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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

"Disarm my life? Hmmm...."

For Sunday, November 28th



( “Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares” statue at the United Nations garden in New York City; the statue was a gift to the UN in 1959 from the then Soviet Union. Made by Evgeniy Vuchetich, the bronze statue represents the figure of a man holding a hammer in one hand and, in the other, a sword which he is making into a plowshare. It symbolizes humanity’s desire to put an end to war and convert the means of destruction into creative tools for the benefit of all humankind.)

Lectionary Scripture - Isaiah 2:1-5 (NRSV)

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

“Disarm my life? Hmmm…”

A worship resource for the above scripture asks, “What steps can you take to disarm your whole life?” It’s a question offered after an earlier statement in the resource which says, “Disarm your minds, your hearts, your hands, your taxes, your nation, and the world.”

Initially when I read the material, I wondered if the author meant ridding myself of any distress, anger, indignation, or need to take action over the horde of unjust malevolent ways people are treated in this world. If that’s the intent, I am unable to do so.

Frankly, I don’t know how any of us can disarm our hearts while so much of the world suffers. I realize that some individuals manage to achieve this in ways that are appropriate, honorable, and enlightened. But I suspect that for most of us not routinely abused or suffering or ignored, we disarm mainly by turning our attentions to things more pleasurable or distracting. Perhaps we do so -- or justify doing so -- out of a sense that there’s little we have power to change. As a result however, substantial portions of humanity watch from the sidelines while thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions suffer daily. For me, I’m not able to watch from the sidelines, so I do what I can to effect change, particularly systemic change. Sometimes there’s an abundance of opportunity and I simply cannot keep up. Other times I have long dry spells before I’m in a position to do something. And then there are those occasions where the only thing I can do is sit down and share here what’s on my mind and heart.

Regarding the above, one thing I have consistently advocated for years is that churches critically examine their use of assets and resources. Typically I urge less focus on themselves and more on what they can do to address needs and alleviated suffering in the communities where they reside. For me, it’s must be done if God’s Peaceable Kingdom is ever to be a reality here on earth. At times, people hear my plea and petition and make needed sacrifices. Other times, I’m ignored or shown the door. Mostly this happens where people have established a comfortable community for themselves and they don’t want their boat rocked. Speaking figuratively, these faith communities unsheathe their swords at the slightest threat of change to their way of being. Generally in my experience, these situations are the most difficult to transform into Isaiah’s plowshares and pruning hooks unless confronted with the crisis of their own death and demise.

No matter if the swords and spears are real or figurative – an empowering yet disarming symbol for me is the UN “Swords into Plowshares” statue in New York City. Much is captured in that symbol which represents for me a multi-step process of beating something harmful into something life giving. As I see it, the first step is simply that of identifying, acknowledging, and labeling what is a sword and what is a spear in today’s world. For me, I imagine the continuum running anywhere from a nuclear warhead to a landmine to a despicable CEO’s behavior to law-breaking board members of a non-profit to an abusive faith community to a person or group of persons making someone’s life hell. All of these kill life or take well-being from it.

After arriving to a clear and defined sense of today’s swords and spears, I see the next step in Isaiah’s “swords to plowshares” being that of obtaining control and/or possession of the above harmful things so they no longer undermine, injure, or destroy. In the case of the unscrupulous CEO and his/her minions, there’s jail time, lawsuits and new regulations to prevent such immorality or criminality. For the person or persons whose self-serving interests create hell for others, there are a remarkable number of powerful and diverse behavioral and psychological interventions capable of modifying such behavior and setting healthy boundaries. When appropriately employed and maintained, these tools accomplish great good in calming an emotionally or psychologically chaotic environment. In a symbolic yet very real sense, they are like the hammer on the UN statue for they re-form and redirect negativity from its life sapping ways into energy and focus that betters the Common Good.

Transforming another part of today’s swords and spears involves the implements of war. As most of us know, this endeavor is an endlessly challenging battle. Who knows how and when the world will ever arrive at peace sufficient to disarm ourselves militarily? Who knows when and how we will finally accept that the astronomical costs to massively and shockingly kill each other are no longer worthwhile. As many of us know, hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars get spent ensuring our lethality – all of it at the expense of those who are suffering. I think U.S President Dwight Eisenhower (a Republican) said it best in the following:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. —From the “Chance for Peace” address delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953.
Inspired of God, the Prophet Isaiah envisioned an end to this theft. The imagery God placed in Isaiah’s mind was simple and powerful – swords to plowshares and spears to pruning hooks. Our minds, hopes, and spirits have been stirred by these images ever since. Yet in 27 centuries since Isaiah’s vision and prophecy, plowshares and pruning hooks have eluded us. And all this time later, the danger we are to one another grows greater every day.

For some persons, they have had all they can take. One of those taking hammer in hand is poet, activist, and Catholic priest, Dan Berrigan. Writing for this week’s lectionary resource at Sojourners, Father Berrigan puts it like this:

IT WAS IN THE SUMMER OF 1980 that a group of us "discovered" Isaiah. It seemed as though we had all accidentally broken the crust of an ancient cave and come upon a treasure in a stone jar, a veritable Dead Sea scroll.

He had of course been there all the time, all our lifetime. But now he was "our" Isaiah.

That summer we were seeking in scripture a metaphor, an image that would lend strength to an as-yet-nascent purpose. Finally it came to us, through Molly Rush, mother and grandmother, of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. The text that would turn life on its head: "God will wield authority over the nations and render judgment over many peoples. They will hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into sickles."

All great moments are finally simple. We took our small household hammers (and our smaller courage) in hand, and on September 9, 1980, entered the General Electric Reentry Division plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Armed, so to speak; disarmed by Isaiah. Preparing for these nefarious goings-on was, I reflected often since, a perfect way of doing scripture study. There we were, willy-nilly, under the nudge of conscience, rueful, dead center. In some place known as the geography of faith, a terrain, icy and torrid by turns, in which Isaiah himself had stood.

He stood there, in his own time, a time uncannily like our own. And then occurred to him this oracle, swords into plowshares! A word highly unlikely, absurd even, given "the facts" (his, ours), "realism," "big-power diplomacy," "just war theory," the curious game known as "interim ethic."

A vision of peacemaking, in a bloody, unpeaceable time. The century of Isaiah, the seventh before Christ; turbulent in the extreme. War and rumors of war. In the grand tradition of prophets in action, Isaiah intervened directly in political, military, and diplomatic events. He predicted the invasion of Palestine; it happened twice. He lived to see the threat of siege laid to his beloved Jerusalem.

A time like our own. A time of whetted swords and rusted plowshares, of immense violence and social conflict and neglect of the poor.

Need one go on with analogies that fit, hand to glove, sword to hand? Social and military crimes; and then the worship that smoked and muttered away, all honor to Gog and Magog, all mockery to the God of compassion.

Enough said. We need Isaiah, this last-ditch voice of sanity, this unlikely and practical visionary--somewhat as his own times needed him. Our times, it goes without saying, are plain mad; and not the times only, but those who presume to speak up, to speak for us; and who in fact concoct the imagery, betrayal, and moral decrepitude that lead us headlong into the ditch. Blindfolded we go, and who shall give us sight? (From Sojourner’s sermon preparation resource for November 28, 2010; http://www.sojo.net/, subscription required)
To be more specific regarding Father Berrigan’s protest and activism of September 1980, he and his brother Philip and six others known at the “Plowshares Eight” began the Plowshares Movement in August of that year. Subsequently, they illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. There they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones with small household hammers. According to Wikipedia information, they were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts.

On April 10, 1990, after ten years of appeals, Father Berrigan's group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 23 and 1/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison. Their legal battle was re-created in the film “The King of Prussia” which starred Martin Sheen and included appearances by the “Plowshares Eight”.

To this day, at the age of 89, Father Berrigan remains involved with the Plowshares Movement. I imagine that Father Berrigan constituted more than one migraine headache for his congregation and his ministerial supervisors and overseers. For me, I want to be clear that I do not condone Father Berrigan’s form of activism. It goes beyond the civil disobedience which I would engage in. What I want to encourage as a result of his life witness is that each of us carefully consider what we can do to come off the sidelines and what we can do to ensure that swords and spears transform into plowshares and pruning hooks. If we fail to do this, who knows what the next 27 centuries will bring since our lethality grows so insidiously each passing year – far surpassing anything from Isaiah’s time.

It seems then to me that the last and final step of humanity’s swords and spears into plowshares and pruning hooks begs a certain question, e.g. what shall we beat and transform these hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars into? Shall we (meaning the world) take a portion of them to ensure formidable disaster response when earthquakes or tsunamis or hurricanes devastate a community or a country or a people? Shall we take a portion to ensure eradication of hunger, poverty, disease, and provide universal healthcare, and safe and secure housing, education, and employment opportunity for all in need? Shall we take a portion to repair the environmental damage we have caused to God’s precious creation? Shall we take a portion to ensure that corrupt unethical unqualified people cannot occupy positions of power and influence in our governments, communities, and marketplaces? What all shall we do when war is no more? What all can we do?

Modern day swords into modern day plowshares – share you dream of it, share your hope – then pick up a hammer and let's get to work.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

"Today, you are with me in Paradise"

For Sunday, November 21st, 2010


(Cropped photo of the 11th Station of “The Way of the Cross” at Ta Pinu Sanctuary located in Gozo, Malta on the southernmost tip of Italy. Photo taken by Hans A. Rosbach, provided under Creative Commons License)

Lectionary Scripture – Luke 23:33-43 (NRSV)

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

Today, you are with me in Paradise
 

Luke’s words above capture a defining moment in history. In that moment, some mocked the innocent one dying upon the cross. Others considered him part of a typical day in the life of the Empire. Others grieved inconsolably for a loved one executed so tortuously and shamefully. Yet some see and understand that a shocking new beginning is about to take place, one from which there will be no turning back. And nearly two thousand years later, from that utterly dark and agonizing moment, two billion souls now claim to follow and pursue the cause of one who died so scornful a death. It was a death that made all of us of responsible for what’s not right and what’s not just in the world. In short, it made each of us responsible for doing justice, speaking justice, and creating justice that will bring about God’s Peaceable Kingdom here on earth.

Most appropriately, scholars and theologians therefore ask in what sense do we see ourselves responsible for bringing about the Peaceable Kingdom? In what ways are we doing justice, speaking justice, creating justice? What are our individual responsibilities? And if we are doing those things, what then does the process of establishing the Kingdom here on earth look like? What does the Kingdom itself look like?

I doubt that I have answers of any real use to anyone. I know however what drives me at the core of who I am. It slipped out during a prayer I gave at an interfaith service in September 2001 following the events of 9/11. Surprising to me, local news media picked it up and broadcast it that evening on the eleven o’clock news. Simply put, I had prayed these words, “No living soul should ever suffer a single moment of terror.”

Looking back at that statement, and if there’s any truth in it, what does it mean that our world should look like here and now? Well first and foremost in our current economic climate, it would mean that no one person or groups of persons should have the ability or even the remotest opportunity to throw world markets into any kind of tailspin that takes years or decades to recover from. Whoever allowed such sociopaths to gain this upper hand anyway? The short answer is me and you. Who can correct the problem? You and me. How so? We do it by making sure no one can ever again get away with financial speculation based solely on thin air. We keep it from happening again by jumping on even the smallest sign that someone somewhere is cooking the books. We keep it from happening again by protecting the whistleblowers that courageously come forward and say that something is wrong, illegal, unethical, or immoral. We do that instead of erecting walls through laws or processes that allow various parts or pieces of our legal system to intimidate whistleblowers seeking after justice. For the truth of it is this my friends that there are plenty of moments of terror in watching all one’s savings go up in smoke and there are plenty of moments of terror when one no longer has a job and cannot provide for oneself or one’s family.

And what about the moments of terror when a man or woman cannot obtain healthcare and medicines for their child? What about the moment of terror a child experiences seeing their parent in pain or dying because some fool somewhere thinks God’s children shouldn’t bear the burden together of ensuring that every parent and every child and every person gets the healthcare and medicines they need for having as full and beneficial a quality of life as possible.

What about the wars? What about the terror wars always proliferate such as the destruction of life, destruction of the quality of life, the rapes, the beatings, the torture, the disease, the famine, and the grinding debt created by war on behalf of leaders who dismissively think it unnecessary to pay for a war and casually toss that burden of debt onto younger generations. In the days of God’s Peaceable Kingdom, God will have a very special place for such leaders and promulgators of death and terror.

So what does the Peaceable Kingdom here on earth look like? It looks like the most splendid comfortably warm and sunny summer day ever experienced in your life. On that day, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of the Prophets and the Spirit of Peace will be everywhere permeating every living thing and every living soul with their message of peace and justice. There will be no poverty. There will be no disease. There will be no one experiencing hardship. There will no one seeking advantage over others. There will be no one worried over their institution or business or church or family or community surviving into the future.

And what will we spend our time doing in the Peaceable Kingdom? We’ll spend it exploring and learning and understanding the vast potential of life that lies beyond the dark and evil influences of our times. For when we find the courage to be the Peaceable Kingdom now, we will have finally arrived to the day Christ says to us, “Truly I tell you, today you are with me in Paradise.”

Thursday, November 11, 2010

"Rejoice in God's New Creation" - Guest Blogger Lana

For Sunday, November 14, 2010


I’m pleased to introduce to you to my friend, Lana, who is peace-n-justice’s first guest blogger. Lana is a Canadian living in Vancouver, British Columbia. As a favor to me, she has regularly and faithfully “pre-read” my blog postings. This hardly means that I have routinely won her stamp of approval -- far from it. What I have mostly sought from her is her objective criticism born of a spirituality in her that has blessed my life many times over. Below, you will hear from her how that spirituality came into being and how the prophetic nature of it brings joy and empowerment to those that society and culture cast aside.

Some twenty years ago, Lana awakened a similar call in me to be courageous and prophetic while serving as her pastor in British Columbia. Because of her, I have never turned back though Lana and I would probably agree that sometimes I’m a bit too edgy and don't rejoice enough in my blogging or consider often enough what lies beyond indignation or frustration that I have expressed.  In a recent phone conversation together about these things, an epiphany took place and I felt I should ask her to guest blog at peace-n-justice. With a little persuasion, Lana agreed and this Sunday’s lectionary from Isaiah worked out as the perfect opportunity. I think you'll agree that in what Lana has written there are some wonderfully inspiring thoughts.  So with no further ado, let’s turn you over to Lana, one of God’s blessed children. -- Brad Shumate, Vancouver WA

"Rejoice in God's New Creation"

(Graphic is “Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks, 1780-1849, a primitive American painter who is well known for his folk depiction of the Isaiah prophecy contain in the scripture below)

Lectionary Reading - Isaiah 65:17-25 (New International Version)

"Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.  The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.  Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach [a] a hundred will be considered accursed.

They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them.
Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food.  They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD.

"Rejoice in God's New Creation"


A man I love shot a wolf this past week. I never would have believed it had I not seen him beside the lifeless animal in a photo emailed to me from my mother 600 miles away.

As I stared at the hunter’s smiling face, I could not make sense of what I was seeing. I found myself trapped in the space where feelings begin and the thoughts that finally articulate them. In my family we had been raised with an honor code of hunting values. One of those core values is that one does not kill animals not sanctioned for eating. We would no sooner harm a wolf than shoot the family dog. When words finally came to me, I emailed back and asked, “Why did Dad shoot the wolf?”

For as long as I can remember my dad always wanted to see a wolf up close. He would share about hearing their soulful cries and following their tracks. Once or twice he had even seen where they lay or left other markings, but always that close up sighting eluded him.

As a result of my father’s sharing and hunting experiences, he instilled in me while I was quite young a sense of awe and wonder while in the presence of nature. Sometimes he did this through funny tricks of getting birds to land on his hand and eat bread crust stolen from our sandwiches. At other times, he taught us how to catch fish with recycled milk bags. There were also the challenging times of being perched on a fallen log or out-cropped rock to see who could be quiet the longest. In this way we could hear (and later identify) the sounds around us.

Dad always took time to appreciate every beauty of nature, even the death of a lone wolf which I eventually learned he had not killed but simply happened upon it while hunting. His smile in the photo resulted from his happiness seeing this wolf close up before Mother Nature reclaimed it back into the earth. Compelled by his love of nature and love of wolves, Dad examined and marveled at what had always eluded him. The photo captured that moment of joy in his life.

For all his love of Nature, what amazes me is Dad’s non-belief in God. He is absolutely unable to credit God for the beauty he reverences in Nature. Ironically, the moments he provided me atop mountain peaks as a child left indelible marks on my soul. I came therefore to a faith in God that my father never intended. In time, I found a community with whom I could share that faith.

One of the central values of my faith community is an appreciation of the inter-connectedness of the whole of life. In the spring of 2000, I co-led a Northwest Washington youth retreat with Paul Lucero, an Oneida Elder and Native American Ministries Leader in my faith tradition. During that retreat, Paul shared with us a sacred story from his Native American tradition. It’s a story that communicates the value of all that has been created in the eyes of the Creator. The story goes that….

A great celebration took place where all the animals were asked to gather so that the Creator could bless them and give each of them a distinct gift. Rabbit being, both highly distractible and highly fearful (even of the Creator) chose to avoid the ceremony. When the Creator finally sought him out, after all the other animals had received their unique gifts, Rabbit was found hiding with his bottom sticking out of a hole in the ground. The Creator, not to be cheated out of an opportunity to bless Creation, allowed Rabbit to keep his jitters and keen fears. The Creator then gave him strong legs and the ability to warn his community with a firm strong stomp.
When I hold this sacred Oneida teaching and the above Isaiah scripture in my mind at the same time, I am struck with the thought that perhaps we are not wholly in God’s image as individuals, but together in community we are the whole image of God. Like Rabbit, we are often too busy, too afraid, or feel too insignificant to “show up” when there are blessings to be had, or when God calls us to some specific task or responsibility. Each of us must therefore learn how to live out our calling. And we must each show up to be blessed and sustained by the community that forms God in us. In short, none of us can escape the blessing or gifting intended by our Creator.

My journey toward accepting my gift and blessing began at age nineteen. At that time, God impressed upon me a spiritual calling to bridge together people of differing faiths. Philosophically, I embraced the call easily and in different employment and social situations, I try always to live out that perspective. When I met Elder Lucero however, he also discerned a call in me to “prophesy”. On hearing that from him, I felt very much like Rabbit with his bottom sticking out of the hole. And as the retreat wore on that weekend, there was much laughter as I learned that even though I was young, I still had a very old fashioned view of what “prophetic” is.

On that note, I was reluctant to embrace the idea that I might be gifted with prophesy. “What would that mean?” I wondered. Elder Lucero discerned and clarified for me that I “carry with me” a very large idea of what God could do with people’s lives no matter what the circumstance. So my calling to be a bridge between people of differing faiths was only one small part of a greater gift or responsibility of “prophesy”. The next thing to embrace in my life’s work would be seeing and speaking of God’s possibility in the world where it often seemed impossible or unspeakable. In the past five years, this task has become quite clear for me in my work as an employment counselor in the poorest postal code in Canada where I have been helping people to invent new possibilities for themselves. In no uncertain terms, it is a place where people are labeled “addicts”, “sick”, “unemployed”, “criminal”, and “chronic”. For me however, it is a place of unlimited grace, for each day brings an opportunity to meet new people for whom a relevant infusion of Isaiah’s prophetic message is sorely needed, particularly in the following:

"Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.  The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy."
Long and short of it, we are free to put our past behind us and to confidently claim a new future. I have witnessed this process many times as I saw people leave behind labels and claim new lives. Sometimes this process happened by finding work. Other times it occurred through finding shelter or simply being received into space that fostered healthier alternatives to the person’s current reality. For the past year I have worked on a mental health team exclusively devoted to helping persons with mental illness envision new space, new lives, new careers and healthier alternatives that give meaning and purpose to their lives. My work on this team involves advocacy with employers and communities to change how they view persons with mental illness so that new and greater opportunities and possibilities are continually created. Prophetically, I am compelled to find and create hope where others do not. What carries me through this demanding endeavor is my firm belief in the Spirit revealed in Isaiah 65:24-25:

Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.  The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food.  They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD.
This scripture is a prophetic call to action for me and for you. The Spirit claims “the wolf and the lamb will feed together”. When, one might wonder? Well, it will be when we make it so. Earlier I mentioned that I felt a bit like Rabbit when I was learning from Elder Lucero as what his stories teach about is the animals and their relationship to the Creator. In turn, those lessons teach us about our own natures as human beings.

In the above scripture, we are therefore called to look at alternate possibilities for our own natures. For instance, if the lion can eat straw like the ox, perhaps we can do a better job of feeding the hungry in our cities? If the wolf can feed with the lamb, perhaps we can have a better relationship with our ex-spouse? What situations are we living with where we are seeing only the typical or stereotypical solution? The Isaiah passage is a call for us to look into our lives and see where we can make new lives through being agents for reconciliation, transformation, even creation.

I do not know the nature of your individual calling. I do believe the teachings of Elder Lucero that the Creator will find and bless you wherever you are and that your gift is meant to be shared within the community gifted to you. Find something that seems impossible to do, and go take it on.

Lana
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada

Friday, November 5, 2010

"God of the Living"

For Sunday, November 7th, 2010


(Graphic is a lectionary drawing by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Peru, available at www.mscperu.org)

Gospel Lectionary Reading - Luke 20:27-38 NRSV

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."

Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

"God of the Living"

My goodness, where does one begin with a scripture story/event like this? There are many wonderful and empowering commentaries of this encounter between Jesus with the Sadducees. In most of them, the comments center upon the rub between the “organized religion” of the time and new insights offered by a controversial young rabbi who we know by the name of Jesus.

For their part, the Sadducees were a highly rigid and puritanical priestly sect. Almost always, they’d be engaged in some kind of minutia or micro-management that would make most people’s heads spin today. For instance, they insisted that the high priest light the kindling for the Temple altar fire outside the Temple so the smoke from the kindling’s burning enveloped and wrapped around the high priest before he entered into the presence of God in the Temple. My guess is that the smoke somehow minimized or disguised human essence so its depravity did not anger or offend God’s divine being.

The Sadducees tended to be hostile toward rabbis and the rabbinic law; however they were not above using its own methods against it. In the above case for instance, the Sadducees employed a rabbinic tool for reasoning things to whatever absurd extreme they find necessary to make rabbinic teachings like those of Jesus appear nonsensical. They hope in the course of their efforts to trap Jesus into saying or teaching something that could be labeled heretical, dangerous, and therefore a reason to get rid of him. It didn’t matter that they didn’t believe in an afterlife to begin so why even engage in such a discussion with Jesus. The main thing is that they – the religious authority and establishment -- wanted him gone and banished from the Temple altogether. They would therefore employ whatever means they considered necessary to achieve that end. Organized institutional religion would have its way with a contrarian like Jesus, so either he better get with the institution’s program or he better get lost.

Jesus turns such misguided effort back on to itself. From a seemingly insignificant piece of the Hebrew scripture, Jesus points out to the Sadducees they’re failure to grasp the depth of Judaism’s own sacred writings, i.e. that those who have passed on from “this age” into “that age” to come, remain very much alive. In that regard, God has said, “I am the God” of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, not “I was the God” of these persons. As Jesus points these things out to the Sadducees, one can almost imagine the “Ah, yes” expressions of the crowd and all the heads nodding in agreement with him. Not content to let things end there, Jesus cuts the Sadducees’ absurdity to shreds when he takes the position that marriage is a product of “this age” however it will not be part of “that age” to come. Undoubtedly angered at their embarrassment before the crowd, which most self-righteous people would be, it’s likely the Sadducees withdrew to watch for their religion’s next opportunity to take Jesus down. Score one for Jesus and zero for organized religion.

As we know however, the followers of Jesus eventually promulgated a new religion. In time, they evangelized a considerable portion of the world. In time, they became the organized religion dominating people’s reality and governing thought and governing lives. Even today in an increasingly secularized and pluralistic world, the followers of Jesus continue to wield significant influence and power in people’s lives. Yet as most of us realize, that power and influence is waning with more and more prophetic contrarians of our time. With information technology being what it is, they are far more prolific and vocal than at any time in the past. From many of their points of view, they offer a singular insistence which is that all paths to the love and grace of God are good. There is no one path that people must adhere to or only one way into the family of God. Voices suggesting that such is the case reflect only the prejudice of “this age” rather than the thinking of “that age” which is to come and which is already manifesting itself in various forms. To the degree therefore that organized religion ignores this or speaks or plots against it, it does so at great peril. For it will be a peril that ultimately judges and rules against organized religion as an utterly irrelevant archaic thing. The sad thing will be the memory and tradition that gets lost rather than the memory and tradition that transformed itself into a new creation capable of blessing generations long into the future – generations in turn which would have generously honored those which preceded them.

For the generations that follow you, may you always find the generosity to embrace and resource their needs so the memories and monuments they erect to your foresight can bless you in “that age” to come; remembering always that our God is the god of the living and never the god of the dead.