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When he comes, what will he do?

When he comes, what will he do?

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The sermon I preached yesterday morning at Deer Isle Sunset Congregational Church, broadcast via Zoom and Facebook …

It’s all gift, all of it:

the vista from the ledges on the brow of Blue Hill, stretching from the mountains of Acadia across Blue Hill Bay and Penobscot Bay to the Camden Hills,

the brightly-colored leaves — orange and yellow and red — providing a last visual treat before long months of chill and darkness,

the fire that sparks and crackles, taking the edge off the chill and intimating deep mysteries of the universe in its dancing flames.

It’s all gift, all of it:

the eagle gliding on still wings, the lobster flapping its tail as it is lifted from the trap, the harbor seal leaping from the waves,

the dip of a paddle, the filling of a sail, the crash of a breaking wave.

It’s all gift, all of it:

the tangy freshness of a scallop ceviche, the robust aroma of roasting coffee (even of you don’t like coffee!), the table set for two or four or for a whole extended family,

your granddaughter swinging on a backyard swing, the young soccer player launching an arcing shot on net, the person listening on the other end of the phone call,

the novel you wish would never end, the music you wish would never end, the painting that pulls you into its world — enthralling, consuming.

It’s all gift, all of it:

the one lying next to you in the bed and the one lying in a bed across the road and the one lying in a bed on the other side of the world.

It’s all gift, all of it:

your work, your family, your community, your neighbors, your nation, this world, your life — your life, your very next breath.

It’s all gift.

It’s all gift — this garden, this vineyard, this earth — given to us, given to you and to me, given to all of us, every one of us, to enjoy and to tend, to be blessed by the tending, and to offer blessing by the tending.  It is given freely, in joy for the sake of joy, with only one condition: that the landowner, the gift-giver, the laird, the Lord, be given his share of the harvest.

And what is his share of the harvest?  Justice.  This is what the landowner, the gift-giver, the Lord. wants … justice.

He wants a just tending of the earth: appreciating and preserving and protecting its beauty and its bounty, taking from it what we may with gratitude and with humility, but not exploiting or abusing or taking for granted, tending it with care for the sake of the generations that will live after us on this earth and for the sake of the earth itself.

He wants a just tending of the vulnerable ones among us, of those easily overlooked or even pushed aside because of age or gender or race or nationality or disability or disease or circumstance.

He wants a just tending of the fruits of the garden, understanding and applying the fundamental truth that this garden does not belong to us, but is given to us for the blessing of all of us.

So, when he comes, what will he do?  When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do?

He wants his share of the harvest!  He wants justice!  But we have wittingly poured carbon into the earth’s atmosphere, causing fundamental change to climate and weather patterns and putting life, all life on this planet, at risk.  Our nation is already and will increasingly suffer the effects of climate change: heat waves, drought, heavy downpours, sea level rise, declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, increasing ocean acidity, disappearing fisheries, wildfires, insect outbreaks, disease spreading among plants and animals and humans.  A recent United Nations study reported that one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history, due primarily to the direct and indirect effects of human exploitation and disturbance of their habitat.

He wants his share of the harvest!  He wants justice!  But Proud Boys are told to “stand by” and an officer of the state pins the neck of a black man with his knee for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, not because he must but because he can.  Children are forcibly separated from their parents at our borders, and hardworking, tax-paying heads of household are unjustly deported.  And in our nation, three out of four women have experienced verbal sexual harassment,  two out of four have been sexually touched without their permission, and one of every four women have survived sexual assault.

He wants his share of the harvest!  He wants justice!  But the top 0.1% of Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 80%.  Three single individuals, three men, hold more wealth than the bottom half of the entire US population combined.

He wants his share of the harvest!  He wants justice!  But the church of which we are a part, the larger community of women and men who choose to call ourselves by Christ’s name, are as bitterly divided against each other as the nation as a whole.  How can that be?  How can it be that people who love Jesus (or at least claim to), how can it be that people who commit themselves to following Jesus (or at least claim to), can hold such divergent social values and political loyalties?  Is Jesus that opaque, that unclear?  Or is it us?  Are we not paying close enough attention?  Are we all not paying close enough attention to what Jesus says matters most?  It was his prayer, after all, that we be one –that we be one — and he said that the world will know we belong to him by our love for each other.

The landowner, the gift-giver, the Lord, wants his share of the harvest!  He wants justice!

And what about you?  What lies in your heart?  What bitterness lingers there?  What grudges do you harbor there?  Whom do you exclude from your care, from your consideration, from your love?  From whom have you become estranged, either by their choice or yours or by simple neglect?

When he comes, what will he do?  When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do?

He will kill them!  He will kill these evil men!  He will kill these faithless tenants!  He will kill … us?

Will he?

Whose words are these?  Whose words are these?  These are the words of the scholars, the teachers, the rabbis, the pastors, the imams.  These are our words, not Jesus’ words.  This is our way — the way of payback, revenge, settling scores — not Jesus’ way.

When he comes, what will he do?

In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Savior,
     you have come to us
     and shared our common lot,
     conquering sin and death
     and reconciling the world to yourself.

In Jesus Christ, you have come to us, you — our God, our Lord, the landowner, the gift-giver.  In Jesus Christ, you have come to us, not judging, but saving, not killing, but being killed, not taking back, but giving more, not cutting off, but reconciling.  Reconciling.  Bringing back together.  Overcoming divides.  Repairing broken relationships.  Reconciling us, reconciling the world, to yourself.

It’s all gift.  The generous One is generous again and generous still.  He has come to us and he comes to us still in order to restore and to fulfill the purpose of his gift.  He has come to us and he comes to us still, conquering sin and death and reconciling.  He has come to us and he comes to us still to make his business our business, to make the business of conquering sin and death our business, to make the business of reconciling our business.  This is how we honor him, this is how we show our gratitude, by giving him his share of the harvest, by doing the ongoing work of reconciliation.

There is a simple prayer service written by the Iona Community in Scotland that is one of my favorites.  At the church I pastored in Waterloo, Iowa, we would use this service each year on Wednesday evenings during the season of Lent.  The service includes a time of shared, directed prayers that begins like this:

We bring to God
someone whom we have met or remembered today
and for whom we want to pray …

We bring to God
someone who is hurting tonight and needs our prayer …

We bring to God
a troubled situation in our world tonight …

But then there is this:

We bring to God, silently,
someone whom we find hard to forgive or trust …

This is the work of reconciliation!  Whom do you find hard to forgive?  Whom do you find hard to trust?  From whom have you become estranged?  With whom do you need to be reconciled?

It is a place to start, a place from which the ripple effects of being reconciled may spread.  We begin to change the world by changing ourselves.  We become reconciled to God as we reconcile ourselves to each other.

The prayers end with this invitation:

We bring ourselves to God
that we might grow in generosity of spirit,
clarity of mind,
and warmth of affection …

Warmth of affection …  Clarity of mind …  Generosity of spirit …  May it be so.  May it be so …

a tale of two florida prosecutors

a tale of two florida prosecutors

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1) Miami-Dade prosecutor Katherine Fernandez Rundle declined to press charges in the case of Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic prison inmate who died in June 2012 after being locked in a hot shower for two hours, saying that “the evidence does not show that Rainey’s well-being was grossly disregarded by the correctional staff.”

However,

witnesses [interviewed by the Miami Herald] including a nurse on duty that night, and several inmates interviewed by the Herald over the past two years, have said that two corrections officers, Cornelius Thompson and Roland Clark, forced Rainey into an enclosed, locked shower stall and that the water had been cranked as high as 180 degrees from a neighboring room, where the heat controls were. … Rainey screamed in terror and begged to be let out for more than an hour until he collapsed and died.

And,

when his body was pulled out, nurses said there were burns on 90 percent of his body. A nurse said his body temperature was too high to register with a thermometer. And his skin fell off at the touch.

Rainey was serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession.

When a mentally-ill minor drug offender is imprisoned, does he forfeit all his rights, all his human rights, including the right to live? Who protects him? (If not us?) Who will ensure him justice? (If not us?)

2) Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced last Thursday that she will not pursue death sentences for any capital cases during her time in office. That earned her a angry rebuke from Florida governor Rick Scott who removed from her jurisdiction the high profile case of a man charged with killing a police officer, saying she “has made it clear that she will not fight for justice.”

Because only a death satisfies justice? If blood revenge is the only means of “fighting for justice” (which is what the death penalty is, after all, blood revenge), what does that say about us?

Death sentences are notoriously inequitable in their application, do not provide any deterrence, cost taxpayers more, do not bring “resolution” to grieving families, rather, and as Ayala observed, “cases drag on for years, adding to victims’ anguish.” Could it be that refusing to pursue death sentences is in fact “fighting for justice?” Because the question remains, beyond any concerns about fairness and effectiveness, is killing by the state just? Or is it an overreach and abuse of power and a corrosive threat to our humanity?

Which of these prosecutors is fighting for justice? Which showed courage? Which represents the best of who we are as human beings?

no better the second time

no better the second time

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The message I sent today to Senators Grassley and Ernst and Representative Blum:

A new travel ban is expected to be issued any day now.  Such a ban is not necessary, does not make us any safer, is ill-intentioned, hurts our international standing, and betrays the best of our national heritage.  I do hope you will not let party loyalty trump your good sense, your patriotism, and your defense of justice.

Send yours!

fire with fire?

fire with fire?

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Trump on waterboarding: ‘We have to fight fire with fire’

When you fight fire with fire, that’s what you get: more fire. When you fight fire with fire, you are no different than your enemy. When you counter something immoral with something immoral, you are immoral. This is not a partisan issue. This is a moral issue. Torture is NEVER the right thing to do. Torture is a betrayal of everything we claim as a nation to stand for: justice, certain inalienable human rights, and the rule of law.

If you agree, add your name to the petition: Torture is not an American value.

Torture harms not only those who are tortured; it also damages the souls of those who torture and of those who turn aside and allow people to be tortured.

In 2015, a new law authored by Senators John McCain & Dianne Feinstein and passed by Congress permanently banned the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding and sexual humiliation, that were part of the CIA’s torture program.

We call upon President Trump and his Administration to follow U.S. law and common decency by respecting the dignity and worth of each human being and rejecting torture in every way.

killing bin laden

killing bin laden

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Yes, Osama bin Laden did evil things. Yes, he despoiled the image of God that was put in him as well as in each of us. But if we allow his choices to change our choices, to make us people ready to kill — for the sake of “closure,” for the sake of “justice,” for the sake of “revenge” — then we have done the same. We have despoiled the image of God in us.

Strength, courage, and righteousness mean living the values we hold dear and not allowing ourselves to be transformed in reaction to the chaos and brokenness and evil around us.

When we are better than that, when we can uphold the value of life, all life, when we can love the humanity in any human being, even in a man consumed by evil, then we reveal something truly extraordinary, the likeness of the living God.

And so I did not find reason to celebrate this weekend over the news of bin Laden’s death. It was an occasion not for joy, but for sadness at the ongoing price all of humanity is paying for the hatred and suspicion and vengefulness that set us against each other.

sharing the wealth?

sharing the wealth?

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A good editorial in the latest issue of The Christian Century: American Pie

In the course of discussing tax policy with an unlicensed Ohio plumber, Barack Obama suggested that “spreading the wealth around” a bit more would be good for the country. Obama was trying to explain why he wants to impose a modest tax increase on people who make more than $250,000 a year while reducing taxes on those making less than that amount. John McCain and his supporters immediately seized on Obama’s remark as a sign that Obama favors a socialist form of income redistribution.

The notion that a progressive income tax is a form of socialism is ludicrous. Since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, Americans have recognized that those who are flourishing most in society should pay a proportionately higher share of tax. After all, they are the ones benefiting most from the social stability and infrastructure that government provides.

Talk of socialism would be laughable except that it is part of a larger, disturbing reality in American politics: it has become almost impossible to talk about the disparities in wealth that have arisen over the past three decades and about how this stratification undermines democracy and fosters unequal outcomes in other areas of life, including educational opportunity and access to health care.

Since the late 1970s the share of national income going to the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled and the share for the top 0.1 percent has tripled. More than 40 percent of total income goes to the wealthiest 10 percent—their biggest share of the nation’s pie in at least 65 years. The very wealthy have become enormously wealthy, while middle-class workers have seen their wages stagnate—barely keeping pace with inflation—and at the same time have had to deal with sharp increases in the costs of health care and education.

In light of this trend, the dispute between McCain and Obama on taxes is minor: Obama wants to return the top marginal tax rate to 39 percent, where it was under Clinton, while McCain wants to keep it at 35 percent. Both men, in other words, would maintain the mildly progressive tax system that currently exists. The current system is actually much less progressive than it was in earlier decades—under Eisenhower the top tax rate was 91 percent, and under Nixon it was 70 percent. Those were hardly socialist administrations.

Though tax rates are not the only factor shaping economic conditions, they are an important measure of how the burdens of common life are being distributed. The warnings about socialism should be seen for what they are: a blunt effort to block any discussion of the ominous fact that the U.S. has become a nation of increasing inequality and, for many, of declining opportunity.

“Socialism” is meant to conjure visions of our adversaries, of systems of government that undermine the freedoms and personal opportunities democracies are supposed to guarantee. Its use, as the editorial suggests, serves to stifle, not encourage, debate. The focus of the debate should be fairness. Any enacted tax policy redistributes wealth; the Bush administration tax cuts redistributed wealth to the wealthiest of Americans. Is tax relief for the wealthy “capitalism” as opposed to tax relief for the middle class which is “socialism?” So the foundation of our democracy is subsidies for the upper class? I don’t think that was the vision of our nation’s founders. Fairness and justice are closer to that vision, I think, and closer to the vision of the world God calls us to bring into being.

at our worst … and best

at our worst … and best

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Three Iraqis and a Jordanian filed federal lawsuits Monday alleging they were tortured by U.S. defense contractors while detained at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

The lawsuits allege that those arrested and taken to the prison were subjected to forced nudity, electrical shocks, mock executions and other inhumane treatment. They seek unspecified payments high enough to compensate the detainees for their injuries, and to deter contractors from such conduct in the future.

“These innocent men were senselessly tortured by U.S. companies that profited from their misery,” said lead attorney Susan L. Burke, of the Philadelphia law firm Burke O’Neil. “These men came to U.S. courts because our laws, as they have for generations, allow their claims to be heard here.”

From an Associated Press article by David Dishneau, Abu Ghraib Inmates Sue Contractors, Claim Torture

Terrible things — truly terrible things — have been done in our name, “to protect the interests of the nation.” Terrible things have been done, with precious little accountability. Only media reports and opinion pieces — not really the courts and not really the congress — have held the practice of “enhanced interrogation” up to the light of day, but, even so, such reporting has sparked little outrage. Some of us deny it. Some of make excuses for it. And some of us just chalk it up to the cost of ensuring our security.

Personal and national security, whatever the cost, without regard for law or principle or love of neighbor: this shows us at our worst.

But now four individuals subjected to “enhanced interrogation” are suing. I applaud this opportunity to “try” the case, to bring the facts to light, to put the minds and hearts of the American people and the American justice system to the test. And as the lawyer for the plaintiffs suggests, this shows us at our best, capable of facing and redressing our own sins. The American system of governance is supposed to work that way, giving all access to justice, and allowing for self-correction as we learn from our mistakes.

May it be so in this case …

shame on burger king!

shame on burger king!

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From a UCC Justice and Peace Action Network newsletter:

You probably also know that after much work and a successful boycott, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) won an agreement with Taco Bell for improved pay, better working conditions, and greater dignity for tomato pickers. CIW also signed similar agreements with McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s, and A & W Restaurants.

There is great momentum within the fast food industry to improve conditions for farm workers but Burger King is refusing to join this movement.

Burger King’s actions are threatening to undo a hard-fought victory on behalf of exploited farm workers. I have just received this call to action from the Sojourner’s community:

Dear Timothy,

For Christmas, Burger King is trying to make the country’s poorest workers even poorer.

A few months ago, we asked you to send messages to Burger King, asking them to join McDonald’s and Taco Bell in increasing the sub-poverty wages of Florida tomato pickers.

Almost 20,000 of you responded, but Burger King’s behavior has only gotten worse. Not only have they failed to heed the faith community’s call to improve wages and working conditions for tomato pickers – they’re working to undermine the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ existing agreements with other fast-food chains!

As Eric Schlosser, author of Fast-Food Nation, explained in the New York Times:

The migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries, and unloads two tons of tomatoes.

Yum! Brands (owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) and McDonald’s had agreed to pay a penny more per pound to increase wages by 70 percent per bucket, but this holiday season workers aren’t receiving the increase. Why? Because Burger King has refused to pay the extra penny and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s. This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers.

A Burger King spokesman responded, “Florida growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit” – apparently, even if that means putting profits ahead of justice and dignity for their workers.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs – a major shareholder in Burger King, with two representatives on the board of directors – is preparing to pay holiday bonuses. Last year, Goldman Sach’s top 12 executives received more than $200 million in bonuses – more than twice the annual earnings of 10,000 Florida tomato pickers.

As we read of such injustices in this time of Advent, we reflect upon God’s justice and mercy, as described in the words of Mary:

[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; [God] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53).

Advent reminds us that God intends well-being for all, not just some. We hope you’ll join us in taking action.

Blessings,

I encourage you to join me in responding to Sojourner’s call and send a message to Burger King.