Every vote counts?

         As a rule I really haven't gone out up until now.  I go to church once every two weeks to record services, and that's been pretty much it.  We order our groceries and other things that we need.  We go for walks around the neighborhood for exercise, but always wearing masks and avoid people by crossing the street when we encounter them.  I haven't even seen my mother or my sister during this entire time, though they live right here in the Bay Area.  Extreme caution?  No doubt.  But I am prone to lung infections - I don't get colds, I get bronchitis; and David has a whole host of other issues that make him vulnerable.  Additionally, I just don't want to be the cause of anyone else getting sick, ever.

      But today, for the first time since all of this has happened I went to a non-partisan "event".  I joined a few other clergy and we went and stood on the corner of a fairly busy street (with our masks on, spaced out) with signs that read, "Thank you to the poll workers!",  "Thank you to the postal workers!", "Every vote matters!"  That was it.  

      And it was interesting.  We got a lot of support - people honking and giving us thumbs up.  We also got a surprising number of thumbs down.  And I had to wonder, what were they saying in that?  Seriously!  Are they protesting that we are thanking the poll workers and the postal workers?  Ridiculous.  No, they were showing their hands.  They were protesting the idea that every citizen of this country has a right to vote.  They were protesting the idea that every citizen should be able to have their vote counted.  They were owning their racism and prejudice, without apology.

    As a country we are more and more divided.  Or perhaps, as a friend mentioned to me today, we are not in fact more divided, just more aware of the divisions between us.  Perhaps.  There was a time when manners, kindness, and common courtesy kept us connected, even to those with whom we disagreed.  But this is no longer the case.  We no longer feel we have to practice common kindnesses, common courtesies.  Kindness and courtesy are no longer "common" at all.  And so people are unkind.  People are unafraid to act out their fear in angry and even violent ways.  Those who do not resort to violence often practice other ways of bullying... such as passively aggressively icing others out.  People no longer feel they need to self-reflect, to challenge their own fears and prejudices and work to be better.  They no longer recognize the need to talk with and to those with whom we disagree, working to build bridges of understanding and healing.  Instead, folk feel free, for example, to admit their unapologetic prejudices in the form of protesting that those who are different or "other" from "us" should not even have their votes counted.  

    I do not know the way back from this divide.  I do not know how, if we listen to different news stations and believe different basic truths, and feel that the ways we do things are only the way we will do things when they suit us, but that we will challenge and ignore our laws and our processes when they don't suit us, how we will find common ground and how we can repair and rebuild the damage.  I do not know how we will learn to talk to those with whom we disagree if the only ways we are willing to engage them are through violent words, attacks, or by cutting them off and refusing to engage them at all.

    I think we MUST learn a new way to relate to one another.  We must remember that we are all connected, that we are brothers and sisters to one another.  We must go back to seeing ourselves as family, all children of one God.  If we are to heal this divide we must start to talk to one another, to listen to one another.  We must work on building relationships, taking the risks to be together in kindness and compassion.  

    Until we can start to do this, I think there is little hope of healing for our nation.  And if we can't even learn to hear each other within this country, there is even less hope of healing for our world.

Not Peace, but a Sword

Hebrew 11:29-12:2

Luke 12:49-56

            This passage from Luke is a hard one, I believe, for us to understand.  In so many ways, in so many of our scriptures, we hear words promoting peace, promoting love, promoting a care that is full of grace and compassion and acceptance and nurture.  In the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Jesus, we are told has come to “guide our feet into the way of peace.”  When he appears at the end of the gospel, a risen Christ, he offers peace again, “my peace I leave you, my peace I give you.”  He tells parables of reconciliation such as the parable of the prodigal son, and he told his disciples to bring greetings of peace when they went to share the good news.  He brings healing, which is a physical manifestation of peace, and he offers forgiveness which bring the soul peace. 

But then we come to today’s passage.  And instead Jesus says, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”  It’s hard to understand. 

Not only is this passage hard to understand, it’s also dangerous when misinterpreted.  This passage has been used by Christians of a more fundamentalist nature to justify the cutting off of children who are different than we expect them to be (such as LGBTQ children), disengaging from family with whom we disagree, and separating ourselves into “us” and “them”.  It has been used to isolate and alienate and create divisions without bridges, without words of understanding or ears to hear.  It has been misused to justify failing to work on relationships where there is controversy or conflict.  It has been misused to give excuses for simply ending relationships rather than doing the hard work of listening, sharing and rebuilding.

            But that is not what this passage is about.

            First of all, I believe this to be another example of a passage that is descriptive rather than prescriptive.  It describes a reality, rather than proclaiming that this is the way we are called to be.  But it describes a reality that accompanies a faith that is genuine and true and active.  That reality is that when you set your heart and mind on following a Christ who stands up for the oppressed, who is not afraid to confront the authority figures of the day (the scribes and pharisees, the money changers in the temple), who speaks TRUTH in the face of injustice, division will be created.  It will.  This is not because we are seeking division, but because speaking truth to authority, upsetting the status quo, demanding justice for those who are being harmed, will cause conflict and division.  We’ve seem this throughout history.  Those people in this country who stood up during the civil rights movement.  The women who fought for suffrage and the right to vote.  Family members creating an intervention for someone with addiction issues.  And now: with all the people standing up against the inhumane treatment of the children at the border.  The people doing God’s will, the people saying “No!  We will not tolerate this inability to treat one another with love.  We will not put up with the inhumane treatment of our brothers and sisters.  We will not allow this kind of cruelty to continue, a cruelty that fails to remember that we are connected, that we are all one, that when one of us hurts, all of us are lessened.”  When people say this, when people stand up for those who have little voice, when people reclaim basic human rights for ALL people – this causes division, it causes strife, it causes disruption.  It is a knife between peoples: between those who are seeking what is good only for themselves and their families, and those who get, as Jesus taught us to get, that there are not people who are more deserving or have more right to the good things that others have.  This sword, this division, is a necessary part of justice.  I wish it weren’t but it is.  And Jesus is clear about that.  If we want to follow Jesus, conflict will occur, divisions will occur.  And we are still called to follow.

            Sojourner’s Magazine had a very interesting article this week in which Melissa Florer-Bixler wrote, “"We wrongly assume we should not have enemies, but the expectation of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we will have enemies. We know this because Jesus gives us a command to love our enemies. And in order to love your enemies, you first have to know who they are. Enemies are not the people we dislike or those who are different from us. In the gospel, enemies are those who make camp on the far side of the line that is justice.  And God is beckoning us – ALL of us – to join God among the oppressed.”  She goes on to explain that yes, we are called to love our enemies.  But loving them, true loving and caring about them is “to call them out of the world of denial and oppression, of despots and executioners.  To love your enemies is to help them see the truth about themselves and show them something else is possible.  To love your enemies is to tell them the story of how once we too were enemies of God and that through the lvoe of God who lived, died and rose among us, we are now called friends.  We have enemies because we hope that one day we might call them friends…. To turn from enemies to friends means our lives must change.”

            Again, this is what it means to be people following on the way.  And it is not pretty.  It is not easy. And it does not happen without confrontation and division. 

Frankly, even reconciliation will bring division.  As Audrey West says in Feasting on the Word commentary, “A ministry that reconciles long-standing enemies will inevitably rend relationships that depend on the old status quo.”  She goes on to point out that even in the story of the prodigal son, while the father and younger son had a healed and reconciled relationship, that reconciliation caused a new division between the father and the elder son.  She continues, “Humankind does not always appreciate the gospel's great reversals. We do not like it when those we deem undeserving receive the abundant grace promised to all. We want others to be punished for their sin, while we expect to be welcomed into the heavenly home (nobody expects to see their enemies in heaven!). Jealousy, anger, desire for revenge, resistance to change: these can consume us in the face of the gospel, to the point that we find ourselves antagonists against those whom Jesus welcomes.

“Jesus' teaching also speaks to the reality of a kinship based not on familial blood ties, but on a covenant of Jesus' blood (22:20). Even among his own people, where he is known as "Joseph's son" (4:22), Jesus becomes an outsider when he announces his mission from God. And when his own mother and brothers try to get close to him, he redefines the familial ties that bind his true family to him: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it" (8:21). What ties believers together is not the covenant of lineage but the covenant of blood, poured out for those who find fellowship in the family of God.”  (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).)

            It is when we are actually following in the way of Christ that divisions begin, not because we are seeking division but because we are seeking goodness, grace, justice, which will upset the status quo.  It will unbalance the mobile that we’ve come to understand and accept, especially when it has benefitted and served us.  It will not be pretty when the work of the gospel begins, it will not be smooth, it will not be easy.  It will require change, from all of us, and it will demand the best of us to challenge the worst that arises in response. 

            Jesus specifically describes this “division that will come” as a division within families. And this is a reminder to all of us that the “family of God” is not biological.  It includes everyone.  And when we try to protect what is “ours” for “our family” we miss the point.  All of it is God’s, and it is put in our care so that we might be stewards of the resources that come our way, using them for the good of everyone: EVERYONE.  The new family of God will not look like everyone looking out for their own.  It will look like us taking very seriously the call to see that homeless man as our brother, to see that undocumented child as our own child, to see the prostitute and drug addict as our sister, to see the person in prison as our spouse.  And it will mean that we provide the same care for them as we would if they really were our family member because in the new kingdom of God, in the NOW, in the following of Christ, that is exactly what they are.

            In the book Tattoos on the Heart, Father Boyle talks about the upset that some of the older church members experienced when his congregation really took on caring for the poor, for the homeless, and for gangs.  He says,

It was about this time what a man drove by the church and stopped to talk to me.  He was Latino, in a nice car and had arrived at some comfortable life and living.  He knew I was the pastor  He waxed nostalgic about having grown up in the projects and pointed to the church and said he had been baptized and made his first communion there.  Then he takes in the scene all around him.  Gang members gathered by the bell tower, homeless men and women being fed in great numbers in the parking lot.  Folks arriving for the AA and NA meetings and the ESL classes.  It’s a “Who’s Who of Everybody Who Was Nobody.  Gang member, drug addict, homeless, undocumented.  This man sees all this and shakes his head, determined and disgusted, as if to say, “tsk tsk.”

            “You know,” he says, “This used to be a church.”

            I mount my high horse and say, “You know, most people around here think it’s finally a church.” (p73)

            That’s what the gospel looks like.  It offers grace and comfort to those who are afflicted.  And we like talking about that.  We are comfortable talking about that.  This is important.  And if you are suffering, which all of us are in some way, know that the love and compassion of Christ is with you, offering comfort, presence, love, grace and healing.  But the other side of this is that the gospel also offers affliction to those who are comfortable.  Doing the work of Christ is not and will not be easy.  It does not come without cost, and sometimes the cost is relationships with those we love the most.  We know this.  We know as we struggle to get along in an increasingly divided time how hard it is to listen and speak truth in a way that maintains relationships.  We know that as much as we try, if we do the work of Christ we put at risk for people the comfort of their current lives and that challenge costs us at times.  The cost for God-self, for Christ, for Jesus, in his speaking truth and in his standing up for the defenseless, and for his healing of people and confronting the status quo: that cost was death: a death on a cross in a most awful and gruesome way.  And yet, he stepped into that life, with conviction, with strength, because God’s love for us was so great, Jesus’ love for all was so big, that being that Truth, being that Way of unconditional love and strength: these were things he was not willing to sacrifice to make nice or to get along with everyone, or even to keep his life.  He calls us to be willing to follow in the same way.  Again, not easy.  Not pain-free.  Not comfortable.  There is no room for “prosperity gospel” thinking here.  Following Christ is hard.  It is simple, but it is hard.

            So where is the Good News in this?  The good news is that there is peace at the end.  But as Bonhoeffer said it, “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”  The good news is also that when we choose to do what Jesus calls us to do, when we choose to stand up for those who are voiceless, those who are weaker, those who are suffering, that is when we find true peace within our own hearts.  It is truly the “peace that surpasses understanding.” And part of why it passes understanding is that it comes in the midst of the divisions that action causes.

            It is difficult for us to hear passages like today.  I understand that.  God understands that.  But God is not only about grace.  God calls us into a life of radical and complete love.  That means speaking truth, it means acting for the best for everyone.  It means caring about those we would rather not speak to.  It means being willing to give some things up, to step forward into a life of stewardship, sharing, caring that confronts injustices and brings wholeness to all people.  This isn’t easy.  But God wants us to be the most whole, the best we are and the best we can be. For our sake, as well as for the sake of all we encounter.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Unity - for Ecumenical service

A man was walking on a bridge one day when he was a woman about to jump off.  He immediately ran over and said, “Stop!  Don’t do it!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she replied.

“Well, there is so much to live for.  Are you a person of faith?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Well, are you Christian?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“So am I!  Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

“Protestant,” she said.

“Well, me, too!” he responded.  “What denomination?”

“Oh, I’m Presbyterian” she said.

“Well, how wonderful!  So am I!  Are you a member of the PCUSA or Presbyterian church of the Americas or...?”

By this time the woman really was beginning to smile again as she thought in amazement of all their similarities and the providence of having met this man at this time.  She replied therefore to his question with enthusiasm, “I’m a member of the PCUSA.”

The man looked horrified for a moment, then yelled “You heretic!” and pushed her off the bridge.

--

               15 years ago I attended a General Assembly which is when our National Presbyterian Church meets every couple years to work through issues and make decisions.  That particular year was another banner year for infighting over issues.  I went to General Assembly and spent most of my time in the chapel praying.  The whole time I was there, there was only one other person who came into the chapel to pray, and she, too, came daily.  The first day we met there we fell into discussion and it became very clear that we were on opposite sides of pretty much any theological debate and in particular those many issues that were on the floor of GA that particular year.  For the first several days this successfully isolated us from each other.  We no longer talked, no longer made eye contact.  But rather we sat on our opposite sides of the chapel each praying earnestly for the other persons’ enlightenment and even redemption.  It would have been easy for me to start seeing her as “the enemy” and as a prime example of a reason why I would have been perfectly fine with our church splitting over some of these issues.  By the last day it was obvious that neither of us had been changed in our stances or opinions by the other person’s prayers. 

               And yet, at the same time, both of us were changed.  Because, by the last day, we sat together and as were both about to leave the chapel to attend the GA session that would decide some of the issues we disagreed so strongly about, we decided instead to spend the time praying out loud together, each respectfully and earnestly caring for one another and for the whole General Assembly as sisters and brothers in faith.  Afterwards we spent some time talking, getting to know one another more personally, hearing each other’s stories.  We came to truly love each other, and in so doing, were able to have more compassion for all of those on the other sides of these issues.  She could no longer be “the enemy”.  She was family, and not someone I could or wanted to push out of “my” church.

               Unity is elusive at this point in time.  We are a country divided, not only by our politics, but by every wall that we can possibly dream up.  We are separated from each other by differing faith beliefs, by differing appearance, by different heritage, by different genders and sexual orientations.  But under all of that what separates us is fear: fear of what is other, fear of what is different; but even more, fear that we won’t have enough, that there won’t BE enough for all of us and that I therefore have to take what I feel I deserve, and keep it from others. Behind the fear is lack of understanding and compassion, lack of recognition that we are all connected, and that the other is just another person on the journey, like us. But God has given this world ENOUGH.  There is enough.  And we are called not to fear one another but to love one another.

Jesus is clear about this: “In everything you do, treat others exactly as you would have them treat you” (Matthew 7:12), as well as “Whatever you do to others, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40), and John 17:20-23: I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. ...I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

As long as we fear each other and build walls between us we will not be able to be in complete Unity as Christ calls us to be.

The thing is, everything we do affects the next person which affects the next person.  We are all connected, and with all of our different journeys and experiences and stories, the bigger story, the one in God’s mind is just ONE.  One story of which we are apart.  A circle that has no beginning and no end but is connected and united.  When we remember that, there is no division.  And we can live as Christ called us to live.