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Month: April 2008

i applaud jimmy carter

i applaud jimmy carter

I applaud Jimmy Carter for his courage, for engaging the leadership of Hamas in dialogue, for searching out any avenues for moving the peace process forward.

He has been criticized for meeting at all with Khalid Meshaal, by both the Bush administration and the Democratic presidential candidates. Dialogue should be absolutely contingent, they argue, on Hamas’ recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence. But it seems to me if the goal of a peace process is made a precondition to dialogue, then the process will surely go where it has always gone … nowhere.

Start talking! Explore options! Get the people who have a stake in the process — all the people who have a stake in the process — to start talking … and listening. The alternative is to draw lines in the sand (on both sides) and stake out intransigent positions (on both sides) and continue to be mired in the cycle of violence and misery that has plagued the peoples who live on this land for generation after generation after generation.

here!

here!

This poem by David Wagoner, entitled “Lost” was posted on April 18th at the inward/outward website …

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Every place is a Here … and every place may be a home.

justice stevens disavows the death penalty

justice stevens disavows the death penalty

In an opinion released on Wednesday, United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:

I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents “the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the state (is) patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.”

Absolutely right …

It is difficult for me to discern even a “marginal” contribution to the public good. What does the death penalty accomplish, except to satisfy an unholy desire for retribution or revenge? It does not make people better or society safer. On the contrary, it reinforces a culture of violence and encourages the least helpful — and the least noble — impulses in a victimized society.

As a nation that proclaims itself a defender of liberty and human rights, it would only be right for us to lead the rest of the world toward the total abolition of the death penalty, but we aren’t. We aren’t leading. We’re not even following.

disconnected faith?

disconnected faith?

Cool Congregations logoIn a couple of weeks, our congregation will be hosting a “Cool Congregations” workshop, intended to promote an informed and committed response by people of faith to the serious environmental threat posed by global warming. We sent out a mailing describing the event to churches of every denomination in the metropolitan area and to all the UCC churches in northeast Iowa.

This week I have been making follow-up calls to a selected list of churches that had received the mailing — I had the A’s and B’s and C’s!

I have been surprised — and disheartened — by the palpable disconnect between many of these faith communities and any sense of responsibility for the health of the planet. Maybe it’s because the issue of global warming has become so politicized, though it is most difficult for me to see how this is in any way a partisan issue. Or maybe it’s because churches believe that even talking about global warming means being co-opted by some broader “liberal” agenda.

That is what I find disheartening, and disturbing. Who better should care about this earth than those who believe God made it? Who better should be eager to do all we can to keep it beautiful and pristine and life-sustaining than those who believe God made it good and left us in charge of keeping it good? What is the value of a faith that serves only to prepare us for “another life” and largely neglects this one? Where is the integrity in a faith waits longingly for a “new world” while letting this one “go to hell?”

Life is God’s gift to us, a most precious gift indeed. And we honor God best by taking good care of that gift … in its entirety! Not just taking care of souls, but bodies too! Not just honoring the Word, but the Word made flesh! Not just valuing the Spirit, but all that the Spirit brings to life, all that the Spirit brought to life when it moved over the waters at the dawn of creation!

more on jeremiah wright

more on jeremiah wright

Here are some of my reflections on the widespread condemnation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright based on video clips of a few of his sermons. I will share this with our church this Sunday as a part of my sermon based on Jesus’ parable of the two sons (Matthew 21:28-32) …

Actions speak louder than words. It is so important for us to remember that, because we live in a time when our words may be used as weapons against us, when just a few words may be used to judge or dismiss or denounce an entire career, an entire life.

That is just what has happened to one of my colleagues, a member of our church, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, recently retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

You have undoubtedly heard the news stories or seen some of the video clips: Jeremiah Wright standing in the pulpit saying, “God damn America!” For those few words and for a few others that have been excerpted from thirty-six years worth of sermons, he has been judged and vilified and denounced as unpatriotic and a hatemonger.

It is surely unfair to lift a single phrase or a few short paragraphs from their broader context. If you were to listen to the entire sermon from which those words came, you might better appreciate what Rev. Wright was trying to say about our country and what he was not trying to say. You might not, but you might.

And it is surely uncharitable to ignore the cultural context from which and to which he speaks, a context very different from our own. We don’t know what life looks like from the underside. We who are white cannot begin to understand what it is like to be a person of color in America. And the style and substance and heritage of African-American worship is probably like a foreign language to most of us.

But even taking his words at face value, out of context, we have to remember: actions speak louder.

The man we deem unpatriotic heard John Kennedy’s famous words in 1961: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” … and he did. He gave up his student deferment and joined the Marines where he completed a two-year tour of duty. At the end of the two years, he became a Navy corpsman, serving his country another four years, while earning numerous distinctions and commendations.

Jeremiah Wright then completed his college and seminary education and went on to assume pastoral duties at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a church then of eighty-seven members.

That same church now has over 8,000 members. It is a most wealthy and most successful church, but has intentionally remained rooted in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. Its website lists fifty-nine different ministries of the church, including support for cancer survivors, career development, counseling ministries, dance ministries, ministry for victims of domestic violence, drug and alcohol recovery programs, grief ministry, girl scouts, work with individuals and familes impacted by HIV/AIDS, support for married couples seeking to build and maintain Christian homes, tutoring programs in math and reading, a elementary school mentoring program, a prison ministry, and forty-six more ministries!

Actions speak louder!

The congregation holds education in high esteem and has sixty members currently enrolled in seminaries, earning masters degrees and preparing for Christian ministry, while their tuition costs are fully paid by the church.

John Thomas, president and general minister of the United Church of Christ says of the church:

While the worship is always inspiring, the welcome extravagant, and the preaching biblically based and prophetically challenging, I have been especially moved by the way Trinity ministers to its young people, nurturing them to claim their Christian faith, to celebrate their African-American heritage, and to pursue higher education to prepare themselves for leadership in church and society.

I was able to witness that for myself three years ago when I attended the Festival of Homiletics held that year in Chicago. On Thursday night, Rev. Wright preached to the nine hundred ministers attending the conference, while a choir of probably sixty to eighty voices provided worship music and two dozen young dancers added a stunning visual layer to our worship.

It was for me a most moving worship experience. The passion and energy and joy and hope and faith of these young folk were palpably visible and highly contagious! I thought to myself: here is a ministry that really does reach young people and give them something to believe in and live for and take pride in, a ministry that crowns them with dignity and honor and purpose.

Actions speak louder!

Does this sound like a church, a pastor, that foments hate? Does this sound like a church, a pastor, that despises America? This is a church, this is a pastor, that are deeply invested in ministries of compassion and hope, that are deeply committed to transforming neighborhood and nation and world through the gospel of Jesus Christ. As political commentator David Gergen said of Jeremiah Wright:

It’s not a lack of patriotism. It is a different form of patriotism. Actually, Reverend Wright may love this country more than any of us but feel we’ve fallen short of what we preach and believe.

on earth as it is in heaven

on earth as it is in heaven

N. T. Wright is right! The separation of religion from “real life,” the separation of faith from politics, from the push and pull of the everyday decisions that impact the lives of persons and communities of persons, is artificial and contrary to the “way” to which Jesus calls his followers. Faith is not just about “then,” but about now, not just about “there,” but about here. Hope is not just about “waiting it out” until we go to “a better place,” but about believing God can and will make this world a better place, with us and through us. The following quote comes from an interview Wright did last year with Christianity Today. You can read the transcript of the entire interview here.
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For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery.

The longer that I’ve gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it’s been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and how we’ve managed for years to say the Lord’s Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious. Our Western culture since the 18th century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics. When I lecture about this, people will pop up and say, “Surely Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world.” And the answer is no, what Jesus said in John 18 is, “My kingdom is not from this world.” That’s ek tou kosmoutoutou. It’s quite clear in the text that Jesus’ kingdom doesn’t start with this world. It isn’t a worldly kingdom, but it is for this world. It’s from somewhere else, but it’s for this world.