Debt Crisis

“But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth…If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.” Deuteronomy 9:18-19

Yesterday, in the eleventh hour, Congress struck a deal ending months of brinksmanship over the nation’s debt crisis. The deal succeeded in extending our ability to pay down our national debt, and may well provide some measure of comfort to our personal portfolios but it failed this simple Deuteronomic test of remembrance.

The ancient religious ethic asserts now, as it did then, that wealth and well-being are not private matters. They are market shares of grace entrusted to us by a generous God who expects grace, gratitude, and generosity of spirit from us in return. As God has remembered us with the dividends of a perpetual love, so we are called to remember God and God’s people each and every time we look at the bottom line.

Our financial debt crisis may have been averted for the time being, but our spiritual debt crisis will linger as long as we say to ourselves, “my power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

All that Glitters is Not Gold

It was Christmas Eve several years ago. The church was packed. About ten minutes into worship, a woman came through the rear door and sat down in a pew in the back. Judging by her many layers of oddly assorted clothing, I guessed she was homeless.

Later that evening, an usher sought me out, holding something in her hand. “A woman in the back of the church put this in the offering plate,” she said, holding up a half-used bottle of sparkly green Revlon nail polish. “I think she was homeless.”

While others that night had casually tossed large bills into the offering plate, this woman had, quite possibly, given away the most valuable thing in her possession: the one thing which could remind her that she was still a beautiful woman in God’s eyes.

Perhaps she gave it out of pure adoration: a wise woman's gift brought from afar and laid at the manger. Perhaps it was an offering of solidarity with Mary’s travails. Or maybe, just maybe, she gave it in the hopes that a little of what made her more beautiful might make the world in which she, and we, live a little more beautiful too.

Who was she to think that a little green nail polish would help make the world a better place?! Then again, who was she not to?”


-An excerpt from the 2010 Christmas Eve meditation.

Let Us Love One Another

By now most of you know the story: on September 22nd Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clemente, a quiet, talented violinist jumped off the George Washington Bridge, taking his own life after two classmates secretly and illegally taped and then posted to the web a video of Tyler having a sexual encounter with another male student. Tragically, Tyler was not the only young American to end his life after being exploited, teased, bullied or harassed. September alone saw at least three other tragedies like this. 13 year-old Asher Brown in Cyprus, Texas, was repeatedly bullied and accused of being gay by classmates. He shot himself in the head. 15 year-old Billy Lucas of Greensburgh, Indiana ended his life after classmates repeatedly mocked him and questioned his sexual orientation. Seth Walsh of Tehachapi, California, died after attempting to hang himself in his back yard after years of being tormented because he was gay.

It is important that we as a people of faith take steps in our own lives and circles of friendship to let others know that victimization of anyone is morally wrong and reprehensible. Bullying in schools remains a significant and scarring issue for countless American children, as we well know from recent events right here at Concord High. It is particularly toxic and dangerous, however, when the victims also happen to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. We at South Church, in Concord, NH, have committed ourselves to work toward a world where all persons will be affirmed for who they are. Let us speak up wherever a voice of compassion and justice needs to be heard. Let us pray for the victims’ families as well for those whose harassment contributed to these needless losses of precious life. Let us find ways to instill in the young people in our lives a deep and abiding sense that, as the Quakers say, “there is that of God in each one of us.”

If you have not already seen it, I recommend a recent commentary posted by Ellen Degeneres. While she does not speak from a religious perspective, she certainly offers a timely challenge to us all: http://www.tubehome.com/watch/ellen-degeneres-tyler-clemente-suicide.

Banquet Logic

“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be paid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Luke 14:13-14

Sometimes the only way to fight idea is with another idea. In his very first sermon in Nazareth, and then again at this banquet hosted by the religious elite, Jesus was offering up a new idea: like it or not, God belongs to other people too. He was up against an ideology as old as the first human inklings of the divine: the logic that God would never consort with those the “devoted” consider unworthy. Yet over and over, lovingly, stubbornly, Jesus countered this logic by eating with sinners and preaching sermons about heavenly banquets at which outcasts sit in the honored places.

The idea that the Islamic faith is a mortal danger either to the West or to Christianity is hardly a new one, but it has certainly enjoying renewed favor in recent weeks near Ground Zero and far beyond. One church in Gainesville Florida has decided that the proper Christian duty with respect to Islam is a large-scale burning of copies of the Qu’ran. Fortunately, across town, Rev. Larry Reimer and the United Church of Gainesville and several other communities of faith in that city have decided to apply a little of their own banquet logic. Rather than join in burning the Qu’ran, they are going to begin reading it. Now there’s an idea!

Banquet logic is effective because it is so disarming. It abides by the apostle Paul’s warning that our real enemies are not flesh and blood, but the “powers and principalities” which usurp our spiritual judgment, especially in times of fear. It knows that when we invite our “enemy” to the table, or even into our houses of worship, we are not dishonoring Jesus or defiling God’s vision. We are simply doing what Jesus did.

Prayer: Dear God, as you have done for me so many times, help me learn what it means set a table of welcome and mercy for others, even when – especially when – I think they are my enemies. Amen.

What’s The Bottom Line?

I can’t say I was surprised, but I was mildly concerned. Here we were, twelve members of the same UCC church engaged in a class on the history of the traditionally “orthodox” understandings of Jesus only to discover that our beliefs were all over the map. Some participants confessed that they were struggling to accept the assertion of Jesus’ divinity while others felt it was absolutely central to their faith. Still others found the whole discussion somewhat unsettling because they had always assumed people in the same tradition would believe generally the same things. At one point, one of the participants asked the question: “Jed, what’s the bottom line? What must we believe to be called a Christian in the United Church of Christ?”

I sat with the question for a good half a minute as I considered the freight of her question and felt the weight of anticipation in the room. Fortunately, in that moment, the words of Sam Solivan, a former professor, came back to me: “In the end, what counts more than orthodoxy is orthopraxis.” In other words, “right practice” is more important to the Christian life than “right belief.” So I replied, “I suspect Jesus might answer your question with two short sayings: ’Love one another as I have loved you; ‘ and ‘Come, follow me.’”

A week later, the evaluation forms rolled in and I opened them with a hint of trepidation. Had the class helped people grow in their walk with Jesus, or had it only unsettled them? To my relief, the responses were filled with gratitude. Apparently, the very act of coming together and engaging our questions and hungers in an atmosphere of love and non-judgment was not only eye-opening: it left them hungry for more. They wanted to continue the journey together.

For those of us seeking to follow Jesus, Frederich Beuchner wrote, “You do not come first to understand a person fully and then to love him, but love comes first, and then it is out of the love that understanding is born.” (The Magnificent Defeat, HarperCollins, pp 98-99.) It’s as true with Jesus as it is with one another. Love comes first. That is the genius of moving beyond the question “what must I believe?” to the question, “what must I do?” The answer isn’t complex: love your neighbor as yourself, and strive in all you do to follow the way of Jesus.

What a gift it is, to call the United Church of Christ home. Here, we are called beyond the black and white of creeds to the color of deeds, beyond the anxiety of passing tests of faith to the joys of sharing our testimonies of faith. What a gift to have as our guide these words: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials diversity; and in all things, charity.”

On the Cusp

Today on our ride home, my daughter remarked, "I'm trying not to grow up too fast, Dad, but it's hard." She's on the cusp between child and young adult, between self-awareness and self-consciousness, between free agent of the Holy Spirit and product of the world's expectations of her. As much joy as it gives me to watch her mature so beautifully, I find myself wishing the scales of her life would tilt a little in reverse, too...back toward her carefree days. But the wish is a vain one. As the hymn puts it, "time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons (and daughters) away." We are perpetually on the cusp of that which our journey has in store for us, and while change can be promise, we can all be forgiven the occasional glance in the rear-view mirror. That mirror, after all, can be one of life's greatest repositories - and reminders - of the wonder we have experienced.

Prayer: "God of the journey, help me to linger here on the cusp of tomorrow, just for a moment. Help me not to grow up any faster than I have to. Amen."

Foreseen in Joy

“I am about to do a new thing;
 now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:19

My friend Ignatius has foresight, but with a twist: he likes to prepare himself for events which have yet to happen. I’m reminded of this every time we go on a mission trip together: I pack for one, while Ignatius packs for many. Buried in his suitcase among the socks and the toothpaste are the items he can’t wait to give away to people he hasn’t even met yet: silly string and balloons for kids in San Salvador, McDonalds’ gift cards for hungry, homeless men in Boston. Even before he’s out the door, he is preparing for joyful moments of encounter long before they happen. Which, I’m convinced, is a big part of why they inevitably do.

It’s precisely that kind of foresight to which Isaiah invites us: that spiritual readiness to see beyond the stranger to the friend, beyond the lump of clay to the chalice full of wine, beyond the conflict to the reconciliation. It is that kind of vision of which Wendell Berry spoke when he wrote, “That which is foreseen in joy must be lived out every day.”

This afternoon I passed by a homeless man sitting alone on a remote city bench. His walker was sitting beside him, and in his hands, raised to his lips, was a flute. At first I thought it odd that he was playing without an audience. Then it dawned on me that perhaps he, like Ignatius, is gifted with foresight, and that his flute and he were simply announcing that there is more to God’s realm than sometimes meets the average eye.

Prayer
Visionary God, give me eyes to imagine what you have already seen, and to live it out every day. Amen.