Go & Worship

[NOTE:  I wrote this reflection in the fall of 2006.  In the eight years since, so much has changed and so little.]

My thought today is a simple one: go to worship this weekend.  Not out of burden or duty, but out of gratitude that you can.  I spent time with a Christian group in Iraq and was struck by how difficult and sometimes impossible it is there to go to worship.

I was unable to attend church more often than not in Iraq – I missed church because the times of worship change to accommodate the before-dark curfew.  Another week I was on the Syrian border with Palestinian friends running for their lives.  Many times a priest friend would tell us not to come, that it was not safe today.  ‘Maybe next week’, he said week after week.

And then there was the day we actually made it  – the day that churches instead of mosques were bombed.  On our way, we saw the black smoke of car bombs at churches in the area.  Six in all.  But that day, it wasn’t the church we were going to attend.

Never before have I had to risk my life to worship in community, to go to church.  It has given me a profound gratitude for the privilege of gathering with the communion of the saints.

One evening at Mass in a nearby Catholic church, I wept at the courage of the gathered community who risked their lives to gather.  This night the priest said, “You are the result of God’s love, not it’s cause.”  I will never forget his words.  For such love, my Iraqi friends, Christian, Muslim, Yezidi, and others, gather still.

Pray for them, please.  Pray for us.  Go and worship.

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.

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*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.)

An EasyBake Ovenless Life

You know you’ve had a privileged childhood when you’re biggest beef with your parents is that you never

got that EasyBake Oven you drooled over as a girl.

That’s right – an EasyBake Oven.

Even now when I see the modern equivalent, I find I am jealous, feeling somehow bereft, that I never had the chance as a girl child to cook real, albeit tiny, cakes to the heat of a light bulb.

How does that work, anyway?

And the really silly thing about this (well, several silly things, actually)?

1. I learned to cook from the women of my family on real stoves – way better any day than EasyBake.

2. If I really, really, really want an EasyBake Oven, I could certainly get one for myself now (of course, that wouldn’t be the same, but still).

3. The cakes were crap.  We all know it.  No matter how cool the pictures were on television, when all was said and done, what you were left with was really not much.

4. None of my friends (that I can remember) ever had an EasyBake Oven.  So wherever the source of my childhood obsession resides, it isn’t in jealousy.  What is it?  I truly don’t know.  The fact is, I just hate to admit that 50+ years later, I can still be swayed into a morass of emotions just by seeing a picture of, of all things, an EasyBake Oven (sigh).  And I hate even more the very real possibility that it’s as simple as the power of advertising having planted this ridiculous desire in my heart.

What is an EasyBake Ovenless girl to do?

_________________
NOTE:  After another post on our church's FB page about our upcoming Sunday's Chocolate Communion service, I went to the FB page of Baraka Presbyterian Church (in Bethlehem) because they had 'liked' the Chocolate Communion post.  And what did I see?  In far away Bethlehem, where there is so much suffering, violence and trauma, the children in the nursery at the church there enjoy -- yes -- their very own EasyBake (well, maybe not the same brand) Oven.  What a blessing!  Thank you, Lord, that these children have space in which to laugh and play, live and love, worship and praise.  Amen.

BethRant: HEY WHITE FOLK

HEY WHITE FOLK . . . and yeah, I’m one of you – of us, I should say.

Now that I have your attention . . .

Please read this article by an American woman physician about her ill treatment based only on the color of her skin.  Please.  Read.  It.  Please.

And when you’re tempted to argue, to disagree, to distinguish, please, please, take your fingers away from the keyboard and consider, if you will, for just a moment . . .

When you walk down a city street, have you ever noticed that the young men of color will often not look you in the eye?  Have you ever thought that maybe it’s not about them, but about you?  Have you ever considered how it must hurt them to see fear, suspicion, contempt or loathing in your eyes?  Have you?

When you sit and listen to that joke, that remark – yeah, that one – and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean – we both know better, don’t we? – does it occur to you that in the mere listening, you and your own attitudes are being changed?  That your ‘tolerance’ for the intolerable is being built up?  That you are gradually, oh so gradually, becoming one with the one telling the joke, making the remark?  That there is a cost to us all when you are silent?

When you demand that brown people apologize for acts of terrorism around the world in order to make it clear to you that they do not agree, has it occurred to you that no one expects you to apologize for Timothy McVeigh?  For David Koresh?  For Jim Jones?  For Adolph Hitler?  For Joseph Stalin?  For the white person down the street who just broke into the house of your neighbor of color?  Did it ever even occur to you to go that neighbor and apologize for your kind?  Of course not.  Why, then, should it occur to ‘them’ to apologize to you – for something they did not do and with which they do not agree?

And to all the white women who passed by so easily, did it not occur to you not to pass by?  To stand with a sister in trouble?  To show your solidarity in rejection of this ill-treatment?

Because, you see, it isn’t just the one act that hurts so much.  That’s bad enough.  But when the privileged keep walking by as if it were our right, we reinforce the ugly.  We say it’s perfectly fine with us.  And it shouldn’t be.  But as Dr. Jilani points out from her own life experiences, unfortunately, it is.  It is fine with ‘us’.

If that does not sicken you, then I fear for us all.  A woman’s spirit was being annihilated.  And no one stopped to help.  Who taught ‘us’ that it is permissible to be so numbed, so indifferent, so afraid, perhaps, to the suffering of another happening right before our eyes that we could just walk on by as if it weren’t happening?  Shame on them.  Shame on us.

So some practical advice to the white folk:

1. Cut out the racism and the bigotry, the jokes.  Check your fears at the door and don’t make your fears someone else’s problem.  If you’re a Christian, remember that Jesus doesn’t like it.  Really.

2. Take up for other people when they’re being treated badly.  As a human being, it is your job.

3. Do not listen to the jokes and cracks.  I don’t care who's doing the telling.  Do not listen to them.  Say you will not listen to them.  If they do not stop, leave the room.

4. Stop complaining about how hard it is to be white.  It isn’t.  It’s hard to be human.

5. The Golden Rule has all kinds of applications.  Consider this: the next time you’re afraid of someone because they’re different than you, ask yourself why they might be afraid of you.  Put yourself in their shoes and act accordingly.  It is, after all, the Rule.

6. The idea that if one person of a group acts in a certain way means that they all do is just foolish.  Think not?  Well, if we’re to follow that line of thinking, every woman on the planet must hate, fear and suspect all men, because virtually every woman on the planet has been endangered at some point in her life by a man – not all men, but a man.  Does that mean no man can be trusted?  Of course not.  Does that mean you men must apologize to we women for your kind?  No.

7. It is not the job of the one suffering to explain themselves to you.  Don’t ask them to.  It hurts too much.

8. Stop thinking, acting, believing, as if we’re better than everyone else.  We’re not.  Nor are ‘they’ worse than we.  Life is not a contest and the ‘who’s better’ game is a destructive waste of time.  Consider that those you fear and hate the most are probably more like you than you can imagine – wanting simply to live in peace, provide for their families, have enough to survive.

9. Mom wasn’t wrong.  If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

RantEnd