Wheat and Weeds, Redux

On Sunday I preached the parable of the wheat and the weeds, the one where there is good seed sown by a good sower and an enemy that mucks things up by sowing weeds while everyone is sleeping.  And before that, on Tuesday evening, when we had read this parable and its explanation at an online Bible study, there was silence afterward we finished reading.  And someone said, "I don't like this parable." And I think that part of it was just that the parable itself ends with the image of the weeds being burned and the wheat being gathered, and the explanation has that line about casting out evildoers and the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So, it's not (in some ways) what you would call a "feel good" parable, although I wrestled a blessing out of it, pointing out that God lets the wheat and weeds grow together because God doesn't want to lose even one shock of wheat, and as well pointing out that the presence of the weeds does not mean God has abandoned the field.

Afterwards my husband asked me why I had not used our own yard as a sermon illustration:  with our many weeds that we struggle to control, and our St. Augustine grass (which we had never heard of up north) which we THOUGHT was a weed, and were merrily trying to pull out.  I said that I had thought about it but I had way too much material for one sermon.  So the St. Augustine grass did not make it into the sermon.

But he also told me afterwards that the one thing I mentioned that he had never noticed before was that the reason the sower doesn't want to dig up any weeds is that the wheat would be uprooted at the same time.  In other words, their roots are too close together, even entangled.  He had never noticed that.  Frankly, neither had I.  I had always focussed on the interesting idea that this particular weed looked a lot like wheat.  But the fact that it might not even be possible to uproot weeds without uprooting some wheat along with it -- that never made an impression on me.

But I'm thinking more and more about that entangled wheat these days.  Maybe it's COVID 19 and our attempts to quarantine and protect ourselves from the virus.  Maybe it's the fact that there are many gated communities around me, or the fact that we seem to live in bubbles defined by our race or class or even our politics.  We surround ourselves with people who think like us, whether or not they look like us.

But the truth is, we are all tangled up in each other, and our fates are intertwined.  Even if we live in gated communities.  Even at our most segregated.  I remember that some people would say:  why should I care about the public schools?  My kids are grown up now.  And someone else would say:  I care, because the children who go to those schools will be the teachers and police officers, and custodians and politicians in my community, and I want them all to be well educated.  We touch each other's lives, whether we want to or not.

Our fates are intertwined.  We belong to each other.   That's God's honest truth, although some days it may make us weep and gnash our teeth.

But someday, when all of the weeds inside us are burned, perhaps we will rejoice in this.  Perhaps we'll see the beauty in the dandelion and stop trying to dig up the Augustine grass, and notice that the wheat is springing up and bearing fruit, to share.

Just Mercy

Last Friday my husband indulged me by going with me to the movie "Just Mercy", which had just opened up in our community.  It's not that he didn't want to see the movie, but that I had read Bryan Stevenson's book in 2015, shortly after moving to this community from Minnesota.  I remembered the strong emotions the book elicited, and its stories that put a human face on many death-row prisoners -- some of them guilty, some of them innocent.  I remembered its main story well, about Walter McMillan, framed for a murder he did not commit, and the irony that his story took place in Monroeville, where Harper Lee wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Very near the beginning of the movie is this small vignette, which I remembered from the introduction to his book.  Bryan Stevenson is still a law student, and he is going to visit an inmate on death row for the first time.  He doesn't know the young man, and he doesn't have good news.  He is anxious about the contact on many levels.  He wonders if this inmate will be bitter and abusive to him.  But when he goes to the prison, that's not what he finds.  He finds a young man who is much like him, who had a similar church background, sang the same songs, lived in similar kinds of experiences.  He tells the young man that he will not be executed in the coming year, and he reacts as if it's the best news he ever heard.  Now, he says, he can invite his wife and children to visit him, because there's no danger that he will be inviting them on the day of his execution.

They ended up talking well over the one hour limit (which raised the ire of the prison guard).  As the angry guard pushed the prisoner back out of the room to his cell amid Stevenson's protests, the young man suddenly burst into song, "Higher Ground."  He sang with conviction in a deep baritone voice,

Lord lift me up and let me stand
By faith in Heaven's tableland
A higher plane, that I have found
Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground.

Stevenson says that in that moment he experienced grace.  He did not expect to receive hope from this young man on death row.  He wondered how many people we meet, in how many circumstances, we do not really see.

The words Jesus speaks in this week's gospel are his first recorded words in John's gospel.  They are all provocative in their own way.  "What are you looking for?"  "Come and see."

But today I am thinking that it is the third time that is the most powerful.  Andrew brings his brother Simon to meet Jesus.  Jesus looks at Simon and sees him, and says.  'You are Simon, son of John."  But that's not all he says.  He continues, "From now on you will be called Cephas" (which means Peter).  Jesus sees Simon, and he sees a Rock.

Bryan Stevenson has spent his life working for justice for those many of us do not see.  He sees people battered by life experience, struggling against disability, some wrongfully imprisoned, some trying to rise above the worst they ever did.  But before he could help them, he had to see them.  It's not as easy to do as it is to talk about it.  But it is a moment of grace.  Both to see -- and to be seen.

How many people do we meet, in how many circumstances, that we do not really see?

The Greatest of These

Personally, I don't think Hope gets enough credit.

I know, Paul said it, so it must be true:  Faith, Hope and Love abide, these three, and Love is the greatest of all.

But sometimes I think you can make a pretty good case for hope.

You might think that two people decide to get married because they love each other, or even because they have faith in each other.  But what if it's really hope:  that they have a hope that it will all work out, and work out for the next fifty-odd years or so?  So maybe, if you scratch below the surface, their hope is really a crazy, misplaced dream, and they really were not meant for each other in the end.  But in the beginning, they had hope.  That's why they got married.

 Then there is the opposite:  I remember hearing Father Gregory Boyle say once that young men and women joined gangs because of a "fatal deficit of hope."  People make choices because they have hope, and they make other choices because they have no hope.  Children stay in school and work hard because they have hope that their work will bear fruit and their life will make sense, and their choices will mean something.

At church this morning we hear a parable that makes Lutheran pastors weep.  It is the one about the ten bridesmaids, waiting for the bridegroom.  Five were wise and five were foolish.  The foolish ones were afraid they were running out of oil, and when the hour was late they rushed out to get more, only to have the delayed bridegroom arrive while they were searching around and tell them (gracelessly) "I never knew you."  This being a parable and all, we can expect that the story will jar us and offend us, and the details will go against our grain, but Lutheran pastors like it better when the offense is on the merciful side, and so we don't know what to do with this harsh bridegroom slamming the door in the the bridesmaids' faces.

What is the message of the parable?  What is Jesus, on his way to the cross, trying to say to us?

Well, more than one or two things, that's for sure.  Some people think the missing oil is faith.  Some people think that it is good works (as in, "Let your light so shine before others, so that they may see your good works….."); others think the point is staying put, even when your lamp is going out.  Do not leave the church, but stay in the body and keep waiting for the bridegroom!

Me, I can't help thinking about hope.  Being that it's a parable and all, I am sure that it is not just about hope, but there is something there about not losing heart for the long haul that grabs me and won't let go. Somehow I think that is something that Matthew might have latched on to, thinking about the destruction of the temple and the temptation to give up and look for someone else or something else to believe in.  Somehow I think that this is the issue for our age as well:  how to keep going when things look bleak and dark, when all of the news is bleak, and you are tempted to give up and stop voting or at least look for something else to hope for.  Good works play a part:  after all, we study and work and ladle soup and heal and forgive sins and keep on doing it because of the hope that is (however dimly) burning in those lamps of ours.

It's that hope that he told us about, the hope for a place where the least will be lifted up, where sparrows will be noticed, where bread will be multiplied, where all of us will be recognized for who we are, where we will be saved by grace.

Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, I can't help thinking this evening, for in the end we are saved … not by grace, and not by good works, but by hope.

The greatest of these.

Stuck on David

It's easy to get stuck on David.

Of course, the David of whom I speak is King David, and it's easy to get stuck on him for so many reasons.  First of all, the scriptures describe him as someone it would be easy to get stuck on:  ruddy and handsome, strong and confident, both athletic and musical.  He slays Goliath with a slingshot and one smooth stone; he tames the moody King Saul with his music.

Then again, there are so many stories about David in the Old Testament, so many I don't remember them all.  I remember doing a whirlwind tour of the Bible one summer (the goal was 90 Days) and being surprised that there were a few stories about David's intrigues before and after he became King that I either didn't know or had forgotten. There was one in particular I don't remember ever hearing before.  David is on the run from Absalom when a man starts cursing him and throwing rocks at him.  David's men want to kill him, but David stops them, saying, of all things, that the man is preaching God's word to him.  It seemed like an incredibly expansive view at the time.  But, that's David for you.

How can you not get stuck on David?  Half of 1st Samuel and almost all of 2nd Samuel is his story.  And when we get to the New Testament and the stories about Jesus, we are still stuck on David.  After all, didn't the prophets promise that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, the City of David?

So, last week, when I prepared to preach on the story of David and Bathsheba, I couldn't help it:  I was stuck on David.  Of course, it was his story:  David's sin, the prophet's confrontation, David's contrition and repentance.  "Create in me a clean heart" is not just David's song:  it is our song, too.  So of course, I couldn't help it:  all of the main points of my sermon were about sin and blindness, and the people who confront us when we have gone astray.  The points of my sermon were all about who are our Nathans, who holds the mirror up to our eyes, and about how God makes our hearts new, again and again.

I was stuck on David.

Perhaps that is how it has to be.  David is one of the Main Characters of Scripture after all.  We are meant to see things through his eyes.  His image fills up the whole mirror, like Abraham,or Moses,  Jesus or the Apostle Paul.

And yet, even while I was writing my sermon, and getting the points I was supposed to get (sin, confession, repentance, forgiveness), I couldn't help feeling this little niggling feeling in the back of my mind:  What about Bathsheba?  What about Uriah?  This is not their story, but they are in it.  They are minor characters.  Do they matter?

It is so easy to focus on the story from David's point of view that we forget about Bathsheba and Uriah.  But it seemed to me (suddenly) that if we do this we are committing the same sin that David committed.  Because he forgot about Bathsheba and Uriah too.  Or at least, he forgot they were actual people, beloved by God as he was, with lives that mattered.  David had begun to regard them as convenient or inconvenient, depending on the circumstances, and forgotten that they were beloved of God as he was.

I have often taught this story to confirmation students and have cleverly asked them to identify how many of the ten commandments David broke.  We can make a case that David broke almost all of them, and so we have a helpful review of the commandments.  But although clever, perhaps that tactic was not quite enough.  Perhaps the larger lesson is this:  the point of the commandments was not so much keeping David righteous as it was keeping Uriah and Bathsheba safe.  The commandments are all about Other People, and especially about those Minor Characters, the ones it is so easy to forget.

It is easy to get stuck on David, but there is always something in scripture, some subversive undercurrent, that whispers to me that there are other stories, too.   In my imagination  I see them:  Jephthah's daughter,  the widow of Zarephath, Uriah the Hittite.  People with no names, but for whom God's heart breaks.

A Bible Verse on a Stick

A number of years ago, we had a ministry fair at the start of our program year (sometimes called Rally Day), where all of the groups set up booths or tables, advertising their specialties.  The prayer shawl ministry had shawls; the quilters had sample quilts; the Sunday School had registration tables; the Adult Choir had a tape of their music; the book club showed some of the titles we had read and a free bookmark showing some of the upcoming books.  The social justice group had what I thought was a particularly clever idea:  Free "Bible Verses on a Stick" to take home.  Our local state fair advertises nearly everything on-a-stick, so why not Bible verses?

The verse they chose?  Micah 6:8, or course.  "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

It is the kind of verse you might want on a placque, or a stick, especially if you were a peace-and-justice-loving type.  It is easy to understand.  It is easy to remember.  It could be the kind of verse that might animate and inspire your imagination for your whole life.

Do justice.  Love Kindness.  Walk Humbly.

Seems simple, doesn't it?  How can you argue with a verse like this?

I will confess that I have loved this verse, but not often preached on it.  I mean (I thought), what can you say?  Do justice.  Love Kindness.  Walk Humbly.  Just do it.

A friend of mine, who pays more attention to verbs than I do, apparently, once remarked that though this verse instructs us to "Do justice and Love Kindness," we more often have it backwards.  We love justice, but do random acts of kindness, which is much easier than creating justice.  It is much easier to go to the soup kitchen and ladle soup than it is to address the causes of hunger.  It is much easier pay for the hamburger of the person who is coming after you in the drive through or chip in a few dollars when the person in front of you at the grocery store can't quite pay her bill.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

But maybe we pay too much attention to the different verbs.  Maybe we are meant to both do and love both justice and kindness, and there are other questions to ask about this Bible verse, which is so easy to put on a stick, so easy to understand and remember, but perhaps not so easy in other ways.

When I read the seven verses before the famous one, I notice that there is a conversation going on, a conversation between God and Israel.  Well, actually it is more like an argument, with God sounding a little like a jilted lover.  After all God has done for Israel,  what has happened to their relationship?  Israel seems to be tired of God, tired of being the chosen people.  They are not paying attention.  They have put their fingers in their ears and they are saying, "la la la".  What happened?  God wants to know.

When the people reply, they seem to have heard God's plea.  They are asking, "What do you want from us?"  And they have some examples:  exaggerated, over the top.

"What do you want from us, God?"  do you want thousands of rams?  rivers of oil?  my first born-child?  would that satisfy you?

And it seems like such an odd reply, really.  Not just because of the exaggeration, but because of the assumptions:  what would God want with thousands of rams?  how would all of that oil satisfy God?  Can God be satisfied?  It sounds like they are trying to get God off their backs, buy God off with ridiculous sums.

But here's another thing I wondered, almost wistfully:

Do we even ask that question any more?

"What do you want from us, God?"  I wonder.  Have we stopped asking God, "What do you want?"  I have been thinking about that.  Because if we ask, here is what God wants, something so simple, but not easy.  You can understand it.  You can memorize it.  You can put it on a stick.

Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with God.

So simple.  But if you think it is easy, you have never tried it.  One thing is:  it's never done.  You can't be kind once, and then you have met your kindness obligation.  You can't shovel one person's driveway and then you can check mercy off your list.  And doing justice:  well, all you can do is make progress, fail, step back, go forward, fail again.  Sometimes you think you have done justice, and later you realize that you just made things a worse mess.  But you get up and try again.  I suppose that is where humility comes in.

Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with God.

"What do you want from us God?"

And the true and terrifying answer, the true and only answer, the true and life-giving answer is this:

I don't want anything from you.  I just want you.

Escapism and Hope

This year we are trying to offer opportunities for faith formation on Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings.  So, in the fall, we had an introduction to Spiritual Formation, a course called "Making Sense of Scripture" and the DVD series "Animate: faith."  I wondered what to do for the short weeks of Advent, and hit on the idea of a carol study.

So every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening we sing, and study a different Christmas carol.  We learn a little about the text and the tune, and the story behind it.  We look up the Bible passages associated with the text.  We talk a little bit about what the carol means to us, when we first heard it, how we might hear differently now than we did when we were five years old.

We also sing the carol.  Twice, if there's time.  It's a little subversive pushback to the "no Christmas carols until Christmas" meme.

The first carol we sang, and studied, was "Once in Royal David's City."  It's a song I didn't really know as a small child; I didn't get accustomed to it until I started buying the choral albums from the famous choirs in Great Britain, and listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio.  Some of our group had known it for a long time; others were just singing now, tonight, for one of the first times ever.

None of us knew that Cecil Alexander was a woman, a young woman who liked to write poetry, and was worried that her father would disapprove.  We didn't know that the carol was originally written for children, to help teach them a portion of the Apostles Creed.

Though this is not one of the carols I grew up with, and know by heart, I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears at that last verse, thinking of my father and his recent death:

Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by,
we shall see him; but in heaven, set at God's right hand on high;
there his children gather round, bright like stars, with glory crowned.

I couldn't help thinking about my father, now shining with glory.

Another person noted the line in the second verse, "with the poor and meek and lowly, lived on earth our Savior lowly." She thought it was a good idea that the hymn writer reminds us that Jesus lived not among the rich and powerful, but with the ordinary and the struggling.

Yet another person expressed some frustration with the hymn though.  Sure, Jesus lived with the poor and meek and lowly while he was on earth, she said.  But then it seems that in the next verse, it's all about Jesus leading his children on 'to the place where he has gone.'  What about, instead of singing about us all following Jesus to heaven, we could sing about all of us following Jesus to be with the poor and the meek and the lowly?  What about acknowledging that Jesus still lives among the poor and meek and lowly, even now?

She has a point.

I can rationalize that these carols were written at a time when infant and child mortality was higher; I can also point out that probably the children who gather round in glory at the last verse are also some of the poor and meek and lowly.  At least I imagine it that way.  Those who follow Jesus, living plain and unlettered lives, will someday shine like the sun.

But, maybe I'm reading between the lines.

There's a fine line between escapism and hope.  The hope of the resurrection makes us yearn to see creation restored, to long for the time when the lowly ones will shine, will be seen for who they really are.  My passion for social justice does not preclude the hope that I will be reunited with those I love (and those I don't love, to be honest) as we gather around the throne of the Lamb.  But when does that hope become escapism?  When do we use the promise of heaven to ignore the hurts and injustices on God's beloved earth?

Just now I read a story about an incident in Iceland.  The police there killed an armed man.  This is a rare occurrence in Iceland.  It was the first time that police officers had killed someone since 1944.  And then the police actually apologized for killing a man.  You know what my first thought was, "Honey, let's move to Iceland!"  Escapism.

Escapism leads us straight to heaven.  But hope leads us back to earth again.  Hope sees the promise of the resurrection as a clue to abundant life right now.

Especially at this time of the year, with the message of the incarnation, maybe we should sings songs that tell us that, since God has come here and walked upon this beloved earth, let us plant our feet firmly on the earth, and walk in the ways of mercy and justice, as he did.

Judges, Widows, and what We Pray For

So I've been thinking about the parable of the widow and the unrighteous judge all week.  I've been thinking about prayer, and the problem of the parable, because, you know, it does seem like the parable is encouraging us to be persistent (perhaps not just in prayer, though), even though after 2,000 years it is clear that that all of the prayers and yearnings of all of the saints have not been answered with all speediness.

So I can't stop thinking about it.  Prayer, and persistence, and what we want, and what we pray for, and hope for, and work for, too.  Because all of these things are tied up in this parable for me, in eight short verses.

What is it we really want?  What is it we pray for?  The widow wanted justice, passionately.

So I was thinking about these things on Friday night while we were bookstore shopping, and I came across this issue of Poetry Magazine.  Near the beginning was a poem by a woman named Alice Fulton.  Here are the first few lines:

For your birthday, I'm learning to pop champagne corks
with a cossack sword when all you asked for was world peace.
I'm actioning the deliverables to wish you many happy returns

of the ecstasies that are imminent when all you requested
was a contentment so quiet it's inaudible.  Remember when
I gave you a robe of black silk that floats and does not rustle?
When all you desired was to turn from what was finished and hard

in the darkness.*

What is it we really want?  What is it we pray for?  We pray for our family to be safe, for roofs over our heads, for food, for world peace.

Persistence is not just about prayer.  It is about lived prayer, our efforts, the mercy we show, the peace we work to create.

And yet, when we are honest, we know that the really important things are beyond us.  At our best, we cobble together little pieces of mercy, shards of peace, remnants of the promise of abundance.

So prayer reveals us.  Prayer reveals both the meanness and the depth of our hopes.

As it turns out, the things we really want, really need, are beyond us.

Justice.
Mercy.
World Peace.

Don't give up.

*Alice Fulton, "You Own It" (October 2013 Poetry)

God and Political Platforms

I heard that the Democratic Party took God out of their platform for 2012.

I had some misgivings about that.

Then, I heard that this week they put God back into their platform.

I had some misgivings about that too.

When I first heard that the Democrats had taken God out of their platform, I had misgivings because there are so many people who already think that Republicans are the party of God and Democrats are the party of the opposite of that.  And I know that there are plenty of Christians on the left, and that there are also plenty of non-believers on the right.  From a Public Relations standpoint, it seemed like a train wreck.

All public relations aside though, I have misgivings about the concept of God being in political platforms, and not from a separation-of-church-and-state standpoint so much as from a theological standpoint.

It's not that I think that God has no place in politics.  In fact, if you have a faith, you can't help but express your faith in every area of your life, including how you live in the public arena, including who you vote for, what causes you support, what kind of community you want to live in.  So when people use "separation of church and state" to mean that people of faith should not let their faith influence their public life, I think that is pretty much impossible.  If you are an elected official and you are a person of integrity, your faith and values will influence how you do your job.

I also don't think that Jesus is "above" politics, and doesn't care how we live our lives.  It's true, "his kingdom is not of this world," but it also abundantly clear that Jesus cares about how we treat our neighbor, our enemy, the poor and the weak among us.  Those issues are not apolitical.   The hope that we have for God's reign of love has an impact on how we live every aspect of our lives right now.

But when we talk about God in the context of a political platform, suddenly, instead of listening to God and letting God guide us, we are using God as a rubber stamp for whatever our own political agenda might be.  The question then is:  Who is in charge here?  Are we instruments of God's peace?  Or are we trying to make God an instrument of our own desires?

God will not be co-opted.

(this is a draft and may be changed or deleted....)

Half the Church: A book Review

This book was not written for me.  But, it could have been, once upon a time.

Let me explain.  When I was growing up, the Lutheran Church did not ordain woman.  As I approached young adulthood, that changed, but at the same time, I had begun to worship with a less Lutheran and more evangelical set.  So, even while women were opening doors in my denomination, I was struggling with whether I thought women should be ordained.

The book Half the Church is not written to address the subject of ordination of women.  Carolyn Curtis James addresses the issues of women's empowerment while side-stepping the issue of whether women can in fact be called to public ministry. 

Make no mistake, she is passionate about empowering women, having been convicted about the de-valuing of women and girls in many parts of the developing world.  Jumping off from the best-selling book, Half the Sky, by  Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, she notes that the key to empowering communities is actually valuing women's contributions, and empowering women.  She also rightly recognizes that it is time for the church to understand that the call to do justice is part of the call to proclaim the gospel.

Ms. Curtis James persuasively argues that scripture is a resource for discovering models for strong women, leaders, crusaders for justice.    If you read this book, you will find some strong women here:  Eve, Ruth, Mary.  Her exegesis and stories are persuasive.  I also appreciated her appropriation of the "bride of Christ" metaphor as a strong church in partnership with Christ, to bring justice and healing to the world. 

However, as one who struggled with the issue of ordination as a young woman, I find myself disappointed in her refusal to take a stand on way or another.  She's passionate about women in leadership; just not willing to take a stand for women's voices in the pulpit.

Disclaimer:  I received this book from Zondervan to review, with no expectation that I would give a positive review.  I have another one to give away to anyone who would like one.

Prayer and Justice

I'm behind, I'll admit it.  I haven't been preaching much lately, and I've had a little mini-vacation, to boot.  So, instead of thinking about this Sunday's readings, I'm thinking back to last Sunday.

We are in Stewardship season already in our congregation, so we haven't been preaching on the texts.  We've been talking about generosity and giving and why we should pledge and our congregation's mission and ministry. 

But I caught myself listening to the texts, and especially the gospel, with special interest on Sunday.  I listened to myself reading the story about the unjust judge and the persistent widow in light of our visit to the Martin Luther King Center last week.  We toured the old Sweet Auburn neighborhood, the house where Rev. King was born and raised, checked out the exhibits about the history of the civil rights movement.  (Among other tidbits, I learned that, as a child, Martin hated doing the dishes.)

At the gift shop, I bought a book,  No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King.  The book was written by an Episcopal priest called Gurdon Brewster.  I had read a review in the Christian Century magazine about the book, so I looked for that one in particular. 

I ended up reading the whole book on the plane home.

In the summer of 1960, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student in New York who spent the summer working with Martin Luther King Sr. and his son at Ebenezer Baptist.  He worked with the youth group at Ebenezer, and tried to put together some special events for integrated youth groups.  He had a couple of successes and a lot of setbacks, and some close calls.

He also learned to pray.

When he first got to Ebenezer, he had never said a prayer out loud, except for those written in the Book of Common Prayer.  He  relays his fear of speaking, his stilted language, and his progress in prayer as he gains more and more experience throughout the summer.  In particular, he tells the story of a young teenager who is in the hospital, dying of an unknown disease.  It is as he prays for and with her, that he begins to pray intimately, as if he were in conversation with God.  This dying young girl teaches him how to pray.

Prayer and Justice.

I don't know about you, but for some reason I rarely think about them in the same sentence, or even the same breath.  My friends who are passionate about social justice:  I don't think of them as being passionate about prayer. Social justice is Doing Something, and prayer is, well, isn't prayer just the opposite of Doing Something?

On the other hand, the people I know who are passionate about prayer, for the most part look at me blankly when I talk about social justice.

Prayer and justice.  Those were the two things that Gurdon Brewster learned from his summer with Daddy King.

And, as I listened to the gospel reading on Sunday, it seemed to me that these are more connected than I had thought before.  Is the parable about the widow beating on the door of the unjust judge about persistent prayer?  Or is it about seeking justice?

Yes.  I think the answer is yes.

Persistent prayer and seeking justice:  both of them, it seems to me involve struggle, involve wrestling, involve honest questioning.  When we come to God in prayer, we learn to speak honestly, to ask questions, to persist despite failure, despite silence.  And when we persist in seeking justice, we also struggle, become more honest with God and with others and with ourselves, and persist despite failure.

In both cases, we persist because, somehow, we have learned to trust God.  We believe that God is just, that ultimately, God is on the side of healing, or reconciliation, of the poor being lifted up and the silent finding a voice.  I don't know why we keep believing it, sometimes, but we do.   There's so much failure, so much silence, so much injustice, so much death -- except for that strange story that intrigues us, that we keep coming back to, you know the one:  about the Son of man rising on the third day.  So, despite ourselves, we keep praying.  Or we keep seeking justice.  But usually, not both.  Why not?

Prayer and justice.  If we put them together more often, what an explosion the world would hear. 

In the meantime, the question remains:  "When the Son of man appears, will he find faith on earth?"

Something there is that seems to love a wall...

I teach a Saturday morning men's Bible study on Saturday mornings. We're reading Luke now. When I say "teach", I mean this rather loosely. Though I have been known to hold forth on occasion, for the most part this is a conversation rather than a lecture.

And we do venture off-topic once in awhile. A couple of weeks ago, for example, one of the men brought up an article he had read about one of our more well-known (and conservative) congressional representatives. He said he learned the term "cognitive dissonance" for the first time, discussing the term and the congresswoman with his son. I believe that the issue at hand was that she was against funding for programs from which her family benefitted, as they were parents to several foster children.

Basically, the writer of the article did not understand the Congresswoman, something our table discussed. One of the men ventured this opinion as to why not, "Liberals think that all charity should come from the government."

Now this statement was jarring at first for several reasons: first of all, I was sitting right there, and I consider myself rather liberal, although not in such a way as to insinuate that those not of my political persuasian could not possibly by Christians. And I'm pretty sure that I don't think that "all charity should come from the government." So I wondered why this gentleman should think this way. I do disagree with this gentleman's politics, although I consider him to be (of course) a brother in Christ. I'm sure he does not get this opinion from his conversations with me. I can think of plenty of private charities I endorse and even contribute to.

So, my first thought was, it must be all those conservative authors, the ones with names I won't even mention (why give them any more P.R.?) If he talked to me, he might find out what I really think, which has less to do with ideology (I thought) and more to do with a program's effectiveness. Some people think that a private charity is always more effective; others think that a public/government program is always more effective and appropriate.

Why is it that he might be more interested in his opinions about liberals from conservative authors rather than a real liberal?

Why is it that I might be more interested in getting my opinions about conservatives from entertaining liberal authors rather than a real conservative?

Those were my first thoughts.

Then I went a little further, and considered the word "charity". I also considered, if we really had a deep and respectful conversation with one another, that he and I had different ideas about the line between "charity" and "justice." For example, I think some government help for the poor is really a justice issue, not about charity, because I think that there are many cases where the playing field is not level, and some people start out with a disadvantage, and there are others who definitely start with a big advantage, who benefit from the system the way it is. He might be absolutely certain that anytime there is help for anyone, it is charity, not justice, because justice means that those who work hard get to reap the benefit.

I'm not sure that this is ever a divide that can be fully bridged.

However, the Bible's idea of justice might be a place to start. I suspect this justice (and this mercy) might challenge both of us.

"What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God."

Book #18: Speak

After reading another book by Laurie Anderson, (Chains), I saw this one advertised on the back and wanted to read it too. It is young adult fiction, and it's about a young woman named Melinda who stops talking after a horrible incident toward the end of the summer of her 8th grade year. It's a book about personal injustice; it's a book about what it means to be empowered; in a way, it's a book about finding your voice, but not in a nice-nice psychological way: in a life or death way.

Melinda doesn't think she has any friends. But she does. There's a young man she admires named David Petrakis who stands up for her in a class when a teacher tries to force her to give her report (about the suffragettes) orally. But later, he tells her:

"But you got it wrong. The suffragettes were all about speaking up, screaming for their rights. You can't speak up for your right to be silent. That's letting the bad guys win. If the suffragettes did that, women would be able to vote yet...... don't expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself."

speak. In many contexts, still the lesson we need to learn.

The Red Scarf, TV Dinners, Ben Hur

This evening I spent a little time knitting the famous Red Cable Scarf. I feel like I'm making progress now, although I'm not nearly as far along as I would like to be. I figured out that, along with my own ignorance of the dreaded braided cable, the instruction book itself had a mistake in one row. When I figured that out, I felt quite brilliant.

In the background I watched and listened to a little bit of the movie Ben Hur. I hear it's quite good; four stars and all, but I don't think I've ever watched it from beginning to end. I get snatches, here and there: the old magi Balthazar, reminiscing about his trek to Bethlehem many years ago; Judah Ben-hur's mother and sister, hiding in the shadows, because they have leprosy; the famous chariot race (I just hear the sounds of it, though: I'm not paying attention then.)

In the bedroom my husband tries to feel better. He's barely eaten all day. I keep asking him if he wants anything; he usually says no, although I did get him several glasses of water this morning. Finally he had a teeny bit of jello.

I was worried and distracted earlier this evening because I thought I had lost something important. I kept going through pockets and re-tracing steps, and looking under car seats. Then suddenly, I took a deep breath,reached into a crevice in my purse, and found it. (My dad's voice, "Why is it always in the last place you looked?")

My mind is going back and forth between many things, important and mundane: a thoughtful meeting with a public official yesterday (He's a genuinely good person, I thought, while we were talking; he's talking about community solutions and deep democracy and innovation and justice); our first communion students, all lined up in the chapel to taste a bit of wine for the first time; bananas and white toasted bread and chicken soup; taxes and exercise and cholesterol; marigold seeds and containers for a children's sermon; the grain of wheat falling into the ground, disappearing from sight, and the trust it takes to let go of that seed, to let it fall and trust that it will bear fruit.

I think of the seed of myself: here I am, a woman of a certain age, married with step-children and a dog, and wondering if I can believe that if I throw a certain seed into the ground, that later on, it will be a marigold, or carrots, or tomatoes, even. What more is there inside me, even now?

It's late and I should be in bed. The red cable scarf is on the sofa, waiting for me to stitch the next row; the children will be waiting tomorrow with their hands cupped in anticipation; other children will cup their hands and look at tiny seeds -- "Go and plant them," I'll say. "They'll grow. I promise."

And then I'll take the invisible seeds I am so afraid to spend and I'll toss them into the wind, and whisper to God, "Go ahead. Use me too."

Potpourri

Yesterday at church there was a big "handicap parking" sign in the sanctuary, as we were encouraged, in the sermon, to consider the differently-abled, and how we are all, in one way or another, differently-abled. The congregation at 10:00 is coming along nicely learning our sign-language prayer:

God, be in my head, and in my understanding,
God, be in mine eyes, and in my looking,
God, be in my mouth, and in my speaking,
God, be in my heart, and in my understanding,
God, be in mine end, and in my departing.

I am growing to appreciate the poetry of American Sign Language. Did you know that the sign for "end" (death) is the same one that is used for baptism?

****

After church a few of us viewed an episode from the PBS Series "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making us Sick?" The episode yesterday was called "Becoming American." New immigrants from Latin America are among the healthiest members of our society, according to this episode. Even though they often come from places of fear and grinding poverty, they come here in better health than most people who have lived here all their lives. But within a generation this changes.

As I was listening and pondering as to why this should be, I was doodling on my note pad. I wrote the word "HOPE" in big letters as I listened. And sure enough, a sense of hopefulness, a sense of possible opportunity, was one of the reasons for the good health of these new immigrants. As well, they often come with strong family systems and ties. But, as they stay, most of them experience a grinding away of their hopes and opportunities, as they also learn to work long hours and experience social isolation. Social isolation is another cause of ill health in our society. And, the program said, ultimately, family is not enough. We need community ties.

As I listened, I thought of the church, the body of Christ, the community that gathers and is sent. I thought: in this day and age people are less and less tied to a Christian community, and less and less able to see the value in that time spent together. But there is value: actually there are many values -- a strengthening of our common hope, an encouragement as we life out Jesus' values in our lives and in our world.

We come to worship to be fed and lifted up. But we also come to encourage and lift one another up. We receive and we give. And we are sent -- for the same reasons -- to comfort the grieving, to lift up the weak, to do justice, and love kindness, to walk humbly with God through all the week.

****

Today at breakfast, I saw a man reading the morning paper. The front page was vivid with the news of the trial for the Craigslist murder. It was a particularly senseless crime: the murder of a beautiful, intelligent, talented young woman for no apparent reason.

The thought went through my mind: The resurrection, in the beginning, was really about justice.

When the idea of the resurrection of the dead developed in Judaism, it seems to me that in part it was to answer the question: if God is just, why do the wicked prevail sometimes in this life? Why do the just die without being vindicated?

As I looked at the newspaper picture of the young woman, I thought about the justice we can do in this trial by rendering a particular verdict. And then I thought: Real justice would be for her to get her life back.

That would be justice for her -- and justice for us, who will miss her gifts, and all that she would have done in and for the world.

Book #12: Arc of Justice

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."--Abolitionist Theodore Parker, c. 1850s

Arc of Justice won the national book award in 2004. It tells the tale of an African-American doctor, Ossian Sweet, and his wife Gladys, who bought a house in a white neighborhood in Detroit in 1925, when neighborhood segregation was just hardening and the Ku Klux Klan was in its ascendency in the north. The story is fascinating for its depth, attention to detail, and background. Some of the details:

1. The emergency of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination in the aftermath of the civil war, specifically dedicated to encouraging the newly-freed African Americans to work hard, prove to their white neighbors that they were worthy of the freedom they were given. Yet their efforts were made almost impossible by the continous institutional racism they encountered.

2. When you hear the word "race riot", what do you think of? Detroit and Los Angeles in the 1960s? Yet there were many race riots at the turn of the last century, when frightened whites rioted in the aftermath of real or alleged crimes, often burning down whole african-american sections of town.

3. The emergence and role of mortgages and mortgage lending in the growth and hardening of segregation. Before the 1910s or 20s, most people bought land and built their own house, or saved and bought a house outright. But business practices changed, and made this impossible. It was an effort to keep certain classes of people (not just african-americans, but immigrants) out of the markets. It also made people more afraid of losing their investment, since they had take out loans.

4. The cameo role played by a young pastor, Reinhold Neibuhr, as he spoke out against racism in his Detroit church in the aftermath of the shooting at Ossian Sweet's house, and the trial that took place. It made me muse on what it would take for me to be a prophetic pastor in my time and place, and what is the great issue God might be calling me to weigh in on.

You will have to decide for yourself, after you read this book, whether the quotation at the top of this post is true.

A Reminder for Martin Luther King Day

I found this quotation over at Wounded Bird:

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., "Strength to Love", 1963

I can't add anything to that, except to urge all of us to take it to heart.

Feed the Pig

My husband and I were watching TV a couple of nights ago and all of a sudden this commercial came on and my husband sat up straight in his chair:



What? A commercial for NOT buying stuff? How subversive is that?

I thought it was a great idea, sandwiched, as it was, between all those commercials telling us that that we really need that car, or those clothes, or that TV, ipod or phone. We need them, of course, because then we'll be smarter, more popular, better-looking: you name it. And of course it helps the economy: it's patriotic to buy stuff. So I love this commercial, and the website that goes along with it, too.

But as I got to thinking, I worried, too. This is only one side of the equation: the "personal responsiblity" side. It's great to instill better personal habits, especially subversive ones. But there is another side to the spending and personal debt crisis. There are predatory lenders, and there are bankruptcy laws that, while purporting to discourage cheaters, often end up benefitting the rich.

Don't get me wrong: personal responsibility is great. I am all for personal responsibility. Tear up the million credit card applications you get every week. Just say no to the telephone offers for whatever-it-is-they-are-selling. And don't worry about whether that salesman will make his commission! It's his job to try to sell you the TV. It's your job to figure out whether you can afford it. (Can you tell my dad was in sales?)

But there's also such a thing as justice. And some people use the word "personal responsibility" as if to imply that "if you are in financial trouble or are poor, it's your own fault, and I don't have to feel sorry for you."

Ahem. Will everyone who has never made a mistake please raise their hand? I thought so.

I'm a both/and sort of girl. I believe in personal responsibility AND justice, trying hard AND creating a more level playing field. It's not a matter of "feeling sorry for" people who are in trouble; it's being angry about a system where the rules are skewed against the very people who need help the most.

A few years ago a friend of mine was trying to buy her first house. She had had some financial difficulties in the past, and the mortgage lender she went to both tried to give her an interest rate which was about twice the current rate AND told her to lie about her income in order to get a bigger loan. She told my friend that she wouldn't get the house unless she lied. Luckily, at the last minute my friend decided she couldn't lie.

So: feed the pig. Yes, of course. But that's not enough. Change the system, too.

sharing the peace

Lately I've been thinking about "sharing the peace." This is a relatively new concept in Lutheran churches -- people have only been "sharing the peace" since about 1978. Usually it occurs after the prayers of the church, when the Pastor announces, "The peace of Christ be with you always," and the people reply, "And also with you." And then people turn and SHAKE HANDS with each other, and say "Peace" or something on that order. Therein lies the controversy. Some feel that it is not quite a serious enough gesture for a church service -- here we are concentrating on GOD, and all of a sudden we are shaking hands and saying, "Hello."

The idea comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 20. After the resurrection, the disciples are huddled together in a locked room, when Jesus comes through the door and greets them: "Peace be with you." Then he tells them, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." Or, more colloquially, "Get your behinds out of this room and share my peace." "Peace be with you," is a greeting (think Hebrew, "Shalom") but it's not exactly like saying, "Have a nice day."

When we overcome our fear or our shyness or whatever it is to turn to our neighbor and say, "Christ's peace be with you," we are practicing for a life of getting our behinds out of our churches and our houses (anywhere we hide) and sharing Christ's peace with the world. It's not about standing on the corner passing out tracts, which would scare my dog. But it is about caring about the world and our neighbor enough to work for the world and our neighbor's good. So -- crusade against pornography. Work for the good of your neighborhood public school. Volunteer at the crisis nursery. Share Christ's peace.

Sorry about the sermon. Occupational hazard. Have a nice day -- oh, I mean, "Peace."