ENGLISH IS THE LANGUAGE OF CRESTWOOD, IL

 

FROM WBEZ in CHICAGO

By The Archives

  Oct 18, 2007, 3:00pm EDT

A southwest suburban mayor is expected to step down tonight after 38 years in office. Crestwood's Chester Stranczek leaves behind a legacy of extreme privatization, unchallenged elections and a controversial sign outside village hall. Chicago Public Radio's Sam Hudzik reports.

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If you're driving on Cicero Avenue around 138th street, just south of the Cal Sag Channel, you can't miss it. It's a large sign with black, removable letters, and it's the property of Mayor Chester Stranczek. He says the Police and Fire Auxillary gave it to him in 1970, and put it up right outside village hall. Stranczek says 98-percent of the time, he uses his sign to publicize events in the village.

STRANCZEK: About two percent is probably political.

It's those times that get Stranczek noticed. One message in particular from the mid-90s.

STRANCZEK: English is our language. No excetions. (sic) Learn it.

Except, the "p" in exceptions was missing, hardly bolstering the mayor's message. It didn't go unnoticed.

STRANCZEK: When the newspapers came here to look at the sign and take pictures, my assistant ,Frank Gassmere, told the press that the wind blew it over. It really wasn't true. We just put it up there wrong.

The misspelled word clouded an issue the mayor feels strongly about, rooted in his own experience as the son of Polish immigrants.

The debate over gays in the military in the early '90s led to another polarizing message on the sign: “No Gays in My Foxhole.” He's also reportedly posted signs complaining about the O.J. Simpson verdict, the I.R.S. and welfare recipients.

The signs have brought him a lot of attention, but Stranczek's most proud of his more practical work as mayor. He runs the village just like the two businesses he founded. That mentality has led to a reputation as a stern administrator who leads Crestwood and the members of its elected board like a monarch. With few exceptions, projects he likes get approved. And nothing else stands a chance.

ambi: restaurant

Inside the Country House Restaurant – on the border of Crestwood and neighboring Alsip – everyone knows the mayor's retiring. What the hostess, a waitress and the breakfast crowd mention first about Stranczek is the one-of-a-kind property tax refund he arranges for homeowners.

RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES AND GUESTS: Gives us our tax rebate for one thing. I've got to say that…Oh it's outstanding. God, I don't have words to say…Well, it's a nice little Christmas bonus, yeah…Well of course we all like the tax rebate…The taxes are usually pretty high. I mean, all over where you go. But that makes more reasonable then, you know. It makes it affordable…I love it, and I love my mayor.

Since 1994, the village has returned $48-million dollars in property taxes to its residents. Stranczek says the village can afford the rebates by outsourcing most municipal services to private companies.

Not a bad political move. Stranczek hasn't faced an election challenge in decades. And he doesn't get much grief from village residents for his infamous Cicero Avenue political statements.

RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES AND GUESTS: He wants to get a point across, and it works, so…I think it's great. I'm glad to see it…I have no comment. I think it's great…It's his opinion and he's entitled to whatever opinion he wants. (laugh) Like everybody – it's America.

Of course, not everyone in America has access to a big sign alongside a busy road. And as of tonight, neither will Chester Stranczek. He's hoping to give his office and his sign to his son Robert, a village trustee and businessman. The board still has to approve the appointment, but the folks at Country House Restaurant are fine with it - just so long as the tax rebates keep coming.

I'm Sam Hudzik, Chicago Public Radio.

Reformation Day Sermon on How Jesus’ Teachings Should Come With a Warning Label 27OKT13

REFORMATION DAY sermon from Rev Nadia Bolz-Webber. Not a celebration of the schism dividing Protestants and Catholics, but a celebration of our needs being met by God. Give a listen....

October 28, 2013 By Nadia Bolz Weber 

If you got church problems, I feel bad for you son….

2013-10-27 NBW HFASS Sermon 2 <—– click here to listen along.
This week I began to think that Jesus’ teachings should really come with a warning label. Perhaps something like, Caution! Contents may cause extreme discomfort if actually ingested.
See, in our Gospel for today, Luke tells us that this parable was told to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and held others in contempt.  The Pharisee in the story, a devout, tithe paying do-gooder – prays what can only be described as an EGO-cessory prayer, Thank you God that I am not like those people: adulterers, thieves, rogues, I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of my income to the church. Thank you that I am not like that filthy tax collector over there. Geez that guy is pathetic, don’t you think, God?
The Pharisee trusted in himself that he was righteous.
Typical.
If the Pharisees were around today…not the actual ones…I mean our stereotype of who the Pharisees were – priggish hypocritical religious leaders, don’t you think if they were around today they could get like, so much done on Facebook? I mean, think how Self-righteous they could be without even leaving their living rooms! They really were born at the wrong time, because I’m pretty sure Pharisees would love the hell out of Facebook.
And as someone who has often been held in contempt by those who trust in themselves that they are righteous I’ve recently found my tolerance for self-righteous comments on Facebook to be quickly dwindling. One more pious comment on my public Facebook page from some nice Christian who is “disappointed” in me for saying the bad words and I might just lose my you-know-what.
So, when I read that this parable was told to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and held others in contempt, who knew they were right because they could easily pick out the ones who were wrong in a spiritual line up I thought, “right on, Jesus, because man do I know those people!”
If you are paying attention, you might predict that this is exactly the point where that warning label about how ingesting Jesus’ teachings will cause extreme discomfort would have come in handy for me this week in a couple of ways
First, because let’s be honest. It’s takes a whole lot of self-righteousness to be that indignant about other people’s self-righteousness.  So where Does that leave me now but to say “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner”?
Because honestly here’s an EGOcessory prayer that might be familiar: I thank you God that I am not like others: thieves, rouges, adulterers…people who don’t recycle.  I thank you God, that I am not like those People who don’t sign up for jobs at church.  Thank you that I always remember to bring my reusable grocery bags to Whole Foods, I have replaced all my incandescents with compact fluorescents and I have a rainbow flag sticker on my Prius.  Thank you Jesus.
Well, THAT’S uncomfortable.
Especially if the other guy, the Tax Collector…the one who is a traitor to his people, the guy who is totally the one percent, who hordes wealth at the expense of others, the one who litters and tells racist jokes and buys over packaged goods and has gun racks and T & A mud flaps on his truck prays simply  “God, have mercy on me a sinner”
As we know, the one who goes home justified is not the guy who bragged about doing everything right but the guy who was humble about doing everything wrong. So I guess that rather than the moral of the story being “try harder to be righteous”, the moral of the story is “try harder to be humble” right?
And there it is. Reason number 2 for why this parable should come with a warning label.
It is as though this parable is a trap and the bait for this trap is our desire to figure out the moral of the story.  Because as soon as we reach for that delicious little one inch square piece of cheddar convinced the point of the parable is that to be really righteous, to be really good in the eyes of others and in the eyes of God is to be humble, then we find the jaws of this parable snap around us because the very next thing out of our mouths can only be: Thank you God that I am humble like the Tax collector and not a bragger like this Pharisee.  Trapped.
Or in the words of Homer Simpson, D’uh!
Because the problem with always looking for the moral of the story in Jesus’ parables and especially in this parable: is that I start to assume the moral of the story will lead me to the virtue I can adopt to be righteous.  And what is righteousness but movement from vice to virtue?
But the text says nothing of the tax collector moving from vice to virtue…the text mentions nothing of repentance or self-improvement. The text does nothing to uphold any of our cherished notions of who is righteous.
Which means that the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the Tax collector is perhaps not a morality tale after all, but is meant to highlight the un-fair and totally baffling grace of a God who seems entirely unimpressed by our virtue. If there is some kind of promise here then it’s not that we can use our humility to become righteous before God, the promise is not in what the ones hearing the parable can do to become justified. The promise is in the one telling the parable….the promise for us is Christ.  Meaning that, there is a solution to the problem of the Great Human Competition Extravaganza that we are continually engaged in.  There is a solution to the endless one-up-mans ship that we are continually engaged in. There is a solution to self-righteousness but it’s not trying to be more humble. The solution was for God to be made flesh and walk among us, God’s own beloved bragging sinners.  Because this changes everything.   See, Jesus wasn’t a new Moses bringing a better law, or a new religion we’ll never live up to.  Jesus isn’t just sitting in heaven waiting to see if we can pull off the impossible and then condemning us for our inevitable failure.  Jesus subverts the entire paradigm because, if the Reformation brought us anything it is that this isn’t about a spiritual ladder in which we learn how to move from vice to virtue. This isn’t about moving from the vice of being a tax collector to the virtue of being righteous as we might think.  But it’s also not about moving from the vice of being self-righteous to the virtue of being humble.  This Christianity thing is not about moving from vice to virtue.  If anything we move from virtue to Christ. This means that Christ and not ourselves is the source of our righteousness. The righteousness we do have is not our own, but that of a Merciful and gracious God who comes to us in vulnerability and suffering of all things.  And the thing is….when our righteousness is not our own but is that of Christ, there is no extra credit to be obtained. There is no basis on which to compare ourselves to each other because what qualifies us to receive this grace is not our virtue, but our need.  And we are all equal in our need.
It’s all pretty offensive really. The fact that God loves me as I am right now and not just as I could be if I only got everything right seems foolish.  My ego holds out for a me-based solution that I can either boast about or despair in.  But the solution isn’t me-shaped.  It’s cruciform.
So in the end, humility is not a virtue that makes us righteous.  But it’s not unimportant either, because humility is just admitting the truth of being human…humility is the naked state in which we stand before a righteous God who sees us as we are – sees every jealous inclination, every racist thought, every selfish desire every good deed done for the wrong reason and God sees all of it through the lens of the cross and says to us you are free.  Free from all of it. No one is keeping score. You are already justified, You are already righteous. You are already God’s new creation.
So, brothers and sisters, You do stand in righteousness before your God, not due to your virtue, but due to the cross. Only a God who slips into skin taking on flesh in all it’s broken glory – only this God of foolish love who dies a scandalous death without even lifting a finger to condemn the enemy – only this God can love you where you are.  Right now.  Because in the world according to God that’s how things work.  Tax Collectors are justified, the last are first the first are last, our virtues become vices and our need of all things, our need becomes our greatest asset. Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/10/reformation-day-sermon-on-self-righteousness-and-humility/ 

Sermon on the Parameters We Prefer For Jesus to Work Under 25AUG13

I have been listening to Rev Bolz-Webber's sermons for a few years now, and this, in my opinion, is one of her best. There is a lesson in it for her (as she readily admits) as well as for believers, non-believers, and all those who judge others on matters of faith. Thank you for a valuable lesson for me Rev Bolz-Webber.

August 27, 2013 By Nadia Bolz Weber 

You gotta love Dan Erlander’s drawings.

2013-08-25 NBW HFASS Sermon<—–Click here to listen along (and delight yourself with how much I botched one of the paragraphs)
I have to say, one of my very favorite things about Jesus is how he does whatever he wants to and could really give a hell about how other people feel about it. Yeah.  I just find that endearing. Especially when he irritates the nice religious people. That’s secretly my favorite.
In our Gospel text for today Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on a Sabbath when he sees a woman with a crippled back. He saw her, called her over and said “Woman you are set free from your ailment” He reached out and touched her and she stood upright for the first time in 18 years and praised God. Which seems like a win.  Except for that then the leader of the synagogue throws a little tizzy about how that kind of thing should not be happening on the Sabbath.  Further proof that super religious people can just be so helpful, can’t they?
Especially when they seem to value parameters over people – which should sound like a familiar story…
Stories of churches denying your call to ministry because you fall outside the parameters of which gender is allowed to be ordained and stories of churches denying you the Eucharist because you fall outside the parameters of what kind of sexual orientation is allowed to receive the means of grace and stories of churches denying you a place in community because you just weren’t sure if you believed in God and that falls outside the parameters of doctrinal purity – well, these kind of stories are sadly bordering on cliché around here. We hear them all the time.
So I’m really grateful that Jesus has always tended to disregard people’s preferred parameters for how he should do things, and that he always just seems to keep seeing people, touching them, healing them and then thumbing his nose at anyone who says he really should be more discerning about his clientele and his tactics.
Because I, like many of you, relate to the woman with the crippled back. We who have, at times in our lives, felt crippled by spirits that weaken us, that keep us from standing upright as children of God. And I, like many of you, are happy to have a space like this where we have pretty loosy goosey parameters for who gets access to what…where we, despite the parameters so much of the church wants to place around Jesus, can still experience divine love and healing and grace.
Which is why this week when I was invited to a dinner at the house of a church leader I just felt so uncomfortable.
The invitation came from a group of Evangelical pastors here in Denver who have invited me to be part of various conversations on several occasions.  I believe in that kind of cross-pollination even though it’s not easy for me.  And it’s mainly not easy for me because of the extreme effort it takes for me to get over my indignation at being the only female clergy person in a room full of hip young evangelical pastors and their pretty wives.  This discomfort only grew Monday night as I thought about my fancy seminary education and ordination and the fact that my denomination had, the week before, elected a woman to be our presiding bishop and yet not a single one of the churches represented had a female pastor. Add to this the fact that, the dinner with the Evangelicals was in Highlands Ranch of all places so of course I couldn’t help but mention what a Loooong drive it had been from the city.
I finally started talking to one of the wives and immediately liked her because she said something snarky and I’m a sucker for that.  And I eventually told her how hard these kind of events are for me and why – and she very kindly asked “but don’t you still think we are all on the same team?”
Before I knew what I was saying I said “Oh my gosh, of course not”
And then when I came to my senses, I answered that personally it doesn’t always feel that way but that in terms of the Body of Christ maybe she’s right.
Which is why this week:
when I had such a hard time having an open heart with my Evangelical colleagues
and when I struggled I with how divine love or healing or redemption could possibly happen in Christian communities where there is so little concern for equality and  inclusion and the celebration of all God’s children,
as I studied this story of Jesus and the woman and the religious leader
that struggle I was having felt less like a criticism of them and more like a confession about me.
Because that’s when I stopped relating to the woman who was healed and started relating more to the hypocritical Sabbath-keeping religious leader calling foul.
Because I noticed that in the text, Jesus rebuked the religious leader for valuing parameters more than people – not for defending the practice of Sabbath-keeping.  Sabbath was still a valid way in which divine love, and healing and grace happened. The leader of the synagogue was not wrong in his love for keeping Sabbath. He was wrong in assuming that if God works within the parameters of Sabbath keeping that God cannot also work outside the parameters of Sabbath keeping.
I think what we are so prone to do is to think that if there is an experience of the Gospel within a particular set of circumstances, that means that only under that particular set of circumstances can the Gospel be experienced.  As though God’s agency is limited to the ways in which we happen to experience God.
And I wonder about the ways I might do the same thing. I wondered if for me this week, I wasn’t guilty of valuing parameters more than people when my heart was not open to the Evangelicals who invited me to dinner.  To be clear: This is not to say that gender equality and inclusion of all God’s children is not important, or that many of you don’t legitimately have a right to be upset with how you have been treated by those who say they follow Jesus, it’s just that we have to allow that God might actually be powerful enough to work outside of the parameters of how we attempt to live out the Gospel in this community.
Because in the end, faith is so much more about this kind of freedom – this kind of resting in the power of God’s love than it is about defending positions and monitoring parameters.
Because I suspect that God does God’s redeeming work in ways and through means with which I disagree.  And yes, I find this endlessly irritating, but I think more is to be had by relaxing and seeing that this might very well be true than there is to be had through pretending it’s not.
A couple weeks ago I got to hear Catholic theologian James Allison talk about how we think faith is about striving – keeping parameters, calling people out for not having it right, spiritual practices, doctrinal purity… whatever – but that really faith is about relaxing. Specifically, relaxing in the way we do when we are with a friend who we know for certain is fond of us.  We don’t have to strive around them and we somehow still become our best self – funny, spontaneous, free. Allison suggests that faith is trusting so much that God is fond of us that we just fricken relax.
I think that is what Jesus was saying to the religious leader, not that there is anything wrong with Sabbath keeping, but that Oh my gosh, just relax.
And if that’s true…if faith is akin to relaxing and if relaxing about stuff is hard for us, I wonder if on some level that’s because It’s hard to relax when we think that grace is limited, or there is only so much divine love to go around. Which is when we should remind each other that divine love, healing, grace….. these are not economic categories.
Divine love is simply not a limited resource and it is most certainly not something that happens only here or only in this way or only among us or and… I can’t wait to see the blog comments on this one…only among Christians.
And if the divine love of Christ is powerful enough to heal outside our parameters for how we believe that happens then the divine love of Christ is also powerful enough to heal outside the parameters of how others think that should happen.  Which also is perhaps grounds to relax.
Because if Sabbath is about rest and relaxing it means that there is Grace enough for all of us. Grace enough for the homophobes and the queers.  Grace enough for the Sabbath keepers and the Sabbath breakers. Grace enough for me and for the people who don’t think I deserve grace.  Grace enough for the Evangelicals and the Lutherans. There’s enough. Thanks be to God. There is enough.

Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/08/sermon-on-the-parameter-we-prefer-for-jesus-to-work-under/