Looking for commonalities is the relatively easy part of forming a multicultural community. True multiculturalism, however, means being humble and brave enough to explore our different perspectives, experiences, traditions, and values while staying in relationship. It means bringing our whole selves to the table and inviting others to do the same, not just the parts that “fit in.” It means being willing to be changed.
~Kathleen Rolenz
A little something to make you smile while being kind of deep and true
A blog started by a colleague concerned about recent changes in our denomination’s Board of Pensions. If you’re not Presbyterian clergy, this probably won’t be of any concern to you, but if you are, you should read it.
I imagine there must have been some excitement in the air that morning as people entered the synagogue, dressed in their Saturday best. Perhaps some of the regulars were shuffling to find a new place to sit, since their usual seats were taken by the folks who normally only show up at Yom Kippur and Passover. But they came to synagogue that morning because they heard the news about the new guest preacher. One of their own, a local son, was returning to Nazareth for the first time since he began to make a name for himself in the region of Galilee.
Many of them remembered Jesus as a small boy, running around and playing with his friends while the adults made small-talk after the service. Now, at age thirty, he was beginning to garner a reputation as an itinerant rabbi, a teacher of the Torah. There were even some astonishing reports of unexplained, mystical healings associated with his visits. If even a few of these rumors were true, then surely he was about to save the best for them, the people of his hometown, the very ones with whom he had grown up and lived.
They were good-hearted, hard-working, small-town folk who came together Sabbath after Sabbath to honor their Jewish heritage and listen to the wisdom of the Torah. They knew Jesus and he knew them. They were the ones who taught Jesus those old stories of Moses and the prophets. Now, Jesus was the one who would preserve that history and pass it on to yet another generation, as it had been passed down to them by their ancestors in that very same synagogue. This was a very big day indeed.
The service itself, like every Shabbat service, featured the singing of the old psalms, praying prayers, and of course reciting the ancient Shema, Israel’s oldest creed: “Hear, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai alone.” This faith formed the core of their tradition, preserved and passed on from generation to generation. And now, they were proud to welcome one of their own, Jesus, as the newest defender of the faith and guardian of the tradition.
After a reading from the Torah, there was usually another reading from one of the prophets. That week, it came from the book of Isaiah. Jesus read out loud: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Heads around the room were nodding in agreement as the old familiar words washed over them for the umpteenth time in their lives. They knew the story behind the words as well:
The prophet was writing to a community of Jews who had just returned from multiple generations of slavery in Babylon and Persia. It was in that place and time of tribulation that their religion had taken the shape it now held for them. They had come to believe that their God, Adonai of Israel, was the one true deity and all others were mere pretenders to heaven’s throne. In Babylon, alienated from the land of their ancestors and the Jerusalem temple where sacrifices were made daily, their Jewish ancestors had turned their attention to prayer and the study of the Torah in synagogues under the tutelage of learned rabbis. As strangers in a strange land, their ancestors had proudly struggled under oppression to preserve their faith and culture. The very existence of this synagogue in the small town of Nazareth was a testimony to their success.
Finally, after three generations of Jewish children had grown up under a Babylonian whip, the Persians invaded and conquered Babylon. These more open-minded Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild, so long as they promised to remain loyal and subservient to the Empire. The prophet writing in this section of the book of Isaiah directed his words toward these newly returned exiles. They were faced with the task of rebuilding their country from the ground up. How would they even start? What values and ideals would shape this new society?
This particular prophet, writing in the name of another ancient seer, Isaiah of Jerusalem, who had lived and died centuries before, reminded the people of the ancient tradition of the year of Jubilee, a special holiday that came only once every fifty years. In this year, every debt would be forgiven and every slave set free. The land and the people would rest and then emerge with a fresh start, a new lease on life. The onset of this holiday was certainly “good news to the poor” for it brought release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed, and forgiveness to the debtors. It was a fresh start. The future was suddenly wide open. Liberated by the pronouncement of divine forgiveness, a new generation of people was free to rebuild the world anew. This is why they called it “the year of the Lord’s favor.” It seemed to them like heaven itself was smiling.
Back in the Nazarene synagogue, the old men heard these ancient words with tears in their eyes and smiles under their beards. God had been faithful, their people had survived, rebuilt, and passed on their heritage to another generation of Jews. And now, here was Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the little kid who used to play in their streets, now grown up tall, ordained as a rabbi, and preaching his first sermon in his hometown. The people survived. Their tradition lived on. God be praised!
Jesus finished his reading, rolled the scroll back up, and handed it back to the attendant. Then he sat down in the rabbi’s chair, which is what they used back then instead of a pulpit, and began to preach. He gave them the main point of his sermon with his opening remark: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Wait… what did he just say? Fulfilled? Didn’t he mean to say Honored, or Remembered, or Preserved? What does he mean by ‘Fulfilled’? If those ancient words were being ‘fulfilled’ ‘today’, it would mean that the story of our people is not yet over. It would mean that the journey home to freedom is not yet finished. It would mean that the task of rebuilding a new community is up to us, not our ancestors.
Even more importantly, it would mean that the year of Jubilee is now. All debts are off and all slaves are free. A fresh start for us, not just a bunch of people who lived once upon a time.
Jesus brought their tradition to life by showing it to be unfinished. A new world was being brought to birth by the age-old values of forgiveness and freedom. The same Spirit that animated the ancient prophets like a fire shut up in their bones was ready to set hearts on fire in that synagogue.
By appealing to this passage, Jesus deftly drew from multiple layers of tradition in order to make his point. Present, prophet, and Torah each represented different strands woven into a single tapestry in this sermon. Jesus appealed to the very deepest parts of who they were and what they valued as loyal, faithful Jews. He called them toward their higher calling through a fuller vision of who they were. He opened their eyes to the presence of a dynamic reality that is still unfolding, still working in their lives in order to bring fulfillment to the prophet’s ancient vision. Like any good preacher, Jesus brought the past into the present in order to shape the future. He opened their minds to possibilities that boggled their imaginations. He showed them a vision of what this world could be like if it were remade along the lines of these Jubilee values instead of the exacting cruelty of the loan shark and the slave driver.
Jesus introduced the people of his home synagogue to a living tradition, a prophetic tradition that reveres the memory of the past by trusting the promise of the future. Jesus invited his neighbors to follow the trajectory of the prophets rather than standing by their writings.
I believe that same invitation is now extended to us, the people sitting in this church today. We too can best honor the heritage left by our forebears by tracing the trajectory of their lives, rather than dogmatically hanging on their every word. To quote the Buddhist poet Matsuo Basho: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.”
Like those members of the Nazarene synagogue, we have our own tradition that we would like to preserve. Beginning with Jesus, we might follow our tradition through the likes of the apostle Paul, Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. Each of these voices (as well as many others) is worth paying attention to. But it is always a dangerous thing to make an idol of history. None of these voices carries the last word in matters of faith and ethics. Every generation of believers is still responsible, as heirs of the tradition, for continuing to interpret spiritual truth (as we understand it) in its day.
Our church tradition has a slogan that reflects this conviction: Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda. “The church is reformed and always to be reformed.”
The Reformation never ends. The story is not yet over. The Christian faith begs to be interpreted and applied in our day, just as it was in Calvin’s and Paul’s. Our interpretations will not match theirs exactly. John Calvin, for example, would shudder to learn that we now ordain women to preach in the very churches he founded.
There are some who argue that we have departed from “the faith once delivered to the saints” because of these and others of our practices that differ from our forebears. I say that we are not heretics but pioneers, reformers, maybe even prophets. Our task is not to blindly adhere to the words written on a page, but to critically follow the trajectory of the values expressed in those words. Following the image of the Jubilee that Jesus used: what does it mean to forgive debts and liberate slaves in 2013? Following Paul and Calvin, what does it mean for us to be reformers of church and society today?
As we stretch our minds to answer these questions, we continue the living tradition that was handed down to us from our ancestors. We honor our history by moving it forward, trusting in the guiding light of the Spirit to lead us home to the One from whom all blessings flow.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hlVBg7_08n0#!%5DWhen I was at church, they taught me something else:
“If you preach hate at the service, those words aren’t anointed,
that holy water that you soak in has been poisoned.”
-Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Let’s face it:
Parents just don’t understand.
I’m only 32, so it wasn’t all that long ago that I was a teenager bemoaning this very fact to my friends at school. All through those years, my elders kept on telling me, “You’ll understand when you have kids of your own.”
Well, you know what? I do have kids of my own now and guess what:
Parents still don’t understand!
For the life of me, I cannot comprehend even a fraction of what goes on in my four year old daughter’s mind. I admit that I’m still pretty new to the parenting game, but somehow, I get the impression that me not understanding her is only going to get worse as she gets older.
She has this incredibly vibrant and active imagination that can create entire worlds with their own cast of characters and plotlines. Once in a while, she’ll poke her head out of her fantasy play world and update us on what everybody in there is doing. Naturally, she just assumes that we’ve been in there with her all along and therefore know exactly what she’s talking about. We don’t, of course. But whatever she’s telling us is obviously important to her, so my wife and I usually just nod, smile, and say, “Okay!”
Parents just don’t understand.
But, as a parent, there certainly are things that you do understand.
For instance, there are things we know about our kids that no one else will ever know (with the possible exception of their future partners/spouses). Sometimes, we know them even better than they know themselves. We know what they’re capable of, even if they don’t.
I imagine that such was the case between Jesus and his mother as well. On one occasion, around the time that Jesus began his ministry, he and his mother attended a wedding together in a tiny little village called Cana. This village was so small and remote, in fact, that archaeologists today aren’t entirely sure where it was located. During the celebration, the unthinkable happened: the host family ran out of wine.
If that happened at a wedding today, we would probably say something like, “Gosh! That’s a bummer!” but then quickly get back to entertaining ourselves in other ways. Generally speaking, we would get over it. But in the ancient world, where social capital was just as valuable as money, this would have been a supreme humiliation. The family’s reputation would be ruined for all time. They would never live it down in the eyes of the community. The shadow of this event would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
With that in mind, you might be able to imagine the very real concern in Jesus’ mother’s voice when she tells him, “They have no wine.” At this point in the story, it’s not entirely clear what Jesus’ mother was trying to accomplish by telling Jesus this. According to the narrative text in John’s gospel, Jesus had never done anything particularly amazing or miraculous before this point. Even Jesus himself seems standoffish and dismissive when his mother first approaches him. He says, “Woman (which was a term of respect back then, like ma’am or madam is today), what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
Now, I just wish that the narrator had described the look on her face in that moment. In my imagination, I see her with her head cocked to one side and her hands on her hips, looking her son right in the eye. Then, without another word, she turns around, grabs a panicked staff member as he rushes by, and almost shoves him in Jesus’ direction, saying, “Do whatever he tells you.” Jesus, visibly annoyed, clenches his jaw and furrows his brow at his mother. She simply raises her eyebrows and walks back to the party, smiling knowingly.
Jesus says it isn’t time yet, but his mother knows: it’s time. It’s time for Jesus to become the person he was always meant to be. It’s time for the potential hidden in his life to break out into the open. He may not have even seen it in himself, but his mother saw it. And in order to actualize that potential, she had to get ahead of Jesus. She had to take that leap of faith and push him into something that even Jesus didn’t think he was ready for.
What happens next is the famous incident of Jesus miraculously turning water into wine. According to the narrator of the text, it was Jesus’ first miracle… and it never would have happened if his mother hadn’t pushed him into it.
Now, this whole scene might strike some of us as strange. We’re used to thinking of Jesus as our guru: the all-knowing, all-wise Son of God. He teaches and people listen. After all, he’s Jesus Christ, right? But in this story, he’s the one being pushed. The situation feels a little upside down.
To be honest, the more I think about this disturbing idea, the more I like it. In a metaphorical sense, it’s almost as if Jesus’ mother is reaching out across two thousand years of time just to mess with our heads. But if you let yourself sit with this ironic image of Jesus being pushed into his first miracle, some interesting thoughts start to develop.
Here’s what struck me about this story: Jesus’ mother is getting ahead of Jesus.
When I think about some of the most heroic people in history, I can’t escape the observation that most of them had to push back against the forces of cultural inertia in order to achieve greatness. In a sense, they too were getting ahead of Jesus, so long as we understand “Jesus” as a cultural icon whose name is invoked by the powerful in order to legitimate the social status quo.
For example: 150 years ago, a large number of preachers invoked the name of Jesus and even quoted the Bible in order to justify the practice of slavery in this country. And you know what? They were right… technically speaking. Numerous passages in both the Old and New Testaments talk about slavery as an accepted part of life. Pro-slavery advocates had the text of the Bible on their side.
Nevertheless, abolitionist movements, beginning with the Quakers in the 1600s, gradually built up steam and generated support among the people. They argued that the ownership of another human being as property violates the spirit of Christianity, even though it’s not expressly forbidden in the text of the Bible.
We take this line of reasoning for granted in the 21st century, but it was still a hotly contested issue in the 19th century. It was not socially advantageous to be an abolitionist in those days. Those who called out in the name of conscience were often beaten back by well-respected citizens carrying Bibles. These early heroes of freedom and equality, like Jesus’ mother in the story of the wedding at Cana, had to get ahead of Jesus in order to stand up for what is truly right and good: not the historical person named Jesus of Nazareth or the Spirit of the risen Christ that lived in their hearts, but the image of Jesus that was constructed and corrupted by the prejudice of the slave-owners.
When I talk about “getting ahead of Jesus”, I mean to say that people need to challenge their ideas about Jesus, not Jesus himself. We need to cultivate enough self-awareness to question our own assumptions about reality. When well-dressed and well-paid preachers go on TV, quote the Bible, and use it to justify the exclusion of gay & lesbian people, we to get ahead of that Jesus. When someone sends you an email with a painting of Jesus wrapped in an American flag and carrying an assault rifle, you need to get ahead of that Jesus. When politicians use Christian rhetoric to turn our diverse society into a religiously monolithic nation, we need to get ahead of that Jesus.
Whenever we take a controversial stand for what we believe is right, there will always be people who can quote the Bible against us. On the surface, many of these folks will appear to be more knowledgeable and more dedicated believers than some of us, but I’m telling you now that you don’t have to buy into their ideas. The real measure of your faith is not the church you attend, the Bible you read, or the check you write. The real measure of your faith is the life you live.
When people call you a hell-bound heretic, just remember Jesus’ mother, who made a miracle happen by getting ahead of Jesus. Remember the abolitionists and Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow. They all got ahead of Jesus, going beyond the text of the Bible in order to honor the spirit of the Bible and so they worked their own kind of miracle: a living miracle of freedom and equality that has yet to be completed in our day.
It falls to us to keep this miracle going, to question our own assumptions and challenge deeply-established injustice, to get ahead of our ideas about Jesus and come to know, love, and follow the real Jesus, the Jesus whose Spirit lives within us, working miracles in us and through us that we cannot even begin to imagine.
Here is an article from UU World magazine about a new friend of mine.
Ron is the director of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship. His ministry in Turley, Oklahoma bears some resemblance to our community vision at St. James Mission in Utica. I’m getting to know Ron via Facebook and had one phone conversation with him. A lovely guy committed to a unique ministry. This article is a couple of years old, but that doesn’t diminish its fabulous-ness in the least.
From the article:
Robinson, who identifies himself as a Unitarian Universalist Christian, and who is executive director of the UU Christian Fellowship, a denominational organization of UU Christians, said that in Turley he presents “classic Universalist Christianity.” He added, “It’s definitely a liberation theology—the three ‘R’s: relocating to where people are struggling, redistribution of goods and justice, and reconciliation. We do the first two pretty well and we need to be a lot better at the third.”
He said the Unitarian part of Unitarian Universalism “doesn’t fit as well culturally with what we’re trying to do because people here identify it more with wealth and education. Universalism gives us our best connection.” He added that when people in Turley press him whether he is Christian, he says, “‘Yes, but you don’t have to be a Christian to be in our church.’ Then if people have more questions, I talk about following Jesus and ‘deeds, not creeds.’ People get that. If they ask, ‘Do you believe in heaven and hell?’ I respond, ‘I trust God’s love is for all time. The details we don’t know. You’re free to believe in heaven and stay and work with us.’”
Could a church become missional in a place like Turley without a Christian persona? Robinson believes it could. “A lot of the missional churches are not claiming Christianity today because of the ways it has been identified as bigoted, boring, critical, or irrelevant, and so many churches are now casting their faith in terms like ‘following Jesus’ rather than connecting to an institutional church. I think that question about whether you’re Christian, particularly for the younger generation, is becoming less important. Having said that, I do think that what you do have to have is a sense of the transcendent—a belief in something beyond yourself even if you only name it the human spirit.”
The liberal church brings a needed perspective to missional work, he noted, by its affirmation of diverse religions, sexual orientations, genders, and ethnicities. “That means we can channel our energies not into opposing these issues, but into the creation of relationships and communities of all kinds that reflect core progressive values.”
Reblogged from NPR
Article by John Burnett
Beautiful post tells the story of a faith community struggling to survive and live their values in battle-torn Juarez, Mexico.
“I see the results of darkness. But I also see the goodness and the courage and the bravery of people,” Mullins says. “I would see the hand of God in the midst of mayhem by people who were able to support each other, show great solidarity and kindness, love, hug [and] pray together.”
I read another article on this person several months ago. Her book, ‘When God Talks Back’, is one I want to read. I wish they’d release it on Audible…
Reblog from Huffington Post:
Article by Joel Diaz
If you live in the Columbus, Ohio area, please stop by Mikey’s Late Nite Slice for a piece of pizza with a generous helping of human decency. Nicely done, folks.
This past weekend I was a part of something incredible that happened in my community of Columbus, Ohio. After a fun night out in the Short North, my friend Ethan and I ventured down the street to a popular pizza truck called Mikey’s Late Night Slice. As a frequent late night visitor to the truck I knew the requisite wait in line is part of the process for securing an insanely good slice of pizza. It was really cold so Ethan and I were holding hands and standing close together to keep warm, we were laughing and joking about all the fun we’d had that night, when all of the sudden the guy in front of us turns around and tells us to cut our “gay shit” out…. (cont.)
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 