Standing on a Rock

There have been times, over the last few months, when I have wanted to just leave the internet altogether (except for you Amazon, I'll always love you).  Social media has been giving me fits and I have to keep telling myself about one of my cardinal rules: don't argue with people on Facebook or Twitter, it's just never going to make anything good happen.  There is just so much nonsense out there, so much untruth, half-truth and willful obfuscation.  It provokes nausea.

But there are times when the Interweb lives up to it's promise, and one of those times is when the powerful look to flex their muscles against those who would refuse to be oppressed. It has been a core of the protest against police misconduct: the recording and sharing of pictures and videos that make the truth of otherwise confused and chaotic encounters more available and reliable (not perfect still, but better).

Right now, you can hear the voices and see the faces of the group of people protesting at Standing Rock North Dakota.  Their cause has risen into public awareness thanks largely to social media, because very little has been said or written about on the network news programs or newspapers.  You can see pictures of police and security forces in riot gear and with military vehicles looming over lines of protesters in flannel shirts and with traditional native garb.  Tanks versus horses, dogs and guns versus unarmed protesters. The United Nations and Amnesty International are watching how our nation responds to this.

The issue is essentially oil money versus the people of the Standing Rock Reservation.  Their reasons for protest are many, deep rooted in the history of this nation of ours.  To the Lakota people, the Dakota Access Pipeline is just another in a long list of offensive invasions against their place and their identity.  I don't want to engage in doe-eyed idealism of the Native peoples as harmonious stewards of the land.  While there may be some truth in the notion that their sense of connection to the land leads them to a more responsible stewardship of their environment, it is not a purely environmental cause at the heart of the crisis in Standing Rock.

Sure, pipelines are environmentally suspicious, they can leak and pollute the water.  As conduits of fossil fuels they inherently contribute to our dependency on non-renewable and pollution causing sources of energy.  There certainly are valid ecological reasons to oppose the pipeline, but to me the more compelling argument is the human rights and human dignity of this protest.

Imagine if you will, that someone wants to build a pipeline through your church, or your favorite park, or the place where you had your fondest childhood memories.  Even if they could promise that the pipeline would be leak free, even if they promised that they would try to mitigate as many of the "side effects" as they could, would you trust it?  Now imagine that the same people who were making these promises had broken promises to generations and generations of your ancestors, could you trust it?

That is where the Lakota people are standing now. It is about the water, it is about the land, but it is also about the history.  In this history, Europeans, Americans, White People, corporations and the US government cannot pretend to be the good guys. We are being faced yet again with what we pledge our allegiance to: is it money? Is it oil? Is it the "free market?" Or is it human dignity?  What's it going to be? Where are we going to stand?

Almost...

I could go vote today, and get it over with.  I'm not sure I want to though, it would be like opening a Christmas present early, it feels good at the time, but then... a letdown.
What am I saying, this whole election is a letdown.  It's an extremely important letdown, but most of us feel like we're not going to get what we want, I think, including the candidates. I can't imagine that anyone is going to come out of this experience feeling better about themselves. It's like eating at Taco Bell, you went because you were hungry, lazy and poor, and because some little voice in your head said, "don't worry, this time it will be better."
The past few months have proven that our nation has a fragile ego, is easily distracted and seduced and can't seem to keep our eye on the actual problems at hand.  I know, the election isn't over yet.  It really doesn't matter, even if the Trumpocalypse is averted, we're still going to get four more years of status quo politics, while the Democrats behave exactly like Republicans used to, and the Republicans try to convince themselves that Trump really isn't who they are.
I have a bit of the indigestion already.
The thing is, smarter people than me have noticed that the discontent that fuels Trump is not terribly different than the discontent that fuels me and the others who were feeling the Bern.  We all have this sense that the system is rigged to benefit people like Hillary and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.  The clever trick that the Donald has pulled is convincing the proletarians that he was one of them.  He's not, and he has pulled down whatever integrity and gravitas the working class might have had with his orange-ish crassness and unhinged rhetoric.
If you haven't watched this already, I'm just going to leave this here:

The way that Tom Hanks quite artfully illustrates the fact that the driving force behind many Trump supporters resonates with the sort of distrust of government, angst at the system, and general disenchantment with how things work is actually oddly touching. I have been trying to develop some sort of empathy for people who are willing to support such a racist and sexist embarrassment.  I am hoping and trying to believe that not all the people with Trump signs in their yard are "deplorable," but bedfellows like the KKK and Alt-right definitely cast doubt on that hope.

The "indigestion" of this election is going to be the difficult process of learning to trust one another again.  It very well might be a severe case of botulism though.  I'm not sure that we are going to be able to reverse the trend of polarized thinking that has become the hallmark of this election.

Best case scenario: November 9 is like waking up from some sort of fever dream and we all get to put it behind us. We move forward with Hillary, and she manages to be a bit more upright than Bill and bit more effective than Barack.  We forget all this nastiness and tom-foolery and work at becoming a more perfect union.

Worst case scenario: The next President of these United States: Donald J. Trump.

Somewhere in between: First woman President gets pretty much the same obstructionist environment that our first black President was given. Four more years of barely avoiding budget catastrophes and not fixing the problems we all face together.  Four years (at least) of Clinton-ism, where politics (some would argue dirty politics) is the par we're shooting with very few moves in a truly positive direction.

I'm hoping for the best, bracing for the worst, and probably going to get some variety of the middle, just like Taco Bell, maybe the cramps won't be that bad this time.

Aim Higher

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, 

"You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, 

and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me." 

When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

-Mark 10: 21-22

The other night we watched the launch of an Antares rocket from Wallops Island in Virginia.  From our vantage point here in Southern Maryland the rocket was a smallish orange ball of fire rising into the night sky.  We had the video feed from the launch site playing on my phone, the video showed the control room, and the launch pad, it had the voice communications of all the control crew, reporting the status of various systems.  "Such and such a complicated sounding system is Nominal," "another complicated thing is green."  Caitlyn, in her un-self-conscious eleven year old wisdom, said, "Those are a bunch of smart people," referring to the people in the control room and the voices on the comm.

"Yes, they are," I said, and for some reason I had this sort of sad feeling that's taken me about a day and half to sort out.

Don't get me wrong, sad feelings are pretty normal for me, I'm sort of wired that way, but the thing is this was out of place, it was a nice night and we were doing a neat thing with the kids.  The kids were not in the state of tween ennui that has become pretty standard in our house these days.  They were stoked, hanging on the count down, pointing at the admittedly un-spectacular orange blob in the sky.  They had a sense of the rather remarkable feat of human endeavor that is our space program.

I think the sadness came from the reality that even the imagination sparking adventure of space exploration has been hamstrung by dollar signs. We launch un-manned satellites and rockets mostly these days.  The space shuttles are museum pieces, we haven't been back to the moon in nearly 50 years, the occasional probe launch to the side, most of what we do is dull and pragmatic, even if it is still technologically impressive.

That rocket NASA launched on Monday night, was a supply capsule for the space station.  On the interesting side: we have a space station, but every few years someone has to decide whether that is even worth the bills that it runs up, and that is sort of what's disappointing on an existential level.  If space stuff can make us a buck, it will happen faster than you can say Apollo, if it's just about the drive to get "out there," well, it's proving to take a bit longer.

In the Star Trek imagination, one of the prerequisites for true space exploration was the motivation to move beyond money.  In the movie First Contact, that fundamental change is precipitated by contact with the Vulcan people, finally proving to a troubled human race that we are not alone in the universe.  In one of the episodes of The Next Generation, there is a conversation between Counselor Troi and a time traveling Mark Twain.  Troi explains to Mr. Clemens that humanity has moved beyond the need for money, and he just can't get a handle on how anything would get done.

That's a problem that I think most of us have: even imagining that there might be an alternative to money.  If you didn't get paid, would you still do your job?  If you didn't need to get paid, if all of your needs and most of your wants were provided for what would you do?  The optimistic vision of Star Trek, is that it would free you up to do what you are really called to do.  An oddly more realistic vision may actually be what happens in the movie Wall-E where humanity adapts to having all of their work done by robots by essentially losing the ability to do anything for themselves, evolving into morbidly obese slugs that float around an enormous intergalactic carnival cruise liner in hover pods.

It occurs to me that the difference between the two visions is simply one of purpose.  In Star Trek, people were given a different option: "explore of strange new worlds, seeking out new life, new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before."  In Wall-E, they were not, they were just essentially allowed to atrophy, having all their needs and wants met by machines.  The question before all of us, if we are ever going to move beyond money, is what vision are we pursuing?

When Jesus asks the rich young man to sell everything he owns, he is advocating more than just a sacrifice for the sake of charity to the poor.  He is offering the young man a choice of coming with him on an adventure of discipleship, or staying put in his comfortable relationship with Mammon.  The sadness comes because the young man is not able to choose the path of discipleship.  He wants to follow Jesus, but he is too enmeshed in his relationship to money.

I'll be honest with you, I want us to aim higher, I want to aim higher than just money, but I also come to these moments where I grieve because I have many possessions.

Bill Clinton's famous line "It's the economy stupid," makes me involuntarily grind my teeth, because it is so inescapably true.  It is statement of our idolatry, proof of the master we serve.

Thankfully we're still shooting these little pods of stuff off of the face of earth, we're still sending our robot surrogates to Mars and Pluto and beyond. I guess I'm just longing for a little more discovery and little less accounting.

What Do You Mean Again?

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

I came of age during the dying throes of the Soviet Union.  Most of my memories of anything prior to about 1980 have mostly to do with Star Wars (not the Ronald Reagan version). The Berlin Wall fell during my sophomore year in High School and McDonalds, Levis and Capitalism won the great Cold War against the Red Menace. At the time, I was not at all familiar with what Marx and Engels and their communist comrades had actually said in the much maligned manifesto.  To judge from what we were told in Social Studies class, it must have been evil and godless.  Even my "cool" and liberal teacher didn't actually have us read what they said about the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, probably because he would have had to wade through waves of angry parents if he actually had teenagers read the dreaded Communist Manifesto.

I never actually read the thing myself until I was in Seminary.  I was working in the library and shelving books, and I saw this little thing sitting there, not but thirty pages or so long.  In those days, I was used to reading German Theologians and so I could absorb and digest that sort of thing like eating potato chips.  I read it, and I looked for the evil that might have, when I was a kid, brought the world to its knees. I didn't find it.

I found lots of stuff that I didn't exactly agree with as a comfortable (decidedly bourgeoisie) academic who actually likes (mostly) his decadent capitalist situation.  I was not instantly persuaded, nor have I been since then, that communism is the answer to all our woes.  What I was interested in was the historical perspective of a group of people who have become the minority opinion (Yes I know about China, and their billions of communists, but they honestly don't drive the consciousness of the world the way the West does, at least not yet).  I found the historical framing of the struggle between classes to be fairly compelling, and it has become more so in the past fifteen years. It is a critique I think we still need to answer.

I don't agree with Marx's optimism about the proletariat, but it's likely that the picture has shifted too significantly to know whether or not he was actually being naive.  What I do see in the Manifesto is a rather bold attempt at outlining a revolution.  It is a moment where some people realized that the history of the world was basically a repetitive cycle of oppression of the weak by the strong and the poor by the rich. They saw through the illusion of democratization.  They saw the role that money and wealth were playing in turning the merchant class into the new aristocracy, or essentially a tool of the aristocracy, and in that case, they were not wrong.

In the brutal world of the twentieth century it was difficult to defend communism (technically socialism, as full fledged communism has never really happened).  You had Stalin, who managed to out Hitler, Hitler, but who mostly did it from behind the Iron Curtain where we mostly agreed not to peek.  You had oppressive and godless governments who enforced the will of the State and never really ever got around to the general good and welfare of the collective.

In that context, it was easy for us to wear the white hat, we were free, we had all the smiles and good times.  Never mind the McCarthy hearings, or the black list, never mind the racial tensions and the struggle for women's rights, never mind the myriad forms of oppression that are woven into the fabric of our nation.  Comparatively speaking we were heaven on earth up against the hell that we had to literally hold back with our finger itching at the trigger of nuclear war.

The problem with staring so intently at your enemy is that you often don't look at yourself very critically or constructively, and I think that has led to a rather glaring blind spot in our collective consciousness.  We look back at those years as the halcyon days of our great empire, and in many ways our impulse is to yearn for them.  There is a lot behind that: then we knew who our enemy was and we understood them.  Russians are essentially Europeans, even though a lot of their country is in Asia.  Moscow and Petersburg are European cities, they are understandable and familiar to the western mind.  Mutually Assured Destruction worked because both sides realized it was a bad idea to incinerate the only planet we actually have.

Our enemy of these times is actually not so reliable in that department.  We understand them poorly, if at all, and we honestly don't give them the honor we gave the USSR as an opponent.  We disdain them and hate them with a different sort of bile.  That's why so many in our culture now are kind of obsessed with Vladmir Putin, even as an enemy, he hearkens us back to the "good old days."  Honestly we would rather deal with the likes of him than with Osama Bin Laden or whatever god forsaken maniac wants to kill us this week.

The "good old days" were not really so good as we mostly remember them.  It really was terrifying to contemplate all out nuclear war.  As frightful as the prospects of terror attacks and even some sort of dirty bomb might be, it's not quite of the same character as the world-ending conflagration that would have been fought essentially between targeting computers.

As problematic as the world is now, I don't really want to rewind to that state of affairs.  I would rather learn from history than repeat it, and I think that means learning from the minority opinions and the ideas that may have been put on the scrap heap.  If they were wrong, why were they wrong?  How wrong were they?  How wrong were we even though we "won?"

Instead of making America great again, how about we just try making it better than it is now, and focus particularly on trying for a nation that is better than it has ever been? Instead of repeating the same cycle and enduring the same oppression and division, how about we learn from our past rather than idolizing it?

And Now This

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, 

"No! We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."

When Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord.

The Lord said, "Listen to their voice and set a king over them."

Samuel then said to the people of Israel, "Each of you return home."

- 1 Samuel 8: 19-22

If you want to be a "biblical" sort of person, I mean one that shapes their life according to the God-breathed Word.  I think you ought to pay attention to the history of people with their kings at moments like this.  Here's the back story: God had rescued Israel out of slavery in Egypt, the Pharaohs of Egypt were the prototype for ancient kings, they ruled an empire that was much more than just a small corner of the world.  They were far more than glorified chieftains or tribal leaders.  Egypt genuinely qualified as what we might call a nation.  God had brought this little band of Hebrews out of the brick pits and fields of a great empire, they wandered in the wilderness for a generation and finally inherited the promised land.  They were set up to live as a nation under God alone.  No king, only judges, no ruler except the Lord.  The Word was to guide them and the Name of the Lord was to give them their identity.

Except that wasn't enough for them.

After their God had liberated them from the mighty Pharaoh, and led them and guided them into the promised land, after the Hand of the Almighty had picked them up from the mud, once they were comfortable and concerned primarily with safety and security, then things started to fall apart.  As it says in that ominous and blood soaked ending of the book of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did was right in their own eyes."

Samuel, to simplify a bit, was both the first prophet and the last judge, he is a hinge point in the history of Israel.  The people ask Samuel to give them a king, because they didn't trust that Samuel's kids would live up to the role.  They were now intimidated and fearful of the Philistines, and the other little nations that surrounded them.  It would seem that they had forgotten entirely how God had liberated them from Pharaoh, so when they asked for a king, Samuel first reminded them of that reality.

Honestly, the Philistines were nothing compared to Pharaoh, neither were any of the other foes Israel faced until the Assyrian Empire rose in the north.  But they had lost faith and trust in God, they wanted to take steps to do things on their own and they wanted a king to do it for them.  God told Samuel to remind them what having a king was like, to paraphrase: "he will take your sons to fight wars and make his war machines, he will take your daughters to serve in his palace and he will take your wealth and your property and put them to his work."

Samuel ends his warning with this: "In that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day."

This is a sad moment in the history of God's people.  For their sins, they are given Saul, a great warrior, just the strong man that they wanted, and also a madman.  It would seem we still haven't learned our lesson about kings who promise us security, even after all this time.  Even now in a democracy, we still go through the king making season every few years.  Every time we choose based on the person we think will be the greatest king, even though our very identity was formed by throwing off a monarchy, we still look for the illusory presence of a great leader.

I'm not even going to make specific comment about the impending choice before us, I've had too much of that for my guts already.  I'm saying here that no human leader will ever be able to do everything you think they will.  They are at best, merely human, they are at worst something rather more sinister and dangerous. The hope of the framers of our nation was to rise above the need for kings.  The office of President was rather carefully crafted so that it would not be easily confused with the throne of a king.  But you have to give human depravity some credit for managing to work around those careful plans.

Ecclesiastes, (and Battlestar Galactica) tells us that what has been will be again, and what is now has been before, in other words, nothing new under the sun.  Despite the hope and covenant promise of being the chosen people of God, Israel demanded a mere mortal king.  Despite the promise of freedom and democracy, we neglect our own political duty so gravely that we ultimately look, with false and misguided hope, towards a single person to change our course for us.

I know a little bit about what I'm talking about, because churches tend to do this to their pastors as well: the leader is the fixer and the one who takes on the obstacles.

It's not a good system, it doesn't work in the long run and chews people up and spits them out. Our great and powerful leaders leave office clearly the worse for wear.  Pastors burn out of churches at an alarming rate.  I suspect we all watch that scene in Cool Hand Luke where Luke shouts "Stop feeding off of me" with a certain rueful understanding.

This may just be a lesson in reality.  Honestly, the situation at the end of the period of the Judges (and mostly during it) was not what you would call a utopia.  Maybe its just a fact of our fallen world that we just can't handle true self-rule.  Maybe all of this is really just vanity and chasing after the wind.

I know it's certainly not going to be solved in this or any other election cycle, no matter what the outcome. It's got to start within our hearts with an understanding that God alone is worthy of our allegiance, and all other loyalties come after that.

That's what I'm working on this morning.

More Sifting

Every part of Scripture is God breathed and useful in one way or another - 

showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way.

Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.

-2 Timothy 3: 16-17 (The Message)

Here's some not so nice baggage I have had to sift through with this Timothy reading: I have used this text as a weapon against other people, and I have had others use it as a weapon against me.  I admit and confess that I have misunderstood what Paul was actually saying to Timothy and I thought that the "God breathed" Word was some sort of infallible support for my own (all too fleeting) sense of orthodoxy.  So first of all, I would like to repent of my own idolatry of the Bible.  I would like to repent of all the times when I felt that God's Word justified some prejudice or opinion of mine.  I would like to repent of any and all times that I tried to strangle the breath out of the Word.

I would also like to lay this burden down: I have come to a place where I cringe when I hear someone say the word biblical.  Which is kind of tricky in my line of work, sort of like a doctor who doesn't like the sight of blood.  None of this is because I have rejected the Scripture, or because I no longer bind myself under the authority of the Word, but because I get the sense that a lot of times people use that word too lightly, they use it to mean "traditional," or "moral," or "ethical," or maybe even "righteous," in short they are not adequately acknowledging how complex and alive the actual God breathed Word truly is.

I will turn to Psalm 137 as my example, because it is personal and beloved to me.  This was one of the Scriptures read at my brother's funeral.  Of all the memories of that day, one of my Dad's friends reading: "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and we wept when we remembered Zion." But he didn't read all the way to the end of the Psalm, for good reason, the last verse of the Psalm reads: "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks!"  That part always seems to get left out of the reading of that Psalm, the bitterness and the anger at the oppressor that has so twisted the singer of songs that he would delight in the killing of infants.  We have a hard enough time acknowledging lament in the Scripture without that sort of brutal image. 

And this is not an isolated incident.  The Bible is full of stories that I would not tell my children: Judah and Tamar, the Levite's concubine, David and Bathsheba (and poor Uriah), Amnon raping Tamar (different Tamar this time) and David, good old king David, not doing anything about it.  I could go on, but if you have even a passing familiarity with the stories I'm talking about you will notice that justice is rarely done, the innocent are not protected and all of the people suffer for the sins of a few.

So when you say something is "biblical," my snarkiest response is likely to be, "you mean like rape and incest and the killing of children?"

But I get it, you just mean the good parts, where the baby Jesus is smiling at the Blessed Virgin as the cattle are lowing and the wise men are bringing gifts.  But Herod kills a bunch of kids in that story too!

How am I supposed to deal with this in any sort of beatific fashion?

Well, the fact of the matter is, I can deal with those rough edges.  I can learn something about God, and about humanity in all of them, but what I learn may lead me to hang up my harp on the branches and not exactly want to sing any more songs.  I don't always like this book that sits open in front of me every day, but I have chosen to wrestle with it, yell at it, slam it shut and eventually come back to it again and again. So when I say biblical, I am not being simple minded or naive.  When I say biblical, I could be talking about a soaring vision of light, or black, knotted pit in my stomach, it just depends.  But I'll tell you what, I take this Word very seriously, and because I do people that accuse me of being one of the "itching ears" gang that Paul talked about in his letter to Timothy, because of my progressive politics, it forces me to practice forgiveness of a very certain type. 

See, here's the thing, my inclusive stance towards LGBTQ people, my support of marriage equality, my desire for a more just system of laws, the fact that I actually want to protect the environment or work to end racism or poverty instead of just hoping that Jesus will come back soon, all that stuff is a result of my working with and wrestling my way through these Scriptures.

I have, in fact, changed my opinion on several of the things on that list as a result of a convicting moment that I had while reading Scripture or preparing a sermon. It's pretty safe to say that there is almost nothing I think, write or talk about that isn't in some way touched by my on-going relationship with the Scripture.

If you tell me something like: "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it," you are essentially like that person who thinks that they can tell a Navy fighter pilot something about flying because you were super good at playing WWII Fighter Ace on Nintendo. It's not that I would dishonor your conclusions, you may even be right about something, it's that I don't think you have actually put in the time or the honest struggle in coming to those conclusions.  You are not treating the Scripture as God breathed you are treating it like the rules of Monopoly (and probably cheating) or a self-help book that mostly just validates your own sinful biases.

I do not believe that my interpretation of Scripture is infallible, or even that it might not change more down the road.  I do not expect that everyone will agree with me about how to live with and in the God breathed Word, I'm not the Pope, nor do I want to be. I would just like people to stop implying or even insisting that I'm not paying attention to this Word, as much as I would like to live otherwise, I just can't get away from it.

Baggage down, sermon ready.

Sifting

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, 

Knowing from whom you have learned it...

-2 Timothy 3: 14

This has been happening to me a lot lately.  When I sit down on Monday to read the Revised Common Lectionary passages for the coming Sunday, there is one that I think, "no way, not that one." But by Wednesday I have realized that the very one I wanted to stay away from is the one the Spirit is pushing me towards.  I've started too many sermons in the past month with that little trope though, so I'm getting it out of the way here on Wednesday, hoping that I will be able to clear the deck of old baggage and really deal with this passage with fresh eyes and a new heart.

So, on to the baggage. I strongly identify with Timothy, I may not exactly be the youngest of the young, but for a good while, when I first started ordained ministry, I was the youngest minister in whatever group I was a part of.  I actually felt a bit of relief when, after about three or four years of that, a couple younger folk arrived in my Presbytery, so I didn't have to be the baby anymore.  I also identify with Timothy because I have been blessed with several wise mentors to teach me the ropes of this peculiar vocation.  

It starts with my Dad, I grew up as the son of a Pastor.  But my Dad was always the kind of person that would inspire my peers to say, "he doesn't really seem like a normal Pastor."  I heard that a lot, but since he was my primary frame of reference I didn't really know what that meant. I do now though, because I have seen a lot of "normal pastors." I think what was meant by that was essentially people who are so preoccupied with their religiosity that they neglect their humanity.  In other words, they don't keep it real.  I get why it happens, it's a defense mechanism, you put up a persona instead of your true self. Being real with people makes you vulnerable.  When they criticize and/or attack you they're not just taking down some false front you've constructed, they're actually ripping you.  Paul is trying to coach young Timothy through such a situation, to paraphrase: Hold on to who you are and remember who you have learned from.

I was fortunate to have two mentors in Seminary: David McFarlane, a diminutive Scot with impressively expressive eyebrows (they would make Peter Capaldi proud).  Who used a very Doctor Who-esque approach to disarm and counter the rather uptight, wealthy, congregation of The Presbyterian Church, Sewickley.  David insisted that the tall steeple and trappings of wealth would not change him or intimidate him.  He drove out of Sewickley (a town with a Bentley Dealership), in the same beat up red Honda Civic that he arrived in.  I owe to David an appreciation of Jonathan Edwards and a better understanding of the politics of wealth and power, as well as an appreciation for Planned Parenthood (an organization I had vilified in my own mind).  His good nature and kind liberalism started to crack the ice of a rather rigid dogmatist in the making. I think, I hope, he got to me in time.

By the time David and I parted ways, we were both fairly sure that my pastoral life would probably not lead me into a large corporate church like Sewickley.  I don't remember the exact wording of his advice, but it was something along the lines of: "If you're ever going to try to lead a congregation like this, let it be when you are old enough to retire in peace if, or rather when it starts to eat your soul."

With that experience tucked into my pocket, I moved a bit north to work with Rev. Dr. W. James Legge, who the first time I met him looked exactly like Santa Claus, if Santa Claus was a priest.  Jim has been the Pastor at a congregation that was much more like the ones I would realistically serve, for a really long time.  He was the master of "do as I say, not as I do." He helped me get my hands in to the dirt of ministry in a way that simply would not have been possible in Sewickley.  He showed me that often you have to carve out your own way and do things according to your gifts, not the gifts that other people think you ought to have.

With Dad, David, and Jim, not to mention some really good Seminary Professors in my corner, I thought I was ready to do this thing.  But, as it turns out, there is nothing quite like having to run your own circus to find all the pitfalls.  And so the Spirit gave me a friend and colleague in my first call, another absurdly long-tenured Presbyterian in the next town over, Bruce Shannon.  Bruce and I worked together on everything from a cooperative youth program to Presbytery council right up until I left Western PA and he retired a few months apart.  I can't even begin to number the times that I leaned on his experience, and bent his ear about some little nonsense.  I probably ignored  and neglected enough good advice from him to fill a decent size book. What advice I did take saved my bacon. Bruce and I had nearly a decade of working together and I'm pretty sure that without his friendship and wisdom, things might have gone very differently for me.

I needed to be reminded of "whom I have learned it." That's what today was all about.  I've got more baggage in the later parts of the text from 2 Timothy, but as it turns out, I only got through the first verse.  I've got some more sifting to do, or this is going to be a long sermon.

Civil Discourse?

We are less than a month away from the election.  Every time I write a blog that relates to this circus I think, "Okay, that's it, I'm done.  I've said all that I can say." But Trump really is the gift that keeps on giving, like herpes.
I didn't immediately fly off the handle when I heard about his "locker room talk," because, quite frankly, as much as I wanted to be shocked and appalled, I wasn't.  For what it's worth, the Donald is actually right, I have heard people talk in a way that was every bit as vulgar and disrespectful about women.  And no, I'm sorry, I mostly did not stand up and call them on their bad behavior, because they were idiots, I knew they were idiots.  I also knew that they, as idiots, were mostly harmless and what's more, were probably likely to stammer like a fool when confronted with an actual woman.  Did I mention that most of the incidents I'm referring to happened in High School? Maybe a few in college, but have mostly vanished from my world by the age of 42.  I don't miss them.  Trump was 59, he was on his third marriage and actually had grandkids.  He also occupied a position of authority and had the privilege that comes with money.  Meaning that his "locker room talk" about making advances on women and groping them was more than just the empty posturing of a 16 year old boy, it was, as has been accused by many women, a clear and present danger.
The whole scenario made me feel sorry for any women that this lecherous pumpkinhead may have assaulted, and who just had to swallow that because he was Donald J. Trump.  But that was not the end of the public molestation that this election is forcing upon us.  Then came the justifications, for sake of my blood pressure, I'm just going to focus on three:

1. It's just locker room talk.  Bull-freaking-pucky, as noted above, this is, indeed something you are likely to hear in locker rooms, among teenagers, who have limited experience with actual sex.  Among grown-ups who are capable of dealing with the relationships that ought to define sexual relationships, this sort of talk tends to go away.  Because girls are no longer abstract things that you want to "get some" from, they are actual people you spend time with and maybe even commit to, then they become the mother of your children, and then, if you have a daughter, if some clown started saying what Donald said, you want to rip his throat out with your bare hands... Sorry, I'm getting too emotionally involved with this one, let's move on.
2. Bill Clinton is a slimebag too. Yes, Bill Clinton is a lecherous toad as well.  He absolutely abused his authority and engaged in adulterous relationships, regardless of what the definition of "is" is.  This is such an incredible deflection that I felt my intelligence being insulted even more than when I watch those payday loan commercials where people are so thankful that someone was able to take usurious advantage of them.  This is what is known in the world of rhetoric as a false equivalence, and would mostly be declared out of order by any moderator worth their salt.  First of all, we are not electing Bill again.  Second of all, we are not electing Bill again. I will fully capitulate to the fact that Bill and the Donald, heck let's throw JFK in on that as well, are actually birds of feather who have managed to grope and molest their way through life.  I admit that the shameful way we have allowed rich and powerful men to harass and abuse women with impunity is unacceptable.  We need to stop allowing that to happen. Period. End of Sentence. John Oliver pointed out this funny but profane clip, it's almost like the first woman president has to face her very own version of Darth Vader, except the dark side of the force, in this case, is chauvinism, sexism and misogyny.  It actually makes sense that her very own husband is, in fact, an illustration of all that bad old stuff, but this time America, we have a choice and our eyes are open.
3. Women read Fifty Shades of Grey, they must like dirty, rapey stuff. I saved this one for last because, great googly-moogly, how is this even a justification? First of all, I will be the last one to defend FSoG, not because they are profane or controversial, but because they are horrible writing.  I very much would like it if we could collectively rise up and say that they are trashy, horrible, very bad books.  I do not like the way that they essentially romanticize emotional control and sexual abuse, and I do not need reminded that I'm misunderstanding the power dynamic in those sorts of relationships.  Controlling behavior is abusive by nature.  If you need a contract to define how you are going to relate to each other sexually, that is probably not good.  But I digress, whether or not a woman enjoyed reading that trash does not entitle anyone to molest or assault her, to "kiss her without waiting," or to "grab..." I'm not even going to say it.  The fact that I like to watch horror movies does not make it okay for someone to chase me around wearing a hockey mask and wielding a machete.  I do not consent to that sort of treatment.

So this is where we are America.  We have a month more of this, and then we have to choose.  The point where we can feel good about this process has long since passed.  I'm just hoping to get through the next debate without having a rage induced aneurysm.

Justice For All

Evil can hide in systems much more readily than in individuals.

-Richard Rohr

As you might be able to tell, I'm not a fan of this election cycle, it's giving me bad feelings on a pretty much daily basis.  The thing that I guess I'm most vexed by is the way that the veneer of our civility has been peeled away and the rotten underneath stuff is so visible. Political relationships have devolved into petty squabbles where truth and righteousness get steamrolled in the push to "win." The prejudice that has lurked in the shadows of our society has decided that now is the hour to step out onto the big stage and strut it's stuff.

I have caught myself, several times, calling a certain orange tinted candidate, evil.  But that's not really accurate.  I don't think the Donald is evil, he's authoritarian, arrogant and chauvinistic, but that just makes him all the more attractive to people who just can not stand Hillary. I think insofar as either candidate represents something evil, it is evil that hides from them behind a mask of ideological assumptions about the world.  Trump preaches the idea that if you just take off all the restraints, people and businesses will be able to roll into prosperity and good times.  Trump is a man at home in chaos, he seems to flourish in this environment where truth is hard to come by.  At the same time, he shouts about "Law and Order" (not the TV show), and seems to have no idea about how that echoes Mussolini and Franco, nor does he see any contradiction in advocating authoritarian rules for the masses while removing what regulations we have to restrain the robber barons (of which class he is a lifetime member).  His personal and professional life has been chaotic to say the least, multiple marriages, failed businesses (and some successful ones), his name on shining buildings and cursed on the tongues of many whom he owed money.  "Reality" television loved him, because he is larger than life, and his cult of personality has proven to be able to cross over into the world of politics.

But he is not alone in serving and protecting Evil.  Hillary has been a part of the political system, with all of its wars, greed and corruption for pretty much her entire adult life. Her "corruption" like her much discussed email scandal, were really just capitulations to political necessity.  The comment has been made by those who pay more attention to politics than me that Hillary has been playing the political game for so long that she may have actually forgotten what it was like to not be a part of the game. She has been so long in the dragon's lair that she has become a dragon herself.

Here is the larger context of the above quote from Fr. Rohr: 

Today, most of us try to find personal and individual freedom even as we remain inside of structural boxes and a system of consumption that we are then unable or unwilling to critique.  Our mortgages, luxuries and privileged lifestyles control our whole future. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security and status determines what we can and cannot say or even think.  Self-serving institutions that give us our security, status or identity are considered "too big to fail" and are invariably beyond judgment from the vast majority of people. Evil can hide in systems much more readily than in individuals.

If I'm honest, and I generally try to be, I know that I could probably get whole-heartedly behind either candidate if it weren't for this pesky thing called the Gospel that keeps telling me to look out for the least of these and the little ones.  I could embrace Trump's strong-man iconoclasm and say that, for all his faults, at least he's something new and different, because the old system might just be too broke to get anything but congress overriding a veto on highly emotional grounds, and then realizing that they probably just opened American service people and contractors all over the world to being sued in foreign courts.  I could be more enthusiastic about my support for Hillary, because essentially I do believe that she is the better choice, not because she's going to change the system, but because she knows how to work the system.  But I'm not happy about endorsing the status quo (I'm still mourning for Bernie).  I want things to change, I just don't want them to change in the way I think Trump would change them. The majority of us are probably going to be voting based on rejection principle rather than on some positive criteria, and that may be sad, but it might just get us through this kerfuffle.
I believe that the Gospel leads us to be salt and light, and work for the peace of the city, even if we are exile.  The Christian relationship to civil authorities (rendering unto Caesar) is tricky.  I believe we are called to work for justice and challenge "the world," which meant essentially, the systems of greed and violence, those "structural boxes" and systems of consumption as Rohr described them.  The truth of the matter is that we are probably never going to get a presidential candidate who really takes a Gospel approach to the process or the office.  They crucified Jesus, and he wasn't even running.

Tears of a Clown

I do not like clowns.  It probably stems from some combination Stephen King's IT, and pictures of John Wayne Gacy.  I'm not given to irrational phobias either.  I tolerate spiders, snakes, rodents and suchlike, as long as we keep our respective habitats sorted properly.  But clowns?  I do not like clowns.
I'm not exactly afraid of clowns though, it's more of a vague sense of irritation when I see one, and a feeling of being sort of spooked out by the nature of them (extends to mimes as well).  I can't entirely explain the creepiness of clowns to those who don't feel it on an ontological level.
Needless to say, the trend of lurking clowns, no doubt instigated by some brainless internet stooge and apparently becoming something of a trend, causes me some trouble. Here's why: I'm not a violent person, but that is primarily because of my upbringing and my core beliefs in love, grace and the brotherhood of humankind.  I believe in non-violence, because I believe that violence only begets more violence and the world is a brutal enough place without my fear-induced blood lust being added to the mix.
That being said, I tend to think that I could straight up murder some creepy clown who showed up in my backyard or in a deserted parking lot.  I would not be acting as the clear thinking Christian man that I try to be, I would be responding to that clown the way most people respond to a bee in their underwear, which is in a focused state of panicked agitation.  That merry prankster should pray I'm not armed.
One clown has been shot. It's really only a matter of time before someone gets killed over a stupid prank, because I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.
I can see how this started out funny. I think clowns in general started out funny, but at some point things outlive their cultural epoch, like burlesque shows and black face.  I think perhaps this is the nadir of clowns as a cultural phenomenon.  What began as a way to perform rollicking slapstick and indulge a talent for making things out of balloons, is now nothing more than a creepy punch line to a joke that goes too far to really be funny to any non-psychopath.
I actually do understand the entertainment value in sheer chaos and disturbance.  I've been to a Gwar show, I get it.  But clowns lurking?  It's just too sinister to allow me to believe it's anything but a cynical ploy to get attention and maybe gut-shot.
Y'all need to quit, or someone's gonna get dead.

Sources

Remember when your teacher told you that you needed to remember the multiplication tables because you wouldn't always have a calculator with you? Yeah, about that, I now pretty much always have a calculator with me (on my phone), not to mention something that will tell me in a few seconds about the quadratic formula, the definition of a cosine or the acceleration due to gravity.  It can also call up the Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the Constitution or Hamlet's monologue.
What it cannot do is sort out all of the nonsense that passes for news these days.  In the past day or so, I have seen articles shared on facebook by people I'm friends with that claimed the following: Hillary Clinton ordered a drone strike on Julian Assange (Wiki Leaks guy), because Assange has been "threatening" to release information detrimental to her campaign.  Granted it is a crackpot story from thoroughly disreputable sources, however, it has come to my attention that people don't really carefully consider the source before they re-post. I use this example because it should raise the following question in EVERYONE's head, regardless of whether you support Clinton: Hillary Clinton is no longer Secretary of State, a Senator, or functioning in any capacity that would give her the authority to order a drone strike on someone (and honestly I'm not even sure any of her other positions would have given her that authority, maybe sec. of state? Maybe?).
There are equally ridiculous things being said about Trump, although there are enough absurdities that issue forth from the orange one that do not require hyperbole.

Here's a clue, and I'm going to be as balanced as I can here.  If it comes from Breitbart, Mother Jones, The Daily Kos, Occupy Democrats, Fox News, CNS or any of the myriad other mudslingers You should always consider the information contained therein to be suspect.  I'm not saying they never tell the truth, but their version of the truth is probably slanted.
Fact checkers like Snopes, Factcheck.org and Politifact are necessary stops on your daily internet browsing.  Don't be dissuaded if one of wizards of misinformation tries to convince you not to look behind the curtain because: fact checkers are just another tool of the "liberal media" (right wing) / "establishment" (left wing).  Breitbart loves to "fact check the fact checkers" because, a lot of the time, the fact checkers are more critical of their boy (the struggle of being the propaganda mouthpiece of a pathological con man).
I admit, my cynicism meter gets pushed into the red an awful, awful lot these days, I want to just throw up my hands and concede that in a world of liars I'll settle for half truth and be done with it, but I'm not okay with that really.
I spend a lot of my time engaged in a practice called Exegesis, in which I take a particular passage of Scripture and I try and interpret what it means.  The end result of this practice is the sermon that I crank out every Sunday (and sometimes a few blog articles along the way).
The thing is, I spend an entire week wrestling with each little block of Scripture, because, no matter what someone might tell you, the Bible is a lot more complicated than a newspaper.  I have to take into account a lot different things in the process of exegesis far beyond just "knowing what the words mean." I have to consider history, I have to consider the the traditions of the church and theological perspective.  I have to consider how my own experience shapes my understanding, but also guard against committing "eisegesis" where I read my own bias and preconceptions into the text.  Finally I have to sort out all the stuff that I've learned and somehow figure out what I'm going to say and what I'm not going to say, given the time I have and the audience who will be listening.  Last week, I had a neat way to tie in the scripture from Lamentations with the teachings from Luke, but it would have taken too long to make the moves to get there, so I had to put it aside.  It was good, it was true, but it was sort of irrelevant to the rest of what I was saying.
It's kind of hard to hold back when you see something that confirms your bias: Trump is a stooge, Hillary is a crooked politician, the two party system sucks, neither one of them deserve to be president.  No matter where you stand, you can find some "news" outlet that makes you feel not so very alone.  That doesn't mean that the people who agree with you are right.  It doesn't mean their stories are true.
Just because the truth is often difficult and hard doesn't mean we get to give up looking.

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

But that Joke isn't funny anymore,

No, it's too close to home,

and it's too near the bone, 

after all...

-The Smiths

I admit, I got a few chuckles out of this, but frankly it was low hanging fruit.  Comedy is normally the result of taking some little quirk and exaggerating it, like Jon Stewart aping George W. Bush and his manner of squinting and his peculiar little chuckle.  But in those days, Stewart would often have to actually also exaggerate the content of what was said as well.  SNL hardly had to do that, and I'll be fair, they didn't really have to reach very far to skewer Hillary's smugness as she contentedly watched Trump hoist himself by his own petards.
The problem is this is about who we are going to call our leader for the next four years.  In our system of government, each branch, including the executive is limited in its ability to wreck our ship of state.  It's a good idea, but in these days, where image and perception are so important to actually creating reality, the public face of your commander in chief does matter.
If you peer behind the veil a little bit, you might find some Trump supporters who think that all these gaffs and other crass behavior are just some sort of ploy, or maybe just a series of poorly thought out mistakes, rather than who he is in the real world. Except, because he has been such a public figure for so long, we know that his record of being a boor goes back quite a ways.  We also know that he shows a sociopathic lack of humility, an allergy to facts, and apparently considers diplomacy and compromise to be signs of weakness.
Hillary's track record is that of a politician, and yes that means she's left some destruction in her wake.  Yes, that means she may have voted one way one time and another way another time.  It may mean that she has learned to dissemble and deflect with a preternatural skill that almost makes her seem like an automaton...
Funny right?
I don't know.  I'm not really laughing, and believe me, I'm enough of a cynic that I can usually laugh through quite a lot.
Right now I'm feeling like my cynicism, and maybe the cynicism of our very nation has risen up to bite us.  How did we get to the place where it's actually hard to tell the difference between a debate and a late night sketch comedy routine?  Have we smirked our way into a catastrophe?
Only time will tell.