The Renewal of the World

       When I was in seminary, I worked one summer in Washington, D.C. out of a Lutheran church at  16th and V Street.  It was in the upper 14th street area that was burned by arson after the assassination of Martin Luther King.  The arson spread all the way to DuPont Circle, where St. Thomas Episcopal Church was torched.  It was a terrible time for the whole community and the devastation was evident as I walked the streets learning how to do pastoral ministry.

The poverty and the lack of proper housing was almost overwhelming.  I had one white family living on a street of mostly abandoned homes.  Social workers visited and tried to help.  The father stayed in his room most of the time and his wife and kids lived their lives trying to make do with whatever came their way.  The community developed a beautiful scheme to get food at the end of the month when the checks ran out.  They would take turns going to the relief agencies to get help.  They would then come back to the neighborhood with what they were able to obtain and share it.  It was remarkable to me the way that underneath all of the poverty, that community found a way to work.

The father lived in a sea of depression.  The pastor of the Lutheran church where I worked asked me one day what my plan was for him.  I told him that I wanted to get him to come out of the room, talk to me, somehow alleviate his depression and then set him on a path to getting a job.  The pastor was a remarkably wise man, who then said to me about my plan, “And finally by your grace, he will achieve everlasting life.”   That put in perspective for me the limits of my ministry and the probability of my success.  Ultimately, I don’t know what happened to that family.  I was there for the rest of the summer, but I left before there was any resolution to their problem.  As always, they taught me much more than I was able to provide for them.

I was reminded of all of this because of the reading from the Book of Jeremiah.  In the 33rd chapter, the prophet says:

                              The days are surely coming, says the LORD, 
                             when I will fulfill the promise I made to the
                              house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In
                              those days and at that time I will cause a 
                             righteous Branch to spring up for David; and
                             he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

  The people in those neighborhoods were certainly yearning for righteousness,   but they could find it nowhere.  Their lives were full of poverty and distress.  There was nobody to change what was so oppressive outside.

Change was what I thought I was there to do, but it wasn’t up to me.  Ultimately, the work to effect change came from many organizations that brought wholesome change to that neighborhood and brought many people out of poverty and brought hope where there was only despair.

My work in Washington was forty years ago.  The pain is still felt.  I saw an article yesterday that said that Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire who created such a stir when he was chosen because he is a gay man living with and married to his partner is planning after his retirement to go to D.C. to be Bishop in Residence at St. Thomas Church.  There is another chapter in the healing of the pain of the world that will begin.  I thank God for that and know that the renewal of the world can’t be far behind.

Quirks and Acceptance

     Thanksgiving is such a wonderful day.  It is filled with all of the relationships that have become a part of our lives.  As Rosie and I have gotten older, more and more people have joined our family.  We not only have our three beautiful daughters, but there are also our five grandchildren and now two great-grandchildren.  This is something that I never really thought I would experience.  Looking at those two young boys that our Alison has brought into this world gives me great pleasure.  I know that they will grow up and learn to appreciate all of these people who crowd around them and learn to love them, even with all of their quirks.

Quirks is what we are all about, really.  We all have rough edges that life sometimes sands down, but they are always with us.  What we need to do about our quirks is to forgive them, mostly.  That isn’t always easy.  We can become annoyed with each other over all kinds of things.

This past political campaign gave us ample opportunity to display our opinions, not all of which were shared by others.  How we coped with that is essential to our relationships.  Rosie has a good friend who is very conservative.  When they talked during the election, Rosie kept the conversation away from the politics as best she could.  When that didn’t always work, she would become a bit annoyed and wonder what she ought to do to change her friend’s attitudes.  The problem isn’t in changing her friend, it is in changing ourselves so that we can accommodate the opinions that we don’t share.  Now that the election is over, their conversations are a bit more comfortable.

My parents were strong Republicans, who disliked Franklin Roosevelt with a passion.  I grew up to take a different course and have a different opinion.  I know that my parents would probably not approve of my choices in elections, but that is not something that is going to make me change.  I know that the reason that we have elections is so that these differences that we all have can be somehow sorted out and that this society of ours can move forward.  That includes all of us, no matter what our political affiliations are.

I thank God not only for my family, but also for my friends, who also know my quirks and mostly accept them.  I don’t think that is always very easy.  I am self aware enough to know that I can be somewhat irritating with my opinions, which I don’t easily hide.  That can be a barrier sometimes.  In my ministry, I have mostly had people in my parish who accepted me, even when they disagreed with what I had to say.  I am thankful for that.

In the book of Daniel, there is a vision of the Ancient One on his throne with the appearance of “one like a human being” being presented to him.  The Ancient One gives this person dominion, glory and kingship over all of the peoples, nations and languages.  This is a powerful vision.  It predates the coming of the Christ, but is certainly descriptive of our Lord.

If all of us who live in this world are living under the vision and the command of the Ancient One, we are therefore unified under this “one like a human being”.  We have come to understand this as our Lord Jesus, our King and our savior.  Somehow that makes me feel rather small with my quirks.  I believe that these are known to my God and that I am accepted with them, just as are my friends and relatives with theirs.

The End of the World

Predictions of the end of the world aren’t new.  We have been hearing them for ages from people who ought to know better.  Certainly the world will come to an end.  The sun will flame out, become a red star and we will have no source of heat.  The oceans will dry up and the air will become unbreathable.  But that isn’t now, or even close to now.  Environmentalists are rightly concerned about the state of our earth, the melting of the polar icecap, the terrible pollution of our atmosphere, and if we do nothing about these things, there will be terrible consequences for this planet.  Already the temperatures seem to be rising and storms more frequent.  The devastation of the storm on the east coast over the past couple of weeks is certainly evidence that we can’t ignore the climate.

But it is one thing to be actively concerned about our environment and another thing entirely to predict the imminent end of the world.  But somehow, we are fascinated by the idea that something terrible is going to happen to all of us.  The Mayan Calendar ending on December 21 is an example of this.  Until we get to December 22, this won’t be put to rest.  So it becomes fodder for people who thrive on predicting disaster.

Jesus speaks to his disciples who are admiring the great temple.  He tells them that all of the stones in that building will be thrown down and not one stone will stand upon another.  They ask him privately when this will happen and he tells them to be careful not to be led astray, that there will be those who come and claim to be the leader, but not to follow them.  Nation will rise up against nation, he says, but these are the birth- pangs.

What follows from all of this is that God holds us all in the palm of his hand.  We need not fear whatever we see around us.  The birth that is coming is of God’s ultimate Kingdom in which we all will live in peace and harmony.  When will this happen?  It’s impossible to say, but certainly nations are still rising up against each other, there are earthquakes and other signs.   Just as Jesus said, the terrible signs are all around us.

The message is clear.  Our God loves this planet and all of us.  Despite what we do to one another, we will not lose that love and that care.  Jesus came to us to demonstrate with his life the love that completely resides in God.  Despite his crucifixion, and our rejection of Jesus, he rose from the dead to help us to know that we will rise also, no matter what the world looks like, our salvation is complete.

Money and Power

       Well, finally the election is over, we can find other things to obsess about.   I am particularly happy that I won’t have to use the mute button on my remote so often when campaign commercials come on.  They got to be rather annoying for all of us.

  I wonder what part religion played in this election.  There were people claiming all kinds of things.  The arguments over abortion and gay rights were two places where seeming  religious voices were raised and absolute claims were made.  I was struck by a full page ad that appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a couple of times from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association that seemed to be telling us what God wanted us to do about these issues.  I was struck by the ad because I have always admired Billy Graham and was sorry to see his name used un such a way for political purposes.  I suspect that his son Franklin was behind all of this.  Billy is 94 and Franklin was the one who spoke so harshly of Muslims at the ceremony in New York after the 9/11 tragedy.  At the time I thought that Billy would never have done this.

My hope is that this election  will unite this nation, not divide it.  Religion is one of those wonderful areas where we can be so easily divided.  We saw that in Pittsburgh over the last several years, but with our new bishop, we are on our way to a new day.

     The way that religion in this election used power was with money.  That is always suspect with me.  What we discovered in this election is that money can’t always buy power.  I’m glad of this, because it is the people without power who need their voices heard in this land.  The Citizen’s United verdict is not the ultimate law that we were afraid it was going to be.  I am heartened by this.  It just may be that our political system is on its way to holding ideas of greater value than money.  Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing.

In the twelfth chapter of Mark, Jesus seems to speak about money and power in an excellent way.  Jesus has been watching as people drop money into the treasury at the temple.  He saw rich people putting in large sums, but he was particularly taken by a poor widow who put in two copper coins worth about a penny.  His lesson for his disciples was that she put in more than the others because  this small mite was all that she had.  He said for them to beware of the scribes who like to walk around in their long robes and to have the best seats and the places of honor.  They devour widows houses and for the sake of appearances say long prayers.  They will have the worst condemnation.

It is easy to fall in love with money and to believe that the power that it brings is absolute.  According to this election, that isn’t necessarily so.  Thank God for that.  My hope is that we can listen as ideas are offered and to use them to unite us in God’s love for all of creation.