"What you call a fact depends on the theory you bring to it."
Albert Einstein (source unknown)
Lesslie Newbigin (Proper Confidence):
"The simple truth is that resurrection cannot be accommodated to any way of understanding the world except one in which it is the starting point."
[...]
"The problem of making sense of the gospel is that it calls for a change of mind which is as radical as is the action of God in becoming man and dying on a cross."
Walter Kunneth (Theology of the Resurrection):
"We may say without exaggeration: at the tomb in Jerusalem the ultimate choice will be made between two totally different world-views."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Mystery of Easter):
“In Jesus Christ we believe the God who has become human crucified and resurrected. In the incarnation, we recognize God’s love for his creation; in the crucifixion, God’s judgment over all flesh; in the resurrection, God’s will for a new world.”
[…]
“Certainly we assume the grave was empty. But only one thing is important: God has declared himself to Christ and has touched him with his eternal life. Now Christ lives because God lives and because God’s love lives. That is enough for us. We can brood over the ‘how.’ We cannot change the ‘that.’
"But if God lives, then so too love lives, in spite of the cross – then we don’t live in sin, then God has indeed forgiven us. He has declared himself to Jesus, but Jesus has declared himself to us. If Jesus lives then our faith gains new meaning. Then we are the most blessed of human beings. A Yes of God to our guilty humanity, a new meaning for all our doing – that is Easter."
Not being deserted by God – but being full of God, not humans and their titanic victory over Godhood, but God and his mighty victory over humankind, over death and sin and indignation – that is Easter.”
[…]
“Christ did not come into the world that we might understand him, but that we might cling to him, that we might simply let ourselves be swept away by him into the immense event of the resurrection”
Thomas Merton (He is risen):
“The risen life is not easy; it is also a dying life. The presence of the Resurrection in our lives means the presence of the Cross, for we do not rise with Christ unless we also first die with him. It is by the cross that we enter the dynamism of creative transformation, the dynamism of resurrection and renewal, the dynamism of love.”
N. T. Wright (Simply Christian):
“If Easter makes any sense at all, it makes sense within something much more like the classic Jewish worldview: heaven and earth are neither the same thing, nor a long way removed from one another, but they overlap and interlock mysteriously in a number of ways; and the God who made both heaven and earth is at work from within the world as well as from without, sharing the pain of the world – indeed, taking its full weight upon his own shoulders. From this point of view, as the Eastern Orthodox churches have always emphasized, when Jesus rose again, God’s whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibility. Indeed, precisely because part of that new possibility is for human beings to be revived and renewed, the resurrection of Jesus does not leave us passive, helpless spectators. We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and commissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world.”
More on the significance of Resurrection here and here.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Click, Click, Click, Click
A Good Friday Sermon
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Navy commissioned its first nuclear powered submarine with the ability to launch nuclear missiles. The K-19 set out from port on its first maneuvers to send a message that, just as the United States had nuclear submarines that could threaten the Soviet Union, the threat was now mutual. After testing their missiles, disaster struck. The nuclear reactor developed a leak in its coolant system and began to overheat. As the reactor continued to heat up so did the possibility of an explosion. The leak also began to send toxic radiation throughout the submarine. The men on the K-19 were trapped. They were all quickly becoming contaminated with a potentially lethal dose of radiation. You can see a version of this story in the movie K-19, The Widow Maker.
Our world, like the K-19, has a toxic leak at its heart. Our world is contaminated. The radiation of Sin and Death, of violence and suffering permeates this world. And, whether we like to admit it or not, it permeates each of us. We are contaminated. What’s even harder for us to admit is that many of our actions and thoughts contribute to the contamination. The leaking reactor at the heart of the world contaminates everything. The reactor of our own hearts is contaminated. Like the crew on the K-19 we are trapped, unable to escape the toxic contamination.
Into this world comes one who is not contaminated. Jesus enters into the world and acts as a sort of holy Geiger Counter setting off a click, click, click as he encounters the contamination radiating from Sin and Death.
Judas, a trusted friend and disciple, comes to him in the darkness. Perhaps it was greed. Perhaps it was disillusionment. Perhaps it as an impatient attempt to force Jesus’ hand and bring about the kingdom as Judas envisioned it. In any event, Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. And with that lip service, the Geiger Counter goes click, click, click, click.
By most standards the high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, were probably decent enough men, trying to maintain as much independence for their nation as they could while appeasing the occupying Romans and forestalling the wrath of the empire. But Caiaphas was the one who had counseled that it was “better to have one person die for the people.” Jesus was just “collateral damage” in the struggle to preserve the nation’s precarious security. There is a logic to his thinking. It is reasoning with which we have become familiar. But the thinking is contaminated. And again we hear, click, click, click, click.
Peter, the “Rock”, cracks under pressure and lies to avoid being associated with the one who had called him and whom he had followed. He denies Jesus not once but thrice and upon the third denial hears the rooster crow click, click, click, click.
Pilate cynically asks the one who is Truth, “What is truth?” Unable or unwilling to accept the truth and the changes that must follow acceptence, Pilate, who claims the power to free or to crucify, hands an innocent man over to be crucified while seeking to remain free of the guilt. But he cannot escape the click, click, click, click measuring the contamination of his actions.
One way or another, each of the characters that Jesus encounters in the passion narrative (excepting only Mary and the other women, along with the disciple Jesus loved) demonstrates his contamination by the radiation of Sin and Death. Each alone and all together act out of fear, pride, and disbelief leading to betrayal, denial, desertion, deceit, collaboration, and the justification of violence.
In one sense, little has changed. We live in a world that still radiates Sin and Death. And, one way or another, through things done and things left undone, we demonstrate our own contamination. Called to love God and neighbor, we too often deny, betray, and desert both. But that is not the whole story.
If all we could say was that Jesus came into the world to reveal and measure the contamination of Sin, if he merely left us with nothing but the echo of the click, click, click, click; we would still be trapped and lost. If all he said was “Listen to the click, click, click, click and stop participating in your own contamination and that of others,” we would still be trapped and lost. But he has done more. He has sacrificed himself to begin the decontamination.
As the disaster on the K-19 worsened, levels of radiation in the submarine rose along with the expectation that the overheating reactor would explode if nothing was done. Seven crewmen volunteered to work in shifts in the high-radiation area to create a new coolant system for the reactor. In doing so they absorbed lethal doses of radiation. All seven died. It was an heroic sacrifice that saved most of the rest of the crew and prevented an explosion that would have sunk the submarine.
I wonder if the sacrifice of Jesus which we commemorate today might be understood similarly. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the lethal dose of Sin and Death, repaired the leak, and began the decontamination of the world. Today we who are now in Christ celebrate our deliverance and decontamination. As with the K-19 after the repair, we still suffer the effects of residual radiation. But Sin and Death were contained on a Friday afternoon nearly 2,000 years ago and the decontamination through forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing began. And that was a Good Friday indeed.
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Navy commissioned its first nuclear powered submarine with the ability to launch nuclear missiles. The K-19 set out from port on its first maneuvers to send a message that, just as the United States had nuclear submarines that could threaten the Soviet Union, the threat was now mutual. After testing their missiles, disaster struck. The nuclear reactor developed a leak in its coolant system and began to overheat. As the reactor continued to heat up so did the possibility of an explosion. The leak also began to send toxic radiation throughout the submarine. The men on the K-19 were trapped. They were all quickly becoming contaminated with a potentially lethal dose of radiation. You can see a version of this story in the movie K-19, The Widow Maker.
Our world, like the K-19, has a toxic leak at its heart. Our world is contaminated. The radiation of Sin and Death, of violence and suffering permeates this world. And, whether we like to admit it or not, it permeates each of us. We are contaminated. What’s even harder for us to admit is that many of our actions and thoughts contribute to the contamination. The leaking reactor at the heart of the world contaminates everything. The reactor of our own hearts is contaminated. Like the crew on the K-19 we are trapped, unable to escape the toxic contamination.
Into this world comes one who is not contaminated. Jesus enters into the world and acts as a sort of holy Geiger Counter setting off a click, click, click as he encounters the contamination radiating from Sin and Death.
Judas, a trusted friend and disciple, comes to him in the darkness. Perhaps it was greed. Perhaps it was disillusionment. Perhaps it as an impatient attempt to force Jesus’ hand and bring about the kingdom as Judas envisioned it. In any event, Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. And with that lip service, the Geiger Counter goes click, click, click, click.
By most standards the high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, were probably decent enough men, trying to maintain as much independence for their nation as they could while appeasing the occupying Romans and forestalling the wrath of the empire. But Caiaphas was the one who had counseled that it was “better to have one person die for the people.” Jesus was just “collateral damage” in the struggle to preserve the nation’s precarious security. There is a logic to his thinking. It is reasoning with which we have become familiar. But the thinking is contaminated. And again we hear, click, click, click, click.
Peter, the “Rock”, cracks under pressure and lies to avoid being associated with the one who had called him and whom he had followed. He denies Jesus not once but thrice and upon the third denial hears the rooster crow click, click, click, click.
Pilate cynically asks the one who is Truth, “What is truth?” Unable or unwilling to accept the truth and the changes that must follow acceptence, Pilate, who claims the power to free or to crucify, hands an innocent man over to be crucified while seeking to remain free of the guilt. But he cannot escape the click, click, click, click measuring the contamination of his actions.
One way or another, each of the characters that Jesus encounters in the passion narrative (excepting only Mary and the other women, along with the disciple Jesus loved) demonstrates his contamination by the radiation of Sin and Death. Each alone and all together act out of fear, pride, and disbelief leading to betrayal, denial, desertion, deceit, collaboration, and the justification of violence.
In one sense, little has changed. We live in a world that still radiates Sin and Death. And, one way or another, through things done and things left undone, we demonstrate our own contamination. Called to love God and neighbor, we too often deny, betray, and desert both. But that is not the whole story.
If all we could say was that Jesus came into the world to reveal and measure the contamination of Sin, if he merely left us with nothing but the echo of the click, click, click, click; we would still be trapped and lost. If all he said was “Listen to the click, click, click, click and stop participating in your own contamination and that of others,” we would still be trapped and lost. But he has done more. He has sacrificed himself to begin the decontamination.
As the disaster on the K-19 worsened, levels of radiation in the submarine rose along with the expectation that the overheating reactor would explode if nothing was done. Seven crewmen volunteered to work in shifts in the high-radiation area to create a new coolant system for the reactor. In doing so they absorbed lethal doses of radiation. All seven died. It was an heroic sacrifice that saved most of the rest of the crew and prevented an explosion that would have sunk the submarine.
I wonder if the sacrifice of Jesus which we commemorate today might be understood similarly. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the lethal dose of Sin and Death, repaired the leak, and began the decontamination of the world. Today we who are now in Christ celebrate our deliverance and decontamination. As with the K-19 after the repair, we still suffer the effects of residual radiation. But Sin and Death were contained on a Friday afternoon nearly 2,000 years ago and the decontamination through forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing began. And that was a Good Friday indeed.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Whose Feet Will You Wash?
Maundy Thursday is a reminder that our Lord’s call to communion with himself is inseparable from our communion with one another as members of his body. Basil the Great understood this and warned in his monastic Rule against seeking communion with God outside of community:
A Life Pleasing to God, The Spirituality of the Rules of St. Basil by Augustine Holmes OSB, Cistercian Publications, WMU Station, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 12000, p. 142
How shall you show humility, if you have no one in comparison with whom to show yourself humble? How shall you show compassion if you cut yourself off from the fellowship of the many? How can you exercise yourself in patience, if no one contradicts your wishes? If you think the teaching of the Holy Scripture is sufficient to correct your character, you are like a person who learns the theory of carpentry but never makes anything.
The Lord, because of his great love of humanity, was not content only with teaching the word, but, so that he might accurately and clearly give us an example of humility in the perfection of love, he girded himself and washed the feet of the disciples in person. [If you neglect life in the community] whose feet will you wash? Who will you care for? In comparison to whom will you be last?
A Life Pleasing to God, The Spirituality of the Rules of St. Basil by Augustine Holmes OSB, Cistercian Publications, WMU Station, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 12000, p. 142
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
A Fragrant Offering and Sacrifice
Sermon for 5th Sunday of Lent, Yr C, 3/21/10
Isaiah 43:16 – 21, Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b – 14, John 12:1 – 8
My name is Josiah. I am not particularly important. But I have seen important things. I want to tell you a story about an amazing dinner party I attended years ago when I was young. It was at the home of my friend, Lazarus.
You have probably heard of Lazarus. A couple of weeks before, he had died of a fever. Dead and buried. Then, the Rabbi Jesus had come and restored him to life after he’d been four days dead. Many of us had been listening to Jesus whenever we could and had begun to hope that he might be the messiah. This pretty much sealed the deal for me.
We celebrated for days. Our mourning had been turned to dancing. Psalm 126 was in our hearts and on our lips –
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion
Then we were like those who dream
Then was our mouth filled with laughter
And our tongue with shouts of joy.
The LORD has done great things for us and we are glad indeed!
We had gone from tears to songs of joy.
Then one day, Lazarus told me to come to a dinner party at his home. When I arrived, Jesus was there along with his twelve disciples. Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, were there. And one or two other close friends and Jesus followers. After raising Lazarus, Jesus had been laying low in a small town somewhere. This was the first time he had come back to Bethany.
As usual, the food was wonderful. Martha is a fine cook and hostess. She understood Jesus when he had said he came to serve and not be served and she did the same.
There was much laughter. Someone asked Lazarus, “What was the first thought that came into your mind when you came back to life?
“What’s that smell?,” was his response.
We all laughed. I was one of those who had helped to roll away the stone from the mouth of his tomb and I can attest to the stench of death that it contained.
Amidst all the laughter, I began to notice something. We were celebrating Lazarus’ coming back to life and honoring the one who had done it. But, more and more, it began to have the feel of a funeral dinner. There was laughter. There was joking. There was remembering. But there was a somber air to it all. Especially among some of Jesus’ disciples. A couple of them kept glancing at the door or out the windows as if they suspected someone unwelcome might crash the party at any time. Others looked somehow sad – sad or determined, or both – even when they laughed. Then I noticed the wistful look on Jesus' face. He looked like someone who was enjoying a last dinner with family and friends before leaving on a long and treacherous journey.
Then, something most shocking happened. Mary, who had been looking intently at Jesus the whole time, came to where Jesus was reclining and knelt at his feet. From somewhere, she pulled out a large jar of expensive perfume – pure nard! She began slathering it on Jesus’ feet – a lot of it. The place was stunned to silence. From where I was, it looked like she was weeping. The whole house was full of the beautiful fragrance of the stuff.
Then, ever the impetuous one, Mary uncovered and undid her hair. Several in the room gasped. You, living in a different time and place, might not realize how scandalous this was. A woman’s hair was considered quite erotic. Only her husband would ever see it down and the first undoing of her hair in his presence was a significant part of their wedding night. And Mary had such hair! Dark and rich and luxurious. Hair that could tempt the angels.
There was another gasp as she began to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Martha shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head with a bemused look on her face as if to say, “There she goes again.”
One of Jesus disciples, Judas, broke the silence with a protest about the extravagant waste. The money that purchased that perfume could have been given to the poor. I learned later that some of the disciples suspected that Judas’ motives were more selfish and that he had been embezzling some of the funds from the common purse.
Whether he had been embezzling or had been sincerely concerned for the poor, I have come to think Judas was missing the point either way. One way or another all of us were. We all had our own idea of what Jesus should be about and where he should go and what he should do. For most of us that meant Jesus should fit into our ready-made ideas of what the Messiah should be. Or that he should do what we would do if we were the Messiah. We had our idols and were determined to have Jesus on our terms. We were never quite ready to take him as he was or follow him all the way.
Except for Mary. Mary got it. And she taught us all a lesson that evening. She poured out her love and devotion to Jesus with all the extravagance of rich and costly perfume and without reservation. She anointed his feet, signifying that she was prepared to go wherever those feet went and she would keep her focus on him to lead her. She anointed his feet with perfume and wiped then with her hair. And, now, her hair was soaked with the same fragrance as Jesus.
Far from being scandalized or offended, Jesus welcomed the gesture and said she was preparing him for his death. In about a week we would understand just how true that was. Jesus was killed by the powers that be.
But, like Lazarus, only much more so, he did not stay dead. He rose again. Again, Psalm 126 was in our hearts and on our lips:
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion
Then we were like those who dream
Then was our mouth filled with laughter
And our tongue with shouts of joy.
The LORD has done great things for us and we are glad indeed!
Mary’s extravagant sacrifice of 300 denarri’s worth of nard was a prophetic act foreshadowing the extravagant sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Jesus, who overcame the stench of sin and death and filled our lives with the rich fragrance of his extravagant life and love. Mary had anticipated it all.
I have spent the rest of my life trying to catch up to Mary’s faithfulness. I have tried to sit attentively at the feet of Jesus. I have wanted to worship him in the beauty of holiness. I have tried to love him back with the same fragrant and extravagant love with which he loved me. I have tried to love others with that same costly love. I have tried to follow in his footsteps wherever they led. More often than not, they have led me to the poor who are indeed still with us – or at least they are with us if we choose to be with and for them as Jesus himself was with and for the poor.
I want to be as soaked like Mary’s hair with the love and joy of Jesus. It is the fragrance of mercy. It is the aroma of heaven. I want to be that aroma in the world around me. As another follower of Jesus, Paul, wrote in one of his letters, “I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Like Mary, I seek to love, even as Jesus first loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering an sacrifice to God.
Isaiah 43:16 – 21, Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b – 14, John 12:1 – 8
My name is Josiah. I am not particularly important. But I have seen important things. I want to tell you a story about an amazing dinner party I attended years ago when I was young. It was at the home of my friend, Lazarus.
You have probably heard of Lazarus. A couple of weeks before, he had died of a fever. Dead and buried. Then, the Rabbi Jesus had come and restored him to life after he’d been four days dead. Many of us had been listening to Jesus whenever we could and had begun to hope that he might be the messiah. This pretty much sealed the deal for me.
We celebrated for days. Our mourning had been turned to dancing. Psalm 126 was in our hearts and on our lips –
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion
Then we were like those who dream
Then was our mouth filled with laughter
And our tongue with shouts of joy.
The LORD has done great things for us and we are glad indeed!
We had gone from tears to songs of joy.
Then one day, Lazarus told me to come to a dinner party at his home. When I arrived, Jesus was there along with his twelve disciples. Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, were there. And one or two other close friends and Jesus followers. After raising Lazarus, Jesus had been laying low in a small town somewhere. This was the first time he had come back to Bethany.
As usual, the food was wonderful. Martha is a fine cook and hostess. She understood Jesus when he had said he came to serve and not be served and she did the same.
There was much laughter. Someone asked Lazarus, “What was the first thought that came into your mind when you came back to life?
“What’s that smell?,” was his response.
We all laughed. I was one of those who had helped to roll away the stone from the mouth of his tomb and I can attest to the stench of death that it contained.
Amidst all the laughter, I began to notice something. We were celebrating Lazarus’ coming back to life and honoring the one who had done it. But, more and more, it began to have the feel of a funeral dinner. There was laughter. There was joking. There was remembering. But there was a somber air to it all. Especially among some of Jesus’ disciples. A couple of them kept glancing at the door or out the windows as if they suspected someone unwelcome might crash the party at any time. Others looked somehow sad – sad or determined, or both – even when they laughed. Then I noticed the wistful look on Jesus' face. He looked like someone who was enjoying a last dinner with family and friends before leaving on a long and treacherous journey.
Then, something most shocking happened. Mary, who had been looking intently at Jesus the whole time, came to where Jesus was reclining and knelt at his feet. From somewhere, she pulled out a large jar of expensive perfume – pure nard! She began slathering it on Jesus’ feet – a lot of it. The place was stunned to silence. From where I was, it looked like she was weeping. The whole house was full of the beautiful fragrance of the stuff.
Then, ever the impetuous one, Mary uncovered and undid her hair. Several in the room gasped. You, living in a different time and place, might not realize how scandalous this was. A woman’s hair was considered quite erotic. Only her husband would ever see it down and the first undoing of her hair in his presence was a significant part of their wedding night. And Mary had such hair! Dark and rich and luxurious. Hair that could tempt the angels.
There was another gasp as she began to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Martha shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head with a bemused look on her face as if to say, “There she goes again.”
One of Jesus disciples, Judas, broke the silence with a protest about the extravagant waste. The money that purchased that perfume could have been given to the poor. I learned later that some of the disciples suspected that Judas’ motives were more selfish and that he had been embezzling some of the funds from the common purse.
Whether he had been embezzling or had been sincerely concerned for the poor, I have come to think Judas was missing the point either way. One way or another all of us were. We all had our own idea of what Jesus should be about and where he should go and what he should do. For most of us that meant Jesus should fit into our ready-made ideas of what the Messiah should be. Or that he should do what we would do if we were the Messiah. We had our idols and were determined to have Jesus on our terms. We were never quite ready to take him as he was or follow him all the way.
Except for Mary. Mary got it. And she taught us all a lesson that evening. She poured out her love and devotion to Jesus with all the extravagance of rich and costly perfume and without reservation. She anointed his feet, signifying that she was prepared to go wherever those feet went and she would keep her focus on him to lead her. She anointed his feet with perfume and wiped then with her hair. And, now, her hair was soaked with the same fragrance as Jesus.
Far from being scandalized or offended, Jesus welcomed the gesture and said she was preparing him for his death. In about a week we would understand just how true that was. Jesus was killed by the powers that be.
But, like Lazarus, only much more so, he did not stay dead. He rose again. Again, Psalm 126 was in our hearts and on our lips:
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion
Then we were like those who dream
Then was our mouth filled with laughter
And our tongue with shouts of joy.
The LORD has done great things for us and we are glad indeed!
Mary’s extravagant sacrifice of 300 denarri’s worth of nard was a prophetic act foreshadowing the extravagant sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Jesus, who overcame the stench of sin and death and filled our lives with the rich fragrance of his extravagant life and love. Mary had anticipated it all.
I have spent the rest of my life trying to catch up to Mary’s faithfulness. I have tried to sit attentively at the feet of Jesus. I have wanted to worship him in the beauty of holiness. I have tried to love him back with the same fragrant and extravagant love with which he loved me. I have tried to love others with that same costly love. I have tried to follow in his footsteps wherever they led. More often than not, they have led me to the poor who are indeed still with us – or at least they are with us if we choose to be with and for them as Jesus himself was with and for the poor.
I want to be as soaked like Mary’s hair with the love and joy of Jesus. It is the fragrance of mercy. It is the aroma of heaven. I want to be that aroma in the world around me. As another follower of Jesus, Paul, wrote in one of his letters, “I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Like Mary, I seek to love, even as Jesus first loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering an sacrifice to God.
Friday, March 19, 2010
A Video from my friend (and hero) Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul
Daniel Deng Bul, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan is one of my heroes. I first got to know him when he was bishop of the Diocese of Renk with which the Diocese of Chicago has a companion relationship. Bishop Daniel has long been a leader of the Church in Sudan and a tireless advocate for peace and reconciliation. While he was still Bishop of Renk, I had the honor of traveling to the Diocese of Renk in February of 2005 as part of a delegation from our diocese.
While there, we visited the town of Melut, south of Renk. We were told that due to the civil war (which had only just formally ended a month before we went), it would not have been safe for us to go there a year before. As recently as 2002, 80 villages just south of Melut were burned to the ground by the government in Khartoum in an act of ethnic cleansing. The area is rich in oil and the northern government is determined to claim it before there is any division between the north and Southern Sudan. The people were rounded up and put in a sort of concentration camp. They were without food. When Bishop Daniel found out about this, he arranged to take a truck of grain to the people. He was stopped at a military check-point near the camp and told they could go no farther. Bishop Daniel insisted that he must go because the people were hungry. He was told that if he continued, he would be shot. This was no idle threat given the armies history. The bishop replied, “Then, you will have to shoot me. I will not let my people starve.” The unrelenting moral force of the bishop eventually won out. One of the soldiers relented and talked the others into letting the bishop go on and the much-needed grain was delivered to the people. One reads about folk like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero, and Mother Teresa. For the first time, with Bishop Daniel, I felt as though I was in the presence of such a one as these.
The Nancy he mentions in the video is Nancy Wang, the girlfriend of a member of St. Barnabas, Jonathan Lehe. Jonathan is in Africa working for the Clinton Foundation. Nancy has been working in Southern Sudan supplying the Ministry of Health, Government of Southern Sudan with essential drugs and hospital supplies. Through this connection, we at St. Barnabas are seeking to increase the aid we are able to provide to our sisters and brothers in Sudan.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Spirituality and Politics from the Angle of Eternity
I've just finished one of the my Lenten books, The Spiritual Life, by the great Anglican mystic and spiritual writer, Evelyn Underhill. It is a wonderful little book full of insights. I was particularly struck (in light of recent comments made by a certain radio/tv opionator) by the link she makes between the spiritual life and politics.
With regard to saying the Lord's Prayer, Underhill affirms, "It is useless to utter fervent petitions for that Kingdom to be established and that Will done, unless we are willing to do something about it ourselves."
She goes futher:
With regard to saying the Lord's Prayer, Underhill affirms, "It is useless to utter fervent petitions for that Kingdom to be established and that Will done, unless we are willing to do something about it ourselves."
She goes futher:
That means trying to see things, persons and choices from the angle of eternity; and dealing with them as part of the material in which the Spirit works. This will be decisive for the way we behave as to our personal, social, and national obligations. It will decide the papers we read, the movements we support, the kind of administrators we vote for, our attitude to social and international justice. For though we may renounce the world for ourselves, refuse the attempt to get anything out of it, we have to accept it as the sphere in which we are to co-operate with the Spirit, and try to do the Will. Therefore the prevalent notion that spirituality and politics have nothing to do with one another is the exact opposite of the truth. Once it is accepted in a realistic sense, the Spiritual Life has everything to do with politics. It means that certain convictions about God and the world become the moral and spiritual imperatives of our life; and this must be decisive for the way we choose to behave about that bit of the world over which we have been given a limited control.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
MLK, Jr., Dorothy Day & Glenn Beck
I'm visiting one of my daughters, Becca, in Atlanta. Today we visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. It was an inspiring reminder of King's life and teaching. It was also a disturbing reminder of just how recently the most blatant social injustices of racism were common in many parts of the USA. It was also an uncomfortable reminder that racism and other injustices and inequalities persist.
From the King Center, Becca took me to the Open Door, a Catholic Worker community where she and another medical student volunteer once a week to manage a clinic for the homeless. Of course I was moved deeply with paternal pride at seeing this aspect of my daughter's life. I was also reminded of the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day, whose life and teaching are as inspirational as are King's. And, again, I remembered that the peace and justice to which she bore witness remain counter-cultural and elusive.
I appreciate both of these faithful witnesses to the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are those, most recently and notoriously, Glenn Beck, who want to segregate the call to personal conversion and righteousness from the call to social conversion and justice. But that segregation is a distortion of the gospel that Jesus actually proclaimed. And it is not a segregation that has been recognized by the great teachers and saints of the Church. It is also beyond doubt that without the proclamation of this "social" aspect of the gospel by folk like King, the injustices of Jim Crow would have endured. I wonder what Glenn Beck would have been saying about that if he had been broadcasting his nonsense in the late 1950's and early 60's?
Faithful Christians can and do disagree on particulars of Church and public policy when it comes to bearing witness to, and seeking to achieve, greater justice in the world. But, there is no escaping the necessity of measuring our personal and social lives and policies against the needs of "the least of these." Jesus himself said that our salvation just might depend upon it.
While neither King nor Day are official saints (the latter famously declaring she did not want to be dismissed so easily), they both rank among the great Christian teachers and exemplars of the last century. Thankfully, neither of them misunderstood the gospel the way Glenn Beck misunderstands and misrepresnts it. I am grateful to have been reminded today of their witness.
From the King Center, Becca took me to the Open Door, a Catholic Worker community where she and another medical student volunteer once a week to manage a clinic for the homeless. Of course I was moved deeply with paternal pride at seeing this aspect of my daughter's life. I was also reminded of the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day, whose life and teaching are as inspirational as are King's. And, again, I remembered that the peace and justice to which she bore witness remain counter-cultural and elusive.
I appreciate both of these faithful witnesses to the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are those, most recently and notoriously, Glenn Beck, who want to segregate the call to personal conversion and righteousness from the call to social conversion and justice. But that segregation is a distortion of the gospel that Jesus actually proclaimed. And it is not a segregation that has been recognized by the great teachers and saints of the Church. It is also beyond doubt that without the proclamation of this "social" aspect of the gospel by folk like King, the injustices of Jim Crow would have endured. I wonder what Glenn Beck would have been saying about that if he had been broadcasting his nonsense in the late 1950's and early 60's?
Faithful Christians can and do disagree on particulars of Church and public policy when it comes to bearing witness to, and seeking to achieve, greater justice in the world. But, there is no escaping the necessity of measuring our personal and social lives and policies against the needs of "the least of these." Jesus himself said that our salvation just might depend upon it.
While neither King nor Day are official saints (the latter famously declaring she did not want to be dismissed so easily), they both rank among the great Christian teachers and exemplars of the last century. Thankfully, neither of them misunderstood the gospel the way Glenn Beck misunderstands and misrepresnts it. I am grateful to have been reminded today of their witness.
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend. — Dorothy Day
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