Recent

—compiled by Ken Sehested

Language matters

• “El Shaddai” is one of several “names” given to God in Scripture. El Shaddai is a feminine noun, which can be translated “God of the breast,” conveying the quality of nourishing, satisfying and supplying needs. It is used seven times in Scripture (see Genesis 17:1).
• The English translation of “El Shaddai” as “God Almighty” is misleading, because “almighty” suggests omnipotence, the capacity to overpower or destroy. Whereas “Shaddai” infers sufficiency and nourishment (i.e., “blessings of the breasts and of the womb”) and implies a certain fecundity.
• Also in Hebrew, the divine presence(“Shekhinah”) of God is feminine.
• From the word “womb” (rehem) comes the verb “to have compassion” (raham), and the phrase “Yahweh’s compassionate (rahum) and gracious” repeatedly appears in the Hebrew scripture to describe the merciful and saving acts of God in history.

Biblical texts

• Deut 32:18; Ps 90:2; Prov 8:24-25; Isa 43:1,7,15; 44:2, 24; 45:9, 11; 51:13; 54:5 – The Creator God of Israel is also imaged as the shaper, maker and mother God who formed Israel in the womb and birthed Israel with labor pains. 
• Deut 4:31; 2 Chr 30:9;  Neh 9:17; Ps 78:38; 86:16; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 145:8; John 4:7 – images of God who demonstrates “womb–like compassion” for her child Israel.
• Exodus 33:19 and 34:6 – In Hebrew the words for “compassion” and “womb” derive from the same root. God of compassion use the Hebrew word “rehem” which can be translated “womb-love.
• Num 11:12 – “Was it I who conceived all this people, was it I who gave them birth that you should say to me, carry them in your bosom like a nurse with a baby at the breast?”
• Prov 7-9 –“Wisdom” (“Sophia”) who was present before the foundations of the world were created; and announces (Prov 1) Heaven’s judgment on “scoffers” and “fools.”
• John 7: 38 – From his breast shall flow the fountains of living water.
• Gen 1:2 – God as a nesting mother.
• Is 42:14 [Thus says the Lord], “For a long time I have held my peace; I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant.”
• Ex 19:4 & Deut 32 :1-12 – God as a mother eagle.
• Hos 13:8 – “I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs.”
• Ps 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 61:4 – Refuge in “the shadow of [God’s] wings.”
• Job 38:28-29 – “Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven?”
• Luke 15:8 – A woman tirelessly sweeping for her lost coin, for what is important to her.
• Luke 13: 34 (Matt 23:37) – “How often I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”
• Gen 2:7, Ps 104: 29; John 3:8 – “Ruah” presence gives life; feminine Hebrew word meaning breath, wind, inspiration or spirit.
• Gen 3:21 – God as a seamstress.
• Isaiah 66:13 – “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”)
• Isa 4:4, Ps 51:7 – God as a washerwoman.
• Ps 22:9-11, Ps 71:6; Isa 66:9 – God as a midwife.
• Matt 13:33 – God as a woman baking bread.

 A few post-biblical texts

• Clement of Alexander (c.150 – c. 215 CE) spoke of Christ as the breast of God supplying the milk of love.
• “Just as God is our Father, so God is also our Mother.” And also, “The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life. . . .” —Julian of Norwich (1342–1416)
• “We are all meant to be mothers of God.” —Meister Eckhart, 13^th century mystic
• “A mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” —Emily Dickinson

• “In the divine economy it is not the feminine person who remains hidden and at home. She is God in the world, moving, stirring up, revealing, interceding. It is she who calls out, sanctifies, and animates the church. Hers is the water of the one baptism. The debt of sin is wiped away by her. She is the life-giver who raises men [sic] from the dead with the life of the coming age. Jesus himself left the earth so that she, the intercessor, might come.” — Jay G. Williams, “Yahweh, Women and the Trinity,” Theology Today 32 (1975) 240.

• “You, beloved daughters, serve as reminders / that life cannot be had on the cheap; / that every new future foreseen in joy / will endure all tearful failures; that strength / of hand and valiance of heart must be / coupled with wombish welcome to that / unnameable (and thus unmanageable) / Promise that death’s ascendance will / be crushed. / Such vision persists; such milk flows; / and by it we are kept from perishing.” —Ken Sehested, “On the flow of tears”

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Satan, we’re gonna tear / Your kingdom down (Lord, Jesu’) / Oh, Satan, we’re gonna tear / Your Kingdom down (oh Yes) / You’ve been building your kingdom / All over the land / Satan, we’re gonna tear / Your kingdom down, down (yes).” —“Satan, We’re Gonna’ Tear Your Kingdom Down,” Shirley Caesar and The Young People’s Institutional Choir of Brooklyn

§  §  §

We have entered Eastertide, the liturgical season beginning with Easter and ending 50 days later on Pentecost (aka Whitsunday). The formulation of this season parallels the period in Judaism between the first day of Pesach (Passover, marking their liberation from Egypt) and the feast of Shavu’ot (Feast of Weeks, both a harvest festival and a commemoration of the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai). Parallel resurrection moments, setting the stage for resulting resurrection movements.

Freedom’s announcement is not a spectator sport. Neither the parting of the sea, nor the rolling of tombstone, is part of some kind of divine service economy. God is not a personal attendant, working for tips (aka piety). God is the Ringleader, the Chief Inciter of the rebellion against the reign of every cruel and merciless force.

There is no resurrection by proxy.* It’s a bet your assets kind of involvement. The baptismal waters are troubled and troublesome.

Eastertide was the period when the early followers of Jesus were forced to recalibrate their messianic expectations. Good Friday’s execution was a crushing blow to their hopes. Despite Jesus’ repeated teachings to the contrary, the apostles still presumed Jesus would be the leader of a divinely-inaugurated coup d’état that would expel Roman occupiers and restore King David’s regal dynasty.

Hadn’t the Hebrew prophets predicted this messianic outcome—confirmed in Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives?

We, even today, are not exempt from the same kind of disorientation caused by the resurrection’s disarranging announcement.

Eastertide as cognitive dissonance

Eastertide is the season for Jesus’ followers to undergo a complete reimagining of the nature of power. It demands a decolonization of the mind and a regeneration of the heart: conception, conviction, and practice operating in tandem, each shaping, correcting, and reinforcing the other. A certain deconstruction is at work, and it is often discomfiting, for we are being stretched and refitted to become suitable couriers of the news that is disturbing before it is good.

Near the very end of Luke’s Gospel, the text records this odd command from Jesus as he prepares to end his resurrectionary appearances to ascend to the Abba.

“I am going to send you what my Father has promised [i.e., the paraclete or Holy Spirit]; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (24:49, emphasis added).

Before the community of the resurrection could mobilize, before its power could be unleashed, it first had to undergo formation and instruction—something parallel to the Israelites’ confused wandering prior to receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai.

Why? Because cognitive dissonance—the attempt to hold on to two opposing ideas at the same time—is a very real thing. One conviction has your heart (which means, in biblical terms, your pocketbook); the other is just for public relations.

Former Senate Majority Trent Lott, a faithful, lifetime Southern Baptist, was asked in 2004 about the breaking news of brutal torturing of Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. He responded, “This is not Sunday school . . . this is rough stuff.” The Jesus story largely has no real traction in public life. As that line in Greg Brown’s song puts it,  “Oh, Lord, I’ve made you a place in my heart, and I hope that you leave it alone.”

Two decades before, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lynch v. Donnelly decision, Chief Justice Warren Burger ruled that a city-sponsored Christmas nativity display is “a passive symbol,” that it “engenders a friendly community spirit,” and “serves the commercial interests” of merchants. I can think of no greater expression of disdain for the “high calling” by which we set our compasses.

The judicatory reign of worldly dominion will never voluntarily cede its sovereignty. Which is why the colonial Massachusetts Bay Colony authorities judged a dissenter like Roger Williams as an “incendiary of the commonwealth.”

Eastertide as reorientation

In “the world” (the warped and disordered affliction of Creation), we are constantly being offered counterfeit assurances: You get what you deserve; you are what you own; the strong take what they can, the weak suffer what they must; only the strong survive; eat or be eaten. The assertions of the Beatitudes are contradicted at every turn: the poor are shamed; the mourners, taunted; the meek, mocked; the merciful, victimized; the peacemakers, disparaged.

The thing that must be rectified before power “from on high” (i.e., not susceptible to manipulative human authority) can be granted, the discrepancy between what our eyes have been trained to see, our ears schooled to hear, must be tutored. Our minds, says the Apostle, must be “righted.”

In other words, we have been brainwashed. Or to use another metaphor: Before we can comprehend the beatific vision by which we have been called, the contorted neural pathways in our brains need to be disentangled in order to see where the Spirit is breaking out, to hear what the Spirit’s is declaring, to comprehend our marching orders.

As Mark Twain put it, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Like all of the church’s liturgical seasons, Eastertide is not one and done. As with the formation of our faith, we learn bit by bit, by repetitive effort, a process that is not characterized by gallant effort as by perseverance.

In Luke’s story, after Jesus was baptized, the Divine Breath descended on him “as a dove” and as a “voice from heaven.” Then the text offers a lengthy genealogy, tracing Jesus’ lineage and career back to Creation’s story of origin. In his storyline, something distinctive is occurring; but it is not novel. The narrative traces back to “in the beginning,” when the first Breath of God “swept over the face of the waters.”

After that came the desert’s confirmation class, where assumptions about power were clarified. The wilderness was his catechesis. Not until those lessons were learned was Jesus’ anointment completed with his being “filled with the power of the spirit”—a power contradicting every earthly supremacist claim.

That indwelling led to Jesus’ inaugural sermon. The congregation’s initial response was admiration over a hometown boy made good, who recited venerated lines from the revered Prophet Isaiah. In his commentary, however—in bringing the text to bear on history’s context—Jesus veered from assumed Israel-first piety by telling a story of God’s privileging the needs of those in sh*thole countries. Hearing that, the crowd’s mood got ugly, and they were “filled with rage.” It was an affront—then as now—to hear that being chosen does not entail exclusive claim to Heaven’s affection.

Pentecostal preparation

Eastertide is the season when we learn to tell a different story about a different configuration of power, inside out, upside down, the envisioning of a commonwealth that flips the script of every predatory claim of entitlement. Jesus’ lordship upends and overthrows lording of every sort.

Pentecost is when we take Easter to the streets, and the streets are still mean. But the Apostles’ power—with the granting of fiery nerve and inspired breath upon earth’s turbid disorder—inaugurates the Spirit’s incursion against every affront to Creation’s intent and the Beloved Community’s surety.

Eastertide’s preparation is for the Spirit’s outing of the church at Pentecost. There will be scandal; indeed, the world’s current innkeepers will declare “no room” and will demand that we keep our noses out of its business.

The Way of the Cross still leads home, sisters and brothers; but we are not left bereft. Attend to Eastertide’s tutoring. The tomb’s seal has been broken. The Comforter is present to sustain, to animate, to inform, and to incite the little flock of Jesus—not for exclusionary claim to the Beloved’s deference but for extravagant announcement of Mercy’s mending power, restoring the maimed and shamed (and all who find no “home” in the world’s present ordering), readying the table of refuge and bounty for the age to come.

Alas, sorrow’s governance remains. In the ordinary days that follow in the wake of Pentecost’s tide, the names of additional martyrs will be added to our All Saints’ Day recitals. The rule of terror continues, by state and statute and commercial decree and xenophobic clamor. Zion’s true songs of praise are heard as threat since angels’ good tidings and joy’s insurgence cannot be brokered or patented or rationed.

If left to our own resolve, the weight of woe would overwhelm even the strongest. But the Spirit has smuggled provisions through enemy lines. The attentive will spot clues of their whereabouts. The virtue of hope and the victual of sustenance have been readied. The supply chain, though constantly harried, has not been broken.

The facts on the ground do not have the last word, though this cannot be verified by existing calculus. Cheating death is what we do—not by means of moral heroism but because joy’s embrace is more resilient than grief’s restraint.

Be joyful, friends, though you have considered the facts.** Come out, you Little Flock of Jesus. Be seen. Pitch your tent in compassionate proximity to the disdained. Let them evangelize you. In learning their names you will discover your own; and from their voices, discern what needs doing.

Be converted; be commissioned. The high prize awaits.

§  §  §

Benediction. “Christos Anesti (Χριστὸς ἀνέστη).” —Greek Orthodox Easter Chant of Resurrection, sung joyfully during Pascha [Resurrection Sunday] to proclaim Christ’s resurrection

*the phrase is from Vincent Harding
**line from Wendell Berry

#  #  #

by Ken Sehested

15 May is the anniversary of what Palestinians call al-Nakba, translated as “the Catastrophe” in reference to the day following Israel’s formation as a state in 1948. Some three-quarters of a million Palestinians were forced from their homes. Four hundred Palestinian villages cease to exist. The heirs of the expelled now number five million, most living in refugee camps on the West Bank, Gaza, and surrounding countries.

I was in my 30s when I first heard the word al-Nakba, and the historical moment it represents, well into a career requiring broad knowledge of global affairs. In my experience, few here in North America know the word.

A more evocative translation of al-Nakba could be “the Humiliation,” since in English “catastrophe” is often associated with “natural” disasters. As such, no human agency is implied—only the brute hand of climatic turbulence well beyond our control or even prediction.

Al-Nakba was not natural, not beyond control, likely not even beyond prediction.

§  §  §

        The only vague memory I have of this period in Palestine’s history is watching one of Paul Newman’s early films, Exodus (1960), based in part on Leon Uris’ book by the same title, loosely retelling the dramatic saga of Holocaust surviving Jews attempting to reach Palestine from France after the war.

I don’t remember that movie saying anything about Irgun and Lehi, Jewish terrorist groups, which carried out bombings and assassinations against British governance and military (during the “British Mandate” rule) and the predominantly Arab population.

By the way, in my research I notice that Wikipedia prefers to speak of “Jewish paramilitary” groups who engaged in “Zionist political” military action during this period. The difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is almost always decided by whose future gains the upper hand.

§  §  §

        Among the vilest things I’ve ever heard about Jews came from the imam of a mosque in Basra in southern Iraq. Afterward our group quizzed our translator to make sure he wasn’t exaggerating. “Actually, it was a little worse,” he said.

And some of the most reprehensible statements about Muslims I’ve seen were scrawled on the closed shop gates of Arab merchants in Hebron, spray painted by residents of the nearby Jewish settlement in the heart of that ancient West Bank city.

One of the good recent articles regarding the situation in Gaza is by Rabbi Edward Retting of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, an organization that does courageous work. “There is only one way toward peace,” he writes. “That is the recognition that our dispute concerns two just causes [that of Jews and of Palestinians] tragically thrown into opposition one to the other.”

Yes, I say in response. But one is an elephant, the other is a mouse. Without recognition of this premise, without clarifying the calculus of power, whatever conclusions emerge will only deepen the cycle of violence which now feeds on itself, like the record-breaking warmth of the Gulf of Mexico turning always-destructive hurricanes into monster storms.

§  §  §

        The work of reconciliation in the midst of conflict can never sidestep the question of power relations between conflicting parties. To illustrate that disparity, here are some figures from Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza.

Between 10,626 and 10,895 Palestinians were killed (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled). Sixty-six Israeli soldiers, five Israeli civilians (including one child) and one Thai civilian were killed and 469 Israeli soldiers and 261 Israeli civilians were injured (the latter by rockets fired by Hamas into southern Israel). The Gazan casualty rate was 65%-70%. (“2014 Israel-Gaza conflict,” Wikipedia)

Until recently I could see no way forward in addressing this conflict other than the so-called “two state solution,” with the nation of Israel and a newly-created Palestinian state residing side-by-side, with a negotiated land swap that would approximate the pre-1967 war’s border.

Everybody knows that Hamas, Gaza’s ruling party (chosen by democratic election), still refuses to recognize Israel’s legitimacy. Few know, however, that Israel’s ruling Likud Party, along with other parties in its governing coalition, are officially and adamantly opposed to any meaningful two-nation arrangement.

The US is hardly an honest broker in this conflict. Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign aid, now at $3.8 billion per year. US support for the Palestinians is a tiny fraction of that, almost all of which is routed through various UN agencies to support basic infrastructure and refugee provisions. (President Trump has already cut those payments and is threatening to cancel them outright.)

While it’s true that US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital does not affect any concrete structural changes; it does however give symbolic strength to Israel’s claim of sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, in contravention of United Nations’ mandates (which also make all of Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal under international law).

§  §  §

        There is a popular saying among visitors to Israel/Palestine: Stay for a week, and you think you can write a book. Stay for a month, and you think, well, maybe an essay. Stay for a year, and you don’t know what to say.

I do not pretend in these spare comments to offer policy guidance toward a different future. I do know, as the saying goes, that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. And I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the dominant narrative in American political culture is not only shortsighted but also complicit with Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine’s population.

The only genuine, lasting security is mutual security. At present, the West Bank and Gaza are more like maximum security prisons.

Truth be told, over the past hours of writing I have fought off my own heart’s numerous pleas to cease and desist any public comments on this topic. I am connected to several communities for whom conversation about sexual orientation is a breeze compared to discussions of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The volatility quotient is enough to shut down meaningful dialogue. In addition, for people like myself, who at this distance face little existential threat, the subject easily becomes a conveniently liberal parlor exercise. When there’s no blood on the floor, talk is cheap.

In the end, though, silence on the matter is both an abdication of liability (make it go away!) and a collaboration with infamy. We have the right neither to demand this conversation nor to abandon it. We sit, always, on a moral precipice—but that is exactly the proper posture of reverence. Shared reverence is our only hope.

§  §  §

        In the end, my political pessimism is held at bay because I know a few of the many (far more than you might think) Israelis and Palestinians—Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other people of conscience—who arise each day, indefatigably and almost beyond imagination, to practice truth-telling and justice seasoned with mercy and compassion. And I know a few others, here in the US and elsewhere, who persevere in their support for these militant agents of reconciliation.

What to do? At the very least, dig deeper for information and perspective on this topic beyond what our dominant media supplies. Hold your heart open to the possibility of connecting with the network of resisters, healers, and visionaries who dream differently, inspired by the vision spoken of by the Prophet Micah, for the day when all shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, with none to make them afraid (4:4).

#  #  #

©ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. For more on this subject see “House to house, field to field: Reflections on a peace mission to the West Bank.” http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/2015/02/05/house-to-house-field-to-field.1353226

Ken Sehested

Parade. Palestinian band escorting the Orthodox Patriarch on Palm Sunday from The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

§  §  §

Kindred, we stand on the cusp of Jesus’ final, “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem; his rhetorical jousting with religious authorities; culminated by his inevitable confrontation with Rome’s rulers and the Temple’s bouncers.

Would that “getting right with God” were a more civil, reputation-enhancing, and less disruptive affair.

Instead, Lent beckons us to peer into the face of history’s tragedies, including those in our own hearts.

In response to Jesus’ provocative entry into Jerusalem, the crowds lining the street covered the road with cloaks and “branches,” probably palms, objects of public recognition for royalty and often symbols of military victory in Near Eastern cultures.

This clamor was an incendiary challenge to ruling elites and foreign occupation. Hosanna! More than entreaty for blessing and peace in the immortal bye-and-bye. This street theater evoked expectation of both spiritual redemption and national liberation. Hosanna! meant come and liberate from history’s constrictions.

Passover observance in Jerusalem brought extra garrisons of Roman soldiers to town to suppress outbreaks of Jewish nationalist agitation. On what the church has since named “Palm Sunday,” Jesus is riding on a lowly donkey, not something that a military leader would do. (But is, in fact, referenced in the prophet Zechariah (9:9) as a messianic sign.)

We know from other sources, that Judea’s collaborating King Herod also paraded into Jerusalem this same week, from the other side, and he is wearing his elaborate armor, displaying his deadly weapons, and riding a war horse. Jerusalem thus became the stage of paraded and competing claims on the nature of power.

The crowd proclaimed Jesus as “Son of David” or merely “King,” both references to Israel’s King David who personified the golden age of national splendor. These demonstrators did not comprehend the nuance of Jesus’ upside-down intervention.

Nor, as yet, did his disciples.

Nor, as yet, largely, do we.

§  §  §

Passion. “If it be your will, that I speak no more / And my voice be still, as it was before / I will speak no more, I shall abide until / I am spoken for, if it be your will / If it be your will, that a voice be true / From this broken hill, I will sing to you / From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will, to let me sing.” —“If It Be Your Will,” Leonard Cohen

§  §  §

In the coming week, we face Maundy’s mandate and Friday’s calamity . . . and, well, Saturday’s betwixt-and-between daze and discomposure of Jesus’ disciples and revelers. Then and now, the dominant culture remained confident in the security of the tomb’s immovable stone and the legionnaires’ vigilance over its irrevocable seal.

Best not bank on resurrection’s circumvention of death’s ascendance and terror’s reign. Few doubt the market’s rule enforced by the sword’s regime.

Be clear about this: There is no bystanding in this drama. There is no skipping Maundy’s directive and Friday’s threat on the way to Sunday’s Uprising. No leap from crib to cross to Crown of Glory.

In prosperous cultures like ours, voyeurism is the great pretender as an agency of spiritual formation. Titillation substitutes for texture and substance. The quest for emotional novelties, intellectual baubles, and experiential souvenirs displacing incarnation’s fleshly ordeal.

In my native West Texas idiom, a pretend rancher would be described as “all hat and no cows.” You can dress the part without engaging the reality. “Spirituality” as levitation from history’s crucifying peril. The luxury of hope’s assurance severed from the context of threat. Singing the blues without paying the dues. The pretense of faith despite no back against any wall.

Holy Week epitomizes the story of history’s brutal affliction upended and overturned by Heaven’s insurgence. Good Friday is good not because of what it displays but because of what it foreshadows.

Easter’s eruption is our hymn of invitation to join this mutiny. There is no “getting right with God,” there’s only getting soaked. Only the passion opens onto the Spirit’s efficacy. In a suffering world, only a suffering God is believable. The Way is enjoined by imitating the One we adore.

Let this be our adoration. Let this be our testimony to Heaven’s insurrection for Earth’s reclamation. In the words of an old proverb, let this be our eulogy: They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.

§  §  §

Promulgation. “I was there when they crucified my Lord / I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword / I threw the dice when they pierced his side / But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide / When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that train / When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame / Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down / But I did what I did before love came to town.” —“When Love Comes to Town,” U2 and B.B. King

9 April 2025 • On the occasion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s execution, eight days following Easter’s observance in 1945

#  #  #

A bit of history and a meditation on the provocation of his witness
(on the anniversary of his assassination)

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Early morning, April four / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky. / Free at last, they took your life / They could not take your pride. / In the name of love / What more in the name of love.” —“Pride (In the Name of Love),” U2, celebrating the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

§  §  §

If I had the authority, I would institute a new liturgical season in the US—beginning with Dr. King’s 15 January birth anniversary, extending to Ash Wednesday—in preparation devoted to the gift of discomfort in spiritual formation.

It also provides a more visceral connection to the Lenten drama: the breathtaking breakthrough of hope, seemingly out of nowhere, for the prospect of a major advance of justice and human dignity (not unlike the disciples’ and other followers of Jesus experienced), followed by a cruel backlash and crackdown against the same (like the narrative of Jesus’ final days). Then prepping our attention to Jesus’ resurrection stories by attending Dr. King’s parting exhortation: “I’ve been to the mountaintop. I may not get to the promised land with you; but we as a people will get there!”

Dr. King hadn’t planned to speak that night in Memphis. He knew the threats to his life were getting closer by the day. The initial march in Memphis, in support of the striking sanitation workers, had turned violent. The international acclaim he received as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient two years previously had faded; his monumental “I Have a Dream” speech five years earlier seemed to have morphed into a nightmare, given the racial violence spreading across the country. President Johnson, who had granted King’s access to the White House, was enraged by King’s attacks of the war.

By now many of his white liberal friends in the press had abandoned him (as did some in the Black press and other civil rights organizations), all of whom feared he was strategically compromising the civil rights struggle with his condemnation of the war in Vietnam.

The Southern Christian Leadership staff and his close advisers all begged him not to go to Memphis because there was so much work to do preparing for the upcoming Poor People’s March on Washington (“A National Call for a Moral Revival”), scheduled to begin in three weeks, to demand a $12 billion Economic Bill of Rights; fuller employment; income for the disabled; and an end to housing discrimination.

All of this weighed on him so heavily that he decided not to attend the rally at Mason Temple that evening. He asked Ralph Abernathy to speak instead. The weather itself compounded his weariness, for there were serious thunder storms rolling through Memphis, and he wondered if anybody would show up.

As it turned out, despite the weather threat, Mason Temple’s massive sanctuary was packed, and the people wanted to hear from King. Abernathy called him and begged him to come and at least say a few words of encouragement.

So he did, and spoke extemporaneously for over 40 minutes. He confessed his weariness to the crowd, hinting at his sense of mortality, saying “I may not get there with you.” No doubt he knew well the story of Moses who, having led the Israelites out of slavery and wandered in wasteless tracts for 40 years before reaching the edge of the promised land, but could not go there with his people.

But as if a light in his mind spread like a fire in his heart, and with an animated face his voice began to rise, culminating in a vivid image: “But I’ve been to the mountain top, and seen the promised land.” Then came the throb of rising crescendo he shouted out, with tears in his eyes, “I may not get there with you. But we as a people will get there!” Then he nearly fainted and had to be led back to his seat on the podium. Pandemonium had broken out in the congregation.

I believe King was imagining his own demise. You could see the foreboding on his face, in his voice, even in his watering eyes as he spoke. Yet his imagination stretched beyond the shiver of mortal brink. The spiritual contour of his vision was fully aligned with Scripture’s insistence that death lacks final authority. His hope inhabited the great Apostle’s jubilant provocation: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

Some insist this speech was the greatest of his life—fuller, more comprehensive even than his famous “Dream” speech. We forget that less than three weeks after his soaring oratory at the Lincoln Memorial—with a quarter million attending—he was summoned back to Alabama for the grisly task of burying four children violently murdered by a terrorist’s bomb at 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Now in Memphis, he was soberly aware that for too many the dream was still a nightmare.

Sure enough, the next day, on 4 April, an assassin’s bullet found his throat. His misgivings of the night before were well founded.

But his was a constellating light, one that transcended his own dire anxiety. He was telling his listeners—he is instructing us now, even from that distance—that the road to peace, rooted in justice, tempered with mercy, difficult and dangerous as it would yet be, would direct and sustain the people after his breathly life faded.

You could hear the echo of Dr. King’s speech in the recent record-setting 25-hour speech in the US Senate chamber, where Cory Booker valiantly predicted that “the power of the people” is greater than the power of racist extremists.

This, for people of faith in the Manner of Jesus, is Resurrection’s imprint on the content and character of our lives.

As preparation for Holy Week, I urge you to listen again to that speech. You can hear it (audio only, 43:14) in its entirety here; or you can listen to about half (22:14) of the speech along with photos, video clips and commentary from some of his colleagues at this link; or an abbreviated 2+ minute portion.

We are in great need of recovering this disconcerting history as an antidote to the way Dr. King’s legacy been homogenized and domesticated and usurped by consumer and patriotic forces wanting to forget that this subversive struggle continues, as does the resistance it engenders. As my mentor and friend Walker Knight insisted, “Peace, like war, is waged.”

§  §  §

§  §  §

Penitential hymn. “Come Ye Disconsolate.” —Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway

§  §  §

Ignite in us again the Word that stirs insurrection
against every imperial reign

Dr. King’s 4 April 1968 assassination contemporizes the trials of Lent and the context of Holy Week. His provocation remains.

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 confess, O 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 the White House and big house and church house alike has been reduced to polite platitude, “race relations” Sundays and gushy, mushy reverie.

Hear this, O People of the Dream: It is good and right that you recall the memory of 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, a light that fires resolve, strengthening and directing our feet.

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!”

Ken Sehested, inspired by 1 Samuel 2:1–8; Isaiah 11:3–9; Joel 2:19–26; Zephaniah 3:19; Luke 1:51-53; Luke 4:18–19; Revelation 21:1-4; Romans 8:19-24. Final line from “Life Every Voice and Sing” (aka “The Negro National Anthem”) by James Weldon Johnson.

§  §  §

Benediction. “Now the war is not over, victory isn’t won / And we’ll fight on to the finish, then when it’s all done / We’ll cry glory, oh glory (Glory, glory).” —John Legend and Common, “Glory,” theme song for the 2014 film “Selma” which portrays the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march

#  #  #

 

A meditation on faithful living in a land filled with frightful prospects

Ken Sehested

Note: I wrote an earlier version of this article (“Dueling spirits are loose in the land: A meditation on the pandemic and the outbreak of political infamy”) in June 2000 when the COVID-19 epidemic wrought infectious fear and trembling, coinciding with the pestilence of President Trump’s first term in office. Some copy has been edited and added in this updated version.

Processional. “Psalm 116: How can I repay the Lord.” —Poor Clares and Pauline Sisters, Lusaka, Zambia

Call to worship. “At the center of our pain, we glimpse a fairer world and hear a call. When we are able to keep company with our own fears and sorrows, we are shown the way to go, our parched lives are watered, and the earth becomes a greener place. Hope begins to grow, and we are summoned to the work that will give us a feeling of wellness and make possible that which we envision.” —Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope

§  §  §

I will likely be considered antiquated, maybe maniacal, even apoplectic when I say we in the US (with derivative outbreaks elsewhere) are under the spell of the demonic, of those who worship retribution’s demand for sacrificial blood, specifically the silencing and vilifying of dissenters and the coercion of allies and demonizing of opponents.

It is characterized by the bullying of those who do not politically genuflect in our current administration’s presence, of any and all who stand in the way of their imperial designs. Who claim authority to divide the world into makers and takers, to shape all reality in service to the ruthless pursuit of the will to power, power being the elixir of indefinite, everlasting rule of the strong over the weak, the privileged over the disdained, the worthy over the sordid—and claiming that such logic is built into the grain of the universe.

Which, implicitly or explicitly, makes a theological claim: God made it this way.

Not just the claim to rule, but also a despising and revulsion of the frail, all of who are to be sacrificed as burnt offering to an unholy, odious, heinous god, a god who revels in caging children, who threatens fire from (nuclear) heavens, who shrugs at the sight of human suffering, pandemics, genocidal suppression, and ecological devastation, who laughs at every attempt of impeachment, whose word is less than worthless, whose every step is concealed in deceit, whose smiling face tells lies at every turn, whose law has become a license for infamy.

It’s the cost of doing business. Nothing personal. Agree to payola and, suddenly, you’re whole. Such have no friends, only interests. No allies, only exigent collaborators. Welcome to the politics of pandemonium and perfidy.

§  §  §

Parenthesis: Yom HaShoah is the Holocaust remembrance day for the Jewish community, beginning this year at sunset on 23 April. In many quarters, the language of Yom HaShoah is used instead of “holocaust” because the latter is a Greek word indicating a sacrificial burnt offering as a gift to god. In our day and in our land, it is the disinherited who are designated for holocaust, as when shadow-president Elon Musk refers to the “parasite class” and others as the “takers” as distinguished from the morally upright “makers.”

When money rules, poverty is sin.

§  §  §

But then, “The Word came to me, saying: ‘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 extorted the immigrant’” (cf. Ezekiel 22).

Nevertheless, the rapacious laugh at the thought: “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” (Psalm 73:11) Which is to say, scream all you want; none hears the cries of the despoiled. Your God has hung a “do not disturb” sign on Heaven’s door.

You are left to your own retched destiny of grief. Pray only that your death be swift, your memory forgotten. In truth, as 20^th century philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand asserted, “altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism” and “the pursuit of happiness” (in “The Virtue of Selfishness”).

§  §  §

Word. “The history of the world, my sweet / Is who gets eaten, and who gets to eat.” —Sweeney Todd to Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler

§  §  §

The Ancient of Days wails, “How long? How long will your priests barter righteous to the highest bidder? How long will your prophets pander lies and abide deceit?” (cf. Jeremiah 23:26) How long will you hoard what is not yours! (cf. Habakkuk 2:6).

Those used for target practice, as grist for the mill, as anglers’ bait and fodder for canons cry out, backed against the wall: “How long, O Lord? How long!” (Job 8:2, 18:2, 19:2; Psalm 4:2, 6:3, 13:1-2, 35:17, 62:3, 74:9-10, 74:22, 79:5, 80:4, 82:2, 89:46, 90:13, 94:3, 119:84; Isaiah 6:11; Jeremiah 4:21, 12:4; Habakkuk 1:2)

Judgment awaits those who “plunder many nations, because of human bloodshed and violence to the earth” (Habakkuk 3:6-8). For “I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice, for these people do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty (Malachi 3:5).

Because “In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. . . . Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor” (Ezekiel 28:16-17).

“There are those,” writes the author of Proverbs, “whose teeth are swords, whose teeth are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth” (30:14).

Kindred, a cacophony of spirits is loose in the land. We must “Test the spirits to see which is from God” (1 John 4:1); and then loudly, vigorously announce your conclusions in the public square.

Within your assemblies, be persistent in considering how to incite one another—to provoke, stimulate, spur, encourage, stir up to love and good works, to fulfilling the demands of justice (Hebrews 10:24), the prerequisites of peace, all of which are mediated by the imperative of mercy.

Stand, O Mortal, in the watchtower and scan the horizon. “For there is still a vision which will eclipse the ways of the wicked. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come” (cf. Habakkuk 2:1-3).

In the midst of this present turmoil, seek out the quiet of your heart’s deepest region. A Sheltering Wing dwells there and a Guiding Hand—not to escort you from history’s bloody stage, but through it, through and to that far horizon foretold in our defining prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-10); and Holy Writ’s final promise, of the coming day when all tears will be dried and death itself will be devoured (Revelation 21:4).

§  §  §

Benediction. “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” —character in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

Recessional. “When I can’t run anymore, I will walk / When I can’t walk anymore, I may stumble / When I stumble sometimes, I might fall / And down on my knees, I will crawl / Yes down on my knees, I will crawl / I will walk in the light and in the darkness / I will walk in a crowd and all alone / I will walk in the sun, in the pouring rain / But I know I will find my way home / I know I will find my way home.”  — Eli “Paperboy” Reed, “My Way Home”

#  #  #

Lent is the season to sort out the gods.

Ken Sehested
Text: Philippians 3:17-4:1

Invocation.  “Lovers of the world unite / bound to Creator’s vision, bright / that even these our darkest nights / become the light become the light.” — “Hope Beyond All Hope,” Alana Levandoski

§  §  §

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.

On the very day of his assassination in Memphis, Dr. King called his office at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta to give them his coming Sunday’s sermon title. That sermon title was this: “Why America may be going to hell.” By the time of that fateful day, King’s popularly among the general public had tanked, particularly in the previous 12 months since his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York City. After that speech, loudly condemning the war, most of his supporters among white liberals vanished. He was bitterly criticized by more than a few leaders in the civil rights movement. His clear linkage between domestic oppression and international aggression suddenly turned his fame into infamy. Dr. King recognized that the goals of voting rights, integrated schools and buses and lunch counters, were too tame. Something more fundamental was at stake. That’s when he began speaking more directly about predatory capitalism.

And when he did . . . well, you know the old aphorism: Now he done quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’!

Just so, what is needed from the community of faith is that its preachin’ includes meddlin’—meddling in the ways money becomes the supreme arbiter of value, in which case the poor and the weak become expendable. What is at stake in this moment in history is more than our democratic norms, the rule of law, maybe the very soul of our nation. This is a profoundly spiritual struggle.

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 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.

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 Lent?

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.

Lent’s labor 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! Lent 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.

Lenten observance is simply the recognition, followed by corrective measures, that pipes can get clogged; moving parts need lubrication; bodies, in need of medical intervention; cracks exposed and rot replaced.

Remembering that you are dust is not an insult, for such is the very stuff of the universe, ordered and animated in God’s own delight. 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, which Missy mentioned last Sunday: What does it mean to draw near to the heart of God?

§  §  §

Prepping for Tenebrae. “My harp is turned to grieving / and my flute to the voice of those who weep.  / Spare me, O Lord, / for my days are as nothing.” —English translation of “Versa est in luctum” by Alonso Lobo, 16^th century composer, performed by Tenebrae Choir conducted by Nigel Short 

§  §  §

And what, you may ask, does calling out dictators have to do with drawing near to the heart of God?

This juxtaposition seems senseless and contorted. Oil and water. Material and spiritual. Doesn’t this confuse piety and politics? And with today’s text, two things are connected in ways that seem preposterous: gods and bellies. Are you kidding me?! Gods and bellies! Can there be a more ridiculous pairing of words?

This is the very point where our piety has too frequently abandoned the very meaning of holiness. So let me see if I can clarify.

In short: To be holy is to be made whole. To draw near to the heart of God is to enter into God’s delight over the created order and into God’s pathos, God’s own grief over a world gone amok. On the one hand, we are called to recognize and proclaim the beauty of what God has created. On the other hand, to accompany the Spirit into God’s grief and anguish is to come alongside those afflicted by the business end of the gun barrel, the pointed end of the knife, the bludgeoning end of the billy club.

This kind of piety—which is rooted in beauty, not duty—prompts us to live in compassionate proximity with those who are shamed, disfigured, silenced, or abandoned. When we experience the loveliness of God—when we draw near to the heart of God—we become lovely, most expressly with those for whom love and care have been suspended.

There are limitless ways to do this, of course, some very ordinary and familiar and nearby; some more ambitious or dramatic or faraway. Integral to our work is to train our attention both to the earth’s beauty and the world’s disfigurement. Sometimes we are called to go beyond our comfort zones, to get ourselves in “good trouble,” to call out injustice or call in the wounded.

Hear this, you Little Flock of Jesus: Trouble is when we go with the people we love. The imposition of Ash Wednesday is not an act of subservience, like a supplicant to a monarch. It is to allow our appetites for fatty foods and sugary colas to be corrected.

In the so-called “real” world, the market insists that we are what we consume; that we are utterly alone, with no covenants, no lasting relationships, no communal bonds. The market’s propaganda says might makes right; that only the strong survive; that you keep what you can seize; that the rich take what they want and the poor suffer what they must.

Lent is our iconoclastic season, to sort out the gods. In particular, Lent’s interrogation is to examine the relationship between gods and bellies. To examine the ways our appetites are serving, or have been severed from, our relationship to the One who alone is worthy, the One who both delights in creation’s sacred status but also grieves over the ways humanity has been warped by inhumane loyalties, desecrated neighbors, and nature itself.

So, let me sum all this up as make our journey with Jesus to Jerusalem: In the immortal words of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, “Carry on. Love is coming. Love is coming for us all.”

Live accordingly. Do the truth. In times of trouble, come what may, return again to the Love that will not let you go.

§  §  §

 

Benediction. “All the pain that you have known  / All the violence in your soul  / All the ‘wrong’ things you have done  / I will take from you when I come.” —Sinéad O’Connor, “This Is to Mother You”

Recessional. “Verbovaya Doschechka.” —Ukrainian folk song, with 94 violinists from 29 countries collaborating on this rendition

#  #  #

Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville NC, 16 March 2025, Lent 2