Category: Humanity

Where Is The Resurrected Life Found?

A reflection on Acts 10

Peter, a Jew, found it in a Roman soldier, who, as a soldier, represented the oppression of the Roman empire.

It took a vision and the leading of the Spirit to bring Peter to the point where he invited three Gentiles sent by a Roman centurion named Cornelius into his house and “gave them lodging.” And then went with them and entered into the home of Cornelius.

Peter shared with Cornelius the change he underwent: “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

The distance Peter traveled could hardly have been greater: He was in the house of a Gentile, a soldier (in Christ, Peter had become a man of peace) and a Roman who represented the occupying power of Rome. Because the distance was religious as well as political in nature, it was a longer way to travel than that of a progressive ideologue sitting down with a conservative ideologue.

What made it possible was a spirituality that recognized the humanity in all. Peter had his eyes openned by the power of the Spirit. He had died to the old way of seeing others and made alive to what God was doing in places where he had not expected to see the resurrected life. The new life that he had found was not far from anyone, if they would turn to receive it.

Peter shared with Cornelius and his household what he had come to see: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

Peter speaks of “what is right” as a sign of God’s work in a person’s life. He also refers to the fear of God. But here it is not a slavish fear of punishment, but rather fear understood as taking God seriously, having reverence. The “fear of God” in Cornelius was seen in his life of prayer and care for the poor. This was a man who was open to what Peter had to share concerning Jesus of Nazareth who “God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Where is the resurrected life found?

It is found where love is practiced, where there is goodness and healing. Peter says nothing about what Cornelius believed but about what he did. The resurrected life is not, first of all, about beliefs or a particular Christian theology. It is about the lived life. Above all, it is about openness. One who thinks of themself as an atheist but is implicitly open to Incomprehensible Mystery and to our true humanity is closer to God than a Christian who has a well-worn Christian ideology, but whose heart is closed to others, particularly to others very different from themselves.

We have seen Christian ideologues operate by falsehood and manipulation, who live for power and are far from “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” for “doing good and healing all who were oppressed.”

Resurrection to new life is open to all who will receive, wherever and whoever they are. It is not far away. As with the reign of God, new life is near.

Filed under: Grace, Humanity, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,

The Love of God and the End of War

My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine, to the children who are being traumatized and to their parents who are trying to protect them, comfort them, get them out of harms way, as they endure the shelling and bombing of their cities. Along with the rest of the world, I have watched the massive gathering of Russian troops and their entrance into Ukraine in an effort to bring Ukraine under the control of Vladimir Putin’s government. The blatant disregard for the will of the Ukrainian people, the bombing of their cities, the growing number of civilians killed, and the largest movement of refugees in Europe since World War II has focused the world’s attention and brought widespread condemnation.

I also feel for the situation of young Russian conscripts who thought they were involved in a military training exercise and would soon be back home, only to find themselves sent across the Ukrainian border into a war where their mission was to kill other human beings, many of whom had deep Russian ties. They were being treated as fodder for a war machine.

And then I think about this war in relation to the wider global reality of war. Our world is at war. Wikipedia names 5 current major wars in which there have been 10,000 or more combat-related deaths in the current or past year, 18 current wars with 1,000–9,999 combat-related deaths in the current or past year, 41 current minor conflicts (100–999 combat-related deaths in current or past year) and skirmishes (fewer than 100 deaths in current or past year).

Afghanistan has experienced 1,450,000–2,084,468 fatalities; Yemen, 377,000; Myanmar, 150,000–210,000; Tigray, 23,600–100,000; Ukraine (beginning in 2014), 13,300+.

We are a world at war. Nations go to war regularly. Autocracies go to war. Democracies go to war. Autocracies and democracies both do wars of aggression. Russia has gone into Ukraine on the pretense of addressing Nazism and genocide. The United States went to war in Iraq on the pretense of addressing weapons of mass destruction. Over 100,000 civilians were killed in Iraq. I felt for the children of Iraq the way I feel for the children of Ukraine. In the case of Iraq, children were being traumatized by American bombs. Whatever nation goes to war, the outcomes are the same: people killed, maimed, traumatized, and their support systems destroyed.

Furthermore, it is apparent that humanity sees little in the way of an alternative. The United States has been involved in war somewhere for most of its history. And a nation’s citizens generally support their nation’s wars, anti-war protests not withstanding. War has had a kind of inevitability attached to it. It is an extreme symptom of our spiritual condition: we are a humanity centered in upon itself rather than in God (who is Love), our true center.

If we have begun to experience a recentering of our lives in God, we must bear witness to what we have come to know which includes a growing spiritual understanding of why humanity chooses war. Given the human condition, war appears to be the only thing available for the people of Ukraine in their situation—and they take it up with courage and determination against great odds. Thomas Merton, in a journal entry for March 1, 1966, speaks to this. He writes these words at a time when the United States had over a 184,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam. He writes of his “sorrow at the fabulous confusion and violence of this world, which does not understand God’s love.” And then he states what he must do: “I am called not to interpret or condemn this misunderstanding, only to return the love which is the final and ultimate truth of everything, and which seeks all [humanity’s] awakening and response. Basically I need to grow in this faith and this realization, not only for myself but for all.”

It is the experience of God’s love that allows us to step out of the inevitability of war and of killing one another. This love encourages us to not “sign up” for war but rather witness in word and action to the spiritual reality of an unconditional love that Jesus says is capable of loving our enemy. Operating from this love means, in Jesus’ words, praying for those who persecute us and, when hit, rather than returning the same, turning the other cheek. But this love does not only mean not reacting to another’s aggression with the same kind of aggression; it also means confronting evil, confronting injustice. Jesus called out injustice. He was a “sign that was opposed.” His words and actions were subversive to the established order, and they brought about his execution. The unconditional love of God involves being willing to die for the sake of others.

We have seen this kind of action, at times, on an individual level, and we got a sense of this kind of action on a social level in the non-violent action of the civil rights movement. We do not expect it on a national level. There would have to be a massive spiritual awakening for that to happen. So, we do not spend time “condemning this misunderstanding” of how to respond to aggression, but rather witness to “the love which is the final and ultimate truth of everything.” Jesus said that he did not come into the world to condemn the world but to seek and to save the lost. In a world that condemns itself to war and death, those who have experienced the unconditional love of God must live more deeply in it and bear witness in word and action to that love so that, in Jesus words, we are a light in the world, a light that reveals the only alternative to war.

Filed under: Humanity, War, WitnessTagged with: ,

Trump, White America, and Our Humanity

After all that Donald Trump has done, all the misery he has caused, all the racism he has aroused, all the immigrant families he has destroyed, all the people who have left this life because of his mismanagement of a pandemic, still roughly half of the country voted to extend this horror show.

White people—both men and women—were the only group in which a majority voted for Trump. (Charles M. Blow)

I have thought of Donald Trump as a mirror by which we could see ourselves as a nation. After all, we had managed to put him into the office of the presidency. My hope was that, after four years of looking in the mirror, we would not like what we saw. I had not expected Trump to grow his base by several million voters. Apparently, many looked in the mirror, saw themselves, and liked what they saw.

Many, who have been the opposition to Trump, have been alarmed by the breaking of democratic and institutional norms, practices, and mores; the narcissistic, demeaning, dishonest, and immoral behavior; the utter lack of leadership and care for the real issues of our time. We have an incredibly self-absorbed human being heading our government. He is a mirror of self-absorption. In fact, Trump has mirrored our ability, as a people, to be absorbed with our most narrow interests, to see not far beyond our personal issues and those of people like us. When Trump has expressed grievances, prejudices, and fear of others different from us, we may have seen ourselves in the mirror. When Trump has demeaned those viewed as the opposition or “not us,” we may have seen ourselves, having craved their demeaning. If we have been a part of the opposition to Trump, we may have seen ourselves in the mirror of those who have demeaned Trump and his supporters.

It is apparent that we can look into a mirror that represents something of ourselves and be blind to the defacement that is present. We need a different mirror. We need the mirror of Christ, the mirror of our true humanity, a humanity turned outward to others, not merely looking out for its own interests. In Christ, we see compassion that recognizes the needs of others and reaches out with healing and liberation. We see mercy that enters into the lives of the “least” of the human family, those marginalized by our inhumanity towards others. In Christ, we see justice that works to make right what is wrong. In Christ, we see one who loses his life for the sake of the world. We need to look into the mirror of the humanity we see in Christ. This humanity—which is compassionate and merciful—is near, as near as God is to us, the God who is in all things. But we must turn from our false humanity to our true selves made in the image of God.

If we look into the mirror of Christ, the mirror of compassionate humanity, we will begin to see truthfully. We will see the disfigurement of our humanity by sin, the spiritual roots of our blindness. We will also see that neither Trump nor support for Trump is an aberration. As Jamille Bouie expresses it, “The line to Trump runs through the whole of American history.” Trump mirrors our history. Whatever our democratic ideals, ours is a history of the degradation and subjugation of people, of native Americans and people of African descent and others. Ours has been a history of White supremacy—what many have called our nation’s original sin. The majority of Whites voted for Trump. He represented them more than the alternative that at least expressed the desire to address racial disparities and injustices and to stop the mistreatment of children and families at our border. When we look into the mirror that is Trump, we see White supremacy. And White supremacy has supported him.

White evangelicals, who saw in Trump a protector of “Christian values” or, at the least, “religious freedom,” need to turn to Christ, who said that if we seek to secure our lives, we will lose them, but if we lose our lives for Christ’s sake, we will gain them. Only when we relinquish our lives to God will we be witnesses to Christ, rather than witnesses to our fears and self-absorption and White nationalist values that exist under a guise of “Christian values.”

Dear reader, if you are finding your true self in Christ, you know that you are called to be a witness to what is on the heart of God whose image you are. We are to be witnesses in a world plagued by inhumanity. We are to be witnesses before a false Christianity. We join with others who are discovering their true humanity. They may not call it Christ, but they are increasingly living from that humanity, and we recognize them by their compassion and share with them a common labor to do justice, love mercy, and live faithfully.

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Gifts in a Time of Pandemic

The very depth of emotion, the connecting to the core of one’s being, the calling into play one’s strongest feelings and abilities, can be rich, even on deathbeds, in wars and emergencies, while what is often assumed to be the circumstance of happiness sometimes is only insulation from the depths, or so the plagues of ennui and angst among the comfortable suggest.

Rebecca Solnit, “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster”

Rebecca Solnit examines catastrophes such as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Katrina for the extraordinary experiences of community, sharing, and deep compassion. She gives expression to the hurt and suffering as well as the actions, often by those in authority, that make matters worse in the crisis. Her focus, however, is on human beings shining with the beauty of humanity in the midst of great trials.

We see this humanity played out today in the many concrete acts of compassion in the midst of the pandemic. Relationships often take on a deeper significance, not only relationships to those near and dear, but to neighbors and strangers. There is the sense that we are going through this together. Often it is very simple experiences that are deepened in their significance for our lives. Recently, on a pleasant weather day, neighbors came out of their back doors to enjoy the sun. We immediately greeted one another across two fences and entered into conversation. My neighbor two doors down shared how wonderful it was, in the midst of our “staying in place,” to find each other outside at the same moment and be able to share with one another.

We experience a deeper appreciation for neighbors and for those who deliver our mail, pick up our garbage, and work in our grocery stores. In addition to the health care workers on the front lines of combating this virus, we are recognizing other “essential workers:” bus drivers, farmworkers, food processors, first responders of all kinds, delivery people, maintenance people, home health aides. Some, like the last in this list, often receive less than a living wage. Many essential workers are undocumented. Will our recognition of the essential nature of their work bring about a societal change that ensures a living wage, health care for all, and a path to legalization for the millions of undocumented workers? Can we acknowledge that every one of us is “essential” and are to be loved?

We are given an opportunity, during this time of COVID-19, to reflect on the inequalities that are present and on the kind of society we want to have. The crisis this virus has created shines a light on the inequities. The statistics that show a much larger percentage of deaths in communities of color are a reminder of what has historically been the reality: The state of health, in these communities, is an outcome of years of inequities in the provision of health care, in the existence of food deserts, underfunded education, and diminished job opportunities. What this pandemic reveals to us about these injustices, we must not ignore. Deepened understanding is a gift, as is the call to work toward the kind of change that comes from doing justice and loving mercy. Will we receive these gifts?

There is much we can receive as we go through this time of pandemic, gifts that will change our lives. Saint Paul encourages us to make the most of the time: “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time.” There is something to receive during this time for the upbuilding and renewal of community. Therefore, we must make the most of this time, so that we receive the gifts given for the recreating of our relationships and society.

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Beauty and Awe

This month of December, my daughter and I, along with her dog, Fiona, drove from Chicago to Anchorage, Alaska, where Elizabeth has been called to pastor a church. At Dawson Creek, in the upper part of British Columbia, we were at mile zero of the Alaskan highway—ahead of us, 1580 miles of mostly snow-packed roads and mountainous terrain of astonishing beauty. We started our days, of increasingly shorter daylight, before sunrise and ended them after sunset. We experienced the beauty of snowy mountains, some of which reached 19,000 feet, in various kinds of light, blue sky, and clouds. We lived in awe of the beauty that surrounded and enveloped us.

God has been referred to as Being itself, Life itself, Love itself. Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth century American pastor and theologian in a time of great awakening, referred to God as Beauty itself. We meet God in the beauty around us and within us, large and small, magnificent and lowly.

Beauty meets us in the grandeur of mountains and the delicacy of a beetle. I meet beauty in my backyard. I encounter it in the chickadee that grabs a sunflower seed at my bird feeder and, unlike the sparrows, does not linger, but flies away to a solitary place to enjoy it. I meet beauty in the sunflowers that the birds plant in my garden and the butterflies that visit them.

Beauty meets us in the human body and the human mind, in form and thought, in sound, sense, and creativity; art, music, and dance. I am taken in by the beauty of Chicago’s cityscape lit up at night and viewed across the water of Lake Michigan, and by the canyons and cliffs of its skyscrapers during the day—and the peregrine falcons that nest there. The city itself is an expression of nature, of human nature and therefore of the divine nature and of Beauty itself. The sin and evil that reside in the city (and in its making) and in the world cannot overcome the beauty. It shines in the darkness.

And God is in it. Beauty itself draws us. The awe we experience is our drawing near. We are invited to come nearer, to enter in and to receive and be changed.

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The Coming Collapse

Hanns Lilje, a Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany, in his book, The Valley of the Shadow (1950), shares his experience with arrest, interrogation and a trial that ended with his being sentenced to death. (Before the sentence could be carried out, however, communication broke down and the Allies gained control of Germany.) One of his observations in this book was that the Nazi regime was collapsing from within. He sees the collapse in the faces, features, and actions of guards, interrogators, and judge.

He views young men whose lives were “empty,” who “were forced to be brutal” which “caused them to crumble inwardly.” He describes the judge’s face, at his trial, in this way: It “had originally been a good one, almost noble, with clear-cut and intellectual features, but it had decayed (as it were) from within, and all his features bore signs of a terrible inner decline.”

Of tyrants, like Hitler, Lilje writes: “God allows the tyrant to follow his way blindly, to the end, until nothing remains.” Evil sown reaps the decline and fall of the evil-doer.

We are reminded of Paul’s words: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.” (Galatians 6:7)

Evil sown carries its own demise within it. Sin is like a parasite. It eats away at truth, compassion, justice, mercy, and faithfulness until it has nothing left to feed upon. St. Augustine says, “Sin is nothing and human beings become nothing when they sin.” Sin always robs us of reality. The “nothing” that is sin produces no love; it undoes love. It shows no compassion, no mercy. Where justice is required, it is unjust. And it is untruthful: It takes away from and distorts the truth.

We experience this undoing personally, and we see it taking place all around us. None of us are without sin, and we all experience the breakdown sin causes in our lives and relationships, whether from our own sins or the sins of others against us. We see this corruption on a social and global scale. We see the loss of compassion daily in the mistreatment of human beings at our border, in our warring ways, in the gangsterism on our streets and in corporate boardrooms, in sexual assault and harassment, and in all forms of inhumanity towards others: the injustices in our criminal justice system, discrimination in housing, health care and educational resources, and in the neglect and hurt of the most vulnerable among us.

We see the disintegration of truth and compassion among those who are placed in positions of leadership. We currently have a man in the office of the presidency who has lied or made misstatements, according to fact-checking, more than 11,000 times in his presidency. Many have become numb to this situation. We have leaders who disparage and demean various ethnic groups and religions among us and leaders who show little regard for future generations as they refuse to address the issues of climate change, seeing such actions as disadvantages to their wealth and power.

But what we are seeing is not only the great hurt being perpetrated on others but the steady breakdown and destruction of the perpetrators themselves. They are unwittingly sowing the seeds of their own demise. Their corruption is eating away at branch and root. It is not surprising that our present government has had a steady flow of those who have had to leave their positions.

The New Testament book of James says, “Not many of you should become teachers…for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Not many should become leaders. Judgment awaits. What has been sown will be reaped. If we have sown to destruction (the destruction of compassion and justice and mercy), we will reap destruction. We will reap our own inhumanity with its consequences in the hollowing out of our lives and our eventual collapse. Yes, we will leave carnage in our wake, but we will also lose our own souls.

We see this debilitation in the leadership of our government. It is a sickness unto death. That does not mean that we can simply sit, watch and wait for it all to fall apart and then attempt to pick up the pieces. That would mean more affliction on the most vulnerable, and it would mean our own disintegration. People of faith know that they are called to be witnesses. We are to witness from the grace, compassion, and justice we have experienced. As we learn to live from the Source of love, we know that we are under a call to speak to the corruption by witnessing to God’s compassion and justice. We are to join with others to call for compassion, justice, and mercy and do so by addressing the specific injustices of our time, working to make right what is wrong. We are to do justice. We are to be channels of the kind of love that effects actual change.

To those who continue down the road of destruction, who have committed themselves to that road, we will be viewed as subversives. To those who hold onto power for themselves (and “their people”) over against others, we will be called radicals. But then love, care for the truth, and doing justice are radical; they go to the root (radix) of being the humans God calls us to be.

Filed under: Evil, Humanity, Justice, Society, Spirituality, WitnessTagged with: , , ,

Christmas Reflections on Incarnation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3,14)

Christmas is not the celebration of baby Jesus but of the entirety of Jesus’ life and the whole of humanity. It is the celebration of incarnation, the “Word become flesh.” We are giving thanks that we become truly human by becoming divine. The Word of God, God’s self-expression, participates in our humanity. Or to say it another way, humanity participates in the divine nature through Christ who is the Participant of the divine nature. (2 Peter 1:4)

In the early centuries of the church, especially with eastern Christianity, the word “divinization” was used as a way to express the meaning of incarnation. God, who created all things through the Word or Image of God—stamping all of creation with divine reality, raises up God’s creation into union with God. God “divinizes” God’s creation. We humans are that aspect of an evolving universe that has become self-conscious and that experiences itself as open to God. We are spirit as well as matter.

What this means is that God does not come to us as an afterthought or an add-on to creation and to our humanity, but inseparable from who we are, when we are truly ourselves. We cannot be truly human without, at the same time, being divine—that is, “children of God.” We were created for union with God.

When we are alienated from God (what Christians mean by “sin”), we experience the loss of our humanity. What we have lost is our divine center. We have tried to make ourselves the center of our own universe, no longer at home with God or the universe. We construct a false self and produce broken relationships and broken societies and a broken enviornment.

We have ways of expressing this loss of humanity. We speak of our inhumanity. We speak in negative terms. We are unloving, unwilling, untruthful, ungrateful, unfaithful, impatient, unkind, unspiritual, in a state of disunity, discord, disorientation, etc. What we have lost is the fruit of the Spirit of God, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) When we are godless, we are inhuman.

When Jesus proclaims God’s reign and calls us to repent, he is telling us to turn back to God as the center and source of our lives. He is expressing the same call as the prophets before him: “Return to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.” (Hosea 12:6)

Jesus declares that God’s reign is near. The source and center of our lives, the fountain of life and our true humanity, is not far away. We can turn again to the divine center. “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15) Therefore James tells us to “draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8) Right now, in this moment, we can again draw near to God, knowing that God is drawing us near.

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