Liberal Christian Commentary

Golden Bull, Golden Bear: Year A, Proper 23

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:41:00 +0000

Exodus 32:1-14; Isaiah 25:1-9; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

The Golden Calf! What a story for our times with global credit markets crashing, and panicked investors stripping off their assets and thrusting them into gold and cash money markets.

The Elves have set it all up for us, as usual. On the one hand, undisciplined people, unable to wait for guidance from their leader who has gone up the mountain to seek guidance from God Himself, have forgotten who they are, and who saved them from the worst kind of oppression. Psalm 106 tells how “Moses, [God’s] chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.” But Matthew’s Jesus has no time for compassion: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” On the other hand, Isaiah sings of the great feast, the banquet on the mountain, prepared for the just at the end of time. Paul exults in the nearness of the Lord, and the beloved Psalm 23 leads us gently home.

The choice is clear, if stark: right-wing conservatism, or left-wing liberalism; the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie; violent apocalyptic judgment or non-violent distributive justice-compassion. The conflict is as old as time. Once more we are sent back to the four questions of the apocalypse :

1) What is the nature of God? Violent or non-violent?
2) What is the nature of Jesus’ message? Inclusive or exclusive?
3) What is faith? Literal belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice?

This week’s focus is on Jesus’s message.

The parable of the wedding celebration appears in three versions: Matthew 22:1-14, Luke 14:16-24, and Thomas 64:1-12. Matthew’s version is the most elaborate, and the most compromised with contemporary First Century Christian concerns. Jerusalem has been destroyed, along with Jewish temple-centered religious practice; the Romanization of society has brought systems of patronage and collaboration. Anyone who isn’t properly dressed, who doesn’t fulfill the proper qualifications, is subject to exclusionary judgment. Only the elect can be trusted to be part of the community.

The version in Thomas, found in The Five Gospels, is much simpler. Here, a person is receiving guests, and has prepared a dinner party, not a wedding party. Thomas has no reference to invading armies that destroy the city. But the party-giver is frustrated when four invited guests turn him down. He has his slave go out and “bring back whomever you find to have dinner.” Then the transcriber of the sayings collected in Thomas opines, “Buyers and merchants [will] not enter the places of my Father,” (The Five Gospels, p. 509), which puts a very different spin on the story.

The third version in Luke is not included in any of the Revised Common Lectionary readings for the three-year cycle. Apparently the Elves decided that Matthew’s version is the definitive one for Christian theology and practice. However, the Jesus Seminar scholars point out that the version in Luke is likely the closest to what the historical Jesus would have told, although it too is permeated with early Christian piety. Imagine the scene, based on the stripped down version (The Five Gospels p. 353):

When Jesus was in Jericho, he encountered a head toll collector – a rich man named Zacchaeus. Later that evening, Jesus arrives for the banquet at Zach’s house. After the meal, as the wine jug is passed among the reclining guests, Zach asks Jesus what is the Kingdom of God? What is it like? How do we find it?

Jesus says, “There was a man who held an important position in Herod Antipas’ administration. He wanted to give a dinner party for some local businessmen so that he could recruit them to act as liaison with the Roman proconsul. But they declined the invitation for perfectly good reasons – don’t forget, it’s the law that if the Romans draft you for some project, you can finish your own work first. So later, this guy sends his servant around again telling his cronies that the feast is ready, but they all refuse to come. In a rage, now, the host tells the servant to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. . . .” Jesus looks around at the group, but they don’t seem to get it. He goes on: “When he sees that there is still room in his banquet hall, he sends his servant out into the countryside to round up people at sword-point.”

This parable is a huge joke, which does not translate well in a 21st Century world where the Roman patronage system no longer is in force. According to John Dominic Crossan, in First Century Rome, everyone participated in the patronage system, from God to the Emperor, to the noble classes, to the merchants, the traders, the military, servants, slaves, and the totally disenfranchised. Everyone was either a patron or a client, and everyone had both patrons and clients, people to whom and from whom favors or commercial debt was owed. The way to repay the debt among the upper classes was to hold a banquet, usually a sacrificial banquet, in which an animal (or several) were slaughtered in the temple, the blood poured out for the gods, and the meat shared among the guests – all of whom were clients of the one giving the feast. For a guest to refuse to attend would be social, political, and commercial suicide, regardless of where one was in the social strata. For a host to then fill the banquet hall with people with whom one did not and would never do business would be ludicrous. There would be no possibility of ever receiving an invitation or favor in return.

But of such is the Kingdom of God. This story is about grace, not apocalyptic judgment.

As for the Golden Bull, the temptation to extrapolate the metaphor to include pious diatribes against Wall Street Greed is great, but irrelevant. Moses makes his own Wall Street deal with God when he reminds God that if God takes out his frustration and anger on the people, God will look bad in the eyes of all the surrounding tribes and nations, including – especially – Egypt. “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster he planned to bring on his people.” Then in the part we never read in any of the 3-year cycle of the Common Lectionary (Exodus 32:15-35), Moses takes on the roll of God and commands the Sons of Levi (who answer the call to be on the Lord’s side, and later become priests) to kill “your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.” So a great blood bath ensues. Perhaps in order to reinforce the point, by the end of chapter 32, God has gone back on his promise to Moses not to punish the people, and sends a plague on them “because they made the calf – the one that Aaron made.”

Taking Matthew’s version of the parable of the wedding feast as definitive, and including the entire story about Aaron and the Golden Calf, puts post-modern, 21st Century followers of Jesus, in the same camp with an avenging, double-crossing Moses in the service of a capricious God. Is the nature of God then violent, and is Jesus’s message then exclusive and relentlessly judgmental? Or are these stories illustrations of the constant human struggle with the normalcy of civilization, and the consequences of failing to act with distributive justice-compassion?

The relevance of the 21st Century Christian message for sustainable life on Planet Earth depends on the answer we choose. As we have seen in the past several lessons, in the realm of God, the requirements of Empire for debt and death have no power.

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Murder in the Vineyard: Year A, Proper 22

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:08:00 +0000

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 19; Psalm 80:7-15; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

Well the Elves won’t have it any other way for this Proper 22. The sermon practically writes itself: Choose from the 10 Commandments; the story of the leased vineyard, including “the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”; or even the portion of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which lends itself to easy listening: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Any lay-leader worth his or her salt can write the liturgy for this Sunday blindfolded: The choir has to sing the chorus from Handel’s Creation (Psalm 19): “The Heavens are telling the glory of God!” Use the litany responses from Psalm 80 in the Prayer of Confession: “Restore us O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” Preface the sermon with “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Actually, I’m serious about the liturgy – except for the closing words of Psalm 80, which have always struck me as the height of egoistic presumption when removed from their context – as they usually are when used routinely. But I digress. The sermon is going to take more work than might appear necessary at first glance.

To begin with, Paul’s words are hardly easy listening if the dogma of 2,000 years can somehow be put aside. Paul is not talking about belief in a story about someone who came back from the dead to scare us into piety. Paul is talking about the price paid daily for participating in the ongoing work begun by Jesus of restoring God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. Paul’s sense of justice did not come from conventional rules and laws that keep empires in power. His sense of justice (righteousness) – his conviction of what is right – comes from his trust in the life example and teachings of Jesus – whom he dared to call “Lord” in the face of the Roman Emperor, who claimed the same title. Paul hopes he can die for the same reason Jesus did, and somehow participate in the incarnation of God’s realm – as the Christ does. These are ecstatic, mystic words, which cannot – must not – be taken literally. The parable of the leased vineyard provides a clue into what Paul was trying to say.

Matthew’s version of the leased vineyard (the parable of the wicked tenants) quotes the imagery from Isaiah 5 as the introduction, and then closes with Jesus’s implication that he himself is “the stone that the builders rejected.” The vine and the vineyard have been used as a metaphor for the chosen people of God since the beginning. Early Christians would have had no problem using that metaphor to refer to Jesus, Jesus’s new Way, and ultimately to themselves as heirs of the promise. The cornerstone or keystone metaphor is likely a common early Christian reference to Jesus, who did become the foundation for the new way, after being rejected by both imperial Rome and the traditional Jewish members of the synagogues, whether in Jerusalem or the diaspora.

Some Biblical scholars disagree, but these commentaries take the view that Jesus himself did not claim to be the Messiah. That claim was made about him during his lifetime, but the seeming prescience that he would suffer and die for sins was never part of his message. Nor did Jesus’s authentic message include apocalyptic judgment, such as Matthew’s Jesus continues to threaten in this parable as well as others. Matthew’s framework transforms Jesus’s parable into an allegory about himself for Matthew’s Christian community, thereby robbing the story of its power.

The scholars of the Jesus Seminar consider the version of the parable in Thomas 65 to be closer to the authentic historical Jesus because it is not overlaid with Christian interpretation. Here is the version from Thomas 65 (The Five Gospels p. 510):

“A [. . .] person owned a vineyard and rented it to some farmers, so they could work it and he could collect its crop from them. He sent his slave so the farmers would give him the vineyard’s crop. They grabbed him, beat him, and almost killed him, and the slave returned and told his master. His master said, “Perhaps he didn’t know them.” He sent another slave, and the farmers beat that one as well. Then the master sent his son and said, “Perhaps they’ll show my son some respect.” Because the farmers knew that he was the heir to the vineyard, they grabbed him and killed him.”

Stripped down to the story alone, the meaning is no longer so clear. When the story is seen in the context of First Century Roman imperial oppression, the meaning is even less clear. Jesus’s followers, far more familiar with the realities of tenant farming for absentee landlords, and the economic precariousness of everyday life, might well have asked,“What’s wrong with killing the heir to the vineyard and keeping the crop for ourselves?” After all, as reported in Matthew’s version, the people who heard it agreed: “[The owner] will [merely] lease the vineyard out to other farmers who will deliver their produce to him at the proper time.” So why not take what we can? Why not lie in wait for the owner himself to show up and kill him too?

The Jesus Seminar Scholars suggest that this parable as it stands on its own is comparable to the parable of the shrewd manager in Luke 16:1-7 because it deals with the economic realities of 1st Century Palestine. Both parables could certainly be interpreted in terms of past as well as present economic realities in the United States. (Note that the commentary on the shrewd manager from one year ago mentions the then-emerging crisis in the U.S. mortgage market.) However, I suggest it is even more comparable to the parable of the unforgiving slave from three weeks ago: “When the parable of the unforgiving slave is reduced to the bare bones of the story itself, when Matthew’s opinion about God’s avenging judgment is removed, we find that the slave for whom a vast debt was forgiven is held accountable not to his master, but to his own integrity.” Likewise, the scheming vineyard caretakers in today’s parable might be justified in their desire for revenge against the unjust system that keeps them beholden to the land owner, with no recourse should the crop fail or should the owner demand the entire profit – either of which were distinct possibilities. The version of the parable in the Sayings Gospel of Thomas leaves us hanging. But Jesus would not have advocated a violent and unjust solution to an equally violent and unjust situation. Jesus always shows us the way to Covenant, never Empire.

Jesus probably was very familiar with the prophet Isaiah’s Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard. What he would not have been able to do is transform the reference in verse 7 into his own death. Isaiah in Exile laments that the people have rejected the law – “The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel . . . he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness [justice] but heard a cry [oppression]!” The Elves should not have stopped the reading there. The Song is not about foretelling the death of Jesus; it is about the failure of the people to honor God’s Covenant: “[A]s the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their blossom go up like dust: for they have rejected the instruction of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.” Isaiah 5:24.

In Jewish tradition the giving of the law is celebrated 50 days after the Passover. Christianity appropriated this festival, overthrowing the original meaning – the giving of the Jewish law (Shavuot) – and replacing it with the establishment of the church of Jesus Christ (Pentecost). The Elves constructed the Christian lectionary so that we arrive at one of the stories of the origin of “the 10 Commandments” three months later. What most Christians have never been taught is that the great law of Moses is far more than the first ten rules. The law codifies God’s insistence on distributive justice-compassion, and the Old Testament is the story of the struggle to keep that law.

Jesus’s followers would have known the whole law and the prophets. The metaphor of the lover’s vineyard – God’s realm, God’s people – would also have been part of their daily mythos, as they suffered under Roman oppression and prayed for deliverance from injustice. Jesus’s story about the leased vineyard may well have reminded them of Isaiah’s Song, and the choice to be made. The recorder of Thomas’ sayings gospel ends many of Jesus’s words with “Anyone here with two ears had better listen!” The Unforgiving Slave learned the hard way that in God’s realm, debt has no power. Likewise, in God’s realm, killing the heir will not restore the vineyard to the beloved.

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It’s the Economy, Stupid: Year A, Proper 21

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:35:00 +0000

Exodus 17:1-7; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16; Psalm 25:1-9; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

The readings for this Sunday from Matthew and Paul’s letter to the Philippians are usually construed as being about “belief” in Jesus’s power to save us from hell. The overarching theme, however, when the prophet Ezekiel’s word from God is also considered, is personal accountability in God’s realm where distributive justice-compassion prevails.

The exiled Israelites in Babylon found God to be unfair, perhaps because God refused to allow them to blame either their parents or the people left behind in Jerusalem for their plight. To add insult to injury, the promise of salvation (life and justice) is extended to anyone, including the Babylonians, who “turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all [God’s] statutes and do what is lawful and right.” Matthew’s Jesus presents a choice between a son who gives lip service but doesn’t follow through, and a son who first refuses to comply with his father’s request, but later does so. On its face, the story follows the lesson from Ezekiel. But Matthew’s vignette is not a parable about justice; it is a cautionary tale about shame and honor in a first century Jewish culture. The one son first honors his father by saying he will do as asked, then shames his father by reneging on the promise. The second son first shames his father by refusing to follow orders, then honors his father by obeying. The end result is conventional piety, not radical love. Matthew then compounds his error by casting the lesson in terms of the failure of some in his Jewish community to believe the apocalyptic message brought by John the Baptist.

At a time when the U.S. economy is on the brink of depression and threatens to take down the rest of the world with it, Christians should not be wasting their time on a Sunday ranting about petty sin and the threat of hell in the next life.

Wall Street employees, from the janitors to the CEOs, believed the glory days would never end. We were all living the American Dream – own your own home. No money down, no need to prove you are even employed. (I myself managed to acquire a home equity “liar loan” because of my pristine credit report.) Borrow money to make money. Buy a house and flip it before the balloon payment comes due or the ARM readjusts upwards. The rich flipped new subdivisions. The poor flipped foreclosed properties.

Now the party’s over, and the bull is hitched to the cart, hauling whoever is left into exile. Forty thousand people are in jeopardy of losing their jobs in New York City alone. The last investment banks standing (Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have cashed in their chips and pledged to play by the rules. Wall Street will never be the same.

“O House of Israel,” Ezekiel reports God’s voice: “Are my ways unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair?” Whoever persists in unjust policies will die, according to God’s imperial rule. “None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die.” This is not retribution or payback. This is not God’s version of the blood feud that involves generations. This is the consequence of failing to act with justice-compassion in one’s own life.

How quickly the conservative arch-capitalists dive for the socialist button. Who would ever have imagined that the Bush Administration would nationalize the U.S. financial system? Surely that has a much greater impact on the world economy than Hugo Chavez nationalizing the oil companies in Venezuela. But wait – who exactly is being saved here? To whom are the gold, silver, and green parachutes being handed out?

From prison, Paul writes his pastoral letter to the Philippians: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Jesus’s radical abandonment of his own self-interest meant he was “obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Paul is not talking about the kind of pious obedience demanded by the fictitious father in Matthew’s sketch. Paul is talking about the kind of obedience that comes from total commitment to distributive justice-compassion. He is not talking about leveraging debt in order to amass fortunes that seduce others into debt they cannot afford. Paul is talking about creating the realm of God on earth by letting “the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who . . . emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” In such a realm, greed has no place, and debt has no power.

“Only the person who sins shall die” – no more serial retribution, says Ezekiel’s God. But the heirs to this promise are not restricted to the people of Israel. Anyone who turns from sin lives. The Israelites in the 6th Century BCE said that’s not fair. In the 21st Century CE, some are calling for punishment of the speculators and managers who seem to be responsible for the financial melt-down. Others are holding individual people responsible for making poor choices, or for not having the good sense to avoid the deal that seemed too good to be true. But this is pious revenge. If justice is distributive, there is no need for punishment beyond the consequences already befalling all of us who are caught in the system. If we truly turn from our destructive, unjust habits, the old patterns will not be repeated.

Meanwhile, the Hebrew people wandering in the Sinai desert – like the exiles in Babylon and the skeptics in Matthew’s synagogue – also continue to not believe God’s promises. They complained last week that God led them out of bondage in Egypt so that they could die of hunger. This week they moan that they will die of thirst in the desert. In neither case are they able to trust the Covenant. God brought them manna from heaven that magically appeared overnight. Moses produced water from a rock. What’s next? Is there any miracle that will convince us to trust in the power of the Covenant?

This metaphor risks getting stretched beyond recognition, but the point still stands: God’s realm includes all of humanity. As soon as we abandon justice-compassion, or ignore the consequences of our actions that lead to unjust systems, we are caught in the powerful currents that propel civilizations into empires. This is not an indictment of human nature, as John Dominic Crossan is careful to make clear. Empire can happen when people begin to organize themselves into societies, but Empire is not necessarily inevitable. The primal myth of the Hebrew people tells us not to abandon hope. Sign onto the Covenant. Pick up your Blackberry and start making sustainable deals that insure that no part of the interdependent web of life on this Planet is compromised. “I have no pleasure in the death of any [life form], says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.”

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Harvest – Year A Proper 20

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:17:00 +0000

Exodus 16:2-15; Jonah 3:10-4:11; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Psalm 145:1-8; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

This year (2008) the Autumnal Equinox falls on the third Sunday in September – proper 20 in Year A. A full harvest moon happened on the previous Monday. The second harvest of the year is underway in the Northern Hemisphere. On the U.S. East Coast, the effects of three hurricanes in as many weeks – two in the Gulf and one that scurried up the Eastern seaboard, left the air heavy with tropical humidity, and the summer prolonged. Pumpkins and hay bales are beginning to predominate local farm markets. The last of the sweet corn, heirloom variety tomatoes, burgundy beans, zucchini, eggplant, and peaches are soon to be overtaken by the squashes, apples, sweet potatoes, and other root vegetables. Earth’s bounty is there for the picking, canning, pickling, freezing.

Matthew’s parable of the workers in the vineyard is a harvest story. As usual, Matthew’s pious comment at the end has nothing to do with the point. According to the Jesus Seminar commentary in The Five Gospels, the parable is not about the reversal of fortune for the greedy or the self-righteous (“the last will be first and the first last”) but about frustrated expectations. Conventional fairness in the imperial marketplace certainly does get turned upside down, whether from the point of view of the rich proprietor, or the poor workers hired throughout the day. But Jesus is talking about more than frustrated expectations. Jesus is illustrating how In God’s realm the reward is bestowed whenever the program is joined. That is the nature of God’s Covenant.

“Covenant” is the defining word for all these readings, including the “alternative” portion of the story of Jonah, and the workers in the vineyard. In the Exodus story, the Covenant is clear, as God makes sure the people have the food they need for the day. Covenant is not so clear to Jonah, who is clueless from beginning to end. How can you throw a tantrum over a bush that is here today and gone tomorrow, God asks, when there are 120,000 people whose ignorance keeps them in bondage? Never mind the non-sequitur about the animals in sackcloth (Jonah 3:8) – perhaps they were in solidarity with the people who realized they needed to sign onto God’s Covenant in order to save themselves. The part Jonah failed to realize is that God’s Covenant is extended to everyone who turns to God’s way of distributive justice. No questions asked, no retribution for past sins required.

Read superficially, this feels suspiciously like “cheap grace.” Certainly that is what Jonah thought. If God is going to settle for cheap grace, Jonah would prefer to be dead, thank you very much. The deadbeats hanging around the well all day, pinching the women, get the same wages as the pious ones who worked from dawn. The proprietor looks like a typical CEO, cheating his workers with bait-and-switch promises of a days’ pay for a days’ work without defining the length of the day or the rate. How fair or just is that? It’s just like the old miscreant on his deathbed who confesses Jesus as Lord, and the angels waft him to heaven.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote the book on Grace, says: “The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. . . . Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth . . . An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. . . .” The key in Matthew’s parable is the timing. God’s reward is paid as soon as the worker agrees to the bargain. And what is the bargain? To be first? To be last? Far from a position in line, the bargain – the Covenant – is in Bonhoeffer’s words, true (costly) grace: “the Incarnation of God.” When Paul says in Philippians 1:21, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain,” he is talking about incarnation – taking on the life and the purpose and the work that Jesus did. In Paul’s experience, to die doing that work is deliverance. Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace” is the radical abandonment of self-interest so that the great work of distributive justice-compassion can continue, and God’s Kingdom can come. The promised reward is deliverance from injustice – whether we live or die.

The Elves have conveniently abandoned the remainder of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Suddenly we switch to Philippians for the time leading up to Advent and Year B. Romans 15:4-13 was cherry-picked for Advent in Year A. Romans 16:25-27 is used peripherally on the fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B (stay tuned).

But despite the Elves’ mysterious work, Paul’s point still stands, whether it is by polemic in Romans, or by pastoral in Philippians. Like Matthew’s parable and Jonah’s tale, this is not easy piety, nor is it a children’s story to be tossed off on a Sunday morning. Paul is writing from prison, where the conditions were primitive and horrific: so bad, that it is possible they made his friend Epaphroditus ill to the point of threatening his life. We don’t know what Paul did that landed him in jail, but we can safely bet the rent that he wasn’t preaching about salvation from hell in the next life, which poses no threat to Empire. Paul got into trouble for the same reason Jesus did. Preaching deliverance from injustice in this life calls into question everything that Empire does.

Radical abandonment of self-interest brings justice and life – the presence of God. The joke – which Jonah resented, Jesus knew, and Paul realized – is that the Covenant includes everybody and anybody who is willing to sign on. Jonah only went to Ninevah after his journey into death in the belly of the fish. But Jonah didn’t die – he held onto his pious convention like a three-year-old. He would rather hold his breath until he turns blue than acknowledge that God cares more about saving 120,000 sinners from injustice than one recalcitrant, self-righteous prophet.

Being willing to sign onto the Covenant and actually sticking to the agreement are not the same, however, as Moses found to his chagrin, and the Elves conveniently decline to include in the reading (Exodus 16:16-30). God might deliver us from the shadow of death, but as soon as times get dicey, we complain. God gives us manna from heaven – the perfect food – and the only requirement is that we trust it will be there. But we do not trust, we hoard – and find that what we have hoarded has rotted overnight. Not only that, God provides enough so that over the Sabbath – the holy day of rest – we do not need to go out and gather food. But we do not trust that what was provided will be enough, and we go out on the Sabbath to get more, and find none.

21st Century life is largely divorced from the natural rhythms of the seasons and of the spirit of the land itself. Inhabitants of the civilized world have a long history of setting ourselves apart from and above that world. As a result, farmers – who should know better – over-fertilize, over-graze, over-plant, play the markets, and rely on chemical short-cuts for seeds, pest control, water supply. Commodities such as silver, gold, copper, coal, and oil are all exploited to the detriment of the Planet. “Mountaintop removal” – also known as “strip mining” – destroys in a day what took the Planet hundreds of millennia to create. “Surface mining” leaves slag piles in the middle of farmland and suburban areas. All of these activities are directly responsible for the decline in potable water and breathable air, and contribute to climate change world-wide that results in devastating storms, floods, droughts, fires, and mass extinctions of diverse life forms.

Ninevah’s animals in sackcloth might be telling us that the “Incarnation of God” is not confined to humanity. In this time of harvest, Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace” means the radical abandonment of self-interest toward all forms of life, including the non-human and (to us) non-sentient inhabitants of Earth: "Costly grace" means sustainable action; eco-justice.

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As We Forgive: Year A, Proper 19

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:25:00 +0000

Exodus 14:19-31; Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21; Genesis 50:15-21; Psalm 114; Psalm 103; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

A conventional pass through the readings for this Sunday leads us to a vision of retributive judgment against the enemies of God: As Moses and the multitude of Israelites cross the Red Sea, God protects those who have signed on to the Covenant. The Elves tell us the alternative Old Testament reading (Genesis 50:15-21) is closely related to the Gospel reading. Joseph forgives his dastardly brothers, who sold him into slavery in Egypt. Sure enough in Matthew 18:21-22, Peter’s question about how much forgiveness is enough is paired with the parable of the unforgiving slave, instead of with last week’s admonitions about how to deal with recalcitrant members of the community. Matthew’s Jesus threatens divine punishment of those followers who fail to forgive their friends and neighbors who might owe them a debt of money, gratitude, respect, or other payment for wrongdoing. Paul seems to agree, as he cautions the faithful not to judge one another, but to leave judgment to God. “We do not live to ourselves,” Paul pontificates. “[W]hether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

The Jesus Seminar commentators in The Five Gospels (p. 218), make a distinction between a parable, which has a single point, and an allegory, which “is coded theology.” By putting the story of the unforgiving slave in the context of how much forgiveness is required for salvation, Matthew turns the authentic Jesus’s parable into allegory. In other words, instead of a parable with a confounding ending that causes the hearers to wonder what the trick is, Matthew’s Jesus hits us over the head with piety: “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you, unless you find it in your heart to forgive each one of your brothers and sisters.” Taking that point to its logical conclusion, given the juxtaposition of this reading with Genesis, even Joseph, who suffered the ultimate betrayal and was sold into slavery, was able to forgive all his brothers. Surely Christians – who have overthrown all that Old Testament tribalism – can do as well, if not better than that.

Matthew’s interpretation of Jesus’s parable paints God as requiring retributive judgment. But Paul writes 50 years after the death of Jesus, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? . . . each of us will be accountable to God.” Being accountable to one’s “lord” is not the same as being judged less than moral by one’s neighbors. Paul suggests that people may have been inviting others to join the Christian community in Rome as a set-up, or as Paul puts it, “for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.” Dietary customs (“The weak eat only vegetables”) are not usually fighting offenses in the post-modern world. Instead, the clash of opinions about gun ownership, reproductive choice, homosexuality, and theories about social and economic conditions has prompted deadly attacks on churches and communities from both the left and the right. In such a polarized environment, judgment wins the day, as complex thought is reduced to bumper sticker code that appeals to fear. Accountability is left for dead.

Paul’s point is that judging others is a waste of time and energy because each of us is ultimately accountable to God. But to whom or what are we accountable in a post-Christian, non-theistic world? When the parable of the unforgiving slave is reduced to the bare bones of the story itself, when Matthew’s opinion about God’s avenging judgment is removed, we find that the slave for whom a vast debt was forgiven is held accountable not to his master, but to his own integrity.

Because Matthew is the only one who tells this particular parable, it is perhaps unfair to have it stand alone without Matthew’s commentary. But the Jesus Seminar scholars thought that the story alone was the kind of story that Jesus liked to tell. So here we are, around the camp fire. We come in a bit late, so don’t hear what prompted Jesus to start the story the way he did. . . .

“Now I’ll tell you why God’s realm is like a land owner who decided to settle accounts with his slaves,” Jesus says. He finishes off his last bite of fish, and licks his fingers. Mary Magdalene tucks a loaf of bread into the coals to warm, uncorks the wineskin, and starts it on its rounds. Andrew throws another log on the fire. Somebody hushes a child and points at Jesus.

“So the first account he looks at, the slave owes him $10 million.”

“10 million!” “No way!” “No wonder the guy needed to close his accounts.” “This crook ripped off his entire estate!”

Jesus goes on: “Obviously, he couldn’t pay it back, so the land owner ordered him to be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had.” Jesus looks around at the company. “Sort of like you and Zach, Hannah.” Hannah hugs the child, and Zach shivers and wraps his arms around his knees.

“Anyway, the slave begs forgiveness, reminds the land owner what an excellent steward he has been in other ways, and promises he will pay it all back.” Jesus pauses for a moment. We are all expecting the worst for the slave for his impertinence: jail, torture, exile – but then Jesus says, “This land owner was compassionate. This master let that slave go and canceled the debt.”

It’s a joke. Several people start laughing. But Jesus isn’t finished with the story.

“Wait,” he says, “There’s more. As soon as the slave got out of there, he jumped one of his fellow slaves who owed him $100 and demanded payment immediately. Well of course the guy begged for mercy, but the slave wasn’t interested. Instead, he threw the guy in prison until he paid the debt. When the rest of the slaves realized what had happened, they complained to the land owner.”

“Why? The slave was within his rights,” says Judas.

“The land owner called the slave back and rescinded the agreement, and threw the slave into jail to be tortured until he could repay it all.”

Silence. A twig snaps in the fire. Jesus pulls the warm loaf of bread out of the coals. He breaks the bread into two pieces, and lifts it up in his hands. Then he closes his eyes and says, “Abba, may your name be praised. You provide us with the bread we need for the day.” Jesus passes the bread to the people on either side of him. “Forgive us our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us.”

In the stripped down parable, the subject matter is clearly economic debt – a life or death fact in the 1st Century. The followers of Jesus presumably were the debtors, not the ones to whom debt was owed, hence the conundrum and the open meaning. What debt do we forgive, if no debt is owed to us? Debt is concerned with either the past or the future, never the present moment, which is all that matters in God’s realm. In God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, where bread for the day is provided, where rain falls on the just and the unjust, debt has no power.

BLOG ARCHIVE

Yes, But . . . : Proper 18, Year A

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:59:00 +0000

Exodus 12:1-14; Ezekiel 33:7-11; Psalm 149; Psalm 119:33-40; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

The Elves must have tied on blindfolds then riffled the pages and planted a finger on the verses from Romans and from Matthew. How else to come up with opposing teachings from Peter’s Jerusalem faction (“If [they] refuse to listen . . . treat [them] like you would a pagan or toll collector”) and the Apostle Paul, sent off to bring the Jesus story to those very pagans, jailors, collaborators and sinners throughout the Roman empire (“Love is the fulfilling of the law”).

When confronted with blatant contradictions in the gospels, go back to the four questions for the apocalypse:

1) What is the nature of God? Violent or non-violent?
2) What is the nature of Jesus’ message? Inclusive or exclusive?
3) What is faith? Literal belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice?

For Christians, the answers to these four questions frame the difference between the continuing normalcy of civilization and its retributive systems of control and participation in the ongoing program of restoring God’s distributive justice-compassion, as taught by Jesus. The answers for the authoritarian right (Empire) are: violent, exclusive, literal belief, and salvation from hell in the next life. The answers for the partnership on the left (Covenant) are non-violent, inclusive, commitment to the great work, and liberation from injustice in this life, here and now. These answers provide guideposts to the authentic teachings of Jesus, and to a faith that might swing the balance to sustainable, conscious life on Planet Earth.

Matthew’s Jesus is spelling out the ground rules for living in Matthew’s Jerusalem community. They are bogged down in the minutiae of normal civilization, where “justice” is based on what can be proved or witnessed to by at least two, but ideally three people. The Elves stop short of verses 21 and 22, where the hair-splitting continues as Peter demands to know how many times one person must forgive another.

This is easy piety. Paul is dishing out the rough stuff. “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. . . . The [ten] commandments are summed up in this word: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” In that context, verses 11-14 of this amazing letter to the Romans cannot possibly be reduced to apocalyptic judgment upon petty sin. Paul did believe that the day of the Lord’s restoration of the Kingdom of distributive justice-compassion was imminent – and indeed it is. All that is required is to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light . . .” Just like Jesus said – the Kingdom of God is here now, all we have to do is look and listen, all we have to do is step into that parallel universe.

Ah, yes, but . . .

Coal companies in West Virginia complain of lost profits because of increased government oversight of mine safety.
Worse are the outrageous actions of Agriprocessors, a kosher meat-packing plant in Iowa. After a raid by the Immigration Department in May arrested half its workers, the company has continued to cut corners on wages, working conditions, health, and safety, and has deliberately recruited workers from such disenfranchised populations as residents of a homeless shelter in Texas, Somali refugees from Minnesota, unemployable former prisoners from other states in the midwest, and unsuspecting people from the island of Palau, who are not subject to U.S. immigration rules because they belong to a former United Nations trusteeship, now administered by the United States. One wonders where the U.S. Government has actually intervened in this case?

Meanwhile, back in the Old Testament, the Elves skip all the nasty plagues visited upon the hapless Egyptians and cut to the chase: The Passover ritual is a blood ritual that identifies clearly who belongs to God and who does not, and Ezekiel is the sentinel – the guardian of the faith, who warns the people when they are slipping into injustice and away from God’s rule.

In fairness to the Elves, the lectionary readings are not intended to coincide. The passage cherry-picked from Ezekiel is the “alternate,” to be used in case it is more pertinent to the needs of the local congregation. Nevertheless, the exodus from Egypt after the commitment of the people to God and the later exile to Babylon might be seen as parallel metaphors. Both are mass movements of the Hebrew people from their settled existence. Both events were triggered by corporate injustice – the oppression of the Hebrew people by the Egyptian Pharaoh on the one hand, and on the other, the complicity with injustice by the Israelite nation in their own land. Moses is the leader of the exodus, Ezekiel is the prophet that went to Babylon.

God seems to revel in deliberately “hardening the heart” of Pharaoh so that Moses can demonstrate God’s awesome power through nine plagues. Only when the first-born children start dying does Pharaoh relent. Then he does not stop at merely letting the people go, he throws them out. God tells Ezekiel that if he warns the people about turning away from God, and the people pay no attention, then God will destroy the people, and their blood will be on their own heads. However, if Ezekiel does not warn the people, and they turn away from God, the people will be destroyed, and Ezekiel along with them.

The point seems to be that the leaders are accountable for the fidelity of the people to God’s rule, which is distributive justice-compassion, and the leaders are equally accountable for the consequences of infidelity. What an interesting concept for 21st Century civilizations, when the more closely a candidate for office is identified with conventional piety (sexual abstinence for the unmarried; social and political exclusion for GLBT people; unquestioning compliance with authority), the greater the probability that even the appearance of impropriety signals a lack of personal integrity.

We may ask, who belongs to God today, and who are the sentinels?

Keeping the 4 Questions and the partnership answers in mind, (non-violent God, inclusive message, commitment to the great work, and liberation from injustice in this life, here and now), injustice must be recognized, named, acknowledged, and owned. The Ten Commandments (that great foundation for conventional piety) are irrelevant, says Paul. What matters is the radical abandonment of self-interest: “. . . make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” This is not about petty sexual sin. It is about comfort at the expense of the environment; profit at the expense of well-being; personal advancement at the expense of relationship.

Participants in the program of restoring God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion are the sentinels for our time, whether they are on the political left or the political right, whether they embrace Christianity or not. The proof lies in the results.

BLOG ARCHIVE

Call and Response: Year A Proper 17

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:47:00 +0000

Exodus 3:1-15; Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Psalm 26:1-8; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

For an election year, when the people are calling for leadership and deliverance from unjust systems of war and greed, the Elves’ common lectionary readings for Proper 17 are spot-on. First comes the story of Moses and the burning bush. God calls Moses into leadership, ready or not. God also assures Moses that “I am who I am, and I will be what I will be.” The Covenant with Moses’s ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is reaffirmed. The alternative reading from the prophet Jeremiah – writing from the remnant community left behind by the marauding Babylonians – has the same message: “. . . I am with you to save you and deliver you, says the Lord. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.”

The Covenant is renewed in the Christian community founded by Paul in Rome. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” God’s “wrath” is not human anger or revenge, but is God’s response to human injustice. God’s Covenant assumes non-violent distributive justice, not violent retribution. God’s justice is not revenge, but is the consequence of unjust behavior, and will be meted out, sooner or later. Meanwhile, Paul says, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Finally, Matthew’s group of Jewish Christians, under siege by the surrounding communities of Romans and members of local synagogues who did not accept the Christian’s claim that Jesus was the Messiah, found inspiration in Jesus’s words: “Those who want to come after me should deny themselves, pick up their cross, and follow me.”

While the passage from Matthew ends with a threat (“. . . the son of Adam is going to come . . . and he will reward everyone according to their deeds”), these readings are not about judgment. They are about call and response.

Twenty-first century people are no more cynical than their first century counterparts. Anyone called to national leadership (then or now) runs the risk of corruption by corporate power, special interests, and the traps set by the normal human inability to distinguish between ego-driven power-hunger and the genuine compassion that propels some of us into action. What would the opposition party of today do with the fact that long ago, before he was called by God to lead the people to freedom, Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew? (See Exodus 2:11-22.) What kind of “flip-flopping” politician was Moses? First he claims a heritage with the dominant Egyptians, then he aligns himself with the oppressed Hebrews? Who is this man anyway? He is a stranger in a strange land, a “resident alien” who has to prove his credentials as one of the people before the people will trust him enough to follow him out of bondage.

But what may be more important than individual national leaders is the ability of the people themselves to raise up leaders among their own local communities. Too often world history has illustrated that the normalcy of civilization always devolves from covenant to empire. The civilization may begin with a charismatic, visionary leader who embodies distributive justice-compassion, but so long as the people look to strong leaders and not to themselves, the danger is great that the civilization will develop the theology of empire: piety, war, victory, and uneasy peace.

“Piety” means that those values (biblical, family) that sustain civilization are primary. In ancient Rome, the Emperor and his family were worshiped as gods; in the families of ordinary citizens, the man had absolute power of life and death over his wife, his children, his servants, slaves, and animals. Relationships among people and between levels of society were strictly controlled by the rules of religion, which leached into civil relationships, both commercial and private. In 21st Century United States, worship of country has replaced the Emperor and his family in a patriotism that presidential candidates ignore at their political peril; right-wing religious beliefs determine the rules governing marriage, childbirth, the criminal justice system, the medical system, economics – in short, all matters of life and death. Such piety has already resulted in various wars, both foreign and domestic: the war on drugs, terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan. Wars must be won, according to conventional piety, making victory a prerequisite to peace. But that peace can never be true peace because piety – the worship of patriotism and conventionality – demands constant war against the adversaries: other countries, other ways of life, points of view in conflict with the prevailing civil religion, and this constant war – a pious, holy war – demands strong leadership.

In the great story of the Jewish people, God is the one who restores the Covenant after the people have fallen out of God’s distributive justice-compassion. As we have seen in this Year A cycle, the Covenant was declared to Noah in the form of the rainbow after the flood; reiterated and codified to Abraham, and promised to his descendants. So long as the people live in justice-compassion, all is well. As soon as the people turn away from God’s program, calamity strikes.

The secret to re-establishing and maintaining the Covenant lies in the empowerment of each member of the community – which is what Paul’s letter to the Romans is all about. Paul reminds his readers/listeners “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think” (Romans 12:3); and “do not claim to be wiser than you are” (12:16b). Instead, he says, follow the example of Jesus: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; . . . Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

When we stand together, tyranny – whether of the majority or the minority – is overthrown. But individuals cannot allow themselves to be swayed by promises of first victory, then peace. Once again, the Elves have left out an important part of Paul’s argument, which appears in the first seven verses of Chapter 13. Perhaps they do so because those skipped verses seem to contradict Paul’s entire polemic about how “the strength of sin is the law.” What is going on here? For a clue, see John Dominic Crossan’s complete discussion in In Search of Paul (pp. 409-411). For now, however, consider what Paul is actually saying. “Therefore, one must be subject [to the representatives of the law – the authorities] not only because of wrath [the proper response to injustice] but also because of conscience.” In other words, be subject to the law not only because of God’s inevitable action in response to injustice, but because of individual conscience. He continues, “Pay to all what is due them – taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” Behind these words is the call to resistance against unjust taxes, unearned and undeserved riches; resistance to those to whom no respect or honor is due because their actions do not command respect or honor.

So the marks of a true Christian, as spelled out in Romans 12:9-21 are about as far from conventional piety as one can get. Instead of unquestioning compliance with the law, Paul is saying, pick your fights with deliberation. Instead of lashing out in search of revenge, leave the consequences of evil action to take their own course, and practice that non-violent resistance that “will heap burning coals on their heads.” Despite the all-too-human certainty in Matthew 16:27 and 28 that judgment will arrive on the wings of God’s avenging angels, Matthew’s Jesus calls for all who would be followers to radically abandon self-interest. “What good will it do if you acquire the whole world but forfeit your life” Jesus asks. “Or what will you give in exchange for your life?” Taking up your cross is not the struggle to stop smoking, give up chocolate, or tolerate your pushy sister–in-law. It is a call to participate in the ongoing program of restoring God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion.

The imagery of taking up one’s cross is identified with en exclusive Christianity, that has changed the meaning from radical, non-violent action for distributive justice to self-righteous martyrdom on behalf of religious ideology. But as the continuing story tells us, no one who answers the call and does the work is left out of the kingdom. “Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering,” says the Psalmist.

What is your response?

BLOG ARCHIVE

Living Sacrifice: Year A Proper 16

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:18:00 +0000

Exodus 1:8-2:10; Isaiah 51:1-6; Psalm 124; Psalm 138; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

How many sermons have been preached on the first two verses of Romans 12? How many rituals of baptism, confirmation, communion, invocation, confession, benediction? “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice . . . . Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds . . . .” Plucked out of the context of the rest of Paul’s argument, these verses are a reminder that Christians hold a special place in God’s Kingdom. Christians do not live by the same rules as the rest of society. Christians are able to “discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

This exclusivity is confirmed by Matthew’s Jesus, who rewards Peter’s declaration that Jesus is “the Anointed, the son of the living God” with the keys to the kingdom. Whatever Peter binds on earth will be bound in heaven (marriage contracts, peace treaties, tax breaks for corporations); and of course the opposite is also true: whatever agreement Peter releases on earth will also be released in heaven (voting rights, environmental protections, social safety nets).

Is that an unfair argument? Only from the point of view of church tradition that flies in the face of Covenant and aligns itself with Empire.

Paul of course is not referring to accommodation with political expediency. Paul’s words are meant to encourage subversion, the same kind of subversion that Moses’ mother set in motion with her little reed basket. Growing up in the midst of imperial privilege was a tiny spark of God’s justice-compassion, a subtle and unsuspected link to Abraham’s Covenant. These biblical links in the great chain that is the story of the Jewish people (and by adoption, followers of Jesus’s way as well) are all individuals. The Apostle Paul is calling for a collective shift in consciousness. “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”

But this is not an exclusive club. Anyone who wishes to participate in the program of restoring God’s Covenant (non-violence, distributive justice, peace) is part of the kingdom. The only requirement is the radical abandonment of self-interest: That is the “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [or reasonable] worship.” Sacrifice can only make sacred what is freely offered as a symbol of reconciliation with the realm of distributive justice-compassion that humans continually cut ourselves from. That life can only be acceptable as a sacrifice when self-interest is freely and radically abandoned in the service of the greater good.

In 1st Century Rome, Paul’s call to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” meant declining to participate in the usual patronage system of public sacrifice and banquet, the purpose of which was to reconcile the participants with the gods and the emperor, and to restore the commercial balance between patrons and clients. Instead, by radically abandoning self-interest and sharing everything necessary for community without cost or price or condition, members of the Christian community restored God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion here and now. This state of affairs is bad for business as usual, and is therefore unacceptable to Empire, as history has proven over and over again. Nor did members of the Christian community find this model easy – as evidenced in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Following such a program gets awkward, if not extremely difficult. What about the slacker who joins the community just to get food, and never makes a contribution? How can my daughter get a decent marriage proposal without a dowry – which is only made possible because of deals I make in the course of business? If all property is owned in common, how can I get yours? In order to survive, the Church had to make some accommodation, and the accommodation began within a few short years after the death of Jesus.

In the 21st Century, collective action to assure the wellbeing of human life on the Planet is essential. The time is long past for individual leadership on the order of the return of a messiah, a prophet, or a liberator. Yet in the United States, national elections continue to focus on individuals who can win enough political support to bring their own ideas into power. Collective welfare, whether of education, medical services, employment benefits, or housing, is considered to be rewarding irresponsibility and encouraging criminal behavior at the expense of law-abiding tax-payers. The result is entrenched injustice.

Bob Dylan asked the question 40 years ago: “How many deaths will it take ‘til we know that too many people have died?” He was singing about war, but any one of the above mentioned examples would do as an illustration of what the radical abandonment of self-interest might mean. For now, in what is becoming a continuing series, the question applies to the evils of market-driven medicine in the United States, which is also a war against human dignity, decency, common sense, and oh yeah – love. Specifically, let’s focus on one aspect of the medical system that impacts everyone, and that threatens to overwhelm the entire house of cards as the huge cohort of people born between 1945 and 1960 approaches our sunset years: end of life care.

When a nursing home prescribes medication that will stimulate appetite, but will not provide the assistance necessary for the person to eat, what is the point of providing food? A major problem “everywhere” in one particular state system is the failure of nursing home staff to turn patients every two hours, as specifically ordered by the physician, thereby worsening bedsores caused by archaic equipment, and creating more. What possible purpose is served in prolonging life for which there is no longer any discernible quality? Especially if one is trapped in the medical system that requires the sustaining if not prolonging of life, but denies the care required?

At what point do we realize that the radical abandonment of self-interest might mean the active assistance of someone into death? This is not murder. Murder means to cause the involuntary death of another, whether at the hands of the state and its death penalty for criminals (Empire) or at the hands of a fellow human being who has become so involved with self-interest that s/he cannot discern right from wrong. Instead, such active assistance is the conscious choice on the part of the dying one and the assistant to ease into whatever adventure comes after this life.

If Christians “believe” that Jesus gave us “victory” over death, why should we be so afraid to welcome that release? Of course, as a society, we have been down this road with some tough cases: Terri Schiavo, and of course, Dr. Jack Kervorkian, who actively worked to assist terminally ill people with suicide, and was eventually convicted of 2nd Degree Murder and delivering a controlled substance without a license. He is now out on parole, after serving eight years.

What is the nature of the god worshiped by the people who devised the rules and regulations that offer promises of “care,” while denying access to that very care? And where is the Church (the Body of Christ) on these issues of death and dying? Somehow we consider the self-sacrifice of someone who saves another’s life to be holy, but causing the humane termination of life is evil. Why am I allowed to kill myself to save another, but not to kill another in order to alleviate terminal and incurable suffering? In either case, death has happened, but one is noble, and the other is a crime.

Despite all the screaming about how the United States was founded as, and continues to be, a “Christian” nation, as soon as the radical abandonment of self-interest [“love”] includes active compassion – such as supporting the right to die, or increasing taxes to pay for “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of [self] and [family],” retribution comes into play. Suddenly we revert to the prehistoric idea that anyone who is poor or dispossessed or ill or dying must either be a parasite on the community, or must have done something to deserve it.

We like to point to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in which he declared that “government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” But the part that is overlooked is the responsibility the people have for the people. As the Apostle Paul says, “we . . . are one body in Christ, and individually, we are members one of another.” Property rights, NIMBY, and “family values” belong to the theology of Empire: piety, war, victory. That theology is a theology of individual salvation rather than corporate distributive justice-compassion, and is aligned with the forces of evil, which work to convince us that the realm of God is closed to us, and the keys to the kingdom are lost.

“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice,” Paul says. “Do not be conformed to this world,” where the normalcy of civilization traps us into injustice, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern” the will of God, which is justice-compassion.

BLOG ARCHIVE

WWJD: Year A, Proper 15

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Genesis 45:1-15; Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 133; Psalm 67; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: 10-28

Matthew’s Jesus may have actually said that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person; rather it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.” The version in the Gospel of Thomas (Thomas 14:5) puts the saying in the context of Jesus’s itinerant ministry: “When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you . . .” Matthew’s context has Jesus preaching to a crowd that includes those pesky Pharisees. Later, Peter (among the more dim-witted in the entourage, according to Matthew) insists that Jesus explain the “riddle.” The explanation has for two millennia obscured the real point, which is not about sexual immorality, evil intentions, and blasphemies, as pious Matthew would have us believe.

The real point is that living in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion obviates the need for any rules about what is or is not “kosher” or politically correct. The Apostle Paul is saying much the same thing behind all the polemics and despite the cutting and pasting by the Elves.

If we concentrate on Romans 11:29-32, with the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his dastardly brothers firmly in mind, then the message for today is a very pious one: Just as we all are “disobedient” to God’s rules (regarding the Ten Commandments, abortion, same-sex marriage, “sexual sin,” gun ownership), but have now received God’s forgiveness (by believing that Jesus died in our place and was bodily resurrected), so “they” (by implication, “the Jews”) have also been disobedient and have also been forgiven (therefore, supporting the government of Israel regardless of the circumstances is “God’s Will”). Then comes the kicker: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” Here is the monster God (graphically illustrated by Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ), who deliberately causes people to fall into evil so that “he” can then save us and cause us to love “him.” Such an interpretation is nothing more than a justification for abuse at every level of human experience – the exact opposite of distributive justice-compassion, and light-years from what the Apostle Paul was trying to say. The Elves strive mightily to avoid the anti-semitism that can arise from an uninformed and literal reading of Paul’s argument. But by not providing the context and allowing the full depth and breadth of Paul’s polemic to be worked through, we are hard-pressed to arrive at any other conclusion.

Look at what Paul says in Romans 11:11-12: “So I ask, have they (the Jews) stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles . . . Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?” And later in verse 15: “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!” Emphasis mine.

Then, assuming we still won’t get his point, Paul uses the metaphor of some branches that were broken from a healthy olive tree, and a wild shoot grafted into their place. Again, the argument takes some careful reading. Paul does say, “For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you . . . Note [God’s] severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.”

What is God’s kindness? It is distributive justice-compassion, usually misunderstood as “mercy.” “Mercy” as imperial theology uses the term most often means feeling sorry for a criminal, and converting the sentence from the death penalty to life in prison without parole. God’s kindness under Covenant, on the other hand, means distributive justice-compassion: taking into consideration the entire context, then acting with radical abandonment of self-interest to ensure fairness. When Paul talks about “full inclusion” and “acceptance” of the Jews, he means what he has said throughout this letter to the Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God as evidenced and experienced in the life and teachings of Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ. God has no litmus test for inclusion in the Kingdom except to do our best to live in distributive justice-compassion. No one is left out: neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor gentile; and when we fail – because of a “thorn in the flesh” or any other shortcoming, we are saved by God’s grace. Belief in a resuscitated corpse has nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, don’t get too smug about your salvation. God has always been very clear about the preference extended in God’s realm to those who live in distributive justice-compassion. There are consequences for those who do not, generally having to do with becoming trapped in imperial forms of retributive justice, and theologies of piety, war, victory, peace – not to mention environmental holocaust.

Look what Joseph did, when his brothers came looking for food-aid in a time of drought and famine in their own land. Joseph – now part of Pharaoh’s imperial rule – could have enslaved them on the spot, or sent them away to starve and die. Instead, remembering that he was part of God’s Covenant with his great-grandfather Abraham, his grandfather Isaac, and his father Jacob, he took them in. In the grand scheme of the Bible, of course, we Christians can make the next leap and claim that because of Joseph’s justice-compassion, the Hebrew people did become enslaved, which allowed the great liberator Moses to appear on the scene, and ultimately, of course, Jesus, whom Christians call the Messiah. We can also “take in” the Jews by conversion – forceful or otherwise – as the dogma that underlies Christian Zionism assumes.

But the point is not supersessionary arrogance. The point is the continuing development of human consciousness toward distributive justice-compassion. The story is about the continuing inevitable normalcy of civilization toward the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory), and the ongoing struggle to remain true to the Covenant: non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, peace.

In today’s U.S. society, the aphorism Jesus might use to illustrate his reversal of imperial piety might be, “A victim is only a victim when personal power is unclaimed.”

Joseph certainly did not remain a victim of his brother’s injustice. He took advantage whenever he could of the personal talents and power he had, and eventually won a place for himself that allowed him to rescue his entire family. Most extraordinary of all, he completely reconciled with his brothers – just like Esau did with Jacob (the Elves left that part out of the lectionary). There is a pattern here, if we are willing to see it. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is about the empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised, victims of imperial power, which turns out not to be “power” at all. Once a victim is empowered, that person ceases to be a victim. Jesus himself did not die a helpless victim. Jesus died in active, non-violent resistance to injustice.

The U.S. medical system (I refuse to call it “health care”) is front and center for many of us and certainly for me, as my mother lies dying in a poorly-managed nursing facility, whose policies and procedures are borderline at best, and legally suspicious at worst. We are caught in a web of imperial piety, consisting of social norms, “Christian” beliefs, legal definitions, and of course, the consequences of market forces allowed to run amok by political expediency. To file a complaint with the State is to risk retaliation on the part of the providers, even though such retaliation is against the law. We have neither the money, nor enough evidence to pursue a malpractice lawsuit, but we are not interested in revenge; we are interested in accountability.

That same pious imperial web ensnared Jim Adkisson, who invaded the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on a Sunday morning in July. He was not able to break out of his victim role. Instead he attacked the most convenient representative of “liberal” ideas, which he blamed for his inability to find and keep a job, support his family, and ultimately fulfill his perceived obligations as a man in U.S. society. He remains in jail, charged with one count of murder so far, under $1 million bond.

How can we reverse imperial power today? Or, in the pious slogan of the late 1990s, What Would Jesus Do? First of all, what Jesus did, what Mr. Adkisson was unable to do, and what we must do, is drive a stake through the heart of our all-too-human desire for retribution. The State will exact its revenge, and the UUA will continue its stand for liberal values -- but not so far as to radically abandon its own self-interest and work for reconciliation with either Mr. Adkisson or his family. Perhaps it is too much to ask. After all, in a market-driven society, who has time to empower the powerless?

Secondly, we must reverse the insidious lie that takes literally the Pauline admonition that “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ.” We must not be “content” with injustice. Nor must we be “content” with the easy hegemony that declares that anyone who does not believe that Jesus died for our sins is not a part of the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. What defiles us is the tacit agreement with imperial injustice, and its accompanying theology.

Isaiah still has the last word: “Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right . . . And the foreigners . . . all who . . . hold fast my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain. . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

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The Sound of Silence: Year A Proper 14

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:56:00 +0000

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; 1 Kings 19:9-13; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

What new meaning can be wrung from the metaphor of Jesus walking on the water and pulling the unstable Peter to safety in the boat as the wind dies down? After 2,000 years, we have certainly heard and said it all – including the defiant retort from the underpaid, overworked middle manager (or Greek slave – pick your era): “Sorry, I only pass water, not walk on it!” We could reach for a clue in the fascinating factoid revealed in the notes in the Harper Collins Study Bible (p. 1885, note 14.27), that ancient Jewish mariners used to carry in their boats a magical club engraved with “I Am” to shake at the storm threatening their safety – sort of like the land-locked witch who throws a silver dagger into the earth in the path of the cyclone, thereby splitting and defeating it. There may be a scientific possibility that such action on the part of the witch could rearrange the electrical forces generated by a tornado out on the prairie, and so it could be construed as trust in the covenant with the natural forces of the universe – but all we would be doing is joining the biblical literalists, and the Elves who herd us willing or not along the supersessionist path.

Joseph’s brothers seem to be understandably tired of Joseph and his special coat (with “sleeves” or “many colors”). Any little brother who rubs in the fact that he is Daddy’s favorite by bragging about dreams of superiority is courting karmic consequences. But we blithely hit the highlights on the way to proving Jesus’s ancestry, and don’t worry about scaring our children with Sunday School tales of terror – not to mention justifying the worst examples of sibling rivalry.

Matthew’s Jesus is Moses, constantly withdrawing to mountain tops to commune with God, then leading the people through the Dead Sea waters. Jesus walking on the water evokes God who “tramples on the sea” (Job 9:8), and“[whose] way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen . . . .” Psalm 77:19. The hidden realm of God leads us to liberation through uncharted waters, leaving no trace but righteousness (justice-compassion), which creates the path for our steps.

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

Paul Simon, 1966

Our favorite prophet Elijah is hiding out in his cave listening to “the still small voice” of God, but we need to read the beloved passage from 1st Kings carefully. According to the notes in the Harper Collins Study Bible (p. 551), the translation of the Hebrew is just ambiguous enough to cast some doubt on whether Elijah (like Paul Simon) heard anything other than his own despair in the silence that followed the storm. God does speak to Elijah, after Elijah repeats his tale of woe: “. . . I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.” God then tells Elijah to anoint a new king, AND to anoint a new prophet. “Thanks for your service, Elijah,” God seems to be saying. “I accept your resignation as soon as you have trained your replacement.”

Fools said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

The silence of the collective Church in the 21st Century is deafening. Perhaps the silence rises and grows because the call from the liberal church for inclusive, distributive justice is drowned out by the fundamentalists’ exclusive, retributive message, which the media have assumed defines “Christianity.” Humans are normally able and all too eager to attach value to what attracts or repels. What is attractive is good; what is repellent is evil – except for those among us who have turned the logical experience on its head and insist that what is attractive is evil, and what is repellent is good. The torturers at Guantanamo Bay Prison come to mind, along with the entrepreneurs who set up the market-based disaster called the United States medical system, where neither “Health” nor “Care” are to be found – whether one has money and lawyers or not.

Some of the silence is due to seminary training, which neglects the reality of a need for a course in “Crucifixion 101.” Newly minted ministers may be grounded in post-modern theology, scholarship, and cosmology, but most are not equipped with the tools they need to lead parishioners out of the religious concepts of the 19th Century. As a result, instead of reclaiming Christianity for a new age, ministers in order to stay employed preach what the people are used to and want to hear.

Some signs are appearing that the current crop of young adult evangelicals may be ready and willing fora kind of accommodation with the left in terms of social and economic justice, if not a transformation. But conflict between the radical inclusiveness that liberals are convinced was taught by Jesus, and the dogmas surrounding homosexuality and the sanctity of life that conservative fundamentalists insist upon, still stand in the way. The fact that conservative Christianity has become identified with policies of the current United States government adds an additional layer of suspicion to liberals, who are accused and assumed to be unpatriotic with their opposition to war, their insistence on universal health care, radical response to climate change, prison and justice reform, etc.

No wonder old Elijah emerged from the silence in such a negative state that God had to act to replace him.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence.

If one reads Romans 10:5-15 thinking that “righteousness” means politically correct piety, Paul’s words are a call for crusade against everyone who does not sign up. “. . . [I]f you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him frm the dead, you will be saved.” What could be more clear? One’s life is justified (rationalized) by belief in the life and death and literal physical resurrection of Jesus. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” from Hell at the end of life. Hence the smug use of the aphorism, “there are no atheists in foxholes.”

Christian “faith” has become believing in magic: walking on water, calming storms, curing terminal illness, finding parking places, or extracting cars from snowbanks. While there are no magic wands or crystal balls, the cross has nevertheless conveyed magic power. We make the sign of the cross for protection or good luck. Crucifixes are especially useful for waving in front of vampires or other forces of evil. Pieces of the true cross (and its mojo) are still for sale by enterprising shopkeepers.

But pious interpretations are not what is going on here.

Paul asks, “how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed . . . of whom they have never heard?” So the call goes out for witnesses, missionaries, to bring the “good news.” These words just roll off the keyboard, as they have flowed from pens and from the extemporaneous artistry of countless preachers and theologians, most of whom have missed the point completely. The Apostle Paul’s mystic insights are incomprehensible to most people, who only want to eat, sleep, make and raise children, be happy, be healthy, and live forever.

Christian “faith” is not about anybody coming back from the dead, nor is it about avoiding death altogether. Christian “faith” is trust in the distributive justice-compassion that holds sway in the Universe, despite human social organization and understanding. Nothing distinguishes “Christian” from other faiths that have discovered the same truth except that Christian faith arises from the life and teachings of Jesus.

Chapter 10 of Paul’s letter to the Romans continues his polemic against the Jewish communities who disagreed with his conclusions about who Jesus was. It is incomprehensible to Paul that anyone who heard the story would either not believe it, or not realize its radical meaning. Paul would make the same argument today. The cherry-picking Elves do a great disservice to Paul’s theology by skipping around, perhaps hoping to avoid the anti-semitism that has plagued Christianity from the beginning. In the section skipped in proper 14 (Romans 10:16-21), Paul quotes Isaiah: “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me . . . All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” Does this mean those who refuse to believe in the literal story about Jesus? Or does this mean that – as Jesus preached – the realm of God is all around us, ready for anyone to open their eyes and look and listen, and step into that realm?

People can only know if they are told, Paul says. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” “. . . Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” The word has gone out through all the lands, through the best scholarship, through voices recovered from the past in Qumran and Nag Hamadi, through the work of “biblical archeologists” excavating Jesus, and through the insights of cosmologists.
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The prophet Isaiah asks the same question Paul asks in his seminal letter to the fledgling Christian community in Rome (Isaiah 40:21-31): How can anyone not have heard? And once heard, how can anyone not get it?

Put Your Own On First: Year A, Proper 13

noreply@blogger.com (Sea Raven, D.Min.) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Genesis 32:22-31; Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 17:1-7, 15; Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

The Elves may have cherry-picked Romans 9 in order to avoid anti-Jewish preaching. The portions not included certainly could be read by the literal or unwary as a diatribe against Judaism. Paul’s point of course is not anti-Jewish. He spells it out very clearly in those first five verses we are supposed to read: “They are Israelites,” he writes, “and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; . . . from them . . . comes the Messiah.” But he is disappointed that many Jews rejected the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. He argues that they relied on works mandated by law instead of faith in the ancient Covenant with God, which in Paul’s mind was renewed and manifested in the life and teachings of Jesus. Therefore, God has extended to Gentiles the opportunity to sign on to the Covenant. Jews, of course, then and now, would disagree that they failed to measure up to the promise of distributive justice-compassion.

Whether Paul’s polemics deserve attention or not, the whole series of readings for Proper 13 is about Covenant, starting with Isaiah 55. Just as God extended his Covenant with David to include the entire nation of Israel, so God now extends to all the world the opportunity to participate in the ongoing restoration of God’s Kingdom of distributive justice-compassion. The Feeding of the 5,000 is an illustration of the God that Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-30), and it is an illustration of the invitation to abundant life extended by the prophet Isaiah. “Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant . . . .”

The story of Jacob wrestling with God (or the angel of God) is also used in Proper 24, Year C – but there it is an alternative to Jeremiah, and is purported to be related to the gospel and epistle readings. In Year A, we skip the rest of the Jacob story, his reconciliation with Esau, and his establishment of settlement at Bethel (Jerusalem), so that we can go directly to the story of Joseph, and continue the lineage to the birth of Jesus. But the story of Jacob’s fight with God is set in the middle of Jacob’s dilemma about how to deal with the coming meeting between himself and his estranged brother Esau. After the fight Jacob is reborn-renamed as Israel (the one who strives with God) because he has striven with God (the angel) and humans (Laban) and prevailed. The next thing that happens is reconciliation with Esau – distributive justice.

The point is that Covenant – living in partnership with God in distributive justice-compassion – means life here now, not there then. In other words, reconcile with your brother and you will participate in the available abundance. When we fight with God about it, we always get hurt. In other words, if we resist dealing with the injustices in life – such as robbing our brother/sister of their birth right – we may well end up mentally and/or physically impaired. This is not “judgment.” These are the consequences of not acting from radical abandonment of self-interest.

To return to Paul’s argument, only the radical abandonment of self-interest counts. The law does not require such action. Only faith in God’s realm produces salvation, which is life lived in partnership with God in justice-compassion. Works prescribed by law support the systems of injustice because we are not personally invested in them. We have a personal investment in reconciliation with friends, family, enemies.

Radical abandonment of self-interest (i.e., “love”) is easiest to understand at the corporate level. Commercial, political, social “self-interests” are targets that attract money, media, and throngs of dedicated workers, whether for church mission fields, political action committees, marches, rallies, enthusiasm, and results. Political and social liberalism in the United States would be closer to death than it is without the willingness of people to abandon immediate gratification for the greater good.

But where the rubber hits the road, or perhaps where the Apostle Paul got it at the gut level (see Romans 7:21-25), is in the mundane realities of day-to-day intimate living with self, family, friends. Traditional teaching and understanding have it backwards. Sacrificial love is not about throwing yourself under the bus. Sacrificial love means letting go of guilt and ego involvement. It means taking a break, nourishing yourself, saying goodbye. The first instruction the flight attendant gives us when the oxygen mask comes down is to put your own mask on first, then help the one next to you.

In a crisis, when Death is sitting on the chair beside your Mother, we want God to intervene, to save, to prevent the inevitable course – whether it is dictated by the medical profession, the legal profession, or the Church itself. But look at what Paul says in the rest of his polemic in Romans 9:14-18: “[God] has mercy on whomever he chooses, and [God] hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.” In other words, in God’s realm, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Remember that the opposite to the Covenant – nonviolence, distributive justice-compassion, peace – is the theology of Empire: Piety, War (violence), Victory, and conditional peace. The theology of Empire requires victims: victims of war, and of domestic or public violence. Victims are the result of a justice system that is based on judgmental retribution and payback, not neutral fairness. Under Covenant, there can be neither victims nor enemies, because those who live by distributive justice-compassion know that true power lies in trusting God’s realm. Life under Covenant means the radical abandonment of self-interest. Those who love their enemies have no enemies.

When we are in alignment with that Covenant, intervention can be seen to be interference on the part of Empire, not the fulfillment of God’s distributive justice-compassion. Paul says later in Chapter 9:30-33: “Gentiles who did not strive for righteousness have attained it, that is righteousness through faith; but Israel, who did strive for the righteousness that is based on the law, did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works.”

When we let go and trust in the Covenant, everything falls into place. Does that mean that justice is served, or that suffering ends, or that miracles overturn the physical realities of the Universe as we know it? Of course not. Death is part of life, and life is whatever happens to us. What “works” is the marvelous course that opens out before us as soon as we let go of any thought of making something happen that is not already in the offing.

On the evening of July 3, a hospital dumped my Mother into a “skilled nursing/rehab” facility, which I was unable at the 11th hour to avoid. On Friday July 4th, the biggest political patriotic holiday in the United States, I had to say goodbye to her and fly 1,000 miles back to my home. All I could tell her was, I had done my best, and would have to trust the people in the system to do their job, and the creative forces of distributive justice to hold sway. Like a kayack in rapids, she and I had to just ride the river. Any attempt to intervene with a paddle or by shifting our weight would have wrecked us on the rocks. That is part of what it means to radically abandon self-interest.

Am I going to sue the hospital and take on the whole catastrophe of the U.S. medical system? Call Fox News and start an investigation into nursing home malpractice? Not directly. Those kinds of actions are usually self-gratifying, ego-justifying, Empire-supporting manifestations of works based on law, without faith, and outside the Covenant. Does that mean we just turn our faces to the wall and die? Absolutely not. We are not victims. There is work to be done in the “right to die” movement, which the United Church of Christ has begun to seriously explore. There are hospital and nursing home chaplaincies in need of personnel grounded in Covenant; and in the interim, there are blogs to write.

Did – will – my Mother magically recover full strength and vibrant life? No. Not on this Planet. But, as Isaiah promises, according to God’s Covenant, she shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace. . . . Those who live in Covenant with distributive justice-compassion are not victims, but victors. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law,” sings Paul in 1st Corinthians. “But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

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