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.

Thinking about "Dear God"

"Dear God," I've said a million times and then some.

"Dear God,"
"watch over my children,"
"keep my wife,"
"help me,"
"be with my friend,"
"bless our world."

"Dear God" ... sweet words, words of hope, humility, and longing.

Words that have meant the world to me over the years, without question, simple and direct, personal and poignant, "Dear God."

My sadness about the word "God" is how this precious word has been sullied and stained by certain religious elements that have lost all imagination, replacing it with dogma ... religious elements that have ceased thinking, elements without humility before the great mysteries of life, death, love and eternity.

Sadly, my own inner spirit has been hurt by these elements - their brutality, their insistence, their misplaced confidence in what they know, their disdain for the poor, for immigrants, and for people of other faith-traditions.

I have been taking a daily bath in their filthy water for some years now, trying to figure it out, trying to find words to counter their evil influence, wanting to shine some light into the darkness and madness of their violent thoughts and behavior. Compounded by the filthy water of wayward politics, linked to these religious elements, with a horrible and heinous progeny populating our churches, our schools, our sense of being and identity. Bathe in filthy water, and there is no cleansing, but only more filth, more despair, more disappointment and discouragement, until the soul itself is compromised by the principalities and powers of death.

Great music, poetry, exalted preaching, novels and film ... birds and bees and children laughing and crying ... all of this, and more, cleansing ... clean ... clear ... hope anew, courage to believe, to imagine, to see the mountain, to hear the world, to engage the powers of life, and be a human being fully alive, which is, after all, the glory of God.

"Dear God" ... two words that have meant the world to me ... dear, close and kind ... God, high above and surrounding all that is, making life, and holding us dear, as only Dear God can do.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Forum, First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, Feb . 19, 2017

Feb. 19, 2017 Forum,

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles

The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

December 10, 1964

When Laura approached about what I’d like to do with this series, it didn’t take me long to choose this piece of it, with its focus on two remarkable prophets, and how two “simple” verses were woven into Dr. King’s acceptance speech.

The Peaceful Kingdom

Isaiah 11

¹      A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

      and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

²      The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,

      the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

      the spirit of counsel and might,

      the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

³      His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

      He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

      or decide by what his ears hear;

⁴      but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

      and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

      he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

      and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

⁵      Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,

      and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

⁶      The wolf shall live with the lamb,

      the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

      the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

      and a little child shall lead them.

⁷      The cow and the bear shall graze,

      their young shall lie down together;

      and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

⁸      The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

      and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

⁹      They will not hurt or destroy

      on all my holy mountain;

      for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

      as the waters cover the sea.

Peace and Security through Obedience

Micah 4

¹      In days to come

      the mountain of the LORD’S house

      shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

      and shall be raised up above the hills.

      Peoples shall stream to it,

²      and many nations shall come and say:

      “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

      to the house of the God of Jacob;

      that he may teach us his ways

      and that we may walk in his paths.”

      For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

      and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

³      He shall judge between many peoples,

      and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;

      they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

      and their spears into pruning hooks;

      nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

      neither shall they learn war any more;

⁴      but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,

      and no one shall make them afraid;

      for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

⁵      For all the peoples walk,

      each in the name of its god,

      but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God

      forever and ever.

*The film clip …*

Both Isaiah (the text for today) and Micah (737-696 bce) are 8th Century Prophets, a time wherein the Judean Kings were at their greatest level of power in a kingdom now divided.

After Solomon’s death, his son, Rehoboam, assumed the throne and issued a number of mean-spirited “executive orders” (1 Kings 12.6-11) and so the Kingdom split into Northern (Israel) and Southern (Judah) … ultimately the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria (722 bce) and the Southern, or Judah, fell to Babylon (587 bce) and led to the “Babylonia Captivity.”

The Northern and Southern Kingdoms were often enemies and combatants. After Israel’s fall (the remnant of which was know in the New Testament as Samaritans (treated by the Jews {Judeans} as half-breeds and spiritually defective). 

Jesus, himself, from the “northern” area, while not a Samaritan, was still considered an outsider to the true land of Judah that saw itself as the pure expression of faith and blood.

By the time of the 8th Century, Israel was gone, so the prophets in our purview are directing their thoughts to the Southern Kingdom, i.e. Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem. 

The prophets grew in influence as the kings/queens grew in power, along with their religious support staff (ha!) … the prophets challenged the kings/queens and the priestly guild of Jerusalem, with all of its pomp and circumstance and its enormous wealth (certainly the case which Jesus addresses time and again). The prophets were bold, frequently in trouble, accused of treason and heresy, suggesting that if Judah continued on its way, it would all end badly.

Yet the prophets also looked to better days … days of peace and prosperity … the peaceable kingdom wherein opposing realities would come together and people were no longer prepping for war, but for peace, and would thus experience a great sense of safety and comfort - not just psychologically or spiritually, but materially, with everyone enjoying their own figs and vines.

All of this and more was in the mind and heart of Dr. King, a man of the Bible, engaged intelligently (as opposed to ideologically, or literally) with the text, and with theologians who tackled the vast social questions and systemic systems of the day, as well as the personal matters that so occupied evangelicalism (i.e. swearing, drinking, dancing, smoking, card playing, theater attendance) … on these good thinkers, like Paul Tillich, Dr. King built his ideas, his resistance and his blueprint for a just society, upon their work, and that of the Prophets, and the Prophet we honor in life and faith, Jesus of Nazareth.

Gandhi, and others, too, were influential … those who worked for peace, but never at the expense of justice, those who saw life in all of its wholeness … and for his work, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and for his work, his faith, his vision, we honor him today.

Well, It's Sunday!

Well, it's Sunday.
Now what?
For me?
Church.


Been there all of my life.
Early-on memories, dark
Vaulted, beamed
Ceiling.


Pews too high for
Short legs.
Swinging away.
Listening.


Parents, brother.
Preacher in the pulpit.
Windows, glass, stained.
Light.


Pot luck dinners.
VBS, and I didn't like it.
Not one bit.
Played a seed in the Sower Drama.


God.
Early-on memories.
Presence.
Good and kind and loving.


I don't know what religion means.
I don't know what church is all about.
It's my DNA.
It's bone of my bone.


I cry with music.
I nod my head in hope.
I pray to be mindful and kind.
I want things for my family.


Life is short.
And gets shorter all the time.
Days hurry on.
Time passes on.


It's Sunday.
A time to think about
Passing things, and things, that may be
Permanent.

Words ...

Words ...


A word isn't really word until it's embraced in a sentence of some sort.


That's what a word is all about ... the words that precede and follow it ... and depending on those words, the word itself might take on many a shade of meaning ... perhaps this or that ... or maybe not ... or maybe ...


Hinting at what it means ... leaving the final decision up to us ... for good or for ill ... up to us.


How to string words together ... in familiar patterns that comfort with their familiarity ... or in discomfiting ways, that catch our attention and arouse uneasiness ...


Words are not easy ... every try to catch smoke?


Words convey the mysteries of life ... from the salacious to the salubrious ... our highest hopes of a better world to the bitterness of disappointment ... trying, trying, trying, to understand what is always just beyond the tip of the finger, defying our gasp ... eluding us, and quickly pecking our cheek with an enticing kiss that keeps us alive and alert and still seeking to find ... slipping away at the moment of embrace ... laughing ... deriding ... beckoning ... and maybe we continue ... or maybe we retire from the field for a drink ...


Words ... they're all we have ... no matter the language, though other languages capture their own reality in their own way ... and it pays to know something about other languages other than one's own ... even a few words of another can shed light on whatever it is we seek.


And who knows what we seek?


If it isn't one thing, it's another ...


The human spirit is restless ... always seeking ... never finding ... at least anything permanent ... but only the passing, the fragments, like a good lunch that satisfies until about 6 o'clock, and then hunger once again ... and so we get out our victuals, and turn on the stove ... and get out our dictionaries, and take up our pen, or the keyboard ... and we prepare something to satisfy ... and we know, to satisfy, only for a time.


Words ... strange critters ...


They're all we have.

Before More Damage Is Done

There are times when the very word "christian" rests bitter in my mind and heart.

What with the media's fascination with evangelicals and their bigotry, and what with the megachurches trumpeting their special brand of power and miracles, with their steel-jawed preachers and their bosomy beauties, in the minds of many, this is what Christianity is all about.

Meanwhile, more thoughtful Christians, and, yes, there are plenty of them, sit back, mostly stunned into silence, hoping the whole mess will sort itself out.

Perhaps it will ... I get the feeling that evangelicals have gotten about as crazy and mean-spirited as they can get, short of resorting to arms and killing the "heathen" (I guess some of the swamp-bred militias are doing just that, or at least, want to).

I have always believed that Americans are mostly sensible. Religious, yes, but with a certain restraint and will not long tolerate religious extremism, of any kind.

I have always believed, as well, in the primal character of the Spirit of God, the Creator God - that the Spirit always hovers over the chaos and darkness, calling for light, and bringing forth a degree of order, process and progress toward cohesion, creating an environment in which life can emerge, evolve and prosper.

How it works, I don't know, but it works; that much I know.

I can only hope that it works soon enough, to contain the monstrous distortions of the Christian Faith, these days combined with the fascist instincts of wealth and power, before any more damage is done.

Living in Two Worlds: Hope and Despair

Written for the Presbyterian Outlook blog ...

-------------

I find myself in two worlds: hope and despair.

I think the two are related, in a symbiotic way.

I get the uneasy feeling that hope needs despair in order to be hope, in any authentic way. Hope is a part of the faith I have in Christ, a faith that confronts the "realities" of the day, without flinching, yet rises above them to claim the providence of God, God-at-work, in all things. Without despair in things as they are, hope for things as they will be seems shallow and self-serving.

Which then makes despair an integral part of my spiritual layout. Not that I'm happy about that, but I'm in good company.

I think the Prophets are people of despair and hope, and sometimes the oscillation is severe (read Isaiah). Jesus speaks of his "troubled" heart (John 12:27), as well, and then speaks of "my joy" (John 15:11). I can't have one without the other, if I understand anything about the ways of God in my life.

Paul says that hope has a lot "invisibility" to it - things unseen (Romans 8:25), and then reminds us that it's the Holy Spirit that prays within us, for us and with us, when we can't see, with "sighs too deep for words."

I live in both worlds, and maybe you do, too.

I think Matthew lives in both as he pens the opening chapters of his gospel. He begins with an affirmation of faith in God's ordering of history (Chapter 1), then moves the reader into some of the dark materials of our world (Chapter 2) and then blends it all together in Chapters 3 and 4.

The Gospels help me with despair - not to move me out of it, but to bear it, as a cross, in the name of Jesus, and bear it with hope in the providence of God.

If despair takes hold, and I live only in Chapter 2, what with the conniving of Herod and his bloodlust for anyone who threatens his throne, my spirit grows heavy.

Yet, if I try to live only in hope, with sweet nostrums piled high all about me, my spirit objects, for what right do I have to escape from sorrow and sadness when millions of human beings are condemned to mean and miserable lives, for want of justice and peace?

To follow Christ is to spend time in both realms - in the darkness of Herod's world and in the brightness of a Magi's star.

To live with Jesus shedding tears on the brow of the hill overlooking Jerusalem and with his incredible forgiveness and reinstatement of Peter after the resurrection.

I live in both worlds - maybe you do, too.

Tom Eggebeen, Interim Pastor
Covenant Presbyterian Church
Los Angeles, CA

Just Read the Layman

 I just put down the latest issue of the Layman (January, 2009) ... a tour de force of dissatisfaction.

I have some sympathy for them ... there was a time in my life when dissatisfaction sat on both of my shoulders, but with the passage of time, I've either grown addled or I've grown! Obviously, some would say addled. But I like my peaceable stance; I’d like to think that I’ve grown.

If the current Layman reflects where a good many of our brothers and sisters are living right now, it's pretty far from where I live.

Wish I had some answers - I don't.

With the turn of every page, I saw a determined Layman creating two camps with an absolute chasm between them - an unbridgeable gulf growing wider by the day. Again and again, churches leaving were lifted up and celebrated, along with all the numbers. On every page: the supposed failures of the PCUSA – our emptiness and our unfaithfulness, our desertion of the gospel and our abandonment of the historic Reformed faith, and so on.

Part of me is burdened with sadness – because the two camps are never so clearly delineated – there are folks with sympathies and sentiments rooted in both and on all sides of the questions.

Part of me is resigned to the darkening mood of the conversation, or what’s left of it.

Part of me is simply frustrated – how can the conversation be enlarged?

Part of me is hopeful, too. If Jesus’ ministry were judged on the basis of numbers and popularity, we’d all have to agree that his work was largely a failure. Only in the aftermath of the resurrection and subsequent missional expansion does the work of Jesus take on a larger significance.

So, who’s to say?

Church history is replete with times of God shaking things out. Our own history – often fatally flawed with our incessant desire to write it all down and then test one another’s orthodoxy or orthopraxy – has seen countless moments of division and reconciliation, off-shoots and new denominations. So who knows exactly where the power of resurrection will manifest itself? But we believe and trust: “God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17).

As some of our brothers and sisters pack their bags and move to a new town, I can only wish them well. I’d love to see them stay a little while longer, but their discontent only grows stronger – a discontent resolved only by living in a new neighborhood with less irksome neighbors.

I suspect they’ll find, however, as all folks do who move, that a good deal of the discontent is a spiritual inclination always in need of someone or something against which to express itself anew. Dissatisfaction, like some primordial hunger, is never assuaged; it will only find new reasons to live.

I am happier than ever in being a Presbyterian – our faithfulness to the gospel is expressed in a willingness to constantly explore the boundary regions of love. Jesus is a boundary crosser, and so are we. There’s always some risk in such ventures of faith, but risk is part of it.

When all is said and done, our immediate family may be a little smaller, but so was Gideon’s army, and those 300 were more than enough to win the day!