CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Listening to Barry Taylor of Fuller Seminary -- and question is raised about what it means to be human in the 21st century.  Genesis speaks of humanity created in the image of God, but we're moving toward what he's calling (at this moment) the "techno-self."  We're moving in a direction where the line between human and technological is being blurred.

As a Star Trek fan, I'm reminded of the Borg (not Marcus).  With that image, what do we make of this question of our existence as humans?

So, how do we, as we do theology after google, how do we reflect theologically on humanity when this line is blurred? 

In a previous posting, I asked the question of the goodness of a democratized theology.  This is the sense of what theology after Google.    Emergent Christianity is seen as a deconstruction of the old boundaries and rules -- including the clergy system.  That is a church that is guided or perhaps ruled by the clergy.  Anti-clericalism, of course, has long been with us. 

But there is a question that has been raised about the conversation that is going on here in Claremont.  In our embrace of democratization are we giving way to a rather undisciplined conversation.  That is, should we be more concerned about what the Reformed tradition calls doing things "decently and in order"?  Or, to put it another way, should we be concerned about "appropriateness" of our conversation? 

Last night the Theology after Google event began.  We heard from several theologians of the academic kind, including our host Philip Clayton.  Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller guided our conversation as to where the new medias are taking the theological conversation.
The overall message is simple, the new media is allowing for the theological conversation to leave the ivory towers of academia and get taken up by the people.  No longer can the experts be the arbitrers of truth.  Now this is very post modern and attractive, and while I'm on board to a great extent, I'm wondering where this leads.  How democratic should this be, and should we jettison all expertise?  I don't think that's the intent, but in our excitement, can this not be the message that gets caught.
So, in a few minutes we enter a new day, with new presentations, creating new conversations.  Therefore, to my TAG participants and to the blogosphere in general -- how democratic should it get?  And, to what extent should we bring in the voices of the "experts?"  I look forward to your thoughts!

For the next several days I will be participating in the Theology after Google Conference.  It's quite a show, really -- the Schedule can be found here.   You can watch it live -- via the internet if you'd like.  My presentation comes late Friday morning (PST).  I'm going to offer the contrarian voice, which will be a surprise to some who know me.  There are those, especially in the churches that I've pastored, that think that the only word I know is change!  But, I'm going to offer a "wait a minute" statement (because I'm among the elders at this conference).
So, here's information on the live streaming: 
Here's a statement from the Transforming Theology Site that can guide you:
The Theology After Google Conference will be streamed for all those not enjoying the SoCal sun this week. We would love to get your feedback, some conversation, and questions for the presenters through our Twitter Twub (#tag10). Here's the event bookstore if you are so inspired.
I was hoping to embed the video link here, but since it's not working, you can watch it by clicking here, starting Wednesday Evening at 7:00 PST (that's 10:00 at home):

Now, I don't normally give Glen Beck the time of day.  He's a hate monger, bigot, and disseminator of  misinformation.  But, I want to address his attacks on the progressive churches, because the statements are egregious and false.
In a clip that can be found here he not only tells people to leave churches that proclaim social justice, but equates this with both communism and nazism.  Now, I don't know which Bible Glen reads, but there are clear passages (many more than speak about homosexuality) that call for social justice.  Jesus himself declared:
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’(Luke 4:16-21).In this passage, Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 61:1ff.   Jesus tells the rich young ruler that if he wanted to be saved to sell all that he had, give it to the poor, and follow him (Luke 18:18ff).  In Acts we read that the early Christians shared all things in common (Acts 4:32-37), so that "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything was held in common."  
I could go on, but I think that this is sufficient to respond to Beck's rant.  If you look through scripture we find it clear that God is concerned about social justice.  Indeed, I'll close with a statement from biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, defining biblical justice:
 Justice (mispat) in the Old Testament concerns distribution in order to make sure that  all members of the community have access to resources and good for the sake of a viable life of dignity.  In covenantal tradition the particular subject of YHWH's justice is the triad "widow, orphan, immigrant," those without leverage or muscle to sustain their own legitimate place in society. (Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good, WJK, 2010, p. 62).That I think is sufficient. 1718192021

The problem isn't us -- it's our God.  Actually, it's their God.  My God is okay -- nice, lovable, etc.  But the same can't be said of their God, who inspires acts of hate and violence.  Sound familiar?  There is, of course, within most, if not all, religions have had a warrior element to them. 

Martin Marty takes up this issue of the conflicting views of God in the context of the publication of a book by the son of a founder of Hamas, who blames Islamic inspired terrorism not on the perpetrators but on the God depicted in their holy book.  Of course, it needs to be pointed out that the author is a former Israeli double agent and a convert to Christianity.   I'll let Marty tell the story and invite your responses!


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Sightings 3/8/10

God versus God -- Martin E. Marty
We are in for another intense round of “God vs. God,” “Our God vs. Their God,” “Good God vs. Bad God=Devil.”  The current round comes from many readers of Mosab Hassan Yousef’s new Son of Hamas, which reads like a spy novel and whose “gripping” plot needs no publicity from me.  Yousef is becoming almost unavoidable in and on the media.  The work of a son of a founder of Hamas and a top spy for Israel’s Shin Bet, whose espionage efforts and about-faces others can appraise, is interesting to Sightings for its content on a particular subject, the author’s preached view of “The Islamic God.”             Sean Hannity, who may not often be cited here as a mild one, was chastised by bloggers for being unaroused by Yousef’s theology.  The Fox TV host was even criticized by many for being “PC,” too politically correct to join in the attack on Allah when he interviewed Yousef on March 4th.  And attack there certainly was.  Yousef: “There are no moderate Muslims.”  “All Muslims are the same,” namely fanatics.  “They believe in a god of the Koran and they believe that this Koran is from that god.”  More: “The most criminal terrorist Muslim has more morality than their God,” contended Yousef; “Their god is a terrorist and ignorant.”             The March 5th Wall Street Journal featured a page-wide bold-print headline above its interview of Yousef by Matthew Kaminski: “THEY NEED TO BE LIBERATED FROM THEIR GOD.”  Killing can play its part, but, you guessed it, Yousef also relies on spiritual demolition for such liberation.  Yousef says his father is not a fanatic, but “he’s doing the will of a fanatic God…a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God.”  Governments “don’t want to admit this is an ideological war…The problem is not Muslims.  The problem is their God.  He is their biggest enemy.”             Yousef – again, you guessed it – is living in the U.S. as a convert to Christianity.  In his book and in interviews he says nice things about “the grace, love and humility that Jesus talked about.”  It did take courage for Yousef to become an apostate and break with Islam, his family, and the spy-world he served.  Henceforth?  Max Scheler wrote that an apostate “is engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past.”  There may be plenty against which to react, but one has to ask what good his demonizing of his neighbor’s God will do in the already mutually demonizing conflicts of our day.  What René Girard calls “the mimetic principle” is in action here and these days:  You say something about our God and they say something worse about ours, so we say something “worser” yet about theirs, in a constant escalation which can lead to neither security for us or a better (in our eyes) alternative for them.             “Them” Muslims find texts from a book that serves “us” as the Koran serves “them:” namely, the Bible.  Several titles on my shelf signal the riches available (see below). The warrior God was cited on all sides in World War I, for example, where Christian clergy and laity alike invoked this God on the side of Germany versus this God on the side of France and, with denominational variants, of England and the United States.  World War I is not the last time “we” read a scripture in which “our God” inspired us to do the worst.  Most citizens and soldiers may not have licensed atrocity and indiscriminate mass killing, but “our God” did not help the merciful show grace, love and humility,” and made post-war peacemaking more difficult.

References:
Sample titles about the warrior God in the Bible include Yahweh is a Warrior, by Millard C. Lind; The Problem of War in the Old Testament by Peter C. Craigie; Holy War in Ancient Israel, by Gerhard von Rad; the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, by various authors.
Read the Wall Street Journal interview with Yousef:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103481069258868.html?KEYWORDS=yousef
Watch the Hannity interview at http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/son-of-hamas-top-dog-moderate-islam-does-not-exist.html     Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com. 
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In this month’s edition of the Religion and Culture Web Forum, Sarah Imhoff introduces us to the Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu, who weds reggae music with strong pronouncements of Jewish faith and identity.  Imhoff notes that a common concern for music critics and Matisyahu's coreligionists alike resides in issues of authenticity.  Music critics ask if he's "reggae" enough; Orthodox Jews debate whether he's "Jewish" enough. By troubling categories of identity and their relationships with artistic form, Imhoff explores the limits of "authenticity" in aesthetic and religious performance.  With invited responses forthcoming from Melvin L. Butler (University of Chicago), Judah Cohen (Indiana University), Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank (University of California, Santa Barbara), Elliot A. Ratzman (Swarthmore College),and Nora Rubel (University of Rochester).
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml 
 
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
 

I think I have a vision for what Christian worship should look like, what it should entail, etc.  In my mind, it involves music, preaching, the Lord's Table, Prayer.  But is that what God really desires?  The prophets sometimes thought in very different categories -- most often thinking in the categories of justice and mercy.
I'm nearing the end of Walter Brueggemann's brief but compelling Journey to the Common Good (WJK, 2010).  As he comes to an end of the book, he's reflecting on the Isaiah text and points us to the final ten chapters, what is often called Third Isaiah.  It is written after the exile has ended, and reconstruction has begun.  There is a difference of opinion as to what this should look like -- and who is welcome.  He notes that the vision held out by Third Isaiah differs from that of someone like Ezra, who had in mind a sense of ethnic and religious purity.  For Isaiah the membership in the community is broader -- it involves both the foreigner and the eunuch (Is. 564-7).  
Brueggemann goes on to write that "membership is for the sake of worship."   He goes on to note that "worship is crucial because it is an act of communal imagination that responds to the new sovereign, and it lines out reality in an alternative way" (p. 109).  In Isaiah 58, we read this description of worship that is focused on loosing "the bonds of injustice" and letting the "oppressed go free."  It's about sharing bread with the hungry and housing the homeless.  That's not what we usually think of as worship, and yet this is exactly how this post-exilic prophet imagines it. Brueggemann writes:
The new worship concerns the construction and practices of neighborliness of the most elemental kind.  The new worship looks advantage and disadvantage square in the face, and urges economic gestures that bind haves and havenots together.  The accent is upon praxis, . . ."  (pp. 110-111).
He then points us on to a statement from Jeremiah 22:15-16, which the Isaiah passage (Isa. 58:6-7) echoes. 
My question arising out of this discussion concerns our own worship.  What if we took to heart the reflections of Isaiah and Jeremiah to heart.  What if, we would accept as true that, as Brueggemann writes, "knowledge of God is acknowledgment of neighbor" (p. 111)?

Luke 11:1-4; Luke 12:22-34

We’ve come to the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer.  In the previous two petitions we’ve asked God to make God’s name holy in our lives, and we’ve asked that God’s reign would be made known in our midst, even as we seek to know and do God’s will.  Having made these requests, which focus on God holiness and God’s reign on earth as well as in heaven, we make our first request of God.  And in this request, we focus on our most basic of needs – our daily bread.  Yes, food, water, shelter, these are the basics, and so it’s not surprising that this is where Jesus begins.   
    The idea that God is the provider of our daily bread goes back at least to the Exodus story, where the people of Israel find themselves wandering for forty years in the desert of Sinai.  Reading the story, you might think that the people expected a quick trip across the desert, and on into the promised land.  Yes, just a hop, skip, and a jump, and they’d move from slavery to the good life.  I think that’s human nature.  We like immediate gratification and solutions, but as the story demonstrates, this trip lasted far longer than anyone expected.  So, finding themselves in the desert, which isn’t the greatest storehouse of food and drink, they discover that they don’t have anything to eat.  Upon this discovery, they cried out to God – mostly in the form of complaints and grumbling.  But, God heard their cries, just as God heard their cries while they were living in slavery in Egypt.  In response to their prayers, God provided them with quail, manna from heaven, and water from a rock.
     The provisions did come, however, with a few strings attached.  Moses tells the people that they should gather the manna, which fell like dew on the desert floor, in the morning.  They could bake it or boil it, but they couldn’t save it.  If they tried to keep leftovers, they’d spoil.  So, there was no reason to hoard.  When they saw the food, they rejoiced, but after awhile they got bored with the menu, as well as with life in the desert, and returned to complaining and grumbling (Exodus 16-17).    
    It’s true that the people of Israel took a great risk in following Moses into the desert.  Life may have been bad under Pharaoh’s rule, but at least they knew what to expect.  As we all know, sometimes what we know appears to be better than what we don’t know.  So, facing the possibility of starvation in the desert made slavery look like a pretty good alternative.   To continue the journey in the desert meant walking by faith and depending on God’s provisions. 

1.  Dependency on God the Provider   
    When we pray “Give us this day, our daily bread,” we are offering a statement of faith in God.  We’re declaring our trust that God will provide our basic needs.   Therefore, this beloved prayer, which we recite every Sunday, is a declaration to God of our willingness to entrust the day to God’s care.
    Although the Exodus story stands behind this prayer, so do other stories, stories that Jesus’ disciples knew all too well.  Those who were first taught this prayer, lived under Roman occupation, and therefore understood that Caesar, not God, was their great provider.  Indeed, Caesar used bread, and when the bread ran short, circuses,  to control the mob.  The point that Caesar liked to make was that the people’s lives depended on Caesar’s grace.   Therefore, once again we find Jesus pointing us elsewhere.  He wants us to understand that God and not Caesar is our patron, and as such, we are God’s clients and not Caesar’s.
    There is, however, more to this petition than simply acknowledging God’s patronage over Caesar’s.  As Michael Crosby points out in his reflections on this prayer, in making this petition, we’re recognizing that we’re not self-sufficient.  That is, if we think we have no needs, then we’re saying that we have no need of anyone else, including God.  He writes about his own discovery, that he’d “fallen for the original temptation of the serpent:  to ‘become like God’.”  (Michael Crosby, The Prayer that Jesus Taught Us, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 2002, p. 123).   When we fall prey to this temptation, then this daily bread becomes “our ‘bread,” which we can provide for ourselves.  At that point, it no longer is seen as a gift of God, and thus, we have no need to share with others.
    But, when we think that we have everything under control, when we believe that  we’re in the driver’s seat of life, then too often we fall victim to anxiety and fear.  That is, if everything depends upon me, then what happens when things go awry?    It’s at this point, when we’re hanging on by a thread, that we hear Jesus say to us:   What benefit does worry bring  you?  Does it add even a single hour to your life?  If not, then why do you keep striving for food and drink, as the nations do?  Does God not know what you need?  Does God really care more for the ravens than for you?  And yet, they don’t seem to worry.  
2.  Our Solidarity as Neighbors
    This petition is our “Declaration of Dependence” on God.  It is also a statement of  solidarity with our neighbors.  The meaning of this prayer depends on its pronouns.  Too often we pray this prayer as if we’re speaking in the first-person singular, but that’s not how Jesus taught it.  Instead, Jesus invites us to use the words “us” and “our” in our prayer to God our Provider.
    We pray:  Give to “us” “our” daily bread.  These are plural pronouns, which means that when we pray this prayer, we’re identifying ourselves with our neighbors.   When we pray this prayer, asking God’s provision of our basic needs, our prayer levels the social playing field.   Indeed, even those who appear to be our clients in life, are, like us, God’s clients.   To pray this prayer faithfully, requires a certain humility.  
    Praying that God would provide manna from heaven also involves a willingness to share our bounty with our table mates.   I think it’s instructive that Jesus tells his followers that they should sell their possessions and give them as alms to the poor, and that in Acts we read that the earliest Christians pooled their resources, so that no one was in need (Acts 4:32-37).
    I’m not sure that we’re supposed to sell everything and join in communal living. Some are called to this life, but it never did become a common practice.  But, when we pray this prayer, as Jesus taught it, we are responding to an invitation to what Walter Brueggemann calls the “practice of neighborhood.”  It’s a commitment to pursue the common good, a recognition that simply because I don’t make use of a particular service in society, doesn’t mean that my neighbor doesn’t.  As Brueggemann puts it, it’s a movement “from scarcity through abundance to neighborhood” (Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good, WJK Press, 2010, pp. 30-31).  
    The biblical message is not one of “God helps those who help themselves.”   That phrase is more reflective of Benjamin Franklin than Jesus.  The message of neighborly solidarity may be best summarized by these words from Ecclesiastes.     Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. . . . And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one.  A threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Eccl. 4:9-12).  
3.  Resting in the Provider’s Grace    
    Jesus tells us to strive for the kingdom, and when we do so then everything else will follow in its wake, for it’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.    All that’s required of us is a willingness to receive God’s provision as a gift of grace.  So, don’t worry about tomorrow, instead, put your trust in God, for God is faithful.
    In the parable that precedes this morning’s text, Luke sets up this call to trust in God.  In this parable, Jesus speaks of a rich man who builds a barn to hold his grain, so that he can sit back, and eat, drink, and be merry.  But, as Jesus tells the story, the man would die that very night – so who benefited from this act of hoarding?  And so it is, Jesus says, with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God (Luke 12:13-21).  Yes, and “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Lk 12:34).
    The question facing us today is this:  Where is my heart?  On whom will I depend?  By praying this prayer, we’re declaring that our help and sustenance comes from God.  
    Now, I do believe this is true, but I must admit that I have hedged my bets.  I have a pension, savings, and insurance.  Wisdom seems to suggest that we plan for the future, but too often this “wisdom” leads to anxiety, because we believe that everything rests on us, which is why we hoard.
    And yet, as we pray  “Give us this day, our daily bread,” we confess our belief that God is faithful and gracious and loving.  This God will provide all our needs, for as  the third stanza of the hymn Amazing Grace puts it:
    Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
    ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

Preached by: Dr. Robert D. CornwallPastor, Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)Troy, MichiganMarch 7, 2009Third Sunday of Lent

I wanted to pick up again on the recently released report from the Social Science Research Council on religious blogs.  Now, as noted before, religion blogs don't dominate the top 100 blogs, though major blogs like Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish regularly engage in discussions of religion.  That said, the blogosphere is able to reach well beyond either the academy or the local church. 
Joe Carter, web editor at the journal First Things, makes this point that is worth attending to:
The average pastor in America has sixty people who will hear their sermon on a Sunday morning. In contrast, a blogger who writes about religion can expect from two to one thousand times as many visitors will read their thoughts over the course of a week. The result is that thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Christians are more influenced by their favorite blogger than by their local pastor. Academic bloggers, particularly those who are also pastors or teach on religious subjects, can expect to have an especially outsized influence, one than often dwarfs the impact they have on their own peers and students.Although it's difficult to measure influence, the attendance at my church's Sunday service is near the average mentioned in this quote, but the daily visits to my blog number 4-5 times that number.  Again, it's difficult to measure influence, as many who stop in may be browsers looking for something else.  But, what if they stop for a moment, and take in what I've written? 
Carter, who works for a conservative edged journal (I was a charter subscriber) raises a good question, however, and that deals with the question of oversight.  While the focus of this blog is religious, dealing with issues that affect my congregation and its people, the church doesn't supervise it.  Carter notes that this is the norm, and that few bloggers would want their dioceses, congregations, or school administrations deciding what should be posted.  And yet, even if we mark clearly that our opinions are our own and not that of the institutions we serve, what we write does reflect upon these institutions.   Now, my current congregation new I was a blogger going in -- and the search committee was following what I was writing before calling me. Hopefully, they new what they were getting and welcomed what I write --  even if the members don't always agree with what appears here. 
But, going back to the original premise, what kind of impact or influence can we have?  And further, how can we enhance that influence -- without becoming manipulative?  As noted earlier, I'll be a presenter at the Theology after Google, a conference that is dealing with this very issue. 
As Philip Clayton notes in his book Transforming Christian Theology (Fortress, 2010), the internet offers the possibility of democratizing theology, allowing the nonspecialist the opportunity to join in the conversation (pp. 2-3).  I agree with this decision, but I think it's worth keeping in mind the dark side of this move -- the possibility of letting a theological populism emerge that is anti-intellectual (see the discussion of post modern inversions by Geoffrey Holsclaw).  Thus, we who engage in this conversation, need to keep things balanced. 

The biblical injunction is to love our neighbors, even as we love ourselves.  I have become increasingly concerned about our ability to understand and live out this injunction.  There seems to be in the wind a wild west sensibility where everyone is on their own -- even taking the "law" into their own hands.  We hear anti-tax and anti-government tirades, but forget that our neighbor may benefit from one or more of those programs.

Each day as I take my car out of the garage, I head out on public streets (many of which are in dire need of repair) -- who pays for them?   I may not call upon them, but I rest easy knowing that there is police and fire protection.  My son is in a public college (so I benefit there), but I don't have any kids in public schools (but I'm glad they're there for the families with children).  Social Security and Medicare, which take up much of the non-defense related national spending provides essential services.  I hear people say that they can take care of themselves, and yet we can't.  We need each other.

As I'm thinking on these things, I'm reading Walter Brueggemann's Journey to the Common Good, (WJK Press, 2010).  I'm taken with the book and its title, because it speaks to something that is, in my mind, being lost today.  He writes:

Now the two triads offered by Jeremiah constitute the decisive either/or of faith in ancient Israel and of faith in the derivative story of humanity:  

• either:  wisdom, might, and wealth;

• or:  steadfast love, justice, righteousness.

One is a triad of death because it violates neighborliness.  The other is a triad of life because it coheres with YHWH's best intention for all creation.  In prophetic discourse there is no compromise on this either/or, no middle ground.  It is a contestation that is designed to place all serious persons, liberal and conservative, in a profound crisis.  It is the purpose of the poetry to invite the listener into serious contestation where we may, always again, redecide about our common life in the world.  (p. 65).You might wonder why wisdom is listed here.  The reason is that the wisdom of Solomon is designed to "control the mystery and to reduce it to a technical operation; . . ." (p. 60). 

What is the common good?  What does it mean to be a neighbor?  Indeed, who is my neighbor?  Am I ready to contribute to the common good?  These are questions that are up for contestation.

Last December, I think it was, the Senate passed a Health Reform bill, one that followed in the wake of one passed by the House.  All that was needed was a way to bring the two bills together.  Because of the GOP use of the filibuster, that has proven impossible -- they simply won't allow a vote to be taken.  I read recently that about 80% of bills have been filibustered since the beginning of the Obama presidency.  What was once a rare occurrence, has now become par for the course. 

The Republicans continue to insist that the Democrats are trying to ram through the reform package -- but aren't they obstructing the majority from enacting key legislation.  They act as if they are the majority, but they're not.  Thus, the only way around the obstructionism, is to have the House pass the Senate Bill, and then amend the flawed Senate Bill through reconciliation -- a process that is usually used for budget and tax bills.  But, there is sufficient precedent for using it in these kinds of events as well. 

E.J. Dionne has helpfully called attention to the hypocrisy, if not out right dishonesty of the GOP efforts.  Responding to a disingenuous Orrin Hatch op-ed, Dionne writes:

Hatch said that reconciliation should not be used for "substantive legislation" unless the legislation has "significant bipartisan support." But surely the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which were passed under reconciliation and increased the deficit by $1.7 trillion during his presidency, were "substantive legislation." The 2003 dividends tax cut could muster only 50 votes. Vice President Dick Cheney had to break the tie. Talk about "ramming through." 

The underlying "principle" here seems to be that it's fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle-income and poor people get health insurance.
You can add to this, the hypocrisy of John McCain, who wants to shield Medicare from cuts using Reconciliation -- even though he's voted several times using reconciliation to cut medicare benefits. As Ezra Klein notes:
Last night, John McCain introduced an amendment that makes Medicare immune to the reconciliation process. That's all fine, except for McCain's record: Of the nine reconciliation bills McCain has voted to pass during his time in office, four of them included substantial cuts to Medicare. For those keeping score at home, they were the Balanced Budget Act of 1995, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The Balanced Budget Act of 1995, in particular, included many more cuts to Medicare than anything on the table today. Now he's saying that "entitlements should not be part of a reconciliation process." They're "too important."
So much for John the Maverick.

Next week I'm participating in a conference entitled Theology after Google.  It's part of a Ford Foundation sponsored project called Transforming Theology that is guided by theologian Philip Clayton.  Clayton has come to the conclusion that if theology is going to permeate the church and society in such a way that our world will experience transformation, it will have to move beyond the old ways of doing things.  Waiting for the theological formulations of the academic theologian to trickle down to the congregations and beyond simply won't get the job done.
So, I'll be out there giving my spiel, which I've entitled ""Brick and Mortar Meets Google: Bridging the Ages of Spirituality."  Being one of the older presenters at the conference, and because I pastor a fairly traditional mainline Protestant congregation, I decided to reflect on the ways in which we might try to bridge the two ages, so as not to leave folks behind, as if they don't matter.  At the same time, the world is changing and the church must adapt if it's not going to be left behind or at best become a relatively innocuous social club with a religious front.


It is as I'm preparing for this conference that I run into a report about religion and the blogosphere.  Published by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the report is entitled "The New Landscape of the Religion Blogosphere," and it claims to have surveyed the largest 100 religiously oriented blogs. Now, while I've made some top 100 lists, I didn't make this list. So, these must be the really big players.
Early in the report, we read why this is important:Religion blogs, as such, have not necessarily been at the forefront of the blogosphere as a whole; for instance, few of those that this report focuses on are in the very highest echelons of rank and influence (blogging about religion from time to time, on the other hand, certainly occurs there). Still, in hardly so much as a decade, religion blogs have already come and gone, debuted and declined, mutated and morphed.
 The take on this report from those who have reported on it is that religion blogs have been around for some time, maturing and creating new dynamics, but they remain a rather underutilized medium of communication.  So, the question is -- what's next?  What role do those of us small time operations have?  How do we get noticed in the midst of the high powered, institutionally sponsored blogs and sites?  The blogosphere is a wide open opportunity to connect, but how will harness it?  And for what purpose?
I'll leave you with the closing paragraph that ponders the future:
The key variable for the future of the religion blogosphere is the same as for the Internet as a whole: connectivity. In what ways will people interact, share ideas, form hierarchies, and gather social capital? There are certainly content areas that need to be filled, as the bloggers quoted above suggest. But just as important is the kind of infrastructure within which they work. There likely is, somewhere on the Internet, the great writing on Islam Sharlet is looking for, or the diversity Myers sees as lacking, yet they don’t have the means for finding it. While Web 2.0 brought vast, user-generated content-creation, the challenge of Web 3.0 will undoubtedly be finding ways to make all that information even more accessible, useful, and social —“taming the deluge of data,” as one observer puts it (Griner 2009). Even the nearly 100 blogs discussed in this report are more than most people can afford to keep track of on a daily or weekly basis. The bloggers’ suggestions—more diversity, more investigative journalism, more metro coverage, and so on—all amount to more blogs, more data to consume. The question then becomes: what to do with it all?
What shall we do indeed?!

Quentin Tarantino's Oscar nominated Inglourious Basterds is at once entertaining and disturbing.  It's a revenge fantasy -- and Nazis are, of course, easy to hate.   The biblical text, and other related texts, have revenge scenes, that stir the imagination of victims, encouraging them to take up the cause of the people.  And thus, there may be parallels between the two stories.  Indeed, Mark Bilby finds a parallel between the movie's story-line and that of an extra-canonical text -- Judith.  Bilby's thoughts find their way into today's edition of Sightings. 
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Sightings 3/4/10Seeing Nazis Massacred, Followed by Humorless Analysis-- Mark Bilby
Warning:  Spoilers below.
The guiltiest and most pleasurable jokes are insider affairs.  Such is Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-nominated Inglourious Basterds, a most guilty pleasure and fantastical joke.  But what is the joke?  Critical reviews of the film have varied wildly.  Berardinelli and Ebert respectively saw Tarantino’s enormous risk as his life’s masterpiece and the year’s best film.   The only genius that many other reviewers could uncover was self-absorbed:  a professorial, monotonously slow compiling of one cinematic allusion upon another, in which apparently the actors were the only ones in the theater having a good time.
But a better time was had by all at a recent screening at the Jewish Theological Seminary, reported in Paul Vitello’s article, “Seeing Nazis Massacred, Followed by a Discussion.”  He paraphrases Amy Kalmanofsky, Assistant Professor of Bible at JTS, who noted that revenge fantasies appear throughout the Bible, specifically in the books of Esther and Exodus.  Both tell of plots to kill the Jewish people, which turn around on divine strings, becoming tales of horrific vengeance, one accomplished as Moses lowers his hands, the other as diaspora Jews take up arms against Haman’s kin.  Both became backgrounds for Jewish holidays, the inescapably particular Passover and the wild and destructive Purim.
While I was not there that night at JTS to participate in the discussion, I imagine that the talk could easily have turned to another ancient Jewish short story.  This one made it into many Christian Bibles through the years but not the TaNaKh, though it has certainly been relished by many Jews.  Perhaps the sweet taste of this Galilean story even nourished the imagination of a certain Jewish peasant boy in Nazareth.
Judith, so famously depicted by Caravaggio, is the Basterds of Jewish antiquity.
One of only a few ancient Jewish books named for heroines, Judith offers an alternate, fictional history of the very real and most tragic of events in Jewish antiquity, the Babylonian conquest.  Real history says that in 587 BCE Judah was invaded, Jerusalem and its Temple destroyed, and its persons of wealth and influence killed or deported.
But Judith, the fetishized protagonist – gorgeous and pious, seductive and smart, arrayed in elegant attire – has a different story to tell.  She pretends to defect, chooses to be a prisoner.  With her looks and wits she finds her way into the Babylonian camp, into the general’s tent.  With his own sword she lops off Holofernes’ drunken head, spirited away in her handmaid’s sack.  Hung upon a wall, the hideous head incites panic.  The enemy flees in disarray, cut down by the emboldened Israelites, who take back possession of the once conquered lands.
Tarantino’s Nazploitation runs parallel.  Its protagonist (Shoshanna), with her mélange of close-up beauty, wild fortune and elegant deception, finds her way into the fictional Nazi camp set up in her native place, the theater.  The fire of her vengeful face upon the screen incites panic and the enemy’s massacre.  The squad of Jewish men for whom the movie is named only share in the victory that she spearheads behind the scenes.
Perhaps written during or after the Maccabean revolts, whose success against the Greeks is commemorated at Hanukah, Judith’s entertaining drama may have had a serious side; so also for Tarantino’s Shoah-comedy.  His Nazi-drama drinks not once but twice of the unfiltered milk of human life.  It exposes how fascism can be polite, how civilization can be relentlessly violent in scapegoating the Other, and how cool we reckless Americans can be, even if we do only speak one language.
But most of all, the film comforts tragic victims as comedic victors.  Piety, even the academic variety, has often felt obliged to whitewash the sacred texts.  We so often find ourselves compelled to pasteurize, homogenize, and bleach the offensive, the particular, and the macabre.  We do to the divine stories what Disney does to den Brüder Grimm.  To avert this penchant is difficult, but it can happen, and it has happened in Tarantino’s film despite a comedic treatment of dreadful subject matter.  What the heart and mind finds so difficult but so necessary to remember, finds a catharsis of laughs in place of tears.  For insiders, this is the stuff that makes for sanity.  
References:Paul Vitello, “Seeing Nazis Massacred, Followed by a Discussion,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 2009;  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/nyregion/18basterds.html?_r=1.
Roger Ebert, “Inglourious Basterds,” Chicago Sun-Times, Aug. 17, 2009; http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090819/REVIEWS/908199995.
James Berardinelli, “Inglourious Basterds”, Aug. 18, 2009; http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1774.Mark Bilby is a Ph.D. Candidate in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at the University of Virginia, and Visiting Assistant Professor at Point Loma Nazarene University.
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In this month’s edition of the Religion and Culture Web Forum, Sarah Imhoff introduces us to the Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu, who weds reggae music with strong pronouncements of Jewish faith and identity.  Imhoff notes that a common concern for music critics and Matisyahu's coreligionists alike resides in issues of authenticity.  Music critics ask if he's "reggae" enough; Orthodox Jews debate whether he's "Jewish" enough. By troubling categories of identity and their relationships with artistic form, Imhoff explores the limits of "authenticity" in aesthetic and religious performance.  With invited responses forthcoming from Melvin L. Butler (University of Chicago), Judah Cohen (Indiana University), Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank (University of California, Santa Barbara), Elliot A. Ratzman (Swarthmore College),and Nora Rubel (University of Rochester).
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml 
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

The other day I posted a comment about and link to an interview with Disciple mega-church pastor Cynthia Hale.  Cynthia raised questions about the future viability of denominational structures.  Today, I viewed a video interview, posted at Homebrewed Christianity, with Bruce Epperly, a Disciple/UCC pastor/theologian/seminary professor.  The interviewer is Tripp Fuller, the coordinator of next week's Theology after Google conference.  Bruce will be on the same stage next Friday as will I.
In this interview, which lasts about 18 minutes, Tripp asks Bruce -- as a Progressive theologian -- to speak to the future of the church, emergent theology, and where we're going as the people of God.  I think you will find this an interesting conversation -- so watch and offer your thoughts.

GOD IN THE OBAMA ERA: President’s Religion and Ethics from George Washington to Barack Obama.  By Niels Nielsen.  Garden City, NY: Morgan James, 2009.   397 pages. 

    The question of Barack Obama’s faith has long been a topic of conversation.  There are those who continue to claim that he’s a secret Muslim – and thus a terrorist or lover of terrorists.  There are others who continue to highlight his relationship with former pastor Jeremiah Wright.  Some on the left are angry that Obama has continued a Bush era faith based office, and that he invited Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration.  It is likely that there will be no end to the speculations and the conversations as the nature of his faith and the way that faith will impact his presidency.
    Of course, with the President having only been in office for a little more than a year, it’s still too early to make a judgment on the impact that faith will make on his policy.  We do know that his faith is important to him.  He’s thoughtful about it – anyone who can discourse on the views of Reinhold Niebuhr isn’t your typical U.S. President.   He may not be regularly attending a local church (he apparently shares in worship at Camp David that is led by a military chaplain), but he does rely on a broad group of religious leaders for advice – including the General Minister of my own denomination.  The way he understands his faith, and the way in which it influences his understandings, is very different from his predecessor -- and yet not so very different.  Consider for just a moment that both this President and the former President looked to the same African American United Methodist pastor for advice – KirbyJohn Caldwell.   So, who is Obama and how does his faith commitments and actions fit into the broader scheme of American history?

    Niels Nielsen, a religious studies professor at Rice University, seeks to add his own voice to the discussion of Obama’s faith in God in the Obama Era, though  the title is a bit misleading.  It should point out that this is not simply a book about Obama’s faith or about how people view God at the beginning of Obama’s presidency.  The book’s subtitle offers us a better sense of the contents of the book, for its focus is on the way in which religion has influenced the ethics and actions of the nation’s Presidents, especially in the 20th century.  Indeed, two-thirds of the book carries has little to do with Obama, except for a paragraph or two at the beginning of chapters that compare Obama to one of his predecessors.  If one were to pull out the middle two-thirds of the book, you could find a a coherent discussion of presidential religion and ethics, without ever mentioning Obama’s name.  As one reads the book, one gets the sense that much of it was already written prior to the Obama presidency, and then it was modified to take into consideration the current occupant.  Only the final two chapters deal specifically with Obama and his faith.  That is not a criticism of the book, but it’s helpful to note that the book is not specifically about Obama.

    What Nielsen does provide is an overview and introduction to the relationship of religion and the Presidency, focusing largely on the presidents who have governed during the 20th and 21st centuries.  Only Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln merit attention among earlier presidents, and the choice of these three is obvious.  Washington is the founding President who set many of the precedents that have endured over time – Nielsen isn’t convinced, however, that Washington qualifies as a true Deist.  Jefferson, of course, is well known for his skepticism, and Lincoln for the depth of his faith in a time of crisis – despite not being affiliated with any specific faith community.

    The focus, then, is on more recent leaders, beginning with Woodrow Wilson.  What we discover is that these men are, for the most part, religious, though not necessarily overly so.  Wilson was fairly devout, and a bit priggish.  Herbert Hoover was Quaker, but also rather secular.  Kennedy, of course, was Catholic; something he had to overcome.  Lyndon Johnson was Disciple, but also rather crude, and Nielsen doesn’t spend much time with this connection – pointing rather to a later relationship with Billy Graham.   Jimmy Carter was, of course, a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, and that faith did empower his social views and commitments.  Ronald Reagan was Disciple as well, and learned from it a rejection of doctrinal dogmatism and a literal interpretation of the Bible.  That early introduction to biblical literalism, may have allowed him to embrace more conservative theological positions that fit with his conservative politics.  What we discover is that for the most part, these Presidents had a degree of piety, but their political decisions rarely followed from their faith.  There have always been other factors guiding them, though faith often provided a sense of grounding and sustenance. 

    It should not be surprising that over the past half century, one figure stands out – Billy Graham.  Graham seems to always be in the center of things – it doesn’t matter what the political position.  He was close to LBJ, Nixon, and the Bushes.  While some may have sought Billy Graham out for spiritual reasons, Nixon also seemed to  understand the political benefits of aligning himself with one who was seen as the pillar of Christian morality.   Interestingly, according to Nielsen, only Harry Truman would have nothing to do with the great Evangelist. According to an account quoted by Nielsen, Truman was known to have said of Graham:    He claims he’s a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was President.  I just don’t go for people like that” (p. 157).
It appears that Truman wasn’t interested in Graham’s advice.   

    God in the Obama Era is an informative book, taking us through the ways in which our Presidents have grappled with faith and politics, seeking to help us understand how they either tried to bring them together or keep them separate.      As for his analysis of Obama, it’s pretty straight forward.  He notes Obama’s interest in and reliance upon Reinhold Niebuhr.  From Niebuhr he has gained an understanding of power and the way in which it should be approached.  It is pragmatic, realistic, and tough minded. 
    The primary issues here are ones of editing.  There are a number of grammatical and typographical errors.  In addition, there were several points where names were given incorrectly – to give two that stood out to me, the former Presidential candidate and Congressman from Missouri is Richard Gephardt not Gerhardt.  The other error is listing the preacher at Obama’s Inaugural Prayer Service as Sharon Watson.  It is Sharon Watkins – General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  In addition, the book would have been more useful had the author included an index.  The book is of sufficient size and scope to warrant such an addition. 
     With these few caveats that focus more on editing and format, one will find here a useful narrative of the role religion has played in the lives of our Presidents.  Since the United States remains religious in its orientation – though secularism is creeping in – it is helpful to know and understand these issues.  It is helpful to have as a guide one who seeks to help us understand the nuances, rather than simply offering critique.  In this Nielsen is successful.

   

I am a Disciples of Christ Pastor.  I came to this place in ministry from a place very different from where I am today.  Unlike many of my colleagues, I didn't grow up Disciple.  I was born, baptized, and confirmed in the Episcopal Church.  I served as an acolyte, sang in the choir, and served as a lay reader.  Later, in High School, I had a crisis of faith, and joined with a Foursquare Church, staying there through college.  By the end of college, I was having struggles with the theological sensibilities of my chosen church home, and being that I was at a Disciples school, ended up imbibing the ethos of that church.  My history professor at Northwest Christian College (now University), Dennis Helsabeck, helped me with this transition.  Even after that, however, I spent time at a Covenant Church, some Baptist churches, and a Presbyterian church (some of that since being ordained as a Disciple).  I went to Fuller Seminary, which is not linked to any particular denomination.
But, I have found a home in the Disciples.  At the same time, even as I'm firmly planted within the Disciples ethos -- appreciating both its emphasis on freedom and its emphasis on unity -- I recognize that the church is much bigger than any one denomination.  Denominational traditions are like families.  Each has its own ethos and sensibilities.  We see it expressed in worship, in preaching, and in outreach efforts.  As Disciples we celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday and baptize upon profession of faith.  But again, the church is larger than the denomination.
As we think about the institutional part of the church -- and I'm not sure that the church can avoid this institutional aspect -- the question remains, what purpose do those entities beyond the local congregation serve?
 That question is addressed in an interview, which is found both in print and on video at the Duke Divinity School's Faith and Leadership website with Cynthia Hale.  Cynthia is pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church, a predominantly African American congregation in Georgia, which is among the largest of the Disciple churches.  She offered a prayer at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service (at which our mutual General Minister, Rev. Sharon Watkins, preached.  She speaks to the question of what "services" these entities provide local congregations, and notes that the General Church, what some might call the top level, is often distant from the local congregation.   Now, she pastors a mega-church, and as such it outsizes the reach of most regions.  Her congregation has more money and more staff -- I'm assuming -- than the region has.  So, what is the relationship? She suggests that the local church is the foundation.  The other manifestations (a Disciple term to get around hierarchicalism) seem to be dying or shrinking.  The Michigan region, for instance, is struggling to call a Regional Minister.  Where are the funds going to come from?  Even as local churches struggle to pay their bills, they find it difficult to justify sending funds to the other parts of the church.  Interestingly, one of the areas she believes regions (especially) can assist local churches is in supporting and empowering pastors.  But, as a mega-church pastor, she wonders who will be her pastor, since she is already serving as a mentor to other pastors (an unofficial bishop) and her regional minister is stretched well beyond his limits (I could say the same about my own).
You will have to click here to view the video.  I hope you'll check out this discussion and then come back here and offer your thoughts about this important question.  What is the future of the denomination?

There is a famous scene in the TV show West Wing, when the President (Martin Sheen) debates a character patterned after Dr. Laura on the implementation of some of the Bible's more inconvenient statements.  The issue is one of both interpretation and implementation of what we read in the Bible.  I expect there are very few perfectly consistent biblical literalists.  At some point, we all pick and choose.  The question has always been -- why and when.  We all have our "proof texts" -- both liberals and conservatives. 

Martin Marty picks up on this issue as he addresses a former Beverly Hills beauty queen's consistency in interpreting the Bible's injunctions on same gender sexual relationships.   As always, a thoughtful response!

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Sightings 3/1/10

Biblical Literalism -- Martin E. Marty
Lauren Ashley, self-proclaimed Miss Beverly Hills, now rejected by Hills officials, is drawing more media attention as an oracle than anyone else since another would-be Beauty Queen, Carrie Prejean, spoke.  Both commented on homosexuality.  We news-scanners find issues connected with it to be the most church-dividing since the Council of Nicea or the Protestant Reformation.  “Gay” could provide copy for every issue of Sightings, but we rarely notice it.  Hardly harpers on the subject, we obviously have to find some distinctive feature to justify commenting this time.  There is one.             While beauty queens usually merit being overlooked as oracles, Miss Ashley, now heaped on by “the liberal elites,” deserves credit for her integrity and consistency.  The trump card played by opponents of gay rights, gay ordination, and all the other gay things in church and often state is marked “Biblical Literalism.”  There are about six inches of print in their big fat Bibles that serve them as negative “proof texts.”  Even secular vote-seekers, when they do not make their cases on other grounds, trumpet “The Bible says…,” but rarely do any do as well as Miss Ashley at making her judgment on the basis of what the Bible actually does say.  Most of them quote parts of verses.  Not Miss Ashley:  “The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman,” she comments. “In Leviticus it says, ‘if man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.”  Most quoters stop there, but Ashley goes on: “They shall surely be put to death…The Bible is pretty black and white.”  So, she emphasizes, if a loving God says “that having sex with someone of your own gender is going to bring death upon you, that’s a pretty stern warning…”
Seriously: if the first half of that verse is divinely-inspired and authoritative, who are we moderns to decide that the second half is not, and that it can be shrugged off?  The same goes for other scriptural death penalty cases.  As every smart skeptic or New Atheist never tires of reminding us, Leviticus and Deuteronomy command capital punishment in numerous clear and specified instances:  when children curse their parents, when anyone blasphemes, and even when a son is persistently disobedient.  He should be put to death by divine, elder-ly, and parental authority backed by God’s law.
Contra the skeptics, New Atheists, and consistent humanists, let it be said that most Bible-believers, even the simplest and thus noblest people of faith, are sophisticated enough at exegesis and hermeneutics not to use the scriptures the way literalist Ashley does.  But does she not do us a favor by pressing the issue?  No Jews are Jews because God told their ancestors to commit omnicide against the Amalekites.  No Christians, whose book also includes Leviticus and Deuteronomy, use it to punish men who have intercourse with a menstruating wife.  No Christians in our cultures use the Bible, which never de-legitimizes slavery, to legitimize slavery.  Bible-folk pick and choose, seeing the Bible as a “book of salvation,” what Christians call “the gospel=the good news.”  It is harder to say why many pick just one command out of many hundreds and raise it above “salvation” and “gospel” or to justify “propositions” and “constitutional amendments” on grounds of biblical literalism.  Is the literal Bible really at issue?
Some anti-gay rights, anti-gay marriage, anti-et cetera folk try to make their case on the basis of psychology or sociology.  Thanks, Lauren Ashley, for relying on the Bible.  Literally.
Reference: http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/02/24/Miss_Beverly_Hills_Cites_Antigay_Bible_Verse/

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com. 
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In this month’s edition of the Religion and Culture Web Forum, Sarah Imhoff introduces us to the Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu, who weds reggae music with strong pronouncements of Jewish faith and identity.  Imhoff notes that a common concern for music critics and Matisyahu's coreligionists alike resides in issues of authenticity.  Music critics ask if he's "reggae" enough; Orthodox Jews debate whether he's "Jewish" enough. By troubling categories of identity and their relationships with artistic form, Imhoff explores the limits of "authenticity" in aesthetic and religious performance.  With invited responses forthcoming from Melvin L. Butler (University of Chicago), Judah Cohen (Indiana University), Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank (University of California, Santa Barbara), Elliot A. Ratzman (Swarthmore College),and Nora Rubel (University of Rochester).
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml 
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Matthew 6:7-13; Luke 13:18-21

We live in a modern democracy that enshrines the words:     We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Didn’t the nation’s founders throw off a king in order to gain this independence?   And yet, week after week, we pray that God’s kingdom would be revealed and that God’s will would be done, both in heaven and on earth.  How do we reconcile our prayers with our politics?
    I suppose we reconcile these two very different perspectives, by spiritualizing the kingdom of God.  We live in a democracy here on earth – where we get to run our own lives – and when we get to heaven, well, then God gets to be in charge!  
    Unfortunately, Jesus won’t let us off the hook so easily.  Remember, in the prayer, as Matthew presents it, we commit ourselves to obeying God, both on earth and in heaven.  Jesus also says that the kingdom is already here in our midst.   And, when people asked – where is the kingdom?  Jesus responded:
    “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’  For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20-21 NRSV).
Now, I should point out that many translations replace the word “among” with “within.”  If we go with “within,” then it’s easier to spiritualize the message of the kingdom.  The kingdom of God simply becomes a matter of our personal relationship with God, and therefore doesn’t have any social or political ramifications.  But, if the kingdom of God is all around us, even if it’s invisible to the naked eye, then the message is quite different.
   
1.  The Kingdom – the Heart of the Prayer   
    So what do we mean, when we pray for God’s kingdom to be revealed?  As we consider this question, it’s important to remember that Jesus focused his ministry on proclaiming the kingdom of God.  Everything he did, whether he was teaching or healing, revealed to the world the nature of God’s reign.  Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us that this petition stands at the very heart of this prayer.  Jesus believed and taught that God’s kingdom required that God’s will be done on earth even as it is in heaven, just as the second clause of the petition reminds us.  Everything that we prayed for in this prayer is rooted in the premise that the kingdom of the Holy God is present in our midst.   This includes God’s daily provisions, the request for forgiveness, and the request that God would protect us against the inroads of evil.  All of this is rooted in the assumption that God’s kingdom is truly present in the here and now.    
    Now, when we pray this prayer, we need to be aware that there are other kingdoms that have a claim on our allegiance, just as they did when Jesus taught this prayer to a people living under Roman occupation.  As I pointed out in the last sermon, the Roman emperor considered himself the Great Father, and the people of the Empire were his children.  He promised to provide them with bread and protection, in exchange for their absolute obedience and worship.  So, when Jesus invites us to pray this prayer, we need to remember that God’s kingdom stands in contrast to Caesar’s – whether Caesar is an emperor or a president doesn’t matter.
    Jesus often used parables to describe the nature of God’s kingdom.  Therefore, as we consider what it means to pray this prayer, I’d like us to consider two very brief but powerful parables.  One talks about mustard seeds and the other speaks of yeast.

2.  Small Is Beautiful
    According to the parable of the mustard seed, this seed is among the smallest of all seeds.  It’s so small that it’s difficult to see, and yet the promise of the mature plant is present in the seed.   I expect that when Jesus says that the kingdom is in your midst, his audience was likely looking around, wondering what they should be looking for.  After all, they couldn’t see a throne or an army.  All they could see was a rag tag band of Galileans following a rather young religious teacher. 
    But this is good news, because it reminds us that small is beautiful, and that big things can have small beginnings.  As one commentator suggested, the people expected the kingdom to be like a mighty cedar, like the one promised in Ezekiel, but as Luke reminds us, Jesus’ ministry was similar to that of the mustard seed.  It’s full of promise, but we can’t see the fullness of its presence just yet.  But, when it does arrive in its fulness – it’ll be much like that cedar.  It will grow large enough to host the birds of the air in its branches, just as the prophet suggested (Ezk. 17:22-23).  And that promise of nesting space has been interpreted to mean inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God.     
    When we pray that God’s kingdom would be made known in our midst, we need to change our sense of what this means.  It’s not a matter of spectacles or demonstrations of power.  Instead, it’s about being present in such a way that God’s purpose might be fulfilled on earth. 
    This is good news, because while we might be small and even insignificant by the world’s standards, we have the possibility of making a difference in the community – that is, we can be signs of God’s reign.  Yes, there was a time when we were a large and influential church, but now, as we seek to be a missional presence in our community, our influence will not be determined by our size or our wealth.  Instead, it will be determined by our willingness to allow God to use us for the transformation of the world.

3.  A Little is a Lot      
    The second parable speaks of yeast, though it might be better to speak of leaven.  The image here is that of a small ball  of fermented dough, which when added to fresh dough or flour starts the leavening process.  In this case, a woman hides, a small amount of leaven in three measures of flour.  That may not sound like a lot at first, but consider that these three measures equal 50 pounds.  That’s enough dough to  feed 150 people, which makes it a lot of bread!
    As we think about what this parable means for us, it might be helpful to remember that leaven and yeast were often used as metaphors for uncleanness and corrupting influences.  Paul speaks of a little leaven, corrupting a whole batch of dough (Gal. 5:9).  According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus warns the disciples about  the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Matthew 16:5-12; Mark 8:14-21).  In this case, however, the leaven has a positive value.  It works in much the same way, but with a different outcome.  Instead of being a source of evil, it becomes a source of good. 
    The early Christian community might have been small in number, and their influence on society may have been initially quite small, but over time, that little bit of leaven, hidden in the flour, produced a lot of loaves of bread.  The kingdom of God may seem hidden, and yet it can change the dynamics of the world’s existence. 
    If we’re willing to be signs of God’s reign, in our words and in our deeds, in the way we interact with others, and live our lives in the world, then we can be change agents in society.  We can change the tone of the conversation and the focus of our culture’s attention.  That is, after all, what yeast does, it changes things.  Paul writes to the Corinthian church and tells them that God has reconciled them in Christ, making them new creations, and therefore God was entrusting to them the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:16-21). 
    We live in a time of fear, mistrust, anxiety, and even great anger.  The air is heavy with its presence.  As Walter Brueggemann speaks of journeying to the common good, he points us back to the Exodus story.  In that story we see a people move out of slavery in Egypt to the freedom of Sinai.  He makes a point that I think speaks to our situation.
    Those who are living in anxiety and fear, most especially fear of scarcity, have not time or energy for the common good.  (Walter Brueggemann, The Journey to the Common Good, WJK, 2010, p. 7). 
The message of the kingdom, is this: we no longer need to live in anxiety.  We needn’t fear scarcity, for we live in the midst of God’s abundance.  This is because  the leaven is hidden in the dough.  Indeed, as the next petition reminds us – God is the great provider.  But, too often we miss the signs of God’s kingdom, because we’re too focused on living In Pharaoh’s kingdom or Caesar’s kingdom.  And in that kingdom, there’s never enough.  That’s because no one shares, and no one looks out for the other.  It’s everyone for themselves.  
    In God’s kingdom, things are different.  We can be agents of change, agents of transformation, agents of reconciliation.  Of course, it starts here in this community that we call church.  If we’re not reconciled – if love doesn’t permeate this community or  we spend our time grumbling about little things – then we’ll find it difficult to answer the call to bear witness to God’s presence in the world. 
  As we pray this prayer, that God’s kingdom would be revealed in our midst, let’s remember that this promised reign of God starts small – in a mustard seed and in a ball of fermented dough.  May we hear and respond to God’s will, both here on earth and also in heaven.  Then we’ll be ready to reach out into our neighborhoods and communities, touching lives, so that they too might be transformed and healed.   

Preached by:Dr. Robert D. CornwallPastor, Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)Troy, Michigan2nd Sunday of LentFebruary 28, 2010
                                               

In the wake of the devastating earthquake that has wreaked havoc on Haiti, news has come of  one of history's largest earthquakes, one measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale, has hit off the coast of Chile, about 200 miles southwest of the capital of Santiago, and 70 miles north of the second largest city, Concepcion, which is in the zone that has experienced the highest amounts of shaking due to the quake. (see the map from the New York Times to the left).
   The damage is great, as one might expect, but added to the earthquake damage in Chile, there is the possibility of a dangerous tsunami hitting through out the Pacific Region, including Hawaii. Despite the magnitude of the quake, the effects on Chile likely will be less than in Haiti, for the people of Chile are used to large quakes and have prepared for them -- much as in Southern California.  Still, as I know from living in Southern California, and having experienced much smaller quakes, the devastation will still be great. 
Church World Service offers this update on ways of helping, knowing that at this point it's still too early to know what will be needed. 
CWS emergency staff have been in contact with our colleagues on the ground in Chile, who report their people are safe.  CWS has worked in Chile to provide emergency preparedness training and assistance to the country's sizable population of Colombians, displaced to Chile by conflict.  CWS works with two Chilean agencies, FASIC (Fundacion de Ayuda Social de las Iglesia Cristianas) and IMECH, the Methodist Church of Chile.

As part of the international ACT Alliance network, CWS will work to provide emergency assistance such as food, water and shelter to those affected by this disaster.  CWS staff continue to be in contact with people in Chile and colleagues in other ACT Alliance agencies to ensure a timely and responsible response.  CWS staff are also preparing for a tsunami response in Hawaii should any be needed. Please donate now to help meet emergency needs in Chile and from related tsunamis.The Disciples of Christ relief arm, Week of Compassion (for whom we are taking our general outreach offering this week), notes that guidance will be provided soon.  Funds can, of course, be given through them.  
In addition, may we keep the people of that region in our prayers.

In the churches I've pastored, all of which have been small or smaller, have liked to think of themselves as family.  Of course, we have always been rather dysfunctional families!   Still, we like the idea of being family, because it speaks of intimacy and support.  But is this a good image for the church?  Does it portend something that undermines the purpose of the Church?
Tony Robinson has written a piece for Duke Divinity School's Call & Response blog that calls into question this idea that the church is family.  Entitled "Quit Thinking of the Church as Family," Robinson notes that there are a number of reasons why this image runs contrary to the purpose of the church to be a community that is transformative of people and the broader community to be more Christlike.  He writes:
Many of the congregations that claim “We’re a family,” lose sight of larger transformative purposes and settle, instead, for the comfort and satisfaction of their members. The core purpose of a congregation -- growing people of faith and helping people and communities move from despair to hope -- gives way to lesser and even contrary purposes like keeping people happy. While it may not be a necessary outcome of the use of the family image, many congregations that gravitate towards it seem to make member comfort and satisfaction their de facto purpose.He goes on to say that if we feel the need to use the idea of family it would be helpful  to remember that Jesus subverted the typical idea of family: If we must use “family,” we should be aware of the way that Jesus, while using “family,” also subverts conventional understandings of family and challenges their usual boundaries with a thoroughly new vision of “family.” I would add that the image of family can be excluding.  Robinson mentions the message sent to the unmarried or those without children that the church is there for "families," and if one doesn't fit that category then one is less than welcome.  I would push this a bit further to note that families focus on blood.  It's not easy to break into a family.  There are certain family traits, secrets, etc. that are not easily shared.  Thus families, by their very nature are focused on maintaining boundaries.
Other images, such as People of God, Body of Christ, even Household of God, may in the end be better terms that will allow us to fulfill our calling to be a transformative agent in the world.