In 2016, 81% of white evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump after (among other things) hearing an audio recording of him bragging about sexually assaulting women.
Maya Angelou famously said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
In the years since, even after enacting deliberately cruel policies to rip families apart and put children in cages at the southern border, evangelical support is as fervent as ever.
I was raised in the Evangelical world. It shaped me. I learned to take the words of Jesus seriously – love God, love your neighbor, feed the hungry, fight for justice for the oppressed. I thought that things like love, kindness, gentleness, and self-control MATTERED. I have been so confused and deeply saddened by the unflinching loyalty to a man who so clearly embodies the opposite of these values.
This song is a lament. It’s a loving rebuke. It’s a plea for the 81%, to come home to the way of Jesus.
You can read more about this song and its composer HERE and HERE.
Sermon: Epiphany III – How to Pray for Our Friends in Christ
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-20)
• • •
The Lord be with you.
Few things are more human than the urge to pray. If we have sense, we human beings recognize our limited ability to make things happen, to extricate ourselves from the dilemmas we find ourselves in, or to fix what is broken in ourselves and in the world. And so, our hearts cry out.
Sometimes in our hearts we feel that we are lost and without direction. And so we cry out for wisdom, for guidance, for a way out of the wilderness.
Sometimes in our hearts we feel small and weak. And so we cry out for strength.
There are times when we feel frustrated and angry. And so we cry out “Why?” and we protest and complain and demand justice. Sometimes in our anger we curse, and little do we know it, but we are praying.
When we get ill or find ourselves in frightening or discouraging places with regard to our health and well being, we cry out for healing, for restoration and recovery, for comfort and wholeness in our bodies and minds.
Sometimes we get sad. We lose someone we love. The weight of the world and our worries presses down on us and we stumble beneath burdens too heavy for us to bear. We cry out for relief, for someone to hold us and reassure us that we are not alone and that all will be well.
There are pleasant times when we feel deep joy in living, when all is right, bright and happy in our world. In those seasons our hearts cry out with a spirit of contentment, gratitude, and praise.
When we think of those we love, we find that our hearts are always crying out for them — for their health and well being, that they will be established and successful in life, that they will be happy, secure, and well taken care of.
We are human, therefore we pray. We may not always voice these heart-cries in times of formal prayer. More often, these prayers are just part of the way we think and feel and breathe and act each day.
Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians is filled with prayers. In fact, a case can be made that the entire first three chapters of this letter is written in various forms of prayer. He begins by blessing God for all his blessings, and then just keeps meditating on all those blessings, pausing along the way to pray for his friends in Ephesus that they will be able to grasp and appropriate them in their hearts, minds, and lives.
Chapter three ends with one of these prayers, the one I read just a few minutes ago. It is a wonderful example of how to pray for each other as friends in Christ.
Notice first how Paul prays that his friends may be filled with strength in the inner person by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now there’s a prayer we all need. Paul doesn’t focus on the circumstances the believers in Ephesus are facing on the outside, but rather prays that God will help them on the inside, no matter what they’re going through.
That’s where we need God’s help most of all too, isn’t it — on the inside. You know, in that secret place where you lack self-confidence, where you feel weak or ill-equipped to handle the demands of life. The inside, where you may be still reeling from some trauma you have experienced that keeps you anxious and afraid. The inside, where you regret some bad choices you’ve made and you feel guilt and shame that’s hard to shake. The inside, that part of you that you want to hide and not reveal to anyone else. Paul prays that God’s Spirit will strengthen us with divine power right there, right where we all need it most when life’s relentless issues and challenges rise up.
And then Paul prays that his friends may be filled with God’s love, as Christ makes his home in their hearts. He prays that they will be rooted and grounded in love — that love will be the source and the foundation of everything they think, say, and do. And he prays that God will fill them up with the kind of love that is so vast, so rich, so profound that it’s really beyond understanding or description.
Paul puts his finger right on what we really need, right? Strength and love.
Strength to bear up under pressure and the trials and temptations that accost us. Strength to persevere, to keep pressing on through the various seasons and circumstances of life with all their challenges and complexities. God’s strength, to carry us in our weakness, to sustain us when we get weary, to empower us to follow the path of Christ.
And love. Love to embrace life as God’s gift and to relish it. Love to devote ourselves to the lifestyle of Christ — serving our families, our neighbors, our communities, our world. God’s love, to overcome our laziness, our selfishness, our prejudices, and our pride.
I hope you will pray this way for me. And I will try my best to always pray this way for you. Strength and love. Love and strength. It all comes from Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. So let’s pray for each other that Christ may fill us and bless us each day.
May the Word of Christ dwell in us richly in all wisdom. Amen.
The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: January 25, 2020 Profound Thoughts Edition
Before we pass on a few profound (and not-so profound) thoughts over the Brunch table today, allow me to share a link to a truly profound conversation between “eco-theologian” Michael Dowd and our own Damaris Zehner. Dowd blogs at Post-doom and you can find his interview with Damaris on YouTube HERE or by clicking on the image below. You’ll get a great overview of Damaris’s career and background, and the kind of life she is most interested in practicing and writing about. You can follow her observations and reflections regularly at Integrity of Life. And we will keep the link to the Post-doom interview up on the IM Bulletin Board so that you can continue to access it easily.
Here are a few of Damaris’s profound thoughts that she expresses in the interview:
Mostly, we live daily. Nonetheless, what a good culture would do is to set up our daily lives with the future in mind. So, whether we’re thinking about it or not, whether we are aiming for something specific or not, we are living in such a way that there is something in the future for our children, grandchildren, and for all life on earth.
And if I were to choose a single Bible verse that I think works both spiritually and practically to every audience, it’s Micah 6:8, which is “love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” And I really think that that covers it — whether we are talking about how we handle the environment and other species, how we deal with the economy, how we deal with other people, and how we prepare for the future. If we’re living humbly now, we won’t use up what other people will need in the future. If we’re thinking of justice and mercy, we will be considering the whole world around us.
If we are doing that, it goes back to what you were talking about, which is the sense of gratitude. When we’re not front and center, grabbing and shoving out of fear, then we can just sit back and go, “This is a nice world. We like it here. Let’s stay.”
•
Never again…
This week marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Here are some poignant thoughts expressed about remembering the Holocaust.
But one thing I took from this was a big fear I’ve now got about people of absolute faith. I always thought faith of itself was – could only be a positive thing. Everyone talks about the importance of having faith. Well, these guys had faith, absolute faith. And there’s one really desperately upsetting…ideologically, there’s one desperately particularly upsetting moment where – in the book – where I talk about how Himmler and Hoss most admired, as prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They pointed to them and said, see that faith? That’s the kind of faith we need in our führer – absolute, unshakable faith. (from an interview with Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: A New History)
Today, you have a young generation of Germans. And I do not believe in collective guilt. So I have absolutely no problem with the young Germans. I even feel sorry for the young Germans because to be maybe sons or daughters of killers is different than to be sons and daughters of the victims. And I felt sorry for them. I still do. (from an interview with Elie Wiesel)
Our age is a different age. The words are not the same, the perpetrators are not the same perpetrators but it is the same evil, and there remains only one answer: Never again. (President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany)
• • •
A few profound, curmudgeonly thoughts…
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• • •
Institutional dereliction…
The always intriguing Mockingbird blog takes note of several recent observations about “the increasingly tenuous relationship between individuals and institutions.” One of the best articles cited is How Did Americans Lose Faith in Everything? by Yuval Levin. Here are some of his poignant thoughts:
But what we are missing is not simply greater connectedness but a structure of social life: a way to give shape, purpose, concrete meaning and identity to the things we do together. If American life is a big open space, it is not a space filled with individuals. It is a space filled with these structures of social life — with institutions. And if we are too often failing to foster belonging, legitimacy and trust, what we are confronting is a failure of institutions.
…We trust political institutions when they undertake a solemn obligation to the public interest and shape the people who populate them to do the same. We trust a business because it promises quality and reliability and rewards its workers when they deliver those. We trust a profession because it imposes standards and rules on its members intended to make them worthy of confidence. We trust the military because it values courage, honor and duty in carrying out the defense of the nation and forms human beings who do, too.
…What stands out about our era in particular is a distinct kind of institutional dereliction — a failure even to attempt to form trustworthy people, and a tendency to think of institutions not as molds of character and behavior but as platforms for performance and prominence.
Note from CM: I wrote this post in 2009. I thought I would re-run it today in its original form and ask for input on how you see that things may or may not have changed.
One sentence from the original post that I know is most certainly obsolete is found right in the beginning: “This involvement [of evangelicalism with politics] had its high water mark in the presidency of George W. Bush and the Republican domination of Congress.” From where I sit, it looks like the water is still rising.
Along with this piece, you might want to read Scot McKnight’s post that is linked on the IM Bulletin Board: Christianity Tomorrow. Scot maintains that the Christian church in many of its expressions (not just evangelicalism) has fallen into “Locke’s trap” and has increasingly adopted the “secular eschatology and soteriology” of “statism” — though few would admit to this. Statism “is a belief that solutions to our biggest problems are found in the state and the Christian’s responsibility from the Left or the Right is to get involved and acquire political power.”
A WORD: This is not a post about President Trump and I do not want the discussion to devolve into rants about him or the current administration, its policies, the current impeachment trial, etc. Stay on topic — comments will be strictly moderated and I will not feel the need to defend myself in doing so.
• • •
Why I Am Not a Culture Warrior
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When it comes to the culture wars, I am a conscientious objector.
Since the 1970’s evangelicalism in America has taken to getting involved in public cultural activism and the political sphere with unprecedented vigor. Evangelicals have followed the voices of religious leaders like Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, and James Dobson to raise their voices in the public debate about such issues as abortion, the erosion of personal morality (as they see it) especially as portrayed in the entertainment media, and the gay rights movement. In the process, evangelical Christianity became so connected to the conservative wing of the Republican party that at times the two seemed indistinguishable. This involvement had its high water mark in the presidency of George W. Bush and the Republican domination of Congress.
As a result of this evangelical embrace of a culture war approach to their mission in the world, churches, pastors, and individual Christians have been swept up into having to choose sides on many complex issues and to adopt a “Christ against culture” mentality. This has coincided with the development of an entire Christian subculture, which in my view has isolated believers from their neighbors and genuine redemptive interaction with the world.
Thus, evangelicals find themselves in the equivalent of spiritual trench warfare. We are dug in to our positions, separated from our “enemies,” seeing things only from one perspective, and having no real contact with those on the other side except to bombard them relentlessly. Doesn’t sound like a Great Commission lifestyle to me!
As Michael Spencer observes on his Internet Monk blog:
Every day I listen to and read Christians whose consideration of other persons is on the basis of politics and cultural conflict. Not the Gospel. Their anger and frustration dominates, not the Gospel.
Frankly, I don’t want any part of that approach. And so I’ve decided to conscientiously object to that path of life and “ministry.”
Here are some of the reasons I’ve gone AWOL…
(1) The culture war approach assumes the position that America is somehow different than other nations in our manifest destiny, a “Christian” land that must be “saved” and “brought back” to its Christian “roots.”
In the minds of those who assume this, there is an idea of some kind of vague Eden that once existed in our nation when people all went to church, lived moral lives, and the government supported the teachings of Christ. ‘Twas never so.
(2) The culture war approach holds that the media is the arena in which we should fight our battles, that it accurately represents the reality of the situation on the ground, and that therefore we must make our voice be heard through the media in order to win peoples’ hearts and minds.
The simple fact is that most people listen to media that confirm their beliefs, not challenge them. You won’t find the conservatives lining up to see the latest Michael Moore or Bill Maher film. Nor will you pass many liberals listening to Rush in their cars or catch them watching Fox News at night. Culture warriors generally preach to the choir.
But that’s not the only problem. By moving to a media-driven strategy, Christians have become conditioned to seek the spectacular and forsake the down-to-earth path our Savior teaches us to take–the small, seemingly insignificant, seed-planting approaches of loving our neighbors in the context of real daily life. That is the mystery of how the Kingdom comes and how the world is changed.
(3) The culture war approach relies on political machinery as a primary weapon to restore “righteousness” to the land.
This means we have allowed the world to choose the arena, the weapons, the rules, the referees, and the definitions of what it means to “win” or “lose” in the conflict. In addition, it makes Christians vulnerable to the temptations of power, which are among the least understood among us.
(4) The culture war approach teaches us to fear, dislike, oppose, and look down on our neighbors rather than lay down our lives for them in sacrificial love.
It pits us “against” them, when the Incarnation teaches us to be “with” them.
(5) The culture war approach leads to Christians unwisely choosing our battles and showing a misleading face to the world.
Must a person have “correct” political or cultural opinions before he can come to faith in Christ? The simple Good News of Jesus and his gracious salvation can become so mixed with righteous “positions” that the Gospel itself gets distorted.
IMHO, the culture war approach has a lot more in common with the way the Pharisees lived out the religious life and ministry than it does with our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles.
Review of “Love and Quasars: An Astrophysicist Reconciles Faith and Science” by Paul Wallace, Part 11.
The final Chapter 13 is entitled, Why I Came Back: Love Embraces the Cosmos. As he noted in earlier chapters, despite the conservative evangelical background he was raised in, by the time he left home for college, Wallace’s childhood faith was gone. At college he found little to draw him back. He adopted the whole “rebel” outlook including long hair, old army coats, and worn-out Chuck Taylors plus attitude. He recounts conversations with Baptist students trying to convert him and responding with the argumentative, smart-alecky, atheist attitude. This continued until his senior year, when he met Elizabeth, his future wife-to-be. He says:
This went on until September of my senior year. That’s when I met Elizabeth, a Christian I couldn’t argue with. I don’t mean she had all the answers or was a skilled debater. She just didn’t argue. She had no interest in it. And it didn’t matter how she dressed or what her theology was, because on the day I met her… she looked at me and didn’t see a conversion project or a physics major or a freaky rock musician. I felt like she saw me beneath all that, and she had no agenda. This immediately shut down the rather prominent smart-ass component of my persona, which was unpleasant… But we got along so well. We talked for hours, night after night, with zero effort. It was the first time I had ever dated someone and not gotten all locked up by nerves and self-consciousness. But the faith thing held us back. She had it and I didn’t, and that mattered to both of us.
Over the next six months, she stood still as I skittered toward her and away from her like a nervous squirrel. It caused her some pain, but she held out. In the level gaze of her love, I eventually calmed down, began to pray with her, and months later, attended church with her. Within two years of meeting, we were joined in Christian marriage… So it was love, not science or an argument, that brought me back and opened up my world.
I’m having an extremely tough time not being cynical here. Wallace is trying to say that Elizabeth’s agape’ is what drew him back. However, it seems likely to me that storge’, philia, and even eros were equally involved. Not to mention the strong cultural identity that he was raised in. It’s hard not to imagine that if he were raised Hindu and she were a Hindu beauty, that it would be Hinduism he would be returning to, or Muslim and a Muslim beauty… you get the idea. Still – it is Wallace’s story – and he has to tell it as it occurred to him.
Wallace’s larger point – that scientific knowledge is not opposed to Christian faith – is still being made. After all 1 Corinthians 8:1, “But knowledge puffs up while love builds up” is still true. He says:
Love and reason work together like faith and science. And in the same way that faith must contain all science, love must encompass all reason and knowledge and sound argument. Love puts these tools in their proper context and sets them to their rightful task of building a better and more just and more beautiful world.
Search the cosmos, and you will find no bottom and no boundaries, but faith can contain it still. God does not explain the world the way gravity or evolution does, and faith does not compete with science. God is not a theory of everything. God does not close the door on our not-knowing but throws it open and invites us to experience the joy of knowing and to deepen the great mystery of not knowing.
God is not knowledge but love, a love embracing all-knowing and all not-knowing, a love in which fear – of the unknown, of our own questions, even of death – has no place. And we are perhaps the strangest of all things: walking talking assemblies of atoms that have found ourselves in an infinite and evolving universe that somehow makes no sense and carries no meaning and offers no hope outside the great and shining reality we call love.
Note from CM: I went to a funeral this week of a 96 year-old veteran of both WWII and Korea. As I sat there in the service, I was reminded of this post from a few years ago about one of his comrades.
• • •
Richard
This is Middle America. This is the generation of “older people” that I grew up respecting, the people who ran or worked for local businesses, tended to their families, and were involved in their communities. This is the group of people who essentially built the world as I have known it. They fought in World War II, came home and went to school or work, marrying the sweethearts they met before or after going overseas. This is the Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Crosby and Hope, Bogie and Bacall generation.
This is Richard.
I officiated Richard’s funeral this week, and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. Sure, there were tears, but many of them were tears of gratitude. Richard had lived 92 good years, was married over 65 years, lived a simple, frugal life with five kids and a number of pets in a proud, well-kept neighborhood in the city. A neighbor told me he used to have a good walk every morning and evening to and from the bus that took him to work downtown.
Richard was a codebreaker in Italy during World War II. He was proud of his military service and he maintained an interest in the era by building model WWII model airplanes and reading about it. A few years ago he had the privilege of going on an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. and seeing the WWII Memorial honoring guys like him.
His wife died a few years ago and it was the one sadness in his life as far as I could determine. Oh yes, he did have one regret from earlier days. While serving in Italy, he came into possession of a beautiful dog to which he gave an Italian name. When it came time to return stateside, he was not allowed to bring the dog with him. The kids told me he talked about that dog for the rest of his life.
Richard loved animals. I’ve always considered that to be a telling feature of a person. If someone loves animals and treats them with kindness and loving care, it usually indicates goodness of character. His last pet was the most affectionate cat I have ever been around. When we met as a hospice team after Richard’s death, we talked a long time about what would happen to the cat; they were that close. Solution: one of the daughters will take her to her home, a continual reminder of her dad’s gentle and kind spirit.
Richard had an active mind right up to the end. Whenever I visited, he was working through a book, or several of them. When he could no longer read well enough, he listened to books on tape, and we would discuss what he was reading. He remained curious and interested in learning until his final days. I always found conversations with Richard stimulating, and I would try to get him to talk about his days in World War II. The one television show he would not miss was Jeopardy.
There came a time when Richard began seeing visions of people standing by his bed and having dreams of past events. We discussed those and he shared with me that he was more curious about them than frightened or concerned. Talking with the family after he died, it became clear to me that his mind was actively reviewing his life and processing his memories.
Here is the text I used for the message I gave at Richard’s service, from Genesis 25:
This is the length of Abraham’s life, one hundred seventy-five years. Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field…that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with his wife Sarah. After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac.
Of all the hospice patients I’ve had the privilege of meeting, this passage perhaps fits Richard better than any of the others. He died in a good old age, an old man and “full of years” – a profound description that speaks not only of his life’s length but also of its quality.
Richard died a man who had lived a good, full life.
Now he lies next to his “Sarah,” gathered to his people.
And I love the way this text ends: “After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac.”
When we lose good people like Richard from past generations we may feel unequipped to take their place. However, God is with us as he was with our fathers – God is our dwelling place in all generations – and his blessing carries on. It is as available to us as it was to Richard, and it may well be that someday a historian will look back and say, “After the death of Richard, God blessed his family and the people of their generation.”
Richard is not a hero in any spectacular, public sense. But to me, Richard represents the best of Middle America, the people who have been my common grace heroes, the “greatest generation” if you will.
These are the righteous, of whom the wisdom psalm says:
The meek shall inherit the land,
and delight themselves in abundant prosperity….
The LORD knows the days of the blameless,
and their heritage will abide forever. (Ps. 37:11, 18)
One of my favorite stories in scripture is that of the patriarch Jacob. Or, “that rascal,” as I like to call him. From birth, Jacob was never anything but a piece of work. His entire life was one giant con. Born trying to supplant his brother’s place (which is the meaning of his name), Jacob lived as a schemer to the end.
As a youngster, his infamous career began when he tricked his brother out of both birthright and blessing. The fallout was so severe it forced the young scoundrel to flee home.
Then the living God met him on the road in an dream encounter that we sometimes speak of as Jacob’s “conversion” at Beth-el, the house of God. However, if it was a conversion, it didn’t appear to change Jacob very much. He emerged from the vision and immediately began bargaining with God and setting his own terms for their relationship:
If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you (Genesis 28:20-22).
What a deal for God.
Moving down the road, Jacob’s conniving ways were about to advance exponentially. His fugitive journey led him to a school of treachery as he went to live with his uncle Laban, a double dealer who almost proved to be a match for Jacob in treachery. The story of their many years together is a tale of two tricksters continually trying to outdo each other.
And Jacob had more on his plate than duking it out with Laban. In his own tent he had to deal with two scrappy wives who scratched and clawed to gain an advantage in the family like prizefighters.
Ultimately, Jacob won the showdown with his shyster uncle Laban, packed up his contentious clan, and hit the road with a pile of booty.
Having left that frying pan, he turned to travel back home toward the fire that was his brother Esau, who had held grudges ever since Jacob left. Jacob shook in his sandals at the prospect of meeting the brute and getting the beating he deserved.
One night, while camping en route, a man (an angel? God himself?) ambushed the patriarch in the darkness and they wrestled through the night until Jacob emerged a crippled “victor” with a new name — Israel.
I guess you could call that transformation. I call it a busted hip and the knowledge that the only hope he had was in hanging on to God for dear life.
For the rest of Jacob’s days, he and the family dealt with the consequences and ongoing patterns of his lifetime of deception. The character traits engraved on Jacob’s face and visible in his constant limp flowed through the rest of the household, and until the day he died, Jacob worried and struggled to keep faith, hope, and love alive in a clan full of connivers.
The last story about Jacob before his death brings a smile. Son Joseph presents his two sons to their grandfather for his blessing. Manasseh, the firstborn, should be blessed with Jacob’s right hand. Instead the patriarch crosses his arms and places it on the head of the younger, Ephraim. Manasseh, the elder and rightful heir, gets the left hand — second best.
Joseph has a hissy fit and objects. He thinks the old man made a mistake because of his failing eyesight. This is the ultimate faux pas; it will scar his boys for life.
But Jacob insists. Here at the culmination of all his journeys, he wants to pass on what he’s learned about the only thing that really matters: It’s all about God’s choice, God’s blessing, God’s grace, God’s relentless promises. Maybe God is the ultimate Trickster.
I can just see that rascally twinkle in Jacob’s eye, as he puts one over on his own son and grandsons.
And I can hear Jacob chuckle a little at Joseph’s indignation. We chuckle with him. Joseph, who knew all about his dad and the ways of his family, probably broke down and cracked a smile himself. Perhaps a saint is nothing more than an old scoundrel we can’t help but smile at.
Fact is, Jacob was endlessly persistent in trying to get his own way and gaining advantage over others. But he was not nearly as persistent as the God who stuck with him and blessed him in spite of himself.
And I’d be willing to bet that if you asked God, he’d say, “One of my better stories.”
Jacob was not someone any right thinking person would admire. Deceiver, con artist, trickster, conniver, swindler, rascal and rogue. From the day he was born to the day he died.
This is from a piece Michael Spencer wrote in 2007, in which he complained that the day was not being celebrated well. One of his issues had to do with the attitude of the (white) evangelical church toward Dr. King.
• • •
I don’t like the ambiguity of evangelicals toward Dr. King. If I preach about Dr. King, I can already tell you about the letters and comments. It’s even worse in the blogosphere. The venom and hatred of Dr. King is of a kind I haven’t encountered about any public figure. It goes beyond personal. Somewhere, it touches the fact that many evangelicals are committed to a kind of white flight, practical apartheid that lets the occasional minority preach or sing, but still wants an all white suburban private school so our kids can become “leaders.”
I know all the facts. Plagarizer. Theological liberal. Adulterer. I know that many Christians to this day feel he was out of line to provoke reaction. (Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farm opposed public marches, even as his ministry was persecuted for integration.) When he’s mentioned by preachers and invoked by Bono, I can feel the shift in the room.
King wasn’t a saint on the level of perfection. He was flawed like David, and used by God anyway. I have read his sermons many times. They are hardly orthodox in some ways, but they have an incredible appreciation of Jesus in others. While some evangelicals will spend the day linking his college and seminary papers as evidence of his apostasy, I’ll be grateful no one can find my college and seminary work. Good grief.
We ought to be glad King’s vision was of the peace of Christ and treating people as the images of God. We should thank God he was willing to suffer, be bold and go to the cross. We should see him as an American martyr and thank God for his faith, Christ’s power in his life and his love for all persons, especially his enemies. We can learn a lot from him and we should embrace him.
Instead, evangelicals will be of split mind and some will make it their business to run down the great man as some expression of service to God. Weird. Here’s one time we can tell the culture to look at a flawed person and see the grace and power of God, and we won’t. I guess he’s not Pat Robertson. That’s right. He’s not. Look at all the orthodox evangelicals have done for racial justice. ***crickets***
In his day, King said the church- the moderate, white church- was his greatest disappointment. Progress has been made, but we still have a long way to go. Some evangelicals won’t learn from anyone that isn’t one of their “kind.” That’s their loss, and a poor witness.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the man and the day. I celebrate it. I pray for its genuine influence in our country. But we haven’t done so well with it, and I pray we can do better.
[If you want to celebrate the day, the Dream Speech is fine, but if you haven’t read Letter From Birmingham Jail, you don’t know why Dr. King is so relevant and important for Christians today.]
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (Ephesians 2.8-9)
The Lord be with you.
In California, within a relatively short span you can travel from the lowest elevation in North America to the highest elevation in the continental U.S. Badwater in Death Valley, is 280 feet below sea level. You can go from there in just 135 miles to the summit of Mt. Whitney, which is 14,495 feet above sea level. The journey will take you from salt flats to snowy peaks, from the lowest place to the highest place.
Some people have hiked this path from lowest to highest. For about fifty years, a group called Summit Adventure has held a mountain bike race on this route called the Whitney Classic. There is even a race called the Badwater Ultramarathon, which describes itself as “the world’s toughest foot race.” People have expended a lot of energy to go from Death Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney.
Today’s text from Ephesians also takes us from lowest to highest, in this case in terms of spiritual geography.
Ephesians 2:1 pictures us dead in sin. Ephesians 2:6 shows us seated with Christ in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 2:1-2 places us walking in trespasses and sins according to the course of this world. Ephesians 2:10 says we are now walking in the good works God has planned for us from before the world began.
Ephesians 2:3 portrays us as people who are experiencing the wrathful consequences of living in sinful disobedience. Ephesians 2:7 says we will forever enjoy the riches of God’s immeasurable kindness toward us in Christ.
And the summary of this journey from lowest to highest is found in verses 8-9.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
You will note right away that the journey Paul describes is quite different. The journey from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney is all about effort, and training, and sweat and toil. It’s something the hiker, the biker, or the runner achieves. It’s a great accomplishment, the result of an incredible amount of work and struggle.
The journey from death in sin to life in Christ, on the other hand, is by God’s grace alone and it comes to us when God gives us the gift of faith to trust in and follow Jesus.
It is about God’s work, not ours.
It is about what Jesus accomplished, not what we have achieved.
It is a journey for which we praise God, not something about which we can boast.
The journey from death in sin to life in Christ is due to God’s creative, life-giving action in Christ. As God created the heavens and the earth and called light out of darkness, so he created new life in us and called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.
We celebrate and enact this in our baptism. As Jesus died and was buried, then rose and ascended into heaven, even so, we die and are buried with Christ in baptism, then raised up to walk with Christ in newness of life, now and forever. From the lowest place to the highest, from death to life, from the grave to seated with Christ in heavenly places. All this is what God has done by grace for us and with us and in us.
But one of the greatest aspects of all of this is the way this passage ends. God raises us from death to life and then enters into a wonderful partnership with us.
When God created the first humans, God blessed them, then gave them a vocation to be fruitful and multiply, to exercise stewardship over creation, to subdue the powers of evil in the world and to bear God’s image in all of life.
Now, Ephesians tells us, God has recreated us in Christ, and he has done so that we too might walk in the good works he has prepared for us. In Christ, we not only have life but we also have a purpose, a calling, a destiny to fulfill. We are God’s image in the world.
The good works that God calls us to walk in are deeds that will bless our families, our neighbors, our communities, and our world. The vast majority of them are not big, spectacular projects but simple acts of kindness, generosity, respect, and love. The grace of God we have received is designed to make us grateful and gracious people. The faith God has given us is meant to help us be more faithful, more willing to believe the best and to encourage the best in others.
We have reached a transition point in Ephesians. Thus far, we have been meditating on the grace of God that has brought us salvation and has given us new life and new identity in Christ. We are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, and we are called to rest in that, to rely on that, to rejoice in that. We sit with Christ, alive and new.
The next step, which this passage in Ephesians introduces, is that we are to get up and start walking. It says it very generally here — we are to walk in the good works God has planned for us. If we rest in Christ, we are also to walk with Christ and to walk as Christ himself walked.
From the lowest place to the highest place. From Death Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney. From the grave to seated with Christ in the heavenly places. One, a journey of incredible human effort. The other, a journey of grace from beginning to end. May God, in grace, continue with us on this journey.
May the Word of Christ dwell in us richly in all wisdom. Amen.
The small volcano south of the Philippine capital that draws many tourists for its picturesque setting in a lake erupted with a massive plume of ash and steam Sunday, prompting thousands of people to flee and officials to shut Manila’s international airport. (Domcar C. Lagto/Sipa USA via AP)
The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: January 18, 2020
In 1868, Charles D. Blake took advantage of the interest in President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment by writing a polka in honor of the occasion. Since he added no words, we don’t know how the composer felt about the POTUS or his trial. However, the fact that he wrote a dance tune might suggest either that he was in favor, or that he was delighted for a chance to cash in — the most American stance of all.
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VIRGINIA IN THE NEWS…
Equal Rights Amendment. Both houses of Virginia’s General Assembly passed the Equal Rights Amendment this week, fulfilling a promise that helped Democrats win control of the legislature and marking a watershed moment in the nearly century-long effort to add protections for women to the U.S. Constitution. Virginia is the pivotal 38th state to pass the ERA, the final one necessary for ratification. Passed in 1972. U.S. lawmakers set a deadline of March 22, 1979, for three-quarters of the states (38) to ratify the ERA, which was later extended to 1982. But since the deadline was not in the original amendment, supporters say it is not constitutional. Several efforts are underway in Congress to either extend or restart the ratification process.
Brouhaha over Guns. A sense of crisis has been growing in Virginia’s capitol this week. In anticipation of a rally planned for Monday (Martin Luther King holiday) to protest proposed gun control legislation in the statea. When intelligence warned of white supremacist violence, Gov. Ralph Northrum declared a state of emergency and temporarily enacted a weapons ban on the grounds of the state capitol. Then the FBI announced it had arrested three men connected with a neo-Nazi group who had obtained weapons, including an assault weapon they fashioned, and planned on attending the rally. [Update: three more have been arrested]. Online groups have been fanning the flames by calling Monday’s event a “boogaloo,” a crisis event designed to accelerate the race war they anticipate. Militia members from across the U.S. have said they will attend the rally. Virginia’s now Democratic-controlled legislature is proposing sweeping new legislation that would place new regulations and restrictions in the state’s gun laws. Is this a foreshadowing of the kind of rancor we might expect in the political year ahead?
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In other gun news: The TSA reports that 4,432 firearms were confiscated at U.S. airports last year. 87% of them were loaded. 278 airports were involved, led by Atlanta’s Hartsfield, where 323 guns were seized.
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100 YEARS AGO — PROHIBITION
NY Times: A century ago Friday, the 18th Amendment came into effect, outlawing the production, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages. Ever since, that day has been celebrated — or mourned — for formally ushering in the Prohibition Era.
Except that it didn’t.
Contrary to popular imagination — including recent coverage of the amendment’s centennial — there was no mad dash for hooch on the night of Jan. 16, 1920, no “going out of business” liquor store sales on Prohibition Eve. The United States had already been “dry” for the previous half-year thanks to the Wartime Prohibition Act. And even before that, 32 of the 48 states had already enacted their own statewide prohibitions.
“With little that differed from normal wartime prohibition drinking habits, New York City entered at 12:01 o’clock this morning into the long dry spell,” this newspaper solemnly noted. A few restaurants and hotels held mock funerals for booze, but the city’s saloons had long since been shuttered, and “the spontaneous orgies of drink that were predicted failed in large part to occur.” What with debates over ratifying the Peace of Versailles and a war scare with Bolshevik Russia, the 18th Amendment was barely front-page news.
That the final triumph of prohibition was met with shrugs, rather than the outraged street protests we tend to imagine, says less about prohibition back then and more about our inability to understand it today. The entire idea of prohibition seems so hostile to Americans’ contemporary sensibilities of personal freedom that we struggle to comprehend how our ancestors could have possibly supported it.
For decades now, popular histories have concocted false stories that the majority of the public had never supported prohibition, or that prohibition was conceived by a “radical fringe” of Bible-thumping, rural evangelicals trying to codify their Puritan morality. We use the same language to vilify prohibitionists as we do to describe ISIS or Al Qaeda: calling them “deeply antidemocratic,” “extremists” and “zealots.”
But this portrayal of prohibition as some reactionary, cultural-religious movement runs into a bevy of uncomfortable historical questions. How could such an “ultra-conservative” prohibition movement win its greatest victory during the middle of the Progressive Era? How could organizations like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union champion progressive issues like the expansion of suffrage and civil and labor rights alongside supposedly reactionary prohibition?
If the victory of prohibition was all about Bible-thumping morality, why was there no evangelical revivalism at the time? If prohibition never had popular support, how did the 18th Amendment pass with a 68 percent supermajority in the House of Representatives and 76 percent support in the Senate, and then get ratified by 46 of the 48 states, all in record time? None of this adds up.
In reality, the temperance movement was anything but pinky-raising Victorians forbidding society to drink. Temperance was the longest-running, most widely supported social movement in both American and global history. Its foe wasn’t the drink in the bottle or the drunk who drank it, but the drink traffic: powerful business interests — protected by a government reliant on liquor taxes — getting men addicted to booze, and then profiting handsomely by bleeding them and their families dry.
…One legislator called for prohibition “for the safety and redemption of the people from the social, political and moral curse of the saloon.” That zealot was Abraham Lincoln, rising to support Illinois’s statewide prohibition in 1855. Similar sentiments were expressed by Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, William Jennings Bryan, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and many other progressive leaders.
…For a better understanding of temperance and prohibition, forget Bible-thumping “thou shalt nots.” Think instead about a major industry making outlandish profits by getting people hooked on an addictive substance that could kill them. Maybe that industry uses some of those profits to buy corrupt political cover by currying favor with government and oversight bodies. Let’s call this substance “opioids,” and the industry, “Big Pharma.”
This is the same type of predatory capitalism that the temperance-cum-prohibition movement fought 100 years ago. Should big businesses be able to use addiction to reap tremendous profits from the poor? If your answer is no, and you were around 100 years ago, you likely would have joined the vast majority of Americans calling for the prohibition of liquor traffic.
Spotify has launched playlists for dogs left home alone, after discovering that 74% of UK pet owners play music for their pets. According to Reuters, the streaming music service has also “launched a podcast featuring soothing music, “dog-directed praise”, stories, and messages of affirmation and reassurance narrated by actors to alleviate stress for dogs who are home alone.”
By the way, 4 in 10 owners say their pets have a favorite kind of music, and 25% report their pets dance to it.
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In other music news: After reports that Nissan Motor boss Carlos Ghosn was smuggled out Japan by concealing himself in a musical instrument case, Yamaha Corporation tweeted: “We won’t mention the reason, but there have been many tweets about climbing inside large musical instrument cases. A warning after any unfortunate accident would be too late, so we ask everyone not to try it.” So there.
Is baseball by nature a cheating enterprise? I don’t think so, but it seems to me that every competitive endeavor provides ample temptation to try and gain advantage over one’s opponent, within or without the rules. And, as in every realm of life, better technology always brings with it new and more devious ways to succumb to that temptation.
And so we’ve come to baseball’s latest cheaters (who got caught) — the Houston Astros. While their cheating comes nowhere close to a Black Sox scandal, a Pete Rose gambling transgression, or a steroids debacle, I’m glad MLB is addressing and punishing it.
I just wish I was young enough to drill a fastball into Alex Bregman’s ribs.
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ON MY WINTER PLAYLIST
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Don’t stop trying to find me here amidst the chaos Though I know it’s blinding, there’s a way out Say out loud we will not give up on love now No fear, don’t you turn like Orpheus, just stay here Hold me in the dark, and when the day appears We’ll say we did not give up on love today
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The Internet Monk Archives 