Getting Jesus to Do Whatever You Ask of Him (and other ways you can’t avoid death and resurrection) 21OKT12

A great sermon on how God answers our prayers from Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber.....

10-21-12 NBW Sermon <—–click here to listen to the sermon (that’s what makes it “preaching”)
This might seem weird to you, but I don’t always get what I want. And a year and a half ago, as many of you know, I wanted something really particular. For the 1^st 3 years of this church, we were using a hundred year old church building in an edgy hispster neighborhood.  It had hardwood floors and stained glass and no pews and it wasn’t perfect but it was really close and I was certain I mean, I was really certain that we had to stay there. The vitality and life of this community depended on it.  But my attachment to us staying in that building caused me a lot of suffering. And looking back on it I’m sure it caused those of you who were around at that time some suffering too (not the least of which was the fact that there was basically no heat in that building and liturgy during the Winter was like a sub-arctic adventure) but I thought it was worth it because that was nothing compared to the suffering and death the community would face were we not in that “perfect” church building.  I wanted to avoid that, so I kept asking God to help us out.
I mention this because 18 months ago were I in the place of James and John, the disciples in our gospel text who kind of slime up to Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and say Hey Jesus we want you to do whatever we ask…were I in their place and Jesus said what do you want I would have said we have to be able to stay in that cold little church building.  I would have said this because I thought that outcome is what would help us avoid something bad.
And I imagine Jesus would have said to me what he said to James and John and what we might try and hear him say to us pretty much every single day and that’s You do not know what you are asking.
To get a little perspective, we might go back a few verses because our reading last week ends with the rich man going away saddened and Jesus saying the first will be last and the last first and between that and today’s reading there’s a pretty important 3 verses and in defiance of the lectionary Gods I am going to read those to you.

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem (just a side note here…that’s where he’s going to suffer and die) , and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him,  (another side note…this is now the 3^rd time he says this to them) ³³saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; ³⁴they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’
35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ ³⁶And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ ³⁷And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ ³⁸But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking.

Sounds a little different in context doesn’t it?
I’m not sure exactly what was behind James and John’s request, but I’m thinking it had something to do with wanting to avoid suffering or death of some kind because, as the text said they were going to Jerusalem and they were afraid and who can blame them?
See, I think that sometimes I want God to do something for me because if I get that thing or that situation comes true then the promise is that I will avoid some kind of suffering.  If God will just let me win the lottery then I would avoid the suffering of not having a Mercedes.  If God can just let that one particular boy fall in love with me then I can avoid the suffering of loneliness.  If God can help us not lose our church building then we can avoid the suffering of being a homeless church who might, God forbid, move into a beautiful historic neighborhood instead. I think that’s what we do.  Our desire to have God do something for us is rooted in our desire to avoid suffering which is, on an existential level, our desire to avoid death. And to all of this Jesus says “you do not know what you are asking”.
Nobody avoids suffering. Nobody avoids death.
Don’t mistake me.  There is nothing wrong with asking things of God. Indeed, part of being a people of faith is to lift our hearts to God in both praise and petition. And if nothing else, this is indeed a praying church. Of course we take the desires of our hearts to God as well we should. We just shouldn’t be overly sure that us getting what we want means that we will be happy and it surely doesn’t mean we get a pass on the hard stuff.
Because when in their fear the disciples say they want him to do whatever they ask he doesn’t shame them for their request. He just starts talking about the ordeal he’s about to go through.  He speaks of us sharing in his cup and his baptism – as if he’s wrapping sacramental language around what awaits him in Jerusalem –
He said the cup I drink is not an avoidance of suffering program and to be clear, it’s not a glorifying of suffering program.  The cup and the baptism that awaited Jesus in Jerusalem, was simply death and resurrection.  And if anything THIS is what the Christian life is about.
To our personal requests of God, to all of our desires that we bring to Jesus saying hey Jesus we want you to do for us whatever we ask Jesus just smiles and says “it doesn’t work like that”  It doesn’t work like that but I did come to bring you life and life abundant and the real truth of that is never found in the avoidance of pain or the manipulation of God or transcending the human experience it always comes from death and resurrection.  Truth and life and all the things God wants to reveal to us in Jesus Christ come from descent into death before rising to new life and we might fight that or think that we have found a work around for it but that road to Jerusalem is where we stay.
It was weird a year and a half ago when we got the eviction letter late in Lent and it said we had to be out by the first Sunday in Easter.  It was our road to Jerusalem and on it I kept making my requests to God and God kept saying “you do not know what you are asking” and in the end nothing could keep my self and this community on so many levels from going through death and resurrection during that Holy Week. And in the end, the resurrection story of us of finding St Thomas and having our community grow and thrive in a way we simply never could have imagined was slightly more than metaphorical.
And that’s what this thing is about.  Which is why this week I starting thinking about how undeterred Jesus was even when his people didn’t know what they were asking.  Because despite that and despite the fact that his disciples never understand anything he says, Jesus still stays on message and knowing what is before him he stays on the road to Jerusalem and with all of it tearing at him he stays on the cross but brothers and sisters he does not stay in the grave. Death, the thing that ultimately we think we are avoiding by getting what we want is destroyed by a God who didn’t avoid it but dived right into it and then kicked it’s ass.
So, by all means faithful people, raise your hearts to God in praise and petition, just know that you do not really know what you are asking and that is a good thing.   Because you will be brought to the empty tomb only through the cross and sometimes no is simply the vehicle for a deeper yes and a newer life and the thing you never saw coming. Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/10/getting-jesus-to-do-whatever-you-ask-of-him-and-other-ways-you-cant-avoid-death-and-resurrection/ 

CNN Airs The Most Ridiculous Statement I’ve Ever Seen On Television 28AUG12

HERE is a revealing piece about how poor mitt robme "suffered" during his mormon missionary stint in France in 1968, after applying for and receiving a total of for deferments to avoid the draft and having to serve the country he loves in Vietnam (note, SARCASM INTENDED)....

by Tommy Christopher

When a friend tweeted me about a line from CNN’s Romney Revealed documentary, I thought he must have misheard or paraphrased it, but as it turns out, Gloria Borger‘s narration of the Mitt Romney profile really did contain the most ridiculous sentence I’ve ever heard on television, so ridiculous that I’m half-suspicious CNN is actually a cabal of master satirists who are making fun of the Republican presidential candidate.
The portion of the documentary in question covers Mitt Romney’s stint as a door-to-door Mormon recruiter in 1968 France, a duty which helped him to avoid military service in Vietnam. Earlier in the doc, narrator and interviewer Gloria Borger glossed over the fact that Romney sought, and received, four deferments during the Vietnam War (and later lied about it), instead saying simply that he was “exempt as a student, and with a high draft number.”
The doc also notes, as an example of Romney “becoming his own man,” that he protested in favor of the draft that he so skillfully avoided, before moving on to the time he spent in France, a time that Romney once described as “tough” because the French were “not happy to see Americans, because we were in Vietnam at the time.”
Yes, you heard that right. Not only did Mitt Romney protest in favor of sending other people’s children to die in Vietnam, even as he avoided service himself, he then complained about how those dying Americans made it “tough” for him while he was in France avoiding service.
Perhaps to avoid charges of bias, the documentary steers clear of these contradictions, but then takes the whitewashing to blindingly absurd levels by introducing the next segment with the aforementioned most ridiculous statement I’ve ever seen on television. “In 1968, France was a dangerous place to be for a 21-year-old American,” Borger says, “but Mitt Romney was right in the middle of it.”
That’s right, in 1968, the year in which the highest number of American deaths in Vietnam were reported (16,592), France was a dangerous place to be for a 21-year-old American who was avoiding service in Vietnam. Aside from the constant danger of having one’s eye put out by an errant baguette, what hardships did Mitt Romney face while he was “in country?”
Well, all those dying Americans were causing protests in France, and as a result, says fellow Romney missionary Mike Bush, “There was no train service, there were no buses, no newspapers. The electricity would go off from time-to-time.”
The electricity would go off from time-to-time? Mon Dieu. Think of the horrific flashbacks to rudely-interrupted Gilligan’s Island reruns and spoiled escargot. But the horrors of Vietnam-era France didn’t end there.
“There were no letters from home,” Bush continues. “The money at the time came via check. That was our lifeline was getting letters from home.”
So, CNN’s story is that Mitt Romney had it tough during Vietnam because the protests in France made it hard for his dad to send him money. That’ll give anyone the thousand-yard stare.
The quest for “objectivity” has increasingly become the quest to avoid charges of bias, but in Romney Revealed, CNN seems to have bent over so far backward that they ended up unintentionally parodying the poor guy. Mitt Romney, and CNN’s audience, deserve better.
Here’s the clip, from CNN’s Romney Revealed:
<iframe src="http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?content=7K7NX72XY19X8NL0&content_type=content_item&layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&widget_type_cid=svp&read_more=1" width="420" height="421" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
(h/t Don Millard)
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-airs-the-most-ridiculous-statement-ive-ever-seen-on-television/
 

Rick Santorum: Obamacare Poster Boy 1MAR12 & Rick Santorum calls for low-income children to suffer 21NOV11

rick santorum's position on suffering as being part of life is cruel, evil and un-Christian. He said "Suffering, if you're a Christian, suffering is a part of life. And it's not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life." There is no Biblical basis for his statement, it is a perversion of the true teachings of Jesus Christ. Matthew 5:3-12, the Sermon on the Mount, addresses suffering due to grief (v.4) and persecution because of their faith (v. 10-12). John 15:18 through 16:4 addresses suffering by believers because of their faith as does Romans 8:18-30 and 1 Peter 4:12-19. 2 Corinthians 4:1-15 is a lesson on suffering and holding on to faith but does not condone it as a good life experience. Nowhere in Scripture are Christians told to tolerate the suffering of others, to do nothing to alleviate the suffering of others or to prevent actions by anyone to prevent the suffering of others. rick santorum's Christianity lacks compassion and mercy, basic tenants of our faith. If he wants to believe suffering is a good thing in his life that is his decision, he should not cause suffering for others. And rick, you may want to read the Scripture mentioned above to see what is in store for those causing the suffering of others.......This from Mother Jones & Daily Kos.......

The candidate's tax returns reveal staggering medical bills that would bankrupt many Americans—yet Santorum wants to roll back programs that would help families like his.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum Gage Skidmore/Flickr

During a recent interview with Glenn Beck, Rick and Karen Santorum suggested that the Obama administration's health care reform law would harm people with disabilities, like their three-year-old daughter, Bella, who suffers from a rare and usually fatal genetic disorder. In fact, it was because of President Obama's health care overhaul, they said, that the former Pennsylvania senator decided to seek the presidency. "We have as you know a little angel, little Bella, special-needs little girl, and when Obamacare passed, that was it, that put the fire in my belly," Karen said. Rick added that Obama's Affordable Care Act is "all about the usefulness of the person to society, instead of the dignity of every human life and the opportunity for people who love and care for people to give them the best possibility to have the best possible life." Yet, even as the Santorums bash Obamacare, their own family story—which includes staggering medical bills that would bankrupt many American families—makes the case for the health care policies that they vigorously oppose.
By cashing in on his senatorial connections to join the 1 percent, Santorum managed to escape the crippling debt that can come with raising a disabled child. But his tax returns appear to show how expensive caring for a disabled child can be under the current health care system, even for someone with health insurance. In 2009 and 2010, the Santorums racked up $100,000 in medical expenses—more than the median American family income each year—and that's after their private insurance paid some costs. During that same time period, they also had nearly $100,000 worth of household assistance—help they didn't have in 2007, before Bella was born. (The Santorum campaign did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about the exact nature of these expenses.)
"The financial implications [of having a disabled child] can be pretty catastrophic pretty fast," says Katy Neas, senior vice president for government affairs at Easter Seals, which provides services to more than a million disabled people every year. "Families end up losing everything because of health care costs." She says the medical expenses the Santorums have incurred aren't unusual for families with disabled children. Private insurance plans, she says, don't meet these kids' needs, largely because they impose tight limits on payments for the various therapies disabled kids require. And until the Obama health care reform law passed, insurers simply wouldn't cover many disabled children.

Nebraska resident Lisa Gourley knows this well. Deprived of oxygen in the womb, her son Colin was born with serious brain damage. After his birth, Gourley couldn't go back to work because Colin needed round-the-clock attention and intensive medical care. The family had to rely on one income. And as Colin, now 18, got older, Gourley says that private insurance didn't cover everything he needed. For instance, one year his feet grew faster than expected, and he ended up requiring a second set of $3,000 leg braces. Insurance would only pay for one pair each year.
Not only has he had 14 orthopedic surgeries, but Colin needs physical therapy between three and five times a week to stay out of a wheelchair. Private insurance would only pay for enough therapy visits to get him through March or April, leaving the family scrambling to pay for the rest of his sessions. The mounting medical expenses nearly sent the family of six into bankruptcy, a fate they only avoided by selling their house and moving in with Gourley's in-laws for several years. Gourley's husband lost his banking job during the financial crisis, and with it, their private insurance. Later, after her husband found a new job, Gourley discovered that not a single company would insure Colin. "They barely insure you if you have high blood pressure, let alone brain damage," she says.
The new health care reform law now requires insurers to cover kids like Colin, but most of the provisions that will really make private insurance a viable option for families like the Gourleys won't kick in for a few more years. So he remains on Medicaid, the government health care program for low-income people that has seen severe cuts during the recession, making it difficult for the Gourleys to even find doctors and caretakers who will participate in the program because the reimbursements are now so low.
Despite Medicaid's crucial role in helping families with disabled kids, Santorum has promised that, if elected, he would further slash the program by 10 percent and then freeze the budget for four years. He has also proposed shifting the program's funding into block grants to the states, a move that would likely result in severe budget cuts. Easter Seals, not surprisingly, opposes both of these moves because of the impact it could have on disabled people.
Of course, many middle-class families of disabled children like the Gourleys might not need Medicaid if private health insurance coverage were sufficient—but as the Santorums' tax returns suggest, it isn't. The new health care reform law that Santorum has vowed to repeal if elected is designed to eventually remedy part of that problem.
It will put an end to annual or lifetime caps on benefits, which are easily hit by disabled kids. By 2014, the law's "essential benefits" package will require coverage for "habilitative" services, things like speech, occupational, or physical therapy, which are critical to the quality of life for special-needs children. And the law will increase payments to doctors who take Medicaid, which will help ensure that disabled kids in the program can actually find a good provider.
Beyond that, the Affordable Care Act expands the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid to include families making 133 percent of the federal poverty line, so that more disabled children will be covered. Santorum is deeply opposed to this sort of socialism. In November, he complained that people who weren't stuck in poverty could qualify for Medicaid, which he said would only lead to a sense of entitlement among children in the program. Better to let the people do without, he said: "Suffering, if you're a Christian, suffering is a part of life. And it's not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life."
If Santorum were to win the White House, his health care policies would certainly impose some suffering upon many families with disabled children. And the negative impacts of those policies would be exacerbated if Santorum were able to implement his theologically driven opposition to abortion and birth control. A devout Catholic, Santorum has said that birth control is "harmful to women" and "harmful to our society"—because he thinks that sex should only be a procreative act among heterosexual married people. He thinks the Supreme Court was misguided when it struck down a ban on the sale of contraception to married people in 1965. Presumably, he and Karen have eschewed contraception—and at the age of 48, Karen had Bella.
Were Santorum to deny women, particularly those in their 40s, abortion and contraception, more families—including those of lesser means—would face the severe challenges of raising disabled children. The possibility for serious complications rises exponentially among older women should they forgo contraception. Humans weren't designed to have children well into mid-life. The risk of having a child with Down Syndrome for a woman in her 20s is 1 in 1,250. At age 45, the risk jumps to 1 in 30. At 49, it's 1 in 10. Most American women who conceive a disabled child choose to abort. Santorum is certainly free to find fault with this on moral grounds. But if disabled children are gifts from God, as Santorum has said, why make it harder for parents to care for them? More people, too, might forgo abortion if they could be sure that bearing a disabled child would not bankrupt them.
After Santorum mentioned Bella in a debate last fall, people on the campaign trail started asking questions about her. So he made a moving video to let the public have a glimpse of the child who is too medically fragile to join him on the stump. On many levels, the Santorums have a lot to teach us. But what's missing from their tale is any evidence that their own personal trials have given them insight into other people's suffering—or compassion for it. Supporting health care reform so disabled children can have a fighting chance at living with dignity can be just as moral as opposing abortion. Yet Santorum seems unable to recognize that the inspiring tale of his own family makes that very case.

Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie Mencimer is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. For more of her stories, click here. You can also follow her on Twitter. RSS | Twitter

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  Rick Santorum calls for low-income children to suffer

  by Laura ClawsonFollow for Daily Kos Labor
  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/21/1038707/-Rick-Santorum-calls-for-low-income-children-to-suffer 

  Rick Santorum, speaking in Ottumwa, Iowa on Friday:
  

  
  

  If you're low-income ... in many states you can qualify for Medicaid, you can qualify for food stamps, you can qualify for housing assistance, and that's not if you're in poverty. That's if you're above the poverty line. And so you have all of the children growing up in an environment where government is paying you, and then we wonder why do these kids feel they're entitled to so much? [...] That is not a healthy thing for children, it's not a healthy thing for society ... Suffering, if you're a Christian, suffering is a part of life. And it's not a bad thing, it is an essential thing in life ... There are all different ways to suffer. One way to suffer is through lack of food and shelter and there's another way to suffer which is lack of dignity and hope and there's all sorts of ways that people suffer and it's not just tangible, it's also intangible and we have to consider both.

  Rick Santorum starts here with a pretty standard Republican "culture of entitlement" argument: If you give these low-income families food and health care, their kids will grow up just thinking they're entitled to food and health care, and we can't have that. If their parents' jobs don't pay enough—because note that he specifies this is people just above the poverty line, so clearly he is talking here about employed people—to pay for food and health care, then those kids should go without.
  Then he whips that tried-and-true argument into a frothy mix with the suggestion that in fact denying low-income children food and health care is actually a good Christian thing to do. Because, yes, they will suffer tangibly through lack of food and shelter, but if they are getting their food and shelter in part through governmental assistance due to low-paying jobs, then they are suffering intangibly through lack of dignity and hope. And there's nothing that says dignity and hope like children starving on the street.

  Originally posted to Daily Kos Labor on Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 10:57 AM PST.

  Also republished by Occupy Virtual America: OCCUPY BEYOND WALLSTREET, Occupy our homes!, ClassWarfare Newsletter: WallStreet VS Working Class Global Occupy movement, and Daily Kos.

WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SUCH HORRIBLE SUFFERING?

Question; “Why does God allow such horrible suffering?” Leader; “Why do you?” Conversation overheard in a home bible Study, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada