The Exalted Humbled, the Humbled Exalted"

(Graphic from Church PowerPoint at http://www.churchpowerpoint.com/, used by permission)

Lectionary Reading - Luke 14:1, 7-14 (NRSV)


On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

The Exalted Humbled, the Humbled Exalted

The Peaceable Kingdom envisions no systems of domination. For those who want systems of “pecking order” to remain in place, they do so at great peril to themselves for their needs to dominate and control others will come to a startling end. This is the message that Jesus makes clear in the scripture above. And ominous end it will be for those who consider themselves exalted over others as the exalted shall be humbled and the humble exalted.”

Jesus words mean one thing, i.e. hierarchies must eventually pass away. They must be transcended, turned on end, utterly reordered. Behind Jesus words are the reasons why. First, hierarchies mostly feed and massage egos. Second, they reward dysfunctional needs for status and acclaim. Third, they concretize unhealthy unhelpful dynamics in which the needs and wants of a minority oppress and supersede those of majority.

Listening one morning this past week to progressive radio talk show host, Thom Hartman, I was reminded of the truth Jesus spoke in the above scripture. Hartman noted how the American government (which is very hierarchical) became a pawn over the past thirty years for corporations and the wealthiest portion of our citizenry (some 20% of Americans). This dysfunctional dynamic led to an incredible enrichment of wealth already held by this select portion of our societal hierarchy. Meanwhile, for the other 80% of Americans, their real incomes fell and their purchasing power dropped to all time lows. Driving these dynamics for the most part, according to Hartman, is one specific minority made up of five to six mega-corporations. Together, they exert tremendous downward pressure on our society’s working class. Through busting labor unions, outsourcing jobs to other parts of the world where people work for little compensation in squalid conditions, these mega-corporations generate profits, enrich shareholders, so in the end the ultra wealthy of our social hierarchy are kept happy and satisfied.

From my perspective, mega-corporations don’t look or sound very egalitarian.  They're powerful hierarchies and there’s little I see in them that suggests they want life for the poverty-stricken, diseased, starving, disabled and disadvantaged to resemble anything close to a banquet. I especially think this when I hear about a CEO of a large healthcare corporation who makes $774 million dollars annually. What on earth do such persons accomplish for the common good that justifies such a salary? If such persons and entities truly care, as many seem to want us to think they do, then let them lift up and project a global corporate mission characterized by unceasing passion for a mission and presence in the world wherein the pursuit of profits utterly pales in comparison to what does matter. And if they have no understanding of that which truly matters then let them read in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Prophet Isaiah’s vision of God’s Holy Mountain. A world wherein…

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9 NRSV)

To the monolithic corporations, to their leaders and shareholders, to the wealthy of this world, and to anyone who believes they number among humanity’s most exalted --- you must learn the value of continually serving and uplifting those for whom life is nothing but struggle. For in meeting the needs of anyone lesser than you and providing them solid dependable ongoing possibilities for improving their lives that we, humanity in turn, become a true and blessed gift to our creator. Therein lays your ultimate happiness and truest wealth.

Therefore be generous, be just and reconciling, not only toward individuals but also transforming of any system lacking in aggressive pursuit of the blessed day for which we seek – the day of God’s peace for all living souls. Become this and surely God says to you, “Friend, move up higher.”

"Righteous Indignation"

For Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

(Graphic is an illustration found in "Standard Bible Story Readers, Book Two" by Lillie A. Faris, published by The Standard Publishing Company, 1925, and illustrated by O. A. Stemler and Bess Bruce Cleaveland.  Artist is unknown)

Lectionary Reading - Luke 13:10-17 NRSV

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."

But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Righteous Indignation

Freedom depends on those who act, one commentary says. The same commentary also states that by taking action, one’s speaking out might harm relationships at first but then bring healing in the end. For me, Jesus has long been my inspiration for those situations that involved taking a person, or group of persons, by the horns to speak plainly to them. When this happened, it always occurred for the purpose of accomplishing a greater good. Jesus proved that quite obviously to the hypocrites and crowd with his Sabbath healing of the long crippled woman. Clearly his speaking out – and acting out -- brought healing to the woman and rejoicing from the crowd. For it was nothing less than an amazing moment of blessing and miracle that suddenly and irrefutably reframed Sabbath. Furthermore, it put the religious authorities to shame for their self-righteousness and rigidity which purported that Sabbath could only exist and occur in a certain way and form. One might hope that the embarrassment and reframing from Jesus accomplished a change of heart in the religious authorities, but as most people realize – there are those individuals who remain hardened or untouchable. No matter what you do or try to do, they’re simply rigid unreachable micro-managing unhappy people too attached to their own sense of how things should be done. Most of us know when we’re up against such persons and situations. And most of us know that nothing we do will bring such persons into a healthier, happier, more relaxed and productive space. So like Jesus, it’s simply best to speak forthrightly in such situations or circumstances and let your indignation show. It gets the message across – and as you can see from Jesus’ example -- it gets across unmistakably so.

On that note, I remember a situation a number of years ago while care-managing the adult system of care for publicly funded mental health services in the county where we live. One of my tasks involved getting our county residents back home from the state psychiatric hospital which was a two hour drive away from our community. Typically our residents were hospitalized in that facility when there was a bed shortage in our local hospitals. And as you might guess, those individuals wanted to get back to their home community as soon as possible as did their families and loved ones. Problem is that once they landed in a long term state-run psychiatric facility, patients tended to be kept longer than was necessary. Generally, the problem was two-fold in that either the state hospital would hold on to the patient too long for revenue purposes or the community did not have an adequate discharge setting for the person.

In one such situation, the hospital contacted me about a patient. He wanted to get home – nothing new there. The nice thing however was that the hospital felt he was ready to return to the community but the local mental health center wasn’t doing enough to make discharge happen. The issue involved the person’s inability to get himself out of his bed in the morning. A few days later, I drove to the state hospital to see the person and review his medical record. Long and short of it, the person’s need was quite simple. He only required that someone come into his room and get him sitting upright on his bed. Once that was done, he was able to take care of his needs such as transferring himself to a wheelchair and getting on with his day.

Returning to the office, I contacted the director of our local transition facility. I reported my observations and urged the necessary accommodation so our resident could return to the county and move forward with recovery from the psychiatric crisis that had landed him in the hospital. As often occurs in the poorly funded world of public mental health services, the subsequent conversation between the director and me occurred via voicemails to each other over a period of several days.

At one point, after a particularly annoying voicemail, I finally arrived at exasperation and vented with my office colleagues. “Hypocrites,” I said, “why are these people working in community mental health if they refuse to accept a patient back to his community simply because he needs a staff member to get him sitting upright in his bed? He’s a small guy. It won’t take much effort at all.” I then said to my colleagues that I had to cool down, get my head back into rational space, and make one more attempt to persuade the facility director. To my amazement my colleagues said, “Absolutely not!” They then said, “Brad, you never let your anger out at these unjust situations because you never want people to feel that you don’t respect or appreciate them. You need to trust your anger. You need to trust that it’s right and just and appropriate and not disrespectful. We know you and we know that nothing less would ever come out of you. Don’t think about what you’re going say. Just call back and say what needs to be said.”

Long and short of it, I made the call. And once again it had to be a voicemail, but I said everything in that message which needed saying including how incredibly angry I felt over the situation and how woefully inadequate I felt the mental health center’s response had been to this particular situation. I then demanded a meeting with the transition facility director as well as his supervisor who was the mental health center’s executive director, and lastly their medical director. A day or two later the meeting occurred during which the executive director apologized to me personally and apologized that more hadn’t been done for the patient to return him back to the community in a timely fashion. I was also assured the situation would not happen again.

Righteous indignation, there’s always a place for it my friends even if some fool of a person tells you there isn’t – and believe me there are plenty of fools who will tell you so. Mostly it’s because they are persons incapable of handling intense feelings or situations themselves – no matter how righteous or appropriate indignation may be.

Main thing for you to understand about righteous indignation is that it says the game is over. It also says that you will no longer allow another person’s manipulations and scheming and need to control to go on. Trust such indignation my friends even if in the end your anger generates but one therapeutic result such as a crippled woman healed or a physically disabled man with psychiatric issues to come home. When righteous indignation becomes necessary, trust it, for it moves the world closer to God’s Peaceable Kingdom. And that means everything!

Resources Utilized:
 
1)  Commentary from Community of Christ 2010 Worship Helps for Sunday, August 22, 2010
2)  New Revised Standard Version of the Bible

“I Came to Bring Fire”

For Sunday, August 15th, 2010

(Graphic is liturgical art of the gospel lectionary reading from http://www.4catholiceducators.com)

Lectionary Scripture - Luke 12:49-57 (NRSV)

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?”

“I Came to Bring Fire”

Another version of the above lectionary scripture from the Contemporary English Version (CEV) expresses Jesus’ words a bit differently. In that version one part of the scripture reads this way, “Do you think that I came to bring peace to earth? No indeed! I came to make people choose sides.” And in the last portion of the CEV version, Jesus says, “You can predict the weather by looking at the earth and sky, but you don't really know what's going on right now. Why don't you understand the right thing to do?”

Reflecting on the CEV version of this scripture, it struck me that at times in the past I have felt like Jesus. I then recalled occasions of preaching in a congregation that I have visited a few times over the years. What I have discovered through the years about this congregation is that a fair number of individuals have constructed for themselves a wonderfully sanitized Jesus. The purpose of their Jesus is to make them feel warm and fuzzy about who they are and what they’ve accomplished in their lives both individually and collectively. They see their Jesus as someone who rewards all their hard work. Their Jesus never makes them feel guilty about their wealth. Their Jesus never makes them feel self-conscious about the poor, the starving, the sick and afflicted, or those who suffer from social or economic injustices rampant throughout our country and the world. In fact, their Jesus is so comfortable to them they have no problem saying,

“Well Jesus said the poor would always be among us. So here’s what I have to say: I have worked hard to get where I am and have the things I have. No one’s taking it away from me. In fact, I want a lot back that the government takes away from me through taxes. And I think a good place to start is with the poor. They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get off the government dole. I made it without such help, so can they.”

So in this congregation, there’s a fair amount of judgmental attitudes toward the poor which it expresses itself in right-wing political prejudice and ideology toward those mired in poverty. There’s also a fair degree of theology and congregational life that’s focused on “spiritual needs” to the exclusion of addressing social injustices and economic injustices. For these individuals, the cause of the Peaceable Kingdom is not a transforming reality for which we struggle and fight to make real here and now but rather some kind of magical Disney-like thing that happens after we shed this mortal existence. Brian McLaren in his book titled Everything Must Change identifies this form of congregational life as follows:

It has specialized in dealing with “spiritual needs” to the exclusion of physical and social needs. It has specialized in people’s destination in the afterlife but has failed to address significant social injustices in this life. It has focused on “me” and “my soul” and “my spiritual life” and “my eternal destiny,” but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of [this] lifetime: systematic injustice, systemic poverty, systemic ecological crisis, systemic dysfunctions of many kinds.

Now I want to state that there are a number of persons in the congregation I speak of who are quite concerned about social injustices and economic injustices and all forms of dysfunction that burden and paralyze efforts toward the common good. I know who those persons are and how frustrated they feel by the congregants who demand and expect the congregational focus to be on the “spiritual.” For these frustrated persons, they experience the congregation as stuck in neutral, spinning its wheels in the mud, getting nowhere fast, aging and declining because their way of being compels little interest in others to join the congregation. The unwritten law is that the congregational boat must not be rocked. Discipleship defaults therefore to being little more than a member of a community social club. In turn, one’s faith journey achieves little, if any, transformative influence upon society and culture toward Christ’s Peaceable Kingdom being reality here on earth. So while everyone in this congregation projects an outwardly friendly face, there’s a tension, negativity, discouragement, and judgmental hypocrisy that’s alive and well beneath the surface. Like a dysfunctional family, everyone colludes to not rock the boat and keep the lid shut on Pandora’s Box. Debilitating mediocrity results while complacency orders the nature of congregational life.

Knowing these things about the congregation, I often bring with me into their pulpit the Jesus who is not sanitized. Instead, it’s a Jesus who’s quite “prickly” as once stated by the former Duke University professor and United Methodist Bishop William Willimon. It’s the Jesus who without reservation says, “Do you think that I came to bring peace? No, I came to make people choose sides.” And this Jesus tends to get pricklier, “Who do you think you trying to fool? Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Why do you not understand the right thing to do?”

As I rarely ask such questions directly when preaching in this congregation, it’s the stories I share and the moral of those stories that seem to reach down into the congregation’s Pandora’s Box; doing so in a way that urges movement beyond the status quo toward a mission that’s potent and powerful in their community for the Peaceable Kingdom. I do think that something of my friend, Prickly Jesus, must break through the congregation’s façade. I say this because two things generally happen. One thing is that there always seems to be one of the “spiritual” oriented persons who’s part of the worship team when I visit. And almost always those individuals have some kind of opportunity to follow me in the order of service after I preach. It may be that the person has a reading or a prayer to do or may be the worship leader that day. What I and others attending the worship can invariably count on is that the individual will take opportunity in some way or another to distract the congregation from the message I’ve shared or be completely dismissive of it. The behavior happens so dependably and systematically that it truly amounts to one of those systemic dysfunctions of which McLaren writes. In fact, this regular kind of incident has been embarrassing enough for some congregants that I’ll get emails after a visit that apologize for what happened and comment on how annoying the behavior was.

But the above “dysfunction” is typically offset by the second thing which happens. And what that is are the positive and touching things said to me by other congregants. Things said to me such as, “I so appreciate it when you visit us. You always bring us a message that forces us to think outside of ourselves and beyond what we do here. Thanks so much for coming. Your message today was the best one yet.”

Again, I have to thank Bishop Willimon for reminding me of the importance of bringing “Prickly Jesus” into the pulpit. In case you don’t recognize Bishop Willimon’s name, he is the second most widely read author among Protestant pastors. Henri Nouwen is first. You might recognize Nouwen’s name from the book he wrote titled The Wounded Healer.

So if you as a minister or follower of Prickly Jesus ever think you need to take on a sanitized warm-fuzzy Jesus whose only concern is a heavenly hereafter, then consider the following from an article the good bishop wrote for the March-April 2003 edition of Sojourners magazine:

There is a peculiar pastoral burden of having to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified in the midst of a nation of prosperity, particularly if the affluent are among us when we preach. Most of us preachers (to the discredit of the American church) preach to relatively affluent congregations. Jesus makes a prickly pulpit partner when, in the pews, sit those for whom he appears to have had deep antipathy.

We were guests at an affluent Episcopal parish in the mountains of western North Carolina where rich people go to retire. We made our way through a parking lot of Cadillacs and Lincolns. The liturgy went well enough until we got to the sermon. The lectionary's assigned text was from 1 Kings, the reign of King Solomon. The priest told us that Solomon was the world's wisest man, king at a time when Israel at last stood at the summit of national development. No longer was Israel jerked around by larger nations. Israel had a big army and lots of chariots. The economy was booming. A great temple was being built as a sign of national prosperity.

Then he paused and said, "And yet Israel learned that the reign of Solomon was a time when the nation was as far from the heart of God as it could get...." Then the preacher hammered us for our stock portfolios, our pointless leisure, and problems with our spoiled children. Where else but church would you get a read like that on a "well-functioning economy"?

It’s all too easy these days to let our souls wander from the heart and purposes of God’s Peaceable Kingdom. Trust this however that Christ (or whatever great teacher or prophet you follow) will come to you in some way or another and you will be asked who you’re trying to fool. You will be asked why you persist in self-defeating, self-serving, self-absorbed behavior. And you can bet that your teacher, prophet, or savior will point to dominating unjust dysfunctional things, dominating unjust dysfunctional people, and dominating unjust dysfunctional realities. And quite uncomfortably, you will be put on the spot and asked why you fail to understand these things and why you fail to do what it right.

The time has come my friends, the fires for transformation and justice are being lit -- and lit now!