One of my favorite songs is one I learned as a very young boy in Church School. "Rock a my soul in the bosom of Abraham." Perhaps you've heard it? It's a great old tune. 'Easy to learn and sing. In one part of the song the lyric goes like this.
"So high you can't get over it, so low you can't get under it. So wide you can't get around it, ya gotta go through the door."
It seems to me that this lyric describes a number of us with dead on accuracy. We are a people who are always trying to get around things. When I was a kid I hated gym class. I tried a thousand different things to get around having to go to gym class. I faked being sick. I "forgot" my gym clothes. I even went to study hall hoping that no one would notice my absence. Of course none of it worked.
Then I got older and I tried to get around other things. Required classes in college and seminary were something that bugged me. Did you know that the college I went to required you to take swimming classes in order to graduate? Swimming? I was an English major! What did swimming have to do with British novels? Well, I didn't get round it in the end. But I did become a pretty good swimmer.
I wonder. Do you ever try to get around things? Do you ever try to get over on someone or get around something you know you should do? Sometimes, as the song says, we go low. We stoop down and go under - just to avoid what we know we should be doing in the first place.
'Going through that door.
I believe Christian faith is like that.
There are certain things that you just can't get around if you want to be a Christian. I'd like to focus on just a couple of them.
If you are a Christian it's important to understand that Jesus is about peace. No amount of so called Just War Theories or well paid military chaplains can change the truth that our Lord and Savior calls us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. We can wrestle with it, argue about it, even get angry with folks for bringing it up in the first place. But you can't get around it. Jesus Christ calls his followers to be peacemakers.
Another thing we can't get around as followers of the Master is the call to love one another. It's pretty clear. We are to love the Lord God with all our heart all our souls and all our mind.....and then Jesus tell us....to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And the love he describes is "agape" love. That is, the love of God in Christ Jesus as lived out in Christian community. It requires compassion, grace, flexibility, and forgiveness.
These two things are pretty critical.
We really can't get around them if we want to be Christians.
We have to go through the door of peacemaking, step over the sill of justice and enter into a new way of being in Jesus Christ. And we have to give our whole beings to God while we go about the day to day wonderful business of loving one another. You just get around it. You have to go through the door of fellowship and friendship formed in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Schuyler Rhodes
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
It's the Guns, Stupid!
I can't watch it anymore. I click the remote through the five channels (nope - no cable at my house) and it is relentless in its flow. Every media outlet is on the stick. The television streams virtually endless footage of the shootings at Virginia Tech. And then they have the temerity to show the video left by the troubled young man who perpetrated this unspeakable act. We are shocked. The nation is rocked by the horror of it all. Senseless. Brutal. A genie of death slipped from the bottle and slithered from dorm to classrooms, snuffing out young life with the greatest of ease. And somehow no one can seem to comprehend what happened. Somehow, with shaking heads and pursed lips we find ourselves cluelessly glued to the television.
How could this happen? Someone must be to blame. It has to be someone's fault. So the investigations begin and fingers are leveled. Did the University act appropriately? The police? What could have prevented this? There must, we seem to think, be an answer.
And there is, except we stand deaf and mute in the face of it.
It's the guns.
There are more registered gun dealers in the United States than there are gas stations. Guns are everywhere. And we're not talking Uncle Jack's 22 caliber hunting rifle here. We are talking about military issue fire arms designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Semi-automatic pistols with expanded bullet clips? Sure. Stop down at the local sporting shop and pick up your own today.
Yes. It's the guns. Emotionally disturbed and mentally ill folks will always be around, but do we need to make guns so easily attainable that one can stride through the halls of university taking out thirty plus people as easy as, dare I say it, shooting ducks in a barrel?
Yes. It is the guns. But it's not just guns here within our borders. Can anyone remember how many people died in Iraq on the day of the Virginia Tech tragedy? Can anyone recall how many people died in Afghanistan on that day? Or can anyone summon up the number of people who died around the world because of weapons our nation provided in the much vaunted "free market?"
Yes indeed, it's the guns. I join the millions who mourn and hold the victims' families in prayer. But as we weep and pray, maybe we could open our eyes to the genie that we have released on the world. This is the death genie who comes in the shape of automatic pistols or semi-automatic rifles or land mines. It's the genie who sprays forth as napalm or rains down as cluster bombs. And yes. We are responsible. Instead of seeking to assign blame to a hapless university administration or to a police force doing their best, perhaps we could take a quick glance in the mirror.
Then together let's see if we can't put that genie back in the bottle. How about a little reasonable gun control? How about bringing the troops home? How about signing the International Land Mine treaty? How about paying attention to those around us so we might notice if they are in distress or disturbed?
We've heard a great deal about "personal responsibility" over the past few years. How about us being personally responsible for the death in which we all participate?
How could this happen? Someone must be to blame. It has to be someone's fault. So the investigations begin and fingers are leveled. Did the University act appropriately? The police? What could have prevented this? There must, we seem to think, be an answer.
And there is, except we stand deaf and mute in the face of it.
It's the guns.
There are more registered gun dealers in the United States than there are gas stations. Guns are everywhere. And we're not talking Uncle Jack's 22 caliber hunting rifle here. We are talking about military issue fire arms designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Semi-automatic pistols with expanded bullet clips? Sure. Stop down at the local sporting shop and pick up your own today.
Yes. It's the guns. Emotionally disturbed and mentally ill folks will always be around, but do we need to make guns so easily attainable that one can stride through the halls of university taking out thirty plus people as easy as, dare I say it, shooting ducks in a barrel?
Yes. It is the guns. But it's not just guns here within our borders. Can anyone remember how many people died in Iraq on the day of the Virginia Tech tragedy? Can anyone recall how many people died in Afghanistan on that day? Or can anyone summon up the number of people who died around the world because of weapons our nation provided in the much vaunted "free market?"
Yes indeed, it's the guns. I join the millions who mourn and hold the victims' families in prayer. But as we weep and pray, maybe we could open our eyes to the genie that we have released on the world. This is the death genie who comes in the shape of automatic pistols or semi-automatic rifles or land mines. It's the genie who sprays forth as napalm or rains down as cluster bombs. And yes. We are responsible. Instead of seeking to assign blame to a hapless university administration or to a police force doing their best, perhaps we could take a quick glance in the mirror.
Then together let's see if we can't put that genie back in the bottle. How about a little reasonable gun control? How about bringing the troops home? How about signing the International Land Mine treaty? How about paying attention to those around us so we might notice if they are in distress or disturbed?
We've heard a great deal about "personal responsibility" over the past few years. How about us being personally responsible for the death in which we all participate?
Thursday, March 1, 2007
I was a Stranger...and you did not welcome me" Matt. 25:43
"I WAS A STRANGER....AND YOU DID NOT WELCOME ME..." Matthew 25:43
Each time I pick up a newspaper or turn on my television, I hear the cry for "immigration reform." The voices are shrill and the things they call for are shocking, not only in the specifics, but because they are nothing more than thinly veiled racism marching to the drumbeat of fear.
From vigilantes gearing up to patrol the borders to troops being sent to repell the aliens, to the proposal to build a fence to keep "them" out, it all adds up to a racist rattling of old bones in a closet whose door we somehow cannot keep shut.
As a Christian I find it interesting that the ones screaming the loudest for this so called reform name themselves as Christian as well. To my sisters and brothers in Christ, I would suggest a modest study of Scriptures. Deuteronomy 10:19 directs us to "love the stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers." Exodus 22:21 tells us we may not "wrong or oppress a resident alien." More over, it states that we "know the heart of an alien" because were were once aliens oursleves. In Leviticus 19:34 we are told that "the alien who resides with you shalll be to you as a citizen among you. You sall love the alien as yourself...." Jesus gets into the act also in Matthew 25 as he sorts out the sheep from the goats. If you don't receive the stranger, he tell us rather bluntly, you don't receive him.
And this, friends, only dents the biblical witness calling us to welcome the alien, the stranger, the immigrant among us. For we ourselves were once as they are now. Given the ugly history of our nation's founding, I find it unfathomable that we could resort to such behavior. Like the Israelites coming over into Canan's land, the Europeans flooded into this continent in a genocidal frenzy, wiping out natives who, at first, welcomed them with open arms. As a nation of immigrants, how can we begin to imagine all of this?
But if, as I suspect, the faith in God that these people spout is all talk and no action, let's get down to captialist brass tacks. The bottom line, after all, is the bottom line. If all of the allegedly illegal workers were deported, the economies of all the border states would, quite simply, collapse. The stark truth is that we depend upon these people to be willing to accept wages we would never consider to do work we will not undertake. The food we eat is picked by the hands of these people. The dishes we eat off at our restaurants are washed by these people. Floors are mopped, toilets are cleaned, and literally thousands of menial tasks are performed by people that are blithely labelled as "illegal."
Now if we cannot be motivated to welcome those among us by our faith and it's Scriptures. If we cannot be awakened by our own economic interests to the fact that these people are needed, then I come to offer a true solution to the situation.
If we really wish to stop the flood of immigration from the Americas to the south of us there is a way. And it isn't about militarizing borders or deporting "illegals." If we really wish to halt this "invasion," as I have heard it called, we simply need to do one thing.
The United States of America must embark on an economic development program in Mexico, and Central America, pledging to spend, say, a few hundred billion dollars to help the economies of these countries develop. Rather than manipulating governments and trading to keep other nations poor so that we can raid their natural resources, we should be using our wealth to develop them into viable trading partners. If we did this, the immigration would cease. If we made it our aim to develop these countries as true equals in the market based economy, then our economy would benefit as well. If we focused on development so that Central American and Mexican workers had jobs and their families had enough to eat, they would have no reason to come here.
Do we think that they love our country more than their own? Are we arrogant enough to believe that people risk life and limb, leave their families because they WANT to come to the United States? No. They would all rather stay home.
It's the poverty, stupid!
If we stopped greedily holding on to the wealth that even now is slipping away from us, and learned how to walk with other nations and cultures as partners, things would change.
If we abandoned the mantle of empire and stopped spending our money on the guns and tanks and bombs we need to protect our wealth, and instead used those resources to feed and house everyone, we would not even be having this immigration discussion.
So, maybe these shrill, racist voices have a point. Let's halt all this illegal immigration. Let's lobby congress for a new deal in the Americas. Let's launch the "Equal Partner Initiative" and make friends around the world instead of enemies. Instead of building a fence across the border, let's build schools everywhere. Instead of posting troops at the border, let's send doctors. Rather than hording what we have, let's act like mature kids in this sand box, and share.
If we can do this here in our own corner of the world, perhaps we might learn to apply it elsewhere. Imagine what the world might look like if we set out on global partnership initiative! Instead of spending ourselves into debt and death fighting over oil resources that will be gone in a few decades anyway, why don't we bank roll develpoment and research for clean, renewable energy resources that could power our planet into the 22nd century?
Ah but I hear the voices now. "Be realistic. You can't do that. You've got to live in the real world!" Well, to me, thousand mile fences and an oppressed labor force aren't realistic, they are criminal. So there you have it.
Check out the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Study a little economics. Stop being greedy. There is a different way.
'Catch you in a little while,.
Pastor Schuyler Rhodes
Each time I pick up a newspaper or turn on my television, I hear the cry for "immigration reform." The voices are shrill and the things they call for are shocking, not only in the specifics, but because they are nothing more than thinly veiled racism marching to the drumbeat of fear.
From vigilantes gearing up to patrol the borders to troops being sent to repell the aliens, to the proposal to build a fence to keep "them" out, it all adds up to a racist rattling of old bones in a closet whose door we somehow cannot keep shut.
As a Christian I find it interesting that the ones screaming the loudest for this so called reform name themselves as Christian as well. To my sisters and brothers in Christ, I would suggest a modest study of Scriptures. Deuteronomy 10:19 directs us to "love the stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers." Exodus 22:21 tells us we may not "wrong or oppress a resident alien." More over, it states that we "know the heart of an alien" because were were once aliens oursleves. In Leviticus 19:34 we are told that "the alien who resides with you shalll be to you as a citizen among you. You sall love the alien as yourself...." Jesus gets into the act also in Matthew 25 as he sorts out the sheep from the goats. If you don't receive the stranger, he tell us rather bluntly, you don't receive him.
And this, friends, only dents the biblical witness calling us to welcome the alien, the stranger, the immigrant among us. For we ourselves were once as they are now. Given the ugly history of our nation's founding, I find it unfathomable that we could resort to such behavior. Like the Israelites coming over into Canan's land, the Europeans flooded into this continent in a genocidal frenzy, wiping out natives who, at first, welcomed them with open arms. As a nation of immigrants, how can we begin to imagine all of this?
But if, as I suspect, the faith in God that these people spout is all talk and no action, let's get down to captialist brass tacks. The bottom line, after all, is the bottom line. If all of the allegedly illegal workers were deported, the economies of all the border states would, quite simply, collapse. The stark truth is that we depend upon these people to be willing to accept wages we would never consider to do work we will not undertake. The food we eat is picked by the hands of these people. The dishes we eat off at our restaurants are washed by these people. Floors are mopped, toilets are cleaned, and literally thousands of menial tasks are performed by people that are blithely labelled as "illegal."
Now if we cannot be motivated to welcome those among us by our faith and it's Scriptures. If we cannot be awakened by our own economic interests to the fact that these people are needed, then I come to offer a true solution to the situation.
If we really wish to stop the flood of immigration from the Americas to the south of us there is a way. And it isn't about militarizing borders or deporting "illegals." If we really wish to halt this "invasion," as I have heard it called, we simply need to do one thing.
The United States of America must embark on an economic development program in Mexico, and Central America, pledging to spend, say, a few hundred billion dollars to help the economies of these countries develop. Rather than manipulating governments and trading to keep other nations poor so that we can raid their natural resources, we should be using our wealth to develop them into viable trading partners. If we did this, the immigration would cease. If we made it our aim to develop these countries as true equals in the market based economy, then our economy would benefit as well. If we focused on development so that Central American and Mexican workers had jobs and their families had enough to eat, they would have no reason to come here.
Do we think that they love our country more than their own? Are we arrogant enough to believe that people risk life and limb, leave their families because they WANT to come to the United States? No. They would all rather stay home.
It's the poverty, stupid!
If we stopped greedily holding on to the wealth that even now is slipping away from us, and learned how to walk with other nations and cultures as partners, things would change.
If we abandoned the mantle of empire and stopped spending our money on the guns and tanks and bombs we need to protect our wealth, and instead used those resources to feed and house everyone, we would not even be having this immigration discussion.
So, maybe these shrill, racist voices have a point. Let's halt all this illegal immigration. Let's lobby congress for a new deal in the Americas. Let's launch the "Equal Partner Initiative" and make friends around the world instead of enemies. Instead of building a fence across the border, let's build schools everywhere. Instead of posting troops at the border, let's send doctors. Rather than hording what we have, let's act like mature kids in this sand box, and share.
If we can do this here in our own corner of the world, perhaps we might learn to apply it elsewhere. Imagine what the world might look like if we set out on global partnership initiative! Instead of spending ourselves into debt and death fighting over oil resources that will be gone in a few decades anyway, why don't we bank roll develpoment and research for clean, renewable energy resources that could power our planet into the 22nd century?
Ah but I hear the voices now. "Be realistic. You can't do that. You've got to live in the real world!" Well, to me, thousand mile fences and an oppressed labor force aren't realistic, they are criminal. So there you have it.
Check out the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Study a little economics. Stop being greedy. There is a different way.
'Catch you in a little while,.
Pastor Schuyler Rhodes
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
