BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
I have always been opposed to the death penalty. I feel executing someone may be sending them to Hell because they may not have made things right with God for their soul. Sentencing someone to life in prison without the chance of parole for committing a heinous crime at least gives them the time to get right with God before they die if they so choose. Christianity teaches that we need to forgive just as we believe God grants forgiveness for our sins when we ask for it. PLEASE CLICK THE LINK TO SIGN THE PETITION ASKING PRESIDENT BIDEN TO COMMUTE EVERY PRISONER ON DEATH ROW. This is not calling for him to release death row prisoners, it is calling on him to change their sentence from death to life in prison. This from the ACLU.....
President Biden remains the president of this country until January 20 – and his action is needed now more than ever. He must do everything possible before he leaves office to preserve our democracy and mitigate the harm that Trump's policies will create –and that starts with commuting the sentences of everyone on federal death row.
The death penalty system perpetuates injustice – Black, Brown, and economically disadvantaged people make up a disproportionate number of people on death row due to racial bias and sentencing errors. In addition, the death penalty fails to deter crime, wasting resources without making our communities safer, and is fundamentally inhumane.
Donald Trump executed more people in his first term as president than the past 10 administrations combined. And he's promised to expand the use of the federal death penalty in his second term.These horrific executions are a moral stain on our nation.
Joe Biden campaigned on addressing the death penalty. But with less than 70 days left, Biden's administration has yet to act to end this inhumane and outdated process.
We are counting on President Biden to do the right thing in the time he has left in office.His actions over the next two months will determine how much power President-elect Donald Trump has over our civil rights and civil liberties when he takes office – so action in this moment cannot wait.
FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2008, file photo Lady Gaga makes an appearance at MTV Studio's in Times Square for MTV's "Total Request Live" show in New York. Lady Gaga and Tyler the Creator lead MTV's newly inaugurated O Music Awards with three nominations each,MTV announced Tuesday, April 5, 2011. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, File) (Peter Kramer - AP)
The video for Lady Gaga’s song “Judas” has premiered, ending weeks of speculation stirred up by several religious spokespersons who denounced it before seeing it. The video is set in a motorcycle gang; Jesus is the leader, Judas a thuggish member and Gaga is torn by her attraction to both. As a quick first reaction, I find it moving, both artistically and spiritually. What has always fascinated and frustrated me is the disconnect between the Gaga haters and what I, and some of my friends, see in her work. Many of my religious young adult friends love Gaga; most of the rest don’t have any serious problem with her. They understand what she’s trying to do, even if it isn’t their taste. This is true across Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelicals. So, what is it about Gaga that excites one devout person and intimidates another? Some insist Gaga exploits Christian and especially Catholic symbols for shock value, rather than admitting they could be part of an honest attempt to wrestle with spiritual issues. I think some critics simply have trouble believing someone like Gaga could be sincere. Or perhaps it’s just the easiest way to dismiss her work. Don’t get me wrong. I cringed watching her dressed in a fetishized nun costume in the Alejandro video, which among her hits so far had the least redeeming value. But I do think she was sincerely trying to express something, to externalize her struggles through the imagery.
In the “Judas” video, Gaga (apparently as Mary Magdalene, though some story lines are blurred together in both the lyrics and the video) rides with Jesus in a motorcycle gang, while pining after bad boy Judas, a beer-guzzling thug who’s also in the gang. We see Gaga turning away from Judas in favor of Jesus again and again. At one point, she washes Jesus’ feet just before the most notable lines in the song:
I wanna love you,
But something’s pulling me away from you.
Jesus is my virtue,
Judas is the demon I cling to. Lady Gaga’s creative director, Laurieann Gibson, described the creative process the team went through in completing the “Judas” video this way: “It was amazing because to have that conversation about salvation, peace and the search for the truth in a room of non-believers and believers, to me, that was saying God is active in a big way.”
This is not the stuff of pop music. It’s a cultural phenomenon. And that perhaps is where we get to the root of the problem some have with Gaga. Unlike any other current pop star at the global level, Gaga writes about, talks about and openly struggles with spiritual issues in almost every song she writes. Most shocking in our current culture, she mentions Jesus by name. In Judas, she says “Jesus is my virtue.” In “You and I,” about an old boyfriend she calls Nebraska, Gaga says, “There’s only three men I served my whole life / It’s my dad and Nebraska and Jesus Christ.”
So while some may like to dismiss her as disingenuous, it is exactly Gaga’s genuineness that is a threat. While an R&B artist singing crudely about sex is clearly defined in their role outside the spiritual conversation, Gaga dares to jump right into the middle of it. And while she’s there, with a bully pulpit speaking to millions, she dares to say things like, “I’m beautiful in my way, cause God makes no mistakes.” This is much more dangerous in some people’s minds than empty pop music. Gaga calls her fans little monsters, her way of saying we are all fallen, all flawed, and that it is the misfits of society who can teach the comfortable a thing or two about God’s love and compassion. And that’s what she’s doing. This post originally ran at BustedHalo.com, an online magazine for spiritual seekers.
By Phil Fox Rose | 09:54 AM ET, 05/06/2011
Lady Gaga: 'Judas' video means to 'celebrate faith'
Ready to rock?Lady Gaga's new controversial video for Judas, her second single from her May 23 album, Born This Way, has arrived. In it, Gaga stars as Mary Magdalene leading a motorcycle gang on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Gaga explained last week to MSN that "theme of the video and the way that I wanted to aesthetically portray the story was as a motorcycle Fellini movie where the apostles are revolutionaries in a modern-day Jerusalem."
Her goal, she says, is to show that "forgiveness and betrayal are hand in hand ... video puts destiny above all things and postures that the mistakes in your life are in fact not mistakes at all, they are just part of your overarching potential and your destiny."
And, she said, "It's meant more to celebrate faith than it is to challenge it."
PROBABLY the best Easter sermon I have ever heard!
Easter Sunrise Sermon for Red Rocks
I had the freezing-cold honor of preaching to 10,000 people last Sunday at the 64th Annual Red Rocks Sunrise Easter service. If you'd like to watch the video of it you can do so here http://72.35.76.65:3737/ccceaster Sermon starts at about 53 minutes in. If you have a Mac you'll need this to view the video http://8help.osu.edu/784.html
I’ve often wondered what people in America think when they actually read the story of Jesus rising from the dead for the first time. There’s simply no way the story could adhere to their expectations. I imagine them reading and re-reading it, shocked that they can’t find a single mention of bunnies or rabbits or painted eggs or white sales at Macy’s. Because let’s be honest, that is what our culture thinks Easter is about. Easter in America is really just an excuse to eat chocolate and buy new bedding, and each year we pretend that we can’t really just eat chocolate and buy new bedding whenever we want, which I think is so adorable of us. But honestly the church’s presentation of Easter isn’t less odd. For many churches Easter is another word for “church show off day”…when we spiffy up the building and pull out the lilies and hire a brass quintet and put on fabulous hats and do whatever we have do to impress visitors. It’s kinda like the church’s version of putting out the guest towels. And don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate and I love fancy music I mean...if I could possibly listen to the Alleluia Chorus while eating a Cadbury Egg I’d be in heaven. But this all has very little to do with the actual Gospel story because the gospel story is not fancy, its, downright messy. See, Easter in the Bible may be the greatest story ever told. It’s just not the story we usually choose to tell, because its not a story about new dresses and baskets and flowers and candy and spiffyness. Really, it’s a story about flesh and dirt and bodies and confusion and its about the way God never seems to adhere to our expectations. Because think about it, Mary Magdalen stood there at the empty tomb that morning while her expectations of what was possible collided full force with the God of Abraham and Sara. Her certainty that she knew how this whole Jesus thing was ending slammed right up against the full force of God’s suffering and redemptive love and though it was nothing short of divine revelation in the flesh Jesus still didn’t look very impressive, not in the churchy Easter sense. See, when Mary Magdalene stood at the tomb she didn’t encounter some perfected radiant glowing spiritual Jesus that first Easter morning. Seriously, no offense to gardeners but Jesus couldn’t have been looking all that spiffy and impressive if she mistook him for a gardener: And I like to think that Mary Magdalene mistook the resurrected Christ for a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from his own tomb under his nails. Now, I’ve been in a whole lot of churches and I gotta say, In most of them there is no dirt under the nails of the resurrected Christ. Because we’ve had to clean him up to look more impressive at Easter. And my theory is this: I think it’s because we go straight from Christmas to Easter, we go from the sentimentality of the Baby Jesus to the glory of the resurrected Christ, Santa Claus to Peter Cotton Tail, so quickly that we don’t bother with the messy important parts in-between: namely, what Jesus taught, how Jesus lived and how Jesus died. So, since there’s basically 10,000 of you guys just sitting here this morning, I thought I’d fill you in on the messy parts real quick… See it starts here: Once upon a time, the God of the Universe was basically fed up with being on the receiving end of all our human projections, tired of being nothing more to us than what we thought God should be: angry, show-offy, defensive, insecure, in short, the vengeance-seeking tyrant we would be if we were God. So, at that time, over 2,000 years ago, God’s Loving Desire to really be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl named Mary. And when the time came for her to give birth to God, there was no room in our expectations – no room in any impressive or spiffy or safe place. So this God was born in straw and dirt. He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest, rather unimpressive characters to follow him. Fishermen, Tax collectors, prostitutes, homeless women with no teeth, people from Commerce City, Ann Coulter and Charlie Sheen. If you think I’m kidding…read it for yourselves. These people were questionable. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us. He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor. And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”. What if God is not who we thought? What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus? Because that changes everything. If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends. A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This, this is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under his nails. So while the churches may try and clean up Jesus so the visitors will be impressed today, The God of Easter, the God who brings life out of death doesn’t want to make you impressive, this God isn’t satisfied with making you good or nice. IF you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and piety and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. Because God isn’t about making you spiffy. God isn’t about making you nicer. God is about making you new. And new doesn’t always look perfect, with a fabulous new dress because like the Easter story itself, new can be messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like the lumpy awkward forgiveness we manage to scrounge up despite ourselves. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing you never saw coming …never even hoped for, but ends up being what you needed all along and it happens to all of us. Because as Jesus said…the world according to God is near to us. And God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and pulling us out of the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over. So by all means enjoy the lilies and chocolate and fancy music. But know that if there is anything impressive about following Jesus it’s that you are loved so powerfully by God that God has swept you up into God’s own story of death and life and life after death. And if there’s anything impressive about Christians, it’s that we are a people who still have the dirt from our graves under our nails, while we stand here shouting Alleluia! Christ is risen.
HERE is a thought appropriate for this Easter season....God didn't take revenge on the world when Christ, His Son, was executed, he showed mercy and grace. Shouldn't we try to do the same? I am against the death penalty, and if Troy Davis is executed, in spite of all the doubt about his trial and conviction, it may turn out that Georgia will have executed an innocent man. Please sign the petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to save his life.
Troy Davis is about to be executed -- even though he may be innocent.
Tell Georgia to spare Troy Davis' life.
In 1991, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a white police officer. Though there's major evidence that Davis didn't commit the crime, Georgia is prepared to put him to death. We have a good chance of stopping this -- but only if we speak up now.
The fact is, no physical evidence connected Davis to the murder. Seven of the original nine witnesses have recanted, with many saying their testimony was a result of law enforcement pressure. Of the remaining witnesses, one is highly suspect and the other could be the actual culprit in the officer's murder.
Now, despite these and other facts, the state of Georgia has taken the first steps toward Davis' execution -- and only the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole stands between Davis and the lethal injection chamber.
Georgia may be about to kill an innocent man. That's not justice. Please ask the Georgia Parole Board to spare Troy Davis' life, before it's too late -- and it's critical that you ask others to do the same:
Since Troy Davis' 1991 conviction, numerous facts have emerged that introduce significant doubt as to his guilt. These facts include:
All but two of the original witnesses against Troy Davis have signed affidavits recanting their earlier testimony. Most claim that their testimony was coerced by police officers.1
Multiple witnesses say that another man -- one of the original witnesses against Davis -- has claimed to have slain the fallen officer.2
The weapon used in the murder was never found. The only physical evidence connecting Davis to the crime was indirect, circumstantial -- and new testimony disputes Davis's connection to that evidence.3
In light of this evidence, the Supreme Court granted Davis another chance. But instead of an actual new trial before a jury, which would mean the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is on the prosecutor, he got an evidentiary hearing before a single federal judge where Davis' lawyers had the burden to meet an impossibly high and undefined legal standard.
In light of this, it was sad -- but no surprise -- when the judge rejected the new evidence and cleared the way for Davis' execution. However, even he acknowledged lingering doubt, noting that the case against Davis was not "ironclad."
But "ironclad" is exactly what the evidence should be in order to put someone to death. If the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole doesn't act to stop Davis' execution, they'll run a serious risk of putting an innocent man to death. That is not acceptable.
Please join us, along with our partners at Amnesty International and the NAACP, in asking the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to save Troy Davis' life by commuting his sentence to life in prison. And when you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same.
But the hour is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” The story of the woman at the well is the longest recorded conversation with an individual that Jesus had in any of the gospel accounts. And isn’t it really just like Jesus to linger in public talking to a half-breed divorcee? She walks up and in the unforgiving light of a noon sun Jesus just sits there for everyone to see languishing in conversation with a discarded woman. Much has been made of the outsider status of this person Jesus talks to the longest… she’s a woman and a Samaratin but she might as well be a homeless trannie with bad teeth or An Enron executive, or a meth-addict, or Ann Coulter, or the guy who bullied me in High School. The point being that Jesus just sits there chatting it up with whoever we wish he’d have the good taste to dislike as much as we do. I’m sure there were important things to do, important people to see but he just seems to have no concept of time. I imagine his disciples were beyond irritated – they kept butting in tapping their watches Um…Jesus? It’s lunch time. And Jesus just sits there talking with her as though he’s got all day.
She’s carrying more than a jar with her. The woman at the well. As she walks up to the well at the noon of the day…hours after the respected and respectable women of her village have already come and gone she walks up burdened by a water bucket and a story. The text is silent on why she has had 5 husbands, the church has always assumed she is a floozy but she very well may have simply been discarded, widowed, abandonded or maybe some combination of all these things, but the point is…I’m willing to bet that her past whether it be as victim or vixen is connected to why she’s at the well at noon and not at sunrise with the other women. She’s come for water but she carries with her a jar and a story. There’s this thing about this passage which has always baffled me. It’s toward the end…she has a conversation in which Jesus lets on that he knows she’s had 5 husbands and the man she lives with now is not her husband and she runs back to her village saying come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done... as though that’s a good thing. I, for one, would very much not enjoy having someone tell me everything I’d ever done; other than sounding really time consuming, there are things I really don’t want to be reminded of. So then why would Jesus telling her everything she had done lead her to believing he might be the messiah? Here’s the thing: I think there’s more to it than Wow this Jesus is a great psychic soothsayer fortune teller guy. I think it had to have been more than the fact that he told her what she’d done. I think it had to have been the way in which he told her what she’d done without implying that what she’d done defines who she is. Perhaps standing there in the stark and unforgiving light of the noon sun she came carrying more than a water jug. She came carrying her past as a mark of identity thinking and being treated as though she is nothing more than the sum total of her mistakes or the sum total of her victimization. And taking his sweet time Jesus says yes. what you have done and what you have left undone and what has been done to you and what has been left undone to you has really happened, yes, it’s true. And it is not who you are. And in that moment suddenly the distance between how others see her and how God sees her disappears. She came carrying more than a water jug in the stark light of a noon sun, she came carrying the past as a shackle and the future as the key. She knew the future was the time in which the messiah would come and make everything right, a time some time out there when the Christ will be revealed. And Jesus says to her I am he. Jesus speaks to her the truth of who she is by speaking to her the truth of who God is. Jesus says to her now is the time in which God seeks you in the very truth of who you are in this, the present moment. In today’s gospel Jesus says the hour is here for us to worship God in truth and God seeks such as these. The hour is indeed here in which God is seeking you in truth…the truth of who you are not the regrets of who you were, not the ideal or the promise of who you might become – God is seeking you now in the truth of who you are.
There is a crass but true saying in Alcoholics Anonymous: “When you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future you’re basically pissing on the present” How often are we not present to others, not present to ourselves and not present to God in the moment because of regret, nostalgia, and worry. We too allow ourselves to be so absorbed with either the hurt or the glory of the past or we allow ourselves to be so absorbed with either the fear or hope of the future that we miss the only thing that is real which is the sacrament of the present moment. I love the way Paul in his epistles uses the word “now”. In his letter to the church in Corinth he writes: For God says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, Paul writes, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! I just don’t think that when Paul says Now he meant that one moment in time 2,000 years ago when he penned the letter. I think he meant the NOW. The present moment continues to be the “acceptable time” in which God is present to you in the truth of who you are. In other words, Ram Dass didn’t invent that whole Be Here Now thing. So, if the Samaratin woman at the well did come burdened with more than her water jar, then I think verse 28 is pretty great – it goes like this: -then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” I guess that’s what I wish for you. That you know how known you are. That you are filled with the love of a God who knows you and loves you…that you are so filled with the presence of Christ in the sacrament of the present moment that you leave your water jug or whatever it is you think you came here for …leave it here at this table where God is seeking you in the truth of who you are. You may be here this evening and feel like nobody could ever love you, if they knew who your really are. But the good news is that God knows it all, God’s seen it all, and God loves you. May you leave behind whatever it is you think you came here for and instead be filled with the truth of this present moment, the truth that there is quite enough of God’s love for everyone, because God sees you through the indiscriminate eyes of Jesus. (my thanks to Rev. Paul Fromberg for letting me steal the last 3 sentences of this sermon)
A sermon we all (especially me) need to HEAR in these very difficult times.
Sometimes when I’m bored I kinda like to fill in sound effects that I think the crowd listening to Jesus might have responded with. He takes familiar passages And says “you have heard this (and everyones like “yeah!) and then he goes but I say this” (and everyone’s like booo) he does this with messianic authority several times in the Sermon on the Mount like in today’s reading when he says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ (and everyones like “yeah!)39But I say to you, if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; (and everyone’s like boo!) Jesus takes the part of the law of Moses which prevented disproportional punishment…. the let the punishment fit the crime statute found in Exodus 21 and turns it on it’s head like Jesus loves to do. OK, fair enough. But then the next part says this. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
So where exactly is it is written you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies? That’s just not found in the Torah. I searched for it…it’s not there, sure the love your neighbor thing is in the old testament but hate your enemy? good luck , it’s like trying to look for “God helps those who help themselves” It’s simply not in the Bible. But then I realized why love your neighbor and hate your enemy sounds so familiar …. ‘cause, it might not be in the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it’s in my heart. It’s like, in our DNA. So if you’re trying to find where Love your neighbor and hate your enemy is found don’t look in the old testament…look here. When I realized this it felt like a bad horror movie “the phone call is coming from inside the house” See In my heart I want to savor my anger and resentments. I mean you may be able to turn them into love but my anger and hatred is special. It’s justified and if I can get other people to hate the people I hate then all the better. Knowing why each of my enemies clearly deserves to be hated is like a big delicious meal, until I realize I’m the main course. Because hatred is simply a corrosive form of spiritual bondage. So Jesus says Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. Now before we go on let me say this: loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you is not the same as saying that it’s ok that someone has caused you emotional, spiritual or physical harm. I don’t think Jesus is saying that we should dismiss, discount or diminish the very real harm done to us by damaged people.
So when Jesus says love your enemies I just don’t think he means try and muster up a positive emotional feeling about despicable people. Loving those who persecute you is simply not the same as saying you should feel affection toward the people who have hurt you, or that you should feel fondness for people who are mean to you at work. I just don’t think this about our feelings. Because the Greek word Jesus uses when he tells us to love our enemies is Agape and Agape love simply isn’t about what we feel in our hearts. It’s not a sentiment. I actually don’t think it has to do with feelings at all…agape is the love that’s only possible through the indwelling of God’s spirit.
And I don’t think he means think nice thoughts even. Remember when your mom made you apologize to your brother or sister and you just kind of phoned it in “sorry.” and she was like “say it like you mean it…it doesn’t count if you don’t mean it” Yeah…this isn’t like that. I think loving our enemies might be too central to the gospel…too close to the heart of Jesus for it to wait until we mean it. I don’t mean it. And my heart, remember… the very place where I found that impulse that I am to love my neighbor and hate my enemy isn’t going to purify itself. So if God is waiting for that same heart to feel nice loving warm pink fuzzy things about someone who is my enemy well, I think God might be waiting awhile. So if it’s not a feeling we try really really hard to create in our own hearts maybe Agape-ing… loving our enemies is actually an action. Because given the choice between feeling the thing and doing the thing I think the doing of the thing that is what’s critical here. And maybe “really meaning it” is not the prerequisite to just doing it and maybe the action we take is simply this: you pray for those who persecute you. Commend them to God. You don’t have to feel affection for them…just hand em over. Because this counter-intuitive act of enemy love requires prayer. It doesn’t require the right feelings of niceness or generosity, It requires that we commend our enemies to the one who has perfected the love of enemy. It requires being in the prayerful presence of a God who was killed by God’s enemies and then rather than retaliation, rather than violence, rather than an eye for an eye God used that same death to be the very thing that ends up being the source of their salvation. So maybe when Jesus says to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you it’s not so that you can be good. It’s so you can be free. this freedom from the corrosive distortions of hatred this freedom from having to protect our selves and prove ourselves and preserve our rightness. Well, this is the freedom of the Gospel. This is the freedom of a God who loves God’s own enemies enough to die for them. I’ll end with a story about how you just never know when God might make your enemy your friend. A man named Chris Roseborough hosts a conservative Christian talk radio show called Pirate Christian Radio. And a couple months after he had spent 2 of his shows talking about me and how I am disobeying God by being a female pastor and how I’m a heretic because I have gay folks in my church and well, you get the idea. Well a couple months after this he showed up to a conference I was speaking at in the Twin Cities. Now you should know something about me. My first response to almost everything is screw you. Now I almost never stay there but I almost always start there. God usually pretty quickly moves me to something a little more gracious but that doesn’t change my wiring. I’m a fighter. So when I heard he was there I went into a little mini rage screw that guy he shouldn’t even be here, don’t show me who he is I’m not talking to him. Clearly he was my enemy. But the next day a middle aged guy with a beer gut and a bad goatee walks up to me after I had spoken extends his hand and says “Hi. I’m Chris…” I swallowed hard, extended my hand said a quick “help me” prayer and we proceeded to have a conversation about our need for God’s grace and forgiveness of sins and the Eucharist. A conversation in which he cried twice. At the end I said “Chris, I have 2 things to say to you. 1. You are a beautiful child of God and 2. I think you and I were desperate enough to hear the gospel today that we might even hear it from each other. Now Chris calls me about every couple months and we talk for like an hour. He hasn’t written about me or talked about me on his radio show and he’s gotten in a lot of trouble form his followers for calling me his friend. Now…did this happen because I managed to make my heart feel really nice warm fuzzy feelings toward him? clearly not. I can’t stand the guy. This was a loving-my-enemy that only could flow from the heart of a forgiving God. The same God who in the book of Ezekial says I your God will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I your God will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
And THAT is what freedom feels like. May it be so. Amen
20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 24“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. 27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you.
It’s All Saints Sunday boys and girls. I know this might not ever be a popular idea but I am officially suggesting we re-name this ancient feast of the church All Sinners and Saints Day. And here’s why: Because a couple months ago Amy Clifford and I were walking down Sherman between 13th & 14th when we noticed a large memorial in the courtyard of that weird Pillar of Fire church across from the capital…you know, the one with big pink call letters KPOF on roof…anyhow…so this memorial said “Alma White, founder of the Pillar of Fire church 1901” I totally freaked. Turning to ACliff I said “Alma…that’s a woman’s name isn’t it? Did a woman plant a church in urban Denver in 1901????” Desperate for someone I can place in the category “hero” or “role model” it took me about 2 seconds to pull out my iphone and look up information on Alma White. My excitement about discovering a new hero only built as I read her Wikepedia entry…and I quote “Alma Bridwell White (born 1862 – died 1946) was the founder, and a 'bishop,' of the Pillar of Fire Church. In 1918, she became the first 'woman bishop' in the United States. She was noted for her feminism, ......and her association with the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey, .....her anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, racism, and..... hostility to immigrants”
Great. The next day I called my friend Sara to tell her the story of how I thought I had a hero but it ends up she’s just a lousy racist… and her response was “email me her name…I’ll add her to the litany of saints along with all the other broken people of God” I don’t want Alma White on the litany of saints. It messes with my categories…I want racists to stay in the ‘racist’ box. When they start sneaking into the ‘saint’ box it, you know, makes me nervous. But on this day when we remember the dead I wonder if examining how we use categories and boxes might be useful. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we can avoid using them all together…What ways do we have of understanding the world around us if not through the use of category? Early in human development putting things in proper categories allowed for our survival… knowing whether a certain plant, for instance, fell in the category “dinner” or the category “poison”. So while they are inevitable, categories and our use of them can also be a window into our desires…especially when it comes to our need for purity.. wanting the good people to be all good and the bad people to be all bad. So in Luke’s Beatitudes we heard earlier you know the “blessed are”s the and “woe to”s…well it feels like Jesus has a few things to say about our reliance on categories. He comes and says you know your category “blessed” the big box in which you conceptually place all the good things and the lucky people? Well, Jesus says, just watch as I slip some unsettling things into your box labled “blessed” And out of the corner of our eye we see Jesus put the poor, the hungry, the reviled into the blessed box, and do it with impunity. Then he turns and puts all the wrong people in the ‘woe to you’ box: the wealthy, those with full bellies along with people who laugh. And that’s what Jesus does with our categories, our precious ways if being so sure about everything: who is good who is bad who is blessed who is cursed who is right who is wrong. Maybe Jesus is telling us that our categories and need for purity aren’t actually going to help us understand God at all. I, for one, think knowing the difference between a racist and a saint is kinda important. But when Jesus again and again says that last shall be first and the first shall be last and the poor are blessed and the rich are cursed and that prostitutes make great dinner guests then it makes me wonder if our need for pure black and white categories is maybe not true religion at all but is actually sin. Bonhoeffer said the original sin in the garden of Eden was choosing knowledge of good and evil over the knowledge of God. We’d rather know what categories we fit in and more importantly what categories others fit in rather than know God and I think on some level what that ends up meaning is that we can either try and be God, or we can know God. It’s kinda hard to pull off both. So when Jesus messes with all our categories it’s not a call to get better categories, maybe it’s a call to subvert them all together. Because what we are dealing with here is not so much an either/or God but a both/and God. And in a culture that thinks the purpose of religion is the proper application of categories: right from wrong, good from bad, sinner from saint, pure from impure this can be a problem. Yet suspending the categories for a minute might just allow us to sit in what the mystics called the great cloud of unknowing. And where are we the closest to the great unknowing but when we touch the mystery of death. Death, the ultimate impurity. It is finally only a God who does not adhere to our categories who can enter into death itself and say even here…even here on the cross I will be found. I will be with my broken saints and forgiven sinners not just in times of full bellies and laughter but in times of suffering and despair. And in this both/and God in whom we live and move and have our being that we are connected to all who were and all who are and all who will be. So that even the categories of time and space are suspended, supplanted, subverted. This is what it is to be sainted – it is to be entirely human and bound to the broken reality of life yet somehow free from all of it at the same time. This freedom, this unknowing in the face of God is the key to sainthood that is, to understanding all our lives as belonging to, coming from, going to God. For it is not our ability to be saintly but God’s ability to work through sinners that makes us and those who have gone before us the saints of God. It is not our ability to choose good over evil which makes us pure – it’s God’s ability to forever name us as God’s own which makes us saints. The title is always conferred…it’s never earned.
I mean, Alma White was a stone-cold racist who also paved the way for women become leaders in the church. To say a racist can be a saint is not the same as saying that being a racist is saintly. Martin Luther reformed the church, translated the Bible into the vernacular so that for the first time in history regular people could read it and then toward the end of his life he wrote horrible anti-semetic rants. Martin Luther King Jr sparked a non-violent revolution in America insisting on the freedom and dignity of all God’s children and he cheated on his wife. The point being lets call a sin a sin by all means but if we want purity in our Saints or in our selves we are going to be disappointed.
So on the Feast of All Saints and Sinners let us celebrate not the myth of saintly purity but the God who manages to get all kinds of redemptive beautiful things done through broken saints and redeemed sinners. And let us sit in the great cloud of unknowing with the communion of saints being certain of nothing but the mystery of it all…and that somehow in this both/and God all of what we see as good and bad and pure and impure…the saints and the racists all of it is held together. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. Alleluia. Amen
FROM the lady preacher who calls her blog 'Sarcastic Lutheran', she often post great sermons and life lessons. Click the header to go to her blog.....you'll have to go there to see what other have e mailed her in response to her request......
Sermon on the Woman With the Bent Back
Luke 13:10-17
10Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
We know very little about the woman who was healed in our text today. The text is silent on the question of why was she healed and others weren’t. We don’t know why she bore the pain and humiliation of a bent back. Perhaps modern physiologists might be able to give a diagnoses, you know, now that we know SO much about human beings. Perhaps the source of her crippled physique was chiropractic in nature, perhaps a lack of calcium. Medically there’s only conjecture on our side of the 2,000 years that separate us from her.
None of us may have ever experienced the spinal reality of such a thing but The infirmity of the woman who was healed in our text for today seems spiritually familiar doesn’t it? Because her collapsed posture is the physical representation of being se encurvatus en se…, the self curved in on the self which, incidentally, is Luther’s definition of sin. Myopically unconcerned for anything but the self and having no thought for God or the neighbor. In other words, bent in a manner in which we see nothing but our own feet. We can come by it naturally – embodying the messages we receive from society and our families and our selves – that we are not thin enough, smart enough, rich enough, like our sister enough, or enough enough. This can just bend us in. Then add to it our cultural obsession with the self and the notion that we are our own Gods and the result is a deformity of identity. One particularly insidious example being our inability to forgive ourselves for not being God. For not being God! For making mistakes and getting things wrong and not hitting the mark. Hard to say which is worse – trying to be God for myself, or punishing myself for not managing to do something that isn’t actually possible in the first place.. What bends us over so that we see only self are the voices from inside or outside that try to overpower the sound of God naming us as God’s own.
It’s hard to say what it was like for her that day when everything changed. We think of this text in Luke as a healing narrative but really it was nothing less than an exorcism. Well, that and another opportunity for Jesus to pick a fight with the nice religious folks since all of this happened on the Sabbath. In all fairness the leaders of the synagogue were just doing their job when they said to the crowds that it was the Sabbath day of rest and not a time for healings. But see, Jesus does not violate the Sabbath by healing her. He fulfills it. By healing her he actually does Sabbath TO her. He physically embodies in her what Sabbath is, namely a time for putting aside our handiwork so that we might witness the handiwork of God. She is passive, in the midst of the faithful where she is restored to an upright position, no longer turned in on herself and is named as a Child of God’s promises. That sounds pretty sabbathy to me.
After she is seen, touched, and healed by Christ, she is named by him as a daughter of Abraham and restored to the dignity and wholeness of being a child of the promise. You know, this is the only place in the Bible where the term daughter of Abraham appears. Here Jesus places her in the history of God’s promises. And the promise to which she has claim...the promise to Abraham was not that his children and children’s children would be super rich and important and fabulous…the promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be a blessing to all nations. The good news for Abraham had little do with himself and had a lot to do with God’s love for the whole world.
So this daughter of Abraham is blessed to be a blessing. She encounters the Christ and For the first time in 18 years stands upright and praises God not because she got what she wanted but because praise is simply the consequence of wholeness.
Here’s where we finally learn what the purpose of her healing was. The purpose of her healing is not fulfilled when she stands up straight and it’s not fulfilled when she is named and it’s not fulfilled when she praises God. The healing is completed when the community witnesses new life in their midst and rejoices. In other words, her healing from God had less to do with her and more to do with God’s love for the whole world.
Having seen God’s mercy in the upright body of this daughter of Abraham, the community rejoices for having God in their midst. Right there in the mess of their broken lives and fractured hopes and crippled bodies. Right there in the midst of the hypocrites and religious legalists. There is where God shows up.
It’s the same for you actually. Your encounter with God’s grace has a purpose. Your being freed from the tyranny of self has a purpose. Your being acted upon by God…being made whole has a purpose: and it’s not so that you can collect higher self-esteem and a sense of well-being in order to Spiritually feather your nest. God does all of this for the good of your neighbor. It’s always been like that with God. You know why God gave us the 10 commandments? Because God demands obedience? So that you will be happy? nope. Because God loves your neighbor and would prefer you not steal from them or sleep with their husbands.
Having been restored by God, having been healed of being bent in on herself, this daughter of Abraham then bore Christ into her community. So if you too have been freed from bondage, if you have been shown selfless love, raised from the dead, restored to wholeness it is for the benefit of the community. Don’t keep it to yourself. Because like the bent woman, you really are blessed to be a blessing.
This week I asked you to email me examples of where God is healing you where you feel free and where you still feel bound. So, as an experience of doing Sabbath to each other hear now where God is at work.
This is a moving and personal article about the now famous video known worldwide as "COLLATERAL MURDER" showing the wanton carnage and violence of war in Iraq in July 2007. It is an expression of remorse, and questions the Christian church's endorsement of war by a member of the American forces directly involved in this event. Following this article is a letter, 'Letter To Iraq', open to the public to sign (copy and paste the link to go to the letter) from the author of this article and a fellow soldier who was also involved in that days events. Last is the video for those who have not seen it.
by Josh Stieber 04-19-2010
Recently, Wikileaks, an online whistleblower site, released a video which was dubbed “Collateral Murder.” I write as a former member of the Infantry company shown on the ground in this video, but also as a Christian who, following my experiences in Iraq, has left the military as a conscientious objector. More recently, a fellow veteran of the same company and I have written a letter to the people of Iraq that we would be grateful if others would read and sign if they agreed with our words of responsibility and reconciliation. But this is not about washing my hands of the blood that was spilled; this is an opportunity to critically but constructively examine what this video means to us as Christians.
Since the release of “Collateral Murder,” passionate responses of all types have filled newspapers, chat rooms, television programs, and personal conversations. The video graphically shows a combat scene from Iraq where children were injured and adults were killed, accompanied by audio of soldiers on the radio during the event speaking callously about the lives lost on that summer day in 2007.
The callousness toward killing as heard in Collateral Murder, though taken somewhat out of context, vividly shows the strong need for the love of Christ that we are called to embody. However, if we only say that the soldiers shown in this video are morally depraved and shouldn’t joke about killing, then we’re being short-sighted and missing an important opportunity. One of the most telling aspects in the aftermath of this video’s release is that the Secretary of Defense and other top leaders have said that the actions shown were militarily justified. They’ve put their stamp of approval on it. On this point, I actually agree: given the full context which this video fails to show, these soldiers were responding exactly as we all had been trained. The challenge then is not only to see the rotten fruit but also the tree from which it fell.
Not only is the dehumanization that was illustrated in the video systematically instilled throughout military training, but its roots run throughout our society as a whole, the church included. In my history class at a Christian high school, I was taught — as are most students, religious or not — that decisions like the dropping of the atomic bomb weren’t necessarily morally wrong nor did they stand in opposition to Jesus’ priorities. At best, I was told that the bombings were strategically debatable. This is the very same mindset shown in Collateral Murder; it says that sometimes the taking of innocent lives and the hardening of our consciences is needed in the process of achieving our national goals of security. The atomic bomb crew was even blessed by a chaplain who later repented of his choices and became an active peacemaker; so the answer to the troubling problems shown in Collateral Murder run far deeper than saying that the gunner should have prayed as he sprayed instead of laughed.
This is where we need to look at how we may have contributed to the tree that produced this revolting fruit. Going back to my religious upbringing, my pastors diligently taught me that listening to non-Christian music and following the world’s standards on dating would slowly rot my soul. But what about the world’s standards on treating one’s enemies? Clearly much of Christianity understands the connection between day-to-day decisions and the state of our souls when it comes to responding to the popular culture. But there was never any teaching that playing violent video games, shooting guns at church camp, or glorifying military practice in history classes at religious school or even at church — that these things would slowly influence our souls as much as listening to sinful music would. Not only was this concern not raised, but the opposite is taught.
The wife and daughters of the founder of the popular mega-church chain that I grew up attending have a blog, widely read by those seeking to understand God’s design for genders. According to this widely-read blog:
It’s never too early to begin teaching our children about God’s design for men and women. We’re constantly telling Jack, “That’s what boys do!” Boys hold the door for the girls. Boys play with army men. Boys are tough.
Again, if we can understand that listening to secular music may lead a young person down a road of sex, drugs, and alcohol, should there be any surprise that when children are taught to be tough and to simulate war as young as possible that they will grow up embracing the callous mindset which the Wikileaks video only begins to expose? This video no longer lets us use ignorance as an excuse; we need to ask if this video which represents what the military is supposed to look like, which has been justified by prominent government leaders, is the harvest we have sown while claiming to follow God.
I take responsibility for not questioning my religious leader’s strong approval of warfare and for wholeheartedly believing, as did many of my army friends, that as I signed my enlistment papers, I was serving God and country. I was taught this would be an honorable example of laying down my life for my brothers; nobody I knew warned me that I might be asked to fire on children, intentionally or incidentally. Perhaps in my short-sightedness I missed the prevailing mindset that the ends justify the means.
When aspects of military training did trouble me and I felt my conscience hardening, I wrote home to leaders at my church and other Christian friends, asking how I could be following God while I was commanded to repeat war cries like “Kill them all, let God sort them out,” or singing songs with lines like, “When I get to hell, Satan’s gunna say ‘how’d you earn your living boy, how’d you earn your pay?’ And I’ll reply with a boot to his chest, ‘I earned my living laying Hajis down to rest.’” The answer these Christian leaders gave was simply that I needed to practice faith and patience because God is in control even though we can’t see him.
Through all of this, my leaders did show me enough of Jesus’ love that I eventually knew that how I was living and what I was being asked to do and think were poor representations of that divine gift. One night, I was on guard duty with a friend that I had attended church with before we were sent to Iraq. My friend started making threats toward a man we were holding prisoner. At first I told my friend that he was being un-American by not considering this man innocent until proven guilty. Echoing the racism we were trained with, my friend told me that there was no way that this man could be completely innocent: he was Iraqi. Then I asked him about all the things we had learned in church — loving our enemies, returning evil with good, blessed are the peacemakers, turn the other cheek — and my friend looked me in the eyes, saying with the utmost sincerity, “I think Jesus would have turned his cheek once or twice, but he wouldn’t have let anybody punk him around.”
It seemed so obvious to me at that point that Jesus’ mission was never to “not get punked”– in fact he said that if we really followed him then we would get punked (though he used less hip terms). He lived and died and rose with a love that overcomes the worse “punking” that the world can offer. I came to the conclusion that even if I was legitimately threatened, that following Jesus had nothing to do with self-defense and it could no longer be an excuse to stop loving as Jesus loved me. Safety is an understandable priority, but one that Jesus never preached.
With the Wikileaks video now shown worldwide, we have the responsibility to stop twisting things like Paul’s teaching that “we need to submit to the governing authorities.” But by this standard, we have already violated that by removing Saddam Hussein, a governing authority. Paul kept preaching the love of God despite the governing authority’s arrests, eventually leading to his death. Jesus, his apostles, and the early church never taught violent revolution, but lived out the example that we are most importantly citizens of God’s kingdom and that may put us at odds with the kingdoms of this world.
The scene shown in the Collateral Murder video is not out of the ordinary and has been claimed as acceptable by the governing authority. Though the actions that harmed children may be justifiable in military terms, I find nothing in Jesus’ teaching that advocates these policies, even if it means keeping our own children safer. The time has come where we must choose to which kingdom we pledge allegiance. I hope that part of this reexamined identity we seek means reaching out to the soldiers who have been asked to do our dirty work; restoring the love that they were taught to suppress.
As I have chosen to speak publicly and provide context to the video to help others understand my friends in the military, I likewise will not judge those who declare safety as their priority. I simply ask that you not attach the precious name of Jesus to this earthly cause, nor teach children that God blesses this. Please consider the strong warnings of Jesus as you wrestle with how to train the next generation: “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:6)
If you trust in guns and bombs to protect you — that sometimes hit the enemy and sometimes unarmed civilians — and in the dehumanizing training that prepares soldiers to pull the triggers, please just say so. Our glory is in a man who was punked around and crucified as he showed us the transforming love that marks his kingdom.
Stieber is a veteran of B. Co 2/16 Infantry and co-author of contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com.
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
A newly released Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video has made international headlines showing a July 2007 shooting incident outside of Baghdad in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. Two soldiers from Bravo Company 2-16, the company depicted in the video, have written an open letter of apology to the Iraqis who were injured or lost loved ones during the attack that, these former soldiers say, is a regular occurrence in this war.
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military
Sign your name to their letter here http://www.lettertoiraq.com
Peace be with you.
To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:
We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.
We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.
There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.
We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of "god and country". The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won't lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation's importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation's leaders, and to extend our hands to you.
With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.
Solemnly and Sincerely,
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army
