For Sunday, 9/24/2017, God’s Generosity, "Senator Graham Return to Sunday School"

Men Weeding a Field by Dhammika Heenpella

Matthew 20:1-16  NRSV

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.  After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.  When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.  And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’  They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’  When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.  Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.   And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’  But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?  So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” 

God’s Generosity, "Senator Graham Return to Sunday School"

The GOP Republican Congress and POTUS 45 just don’t know when to stop regarding their efforts to dismantle the Affordable Healthcare Act.  They also seem to have no ability to recognize when they should embrace Single Payer Universal Healthcare and get on task and get it done.   When it comes to healthcare, they know only how to bitch that there should be levels of reward versus healthcare being a citizen’s right. They gripe like the workers recruited early in the day as in Jesus’ story above.  Senator Graham is patently offensive for putting forward a healthcare bill that would leave millions upon millions of our fellow citizens without healthcare coverage.

Personally, I think Senator Graham should have to live day in and day out for the next five years in the homes of families he would throw off healthcare coverage and that he would have to share in their suffering like any other member of those families when they can’t get medicines or can’t see a doctor or have a mental illness they can’t get treated.  Perhaps Graham’s appalling and disgusting lack of compassion would transform to something that’s truly Christlike, because he evidences none of that now.  I have an even better idea that in addition to living with families he would throw off healthcare coverage, Graham would also have to go back to Sunday School to pick up some crucial spiritual lessons and teachings regarding that we are one another’s keepers.  Lessons that he has somehow forgotten during his time in public service and becoming a typical GOP tool of the rich and powerful.  

Workers in the parable recruited late in the day were paid the same as workers who spent the entire day in the field.  Those who worked only a few hours, as complained by the day long workers, shouldn’t get paid as much or benefit the same.  Applying this notion of things to our healthcare system is that our fellow citizens should only have health insurance coverage to the level they deserve and can afford because of the job or work they do.  The social justice notion of Single Payer Universal Healthcare, such as present in every other western democracy, is utter anathema to people like Senator Graham.  They think the working poor or the sick only have the coverage they can afford to buy – sometimes Senator Graham, that comes down to a choice between food and the rent.  How in good conscience and as a person of faith, so heartlessly abandon our fellow citizens to making such decisions.  And don’t give me any of that bullshit about what the states should be responsible for and what the Federal Government should tackle.  In case you hadn’t noticed, Senator Graham, we are all in this together and ignorance of that and how uneven the playing field would be from state to state, simply reinforces a perspective that you are disastrously out of touch with how greatly healthcare concerns every family in this country.  When every person in this country gets the same level of Cadillac healthcare coverage and benefit you do as an elected representative, that’s when the healthcare system in this country will truly be socially just.

Why is it that POTUS 45 and the GOP Congress foam at the mouth over Universal Healthcare issue and not others.  Why for instance when it comes to national defense, they don’t apply the same principle that the level of benefit should be commensurate to what a person can afford.  Why for instance when it comes to our infrastructure like bridges or dams or our electrical grid they fail to foam at the mouth that the rich and powerful should have much better bridges and better dams and better electrical power than the working poor or the sick and disabled.

The thing that repulses me even more, is that our so many members of our GOP Congress proclaim themselves to be Christians!  If so, they hardly understand the principles of God’s Generosity as Jesus taught.  They understand it so poorly that senators like Lindsey Graham truly need to go back to Sunday School and repeat it all over again.  What I wouldn’t do to have photos of Graham sitting on a tiny chair in Sunday School relearning Jesus’ message of God’s Generosity week after week and year after year until he finally gets it down – especially after his latest attempt underway in Congress to push a bill that will eventually eliminate Medicaid/Medicare altogether and get the Federal Government out of being involved in healthcare at.  Graham, I don’t think I want to be you on Judgement Day when God deals with you and your soul-less ways toward your fellow citizens.  You are a severe disappointment as a human being for putting forward a bill in Congress that will throw untold millions off their healthcare coverage.  You understand absolutely zero relative to the principles of God’s Generosity as taught by Jesus.

Single Payer Universal Healthcare is a perfect example of God’s Generosity.  It takes care of all of us without regard to whether you or I have worked all day, all year, or just a few hours, or no time at all.  It only asks that people get the healthcare they need when they need it, nothing less and nothing more.  Like whatever crop needs to be harvested so people can eat and not starve and therefore be healthier, Universal Healthcare is a commodity that benefits us all, just like our National Defense benefits us all, just like the Food and Drug Administration keeps us healthy and safe too.

Single Payer Universal Healthcare that benefits everyone the same, just as the workers found out in Jesus parable above, is a powerful step toward God’s Kingdom here on Earth, or what I like to call the Just and Peaceable Reign of God here on Earth.  Why is this so hard for GOP Congressional Members to see, especially those like Senator Graham who proclaim themselves to be followers of Jesus.  I don’t know what Jesus you follow Senator Graham, but whoever your Jesus is -- he’s utterly unrecognizable to me and to millions of other persons of faith in this country.  The only way healthcare is going to work and do right by everyone in this country is not to put it back onto the states but to make it a right – an inalienable right covered and protected by our Constitution.  Senator Graham, you have forgotten and disastrously lost sight of the preamble of our Constitution and so I remind you of it by repeating it here:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America..”

Get your act together Senator Graham.  Make Jesus proud of you again.  Single Payer Universal Healthcare insures domestic tranquility, provides for the common defense by helping our citizenry be healthy --- and capable of engaging in defense.  Without doubt, Single Payer Universal Healthcare promotes our citizenry’s general welfare and secures blessings not only to ourselves but also to our posterity --- for now and evermore.

Single Payer Universal Healthcare – get it done Senator Graham, and get it done now!

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon   

(Brad Shumate provides spiritual direction ministries in-person, via video-conferencing, by telephone, or through email consultation. If you are interested in benefiting from the healing ministries he offers through spiritual direction, please complete the contact form in the right column of this blog.  Brad will respond within twenty-hours.)          

For Sunday, 9/17/17 - Forgiveness' Blessings & the Costs of Unforgiving

Millennium Chapel for Peace and Forgiveness 

Matthew 18:21–35 NRSV 

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.   For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.  When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him and as he could not pay his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made.  So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’  And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.  But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’  Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’  But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt.  When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place.   Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’  And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.  So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Forgiveness’ Blessings & the Costs of Unforgiving

My heart is often heavy as a psychotherapist when hearing the stories of young adults and/or their families struggling with college loan debt.  When I reflect on the financial aid I received thirty-five to forty years ago for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I feel appalled and ashamed at what we Americans are allowing to happen to our young adult citizens.  My total indebtedness of $6,000 at the end of my schooling in the mid-1980s would be roughly $13,500 today -- a manageable loan.  In addition, I had a very low 3% rate of interest with a term of 25 years.  Those school loan funds bought a bachelor's degree and a professional master's degree that has allowed me to enjoy the blessings of an upper middle-class lifestyle.  The $6,000 that I owed was paid off long ago and long before the twenty-five year term I was originally allowed.  All in all, it was and has been a workable journey.  The life lessons learned along the way have brought many wonderful and phenomenal blessings.

By contrast, today's young adult college graduate averages indebtedness of $37,172 per the The Economist in June 2014.  A total of 44 million borrowers are represented in that figure.  For most of us, we recognize that's a lot of money to owe, especially when real wages for the past several decades, when adjusted for inflation, are going down or stagnant while the cost of living outpaces people's ability to keep up.  Increasingly we have become a society and culture of the haves and have-nots and it is demoralizing, distressing, and pissing off a lot of Americans. Many of our young adults rightly feel they have bestowed them little hope as climate change, indebtedness, automation, and evolving artificial intelligence take their toll -- making it harder and harder for individuals to find sustainable lifestyle and employment.  The frightening results are what our world is becoming as the wealthy become richer, the middle class disappears, and the working poor poorer, leaving few with any sense of safety or security -- especially as they age and the ravages of aging takes its toll. Governments, particularly the unified GOP government of the USA, is now powerfully influenced and manipulated by the wealthy who steadfastly erode the well-being of citizens by working relentlessly to demonize any notion that government is good for us.  The foundations of Western Civilization and illusion of the USA Empire are crumbling.

Globalization was supposedly the answer that in time would right the ship of the ills stated above, but it proved only to be a tool of the wealthy -- adding to their wealth in a filthy insidious way.  For example, whenever the bottom line doesn't please the shareholders, CEOs and corporate boards of directors whack off employees and cast them adrift into seas of hardship.  I am always amazed at what little responsibility corporations and employers have for the workers they lay off.  Western Civilization has this highly disturbed mindset that corporations must survive at all costs while the lives of people they devastate through layoffs is really of no concern.  There is no real and complete responsibility for helping workers find new employment that interests/motivates the laid off worker, there is no responsibility to help laid off workers obtain education and training related to new jobs.  There is no obligation to support those workers financially and ensure their have good healthcare coverage until they are securely established into their new jobs.  There is virtually no social contract with respect to any of this and frankly it ends up being a pretty shitty thing that the wealthy and corporations get away with.

Today, no one personifies these dynamics better than rage prone billionaire POTUS 45.  According to CNN reporters, Dan Merica and Kevin Liptak, in their 9/16/17 article titled "He cut your heart out" -- if a person makes 45 look bad in anyway shape or form, intentionally or unintentionally, you will face a withering torrent of verbally abusive rage that might include 45 ripping the door off a wardrobe to emphasize his point.  Who in their right mind cares to live with that kind of a person, either at work or at home?  And what in the world has become so disturbed in the minds of those voted for 45 that they wanted such an unfit person to be their POTUS?  Perhaps, they have lost all hope and feel there is little to care about anymore, so why not have a rage filled man be constantly on a rant demeaning and throwing people under the bus anytime the whim strikes him?  I guess it probably makes for some kind of entertainment.  

Human family whom I call my church family, we can have things better -- much better.  It will however require engaging our imaginations.  It will require our creativity and resourcefulness.  It will necessitate in each of us gentleness, compassion, patience, forgiveness and generosity that passionately creates safety and security for each and every living soul here on earth.  The prophet Isaiah described this sense of safety and security so poignantly in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Persons of faith refer to such a time as the Just and Peaceable Reign of God,

 "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)

It has been this vision of Isaiah's that drives my own life and ministry as a spiritual director and psychotherapist.  It is this vision that gives me hope.  God has not abandoned us.  If that were so, humanity would have destroyed itself long ago.  Instead, God calls us as the faith community that is the human family, to become something more than we are, something that cannot be achieved through greed, dominance, or toxic raging shaming like that to which POTUS 45 is accustomed.

Such ways of being must be -- and can be – transcended.  “For this reason,” is what Jesus typically said before sharing a story for through his stories and teachings he worked to enable our imaginations and creativity for ushering in the Just and Peaceable Reign of God as have done other diverse prophets, teachers, and healers before him and since him!

So herein is your calling and mine --- to be prophets and teachers and healers.  Not just one of these, but all three.  Obviously there will be, and can be, many pretenders to such a calling, even POTUS 45 can be an excellent pretender.  The authentic prophet and teacher and healer is one who has known forgiveness and extended it – whether that’s forgiveness you extend to yourself, or others, or for a situation or circumstance that harmed or injured you in some fashion.  Jesus demonstrated this during horrifying torture when Roman soldiers pounded metal stakes through his wrists and feet.  As the soldiers did so, Jesus prayed, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Several years ago, I had a dream of being in paralysis and laying chest down on my bed.  A person climbed on my back and attempted to strangle me with a piece of rope.  I knew that I had but one chance to free myself and as the moment approached, the dream abruptly ended as I woke up from screaming and crying out in my sleep.  Not long after that dream, I took steps to remove that person from my life and in time accomplished doing so.  The person went on to live their life the way they wanted and I did the same.  About a year later, during a period of intense work in therapy and spiritual direction, I had another dream.  It was nighttime in the dream and I stood high up on the side of a mountain.  The stars gleamed and sparkled, there was a deep sense of peace within me.  My hands opened with palms up and I saw the rope laying in my hands that had been used to try and end my life and soul.  Slowly the rope began to transition to sand in my hands which I then cast it out toward the sky.  As the sand rose toward the sky it became gleaming sparkling stardust taking up residence as distant new stars.  Warmth and peace came again to my soul for I knew I was free, that I had let go, that I had moved on from that which had bound me and sapped life from the prophet, the teacher, the healer within me.

Today, I embrace the prophet, the teacher, the healer with me.  May you do so the same so the Just and Peaceable Reign of God’s Holy Mountain takes up residence with you -- and through you.

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon USA

(Brad Shumate provides spiritual direction ministries in-person, via video-conferencing, by telephone, or through email consultation. If you are interested in benefiting from the healing ministries he offers through spiritual direction, please complete the contact form in the right column of this blog.  Brad will respond within twenty-hours.)