A reply on a friend's page complaining about "illegals" ...

Thank God there are no "illegals" in God's Kingdom ... and on a more practical level, a nation that has

spent trillions on war certainly can handle this. 

It's people, just plain people, looking for a better life. Driven by desperate circumstances, love for their children, hope for the future, seeking safety and refuge. 

God's arms are open; I pray that ours are, too. 

Sure, some will say, "Criminals are in their ranks," and that may be true ... but there are thousands of people willing to work hard, to make a contribution to our nation's future. 

When the Italians came, when the Hungarians and Irish came, when the Poles and Germans came, they were labeled "second class," "criminal," and "low-lifes." But millions came, and lifted up this nation, and their children went to school, to become doctors and scientists, ministers and teachers, librarians and engineers. 

It's all about the future. Some won't make it; some will make the wrong turn; but millions will become Americans - true blue Americans. 

And that's what makes this nation great.

Bless the LORD - Psalm 34

Psalm 34, from the Lectionary ... some thoughts ...

It begins with a blessing, a blessing of the LORD, a blessing to be uttered, contemplated, thought about, "at all times."

If read in isolation from the rest of the Psalm, one might be given to a particular kind of spirituality that lives in dreamy lands and exulted places, far away from the maddening crowd, lost in wonder and lost in praise ... or something like that.

Which, sometimes, is very attractive, as the maddening crowd is just that - maddening. Who doesn't want some escape now and then?

But the Psalm presses on, relentlessly, taking the reader into the world, even as the reader blesses the LORD. The upward gaze, to the LORD, is very quickly matched by a searing awareness of the surrounding world and its times.

vs. 4 - a hint of hard times for the writer, and, yes, the LORD's deliverance.

vs. 6 - "the poor soul" it says - again, hinting at spiritual poverty, harsh times, troubles, and, yes, again, deliverance.

vs. 7 - "angels encamped around," as guardians of the reader, needed guardians, in times of distress, and, yes, again, the note of deliverance.

The Psalm presses on with notes of deliverance and provision. The phrase, "fear of the LORD" occurs - that strange and powerful image of devotion, dedication, allegiance, awe and mystery. To fear the LORD is to cleanse the soul of all other fears, imagined or real ... to set the self before the majesty of sovereign love, a love that will never ever let the reader go; a majesty unto whom all hearts are open, and to whom all belong, with provisions of mercy, without question.

vs. 11 - teaching others ... and the hint of what is to come, "keep your tongue from evil" ... and if one wonders what "evil" may be, the writer clarifies, and speaks of "deceit."

vs. 14 - "depart from evil," that is, an evil tongue (to read the Book of James right now might be appropriate), and all the deceit that characterizes evil ... with then the positive note: "do good," and "seek peace" (which is the opposite of deceit, and then, not only "seek," but pursue ... run after it, don't let it get away, pursue until caught, full-out effort, full speed ahead.

vs 16 - evildoers (those who rely upon deceit to further their own interests) do not fare well ultimately.

vs. 18 - the LORD is near to the broken hearted and those crushed in spirit ... reality ... REALITY ... broken and crushed for good reason, because of the evil, the deceiver, the topsy-turvy times, when evil has its day.

vs. 19 - no laughing matter, no momentary glitch ... "many are the afflictions of the righteous," but rescue is at hand.

vs. 21 - death is given to the wicked, and "those who hate the righteous" ... and why do the wicked hate the righteous? Because the righteous remind the wicked of how wrong they are with their deceit, with their self-serving ways, their lies and corruption. As long as there are good and decent people who love the LORD and pay attention to the needs of others, the wicked will always gnash their teeth (Psalm 37.12) and be angry.

vs. 22 - the final note of the Psalm, deliverance, redemption, great promise for those who take refuge in the LORD, who stand by truth and love, social awareness of the poor; people who are willing to be broken and crushed by the trials of the times, not just personal trials, but the trials of a weary land gone berserk, which happened a good many time in Israel's story.

And so much of this, a hint of what is to come in the preaching of Jesus, his beatitudes, his life, his cross and death ... and the ultimate and final word, deliverance!

Such things, considered at "all times," is what it means to bless the LORD.

Reared in Safety and Security - Why Now So Fearful?

A good many Americans have been reared in safety and security.

But for reasons beyond my grasp, a huge industry has grown up in the land promoting fear - everything from the "fear of the stranger" to "home-invasions," the fear of which far exceeds what the stats might support.

From the constant parade of murder and mayhem on the local news to politicians who can see a terrorist under every bed, we're inundated with the words of fear.

It's making a lot of us desperate, and angry ... because fear, if sustained, becomes anger.

Fearful of so many things: terrorism, criminals, Muslims, "illegal" immigrants, anger is growing among certain segments of the population, and that's the stuff of fascism. Sustained fear and then anger weakens moral and spiritual sensibilities, reduces our capacity for compassion and kindness and stilts our vision of the world. Sooner or later, most everyone and everything becomes a threat. The ability to distinguish between reality and imagination is lost. And, makes one a consumer of "safety-devices" - everything from home security systems to white-supremacy movements.

In such a state of mind, we either move toward a highly defensive posture, a state of high-alert that saps our energy and deranges us ... or we grow up, shall I say, and take an honest assessment of our situation and ask the question: Just how safe, or not, am I?

And for those who Christians, it might well be helpful to remember what the angels frequently say: "Fear not!"

Fear, in and of itself, has some helpful dimensions - like, fight or flight, but there are other options, too.

Like the firefighters who are really afraid, but neither fight nor flee ... but run toward the conflagration in order to help others.

Jesus faced down his fears and eschewed anger, and went to Jerusalem in spite of Peter's advice to stay away from this hotbed of intrigue and danger.

Fight is certainly what many of us are choosing, turning mind and home into an "armed fortress."

Flight is a huge spiritual option for many - sort of like Medieval theologians debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin while ignoring the hell in which most of the serfs lived.

But the third option: running toward the conflagration, and doing so with a certain amount of trust in the love of God and a sense of reality - that it may end badly if I go there, but I'll not run away, nor will I engage in needless conflict with adversaries.

Because a frightened, angry, person, is not likely to be of much help or hope to anyone.

Indeed, Jesus heals the blind and and comforts the afflicted. Here's where he's needed - people desperate for help and hope. And when challenged by his enemies, chooses non-engagement.

Those who follow Jesus (unlike Peter who didn't want to face the possibility of his own death when Jesus proclaims his own death) will move toward the conflagration with caution, of course, but with a determination to pay whatever the price might be for love, which, after all, casts out all forms of fear (1 John 4.18).

Anti-Islamic Sentiment in America

John Buchanan, editor of The Christian Century and pastor of Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church, writes poignantly of his loving grandmother's seething mistrust about Roman Catholics, and how radio evangelists with their lurid publications promoted hatred and raised lots of money.

Here is John's fine editorial, from the September 21 issue:

The Christian Century

Thinking Critically. Living Faithfully.

EDITOR'S DESK

Nonnegotiable

Sep 08, 2010 by John M. Buchanan

In his New York Times column (August 22), Nicholas Kristof wrote about the controversy over the proposal to build an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan: "For much of American history, demagogues have manipulated irrational fears toward people of minority religious beliefs, particularly Catholics and Jews . . . Today's crusaders against the Islamic Community Center are promoting a similar paranoid intolerance, and one day we will be ashamed of it."

His column reminded me that members of my family, showing the influence of their Scottish/Irish ancestors, believed that the pope was behind a Catholic conspiracy to take over the government of the United States. I used to sit on the front porch with my grandmother, otherwise the gentlest, most unconditionally loving person in my young life, while she regaled me with stories about what was going on under the dome of the Roman Catholic cathedral one block away. They're storing guns in the basement, Grandma assured me, and I imagined that the windows in the dome were gunports through which "they" planned to fire on the rest of the city.

Grandma was a lifelong Presbyterian, but at some point she stopped attending church and began to listen to radio evan­gelists and to send them modest contributions. Her mail was full of the radio evangelists' newsletters and gospel tracts with vivid pictures of the devil and the fires of hell devouring hapless sinners—along with appeals for more money. Some of it was benign. She adored Billy Graham. But some of it was toxic: anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant. As she aged, my grandmother became more dependent on the radio preachers. She also subscribed to their newspapers for me, including The Sword of the Lord, which condemned ecumenism, mainline church leaders and the civil rights movement—in short, everything I found compelling about the Christian church and its worldview. Nothing galvanized editors of that publication like Catholicism; when John Kennedy ran for president, The Sword of the Lord and Grandma knew that the end was near.

I loved my grandmother and treasure the memory of her love for me, but I'm ashamed of her worldview, and I cringe at Americans' recurrent irrational fear of minorities.

The most tragic dimension of that irrational fear is the way it is exploited by politicians. I cannot comprehend how otherwise sane and thoughtful people can conclude that an Islamic com munity center two blocks away from Ground Zero is inappropriate—not to mention dangerous—and think that the religion of the Qur'an is any more violent than much of the religion of the Bible. It's not a mosque and it's not on the site of the World Trade Center twin towers, but even if it were, the right of all Americans to pray and worship how and who and where they choose is one of the most important rights and values of our nation. It is not negotiable.

The Purpose of a Confession

" 'Confessions' exist for us to go through them (not once but continually), not for us to return to them, take up our abode in them, and conduct our further thinking from their standpoint and in bondage to them. The church never did well to attach itself arbitrarily to one man - whether his name was Thomas ... or Luther, or Calvin - and in his school to attach itself to one form of doctrine. And it was never at any time good for it to look back instead of forwards as a matter of principle" (Barth, in Eberhard Busch's biography, p. 375).

The church is always tempted to find a place wherein it can find shelter; the only problem is this: such shelters are never God, but always our poorly constructed houses of straw.

Because standing in the shelter of God never quite feels safe enough for us, and, indeed, it's not all that safe.

God takes us on a great adventure, and sometimes our hearts are not up to it, and we want to find a pleasant tree somewhere in Palestine and settle down beneath its pleasant shade ... or on the Mount or Transfiguration, at least build booths for everyone.

The history of the church can be seen, I think, as a constant tussle between the heart's desire for security and the Spirit's call to adventure.

When things get dicey, the church hunkers down in the bunkers of orthodoxy. But what a loss, for in the very things we call dicey, God is at work. In one sense, hunkering down is a genuine loss of faith - faith in God and God's providence.

When things get dicey, the church goes looking for heretics so as to silence the inner voices of our own doubt (always our companion, though mostly quiet) and the voice of God, beckoning us onward.

If we trust God's providence, knowing the perfect love of Christ, a love that casts out all fear, then we can be brave and confident and bold in our faith, even as we are humble and patient and respectful before the mysteries of life in a myriad of human beings and ideas.

Fear, and the enemies it makes, destroys our faith.

But welcome and affirmation gives wings to our faith, faith in God who is creator of the world, and remains the decisive factor in it's history, gathering up everything - the good, the bad and the ugly - into the unfailing energy of redemption and the eventual new heaven and new earth.