The fastest growing religion, and indeed, the religion with the most believers is the Market. Indeed, some have claimed that the Market is the first worldwide religion. Surprised? Consider this: every time someone complains about the cost of oil, or that too many workers are being laid off, or that too many jobs are going overseas, the answer is always “the Market is working — don’t mess with it.” Look at what commodities traders are saying about any attempt to curb the speculation which probably has impacted the run up in oil prices. Their answer is always, “any regulation will only make matters worse, trust the market.” What they are really saying though, is not just trust, but grovel, bow before it, even praise it. Now when the market has become this infallible it has become a god. And an immoral god at that. A god that reduces humans into commodities; a god that reduces all of nature’s value to resources — all to be used for its own profit. The reign of the Market, as it is currently operated, is inescapably abusive — and it is a reign which couldn’t be further from the hopes and equality that are essential to God’s Reign.
Notice something else? Those who praise the “free” market and claim that regulating it would only make matters worse wouldn’t dream of deregulating sexuality or of allowing for a “free” culture. Indeed, they are the first to decry the so-called “liberalization” of society. From the stand point of logic, this is hypocrisy. Jesus understood this well and accused the powers-that-were of his time with much the same thing: “You would regulate the utmost details of the people’s lives, but you let the Roman occupiers do what they want, and just look at what you allow to go on in the Temple!”
The Market has succeeded because it has given its adherents unparalleled financial success. And not just the rich and famous, but all those who have benefited from it indirectly like many of us have. But for all its success, it has created a community of believers whose focus is upon gaining unlimited wealth from limited resources. This is a market that doesn’t understand the concept of “good enough.” Nor does it have a value to define the upper limits of what is a “reasonable return on investment.” And because it can not and will not regulate itself on its own, eventually when those limited resources it depends upon are depleted, the “train wreck” will occur and the Market will collapse.
The alternative is not a planned economy. Such alternatives have proven disastrous time and time again. No, as so often is the case, we must look for a middle way. A responsibly regulated and socially conscious market will provide the best economic benefits for all of Humanity while simultaneously protecting and valuing the environment and its resources. But for that to happen, the divinity that has been invested in the market has to be stripped from it. Only when the infallibility, omniscience and omnipotence are returned to God where they belong, and the market becomes subordinate to God, will such a blessing be possible.
As for you and me, we must practice that middle-way we are preaching to policy makers. Moderation in possessions, activities, hobbies, diet, investments, indeed, in almost every facet of our lives embraces this middle way. But the only way that middle way will ever be emotionally successful for us — the only way it will ever be “good enough” — is if we invest 100% in the true God who is the only One who can help us see that “good enough” is really the “best that can be.”
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
24 Jun 08 — Some thoughs on Pride
Oh what a difference 7 years makes! The last time I marched in Louisville was in 2001 when Pride had to be cloaked with the euphemism of a “Justice March.” As I remember it was about 360 folks walking in a straggling unorganized ramble down 4th St. back then instead of a — get this! a parade with floats! And my oh my, there were churches towards the front, the center, and the rear (cradle to grave coverage). They said 500 and that’s believable, but if you add all the folks participating from the balcony of the Connection and the steps of the Arts Center, well, seems like 1,000+ would be more realistic. And as I remember, back then it was mostly us older folks, whereas this time, it was a whole lot of young people as well. What does this all mean? We’re winning. Maybe not so much the hearts and souls of the hard core opposition, but certainly those who in times past have not been able to come out of their closets and join the fun. Let me say a great big thank you to everyone who had done their part in getting us from 2001 to 2008.
Let me put our march here into some perspective. When I pastored the MCC in Santa Ana, California, there was no longer a Pride Event in the surrounding Orange County, so we went over to nearby Long Beach which has one of the biggest events on the Pride Circuit. In 2002 I rode on the back of a restored 1935 Austin Morgan in full clergy drag with my deacon who was in full leather. We were one of about 100 floats lining up for a parade more than a mile in length passing some 300,000 spectators. Yes, only the floats “marched,” the people just stood around, watching and cheering. What struck me so much about all those thousands was how “ordinary” we all looked.
In 2005 our church staffed a booth at the Pride festival. I was there for 12 hours on Saturday and 9 on Sunday. I temporarily lost my hearing part way through since they had put our church booth right next to the Masterbeat® booth that was hawking and demonstrating its dance CDs at mega-volume levels. With literally hundreds of thousands of people passing by and with people who were as good at reaching out and talking to people as the crew did this year at MCC Louisville, over those two days we were able to hand out less than 30 brochures about the church. Conversely, here the crew passed out close to 300 brochures about the church in less than 8 hours with only several thousands passing by. Which just goes to show that California and Kentucky are very different. What works in one place doesn’t always work in another. (Am I ever finding that out!)
So what does it all mean? The Good News is: faith is very important to the folks visiting Louisville’s Pride Festival. There is a hunger. And they are interested in us (and other faith organizations around town). Time to get cooking!
Let me put our march here into some perspective. When I pastored the MCC in Santa Ana, California, there was no longer a Pride Event in the surrounding Orange County, so we went over to nearby Long Beach which has one of the biggest events on the Pride Circuit. In 2002 I rode on the back of a restored 1935 Austin Morgan in full clergy drag with my deacon who was in full leather. We were one of about 100 floats lining up for a parade more than a mile in length passing some 300,000 spectators. Yes, only the floats “marched,” the people just stood around, watching and cheering. What struck me so much about all those thousands was how “ordinary” we all looked.
In 2005 our church staffed a booth at the Pride festival. I was there for 12 hours on Saturday and 9 on Sunday. I temporarily lost my hearing part way through since they had put our church booth right next to the Masterbeat® booth that was hawking and demonstrating its dance CDs at mega-volume levels. With literally hundreds of thousands of people passing by and with people who were as good at reaching out and talking to people as the crew did this year at MCC Louisville, over those two days we were able to hand out less than 30 brochures about the church. Conversely, here the crew passed out close to 300 brochures about the church in less than 8 hours with only several thousands passing by. Which just goes to show that California and Kentucky are very different. What works in one place doesn’t always work in another. (Am I ever finding that out!)
So what does it all mean? The Good News is: faith is very important to the folks visiting Louisville’s Pride Festival. There is a hunger. And they are interested in us (and other faith organizations around town). Time to get cooking!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
19 Jun 08 — Some Thoughs on Immigration
Until the ever increasing spiral of gas prices and other economic woes knocked it out of our consciousness, immigration was a big and very emotional issue. Now it has faded into the background, but the hurt, pain, confusion and antagonism has not been resolved. Reading through the Abraham and Sarah narrative in Genesis reminds us that we are all immigrants. Every citizen of our country came from some where else. At one time or another, all of our ancestors heard God calling out to them to leave their home and find a better place. As Christians we call this the Promised Land; as citizens we call it “the land of opportunity.” Regardless of what we call it, at heart the motivation is the same: our hope for a better life.
Everyone of us also shares something else with Abraham and Sarah. When we get to that Promised Land, it is almost always already occupied by the Canaanites. For European-Americans, the Native-Americans who had arrived earlier were labeled and treated like Canaanites. For those Americans immigrating to the west coast, following the siren song of the Gold Rush, it was the Californios (the Mexicans who had already colonized parts of what is now our southwest) who were labeled and treated like Canaanites. For African-Americans, who were migrating north to escape oppression in the deep south in the earlier decades of the last century, it was the already entrenched and unwelcoming ethnic groups in the northern cities who became Canaanites. Guess what? For all those crossing our borders in search of the Promised Land today, we are in danger of being the Canaanites of this generation. And we know what God’s opinion of the Canaanites is. Let’s just say, that’s not a “label” I’m in any hurry to claim.
Now there are many ways of escaping the Canaanite label. We can welcome the immigrants, treating them as neighbors and not as enemies — giving them the same love we give ourselves — just like Jesus taught us. We can also help them to make their homeland better so they never feel the need to move. Sort of like sharing our blessings with those who are less fortunate — a good Christian virtue and pragmatic politics. Certainly there are many more ways, but you won’t hear anything like this in the political controversies which are sure to arise when this issue becomes a hop topic again. It will all be spoken and argued in the language of law, not in love. In the mean time, let’s seek ways of creatively addressing the problem so we aren’t condemned as Canaanites when that time comes.
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We are also all immigrants from the womb. The very moment we are born we enter a world in which the Canaanites are on the prowl. Worse, for the first several decades of our life, we are dependent upon many of those Canaanites! Sometimes they are good, and we find someone like a King Cyrus who will protect us and help us grow into the person we are supposed to. And sometimes they are like a Haman, set on destroying us, or like a Jezebel, keeping us in our place (or at least what “she” thinks our place should be). If we are going to find the Promised Land, or perhaps we should say, if we are to become the person God promised us to be, then we have to go on a voyage of discovery, seeking a place for ourselves in the World. If we don’t accept the challenge, then the Canaanites will always control our destiny.
Everyone of us also shares something else with Abraham and Sarah. When we get to that Promised Land, it is almost always already occupied by the Canaanites. For European-Americans, the Native-Americans who had arrived earlier were labeled and treated like Canaanites. For those Americans immigrating to the west coast, following the siren song of the Gold Rush, it was the Californios (the Mexicans who had already colonized parts of what is now our southwest) who were labeled and treated like Canaanites. For African-Americans, who were migrating north to escape oppression in the deep south in the earlier decades of the last century, it was the already entrenched and unwelcoming ethnic groups in the northern cities who became Canaanites. Guess what? For all those crossing our borders in search of the Promised Land today, we are in danger of being the Canaanites of this generation. And we know what God’s opinion of the Canaanites is. Let’s just say, that’s not a “label” I’m in any hurry to claim.
Now there are many ways of escaping the Canaanite label. We can welcome the immigrants, treating them as neighbors and not as enemies — giving them the same love we give ourselves — just like Jesus taught us. We can also help them to make their homeland better so they never feel the need to move. Sort of like sharing our blessings with those who are less fortunate — a good Christian virtue and pragmatic politics. Certainly there are many more ways, but you won’t hear anything like this in the political controversies which are sure to arise when this issue becomes a hop topic again. It will all be spoken and argued in the language of law, not in love. In the mean time, let’s seek ways of creatively addressing the problem so we aren’t condemned as Canaanites when that time comes.
///////
We are also all immigrants from the womb. The very moment we are born we enter a world in which the Canaanites are on the prowl. Worse, for the first several decades of our life, we are dependent upon many of those Canaanites! Sometimes they are good, and we find someone like a King Cyrus who will protect us and help us grow into the person we are supposed to. And sometimes they are like a Haman, set on destroying us, or like a Jezebel, keeping us in our place (or at least what “she” thinks our place should be). If we are going to find the Promised Land, or perhaps we should say, if we are to become the person God promised us to be, then we have to go on a voyage of discovery, seeking a place for ourselves in the World. If we don’t accept the challenge, then the Canaanites will always control our destiny.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
17 Jun 08 - Some Thoughts on Unity
Unity is one of those “touchy” subjects. You hear it all the time in civic and church discussions. There seems to be a deeply ingrained longing for unity and an equally nagging fear of disunity. You can hear many examples of this longing for unity in Scripture, especially in the New Testament. Consider what Paul asks of his Philippian congregation, “Beloved, I urge Euodia and Syntyche to think alike in the Savior.” (Philippians 4:2) Here Paul is asking the congregation as a whole to help these two power women work for the same purpose. And Luke paints us a portrait of unity in the early church when he wrote, “Now the multitude of those believers were united as one heart and soul.” (Luke 4:32) And in a more chilling call for unity, the High Priest of those days said in so many words, “It is better for one to be eliminated so that the precious unity of our faith can be maintained.” (Paraphrase of John 18:14) We hear this cry today from many leaders when they tell us to hide part of who we are or stop doing something we love for what they consider to be for the better of the whole.
But God has something to say about this unity. God warns us that too much of a good thing can be bad. In the story of Babel in Genesis 11, Humanity was all united and was seeking to build a temple which would reach as high as the Heavens above. God “came down,” realized this was not a good thing, and intentionally disunited our ancestors by giving them the gift of different languages and cultures. No longer able to coordinate their massive building project, it fell into ruins as everyone went in search of a home they could call their own. By this confusion that God created, God was able to retain control — and that means that ultimately it is God’s Responsibility to unify us across all of our differences, because God was the One who created those differences. To go one more step, that means that Unity is in the Godhead and is something we can participate in but never fully achieve until we enter Paradise.
Historically we have paid a terrible price in war and other forms of strife because of disunity. We have also not been able to develop cures for diseases, nor have we been able to feed all the world’s hungry because of economic disunity. But look at what we have gained from intentional human acts of disunity: our Protestant faith was born out of our split with Catholicism, as indeed our Christian faith was from Judaism. Our country was born by disuniting from the United Kingdom, and how impoverished would be the whole world without the example of our Constitution — born to unite colonies which had won their freedom by disunion. And where would we be as various ethnic, racial, and sexual communities if we had not broken away from the mainstream to consolidate and live into our identities even as we maintain faith with a larger civic and faithful whole? In other words, it is not as simple as unity is good and disunity is bad.
Jesus sought to bring us to a workable state of unity when he asked us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31). But Jesus never told us to be our neighbor, or even to be just like our neighbor. No, there is only so much unity that Jesus wanted for us — Jesus well knows that too much unity like too much power can corrupt Humanity. Unity can help foster peace and efficiency, but too much unity can trivialize and diminish people’s lives.
So we have Humanity’s longing for unity and God/Jesus’ Cautions about having too much unity. We must seek a middle way between these two poles: a place in the sun that allows us to be who we are while helping others to be who they are.
But God has something to say about this unity. God warns us that too much of a good thing can be bad. In the story of Babel in Genesis 11, Humanity was all united and was seeking to build a temple which would reach as high as the Heavens above. God “came down,” realized this was not a good thing, and intentionally disunited our ancestors by giving them the gift of different languages and cultures. No longer able to coordinate their massive building project, it fell into ruins as everyone went in search of a home they could call their own. By this confusion that God created, God was able to retain control — and that means that ultimately it is God’s Responsibility to unify us across all of our differences, because God was the One who created those differences. To go one more step, that means that Unity is in the Godhead and is something we can participate in but never fully achieve until we enter Paradise.
Historically we have paid a terrible price in war and other forms of strife because of disunity. We have also not been able to develop cures for diseases, nor have we been able to feed all the world’s hungry because of economic disunity. But look at what we have gained from intentional human acts of disunity: our Protestant faith was born out of our split with Catholicism, as indeed our Christian faith was from Judaism. Our country was born by disuniting from the United Kingdom, and how impoverished would be the whole world without the example of our Constitution — born to unite colonies which had won their freedom by disunion. And where would we be as various ethnic, racial, and sexual communities if we had not broken away from the mainstream to consolidate and live into our identities even as we maintain faith with a larger civic and faithful whole? In other words, it is not as simple as unity is good and disunity is bad.
Jesus sought to bring us to a workable state of unity when he asked us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31). But Jesus never told us to be our neighbor, or even to be just like our neighbor. No, there is only so much unity that Jesus wanted for us — Jesus well knows that too much unity like too much power can corrupt Humanity. Unity can help foster peace and efficiency, but too much unity can trivialize and diminish people’s lives.
So we have Humanity’s longing for unity and God/Jesus’ Cautions about having too much unity. We must seek a middle way between these two poles: a place in the sun that allows us to be who we are while helping others to be who they are.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
12 Jun 08 - Some Thoughts About Freedom
Drive around for any amount of time, and sooner or later, you will see a bumper sticker which says, “Freedom is not free.” I even saw it this last week on a church sign in honor of Memorial Day. And there is a measure of truth to it. The history of our nation is written in the blood paid for our freedom. And it is right that we honor that sacrifice.
But let us also celebrate those who have won freedom through words instead of arms. And let us also remember that there is a freedom none of us can buy with our own blood: the freedom we receive because God gave it to us. Consider these texts from the Bible: “Where God’s Spirit is, there is liberty.” (II Corinthians 3:17) “For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1) “As God’s Servants, live as free persons…” (I Peter 2:16) and “God has sent me to proclaim release to those held captive…to liberate the oppressed.” (Luke 4:18) Is there a price for this freedom? Yes, it costs your belief.
When faced with the question of freedom, our faith should be in the driver’s seat. Ideally, we bring liberty to others and ourselves by bringing them to God. For some that will be as Christians, for some that will be through other faiths or civics that prize liberty and freedom as virtues. Regardless, the more we get God involved, the better chance we have of obtaining freedom at the lowest possible price.
But let us also celebrate those who have won freedom through words instead of arms. And let us also remember that there is a freedom none of us can buy with our own blood: the freedom we receive because God gave it to us. Consider these texts from the Bible: “Where God’s Spirit is, there is liberty.” (II Corinthians 3:17) “For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1) “As God’s Servants, live as free persons…” (I Peter 2:16) and “God has sent me to proclaim release to those held captive…to liberate the oppressed.” (Luke 4:18) Is there a price for this freedom? Yes, it costs your belief.
When faced with the question of freedom, our faith should be in the driver’s seat. Ideally, we bring liberty to others and ourselves by bringing them to God. For some that will be as Christians, for some that will be through other faiths or civics that prize liberty and freedom as virtues. Regardless, the more we get God involved, the better chance we have of obtaining freedom at the lowest possible price.
10 Jun 08 - Some Thoughts About Tithes
Abram gave the first recorded tithe to God in thanksgiving for his victory in war (Genesis 14:14-20). This was about 1800 years before Christ was born. The “last word” on tithing from the Bible is found in Malachi 3:20. Malachi was a Prophet speaking for God about 450 years before Christ. He challenged us to “bring the full tithe into the storehouse…and thus put Me to the test.” Yes, that’s right, God is challenging us to challenge God. And why? So that we can see “if God will not open the windows of Heaven for you and pour down an overflowing blessing.” (Scripture quotation is from the NRSV.) So, the first word of the Bible on tithing says we should tithe because of what God has already done for us. And the last word says we should tithe because of what God will do for us.
Jesus accepted these teachings and made no changes to them. His only concern was that the religious leaders of his time were tithing to their advantage and not the faith’s. For example, the Pharisees would pay tithes on the seasoning for food but not for the food itself. (See Matthew 23:23 for another example.) Jesus was accusing them of being stingy and ungenerous. He was also accusing them of missing the point.
What then can we say about tithing? It is a way of life, a part of our relationship with God. We should tithe in recognition of who God is for us, and what God does for us. We also do not want the Living Christ to say, “You are being stingy,” or worse, “You’re missing the point.” Like any other investment, the more one invests, the more one receives. It may not be what we expect, but it is what God wants us to have. It may not come today, but it will come someday. In the meantime, tithing helps to keeps us focused upon God. And that is true whether our tithe is money, time, or talent.
Jesus accepted these teachings and made no changes to them. His only concern was that the religious leaders of his time were tithing to their advantage and not the faith’s. For example, the Pharisees would pay tithes on the seasoning for food but not for the food itself. (See Matthew 23:23 for another example.) Jesus was accusing them of being stingy and ungenerous. He was also accusing them of missing the point.
What then can we say about tithing? It is a way of life, a part of our relationship with God. We should tithe in recognition of who God is for us, and what God does for us. We also do not want the Living Christ to say, “You are being stingy,” or worse, “You’re missing the point.” Like any other investment, the more one invests, the more one receives. It may not be what we expect, but it is what God wants us to have. It may not come today, but it will come someday. In the meantime, tithing helps to keeps us focused upon God. And that is true whether our tithe is money, time, or talent.
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