All posts by revolsen
Refugee Discipleship
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may be ready to receive you wherever you appear, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:13-16.
Our second lesson for this coming Sunday is an excerpt from a much longer roll call of faith heroes in the Hebrew Scriptures, beginning with Abel, the first born of Adam and Eve, and ending with the prophets. I encourage you to read Chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews in its entirety. The faith of these individuals, we are told by the anonymous author of the letter, consists of the assurance of things they do not yet see, trust in promises not yet fulfilled, belief in a future beyond the horizons of their lifetimes. Like them, disciples of Jesus are “strangers and foreigners on the earth.” They are “are seeking a homeland.” They are refugees for whom there is no permanent place, no ultimate loyalty and no “blood and soil” tie to any place.
Unless you have been residing on another planet for the last ten years, you know that “refugees,” “foreigners” and “strangers” are among the most hated individuals on the globe. Refugee camps all over the world host millions of people that are unwanted by any nation anywhere. Refugees fleeing war zones, gang violence, religious persecution and starvation brave unimaginable dangers seeking to bring themselves and their families to safe havens in our country and others, only to be met with barbed wire, armed guards and a population unwilling to offer them sanctuary. Like the saints of old, they suffer “mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They [are] killed by the sword; they [go] about….destitute, persecuted, tormented…” Hebrews 11:36-37. It is as refugees, the writer tells us, that disciples of Jesus are to live. We are a people belonging to no country but seeking a homeland that, for now, is only a promise.
Refugee status defines much of biblical history. Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden. Abraham and Sarah are foreigners and squatters in the land of Canaan. They later become refugees driven by famine into Egypt and compelled to trade sexual favors for security in that realm. The people of Israel spend four hundred years as enslaved and exploited laborers in the land of Egypt and forty more years as landless nomads in the wilderness. Following the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of Israel and Judah, the people of Israel are carried into exile and resettled throughout the middle east. Those who return to the land of Israel find themselves ruled by imperial decree and treated as foreigners in their own land. Jesus and his family came to Egypt fleeing political violence and genocide. As the Letter to the Hebrews makes clear, the story of Israel and the Church is a story of God’s love for refugees and God’s choice of those who are “no people” to be “God’s people.” I Peter 2:10.
In view of all this, it should come as no surprise that the church has historically been involved in the ministry of welcoming refugees and assisting them in resettling. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, an oranization of my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has been in this good work for eight decades. That has never before been considered a political issue. Welcoming strangers is part and parcel of discipleship. As the GEICO commercial says, “its what you do” when you follow Jesus. See Matthew 25:35. There has, of course, always been some opposition to admitting refugees into the country, most of which has been grounded in racism, xenophobia and an unfounded fear that refugees will take jobs away from hard working Americans and bleed taxpayer dollars in public benefits. But these misguided and uninformed voices were a small, if noisy, minority. Overall, refugee resettlement has been historically popular and has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress. Consequently, the church’s resettlement ministry has been no more controversial than running food pantries and thrift shops.
But then came the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and his virulent rhetoric characterizing refugees as murderers, rapists and violent criminals. For many reasons, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article, Trump’s rude characterization of refugees caught on in a big way. Churches that had been involved with refugee resettlement for decades suddenly found themselves faced with angry local citizen’s groups and even death threats. See “Opposition to Refugee Arrivals Keeps Getting Louder,” by Joel Rose on NPR’s All Things Considered. Suddenly, this ancient church practice of welcoming strangers recognized in the Hebrew Scriptures, established as a fundamental Christian practice in the New Testament and practiced by monasteries, convents, hospitals and inns throughout the centuries has become subversive and anti-American.
The church has historically stood with the refugee because we are refugees ourselves. If we don’t look much like refugees seeking a better homeland, then perhaps it is because we have gotten a little too cozy with the one through which we are supposed to be “just passing through.” In the words of the hymn/poem below:
“O shame to us who rest content
While lust and greed for gain
In street and shop and tenement
Wring gold from human pain,
And bitter lips in blind despair
Cry, ‘Christ has died in vain.’”
We have perhaps forgotten that “the earth is the Lord’s” and that no claim of national sovereignty can rise higher than God’s bequest of this good earth for the benefit of all people. No demand for national loyalty can rise above Jesus’ call to love our neighbor, no matter what side of any humanly drawn border that neighbor might have resided. Baptism trumps citizenship. To turn away a refugee is to turn away Jesus. The nations built on foundations of blood, soil and culture that would demand our ultimate allegiance at the expense of our neighbor are simply too small to accommodate the reign of God. Nothing less than the “Holy City seen of John” is fit to be called our homeland. These are neither liberal propositions nor conservative ones. They are neither Democratic nor Republican. They are just plain Jesus. If they do not comport with your politics, then you will just have to get yourself a new politics or a new savior.
Here is the text of the hymn written by Walter Russell Bowie cited above. It speaks of the City long sought by the biblical saints and how pursuit of that homeland ought to shape our hearts and actions.
1 O Holy City, seen of John,
Where Christ, the Lamb, does reign,
Within those four-square walls shall come
No night, nor need, nor pain,
And where the tears are wiped from eyes
That shall not weep again.
2 O shame to us who rest content
While lust and greed for gain
In street and shop and tenement
Wring gold from human pain,
And bitter lips in blind despair
Cry, “Christ has died in vain.”
3 Give us, O God, the strength to build
The City that has stood
Too long a dream, whose laws are love,
Whose ways, the common good,
And where the shining sun becomes
God’s grace for human good.
4 Already in the mind of God
That City rises fair:
Lo, how its splendor challenges
The souls that greatly dare:
Yea, bids us seize the whole of life
And build its glory there.
Source: RitualSong (2nd ed.) #957. Walter Russell Bowie (1882–1969) was a priest, author, editor, educator, hymn writer, and lecturer in the Episcopal Church (United States). He was born in Richmond, Virginia where his family had deep roots. He received a B.A and M.A. from Harvard University. As an undergraduate, Bowie was co-editor of The Harvard Crimson along with Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was ordained a deacon in 1908 and returned to Virginia where he entered the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary, now known as Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. Bowie became known as a preacher as well as author and hymnist. In the 1920s, he advocated for creation of the League of Nations and US immigration reform. He staunchly opposed the the Ku Klux Klan and the spread of religious fundamentalism. Bowie joined the American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, The Church League for Industrial Democracy, the Citizens’ Committee to Free Earl Browder and the Civil Rights Congress.
On Truth Telling
EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Prayer of the Day: Benevolent God, you are the source, the guide, and the goal of our lives. Teach us to love what is worth loving, to reject what is offensive to you, and to treasure what is precious in your sight, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator.” Colossians 3:9-10.
This should go without saying. We have all been taught that lying is immoral. Still, most of us would confess that, at some point in our lives, we have been guilty of telling a lie. Those who profess otherwise are probably compulsive liars who have lost the capacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Such types appear to be on the increase in this age of “alternative facts.” Civil discourse has been rendered impossible by lies which have gained large public credence. There has been much lament in recent years about “polarization” in our society. But I do not believe polarization is the problem. Every community, including ecclesiastical ones, are polarized or divided to some extent. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It is possible for two intelligent people of good will to examine the same facts and come to very different conclusions about how significant those facts are, how they are related and what response they require from us. But as long as we are dealing with the same facts, it is possible to learn from each other’s perspective on them and find common ground and mutual concerns. Compromise can lead to agreed upon courses of action that are beneficial to all, even when they do not give all of us everything we might want.
In an environment where we cannot agree on the facts, however, no such constructive dialogue can take place. If one side dismisses all the science supporting the threat of climate change as “bunk and propaganda,” there is no likelihood that any meaningful joint response to the threat can be made. Lies that dismiss, deny and distort the facts make communal life impossible. Lies and misinformation abound these days and addressing every crackpot notion, conspiracy theory and piece of junk science bubbling up through talk radio, the internet and shadowy online communities feels a little like playing whack a mole. Still, I believe it is important that responsible citizens and, as Saint Paul reminds us, disciples of Jesus speak up to stop the lies and witness to the truth.
The opportunity for truth telling arises in the arena of social media, letters to the editor of local papers, in our congregations and within our families. The truth about our nation’s racism, misogyny, and homophobia needs to be told in our schools, in our churches, in our legislatures and in our courts. Most importantly, the truth needs to be told in barbershops, quilting groups and family gatherings because that is often where it makes the greatest impact. Crazy uncle Ned’s racist comments and wild conspiracy ravings should not be politely tolerated at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Uncle Ned needs to be told, in the clearest terms possible, that he is lying and and that he needs to stop it. That might make for some uncomfortable moments and perhaps some permanent family rupture. But Jesus warned us that such might well be the result of faithfulness to God’s reign. Luke 12:51-53.
That being said, it is important to remember that truth is more than the sum of the facts. Back when I taught confirmation, I posed a hypothetical to my class. Imagine, I said, that you are on the school board. The board is planning to hire Mary Smith to be its treasurer. As such, she will be responsible for managing funds for the whole school district. You learn that Mary was formerly convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to ninety days in prison. Should you inform the board about Mary’s conviction?
Under these circumstances, the class unanimously agreed that the board should be made aware of this event in Mary’s past. After all, as treasurer, Mary will be responsible for managing a substantial amount of public money critical for the operation of the schools within the district. It would be a breach of duty for a member of the school board to turn a blind eye to the facts and allow the board to place a person with a history of financial dishonesty in this important position.
But then I added to the hypothetical. Mary was a foster child who aged out of the system when she turned eighteen years old. At that time, she was informed that she could no longer live in the halfway house where was staying. Mary was working at a convenience store during this period of her life. One evening, when her employer left early and asked her to close up the store for the night, Mary took three hundred dollars from the cash register to cover her deposit for a room she planned to rent. She had intended to pay the money back again once she got established, but her theft was detected and Mary was arrested shortly thereafter. Upon release from prison, Mary found a job at a restaurant. She put aside as much money from her meager salary as she could each week. As soon as she had saved enough, she went back to her former employer at the convenience store and repaid the three hundred dollars she had taken with interest. Her former employer was impressed with Mary’s act and offered to re-hire her. Mary soon became her employer’s assistant and has been managing the store’s finances faithfully for over twenty years. In addition, Mary has been doing volunteer work with an agency helping first time offenders newly released from prison to find work and integrate back into society. She is currently serving as treasurer for her church.
The class agreed that having this additional information made the decision a great deal more difficult. Is something that happened so long ago in the life of a desperate and inexperienced young girl relevant to the woman she has become? There was some lively discussion over what obligation a school board member had under these circumstances. Some of the kids felt that there was no need to disclose Mary’s conviction and that doing so would be unfair. Others expressed the view that, although duty bound as a member of the board to disclose the conviction, they would also be obligated to provide the context and relate the exemplary nature of Mary’s subsequent life of integrity and service. All agreed that simply disclosing the conviction, without more, would be wrong.
Speaking truthfully involves more than accurately relating facts. Within the parameters of my hypothetical, Mary’s conviction at the age of eighteen was a true fact. Standing alone, however, it did not accurately reflect the true content of her character. Without more, simply relating the fact of Mary’s conviction to the school board would have been a lie. It would have led the board to conclude that Mary was not trustworthy when, in fact, she clearly was. It would have reduced the rich and varied narrative of Mary’s life to a single exercise of poor judgment in a state of desperation at a young age. How many of us would want our whole lives to be measured by the worst thing we have ever done? Truthful speech is not “just the facts.” Truthful speech places facts into a larger narrative where they can be understood properly.
Saint Paul teaches us that, in order to speak the truth, one must be “clothed […..]with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator.” That is to say, one must view the facts from God’s perspective-something that happens gradually and only as the “mind of Christ” is formed in us. Philippians 2:5. Facts need to be contextualized and the context in which disciples view individual facts is the end toward which God is moving all creation revealed in the obedient life, faithful death and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. The truth about any person or nation cannot be understood apart from what we believe God’s loving purpose is for all people. Each individual is created in and with the potential for reflecting God’s image. Jesus could see in Peter the coward, James and John the self seeking brothers, Judas the terrorist and Matthew the collaborator the apostles they each ultimately became. So, too, we are challenged not merely to see in one another what in fact is, but also what in Christ each of us can become. That context shapes the way we speak truthfully. Truthful speech is always healing, redemptive and restorative-even when it is difficult to utter and painful to hear. What is spoken with the intent to tear down, hurt and destroy is never true, however factually accurate it might be.
Here is a poem by Patricia Goedicke reflecting the difficulty as well as the urgency of speaking truthfully.
I have arrived here after taking many steps
Over the kitchen floors of friends and through their lives.
The dun-colored hills have been good to me
And the gold rivers.
I have loved chrysantheumums, and children:
I have been grandmother to some.
In one pocket I have hidden chocolates from you
And knives.
Speaking my real thoughts to no one
In bars and at lecterns I have told the truth
Fairly often, but hardly ever to myself.
I have not cried out against the crimes of my country
But I have protected myself, I have watched from a safe corner
The rape of mountains, the eagle’s reckless plunge.
Ever since high school I have waved goodbye to history:
I have assisted you to grow
In all ways that were convenient to me.
What is a block vote against steam shovels?
My current events teacher was a fine man
But his moral precepts were a put-up job and I followed them.
Well-dressed, in my new Adidas
At every gathering I investigated my psyche with friends
And they investigated theirs with me.
But whenever Trouble came in the front door I ran out the back
And fell into the pit of my bones.
Escaped from those burning buildings, the past,
What balance can any of us hope for?
I was comparing lipsticks
The day Nagasaki vanished.
The day Solzhenitsyn disappeared into the Gulag
I was attending a cocktail party.
Perhaps there are only ashes in my handbag.
A man at the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street
Tried to sweep me into a trash barrel and I almost agreed.
Already the dried blood was sifting along my wrists.
Already my own hands
Were tightening around my throat
But Sorrow saved me, Sorrow gave me an image
Of bombs like human tears watering the world’s gardens.
How could I not answer?
Since then I have been planting words
In every windowbox, poking them to grow up.
What’s God, That he should be mindful of me?
Sometimes I feel like wood
Waiting for someone to peel me.
Indeed I have been lukewarm
At heart, which is all that matters.
Of tiny bread-colored atoms,
Equal fragments equally dispersed
That love each other and are never hungry.
What have I ever ignited
That warmed anyone?
I have not followed the rivers.
Dangerous as a pine needle
Packed in among others, in the dense multitudes
And dry timbers of the West
I am afraid of greed,
The rich taste of it, the anger
Hidden in my pockets.
Columns of smoke on the horizon,
Pillars of green fire.
But I have arrived here somehow,
Neither have I stopped talking.
Numberless are the kitchens I have sat in,
Chewing my fingers, trying to say something,
Anything, so that the daughters of men should see
As many sides of themselves as possible.
Word after word my footprints
Have stumbled across deserts.
How should I escape them?
They keep following after me.
A little wind stirs itself,
Whisks across my eyelids,
And I know what it is before I say it:
What if the world really articulates itself
In the socket of a human knee?
God save me
From the swamps of hubris but it may be, it may be.
Before the idea, the impulse.
I feel it moving in me, it is there
Arthritic but still powerful, a seizure
Delicate as grasshoppers, a light
Gathering in the skull.
Between thumb and forefinger
And the ballbearing joints of the tongue
In soft, glottal convulsions
Out of no alien skies
But out of the mind’s muscle
The hieroglyph figures rise.
The little histories of words
Cannot be eaten.
I know it, you know it
And the children…
But the images we make are our own.
In the cool caves of the intellect
The twisted roots of them lead us
Backwards and then forwards.
If only we could understand
What’s in our pockets is for everyone!
I have a dictionary in one hand, a mirror.
Strangers look at themselves in it,
Tracing the expressions they use
From one family to the next
They comfort themselves, murmuring
The tongues we speak are a blizzard
Of words like warm wool flying:
In the shy conjugal rites
Of verb, consonant, vowel,
In the dark mucosal flesh lining
The prismed underside of the skin
Each one is a spark sheared
From the veined fleece of the spirit
Of the looking-glass body we live in.
It is the one I have been cherishing,
The one all of us speak from,
For the world as we know it moves
Necessarily by steps.
Breath, pulse beat, ten digital stops.
At the foot of the mountains I look up. Does God
Lift up His hand to cover them?
Blinded by tears like rain
My bones turn granite, the spine of the hills congeals them.
Where is the eye of the storm,
Or where is the center of my seeing?
The wind of my breath is a hurricane:
I am locked inside myself.
Painfully, up the bald stepladder I climb,
But sometimes the light in my head goes on
More like the sun than a match.
Just as they said in Arabia
There’s a huge pantalooned angel swelling
Inside the body’s glass jar.
The white-haired thread of steam
From the teakettle on the range whistles
And sharpens itself into a voice
Bodiless as history, invisible
But still whispering in ears
That keep trying to hear it.
It is as if midgets were bellowing their names
Down sets of cardboard cylinders.
But we have not disappeared
Yet.
My friends, we have said many things to each other
In new combinations, seed upon seed exploding
And blossoming in kitchen gardens.
I confess I am ashamed of myself:
I have not tried hard enough to understand
Or listen to you speak.
But the Word is mindful of itself
And always has been.
Littering every street
In the sly eyes of tin cans,
Drops of water in the gutter
The world looks back at us
From every known language:
Yoruba, Hebrew, Chinese,
Arrogant English, the subject
Subjecting all to its desires,
Even the softer tongues, romantic
Self-reflexive, done to
As we would be done by,
Whatever life we cultivate
Out of the animal moans of childhood
It is all wheat fields, all grass
Growing and being grown.
With poisoned bread in my pockets, or gumdrops,
Or armies like Myrmidons rising
What I say is true
For a time only, thank God,
If I have only arrived anywhere it is to look
Carefully, at all I thought I knew.
In living rivers of speech
The reflections I make are my own
And yet not:
Though the old growth rings are hidden from us
And the echoing tomorrows of the acorn,
The warm currents of the senses
Are a two-way street, my friends:
The palms of our hands are crisscrossed
With as many intersections as a leaf.
Source: The Tongues We Speak (c. Patricia Goedicke; pub. by Milkweed Editions, 1989). Patricia Goedicke (1931-2006) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but she grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire where her father was a resident psychiatrist at Dartmouth College. During her high school years, Goedicke distinguished herself as a downhill skier. She earned her B.A. at Middlebury College where she studied with Robert Frost. Her awards and accomplishments include the Rockefeller Foundation Residency; a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship; a Pushcart Prize; the William Carlos Williams Prize; the 1987 Carolyn Kizer Prize; the Hohenberg Award, and the 1992 Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner. Her last book was recognized as one of the top 10 poetry books of 2000 by the American Library Association. The Tongues We Speak, featuring the above poem, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1990. Goedicke was awarded The Chad Walsh Poetry Prize by the Beloit Poetry Journal in 2002. You can read more about Patricia Goedicke and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Praying for Daily Bread
SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and you gladly give more than we either desire or deserve. Pour upon us your abundant mercy. Forgive us those things that weigh on our conscience, and give us those good things that come only through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“Give us each day our daily bread.” Luke 11:3.
The context is important here. Jesus is asked specifically by his disciples to teach them how to pray. In Luke’s account, there are just four things: That God’s reign come; for each day’s bread; for forgiveness; and to be spared from “the time of trial.” Tomes could be written on each of these four petitions, but I want to say just one thing about the second petition for “daily bread.” It is a modest request, or at least it seems so. Though my family was hardly rich, there was never a day I doubted that there would be food on the table at the next meal. I never lacked for the bare necessities of life and, in fact, I grew up with plenty of things that were hardly necessary to survival. Praying for daily bread, then, seems a bit insincere. I already have daily bread and more. So what is the point of asking for what I already have?
But there is another way of reading this text. Think back to John the Baptist’s admonition for those who have food to share with those who do not. Luke 3:10-11. Or recall Mary’s song of praise:
“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.
I don’t think the rich are being sent away to starve. But they are sent away “empty” of the blessings God would bestow upon them. That is because one can only receive “good things” from God when one’s hands are empty. How many of us really want to empty our hands? How many of us want to be content to live each day with only what we need? For those who are starving, for those desperately ill and without adequate medical care, for those who are homeless having these bare necessities, the promise of daily bread represents the opportunity to live and thrive. But for those of us who have become accustomed to more, to those of us who have grown up with a degree of privilege, for those of us who feel entitled to more than our daily bread, the coming reign of God appears threatening and fearful. Fixated on what we are trying so hard to hang onto, we are blind to the life of blessing God would give us.
So how do rich Christians pray this prayer Jesus taught us? We might begin by praying for the courage to trust God’s promise to provide for us just as God provides for the grass of the fields and the birds of the air. If the prospect of losing our savings, property and livelihood is frightening, it is because we have put our faith in the engines of the economy rather than in one another. We have exchanged the security found in God’s promises and the safety assured through a community governed by generosity for that nirvana of “financial security” promised by banks and insurance companies. Ironically, the wealthier we become, the more fearful and insecure we feel. We know that what the market gives, the market can as easily take away. But what if we put away our misplaced faith in an economy that does not care about us? What if we invested in friendships and community instead of individual financial plans?
We might pray for contentment. As Saint Paul reminds Timothy, “the love of money is the root of all evils…” and “if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” I Timothy 6:6-10. In a culture of consumerism where more is always better and worth is measured in dollars, disciples of Jesus are called to a radically different economy. Unlike our capitalist system fueled by greed and an insatiable hunger for acquisition, the economy of God’s reign exists to serve the needs of people and especially those deemed “least” among us. We need to ask ourselves with each dollar we spend, who made what I am purchasing? Under what conditions did they labor to produce it? What materials go into what I buy and at what cost to human health, ecological wellbeing and environmental safety were they extracted from the planet? Is this an item I need? Why do I think I need it?
We might expand our understanding of “us” and “our” in the petition to include those who lack daily bread. This would serve as a salutary reminder that God’s reign has not yet come and that God’s will is not yet being done on earth as in heaven. The answer to this prayer for daily bread does not end with the satisfaction of our own hunger. In a sense, we ought to rise up from the dinner table hungrier than we came, determined to seek first God’s reign that our deepest needs and those of others will finally be met.
We might rediscover the practice of fasting, whether that be from food, entertainment, social media or any other aspect of our lives. Fasting brings into sharper focus our dependence on God’s promises and upon one another. It reminds us that our daily bread comes through the labor and services of others upon whom we depend. It can make us more sensitive to the pain of those whose fasting is not voluntary but imposed by poverty and injustice.
Jesus teaches us that daily bread is a free gift from our Creator. God has given us a world capable of feeding our need. It cannot, however, sustain our greed. So we pray that God would teach us to accept with thanksgiving our daily bread, to be content with this precious gift, to know that we have been blessed to be a blessing to our neighbors and to live gently and peacefully on our planet, being faithful caretakers of all God has made.
Here is a poem by Juan Felipe Herrera that might well serve as a faithful prayer for daily bread.
[Let us Gather in a Flurishing way]
Let us gather in a flourishing way
with sunluz grains abriendo los cantos
que cargamos cada día
en el young pasto nuestro cuerpo
para regalar y dar feliz perlas pearls
of corn flowing árboles de vida en las cuatro esquinas
let us gather in a flourishing way
contentos llenos de fuerza to vida
giving nacimientos to fragrant ríos
dulces frescos verdes turquoise strong
carne de nuestros hijos rainbows
let us gather in a flourishing way
en la luz y en la carne of our heart to toil
tranquilos in fields of blossoms
juntos to stretch los brazos
tranquilos with the rain en la mañana
temprana estrella on our forehead
cielo de calor and wisdom to meet us
where we toil siempre
in the garden of our struggle and joy
let us offer our hearts a saludar our águila rising
freedom
a celebrar woven brazos branches ramas
piedras nopales plumas piercing bursting
figs and aguacates
ripe mariposa fields and mares claros
of our face
to breathe todos en el camino blessing
seeds to give to grow maiztlán
en las manos de nuestro amor
Source: Half of the World in Light, Juan Felipe Herrera (The University of Arizona Press, 2008). Juan Felipe Herrera (b. 1948) is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. Herrera’s experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work. He lived from crop to crop and from tractor to trailer to tents on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley and the Salinas Valley. He graduated from San Diego High School in 1967 and received the Educational Opportunity Program scholarship to attend the University of California, Los Angeles where he received his B.A. in Social Anthropology. Later, he received his master’s degree in social anthropology from Stanford University, and his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Herrera currently resides in Redlands, California with his partner Margarita Robles, a performance artist and poet. They have five children. You can read more about Juan Felipe Herrera and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Don’t Barter Away Your Rights at the Kitchen Table!
This evening I listened to columnist David Brooks on NPR telling us that Democrats are wasting their time talking about reproductive rights, racial injustice and legal protection for sexual minorities. What Americans are concerned about these days are “kitchen table issues.” That is, they care chiefly about issues that have an immediate impact on their daily lives, the chief one being inflation, i.e., the rising price of gas, rent, groceries, heating fuel and consumer goods. That, says Brooks, is what will drive the outcome of the midterm elections and beyond.
If Mr. Brooks is right about the voting proclivities of the American public, the American public had best heed the admonition of Benjamin Franklin to the effect that “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Just to be clear, I am not a Democrat, nor am I interested in wasting my breath telling Democrats what they should or should not be saying to do well in the next election. But if you are one of those people telling pollsters that you have got a family to feed, a mortgage to pay and places you need to drive and that you have no time to waste on esoteric legal issues that don’t affect you, then listen up.
Just a century ago, before I was born, there was a nation suffering a good deal more than the United States is now. It was a nation that suffered a severe and humiliating military defeat in a world war for which it was unfairly held responsible and punished with crushing demands for reparations. Inflation was so bad that a wheel barrow full of paper money could hardly buy a loaf of bread. Unemployment was rampant, crime and corruption systemic and poverty the norm. But a leader arose who was able to deliver jobs, an economic revival, a renewed sense of national pride and a measure of international influence. Yes, the press was being systematically repressed, but its criticism of the new regime that was doing so much for the nation seemed to justify these measures. Yes, it was a shame that so many Jewish people were losing their homes and businesses. But what is that in the grand scheme of things? And anyway, it doesn’t affect us. Bottom line, the leader has given us jobs, incomes, pride in our country and a strong economy. For that we can surely overlook his personal flaws and the unfortunate effects of his policies on people at the margins. I don’t have to finish the story for you. You know how it ended.
Unlike a tank of gas, a bottle of milk or a 401K, fundamental rights cannot be seen, measured, weighed or given a dollar value. They are like the air you breath. You never notice or think about them until the day you discover you don’t have them anymore. Then they become pretty damn urgent. And here is the thing about rights. If they do not belong to everyone, they don’t belong to anyone. The present Supreme Court has demonstrated a willingness to play fast and lose with the Constitution in the service of nullifying rights of common people and enhancing the power of its favored politcal leaders and their policies. Consider, the same Court that casually erased the guarantee of bodily integrity women have relied upon for fifty years on grounds that it isn’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution turned around and spun out of whole cloth a doctrine of presidential immunity that is not even inferable from the founding documents. If the Court can arbitrarily take reproductive freedom away from women today, it can just as easily wipe out any other right tomorrow.
The right of privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade is no longer theoretical when some court or state board of examiners demands that your ten year old daughter bear the child of her rapist-regardless the physical and psychic trauma that induces. And be advised that rights protected in Roe v. Wade are far more extensive than the right to an abortion. If the Supreme Court carries forward the reasoning it used to overrule Roe v. Wade, you stand to lose your ability to make decisions affecting birth control, end of life treatment and other deeply personal medical decisions that will sooner or later affect all of us. Loving v. Virginia mean anything to you? It will once the Supreme Court decides, as it very well could, that the right to marry affirmed by this case is not recognized by the constitution such that the state can determine who you can and cannot marry and insurance companies are free to deny health coverage when you marry or have children with a spouse carrying a genetic abnormality.
I may not be old enough to remember Hitler’s Germany or imperial Japan, but I remember very well my parents’ stories of the sacrifices their generation made to defend our country against the threat of totalitarian fascism. My father and his brother, both veterans of that conflict, understood well what was at stake. They put their lives on the line to defend the rights we enjoy today. Many of their fellow service people put their lives over the line. As much as I miss my Dad, I am glad he is not here to witness the disinterest and contempt half of his country has for the precious freedoms he and his peers sacrificed so much to preserve for us.
Here is what I can remember: I remember a time in these United States when women were dying routinely of sepsis form self induced abortions, when interracial marriage was illegal in most states, when prayer was imposed on public school children, when kids merely suspected of being gay were routinely bullied and the school authorities turned a blind eye. I am old enough to remember how my mother, who rose to the level of supervisor of her department in a government agency, was paid half of what her male counterparts were paid-and the law said that was just fine. I can still remember how four KKK members bombed a Birmingham church killing four little black girls and got off scott free. This is the country we had before, Brown v. Board of Education, before Roe v. Wade, before Loving v. Virginia, before Obergefell v. Hodges. It is the sort of country you get when rights are taken away.
So, I have to ask you, is that the kind of country in which you want your children to grow up? Are you really willing to trade the precious freedoms won with the blood of our soldiers, the sacrifices of civil rights leaders and the courage of ordinary citizens over the centuries for cheap gas and chicken McNuggets? I hope not. I hope you are all better than Mr. Brooks thinks you are. I hope that you stand up and tell political leaders who trample on your civil liberties while wooing you with the promise of a better economy that your rights and the future of your children are not for sale. I hope you have the courage to tell your congressional leaders, be they Democrat, Republican or something else, that if they won’t defend your rights, they can’t expect your vote.
Then again, maybe Mr. Brooks is right. Maybe Donald Trump was right when he called our veterans “suckers” and “losers.” Maybe this country turned out to be unworthy of the blood, sweat and tears they put into defending its freedoms. Maybe we deserve Hitler, Tito, Mussolini or Donald Trump. If the price of defending our rights doesn’t fit into the family budget, then perhaps we no longer deserve them.
When the Arc of the Universe Bends Toward Chaos
SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Eternal God, you draw near to us in Christ, and you make yourself our guest. Amid the cares of our lives, make us attentive to your presence, that we may treasure your word above all else, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“[Christ] himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17.
The divine word, “Let there be” pulled together out of nothingness an ordered universe and continues holding it together against the destructive pull of chaos. The breath of God animates the cosmos as it is guided by God’s parental providence toward the end were “God is all in all.” I Corinthians 15:28. That, of course, is a statement of faith. It cannot be verified empirically. But I hasten to add that its being a statement of faith does not mean that it is irrational. Trinitarian faith is the lens through which disciples of Jesus look out upon the universe and make sense of its terrifying beauty, mystery and potential. It is not the only lens through which one might view this thing we call “reality.” Those who stand upon other platforms looking through other lenses may well see things differently and make observations of which we are incapable. Genuine Trinitarian faith welcomes knowledge and understanding from whatever source it may come, whether that be scientific research, literary or artistic expression or the teachings and reflections of other religious traditions. Greater knowledge and understanding do not threaten, but deepen such faith.
That being said, faith does not always comport with life as one experiences it. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is known to have said on more than one occasion that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He was paraphrasing a longer and perhaps more modest quote by abolitionist Unitarian minister Theodore Parker who said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.” See “The Truth About the ‘Arc of the Moral Universe,’” Huffpost, January 18, 2018. Many of the of the biblical witnesses express the same confidence. “I have been young,” says the psalmist, “and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread…The righteous shall be preserved forever…The righteous shall possess the land and dwell upon it forever.” Psalm 37:25-29.
Other biblical witnesses testify, however, that they have indeed seen the righteous forsaken. The prophet Habakkuk cries out,
“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgement comes forth perverted.” Habakkuk 1:2-4.
Like the psalmist, the prophet also expresses faith in God’s ultimate justice, though in spite of rather than because of what experience has taught him. Habakkuk 2:1-5. Habakkuk “walks by faith and not by sight” as Saint Paul would say. II Corinthians 5:7. That is how I find myself walking these days. I have always disavowed the “progressive” label because I don’t believe in progress-at least not in the sense of its inevitability. The hard fought gains of women, people of color and LGBTQ+ folk in securing basic human rights can be wiped out in a single day-as our Supreme Court has taught us. The rule of law and the constitution are proving powerless against a party now driven by a narcissistic megalomaniac and a court stacked by reactionary justices who, not to put too fine a point on it, lied their way through confirmation into their high office. We might well be witnessing the twilight of American democracy, to say nothing of the peace that has held in Europe for the last seventy years. In the midst of all this dissolution, the call to believe that all things hold together in Christ Jesus seems like a mighty big ask.
Yet it is this sort of faith that carried Israel through four hundred years of slavery, centuries of foreign military occupation and seventy years of exile. It is the kind of faith that has seen the church through the rise and fall of empires, revolutions, pandemics, persecution and social change. In spite of history’s erratic course, people of faith maintain that our world is, in fact, going somewhere. We are on a pilgrimage toward “a city which is to come.” Hebrews 13:14. Faith in this hope has sustained Israel and the church in the darkest of times. Our current position in history appears to be yet another such dark time. We are being challenged to believe that God has “the whole world in his hands,” even as it appears to be falling into the abyss.
If there is an arc bending toward anything hopeful, it has often been difficult to discern. So perhaps the arc is not the best of metaphors one might use in speaking about the hope for God’s just and peaceful reign “on earth as in heaven.” Rather than a relentless progressive march toward a better world in which “every round goes higher, higher,”[1] our journey is rather one of false starts, wrong turns, dead ends and missed opportunities held on course nevertheless by a God who will not give up, will not let go, will not stop working redemptively with whatever messes we make to nudge us closer to a new creation.
None of this is to say that what we do or refrain from doing makes no difference because, as our Lutheran Catechism teaches, “God’s kingdom comes without our prayers-” or anything else from us. It matters that our failure to restrain capitalistic exploitation of our environment is leaving for our children a poorer, less biologically diverse and more toxic planet. It matters that God no longer has nineteen beautiful children and two wonderful teachers from Uvalde, Texas to work with. It matters that, regardless how things turn out on the battlefield in Ukraine, the seeds of hatred, resentment and distrust planted in the course of that conflict will continue between two closely related peoples for generations. No, we cannot stop God’s kingdom from coming. But we can certainly make things a lot more difficult for God and deprive God and God’s kingdom of much that is true, beautiful and good by our self destructive resistance. Perhaps that is as close as we can come to imagining what it means to be in hell: living for eternity with full knowledge and understanding of all that could have been but was not. That is why, after telling us that God’s reign comes without our prayers, the Catechism goes on to say, “but we pray that it might come among us.”
Here is a poem by Langston Hughes describing what it might be like to cling fast to a word urging us forward when everything seems to be sliding backwards.
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Source: The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (c. 2002 by Langston Hughes; pub. by University of Missouri Press (BkMk Press)). Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.” Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).
[1] From the spiritual, “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.”
Mercy From Where You Least Expect It
FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, your mercy delights us, and the world longs for your loving care. Hear the cries of everyone in need, and turn our hearts to love our neighbors with the love of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
There is more than one way to read a parable. There are three characters in this story of the Good Samaritan. There is the lawyer standing at the sidelines posing the question, “who is my neighbor?” We might well put ourselves in his shoes and, in so doing, hear Jesus’ admonition to do as was done by the Samaritan to the robbery victim. Or we might look at this parable from the standpoint of the Samaritan who, finding a wounded Jew on the road side, sees not an enemy but simply a man in need of care and feels compassion. From that standpoint, we might evaluate our own capacity to see in our enemies the call of Jesus for the exercise of compassion. But it is also possible to view this parable from the standpoint of the guy who got the crap beaten out of him and was left on the roadside to die-and then received mercy from a source he never imagined mercy would ever come.
Twenty-three years ago, my wife lay in a coma and I was sitting at her bedside in the ICU waiting for some word on her prospects of recovery from any one of the many physicians caring for her. Had I been at home on the east coast, I would have been surrounded by family, caring friends and my church. As it was, we were on vacation in Seattle, Washington when my wife became ill and sank into unconsciousness. I desperately needed someone with whom to pray, to share my fear and pain. I made this need known to the hospital social worker. Though the hospital had no chaplaincy program, the social worker said she would reach out to the local Lutheran churches. A day later I had received neither a visit nor any pastoral communication. The social worker told me apologetically that she could find no Lutheran pastors willing or able to come out to the hospital. So I told her that I was not denominationally particular and that any flavor of Christian would do.
Not twenty minutes later a young man walked into the ICU room where I was sitting with my wife and introduced himself as an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as Mormons. Having grown up in a town where Mormons were heavily represented, I had had a number of experiences with their aggressive evangelistic methods. I learned very early on that when they showed up at the door, the best policy was to say that you were in the middle of an important phone call that would probably last for at least an hour and so were unable to speak. Then you shut the door before they can suggest scheduling another visit at a more convenient time. Under no circumstances do you open the screen door even a crack, unless you really are interested in having your soul saved. That was about the last thing I needed that day. I was beginning to think that my request for “any flavor of Christian” was maybe just a bit over broad.
Perhaps the young elder sensed my dismay. “Brother Peter,” he said. “You’ve probably heard that my church is very committed to evangelizing and winning people to our faith. But I know this isn’t the time or place for that. So perhaps we can sit together and pray in Jesus’ name for your wife and say the Lord’s Prayer together. Would that be OK?” That was exactly what I needed at that time and in that place. I was looking for ministry from my Lutheran and/or orthodox Christian siblings. But help came from the last place I could have expected. I think I know how that beaten and bloodied Jew lying on the side of the road must have felt when he looked up into the face of that Samaritan tenderly washing and binding up his wounds. Since that day, I have never been able to think of Mormons with the same uncharitable and judgmental attitude I developed growing up. To be sure, I still have my doctrinal and theological differences with Mormons. But I know now that they are my neighbors because, of all the churches from which help was sought on my behalf, the Mormons came and showed me compassion.
When you are in dire need of compassion and another human being offers it, you tend to forget about all the distinctions that seem so very important in this polarized culture of ours. When your house is on fire, you don’t ask the firefighter that got you safely outside and is risking life and limb to save your home whether she is a Muslim or whether he is gay or whether their politics is liberal or conservative or whether they are properly documented or what church, if any, they belong to. You are just grateful that your neighbors care enough about each other to arrange for fire protection; that there are women and men who care enough to take on the risky work of fighting fires and saving lives; that there are people willing to open their doors for you if necessary until you get back on your feet. Compassion does not recognize distinctions. God has created us with a marvelous capacity to look beyond our surface distinctions and recognize in one another the holy image we all share with our Creator. Sometimes, though, we need to get the crap beaten out of us to remind us that it’s there.
Here is a poem by Mark Turbyfill speaking to our common humanity pulling against all that divides us.
Strangers
God,
I shall tell you:
I am seeing and seeing strangers
Who are not strangers,
For there is something in their eyes,
And about their faces
That whispers to me
(But so low
That I can never quite hear)
Of the lost half of myself
Which I have been seeking since the beginning of earth.
And I could follow them to the end of the world,
Would they but lean nearer, nearer,
And tell me….”
Source: Poetry, (May 1917). Mark Turbyfill (1896-1990) was an American poet, dancer, and painter. He was born in Oklahoma City and came to Chicago with his parents in 1911. He began publishing poems while still a teenager. His professional dance career began in 1919 when he joined the Pavley-Oukrainsky corps de ballet with the Chicago Grand Opera Company. He continued to dance through the 1920s and 1930s, later becoming principal dancer under Adolph Bolm with the Chicago Allied Arts and partnering Chicago dancer and choreographer Ruth Page.
Sheep Among Wolves
FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, you are the city that shelters us, the mother who comforts us. With your Spirit accompany us on our life’s journey, that we may spread your peace in all the world, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” Luke 10:3.
We in the United States live in a culture steeped in violence. The culture of bloodshed permeates our popular literature, entertainment networks, advertising and, increasingly these days, our politics. The attack on our Capital following the 2020 election was not, as some would have us believe, an anomalous bleep on the radar. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, an expression of our national character. Our national creed is well expressed by Wayne Robert LaPierre Jr., CEO and executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) who famously reminds us that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Not to be out done, Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert told an audience of conservative Christians that if only Jesus had had an AR-15, he could have prevented the Romans from executing him. Perhaps Boebert’s comment was only a lame attempt at humor. But that she felt comfortable making light of what to Christians is (or should be!) the central tenet of their faith to a Christian audience speaks volumes.
Into this increasingly violent culture, Jesus sends his disciples as lambs among wolves. That registers as lunacy to a people steeped in the myth of redemptive violence and the firm belief that, when push comes to shove, a violent response to evil is finally unavoidable. In the words of Kenny Rogers, “Sometimes you have to fight to be a man.” I was recently in a discussion with a fellow Christian who said to me, “those who beat their spears into plowshares wind up plowing the fields of those who keep their swords.” When I pointed out to him that his clever remark was actually mocking the words of the Prophet Isaiah, he was, to put it mildly, chagrined. This little interchange demonstrates once again that American Christians are typically more American than Christian. How else can you explain Christians supporting “the right to bear arms” while claiming to follow the one who tells his disciples to “put away the sword?”
Yet disciples are distinguished by the conviction, lived out by their Lord, namely, that it is better to die than to kill. It all comes down to this: there are evils in the world that seem to cry out for an immediate remedy and nothing is more immediate than a bullet. Our temptation is to address such evils with appeals to some noble end justifying violent means. There can be no clearer example of such self justifying violence than the war in Ukraine where unspeakable carnage continues to be fed by a seemingly endless supply of weapons from NATO countered by a Russian arsenal of nearly equal magnitude. Of course, both sides are armed with weapons that could plunge civilization into new dark age if and when one gets the upper hand and the other’s security seems genuinely threatened. This is the dead end to which Mr. LaPierre’s philosophy finally leads.
To be a disciple of Jesus is to refuse, along with our Lord, to get caught up in the cycle of retribution; to reject the notion that the use of violent force is inevitable; and to be prepared to suffer death rather than to inflict it. It is to be sent as a lamb into the midst of ravenous wolves. To be a disciple of Jesus is to recognize that the ends never justify the means because we cannot know what the ends will be and whether they are the ends toward which God is working. The ends cannot justify the means because unjust means will always infect the ends. We cannot control the ends to which our actions bring us, but we can control the means by which we act. To do that, we must sometimes resist the temptation to bypass the peaceful way of our Lord to achieve some noble end or avoid some unspeakable evil.
Here is a poem by Dudley Randall illustrating that, whether we put our lives on the line to confront evil with a potent witness of peace or whether we simply gather to pray for peace, violence is still able to reach us. No greater juxtaposition has ever been seen than that of the ongoing courageous and peaceful struggle for racial justice in our land and the violent and ruthless opposition to it.
Ballad of Birmingham
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
Source: Cities Burning (c. 1968 by Dudley Randall; pub. by Broadside Press, 1968). Dudley Randall (1914-2000) was an African-American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan. He founded a pioneering publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African-American writers. Randall’s poetry is characterized by simplicity and realism. Randall became interested in poetry at an early age. His interest stemmed from his father taking him to hear prominent African-American writers and artists speak, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter Francis White, James Weldon Johnson and others. Randall worked on the floor of a Ford Motor plant, as a postal clerk and served in the military during the Second World War. He earned a master’s degree in library science and served as a reference librarian at University of Detroit where he was also named the University’s Poet-in-Residence. You can find out more about Dudly Randall and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
What Does the Bible Really Say About Abortion?
It’s official. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade returning to the states full authority to regulate medical termination of pregnancies without regard to a women’s needs or desires. As a practical matter, this means the issue is no longer a mere culture war talking point. The extent to which women are entitled to determine the medical treatment surrounding their pregnancies will be a hotly contested issue in several states. As has been the case from the get go, religion figures heavily into the debate. Volumes have been written and I am sure more will be forthcoming about all the implications of this development. However, I am confining this discussion to the question posed in the title of my article, namely, what the Bible really says about abortion. As a disciple of Jesus, I want to make sure that if the Bible is to be dragged into this debate, people understand what it does and does not say. As a lawyer who took an oath to uphold the Constitution (back in the days when that actually meant something), I want us to be clear about what the issues actually are so that we do not clutter the airwaves, internet and barber shop with a lot of fruitless, ignorant chatter. One can only hope. So here goes.
In the strictest sense, the answer to the question posed is “nothing.” The Bible does not address abortion anywhere. The one place where the status of a fetus is discussed is Exodus 21:22. Here the law provides that, where a pregnant woman is injured in the course of a brawl such that she miscarries, the responsible party must pay a fine to the woman’s husband. The provision clearly does not treat the wrongfully caused miscarriage as a homicide. It is rather a civil offense against property, more specifically, the property of the woman’s husband. This verse does nothing to support either the proposition that a fetus is the equivalent of a mature human or the claim that a woman should have the right to control her own body. It has no useful ammunition for either army in the abortion culture war. Not surprisingly, both sides ignore it.
Now some anti-abortion advocates cite passages like Psalm 139:13-18, Jeremiah 1:5 and Genesis 25:21-26 (Jacob and Esau wrestling in Rachel’s womb) and Luke 1:41-44 (John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s womb) in support of their claim that human life begins at conception. All reputable biblical scholars agree that these texts are poetic expressions of God’s involvement with and destiny for the people involved. They are not addressing our Twenty-First Century culture war disputes about how or when a person comes into being or when a person becomes a sentient human creature. The Lord says to Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” The psalmist declares that his or her days “were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.” Yet if one insists on ignoring the biblical writers’ intent and taking these verses as addressing the moment when life begins, then one can only conclude that life begins before conception. As a matter of fact, the biblical authors did not even know about conception. The ancient view was that a person springs from the “seed” of one’s father. Females are simply incubators for their husband’s seed.[1] This understanding is exhibited by the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews who states that the patriarch Levi was in the loins of his great grandfather Abraham. Hebrews 7:9-10. However valid the theological point made by the author, one must admit that his or her understanding of human biology is wanting. Nonetheless, if you insist on taking the Bible literally at this point, then we should be regulating penises rather than wombs.
So here is the bottom line. I don’t know when a psycho-spiritual being emerges from the human reproductive process. Neither do you, nor does anyone else for that matter. The Supreme Court was incapable of making that determination and said as much. Science cannot answer the question for us and, as we have seen, the Bible is silent on the matter. Your opinion that the emergence of sentient being occurs at conception, birth or some point in between or after is just that-an opinion. More precisely, it is a religious/philosophical opinion.[2] Of course, you are welcome to your opinion. But you cannot maintain that it is a biblical teaching to which all Christians are bound and you certainly are not entitled to have it enshrined in law on that basis. The truth is that when, if ever, in the process of reproduction a fetus is deemed a person is purely a legal determination. It is a decision we as citizens make based not on religion or metaphysics, but by weighing the rights and interests of women, the interests of society as a whole and our understanding of pre-natal fetal development gleaned from medical science. The Supreme Court balanced all of these interests in its 1973 decision, Row v. Wade, and determined, rightly I think, that the right of women to privacy in this most personal of decisions predominates. You can argue that these interests should have been balanced in some other way. But you cannot argue either that the Bible or medical science supports the proposition that a “person” emerges at conception. As they say down south, “that dog won’t hunt.”
[1] Thus, the same reasoning applies to Jacob and Esau as well as John the Baptist. The point made is that their origin lies in the mystery of God’s predestination. Yet, once again, if we take this text as a literal description of when a person comes into being, that point would have to be before conception takes place.
[2] I have an opinion on this matter as well. I choose not to share it in this article as it is no more germane than yours. Nevertheless, if you are interested, you can find it at this link.
Salvation Bigger than the Church
THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, ruler of all hearts, you call us to obey you, and you favor us with true freedom. Keep us faithful to the ways of your Son, that, leaving behind all that hinders us, we may steadfastly follow your paths, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
In the first section of today’s gospel, Jesus must restrain his disciples who would nuke Samaritan villages that will not receive him. He would have his disciples know that retribution is not consistent with the reign of God he proclaims. Jesus’ love and forgiveness extends even to those who reject him. We never find Jesus turning away anyone in need of his assistance. He does not ask any one of the five thousand people he fed with loaves and fishes to demonstrate genuine need or that they have made good faith efforts to find gainful employment. Jesus responds with compassion to agents of the Empire occupying his homeland and which ultimately crucified him. He welcomed invitations to dine with respected religious leaders as well as social outcasts. Jesus’ love is radically inclusive, embracing even those who nailed him to the cross.
When it comes to selecting his disciples, however, Jesus is careful and discriminating. He spent the whole night in prayer before selecting the Twelve. Luke 6:12-16. He made it clear to the admiring crowd following him that, if they would be his disciples, they would need to put the reign of God before everything else and be prepared to take up the cross on which he himself would soon die for its sake. Luke 9:23-25. In the second half of our gospel reading, Jesus turns away three people who desire to be his disciples. The first, who promises to follow Jesus wherever he might go, is warned that homelessness is part of the discipleship package. The second two learn that the reign of God takes precedence even over “family values.” All of this strikes one as rather severe and uncompromising.
Or perhaps not. If we understand that Jesus’ love extends to all people and, indeed, the whole cosmos, then his words to these would be followers do not amount to rejection. Nor are they a reflection on their characters. Jesus is simply suggesting to them that they are not yet ready to be his disciples. They are not ready to make the sacrifices required to proclaim in word and deed the good news of God’s reign or to begin living into that reign in the mist of a world hostile to it. It does not mean that they are excluded from that reign or from the love God has for all creation.
Perhaps one of the most destructive errors infecting the church over the centuries is our coupling of church with God’s promise of salvation. I have seen on any number of occasions and perhaps you have too the bumper sticker declaring “No salvation outside the church.” I grew up with that assumption in my home congregation. As a young man pursuing ministry, I believed that salvation consisted in being converted to Christianity and being thus included in the church. My job, then, was to “bring people to Christ.” Over the years, however, I have come to recognize the insidious effect this misconception has had on what was supposed to be “good news.” Instead of sharing an incredibly good word to a world hungry for God’s inclusive kindness, mercy and reconciliation, we found ourselves trying to scare people into an exclusive church with threats of God’s wrath. Missionary work was a zero sum game in which people were called upon to abandon altogether their faith, their families and the faith communities that had formed them to “get aboard” the good ship salvation. It was that or face eternal damnation. Of course, this outlook on the missionary endeavor fit all too comfortably with western racism, colonialism and ruthless imperial exploitation. Though there were and are missionaries that respect and value the cultures and religion of the people to whom they minister, too many of them shared the prejudice and contempt of their oppressors. That condescending attitude is amply reflected in the poem by Anita Endrezze below.
The equation of church with salvation has been equally harmful to our ecclesiology. If salvation means conversion and church membership, then evangelism equates with church membership growth. A church that is not growing is not doing its job. That explains a great deal of the angst these days over the marked decline in membership among mainline and, increasingly, so-called “evangelical” churches as well. If we are not growing, it means we are not “connecting” with people. If we are not growing, it means we are no longer “relevant.” If we are not growing, it must be because we are doing something wrong. Hence, the frantic effort to attract young families with flashy Sunday School curriculum, exciting youth activities, couples’ clubs, singles groups, book clubs and novel worship innovations like “seekers worship” and “dinner church.” Please understand that I don’t believe there is anything wrong with any of these things in themselves. But when they are part of an effort to lure people into the church by appealing to their appitites for freebies, entertainment and cheap babysitting services, they betray Jesus’ call to make disciples.
That brings me to my final point. Nowhere does Jesus call us to make church members of all nations. He calls us instead to make disciples of all nations or, more accurately stated, from among all nations. Membership implies a degree of status that goes with being part of a group. As a member of this church, I have a right to have my kids baptized, confirmed and married here. When my time comes, I am entitled to be buried out of this church. All I need to do in return is contribute a few dollars every year and show up often enough not to be taken off the rolls for inactivity. It is all transactional. As much as we preachers like to rail against inactive members, we have only our own flawed theology and practice to blame. We have sold the church as a warm, friendly community that offers all manner of benefits while requiring next to nothing in return. Can we really blame the people we have lured into our midst on this pretext when they balk at having an offering plate shoved under their nose and a request for a pledge of financial support? Understandably, these folks feel like the victims of a classic “bait and switch.” By appealing to their consumer appitites, we have neither proclaimed to them the Good News about what Jesus has done for them nor have we challenged them to join with him in witnessing to that Good News to a world that desparately needs it.
The church is not a life raft designed to rescue as many souls as possible from a sinking ship. The church is the first fruits of God’s design to save the ship. The church is to be “a demonstration plot” for the coming reign of God, as the late Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm so aptly put it. To be chosen as Jesus’ disciple is not an election to privilege above and beyond the rest of humanity. It is election to a vocation of service to the world for which God sent the only begotten Son. The church, however imperfectly, testifies to what human community is supposed to look like and the end to which God is drawing all of creation. Its mission is not to expand its numbers, but to form people capable of living in communion of Trinitarian love.
Properly understood, the gospel lesson for this week is incredibly good news. The burden of saving the world no longer rests upon our shoulders. We need no longer worry about children who seem to have no interest in the church or critics who malign the church or the seeming indifference of the dominant culture to the church’s ministry. The salvation of the world and of each individual is God’s responsibility and God’s work of salvation extends far beyond the borders of the church. As Jesus reminds us, those who are not against us are with us. Mark 9:40. Indeed, if we believe what Saint Paul tells us about “all things being held together” in Christ, then it should not surprise us to find Jesus reflected in the faith and life of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and people other faith-or no faith-traditions.See Colossians 1:15-20.
I suspect that congregations changing their focus from growing membership to making disciples might lose some long time members who want only the privileges that come with belonging to a voluntary organization. I also suspect that such congregations will attract new people hungry for community grounded in thick spiritual practices and dedicated to witnessing in word and action to God’s coming reign of justice, reconciliation and peace. Whether that will be a net loss or gain in terms of numbers, I neither know nor care. The church from which the Good News of Jesus Christ spread to the entire Mediterranean world was small enough to meet in a single room. As the story of the loaves and fishes illustrate, God does not need much to work with in order to accomplish great things.
Here is the poem by Anita Endrezze to which I referred above.
Indian Vices
By nature Indians are very lazy and sworn enemies of work.
They prefer to suffer hunger than to fatigue themselves
with agriculture. Therefore, they must be forced to do this by their
superiors. With six industrious Europeans one can do more
in one day than fifty Indians
—Joseph Och, Missionary in Sonora: Travel Reports
of Joseph Och, S.J., 1755-176
Mining: The Indian is naked, swinging
quarter to half hundredweight steel-edged crowbars.
He climbs beams with notches set step by step,
carrying ore in plaited baskets
on his shoulders.
They are given one half-bushel of maize per week.
This is their payment unless they have a family–
then they are given two half-bushels.
Two men using a wheelbarrow could haul out
more than can thirty lazy Indians
working an entire day.
Natural resources: They are naked, with only a loincloth.
Otherwise they would steal valuable ore.
Instead they laugh
when their hair is thick with dusted gold
so that they look like ugly yellow-haired creatures.
Their hair is long and they secrete fragments
of ore there, wrapping their hair up
like a turban. You can no more trust them
than you would a Turk.
Gold and silver ore varies.
Some is very heavy, pure
silver spiked, as it were,
with silver nails.
The completely black
very heavy ores
are considered the richest.
Processing: The Indian washes his hair
several times a day, sluicing water
over his long hair, letting the silver fall
into a bowl which he then strains,
keeping more silver.
Then again, the Indian must relieve himself
and he hides behind a bush,
thereby stealing more ore
in a most despicable way.
Some can be reduced by fire . . .
or be broken up
and placed into a clay oven
. . . with molten lead,
until . . . the lead has amalgamated
with the silver.
Pebbles and slag float on top
and are skinned off
with hoes and the lead heated
with a double fire
until it becomes light and frothy
like glass.
This froth is removed in heaps;
what remains is pure silver.
The waste product: When the Indian dies,
perhaps careless at work, he is wrapped in a horse blanket.
Thread from deer or plant fiber
is used to sew him up.
It is heathen, this practice
of putting bows and arrows,
small bowls, and other things
in the grave. Instead, I pull the bell rope
and they are pleased at the songs
and lighted tapers
on the altar of the whitewashed church.
They die when they want to,
saying they are only journeying
to the next village.
They have many vices
which I have discovered
and abolished, including the throwing
of patterned sticks,
which is like gambling.
They would rather lie on blankets
in the bushes, throwing these sticks
against the rough wool to muffle the sound,
than work in the fields
or in the mines which are very near,
nor do they think of tomorrow
and the profit that must be made,
whether it is gold, silver, maize,
or their heathenish souls.
Source: Throwing Fire at the Sun Water at the Moon, (c. 2000 by Anita Endrezze, pub. by University of Arizona Press). Anita Endrezze (b. 1952) is an American poet, writer and artist based in Washington State. She claims Yaqui ancestry from her father. The Yaqui are an Uto-Aztecan-speaking Indigenous people of Mexico in the valley of the Río Yaqui in the Mexican state of Sonora and the Southwestern United States. They also have communities in Chihuahua and Durango. Endrezze graduated with an master’s degree from Eastern Washington University. Her poems and stories have been translated into seven languages and published in ten countries. You can read more about Anita Endrezze and sample more of her poems at the Poetry Foundation website.
