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Ken Sehested

¶ Processional. “If you heart is hurting for your loved ones who have gone to the other side camp, be encouraged that you will see them again! Dedicated to all the missing and murdered Indigenous women around the world and anyone who has lost a loved one!” —song by Theresa Bear Fox’s Sky World sung by Teio Swathe

¶ Call to worship. “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” — Oglala Lakota Chief Black Elk

¶ “If you want to read about a European pioneer on Columbus Day, learn about Bartolomé de las Casas. His story is one of unfolding repentance over the course of his life in regard to treatment of the indigenous population of the Spanish conquest of the ‘New World.’” —continue reading “Witness to villainy: An excerpt from Bartolomé de las Casas’ documentation of Spanish conquest in the Americas“

¶ Colonial theological mischief. “Writing 1571 in opposition to Bartolomé de las Casas’ advocacy for indigenous citizens of the Americas, an unnamed Spanish church official in Peru penned the following parable as a theological rationale for conquest.” —continue reading “God acted as a father who has two daughters: A theological rationale for the conquest of the Americas”

¶ Closer to home. “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and [we] gave the praise thereof to God.” —William Bradford, governor of the early Plymouth Colony, writing in 1637 of his Pilgrim community’s annihilation of a Pequot Indian village along the Mystic River

¶ Slave trader. It was Christopher Columbus who inaugurated the trans-Atlantic slave trade when he shipped two dozen native Taíno people of the Caribbean. In a 1494 letter to the Spanish monarchs, Columbus judged that his exploration of the “new” world could be financed by slaves’ value, these “who are so wild and well built and with a good understanding of things that we think they will be finer than any other slaves once they are freed from their inhumanity, which they will lose as soon as they leave their own lands.” —quoted in Bill Bigelow, “No Monuments for Murders,” CommonDreams

¶ Los nadies. “Columbus’ world is not so different from the world we live in today. Big countries continue to dominate ‘lesser’ nations. The quest for profit is still paramount. The world is still sliced in two between the worthy — the owning classes, the corporate masters, the generals — and those the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called los nadies — the nobodies.” — Bill Bigelow, “No Monuments for Murders,” CommonDreams

¶ “Witness to villainy: An excerpt from Bartolomé de las Casas’ documentation of Spanish conquest in the Americas”

¶ Heather Cox Richardson on Columbus Day. “The Columbus Day holiday began in the 1920s, when a resurgent Ku Klux Klan tried to create a lily-white country by attacking not just Black Americans, but also immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. This was an easy sell in the Twenties, since government leaders during the First World War had emphasized Americanism and demanded that immigrants reject all ties to their countries of origin. From there it was a short step for native-born white American Protestants to see anyone different from themselves as a threat to the nation.

“The Klan attacked the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. Klan members spread the rumor that one became a leader of the Knights of Columbus by vowing to exterminate Protestants and to torture and kill anyone upon orders of Catholic leaders.

“To combat the growing animosity toward Catholics and racial minorities, the Knights of Columbus began to highlight the roles those groups had played in American history. In the early 1920s they published three books in a ‘Knights of Columbus Racial Contributions’ series, including The Gift of Black Folk by pioneering Black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois.” —continue reading her October 12, 2025 post on “Letters from an American”

¶ Of course, we now know that Viking explorer Leif Erickson and his Norse companions were likely the first to reach the Western Hemisphere, approximately in the year 1,000 CE, some 500 years before Columbus made landfall in what he thought was the East Indies (then construed as southern and eastern Asia), thus giving the name “Indians” to the indigenous people of the Americas.

¶ How the chaplain got her name “Kicking Doe” from a Native American prayer circle in a maximum security men’s prison. “It had been a warm spring day after a particularly harsh winter. How wonderful it was to finally go outside to the [Native American] sacred circle without a heavy coat. As I watched the pipe ceremony begin to unfold, I noticed a regular participant sitting on the grass. I asked him why he was not joining the group. ‘My spirit is full of too many hurts and too much anger this week. I don’t want to infect the others,’ he explained. ‘But I need to hear the prayers.’

“I shuddered to think how many times I had contaminated groups with my agitated spirit. But that day the blue-canopied sky gave me a sense of peace.

“At the end of the prayers, Tokala, the pipe-bearer, offered an unusual invitation. ‘Come join us in the circle,’ he said gently to me. Surprised, I walked clockwise around the circle to the entrance. Waving a feather over a smoking seashell, Tokala smudged me with sage and motioned for me to stand close to the center.

“He swirled a dab of cornmeal and water in the palm of his hand. Then he marked my forehead with the paste. ‘Chap, we’ve decided to give you a new name today. We name you ‘Kicking Doe,’ to honor your fighting spirit and gentle heart.’” —continue reading Nancy Hastings Sehested’s “Kicking Doe” story, from Marked for Life: A prison chaplain’s story”

¶ Hautey, a chief of the Taíno people (in what is now the Caribbean region) who led the first major resistance campaign against the Spanish conquistadors

Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish priest who witnessed and wrote about the atrocities of the conquistadors, tells the story of Hatuey, who was captured by the Spanish in what is now Cuba. He was sentenced to be burned at the stake.

As Hatuey was bound to the stake and surrounded by brush, a Spanish friar attempted to covert this first Cuban national hero. The friar explained to him about conversion and baptism, noting the options of eternity spent either in heaven or hell. When offered the opportunity of baptism (to save his soul, not his skin), Hautey asked for time to think it over.

Finally, he responded, requesting final clarification: “And the baptized, where do they go after death?”

“To heaven,” said the friar.”

“And the Spanish, where do they go?”

“If baptized,” the friar answered, “to heaven, of course.”

After weighing his decision, Hautey concluded: “Then I don’t want to go there. Don’t baptize me. I prefer to go to hell.”

¶ Benediction. “Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just one step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.” —Eleanore Roosevelt

¶ Recessional. “Why is one man rich and another man poor / Why we ain’t satisfied, why we gotta have more? / Why is suicide rates on the rez so high? / Why I tell you the truth, but you say “Don’t lie.” / Why is being a good father at an all time low? . . . / Why it’s so hard to forgive and leave the past behind? / And if you did, then that’s divine / Why don’t you help your brother when you see him fall? / Why do we act like God don’t see it all? / Hanawena ha wen hey (Why) /  Hanawena ha wen hey yo wa (Why).” —Supaman, “Why,” culture-scrambling indigenous (Crow Nation) hip-hop

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Ken Sehested

Processsional. “Lead me, O Lord, O great redeemer through the troubles of this world. Lord, I thank you for watching over me thus far. You are forever by my side.” —English translation of “Ndikhokhele Bawo,” University of Pretoria Youth Choir 

Call to worship. “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord.” —Proverbs 6:16-19

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Night owl that I am, these thoughts began composing in my mind at the stroke of midnight Tuesday, just as the US government closed (many of) its doors. I began imagining the anxiety, even panic, which hundreds of thousands federal employees are furloughed (and now, maybe, fired).  Hundreds of thousands, considered “essential” to protect lives and property—and more than one million members of the military—now working without pay.

These fraught facts come just hours after the President, lecturing hundreds of military generals and admirals, said that our nation’s enemies “are within” our borders rather than from without. He urged military commanders to pursue “training exercises” within urban areas, using “full force.” Newly minted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised that the military’s “warrior spirit” would be “reawakened.” This, from a part time former Fox News anchor, frequently accused of drunken behavior on the job, who had to promise the Senate that he would become a teetotaler in order to receive their confirmation.

Both Hegseth and Trump promised to eliminate every vestige of the military’s “rules of engagement” protocols, which governed the extent of lethality needed to accomplish a mission. In other words: no more moral compasses, not even the pretense of wartime’s “justifiability” criteria. Think “kill them all and let God sort them out,” variation of the Latin phrase describing the rules of engagement in the 13^th century Cathar Crusade.

The shutdown pivots on the soon-to-be abolished subsidies of the Affordable Health Care Act and a massive purging of the Medicaid roles. An estimated fifteen million people’s health insurance would either rise dramatically or disappear altogether. The downstream fallout will hit hospitals hard, particularly those in small town and rural areas. Republicans say these health care concerns can be remedied before year’s end. Democrats (correctly, I believe) are convinced no such remediation will occur in the time left before recent budget restraints take effect.

Scripture’s scrutiny of bootleg piety is never more unambiguous than this one sentence in John’s first epistle (3:17): “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods, sees a neighbor in need, yet refuses?”

The threats to our small-d democratic institutions, policies, and norms—and the headlong rush to authoritarian and oligarchic rule—are too numerous to summarize, too vast to even say grace over.

Just this week we learned that three in 10 US citizens now say that political violence may be necessary to get the country back on track. And that number has grown significantly since the previous poll in April 2024. And nearly two-thirds of citizens now say our nation’s political system is beyond repair.  Which means tens of millions who, though not participating in political violence, would nevertheless not lift a finger to stop it.

If one change in federal data collection reflects the current administration’s character, it was the announcement last month of the US Department of Agriculture’s decision to cease issuing its annual Household Food Security Report. Why? Surely to hide the fact that, with the implementation of Congress’ “big beautiful budget bill,” approximately four million citizens already enduring food insecurity will become ineligible for receiving food stamps.

While that report rarely if ever was the cause of national repentance, it did, at least one day per year and one day’s news cycle, hold up a mirror displaying the results of our predatory economy’s grievous impact. In a nation where accumulated wealth is the standard of worth and value, being poor means being a sinner. Out of sight, out of mind.

So, what are we to do, how are we to respond? Here are seven commendations for your consideration.

First commendation. Avoid practicing magical thinking, professions of unicorn sightings, cushioned parlor games of fantastical daydreaming, delusional reverie rising from hot tub bemusement.

Second commendation. Acknowledge that our desperation (whether occasional or constant) reveals how privileged we are, in relation to the unnumbered, both within our nation and without, who have lived in despondence long before now and still do. For those of us who do not fret about where tomorrow’s food will come, despair is a form of narcissism resulting in a self-imposed debility.

Third commendation. It’s time to get a grip, cast off the easy comfort of optimism, and welcome being roughly tutored by the Spirit as to the true and wasted places where hope emerges, where water flows from rock and manna appears in drought-impaired landscapes; where impossibilities are reversed, valleys of despair are raised and spirits restored, heights of arrogance are humbled and brought low.

Fourth commendation. It is our duty to be informed. But not consumed. Doomscrolling is a kind of self-mutilation which serves the interests of those who want us distracted, agitated, and frantic, unable to apply the modest weight of our convictions in campaigns of mass reconstruction.

Fifth commendation. It is essential that we be grounded in real world events, cognizant of the brute facts of seemingly incorrigible and corrupt patterns of power. But we are also called to practice what John Paul Lederach, in his book The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, calls “moral imagination” which is “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenge of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist. . . . The moral imagination believes and acts on the basis that the unexpected is possible. It operates with the view that the creative act is always within human potential, but creativity requires moving beyond the parameters of what is visible, what currently exists, or what is taken as given.”

Lederach also writes, “Pessimism born of cynicism is a luxurious avoidance of engagement.”

Sixth commendation. As Wendell Berry counsels, it is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. We need communities of conviction, starting with one that is locally grounded; but also to which we are connected at a distance. Such communities must facilitate boundary-crossing connections with those not of our caste, class, ethno-nationalities, etc. As Archbishop Hélder Câmara, outspoken critic of the US-backed military junta that ruled Brazil for more than two decades, we are called to throw off confusion “in order that we may be free to the point of being able to deliver ourselves from ourselves and be able to give ourselves to others.”

Seventh commendation. More than anything else, the Little Flock of Jesus’ vision and mission must sustain impervious resistance to imperial dominance. In these days, here and now—at historic levels—the community of faith in the Way of Jesus (and other communities of faith as well) is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. The source of our confusion is the assumption that we can ride out this storm on our own.

As has been said, there are fates worse than death. Should our small-r republication polity be superseded by unabated authoritarianism, those on the Jesus Road have historically been a resilient community. Attempted repression has often led to our thriving. Some would go so far as to say we are at our best on the run.

What is most fearful is the work of the Confuser (one alternative rendering of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Deceiver, Father of Lies, etc.). There are those who believe Jesus would have been prudent to accede to the three wilderness promises of the devil. One who could turn rocks into bread would surely be universally hailed; could be crowned sovereign of all the kingdoms of the world; should be immune to physical threat and bodily harm.

As Jesus said later, those to be feared are not those who can kill the body but those who can kill the soul (Matthew 10:38).

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Prayer of the aggrieved. “For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves. . . . because of their many transgressions, cast them out” (Psalm 5:9-10).

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Some months ago, Dr. Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today (who was exiled from the princely circle of Southern Baptists’ theological policing force for opposing Trump), has written, “Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — ‘turn the other cheek’ — (and) to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’ And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’”

The struggle for people of faith is not against unbelief but warped and wrenched faith. Atheism is not our problem. Idolatry is.

Before you read another word, pause and watch this 41-second video, posted the day before conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk’s hagiographic memorial service, of Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth reciting the Lord’s Prayer interspersed with footage of American troops, tanks and stealth bombers.

And so on: The United States Department of War Rapid Response X account, on Sunday 7 September, posted a brief video showing military personnel completing outdoor training as the words “Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you, wherever you go” faded into the screen.

And so on: In August, the DOW posted another video on X captioned “We Are One Nation Under God,” a motto from the pledge of allegiance, showing military aircraft and soldiers in operations as “I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed” (Psalm 18:37) appears onscreen.*

I stayed in touch for years with my roommate, developing a friendship forged during my three weeks in Iraq shortly before the “shock and awe” massive bombing campaign that began the US invasion in 2003. One fall, as Advent season approached, including Matthew’s text accounting Herod’s slaughter of infants in and around Bethlehem, I sent a note to Ed, commenting, “There is agony in the air, and we must listen for the sounds of angel wings.” Ed responded, “Nor, alas, dare we ignore the flailing of devils’ tails.”

Both of these things are true; and both are attended in developing a life faithful both to Earth’s agony and Heaven’s jubilance.

I am committed to democracy not primarily for reasons of political philosophy but because democracy is how citizens can practice nonviolence in the public square. As previously stated, I do not fear for communities of faith should our nation devolve into despotism.

What I do fear—what keeps me up at night, what feebles my knees, clouds my sight, and threatens my breath—is that the Body of Christ becomes confused; becomes a chaplain to the empire; trades away its covenant vow and vision of a new Heaven and new Earth for a seat at Pharaoh’s table, or privileged recognition in Caesar’s court, or assure Herod’s good graces.

I shiver every time a public figure concludes remarks with this benediction: May God bless America. It almost always implies the conviction that our national righteousness is deserving of Heaven’s devoted, generous attention. As biblical scholar and activist Ched Myers writes in “Mixed Blessing: A Biblical Inquiry into a ‘Patriotic’ Cant”:

“Of the 41 appearances [in the New Testament] of the Greek verb eulogeoo (literally ‘speaking a good word’), only twice do we find it in the imperative mood. In neither case does it involve God. It does, however, involve us. In Jesus’ famous sermon he invites his disciples to ‘Bless those who curse you’ (Matthew 5:44 & Luke 6:28). These instructions are later echoed by the apostle Paul: ‘Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse’” (Romans 12:14).

The more relevant text for our nation comes from Deuteronomy’s dire warning to the Israelites, should they ever boast “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me” (8:17). Centered in such hubris, God functions more as a totem; a national mascot; a magic lamp to be rubbed, summoning a wish-granting Genie.

Surely the most challenging confusion in modern culture is the illusion that we are on our own, accountable to no one, orientated to no horizon except the one we ourselves create, operating under no vow, no covenant, no discipline, only what the solitary self desires along with the transactions needed to obtain treasure and esteem and coercive dominance. In such a universe, might truly is the only thing that makes right, and despots of every sort take their victory laps using the heads of the defeated as stepping stones across a river of blood.

Therefore, kindred, every Little Flock of Jesus, fear not the sovereigns of this present age. They cannot take from you what is essential. Only fear the spinners of theological confusion, the weavers of deception, the conning shysters that peddle delusion—most especially those robed in pious pretense and cloaks of sanctimony.

Tell the truth, and shame the devil.

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Benediction. I’ve returned again and again—in times of anxiety, confusion, and feelings of not being sufficient for the work at hand—to this simple mantra. “I have come from God; I have lived in God (in my better moments); and I am going back to God: for Whom nothing is wasted; to Whom I am a delight, regardless of my foibles; with Whom is no regret; by Whom all trauma and failure and shame will serve as the fuel for the fire to cook feasts for our fiestas and joyful merriment.” —KLS

Recessional. “We / are not alone / we are not alone / we / are not alone / for God is with us.” —“We Are Not Alone,” Pepper Choplin, performed by the Oasis Chorale 

*For more see faith-based commentator Brian Kaylor’s “The Bible According to the Department of War’ https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/the-bible-according-to-the-department-8b8. Kaylor’s new book, The Bible According to Christian Nationalists: Exploiting Scripture for Political Power, is coming soon. You can preorder here.

       My former colleague, Dan Buttry, was asked by the Faith team at the national No Kings network to revise his older Bible Study Manual on Conflict Transformation in a shortened version to be focused specifically on the challenges of rising authoritarianism.  Advance permission is granted download Resisting Authoritarianism Bible Study, copy, for group study.

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Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Lead me, O Lord, O great redeemer through the troubles of this world. Lord, I thank you for watching over me thus far. You are forever by my side.” —English translation of lyrics in “Ndikhokhele Bawo,” University of Pretoria Youth Choir

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Immediately following the dastardly terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, I sat at a computer screen—in the secretary’s office of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, far from home—for the better part of a day trying, desperately, to write something that made sense of this tragedy. It unfolded not only as a devastating body count but also a grievous psychic wound to the US national self-image.

(The article: “In the valley of the shadow: Reflections on the trauma of 11 September 2001.”)

This changes everything, I wrote.

I was soon chided for that remark by Ray, a Canadian friend—a theologically astute and socially aware friend—who responded that such tragedies are multiplied many times over in many parts of the world on a regular basis.

My purpose was not comparative, singular tragedies, I responded. In fact, the country of Chili has its own 9/11 woebegone memory: Of the 11 September 1973 coup d’etat overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende, bringing to power a right-wing military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet who ruled—with support from the US—for 27 years, killing or “disappearing” more than 3,000, torturing most of the other 38,000 political prisoners.

It’s the context of our terror memory that makes this such a grievous wound, in this one country (my own): Being the wealthiest in history, and being the most heavily armed, and having one of the most extensive colonial influence-peddling operations in the world (accomplished more by economic penetration and financial manipulation than by gunboat diplomacy), the US would likely undertake retaliation for a generation or more.

Sure enough, on the heels of 9/11, Congress passed a revised “authorization of use of military force,” which allows the president almost unlimited use of military force by simply saying “terrorism.” For the first time, legal justification for preemptive war. (And remember: the US has never made a no-first-use policy regarding nuclear strikes against our enemies. That preemptive option has never been ruled out.)

I remember a comment made by General John Abizaid, then head of US forces in Iraq, made a few months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He admitted that his troops face “a classical guerrilla-type campaign” and said that troops might have to double their expected tours of duty in order to pacify the country. After that, a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, said about the unrest in Iraq: “This is the future for the world we’re in at the moment. We’ll get better as we do it more often.”[1]

A generation after the 9/11 attacks on the US, the recoil of that abominable day has spawned the ravenous and ruthless administration of our current president, his molesting cabinet, and his duplicitous judicial, legislative, and social media enablers.

Not to put a too theological spin on it, we are in deep doo-doo. As a nation-state, certainly. Small-d democrat institutions, rules, and norms are crumbling. Political commentator Ezra Klein recently  said “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”[2]

As communities of faith, clearly, as the public posture of Christian congregations is not only dwindling but increasingly devoid of reference to Jesus (except as a mascot).

As former Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow wrote, “War is rich and vivid, with its traditions, its military academies, its ancient regiments and hero stories, its Iliads, its flash. Peace is not exciting. Its accoutrements are, almost by definition, unremarkable if they work well. It is a rare society that tells exemplary stories of peacemaking—except, say, for the Gospels of Christ, whose irenic grace may be admired from a distance, without much effect on daily behavior.” (Italics added.)[3]

As that anguished prophet, Jeremiah, moaned: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (8:20).

The time of testing is upon us. The day of judgment will be disruptive. As William Shakespeare’s storm-tossed characters in “The Tempest” cried, “All is lost, all is lost, to prayer, to prayer.” Such is, I would argue, the truthful claim that the courage needed for the facing of these days comes from beyond human facility.  Which is to say, transcendence is involved: a firmer footing, a deeper clarity, a capacity beyond what is thought possible.

Such transcending prayer, however, is not an escape hatch, not a head buried in the sand, not a “Hail Mary” (a desperation football play), not whistling through the graveyard.

Rather, prayer is the portal available to grace-shaped lives to envision another world, an earth cradled in Heaven’s Kinship, a re-created future when all shall linger ‘neath their own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid (Micah 4:4), the day when “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6).

The call to prayer is not merely reclusive. Sometime the center to which our “centering prayer” calls us is smack dab in the middle of the world’s decentered, disoriented, disabled and dysfunctional life.

Such prayer conjures memory supplied in the Little Flock of Jesus’ two primary sacraments: baptism and eucharist. The first being a renunciation of the squandering world’s reliance on the myth of redemptive violence (as New Testament scholar Walter Wink so aptly called it); the second, the sheer joy of the bread-and-cup table of assurance that nothing can finally separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35).

At this table we learn that we can risk much because we are safe. That not even mortal wound can sever ties with the Beloved.

The eucharistic meal is a repetitive reminder of our baptismal vows, vows which are safeguarded by the promise that, though weeping endures for the night, joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

It’s important to remember, though, that the eucharistic invitation is not for a happy-clappy life. As mentioned above, embedded in this invitation to blessed assurance and feast of plenty is the memory of the baptismal act of renunciation of “the world’s” modus operandi, of the incessant claim characteristic of profaned life that only the strong survive, that you get what you earn and you keep what you can protect.

As the fifth century BCE general and historian Thucydides commented, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”[4]

Integral to the infant baptismal vows in several denominations are these three questions: “Dost thou renounce Satan? and all his works? and all his pomps?” To which the parents reply, to each question, “I do renounce.”

To profess this renunciation is not simply to parrot the words but to foster a life devoted to the places where life has come undone, where the abused and forsaken congregate, to offer care not as a patron to a debtor but out of the conviction reflecting God’s preferential option for the impoverished and the excluded who have no place at the table of bounty.

We locate ourselves in compassionate proximity to the abandoned because it is in such locations that we are most likely to be attuned to the Spirit’s movement in history. Counter intuitively, it is in such circumstances that we find our own salvation, that our own breath is restored, and where the Kinship of God is announced.

Our very souls are at stake in the midst of this conquest by the haves of the have-nots.

As playwright Archibald MacLeish penned in his play “J.B.,” a modern retelling of the Book of Job: “Isn’t there anything you understand? It’s from the ash heap God is seen. Always! Always from the ashes.”

Between the baptismal soak and the table’s delightful feast, there is the Apostle’s call to mobilized training and outfitting, of “putting on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-17). Such preparation is the sine qua non, the first and fundamental duty, of those on the Way of Jesus. The text is militant, a boot-camp stipulation, an exacting disciplining, like steel-on-steel sharpening. Living hopefully “in the world” is a risky business, for which rigorous preparation is essential.

Despite all apparent odds and most available evidence, hope is our rightful posture, rooted in a beatific vision, the provision of buoyancy in the midst of drowning billows. Ours is a faith that history is not fixed, that the future is not fated, that creation is not abandoned to its violent, predatious habits and corrupt predilections.

“To prayer, to prayer” . . . but, no, in the end, all is not lost. And thus we pray:

Blessed One,

Hallowed be Your Name; and thereby may your
consecration uphold us in the living on these
trying days. We confess that our faith, our hope,
and our love are oft under siege by the
powers of enmity, animosity, and

acrimony. Teach us to live within the bonds of
your strength rather than the pretense of our
vanity, so that we may stand against the wiles of
the Confuser. Remind us that only reverence can
counter the tides of

violence. In the struggle for earth’s proper
alignment with Your promise in Creation, and
your intention in Re-Creation, clothe us with the
attire that makes for life’s flourishing: with the
belt of truth to cinch every lie; with

the breastplate of righteousness that confronts
every injustice; with feet shod with the hope that
sustains against the bruising stones of despair;
with the helmet of assurance that averts the
arrows of insult and

contempt and shame; with the shield of faith that
denounces the spirit of confusion and the
temptation of despondence; and with the sword
of protection against the soil’s despoiling, the
water’s fouling, the

air’s poisoning. Most of all, help us to remember
that we are not loved because we are valued, but
that we are valued because we are loved[5]; and
that, in the end, love will outlast hate, kindness
will displace hostility, mercy

will trump vengeance—in our longing
for and leaning toward that day when all flesh
shall see the goodness of God in the land of the
living. We ask these things not for private gain
but for the common good, endowed in and

through the name of Jesus, our masterless friend,
and aspired by the Holy Spirit’s work twining the
heart’s desire with history’s consummation and
habitation of that Land which is fairer than day.
Maranatha. Come quickly. Amen.

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Benediction. “You do not carry this all alone. / No, you do not carry this all alone. / This is way too big for you to carry this on your own, so / You do not carry this all alone.” —“Carry This All,” Alexandra Blakely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBhCFsatU0Y

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[1] Quoted in Harper’s Weekly, 22 July 22 2003

[2] “Stop Acting Like This Is Normal,” New York Times, 7 September 2025
Weeks earlier, on her weekly broadcast, cable news reporter said the US is not headed toward an authoritarian state under President Trump, “We are there. It is here.” —“Rachel Maddow Warns the US Isn’t Headed for Dictatorship: ‘We Are There,” Tess Patton, The Wrap, 5 September 2025
“On Friday, September 5, Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell told Southern Baptist pastor and Newsmax host Tony Perkins that Trump may try to declare that ‘there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States’ in order to claim ‘emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,’ overriding the Constitution’s clear designation that states alone have control over elections.” —Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters from an American,” Sept 8, 2015

[3] “To Conquer the Past,” 3 January, 1994

[4] Spoken by Athenians during the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War

[5] Line borrowed from William Sloane Coffin

Compiled by Ken Sehested

• “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. . . .” —Matthew 5:22a

• “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” —Ephesians 4:26-27

• “Give in to your anger. With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant.” —Star Wars movie Emperor Palpatine taunting Luke Skywalker

• “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” —Saint Augustine

• “Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.” —Audre Lorde

• The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.” —Joe Klaas

• If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• “Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.” —Zora Neale Hurston
  
• “What do you think we ought to do with the anger and the yearning for vengeance that is so powerful among us? I proposed in [Praying the Psalms] that what the lament psalms do is show Israel doing three things. First, you must voice the rage. Everybody knows that. Everybody in the therapeutic society knows that you must voice it, but therapeutic society stops there. Second, you must submit it to another, meaning God in this context. Third, you then must relinquish it and say, ‘I entrust my rage to you.’” —Walter Brueggemann

• “Hurt people hurt people.” —author unknown

• “All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.” —Richard Rohr

• “Beneath the shouting, there’s suffering. Beneath the anger, fear. Beneath the threats, broken hearts. Start there and we might get somewhere.” —Parker Palmer

• “One Saturday evening a church member called my wife about worship the next morning. She had assigned him a Scripture reading.
  “I made a mistake and wrote down Psalm 109,” he said.
  “That’s the one,” Nancy said.
  “Are you sure?” he replied, “This one’s not very nice—and you want me to read this in church?!” —Ken Sehested

• “Do not be quick to anger, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.” —Ecclesiastes 7:9

• When bell hooks first met Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist priest and peace activist, all she could say was, “I’m so angry.” To which he responded, “Oh, hold on to your anger and use it as compost for your garden.”
• “…when God forbids oppression of the poor in the Book of the Covenant [Exodus 22:21-24], it is the first time the Scriptures explicitly affirm that God becomes angry.” —Thomas D. Hanks

• “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ―Mark Twain

• “Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see: egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see.” ―Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

• “Men in rage strike those that wish them best.” ―William Shakespeare’s “Othello”

• The unregenerate are “by nature children of wrath.” —Ephesians 2:3

• “The best answer will come from the person who is not angry.” —Arabic proverb

• “Anger often acts as a shield that conceals more vulnerable feelings. These underlying emotions often include fear, shame, grief, powerlessness, betrayal, and fatigue. . . . From a neurobiological standpoint, anger is tied closely to our threat detection system. When we perceive a threat, real or imagined, our amygdala activates, preparing us for fight, flight, or freeze. This reaction can override our prefrontal cortex, which manages emotional regulation and social engagement. Consequently, we might lash out in anger when we perceive a threat. We might respond angrily when what we actually need is a feeling of connection and safety.” — Vivian Chung Easton, “Beneath the Surface: A Therapist’s Guide to the Anger Iceberg”
• “Anger as soon as fed is dead– / ‘Tis starving makes it fat.” ―Emily Dickinson

• “Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger.” —Chinese proverb

• “The Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said: When God created the creation, he inscribed upon the Throne, ‘My Mercy overpowers My wrath.’” —Imam Bukhari and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj ahadith, or official collections of oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad

• “Contrary to the rest of men enlist yourself in an army without weapons, without war, without bloodshed, without wrath, without stain. . . .” —Clement of Alexandria

• “Salvation is not flight from the wrath of God; it is accepting and reciprocating the love of God. Salvation is not separation. It is the beginning of union with all that is or has been or will ever be.” —James Baldwin

• “Jesus does not weep in anger or in indignation or with any satisfaction. He weeps in profound grief for this gift of God that has died.” —Walter Brueggemann

• “The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, / Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.” ―Euripides

• “Anger is the prelude to courage.” ―Eric Hoffer

• “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves: one for the enemy, one for yourself.” — Confucius

• “At the heart of all anger, all grudges, and all resentment, you’ll always find a fear that hopes to stay anonymous.” ―Donald L. Hicks

• “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.” —Marcus Aurelius

• “You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.” — Gautama Buddha
• “Hatred bounces.” —e.e. cummings

• “Talk to us about reconciliation / Only if you first experience / the anger of our dying. / Talk to us about reconciliation / Only if your living is not the cause / of our dying.” —excerpt from a poem by Filipino author Justino Cabazares

• “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.” —Richard Rohr

• “No matter how hot your anger is, it cannot cook yams.” —Nigerian proverb

• “Every war already carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed.” —Käthe Kollwitz

• “I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.” —C.S. Lewis

• “I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson: to conserve my anger, and, as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power which can move the world.” —Mahatma Gandhi

• “Anger makes us all stupid.” —Johanna Spyri

• “If I have learned anything in my life, it is that bitterness consumes the vessel that contains it.” —Rubin “Hurricane” Carter

• “I wouldn’t have to manage my anger if people would manage their stupidity.” —anonymous

• “If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.” —Chinese proverb
• “Conquer anger by love; conquer evil by good; conquer the miser by liberality; conquer the liar by truth.” —Gautama Buddha

• “Catering to fear and pessimism is a function of the most dangerous belief: that violence can bring order out of chaos.” —Gareth Higgins

• “Let us not be afraid to protect the weak because of the anger of the strong, or to defend the poor because of the power of the rich.” —Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves

• “What Christians call discipleship is nothing less than organizing people for another way of life that deals with the inequalities, the frustrations, the anger, and the hopelessness of their times in constructive ways.” —Joerg Rieger

• “For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature . . . we lack a holy rage—the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth . . . a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world.” —Kai Munk, Danish pastor killed by the Gestapo in 1944

• “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” —Gautama Buddha

• The seven sins: Luxuria (extravagance, later lust), Gula (gluttony), Avaritia (greed), Acedia (sloth), Ira (wrath, more commonly known as anger), Invidia (envy), and Superbia (pride).
• “A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, ‘In every life there is a terrible fight—a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.’ A child asked, ‘Grandfather, which wolf will win?’ The elder looked him in the eye. ‘The one you feed.’” —Cherokee parable

  #  #  #

 

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Inspired by Love and Anger.” —Iona Community

§  §  §

Given the state of public affairs in these riven United States, I too frequently find myself in a foaming-at-the-mouth froth of anger. Utter disgust, flinging foul imprecations and anathemas (mostly under my breath). I catch myself, with James and John (Luke 9:54), beseeching Jesus for permission to rain down fire from Heaven on the unrighteous, the villainous, the unscrupulous racketeers who pantomime as public servants.

And I am pressed, at the old hymn puts it, to “take it [this urge] to the Lord in prayer.”

Few topics are as ambiguous for people of faith as anger. All of us get angry from time to time. But something inside us tells us we’re not supposed to be angry—even though sometimes it feels utterly righteous.

Mostly, we are taught that anger is wrong, a temptation to vengeance. Think of the Star Wars movie Emperor Palpatine taunting Luke Skywalker: “Give in to your anger. With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant.”

The Bible itself seems to be ambiguous. Jesus appears to forbid it when he says “every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.” (Matthew 5:22—although a textual note adds: “Other ancient authorities insert ‘without cause’ in this verse. The rest of this text involves Jesus’ warning about insulting behavior.)

God surely gets angry. A lot. The first time in Scripture where God threatens divine wrath is promised against the Israelites should they mistreat migrants, widows, and orphans (Exodus 22:21-24).

How come God gets to, and we don’t? The Psalms, in particular, are packed full of angry statements, though we almost never read those in polite company. (For more, see “Angry words in the Psalms: A collection of texts” https://prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/angry-words-in-the-psalms/.

§  §  §

One Saturday evening a church member called my wife about worship the next morning. She had assigned him a text for reading in the service.

“I made a mistake and wrote down Psalm 109,” John said.

“That’s the one,” Nancy replied.

“Are you sure?” he said in a puzzled voice. “This one’s not very nice—and you want me to read this in church?”

§  §  §

Declaration of faith. “We are a gentle, angry people, and we are singing, singing for our lives.” —“Singing For Our Lives,” Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert

§  §  §

Sometimes we muster the will power to “swallow” our anger. Doing that, however, is like swallowing a mouth-full of nails. It usually produces serious digestive problems. (Have you ever heard someone described as “eaten up with anger”?)

Psychologically speaking, swallowing anger leads either to depression (when internalized) or aggression. I am convinced you can no more stamp out anger than you can destroy energy. It simply assumes another form.

I probably have as many questions about anger as anyone. But I know four things for sure.

1. If you’re never angry, you’re not paying attention. Conflict is constitutive to life as we know it, and transforming such conflict, envisioning and practicing redemptive response, is the heart of faith.
2. Anger is the appropriate response to every form of abuse and injustice. It is, in fact, the animating presence of God; for life as we know it is not finally fated to destruction and will be transformed. This is the promise on which faith is formed and engaged.
3. Yet anger’s sway easily becomes a cover to act out our own fears and vanities—and is especially brutal when invoking religious identity and transcendent justification. There is no vengeance quite as brutal as when one claims divine authority.
4. As with all such weighty matters, talking about the appropriate use of anger is immeasurably easier than practicing it. We remain acquainted with failure; it is risky; and sometimes bruising. But from such disturbances—when we learn how to enter into and transform conflict without picking up a stick—is how faith is developed.

A good friend once shared an anecdote about the dilemma of handling anger as depicted in a favorite episode of an old television show, “Hill Street Blues.” Ramona wrote:

“The show dealt with the ugly realities of daily life in the inner city. I watched the show faithfully and considered the characters portrayed as friends—people who understood the violence of poverty and the drug culture, realities that characterized my rough neighborhood.

“In one episode, one of the young police officers was being praised by his sergeant for how well he had handled a series of conflicted encounters—a case of domestic violence, an arrest of a drug dealer, and a confrontation with a quarrelsome prostitute—all in a night’s work. The officer thanked him for the encouragement and then asked him, ‘But, sir, where do you put the anger?’”

All of us, virtually every day, in small, personal ways or in large public ones, encounter conflict and wrestle with the question about where to “put” our anger. Every episode is an exercise in faith development and the occasion for deepening grace, grace that calms our fretful habits, provides buoyancy amid the storms, and unleashes imagination and energy for building bridges across walls of enmity.

Faith formation and the ministry of reconciliation are interwoven in the drama of redemption. Getting to that place of recognizing how the bile of anger poisons our spirits, we come back again and again to face the challenge Jesus put to James and John; and here the King Jimmy language seems most eloquent: “Ye know not what manner spirit ye are of.”

Becoming conscious of that (unholy) spirit, acknowledging its sweet craving, facing the fact that this, too, must be rejected, must be put aside, its lustful allure laid down, to face the fires of our own purification: these are the terms of forgiveness. For we do not often “know not what spirit ye are of.”

One of my favorite quotes is from the legendary migrant farmworker organizer (and devout Roman Catholic), Cesar Chavez, who wrote: “I am a violent man learning to be nonviolent.” None of us is exempt from the tantalizing allure of enacting angry vengeance: in opposition to the rule of greed, in protection of the vulnerable. In truth, people shaped in the Way of Jesus are called to do both of these things. The work of disarming the heart, and the call to disarm the nations, intersect and work in tandem.

The work of salvation is always personal but never private. Lives lived in penitential concession—walking humbly with God—is the fulcrum whereby we leverage the work of doing justice and loving mercy. In the concise, startling syntax of Luke, “The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (7:47).

It is disorienting, and frightening, to confront the ways our self-justifying lies and twisted hearts and confounded minds have been caught up in the world’s tragic spiral of vengeful and suppressive malice.  Only the work of grace is strong enough to loosen these knots. Only then can the fire-refining work of the Spirit thereby instruct us in expressing the love of God for all of creation as a flame that heals and reveals but does not scorch or consume.

§  §  §

Benediction. “While I’m alive / Let there be peace / Let these cries / Of anger cease / Far and wide / Before I die / Let there be peace.” —Ruth Moody, “Far and Wide”

#  #  #

For more on this topic, see “How do you deal with anger? Pastoral commentary.”)

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Lord dear Lord I’ve loved / God almighty, God up above / Please, look down and see my people through / God dear God I’ve loved / God almighty, God up above / Please, look down and see my people through / He’ll give peace and comfort / To every troubled mind / Come Sunday, oh come Sunday / That’s the day.” —“Come Sunday,” Duke Ellington featuring Mahalia Jackson

§  §  §

You may have seen this social media meme. It’s a painting, of a woman in Victorian style dress, and the caption reads: “These days most of my exercise comes from shaking my head.”

Any of you been doing this kind of exercise lately?

Without a doubt, we’re in a rough patch as citizens in this republic. Clearly moving toward an extreme autocratic (or oligarchic) federal government. Depending on your definition, you could also say fascist. Reminds me of Jeremiah’s scathing criticism in his age: “Were [the rulers] ashamed when they committed abomination? . . . (No) they did not know how to blush” (Jer. 6:15). Or recall the judgment of Amos, who complained that the rich sell the poor for silver, and barter the needy for a pair of shoes (8:6). We are millennia removed from the ages of these prophets, but their sharp accusations are as relevant as ever.

There have always been times when some in power have exercised cruelty and deceit. But never have the majority in all three branches of our government displayed such cold hearts, cruel minds, calloused hands and feet. A time when empathy, a vigilant attention to suffering, has been explicitly repudiated. As our recently-exiled shadow president, Elon Musk, said recently, “The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.”

Many economists believe that the current state of our ruthless economy and politics of fraud are worse than it was in the Gilded Age, during the latter part of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when robber barons amassed their wealth at the expense of workers, when political corruption was rampant—or, as the title of my sermon says it, quoting Paul’s letter to the small Christian community in Philippi, “their god is their belly.” And I’m not just talking about stomachs or culinary habits—it was (and is) a gluttony of twisted desires and rapacious appetites, where might most certainly, and most ruthlessly, makes right.

I’m remembering, too, the Prophet Micah, who warned of the judgment to come of those, as he puts it, “who devise evil deeds on their beds!” And can’t wait until the sun rises to seize the property of others, who covet fields and oppress householders (2:1-2). Those who, like our golden-dyed hair-of-a-president, resurrects our nation’s colonial past by his intention to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland, ethnically cleansing Gaza to establish it as a massive tourist resort—even to the point of annexing Canada, all to satisfy his insatiable quest for personal gain and coercive plunder.

We are witnessing as never before the transforming of common wealth into private equity. Filling his unquenchable belly, and those of his parasitic patrons.

§  §  §

Hymn of intercession. “Speakers are crying like a forest in the rain / I was so alone with my thoughts and my pain / And the darkness closed like a mouth on a wire / And night, I’ll never be free / Ooh, in this darkness / Please light my way / Light my way. “—Moby, “This Wild Darkness”

§  §  §

Now, put on your seatbelt because I’m going to make a hair turn maneuver to ask what in the world does this have to do with drawing near to the heart of God—which is, for us as a worshiping community, the crux of the matter.

One of the unheralded theologians of the 20^th century was Charles Schultz and his serial “Peanuts” cartoons. In one day’s panel, Snoopy the dog declares he’s going on a hunger strike. The next day’s sequel has Snoopy banging at Charlie Brown’s back door, food bowl in mouth. Charlie Brown opens the door and says, “Your hunger strike didn’t last very long, did it?” To which Snoopy replied, “The brain may be important, but the stomach is still in charge.”

Though we’ve all recognized this fact over and over, we’re still surprised when our consciences are overruled by our exaggerated appetites. Long before Karl Marx’s claim that money is the prime factor in human decisions, Jesus said it much more concisely: “You cannot serve God and mammon.”

The brain may be important, but the stomach’s in charge.

The work of worship—the practice of praise, penitence and absolution, intercession, hearing and responding to the Word declared and our response in eucharistic practice—is designed to give devoted time to our own hearts and minds; to examine the work of our hands, the paths of our feet; to inquire into the orientation of our eyes and our ears; to audit our speech, whether we have been true and truthful, whether we have said too much—or too little; to scrutinize our longings and desires to see if any have breached their healthy boundaries, if some need retraining of retracting—or reviving.

But hear this! Our liturgical practice is not for our self-absorption or flagellation, which can be yet another form of narcissism, of pride, of conceit. The work is not a spotlight on ourselves, much less a despairing obsession with our own failings. It is the work of triangulating our attention, in alignment with and yoked to the Work of the Spirit, in a world that has forgotten its origin, its promise, its purpose.

Our liturgical work, in regularly-gathered assembly, is to revivify, to recollect, what Latin American liberation theologian Johann Baptista Metz called “the dangerous memory” of Jesus and all who have traveled in his steps. There is risk involved in declaring our allegiance to such reflection-practice. Such remembrance is not merely reminiscence, much less nostalgia. It is more than keeping a diary of names, dates, and events; but rather, a commitment to walk in ways that reflect such values and directives; to travel in the direction of those whom the world considers expendable; to position ourselves in compassionate proximity with the least, the lost, the lowly, not as virtue signaling but as the very means by which we tune our ears and focus our eyes to what and where and how the Spirit is redemptively moving over the landscape of wreckage and ruin.

Our preparation for and participation in eucharistic observance is simply the recognition, followed by corrective measures, that (in one’s own life) pipes can get clogged; moving parts need lubrication; bodies, in need of medical intervention; cracks exposed and rot replaced.

Remembering that you are dust (a Lenten image with open ended application) is not an insult, for such is the very stuff of the universe, ordered and animated in God’s own good pleasure. Do not grovel! Simply allow your compass to be adjusted, as needed.

When we do this, we begin to gravitate toward the most essential question: What does it mean to draw near to the heart of God? It means to be inserted into the heartache of a world overflowing with denuded souls, devoured bodies, and desecrated mountains and meadows, forests and fields, rivulets and seas. Drawing near to the heart of God blossoms from the seeds sown in the cracks of a crucifying world announcing the coming of a resurrected Earth marked by Heaven’s joyful, unending delight.

Now that the prayers have been said, the hymns sung, the texts read and spoken witnesses concluded, the hymn of invitation is repeatedly offered: Declare yourself, from this moment on. Choose whom you will serve. Declare the holiness of the One True God in the practice of iconoclasm aimed at every false god.

As the liturgy ends and the service begins, let this be our parting benediction, from poet and spoken word artist Andrea Gibson, (who this week passed much too early):

“In the end, I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks.”

§  §  §

Benediction. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” —Thomas Tallis, “If Ye Love Me,” performed by Vox Luminis

#  #  #

July 2025

 

Ken Sehested

Processional. “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” —aka the Negro National Anthem, James Weldon Johnson, performed by the Howard Gospel Choir

Call to worship. “Beware of those who pray pretty, but live ugly. Who drink in Jesus, but spit out hate. Who pursue a Christian nation, but not the Sermon on the Mount. Who boast of faith, but rely on fear. And who hear God’s promises of abundance, but not God’s cries for sacrifice, servanthood, humility, and compassion. Jesus is not there.”  —Chris Kratzer

§  §  §

Competing moral assertions

“The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.” —Elon Musk, the world’s richest human who, in decimating the US Aid for International Development, has taken food out of the mouths of the world’s poorest children

“The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” —Hannah Arendt, after coverage of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals

§  §  §

Just days before US President Donal Trump left office at the conclusion of his first term in office, a “1776 Commission” he created in 2020 issued its report, calling for “patriotic education” designed to counter what he claimed was a “twisted web of lies” of systemic racism being taught in public schools, calling it “a form of child abuse.”

Though President Joe Biden abolished that commission shortly after winning the 2020 election, Trump has reinstated the work’s agenda and its goal of getting rid of “wokeness” across the spectrum of US institutions, including a “radicalized view of American history” which “vilified [the US’] Founders and [its] founding.”

In the months following his resuming office in January 2025, he has ruled mostly by way of 166 executive orders, 44 memoranda, and 71 proclamations.

Now, his first legislative initiative, what he calls his “One Big Beautiful Bill” (formally, H.R. 1, a budget reconciliation bill), is a done deal. The House of Representatives largely left intact the Senate’s version, though a number of House members received unspecified concessions to secure their votes.

The president pressed Republican congressional leaders to get the bill to his desk by July 4^th, the date of our nation’s birth, in order to sign it into law amid the national fireworks displays—to supplement his personal vanity project begun with the recent military parade on his birthday.

§  §  §

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency tasks with tallying the costs of federal budget initiatives, assesses that H.R. 1 will have dramatic economic impacts on the distribution of wealth in the US.

Overall: If approved, this legislation will create the largest transfer of wealth from the nation’s poorer economic classes to the wealthiest.

Among the findings (largely verified by the analyses of other similar private firms) are the following:

• Americans who comprise the bottom fifth of all earners would see their annual after-tax incomes fall on average by 2.5 percent within the next decade, while those at the top would see about a 2.4 percent boost, according to the analysis, which factors in wages earned and government benefits received.

On average, that translates to about $560 in losses for someone who reports little to no income by 2034, and more than $118,000 in gains for someone making over $3 million, the report found.

• A person making $217,000 or more annually would receive about a $12,500 tax cut, on average, according to a new analysis released Monday by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which did not factor in last-minute changes to the legislation. But a person making $35,000 or less would see only about a $150 average tax cut, the group found.
• Medicaid, the government’s health care program for lower income households, will be cut more than $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000), forcing somewhere between 12-17 million off its roll.
• More than three million would lose food stamps and other nutritional-related programs, including more than 17 million children.
• The bill will increase the national debt by $3.4 trillion ($4.1 trillion, counting cumulative interest) over the next decade.
• Hundreds of rural hospitals, in particular, will be hard hit; the American Health Care Associates estimates that one-quarter of nursing care facilities will close.
• Bonus to big pharma. HB1 allows more medications to be exempt from Medicare’s price negotiation process, keeping prices high.
• A potpourri of other cuts will result as well. Especially hard hit will be the tax incentives for alternative energy companies (the same kind of incentives long provided to fossil fuel companies), likely wiping out the tremendous gains those businesses have made in reducing deadly carbon emissions.
• HR 1 quadruples funding for border security: $60 billion on top of the existing $17.1 budget. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will now be bigger that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Agency, and others combined.
• The tax cuts will come into effect almost immediately. But the cuts to safety net social spending will not take effect until after the 2026 midterm elections. (Surprise. Surprise. Which is probably why Sen. McConnell said critics “will get over it.”)

“A budget can reveal many things: priorities, values, and ambitions.  It also reveals character. When we look closely at this one, we see a form of social violence disguised as governance. A turning away. A coldness settles in when power no longer feels accountable to suffering,” says Gayle Rose of The Institute for Public Reporting, Memphis. “They talk about financial efficiency, but what they offer is moral bankruptcy.”

Keep in mind that before this bill was proposed, the bottom 50% of US citizens held just 2.4% of the country’s wealth (down from 3.5% in 1990). The top 50% owned 97.6%.

It’s possible, of course, that recent history—a late June opinion poll indicated that the public opposed HR 1 by a 2-to-1 margin—may undermine the bill’s legitimacy. But the damage to our democracy could take a long time to recover.

§  §  §

Claims and counter claims on President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”

“We are all going to die.” —Senator Joni Ernist (R-IA), in a town hall meeting, responding to one participant’s concern that people will die as a result slashing Medicaid coverage and food assistance programs. She then went on to make a snarky faux apology filmed in a graveyard.

“. . . they’ll get over it.” —Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), in a meeting with Republican colleagues, admitting their constituents will face political blowback over Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid and food assistance

Draconian cuts to Medicaid insurance coverage and nutrition assistance to lower income citizens are “immaterial” and “minutiae” compared to the additional immigration enforcement funding in Trump’s bill. — Vice President J.D. Vance

“This is a deal with the Devil.” —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), referring to Trump’s megabill

This is the “most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on.” —Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)

“It’s a strange feeling to see people work so hard to hurt so many people.” —author unknown, responding to the marathon sessions needed by the House and Senate to establish HR 1

§  §  §

Anyone having been exposed to Sunday school lessons immersed in biblical texts knows what happened in the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, along the Jordan River plain in ancient Canaan.

Genesis 19 accounts the arrival in Sodom of two “angels,” where they encountered Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who invited them to dine and lodge with him. As night fell, men of Sodom surrounded the house and demanded that Lot turn over to them the two guests so that they “could have sex with them.”

Being the one righteous man in the city, Lot refused. Although my teachers and preachers failed to mention that Lot offered his two virginal daughters to the rapists, saying “Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like.”

Then Lot’s angelic visitors “struck blind” the marauders, and Lot and his family escaped. Having been warned not to look back on Sodom’s destruction, Lot’s wife did so and was turned into a pillar of salt.

Since that time, “sodomy” laws have proliferated, criminalizing homosexuality and other taboo sexual practices. (It wasn’t until 2003 that the US Supreme Court invalidated state laws in this regard.)

Nevertheless, consider this: Of the many time the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is mentioned in both the Older and the Newer Testaments, only one text, from the Prophet Ezekiel, specifies the precise nature of that sin.

“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (16:49)

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If you’ve not read it recently (or at all), I strongly encourage you to listen to a short speech by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, “What To The Slave Is The Fourth of July?”, originally delivered on 5 July 1852. This rendition is by his descendants (6:59 video).

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“The natives, they are all dead of small Poxe,” wrote Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop in 1630. “The Lord hathe cleared out title to what we possess.”

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The US Declaration of Independence was issued on 4 July 1776. It included these extraordinary lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

That latter phrase represents a profound change in political philosophy, testily emerging from the ancient assumption of the divine right of kings and potentates. The idea was not novel to the British colonial intelligentsia—it was already a minority movement in Britain. But it was a radical change in governance theory. And it was still a suspicious notion to most colonists.

Having been launched in the Declaration of Independence, then incarnated more fully with the 1777 approval of the US Constitution (not ratified until 1778), this nascent revolution was fragile and hotly contested in its administration.

On 30 October 1787, a New York newspaper carried a front page ad for an almanac which, for the first time, printed within its covers the Constitution of the US, the document which contains this soaring language:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . .”

But in that same almanac was this ad: “TO BE SOLD. A LIKELY young NEGRO WENCH, 20 years of age, she is healthy . . . and has a small child . . .” and “remarkably handy at housework.”

So while our nation’s founding held forth a bold promise of freedom, it also carried a pernicious caste prejudice. There was no way to square these two characteristics—freedom and enslavement—until the ideology of race was invented to justify displacement and genocide of the indigenous population and enslavement of dark skinned people judged short of full humanity.

When President Trump celebrates our nation’s birth with the signing of a sodomizing budget bill—at his Resolute Desk, situated in the grand national seat of government built by Black slaves, on land where the Piscataway, Pamunkey, the Nentego (Nanichoke), Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Monacan, and the Powhatan cultures thrived prior to European unauthorized immigration—he will be oblivious to this history.

This is not an option for people of faith and conscience. Dissidents to such abominable policy need to hear, and memorize, and teach to our children, one of the final statements Pope Francis made on Good Friday of this year, three days prior to his passing, in an implicit criticism of the Trump Administration’s migration policies:

“Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush. It is lowly, faithful to the earth. . . . It cultivates, repairs and protects.”

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Benediction. “for god is now where god has always been: / bunkered down with those in the ditch / raising fountains from the cracking dirt / and raising a feast for the hollow unheard / unheard, unheard / while the powerful who reign / dissolve into the grave / the eternal one will shade / the ones they cast away / until the coming of the day / when all this is remade / praise be the lord of all / who’ve nowhere to belong / for the kingdom is drawing near.” —Jameson McGregor, “Liturgy Stuff”

Recessional. “Oh, I’ve been smilin’ lately / Dreaming about the world as one / And I believe it could be / Some day it’s going to come / ‘Cause out on the edge of darkness / There rides a peace train / Oh, peace train take this country / Come take me home again.” —”Peace Train,” by Yusaf/Cat Stevens, performed by vocalist Keb’ Mo’ and Rhiannon Giddens and instrumentalists from around the world, produced by Playing for Change

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Sources consulted for this essay

Chris Stein, “What’s in Trump’s major tax bill? Extended cuts, deportations and more,“ The Guardian

•Ezekiel Kweku, “This Is the Birthright Reckoning That America Needs,” New York Times

•Howard Gleckman, “The Pending Senate Budget Bill Is Even More Regressive Than The Finance Panel’s Version,” Tax Policy Center

•“Information Concerning the Budgetary Effects of H.R. 1, as Passed by the Senate on July 1, 2025,” Congressional Budget Office

•Kayla Zhu, “Charted: US Wealth Held by the Bottom 50% (1989-2024),” Visual Capitalist

•Daniel Costa, Josh Bivens, Ben Zipperer and Monique Morrissey, “The US benefits from immigration but policy reforms needed to maximize gains,” Economic Policy Institute

•Gayle Rose, “Abandon the Rest,” The Institute for Public Reporting Memphis”

•“Trump Administration Live Updates: House Passes Sweeping Bill to Fulfill President’s Domestic Agenda,” New York Times

•“1776 Commission,” Wikipedia

•Tim Romm, “Poorest Americans Dealt Biggest Blow Under Senate Republican Tax Package,” New York Times

•“Senate Approves Unprecedented Spending for Mass Deportation, Ignoring What’s Broken in our Immigration System,” American Immigration Council

•Alicia Parlapiano and Margot Sanger-Katz, “9 Questions About the Republican Megabill, Answered,” New York Times

•Jill Lapore, “These Truths: A History of the United States,” W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

 

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Generals gathered in their masses / Just like witches at black masses / Evil minds that plot destruction / Sorcerer of death’s construction / In the fields, the bodies burning / As the war machine keeps turning / Death and hatred to mankind / Poisoning their brainwashed minds / Oh, Lord, yeah / Politicians hide themselves away / They only started the war / Why should they go out to fight? / They leave that role to the poor, yeah / Time will tell on their power minds / Making war just for fun / Treating people just like pawns in chess / Wait ’til their judgement day comes, yeah.” —”War Pigs,” Black Sabbath

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“An Israeli government minister has vowed that ‘Gaza will be entirely destroyed’ as a result of an Israeli military victory, and that its Palestinian population will ‘leave in great numbers to third countries’, raising fears of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territory. . .

“The declaration on Tuesday by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, came a day after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which an Israeli official said would entail ‘the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories’”.

“Smotrich, speaking to a conference on Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, went further, making clear that many Palestinians would be driven out of the territory altogether, as part of a scorched earth offensive.

“‘Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to … the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,’ the minister said. Israel’s neighbours Egypt and Jordan have said they will refuse to allow an exodus of refugees on their territory, arguing that would make them party to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.” —The Guardian

“More than 50,000 children reportedly killed or injured in the Gaza Strip.” —United Nations Children’s Fund

• Video (1:00) of destruction in Gaza City
• Video (0:59) of destruction in Rafah, southern Gaza

Few US citizens know that in 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency planned, funded, and directed the overthrow of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran and installed shah (king) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in the interests of maintaining bargain-rate access to Iran’s oil reserves.

The shah’s brutal reign lasted until his overthrow in 1979 during the Iranian revolution. (We remember the US hostages taken, but not the triggering cause.)

—for more information, see “Itching for a brawl: To interpret the latest round of US-Iran tension, here is some history you need to know“

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Benediction. “Gaza.” —The March Family, searing but beautiful song protesting Israel’s war

Recessional. “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” —Vince Vance & The Valiants

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by Ken Sehested

“Why stand ye gazing . . . ? (Acts 1:11)

Invocation. “As my soul slides down to die. / How could I lose him? / What did I try? / Bit by bit, I’ve realized / That he was here with me; / I looked into my father’s eyes. / My father’s eyes. / I looked into my father’s eyes. / My father’s eyes.” —Eric Clapton, “My Father’s Eyes”

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My Dad wasn’t the least bit athletic; nor were others in his family. (Though my mom played for a year in a semi-pro women’s basketball league, her team sponsored by Phillips 66 petroleum company—she worked as a secretary in their corporate office by day and played b-ball by night.)

Other than her influence, we’re not sure where my sporting interest and coordination came from. I played every kind of ball available, whether organized or ad hoc sandlot. (Last I heard, I still own my high school’s track and field discus throw record.)

Dad found a way to stay connected with my love of sport by volunteering as an assistant coach of my Little League baseball team. It required little experience—or skill, for that matter. Only attentiveness. (There’s a lesson in there for us all.) It certainly wasn’t for the glamour.

The demands of his job meant he arrived late to practice—straight from work in his grease-smudged overalls and steel-toed boots, having wrestled large diesel engines all day. No one noticed his attire, though, since most of us came from blue-collar homes.

Our practice field was a baked dirt lot on the edge of a Mexican American neighborhood in our small West Texas town. It would be a few years before African Americans were integrated into our schools and cultural institutions (like Little League baseball). But Chicanos were school-and-playmates from an early age. My earliest Spanish language tutoring involved schoolyard cuss words.

On the field, two-handed catches were stressed. Anyone failing to do so had to run to the railroad tracks in the distance, through patches of tumbleweed and prickly pear cactus. From time to time foul balls grazed passing autos. Cracked bats were heavily taped and reused.

Local businesses sponsored different teams in the league, providing bats and balls and game uniforms—though I don’t recall them using our jerseys to advertise. The “Mad Men” ad culture hadn’t yet infected backcountry regions like ours. Moms repaired the occasional uniform tears. Our head coach bought us hotdogs and colas after every game, win or lose.

We were taking infield practice one afternoon when, from the corner of my eye, I was startled to see Dad sprinting toward the road paralleling our field, yelling “Hey! Hey!” The rest of us stood gazing, frozen in shock—focusing now on a young boy rumpled on the pavement, having fallen from the back of a passing pickup truck. (Pickup bed passengers were a common sight in that era.)

Whether it was Dad’s yelling, or other pickup passengers, I don’t know; but the driver quickly screeched to a halt.

Luckily the boy suffered no serious injury, though the pavement took a layer of skin from parts of his face, arms and hands and knees. Likely some lingering frightful memories, too. The whole affair was over as quickly as it began. And we got back to play, nursing dreams of dramatic game-ending catches and big league walk off home runs.

Even so, to this day when the memory arises, it plays in slow motion: Dad running. Yelling. The rest of us gazing like deer-in-a-headlight daze.

I want to live undazed like my Dad. Ready to run as needed; yell when appropriate; always attentive; never merely dazed, sleep-walking through history as though it were but a testing ground for life in the sweet bye-and-bye.

More than any other, this is the injunction under which I live, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in complaint: drawn back, through and from beatific gaze, then toward Jerusalem’s deceit; back toward skinned children; caught up anew to the innumerable sites of Heaven’s assault on Earth’s duress.

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Word. “I didn’t come out to [my Dad] for many years because I feared what he might do and say, how he might dismiss and punish me. I had absolutely no evidence to fuel this fear. And when I finally did come out, extremely awkwardly, he said, ‘OK. Great. I’ve been preparing for this for years. Thanks for catching up. Now, go live your life.’

“And then he went on to shepherd his congregation into becoming the first UCC congregation in Cincinnati that is Open & Affirming of LGBTQ folk. He talks the talk and walks the walk and waits for us to catch up. That’s the definition of a Dad.” —Rev. Micah Bucey, on the occasion of his Dad’s birthday

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Bonus track. Should an occasion arise, be like this dad (2:55 video).

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Benediction. “A note that bears repeating each year: I am thinking of all of you who are not fathers but want to be, all of you who have lost a child, all of you whose fathers have left this Earth, all of you whose fathers weren’t/aren’t who you needed them to be, all of you who may have or have had a complicated role as a stepfather, all of you who have chosen not to be fathers and have felt pressure to choose otherwise. This weekend may be tough for you. Please remember that you are loved and you are not alone.”  —Courtney Walsh, wise woman and my favorite midwife

Recessional. Malakai Bayoh, sings “O Mio Babbino Caro” (“O My Beloved Father”).

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photo below: me and Dad c. 1952

Ken Sehested

Processional. “I’m gonna tell you fascists / You may be surprised / The people in this world / Are getting organized / You’re bound to lose / You fascists bound to lose / Race hatred cannot stop us / This one thing we know / Your poll tax and Jim Crow / And greed has got to go / You’re bound to lose / You fascists bound to lose.” —”You Fascists Bound to Lose,” Woody Guthrie, performed by Resistance Revival Chorus with Rhiannon Giddens

Call to worship. You may have seen this social media meme. It’s a painting, of a woman in Victorian style dress, and the caption reads: “These days most of my exercise comes from shaking my head.”

Any of you been doing this kind of exercise lately?

Without a doubt, we’re in a rough patch as citizens in this republic. Clearly moving toward an extreme autocratic (or oligarchic) federal government. Depending on your definition, you could also say fascist. Reminds me of Jeremiah’s scathing criticism in his age: “Were [the rulers] ashamed when they committed abomination? . . . [No] they did not know how to blush” (6:15). Or recall the judgment of Amos, who complained that the rich sell the poor for silver, and barter the needy for a pair of shoes (8:6). We are millennia removed from the ages of these prophets, but their sharp accusations are as relevant as ever. —kls

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Sorrow follows most waking hours
A personal testimony

Our land is fraught with trauma. Sorrow follows most waking hours, even haunting sleep’s dreamland.

Light returns and mornings arise, and the best we can do is throw off the covers, throw our legs over the bed’s edge, and sit for a moment to allow blood’s flow to our feet before attempting to stand.

A decision stands before us: Dare to stand, to move, to break fast and enter the day’s adventure—or lie back and hope for the bliss of the quieted breath of torpid slumber.

Some days, you’re tempted to toss a coin. Heads, rise up, Tails, lie back. In most cases, though, biology itself makes the call. By this time, bladders are squealing.

So decide again, despite the odds, that life is stronger than death; love, stronger than fear; gratitude, more enduring than complaint.

For all who have warm beds, food without anxiety, beloveds who call you by name, no threats hounding you by day, no thievery by night, count your privilege: Those who lack such resources need your attention. But more so—so much more—do we need their presence. The tables are turned, for even now the proud are to be scattered, thrones toppled, the lowly lifted, the hungry sated, the rich sent into exile.

And we, the exiled, can only hope for mercy from the lowly—an absolution that, while it cannot erase the past, can animate the work of repair that opens on to a new, healed future.

We are supplicants, with the prophet, asking, pleading, half-way fearful, bracing ourselves for a frightful conclusion, “Can these bleached bones yet live?” And with the psalmist, “Can justice and peace embrace?”

And in its varied but parallel contexts, we ask, here and now, in the bosom of our own native soil, our own republic, our own beloved-but-now-bedeviled nation, “Who can deliver us from this body of death?”

Linger in prayer, pilgrim: But lounge unencumbered, vigilant, open-handed. Soften the furrow of your brow. Align your whereabouts with those whose voices cry out for Heaven’s incursion upon Earth’s revulsion, aligned against Creation’s promise and Re-Creation’s consummation.

Behold, the Holy City! If it seems slow, wait. It will surely come; and all flesh shall see the salvation of our God. —kls

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News of Walter Brueggemann’s passing causes many of us to rise up and bless his name and prompts gratitude for his labors. I highly commend to you “Walter Brueggemann: A Remembrance (March 11, 1933 – June 5, 2025), by my friend Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, an author, activist, pastor, and a Detroiter (whose most recent book is Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection).

https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2025/06/10/the-radical-power-of-the-poetic-word/ From my own recollection, see “A remembrance of Walter Brueggemann.” https://prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/a-remembrance-of-walter-brueggemann/

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Benediction. We are, slowly and inexorably—though faster now than I’ve ever noticed before in my life—turning toward the dark side, an arena of life as certain and palpable as that reality characterized, and as compelling, as the beatific invitation of the Beloved Community. The truth of the matter is, as Tolkien’s Galadriel says, “The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stay but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”

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Recessional. “When the rain is blowing in your face / And the whole world is on your case / I could offer you a warm embrace / To make you feel my love / When the evening shadows and the stars appear / And there is no one there to dry your tears / I could hold you for a million years / To make you feel my love.” —“May You Feel My Love,” by Bob Dylan, arranged by Anna Lapwood and performed by the Pembroke College Chapel Choir, Cambridge, England

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