Sunday, April 25, 2021

Heal the Land

I'm planning a canoe/kayak trip across the Susquehanna River this week, to demonstrate a gerrymandered district with one part on the eastern side of the river, and another, cut off by the river, with no way across except by boat unless you drive through neighboring districts. If you're in the area and have some free time, please join me!

Our river crossing will go just above Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history. The reactor was built on a sandbar in the river, a river that provides drinking water for millions in Pennsylvania and Maryland and supplies half the fresh water for the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the country.

Just five years after the reactor was built in 1974, a broken pressure valve set off a series of misguided responses that yielded a partial meltdown, internal explosions and release of radiation into the air. The impacted reactor was never reopened. Another reactor continued in use until 2019. For forty years, there have been unanswered questions about what really happened, long-term impacts, and cost and implications of plans to fully decommission the reactors.

Nicholas L. Tonelli, Flickr

Thursday, April 22, was Earth Day. I thought of that this morning, when my reading in Psalms spoke of jubilant rivers, joyful forest, mountains singing for joy.

Just last week a new report on abandoned coal fields identified Pennsylvania and West Virginia as home to "roughly half the unreclaimed acres and two-thirds of the cost." Another study described hundreds of thousands of orphan gas and oil wells in just four states, including Pennsylvania, leaking oil and gas into water, land and air. Yet another report gave four of Pennsylvania's most populous counties an F on air quality. Five others, including my own, scored a D. In 31 of our 67 counties, data is incomplete or non-existent. PA regulators apparently would like us to believe what we don't know can't hurt us.

In 2012, just a year into this blog, I wrote a post called Earth Day Shalom: Ripple of Resurrection.

I’m not a farmer, or environmental scientist. But my knowledge of Christ’s shalom calls me to extend that experience of welcome and safe haven. On our own suburban half-acre, I’ve been working to build a place of sanctuary for bugs, butterflies, and birds. Native plantings, non-chemical lawn care, and lots of bird feeders and water supplies have helped create an oasis of bird song. Nesting in our yard this year are bluebirds, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, tufted titmice, chickadees, white throated and song sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, and two very dignified crows.

I know, though, that the world is bigger than my yard. Over the years I’ve helped plant trees on a city street, organized landscape days for a local elementary school, planted wildflowers around the edge of a townhouse complex. I’m currently trying to help organize a group of stewards for a neglected wetland near our home.

Looking back, I can see the ways God has led me ever deeper into a vision of connection: interwoven relationships between people, places, ideas, actions. Back in 2012, I quoted Nicholas Wolterstorff's Educating for Shalom:

“…Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships: with God, with self, with fellows, with nature. . . But the peace which is shalom is not merely the absence of hostility, not merely being in the right relationship. Shalom at its highest is enjoyment in one’s relationships. A nation may be at peace with all its neighbors and yet be miserable in its poverty. To dwell in shalom is to enjoy living before God, to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life with oneself. . .”

Resurrection is practiced in part in harmony with God and ourselves, but also in a broader canvas: as good news to a broken, battered world. Like it or not, we operate, every day, in economic, political and environmental contexts. In THOSE contexts God invites us to act as agents of reconciliation and resurrection:

If the resurrection was the sign of the great reversal, it was also the sign of the coming shalom. When the resurrected Jesus greeted his friends, his first words were “peace be with you.” In his letter to the Colossians, Paul insists that all creation is woven together by the creative, sustaining power of Jesus himself, and that the resurrection is the start of reconciliation and God’s shalom for “all things - on earth - or in heaven,” not just for humans, but for all creation.

In the past nine years, I've learned a great deal about the systems and structures of power and economic reality that prioritize profit over people. I've looked into the eyes of political and corporate agents who will do and say whatever is needed to ensure their own profit and power. I've seen good people pulled into destructive actions, complicit in things they know are wrong. And I've seen many of God's people construct convoluted arguments defending the destruction of creation and shalom.

I asked nine years ago:

As a child of God, what role do I have in seeing the world freed from its bondage to decay, not just in the future, but now? Is it enough to sign a petition against fracking, or do I need to do more? Is it enough to buy organic, local food, or do I need to speak out on behalf of sustainable farming?

What I've learned since then is that speaking out on specific issues will do little good until we address the structures of power themselves: structures that enhance the flow of corporate money into the halls of government, systems that deliberately divide and conceal to undermine any attempt at change.

I still spend time doing what I can to heal my own little corner of the earth. As I do, I find insects I never saw before, birds I never heard, toads and snakes and fox and owls enjoying our little sanctuary. But I also find myself living a broader construct, working for fair elections, fair legislative policy. Looking for ways to wrest power from from destructive forces and to find ways to amplify the voices of the poor, the misplaced, the invisible and overlooked,

I've learned that as we commit to act as agents of resurrection, that obedience can lead into unexpected places and demand use of heart and mind, energy and time, resources we didn't know we had.

I've also learned that as we learn to love what God loves, as we ask to see what God sees, we discover untapped reservoirs of grace, beauty, community and love. We see hints of God's kingdom on earth. We're drawn into new experiences of shalom. We find new fellowship with God, creation, and others as we pray and work for God's kingdom here on earth.

Porters' Gate songs have become the soundtrack of this strange, pandemic season: songs of justice, lament, work and neighbor. This one reminds me of our calling, one we can never accomplish on our own: Heal the land, meet the need, set the captives free.

The Porter's Gate - The Earth Shall Know (feat. Casey J, Leslie Jordan & Urban Doxology)

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Setting Captives Free

from Works of Mercy, Rita Corbin, Catholic Worker, New York, ca 1970

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

That was the proclamation of Jesus' intent, read from Isaiah at the start of his public ministry. Some of that work was done in the few short years before his death. Some was accomplished in his death and resurrection. In Ephesians Paul wrote, "When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive": further proclamation of freedom; further setting the oppressed free.

But we know that work continues. In one church I attended, a new rector preached on that text from Luke 4, then asked every parishioner to memorize it.

If you wonder what God is calling you to, he told us, wonder no more. It's right here:

proclaim good news to the poor
proclaim freedom for the prisoners
engage in acts of healing
set the oppressed free

He offended some parishioners by moving quickly to expand the church's work with the homeless. Soon our church was one of a coalition of congregations operating a day-center with showers, laundry facilities, computers and volunteer counselors ready to help navigate the challenges confronting someone trying to rebuild a broken life.

I thought of him yesterday, listening to the sixth of a series of regional forums on prison gerrymandering I helped organize and lead.

How is it that a nation claiming to be Christian has the highest incarceration rate on the planet?

How is it that people claiming to be followers of Christ are often the loudest proponents of tough-on-crime policies that warehouse kids and young adults most oppressed by racism, poverty and inequitable school funding?

April is "Second Chance Month" in Pennsylvania, a celebration of the Clean Slate Act passed in 2020, to seal the criminal records of non-violent offenders after specific crime-free periods, depending on the initial offense.

But as one of the speakers on our forum said yesterday, what about a first chance? How many in PA prisons are serving decades, even life sentences, for things done as kids, without ever having a chance to grow, to learn, to catch a glimpse of a promising future?

I've been carrying some heavy statistics these past few week, stats comparing the US to other nations. We have the highest per-capita incarceration rates in the word, far out-pacing other NATO nations. And PA has the highest percent of juvenile lifers on the planet: as of 2018, 1 in 5 juvenile lifers in the US were right here in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Some of them have since been released, thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in 2012 that sentencing juveniles to life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment. Several of those who have been released have been part of our panels in the last few weeks. They served decades for things done in their teens. Now they're working to help friends in prison gain their freedom and rebuild their lives.

Our forums have looked at the intersection between prison gerrymandering, unjust prison policies, neglect of impacted communities, mass incarceration. One of our presenters yesterday mentioned Hebrews 13: 3:

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

I wrote about that text in 2012, as I tried to think through my own political platform: Remember those in prison.

I shared lots of stats. Here's a sampling (accurate in 2012):

One in 104 American adults is behind bars. One in 33 is under correctional control (on bail, on parole, in prison or jail).

One in four of the world’s inmates is doing time in an American prison.

16% (350,000) of incarcerated adults are mentally ill. The percentage in juvenile custody is even higher.

3/4 of drug offenders in state prisons are non-violent offenders or in prison solely for drug offenses.

85 percent of all juveniles who appear in juvenile court are functionally illiterate. More than 6 in 10 of all prison inmates would have difficulty writing a letter, or filling out a job application.

Young black men without a high school diploma are now more likely to be incarcerated than employed.

Not a lot has changed since then. In fact, in some ways things are worse. COVID-19 has hit prisons hard, with death tolls in prisons higher than the general public. At the same time, attempts to control the pandemic have resulted in increased lockdowns, increased solitary confinement, total suspension of programs that encourage mental health.

I believe

I believe in science, medicine, doctors, vaccinations.

I had my first Moderna vaccination on Marcy 30, Doctor Appreciation Day. I found myself giving thanks for Dr. Fauci and all the doctors, nurses, medical professionals and hospital staff who have worked so tirelessly and courageously during this past year of pandemic. I also gave thanks and continue to give thanks for all the scientists, lab workers, researchers of every kind gathering data and racing to find treatments and vaccines while we travel together through this global experiment.

We've watched the scientific process play out in real time: Does the virus survive on food? Hard surfaces? Still air?

Are children carriers? Can we contract it from people with no symptoms? Do masks work? For the wearer? For those around them?

There are things we know now we didn't know a year ago. There are things we still don't know, maybe never WILL know. The research matters. The humility matters too.

My high school physics teacher, Mr. Appell, liked to lead us deep into the inner workings of theories that shaped science for decades, even centuries, then would start class off one day with a giant NG, for "NO GOOD," scrawled across the board. Copernicus. Galileo. Kepler. Months spent on each, then the giant NG as solar theories bit the dust. NG NG NG.

Unknown East European Artist
Wood engraving

That's the way it is with science. Theories are tested. Data is studied. Some things add up. Some things don't. We balance what we know against what we don't and do our best on the wide continuum between sheer ignorance and total understanding.

Our sermon this morning was about Thomas. He wanted empirical proof of the resurrection, and was given it, and believed, completely. History suggests he traveled through what is now India, founding churches, until he was martyred in 72 BC.

Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." That's us, the centuries of believers, affirming faith in a resurrection we can never prove.

This morning, after the sermon, we also had a baptism. This question is part of the liturgy:

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
The answer:
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
    He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
        and born of the Virgin Mary.
    He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
        was crucified, died, and was buried.
    He descended to the dead.
    On the third day he rose again.
    He ascended into heaven,
        and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
    He will come again to judge the living and the dead

And then this:

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the holy catholic Church,
    the communion of saints,
    the forgiveness of sins,
    the resurrection of the body,
    and the life everlasting.

Do I believe in resurrection? I do, just as much as I believe in science. Maybe more.

That doesn't suggest I know what resurrection means, or that I could describe Jesus' resurrection body, or that I have a fully-formed vision of life everlasting.

I've never really understood the idea that science and belief, science and resurrection, science and miracle somehow contradict each other. We are bundles of cells, nerves, emotions, ideas: some mostly physical, some mostly not.

Yet who can show the exact boundaries between physical, emotional, spiritual?

Who can prove causations are entirely one realm or the other?

I heard Frances Collins speak at a youth conference over a decade ago. He led the Human Genome Project and has been director of the National Institute of Health since 2009, nominated by Barack Obama, unanimously approved by the US Senate, serving under Donald Trump and recently selected by Joe Biden to continue in the same role.

He was an atheist in his youth, devoted to science, with a PhD in physical chemistry and an MD by the time he was 27. But along the way he began to see realities that didn't line up with his scientific training. There was nothing in science to explain morality, hope, or beauty.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."
But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.
For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

Collins helped found BioLogos, an organization which explores the intersection of faith and science. The Biologos website might alarm those who hold to a literal interpretation of every part of scripture. It might intrigue those open to consider alternative perspectives. I enjoy reading the personal stories of scientists whose work in the field led them deeper and deeper into orthodox faith and used the site in my last years of youth ministry exploring questions our older students were asking.

Tonight, April 11, Collins will be discussing How Christians can help end the pandemic. My guess is step one will be "believe the science."

Also of interest, a podcast from last Easter: Resurrection in the time of Coronavirus. Step one: believe in resurrection.

There is far more room on that wide continuum between sheer ignorance and total understanding than we sometimes acknowledge. Room for data, for scientific theory, for mystery, for faith. And for the humility to say "Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief."

Sunday, April 4, 2021

Risen

James Reid, Life of Christ
woodcut, Philadelphia, 1930

Three close family members have had dangerous car accidents in the past nine months.

The first was on the PA turnpike one night last summer caused by debris from a shredded tire. My brother-in-law found his car thrown toward the median. The car was totaled, but he was okay, just badly shaken, replaying the incident in his mind for days after. It could have ended very differently.

Last month is was my son, waiting on a busy road to make a left turn, rear-ended by someone not paying attention. Since his wheels were turned, he was pushed hard into the oncoming traffic lane. Fortunately, no one hit him head-on. His car, too, was totaled. A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later, the outcome could have been tragic.

Wednesday it was my husband, Whitney. Heading off for an oil change, he was hit by an SUV running a red light. The front end of his car was smashed, with debris thrown across the road. His wrist was abraded by an air bag, but other than that, he's fine, just shaken like the others.

Life is fragile. Our days are uncertain. One second can change our lives. One nano-second can end them.

I've been reflecting on all that this week as I read the gospel accounts of crucifixion and resurrection. Many of Jesus' last conversations included predictions of his death and references to resurrection. No one believed him.

We sometimes think the people of his day were innocents, simple folks eager to believe a myth of a resurrected hero.

That's not what I see as I read the accounts. Death was much more present for the people of his time. Disease, hunger, violence: all leaned in close. There were a few surprising stories of resurrection: Lazarus, the rich ruler's daughter. But for every day folks, that seemed like nonsense. You lived. You died. Life was harsh and short. Maybe somewhere in the distant future there was an afterlife for the most pious and holy, but for most folks? Forget it.

The Sadducees, students of religious law, concocted stories and questions to prove resurrection was ridiculous.

I like the way The Message words the account from Mark 12:

Some Sadducees, the party that denies any possibility of resurrection, came up and asked, “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man dies and leaves a wife but no child, his brother is obligated to marry the widow and have children. Well, there once were seven brothers. The first took a wife. He died childless. The second married her. He died, and still no child. The same with the third. All seven took their turn, but no child. Finally the wife died. When they are raised at the resurrection, whose wife is she? All seven were her husband.”

Jesus said, “You’re way off base, and here’s why: One, you don’t know what God said; two, you don’t know how God works. After the dead are raised up, we’re past the marriage business. As it is with angels now, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding the dead, whether or not they are raised, don’t you ever read the Bible? How God at the bush said to Moses, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? The living God is God of the living, not the dead. You’re way, way off base.”

The phrasing of the response interests me: You don't know what God said; you don't know how God works.

James Reid, Life of Christ,
woodcut, Philadelphia, 1930

Now, millennia later, we can read the words, but we still don't quite know what they said, and we definitely don't know how God works.

Jesus's friends, heading toward his tomb on that morning long ago, had spent time with him, watched him, listened to him. But none of them had the slightest hope that death had been defeated. They had loved and followed Jesus. They had watched with grief and fear as the crucifixion unfolded. Now they were hoping to see his broken body, hoping to wrap and bathe it and honor him in his death. Resurrection, from their own accounts, was the last thing on their minds.

Is resurrection on OUR minds, this Easter morning? I had my first COVID vaccination Thursday afternoon, and have spent the past two days slightly achy, slightly feverish, tired.

I'm thinking about the more than 500,000 here in the US who have died of COVID in the past year, the nearly 3 million around the globe.

Does God care? Is resurrection part of that story?

In the days following that first resurrection morning, some believed quickly. Some needed convincing.

Luke, the careful historian, describes the first report of resurrection:

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Were there some who heard the women's story and believed it immediately? When did "nonsense," for Peter, finally make sense? Were there some who saw the resurrected Jesus and explained it all away? Were there some who saw, and heard, and deliberately decided that belief would be too costly?

Saul fought those who spoke of resurrection until he was struck with a blinding light on the road to Damascus. Renamed Paul, he spent the rest of his life teaching others of the truth of the resurrection, risking his life for that central reality, facing imprisonment for the hope of resurrection.

In his first letter to Corinthian converts he reminded them:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

There are mysteries on mysteries in considering resurrection. Are suffering and death anomalies, or essential parts of a much larger story? Is this life precious beyond all else, or a moment, a sigh, before the real song begins? Is it reasonable to believe in resurrection? Unreasonable to doubt it? Are all somehow equally true?

From a poem by John Terpstra (find the full poem here)

Because I did not for a moment doubt in childhood
the story of this rising, shall I, now
I am wiser? The world still has no
boundary. The lines still shiver and wave;
the impossible takes place . . .
I’ll say this: whom she supposed to be
the gardener sings and dances the contour lines
that are his body; this body that is broken
by time and season and violence too deep
for us to wonder at the source, broken
into beauty that lures our present rambling
and leads us to the edge of this escarpment . . .

and where we meet her
who has run and sung and danced these trails
since the day she first saw
the massive rock dislodged
from the cliff-face
of any reasonable expectation.

There is much I don't know: what the word "resurrection" means. What eternity will be. Where the boundaries of grace and love are found, if there are

Today, Resurrection Sunday, is the day to set all wondering aside and simply rejoice that life has conquered death.

Hallejuah. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.

David Jones, The Resurrection, woodcut, London, 1924