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Occasional Thoughts and Other Posts from a UCC Pastor
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
From the UCC Network - Devotional 9/20 "You Got Rhythm?"
You Got Rhythm?
Excerpt from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
Reflection by Martin B. Copenhaver
Everyone is talking about balance these days. We want more balance in our lives. We complain about the lack of balance. We strive for the right balance between our work lives and the rest of our lives. Magazines provide carefully balanced lists of suggestions about how to get more balance. But, frankly, to me the whole concept of balance sounds exhausting, like balancing on one foot or balancing a tray of full glasses while walking on a rocky path—I can do it, to be sure, but not for long. I don’t know of anyone who can stay balanced for very long.
But balance is not a biblical virtue. Instead, the way of life that is commended in the Bible is more about rhythm than it is about balance. There is the rhythm of the week, six days of work and one day of rest, set within the larger rhythms of the liturgical year. Jesus spent time in intense engagement with the people around him in rhythm with time alone or with close friends. And then there is the basic spiritual rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. Indeed, there is a “time for every matter under heaven,” which is an ancient affirmation of the place of rhythm in our lives.
When we strive for balance it is like standing on one foot. When we respond to the rhythms of creation, it is more like taking part in a dance—first one foot, and then the other. Which one sounds more life-giving to you? Exactly.
Prayer
God, help me to know how to move my feet in the rhythmic dance of your creation, first one and then other. And if I lose my balance, help me to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.
God, help me to know how to move my feet in the rhythmic dance of your creation, first one and then other. And if I lose my balance, help me to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry (repost from the e New York Times)
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 18, 2010
Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.
I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.
So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apologyfor being too respectful of Muslims. “We sincerely apologize,” wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: “we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.” As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: “Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human.”
I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn’t reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be “balanced” by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?
Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?
I interrupt this discussion of peaceful journalism in Maine to provide some “balance.” Journalists can also be terrorists, murderers and rapists. For example, radio journalists in Rwanda promoted genocide.
I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn’t about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.
Granted, the reason for the nastiness isn’t hard to understand. Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole. Threats by Muslim crazies just in the last few days forced a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, to go into hiding after she drew a cartoon about Muhammad that went viral.
And then there’s 9/11. When I recently compared today’s prejudice toward Muslims to the historical bigotry toward Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Asian-Americans, many readers protested that it was a false parallel. As one, Carla, put it on my blog: “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.”
That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.
Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.
But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.
From the UCC Network - Devotional 9/19 "It's Not All About You and Me"
It’s Not All About You and Me
Excerpt from Amos 8:4-7
Listen to this, you who walk all over the weak, you who treat poor people as less than nothing, Who say, "When's my next paycheck coming so I can go out and live it up? How long till the weekend when I can go out and have a good time?" Who give little and take much, and never do an honest day's work. You exploit the poor, using them—and then, when they're used up, you discard them. God swears against the arrogance of Jacob: "I'm keeping track of their every last sin." (The Message)
Reflection by Ron Buford
If you are like me, I like an encouraging devotional to start my day.
This is not one of them.
Amos was prophet in a time like ours . . . . In our own time, some people did well financially, others became worse off. The gap between rich and poor widened. Religious leaders said nothing for fear of impacting collections. The poor were continually in debt, borrowing at high interest rates just to keep cars and homes from repossession. CEO’s and managers, seeing the first signs of economic recovery, continued exporting work to foreign call centers, factories and fields where people made less than a living wage, in order to boost profits, bonuses, and returns for stockholders rather than bring back even just a few more workers. Retirees in religious groups didn’t want to know where their pension profits were made either; “just keep my returns high,” they said. People voted for politicians who talked tough on undocumented workers, conveniently forgetting the undocumented workers caring for their children, homes, and gardens, forgetting their once foreign language-speaking great-grandparents who made it possible for them to get a college education after landing a union job and a tax-funded loan for housing. Taxes were cut to squeeze out a few more dollars for vacation and millions more for the top 2 percent despite crumbling infrastructure, education and healthcare systems for the poor--all built with their great grandparents’ taxes and charity from those who had less money but a greater sense of community. People drove wasteful cars rather than encounter the poor on public transportation. Checking their locks, they drove through poor neighborhoods, laughing all the way to work, listening to NPR, congratulating themselves on their progressive politics, celebrating gay marriages while increasing numbers of both gay and straight couples could not afford to get married.
Shame on us! Our inattentiveness and tolerance of such inequities even among avid capitalists is sin. What’s worse is that it’s doubling back and hurting our economy, crippling our infrastructure, and destroying our environment. God is already judging us; the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Shall we turn around before it’s too late?
Prayer
Oh God, Have mercy on us. Open our eyes. Send leaders with courage, creativity, and a heart for all the people. Help us each make economic decisions that bring about justice in the marketplace and in our environment. Amen.
Oh God, Have mercy on us. Open our eyes. Send leaders with courage, creativity, and a heart for all the people. Help us each make economic decisions that bring about justice in the marketplace and in our environment. Amen.
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
From the UCC Network - Devotional 9/18 "Undeniably Free"
Undeniably Free
Bible Excerpt from Romans 13:1-7
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities…”
Reflection by Felix Carrion
It’s a good thing--no, it’s really a good thing—that after this was written, many, many people throughout the course of history, around the world, never fully, if at all, took these words to be undeniably the exact representation of how God sees it.
“Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”
What would still be enthroned on the altar of the status quo if indeed we had taken these words to be the literal words of God? What evil would still have us in the vise of the fear of repercussions?
The first, and greatest, tyrannical authority is fear. And all other authorities that rule with fear as a wielding weapon follow suit.
I am, like you, and Paul, too, prone to get it both right and wrong, but always undeniably free to be the subject of no other human being or institution.
I am, like you, and Paul, too, undeniably free from the rule of all human beings who forget that they also are just like you and me.
We are undeniably free. Now let’s not ever forget it!
Prayer
O God, for creating and loving me in total freedom, I give you thanks and praise! Amen.
O God, for creating and loving me in total freedom, I give you thanks and praise! Amen.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Teshuvah, In Three Acts (a repost from The Jewish Week)
Teshuvah, In Three Acts
Rabbi Ayelet Cohen A rabbi reflects on the struggle to restore wholeness in the lives of three congregants.
Special to The Jewish Week
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
It is ironic that so many Jews engage in active religious Jewish life primarily around the High Holy Days, a time of year with a set of rituals that call for such intense engagement. Many of us go to High Holy Days services because we are on autopilot — that is what we are expected to do as Jews at this time of the year. But the goal of these Days of Awe is to jolt us out of the automatic and to pay attention: to bring a greater mindfulness to our actions.
Teshuvah is a deeply personal process that occurs within the framework of the Jewish year. As such it reminds us that we have the ability to contemplate and transform our relationships with God and with Judaism just as we hope to do in our relationships with the people in our lives. Teshuvah opens us to the possibility of doing the internal work we need to heal what is most broken in our emotional and spiritual lives. Through that work we may begin to restore wholeness. This struggle is at the heart of these three stories of teshuvah from my years as a rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue serving Jews of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
A young man ran up to me during the break on one Yom Kippur afternoon, excited to introduce me to his parents. He had told me before, that each year he dreads the High Holy Days. Every Rosh HaShanah he would return to his parents’ shul, where he would sit with his brother and sister and their families. On each visit his father would remind him that their friends didn’t need to hear the details of his “New York life,” his code for “please don’t mention that you are gay.”
His mother would tell him which of his high school friends had gotten married or had babies since the last holiday. This young man didn’t have the vocabulary to tell his parents that his Jewish education was precious to him, that he learned from them that living a Jewish life was beautiful and important and that he had no intention of giving that up because he is gay. But that year he had worked up the courage to invite them to come to his synagogue, CBST, for Yom Kippur.
Clutching their machzorim to their chests like armor, his parents came warily into the sanctuary, the soaring glass pavilion of the Jacob Javits Center. They were surprised to find themselves drawn into the davening. Looking around they saw many families with children. They saw families that included heterosexual people and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. They saw their son surrounded by a Jewish community in which he could participate with the fullness of who he was. And for the first time they were able to observe Yom Kippur while being fully honest about who their family was.
Another man came to see me after Rosh HaShanah. As he told me his story, he was heavy with shame. He was in a 12-step program and felt that he was starting to understand what he needed to do to become healthier, but he still struggled with his addiction. There were many days when he could not will himself to leave the house.
On the morning of Rosh HaShanah he woke up with the intention of going to shul and beginning the year cleanly. Yet on that first morning of the first day of the year he found himself engaging in his addiction. Full of self-loathing he somehow forced himself to stop and go to services anyway. He felt sure that God would not want him to be in the synagogue.
Certainly if the other members of the community knew what he had done that morning they wouldn’t want him in their midst. But he so wanted to live differently this year. Convinced of his unworthiness he approached the entrance of the sanctuary tentatively. A volunteer greeted him warmly and opened the door for him. As he looked up he found himself looking into the open ark, and the Torahs in their white mantles, the light seeming to shine from within.
What did it mean, he wanted to know, that the ark was open at the moment he came in. Could it be, as he so hoped, that God was open even to him? Was it possible that he could come back even from the deepest depths, even though he was so broken? Was it possible that God still wanted him?
I ran into one woman outside of the sanctuary on Yom Kippur. She was sitting on the floor playing with her young son. She had lost her mother earlier that year. “I am furious at God,” she told me. “Ever since my mother died I have been furious at God. I have no intention of going in there and praying or saying anything to God.”
But she had come to shul anyway. It was Yom Kippur. She and her partner were raising a child. She was angry at God that her mother had not lived to know the grandson who would surely have brought her so much joy. But this woman and her partner were creating a family, continuing the chain of their Jewish families. They wanted their son to be a part of their Jewish community.
She didn’t go into the sanctuary that year. She may not have gone in the next year either. But she kept coming to shul, with her partner and their son. Even as she raged with God she knew that for her Jewish family, marking the holidays and coming to shul was essential. She wasn’t asking God for forgiveness. She wanted God to ask her for forgiveness, for taking her mother away before her son had a chance to know his grandmother. And it seemed like Yom Kippur was the right time for that.
Each year as the fullness of summer begins to wane and the moon of the month of Elul swells and subsides, the season of teshuvah returns. Teshuvah is a gift and a challenge. It is slow work. There is no magic formula that will suddenly heal all that has shattered in our lives. We build community; we explore and reconcile with Judaism; we search for God. Every year as we return to this season we are painfully aware of what is still broken.
But each year doing teshuvah reminds us that we may begin to repair what is broken. We may recover that which has been lost. Teshuvah reminds us that wholeness is possible.
Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen served for 10 years at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue. She is currently writing and teaching in New York.
From the UCC Network - Devotional 9/17 "Trial Seperation
Trial Separation
Excerpt from Romans 8:31-39
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Reflection by Lillian Daniel
When I was ten, my parents sat me down in our formal living room to explain that my dad would be moving out for a while. “Are you getting a divorce?” I asked. “No,” they said, “This is just a trial separation.”
My ten-year-old emotional barometer had gauged the tension between them. My young ears had heard the arguments. My little heart had beat to the rhythm of their anger. Perhaps a separation might be worth trying. At least it meant our family was trying something.
I worried I would never see my dad, but I ended up seeing him more than ever. He took me to the new James Bond movie and out to eat spaghetti. We had one-on-one conversations we had never had before. For a few months our little family tried the separation and I confess that I liked it.
And then just as suddenly, my dad moved back in, and our deep conversations and spaghetti dinners passed away. The old dynamics swept over our family like an irresistible wave, pulling us into the rip tide of rusty resentments and sorry score-keeping. Living in the same house, we were trying out separation all over again.
I love this scripture because it promises us that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We human beings are always trying out separation, but God is always and consistently practicing connection.
Prayer
Holy Spirit—use our trial separations to teach us how to connect to you and to one another, one day, in this life or the next. Amen.
Holy Spirit—use our trial separations to teach us how to connect to you and to one another, one day, in this life or the next. Amen.
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
From the UCC Network - Devotional 9/16 "A Prayer from the Pit"
A Prayer from the Pit
Excerpt from Job 30:18-19 (NIV)
“In [God’s] great power God becomes like clothing to me[and] binds me like the neck of my garment. [God] throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes.”
Reflection by Kenneth L. Samuel
The only thing worse than the deep dark agony of desperation and suffering is silence. Out of the abysmal cauldron of his condition, Job speaks, but not just in rants to those around him who would listen. Job speaks in faith to God, for there is no other way to speak to God. Prayers from the pit of painful predicaments are nevertheless acknowledgements of God’s presence.
And even though Job expresses great disappointment that God had not alleviated his distress, he nevertheless acknowledges God’s power – for the same God who has the power to throw us into the mud and reduce us to dust and ashes is the same God who has the power to lift us out of the mud and give us new life. Any prayer out of any condition that acknowledges the presence and the power of God has potential to unleash new possibilities for life. Ask Job. He would tell you that the God of his deepest dejection is also the God of his greatest deliverance.
Prayer
Lord, even in the midst of our deepest distresses, we are grateful that you hear us. Help us to never forget that your presence has the power to make our lives new. Amen.
Lord, even in the midst of our deepest distresses, we are grateful that you hear us. Help us to never forget that your presence has the power to make our lives new. Amen.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
From the UCC Network - Devotional 9/15 "Behemoth and Leviathan"
Behemoth and Leviathan
Excerpt from Job 40:6-14; 42:1-6
“Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you declare to me….Look at Behemoth . . . can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook? . . . ”
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
I love this part of Job. Up till this point, I’m always with Job, demanding from God an explanation for terrible things. But here, where God’s all, “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself,” I come around to cheering God on.
Basically, God says the annoying thing that parents everywhere say: “Because I said so.” It’s an unsatisfactory answer, but the poetry God uses to establish her dominion is magnificent. It’s completely about the natural world. “You want to know why I get to make the decisions, Job? Look around. Can YOU make a huge animal? Can YOU make a huge sea monster?” God describes them in glorious detail, and the reader cannot help but be seduced by the proof.
Christians have long argued about whether the natural world can tell us all we need to know about God, or whether we need special revelations as well. All I know is, the Book of Job says if you want to know about the glory of God, look at a living thing. It doesn’t have to be an elephant; a spider weaving a web is just as magnificent. Your cat in your lap or a bird out on the porch are just as astounding.
Today, spend some time really looking at a living thing. Unless you’re able to make one of those yourself, then praise the one who can.
Prayer
God, thank you for revealing yourself to me through and in your creations. Grant that I might remember to stop—often—to notice your world and praise your name. Amen.
God, thank you for revealing yourself to me through and in your creations. Grant that I might remember to stop—often—to notice your world and praise your name. Amen.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Hijacking of the Almighty - David Coates (Repost)
David Coates
Posted: August 31, 2010 01:41 PM
The Hijacking of the Almighty
Have I missed something? Perhaps I have. Or is one of the troubling undersides of the Glenn Beck rally on the Lincoln Memorial last Saturday not yet receiving the full coverage that it deserves?
• The rally has rightly been criticized as a questionable attempt to exploit the legacy of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement which he led. This country has no history of excluding white males from voting or from sitting at food counters; and certainly no history of white men being lynched simply for looking at an African-American woman. Many of Glenn Beck's overwhelmingly white supporters at the rally may feel persecuted and unloved, but in the full story of persecution and racial hatred in this country they don't even make the front row. Indeed, when Glenn Beck was reminded by Chris Wallace on Fox News immediately after the rally that the original civil rights movement had an economic agenda as well as a political one - that the original March on Washington was one for jobs as well as for freedom - Beck explicitly rejected the legacy of that wider agenda. But rights without resources, as Lyndon Johnson once said, are not full rights at all. "The man who is hungry, who cannot find work or educate his children, who is bowed by want, that man is not fully free." Martin Luther King understood that - it was what took him to Memphis and his death - but Glenn Beck clearly does not.
• The rally has also been rightly criticized for pretending to be non-political while talking in apocalyptical terms about the country going in the wrong direction under the current administration. Maybe the main speakers just about negotiated that pitfall, purporting to be non-political by focusing on our men and women in uniform - honoring them as though only conservatives do that. But people in the crowd appeared pretty clear. They were there, yes to honor our soldiers - and to restore honor (which clearly in their view has been lost) - a political statement in itself - but when asked, many let it be known that they there to protest very specific things as well: to protest weak foreign policy, to protest high taxes, to protest the stimulus package and welfare handouts... And, of course, they were there to hear Sarah Palin, that well known paragon of non-partisanship, who - commissioned to speak as a mother of a combat veteran - let her political guard down just once, rejecting those who would fundamentally transform America instead of restoring it and its honor. Obama, beware!
Both are important critiques. Both have been extensively made.
But what about the Beck claim that, in the wake of the rally, America was turning back to God? How about the implication of that claim: the assertion that, before the rally occurred, the nation was turning away from God, that the rally itself was a key religious turning point, and that the turn being made was purely religiously-informed? How about the hijacking of Christianity that went on at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday? How does that play into an undercurrent of animosity among certain Tea Party folk towards our black president - the man whom so many conservative activists still continue simultaneously to condemn both for following Jeremiah Wright and for being a closet Muslim!
We have to ask them. Do Christianity and conservatism automatically go together? Is the New Testament a clarion call against Big Government? It was always implied but never said, at the rally on Saturday, that "turning back to God" meant turning away from even the modest centrist policies of the Obama administration. An individual relationship with The Almighty segued, in the arguments of Beck and Palin, into an anti-statist politics in which the solution to all our current difficulties required, as Glenn Beck later said on Fox News, primarily personal salvation. So no big government - just a turn back to God.
The question is: what sort of God?
• At what point did Jesus give up on Big Government?
• At what point did Jesus' "rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" turn itself into an argument for low taxation?
• When did the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount suddenly become a convert to trickle-down economics?
• When did the thesis that "it is more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" become an argument for the extension of all the Bush Tax cuts, including those to the rich?
I don't know the answer to those questions; but it would appear that many people at the rally on Saturday do. For how else could their Christianity and their conservatism have so easily merged together?
In a society as serious about its religions as this one, any movement that can wrap its politics inside the Bible (or even inside the Book of Mormon) has a huge claim on people's loyalties. I assume Glenn Beck knows that, which is presumably why he is so keen to do that wrapping. But Christians come in many political shades, not just one; so where is the voice of the Christian Left, or even the Christian Center, shouting "foul" at this hijacking of their religion by one particular political philosophy?
That shout needs to be made, for if Beck can get away unchallenged on this theft now, presumably he will do it again - and each time to greater effect.
Jim Wallis has regularly made the counter-case to Beck's particular brand of religiosity, but when that brand fills the amphitheatre before the Lincoln Memorial and holds the attention of the world's media, his voice must not be the only one. It is time for all of us to remember - and to announce, loud and strong -that if Jesus were to return to earth today, the odds are that he would not be a modern-day Republican or a Tea Party activist. He would be way too compassionate for that.
For a fuller discussion of the arguments developed here, see Chapter 8 (Is God Necessarily Conservative?) in David Coates,Answering Back, New York: Continuum Books, 2010
First posted, with full sourcing, on www.davidcoates.net
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