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These are but a few of the price tags of the first 50+ hours of the war

Compiled by Ken Sehested

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“. . . they traded their wisdom for their splendor.”
—Ezekiel 28:17

Prelude. “Lament.” —Yuval Ron 

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• At least 153 girls, most between the age of 7-12, were killed by a US missile strike on their school in Minab, Iran.

• An estimated 555 Iranians have died. Six US service members. Nine-to-eleven Israelis.

• The three US F-15E Strike Eagle warplanes shot down by friendly fire over Kuwait cost $90-$100 million each.

• Small Iranian drone missiles cost $20,000 each. Each US Patriot missile (used to shoot down the Iranian drones) cost $4 million each.

• On average, 1,000 bombs and missiles strike Iran each day.

• US “bunker buster” bombs cost $5 million each.

• US spent more than $100 million attacking Iran on the first day. And our president says the attacks will escalate.

• Each US B-2 Spirit Bomber costs $2 billion.

• Each of the two US carrier strike groups near Iran costs $13 million in regular maintenance per day. Each F-15 Strike Eagle jet costs $29,000 per hour to operate.

• Trump says war was planned to last “four-to-five weeks” but could go on much longer.

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Postlude. “When I am laid, / am laid in earth, / may my wrongs create / No trouble / no trouble in, / in thy breast. —“Dido’s Lament,” Alison Moyet & Henry Purcell

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Picture below: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed by a US missile strike in Minab, Iran.

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Sources for this data:

“Prolonged War with Iran Would Cost Taxpayers Dearly“

AI overview: Cost of F-15 fighter plane shot down over Kuwait

“US F-15 Friendly Fire Incident in Kuwait, All Pilots Safe”

AI overview: “Warships, explosive drones and stealth bombers: The high-tech weapons and hardware the US is using to attack Iran”

“US announces its first casualties in Iran war; poll signals challenge for Trump”

“’Whatever it takes’: Trump says Iran operation could last a month or more “

“At least 153 dead after reported strike on school, Iran says”

“Iran death toll reaches 555 as US, Israel escalate attacks”

“The first 24 hours of the US attack on Iran cost approximately $779 million”

AI overview: cost of operating F-15 warplane

 

 

Ken Sehested

Under cover of sham “negotiations,” in an attempted denial of political gravity, likely setting the stage for triggering the 1976 National Emergency Act for an electoral takeover leading up to November’s mid-term elections, and the threat of being found culpable in human trafficking, our president has started another g*dd*mmed war.

The fundamental lie at the root of our nation’s crisis is a theological heresy: That the US has a “manifest destiny,” that we are the one “exceptional” nation, and we are so because God has “anointed” us as such. Which is why people on the Way of Jesus must collaborate with all people of conscience, of faith or no faith, to stand in the face of our nation’s presidential psychosis to say a clear, unambiguous, and vehement NO to this military adventurism.

What follows is a recollection of previous statement from one local congregation, from 2007 during George W. Bush’s presidency, then reissued again in 2012 during Barak Obama’s presidency.

They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall, says the Lord.
Jeremiah 6:15

Invocation. “Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness: according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences. Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin. . . .thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence: and take not thy holy Spirit from me.” —translation of “Miserere Mei Deus” (“God have mercy,” based on Psalm 51), by Gregorio Allegri, performed by Tenebrae 

Call to worship. “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.” —Habakkuk 1:3

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We Say No, Again
Baiting Iran toward a dangerous collision

by Ken Sehested
15 January 2012

On the first Sunday on Lent in 2007, when tensions between the US and Iran were escalating, Circle of Mercy Congregation unanimously adopted a statement (“We Say No: A Christian statement in opposition to war with Iran—see below”) opposing an attack on Iran. With the recent assassination of another Iranian scientist—the fourth to be targeted in the past two years—tensions between our two countries are again at a boiling point.

This is an appropriate time, on this observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, to reaffirm our earlier convictions.

Virtually no one in the US media, Congress or Administration is willing to speak of this assassination as an act of terrorism. One can imagine the outcry here if US scientists were being targeted, if Iran’s submarines were patrolling our coasts, if our nuclear program were the target of a cyber attack, if our energy exports and financial transactions were blockaded, or if Iranian political leaders were openly calling for “regime change” in the US.

No one denies that our two nations have real and substantial policy disagreements. What seems increasingly clear, however, is that the US is baiting Iran toward a dangerous retaliatory response.

The legacy which Dr. King’s bequeathed to us—highlighted by the new memorial in our nation’s capitol—is more than a fanciful pipe dream or fairy tale. Revering the dreamer while reneging on the dream only hollows his memory. If Dr. King is to be more than a public souvenir, his commitment to nonviolent struggle—stemming from his vision of the Beloved Community—must become our commitment as well. Thus the following convictions need reaffirming.

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“We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line.”
—former President Joe Biden

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We Say NO
A Christian statement in opposition to war with Iran
Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC (USA)
Lent 2007

Despite assurances to the contrary from the U.S. Administration, we believe our nation’s leaders may be seriously calculating the benefits and risks of attacking Iran. Our reading of this moment in history, in light of our commitments as citizens and our convictions as followers of Jesus, impels us to oppose such a move.

We fear that our political leadership—led by the Administration with the complicity of Congress—is pushing us to the brink of moral, financial, ecological and diplomatic bankruptcy.

As with the ancient empire described in the Prophet Habakkuk’s oracle, our government is setting its “national interests” above international norms of justice, usurping all authority to itself. With an escalating military budget—already larger than those of all other nations combined—we seem to have established our own destructive threat as the source of national glory and honor.

Pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.
Their eyes swell out with fatness, their hearts overflow with follies.
They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.
They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth.
Psalm 73:6-9

It is not our habit to engage in partisanship on any political party’s agenda. We believe in the separation of church and state. But not in the separation of values from public policy.

In the Magisterial Reformation legacies of the Christian community (toward which some in our congregation lean) there is a tradition of invoking a status confessionis, of declaring that some moments in history require the church to refuse neutrality and abandon silence. And in the Radical Reformation traditions (various Ana/baptists, toward which others of us lean), Jesus’ insistence on loving enemies precludes the willingness to kill them.

Not only are these religious convictions suffering scandal; so, too, are the core values of this Republic’s founding. It was Thomas Jefferson, in 1807, who asserted, “The spirit of this country is totally averse to a large military force.” Now, with the Administration’s 2002 “National Security Strategy” document, the U.S. claims (for the first time) justification for waging preemptive war. This policy undermines our democratic traditions, any and every theory of when war is “just,” and the very foundation of international law itself. The contradiction is staggering.

Accordingly, should the U.S. preemptively attack Iran, we shall vigorously protest. For some of us, this commitment includes the willingness to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.

In the same way, we also pledge vigorous support for any leaders willing to consider Iran’s security concerns and national interests alongside those of the United States. Competition in belligerent behavior carries catastrophic risks. The only enduring security is mutual security.

Another way is possible. Waging peace will require at least as much commitment—as much courage, pride, honor and ingenuity—as the pursuit of war.

We say no to war against Iran. It is both a contradiction to the Way of the Cross and a defamation of national honor. We say yes to the strategies of multilateral diplomacy and other nonviolent initiatives. We invite other Christians, other people of faith, and other people of conscience to deliberate these convictions and consider similar commitments.

Postscript

You have sown much and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough;
you drink, but you never have your fill; you put the wages you earn in a bag full of holes.
Haggai 1:6

We make this statement in the midst of Lent, the Christian season leading up to Easter. The traditional emphases of Lent are prayer, fasting and almsgiving, all of which focus the mind and heart on the way gluttony corrupts our personal and common life. Appetites have a way of overwhelming wisdom. Righteousness is pursued by a commitment to clarifying disciplines: prayer, to calm the heart’s fretfulness; fasting, to purge the body’s toxic buildup; almsgiving, to recall God’s bias on behalf of those denied access to the earth’s bountiful table of provision.

Sisters and brothers, especially in the household of faith: the Apostle Paul’s instruction—overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21b)—is both a spiritual truth and the foundation for politically realistic strategies to transform conflict. The Way of the Cross leads home.

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Benediction. “God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” —Micah 4:3

Postlude. “Psalm 51.” —Choir of St. Simon the Leper, Republic of Georgia (sung in Aramaic) 

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A litany for worship inspired by Isaiah 58

Ken Sehested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—inspired by Isaiah 58

 

US presidential quotes that might surprise you

Compiled by Ken Sehested

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

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

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On the rule of mammon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Miscellaneous other presidential quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ken Sehested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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To the rupture convulsing our nation’s heartland

Assembled by Ken Sehested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If that makes you uncomfortable—good.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Conscientious Objector
Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

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

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

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

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

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by Ken Sehested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ken Sehested

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

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

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

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

(Art at right: John August Swanson)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Art below: Kathy Manis Findley)