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Isaiah redux

A litany for worship inspired by Isaiah 58

Ken Sehested

Hail, O human one, progeny of the stars’ dust enlivened by the Breath of the Most High. Stand and be accounted.

Do you enter the portal of Heaven’s presence with open hands and penitential heart? Or do you come to bargain?

Do you delight to know my ways? To have your light break forth like the dawn, your healing spring up speedily? Do you seek Heaven’s presence as your rear guard?

Are you soliciting divine guidance?  Raindrops for parched places? Relief from osteoporosis or a well-watered garden, fed by springs that never runs dry?

Or repair of your ancient ruins, enough to support many generations, and to be known as a repairer of the breach and restorer of safe streets?

If so, honor my Name by naming those whose sake you are pursuing, those who have my close attention. I am less interested in your ritual acts of purification than in your advocacy for those with little standing in your midst.

Instead of fasting, loose the bonds of injustice and undo the ligaments of servitude, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, housing those denied a postal address.

Instead of genuflecting in the sanctuary, genuflect in the back streets and darkened alleys on behalf of those who have insufficient clothing or respect. Want to draw near to me? Then restore the dignity and livelihoods of those on the margin, those who dig through dumpsters for their daily bread, those whose food stamps have been withdrawn, those whose health care has become exorbitant and out of reach.

Form coalitions demanding redirection of public policies that now privilege the few in neglect of the many, policies which subsidize stock portfolios and prolong the lash of servility.

Then I, Host of Heaven, will answer and provide you with salvation’s light, flourishing gardens, more water than you can imagine, healing of your infirmities, solace in your affliction. Then your vindicator shall go before you; your benefactor will have your back.

—inspired by Isaiah 58

 

Presidents’ Day special

US presidential quotes that might surprise you

Compiled by Ken Sehested

Invocation. “The President Sang Amazing Grace.” —Joan Baez 

Call to worship. “Don’t go playing no shell game with God  / Only Satan’s going to give you odds / We’re given love and love must be returned / That’s all the bearings that you need to learn.” —“Starwheel,” Bruce Coburn 

§  §  §

On the rule of mammon

¶ “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” —President Thomas Jefferson

¶ “The growing wealth acquired by [corporations] never fails to be a source of abuses.” —President James Madison

¶ “The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.” —President Abraham Lincoln

¶ “To befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. All contributions by corporations to any political committee for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.” —President Theodore Roosevelt

¶ “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of government. I do not expect monopoly to restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.” —President Woodrow Wilson

¶ “In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many.” —President Rutherford B. Hayes

¶ “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” —1912 platform of the Progressive Party, founded by former president Theodore Roosevelt

¶ “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” —President Franklin D. Roosevelt

¶ “Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called Social Security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps the people.” —President Harry S. Truman, 1952

¶ “A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” —President Barack Obama, inauguration speech, 1.20.09

¶ “The greatest moral challenge of the 21st century is the chasm between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” —President Jimmy Carter

¶ “With all due deference to separation of powers,” Obama scolded, the [Supreme Court ‘Citizens United’] decision “will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” —President Barak Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address to Congress (with all the Supreme Court justices sitting in front of him)

For more quotes from elected officials admitting the influence of corporate interests, see Jon Swarz, “Yes, We’re Corrupt: A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics.” https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/politicians-admitting-obvious-fact-money-affects-vote/

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Hymn of confession. “World’s in a Bad Condition” (when politicians, bankers and preachers are on the make). —bluesmen Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wNsWftgQVQ

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The US as “exceptional” or “indispensable” nation and “manifest destiny”

¶ The idea of “American exceptionalism” is at least as old as when Puritan leader John Winthrop wrote in 1630 to describe the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a model Christian community.

¶ Journalist John L. Sullivan first used the phrase “manifest destiny” in an 1845 article for the Democratic Review arguing for the annexation of the Republic of Texas.

¶ US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright first claimed the US as “the indispensable nation” in justifying the US-led embargo on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991.

¶ Albright’s boss, President Bill Clinton, then used the phrase in his Second Inaugural Address in 1997.

¶ Then, in a 2012 commencement address to the Air Force Academy, President Barack Obama asserted that the US is “the one indispensable nation.”

¶ The French political theorist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was the first writer to describe the US as “exceptional” in 1831 and 1840, in “Democracy in America.”

¶ But the more common reference began with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (!) in criticizing the American Communist Party leaders for their belief that the US was above Marxist doctrine of the laws of history.

¶ “…our holy struggle for liberty and independence” that will be won “under Divine Providence.” —Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Feb. 1864, referring to the South’s war against the Union to preserve white supremacy and African slavery

¶ “I believe that God planted in us the vision of liberty. I cannot be deprived of the hope that we are chosen, and prominently chosen, to show the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty.” — President Woodrow Wilson as Washington entered World War I

¶ “President Trump saying (with dramatic gesture) he is “the chosen one.” —0:47 video, 21 August 2019

¶ “The best that can happen to any people that has not already a high civilization of its own is to assimilate and profit by American or European ideas . . . of civilization and Christianity, . . . the prerequisite condition to the moral and material advance of the peoples who dwell in the darker corners of the earth.” —President Theodore Roosevelt

¶ “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled there will be America’s heart, her benedictions and her prayers. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice and by the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…she might become the dictatress of the world.  She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.” —President John Quincy Adams, Washington D.C., July 4, 1821

¶ America is the “most just and virtuous republic ever conceived. Someday soon, we will plant the American flag on Mars.” —President Donald Trump, in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial, 4 July 2019

¶ On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson’s first secretary of state, described the United States as “the supreme moral factor in the world’s progress and the accepted arbiter of the world’s disputes.” —Chalmers Johnson, “Exporting the American Model: Markets and Democracy”

¶ “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”  —Russian President Vladimir V. Putin

¶ In his statement on the killing [of Osama bin Laden], he [President Obama] said: “Tonight we are once again reminded that Americans can do whatever we set our minds to—we can do these things not because of our wealth and power, but because of who we are, one nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” —televised address, 2 May 2011

¶ President Franklin D. Roosevelt supposedly remarked in 1939 that [Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio] “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

¶ “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” —President Thomas Jefferson

¶ “President George W. Bush reminded his people that the United States is ‘a nation founded under God and that from our very beginning we have relied upon His strength and guidance in war and in peace.’ Following the military victory, Bush spoke before the National Religious Broadcasters and thanked them for ‘helping America, as Christ ordained, to be a light unto the world.’ Bush declared that the teachings of Jesus had been the moral force behind the victory. When he ordered bombing in the ‘no fly zone’ of southern Iraq in the week before he left office, Bush stated that the bomber pilots had done the work of the Lord.” — Griffith, “The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God”

¶ “Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.” —Henry Kissinger, 1974, US Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon & Ford

§  §  §

Altar call. “Let It Be Me.” —Indigo Girls 

§  §  §

Miscellaneous other presidential quotations

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” —President Abraham Lincoln, 22 August 1862

¶ Listen to this video clip (1:53) from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex” speech warning about burgeoning military budgets.

¶ “[Thomas] Jefferson felt that the presidency created by the new Constitution was too strong. . . . He was especially concerned that an unscrupulous president might narrowly lose a bid for reelection and falsely insist that the contest had been stolen. ‘He will pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported by the states voting for him,’ Jefferson wrote to [James] Madison.” —Jeffrey Rosen, “The Nightmare of Despotism,” The Atlantic

¶“We can’t be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of arms.” —President Jimmy Carter

¶ “We’ve been at war with 25 different countries or more since the Second World War. There were four years—I won’t say which ones—where we didn’t drop a bomb, we didn’t launch a missile, we didn’t fire a bullet.” —President Jimmy Carter, TED Talk, May 2015

In the earliest days of our republic, there was little support for universal voting rights. John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and later president, wrote in 1776 that no good could come from enfranchising more Americans: “Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level.”

¶ “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever . . . The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.” —President Thomas Jefferson

§  §  §

Benediction. “Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, / Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? / Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, / I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. / Approach strong deliveress, / When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead.” —excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” written as an elegy followed the trauma of the US Civil War and President Lincoln’s assassination

Recessional. And in preparation for Ash Wednesday: “Create In Me.” —Acappella

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Feast days and history’s affliction

Remembering St. Brigit’s feast day and the Greensboro student sit-in

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Gabhaim Molta Bríghde” (“I Give Praise to Saint Brigid”). — Aoife Ní Fhearraigh (Scroll down to see the lyrics.) 

§  §  §

Tomorrow, the first of February, is the feast day of St. Brigit (aka Brigid) of Kildare (c. 451–525), Irish abbess known for  her hospitality. It brought to mind one of my favorite prayers, which I designed as a piece of art (at bottom).

As it happens, tomorrow is also the sixty-sixth anniversary of the Greensboro, NC “sit-in” movement, when students at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University demanded to be served at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter.

The extraordinary decision by those students to commit nonviolent resistance against injustice was not done on impulse. Much preparation went beforehand. This tactic had been tried before but did not spark of movement.

This one did, triggering similar protests in 55 cities and 13 states. One of my dear friends, then a student at Wake Forest University in nearby Winston-Salem, was among the first white students to join that action. (See George Williamson’s memoir, Born in Sin, Upended in Grace. For more on the inaugural sit-in, see “How the Greensboro Four Sit-In Sparked a Movement.”)

It’s instructive, too, to recall that most every major civil rights movement episode was initiated by local communities. Dr. King’s presence certainly brought national attention, strategy focus, additional activists, and necessary funding. But the spark that prompted the blaze almost always came from localized leaders and networks.

The coincidence of St. Brigit’s feast day and the Greensboro action is a fitting framework to think of the kind of formation people of faith must undertake.

Clearly we need a beatific vision which Brigit’s prayer provides, I would say “mystical” vision, but the word in Englishmostly draws up images of esoteric hermits or rarefied saints. But, yes, a mystical vision, illimitable; a “thin space” experience where Heaven’s ecstasy and Earth’s agony overlay; a transcendent apprehension that, yes, “Earth has no sorrow that Heav’n cannot heal.”

Such intuitive grasp of the Beloved’s promise is essential if companions of Jesus are to withstand the inevitable storms and squalls of history’s rancor and hostility. Such an anchor is what allows us to face the rampaging powers, who mock the faithful, saying “you cannot withstand the storm,” and responding “I am the storm.”

A mountaintop experience, not unlike that of the story of Jesus’ “transfiguration,” when Jesus takes three of his disciples to a peak, where a glorious vision unfolds, where the Prophets Moses and Elijah appear. Impulsive Peter suggests tabernacles be built there. But no sooner had the rapturous moment ended, Jesus—ignoring Peter’s impetuous request—saying something to the effect of fugetaboutit and leads the three back down the mountain where they are immediately confronted by a man whose son had a “spirit” causing him to convulse, grind his teeth, and foam at the mouth, which some commentators think may have been epilepsy.

Jesus heals the boy. And thereby establishes the link between the ecstasy and epilepsy—between mountaintop spiritual experience and the healing of Earth’s destitute, diseased condition.

You may recall that this story in Mark’s Gospel (chapter 9) comes immediately after Jesus’ conversation with his disciples, asking, “who do the people say I am?” Peter gets it right—but not quite right. Then Jesus speaks to them of the trouble tocome, of his suffering and eventual crucifixion by Rome’s anti-terrorism task force. Whereupon Peter, in his insolence, adamantly rejects the notion that a sovereign should suffer, much less die!

We should also be thinking here about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “mountaintop” speech in Memphis—surely a beatific expression—where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. Some consider that speech to be his most electric elocution.

“I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.”

He continued, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” And the vision comes in the context of supporting the demand of sanitation workers for better pay and working conditions.

To sustain the struggle at hand we need St. Brigit’s visionary prayer of festive delight and exuberant gladness. But make no mistake, its lexicon—its field of vision—is infirmity, is animosity, is in every context of history’s affliction, even within our own hearts and minds.

St. Brigit’s vision, combined with the resolute bravery of the disinherited (supported by those who join them), chart the path for followers of The Way.

§  §  §

Benediction. “I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table.” —Birmingham Jubilee Singers 

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Let the poets speak

To the rupture convulsing our nation’s heartland

Assembled by Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Within our darkest night, / You kindle the fire / that never dies away.” —“Within Our Darkest Night,” J. Berthier, Taizé

Call to worship. “Jesus is the reality of which Caesar is the parody.” —N.T. Wright, New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop

§  §  §

 

Matt Moberg
Minneapolis pastor and co-chaplain of the
Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team

“If you’re a church posting
prayers for peace and unity today
while my city bleeds in the street,
miss me with that softness you only
wear when it costs you nothing.

“Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness.
Don’t call silence “peacemaking.”
Don’t light a candle and think it
substitutes for showing up.

“Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me
next to my car, looked me in the eye and told me,
“We’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Not metaphor.”
Not hyperbole.
A threat dressed up in a badge and a paycheck.

“Peace isn’t what you ask for
when the boot is already on someone’s neck.
Peace is what the powerful ask for
when they don’t want to be interrupted.

“Unity isn’t neutral.
Unity that refuses to name violence
is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.

“Stop using scripture like chloroform.
Stop calling your fear “wisdom.”
Stop pretending Jesus was crucified
because he preached good vibes and personal growth.

“You don’t get to quote scripture like a lullaby
while injustice stays wide awake.
You don’t get to ask God to “heal the land”
if you won’t even look at the wound.

“There is a kind of peace that only exists
because it refuses to tell the truth.
That peace is a lie.
And lies don’t grow anything worth saving.

“The scriptures you love weren’t written to keep
things calm. They were written to set things right.

“And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is stop praying around the pain and start standing inside it.

“If that makes you uncomfortable—good.”

§  §  §

Hymn of lament. “Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” —Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet”

Eucharistic invitation. Fear displacement is the most important pastoral duty we have in our communities, to heal the dis-ease of anxious hearts and timid decorum, thereby unleashing confident defiance of the vindictive politics of distraction, panic, and fury. Jesus beckons us to the Table for just this purpose, to restore the daring, blessed assurance that the world—despite much evidence to the contrary—is in God’s hands and is promised only to the meek who know their true and only source of security, an assurance which not even threat of death can dislodge. Fearless citizens are Caesar’s greatest nightmare. —Ken Sehested

§  §  §

When a Baptized Conscience Refuses Anesthesia
Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca

When a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
the senses sharpen like flint.
The air smells of iron and smoke.
The hymns echo hollow in rooms where truth has been embalmed.
Every silence starts to speak.
I walk through the streets with my collar tight against my throat,
feeling the pulse beneath concrete,
bones of old empires grinding under asphalt,
their promises bleaching in the sun
like abandoned crosses on a hill.
Water remembers me.
It remembers the day it claimed my body,
the day oil traced a cross on my skin
and said, Wake up.
You belong to God now.
There is no numbing that kind of claim.
When a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
sleep fractures.
Dreams fill with children calling names we forgot to learn,
with borders stitched into flesh,
with angels standing guard at detention centers,
their wings singed, their eyes unblinking.
I try to pray politely.
You do not let me.
Instead, you bring me fig trees stripped bare,
coins clinking in Judas’ pocket,
Pilate washing hands that never come clean.
You set a table in the presence of drones and ledgers,
and ask me to eat anyway.
Jesus, I see you still refusing the wine mixed with myrrh.
Still choosing pain over forgetting.
Still loving with nerve endings intact.
Still breathing forgiveness through cracked lips
while the crowd rehearses its excuses.
How dare I ask to be spared consciousness
when love itself stayed awake.
When a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
hope is not soft.
It is bone-deep.
It is a fist closed around a seed in winter.
It is Mary’s song rattling the palace windows at midnight.
It is Amos pounding his staff into the marble floor
until justice echoes like thunder.
I feel it in my chest, Lord.
This burning.
This grief that refuses to curdle into hatred.
This anger that keeps choosing compassion
even when it would be easier to disappear.
Do not let them lull me, God.
Not with comfort.
Not with patriotism dressed as piety.
Not with the lie that this is just how the world works.
Keep my conscience unsedated.
Let it ache.
Let it imagine another way.
Let it see resurrection even while standing at the grave.
Because when a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
the empire trembles,
the stone begins to shift,
and somewhere beneath the weight of brutality and lies,
new life draws breath
and waits for dawn.

§  §  §

The best concise summary on this topic: “How We Got Here: The Racist Myth of a ‘Broken’ Immigration System” by Craig Nash

§  §  §

Of the Empire
Mary Oliver, published in “Red Bird”

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

§  §  §

Word. “The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, say to this people: You are a land that is not cleansed. Your officials are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. You have practiced extortion, committed robbery, oppressed the poor and needy, and tyrannized the immigrant.” —adapted from Ezekiel 22

§  §  §

Conscientious Objector
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.

§  §  §

Benediction. “We must do what they fear—tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.” —Alexi Navalny, a lawyer, human rights and anti-corruption activist, who died in a Russian prison, in his posthumously published memoir, “Patriot”

Recessional. “We are not alone . . . for God is with us.” —“We Are Not Alone,” The Riverside Choir

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We still have a dream

A litany for worship commemorating
the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Ken Sehested

Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is not the same
as being captured by it. Too many find it possible to
respect the man but relinquish the mission. It has become
too easy to revere the dreamer but renege on the dream.
So let us now recall the deep roots of that vision as
spoken in ages past:

We remember when Hannah praised God by saying:
The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble gird on strength.

We dream of the day when the wolf shall dwell
with the lamb. For the earth shall be full
of the knowledge of the Lord.

We long for the day when all shall eat in plenty
and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord.

We eagerly await the day when the lame shall be
restored, the outcast gathered, and the Blessed One
will change their shame into praise.

On that coming day, says Mother Mary,
God will pull down the mighty from their thrones
and exalt those of low degree.

Our hearts ache for the time when the People of God
will again be anointed with the power to
preach good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

We still have a dream:
of a new heaven and a new earth,
when the Beloved will dry every tear
and death itself will come undone.

For we know that creation itself,
now groaning in travail,
will be set free from its bondage to decay.

Ignite in us again the Word that stirs
insurrection against every imperial reign,
against every forecloser’s claim,
against every slaver’s chain,
until the Faith which death could not contain,
the Hope which doubt could not constrain,
and the Love which fear could not arraign
lifts every voice to sing ’til earth and heaven ring!

Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea!

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 Inspired by 1 Sam 2:1–8; Isa 11:3–9; Joel 2:19–26; Zeph 3:19; Luke 1:51-53; Luke 4:18–19; Rev 21:1–4; Rom 8:19–24. Final line from “Life Every Voice and Sing” (also known as “The Negro National Anthem”) by James Weldon Johnson.

Marking Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday

A litany for worship A litany for worship, using lines from
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson

Ken Sehested

Hear this, O People of the Dream: It is good and right that you recall the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement which mobilized him. The journey to the Beloved Community is sometimes dark and desperate and dangerous, and we need constellating light to orient our hearts and direct our feet.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; Thou who hast by Thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray.

We confess, oh God, that the dream once unfurled with unmatched eloquence on our nation’s lawn has been tamed by pious sentiment and framed for commercial interests. The oratory that once sent shivers through White House and big house and church house alike has been reduced to polite platitude, “race relations” Sundays and gushy, mushy reverie.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee; Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Ignite in us again the Word that stirs insurrection against every imperial reign, against every forecloser’s claim, against every slaver’s chain, until the Faith which death could not contain, the Hope which doubt could not constrain and the Love which fear could not arraign lifts every voice to sing till earth and heaven ring!

Let our rejoicing rise, High as the list’ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea!

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A Martin Luther King Jr. remembrance

by Ken Sehested

I have a vivid memory of the exact moment. I was in seminary, having fled my native South to New York City to finish college and then seminary, embarrassed at being a Baptist, at being a white Southerner, and not entirely sure if I was a believer. But the God question wouldn’t go away.

A mighty wrestling match was underway in my soul, trying to come to terms with my adolescent “youth revival” preacher days. Neither the Civil Rights nor the anti-Vietnam War movements had disturbed my piously-furrowed brow.

One Saturday during high school, starting a Saturday 12-hour shift pumping gas, washing cars, and changing oil, I was transferring product displays and stacks of new tires outside as we prepared to open shortly before dawn. I overheard the radio saying something about Martin Luther King Jr.

“That Martin Luther King, he ain’t no Christian,” the station owner growled toward the radio. “Ever’where he go they’s trouble.”

It would be years before it occurred to me the same was likely said about Jesus.

Entering seminary, I became a voracious reader of Civil Rights Movement history, the gritty details and the many figures, making a timeline and a map in my mind.

Then came that vivid moment. I had purchased one of those over-sized books of photos of Dr. King and other civil rights moments and luminaries. Flipping through, I turned to a photo showing Dr. King and his wife Coretta sitting at a piano, their infant daughter Yolanda perched on Martin’s lap as he and Coretta sang from an open hymnal.

The cover title was clear. It was the Broadman Hymnal! The hymnal I grew up with. Published by the Southern Baptist Convention (the same body whose Executive Committee voted down a resolution of sympathy to members of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, one day after the terrorist bombing in 1963 that killed four young children).

At one time I could quote from memory the page number of dozens of titles in that hymnal. As I came to discover, a good many Black churches that hosted Civil Rights Movement mass meetings—churches that were threatened by cross-burning Klan torches—did their singing from the Broadman. And I also learned that terrorism on American soil has a long history.

That moment—that photo—stands among my life’s greatest epiphanies. I came to realize that the language of faith can have many different, even competing meanings, just as any chemical compound, minus even one element, turns into something else altogether.

I had long since comes to despise the refrain from that popular hymn, “What a Fellowship.” Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarm. Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.” By this time the sound of that song felt in my ears something like someone raking their fingernails across a chalk board!

Until I saw the first episode of that special Public Broadcasting Service series, “Eyes On the Prize,” and learn that the first song sung at the first mass meeting called to considered continuing their one-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., on 5 December 1955 at Holt Street Baptist Church was “What a Fellowship”! The meaning of that music was suddenly transformed in my mind.

Of course! When you can’t depend on the police, or the court system, the government or the business community—not even the white churches (including the liberal ones)!—leaning on Jesus was an audacious, even revolutionary act.

Faith has a way of being clarified in the midst of turmoil, in the face of threat.

The annual commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday provides a perennial occasion to remember the dream that still beckons both church and civil society. And not just in the US.

I’ve listened to children in Baghdad sing “We Shall Overcome” in Arabic, and read similar accounts of its being sung during the collapse of the Berlin Wall in Germany, and demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing , and in protest marches in South Africa’s Soweto Township. A comic book style telling of the Montgomery bus boycott, first published in 1958, was translated into Arabic in 2008 and circulated widely during the “Arab Spring” democracy movement in North Africa.

Yet Dr. King was not assassinated because he was a dreamer, or a promoter of “race relations Sundays.” The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) strategically focused on integration. Though the MIA’s first demand from the bus company did not include full integration. Black riders would still have to sit at the back, whites at the front. Only no Black person would have to give up their seat to a white person. It was an incremental goal that would soon lead to more substantial demands.

Over time the Movement would recognize that integrated seating at lunch counters and water fountains and bus terminals was not nearly—not nearly—enough. In time they would become clear that to achieve  changes in fundamental economic systems, equitable pay, and housing policies, voter registration in the Black community would need to change, too.

Remember, the 1963 March on Washington was name “The Jobs and Freedom March.”

Since the legislation making Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday—approved by Congress in ’86, first commemorated in ’88 (as a day of service to communities, not picnics), national holiday-makers, in concert with commercial interests, have gradually domesticated and smoothed over the threat he represented. (“The most dangerous negro in the country,” according to the FBI’s assessment.) During my years in Atlanta, several Black civil rights groups seriously discussed, but then chose not to protest that city’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday parade because of its corporate sponsorship and military presence.

We forget that by the time King was assassinated, his favorable public opinion polling had plummeted to 33%. We forget that his last major speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” when he openly condemned the U.S. war in Vietnam, he charged that our nation was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

After prophets die, we mold their memory to suit our purposes. We ladle praise on them and put them on pedestals—as a way to distance ourselves from them. There is some truth in that old canard: A conservative is someone who admires a dead radical—because they could not climb down from their pedestals to challenge us.

Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is not the same as being captured by it. It is not only possible but common to respect the man but relinquish the mission, to revere the dreamer but renege on the dream . . . such that it turns into something else entirely. As with the Christian community, admiring Jesus substitutes for following him.

The biggest mistake we make is using the King Birthday observance as the occasion to heap accolades on his memory. Diane Nash, one of the many unheralded leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, says it well:

“If people think that it was Martin Luther King’s movement, then today they—young people—are more likely to say, ‘gosh, I wish we had a Martin Luther King here today to lead us.’ If people knew how that movement started, then the question they would ask themselves is, “What can I do?’”

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Epiphany’s coup d’état

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Take Us Home by Another Way.” —Christopher Grundy 

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In the US, 6 January 2025 is the fifth anniversary of the attempted coup to overturn Congress’ formal confirmation of the previous November’s presidential election results. It remains an open wound in our body politic. Its felonious instigator has thus far escaped conviction, has returned to power, and has pardoned all the coup’s agents.

In the Christian liturgical calendar, 6 January (Epiphany) is commonly observed as the arrival of the Eastern Magi to Bethlehem’s animal feed trough serving as a crib for baby Jesus. In other traditions, the date is marked as the occasion of Jesus’ baptism. In some Eastern Orthodox traditions, 7 January (according to the older Julian calendar) is celebrated as Jesus’ birth—though, in Judaic calculation, a “day” begins on sunset the night before, as in the Genesis account of Creation: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5).

In all these cases, a coup d’état is underway, though only the despots experience it as violent, as in Mary’s hymn of praise, where the powerful are tossed from their thrones and the rich are sent away empty.

(Art at right: John August Swanson)

In all Christians traditions, the common element is the inauguration of a confrontation between God’s Only Begotten and those in seats of power. Divine table-turning is underway. Epiphany, as the manifestation of God’s Intent, will disrupt the world as we know it. Those for whom this “world” is “home”—who profit from current arrangements, from orthodoxies of every sort—will take offense at this swaddling-wrapped revolt.

The bias of heaven is clear: Epiphany’s insurrection announcement confronts every settlement anchored in repression and domination. The announcement of the Kinship of God provokes terror in the imagination of those who believe that death remains the determinant of earthly affairs, that might makes right, that spoils belong to the victors.

Epiphany is provocative. A new Victor has been declared, beyond history’s fated presumption, though its sovereignty awaits its anointed, appointed time.

How, then, are we to live in between appearance and conclusion, between the given and the promised, between Earth’s misery and Heaven’s revelry. What are the pastoral guidelines flowing from this prophetic disclosure?

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Hymn of intercession. “My heart / Be wise / Your enemies have surrounded you / Rising against you / Wait and pray / Don’t stop fighting / Ask every day / The Lord is powerful / Do not lose / Your armour / In death you will finish / Your work.” —English translation of “Inkosi Namandla” (“Lord of Strength”), a reimagining of the traditional Tshwane church song “Ke na le modisa,” arranged by Michael Barrett, performed by the University of Pretoria Camerata 

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We, of the majority caste, are largely innocents. By innocent I mean clueless about the way history has privileged some and impoverished others. If we are to move toward a future beyond the fatal consequence of our transgressions, we must lose our innocence. We have hard work to do, patient work, risky work, but worthy, inspiring, hopeful work.

Take a hand. Make your vow. Gird your loins. Declare an allegiance beyond the tip of your nose. Step over your contented threshold and out of your comfort zone. Prepare for turbulence, maybe threat. Make alliances across racial, class, cultural and national boundaries. Cultivate the kind of imagination needed to resist cultural conformity and nationalist fervor.

Nurture a faith rooted deeply enough to withstand inevitable seasons of drought and tempest. Brace yourself for Epiphany’s provocation, confounding the coronation of mammon protected by praetorian guards and backed by courts of infamy. Refuse seating at the tables Jesus flipped.

Be a conscientious objector to the rule of the market. Set your eyes on a horizon beyond every prognosticating fate. Never forget that history belongs to the interceding intercessors. Between the hammer of hope and the anvil of conviction the Spirit’s fire forges impossibility into re-possibility.

These are our disciplines, and sometimes they are arduous. But they are not imposed by a divine taskmaster. They are the overflow of joy, the product of ecstatic vision capable of tracing Creation’s promise, to Resurrection’s assurance, recollecting the Prophet’s assertion that wolf and lamb will lie shorn of threat and the Revelator’s conclusion that, one day, death will be no more.

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Benediction. “I woke up this mornin’ and none of the news was good / And death machines were rumblin’ ‘cross the ground where Jesus stood / And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way / And there was nothin’ anyone could do or say / And I almost listened to him / Yeah, I almost lost my mind / Then I regained my senses again / And looked into my heart to find / That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham / Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem. . . . / But I believe there’ll come a day when the lion and the lamb / Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem.” —Steve Earle, “Jerusalem”

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(Art below: Kathy Manis Findley)

 

It’s a sad and beautiful world

Commendations for sustaining
impervious resistance to imperial dominance

 

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Sometimes I get so sad / Sometimes you just make me mad / It’s a sad and beautiful world / It’s a sad and beautiful world.” —“Sad and Beautiful World,” Mavis Staples 

Call to worship. Over and over again, the psalmist and the prophets exclaimed grief, sometimes with fury, with some version of: “How long, O Lord, how long will the wicked prosper?” —Psalm 6:3; 13:1-2; 35:17; 74:10; 82:2; 89:46; 94:3; 119:84; Job 19:2; Hosea 8:5; Isaiah 6:11; Jeremiah 12:4; 47:6; Habakkuk 1:2; Zechariah 1:12; Revelation 6:10

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An internet meme summarizes my conclusion: “If 2025 were a drink, it would be a colonoscopy prep.”

And another: “I am going to stay up on New Year’s Eve this year. Not to welcome the new year or anything. I just want to make sure this one leaves.”

It’s been a pants-on-fire kind of year. The kind that makes even the most happy-go-lucky soul develop a quaver in their otherwise cheery voice. Every time I think we hit bottom, a basement appears. And again.

It’s true: there are some hints that the maga-fever might be breaking. We need to note those cracks; but who knows how long cracks survive before a dam’s rupture begins. Even if it does—to switch metaphors—the momentum of a runaway train makes it difficult to halt; plus, the stopping could come as a massively destructive derailment.

You don’t have to be an alarmist to think the future of our republic is in danger. Which is why people of faith and conscience should occupy ourselves with disciplined patterns of storm-resistant spiritual fortification.

It’s a sad world. The Bible frequently and furiously expresses these emotions and impulses. I dare say, Scripture encourages us to hurl our insults, to shout our helplessness, to confess our own violent imaginations—at the world, and even at God.

But it is required that we process these vile emotions with each other, with God as our witness, with the permission of the Holy Spirit, mimicking even the speech of Jesus, as when he said, on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

It is a sad world. A distressful world. A sometimes wretched and rancorous world. But it is also, simultaneously—most certainly, just as surely—a beautiful world.

How do we hold these two things together, allowing neither to cancel out the other, making space both for the brutality of the world and the bounty of the world? Attending both to Earth’s agony and Heaven’s jubilation?

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Hymn of intercession. “Emmanuel.” —Public School 22 Chorus, Staten Island, NY, arrangement inspired by Tori Amos, directed by Gregg Breinberg 

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I have seven commendations for your consideration. No doubt you can add others.

 

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

We all have the tendency to shelter in place during socially-severe weather; to shut out the shouting; to shield our eyes and cover our ears to the misery just beyond our front gates. But if we are to discover what is truly beautiful in the world, we begin by being attentive to where beauty has been suppressed; to where humanity has been dehumanized; to where earth’s beauty has been contaminated; to where children’s playful voices have been silenced.

Doing so requires being vulnerable in ways that seem risky. That doesn’t mean being foolhardy. It does mean critically examining our risk-avoidance habits. Faith in the Way of Jesus is inherently risky.

Second commendation. It is incumbent upon us to acknowledge that our complaints reveal how privileged we are, in relation to the unnumbered, both within our nation and elsewhere, who have lived in despondence and disposition long before now.

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. Truth is, we have more resilience than we know, and we cannot know our limits until they are tested. Be willing to be tested.

 

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 heights of arrogance are humbled and brought low.

To quote Mary Oliver, the challenge for us is to “keep some room in our hearts for the unimaginable.”

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 resistance AND reconstruction.

As John Paul Lederach writes, “Pessimism born of cynicism is a luxurious avoidance of engagement.” The commitment to be attentive to godforsaken people and places does not mean self-traumatizing. God is not a sadist, and we are not masochists.

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. . . . creativity requires moving beyond the parameters of what is visible, what currently exists, or what is taken as given.”

Imperial powers always limit what is possible to what is available. As the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy says, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

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 with others to which we are connected at a distance.

To keep our eyes on the prize, we need each other, such that when our spirits flag, we are carried by others. All of our communities should facilitate boundary-crossing connections with those not of our caste, class, ethno-nationalities, etc.

James Baldwin said, “The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love . . . is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.” You don’t have to be a priest or a preacher to do this. You can be a truck driver, a ballet dancer, a beautician, or a heart surgeon.

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 is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. A current, prominent name for this corruption is White/Christian Nationalism.

Maybe the most distinctive calling we have in this season is to undermine the corruption of Christian speech, to intelligently and passionately confront the theme of so-called manifest destiny, as if the opulence and orgy of our national piety have the power to manipulate God’s special favor, as if colonialism is virtue.

This is heresy and must be loudly denounced as such, not just with our words but with the very shape of our lives, livelihoods shaped and animated by the Beloved’s passion for the fate of those left behind, left out, left over.

Kindred, it is a sad and a beautiful world. We live in a colicky world, and in a history that appears to be predicated on violence.

We must speak to each other of our sadness, of our own violent impulses, and testify publicly and grievously, of Earth’s agony; but also testify, resoundingly, to Creation’s beauty, of her inconspicuous heroes, of the stories of kindness and compassion and sheer gladness.

As we do, I assure you, in most uncertain terms, that the Creator of Heaven and Earth hovers near, unseen but fully present, weeping with us in our grievous sorrows, rejoicing in our exultant joys.

World without end. Amen. And amen.

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Benediction. “Blessed One, whose name we dare not speak, but of whose Presence we dare not remain silent, we stand before you with hearts in shreds and hands frozen. We know that we creatures were made for praise and thanksgiving. We recognize that gratitude is our natural home.

“But these are unnatural days. Instead of Heaven’s jubilation at Creation’s unfolding, most of what we hear are the arias of agony and the cornet’s sounding of retreat. . . . Remind us again, O Holy Spirit, of that design by whose pattern we were made. Call back to memory, Sweet Jesus, at whose table we eat and drink, of whose feet we are to wash. Call us back to our right mind, for clarity over the source and aim of our commission.” —KLS

Recessional. “What a Wonderful World.” —Louis Armstrong 

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A version of this article first appeared in Baptist News Global.

The stilling power of Advent‘s drama

Ken Sehested

“Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”
—Cormac McCarthy, “All the Pretty Horses”

Invocation. “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning . . . / the day is drawing nigh. / Darker midnight lies before us . . . / the day is drawing nigh. / For the morning soon is breaking . . . / the day is drawing nigh. / Children, don’t get weary / till your work is done.” —“Keep Your Lamps,” arr. André Thomas, combined choirs of Florida State University 

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The photo below is not an award-winner, like those of the Natural History Museum’s annual wildlife winners. Or those on the “Religious Feeling Photo Contest Winners” site. Or the comedy wildlife photo awards. Or the Smithsonian magazine’s “Breathtaking Space Images.”

 

But it will from this day forward shape my Advent imagination.

This picture below features Wanda Hernández Murga, coordination of the Kairos Center, a ministry of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Matanzas, Cuba. She is standing, arms raised in the posture of jubilation, exultant smile, standing in the midst of a gutted building. The atmosphere appears dank, architecture of wreckage, in a building razed back to its decrepit walls and load bearing arch.

The scene instinctively makes you want to gasp and whisper, oh, that’s not a safe place to stand.

Ah, but you would be wrong. What you’re looking at is a long-held dream in an early stage of being materialized, in the midst of what seems to be rubble, of a building about to be rehabbed to house a music school, liturgical arts laboratory, and social services center on the edge of one of Matanzas’ poorer neighborhoods.

The rubble I witnessed there on a trip last fall has been removed (except for the stack of rescued bricks and slate ready to be recycled). I marveled at the architect’s sketches depicting the building’s resurrection. I had previously seen the constant flow of children and youth (regardless of religious affiliation) pouring into Primera Iglesia’s building, next door to this new site, arriving for music lessons, along with the influx of pensioners coming for freely-offered communal meals.

I’ve seen photos of the Center’s orchestras in holiday marches throughout the city streets. The creative liturgy workshops, incorporating all manner of drama, dance, readings and music, flow directly into the congregation’s worship and influencing liturgical practice in churches across the nation.

As it is, the Center’s activities share cramped space with the congregation’s programs. The dream of having its own dedicated space has persevered over a decade. Locating options—and the funds to purchase such a site—has required much patience. Last year, solicitation here in the US raised the funds to purchase the building. (Real estate is surprisingly cheap in Cuba.) And now acquiring the funds to renovate the building is underway. (Building materials are scarce, and expensive.)

The patient perseverance, the waiting and longing, of these friends in Matanzas is an Advent parable. The patience is not nonchalance. Waiting is not inertia. Longing is not wistfulness. This kind of waiting is the on-the-edge-of-your-seat, ever ready, hands readied for the labor to come. Not resignation, but a long deferred dream which will allow the Center’s creative craft to be expanded—all in the context of a community of faith which affirms that, in Mary’s words, the day approaches when the Spirit will “scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”

We cannot engineer miracles; but we can prepare for them.

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Hymn of petition. “Now we who mystically represent the Cherubim, / And chant the Thrice-Holy Hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, / Let us lay aside all worldly cares, / That we may receive the King of all, / Who comes invisibly escorted by the Divine Hosts. / Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!” —English translation of the first verse of “The Cherubic Hymn” by G. Lvovsky, performed by the Choir of the Sretensky Monastery 

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I doubt novelist Cormac McCarthy ever pondered Advent, but he provides a succinct sentence pointing to the heart of the matter.

“Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”

You may already know that McCarthy’s novels contain a great deal of violent conflict. In a 1992 interview with the New York Times, he commented, “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.”

As if history is utterly fixed, the universe irreparably fated in its endless spinning, not progress but degress, a de-Creation, if you will, from its original delight to a spiral of entropy, random fracturing, no Center to hold, oriented only to exhaustion and utter ruination, no world-without-end-amen, only a terminus ad quem without rhyme or reason, absent transcendent verity or moral apogee.

The Nativity story in first century Palestine was just such a dangerous idea. As a child in Nazareth, Jesus most certainly heard of the butchery in nearby Sepphorus, four miles north, when an estimated 2,000 Jews were crucified, hung along the streets and highways in that area, following a failed rebellion against Roman rule after Herod’s death in 4 CE. It’s a historical fact that needs to be processed in our Nativity recollection.

Advent’s announcement of incarnation is not an invasion, nor merely an accretion to Creation’s original blessing, an added element to repossess a terminally incorrigible world. Rather, it is a dessoterramento, a Portuguese word that signifies an uncovering of what has been buried or repressed. It is not Creation that is sanitized and sucked up into Heaven; it is the announcement that the Most High has pitched a tent among mortals (cf. John 1:14 & Revelation 21:3) whose minds have been righted to reverential posture.

As William Sloan Coffin Jr. noted, only reverence can restrain violence: because it, and it alone, can constrain self-centered living.

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Hymn of consolation. “Away from the manger they ran for their lives / The crying boy Jesus, a son they must hide / A dream came to Joseph, they fled in the night / And they ran and they ran and they ran / Ooh / No stars in the sky but the Spirit of God / Led down into Egypt from Herod to hide / No place/  for his parents no country or tribe / And they ran and they ran and they ran / Ooh / Stay near me LORD Jesus when danger is nigh / And keep us from herods and all of their lies / I love the LORD Jesus, the Refugee King / And we sing and we sing and we sing / Alleluja.” —“Refugee King,” Liz Vice 

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Advent’s call to patient perseverance, what my seminary professor Dorothee Sölle called “revolutionary patience,” is penitential in nature: penitential not in feeling bad about ourselves, but in reawakening, of being recalled, resituated and recentered from the cacophony of life lived outside covenant vows; rescued from the omnipresent governing values that assure the strong take what they can and the weak endure what they must; generosity not-for-gain but due to the simple facts that blessed people bless people. It’s who we are (or, more precisely, who we are becoming, season by season, occasionally falling back into self-centered stupor) being born again (and again and again) into our high calling in Christ Jesus.

It is the Holy Spirit slapping our face, saying “SNAP OUT of it!”

Some years ago I attended a service where the bulletin cover depicted a gentle-flowing stream, over which were imposed the “Peace, be still” refrain which shows up in various forms throughout the biblical narrative. I kept it as a reminder that the original “be still” phrase was spoken by Moses to the Hebrew people when their backs were against the sea with Pharaoh’s ruthless army bearing down on them (Exodus 14:13-14).

Peace . . . fear not . . . be still. These are admonishments in the context of conflagration–and not on a nice, sunny-day picnic on warm, green grass, champagne flute in hand, with the gurgling mountain stream in the background and butterflies all around.

Rather than a recommendation to leisure (much less, passivity), “be still” is actually a war-cry, only the terms of engagement are nothing like what we usually associate with soldierly action. The psalmist’s image of standing “beside still waters” is in the context of “the valley of the shadow of death,” where the Lord’s table is spread “in the presence of my enemies.” The issues are those of life and death.

This is what Dr. Sölle (blessed be her memory) meant by practicing “revolutionary patience”—an utterly impatient posture which nonetheless refuses the idolatrous resort to violence, even emotional violence, because of an abiding confidence, that despite much evidence, death itself will be undone. We are but participants and witnesses, not engineers, to this promised new world order, to God’s Kinship which first gathers up “the alien, the widow, and the orphan,” not because of their moral worth but simply because they have been left behind, left out, leftover—surplus in the world’s ordering of power.

To be sure, calluses can grow on fretful rubbed hands. Disappointments are not uncommon. Sometimes, in prayer, we need to stomp our feet and issue curses into the ether. Like our friends in Cuba, we plan, and we wait; we intercess, and we wait; we dream, and we wait; we plead, and we wait; we engage, across the spectrum from random acts of kindness to public acts of civil disobedience, and we wait—because even when we “win,” the winning is always incremental.

Nevertheless, we confess, with Mother Pollard, resident of Montgomery, Alabama, who walked to work during the year long bus boycott, my feets is tired but my soul is rested.

Unfortunately, few if any can experience this stillness, can generate this peaceful still point amidst the storm, on our own. It’s almost always mediated by the fleshly presence of others and the vibrant memory of saints gone before. Which is why pastoral ministry–fostering communities oriented to this vision–is so crucial in cultivating the seedbed’s soil from which prophetic action blooms.

Which is why memory is essential. Which is why I stay in touch with people like my friend Wanda, who can look past dilapidated history to a farther horizon where joy emerges. They help me keep my lamps trimmed and burning.

“Tribulation” is the normal circumstance for Still Ones in a fractious world whose currency is the power to exclude and dominate. But “be of good cheer . . . take heart . . . have courage,” for this “world” is being dismantled (cf. John 16:33), a new heaven and new earth are on their way (cf. Revelation 21:1ff).

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Benediction. “My body groans for Your redemption / My spirit waits for Your day / My heart longs for consolation / On You we wait, for You we wait . . . / Do not tarry, Lord / On You we wait, for You we wait.” —“Do Not Tarry,” Rachel Colman 

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