Who will speak for us?

Sometimes people say the smartest things:

The American Left has no coherent or compelling moral vision to justify its policy aims. It frequently can’t articulate why it is it believes what it does.  (Conor P. Williams, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen)

It shouldn’t have to be that way.

While the hijacking of American Christianity by a narrow, one-sided political agenda is surely bemoan-able, the blame lies equally at the feet of those who have, for the sake of self-promotion, advanced that cause, as well as those, who in their indolence and fear have stood by and allowed it to happen.  A true, biblical church with a strong prophetic voice should resound across the entire political spectrum, not just one side.  And there is a deep and important word which should be shouted loudly and plainly from the progressive side of the aisle. 

The Biblical call to care for the poor and advocate for the powerless is constant, demanding.  Love and care for Gods’ creation is the song of the Psalmists.  Jesus called his followers to practice peace in place of retaliation, to shun affluence and wealth, to put the needs of others ahead of themselves, he fed those who were hungry and healed those who were sick.  He reached across social, political and ethnic boundaries.  He associated with those who were shut out by polite society. 

There is a strong Christian, moral vision to propel a more progressive politic in this country.  There is a spiritual vacuum in our common conversation dying for lack of a Christian presence, a Christian voice.  There is a religious dimension to our civic life which reaches far beyond the limited issues of abortion and homosexuality. 

Once upon a time, we had such great voices, even from humble places like Nebraska.  George W. Norris.  William Jennings Bryan.  Bryan’s battle against Darwinism was not merely a small-minded fear of science, but moved by a Christian progressivism which grieved for a world led to “the merciless law of hate by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” 

Turns out he may have been right.  How amazing, that this man so often scorned as the very symbol of narrow-minded religiosity, may have been the last great voice of the true Christian cause in public life? 

That is the great mystery of faith and politics, that tolerance of differences has led to tolerance of rapaciousness, that allowing others to believe as they choose has opened the door to allowing others to starve and die for lack of food and medical care.  It is a great human crime that a political philosophy which endeavors most to reject any kind of religious tyranny has, perhaps inadvertently, ushered in a new kind of despotism, one of injustice and poverty. 

This is our failure, to recognize that even in a diverse world there are still moral absolutes.  That even those who reject the labels of religion are subject to the laws of humanity, that everyone, regardless of creed, is absolutely required to live among others in peace and love.

And that those who are Christians have the greatest responsibility of all. 

For regardless of how much we despise the taint that others have brought upon our faith, maybe even because of that, we are called to proclaim loudly and clearly the Biblical demands of peace and justice, of care for those in need, of standing with the downtrodden and left out.  We are not called to a conversation about the viability of government, we are called to move forward the work that our Lord puts before us.  In the presence of crowds of hungry people, Jesus did not invite his disciples to a debate about what they could do, he simply said, “You!  Get them something to eat!” 

They failed, of course.  Will we?

We need to stop talking about the viability of Social Security, and start talking about the viability of a community that turns its back on the care of those who can no longer provide for themselves.  We need to stop asking if we can afford to provide food stamps and medical care and child care and help for the disabled and education for our children and start asking if we can afford to fail this most sacred calling. 

We need to speak what is right.  Because if we don’t, who will? 

Now more than ever, we need leaders who will speak that word, make that challenge, who will refuse to let right be defined by what someone else does and start asking about what we are all doing for all of us. 

Will it happen?  I believe so, for thus it was promised: 

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet,who shall speak to them everything that I command. Deuteronomy 18:18

Please, God, send your prophet now. 

Given for who?

In 1974, the Catholic Church said, “Man may never obey a law which is in itself immoral.” 

Acting on that teaching, in 2004 Vatican officials encouraged US Catholic Bishops and Priests to refuse Holy Communion to then Presidential candidate John Kerry for his refusal to support anti-abortion legislation. 

This week, commenting on Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget proposals, the US Conference of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church said that because the budget disproportionately cuts programs that “serve poor and vulnerable people,” it does not meet “moral criteria.”

Will Roman Catholic Bishops and Priests now assume their sacred duty to excommunicate the author of this immoral budget (also Catholic) or any of its supporters? 

I doubt it. 

This is, of course, the problem you get into when the church dabbles in politics.

You find yourself in bed with politicians who are willing to stand with you on certain issues which are morally significant, like abortion and homosexuality, only to watch them take abominable positions on a whole host of others issues like social and economic justice, war and torture, the death penalty, care for the creation.  You look across the aisle and find the rest of the church on the other side, in the same predicament, married to politicians who constantly let them down, and you realize that you’ve become pawns in someone else’s game of divide and conquer.

And you want to speak, but this act of hypocrisy has silenced the prophets.  Ignorant, partly at your own hand, your flock has turned their back on much of the Scriptures, only to support political positions that crucify Jesus over and over again.  And the worst part, the absolute worst part, is that the throng of outsiders watching this farce sees, knows, how indefensible and untenable your place in the world has become.  And they hate you for it. 

And then it really hits you.

This is not a political failure.  This is a spiritual one. 

Because this is the problem that you get into when the church refuses to preach grace. 

Convinced that our worldly works and human actions determine our place in heaven, saying but not trusting fully the truth that it is the work of Christ alone which saves us, the church has confined itself to the role of Worldly Moral Police, following the winding path to a place from which it can no longer speak truth to anyone.  The work of politics is, after all, the consummate human endeavor, awash in violence and greed and self-indulgence and bigotry, a veritable cornucopia of sin.  It is most surely no place for the church of Jesus Christ.

Most assuredly, yes, the political world is desperately in need of the church’s voice, of our most prophetic word, of our critical eye and our spiritual guidance.  But the church cannot speak to the problem when the church is the problem.  The church cannot free those in prison when it has put itself into the same chains.  The church must always, constantly and powerfully distinguish itself from the world it if is to help the world at all.

The church must be grace.

Grace, after all, is not that which comes from within.  No, grace is the word that comes from without, the voice of God spoken from beyond us, the voice come from salvation to those trapped in sin.  The voice of grace is not a voice of this world, it is a voice of a God come into the world, come to lead his pilgrim people to the next world. 

A church sold out to the politics of this world cannot be grace, cannot speak grace, cannot save. 

Is this the time when the church divorces itself from its unholy marriage to worldly politics?

Unfortunately, I doubt that, too. 

A New Bible Translation for the New Century

Pastor Rick Warren has made the most important discovery in the history of the church.

For which we will probably all be in his debt forever.  Maybe literally.

It turns out that we were all wrong in our traditional reading of the Bible, particularly those passages regarding God’s view of earthly wealth and the rich.  Way wrong.  In fact, Warren teaches us, God does not despise wealth, does not think it is a bad thing to be horribly rich, nor is at all interested in justice after all.

Jesus did not tell the rich young ruler to give away all his wealth to the poor.  The poor do not need his money, they need jobs, so he should hang on it all of it.  That he went away sad was probably a result of misunderstanding the Savior’s words.

In Jesus’ parable, it turns out that the beggar Lazarus was not carted off to heaven by Jesus but sent out looking for work, and the rich man, in his purple robes eating his sumptuous feast was probably not punished by eternal fire for his affluence, after all.

And the whole sheep and goats thing in Matthew 25?  Jesus is not really so much commanding us to feed, clothe, house or tend to the hungry, poor or sick, but just to find them employment.  Isaiah’s rebuke of Isreal for “grinding the face of poor” is actually a call to give them more jobs at the local mill.  And the jubilee instructions in Deuteronomy are mostly a redaction error of some kind.

Feed the hungry crowds?  Heal the sick?  Nice idea, but not the problem of the wealthy.  They have enough to worry about, what with their incomes rising by a factor of some 300% over the last 3 decades.  Somebody has to count up all of that loot. 

No, Warren teaches us, Jesus doesn’t think it’s bad to be wealthy. 

And as the most famous Pastor in America, he’s probably right.  Besides, being a millionaire hundreds of times over himself, who else besides Warren knows the true heart of the wealthy?  Perhaps building a big bank account is the true driver of purpose? 

Or not. 

The iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me, those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches?  Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life, there is no price one can give to God for it.  (Psalm 49:5-7)

At least Pastor Warren knew that the Bible speaks of the poor thousands of times.  Perhaps he should also consider the hundreds of times that the Bible mentions the rich.  There he will note an absence of praise for wealth, a lack of virtue associated with worldly treasure, a disdain and judgment for those who accumulate and hold fortune, for no other reason than that they are rich.  No, Pastor Warren, you are wrong to the point of shaming the good name of Pastor’s everywhere. 

I cannot imagine what should motivate such an obviously erroneous and dishonest comment on his part.  But if one wonders why agnosticism and atheism are the new growing pastime in America, why millions are fleeing the church, they need look no further.

We have sold our souls to the gods of the human economy.  Lord have mercy on us. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Lots

How often the words astronomical and odds go together!

Last week Americans spent $1.5 billion for a 1 in 176 million chance to win the Mega Millions lottery, a prize worth about 1/5^th of that.  And every ticket buyer knew, when they were honest, that they were not really going to win, that the odds were not in anyone’s favor, that they were more likely to be killed by terrorist or struck by lightning – twice! – than win the lottery.

But the prize, so amazing, so life-changing, well, you have to take your chance.  On even the most remote possibility, you have to cast your lot.

Like the soldiers at the cross, just to name one example. 

Yes, the soldiers, who, having nailed Jesus to the cross, now awaiting the certainty of his death, consider the worldly belongings that be left behind, and not wanting to destroy his tunic for it was well made and valuable, determined to leave it’s appointment to fate, and so they cast their lots there at the foot of the cross.  Since we cannot decide it, since we do not want to destroy it, let God decide what will happen to his tunic.

Let God decide what will happen to his Son.

Let God decide.

Good Friday is the great lottery of our salvation, our last, against-all-odds shot at eternity.  The odds of such broken creatures as us finding a place in the Father’s kingdom are astronomical.  The odds of such mortal creatures as us living beyond the grave are astronomical.  The odds of such suffering and grieving people as us finding comfort and hope are astronomical. 

But in the face of this darkness, in the vaguest possibility of life, both in this world and the next, for the extravagant gift that is at stake here, we must cast our lots, we must take our chance, we must hang our faith on the risk that he knows what he is saying, means what he promises, that his claim to be The One is, in fact, real, ours. 

And since we can do nothing else, let God decide. 

Because we can do nothing except sin and hurt and die, except watch and hope and pray, then let us cast our lots and let God decide.

And not fear.  Because the game is rigged anyway. 

In your favor. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Find

It’s always in the last place you look, they say.

Ha ha.

Of course it’s in the last place you look – why would you keep on looking after you’ve found it?  That would be kind of ridiculous, after all.  It’s not like looking is all that fun, not like it’s a common pastime or amusement for anyone who isn’t a treasure hunter by profession (and I’m not sure that the looking is their favorite part of the job, either!)

No, the problem is not the last place you look.  It’s the many, many, way too many places you have to look before you get to the last place.  It’s the profusion of frustrating, disappointing, unhelpful stops along the way that gets to you.  The trials of errors, the inane and silly places that you look which could never be the place but you have to look somewhere after all.  The mounting tension, the sense of failure, the self-doubt and personal questioning, the anger and the grief and the spectacle of it all.

The looking. 

No one likes the looking, only the finding.  And since not finding is not an option, since losing is, well, losing, we subject ourselves to endless torture in the constant and daily quest to find.

Poor us. 

Poor Pilate.  Having searched Jesus endlessly, up and down and back again, for some sign, some understanding, some knowledge about who he is and what he did and why the Jewish authorities are so determined to have him dead, he finds nothing.  “I find no case against him,” he confesses to the crowd.  He holds him up to the mob for closer inspection.  “Behold the man,” he dares them.  Find what you are looking for yourself.  Tell me what you see.  But he cannot get free from the ultimate game of seek, no more than we can now. 

For we are creatures searching, seeking, questing.  We know in the very depths of our souls that we are missing, something, someone, and we are turning over every rock and opening every door in fretful haste, hoping, examining, judging every corner of life.  To find.  Something.  To discover what we miss, to fill up the emptiness, to have, to possess, what we know we want, need.  Searching every nook and cranny, trying out every possibility, sublime and useless even, looking, overlooking, trying and discarding, rummaging through our lives like overloaded closets full of inadequate junk. 

To find.  Perhaps even to find him.

But we never do.  That is the great irony of this story, the great mystery of faith, that we look but never perceive, that we listen but never understand.  Like Pilate, we wonder what truth is, even when it slouches, beaten, right in front of us.  Behold the man, we say, hopeful that someone will tell us what we behold, but the answer escapes us even as the words fall from our lips.

For we cannot see.  We cannot find. 

We can only be shown.  We can only be found.

That is the nature of faith, the meaning of this story, the purpose of this death.  Having the Savior in our hands we can only kill him.  Having salvation in our hands, we can only lose it.  Grace is not for the taking, not for the finding, only for the giving, only for pouring out on the helpless heads of the lost and abandoned.  We can only be baptized, in the end.  We can only be fed. 

I find that I cannot find.  I believe that I cannot believe.  This is the badge of honor of faith, that on another Good Friday, our search would be nailed to a cross and ended forever, that our self-seeking pursuit of righteousness is lost, dead, forever. 

That we would not find, but stay lost.

For it only the lost who can be found. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Will

Will he or won’t he? 

It is the verb of uncertainty, the tension of the future, of what unseen things lie ahead, of what may or might or can or should or, well, will, be.  Whenever what will be comes to be.  

It is the verb of strain, of power, by which we mean willpower, the fortitude of humanity in the face of temptation, of trial, of distraction and dislocation.  It is the tenuous cling to a hoped-for-reality in the face of an actual one.  It is the tenacity to get through what is hard to get through.  At minimum the possibility of survival in the face of certain defeat.  The hopefullness of the human spirit.

But it is actually neither of these.

It is God.  For God is will. 

Thy will be done.  Four simple words that encompass the entirety of a night at Gethsemane, a whole prayer, a whole prayer-life.  Thy will be done.  A death prayer, an urging of defeat and destruction, a plea for an end, an out.  Not my will, but thy will be done.  A radical calling for a drastic moment, a profound hope for an extreme truth, this substitution of will.

Not a wish, not a desire, but so much more than that.  Not what God wants, but what God is, for no God named I Am can be reduced to want or chance, no such God is limited by expectation or possibility.  Thy will be done is the closing of the door on all such idiocy and idolatry, on the artifice that anything but God’s will would be done anyway.  

It is not the prayer that re-writes the future.  It is the prayer which etches the formerly determined future indelibly on hearts and souls and into history and in, with and under the present reality which cannot overcome it.  Thy will be done is the writ of surrender to the truth that Thy will is already done, even now swelling up through the surface of all the uncertainties and weaknesses which pretend to be will. 

For His will is His Grace, his pre-creation decision to be a God of love and salvation, to be God for us and of us and with us.  And in the darkness of the Garden is played out the very nature of God and the Universe and me in one simple word.  Will.  As in may what has been done now be done anew.  Again.  Always.

And may I be there to see it.  If you will. 

Five Words for Holy Week: Meal

In every civilized society, it is an established convention; that the condemned are given, as a final act of humanity, a last meal.

One last act of compassion before the barbarity ensues. 

It has become a matter of myth and movie, this one last meal.  What extravagant, remarkable selection would one choose knowing that they would never again eat, never again taste, never again feel pleasure, never again associate with anything of this world, never again breathe … 

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”  (Luke 22:15-16) 

He knows, of course – how could he not?  He knows full well that this is his last meal. He knows the pain and distress that await him in the next hours.  He knows that at his side recline his betrayer and his denier, his chosen few who will not watch with him through the night but in the morning scatter in fear and alarm.  He comes now to his final request, his last meal, a time which he has long forseen and expected. 

And his last request?  His final taste of this world?  No, it will not be filled with fine foods and the best wine, it will not offer him one last comfort before the end, it will be for them, for others present and others yet to come.  His last moment, his last meal, will embody all that he has come to be, it will be the climax and the genesis of his mission, it will be a meal not for his own good, but for those he served. 

And it will be the best meal of all. 

What does that word mean to us?  A meal, a time of being filled, of needs met and wants indulged, at its minimum what we must have and at its best what we most desire.  But what do we truly need and what is our greatest joy?  Not the filling of our stomachs, but of our hearts, not the needs of our bodies but of our souls, that is the last word of our lives, that is what defines and completes us, that is what ought to be our last moment. 

Not what we do for ourselves, but for our neighbor.   

The brokenness of this world is surely captured in its penurious graspings, it our lusting for self-satisfaction like we’re never going to eat again.  That is the measure of our sin, that our mortality turns us ever toward our worldly wants.  But this last meal, to which we return every seven days, reminds us that the ultimate word for us is his word, that we are more than entrails and appetites, that all we have is created to be corporeal so we will not be too attached to it.   

We are, not unlike he is, most free from the prison of this world when we turn to the needs of our neighbors.  We are most fed when we feed, we are best served when we serve, we are ever loved when we love.   

May your next meal be as good as your last. 

Five Words for Holy Week: King

The week begins with a clear agenda:  this is going to be about power. 

“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you …” begins the writer of Matthew.  The reference to Solomon is unmistakable, just as only one emerged from the royal battle for David’s throne then, so now comes only one to claim boldly that same throne, to set himself apart from throngs who desire to rule, to put down the poseurs and usurpers alike.   

He does not just want to be King, he is King, and he will countenance no other Kings before him. 

This scene, so sweetly re-enacted in our churches on Palm Sunday with branch-waving children and songs of joy and ringing hosannas is in reality more invasion than parade, a demand of something far than attention, a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of how much the city has been waiting for his appearance.  Perhaps he senses the irony of the moment, perhaps he knows that the next time he travels this path it will not be riding on a donkey but dragging a heavy cross.  Perhaps he knows how these cheers will be overcome by shouts of “Crucify Him” too few days from now.   

Perhaps that just steels his will all the more. 

For this is one thing I know about Kings – they must be Kings.  Real Kings, not those who desire power but those who actually have it, do not need to threaten or bribe, coerce or plead, they do not need even to seize power by violence or subversion.  Real Kings own their crown, it is part of them, they are beholden to no one but the God who grants them their place.

Such is this King, entering the city now, waving benignly and supremely to the adoring crowds, moving forward toward his impending coronation, to the most ironic moment of them all. 

For it is in that monumental sacrifice, in the humiliation and the horror of the crucifixion, that his kingliness is truly revealed.  Not by power, not by conquering army or overwhelming might, but in his gracious act of self-giving he puts to an end all pretensions of power, every enemy, destroys sin and the devil and even death itself.  Here the name of King is redefined forever, here the absurdity of every worldly King is laid bare, here is founded the Kingdom that never ends.  

Not by gold is he crowned, but by thorns, and the blood which flows from those wounds shines brighter than any precious gem.  

Behold, O Zion, you King is coming to you.