For 7/29/18 - "Share Generously"

Lectionary Scripture - John 6:1-21 NRSV

by Leonard J. Matthews on Flickr.com

Lectionary Reflection:

One worship resource titles the 7/29/18 lectionary, "Share Generously".  In light of the scripture's story of the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand with merely two fish and five loaves of bread, it asks the question, "When have you looked at a group of people and felt overwhelmed with compassion because the need was so great? What was your response?"

Well, it happened for me in September 2017 in Fargo, North Dakota.  Dawn (my fiancé) and I had arrived in town for the 42nd reunion of the West Fargo High School Class of 1975.  It would be my first time attending a gathering of my classmates since graduation.  This particular class reunion was considered special as it was the year that lalmost all of us turned 60 years old!

  
The late evening of our flight's arrival to Fargo on Thursday, 9/14/17, was totally disorienting for me.  I recognized absolutely nothing and understandably so.  I had not been back to Fargo in over 40 years.  The airport was new.  There had been so much expansion and growth over the years that I was lost.  The streets out of the airport were new. The hotel we were staying at was new to me.  In the windy cold darkness of night, I was never so glad for having a GPS app on my phone!

The change that struck me the most however was during the brief stop we made at a Walmart near the hotel for needed personal care items.  Barely a few moments into the Walmart, I realized the almost entirely Caucasian Fargo of my youth no longer existed.  People of color were every where!  Many were hard at work stocking store shelves while many others were actively shopping for their basic needs.  I felt mesmerized and overjoyed as I heard different languages spoken all around me.

My mind subsequently drifted back to the years of my youth when I heard state and local officials plead for young adults, like myself at the time, not to leave the state but to make their lives and futures there as the state's population was declining frighteningly.  Like many others, I went ahead and left.  Now as I looked at all the people of color in the Fargo Walmart, I realized that North Dakota had found a remedy, e.g. an invitation for immigrants to come and find safety, find community, and lastly become numbered among our citizens!  For North Dakota and particularly the Fargo/Moorhead (MN) metropolitan area, it has been very successful.  The New American Economy Report of August 2016 titled "The Contributions of New Americans in North Dakota" points out the following information/data:

• In 2014, foreign-born residents contributed $542.8 million to the metro area’s GDP, including $13.8 million in state and local taxes. This groups also wields $149.4 million in spending power.
• Foreign-born residents in Fargo tend to have higher levels of educational attainment. In 2014, 27.6% of immigrants in Fargo held at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 23.6% of the U.S.-born population. About 11.3% of the immigrants held advanced degrees, compared with 5.8% of the U.S.-born population.
• In fall 2014, 1,597 students enrolled in colleges and universities in the metro area held temporary resident visas. These students supported 343 local jobs and contributed $36.5 million in spending in that academic year.
• If Fargo retains one half of its international students with a bachelor’s degree or higher after graduation, 373 local jobs will be created within six years, boosting the metro area’s real GDP by $84 million.
• Because of the role immigrants play in the workforce helping companies keep jobs on U.S. soil, it’s estimated that in 2014, the 10,663 immigrants and refugees living in Fargo helped create or preserve 490 local manufacturing jobs that would have otherwise vanished or moved elsewhere.
• Foreign-born households also support federal social programs. In 2014, foreign-born households in Fargo contributed $23.5 million to Social Security and $5.9 million to Medicare
• With the release of this report, the Fargo Human Relations Commission is announcing the commencement of a process that will engage community leaders in an inclusive discussion of what the City of Fargo can do to ensure that all community members are welcomed and encouraged to succeed.

"Share Generously" has indeed been the spirit of much of the Fargo/Moorhead metro area as well as that of the great state of North Dakota as Asians, Hispanics, and West Sub-Saharan Africans call Fargo and North Dakota "home".  And "Share Generously" has obviously resulted in bounty akin to the twelve baskets of leftovers collected the day that Jesus shared a young boy's two fish and five loaves of bread with five thousand.  The remarkable thing is the miracle of that event had little to do with magical or supernatural happenings.  It had to do with the fact that traditionally most people traveling to, and present at such an occasion, already had considerable food hidden on their person and in their clothing -- and miraculously when they saw the Christ blessing and sharing, they became "free of encumbrance" to their fear and shared generously with others who had less or had none at all.

What is my response to all this?  What is my response in light of POTUS 45 who does not want to share generously, whom he and his staffers stoke encumbering fear of immigrants every chance they can with his political base of 40% of this country -- a man whose racism calls out countries as "shit-holes"?  What do I do?  I do more than leave a voicemail or shoot off an email to government authorities that immigrant families should be kept together rather children separated from parents as POTUS 45 ordered ICE to do.  Instead, I advocate here and on Twitter and with members of Congress and 45's administration and the Media that those fleeing unstable countries, those fleeing war-torn countries or countries full of marauding persecuting murdering gangs, have an absolute God-given right to seek asylum in the safety and security of Western Democracies without judgement or prejudice -- and you should advocate the same.  All immigrants seeking safety have a right to be free of unchristian behavior of government authorities like US Attorney General Jeff Sessions quoting Bible verses with a sardonic smile on his face to justify turning asylum seeking immigrant families away from our borders.  I hope members of his faith tradition keep up their efforts to take him to church court.

In all activity of sharing generously, there are blessings for all.  The blessings of safety and security, the blessings of added bounty, the blessings of community.  North Dakota and Fargo have experienced those.  In a place that I perceived as dying when I was 18 to 20 years old, forty years later I returned and witnessed prosperity -- prosperity because of immigrants.  Prosperity that was so dizzying and disorienting, it took me days to get my bearings, to find my old high school building, my middle school, the homes I had lived in, the grocery store where I worked in high school, the bank where I worked as a teller when home from college during the summers.  So incredibly much had changed.  

Long story short, I admire Fargo and what it's become.  No matter what anyone says, the data and statistics prove that immigrants and their families seeking safety are vitally important to our national well-being and the well-being of all Western Democracies.  Life on the ground in North Dakota is good and makes clear what the Common Good can become when we open our hands and our hearts and our prayers for the need and benefit of all whom "The One" calls children of God.

Brad Shumate

Free of Encumbrance

Eugene, Oregon

USA 

St. Louis Immigration Rally -- February 4, 2017 - by Paul Sableman

     

         

For Sunday, 7/8/19 "A Prophet is Not Accepted....."

Mark 6:1-13 (NRSV) states a prophet is not accepted in his own country, among his own people, even among his own family.  I know and understand this now.  Once I accepted that truth for my life and being, even as Jesus did for himself, I became "free of encumbrance" to those entities.  I became considerably freer to speak my mind and my heart.  I was free to embrace the mystic within me and speak the words God's Spirit desired me to share with the world around me.  I no longer had to be toe to toe in obeisance to a person who proclaimed their self God's Prophet for an entire religious tradition and movement. 

The freedom God's Spirit gave me, hard won over the course of seven years of intensive individual psychotherapy and individual spiritual direction with a professor of interfaith spirituality since leaving the faith tradition in which I was raised, now enables me to say the following:  "You never had a right to expect me to be a follower in lock-step with your theology, you never had a right to expect that of me as a member, you never had the right to expect that of me of one of your ordained ministers, you never had the right to expect that of me as one of your World Church appointed ministers.  As a result of such expectation toward many, you are suffering the consequences of such expectations and you will continue to suffer until you embrace the task of reconciliation with all the billions of diverse souls who live now -- and have ever lived and saw God and Jesus not in quite the way you think they should.  May you embrace the task and journey toward reconciliation with God's great and grand diversity throughout all the world in a manner you should have done from the very beginning of your movement.

Lastly for a people who chose to place in power a wannabe dictator like POTUS 45, an unwell man who wants the American Democracy to make him POTUS for Life, who considers it treasonous if you and I do not grovel in adoration before him -- ask yourselves how much longer you are willing to live with his lies, his falsehoods, his failed promises, his willingness to victimize and traumatize others -- especially very young children by tearing them from their parents' arms, using their trauma as a means to excuse his racism and his demonizing of others for his own failed policies and executive orders.  Look at yourselves, examine your spiritual self, and then ask yourself if truly he is what you want to emulate before the World.  If not, have courage to be the prophet -- the prophet that is not accepted.

Brad Shumate

Free of Encumbrance

Eugene, Oregon USA