Weighing the Spirit

All one's ways may be pure in one's own eyes,

But the Lord weighs the spirit.

-Proverbs 16: 1

Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Laments rising to the heavens.  A fool who probably thinks more about the toppings on a supreme pizza than the justices of the Supreme Court gets to pick another one.  The good news is that he will probably default to a vanilla conservative like Neil Gorsuch (although Judge Judy is probably available).  The Court, even with the "protection" of Kennedy, seems to have been ruling for the wealthy and powerful and against the interests of the working people pretty consistently recently, but I'm not a lawyer and honestly that's just my opinion.

One of the things that keeps me from being a full fledged liberal (while some of you may disagree that I'm not one) is that I don't trust the government, like not even a little.  It's not that I fear some Orwellian dystopia or a "deep state" conspiracy, it's that I don't think the government is very good at things, it's filled with too many self-serving sycophants like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, but even deeper down than that, it has become a bureaucratic monstrosity. The problem is that some of the things the government does, really need to be done, and I don't trust private corporations to do them without robbing and raping us.  So it's a choice between bureaucracy or those two guys in Pulp Fiction who owned the Gimp, I'll take the bureaucracy thanks and I guess that makes me a liberal.

I always want the government to be better than it is though. I live right down the road from Washington D.C., I know lots of people who work for the government in one capacity or another, they are good people, and their tales of what it's like to work in the belly of the beast are not cause for hope.  Even if they're not at the point of utter frustration, which some definitely are, the feeling that I get from most of them is that they are cogs and wheels in an immense machine.  Any thought they might have of improving the system ends at the alarmingly rigid border of their job description.  Most of them have experienced some sort of "reform by attrition," which means simply not replacing people when they retire or leave and shoveling more work on those who remain.  Sometimes this works, sometimes it burns people up like cheap cigarettes.

Moving to the D.C. area has deepened my suspicion that the government has become something that "We the People," should not trust.  Part of it is just a feel, one of those things I get as an intuitive person and which grows stronger as I listen and learn about the character of an area.  I spent ten years in Western Pennsylvania, which has a feel and a character as well.  The feel and character of that place is sort of like an old grey barn on a rainy day: it's useful, but it has been used hard; it has been cared for, but only to keep it functional, not make it look pretty; it can be beautiful, but you have to see it from the perspective of someone who really cares about it.  The city up the road oozes power.  The people that live in its shadow do so in spiritual peril and sometimes physical peril as well.  Nothing about D.C. feels safe or comfortable, even if it is relatively so. Government buildings present the facades of fortresses, monuments tell the story of our greatness and our sacrifices, and it seems as though actual living people are not much welcome among them, we are tolerated and told to stay on the paths.

Sorry, I'm being a bummer.  What I meant to do is to tell you that none of this matters, and I mean that not in a nihilistic sense, but in a faithful, wisdom-founded, realistic yet hopeful sense. See, even God-fearing people have always tended to want some sort of secular empowerment.  The Israelites cried out for a king, Jesus' disciples always wanted him to be the super-hero messiah they had been taught to expect from their childhood.  People have mistaken kings and rulers for God's anointed one more times than is really helpful to count, let's just say it's a lot.  I think God is probably just amused by our tendency to do this; I mean if he kept getting angry about it, that wouldn't be spiritually healthy.  It's one of our most persistent and annoying idolatries, probably second only to worshiping money.

So in the wisdom literature of Proverbs, Solomon, who knew something of power himself, basically says if you will accept my paraphrase of the verse above: you will probably think what you're doing is right, or else you wouldn't do it, but the Lord knows why you do it and will judge it with a rather different set of criteria.  Later in his life he would write in Ecclesiastes, and again I paraphrase: life sucks then you die, mind your business and try not to be a jerk, oh and stop worrying so much. The foundation of this halcyon statement of the human predicament is the conviction that God is doing something that is bigger than nations and kingdoms and which transcends the scope of any human life, from the greatest to the least.  Jesus actually demonstrates that God is rather more interested in using the last and the least to embody his kingdom, he's not particularly interested in the wealthy or the powerful.

Psalm 2 says, "Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?" That is a pretty good question, but they keep doing it, and I don't expect it will stop any time soon. That perspective, more than anything else, is what keeps me sane these days, just thought I would share it with you.

Feeding the Beast

No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink;

for by doing this  you will heap burning coals on their heads.

-Romans 12: 20

If you were reading last week, that passage sounds familiar.  It's actually a quote from the Old Testament Proverbs 25: 21-22, not just a Jesus or Paul sort of thing.  Proverbs themselves are not particularly dependent on metaphysical belief systems either, they're wisdom that holds pretty much across the board.  This particular adage does conclude with a promise of the Lord rewarding you for being kind to your enemies, but in the most concrete and non-spiritual sense too, vengeance and tit for tat rarely make things better.  Most of us learn this lesson in childhood, but eventually, when we grow up, we forget important things that should not have been forgotten.

Thus, I do not find the treatment of various Trump functionaries in restaurants over the past week to be a particularly satisfying course in the culture war that we are being fed right now.  While I certainly understand the frustration of a restaurant owner who maybe saw Sarah Sanders refuse to answer the rather impassioned question of a reporter about the separation of children on the southern border, I think that asking her to leave your restaurant, whatever the circumstances, is pretty much the wrong approach.  It's wrong on several levels, first is the issue of consistency, which is a whip of cords that can pretty much always be wielded against liberals in the current climate, because we pretend to love free speech, except if Ann Coulter is coming to your college.  And we think that Christian bakers should have to make wedding cakes for a gay couple, but somehow we're okay with Sarah Sanders getting kicked out of a restaurant because the owner disagrees with her boss. None of those situations are perfectly clear moral decisions by the way, I'm not saying that they are, but the tendency of people on both left and right to jump the rails whenever the shoe gets on the other foot is a truly disturbing piece of our current sociological milieu.

This leads to the sort of next level problem with this behavior: it plays into the persecution complex that so many of us have.  I don't need to watch Sean Hannity deal with this, because I know how it's going to go: "This is yet another example of how the 'liberal elites' are trying to silence us," the poor persecuted wealthy white folks.  In case you haven't taken notice yet, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because they had a deep resentment for Hilary Clinton yes, but also for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and not only them but Mitch McConnell and John Boehner before him and even John McCain as well. If you're an honest to goodness Republican, you need to take notice that Trump is a repudiation of your behavior over the past 40 years as much as it is of the Democrats.

The one thing that Trump and Bernie Sanders had in common was that they told people, in no uncertain terms, that the system as it stands is broken and needs fixed.  They were both challengers of the status quo.  The main difference between their paths to the White House was the different primary processes of the party they chose to try and take over.  Democrats have a massive weight of super-delegates to counter the raw urges of the masses (not always a good thing, but sometimes an important brake to pull). Republicans do not have such a thing and so they get what they want, like a five year old that wants a Twinkie before bed.  Stomachache is in process. Conservatives like Ross Douthat and Michael Gerson have been beating the Anti-Trump drum for a long time, but this week the stodgiest of the stodgy columnists George Will rounded the bend and said that to counter the Trump takeover, conservatives need to vote against the GOP.

I have been reading conservative folks and libertarian perspectives intentionally over the past several years, and this comes as no surprise.  People who actually understand politics and see our system for what it is: a balance of powers and institutions devoted to compromise rather than a winner take all contest, have not been sanguine about where this is leading our nation. The only people who really seem to be loving this are the likes of Sean Hannity and Alex Jones. In other words people who rely on anger and convincing people that "they" whoever "they" happen to be at the moment, are out to get them.

So, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum as it has been defined for most of my life, you are now a person without a country, thanks to the skillful manipulation of our tendency to feel persecuted.  Even now Trump is telling people that immigrants are a huge danger, that crime is raging, that foreigners (but not Russia) are playing us for chumps, that it is "carnage" out there.  None of that is objectively true, but somehow he makes it seem true to a lot of people.  The owner of a small restaurant asking Sarah Sanders to leave because of her association with Trump, somehow plays into that. Somehow or other a woman who daily represents a corrupt and mendacious administration has become a sympathetic figure. You know what wouldn't play into that?  Feeding her dinner and treating her like any of us would want to be treated in a restaurant.  We should not lose sight of our common humanity in all of this.  There are plenty of ways to protest what our government is doing, not least of which is voting for something different. But before all that, how about acting like we still are something different.

Hard Hearts

He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him,

How to destroy him.

-Mark 3: 5-6 (NRSV)

Maybe this passage came a couple of weeks too early. This was part of the text from June 3, it's about how Jesus dealt with people who wanted to enforce the letter of the law rather than have compassion on others.  No, I'm not making that up, neither is it a particularly "liberal" interpretation.  You don't have to do any mental gymnastics to see that the clear problem that Jesus has with those who keep the Sabbath is that they do so to the exclusion of being basically decent humans.  The rules have become more important than the people, and that makes Jesus angry and he is "grieved at their hardness of heart."

Now, I understand that there are layers and layers of our psyche that are designed to help us survive and that when we feel threatened some of the more primal instinct kicks in, and I understand that many of you have been hearing for years about what an existential threat that immigrants pose to our society.  I understand that some of you may be frustrated by having to press one for English when you call any big organization.  I know that MS-13 are scary people and none of us want them living on our block, or even in our town, but if you will join me on a spiritual exercise of walking a mile in someone else's shoes I would like to deliberately exercise your compassion muscles.

Imagine for a minute (and maybe this isn't that far of a reach) that the United States has suffered a calamity. Our government is non functional, the rule of law has broken down entirely.  We're in full on Road Warrior territory with gangs of terrifying rapists in metal underwear roving the land in search of plunder and slaves.  There are still good folks around, towns that try to just go about their business and live like they always did, but there is constant danger. You have several small children and have been successfully hiding out in a pocket of relative safety, but the bad stuff is closing in. You have heard that Canada has somehow avoided the wholesale degradation that our nation experienced and you hope that, somehow, if you can just get to the north you can return to something like a normal life.  You will have to give up everything you can't carry and you will have to risk immense danger, but you decide to go.

Along the way there are people who will try to take advantage of you, rape you, steal what little you have, promise you help but then betray you.  The people and communities you pass through along the way will not help you, in fact they will distrust you and despise you, especially if they feel like they're still relatively safe and secure. Your children will be hungry and tired and scared out of their minds, but you as their parents must somehow protect their fragile little lives with your own.

You arrive at the border of your last hope for civilization.  You expect to be able to ask for asylum, for refugee status, for something.  But Canada has been dealing with too many of your ilk, and they're starting to feel the pressure and the fear of too many immigrants taxing their system, so they have instituted a set of policies that they think will make them more secure and deter all these formerly smug Americans who are now beggars at the gates.

You have no connections, you have no money, you are arrested and charged with a minor offense, you will need to go to court and present your case for asylum, but in the meantime your children are taken away, you don't entirely know where.  All this time you have been their strength and their protectors, and you have done your best to keep them sane and hopeful that something better was ahead.  You listen to them screaming and crying for you as they are taken away by Canadian soldiers. Has your heart broken yet?

The only hyperbole in that entire description is metal underwear.  The rest you just need to change Canada to the United States.  You need to understand that the people who are fleeing from Central and South America are not just regular migrants looking for jobs, they are fleeing from cities and places where the rule of law has mostly or completely fallen apart, they are desperate for the security of our borders, even if they would be undocumented and impoverished.

The most basic moral injunction that Jesus gives his disciples is, "Love one another."  Whatever excuse you may use to break that injunction, does not change the immorality of breaking it.  Complicated and difficult situations do not relieve us of our moral duty.  Feeling threatened or frustrated by people who are different than you certainly is no excuse.  In fact, the parable of the Good Samaritan, for which my church is named, makes that point rather specifically.  The Samaritan, a rather despised out group to the Judeans Jesus was talking to, was the one who showed love and care and who was the neighbor of the man in the ditch.

The Bible really is a pretty amazing book, too bad we just swear on it instead of reading it.

Analysis

Yesterday I talked about the Bible, which is one of my primary areas of vocational expertise. Today I'm going to talk about the other area that I have to deal with pretty much every day in one way or another: human emotional processes.  I am not a counselor or a psychologist, but as a pastor I do have to wear those hats from time to time.  What is more relevant though is that, as a leader of a diverse group of people who are part of my congregation on an entirely voluntary basis, I have to navigate how people feel about things from the color of the carpet to the eternal condition of the soul.

As a leader of people, one should always recognize, and even embrace, the reality that your authority has limits. I can inform people, I can encourage people, in certain circumstances I can even correct people, but the minute, nay the second, that I start to employ those things for my own benefit at the expense of the community, I have failed as a leader, and I should no longer be trusted.  I know that sounds harsh; it is, and thankfully there is a certain amount of grace that operates in the situation, so that consequences are not as immediate as the failure.  That's another thing, failure is part of leadership, anyone who tells you it's not is delusional and not to be trusted.  A good leader will admit their failure, learn from their failure and seek to do better.  A bad leader will double down on their failure in a vain attempt to look strong when they are weak.

I think you probably see where I'm going with this, but let me tell you that this is a log I have had to take out of my own eye many, many times, so I know what I'm talking about.  If I were to try and lead the 200 people in my congregation the way our President is leading this country, I would deserve to be kicked out.  Of all the tests of a good leader that the Donald fails, the one that he fails most drastically is the ability to admit when he's wrong.  As even people from his own tribe are saying (John McCain, Orin Hatch and Laura Bush to name a few prominent ones), he could stop this travesty at the southern border right now.  He doesn't have to change the law, he just needs to admit that the policy of "zero tolerance" was misguided and had unintended consequences.  We could argue about whether the consequences were really unintended, but if the sinister figure of Stephen Miller becomes the face of our immigration policy we may be deeper in Hell than I feared.  So let's just give Donald the benefit of the doubt, let's use the most reliable personality observations that we have about him: he is vain, which leads him to project an strong image, and fear the appearance of weakness; he is an intuitive decision maker, who admittedly "goes with his gut" on a lot of matters.  His "gut" tells him that our borders are porous and that MS-13 is flooding our country with brutal thugs.  Both of these feelings have some grounding in reality, but objective analysis tells us that neither problem is as bad as Trump and his cronies make it sound.  But he has persistently banished most of the advisers who had any stomach to present him with contrary information, and kept sycophants and trolls who affirm his most pessimistic notions.

The term "Zero Tolerance" sounds tough.  My kid's school has a zero tolerance policy about bullying.  A lot of places have a zero tolerance policy about illegal drug use.  It's a thing that tells the bad guys that there's a new sheriff in town.  And almost every zero tolerance policy is prone to produce miscarriages of justice, punishments that do not fit the crime and situations where innocent people get caught in an inflexible bureaucratic enforcement of a rule.

If Trump were a different kind of person, he would recognize that his tough guy routine with regard to immigration has gone too far.  That picture of the little girl crying up at her mother being searched by border patrol, the pictures of the "chain link walls," the recording of the wailing children, and the general outrage from all quarters, would tell a good leader that a course correction needs to be made.  That would require the virtue of humility, which is the single virtue that Trump most glaringly lacks.

A year ago, I might have had some hope that there were wise people talking the Donald down from his draconian tower of witless arrogance, but I think he has banished the few wise men he had from his company.  I am not sanguine about the hope that our legislative branch, or even the judicial branch will ride to the rescue.  I think they have been caught flat footed by a leader who seems to lack the ability to self-reflect and course correct, and in some cases they are just plain scared because they honestly have let him get too much power in the first place.

We are in a bad spot, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.  The responsible, grown up thing to do is to insist that we not let the consequences of our fearful tribalism, our selfish isolationism and our feckless polity fall on innocent children.  In the long run we must learn not to trust people like Donald Trump, they will insistently be who they are.  We can no longer assume that the institutions will change them or even restrain them, unless we recover and restore those institutions.  That will require that we have the humility to admit how we participated in breaking them (swallowing false narratives, engaging in wishful thinking, and flat out apathy).  It will require that we have the patience and wisdom to participate in their reconstruction even though the work will be slow and mostly dull.  It will mean demanding that your news sources are reliable and not simply feeding you what you want to hear. It will mean actually paying attention to local politics and even participating in the system, at the very least as an informed voter.  It means that we have to stop getting distracted by shiny objects and empty promises. It means that we will have to learn to reject rhetoric and arguments that do not adhere to logic and principal, even if we like them.  It means that we will have to search for and work to reattain our moral structure and balance.  We need to figure out what holds us together as a country, and it can't be money, and it can't be power, they are idols and they will lead us into Hell where we sacrifice our children on the flaming altars of their demands.  I know that sounds dramatic, but C.S. Lewis was right when he observed that idolatry always seems to lead to that particular omega point: screaming children, grieving parents and a people who are near to utter dissolution. 

Hermeneutics

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.

-Romans 13: 1 (NRSV)

Yes, the Apostle Paul does instruct the church to obey the civil authorities, which in the case of the Romans meant Caesar, who insisted on being addressed as Lord, who demanded taxes and who often brutally suppressed those who challenged his authority. But what we are doing on our southern border is making Jesus sad, and Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions the Apostle Paul would beat you about the head and neck with a rod for implying that his words justify what y'all are doing to those babies.

Okay, breathe.

Let's talk about Paul for a minute, because it seems like a lot of the time when people get all itchy to quote the Bible about something they think justifies their meanness, particularly if they want a New Testament quote, they go after Paul.  Partly this is because Paul wrote a lot of stuff in the New Testament, so there's a statistical probability that if you open the book and point you probably hit something by Paul.  But also, and this is pretty important, Paul wrote letters to churches full of people he cared about, not exactly theological treatises, but pastoral letters.  This is crucial to understand for two reasons: first, it explains why he talks about specific behavior a lot more than Jesus did.  He is trying to help a community of believers navigate the tricky waters of living in the world and the in the Kingdom of God at the same time.  Secondly it explains why he seems to accept certain things that we would call wrong: slavery, the subjugation of women, economic injustice and imperial oppression to name a few.  He encourages people to make the best of the world they live in because he is a pastor to those people and he knows what happens to people when they challenge the "principalities and powers."  He was willing to stand up and call out the devil himself and get whipped, beaten, imprisoned and eventually executed for that, but he didn't want that for his people.

I know people who have come to really dislike Paul for some of the things he said that get used by people like Jeff Sessions and that ilk to rationalize their behavior, but let me speak on Paul's behalf, because I think I understand that grumpy old Apostle's heart.  See right before Romans 13 comes Romans 12, and remember the whole book of Romans is a letter, not originally neatly divided into chapters and verses, so this flows from thought to thought.  Romans 12 talks about how we are supposed to be different than the world.  Some highlights:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. (9-10)

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. (13)

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (21)

So by the time Paul starts talking about how to deal with a government, he has already challenged the church to live in a way that runs very contrary to how the world works.  And remember, most of the people Paul was writing to, had very little control over what Rome might do, even citizens like himself had very little ability to steer the course of the Empire.  Romans 13 is an injunction to people not to joust at windmills; pay your taxes, abide by the rules and you can probably avoid getting yourself crucified or beheaded.  To use that text, in a democratic society, to justify separating children from their parents because of an arbitrary policy interpretation, which is designed to deliberately induce terror upon people who are already some of the most vulnerable people in our world...
Like I said, Paul would beat you with a stick.
Let's look at what Paul would actually do when compassion runs against the rule of law.  Fortunately we actually have a whole book of the Bible dedicated to that.  It's called Philemon, most people have probably not read it.  Philemon is the addressee of a letter from Paul, when Paul is in prison.  Yes, friends that's right Paul got himself throwed in jail because he didn't exactly subject himself to governing authorities.  What got Paul put in prison?  Was it his bold theological statements? Nope.  Was it some sort of immoral behavior?  Nope.  What exactly got Paul locked up? It was because he, and this Gospel of Jesus Christ thing he kept insisting upon were creating a nuisance for those in power, not because Christians were wild heretics, but because they were demonstrating what a community founded on love could look like: "No longer slave or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile," that kind of thing.  That sort of love is radical and threatening to those who use the law to reinforce their own power.
Paul's words in his letters encouraged the people of the way to be exceedingly good so that they would be above reproach, and so that, if they found themselves persecuted as he was, people would see that it was the persecutors who were the evil doers.  Another gem from Romans 12:

No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their head. (20)

But I digress, I was going to tell you about Philemon. Philemon is a man that Paul knew, as they say, back in the day.  Paul says to his old friend:

I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.

You can kind of tell that Paul is buttering him up a little, and he is, because he's about to ask a big solid.  See Philemon had some slaves, and one slave in particular, Onesimus, had run away and come to be with Paul and Paul "became his father," meaning that Paul brought Onesimus into the community of the Way of Jesus Christ.  Paul knew Onesimus was a slave, but as is well established, Paul did not give two shakes about that.  Onesimus was a great help to Paul while Paul was in prison, but Paul knew that his status as property was going to become a problem at some point. Because Onesimus had broken the law and "wronged" Philemon, amends needed to be made, even if the law that was broken was an unjust law.  Instead of doing what Abraham Lincoln and all of us would have wanted and writing to Philemon about what an evil institution slavery is and challenging him to step out of his entire worldview, time and place, he challenges him to be the kind of merciful and loving person Paul knows him to be.  Forgive Onesimus, maybe even free him (wink wink), I could really use him back here to help me, poor old prisoner that I am.  It's a short letter, but it tells you loads about Paul and the community of the early church.
So, America, we have a choice when it comes to this Bible thing, we can interpret a few verses here and there to justify being pretty mean and nasty, or like Paul encourages Philemon, we can be the good people we really can and ought to be.  It goes beyond the immigrant children, it goes beyond the poor and the oppressed, it is a challenge to be people who can "let love be genuine."  If you are a Christian of any sort, I encourage you to read Philemon, consider the context and what Paul is asking of his friend:

Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

 

 

Another Farewell

Someday we will stop being so surprised by suicides, but today is not that day. Some of the people that I thought were just great have done it: Curt Cobain, Robin Williams, Chris Cornell and now Anthony Bourdain. In the case of Cobain, it wasn't too mysterious, he had chronic pain and was battling drug addiction, he was also in that awkward phase of adjusting to fame and success.  Williams rocked us because he was so talented and seemed funny and happy, and we just couldn't imagine that he was really a crying on the inside clown.  Cornell seemed like he had survived the musician's curse, he had been through the addiction and rehab cycle a couple of times, he had been a part of several really successful bands and been both critically acclaimed and widely loved by fans.  His lyrics were emotionally deep and his musical talent far outstripped even the most successful of his contemporaries.  He seemed like, at 50, he was moving into that phase of artistry that gave elder artists like Cohen, Dylan and Bowie a bit of a chance to really do something beautiful even if it wasn't a commercial success.

Now to Anthony Bourdain, a man famous for cooking and travelling and writing about cooking and travelling.  A man who seemed to have a life that anyone with the smallest craving for adventure would call amazing. The thing that I guess really gets me about Bourdain going out like this is that, even more than the artists that I related to through their songs and their acting, I felt like I knew Anthony Bourdain.  His show, No Reservations, was something I could watch endlessly, much to Michele's chagrin.  He took me places I will probably never go in real life, and even if I did, I would probably not be willing or able to go the places his production team took him.  He taught me to look for street food and embrace the local. He taught me to despise fast food and chain restaurants and to eat there only if you have to.

As his show progressed though, he also started to teach his audience how to be good guests, which is the other half of a spiritual practice that I know is of deep importance: hospitality.  If you watch how Anthony Bourdain accepted the hospitality of people around the world, you will see that despite his gruff, New York crankiness, he knew that being welcome into people's homes and at their table was a sacred occurrence. He knew that the way grandma, anyone's grandma, created food from the depths of their tradition was something that no restaurant on earth could ever produce.  And the thing that you appreciated is that he let you know exactly how he felt about the experiences, he let you see what was going on in his soul, and a man pretty obviously not given to vulnerability would show you his spirit.

But I guess there was something missing.  A man who spent his life seeking out connections with the most sacred and intimate rituals of humanity, table fellowship, could not in the end stay with us and show us more.  Even when he was at a point where he could go and do whatever he wanted, he just could not stay here any longer.  Maybe the keen sensitivity to our shared humanity that was his gift was also an open wound, maybe it was that at 61, with so much at his command, he still couldn't shake the sadness that always lurks in the part of us that creates beautiful things.

I think maybe that's something that all of these people shared in common.  I don't want to glorify suicide as some grand artistic gesture, I think Goethe and Salinger really put that idea to bed for us a while ago. But what I would call us to consider is that maybe if we let ourselves be open to the humanity that we all share we are putting ourselves in a position where suffering is inevitable. And in fact, suffering should not be avoided if it happens in the course of being more open to others and of loving those others. That is certainly what Christianity calls us into, if we're really following Jesus.  Those relationships that become sacrificial, that gravitational pull to identify with the last and the least.  Anthony Bourdain spent quite a bit of time among the poor of the world, and indeed among the rich and middle class as well, he ate their food and drank from their cup. What he gave all of us was the chance to see how connected we all could be if we would just stop fearing one another and start eating together.  It was good work, but I'm sure it was hard, and maybe even grievous.

Even though I know he was not a "religious" person in the regular sense of the word, he was a religious person in his willingness to be with people. This morning I am sure that Anthony Bourdain has experienced the mercy of a God he didn't really believe in, but who gave him the desire to sit at all those tables, with all of those other children of God.  If he could do it here, he will do it there.

Preaching to the Choir?

Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land,

Saying,"When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain,"

"And the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?"

"We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances,

"buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals,"

"And selling the sweepings of the wheat."

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:

Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

-Amos 8: 4-7

A few months back, I was asked to speak to a group of politicians and people running for public office about the problems of poverty and homelessness here in Charles County Maryland.  I did so with little trepidation.  I felt I had something prophetic to say, even if I was just given a little window of opportunity and a few open ears.  Tomorrow I will be doing the same thing, but this time for religious people from the community, other Pastors and church leaders and perhaps even people from other faith traditions.  This time, I feel like I don't quite know what to say, because I don't want to come across as preachy or condescending.  I understand this time that many people who choose to come in the morning are probably facing the same desperate feeling of being up against a wall, facing an unjust system that they think they cannot change.

On one hand I know that our words have power, I know that, if I speak with the conviction of a prophet my words will be heard and maybe hearts will be challenged. On the other hand, I know that most of the people I will speak to tomorrow are standing in the same shoes as I am, our cultural power has faded and the urgency of our voices has been washed out by the concerns for mere survival. Our prophetic tongues are stilled too often by the demands of our priestly vocation.

Lately I have been feeling the Spirit say, "Cry out!" and I hear my spirit answer, "What shall I cry?" I feel like a lot of the un-justice that we experience is ingrained our culture and in our very ideology.  We have served Mammon and the idol of self for so long we almost can't imagine what a community rooted in love would actually look like.  Many of us, myself included, have about given up hope of ever seeing it happen.  Thus we retreat into our smaller and smaller enclaves of people who are, for some reason, still willing to listen to the Voice of the Lord.  As we retreat charlatans step up to take the place that prophets should have occupied.  They glorify worldly success, they trumpet the numbers of "lost sheep" they are managing to corral and fleece.  They tell people the comforting news that God wants to bless them, and utterly ignore the challenge of being a disciple, and for the time being their version of faith is drawing more people than mine.

In their temples one learns to look out for number one, praising some kind of god while neglecting the suffering of the poor and vulnerable.  If their conscience ever gives them a nudge they might offer some alms to the beggars and feel that that is sufficient to continue to claim their god's blessing.

I know, all of that sounds dramatic and maybe a little bit harsh, that is sort of the reason that I'm trying to think this through beforehand.  I'm assuming that my audience tomorrow is coming to this gathering because they also feel that something has gone wrong with our system and they may be wondering what to do about it.  Part of the task is to help people to see how truly dire the circumstances are for those who live below the level of economic security.  People who are doing well always seem too ready to forget the ease with which things can fall apart and it is indeed hard to look clearly at the system that has allowed you to flourish and see the flaws.

I guess I know what I need to say, my goal is to say it with love and grace.