Choosing War Again

We are at war again! How easily we go to war! It is as if, having prepared for war with all manner of sophisticated weaponry, we cannot help ourselves but to use our weaponry. Is that because we have to prove how powerful we are?

I am referring to us as a people. Abraham Lincoln reminded us that we are “a government of the people, by the people, for the people” with the hope that our democratic form of government would “not perish from the earth.” We choose our representatives and president. We can choose presidents who are problem solvers for the American people or we can choose a president who is needy for power and make him our commander in chief, making available to him all manner of military power.

We the people have again gone to war. We have attacked Iran, and as with all wars, a rationale has been given by our president and many of our legislators. Apparently, we are going to be the Iranian people’s savior. We are doing regime change again. (How well has that worked in the past?) Or, at least, we will open the way for the people of Iran to make changes, as if we consulted them for what they needed. Iranian organizations working for change in Iran know, on the ground, what is necessary for change. We are not it. Nor does the destruction we bring help them: the loss of life, the children killed in an elementary school, a hospital bombed.

We the people are at war. By a majority, we chose our president and representatives, and the government we have chosen has taken us to war. Yes, our president has acted lawlessly. (There were no “imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” Politico) Nor did he consult with congress. But then we chose a lawless president. We knew he was lawless, if we were paying attention.

Each of us are responsible for the decisions we make, the actions we take, the leaders we choose, the witness we present. We witness from values we hold, from our sense of purpose in life, from what we live for. There are alternatives to war. Yet, we keep choosing war.

The prophet Isaiah envisioned a day when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” For that day to come he exhorted us: “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Inherent to our humanity is the potential to decide to walk in the light of our Creator (the light is there for us) or pretend we are our own god and walk in the darkness of our deceit and make life hard for those we live with. A government of the people means that the decisions of a nation come through the people rather than a king. The people choose their representatives and their president. We do so in light or darkness (or some measure of both).

In this moment, we can make decisions about our government. We have agency. We can take stands, speak out, press for change, be witnesses to another way of operating, the way of “doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God.” We can be light in the darkness, if we will be open to the light.

There is an alternative to war. We have had difficulty accepting it or signing up for it. Jesus speaks it: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Filed under: Justice, Leadership, Peace, Society, War, WitnessTagged with: , , ,

Healing For Divisions

How do we cross the divides? Whether cultural, social, or political, where do we find common ground? How do we recognize our common humanity?

Divisions reveal the breakdown of our humanity. Our divisions surface from the hollowing out of our humanity. A humanity meant to manifest love loses its humanity when it ceases to love.

For the dividing walls to come down, we must recognize our inhumanity in light of our humanity. And there must be a renewal of our humanity and a renewal of love.

Until we acknowledge that we are to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” we will rationalize our behavior. We will legitimize our divisions. We will treat our inhumanity toward others as necessary and love as impossible.

Change comes when we seek quiet moments of interior reflection in which we allow ourselves to recognize the loss of our humanity in our stinginess, belligerence, unfairness, dishonesty, prejudices and unloving actions. We acknowledge our inhumanity in our refusal to love our neighbor, especially our neighbor who does not think or operate like us or who we have viewed as an enemy.

In the silence of introspection, we may hear the still small voice calling us to love our neighbor. Rather than throw back at another what they have thrown at us, we take a step toward love by forgiving them. And then we look for what else love can do. We may even see that Jesus is right when he tells us to love our enemies. We were meant for love, and it is possible to love another who does not love us. It is possible to look beyond another’s brokenness and see their need.

The divisions in our society are only addressed by a love that sees beyond the inhumanity of the other to their humanity. The image of God stamped on our humanity may be effaced, but it is not destroyed. So we find a way to speak and act in recognition of the humanity of others, whether we experience their actions as humane or not.

There is no recovery from our divisions if we remain focused on another’s inhumanity, on their cruelty, hate, distorted values, fears and prejudices, and treat them as unredeemable. By words and actions we must call one another back to humanity: Speak against inhumanity and for humanity. Act against hate and for love.

At times that may mean speaking hard words of love that call out the inhumanity of one toward another, so that the inhumanity of one can be seen for what it is and the one who is being harmed be recognized in their injury. (Love is not the same thing as being nice.)

This is what I recognize Jesus doing when he called out religious leaders who “tied up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and laid them on the shoulders of others, but were unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” He called them back to their humanity when he addressed what they had become: “You are like whitewashed tombs….On the outside you look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Love speaks hard words when necessary.

God, the source of love and our true humanity calls us back to our humanity as children of God. Only as children of God empowered to love do our divisions lose their power and break down.

Filed under: Compassion, Healing, Love, SpiritualityTagged with: ,

Can ICE Agents Be Saved?

”Can they be saved?” is a question that could have been asked of tax collectors in Jesus’ time and place. These traitors who collected taxes in Judea for the occupying power of Rome were at the top of the list of sinners. Religious leaders certainly saw them outside of God’s mercy. They asked Jesus’ followers, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Can tax collectors be saved? Can ICE agents be saved? Can those occupying cities in this nation, pulling people out of their homes and cars, beating them, shooting them, confining them in inhumane detention centers, deporting them to nations they are not from, separating parents from their children, racially profiling and abusing them be saved? Can White supremacists be saved? (A White pastor who had been detained by ICE was let go with the words, “Well, you’re White. You wouldn’t be fun anyway.” Clearly, White supremacists have been recruited for this activity.)

Can ICE agents be saved?

Can tax-collecting traitors who got rich off the oppression of others be saved?

Jesus was passing by a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector and was rich. Jesus said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” People grumbled at Jesus’ going “to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” But Zacchaeus demonstrated repentance, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house…for the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Another tax collector, Matthew, became one of Jesus’ twelve core disciples. Jesus “called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, `Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.” And Jesus made it clear to Matthew, and to all, that following him meant that they “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow.”

Jesus’ central message was “repent and have faith for the reign of God is near.” Let go and let God reign in your lives.

Salvation is open to all. Relationship with God is open to all. The way is repentance. Turn around. Do not continue down the path you are on. Relinquish your life to God. Let God direct your steps.

The message to ICE agents is: “Do not continue to bully and terrorize others. But turn to the God who is Love and have your life turned around, so that you exist for the uplift of others and for seeing other’s needs and serving them.”

Salvation comes to the house of an ICE agent when they repent. Salvation comes to those who oversee ICE, when they repent and bear fruits of repentance. Fruits of repentance are seen when leaders in government no longer center their decisions on holding on to power, but instead take responsibility for leading our nation with compassion and care for all.

By God’s grace repentance, change of direction, and new life is available to all.

Filed under: Grace, Justice, Mercy, Repentance, Salvation, SocietyTagged with: ,

Martin Luther King Jr: “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool”

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon entitled, “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool.” His text was Luke 12:16-21, the parable of the rich man who had a bumper crop and decided to pull down his old barns and build larger ones where he would store all his grain and goods.

Pastor King notes that the man was not called a fool simply because he was rich. Things had come together for this man in such a manner that he had far more than he needed. What made him a fool was his assumption about himself and his relationship to others. With his riches, he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

The point of the story: “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”

King notes that the man made relaxing, eating, drinking and being merry the goal of his life. King further notes the use of the word “I.” The man assumes that it is all about him. He does not acknowledge his dependence on others, those who worked his land and built his barns.

King talks about our interdependence. Those who are rich in our nation did not become rich without the work of others. He also reminds us of the way “the black man made America wealthy.” The wealth the nation derived from cotton was produced on the backs of an enslaved people. That work remains unpaid.

Pride and arrogance make us blind to our dependence on others. Ultimately, it makes us blind to our dependence on God for our very being and for our purpose in life, which is to love one another as God has loved us.

King applies this blindness to the kind of religion we make up for ourselves:

“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of people and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls—the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul—is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.”

King echos Jesus who calls us to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. And the prophet Micah who tells us what God requires of human beings: We are “to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.”

Filed under: Humanity, Justice, Racism, Serving, SocietyTagged with: , ,

We Do It Because We Can

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

Come now, you who say we will go into such and such a nation and, having the military power to do it, will take hold of their government to bend it to our will which is to have their oil.

“Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.”

Never mind that over a hundred people are killed by our actions, families robbed of their loved ones. Never mind the loss of life. It is necessary to obtain access to the oil. After all, it is our oil. We lay claim to it. And we have the means to take it.

“Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.”

And while we are at it, having the military power we have, why not make Columbia bend to our will and Mexico as well? Why not take over Cuba and Greenland and Canada?

“Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.”

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:46)

Filed under: Evil, Society, War, WitnessTagged with: ,

Christmas Reflections 2025

At the heart of the meaning of Christmas is Incarnation:

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.” John 1:14

The Word became flesh. God is revealed in the flesh. The implication is that God is expressed in our humanity. While that is true, we, who are human, are not all there is to flesh. We have many animal kin who are flesh. I feel like God is revealed in my dog, and the squirrels, rabbits and birds outside my window, and the deer and coyote that I encounter in the woods, and in the trees and flowers. God is present in all of creation.

Certainly, what we celebrate at Christmas is the union of God and humanity—the Word or Expression of God joined to our humanity as we exist in the flesh. And yet, we are not separate from the rest of creation. As the theologian, Karl Rahner, puts it, “Our bodies do not end with our skin.” The reality of our fleshly existence and its survival is part of a whole, the flesh and matter of the cosmos.

Our evolution from a speck of life makes us part of a tree of life. We are life that has become conscious of itself and reflective. In their book, Journey of the Universe, Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, write that “every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.”

Even more so, we are the coming-to-be of the universe in its reflection of its Creator. And, in our infinite openness, we are the universe reaching out to its Creator. All of creation shares in our reaching out and glorifying God our Maker.

So, Jesus tells us to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air and how God cares for them. We share in the same care of the Creator. And all of creation joins us in glorifying God for God’s creation and care.

Francis of Assisi, in his Canticle of Creation, sings of God’s praise through all of creation, through Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Stars, Brothers Wind and Air, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Earth, our Mother.

“Praise be yours, our Lord, through all that you have made.”

The Word became flesh and dwells among us. God is present in and through our humanity and through all of creation. Thanks be to God.

Filed under: Creation, Humanity, Incarnation, Nature, Praise, Unity

Consider

”Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.” (Luke 11:35)

Jesus addressed a crowd with these words. He addressed people who were swept along by a crowd. He addressed those who were unable to discern what was happening around them. Many of them, without discernment, may have ended up in the crowd that cried out for Jesus’ crucifixion.

Jesus would have those in the crowd do some considering: “Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.” Consider whether what you call the light is actually darkness.

Jesus would have us discern the “signs of the times,” to recognize what is happening around and in us. So he spoke of spiritual blindness, the inability to discern our times and our motivations and our purpose.

Jesus said, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?” It is possible for a whole crowd of people to be blind and guide each other toward a pit.

Therefore, ”Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.”

How do we go about the task of “considering”? We say we are enlightened, that we see, but what if we are blind? What if we assume we are in the light when we operate in darkness? Consider it.

The act of considering means we stop assuming. We ask the question, “Am I actually in the light or am I in darkness?” Is what I call light, actually darkness? Is what I call true, a lie? Is what I go after false? Is what I have been daily choosing false to my true humanity made in the image of God?

Jesus says, “Consider.” Consider motivations. Why do we choose what we choose and go after what we go after? Why do we choose the leaders we choose? What is it that we want when we make choices? Do we tend not to get beyond asking what is in it for us? Do we consider the effects of our decisions on others?

Does what we consider for ourselves bring light into our lives and into the world? Does it make us more open to others, more loving—since love is what makes relationships possible. Do we consider love? Do we consider and seek after the ability to love, to have compassion, to see the needs of others and respond.

”Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.”

These words call for self-examination. Jesus, addressing the crowd, may be speaking to those who have given little place in their lives for self-examination. They may have gone through life giving little care to their motivations, impulses, priorities—why they do what they do. To them he says, “Consider.” Finally, get around to considering.

Consider why you choose what you choose. Consider why you choose what you let into your life. Consider whether you let in light or darkness, love or hate, joy or bitterness, peace or war, hope or despair.

What we choose obviously affects not only ourselves but others. Our darkness adds to the darkness in the world. Our light adds to the light. Therefore, “consider whether the light in you is not darkness.”

Our nation and world need people of the light, people who see and speak from the light, and therefore are witnesses in the midst of darkness.

Filed under: Discernment, Humanity, Mindfulness, Spirituality, WitnessTagged with: ,

Lawlessness and the Law of Love

The lawlessness of the president of the United States has often been noted as he has ignored the United States Constitution, its laws, and the legislation passed by congress, in order to increase his power and press forward with his agenda which has included avenging himself against his perceived enemies.

Beyond the laws of a nation, however, their is a deeper law that binds us together. It is the law of our fundamental humanity. St. Paul expresses it: “The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14)

Jesus speaks in a similar way when asked what is the greatest commandment: “The first is…‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 12:29-31)

The love of neighbor is powerful for healing our divisions.

Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” So, Jesus tells a story of a man who “fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead.” Two very religious people, who see him lying to the side of the road, pass by on the other side, afraid to get involved. But a Samaritan comes upon this wounded Jewish man (there was enmity between Samaritans and Jews) and is “moved with compassion” and “bandaged his wounds” and “took care of him.” Jesus asked who “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The hearer of this story, answered, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:29-37)

Recently, in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, ICE agents raided an apartment building overnight, breaking down doors, and removing people from their beds along with children. The apartment occupants were zip tied and forced into waiting vehicles. A witness across the street said, “she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans.” A 67 year old man tried to reason with the ICE agents, telling them he was a US citizen and asking if they had a warrant for breaking into his apartment. He was left outside in zip ties for several hours before they let him go. (WBEZ Chicago)

When we move away from love and compassion, we become capable of all kinds of inhuman acts. If any of those ICE agents could see their own children in the children that they put into vans, it is hard to imagine they could operate in the way they did. That is true also for everyone who oversaw the action and those who were the policy makers for such actions.

It is because of this distance from our true humanity rooted in love that Jesus calls us to repent, to turn to back God. Rather than operate as if we were the gods of our own lives (and the lives of others), Jesus tells us to relinquish our lives to God. He tells us to lose our lives and we will find our true selves, and we will find the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit.

The movement into loving our neighbors as ourselves is a spiritual movement. It is a movement of the Spirit of God who enables us to let go of our lives to God, so that we become available to God for the work of love in the lives of others.

Paul writes of the Spirit of God at work in us to bring us to our full humanity as children of God. He lists the kind of fruit that the Spirit produces in us when we let go, and let God. We come to bear fruit that the Spirit produces.

He gives examples of this fruit of the Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” And then he adds, “There is no law against such things.” (Galatians 5:22-23) No other law is needed, if we are coming to know and live out the law of love in Christ by the help of the Spirit.

Filed under: Compassion, Justice, Love, Mercy, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

Caught Up In Stuff

From the cross, Jesus prayed, ”Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

In other words, they are caught up in stuff and do not know it. They are captive to ways of being, thinking, and feeling from which they make decisions, from which they lash out. They are captive to fears, resentments, prejudices, anger, divisiveness, various attitudes, misplaced desires and feelings.

Over years of ministry to people in a church and a neighborhood, I reached out to people who were caught up in stuff. And in order to do ministry, I had to increasingly recognize the stuff I was caught up in and experience the grace that liberates me from captivity. I was a “wounded healer” ministering to other wounded people.

Among the people I ministered to were people struggling with drug addictions, past hurts and trauma, broken relationships, domestic violence, poverty, injustice. What they were struggling with were experiences that often held them in captivity from which they made bad decisions—until they came to see and acknowledge their bondage and experienced God’s liberating work in their lives.

What people are caught up in generally determines their actions. They find themselves acting in ways that hurt themselves and others. So we pray, ”Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” They are caught up in stuff.

I reached out to young people caught up in gangs. I could see that they were caught up in stuff. When a young man came into my church one Sunday morning who had a newborn son and expressed his desire to get free from a gang he belonged to, he was acknowledging that he was caught up in stuff, and it was not going to help him raise his son.

The stuff we are caught up in determines much of what we decide and do. When we operate unaware of the stuff we are caught up in, it can be said of us that we do not know what we are doing.

Crowds welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with great jubilation. Days later crowds were calling for his crucifixion. The only way to describe this occurrence is that they did not know what they were doing.

How much of our lives can be explained in this way? How much of what goes on in the lives of the people of our nation and the leaders they choose can it be said, “They do not know what they are doing.”

When we make decisions from hidden impulses, hidden because we operate unaware of them, it can be said, “We do not know what we are doing.” When we are held captive to fear, anger, grievances, resentments, prejudices, selfishness, greed, arrogance, self-righteousness, judgmemtalism (add your own to the list), and do not recognize or acknowledge these things, we will act out of them. They will also be hooks for con artists including political con artists. The crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion was egged on by religious leaders.

Gracious God, wake us up to what is going on inside us, when we are making decisions and taking action. Spirit of Truth, enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we discern the source of our actions. Turn our hearts to you. Free us from bondage to sin; cleanse us from “strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy” (Galatians 5:18-21); free us from resentment, fear, prejudice, greed, and from the hidden false gods we serve. Make us aware of and free us from our self-righteousness which keeps us from seeing the needs of others and welcoming them as you welcome them. Help us to return to you, gracious God. Bring truth to our inward being. Amen.

Filed under: Confession, Discernment, Liberation, PrayerTagged with: , , ,

Who Is Responsible For Global Warming?

Lately, my wife and I have been wearing masks when we go outside, as smoke from the forest fires in Canada have reached the area in which we live. We understand that climate change is making these events more likely with drier conditions, increased wind and lightening strikes.

Many scientist are calling the time in which we live the anthropocene period. We, humans, are the creature that is having the dominant effect on the earth, bringing great change to the environment and to the earth’s climate. For years, we have pumped carbon into the atmosphere, trapping heat and warming our planet with the subsequent change of our weather patterns.

This change effects not only ourselves but all creatures on this planet. We are making our planet-home increasingly inhospitable to life. This situation is an issue for all creatures, but responsibility resides with humans to take the actions necessary to stop the destruction.

These actions will involve nations working together to bring about an end to the huge amount of carbon gases we are releasing into the air. The United States is the second worst emitter of CO2, China leading the way. As a step in the right direction, the United States joined with other nations in signing the “Paris Agreement,” from which President Trump, with his “drill baby drill” speech and attitude, has ordered our withdrawal in both of his terms, and has pushed against wind and solar energy in favor of oil, gas, and coal.

And yet our responsibility remains. The first chapter of Genesis, drawing from human experience, recognizes this responsibility. We read there that we “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” It is clearer than ever, in this anthropocene period of our planet, that we have “dominion.” With this power, we can be good stewards or bad. We can decide for life or death. We have a responsibility, whether we exercise it or shirk it.

Clearly, we have many leaders who refuse their responsibility. Nevertheless, we all remain responsible whether we choose to be or not. We are responsible for the leaders we choose. We are responsible for how we contribute to global warming. Each of us is responsible for gaining knowledge of the effects of our personal behavior on our environment and taking actions for reform.

Jesus called his followers to be witnesses whose witness can take many forms. We must join with others in witnessing to God’s care for life on this planet. We must exercise our calling to be good stewards of the earth and encourage others to respond to the needs of all creatures who share our planet-home. We must acknowledge that our life-styles must change. We cannot continue to operate the way we have. People of faith know about the necessity of repentance, of turning around, changing our minds, changing direction. That is what this moment calls for—for the sake, not only of ourselves, but of all creatures that share our home.

Filed under: Climate Change, Environment, Humanity, Society, WitnessTagged with: , , ,