Passing the Peace to Barack Obama
Third Sunday, January 18
“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
1 Timothy 2:1-4
“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because our anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”
James 1:19-20
Well, we are into week three of talking about the way we might build a culture of peace, but not just any peace. Last week we spent some time with Saint Francis’ famous prayer that begins with the line, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…” That is “your” peace, the peace of God. St. Francis is seeking an expression of faith, a reflection of God in that bringing of peace. And we seek the same.
Towards that end we are doing something different this coming Sunday. We run the danger of being misunderstood, but it seems a worthy gamble to me. We are going to take the opportunity to “pass the peace” to President-Elect Barack Obama.
We always have prayer stations around the Sanctuary for personal devotion and community activity, and for the next couple of weeks we’ll have a place to extend the peace of Christ to our incoming President. Some of you saw the temporary wall that appeared at the National Mall after the election last year which congratulated Barack Obama on his victory and pledged to give him support for tackling the many issues he raised as priorities during his campaigning: issues like poverty, peace and unity. We are mimicking that wall with one of our own which will be a place for folks to sign their names, draw and paint.
Here’s how I was thinking the pledge on our wall might read: “President Obama, we extend to you and your family the peace of Christ as you enter into this new office of service to our nation. We pray for you all the needed wisdom and strength from God to hold such a position of responsibility and power with integrity, patience and perseverance. We at Church in Bethesda pledge our prayers on your behalf. We also pledge that we will speak and act as agents of peace and unity during your administration’s years in office. We renounce the destructive language of political abuse, humiliation and degradation that has become the norm in our times. We will speak to edify and encourage. Our faith calls us to respectful submission to those in authority and faithful service to our neighbors. These ideas will guide us as we follow your lead in the coming years. May the God of grace and wisdom enrich your years of service.”
That pledge, and the wall where we can prayerfully commit to it, will stand in our Sanctuary for the next couple of Sundays. Now, I don’t personally want anyone too confused by the wall… we are not trying to either politicize our religion or “religiousize” our politics. This is an expression of faithfulness. We would have found a way to pass this peace to John McCain as our next President at this time had he won the last election.
It will be hard for some Christians to sincerely pass the peace to Barack Obama, just as it would have been difficult for some to pass it to John McCain, but it’s who we are. We are the people who have chosen a King who sends us in peace. So we do it, when it is easy and when it is not. We don’t plan to have this “wall of peace” in our Sanctuary to choose a party side and exclude someone of varying political sensibilities. It’s not about the politics of the nation, but about the faith of the kingdom. Watch for photos of the wall. I’ll surely post some.
Now, may God bless our country and give us the peace that we need. May God bring peace to the battlefields and killing fields around the world. May the Spirit of God consume the warring souls of those leaders and all in authority who cannot find such peace within themselves.
May Christ be better known and clearer shown in all corners of the world in this new year. May God be glorified, the divine peace increased, and all people shown the beauty of life, life immersed in the eternal. Amen.
Notes for Passing the Peace
Second Sunday, 01-11-09
“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
Ephesians 4:14-16
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
We have started talking about passing the peace in the sense of building a culture of peace within our faith community that is then expressive to the world around us of the peace of God. We started by stating expressly that we desire a posture of peace versus a combative posture with others, specifically moving from trying to influence people from a position of power to an influence that is in line with the scriptural metaphors of salt and yeast.
We’re following that up by talking about a shift from a “persecution complex” being sold in our country today to a realization of our status as ambassadors, with either majority or minority status.
It would be funny to think of Christians as persecuted in our country today, if religious persecution wasn’t such a deadly reality in so many places around the world. Leave it to some American Christians, numbered among the 5% of global consumers who consume an estimated 24% of the world’s resources, to somehow figure themselves victims.
Victims fight for rights, for revenge, for justice for themselves. Ambassadors work create connection, reconciliation, peace… they work for the rights and others. Maybe in many ways the nouns victim and ambassador don’t make complete sense when set up as opposites, but I believe they do a fairly good job of representing the choice we have as Christ followers in our current culture and context in the West. When we choose to be victims we become self-centered, self-interested and self-absorbed. We begin to carry massive chips on our shoulders and to interpret slights against our faith or faithful habits as attacks, a loss of “rights” and a new battle ground on which to make our stand. When we embrace the role of ambassador, as did Christ, as did Saint Paul, and so many others of our historical faith community, we find a new chance to respond to our minority status or at least to the growing cultural dissonance with our public expressions of faith with a new tact, a new level of peace. Victims are humiliated. Ambassadors are humbled.
Saint Paul actually used the word “ambassadors” in our second letter to Corinthians as I believe he immediately spoke about his own work, but also of the work of the Christian community as a whole. I think this flow begins back in the third chapter, at least. In the third chapter he draws a contrast between the will of God written on stone tablets and then written on the living hearts of followers, a contrast between death and lasting righteousness. Theologically he will hang the idea on two points in the fifth chapter: 1) the fact that this life is not the only life or not the paramount expression of life, and also 2) the driving love of Christ. He calls that love “compelling.”
Here’s how I think this all begins to work out… in this world we belong to a kingdom, but we’re not building one. Christ did not come to extend through his followers a new political power base of movers and shakers to dominate the world scene through force of will or arms. Here we are reminded of last week’s scriptural metaphors of salt and yeast. In fact, the kingdom, and it’s influence, would be vastly different, and therefore far more meaningful and lasting than a particular political or civic establishment. We bring life to the dying, that is part of the message of Christ. We bring peace to the hopeless, freedom to the enslaved. These are hallmarks of Christ’s purpose. But we are not called to bring Christian rule. There’s a necessary difference between the reign of Christ and the rule of Christians. Didn’t Jesus renounce the kind of “fighting kingdom” about which Pilate seemed interested? Hmm…
We are also confronted with the imperative to be led by and formed by the compelling love of Christ. In other words, when a Christian confronts anyone and/or responds to any situation out of disgust, hatred, envy, apathy, racism, vengeance, superiority, lust, self-interest or pride they are on the wrong track. This compelling love of Christ is not a pithy Hallmark card slogan, but it is a real and difficult challenge for a “nation of ambassadors” to carry out in the arenas and times of both domestic and international conflict and even relative tranquility.
A people without an understanding of and a commitment to the kingdom priorities of reconciliation and love will quite naturally have a hard time with “speaking the truth in love.” In fact, I think we have often had a hard time doing this thing. Popular alternatives that I’ve seen have tended to look like “speaking the truth with tough love,” or when we are feeling particularly righteous, “speaking the truth and loving it.”
We have to embrace our ambassadorial status to go and make the connections in the world that lead us to being a people of reconciliation. I’m praying for the day that followers of Christ are not known in our hemisphere for who they hate. I pray for the day that fringe groups of our faith, no matter how small or marginal, have stopped making “God hates Fags” signs. I pray for the day that my own understanding of that compelling love has moved me deeper into relationships of reconciliation with my neighbors, maybe the ones I’ve thought would be the least interested in Christ’s message of peace. There can be a kingdom in this world that while being faithful to God is extending and sharing the divine peace with all the fellow travelers along our roads. Bet on it.
These are some notes I’ve made in preparation for leading a discussion at CiB in January on building a culture of peace, an imperative for Christ followers…
As Israel invades Gaza in a continuation of it’s recent offensive, I’m just not interested in the same old arguments about who started what when. I am reminded of the old African proverb, “When the elephants quarrel, it’s the grass which suffers.” My prayers are with the folks in both Israel and Gaza who are dodging rockets and gunfire. My prayers are with the respective leaderships who cannot find enough love of peace in the jumble of all their many desires.
Tomorrow, I am starting a discussion at Church in Bethesda about creating a culture of peace, in our own lives, in the life of a faith community and in our world. We’ve come a long way from a serving, suffering Christ to find his followers organized into political caucuses, both left and right, fighting for dominance and rights and civil power.
Maybe that big question of who really ultimately fired first in the whole Israel/Gaza mess has a less deadly, but still crass and hurtful analogy in the “Great American Bumper-Fish War.” You know what I mean; on some cars a Jesus fish gobbles the Darwin fish, while on others a Darwin fish consumes the Jesus fish. I don’t know whose fish ate whose first, but I think that in such a contest that no one is winning any hearts or minds. I also don’t believe that faith and intellect are antithetical. Why do we draw lines and go spoiling for a fight?
Mostly, I don’t believe that Jesus calls us to a “one upping” of cultural or personal slights. How far from “Blessed are the peacemakers” do we wander when we assume a combative, either offensive or defensive, posture with the world? Did Jesus die for my civil rights? Did Jesus die for my cultural dominance? Did Jesus ask me to take up my cross and shove into people’s faces? Jesus took a small fish and blessed it and fed the hungry. Why would we use a small fish to divide and insult?
So, tomorrow we start talking about what scripture might be doing when it calls us to be “salt” and likens the kingdom reign of God in this world to “yeast.” I don’t wonder why we can’t “all just get along.” I wonder when we as Christ followers will claim our rightful place as servants, when we will not be found to be the ones standing up for ourselves, but standing to the side, quietly leavening a world that doesn’t need us to win, but to love.
Seriously, there’s only a “culture war,” as the pundits call it, if we show up to fight. When we choose peace, well then there’s just a chance to do some good. I’ve really already stared this conversation with several friends sitting in offices, coffee shops and living rooms. Seemed like something some of you might want to join in on.
Wow, do I love Advent! I was working on the reading for this Sunday from Isaiah 64:1-9 and moved into writing something to be read while we light that first candle…
On The Lighting of Advent’s First Candle
One candle, one small light.
It seems so insignificant a gesture,
Drowned in the darkness that surrounds us.
War, poverty, disease, the age old enemies
That seem to be the lasting bane,
Which steal hope generation after generation.
“Oh, look on us, we pray!”
We strain to see, but our eyes so often fail.
We hope to be seen, but our hearts so often fail.
We remember!
But we light that one candle.
We light that candle
And we try to wipe the sleep from our eyes…
We stand in the paradox of waiting
For that which we have already received.
We come again to a day of longing, a moment of renewal,
The presence of a single candle to recall us to the light.
Our own steps have too seldom chosen the brightened path.
We remember!
We light that one candle!
We defy the numbing pain and cast away the fatigue
That steals the strength and peace from our spirits.
i am very excited about a site i’ve wanted to have setup up for a while, that is now online and going… sharedcreativity.wordpress.com! it’s a site where i have started making my video loops available for free to anyone who is helping minisitries with worship projection.
i’ve started with a handfull of my vids and will be adding more, slowly but surely. all the cuts are currently in .wmv format, but i hope to start adding .mov versions, soon.
Yes, I am actually considering the unthinkable. I am probably not going to cast a vote on November 4th this year.
*Sigh* I do that a lot these days (sighing) when I start trying to pick through the morass that is America politics and the spin of words, meanings and intentions. As someone struggling to follow Christ and discover the many ramifications of that following in the world, I have to admit that politics are just coming up short.
And talk about a mess… I heard an author underscoring a good point just a couple of days ago: we have four people, all very admirable and diverse in their public service, all claiming to be followers of Christ, and all of them divided into teams bent on the ridicule, defeat and public destruction of the other. Nice! If only all the Christians could rip each other like that! Oh wait…
There are also all the other Christians, the “daily Jesus” across our nation, lining up on teams and propagating some of the most hateful spin and soul-rending, accusatory gossip I’ve never asked to see or hear. *sigh*
While I’m on my soap box… where has the moral high ground gone? I listen to both sides, and they both say the same things! The other side is bad, evil, racist, stupid, elitist, ignorant, liars. The other side wants to kill children, neglect the elderly and wreck the economy. And both sides think I’m a fresh cucumber who will just nod and chuckle and be so grateful they’ve enlightened me. I switch channels back and forth on the radio and the only thing that changes is who is doing the talking.
*Sigh* So, here are my party platforms as they currently stand… and yes you too can join my party, every Saturday night at 8pm in the front yard until it gets too cold.
1. I accept, without question, all four candidates’ profession of faith, and I celebrate that they all call on the name of the only One I believe is actually capable of making the world a better place.
2. I am going to pray my faith to tatters for these four people! I am going to be praying that they find a way to bring more peace to our country and the world. I’m praying that they can find a way to bring more harmony and civility to our discussions and political arenas. I am praying that each one’s faith grows and deepens and enlivens them as it brings all the wisdom they need before and after November 4th.
3. I don’t really have a third thought for the list. But since there should probably be a third in any list, I threw the number in for grins.
So, am I just “thumbing my nose” at the glorious American political process and all those who literally died to provide me such an opportunity? Nope. In fact, I’ll be doing my part to propagate the mess. I have been accepted as an election judge in my district, and I’ll be right in there smiling and helping folks do their thing, casting those votes! But, I’m choosing only a servant’s posture for now.
As I read the scriptures, I can find no reasonably implicit or explicit expectation to be a faithful participant in the voting process. Surely, you can quote a famous American historical figure or highly talented Rock Star to the contrary, but I just feel the need for some “change.” If I truly do place my faith in a King who transcends politics and if I place my faith in a transforming gospel which can never be bound or blunted by the governmental and political winds that blow… then maybe I need to put my ballot where my faith is.
Here’s how my growing perspective on the future looks: What will I be doing on November 5th, if we even know that soon who won? The same thing I’m doing today. I’ll be praying for our nation, for it’s leaders and people. I’ll be praying for the world’s leaders and peoples. I’ll be speaking and living the life-giving, hope-driven peace of God to the best of my abilities in every venue I find it possible. I’ll be working hard and paying my taxes. I’ll be faithful to my wife, my children, my whole family and to any and all to whom I carry my various responsibilities. I’ll be seeking and finding a transformation in Christ, along with my church family, which enables us to further grow in ministry and service to everyone within our reach. No president, Republican or Democrat, makes these things possible. No president can cause them to cease.
And I also recognize that when I begin to feel that pull, that planetary-like gravitational pull of the power and adrenaline of politics, I personally have more to lose than to gain.
I fully understand this might not be your road. I in no way mean to represent my faith musings as a template for you. Your going and voting can be as faithful as my abstinence. In fact, that’s all I would presume to ask of you, my friends and families. If you vote, vote with faith, with hope, with love and with pleas for heavenly wisdom.
My amazing, beautiful wife says I should write in a vote. Maybe I should sell my vote on eBay!? Surely that’s been done.
Right now, I’m not feeling it. I don’t think I’ll be voting. But, who knows? That gravitational pull just might overcome my defenses. Or Teresa might step it up, slap me around a little and change my mind.
I have been blessed in my short 38 years to have lived in a wondrous variety of places… places like East Africa, North Texas, Central Alabama and Western Maryland. In all these many places I have known an amazing array of Christians from all kinds of backgrounds and with many diverse ideas and viewpoints. I’m continually grateful for this range of experience and what I’ve been allowed to glimpse in their lives as they all struggled to be representatives of Christ in their own times and places.
I’ve seen that sometimes Jesus does drive an SUV.
Sometimes he drives a hybrid or even rides the bus.
He’s also been known to ride her bike to work.
Sometimes Jesus has her hands so full just trying to pay bills and raise a couple of strong-willed kids that she really doesn’t have time to think too much about the big, global questions out there.
And I’ve seen Jesus agonizing over the epidemics of AIDS and poverty that at times can seem to cripple whole continents.
I’ve seen Jesus foster “unwanted” babies in her own home.
Jesus has mortgages, unpaid bills, school loans, and is half-way to an ulcer.
Jesus also keeps giving at church and handing bills to folks on the street and wrestling with what response an American suburbanite has to the horrors of Sudan and suicide bombers.
Jesus loves peace, but sometimes she wears a uniform.
Jesus loves peace, but sometimes he marches with signs by the White House.
Jesus has been known to vote pretty liberal, choosing a candidate who promises answers from the government for the woes of poverty.
And I’ve seen Jesus vote for the fiscal conservative because she really does believe that lower taxes and helping businesses will create jobs that will help people build lives of dignity and hope.
Of course I’ve also seen Jesus scratching his head as he’s trying to figure out what a candidate just said.
I’ve seen Jesus with tattoos and even a piercing or two, or five.
I’ve seen Jesus in a Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and tie like clockwork each weekend.
Maybe Jesus isn’t a brand.
All those glimpses of Jesus, even in most diverse extremes, don’t cause me too much angst or confusion. But, I have seen and heard some things that bother me.
I don’t like it when Jesus makes fun of Jesus.
Sometimes Jesus doesn’t like Jesus’ accent, or his hair style, or her politics, and thinks that stinging, humiliating jibes might somehow be an appropriate response.
Something is wrong when Jesus hates Jesus.
I worry about it when Jesus hates Jesus, even to point to questioning if she really is Jesus, or maybe just a faker.
In fact, something’s wrong when Jesus hates anybody.
It just doesn’t feel right when Jesus subverts faith and love in favor of candidates and issues.
I’ve heard people who were standing around watching Jesus hate Jesus just chuckle and say things like, “I knew there wasn’t anything to all that Jesus junk.”
And so many folks who need to hear the words of hope and peace that Jesus hallmarked in his First Century ministry today just get a belly full of my-way-or-the-highway pride and cultural labeling in our 21st Century scramble for market share and cultural dominance.
*sigh*
I love Jesus.
I enjoy talking to Jesus.
Every time I get a chance to sit and have coffee with him, I’m there.
I love listening to Jesus tell stories of answered prayers and when she got to see God moving in exciting ways on a mission trip or in a relationship.
I pray Jesus keeps doing that “Jesus Thing” all across our globe, and that Jesus is always there to kick me back in line, loving the Jesus trying to live and breath and touch this world through me.
I love Jesus, which means I love you.
And it means that I really hope you love me.
It’s our love, and never our hate, that can change the world.
It’s our love, and not our votes, that can save the dying.
It’s our love, our hands, our feet, our faith, our peace, our joy, our Jesus that can never be lost or won in any election.
So, I took a break from picking up litter this weekend to rescue some trees. I’ve rescued dogs and a cat from various centers, but never rescued a plant before. My neighbor has built himself a new house, and planned to trash a row of sweet little trees that stood between our two homes… until another neighbor double-dog dared me to move them. How did she do that? She simply told me it could be done… that’s a double-dog dare to a guy.
I’ve never moved a tree before this weekend. But after a few hours yesterday evening and about six today… around twenty little trees have a new home in various places around my yard. Some will still offer a screen between our two houses and others line our front fence. Once we get a bird bath in with a couple of feeders, this will definitely be a choice picnic yard.
My wife and I have joked about it, but we like to eat outside. I think we’re the only folks in our neighborhood who will eat dinner in their front yard. (Enter background banjo music.) I promise we always leave the squirrels alone! But ya know, maybe if we all ate in our front yards every now and again we’d all be a little more attuned to ebb and tide of litter washing up and down our streets? Who knows, maw.
I haven’t done any gardening work or really anything with plants since we lived in Africa and I grew veggies and tended our fruit trees. It felt good… goooooooooooood. My back is sore, sure. But it was nice to grub around out there and watch the birds picking through the yard and turned soil. Please, say a little prayer for my trees… they are my first transplants, and I didn’t go to medical school! The whole experience was a blessing for me, and I’m praying it was a blessing for the trees, too. I’ll know in a month.
For now, the little trees are as yet unhugged, but out of harm’s way. If they survive the transplant ya’ll have to come over for a cookout, soon… in the front yard.
In the month of May we’ll be talking at Church in Bethesda about knowing God’s will. You know, a simple little thing like that. I started a chart, though I like to call it a “matrix” of my thoughts so far. I’ll throw it in this post at the bottom. We all know the movie, but do you know what a matrix is? I went to dictionary.com to see if I was using it properly… it’s a starting place or point of origin. I like that.
Anyway… look the matrix over and throw me any suggestions. Here’s a brief explanation of it I’ll be sharing on Sunday morning… “The chart is my attempt to gather my thoughts on moving forward with, knowing and entering into God’s will in life. The seven circles are representative of the ways I have thought of God’s will being accessible to us and the different applications of that divine will, and their interdependence (over-lapping). To the side of the circles I tried to describe the “avenues of knowing” or the scope in which we seek and apply that will. I also brainstormed a short list of concepts, activities, hopes and implications of God’s will… we’ll talk about these and more as we process this together, leave the matrix behind and approach a type of “solution.”
As you look it over and think about this week, I’d like to say just a few words about the interdependence (overlap) of the circles: I take it very seriously. I believe that we can move through life very connected to God and what God hopes and dreams for this world, and I believe that keeping all our circles over-lapped is key to not getting off in undesirable country. I mean it like this: Some folks are better at intuiting things, and some are more knowledgeable with the scriptures, just as some are wrapped up in the daily personal things of life while others have more time and opportunity to grapple with the global, cosmic issues… we need one another in this endeavor. It would be very difficult for one person to tackle all this alone: we need one another. Intuiting without a good grasp of scripture can easily go awry, just as imposing views of scripture divorced from a connection to living, breathing people can be suffocating and deadly. God has some daily concerns and some comic concerns, how do they interrelate? Divorcing God’s love of us and God’s love of creation, I believe, is a great example of how we Christians have lived an imbalance in the world that helped create some of our environmental problems today.”
I gaze upon the constellation
Filling up with consternation
Senses threaten cancellation
Living or an approximation
Seeking an inner transformation
Mixing in an appellation
Soul-felt deepening aspiration
Climbing from asphyxiation
Lost in loose transliteration
Half again the bifurcation
Ashes attest the incineration
Stretching an explanation
Spilling in evisceration
Fearing to be an abomination
Asking for a sanctification
Feeling total purification
Can I hear a revelation
Will you join the exaltation
Revel in invigoration
Spiritual inebriation
Enlightening intoxication
Transcending our classification
Shred the lines of demarcation
Spending each denomination
Gambling annihilation
Finally knowing emancipation
Accepting all propitiation
Hoping in anticipation
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