Love life. Live love.

Yesterday was National Daughters’ Day. One of the great gifts in my life has been my two wonderful, thoughtful daughters, and my granddaughter, a joy and delight just as her mother and aunt have been. 

But the day reminds me of other daughters in the faith, young women God has graciously put in my life to teach me and challenge me and remind me that simple answers are rarely the right ones, and grace is a gift that flows in every direction. 

Yesterday was also the day President Trump announced his third selection for Supreme Court judge, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg still awaits burial. The rancor and division grow deeper as precedent is ignored, previous statements about appropriate timing are forgotten, and the court becomes ever more a tool of party politics. 

I wrote in 2012 about my experience as a young mom, marching in pro-life marches as part of a group called NOEL: National Organization of Episcopalians for Life. I wrote then: 

For me, this is a topic where justice, mercy, and humility collide, and I find myself grieving, repenting, and wishing I lived in a time that allowed sackcloth and ashes. I’d go find some.

Here’s what I grieve: 

• Political rhetoric that makes light of the experience of rape, that dares to suggest that some rapes are more worthy of sympathy than others. 
• Junk science masquerading as fact that somehow ignores the experience of an estimated 32,000 women with rape-related pregnancies each year.
• The flurry of punitive and mean-spirited laws promoted, in some cases passed, with no clear justification: how many men who voted for transvaginal ultrasounds had any idea of what that might be like? 
• Attempts to limit access to contraception, cut food aid to mothers and children, limit early education. 

Since then, I’ve watched my people, white Evangelical Christians, put their trust in a man who has boasted about forced sexual encounters, whose close friends exploited underage women for the benefit of wealthy, powerful men, a man who mocks the disabled and calls fallen soldiers "losers." 

In ministry I often referred to a passage in 2 Chronicles 20, where King Jehoshaphat showed great wisdom as he put his trust in God’s provision. Lately I’ve been musing on the end of that story, where Jehoshaphat put his trust in an unholy alliance, rather than God himself:

Later, Jehoshaphat king of Judah made an alliance with Ahaziah king of Israel, whose ways were wicked. He agreed with him to construct a fleet of trading ships. After these were built at Ezion Geber, Eliezer son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, “Because you have made an alliance with Ahaziah, the LORD will destroy what you have made.” The ships were wrecked and were not able to set sail to trade.

In the evangelical alliance with Donald Trump and the harsher side of the GOP, evangelical churches are destroying their witness and demonstrating a tragic lack of trust in God and lack of understanding of who he calls us to be. 

I’ve argued elsewhere that Trump’s ways are wicked. The evidence now is far greater than what I knew in 2016, when I wrote about his recurrent pattern of fraud and mistreatment of women. Since then he has manipulated every institution he can reach to his own profit and political ends, sowing seeds of doubt in our elections, our postal service, our courts, our medical professsionals.

If the goal is to preserve life, we need to ask:

• Why did he hide the danger of Covid-19 and refuse to use all means he could to put testing in place and provide needed supplies? The mounting death toll here in our country could have been averted with leadership that put lives first. 
• Why does he hold rallies, with thousands in close quarters, without masks, in defiance of all medical recommendations, risking the lives of his own supporters? 
• Why does he undercut and discount attempts to address climate change, which costs thousands of lives each year and will soon decimate island nations and coastal communities around the globe? 
• Why does he fail to speak out on behalf of black lives lost to unjust use of force? 
• Why has he pushed for federal application of the death penalty, zealously endorsing the execution of poor people of color while commuting sentences of his powerful cronies? 

If the goal is to see fewer abortions, there are better ways to get there than packing the court with partisan judges. I continue to wonder why those who claim to be pro-life are not more eager to ensure policies that would make parenthood more possible. There are plenty who have written about this in more detail than space allows. 

Here's a quick sample from Red Letter Christians: 

The fact is that banning abortion is not the best way to safeguard the unborn. Three of the five nations with the lowest abortion rates are nations where abortion is legal. Further, the regions of the world where abortion rates are the highest are where abortion tends to be illegal. No doubt many factors account for this fact. Regardless, all in all, there is no correspondence between the legality or illegality of abortion and abortion rates.

What many pro-life Christian also don’t know is that abortion rates in the United States have been dropping and are now at pre-Roe v Wade levels. Some would like to claim that abortion rates are dropping because of the restrictive laws that have been put in place that have closed abortion clinics or otherwise made it more difficult for women to get abortion. But the facts don’t support that claim.

States where abortions are easily available have seen abortion rates fall as much or more. One report observes, “Five of the six states with the biggest declines – Hawaii at 30 percent, New Mexico at 24 percent, Nevada and Rhode Island at 22 percent, Connecticut at 21 percent – have passed no recent laws to restrict abortion clinics or providers.” Further, other developed nations have seen abortion rates drop without laws that have restricted abortion.

Those of us who oppose abortion have a responsibility to be honest about what does and doesn’t work. Something besides a desire to protect unborn life is at work if most of the anti-abortion efforts are dedicated to pushing an approach that has not been shown to be consistently effective. The desire to control and punish women seems to be over-riding the desire to reduce abortions. This is deeply misguided.

So what works? Essentially, it comes down to three things: (1) easy access to cheap or free contraceptive, (2) sex education which includes information about how to correctly use contraceptives, and (3) a strong social safety net.

That safety net would include paid family leave, affordable child care, affordable housing. I’m offended by anyone who claims to be pro-life and opposes policies that make it easier to care for children.

I know women whose lives have been shattered by abortion.

And I know teen girls burdened with care for small lives when they weren’t ready to manage their own, young women whose futures were shattered by circumstances far beyond their control, women who found themselves drowning with guilt and regret and judgement from all sides.

Punitive policies aren’t the answer.

I think of Jesus’ gentleness with the woman caught in adultery, with the woman at the well, with the bruised and broken women drawn to his words of mercy.

I think of the verse from Isaiah that says “a bruised reed he will not break.”

I think of the way he called the women around him – older, younger, clean, “unclean”: daughter. 

And I think of his words for the Pharisees eager to be right but lacking in love and mercy:

 do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. 

The load of an unwanted pregnancy is a heavy one. 

Strange that the people most likely to impose that on women they don’t know have been most vocal in refusing to wear masks to protect the lives of those they do know. 

It’s not for me to judge. 

What I know for sure is this: the Lord of life is also the Lord of love.

Our policy needs to be shaped by both: love of life. Lives of love.

If you listen to podcasts, here’s one to consider: Freedom Road Podcast: It's time to talk about abortion and reproductive justice. I love a concluding comment from Susan Chorley, an ordained American Baptist minister and director of an after-abortion counseling hotline: 

I think my prayer and what I have continued to uncover and recover is that the love of Jesus is big enough. And any of these limits that we’re trying to place on Jesus’s love are false. And it’s a real opportunity and actually a revival of the Christian community to trust in the abundance and never-ending love of Jesus.

If our arguments don't reflect the never-ending love of Jesus, they're just arguments. Clanging cymbals. Sounding brass. Campaign slogans meant to inflame. 

We don’t need more of Donald Trump.

We need far more of Jesus and his unfailing love. 

Are there other Christians speaking out against a one-issue embrace of Donald Trump's presidency? There are many. If you need more, let me know. 

A short video by a pro-life doctor: The core of the pro-life ethic is respect for human life. Don’t let your vote be held hostage by a president who shows no respect for human life.

Liberty professor Karen Swallow asks Must Pro-llfe mean Pro-Trump? We have placed too much faith in the political calculus and not enough faith in God’s power.  At what point do our actions imply that God wants us to do wrong because he needs us to help him do right?

Mother of six Jennifer Abel describes The Heavy Weight of Disillusionment and asks her fellow Christians: Why are you so willing to turn a blind eye to so many behaviors that are completely, blatantly in opposition to the heart and character of Christ?

Pro-life conservative columnist Mona Charen: Why this Pro-Live Conservative Is Voting for Biden: Being pro-life is part of an overall approach to ethical questions. It’s wrong to take innocent life. But other things are immoral too. It’s also wrong to swindle people, to degrade and demonize, to incite violence, to bully, and while we’re at it, to steal, to bear false witness, to commit adultery, and to covet. . . Donald Trump is a daily, even hourly, assault on the very idea of morality, even as he obliterates truth. His influence is like sulphuric acid on our civic bonds. His cruelty is contagious.

Conservative columnist David French asks Do Pro-Lifers Who Reject Trump Have ‘Blood on their Hands’? Short answer: no. The long answer: 1. Presidents have been irrelevant to the abortion rate; 2. Judges have been forces of stability, not change, in abortion law; 3. State legislatures have had more influence on abortion than Congress; 4. Even if Roe is overturned, abortion will be mostly unchanged in the U.S.; and 5. The pro-life movement has an enormous cultural advantage.

From Christianity Today: On the Front Lines, Some Pro-Life Activists Think Twice About Supporting Trump.

A foster and adoptive parent speaks on behalf of unwanted children: Pro-life should be more than pro-birth.

Church of the Redeemer pastor Tim Keller Encourages Christians to Vote Their Conscience, Stop Demonizing Other Political Parties: “The Bible binds my conscience to care for the poor, but it does not tell me the best practical way to do it.” “The Bible tells me that abortion is a sin and great evil, but it doesn’t tell me the best way to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which policies are most effective.

Mennonite pastor and professor Ron Sider: Does Abortion Trump Everything Else?  "What does the bible say God cares about? . . . God cares both about the sanctity of human life and ecnomic justice for all, especially the poor. God cares both about marriage and racial justice. God cares both about sexual integrity and peacemaking and care for creation. . . Poverty, health care, racial justice, climate change, capital punishment; Abortion is by no means the only pro-life issue in 2020. Biblical people must support a biblically-balanced agenda, not one-issue politics."

Maintain Justice

What crimes do we justify?

Which do we condemn?

I’d been thinking about this before the release Friday night of a tape in which candidate Donald Trump boasted of sexual assault.

Wondering if “law and order” would be a focus on this evening’s presidential debate.

I doubt it will come up, but by many indicators crime rates have fallen sharply in the past few decades, while incarceration rates have been near an all-time high.

Prosecution of white collar crime is at a twenty year low, while incarceration for misdemeanors and other petty crimes is higher than anyplace on the planet.

It’s not that financial transgressions are less common that they were before. By any account, white collar crime is epidemic.

But complicated financial systems, loosely regulated corporate structures, shrinking budgets for investigation, unfilled judicial posts and more have made it far less common for such crimes to be brought to trial.

In towns and cities across America, poor people can be jailed for failure to pay a simple traffic fine.

Juvenile shoplifters can find themselves doing time if their parents don’t have means to hire legal counsel.

Growing Incarceration Contributed Little to Drop in Crime

Migrant children are held for months in detention centers without legal recourse.

People struggling with mental illness are locked in solitary confinement for something as vague as disturbing the peace.

But steal billions of retirement dollars from public pensions and there’s no chance at all you’ll ever see a prison cell.

Cheat employees and contractors of millions and smile. While employers steal an estimated $20 billion a year, very few are ever prosecuted and current penalties involve paying back just a fraction of what’s owed. 

In 2014, journalist Matt Taibbi wrote a scathing analysis called The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.  It’s worth quoting at length, but here’s just a sampling: 

It’s become a cliché by now, but since 2008, no high-ranking executive from any financial institution has gone to jail, not one, for any of the systemic crimes that wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth.

Our prison population, in fact, is now the biggest in the history of human civilization. There are more people in the United States either on parole or in jail today (around 6 million total) than there ever were at any time in Stalin’s gulags. For what it’s worth, there are also more black men in jail right now than there were in slavery at its peak. See if this syllogism works, then. Poverty goes up; Crime goes down; Prison population doubles.

When the state brings a fraud case against a welfare mom, it brings it with disgust, with rage, because in addition to committing the legal crime, she’s committed the political crime of being needy and an eyesore. Banks commit the legal crime of fraud wholesale; they do so out in the open, have entire departments committed to it, and have employees who’ve spent years literally doing nothing but commit, over and over again, the same legal crime that some welfare mothers go to jail for doing once. . .  

Senators Patty Murray (a Democrat from Washington) and Sherrod Brown (a Democrat from Ohio), together with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (a Democrat from Connecticut) have introduced federal legislation that would make it easier for employees to recover stolen wages. Their bill would provide for triple reimbursement as well as penalties and potential criminal charges for repeated offenses or deliberate falsification of records.

That legislation is not likely to pass anytime soon.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (a Democrat from Massachusetts) has been tireless in efforts to shame Congress into addressing white collar crime. Her report “Rigged Justice” describes the way corporate criminals “game the system, cheat families, rip off taxpayers, and even take actions that result in the death of innocent victims - all with no serious consequences."

I would happily vote for a candidate willing to address the depths of current injustice, but from what I can tell, there’s no one on my own ballot – from top to bottom – who has expressed any interest in white collar crime.

Except to engage in it.

Candidate Donald Trump was recently called out by the New York Times for a 1995 tax filing that claimed a $916 million loss. According to Business Insider, “That’s 1.9% of all the net operating losses claimed by individual income taxpayers in the US in 1995.”

Add in “a property-tax rebate on his Trump Tower penthouse through a program that is supposed to be available only to people who earn less than $500,000 a year.”

Then consider the practice of having bills paid to the Trump Foundation, rather than Trump corporations, and using that money for non-charitable purposes.  

Last week New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman instructed the foundation that its fundraising was in violation of the law and must stop immediately. The foundation has fifteen days to provide the financial audit reports it should, by law, have provided every year since 2008. Noncompliance, according to James G. Sheehan, the head of the charities bureau in the office of Attorney General, will be considered “a continuing fraud upon the people of New York.”

Fraud is also the word used in regard to Trump University. An affidavit filed by a former employee states:

Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.

The fraud trial in New York is set for November 28. 

In Texas, then-Attorney General Greg Abbott instructed a state regulator to drop investigation into Trump University fraud despite “a solid case”; Abbot received a $35,000 campaign contribution from Trump in his subsequent successful run for governor. 

In Florida, a similar case was dropped after a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s campaign. Attorneys and papers across the country have asked for investigation into bribery. 

Fraud, bribery, tax evasion: as I said, white collar prosecutions are at an all time low, and an aggressive lawyer can do wonders in discouraging investigation.

Trump’s mentor in law and business was Roy Cohn, chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Until his death from AIDS in 1986, Cohn instructed Trump on the wonders of tax evasion, legal circumvention, aggressive countersuits and well-placed campaign contributions. Just weeks before his death, Cohn was disbarred for  “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” 

  

Cohn’s use of the law to bully opponents has served Trump well in his repeated, well-documented wage theft. He’s withheld payment from contractors and subcontractors, lawyers, architects, employees, even beauty pageant winners. 

Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.

In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing. . . .

The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.  

There’s a great deal of spin in this election season. It sometimes feels hard to find the truth. But the

USA Today Exclusive: Hundreds Allege
Donald Trump doesn't pay his bills

mountain of evidence on Trump’s business dealings goes back decades and includes depositions, legal documents and testimony from many he has harmed.

Trump supporters point to Hillary Clinton’s own baggage. I’m not a Clinton supporter, but the few infractions she’s accused of have yielded little evidence beyond poor judgment (in the case of the supposed email scandal), reasonable attempts to manage difficult diplomatic messaging and the painful fallout of a terrorist attack (Benghazi), and overly-zealous defense of an adulterous husband. 

My point here is not support for Clinton. She has both strengths and flaws. She's been attacked, investigated, vilified more than any person I can think of. 

My point is my own deep grief that so many would support a person who has boastfully defrauded so many.

And my longing for leaders who care - even a little - about the justice God demands. 

I’ve been reading the prophets this fall as antidote to the moral maneuvering endemic to election discourse. 

And I’ve been circling back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy as I listen to religious leaders who dare to tell me who to vote for. 

Here’s what Leviticus 19:13 says:

Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.

And Deuteronomy 24:14-16

Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin. 

And Amos 5:10-12:

There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth.
You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.   

And Malachi (3:5-6):

 I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty. 

There are many issues weighing in the balance this election.

I’ll be praying for justice in our courts and for wisdom about who might support that.

And I’ll be voting against candidates who aggressively, consistently deprive the poor of justice.

And yes, I know there are many who believe the most important issue in this election is selection of Supreme Court judges who will overturn, or NOT overturn, Roe v. Wade. I’ll be praying and posting about that next week.

This post is part of a continuing series on What's Your Platform 

Beyond the Party Platform July 24, 2016

A Different Way July 31, 2016 

Election Fraud and Rigged Elections, August 10, 2016 

How Long Will the Land Lie Parched? August 21, 2016 

Walls, Welcome, Mercy, Law August 28, 2016

Workers and Their Wages, Sep 3, 2016 

Educating Ourselves On Education, Sep 10, 2016 

Let's Talk, Sep 17, 2016

The Language of the Unheard, Sep 24,2016

Symptoms, Not Causes

Last week I spent three days in Washington, DC with 700 or so strong, outspoken women and a handful of men courageous enough to join the League of Women Voters. We were wrestling with issues of democracy: 

• Roll-back of voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act
• Vast infusions of undisclosed donations that followed the Supreme Court Citizen’s United decision declaring corporations are people.
• Erosion of public trust in the structures and systems of government.

We’ve heard the stories in the news: five hour waits to vote in poor communities in Arizona. 

Illegal purges of voter rolls in states like Georgia and Ohio.  

The speakers I heard brought the headlines alive with context and stories and troubling insight into underlying issues. 

Amanda Taub spoke on the rise of American authoritarianism, describing the way rapid social change can become an occasion for whole groups of people to look for scapegoats to blame. Powerful, punitive leaders can stir anxiety into fear and sweep laws aside with a promise of protection from encroaching others who bring unwanted social change.  

Jennifer Lawless focused on the dangerous dismantling of trust in public institutions and the undermined legitimacy of those institutions when the majority withdraws from engagement. 

Arturo Vargas, of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, spoke, in tears, of the obstacles put in the way of a growing Latino population. He insisted that his people care deeply about their communities, yet find it difficult to translate that concern into civic engagement when so much is done to ensure their votes don’t count.

Kristen Clarke, President of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Christine Chen, of the Asian Pacific Islander American Vote, described new forms of voter suppression and ongoing barriers to full inclusion of minority voters. 

Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot, gave a masterful overview of the struggle that shaped the Voting Rights Act of 1963 and continues to play out in polling places and courthouses across the country.  As he said with passion: "It is fundamentally immoral to try to win elections by stopping people from voting.” 

The primary focus of the convention was democracy, voting rights, the forces undermining the ability to reach good solutions that serve the common good. But we also spent time looking at some of the fallout of our political dysfunction, acknowledging that every political decision has real-life human outcomes. 

My friend, Jennifer Levy-Tatum, presented insights from our year-long criminal justice study, demonstrating in tragic detail that little shifts in sentencing legislation can throw thousands of families in to poverty and ruin more lives than anyone imagined. Speaking to a room packed with men and women from other states she shared just a little of what we’ve learned, about county jails packed with people waiting trial for months. Defense lawyers with schedules so tight they meet clients just before a trial begins. Mentally ill men and women kept in solitary confinement rather than receive appropriate treatment. Pregnant women giving birth in shackles. Millions of tax dollars invested in building new prisons rather than putting money into teachers and schools to give poor communities a better path to the future. 

In the news between our meetings, like the rumble of thunder, we heard ongoing coverage of the Orlando shooting. 

In the days since, disruption on Capital Hill has captured the news, with civil rights hero John Lewis and others pleading for the House Speaker, Paul Ryan, to allow a vote on gun safety bills. 

 

The temptation to place blame runs high.

For some, President Obama is the cause of all our current woes.

Others point to the Republican Party.

Immigrants.  

Muslims.

Hillary and Bill Clinton. 

But what if people are symptoms, not causes? 

Donald Trump didn’t undermine our ability to weigh facts and fiction. That started long ago, with philosophical relativism, deconstructionist theory, the post-modern dismissal of objective reality and absolute truth.  A culture that still believed firmly in objective truth would have little patience with Trump’s obvious lies. 

Gays haven’t destroyed our families. That honor goes to a dizzying stew that could include slavery, pornography, birth control, growth of women’s rights and opportunities, loss of job security, oppressive work hours, addiction, abuse, a “me-first” philosophy endemic to our current culture.

Governmental dysfunction wasn’t invented by Paul Ryan or his fellow GOP representatives, or by President Barack Obama. It’s been built into the system, with steady intent, over long decades of determined self-interest by leaders from both sides eager to bolster their own standing. 

Hate, fear, suspicion, prejudice? We can’t pin those on any one group, religion, race. They’re our constant companions, held in check by compassion and self-control, or fanned into destructive fire by careless speech and lazy patterns of thought.

As Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus,  

we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. 

 What are principalities and powers? 

Are they spiritual forces? 

Oppressive systems? 

Embedded patterns of action and thought that hold whole continents captive? 

Scholars and theologians have written reams on the question. Walter Wink alone wrote five books on the topic: Naming the Powers (1984), Unmasking the Powers (1996), Engaging the Powers (1992), When the Powers Fall (1998), and The Powers that Be (1999). All address the disordered worldview that puts trust in violence rather than love and prioritizes wealth over justice.

There is much to learn about what it means to wrestle with principalities and powers,  but the meaning of the first part of Paul’s observation seems very clear. We aren’t doing battle with mere humans. Individuals aren’t the cause of our deep dilemmas.

Omar Mateen, the man who opened fire in the nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 people and injuring 53 others, was certainly the immediate cause of death and injury.

Yet he himself was and is a symptom of complex forces: misguided notions about race, religion and power, conflicting ideas about gender and belonging, a cultural love-affair with weapons and violence.  He’s not the first American man to turn his inner agitation outward in an explosion of deadly power. Just the latest and most visible.

It’s always easiest to scapegoat.

And always dangerously wrong.

Any real solution to our current morass will involve attention to causes, courageous engagement, selfless service, a renewed willingness to seek and speak the truth, great wisdom and compassion. 

No one person, no one party can make that happen. 

Palms, Power, Pain, Betrayal, Prayer

Triumphal Entry, Emmanuel Nsama, Zambia 1969

Our service started this morning on the lawn outside our church, with guitars and palms and a short Palm Sunday reading.

It was a cold morning, hovering on the edge of snow. Our voices sounded thin in the cold air. The waving of palms was half-hearted and the hosannas were more like murmurs than the robust shouts the occasion called for. As I said, it was cold. And we’re Episcopalians– not much given to shouting.

Even so, there was something in the observance, and the readings that followed, that opened a window to something unexpected.

I’d been talking in the church atrium just before, over coffee and bagel, with a fellow parishioner who had asked what I thought of the presidential election. He mentioned the 2014 Charles Marsh biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory, and for a few minutes we wondered together how the German church had found itself supporting Adolph Hitler, why there were so few who joined Bonhoeffer in determined resistance.

Standing in the cold with a palm in my hand, I glimpsed, for just a moment, that emotion on the streets of Jerusalem, the cry of support for someone coming in power to smash the enemy and set things right.

It’s the same emotion that welcomed the Israelite kings, that cried out in praise of Caesar, that echoed through the Nuremburg parade grounds when Hitler held his rallies.

We all struggle with the voices inside us; we’re susceptible to that inner cry that wants to affix blame for the things that have gone wrong, that wants someone strong to come and take our side.

Demagogues, by definition, gain power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people. They promise to use that power to trample opponents and make life better for the people who support them.

And if we are the chosen ones, and they are the enemy, what’s to stop us from crying Hurrah! Hosanna! Heil!

Our service this morning led us back into church, where we followed the readings of Holy Week: the Passover meal in the upper room, the agonized prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ trial and beatings, Peter’s betrayal.

I’ve never understood Judas’ motivation: why sell out someone he’d followed for three years?

Yet this morning, listening to the familiar words, I suddenly felt Judas’ anger, his outrage, his own sense of betrayal: the one who was supposed to seize power and smash the Roman conquerors was kneeling to wash his followers’ feet. How dare he! As if Donald Trump, on Election Day, called time-out to make lunch for his campaign staff and quietly explained that he had no intention of winning. What a wasted opportunity!

Judas’ betrayal, I believe, was prompted by his own sense of betrayal, his anger that the story he envisioned was going wrong, that Jesus refused to grasp power and spoke of pain instead.

Peter’s betrayal was more from confusion, when he grabbed his sword and sliced at a soldier’s ear, and then from both confusion and fear, when he said, with mounting panic: “I don’t know him! I DON’T KNOW HIM!”

In one sense, he was right. He didn’t know him. Didn’t understand that Jesus would be the one to conquer power by choosing his own great pain instead.

The brief sermon this morning focused on the need to stay present in the story of Christ’s passion: to not rush to resurrection, to not run past the reality of Christ’s death on the cross.

We would all like to think the world is a mess because of those people over there. Immigrants, unions, Republicans, Obama. Refugees. Muslims. Terrorists. Christians!

Gone.

Whoever they are.

Whatever they’ve done.

But Jesus invites us to see our own complicity in the pain of the world.

Our own brokenness.

Our own sin.

Our own selfish refusal to listen or love.

And then he offers to take the consequence himself. To gather to himself our own death, our own darkness, our own outraged, outrageous anger.

That makes us angrier still.

How dare he.

We’d like them smashed, fixed, changed.

In 1933, just days after Hitler's long-sought appointment as chancellor, Bonhoeffer preached a courageous sermon on Gideon and the inevitable attraction of power:

Gideon’s warriors must have been flabbergasted; they must have shuddered when he gave them the order to go home. The church is always astounded, and shudders, when it hears the voice of the One who commands it to renounce power and honor. To let go of all its calculations and let God alone do God’s work. We shake our heads and are scandalized as we watch many a Gideon among us going his way. But how can that confound us who see in the midst of our church the cross, which is the sign of powerlessness, dishonor, defenselessness, hopelessness, meaninglessness, and yet is also where we find divine power, honor, defense, hope, meaning, glory, life, victory. Do we now see the direct line from Gideon to the cross? Do we see that the name of this line, in a word, is “faith”?

Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith alone conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God’s victory means our defeat, our humiliation. . . . It means the world and its shouting is silenced, that all our ideas and plans are frustrated; it means the cross. The cross over the world . . . .

The people approach the victorious Gideon with the final trial, the final temptation: “Be our lord, rule over us.” But Gideon has not forgotten his own history, nor the history of his people. . . . “The Lord will rule over you, and you shall have no other lord.” At this word, all the altars of gods and idols fall down, all worship of human beings and human self-idolization. They are all judged, condemned, cancelled out, crucified, and toppled into the dust before the One who alone is Lord. Beside us kneels Gideon, who was brought through fear and doubt to faith, before the altar of the one and only God, and with us Gideon prays, "Lord on the cross, be our only Lord. Amen.”

I listen to Christians explain why we should support Donald Trump and hear echoes of the cry for Gideon to gather his forces.

I listen to friends explain that Trump won’t win, we have nothing to fear, and think of the long years of German struggle, years of growing anger, of propaganda, of scapegoating, of longing for Germany to be great again, of feeding that voice that cries ‘let’s get rid of those who are causing the problem! We need someone strong who will make things right again!” 

When we feel betrayed we are most at risk of betraying the one who invites us to the cross.

Christ's Crucifixion,  Master of
 Vyšší Brod, Bohemia, ca 1630

He invites us to set down our plans. Our swords.

Our rights. Our guns.

Our longing for privilege and power.

Our fear that the world we know and love has been ruined by forces we can't control.

Invites us to kneel with Gideon.

With Bonhoeffer.

With Peter, once he came to his senses.

Invites us to embrace the pain of betrayal.

Invites us to love our betrayers.

Invites us to kneel and pray:

Lord on the cross, be our only Lord. Amen.




An earlier Palm Sunday post: The Call of the Cross, April 1, 2012
For more about the cross and its significance: Thank You for the Cross

What I'd Give: Foundational Faith

This Epiphany season I’m writing about formative gifts I’d love to give, but can’t. Gifts that aren’t mine to give.

“What I’d give you if I could.”

Last week I wrote about the gift of “living into love.” The love is already given – long before the world was breathed into motion. But awareness of that love, willingness to live into that love: that’s the gift I would give, but can’t.

This week I’ve been thinking about the gift of faith: not just randomly directed faith, but faith in a God who dreamed the world in love, who spun it into orbit, who calls us into a compelling intergalactic narrative in which we all have significance, all are invited to a never-ending ever-after.

Faith, as we use the word, is often undirected: “Just have faith.” In what? Whom? Why?

Or it’s offered as a static expression of cognitive assent, expressed through a short sentence of prayer, or repetition of a creed.

Faith, as I see it expressed in the gospels, as I see it demonstrated and described by Jesus himself, is an immersive, embracing, encompassing reality: a foundation to stand on, a fellowship to live within, a future to run toward.

Sprouting acorn, Wikimedia commons

There’s no moment when we can say faith begins. It’s a seed, dropped into dark earth, with roots slowly spreading, slender shoots emerging, until one day, maybe long after, it’s an edifice of grace, feeding and fueling constellations of others.

I’ve been spending time in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7, bemoaning the childhood presentation of faith that flattened something marvelous into a yes or no checkpoint on some Sunday School teacher’s script. The wise man built his house on the rock, Jesus said, and we were led to believe that rock was “Do you believe in Jesus?”

Believe what: in an old Hebrew name? In the flannel board figure drooping on the dusty backdrop? Believe that if I say a few words I can do what I want, and I’ll show up at heaven’s gates with a free pass that says “enter: one”?

The foundation Jesus described was at the very end of the teaching Matthew recorded, an encapsulation of the most radical, most impossible way of life any religion has ever offered: love those who despise you, persecute you, oppose you at every turn. Forgive those who harm you, hate you, do their best to make your every moment hell on earth. Give generously, beyond reason: resources, time, energy, mercy. Demonstrate deep faithfulness of heart and mind. Set aside fear, anxiety, anger.

Impossible without walking in deep friendship with the one who invites us.

What Jesus said was this: trust yourself so deeply to this way of life I’m offering you, align yourself so closely to my vision and my power, live into my love so completely that you become someone different: radiant, radical, redemptive. A light in a dark world. A beacon of joy when all reason denounces any glimmer of hope.   

My grandsons love Star Wars: the story of Luke Skywalker, orphaned nephew of a nowhere nobody, drawn into the fellowship of rebels standing against evil forces seeking to rule the galaxy. It’s a big story and they picture themselves inside it: rescuing Han Solo from his frozen doom. Confronting Darth Vader with light sabers and forgiveness..

All our best stories point to the one great story that fuels our faith. As a child, I read and reread the Chronicles of Narnia. I was Lucy, third of four children pulled from a boring train depot into a frozen world held hostage by the snow queen. I was captured by the idea that four children could be part of a story larger than themselves, a story that began before they were born, stretched on, larger and larger, to a grand and joyful ending.

Faith is no flat, propositional assent. Read Hebrews 11, one my all-time favorite passages: by faith Noah built an ark. By faith Abraham left his home and went to live in tents like a stranger in a foreign land. By faith Moses left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger.  By faith Rahab welcomed the spies. The list goes on: men and women who saw miracles, administered justice, faced great trials, suffered unspeakable persecution.

By faith.

If you’d asked them what they were putting their faith in, I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t have offered that favorite of all Sunday School answers: Jesus. They didn’t yet know him.

And I’m doubtful they would have offered a doctrinal statement. 

What they knew of God went beyond words: experiential, personal, immediate, life-shattering.

They were fueled by, compelled by, their experience of a God who called them by name, who invited them in to an unfolding story of obedience and rebellion. They were imperfect people, willing to set aside comfort, safety, the known status quo, propelled by a vision of a world where grace and goodness rule.

I have friends and relatives – many – who say “I just can’t believe God would welcome some jerk into heaven just because he said ‘I believe in Jesus,’ and turn aside someone who was good all his life but never said he believed.”

And I have friends and relatives who see faith as just one of those ideas people like to fight about because they want to be right: an unprovable proposition deserving no more than a shrug, a roll of the eye, a weary “sure, whatever.”

The Christian church – in its many incarnations – has done a great disservice to the life of faith by claiming to know who God will welcome, who God will turn away, by flattening the fullness of Christ’s gospel to a simple yes/no checkpoint on someone’s self-righteous survey.

The end of the Sermon on the Mount is instructive: it contains familiar words that are rarely considered as one, complete whole:

Sermon on the Mount, Charles Plessard, France 19??

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

I grieve at the way the notion of faith has been used as a cudgel to knock others into line, as permission to judge, to dismiss, to exclude.

I grieve at the way it’s been flattened, falsified, simplified, sullied – easy to ridicule, far too easy to reject.

The life of faith I’ve found has been that firm foundation Jesus offered: a fellowship of compassionate, courageous fellow-travelers, a plumb-line for each attitude and action, strength to face daily sorrows and struggles, a vision of redemption that shapes my decisions and propels me toward a future very different from today.

I can’t give you that. Can’t undo the harm done by institutional religion, can’t give you 3-D glasses when you can’t see what I see.

All I can do is live a life of faith that suggests, just a little, something more, something greater. Invite you to meet others whose lives are fueled by faith.

Pray you’ll be surrounded, supported, propelled forward by that great cloud of witnesses described in Hebrews  12 so that together we can “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

detail from The Christian Martyrs of Nagasaki; anon. 16th-17th century Japanese painting

During this Epiphany season (from the beginning of January until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, February 10) I’ll be blogging about those things I would give if I could.

January 3: What I'd Give You

January 10: What I’d Give: Living into Love