Pilate Washes His Hands

 Matt 27:15-31

We are taught from a young age that we are to know our history or we are doomed to repeat it.  We repeat it anyway when equal rights for the other threatens the advantage of the powerful. Jesus was a threat to the power, to empire, to the religious advantaged, and an unjust status quo.  What was this threat? Hope.

Hope is a dangerous virtue to power.  President Snow in the movie Hunger Games puts it this way, "Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained."  The problem with Jesus is that he brought a lots of hope to the other, the marginalized, the outcast, the rejected, the oppressed.  Hope that is detrimental to the privileged crowd that gathers at the Capital steps shouting "Give us Barabbas." The kind of threat that needs to be extinguished.   And Pilate washes his hands. 

It was 1963 as the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum when fear stood its ground as George Wallace exclaimed, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."   And Pilate washes his hands. As Grand Jurys continue to protect empire, Pilate washes his hands. 

As Roy Moore, Alabama Supreme Court Justice, defies a higher court ruling and refuses marriage certificates, Pilate washes his hands.  

Thankfully, Pilate does not have the last word. Wallace and Moore do not have the last word.  Grand Jurys will not have the last word.  For hope is stronger than fear.  Love prevails. He is risen indeed.   

"Willing to Be Disturbed" (Margeret J. Wheatley)

Grateful a friend shared this timely article.  A few of my mentors whom I greatly admire share a special gift of seeing the larger picture.  That while it is easy to get emotions fired up over the periphery, or symptoms, they have a gift for getting at the core.  But at the core is discomfort?  Are we willing to be uncomfortable?  Are we willing to be disturbed?  

Wheatley, Margaret J. Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future San Francisco: Berrett-Koshler Publishers, Inc., 2002

“Willing to Be Disturbed”

As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally—our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today. Paradoxically, we can only find those answers by admitting we don’t know. We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time.

We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know. Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven’t been rewarded for being confused. Or for asking more questions rather than giving quick answers. We’ve also spent many years listening to others mainly to determine whether we agree with them or not. We don’t have time or interest to sit and listen to those who think differently than we do.

But the world now is quite perplexing. We no longer live in those sweet, slow days when life felt predictable, when we actually knew what to do next. We live in a complex world, we often don’t know what’s going on, and we won’t be able to understand its complexity unless we spend more time in not knowing.

It is very difficult to give up our certainties—our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways. Curiosity is what we need. We don’t have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledge that their way of interpreting the world might be essential to our survival.

We live in a dense and tangled global system. Because we live in different parts of this complexity, and because no two people are physically identical, we each experience life differently. It’s impossible for any two people to ever see things exactly the same. You can test this out for yourself.

Take any event that you’ve shared with others (a speech, a movie, a current event, a major problem) and ask your colleagues and friends to describe their interpretation of that event. I think you’ll be amazed at how many different explanations you’ll hear. Once you get a sense of diversity, try asking even more colleagues. You’ll end up with a rich tapestry of interpretations that are much more interesting than any single one.

To be curious about how someone else interprets things, we have to be willing to admit that we’re not capable of figuring things out alone. If our solutions don’t work as well as we want them to, if our explanations of why something happened don’t feel sufficient, it’s time to begin asking others about what they see and think. When so many interpretations are available, I can’t understand why we would be satisfied with superficial conversations where we pretend to agree with one another.

There are many ways to sit and listen for the differences. Lately, I’ve been listening for what surprises me. What did I just hear that startled me? This isn’t easy – I’m accustomed to sitting there nodding my head to those saying things I agree with. But when I notice what surprises me, I’m able to see my own views more dearly, including my beliefs and assumptions.

Noticing what surprises and disturbs me has been a very useful way to see invisible beliefs. If what you say surprises me, I must have been assuming something else was true. If what you say disturbs me, I must believe something contrary to you. My shock at your position exposes my own position. When I hear myself saying, “How could anyone believe something like that?” a light comes on for me to see my own beliefs. These moments are great gifts. If I can see my beliefs and assumptions, I can decide whether I still value them.

I hope you’ll begin a conversation, listening for what’s new. Listen as best you can for what’s different, for what surprises you. See if this practice helps you learn something new. Notice whether you develop a better relationship with the person you’re talking with. If you try this with several people, you might find yourself laughing in delight as you realize how many unique ways there are to be human.

We have the opportunity many times a day, everyday, to be the one who listens to others, curious rather than certain. But the greatest benefit of all is that listening moves us closer. When we listen with less judgment, we always develop better relationships with each other. It’s not differences that divide us. It’s our judgments about each other that do curiosity and good listening bring us back together.

Sometimes we hesitate to listen for differences because we don’t want to change. We’re comfortable with our lives, and if we listened to anyone who raised questions, we’d have to get engaged in changing things. If we don’t listen, things can stay as they are and we won’t have to expend any energy. But most of us do see things in our life or in the world that we would like to be different. If that’s true, we have to listen more, not less. And we have to be willing to move into the very uncomfortable place of uncertainty.

We can’t be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new. Of course it’s scary to give up what we know, but the abyss is where newness lives. Great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing. If we can move through the fear and enter the abyss, we are rewarded greatly. We rediscover we’re creative.

As the world grows more strange and puzzling and difficult, I don’t believe most of us want to keep struggling through it alone, I can’t know what to do from my own narrow perspective. I know I need a better understanding of what’s going on. I want to sit down with you and talk about all the frightening and hopeful things I observe, and listen to what frightens you and gives you hope. I need new ideas and solutions for the problems I care about. I know I need to talk to you to discover those. I need to learn to value your perspective, and I want you to value mine. I expect to be disturbed by what I hear from you. I know we don’t have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined by our human hearts.

God Save Us From God

God Save Us From God[1]

When the skies are dark and all around us seems chaos with the news in Ferguson, Gaza, Liberia, and the terror of ISIS, I am quickly reminded of our recent small group study, Surprised By Hope, a book and study by Bishop N.T. Wright.  Out of many things that I gained from this study, one that stands out is to consider how we live into the words of the prayer we recite every week "thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  That the language of 'Kingdom of God' that may seem so foreign is talking about God's kingdom here on earth.  This shatters any of our categories that I like to think of as the 'evacuation model', a model that is so focused on saving oneself that it leads to a removal of our responsibilities to our neighbor and all of creation.

Jesus spoke much about living into God's presence in the here and now, or as we say in our more churchy words, "The Kingdom of God."  Rather than the evacuation mode, this is one we live with our feet, where our street credit comes from how we walk the walk.  When asked the most important of commandments, Jesus gave the most beautiful summary of God's law, "To love God with everything we got, and the same goes for people." (translation mine).   So as people of hope in a world that is motivated by fear, how are we going to walk?  

God's purpose throughout history has been restoration of all things.  In the resurrection, God did something new.  Brian McLaren, pastor and theologian, helped open new worlds for me in understanding a loving God in my journey through seminary education.  One simple translation that helped me see God in a new way was to translate the word 'righteousness' as 'restorative justice.'  This last week as I was at retreat and Brian was the keynote speaker, he continued to help open my eyes to our amazing creator by looking at some of our most difficult and violent passages in Scripture, but not in isolation, but rather in the context of the many books.  From the most violent texts of Judges, we looked at this next to the opening of Ruth followed by Matthew.  You come to see an evolving and new understanding of God that culminates in one whose judgment is one of justice, who feeds the masses, and whose abundance is more than we could ever imagine. 

To look at the larger story, may we be transformed to see God not as a God of violence, or as a God of patriarchy, or as a God of sacrifice, or as a God of choosing favorites, but may we see God as one whose purpose is loving and restoring relationships.  Or as N.T. Wright shared in our study, “people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.”  While the news may make everything seem dark, may we live in the hope of sharing light in the darkness.  This is reflected in how we love and care for one another and how we live out the belief of a God of non-violence, a God of inclusion, and a God of justice.  From the words of the prophet Micah who shared a new vision of a non-violent and transforming understanding of God:     

With what shall I come before the Lord,and bow myself before God on high?  Shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves a year old?  Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?  He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

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[1] *Meister Eckhart Quote and theme for this years Companions of the Inner Way spiritual retreat. 

Grace on Sale

Here they come,  the ‘Merica cries of Christian persecution. Mary’s Gourmet Diner hit the news this week for offering discounts of 15% for those who prayed prior to their meal.  Literally, a sale on grace.  Cheap grace. Must be awful to pay the same price for a chicken sandwich.  But now, ownership has made the decision to end the discount under the pressure of a lawsuit.  And here we go again…rather than living with grace, being kind, loving mercy, and walking humbly…the whining is going to only solidify even more why our young people want nothing to do with church.  A place where Jesus Saves—15%.      

Dietrich Bonheoffer who’s life witnessed the true cost of discipleship, and who knew persecution, shared: “The church is only the church when it exists for others.”  The problem with prayer on sale is the human dilemma that wants to participate advantages of empire where membership comes with privileges. Where the Church of Me shares that the good news is reduced to a consumer transaction.  But our faith teaches us the exact opposite—that we are at our best when we extend our generosity to the stranger and extend hospitality to our guests.  The economics of Jesus are ones where first is last and last is first.

When Jesus was saying a few things challenging the privileged exploiting their own power, he said something like “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites  who pray in public for a discount on a chicken sandwich, but instead of praying for your own benefit, try having the integrity of removing selfish agendas and you may find that the true reward is finding relationship.”   

(p.s.: If you want to know persecution, try asking thousands of children seeking mercy at our border, a Nigerian child sold into sex trade, a Palestinian seeking sanctuary with nowhere to go, or Yazidi, Christian, and religious minorities in Iraq.)

Prophet or Profit?

There is an overwhelming shared common assumption that asks our faith leaders not to be political.  Words matter.  We try so hard under this pressure to parse our words carefully with the sensitivity that our community be welcome to all—including Republicans and Democrats.  We painstakingly enter into our sermon writing in prayer asking that God be our guide so the outcome of our preaching is faithful.  In a perfect world, I would live up to the ideals set here: Dear Pastors: Tell Us the Truth.  But we are a complex people, faithful and broken, assured and sensitive.  So we preach texts such as this last weekend about the story of “The rich man and Lazarus.”  (Rich Man and Lazarus) This text is apropos as are all of the prophets, the Pentateuch, the four gospels—heck, the entirety of our Scripture speaks volumes to where we find ourselves this week in government shutdown.  As faith leaders, how can we remain quiet and be faithful?  For at the center of this crisis something much greater than anything political—at the heart of this is a spiritual crisis. 

This spiritual crisis is best shared from the words of Mother Theresa who says, If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.  Our emphasis on individualism, exceptionalism, prosperity—feel good gospel has forgotten our individual place within the common good.  In all of our Abrahamic traditions, our care for our neighbor is right alongside loving God.  So while a minority of extremist ideologues who paint an oversimplified picture in black and white, we find ourselves in a grey world that forgets in the retreat of fear that we are trying to walk this journey together.  So in our disagreement, we shut it all down—and when we are honest about it, over what?  There is enough animosity to what breaks down to a battle over power (a spiritual crisis in and of itself) that family systems theory understands as the Hatfields and the McCoys.  Sadly, our founders understood protecting the individual while upholding the collective.  Benjamin Franklin understood in recognizing the increasing disparity of wealth and responded with public hospitals that provided care based upon ability to pay.  Recognizing the disparity, he also saw education as an opportunity to help the collective in establishing a library system that was good for the whole.   

Whether Christian, Muslim, Jew, Humanitarian, we share an interest in standing with our neighbor —poor neighbor included…even preferred.  From my tradition, poverty and justice is addressed on every single page.(I think this is important).  In standing with our marginalized neighbor, we can get to know them.  By getting to know them, we can know them as children of God, created in God’s image, and come to realize how no one chooses poverty.  Yet, when we forget that we belong to each other—our nature is to protect ourself.  In protecting ourself, we isolate poverty, we move to suburbs, we stack the deck to provide for our own—and our primate instincts become a Darwinian game of survival of the fittest. 

Together, there are large problems that need to be solved.  But as we learn from as early as I can remember, together is the best way to solve a problem.  No one person or party has a monopoly on the best ideas.  And because our collective is made up of differing ideas, we may find ourselves at times in the minority.  When we are at our best, in a system of checks and balances, how are we to respond? 

In our spiritual crisis, real people have been made invisible.  As I am continually returning this week to the parable of the rich-man--thousands of Americans are now laying at the rich man’s gate hoping for a scrap of food. Invisible–as the rich man mockingly is playing a strategic game of chess,  real people hunger, real children need head start, real people on the margins who are the most vulnerable lie at the gates our rich people are adorning themselves in their purple linens. 

As faith leaders, we too hold diverse political ideologies.  Yet one thing we can (should) all agree on, is our faith calls us to stand with those who cannot stand for themselves, to provide for those that hunger, to love our neighbor (even our Democrat or Republican neighbor), and to live caring for one another recognizing we belong together.  This is not political.  This is spiritual, and this is our call.  This shut-down is hurting our most vulnerable.   Please—share your voice, pray, care for one another, and lead.  

Do Justice

I am leading the discipline of Spiritual Justice for my spiritual formation class next week.  It is a week with many deadlines and yet I want to provide justice to the topic justice. A professor that I deeply respect for representing and living a just life offered this advice for the class, "Do justice!"  Do justice?  My puzzled look prompted him again to say, "do justice!  Don't talk about it.  Do it."  He helped articulate what should be so obvious.  We do enough talking and somehow this leads to feeling pacified as if we have done something.  I am great about drawing attention to what I feel about hot topics that are dividing the church, or challenging theological questions that often seem overly simplified to what is often the mystery, but doing--that is the hard part.  Yet it is the actions that lead to personal change, and it is our actions that help draw attention to justice.

Just this last week I clicked "like" after watching the viral Kony 2012 video and somehow felt good as if I had done something.  Sure, the video is well produced and is drawing attention to horrible injustice, but should I somehow find comfort that clicking "like" is doing something?  Not saying that we shouldn't draw attention, but instead I am offering that this is just the beginning.  Our faith that can move mountains does not do this by simply clicking like or talking about justice, but it is through faith that we should be led to doing.

So enough of talking and blogging about justice as I try to refocus on living justly.  To do justice is a verb, and living this out is where change happens.

Shalom!     

Faith and/or Religion: Please Keep Your Religion Out of Our Politics!

Glad the ad's are over, but the news cycle reminds us that this is just the beginning.  Today we see the ugliness at its best with a Super Pac presenting an ad that appeals to the fears and shallow-mindedness by painting Jon Huntsman with suspicion over his connection with China.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZeVqj-t1U0&feature=player_embedded

In an age of Super Pac's, we don't know for sure who submitted this ad, but all should speak loudly denouncing such a message.  

I am not making a statement about Mr. Huntsman, but rather a culture that presents multiculturalism, multilingual, diversity, and education in a negative way.  Why is intelligence presented as elitism, and scholarship viewed with suspicion, and diversity painted as un-American?  Everything this video tries to present with suspicion are qualities that we should admire.  This is only symptomatic of how many candidates try to present themselves as having a monopoly on faith and values.  We are not seeking a pastor-in-chief, or theologian of the United States, but someone that exemplifies leadership.  This does not require "Christian" in the title. 

From my experience, I have worked closely with a Muslim friend who exemplified tremendous leadership and happened to be Muslim.  To share another experience, a family member of mine has a friend who leads a brownie troop.  Many in the community do not allow their children to participate because this leader happens to be atheist, but happens to be an excellent mom and positive leader for the many children that do participate.  Further, this kind of thinking has led many of the children to ask this leader's children at school if they knew they were going to hell?  Really?  Is this what we are teaching our children?  Is this the kind of faith that transforms, or is this one that is based on self-gain?  This is faith that is motivated by saving ourselves with the fear of hell rather than a faith that transforms.  Are we called to live separately in this melting pot, or can we live with religious differences together and maybe learn from each other.  Wouldn't our faith provide a better witness from loving and participating together with those of different faith traditions?

As many candidates try to present a monopoly as the candidate of Christian values, are they being motivated by faith, or are they manipulating religion for self-gain?  I would propose the latter and hold off on judgment based on religious traditions.  Pascal says this best when stating, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."  Let us love one another in our differences and seek the best in each other rather than taking something beautiful...such as faith, and making it such an ugly thing that divides rather than unites.