Staying in My Sandbox

I'm not a politician. I'm not a lawyer.  I'm not a constitutional scholar.  I'm not even a particularly politically active person.  I vote, I pay attention, but my introversion doesn't often lead me to march out into the streets and protest.  When I do go to political type events I tend to be quiet and listen to what people have to say. So I'm not going to comment on most of what happened at the RNC last night, other than to say that I found the xenophobic jingoism a bit difficult to watch without physically cringing.
What I am going to comment on is the only part of the whole mess about which I am qualified to critique: the closing prayer and benediction, because I do that sort of thing at places.  Also, because I am a follower of Jesus and as such a member of the Body of Christ.  In the interest of balance, I'm going to give you this link to a conservative blogger who is also commenting on the travesty of Mark Burns' little performance.  I fully agree with my "Red State" counterpart that this was not a prayer by any recognizable standard of Christian discipleship.  Many in the church may disagree with each other about the politics of the day.  I do not disqualify conservatives or Republicans from being honest followers of the Christ, but when you have something like this at your convention?
Look, one of the reasons I have trouble taking Libertarians seriously is because of the perpetual presence of people like Vermin Love Supreme, who is pretty obviously making some sort of satirical jest at the absurdity of politics. I would prefer a man with a boot on his head to what happened last night.  Burns was making no such jest, he was frightfully serious, when he invoked the name of Jesus Christ and then proceeded to co-opt that name into a hateful diatribe naming Hillary and the "Liberal Democratic Party" as the enemy.
He appears to pray that Trump will unite the party in the same breath as he is asking God to keep us "divided not united," although I suspect that is simply a product of horrendous grammar and poor sentence structure.  I think he either meant to switch that order, or he is blaming the "liberal democrats" for doing that, to tell you the truth, I'm just not sure.
Theologically I'm wondering how any follower of Christ can justify bearing this sort of witness in the public arena.  Even conservatives are choking on it, it echoes the worst religious fascism of the past, it claims divine blessing on one and only one political ideology, it absolutely blasphemes the very name of Christ, and I'm not using the word blasphemy lightly.  That sort of mean, nasty, divisive, hateful rhetoric "in the name of Jesus," is absolutely using the name of the Lord in vain.
That's the biggest problem, but my problems don't end there.  My other problem with the Right Reverend Burns is a professional one, and I don't mean theological.  He was asked to give a Benediction, from the Latin Benedictus, bene = good, dictus = word.  He was supposed to send out the gathered people with a good word, with a blessing, not with a curse.  What he did was demonic, in that it was a perversion of the intended purpose of what he was called upon to do.  He allowed his hate and his fear to rob that moment of the power it might have had, to soothe the angry souls, to claim the peace of God and to send the delegates and attendees about their business filled with grace.
I know, most of us don't pay any attention to the importance of liturgy in our lives.  For most of us prayers like this one are supposed to be pro-forma, but liturgy is from the Greek Leitourgia which translated woodenly means "The Work of the People." It is a code of rituals which are meant to move in concert with the divine Spirit of God.  A Benediction is meant to send transformed people out into the world to continue to follow Christ and bear witness to the presence of the Spirit.
So the blasphemy was not only to the "name of Jesus," which he said was so important in his introduction (a crucified man, who said love your enemies), but also to the Spirit of God which moves among the children of God. I'm sure Mr. Burns has read the Bible, so I'm not going to go about quoting things, but I would ask him and anyone gave him the Amen he was asking for, to go back and take a closer look, because I think you're missing something crucially important.

I Feel Numb

I wondered when this was going to happen.  When my outrage burner was just going to flame out from overuse.  I think it might have happened yesterday when someone came up to me after church and told me about the three police officers killed in Baton Rouge. I wasn't entirely devoid of emotion, but I felt entirely un-surprised, un-shocked, un-anything really.  What happened? It doesn't really matter, three guys are dead.  Was it a conspiracy? It doesn't really matter, three more guys are dead.  Was the killer associated with #blacklivesmatter, or did he think BLM was just a bunch of protesting pansies? It doesn't really matter, three men who were just doing their job aren't coming home from work.  Was this a case of politically motivated violence, racially fueled violence? It doesn't really matter, it was violence of a deadly sort.
We have a race problem, no denying that.  We have a justice problem, for sure. We have a gun problem, it's just begging for a solution.  But underneath all of that we have a violence problem.  We have bought the proposition that strength equals security, that courageous individuals are all it takes to ensure a free society.  It is a lie.  The gunslingers of the old west did not make the towns more safe, neither did the stoic Marshals and Sheriffs.  There's always going to be a faster gun, a bigger gang, a better army.  The demon of violence will always up the ante.  It ran us all the way up to the atomic bomb before we, collectively, as a human species said, "hey hold on a minute, this is crazy."  Even then we only decided to tuck our WMDs out of sight, not stop making them, not wind back to the way it was.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), I grew up with it, and to tell you the truth, 14 year old me found it vaguely comforting to know that if I got blown to cinders the world was going to go with me.  I don't know why I found that comforting.  41 year old me, father-of-two me, doesn't find it very comforting at all.  But I think too many people still buy it; the revenge fallacy.  If you're going down take somebody with you. It's insanity of a dangerous sort.
Events like what happened in Baton Rouge yesterday are going nowhere good.  The reason I have heard from police about why there are so many Alton Sterling, Philando Castille sorts of incidents is that police never know who has a gun and how they're likely to use it.  A traffic stop should not be a situation where a police officer has to worry about getting shot, but it is because we are armed to the teeth and our violence is out of control.  A traffic stop is not a situation where the driver should have to worry about getting shot by police, but it is because we have this vicious circle of violence feeding on itself and growing stronger.
The Dallas PD has said that open carry made the situation there last week worse, because they could not reasonably tell the "good guys with guns" from the bad guy with a gun.  How were the Baton Rouge police supposed to know if the shooter yesterday was a good guy or a bad guy until he opened fire?  Louisiana is an open carry state, with no permits required.  Under those circumstances a person can carry his AR-15 down the street and the police have no grounds to stop him and even ask to see his permit.
In the climate of fear and loathing that we see now, a man who decides to carry a gun in public probably has bought in, to at least some degree, that the reason he is carrying that gun is for safety purposes.  It makes him more safe the same way kerosene puts out fires.
I am sorry for those officers.
I am afraid for our nation.
The demon of violence has his hooks in us but good.

Gotta Catch 'Em All... well a few anyway

At first, I thought it was clickbait, then maybe a satirical post, but it gradually dawned on me that the person writing about how the Pokemon GO craze might actually be important to churches, was serious, and more than that, they might be right... maybe... well probably not, unless you have people willing to hang out in front of your building and be creepy with passing young adults.
Allow me to explain, actually just read this.  The situation is that churches and other public spaces are being used in the expanded reality of the Pokemon GO game as Pokestops and Pokegyms, and well, I've caught like five different kinds of Pokemon on my way to the bathroom from my office.  Oh yeah, I might have downloaded the app, and made myself a character (RevRend18).  I might be on level four and working towards level five, where the stuff can really start to happen.  It all started because I was just curious about whether or not Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church is featured in the game, (it is, our sign is a Pokestop). The big Brethren Church next door actually has a Pokegym, even though I'm pretty sure their official position would be that Pokemon is some sort of devil worship (I suspect they don't know, the app doesn't actually have to ask permission to use your spot in a virtually rendered digitally expanded reality).
I'm too old to actually have been involved in the original Pokemon craze of the 1990's, so I entered the world of Pokemon GO a complete neophyte.  I do know what a Pikachu looks like, and that that little yellow dude is a total badass, but beyond that I'm pretty clueless of the difference between a Meowff and Squirtle.  If none of that makes any sense to you, don't worry, it means you're a well adjusted adult without children raised during the Poke-Epoch.
Me on the other hand... I have no excuse, I'm kind of having fun playing Pokemon GO.  My morning loop around the lake at Gilbert Run has three Pokestops and yesterday morning I captured like six Pokemon, as well as accruing enough walk distance to hatch my first Pokemon Egg, but being new I didn't know that you had to put the egg in an incubator before you start walking, so next walk for sure I will be the proud papa of some kind of new Pokemon.
Of course this game is huge right now, it's servers are crashing from over crowding, and it is generating all sorts of hater-ade from the interweb, which is kind of interesting, because everything that gets popular goes through that.  It's the human reaction to new things put out there in meme form.  Oddly enough though the haters have actually kept me in it.  I figure, if Pokemon is being mocked by a bunch of grumpy old trolls, it might just be something to keep a finger on.
Honestly, I don't see myself ever getting that wrapped up in it.  I'm not trying to "Catch em all" or take over a Gym, I am really treating it sort of like a little scavenger hunt, which is kind of fun for now.  I go places and walk a bit as it is, I always have my phone with me anyway, and I have observed that tuning into the "expanded reality" of Pokemon GO helps you understand what certain other people around you are doing.  I have seen people pulled over in cars at odd places, you guessed it Pokestops.  Yesterday as I was collecting some Pokeballs from the Pokestop at Gilbert run, I saw a lady get out of her car and come strolling down the hill towards me with her phone out like a tricorder from Star Trek, I knew what she was up to.
Of course, some ne'er do wells have figured out how to lure people into out of the way places and rob them, and a few people have been injured because they were paying too much attention to that Pidgey they were trying to catch and not enough to the oncoming traffic, but at long last something inter-webby is getting us outside. We need to deal with the dangers of outside a little more often I think, or else we're going to end up in a Wall-E situation sooner than you think.
What I think I like about Pokemon GO, as opposed to Ingress, another expanded reality game that I dabbled in because it came pre-installed on my phone, is that you don't have to take it very seriously.  My Ingress days were over the minute I got an email from two actual people, not the game server autobot, telling me to check with them before I did things in the game, that creeped me out and I was done.  They seemed awfully intent on trying to control what I did with their imaginary forcefield thingies and I was not down for that kind of drama.  I heard that actual confrontations have broken out among Ingress players, in the really real world, so I'm thinking that I was probably wise to bail.  Anyway, I'm like three days into Pokemon GO, I have spent no money on it, I will spend no money on it, and I'll tell you, on these terms, I don't hate it.

What Matters?

I could tell you about my foray into the world of Pokemon GO, or we could talk about serious things.  I'm kind of on a theme this week so let's leave the Pokemon for another day.  I want to talk specifically about the non-video game related cultural phenomenon today, what I have come to call the #hashtagwar.  The combatants are: #blacklivesmatter, #alllivesmatter, and also competing #bluelivesmatter (which makes less universal sense because police mostly wear brown where I'm from, but I get it).
The gauntlet was thrown down in Ferguson MO over a year ago, after the death of Mike Brown and the ensuing protests and riots.  #blacklivesmatter boomed into instant notoriety and in some points of view, infamy.  I have heard people (including black people) say they might actually rephrase it to read #blacklivesmattertoo. Many people from all over the spectrum have brought issue with the tag and the sentiment behind it.  It has had its share of apologists and antagonists to be sure, and out of the ranks emerged #alllivesmatter, which at first blush appears to make a valid point, all lives do matter for sure, police lives matter, Asian lives matter, white lives matter, Latino lives matter, LGBTQ lives matter, all of them do in fact matter, or as the Gates Foundation has proffered in proper and fully thought out language: all lives have equal value.
Yes, but it was the killing of black people that was being protested.  All of the other hashtags and sentiments were functioning as a negation of that emphasis.  There have been many clever analogies used to illuminate the dynamic, here are a few:

1. Two houses are on fire, there is only one fire-hose.  The owner of a house next door to the burning house is using the hose to keep his own house from catching fire, while the owner of the burning house protests that his house is on fire and needs that water more urgently.  In fact, it would serve both their purposes rather well if the actual burning house was no longer burning.
2. There are people at a table, one person has no food, and requests that he be given some food.  The other people at the table reply that they all deserve food rather than trying to rectify the situation.
3. There are people in a lifeboat, and another person in the water with sharks, crying for help.  The people in the boat say, "shark lives matter."

I wonder, if Martin Luther King had lived in the age of social media, Twitter would have picked apart his "I have a dream," speech.  The trolls certainly would have had a field day with his "I've seen the mountaintop" speech, and his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The reality is you can say very little these days without someone trying (and maybe succeeding) to negate your point.  Argument is fine, clarification is fine, but there are fires burning in our society that need to be put out.

I was talking to someone about the sit ins and civil rights protests of the 1960's the other day.  We were discussing how the commitment to non-violence was so crucial to whatever success was won, and how admirable it was that people could maintain that commitment in the face of brutality.

It was a remarkable feat of self restraint.  But it doesn't surprise me, as the years have rolled by that the patience of people, and their commitment to the road of peace has been tested and broken.

Howard Thurman in his preface to Jesus and the Disinherited, notes that Christianity always should have something important to say to those who "stand with their backs against the wall."  The investigation he takes on in his short but brilliant book is the many ways in which the organized religious expressions of Christian faith have not only failed to stand with the "least of these," but have often taken the side of the powerful against the weak.  Because we don't want to stand with the disinherited, the tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, addicts, minorities, foreigners, we would rather stand comfortably in the position of privilege.

So when we hear a voice cry out, even in the form of a hashtag, and we decide to negate or otherwise correct their cry for justice, even if our intentions are good, we have essentially betrayed the Gospel.  Remember again, what the story from Luke tells us comes from the mouth of the lawyer who is trying to test Jesus, "But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, 'Who is my neighbor?'"

"Wanting to justify himself..." Isn't that what we're doing when we respond to the raw and painful implications of #blacklivesmatter with some sort of correction or redirection? We're trying to justify ourselves at best, and we're playing Amaziah's card at worst, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah..." (Amos 7: 12)

The Shadow of the Uniform

I have noticed, in both real world discussions and social media posturing, that there is this assumption out there that, if you dare to support #blacklivesmatter, you are somehow against police officers, or even worse that you are implying that somehow black lives are privileged over other lives.  A few people have noted that recognizing the systemic injustice of racism and supporting the men and women of law enforcement should not, and honestly cannot be mutually exclusive categories.
I will say this without equivocation: violence against police is not okay.
For those in the protest movement, you need to remember what Dr. King held so fast to in the turbulence of the 1960's: violence is antithetical to true cultural change.  Already, the violence that has broken out has a certain segment of society, which already bore some antipathy towards your cause, blaming you and justifying their former opinion that #blacklivesmatter is just another attention grab by people who don't want to take "personal responsibility" for their own success.  Violence produces fear and fear breeds prejudice, you are figuratively shooting yourselves when you break out of the mold of nonviolent protest.
You may have seen this picture or some other angle of the same scene:

A young woman in a sundress being arrested by police in riot gear.  I will not read more into this than is necessary, but the contrast of men in armor against a girl in a wispy dress does not say good things about where we are as a society.  This also is a plumb line.

Look at the body language of the people in this picture though.  She is defiant and stoic, they are on guard and I would guess more than a little terrified of what is happening.  What you don't see is the mobs of people that have brought all those police in riot gear out to the scene.  They are not afraid of her, they are afraid of the thousands of people who are with her (not pictured).

What I have heard, and I am listening, from the law enforcement side of the equation, is that most police officers are just trying to do their job and make it home at the end of watch.  I fully support them in that duty.  I have great respect for police, firefighters, soldiers, EMTs and all people who put themselves in dangerous places for the good of our society.

I also know what it's like to wear a uniform.  I have one you know.  It's black, with a little white tab in the collar.  I don't wear it all the time, but I put it on for funerals and times when I know I'll need others to know what I'm up to, like visiting a hospital at odd hours or when I need to get to see someone in ICU.  When I wear it, I get called Father, I get treated with deference, and sometimes I get looked at a little funny.  Because, like police officers recently, some people who wear my uniform have broken the trust they were given and have hurt the people they are supposed to be helping.  It actually goes even deeper than the uniform, there has been so much non-Jesus like behavior from Christians over the years that I often have to explain why I'm not "that kind" of Christian.  Why I try not to be judgmental, why I have no problem with science or evolution, why gay people getting married doesn't bother me... name your favorite Christian rage topic.

I don't really enjoy these conversations, any more than the good cops and ex-cops I know would enjoy explaining how they never actually shot anyone in cold blood, or beat someone up for talking back.

When you put on a uniform, you are joining a group of people who are, for better or worse, identified by their corporate actions.  You are given authority, you are respected by the community (don't let the horror stories fool you), the majority of the citizenry, white, black and otherwise, is glad you're doing what you do.  We see when you do nice things, we see when you do hard things, we catch a lot of it on our little video cameras.  But dangerous weapons are a part of your uniform, a mistake with a gun is not one that is harmless or easily taken back.  Pulling a trigger multiplies any fear and anger you might have in a split second into a catastrophe.

When you put on that gun, and in some cases that helmet and that armor to protect yourself, it's hard to see you as anything but a terrifying danger rather than as a human being who would rather be home playing with his or her children.  I hear people supporting police by reminding everyone of the fact that cops are, in fact, human beings.  I get it, it's not a pleasant feeling to be dehumanized...

You see where I'm going with this right?

Since many in our country would seem to like it if we lived in Mayberry back the 1950's, let's think for a second about Sheriff Andy Griffith.  Did you ever see Andy draw his gun on anyone?  It may have happened somewhere along the line, but the behavior that sticks in my mind is Andy dealing with the people in his community with a sort of long suffering patience and a calmer head than everyone.  You know who was always pulling his gun? Barney Fife, Don Knott's bumbling, cowardly stooge of a deputy.  Andy Griffith was the picture of law and order because he knew his people, and he wasn't afraid, and he was calm when other people lost their head.

I want to be able to trust my law enforcers to better than the average bear.

In my line of work, it is often up to me, the one in authority, to live to higher standard.  If I catch myself being a gossip, or trying to manipulate a person or a situation in my favor, I need to repent of that.  If I catch myself abusing my position in any way, I need to repent of that, and on some level I need to repent of and learn from the ways in which I see my fellow clergy fail. It is a false sense of security that tells me that I'm somehow above making the same errors in judgment.

The rules of professional conduct, for anyone who occupies a position of authority, are that the person in authority is more responsible for their conduct than the person who is subject to that authority.  Parents have to be the grown ups, a boss should abide by a higher standard of accountability than an employee, a priest or minister has to demonstrate a commitment to service and holiness, a police officer ought to always be beholden to the law and to justice, a politician ought to have the best interest of the society in their sight.

As Stan Lee so wisely integrates into his Spider-Man series: "With great power, comes great responsibility."  I'm just going to leave it at that for now.

Monday Morning Preacher

Okay, so my sermon yesterday wasn't what I wrote down.  If you were to look on the Church's website for the text of what I wrote, you will find something that is only partly related to what I actually said.  Fortunately there is audio, well maybe fortunately, that depends on how you take it.  The sermon was called Plumb and it was a blending of both the Old Testament lectionary passage from Amos and the Good Samaritan Parable from Luke.  It was one of those weeks where the selection of the Revised Common Lectionary was particularly serendipitous and problematic at the same time, in other words it was prophetic.  A couple of years ago I purchased a plumb line to use as a children's sermon object lesson, yesterday I used it in a grown up sermon.  Here is a revised and written version of what I did, holding a plumb line in my hand:

God showed Amos a vision of a plumb line,

Not to tell him that things were crooked,

The Shepherd of Tekoa knew that already.

God showed him the vision to let him know that the Crooked was about to fall.

God didn't have to tell Amos what was wrong.

The plumb line did that.

Have you watched the news this week.

This is a plumb line.

Have you heard the names: Philando Castille, Alton Sterling?

This is a plumb line.

What about the Dallas Police officers?

This is a plumb line.

Do you think we're in a good place? A right place?

This is a plumb line.

Are you offended by the statement that Black Lives Matter?

This is a plumb line.

I met for prayer on Thursday afternoon with a young black pastor,

He said he was angry.

This is a plumb line.

He said he couldn't really tell whether he was supposed to be a Pastor,

Or a black man.

He wasn't sure he could be both at this particular moment.

This is a plumb line.

He said that his young wife and he were wondering if

They could in good conscience,

decide to bring a child into this mess.

This is a plumb line.

I was angry for him and along with him,

But I know that I can never feel what he feels.

This is a plumb line.

I know that my white privilege has come at his expense.

This is a plumb line.

Our name,

Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church,

comes from a parable that answers a question:

"Who is my neighbor?"

This is a plumb line.

Jesus uses a Samaritan, a person roundly despised and hated,

A victim of prejudice and derision,

To tell someone that they don't get to draw lines,

This is a plumb line.

Are you uncomfortable yet?

This is a plumb line.

As you probably know, I said more than just that: here is the audio.

Lights, Camera, Good Grief

It's the cameras that are new.

It's not the violence that's new.

- Ta-Nehisi Coates

I have had a busy week, so I don't have time to go over everything that's going on right now.  Frankly, most of it is vanity and chasing after the wind anyway.  Hillary's emails, Trump being Trump, the Brexit, blah, blah, blah.  Oh yeah, and two more black men have been shot by police (actually more than that, but two that were actually recorded on video) during "routine" stops for things that shouldn't have even amounted to more than a "Hey did you know your tail light is out."  I used to drive a junker (1984 Chevy Cavalier), I had cops stop me to tell me that something or other was wrong a few times, on most occasions they didn't even ask to see my license or registration.  But then again, I'm white, so I don't pretend that my experience with police has anything to do with what has happened so often recently.

It's easy, too easy really, for me to say I support the police, because to me the police are my neighbors (literally, my neighbor is a Police officer).  They are also generally pretty nice to me, even when I have gotten caught being naughty.  I have never been brutalized or really even seriously intimidated by a police officer, they have never pulled a gun on me and told me to get down on the ground (and I have actually been arrested once, long time ago, galaxy far, far away).  I have worked with police officers, I have talked to police officers, and I know that most of them really are good guys (and women), but even good guys can do bad things, especially when they are trained and conditioned to respond to certain types of people in certain situations with more violence than they would otherwise exercise.  Especially when the whole context of their work teaches them that it's okay and expected.

There is no better example of the fact that racism is a systemic problem, and not just a matter of collective individual prejudice, than the growing list of black men who have been killed by police in less than critical situations.  It is not, I believe, a matter of the individual police officers being racist, though there may be some, most are probably not. Our police, black, brown and white, are enmeshed in a system that is undeniably racist.  Black men are incarcerated at a tragically higher rate than white men, even though the controlled substance violations that largely cause these incarcerations are actually more prevalent among the white population.  White kids (like me) usually get a lawyer and walk away with a fine and probation, black kids go to jail or juvenile detention, and once you've experienced the institution of incarceration, things generally don't get much better for you.

As a culture, we assume things about black men, we impute to them the qualities of arrogance and danger, it is not surprising that we largely support our police doing the same thing. While it breaks my heart to see videos of people dying so pointlessly in the streets at the hands of the people who are supposed to be protecting us, I feel that we all need to see these things, including police officers who are not in the heat of the moment.  My hope is that the good guys will take notice of their own behavior and that they will recognize the blind spots in the system of which they are the hands and feet (and guns).

We need these videos, because we will not believe the voices, like Mr. Coates, who tell us how it is to live on the other side of the tracks, unless we have other documentation. We don't want to believe them, and our own experience of policemen and women tells us that something is awry.  We would much rather make individual exceptions, label this victim a thug, or say that victim resisted arrest, or finding any little excuse why a black somebody had to die.  We would rather believe that the officers were following their training (the part that teaches them command presence and use of force) and not acknowledging that they were probably not following their training (the part that teaches them situational awareness, deescalation, and peaceful intervention).

Want to change this pattern? I believe that our police officers are the ones who can start to fix the system, but they have to be empowered to do so.  I believe that the reason most people become police is because they are fundamentally good people who want to protect and serve, and we should give them the tools they need to do that, for everyone, equal protection under the law.