Tag Archives: jesus

Palestinians, Jews and the Nation of Israel

July 28, 2026UncategorizedBible, faith, god, Israel, jesusrevolsen

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Prayer of the Day: Glorious God, your generosity waters the world with goodness, and you cover creation with abundance. Awaken in us a hunger for the food that satisfies both body and spirit, and with this food fill all the starving world; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Romas 9:4-5.

I travel Cape Cod’s Route 6 frequently these days. That arterial highway is the only means of travel up through the Outer Cape stretching from Orleans to Provincetown. Along the way I pass a church that proudly proclaims “We stand with Israel” and frequently flies the Israeli flag. I have not spoken with the pastor of that congregation or any of its members about its support for Israel, but I strongly suspect that they view such support as an outgrowth of their faith. Identification with the State of Israel is common place among white evangelical Christians. For some, support for Israel amounts to a stand against antisemitism. As one evangelical woman with whom I recently spoke expressed it, “We don’t want to make the same mistake the church in Germany made during the second world war.” No doubt the horrific attack by Hamas against Israeli civilians evoked sympathy for the people of Israel-as well it should.

Many evangelicals, however, subscribe to a fringe doctrine known as “premillennialism.” According to this teaching, a blueprint for the imminent end of the world and the return of Christ to establish a one thousand year Christian theocracy is woven into the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. There is much disagreement among evangelicals holding these views over the details of how the end will unfold. But in premillennial thought, the nation of Israel plays a crucial role in igniting the wars and tribulations that will plunge the earth into a hopeless condition of demonic global rule. After this, Christ will return and with him the resurrected Christians to crush the powers of evil and rule the world for the next thousand years. Support of Israel, then, is to be allied with God’s plan for the windup of history. It is rather like lighting the fuse of Armageddon. While most of us mainliners do not hold premillennial views, I find support for the state of Israel to be for many a religious moral obligation. In their minds, opposition to Israel amounts to opposing or even persecuting the Jews.

To be clear, antisemitism is antithetical to faith in Jesus Christ. I have argued in a pervious article that Saint Paul would be baffled by the divorce between the modern church and the people of Israel. See Judaism, Christianity, Antisemitism and Saint Paul. As the apostle understood it, the church did not supersede Israel. Rather, the church was the door through which God invites the gentiles into Israel’s covenant relationship with God. The above passage illustrates Paul’s understanding that Israel was, is and always will be “adopted” by God and in primary possession not only of the ancient covenants, the Torah and the prophetic promises, but also the One we worship as the Christ. Though the Jewish faithful do not view Jesus as their messiah, they worship the God Jesus invoked as Father and whose covenant partnership with them continues unbroken. Though he was sometimes less than clear about the specifics, Paul was convinced that the destiny of Israel was integral to God’s redemptive purpose for all creation. To be a disciple of Jesus is to recognize God’s past faithfulness to God’s people Israel and God’s continuing faithfulness through the ancient covenants to which the Hebrew Scriptures testify. To denigrate the Jews is to blaspheme the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

That said, it needs also to be said clearly and unequivocally that recognizing, affirming and honoring God’s people Israel is not the same as supporting the policies, practices and geopolitical aims of the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel is just that: a nation. As such, it is a humanly established entity no more or less than any other nation. It does not have divine sanction any more than any other nation, including the United States, notwithstanding some very misguided notions to the contrary. The nation of Israel does not, on the basis of some biblical mandate, get a pass on practices that can fairly be characterized as unlawful annexation, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Thus, while one might fairly argue that there are strategic, military and humanitarian reasons for supporting the government of Israel, one cannot argue, from a Christian perspective, that support for the nation of Israel is a religious duty. Accordingly, while disciples of Jesus must advocate for the rights of Jewish people everywhere and resist all forms of antisemitism, they must also decry and condemn in no uncertain terms the Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the violent dispossession of Palestinians living in the West Bank.

American Christians and Lutheran Christians in particular need to tread lightly here. We need to use sparingly such loaded and inflammatory terms as “colonialism,” “genocide,” and “ethnic cleansing.” What Israelis are rightly condemned for doing to the Palestinians over the last 80 years the United States government has been doing to our own indigenous population for the last three centuries. Moreover, the move to create a Jewish state arose from the well founded belief of Jews, having suffered centuries of pogroms in Europe culminating in the Holocaust, that there could be no safe place in the world for them unless they made one for themselves. Lest we be too hard on the Jews who migrated to and claimed land in Palestine, let us recall that we are among the many nations that refused asylum to the family of Ann Frank and thousands of other Jews seeking refuge from Hitler’s “final solution.” See The American Murder of Anne Frank-and now Syrian Refugees. Stripped of their citizenship in Germany and other Nazi occupied territories, the Jews were rendered non persons. They had no right to exist anywhere in the world. No nation was obliged to receive them. The history of the State of Israel illustrates the brutal reality that stateless refugees are not afforded human rights and have no protection against oppression and violence beyond a few toothless UN resolutions. It is one of history’s cruel ironies that Palestinians, another stateless people, are suffering the same fate their oppressors knew so well.

Finally, those of us in the Lutheran tradition must recognize that we played a particularly shameful role ignoring and, in many instances, facilitating the Nazi oppression of Jews in Europe. Martin Luther’s despicable writings denigrating the Jews constitute a dark blot on the Reformation at the heart of our religious identity. For example, Paul Althaus, a Lutheran scholar in Germany from the 1930s through the 1950s. Greeted the rise of Hitler as a “gift and miracle from God.” Gerhard Kittel, a German Lutheran theologian and New Testament scholar, joined the Nazi Party in 1933. He produced writings on the “Jewish Question” that promoted the Third Reich’s exclusionary policies. Though there were notable exceptions to the church’s complicity in the Nazi’s genocidal policies, such as Deitrich Bohnoeffer and Martin Niemöller, they were exceptions. At best, the church remained indifferent to the fate of the Jews throughout Europe. At worst, it facilitated their oppression.

None of this is to say that the church is wrong to condemn Israel’s brutal wars of aggression against the Palestinians. But we need to do so with the full recognition and frank admission that the state of Israel came into existence as a result of centuries of exclusion, persecution and violence against Jews routinely sanctioned by the church. For Jews both in Israel and elsewhere, the state represents both a sanctuary and a bulwark of defense against a world filled with hostility toward them. To suggest that Israelis abandon their efforts to continue the existence of a Jewish state, acquiesce to a pan Palestinian democracy and trust in the good will of the international order that failed them so spectacularly in the 1930s and 1940s-that is a mighty big ask. A just and lasting peace must therefore ensure the safety and wellbeing of Jews in their ancestral homeland as well as freedom and self determination for Palestinians whose claim to the land, on the same grounds, is no less legitimate. What shape such a peace might take is well beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that Disciples of Jesus must stand with the Palestinian people against the violence of the Israeli government while standing with the Jewish people against the growing tide of antisemitism. That will surely prove more difficult in practice than in theory. But Jesus never asks us to do anything that is easy.

Here are two poems, one by Palestinian author Mahmoud Darwish and the other by the Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai reflecting upon life in a land they both regard as theirs and holy.

To Our Land

To our land,

and it is the one near the word of god,

a ceiling of clouds

To our land,

and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,

the map of absence

To our land,

and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,

a heavenly horizon … and a hidden chasm

To our land,

and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,

holy books … and an identity wound

To our land,

and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,

the ambush of a new past

To our land, and it is a prize of war,

the freedom to die from longing and burning

and our land, in its bloodied night,

is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far

and illuminates what’s outside it …

As for us, inside,

we suffocate more!

Source: The Butterfly’s Burden, by Mahmoud Darwish, (pub. by Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

Jews in the Land of Israel

We forget where we came from. Our Jewish

names from the Exile give us away,

bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities,

metals, knights who turned to stone, roses,

spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red,

handicrafts long gone from the world

(the hands are gone too).

Circumcision does it to us,

as in the Bible story of Shechem and the sons of Jacob,

so that we go on hurting all our lives.

What are we doing, coming back here with this pain?

Our longings were drained together with the swamps,

the desert blooms for us, and our children are beautiful.

Even the wrecks of ships that sank on the way

reached this shore,

even winds did. Not all the sails.

What are we doing

in this dark land with its

yellow shadows that pierce the eyes?

(Every now and then someone says, even after forty

or fifty years: “The sun is killing me.”)

What are we doing with these souls of mist, with these names,

with our eyes of forests, with our beautiful children,

with our quick blood?

Spilled blood is not the roots of trees

but it’s the closest thing to roots

we have.

Source: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015)

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a Palestinian author and poet. He was author of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence formally establishing the State of Palestine in November 1988. Darwish is widely regarded as the country’s national poet. His poetry and other literature, for which he won numerous awards internationally, was published in Arabic, though he was fluent in English, French and Hebrew. Darwish served as an editor for several literary magazines in both Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Darwish’s family fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but returned to Israel a year later where they were granted residency status. In 1970, Darwish left Israel to study in the Soviet Union, where he attended Moscow State University for one year. In 1971, he moved to Cairo, Egypt, where he worked for the daily newspaper al-Ahram. In 1973, Darwish joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and was consequently banned from entering Israel. He was elected to the PLO Executive Committee in 1987. Over his lifetime of 67 years Darwish published more than thirty volumes of poetry and eight books of prose. You can read more about Mahmoud Darwish and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Yehuda Amichai is one of Israel’s most prominent poets. He was born in Germany in 1924 but left with his family for Palestine in 1935. As a young man he volunteered and fought in World War II as a soldier in the British Army. After discharge from the British Army in 1946, Amichai was a student at David Yellin College of Education in Jerusalem and became a teacher in Haifa. Amichai fought in the 1948 Arab/Israeli war on the southern front in the Negev. After the war, Amichai studied the Torah and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry in 1955. In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur War. Amichai was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s and was a poet in residence at New York University in 1987. Amichai was invited in 1994 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to read from his poems at the ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. His poems have been translated into English, French, German and Swedish. You can read more about Yehuda Amichai and his poetry on the Poetry Foundation Website.

Deep Reading

July 21, 2026UncategorizedBible, faith, god, jesus, Psalmsrevolsen

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

1 Kings 3:5-12

Psalm 119:129-136

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Prayer of the Day: Beloved and sovereign God, through the death and resurrection of your Son you bring us into your kingdom of justice and mercy. By your Spirit, give us your wisdom, that we may treasure the life that comes from Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Your decrees are wonderful;
therefore my soul keeps them.
The unfolding of your words gives light;
it imparts understanding to the simple.” Psalm 119:129-130.

In pre-literate cultures there are no books. There is no written language by which knowledge and information can be communicated to succeeding generations. Continuity must therefore be maintained through stories, songs, liturgy and dance. Skills are passed on from parent to child through participation in the crafts and activities required to sustain the community. Religious teaching, like everything else, must be internalized. The words of God are “kept in the soul,” where they “unfold” as one grows, giving “light” and “understanding” by which one learns to navigate the various stages of life from cradle to grave.

Our psalm for the coming Sunday, cited in part above, illustrates the point. While it is true that this work has been committed to writing, it surely had a pre-written existence. The lines of each strophe in the psalm begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a design to render them singable and to aid the memory. Though admittedly lacking in chronologically progressive order in terms of a coherent theme, the psalm revolves constantly around the Torah experienced by the psalmist as reliable guide, faithful companion, relentless judge, purifying fire and source of endless joy. Professor Walter Brueggeman, rightly recognizes this psalm as “a massive intellectual achievement” through which the psalmist affirms that the Torah meets us at every stage of life addressing every human experience from “A to Z,” or more precisely “alpeh to tav.” Brueggeman, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, (c. 1984 by Augsburg Publishing House), p. 40.

Long after the advent of written language, Christian communities remained largely pre-literate. Their religious education came through listening to sermons, participation in liturgy and contemplation of graphic representations of biblical themes. Literacy was confined to relative few including the clergy, university professors and the ruling elite. The ability to write and read written texts was rare among common folk for whom it was unnecessary. But that began to change with the Reformation and the Renaissance. The invention of the printing press made publication of documents in mass for public consumption possible. Literacy rates and opportunities for education increased. Texts like the Bible, Greek and Latin classics as well as the speeches and sermons of religious and civil leaders became accessible to the public. Common people had more access to more information than ever before.

There are some obvious parallels between the invention of the printing press and the rise of the internet. Information that would formerly have taken days or even months to accumulate from public libraries, government agencies, state and national archives can now be gleaned from online sources in less than an hour. This information revolution had a profound effect on my own profession in the law. When I first began practicing, multiparty cases involving multiple jurisdictions and their distinct statutes and rules could be handled only by big city firms equipped with massive law libraries staffed by attorneys whose chief responsibility was to research law applicable to these complex cases. But with the advent of online resources such as Lexis and Westlaw, small and midsize firms could buy subscriptions to the same legal resources accessible with a few keystrokes. This development not only leveled the playing field. It rendered the big firms that charged hourly fees to conduct days of research among dusty tomes cumbersome, inefficient, overstaffed, bureaucratic dinosaurs ill equipped to survive in the new business climate.

In the same way, information has become more readily available to the public at large. Our phones give us access to libraries, government agencies, commercial entities and data banks of every kind. Our watches notify us of breaking news in real time. Weather forecasts, stock market indices and minute by minute sports reporting are all at our fingertips. Today’s news is old news before it ever goes to print. The average American in the twenty-first century has access to more information than any previous generation.

As a blogger publishing my work on the internet, I am hardly in a position to denigrate all things digital. I am convinced that, notwithstanding the dangers it presents, the world wide web and the opportunities it presents for information sharing, education and provision of public services is a benefit to humanity. At the same time, however, I cannot help but wonder if something is not lost here. If you were to ask post printing press believers where their Bible is located, they might answer that it is on their night stand or on the coffee table or on one of their book shelves. Today’s believers might well say that their Bible is on a CD or a flash drive or somewhere in the Cloud. Preliterate believers would say, however, that their Bible is the only place it can be-in their hearts. It seems to me that with each technological advance in the preservation and transmission of information, we have become increasingly detached from what we know. Why memorize what you can easily look up in the book? Why waste time paging through a book for a passage or information that a search engine can pull up for you in a matter of seconds? The more accessible information becomes, the less need there is to internalize it. Yet, according to the psalmist, that is precisely what we are supposed to do with scriptures. They are not meant to sit idly on a shelf until consulted or to float disembodied in cyberspace. The words of scripture must be planted in the depths of the soul where they unfold like blossoms transforming the hearts and minds of believers. As the collect of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer reminds us, we are called to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the scriptures.

In a recently published article in The Atlantic, staff writer Rose Horowitch argues that we in the United States are fast becoming a postliterate culture. The Atlantic (August 2026). She points out that people of all ages and backgrounds are reading substantially less from classical works of literature, books dealing in some detail with scientific, historical or cultural issues and newspapers providing in depth coverage of contemporary events. Horowitch notes that in 1958 the English translation of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak was the year’s best selling novel. Last year’s best selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the most recent installment of the young adult series, Hunger Games. At the risk of seeming to be snobbish, I read Doctor Zhivago my sophomore year in high school. To be sure, I read plenty of comic books as well, but I understood, as did most of my classmates, the difference between serious literature and pure entertainment.

I grew up in a two newspaper household. The Bremerton Sun provided in depth coverage of local news and events while the Seattle Post Intelligencer afforded a national and global perspective. Of course, reading a syndicated newspaper takes time and patience. The world is a complex place and events, both local and national, are understood and interpreted differently by persons and groups with varying interests and perspectives. Good journalism seeks always to give voice to all such perspectives and expose the nuances and complexities involved. It seeks not so much to provide explanations as to equip readers with the information and context required to form their own reasoned conclusions. As the demise of major independent newspapers throughout the country demonstrates, the public has little patience for lengthy and comprehensive articles. The news in easy bite size pieces can be downloaded, often at no cost, from any number of online media platforms. Less is more.

It is debatable how much, if at all, online platforms and social media are responsible for this trend. What is clearly indisputable, however, is the fact that we are reading less, reading more superficially and reading ever more frequently material of dubious value and accuracy. Moreover, unlike preliterate societies, our postliterate world lacks the traditional social and ritual infrastructure for maintaining and transferring culture, values and faith to the next generation. Ironically, our generation has more information available to it than any previous generation, yet we increasingly lack both the desire and the conceptual tools to process it. Horowitch believes that, just the growth in literacy proved transformative for human civilization, the demise thereof will be equally impactful. She fears that we may be on the brink of a new dark age.

It was during the dark ages following disintegration of the Roman Empire that the church performed in its monasteries an invaluable service to civilization by copying and preserving great works of antiquity. It is for the same reason that the church must make common cause with all who seek to preserve independent newspapers, public libraries, liberal arts curriculum in our institutions of learning and the promotion of reading in all levels of education. More significantly, we are called upon by the psalmist to internalize the scriptures witnessing to the obedient life, faithful death and glorious resurrection of Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims. The psalmist invites us to read deeply, think deeply and pray deeply in the midst of a shallow and superficial culture.

Here is a poem by Henry Braun illustrating the power and effect of deep reading.

On Reading Late

Some evenings fragility

Lays itself out on roads

From the novel you are reading,

Old particular enlargements

That keep you wakeful

Long after the book closes.

Someone was alive

Whom you followed by oil lamp

For hours through the pages

And now, in a quiet house,

Everyone breathing must be looked at

And more than looked at,

Accompanied.

Source: Poetry, (April, 1971). Henry Braun (1930–2014) was an American poet, teacher, and peace activist. Born in Olean, New York, he lost his mother when he was two years old. He spent part of his childhood in an orphanage and foster homes in Buffalo. He was ultimately raised by his father and attended Hutchinson Central High School. After graduating from Brandeis University, he spent a year in France. Upon returning, he earned a master’s degree from Boston University. In the 1960s Braun opposed the Vietnam War. He organized poetry read-ins and donated his war tax dollars to a veterans’ hospital and to Philadelphia public schools. As a result, he was convicted of tax evasion. He also organized a draft card turn-in at the Justice Department for which he was an unindicted co-conspirator at the “Boston Five” trial. In 1968 his first poetry collection was published and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He was a Contributing Editor for the American Poetry Review.

A Disarming God

June 28, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Zechariah 9:9-12

Psalm 145:8-14

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Prayer of the Day: You are great, O God, and greatly to be praised. You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Grant that we may believe in you, call upon you, know you, and serve you, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
    and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
    and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
    and from the River to the ends of the earth.” Zechariah 9:10.

This week we head into that orgy of patriotic celebrations commemorating the declaration of independence of the original thirteen colonies from Great Britain sparking the Revolutionary War. The United States is far from the only nation born out of lethal violence, nor is it the only one that celebrates such seminal conflicts. National mythologies grounded in wars portrayed as heroic struggles and which lionize military figures at the head of such wars abound. Most nations have their George Washingtons along with a pantheon of lesser veterans honored regularly at civil ceremonies. Violence is a key ingredient to nationalism.

Not so with God’s people Israel. Abraham, Sarah and their descendants existed for generations in the Promised Land as sojourners. They lived as resident aliens in the no man’s land between various Canaanite city states and always in the shadow of the Egyptian empire. They were enslaved for generations in Egypt and their liberation came about, not through any violent uprising or military struggle, but through the intervention of the God of their ancestors. In the final confrontation between the armies of Pharoah and the people of Israel at the Red Sea, there was no military resistance on Israel’s part. No heroic leader rose up to rally the people and lead them to victory. There was only Moses who told the terrified crowd corralled between an imperial army and the sea, “the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” Exodus 14:14. Even the conquest of the land of Canaan was never attributed to Israel’s armies. As the psalmist attests:

“We have heard with our ears, O God;
    our ancestors have told us
what deeds you performed in their days,
    in the days of old:
you with your own hand drove out the nations,
    but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
    but them you set free;

for not by their own sword did they win the land,
    nor did their own arm give them victory,
but your right hand, and your arm,
    and the light of your countenance,
    for you delighted in them.” Psalm 44:1-3.

A holiday such as Veteran’s Day would have been unthinkable for Israel. Their “thank you for your service” was directed to God alone.

The God of the Bible abhors violence. Violence, we are told, was what drove God to bring a catastrophic flood upon the earth in the days of Noah. Genesis 6:11. It was the failure of such divine violence to remedy human violence that led God to renounce violence forever as a means of dealing with the earth. Genesis 8:20-22. God is worshiped throughout the scriptures as the one who

“makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.” Psalm 46:9.

Isaiah prophesies the rise of a ruler who will inaugurate an era of peace, but not through military might. This ruler will judge “with righteousness,” champion the cause of the “poor” and decide “with equity for the meek of the earth.” Isaiah 11:3-4. This ruler will indeed smite the powers of systemic injustice infecting the earth and slay the wicked, but not with military force. This ruler will defeat the powers and agencies of evil “by the rod of his mouth” and by “the breath of his lips.” Isaiah 11:4. God’s power is God’s Word exercised through the messiah as persuasive, not coercive. Under the gentle reign of this messianic ruler,

“The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed^[a] together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11:6-9.

God consistently chooses mercy over retribution. Though Adam and Eve were warned that they would die on the day they ate fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God did not bring death upon them. Instead, he clothed them before sending them forth from the garden of Eden. God did not impose the death sentence-or even life without parole-upon Cain for the murder of his brother. God spared the wicked city of Nineveh, much to the annoyance of the prophet Jonah. Even when God employs what we experience as violence, it is always measured and designed to bring about repentance, healing and reconciliation. Moreover, lethal violence is not a measure to be taken by human beings. While the psalmists cry out for vengeance against their enemies and sometimes tell God in bloodcurdling terms how their enemies should be punished, they leave the business of executing retributive justice in the hands of God where it rightly belongs. So it should come as no surprise that Jesus refused to permit his disciples to draw the sword in his defense.

Our reading from Zechariah makes the bold proclamation that God saves God’s people by disarming them, by taking from their hand instruments of violence and by eliminating from their portfolio the basic tools of warfare. Israel’s messiah comes not on a war horse, but “humble and riding on a donkey.” God’s just and gentle reign will not, indeed, cannot be implemented by means of violence. God has no desire to be Stalin on steroids. God will reign through love or not at all.

As those who follow me know, I identify as a Christological pacifist. As such, I do not condone the use of lethal force under any circumstances. I am well aware that my convictions constitute a minority position within the church catholic and that most of my siblings in the faith subscribe to some form of the “just war” doctrine. That teaching affirms Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount to the effect that the default posture of a disciple is pacifism. When violently attacked, a disciple “turns the other cheek” and responds with love and prayer for the enemy. A narrow exception to that rule exists for persons engaged as soldiers and law enforcement officers, the rationale being that such persons exercise force, not to extract vengeance, but to protect the innocent from violence. Though you might disagree with my objections to the “just war” doctrine, I hope we can agree that war, and every other exercise of violence whether just or not, represents a tragic human failure. I hope we can agree that the idolatry of nationalism, the most extreme manifestation of which is war, constitutes a rupture in the human family, an exaltation of nation, tribe, race and class over the global unity God desires for the world. I hope that in our worship we can avoid the cultural tendency to glorify our nation’s wars and idolize those who fight them. In these days in which missiles and drones reign death from eastern Europe to the middle east and millions caught in the cross-fire are killed, wounded and uprooted from their homes, the church must not sugar coat these realities with patriotic jingoism. We need to say in no uncertain terms that war is not glorious, not to honorable, not righteous and certainly not an occasion for celebration and pride. It is sin, for which the only faithful response is repentance.

Here is a poem by Thomas McGrath that strips away the patriotic façade of glory, honor and heroism covering the unspeakable horror and obscenity of war.

Ode for the American Dead in Asia

God love you now, if no one else will ever,

Corpse in the paddy, or dead on a high hill

In the fine and ruinous summer of a war

You never wanted. All your false flags were

Of bravery and ignorance, like grade school maps:

Colors of countries you would never see—

Until that weekend in eternity

When, laughing, well armed, perfectly ready to kill

The world and your brother, the safe commanders sent

You into your future. Oh, dead on a hill,

Dead in a paddy, leeched and tumbled to

A tomb of footnotes. We mourn a changeling: you:

Handselled to poverty and drummed to war

By distinguished masters whom you never knew.

The bee that spins his metal from the sun,

The shy mole drifting like a miner ghost

Through midnight earth—all happy creatures run

As strict as trains on rails the circuits of

Blind instinct. Happy in your summer follies,

You mined a culture that was mined for war:

The state to mold you, church to bless, and always

The elders to confirm you in your ignorance.

No scholar put your thinking cap on nor

Warned that in dead seas fishes died in schools

Before inventing legs to walk the land.

The rulers stuck a tennis racket in your hand,

An Ark against the flood. In time of change

Courage is not enough: the blind mole dies,

And you on your hill, who did not know the rules.

Wet in the windy counties of the dawn

The lone crow skirls his draggled passage home:

And God (whose sparrows fall aslant his gaze,

Like grace or confetti) blinks and he is gone,

And you are gone. Your scarecrow valor grows

And rusts like early lilac while the rose

Blooms in Dakota and the stock exchange

Flowers. Roses, rents, all things conspire

To crown your death with wreaths of living fire.

And the public mourners come: the politic tear

Is cast in the Forum. But, in another year,

We will mourn you, whose fossil courage fills

The limestone histories: brave: ignorant: amazed:

Dead in the rice paddies, dead on the nameless hills.

Source: Selected Poems 1938-1988 (c. 1988 by Thomas McGrath; pub. by Copper Canyon Press, 1988). Thomas McGrath (1916-1990) was a celebrated American poet and screenwriter of documentary films. He grew up on a farm in Ransom County, ND. He earned a B.A. from the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks and served in the Aleutian Islands with the U.S. Air Force during the Second World War. McGrath was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University and pursued postgraduate studies at Louisiana State University. He taught at Colby College in Maine and at Los Angeles State College. He was dismissed from the latter in connection with his refusal to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953. In refusing to participate in the committee’s “blacklisting” efforts, he testified that “[a] teacher who will tack and turn with every shift of the political wind cannot be a good teacher. I have never done this myself, nor will I ever.” McGrath later taught at North Dakota State University and Minnesota State University. He was married three times and had one son to whom much of his later work was dedicated. You can read more about Thomas McGrath and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Praying for an End to American Empire

June 22, 2026UncategorizedBible, faith, god, Jeremiah, jesusrevolsen

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Prayer of the Day: O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.” Jeremiah 28:8-9.

There is a back story to our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. It all begins with God commanding Jeremiah to proclaim to the people of Judah that God is about to bring the Kingdom of David and the Temple in Jerusalem to an end by the hand of the King of Babylon whose armies are even now advancing upon Jerusalem. To make the point, Jeremiah is told to wear a yoke over his shoulders, the kind used for oxen. It is God who brings the yolk of Babylonian bondage upon Judah. To resist Babylon is to resist God. Jeremiah 27:1-11. You can imagine how that must have gone over. How would you like to be sent out to meet the Fourth of July parade with a yoke on your neck to tell everyone that God is about give victory to America’s national enemies?

The drama unfolds in Jerusalem where the prophet Hananiah is rallying the people of the city behind the flag. “Salvation is on the way! The Lord is coming to the aid of his people just like he always has in the past! The Lord is coming to rescue Jerusalem! The Lord is coming to save his people! Within two years we are going to see all the treasures taken from us by the Babylonians returned. We are going to see freedom! We are going to see peace! Do I hear an ‘Amen.’?” (Paraphrase of Jeremiah 28:1-4).

“Amen” shouts a voice from the midst of the cheering crowd. Everyone turns to see the prophet Jeremiah wearing his yoke. “Amen!” shouts Jeremiah. “I hope you are right Hananiah. I hope everything you say comes true. Nothing would make me happier than to be dead wrong about everything I have said. But this is much bigger than you and me, Hananiah. This is much more important than who is right and who is wrong. The question here is, ‘What is the word of the Lord for us this day?’ Don’t forget,” says Jeremiah to Hananiah, “there have been prophets before you and me. Not all of them prophesied salvation. Some foretold disaster and destruction. Remember Elijah, remember Amos, remember Micah who once prophesied that this very city would be laid bare as a mown field. Time will tell what the word of the Lord is, who proclaimed it and who received it faithfully.” (Paraphrase of Vss. 5-9). So ends the lectionary reading, but not the story. Next Hananiah, in a dramatic and brilliant show of rhetorical theater, jumps down from the podium, breaks in two the yoke from off Jeremiah’s neck and cries out, “So shall the Lord break the yoke of Babylon from the neck of his people.” Jeremiah 28:10-11. The crowd roars its approval and Jeremiah goes his way.

Jeremiah lost the rhetorical duel, but time proved the validity of his words which, as it turned out, were God’s Word. It was to the words of Jeremiah, faithfully preserved by his disciples, that Israel turned for comfort, hope and guidance during their exile in Babylon and throughout the coming ages. There are no writings of Hananiah known to exist today. Though he was surely more popular, influential and well connected in his day, commanding larger crowds and attracting a bigger following, Hananiah turned out to be a fraud. His promises proved cruelly misleading. His words were hollow, empty and unreliable. Sometimes, the Word of the Lord must endure long periods of rejection, neglect and distortion before it breaks forth again like a spring of pure water cleansed and purified by the dark underground through which it passes. Perhaps the time has come for Jeremiah’s prophecy to break forth again with words of judgment and hope.

Much has been written about the dangers of Christian nationalism though, as I have said before, attention has been focused principally on right wing religious movements. The explicit elevation of the United States to the status of a divine project whose interests coincide with God’s will is rightly denounced as heretical. Nevertheless, as I have frequently pointed out before, the symbiotic relationship between American Christianity and American national aspirations is not solely a right wing phenomenon. Mainline protestant Christianity has always been infected with the virus of American mythology, a belief that the United States is somehow exceptional and that its role as leader of the “free world” is essential to the common good. There has always been a faith in America’s essential goodness, a belief that, notwithstanding some significant flaws, failures and imperfections, America is progressing toward a “more perfect union.” Much of American Christian witness and mission has been more about saving, preserving and perfecting America than announcing the reign of God. Thus, while we can tolerate and even praise those who criticize, chastise and scold America, there is no tolerance whatsoever for those who dare to suggest that the United States itself might be altogether inconsistent with the values of God’s reign. Witness the national outcry against another Jeremiah, namely, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who had the audacity to suggest that God might damn rather than bless America.

I think the one and only thing for which we can genuinely and sincerely thank Donald Trump is his putting the lie to the American mythology of the righteous nation, the city on the hill, the world’s best hope. Those of us who clung desperately to that myth dismissed the 2016 election as a fluke allowed by a scandal ridden and deeply unpopular democratic candidate. Following the January 6, 2021 failed Republican coup we insisted “this is not us.” But after the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024, we could no longer deny that the racism, misogyny, homophobia and outright cruelty of Donald Trump is a reflection of the American soul. His military threats against long time allies, his unprovoked aggression against neighboring countries and his needless wars initiated and provoked in the middle east, endorsed or at least tolerated by a substantial portion of the American public, demonstrate that the militaristic and authoritarian genes of Hitler and Stalin are firmly engrained in America’s DNA. The United States is not the world’s savior. To the contrary, it is currently the greatest threat to world peace, representative government and the planet’s ecological well being.

Should we, rather than praying for God’s blessing upon the United States, be praying instead for the end of its imperial power and influence? Should we be re-examining the unspoken assumption that the health of the global community depends on some version of a reformed, completed and redeemed America? Must we, like Jeremiah, announce to a church symbiotically fused with the United States and its myth of exceptionalism that there can be no redemption for America, only judgment and deconstruction? Is not our failure to conceive a hopeful future for the planet without the United States a damning indictment against a church that has lost sight of its prophetic calling? Does it not point to an idolatrous comingling of American mythology with the just and gentle reign of God? Unlike Jeremiah, I do not have a definitive Word from God on these questions, but I think they are the kinds of questions the church, particularly the church in America, ought to be asking.

To be clear, praying for an end to American imperialism is not the same as praying for the destruction of our country. There is much that I love about the United States of America, its diverse cultural traditions and the music, art and science they have produced. I have profound respect for the many Americans who have striven to and to some degree succeeded in building a more just and equitable society on our soil. None of this need be lost in the deconstruction of the American empire and its disproportional influence over the rest of the world. After all, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Spanish Empire all came to an end. Nevertheless, Italy, England and Spain are doing just fine. A United States of America shorn of its exceptionalist pretensions, its oversized military and its profit driven economy presided over by oligarchs, finally taking its place among the nations of the world as a partner rather than an overlord would surely be a welcome development. But it may be that such a promising future can be found only on the far side of judgment taking the shape of a painful dismantling of our delusions of grandeur, our systemically unjust institutions and our military industrial complex.

Here is a poem by Mary Oliver which, like the prophet Jeremiah, speaks a truth that is hard to hear. Yet, as Jeremiah and all true prophets know, there is no hope for redemption apart from confrontation by the truth, difficult as it may be to receive.

Of Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

Source: Red Bird, (c. 2009 by Mary Oliver; pub. by Beacon Press). Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was born in Maple Heights, Ohio. She was deeply influenced by poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her work received early critical attention with the 1983 publication of a collection of poems entitled American Primitive. She is a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award. She spent the latter years of her life in Provincetown on Cape Cod, MA before moving to Florida where she died. Many of her poems reflect the unique features, vegetation and wildlife of the Cape. You can read more about Mary Oliver and sample some of her other poems at the Poetry Foundation Website.

What the Hell?

June 15, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Prayer of the Day: Teach us, good Lord God, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we do your will, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28.

“Pastor, do you believe in hell?” That is a question I frequently get on Sundays when texts like this come up. My stock response is, “Why don’t you tell me what you think hell is and I will tell you whether I believe in it or not.” That usually gets the conversation going in a way that allows me to deconstruct a lot of harmful misconceptions and invite the entertainment of new perspectives. But sooner or later, I am pressed to respond to the question: What is hell and do I believe in it?

The short answer to the first part of the question is that I don’t know what hell is. The Bible speaks of it only in parabolic, apocalyptic and poetic terms from which I don’t think we can draw any concrete metaphysical conclusions. The Greek word used in the New Testament is “Geheneh,” which is the name of the place where garbage was burned outside the city, suggesting to me that it is figurative rather than literal. I therefore do not believe the scriptural references to hell, even the lurid images of the “lake of fire” in the Book of Revelation, support belief in a subterranean realm where damned souls are imprisoned for torment throughout all eternity. One of the most ancient creedal assertions found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is that God is “merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Even when God punishes, God does so with the ultimate aim of healing and reconciliation. Eternal punishment is simply not consistent with God’s character as so revealed.

Most of what can be gleaned about hell comes from the book of Revelation which employes apocalyptic imagery. I think so many people get Revelation entirely wrong because they give only a cursory glance to chapters 1-3, the letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor. These are small, vulnerable and demoralized communities living under the shadow of a hostile empire facing social ostracism, political infighting and struggles with heretical influences. One gathers from the tone and content of these letters that these churches are on the verge of giving up. No doubt they were beginning to wonder, what’s the point? The apostle is using the fantastic imagery throughout the rest of the book to make the point that his churches are precious in God’s sight, that their struggling communities represent God’s presence in the world and that the struggles they face are of cosmic significance. It is the lamb, the lamb who was slain no less, that is destined to triumph over the fearful and beastly powers of empire. The intent was clearly not to establish a timetable for the world’s demise, but a poetic vision of its redemption. The “lake of fire” was prepared for the demonic forces animating the Roman empire, not for human beings.

The biggest problem with hell is the obsession people seem to have with who is going there and who isn’t. I am not sure anyone is going to hell. The prophet Ezekiel tells us that God takes no pleasure in the death of anyone. Ezekiel 18:32. Saint Peter tells us that it is not God’s will that any perish. II Peter 3:9. John’s gospel tells us that God so loved the world (not Christians, not the church, not good people) that God sent the only beloved Son. John 3:16. That suggests to me that salvation is much bigger than the church. It is not God’s intent to save as many souls as possible from a sinking ship. God means to save the ship and everyone on it. Whatever and whoever God is able to work into the mosaic of the new heaven and the new earth, God will save to that end.

That being said, the passage must mean something. Jesus’ words are clearly intended, at least in part, as a dire warning. There is much that is irreconcilable with God’s reign and cannot be woven into the fabric of a new creation. Hatred, bigotry, cruelty, arrogance, lust for power and wealth come to mind. These things are therefore consigned to the garbage dump for burning. If we are all honest with ourselves, these moral faults infect us all to some degree. Thus, on that day when all that is “covered” is “uncovered” and all secrets are made known (Matthew 10:26), there will be some hell to pay for all of us. I quote again a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s monumental work, The Brothers Karamazov. The scene is the death bed of the sainted Father Zossima, elder of the local monastery from which he addresses the monks under his leadership for the last time.

“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.’”[1]

I cannot imagine that on the day of judgment when our lives are measured against the rich and numerous opportunities we have had to love deeply this good green earth, the many people whose lives have intersected with our own and the One from whom these opportunities come, we will not lament the time we have wasted on envy, bitterness and chasing after trivialities we thought would bring us happiness. Saint Paul alludes to something like this in his First Letter to the church in Corinth:

“According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Let each builder choose with care how to build on it.For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the daywill disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.If the work that someone has built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a wage. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.” I Corinthians 3:10-15.

Is it possible for a person to become so thoroughly distorted, so completely depraved that the image of God is entirely erased and the Creator must say, “I never knew you. Depart from me”? Since Jesus floats this possibility, it would be foolish to ignore it. Nonetheless, that is not a call I believe any of us can make. From the disciple’s perspective, it is assumed that all persons, however cruel and depraved they might appear to us, nevertheless bear the image of God and must be treated with love and compassion. When Jesus was asked whether many or few would be saved, he refused to answer. Instead, he told the inquirers to focus on their own walk on the narrow path rather than speculate on the destiny of others. Luke 13:23-24.

Finally, I am not sure what eternal punishment looks like-assuming anyone arrives there. I don’t think God gets any jollies from torturing people who call upon God by a different name, do not believe in God or do not have their doctrine quite right. If any are lost, it will be because they have become so thoroughly depraved that nothing of God’s image is recognizable or reconcilable with the kingdom of heaven. So what happens to those who become so thoroughly depraved that they cannot live peacefully under the gentle reign of God? Perhaps Father Zossima is right. The lost will finally be allowed into the kingdom in spite of themselves. That might be worse than any eternal flame. Can you imagine Donald Trump living in a world that no longer pays him any attention? Can you imagine Hitler living in a community that no longer remembers or cares about the Third Reich? What could be worse than realizing that you have thrown your life away on all the things that don’t matter and that everything you thought was important, all the accomplishments in which you took such pride and all the causes you gave your life to are worthless trinkets rusting in the dustbin of a world now past and that it is too late to change it?

The observations made by Father Zossima, speculative as they might be, are nonetheless in keeping with the gospel message, namely, that the Good News of Jesus is not merely life after death, but life now into which God’s reign is breaking. Eternal life is not eternal merely by virtue of its duration, but chiefly because of its quality. “Faith, hope and love, these three remain, but the greatest of these is love,” says St. Paul. I Corinthians 13:13. All who live in love are living a life that transcends death. To live for less is to waste one’s life on that which is only fit for burning in the dump.

To conclude where I began, I don’t know what hell is. I am convinced, however, that whatever it is, hell is of our own making and not the work of a merciful and compassionate Creator. Here is a poem by Carl Sanburg illustrating the point.

Our Hells

Milton unlocked hell for us

And let us have a look.

Dante did the same.

Each of these hells is special-

One is Milton’s, one Dante’s.

Milton put in all that for him

was hell on earth.

Dante put in all that for him

was hell on earth.

Each of the demons was done in

a dear personal idiom.

If you unlock your hell for me

And I unlock my hell for you

They will be two special hells

Done in our dear personal idioms.

Each of us showing what for us

is hell on earth.

Source: Poetry (October, 1932). Carl Sandburg (1878 – July 22, 1967) was a Swedish-American poet, biographer, journalist and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Sandburg is widely regarded as a major figure in contemporary literature. At the age of thirteen Sandburg left school and began driving a milk wagon. Throughout his early years, he worked as a porter at the Union Hotel barbershop in Galesburg, Illinois, a bricklayer, a farm laborer in Kansas, a hotel servant in Denver, Colorado and a coal-heaver in Omaha. Sandburg began his writing career as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Later he wrote poetry, history, biographies, novels, children’s literature and film reviews. He also collected and edited books of ballads and folklore. He spent most of his life in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan before moving to North Carolina. You can find out more about Carl Sandburg and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

[1] Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov (Trans. by Constance Garnett, c. 1950 by Random House, Inc., New York, NY) p. 387.

Deserves Got Nothing To Do With It

June 10, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

It has become increasingly clear to me that I will not be able to post an article for this week. I therefore am reposting an article I wrote on the same texts six years ago that I hope will still resonate currently. I also recommend the fine articles written by Danny Zacharias, Diana Abernethy, Joel LeMon and Stephen Chester at Working Preacher.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Exodus 19:2-8
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35; 10:1-23

Prayer of the Day: God of compassion, you have opened the way for us and brought us to yourself. Pour your love into our hearts, that, overflowing with joy, we may freely share the blessings of your realm and faithfully proclaim the good news of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.

Brian was a young exchange student from England majoring in engineering. But in the middle of his sophomore year, he began experiencing chronic pain and fatigue. After undergoing numerous tests, Brian was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease that had ravaged his kidneys. Though the disease was brought under control with medication, Brian’s kidneys were beyond healing. The young man was placed on dialysis. At this point, one of his teachers, a young professor in her third year of teaching, underwent testing to find out whether she might be a potential organ donor for her student. When the results confirmed that she was indeed a match, she volunteered to donate one of her kidneys to Brian. The resulting transplant was a success and Brian returned to leading a full and active life. This story is true, though the names have been changed in the interest of protecting the privacy of those involved.

One can’t help but be inspired by the young professor’s generosity. But how inspiring would it be if, instead of a promising young engineering student, Brian had been a high school drop out with a long history of addiction. What if his kidneys had been done in by years of drug and alcohol abuse rather than an autoimmune disease? Would such a generous and costly sacrifice move us to the same admiration? Our would we wonder about the sanity of the donor? Certainly, there must be other matches far more deserving.

Yet, as Clint Eastwood’s character, Bill Munny says, “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”[1] Those of you who have seen the movie, Unforgiven know that Munny, being a cold blooded killer, means simply that what happens to us is not tied to whatever we think we are entitled. The universe deals out famine, epidemics, hurricanes and personal tragedy without a thought to what anyone deserves. Experience bears that out every day. Children are killed by drunk drivers, innocent civilians are killed in military conflicts of which they want no part and the cat throws up all over the carpet just as the guests arrive. Saint Paul, however, applies this concept inversely to God’s love for creation and the people God calls to make known that redemptive love. The world might appear to be hopelessly caught in a spiral of spiritual, economic, environmental and political destruction. The church might seem a far cry from the Body of Christ Paul insists that it is. Neither the world nor the church seems worth God’s investing so much of God’s self. But this world is the one for which God sent God’s Son and the church is the people called and chosen to make that wonderful gift known. “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”

The same principle seems to be at work in Jesus’ selection of disciples. This is a motley group consisting of a terrorist dedicated to ending by whatever means Roman occupation of the Promised Land, a tax collector enriched by collaborating with Rome and some fishermen who were just trying to make a living and stay out of the way. As we discover throughout the gospel, these are people of “little faith,” people slow to comprehend Jesus’ parables, people obsessed with being “great” in the kingdom of heaven and quick to abandon their Lord when their support is needed most. There were probably many others as or more deserving of inclusion among “the twelve.” But “deserves got nothing to do with it.”

I know something of undeserved grace. I was about as unpromising a student in high school as the twelve were unpromising prospects for discipleship. My grades hovered at and sometimes dipped below “C” level. My only interest in college was avoiding the draft in the event the Vietnam war dragged on past my eighteenth birthday. So I sluffed my way through Ms. Boyers’ “bonehead English” class during my freshman year, fully expecting to be placed in the sophomore equivalent the following year. Much to my surprise, however, I discovered upon my return to school in the fall that I had been placed in honors humanities. This had to be a mistake, I reasoned. Ms. Boyer informed me that it was no mistake. “Peter,” she said, “you are lazy, your spelling is awful and your penmanship stinks. But you have a brain. You can be much better than you are. So I saw to it that you got placed in honors. Now, don’t embarrass me.”

I don’t know exactly what Ms. Boyer saw in me. But her decision to place me in honors humanities was literally life changing. In that class I discovered a passion for learning that put me on a trajectory leading into two rewarding careers. There were, no doubt, plenty of students (probably most of my class) that showed more potential and were more deserving of that spot in honors humanities than me. But as it turned out, “deserves got nothing to do with it.”

We don’t get what we deserve in life. That is common complaint, but it shouldn’t be. As the anonymous poet says, “There ain’t no one should have the nerve/ To say they ought to get what they deserve.”

Justice

He shuffled in out of the rain and sleet
leaving in his wake puddles of dirty
water on the floor from the melting slush
on his booted feet.
Behind the counter the haggard waitress
turned her back against the freezing wind
That came uninvited through the door he’d left ajar.

She muttered “Jesus!
Why can’t you shut the door?
Don’t you know it’s cold as hell?
It costs enough to heat this joint,
Without having to heat
the whole damn city as well.”

The harsh rebuke was lost on him.
He took his seat at the counter,
fumbled with the menu
half speaking, half singing
the words to a vaguely familiar hymn.

“Mary’s favorite,” he said,
turning toward the waitress on his stool.
She, for her part, kept her gaze on the grill.
She had no time to pass with this garrulous old fool.
“Loved that old song,” he declared in a husky voice
so loud and so intrusive was his talk,
That patrons in the booths along the wall
Stopped their hushed chatter and looked up.

“Keep it down, will you?” she snapped.
“You don’t have to broadcast to the whole damn world you know.”
“Sorry,” he replied, in no quieter tone.
“I’m so confounded deaf these days I can’t hear myself.”
“Well I can hear you fine.
And so can everyone in the room.”

“Now my Mary,” he began…
But to begin is as far as he got.
“Look, Chuck, I’m busy.
I got customers, tables and food.
I don’t have time to chew the fat.
Don’t mean to be rude.”

He stammered something about having to go,
Got up from his stool,
Put on his hat
And trudged back out into the snow.
The waitress stared straight ahead
The deep purple neon sign
Reflected off her glossy black hair,
Illuminated the crusty makeup on her pale face
And gave a surreal glow to her chalky, white skin.

“Kind of rough on the old coot, weren’t ya?”
An old fat man with an unlit cigar in his mouth
Sauntered out of the back room.
He sat himself down a shabby chair
Behind the counter.
A resentful silence was all the answer he got.
“Seems to me,” he went on, “the guy is just lonely.
Let him talk a minute or two
and he’ll move on, like as not.”

“He ain’t the only one that’s lonely,”
The waitress replied.
“And he treated ‘his Mary’ like a dog
Right up to the day she died.
Now, of course, he misses her.
Says he wants her back.
I bet the hell he does.
But it’s too damn late now, Mack.
He’s a lonely ‘cause he’s a bastard
And he’s been one all his life.
He didn’t deserve Mary
And there’s no woman so bad
As deserved to be his wife.”

“That may well be,” the fat man said.
But let the good Lord sort that out once we’re all dead.
Fact is, there ain’t no one should have the nerve
To say they ought to get what they deserve.”

Source: Anonymous.

[1] Unforgiven, 1992, Fill written by David Webb Peoples and produced by Clint Eastwood.

The Task of Redeeming Language

June 4, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Hosea 5:15—6:6

Psalm 50:7-15

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Prayer of the Day: O God, you are the source of life and the ground of our being. By the power of your Spirit bring healing to this wounded world, and raise us to the new life of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
    I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
    and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
    the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea 6:5-6.

This text is yet another reminder that the power behind God’s judgement, God’s wrath and God’s punishment is God’s Word. The violence implied in the words “killed” and “hewn” pertains not to weapons of war designed to destroy human flesh, but to preaching, parables and poetic utterances crafted to break hearts, change minds and restore relationships. As the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

The point is further illustrated in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in which Paul urges his readers to “take up the whole armor of God.” Ephesians 6:13. For a people living under Roman occupation, the sight of soldiers armed with swords, shields and helmets was a common one and a reminder of Rome’s military supremacy. Seeing Rome’s well suited troops on their streets sent a clear message to everyone that they lived at the base of a hierarchical pyramid of power on which the emperor stood at the apex. Paul stands that pyramid on its head, reminding the church at Ephesus that their enemies are not “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. Against such powers, weapons of steel are useless. Thus, Paul tells his readers to arm themselves with the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit “which is the Word of God.” Ephesians 6:14-17.

Speech is integral to our humanity. We claim that we have been created in God’s image and there has been no little debate over exactly what that means. In the Bible’s opening words, in the first chapter of Genesis, the first thing we learn about God is that God speaks. Perhaps that is what makes us human creatures uniquely Godlike. We have the power of endowing sounds and syllables with meanings, making our thoughts, feelings, ideas and opinions known to one another. With these building blocks called words, we erect poems, songs, stories, novels, speeches and sermons. Words are complex vectors of meaning capable of evoking imaginative worlds and bringing into focus the depth and complexity of the “real” one. Karl Marx is credited with saying, “give me twenty-six soldiers and I will conquer the world,” by which he meant the letters of the alphabet.

That brings me to the flip side of speech. Words are capable of incredible evil and destructiveness. Words can be used to insult, demean and intimidate. They are used to lie, construct hateful ideologies, reinforce racial prejudices, propagate dangerous misinformation and incite violence. Cruel and oppressive regimes have employed propaganda to whip up support for their reigns of terror. Words can be employed to label and scapegoat the most vulnerable among us. In our own United States, the words of the Bible are routinely stripped of their context and misappropriated by preachers of hate and corrupt politicians to justify their oppressive, unjust and frequently racist policies. Just as words can bring life and hope, they can ruin life and extinguish hope.

It is fashionable these days to rag on social media and AI for degrading our vocabularies, cheapening our dialogue and poisoning our civil discourse. Clearly, they have contributed to all these worrisome trends. The same, however, can be said for the invention of the printing press, the growth of radio and its subsequent displacement by television. Whenever you give a bigger voice to more people, you run the risk that the gift of language and speech might be abused. Our problem with hate speech, misinformation and abusive online conduct is not a technical one. It is a malady of the human heart. We are a people with a decreasing vocabulary, shrinking imagination and growing lack of linguistic competence.

The collapse of language is nowhere better illustrated than by our own government which tells us repeatedly that there is a ceasefire between the United States and Iran even though we are shooting missiles and drones at each other. Our secretary of defense insists that the massive bombing campaign against Iran was not a war. The president tells us the mob that stormed our capital on January 6, 2021 are patriots. It is as though language has been thoroughly drained of meaning. This is all reminiscent of Alice’s encounter with Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.

Alice Through the Looking Glass, (Lewis Carroll).

Accordingly, terms like “war,” “ceasefire” and “patriot” mean whatever the loudest and most powerful voice says they mean. Words are no longer vessels of meaning. To the contrary, they are bereft of meaning, so much so that antonyms become synonyms. We are living into George Orwell’s dystopia where the government’s slogan is:

“War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.” 1984,(George Orwell).

It is hardly surprising, then, that our government is unable to function. How is it possible to formulate policy, draft legislation, enforce or interpret law where words have no meaning and language is little more than noise? How can nations resolve conflicts, make and honor treaties or collaborate in addressing global problems if their agreements consist of words without meaning? Is it surprising that our online discourse so often amounts to little more than an exchange of insults and competing memes? Moreover, it should not surprise us that our violent rhetoric often evolves into violent acts. When language no longer works, what is left other than to silence your opponents by lethal means?

As disciples of Jesus, the Word made flesh, we have a keen interest in redeeming words and restoring language. The healing of language needs to begin with us. We need a renewed respect for words.[1] We need a deeper appreciation and understanding of the meanings they carry, how they are heard differently by different audiences who have learned them in very different contexts. We who preach need to work harder at developing our vocabulary so that we avoid religious jargon, partisan clichés and worn out rhetoric. We need to develop our linguistic skills so that we can speak clearly, directly and imaginatively. We need to practice constructing sentences where words are well placed so that their intended meaning is clear and well expressed. We need to work harder at crafting paragraphs that serve as building blocks for the construction of the “big idea” that our congregations need to hear. Beyond that, we need to be mindful of our use of words on social media, at public gatherings where we have the opportunity to speak to important issues and even in casual conversation. Preserving and improving our language is not simply a matter of good manners and social etiquette. It is a matter of preserving our very humanity.

Here is an anonymous poem that addresses the importance of words and speech.

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Source: Anonymous

[1] In this regard, I have noted a recent trend among some preachers to employ the “F” word in their preaching. I am not sure what the rationale for that is. The word has become so ubiquitous in our culture that it has lost its shock value even in church. If the preacher’s objective is to show the congregation that they are “real” or “earthy” and so enhance their credibility, well, good luck with that. My objection to the use of the “F” word generally has nothing to do with its meaning, but with its total lack thereof. When you say to me, “F” you, all I can surmise is that you are angry but that you lack the vocabulary, conceptual tools and emotional maturity to understand or explain why you are angry or what your anger has to do with me. Either that or you are just too lazy to bother with all that. Thus, the “F” word is nothing more than the inarticulate grunt of a person unable or unwilling to employ intelligible speech.

Creedal Fundamentalism

May 26, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, god, jesus, theologyrevolsen

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Genesis 1:1–2:4a

Psalm 8

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

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.

On this coming Sunday of the Holy Trinity, it is customary to elevate the ecumenical creeds[1] subscribed to by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communities as well as by most protestants. Our American Churches, even the liturgical ones, are often ambivalent about creeds. There is something deeply anti American about expecting individuals to subordinate their individual beliefs and convictions to a communal statement of belief. Individualism and the jealous protection of individual freedoms runs deep among us. One church I visited during my teenage years proudly proclaimed on its marque that it had “no creed but the Bible.” Once inside, however, I was given a worship bulletin with a list of bullet points on the front cover stating, among other things, that the church held the Bible to be verbally inspired, forbade women to teach or serve as elders and insisted that intimate sexual relations were forbidden outside of marriage. One wonders why, if the Bible is sufficient, the congregation found it necessary to articulate these positions that were obviously important to it.

It seems that if we are going to live in intentional community, there is no getting around creeds of some sort. To be fair, I have also encountered progressive protestant churches that avoid the use of the creeds in the spirit of being inclusive. Yet I have no doubt that there are beliefs and behaviors, the expression of which, could result in excommunication-though I doubt these churches would use such arcane ecclesiastical language to describe it. Every community, religious or otherwise, has core beliefs and norms governing its day to day life. That being the case, I believe it is best to be aware of and honest about what those beliefs and norms are. In short, I like churches that keep their creeds out in the open where I can see them.

The biblical cannon we have today consists in large part of texts interpreting and re-interpreting prior texts as well as songs, stories and liturgies from oral tradition predating the written word. As the diverse array of protestant sects amply demonstrates, the biblical interpretation has given rise to numerous conflicting and sometimes bizarre forms of religion. Each claims the Bible as the source of its faith and life. Fundamentalism, a term now applied more broadly to a wide variety of religious movements, was coined in 1920 to describe conservative Evangelical Protestants who supported the principles expounded in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, a collection of 90 essays published between 1910 and 1915, designed to affirm the core doctrines of Christianity. These consisted in the main of 1) the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible; 2) the deity of Jesus Christ; 3) the virgin birth of Jesus; 4) the substitutionary atonement; and 5) the resurrection and second coming of Christ. These fundamentals, defined with a strict literalism hard to reconcile with the science of the 19^th century so many evangelicals viewed as a threat to Christianity, were deemed the “fundamentals” and amounted to a de facto creed.

The truth is, we are all fundamentalists in the sense that there are convictions we hold to be fundamental to who we are and what we live for. Though we Americans are loath to admit it, we do not come upon these fundamentals autonomously. For better or worse, we are influenced by our upbringing, our education, our peers, our life experiences and by the media through which we view the world at large. When I worked as an intern at a church in Brooklyn, I never understood why several members of the church urged me not to take the subway until I saw the local paper they read on a daily basis. That publication featured crime stories almost exclusively, many of which took place in the subway. Of course, millions of people ride the subway every day and have done so all their lives without encountering any danger. But if your window into the outside world is skewed toward the violent exception, your view of the whole is bound to be distorted. Your fundamental beliefs about your city and your neighbors are similarly influenced.

We cannot escape being shaped and influenced by the world around us. But we do have some choice over the communities to which belong, the individuals with whom we associate and the literature and media through which we view the larger world. The church is the people who associate with Jesus. We are shaped, many of us from childhood, by teaching, hymns, liturgy and preaching through which the mind of Christ is formed in us. The creeds are a central part of that process. As I have said before, the creeds need to be recited liturgically and understood as God’s lyrical narrative. They tell the story of a God who, though fully blessed in love within God’s triune self, nevertheless made room for something other than God to be. By speaking the words, “Let there be,” God made room for a universe to explode into being. God’s’ love for that universe was so deep, so passionate and so enduring that God fused God’s self with the flesh of God’s human creatures and remains incarnate despite our cruel rejection. God’s fleshly existence in the midst of the world God made and loves continues in the community of people God’s Spirit calls together to witness, serve and testify to that love. Love, as the glue cementing the Trinity, pre-existed the universe and continues to hold it together against all that would rip it apart. These creedal fundamentals are the ones by which I long to be formed.

It matters what you believe about God. I don’t have to tell you that there is plenty of religion out there, much of it nominally Christian, that proclaims a very different sort of god than we meet in the creeds. The crackpot Christianity of nationalists like Pete Hegseth who insists that God is at work in the weapons of death rained by the United States and Israel upon civilian populations is but one example. There are plenty more that come out regularly in the tragic stories of people who have been grievously injured by the teachings and practices of churches who worship an angry god who hates what he has made and seems to love his precious commandments more than the people they are supposed to serve and protect. Toxic religion built on a depraved understanding of who God is and what God desires kills. It is important, therefore, that we be crystal clear about the nature of the God we worship and God’s gracious purpose for the cosmos conceived and birthed in God’s trinitarian heart.

Here is a poem by Haki R. Madhubuti who makes a conscious choice about what he will be shaped and influenced. He reflects the spirit in which I believe one ought to approach the scriptures, liturgy, preaching and, yes, the creeds.

So Many Books, So Little Time

(For independent booksellers & librarians, especially Nichelle Hayes)

Frequently during my mornings of pain & reflection

when I can’t write

or articulate my thoughts

or locate the mindmusic needed

to complete the poems & essays

that are weeks plus days overdue

forcing me to stop, I cease

answering my phone, eating right, running my miles,

reading my mail, and making love.

(Also, this is when my children do not seek me out

because I do not seek them out.)

I escape north, to the nearest library or used bookstore.

They are my retreats, my quiet energy-givers, my intellectual refuge.

For me it is not bluewater beaches, theme parks,

or silent chapels hidden among forest greens.

Not multi-stored American malls, corporate book

supermarkets, mountain trails, or Caribbean hideaways.

My sanctuaries are liberated lighthouses of shelved books,

featuring forgotten poets, unread anthropologists of tenure-

seeking assistant professors, self-published geniuses, remaindered

first novelists, highlighting speed-written bestsellers,

wise historians & theologians, nobel, pulitzer prize, and american book

award winners, poets & fiction writers, overcertain political commentators,

small press wunderkinds & learned academics.

All are vitamins for my slow brain & sidetracked spirit in this

winter of creating.

I do not believe in smiling politicians, AMA doctors,

zebra-faced bankers, red-jacketed real estate or automobile

salespeople, or singing preachers.

I believe in books.

It can be conveniently argued that knowledge,

not that which is condensed or computer packaged, but

pages of hard-fought words, dancing language

meticulously & contemplatively written by the likes of me & others,

shelved imperfectly at the level of open hearts & minds,

is preventive medicine strengthening me for the return to my

clear pages of incomplete ideas to be reworked, revised &

written as new worlds and words in all of their subjective

configurations to eventually be processed into books that

will hopefully be placed on the shelves of libraries, bookstores, homes,

& other sanctuaries of learning to be found & browsed over by receptive

booklovers, readers & writers looking for a retreat,

looking for departure & yes spaces,

looking for open heart surgery without the knife.

Source: Poetry (April 2023). Haki R. Madhubuti (born Don Luther Lee in 1942) is an African-American author, educator and poet. He is also well known as the publisher and operator of a black-themed bookstore. Madhubuti was instrumental in the founding of Third World Press, the oldest independent black publishing house in the United States. He has published twenty-eight books and co-edited two volumes of literary works. Madhubuti has received the Distinguished Writers Award and the American Book Award. He has been honored by the Middle Atlantic Writers Association, African-American Arts Alliance and awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can read more about Haki Madhubuti and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] These include the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, though it is debatable whether the last of these three should be considered truly ecumenical. The Athanasian Creed is product of the western church written in Latin rather than Greek and has never been given creedal status by the Orthodox churches. It also includes numerous anathemas which are problematic to say the least. Thus, I would prefer to see it given the status of a document that is informative but not deemed creedal.

That Unruly Spirit of God

May 19, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

PENTECOST SUNDAY

Acts 2:1-21 or Numbers 11:24-30

Psalm 104:24-34, 35

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21

John 20:19-23 or

John 7:37-39

Prayer of the Day: O God, on this day you open the hearts of your faithful people by sending into us your Holy Spirit. Direct us by the light of that Spirit, that we may have a right judgment in all things and rejoice at all times in your peace, through Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” John 20:21-22.

Here on the Outer Cape we have learned to take the weather forecasts with a grain of salt. Maybe that is because the forecasters focus exclusively on population centers on the mainland, like Boston. The Cape and Islands are often an afterthought. What happens weatherwise on the mainland is often quite different from what takes place on Cape Cod. Furthermore, what is happening down in Sandwich or up in Provincetown might be entirely different from what we experience in Wellfleet. This spit of land between the bay and the open ocean is subject to sudden and unpredictable bouts of wind, fog, rain or snow depending upon the capricious mood of the Atlantic. We have even had a couple of tornados during the years I have resided on the Cape.

One thing you can definitely say about the Holy Spirit: she is as wild and unpredictable as the weather on the Outer Cape. Jesus said as much himself. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”[1] John 3:8. In the Book of Acts, the church is forever scrambling to catch up with the Spirit whose power leads and sometimes drags the church kicking and screaming into an ever more diverse, inclusive community of equity, mutuality reflective of God’s intent for the whole human family. While the church is a creature of the Holy Spirit, it is not her custodian.

Lutheran theology has always emphasized the centrality of Word and Sacrament as vehicles for the outpouring of the Spirit upon believers. This is all well and good if understood to mean that the Spirit can be relied upon to be present in a redemptive way for all who receive the sacrament of Holy Baptism and partake of the Lord’s Supper. It is a mistake, however, to assume that the activity of the Holy Spirit is constrained by the church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament. In the Bible, the Spirit is frequently found to be active outside the church and its institutions. Prior to Peter’s determination to baptize the household of Cornelius, the Spirit was poured out on that household. Acts 10:44-48. When the disciples reported to Jesus that they had silenced a man outside their company who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, he rebuked them. Mark 9:38-41. So, too, Moses had to reign in his assistant Joshua who was intent on keeping God’s Spirit safely penned within the confines of proper ecclesiastical channels. Numbers 11:26-30. Thus, while the Spirit can be relied upon to be present where the Word is preached and the Eucharist is celebrated, she will not be confined there.

How does one recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit? While I do not have a hard and fast answer to that question, I believe there are three human traits characterizing people and communities inspired by the Spirit. These are, in no particular order of importance, curiosity, imagination and courage. While there may be no proof of the existence of a creator as such, it seems to me curiosity constitutes pretty good evidence. It has been said that God is nothing but the answer to humanity’s unanswered questions. But the question hiding behind that assertion is what interests me. Why do we have questions that need to be answered? What makes us so damned curious? Why do we wonder what creeps along the ocean depths? Why do we wonder and spend good money trying to find out whether we, as sentient beings, are alone in the universe? Why are we obsessed with figuring out the origins of the cosmos? Why do we want to go to Mars?

I believe that curiosity is a driving force in human development, just as boredom and disinterest are dehumanizing. I believe the Spirit of God is the engine driving human curiosity and the power that drives the church toward becoming the Body of Christ in all of its manifest meaning and beauty. Philip appealed to the skeptical Nathaniel’s curiosity to bring him to Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel, it was curiosity that brought the women to the tomb of Jesus and the revelation of his Resurrection.[2] Curiosity brought together the pagan congregation that heard Paul expound the good news of Jesus Christ at the Areopagus. Curiosity has brought a lot of folks to the churches I served. A thriving Christian community requires a healthy dose of curiosity. It should forever be asking what the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus mean for its presence and work in its community. A healthy church is always bringing thoughtful questions to the scriptures, challenging the assumed interpretations and looking for connections between faith and the world of science, the arts and political life. Sadly, the scriptures, creeds and confessions have too often been misused to shut down questioning and extinguish curiosity. Religion without curiosity becomes stale, boring and oppressive.

That leads me to the second characteristic of inspiration, namely, imagination. By my estimate, about one third of the Hebrew Scriptures consist of poetry, narrative fiction or graphic imagery. Jesus did most of his teaching through parabolic speech. Saint Paul’s letters are rich in metaphor, simile and analogy. The frequently misunderstood Book of Revelation is rich in poetic language and graphic images designed to stimulate the imagination and challenge the beleaguered churches of Asia Minor to recognize the cosmic significance of their struggle to live faithfully under the oppressive reign of empire.

Albert Einstein famously asserted that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Knowledge, to be sure, is important. It provides a foundation of facts and data. But knowledge is limited to what is already known. By contrast, imagination is boundless. Imagination enables one to look beyond what is and contemplate what might be. As noted by Hebrew Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann, “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”[3] Healthy faith communities and individuals do not accept the status quo as a given. It does not resign itself to the inevitability of hunger, economic inequality, famine and war. It is sustained by the vision of a renewed earth on which the nations live in peace and all people live sustainably under the gentle reign of God. Though that vision may seem impossibly far away, we catch glimpses of it even now within communities seeking to live, however imperfectly, in the way of Jesus. The Holy Spirit inspires disciples of Jesus to pattern their lives not on the ways of the existing order, but on a bold vision of the future that only imagination can embrace.

Finally, there is courage. Courage is not the mere absence of fear. Courage is grounded in the conviction that the future God promises us is more real than what we cynically characterize as “the real world.” Professor of Christian ethics, Stanley Hauerwas once said that the life lived by disciples of Jesus makes no sense apart from the conviction that God raised Jesus from death. The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are ill suited for life in the environments of business and politics. As one participant in a Bible Study I once led on the Sermon told me, “Pastor, if I conducted business that way in my firm, I’d be crucified.” I don’t believe he knew how prophetic he was being. The Sermon on the Mount is not to be understood as some humanly unachievable ideal. To the contrary, it is the template for the life Jesus actually did live and as a result of which he was crucified. For the disciple, the reign of God is that priceless pearl, that treasure buried in the field for which no sacrifice is too great. It is love for that gentle reign that inspired the words of Martin Luther’s celebrated hymn,

Were they to take our house,

Goods, fame, child, or spouse,

Though life be wrenched away,

They cannot win the day.

The kingdom’s ours forever.[4]

In sum, the Holy Spirit is that wild, unpredictable wind that blows where she wills. Wherever her breath falls, it evokes burning curiosity, ignites the imagination and inspires courageous acts of witness, advocacy, justice, mercy and peacemaking. This is the gift of Pentecost.

Here is a poem by Mary Oliver who speaks of a “wider world” than the “orderly house of reasons and proofs.” Such is the expanded vision I believe is evoked by curiosity, imagination and courage-the signature marks of the Holy Spirit.

The World I Live In

I have refused to live

Locked in the orderly house of

reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or

twice I have seen. I’ll just

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

ever possibly, see one.

Source: Devotions, (c. 2017 by N.W. Orchard, L.L.C.) p. 3. Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was born in Maple Heights, Ohio. She was deeply influenced by poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her work received early critical attention with the 1983 publication of a collection of poems entitled American Primitive. She is a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award. She spent the latter years of her life in Provincetown on Cape Cod, MA before moving to Florida where she died. Many of her poems reflect the unique features, vegetation and wildlife of the Cape. You can read more about Mary Oliver and sample some of her other poems at the Poetry Foundation Website.

[1] It should be noted that the Greek word Jesus uses for “wind,” (pneuma) is the one he uses in the next sentence for “spirit.”

[2] In both Mark and Luke, the women came to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, no doubt convinced that he was dead. But in Matthew’s gospel, the tomb was sealed and guarded. Thus, the women could have had no such purpose as Jesus’ body would have been well out of their reach.

[3] Brueggemann, Walter, The Prophetic Imagination, Second Edition, (c. 2001 by Augsburg Fortress) p. 3.

[4] “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (c. 2006 by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; pub. by Augsburg Fortress) Hymn #504.

The Divine Cosmic Intervention

May 12, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 1:6-14

Psalm 68:1-10; 32-35

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

John 17:1-11

Prayer of the Day: O God of glory, your Son Jesus Christ suffered for us and ascended to your right hand. Unite us with Christ and each other in suffering and in joy, that all the world may be drawn into your bountiful presence, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect [my disciples] in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” John 17:11.

“In the world, but not of it.” It would be a gross misreading of this text to assume that when Jesus says he is praying for his disciples, not the world at large, that he regards the world a lost cause and can only hope that his disciples will manage to survive until he takes them to himself. To understand Jesus’ prayer properly, we need to hear it in the context of John’s gospel as a whole. Recall that in the first chapter of the gospel John the Baptist identifies Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John 1:29. In the third chapter, the evangelist declares that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” and that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:16-17. When Judas asked Jesus why he was revealing himself to the disciples rather than to the world, he responded, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” John 14:23. Jesus prayer that his disciples will be one even as he and his Father are one, is made with the Easter morning great commission in mind: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” John 20:21. The disciples are sent out clothed with the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus’ mission of flooding the world with God’s redemptive love.

What, then, does it look like to be distinct from the world as a disciple of Jesus, yet inseparable from it? How can one be against the world and yet for the world? The analogy I would suggest is that of an “intervention.” The working definition I will use for the term comes from the website for Scienceinsights:

“An intervention is any deliberate action taken to change the course of a situation, whether that’s a health condition, a behavioral crisis, a learning difficulty, or an addiction. The word shows up across medicine, psychology, education, and substance abuse treatment, but the core idea is always the same: stepping in with a plan to improve an outcome that won’t improve on its own.”

The specific context I have in mind is that of intervention to address addiction. The process typically involves members of the person’s social network gathering together and directly describing the specific harm that the individual’s addictive behavior has caused. Each participant shares personal examples and states what actions they will take if the person refuses treatment. Though confrontational by design, the tone is meant to come from love and deep concern rather than anger.

We can view the cross as, among other things, God’s cosmic intervention. That the world would not only reject but cruelly execute the one in whom God’s very self is revealed makes crystal clear how far off the rails it has gone and the self destructive direction in which it is headed. Yet, at the same time, the cross reveals the depth of God’s love for it and the length to which God is willing to go in order to alter its ruinous path. The Resurrection emphasizes God’s unwillingness to throw in the towel even in the face of the world’s rejection.

Intervention is confrontational. Evil, especially in the form of systemic injustice and oppression needs to be addressed with clarity and frankness. In the American context, that means speaking the truth about America as it is experienced by those within our borders living on the margins. That includes, undocumented persons living the shadows, the homeless living in the streets, gay, lesbian and transgender youth forced to live a lie to avoid family rejection, religious condemnation and governmental oppression. It includes prisoners incarcerated in corporately owned and operated facilities. Intervention means standing up to governmental efforts to erase from libraries, schools and public parks and monuments the stories of indigenous peoples murdered and driven from their homes, enslaved persons deprived of freedom and human dignity and the brutality experienced by child laborers, all in an effort to present a sanitized version of American history for public patriotic consumption. Such interventional ministry is not inconsistent with love for one’s country anymore than intervention in a loved one’s addictive behavior is contrary to genuine affection and concern.

Intervention might well meet with resistance. It is natural for people confronted with the consequences of their addictive behavior to become angry and defensive. It is natural for them to feel, initially at least, that they are being attacked and bullied. That is why persons involved with an intervention must be prepared to remain patient, avoid responding reflexively to insults and accusations and stick to the objective, namely, helping the persons subject to the intervention understand both their need and the willingness of the interveners to assist. Jesus warns his disciples that they can expect the world’s hostility to their ministry. “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.” The disciples have no reason to expect any better treatment than Jesus himself received from the world. But as Jesus refused to give up on the world, so his disciples must continue in doing the works that Jesus did and in speaking not condemnation, but redemption for the world.

Finally, intervention may not work. For any number of reasons, a person might finally reject life saving assistance offered by loved ones. Interveners need to understand that, while they can offer support, assistance and care, they cannot “fix” a broken person. Ingrained habits, outlooks on life and ways of coping with stress are difficult to shake and seldom yield in the course of a single encounter. For that reason, it is important to anticipate failure and be prepared to persevere in speaking the truth in love, neither condemning the affected individual nor further enabling their self destructive conduct. The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. But sometimes the good news must be experienced as bad news before it can be heard and understood as good.

In the same way, disciples of Jesus are not called to redeem the world. That is God’s role. They are called rather to bear witness before the world to God’s redemptive work by carrying on the works of Jesus in their lives together. God knows this world needs an intervention. This is a world careening toward the carnage of increasingly wide ranging and lethal war, economic disparity and ecological ruin. This is a world in which nations and national leaders exercise godlike power reducing to rubble whole communities. It is a world where governments incarcerate, abuse and deport refugees fleeing violence and starvation. Ours is a world where people and communities identifying as Christian espouse racist, misogynist, homophobic hate and nationalism. Nevertheless, it is the world God loved enough to send the beloved Son. Disciples of Jesus are to be an alternative community demonstrating a different way of being human. The church at its best is a disruptive presence, calling into question the values of a world drunk on power, addicted to unsustainable consumption and teetering on the brink of destruction through its own violence.

This uncomfortable work of intervention requires families to confront members caught up in the tangled swamp of lies emanating from crackpot Christianity, junk science and bizarre conspiracy nonsense. It requires pastors and bishops to preach Christ crucified in America’s detention centers, in the rubble left by American bombs and in the hungry, homeless and sick living in the shadow of obscene degrees of wealth. It requires those of us who have known only privilege, comfort and prosperity as Americans to open the eyes of our hearts to see the ones who daily pay the price for our relative wellbeing and work to dismantle the systemic injustice responsible for such disparity. This is work that is uncomfortable and dangerous. It can get you killed. But the God who loved this world enough to intervene asks nothing less of us.

Here is a poem by Sonia Sanchez that I believe expresses something of what it is like to be a living intervention in, against yet for the world.

Morning Song and Evening Walk

Tonite in need of you

and God

I move imperfect

through this ancient city.

Quiet. No one hears

No one feels the tears

of multitudes.

The silence thickens

I have lost the shore

of your kind seasons

who will hear my voice

nasal against distinguished

actors

O I am tired

of voices without sound

I will rest on this ground

full of mass hymns.

You have been here since I can remember Martin

from Selma to Montgomery from Watts to Chicago

from Nobel Peace Prize to Memphis, Tennessee.

Unmoved among the angles and corners

of aristocratic confusion.

It was a time to be born

forced forward a time

to wander inside drums

the good times with eyes like stars

and soldiers without medals or weapons

but honor, yes.

And you told us: the storm is rising against the

privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no

shelter in isolation or armament

and you told us: the storm will

not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of

the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live

in dignity and human decency.

All summerlong it has rained

and the water rises in our throats

and all that we sing is rumored

forgotten.

Whom shall we call when this song comes of age?

And they came into the city carrying their fastings

in their eyes and the young 9-year-old Sudanese

boy said, “I want something to eat at nite a

place to sleep.”

And they came into the city hands salivating guns,

and the young 9-year-old words snapped red

with vowels:

Mama mama Auntie auntie I dead I dead I deaddddd.

In our city of lost alphabets

where only our eyes strengthen the children

you spoke like Peter like John

you fisherman of tongues

untangling our wings

you inaugurated iron for our masks

exiled no one with your touch

and we felt the thunder in your hands.

We are soldiers in the army

we have to fight, although we have to cry.

We have to hold up the freedom banners

we have to hold it up until we die.

And you said we must keep going and we became

small miracles, pushed the wind down, entered

the slow bloodstream of America

surrounded streets and “reconcentradas,” tuned

our legs against Olympic politicians elaborate cadavers

growing fat underneath western hats.

And we scraped the rust from old laws

went floor by floor window by window

and clean faces rose from the dust

became new brides and bridegrooms among change

men and women coming for their inheritance.

And you challenged us to catch up with our

own breaths to breathe in Latinos Asians Native Americans

Whites Blacks Gays Lesbians Muslims and Jews, to gather

up our rainbow-colored skins in peace and racial justice

as we try to answer your long-ago question: Is there

a nonviolent peacemaking army that can shut down

the Pentagon?

And you challenged us to breathe in Bernard Haring’s words:

the materialistic growth—mania for

more and more production and more

and more markets for selling unnecessary

and even damaging products is a

sin against the generation to come

what shall we leave to them:

rubbish, atomic weapons numerous

enough to make the earth

uninhabitable, a poisoned

atmosphere, polluted water?

“Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful

thing compared to love in dreams,” said a Russian writer.

Now I know at great cost Martin that as we burn

something moves out of the flames

(call it spirit or apparition)

till no fire or body or ash remain

we breathe out and smell the world again

Aye-Aye-Aye Ayo-Ayo-Ayo Ayeee-Ayeee-Ayeee

Amen men men men Awoman woman woman woman

Men men men Woman woman woman

Men men Woman woman

Men Woman

Womanmen.

Source: Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1999). Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver in 1934) is an American poet, writer and professor. She is a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez has written several books of poetry. She has also authored short stories, critical essays, plays and children’s books. She received Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1993. In 2001 she was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to American poetry. You can read more about Sonia Sanchez and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Peter's Outer Cape Portico

A place where prophets, apostles and poets meet in the lessons for each Sunday of the church year

Tag Archives: jesus

Palestinians, Jews and the Nation of Israel

Deep Reading

A Disarming God

Praying for an End to American Empire

What the Hell?

Deserves Got Nothing To Do With It

The Task of Redeeming Language

Creedal Fundamentalism

That Unruly Spirit of God

The Divine Cosmic Intervention

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: