Elementary school playground. 

On the coast road where Trent Lott had a home. This roof was still in good shape -- it's just the house beneath it that was gone. 

Close to the coast. 

After the deluge. 

On the ground in Mississippi. 

Katrina Diaries: The View from the Front Porch

Another multi-analgesic day: gutting the interior of Alfred Jackson’s house. Mr. Jackson, an 82-year-old African-American man, has lived his entire life in the house we stripped to studs today. Katrina was the first storm to flood his house, and she left it under eight feet of brackish water.

The work is brutal in the 90-degree heat, and it doesn’t leave much time for conversation so I don’t know much about Mr. Jackson’s eight decades in Mississippi. I do know he had built a nice home with beautiful paneling on many of the walls, and shelves filled with books and the mementos of a long life.

Katrina’s winds and water swept away the books and many of the mementos. They ripped the veneer right off the walls. They also ripped the veneer that has glossed over racial politics in America. But they left behind a Bible, a bit worse for the beating it suffered, but still carrying the promise that someday justice will roll down like mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

An octogenarian in Mississippi has probably seen a lot of water roll by. He could be forgiven for a certain sadness in the wake of these angry waters, yet as he sat in the shade of a tree in his front lawn watching us carry out the stuff of a lifetime, Mr. Jackson’s eyes were still bright, hopeful and focused on the future as he told us – eyes twinkling – that he’d been thinking about redecorating anyway.

Yesterday we drove along the beach front road where Sen. Trent Lott’s house was destroyed. President Bush joked about sitting on the front porch again when it is rebuilt. I don’t suppose the president will ever sit out under the tree in Alfred Jackson’s front yard.

He should. Familiarity does not breed contempt; it cultivates concern and compassion. Many political observers have noted President Bush’s apparent discomfort with poor folks in general and poor African-Americans in particular. The First Lady may be honest in her insistence that Mr. Bush cares for all Americans; nevertheless, her heated defense of her husband does not change the fact that folks like Alfred Jackson will never be among Mr. Bush’s circle of familiarity and concern.

As for me, in better – and cooler – times, I am pretty darn sure that I’d rather spend an afternoon sitting in Mr. Jackson’s front yard than on Trent Lott’s front porch. The view of the Gulf of Mexico may be much better from Sen. Lott’s porch, but the view of America is better from Mr. Jackson’s.

Katrina Diaries: Lord's Day

The best way to describe this Sabbath is that it has been a four ibuprofen day. We made of our work a worship, and recalled with our backs that the Sabbath was made for humankind not humankind for the Sabbath.

The “worship” began with prayer at 8:30, followed by a chorus of chain saws at 8:45. Before dinner was mercifully served at 7:00 we had gutted one house down to its bare studs and removed a ton or more of trees and debris from outside of another.

We are in an area spared the worst of the storm, and still the devastation along the shore is indescribable. Tornados reduce homes to matchsticks; hurricanes do the same thing and then sweep the matchsticks out to sea.

Such storms strike with a great egalitarian furry, sweeping away mansions and shacks alike. Along the beach road in Pascagoula we passed what, we were told, was the home of the wealthiest man in Mississippi. It is now a see-through – or, perhaps, sea-through – structure. The neighbor’s car rests in a swimming pool. One perfectly intact roof sits squarely on the foundation of a house swept away by the storm surge. The roofers would be proud of their work, but a bit mystified as to the whereabouts of the house they did it on.

Two blocks inland the homes are far more modest – two bedrooms on a slab qualifies as middle class; working class folks inhabit trailers. Just a few days ago all were six feet under the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, while the wind and waves were no respecter of class, the economic structures that will determine the course of rebuilding are entirely class driven. There is a class of folks who are insured and another class of folks who are not. There is a class of folks who can afford to rebuild and another class who cannot. The wealth on the coast line here is not as deep as the flood waters were, and thus the outpouring of volunteers is crucial. Free labor is all some folks can afford.

But it will not, on its own, be enough to ensure the return of ordinary working folks – the shipbuilders, the fishers, the shop owners, police, fire fighters, school teachers, service employees and factory workers who have lived along this coastline in homes just a stroll away from the water.

Ensuring their return will take a massive influx of public money justly distributed. These days, the tens of thousands of folks all along the Gulf Coast need the concern of the federal government.

They certainly aren’t getting the concern of some insurance companies unless they have flood insurance. Homes utterly destroyed by the 25-foot storm surge aren’t covered by standard policies because the damage was caused by water not wind – never mind that the wall of water was driven by 150-mile per hour winds.

One home we worked on today was totaled by the storm surge. It had to be completely gutted, which we did. The insurance agent told the home owner to expect $10,000 to cover the roof of their shed, which was blown off by the wind, but to expect nothing for their house which was under eight feet of water when the surge rolled through. The family of five is homeless, but their shed will have a nice roof.

For now, the kindness of strangers is all that holds together many such families. Such kindness marks the first step on the road to recovery. There’s plenty of work to be done. Will there be enough strangers to do it?

Katrina Diaries: Heroes Highway

It is a long, long, long way from Arlington, Virginia, to Gautier, Mississippi. My butt is molded to the seat of this minivan! In my road stupor I am convinced that I rolled through northern Alabama listening to Jackson Browne singing “After the Deluge.”

The long, low ridge that emerges from the broad coastal plain just south of Birmingham marks the southern end of the Appalachians, and it seems to me utterly disconnected from the rest of those mountains. The distance is more than geographic and may be measured better in time than in miles. History in the south is Faulknerian: “the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”

I cannot drive through Birmingham without recalling its critical place in the Civil Rights Movement. The pictures from the Gulf Coast of black people fleeing raging water are more helpless and, perhaps, hopeless, than the pictures from four decades ago of black folks fleeing water aimed with rage by Birmingham police. After the deluge there were no buildings fit to keep the children dry.

I am a southerner, born in Tuscaloosa just a few years before Gov. Wallace stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama promising “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” I know intimately, having graduated from Chattanooga High School with a class that was 50 percent white and 50 percent African-American, that the South has changed.

But sometimes I think those remarkable changes have been overtaken by other equally significant yet almost unremarked upon changes in the broader culture. The Civil Rights Movement itself reminds me of a time before we all became consumers instead of citizens, before we became bound more by a common market than by common humanity. I cannot think about the Movement without recalling the music that kept spirits high; a recollection that makes the destruction of music-filled New Orleans all the more dispiriting.

Yet driving down the “Heroes Highway,” as the interstate from Montgomery to Mobile is called, I saw a few signs of hope as I sped along in an ad hoc caravan of concern. Trucks hauling mobile homes for FEMA, Red Cross crews, other church groups – all heading for the battered Gulf Coast in an effort to close the distances that have separated us one from another for far too long.

Even after the deluge and amidst the apparent triumph of consumer culture, we remain, each of us and all of us, creatures of one earth. Perhaps we may recall this fundamental truth and live into it again as creation reveals its secrets by and by.

Katrina Diaries: A Long Day's Journey

I've been down on the Gulf Coast for a while, with no access to the cyber world but need deep in the muck of the real world. Over the next several days I will post reflections on my time in Mississippi.
If Frederick Buechner is right – if call emerges at the intersection of deep joy and deep need – then I am less called than confused. Why am I heading to the Gulf Coast to join a group of volunteers from National Capital Presbytery? The pictures from Katrina’s wake are compelling, to be sure. I am a pastor, and pastors are supposed to serve, right? After all, I have some experience in cleaning up after hurricanes and in leading mission trips. In addition, to my great surprise, an openly gay member of my congregation is heading down with the team. I am surprised at his participation not for doubts about his gifts – he holds a construction e license – but because the last time he joined a Presbytery mission trip he and his partner had to reenter the closet for the sake of the sensibilities of their Kenyan hosts and the experience was more than a little abusive. I am going, in part, to support Tom.
So I feel obligation and duty, longing and loneliness but little joy as I drive south. Already I miss my children and my wife and wonder about the faithfulness of leaving them and the congregation I serve behind.
Of course, while I may sense little joy as I embark on this journey, the dire need that awaits us in Mississippi is not in doubt. The images that have flashed across screens for the past two weeks are unprecedented in my lifetime. Although we’ve seen utter destruction before and too many times, the scope of Katrina’s devastation exceeds any natural disaster in the United States in the past half century.
On top of the breadth of destruction, the storm’s effects have clearly split along lines of class and race, and thus made clear the deep divisions and fault lines still running through American society. What most Americans don’t want to know or believe about their country has been laid bare in the Third World images beamed out of New Orleans. The commonwealth has collapsed.
A generation of Reaganomics and neo-conservative policies has eviscerated the public sector, intensified the radical individualism of American culture and widened the gap between the haves and have nots to a distance not seen since the Gilded Age. Grover Norquist, who has been called “field marshall of the Bush plan,” once famously remarked that he would like to shrink the federal government to the size where it can be flushed down the bathtub drain. The response of FEMA as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were being flushed down the drain suggests that Norquist’s dream has come true – with disastrous consequences.
Meanwhile, right-wing Christianity, with its focus on narrowly circumscribed personal piety and individual salvation, has played chaplain to this movement.
In the faces of the women, children and men abandoned in the rising flood waters we are confronting the limits of the conservative social and theological imagination.
The deep need of the world is in those faces. They call forth both the immediate response of disaster relief – the hands on, boots in the mud work of thousands of volunteers, and also for a sustained political engagement confronting the powers in the board rooms of the corporations that will profit from this misery or fail to cover its victims adequately, and the hearing rooms of a Congress that still seems more interested in cutting the taxes of the wealthy than in meeting the needs of the poor.
Christ is in those mud-smeared faces, too. The incarnate one is in our midst: homeless, poor, feeling as abandoned as on the cross. As I drive toward Mississippi, I am realizing that it does bring me deep joy to witness to the reality that some still seek Christ in such places. When that joy of encounter meets such desperate need, Christ beckons – calling us to the public square and to public squalor to be repairers of the breaches in both places.

Coming Out

Nobody says it better than Bill Moyers, and he was at it again recently in a speech at Union Seminary in New York. His warnings about the dangers of theocracy were echoing in my mind when I received a call from a local congregation wanting to use space in the building of the church I serve. We're close to public transportation rail lines, so it's not unusual for groups to ask and we often accommodate such requests. But this time the request was for a room for a support group for men and women "seeking a way out of homosexuality."
I'll confess that I stopped seeking further information right there. After all, in a More Light Presbyterian congregation that is welcoming, affirming and empowering of individuals regardless of sexual orientation, one that hosts "coming out" support groups for people discerning their own sexual identity, anything resembling the "ex-gay" movement is incongruent with our mission. The request to use our space may have been motivated by deeply held values of compassion and concern. It came from a main-line Protestant church that would surely eschew the label of fundamentalism. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that such a request is also deeply intertwined with the very thing about which mowers warns.
As he put it, "This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or wrong. They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone know what it means."
The problem, of course, is that the witness of scripture is multivalent and overdetermined. Just as there are conservative scholars who insist on a quasi-literalist reading of the handful of passages sometimes interpreted as relating to homosexuality there are many others who insist that such readings are, at best, inaccurate and, at worst, based more on contemporary prejudice than Biblical scholarship.
For my money, the best brief and readable such progressive critique remains the one authored more than 20 years ago by Walter Wink.
As Wink insists, "The Bible only knows a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, culture, or period."
Any program that attempts to push, pull, prod or persuade a gay man or a lesbian woman that their sexuality is deviant and unholy -- rather than a part of the incredible variety of God's good creation -- misses the mark of the love ethic.

Labor of Imagination

The Third World nature of the images from the Gulf Coast are almost beyond description: they paint a scene of destruction, desolation, despair, chaos and hopelessness – all coming with oppressive tropical heat that adds a veneer of sweat to the misery.
Underneath it all runs a current of outrage as survivors begin to raise questions that the nation must address in the days to come – questions of racial justice, economic justice, budget priorities, security choices. As is typical, James Carrol offers some of the sharpest and most eloquently phrased response to such questions. His words provide context for the images that continue to emerge. As is also typical, David Corn offers a less eloquent, more pointed critique in his response. Both are worth the read.
Where, in all of this volatile mix of fear, despair and anger, do we find images of hope? What now will call forth and inspire the labor of imagination? To ask the peculiarly Christian question: Where in all of this can we find resurrection?
I hope people of faith found a bit of it when they gathered in worship in recent days. There were undoubtedly some voices in some pulpits last weekend speaking of God’s judgement and wrath. But the God of resurrection hope is not the author of human suffering. Only those of too limited imagination – and of too short memory – would make such claims in response to the images of suffering coming from the Gulf Coast in the past days.
No, now is not the time to speak of God’s judgment – at least not in such simplistic terms. Instead, let people of faith and hope speak together of the memory of God’s infinite imagination and the call to us to participate in such times as this in the Godly labor of imagination. For only through such imaginative work can we move beyond paralyzing fear. As Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, insists, “the work of imagination is serious business because through it we build or destroy the world.”
There has been more than enough destruction; now is the time to build.
In his memoir, The Story of a Life, the Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld writes, “memory pulled toward the now and imagination sailed toward the unknown.”
In times of crisis we are challenged to hold these two together – memory and imagination. As a people of faith, a people called, shaped and informed by a particular story, a particular collection of memories, we gather strength from the memory of God’s transformative power and of its work in the lives of those who have come before us. Exodus reminds us that the water was parted to transform a people – to liberate captives and found a new people shaped and formed around the memory of justice.
A people shaped and formed by justice cannot turn their backs on injustice anywhere. However, when we ask, “what is the work of justice in this context” our discernment calls us into the labor of imagination as we cast a vision of a future otherwise, a future in which the poor are not consigned to the most dangerous living conditions and resigned to the back of every line for assistance in times of crisis.
The gospel stories of Jesus calming the seas remind us of Jesus’ transforming presence in the lives of the disciples, calming the storms around them and encouraging them to live without fear. A people shaped and formed by the love which casts out all fear cannot ignore the cries of those living in the midst of such fearful conditions. However, when we ask, “what is the work of such love in this context” our discernment calls us into the labor of imagination as we cast a vision of a future otherwise, a future in which refugees find a welcome and hospitality casts out fear.
And even – especially – in the midst of such a time as this, the words of the psalmist call us to sing: and to sing a more profound hallelujah, to lift our voices in praise, to join the chorus of creation and to worship with imagination. When we recall the apostle Paul’s admonition to make of our very lives a worship, we begin to move toward the labor of imagination that is required of us if we are to look at the images from New Orleans and imagine those waters parted, those communities rebuilt, those lives restored, those homeless welcomed, those mourning comforted, those naked clothed and hungry fed.
The memory of stories of transformation should not leave us wallowing in nostalgia, but rather they should and must and will pull us toward the now and help us imagine a future of restoration. What lies immediately before and around is horror. Lives and communities have been dis-membered; now they must be re-membered. They must be rebuilt, restored, reformed, reimagined.
For, if imagination sails toward the unknown, it sails toward a future that is, nonetheless, shaped by the play of memory and imagination.
The images that have touched us so deeply during these past few days leave us profoundly unsettled. It is as if the present moment is the unknown. Powerful images work on us that way. As the poet Adrienne Rich said, art isn’t “enough as something to be appreciated, finely figured; it [can] be a fierce, destabilizing force, a wave pulling you further out than you thought you wanted to be.”
Di Bartolo’s Crucifixion works that way on me. For in drawing me in, it pushes me out further than I want to be – out to where I encounter compassion that is almost beyond my imagination.
Jesus eyes, from which I want to turn away, beckon me into a landscape of suffering and of suffering with that does soul work on my imagination.
Vincent Van Gogh once wrote, “I prefer painting people’s eyes rather than cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral – a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker.”
During the past few days I have tried not to turn my eyes away from the eyes of those on the Gulf Coast. They are tired, full of despair. They are like the eyes of warriors who have witnessed too much death, too much destruction. They are like the eyes of Jesus on the cross.
If, as they say, the eyes are windows to the soul, these eyes remind us that the human soul is sacred space. These eyes beckon us into the present moment and call us to the labor of imagining and constructing a future otherwise.
When I confront the eyes of the people in the pictures overwhelming us these days, I encounter a suffering almost beyond imagining. Nevertheless, when I remember the work of Christ on the cross, when I look into those eyes, I encounter a compassion that is far beyond my own limited capacity to imagine – except for the story that I recall – or, that recalls me. The story of a love so immeasureable as to encompass all my fears and despair and all of those of creation itself. The story of a love from which nothing will ever separate us: not heights of smashing waves, not depths of stagnant water, not rulers who are inept or unjust, not powers of awesome wind, not present images of chaos, not even death itself – nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.The story of the cross insists that we encounter a God whose imagination soars far beyond our limits – even our limits of death. For even where Jesus, as depicted by di Bartolo and reflected by the gospels, experiences utter abandonment, isolation and alienation, God imagines new life, new community, new hope. As we give of our time and treasure in the days to come – in response to this and other suffering as well – may our labor be imaginative, may it be shaped by the memories of our faith, and may it be labor filled with faith, hope and love enough to shape a future otherwise for those dwelling now in despair.

Amidst the Storm

A hymn for this week.

When raging storms push forth a rising tide,
When rain and wind leave nowhere left to hide,
We cling to branches of the tree of life.
Alleluia.

Foundations crumble on the shifting sand.
We search for hope across a broken land.
Amidst the raging storm we seek God’s hand.
Alleluia.

The homeless wonder through the city’s street.
They seek small shelter from the scorching heat.
Amazing grace would be so cool and sweet.
Alleluia.

When on our own we cannot seem to start,
But neighbors are God’s feet and hands and heart
It is as if You’ve made the waters part.
Alleluia.

The captives will taste liberty again.
The suffering find a balm for deepest pain.
The blind will see, the voiceless lift the strain:
Alleluia. Amen.

Tune: Engelberg
If you feel so moved, feel free to use it. Cite as "David Ensign, copyright 2005," and leave a comment. Thanks.

Why I Am Marching

There's a major anti-war demonstration scheduled next month in DC. It will be time, again, to put on a clerical collar and walk through the streets of Washington with my children who grow weary of such things.
Why bother? As I consider that question -- and as I looked through some old files in search of something else -- I came across something I wrote in the fall of 2002, prior to one of the earliest demonstrations in opposition to war in Iraq. It still rang true to me.

"Last night a member of our session raised concerns for the safety of those of us going to Washington this weekend to protest against war in Iraq. Following another random sniper killing in the Washington area earlier in the week her concerns prompted some reflection. Why run the risk, however infinitesimal, of stepping into the sights of a madman? It is a question worth pondering even if the risk is reduced by today’s arrest of suspects in the sniper case.

"In terms of relative risk, of course, I run a far greater one most afternoons when I cross Monticello Blvd. on my way for an afternoon java fix at Starbucks.

"But this decision is not about the kind of risks I choose to run, but rather about the kind of life I choose to lead. Meaningful lives are, ultimately, faithful lives. The opposite of faith is not disbelief or wrong belief. No, the opposite of faith is fear. A faithful life, a life of meaning, cannot be led in fear.

"It is faith that calls me to march in Washington this weekend -- faith in the Christ who said, “blessed are the peacemakers,” and faith that a better world is possible.

"The nation seems bent on a headlong rush into war. The talking heads assure us that most of the nation supports the president as he leads us with seeming inevitability down the same path his father walked 11 years ago.

"Faith compels me to witness: war is never inevitable. War is a choice that national leaders make, and war is a failure that they pursue as policy. Another choice is always possible, and the peacemaker’s calling is to stand in the public square and proclaim that possibility.

"So Friday night I will board a bus in Cleveland Heights with 50-some other Presbyterians-for-peace to make the long trek to the Mall in Washington.

"That 50-some Presbyterians from Ohio would hop on a bus for a 400-mile, overnight trip that will bring us home at 2 a.m. ought to raise all kinds of questions about the depth of support in the mainstream of middle America for this military adventure, but the pundits can ponder that. To me, this congregation of ordinary folk witnesses to an extraordinary truth: the peacemaker’s call compels us into the meaningful lives we would live.

"We trust that the most serious risk we run this weekend is the loss of two night’s sleep. But if our risk is bigger, we run it recalling Bonhoeffer’s reminder: when the Prince of Peace calls us, he bids us come and die. Die to lives of fear and be reborn to lives of faith. Die to lives of conventional wisdom and be reborn to lives of hope. Die to lives of age-old hatreds and be reborn to lives of exuberant love. Die to lives of war and be reborn to lives of peace.

"Why do I march this weekend? For my own offspring – beloved children of God -- I can only answer: blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

The cyber age is full of ups and downs. If you're reading this, you know that one of the ups is global conversation at the speed of the web. If you're wondering why it's been so long since the most recent post ... well, what is the sound of one computer crashing ... if it's in the woods, does anyone hear it?
Anyway, we were back up and running just in time for Hiroshima Day.

Signs of Hope

In case you missed this declaration, it's worth reading. It's one more sign of hope for progressive people of faith. These days we need all the signs we can find.

Resident Aliens Revisited

OK. I’ve had a few days to digest Resident Aliens, and here’s one more small response -- although a rather lengthy post -- to add to the volumes this little book has already inspired.

How can we form communities of discipleship in the midst of what is undoubtedly a culture of disbelief? Now I mean that question to be provocative, but I don’t mean simply to suggest that the unchurched don’t believe in God. Indeed, since their numbers are huge and they are diverse in background and perspective, I don’t know what it is that they believe or disbelieve beyond the self-evident fact that few of them believe that getting up on Sunday morning to worship is worth their time and effort.

Moreover, naming our context as a culture of disbelief condemns the church far more than it does the culture. Hauerwas and Willimon are spot on when they suggest that the church itself has made disbelief an easy perspective to take because “we Christians have given atheists less and less in which to disbelieve! A flaccid church has robbed” disbelief of its edge, of its sense of avante guard and its sense of adventure.[1]

The church itself too often works – or, better, fails to work – by way of a functional atheism. This is true internally and externally. In other words, it is true of the church as it performs the necessary acts of maintaining an institution – setting budgets, recruiting and hiring staff, making decisions about its common life; and it is true of the church as it witnesses in the world through acts of mercy and of justice, as it engages the community in service and through political processes.

As Hauerwas and Willimon put it, “The church is the dull exponent of conventional secular political ideas with a vaguely religious tint.”[2]

This is true, they argued, whether we are speaking of liberal social witness or conservative social witness or of the church’s internal functions. In other words, the religious right is indistinguishable from the Republican Party while the religious left is the Democratic Party at prayer. Both sides too often seek to exercise power rather than take up a ministry of reconciliation. Churches left and right look indistinguishable from the Kiwanis Club when they make internal decisions. I’ve seen a lot of church budgets set over the years, in liberal and conservative congregations, and precious few of them developed through a deeply spiritual process of discernment.

If the church is a house of memory, if Brueggemann is correct, if we are drawn together by practices of memory, perhaps we are suffering from spiritual Altzheimer’s disease. We have forgotten that what draws us together, what makes faith a remarkable adventure, what makes our journey together a powerful and transformative witness, is that God has acted decisively in the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and that in and through Jesus Christ, God calls followers of Jesus together to be the church.

When we respond – when we follow Jesus together – we become “salt and light.” We become a sign for the world – a beacon of hope, a way beyond the left and right ways of the world.

The kicker comes here, though. For, as Brueggemann clearly says, we are drawn together by practices that include suffering. This is not a call to suffer for the sake of suffering, but rather to sacrifice for the sake of the gospel and the sake of God’s good creation. When Jesus says, “follow me,” he is inviting disciples on a journey that leads to Jerusalem and to the cross. As Bonhoeffer put it so bluntly, when Jesus calls, he bids us come and die.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, this is the point at which his invitation runs smack up against our deepest desires for security. We are afraid. We live in a culture not only of disbelief, but of deep and abiding fear and insecurity. You don’t have to look very far from where I live in Northern Virginia to understand how deeply this culture values security, nor, I would guess, do any of us have to look any further than our own homes, checking accounts, jobs or investments to see how deeply we, as individuals, value security.

But Jesus calls us to a life together, as church, marked by a radical trust in the sovereign Lord of history and an utterly, foolishly adventurous life of discipleship as we follow him into a life where the poor are blessed, the mourners are comforted, the meek inherit the earth and the peacemakers are called the children of God. That world doesn’t look much like North America, nor much like the North American church, where all too often the poor are blamed for their poverty, the mourners are an embarrassment unless the grieving is “healthy” and brief, the meek are silenced and the peacemakers are called all manner of things from traitor to naïve.

Nevertheless, God is calling us to follow Jesus into the world – into our own backyards now where old memories are giving way to new opportunities – to share this radically counter-cultural gospel of going the second mile, of turning the other cheek, of loving neighbors and enemies.

Now, you have heard it said – on the talk shows, through the internet, from our political leaders, and, too often no doubt from pulpits – you have heard it said that such is not the way of the world, that this is impractical, that nobody really lives this way. But I say to you that God calls us to this life, and, by God’s grace and mercy and love, we can join the great adventure of trying to live it. If we are resident aliens, let's make a joyous noise in a foreign land, and make the life of faith a journey of adventure once again.

---

[1] Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), 50; they cite Alasdair MacIntyre, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 24.

[2] Hauerwas and Willimon, 38.

Amen, brother!

I've finally actually read Resident Aliens, the 1989 offering from Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon whose title names the church's situation in the midst of a culture of disbelief. Resident Aliens is now considered a classic, and I've read many pieces of it and about it over the years without actually reading the book itself. (Do you have a long list of such books on your shelves, too?)
I'm taken with the church as "salt and light," but not sure that colony is the best image to describe the church in an age of empire. There's way too much to blog on when my children are waiting for me to come up and dish ice cream. Anyway, in the middle of my own reflections on that still challenging book I ran across this post on alternet. I imagine that Hauerwas and Willimon would call the very notion of the religious left fighting back a sign that liberals still long for the age of Christendom, but I'll call it one small sign of hope and say "amen" to the effort. But now, it's time for ice cream.

Back to Camp

I went back to summer camp this year. More than 20 years after serving on the staff of an outstanding Presbyterian summer camp I had the opportunity to return to my roots and spend two weeks as "pastor-in-residence."
First: I had a blast, and highly recommend two weeks at camp for anyone feeling a bit stressed out and over-urbanized or suburbanized.
That said, in twentysome years the place had changed a bit. Its core identity -- a place of building community -- remains remarkably constant. However, the flavor of the community is significantly more evangelical. Praise music has replaced folk music and spirituals at campfires: "My Jesus, My Savior" instead of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot." The story of the call of Samuel has replaced African folk tales as a way of inviting campers deeper into discovery. Intentional Bible study has replaced more general "time for reflection."
In many ways these changes are overdue corrections. It's not that the community was ever too secularized or too accommodating to secular culture. Rather, it simply assumed a familiarity with the songs and stories and traditions of Christian faith that, over time, failed to reflect the reality of its staff or campers. The same is true in the broader church today.
On the other hand, one might argue that the church -- and camp, to a lesser degree -- are actually more accommodating to the culture now. This is something of a stretch at camp where a deep respect for creation, near absence of consumerism and focus on community rather than individual striving remain radically counter cultural. Still, the "Jesus-is-my-boyfriend" praise songs are by and large capitulations to some of the least inspiring aspects of popular culture, and the theology they reflect draws on some of the least inspiring aspects of contemporary church life, too.
Those trends worry me because the signs of an accommodating church are all around us. Non-denominational churches (as well as many main line ones) are springing up as fast as strip malls in sprawling American suburbs -- with architecture often just as uninspiring. Few, if any of these congregations give voice to any prophetic critique of sprawl itself. Churches of all kinds engage in nitch marketing efforts to appeal to religious consumers but rarely offer a prophetic response to consumerism. The church too often supports American foreign policy but remains silent about idolatrous nationalism and militarism.
If you're lucky enough to find yourself at camp this summer, don't let a few mediocre praise songs spoil your fun. But if you find yourself in a church somewhere soon, keep your eyes wide open to the various gods who are being praised.

Going Off Line

Christian Wright is on the road and happily disconnected from the world for the next four weeks. Check back in mid July. Peace out.

The Costs this Time

Been reading Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship again, and am reminded by his prophetic critique of both church and state of the ongoing necessity to speak out at every opportunity against the war of choice we are fighting in Iraq. Although it gets very tiresome after three years to repeat the same opposition over and over, it is more important now than ever because it seems as if the public is finally itself growing weary from the war. Recent editorials in a variety of mainstream papers underscore the increasing discontent. While the infamous Downing Street memo doesn't reveal anything that antiwar activists didn't already assume, it strongly suggests that Congress and the American people were not being told the whole truth about Bush administration plans. Recent news reports suggest the same lack of candor concerning escalating air attacks on Iraq at a time when we were being told that all avenues short of war were being pursued. Although it remains difficult and often extremely unpopular to do so, part of the cost of discipleship in our time must be standing squarely in the public square to say "no" to this war. Truth deserves nothing less.

Hm ...

A wee thought for the day:
"Theology does not dictate political or military strategy, and to identify a particular policy with Christian morality pure and simple is dishonesty and opportunism." Thomas Merton wrote those words more than 40 years ago in reflecting on the Cold War and the moral challenge presented by nuclear weapons. Imagine the heartache saved the body politic if we'd listened to him.

No More Deep Throat

It's been interesting reading the Washington Post these past few days, what with Deep Throat revealed and the end of this city's favorite parlor game. I came of age politically during the summer of Watergate hearings. I read all the early books about the scandal and was practically waiting in line when All the President's Men opened.
It's amusing to listen to the remaining Nixon loyalists this week attacking the integrity of the FBI man who leaked crucial information to Woodward and Bernstein. I used to be surprised when Nixon's supporters looked everywhere but at the Oval Office and its occupant to place the blame. These days I recognize it as a habit too ingrained to break.
Now that the identity of Deep Throat has been revealed, it's clear he was a man of many and mixed motives. It has always been clear that power politics played a central and crucial role in Nixon's downfall. Now we know that personal politics played a part as well. But mixed motives and power politics pale beside the truth, and the information that Mark Felt suplied all turned out to be true.
The truth ought to set us free. The truth was that the Nixon administration abused its power and broke the nation's laws. Truth freed the nation from the strange, paranoid grasp of Richard Nixon.
Alas, as Sen. Hiram Johnson put it during the first World War, "the first casualty of war is truth." The war on terror certainly counts truth among its victims -- from truths about weapons of mass destruction to those about prisoner abuse. The lies of the current Oval Office occupant have shaped the fearfulness of our time, stoking legitimate fears far beyond reason and using them as pretext for much mischief.
There is no more Deep Throat to leak unpopular truth and free us from this fear. While, as they used to say on the X-files, the truth is out there, we choose to ignore it and go on living in the grasp of our own strange paranoia.
So long, Deep Throat. Thanks, and rest in peace.

A Narrative of Hope

I did two things last weekend that, in distinct but related ways, prepared my heart and mind for reflecting on the story of the great flood on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
First, my sons and I went to see the new Star Wars movie, and second, the whole family accompanied some out-of-town friends to Arlington National Cemetery.
More on Revenge of the Sith in a moment. First, the cemetery. We went to a few of the famous graves: Audie Murphy, Joe Louis, and, of course, the Kennedy’s. We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown.
Now, I should mention that the man we were with, a good friend from Cleveland, is a self-described conservative, gun nut, military enthusiast. You can see immediately why I might be drawn to him – with all that in common!
It was more than a little bit interesting to walk through Arlington National Cemetery with him. The two of us walked together along the same paths, cast our eyes upon the same scenes, but perceived a profoundly different set of stories emanating from the headstones, markers and memorials.
Where he saw stories of honor, courage and sacrifice for the ideals of the country, I saw stories of horror, fear, suffering and the failure of humankind to live into God’s intention for creation as human behavior devolves into the singular emotion of hatred.
I think he saw the stories that the custodians of Arlington, and of the national memory of war, want each of us to hear. I, on the other hand, was left wondering if another story is possible. Is it possible, in our time, to imagine a narrative of hope?
Now, the two of us are friends, and we can talk easily about the sharp divergences in the ways that we see the world.
“Surely,” he insisted, “there are stories of honor, courage and sacrifice.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “surely there are, and just as surely, we should mark them and honor them.”
And so, on this Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, we do. Please, do not forget that however you feel about the war we are now engaged and engulfed in – especially now when so many young Americans are once again serving under arms.
Let President Kennedy’s famous words, carved in stone there at his gravesite, remind us of the debt of gratitude we owe to all who have answered this call, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
But let the words of scripture remind us that the narratives we recall on a weekend such as this are never unambiguous. The story of the flood lifts up the profound ambiguity at the center of human life: we are torn, each of us at many moments, between the better angels of our nature and the potential for horror and, indeed, evil, that resides also within each of us – Noah notwithstanding.
That tension, that ambiguity, lie at the heart of the Star Wars saga. In compelling ways, the new movie deepened my reflections about the stories of Memorial Day and of Noah and the flood. This film explores the same terrain and its narrative stretches between the same poles as it tells the story of how the Jedi Anakin Skywalker – the one they called “the chosen one” – turns to the dark side and becomes the evil Darth Vader, he of the heavy breathing and wonderfully black outfit! His journey from light to dark underscores the wisdom of my favorite theologian, Jedi master Yoda, who reminds us that “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
That’s a story we would prefer to forget on national days of remembering. But it’s a story that’s never far from the surface, even when buried in shrines at places like Arlington National Cemetery.

Cry the Beloved Country

I've been reading Alan Paton's apartheid era classic, and am struck by how remarkably contemporary it remains almost 60 years after its publication. The passage from which the title comes is a wonderfully accurate description of what it feels like to live in the United States in these nights of empire, days of terror.
"We do not know, we do not knonw. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the rapture of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be exterminated, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all. ...
"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh to gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. for fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."
Ah, but our land is so beautiful, too.

A Way Out of No Way

Last week was a difficult one: a challenge on scales both grand and global, and intimate and local.

It’s been a difficult week for the progressive church as our Roman Catholic brothers – I can’t hold the sisters accountable as they have no voice – our Roman Catholic brothers call a pope who ran the church office formerly called the Inquisition, who says that homosexuality is “objectively disordered and homosexual practices are sins gravely contrary to chastity,” who sees no way forward for women in the church and finds church teachings on contraception more important than the lives of millions of the world’s poorest who will die of AIDS.

Closer to home, Sen. Frist went on TV to tell the nation that progressives are out to filibuster faith – whatever that pernicious phrase means.

All of this is deeply troubling on a large scale. It is enough for the week, to be sure.

But this has also been a deeply troubling week on an intimate scale as well, as we have struggled to help our children with the reality of a bus wreck that struck very close to home. Our children were not on the bus the crashed in Arlington, but it carried some of their close friends and classmates, several of whom were hurt and hospitalized.

It’s been a difficult week in our household, and, for many progressives, it’s been a difficult week in the household of God.

The question for me this week then is this: is there a theological renewal possible that is both large enough to answer the challenge of a conservatism that borders on fundamentalism, and intimate enough to speak to the broken hearts of children and families?

It is perhaps providential that the lectionary placed before the church on Sunday one of those baseline places, one of those foundational passages of scripture. If we are to renew theology and the church we must not merely account for such passages but, indeed, we must be guided by them.

That’s a steep challenge for the progressive church when the passage includes John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Unfortunately, this passage is one of those billboard pieces that conservatives too often use to build a barbed-wire fence of orthodoxy around the garden of faith.

If we are to imagine and then articulate a theology and a vision of church that is expansive enough to respond to the challenge of fundamentalism and also intimate enough to respond to the suffering of grieving families we’ve got to spend some time dwelling in the garden of faith; we’ve got to tear down the fences around it; and we’ve got to embrace the rich and wondrous variety of creation that springs from its soil.

So, what then are we going to do with a passage that is so well known, so often used – and, let’s face it – so often abused that it shows up on signs at baseball games? I’ve got a radical suggestion this morning: let’s take it seriously. Indeed, let’s take it literally – more literally than the literalists and, perhaps, more fundamentally than the fundamentalists.

“I am the way, the truth and the life,” says Jesus.

This is one of those passages often used as a weapon by evangelists of a certain stripe. It was a motto of the crusades, it was no doubt used by the Inquisition, and it still gets used today by some Christians to construct the gates for the club of the saved and keep out the riffraff who don’t fit the mold of a particular conservative orthodox creedal perspective.

You remember the Rainbow Wig Man who used to show up at sporting events with Bible verses plastered on signboards? He used John 14:6 almost interchangeably with John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world …” In interviews, the Rainbow Man said that he was spreading the good news about Jesus to save those souls who were condemned to hell for all eternity if they did not confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to use the words of the church’s most ancient confession. He seemed to know quite well who was in and who was out, who was us and who was them, who was saved and who was condemned.

But the funny thing is, in this wonderfully rich passage from John, Jesus doesn’t say a single thing about creedal statements or confessions. He simply says, “I’m going to fix a room for you, and believe me, Dad’s house has plenty of space: there’s a room for you there. You know the way: just follow the road.”

When Thomas gives voice to our question – which road is that, Lord? – Jesus simply says, “I am the road.”

No particular church or confession or dogma or denomination or faith tradition is lifted up here. Simply Jesus himself, his very life, a life marked by the breaking of barriers and the breaking of bread; eating with the tax collectors; touching the lepers; breaking bread and breaking silence with women of less than sterling repute; welcoming first the children and claiming a special place for them in the household of God.

Rather than creedal confession, rather than guardian of orthodoxy, Jesus offers relationship. Truth is found in relationship with God, Jesus is telling us. The way of his relationship to God – a way of deep prayer, of utter self-giving, of absolute obedience to the will of God – this is the road to the household of God.

Truth lies not in orthodox theology but in deep relationship. Cardinal Ratzinger would probably tell me that such thinking begins the slippery slope toward the tyranny of relativism, but I’m just trying to take Jesus at his word here. If Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, then the way is one of heterodoxy, the truth is manifest in relationship, and the life is one of such excessive exuberance that no creed can capture it.

Come to think of it, saying “Lord, Lord; I believe, I believe” might be a whole lot easier than following this way of Jesus. This way of Jesus might take us into places where we’d rather not go: to places of heartache and suffering, to place of deep doubt and fear, places of loneliness and persecution, places of poverty and brokenness.

That’s often the case when we are called. For although our true calling will be a place of deep joy, it is almost always also a place of deep suffering and pain, for we are called to respond to the deepest needs of the world.

Sometimes those places of deep need are quite public. These days, as Pope Benedict XVI begins his reign, one place of deep public need is for the witness of progressive Christians speaking out for the full inclusion of all women and of all men – no matter their sexual orientation – in the full life and leadership of the church catholic. Also these days, as Senator Frist takes to the airwave in support of the American conservative effort to hijack Christianity in the name of a narrow partisan agenda, another quite public deep need is for the witness of progressive Christians in the public square and on the phone to the offices of elected officials to remind them that the language of faith has no place in a partisan fight over Senate rules.

At the same time, many places of deep need are quite personal: the needs of young people for support and mentoring as they navigate the often overwhelming path of adolescence; the needs of families as they struggle with the many and manifold challenges of raising children; the needs of young couples trying to chart a way forward. And this week, in particular, the needs of children and families in our community trying to cope with an unfathomable loss.

The conservative orthodoxy embraced by the Roman church today and its Protestant twin upheld by American conservative evangelicals fails these tests. It fails because in the face of the heartbreak of the AIDS pandemic it offers nothing but death; in the face of the overwhelming and obvious giftedness of women leaders and gay and lesbian leaders, it offers nothing but flatfooted literal readings of ancient texts; and in the face of grieving families, it too often offers up a remote God of atonement theology who sacrifices a child for the sins of the world, a God whose purposes too often require human suffering. Such a god would surely not hesitate to snatch away two young children for some cause that we cannot discern, and, if you listen, you will surely hear such a god attested in many conservative pulpits in the face of tragedies as massive as the tsunami and as local as the bus accident.

To all that the progressive church must say “No;” for such a god is not worthy of our worship. But we must also say much more than “No.”

A progressive theology, a progressive church worthy of the name of Jesus Christ, must be capable of responding to each and every one of those needs. For the way that we follow is a way of compassion, the truth that we uphold is one founded in a relationship of love, and the life that we seek to emulate is one filled with grace and trust, love and justice, passion and compassion.

We follow this way, because the road that Jesus walked took him always first to the places of deepest need, to the dwelling places of those who had the most difficult time imagining for themselves a place in the dwelling place of God. Those dying from AIDS, teenagers – gay and straight – struggling to come to grips with their sexuality, women barred from the priesthood, pacifists in the midst of war, the street people looking for a handout or a hand up, families isolated in grief, children to whom the world seems so large and scary and impossible to understand. These are the ones to whom Jesus went first preaching good news.

These are the ones with whom Jesus wept in the face of deep grief, saying by his very presence, “you are beloved, you will be restored, you will be made whole.” By his very presence he acknowledged the reality of their pain and reassured the broken hearted that God was not the author of their suffering but rather offered a way through which that suffering might be redeemed.

Perhaps Jesus simply understood that in those places and times of desperation, people are more apt to recognize their need for salvation – for wholeness and healing and communion, as the Latin roots of the word salvation connote.

Let that understanding beckon the progressive church. We live in a time of often deep desperation. The world stands in need of salvation. In ways both grand and global as well as those local and intimate, creation stumbles in the dark, lost and searching for a little light by which to find a way home.

To a desperate world seeking more than anything a way home, Jesus says, “fear not, for there is room for you all where I am going.”

Christ bids us to follow the way into relation with the Holy One whose dwelling place has many rooms. The way is one of joyous service. Christ bids us to follow the truth expressed in his life: that we are the beloved ones of God. Christ bids us to follow the life he led – an abundant life of overflowing cups, of breaking bread and breaking barriers.

The way, the truth and the life: they will make a way out of the no way of weeks like this past one.

New Pope, Old Story

Lots of ways to look at today's selection of Pope Benedict 16. First, I'm wondering about the name choice. I was hoping for Jake or Elwood -- weren't the Blues brothers canonized for the miracle salvation of St. whatever-it-was? But, alas, was not to be. I'll admit that, good Protestant that I am, I have no clue about the whole "naming of the Pope" thing, but I do hope that the speculation I heard today about the previous Benedict's efforts to bring peace to Europe amidst the chaos of the first world war accurately reflects the present Benedict's desire to be a peacemaker.
I certainly have more than a few doubts. His incredibly conservative orthodoxy seems bent on taking the church back a whole lot further than the early 20th century. If religious pluralism is at the root of any of the world's rifts and conflicts the man who railed against the "tyranny of relativism" and stated clearly that not all religions are equally true does not seem particularly well suited to healing sectarian divides.
On the other hand, if the root of the world's major divisions is the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, perhaps Benedict will have a significant voice to offer. He seems to share his predecessor's conviction concerning a preferential option for the poor. If he places the full weight of his office behind the work of economic justice and economic democracy, perhaps he may be part of reviving the truly old, old story concerning the one who came preaching good news to the poor. That's an orthodoxy that even I could get behind.
Of course, that's the most hopeful thing I can imagine saying today as this incredibly conservative man takes over the leadership of the world's Roman Catholics. Our sisters need not apply for leadership there. Our gay brothers and lesbian sisters will not find an open door. Those living under the constant threat of the global AIDS pandemic will find a pious, self-righteous option for orthodoxy over life-saving condom use (so much for the culture of life).
The list of deep concerns is too long to enumerate. It is a new pope who brings the same old story. Suffice it to say, that while I am holding my Roman Catholic sisters and brothers in the light today, I am also thanking God for Luther and Calvin. Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda!

Easter

OK, if a pastor can't get irreverent on Easter when can he? Here's a totally silly bit called Where's Jesus. And remember, life is way too short to take everything seriously. (Anyway, my sister sent this -- it's Easter evening, I've had a long day, what did you expect? A thoughtful reflection on resurrection? Hah!) Happy Easter.

Palms and Politics

Palm Sunday – at least the original Palm Sunday – was quite clearly a political action. So celebrate it this weekend by speaking out against an unjust war. (Click here to find a peace vigil near you.)

On that first Palm Sunday, Jesus was leading a rally, a march, on the capitol and the seat of power of his world. Jesus, who was always attuned to the importance of symbol and story, rodes in on a donkey to remind the people of the messianic prophecy: “look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.”

The crowds responded in kind: “Hosanna! Hosanna!” Or, “save us, liberate us, set us free from the tyranny of our time!”

This is radical, even revolutionary stuff, and it is inherently political. But at the same time it is spiritually transformative as well. The turning of the world implicit in this entry to Jerusalem is at once deeply personal and thoroughly social and political, and the action itself – the marching, the crowds, the shouting and singing – is a spiritual practice.

Every spiritual practice aims to draw us closer to God, to help us experience God’s presence and to be shaped by that experience for lives of discipleship. So get close to God this Palm Sunday weekend by taking it to the streets.

This War is Still Wrong

I was going through some old files this week and I came across these notes from a speech I gave in Cleveland's Public Square two years ago this Saturday. I am saddened at how much of this has come true in the past two years. This war was wrongly conceived, wrongly executed and wrongly continues today.

Later on this evening at Forest Hill Presbyterian, we will gather for a worship service. We’ll confess our sins and pray for forgiveness. We’ll pray for the men and women fighting in Iraq today. We’ll pray for President Bush. We’ll pray for Saddam Hussein. All of this will be good and right and appropriate.

But, first things first. Let’s get one thing straight: this war is wrong!

I’m a preacher, not a policy maker, but it doesn’t take a policy expert to see that this war is wrong strategically. The risks of attacking and occupying a country at the heart of the Arab world far outweigh the risks of isolating and containing that country. This war is wrong strategically!

I’m a preacher, not a politician, but it doesn’t take a pollster to see that this war is wrong politically. It’s not just that American public opinion is divided, or even that today’s attacks threaten to divide America more deeply than it has been divided in more than a generation. No. It’s not that; it’s this: more than 90 percent of the world’s population opposes this war. That matters. This war is wrong politically!

I’m a preacher, not a diplomat, but it doesn’t take a U.N. ambassador to see that this war is wrong diplomatically. President Bush is mistaken: this war is not rendering the United Nations irrelevant. The world’s desire for peace can never be irrelevant to the community of nations. No: what is irrelevant to the community of nations is the American empire’s desire for dominance. This war is wrong diplomatically!

You know what? I’m a preacher … but I am also a parent. Last Sunday evening we held a candle light vigil at Forest Hill, and my three-year-old daughter walked with a crowd of 175 singing, praying, peaceful people of faith holding a flickering flame of hope against the darkness of these days. And when we ended, she looked up at her mother and said, “Mommy, what else do we need to do to stop the war?”

Why can’t our leaders grasp the wisdom of a three-year-old girl? She doesn’t know much about war, but when she asks we just tell her “war means that lots of children get hurt.”

Lots of innocent women, men and children will die in Iraq. Hannah Caitlin, you know this well: this war is wrong morally!

This war is wrong: strategically, politically, diplomatically, morally. This war is just plain wrong!

I’m not a policy maker. I’m not a politician. I’m not a diplomat. I’m a preacher and a disciple of the Prince of Peace.

And so this much I know: “Blessed are the peacemakers!”

I want you to look at the people standing around you. Go ahead.

You are blessed! We are all blessed. It might not feel that way today, but we are blessed because we are peacemakers.

We’ve got some difficult days ahead of us. That much is clear. But now is not the time to despair, for though our generation is tasting the curse of war, we know that the peacemakers shall be called the children of God. Now is not the time to despair, because there’s too much work to be done. Now is not the time to despair, because no matter how dark this midnight feels, joy cometh with the morning that breaks forth with peace. Now is not the time to despair, for though mighty and awful weapons have been unleashed today, we know that day is coming when we shall beat swords into plowshares and study war no more.

We don’t need to study anymore to know this: This war is wrong! This war is wrong and we want peace now!

Peacemakers: what do we want? When do we want it?

Our Bodies, Our Selves

I’ve been thinking about the deep divisions within the church and the culture over sexuality, and I believe much of it comes down to the way we understand ourselves as embodied creatures. We become what we practice; if we practice honoring our bodies we will become those people “shaped by the conviction that the body is sacred, that it is holy, that it is worthy of blessing and care,” to borrow Stephanie Paulsell’s words. There are precious few places in our culture that share such a conviction. For in our culture, bodies are honored insofar as the match an idealized beauty, strength, sexuality.

The church and the culture fracture over images of bodies.

Of course, within the church we ought to remember that Jesus looked beyond these surface considerations, and calls us to do so as well. Of course, we don’t do that very well, no matter what side of the divides we fall on. We also too often forget that Jesus said it’s not what goes into a person but rather what comes out that matters spiritually. There’s deep importance to that insight for it reminds us that Jesus is always more concerned with depth than with surface, with how faith is lived out in the world rather than with ritual observances of binding dietary rules and the like.

On the other hand, the computer programmers’ watchword – garbage in, garbage out – is a good caution for the spiritual practice of honoring the body. Not only does what we consume by way of food, drink and pharmaceuticals have obvious affects on our bodily health, but what we take in by way of the culture has equally significant effects, even if they are often less obvious and more difficult to trace. Here you can imagine a picture of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, and add to it a long list of porneia, to use the New Testament word that in our age should remind us not only of the various hypersexualized pieces-of-bodies commodified by our media-saturated world but also of the violated bodies-in-pieces of its crude and pervasive violence.

You see, truly honoring the body with fidelity and chastity – to use two words hotly contested in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – is a profoundly counter-cultural practice, because it reminds us that we are beautifully made in the image of a loving Creator. Honoring the body reminds us that each and every body – no matter age or gender or sexuality or appearance or sickness or health or size or status – each and every body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Honoring the body, then, turns us toward the Creator and away from images and ideologies that would devalue and devour our bodies.

As with so much in Christian practice and theology, we will understand this better if we learn if from those who are poor; in this case, poor in body. I shared a meal last week at the L’Arche community in the District. L’Arche is a global movement begun in France about 40 years ago by Jean Vanier. L’Arch communities create homes for people with severe mental and, often, physical disabilities, who live with their helpers in community. Last week, toward the end of the evening, Andrew, a young man who does not speak beyond grunts, took me by the hand and led me around making sure that I had met each member of the community, as we had gathered after dinners in a couple of houses in Adams-Morgan. Andrew has dancing, smiling eyes, and his grip on my hand conveyed an incredibly deep hospitality.

Sometimes, Andrew has trouble walking. He had a bruise on his chin where he had hit his face in a recent fall. Tuesday evening I was deeply moved by the community director’s simple question: can you imagine what it would be like if falling down were a regular part of your life?

That reminded me that some people know they have a body because it hurts.

A few years back, Jean Vanier spoke at Harvard, and he said,

Many people know they have a head because they have learned that two and two are four. They know that they have hands because they can cook eggs and do other things. Many know they have a sexuality because they have experienced strong emotions. But what they do not always know is that they have a well deep inside of them. If that well is tapped, springs of life and of tenderness flow forth. It has to be revealed in each person that these waters are there and that they can rise up from each one of us and flow over people, giving them life and a new hope.

I’m still not sure I know what fidelity and chastity really mean, or if the progressive church can really receive any gift from these words that have done such great damage to so many over the past decade in our denomination. But if there is a gift there to be discovered, I believe it has something to do with the way that honoring our embodied selves can tap that well and allow life and tenderness and love and faithfulness and wholeness and holiness to flow in and through our lives and our communities.

Stephanie Paulsell, “Honoring the Sexual Body” (delivered Nov. 5, 2004; www.covenantnetwork.org/sermon&papers/Paulsell-04.html) 5.

Fidelity and chastity are words inserted into the church’s constitution (G-6.0106b) as part of an effort to bar the ordination of gays and lesbians. Fidelity, or faithfulness, is clearly a concern of scripture and Christian thought throughout its history. Chastity, on the other hand, is not. The idea is more clearly associated with Victorian sexual morality than with scripture or historic Christian thought.

Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community (New York: Paulist Press, 1992) 27-28.

Born Again Progressive

I had the great good fortune to preach Wednesday evening at the monthly worship at Sojourners. We talked together about the third chapter of John's gospel -- the genesis of "born again" and the subject of lots of "John 3:16" signs at baseball games.
For too long now the phrase "you must be born again," has been the trumpet blast of triumphal Christianity. To be born again, from that perspective, means an "unflinching belief and loyalty" to a Christianity that assumes for itslef triumph "over all ignorance, uncertainty, doubt, and incompleteness, as well, of course, asover every other point of view (Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context)."
Such an understanding of Christian faith removes all doubt, and I suppose that is attractive if what you crave in life is certainty and order. Empires, after all, are quite good at imposing order. But if you love the deep mysteries of life, the unfathomable depths of God, then doubt must be part and parcel of faith, and incompleteness must be part of theology itself.
As for me, I am in love with mystery. As Isaiah knew, our thoughts are not God's thoughts nor are our ways God's ways. I find little support for empire in what I know of Jesus. Being born again is not a ticket to the front row in the victory parade of the empire, but is instead a calling to renounce the very identity that empire imposes and reclaim the identity that God gives each of us: we are the beloved, each and every one of us.

Ash Wednesday -- Stories of the Dust

Our lives are surrounded by and suffused with stories that flow together like a river whose source sprang forth eons ago before the dawn of time. It flows past, picks us up along its way and sweeps us on in a weave of infinite complexity on channels and river beds that wind a tortuous route toward an eschatological ocean at history’s end. Sometimes our stories flow together and draw us into community, but often, along the way, each of us somehow comes to believe that our stream is the only one, and thus our lives become fragmented and we become deaf to any other story.

We live in just such a time, when the controlling mythology has us convinced that we are isolated individuals whose lives are radically disconnected from each other. The Marlboro Man is the icon of our age of rugged individualism, and the “welfare mother” is his opposite number. The dominate story in which they play leading roles frames a vision of reality in which poverty or disease are signs of moral failing and compassion is weakness.

The dominant story of our time tells us that we are part of a species that is even more radically disconnected from the rest of creation than we are from each other. In this story nature is merely economic resource, and its beauty is reduced to another consumer good or, too often, simply reduced to waste without even the dignity of returning to dust. But the poet Wendell Berry offers an alternative economy with but a handful of words:

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven’s Kingdom come to earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O dust, arise!

This strikes me as the perfect Lenten discipline for a people journeying from Ash Wednesday’s reminder – you are dust and to dust you shall return. Yes, certainly, but also this: O dust, arise! Imagine paradise! Cast a vision for a future otherwise.

From “The Clearing Rests in Song and Shade,” in Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1998), 49.

High Holy Days

So I sat down to watch a little football, and a church service broke out. American civil religion at its best -- combined choirs of all the armed forces rendering the Star Spangled Banner at its most hymnic, two high priests (er ... ex-presidents), a liturgy of memory honoring "the greatest generation," and then the call for an offering (I mean, of course, commercials). What a worship service! It brought the entire congregation to its feet! Can I get an Amen!
Just once I'd like to see honored a peacemaker, or even someone who has given her life to teaching or working to end poverty.
I don't expect it; it would turn the entire system on its head.
If you want to see a real Super Bowl Sunday sermon, check out the Sunday comics today. In our hometown paper, the Washington Post, these two (Tank McNamara and Candorville) were printed side by side. That'll preach.
Enjoy the game.

Spongebob at the Inauguration

As Ronald Reagan might have said, "now there you go again." You would think that right-wing evangelicals might have learned something when Jerry Falwell went after the teletubbies a few years back, but now James Dobson of Focus on the Family has targeted Spongebob. Apparently Mr. Squarepants is promoting acceptance of diversity, and Dobson fears the cartoon figure is part of a vast conspiracy to force the "homosexual agenda" onto Mainstreet U.S.A.
Don't the people at Focus on the Family have more important things to worry about? Whew ... as Forest Gump would put it, "that's all I've got to say about that."
So, with this abiding fear of animated liberals as the backdrop, President Bush took the oath of office again yesterday. I'll give the man his props here: it was an eloquent speech. It might even be one for the ages, that could be widely quoted in the future. The problem is, for a president to be considered worth quoting by future generations, he must achieve something worth remembering and celebrating in future generations.
Perhaps President Bush would achieve the greatness that his rhetoric aims for if he truly believed what he says and understood its full implications. It would be nice to believe that we will stand on the side of indigenous movements for freedom rather than on the side of military dictators, but our history in Latin America and Africa leave room for plenty of doubt.
Moreover, for all his bold claims about American support for freedom and opposition to tyranny --"Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it." -- for all that, the president continues to ignore the tyranny of the concentrated power of wealth both here at home and abroad.
At home just two words should raise all kinds of questions: Enron, Walmart. Abroad, well surely American military power is respected and feared and loathed in various measures around the world, but America's economic power inspires equal amounts of respect, fear and loathing. Certainly that economic power is also admired, and attracts millions to the "land of opportunity," but the powerlessness of local economies in the face of concentrated power identified with the United States must certainly feel akin to slavery to many. Bush is right, eventually the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. The question for the president now is how to answer that call when he presides over power that many find enslaving.
I think most of us have more to fear from the concentrated power of unchecked economic forces than we do from the concentrated power of cartoons. I wonder which one will get more attention in the next four years.

MLK Day

A couple of lines from Dr. King have been stirring around my thoughts during the past few days. The first comes from a speech that King delivered at the Riverside Church in New York in April, 1967, when he spoke out publicly against the war in Vietnam for the first time. If you read that speech today, A Time to Break Silence rings just as true about Iraq now as it did about Vietnam four decades ago -- just substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam" and "terrorism" for "communism."
Here's the line that's been bugging me:
"A country that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Now it's not so much the truth of this observation by itself that is bugging me these days -- after all, it's been true for decades no matter how you slice and spin the federal budget. What's aggitating me in January, 2005, is the continued truth of the second line:
"There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. . . . But the judgment of God is upon the church [today] as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century."
There is a deep and profound connection between these two lines, and the continued silence of the mainline church with respect to the war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror damns it as much as its silence in Birmingham. I know that many denominational bodies have written letters that opposed the invasion 18 months ago, but too few congregations are preaching peace and pressing for it. Until the middle of America becomes disgusted with what is disgusting, it will continue. The church's voice could make a difference.