Dear Hobby Lobby, et al.: Jesus Is Not a Legal Fiction

[This piece is a reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby et al. cases, finding that for-profit corporations can have religious views and can opt out of certain laws as violative of those views.  I am furious -- hence this piece.  Working titles included -- The Good News of Hobby Lobby . . . or . . . Ladies & Gentlemen: I Give You Hobby Lobby World do not even get close to the heartbreak I experience over this case and its conclusion, to which I react much more as a Christian than I do as a woman, although both are in play.  If I offend, so be it.  I will not ask forgiveness in advance, which suggests an intention to sin while seeking to blunt the consequence to me, which is exactly what I perceive to be happening here, as self-interest prompts the highest ruling body in our land -- the Supreme Court -- to actually take faith and make it a joke.  God does not need my defending.  But my nation requires my participation.  To the decision . . . ]

So let’s all of the so-called liberal ilk*, and especially the women among us, just take a deep breath and look for a little bit of humor, a little bit of justice, a little bit of common sense in the Hobby Lobby Debacle.

***

First, to the humor:

Corporations are now not only people, but religious people.  This is GREAT news for us!  Finally, now, we women persons can form our own for-profit corporations, declare our religious views and exempt ourselves from a whole host of laws we find problematic.

1. Corporation Beth will not allow for nor pay for any employee of Corporation Beth to be away from work serving his or her country in the military.  It violates Corporation Beth’s pacifist religious tenets.  Sadly, that does not mean my employees might not be required by their government to serve.  But hey, the good news is that I as Corporation Beth, won’t have to pay for it.

2. Maybe Corporation Sally doesn’t care for certain styles and fashions popular to the day – so Corporation Sally might require men to wear loose-fitting pants so as not to be unduly distracting in the work place because Corporation Sally's God does not like tight pants on men!

3. Corporation Joan has read that addiction is one of those nefarious behavior-based diseases where the person may not know of their susceptibility to it until they imbibe.  Being a reasonable religious person and deeply caring for her employees, Corporation Joan may now institute a policy that in order to receive health care under her plan (her plan, her rules, remember, so long as it’s religious), all employees must refrain from all consumption of alcohol or drugs, prescription or otherwise (which quite handily gets rid of the prescription drug coverage requirement in one fell swoop).

4. In Corporation Every Woman in the United States, Viagra coverage is gone, gone, gone, because for sure, that violates ALL our religious faiths.

5. Corporation I Am Your Mother eliminates caffeine (bad for you and keeps you up at night); all fats in the diet (what, you want to have a heart attack before you’re 30?); cigarettes (need we say more?); driving too fast (I should pay for your suicidal behavior?); well, you get the point.  And it doesn’t matter one little bit whether we follow these rules or not (this is, after all, Corporation I Am Your Mother – CIAYM for short and in CIAYM, the order of the day is to do what I say and not what I do – Mom, after all, knows best).  So, to all you conservatives and libertarians, we hope you’re as pleased as we are – you’ve traded in your ‘Nanny State’ for Nanny Corporation.  And our freedom of speech guarantees you’ll be hearing from us even in your sleep.  Sweet dreams, cutie.  Love you, Mom.

6. Corporation Gladys eliminates all blood pressure medicines and treatments from coverage under her plan as most affected by such things are men and they have brought it on themselves and Gladys’ religion prohibits, absolutely prohibits, rewarding anyone, but especially men, for their own self-destructive behavior.  Corporation Gladys will send a representative to the visitation at your funeral.  But she will not be paying for your own self-destructive behavior.

***

As for justice, I’m with Dr. King on this one – the moral arc is indeed a long one, but its bent is one-directional.  The fact is that over time, this ruling will inevitably be taken to its logical and ridiculous conclusion and some future mothers and fathers will come to their senses and undo this nonsense.

I know that simply because, having been a lawyer, I know that my own kind can never, never, never, leave well enough alone.  Some creative cuss will inevitably come up with the silliest and most dangerous (from the State’s point of view) interpretation of this legal joke and it will work and the Supreme Court (keeper of the traditional values of the nation – never think otherwise) will recoil in horror at what their own ancestors have wrought.  The thing will be undone and all will be well – well, of course, except for all the folks in the meantime for whom it was not well.

And understand this about justice:  perception is as important as reality.  We cannot know with any certainty the intentions of those bringing these cases or those deciding in their favor.  But we can know that many women across this land feel disenfranchised, dismissed, attacked, minimized, disappeared from public discourse, simply because they are the target.  This action does not, cannot, affect health coverage for men.  It is only about women, as the 'keepers' of the reproductive cycle.  Argue all you like:  the fact is that many women experience this decision as discriminatory.

***  

Common sense – that oh, so rare commodity, is right scarce these days, it seems to me.  Maybe I’ve missed something really important.  But I don’t think so.  So I offer a few personal bromides in the (most likely vain) hope of assisting those whose own common sense seems to have fled:

1. Jesus neither requires nor desires bouncers.  You do not have to (in fact you cannot) act to enforce Jesus.  It just doesn’t work.  In fact, it has the opposite effect.

2. Think mote and plank.  If this is really about religion (and we all know it’s not – it’s about money – but let’s play along and pretend that you really are honest brokers of your own truths), I humbly (okay, I’m not all that honest either) suggest you recall Jesus’ own words about the mote and plank and devote yourself to some time reading the Desert Fathers and Mothers (who were quite clear that their own breaches were so extreme that they were in no position to condemn the actions of others).  More directly, did you survey all your shareholders or trust beneficiaries to determine whether or not any of your women use IUD’s or other comparable means of birth control?  Clean your own damn house before you go snooping around in the houses of your employees is a more direct way of putting it.

3. There are always unintended consequences – put another way:  Know that you will pay for this – and not in a good way.  I alluded to this above, but I’ll be more clear: making law ALWAYS has unintended consequences.  You lack the imagination to even begin to comprehend where this law will go.  But there are lawyers and activist groups out there now plotting away.  In the long run, you will not have protected the sanctity of your own religious beliefs.  What you will do is make anything called religious a joke, as companies far and wide seek new and interesting ways to make themselves ‘religious’ so as to avoid their financial obligations (remember: it is ALWAYS all about the money).  If you really care about the practice of your religion, this was a very bad day for you and I am only sorry that you lack the insight to understand that.

4. Beware of any action taken by one group that affects the rights of another.  This is supposedly about religion.  But hear the women.  And hear them clearly.  This rule applies ONLY to women – men, thus far, cannot have children, so by definition, this rule is about women and women only.  The opinion is written by a man.  The dissent is written by a woman.  That should tell you something.  At a minimum, it should tell you that when one group (in this case, men) makes a rule that only affects another group to which they do not belong (women), great humility and caution are called for.  Listening to the voices of the other group is called for.

5. Moral ambiguity is the land of grown-ups.  You live in the land of grown-ups.  That means things will not always go your way, simply because you are not the only inhabitant of this land.  Just sit with that one for awhile.  You might ask yourself what we who see otherwise on this issue than you have had to put up with from the likes of you over the centuries to get some idea of what is intended here.

***

To Justice Alito and all the signers-on: I thought you were a Christian.  As such, I gave you credit for understanding how very ridiculous it is to claim that a corporation has religion**.  I never considered for an instant that you would take the rule that allows for non-profits to opt out of this provision as ‘evidence’ that corporations have religion.  But you did.

You may be a wonderful Justice (I am not in a position to know), but sadly, I must conclude that you aren’t much of a Christian, because you have made the Christ I follow a joke by doing that most insidious thing we lawyers can do: you have made Jesus a legal fiction.

And you have broken my heart.



_____________
*When it became ‘liberal’ as opposed to conservative or even libertarian to keep the government out of my vagina, I really would like to know.  When it became liberal as opposed to conservative or libertarian to favor the creeds of my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters (contraception equals sin) over the creeds of oh, say Jehovah’s Witnesses (blood transfusions equal sin) or Christian Scientists (all medical treatment equals sin), I really would like to know.  When the ‘religious’ rights of a fictional character (a corporation) became more important that the religious freedoms of its employees (real, actual, living, breathing people), as a stated value of the conservative and/or libertarians among us, I really, truly, genuinely, would like to know.

**Hobby Lobby  My own Hobby Lobby analysis – turns out (according to the majority of the Supreme Court) I was wrong.

That All May Share of the Feast

We end our study of the Beatitudes on Transfiguration Sunday – the day commemorating that long-ago day when Jesus’ disciples saw Jesus, transfigured, changed.  The better word might be revealed – that is, the disciples saw Jesus not as somehow different than he was, but as he really was all along.

Why should Jesus’ transfiguration matter to our understanding of the beatitudes?  Perhaps in the glorious revealing of Jesus in his true fullness lies the key to all our mysteries – perhaps there, in Jesus’ own glorious light, lies the revealing of all he sought to tell us on that mountain day of sermons and blessings.

Perhaps there, in Jesus own light of revealing lies the truth of the beatitudes: the call to see not as the world sees, blinded by so much that gets in the way between us and God, but to see with all the nonsense stripped away, what Jesus has been showing us all along . . . our state of upside-down blessedness, as real as Jesus’ own shining forth.

Consider the last of the blessings, then, from the light of Jesus’ own revealing . . .

Matthew 5.10 (NRSV)  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Privileged the ones harassed because of their beliefs for the sake of justice:  because of them is the kingdom of heaven.

Blissful those hounded for the faith for the cause of justice: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5.10-12 (NRSV):  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Some things to note:

1. Here does Jesus move from the 3rd to the 2nd person – from ‘they’ to ‘you’.  Now it gets personal.

2. Jesus does not bless all suffering.  All suffering is not ‘blessed’ and none of it is good, even the blessed kind.

3. There is a juxtaposition, a contrast here, that still ends in the place of blessedness: both those who suffer because they cling to justice and those who suffer at the hands of injustice itself are blessed. Within the whole of the beatitudes, we begin with the blessing of the poor in spirit and end with the persecuted.  If it be the beggars whom Jesus first blesses, a certain sense emerges in the progression of the beatitudes in linking them to the idea of God’s justice.  William Sloane Coffin once observed that the very need for charity is evidence of injustice.  That is, the fact that some need, prompting others to give, shows us that all is not well in God’s world, for if all were well, there would be no need for our charity.  Understood in this way, Jesus begins by blessing those who show the world what’s wrong with it simply by their lack and he ends by blessing those who work to change the world into a place where there is injustice no longer.

4. The promise here is present (rather than future) tense: the kingdom of heaven ‘is’ (as opposed to ‘will be’) theirs.

5. Righteousness itself, that is, the insistence on justice – in one’s dealings with others – is a form of prophecy, of truth-speaking the will of God to others.

***

That All May Share of the Feast

Looking, then, towards Jesus’ beatituding of some among us, through the transfigured, the revealed, Jesus, might we then see thusly . . .

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the beggars our kings? . . .  lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of plenty where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the heartbroken our prophets? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of soothing balm and curing kindness where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the broken in life our signposts? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world where all may safely dwell and do their appointed work, there, sharing of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the justice seekers our conscience? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of fears banished, hopes fulfilled where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the mercied mercying ones our priests? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of care and understanding where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the God-seers our children? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of imagination and possibilities where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the creation-restoring reconcilers our healers? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the realization of a shalom-wholeness of things where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the hounded ones our witnesses? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the day when foolish humans will require no more sacrifice and all will share of the feast?

Oh, happy, blessed, blissful, privileged transfigured, transfiguring ones . . . who knew that there, behind the clothing of your wretchedness lies your blessedness.

Amen.

God's Kids You Are -- Blessed the Peacemakers

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. – Matthew 5.9

Blissful the ones trying to make peace, for they are God’s own kids.

Privileged those who try to reconcile people having disagreements, because they do God’s work.

***

What does it mean to be called a child of God?  In the New Testament, generally it means you are claimed by God, part of God’s family; it’s  another name for a Christian.  In this understanding, Jesus’ saying might mean, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for I have claimed them and they are mine.”

Another sense of being called a child (or more literally, a son) of God is in the sense that one is doing a God-like thing or work.*

But what actually is peacemaking?  It’s an active thing, and it includes the presence of justice, for God’s peace, as biblically understood, is probably better understood as a model of health rather than a courtroom model, with justice understood as wellness, wholeness, completeness, in the way that God intends all creation to be well, whole, complete.

Participating in God’s creation in a way designed to restore health, wellness and wholeness for all is to make, to create, peace.  To make peace is to fundamentally change the nature of creation and all within it.  Understood thus, how could restoring God’s creation not be blessed by God?

Yet for the peacemakers among us, life is a great challenge.  There is no comfort of being at one with the crowd.  They live on the outside of things – always.  They see the world through different eyes – the eyes of hope for the better it could be – always.  And they are hated for it – always.

So perhaps what this beatitude is saying goes something like this: oh, my blessed ones who try so hard to make my peace move from dream to reality – nobody will thank you for it, you know.  Oh, they’ll love you enough when you’re talking about the other guy.  But as soon as you turn your gaze toward them, the friendship will be over.  They’ll feel betrayed.  And they won’t understand.  At least not at first.  Maybe never.  Just don’t you forget – whether they claim you as one of their own or not, I always will – I will always claim you for you are mine.  Nobody takes that from you.  Nobody.  So when it gets lonely . . . when you’re sure the world is incurably violent and nothing you do will ever make a difference . . . when you just know that your life has been a waste and a failure, you remember this: 

You are mine and nothing about you or what you do is a waste. 

As for the rest of us, perhaps we would do well to be a little more thankful for the peacemakers among us . . . for the ones who point out what is not always obvious to us . . . the ones who ask the hard questions, like: why does it ‘have to be’ this way? . . . the ones who challenge us to be better than we are . . . the ones who refuse to settle for business as usual . . . the ones who will not let themselves . . . or us . . . off the hook – yeah, those folk.  Maybe we should thank them, work with them, listen to them, walk alongside them, because maybe, just maybe they’re right.  Maybe we can actually do better.  And maybe we should.

After all, it was Jesus himself who said, Oh, lucky, happy, blissful, privileged, blessed you – my peacemakers, my creation restorers: you are my children!


____________________
*a God-like thing or work – from William Barclay’s The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1, p. 109-110.

50 Years Later & It's Still a Dream

I come from a tradition (Presbyterian) that strongly believes that words have power, that the act of speaking itself creates reality.  And so today, 50 years on from when Dr. King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke into our past as well as our future, his words still move, still challenge, still sting and still encourage.

If we white folk read or listen to Dr. King's speech today as if it were an interesting historical note with no relevance to who or what we are today, we remain part of the problem.  Until we can hear these words speaking into our present, there truly is no hope for our future, for much work remains to be done before the dream becomes reality.

When we would say that there's no money for reparations or to right the wrongs of centuries, I hear Dr. King's voice reminding us:  But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

When we would urge patience or more waiting for just the right time, from 50 years past, Dr. King's voice chastises:  We have come . . . to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.

When we take what is and call it good enough because it isn't happening to us, Dr. King reminds with biblical warrant:  . . . we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

When we cynically appropriate Dr. King's words when speaking of his own children*, I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, we disregard the words surrounding his dream about the sweltering injustice of Mississippi . . . the vicious racism of Alabama . . . the not-yet-realized reality of former slave and former slave-owner descendants sitting down to table together . . . When we descend into such ashes-in-the-mouth-that-knows-no-shame badness that would steal the dream and crush it to bits that shame is too small a word to describe, our cries of justice fulfilled ring hollow even in our own ears as desperation and self-interest seek to advance themselves still on the backs of others.

. . . when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Isn't that a day worth speeding up?

Today at 3.00 p.m., join your voice to the bells ringing throughout the country . . . ringing to remind us . . . ringing to call us back to our best selves . . .ringing out the possibility of a dream still not yet realized . . . ringing us back to the urgency to know that the dream is here and it is now and it is necessary . . . 


______________________
*In striving to end Affirmative Action and other similar programs to advance opportunities for minorities in the United States, particularly those of color, certain politicians quote Dr. King's reference to his own children as 'evidence' that Dr. King opposed or would have opposed Affirmative Action.  It is scandalous and they know it, for the fact is that we still live in a nation where the children and grand-children of Dr. King are judged by the color of their skin and that has nothing to do with Affirmative Action.  

But It's My Candy!

[Picture me standing before the congregation on Sunday with an orange plastic bucket filled to the brim with candy.  I take out the two chocolate bars – big ones – and begin to eat them, slowly at first and then more quickly shoving bits into my mouth even as I talk.  Wait for it with me – someone will break – they always do.  Sooner or later, someone will ask why I am not sharing.  Usually it’s one of the kids.  This time, it’s one of the grown-ups asking from the back, “when are you going to share?”.  I smile.  It doesn’t ‘work’ if no one protests.  And thus we begin our conversation about sharing – this time with a twist, as I ask them why I should share.  After all, this is my candy.  I bought it with my own hard-earned money.  If you wanted candy, I ask, shouldn’t you have brought some yourself?  Why should I share mine?  And thus begins the dialogue about why we not only should, but must, share out of our plenty.  And I wonder again why it’s so easy to understand about a bucket of candy and so hard to understand about wealth and bounty and privilege and blessing.  And the sermon goes something like this . . . as I share the bucket of candy but take it up again at the end and clutch the leftovers tightly to myself.*]

In the kingdom of God: there is no ‘they’ there.  It is all and always and only ‘us’.  Isn’t that the Golden Rule (do unto others . . . ) in a nutshell?  This understanding that it’s all an ‘us’ proposition is the foundation of biblical justice.

The Bible is replete with discussion not only of God as just, but of God’s call . . . no – God’s demand that we, as God’s followers, treat all others (whether followers of God or not) justly (read: as we ourselves would wish to be treated).

The word justice appears in the Bible 173 times, beginning with Genesis 18.19:  speaking of Abraham, it is written that he would keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice . . . 

Justice is fairly easy to recognize.  Injustice isn’t.  Sometimes, we convince ourselves that our injustice is actually justice.  A reality check is always helpful.  The constant companions of injustice are deception, violence, robbery, greed.  If we’re acting justly, there is no need to lie, to stretch the truth, to cover up.  If we’re acting unjustly, truth is nowhere to be found.  If we’re acting unjustly, we’re doing violence to another.  If we’re acting unjustly, we’re taking what is not ours to have.

Micah 6.8 is perhaps the best known biblical passage on justice: what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness (or mercy) and walk humbly with your God?  This is the Prime Directive of the Divine.

In Matthew 12.18, when Jesus is baptized, the divine promise of him is that he would proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

In Acts 24.25, the scary message of the gospel to the Roman powerhouse Felix was justice – a message which frightened him out of his wits.

All of this brings us to the conversation of the modern concept of privilege.  Privilege is the idea that a group of people enjoy unfair advantages brought to them not by merit or effort, but simply by random circumstances, such as birth.  Privilege is another way of saying something is unjust, systemically unjust.

Privilege is passive injustice – if I am privileged, it does not mean that I have done something directly malicious to another person.  I may have never told a single lie and still be privileged from the lies told by those who came before me.

Privilege is the hardest injustice to undo because it requires the privileged one to give something up that they themselves did not steal to get.  It require me as it’s beneficiary to recognize that I didn’t steal this, but someone did.

And privilege is hard to talk about because it breeds great resentment and feelings of helplessness among those accused of possessing it.
 
Here’s the thing: we’re privileged.  We live in the United States.  That’s an advantage.  And it’s not all about worth, merit or hard work.  Some of it is.  But some of it is about unfair advantage.  The same thing about gender.  And about race or ethnicity.  And economics.

None of this is about making people feel bad about the color of their skin or their gender or their citizenship.  It is about readjusting our thinking to understanding a couple of things biblical:

1. To whom much is given, much is required.  Luke 12.48

2. Truth is a divine imperative.  How I feel about it is pretty much beside the point.

3. Justice is God’s business – always.  And because it’s God’s business, it must also be ours.  Even and especially when we’ve been on the receiving end of the fruits of injustice.

4. If my politics towards others are not informed by Christ, I have no place to stand.  So when we talk about Obamacare, gun control, welfare, immigration, military spending, and the myriad of other concerns we share as citizens, we cannot begin with what we think.  We must begin with what God thinks.  We must seek out the mind and heart of God.  We must listen for a word from God.  We must be humble.  We must recognize that God speaks to you as well as to me.  We must be open to hear a convicting word – one that makes us uncomfortable.

6. Because, perhaps most important of all, if God is always and only telling us what we already believe, chances are we aren’t listening to God at all.  And that, friends, is the core of injustice.

If we’re to be about our Father’s business, we’re to be about the business of stewarding, of taking good care of, God’s justice.  After all, there is no other justice than God’s.

_________________________
*In answer to why I should share the candy, answers included “good manners”, “the Golden Rule” and my own personal favorite: “you’re the pastor.  You’re supposed to share!”  (Had to be someone who doesn’t know me so well on that one – I was an only child long before I was a pastor.)

MoneyChanger Mondays

Monday of what we Christians call Holy Week was a bad day for the moneychangers of Jesus’ time.  Turns out it’s the same for Wall Street.

In their book The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Crossan make a compelling case that Jesus’ action at the temple on that fateful Monday was not so much a cleansing (making ritually pure) as it was a symbolic prediction of the destruction of the temple as fruitless (fruitless is worse than being useless, as the thing – fig tree or temple or society – projects itself as useful but isn’t – and the lie has dire and bitter consequences for those deceived, those who believed the lie that fruit could be found where, in fact, there was none).

Borg and Crossan quote from Jeremiah 7 for the phrase ‘den of robbers’, arguing from the linkage between Jeremiah and Mark 11.12-19 (the moneychanger temple incident), that God insists not merely on justice and worship, but that God prefers justice over worship.  I would disagree (it may be hairsplitting, but I don’t think so) and say that in fact, God would have us understand that acting justly is itself an act of worship, of lifting our voices in praise to God and all that God has created.  Borg and Crossan distinguish (rightly) between justice and the forms of worship in quoting from Hosea 6.6, I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.  

But sacrifice and burnt offerings are the external evidence, the forms, of worship and they may (or may not) evidence actual or genuine worship of God.  But we know this: in all facets of life, we often act contrary to our hearts.

Jesus’ emphasis throughout his ministry is to get our hearts and our hands acting in concert – with each other and most importantly, with the heart of the divine.

And that, I think, is the problem of Mondays for we Christians in our time: our Sunday hearts and our Monday hands so often find themselves at odds with each other.

Not always.

But often enough to make Mondays a real problem.

Borg and Crossan interpret the events at the Monday temple as underscoring that we human claimed believers and followers cannot run and hide in our Sunday temples from what we’ve done on Monday.

I’m with them on this: this is a social justice commentary by Jesus on what’s happening in his time and in ours.  It’s a matter of public morality, decency and politics.

But to turn it towards private piety for a moment, I am wondering who or what my Monday moneychangers are and where they’re hiding within the Sunday temple of my own heart.

What is it that I hope you don’t know about me, especially when it comes to how I treat others?

Is Jesus Christ really President* of all my Mondays?

I want to think so.  I want to believe that the Jesus moment I had in church yesterday is with me in all my todays.  I want to think to that I am not Wall Street and that I don’t succumb to the worries, fears and behaviors of the world whenever Monday comes around.

May the wish become prayer.
May the prayer become thought.
May the thought become reality.
May the reality become my wish.

Amen.




______________
*which is just another way of saying ‘Lord’.  Listen to Woody Guthrie’s Christ for President on the YouTube link below.

***

Christ for President – words by Woody Guthrie

& music by Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett

performed on YouTube by Billy Bragg and Wilco

Let's have Christ our President

Let us have him for our king

Cast your vote for the Carpenter

That you call the Nazarene

The only way we can ever beat

These crooked politician men

Is to run the money changers out of the temple

Put the Carpenter in

O It's Jesus Christ our President

God above our king

With a job and a pension for young and old

We will make hallelujah ring

Every year we waste enough

To feed the ones who starve

We build our civilization up

And we shoot it down with wars

But with the Carpenter on the seat

Way up in the Capital town

The USA would be on the way

Prosperity Bound!

When Is a Dollar Not a Dollar? Taxes, Poverty, Economics & Justice

A dollar costs some more than others.  Economics isn’t all arithmetic.  Thus all dollars are not created equal.  A dollar costs me some spare change in my purse.  But a dollar costs some people a week of labor.  If you’re poor, a dollar is a bag of rice, which can feed your family for a day.  If you’re the widow Jesus watched at the temple, even less than a dollar can be all that’s left between you and starvation.

It is at best a fundamental failure to understand that all dollars are not created equal that is leading to the call by many governors to eliminate or substantially reduce income taxation in their states under the guise of economic stimulation.*  They are, perhaps, merely mirroring the national election debates, all of which, from all political spectra, emphasized the middle class.  The poor were seldom, if ever, even mentioned.  It’s past time they were.  I say ‘they’ for one simple reason: I am not poor.

Economics that is theoretical is a waste of time.  Economics that does not take realities into account is worse than a waste of time; it is an attempt to alter our understanding of reality, to distance ourselves from it, that we, the wealthier, might be insulated from the sting of the poverty of another.

Social justice that ignores economic injustice is no justice at all.

Charity is what I am free to do or not do out of the goodness of my own heart.

Justice, on the other hand, is what I owe to my fellow human beings.

It is an enormous difference.

I can congratulate myself on my charity.

But justice is like breathing; it is necessary, even essential, to my, to our, continued existence.  Who congratulates themselves for breathing?

***

*What calls to eliminate state income taxes generally leave unsaid is the simultaneous implementation or increase of sales tax to make up the difference.  Sales taxes affect every consumer exactly the same.  Well, isn’t that fair?  No.  It isn’t ‘fair’ because of the fact that all dollars are not created equal.  Flat taxes that hit rich and poor alike are called ‘regressive’ for a reason.  To regress is to go backwards and in the case of flat taxes, what we do is back away from justice for the poor, those who have less than I do.  They are not a disease.  They are not a ‘problem’.  They are people.  “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread”, observed Anatole France.  The irony is as obvious as it is cruel: it is illegal for both, but it is only a necessity for one.  Another quote comes to mind: “To whom much is given, much is required.” [Luke 12.48].  Waging economic war on the poor is not merely unseemly (although it is certainly that); it is unjust.  I suspect the origins are not in some overtly evil impulse; rather, it is a case, I think, of governors and others similarly situated, simply having little, if any acquaintance, with the folks their laws impact adversely.  A friend at a cocktail party observes how hard the current taxes hit them and their friend the governor starts thinking about how to help these friends and believes, because friends don’t lie to friends, after all, the lie that helping the friend will help ‘everyone’.  While they smile and tip their glasses, there are no poor people present to protest, to point out that the change will be on their backs.  Maybe governors and presidents and the like should be required to, at the least, join the movement to live on a poverty-level income for a month.  Maybe then some eyes would be opened.

***

A sampling of governors calling for elimination or substantial reduction in income taxes to be made up with simultaneous increases in sales taxes:

Governor Sam Brownback, of Kansas, per The New York Times:

. . . there is significant concern in Kansas over the cost of the tax cuts, which is expected to total nearly $850 million in the coming fiscal year. In the budget he presented last week, [Governor]  Brownback proposed to help cover the cost of those cuts by keeping in place a sales tax increase that was scheduled to expire this year and by eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. . . Critics say Mr. Brownback’s tax cut was passed on the backs of low-income Kansans. The bill included the repeal of tax credits for food, rental housing and child care that benefited low-income residents. Because of those repeals, the poorest 20 percent of Kansans will spend an additional 1.3 percent of their incomes, an average of $148 per year, on taxes, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The top 1 percent, meanwhile, will see the share of their income that goes toward taxes drop by 2 percent, or $21,087 per year, the report said.

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, from The Advocate:

Gov. Bobby Jindal said Thursday that he wants to eliminate the state’s personal income and corporate taxes. . . [To make up the difference] Alario, R-Westwego, said Jindal administration officials discussed a 1.6 percent increase in state sales tax during a meeting with legislative leaders this week.  

Governor Dave Heineman of Nebraska, from The Daily Nebraskan:

Gov. Dave Heineman made a bold proposal during his State of the State address Tuesday — eliminate the state income tax. . . As a means to make up for the lost revenue, Heineman’s proposal would also end $5 billion in sales tax exemptions [although food would continue to be exempt].

Mad Days

I have a file of blog posts I’ve not yet posted.  Probably never will.  They’re my really angry thoughts – thoughts like why I am a feminist . . . ponderings on white privilege . . . how I listen and what it costs me . . . why I’m a (striving) pacifist (to protect you from me – the angry me) . . . how politics is a lie-filled waste of time . . . like I said – these are my (really) angry thoughts.

Most days, I’m just not that angry.

But every now and again, the toll of injustice is felt more heavily than others.  And I have no other response than anger to injustice.

Don’t agree with me on how to cook the turkey?  We can fuss over that one (I am right, you know - just admit it), but there’ll be no blows, verbal or physical.

But call yourself or myself a Christian and cheat or lie our way out of a problem?  Hurt someone else just because we can?  Refuse to acknowledge the reality of our collective injustices?  Make our problems be about the color of someone else’s skin or their gender or who they love or or or?  Yeah – those are anger provoking.

But this is not one of those days, so I back away from posting from that special file I should rename anger.

This is not a mad day.  This is a day for rejoicing.  Because little Ella, only 5 years old and already a veteran of open-heart surgery, survived.  Because a dear friend and I were able to laugh and be silly amidst her tears and breaking and broken heart.  Because being a good friend matters.  Because my family is coming for Thanksgiving – well, some of them.  Because I am alive.  Because the sun will rise and shine.  Because Maureen is on her way to do the good work of justice and she carries my heart with her.  Because the cool air and light fog of the mountains refreshes my soul.  Because I have the capacity for anger and outrage at injustice – it would be a sorry world indeed when injustice didn’t register in the consciousness.  Because I finally have an appointment to get my shaggy-dog hair cut.  Because in ways large and small, I am blessed.

May you too find your blessings in this and every day, even and especially the mad ones.

The Walking Wounded

There are so many of us walking wounded these days - perhaps all days - some with wounds writ large on the face of history - some the harder-to-see wounds real nonetheless.

What prescription do we seek?  What cure can we find?

Medicating of self?  One more drink - one more pill?  It works - until it doesn’t.

Examining and reexamining with friends and strangers what went wrong and why?  Hard to know when we slip from needful reflection to needless self-infliction, reliving the pain over and over again.

Blaming God or the cosmos at the injustice of our peculiar suffering?  As if suffering were ever a matter of justice.  Suffering, after all, is different than pain.  The pain of the moment may be unjust.  But the rental space in my head that is suffering, the afterburn of pain, isn’t about justice, it’s about health and wellness – or its lack.

These are the things I think about today as I consider so many among us who are the walking wounded.  I wonder and hope and pray that my noticing, all our noticing, matters.  I know that our not knowing does – its own form of wound – as the one barely able to put one foot in front of the other must wonder what they have to do to get a busy world just to notice.

God notices.  This I know.  Deep down.  In the place I have no other name for and so call my ‘knower’.  Deep down in my knower, I know God notices.  That carries me.  But some days, to borrow from a quote I heard a long time ago, I just need skin.  Some days, so do you.  On those days, I am hoping and praying that I offer you the face of God and that you offer the same face back to me.

Come, let us walk together.

No need to talk.

Just look at me and see my wounds and know you do not travel alone.

Mein bester Feind (My Best Enemy)

Part 1    

My Best Enemy represents the first movie I’ve ever seen at a film festival because the October Chicago Film Festival is the first such event I have ever attended.  I love movies, so as I sit in the dark in anticipation, I wonder why I have never done this before and realize that but for my friend Anita’s connection to film and film folk, I probably never would have.  Check one for friends who bring us amazing experiences.

The movie is in German with subtitles.  As I said above, I love movies; films, not so much.  And for me, subtitles equal film . . . something more than the mere escapism that is my usual fare. . . something I’ll have to think on.

There are a plethora of themes and ideas that grab in My Best Enemy.  One is the care we humans must take in not becoming the thing we abhor, that in being freed from oppression, we do not become oppressors ourselves.

Doing to is very satisfying when the one done to richly deserves what is meted out, especially in film, where we sit collectively while still alone somehow in the dark, our participation the passive receipt of what the mama bird has already chewed for us.  Simply put, in our theater seats, we tend to go where we are led.

So it is no surprise to me, one striving towards pacifism, that I join with the audience’s sighs and laughter as one character receives what he had just meted out to another, even as a small (too small) part of my brain registers the horror of what has been brought to them both.  I do not know or understand why the turned table is too tempting to resist, in film as in life, but I know that it often is.

Perhaps the lesson is this: take care not to define comeuppance as justice, deception as wisdom, the cruelty of reprisal as morally superior to the cruelty which begot it.

On Wall Street, Occupations and Such: When is Enough Enough?

Last week in Chicago for Christian Peacemaker Teams’ (CPT) 25th anniversary Peace Congress, some friends and I joined the Occupy Chicago protest outside Bank of America and in front of the Chicago Board of Trade.

Drums, not bullets or rocks, were the medium of expression for anger and determination.

Community building happened before our eyes as a general assembly convened for business sublime and ordinary.

What might have been street kids mingled with college grads, grandmas and grandpas and everyone in between.

And the signs were a crash course in economics, with quotes from such folk as Adam Smith blazoning messages of the need for change.

It was peaceful, convivial, respectful of passers by, cheerful and focused.

The political structures of the day seem at a loss as to what to ‘do’ with the Occupy movement.  Politics and politicians are largely irrelevant in what I saw.

I can’t express the credo for this movement; but the question I come away with is this: When is enough enough?

When we arrived, my friends and I, we milled around a bit, observing, listening.  We had come without signs, but noticed a pile of them, available to all.  Looking through them, I found the perfect one for me: Stop telling the truth.  I am trying to be normal.

I don’t know what the author intended, but what I took away was this:

(1) as a follower of Jesus, speaking Truth and truth is my obligation as well as my privilege.  It often isn’t comfortable or welcome, the business of speaking Truth and truth.  What it is is a calling; the calling of every Christian.  Living truth, following The Truth, we may not, we cannot, remain silent in the face of lies, especially the great ones; and

(2) When we live our lives trying to pretend that everything and everyone is okay when it and they are clearly not, the Truth and the truth are very uncomfortable.  Not thinking about, not acting upon, the call to and for justice is a luxury Americans in general and Christians in particular do not have.

So when is enough enough?  It is a personal question and all I can offer is my own personal answer in all its particularities.

In material terms, when do I have enough?  Enough stuff?  Enough wealth?  The answer is a very long time ago I accumulated all I would ever need and more besides.  I give my 10% to my church and still have more than I need.  In a lifetime of 56 years thus far, I have already expended far more than my personal share of the world’s resources.

This is my confession and my challenge.  I cannot undo what has already been done.  But I can change. . . change patterns of consumption . . . the desire for things . . . the enculturated feeling within that enough is never enough . . . I can use less and share more . . . I can stop pretending that all is normal . . . I can listen and learn . . . I can stop supporting structures that oppress the generations. . . and I can lend my voice, my presence.

I can.  The question is will I?