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Blasphemy

Blasphemy

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A Wednesday evening tweet from President Trump …

These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.

Mr. Trump’s words are not merely justification of a shameful and violent attack on our American democracy, and not merely a shameless lie, but quite simply blasphemy.

It is blasphemous to attribute holiness to something that is entirely profane. Whether or not God may use political leaders to advance God’s purposes (and we do pray that our leaders will advance God’s purposes of justice and righteousness and peace), and whether or not God has a preference in any particular election (and I believe that God cares little about whom we choose to elect, but much about how whomever we do elect chooses to act),  no politician may claim holiness because of their office and no elective “victory” is worthy of being named “holy.”

When this president claims that his (untrue) “election victory” is “sacred,” he is claiming for himself status and honor and glory that belong to God alone. And that is blasphemy.

heaven can wait

heaven can wait

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I don’t expect to go to heaven.

At one time I did. At one time, making myself worthy of heaven was the focus of my life. From early childhood, I learned what it meant to ask Jesus into my heart with the hope of spending eternity with him in heaven. I learned to live for the sake of heaven. I wanted to please God now, do what God wanted now, so that one day, when my life came to its inevitable end, I might enjoy that great reward, life without end in a perfect place.

That childhood faith became my adolescent faith and the faith I carried into young adulthood. By that time, my faith was more informed and articulate and nuanced, but the core of my belief remained the same: faith in Jesus secured for me, and for all who share that faith, the reward of eternal life in heaven.

I don’t believe that anymore.

The seeds of a changed mind were planted almost from the beginning. I never questioned the wisdom of seeking heaven first, of ordering this life for the sake of the next, but, even as a child, I didn’t find the idea of heaven particularly appealing. I knew heaven wasn’t about harps and wings and streets of gold, but it was not clear to me what it was about. Being with God, enjoying God’s company, singing endless songs of praise, something like endless church? Any heaven I could imagine was amorphous and ethereal, a strange and sterile and wholly unfamiliar realm. In contrast, the beauty and substance and energy and delights of this life and this earth seemed a whole lot more attractive to me!

My love for this earth was one of those seeds, a seed planted by my father. He taught me to swim and paddle and sail. He took me hiking and woke me up before dawn to take me birding. My father birthed faith in me, but he also birthed in me an abiding fondness for mountain and stream and lake and forest.

My mother read to me. She read aloud the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis. The seven Narnia books were a seed, too, framing as much as the church did my early sense of Christian character and Christian hope. It was the last of these novels especially, the one entitled, The Last Battle, that planted in my imagination a vision of a “heaven” that was not foreign and uninviting, but familiar and compelling, a vision of a new world like this one — filled with mountains and streams and forests and familiar faces — a new world that was this one, only bigger somehow, somehow more real, more substantial, more alive.

But the most important seed of a changed faith was faith itself. I expected heaven, but I didn’t believe in heaven. I believed in Jesus. I loved Jesus, not for the sake of what Jesus might do for me, but because Jesus was worthy of my love. I wanted to follow him, learn from him, let him reshape my mind.

And he did. Jesus led me back into the story and that story changed my mind. As a philosophy student and seminarian and young pastor, I began to read the Bible more closely, more carefully, and the pieces of a new way of thinking began to take shape. I heard the creation story, as if for the first time, and its repeated refrain: “And God saw that it was good!” Yes! This is good: this world and all that fills it! This is what God loves! This is what God cares about! This is what God calls good!

I heard the Hebrews’ witness to God’s concern, not for disembodied souls, but for whole persons, for whole communities of persons. I heard the call to do justice for the poor, to welcome the stranger, and to care for the land. I understood that the human creature made in God’s image is an indivisible entity, spirit and body, not the sum of separable parts. I was enthralled with the biblical vision of “shalom, ” a vision of peace, but more than peace, a vision of fruitfulness and bounty and justice and harmony and fullness of life.

And I heard this: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth … I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” Coming down! Heaven comes down; we don’t go up! Those words from the book of Revelation were a revelation.

Of course! This is what God loves — this earth, these human beings. This is what God saves. We don’t go to heaven; heaven — God — comes to us, not to take us away to another place, but to make this place new, to make us new, to make “heaven” of this earth, to make this earth a place of “no more death, no more grief or crying or pain.”

I can’t wait …

peachy!

peachy!

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I enjoyed Elane O’Rourke’s New Year’s Day post: on the premise that whatever one does on New Year’s Day one will do all year. It is fun, reflective, and disarmingly honest … about her reactions to the events of the year and about the status of her relationship with the Big G(al/uy)!

Here’s an excerpt:

Last night, my wonderful husband also asked: so how is your relationship with God these days? And I was able to answer, confidently: peachy. God and I are doing really well, like comfortable old friends who occupy a room together, occasionally chatting, doing things together and apart. When I feel distant, I know it’s just me — that I need to pick up the phone and call.

Wow! Peachy? Wouldn’t it be great to have such a sense of freedom and assurance and trust about your relationship with the living God? I pray that it may be so, that the bonds between God and you in this new year will be just peachy!

And I pray that when you feel distant, as you will, you will recognize it is just you, and you will “pick up the phone …”

more on jeremiah wright

more on jeremiah wright

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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.

obama: the role of faith in political conversation

obama: the role of faith in political conversation

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Tolerance and passionate faith are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe the opposite is true. Passionate believers, genuine believers, are more tolerant people, because they understand how tolerant God has been with them!

It is refreshing to hear Sen. Barack Obama, a Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ, speak about his faith and its role in framing his political agenda … and his response to folks who may not share his political agenda. He is not apologetic about his faith. Neither is he dismissive of other people’s faith.

He is right. We need a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this nation, about the role of faith in shaping our values … not slogans and sound bites and accusations, but a conversation, a conversation that includes both honest sharing and respectful listening.

Read this excerpt from his keynote address at Pentecost 2006, sponsored by Call to Renewal, a movement affiliated with the Sojourners Community in Washington D.C. Or read the entire address: Keynote Address: Sen. Barack Obama.

A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School that said the following:

“Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you.”

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be “totalizing.” His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of President Bush’s foreign policy.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my Web site, which suggested that I would fight “right wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” He went on to write:

“I sense that you have a strong sense of justice … and I also sense that you are a fair-minded person with a high regard for reason … Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded. … You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others … I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”

I checked my Web site and found the offending words. My staff had written them to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Re-reading the doctor’s letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in reasonable terms – those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

I wrote back to the doctor and thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own – a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

the opposite of peace …

the opposite of peace …

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I think the opposite of hope is not despair, but resignation.
no hope, just emptiness, care-lessness …

I think the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy.
no love, just indifference, care-lessness …

Could it be that the opposite of peace is not conflict, but contentment?
no longing for peace, just settling for the status quo, care-lessness?

filled with power

filled with power

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When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me …

That’s what Jesus promised his first apostles: you will be filled with power … and they were:

  • power to boldly proclaim a message of good news
  • power to heal broken bodies and broken souls
  • power to stand up to fierce opposition and harsh persecution
  • power to see what they could not see before — the ever-widening circle of the Lord’s embrace.

You will be filled with power …

Do you feel powerful, empowered, filled with power? Sometimes it seems that for us faith is more about comfort and assurance than about power, more about belief than about action, more about what Jesus can do for us than about we can do in Jesus’ name.

What can we do in Jesus’ name?

  • Can we boldly proclaim good news to a world that is cynical, hurting, despairing, splintered?
  • Do we expect to bring healing to broken souls and broken bodies?
  • Will we stand up and not back down in the face of doubt, derision, scoffing, verbal attacks, political isolation?
  • Will we see the still-widening circle of the Lord’s embrace?

I don’t want to be part of a church that is innocuous, self-absorbed, timid. I don’t want to be content with a faith that promises future blessing, but makes no real difference now. I want to know what it is — to explore with you, my fellow believers, what it is — that we can do here and now in Jesus’ name!

Do we believe the good news? Do we believe Jesus is alive? Do we believe Jesus is alive in us? Do we believe that we are filled with power, and are we ready to exercise that power in love, in Jesus’ name, for our neighbor’s sake?

words with(out) meaning

words with(out) meaning

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So much of language is just “fill” … words to fill empty space, words to comply with the rules and expectations of social interaction, words to avoid an awkward silence, words to avoid a more threatening eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul contact. We have to use so many words just to get through a day, words not well thought out, revealing nothing particularly profound, revealing nothing much of what is “really real” about ourselves.

And yet, even these “throwaway” words carry meaning. Even these “lightweight” words make a real and valued and valuable connection to another human being. The words we may “toss off” may well be received as a true gift and a blessing.

The same is true of the language of prayer. So much of my praying to God may be “going through the motions,” words to comply with the rules and expectations of a viable faith, praying so as to be able to say I have prayed. Not well thought out, not particularly focussed, not fully engaged.

And yet … To have prayed, however we have prayed, is to have made a real connection to the living God, a connection I dare say that brings delight to God and untold blessing to us.

So pray! Don’t wait for the right time or the right words or the right mood. Just talk to God. And when you do, those startling moments of profound self-revelation and unexpected intimacy that happen from time to time in your human conversations will happen too in your conversation with God.

So much of language is “fill” …… but not all of it!