Is it not time

The psalms show us what justice looks like.

Justice maintains the right of the weak, and it rescues the needy (Ps. 82). It rejects the desire to take advantage of the vulnerable (Ps. 94). The just refuse to speak out of two sides of their mouth (Ps. 28). They aren’t bloodthirsty (Ps. 139), greedy (Ps. 10), or conniving (Ps. 94), and they don’t love violence (Ps. 11). Those who love justice actively reject all systems that oppress people (Ps. 58).

Who are the recipients of justice? All people alike require justice. But those who need it most, according to the Psalms, are what philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff calls the “quartet of the vulnerable”: widows, orphans, poor, and resident aliens”

In other words, the very people being abandoned by the American right (those who paradoxically claim Jesus)

A Psalm for our times

God is

We know God

We know God

God is immanent and transcendent

God is in us

A spark

A roaring fire

A rushing wind

A spring of living wate

And God is just

And God demands justice

How long O Lord will this continue

How long with the liars, the frauds

The greedy

The abusive

Flourish

How long will they sit in the seats of power

And in the courts of justice

A promote inequity, and inequality

How long will they make the rich richer

And the poor poorer

O God love

Change us!

Transform us

Give us new minds, new hearts

New eyes

Make us a people

Make us a nation

That defends the weak rather than shames them

That lifts the poor up rather than shames them

That defends the weak rather than ridicules them

That refuses to accept and sustain systems that oppress

Rather than worshiping the wicked

May we see them for who they are

Destroyers

Dividers

Plunderers

They talk about God

They sell Bibles

They claim God’s favor

They claim God’s call

But they know nothing, they understand nothing.

They walk about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

O God, is it not time?

Is it not time, before there is no time

For love to win?

collateral renewal

You have heard of collateral damage. Now hear of collateral renewal. Every time we act in kindness, in mercy, in love: the impact of our actions radiates out to touch many more lives than the ones in our immediate vicinity. Others we do not know will be affected. The reverberations of our compassion will circle the world. Collateral renewal – healing rippling out, never ending.

                     Steven Charleston

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On Friday Jesus was put on a cross

He went by choice

A choice not to meet violence with violence

Hate with hate

He could, perhaps have cursed his tormentors

He could have rained invectives on those gathered around him

Those who had beaten him

Nailed him to a tree

In order to steal his breath

The breath of God within him

Instead from that cross rained down

Forgiveness

Compassion

Healing

Restoration

Drop by drop by drop

Love hit that immense sea of enmity

Creating ripples of renewal

That spread

Moving every outward

Transforming

His disciples who could have

In anger

Turned to violence

Didn’t

Those who could have luxuriated in resentment

Didn’t

Christ’s love

Creating collateral renewal

We all see those who

Drop hate and resentment into the world

Those create collateral damage

They create ripples of anger

And we

Alas

Become smaller

Harder

Colder

Crueler

They bring out the worst in use

And make this world hell

But still, love comes

Drop by drop

Filling us

So that we

“act in kindness, in mercy, in love”

We too have a choice

Even when the worst happens

Even then

To radiate compassion

To create collateral renewal

I don’t know what went on in the souls

The hearts and minds of the disciples

On that Saturday

During the great wait

But I hope what they heard were not the cries

Crucify him

But the gentle words

Forgive them

Today you will be with me in Paradise

Here is your mother

Here is your son

I hope I believe

That in that dead silence

Renewal happened

I pray that today

We, those who follow

Can choose love

That we can choose, even as we are assailed

By lies, and hate

By the abuse of power

To look with compassion

Even on our tormentors

Even those who wish us dead

That

We can act with kindness, mercy, and love

For what comes from the cross must be

Must always be

renewal

The Table is the Point

If you are writing a play about [Holy Week}, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table. The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story. Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.

They never return to the cross. Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution. He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meet him there. He never valorizes the events of Friday. He never mentions them. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational — take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

Table – trial – cross – tomb – tomb – table.

What if the table is the point?

                     Diana Butler Bass

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What if the table is the point?

What if community is the point?

What if Easter is, when all is said and done, about

People gathering

Laughing

Eating

People listening to each other

Supporting one other

Being together when it is easy, and when it is not

Being together in the rejoicing and in the lamenting

What if Easter is about Jesus stepping in

And saving us

Not from God’s wrath

But from the enmity of the Rulers of the World

From hate and violence

From those forces that would divide and destroy

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,

a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,

the sheet that covers all nations;

   he will swallow up death forever.

In the great story of love

We move from a table, where feet were washed

Bread was broken

And wine was drunk

Out into a dark and painful world

To a garden of anguish

To betrayal

And abuse

To injustice and death

To a tomb filled and a tomb emptied

And ends up back in an upper room, that same room, perhaps

And at a  table

Where once again bread is broken

And by the Sea of Galilee

Where once again bread is broken

And fish are served

Food for the stomach

Food for the heart

Food for the soul

Perhaps the point is that because of Jesus

We can be together

We can be stuffed with all good things

We can be love

The table reminds us we are family

That we are stuck with each other

And we might as well love each other

It reminds us that faith is about being fed

And feeding one another

Perhaps the table is the point.  As Rachel Held Evans once wrote:

“This is what God’s kingdom is like a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.”

God are you There?

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!” —Genesis 28:16

The Bible I set out to learn and love rewarded me with another way of approaching God, a way that trusts the union of spirit and flesh as much as it trusts the world to be a place of encounter with God…. People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay….

According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.”  How does one learn to see and hear such angels?

          Barbara Brown Taylor (quoted by the Center for Action and Contemplation)

________________________________

God!

Are you there?

I wonder sometimes

When my body hurts

And my eyes fail

I wonder sometimes

When I hear the disabled ridiculed

And people laugh

When I hear hate spewed

And people cheer

When I watch as masses, driven by resentment

Are fueled by a desire dominance

I wonder sometimes as I watch us

Destroy the planet for profit

And see dying and starving children

The flotsam of war

O God!

My heart fails within me

My feet stumble

As I see the prosperity of the wicked.

I know there is nothing new under the sun

We have seen this before

The words of an ancient Psalmist echo in my soul

As he laments human arrogance

“Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.

  From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits.

  They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance, they threaten oppression.

  Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.”

          (Psalm 73)

Where are you, God?

Why do you not set things right!?

Why do you not bring down the mighty and lift up the poor?

Are you in this place?

Surely, you are in this place.

Help me to know it.

Help me to see you, God of love

In the brilliant reds of the sunrise

In the majesty of the mountains

In the laughing voices of the streams

Help me to see you, Lord,

In the eagle that flies

And the deer that wanders

In creatures large and small

Help me to see you in the little things

In that act of kindness

That kind word

That smile, that laugh

That comes

I need glimmers of your presence Lord,

Help me to see you

Even where it is hardest to see you

In those human creatures who strive and toil

Love and hate

Destroy and heal

We are so confusing, O Sacred

So confused

Help me to see you, lord, in myself

And in all those others

In whom your image is badly blurred

May I see and hear the angels

Softly whispering

You are loved

You are loved

Grow

Grow

The danger of certainty

I walked through an earthquake once

as the ground shifted beneath my feet

and the world swayed

and all seemed undone

I breathed deeply

when the ground was once again

solid

and I stood on solid ground

certain

Certainty

I long for certainty

It would be nice to know

That God is there

That Love will win

I would love to be certain

About what is right and wrong

I envy, sometimes

Those who say with certitude

The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it

However

It has been said that the opposite of certainty is not doubt

It is openness

It is faith

And I have become certain that certainty

Can be a curse rather than a blessing

And that it is better to question

And struggle

To seek

And explore

Bertrand Russell once said

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

There is a strength to certainty

But weakness too

The strength of conviction, perhaps

The passion that comes from believing one is right

But with certainty closedness

Stuckness

A refusal to think, to challenge

To change

we indeed need a degree of certainty to get by

but it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal

For with the sureness of certainty comes

What can only be called

Arrogance, conceit, haughtiness

I know the truth, you don’t

I am right, you are wrong

I am saved, you are cursed

The earth is 6000 years old

LGBTQI+ people are sin

God hates all who do not believe the way I do

It is unintentional

Perhaps unseen

But it is there

A stolid, cold, cruelness

Blind faith is truly blind

Blind to people

To pain

To the radicality and irrationality

Of that power we often call God

Certainty stops us in our tracks

It keeps us from learning

Growing

Changing

From seeing God’s new thing

Give us uncertainty, God

Do not allow us to ever, ever

Believe we understand you (beyond that you are love)

Or to believe we speak for you

Or are the repositories of truth

Or the gatekeepers of the kingdom

Keep us questioning

Searching

Doubting

Struggling

Hoping

Loving

Changing

Growing

Let us join the man

Who on his knees in the dust

Cried to Jesus

Lord, I believe!

Help my unbelief

Help us believe

Help us question our beliefs

And lead us forward

always

Into uncertainty

And a fresh and beautiful

newness

It’s A Good Day to Live

It is a good day to live…

Let me embrace each dawn as a gift

Let me walk the hours of day unafraid

With grace and faith unbounded.

Let evening find me close to those I love

Warming my soul by the fires of their laughter,

Let me sleep believing tomorrow will be a blessing.

          Steven Charleston  (Spirit Wheel)

__________________________________________

I am sitting in the dark

Waiting for the light to come

There is always that moment on long winter nights

As the snow falls and the wind howls

When I wonder

If the light will once again return

Will the sun rise over the frozen hills?

Will the clouds break and let

The brilliance of the sun

Set the world afire?

Sometimes if feels as if the light will never come

Or if it rises will do so weakly

Pale light

Which brings no warmth

No resolution to the cold bleakness

It is hard to have hope these days

So much of the world lies in the cold darkness

Of human suffering, oppression, inequality

Hate is piled on top of hate

Violence begets violence

And our eyes have become adjusted to the light

And daily we trod

Carefully,

Picking our way through the darkness

Leaving it untouched

Yet we are called to the light

To embrace it

And carry it

To be, not candles in the wind

But angel fire

People who set the world aflame

With hope

So let us rise

Let us raise our voices to the heavens

Declaring

It is a good day to live…

Let embrace this day as a gift

And walk through this troubled world unafraid

Full of grace and truth

May the Spirit burn like a fire

So that we walk in the light

And become light in the darkness

And may we join with others

In singing the song of hope and love

Joining our light together

So that the fire of God’s love

Sets the world aflame

And our souls are warmed

And hope is birthed

This is a good day to live

And serve

 __________________________

His Word is a lamp unto my feet

A light upon my way

And I do well to pay it heed

Until the final day

Until the day dawns

And the morning star

Arises in your heart

Take this lamp and light your way

To your eternal home

                     John Fischer

Capitalism and other things

The time is coming when people will be insane, and when they will see someone who is not insane, they will attack that person saying: ‘You are insane because you are not like us.’

      Abba Anthony

I want to challenge [Christians] to form a stance on how one ought to walk the line between the creation of heavenly good and the formation of earthly goods. Capitalism has been at the forefront of the world’s largest beneficial leaps and behind the scenes in the perpetration of the world’s grossest injustices. It has been a force for good and evil.

      Grant Dunnavan

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

      Jesus, as quoted in Mark 10

____________________________________

It was like a bomb dropped into the midst of the discussion

The foolish minister suggested that “blessed are the meek”

might refer not to weakness

but to the posture of following the example of Jesus

and humbling

That it might mean letting go of the need to put oneself forward,

To promote, protect, and benefit one’s self

And choosing instead to promote, protect, and benefit the person in front of us.

And then suggested we think of it in terms of the immigrants on the border

And the poor coming into the food bank

And in terms of our economic systems

And then he said the “C” word

Capitalism

Perhaps Capitalism, it was suggests

does not line up with the radicality of the Gospel

Boom

The foolish minister was of course me

And the discussion, actually, was healthy as we talked about how capitalism

has driven a lot of good things (and it has).  The world would probably not have seen the advancements it has seen, in medicine, technology, and more, if not for capitalism.

But we also had to face the fact that capitalism, for all of the ways it benefits society, is driven by individual desires to “get ahead.” 

This was once pointed out powerfully by the conservative economist Milton Friedman.  He was asked by Phil Donahue, “When you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed’s a good idea to run on?”

Quick as a wink, Friedman responded, “Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? … What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy. It’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests.”

I have my issues with capitalism.  And, if the truth were told, I have issues with socialism.  I have trouble with pretty much every economic system that has been devised because they all, even the most altruistic, have one flaw.  They are established and run by human creatures.

And it doesn’t generally turn out well.  This is why, in 2021, the top 10 percent of Americans held nearly 70 percent of US wealth, and the bottom 50 percent held a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth.

Tickle-down doesn’t work.

When profit is the goal, and growth is the goal, the tendency is for wealth to flow up.

So we have historic profit margins, and no increase in the minimum wage.

We have people who have more money than they could ever possibly spend

And people who have no home, not enough food

People who are barely making it

Or not making it

It is easy to say it is the fault of the poor (we do this all of the time)

They make bad choices

They spend money on frivolous things

They….

Shame on them

I know about this

I have done it

Mea culpa

Mea maxima culpa

But this is where we are.  In a place where economic ideologies, and ideologies of power all take us away from the radicality of the gospel.  Of selling all and giving all.  Of making sure we all get there together.  Of picking up our cross and following.  Which means embracing the cost and loss of the following

And some of that loss may be painful

A loss of money

Power

Safety

Comfort

Surety

Instead, we are driven by a need for power

And a need to accumulate

And a need to be in control (be safe)

And we chase after leaders who promise us

Power, control, domination, wealth

And promise to remove anything, or anyone, who makes us uncomfortable

And so those furthest from God, out of touch with God’s way

Have great power

And they point at those who are not like them

Those who would welcome the immigrant

Who would take care of the poor

Who would embrace people who are LGBTQI+

And say

They are weak.

They are sheep

They are insane

They are snowflakes

They are anti-American

They

Martin Luther King Jr was accused of being maladjusted

Because he refused to accept the things the world had come to accept

Racism

Inequity

Violence

He responded by saying he was proud to be maladjusted

Because we cannot become comfortable with

We cannot adjust our minds and hearts to go along with

Racism

Inequity

Violence

We need to be maladjusted in a world where people have become adjusted

To the wrong things.

I don’t have a solution for greed

Or Donald Trump and the cult of retribution (now he is going to “get” MSNBC”  All enemies are now targets for annihilation)

I don’t have a solution for the desire for power and safety

I just know that the radicality of the Gospel

Challenges so many of the things I have become adjusted to, and comfortable with.

And I have to be willing to pick up the cross of change

The cross of humility

Even sacrifice

If I am going to be the kind of presence in this world

That Jesus wants me to be

Where is God

Through centuries God’s voice cried in the wilderness.  How skillfully it was trapped and imprisoned in the temples.  How often it was drowned or distorted?  Now we behold how it gradually withdraws, abandoning one people after another, departing from their souls, despising their wisdom.  The taste for the good has all but gone from the earth.  We heap spite upon cruelty, malice upon atrocity… There has never been more reason for human creatures to be ashamed than now. Silence hovers mercilessly over many dreadful lands.  The day of the Lord is a day without the Lord.  Where is God?

          Abraham Joshua Heschel, “I Asked for Wonder”

__________________________________________

Has God gone silent?

Has Jesus left the building?

Has the Sacred decided to depart

Is the day of the Lord without the Lord?

Where is God?

Is God gone, or have we simply silenced the voice of love

Have we drowned and distorted God’s Word

Have tried to contain the fire of the Spirit

The wild breath of God

In our sanctuaries and our creeds

We have attempted to trap the wind

We have slammed shut the windows of our sanctuaries

Hoping to contain that which cannot be contained

But a wind that cannot move cannot move us

We have attempted to enshrine the Sacred

We have invoked the name of God’s most high

In the high places we have created

Claiming God in the halls of justice

In the stifling halls of power

But God is not there

The wind of God is blowing

In the wilderness

In poverty stricken cities,

God is tenting with the homeless

God is digging through the rubble of Gaza

The voice of God cries out in the wildernesses

Created by our greed, our hate, our lust for power

As we in the name of God

“heap spite upon cruelty, malice upon atrocity”

God shows up

Among those we would throw away

Exclude

Shame

Diminish

Where is God?

In the rubble of Rafah

Under a freeway overpass in America

In the waters of the Rio Grande

In a bombed-out building in Ukraine

God is

God is present

God is love and power mixed

God still speaks, still acts, still loves, still transforms

In the wild places

In the broken open places

Of great need

And great humility

If we go to church, it may well be

that we do NOT hear the voice of God

but if we go to a person in need

if we stand with an LGBTQI+ person

if we stand with the oppressed and suppressed

we might well hear God’s song of love

echoing in the wilderness

Finding he Words

If I can find the words in my mind

The words could explain, but the words won’t come…

And I don’t know what to say

          The Zombies, Chris White

__________________________________

It is like a silent scream

It builds inside me, filling me until I am stretched

Engorged

Unable to contain it all and yet

Caught with the unutterable

All around me, there is pain, anger, fear, distrust, hate

There are people trusting the deceitful,

living a lie

living without insight or understanding

pushing our world into the abyss

of climate change, division, and war

I pick it up and carry it

The slide into fascism

The racism

The inhumanity at the border

I pick it up and carry it

the pain of those I listen to and counsel

those who come to me with their own fear and pain

words spill out

there are always words

but they seem to get lost

I speak from the pulpit, and the words twist and vanish

Do they touch hearts?  Heal souls?

In counseling, I seek to say words that will unlock insight,

help people heal themselves (or their relationships)

but do I help?

Amid many words, I feel wordless

as if the words needed somehow

don’t come

not the right words

not

the kinds words

the healing words

the Spirit Words

those, perhaps, are stuck in my throat

in my heart

perhaps those Spirit Words are entangled

in my own inner chaos

I know I cannot “fix” the world

that it is not my job to heal people

they have to do that themselves

I am no Jonah, no Isaiah

Who can turn a city, and nation around

but I can speak words of love

of hope

of joy

I can speak words that open doors,

create space

raise questions

For today I will speak to God

I will shout to the skies

I will curse, perhaps

Lament

I will cry out for release

and will

try to find the words

to say to all I

I love you

love alone

It was as if

all the miseries of human creatures

had rained down

pain and hate and fear

searing the soil, consuming the fragile buds of the acacia tree

leaving nothing

but stones

there with only a stone for a pillow, he sat

this beloved child

surrounded by whisperings

make this stone bread

It is all yours if you want it

All the power!  Grab it

All the fame and fortune!

You can be king of the world

Yes, you can!

There is that place where there was only want

Where there was every excuse to grab power

The Beloved chose another way

He did become exalted, with a name that is above every name,

He did become one to whom every knee should bow and tongue confess

But not by grabbing power

He humbled himself

He gave it all up

The power, the glory,

Even life

To love us to God

To show us the way

Power without love becomes cruel

Heartless

Cruel

Greg Abbott

Donald Trump

And so many more

Some, wanting what is wrong

Some, perhaps, wanting what is right

Have heard the whisperings

And responded

Have chosen to grab power

To control, to dominate, to coerce, to punish

There is no right relationship possible here

Just walls

Just people with power, and people without

People with, and people without

People winning and people losing

People turning other people into objects

To be “acquired, controlled, used and discarded” (Spellers)

For power

The world has never gotten better

We have moved no closer to the Kindom of God

When the state, the church, and individual Christians

Have listened to The Whisperer

It has only gotten crueler

More deadly

More unjust

More divided

We have not learned

That we can have it all, and have nothing

And we can have nothing and have it all

What good is it

If we win the world

But lose our souls

There is only one path to true power

One path to the Kindom

One path

Paul said it well

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Phil 2)

The path of humility

And servanthood

Jesus showed us the way

It is not an easy way

It seems nonsensical. It seems impossible, weak

We act as if Jesus was wrong

But if the cross shows us anything

It shows us that the power of God shows up most

When we are humble

When we cede

When we serve

When we love

There is a way other than domination

Maybe we ought to try it.

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There is no possibility for right relationship if one powerful group protects and sustains itself over and against all others. From there, it’s just too easy to construct binaries and hierarchies of human existence. Our group is good; all of you are bad. Our group belongs on top; we have to keep you low. Our group owns these resources and knows the best way to use them; you will only receive what we give you. Other members of the human family become objects and tools to be acquired, controlled, used, and discarded.

          Stephanie Spellers, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New

Hope for Beloved Community (New York: Church Publishing, 2021), 39.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

Justice without love is not justice. Love without justice is not love.

 Mother Teresa

If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

          Paul