Get with the program: Christmas Eve 2015

Like a lot of youth my age, I started going back to church after I got married in my early 20’s after a long break throughout college and post-graduation. No one was making me get up on Sunday mornings anymore and dragging me resentfully to a worship service that meant virtually nothing to me.  But as the churchless years wore on I began to feel a kind of emptiness creeping into my life. When the big dates rolled around, like Easter and Christmas, I’d drive by churches with full parking lots and wonder what it was like inside. There was an emotional sting that could best be described as a kind of homesickness.  I had left home and gone out into the world, claiming my little corner and holding tightly onto the youthful  belief that I could solve any problem, could master any skill, and was the master of my destination.  This is, of course, both true and false.  Its falsehood rested in my youthful inability to acknowledge, or in any way appreciate that the power that I possessed for the building of my life did not actually originate with me.  I didn’t give a thought to where it came from actually; it never occurred to me to wonder about such things. I just assumed that my freedom and my free will was my God-given right and that no one was going to interfere in the making of my dreams.  I dreamed of marriage and I got married. I dreamed of money and a big house. We had money and a nice house on the beach.  And somewhere in the midst of all that it just seemed that the thing that was missing, the thing that would make the recreation of my parent’s life perfect, would be a return to church.  And we went. We weren’t there very long when one day and older gentlemen walked up to me and stuck a pledge card into my 24 year old hands and said gruffly, “Get with the program,” and walked away.  I do not recommend this a stewardship strategy.  My then husband and I got the hint and stepped up to the plate but only because I was embarrassed and felt shamed into it.  So it will not be a shock to you to hear that we didn’t stay there for long. Though I didn't know it at the time, I had been given a powerful spiritual teaching.  

I didn’t recall this incident for another 20 years until I was writing a stewardship sermon about 8 or 9 years ago. But this time, with a lot of life experience in hand, the words fell on me differently. It wasn’t about money at all. It wasn’t really even about the fulfilling of obligations or someone else’s expectations – though it was at the time, make no mistake. These last few years of my life have been about exploring this spiritual fountain of wisdom: Get with the program. But what is the program?

It’s just a metaphor. The key here is not to take the words too literally.  It’s just a simple but powerful metaphor.  So many times this year I have said to you, “You are not a human having an occasional spiritual experience. Rather, you are a spiritual being having a human experience.”  This is a hard truth for us to move past the intellectual realm and into the experiential life. We have a tendency to want to make sense of things with our mind. That’s our first mistake. To understand this metaphor we have to feel it.  Miguel Ruiz, Jr. offers this explanation as a place to start:  

"Your name and the body it represents are empty symbols whose meaning and definition are the expression of your intent as you live life.  The true you is the living being, the point of perception, that gives these symbols life.  Oftentimes we confuse our bodies and our names with who we really are, and the result is suffering.  You are not your body, and you are not the label attached to it. You are life; you are love. You are the source of love, and, consequently, you have enough love to share with everyone along the path of your life."

These are only words on a page until you can feel its truth in your life.  What would it take for you to feel like a spiritual being and not just a human being stuck with all the limitations that come with it.  What would happen if you felt, for the first time in your life, that your potential as a spiritual being was unimaginably far beyond what you know to be true as human being? If I sound out of tune let me read you a few words from Albert Einstein: 

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”  

That last bit sounds very much like the gospel we have been called to proclaim. 

Einstein also remarked that: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” The false teachings of the world would have us hoping against hope for miracles or worse, not believing in them at all. One of the teachings of the birth of the Christ is that it is a miracle. And it is. But so is everything else. Which does not take away from its importance in the slightest. Don’t stop there. Don’t stop with a single miracle that happened 2000 years ago and say, That’s it. We got our miracle.  No. No. It’s a miracle that pure love came into the world. That God came to be with us as one of us.  It’s a miracle that we could be loved that much.  If you read the New Testament through that lens you will see that it’s a book of miracles. If you then see your own life through this lens, you will see your life is a book of miracles. If you look around your world…. Look at the glass that is in these windows. Glass is sand that has been heated until it melts. When it melts in a certain way, under certain conditions it becomes clear. Add color and it becomes stained glass. You say, well, that’s just basic science. Yes, that’s right. But how did we figure that out? Now tiny glass threads carry electronic messages at the speed of light. That’s a miracle. Have you seen pictures of snowflakes under a microscope? That no two are alike; each is a work of crystalline art.  That’s miraculous. Look at the physical shell you have been given to care for the essence of you that resides it in. It’s been doing the work of healing since before you were born. And you can sleep and you will not stop breathing even though you are not telling your body to do it because now you are busy dreaming.  That is a miracle. Which one? The breathing or the dreaming?  Exactly.  It is night now. Tomorrow the sun will rise and it will be so warm on Christmas Day that you will be able to go for a hike. It is a miracle. Have you ever loved someone so much it filled your whole life with joy? Where did it come from?  Did that love change your life? That is a miracle. Now use your imagination and imagine that your heart is so full of love for every living thing that you cannot tolerate anything that exists that runs counter to that love. Of course, the fact that you have an imagination is a miracle too. And if you can imagine that kind of expansive love, even if just for a moment, then you are then capable of being that love because you are that love.  Are you beginning to understand now?

We are corrupted by the false teachings of the world and we believe things about ourselves that instead of setting us free makes us slaves.  The truth is that pure, unblemished, uncorrupted love came into the world to set us free. We become free by knowing that we are a part of that love; that we are not separate from it. That truth, that we are love is very powerful. That’s the program. To get with the program is to begin to see where the lies of the world begin and end and where the truth begins. But you have to feel it. You cannot think your way there because love resides in the heart. You know this because you are a spiritual being and everything you need to know is already in your heart.

That is why Jesus instructs us to go straight to action. He does not give us teachings that require written or oral exams.  At the local coffee shop in town there is a chalk board where people are invited to write whatever words of wisdom strikes them.  The other day someone wrote:  “I had an excellent education; it took me years to get over it.”  We will not be tested on our intellectual understanding of the teachings of the bible. We get it – but we have a hard time moving past our mental facilities and doing the work that is implied in the teachings. We’re stuck in our heads. But when we’re doing and not thinking we begin to feel something. We feel compassion. We begin to care. We feel a connectedness to the other spiritual beings that occupy this planet with us. That feeling is love. That connectedness is truth. 

Get with the program. 

Visitations

The following began its life as a letter and was then amended and used as a homiletic response on Sunday, June 7 at St. James Episcopal Church, Mansfield, PA. It was again amended for the purpose of this blog.

Earlier this week I visited Jim, a lifelong parishioner of St. James. Now 80 years old he’s in a facility for Alzheimer’s patients. There are only three people left in the parish now with that length of corporate memory. Though he knew who I was he was clearly mentally unhinged. Much of what he said made little sense. But at other times he was as clear as a bell. At one point he said that the church was very important. He described it as, “Not the only thing, but the main thing.” Though urine was covering one of his pant legs he was not bothered. Behind us was a woman yelling, "Help me!" Not one octave in her voice changed as she repeated her pleading chant. It seemed to me the only orienting thing about the place. A row of people in wheel chairs were looking out a glass wall that overlooked the parking lot. A younger man was walking around carrying a leather jacket on a hanger. I thought he was visiting someone but it became obvious he was a patient as he made harsh remarks to other patients he walked by. We shared holy communion together. Then after a long silence between us, Jim looked at me and said, "Where is Jesus Christ now?"  I said nothing. I could guess at what I should say but it would have been trite and inauthentic because it felt to me like the wrong question. Nonetheless it was a valid question for which I had no ready response. 

In my mind, in the span of just a few seconds, I visited all my teachers in search of an answer to that question. 

Bishop Bob was standing right beside me with his hand resting on my shoulder. I looked up and noticed the soft folds of his smile lines and he was nodding with empathy for my inability to comfort but he gave no hint as to where Jesus was. Something about the look on his face told me he might have struggled here himself a couple of times along the way. 

Nancy was sitting directly across from me eating salad with no dressing. When I told her about Jim her eyes welled with tears. Sometimes when she looks at me I think she can see the whole of my entire soul, and though it is very flawed she seems to ignore those parts. She saw that I was distressed and in need of help so she focused intently on the question. She put down her fork and began to answer self-assuredly, saying, "Well, okay, Jesus is…" (As if it was perfectly logical and if we just thought about it rationally the answer would become clear.) Then she suddenly stopped and looked sharply away from me, her eyes settling on some point across the room, and finished with, "well, I don’t know how to explain it; but he’s there." 

Pais was in his office and sank back in his chair with his arms on each arm rest and just looked at me sitting across the desk from him... as if he waited long enough perhaps I'd answer my own question. It was so quiet for so long I began to hear a low buzz coming from the fluorescent bulb above my head.  The silence seemed its own living being that was like a third party in the room that belonged there and I did not feel awkward. Though it was raining outside the window I couldn't hear it. I hadn't expected rain. I imagined that when I left I was going to get wet. He remained perfectly still moving only once to grasp his hands and interlaced his fingers and rested them on his lap but never moved his eyes and patiently waited for me to speak.

Bob was walking across the floor of his cabin and turned to look back at me sitting cross-legged on the coach. It was dusk and the only light was coming in the open door on a clear humid evening. The smell of burnt sage was still in the air. He said, "Yeaahh, that's a good question: where IS Jesus now?" It wasn't a rhetorical question and he was never going to let it go. He smiled and went to pour spearmint tea from last year's garden that had been steeping too long.

Mike was in the coffee shop and he answered the question by reading me a poem by Haffiz that I did not understand. Jim, who works in the bike shop, was sitting next to him and after taking a sip of coffee from his stainless mug he grimaced and waved his hand across his face and said, "Come on! You're still stuck on THAT! Really?" (As if it were so simple, so obvious.) Then he got up to get a refill leaving me with Mike who had moved on to another poem; Jesus was there I knew but strangely hidden in the coded text. Other people caught his eye as they came in and they came over to the table and the question was lost and forgotten.

Diane was in her garden. We were standing by a long row of very tall flowers by a fence. They were almost as tall and I was. As she clipped them it occurred to me that while it appeared random she was very careful about which ones were cut. She’s always says they tell her who is ready to go. She was thoughtful and did not answer me quickly. Finally she said, “You know, it is alright that you are struggling with this. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

In my mind I consulted the Bible and read from Luke: “At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants… and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except for the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

There wasn't a lot to say to Jim after a while that wasn't being repeated so I left him sitting in his wheelchair. He wanted to get up to see me out but his chair alarm sounded and he fell back into place obediently. His hand began to trace the edge of the table as I walked away. From the parking lot I looked up to the third floor and saw the people lined up in their wheel chairs starring down at me. And the whole 90 minutes home I felt completely fraudulent.

Later I read these words from Thich Naht Hahn: “You cannot be by yourself alone. You have to be inter-be with everything else in the cosmos. That is the nature of interbeing.” It was then that it dawned on me that I had been sitting with Jesus. But it was more than that. I was Jesus. I was Jesus having a conversation with Jesus. Jesus was in the bread and the wine and in the words of the Lord’s Prayer we spoke together. Jesus was the woman who rolled up in her wheelchair and asked if I was Jim’s daughter. I said I was not, but rather his priest. She said the word “priest” slowly and looked over our heads trying to find a way to connect with that word. But clearly it meant nothing to her. She only said she had to go to the bathroom and needed to get some help. A young woman in scrubs walked briskly by and told her she would have to wait. I have eyes yet so often I cannot see. I have ears and yet so often I cannot hear.

Jesus was the orderly who was helping Jim walk down the hall when I arrived. I told him I was clergy there to give him communion. He looked puzzled and said, “I don’t know what that means.” He smiled widely and continued, saying, “I don’t know about anything churchy. I lost my faith when my mother died.” And then he shrugged and turned his attention to Jim.  Another orderly came in the room and the first one asked him, “Hey, do you know what communion is?” The other scratched the side of his head uncomfortably and repeated the word, “Communion…” and shook his head. I said it was the bread and wine, holy communion. They looked at me blankly. Could I have not seen that they were Jesus?

Discussion starter on climate change and religion

The following remarks are from a panel discussin held at Mansfield University on April 9 on Climate Change and Religion.

Hello, I’m Rowena Gibbons, Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, here in Mansfield. As Dean of the Northern Tier and West Branch Convocations I extend greetings from our Provisional Bishop Robert Gepert and our bishop-elect, The Rev. Cn. Audrey Scanlan on behalf of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania. I am honored to have been asked to speak to you briefly today, with my colleague, The Rev. Linda Watkins, who is from the southern part of the state.  Unlike Linda I have not formally studied the religious response to climate change and other environmental issues, but as a Christian theologian with a pulpit I do, nonetheless, have some thoughts to share.

I remember clearly some years ago hearing our former bishop Nathan Baxter speak to this issue upon his return from a meeting of bishops from around the world.  It was a time in our history when the hot topic was the church’s response to homosexuality and as difficult as that conversation was in the US it was and continues to be far more difficult to have with the worldwide church.  He said that as the debate raged among the international bishops, one Anglican bishop from a small island nation got up and took the podium and said something to the effect of this:

As I sit here and listen to you debate the theology of sexuality I am greatly distressed because while that might be of concern to you, the reality that I face, is that most, if not all, of my diocese, our island home, will be under water in the next couple of decades as a result of global weather changes that are causing sea levels to rise.  I wonder if perhaps this should not be more of a concern for us?

It was a clarion call for which I personally was glad to hear for many reasons, but none more then the fact that the church often keeps itself busy with things that on the ground, or on the front lines of parish work matter to only a few, wherein larger more pressing issues seem to get lost. The critics of organized religion have rightly criticized the church for this tendency.  We, by this I mean all Christians, have been rather slow to get behind the issue of climate change. We do well to respond to the needs of those hard hit by extreme weather events – mission work is right up our alley of course, but not so well in using our pulpits to gather momentum for real change.

However, two of the largest Christian bodies worldwide, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, have been sharply vocal in recent months. An online article from the Guardian in December reported:

“Following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, the pope will publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds, the document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners. According to Vatican insiders, Francis will meet other faith leaders and lobby politicians at the general assembly in New York in September, when countries will sign up to new anti-poverty and environmental goals. In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it…. The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands…. The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said. In Lima last month, bishops from every continent expressed their frustration with the stalled climate talks and, for the first time, urged rich countries to act.”

And in March, the Guardian also reported similar movement by the Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in another on-line article which stated:

The highest ranking woman in the Anglican communion has said climate denial is a “blind” and immoral position which rejects God’s gift of knowledge. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal church and one of the most powerful women in Christianity, said that climate change was a moral imperative akin to that of the civil rights movement. She said it was already a threat to the livelihoods and survival of people in the developing world. “It is in that sense much like the civil rights movement in this country where we are attending to the rights of all people and the rights of the earth to continue to be a flourishing place,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said in an interview with the Guardian. “It is certainly a moral issue in terms of the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable around the world already.” In the same context, Jefferts Schori attached moral implications to climate denial, suggesting those who reject the underlying science of climate change were turning their backs on God’s gift of knowledge. It’s hard work when you have a climate denier who will not see the reality of scientific truth… [On March 24 the Episcopal Church kicked off] a month-long action campaign designed to encourage church members to reduce their own carbon footprints and lobby government and international corporations to fight climate change.

From my perspective, one of the problems Christians have had, theologically speaking, is our historically arrogant reading of this passage in Genesis. It is this:

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. (NRVS)

Translators often use the word ‘dominion,’ but what is more correct would be ‘stewardship’ or “guardianship.” A sound theological way of seeing ourselves in relation to God is as co-creators who have been given charge over the world we inhabit. As co-creators we are then stewards of the earth and its resources. To plunder and destroy what we have been given to care for and use rightly is a violation of God’s original intent. Too often I hear language that assumes dominion over. Even the phrase, “use of natural resources,” implies ownership over commodities. Water is not a commodity.  Soil is not a commodity. Animals are not a commodity. Reducing the very things that sustain human life to commodities which can be bought and sold flies in the face of the demands of proper stewardship and is born from a place of arrogance. People of faith cannot begin to make substantial changes to our individual behaviors until we reconcile our own misunderstanding of what it means to have dominion. It is work that bears much responsibility and diligent care, under the best of circumstances. Getting there will take more than convincing arguments, it will require a change of perspective; a different paradigm.

One of the gifts of the Episcopal Church is its open engagement with the many faiths and traditions of the world. I believe that the more we engage in such conversations, especially with the Eastern religions, the more we will begin to understand our interconnectedness to all life.  It is not enough to say, When I harm my brother, I suffer. We must also say: When I harm the soil, or pollute the water, or foul the air, I do violence to God.

Every three years when the Episcopal Church gathers for its General Convention, the American Indigenous peoples who are full participants of our faith tradition, open sacred space in their ceremonies, calling on the four winds, the sky and the earth in order to move the rest of us into right relationship with the work of earthly stewardship.  We are reminded that in the end the world that was created for us, and all the forces it contains, namely climate, will in the end have the final word as it acts and reacts to the devastation we have rendered upon it. Again and again we have called out of arrogance and into humility and corrective action. This is a call to repentance actually; simply put, a call to change one’s mind – to have a change of heart – to go a different way.   It is my prayer for Christiandom, that we chose a different way.

Peacemaking on Palm Sunday by way of The First Precept

First, I would like to make clear that on Palm Sunday, the recital of the Passion is a sermon in itself. The Passion narrative is a proclamation that needs no adornment or explanation. To that end I offer only a simple meditation.

This week we have seen another violent tragedy play out when the copilot of a plane fixed a crash killing himself as well as everyone on board. What could have possessed this person to do such violence? Well if we are to be honest we must first acknowledge that we live in a society framed by violence. And violence  happens on many different levels. Inequality, for instance, is a form of violence, not only in its very nature, but in the way in which creates conditions that promotes visceral violence. The repeated shooting of black youths by white police in Ferguson is a stark example. Injustice is form of violence. The kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of very young girls in undeveloped countries to serve in the worldwide sex trade industry is an act of violence that begets violence.  The systematic destruction of the planet’s natural resources is a cataclysmic act of violence for which the generations to follow will pay a heavy toll. Consider that it is predicted that the next great war of the future will be over water. Our own creed of faith, the Nicene Creed, came into its final form over the countless tortured bodies of zealous Christian who died in defense of their proclamation.  It may not be of interest to you to know that young singer and pop star, Zayn Malik has left the wildly popular boyband One Direction. But perhaps it would interest to you to know that in response, young girls across the nation are cutting themselves as a way of showing their love and solidarity with the handsome superstar.  As I said, we live in a society formed and framed by violence. How then might the violent work of the cross serve to address such a condition and further the non-violent, peace-seeking nature of Christianity?

It is sometimes helpful to throw a wide net in order to get there, so bear with me as I, myself, try to understand such a deep mystery. In my reading of Thich Nhat Hahn’s  Living Buddha, Living Christ this week I reviewed the five precepts of Buddhism, which have parallels in all major world religions. In Christianity they are bound up within a single teaching: love your neighbor as yourself.  An advertisement I saw in a magazine recently said simply, If you want to heal the world, you’ll have to begin with yourself.  The healing of neighbor can only begin with healing our own deep wounds. That self-love is missing in our society in a big way is self-evident. Volumes could and have been written on this topic. But I think that perhaps Christianity itself might be to blame, in part. There is a strain of Christianity that has been very pervasive in the West that dwells on self-sacrifice as a way of living as a proper disciple of Christ. The misguided belief is that the more you suffer, that is, deny your own needs in order to provide for the needs of others, the more righteous you become in the sight of God. The image of Christ’s own suffering has been used as the central justification for this teaching. But let me say clearly, it is wrong-headed. To do so is to commit violence to yourself in a very real way. If the Passion has but one lesson it is that Jesus’s suffering was enough; it was large enough to encompass and carry all other suffering. There need be no more; that was the point. All violence of religious peoples was intended to be ended at the cross. Christianity’s gift to the world is non-violence.

If that seems too large to comprehend then perhaps studying how the commandment of love of self/love of others is incorporated into other traditions can be useful for us.  The Five Wonderful Precepts of Buddhism are as follows:

1.       Reverence for life

2.       Generosity

3.       Responsible sexual behavior

4.       Speaking and listening deeply

5.       Ingesting only wholesome substances

Since our topic is violence and how we have been commanded in our own tradition to bring about its end, let us focus on how that might be done.  The first precept, Reverence for life, reads as follows:

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking and in my way of life.

What I like about the wording of this vow is that it takes into account the interconnectedness of the world we inhabit; the acknowledgment of the sacredness of all life: people, animals, plants and even minerals. In truth, we are all made of stardust, that is, minerals, and are positively charged by ions. We are energy, the stuff of the universe. Did you know that when you breathe, the molecules floating around in the air you are breathing was also once breathed by every person who lived before? Just as there is no new water, there is no new air. The elements that make up our breathable stratosphere have been recycled, polluted and mutated,  refined and renewed by nature’s own means, combined with other elements in countless chemical reactions and substances, and are continuously being transformed into what we know to be solids and gases again and again in what appears to be an endless cycle of life.  An unbelievable community of life is supported in the just the smallest dew drop. Each biological system on this planet is dependent on the stability of the others. It is a fragile balance. So is it any wonder that the suffering of others will result in our own suffering? If we want to end suffering, we must begin that work with ourselves. To that end  Christ suffering will have to truly mean something to us. It has to be taken personally or it will be just another story. It is just another beheading, another plane crash/suicide mission, another act of violence that seems senseless and quite disconnected from our own egocentric reality. It is not. Christ died for you. That you might have life and have it abundantly.

Jesus calls us not to self-sacrifice but to self-love – into profound, radical selfishness. The work of the cross has been done. It is not our role. It was his role. As one of my favorite teachers often says: Stay in role. We have been called to a different work; to the saving work of the cross and that begins with addressing our own wounds and brokenness. If you want to heal the world, you must begin by healing yourself. It is only from this place that we can have the kind of determination demanded by our own tradition not to kill, not to let others kill, and to take Christ's commandment to its most complete translation: that we should not condone any act of killing in the world, in our thinking and in our way of life. May the work of cross begin that work in you. 

New Year's note on change and rEVOLution (a nod to Russell Brand)

I must admit that by year's end I was feeling the full weight of the year's trial and tribulations, frets and frustrations. I was worn thin by taking stock of things gained and things lost in the preceding 364 days.  How was your 2014? Mine was a real mix. You know that saying, The only thing that is constant about life is change. Change, accept, adjust, hold tight, let go, fight, surrender: each of us owns a piece of that real estate.  And there is another saying, and that is that all change is perceived as loss; even if its change that is acknowledged to be for the better. Change in which no good can be perceived is the worst. I will openly confess to you that I usually go into change kicking and screaming and making sure that everyone in my world knows that I am not a happy camper. This year I relied heavily on Louis L'amour's saying, which bears repeating: "There will come a time when you believe that everything is finished. That will be the beginning." Like some of you, I had some endings that were really beginnings, though I could only take Louis's word for it at the time. In fact, I just gave in and posted his words on my computer so I'd see them all the time.  I hung out there on faith that some changes, especially the ones that mark a clear ending point, are at the same time places where something new is about to happen.

But on New Year's Day I woke up feeling a bit differently.  For me there is something magical that happens on January 1; it’s a new start. It feels to me the way I think we're supposed to feel on Easter. That whatever came before is past; it's done. And New Year's Day seems a good time to make a break from whatever emotional baggage we're still hanging on too. So turned on some Michael Buble, his song "Feeling Good," seemed to be a good theme song for 2015. It goes like this: "It's a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life." And by the end of the day I was dancing around my kitchen; blissful in the euphoria of new beginnings.

King Herod had a little issue with change. But he had a plan; not a new one actually. Same song, new tune that goes like this:  If something is going to get in your way, threaten your kingdom; then kill it. Well, that's one way to deal with change. And it's not like the world we live in doesn’t witness to that option on a daily basis. Just because you and I wouldn't take that route doesn't mean someone else won't. They do. People are condemned to death through social and economic means all the time. Killing is quite institutionalized really these days. It's so common now we are simply desensitized to it. It's right in front of us and we just pretend don't see it. Or we feel so legitimately overwhelmed by own efforts to survive we yield to our own perception of personal powerlessness. We do things like have fundraising dinners for people who can't afford their cancer treatments. So they might have a chance to live, but they'll drown in debt. I get calls all winter from elderly people who have to choose between food and paying the heating bill. Even with a discount from the gas company, winter here with -18F. degrees on a regular basis for a month can cripple someone on a small fixed income for the next year. It's death by a million cuts.

Back to Herod. We all know how that story ends - the shepherds see the change on the horizon and the change they see is to them good and right. So they make a choice. They go home by a different route. They take a different route.

There have always been people who have been outspoken critics, if not outright prophets, to point, we the masses, in a new direction; to give us the choice of taking another route.  One such current figure, is Russell Brand, hailing from Britain, author of the new book, Revolution, who is taking the worldwide political scene by storm. Here are a couple of excerpt from his recent interview with Amy Goodman, on Democracy Now, which aired this Friday. I'm just going to go ahead and warn you:  Buckle up.

AMY GOODMAN: .....I want to talk about your book, because you talk about the kind of revolution you want to see. Talk about the revolutions in your own life, how you’ve changed over time.

RUSSELL BRAND: Well, the reason I have such faith in the capacity for change, for people to change their lives, is because my own life has changed radically. All a revolution is, really, is to create structures outside of the existing structures, to create change without using the sanctioned means for change. And me, I’ve gone from a life of being impoverished and drug-addicted to a life where I’m sort of affluent and free from drugs. So, that’s what gives me this belief that change is possible on an individual level. 

Part of Amy's interview was a segment of Russell's interview with Jeremy Paxman a television host of a British newshow: 

JEREMY PAXMAN: Is it true you don’t even vote?

RUSSELL BRAND: Yeah, no, I don’t vote. 

JEREMY PAXMAN: Well, how do you have any authority to talk about politics then? 

RUSSELL BRAND: Well, I don’t get my authority from this pre-existing paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people. I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity. Alternative means alternative political systems.

JEREMY PAXMAN: —if you can’t be asked to vote, why should we be asked to listen to your political point of view?

RUSSELL BRAND: You don’t have to listen to my political point of view. But it’s not that I’m not voting out of apathy. I’m not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations now and which has now reached fever pitch, where we have a disenfranchised, disillusioned, despondent underclass that are not being represented by that political system. So, voting for it is tacit complicity with that system, and that’s not something I’m offering up. 

 Back to Amy:

AMY GOODMAN: .... yesterday, our big special was on Mexico— and these 43 students who disappeared in the state of Guerrero. And it turns out that the mayor and the police turned them over to drug gangs. And the question is -- going right up to the president, the billions of dollars, for example, the United States has given the Mexican military and Mexican police, in the name of the so-called drug war, where has it really gone? And is it in fact a real war, but a war against people, particularly poor people and indigenous people?

RUSSELL BRAND: Some people would argue, like in that brilliant film by Eugene Jarecki, The House I Live In, he argues that what’s actually happening is that the bottom 15 percent of society are no longer needed because of the collapse of the manufacturing industry, so it’s a lot better to just criminalize them and put them in prison. So, yeah, it’s like it’s a proxy war on poverty. It’s a proxy race war. I certainly think that argument holds. I mean, I think addiction can affect people from any economic or social background, but those who tend to suffer most are those without money. And there’s no doubt that social conditions have a huge impact on people’s tendency to get addicted to substances. I think if people live in communal environments where they’ve got access to support and—forgive me for using the word—love, then they’re less likely to get addicted to drugs.

Russell Brand hasn't just taken a different route: he's standing at the Y in the road and begging us to go another way. He defines revolution as the creation of structures outside of existing structures; to create change without using the sanctioned means for change. You and I should be familiar with that tactic; its straight out of the gospels. If you think Russell Brand is just too far out there for your taste but at the same time you love your nice church and its lovely music and its good works then I suggest you take another look at the person you pray too. Jesus was a revolutionary; he opposed the status quo at every turn. He never stopped confronting and arguing and engaging people's minds to think about what they were really doing, what they were really supporting - calling out the sheer hypocrisy of at every opportunity. If you actually met Jesus you probably wouldn't like him; he might actually offend you because he was real and so intense. And we generally don't do well with people who are so on point, so confrontational all of the time. He didn't do small talk very well and he was a bit moody actually and he had very high expectations for anyone who pledged their allegiance to him. He would openly criticize his followers just as soon as his detractors.  He was not playing it small. There was too much as stake. There is, now, right now, too much at stake.  It's time for change, for a revolution that is not based on fiscal security which can only condemn those on the short end of that spectrum to a life of misery, but rather a revolution in which love, that's right, love is the basic tenet on which all parts are built. If we think this love thing is simply a ridiculous way to structure a society, then we clearly have not heard a single word Jesus said. And when he was hung on the cross and dying and said, "It is finished." What he was really saying was: This is the beginning.

 

I was at a diocesan meeting yesterday in which someone postulated that one of the reasons that the church has seen such decline is that we don't really expect a lot from the people in the pews; that we don't call people to account for how they live out the gospel. Yes, the bar is really low. Christianity isn't just a personal preference, like whether you're a Steelers fan or a root for the Cowboys.  It's a call to arms actually. Being politically correct these days we shy away from such language, but I think that's right. We're not just called to feed the poor, we're called to do something about it. What other reason would there be for being a disciple?  Personal enlightenment? If that's what you are seeking then I recommend Buddhism. It's lovely really. Personally, it’s a big part of my own sense of spirituality; but it’s not the end game. Christians follow a revolutionary who waged war on the powers and principalities that created conditions of death and despair. Herod is alive and well in every segment of our life. We've been co'oped and made complicit in his deadly schemes.  It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life. It's time to take another route.