Act Compassionately

The tornado that leveled Moore, OK was horrible.  Based upon the pictures and news reports, the destruction was mind-boggling.  Although I have no idea of Moore’s actual financial situation, I doubt it has all the resources to clean up, settle, and rebuild itself on its own.  Outside help is necessary.

I can’t get out of my mind that both Oklahoma senators, Coburn and Inhofe, voted against federal assistance for those who were devastated by Hurricane Sandy, but won’t refuse federal assistance in the wake of this disaster.  I know that one of the reasons Inhofe cited for voting against hurricane aid was the legislation had aid going to other locations not affected by Sandy.  Coburn wants the aid, but wants to cut other parts of the budget to offset the costs (Hmmm…. I don’t think he’s specified where, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he would want some reduction in a social program.)

The Atlantic noted that both senators also voted against FEMA in 2011, implying that their stated objections to the aid after Sandy was bogus.

Personally, I believe Moore should get the money and the assistance because that’s what they need to get their lives back to some sense of normalcy.  Furthermore, providing them without caveats and restrictions is the right thing we do as a community.  Through our taxes we, the people, help those who are in dire need (and we can also give through our churches or other organizations as well).  Providing aid is compassionate.  That’s what we do for each other as community.

Did the senators have a sudden change of heart?  I don’t think so.  Their shift in position seems self-serving and hypocritical.

Is there something we can do to make Coburn and Inhofe regret their earlier votes and come around to recognizing FEMA’s value and the need not to be so stingy with federal funds? My first inclination was to close a military base in Oklahoma – the damage would substantially affect Oklahoma and would have limited repercussions across the nation.  (Oklahoma has six military bases, including one near Moore.  Curiously, there are two Coast Guard installations in the state.)  But that’s not right, either.  We should be generous and compassionate.

Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans 12:20-21, “‘…if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. “  Pettiness and retaliation are sweet, but they are not helpful in the long run.  (They are probably what has gotten us into this mess we have in our government today.)

I hope they reflect upon the nation’s compassion in the time of tremendous need in Moore, OK.  I hope they come to understand that love means helping the stranger without question or hesitation or seeking off-setting budget cuts.  I hope they realize that government plays a major role in our daily lives and mindlessly railing against it by starving it of revenue at best ill-serves everyone.  Starving government of revenue (aka flatly refusing to raise taxes) is not a policy to reform the way government works – they were elected to make government work, which takes more effort than mindless bromides about government’s size.  I hope compassion will change their hearts.

Strangely Liberating

I was hit with malware – bad… I discovered it when my computer, even with the browser closed, began to air something like radio broadcasts.  I brought it in the next morning to have it cleaned out.  It took over a week – eight days exactly.

I use my computer for just about everything.  It’s my home computer and my work computer.  I was fortunate that this past week I didn’t have to preach or write worship.  Although, I had to write my sermon for May 12 longhand.  I also had to write my notes for my weekly television show by hand as well.  Some stuff I had to do on the computer, I was able to do on the church office’s computer.

Although this was the longest I’ve been without my computer in years, it is not as though this was the first time I’ve been without it for several days.  When I go on vacation, I usually don’t take a computer.  But not taking a computer is by choice.  This time, however, I was forced.

Not having my computer for just over a week was strangely liberating.   I sort of missed it, but then, not really.  I didn’t get onto Facebook, which leaves me feeling a little left out of the lives of people who I don’t see during the week.  I didn’t checked my e-mail for over a week.  I had over 500 e-mails when I got the computer back.  Rather than spend time on the computer, I was able to read a little more and got to watch some television.  I was even able to get out to do more pastoral visits.

I also found my writing process was more methodical writing longhand.  I also found that when I was blocked in my writing, I would have to stop.  I didn’t have the distraction that online access gives me (reading the newspaper, playing with FB, that sort of stuff).  I actually got out of my chair and had to do something physical.

I can’t say that I wasn’t feeling some effects by the end of the week.  I started to get a little antsy about the work I had to do.  I also had a mild scare that my documents were lost, but it turns out the techs forgot to reload my files.  In turn, I had visions of having to recreate years of work.  (I know, I know … I have to backup)

Anyway, things are sort of back.  I had to reinstall and reconfigure Outlook and am still missing dozens of address.

I thought I’d have missed my computer more, but was relieved I didn’t.  Still, it felt as though I was a sort of handicapped in my week.

A Reflection on the Boston Bombing

I actually wrote an earlier sermon prior to capturing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but woke up on Saturday nagged that the earlier sermon wouldn’t resonate as well.  So, I started writing all over again on Saturday.  This is the one I preached. (I’ll probably post the earlier sermon later this week.)

Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 21, 2013
Pittsfield, MA

Scriptures:      Rev. 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

The events this past week were tumultuous to say the least.  There were significant events:  ricin-tainted mail sent to a United States Senator and the President of the United States, the United States Senate voting down modest gun control regulation, the explosion at a fertilizer plant which flattened a town, floods throughout the Chicago metropolitan area due to five inches of rain in a single storm, and a terrible earthquake in China which injured 5700 people.  But for us, the bombing at the Boston Marathon and the unfolding drama dominated the headlines.  Friday night’s capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was undoubtedly a huge relief and celebration for just about everyone.  Facebook posts gave thanks and praise to law enforcement.  Blessings abounded for the people of Boston.

The biographies of Dzhokhar and his brother, Tamerlan, tell us a little bit about their lives.  They were Chechnyans, although Dzhokhar never lived in Chechnya, who immigrated to the United States about a decade ago.  They were educated in our schools.  Dzhokhar became a United States citizen last year.  They were both Muslims, the predominate religion in Chechnya.

Without a statement from Dzhokhar, the reasons behind the bombing are speculative at best.  The New York Times quoted two scholars, Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism, and Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic Studies at American University, both felt that the brothers had an identity conflict.  We’ve probably read by now Tamerlan’s comment, “I don’t have a single American friend,” although that was not the case for his younger brother.  Fishman, though, cautioned that drawing any sort of real conclusion is too soon.

Tamerlan, an amateur boxer, wanted to box for the United States in the Olympics.  Comments published in the Boston Globe from people who knew them generally fell along the lines that they were not troubled men.  They regarded them well and seemed genuinely fond of them.  No one said that they expected this from either of them, even people who saw them as recently as a week before the bombing.

Anger, certainly, is an appropriate response, but how does that anger get expressed?  While I won’t cite all the comments the Globe posted yesterday on this event, here is a couple:

• This story is simple: Islamic based terrorism at the core.  He has a playlist on YouTube that had numerous links to a radical Austrailian Muslim.  Islam hatest the West, it is a fundemental culture clash.
• There is no mystery to what happened to them. They became “devout” – read, “fundamentalist” – Muslims. Someone indoctrinated them and trained them. That’s how they got on the intelligence radar. They were 2 stupid, easily manipulated losers motivated by their twisted religious beliefs. Duh.

Some from yesterday’s Washington Post:

• Muslims hate American values, thus they hate us Americans
• Central Asians, Islamicists committed an act of terror on American soil. It they were assisted by others hopefully we hunt them down and peel them like grapes before sending them to Guantanamo.
• I can’t believe how toxic the discourse on this thread is. I need to take a shower after reading some of these comments. Keep at it guys, you are really contributing some great stuff here. Be proud of yourselves.

There is no question that what happened on Monday was a horrible and unimaginable tragedy.  It was supposed to be a day of fun and celebration, which turned in an instant to carnage typically seen on battlefields.  Of course anger and fear.  We’d have hearts of stone if we didn’t have fear or felt any anger.  But what do we do with that anger?

The Globe posted pictures of the victims of the bombing:  Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Sean Collier.  They didn’t have Tamerlan.  Although an alleged perpetrator, he was a victim, too.  Sure, evidence seems to indicate that he had a role in this bombing, but he also died in events related to the bombing just as Sean Collier did.  Our anger makes this hard to accept, but people grieve for him as well.  Whatever misguided thinking drove him to committing this heinous crime, his parents lost a son; his circle of friends became smaller.

As hard as this may be to acknowledge and accept, God does not love selectively.  God’s love is inclusive, radically so.  We do not say, “God’s love embraces everyone, albeit with some exceptions.”  We believe that our discipleship calls upon us to love as God loves.  Love is easy when they are our family and friends.  Love is easy when people are like us or when we come to know them well enough to care about them.  Love is easy when we can help someone through our generosity, like feeding them at a supper for the homeless or helping them in the wake of a disaster.  Love, though, challenges us when we face those whom we find detestable in some way, like Dzokhar and Tamerlan.  How can we find space in our hearts for these two men, especially when there are so many who are more deserving?

God’s love knows no bounds.  “…if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12b)  We are the embodiment of God’s love.

Our prayers for Martin, Krystle, Lingzi, and Sean, the first responders, the police, the medical personnel, the families of those who lost their lives, the people who were at the race, the people of Boston should include Dzokhar and Tamerlan, their families and their friends, too.  We should pray that the toxic thoughts of many do not lead us to undertake collective actions we will later regret: demonizing Muslims, lashing out at immigrants, pushing for a military tribunal.  We should pray that Dzokhar will receive a fair trial and that his family will not suffer punishment in their communities because they are related to him.

We are the church.  We are more than just a building in this community, we connect people with God.  Even for people who have no connection or affiliation with the church, we are seen as God’s people and thus, we have a responsibility to proclaim God’s ways in our ministries. Those ways can be challenging, such as now.  We lead this community by our example.  We are the good shepherd who will lead this community through its dark valleys.  We are the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in order to find the one that is lost; and Dzokhar is definitely lost.  We are the shepherd who reminds this community that love is the single-most powerful force we have for lasting transformation so that true peace and true justice can fulfill the words in the prayer we say every week, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  We remind this community in both word and deed.

We don’t know why Tamerlan and Dzokhar did what they did.  Without a statement, all we can say is speculative at best.  But one lesson we can take from this horrible tragedy is that no one really knows what made two rather normal young American men commit this bombing.  There were no distinct marks in the behaviors that triggered suspicion among their friends and acquaintances.  When we think about it, Tamerlan and Dzokhar could be our neighbor, our friend, or even our family.  They could even be one of us.

As hard as it might be, we should not overlook that they are as deserving of God’s love as much as anyone else. And it is in these moments and times when our faith is challenged and, thus, has an opportunity to grow.  It is moments and times like these when we can show true leadership in our community.

Let the anger generated by this tragedy become an authoritative testament to love’s transforming power.  Let love demonstrate that the kingdom of God promised by Jesus is for all people and when all people know that love, the promise will be fulfilled.

Morning Thoughts on Boston

I didn’t learn of the bombing on Boston yesterday until I was texting my daughter.  All I got was that there were a couple of explosions at the Boston Marathon.  I was in New York City when it took place.  I don’t own a smartphone, so I didn’t have any real information until I got into my car for the drive home.

I was worried about one of my nieces.  She was in Boston on Sunday and is a marathon runner.  (She did not run the race and was already safe at home.)

I listened to the radio reports and it became clear that things were still unfolding at 6:00 PM.  A lot of the stuff I heard was eyewitness accounts, though valuable, were basically filler as more substantial news, such as the perpetrator(s) or the type of explosive, were unknown.  I chose not to watch television or listen to the radio last night and after listening to the radio this morning and reading the Boston Globe and the New York Times, found that things still are unfolding.

I spent yesterday evening thinking and praying – how do we respond?  How should we respond?

As part of the faith community in Pittsfield, I feel we need to do something for people.  I began to jot down notes:

• Not vengeance
• Comfort
• Strength in Community
• Hope

I could not help thinking about September 11 and how our anger as a nation got the better of us, which led us down a terribly reckless path — we’re still paying for those sins.

Turning to psalms, my basic “go-to” book in times like these, I found Psalm 46:1-7:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Really, there is no sense to any of this violence.

Whatever response we do, I hope and pray it is not vengeful.  I hope and pray it is not destructive, but constructive.

Education, Maybe It Should be Poetry

I was going to put this into my last post, but it would have probably obscured the point I made.

As I was writing my last post I started to ask myself what is education’s purpose.  We test our students to be sure they are making adequate yearly progress.  We want them to be knowledgeable in particular subjects and topics.  We seek an outcome for them that will lead to fulfilling and, hopefully, financially remunerative employment.  It’s not unlike trying to make a product, which then is a pretty sad commentary on the way we view education.  Shouldn’t education be more than trying to treat our students as some end-product?

After posting my last one a friend posted an article published from a Syracuse, NY newspaper to her FB page about a local teacher who filed his papers to retire.  He’s leaving two years short of 30 years, when he could have retired with a full pension.  At one point in his long resignation letter he wrote:

“STEM rules the day and ‘data driven’ education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education…”

(STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.  The teacher is a Social Studies Department Leader.)

A bit of serendipity that I wanted to comment on the purpose of education and then got to read the this teacher’s story.

I don’t know why but I’ve been thinking lately about a story one of my great aunts told me years ago.  I shared it the other day with some of the inmates I’m currently teaching in the local house of corrections.  It’s a beautiful story about taking the civil service examination towards the end of the Ching Dynasty.

My great aunt’s father was young when he took the exam.  I think he was in his late teens.

People who took the examination had to go to Beijing.  The government administered the examination in a room in the Forbidden City.  Each person sat at a small table.  The tables were arranged in rows, like a traditional classroom.  Of course each table had its own brush, ink, and paper.

The questions were written on paper lanterns.  Backlit by a flame, people quietly and slowly paraded the questions up and down the aisles so the test takers could read them.  The questions, however, were the first lines to a couplet.  The answer was to finish the couplet with a second line.

The examination did not have anything to do with a specific topic – the objective was to find learned people for government service.

That said a lot about education and learning.  Education should be more than training for a job.  Education is to become learned.  Being learned implies knowing more than the narrow scope that comes with a job.  Someone who is learned can draw upon a rich wealth of knowledge as a resource to perform one’s job, thus enriching the job, but more importantly enriching one’s own life and the collective life of the community.

Shouldn’t our approach to education reflect our understanding of our community?  Or maybe it already does.

Losing Sight – This is Bad

At least for me I find myself shaking my head a lot these days when I read the news.  (Just a note for reference, I don’t watch television news.  I do listen to NPR, though, and some of those stories leave me shaking my head, too.)

It’s bad enough that we can’t pass even a gun registration law through Congress, especially knowing that a substantial majority of people in this country favor some sort of registration law.  I shake my head at the idiocy of Paul Ryan’s budget plan – and if he is a GOP intellectual heavyweight …

But those stories don’t bother as much as this one in The New York Times.  The recent article reported that 17 states offer some sort of school voucher program to allow students to use state money to attend other than public schools.  Georgia, for example, places few restrictions on the money, which means that families can use the money to send their children to religious schools.

I know there are public schools that are failing and that children should not have to attend them.  Admittedly, if I were living in a district with a failing school and I wanted my children to get a decent education, I’d probably think school vouchers are not such a bad idea.  However, when we take public money and give it to private schools which have no accountability to public education, we’re doing nothing to change the situation in the public schools.

The reality is that the track record for alternative schools, such as charters, which have arisen in response to the failings of the public schools in some areas, is mixed at best.  A study done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University in 2009 showed charter schools performance based upon education gains varied by location.  While there were charter students outperformed their peers in traditional public school settings in some locations, they also did worse in others.  Essentially, charter schools did not significantly outperform traditional public schools.  The report concluded that charter schools are not faring as well as their public school counterparts.

We can do better with our public education, but we’re going about it in the most bizarre way.  Rather than trying to find ways to support public education, we seek to punish it.  We pass legislation to divert money away from our public schools through vouchers or we authorize charter schools, which spreads what little money we allocate a bit more thinly.  We want to test children as a way to measure their learning and use the results to reward or punish faculty and staff, which leads to narrowing the curriculum to the test.

Public education’s struggle and failings have a distinct correlation to poverty, but somehow we don’t really want to acknowledge that.  Why don’t we map failing schools with various measures of poverty?  I think the correlation would be too obvious, and goodness! we would be forced to address poverty.

The push towards education vouchers is another sign that the common good just doesn’t have the value in our nation as it once did.  That’s what really makes me shake my head.

Public education has traditionally been understood as a fundamental building block to create a strong community.  Quality education would be available to all children regardless of economic background, race (Brown vs. Board of Education), ethnicity, and physical ability.  It was where a diverse population of children could learn the academics and learn to navigate the social conventions in order to live together in community with each other as adults.  Public education was and is a great example of the common good.

But these vouchers are a sign that the common good is breaking down.  While we’ve always had private schools where people could send their children for an education, that education came out of the family’s resources.  When the state provides money to help families send their children to other schools outside of the public system, the state is implicitly divorcing itself from its own public obligation.

One of the gospel’s overriding message is the necessity for the public good.  We’re all part of the same community and we’re to care for each other.  We’re to support each other.

When we sustain the common good, we all prosper.  True, some may prosper more if they don’t contribute to or help support the common good, but prosperity is more than what one owns.  I often say that the measure of true wealth is not how much one has, but how much one gives away.  The reality is a strong community needs a strong commitment to the common good.  A strong community creates a general feeling of prosperity and ownership of the community’s institutions.  Everyone, regardless of wealth, will feel better off and feel more secure.

When the state, though, undermines itself by offering education vouchers to spend with little or no restrictions (and little or no accountability), the state’s leadership has abdicated its responsibility and role to ensure the common good.

This is really bad.

Thoughts about the Cross

Maundy Thursday
March 28, 2013
Pittsfield, MA

How do you hold two very contradictory concepts or ideas in your head at the same time?  More specifically, can extreme cruelty exist simultaneously with extreme love?  Does one prevail over the other?

That’s the cross.  It was an instrument of extreme torture, perhaps the cruelest and most degrading form of execution anyone could possibly devise.  First, scourged with a whip to open wounds in the condemned’s skin, crucifixion was a slow, agonizing death.  After carrying the cross beam to the execution site, the condemned would be nailed to it, hoisted onto the vertical post and left to die.  Death would take hours and sometimes days – it actually didn’t matter because the person remained on the cross until he died.  The process was so cruel and humiliating that it was not used on a Roman citizen.  It was reserved for slaves and revolutionaries, those who committed the most heinous of crimes, upsetting Roman peace and order.

We should not think of Jesus’ crucifixion and that of the other two criminals as isolated cases.   If we walked down a well-traveled road in Jesus’ Palestine, we would have seen crucifixes on the hillsides all along our route, some empty posts and some with bodies.  That visual was intentional – it instilled enormous fear in the people.  It was one of the ways the Romans kept the peace.

Jesus’ death was political.  Jesus didn’t die because God took the life of his only begotten son to save us from our sins.  Jesus was not the ransom paid to free us from our sins.  Jesus’ death was inevitable because his ministry posed a threat to the entire Roman system of power and authority.  Jesus’ ministry was a living contradiction of the Roman premise that peace came through fear.  Jesus through his ministry showed another way to achieve peace, love.

Love casts out fear.  Love’s opposite is not hate; its opposite is fear.  It’s stunning to think that for all the mighty weaponry of its day and its huge powerful army and its enormous wealth, the Roman authorities feared love.  They feared love’s values:  generosity, loyalty, compassion, mercy, and grace.  They feared love’s imperative that we live not for ourselves but for others.  They feared reconciliation and the transformation that comes from forgiveness.  They feared love’s power because weapons of violence could not match the true and lasting peace that came from sharing the bread and the cup.  Love stood for all that Roman authority was not:  care for widows and orphans, accepting one’s enemy as a brother, servant leadership, and God’s favor upon the poor, not the rich.

Jesus spent three years in Galilee before he set his face towards Jerusalem.  He had done all he could to teach this way of living and that confronting the political and religious authorities in their seat of power was all that he had left.  Even though Jesus went to the cross as a condemned man, he went knowingly.

Jesus through enormous suffering gave his life in love for all humanity.  He said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 5:12-13)  The medieval theologian, Peter Abailard, wrote, “Wherefore, our redemption through Christ’s suffering is that deeper affection in us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also wins for us the true liberty of sons of God, so that we do all things out of love rather than fear – love to him who has shown us grace that no greater can be found…”[1]

Jesus’ crucifixion was not just for the sinners and prostitutes.  He didn’t do it for only for the widows and the orphans, the poor and the hungry.  He willingly went to the cross for the hemorrhaging woman and the woman at the well.  He went to the cross for the thousands who sat in groups of hundreds and fifties when he broke the bread.  He went to the cross for Zacchaeus.

As he hung from the cross he said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”  By those words he also went to the cross for all the Pharisees and scribes who doggedly sought to entrap him.  He went to the cross for the guards who mocked him and the Roman centurion who nailed him to the cross beam.  Jesus went to the cross for Pilate.  Jesus went to the cross out of love.  Love, the power which frees all people from the slavery of their sins, knows no bounds.  Jesus’ death on the cross was the fulfillment of love.

The cross as a symbol of love – God’s love.  The cross is extreme love.  The cross is the gospel, the world inverted and overturned, where what is is no longer and what cannot be becomes the new reality.

In the cross we have two very contradictory perspectives, but only one prevails.

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[1] Peter Abailard. Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (An Excerpt from the Second Book).  A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham.  Edited by Eugene R. Fairweather. The Westminster Press: Philadelphia.  1956.  Page 284