THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Mark 4:26-34

Prayer of the Day: O God, you are the tree of life, offering shelter to all the world. Graft us into yourself and nurture our growth, that we may bear your truth and love to those in need, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” Mark 4:30-32.  

The most common tree on the Outer Cape region of Cape Cod is pitch pine. It isn’t the most beautiful or majestic evergreen, but I must confess that it has grown on me just as it has on the rest of the Cape. This scrappy, scraggly tree is perfectly adapted to our acidic, well-drained and sandy soil. The National Seashore that occupies most of the Outer Cape is dominated by forests of pitch pines, floored with a cushiony layer of needles and covered with scrub oak, beach plumb and hardy species of undergrowth that I can’t begin to name. It wasn’t always that way. The Cape was once dominated by dense cedars that blocked out the sunlight, leaving little opportunity for the smaller deciduous trees and shrubs to gain a foothold. You can still find a few patches of woods like these that have managed somehow to resist the pitch pine invasion. The forest around the Cedar Swamp Trail in the National Seashore at Marconi Beach is one such example.

The pitch pine was imported by European settlers. It’s pitch was used to make tar and turpentine as well as charcoal. The wood from these trees was used for firing steam engines and for brickyards. Once introduced on the Cape, pitch pines gradually began to dominate the landscape. Eventually, what was once a mixture of cedar forest and scrub land transitioned into pine forest. Ecologically, the Outer Cape is a place entirely different from the one on which the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

All of this brings me to Jesus’ two parables. The first is unremarkable. It reflects a reality of which every farmer and gardener is aware. You can prep the soil, plant the seeds at just the right depth and properly spaced. You can weed and water. But the growth is a matter beyond your control. Drought, blight, insect pests, flooding or hail can frustrate your best laid plans for a bountiful harvest. So it is with the reign of God. Disciples can seed the kingdom of God, but only God can bring it to fruition in God’s own way and in God’s own time.

By contrast, the parable of the mustard seed speaks not about the ordered practice of agriculture, but about the chaotic infestation of weeds. Though the mustard plant has always had its culinary uses, nobody in First Century Palestine would have planted it deliberately on any precious plot of arable soil. Like the pitch pine, the mustard bush is bent on dominating the field. It will transform your vegetable garden into a bird sanctuary.

Can we speak of the Kingdom of God as an invasive species? Is it like a non-native plant that sets down its roots, grows, spreads and finally transforms its environment? The analogy is a little discomforting, given that the pitch pine’s introduction to Cape Cod is tied up with the history of colonialism. I have no doubt Jesus’ comparison of God’s approaching reign with an infestation of weeds raised more than a few eyebrows as well. But maybe that is the point. The progressive Protestantism, in which I was raised, has always viewed the Kingdom of God as the endpoint of human development. From the darkness of barbarism, the light of Christ raises church and society up to a greater level of enlightenment. The realm of government, family and work are the arena for transformation of human existence along the arc of justice toward which the universe bends. The garden is, after all, a work in process. But what if God is not interested in the progress of the garden we envision? What if God has something entirely different in mind? What if the order, structure and patterns of regularity we reflexively defend are not the foundation for a fruitful harvest, but the servants of systemic oppression? What if revolution, not evolution is God’s intent?

In addressing these questions, a few things need to said. First, the reign of God is not to be identified with the church. It is the church’s mission to proclaim the reign of God, to bear witness in word and deed to that reign and, to the extent humanly possible, to embody that reign in its communal life. But the church is part and parcel of the current global environment and as much in need of transformation as the rest of it. If we forget that, we run the risk of equating ecclesiastical growth, programmatic success and societal influence with the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t about us and what we are doing. It is about what God in Christ is doing. As theologian and preacher Karl Barth put it, the church is the crater left by Jesus’ death and resurrection. If we are not pointing to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims, we are just an empty hole in the ground.

Second, just as we dare not equate the church and its programs with God’s reign, so too we cannot confuse our own views of what constitutes progress in the direction of God’s reign with what God actually wills. We have seen for the last few decades the corrupting effect of alliances between religion and political agendas. We know all too well the tragic consequences of the church and its representatives seizing the levers of power to make history come out right and so hasten the coming of God’s reign. Jesus rejected the use of imperial force to bring about God’s reign and so should his disciples. This is so because, as Jesus points out, we know neither day nor the hour of the kingdom’s revealing. Nor can we begin to guess the means God is using to bring it about. I don’t suggest for one moment that the church or disciples of Jesus individually are to be politically neutral (as though such a thing were even possible!). In politics, as in everything else, disciples of Jesus are called upon to love their neighbors, especially those deemed “least” in the human family. I think I have some understanding of what that should look like and the actions I need to take in order to bring it about. But I don’t have the advantage of seeing the universe from God’s long range perspective with which my own well meaning efforts might not be in concert and might even be opposed. Thus, I can never blithely assume that “I am on the Lord’s side.” I can only pray that the Lord is on mine and that through my faithful work, God is working a change in my cultural environment.

So what kind of environmental changes would I hope to see the nearness of God’s reign bring about? I would like to see an environment where racial slurs-even the dog whistle kind-no longer find a place in public discourse. I would like to see an environment where all lives really do matter so that people of color no longer have to work so hard convincing the rest of us that theirs do. I would like to see an environment where political candidates who make their case with reasoned arguments and without resorting to falsehoods, insults and wise cracks are rewarded with electoral victories. This is hardly utopian and far short of the glory of God’s kingdom to which the scriptures testify. But it would be a better environment than we now have. It would be a better environment in which to live, work and raise our families. And if enough of us feel the impact of God’s approaching reign, if enough of us can be convinced that the way things are is not the way they have to be, if enough of us start believing that there is a better way to be human, who knows? We might wake up one day to find the ecological landscape changed.

Here is a poem by Bin Remke illustrating how linguistic, cultural and family influences shape us and transform us along with our communities. Can you see the Holy Spirit at work in these media striving to plant the seeds of a better environment in which to be human?  

The Melting Pot

“Who are you to tell us how to live or why,
et cetera?”   No Man, of course, and not so tall   
as is the current fashion, nor smart enough
in the acceptable modern way, to enthrall

the crowd with stories of my life among
the savages where I was home and growing
baffled day by day, raging through the night
as if it were new music I made, groaing.

It came to me today at lunch, the sound
of women in the next booth, a voice like
Aunt Odile’s—whom I never knew well
nor did I like her, but not her spite

but her voice like home-grown fame, a touch
gravelly, a considerable groan itself, it seemed.
They spoke outmoded French around me, never
to me, except to taunt, I thought.   She leaned

above me, on those visits, speaking to Mother
in their private French, laughing.   A boy
surrounded by the sound of foreign tongues
knowing what wasn’t meant for him:   toy

temptations, suggestive coils of syllables.
I learned Latin, for Mass, and did love
its terrific laddered randomness:   
The Blessed hovering Virgin above

every station of a boy’s new path, hormonal
disharmonies, her praises sung into hundreds
the first Tuesday of every month: and yet
Latin could not expose such shreds

of glittering flesh as I found in French,
not like the living tongue whose tip twined
into an Uncle’s mustache as he leered
at the wrong Aunt and winked and a fine

distance crystallized loud there, then
gone. Crashing like German. Father’s family
spoke clear English among the bayous, boys
and girls of immigrants accentless happily

German through two wars, not counting
Civil.   I had the tongue for arithmetic
and spoke it beautifully.   I loved to count:   
precision’s a tempting career, clicking

into a future like an abacus ignoring
all those accents around.
I never learned the luck of any
but English, bland and bound.

But only yesterday I heard a word
the mechanic said in Czech
to his cousin—shop rag—clearly centered
in a welter of incomprehension, the wreck

of my car at their wretched mercies:   shop
rag.   And he wiped his hands and cried   
for me, shrugging like a cousin would.
I wrote a check. I drove home, or tried.

So does it count?   Am I a man of passion or
child of comprehension?   “Father of little lusts
driving myself home who thinks:   Buy some
sentiment, a little like love and she must

speak French this time. She longs
for you, you know; it isn’t just the money.
America loves you for yourself alone”
and so I go for professional help, honey-

blond hair and a disposition like
a happy banker, whose French for dear
sounds like dog; the cost of living
is going up, loving her here.

Source: Massacre of Innocents, (c. 1995 by Bin Ramke; pub. by University of Iowa Press). Bin Remke (b. 1947) was born in Port Neches, Texas. He began writing poetry while an undergraduate at Louisiana State University from which he graduated. He earned his master’s degree from University of New Orleans and his Ph.D from Ohio University. Remke taught at Columbus College in Georgia for several years and he edited the University’s Press’s Contemporary Poetry Series. He currently teaches at the University of Denver. You can read more about Bin Remke and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Genesis 3:8-15

Psalm 130

2 Corinthians 4:13—5:1

Mark 3:20-35

Prayer of the Day: All-powerful God, in Jesus Christ you turned death into life and defeat into victory. Increase our faith and trust in him, that we may triumph over all evil in the strength of the same Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’” Mark 3:22.

Demonizing one’s opponent is as old as the Bible. The scribes in this Sunday’s gospel use demonization to “shut Jesus down.” “Sure,” they say. “He casts out demons and works miraculous cures. That’s easy when you are in league with the devil.” Once they have put Jesus in the devil’s camp, they can safely dismiss everything he does and says. Why would you waste time arguing with the devil? Why would you believe anything that comes from the mouth of one possessed by the devil? No need to engage with Jesus, think about his parables, wonder at the healing power at work in him or consider his remarkable claim that God’s reign has drawn near. He is of the devil. You don’t negotiate with the devil; you don’t talk to the devil and you certainly don’t listen to the devil. The devil is the enemy of all good. The only appropriate response is to silence him.

Demonization is still very often the method of choice in our politically polarized culture. One’s political opponents are not merely people whose policies are misguided, whose priorities are distorted or whose leadership skills are wanting. They are intrinsically sinister. They are “squads” of non-white women manipulating a senile president elected by fraudulent means. Their goal is to undermine America, replace “American values” (whatever those are) with the values of “multiculturalism” (whatever they are). Our opponents are bound and determined to take our guns, bibles and lightbulbs; to implement Sharia law, build cancer causing windmills, slow down our toilets and take God out of the pledge of allegiance.[1] Just as you don’t negotiate with the devil, you don’t negotiate with people whose goal is your destruction. Compromise in this circumstance only drives you closer to capitulation. So you fight your opponent, giving no quarter. You block them at every turn. Such is the politics of demonization in which everyone finally loses because nothing of importance gets done.

Of course, religion makes good use of demonization as well. And we are a good deal less subtle about it. Ecclesiastical history is stained with the blood of victims demonized as heretics and infidels. The Inquisition, the Thirty Years War and the church’s complicity in the Holocaust are just a few illustrations making the point. Jesus had to fight his own disciples’ impulse to demonize more than once in his ministry. When his disciples wanted to call down fire from heaven to “nuke” a Samaritan village that refused to welcome Jesus, Jesus had to rebuke them. Luke 9:51-56. When the Apostle John wanted to silence a man casting out demons in Jesus’ name because “he was not following us,” Jesus had to remind him that “anyone who is not against us is for us.” Mark 9:38-40. The “other” is not necessarily the “enemy.” Moreover, even when one chooses to be an enemy of a disciple of Jesus, the disciple is instructed not to be an enemy in return. Luke 6:27-32. No one, however horrendous their words and conduct may be, is beyond the redemptive reach of God’s love.   

Jesus has some harsh words for his demonizing opponents: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. Mark 3:28-29. There has been no shortage of debate over exactly what constitutes “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” For my part, I believe it is the sin of demonization. Demonization puts an end to any possibility of argument, discussion, reconciliation and peace. It cuts off all lines of communication. When persuasion, compromise and coexistence are off the table, there remains but one solution: silencing, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Once you classify someone as “of the devil,” no insult, act of cruelty or violent attack is off limits. Demonization effectively closes the door to the Spirit’s call for repentance, reconciliation and peace.

Let me be clear about one thing. While disciples must never demonize another human being, they must always uncover, bring to light and condemn demonic ideologies-and that might very well alienate those who hold them. The call to reject demonizing one’s opponent does not suggest one should tolerate the opponent’s demonic beliefs. Nor should it be used as a cover for false moral equivalencies and “what-aboutism.” To state but one example, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive congressperson whose views you might not endorse, is not simply the flip side to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s harassment of teenage gun violence survivors, blatant antisemitism and outright lies. Racism, bullying and dishonesty are not simply alternative political positions deserving of respect in what some leaders of my church like to call “our community of moral deliberation.” You don’t give oxygen to racist ideologies and crackpot conspiracy theories by “deliberating” over them. There is quite frankly nothing over which to deliberate. Nothing to discuss. The only faithful response when confronted by a demon is to cast it out.[2]

That said, it is critical to distinguish between the demon and the possessed. People enslaved to demonic ideologies, hostile as they often can be, are not the enemy. Saint Paul reminds us that “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12. The devil, of course, would prefer that we believe our enemy is of flesh and blood. Nothing pleases the devil more than to see us at each other’s throats, rending each other’s flesh and shedding each other’s blood. But Jesus knows better and so should his disciples. Those possessed by the hateful ideologies of white supremacy, nationalism and sexism are to be pitied, not hated. We are called upon to liberate them from bondage, not to destroy them.

It helps to recall, as a good friend once reminded me, that “nobody is ever only one thing.” People in bondage to hateful ideologies are frequently angry, frightened souls. Those whose marriages are failing, whose careers are heading south or who have experienced other painful reversals in life are primary hosts for demonic ideologies. Such ideologies put a face on their fears, provide a target for their pent up anger and give meaning to their unexplained suffering. As such, they function as a sort of sick type of religion. In my own encounter with such persons, I have sometimes found it helpful to get them talking about themselves, their struggles and experiences rather than getting drawn into a dead end argument with their weird belief systems. When you do that, you discover that beneath the strident bigotry they project, there is a world of hurt and insecurity-as well as an openness to being heard and understood. But to get there, you sometimes have to go around to the back door or find a side enterance.

The minute we lose sight of our enemies’ humanity, the image of God in them that no evil can completely erase, we have demonized them. In so doing, we hand the devil a victory by allowing ourselves to be transformed into the mirror image of what we claim to despise.

Here is a poem by Wendell Berry I have cited before and do so again here. Berry illustrates how forgiveness saves us from becoming the “monsters” we see in our enemy, destroys the enemy’s power over us and sets us at liberty to recognize the enemy’s humanity.

Enemies

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

Source: Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice (c. Wendell Berry, 1994; pub. by Norwood House Press, 2013). Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, novelist, farmer and environmental activist. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. You can read more about Wendell Berry and sample more of his works at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] Incidentally, I think God would be just fine with the last proposal.

[2] For more on this, see my “An Address to Supporters of Donald Trump in the Spirit of ‘Golden Rule 2020’”

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17

Prayer of the Day: Almighty Creator and ever-living God: we worship your glory, eternal Three-in-One, and we praise your power, majestic One-in-Three. Keep us steadfast in this faith, defend us in all adversity, and bring us at last into your presence, where you live in endless joy and love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. 

There will probably be more heresy preached this coming Sunday than in all the church year as preachers throughout the world teeter between proclaiming a god that is a committee of three and a god that is one, but has three suits in the closet. This comes about, in my opinion, as a result of well meaning but misguided efforts to “dumb down” the doctrine of the Trinity. Rather than repeat my rant of a few years ago addressing that issue, I will simply reference it here. I prefer to focus on our Psalm for this Sunday-the topic of which is God’s voice.

This Psalm is disturbing. The “voice” of God is portrayed largely as a destructive force, breaking cedars, stampeding terrified animals and belching forth storms of lightning and thunder. This is not the kindly deity who manages the universe in such a way as to make everything come out right for every individual. God did not make the world a safe playground with padded play equipment, no sharp corners and plenty of foam flooring on which to land. You can get hurt out here.

The hazard of living in God’s good but wild and unpredictable world was brought home to me last week when Sesle, my wife of thirty-eight years took a fall while engaging in competitive sport at a local gym. This accident left her with near total paralysis. She is currently in rehab working to regain movement and strength. The doctors tell us her prognosis is good, but that there are no guarantees. What strikes me is the complete randomness of it all. How remarkable-and terrifying-it is that one’s life and the lives of all who love them can be so thoroughly disrupted and transformed in a matter of seconds. God’s voice shatters the cedars, but the psalm says nothing about the people upon whom the splinters might have fallen. Perhaps that is to remind us that our little lives are far more frail, vulnerable and subject to erasure than we imagine. That is a hard word to hear.

So, was God responsible for Sesle’s injury? I don’t believe God caused, willed or allowed this to happen; not as punishment for sin or to impart some lesson or to accomplish some greater good. There is nothing good about human suffering. Nothing. It just plain sucks. God is not the author of pain. Nevertheless, there is one sense in which you could say that God is responsible. As I said before, God did not create a safe world. God created a world that is beautiful, mysterious and filled with possibilities. This is a world where you can find love, accomplish great things and acquire wisdom. It is a place where you can work hard and play even harder. But it is also a world that can break your heart, hand you some stinging disappointments and crush your dreams. It is a world that offers unlimited joys and unimaginable sorrows. Is it possible to have one without the other? Is the risk of freak accidents causing crushing injuries and events like the Holocaust worth creating a universe with such randomness in it? I have wondered about that a lot over the last week.

In any event, God has determined that the risk of making such a world was worth taking and that this world, in which so much has gone so terribly wrong, is worth saving. So determined is God to see through the work begun in the opening chapter of Genesis that God sends God’s only beloved Son to be born into, grow up in and die upon this beautiful, wonderful and dangerous world-knowing full well the probable outcome. Moreover, God will not accept rejection. Rather than retaliating against the world that murdered the Son, rather than giving up on a world bound and determined to reject God’s love, God raises the rejected Son from death and offers him back to the world again. God continues to offer him and always will, because in God’s view, we are worth it.

So while I acknowledge that God is in this sense responsible for Sesle’s injuries, God is not indifferent to them. I believe that the God who knows when each sparrow falls, is grieved over the suffering of this, his child. I also believe that, just as God is in the storms that shatter cedars, God is present in the cellular reactions that heal wounded nerves and muscles, in the caring hands of doctors, nurses and therapists, in the prayers of the faith community and in the healing outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised in baptism. So I am riding this emotional roller coaster clinging to that promise, the promise that God sent, continues to send and always will send the Beloved Son.

Here is a hymn/poem from the Lutheran Hymnal, the book of hymns and liturgy for the church in which I was raised. It is sung to the tune of Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia. Sadly, it did not make the cut for subsequent Lutheran hymnals. I still find it of enormous comfort at times like the one I am going through now.

Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His own fullness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hast’ning on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Source: The Lutheran Hymnal, (c. 1941 by Concordia Publishing House) #651. This poem is in the public domain. Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel was born in Germany in 1697. Little is known about this remarkale woman. Her name suggests that she came from an aristocratic family. She was associated with a Lutheran religious house in the town of Köthen, though her name does not appear in the house records. There are in existence several letters written by her between 1750-52 to Heinrich Ernst, Count Stolberg. There is some suggestion in the correspondence that, rather than being in a religious house, von Schlegel was a member of the court of the duke of Anhalt-Köthen where Johann Sebastian Bach was musical director from 1717 until 1723. She also corresponded with August Hermann Francke, a prominent Lutheran clergyman, philanthropist and Biblical scholar. The date and place of her death are unknown. Von Schlegel wrote a number of hymns in the spirit of early Pietism. Among English speakers, her best known hymn is the above printed “Stille mein Wille, dein Jesus hilft siegen” written in 1752. This 1855 translation is by Jane Borthwick.

THE DAY OF PENTECOST

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

Romans 8:22-27

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Prayer of the Day: Mighty God, you breathe life into our bones, and your Spirit brings truth to the world. Send us this Spirit, transform us by your truth, and give us language to proclaim your gospel, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“O Lord, how manifold are your works!
   In wisdom you have made them all;
   the earth is full of your creatures.
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
   creeping things innumerable are there,
   living things both small and great.
There go the ships,
   and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.”

Psalm 104:24-26.

It is hard to forget the greatness and wideness of the sea when you live on what amounts to a sand bar jetting right out into its depths. With Cape Cod Bay just a short walk from my house to the west and the open ocean less than three miles due east, I can’t easily escape the reach of the sea. Nor would I want to. I have grown to love the wet salty breeze that blows through our forests of scraggly pitch pines, the cry of seagulls and hypnotic pounding of breakers against the sand in their endless tidal dance of back and forth. It is strangely exhilarating, this existence at Leviathan’s doorstep. During the month of April, those of us fortunate enough to be on the Cape are treated to a rare opportunity for witnessing Leviathan’s sporting about. Each year at that time the magnificent right whales aggregate in Cape Cod Bay after spending the winter months off South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. If you spend a few hours on Herring Cove beach in Provincetown, you are likely to spot them from shore.

Seeing these marvelous creatures is a bittersweet experience for me. As mighty and powerful as it is and as regally as it carries itself through the waves, the right whale is, in fact, a fragile creature classified as endangered. Climate change, habitat destruction, hunting and lethal encounters with commercial fishing gear have all reduced the global right whale population to a mere estimated 360. It breaks my heart to think that mine might be the last generation to see a right whale in the waters of Cape Cod. “The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains,” Saint Paul tells us. That groan can be heard in the diminishing right whale numbers and the many other animal and plant species teetering on the brink of extinction. Selfishness, violence and cruelty do not wreak havoc only on the human family. They threaten the entire fabric of life on our planet.

While we tend to think of the Holy Spirit strictly in terms of Pentecost and the outpouring of that Spirit upon God’s people, it is worth remembering that the Spirit was around long before that. In the opening chapter of Genesis, we find the Spirit of God brooding over the waters, enlivening them with the potential for being, soon to be given shape, color and identity be the word, “Let there be.” For this reason, one faithful way to name the Trinity is by calling upon God the Speaker, God the Voice and God the Word. The psalmist tells us that all life, human and every other species, owes its being and sustenance to God’s Spirit (“breath” in the original Hebrew) poured out upon the cosmos. Psalm 104:30. Thus, human beings share a kinship with the rest of the animal and plant world far more profound than even the common building blocks of life we hold in common. All life is sustained by the same Spirit we invoke in baptism, confess in our worship and rely upon to sustain our faith until the last day.

There are profound implications for this broader understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work. The Spirit, Paul tells us, raises our prayers to God with “sighs too deep for words.” Romans 8:26. So, too, I believe this same Spirit brings before God the anguished cries of suffocating coral reefs, diminished pods of whales and the last song of each bird species lost forever to extinction. Earlier on in his Letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” Romans 8:19. When the human family finally learns to live as God’s faithful creatures and beloved children, when we finally understand that this good earth, that can surely provide for our need, will just as surely perish under the weight of our insatiable greed, when we finally take our place as God’s caretakers for this marvelous planet and learn to live gently on the land, then the creation’s bondage to decay will have ended. For the right whales, that day cannot come too soon.

Here is a poem by Charles Harper Webb giving voice to the groans of creation under the oppressive rule of human greed and exploitation. Webb memorializes some of the unique creatures whose calls will never be heard again, nor their forms seen in the flesh. Lord, in your mercy, hear your creation’s prayer.

The Animals are Leaving

One by one, like guests at a late party   
They shake our hands and step into the dark:   
Arabian ostrich; Long-eared kit fox; Mysterious starling.

One by one, like sheep counted to close our eyes,   
They leap the fence and disappear into the woods:   
Atlas bear; Passenger pigeon; North Island laughing owl;   
Great auk; Dodo; Eastern wapiti; Badlands bighorn sheep.

One by one, like grade school friends,   
They move away and fade out of memory:   
Portuguese ibex; Blue buck; Auroch; Oregon bison;   
Spanish imperial eagle; Japanese wolf; Hawksbill   
Sea turtle; Cape lion; Heath hen; Raiatea thrush.

One by one, like children at a fire drill, they march outside,   
And keep marching, though teachers cry, “Come back!”   
Waved albatross; White-bearded spider monkey;   
Pygmy chimpanzee; Australian night parrot;   
Turquoise parakeet; Indian cheetah; Korean tiger;   
Eastern harbor seal ; Ceylon elephant ; Great Indian rhinoceros.

One by one, like actors in a play that ran for years   
And wowed the world, they link their hands and bow   
Before the curtain falls.

Source:  Amplified Dog, (c. by Charles Harper Webb 2006, pub. by Red Hen Press). Charles Harper Webb is an American poet, professor, psychotherapist and former singer and guitarist. He was born in Philadelphia in 1938, but grew up in Houston. He earned his bachelors degree in English from Rice University, a masters degree in English from the University of Washington and an M.F.A. in Professional Writing. Web also earned a PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Southern California. He currently lives and teaches in Long Beach, California at California State University. He has been awarded a Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievement Award as well as the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award. His most recent poetry collection is Shadow Ball (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). His honors include a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2006. His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, Paris Review, and Ploughshares. You can read more about Charles Harper Webb and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.  

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Psalm 1

1 John 5:9-13

John 17:6-19

Prayer of the Day: Gracious and glorious God, you have chosen us as your own, and by the powerful name of Christ you protect us from evil. By your Spirit transform us and your beloved world, that we may find our joy in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17:18-19.

When I was in full time parish ministry, I always celebrated Ascension Day on the nearest Sunday to the day on which it fell. Liturgical purists among my colleagues objected, informing me that Ascension is not a “movable” feast and ought to be celebrated on the precise day it falls, Sunday or no. I always replied that, in a perfect world where no one works, goes to school or has qualms about driving at night, I might follow the appropriate practice. But the world does not operate with the precision of the liturgical calendar. Because I feel that Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father is critical to the gospel narrative, I don’t believe I can either skip it or relegate it to a weekday service almost no one will attend. So, I told my liturgical purist friends that I would celebrate Ascension on the nearest Sunday and they, for their part, could sue me. If you are of the same mind, I invite you to revisit my post for the Sunday of June 1, 2014.  

Even if you are not inclined to abandon the lectionary order, I still believe that it is possible to speak of the Ascension and urge any preacher to do so. At first blush, that might seem an impossible task. So far from focusing on Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father, Sunday’s gospel has Jesus praying for the disciples he is about to send out into the world. Thus, whereas the Ascension story leaves us gazing into the heavens, our gospel turns the focus on the church’s being sent into the world. But appearances are deceiving. Recall that in the account from the Book of Acts, the angels chide the disciples for staring up into the clouds after the ascended Lord. Acts 1:11.That is because the right hand of God is not somewhere “away beyond the blue,” but wherever God is active-which is everywhere there is. The little band of disciples sent out into the world is the right hand of God at work.

I believe it is just here that Luke’s unique gospel perspective is important. Theologically, logically and chronologically different as it is from the narrative of John the Evangelist, Luke lifts up for us another important dimension that complements and fills out John’s witness.  It is not quite enough to say only that Jesus’ presence continues with his disciples through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Luke would have us know that Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father extends his presence to every corner of the universe. Whatever God does, God does in and through Jesus whether that is evident or not. The Word of God that became incarnate in Jesus remains incarnate. The Word that is Jesus is the same word by which Saint Paul tells us “all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17. God is not all in all-not yet. But we can say with assurance that there is in each historical occurrence, each human relationship, each reaction among subatomic particles a “God factor” struggling toward that end.

It is for this reason that science, the search for understanding of our planet, its place in the universe, the complex ecosystems that make up our world and the millions of creatures whose lives they support is so very important. It is for this reason Black lives, that have mattered too little historically in our nation, matter so very much at this moment in time. It is for this reason that families cannot be ripped apart, the last door to sanctuary closed or life saving food, water and shelter denied to anyone on the basis of which side of an arbitrary line drawn on a map they happen to be. It is for this reason that love, being the very glue that binds the Trinity, is not merely a human emotion among others, but the creative and redemptive power that drives the universe. It is for this reason that the full humanity of women, whose bodies bore the incarnate Lord, cannot be enslaved under patriarchal hierarchies. It is for this reason that kindness really is everything. Because the one who poured out his life in love is the hand through which God is at work in the world, the affirmations on the above yard sign are not merely matters of human opinion. They are, whether the sign maker recognized it or not, matters of divine truth.

Here is a poem by William Blake that I have shared previously. I do so again because it illustrates, I believe, the incarnate, ascended and transcendent Word that is God’s right hand.

The Divine Image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Though unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake eventually came to be considered an important figure in poetry of the Romantic Age. He was born in Soho, London and attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing. Blake considered himself a committed Christian, though he did not identify with the Church of England in which he was baptized and had little use for organized religion. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake. It remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake met and married Catherine Boucher in 1782. She was five years his junior and lacked formal education. Blake taught his young wife to read and write, however, and she assisted him in his artistic endeavors throughout the rest of his career. You can learn more about William Blake and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Kierkegaard’s Ghost

(News that’s fake, but credible)

Bevis and Butthead, MTV’s animated pair from the 1990s, are embarking on what they hope will be their comeback tour titled, Bevis and Butthead do America First. The tour, sponsored by U.S. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Goetz and the  Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), is intended to generate enthusiasm and support for the policies and agenda of the former (some say current) president, Donald J. Trump. “It’s like, you know, the deep state, Big Tech, the ‘fake news media,’ socialists, Antifa, and RINOs are taking us down,” said Mr. Bevis in an interview with our Ghost reporter. “Right,” added Mr. Butthead. Our country’s election’s been stolen. You know, like dead people voting, man. That zombie stuff, it’s not just movies and TV.” The America First tour will hold rallies throughout the United States promoting-well-America first. “Like, no brainer,” said Bevis. “America has the most atom bombs and the most guns.” Butthead agreed, pointing out that America leads the industrial world in gun violence. “But the good guys with the guns always win,” he said. “Just watch any cop show.” “And yet,” added Butthead, “we have Jews with satellites and laser guns starting forest fires, a dead guy in the jungle rigging the vote and the Chinese spraying viruses at us. But nobody is doing anything about it. Go figure.”

Republicans across the board have endorsed the America First tour. “Who better than Bevis and Butthead to make the case for the American people that Donald Trump should be the undisputed leader of the Republican Party,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “These two guys are the embodiment of Republican values.” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas agreed. “Bevis and Butthead represent the best of all the Republican Party can be,” he said. “I think they have a tremendous future in the party.” When asked whether they were entertaining a potential run for office, both members of the America First duo declined to comment. But several attendees at their kickoff event were enthusiastic about the idea. “These guys would be great for the America,” remarked one participant sporting a MAGA hat. “What we need in the Republican Party today is fewer Liz Cheneys. It takes a Butthead to push our true agenda.”

Bevis and Butthead, however, have an objective behind their planned chain of appearances that is more personal than political. “We wanna score,” said Bevis. “Like, that’s why all our rallies are at middle schools. That’s were the cute ones are.” Our Ghost reporter pointed out that both actors are now well into their forties and that sexual advances toward middle school girls on their part would be a felony. “We’re animated characters,” Butthead responded. “Just like Trump, we never grow up. We’re as self absorbed, cruel, immature and ignorant as the day Mike Judge created us. So in a way, we’re still middle schoolers too.” “And we’re celebs,” Bevis added. “So, you know, its Ok if we kiss ’em, grab ’em by the [expletive deleted], whatever. So, like, it’s all cool.”

Stay tuned for further coverage of America First with Bevis and Butthead.

**************************************************************

FAKE NEWS ALERT: The above article is satirical. The events it describes didn’t happen.  “There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn’t necessarily a lie even if it didn’t necessarily happen.” John Steinbeck

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 10:44-48

Psalm 98

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

Prayer of the Day: O God, you have prepared for those who love you joys beyond understanding. Pour into our hearts such love for you that, loving you above all things, we may obtain your promises, which exceed all we can desire; through Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12.

How does that work? How can you command someone to love? To be sure, you can command me to eat my spinach. But you can’t make me like it. Nothing illustrates the point better than my tortured relationship with the violin, an ill starred union that began in my fifth grade year. My teacher determined that my less than stellar handwriting was the result of a lack in manual dexterity. She suggested I take up an instrument that would require use of my hands and fingers. My parents encouraged me to choose the violin. I am not sure whether that was because we already had a violin that belonged to my brother and they were not keen on buying or renting another musical instrument, or whether they thought the finger action required to play it would best address my dexterity problems. Whatever the case may have been, I had no strong feelings either way. Thus, I readily acceded to my parents’ wishes, and so it was my career as a violinist began.

I entered into my studies with enthusiasm and determination. That lasted about a week. It soon became clear to me that learning to play the violin was going to be a long and tedious process. I had to learn to read music. There were scales to be memorized and tedious exercises to be repeated over and over again. I wanted out, but my parents were not the sort to look kindly upon quitting. So I persevered for the next two years, attending elementary orchestra practice where I occupied the last chair in the string section. When I reached middle school, I had a decision to make. The school required two years of music education. I could sing in the choir and ditch the violin. Or I could join the orchestra and continue playing that cursed instrument. I chose the orchestra. I was too self conscious to sing and so the choir was not an option. Although sitting in the last chair of the violin section was humiliating, it was at least a humiliation to which I had become accustomed. So I played violin in the orchestra (sort of) for the next two years, showing up to class and doing as little in the way of practice as I could get away with.

When I departed middle school for high school, I left the violin behind forever. I haven’t touched the violin again and never dreamed I would regret the parting. It was not until my mid fifties when I found myself married and living in a suburban neighborhood with three children of my own that I began to revisit my experience with the violin. It was Kira who brought back some of the old memories. Kira was a little girl that lived in the adjoining yard in back of ours. She sometimes played with my own children and she took up the violin at about the same point I did. Unlike me, Kira’s dedication stuck. She graduated quickly from irritating scales and simple tunes to more advanced compositions. By the time she reached middle school, she was making delightful music. Separated as our houses were by thick forsythia bushes, I seldom if ever saw Kira, but I used to sit out on our patio and listen to her practice on warm spring evenings when the windows were open and her sweet music drifted across the yard with the breeze. As I listened, I became aware of a sadness, a sense of regret. For the first time in my life, I understood what I had thrown away in my youth.

I doubt that all the practice in the world would have enabled me to play like Kira. But I might have become sufficiently proficient to play in community orchestras, church groups and at family gatherings. There is something magical about good music, something that draws us together and brings out the best in us. I see that now and I wish I had the skill to make myself a part of that magic. More importantly, I covet the sheer joy of making music for no particular reason and for no audience but myself. At the age of thirteen, I could not see beyond the tedium of practice imposed by the violin and how it stood between me and numerous other entertainments so enticing to kids my age. Now I understand the joys that awaited me and that I might have known-if only I had traveled further down the road.  

I think that learning to love is a lot like learning to play the violin. It doesn’t come naturally, not even for talented people like Kira. Learning to listen instead of talking all the time takes discipline. Learning to recognize the telltale signs of joy, pain and longing in the tone of a friend’s voice, facial expressions and choice of words requires years of careful attention. Understanding the needs of a faith community requires the hard work of building friendships with its members, participating in its worship, ministry and mission. Learning to love the world instead of hating and fearing it requires regular and disciplined prayer for all its creatures, the environments that sustain them and the human family in all of its divisions and brokenness. Learning to love one’s enemies calls for acquiring the skill of placing oneself in the enemy’s skin and seeing the world through the enemy’s eyes. The love Jesus commands of us is not a feeling, but a habit of the heart shaping the way we encounter all the people in our lives from family to strangers. It is a skill perfected by practice, practice, practice.

As I said, I paid a price for my lack of effort and diligence with the violin. How much greater, though, the price for never learning to love! That price is well articulated by the great Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In his monumental work, The Brothers Karamazov, there is a scene where the sainted Father Zossima, elder of the local monastery, addresses the monks under his leadership for the last time from his death bed:

“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence, immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his coming to earth, the power of saying, ‘I am and I love.’ Once, only once, there was given him a moment of active living love and for that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham’s bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself, ‘Now I have understanding and though I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly, active life) to cool the fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf fixed between that life and this existence.’” Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov (Trans. by Constance Garnett, c. 1950 by Random House, Inc., New York, NY) p. 387.

The greatest tragedy is not death. The greatest tragedy is that people die without ever having lived. The worst thing that can happen is that you will hear the music of love only when it is too late to learn it, play it and dance to it. “Abide in my love,” says Jesus. John 15:9. Love is what life is for and life without it is wasted.

Here is a poem about learning to love-at the beginner’s level.

I Lay Down My Life

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13.

I have never laid down my life.

Not all of it anyway.

Just bits and pieces.

The hospital visit I made

The day I planned to go fishing,

The neighbor’s kid’s

school band concert I attended

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon

When I would rather

Have been doing

Just about anything else,

All the times I said,

“Well, that’s an interesting point”

When I felt like saying

“You’re full of crap,”

All the rude check out people

Bank tellers, receptionists,

At whom I smiled

And wished a good day,

All the Sundays I went to church,

Albeit mostly for the wrong reasons,

And in spite of the fact

I was sorely tempted

To stay home with my coffee,

Bagel and the New York Times,

All the times I’ve contributed

Money to good causes,

Though nothing truly sacrificial

And more to salve my

Privileged conscience

Than in zeal for justice,

All the birthday, anniversary,

Sympathy cards I’ve sent

To show that I cared,

Though probably less

Than the words expressed-

If you add all that up,

It doesn’t come close to a life.

Still, these fragments

I lay down,

Short of the whole

And of mixed quality,

Daring to hope that someday

They’ll look something

Like love.

Source: Anonymous

The Hon. Mitch McConnell

United States Senate

317 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington DC 20510

Dear Senator McConnell:

I read with amusement your letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona expressing your newly discovered “grave concern with American History and Civics Education.” Better late than never I suppose. But we could have used some of that concern back in December and January when Donald Trump was undermining our civil democratic electoral process with what you damn well knew was a blatant lie about the election being stolen from him. Instead of standing up to defend the very civic exercise that gave you your job, you refused to acknowledge the will of the American people expressed in what even Donald Trump’s most loyal toady, former Attorney General Bill Barr, admitted was a free, fair and legitimate election. Not until you found yourself cowering somewhere in the bowels of the Capital Building wetting your trousers as Trump’s mob screamed for your blood did it finally occur to you that perhaps respecting constitutional requirements might not be such a bad idea after all.

While your hypocrisy alone disqualifies you from self-righteously pontificating about the importance of civic education, your purported outrage over “activist indoctrination” and your call for “a rigorous understanding of … American history” is even more laughable. The above photograph, wherein you stand proudly under the banner of treason and white supremacy, the very banner that the Trump mob carried into the halls of our Capital building, belies your purported patriotism. It also demonstrates why you are in no position to tell anyone what constitutes “a balanced assessment of our imperfect but exceptional nation.” Indeed, you are part of the reason we desperately need to “reorient” our teaching of American history and civics. When an elected official cannot tell the difference between treason and patriotism, the flag of the American republic and the flag of those who tried to destroy it, that reflects poorly on the historical understanding and civic intelligence of the people who put him into office.

One can reasonably argue with the analysis put forth by some of the contributors to the New York Times’ “1619 Project.” What you cannot argue away are the facts it discloses, none of which were taught in mine or my children’s primary education classes. To wit,

• The United States Constitution, so far from guaranteeing the Declaration’s bold assertion that “all men are created equal,” counted black Americans as “three fifths of a person,” and that only for purposes determining representation of the states in Congress.

• Ten of the first twelve presidents of the United States were slaveholders.

• The routine separation of enslaved black families, wives from husbands and children from parents, for sale and re-sale.

• The routine and quite legal use of beating, starvation and torture to discipline and control Black slaves.

• The occurrence of the Tulsa race massacre of June 1921 in which mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the ground and from private aircraft and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest Black community in the United States- leaving 36 dead and hundreds hospitalized with injuries.

• Lynching was not an isolated occurrence, but happened routinely and claimed the lives of at least 3,446 African Americans between 1882 and 1968.    

• In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service knowingly withheld life saving antibiotics to Black victims of syphilis in order to study the advanced effects of the disease.

• Until 1967, interracial marriage between Black and white persons was illegal in nearly half of the states of the U.S. and punishable by imprisonment.

• The historic (and still existent) practice of “redlining” and systemic discrimination in housing against persons of color which, incidentally, your former president practiced with regularity and was prosecuted during his years as a real estate baron.

Once again, you might quarrel with some aspects of the Times’ analysis, but the facts are what they are and your railing about “revisionism” and “propaganda” cannot erase them. Nor can the American story be told in a “balanced” way without them. I find the following paragraph from your letter particularly telling:

“Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense. Voters did not vote for it. Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil. If your Administration had proposed actual legislation instead of trying to do this quietly through the Federal Register, that legislation would not pass Congress.”

Since when, Sir, is historical truth determined by legislative action, majority vote or the will of the masses? Do you really think it is the job of teachers, professors and scholars to tell people what they want to hear and already think they know? Is history nothing more than talk therapy for building up national self esteem? I think you know better than that-just as you knew better than to placate the propagators of the “stolen election” lie. But you have demonstrated to all of us throughout your career, Mr. McConnell, that truth, candor and integrity mean nothing to you. You will fly any flag, sing any anthem, placate any foreign dictator or domestic extremist and tell any lie you think will serve your political ambitions. Thus, your plea for “balanced” and “rigorous” education in civics and history strikes me as more than a tad hollow.

For all of the above reasons, your letter deserves to be dismissed out of hand and tossed into the dustbin of history (the real one) along with the rants of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. It has no more merit than its author does integrity.

Very Truly Yours,

Rev. Peter A. Olsen (Retired)

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 8:26-40

Psalm 22:25-31

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Prayer of the Day: O God, you give us your Son as the vine apart from whom we cannot live. Nourish our life in his resurrection, that we may bear the fruit of love and know the fullness of your joy, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” I John 4:18.

This is remarkable, because fear is often the engine driving our religion, our politics, or financial planning and so many other aspects of our lives. Fear, of course, is not altogether irrational. To be sure, there are a lot of imaginary threats spawned by conspiracy theories, junk science and bad religion. But there are also plenty of real dangers out there, such as the dangers Black men and boys face when they encounter police, particularly if they happen to be in the “wrong” neighborhood at the “wrong” time. There is a very real danger that our failure to vaccinate globally against Covid-19 in a timely matter will give the virus time and opportunity to mutate once again into a form capable of penetrating our current vaccines. Persons who have lost their jobs, businesses and homes in the wake of pandemic induced economic turmoil are understandably fearful of what the future may hold for them and their families. The damage to our planet’s climate resulting from unrestrained greenhouse gases should frighten us all.

Fear is a normal and healthy emotion. In a properly functioning psyche, fear alerts one to the presence of danger and the need to react. Fear must not, however, be permitted to dictate our reactions. That is so far a couple of reasons. First, like every other emotion, fear sometimes yields a “false positive.” What I interpret as a romantic show of affection, might simply be a friendly hug. What I interpret as an insult might be nothing more than an awkward attempt at humor. So, too, what I perceive to be a threat might actually turn out to be harmless. Thus, it is critical to question each fear: Why am I afraid? What am I afraid of losing? What basis do I have for believing that this person, place or thing threatens my wellbeing? If I “shoot first and ask questions later,” I am likely to wind up with a hole in my foot and not many answers.  

Secondly, fear makes you stupid. When economic downturns occur, people tend to make poor financial decisions in a fit of panic. For example, otherwise savvy individuals are frequently convinced, often by unscrupulous hucksters posing as financial advisors, that the economy is in collapse and their only hope is to convert as much of their wealth as possible into gold bars.[1] On a collective level, nations reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic by shutting down their borders and pulling out of international agencies like the World Health Organization, little realizing that viruses do not respect borders and that a global pandemics require global responses. On an individual level, human beings deal with their mortality by steadfastly denying it, by covering it up with lotions, creams and hair color and by isolating the aged, infirm and dying in retirement communities, nursing homes and hospice centers. But the inescapable fact of death finally catches up and, when it does, the one whose life has been spent running away from it has developed no spiritual and emotional resources to meet it. In sum, fear works well as a warning. As a motivating force, not so much.

The Apostle John tells us that “perfect love casts out all fear.” In other words, love takes fear out of the driver’s seat. There is no fear of judgement, because God in Christ has taken punishment for sin off the table. Henceforth, judgment has the purpose only of moving us away from self destructive beliefs and conduct toward repentance and reconciliation. In much the same way, love banishes fear of others-whether they be painted as outsiders on the other side of the border threatening to take our country away from us, political opponents threatening to destroy our way of life with offensive policies and agendas or hostile nations threatening our national security. Saint John reminds us that if we cannot see the image of God in other human beings, then whatever it is we claim to worship, it is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, abiding in God’s love casts out all fear of death. That is a message to which I believe we mainline protestant folks have given short shrift. There are a couple of reasons for that. In our manic desire to be “relevant” and our craven fear of being mocked by the academic intelligentsia, we have bent every effort toward making our faith intelligible, appealing and unobjectionable to the modern mind. To that end, it was essential that the resurrection we preach not offend the cannons of modernism with anything that cannot be empirically verified. Resurrection is therefore less a bold proclamation than a truncated affirmation of humanist values easily digestible for a world too small for miracles and shorn of all mystery. A robust witness to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come is too big to fit our “worldly” and “modern” theology. The only way to make it palatable for the modern mind is to preach it as a metaphor for something else-political liberation, self actualization, the discovery of authenticity, etc. In the process, we have manufactured a faith that is inoffensive to the contemporary mind-and as boring as hell. Professor Lance B. Pope[2] puts it succinctly:

“If the summoning the church heeds is not the voice of Another-if it is merely a human projection arising predictably from so many wishes, needs, resentments, and drives-then the church has no real existence, no authentic commission to preach, but only a habitual and unwarranted longing to speak back to the world its own fears and hopes, filtered through the images of a very old book. In this case, the world shows great forbearance by benignly ignoring ‘preaching,’ which surely deserves worse than indifference.”  Pope, Lance B., The Scandal of Having Something to Say: Ricceur and the Possibility of Postliberal Preaching. (c. 2013 by Baylor University Press, Waco, TX) p. 3.

Another reason for our failure to preach the resurrection of the dead is fear of promoting “quietism.” After all, if we make resurrection from death and eternal life too prominent, our people might respond by giving up on his world and pinning all their hopes on “pie in the sky.” Perhaps that is one of those “fears” Saint John would have us “cast out.” If Ernst Becker is to be believed, humanity’s efforts to repress its craven terror of death lies at the root of our most atrocious collective acts of violence, war and genocide.[3] Thus, victory over death is perhaps the most basic and critical element of the gospel. If Becker dismisses religion as but another “death denial” mechanism, that is only because he, too, is captive to the moribund modernist outlook which modern theology has chosen to placate rather than challenge. It seems to me that a strong conviction that Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of “the least,” has been raised from death, that the nations of the world will be judged by how they have treated these “least,” that the future belongs to the God who promises a new creation in which the peoples of every nation, tribe and tongue will share the unity of the Trinity, that Jesus promises his disciples of all ages participation in that future, all of this goes a long way toward freeing us from the fear of death. Liberated from fretting about what we cannot (and need not) change, we are free to spend our lives focusing on more important things we actually can change. A robust resurrection faith makes each minute of life here and now more rather than less urgent.

In sum, Saint John would have us know that love, as it is revealed in Jesus, is the antithesis of a life in bondage to fear. It is life that can be live courageously, smartly and hopefully within all of the complexities and paradoxes given expression in e.e. cumming’s poem below. Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia.       

[love is thicker more than forget]

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

Source: Complete Poems 1904-1962 (c. 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust; pub. by Liveright Publishing Corporation). Edward Estlin Cummings (1894 –1962), published as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright. He authored 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a professor at Harvard University who later became nationally known as the minister of South Congregational Church (Unitarian) in Boston. He grew up in the company of such family friends as the philosophers William James and Josiah Royce. Cummings aspired from childhood to be a poet and wrote poetry daily from age eight to twenty-two. In 1915 he graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude with a BA degree and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He received a MA degree from the university in 1916. In his studies at Harvard, Cummings developed an interest in modern poetry, which ignored conventional grammar and syntax, while aiming for a dynamic use of language. Upon graduating in 1917, Cummings enlisted in the armed forces and served in the ambulance corps in France during the First World War. There he was arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage and held for three and a half months in a military detention camp. He was released at the insistence of the Wilson administration on December 19, 1917 and returned to the United States in January of 1918. Shortly thereafter he was drafted and served until November of 1918. Cummings spent the last decade of his life traveling, fulfilling speaking engagements and spending time at his summer home at Joy Farm in Silver Lake, New Hampshire. He died of a stroke in September of 1962. You can read more about e.e. cummings and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] I am not sure exactly what you do with a gold bar in a collapsed economy. But I have to confess that I didn’t attend the webinar where all of this was supposed to be explained.

[2] Lance B. Pape is Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Brite Divinity School.

[3] Becker, Ernst, The Denial of Death, (c. 1973 by the Free Press, a division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. New York, NY).

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

Prayer of the Day: O Lord Christ, good shepherd of the sheep, you seek the lost and guide us into your fold. Feed us, and we shall be satisfied; heal us, and we shall be whole. Make us one with you, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” I John 3:16-17.

Saint John’s question took on burning urgency this week. Last Friday morning, the White House distributed the text of a directive to be signed by President Joe Biden keeping in place the Trump-era limit on refugee settlement of 1500. This in the face of a refuge flood at our southern border consisting in large part of unaccompanied minors and after Mr. Biden promised during his presidential campaign to increase that number to 62,000 for the remainder of this year and 125,000 the next. It now appears that, following an outcry from some members of congress and numerous churches, NGOs and prominent individuals, the administration is reconsidering its directive, though what the final refugee limit will be remains unclear. We can hope and pray that advocates for refugees will continue pressing the administration to live up to its promise of a more humane approach to human migration.

While the complex legal, economic and political considerations surrounding the issues of refugee resettlement and immigration are legion, the matter is as clear as crystal for disciples of Jesus. One who has the worlds goods and withholds them from another in need has not the love of God. The generosity Jesus requires of his followers is no less than the generosity he has shown them. Such generosity does not end with occasional acts of charity or even the surrender of all one’s worldly goods. Jesus calls for the sacrifice of life itself for the wellbeing of the neighbor.[1] However compelling the cries of “national security,” “border security” and “immigration control” might be in the political arena, they cannot be permitted to stand as arguments against the church’s call to serve the “least of these,” no matter on which side of the border they might be found.

The church, I must emphasize, is not an apolitical organization. As a people called into community where the “mind of Christ” is formed, it carries out Jesus’ mission to the whole world. Because the church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic,” its politics is inescapably “globalist.” While that term is considered close to the “F” word among a lot of nominally Christian folk, ranking as it does along with “communism,” “socialism,” “liberalism” and the like, the truth is, you can’t be a disciple of Jesus without being a globalist. Any so called Christian who goes about with terms like “America First” or “close the border” on the lips is biblically illiterate and knows nothing of Christ.

As a practical matter, human migration is an inescapably global problem. Pretending that we can solve it by regulating our borders is rather like locking your cruise ship cabin door as the ocean gushes in through gaping holes in the hull because, after all, your concern is only with your own cabin and the rest of the ship is not your problem. As long as life remains intolerable for millions of people around the world in their own nations due to corrupt, oppressive or failed governments, famines, war and extreme poverty, people living in these countries will continue attempting to find a better life for themselves and their children in other parts of the world. As long as gross inequality exists between nations such that increasing numbers of people are finding life intolerable at home, we can expect them to be on the move. As noted by Jeffrey Kaye[2] in his recent book:

“…migration will persist no matter what we do to try to restrain or restrict it, particularly as the income gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to expand. Build walls, and people will go over, around, and under them. Hire border guards, and people will bribe them. Step up patrols, and migrants will find alternate routes.” Kaye, Jeffrey, Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration (c. 2010 by Jeffery Kay; pub. by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) p. 11.

Kay concludes that “If limiting migration is a desirable goal, for the have-nots to stop banging on the doors of the developed world, they’ll need good reasons to stay put-economies that work, opportunities to prosper. This might be “pie in the sky,” but the alternatives are even bigger prisons, more police, and higher walls-because like it or not, widening economic differences between countries give impetus to the ongoing global march. Migrants who move from lower to higher income economies are often able to earn twenty to thirty times more than they can by staying at home. So unless massive income disparities are eliminated or reduced, if migrants believe the potential rewards of leaving home outweigh the risks of migrating, people naturally will up and leave.” Ibid. p. 256.

Though Kaye may characterize it as “pie in the sky,” there is precedent for the United States taking initiative for massive global reconstruction. It was called the Marshall Plan. Recognizing that a defeated Germany in the midst of a war ravaged Europe bearing the weight of “victor’s justice” following the first world war had given birth to the second, a farsighted Democratic President (Harry Truman), with the support of a Republican Congress, understood that the best defense against the westward spread of Soviet influence and a new round of global military conflicts threatening the security of the United States was a strong and prosperous Europe. Accordingly, Congress authorized the transfer of over $12 billion, equivalent to $130 billion in today’s dollars, for economic recovery programs in Western European economies. The result: increased economic and political cooperation between the nations of Western Europe, containment of the Soviet threat and no military hostilities for most of the century thereafter. Where there is political will and determination to solve global problems, history has shown us that significant progress can be made on a global scale.

But I digress. As I said before, for disciples of Jesus there is no debate over what we owe persons fleeing criminal violence, starvation and war. Yet it seems we as Christians in the United States have done a poor job of educating our people on the ancient New Testament duty of hospitality to strangers. If 81% of white evangelical Christians, 53% of white mainline protestants and 52% of white Catholics can support a man whose principal campaign promise was to shut our national doors to refugees,[3] the gospel of Jesus Christ is not getting through and the love of God is not sufficiently abiding among us. We need a wake up call, a jolt to shock us out of our complacency, indifference and hardness of heart so we can see what “America First” and “border security” mean in terms of real world effects on real people. As poet Jane Taylor urges,

O then, let the wealthy and gay

But see such a hovel as this,

That in a poor cottage of clay

They may know what true misery is.

Let me be clear: The United States of America is not a Christian country-nor should it be. In fact, there is no such thing. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.” Hebrews 13:14. Nevertheless, though the nations are not required nor can they become Christian in any biblical sense, they are nevertheless called upon to be righteous. As the psalmist says, the nations are obliged to,

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

Maintain the right of the afflicted

And the destitute.

Rescue the weak and the needy;

Deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”  Psalm 82:3-4. 

As church, we are the Body of Christ in the world, a Body that recognizes no borders, whether they be national, ethnic, religious, gender or racial. We believe that all nations are to be judged by the degree to which they have treated the most vulnerable of the human family. That is why we are commissioned with calling the nations, our own in particular, to do that which is commanded of them.

Here is the poem by Jane Taylor quoted in part above:

Poverty

I saw an old cottage of clay,
And only of mud was the floor;
It was all falling into decay,
And the snow drifted in at the door.

Yet there a poor family dwelt,
In a hovel so dismal and rude;
And though gnawing hunger they felt,
They had not a morsel of food.

The children were crying for bread,
And to their poor mother they’d run;
‘Oh, give us some breakfast,’ they said,
Alas! their poor mother had none.

She viewed them with looks of despair,
She said (and I’m sure it was true),
‘’Tis not for myself that I care,
But, my poor little children, for you.’

O then, let the wealthy and gay
But see such a hovel as this,
That in a poor cottage of clay
They may know what true misery is.
And what I may have to bestow
I never will squander away,
While many poor people I know
Around me are wretched as they.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. Jane Taylor 1783 1824 was an English poet and novelist. Though her best known work (seldom attributed to her) is the text for “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” Taylor contributed substantially to several collections of published poems. The authorship of individual poems within these collections is unclear and so it is impossible to determine precisely which ones were written by Taylor as opposed to her mother, Ann and other contributors. Her one novel, Display, published in (1814) went through at least 13 editions. Jane Taylor served as editor of the religious journal, Youth’s Magazine. She wrote numerous shorter pieces for that magazine, including moral tales and personal essays. You can learn more about Jane Taylor and sample more of her work at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] One could reasonably argue that Saint John refers here to the love required of believers for fellow believers within his community and that I am taking the above verses out of context. Be that as it may, Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan makes clear that the obligation to love one’s neighbor as oneself knows no political, ethnic or religious boundaries. Thus, the great commandment articulated by John as the rule for his church is no less applicable outside of our sanctuaries.

[2] Jeffrey Kaye is a freelance journalist and correspondent for PBS NewsHour.

[3] Chestnut, Robert A., A Post-Trump Postmortem for the Mainline Church (Progressive Southern Theologians Website, March 19, 2021).