Recent

by Ken Sehested

        “I’ve slept since then.” That’s my Mom’s go-to line when trying, unsuccessfully, to remember something. After 90 trips around the sun, she says it more frequently.

        “I’ve slept since then” also describes much of the public’s waning attention to the life and legacy of President George H.W. Bush. Given the information overload of our 24/7 news cycles and multiplicity of sources, that marker in our nation’s history is just so yesterday.

        By and large, media arbiters were flush with floral bouquets in their remembrance of the elder Bush. By large consensus, he was a genuinely kind, honest, generous, and loyal man in his interpersonal affairs.

        I understand why heaps of praise were showered. Psychologically, the occasion virtually demanded it be so, given the extreme contrast of past and present political regencies—not to mention the longstanding cultural norm, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, “Of the dead, [say] nothing but good.”

        I haven’t the slightest reason to doubt the witnesses to Bush’s kindly habits. Much has been made of his reluctance to speak in first-person pronouns. You can’t get a more dramatic contrast between this feature of public humility and that of the first-person obsessiveness of the present West Wing occupant, for whom everything is first filtered through his relentless ego and self-preserving interests. He is a man incapable of shame and, in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, does “not know how to blush” (6:15).

§  §  §

“Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.”
—Ezekiel 28:16-19 (see also Isaiah 24:4-6)

§  §  §

        Rabbi A. James Rudin has written about his experience of the elder Bush’s kindness at an interfaith gathering of religious leaders at the Camp David president retreat center, convened by the 41st president.

        “Just as we began our picnic lunch, the president walked into the room carrying his cheeseburger and a glass of milk. By chance there was one open chair remaining at the large table. The president eyed the empty chair before asking the rest of us, ‘Do you mind if I sit here? It seems to be the only vacant seat.’

        “Again, I was tickled that the most powerful person in the world would seek permission to sit at the table with the rest of us.”

        This is an endearing anecdote. Yet something more must also be said.

        Being kind is not enough. Personal magnanimity—including qualities like civility, politeness—has a way of being manipulated for partisan gain. As an analogy, think of the demand for “patience” made in 1963 by white clergy of eight prominent churches in Birmingham, Alabama, calling on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the city’s civil rights movement to be patient in their quest for racial equity. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was an eloquent exposé of the incredulous use of such calls for civility.*

        The biographies of history’s more ruthless leaders reveal numerous accounts of them being generous hosts (to their peers), nice to children, and not kicking their dog.

        To say it another way, can kindness be segregated from doing justice and walking humbly with God, as the Prophet Micah (6:8) insisted? Or, as Robert McAfee Brown noted, maybe doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly are not three separate statements but one statement said in three different ways. Or, why do we effectively embody a reverse the order of the first two elements in this triad: doing (active tense) kindness but merely loving (passive tense) justice?

        Do gracious personal habits exempt any—especially elected officials—from public pursuit of justice?

        I ask for people of faith, of any faith, or no explicit faith at all. The governance of any public polity even vaguely resembling democracy requires a commonweal commitment embedded in a commonwealth vision. It requires integrity—a correspondence and coherence—between personal and public virtue.

§  §  §

“Give rulers your justice, O God. May they defend the cause of the poor,
give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
For your glory, O God, shall encompass the earth.”
—selected from Psalm 72, slightly adapted

§  §  §

        There are more than a few laudatory achievements in George H. W. Bush’s public life, including his four years as president—the first of which was his persevering commitment to public service in various forms. His presidential campaign likely represents the apex, for generations to come, of “kinder, gentler” conservatism. His “thousand points of light” campaign to celebrate small benevolent achievements deserves high regard more than cynical lampooning.

        While a U.S. Congressman, Bush’s vote for the 1968 Fair Housing Act cost him considerable political capital among his Texas constituents. As president, the Clean Air Act, the 1991 Civil Rights Act, and the Americans With Disabilities Act were distinguishing accomplishments of his administration.

        He deserves credit for successfully engaging U.S. leadership in navigating the tense, and globally very dangerous, dismembering of the Berlin Wall, with its far-reaching implications for global restructuring. At Bush’s funeral, retired Senator Alan Simpson reminded us that Bush made the hugely unpopular decision to accept a budget deal with Democrats that reversed his campaign signature pledge—“read my lips, no new taxes”—for the sake of the country’s wellbeing (given the massive deficits run up by President Reagan) even though it may have later cost his reelection.

§  §  §

“By justice a ruler gives a country stability,
but those who are greedy for bribes tear it down.”
—Proverbs 29:4

§  §  §

        Yet there is much in the public record that belies his kindly personal reputation.

        •While campaigning for a Senate seat, he railed against the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act, saying, “The new civil rights act was passed to protect 14% of the people. I’m also worried about the other 86%.”

        •Later, in his 1988 presidential campaign, he paved the way for today’s deluge of racist memes with the infamous “Willie Horton” ad, a sin for which, Lee Atwater, Bush’s campaign manager, apologized before his death. Bush never did.

        •In July 1988, the guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 passengers and crew, before realizing it was a commercial flight. Bush said that he would "never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts are."

        •One year into his presidency, Bush ordered an invasion of Panama to capture one man, the country’s dictator, Manuel Noriega, who, ironically, had been on the CIA payroll under Bush’s tenure as the agency’s director. The U.S. invasion killed hundreds, according to the Pentagon . . . or thousands, according to human rights groups, mostly due to the bombing of poor neighborhoods adjacent to Noriega’s headquarters. Twenty-three U.S. troops and 3 U.S. civilian contractors died in the invasion.

        •While president, Bush pardoned six senior Reagan administration officials, most notably former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for illegally selling arms to Iran (then as now a ranking national enemy) in order to fund a congressionally forbidden “Contra” war against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The pardons likely prevented discovery of Bush’s own knowledge of, and/or participation in, the scandal.

        The list could go on: Bush’s callous disregard during the initial AIDS crisis, helping establish the disease-as-homosexual-sin narrative; inaugurating the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison to keep refugees from Haiti’s military coup out of the U.S.; greatly escalating the so-called War on Drugs and its concomitant splurge in prison construction, inflating prison sentences, resulting in what we now know as The New Jim Crow era of mass incarceration.

        Last on my short list of Bush’s political iniquities was the Persian Gulf War, beginning with the August 1990 deployment of some 650,000 troops (the largest since World War II) to the Arabian Peninsula. Beginning in the wee hours of 17 January and continued for the next forty-two days, the goal was to destroy Iraq’s military capacity, especially in and around Baghdad, and to expel Iraq’s invading army from Kuwait. On average, the US and its allies flew one bombing mission per minute during the war.

        That campaign was brokered on lies and half-truths. The worst hawked the war based on the non-scrutinized testimony of a Kuwaiti teen who testified before Congress, saying Iraqi troops had yanked infants from incubators and left them on the floor to die. Only later did journalists uncover the ruse: the testifier was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S., and her fabricated testimony had been coached by a major U.S. public relations firm.**

        Then began a cascade of unintended consequences, resulting in large part by the crippling of Iraq’s infrastructure—water purification, sanitation, power grid, food distribution—all of which is illegal in international law. Coupled with the U.S.-enforced sanctions, the civilian mortality rate, especially for the young and the old, spiked dramatically. No one can say for sure how many civilians died as a result of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, followed by the sanctions regime, and then the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq (which continues to this day): at a bare minimum, in the hundreds of thousands; quite likely, over one million.

        Saudi citizen Osama bin Laden (an indirect recipient of CIA aid while fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan), outraged at the desecration of Islamic holy land by his native country’s hosting of foreign troops prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, founded Al Qaeda to wage war on the West. His most notorious victory was the terror attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Which led the U.S. to invade Afghanistan and, shortly after, Iraq; and Pakistan, and Yemen, and Somalia, and a Muslim majority region of the Philippines, and Syria. U.S. special operations forces are currently active in 137 countries worldwide supported by some 800 U.S. military bases outside the United States.

        Congressional authorization of the war in Afghanistan, approved three days after 9/11, has now been used 37 since then. Last fall, when four U.S. troops were killed in an ambush in the West African country of Niger, many in Congress had no idea our military was operative there.

        The thrashing of Al Qaida forces by U.S. troops led to the forming of a vicious splinter group, the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL). The Afghan war is now a generational conflict: Those born after 9/11 are now being commissioned for deployment to continue America’s longest war.

§  §  §

Speaking against Judah’s King Jehoiakim, son of King Josiah:
Your father “judged the cause of the poor and needy.
Is not this to know me? says the Lord. But your eyes and heart
are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood,
and for practicing oppression and violence.”
—Jeremiah 22:16

§  §  §

        I didn’t watch all of the funeral service for President Bush at the Washington National Cathedral. Half of the eulogies, through the recessional. I was genuinely moved by most of what was said. I especially appreciated the younger President Bush’s use of humor—that’s probably what enabled him to (mostly) keep his composure. I went from chuckling to teary-eyes in a brief period of time.

        When I learned, afterwards, that President Trump refused to join the unison reading of the Apostle’s Creed, I was neither surprised nor concerned. The root of "creed"—credo—means "I give my heart to." The only thing to which Trump gives his heart is mercantile exchange. Besides this, though, I also believe that many of the church's troubles began when we first started asking state operatives to say the creed, any creed, alongside us in our sanctuaries.

        I’ve read commentary more than once in the past weeks—from those, like me, naturally suspicious of national churches—as one friend put it: “The idea of a ‘national cathedral’ also ‘blurs the lines’ [between church and state], but at shared moments of our national psyche I somehow don’t find it quite so offensive.”

        It was the funeral’s closing recessional that was shockingly symptomatic of our crisis within the believing community.

        Three young acolytes led the exit, hoisting a cross (in the middle) and two torches (candles). They were followed by the armed forces pallbearers, the flag-carrying honor guard, then the royal families (of current and former presidents).

        The line then were met by an honor guard cordon, composed of members of all branches of the military, standing on either side at the casket slowly, rhythmically, step-by-slow-step in military precision, is carried down the lengthy stairs leading to the waiting hearse.

        At street level a military band is playing. Three robed clergy, including Presiding Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry, stand out beyond the hearse, barely on the camera’s screen. Out of the way.

        Altogether, uniformed troops outnumbered vested clergy by at least 100-to-1. Military choruses and orchestras far and away exceeded Cathedral choir members. The attendees were largely of the class who guide and/or underwrite our military’s prominence.

§  §  §

“Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statues,
to turn aside the needy from justice and to robe the poor of my people.
What will you do on the days of judgment?”
—Isaiah 10:1-3

§  §  §

        This, I am arguing, is what empires do: Soliciting the authorization of whatever divinity is ascendant, and the succor of that divinity’s early solicitors, to engage in violent engagement which is always identified with redemptive purpose and national/tribal/ethnic salvation.

        As Chief Dan George, of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (a Coast Salish band in what is now named British Columbia), put it: “When the white man came we had the land and they had the Bibles; now they have the land and we have the Bibles.”

        Righteousness—whether conceived in religious or secular terms—cannot be had short of a commitment to truth telling. The habit of severing personal kindness from public justice is a delusion.

        There’s no way around the fact that truth telling will be impolite. Our history as a nation contains both humane and heinous impulses. Because our virtues as a nation are considerable, we tend to think our vices unremarkable. Such is not the case. And if we are to rightly interpret our condition, we simply must take seriously the whole story.

        Gratefully, mercy remains a trustworthy promise, for none would otherwise survive. But mercy’s demands transcend personal kindliness. There is a certain misery that must be faced, a penitential journey undertaken, regarding our nation’s life and legacy. It will involve not only unpleasantry but the tiresome work of repair.

        But as Galadriel, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, reminds: “Hope remains while the Company is true.”

        How then to live in the shelter of such hope? Find a visionary community that does not segregate personal and public virtue. Invest in its welfare. Practice justice, kindness, and humility in small ways, all the while attending to opportunities for bolder initiatives. Only then will what you need to do be revealed.

#  #  #

*For more on the “civility” debate, see Thomas J. Sugrue, “White America’s Age-Old, Misguided Obsession With Civility,” New York Times.  https://tinyurl.com/yat4wm6c
**For more see "How False Testimony and a Massive U.S. Propaganda Machine Bolstered George H.W. Bush’s War on Iraq” —Democracy Now

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks (19 December 2018)

by Ken Sehested,
Texts: Luke 3:7-18; Zeph. 3:14-20; Phil. 4:4-7

            The text and sermon for this week is a continuation of the story from Luke, and Joyce’s commentary last week: the story John the Baptist. Or, more properly, John the Baptizer. (John really wasn’t a Baptist—although, one summer during college I worked as a youth minister in a church whose pastor believed that Baptists can trace their history back to John. If that were true, that means there were Baptists before there were Christians!)

            Before I read the second part of the text from Luke 3, let’s review the first part.

            •Luke begins with the most improbable political scenario: The word of God bypassed the president, the governors, and the pope to rest on a hillbilly preacher stuck out in the wilderness of the farthest backwaters of the empire. At the edge of the known universe. John was a wild one. The other Gospel writers describe him as someone who lives on locust and wild honey, dressed in a camel-hair tunic and leather belt. Respectable people probably thought of him as a nutcase. And the same of those who tromped out into the wilderness around the Jordan River to hear him preach. Some of those—which later would include Jesus—waded out into the river when John performed what the text calls “a baptism of repentance.” (He probably would have had more volunteers if he offered to just sprinkle their heads with water. But I’m just speculating here.)

            The crux of his sermon was drawn from Isaiah, where the prophet said “prepare the way, make straight the paths, predicting that a great transformation was on its way, when valleys will be filled and mountains brought low . . . and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Isaiah 40:3-5).

            Truth is, these initial chapters of Luke’s Gospel are filled with some of the most explosive texts and most improbable predictions in biblical history:

            •a pair of humble women—one described as “barren,” the other as “virgin”—giving birth to key actors in the New Testament’s drama;

            •of angels crowding the skies—it was a busy season—appearing in succession to Zechariah, John’s father; to the shepherds in the fields; and to Mary, the mother of Jesus;

            •of Mary’s song of praise—a song that also includes some of the most politically subversive language anywhere in the Bible;

            •of Anna, described in the text as a “prophet” herself, an 84-year old woman who virtually lived in the Temple.

            With this review, let’s pick up the story from Luke 3 (7-18). [read story]

John’s baptism was not simply a ritual act of cleansing of the soul; it simultaneously indicated a socially-transformed life. Not just an act of obedience to God, but also a commitment to justice.

            Bear fruits worthy of repentance, John told his listeners. Repentance is not sorrow; it’s not feeling guilty; it’s not an immersion in self-abasement. It is a transformation of character.

            Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Or, to put it in another way, in the immortal words of Tammy Wynette: “Don’t come home a’drinking with lovin’ on your mind.”

            It was the call for repentance that got Roger Williams expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century. Williams, founder of the very first Baptist congregation in this hemisphere, was found guilty of four charges by the Massachusetts Bay Colony courts, the last of which was Williams’ contention "that we have not our land by patent 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."

            Repentance was not just saying to God: “Sorry!” Repentance involves commitments that transform the body politic. Repentance involves a spiritual encounter that reorders and reframes the way we engage the world of flesh and blood.

            Our notions of repentance have largely lost their teeth. I intentionally chose the artwork on today’s bulletin for this reason. At some time or another most of you have seen a “get right with God” sign along the highway; and chances are you thought to yourself, “what biscuit-sopping lowbrow put that up?” But the bulletin cover art shows a line of civil rights marchers in the background. The context is what gives significance to “getting right with God.” During the Civil Rights Movement, repentance meant that people who benefited from racial discrimination needed to relinquish their fears and forfeit their privilege. It comes at a cost.

            And it also meant that people who suffered oppression needed to relinquish their settled second-class status and march to freedom’s disrupting tune. This, also, comes at a cost.

            All of us here in this Circle sometimes experience oppression, and sometimes act as oppressors. A key job of this community of faith is to help each other figure out which is what; and then encourage each other to the risky job of doing the kind of relinquishing that needs to happen so that the social fabric can be repaired.

            Some of you probably noticed the news on Thursday that a bipartisan group of 10 U.S. congressional leaders went for high-level talks with Cuban authorities. It’s the most significant such initiative since the start of the embargo of Cuba in 1960.

            There’s been very little communication between the U.S. and Cuba since the embargo started. And what little we hear comes from the right-wing Cuban American community who left after the revolution.

            On my first trip to Cuba, in 1990, I preached one evening at a special service in a Havana church. There were several Cuban media present to cover the event. And the next day, someone on the street recognized me. I found out I’d been on TV the night before. But when I came back and told that story, one listener called me a liar. “There’s no freedom of religion in Cuba.” When I asked that same person where the Guantanamo U.S. Marine military base was located, he had no idea it was on Cuban soil. Or that the U.S. essentially wrote the Cuba constitution following the Spanish-American War in 1898, inserting a clause stipulating that the U.S. had the right to intervene militarily.

            To be sure, there was repression of religious communities after the Revolution. The dominant church of the time was the Roman Catholic Church, and they were thoroughly aligned with the wealthy classes. But during the last 15 years the churches in Cuba have experienced extraordinary growth.

            Let me tell you one of my most unusual story from my trip back to Cuba in October. One evening I attended the 50th anniversary service of the William Carey Baptist Church in Havana—the same church where I preached in 1990 in front of a Cuban TV camera. The place was packed and the crowd spilled out into the adjoining lobby and hallway.

            The same pastor is there—Rev. Estella Hernandez, though her co-pastor husband died several years ago. Because of our friendship, she had me sit down front, on the second row, and found someone to translate for me. Sitting across from me, on the first row, were three ranking members of the Communist Party in Cuba. They didn’t have a role in the service—they were just there to pay their respects.

            But what makes this story really odd is that just a few feet away from where they were sitting, just around the corner in the lobby, is a prominent plaque, in English, thanking the Women’s Missionary Union of North Carolina for their assistance in constructing the church building. I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

            My principal reason for going was to participate in a conference for progressive Baptist theologians in the Caribbean region. Some of you know I spent the previous 18 months raising money for the conference, which 38 registrants, from 8 different countries. Many of them didn’t previously know each other. We were meeting in the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, founded in 1987 by Rev. Raúl Suarez, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is next door to the King Center. (By the way, Raúl was the first Christian admitted into the Communist Party, and the first Christian elected to the Cuban National Parliament, in 1992. Raúl, a pacifist, was wounded at the 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion by the U.S. He was a volunteer ambulance driver for the Cuban army sent to repulse that invasion.)

            Anyway…what transpired at the conference was far more significant than the formal presentations, the Bible studies, the singing (and there was lots of singing). I’ve seen it happen before, when people who feel like they’re illegitimate children suddenly discover they have all these aunts and uncles and cousins! Most of the people there are renegades in their own communities in Nicaragua, in Panama, in Brazil and Mexico and Costa Rica. In fact, the sponsors of the conference—the Fraternidad de Iglesias Bautistas—the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba—began in 1989 when one of the Baptist conventions in Cuba expelled three churches, for much of the same reasons churches here get kicked out of their denominations.

            Jonathan Pimentel, president of the Baptist Seminary in Costa Rica, summed things up nicely when he said:“Life in the Spirit and life in the world are intimately connected.” In other words, to refer back to the prophet Zephaniah in our opening litany, the fruits of repentance will aim at canceling the shame felt by the lame and replacing it with joy. The fruits of repentance will gather the outcast and make them welcome. This is what it means, in biblical terms, to get right with God.

            After the conference my friend Paco (Francisco Rodés)—former pastor of the Baptist church in Matanzas and now a professor at the Evangelical Seminary—took me on a long car journey about two-thirds of the length of the island to the city of Camagüey, where our sister church, Iglesia Getsemani is located. Along the way we stopped for short visits at several other churches—most of them small, meeting in someone’s living room, and most pastored by women. Kiran, Joy, Greg Yost, Will—you remember the itinerary we took last year. This trip was very similar.

            (By the way, I did get a job offer while I was in Cuba. When Paco found out I could drive his 20-year-old car, he was happy to do so and begged me to come back to work as his chauffeur.)

            Finally, we reached Camagüey and the open arms of our friends at Iglesia Getsemani. It was as if it were last week when we were there, instead of last week. One woman in the congregation told me she could remember my sermon from May of 2005. I chuckled, thinking she was simply being polite. But then she began to summarize the story I told about Elisha and how his house was surrounded by the King of Aram’s army, and how Elisa prayed and the whole army went blind, and then how Elisa led them directly into the walled city where the King of Israel wanted to kill them all; but Elisa said, NO, but instead, bring out tables because we’re going to have a banquet!

            The logic of repentance is driven by a kind of transformation that converts us away from the way the world normally does its business—through intimidation and deceit, through exploitation and hoarding, through violence and the force of arms. And repentance directs us to a whole new set of values and priorities and strategies that foster what the Jewish Talmud calls “tikkun olam,” the repair of the world. To repent means to be immersed in a different social vision; bound to different political loyalties; committed to different economic values.

            I know it’s a little odd to do an Advent sermon and tell stories about Cuba. But the fact is, the whole country of Cuba is experiencing Advent. Will there be political chaos? Will the U.S. decide it’s a good time to invade? The threat of violence and the prospect of redemption are all bound up together.

            Let me close with a poem I’ve just written about John, entitled “The baptizer’s bargain.”

John.
Such a tame name for a man
born to inhabit the wild side
of heaven’s incursion.
You startle children with
your leather-girdled, camel-haired attire,
hot breath bidding the devout
into Jordan’s penitential wake,
the same waters that marked
the boundary of beneficence: of the Hebrew
slaves’ long march from Pharaoh’s provision
(hard, to be sure, but also secure)
to Providence of another, riskier kind,
though laced with promise of milk and honey
What drove you to this scorched abode,
abounding in wild beasts, hostile foes
and scarce sustenance?

John.
The shape of your profile
was cockeyed from conception:
born to parents long since impotent and barren;
your father stunned speechless by
the angel’s approach;
your future yoked with that of Elijah,
ancient antagonist to royal deceit.
(And you paid with your head.)
What was it in Mary’s voice that prompted
your recoil in Elizabeth’s womb
And why the abandonment of familial legacy
in the choice of your name
What incredulous politics is this that the
Word of God would bypass
lordly Tiberius and Pilate,
princely Philip and Lysanias,
priestly Annas and Caiaphas,
to locate you, of honey-smeared beard,
amid such remote and wayward landscape?

John.
Spirit-drenched baptizer of repentant flesh,
exposing shameful inheritance to the Advent
of mercy and an anthem of praise.
Lonely minstrel of pledged Betrothal,
announcing dawn’s infiltration
of destiny’s dark corner,
scattering death’s shadow with
the footfalls of peace.
Witness to dove’s descent, reversing heaven’s
flooding threat with lauded applause
to Mary’s assent and Messiah’s demand
for hills’ prostration and valleys’ upheaval.
Speak, John: Roar the Complaint against every
crooked and cragged thoroughfare.
Should the elect resist, the stones themselves
will produce heirs worthy of Abram’s fealty.
Echo the insistent Refrain: revive, return, repair.

Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

The baptizer’s bargain is this: Enter these
waters at the risk of self-absorbed survival.
A certain drowning is needed for lungs to receive 
Breath From Above on wings of the dove.

 Vipers, beware! The baptized prepare.

Circle of Mercy Congregation, 17 December 2006
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org