Category: Justice

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: , , ,

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: , ,

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: , ,

Christian Leaders and the Priorities of Jesus

When Peter James and John, who were fishing on the Sea of Galilee, were called by Jesus to follow him, we are told that they left everything to follow him. They went where he went, into small towns and across the countryside where people in large numbers came out to him.

They went to people who were marginalized by sickness, lepers who had to stay outside the community; they went to people in need of God’s healing and deliverance. Jesus led his followers out to welcome “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” These followers became part of Jesus’ mission “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.”

Jesus still comes to needy people today through his followers. In fact, you can recognize followers of Jesus by their compassion for those who are pressed to the margins of our society and who care for others regardless of their station in life. Followers of Jesus—when they are following Jesus—look beyond people’s faults and see their needs. With the grace and transformation they have experienced in Christ, they serve, most of them out of the limelight. They themselves are broken people reaching out to other broken people with the mercy and healing they have received.

You know Jesus’ followers by their actions, not by their doctrines and theologies. You know them by their compassion. Not all who name the name of Christ, know Christ. And not all who do not go by the name Christian are distant from Christ. In their actions, it can be seen that they have touched the Christ reality.

Jesus said, “They will know you by your love.” They will not know you because you prospered and became rich—and praised God for your status in a world that makes much of the rich and powerful. They will not know you by a politics that judges others and categorizes the “sinners” of our age. (The religious leaders of Jesus day ridiculed Jesus for eating with sinners. And Jesus did not hold back words of judgment regarding the actions of religious leaders whose religion operated far from the heart of God.)

James, who was very possibly a brother of Jesus, sounds like Jesus when he calls out those who have made themselves rich by the impoverishment of others. James wrote:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

There are many who put themselves forward as Christian leaders who avoid this text from the Bible. And yet it is a word for our times. We have leaders with money and power who craft legislation that furthers their riches and power on the backs of those who struggle to get food on the table and get the health care they need. They judge others for their poverty while giving handouts to themselves, taking from those we came to see as “essential workers” during the COVID health crisis.

What do we make of the “big, beautiful bill” our president is pushing through congress? How do we understand its meaning and discern its impact? Who is it crafted for? What kinds of rationalizations and justifications are being promulgated to sell the bill to people it will not help? How are people viewed in this bill? How are the rich viewed? How are the poor viewed?

To leaders, especially religious leaders, Jesus said, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”

Filed under: Compassion, Discernment, Discipleship, Justice, Leadership, Mercy, Society

Refugees In Our Midst

God enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. That means you must also love immigrants because you were immigrants in Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)

These words from Deuteronomy, in the Bible, were directed to those who “revere the Lord your God” and who “serve him, cling to him,” a people who themselves had been immigrants. They had been immigrants who then were enslaved. They knew what it was to be received into a land and then mistreated.

God says to them that they were not to be like that with those who came into their land. They were to love immigrants because they had been immigrants and because God loved and welcomed them.

This message from the Bible is especially for those who read the Bible as their sacred text, who hear in these words a word of the Lord.

For those who believe in the God who loves immigrants, it is impossible to support what is happening in our nation and the actions of our leaders in regard to immigrants. We are to care for the sojourner in our land. It makes no difference how they came here. They remain human beings made in the image of God in our midst, with needs. We are not to turn away from them. We are not to add to their burdens. We are not to demean them, treating them all as criminals, so as not to feel we have a responsibility for their welfare.

This is a word especially for those who see themselves as people of the Book, of the Bible and as Christians. If we are unwilling to welcome the sojourner, if we refuse care and a place for those who have fled from harm, if we would only add to their harm, it would be better not to call ourselves Christian, that is, persons who have come to be in Christ.

If we have come to be in Christ, the Christ in us does not allow us to disregard other human beings created in God’s image. The love of Christ compels us to respond to their needs—which means getting to know them and their actual needs.

Whatever the laws of our land are or become, we have to live by the law of love which we have come to know in Christ. We must not make of our nation or its laws an idol. We are children of God, before we are citizens of a particular nation. That is why St. Paul calls us “fellow citizens with God’s people.”

We have learned to recognize fellow citizens of a common humanity across national borders and ethnicities who we are called to love with the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit.

Filed under: Compassion, Justice, Mercy, SocietyTagged with: ,

Martin Luther King Jr. and God’s Good News

Jesus came proclaiming the good news of God’s reign. He said to the crowds who came out to hear him, “Repent and have faith for the reign of God is near.” Many received this good news as good news. The reign of God was seen as a reign of love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, healing and new life.

But not all heard the good news as good news. King Herod felt threatened and sought to have Jesus killed. Governor Pilate oversaw his crucifixion.

Prophets proclaim God’s good news, for God is always about our good. But often, God’s good news is experienced as bad news to its recipients. The prophet, Jeremiah, had prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and captivity in Babylon. It was a word of judgment, but it was also the word God’s people needed. They did not hear it as good news, but it was. Israel needed to sit down awhile in a place distant from their homeland. They needed to do some self-examination. They needed to acknowledge their idolatry and injustice, so that they would come back to the God who created and called them and experience again God’s mercy and plans for them. (After 70 years in Babylon another prophet proclaimed the good news of freedom to go back home to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.)

Martin Luther King Jr., as a pastor and a prophet, proclaimed the good news of liberation, but not all received his message as good news. The White establishment, the crafters of Jim Crow laws and terror lynchings, received King’s message as bad news. They heard it as the destruction of their system and way of life, and they fought against it with violence and brutality.

God is about our freedom, and King proclaimed liberation. What the White establishment did not realize was that with the freedom King proclaimed, they would also have opportunity to be free—free from hatred and the struggle to hold another people down. They could be freed from all the time and attention and struggle to maintain an evil system that robbed them of their true humanity.

Where we are in our relationship to the God of love determines how we hear the good news of liberation—whether we hear it as good news or bad news. Martin Luther King proclaimed the good news of liberation. Response to that good news revealed where people stood in relation to freedom and humanity and love.

Lately, I have been thinking of King and his coming out against the Vietnam War. I have wondered, if he lived today, what he would say about the war in Gaza and our nation’s actions in response to it. He would certainly speak against war and genocide and its support.

There were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement who pressed King not to come out against the Vietnam War, but rather to remain focused on the issues of the Civil Rights Movement. King had a strong relationship with President Johnson who was pushing through civil rights legislation. King had an open door to the White House. He could call President Johnson and the president would come to the phone.

But at the same time that Johnson was addressing civil rights, he was also ratcheting up the war in Vietnam. The concern of many Civil Rights leaders was that, if King came out against the Vietnam War, he would lose the open door he had with the president. There were also those who saw the peace oriented nature of the protests as a tactic, not realizing that for King the issue of peace and peacemaking went much deeper.

When King came out against the Vietnam War, he made clear how essential peacemaking was to our humanity :

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars? Why can’t we at long last grow up, and take off our blindfolds, chart new courses, put our hands to the rudder and set sail for the distant destination, the port city of peace (The Atlantic)?

King spoke to people dedicated to war as a solution. He called them (and us) to repent and become peacemakers. It was not a word that President Johnson and many lawmakers and others (then and now) wanted to hear, but it was and is a word of truth we need to hear.

The words and actions of peacemakers are bad news to those committed to war as a solution and to those who profit from war. They are good news to our true humanity made in the image of God.

Filed under: Justice, Liberation, Peace, Racism, WarTagged with: , ,

Nations Become What They Decide To Be

The decisions we make manifest themselves in what we become as human beings. If we decide to get back at others for what they said or did that hurt us, and make a habit of such reactions, we become someone who operates from hurt and anger. On the other hand, if we decide to act from a place of love for others, regardless of how they act toward us, we become lovers of humanity—yes, of a broken humanity. If we have a habit of doing what Jesus instructs his followers to do, “turning the other cheek,” “loving our enemies, “praying for those who persecute us,” we are on a path of growth into our true humanity as children of God.

Our decisions determine what we become. We decide for our humanity or inhumanity. We decide to be lovers or reactors. We decide to give to or to get back at another human being. We decide what we become.

Nations decide what they become. In our nation, a congress, a president, a supreme court, and “we the people” decide what we will be toward each other and the world.

As a people, we have opportunities to decide what kind of nation we will be. We can be tribal in our decisions, reacting against others (owning the libs, or detesting MAGA people). We can make decisions from grievances and the despising of others or we can make decisions from a vision of wholeness and compassion.

In a democracy, even a partial democracy like the United States, the decisions of “we the people” regarding who and what kind of leadership we want, in some measure, provide us with the nation we have. The less we are an autocracy and the more we are a democracy, the more clearly “we the people” are responsible for what we get.

We are responsible for choosing a government that seeks justice for and the uplift of those marginalized or a government and nation that marginalize. We know that it is possible to decide for a government that annihilates a people as the Nazis did. Or, as we did, decide to institute slavery and then, with its abolition, decide for the continued marginalization and oppression of a people by implementing Jim Crow laws and by terrorizing a people with lynchings as the South did or by establishing racist policies, actions and mores as the North did.

Of course, if we care little for anyone beyond ourselves, our family, “our people,” our religion, then we will give little attention to the effects government and societal decisions have on people other than ourselves. We will not spend time trying to understand how others are affected by laws, policies, mores. We will, by our support, ignorance or simply not caring, keep in place laws and mores that maintain the oppression of others outside our circle. (Slavery remained for 250 years, Jim Crow laws for 70 years through a combination of support and/or apathy from a majority of Americans.)

However we think about our decisions as a people and a nation, we see what we have decided by what we have become. Germans must come to terms with the nation they became, a nation that was responsible for killing 6 million Jews. Many, at the time of the Holocaust, may have excused themselves by saying they were not voting for genocide, but the truth is the seeds were there in the rhetoric of Hitler and others.

Americans must come to terms with what we became, a nation responsible for the genocide of millions of Native Americans through displacement and massacre, and the death of millions of Africans who died in the Middle Passage and millions who were brutalized as slaves. Of course, coming to terms with our past means acknowledging the truth of our past. Our oppressive actions locally and globally remain, unless we acknowledge our wrongs and repent. Trying to rewrite or ignore these aspects of our history only binds us to past decisions and future acts of oppression.

We continue to decide what we become—especially by our decisions toward those who have been marginalized, excluded, pushed aside in our nation. Of course, what we become as a nation comes from the decisions of a cross-section of the electorate. What many of us would like to see is not even on the ballot, but must be lifted up and worked for though doing justice, loving mercy and living faithfully. Therefore, Jesus calls the children of humanity, who are also children of God, to be light in the darkness. We are to be witnesses to what we have come to know of the love of God.

Jesus spoke of the age we live in as an “evil age.” In this age, we are to witness to what we have seen and have come to know of our true humanity created in the image of God. Like yeast, we are to have an effect on the whole; we are not to force something on others, but to effect the decisions of others and our nation by our witness to the love of God that is good news for the oppressed, heals the brokenhearted and welcomes all.

Filed under: Decision, Humanity, Justice, WitnessTagged with: , ,

A Christian View of Christian Nationalism

By “Christian,” I mean a follower of Jesus who has come to view the world from the experience of “being in Christ.”

By follower of Jesus, I mean one who is being led to:

  1. Bear suffering in order to serve others. 1
  2. Serve rather than seek dominion over others.2
  3. Love rather than judge or condemn others.3
  4. Love enemies and pray for them.4
  5. Love our neighbor as ourselves, no matter who our neighbor is.5
  6. Do justice, love mercy and live faithfully.6

By the experience of “being in Christ” I mean that we:

  1. Participate in the reality of the crucified and risen Christ so that we die to the old in-turned self and rise to “walk in newness of life.”7
  2. Participate in Christ’s love.8
  3. Be led by the Spirit, rather than by religious rules, principles and beliefs which the “flesh” (the ego-centric self) loves.9
  4. Operate by God’s grace through faith, rather than legalistic moralism.10
  5. Trust ourselves, others, and all creation to God, rather than act like we are the ones who have the answer.

When Christian nationalism is viewed from the vantage point of following Jesus and participating in the reality of Christ, it is seen merely as nationalism with a Christian facade. It is an idolatry of the nation undergirded by Christian rhetoric, particularly in the form of “Christian” laws and principles.

Those who seek to bring back the “Christian foundations” of our nation hearken back to an earlier Christian nationalism, one, at least in part, inherited from Europe. They hearken to a kind of Christian morals and mores that existed as a dimension of our nation alongside its constitution, a Christian morality that for many included the institution of slavery and the dispossession of the peoples indigenous to the land. In other words, a Christianity far removed from the message and life of Christ—a Christianity quite capable of horrendous evil.

The present Christian nationalism carries forward the elements of this earlier nationalism, above all in its White (and male) supremacy. It downplays our history of racism, oppression, and injustice and discounts the primary roots of the American revolution and constitution in Enlightenment values.

Of course, there has been another much smaller stream of Christianity (which included European American Christians) that engaged in movements for the abolition of slavery, pressed for peace among nations, and sought social justice.

Above all, it has been African American Christians who, from their lived experience, brought radical clarity to the unchristian reality of our nation. Frederick Douglass called the Christianity of the slave-holding South and those Northern churches that continued to support their Southern counterparts as “sham religion.“

Black Christians continue to offer a critique and an alternative to White Christian nationalism. White Christians must listen to their voices—which means we must repent of our arrogance. By listening with open hearts, we will receive from those who experience the oppressive nature of White Christian nationalism.

The call to follow Jesus and participate in the Christ reality is a call to repent from all Christian nationalism, from all idolatry of nation and of whiteness and of ourselves, and all attempts to have dominion over others. Freed from idolatry, we are freed from feeling like we must secure “our Christianity.” We are freed from safeguarding what we have built (our false Christianity) and therefore freed to serve others.

Jesus calls his followers, not to dominate and bully others, but to be salt and light in the world, to be witnesses to God’s love and mercy in word and in action. At the heart of our witness is a welcoming love toward others that does justice, loves mercy and walks humbly with God.

  1. “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23 ↩︎
  2. “But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:25-28 ↩︎
  3. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Matthew 7:1 ↩︎
  4. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44 ↩︎
  5. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 19:19 ↩︎
  6. “The weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Matthew 23:23 ↩︎
  7. “We were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:4 ↩︎
  8. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Romans 5:5 ↩︎
  9. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Romans 8:14 ↩︎
  10. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8 ↩︎
Filed under: Discipleship, Grace, Justice, Racism, Society, WitnessTagged with: , ,

Israel, Palestine and What Makes for Peace

“As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Luke 19:41-42

Jesus still weeps over Jerusalem and Palestine and the cities and nations of the world, weeps over our nation’s capital and our nation. If we only knew the things that make for peace, but they are hidden from us by our pridefulness and arrogance.

Join Jesus in weeping over Jerusalem and Palestine. That is a starting point for those of us distant from the horror, but who learn daily of the carnage and loss of life. Weep over the acts of terrorism in the slaughter of Israelis, men, women, and children. Weep over the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, men, women, and children, and for the many children being traumatized, going hungry, exposed, and living in fear.

Then weep for ourselves and our warring ways, for our support for war as a solution. Weep for the wars fought in the name of God and for wars fought in the name of no God; for wars pitting one religion against another and for wars to end religion; for wars fought in the name of ideologies, fought in the name of democracy, or an autocratic ruler, or capitalism, or communism, or any of the many isms.

Weep for the poor and suffering and the violence added to their lives. Stand with those who suffer. Stand against oppression and brutality in whatever name it is exercised, whatever religion or ideology. Join Jesus in weeping over the world and then take up your own cross and walk in the way of peace. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Justice, mercy, and humility are the ways of peace.

“There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

These words of Pastor King are a statement of reality. Peace cannot be achieved without justice and justice cannot be achieved without peace.

Israel, in the end, will not know peace without doing justice, making right what is wrong in their relationship with Palestinians. War is not the answer. Justice is. “There can be no peace without justice.”

And the United States will not have helped Israel by continuing to arm it and refusing to call for a ceasefire and taking steps toward peace.

”Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Jesus

This remains true. Violence begets violence.

And Palestinians will not achieve justice by violent actions, but rather injustice will be added to injustice. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States points to a way: peaceful, sustained, active resistance. “There can be no justice without peace.”

“Let us then pursue what makes for peace.”

St. Paul

Doing justice makes for peace. Love that takes up the cross (that enters into the suffering of others rather than adding to it) makes for peace.

In our commitment to dominate others, in our commitment to our own security over others, the United States, along with Israel and the other nations of the world will keep going to war. Throughout most of our history, the United States has been at war somewhere in the world. And we have spent trillions of dollars on armament, monies that could be used for peace and for the uplift of those in need and therefore for justice.

We remain blind to what makes for peace.

So, Jesus weeps over us: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Filed under: Grief, Justice, Poverty, WarTagged with: , , , ,