years ago. But where are the jobs? And more to the point, where are the jobs that pay a living wage? Some of the jobs have been lost to globalization, others have been lost due to a mis-match between the skills of unemployed workers and the training needed in new technologies, but there are other factors.

In the middle of the last century, when William Barclay wrote his commentaries, the pain of a recession was absorbed in three ways: lost profits, lost productivity and lost jobs. Today we still have those three categories of impact, but approximately two-thirds of the losses are absorbed in unemployment.

Half a century ago, some workers were let go, and those who remained typically did less work, resulting in less productivity and lower profits. Today, the workers who remain find themselves doing more work to make up for those who were laid off. And workers have responded by “doing more with less” and increasing productivity. This increased productivity has not resulted in higher wages, but in higher profits.

Economists will tell us that corporations have learned to manage the downturns more efficiently. But at least part of it is because we no longer have a consensus that people have a right to work and a right to a living wage.

These are not simple issues, but they are issues that should deeply concern us.

Exactly Enough

2011-06-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:57-62

A friend told me about hearing a sermon on this passage by a United Methodist bishop. In the sermon, pastors were admonished to follow Jesus by going where the resident bishop wants to send them. (We’ll leave aside the question of who wants to volunteer to explain to the Bishop that he/she is not Jesus.)

The Bishop affirmed that when we follow Jesus our needs will be taken care of, and illustrated that affirmation with a story about a clergy couple serving very successfully in a church. The District Superintendent and the Bishop assumed that this couple would serve there until retirement. But they also thought that these two pastors would be a wonderful fit for two churches that needed new pastors. And whenever they considered the needs of these two churches, they could not help coming back to this clergy couple. Eventually they asked the two pastors to move and amazingly, they said yes!

Later, one of those pastors called the Bishop to report on their experience:

"Bishop, just a week or two before you called us to move, we sat down with our kids at the end of their semesters at college and said, 'You have to quit college for a year. We're out of money... We're sorry. There's no choice.' But Bishop, in the new churches where we're going, the salaries are higher and there's EXACTLY ENOUGH MORE to allow them to keep going in school!”

“EXACTLY ENOUGH!" The Bishop repeated the phrase for emphasis, and then said:

"You see, when we open our hearts to follow Jesus to where we're called, our needs are taken care of!"

So Jesus “has nowhere to lay his head,” but if we follow him (by doing what the Bishop asks) then we will have enough money to pay for our children’s college education.

One of the most cherished misunderstandings of biblical faith is the doctrine of “Special Providence.” We want to believe that God loves us more and protects us more than others. Special Providence promises that God cares for me in a special and unique way. Of course, that is true in the sense that each of us has a unique experience of God’s care. But as Jesus said, the sun shines and the rain falls, on the just and the unjust, and God’s love is there for everyone.

In a radio sermon preached in 1952, Reinhold Niebuhr said that for many people, believing in God means “that that we have found a way to the ultimate source and end of life that gives us, against all the chances and changes of life, some special security and some special favor.” As an example, he speaks of the prayers “that many a mother with a boy in Korea must pray, ‘A thousand at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand, let no evil come to my boy.’”

For the mother or father with a child in danger, that is the most natural prayer in the world and it is the deepest desire of our hearts. Yet in the end it is impossible. As Niebuhr explains, “The Christian faith believes that beyond, within and beyond, the tragedies and the contradictions of history we have laid hold upon a loving heart, and the proof of whose love, on the one hand, is the impartiality toward all of his children and, secondly, a mercy which transcends good and evil.”

The promise of Christian faith is not that God will grant us a special exemption from life’s hardships, or give us a special reward for our virtue, but that at the center of life there is a loving heart, which will be with us now and forever.

Straining Gnats and Swallowing Camels

2011-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

“Woe to you, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!"
Matthew 23:23-24

This week at our United Methodist Annual Conference, our clergy session included the now annual call to faithfulness and accountability from a large number of our retired clergy. They are impatient with our perverse refusal to move forward toward the full inclusion of our GLBT sisters and brothers, particularly in terms of clergy ordination and same sex marriage.

Yes, there are those pesky six passages (some claim the number is seven, and I have heard another claim of ten, but the ten are a huge stretch), but I cannot help the feeling that we are straining out gnats and swallowing camels, and honestly, it’s embarrassing.

Our Bishop, whom I believe to be a very decent and faithful Christian, was counseling patience and restraint, and reminding us that we are not all of the same mind on this, and we have to think of the whole church. A friend asked, “Have they ever read ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’? I don’t know how to ask that question without sounding unpleasant, but I’d just like to know.” And for those of us who can remember, the rhetoric of patience is precisely what we heard from cautious church leaders during the Civil Rights movement of the late fifties and sixties.

In the Civil Rights era, as Methodists we had our share of segregationists as well as a large number of those who cautioned against rapid change, but our church leadership was almost unanimously on the right side of history. Sadly, that is not the case in the Methodist Church today. We have some prophetic leaders. We even have some prophetic Bishops. But we have way too many on the side of the status quo.

And it’s just embarrassing.

As a United Methodist minister, I am not permitted to marry same sex couples, or even to bless their relationships. I can bless an atomic bomb. I can bless family pets and homes. I can bless baseball games and graduations. But I cannot bless the loving relationship of two persons of the same sex.

At our clergy session many politely stated that this was a place where they would follow their consciences rather than the Book of Discipline.

In the midst of this there was a wonderful moment of grace.

A colleague stood up and asked a simple question. He asked it, not to stir debate or controversy, but simply because he is a pastor with a heart for his people.

He began by saying that as a conservative he was concerned about the Scriptures. “But,” he said, “I have several lesbian couples in my church and I am shaking in my shoes that one of those couples is going to ask me to marry them. And my question to you, Bishop, is, will I be brought up on charges?”

What this pastor was asking was, if I am faithful in my role as pastor to these couples, will I find myself in a church trial charging that I have disobeyed the Discipline of the church? It was so simply and beautifully put by someone who was not thinking about the church politics, but only about the people. Sadly, the answer was (as I knew) that if someone reports his actions to the Bishop, he will face some sort of disciplinary response.

Opponents of inclusion and equality will often tell me that this is not like the Civil Rights movement. The discrimination, they say, is not the same and the issues are totally different. Sometimes they will tell me that sexual orientation is a choice. (But they usually won’t give me a chance to ask, “When did you decide you were a heterosexual? Was it a difficult choice? How did you decide?”) Almost always, they will conclude by assuring me that they are in favor of Civil Rights.

They say that the army is always prepared to win the last war and seldom prepared for the next one. In the church we are certain about the last great issue, but find it hard to commit on the next one.

Enough already. It’s time to move on. We need to forget the church politics and concentrate on the people. Pastors need to be pastors.

Thinking about Anthony Weiner

2011-06-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Matthew 5:27-28

Anthony Weiner has had a very bad two weeks.

On the upside, he looks way better bare chested than anyone would have guessed. I thought he was just skinny. He’s got some muscle.

Unfortunately for Mr. Weiner, that’s the end of the good news.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, called for an ethics investigation into his conduct. “I am deeply disappointed and saddened about this situation,” she said. That’s what she said publicly. I would love to hear the private conversations.

Political scandals in America are media driven. It’s not so much about right and wrong as about what appears right and wrong. Eliot Spitzer lost his job for consorting with prostitutes, but David Vitter is still at work. John Ensign and John Edwards are both in deep trouble, not for having affairs, but for trying to cover them up. Larry Craig resigned (as far as the public story goes) for playing footsie with an undercover cop. Newt Gingrich managed to get Bill Clinton impeached (but not convicted) while he (Gingrich) was having an affair. And what exactly did Christopher Lee do? Go figure.

There is always lots of posturing about how “the media” treats conservatives and liberals differently. Someone always claims a “double standard.” One guy loses his job and another guy just marries his mistress and moves on.

Of course there is something they all have in common. They are all guys. Even Jimmy Carter admitted to “lusting in his heart.”

Jesus was called the “Son of David,” but in terms of sexual ethics they were not even distant cousins. David had a thousand wives and a thousand concubines and still couldn’t stop himself from going after the (married) girl next door. And then Jesus says he was wrong from the first time he looked.

When I was in seminary, Dr. Walter Muelder, who was Dean of the School of Theology and a Professor of Christian Social Ethics, noted in his discussion of the ethics of Jesus that he would not ask for a show of hands for those who had violated the commandment not to “look at a woman with lust.” He allowed us to infer that even our very proper dean had done that. At the time, this came under the heading of way too much information.

It is not easy for us to cultivate healthy attitudes toward sex. It is not easy for Americans, and considering the evidence, it is apparently harder for men than women. Or maybe men don’t try as hard.

Every day in a thousand different ways, we prove that we are uncomfortable with our bodies and uncomfortable with our sexuality. The positive result of that discomfort is that most of us are not likely to post indiscreet photos online. The negative consequence is that for some of us, the discomfort with our bodies and with our sexuality will find expression in ways that are damaging and destructive.

The Anthony Weiner episode will launch a thousand jokes. But it really merits some serious reflection.

A Lamp to My Feet and a Light to My Path

2011-05-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

I do not turn away from your ordinances,
for you have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Psalm 119:102-105

This morning as I was sitting in a coffee shop reading The New York Times on line, I could hear occasional phrases from the conversation of two young men sitting in a booth across the room.

On the table, they each had open Bibles. The young man with the larger Bible was teaching the young man with the smaller Bible. I have seen him in the coffee shop many times; always with his Bible; always teaching another young man.

This should make me glad. What could be better than two young people contemplating what I believe to be the most important book ever written?

For the last several weeks I have spent an hour on Mondays and Tuesdays with Pastor Carol Reale teaching two Confirmation classes. We have spent a lot of time sitting around the table, with our Bibles open, engaged in earnest conversation. And I love it. I love the questions and the insights and the seriousness of our kids. And I want them to love the Bible.

But as I stole a sideways glance at the young men, I felt uneasy.

Part of my uneasiness was because I stereotyped them in the same way that other more secular people stereotype all (or most, or some) Christians. But another part of my uneasiness was because I could tell (am I really certain?) what they were doing. They were not reading the stories; they were picking out the verses. And the man with the larger Bible was explaining what each verse meant. He was connecting a verse in one book to a verse in another to show how they reinforce each other and make the same point. The method is called “proof-texting.” One begins with an assertion and then “proves” it with a Bible verse. Then, building on the first assertion, the argument moves on to ad another assertion “proven” by another text.

The problem with proof-texting is that it treats the Bible as if it were a set of propositions, or a rule book, or an instruction manual. And it approaches the biblical witness as if it were a puzzle to be solved; a hidden message waiting to be decoded.

The truth of the Bible is not in the verses; it is in the stories and the ideas. And it is not hidden. There is no secret to understanding the Bible, other than an openness to the spirit and the willingness to listen as it speaks. When we say that the Bible is true, we don’t mean that it is an accurate account of ancient history or an infallible alternative to modern science; we mean that it is true in our lives. The Bible is our story. It tells us who we are and to whom we belong.

It is dangerous to cast judgment on someone else’s spiritual practice or to question the direction of someone else’s journey. But when we proof-text, we miss the grand sweep of ideas. Instead of hearing a word of grace and hope that opens us to the wonder of God’s presence, we find ourselves in a cramped world of rules and demands that produces guilt rather than grace.

Left Behind

2011-05-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray . . .”
Matthew 24:3-4

On Saturday, a little after 6:00 p.m., Tim Swartz sent me a text message asking, “R U still here?” Elaine and I were at Wesleyan University, celebrating my 40th college reunion. For better or worse, Wesleyan is one of the most secular places on the earth, so it was not surprising that the room was still full. The spirit of John Wesley lives on in the Wesleyan passion to “do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” but it is clothed in a secular faith.

My daughter, Carolyn, was visiting with my sister, Cheryl, in New York. They called my mother, believing that “if Grammie hasn’t been raptured, then no one has been raptured.”

Keith Sanzen and Mark Truman each said that the problem was one of spelling. We should be looking for a “raptor,” rather than a “rapture.” Keith was looking for dinosaurs and Mark was looking for hawks.

On Monday morning when I Googled “May 21,” I found several “Christian” web sites still proclaiming May 21 at 6:00 p.m. as the time of judgment. One site warned readers that if you talk to your pastor about this, it is “almost certain” that he will tell you that no one can know when the end of the world might come. This, they said, was due to a willful misinterpretation of Jesus’ declaration that “no one can know” when the end will come.

Like many of you, I have had a lot of fun with the rapture predictions over the last few days. And in many ways it was exactly that, harmless fun. But I have two serious responses to the good times.

First, I am concerned that there is way too much crazy in the world. It may seem harmless for folks to believe that Elvis is still alive and doubt that a man walked on the moon, but we seem to treat reality as an optional state of mind. We doubt things that are provable and observable, and have a strange attraction for ideas and theories with no basis in reality.

Second, the rapture idea is, for many people, just one more piece of evidence that Christians believe crazy things. The craziness diminishes all of us.

There have been many predictions of the rapture since William Miller predicted that the world would end in the 1840’s. The Millerites were disappointed to find themselves still here as the decade went on, but they continued to refine their calculations, convinced that the end was near. The idea of “the rapture” really took off with the “Left Behind” series written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. They turned a small sectarian vision into an almost mainstream industry and made a fortune in the process.

One may wonder about the sincerity of folks who “lay up treasures on earth” that are almost beyond imagining by selling the idea that we are not long for this world and what really matters is our place in heaven, but they run a very successful business. The problem is that what they are selling is one more version of crazy, dressed up to look like Christian theology.

The great Methodist evangelist E. Stanley Jones was good friends with Mahatma Gandhi. Both men were often asked about the paradox of a friendship that transcended their deeply held religious convictions. Gandhi once explained, “I like your Christ, I just don’t like your Christians.” It is so often our Christian sisters and brothers who make Christianity look bad.

The theological liberalism which prevailed through the middle of the twentieth century left us with a faith which tended to be vague and bland. The rationalism of that era lacked passion, and it lacked the vibrancy that we want in a more biblically centered journey of faith. But looking back, we can now see how important it was to have a faith firmly grounded in reason.

For Methodists, reason and faith have always belonged together. This weekend reminded me again of the importance of that legacy.

Sojourners and the Missing Video

2011-05-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Jeremiah 31:31, 33-34

The Evangelical social justice movement, website and magazine, “Sojourners,” refused to run an ad from an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender) advocacy group called “Believe Out Loud.” The video in question does not advocate for gay marriage or ordination, but only for inclusion in the church. It pictures two moms and their young son going into a church where they encounter many uncomfortable silent stares until the pastor speaks and welcomes them. The message says, “Open Your Heart . . . Break the Silence.” As a footnote, the ad was funded by the Collegiate Church of New York City, known to some of us as the preaching home of Norman Vincent Peale.

The ad is innocuous, but Sojourners declared that this was an issue on which they would not “take sides.” The obvious question would be how there can possibly be “sides” to welcoming people to worship. But they know, and we know, that the goal is not just to have everyone feel welcome at Sunday morning worship.

Sojourners sees itself as a broadly based evangelical coalition focused largely on issues of economic justice. They have spoken out prophetically against racism and war, and over the years they have been remarkably faithful to the biblical witness. Their coalition is built across the political and denominational spectrum. They have made an important witness.

In rejecting the ad, Sojourners explained that if they were to take sides on this issue, they would jeopardize their coalition on the broader issues of social justice. It’s not about prejudice, said Sojourners leader Jim Wallis, it’s about priorities.

As the country song says, “the secret of life is . . . keep your eye on the ball.”

As the great preacher Henry Hitt Crane said long ago, “Don’t major in the minors.”

That’s all good as far as it goes (and I am not going to criticize either Henry Hitt Crane or Gretchen Wilson) but haven’t we heard that before? Like about half a century ago, when the issue was segregation?

When I have testified at the State House in favor of gay marriage, opponents have consistently insisted that gay rights are not the same as civil rights. And they insist that Martin Luther King would never have supported gay marriage. But as James Russell Lowell wrote in that wonderful old hymn, “new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.”

I never met Martin Luther King, but I knew two of his teachers very well. And I know that Paul Deats and Walter Muelder spent their final years advocating for gay rights.

Jim Wallis and the folks at Sojourners need to decide whether their goal is to maintain a political coalition, or to witness for the gospel. Sometimes you can’t do both.

I’m reminded of a Bob Dylan song:

Well, I rapped upon a house
With the U.S. flag upon display
I said, “Could you help me out
I got some friends down the way”
The man says, “Get out of here
I’ll tear you limb from limb”
I said, “You know they refused Jesus, too”
He said, “You’re not Him

Where is Osama bin Laden?

2011-05-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

"If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.”
Mark 9:42-48

Jesus was never shy about telling people where to go. For all his compassion, he did not suffer fools gladly. And there were times when he lost patience, even with his disciples.

In the passages preceding the declaration about the millstone and the worm and the unquenchable fire, we see the disciples listening to Jesus describing how he must go to Jerusalem even though it will mean his death. Showing a remarkable ability to miss the point entirely, they argue with each other about which one is the greatest. He tells them that they need to be “last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and in one of the best scenes in the Gospel, he took the child into his arms and said to them, “Whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me . . . welcomes the one who sent me.”

That beatific scene is followed closely by the millstone, the fire and the worm.

A week ago, when I was searching online for reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden, I came across a blog written by a woman who describes herself as an Evangelical Christian. Her comments caught my attention:

"On Sunday night as I was watching TV, my husband (who was on his computer) said, “Did you hear? Osama bin Laden is dead.” I quickly turned over to the news station to get the latest information. While I am glad that this man who has caused so much death and destruction will not be able to do so anymore, I am saddened that to our knowledge he did not come to know Christ as his Savior and will now spend eternity in hell."

Osama bin Laden will spend eternity in hell, not because he killed innocent men, women and children, apparently without regret, and sent countless others to their deaths on his command, but because he “did not come to know Christ as his Savior.”

On the other hand, if he had come to know Christ as his Savior, he would have gone to heaven. Believers are in, and non-believers are out. Believing in Jesus is your ticket to salvation; don’t leave this life without it!

For centuries, a significant line of Christian theology has held that belief in Jesus as the Christ was the one and only requirement for salvation. And conversely, many Christians have argued that the absence of belief was sufficient cause for a person to spend eternity in hell. So the “Evangelical” blogger is not alone.

In his recent book, “Love Wins,” Rob Bell has stirred a bitter backlash with his suggestion that no one is consigned to eternal torment. For many Christians, apparently, the only thing more precious than the blessed assurance that they are saved is the comfort they get from believing that others are damned.

Bell is accused of the heretical teaching that hell is not a real place. Actually, what he says is that in the time of Jesus, hell was a very specific place. The Greek word most often translated as hell is “Gehenna.” In biblical times, that was the name of a ravine outside of Jerusalem. Originally the site of pagan child sacrifice, in Jesus’ time it was a garbage dump. In Gehenna, the fires literally never went out. And wild dogs gnashed their teeth as they went through the garbage. There were some actions, said Jesus, for which one deserved to be treated like garbage.

According to a recent CNN poll, 61% of respondents think that Osama bin Laden is in hell. There was no indication as to how many thought his whereabouts had been determined by his failure to believe in Jesus and how many thought it was the result of his behavior. There was also no indication why anyone would think to conduct such a poll.

I don’t know where Osama bin Laden is. Rob Bell (and others) seem(s) to think that even after we die, in some way God continues to speak to our spirits. God does not give up.

I believe that we come from God and we go to God. Maybe sometimes it’s a long journey.

Common at the White House

2011-05-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1-5

I don’t like rap music.

Some would say that I don’t understand it, but it doesn’t sound like music to me. I know that’s what older generations said about Rock ‘n Roll, but they were wrong, and that still doesn’t make rap music real music. And I know that there’s “rap” and there’s “hip hop” and I’m not sure whether they are like the Scribes and the Pharisees, two names for the same group, or like the Pharisees and Sadducees, two very different groups that are often confused. And I also know that if any of the kids in our Youth Group read this blog they will be convinced (as if they needed convincing) that I am just old.

All of that is by way of saying that I cannot help having some sympathy with the folks who said that Michelle Obama should not have invited Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., the rapper known as “Common,” to the White House for a poetry festival.

Although Common is known to have a positive message, as least by rapper standards, he still has songs that are violent and misogynistic, and that is my real objection to rap music: the killing and the bad attitudes toward women.

At least that is what I say to myself and to others.

On the other hand, one of my favorite singers is the late Johnny Cash. I love Johnny Cash. And I believe that “Man in Black” is one of the most “Christian” songs I have ever heard. When I hear him sing about the poor and forgotten, it sounds like the Gospel to me. But have you ever heard “Folsom Prison Blues”?

When I was just a baby my mama told me. Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die

How can you sing about shooting a man "just to watch him die"?

If you listen to the album recorded live at Folsom Prison, you hear a very dark vision of humanity. There is frailty and folly, and human evil. It is an uncensored view of the human heart. One of the songs performed at Folsom Prison is “Cocaine Blues,” which includes these brutal lines:

Early one mornin' while makin' the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bed
I stuck that lovin' 44 beneath my head

He sings about murder, betrayal, and adultery, and yet in that dark vision there is a ray of light, which is revealed in the contrast. Oddly, the feeling one gets is more hope than despair. As you listen to the album, you hear a prison official interrupt every so often to announce the names of men who have “visitations,” and you are reminded that these are real people in a real place. It is brilliant. And when I listen to “Folsom Prison,” I am convinced that Johnny Cash was a genius.

When Johnny Cash was honored at the White House by President Bush in 2002, there was no criticism about the violence of his lyrics. There was nothing but praise for “The Man in Black.”

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

God and the King James Bible

2011-05-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 6:4-7

The King James Bible is four hundred years old this month.

The King James Version, also known as the “Authorized Version,” was not the first English translation. That honor belongs to William Tyndale, who produced an English translation in 1525. Unfortunately for Mr. Tyndale, his understanding of the biblical perspective on divorce did not suit Henry VIII, and the king settled the matter by arresting Tyndale for heresy and having him both strangled and burned at the stake. Apparently, when it comes to heresy you can’t be too harsh on the heretics.

The language of the KJV is spectacular. It has a poetic resonance which other translations simply cannot equal. Unfortunately, its poetry is not matched by its accuracy, and there are many passages where the original meaning is lost or obscured.

In John Wesley’s sermon, "On Charity," based on the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s First Letter to the Church in Corinth, he explains at great length that the Greek word agape, which in the King James Version is translated as “charity,” should really be translated as “love.” The mis-translation reduces Christ’s sacrificial love to a hand out.

The problems of accuracy are important (not to mention ironic) because many of those who treasure the King James Bible are also biblical literalists. The Bible they believe literally is known to be an inaccurate translation.

In a recent edition of “Word A Day,” editor Anu Garg celebrated the language of the King James Bible, but added a critical note:

If there's a god, I don't think he/she/it would care what book or which version (or any book) you read, or what name you addressed him/her/it with, or how many times in a day you bowed, or what direction you faced, or how many rituals you observed, or which animal was clean and which wasn't, or what day of the week you did what, or how many people you "saved".

Any entity worthy of being called a god would be above it all and would probably care more about how kind you were to others, and whether you left the world just a little bit better.

Sadly, we know that there are plenty of people who call themselves Christians for whom that criticism is completely valid. And they make all of us look foolish. But I want to respond in a different direction.

Just for the record, I don’t believe in “a god,” or an “entity worthy of being called a god,” or even in “a God.” I believe in the One who is revealed to Moses as the Ground of Being (Tillich’s phrase). A unity beyond our words and our understanding. The One who brings light out of darkness and life out of death. The one who is beyond every attempt to define or contain.

When the Samaritan woman met Jesus at the well, and asked him where the holiest place to worship God was, he said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” God is not contained in words. As T.S. Eliot wrote:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

Words, even the best and most poetic words, cannot hold the Spirit.

Sectarian Violence

2011-05-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
I John 4:7-8

The headline was “Sectarian Violence.” And the dateline was Cairo.

I assumed it would be a story about Muslims attacking each other. But this time the violence is between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Two churches have been burned down and at least twelve people have been killed. The official body count is perfectly divided: six Muslims and six Christians.

Many Christians and some Muslims blame the confrontation on Salafi Muslims. The Salafis are Muslim traditionalists who are often apolitical, but also sometimes radical. In recent months it has been common to use “Salafi” as a generic label for Muslim extremists.

On the other side of the conflict, the Coptic Orthodox church traces its roots to New Testament times as one of the earliest organized churches. They comprise about ten percent of the Egyptian population.

One of the most troubling historical facts for those of us who identify ourselves as religious people is the persistence of sectarian violence. There are feuds and hatreds that last for centuries.

The violence in Cairo does not appear to be organized. Like many so-called religious conflicts, the real issues may be more economic than religious. In this case it may be more about one group of underemployed young men fighting with another group of underemployed young men, than about any larger political issues, and the religious allegiances are little more than convenient labels.

But we should not take great comfort in that observation. If religious affiliation is not the root cause, it is still a flashpoint. In discussing the Doctrine of Original Sin, Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out that even the sublimest truth can be corrupted and misused. In fact, we can know that it will be corrupted. One can argue about whether religions should make claims of absolute truth. But if we do make those claims, then we must be careful about how we make them. If the absolute claims of religious truth are not understood in the context of love and tolerance, they can (and will) lead to violence.

The Bible is right. If we do not love one another, then we cannot love God.

On the Death of Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”
Luke 6:27-33

I have been reflecting on our reaction to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

This is not an easy issue. And this is not a day when many Americans are meditating on Jesus’ commandment (it wasn’t just a suggestion) to love our enemies.

It is only human to want revenge. Jesus would not have had to teach us that retaliation is wrong if we naturally avoided it. It is not surprising that we would want revenge for the killings on 9/11.

H. L. Mencken made fun of the Puritans for their objections to “Bear baiting.” They were not bothered as much by the pain it caused the bear, he said, as by the enjoyment it gave to the spectators. But I believe the Puritans were onto something. I would be much more concerned than they were about the pain inflicted on the bear, but from a moral perspective, it is also wrong to take pleasure in the pain of another being.

And that is how I feel about the celebration of Bin Laden’s death. I have no sympathy for him, but I am uncomfortable with the celebration of his death.

On the one hand, we cannot help celebrating the skill and bravery of the Navy Seals who carried out the operation. It was an impressive achievement. They deserve our praise and admiration. We have to oppose evil. And there are times when that opposition must be translated into the use of force. On the other hand, this isn’t like winning an Olympic event. People died.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed that he was called not just to resist Hitler’s theological grip on the German church, but also to stop him. To that end he joined in a secret assassination plot, and for that reason he was eventually arrested and imprisoned, and finally executed. He was convinced that he was walking in the path that faith required, and he had no regrets, but he also believe that killing, even killing a genocidal maniac like Hitler, was wrong.

He was doing the wrong thing for the right reason. If the plot had succeeded, his response would have been repentance rather than rejoicing.

In “Master’s of War,” Bob Dylan ends his bitter lament this way:

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead.

In the end, the real enemy is war itself. That is the casket we need to lower into the ground. And that is a death that even Jesus would celebrate.

Public Opinion

2011-04-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

Better to meet a she-bear robbed of its cubs
than to confront a fool immersed in folly.
Proverbs 17:12

He also said to the crowds,
“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
“And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?”
Luke 12:54-57

Jesus had a low opinion of public opinion. And that was before the polls showed that 90% of those willing to express an opinion preferred Barabbas the bandit to Jesus the rabbi.

In “Newsweek,” Niall Ferguson, who previously distinguished himself with a plan to reduce the National Debt by selling National Parks (seriously, that was his plan), writes this week about how “America finally comes to its senses and faces the fiscal facts.” As evidence, he cites a Gallup Poll showing that 17% of Americans now see the deficit as the biggest problem facing the nation. This is up from just 5% six months ago and approximately zero a year ago. I have a hard time taking someone seriously who suggested selling the Grand Canyon, but I’m glad that he’s happy.

Last week I was planning to write a blog about how public opinion had shifted on gay marriage. According to the latest poll figures, it is now supported by more than half of the American people. The majorities are slim: one poll showed 51% support and another showed 53%. By contrast, just 37% supported gay marriage in 2003. It might not be the Kingdom of God, but it looked like progress to me.

My confidence in public opinion was buoyed by the news that more than 60% of registered voters would not vote for either Sarah Palin or Donald Trump.

But then I read some other poll numbers.

One poll shows that 43% of registered voters say that “most members of congress are corrupt.” Most? That seems a little harsh. Clearly, there is corruption in congress (Ensign and Rangel come to mind). But most?

Another poll shows that 38% of Americans say that President Obama was not born in the United States. That’s a little more than twice the number of those who say he is a Muslim. How is that even possible? Did the poll also ask how many think Hawaii is part of the United States?

As Bob Dylan wisely observed:

Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time

Dylan added the amusing tag line, “I think Abraham Lincoln said that.” My guess is that if we commissioned a poll, a significant number of people would say that was true.

Schadenfreude

2011-04-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble,
or else the LORD will see it and be displeased,
and turn away his anger from them.
Proverbs 24:17-18

Schadenfreude is the joy one feels at the misery of others. It is a human reaction. Evidence, I think, of our tendency toward sin. Sometimes we can’t help it. Other times we revel in it.

The Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards talked about the joy that the elect in heaven must feel when they see the torment of those lost in hell. It is hard to imagine a more unchristian thought, but that did not seem to trouble Edwards. Among the joys imagined in Edwards’ vision of heaven was a cosmic and eternal schadenfreude.

I mention Edwards because in this respect he makes me look good. By comparison, my Schadenfreude is fairly restrained.

In February I posted a blog (“Have You Heard the Joke about the Gay Guatemalan?”) about Representative Bob Watson in response to a comment he made at a luncheon in Providence. He was criticizing the legislature for spending too much time on questions about the medical use of marijuana, illegal immigration, gay marriage, and authorizing more gambling at Twin River. And this is what he said:

“I suppose if you are a gay man from Guatemala who likes to smoke pot and gamble, you probably think we’re onto some good ideas here.”

Representative Watson was arrested at a sobriety check point in Connecticut over the weekend, and is charged with “driving under the influence” and (this is the best part) possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

It’s like skit from “The Daily Show” come to life right in front of us.

Could it be more amusing? And of course we can easily think of several ways in which it could be even more amusing, and there is amusement in that speculation.

Mr. Watson was unrepentant after his gay Guatemalan joke. In a phone interview with the Providence Journal, Watson explained, “I apologize when appropriate and/or necessary,” and he concluded, “I identify this situation as representing neither circumstance.”

My guess is that he will feel differently about this latest incident.

Jackie and Jake

2011-04-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Matthew 21:10-11

Some translations say, “the whole city was shaken,” others say, “the whole city trembled.” The Greek word translated as turmoil, or shaken, or trembled, actually refers to the shaking of the ground as in an earthquake. It has the same root as seismic.

When the Kingdom of God appears, as it did on the day we call Palm Sunday, the earth shifts under out feet. We have trouble keeping our balance.

If we are paying attention as we read the Gospels, this happens again and again. When the last are first and the first are last, convention is turned on its head. But over time, the newness and strangeness is lost on us. We get used to the story of the Prodigal Son, or the Good Samaritan and they no longer surprise us. They seem conventional, and consequently they also no longer move us.

But if we can experience it again, for the first time, the appearance of the Kingdom of God is like an earthquake.

Two stories.

The first one is easy because we have gotten used to it. In April of 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black person to play Major League Baseball (in the modern era). This happened because Branch Rickey, who was the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, made it happen. Rickey, whose full name was Wesley Branch Rickey, was a devout Christian, and he believed that integrating baseball was a sacred calling.

Shortly before Robinson’s debut, a sports writer warned Rickey that if he went through with his plan, “all hell will break loose.” Branch Rickey responded, “No, I believe all heaven will rejoice.”

When the Kingdom of God appears, it feels like an earthquake to some people, like all hell is breaking loose. But to others, this shifting of the earth is the trembling caused by a heavenly chorus.

Looking back, most of us are certain it was a heavenly chorus. And we are sure that baseball and America are better off because of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. It is hard for us to even conceive of experiencing it as that sports writer did.

The second story is more difficult.

The Smith College community is in an uproar (shaken, trembling, in turmoil) because of a decision by the Admissions Office to bar a student from actively participating as a “Gold Key” guide for prospective students.

Jake entered Smith as a woman, but since last summer has been transitioning into what he understands to be his real identity as a man. The Admissions Office had no problem with Jake as a guide when he was a woman, and they do not question his character, but they do not want a transgender student representing Smith to prospective students and their parents.

For my daughter, Carolyn, Smith ’07, and her friends, this is a clear case of discrimination. The Admissions Office is exhibiting transphobia. They need to rethink this and do the right thing. And Carolyn tells me (I’m sure I’m oversimplifying) that “gender is a social construct.”

If gender is a social construct, then that calls into question what it means to be a “women’s college.” As a proponent of women’s colleges in general, and a strong supporter of Smith in particular, I have concerns about that. I also have confidence that Smith will find its way. But beyond the specific issue at Smith, the larger issue is about how we deal with gender and identity.

Can you feel the ground shifting?

On the Anniversary of Dr. King's Death

2011-04-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the whole land. And the LORD said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. Deuteronomy 34:1, 4-5

The summer before my freshman year in college I received a letter from Wesleyan University asking whether I would mind having a Negro roommate. At the time, I was insulted by the question. What would make them think I was a racist? I rewrote the response card to indicate that I would not mind having a Black roommate, but I did object to the question.

Looking back, the experience seems surreal. Did I really grow up in a time when we thought that white people needed to be asked whether they could share a room with a person of another race? I doubt that they sent a letter to my roommate, Stewart Malloy, to ask whether he would mind having a white roommate. But to be fair, Wesleyan was embarking on a new and precedent setting path. They were the first of the elite, private, traditional liberal arts colleges to actively recruit and admit a large minority population to the student body, and they were understandably nervous. Looking back, I am proud of Wesleyan’s leadership in that historic endeavor.

When I told my grandmother Trench about the question and about my response, she said, “You know that means you’ll have a colored roommate, don’t you?” Later that fall, when Stewart came home for Thanksgiving with me, we were dis-invited from the family meal. It was the beginning of a rift that would last for years.

As the year unfolded, Stewart and I found ourselves living through a time of great racial tension and upheaval. The Wesleyan vision of integration was continually under attack from the larger white community, which wanted “more time” to do this more “gradually,” (that was before we had even reached “all deliberate speed”) and from the pressures of the growing Black pride and Black separatism movements on campus.

Our room was, at least in our minds, like the eye of the hurricane. Stewart and I talked often about racial issues, but we never had a single argument on the subject. We listened to each other, and we learned. And like many other young people, we were busy thinking about how we could change the world.

Then one night, as I sat at my desk, Stewart came back to the room in tears. “They killed him,” he said. And immediately, I knew who the “him” was. Martin Luther King, Jr., the prophet of non-violent change, had been murdered. On campus and around the country, racial tensions increased dramatically.

A few weeks later, after a meeting with the Black student group, Stewart told me that we could no longer be friends. Nothing would change in our room, but outside we would not speak to each other. It was not personal. It had nothing to do with us. It was all about larger issues in the Black student community.

Freshman year ended and we went our separate ways. I don’t believe we spoke again until our twentieth reunion. Stewart was sitting on a stone wall in front of the College of Letters. We hugged and laughed and talked for a long time. It was as if our conversation had only been briefly interrupted.

On the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, I find myself remembering and reflecting. Last night there was a program on CNN chronicling the events surrounding his death. A significant part of the report detailed the efforts of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to discredit King and to treat him as a criminal. Today, when current government leaders speak warmly of his contributions, it is easy to forget how controversial and revolutionary his message was.

Although I often lament our political polarization today, it is important to remember that we have made progress.

One Great Hour of Sharing

2011-03-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Jesus said, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!” Matthew 7:24-27

Infrastructure is important.

On April 3rd we will join with United Methodists around the world in “One Great Hour of Sharing.” The gifts we give will support and maintain the foundation of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, and make all of our relief efforts possible.

One Great Hour of Sharing began after World War II, in a time when Protestant churches were growing dramatically, and Protestant denominations were reaching cultural dominance in the United States. It was a time of optimism and institution building. People wanted to belong, and the church was at the center that belonging. We are more fragmented now. We care less about institutions and denominational labels are no longer important. In many ways, those changes are good, but they have made it much more difficult to maintain a world-wide mission.

In 2010 United Methodists gave more than ever before to support mission work around the world, beginning with a huge offering for earthquake relief in Haiti. At the same time, contributions to One Great Hour of Sharing declined by 13%. Money given to One Great Hour of Sharing doesn’t go directly to Haiti or Japan. It goes to support the infrastructure that makes relief in Haiti and Japan possible.

One Great Hour of Sharing pays for the foundation. It pays to maintain field offices and mission networks around the world. It keeps the lights on. And because OGHS keeps the lights on, when we give to special efforts in Haiti or Japan, every dollar (100%) goes directly to relief work.

In our results oriented culture, we want to see a direct connection between what we do and the difference that it makes. If it won’t make a visible difference, then we don’t want to do it. This is true in the concrete infrastructure of our country, in the roads and bridges, and it is true in the administrative infrastructure of relief organizations and churches. We have no patience with the work that must be done behind the scenes.

Infrastructure is a tough sell. People often say, “I don’t want to give money just to keep the lights on,” or “just to keep the building open.” That is understandable. It feels good to know that what we are giving is going to meet a direct need. But without the basic infrastructure, it is impossible to deliver relief efficiently.

Foundations and infrastructure are not exciting. They seldom inspire. But unless they are solid, the house will not survive the storm.

In One Great Hour of Sharing we build, sustain, and expand the foundation for a relief program that is always ready to respond around the world.

One Hundred Years Ago Today

2011-03-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor— let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.
For the wicked boast of the desires of their heart, those greedy for gain curse and renounce the LORD.
In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, “God will not seek it out”; all their thoughts are, “There is no God.”
Psalm 10:2-4

One hundred years ago today, just a few minutes before closing time on a Saturday, a fire started, probably in a waist bin, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of a Manhattan factory building. All but one of the exits had been locked to prevent the workers from taking unauthorized breaks.

Louis Waldman, later a New York State Assemblyman, was reading in a nearby library when he heard the fire companies responding. He ran out to join the crowd in the street and remembered the scene this way:

"Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies."

In the New York Times the next day the story included this grim report: “The victims who are now lying at the Morgue waiting for some one to identify them by a tooth or the remains of a burned shoe were mostly girls from 16 to 23 years of age.”

There were 146 victims in all, 129 of them women.

The Times suggested that the fire had been started by one of the machines, but an industry journal claimed that the more likely cause was smoking, which was forbidden in the factory. The industry report noted that the epidemic of factory fires was “fairly saturated with moral hazard.” In other words, the deaths were attributable to the moral failings of the workers.

The factory owners were tried for first and second degree manslaughter, but they were acquitted. The defense attorney asked a key witness, a worker who had escaped the fire, to repeat her testimony several times. After she repeated her answers almost word for word, he argued that this was evidence that she had been told what to say by the prosecutors and had memorized her testimony. Defense attorneys also claimed that the prosecution had not proved that the owners knew that the doors were locked at the specific time of the fire. Two years later, one of the owners was found guilty of illegally locking the doors on another factory and fined twenty dollars for the infraction.

When we look back, we are appalled. But it is only a few years ago that the fire at the Station night club claimed one hundred victims, and the cause of death was once again that exits were blocked, and they were not adequate. At the Station, they wanted to prevent patrons from entering without paying; at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, they wanted to prevent workers from leaving while they were being paid. But in both cases the issue was greed.

Lent and Leviticus

2011-03-17T06:30:00.000-07:00

When any of you utter aloud a rash oath for a bad or a good purpose, whatever people utter in an oath, and are unaware of it, when you come to know it, you shall in any of these be guilty. When you realize your guilt in any of these, you shall confess the sin that you have committed. And you shall bring to the LORD, as your penalty for the sin that you have committed, a female from the flock, a sheep or a goat, as a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement on your behalf for your sin.
Leviticus 5:4-6

As we entered the season of Lent our Jewish sisters and brothers entered the Book of Leviticus as their Sabbath Torah portion.

Our Lent will last for six weeks, but the reading of Leviticus will go on for three months.

I am not fond of Lent, but I feel like we get the better deal.

Our traditional Lenten observance often centers around giving up something, like dessert or chocolate. Modern observances have suggested taking on something, like a service commitment or a Bible Study. But this ritual of doing and not doing has often seemed shallow to me, and I have had a hard time appreciating its meaning. For me, observing Lent is a lot like reading Leviticus.

In a commentary on the first Torah portion, chapters 1-5, Rabbi Abigail Treu writes: “Reading Leviticus, it is clear that the reality of the people who generated the text is radically different from our own. It is a book that reads as ancient, obsolete, and irrelevant. In fact, one recent popular edition of the Bible left it out altogether.” For those seeking deep meaning in the biblical text, Leviticus is not an easy read.

We love the stories of Genesis and Exodus. We can identify with the characters and we can imagine ourselves in the stories. We are amazed and inspired. From Abraham and Sarah setting out on a journey into what God describes as “the land that I will show you,” to Jacob wrestling with God, to Moses at the burning bush, confronting a God’s presence in eternal being, “I am that I am.” The stories invite us to ask questions and explore the meaning of life.

Then the biblical narrative enters the strange world of Leviticus, and we encounter a seemingly endless list of strange commandments with little connection to our lives. In Leviticus we find lists of things that must be done, and other things that must not be done, with very little explanation.

But in her commentary, Rabbi Treu made an observation that helps us better understand the importance of Leviticus as well as the experience of Lent. "It is in Leviticus that we come to understand that stories can shape the heart, but ritual shapes our days."

Stories can shape the heart, but ritual shapes our days.

Faithful living requires more than inspiration. We also need to learn how to live and in the most practical and concrete sense we need to learn what to do on a daily basis.

The idea of animal sacrifice is repulsive to us, and it should be. But the idea of sin offering and guilt offering, and the idea that when a sin is committed by one person against another person the first concern must be to restore the broken covenant, these are important concepts. Punishing the guilty is not as important as making restitution to the one who has been injured. Restoring the covenant is an important practice.

Throughout the legal code of Leviticus the text speaks of persons who commit an offense by mistake. The repeated phrase is, “anyone who sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the LORD’s commandments ought not to be done.” If you read the actual offenses listed, in many cases it seems hard to believe that anyone could commit those offenses by mistake. But the code applies this judgment of “unintentional” retroactively. If one confesses a sin, then the very act of confession makes the sin unintentional. Restitution must still be made. The one who suffered must still be made whole. But the intention behind the act is forgiven and forgotten.

The purpose of that strange ancient list of offerings and sacrifices is to make the wounded whole, to let go of the past and embrace the future. In this season of Lent, when Christians give up things and take on things, it is useful to remember that in our rituals we are shaping our days so that they will be open to the insights and inspirations that can shape our hearts.

Lent and Equal Marriage

2011-03-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

Law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
Romans 5:20

It was in many ways the perfect Lenten experience.

Last night I spent almost six hours at the Rhode Island State House attending the State Senate hearing on Marriage Equality.

When it was finally my turn to testify, I spoke briefly (but passionately, I hope) about how I believe that God is always calling us forward as Abraham and Sarah were called to leave home and journey toward "the land that I will show you." We are working toward the Kingdom of God and we are impatient with the present because we look for a future that will be more just. And I believe that Marriage Equality is part of a more just future.

While I waited and watched, I had a lot of time to reflect and meditate. (A good Lenten discipline.)

As a Christian it is painful to hear the Bible (and Jesus!) misused to promote an unholy trinity of tradition, fear and ignorance. One woman lamented the fact that until her testimony, no one had mentioned “the sin of sodomy.” She assured us that a same sex couple cannot really teach children about sin because their lives are immersed in sin. She told us that “it grieves our Lord and Savior, and his Blessed Mother in heaven.”

The Bible has over 30,000 verses, and there are, in fact, six brief passages that condemn homosexuality. None of them are in the Gospels. Oddly, they only condemn male homosexuality. Each of the passages is problematic in one way or another. And not one of them is addressed toward a faithful, committed, monogamous same sex relationship. But listening to some of these folks one would think that everything from Genesis to Revelation was written just to condemn homosexuality.

At times I felt like I had fallen into the Bible Study from hell.

“But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

There were wonderful grace-filled stories told by parents about their gay children and by children about their gay parents. Partners told of their struggles to build a life together. A neuro-scientist talked clinically about studies of sexuality and the brain, and then introduced his brother, who is a pediatrician and cannot marry his partner.

Altogether it presented a very vivid illustration of Paul’s argument about law and grace in Romans. The more the tradionalists invoked the Law (Natural and Religious), the more “the trespass multiplied” by them against their sisters and brothers. The Law was used as a club; in the apparent belief that if they could pound home their point with sufficient force, then they could make homosexuality go away.

They are against Same Sex Marriage because they are against homosexuality, and they are against homosexuality, at least in part, because they do not believe that the Bible is a living Word. It is a dead letter. As Paul argued in his second letter to Corinth, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The dead letter of the Law can be used to wound, but it cannot heal and it cannot bring life.

We need to remind ourselves that we are called to be “ministers of a new covenant, not of letter, but of sprit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (II Corinthians 3:6)

Prayer at Cranston West

2011-03-08T09:21:00.001-08:00

When you come before God, find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense God’s grace.

Matthew 6:6 (The Message)

That verse from the Sermon on the Mount is part of the traditional Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday and it is a good commentary the prayer controversy in Cranston.

Last night the Cranston School Committee voted 4-3 to keep the prayer on the wall of the auditorium of Cranston West High School. Most of the people in the large crowd attending the meeting applauded the decision. They called on Committee members to “do the right thing.” And urged them, “not to ruin our way of life.”

This is the prayer that has been on the wall for almost fifty years:

"Our Heavenly Father,
Grant us each day the desire to do our best,
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically,
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers,
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others,
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win,
Teach us the value of true friendship,
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.
Amen."

The prayer seems harmless enough. But it should come down.

As generic prayers go, it is better than most. And it is a credit to the students who originally wrote it. But it should not be on the wall of the auditorium.

I know this in part because Christopher Young and Karen Russo want it to stay, and believe that everyone who disagrees with them will suffer eternal damnation. I trust Rhode Island’s favorite fun couple to point out the wrong side of almost every issue, though I am touched by their concern (and it is sincere) for saving souls.

For me, this is not primarily about the constitutional issue of separation of Church and State. I will let others argue about that.

This is about how Christians should interact with the world. We should be open and tolerant and accepting of others who do not share our faith. We don’t need the school committee or the town or the state to put a prayer on the wall of the high school. We need prayer in our hearts.

We need to spend time before God. We need to “just be there as simply and honestly as we can manage.” We need to “let the focus shift from us to God.” We need to “begin to sense God’s grace.”

Martin Marty, a church historian at the University of Chicago for many years, often commented on the irony of “Christians” who seldom bothered to say grace at home complaining bitterly about the lack of prayer in public schools. Forcing prayer on children and youth in school isn’t about faith; it’s about control and conformity.

Jessica Ahlquist, a sophomore from Cranston West, talked about how she felt that as an atheist she was being discriminated against. She said that it was wrong “for a majority to say that you can take away a minority right.” She said it was un-American.

It’s also un-Christian.

Sex and Basketball at BYU

2011-03-04T14:18:00.000-08:00

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Matthew 7:13-14

As I ate my bagel at Panera this morning, the man at the next table was engaged in a loud and animated conversation. He gestured with his hands and waved his arms. It was even more entertaining because he was sitting alone, talking into the earpiece of his cell phone, which was not visible most of the time.

And across from him at the next table a man hunched over and talked in low tones into his cell phone. The only thing I heard was, “Next time, make sure he talks to me first.” He said it twice, looking worried and annoyed.

When I left, the animated talker was still going strong, excitedly describing the scene outside, where a tractor-trailer came close to crushing a car because the driver of the car did not want to wait for the truck to complete a wide turn.

The world, I thought to myself, is pretty crazy.

Then I got in my car just in time to hear one of the sports radio guys say, “Wouldn’t you want your daughter to go there? Wouldn’t you be happy to have your daughter go there? I mean, you can be sure they don’t have a ‘vagina club’ . . .” And I knew what was coming next, “. . . like Wesleyan.” It’s always good to have folks talk about my alma mater.

But the subject wasn’t Wesleyan. That was just for contrast. The subject was BYU.

Brigham Young University basketball star Brandon Davies has been suspended from the basketball team for breaking the honor code. He had sex with his girl-friend and that violates the honor code requirement to “live a chaste and virtuous life.”

The reaction has been interesting. In general, the sports folk seem to say, “HOW COULD THEY DO THIS? WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?” One guy said it just plain “creeps me out.”

There are lots of seasons in which people take little notice of BYU basketball. But not this year. Until Davies was suspended, they had a legitimate chance at a number one seed in the NCAA tournament, and a good shot at getting to the Final Four. A national championship was not out of the question. I watched the game against San Diego State, and they were impressive. And they were fun to watch. They have a guard, Jimmer Fredette (that really is his name), who leads the country in scoring. He is the best shooter to play at BYU since Danny Ainge.

And now it’s all gone.

For sports commentators, this defies reason. “Can you imagine,” asked one incredulous talk-show host, “they would rather maintain the purity of their religious ideals, than go the final four?”

How can religion be more important than sports? Is nothing sacred? When you think about it, what is more sacred in America than sex and sports? As one commentator put it, on most college teams that kind of disclosure would get Brandon Davies a round of high fives, not a dismissal.

Do not misunderstand. I am not lining up on the side of total abstinence before marriage. On the other hand, I’m also not comfortable with casual promiscuity. And then there is the issue of how the BYU officials found out. How does Davies’ girl-friend feel about all of this becoming public? Isn’t the embarrassment inflicted on the girl-friend actually a greater sin than having pre-marital sex?

But the thing that strikes me most is the way in which the punishment is seen as so extreme. Is basketball really that important?

We can argue about whether sexual abstinence, even in a committed relationship, is an important aspect of faithful living. Personally, I don’t think it is. But at some point and in some way we have to agree that faithful living is important. Even more important than basketball.

Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God

2011-03-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
John 3:16-17

The sixteenth verse of the third chapter of John’s Gospel is one of the best loved verses in the Bible. And for good reason. It declares God’s unlimited love for the world and promises that everyone who gives his or her heart to Jesus will have eternal life, now and forever.

But that verse is also one of the most controversial and divisive verses in the Bible. For many Christians, what it means is that those who believe in Jesus are saved, and go to heaven, while those who don’t believe in Jesus are lost, and go to hell.

The uncomfortably common paraphrase would read something like this, “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that those who did not believe in him would go to hell.”

Of course if you phrase it that way, almost no one would own it. But for many Christians the idea that someone is going to hell is at the core of their beliefs.

In my Christmas Eve sermon last December I shared my belief that God’s grace is unlimited, that no one is left out, and that in the end we all go to God. As I spoke, a whole row at the back of the church emptied out. A young woman stood up, looking very unhappy, and then motioned for her companions to follow her. Maybe she was just taken with a sudden and urgent need for the rest room, but they didn’t come back and my guess is that she was not about to have her Christmas Eve spoiled by some preacher telling her that God loves everyone.

Over the weekend, Rob Bell, the Evangelical mega-church pastor who wrote “Velvet Elvis,” came under a strong attack because his new book apparently denies that God will condemn anyone to eternal damnation. The book is called, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and it is due for publication later this month.

Bell is being called a heretic. The critics say that in traditional Christian theology heaven and hell are real places. And they say that though there are many issues that divide Catholics and Protestants; this is not one of them. The traditionalist critics believe that God loves everyone, but that those who do not believe in Jesus as their personal savior are condemned to hell.

The same critics have come after Brian McLaren for the same reasons.

Rob Bell’s position is not really new. We would have to search long and hard for a theologian who really believed in the “lake of fire.” Maybe Jonathan Edwards?

Rick Warren, the Mega-Church Pastor who wrote The Purpose Driven Life, says that he believes in hell. But for Warren, hell is being separated from God. What he believes is that we choose to be near to God or separated from God, and that choice determines our destiny. It’s a long way from the eternal fire.

People want to believe in hell because they want others to be punished. The love of judgment (when applied to others!) is part of our sinful nature. Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” And the truth is that we love that image.

But if we look at the whole of scripture and if we really consider the life and teachings of Jesus, then the idea of a literal hell simply will not bear close examination. As Rob Bell asks in a promotional video for his book, “Does anyone really believe that Mahatma Gandhi is burning in hell?”

The reality of our lives is that we are sinners, just as Jonathan Edwards said, and we are in the hands of God, but the more theologically accurate title for our life story would be, “Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.”

Unemployed Need Not Apply

2011-02-25T09:49:00.001-08:00

You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.

Deuteronomy 24:14-15

The Bible has a clear vision about work: it is a good thing. It is good to work and it is good to earn a living. And workers should be paid a fair wage.

Work is not just an economic necessity; it is a spiritual necessity.

And therefore unemployment is not just an economic problem; it is also a spiritual problem. In biblical terms, the purpose of work is not simply to provide for the worker and the family of the worker. Work knits the fabric of society together. Work adds to the common good and the commonwealth. Work builds community.

As the country (and the world) drags its way out of the great recession, we still face one of the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression. Around the country, the average unemployment rate is a little less than 10 percent. Some economists estimate that when we add those who are technically unemployed (out of work and actively looking for a job) to those who are significantly underemployed and those who have become so discouraged in the job search that they have given up, the real number is closer to 20 percent. In some neighborhoods and among some demographic groups, it is much worse.

Writing in the New York Times, Bob Herbert tells of a forty-six year-old teacher from Charlotte, Vermont, who wrote to his Senator, Bernie Sanders. “I am financially ruined,” he wrote. “I find myself depressed and demoralized and my confidence is shattered. Worst of all, as I hear more and more talk about deficit reduction and further layoffs, I have the agonizing feeling that the worst may not be behind us.”

Another writer, a woman with two teenagers wrote about her husband, a building contractor for many years, who cannot find work: “I see my husband, capable and experienced, now really struggling with depression and trying to reinvent his profession at age 51. I feel this recession is leaving us, once perhaps a middle-class couple, now suddenly thrust into the lower-middle-class world without loads of options except to try and find more and more smaller jobs to fill in some of the financial gaps we feel day to day.” And she concludes, “All we want to do is work hard and pay our bills. We’re just not sure even that part of the American Dream is still possible anymore.”

But the spiritual dimensions of the problem are most evident, not in the stories of the unemployed themselves, but in the attitude that some potential employers have taken toward them. If you Google the phrase, “unemployed need not apply,” you will get an avalanche of appalling stories. No one uses that precise phrase, but one manufacturer posted a job announcement with the declaration that “No Unemployed Candidate Will Be Considered At All,” and a Texas electronics company that announced online that it would “not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.”

Last year a research project at Rutgers University found that 70 percent of those responding to a national survey had either lost a job, or had a relative or close friend who had lost a job. What I want to know is, who are the other 30 percent? I thought everybody had a “close friend or relative who had lost a job."

In the current economic climate, blaming the unemployed for their unemployment is cruel, and discriminating against them is just plain wrong. It ought to be illegal.

Selfishness motivates those who “have” to separate themselves from those who “have not.” But one of the tragic lessons of this great recession is that the “haves” are often not that far from joining the “have nots.” The people who seem securely employed today may find themselves unemployed next year are next week.

Writing about the Christian community which came together in the Confessing Church in opposition to Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts the spiritual dimension of work in context:

“In a Christian community, everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable. A community which allows unemployed members to exist within it will perish because of them. It will be well, therefore, if every member receives a definite task to perform for the community, that he may know in hours of doubt that he, too, is not useless and unusable. Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship.”

Collective Bargaining

2011-02-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.
I Corinthians 3:7-9

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
I Corinthians 15:58

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
Galatians 6:2

As you read about and watch the demonstrations and disputes in Wisconsin, you may wonder where the church stands in this.

The history of the Church in relation to labor is less than perfect. And that is particularly true for Protestant Churches.

Historically Protestants have tended to line up on the side of the employers. There was a natural affinity because the factory owners were often Protestant, and the workers were often Roman Catholic.

A partial exception to this pattern is found in the many Methodist Churches that sprang up in mill towns across New England. In the classic pattern there is a large majestic Congregational Church on the village green, and then down a side street and across the river by the factory there is a little Methodist Church. But even in those churches, which were sometimes supported and maintained by the mill owners, the preaching on economic issues was kind to the employers and skeptical of the workers.

In spite of that history, most Protestant Churches adopted a Social Creed around the turn of the last century. And most of those Creeds supported the rights of workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining. The Methodist Church adopted a Social Creed in 1908 and has consistently affirmed the rights of workers.

The original Creed called for the “abolition of child labor, the suppression of the “sweating system,” and “for the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.”

And then there is this remarkable statement. In that document from over a hundred years ago, the church declared its support “For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.” In our “winner take all” economics of today, we probably need a footnote that makes clear they meant the workers and not the owners. The goal of responsible Christians, they believed, was for workers to be paid as much as possible within the limits of a given industrial context. And for the benefits of industry to be equitably (not “equally”) divided for the benefit of society.

None of this gives us specific direction in Wisconsin. It gives broad context and it gives us a general direction. There is room for argument in the details of pensions, health insurance payments, salaries, and working conditions. And we may disagree on the definition of “afford.”

But within the details there is a critical principle which is in danger, and that is the right to collective bargaining. Without the right to collective bargaining, labor is at an overwhelming disadvantage.

In spite of Jesus’ concern for those at the bottom of the economic scale, Christians in the United State have raised little objection to the vast income redistribution from the bottom to the top over the past thirty years. The elimination of collective bargaining is one more way to make that shifting permanent.

The issues today are complex and controversial, just as they were in 1908. The original Social Creed ends with the declaration that the Methodist Church stands "For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills." By saying that, they did not mean that we should write Jesus's teachings into our laws. They meant that as we write our laws and confront the issues of our time, we should remember who we are and whose we are.

(The Methodist Social Creeds from 1908 and 2008 are printed below)

1908 Methodist Social Creed

The Methodist Episcopal Church stands:
For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.

For the principles of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.

For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.

For the abolition of child labor.

For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.

For the suppression of the "sweating system."

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.

For a release for [from] employment one day in seven.

For a living wage in every industry.

For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.

For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.

2008 United Methodist Social Creed

We believe in God, Creator of the world; and in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of creation. We believe in the Holy Spirit, through whom we acknowledge God’s gifts, and we repent of our sin in misusing these gifts to idolatrous ends.

We affirm the natural world as God’s handiwork and dedicate ourselves to its preservation, enhancement, and faithful use by humankind.

We joyfully receive for ourselves and others the blessings of community, sexuality, marriage, and the family.

We commit ourselves to the rights of men, women, children, youth, young adults, the aging, and people with disabilities; to improvement of the quality of life; and to the rights and dignity of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.

We believe in the right and duty of persons to work for the glory of God and the good of themselves and others and in the protection of their welfare in so doing; in the rights to property as a trust from God, collective bargaining, and responsible consumption; and in the elimination of economic and social distress.

We dedicate ourselves to peace throughout the world, to the rule of justice and law among nations, and to individual freedom for all people of the world.

We believe in the present and final triumph of God’s Word in human affairs and gladly accept our commission to manifest the life of the gospel in the world. Amen.

(It is recommended that this statement of Social Principles be continually available to United Methodist Christians and that it be emphasized regularly in every congregation. It is further recommended that "Our Social Creed" be frequently used in Sunday worship.)
From The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church - 2000. Copyright 2000 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.

Did You Hear the Joke About the Gay Guatemalan?

2011-02-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
Psalm 51:1-2

Confession is not easy. But it is necessary.

(Before I go any further I need to confess that I am pointing out a speck in someone else’s eye when I have a log in my own eye. When it comes to inappropriate remarks, I have made my share. But the awareness of may own failings has never stopped me from pointing out the failings of others, so here we go.)

At a luncheon with business leaders in Providence last week, my State Representative and the House minority leader, Robert Watson, made headlines with a sarcastic remark. He was criticizing the legislature for spending too much time on questions about the medical use of marijuana, illegal immigration, gay marriage, and authorizing more gambling at Twin River. And this is what he said:

“I suppose if you are a gay man from Guatemala who likes to smoke pot and gamble, you probably think we’re onto some good ideas here.”

It got a good laugh.

The Guatemalan community was outraged. The gay community has heard a lot worse and took little notice. (Please think about that . . .)

At a news conference in Providence, David Quiroa, president of the Guatemala American Alliance called on Watson to apologize. He also said that he was disappointed in the people in the audience for laughing at the remark. Watson responded that the audience appreciated the remark for what it was, a non-insulting comment about misplaced priorities.

In a phone interview with the Providence Journal, Watson explained, “I apologize when appropriate and/or necessary,” and he concluded, “I identify this situation as representing neither circumstance.”

And he explained, “I was highlighting the misplaced priorities in [the State House] this year. I was using political sarcasm to make my point. Sometimes, political sarcasm or levity can make a point more forcefully than serious sober commentary. . . . Social issues are important, and I know we can walk and chew gum at the same time. But we’re in fiscal financial collapse here in Rhode Island.… We’ve got cities and towns on the brink of bankruptcy. We’ve got unfunded pension funds that are ticking time bombs. And we’re preoccupied by issues that do nothing to solve those problems.”

As James Carville famously advised candidate Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

And there is a truth there which transcends narrow political gains and losses. Jesus talked about economics almost all the time. The Bible has something like 6,900 verses (not my personal count!) about how we treat the poor. Issues of economic justice are at the very center of Jesus’ portrayal of what the Kingdom of God will be. I might not agree with Representative Watson on the solutions to our economic problems, but I do agree on the priority of the issues.

But social issues are important.

And when it comes to minority rights, those who enjoy the privileges of the majority will always be tempted to think of those rights as secondary to more important matters.

In terms of Representative Watson’s remarks, I see two issues. First, he does need to apologize to the Guatemalan community, and to the gay community, for using them to make a joke. And second, he needs to see that although issues of marriage equality and immigration have little effect on his personal life, they do matter to real people.

Out of Egypt

2011-02-12T04:43:00.000-08:00

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’
Luke 17:20-21

When Jesus was asked about signs of the Kingdom, he said that we will not be able to point and say, “Look, there it is!” Because it is, in fact, among us, and around us, and even within us.

Christians talk a lot about the Kingdom of God coming among us. We pray for it, and on our best days we even work for it. And when we look at the vast sweep of world history, we can see that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Still, it is not often that we can actually see it bending in front of us.

But when Omar Suleiman announced that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was leaving after thirty years of rule, and Tahrir Square erupted with shouts of “God is great,” we could say with our Muslim sisters and brothers, “Amen.” In 18 days, without weapons, the people of Egypt overthrew a dictator. It is an astonishing achievement.

Just to be clear, I know that Egypt is not the Kingdom of God. And we all know that nations are not built without struggle. The balance is fragile right now.

It is not over. And the future is uncertain. We don’t know what will happen as a military council takes “temporary” control. The road from overthrowing a dictatorship to establishing a stable democracy will be difficult. But this is a stunning moment.

Jesus presented an alternative to the Empire. The Romans also believed in peace, but they believed that peace was only possible through conquest, “peace through victory.” Jesus’ non-violent alternative was “peace through justice.”

When modern Christians read what Jesus said about the Kingdom of God, our tendency is to think that it is not realistic. It is, we tell ourselves, an impossible ideal.

It is naïve. Non-violence, we tell ourselves, does not work in the real world. We see it as a description of what ought to happen, but in our hearts we do not believe that it is possible.

Maybe we need to expand our concept of “possible.”

Thoughts on Gay Marriage

2011-02-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Matthew 5:11-12

Yesterday I went to the State House to testify in favor of a bill to legalize same sex marriage. I was there from 3:30 until about 11:30, but it seemed a lot longer than that.

The people against same sex marriage, representing the National Organization for Marriage, were mostly polite, although a few shouted loudly and incoherently. But they made it clear that they were certain that homosexuals were going to hell for their “chosen lifestyle,” and those who supported them would go to hell with them. And they made it clear that they were the real “victims” in all of this. They were the ones who were being marginalized and oppressed.

I will never cease to be amazed at the capacity of those who have privilege to feel like victims when even the smallest part of that privilege is questioned.

As the evening wore on, I changed my testimony in order to answer some of the issues raised by opponents, but this is the statement I originally intended to make:

My name is Bill Trench and I am pastor of the East Greenwich United Methodist Church. In our United Methodist tradition the pastor does not speak for the church. My calling is to speak to the church and to the world on behalf of the Gospel.

As a matter of civil rights, I believe that Gay and Lesbian persons are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexuals, and that includes the right to marry the person with whom he or she is in love.

As a Christian, my support for Gay Marriage is rooted and grounded in the theology of marriage itself. Marriage is a covenant between two people; a promise made before God and the community to love one another forever. We make this commitment in spite of the fact that we know that forever is not ours to give; it belongs to God. And the fulfillment of the commitment is never just a human effort; it is always a gift of grace.

The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that when we see people making the commitment of marriage, knowing it is a leap of faith, it should make us proud to be human beings. He also wisely observed that it is not love that keeps us married; it is marriage that keeps us in love. For years we have criticized what we have seen as the promiscuity of the Gay community, without offering a real alternative for faithful commitment.

As a pastor, I have been celebrating the covenant of marriage with couples for the better part of four decades. When we meet to talk about marriage, we spend a session talking in depth about their relationship, and I ask them a series of questions. We talk about their plans and expectations. Somewhere in that process, I ask them, “What is your greatest fear for your marriage?” We talk about all sorts of things; money, children, illness, death, infidelity, addiction, and boredom. But in all those years, no one has ever said, “Pastor Bill, my greatest fear is that if gay people are allowed to marry, I won’t feel the same way about our relationship.”

As a pastor, I know that the greatest threat to marriage is a lack of commitment. Marriage can also be threatened by a lack of communication or trust. But neither my marriage nor yours can be threatened by the longing of others to enter into that same commitment. At a time when heterosexual commitment seems to be in short supply, I find it incredibly moving to see Gay and Lesbian couples lined up at city halls to promise their love to one another.

As a student of the Bible, I am well aware of the verses and passages that are used to condemn homosexuality (curiously, they only condemn male homosexuality). But I also know that when the devil came to tempt Jesus, he quoted Scripture. And I know that the overwhelming thrust of the biblical Word, from Creation to Revelation, from the Exodus to Resurrection, from the Prophets to Paul’s Letters, from Torah to the Gospel, is a story of grace and liberation.

When the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, condemned slavery over two hundred years ago, he did so knowing that the Bible offered more than ample verses and passages indicating that slavery was permissible. Wesley knew, as other Abolitionists knew, that the Spirit of the Bible was leading them beyond the letter. That was true again in issues of women’s rights. And it is true now as we address the issues surrounding the rights of Gay and Lesbian persons.

We stand now on the brink of an historic opportunity to extend the rights and responsibilities of marriage to our Gay and Lesbian sisters and brothers. I believe it is truly a gift of grace.

The Day the Music Died

2011-02-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

And in the streets: the children screamed,

The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.

But not a word was spoken;

The church bells all were broken.

And the three men I admire most:

The father, son, and the holy ghost,

They caught the last train for the coast

The day the music died.

Don McLean

There are people screaming in the streets of Cairo, but for a few minutes I’m thinking about the Midwest instead of the Middle East. And the past rather than the present.

Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) died fifty two years ago today in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

They were on a tour called "The Winter Dance Party," which was scheduled to cover two dozen Midwestern cities in three weeks. The logistical challenges of transporting several bands by bus to so many cities in such a short time were significant. When they got to Clear Lake, Holly suggested to his band mates that they charter a plane to take them to the next stop in Moorhead, Minnesota.

They made arrangements for a 21 year-old local pilot, Roger Peterson, to fly them in a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza. The plane seated three passengers in addition to the pilot. Because he had developed a case of the flu, Richardson asked Waylon Jennings if he would agree to give up his seat on the plane. When Holly heard about it, he told Jennings he hoped the “ol’ bus freezes up,” and Jennings responded in jest, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes". Those words would haunt Waylon Jennings for the rest of his life.

The plane crashed shortly after take-off, caused by a combination of bad weather and pilot error. Because he was unfamiliar with the instruments in the Beechcraft, the young pilot may have thought the plane was ascending when it was actually going down.

I was too young to really notice when it happened. I was not old enough to care about Rock and Roll. But I feel a melancholy sadness looking back.

The music didn’t really die. In fact, you can argue that it got better. But I cannot listen to Buddy Holly without thinking that something wonderful was lost. The music was special.

On this day I am reminded (if I need reminding) that life is fragile and precious, and that every day is a gift.

Everyday it's a gettin' closer,

Goin' faster than a roller coaster,

Love like yours will surely come my way,

hey,

Our Children Will Lead Us

2011-02-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11:6

On Monday Barbara Bush appeared in a video supporting marriage equality.

No, not the original Barbara Bush, her granddaughter, one of the twin daughters of George W. and Laura Bush.

Perhaps the best thing about this is how little excitement it has generated. No one is surprised. In a television interview this past May, Laura Bush responded to a question about gay marriage by saying, “When couples are committed to each other and love each other” they should have “the same sort of rights that everyone has.” Cindy McCain and her daughter Meghan have been even more outspoken in support of marriage equality. Which makes some of us wonder whether the male politicians in those families hold the same views in private that they espouse in public.

There is a gender divide on this issue, but even more significantly, there is a generational divide. For younger people it is simply a non-issue. This is a place where our children will lead us.

The Barbara Bush video, and the lack of response to it, carries a sense of inevitability about it. This sense of inevitability can be a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it encourages us to trust the future. The curse is that it may cause us to forget that we still have a role in shaping that future.

As Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He took that idea from another great preacher. Theodore Parker was a 19th century Unitarian preacher in Boston, an abolitionist and a fierce champion of social justice. In 1853 Parker said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eyes reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

The Barbara Bush video reminds me that God is still at work, and Theodore Parker was right.

Love as a Bold Act: Remembering Sargent Shriver

2011-01-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
Luke 10:25-28

Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. was a devout Christian. I don’t know whether or not he chose a “life verse” from scripture, but when I look at his life I see a connection to the “Great Commandment” to love God and neighbor. And he lived out of Jesus' promise, "Do this, and you will live."

As a young man Shriver was a member of the “America First” movement that opposed involvement in the “European War.” But he enlisted in the Navy before Pearl Harbor because he believed that it was his duty to serve his country, even if he disagreed with its policies. I don’t know what changed a young isolationist into a champion of international responsibility. But his lasting legacy is one of service to the highest ideals international peace and justice.

Sargent Shriver was the first Director of the Peace Corps, which began fifty years ago as one of the key initiatives of President Kennedy in his first months in office.

Writing in the New York Times, Bono tells of his friendship with Shriver, which began when he asked for Shriver’s help in promoting international efforts to help debtor nations. Shriver was immediately supportive and enthusiastic, and helped to network support across the country.

Bono explained Shriver’s dedication to peace and justice as an outgrowth of his faith. He writes, “He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship. Love, yes, but love as a brave act, a bold act, requiring toughness and sacrifice."

In Sargent Shriver, Bono saw a man whose faith was directly connected to action, and for whom one’s work for others was a sacred calling. Shriver believed that “For the Word to become flesh, we had to become the eyes, the ears, the hands of a just God.” In this way injustice could be overcome and justice could be established.

In an article in the Boston Globe, Mark Gearan, who was director of the Peace Corps from 1995 to 1999, and is now President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, wrote:

At the 20th anniversary of the Peace Corps, Shriver quoted Yale President Bartlett Giamatti’s 1981 commencement address: “What concerns me most today is the way . . . we have created thoughtful citizens who disdain politics and politicians when more than ever we need to value politics and what politicians do; when more than ever we need to recognize that the calling to public life is one of the highest callings a society can make.’’ It’s a point that should be made again today.

In a time when there is so much cynicism about government, it is good to remember the optimism of “Camelot.” In those years of rising expectations, there was more than a little turbulence and chaos, but it is good to remember that it was also a time of national and individual altruism. It was not really “Camelot.” It was far from perfect. Some of it was not even good. But there was for many of us a shared vision of what we could become as a nation. We dreamed great dreams for the greater good. And we even achieved some of them. Sargent Shriver was a crucial part of the dreaming and the achieving.