We Said Nothing

I should have written a before and an after post. One before I watched The Passion and one after just to see where it has taken me. For our Public Theology class we were instructed to watch Mel Gibson's movie The Passion and I very reluctantly found it in our video store and brought it home. I find violent movies to be damaging to my spirit and I choose not to damage my spirit as much as I have choice in it. So, where did this movie take me? There is too much to say in this one post.

I have to admit, I don't know the story of Christ's Passion. I didn't sit in a single Sunday school class as a child and I am just beginning to recognize the power in the Bible. I have so much to learn! I didn't know that Judas got money for turning in Jesus to the authorities or that he hung himself in sorrow due to his betrayal. I didn't know that no one who was expected to come to Christ's aid did not. To me, this was the most heartbreaking part of the story. I wept when his friends kept quiet while he was beaten and called blasphemer. He was alone in his suffering as the crowd watched, perhaps some cheering, some in awe, some frozen with terror. Gibson had Satan walking through the crowds of onlookers. This immediately reminded me of Professor Thistlethwaite's recent op-ed where she wrote Gibson's portrayal in this scenario was sadly and disturbingly accurate in that "the Devil is always in the crowd that stands by and in so doing abets horrific mass torture and death."

Why do we say nothing? This is the first place this movie took me. I wept for the fact that we watch suffering and betrayal in one form or another on a daily basis and often do nothing. Maybe is this one of the greatest lessons we are taught in the Bible. Loyalty to humanity and God means speaking up when you don't want to, when you fear for your safety, reputation or status. Am I to take from this that we failed to speak up for God? Is this sin to be repeated again and again?

Sometimes it is the stranger, the one we fear or have ignored in the past who comes, even begrudgingly, to our assistance, carries our cross with us, holds our broken heart and hands and gives us comfort. That is why we love the stranger for just when the world gets dark there is light that can come from unexpected places. This is a testimony to the power of God's love for us all. He is everywhere.

Amen.

1. Believe More

I don’t think it’s too soon to make my New Year’s Resolutions. I can start with the usual like eat less, exercise more, keep in better contact with family and friends, learn how to mediate, start practicing yoga – baby steps…. This is a good start I think. It is missing something though. I just read an op-ed in the New York Times called Taking Science on Faith by Paul Davies. It is about the inevitable and ironic intersection of science and religion in faith. He remarks that as a student he was told the job of the scientist “is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.” This did not stop him from wondering about “why the laws of physics are what they are.” In other words, what is the source of these laws? Davies asserts that scientists, for good reason, are generally not too comfortable with this type of questioning. If reason desserts us at this point, “then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.” Ultimately, like religion, science must rely on faith, “namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too.” We must believe in those things unseen, not “based on testable hypotheses.”

What my list is missing is believing more. Faith needs to be at the top of my list in red ink and underlined in bubble letters. Critical analysis and skepticism are healthy, productive and necessary but they are at some point useless. I can question the laws of the universe and the evils of humanity and will likely never know the truth of origin, of reason, of purpose and despondent give up the church, the Book, living life in its fullest but I don’t want to do this for where else would I go? Barbara Brown Taylor writes that it is with Jesus and within the church community “where we have heard the words of eternal life.” Here is “where we have come to believe and know the Holy One of God.” So, nurturing my belief, my faith in human goodness, in Christ, and in the good news gives me life and energy for the rest of my endeavors.

Amen.

Bottomless Blessings

On the eve of Thanksgiving I will take a moment to count my blessings. I can tell you that last week, at peak fall color, I got to sit on my couch in my living room around noon and watch the gold fall from the trees and pool at their bases. I know that God cushioned the blow for them when they came to rest. I am blessed every time I get to witness, unhurried, earth’s cycle and glory.

I am blessed. I can’t be afraid to say it in fear that it will go away. Alternatively, I read in an article by a 9/11 widow that she believed that by voicing the blessings she and her husband shared in love and life they were insuring themselves against tragedy. Perhaps nothing can protect us from harm. The only thing we do know is that we must get back up after tragedy, after failing, after hitting bottom.

The blessing of abundance is due every human. So while I list my joys I need to keep in mind my brothers and sisters who are not partaking in the feast today or tomorrow. Yes, I love my family. My children are love in flesh. The amazing gift they give is they show me that the human heart’s capacity for love is bottomless. I am grateful for friendship, excellent health and my church community. I love my books and my Seminary and the silly things that make me smile and take my mind off of the hungry world for just a minute.

What about this hungry world? Mark Winne recently wrote an article in the Washington Post about canned compassion. This is a wonderful term aptly describing our holiday overindulgence of both cake and compassion. Today we would like the hungry fed but as Winne states, this “cycle of need -- always present, rarely sated, never resolved -- will continue.” It will continue past Thursday and into shopping frenzy Friday. I don’t mean to judge. I like to shop too. I like the things wrapped in pretty papers that don’t change any systems or people for the better. I understand that trying to fix poverty is much more difficult than dropping cans of corn and boxes of pasta into a plastic bin. However, we must understand, and care once we understand, that these offerings are maintenance. Winne asserts that the donors and those relying on them are “trapped in an ever-expanding web of immediate gratification that offered the recipients no long-term hope of eventually achieving independence and self-reliance.” Most people are too tired or too disinterested in the “task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States.”

Food insecurity is one symptom of the larger problem of poverty and if we continue down the endless road of creating more and more food banks for the ever increasing hungry population then we are merely helping to dig a deeper hole for us all.

I believe that the abundance in our lives is meant to be shared. It is not meant to shrink our hearts out of fear or inspire tighter fists around our coins. Our abundance is tied up to the abundance of our neighbor and stranger. This Thanksgiving I pray that the blessing of compassion does not stop with a can of soup for compassion born of love is bottomless, creative and hopeful for those in need of more than just a sandwich and a prayer. Let us, let me, have the courage today and tomorrow and after the philanthropy party has ended to stare hunger and its begetter in the face. If even a few of us named it and demanded change the lines would shorten and all of our blessings would grow.

Maybe...

In light of our class discussions on torture and definitions of what it means to be human I wanted to share a way my congregation took a step to humanize those who are collectively dehumanized, prisoners.

I have been very interested in the prison ministry Companions Journeying Together and saw an opportunity for my congregation to get involved by writing Christmas cards to incarcerated men and women. It is difficult at times to distinguish between giving charity versus giving justice and I pray that today we gave a little bit of justice with our words of love and hope.

Those who participated, many who were the youth of our church, thought long and hard about what to write in the cards. At every opportunity members of the Mission Committee spoke with the children and adults who struggled with what to write to strangers we are often taught through media to view as having little to no human value and dignity. We asked them to imagine being away from their families for the Holidays and how if would feel if one's sibling or parent were incarcerated. We stressed they are ordinary people just like us who might have made some bad choices, might be innocent, might have just been trying to survive. We are all just trying to survive.

Sounded mostly like charity to me but then I read some of messages in the cards and our children said things about God's love, joy and peace in the world, new beginnings and hope. They all wrote about Hope. There is the justice. I don't think we share our hope with strangers we think are less human than us. Maybe. We all need Hope. That is why we have God. Maybe, just maybe, a prisoner became a person to one of these children or to their parent. Then, maybe they will be a little less tolerant of torture, a corrupt criminal justice system, and the dehumanisation that occurs when a man, a woman or a child drops their identity into a cardboard box and walks into a place where fear and complacency reign. Maybe one card reaching one person might change her life by reminding her of her humanity.

Amen.

Some More Thoughts on Torture

In regards to Torture, and specifically to waterboarding, we, as Christians, have further dishonored God by using the same Baptismal waters (in essence all water can be seen as healing and cleansing and thus sacred) we wash ourselves in and with for our personal and spiritual rebirth, to destroy the God given human dignity in another person. This is sacrilegious and a sin in its greatest sense. We have sinned against our God by taking away the humanity of a soul made in the image of God.

Jesus stepped into the river with us because, to paraphrase Barbara Brown Taylor, he did not want to be separated from us. Baptism is the new gift of life and we “invite the newcomers to step into the river with Jesus, so that their beings are wrapped up with all other beings: the well ones, and the hurt ones, the brave ones and the weak ones, the successful ones and the ones who cannot seem to get anything right.” Waterboarding sanctifies evil and dismisses as insignificant Jesus’ communion with us at the river’s edge.

I pray for those souls we have abandoned and violated through deliberate acts of harm and for those, especially Christians who understand the sacredness of Baptismal water, who have lost their souls, which are, as Professor Thistlethwaite asserts,” the root from which decency arises”. The truth is we all fall a little farther from our Father when someone is tortured. The intimacy of torture carves out the heart of the torturer and leaves an empty shell for the world. Emotion and compassion are entirely suppressed. Whoever was the torturer stays the torturer and the tortured are likely never to fully reclaim their humanity again.
Help us to remember our Baptisms and our vows to love one another, all made in the image of God.

Amen.

Here I Go Again.

I am afraid it has happened. I have yet again become what it is I most fear. One would think I would have learned the lesson of restrained judgment from years of having falsely judged others. Take the time, pre-baby, I was horrified by mothers who chose not to breastfeed. I then of course found myself crying over my imperfect anatomy that made nursing agonizing and almost impossible. I cried giving my baby a bottle of formula but was also so grateful there was an alternative. I have also been scathing in my criticism for the desperate mothers and fathers who run through McDonald’s drive thrus to quiet the raging storms in the back of their vans. Needless to say my kids yell out as we drive by the golden arches, “EIO!!” (as in Old MacDonald). French fries are their best friends.

Well, clearly the lesson did not stick. The more I read and learn and think about Jesus the more I want to talk about him (usually in very inappropriate settings like the gym or in the concessions line at the movies) and the more I have to remind myself that up until a couple of years ago I couldn't even fathom to speak his name or would begin to perspire if anyone in my company spoke his name. As I might have mentioned before, I was not raised in church. I think I went to Easter one time in a plum denim two piece suit with heart pockets my neighbor gave me. Maybe I didn’t even go then. I can’t remember.

Today though, as I walk down the pharmacy isle or the sock isle in a department store, I see Jesus everywhere, in Christmas ornaments, red and green candles, babies in mangers. He is with me every step I take in almost every environment. However, mostly it is the secular Jesus we see painted on the twirling ornaments or printed on the cards. We tend to think to ourselves only of presents and chocolates and family. Not bad things, but what about the revolution he represents (and he does so I argue even for non Christians)? What about his making the heads of the Empire and Temple spin by preaching to the crowds about love and healing and yes, judgment.
I know why some folks get mad that God is lost somewhere in the stacks of gifts and pretty colored magazine pages selling bijous or the latest must-have electronics. I fall for it too. It is consumption at its best. Where I was blind, now I see. I also understand why people take their Good Books and knock on stranger’s doors to talk about the good news. In some small way they want to save a piece of the world from falling into darkness or pull someone out of it. I get it. Today I love Christmas, but for different reasons than I did a few years ago and especially as a child. It is a sacred day we set aside to celebrate the birth of the Light of the World.

Amen.

Yes, It's True. All Life is One.

In our ongoing Public Theology class discussions about the nature of the human and the definition of human we have mostly spoken in theological terms but my eyes have been opened to scientific interpretations of humanity’s undeniable connection to all of creation and more specifically our genetic connection to one another.

James Lawson, describes in his heart-felt essay on race, Higher Ground, what he believes continues to plague our country, impedes human development and reconciliation with God. He remarks that in the United States there “are many who see their normalcy in terms of seeing me as a nonbeing.” The racist’s denial of our “profound relationality of humanity”, as Susan Thistlewaite states in Adam, Eve and the Genome, of not sharing and deriving from one blood starves humans of human intimacy and creates a culture of death. It is our collective expression of an “enmity toward life.” How can we deny our spiritual connections when our genetic ones are so absolute? Based on findings from the Human Genome Project, Professor Thistlethwaite writes that humans are “more than 99.9% the same.” We should all have taken a deep breath at this revelation. The burden of hating the other is no longer scientifically rational. In truth, we are each other’s brother and sister.

Reading this chapter from Professor Thistlethwaite’s book reminded me of my grandfather, Dr. Charles Richard Drew. He was the first Director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank and he was African-American. During World War II he saved thousands of lives, of all races, by discovering how to separate plasma from red blood cells and store it for later use. Incredibly, during the war American military policy ordered segregation of blood from black donors. He argued that from a purely scientific perspective there was no difference between black blood and white blood but fear of “contamination”, of mixing of bloods was greater than the potential life source. Once again, science was manipulated to discriminate, diminish another and sever human bonds.

Science shall not intimidate religion to “stay in its corner.” The Human Genome Project has opened the door wide to further evidence of some divine order, some exposition of our irrefutable interconnectedness and thus our utter dependency on one another, on love.

Amen.

Torture is Not The Way

I am beginning to finally understand the significance of connections in the good news. Why God came to earth, why Jesus loved love and literally embraced and healed those suffering from physical pain, rejection and isolation. I know the story does not end on the cross or on glorious Easter Sunday. Yes, there was resurrection, Christ’s triumph over death to show humanity (Christians as members of humanity) how to fix their part of the world with God’s love as model and the church as symbol and actor playing the central role for Christianity to reclaim compassion, forgiveness and mercy in so many dark places in the world. This is the New Life, the New Humanity John deGruchy describes in Christian Humanism.

In order for this new humanity to be realized here and now, Christians as individuals, and specifically within the church family, are required to stand in opposition to systems and institutions that flourish unchallenged because of our inhumanity to one another. Torture immediately comes to mind as it is currently making headlines in the news. It is a fallacy to believe that torture is an isolated incident that does not amplify the crimes, or suspected, crimes formerly committed, scattering the iniquity like dandelion seeds in the wind. These seeds plant themselves deep in the soil, our souls, and we readily harvest them for future consumption. Shouldn't we, the United States, be on the side of good, of upholding human dignity, of simply stopping the chain of violence in the world? It must start somewhere for there to be peace.

The truth is, as Susan Thistlethwaite recently expressed in a Washington Post op-ed, “the community that offers a license to torture is fundamentally degraded in its claim to be a civilized nation.” We are certainly not the Christian nation some claim us to be once we lose sight of right and wrong, good and evil. One of my classmates wrote that many humans, and particularly Americans, “tend to think it irrational that all people, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, class, gender, sexual preference, etc. should be treated equally and with respect.” However, he continued, “it seems that if Jesus is an example of the way that God sees and wishes to interact in the world- then it is totally rational to believe in the dignity and worth of all people.” When we condone torture we no longer value life or the life of God in another human. We all suffer, whether today or tomorrow, once that seeds comes to plant itself in our front yards, by our children’s footsteps, touching our palms as we dig in our gardens trying to grow things. It grows and becomes a part of our landscape. It is shame and darkness. James Lawson reminds us in his essay, Higher Ground, that in our constant struggle to learn from and honor Jesus, we know there to be another way. We must "live out of love" by refusing to imitate evil and instead emulate Christ.

Amen.

The Healing Church

For my book group at church we are reading a wonderful selection of sermons by Barbara Brown Taylor. I am continually stirred and amazed at the power of her words, at their potent simplicity and remarkable insight.

I just finished her essay Hands and Feet and saw a clear nexus between this writing and our deGruchy chapter reading, A Christian. His description of God’s calling to the Christian community to form a church body that “does not exist to promote its own institutional interests but the gospel of Christ’s peace that reconciles those divided by enmities, both ancient and modern” is in essence Taylor’s model of the new humanity inspired and engendered by the appendages we take for granted in labor and feeding and holding, our hands and feet. She writes that Jesus healed with his hands, walked into the lives of those starving for promise and wrapped his love around the unlovable. As a church community, the appointed body of Christ, we must also grow calluses from giving our hands over to healing and wear our soles thin and raw by spreading the good news near and far. In the vision and reality of the new humanity the church must play the role of healer and reconciler. What we do with our hands and our feet will determine whether or not the church becomes, as deGruchy states, “an anticipatory sign of a true globalism of justice and peace, a globalism in which people who are different from each other find themselves at home together, a celebration of God’s jubilee.”

Establishing the reign of God, reviving human wholeness, is the sole end of the church and therefore it must “challenge all forces and processes that are dehumanizing and depersonalizing, and especially those that are blatantly crimes against humanity.” This becomes clearer to me everyday and with every lucid articulation of our prophetic role. In the case of torture, currently being debated in regards to the President’s recent attorney general nomination, churches, synagogues, mosques, should cry out that in this deliberate act of dehumanization we all fall further away from God, from our humanity, thus our salvation.

What does the smoothness and unmarred condition or perhaps the cracks and scars on my hands and feet have to say about my care for this new humanity? What of those extremities belonging to the church? “Where have they been, whom have they touched, how have they served, what have they proclaimed?” In the end, like Jesus, it is the state of our collective hands and feet that will tell the story.

Amen.

Our Peculiar History of Becoming Human

In reflecting on "Who is the Human Being?" and Professor Thistlethwaite's lecture on God and the Human, I began to think about my family's peculiar history. There is an American story that is unknown and is almost never told and rarely acknowledged by this culture.

As Professor Thistlethwaite pointed out race is a cultural construct and integral to our culture's definitions of who is human and even to the extent of what percentage of you is more human than another. In my family, we were told some portions of our genes were more human than others. You see, there were the masters and the slaves and often the slaves bore the master's children. That is why I look the way I do. That is why I have cousins with long tight little curls, what we call kinky, and big blue or green eyes. Some have fine caramel colored skin with bone straight hair, and others pale, milky skin with lovely broad features. My grandmother's siblings had fine features and light colored hair and they, in order to become more human, "passed" as white. Out of ten children in her family only a couple chose not to "cross over". The ones that did pass as white moved to various parts of the country only to reconnect with the ones who "stayed" black on occasion and always in private. Incredibly, we still have family today who will not acknowledge us publicly as family because they live as "white" (again, thus more human) and don't want the shame of their African heritage to be exposed to the world. Why?

I believe that as a result of the slave society and enduring racist ideology the development of the notion of what is human came to be something other than a person with "black blood", engendering the creation of the One-Drop rule. It amazes and saddens me that one minute some of my ancestors were invisible, sub-human in the eyes of the majority and then in a single moment, or perhaps after a slower more deliberate transformation in becoming white, they were no longer tainted or insignificant to the world. They became "fully human" by crossing that line of race. I imagine they lived better material lives. They were able to live in finer neighborhoods, eat in any restaurant, sit in any seat on a train or bus or in a theatre without shame or humiliation. I want so much to disapprove of their choices but I know why they did it. Who doesn't want to be considered more human, more worthy of love and respect and freedom? Becoming human required their sacrifice and courage. Or maybe they simply believed that the racial categorization of Negro (or black) for people with fair skin and light hair was preposterous and they chose to defy our racist culture. Either way, they crossed over into being and into a "legitimate" existence in the face of arbitrary and oppressive laws. They became the agents of their own liberation.
May we all be liberated into full humanity.

Amen.

The Cost of Salvation

It occurred to me while reading a chapter in John deGruchy's book Christian Humanism that personal salvation is costly. This is it. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." I think "losing" one's life can be taken both literally and figuratively. One can "lose" one's life by sacrificing it for a cause like Christ did or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi. The giving of one's self, one's physical body and spirit, over to death is perhaps the greatest of all costs but there is another. There is the cost of abandoning one's prejudices, confronting one's hatred and desire to live in this world without sacrifice, without obedience to Jesus as Lord.

I am forever in conflict of whether we must we put down our nets in order to walk wholly with Christ or whether we can bear our crosses and love like our Lord, as deGruchy states, to "put God's reign first", have our lives rescued from darkness while living with our feet firmly planted in this world, working and parenting and not always sharing our bread. We are saved when we lose ourselves, when we render our lives in the service of our fellow humans but how do we do this and continue to live life devoted to "the gospel of prosperity and ego-satisfaction"? I don't know how to strike a balance between living a semi-ascetic lifestyle, devoted to prayer and service, and being preoccupied with materialistic successes. It makes pure discipleship impracticable. What a cost! I do know that salvation in this life is a commitment to humanising one another. Perhaps I can begin here. By somehow humanising my enemy, my neighbor or the stranger, I am forced to find in them the Divine also found in me. It is my humanity and your humanity fully alive.
Amen.