Justice
Wildly, Powerfully Kind
“What shall I bring when I come before YHWH, and bow down before God on high?” you ask. “Am I to come before God with burnt offerings? With year-old calves? Will YHWH be placated by thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil? Should I offer my firstborn for my wrongdoings — the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what “good” is, and what YHWH needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.
Micah 6:6-8
My sermon of October 23, 2022 at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC.
We continue today on our three week exploration of that amazing summation of God’s will for us given by the prophet Micah, to do justice, love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. Last week we began with doing justice, and as we looked at the scriptural record, the prophetic witness and the teaching of Christ and others, we arrived at the point of defining justice as the upholding of human dignity. Acting and speaking to establish and protect and dignity of all people is how we are a just people in God’s eyes. Today we come to the second of the three admonitions, to love kindness.
When we speak of kindness, does someone in your life come automatically to mind? We know kindness when we see it, it’s compassionate and generous, it builds people up, increasing joy and lessening hurt. If someone says “well, I was actually being kind” we know that’s suspect, don’t we? Kindness doesn’t need an apology and it’s easily recognized because of the fruit it bears in life.
It makes sense that we build our understanding of kindness on the justice we defined last week, the upholding of human dignity. Kindness is justice in action. It comes from a place of seeing the intrinsic value and worth of a person, and acting on it. It’s going to look like courtesy and compassion and it will be evidence of our just view of people. You’ve known kind people; kind people are the folks who practice the welcome and hospitality that the prophets said God expected to see among the people. Kind folks are quick to share, quick to compliment, slow to turn away, slow to judge and more curious than condemning. Many English translations have the word mercy in place of kind, and that works too… the merciful overlook the little things, give the benefit of the doubt, forgive, and lend a hand when they can.
According to the English dictionaries I perused this week, Kindness is the quality of being generous, helpful and caring for other people… the Hebrew for kindness in Micha’s writing is chesed, a love and generosity between people, ultimately modeled on God’s covenantal love. Though it’s never an easy task to fully render an ancient Hebrew word into English today, with all of its nuances, there’s no hidden messaging or major traps here… it’s talking about deliberate, chosen kindness.
We really see this in Jesus, don’t we?
- Jesus saw people’s value and honored it with compassion and time, like with the woman who snuck up to touch his garment in Mark 5 and Jesus stopped to talk with her,
- Jesus saw people’s potential and invested in it, like when he saw short-statured Zacchaeus up in a tree top in Luke 19 and didn’t laugh, but said, “I’m coming to your house!”,
- Jesus saw people confused and in need and didn’t judge them for it, like the crowds who were directionless as sheep without a shepherd at the end of Matthew 9,
- Jesus saw people in all their human complexity and refused to discard them, as when someone caught in adultery in John 8 was dragged before him and he chose not to judge, but to rescue.
Kindness changes lives for the better! Kindness creates possibilities and opens opportunities.
You know the familiar passage from St. Paul… “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” Galatians 5:22-25
Kindness is the fruit we bear in our lives which plants seeds in other lives. You know that’s the difference between fruits and vegetables, right? In general, fruits have seeds in them while vegetables don’t. Besides a few troublemakers like tomatoes, the rule generally holds. Kindness is a way of life that can be contagious and can multiply.
Things like kindness, the fruit born in our lives by the work and presence of the Spirit, can be powerful in reach and implication. I spent some time this week looking back at a powerful chain of kindness in action which is still blessing people today. Perhaps you know the story of Father Trevor Huddlestone an Anglican Priest in South Africa who bitterly opposed Apartheid. He would doff his hat in respect to a young Desmond Tutu’s mother, and because of his example of kindness Desmond decides he must follow the same path into the priesthood. The story of Fr. Huddlestone’s kindness varies slightly from source to source, but his kindness paves the way for an Archbishop Tutu to become the force he was against Apartheid, fighting for the dignity of all people, leading in reconciliation, and especially being outspoken in upholding the dignity of LGBTQ folks. His example and life continue to bless us, today.
Kindness is not meek and mild. Kindness is powerful, active and challenging for our world!
Exploring the call to love kindness from Micah, we might ask ourselves:
- What fruit of kindness am I cultivating in my life with intention?
- Who has been compassionate, generous and caring for me, and how can I pass that along?
- Who is in need of my compassion, generosity and care?
- What might be getting in the way of my kindness? What am I loving instead?
- Earlier and later in Galatians 5 St. Paul does give a list of things that get in the way… self-indulgence, biting and devouring each other, sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, sorcery, fights, strife, jealousy, anger, argument, divisions, choosing sides against each other, envy, drunkenness, conceit and competition. I’m not sure about you, but sorcery isn’t a struggle for me… but anger? Envy? Being argumentative? Being selfish? Yeah, there are things in my own heart which would fight against kindness.
Too often, it seems, that kindness is the first thing to be sacrificed on the altar of our political, economic, social or religious competitions. Kindness is left behind in the dust cloud of our angers, divisions and biting at one another.
Kindness is a choice, like choosing justice. It’s a calling; it’s the way we live. It’s who we were meant to be. Remember when St. Paul told the church in Ephesus in the middle of Ephesians 2, “we’re made for this, made for goodness, made to be doing good.” (That was my paraphrase!) We just have to move over all the other stuff that has gotten in the way, and then follow God on the world changing path of kindness. May God’s Spirit give us the wisdom, courage and opportunity to be wildly kind!
Be blessed, Rev. Todd
Fatphobia and Justice
“What shall I bring when I come before YHWH, and bow down before God on high?” you ask. “Am I to come before God with burnt offerings? With year-old calves? Will YHWH be placated by thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil? Should I offer my firstborn for my wrongdoings — the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what “good” is, and what YHWH needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.
Micah 6:6-8 Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (p. 1096). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.
Those of us in the Diocese of Washington have been invited to engage this October with the summation of what God wants from us in Micah 6:6-8. Here’s my sermon from Sunday, October 16th, 2022, on Justice and what it means to be a just person in God’s kingdom and the society God would have us help build.
As part of my own engagement with justice this month I have re-listened to the book What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon. Yes, the bullying, the fatphobia, the judgement and the treatment of people based on their weight is a justice issue, an issue of human dignity. There are many issues over which people face unjust harassment and disenfranchisement: race, religion, sexuality, nationality, gender, etc. Weight, specifically fatness, belongs to that list as well.
Aubrey Gordon’s book highlights the fatphobia and fat hatred which we in the West have consumed on-screen and in literature, and perpetuated across the generations with stereotypes, jokes and all too often inaccurate assumptions about people’s health, bodies and virtues. The author candidly shares the unprovoked comments received from strangers, often violent, sexual and mean-spirited in nature. She details the humiliation she and others have experienced navigating public transit and public spaces. She shares research on the horrible treatment of fat people in our healthcare system from biased and judgmental medical professionals. When considering all factors of environment, genetics, employment, individual uniqueness, privilege and more, it’s rather astounding that we have allowed such a injustice to pervade our culture around weight and various body types.
I vividly remember boarding a full flight some years ago on which I was seated on the very last row of the plane. As I finally got to the back and and identified my seat I also identified that the young woman who was sitting next to me was of a body type for whom the airline cared not a bit. Those seats are too narrow for me, but this young woman was a shorter and broader body type than I, and not thin. Our author describes in her book the process of trying to draw in and collapse in upon herself in a similar situation, to become as small as possible. I saw that process in the affect and posture of my seatmate, but I didn’t have our author’s words to describe it. The young woman wasn’t smiling. She was trying to mentally disappear, to vanish along with the part of her body which could not help but enter into my seat’s space, space which my own body would try to use to the fullest. I recall feeling so sorry for her as I approached and sat trying to angle my body to share the space as much as possible. At the time I was a bit overwhelmed at how sad she presented, and so I smiled, greeted her, and tried not to add to her misery with my body language or communications. But even as I tried not to add to what she was suffering, I didn’t have a full awareness of how unfair the whole situation was, how truly unjust it was that she should have to suffer it. She was a paying customer, just like me, and as such she deserved better. She was a human being, just like me, and as such deserved better. I didn’t have the words to express my solidarity. I didn’t even know for sure that solidarity was an option. Oh, it is. It’s a necessity.
Fatphobia is part of our reality. Maybe in my own life I’ve used fewer jokes, made fewer judgments and never spoke or acted with the intention of hurting anyone because of their weight, but I do feel called out by the book for not having better recognized the anti-fat humor and hatred which I have consumed over the years in entertainment, internalized and allowed to shape my implicit and sometimes explicit biases. I’m doing the internal work to strip away the years of hearing and holding the myths that fat means things like lazy, stupid, or gluttonous… myths that fat means less worthy, less deserving or less human. It sounds implausible when said out loud, I mean surely we can’t think that way, but the lived experience of people around us show those attitudes and myths at work in our hearts, minds and society.
I don’t know exactly where my own dad bod falls the spectrum of fatness. But for real, click on that link and read the urban Dictionary entry for dad bod… it’s humorous, but also highlights the way privilege, specifically male privilege, can be and is leveraged to mitigate some stigma of weight. Often people of color and other minority groups don’t have any mitigating privilege with which to shield themselves. With my height and build, even though I’ve definitely got a belly on me, I’ve rarely been chided, joked at or harassed about my weight. I certainly have never faced trolling or public disdain from strangers. My doctors over the years have on occasion advised losing some weight, but never refused to explore my full medical situation or dismissed my concerns as simply due to my weight. It’s heart-breaking to hear the author’s experience and to imagine what others have been through.
Privilege comes with responsivity. My dad bod fits. I fit however tightly in airline seats, roller coasters and those flimsy plastic chairs they often put out at weddings and public events. Because I fit in airline seats I am not smarter, more virtuous, more disciplined or more deserving then someone who does not fit. The privilege of fitting comes with the responsibility to make sure others receive access to the same spaces.
I want to be part of a better world, I have to be part of a better world, where people of any and every weight live with full dignity and worth in our society, and don’t have to suffer the violence and hatred of the trolls online and offline. To work for that kind of society is justice work, and it pleases God. I want to be a safe person for my fat friend, not allowing implicit bias and microaggressions in my language or actions to humiliate or devalue them. I owe them that. They deserve that.
Last time I checked justice was not in limited supply. We can pivot our thinking and take our stand against the injustice of fatphobia without robbing energy from any other justice fight. To be just is to uphold human dignity. Let’s be just people. I recommend the book and the work of fat justice.
Be blessed, Rev. Todd
Be Just
This is the text of my October 16th, 2022, sermon on justice based in Micah 6:6-8.
October has been a bit different for us, as you’ve probably noticed. We’ve not used the usual lectionary readings for each Sunday as the first two weeks were Homecoming and then Samaritan Ministries, and now we have another special emphasis for the remaining three Sundays of the month. We’re going to be joining a Diocesan initiative to focus on that amazing passage we read back on Oct. 3rd, Micah 6:6-8
“What shall I bring when I come before YHWH, and bow down before God on high?” you ask. “Am I to come before God with burnt offerings? With year-old calves? Will YHWH be placated by thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil? Should I offer my firstborn for my wrongdoings — the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what “good” is, and what YHWH needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.
Micah 6:6-8 Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (p. 1096). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.
This diocesan initiative would remind us of the centrality of God’s call to us, God’s intention for us, to Be Just, to Be Kind and to Be Humble.
This short passage is one of those amazing passages that comes along in our scriptures and captures our energy and imagination by so eloquently summarizing and encapsulating big ideas in a simpler expression. Let’s run through a quick reminder of who Micah was… Micah was one of twelve of what we call the minor prophets, a Judean prophet who in the style of Isaiah is proclaiming both the coming punishment for the people’s disregard of God’s law, and the restoration which comes after the punishment. These two things alternate back and forth in the text, consequences and restoration. But, what were the sins or the transgressions of the people?
- Chapter 1 mentions their idolatry.
- In chapter 2 it’s their theft of land and oppression of neighbors.
- In chapter 3 they are ignorant of justice and the way justice should work for people, and instead their judges take bribes and their priests and prophets extort money.
Chapters 4 and 5 speak mostly of the coming restoration and hope found in turning back to God in obedience. And you’re probably familiar with a verse from chapter 5, 5:2… “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.” We hear in it a clear reference to Christ.
When we arrive at chapter 6 God is speaking to the people, asking for their response. And here we have sort of a rhetorical question from the prophet, “What should we do?” We might even hear the question, “What is it God really wants from us?” Do we need to bring sacrifices and burnt offerings? What does God really want? And the answer is given… “Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what ‘good’ is, and what YHWH needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.”
The rest of Micah’s writing, the rest of chapter 6 and chapter 7 gives one more final round of the people’s offenses like cheating in business, violence, dishonesty, plotting against neighbors and perverting justice with bribes, with the appropriate punishment and then eventual restoration.
Spending time in Micah’s writing highlights the importance of justice that comes up in so many scriptural passages, especially from the prophets. Justice was the will of God and the expectation of God for the lives of people and their society. Justice was the bedrock, the foundation of loving neighbors, caring for the poor and safeguarding the most vulnerable. We often miss it because of the tradition of translators to interpret and translate words differently in version to version in English and from passage to passage, but the Christians ethicists Stassen and Gushee remind us in their book on Kingdom Ethics that the four words for justice in Hebrew and Greek appear across scripture some 1060 times. They contrast this against the main words for sexual sin which appear about 90 times. Because we’ve so often translated those words for justice to righteousness or judgment we’ve made it very possible to miss God’s insistence on justice, on just practices in personal and social life.
We tend to think of justice, it seems to me, in terms of action and consequences, mostly just crime and punishment. That’s been true for my life. We also think of justice specifically in context of the major civil rights movements in our nation’s history and the ongoing work to repair and correct the chronic injustices of our social, political, economic and legal systems. In God’s kingdom, in God’s economy and way of ordering the world, justice does include those movements, and also things like honesty, truthfulness, mercy, hospitality, welcome and mutuality.
Just a quick reminder and overview of what this kind of just living looks like:
1) fields are not harvested for every scrap of produce so that the poor can come and glean the edges (Leviticus 19),
2) the dishonesty of false witness against a neighbor is condemned (Exodus 20),
3) strangers and those immigrating among the people are to be treated as fellow citizens of the nation (Exodus 22)…
When we see God’s intention for our lives and hear the lists of accusations brought against the people by the prophets, we see that this is all about mutuality, seeing ourselves in others until there are no more others, but simply us. Justice is a way of living that welcomes, blesses and upholds our neighbors.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963
Time and again the prophets illustrate God’s anger for people leaving the path of justice, abusing their neighbors and for their dishonest practices, for tearing and destroying that weave of mutuality of which Rev. King wrote. The people have been inhospitable to strangers, neglected the poor and the disenfranchised, and they often have done those things while maintaining a religious front, performing sacrifices and keeping feasts. It’s the situation in Isaiah 58 when God has had enough and is furious about those abuses of justice.
I believe that we’d be fully accurate to define justice as the upholding of human dignity. Justice is the truth of people’s worth and the honest action and speech to honor and uphold it.
And this understanding of justice is not confined to the Jewish scriptures but also all over our New Testament! John the Baptizer’s teachings center on sharing equitably and not cheating or extorting one another. (Luke 3) Jesus taught us the same kind of justice in keeping promises and covenants (Matthew 5), forgiving as we are forgiven (Matthew 6), being the neighbor to those in need (Luke 10), and the intrinsic honesty of our yes meaning yes. (Matthew 5) Jesus condemned the Pharisees and religious elite for choosing to major in the minors, paying so much attention to traditions and rules while ignoring the most important matters of justice, mercy and faith. (Matthew 23)
Justice is central to the will and desire of God for us, and we must own the admonition to do justice, to be just… that is to be honest, true, merciful, aware of the most vulnerable and committed to the common good, and to uphold one another’s dignity and value. We do this with our words and our actions, in our business dealings and our relationships. We make it our goal to promote justice in our society, voting for those who will be just and uphold our neighbors. We demand it of our leaders even as we cultivate it in ourselves. We do this in our communities, like our parish family, sharing life with honesty, mutual concern and care, welcoming one another and the stranger.
Justice as we are taught it in God’s kingdom is what we demand and what we deliver. May God give each of us the courage and strength to uphold our neighbors, to safeguard their dignity and in all honesty and joy take our place in that beautiful woven garment of mutuality. Amen, amen and amen.
Be blessed, Rev. Todd
Psalm 1: On Trees and Paths
This past week was spent with Psalm 1 each morning, for at least five minutes with a fresh cup of coffee. I found the most impactful translation of the Psalm to be the Inclusive Bible:
Happiness comes to those who reject the path of violence,
who refuse to associate with criminals
or even to sit with people who belittle others.Happiness comes to those who delight in the Law of YHWH
and meditate on it day and night.
They’re like trees planted by flowing water —
they bear fruit in every season, and their leaves never wither:
everything they do will prosper.
But not wrongdoers! They’re like chaff that the wind blows away.They won’t have a taproot to anchor them when judgment comes,
nor will corrupt individuals be given a place at the Gathering of the Just.YHWH watches over the steps of those who do justice;
but those on a path of violence and injustice will find themselves irretrievably lost.Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (pp. 1157-1158). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.
The image of the tree as been a central part of my faith journey since I was a young boy in church doodling fruit laden branches on worship bulletins and in Bible page margins to visualize the Fruit of the Spirit. I would doodle the tree from Jeremiah 17 that has roots down to the flowing waters… in fact there’s an acrylic canvas of that tree on my dining room wall I painted some years ago. I’ve done my best to follow St. Paul’s admonition to be rooted to Christ. And of course, we have our tree planted by the flowing water in Psalm 1.
The tree is the image of robust strength, stability and growth even in the most difficult times, and it’s providing for others by bearing fruit. It’s a good image and good analogy for us in our intentional choices of where and how we’ll put down our roots. We want to choose, as the psalmist encourages, the path of righteousness, which is justice and goodness. We want to reach into those life giving waters, and for Christians that has always meant spending time with Jesus, soaking up his teaching and examining his Way for emulation in our own lives, this Jesus who promised to be in us a wellspring of living water.
Speaking of choices we make and the Way of Christ, the other image in the psalm is that of the path, the system of choices by which we navigate our days. If the tree image doesn’t resonate at the moment, perhaps the path will… we have images of both standing still and strong, and moving on in confidence and blessing. Life is often like that, huh? We have times of standing fast and times of moving fast. I know that life rarely feels so straight forward or as simple as wisdom literature usually presents, just two paths of right and wrong. It seems that in life we find ourselves more often at a twelve way intersection of choices than at a simple fork in the road, but the idea still works… trying to keep on the good path, the way of life and wholeness. It truly can be a daily effort to leave aside the opportunities and inclinations to be apathetic toward, verbally abusive, dismissive, cruel or even criminal toward the people around us, but that effort is crucial to both our dignity and joy and that of others.
It’s easy to read passages like Psalm 1 as an us vs. them arrangement, winners and losers, and dividing us to those who are good and those who are bad. But by spending time with roots down into those flowing waters, and meditating on the paths that bring life, you come realize that this isn’t us vs. them, but in fact it’s about living as though there is no them; there is only us. Whether we’re talking about a tree growing strong and providing fruit and shade in the midst of a life’s droughts, or we’re talking about paths of hope and goodness that help us all navigate our way through life, we’re in this together. We should act like it.
Peace to you,
Rev. Todd
Being a Good Neighbor
This is my sermon for Sunday, October 2, 2022, at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church as we celebrate our annual Homecoming . Our theme is Being a Good Neighbor and our scripture readings in worship are Micah 6:6-8, Psalm 8, Romans 12:1-8 and Luke 10:25-37. We’re focusing on the Micah and Luke passages.
Good morning, St. Timothy’s family and friends, everyone who has gathered for worship and celebration this morning! It is so good to be together.
I want to begin with a word of gratitude for the last year, mine and Teresa’s first year with you. Thank you for welcoming us and adopting us into the St. Timothy’s family. We are so happy to be here with you. Thank you for all you do, for serving on the Vestry, for leading and serving in various ministries around the church and neighborhood, for consoling one another, praying for one another and keeping tabs on one another through the best and the most difficult days. Thank you for showing up, smiling, even if behind those masks, in person and on Zoom, for reading in worship, for lending us your voices, and for sharing encouragements all along the way. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And as we gather to celebrate this Homecoming Sunday and think on the year gone and to regroup for the year to come, it’s the perfect time to hear Jesus tell a story, that familiar and yet never-gets-old story of being a good neighbor.
A Good Story
The story begins with a question, “What must I do to have eternal life?” I know we often read eternal life as simply “personal salvation” or we hear the question as “how do I get saved,” but I’d invite you to expand your hearing of that question: “What must I do to really live… to live in a way that matters, to live in view of and in step with things which are eternal?” Because the answer is not all that individualistic or only about getting saved and going to heaven when we die… the answer from Jesus is both individual and communal, about the now and the then.
Jesus turns the question back on the asker and asks “what do you think?” And we really so often know the right answer don’t we? We aren’t dumb. We know what is right and what is good, we know how to live as in step with things eternal: we embrace our God in love, and we embrace our neighbor in love. The answer given to Jesus is a reflection of scripture, and it’s a really good expression of what Micah said: do justice, show kindness and humbly walk with God. The same understanding of what is right and good must have been on your minds as well here at St. Timothy’s when you crafted our mission as a church: to live in love, walk by faith and serve our community.
The story could have stopped there, right? I mean, that’s good stuff… in church we would say, “that preaches!” Love God and love others! Done. But wait… I don’t like all my neighbors! In fact, if we’re honest we’re pretty good at not liking a lot of people around us! In the text Jesus has to deal with the perfectly human follow-up question to loving one’s God and loving one’s neighbor….. yeah, but Jesus, you don’t mean that neighbor over there do you? I mean really, who is my neighbor? If you want to avoid anything, make it a philosophical or rhetorical question, right?
But Jesus is ready, as Jesus always is, to help us past some of these very human foibles we carry in our hearts. He tells the story that many of us are super familiar with by now. The phrase “Good Samaritan” is part of the English language and we use it to means someone who is helpful in the moment, right? In the story Jesus tells of a person who falls victim to some the rougher aspects of this life, beaten down, robbed and left in an undignified ditch. He’s passed over and passed by by folks who should know better, religious folks, good folks. But when our neighbors are dirty, hurt and complicated, it’s easy to look away isn’t it? When stopping to help and to be with our messiest neighbors means that we may also get a bit dirty, and maybe we’ll have to spend some time in that same undignified ditch, it’s all too easy to move along and find another neighbor to love. And so we come to the point of the story from Jesus: the question is not who is my neighbor, the question is will I be a neighbor? We will you be the neighbor? Will we be the good neighbors that the world around us so desperately needs?
Being Good Neighbors
The invitation from Jesus is to go and do likewise. We’re sent to be neighbors to the world around us. It’s an invitation to embrace the role of neighbor, not looking away, not ignoring or seeking an easier road, but seeing those around us and loving them, caring about them and even lending a hand when things get rough and dirty.
As we move into this next year, from now until next Homecoming Sunday, let’s explore the ways that we can be the best neighbors! It starts right here right now in that very pew, or at home on that very couch where you’re sitting. The people you see right now, or will see soon and visit with today… love them, see them, and make a promise to yourself that you won’t look away.
As you go through the coming week and the coming months, going to school, to classes, to work, coming to church services, going to the grocery store, on vacations, walking down your street and going about the routines of daily life, love the people you see, care for them and let your heart wrap around them even in the messiness and struggle in which we often find them.
The Samaritan in the story that Jesus told paid a price for seeing that neighbor and loving that neighbor. Money changed hands. The way Jesus tells the story it also sounds like that Samaritan had every national, ethnic, racial and religious reason to pass on by… but instead they tore down the barriers that might divide and the paid the bill for meeting someone else’s needs. And being a neighbor sometimes will come with a price tag, and the question of whether we are willing to pay with our money, time and energy.
But why? Why should we have to be the neighbor? Why should we have to humble ourselves and get dirty? Why shouldn’t we look away? Why shouldn’t we hurry past like the priest and the religious folks in the story? Why not just lower our heads and watch out for ourselves? Because we want to have that life too, right? Back to the question that started this off… we want that life of meaning, that life in step with things eternal, we want the kind of life that carries us through hard times and the ditches in which we find ourselves. Because sometimes we need a neighbor, too.
As we continue to emerge from the years of pandemic separation, and we try to make things familiar again in life and figure out what really living means, as we work to build back lives of purpose and joy and eternal’ness, to build up our church family and grow it with folks joyfully learning of God’s love and life, we’ll do that in the neighborhoods in which God has placed us and with the many neighbors with whom God has placed us. Together is how we find life. Together is how we love. Together is how we really live. Amen, amen and amen. ~ Rev. Todd
Let’s go a little deeper…
A Starting Place for Being a Good Neighbor
Ok, I want to be a good neighbor, but where do I start? Let’s try using the Micah 6:6-8 passage as a framework for being a good neighbor: embracing justice, doing kindness and growing our humility.
“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”
Let’s look a little deeper…
Two of those requirements seem to express life with our neighbors: 1) advocating and acting for justice, and 2) crafting a life of kindness in our words and actions. Can we look around and explore what justice means for our neighbors? What are our opportunities to advocate for all people to have the same opportunities and to be treated with the same respect and dignity which we enjoy or demand for ourselves? Today’s culture wars in our society often seem predicated on winning and losing, as if dignity and respect were limited commodities which we either give away or keep. In truth, those are limitless commodities which we can share and give away without losing a bit of our own.
The third requirement, that of humility, seems rooted in our time with God and the intentionality we have for growing into the people God has called us to be. We need to make sure that we are filling our hearts with good things so that the fruit of our words and actions are good. (Luke 6:43-45) But remember, we aren’t putting on capes and becoming super heroes flying around and saving the world! We’re just people, fashioned and empowered by God’s love and grace, doing what we can to make little bit of difference for the people around us, sharing the kind of life that is really living.
Justice: what is right?
What are some ways we can advocate or uplift the cause of justice in our neighbors’ lives? The perfect place to begin is in prayer, but then we have to make sure that our prayer includes asking God to help us to act; prayer should lead to action. We can write to our political representatives to encourage them to uphold someone’s dignity or to protect our neighbors’ needs for justice. We can sign petitions and advocate for other’s rights. We can be voice for the marginalized and a voice of welcome for those who are being excluded. We can make sure that in our own language and choices we practice welcome, inclusion and uphold respect and dignity for all people.
Kindness: sharing joy.
What about kindness? Is there a need in your neighborhood you could help meet? Who do you know who needs a hand with something? Is there some litter that could picked up, someone struggling who could use an encouraging word, a note or a visit? Remember that kindness is sharing the joy that God has poured into our lives, not what someone has deserved or earned. We can be intentional about kindness; kindness is a choice and a lifestyle.
Humility: time with God.
And there’s our walk with God. How are we making time to be with God in prayer, meditation, study and conversation? How are we seeking God? There are many ways to grow our faith and our experience of God. We can read and study scripture and other supporting books and devotionals. We can spend time in quiet meditation or going for a walk with God, walking down the street or on a wooded path. We can immerse ourselves in music and praise. We can find a spiritual director or friend to help us go deeper in prayer and listening for God.
Making a plan.
What’s keeping us from sitting and prayerfully and choosing an issue of justice, an act of kindness and a practice of spending time with God on which to focus for the week? Imagine the intentionality of choosing an issue of injustice to confront in ourselves and our society, a concrete way we intend to be kind to the people around us, and a practice of growing our faith, and then placing reminders around for us in the coming week. What could we accomplish? How much better would the world be for each person in it who actively embraces justice, kindness and humble growth?
Here’s how this might look, choosing intentions for a week or even a month, developing habits and embracing our place in community as a good neighbor:
- Justice: One group of people who so often get treated as political pawns and not as human beings are the poor souls seeking asylum in our country. I’m going to learn about the situations they are fleeing from in their home countries, and learn about the groups local and national who are helping them, and I’m going to see how I can be involved in supporting these most vulnerable of neighbors.
- Kindness: When I go for my neighborhood walks I’m going to take gloves and a trash bag and get all the litter I can carry! And if there’s a neighbor outside they are going to get a big smile and greeting from me. I hope to greet and get to know a neighbor I currently don’t know.
- God Time: I’m going to start every day with a five minute quiet time, using my phone to set a timer, to just sit and sip my coffee and read and meditate on Psalm 42.
What would your intentions look like?
Your friend,
Rev. Todd
Blind Piety
President Trump’s America is looking less and less American, and totally un-Christian. With the flurry of controversial executive orders our new President has shown the effects of something with which many Christians in the West seem to suffer: blind piety. All in the name of morals and American values, with a strong dash of dishonesty and fear-mongering, our new President shreds the image of America around the world and moves us farther from the Christian values of justice, mercy and love for our neighbors. President Trump road a wave of this blind self-centered piety and unreasoning fear all the way to the White House. Now some of the most vulnerable people on the planet are beginning to pay the price.
What is blind piety? Piety is defined as a quality of being religious or reverent. Blind piety is a religiosity that ignores its negative and hurtful impact on the people around it. Jesus actually condemned it in his own day, and an apt name would also be shallow piety or even mean piety. Jesus condemned the religious leaders of his day who acted piously in vowing their income to the support of the Temple, but in doing so actually neglected their own aging parents who were in need. (Matthew 15) Now, I always wondered at that passage thinking, “How will something like that ever find a dynamic equivalent, today?” Well, ask and receive. It’s been played out on our national stage just this week. With an executive order that piously calls on abortion as a reason to cut our nation’s international help to some of the most needful and most defenseless women and families around the world our President has endangered lives, and many religious people are applauding and smiling. Blind piety. Mean religion. Just as in the day of Jesus, religion used to deny people our assistance is an affront to God.
At another time (Luke 14) Jesus chastises the hypocrisy of the religious thinkers who would refuse to help a fellow human being because of the religious obligations of not working on the Sabbath, but of course they would rescue a child or an animal in sudden distress. The hypocrisy is staggering, and it’s playing out before our eyes in this day and age. Our leaders are turning away from the most needful and endangered children on the planet, and mantling themselves in faith and patriotism while doing it! The President continues to narrate his actions with the familiar and completely dishonest alternative facts about a lack of vetting and the danger represented by refugees. He targets Muslim nations and vilifies and criminalizes the most vulnerable people on the planet. He speaks of walling us off from others, as though we are not all connected human beings with a shared and mutual life on this planet. These actions are not Christian, American or moral.
Why did Jesus condemn those religious leaders of his day? It was for what they had neglected: people. People are at the core of religious law, as he named that core: justice and mercy and faith. (Matthew 23) Jesus will later sum up the Law in two expressions of love: love for God and love for neighbor. (Matthew 25) The problem is not that religion is against people, but these people were misunderstanding their religion. We are guilty in the same way today when we turn from justice, mercy and faith to hide behind fear, exclusion and dishonesty. Some have chosen a blind piety that neglects people.
The sad truth is that these Christians in the West are turning from one of our oldest and deepest religious values: the heart of a stranger. Far back in our oldest Jewish religious roots as Christians is this amazing idea of identifying with the endangered. God gave Israel strict rules for protecting the alien and stranger among them, for blessing them and for serving them. The people of Israel were reminded of their own time as strangers in a strange land, and therefore they should hold to the heart of a stranger. (Exodus 22 & 23, Deuteronomy 24) That is an amazing statement and command of empathy and service. Until the incarnation of Christ into human flesh I cannot think of a more identificational statement in scripture.
These current events call for our silence to be broken and our voices raised. This political landscape suddenly shifts to assault our deepest religious values and we cannot withhold our condemnation of these executive actions. Let us be courageous and true. Let us be vocal and honest. Let us speak against these executive actions and their false religiouslity, blind piety and alternative facts. Let us be as courageous as Jesus to speak for justice, mercy and faith. That courage got him ridiculed, cast out and killed, but most of us face far less danger in our privileged status here in our own country. Privilege is never a license to ignore injustice, forget mercy or live faithlessly in our own time.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, Todd
(to the greater glory of God)
Treat People Like People
I’m on a Sirach kick again, as happens every couple of years. I have a deep affinity with the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. It might also be called Ben Sira. Fun, huh? It’s a unique kind of book among the Apocrypha and scripture in general as the work of a proud grandson, an interpretation out of Hebrew of his grandfather’s acquired knowledge and wisdom.
Pressing Down. As a young Christian I was taught to primarily read scripture in a transactional way: do this and get this, don’t do this and don’t get this. Life was a cosmic vending machine and God was the correct change. Most things in life were a linear transaction of cause and effect, and the scriptures were a guidebook for making the best transactions. While many passages seem to support this way of reading scripture, there’s much more to be experienced. Pressing down into the way of a passage can remake us into new people, whole new communities.
Ecclesiasticus looks very much like the guidebook to end all guidebooks. However, like shifting one’s focus from the nearest trees to the farthest, we can press deeper and farther. Rather than take the transactional sounding statements as the product, let’s view them as the tools to create something bigger: a more just and blessed world.
and do not keep needy eyes waiting.
or delay giving to the needy.
or turn your face away from the poor.
and give no one reason to curse you;
their Creator will hear their prayer.
bow your head low to the great.
and return their greeting politely.
and do not be hesitant in giving a verdict.
and be like a husband to their mother;
you will then be like a son of the Most High,
and he will love you more than does your mother.
The Hashtag Matters
Black lives matter. I find it hard to understand why we have to elaborate so much on what this statement actually means. It means that our black neighbors matter. Our black friends matter. Our black family members matter. Following the suggestion of a congregant and leader here at CiB I made a #BlackLivesMatter banner for the lawn out front, to express our solidarity with all our black neighbors and to express our solidarity with a local church that had its own #BlackLivesMatter banner defaced multiple times.
When I got an email asking what I thought of this idea, making a banner for our church lawn, I thought immediately of another local church banner that was defaced. Back in the last couple of years a sister church up on Old Georgetown Rd, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, had a banner asking for us to stand against gun violence defaced by the removal of gun. Really people, words matter.
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was born of a very real and present fear among our black neighbors that their lives don’t matter or don’t matter as much as other lives. That fear is born of many actual and verifiable things like:
- the history of racism and racial violence (as recent as a shooting this year in a black church in South Carolina, so don’t be fooled by the word history… that legacy of racism is still active and impactful in our society, today),
- prison incarceration rates for black citizens in the U.S.
- policing procedures in some cities that target black youth,
- harsher penalties for black offenders than people of other races for the same offenses,
- disproportionate arrest rates and episodes of police brutality and lethal force against unarmed black citizens.
- disproportionate death rates when interacting with police, even when unarmed.
And if that weren’t enough, too many of their white neighbors just shrug and blame the victim for these inequalities and offer crass advice about too often playing the race card. And of course, we can always find an exception to a rule. There are black Americans who have not faced as much racism or negative attention from neighbors and law enforcement. But even as we are glad that some may not face such trouble, we are not granted a license to ignore the experience of so many who do. Finding a black neighbor without this fear does not erase the fear in the lives of others, just as one police officer behaving badly does not mean all police officers are bad. The hashtag is not just spin. The hashtag is asking if we care about our neighbor’s fear and pain. The hashtag invites us to come together around a truth that cannot be denied: black lives do matter. The hashtag doesn’t divide; it asks us to come together to put meaningful action behind our beliefs of equality and justice.
It seems we do have to say it: #BlackLivesMatter does not mean that white lives don’t, or brown lives don’t, or blue lives don’t (murder of police officers is tragically spiking this year), or that any other lives don’t matter. It simply means that black lives do matter, for real. It doesn’t mean they matter more, but does for sure address the fear that some believe that they matter less. The hashtag was born for a reason, with cause. It didn’t come from nowhere. It came from fear, doubt and experience.
It would be amazing if we didn’t need the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag! It would be an answer to prayers! It would be a great if our neighbors no longer lived in the fear and doubt that they would be aggressively policed and killed without cause. It would be wonderful if they that justice was also for them and theirs. It would be fabulous if their fears and concerns were heard and acted upon. The hashtag dreams of that world! Let it do its work. Let it remind us that listening to one another and taking one another seriously is important. Let it remind us that there are people behind hashtags, people that matter.
People of faith of any color should not be afraid of #BlackLivesMatter, but should embrace it’s truth: black lives do indeed matter. To become part of the solution we have to listen to the voices expressing the fear and doubt, and the pain and anger. Denying the voices of our neighbors who are hurting simply denies us and them the opportunity to begin the healing.
Escalate peace. The hashtag is not a call to violence or to more fighting. The hashtag is a call to step back and view one another with dignity and respect, black and white and blue and every shade around. We have to stop escalating the violence and fear and begin to build bridges and relationships between communities that will foster cooperation and growth. We can do this. We must do this. And the people of the book who claim the One who said “my peace I leave you” must work to establish this vision in the soil of very continent, nation and community of our beautiful shared planet.
AMDG, Todd
Yesterday I Prayed
Most of us rolled out of bed yesterday morning and reached for the nearest device that would link us to Tuesday’s election results. We saw the list of winners and losers. We felt like winners and losers.
And I prayed. I was both a winner and loser yesterday, my vote at times landed on a candidate who prevailed and at other times upon a candidate who will not lead us in the coming years. I would imagine that we all faced some wins and some losses as the ballots were tallied. We each will have issues and interests at stake in who leads us forward. We’ll all have hopes and we’ll all have fears.
Today, I’m still praying. Tomorrow, I’ll pray some more. Prayer is not a consolation prize or an escape from the realities of life. Prayer is the ever-present expression of what is timeless, what is transcendent, what is hopeful. Beyond the arguments, the political parties and caucuses, and all the maneuvering of the powers that be, there must exist a truth and a reality undiminished by our collective failure to express God’s love, justice, grace and charity to one another. It must.
When I pray I beg for wisdom and for graciousness to inhabit the winners and losers of Tuesday’s contests. I beg for wisdom to overwhelm them all. I pray for the Spirit of the Divine to overlay them, even if they do not recognize the source of their growing empathy, mercy, grace and courage.
We keep moving, praying and hoping. I know what issues and values I have at stake in these many new leaders, and in the old leaders who will continue in their positions of power and influence. I know what many of you, a diverse group of people I dearly love, have at stake in these leaders. But we cannot let our fear ever extinguish our hope. We cannot allow our disappointments or even our victories to erode our commitment to justice, mercy and equity for all people.
I hope we’re surprised and not surprised. I hope that in the coming months and years we realize more justice, more equality, more joy, more freedom, and more of the rich life that we have to share. I hope that we see less poverty, less disease, less violence and less hatred, beginning in the halls, offices and rooms of our own Capitol. I pray that the good stuff God brings us is surprisingly beyond what we can today articulate or hope. And I hope we’re faithful enough in our anticipation to not be too surprised.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. To the greater glory of God. This is my daily prayer, inscribed upon my flesh with ink, that God’s glory grows and abounds in this world. This is my prayer because I am convinced that God’s glory is found in our love, grace, mercy and service to one another. Now and always, world without end. Amen.
AMDG, Todd
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