Stewards of God's Mysteries: February 27, 2011 Sermon

Scripture readings: Isaiah 49:8-16a
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

This sermon begins a stewardship preaching series at the end of Epiphany and during Lent, as part of a stewardship project that began with a workshop given by the United Church of Canada's Montreal & Ottawa Conference stewardship consultant for the Ingleside and Newington pastoral charge. The sermon was intended to introduce the congregations to the concept of being a steward, using the Revised Common Lectionary readings for that Sunday.

The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, telling them to think of their leaders in the church as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries, and reminding them that stewards must be considered trustworthy (1 Corinthians 4:1-2). In the time of Jesus and Paul, well-off families had large houses and estates, and the steward was the manager. In fact, that’s how some contemporary Bibles, like the Common English Bible, translate this word: manager. The steward looked after the accounting, supplies and upkeep for the whole household. The word for steward in Paul’s original Greek carried with it emphasis on great responsibility and accountability. For one important aspect of being a steward was that in that position he reported only to one person, the head of the household. He didn’t answer to the other servants, the other members of the family, or anyone else, even though his decisions would affect them all. No one other than the head of the household could praise or criticize his work.

In the same way, Paul is saying, since he and the other leaders of the Corinthian church are stewards of God’s mysteries, they, too, only report to the head of the household. Of course that means God. Only God can judge the leaders, and determine who had done well. This continues what Paul has been saying in this letter to the Corinthians, about the church there being divided into factions, each arguing that they belong to a leader, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter. Here Paul is saying again that all the Corinthians’ bickering over which one leader is the right authority, and taking sides about which leader is greatest, is completely misguided. For all the leaders are stewards, and so, as in households, stewards answer only to God. It is up to God to assess their ministry.

In many United Church congregations we have a Committee of Stewards, who do a great job looking after finances, property maintenance, and insurance: all the things needed to keep the building up and heated and lit and the bills paid. If we use the word ‘steward’ much in our church, we’re usually referring to them. But Paul is using it to refer to all the leaders of the church in Corinth, and it actually can become even broader than that, if we look at what Jesus is saying as we read his Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus says, No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matthew 6:24). Or, to put it another way, no one can be a steward for two heads of households. You couldn’t be a steward in two houses at the same time. Stewards were in exclusive service.

Jesus goes on to say, you can’t serve God and wealth. The King James Bible expresses this as, you cannot serve God and Mammon. Mammon is an old Hebrew word for material possessions. Originally it wasn’t a bad word at all, but over time it came to mean that in which you put your trust. It came to be regarded as an idol, something that people worship and to which they feel allegiance. When we trust in material things and rely on wealth for security, then possessions indeed become idols. They become like God.

So this makes us think about what place our possessions have in our lives. I have been using the Daily Study Bible commentaries by William Barclay, which he wrote in the 1950s and are particularly good on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Barclay writes that at the basis of what Jesus taught about possessions are three great principles. I would add, these are different than and counter to the way our society and systems think about wealth.

First, all things belong to God. This is crystal clear through the whole Bible. When Jesus tells stories, he often depicts God as the master of these big estates, and back then the owner had complete authority. We may be able to rearrange and alter things, but we can’t create anything on this planet or in this universe. Only God can do that, and so ultimate ownership of everything belongs to God. No matter how hard we work, we can’t point to anything and say, this is really mine. We can only say, this belongs to God, and God has given us the use of it as God would want it to be used. So we are all stewards. We manage. And we answer to God for the way we manage the creation God allows us to use.

Second, people are always more important than things. If wealth is accumulated by treating people as things, then these riches are wrong. Jesus says, what does it profit someone if they gain the world but lose their soul (Matthew 16:26)? What puts money in our bank account and makes us prosperous may be at the expense of others. Barclay uses the example of making money during the Industrial Revolution in England by putting children to work in mines and factories. If he were here today, he might point to the chocolate we eat, made from cocoa which is often harvested by child labour. And today we are often treated solely as consumers, as the sum of our purchases.

Third, wealth is always secondary. We often think that the Bible says that money is the root of all evil; but Scripture in fact states that it is the love of money that is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). This is what John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached: material things can be used to help your family and to benefit your neighbours and community, and that is good. But possessions can also be sought simply to heap luxury on top of luxury. Wealth can become the thing we live for and live by, and that is bad. Riches can take over the place in life that only God should occupy. Then wealth does become Mammon, an idol that replaces God.

For Barclay one more point comes out of these principles from what Jesus says about wealth: The possession of money and material things is not a sin, but it is a great responsibility. Just as the stewards of Jesus and Paul’s time had great responsibility over household finances and property, and the Committee of Stewards in United Churches today has responsibility over finances and property, we have great responsibility as stewards of all the gifts God has given us. I was amazed at how much stuff we had when we moved to Ingleside! If we own so much, then this is not a matter of congratulating ourselves: it is a matter for prayer, that we will use our possessions as God wants us to.

For we may not use our possessions at all. We may be so miserly that we may delight simply in getting, and not using. All of our stuff may actually be quite useless. All of our money may just sit there, doing no one any good.

Or we may use our wealth selfishly, piling up thing upon thing just for the sake of having things, and owning the latest and greatest of everything. We may think of possessions simply and solely in terms of what they can do for us.

We may also use our riches maliciously. The news is always full of stories of how wealth and the power it brings can corrupt. Displaying money can be a tool to dazzle others and persuade them to part with their money. There have been lots of financial advisers lately who have made enough to recruit clients who would then lose all of their savings.

Or we may use our riches foolishly, or more accurately, accumulate what seems to be wealth in foolish ways, like borrowing so much and spending so freely that we are so deep in debt that we can’t get out again.

But we may also act as good and responsible stewards, using our possessions for the happiness of others. After all, we don’t really own anything – it is all God’s, and is to be used for God’s purposes. After we provide for ourselves and our families, as stewards we are to manage our finances, property, and goods so that they can be of benefit to our neighbours, and above all our neighbours who are in need.

When my Dad was a boy in New Brunswick during the Depression, he and his brother would only get a few Christmas presents - usually a book, a barley toy, and something my great uncle made in his workshop. But Christmas of 1934 Grampy Hayward hitched the horses up to the sleigh, and they drove up the frozen St. John River to one of the neighbouring houses. The Haywards had little, and lived in the parsonage of the Advent Christian Church as there was no minister there at the time. But the nearby family had even less, and lived in a shack made out of logs covered with tarpaper. And Grampy, Dad, and my uncle gave the children of that family some of their Christmas presents and a basket of food from the pantry, and those would be the only presents that family would get.

So it doesn’t matter how wealthy we are, for we can be just as bighearted with ten dollars as ten thousand dollars if ten is what we have. Remember how Jesus talks about a poor widow who could give only two pennies to the Temple offering, and how her gift was more blessed than the offerings of the rich men who had so much more to spare (Luke 21:1-4). What is important as stewards is for us to use what we have so that giving ranks above getting. For after all, if God is so wonderfully generous to us - if God indeed, as the prophet Isaiah says, never forgets us and inscribes us on the palms of God’s hands (Isaiah 49:15-16) - how can we not be generous to others? Jesus says, it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).

Now, my Dad was only six years old, so he may not have been particularly happy to have to give away his Christmas gifts. Later in life he and my uncle did think that Christmas did give them some sense of what Christmas, and giving, should be all about. But we can be pretty grudging in our giving, too. Paul addresses this when he writes to the Corinthians and reminds them that, if you sow a small number of seeds, you will reap a small crop, and if you sow a generous number of seeds, you will harvest a large crop. Everyone should give whatever they have decided in their heart, but not with hesitation or because of pressure. God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:6-7).

Paul goes on to tell the Corinthians that if they are made rich in every way, it is so that they can be generous in every way and their generosity can produce thanksgiving to God (2 Corinthians 9:11-13). That is stewardship, managing what God has given us in God’s gifts of the talents we have and the money and material things we own. We are stewards with great responsibility, the duty to give willingly and lovingly from all that we have for the work of the church to extend God’s realm. We are stewards with accountability, answering like the stewards of ancient times to the head of the household. We serve one master exclusively: our God who created all things and to whom all things belong, and who calls us to look after what we have with trustworthiness, compassion, and joy.

Blogging on the Wane?

Well, my blog seems to be. This article in The New York Times finds that blogs are being eclipsed by social media like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. After all, a blog post requires a lot more time and thought than a 140-character tweet or a Facebook status update. During the current crisis across the Arab world, I'm spending a lot of time on Twitter to get updates from folks on site (although a lot of the updates are just rehashes of what Al Jazeera is broadcasting).

Church Words

Do clergy ever listen to themselves? Seriously, I found the phrase "erection of the Ordinariate" in a Roman Catholic Church article for public consumption. How could the average person not find that...well, dirty?

Don't Be Afraid

Christmas Eve sermon, Trinity United Church, Ingleside

Giving all glory and honour to God.

Tonight we have sung and read the Christmas story, the one we love from carols and Sunday school pageants and Christmas services and A Charlie Brown Christmas. We know all the parts of the story from hearing it and singing it, and we can put the story together from our carols: once in royal David’s city, Mary and Joseph arrive in O little town of Bethlehem, and Gentle Mary laid her child, away in a manger, no crib for his bed. While shepherds watched their flocks by night, angels from the realms of glory came upon the midnight clear, sweetly singing o’er the plains glory to the newborn king, and the shepherds come and adore him, Christ the Lord. Nowell, nowell, born is the king of Israel.

That is indeed the story. And there’s a lot here in this story, behind the words of the carols and the figures of our nativity sets. It’s like an onion, with lots of layers. Think of that tomorrow if you’re peeling an onion for Christmas dinner. Now I know you’re probably not going to be thinking of that, because on Christmas Day you’re more likely to be thinking of how you’re going to lose it if you hear Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer one more time, so we’ll explore this now. Not all the layers we could find, as we want to leave time for lots more singing, but maybe a couple.

Here’s one layer. Who gets told the news about the Christ being born? Not religious or political leaders or celebrities. Shepherds. We imagine shepherds to be the respectable folks in nice clean robes we see in pageants, but in the time of Jesus people looked down on shepherds as dirt poor, smelly outsiders who couldn’t keep up their religious obligations as they were away a lot, just not the right sort of people at all, at the bottom of the economic and social ladder, like homeless people today. Yet they are the first ones told of this good news for all people.

Here’s another layer. You know, a lot of us have heard the word bedlam, which means a place full of noise, frenzied activity, and confusion. But we don’t know where the word comes from. Well, 500 years ago in England there was a group of monks called the Order of the Star of Bethlehem, devoted to the care of those who were mentally ill. They established an institution called the Bethlehem Hospital, which eventually got shortened to Bedlam. So bedlam comes from Bethlehem. And we can imagine as the story takes place that there really was bedlam in Bethlehem at that first Christmas, the village packed with people for the census, no room in the crowded inns, tired, cranky travelers shouting, Mary and Joseph finding a place with the musty hay and noisy and smelly animals, nothing quite as tidy and antiseptic as our nativity scenes or the old paintings where no animals go to the bathroom and Mary is always shown as very calm, kneeling beside the manger. One female minister commented that this shows that men painted all these pictures, as there was no way she was kneeling after childbirth. And we may make the story very sentimental as we sing little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes, and sleep in heavenly peace, but the story must really be bedlam, the baby wailing as all babies do, animals crying out, mess and filth and darkness, a sore and tired mother, Joseph dealing with these shepherds who rush in, falling over each other, dirty and enthusiastic.

Bedlam in the Christmas story. And Bedlam in our Christmas, today and tomorrow, excitement and shouts of joy as relatives arrive and gifts are opened, music and TV blaring, exhaustion – does this bedlam sound like anyone’s house here? – and perhaps tears of disappointment as a brand new toy breaks, maybe anger as too many drinks cause family tensions to boil over, weeping as sorrow over the death of a loved one or a relationship comes to the surface. Bedlam in our Christmas, and bedlam in our lives, our busy, busy lives of crises and stress that leave us as sleepless and weary and grumpy as the travelers in the original Bethlehem bedlam, lives where we are overwhelmed by noise and cries for attention, lives of worry and anxiety and fear, fear about health and marriage and finances and jobs and crime, fear about an accident or diagnosis or a layoff changing everything in a moment, fear of being alone, fear for ourselves, fear for our loved ones, fear for our world. So many of us, I think all of us, are afraid, and often we don’t know what it is we’re afraid of.

The shepherds in the story were afraid, too. After all, they’re sitting in the dark, minding their own business, and suddenly an angel appears. Yet what is the first thing the angel says to them? Don’t be afraid. These words resound throughout the Christmas story. Just read Luke. The angel comes to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and says, don’t be afraid. The angel comes to Mary to tell her that she will have a son named Jesus, and says, don’t be afraid. The angel comes to Joseph, who is engaged to Mary, and says, don’t be afraid. The angel comes to the shepherds on Christmas night, and says, don’t be afraid. All of these lives turned around unexpectedly, Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds – and they are reassured, don’t be afraid. And so we are reassured when our lives change suddenly. Don’t be afraid.

The angel says, don’t be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy, for all people. And these words, don’t be afraid, are good news for us, people living in the darkness of bedlam and fear, for on us God’s light has shined. Good news for all – well, nearly all. For another layer in this story is that we think of it as the most unthreatening, status quo story imaginable. After all, it’s usually acted out by kids in bathrobes with tea towels on their heads. But it is really a subversive, radical story, so much so that in the 1980s in Guatemala the government banned public readings of part of the Christmas story because it was too dangerous, it could incite rebellion.

In the story the angel comes and says, Your Saviour is born today. He is Christ, the Lord. Well, 20 centuries ago only one person in Palestine, one person in the entire Roman empire, was called Saviour and Lord, even Prince of Peace – and it wasn’t a baby. It was the emperor, Augustus Caesar, considered to be divine, who had ordered the census in the story – the Bible doesn’t say if it was the short form or long form census, but the census is why Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem, this one-horse town in a remote backwater of the empire. Born is the king of Israel are nice lyrics to The First Nowell for us, but when this story was written down these words were threatening to the power of the Emperor and the empire. These words frightened the powers that be – the Bible says about the Emperor’s puppet ruler in Palestine, King Herod was afraid, and all Jerusalem with him. These words threatened the authorities so much that as the story continued Joseph and Mary and Jesus had to flee for their lives and become refugees.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister in Germany and one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. He was executed by the Nazis for opposing the ideology of Hitler with the good news of Jesus Christ. And he wrote about this Christmas message, don’t be afraid, saying: “For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ. No powerful person dares to approach the manger. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly.”

Sisters and brothers, Bethlehem was bedlam, and it seems that our Christmas is bedlam, our lives are bedlam, and our world is bedlam, just as the world into which Jesus was born was bedlam, a world dominated by empire and power then and now, a world of violence and hunger and poverty, a world with no solutions in sight, just in our world a bedlam of competing voices screaming out opinions on every issue from the census to whether you should say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.

And into bedlam comes God, in this mystery of God somehow born among humanity as a tiny, vulnerable baby. God is with us as God identifies completely with us, born as we were. And into our bedlam today God comes just as God came in the Christmas story of bedlam in Bethlehem, this revolutionary story of God coming in and with the lowly, the humble, the poor, the defenceless, the voiceless. That is the deep, eternal truth of this story of Christmas, that we are not alone, for Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, God come to be with us in our vulnerability, our weakness, our helplessness, our fear. And that message of Christmas is not just for poor outsiders on a hillside 20 centuries ago; it’s for us: Don’t be afraid. God is with us. And that message of calm and comfort cuts through the bedlam of our Christmas, the bedlam of our lives, and brings peace, the real silent night, holy night.

Don’t be afraid. And so we are not to be afraid of what is happening to us and around us and in our world, and of what may happen in the future. We have hope, brothers and sisters, for Jesus came at Christmas and comes to us always and will come again - to save us, and to show us what our loving God is like, and to show us how to be fully human – unafraid, and loving, for the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s fear. And when we are not afraid, we can act, act out this story that turns expectations upside down, we can work to make God’s vision of peace on earth and goodwill to all a reality in our world.

Don’t be afraid. That’s what God’s messengers say in the story. If we live our lives in hope and love, free of fear, we too will be God’s messengers, telling and showing the world that we are not afraid because we have been given the good news of Christmas, And so I say to you on this Christmas Eve, the old message, the true message, the amazing message, “Don’t be afraid. Look, I bring you good news to you, wonderful, joyous news for all people. Your Saviour is born today in David’s city. He is Christ, the Lord. This is a sign for you: You will find a newborn baby wrapped snugly and lying in a manger. Glory to God in heaven, and on earth, peace and goodwill to all.”

A Christmas Post: Santa and Christ

Thoughtful piece by Patricia Paddey in today's National Post, The Nice Road to Santa and the Difficult Path to Christ. Here's an excerpt:

Think about it: today’s Santa is the perfect deity for our day; he’s a god-man who is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, who judges and rewards good and bad behaviour. He is a vehicle of undeserved love, forgiveness and grace. Children are taught to adore him and to please him with sacrificial offerings of milk and cookies. He dwells far off in another realm but promises to return regularly to the benefit of those who believe in him. The fact that he’s also one of the great underpinnings of the world industrial economy doesn’t hurt his appeal.

But the story of Jesus? Well that’s a far different matter and one that could never be described in half-measures. The sweet infant sleeping on the hay in the Christmas crèche grows up to be the man who angers local religious authorities, is betrayed, abandoned and handed over for torture by disappointed friends, and dies a traitor’s cruel death. In the days and weeks after his death, hundreds of people are convinced of the reality of his resurrection – including his scared and scattered friends who ultimately hear him victoriously proclaim, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

KJV Turns 400!

It's the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible in 2011. I used to hold out for calling it the Authorized Version, but have now given up. We'll have a special Bible Sunday sometime during the year to celebrate this translation and its immense impact on the English language and the Christian faith. After all, what would Christmas be without Linus reciting Luke's nativity story from the KJV in A Charlie Brown Christmas?

Common English Bible

I've been using the Common English Bible for the New Testament readings on Sundays in Advent. It's a brand-new translation, and I like it - contemporary in feel but takes fewer liberties with the text than The Message (although I still like The Message too). Here's a lookup tool for any New Testament passage.

Find your favorite passage in the CEB:

Reign of Christ

Sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday, November 21, 2010 (this is the draft! lots of rewording and polishing still to do)

Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43


There’s no denying that winter will soon be here: This week I put out 14 bags of leaves for the final collection of yard waste, had my snow tires put on, and watched semi-final and final games in university and CFL football. And the Official Board met and set dates for our congregational annual meetings in February, which doesn’t seem that far off now.

In the calendar of the church, we’re at the end of the year. That’s right, the last Sunday of the church year is November 21, which is called Reign of Christ Sunday. Some churches name it Christ the King. And so our readings this morning have been about Christ as ruler: the Colossians passage, which is probably an early Christian hymn, and Luke, the description of Jesus being put to death on the cross as the King of the Jews, a title given to him to make fun of him but which is truer than the Roman Empire could ever have known, for Jesus is indeed King of the Jews, the Christ, the Messiah sent to bring God’s reign not just to Israel or to the empire but to the whole world.

So today is kind of like the church’s New Year’s Eve. The church will begin a new year with the first Sunday in the season of Advent, November 28. But in our society there is no longer a season of Advent. For retailers and consumers, we’re already at Christmas; stores had Christmas decorations up on the day after Hallowe’en. And those decorations will disappear after Boxing Day, when the church is celebrating the real season of Christmas. The first Christmas special I have noticed in the TV listings actually aired last night. And some radio stations have already switched over to 24-hour Christmas music. Majic 100 starts tomorrow. A writer I was reading the other day commented that he was invited on a talk show to talk about the so-called war on Christmas; he said if there is a war, Christmas seems to be winning, as it’s now colonizing November. A Jesuit priest said that eventually Christmas will start around Labour Day. Now I’m not sure Jesuits are the ones to talk, as I was at United Church meetings in Montreal, and we rented a lovely Jesuit facility in Pierrefonds, and they were putting up Christmas wreaths – the week before Hallowe’en. I thought, just because Jesuits are the Society of Jesus, they don’t have to start celebrating his birthday two months early.

Now, I like that Christmas is the only time of the year you’re going to hear Jesus mentioned in a song playing at the mall, but I also know that this isn’t the true Christmas - Jesus is very much secondary in this version of Christmas, this essentially Christless Christmas, in which the birth of Jesus and its meaning are buried way, way down under the message of buy, buy, buy. If a war on Christmas exists, it’s being waged by retailers and advertisers.

As I think about Reign of Christ Sunday, with its imagery of Christ as ruler that we heard in our Scripture readings, I wonder who really is ruler where we are? Jesus Christ, or the empire of shopping? Jesus Christ, or our earthly empires, ruled by prime ministers and premiers and company presidents? We talked last week about the persecution the church faces in many countries today. Reign of Christ Sunday was placed in the church calendar in the 1920s as a response to that kind of persecution, which at that time came from governments in Mexico and Russia. Perhaps Reign of Christ Sunday has fresh meaning for us as followers of Christ today, as a response not just to governments but to the materialist consumer “Christmas” whose power will dominate all that we hear and see for the next month.

Now, if the connection isn’t obvious between our theme for Reign of Christ, and our spend like Santa and save like Scrooge shopping spree at Christmas, as Canadian Tire used to put it, or between Reign of Christ and what governments and companies do, we need to look back at when Reign of Christ Sunday was placed in the church calendar. This day wasn’t created to praise Christ’s majesty or to talk about how nice things will be when he rules forever and ever. The Pope who put this Sunday in the Roman Catholic church calendar, and from there it has come to us, said that the Feast of Christ the King will call to this world’s leaders. They are the thrones and powers and rulers and authorities the letter to the Colossians talks about in our reading this morning, which were created through Christ and for Christ, and are subject to him. But they have cast Christ not just out of Christmas, but out of public life, and despised, and neglected, and ignored him. Christ’s kingly dignity, Pope Pius XI wrote, demands that the state should take account of God’s commandments and Christian principles in making laws and administering justice.

This year ministers have been following a new initiative, called the Proper 29 Project because in the calendar Reign of Christ is the 29th, or proper, Sunday in Ordinary Time. The project began after thousands of pages of documents were released about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You may have read about those in the paper, or about the debate in Canada over turning detainees in Afghanistan over to Afghan authorities for possible torture. Coalition forces have been responsible for the deaths of 66,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and have ignored the torture of prisoners. The sponsors of Proper 29 wanted to speak out against this when preaching on Reign of Christ Sunday – but also did not want to point fingers at the military, for that’s too easy to do. All of us are morally responsible for the actions carried out in our name, and all of us are subject to the Reign of Christ.

I thought of this watching George W. Bush talking to Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, far too late on Thursday night. President Bush has a new book out, so he’s on all the talk shows. And he admits – well, he doesn’t admit, he puts it out there because he’s proud of it – that he personally approved torturing al-Qaeda prisoners. Even though waterboarding, which is the technique the CIA used, is considered torture under United Nations conventions which were signed into law in the United States, it’s torture under the terms the Allies used to prosecute Japanese officers after World War II, and it’s torture under any application of common sense. American law says that every act of torture is a criminal offence, and no public official may authorize anyone else to commit torture. There is no wiggle room here. Churches hold that torture is immoral and unjustified under any conditions. Yet President Bush shows no shame and says that he would do it again, and here he is, being applauded by the Tonight Show audience. He tells us that he is a man of faith, that Jesus is his personal Saviour, and I believe him. We are all people of faith, yet we are all sinners, and we are all under Christ’s reign.

Proper 29 organizers specifically did not want to blame the military for what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the soldiers and aircrew and sailors are ordinary people, many of them people of deep faith, making life-changing decisions in split seconds and following difficult orders. When the Director of the CIA asked President Bush whether to use torture to get information out of captured al-Qaeda leaders, he had to make a difficult decision too. I believe, and most churches believe, that his decision to torture was the wrong one. But all of us have to make decisions in our lives, and they need to be guided by Christ as the ruler of our lives.

When Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday was created, the Pope did not just talk about earthly rulers ignoring Christ’s reign. He went on to say that this day addresses not just governments but all Christians, for Christ must reign in our minds, all our minds, which should assent to his teachings; Christ must reign in our wills, which should obey the commandments of God; Christ must reign in our bodies, which should serve as instruments for God’s justice.

You may remember a few weeks ago, on Hallowe’en, Reformation Sunday, when I talked about Martin Luther, who contrasted the theology of glory with the theology of the cross. Well, Reign of Christ was not created to celebrate or promote a theology of glory, dressing Christ up like a king or emperor on earth and making him act like that – what the old Anglican catechism called the ‘vain pomp and glory of the world.’ Next year there will be a royal wedding, with lots of pomp and circumstance, and it will be great to watch, but that’s not how Christ reigns as king.

Christ as ruler does not follow the world’s idea of glory. Soren Kierkegaard, who lived in Denmark about 170 years ago and is one of my favourite theologians, had a little story about Christ the king to illustrate this.

Once upon a time a king fell in love with a humble maiden, but wished to avoid embarrassing or offending her. If he went to her in his kingly glory, with royal garments and a retinue of courtiers, he would overwhelm her. And if she should respond to his love, he could never be sure that she loved him or his majesty. He could disguise himself as a beggar and go to her; but then she would not really love him – he is really a king, but she would love a beggar. The reverse solution, elevating the girl instead of lowering the king, wouldn’t work either; this would imply that as a humble maid she was not good enough to be loved, when it was in fact in this state that the king loved her. The only possible answer was for the king to become a beggar in reality, not just to pretend to be one, and to win the maiden’s love as a beggar.

The king in the story is Jesus Christ – and the maiden he loves, the one he loves the way she is, - that’s us. Christ the King did not come to us in glory, but became a beggar, one of us, to win our love. He is not pretending to be humble like us, he really is like us, even though we heard from Colossians that he is the image of God and all things were created by and for him. The letter to the Philippians in the New Testament talks about this, that Christ was in the form of God, but goes on to say that Christ did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and becoming like humans, and in that human form he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And our Luke reading is a description of this, how as king, as ruler, Jesus Christ does humble himself, turning all expectations of how a king should act on their head as he goes to death on a cross. Kings are supposed to be in charge, not obedient. Kings are supposed to be powerful, not humble. Kings are supposed to lead armies into battle, not be put to death alone as a criminal. Kings wear crowns and sit on thrones. But this is the theology of the cross, a theology of suffering, not the theology of glory. The only crown Jesus has is a crown of thorns. His throne is the rough wood of the cross, with two thieves on either side. Christ does not follow the ways of the world. He refuses to use violence when it is used against him. He forgives his persecutors. He is indeed King of the Jews, and the king of creation, but a different kind of king, a servant king, a king who will not take up the sword, a king who says he did not come to judge the world but to save it.

Brothers and sisters, it's as if our world is in darkness. We struggle to learn how to move beyond the violence embedded in our culture. We look with dismay at the war and poverty and environmental destruction that afflicts our world, at the way in which human life is made a commodity or even considered worthless. We try the solutions the rulers and authorities of this world tell us to adopt, embracing violence abroad and consumption at home, and find out that these solve nothing at all. We can’t afford either one.

So who can help us? Who can be found to lift us out of this sorrow and fear we have created for ourselves? We are not so lost that we don't realize that we need a saviour. But our saviour isn’t any of the ones we seize on as who or what can make us happy and fulfilled. We won’t be saved by a political party or leader, or a celebrity, or a corporation. Salvation won’t come from a political or economic or social empire. No, the Bible says, God so loved the world that we were given God’s only Son: Jesus Christ, the image of God, the head of the church, the one who created all rulers and authorities on earth, the king who turned away from glory to become a beggar to love and save us and who brought peace through the blood of his cross. And so he alone is sovereign, he alone deserves our loyalty, he alone must reign in our wills, our minds, our bodies. And when we say to him, Jesus, remember me, he says to us as he brings us into his royal dominion as God’s people, you shall be with me in paradise.

Yet More Online Nuttiness

So I retweeted several articles (like this one on the anti-Semitic overtones in Glenn Beck's current obsession with George Soros, and am now on several Twitter lists like 'hate-mongers-claiming-2b-christian,' 'list-of-mentally-ill-people,' 'listofpeoplementallyill,' 'list-GLBT-hate-mongers-of-Glenn-Beck.' I'm sure that I'm in great company. George Soros is not immune to criticism, but Glenn Beck's depiction of him as the 'Puppet Master' pulling the strings of international finance resurrects a dangerous anti-Semitic image, and Beck spreads what seem to me to be outright lies about how Soros survived the Shoah. So, as a straight Christian, I'm proud to be listed with other Christians and with GLBT opponents of Beck's close encounter with anti-Semitism.

Updating the Blog...

Thoroughly identifying with Queen's University Principal Daniel Woolf as he launches his own blog, and writes: "This will probably not be very frequent, but sometimes one needs more than 140 characters to say something." So, now that I spend three-quarters of my online time on Twitter rather than the blog or Facebook, I will likely be the same.

Thanksgiving Day! In-laws visiting for the holiday and their 63rd wedding anniversary. Have driven to the St. Lawrence Seaway locks at Iroquois to see the leaves, served Great Lakes Brewery's Pumpkin Ale and Hex from Magic Hat Brewery (Burlington VT), and about to tuck into the turkey and ham. Grateful for the harvest, the farmers who grew our food, and all the blessings God showers on us.

Polkaroo!

I mentioned the Polkaroo on Twitter and received a tweet from the Polkaroo - my life is complete:) If you're unfamiliar with the Polkaroo, he is a children's TV character on Ontario's TVO network who looks somewhat like a large green giraffe and can only say his own name: Polkaroo! See http://polkaroo.com.

Must be a Protestant...

So I'm in the local Foodland supermarket and run into the Roman Catholic priest, who is nicely dressed in a dark blue clerical shirt (I own the same one). I, on the other hand, am wearing a black MMA Elite T-shirt with a large cross, a camouflage hunting jacket, Levi's, and a International Ice Hockey Federation ball cap. Oh, and I haven't shaved, either (but, in my defence, neither do the actors on Hawaii Five-Oh). The parishioners he is chatting with must be silently comparing Catholic and Protestant clergy.

Stop Fox News North?

I've been asked to sign, and know a number of United Church folk who have done so, the Avaaz petition to "stop Fox News North" - that is, Sun TV's proposed all news network. I'm not sure that branding the channel as "hate media" is actually getting us anywhere, and would seem to generate a bonanza of free publicity for Quebecor and its Sun minions (who own, among other things, all of the newspapers along the St. Lawrence River, and then complain about "liberal" dominance of the media).

Like Margaret Atwood, I have problems with the process of getting a Category 1 TV licence, but don't think we need to shut down Fox News-style speech.

"Ground Zero Mosque"

I've been twittering constantly the last few days about the controversy over the proposal to build an Islamic cultural centre (termed the "Ground Zero mosque" as it will include a prayer space) two blocks from the World Trade Centre site. There's way too much material, pro and con, to summarize here - see my Twitter feed! - but let me examine a statement by Allen West, who is running for Congress in Florida, and opposes the cultural centre project:

The individuals who hijacked two airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center towers shouted, “Allahu Akhbar”. The individuals who will attend the mosque would offer up like praise of “Allahu Akhbar”. The individuals who detonate suicide vests, behead school teachers and headmasters, throw acid on little girls trying to attend school, and fire rockets into Israel shout, “Allahu Akhbar”.

That's true. And the school teachers, headmasters, and schoolgirls, being Muslims, would also say, "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). It's part of the prayers Muslims say five times a day. It's like saying that the Crusaders, who massacred Muslim civilians, Jews, and even Orthodox Christians, said the Lord's Prayer, so it's somehow a bad thing for Christians to pray the same prayer.

Now a Chautauquan

Back from a great week at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State. Chautauqua was founded in 1874 as a retreat for Methodist Sunday School teachers, and became the centre of the Chautauqua movement of lectures, performances and worship services - "art, religion, music, and knowledge" ("recreation" has now been added as Chautauqua is rife with opportunities for boating, sailing, swimming and biking). There are other "Chautauquas" still operating in the summer elsewhere in the US.

Clergy Renewal Week is organized by the Christian service organization The King's Daughters and Sons and brings ministers from across the US and Canada to Chautauqua. Our group had United Church of Canada, Anglican Church of Canada, United Methodist, Presbyterian Church of the USA, and United Church of Christ clergy. Gate passes were provided by the Chautauqua Institution's Department of Religion and accommodation is provided by the IOKDS in the two houses they own.

Chautauqua is a beautiful town of Victorian cottages, many of which have been in the same family for generations. Its winter population of 300 mushrooms to 10,000 people a day in the summer. It's certainly a bastion of liberal Protestantism, with the mainline American Protestant denominations maintaining houses in the village, although there are two Jewish congregations, and a Roman Catholic presence in facilities borrowed from Protestants. I attended worship services with the Episcopal priest and renowned preacher Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor preaching (and she signed two books for me!), lectures on the week's theme of photography - the inventor of the digital camera, Steve Sasson, photographers Steve McCurry and Ed Kashi, former US poet laureate Billy Collins, and George Eastman House director Tony Bannon were among the speakers - and symphony, ballet and opera performances. It was indeed a renewal week.

"Church" in an app

Fascinating Huffington Post article by Paul Lamb on the potential for religious communities (including creating new kinds of communities) of location-based, social networking apps for mobile phones. He concludes:

There is no question that the mobile experience will redefine how and when people engage with their spiritual and religious communities. Just as we have Web-only worshippers, we may soon be seeing mobile-only congregations which organize and disband on the fly. Nobody knows exactly where things will end up, but next-generation mobile apps could offer a powerful and extended community experience unlike anything that exists today outside of institutional walls and on the Internet.

In a world where it is getting harder and harder to bring people to church, mobile apps might lead the way in bringing church to the people.

I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

Farewell to Prison Farms

The fight to save the prison farms around Kingston, Ontario, was lost in a recent court decision that gave Correctional Services Canada the go-ahead to close the farms and auction off the livestock. I've worked with ex-offenders and with food banks, and I support prison farms: the work gives prisoners confidence and skills (the government says that farm skills aren't useful in the "real world" but I wouldn't say that to the farmers around here, or to the government's rural base!), the output of the farms feeds prisoners and goes to local food banks, and closing the farms will not actually save the government money as there will have to be new skills training programs and replacement purchases for the farm produce. It's rumoured that the hidden agenda at work is using the farmland for expansion of the prisons. Father Raymond de Souza has an excellent piece in The National Post on the issue.

"Jerusalem"

Although I'm in what at one time would be called a "Dissenting" denomination, I always love William Blake's lyrics to Jerusalem, listed by its first line in hymn books as And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time. Chariots of fire, arrows of desire, the Holy Lamb of God walking on England's pleasant pastures green. See the blog Ghost of a Flea on controversies over singing the hymn (which was in our 1971 joint Anglican-United Church of Canada red hymnal, and whose tune is in our present hymn book as O Day of Peace) in the modern Church of England.

Tea Party Jesus

The Huffington Post has excerpts from Tea Party Jesus, putting quotes from key Tea Party and Republican figures into the mouth of Jesus. It makes a great point about how the language of people who call themselves Christians so often isn't, well, Christian. What would Jesus do?

Just a few lines on the G20 Summit

The Muskoka G8 and Toronto G20 summits have been analyzed from here to back online, but here are just a few lines from John Doyle in today's Globe & Mail:

Nobody on TV was prepared, or indeed intellectually equipped, one suspects, to see the enormous fences and the extreme disruption of downtown life and business, as a symbolic act of hostility against a population, and as symbolic examples of the remoteness of the powerful from ordinary people.

Fox in the Henhouse

Much hand-wringing, name-calling, glee, and angst from commentators of various political stripes over the prospect of a "Fox News North" as Quebecor plans to expand Sun TV - which I get on my TV, and seems to broadcast mostly The Casino Rama Grill Room sports talk show - into a conservative news network. Publicity that Quebecor couldn't buy otherwise. I do find the trumped-up indignation of both Fox News and Sun TV amusing, as they protest that a conservative voice is absent from the "lamestream media." In Canada English-speaking conservatives have The National Post, the entire Sun newspaper chain (which in turn owns virtually all of the local papers in my area), talk radio, and Maclean's magazine. As well, conservative talking heads are part of CBC and CTV news coverage. But, of course, it plays well to the base if one is constantly foaming at the mouth about how there is a media conspiracy against one's point of view. The left does the same thing.

Rare Bibles

I'm home from the Medieval Festival at Upper Canada Village - a very sanitized version of the Middle Ages. Many visitors were there from Quebec, where medieval re-creations are very popular. The all-pervasive influence of the Church was left out of this version of medieval times - nary a cross or friar in sight, although a couple of Roman Catholic priests were among the spectators (I was incognito).

But further on ancient times, and my last blog posting about the Lowy Council, this article is about amassing a collection of old Bibles. The Lowy Collection has a first edition of the Authorized Version, the King James Bible, as well as editions of the Torah and the Tanakh, the complete Hebrew Bible.

Judaica and Hebraica

I'm on the Council of the Jacob M. Lowy Collection at Library and Archives Canada - the Lowy donation is Canada's national collection of Judaica and Hebraica, meaning Jewish and Hebrew literature. We had a meeting tonight with Library and Archives officials to discuss how the collection will fit into modernization of the agency, while adhering to the terms of the deed of Mr. Lowy's gift in 1977 (pre-public Internet). But I do need to pay tribute to our retiring curator, Cheryl Jaffee, and welcome the incoming part-time curatorial team led by Leah Cohen. It's a privilege to be part of the Lowy Council and to be surrounded by books that speak of heritage and survival.

Church is good for something...

According to the Tamil rapper Maya (aka M.I.A.). In this profile in the New York Times Magazine, Maya is driving by a church in East London and says:

“That church saved my life. Christ Church! That’s the last time I got to be a high-school dropout: I should have been in school, and a youth worker at the church, who had been in prison, grabbed me and slammed me against the wall one day and said: ‘What is the matter with you? If you stay around here, you’ll end up living in one of these apartments with six babies before you’re 20.’ I used to be hanging about, getting into trouble. He changed my life.”

I haven't blogged for so long! Been relying on Twitter and Facebook. I'm just back from the annual meeting of the United Church of Canada's Montreal & Ottawa Conference in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, and the annual meeting of the Canadian Theological Society at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, held at Concordia University. Montreal was great as always - smoked meat, distractions like the boutique at the Musée des beaux-arts and the Apple Store, hundreds of people around Concordia and on Crescent Street on a Monday night, driving up and down the Main and St. Urbain.

And I'm mourning the death of the Rev. Rod Carter, who taught restorative justice at Queen's Theological College. Rod had been in prison and received a pardon, going on to serve in the military and as a Correctional Services of Canada chaplain, making a difference in the lives of many, many offenders and students - his story is a good counter to the portrayal of pardons by the federal government and media. A gentle man who had a quiet passion for justice.

Beck surrogate responds

There's an ongoing debate about churches and social justice, prompted by Glenn Beck of Fox News commenting that Christians should "flee" churches which talk about social justice. He sees "social justice" as a code phrase for both communist and fascist extremism. This brought a predictable backlash from a wide range of Christians, from the Sojourners' Rev. Jim Wallis to Biblical scholars pointing out that the early church was effectively socialist (see Acts 4:32-35).

The Washington Post's religion pages have been filled with this debate, with the latest being a response from a producer of Glenn Beck's show. He cites one example of "social justice" extremism and says that Beck has nothing against Christian charity, only against advocacy of societal change. But can churches stop at charity? One Brazilian bishop said in the days of the dictatorship in that country, "When I feed the poor, they say I am a Christian. When I ask why they are poor, they say that I am a Communist." Can churches ask these questions?

Revolution by Latrine?

See this article in The New York Review of Books.

30th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Oscar Romero

"The poor have shown the church the true way to go. A church that does not speak out from the side of the poor is not the true church of Jesus." - Monsignor Oscar Romero, assassinated in San Salvador, March 24, 1980

World Water Day

The UN reports that polluted water accounts for more deaths than all forms of violence in the world.

A Kindle in Every Pot

A talk radio host in Ottawa is going on in amazement about how his wife can sit in their living room and access 270,000 books on her Kindle - so why do we need to spend money on libraries? Well, for one thing none of the recent books on the Kindle are free - only Project Gutenburg and other similar public domain works are. And not only can many families not afford to buy ebooks for the Kindle, they can't afford the Kindle in the first place. I shudder to think how I would have bankrupted my parents if they had had to pay for the stacks of books I would bring back from the bookmobile. Yes, libraries will change - but they're still needed. And talk radio hosts with vacation homes in the Bahamas, and $500 to buy a Kindle, should not assume that everyone has the same standard of living.

Rock and Roll!!!

I'm quoted in a Carleton University Magazine article on the glory years of on-campus concerts in Porter Hall. This will likely be one of the few times that "United Church minister" and "sex-club scene" appear together in the same article and the subject is NOT a scandal involving the clergy - the 1984 concert by Frankie Goes to Hollywood is the topic here.

Haiti in Mourning

Very powerful slide show of Haitians at prayer.

Separatism of the Rich

Having been opposed to Quebec separatism my whole life, I now share Brian Topp's concerns about another kind of separatism, that of the rich: see today's Globe & Mail, as he discusses Newfoundland & Labrador Premier Danny Williams' surgery in the US:

Kind of like how governments in the industrialized West can pull together trillions of dollars in a matter of weeks to prop up and bail out speculators and profiteers who played computer games just a little too recklessly with our pensions and savings. While the same governments cannot find tiny fractions of those sums to end child poverty, illiteracy, or homelessness (this can't be done, a young soldier for the separatism of the rich explained to me during last year's coalition negotiations, because addressing those issues would be "fixed costs").

Kind of like how a rich man whose titanic ego (and remarkable energy) led him into the premiership of a Canadian province will not give two seconds' thought to the implications of buying himself care in an American health system tailor-made for wealthy people like himself. Even though he is himself the lead administrator of a public system built on fundamentally different -- and far better -- principles.

Twittering

Twitter proving its utility for anyone interested in travel - announcements about seat sales, train discounts, contests. So it's good for something other than celebrity musings and sightings.

Jesus, Jobs and Justice

New York Times review today of Bettye Collier-Thomas' authoritative Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African-American Women and Religion. Reviewer Richard Thompson Ford states that:

Unfortunately, the civil rights movement has often lagged on the question of women’s equality even as it has led the nation on matters of race. Much of the blame for this must be borne by the religious institutions that have played a predominant role in the struggle for racial justice. Until recently, most black churches refused to grant women leadership roles, depriving them of the platform that so many black men have used to rally followers and challenge injustice. Despite these affronts, black women have remained the most faithful and abiding servants of the church, and they have been among the most diligent and effective activists for racial justice.

According to The Onion

It's meant to be tongue in cheek, but not too distant from reality: Court allows corporations to run for office.

In Haiti There is Anguish

This hymn was written by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, Presbyterian Church of the USA, to the tune St. Christopher ("Beneath the Cross of Jesus"). It has been circulating among pastors as one way to express some of the thoughts and feelings we have had over the last two weeks since the earthquake in Haiti.

In Haiti, there is anguish that seems too much to bear;
A land so used to sorrow now knows even more despair.
From city streets, the cries of grief rise up to hills above;
In all the sorrow, pain and death, where are you, God of love?

A woman sifts through rubble, a man has lost his home,
A hungry, orphaned toddler sobs, for she is now alone.
Where are you, God, when thousands die – the rich, the poorest poor?
Were you the very first to cry for all that is no more?

O God, You love your children; you hear each lifted prayer!
May all who suffer in that land know you are present there.
In moments of compassion shown, in simple acts of grace,
May those in pain find healing balm, and know your love's embrace.

Where are you in the anguish? God, may we hear anew
That anywhere your world cries out, you're there – and suffering too.
And may we see, in others' pain, the cross we're called to bear;
Send out your church in Jesus' name, to pray, to serve, to share.

Port-au-Prince: Destruction Up Close

An amazing panorama in The New York Times of the destroyed cathedral in Port-au-Prince. Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop was killed in the earthquake.

Show Haiti the Money

Good article in The New York Times reminding Americans (and it applies to Canadian and other Western readers, too) that well-meant donations of blankets, water, shoes, etc. are not always helpful. For once I agree with George W. Bush when he says, "I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water. Just send your cash.” In Nicaragua I heard about overwhelming a town with containers of supplies, as there was no transportation or distribution infrastructure to get the goods out of the port.

Haitians Seek Solace in Prayer

From The New York Times today:

"With their churches flattened, their priests killed and their Bibles lost amid the rubble of their homes, desperate Haitians prayed in the streets on Sunday, raising their arms in the air and asking God to ease their grief.

Outside the city’s main cathedral, built in 1750 but now a giant pile of twisted metal, shattered stained glass and cracked concrete, parishioners held a makeshift service at the curb outside, not far from where scores of homeless people were camping out in a public park. The bishop’s sermon of hope was a hard sell, though, as many listening had lost their relatives, their homes and their possessions.

'We have to keep hoping,' said Bishop Marie Eric Toussant, although he acknowledged that he had no resources to help his many suffering parishioners and did not know whether the historic cathedral would ever be rebuilt. He said the quake had toppled the residences where priests stayed, crushing many of them.

Baptized at the cathedral, Jean Viejina, 68, said she had visited the church every Sunday morning for as long as she can remember, using it to help her endure what she described as a challenging life raising six children. Now, even this place of refuge, like so much in Port-au-Prince, was gone...

(Episcopal Bishop Zache) Duracin said organization and survival were still the priorities for both people and institutions.

'Most of the churches are down,' he said, estimating that more than 100 of the 140 Episcopal churches here had collapsed. 'There is almost no place for worship or prayer.'

People are afraid to go into buildings, including churches, that did not collapse, he said, including himself. His home was completely destroyed, so he was sleeping one of the red Coleman tents that he distributed to about 40 families.

He said that since the earthquake, he had not given a single sermon and was still trying to figure out what to say. When asked what parts of the Bible he had been contemplating lately, he answered quickly: 'Job,' he said.

Like Job, who persevered through death and destruction, Bishop Duracin said he hoped that Haiti would soon find a way to continue living.

'We have to look for opportunities from the disaster,' he said. 'We have to mourn. We have to suffer. But we have to get up because life has to continue.'"

The Underlying Tragedy

David Brooks in The New York Times:
"On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

"This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths."

More on those truths in his column.

I'm not saying that this is one of my churches...

Haiti

Photos and reports available on every news site - the New York Times has had very good photographic coverage of the earthquake devastation, to people and buildings. Canadian customers of Rogers and Bell Mobility (Telus any time now) can text haiti to 45678 to donate $5 per text to the Salvation Army's relief efforts (I've done it, and it works!). The United Church of Canada's updated appeal for emergency funds can be found here.

Standing up for Liu Xiaobo

Vaclav Havel and other figures from the Czech Republic and Slovakia have written this letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, although officials at the Chinese Embassy in Prague refused to accept it. It's published in The Washington Post today but I'm reprinting it.

Prague, Jan. 6, 2010

Your Excellency,

On Dec. 23, the Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court -- after holding him for over a year without trial -- sentenced respected intellectual and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power."

Mr. President, we would like you to know that we do not consider this trial an independent judicial process in which neither you nor your government can interfere. In fact, it is just the opposite. Mr. Liu's trial was the result of a political order for which you carry ultimate political responsibility. We are convinced that this trial and harsh sentence meted out to a respected, well-known and prominent citizen of your country merely for thinking and speaking critically about various political and social issues was chiefly meant as a stern warning to others not to follow his path.

Thirty-three years ago, on Jan. 6, 1977, we, playwright Vaclav Havel; actor Pavel Landovsky; and writer Ludvik Vaculik, were arrested by the police in our own country, then a one-party Communist state, for "committing" exactly the same "crime": the drafting of Charter 77 and collection of signatures with the intent to call on our own government to respect our country's constitution, its international obligations and basic civic and human rights. Later, some of us were also sentenced to long prison terms in politically ordained judicial proceedings, just as the court in Beijing shamefully sentenced Mr. Liu Xiaobo in December 2009.

We strongly believe, and we dare to remind you and your Government, that there is nothing subversive to state security when intellectuals, artists, writers and academics exercise their core vocation: to think, re-think, ask questions, criticize, act creatively, and try to initiate open dialogue. On the contrary, the present and future well-being of a society is undermined when governments suppress intellectual debate.

There is nothing subversive to state security or damaging to future prosperity when citizens act guided by their own will and according to their best knowledge and conscience, when they associate among themselves to discuss and express peacefully their concerns and visions about the future development of their society.

On the contrary, a country's material and spiritual future is undermined when its citizens are not allowed to act, associate, think and speak freely.

This is why we call upon you and your Government to secure a fair and genuinely open trial for Liu Xiaobo when the court hears his appeal.

We are also asking you and your Government to end the house arrests and police surveillance which have been imposed on other Charter 08 signatories. We call upon you and your Government to end the criminalization of free speech and to release all prisoners of conscience.

Mr. President, we would like you to know that we will continue to watch carefully the treatment of Mr. Liu Xiaobo and other signatories of Charter 08. We will, together with many of our colleagues from the Czech Republic and Slovakia who signed the original Charter 77, make continued and sustained efforts to draw international attention to their plight.

With regards,

Vaclav Havel, playwright

Pavel Landovsky, author

Vaclav Maly, bishop of Prague

A Couple of Saturday Quotes

George Jonas in The National Post:
"Western-style democracies can survive terrorists. Whether we can survive our own security bureaucracies is a different question. We’re stuck in the groove of an obsolete mindset that isn’t helping us in the age of asymmetric warfare. Many security measures, far from defeating terrorism, are doing the terrorists’ job for them."

Nicholas Thompson, reviewing Michael Gordin's Red Cloud at Dawn in The New York Times, on the beginning of the nuclear arms race between the USA and USSR in the 1940s:
"Somehow, rational decision was piled upon rational decision to create something utterly irrational. Four decades later, two countries with few disputes over land had lavished trillions of dollars and rubles on world-destroying weapons."

Five - count 'em, five - newly discovered "exoplanets"!

I like the "fluffy" planet - could be made of Styrofoam that has escaped Earth's orbit...Maybe there's another planet made out of socks from the Earth's dryers. Here's the Washington Post article. What an amazing universe (see John 1:3).

This reminds me that I saw Avatar - absolutely awesome CGI, although the story was basically Pocahontas in space. I'm not sure that a completely alien race would show emotion in the same way as humans - smiling, laughing, crying. But, like all good science fiction, movies such as Avatar and District 9 make us think hard about our behaviour and attitudes on this planet.

Ataque de Pánico!

This short film from Uruguay has had five million views on YouTube, and brought director Fede Alvarez a $30 million movie contract. So giant robots don't always invade the United States or Japan, apparently.

Jesus as Census Poster Boy

Interesting bit I finally got around to reading in The Washington Post - posters being distributed to Latino church congregations in the US, fostering participation in the upcoming census by pointing out that in Luke's story Jesus was born as the result of a census.

New Year, New Post

New Year's resolution: post more often. Here is U2 singer Bono's New York Times column, with "10 for the next 10." I'm particularly interested in the Abrahamic festival, non-violent revolution, and the African decade.

Charter for Compassion

I've signed the Charter for Compassion, an initiative which is attracting a fair amount of multifaith attention.

Interfaith Road Show

A minister, a rabbi and a sheik get together...and this is what happens. Yes, it's true that in interfaith dialogue many of us try to avoid the difficult topics unless they're raised - I was on an interfaith panel that included my Ahmaddiya Muslim colleague devoting his entire presentation to the crucifixion of Jesus being a falsehood. Would I have spoken about the difference between Muslims and Christians on this issue if he hadn't raised it?

Pollution in China

Chinese industrial pollution - in sickening colour. Reminds me of Edward Burtynsky's photos in Manufactured Landscapes.

Central American Thoughts

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist who writes about international affairs (his latest book is about the importance of lifting women out of poverty) asked for suggestions on where and who to visit in Central America for development stories. I typed out a few thoughts in the comments section of his blog:
"When I was visiting the United Church of Canada’s Mission and Service Fund projects in Nicaragua’s northern Atlantic region, I was impressed by the work of the Moravian Church in Puerto Cabezas. The church operates schools (including a university campus with a seminary) and a water-bottling operation that provides clean drinking water for the entire town. There is a Moravian women’s community centre which was built with funds provided by the Presbyterian Church of the USA, with a coordinator paid by the United Church of Canada. Miskito women at the centre make quilts and pillow cases for sale to feed their families in Puerto Cabezas and the interior. When I was there in 2007 they were asking for funds for classes to teach the women how to use sewing machines. Two other aspects of the story of this area: it is near the Honduran border, so many of the men were Contra fighters during the 1980s, although there seems to be a spirit of cooperation between former Contras and the Sandinista government that was newly elected when I visited; and two hurricanes have hit the region hard in the last two years."

He's receiving a lot of excellent advice from people with experience on the ground in Central America - looking forward to his columns from the region.

Baaack!

Well, I am seriously out of the blogging loop - so far out that I had forgotten that there was a loop. Graduating, being ordained, moving, moving again, getting broken in at the new churches, finding it easier to post links and thoughts to Facebook than to the blog...all added up to no blogging for quite some time. But I promise to be a more conscientious blogger from now on.

Just back from the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Montreal, where I presented a paper on French-language evangelism in the United Church of Canada, 1925-1975. Great conference - heard Tariq Ramadan (one of the world's leading Muslim intellectuals) twice, the Black Liberation theologian James Cone, a panel on multifaith understandings of death and dying in hospice care, a panel on the "death of God" theme, a presentation on Iroquois spirituality and culture with Ellen Gabriel (familiar to many Canadians from the Oka crisis 19 years ago), and saw the Bill Maher anti-religion documentary Religulous. Best line heard during the conference goes to James Cone: "Anyone who does not address the liberation of the poor and weak does not have the gospel. Maybe another gospel, but not the Christian gospel." He went on to say, "It's hard to preach the gospel and not be offensive. They just don't go together." Inspiring, enlightening, thought-provoking.

Theatre of the Oppressed

I've been very impressed with the two leaders of Jana Sanskriti, a theatre movement in West Bengal, who have been visiting North America for the first time. Their group, which performs in villages throughout the state, is part of the Theatre of the Oppressed movement which originated with Augusto Boal in Brazil 35 years ago. Their observations on people's theatre, oppression, religion and politics, and activism in a state with an officially leftist government have given me much to think about.

Back in the Glare!

Well, not me personally this time...The review panel for the intergroup dialogue program has reported, and the University accepted its recommendation to terminate the program (while recognizing that there were never any complaints about the work of the facilitators). The misrepresentation of the program made the atmosphere too poisonous to continue the pilot in its present form, although there will certainly be a continued focus on diversity in residences.

Queen's University statement
Review panel report
The Queen's Journal
Op-ed in The Queen's Journal
The National Post
The Globe & Mail

I haven't been blogging lately - it seems easier to post to Facebook!

Richard J. Neuhaus

The Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus died yesterday. I didn't agree with him on everything - reading the journal First Things, often it seemed that I didn't agree with him on much - but I was always interested in what he wrote. Here is his obituary from the New York Times.

January 9, 2009
Rev. R. J. Neuhaus, Political Theologian, Dies at 72

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a theologian who transformed himself from a liberal Lutheran leader of the civil rights and antiwar struggles in the 1960s to a Roman Catholic beacon of the neoconservative movement of today, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 72 and lived in Manhattan.

He learned that he had cancer in November and recently developed a systemic infection that doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center say led to his death, said Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life. Father Neuhaus founded the journal and served as editor in chief.

Father Neuhaus’s best-known book, “The Naked Public Square,” argued that American democracy must not be stripped of religious morality. Published in 1984, it provoked a debate about the role of religion in affairs of state and was embraced by the growing Christian conservative movement.

In the last 20 years, Father Neuhaus helped give evangelical Protestants and Catholics a theological framework for joining forces in the nation’s culture wars.

With Charles Colson, the former Watergate felon who became a born-again leader of American evangelicals, Father Neuhaus convened a group that in 1994 produced “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” It was a widely distributed manifesto that initially came under fire by critics, who accused the two men of diluting theological differences for political expediency. But the document was ultimately credited with helping to cement the alliance, which has reshaped American politics.

“Richard’s Protestant background gave him a unique brokerage position,” George Weigel, a Catholic commentator and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Mr. Weigel likened Father Neuhaus to the Rev. John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit theologian who was often called on to navigate the relationship between religion and American government in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

Mr. Weigel said of Father Neuhaus, “He was a philosopher and theologian of American democracy, and that is the bright line that links all” the stages of his life.

Father Neuhaus underwent several conversions in his life. He was born in Pembroke, Ontario, and emigrated to the United States, which he came to love fervently. He was a Lutheran minister, like his father, but at the age of 54 was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Politically, he evolved from a liberal Democrat and admirer of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy to a conservative and occasional adviser to President Bush.

No matter which side he was on, Father Neuhaus was always a leader. The Rev. Max L. Stackhouse, a professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, said he first glimpsed Pastor Neuhaus marching in Selma, Ala., in a row of clergy members flanking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“He thought that somebody ought to be out front carrying the ball, and he designated himself, and he was pretty good at it,” Dr. Stackhouse said. “He was not poverty-stricken when it came to confidence, and he did a lot of his homework and made judgments and felt very secure in them. He did enjoy controversy.”

In the 1960s, he was pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church, a predominantly black and Hispanic Lutheran congregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He was arrested at a sit-in at the New York City Board of Education headquarters, demanding integration of the public schools.

With the war in Vietnam raging, he and other prominent members of the clergy, like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, founded Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, an advocacy group. This contact with Jewish and Catholic leaders seeded his passion for interfaith dialogue.

In 1968, Pastor Neuhaus was a delegate for Senator McCarthy to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. When the Chicago police clashed with demonstrators, he was among those arrested and tried for disorderly conduct.

Two years later, he made an unsuccessful bid to become the Democratic candidate for the Congressional seat representing the 14th District, in Brooklyn.

By the mid-1970s his ideas about the relationship between religion and politics were evolving. He helped write a theological statement criticizing churches for speaking out on secular social issues without sufficient attention to faith and spirituality.

He joined conservative clergy members in a campaign against the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, accusing the organizations of a taking a leftist approach to international affairs and cozying up to Marxist governments. He wrote the founding manifesto for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a group that challenges mainline Protestant denominations it considers too liberal.

In 1990, after years of uneasiness in the Lutheran church, Father Neuhaus was accepted into the Catholic Church by Cardinal John O’Connor of New York in the chapel of the cardinal’s residence on Madison Avenue. A year later the cardinal ordained him a priest. Father Neuhaus insisted that his conversion was not so much political as theological. He said the goal of Martin Luther’s Reformation had always been a united Christian church.

“I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time,” he said in an interview then.

His survivors include his sisters, Mildred Schwich of East Wenatchee, Wash., and Johanna Speckhard of Valparaiso, Ind.; and his brothers, Clemens, of Redlands, Calif.; George, of Seeshaupt, Germany; Joseph, of Stone Mountain, Ga.; and Thomas, of St. Hippolyte, Quebec.

Father Neuhaus wrote and edited nearly 30 books, among them “The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World,” “Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus From the Cross,” and “As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning,” about his near-death experience during an early bout with colon cancer.

He advised President Bush and the White House on issues like stem cell research and gay marriage. On Thursday, President and Mrs. Bush issued a statement praising “his wise counsel and guidance.” When Time magazine published a list of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America in 2005, Father Neuhaus, despite his Roman Catholic affiliation, was on it.

In First Things, the journal he founded, he maintained a column of caustic commentary on political, social and religious developments until he fell ill last year.

Father Neuhaus’s last book was “American Babylon,” to be published in March by Basic Books. In it, he depicts America as a nation defined by consumerism and decadence and argues that Christians must learn to live there as if they are in exile from the promised land.

John Wesley's Covenant Prayer for the New Year

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, would hold Watch Night services on New Year's Eve and have his Methodist communities renew their covenant with God in preparation for the New Year. Here is the prayer he used - appropriate for us as we face a new year with challenges for peace and prosperity.

I am no longer my own, but yours, O God.
Tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it.
Tell me who you want me to work with, and I will join them gladly.
If you want me to work, I will work.
If you want me to wait, I will wait.
Let me be raised up or put down for you, let me have many things or nothing.
I offer all that I have and all that I am to you, glorious and blessed God.
Help me to live each day to your glory.
And this covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

Assorted Snowy Day Items

It's too snowy today to travel home for Christmas, so I'm reading a short piece in Time on the success of the Alpha program at Trinity Brompton in London. There is also a photo essay on the drug war in Culiacán. Mexico, and a piece on the Red Cross workers who tend the wounded, which I read as accompaniment to an article in Texas Monthly on the drug violence in Juárez.

The Rebel Jesus

One of my favourite Christmas songs has no holly or silver bells or snow - it's The Rebel Jesus, written by Jackson Browne and included on The Chieftains album The Bells of Dublin.

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
They'll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by the Prince of Peace
And they call him by the Saviour
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavour
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robbers' den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgement
For Ive no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

Coalition Madness

A few more editorials, a lot more blogging, some threats...then the federal government's economic update and the opposition parties' coalition pushed every other issue out of blogs, talk radio, and newspaper front pages. Today Parliament was prorogued, so we have until January 26 for the sense of crisis to dissipate and/or the coalition to fall apart.

Ending the Glare?

Announced today:

At the beginning of this academic year, Queen’s University began a pilot Intergroup Dialogue program as part of its ongoing efforts to foster constructive dialogue between students on difficult issues such as race, religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity.

Over the past week, the pilot program has received extensive media coverage and has generated a great deal of feedback from students, alumni, media and the general public.

We regret that the program has been inaccurately characterized as intrusive and in conflict with the right of freedom of expression. It was not intended to be so, nor in the three months of its operation has any student complained that the program has interfered with individual rights or freedom of speech.

However, in the constructive and self-critical spirit of the program, and in light of the importance of the concerns that have been raised, the University has decided to conduct an early assessment of the program.

A review panel, consisting of the Rector, a senior academic and a member of Queen’s alumni, will be established immediately and will report to me in early January 2009 on the program as it relates to our existing and planned measures to enhance diversity and inclusiveness on campus.

Patrick Deane

Vice-Principal (Academic)

Glare a Bit Less, But Still Bright

The university sent out responses to the (erroneous) news coverage but I haven't seen any printed. There are also more blogs commenting than I can find or list.

Jonathan Kay in National Post
Followup article in the Queen's Journal
University of Western Ontario Gazette
Facebook group with lively discussion

Media Glare Continued...

More action in the lions' den. So far today:

National Post editorial
Globe & Mail editorial
CTV.ca
The Whig Standard
Ottawa Citizen
American Renaissance News
Facebook group

Media Glare

I was interviewed by The National Post and The Globe & Mail yesterday about the Intergroup Dialogue program in Queen's University residences. The articles came out today and misrepresented the program, singling out something the reporters got from an ill-informed editorial in the student-run Queen's Journal. There is a colour picture of me on the Post website and black and white in the print edition, so I'm the new face of the program, and am attracting much vitriolic comment on the newspaper sites and other blogs.

You decide:
The original Journal editorial and cartoon
National Post
The Globe & Mail
Small Dead Animals blog comments
Canadian Press story attempting to clear this up

A Night to Remember

From The New York Times - after the announcement of Barack Obama's victory, First Corinthian Baptist Church, Harlem, New York City

Suit Against God Tossed Out

Associated Press
Updated 3:59 p.m. ET, Wed., Oct. 15, 2008
LINCOLN, Neb. - A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator's lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn't properly served, because of his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Polk wrote.
Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.

"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers said Wednesday. "A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience."

Therefore, Chambers said, "Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal. He said he hasn't decided yet.

Don't Say "That's So Gay"

Campaign against my pet peeve - the constant use of "that's so gay/retarded/lame." See http://www.thinkb4youspeak.com.

Curse of the Black Gold

A short documentary about how oil exploration and production has not benefited the people of Nigeria's Niger Delta, but has profited oil companies and corrupt governments.
http://www.slate.com/id/2197041/

Ordinary Radicals

Moved into the residence at Queen's University in Kingston two weeks ago to begin my new position promoting diversity and addressing identity issues.

There is a new documentary premiering today at US locations on Ordinary Radicals - see http://www.theordinaryradicals.com for the trailer and updates - inspired by Shane Claiborne's book (which I read and loved) and the work of Jim Wallis and Sojourners and others. Very important for people who feel that, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "...the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the (current) century." Amen.

Truth and Freedom

An important article in The New Republic - Richard Just looks at the many recent books on Darfur and asks why, if the truth about genocide in the region is so well known, international action has been so ineffective:
"No genocide has ever been so thoroughly documented while it was taking place. There were certainly no independent film-makers in Auschwitz in 1942, and the best-known Holocaust memoirs did not achieve a wide audience until years after the war. The world more or less looked the other way as genocide unfolded in Cambodia during the 1970s, and the slaughter in Rwanda happened so quickly--a mere hundred days--that by the time the public grasped the extent of the horror, the killing was done. But here is Darfur, whose torments are known to all. The sheer volume of historical, anthropological, and narrative detail available to the public about the genocide is staggering. In the case of the genocide in Darfur, ignorance has never been possible. But the genocide continues. We document what we do not stop. The truth does not set anybody free."
http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=36975a7c-224c-438a-9538-130b9e5cdd91

Mandatory Olympics Post

What blog has not mentioned the Beijing Olympics during the past week?

Interesting piece in Slate on Christian evangelism (or the lack thereof) at the Olympic Games and the state of Christianity (particularly the official and underground Protestant churches) in China: http://www.slate.com/id/2196888/. I hadn't come across the idea that the Olympics logo looks like Jesus nailed to a red door.

Religious Conversions

The Economist has an enlightening overview of conversion from one religion to another in liberal and traditional societies (the author's terms).
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11784873