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Signs of the Times  •  11 October 2018 •  No. 174

¶ Processional. “I Am the Land,” a musical tribute to Salvadoran martyr and Archbishop Oscar Romero, by E. Ethelbert Miller and Richard J. Clark, performed by the Seraphim Singers. (7:21. Thanks Rose.)

¶ Invocation. “Dear Jesus: Don’t do that. Don’t go saying “I come not to bring peace, but division.” You’re scaring us. Don’t you know there are children in the room!” —continue reading “Peace, peace but there is no peace,” a litany for worship inspired by Luke 12:49-53, Jeremiah 6:13-15, and former Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero

Above: Oscar Romero portrait carried by procession 2014. Photo by Jessica Orellana, Reuters.

Special edition
SAINT ÓSCAR ARNULFO ROMERO

This Sunday, 14 October, former Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romeo will be officially canonized—declared a saint—by the Roman Catholic Church during its 2018 Synod of Bishops in Rome.

        In 1997 Romero was declared a “Servant of God,” a process which makes him a candidate for sainthood. But the process stalled when the hierarchy worried if such a move would be too “political.” Then in February of 2015 Pope Francis decreed that Romero had died “for the faith” (in odium fidei); and then in May announced his beatification, the final step before canonization as a saint of the church. A quarter of a million Salvadorans attended Romero’s beatification service.

        When in 1977 Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, many in the government, wealthy landowners, the military, and the Catholic hierarchy were pleased. Romero was known as a traditionalist, compliant on matters of piety, doctrine, and relations with the state.

        They would be proven wrong. —continue reading “Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero: Canonizing El Salvador’s beloved archbishop”

§  §  §

Call to worship. “The saints of old don’t wear golden crowns, or sit on lofty perch, mouthing caustic comments on how poorly we yet-mortal souls measure up to the glory of days past. They, too, knew about keeping hope alive while getting dinner on the table, faucets fixed, carpools covered, and budgets balanced. After the ecstasy, there’s always the laundry.” —continue reading “All Saints Day,” a litany for worship for use on All Saints Day

¶ “For Romero the poor was the key to understand the Christian faith. He reformulated the maxim Gloria Dei, vivens homo (‘the glory of God is the living person’) of St. Irenaeus, into Gloria Dei, vivens pauper (‘the glory of God is the living poor person’).” —Hans Egil Offerdal

Romero's candidacy for sainthood "languished for decades under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who expressed unease with his connection to liberation theology and his vocal denunciations of government killings and kidnappings.” —Joshua J. McElwee, NCRonline

¶ “[Jesuit priest Fr. Jon] Sobrino has said it for us [in his recent reflection on the 30th anniversary of Romero’s assassination]: ‘The church of Jesus is the one that God wants. It is both necessary and possible. We, the people of God, say ‘Give us Jesus back!’ A great cloud of witnesses with Romero in their midst has returned him to us.’” —“Another model of church is possible,” National Catholic Reporter, April 16, 2010

Óscar Romero’s assassination death “was caused not from simple political motives, but from a hatred of the faith kneaded with the charity that would not remain silent in the face of the injustices that implacably and cruelly struck down the poor and their defenders.” —Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, at a Vatican press briefing on Feb. 4, on the eve of his beatification, quoted in Gerald O’Connell, America Magazine

Left: Art by Ricardo Levins Morales

¶ “Actor Raúl Juliá [who plays the archbishop in the 1989 movie, “Romero”] says something strange happened to him while he was filming. He became a Catholic. Again. "I had been a lapsed Catholic," he told New York Newsday columnist Dennis Duggan, "and I had what you might call a conversion back to my faith during the filming. I had stopped going to church. For years I saw only the negative aspects of my church." —Washington Post

¶ “Romero points the Church forward. This is the way we have to go. We have to walk with the crucified people today. Romero understood that, if it was not good news for the poor, it was not the gospel.” —Father Dean Brackley SJ

¶ “While emerging as an international figure, Romero cannot be understood without understanding the context in which he lived.

        “In Romero’s day, soldiers—in large part financed by the U.S. government—and militia death squads wrought terror on large sections of the population. Most Salvadorans continue to live in poverty; many have escaped to the United States, Canada and Europe in search of work.

        “At the time of Romero’s appointment, those who clamored for change openly expressed disappointment. Romero was perceived at the time as timid and allied with the wealthy. He was, critics said, a man chosen so as not to disturb the powerful, who saw the emergence of liberation theology and the growing movement in the Church for a ‘preferential option for the poor’ as a threat.” —Peter Feuerherd, “The Ongoing Legacy of Oscar Romero,” Franciscan Media

¶ “You have just heard in Christ’s gospel that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest.” —John Dear, “Archbishop Romero’s Conversion”

¶ “In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the ‘International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims’ in recognition of the role of Archbishop Romero in defence of human rights. Romero actively denounced violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable people and defended the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposition to all forms of violence.” —“Óscar Romero,” Wikipedia

For more on the US role in the Salvadoran military government’s brutal reign of terror, see Raymond Bonner’s “Time for a US Apology to El Salvador,” The Nation

§  §  §

Óscar Romero quotes

¶ “A church that does not provoke crisis, a gospel that does not disturb, a word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what kind of gospel is that?”

¶ “As a Christian I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be reborn in the Salvadoran people.”

¶ “Thus, the poor have shown the church the true way to go. A church that does not join the poor in order to speak out from the side of the poor against the injustices committed against them is not the true church of Jesus Christ.”

¶ “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”

¶ “The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: how do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.”

¶ “Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be realized.”

¶ “Whoever believes that my preaching is political, that it provokes violence, as if I were the cause of all the evils in the republic, forgets that the word of the Church is not inventing the evils which already exist in the world, but illuminating them. The light illumines what already exists. It doesn’t create it. The great evil already exists, and the word of God wants to do away with those evils. It points them out as part of a necessary denunciation so that people can return to good paths.”

 ¶ “Aspire not to have more, but to be more.”

¶ “A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel’s call. . . . A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens – as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper – that is the preaching of Christ, calling: Wake up! Be converted! That is the church’s authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin.”

¶ “Of those who are condemned it will be said: They could have done good and did not.”

 ¶ “It would be sad, if in a country where murder is being committed so horribly, we were not to find priests also among the victims. They are the testimony of a church incarnate in the problems of its people.”

 ¶ “A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth—beware! It is not the true church of Jesus Christ.”

¶ “It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.”

One cannot be “a true follower of the gospel, if one does not draw from the gospel all the conclusions it contains for this earth, that one cannot live a gospel that is too angelical, a gospel of compliance, a gospel that is not dynamic peace, a gospel that is not of demanding dimensions in regard to temporal matters also.”

 ¶ “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”

 ¶ “The transcendence that the church preaches is not alienation; it is not going to heaven to think about eternal life and forget about the problems on earth. It’s a transcendence from the human heart. It is entering into the reality of a child, of the poor, of those wearing rags, of the sick, of a hovel, of a shack. It is going to share with them. And from the very heart of misery, of this situation, to transcend it, to elevate it, to promote it, and to say to them, ‘You aren’t trash. You aren’t marginalized.’ It is to say exactly the opposite, ‘You are valuable.’”

§  §  §

Resources

• Archbishop Oscar Romero will be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday 14 October. Watch this short (4:17) video summary of his life. —Romero Trust

• “Oscar Romero: 20th Century Martyr,” (1:38). —interestmedia

• “Oscar Romero Animation,” a short (4:46) video illustrating the life and legacy of Romero.

• Watch this brief (1:17) video summary’s of Romero’s life from The Plough.

• The Plough Publishing House published The Violence of Love, a marvelous collection of quotes from Romero sermons. They also offer a free ebook download and audio book
        You can also read the book online, from the Romero Trust.

• Watch this brief (2:58) trailer from the biopic of Romero’s last sermon,  from the 1989 film, “Romero,” starring Raúl Juliá, which focuses on the last three years of the archbishop life. Unfortunately, the film is mostly silent on the history of US involvement with El Salvador’s oppressive government.

• For more background on Romero, see Dan Buttry’s brief biographical summary.  (Dan’s website has hundreds of such short biographical sketches of peacemakers from around the world and of a host of religious traditions.)

Altar call. “You may never enter a lion’s den, or travel through a war zone, or hear a prison door close behind your act of conscience. Mostly, you don’t get to custom-design the witness you bear, the woe you endure, or the promises you make to mend the world as it crosses your path. By and large, you weigh the choices that come your way without the fanfare of stardom’s spotlight, your picture in the paper, or even angels whispering in your ear.” —continue reading “All Saints Day,” a litany for worship for use on All Saints Day

Benediction. “Stand amazed, you betrothed of unimagined Grace. Your siege is ending. In those days the remnant of pardon will arrive from every far-flung hill and hamlet. Among them will be the shamed and forsaken, the exposed and exploited; the blind and the lame and the laboring women.” —continue reading “Unimagined grace,” a litany for worship inspired by Jeremiah 31

Left: “If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.”

Recessional. “Romero,” by The Project on their album “Martyrs’ Prayers.”

Lectionary for this Sunday.

        “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

        “Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

Lectionary for Sunday next.

        “Unimagined grace,” a litany for worship inspired by Jeremiah 31

        “Faith on the run: Why I’m still a Baptist,” a Reformation Day sermon rooted in Mark 10:46-42 and selections from Hebrews 11

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” 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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Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero

Canonizing El Salvador’s beloved archbishop

by Ken Sehested

        This Sunday, 14 October, former Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romeo (15 August 1917 – 24 March 1980) will be officially canonized—declared a saint—by the Roman Catholic Church during its 2018 Synod of Bishops in Rome.

        In 1997 Romero was declared a “Servant of God,” a process which makes him a candidate for sainthood. But the process stalled when the hierarchy worried if such a move would be too “political.” Then in February of 2015 Pope Francis decreed that Romero had died “for the faith” (in odium fidei); and then in May announced his beatification, the final step before canonization as a saint of the church. A quarter of a million Salvadorans attended Romero’s beatification service.

        When in 1977 Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, many in the government, wealthy landowners, the military, and the Catholic hierarchy were pleased. Romero was known as a traditionalist, compliant on matters of piety, doctrine, and relations with the state.

        They would be proven wrong.

§  §  §

“A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the
things of the earth beware! It is not the true church of Jesus Christ.” —Óscar Romero

§  §  §

        A civil war, erupting in 1979, would rip the veneer off the church’s cozy relations with El Salvador’s repressive military government. Over the next 12 years, the war claimed the lives of more than 75,000 and was generously funded by the United States, as much as $2 million per year, at one point with US military officers assuming key positions and directing the Salvadoran army’s assault on rebel forces, carried out under “scorched earth” policies targeting civilian populations.

        The most notorious of the Salvadoran military’s campaigns was at the village of El Mozote where as many as 1,000 unarmed civilians, including 146 children, were massacred on 11 December 1981. The US initially denied the massacre; later, in the 1990s, declassified diplomatic cables confirmed the slaughter.

        Increasingly outspoken against the brutal treatment of El Salvador’s poor by military (many of whom trained in counterterrorism tactics in the US) and paramilitary “death squads,” Archbishop Romero became a target of the military’s ire.

        During his nationally broadcast homily on Sunday 23 March 1980, Romero pleaded with the Salvadoran National Guard, “In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.” The next day, he was murdered while saying Mass in the hospital where he also lived. His text was John 12:23-26, “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

§  §  §

“It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word,
a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world
because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.”
—Óscar Romero

§  §  §

        No one was ever prosecuted for the murder. But in 1993 a United Nations investigation concluded that Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson, head of El Salvador’s military intelligence unit, ordered the assassination.

        Violence against religious figures in El Salvador was widespread. More well known in the US was the murder in December 1980 of three Catholic nuns and one lay missioner from the US. In 1989 soldiers assassinated six Jesuit priests, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador.

        It’s important to remember that Romero’s outspoken passion didn’t arise from reading books on liberation theology. Rather, the conflict he provoked came about because his heart belonged to the abused, bruised people of El Salvador who were refused access to the table of bounty. And his heart was steeled with the same beatific vision of Mary, his nation’s co-patroness, who prophesied of the coming day when the hungry are to filled with good things and the rich sent empty away (Luke 1:46-55).

§  §  §

“A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they become entrenched in their sinful state,
betrays the gospel’s call. . . . A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens—as when
a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper—that is the preaching of Christ, calling
‘Wake up! Be converted!’ That is the church’s authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching
must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted.”
—Óscar Romero

§  §  §

        There is, of course, a measure of ambiguity in achieving sainthood. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement who has been nominated for such recognition, once responded to a reporter’s question by saying, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed that easily.” Elevating the lives of especially noteworthy individuals often does have the effect of insulating existing communities from the scrutiny and accountability such figures pose to the living drama of faith.

        Even so, the work of adding new installments of faithful living—with names and faces and circumstances—to the cloud of witnesses provides renewed guidance and inspiration for the work of rightly remembering the church’s continuing vocation.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

 

Faith On the Run: Why I’m Still a Baptist

A Reformation Sunday sermon

by Ken Sehested
Texts: Mark 10:46-52  and selections from Hebrews 11

PREFACE for Baptist History and Heritage Society

      Two brief words of introduction before I begin.

      First, this sermon was originally presented on Reformation Sunday, and I have retained that framework even though this is Pentecost weekend. However, given the fact that our larger culture’s liturgical season designates this weekend as Memorial Day (with a new World War II memorial being dedicated today in our nation’s capitol)—and given the lectionary reading from Hebrews 11, with its litany of the believing community’s saints and the brutal account of their frequent sufferings—it is quite appropriate to consider this text as an appropriate Memorial Day text for the church.

            Second, I am fully aware that Baptist history in North America has been forged by and large on the anvil of British Baptist influence. In fact, I like to remind people that the great 19th century British Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon once remarked that he was always happy to hear that soldiers had become Christians but never that Christians had become soldiers. “May the day come when war shall be regarded as the most atrocious of crimes—when for a Christian to take part in it shall be regarded as a most heinous offense!” (Cited in For the Healing of the Nations: Baptist Peacemakers, by Paul R. Dekar, Smyth & Helwys Pub. Inc., Macon, GA, p. 43.)

            However, you’ll quickly notice in what follows that I trace the deepest channel of my own spiritual journey to the history of the dissenting traditions of 16th and 17th European lineage historians refer to as the Radical Reformation (broadly, as the Anabaptist movement)—traditions which have also shaped North American Baptist life. Though too little, in my opinion.

§  §  §

      Today is Reformation Sunday—not generally a high liturgical moment for most Baptist congregations. And the ones who do commemorate the occasion usually focus attention on the Luthers, Calvins and Zwinglis—key figures in the mainstream Reformation, what historians refer to as the Magisterial Reformation. Rare is the attention paid to other dissident leaders of the time—people like Conrad Grebel, Pilgrim Marpeck or Menno Simons. These are among the leaders of the radical wing of the Reformation, dismissed as “incendiaries of the commonwealth,” tagged by their enemies, and now by history, as Anabaptists. More on that later.

§  §  §

      I have two very personal and very important associations with Reformation Sunday. One is the fact that my wife Nancy and I were jointly ordained 22 years ago on this Sunday.

      The second association involves a trip Nancy and I took with my parents several years ago. After retiring, my Dad became absorbed with tracing our family history. He tracked down a good deal of information, linking our origins to what is now the Schlesweg-Holstein region of northern Germany—formerly part of the old Danish Kingdom, where there was once a Danish King named Sehested. But Dad wanted to search for specific documents which couldn’t be obtained from a distance, so we went rummaging through public archives and church libraries in several cities from Hamburg to the Danish border.

      Among the documents we discovered on that trip was correspondence, written in 1866, which named my great-great grandfather, Claus Henrich Sehested. [In the reigning Prussian Empire, spelling of Sehested—pronounced SESted—became “Sehestedt.”] After returning home we located someone who could translate the documents (written in Old German) and were stunned to find out that the letters were initiated by a Lutheran Church official requesting that Claus report to a “Pastor Schwandter” in the state church office to explain why he had joined the “Sabbatisten” congregation.

      (After correspondence with several European church historians, our best guess is that the Sabbatisten—one of the many small dissident Christian groups lumped together under the Anabaptist label—are ancestors of those believers known here in North America as “Seventh Day Baptists,” so-named because of their conviction that Jesus never changed the day for proper worship (from Saturday to Sunday). These Sabbatisten, characteristically of most Anabaptists, were also pacifists, as were Seventh Day Baptists in their early days).

      In reply to this ultimatum, my great-great grandfather replied that he had no intention of reporting as directed; that he found the principles of his new church “more biblical”; and the he did not recognize Pastor Schwandter’s authority.

      I’ve known since seminary that my deepest Baptist roots rest with my Anabaptist ancestors in Continental Europe; so discovering that I actually have the genes as well was quite thrilling.

§  §  §

      There was a time when Baptists (whose Southern-flavored phonetic pronunciation is “Babdists”), like mesquite trees in West Texas, were viewed with annoyance. But somewhere between the Carter and Clinton/Gore administrations, mesquite-grilled food became the culinary rage. And we Babdists started learning the social graces.

      Since Will Campbell has a fair amount to do with the fact that I'm still a Baptist, I'm tempted to start by mimicking his voice with something like 'cause I'm po' white trash and proud of it. But Bro. Will is a species all to himself. I'm just happy to be in the same genus.

      So I'd best speak first-person. Which is a very Baptist thing to do—and a major reason I am willing, after some serious ancestral interrogation, to lean into the tradition of my childhood nurture. "Testimony" is a treasured activity in Baptist circles and an important reason why I maintain that identity. Testimonies are personal, unscripted narratives of faith. They are stories of conviction, of choices made, both for and against, often under trying circumstances.

      The significance of testimony bespeaks the emphasis placed on conversion. In our evangelical passion we have always known what my Roman Catholic friends now say best: disarming the heart and disarming the nations are parallel struggles. As a liturgical genre, testimony is more associated with the laity than with clergy, evidence of our notion of "the priesthood of the believer." When testimony time comes, the floor is open to anybody, even the young, the untrained, the non-ordained.

      As T.S. Eliot complained, we know too much but are convinced of too little. Testimony is the language of conviction. Testimony involves wombish disclosure, the entanglements of Spirit and flesh. The stories come from the trenches. They summon memories of passion, of risky business, of suffering, but ultimately of joy. They are tales of conception and gestation, birth and rebirth. Death is cheated on a daily basis.

      Part of the reason I'm (still) a Baptist is implied in the very name. We Baptists love water music. Our roots stem from the nonconformist traditions in 16th century Continental Europe and 17th century England. Leaders of the "left wing" of the Reformation were convinced, after first hand reading of Scripture, that baptism was for believers only—no faith by proxy. Their opponents dubbed them Anabaptists, or “rebaptizers.” Contrary to popular opinion, the debate wasn't so much about how much water was enough (though the dissenters usually performed the rite by full or partial immersion in water, or by pouring a pitcher of water over the head). The debate was over the question of whether citizenship in the Body of Christ was coterminous with citizenship in the state. The subversive character of divine obedience was framed in dramatic terms, especially so with most of the Continental radicals who also refused on biblical grounds to wield the sword in defense of the state.

      These civilly-disobedient believers weren’t hounded and hung, butchered and burned by Roman and Reformation leaders because of a disagreement over how wet you had to get in order to be really baptized. Or even how old you had to be. No, the conflict revolved around the content of the new covenant signified by baptismal waters. For the Anabaptists, the common purse was a more significant confession than the common creed. (Ananias and Sapphara weren’t struck down because they refused to affirm the Bible was literally true!) For the radical reformers, Jesus’ own rejection of the military option—however sacred the purpose might be conceived—was self-evident. This deconstruction of the “myth of redemptive violence” (Walter Wink), and the reconstruction of a new political vision—a vision articulated by the testimony of Jesus—was what made the Anabaptists such a threat. And also why they found themselves on the run.

      The wedge driven between civil and divine authority, and the ensuing legacy of political dissent, is the singular contribution of these rebaptizers to U.S. history. Roger Williams, founder of the first "Baptist" congregation in England's New World colonies, was driven out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 because of his preaching. The first of four charges in his conviction was that he declared ". . . 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."

      Williams knew what we—in our sentimental and fraudulent retelling of our nation’s founding story—usually omit: That the impulse for religious freedom was being hijacked by robber-baron forces. And the same forces are still at work, reported by bloody repetition in daily news broadcasts, only disguised by the loud chants of freedom! freedom! democracy! democracy! I dare say, nothing is more crucial in our time than the need for a critique of the ideological use of the language of freedom.

      I am a Baptist (still, despite obvious cause for embarrassment) because of a profound metaphor of faith summoned by my rebaptizing ancestors. To the great chagrin of the major Reformation figures of the day, these unlettered Anabaptists argued that "salvation by faith alone" was a worthy notion but an insufficient alternative to the tyranny of Roman Catholic sacramental control. The rebaptizers insisted on speaking of Nachfolge Christi, "following Christ." They sensed that "faith alone" language was too abstract, too devoid of animation, lacking the capacity to indicate the concrete character of discipleship.

      Which is why, in the Mark story read earlier about the blind man who, upon gaining his sight, responded not by orthodox theological declarations. The text simply says: “he followed [Jesus] on the way.”

      Similarly, this is why the historic survey of the faithful in history, found in Hebrews 11, has not a word about their correct doctrine but of their courage and perseverance in the face of calamity, suffering and martyrdom. The faith of these saints was not that of cognitive assertion but of dangerous assault on the reigning values of their age.

§  §  §

      And what more should I say of this?

      Historically, Baptists have been urgent apologists for freedom. "Soul competency" is the traditional phrase, meaning each bears both the weight and the privilege of decision. No pope, no bishop, not even any T.V. evangelist can prescribe the terms of faithful living. We are populists, in the best sense of the word, and thus also profoundly multiracial. (At least as a whole, though rarely in part.)

      Ironically enough, despite the emphasis on freedom, Baptists are a deeply communal people. Every Baptist churchhouse has a kitchen, and the dishes are well worn. As are the offering plates, because money is not a private prerogative but a covenant commitment. Baptists are also a people of "the Book." This characteristic functions as the tradition (for a notoriously traditionless people) of accountability. In an increasingly rootless and disposable culture, fidelity to Scripture (which includes, in good Jewish fashion, arguing with Scripture) fosters communal identity and the habits of cultural transcendence, forming and informing faith.

      Needless to say, being a Baptist can be a confusing (and confused?) enterprise. Our tent stretches across everyone from Jesse Jackson to Jesse Helms, from Marian Wright Edelman to Jerry Falwell, from Martin Luther King Jr. to John D. Rockefeller (not to mention my Aunt Len). You have to wonder if this is a confessional tradition or a three-ring circus.

      Admittedly, with important exceptions, we are an arrogant and often insular people. The dramatic rise in social power and economic class among Baptists in the U.S. has crippled many of the impulses described above. As we saw in the 1990 Persian Gulf War, Episcopal presidents (G. Bush) now summon Baptist preachers (B. Graham) to bless military adventure. We've become "at ease in Zion."

      But the sectarian quality—the vestigial memory of God's impending, rending Reign—is still there. Baptists at their best are sectarian, apocalyptic, against the world. Not against the earth, mind you (the distinction is crucial); but the world, that complex set of arrangements and powers which now rummage creation. At our best, when we sing "This World Is Not My Home" that old gospel hymn functions not as escapist piety but as the subversive prayer of "Thy Kingdom come on earth, as in heaven;" not as pie-in-the-sky dividend but as recollection of Jesus' warning: In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer. . . . As I've cautioned my daughters, when you talk about heaven—biblically speaking—you're liable to raise hell.

      "You shall know the truth," wrote Flannery O'Connor, paraphrasing a verse from John’s Gospel, "and the truth will make you odd." That's why we Babdists have always been at our best on the run.

      Come to think of it, all of us have.

#  #  #

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

This sermon was delivered at Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, N.C., on Sunday, 26 October 2003, under the title “The Church Formed and Reformed.” This slightly edited version of that sermon won the Baptist History and Heritage annual preaching award and was delivered at their 27-29 May 2004 annual conference in Vancouver, Washington.

News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times  •  3 October 2018 •  No. 173

Processional. Thousands of students and faculty from the Catholic-run St. Scholastica’s College dance en masse to protest violence against women and children on 14 February 2018, in Manila, Philippines. The annual dance, dubbed One Billion Rising, is held every Valentine’s Day. This year’s performance came shortly after the brutal Philippine President Duterte gave orders for his troops to shoot female dissidents to his regime in the vagina to render them “useless.” (1:15 video.)

Above: Happy 50th anniversary to the Redwood National Park in California, home of the some of the world’s largest trees.

Invocation. “I am an older woman now / And I will heed my own cries / And I will a fierce warrior be / 'til not another woman dies.” —Ventus Women’s Choir, “Warrior”

Call to worship. “Worthy, worthy the One who conceived the earth and gave birth to bears and basil and beatitudes alike. At the sound of your Name the trees rejoice, for you are clothed with honor and clad in beauty. So now, every hill and habitation, every honey bee and human heart, rejoice and give thanks. For the One who set the ocean’s tide, Who rides the wind with wings astride, shall never abide the tumult of pride. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!” —continue reading “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

Hymn of praise. “Tebe pojem” (“I Sing to You”), performed by Vila, a Serbian Orthodox Singing Society.

Act of bravery. “Because an Afghan was being deported on her flight to Istanbul, activist Elin Ersson refused to sit down. What happens in the next minutes shakes everyone on board.” (3:00 video. Thanks Michael.)

Right: Illustration of Christian Blasey Ford, by many_bothans

Confession. “Men: Our hearts sag with sorrow when the history of such misery is unveiled. / Women: Such truthfulness comes at a cost. But worthy is the truth. / M: What good can come from such vile remembrance? Can we not safely and silently dispose of such memory? / W: No, not safely. Heaven still hears. The roots are deep. The seeds are dormant. The brutal harvest continues.” —continue reading “Limb by limb: Repenting and repairing a legacy of violence against women,” a litany for worship

¶ “It is too soon to measure the consequences of your testimony, Dr. Ford, though there have been endless media assertions that this confrontation between you and Judge Kavanaugh was a test of #MeToo (even the headlines put on one of my essays framed it that way). There are so many problems with that framework.

        “One is that #MeToo is only one fruitful year in a project for the rights and equality of women that goes back more than 50 years by one measure, almost 180 by others. Another is that what all this has sought to change is patriarchy, an institution that is thousands of years old. The test of our success is in the remarkable legal and cultural shifts we have achieved over the past 50 years, not whether or not we have changed everyone and everything in the past year. That we have not changed everything does not diminish that we have changed a lot.” —Rebecca Solnit, “,” Common Dreams

Hymn of supplication. “Hold On,” Isaac Cates & Ordained.

Revelatory exercise. Men ask why women are so pissed off. Jackson Katz, a prominent social researcher, illustrates why by reference to a simple exercise he’s done with hundreds of audiences.

        “I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.

        “Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.'

        “Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine.” — Jackson Katz, “The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help”

Break the silence. Listen to Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s reading of Amanda Palmer’s poem, “Protest,” musical background by composer Jherek Bischoff. (2:48 audio) —Poetiosity

Words of assurance. “All the weary mothers of the earth will finally rest; / We will take their babies in our arms, and do our best. / When the sun is low upon the field, / To love and music they will yield, / And the weary mothers of the earth will rest.” —Joan Baez, “All the Weary Mothers of the Earth”

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

Right: Photo by Finnigan Baker at the Seattle women’s march.

When imagination is hitched to workable solutions. “Thistle Farms residential program [in Nashville, Tennessee] is called Magdalene. It provides a two-year home where women can stay for free. . . . It’s a simple model, but it’s critical for survivors of trafficking, addiction, and prostitution to have the space and time to heal.” —watch this brief (4:35 video) narrated by Rev. Becca Stevens

Hymn of resolution. “As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men— / For they are women's children and we mother them again. / Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes— / Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses!” —“Bread and Roses,” Bronwen Lewis

Short story. “Something extraordinary at LAX today. I was at the gate, waiting to get on my plane. A toddler who looked to be eighteen or so months old was having a total meltdown. His young mom, who was clearly pregnant and traveling alone with her son, became completely overwhelmed.” —continue reading Beth Bornstein Dunnington, “Women Surround Crying Mom Whose Toddler Was Having A Meltdown At The Airport” (Thanks Sally.)

Hymn of intercession. “Song from a Secret Garden,” violin instrumental by Tolga Sünter.

Word. “The enemy of feminism isn’t men. It’s patriarchy. And patriarchy is not men. It is a system. And women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality.” —Justine Musk (Thanks Keith.)

Vocabulary update: mantrum: when a grown man throws a tantrum; when he can’t have his way. —Urban Dictionary

In its recent General Convention in Austin, Texas, the Episcopal Church took steps toward considering revision of the Book of Common Prayer to include more gender-neutral wording and more “inclusive and expansive language” for God and humanity. (The 1979 version is the current edition. The original was first published in 1549.) For a good, brief overview on “What the early church thought about gender” see David Wheeler-Reed’s article in Religion News.

Preach it. “Whatever else the true preaching of the word would need to include, it at least would have to be a word that speaks from the perspective of those who have been crushed and marginalized in our society. It would need to be a word of solidarity, healing, and love in situations of brokenness and despair and a disturbing and troubling word of justice to those who wish to protect their privilege by exclusion.” —Letty Russell, in Preaching As Resistance (Thanks Rose.)

Why many women haven’t reported sexual harassment. “I think the answer is, it's a little bit like asking the slaves why they didn't complain about the masters. The power was on the other side, and it went all the way up through to the top of these companies, and you really had very little power as a young female working almost exclusively for men. There was kind of nobody to complain to, including HR departments.” —New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer, author of “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air”

Want some historical background? See “Herstory of Domestic Violence: A Timeline of the Battered Women’s Movement.”

Can’t makes this sh*t up. "The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history. You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society." —former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon (who is alarmed, not comforted, by this assessment), quoted in Eliza Relman, Business Insider

Happy birthday, Mohandas Gandhi (b. 2 October 1869). “Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.”

Call to the table. “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God’s compassionate love for others.” —Clare of Assisi

The state of our disunion. “What boy hasn’t done this [attempted rape] in high school?” mockingly asked Gina Sosa, failed congressional candidate from Miami, one of a group of Republican women speaking to CNN last week about an allegation of attempted rape against a then-17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, now a nominee for the Supreme Court. —quoted in columnist Leonard Pitts

Best one-liner. “There is rape because there are rapists, not because there are pretty girls.” —Leni Robredo, Vice President of the Philippines, denouncing President Rodrigo Duterte’s remark that rape will exist “as long as there are many beautiful women”

For the beauty of the earth. Watch this brief (3:48) video displaying the beauty of California’s Redwood National Park.

Left: Cartoon by Jeff Koterba, Omaha World Herald

Resource. 57% of women have been harassed on Facebook. To counter that, the folk at vpnMentor (“Empowering Internet Safety”) have created “The Empowering Internet Safety Guide for Women” with practical solutions to reduce vulnerability.

Altar call (the potential fallout). “I was . . . wondering whether I would just be jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway, and that I would just be personally annihilated.” —Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, in her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court, Thursday 27 September

Benediction. "When it comes to saving what needs saving, being merely nice and pliant won’t win the day, or the life. Sometimes we need to dig in our heels and do some hollering." —Jan Richardson

Recessional. “I can see a world where we all live / Safe and free from all oppression / No more rape or incest, or abuse / Women are not a possession / You’ve never owned me, don’t even know me / I’m not invisible, I’m simply wonderful / I feel my heart for the first time racing / I feel alive, I feel so amazing.” —Tena Clark and Tim Heintz, “Break the Chain”

Lectionary for this Sunday.

        “Bold confession amid bitter complaint,” a sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31

        “Prosper the work of every generous hand,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90

Lectionary for Sunday next.

        “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

        “Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

Just for fun. “Kids meet an opera singer.” (6:36 video. Thanks Laurie.)

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks

• “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

• “Allahu Akbar,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104
 
Other features

• “Limb by Limb: Repenting and repairing a legacy of violence against women," a litany for worship

• “She was not: The Bible’s most vividly brutal story, and why we must read and remember it,” a sermon

• “Remembering Jephthah’s Daughter,” a litany for worship inspired by Judges 11:29-40

Below: Painting by Cuban artist Lázaro Caballos. This art was created as the logo for a training of women prison chaplains in Cuba. The text from Proverbs (at top) translates: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” The text resonates with the Gospel of Luke’s account (2:19) where it is said that Mary “treasured all these words in her heart” following the shepherds’ pilgrimage (angels never appear to lowly shepherds in the world as we know it), Zechariah’s hymn (“to guide our feet into the way of peace,” 1:79), and Mary’s own credo, including the seditious lines about the hungry being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty” (1:53).

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” 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.

Feel free to copy and post any original art on this site. (The ones with “prayer&politiks.org” at the bottom.) As well as other information you find helpful.

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. You can reach me directly at kensehested@prayerandpolitiks.org.

The earth is satisfied

A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

by Ken Sehested

Worthy, worthy the One who conceived the earth and gave birth to bears and basil and beatitudes alike.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!

At the sound of your Name the trees rejoice, for you are clothed with honor and clad in beauty.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!

From the earth’s rich soil our souls emerge. With creation’s Breath our lungs are filled.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!

Even as the envoys of peace weep, when the rocks tremble and the ground itself mourns, say aloud: God is worth the trouble!

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!

So now, every hill and habitation, every honey bee and human heart, rejoice and give thanks. For the One who set the ocean’s tide, Who rides the wind with wings astride, shall never abide the tumult of pride.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Getting soaked

A meditation on the recovery of baptismal integrity

by Ken Sehested
24 September 2018

Last week I wrote a quick note to my friend Kyle, who gets as excited about baptism as I do, to share the news.

“We’re baptizing seven of our youth group this coming Sunday. Is it OK to brag about this?”

“Yes,” he responded.

Our congregation hasn’t always had a large youth group; nor are we a large assembly. When we began 17 years ago, we named as one of our priorities to be a child-friendly church. And we do fairly well.

But like so many congregations, about the time high school rolls around, many of our young lose interest in all things churchly. (So don’t write to ask about our “secret.” We can only stand in awe and thanksgiving at the vitality in our midst.)

I will say, however, that instructing, and being instructed by, our children is the most labor-intensive work a congregation does. Remember that when you do church budgeting of time and money.

Nurturing the faith of our young is the most important thing we do. Surely this involves insisting that freedom is more than the choice between an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy.

Our failure is not that we ask too much, but that we ask too little. Last Sunday night, after braving the chilly water, the first thing our youth did was to emerge to serve communion to the gathered witnesses.

As a founding co-pastor, the refrain to which I returned as much as any other was this: Whether we grow, in membership or budget, is neither here nor there. Those statistics do not indicate much more than how good we are at marketing. And marketing has little to do with evangelism, with calling people into the community of faith on the Way.

As our motto frames it, we discover and respond to who we are, and to Whom we belong, by “seeking justice, practicing peace, and following Jesus.”

Left: Art by Julie Lonneman

What is important, however, is that we communicate our vision as passionately, intelligently, and convincingly as possible, attested by a lively, risk-taking, mercy-mending company of prayer, praise, discernment, and practice.

The recovery of baptismal integrity is the believing community’s greatest challenge. As it stands, the dying and rising ritually proclaimed in baptism mostly provokes avoiding and shuffling.

As careful readers of Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth know, the Apostle’s teaching about being “in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17) results not in a solitary “new creature” (as the King James version has it) but a “new creation.” It’s not our hungry little egos that are bolstered by this transformation. What is transformed is the lens by which we encounter and engage the world in all its beauty and its agony.

“Following” is a more important word to us than “believing.” The latter is done easily, and singly, from a recliner; whereas the former is communal—we catch courage from each other—and it requires putting some skin in the game.

Which, once upon a time, is what baptism meant—a risk-your-assets conviction. It is, in a very real sense, an act of sedition against a disordered, dismembering world that believes eating, or being eaten, are the only options.

Faith in the manner of Jesus certainly involves a sense of destiny, immersed in a beatific vision of what is to come. But it abides in conflict with the current rule of manifest destiny. Instead of purging the meek, the stranger, the barren—others of every sort—baptismal obedience entails privileging their voices, recognizing that our own salvation is bound to theirs.

This is the church’s legitimate boast, that it has issued the call to its young; it’s principle glory, that they have heard and heeded.

Baptism isn’t a transactional arrangement or contractual accord. There’s no getting right with God.

There’s only getting soaked.

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolotiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

Signs of the Times  •  26 September 2018 •  No. 172

Processional. “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” musical setting by Irving Berlin of Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty, performed by the Portland Choir & Orchestra.

Above: The Monarch butterfly, which each year migrates freely over the borders between Mexico, the US, and Canada, has become the symbol of immigrant rights groups. Photo by Michael Sewell Visual Pursuit via Getty Images.

Invocation. “O Troubler of every tyranny, inspire again the bountiful harvest beyond the speculator’s reach and the broker’s control. May the quarrel of your love reverse the rule of theft and restore an economy of grace. Holy the Name, whose blessing is bestowed on every hungry heart—and who prospers the work of every generous hand.” —continue reading “Prosper the work of every generous hand”

Call to worship. “Pray Without Ceasing,” composed and performed by Currie Burris, hammered dulcimer.

¶ “Brilliant orange-and-black monarchs are among the most easily recognizable of the butterfly species that call the Americas home. Their migration takes them as far north as Canada and, during the winter months, as far south as Mexico City. A single monarch can travel hundreds to thousands of miles.

        “The monarch migration is one of the greatest natural phenomena in the insect world. Monarchs are truly spectacular migrants because the butterflies know the correct direction to migrate, even though they have never made the journey before. They follow an internal ‘compass’ that points them in the right direction each spring and fall.” —for more see “Monarch Butterfly,” National Wildlife Federation

Hymn of praise. “How Great Thou Art,” classic, a cappella rendition by Jenny Wootten Mann, Ider, Alabama, in an empty grain silo.

Earlier this month you heard that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) transferred $200 million from the budgets of other DHS office, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard, to help pay the skyrocketing costs of detaining immigrant children.

        Now we’re learning that up to $266 million will also be taken for this purpose from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including Head Start, support for uninsured HIV/AIDS patients, women’s shelters, cancer research, and mental health facilities.

        “This is not a story about a historically large surge in arrivals” [of immigrant children], said Mark Greenberg, a former HHS official. “This story is about a significant slowdown in children being released from care” into the homes of relatives, out of fear that they too will be detained. —, Common Dreams

¶ Because of the efforts of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and several other women, the City of Atlanta recently announced “it would no longer hold detainees on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The change, championed by immigration advocates as a ‘victory,’ came down the same day the Trump administration announced plans to allow the government to detain migrant children indefinitely, a reversal from current rules that stipulate minors can only be detained up to 20 days.” Pictured at left include Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (at podium) along with Michelle Maziar and Luisa Cardona of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs,  Georgia Rep. Bee Nguyen, and Shana Tabak, executive director of the Tahirih Justice Center. —Kimberly Lawson, Broadly

¶ All total, seven states and over 200 cities and counties have approved some level of restriction in cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities. The cost for those who refuse ICE detention requests can run into the millions of dollars annually, since the federal government pays a daily rate for each detainee. —Center for Immigration Studies

Confession. Both of these things are true. On the one hand. “I praise you [O God], because I am awesomely and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14) “You have made [humans] a little lower than angels, and crowned them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:5) On the other. “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

The Trump Administration recently announced plans “to remove court-imposed time limits on the detention of migrant children, proposing to end 20 years of judicial oversight and allow families to be held indefinitely in secure facilities as their cases wend through the immigration courts.” —Caitlin Dickerson, New York Times

Words of assurance. “Oh you children ripped and torn / Battered, bruised and worn / Kyrie eleison / All who look hate in the face / Locked in hate’s embrace / Kyrie eleison / There is mercy enough, there is grace enough / There is love enough for all of us.” —The Many, “Lovely Needy People"

¶ “In immigration news, a review by the state of Virginia has confirmed immigrant teenagers were strapped to chairs and had mesh bags placed over their heads while being held at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center. But the state concluded this harsh treatment did not meet the state’s legal threshold of abuse or neglect. The state review came after the Associated Press revealed in June that children as young as 14 said they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.” —Democracy Now (Thanks Janet.)

Professing our faith. “Nurturing the faith of our young is the most important thing we do. Surely this involves insisting that freedom is more than the choice between an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy.

       “Our failure is not that we ask too much, but that we ask too little. Last Sunday night, after braving the chilly water, the first thing our youth did was to emerge to serve communion to the gathered witnesses.” —continue reading “Getting soaked: A meditation on the recovery of baptismal integrity”

¶ Simple thing you can do. Over the past two decades the monarch butterfly has come dangerously close to extinction. But you can help save the species by sponsoring an acre of milkweed habitat today.

Hymn of intercession. “ICE is loose over those streets. [*ICE = Immigrations and Customs Enforcement; ice = hielo] / We never know when we will be hit. / They cry, the children cry at the doorway, / They cry when they see that their mother will not come back.” —“Ice El Hielo,” La Santa Cecilia

Offertory. “The Butterfly," Irish folk song performed on tin whistle.

Preach it. " . . . the Bible tells us that those who fought for justice—those who spoke truth to power, those who refused to accept that injustice and inequality had to exist and that there was no better way—always found themselves hated, hounded, and heaped upon with false accusations simply because they believed in the necessity of speaking and working for the cause of righteousness and building a more just community. This lack of majority support is why the just must live by faith and must know exactly who we are.” —Reverend William J. Barber, II, Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation

Two instances of great pastoral advice.

        “I was using my Instant Message service and voice recognition software last week to pray with someone. At the end of my prayer I said, ‘Amen.’ The software typed ‘I'm in.’ (Must be my Kansas accent.) First I laughed. Then I thought that is a pretty good substitution. Many people (including sometimes me) treat "Amen" as if it just means ‘The End.’ I wonder how my praying would change if I regularly included ‘I'm in’ as a declaration of my participation in the actions and presence I seek from God.” —Rev. Alan Selig, Facebook

        “The artist Laurie Anderson paid tribute to her late husband, Lou Reed, by outlining the shared rules for living that they had discerned together.
        •“Don’t be afraid of anybody.”
        •“Get a really good bullshit detector.”
        •“Be really, really tender.” —Gareth Higgins, “A Manifesto for The Porch”

When only the blues will do. “Killing the Blues,” Malcolm Holcombe.

Can’t makes this sh*t up. Major oil companies along the Texas Gulf Coast are lobbying Congress to spend $12 billion to protect their facilities from the rising sea, and intensified storms, caused by climate change! —see “Big oil asks government to protect its Texas facilities from climate change,” Associated Press

¶Short story. “Some of you may recall hearing the story of Manuel Jesus Cordova. He was in the news a couple years ago.  While sneaking across the border from Mexico, Cordova happened to find a 9-year-old boy, Christopher Buchleitner of Rimrock, Az,, alone and injured in the desert. As it happens, Christopher and his mom had been in a single-car accident when their van went over a cliff on a remote road in southern Arizona. His mother had been killed, and Christopher went looking for help. Cordova gave the boy his sweater and some chocolate and built a fire to warm the boy. It was that fire that drew the attention of the border patrol. Authorities say Christopher would likely have died had Cordova not stopped to protect him.

        “Cordova was honored for the rescue by U.S. and Mexican officials at a border crossing station. Then he was arrested by federal agents and returned to Mexico. . . .

        “Beatriz Lopez, the Mexican consul general for Nogales, had this stunningly prophetic insight in her comments to the press about this incident: ‘The desert has a way of rearranging priorities.’” —continue reading “Out of the house of slavery,” a Bible study on immigration

Call to the table. “My peace my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you / My peace is all I ever had that’s all I ever knew / I give my peace to green and black and red and white and blue / My peace my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you.” —Arlo Guthrie, “My Peace”

The state of our disunion. “[A]s terrifying as it is, we know it’s not [Hurricane] Florence that wreaks havoc on North Carolina. It’s everything that comes after the storm, and everything that came before. . . . We already know where the flood waters will go. They will follow a slow, predictable path. We know who lives in low lying areas, we know what neighborhoods are on the south side of the tracks. . . . Floodplains read like maps of the economy and race. . . . Poverty has always been a flood and not a hurricane. It’s always been a slow, rolling disaster, with muddy gray water under an incongruent bright blue sky. It’s always been a slow build of mold between generations, of people making do with babies in faded red milk crates floated on mattresses down city streets. Look away.” —Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Medium (Thanks Greg.)

Best one-liner. “Socialism is a terrible thing till you’re a Republican standing on your roof in North Carolina.” —from the internet

For the beauty of the earth. Watch this brief (0:19) video of a field of Monarch butterflies in their wintering grounds in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt pine-oak forests ecoregion on the border of Michoacán and State of Mexico. (Thanks Marti.)

Altar call. “Come sisters, brothers gather near / We’ve come to share our worries / We fear what some folks have been saying about Latin Americans / the truth’s been misconstrued / There’s all kinds of talk ‘bout building a wall / down along the Southern border. / ‘bout building a wall between me and you / Lord, and if such nonsense should come true / then, we’ll have to knock it down.” —Che Apalache, “The Wall”

Benediction. “The power to vanquish dragons is given only to those who know that relinquishment is the means of true possession; only to those who know that silence gives birth to authentic speak; only to those who recognize life emerging from the ash heap.

        “Hope is only provided to people with their backs against the wall, to those at the end of their rope, to the outnumbered, the outgunned, to those about-to-be-overwhelmed. Bold confession is not an escape clause to life’s apparent death knell. Rather, it is an invitation to grasp that which is available only to those with empty hands.” —continue reading “Bold confession amid bitter complaint”

Recessional. “Todos Somos Ilegales" ("We Are All Illegals"), Residente, Tom Morello & Chad Smith.

Lectionary for this Sunday. “Old Wounds, New Vision,” a sermon anchored in Job 1:1, 2:1-10.

Lectionary for Sunday next.

        “Bold confession amid bitter complaint,” a sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31
        “Prosper the work of every generous hand,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90.

Just for fun. Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnaz, “I Love Lucy” comedians from an age ago, illustrate why people learning to speak English get frustrated with irregular pronunciation patterns. (2:14 video. Thanks Dee Ann.)

#  #  #

Featured this week on prayer&politiks

• “Getting soaked: A meditation on the recovery of baptismal integrity”

• “Bold confession amid bitter complaint,” a sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31

• “Prosper the work of every generous hand,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90

• “Old Wounds, New Vision,” a sermon anchored in Job 1:1, 2:1-10

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” 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.

Feel free to copy and post any original art on this site. (The ones with “prayerandpolitiks.org” at the bottom.) As well as other information you find helpful.

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. You can reach me directly at kensehested@prayerandpolitiks.org.

 

Prosper the work of every generous hand

A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 90

by Ken Sehested

The earth and all its environs were marked from the beginning as the Dwelling Place of abundance. In this once-and-future land the arrogant are humbled by the countenance of Truth.

Holy the Name, whose might is manifest in mercy. Prosper the work of every generous hand.

Turn back, O merchants of misery. Your market rule shall wither in the Light of Heaven’s approach.

Holy the Name, whose majesty is forged in meekness. Prosper the work of every generous hand.

The Author of Eden lays claim to creation’s purpose, raging against the banker’s deceit, overwhelming the financier’s fraud, sweeping away the march of capital that siphons the poor to the engine of greed.

Holy the Name, whose dominion frustrates every pharaoh’s reign. Prosper the work of every generous hand.

O Troubler of every tyranny, inspire again the bountiful harvest beyond the speculator’s reach and the broker’s control. May the quarrel of your love reverse the rule of theft and restore an economy of grace.

Holy the Name, whose blessing is bestowed on every hungry heart—and who prospers the work of every generous hand.

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Bold confession amid bitter complaint

Sermon anchored in Job 23:1-17, Psalm 22:1-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 & Mark 10:17-31

by Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy Congregation, Sunday, 12 October 2003
Texts: Job 23:1-17; Ps. 22:1-15; Heb. 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

This summer I learned from a mutual friend that William Sloan Coffin is dying. His doctor has given him a year.

Some of you know of Bill’s legacy: a CIA operative who got saved, began a ministerial career as the Chaplain at Yale University and from that post undertook a nationally-recognized leadership role in the movement to end the war in Vietnam; then, for many years, the beloved pastor as Riverside Church in New York City.

To say he is a personal friend is to exaggerate a bit. We’ve only been together a handful of times. But his life has intersected mine, particularly with encouraging handwritten notes, at a number of important turning points in my journey.

I pondered for weeks about writing him. But what do you say?

“Gee, Bill, I hear you’re dying”?

I did finally compose some words to acknowledge that I know what he knows. That it grieves not only me but a host of others. And I sent him a copy of an article I recently wrote for a Quaker journal—an article for which I drew important ideas from Nancy and from Stan Dotson. “Carpe Noctem/Sieze the Night: Spiritual disciplines for living in dark times.”

Bill wrote back. First he thanked me for the article. Then he said with characteristic humor: “My spirits are fine; I am going to die but I’m not going to seed!”

Then he wrote: “Your letter arrived just before I performed a wedding and, magpie that I am, I ended my homily with your phrase ‘live large, laugh often and love well.’

It’s a phrase I sometimes use as a benediction in correspondence.

It does appear—does it not?–that life is going to seed. And the admonition to live large, laugh often and love well often sounds hollow in the face of lethal and bloody reality, more sentiment than substance, like the weak lips that whistle make-believe assurance while traipsing through one graveyard after another.

Just look around this Circle. There’s plenty of evidence right here. In recent memory several of our parents and our children, or friends and neighbors, have teetered on the edge of health and wholeness or been lost altogether. Several labor in maddeningly vengeful institutions, or have lost jobs and careers altogether. Several live with the fright of financial insecurity. Several struggle with vocational clarity. Many of us have loved ones caught in addictive spirals of one form or another. All of us, I dare say, have known the anguish of broken relationships with people we loved dearly.

We’ve been burned by religious communities, hounded by a homophobic culture, beleaguered by dominant political values, and belittled by economic forces whose drive to “make a killing” results in the escalation of war abroad and the undermining of basic democratic values here at home.

A simple recitation of public malfeasance is numbing. The current Administration’s policies have resulted in the largest job-constriction rate since the Depression, along with a leap within three years from record federal budget surpluses to record deficits. We now have the greatest income gap, between rich and poor, among all industrialized nations. Nearly a fifth of our children are living in poverty. Public librarians are having to fend off the reach of the Justice Department. Our prison population has quadrupled in the past two decades. More than 43 million men, women and children live without health insurance. Many of our historic environmental and civil rights accords are under assault.

Globally, the Bush Administration has withdrawn from a host of international treaties designed to abet environmental degradation, slow the development of advanced weaponry, and establish the rule of international law. By action of Congress in September 2002 we have in place a “National Security Strategy” which grants the Administration virtually unlimited war-making powers. The level of public disingenuousness is such that Orwell himself would blush, as in U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s recent statement during a press conference in Iraq:  "I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq." And then there’s the chilling, hardly-noticed recent comment by an unnamed assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield, commenting on the reports of low U.S. troop morale in Iraq: "This is the future for the world we're in at the moment. We'll get better as we do it more often."

If you’re not depressed, if you’re not complaining bitterly, you’re not paying attention. If you’re not experiencing the stress and strain of these traumas, we’d like to know what you’re smoking!

The texts read earlier, from Job and from the Psalmist, bring these complaints to speech. These sorts of texts aren’t frequently read in church. They don’t accentuate the positive.

These texts—along with Mark’s story which Nancy told earlier—speak of the despair we confront when our efforts—sometimes heroic efforts—to live according to life’s rules do not exempt us from trauma. We’re doing our best to live faithfully, honestly, righteously. We’re peddling as hard as we can. But the bottom keeps falling out from under us. We bargain in good faith, attempting to be masters of our destiny, responsible parents, loyal colleagues, faithful friends, good citizens. And instead of bread we’ve given a stone.

Who wouldn’t bitterly complain? Who, indeed, can deliver us from this body of death?

Like you, I, too, am sometimes speechless. But I’ve found a voice in a very modern text, a novel, by David James Duncan, entitled The Brothers K. It’s the story of a Vietnam-era family. I’d like to read a long excerpt.

One hot summer afternoon some of the kids are playing in the water sprinkler in the front lawn. From time to time they would disconnect the water garden hose, stretch it straight out across the lawn, then give one end of it a violent snap, causing a horse-shoe shaped “hump” to fly from their hands down the length of the hose.

Beatrice asked, “If a hose could reach from here clear to Spokane, do you think there could be a man strong enough to jerk it hard enough to make the Hump travel all the way?

"'. . . I don’t know about Spokane,” Freddy replied. “I mean, I don’t know how far a hump of energy could travel down a hose, because if some muscleman or machine or something jerked it really hard, I guess the hose might just break.'

“'I never thought of that,' said Bet.

"I didn’t either,' Peter thought.

"'But I do think,”'Freddy continued, 'there might be all sorts of humps of all sorts of energy that go traveling all sorts of directions people can’t see. For instance when a person gets mad at somebody. . . . Like when you get really mad and maybe slap somebody or jerk their arm or something, like Mama does to us sometimes, I think an invisible hump of energy might go flying all the way up their arm and right into their skeleton or insides or whatever—a hump of mean, witchy energy—and I think it might fly round and round in there like a witch on a broomstick flies round the sky, and go right on hurting invisible parts of the person you don’t even know you’re hurting, because you can’t see all the ways their insides are connected to the mean thing you did to their outside. And from then on, maybe that hump of mean energy sits inside the hurt person like a coiled-up hose or a rattlesnake, just waiting in there. And someday, when that person touches somebody else, maybe even way in the future, that rattlesnake energy might come humping up out of them by accident and hurt that next person too, even though they didn’t mean to, and even though the person didn’t deserve it.' She paused for a moment. Then, with feeling, concluded,  'I think it happens. I really think it does.'

“'I think it does, too,' Peter said. . . . 'I think what you said can happen, does happen. But every witch who ever lived was once just a person like you or me, that’s what I think anyway, till somewhere, sometime, they got hit by a big, mean hump of nasty energy themselves, and it shot inside them just like Freddy said, and crashed and smashed around, wrecking things in there, so that a witch was created. The thing is, though, I don’t think that first big jolt is ever the poor witch’s fault.'

"Bet thought about this, and finally nodded cautiously. Freddy said nothing. The sprinkler hissed like a Halloween cat. 'Another thing,' Peter said, “is that everybody gets jolted. You, me, before we die we’ll all get nailed, lots of times. But that doesn’t mean we’ll all get turned into witches. You can’t avoid getting zapped, but you can avoid passing the mean energy on. That’s the interesting thing about witches, the challenge of them—learning not to hit back, or hit somebody else, when they zap you. You can just bury the zap, for instance, like the gods buried the Titans in the center of the earth. Or you can be like a river when a forest fire hits it—phshhhhhhhhhh! Just drown it, drown all the heat and let it wash away. . . .'

“'And the great thing,' he said, 'the reason you can lay a river in the path of any sort of wildfire is that there’s not just rivers inside us, there’s a world in there. . . . I’ve felt how there’s a world, and rivers, and high mountains, whole ranges of mountains, in there. And there are lakes in those mountains—beautiful, pure, deep blue lakes. Thousands of them. Enough to wash away all the dirt and trouble and witchiness on earth.'

“'But to believe in them! To believe enough to remember them. That’s where we blow it! Mountain lakes? In me? Naw! Jesus we believe in, long as He stays out of sight. But the things He said, things like The kingdom of heaven is within you, we believe only by dreaming up a heaven as stupid and boring as our churches. Something truly heavenly, something with mountains higher than St. Helens or Hood and lakes purer and deeper than any on earth—we never look for such things inside us. So when the humps of witchiness come at us, we’ve got nowhere to go, and just get hurt, or get mad, or pass them on and hurt somebody else. But if you want to stop the witchiness, if you want to put out the fires, you can do it. You can do it if you just remember to crawl, right while you’re burning, to drag yourself if that’s what it takes, clear up into those mountains inside you, and on down into those cool, pure lakes.'” [Bantam Books, 1992, pp. 209-211]

Sisters and brothers, this is the Gospel secret: That bold confession can only emerge amid bitter complaint.

The breakthrough from bitter complaint to bold confession is not the product of moral heroism. The breakthrough is not accomplished by brilliant analysis, nor by indefatigable energy.

The secret is this: The power to vanquish dragons is given only to those who know that relinquishment is the means of true possession; only to those who know that silence gives birth to authentic speak; only to those who recognize life emerging from the ash heap.

The Gospel secret is this: Hope is only provided to people with their backs against the wall, to those at the end of their rope, to the outnumbered, the outgunned, to those about-to-be-overwhelmed. Bold confession is not an escape clause to life’s apparent death knell. Rather, it is an invitation to grasp that which is available only to those with empty hands.

It is to the mournful that rejoicing is promised; it is to those facing trial that the Spirit’s presence is promised; it is to the meek that the earth is promised. And it is only from the dark and dangerous shadow of night that guiding light is granted.

Bitter is the moment, and weeping endures for this night. But the morning promises joy. This is our confession. And we’re betting our very lives on it.

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Old Wounds, New Visions

Sermon anchored in Job 1:1, 2:1-10

by Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy Congregation, 8 October 2006
Text: Job 1:1; 2:1-10

            Several things converged to inform my reflection this evening. One is that I simply want to take advantage of the wake of Marc Mullinax’s excellent sermon last week, when he preached on the topic “This I disbelieve.” Disbelieving is a crucial part of our vocation, as Marc so eloquently said. Afterward, I remembered a quote I heard years ago: The reason ancient Rome oppressed the early Christian community was not because Christians proclaimed that “Jesus is Lord.” The Roman authorities were actually quite tolerant of a variety of religious expressions. The thing that got them mad is that when Christians say “Jesus is Lord,” they were also saying “Caesar is NOT Lord.” In Rome, as in lots of places, it’s OK to be religious as long as you don’t threaten the existing order.

            So I decided to flip the coin over to talk about “This I Believe.” As Marc and all our teachers know, students sometimes have to “unlearn” certain things in order for good learning to occur. In the same way, “disbelieving” is integral to deciding what we do in fact believe.

            A second factor that shapes these comments has to do with all the bad news we’ve heard recently. Three school shootings in a week, the most horrific of which was the one in Lancaster, Pa., just a few miles from where Joyce grew up. A man still grieving over the death of his infant daughter 9 years earlier—and maybe still haunted by the memories of his abusing two children many years earlier—attacked what may be one of the most defenseless communities in our country, wounding 10 children (specifically female children—the gender choice was deliberate), killing five of them, in an Amish school house.

            Old wounds, left untreated, often become broken records: They keep on playing the same line, over and over and over again. Keep on re-enacting the same violent response. Keep on screaming, like an infant that receives no comfort.

            On a much larger level: Our war in Iraq now consumes $267,000,000 a day. Nearly 14 U.S. soldiers killed or wounded…every day. An average of 100 Iraqi civilian fatalities . . . every day.

            A couple of weeks ago we lifted special prayers in light of the announcements by the New Vistas mental health program that they would be closing later this month. Four people in or related to this Circle will lose their jobs. And you can imagine the trauma that Carol Minton, chair of the New Vistas board of directors, has had to endure. Worst of all is the precarious existence of New Vistas’ clients in danger of losing medical care.

            Consider this fact: The entire cost of New Vistas’ caseload—10,500 people in the 8 counties of Western NC—could be funded for a year with what we spend in three hours fighting the war in Iraq. Or, to give another frame of reference, New Vistas’ annual budget could be paid for with the amount it will take to build 250 feet of the 700-mile long wall Congress has approved building on the US-Mexican border.

            It’s cause enough to make you wonder: What are the old wounds that feed this kind of national behavior? What unacknowledged traumas are turning us into a “Linus nation,” that makes us clutch ever more tightly to an ever-expanding security blanket?

            It makes you wonder: What are the fears behind the recent U.S. Navy’s issuance of “Prepare to Deploy Orders,” for mobilization of an entire carrier group to the waters around Iran. Is it conceivable that the President is actually planning yet another war? Can it be true, as former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s recently said, that World War III has already begun?

            Old wounds, stored up, ready to explode. And a dearth of vision for a truly new world order. Our is a modern dilemma to which an old text speaks: “Without a vision, the people perish.”

            And then there’s the story of Job, today’s text. If you haven’t read Job’s account recently, I encourage you to do so. It is a genuine cross-cultural experience! And it’s among the most unorthodox books in all the Bible.

            Starting right at the beginning. . . . where the heavenly council gathers. And who should show up, but Satan. Very strange. Actually, Satan’s name can be translated as “The Interrogator.” And he functions not so much as the ruler of the underworld of damned sinners, but as heaven’s own prosecuting attorney.

            Satan actually dares God to put Job’s piety to a test. And God says OK—initially saying can do anything to Job’s circumstances but not to put Job himself at personal risk. When Job does not bend even after his family and his property are taken, the Interrogator says, “Well, sure, he’ll not curse you as long as you don’t threaten his own personal life.” So God says, OK, do what you will, just don’t kill him. And Satan inflicts Job with terrible sores, from his head to his feet. But still Job refuses to curse God.

            What follows for a good part of the rest of the story is a long series of speeches which represent an extended conversation between Job and his so-called friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar Ellihu—each of whom recite to Job some of the most revered and orthodox theology in Hebrew Scripture, trying to get Job to see that he’s got unrepented sin in life. But Job continues to insist on his innocence.

            About the only thing most people know about Job is his supposed “patience.” But the fact is, Job gets very unpatient. And not just with his friends. Job actually challenges God to a debate. And, escalating even further, Job demands that he and God show up together before a courtroom judge.

            If you ever felt the secret (or not so secret) urge to argue with God, here’s your biblical authority to do just that!

            To our modern sensibilities, there’s just so many things about this story that embarrasses us, especially the portrait of God allowing a convincingly “righteous” person to suffer. But in fact it’s our failure to engage in cross-cultural understanding that obscures the question which the ancient author was posing. Namely, for what reason do we love God? Is it possible to love God for selfless reasons? If God provides no goodies for our consumption . . . if God does not provide a personal security detail for our peace of mind . . . if God is not in the business of bartered relationship—“you give me this, and I’ll be not only nice but very, very pious as well”—is there any other reason to love God?

            You probably saw the story in the paper last week of a man who left threatening messages on the Buncombe County Democratic Party headquarters phone. He was sick and tired of receiving what they call those robocalls, the automated, voice-recorded messages that come to your home. I suspect we’ve all gotten a bunch of them recently, both from Charles Taylor and Heath Shuler.

            The man who left those messages was quoted in the paper as saying: “I did all the nice things [to get them from calling me]. But nice didn’t work.”

            Nice didn’t work for Job, either. Nice sometimes doesn’t work for us.

            In case you haven’t read the remainder of the story, or in case you’ve forgotten, I’ll not give away the ending. It’s worth your trouble. . . which is not to say it’s easy to wrap your mind around. But I will give you a clue which has helped me understand the Job narrative. It’s a poem from the 8th century Sufi mystic, Rabia, when she wrote:

            If I adore You out of fear of hell, burn me in hell.
            If I adore You out of desire for paradise, lock me out of paradise.
            But if I adore You alone, do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.

            (Keep in mind that the Arabic word for “beauty” can just as easily be translated “truth,” or even the more colloquial “open arms,” as in “Do not deny to me your open arms.” It is this embrace that our hearts long for more than anything else. And, in fact, it is this embrace that unlocks our own capacity to embrace each other—even our enemies.)

            Here in our Circle we will soon begin the process of planning for our fifth anniversary as a congregation. Those of you who’ve been here know that means we will ask of each other, yet again, “do you want to be here for another year?” If you’re new here, you need to know that membership in our Circle is not assumed from year to year. We ask everybody, even those who’ve been here since the beginning, to decide again. Seniority here gets you nothing, and there’s no hereditary membership. It’s kind of a hassle and requires more bookkeeping. But it’s a structural way that we press each other, year after year, to be clear, yet again, on why we’re here. It requires us to regularly push up against the question of what it is that we believe—and at least by implication, what we disbelieve.

            There are many ways to say what it is we believe—and there are no words finally that can capture everything we believe about God. All human words are frail. But that doesn’t mean we collapse into silence, because words are the basic building blocks of communication, of human community.

            So let me take a stab at saying what we believe. It has to do with old wounds and new visions.

            We are all wounded. There’s no way to escape it. Getting wounded, physically and emotionally, is simply a part of life. Few wounds heal immediately or without our attention. One of the things we do here in this Circle is help each other heal from our wounds. We operate a kind of outpatient clinic, gathering regularly to open ourselves to the healing hands and the loving care which flows from the Spirit through the brothers and sisters which surround us.

            Simultaneously, we are renewing our vision, for we believe, as Seamus Heaney said in his poem which we read as our pastoral prayer, that “a further shore is reachable from here.”

            When I was in high school, one of the downtown streets in our city was changed from one-way to two-way traffic. One afternoon while driving I had this overwhelming sense of confusion. For a second, I thought I was in the “Twilight Zone.” A number of the signs on the street were familiar, but I was thoroughly confused about where I was. It suddenly occurred to me that for the first time I was driving the opposite direction on a very familiar street. I was disoriented because the sequence of signs was backward.

            The process of spiritual formation is often like that. In those breakthrough moments, as the Spirit is reshaping our lives, our values, what we believe in, there is often a similar kind of disorientation. The “facts” are the same, but they are ordered according to a dramatically different pattern, and so the “facts” mean something else entirely.

            This reorienting is what we do together, along with the work of healing old wounds.

            So who are we?

            We are not a social service agency, though there are times when some of our ministries and missions are expressed in those ways.

            We are not a therapy group, though the healing of our hearts and souls is one of the results of our being together.

            We are not a political advocacy group, though we are not hesitant to offer support or resistance to existing authorities.

            And we are not simply a social club, though the relationships we build in the process of being together is surely a part of the glue which holds together everything else.

            What we do here is to keep bringing each other back to the well; to continually rediscover the reason for our counter-cultural values; to be reminded again and again that Divine living in the world is intimately linked to Divine embrace.

            Matthew Fox said it well: The paranoid and the mystic share something in common: but where paranoid persons believe there is a conspiracy in the universe against them, mystics on the other hand believe there is a conspiracy in the universe on their behalf.

            It is this Divine Conspiracy to which we are called. Staying in touch with this Movement of the Spirit requires a lot of disbelieving in what we hear from the world. For indeed imperial powers always want to limit what is possible to what is available. We, on the other hand, believe something more is available and is therefore possible, even if we don’t live to see its fruition.

            Old wounds. New visions. Does this agenda interest you? Soon you’ll have the chance to say so.

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©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org