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3 April 2015  •  No. 16
Good Friday  •  Pesach

¶ Invocation. “Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. / Those who seek God shall never go wanting. / God alone fills us.” —Listen to the Taizé chant “Nada Te Turbe,” based on the mystical writing of the Spanish mystic, St. Teresa of Avila (aka Teresa of Jesus). This past week marked the 500th anniversary of her birth. Teresa was canonized 40 years after her death and, together, with Catherine of Siena, was declared a “Doctor of the Church” by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

¶ Hopeful news. Some 40 faith leaders across the width of Christian denominational lines have published a Holy Week letter calling for an abolition of the death penalty in the United States.
        “We urge governors, prosecutors, judges and anyone entrusted with power to do all that they can to end a practice that diminishes our humanity and contributes to a culture of violence and retribution without restoration,” the group said in a statement released the week Christians around the world commemorate the suffering and execution of Jesus leading up to Easter.
        “We especially ask public officials who are Christian to join us in the solidarity of prayer this week as we meditate on the wounds of injustice that sicken our society,” the statement said.

Artwork by Sydney M.

¶ This week is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Billie Holiday, nicknamed “Lady Day,” who had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing, bringing unsurpassed emotional heft and creative tempo to her music. Among her best known recordings is “Strange Fruit” , a soulful expose of lynching,  written by Abel Meeropol. Meeropol and his wife Anne adopted Michael and Robert, the two young children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after they were convicted and executed for treason.

¶ Last week’s “Signs of the Times” noted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s race-baiting comments as national elections began. There is also another story to be told, though not in the interest of “balance.” (The first step in any equitable resolution of conflict is to analyze the relative relationships of power among disputing parties; and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there is anything but equity.) Nevertheless, clear-eyed assessment must take into account all the brutal facts.
        “One has to go out of one’s way in Denmark to find a synagogue to terrorize—the country has only a few thousand Jews. And one has to go out of one’s way in France to find a kosher market to attack. The terrorizing of the grocery in east Paris [where four Jews were murdered] was not a ‘random act of violence,’ as President Obama oddly suggested. Nor was the February shooting of Dan Uzan outside a Copenhagen synagogue” or “the killing of four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels or in the murder of a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. A vicious anti-Semitism persists on the streets of Europe as well as in the Middle East and on the Internet.” —“Still targeted,” Christian Century editorial

¶ Traveling with an interfaith delegation to Iraq in 2000, to assess the impacts of US-led sanctions, I didn’t realize until it was too late that my passport had an Israeli visa stamp. At the time, Iraq didn’t allow any person with such into their country. By means of a chemical bath, I managed to erase the ink of my Israeli entry stamp but not the exit. An attempted disguise didn’t fool the Iraqi border guard, and I very nearly had to hitchhike the 500 miles back to Amman, Jordan. Luckily our driver, who had made this trip dozens of time, was quick on his feet—a small bribe secured my entry.

¶ On that same trip, Iraq’s foreign minister agreed to meet with us—but only four of us. Our delegation elected our representatives, one of whom was a rabbi, the first rabbi allowed entry into the country since the 1991 Gulf War. The foreign minister’s office refused. We discussed this stipulation and finally agreed to say, OK, if the rabbi can’t come, none of us will come. It worked.

¶ It was Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt who coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem,” describing the composure, during his trial, of the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) leader Adolph Eichmann who managed the logistics of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the genocidal plan to eliminate the Jewish people. What was most striking about Eichmann, says Arendt, was that he expressed neither guilt nor hatred; that he was neither beastly nor sadistic and was judged fully sane by a psychiatrist; that he endlessly insisted that he was only following orders; that what he did was fully legal; that he was only doing his job—all of which is true, which makes it all the more frightening.

¶ In Scripture, “sin” is rendered in several ways with several nuanced meanings, thus needing several synonyms. I think the most significant, and most overlooked, way to capture the meaning is cluelessness, which aligns with what Arendt meant about the banality of evil. Such evil is not so much the result of intentional or heinous brutality but of heedless, negligent, inattentive action oblivious to the context of history and social circumstance—being blind, sometimes innocently, sometimes willfully, typically a mixture of both.

¶ Some of my favorite quotes from Hannah Arendt:
        •"Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.”
        •“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.”
        •"Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it."
        •“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
        •“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
        •“I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.”

Illustration (left) from the 14th century Kaufmann Haggadah.

¶ The Jewish observance of Passover (Pesach) begins this week, starting Friday 3 April at sundown and lasting for seven days (the 15th-22nd of the Hebrew month of Nissan). The date moves around on the Gregorian calendar because the traditional Jewish calendar is lunar rather than solar. The Jewish calendar loses about 11 days relative to the solar calendar every year, but makes up for it by adding a month every two or three years. The Muslim calendar is also is lunar but does not add months, which is why Ramadan circles the calendar.
        Passover commemorates the Hebrew escape from the Egyptian Pharaoh’s brickyards. They left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread dough to rise. In commemoration, for the duration of Passover no leavened bread is eaten, for which reason Passover was called the feast of unleavened bread in the Torah or Old Testament. Thus Matzo (flat unleavened bread) is eaten during Passover and it is a tradition of the holiday.
        The Hebrew verb "pasàch" is first mentioned in the book of Exodus (12:23) and is generally understood to refer to God’s “passing over” the houses of the Hebrews during the final of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. The term may also refer to the lamb or goat designated as the Passover sacrifice.

¶ Yom HaShoah (aka “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” more formally “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day”) is observed one week after the end of Passover, this year beginning at sundown on Wednesday 15 April, the date linked to the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Increasingly, the word Shoah (“calamity”) is preferred because holocaust has historical roots in the Hebrew word olah, meaning “completely burnt offering to God,” with the implication that Jews and other “undesirables” murdered by the Nazis during World War II were a sacrifice to God.

¶ In November 2005 the United Nations created the Holocaust Outreach Programme, designating an international Holocaust Remembrance Day observance for 27 January, the day in 1945 when the Auschwitz death camp in Poland was liberated.

¶ Web resources. “The Path to Nazi Genocide,”  (38-minutes, produced by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum) is a good primer on that history. Here is a poignant four-minute rendition of Schubert’s “Serenade” playing over photos from the Final Solution. “Keep the Memory Alive”  is well-produced video (8:45 minutes) interview with a Holocaust survivor using photos and animation, created specifically for use in an assembly with primary school children.

¶ Profession of faith. “I have looked our destruction, our miserable end, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love of life has not been diminished. I am not bitter or rebellious, or in any way discouraged. . . . My life has been extended by death, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.” —Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life (A Dutch Jew, Hillesum died at age 29 in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, in 1943. Her story been referred to as the adult counterpart to that of Anne Frank.

¶ Here I stand. “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” —Elie Wiesel

¶ “Klezmer,” the traditional music of Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, is sometimes referred to as “Jewish roots music”. One beautiful example, “Shnirele Perele,” is a Yiddish folksong whose provenance is uncertain. Some say it originated from a Jewish religious source, Got fun Avrom, a woman’s prayer at the end of Shabbat (Sabbath), and some attribute the song to Rabbi Levi Yitzchok (1740-1810), a Hasidic rabbi. Watch a beautiful rendition of the song (with displayed lyrics) by the Klezmaniacs.

¶ Good Friday? There are a host of explanations as to how “good” came to be attached to Holy Weeks’ “Friday.” (Germans use the word Karfreitag, “Sorrowful Friday,” which seems more straightforward.) Maybe the ironic modifier “good” simply lends itself to creative exploration. Maybe Good Friday represents the commitment we carry in the midst of the collision between sorrow and joy, despair and hope, imperial aspiration and the one Lordship that undermines all lording, Pax Romana and Pax Christi.
        The irony continues to this day to play out in a host of circumstances, as in this recent story.
        MidAmerica Nazarene University chaplain Randy Beckum has been relieved of some of his duties because of a “controversial sermon,” where he suggested that “Christians should take seriously Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies and by his questioning of Christians’ use of violence.” —Patheos

¶ “Practice resurrection.” If you haven’t read it in a while (or never), see Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”

Artwork (right) by Kaki Roberts.

¶ Preach it. “Let him easter in us. . . .” —Gerard Manly Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland"

¶ Lection for Sunday next includes a text from the early church’s vision of what practicing resurrection looks like. “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” —Acts 4.32

¶ Altar call. “Clarence [Jordan] viewed the resurrection as God's refusal to stay on the other side of the grave. ‘He raised Jesus, not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die, but as a declaration that He himself has now established permanent residence on earth," Clarence said.  "The resurrection places Jesus on this side of the grave, here and now, in the midst of this life.  The Good News of the resurrection is not that we shall die and go home with him but that he is risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.’" —Dallas Lee, Cotton Patch Evidence

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

      • “The Top 10 Reasons You Know It’s the Sunday After Easter"

      • “Draw near,” a litany for worship

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

26 March 2015  •  No. 15

¶ Invocation. It’s not the Muslim, not the Jew, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. —old spiritual, new verse

¶ Amazing. Renewable energy sources “now generate nearly half of Nicaragua's electricity, a figure that government officials predict could rise to 80 percent within a few years. That compares to just 13 percent in the United States. . . . There is so much untapped energy in Nicaragua that it's planning to export electricity to its Central American neighbors.” —John Otis, "Nicaragua's Renewable Energy Revolution Picks Up Steam”

¶ The message from Eduardo came with the asunto [subject] line “First time ever!!!!” followed by several photos, taken at the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People office in Ciego de Avila, where the St. Paul, Minnesota-based Global Volunteers delegation presented an American flag as a gesture of hope for reconciliation. Rev. Eduardo Gonzalez (at left, center, back row), pastor of Iglesia Bautista Enmanuel, served as the local host.
        A gringo friend, Stan Dotson, currently teaching in Cuba who’s been able to travel throughout the island nation, reports that US President Barack Obama’s 17 December 2014 announcement reestablishing diplomatic ties with Cuba has been received with enthusiasm by people across the political spectrum (including the politically indifferent).

¶ Several pieces of legislation have been submitted in the US Senate and House calling for an end to US-Cuba travel restrictions and the US embargo. See this summary by the Washington Office on Latin America.

¶ Intercession. “There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.” —Roman Catholic Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa, former bishop in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killed in the war there in 1996

¶ Words of assurance. In 1971 music producer Gavan Bryars was working on a film about people living on the street in London, recording their songs of all sorts. One, by a man whose frail voice sang “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.” Bryars eventually turned those 13 bars of music into a loop, slowly adding Tom Waits’ voice on top and in harmony, then slowly adding orchestral accompaniment. It is a haunting tune (especially for a Tom Waits fan like myself) to which I’ve listened numerous times as a kind of extended meditation.
        There are versions on the web in several lengths, including a four-minute version , a 20-minute version, and a one hour 14-minute version (the latter available on CD).
       For more of the intriguing story behind this music, see Matthew Archbold’s “The True Story Behind One of the Most Beautiful Hymns I’ve Ever Heard.”

¶ Foot washing. Some years ago, in a visit to our partner congregation in Cuba, our hosts asked us to plan and lead their Wednesday worship service. We chose to focus on the Gospel of John’s “Lord’s Supper” account, where there is no ritual bread and wine observance, only Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. We asked Iglesia Getsemani leaders if we might do a foot washing ritual and found out they had been previously been discussing this. (Pictured at right are two of our members washing the feet of Rev. Angela Hernandez, Iglesia Getsemani’s pastor.)

¶ Lection for Maundy Thursday. “Jesus, knowing that the Abba had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet. . . . After he had washed their feet . . . he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’” —John 13:3-5, 12

¶ Foot washing will alter your point of view. “It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles” by Meister des Hausbuches, 1475, Gemäldegalerie art museum, Berlin, Germany

¶ Preach it. “Maundy means commandment; it’s Commandment Thursday. Jesus expression should be serious.” Unfortunately, “the lectionary gives us only the beginning of Jesus’ farewell discourse. His later words in chapter 14-17 clarify the provocative washing of feet and declaring of a new commandment. He speaks of joy: ‘I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete’” [15:10-11]. —David Keck, “Living the Word,” The Christian Century

¶ Disingenuous confession. The modern form of evasive apology by public figures gives the appearance but not the substance of confession. All are variations on the theme of “I’m sorry if my comments offended anyone,” which is to slyly say it’s your fault if you were offended. (See Edwin Battistella’s “The Art of the Political Apology” for more on this topic.)
        Case in point: This week’s “apology” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his Election Day race-baiting broadcast that “Arab voters are coming in droves to the ballot boxes” and that “left-wing NGOs [non-governmental organizations] are bringing them in buses.” Then, back-tracking on Monday after his reelection, he said “I know the things I said . . . offended some of Israel’s citizens, hurt Arab citizens. I had no intention whatsoever that would happen.” [Approximately 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arab.]
        He also said his election-eve vow to block the creation of a Palestinian state was misunderstood. However, the Likud Party (Netanyahu is its elected leader) Platform states that “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

¶ Regret is not repentance. Rather, “regret” is often a self-centered sentiment designed to draw attention away from the situation of harm and blind to the requirements of repair.

¶ “Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.” —2 Corinthians 7:10

¶ This, on the other hand, is more like a real confession, though there’s no mention of repairing the damage and though the change isn’t as great as some of us would like. “The former president of Bob Jones University (BJU), one of the nation’s bastions of Christian fundamentalism, has apologized for comments he made in 1980 that gays and lesbians should be stoned to death.”
       “I cannot erase [those words], but I wish I could,” said Bob Jones III (grandson of the school’s founder), who retired in 2005, in response to a petition by an informal network of 2,000 LGBT alumni/ae and their supporters asking him to recant his 1980 statement. —Religious News Service

¶ When Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist congregation on the American continent, was banished by his fellow Puritan leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, the first of four charges against him was that he held "that we have not our land by patent [land grant] from the king, but that the natives are the true owners of it, and that we ought to repent of such a receiving of it by patent."

¶ There’s no getting over a certain foreboding in Holy Week liturgies (the “Triduum” of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday), including a dimly-lit Tenebrae (literally, “shadows”) service which typically ends in total darkness and silent recessional. We need a reminder that Jesus didn’t die of a heart attack; that he sweat blood trying to figure out an alternative to what by now seemed inevitable; that his closest friends deserted him. He was executed, in the most publicly shameful manner available, as the Roman Empire’s terror-inspiring warning against all insurgent aims.
        If Holy Week’s schedule gets wearisome, take an irreverent break to ponder God’s burden in abiding our pontifical attention: a new poem, "Raucous."

Cross at left hand-painted by artists at the Kairos Community Center, Matanzas, Cuba.

¶ Preparations for Holy Week and Easter. The brutal violence afflicting citizens of Aleppo, Syria, brings to mind another, even longer-standing (and sometimes violent) conflict within the church: When to celebrate Easter? That conflict is based on differing opinions regarding the lunar calendar, dates of the Jewish Passover observance, and a 16th century switch in the Western church from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Most years, the Eastern and Western churches observe Easter on different Sundays—often a week apart, sometimes as much as a month, and occasionally on the same day (as in 2010, 2011, 2014, not again until 2017).

¶ In 1997 the World Council of Churches sponsored a parlay in Aleppo in hopes of uniting the global Christian community’s observance. Easter would be defined as the first Sunday following the first astronomical full moon following the astronomical vernal equinox, as determined from the meridian of Jerusalem. This reform has not yet been implemented. (Maybe because it’s too confusing?)

¶ Egad! “Fistfights broke out yesterday between Christians gathered [at the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem], the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ,” according to a 2004 story in The Guardian. There was lots of hitting going on. Israeli police called in to quell the minor riot were hit. “There were a lot of people with bloodied faces.” Theological-ecclesial competitors (does this sound familiar?) have resorted to fisticuffs before and since. Here’s a video of a monk-brawl at the Holy Sepulcher in 2008.

¶ Don’t be surprised when you walk down the aisle of your local CVS to find that the company has decided to do its part in supporting our troops. For $3.99, you can buy a package of camouflage-colored Easter eggs, with matching green and white armed plastic soldiers—the “toy prizes” are just like the jellybeans of Easters past and, according to CVS, “Perfect for Easter egg hunts.” —Nancy Aykanian, “CVS Makes War on Easter,” Common Dreams

¶ Hard to stay focused. On Easter Sunday 2013 the Baylor University (mascot: bear) women’s basketball team played in the NCAA quarterfinals for the national championship. The Waco, Texas, Grace Baptist Church sign that day read: “He is risen /  Go Lady Bears.”

¶ Hershey’s wants a piece of Easter action, too, with a milk chocolate cross. (I didn’t see a fair trade dark chocolate option.)

¶ In the movie Son of God, Jesus is played by Diogo Margado “who plays the title role with a gleaming smile and a surfer-dude vibe.” —USA Today movie review

¶ “As E.B. White watched his wife Katherine planning the planting of bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life, he wrote, ‘there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance . . . the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.’
       "Katherine was a member of the resurrection conspiracy, the company of those who plant seeds of hope under dark skies of grief or oppression, going about their living and dying until, no one knows how, when or where, the tender Easter shoots appear, and a piece of creation is healed." —Robert Raines

¶ “Get an Exclusive Coupon on this Cute ALLYOU Easter Craft Kit.”

¶ "To preach to the powerful without denouncing oppression is to promise Easter without Calvary, forgiveness without conversion, and healing without cleansing the wound." —"From What We Have Seen and Heard: A Pastoral Letter on Evangelization From the Black Bishops of the United States," 1984

¶ Altar call. “It is likely that there can be no resurrections by proxy. Each person and each generation may be called to stand anew at the river.” —Vincent Harding, Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement

Art at left ©Julie Lonneman

¶ Closing hymn. “There ain’t no grave can hold my body down.” —Johnny Cash

¶ Benediction. “As Tashi Johnson [in Alice Walker's novel Possessing the Secret of Joy] goes to the firing squad, punishment for fighting the edicts of history, her sisters unfurl a banner before the soldiers can stop them. ‘Resistance is the secret of joy,’ it says in huge block letters. 'There is a roar as if the world cracked open and I flew inside,' says Tashi upon seeing the banner. ‘I am no more. And [am] satisfied.’” —Rose Berger, “Pursuing the Secret of Joy,” Sojourners magazine

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Featured this week on the prayer&politiks site:

• “Easter’s Aftermath,” a poem
• “Raucous,” a new poem, for when piety gets wearisome
• “Bounty and abundance,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 116
• “No Resurrection by Proxy: Open Letter to My Daughter,” Eastertide 1992, during the Gulf War

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

19 March 2015  •  No. 14

¶ Invocation. “Why, when God's world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?” —Rumi

¶ Remarkable news. “South Africa may be one of just 10 countries in the world to permit same-sex marriage—not to mention the only country in Africa—but it is also a place where the assault, rape and murder of lesbians remains a troublingly common issue. At the same time, however, a brave effort is taking shape to counter this hatred and violence. Among the groups leading the charge is Luleki Sizwe, founded in 2005 by Ndumie Funda. The group’s main objective is to put an end to corrective rape—a phenomenon where men rape lesbian women with the belief that it will somehow correct them of their sexuality.” —Ray Mwareya-Mhondera, “South Africa’s brave struggle against lesbian hate crimes”

¶ Good news you likely didn’t hear. An interfaith crowd of more than 1,000 surrounded Oslo, Norway’s main synagogue on Saturday 21 February, chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia.” The event, organized by Muslim youth in the city, was done in solidarity with Norway’s Jewish community on the heels of the murder of two people outside the synagogue the previous week.
        One of the event organizers, 17-year-old Hajrad Arshad, explained that the intention was to make a clear statement that Muslims don’t support anti-Semitism. “We think that after the terrorist attacks in Copenhagen, it is the perfect time for us Muslims to distance ourselves from the harassment of Jews that is happening,” Arshad told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. She noted that the group aimed to “extinguish the prejudices people have against Jews and against Muslims.” [Photo credit: Reuters]

¶ Confession. “Like many people concerned about ‘humanity,’ [European novelist Arthur Koestler] was contemptuous of actual humans. —description of Koestler by Christopher Caldwell, in a review of Michael Scammel’s Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, New York Times Book Review

¶ Words of assurance. “If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await God's mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer. Our peace, our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace.” —Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

Art at left ©Miranda Hassett.

¶ Prayers of intercession. “Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”  —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

¶ Congratulations! This year is the 25th anniversary of the historic American With Disabilities Act of 1990—though churches were exempted from its provisions. A coalition of faith groups is seeking 2,500 faith communities to formally pledge (prior to 26 July) their commitment to full implementation of the Act’s provisions. Consider putting this initiative to your congregation. Even if you’re already in compliance, there is pastoral value in having this conversation. You can find the pledge here. Among the campaign’s co-sponsors are:
        •The Collaborative on Faith and Disability, a clearinghouse for ongoing projects, best practices, upcoming events and other resources addressing topics at the intersection of disability, spirituality and faith communities.
        • The Interfaith Disability Advocacy Coalition, a program of the American Association of People with Disabilities, has produced church resources to raise awareness about ways to expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
        •The ADA National Network has a Facebook page for idea sharing, questions, activities and other resources including links to faith and disability program websites. —information from Baptist News Global Today

¶ Americans With Disabilities Act meets Women’s History Month: The Helen Keller you never knew. Helen Keller is most often depicted simply as a courageous individual who overcame the severe phyisical obstacles of being deaf and blind. But that’s not half the story.
       Newspaper photo (right) of Helen Keller joining the actors’ strike picket line at the premiere of the silent film “Deliverance,” about her own life.
       “Helen Keller worked throughout her long life to achieve social justice; she was an integral part of many social movements in the 20th century,” writes Ruth Shagoury in “Who Stole Helen Keller?”  But she was also an activist and author, writing frequently on disability and class, socialism, women, and war.
        “On August 18th, 1919, Helen Keller took part in a strike called by Actor’s Equity—joining the picket line against the debut of the silent film Deliverance, about her own life. Not only did she join in the picket line, she spoke at the union’s strike meetings in support of their dispute with management regarding their wages. She declared she would 'rather have the film fail than aid the managers in their contest with the players.' (The New York Call also was the first newspaper to publish Keller’s article, “How I Became a Socialist,” in 1912.)"

¶ Disabilities of a different sort. “In response to a racist chant by a group of fraternity brothers the president of Oklahoma University acted quickly to denounce their actions. That was good. There absolutely needed to be accountability for using hateful and horrific language.
        “But then the predictable pattern fell into place. It was the same old triple crown of punishment for a failing. Blame ‘em, shame ‘em and shun ‘em.
        “What if the OU president had said, ‘What happened is deplorable. There are consequences. We will not tolerate any language that denigrates or disrespects anyone, regardless of race, religion, gender or class. Yet we are aware that we all suffer from living within a racist and biased culture of prejudices. We are in this together. The students will remain on campus so that we can learn together. Together we will learn about the paralyzing systems of injustice that bind and constrict us. Together we will seek to discover a mercy that unites us and strengthens us to change for the common good.’” —Nancy Hastings Sehested in last Sunday's sermon, “Astounded by Forgiveness”

¶ It is painful, but I do believe we need to hear the un-bleeped video version of that fraternity pep rally-like chant (sung to a tune eerily similar to “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands”). And I do believe we need to read the uncensored lyrics: “There will never be a nigger SAE [Sigma Alpha Epsilon] / There will never be a nigger SAE / You can hang ‘em from a tree, but it will never start with me / There will never be a nigger SAE.”

¶ Can't make this %#!@ up. Thankfully, social media outrage prompted retailer T.J. Maxx to pull these "hang loose noose" t-shirts.

¶ Hymn of petition. Mercy Now  by Mary Gauthier. This version uses photos from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, whose 10th anniversary is this August, a “natural” disaster which exposed—as much as anything else to that point—the “unnatural” divisions of race and class in our nation.

¶ Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror documents Equal Justice Initiative’s multi-year investigation into lynching in twelve Southern states during the period between Reconstruction and World War II. EJI researchers documented 3959 racial terror lynchings of African Americans between 1877 and 1950—at least 700 more lynchings of black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.

¶ In a recent speech, Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson said:
        • “I don’t think slavery ended. I believe it just evolved.”
        • “Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists.”
        •Some 10,000 children are housed in adult jails and prisons, where they are at least five times more likely to be sexually assaulted than if they were in juvenile facilities.

¶ Here’s an “extended” interview with Stevenson by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”  (It’s worth enduring the open ad.)

¶ Two books that bring to the surface the structural racism of our nation’s criminal justice system. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is the go-to book documenting Bryan Stevenson comment (above) that “slavery didn’t end, it just evolved.” According to the New York Times Book Review, Alexander's “book marshals pages of statistics and legal citations to argue that the get-tough approach to crime that began in the Nixon administration and intensified with Ronald Reagan’s declaration of the war on drugs has devastated black America."
        Where Alexander’s book provides a rigorous analysis of how “slavery has evolved” (as Stevenson says), Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption tells concrete stories. The Washington Post says Stevenson “surely has done as much as any other living American to vindicate the innocent and temper justice with mercy for the guilty.”

¶ Here’s an interview of Alexander by Stephen Colbert on “The Colbert Report.”

¶ Some words are worth a thousand pictures. “Nothing sucks more about prison than missing the people who own beach front property in your heart.” —JEG, prison inmate, in a letter to a former prison chaplain

¶ Some basic facts on prison and race from the American Civil Liberty Union
        •From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people.
        •The US is 5% of the World population and has 25% of world prisoners.
        •African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population.
        •African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.
        •Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population.
        •About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug.
        •Although five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites.

¶ McAfee School of Theology student Jordan Yeager (pictured at left, photo by David Garber) has been an advocate on behalf of Georgia death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner whose execution was postponed last week. David Garber, McAfee associate professor of Old Testament and Hebrew and the faculty advisor for the Certificate in Theological Studies for women at the Arrendale State Prison, said “Many students have written eloquent papers on capital punishment and on restorative justice” during the run-up and aftermath to Gissendale’s scheduled execution. —Baptist News Global Today

¶ The good news is that out-of-control prison costs have forced conservatives and liberals to agree on commonsensical alternatives. And Texas is leading the way. It began with Texas attorney Marc Levin, who has become one of the nation's leading advocates of conservative criminal-justice reform. “How is it 'conservative' to spend vast amounts of taxpayer money on a strategy without asking whether it is providing taxpayers with the best public safety return on their investment?" In 2007 Texas legislators voted to spend an eighth of a proposed $2 billion prison budget increase on drug courts and rehabilitative programs for addicts and mentally ill prisoners. Since then the state’s incarceration rate has fallen by 20% and crime rate is at its lowest since 1968.

¶ Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants. —Harry Whittington, former member of the Texas Board of Corrections and the bonding authority that builds prisons.

¶ Every pastoral agent—clergy and lay leaders alike—should become familiar with the phrase “restorative justice.” For a start, get a copy of Howard Zehr’s The Little Book of Restorative Justice ($4.95) and bookmark the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice site.
       Retributive justice asks “What law has been broken? Who broke it? How should they be punished?” Restorative justice asks “What harm has been done? What needs to be done to repair the harm? Who is responsible for repairing the harm?” (For more, see “If You Do Well,” Ken Sehested’s sermon on restorative justice.)

¶ Lection for Sunday next. “Jesus entered Jerusalem, then entered the Temple. He looked around, taking it all in. But by now it was late. . . . —Mark 11:11, The Message. The lectionary editors stop short of the rest of the (“I’ll be back”) story.

¶ Preach it. Writing 25 years ago, as if a seer of current headlines, Vincent Harding wrote: “On the harshest national level we saw again that race is like a bone stuck in our throat, refusing both digestion and expulsion, endangering our life. . . . “ This news testifies “to the unmistakable need and desire of our nation to deal with its terrifying and compelling history, to exorcise the demons of our racial past and present, perhaps even to discover the healing possibilities that reside in our many-hued and wounded variations on the human theme.” —Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement

¶ Altar call. “In order to change the world, you sometimes have to choose to do uncomfortable things. You have to choose to be in places that are uncomfortable,” which he calls the “power of proximity.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

¶ Benediction. “Yes, the Pope, who beat Edward Snowden for Time magazine’s [2013] ‘Person of the Year,’ is astonishing. I must admit that even as a secular Jew, this pope fills me with awe. He sneaks out at night to feed the homeless; invites homeless people to celebrate his birthday in the Vatican; washes the feet of young prisoners; says he is not one to judge gay people; calls on the church to get beyond its fixation on reproduction and sexual morality; debunks trickle-down economics and questions the morality of capitalism; lives simply and loves to take public transportation. What a cool guy!” —Medea Benjamin, director of CODEPINK

Featured this week on prayer&politiks:
• “Astounded by Forgiveness,” a sermon by Nancy Hastings Sehested
• “The Palm and the Passion,” a litany for Palm Sunday
• “Confrontation in Jerusalem,” a Palm Sunday sermon
• “If You Do Well,” a sermon on restorative justice
• “Blessed unrest,” a litany for worship

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

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