Today, in the USA (and selected outposts of our nation’s allies and opponents), there is a gluttony of emotive expression prompted by our nation’s electoral conclusions.
As is sometimes the case, the Latin intonation captures it best: in extremis, “in the farthest reaches” or even “at the point of death.”
More than a few of us are vicariously experiencing the latter. Though more than a few of us, including me, will not endure the ramifications of this election in literal terms. (Hey! The value of my retirement funds jumped significantly at the news from last night. Wall Street is happy . . . and, yes, I, too, would prefer a longer period of solvency.)
But we know people whose future hangs in the balance, who are now exposed to escalating threat.
What, then, to do? Or as Cole Arthur Riley wrote this morning on her “Black Liturgies” site, what can one do “in a country that kneels on our throats daily and makes no apologies”?
She writes, “[I’m] Seeing an overwhelming amount of ‘well let’s get to work’ attempts to rally and encourage. Maybe there are some of us who need the urgency of a mission in order to survive. I’m trying to honor that. But some of us are a different kind of exhausted. I keep thinking, do we even get a day? Just because you’ve braced yourself for the worst, doesn’t mean it’s any less terrible when it comes. Whatever you thought might come, today is for grief. For sadness, anger. Today is not for shallow platitudes and sentimental pep talks. Nor is it the time to immediately demand more work from Black women and those who have given their bodies and time to attempt to redirect the ship to shore.”
I’m recalling the muse’s disclosure to my own heart some years ago: “Who among you believe that / grieving and lamentation / are symptoms of despair. / Not so! / Only the hopeless are silent / in the face of calamity— / silenced because they no / longer aspire even to be heard, / much less heeded. . . . / The liturgy of grief transforms the pain of lament into passion / for an outcome forged in justice / and tempered in mercy. Such an / outcome is not ours to impose / by strength of will or accomplished / by force of threat; yet it does demand / of us relentless struggle and steadfast resolve.” (“The labor of lament”)
So, yes, count me as an objector to the popular activist aphorism articulated by the early 20th century labor organizer and musician, Joe Hill: “Don’t mourn! Organize.”
Just this morning a friend (thanks, Stan) reminded me of a line from a Zora Neale Hurston novel, “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” The context is the narrative’s key characters taking shelter from the onslaught of a hurricane. In Scripture (and many spiritual traditions), water and wind take on opposing meanings: both threat and assurance.
In Genesis’ story of Creation, the wind (breath, ruah, spirit) of God swept over the “formless void and darkness” of the menacing “waters.” The Hebrew slaves fled Egypt’s deathly embrace, driven by the wind through the death-dealing sea, which parted to save them, whose path then collapsed to devour Pharaoh’s enslaving sway.
Righteousness and justice, says the Blessed One, are to flow like the waters, “like a mighty river than never runs dry,” in the words of the Prophet Amos (5:24). The baptismal grave into which believers are immersed unfolds in resurrected life in Christian texts. And in the Revelator’s fantastical story (chapter 12), the woman and her newborn are pursued by “the dragon/serpent,” who “poured water like a river to sweep her away with the flood”; but the earth itself “opened its mouth and swallowed the river.”
We are immersed in that threat, and before we can calculate our next moves we first require clarification: whether the ground on which we stand, the calling by which we have claimed, the future to which we stretch which is beyond most available evidence, is sturdy enough to bear the weight of our risky convictions, stouthearted enough to forestall our own palpitations, buoyant enough to venture into Leviathan’s depths, sufficiently tenacious and persevering to not be “confused by the roaring of the sea” or “faint from fear and foreboding” in the face of history’s dangerous rift.
The doorway into asking if there are sufficient grounds on which to stand—sturdy? stouthearted? buoyant? tenacious and persevering?—entails our willingness to lament and grieve, to mount an indictment against Heaven’s seeming desertion from Earth’s destiny. Or, as Jeremiah (8:22) demanded to know, “is there no balm in Gilead?”
I dare say our capacity to grieve and lament is related to our capacity to hope, much like the circumference of a tree’s canopy is proportionate to its root system. Otherwise, hope is mere sentiment which, like morning mist, quickly dissipated with the sun’s rise.
Years ago I participated in a retreat for peace and justice activists led by theologian/activist/historian Vincent Harding. He began the first session by playing the Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway rendition of the old hymn, “Come Ye Disconsolate.” And he asked us, where do you put your disconsolation?
There was a collective sigh in the room. And we all sensed we needed to be interrogated by that question before engaging in further analysis and strategic thinking. We needed clarity about the balm.
In extremis, in the farthest reaches, including mortal prospects.
On the eve of an election that could return a scurrilous man to the Oval Office and unleash a befouled future. If not, should he lose, trouble is still brewing, with the prospect of a rising tide of political violence and a tempest of peril and turmoil, like a razor poised at hope’s throat.
Nevertheless, people of faith and conscience are steadied by eyes fixed on a larger horizon. As the ancients admonish: Return to your stronghold you prisoners of hope. (cf . Zechariah 9:12)
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Processional. “Botho,” University of Johannesburg Choir, arr. Mbuso Ndlovu: “Humanity begins with gratitude and respect.”
Invocation. “People speak of hope as it is this delicate ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of cobblestone in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” —Matthew@crowsFault
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Hope is not well-wishing: is not dreaminess, is not a hunch, is not fantasizing, is not whistling past a graveyard or positive-power thinking.
Hope is not optimism which—like its kissing cousin, pessimism—is subject to moods, electoral polling results, unpredictable weather, hormonal messages, or dependent on which-side-of-the-bed you got up this morning.
Hope is not downy soft, is not mint julipy, is not a ride on a sweet unicorn while scattering glitter.
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“This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.” —Rebecca Solnit, “Hope in the Dark”
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Hope is a bucking bronco.
Count on being thrown. Multiple times. Sometimes hitting the ground hard. Sometimes resulting in deep bruises, broken bones, maybe worse.
You will face the fearsome choice of getting up, dusting yourself off, grabbing for the saddle horn and throwing a leg over. Yet again. More determined than ever, despite the odds.
The odds are never good, based on what can be seen in a world that seems predicated on connivance and threat. But the heart can see further, if not hardened or shackled or sold into servitude.
And hope could very well take you to places you haven’t imagined, and maybe didn’t want to go.
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“May your choices reflect your hope, not your fears.” —Nelson Mandela
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Hope is rugged. Hope is not hope absent the context of threat.
Hopeful people are built for adversity, turmoil, occasions when the good is bound and gagged and strapped to a threatened funeral pyre. Being present on the margins, where life is coming apart, provides a clarity about God’s purposes that is not available anywhere else. It teaches us about our own spiritual poverty; it directs us to an affirmation of hope strong enough to endure despair; it steels our weak knees and timid hearts in the midst of adversity.
Of course, hope is not always melodramatic or theatrical. Every parent worthy the title endures a toddler’s temper tantrum and adolescent recklessness. They know that such convulsions do not predict a future outcome. Such persistence in the trenches—“when the food must come in or the fire be put out” (Marge Piercy)—is hope’s most common manifestation.
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Word. “I don’t know how my mother walked her trouble down / I don’t know how my father stood his ground / I don’t know how my people survive slavery / I do remember, that’s why I believe. . . . / My God calls to me in the morning dew / The power of the universe, It knows my name / Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way / I raise my voice for justice, I believe…” —“I Remember, I Believe,” Sweet Honey In the Rock
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When hope crashes on the shoals of despair, we close our eyes and make our way back to the deepest recesses of our hearts where the memories of All Saints Day are stored; and there we recount again the names, the faces, the stories of those gone before, who paved the way to this moment; and we imagine that we carry forward, to a future beyond our reach, when others, finding themselves in similar grief, find footing on our shoulders.
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“The resurrection hope finds living expression in men and women when they protest against death. . . . But it does not live from this protest. It lives from joy in the coming victory of life.” —Jürgen Moltman, “Bread and Wine”
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As Galadriel says to Celeborn in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings, “Hope remains while the Company is true.” Which is why finding and abiding in true company is crucial.
Have you such company?
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Benediction. “Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times, who testify to its persistence when everything seems in shadow and grief. Blessed are you in whom the light lives, in whom the brightness blazes—your heart a chapel, an altar where in the deepest night can be seen the fire that shines forth in you in unaccountable faith, in stubborn hope, in love that illumines every broken thing it finds.” —Jan Richardson
Recessional. “You are the God of justice / You are the God who sees / You are the God who heals and / Who loves the world through me / We believe our love can change things / We will not live silently / You are the God of justice / You are the God who sees.” —“The Whole World Is Waiting,” The Many
Ken Sehested & Nancy Hastings Sehested 13 October 2024, joint sermon at Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville NC
Part one: Ken begins
The text for today is a selection of verses from Hebrews 11 and 12.
The opening verse is a familiar one: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The author then goes on to record a long list of those who have been faithful, who have trusted God. He admits in the middle of this long list that “time would fail me” to tell all the stories.
Then, chapter 12 begins: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight to run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith . . . who for the sake of the joy set before him endured the cross. . .”
The sequence in this text is essential: “for the sake of joy . . . endured the cross.” Endured not from sheer willpower, nor from superhuman strength, or out of moral heroism—but for joy.
Nancy and I recently returned from a 10-day trip to Cuba, and we’ve been asked to report some of our learning. First off, let me mention how the invitation came about. Nancy will then tell some stories reflecting on what we learned. Then I’ll close with some commentary on why this emerging partnership with Oliva Baptist is important in our ongoing journey as people of faith.
The invitation we received came from Rev. Idael Montero, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Havana. That congregation’s beloved pastor emeritus, Rev. Raul Suarez, celebrated his 89th birthday this summer; and the congregation wanted to do a celebration of life for him as he entered his 90th year. They were also celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Fraternity of Baptist Churches’ founding, begun after 3 congregations were expelled from the Western Baptist Convention in Cuba.
I first met Raul in 1985 in a very providential encounter with him on one of his trips to the US. We talked for well over an hour, and at several points he quoted from memory long passages from the writing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That initial conversation then began to initiate additional contacts between the Baptist Peace Fellowship and Fraternity of Baptists in Cuba.
I had no idea that King’s legacy was known in Cuba. In fact, I don’t think I knew there were Baptists in Cuba. Still today some people in the US believe the church was outlawed in Cuba.
Nancy preached in that special, standing-room-only service on 8 September, and I offered the benediction. Then I was on a panel discussion in the afternoon to share stories of our encounters with Raul, who also founded the Martin Luther King Center next door to the church. (In fact, a delegation from the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta were among the special guests in the service.)
This trip provided the opportunity to spend parts of two days with the pastor and congregation of Juan Naranjo Baptist Church in the little village of Oliva, as well as visits with other Fraternity pastors and congregations in that region.
It’s really hard to summarize our experiences over 10 days. The closest, brief sentence I’ve managed is this: We were with inspirited people in a dispirited land living under the mean-spirited and draconian embargo by the United States over the past seven decades.
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Part two: Cuba and WNC after Storm Helene A Reflection by Nancy Hastings Sehested
In Celtic spirituality a sacred place where the boundaries between heaven and earth are blurred is called a “thin place.”
A thin place finds us in a doorway, an opening to new ways of seeing. It is a holy encounter…where beauty and meaning can emerge. Haven’t we discovered that heaven and hell can be found in the very same place on this earth?
Cuba is a thin place.
Since storm Helene, Western North Carolina is a thin place.
Someone asked me if Cuba’s disasters with limited water, food, and electrical power is like what’s happening here.
Yes… in the sense that we have experienced hardships and there is suffering.
Yes… in the sense that there is loss of lives, livelihoods, homes, and roads.
Yes…in the sense that neighbors are helping neighbors.
But no. It is not like Cuba.
There is no National Guard, FEMA, disaster relief aid, utility crews, construction crews, maintenance crews, food and water supplies, gasoline tankers, water maintenance crews, medical personnel, or federal, state and local agencies offering needed help.
I offer a few glimpses of the thin places of sacred experiences on our trip.
On our first day in Havana, several members of Ebenezer Baptist Church—four adults and two teenagers—sat down with us to offer their experiences of living in Cuba now.
One man is a physician, and now serves on the pastoral staff of the church. This is what he said:
“We love our country. We remember how proud we were that everyone had an education and healthcare and food and shelter.
We still love our country, but now it’s heartbreaking. For professionals like me who are doctors and nurses and teachers, it’s an inverted pyramid. I can make more money selling crackers on the street corner than being a doctor.
“At our church, the people line up each week to receive care, for food and for medicine. We offer what we can. It is not enough.
And we are always grieving the loss of family members or young people who have left their homeland to find a way to live in other countries where there is less hard-ship. Who can blame them?”
On Sunday we took a photo of the eight teens in the youth group in front of a picture of Gandhi that hung on the wall. Our own Dan Snyder sent that picture. Then the teens asked us: “Would you pray for us? Would you offer a prayer for us to stay strong on the path of peace and non-violence, the way of Gandhi, King, and Jesus?”
We formed a circle and prayed.
On Monday we went about an hour outside Havana to a church pastored by the president of the Fraternity of Churches. The church house was filled and a full worship service happened. Pastor Corita invited members to offer why they are part of the church.
Answers: Because we find hope and love here. Because we can help children in this neighborhood here. Because we can share the love of Jesus together through this church.
For the benediction, everyone stood and faced the doorway. They placed one hand over their heart and one hand reaching out toward the door. Then the pastor prayed that they would be the love of God for their neighborhood.
A thin place.
Midweek we went to the town of Matanzas. We stayed at the seminary. We saw Ophelia, a retired professor and a former president of the seminary, now in her 80’s. She said: “I’ve never seen hunger in Cuba until now. Never.”
And after some articulate commentary on the horrors of the embargo, as well as the additional sanctions against Cuba inflicted during the Trump administration, she said:
“Thank you for coming to visit. We need people to visit us in this difficult time. We need people to walk alongside us. We need to know that we are not alone.”
As I stood in front of the chapel waiting for the morning prayers, I saw below me a large vegetable garden. I waved to the gardener. Then he picked a tiny flower blossom, walked up the incline and handed it to me.
Thin places.
On Saturday we visited the church in Oliva. About 20 adults and 10 children were all out front to welcome us with hugs and smiles. Then we sat in a circle and looked to see each and every one wearing around their neck the pottery pendants of a cross that Teresa [a Circle of Mercy member] made for them.
Pastor Waldemar welcomed us with prayers. The children sang songs and offered poems and bible verses and gave us pictures they had drawn. Waldemar led us in a Bible study from the passage in Acts which contains the line “silver and gold have I none but what I have I give you.”
The passage was acted out with some of the adults playing the roles, complete with some scarves for costumes.
Waldemar then divided us into two groups to discuss the passage. One group was all women. When they returned to the circle they said this about their understanding of the passage:
“There are women in our neighborhood who are being abused. We don’t have silver and gold to offer, but we can give them a pathway to hope. We can make sure they know that God does not want anyone to be assaulted.”
Pastor Waldemar added: “No one should ever live with emotional or physical abuse. We have another story that they can live. God wants everyone to live safe and free from violence in any form. We can offer them healing from trauma. And we can help more men to learn something different than the machismo mindset.”
The next day on Sunday was an incredible worship service: lively music, beautiful testimonies, children offering interpretive movement to songs, and a hope-filled sermon by Ken. The service ended with communion. Then the communion continued with a lunch for all of spaghetti and tomato sauce.
A thin place—in God’s own presence—in the beauty of the people clearly evident in their generosity, their faith and hope…and joy! Yes, joy!
A final remembrance: The artistic community in Cuba is alive and well. Art and music are everywhere. Beauty is as essential as bread.
Body and soul must be fed. Cubans know this well.
There was no place we visited, whether around a dinner table or in a church house, where music was not offered. They sing their way to assurance, to hope. They sing their gratitude for the Presence of God in the midst of the storms.
And some of those leading as well as joining the people in offering food for body and soul are our own members, Kim and Stan. I don’t think I have to say this to you. You already know that they are extraordinary. They love the people. The people love them. They live in the midst of the struggles and they offer their remarkable loving selves.
And yet, no es facil (“it’s not easy,” a common Cuban refrain). It is not easy. Stan and Kim have faithfully shared their sorrows as well as their joys with us.
As we were dropped off at the airport, Kim had a request for prayer:
Pray that I can keep touching the rock of God’s refuge and strength.
And so we pray, and we pray with our bodies and souls, reaching to touch another day of being in the thin place, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, laying aside every weight to run with perseverance the path set before us, always looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, disregarding the shame and is seated on the right hand of the Merciful One.
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Part three: Ken concludes
As we continue our partnership with Naranjo Baptist Church in Oliva, we need to reflect on the theological significance of this relationship.
Why do this? What makes this connection important? What does it say about the nature of our congregation, a tangible indicator or practice that coheres with our beliefs and convictions? The separate but deeply related questions of “who are we?” and “what are we to do?” must be pondered and clarified.
Our congregation has a long history of mission engagements. The very first mission grant we made together—and this was before we even had a budget—was a [2002] gift to Rabbis For Human Rights to replant olive trees destroyed by the Israeli Defense Force in the West Bank.
As with the author of Hebrews, “time would fail me” to tell all the stories of how we’ve engaged the broken places in our community and the larger world. To name but a few more recent activities: pastoral support for inmates at the women’s prison; Raw Tools’ gun turn in; advocacy for immigrants; very public support for the LGBTQ community; opposition to militarism and environmental degradation, including multiple acts of civil disobedience; opposition to the corporate takeover of our health care institutions. We could easily spend an hour simply naming the concrete actions we’ve taken supporting the creation of a Beloved Community, together and separately.
Why do we do these things? Is it because we are unusually kind-hearted? Is it because we believe it’s better to give than to receive? Is it because we tend to vote for Democrats? Or maybe we’re just doing what our Mamas advised us to do?
All of these things are true, but none are true enough. There’s something deeper going on in our hearts and minds, and our hands and feet. Most importantly, this is what we are doing: We are being saved—yes, saved—being saved from a culture that says only the strong survive; that the rich take what they can and the poor endure what the must; that lasting power flows through the barrel of a gun; that the reality of scarcity demands that we get what we want, regardless of what we have to do to get it.
Whenever we position ourselves in compassionate proximity with those our economy and culture deems expendable—with the bruised and battered and broken and vulnerable—we are putting ourselves into position to more clearly hear what the Spirit is saying. And what the Spirit is saying is that joy is the heartbeat of what God intended in Creation and promises to bring to fruition in the new heaven and the new earth.
In my sermon in Oliva, I concluded: “Our desire in forming a partnership is we want to learn about your joy. We do not come wanting to evangelize you—we want to be evangelized by you. We believe that Christians in Cuba are among our ‘great cloud of witnesses’ from whom we need to learn.”
In our serving we are saved. And in our saving we are empowered to engage in countering (however modestly or dramatically) the rule of vengeance. In that action we discover joy, the kind of joy that is beyond happiness—joy that sustains through the darkest hour. Joy that generates and sustains endurance; joy that knows the world is headed for reclamation; joy that brings us into the company of Jesus.
May it be so.
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Addendum. It was our honor to travel to Cuba with Stan Hastey, former director of the Alliance of Baptists, which has fostered partnerships of congregations here with those affiliated with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba. This was Stan’s 35th trip to Cuba. Everywhere we went, when meeting new friends in Cuba, the fact that we are friends of Stan made us all the more welcomed.
# # #
Nancy Hastings Sehested (left), Rev. Raul Suárez, & Ken Sehested, at a “celebration of life” service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Havana, Cuba
Few know the federal regulations for handling and displaying Old Glory—and frequently are in violation of those laws
Ken Sehested
Invocation. “But your flag decal won’t get you / Into Heaven any more. / They’re already overcrowded / From your dirty little war. / Now Jesus don’t like killin’ / No matter what the reason’s for, / And your flag decal won’t get you / Into Heaven any more.” —John Prine, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Any More”
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In grade school, the principal chose older students, two by two, to raise the US flag each morning and lower it, carefully folding it, each afternoon. The task was considered an honor. What I remember most, though, was the stringent warning to do-not-let-it-touch-the-ground!
No explanation for this admonishment was given. And none of us ever asked why. I remember (though never said aloud) wondering why, since the ground was my friend. I lived for being outside, and loved every open space, save for those patches of goathead stickers (aka puncturevine, Tribulus terrestris)—a common feature in West Texas scrubland—to be avoided at all costs when roaming barefoot. Dropping your ice cream cone on the ground might be considered a defeat. But not for most every other edibles.
I was well into adulthood before I learned of the “US Flag Code” which codifies many details on how our nation’s flag is, and is not, to be handled and displayed. Though it is part of federal law, its provisions and stipulations are not legally enforceable. The Code is more like a formal protocol document. And there are provisions which are now routinely ignored by the general public.
For instance, did you know that the Code prohibits using the flag for the following:
• as personal clothing or other apparel (and also bedding or drapery);
• for commercial advertising;
• embroidered on cushions or handerchiefs, or printed on paper napkins or boxes or anything designed for temporary use and discard;
• on sports uniforms or costumes, excepting members of the military, police and fire fighters, and members of patriotic organizations;
• never be carried horizontally;
• never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
Of particular significance to the Christian community is the provision that any time the flag is displayed along with any other flag (e.g., the US flag and the Christian flag displayed in a sanctuary), the US flag must be “in a position of superior prominence,” which is to the right of the speaker (to the observer’s left) “and its staff should be in front of the staff of the other flag.” Or, on a church grounds flagpole, the Christian flag is displayed underneath the US flag.
Version 1.0.0
Which is to say, loyalty to the nation, of which the flag represents, outranks loyalty to the cross of Christ on the Christian flag. This is made all the more obvious when the US flag is displayed in massive proportions.
Then again, many people residing in the Global South (or attempting to migrant to the US, or hoisted above the 800 US military bases outside the US) only see the US flag behind concertina wire.
Not to mention appropriation of the flag for sheer gluttony, gun reverence, and nationalist infamy
Who’d thought that just prior to commemorating our overthrow of a king, the US Supreme Court would reinstate monarchy?
That might be an exaggeration, but only a teeny-weeny one. With today’s Supreme Court ruling, presidents of the US have “at a minimum, a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”
And what unofficial acts might a president make? Any prosecutor would have to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the president was acting unofficially. The matter now goes back to the DC federal court to decide the official v. unofficial boundary. May be a job opening for a telepathist. Good luck with that.
If ever there were a Rubicon to be crossed, today, in US history, it’s happened. As it happens, no, not every person is subject to the law. Already in 2019 former president Trump presciently claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power “to do whatever I want.”
Key Trump advisors are already talking about a “post-Constitutional order” and the theory of unitary executive authority—highfalutin words for the divine rights of kings. Trump’s evangelical consiglieri corps has years of providing theological cover.
When asked about how he could support someone with a profligate character like Trump, Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, said “I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek. I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.”
You and I both have friends and trusted acquaintances who argue, as July rolls around, that we should distinguish between nationalism and patriotism, ought to reclaim our Independence Day affection for and love of country shed of its hubris and belligerence.
To love one’s country, though, means we first have to tell the truth. Some will resort to the piety, “My country, right or wrong.” But that’s like saying, as G.K. Chesterton pointed out, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Because our virtues as a nation are considerable, we tend to think our vices unremarkable. Such is not the case. And if we are to rightly interpret our condition, to expose our pretension, we simply must take seriously the whole story. Sometimes an intervention is the most loving thing we can do.
As I write, my Canadian friends are celebrating their 1 July Canada Day, their nation’s birth anniversary—which they managed to achieve without a war. Two decades ago, responding to an article on the history of US imperial ambitions—where I mentioned a once-threatened invasion of Canada by the US—a friend in Canada, Scripture scholar Ray Hobbs—responded by saying, “not only threatened but carried out—in fact, four times.”
Those invasions were never mentioned in my history classes (or, likely, in yours).
Heather Cox Richardson points out other excluded background information surrounding our nation’s war of independence. As late as 1763, at the conclusion of what is referred to here as the French and Indian War, British colonists experienced an economic boom. Moreover, with the French relinquishing claims to land west of the Appalachian Mountains, the prospect of yet more free land and natural resources fueled entrepreneurial ambition.
However, Britain had no desire to fund yet another expensive war with Native Americans, which would surely happen if colonists began flooding west across the mountains. Such expansion was outlawed by the Parliament, which also passed multiple tax legislation affecting the colonies to help pay for the war.
For sure, the championing of freedom as a political virtue was an express ideal leading to the founding of the United States. But woven throughout—then as now—were pecuniary interests. Money is free speech, according to the US Supreme Court, first in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case, widened further in the 2010 decision.
Or, to put it baldly, the wealthy (and a corporation is now a “person” as stipulated by the Citizens United case) get more than one vote. Though it must be said that no corporate managers have been jailed, despite having defrauded the public literally trillions of dollars in recent decades. And actual persons, by means of their tax dollars flowing through the US Treasury, bailed out many of our wealthiest companies. Some forms of public welfare is not only perfectly legal but fully expected, under the backroom wink-and-a-nod between politicians and the too-big-to-fail crowd, in accordance with the unassailed assumption that those with the gold get to make the rules. Good work if you can get it.
As has been said, money talks. Louder still as the decimal points accumulate.
Democratic aspiration and commercial gain have been bound together since the arrival of the first English immigrants to our shores. But as Jon Meacham points out in Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, of the 1606 First Charter of Virginia’s 3,805 words, only three percent are about God, the rest about commercial enterprise. As Captain John Smith of the Virginia Company wrote, “Faith was their color, when all their aim was nothing but present profit. “
There was more piety in Puritan Massachusetts, of course. But their exercise of religious freedom was for their own kind. Meacham quotes the English Lord Bishop of Salisbury complaining, ‘Every party cries out for Liberty & toleration, till they get to be uppermost, and then will allow none.’ In fact, the1650 Connecticut Code bluntly stipulates that ‘If any man shall have or worship any God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.’
There is no doubt in my mind that the US Declaration of Independence represents the most politically far-reaching ideas of its time, beginning with those majestic lines of the second paragraph:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .”
One of the great historical ironies associated with the US Declaration of Independence is the fact that Ho Chi Minh, emerging leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam—against which the US fought its longest war of the 20th century—quoted extensively from the Declaration in the founding of his party in September 1945.
But between the issuance of the Declaration and the writing of the US Constitution several years later, profound differences in economic policy emerged, threatening to sever the ties that had united the colonies in the war against British rule.
Slavery had already become the dominant economic generator in the Southern colonies (which greatly profited Northern financiers, insurers, and shipbuilders), where industrial scale agriculture blossomed—and would compete, in the decades to come, with the Northern colonies’ industrial scale manufacturing. Frederick Douglass would conclude that industrial wage slavery was almost as cruel as the chattel kind.
The authoring and editing of the US Constitution was fraught with tension, most explicitly over the question of slavery. The resulting compromise ended with the sanctioning of enslavement.
The “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, attacked slavery early in the Constitutional Convention, stating, “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
In line with Madison’s conviction, Thomas Jefferson attacked the trade in human bondage, calling it a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty”—though he himself profited greatly (and gained at least six children) from the institution.
Such was the moral ambiguity built into the Constitution’s framers. To be sure, Jefferson did not believe that African Americans were social equals. (Nor did future President Abraham Lincoln, who, like many white abolitionists, supported repatriation of slaves to Africa.)
Jefferson described them “as incapable as children,” and admitted that maintaining slavery was like holding “a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”
In the end, the writers reached a compromise. Three provisions in the final draft of the Constitution provided partial limitations on the practice: the Three-Fifths Clause, the ban on Congress ending the slave trade for twenty years, the fugitive slave clause, and the slave insurrections.
Yet to hide its ignominy, the final draft resorted to euphemisms (“certain persons”) rather than use the words “slave” or “slavery.”
If the temporary confederation of colonies (for the purpose of ending British rule) were to survive as a coherent nation-state, the financial boon of chattel slavery had to be warranted.
The lofty sentiment of the Declaration’s “all men are created equal” was a myopic aspiration. The celebration of freedom was literally for men only, and not even for all men. Voting rights was largely restricted to white property owners. Slavery would not be abolished for another 76 years with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The franchise for women wouldn’t be approved until 1920; and nearly a half-century more before the Voting Rights Act assured Black voting rights. Even now, the US Supreme Court, and state legislatures, are chipping away at those voting rights provisions.
The virtues of democratic governance celebrated on our nation’s Independence Day has from our founding been in competition with the interests of a “free” market economy. Though the word “God” is absent from the Constitution, the framers implicitly affirmed that, yes—in contradiction to the New Testament—both God and Mammon can be served simultaneously.
The instability of these competing aspirations was evident from the beginning. It was Jefferson who wrote, in 1816, “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed corporations.”
This sentiment would later be expressed in the writing of President Abraham Lincoln: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . [C]orporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Then again, in the 20th century, President Woodrow Wilson complained: “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of government. I do not expect monopoly to restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”
President Theodore Roosevelt went so far as to say, “All contributions by corporations to any political committee for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.”
As has been said, money doesn’t just talk in politics, it also silences.
Any accurate accounting of the competing interests in our nation’s founding must be attentive to the prophetic protestation of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ 5 July 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
“Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused, the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
His assessment is as indisputable now as then. The slave trade was the original sin of our nation. Clearly, there have been sporadic, courageous, and efficacious movements to right that wrong, and we rightly recollect and celebrate those narratives. We do so not to exhaust or satisfy the longing for justice, but to inform, to sharpen, and to animate the ongoing struggle, to lay claim, as Dr. King reminded in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, to that “promissory note” of freedom’s “inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
And to do so, we must move beyond King-quoting.
The provocative words of 18th century patriot Thomas Paine have never been more prescient than to our current political climate. When reflecting “on the precariousness of human affairs,” a “constitution of our own” based on the rule of law must be established.
“If we omit it now, some [dictator] may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.”
Invocation. “I was blinded by the devil, / Born already ruined, / Stone-cold dead / As I stepped out of the womb. / By His grace I have been touched, / By His word I have been healed, / By His hand I’ve been delivered, / By His spirit I’ve been sealed.” —“Saved,” Bob Dylan
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Methodism’s founder John Wesley, an Anglican priest, was born on 28 June 1703.
Or was it 17 June?
It’s confusing. Because Britain switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian in 1752, while Wesley was still living. Which meant his birthday moved.
Our United Methodist Church (UMC) friends in the US are dealing with a lot of pain these days, with a quarter of their congregations disaffiliating in recent years, the culmination of 40 years of contention, primarily over questions regarding LGBTQ ordination and same-sex marriage in the church.
The logjam finally broke at the end of the 23 April-3 May General Conference meeting in Charlotte, NC, where delegates from central conferences around the world voted to remove discrimination against queer folk from the church’s official documents.
As its name (first uttered by its early Anglican critics) implies, the United Methodist Church is methodical. Many procedures, including a “regionalization” plan set in motion at the General Conference, will take a long time to process and clarify.
If you’re like me, you probably didn’t know that two-thirds of United Methodists live outside the US. An extenuating factor in the conversation involving sexual orientation is that UMC leaders in the Global South accuse the culturally progressive elements in the US body of colonialism in their affirmation of its LGBTQ members.
The remaining body faces a crisis moment that will result in significant institutional downsizing. Might this be a crisis leading to clarified vision and renewal? Or will it put further pressure dwindling of all Christian communions in the US?
Time will tell. Though, as with Gideon, God does have a thing about downsizing.
This fork in the road reminds me of my third most favorite quote from Wesley: “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?”
I suspect most every existing denomination of Christians receive—at its outset, by one or small group individuals—a genuine charism, a gift of the Spirit, a gift that was meant for the whole body. But after a couple generations, the bearers of that gift decided to copyright that gift, using it to establish boundaries, boundaries which hardened into walls, walls that deepened insularity and isolation. And the walls—the traditions, vocabulary, and institutions—become the object of devotion.
The Wesleyan charism (Wesley himself was not alone in its unfolding) has indeed been a gift to the whole church. In this instance, here in the US, the Wesleyan DNA eventually commingled with what is now referred to as the holiness movement, generated in the Second Great Awakening, over time splintering into competing institutional claims on the legacy.
Holiness was most certainly an element of the renewal movement Wesley and his cohorts attempted to ignite in the Church of England. It included a vigorous pattern of piety and ascetic practices. As we know, over time such patterns and practices have a tendency to quench the Spirit rather than unleash Her—as much as solemn, perfunctory liturgical practice in traditionalist circles.
Central to Wesley’s testimony was the occasion, in a May 1738 meeting on Aldersgate Street in London, when he reports in his Journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”
This, of course, is one of the sources from which the evangelical charge, “let Jesus into your heart,” originates. Trouble is, according to the New Testament, when you let Jesus in, he brings all his poor, homeless, hungry, sick, prisoner friends with him.
And in fact, a characteristic practice of the Methodist renewal movement was increased attention to society’s castoffs.
My friend and Methodist clergy Bill Wylie-Kellerman writes that Wesley was keenly aware of the ravages caused by the slave trade. He “recognized such violence hidden in the clean and tidy profits of slave traders and owners. He exposed it, addressing them with the fire of a prophet: ‘Thy hands, thy bed, thy furniture, thy house, thy lands are at present stained with blood.’
“He drew the Methodist societies effectively into abolitionism. The ‘General Rules’ [of the Methodist movement] began with the commitment to give evidence of salvation by ‘Doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is generally practiced.’ ‘Doing no harm’ is an 18th century synonym for nonviolence. . . .
“The founding conference in the US called for the expulsion of any member participating in the slave trade. . . [L]ittle by little that commitment fell to the temptations of mainline compromise. By 1816, a committee reported to General Conference that ‘in relation to slavery, little can be done to abolish a practice so contrary to the principles of moral justice . . .the evil appears past remedy. . . .’” (from “Of Violence and Hope: Death Undone,” Response magazine)
Which brings me to my second favorite quote from Wesley: “Any Christians who take for themselves any more than the plain necessaries of life, live in an open habitual denial of the Lord. They have gained riches and hell-fire.”
There are many reasons to distrust “religion of the heart,” as Wesley accounted and as is heralded by many gathered under the modern umbrella of “evangelical” expressions of faith (though, in increasingly larger circles, evangelicalism in the US has now become a potent political force bound and determined to create a theocracy).
One of my favorite lines from contemporary music comes from the Greg Brown song sung by Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky: “Oh Lord, I’ve made you a place in my heart, and I hope now you leave it alone.”
In contemporary usage, heart religion is notoriously vague, ethereal, and sentimental. The cartoon of a Salvation Army (one of many fruits with Wesleyan-Holiness roots) band playing that old hymn, “Rescue the Perishing (care for the dying),” at a river wharf, to an audience of destitute, unhoused men, with the Salvationists completely oblivious to one who has fallen into the river and is floating away.
In Scripture, though, the heart is not a fickle organ given to flights of emotional zeal, which usually dissipates like morning dew in the sun’s exposure. Rather, the reign and rule of God is rightly said to be about human hearts, because it is in the human heart that choices are made about ultimate trust and security.
The word “worship” comes from the same Old English root as the word “worthy.” Thus our true and proper worship is the act of deciding worthiness. Thus, to name a few examples, can we “bank” (i.e., invest our assets) on God’s promise that one day lion and lamb will lie peacefully together? That every warrior’s bloody boots will be torched. That enemies are to be loved? That all tears will be dried and death come undone? That creation itself will be freed of its defiling bondage?
Such decisions are not merely social or political decisions. They are, at bottom, spiritual decisions. In biblical terms, therefore, giving one’s “heart” to Jesus means withdrawing it from Mammon. And having one’s mind “renewed” (in Paul’s reference) is, in contemporary language, to have it decolonized—which entails, using Wesley’s language, coming to serve God not out of “reverential fear” but now “out of gratitude and love.” To know the profound, unqualified, unassailable love of God entails the journey out of fear; and fearless people are the empire’s greatest threat.
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Hymn of longing. “When the lion and the lamb will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem. . . . I believe that on that day the children of Abraham will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem.” —“Jerusalem,” Abraham Jam
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Which brings me to my most favorite quote from Wesley:
“Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than holy adulterers. The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.”
The warmed heart in Wesley’s testimony is sturdier than emotional exhilaration or affective temperament. Emotional highs last about as long as those from illicit drugs.
Rather, the experience of God’s grace frees from self-centeredness; which generates the capacity to repent the damage we’ve done and the bonds we’ve broken, interrupting the momentum of history’s spiral of violence, turning from harm to health; which sets the stage for sanctified life as agents and provocateurs of Heaven’s insurgency into Earth’s calamity.
And we learn these things, we practice these things, we examine and modify these things . . . together.
Holiness is not like some imagined spiritual stock portfolio, where we frequently check its condition; boosting this or that pious habit to keep up with market fluctuations and cultural fashions; feverishly measuring ourselves against others, alternately priding ourselves when we over perform, shaming ourselves when we fall behind.
Solitude is indeed one of our spiritual practices, but never in isolation from community. As Wendell Berry put it, “It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.”
The depths of God’s ultimate purpose for creation cannot be read from history’s surface. But deep currents do emerge, from time to time. It is the community of faith’s purpose to recognize, rejoice over, proclaim and enjoin those occasions.
The kind of freedom we practice requires communities of conviction, where we uncover, and begin to dismantle, the ways in which we have been fooled into thinking that only the strong survive and that divine favor is a protection racket. It requires face-to-face communities of nurture, in order to persevere during moments of disquiet and dejection and seasons of desperation and anxiety. Faith that is more than well-wishing (“thoughts and prayers”) requires communities of consequence, where we discern and assent to the repercussions of a life lived in contradiction to the pestilent spirit of this pernicious age.
The theologian James Luther Adams writes that “A faith that creates no community of faith and a faith that assumes no definite form is not only a protection against any explicit faith, it is probably also a protection for a hidden idolatry of blood or state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny.”
The ranks of marketeers grow giddy at the thought of a population of purportedly self-made, independent, unaffiliated, autonomous individuals with no community of conviction to help guide their choices—choices which reduce “freedom” to questions of tooth paste brands and cellphone plans.
Join me in saying happy birthday to John Wesley; and a be of good cheer blessing to our United Methodist friends as they come to embrace the insecurity of their common life.
I can imagine Jesus saying to his disciples, shortly before his departure, “I didn’t say it would be easy. It said it would be worth it.”
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Benediction. “We rise, up from the wreckage / Rise, with tears and with courage / Rise, fighting for life / We rise! / In hope, in prayer, we’re right here.” —“We Rise,” Batya Levine & friends
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For your guided meditation, here is a list of my favorite quotes from John Wesley.
“The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion. . . . Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy Solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than Holy Adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.”
“…none shall live with God but he that lives to God…”
“The church changes the world not by making converts but by making disciples.”
“One design you are to pursue to the end of time — the enjoyment of God in time and in eternity. Desire other things, so far as they tend to this.”
“Having, first, gained all you can, and, secondly saved all you can, then give all you can.”
“Any Christians who take for themselves any more than the plain necessaries of life, live in an open habitual denial of the Lord. They have gained riches and hell-fire.”
“But beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”
“Beware you are not a fiery, persecuting enthusiast. Do not imagine that God has called you (just contrary to the spirit of Him you style your Master) to destroy men’s lives, and not to save them. Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think. Use no constraint in matters of religion.”
“The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities.”
“Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.”
John Wesley did not say the following (but I think he would say amen!): “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”
Invocation. “Schindler’s List.” —violin solo by Braimah Kanneh-Mason
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Following Hamas’ brutal execution of nearly 1,200 Israelis on 7 October 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s words have become infamous: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
But this present atrocity did not begin last October. In the days following the 14 May 1948 founding of the nation of Israel, some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by Jewish militias from their homes or fled in fear for their lives. That infamy is designated as al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”), commemorated every 15 May by Palestinians. Then, in 2007, Israel put in place a complete blockade on Gaza and its 2+ million residents, tightly controlling access by land, air, and sea. Human Rights Watch refers to Gaza’s status as the world’s largest open-air prison.
To date some 36,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed during the Israeli Defense Force’s invasion. For up to date information on casualties in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, see “Israel-Gaza war in maps and charts: Live tracker.”
Artwork below: “Women of Gaza” by Palestinian artist Rawan Anani
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Hymn of lament. “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?” —“How long, Lord?” translated lyrics from “Eela Mata Ya Rabbou,” hymn adapted from Psalm 13, a lament over the Israeli massacres of Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip, performed by Fairouz
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This is very significant
Fareed Zakaria, host of GPS, interviewing Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who fled the Nazis as a child, tells Fareed why he has come to the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. (9:55 minutes) You can read Neier’s “Is Israel Committing Genocide?” in the New York Review of Books (You can read it at no cost if you’re willing to provide your name and email address.)
“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice,
you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
If an elephant has his foot on the tail of a
mouse, and you say you are neutral, the
mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”” —Desmond Tutu, former Anglican bishop of South Africa
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Did God sanction genocide?
Jews and Christians have troubling texts which pose grim questions, particularly the apparent sanctioning of genocide in Holy Writ.
Announcing Israel’s commencement of its ground invasion on 28 October 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu referenced God’s instruction to the biblical King Saul to destroy the Amalekites, Israel’s most bitter ancient enemy. Afterwards, the Prime Minister’s office added a textual reference behind his comment, Deuteronomy 15:17-19, which ends with the prophet and priest Samuel delivering instructions to Saul from God: “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.”
The same story, told in 1 Samuel, fills in the brutal details: “Samuel said to Saul, ‘The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. . . . Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’” (15:1-3).
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Then there’s this: Puritans identify Amaleks in the New World
“We’ve seen throughout history the bloody impact of people setting off to kill some new group of ‘Amalekites.’ Puritan leaders justified the genocide of Native Americans in the colonial period of what is now the U.S. by comparing the Native Americans to the Amalekites. As John Winthrop gave his sermon on ‘a model of Christian charity’ to Puritans heading to the new land, he invoked the command for Saul to kill Amalek. That’s the same sermon famous for his line about the new land being ‘a city upon a hill.’ The speech frequently quoted by politicians today to cast the U.S. as a divine city on a hill (instead of what Jesus said about the city being his followers) also includes the theological foundation for genocide against Native Americans. It’s not so shining of a speech after all.” —Brian Kaylor, “A Call for ‘Biblical’ Genocide,” A Public Witness
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Overlooked quotes
“We shall try to spirit the penniless [non-Jewish] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” —Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), considered the “father” of modern political Zionism, in an 1895 entry in his personal diary
“Our thought is that the colonisation of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel [“Land of Israel,” a somewhat flexible description of the area which the biblical Israelite tribes had their settlements] and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country.” — early Zionist leader Leo Motzkin (1867-1933)
“[I]n 1956, the Israeli chief of staff Moshe Dayan made a famous speech at the funeral of an Israeli commander killed on the border with Gaza. What, Dayan wondered, explained the Palestinians’ ‘terrible hatred of us’? Then he answered his own question: ‘For eight years now they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.’” —Patrick Cockburn, in a review of Joe Sacco’s “Footnotes in Gaza,” New York Times Book Review, 27 December 2009
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I have a dream? Scripture’s hint at our destined future
“This is the length of Abraham’s life, one hundred seventy-five years. Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, old and full of years, and was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac [born to Sarah, the first of Abraham’s wives and concubines] and Ishmael [born to Hagar, Sarah’s slave] buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites.” —Genesis 25: 7-10
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Benediction. “From the north to the south / from the west to the east / hear the prayer of the mothers / bring them peace.” —“Prayer of the Mothers,” Yael Deckelbaum, who created an alliance of a group of Israeli and Palestinian women for a “March of Hope” in 2016
Reflecting on our political pandemonium
through the lens of an ancient religious observance
Ken Sehested
Text: Luke 24:44-53 12 May 2024, Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC
Invocation. “People killin’, people dyin’ / Children hurt and you hear them cryin’ / Can you practice what you preach / And would you turn the other cheek.” —Black Eyed Peas, “#WHEREISTHELOVE”
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“I believe that I shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13)
Today we are marking what is called the Feast of the Ascension, the story in the New Testament about the conclusion of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to the disciples, where he is dramatically taken up into heaven. But only in Luke’s Gospel, and in the book of Acts (which Luke also wrote), is there mention of a period of time between resurrection and ascension.
Let’s review the basic elements of this narrative. Chapter 24 in Luke details several resurrection appearances, including the women’s encounter at the empty tomb; the appearance to two disciples on their way out of Jerusalem, Jesus’ identity hidden until the breaking of bread; then Jesus’s appearance to the disciples gathered behind a locked door in Jerusalem—which, as with the story of the Emmaen travelers, includes food, when after showing them his wounds, he suddenly asked: “Got anything to eat?”
Then, leading his disciples out of the city, up onto the Mount of Olives to the village of Bethany, he gives this strange instruction: It’s not yet time for you to launch your mission to declare the Good News not only in Jerusalem but “to all nations.” Wait here until you are “clothed with power from on high”—which is to say, power which you do not generate and may not manipulate, but use only in service to the coming Reign of God.
The repeated instances of Jesus consuming food during this time is extremely important. It underscores and reinforces Scripture’s insistence that faith is a bodified affair; that history, not heaven, is the pivot point of our calling; that we are not saved from the world but for it. As Scripture scholar Frederic Herzog insists, the question about being “born again” is not “have you found Jesus” but “Have you found your neighbor.”
Unfortunately, this clarity has been muddled because of a deeply flawed translation into English of one word. That word is “flesh.”
The Newer Testament is filled with negative images of “the flesh,” which is perceived as corruptible, as warped desire, as licentious (Romans 13:14; 1 John 2:16; 2 Peter 2:18). Flesh is “hostile to God” (Romans 8:7), and we are warned against walking “according to the flesh” (Galatians 4:23, 29), or “setting the mind on the flesh” (Romans 8:5), “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:8), and “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50) contrasting “flesh” with “things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:4-13). Whenever you encounter those expressions, you need to translate “flesh” as “disordered, self-centered desire.”
But consider this: Scripture repeatedly locates the work of salvation in the flesh. Ezekiel predicts the day when a new spirit will be put into human creatures, a “heart of flesh” displacing a “heart of stone” (36:26). Joel foresees the time when God will “pour out my spirit on all flesh” (2:28).
The Prophet’s claim (Isaiah 40:5)—echoed in Luke’s rendering (3:6)—is that “all flesh shall see the salvation of our God.” The first imperative in Jesus’ own model prayer is “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). And John the Revelator (11:15) asserts “the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our God.”
And then there’s this text in the Psalms, surely my favorite: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.” [Line this out to be repeated by the congregation.]
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The second key factor in today’s text is this: The story is not simply about Jesus’ ascension into heaven. A descension is also happening, namely the giving of the Holy Spirit, with its powerful animation of those on the Jesus Road, inciting us into the far reaches of the globe with the profoundly unsettling news that a New Order is rising from the ashes of the old.
Throughout Scripture, the indwelling of the Spirit traffics in fleshly affairs. Getting saved means getting reordered. And the reordering work takes a lifetime of practice, and is often discomforting because we have become so conformed to the way things are.
The clarification of this confusion requires the community of faith to revisit the passion to which we are bound, living open-eyed in a world predicated on and subject to violation—and doing so without resort to in-kind response.
The scuttling of this disorder comes by way pathos, where we learn that God is more taken with the agony of the earth than with the ecstasy of heaven.
The Feast of the Ascension’s insistence is that God has not constructed a co-dependent relationship. The covenant is relational, not despotic. Faith entails participation, not consumption. Jesus is not our mascot, but the “pioneer of faith” (Hebrews 12:2) who bids us follow.
The threat he faced could very well be ours. But also the enduring power of joy, our buoyancy in the face of trouble.
The Feast of the Ascension is the seal of heaven’s safeguard: Not from the bootleg world, but in it, for it, on its behalf, for the blessing of Creation has not been annulled. Next Sunday we will observe the Spirit’s deployment in power as we commemorate Pentecost, the birth of church, the occasion when God’s resurrection moment turns into a resurrection movement.
Repeat with me the credo for today, this time in plural form: “We believe that we shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.”
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Hymn of lament. “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?” —“How long, Lord?” translated lyrics from “Eela Mata Ya Rabbou,” hymn adapted from Psalm 13 of lament over the Israeli massacres of Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip, performed by Fairouz
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But there is, as they say, a fly in this ointment, so I want to close with a confession and, possibly, a word of absolution.
Politically speaking, I am more pessimistic that at any time in my life. Ever darker clouds gather, more ominously that I can remember.
There is a wide range of threats, of course. Climate collapse, wars in Gaza and Ukraine, stubbornly resistant racial animus, escalating wealth inequality, the growing assaults on the LGBTQ community and surge of misogyny, the epidemic of gun violence. On and on. But what troubles me most right now is the malignant growth of the militant MAGA movement, our former president being its ring leader.
You’ve heard the threats detailed: Trump’s promise to be a dictator, at least for a day—which is like saying, as you open a bag of potato chips, “I’m just going to eat one.” His pledge of retribution on all his detractors. The airways saturated with disinformation and outright lies. The Republic Party chair promising “four years of scorched earth policies” in a new Trump administration. A third of Republican party members who believe political violence may be necessary to gain control of the government.
Though I am loath to say it, there is a very realistic possibility of Trump being reelected. And to complicate matters, within the MAGA movement, there is a constituency that truly has been left behind by the brutal logic of our economy—people whose justifiable anger has festered into a wanton, burn-it-all-down rage.
The problem, though, is that I’m also deeply worried regardless of which way the election goes. It feels like a damned-if-he-wins-but-also-damned-if-he-loses kind of predicament. Other than the years leading up to and during our Civil War, I don’t think our nation has faced such a challenge to its most basic constitutional institutions, norms, and our commitment to the common good, upholding the equality of all under the law.
It’s not that the rising tide of malice and threat is new. Trump didn’t create these fractures. There is a long history of such malevolence from the beginning of our republic. Our original constitution sanctions slavery—though it was so unpleasant a thought that the document does not use the word “slavery,” but instead speaks of “other Persons.”
Because our virtues as a nation are considerable, we tend to think our vices unremarkable. Such is not the case. And if we are to rightly interpret our condition, we simply must take seriously the whole story.
What, then, are we to do?
The poet adrienne maree brown says it best: “Things are not getting worse. They are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”
It’s true, of course, that there’s a difference between pessimism and despair; as well as the obverse, between optimism and hope. The former, in both cases, are more like emotions. Which is to say, they’re like the weather . . . changeable . . . over which we have little control.
I remain deeply hopeful in spite of my pessimism. The vision of a new heaven and a new earth, of the day when lion and lamb will lie peacefully together, of the coming Kindom of God, of the Beloved Community, of the day when all tears will be dried—these images have taken root in my heart, and in your hearts, and I cannot imagine a power that would uproot them.
The absolution available to all who are seriously involved in the work of minding and mending and ministering (and often stressed out because of the fragmentary results of our efforts) is remarkably simple: It is not up to us, individually or collectively, to make history turn out right. The wisdom of the Talmud is concisely instructive: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” In the end, it is beauty (blossoming from the soil of a beatific vision), not duty, which sustains even in the midst of drought.
We most certainly need to hold each other tight as we peel back the veil, though I think we may need to do more. Things could get really dicey here, after the election, maybe after next January’s swearing in of a new president, maybe in the months that follow. To be clear: I am not predicting widespread political violence if Trump loses. Though I am predicting a campaign of ruthless vengeance from the Oval Office if he does win.
So, again, what are we to do, if anything?
I have no plan to offer, nor am I suggesting some particular outcome. But I am using this privileged moment to encourage our congregational leaders—our pastors and church council members—to initiate a conversation in the coming months, one that might later involve all our members, to ask ourselves whether we need to prepare for the highly volatile storm on the horizon.
Does this dangerous season require any special measures? What might our role be as a community? What might individual members be prepared to do? Is the fear I’ve described overblown? How does our “peace church” statement inform the living of these days?
Kindred, ours is a bodified faith, an enfleshed faith. Jesus has ascended, but the Spirit is descending. Heaven is not a spatial indicator of a realm behind what’s behind the clouds. It’s a way of talking about God’s intent for Creation. Heaven is forever intersecting with Earth. As Dr. James Forbes said, “Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.” And as that Proverb says, oppressing the poor is an insult to God” (14:31).
I’ll turn to another poet and another Adrienne—this one, Adrienne Rich—to sum it up: “My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed. [Yet] I have to cast my lot with those, who age after age, perversely [or persistently], with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
We, too, are a community with no extraordinary power. But our midst is an Advocate, one who is hell-bent on emptying Hades of its treacherous deceit and it’s deathly sway.
Say it with me, this time in plural form: We believe that we shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
§ § §
Benediction. “. . . from the staggering account / of the Sermon on the Mount / which I don’t pretend to understand at all. / It’s coming from the silence / on the dock of the bay, / from the brave, the bold, the battered / heart of Chevrolet: / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.” —Leonard Cohen, “Democracy” (Click the “show more” button to see the lyrics.)
The lectionary psalm for Pentecost Sunday (104:24-34, 35b) omits the wrathful premise (35a) of the final verse, which reads: “Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.” Only then does the latter half of the verse return to proprietous devotion: “Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord!”
I’m guessing the lectioners omitted that appeal for fear of inciting unruly discontent within the temple of pious obeisance and prudent civility.
Yet there is authoritative precedent for such editing. Did not Jesus, in his inaugural sermon in Nazareth’s temple, drop the first part of Isaiah’s closing line in chapter 61:1-2? After reciting “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (vv. 1:-2b),” he stopped short of saying “. . . and the day of vengeance of our God.”
The assembled crowd was impressed at the erudition of its local boy: “And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. . . .”
So far, so good. But then Jesus (as is said) stopped preachin’ and got to meddlin’, as he expounded on the text, indicating that Israel’s deity was not bound by tribal prejudice, saying that the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, ignoring domestic needs, were sent to minister to members of Israel’s enemies (vv. 24-27). The crowd’s rave turned to rage.
Sacralizing vengeance—giving divine authority to human bloodlust—is repeatedly forbidden for those whose feet are shod with the Gospel of Peace.
So what are we to make of these texts, including the admonition of St. Paul: “Be angry, but sin not” (Ephesians 4:26)?
Anger over injustice is always—always—appropriate. Becoming inured, acclimated, to the presence of oppression and subjugation is the very definition of being “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2), to the ascendance of the Deceiver’s disordering of Creation’s intention. That one thrives on the blood of recrimination, with its ever-escalating spiral of violence.
Recall the pledge of Lamech, great-great-great-great grandson of Adam and Eve—making a vengeful vow that echoes to this day: “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23).
But for people of faith, wrath’s clamor requires temperance; namely, fidelity to Heaven’s repeated injunction: “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:17-19).
To be sure, the psalmist’s imprecatory rage is processed in lament before God—and is no sanction for lethal vengeance, however just our intent. But as long as the assaults now raining in the streets of the meek never raise an ache in our bodies nor a bruise on our hearts, we will never know the urgency of the Advocate’s liberating word.
Intercession implies a certain interposition. Faithfulness to the Way of Jesus implies risk to our own reputation, our own security, even our own body.
To pray intemperate prayers is to acknowledge the outrage; it is to be shaken from indifference; it is to confess that God is not neutral in the affairs of the earth. To issue such pestilent petitions, there in the very sanctuary of praise, is to proclaim the violation an affront not just to human decency but to the Holy One whose name’s sake is at stake: “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker” (Proverbs 14:31).
Spiritual life begins in processing pain, as Richard Rohr notes; and pain not transformed will surely be passed along. Offering our inflamed impulses to God—parking them at Heaven’s doorstep—expresses an act of trust that, in the end, the Beloved will make the crooked straight, will humble the heights and exalt every hollow (Isaiah 40:3-4, Luke 3:5).
To bring grief to speech is itself a sign we have not given up on the Promise of a new heaven and a new earth—a Promise that metabolizes sorrow into joy: joy more sturdy than glee, joy that creates buoyancy in the midst of tumultuous storms, joy which converts the miserly into the magnanimous.
Blessed are you who entrust your rage to the Advocate for redress. Blessed are you who mourn in the midst of deprivation—for neighbors near or afar, acknowledging that your own sake is also at stake—for your Comforter hears and hurries toward the age when all tears will be dried and death itself comes undone (Revelation 21:4).
As I write, the fifth day of Eastertide (which began on Easter eve ending 50 days later on Pentecost Sunday) draws close. As does the moment in 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing just outside his Lorraine Hotel’s second floor room in Memphis, Tennessee.
It was 6:01 p.m. CST. The fourth of April. Barely a half-century ago. He was 39 years old.
Just before a bullet found his jaw, he called out to one of his associates in the parking lot below, saying “make sure we sing Precious Lord tonight.”
§ § §
Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. . . .
§ § §
He had come to Memphis to support the city’s majority-black sanitation workers strike for better pay and working conditions. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) staff and advisors opposed his decision, saying he needed to focus on the upcoming Poor People’s March in Washington, D.C. King’s outspoken opposition to the Vietnam war was a public relations nightmare for him and the SCLC. His public disapprovalrating had risen to 75%.
A week before he participated in a workers’ march in Memphis which, dismally, ended in violence. Then, returning on 3 April, a bomb threat targeted King’s plane in Atlanta before it departed. He was so exhausted when he reached Memphis, he decided to skip that night’s mass meeting in support of the strikers, at the massive 7,500-seat sanctuary at Mason Temple Church of God In Christ.
Despite a massive thunderstorm that evening, the church house was crowded. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, his closest confidant and traveling companion, called King, saying the people needed to hear from him. Reluctantly, he went. And subsequently spoke extemporaneously for 40 minutes, in what we now remember as his soaring “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, which was eerily foreboding (“I may not get there with you”) but also electrifying for the assembled crowd.
He nearly fainted when he finished. Abernathy and others had to help him into his chair on the podium.
§ § §
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. . . .
§ § §
In the days following his assassination, riots broke out in 100 cities across the U.S. The historic Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have largely been gutted in this century by the U.S. Supreme Court. Only 11 years ago, with the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement, we as a nation have been confronted with, and confounded by, the ways in which the “I Have a Dream” moment has been repeatedly delayed, diminished, and sometimes ruthlessly opposed.
In an interview with NBC in May 1967, King admitted that the “dream” of his historic 1963 speech had in some ways “turned into a nightmare.”
The reckoning still menaces.
In 2017 civil rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman wrote that earlier in the day King was shot, he phoned his mother to give her his coming Sunday’s sermon title at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, where he co-pastored with his father: “Why America May Go to Hell,” summarizing that “America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”
§ § §
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. . . .
§ § §
I’ve long been fascinated by the enormous discoveries neuroscientists have made in recent decades about how the human brain works. Recently I came across this article, “Where Imagination Lives In Your Brain?” subtitled “The ability to conjure up possible futures or alternative realities is the flip side of memory. Both faculties cohabit in the brain region called the hippocampus.”
Or, more lyrically, as French philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote in the last century, “If you want to change people’s obedience then you must change their imagination.”
These findings corroborate Hebrew Scripture’s insistence that the worst sin is amnesia. The “Ten Commandments” are delivered with this authorizing premise, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, therefore. . . . “ (Deut. 20:2).
It’s the thereforepremise which should occupy people of faith. Worship is the work of deciding and maintaining an orientation to worthiness, clarifying why we do what we do, illuminated by immersion in our texts alongside the voices of those with no claim to the table of bounty. The how—the roadmap to the Beloved Community—must be negotiated in the public arena with other people of faith and conscience. The Little Flock of Jesus has no privileged information on policy prescriptions.
Memory is the precursor to obedience (whose root word means “to pay attention”). And imagination, for a faithful future of flourishing, is directly tied to memory.
Listen. Pay attention. Remember who you are. “Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19) is part of the Christian Eucharistic mandate.
Arguably, the most important book on the modern Civil Right Movement is Vincent Hardings’ Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement. That’s the motivating spirit behind this (obviously subjective) compilation of musical selections remembering Dr. King.
Not him simply as a solitary hero, but as one whose name is a shorthand way of memorializing a mass movement that included a host of other luminaries and (this is especially important) a countless list of other individuals—threatened and bullied, arrested or lynched, or in some large or small way inconvenienced for the sake of the Beloved Community—whose names and stories are largely lost to history. But are no less cherished in the heart of God.
As preface to these suggestions: If you listen to only one recording, make it the first one, which isn’t a song (but is a melodic offering). It’s a recording of Dr. King’s account of his “kitchen table conversion.” While the urgency of a heavy lift for new social policies is real, at root there must also involve a conversion of the “heart,” both to embolden the policy demands and sustain them once approved—and refined, as needed, in every new season.
In the ungrammatical but theologically profound words of Mother Pollard, who faithfully participated in the 381-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, when asked how she was holding up having to walk to work, responded: “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.”
Allow these soul-resting tunes to sustain your weary feet.
§ § §
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home. —Thomas A. Dorsey
¶ “Early morning, April four / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky. / Free at last, they took your life / They could not take your pride. / In the name of love / What more in the name of love.” —“Pride (In the Name of Love),” U2
¶ “I got a dream / We gonna work it out . . . / I got a dream / That one day / I’m a look deep within myself, I gotta find a way.” —“A Dream,” Common
¶ “Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King / and recognize that there are ties between us, / all men and women living on the Earth. / Ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood, / that we are bound together / in our desire to see the world become / a place in which our children can grow free and strong. / We are bound together by the task that stands before us / and the road that lies ahead. / We are bound and we are bound.” —James Taylor, “Shed a Little Light”
¶ “Sleep, sleep tonight / And may your dreams be realized. / If the thunder cloud passes rain / So let it rain, rain down on he. / So let it be. / So let it. “ —“MLK,” U2’s song in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., performed by Darrell Adams
¶ Ken Medema. —13-minuted performance for a Martin Luther King commemorative service at Marble Collegiate Church, New York City
¶ “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” —Freedom Singers perform at the White House. Bernice Johnson Reagon, looking directly at President Barack and Michelle Obama, says to them and the gathered guests “you have to actually sing [not just listen to] this song.”
¶ “Now the war is not over, victory isn’t won / And we’ll fight on to the finish, then when it’s all done / We’ll cry glory, oh glory.” —“Glory,” John Legend
¶ “I’d rather stand tall / Than live on my knees / ‘Cause I’m a conqueror / And I won’t accept defeat / Try telling me no / One thing about me / Is I’m a conqueror.” — “I Am a ‘Conqueror,” Estelle Pays Tribute To Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
¶ “Soon I will be done / With the troubles of the world . . . / I’m going home to live with God.” —“Soon I Will Be Done,” Arkansas Gospel Music Heritage, featuring Bethany (Which is not, as some would say, a resignation or abdication from history, but the essential assurance of a Presence and a Promise that sustains in the midst of tribulation on the rugged, bandit-threatened road to the Beloved Community.)
Postscript
“Queen of Gospel” singer Mahalia Jackson often traveled with King using her powerful music on the civil rights circuit. Sitting near King during his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial, she prompted him to drop his prepared manuscript, saying “tell them about the dream Martin.” Which he did. Jackson, therefore, should be partially credited for prompting what is now considered the top American speech of the 20th century and, arguably, “the greatest in the English language of all time.” Here’s her rendition of “Precious Lord.”
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