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Signs of the Times  •  30 June 2016  •  No. 79

Processional.America the Beautiful,” performed by Willie Nelson for a video protesting the devastating practice of coal mining by mountaintop removal.

Above. Purple mountains' majesty. Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

America the Beautiful. Poet and Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates wrote her poem “Pikes Peak,” first published in 4 July 1895 edition of The Congregationalist magazine under the title “America,” on a trip to Colorado’s Pike National Park. In 1910 the poem was adapted to a hymn tune by Samuel A. Ward.
        In Bates’ original poem (revised in 1904 and 1911), the third stanza ends with, “Till selfish gain no longer stain, / The banner of the free!” These lines “reflected Bates’ disillusionment with the Gilded Age’s excesses” which produced profound levels of economic inequality in the late 19th century (Lynn Sherr, America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation's Favorite Song).
        The fourth and final stanza of the original poem also contained prophetic announcement, “Till nobler men keep once again / Thy whiter jubilee!” referencing the Torah’s “jubilee” tradition of a profound social renewal movement along with a reference to Revelation 7:14 where those “dressed in white” represent “they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” the Lamb being the one who refused violence’s ascendancy, accomplishing salvation’s triumph by abandoning rather than wielding the sword of vengeance.

Invocation. “O Truth Untamed, all boundaries bow before You / All borders bend according to your Word / O grant that every bitter heart be harbored / In sheltered cove, with Mercy’s flag unfurled / Hearken and haste, Desire of every nation / Refresh the heart of hope too long deferred.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s new lyrics to “This Is My Song

Quotes for Independence Day reflection.
        • “What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.” —Barbara Jordan
        • “This nation is founded on blood like a city on swamps / yet its dream has been beautiful and sometimes just / that now grows brutal and heavy as a burned out star.” —Marge Percy
        • “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” —James Baldwin
        • “O, let America be America again — / The land that never has been yet — / And yet must be.” —Langston Hughes

Call to worship. Listen to a reading of Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again,” produced by junior students in the James Logan High School Electronic Media Production Academy (4:28).

Counter stories. In light of Istanbul and Orlando and the fear of otherness which feeds these and similar eruptions, we must tell different stories. Our struggle, said the Apostle Paul, is not against flesh and blood but against “principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). The only means of effectively defeating evil is not by killing it but by displacing it.
            Posted below are three recent stories with a different tale to tell.

            § Mayor of London Sadiq Khan (at left) took this selfie with the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis at a multi-faith Iftar meal [breaking the day’s fast after sundown during Ramadan] for 100 young people from across London’s faith communities. Khan is the first ethnic minority to be elected as mayor of London, and the first Muslim serving as mayor of a major western nation’s capital. Lambeth Palace, home of the Anglican Archbishop, hosted the event on Monday 27 June. —Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly

            § What happened when an Orthodox Jewish congregation went to a gay bar to mourn Orlando. “When our synagogue heard about the horrific tragedy that took place at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was at the same time that we were celebrating our festival of Shavuot, which celebrates God’s giving of the Torah. As Orthodox Jews, we don’t travel or use the Internet on the Sabbath or on holidays, such as Shavuot. But on Sunday night, as we heard the news, I announced from the pulpit that as soon as the holiday ended at 9:17 p.m. Monday, we would travel from our synagogue in Northwest Washington to a gay bar as an act of solidarity.” Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, Washington Post

            § Creative resistance to hate. Members of the Orlando Shakespeare Theater took the lead in resisting Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of funerals of those killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting, constructing large angel outfits to block the protestors’ visual access. (See photo at right.)
       The Westboro vicious anti-gay legacy of disrupting funerals, which began in 1991but escalated significantly after the killing of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, stretches to include military funerals and women preachers. (A church in East Texas where my wife was preaching was targeted—the congregation’s youth group took lemonade to the protestors.) Read the NPR story (and 1:14 video)

Hymn of praise.This Is My Song,” a cappella rendition by Joan Baez.

More on the Muslim response to terror.

            • ”A Joint Muslim Statement: On the Carnage in Orlando,” more than 200 imams, scholars and community leaders http://orlandostatement.com/ For more background on this document, see “Muslims on Orlando Attacks,” Cameron Glenn, Wilson Center  and CNN’s interview with one of the co-authors.

            • “50 Million Muslims Start Peace Campaign and Openly Denounce ISIS,” Huffington Post http://www.itakelibertywithmycoffee.com/2015/12/50-million-muslims-start-peace-campaign-and-openly-denounce-isis/

            • “Muslim anti-Isis march not covered by mainstream media outlets, say organisers: Hundreds of Muslims flooded the streets of London to condemn terrorism. Media’s response: Silence.” The Guardian

            • “Muslim Americans denounce ISIS terror campaign; urge Americans to stand in solidarity and peace with them.” PennLive

            • “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: ISIS is to Islam What Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity,” Georgia Bristow, Bipartisan Report.

¶ “What percentage of terror attacks in the US and Europe are committed by Muslims?(you’ll be surprised), Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast.

¶ “Army of God? 6 Modern-Day Christian Terrorist Groups You Never Hear About,” Alex Henderson, AlterNet.

Confession.God Forgive Us,” Armenian hymn.

The Broadway hit musical “Hamilton” avoids an equally pronounced feature of Hamilton’s beliefs: his deeply ingrained elitism, his disdain for the lower classes and his fear of democratic politics. . . .
            “Hamilton mistrusted the political capacities of the common people and insisted on deference to elites. In a speech delivered at the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton praised the hierarchical principles of the British political system. He argued, for example, that the new American president and senators should serve for life. . . .
            “No founder of this country more clearly envisioned the greatness of a future empire enabled by drastic inequalities of wealth and power. In this sense, too, “Hamilton” is very much a musical for our times.” —Jason Frank and Isaac Kramnick, “What ‘Hamilton’ Forgets About Alexander Hamilton," New York Times

Other stories of effective resistance. This is how meaningful and sustainable political change happens, one watershed at a time: mobilizing a broad spectrum of citizens who understand long-term hidden costs outweigh short-term profit—a process not dependent on the fickle and cash-corrupted practice known as electoral politics. —Ken Sehested

            • “After facing community resistance, bottled beverage giant Nestlé Waters North America this week ditched its plans to extract water from a Monroe County, Penn. spring. The plan would have seen Nestlé take 200,000 gallons of water per day from the source in Kunkletown. . . .
            "This entire village of Kunkletown came together and slayed the dragon, and it's something to be proud of," Eldred Township resident Donna Deihl told the Allentown Morning Call. . . .
            “The news comes less than a month after voters in Hood River County, Ore. stopped a years-long attempt by Nestlé to extract up to 100 million gallons a year of Oxbow Springs water and bottle it under the Arrowhead brand.” Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

And in related water news. 71% of the citizens of Butte County, California, voted to ban fracking. This is the fourth California country to do so. For a list of other fracking bans, in the US and elsewhere, see “Keep Tap Water Safe.”

Words of assurance. “Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday / I know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes / I'm coming home, I'm coming home / Tell the world that I'm coming.” —“I’m Coming Home,” Ruby Wilson, the Queen of Beale Street (Memphis)

Prank? The headline read “McDowell High (NC) senior prank sparks backlash.” Who are the party-poopers? Latino/a students. Some of the school’s seniors were given permission to decorate the school. What they ended up doing is building a wall out of cardboard boxes closing off an open area, with the caption “We built the wall first” appearing on an Instagram photo. This is how the seeds of Donal Trump’s vulgarity sprout in a harvest of destruction. —from a Ginny Rhodes article, mcdowellnews.com

Best response to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign theme:
       Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
       The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
       We, the people, must redeem
       The land
, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
       The mountains and the endless plain—
       All, all the stretch of these great green states—
       And make America again! —Langston Hughes, final stanza of “Let America Be America Again

¶ “Border controls have always been racist in character. And it’s much the same today. They are about locking in our wealth and keeping mosques out of the Cotswolds. At present, globalisation is a luxury of the rich, for those of us who can swan about the globe with the flick of a boarding pass. The so-called “migrant crisis” is globalisation for the poor. They are blowing their trumpets around our walls. And our walls will fall.”  —Giles Fraser, “National borders exist to pen poor into reservations of poverty

Preach it. “We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted,” one that may lead to “our own moral awakening.” —President Barack Obama, speaking at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan, 27 May 2016. Obama is the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima

Call to the table.What a Friend We Have In Jesus,” sung by a farm family inside an empty grain silo.

¶ Altar call. “Redemption Song,” by Bob Marley, performed by Playing for Change (various artists).

¶ Benediction. “My country ‘tis of thee, struggling for liberty, of thee I sing. / Land where my people died, brilliant with nature’s pride, / From plain and mountain side let freedom ring.” —continue reading Ken’s Sehested alternate lyrics to “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee

Recessional.This Is My Song,” sung in Finnish by a flash mob at the Helsinki, Finland train station. The “Finlandia” tune was written by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in 1899 as a protest to growing censorship of Finnish society by Russia, then Finland’s colonial ruler.

Lectionary for Sunday next. “Remind us again, oh maker of peace, oh drier of tear and calmer of storm, that lion and lamb share a common destiny. Remind us again, that all is Yours and Love secures.” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “Remind us again,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 82

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Remind us again,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 82

• “This Is My Song,” new lyrics to an old song

• “My Country, ‘Tis of Theealternate lyrics

Independence Day resources:

• “Proclaim liberty throughout the land: History of the Liberty Bell

• “Nation of frivolous piety,” a litany for worship on patriotic occasions

• “Proclaim Liberty,” a litany for worship around US Independence Day

• “Instruction on freedom’s demands,” a litany for worship

 

 

 

 

This Is My Song

New lyrics to an old song

by Ken Sehested

O Truth Untamed, all boundaries bow before You
All borders bend according to your Word
O grant that every bitter heart be harbored
In sheltered cove, with Mercy’s flag unfurled
Hearken and haste, Desire of every nation
Refresh the heart of hope too long deferred.

Let every mountain call to meadowed valley
And every stream, to ocean grand and wide
Let fertile ground announce the new creation
When all shall come, ’cross every great divide
O bell of liberty ring out for freedom
Break every slaver’s chain, with hope confide

For all in Christ, there is a new creation
No more shall sorrow’s cold embrace restrain
God’s Rule and Reign unrav’ling pain with pardon
Transforming tears and fears to joy’s refrain
Earth’s host now reconciled to Heaven’s harvest
The land, once tortured, bountiful again

Enlist all hands in reconciling measure
Ambassadors are we in Christ’s domain
Attend your ears to this appeal, O Sisters
O Brothers, heed the reclamation’s claim
A path now opens through the sea of trembling
From slav’ry’s chain, let freedom’s way proclaim

Let peace be waged with courage and devotion
With warrior’s brav’ry, vigilant and bold
Emancipation’s melodies surround us
Each voice in harmony, all tongues enfold
Let Grace untold tame fear’s unnerving sorrow
And sorrow’s verse, to joy’s refrain unfold

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. May be sung to the Finlandia ("This Is My Song") tune. Inspired by 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.

 

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee

Alternate lyrics

My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

We are a people free, joining in liberty our many throngs.
Through much diversity, grant solidarity,
Turning from enmity in joyful song.

Guiding us in the past, God’s hand has held us fast, God’s pow’r we feel.
May righteousness be claimed, true justice be sustained;
Spirit, with us remain, Christ’s love reveal.

My country ‘tis of thee, struggling for liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my people died, brilliant with nature’s pride,
From plain and mountain side let freedom ring.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Tune: America. Lyrics: Stanza 1, Samuel F. Smith; stanzas 22-4, Ralph Lightbody and Ken Sehested

Remind us again

A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 82

by Ken Sehested

As people of faith gather for prayer and praise, the first act is that of interrogation.

How long, oh Beloved, will you permit envy and enmity to choke the soil of our land and souls?

Why are the righteous silenced, the truth-tellers scorned?

Speak, oh Confidence of the Ages.

Train your eyes on our brittle bones and hungry hearts.

Draw near, You from whose womb earth was birthed and bathed in mercy.

Our land shakes and shatters under the weight of its discord; the sky wails and the sea churns.

Remind us again, oh maker of peace, oh drier of tear and calmer of storm, that lion and lamb share a common destiny.

Remind us again, that all is Yours and Love secures.

And now prepare, prepare, prepare ye the Way of the Lord!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Reprinted from “In the Land of the Living: Prayers personal and public.”

 

The Rise of Christianity

by Rodney Stark (1996), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

This is a powerful book analyzing church growth patterns of the early church, using contemporary social-scientific theories suggested why people form new religious movements. It is a challenging account of the rise of Christianity.

‘Attachments lie at the heart of conversion, which means that conversion tends to proceed along social networks formed by interpersonal attachments’ (p 18).  ‘Successful founders of new faiths typically turn first to those with whom they already have strong attachments’ (p 18), and people who are deeply committed to any particular faith do not go out and join some other faith’ (p 19).

The early church linked highly social ethical code with religion.  According to Stark, Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the urban-Grecian world.  Christianity revitalized life.

To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope.  To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity produced a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity.  And to cities faced with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services (p 161).

The empire created misery by its ethnic diversity; it created economic and political unity at the cost of cultural chaos, the immense diversity of tongues, cults, traditions and levels of education.  People of many cultures, speaking in many languages, worshipping all manner of gods, had been dumped helter-skelter.

A major way in which Christianity served as a revitalization movement was in offering a coherent culture that was entirely stripped of ethnicity. Christianity also brought a new conception of humanity to a world saturated with capricious cruelty (p 213, 214).

Stark’s book is a good analysis of church growth methods of the first centuries, and applicable to ours today.

The Gift of Administration

by Donald Senior (2016), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Called and trained as an academic (New Testament), Senior was invited to the administrative position of president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, a graduate school of theology; he came ‘to see both biblical scholarship and the work of administration as expression of (his) vocation as a Christian.  Both (are) deeply rooted in the nature of the gospel and the mission entrusted to the church by the risen Christ’ (x-xi).

This book does not describe how ’to do’ administration but to see the intersection of the people of G-d with their exercise of administration.  Administration, like preaching, teaching or healing, is also an expression of the gospel’ (xxi).  The Gift of Administration is not a ‘how to’ book but a ‘why’ book, the Christian rationale for the work of administration (xxvii).

Senior’s giftedness in New Testament thinking provides powerful biblical insight into the area of administration (whether this would be the large scale, ie president or dean roles, or the pastoral calling.  (One chapter deals with the myth of the church’s change from that of an original, purely spiritual charismatic and non-institutional church degrading into an institutional  church essentially alien in form and spirit from the church Jesus intended’ (p 222).

Senior has  good theological insight in dealing with administrative components; he emphasizes the function of mission statements in focusing self awareness, the church as community, the role of leadership (‘institutional leadership is the ability to influence others toward the mission of a specific institution’, p 25), the generation of finances.

Ch. 6 deals with ‘Habits of the Heart’, where he lists l2 virtues necessary for good administration and l5 ‘maladies’ (cited by Pope Francis), identifying ‘the illness to be healed and the virtue to be cultivated from the very heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to carry out one’s discipleship’ (p 153).

A wonderful book of Christian graces for our Christian virtues.

Take This Bread

by Sara Miles (2007), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

She was a social activist, totally non-religious. Worked in Mexico and El Salvador, then taught in a Baltimore ‘free school’, worked in New York restaurants and got a job with a left wing magazine’ in San Francisco.  One morning she walked into St Gregory’s, an Episcopalian congregation.

‘I had no earthly reason to be there,’ she writes (p 57).  ‘We sat down and stood up and sat down, waited and listened.  ‘Jesus invites everyone to his table,’ a woman announced.  And then we gathered around that table … and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying ‘The blood of Christ’, and then something outrageous and terrifying happened.  Jesus happened to me’ (p 58); the heart of Christianity:  communion (p 74).

‘These people opened the door to grace—not because they had good taste, not because they were rich or intelligent or even always likable.  They had let G-d in and now they were committed to letting in clueless and unprepared strangers like me because they believed in the absolute religious value of welcoming people who didn’t belong’ (p 81).

‘I got communion, whether I wanted it or not, with people I didn’t necessarily like.  People I didn’t choose.  The people G-d chose for me (p 97).  And so in response to the open table of St Gregory, she started a food pantry that brought food around the altar, ‘acknowledging our own hunger and at the same time acknowledging the amazing abundance we’re fed with by G-d … handing plastic bags of macaroni and peanut butter to strangers, in remembrance of him’ (p 116).

It’s a powerful story ‘about food and being with people who aren’t like me’ (p 277).  ‘The point of church is to feed people so they can go out and be Jesus’ (p 265).   The book closes with wonderfully incisive discussion questions to prod and probe our own responses to G-d’s invitation to the open table.

The Religion of the Earliest Church: Creating a Symbolic World

by Gerd Theissen (199), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Theissen defines religion as a cultural sign language which corresponds to an ultimate reality and promise of a gain in life (p 324), a definition he expands on (pp 2-7). It is a semiotic, an objective sign system, making the world a habitable home that is then interpreted.

This interpretation of the world around us utilizes myth (explain what fundamentally determines history; in the Bible it’s the myth, the narrative, of the fundamental acts of G-d, rites (patterns of behaviour in order to depict what is happening in the myths; the first Christians developed a religious sign system without temple, without sacrifice, without priests), ethics (examine how the emphasis on Torah (law) continues in the Christian story).

Religion, a sign language, also has a systematic character, giving expression, eg to the denominational emphases (whether there is an altar, what is ‘on’ the altar).  When the religion gives way to another how do these changing signs reflect faithfulness to the original story (eg eating meat sacrificed to idols)?  And religious signs are a cultural phenomenon, produced by human beings, eg the theory of Christianity will be influenced by change.  Intriguingly, such changes are brought about by charismatics, independently of pre-existing authority roles and traditions.

The two basic values of the primitive Christian ethics are love of neighbour and renunciation of status.  Theissen details how these two values change from one religion (Judaism) to another (Christian), and then in Christianity from the synoptics to the Paulines, eg the Incarnation ‘is an expression of the greatest renunciation of status conceivable’ (p 78).  Myth and ethic flow together: in the Philippians poem, G-d came in the flesh and provides the impetus for ethics.

Theissen develops powerfully the relationship of the changing values in the story of the church.

The Gospels in Context

by Gerd Theissen (2004), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

It’s an old book, first published in 1992, but a treasure I found once more illuminating and insightful. Theissen attempts ‘a history of the synoptic tradition from its oral prehistory to the time when it was written down in the gospels’ (p 2) to identify where and when the sources originated, both small units and text segments ,with attention to cultural context.

Three foci are identified.  (1) An oral Jesus tradition (eg Luke 1:1-4), John 21, talking about the many stories circulating about Jesus; Papias’ collection of oral traditions about Jesus, Paul’s references (1 Cor 7:10,11; 9:14).  (2)  Small individual units (p 4), eg where the author of Matthew’s gospel placed the ‘Our Father’ within a series of associated rules for religious devotional practice. (3)  The oral prehistory of texts, eg the political dimensions of the texts, where ‘events in the political world intrude into the text world of the New Testament (p 7), eg the Jewish War of 70 CE.

The general history of Jesus’ period and the synoptic texts have few clear points of contact, eg the opposition to the emperor Caligula when he proposed erecting his own statue in the Jerusalem temple, or the major political upheavals of 8-70 CE with the climax in the Jewish war (localizable data).

Theissen gives several examples of ways in which the political content affects the shape of the synoptic stories (the Syro-Phoenician woman and political boundaries, events in Palestine, the Caligula story and the great War).  A fascinating and illuminating study.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Revolt of the Scribes

by Richard Horsley (2010), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

One of the groups identified in the synoptic gospels is the scribes, ‘who work in tandem with the chief priests in command of the Temple, and in turn collaborate with the Roman governors’ (p 9).  Ben Sira, writer of Ecclesiasticus (a deuterocanonical writing), ‘represents scribes as serving the priestly aristocracy yet also as caught in the middle between those  heads of the temple state and the Judean people’ (p 9).

The scribes ‘devoted themselves to intense learning of the spectrum of Judean cultural tradition, including Torah, prophets and wisdom of various kinds (p 11). The temple and the high priesthood were imperial instruments to maintain order and collect revenue in Judea.

‘The subordination of the Judean temple state to imperial rulers (Hellenistic and Roman) set up several major conflicts that involved Judean scribes:  the idea of G-d as the ruler of the Judean people and the reality of imperial role; subjection of the temple-state to imperial rules set up potential conflicts between rival factions (p 14).

Horsley details scribal activity during Greek and Roman occupation and influence, pointing out scribal contributions (Daniel, Psalms of Solomon, Enoch) and their role in the nation.  They did not participate in the civil uprisings; ‘rather than preparing to engage in violent revolt, they were prepared to suffer violent repression, even the torture and death of themselves, relatives and friends… preaching and planning an organized action of nonviolent non-cooperation (p 187).

The lesson of the scribes for us is two-fold:  recognize the pressure we are under to cooperate with the dominant order and to figure out how it might be possible to resist; recognize eschatologically that history is not hopeless, and that far from being destroyed, the earth will be renewed (p 205).  We look for the end of empire, not the end of the world.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.