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God is Bigger!

guest post by Deborah Church Worley from her sermon on October 13, 2019 at White Rock Presbyterian Church

“Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’” (Acts 10:34-35)

When I was at Cornell last weekend with my soon-to-be-graduating daughter Sarah, I was filled with both memories of my time there as a student, some 30 years ago, give or take, as well as perspectives as the mom of a prospective student, seeing some things in a fresh way, as Sarah was seeing them for the first time. I did feel a somewhat surprising feeling of pride toward Cornell…a feeling of wanting to share all that was good about it with Sarah…a growing hope that she might be able to experience Cornell as a student herself….

One of the memories that came most quickly to mind, I’m a little embarrassed to say, was actually one that I had shared with my kids previously, because each time I think about it, it makes me laugh. Or at least chuckle. And that is of a T-shirt that some entrepreneurial students created and sold door-to-door in my freshman dorm. It had the Harvard seal on the front… and on the back it said, “Harvard…because not everyone can get into Cornell.” 🙂 🙂 🙂

Now that’s not biggest nor the most famous rivalry in the world, but it does exist. 🙂

Some of these [rivalries] are likely more familiar to more people:

Coke/Pepsi
McDonald’s/Burger King
Fox/CNN
DC/Marvel
Taylor Swift/Kanye West
Apple/Microsoft
Celtics/Lakers
Tom Brady/Peyton Manning
Red Sox/Yankees

And of course, for us here in New Mexico, there’s this one….

Red or green chile??

Some of these rivalries are all in good fun. Some, people take more seriously. Sometimes, just to say, for example, that you’re a fan of a particular team can get you in hot water and earn you some seriously nasty looks and comments, at a minimum. I have a good friend who grew up in Maine and is a lifelong, committed fan of the New England Patriots. When they are in the Super Bowl (which seems to happen pretty regularly these days!), she doesn’t like to tell anyone she’ll be rooting for them…as that is not a particularly welcome comment around here.

And that’s just football! What about things that are inherently more serious? Like politics? There are some serious, and significant, divisions in our country around politics, and it seems like it’s only getting worse…

There are places where a person might very well be afraid to admit that she, or he, voted for Hilary in the last Presidential election; just like there are also places where a person might not feel safe admitting to having voted for Trump. It’s more than a personal preference; it seems to be taken as a reflection of your intelligence or character or goodness or patriotism.

It seems there’s a growing attitude of “If you’re different from me in some way that’s significant to me, I don’t need–or even want–to really get to know you, or know why you think what you think; I know all I need to know about you simply because you’re a [fill-in-the-blank].”

Patriots fan. Broncos fan.

Republican. Democrat.

Labbie. High school dropout.

“I know all I need to know about you because you have tattoos, and body piercings.

Because you curse like a sailor, smoke like a chimney, and drink like a fish.

Because you went to an Ivy League school.

Because you went to Cornell… 🙂

Because you went to Harvard…. :/

Because you served your country in the Armed Services.

Because you didn’t serve your country in the Armed Services….

I know all I need to know about you because you live in the [Espanola] Valley.

Because you live in Los Alamos.

Because you live in a million-dollar home.

Because you live in a mobile home.

I know all I need to know about you, thank you very much,

because of the color of your skin…the shape of your nose…

the accent in your voice…the sound of your last name…

the person you love…the church you attend–or don’t…

the height of your car’s suspension…the height of your heels….

I know all I need to know about you, because I know that one thing about you.

Sometimes it feels like this kind of thinking is becoming more prevalent rather than less…

But maybe not. Maybe it’s just always been around. It certainly existed in first-century Israel. It’s present in the background of today’s passage. Jews and Gentiles really didn’t associate with each other much. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have that big a deal for Peter to visit Cornelius. The story might not have even been worth recording. But it did get recorded, because it was a big deal.

According to one website I looked at, in first-century Israel, “[According to William Barclay,] it was common for a Jewish man to begin the day with a prayer thanking God that he was not a slave, a Gentile, or a woman.” It went on to say that “a basic part of the Jewish religion in the days of the New Testament was an oath that promised that one would never help a Gentile under any circumstances, such as giving directions if they were asked. But it went even as far as [promising to refuse] to help a Gentile woman at the time of her greatest need – when she was giving birth – because the result would only be to bring another Gentile into the world.” Another extreme example of the importance of remaining separate that I stumbled upon in my research is that “if a Jew married a Gentile, the Jewish community would have a funeral for the Jew and consider them dead.” Less extreme but perhaps more important as it was a more common possibility, was the thought that “to even enter the house of a Gentile made a Jew unclean before God.” Jews and Gentiles just did not associate. They knew everything they needed to know about one another simply by knowing to which group they belonged.

That would have been Peter’s training, and point of reference. As a devout Jew, he would have prayed those prayers, made those promises, taken those oaths. He would not have eaten with Gentiles, or invited them into his house, or entered the house of a Gentile himself. Those were simply things he had learned since his birth to not do, things that were ingrained in him by his religious teachings, traditions among his people that were acceptable and accepted, going back thousands of years. To live by those practices didn’t make him a bad person; on the contrary, they made him a good Jew. He was doing what he needed to do, what was expected, what was right.

Until now.

Until God broke in.

Until the Holy Spirit of God told Peter, showed Peter, taught Peter, otherwise.

“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Or more simply put, as it says in “The Message”: “If God says it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Peter’s religion had kind of put God, and the blessings of God, in a box. A box meant only for the people of that religion. And only for the people of that religion that did it right!

Religion seems to have a tendency to do that. Or perhaps, it’s not religion per se, but the people of those religions, who want to make sure they get it right, so that God will love them and bless them….and part of what helps them make sure they’re getting it right, it seems, it be clear about who’s getting it wrong…

Certainly the Christian church, and a good number of us Christians (or more accurately, a horrifying number of us Christians…), seem to think and behave in that way…..

Our practices and traditions, some of which have been passed down for hundreds and even thousands of year, can be harmfully divisive, can seem to seek to exclude rather than include, can serve to move us toward that attitude of “I know all I need to know about you, because I know that one thing about you…,” and it seems we, as Christians, sometimes take that even further, going on to think that “because I know that one thing about you, I also know God doesn’t love you. Or at least not as much as God loves me. Not until you change that one thing so that you’re more like me…” No wonder there are people who would “rather chew glass than come to church.”!! (That was a quote in the article in the Daily Post from someone from the Freedom Church in Los Alamos! Did anyone else see that?? 🙂 )

I am bigger than that! I am bigger than your practices and customs! I am bigger than the way you have always done things! I am bigger, and my blessings are meant for so many more than just your people! I am bigger than your customs have allowed me to be, and I am breaking out! Watch, and watch out! Even better–come with me! Go where I lead you, do what I tell you, say the words I give you, and you and so many more will be blessed!

And Peter listened, and he went, and he did, and he said…all that the Holy Spirit of God told him to do. And the world was changed!

It’s true that there are rivalries and divisions and misunderstandings and prejudices in our world. Just like there were in first-century Israel. And before. Just like, I suspect, there always will be, this side of heaven. And while some are good-natured and harmless, some are very hurtful and hateful.

But our God, the God of Peter and the God of Cornelius, the God who took on flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and who empowered the apostles in the form of the Holy Spirit, the God whom we gather each Sunday to worship and depart each Sunday to serve, our God is bigger than all of that!!

Our God is bigger…and stronger…and greater…and truly beyond our comprehension and capacity to know…but that God knows us, and loves us, and loves the world! And wants to bless the world. Our God wants to bless the world–the whole world, and all the people of the world, not just those whom we choose or approve of or deem to be worthy or like, but all persons… And God can use us to do that, to bless people and change the world…if we, like Peter, will listen and go and do and say, led by the Holy Spirit of God.

May God break our hearts…so that God might first break in, and then break out!

Amen.

Sharing Our Stories

guest post by Andy Zawadski, First Congregational UCC, Albuquerque

It was a Sunday in April 1998. I was not looking for a church. I was quite content belonging to the second-largest Christian denomination in the world, former Roman Catholic (non-practicing) for almost 30 years. My wife Lisa and mother-in-law Marcia had started bringing our children Eva, then 7 and David, then 5 to First Congregational a few weeks before. Marcia had been an active member of this church in the early 1950s. In fact, my wife Lisa was baptized here in 1953.

I was sitting at the dining room table having breakfast and reading the newspaper as Lisa and kids stopped to say goodbye before heading off to church. Then, one of the kids, and I can’t remember who it was asked, “Hey, why doesn’t Dad have to go to church?” What’s that saying? Out of the mouth of babes…

And I thought, “O.K., I’m not going to be a hypocrite and make my kids do something I wouldn’t do myself.” So I came to church.

I was somewhat familiar with First Congregational as my kids had attended Preschool here. But I had only set foot as far as the classrooms and the parlor for parent-teacher meetings. Every time I entered the building I felt like I was stepping back into the 1950s. “Interesting,” I thought. “This place could use some sprucing up.”

As I entered the sanctuary for the first time, I immediately looked for hassocks or “kneelers”. There were none. Good sign. I had enough of that growing up in the Catholic church for 18 years. First Congregational had two services on Sundays in those days. One at 8:30 for the youth and one at 11:00. Reverend Frances Rath was in the pulpit that day. During the sermon, he proceeded to do a few magic tricks for the kids. “Interesting,” I thought. “Never saw that in the Catholic church.”

I don’t remember much else about the service but do remember being greeted warmly by Daisy Jewell and Meth Norris — and several others I can’t recall. “Interesting”, I thought. “Who are these people? Why are they being so nice to me?” (In hindsight, my first encounter with an extravagant welcome.)

Over the next few weeks, I learned that First Congregational had merged with other protestant denominations in 1957 to become the United Church of Christ. Never heard of it. So I did some more research on Congregationalist and the UCC.

I learned that 13 of the 56 signers of the constitution were Congregationalists. That within the UCC’s DNA were the first mainline church to take a stand against slavery (1700), the first to ordain an African American person (1785), the first to ordain a woman (1853), the first in foreign missions (1810), and the first to ordain openly [LGBTQ] persons (1985). I learned that this denomination values education for all people and it’s an important part of their tradition. Congregationalists founded Harvard and Yale, as well as several historically black colleges. “Interesting,” I thought. “This isn’t some fly by night denomination. These accomplishments are impressive and certainly things to be proud of.”

That first Sunday I attended church in 1998 was one of the last in Reverend Frances Rath’s 27 years with First Congregational Church. So, I asked who his replacement would be? I thought maybe the equivalent of a bishop further up in the UCC church hierarchy would send down a new pastor to the church. “Oh no,” someone told me, “the local congregation hires its own pastor — and fires them too if need be.” “Interesting,” I thought. “Never saw that in the Catholic Church.”

I learned that the congregation would hire an interim minister to help with the transition to a new minister. The interim minister would stay about 18 months and couldn’t be hired as the permanent pastor no matter how much the congregation liked the person. It was to be a time of reflection and discernment. How did the congregation see itself right now? What were its strengths and weaknesses? What did it want to be in the future?

I could see how much the congregation loved their pastor of 27 years and literally grieved his retirement. Some people decided to leave. Others dug in for the journey ahead. Observing this from the sidelines, I wasn’t quite sure the congregation would survive the transition. “An interesting exercise of one’s faith,” I thought. “I think I’ll stick around to see how the whole thing plays out.”

That was over 21 years ago. The whole thing is still playing out.

So, that’s the story of how I got here. And why do I stay?

Well, I’m hopelessly addicted to mid-20th-century church buildings in need of constant repair and maintenance.
I’m fascinated by the rich history of the Congregational Church, the United Church of Christ and the 139-year history of this local church – and proud to be associated with it.
Although my personal theology may be different from others, I know it will be accepted here. In fact, it is celebrated.
I stay because our church welcomes and accepts everyone into the life of the church.
And I stay because of the sense of community and purpose I experience being here with all of you. It’s the place I come to give my spirit a workout.

I guess you can sum it my shared story about First Congregational United Church of Christ this way: “He came for the magic tricks. He stayed for the still speaking God.

Thanks for listening…

“No One Cares About Crazy People” Spotlights Our Fractured Mental Health System and One Family’s Battle with Schizophrenia

guest post by Kathryn Andrews, a member of the Southwest Conference’s Widening the Welcome Committee and Desert Palm United Church of Christ

“What if you raised a child who grew up sunny, loved, and loving, perhaps unaccountably talented, a source of family joy, only to watch that child slowly transform in adolescence into a mysterious stranger, shorn of affect, dull of gaze, unresponsive to communication – and perhaps worse?” This is one of wrenching questions author Ron Powers asks in “Nobody Cares About Crazy People,” the story of his schizophrenic sons.

The book is more than a chronicle of one family’s struggle with a serious mental illness. It also serves as an indictment of our national approach to dealing (or not dealing) with mental illness. As Powers recounts, mental hospitals began to appear in the early 19th century, including Philadelphia Hospital, which charged admission to view the insane residents in its basement. In 1841, Quaker Dorthea Dix discovered that violent criminals were sharing jail cells with persons with mental illness in Massachusetts. She devoted the rest of her life to lobbying for dedicated care outside of the penal system, and by 1890 thirty-two new asylums were in place. Yet even with these reforms, individual care and treatment at the overflowing asylums was hard to come by.

President Kennedy took steps to address this overburdened system by signing the Community Mental Health Act (“CMHA”). The legislation, crafted in consultation with psychiatrists and health executives, was aimed at releasing 560,000 patients from state-run asylums to 1,500 new community health centers around the country. The hope was that new “wonder drugs” like Thorazine would enable this population to navigate the outside world and become productive. The CMHA liberated 430,000 patients by 1980, but a combination of factors thwarted the transition to community care.

Over the ensuing decades, budget pressures diverted funds that could have supported the CMHA centers. Meanwhile, Congress passed the Medicaid act, which prohibited federal reimbursement to states for psychiatric patients in state hospitals. The act’s objectives were to encourage patient release from such institutions and to prod the states to assume responsibility for care and treatment costs. The states, however, showed little interest in taking the reins. Without the community follow-up care envisioned by the CMHA, many became chronically ill, homeless, or incarcerated. The upshot was that many of these persons did not become “de-institutionalized” but rather traded one institution for another as the U.S. penal system replaced the mental hospital.

Although American mental health care remains haphazard and chaotic, Powers takes heart from the progress made in researching the causes and treatments of mental illnesses. New research has identified 128 gene variants likely to be involved in the abnormal brain development seen in schizophrenics. The research also reflects that environmental factors likely influence the onset and degree of the disease. Meanwhile, advances are occurring in magnetic resonance imaging, and psychotropic medicines can regulate serotonin and dopamine, which affect behavior.

As the Powers family learned too late, some antipsychotic medicines can be taken by the “depot” method of periodic injection. This method eliminates the need for self-administered oral dosages and ensures consistent medication. This consistency becomes critical when a patient develops “anosognosia,” the false conviction that nothing is wrong with the patient’s mind. Anosognosia caused one Powers son to abandon his medications and end his life just shy of his 21st birthday. The other son survived and lives near his parents.

For the author, the future of mental health care for his surviving son and others with mental illness, “will depend upon whether Americans can recognize that their psychically troubled brothers and sisters are not a threat to communities but potential partners with communities for not only their own but their community’s regeneration. . .. The mentally ill people in our lives, as they strive to build healthy, well-supported, and rewarding lives for themselves, can show us all how to reconnect with the most primal of human urges, the urge to be of use, disentangling from social striving, consumer obsession, cynicism, boredom, and isolation, and honoring it among the true sources of human happiness.”

Letting Go

guest post by Rev. Dr. Don Longbottom, South Central Conference Minister

The clock reads a little past 5am and I am sitting on the aisle seat of a Southwest flight to one more meeting. As I await take off, I am aware that one of my 4 children, Joshua, is in a 25’ sailboat that he has completely rebuilt over the past year. Josh is, at this moment, crossing the Yucatan Channel that runs between western Cuba and Cancun, Mexico.

The memory of Josh in Superman “underoos” and a cape his mother sewed for him remains crystal clear. Shortly thereafter, carried away by his imagination, he jumped off the top of a first story balcony. Already a tough kid at five, he was fine, but 35 years later, not much has changed.

Maybe 2 years ago, Josh took a leave of absence from the UCC Kansas Oklahoma Conference, and decided, post-divorce, to take a little sail boat and navigate from Kansas down the Mississippi and out into the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually, hugging the coastline because the little sailboat belonged only on a lake, he made his way to Pensacola, Florida. “Dad” was not sanguine concerning this “boondoggle.” Having lost one son to SIDS in 1980, I do not live with the luxury of denial. Awful things can and do happen to good people, people that I love.

Call it “kismet,” “God’s providential care,” or even luck, Josh met some characters in Pensacola who make their way in life refurbishing people’s high dollar sailing boats. Several of these were also “blue water” sailors, free spirits to be sure, who travel the world on the wind, “the breath of God.” Over the last 18 months they helped Josh to learn the mysterious ways of blue water sailing and sailboats. It was during this period that he acquired an almost derelict Bayliner 25 he named “Tish.” As good friends do, and with beer in hand, they gave guidance as he poured himself into the Herculean mission of re-furbishing this vessel.

Continuing his journey, the first big test is crossing from Key West 90 miles to Cuba. This is a far more challenging task than one may realize. Between Florida and Cuba flows a river of water named the Gulf Stream, which is powerful and unforgiving. If you’re not competent you can become caught in the current and find yourself swept away from Cuba and out into the Caribbean where not everyone or everywhere is safe. Weather as well can spoil your crossing as wind and wave can conflict, and when this occurs, 25 feet is not a lot of boat. There is an inherent risk in sailing, especially small boat solo sailing.

My self-serving gift to Josh was a marine equipped Garmin, plus a subscription service that utilizes satellites. I am able to track my child…anywhere in the world. It also provides a limited texting platform as well.

Well as “luck” would have it, checking the tracker mid-voyage to Cuba…the track disappeared from the screen. Dad’s “worst case scenario” mindset immediately kicked in. I imagined a 600-foot tanker plowing through my son and his boat. I have a great imagination. My emergency text to Josh was soon answered, “Calm down Dad, I am fine.” It was a tech glitch and Garmin provided a fix.

The moral of this extended narrative is that your five-year-old in “Underoos” is still that same child in your heart no matter their age. I have tried to teach my children to take a big bite out of life, question authority, chart your own course, fear no man and live your life to the fullest. But, I must admit that it is hard to let go! I am blessed by strong-willed, fiercely independent children who are good human beings and I would not change a thing. But it is hard to let go! The love of a parent (biological or otherwise) for their children is as strong a current as there is anywhere anytime.

Here, at last, is my point. I do not care what party or President. I do not care be it an Obama, a Bush, a Clinton, or a Trump. Any government that would take a child from its mother or father’s arms, (save for abuse) is morally reprehensible. Jesus said, “Let the children come unto me.” He also noted that anyone harming one of these would be better off to have a millstone tied around their neck and thrown into the sea.

Jesus Christ taught us to turn the cheek when struck and I for one believe that he meant what he preached. I believe as well that Jesus practiced non-violence, not as a tactic but as a way of life. Anyone attempting to take my child from me would be the greatest test of faith that I could imagine. Jesus taught us to be non-violent but he did not teach us to be silent. It is time to stand up and to speak out!

As I write these final words, Josh is within easy distance of Las Mujeres. He has done well and is safe. One of his friends from back in Pensacola, Leroy, a true veteran of the sea, watches over Josh’s progress and keeps me aware that all is well.

Thanks be to God for good friends and fair winds.

Lessons in the Unexpected

guest post by Sandra Chapin, St. Paul’s UCC publications manager

Another school year has come to an end. The occasion has caused me to reflect upon my school days… No “when I was your age” stories about trekking to school in the snow: a) I grew up in Central Texas where an inch of snow closed the district; b) Mom was my gracious chauffeur.

Being the studious type, my fond memories of school center on many of my teachers whom I held in high esteem.

Mrs. Jo Ann Northern taught creative English in high school. Her enthusiasm for story telling and her rapport with her students made the class one I always enjoyed. When Christmas approached I wanted to give her a gift. I put together the fact that John Milton’s Paradise Lost was one of her favorites and that my mom bought Avon which had at the time the fragrance “Bird of Paradise.” With the small bottle of cologne I included a gift card that I wanted to make extra special. And how would a studious girl do that? I went to the school library and poured over a copy of Paradise Lost looking for a quote to write in the card. This is what I found, and what continues to stick in my mind 45 years later:

How little knows any but God alone to value right the good before him,
but puts most things to worst abuse or to their meanest use.

Did I happen to mention that I was a weird studious girl? By the way, not studious enough to actually read Paradise Lost, an epic poem written over 300 years ago based on the biblical account of humans’ rocky start.

That quote still provokes my curiosity. One of the ways it speaks to me is how a thing seems to be all about “x” and then “y” results. The unexpected.

I expected to like my high school biology teacher Mrs. Raye Juan Markunas. This was because my sister had her three years earlier and she told me about her funny stories. That expectation was fulfilled. Mrs. Markunas was a delightful teacher and her love for her subject matter – and students – touched us all. DNA aligned and genetics came alive. Fortunately the dissected frog remained dead. (Creepy.) She was one of many science teachers who fostered in me a passion for science. Science geek am I.

No wonder that I tuned into PBS last week and got caught up in an episode of “NOVA Wonders” focusing on genetic engineering. Here’s a lesson in the unexpected: We know that the HIV virus hijacks healthy cells by inserting its own destructive DNA. Now the HIV virus has been hijacked by scientists. Modified HIV can insert engineered genetic code into cells that may cure some diseases. ALD is a deadly genetic brain disorder but in a trial using this method some participants have returned to their normal activities. HIV can be a delivery system that saves lives rather than takes lives.

There is learning after high school. Learning that bubbles up when you least expect it. Sometimes I stay long enough working at church (doing my bulletin/newsletter thing) on Tuesdays to speak with Chuck Canada. He sets up our space for the Buddhist meditation classes that are held each week. If you looked up “bubbly personality” in the dictionary you would see a picture of Chuck. What a character! We talk about TV shows we like and the latest political upheavals. He says he’s not a very good Buddhist but as an ambassador for the enjoyment of life, he’s tops in my book. I’m going to relay to you what he said to me last week which prompted me to say to him, “You’re more fun than Wikipedia.”

How we got on the subject of Frank Lloyd Wright, I don’t remember. Chuck has visited many of Wright’s innovative buildings and has seen first hand that having leaky roofs is a reoccurring feature that did not cause Wright, or owners of those properties, to alter his designs in any obtrusive way. The visual often superseded the practical.

“Fallingwater” is a Wright house in a rural area southeast of Pittsburgh. Created for a department store magnate who wanted a view of a waterfall, Wright wanted his client to become one with the waterfall instead. It was built directly on top of the waterfall and its appearance echos cascading water. The family used this spectacular residence as a weekend retreat for over 30 years. Here’s a lesson in the unexpected: Living as one with a waterfall resulted in hearing loss for the family.

Sure, it makes sense, but it startles my imagination. And so it goes with learning. We can learn from those who prepared academically to be teachers. We can learn from friends long after our days spent sitting in a classroom. Films and books have so much to teach us. But, be warned — when we connect with a teacher our minds may open and take us on unexpected journeys. Lifelong learning. Learning is life.

A teacher’s perspective on the lunacy of arming teachers

guest post by Samantha Fox

I am a third-grade teacher at a moderately poor school. I deal with troubled children on a regular basis but as Rebecca Berlin Field of Douglas S. Freeman High School in Virginia wrote, “Nowhere in my contract does it state that if the need arises, I have to shield students from gunfire with my own body. If it did, I wouldn’t have signed it. I love my job. I love my students. I am also a mother with two amazing daughters. I am a wife of a wonderful man. I have a dog that I adore. I don’t want to die defending other people’s children; I want to teach kindness and responsibility … and art history.”

I also am a mother of two wonderful children and a wife to an amazing husband and have a dog I adore. I want to teach love and understanding, to discourage bullying, and create opportunities for children that their parents may not have had. I challenge anyone to call me a coward when I teach 25 active and sometimes angry 3rd graders 5 days a week, but I am not trained to fire a weapon nor could I ever fire one even if trained.

It is madness to even to suggest that teachers be armed. New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent. In 2005 a 17.4% hit rate. New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate in 2007 (and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away). Yet our President wants to arm teachers after a simple training course. There is greater likelihood that an innocent student will be shot than an arm gunman. MADNESS at an extreme.

Guns have no place in schools. Cameras, stronger security maybe but the real answer is to eliminate bullying, to teach our children to respect all students. And the place to start this lesson given President Trumps tweets and comments is from the top down.

I want teachers and parents to speak out against this lunacy.

American Idol

Guest post by Jay Deskins, a Disciples of Christ pastor recently relocated to Tucson; a current Bethany Fellow.

It all started when a tyrant king ruled over the colonies of the East coast of North America. The early European Americans were unable to arm themselves in the protection of their land, liberty, and safety. The climax of this control was the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770. A group of unarmed protestors were shouting down the British soldiers, who were sent to police the colonies, and began to throw stones and snowballs at the soldiers when the soldiers pointed their muskets towards the crowd and killed five of the crowd. Between that event and countless other stories of the oppressive government forcing itself on the homes, lives, and liberty of the civilians, it is no wonder that our country’s founders added the second amendment to the constitution.

However, now in the 21st century, we have similar situations. Unarmed people being shot and killed by a policing force, unwelcome seizures of property, and the rise of tyrants. And yet, what remains? The call to arms.

As a Christian minister, I can’t help myself in seeing that the American gospel of the second amendment is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Guns have become the golden calf of American society; an idol worshipped, even above the words and promises of our ancient scriptures.

Idols are those objects that we create that become our focus. An idol is that which gives us hope. The golden calf of ancient Israel was created when Moses went up to Mount Sinai for forty days, and when the people feared the worst for him, they created a new god that they believed had liberated from slavery in Egypt. Out of fear, lack of focus, and lack of vision they created the calf.

An idol goes places where we think God will not. There are shouts for our schools to be armed because God is not allowed in schools. When our understanding of God is that of a divine presence that is far off and away, a conclusion can be drawn that we have to invite God to our world. But the fallacy here is that if our God is in all places at all times, then our God is absolutely present in school. Since when do we have the right to deny the presence of God?

In 2018, it is more clear than ever that we have built a new golden calf, and in it we have hope, we have promise. One that liberated us from the throws of the tyrant king, one that gives us great hope that will liberate us once again. One that gives us ultimate protection in the face of evil. One that, when the God of our faith seems absent, and that has been cast out of our public sphere, is always present. One that promises equality for all. But, this, this is not good news for us.

You see, the good news is this: the God of Christian worship is not one that calls for self-protection, rather calls us to give our lives. The God of Christian worship is not one that calls for the armament of God’s people, rather calls us to turn our weapons into tools for work. The God of Christian worship is not one that says an eye for an eye, but rather turn our cheek.

God calls us to build relationship, and we can’t do that when we place an idol between our neighbors, or between us and God.

It is time. Let us as people of faith reject this idol. This isn’t political. This is faith. Where is your faith?

Let us throw our idol in the fire, melt it down, put it in the river, and drink it. All of them.

Our Lost Sense of Intimacy and Participation In Our Wild Places

guest post by Tom Martinez

When it comes to bucket lists, I can check off being chased by a Grizzly. Of course had I not run, it probably wouldn’t have chased me. It would have been like the other Grizzly encounters I had while rafting through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR), with them watching me or me watching them, more or less calmly, across the species divide. Though few people realize it, the protected status of the Refuge is endangered by the President’s new budget, a provision of which—if unchallenged—will open up the Refuge to drilling. Hence the religious consortium rising up in defense of ANWR, which is likely to become the next “Standing Rock.”

My encounter with the Grizzly happened roughly midway into a three hundred mile river-rafting trip my first wife and I took through the Refuge. During our preparation we thought a lot about bears. But once we were there we realized they had been a lightning rod for a complicated mix of feelings about the Wild. That’s not to say we lost all fear, but as the exaggerated nature of our fears became evident, our fear deepened into reverence.

We chose ANWR because it is one of the last really wild places in North America and because the Porcupine River offers one of the longest stretches of water-born travel (our trip covered 300 miles) without major rapids. The refuge itself spans over 19 million acres of wilderness and enfolds one of the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world. Despite its rich biodiversity and long-protected status, the current tax bill threatens to open the area up to drilling. To do so would be turn back the clock on what has been, since 1960, its legally protected status.

In addition to being home to Grizzlies, Polar Bears, Arctic Foxes and 200 bird species, the Refuge is also home to the Gwich’in people, an Indigenous tribe that had already been living off the land for thousands of years by the time Columbus “discovered” America. To this day their diet consists mostly of Caribou.

During our first few days rafting through the Refuge we were puzzled by the complete absence of wildlife. Then as we sat on a boulder eating lunch, a fox sauntered by practically close enough to touch. As he passed he looked over his shoulder as if I were the curiosity.

We took to traveling down the river by night, which never grew completely dark. The sun lowered in the sky and then rose again, plunging us into a kaleidoscope of beauty and wonder. One night we heard the sound of wolves howling. We howled back and to our surprise they appeared along the riverbank and ran alongside us.

Because so little of the Wild remains we have lost this sense of intimacy and participation, opting instead for metaphors of domination. In the process, awe and wonder have been replaced with greed and extractive exploitation. That’s why the Refuge and its protected status is now threatened. Some in power see no reason not to drill there.

But Standing Rock signaled a new ecological awakening. Images of Native Americans on horseback facing off with police in riot gear gave symbolic expression to the sense that nature is in trouble. We are wondering if scientists are perhaps right and the sudden upsurge in “unprecedented” weather events and super storms are a function of our having upset the balance of nature. If so, we’ve managed to accomplish that in roughly two hundred years. Meanwhile the Gwitch’in stand for a way of life that’s been sustained for many thousands. Perhaps they have something to teach us.

Many religious voices are attempting to call attention to the ethical or moral nature of this historical moment. The growing sense of urgency felt among the human family is being interpreted as a call to deepen our understanding of our true place in relation to God’s creation—a shift from dominion and even the notion of stewardship, to one of kinship. As we begin to shift at the paradigmatic level, the Earth transforms from an object to be exploited, to something more akin to way the Gwitch’in view the Caribou calving ground, “the sacred place where life begins.”

A disruption of the herd’s massive migration would be similar to what we did to the Plains Indians, who moved in such dramatic harmony with the buffalo. Only this time we have a chance to do something different. Preserving this bio-region and honoring its people would mean preserving a way of life that has moved to the deeper rhythms of the Wild for close to ten thousand years. The choice is clear: we can keep it as protected for centuries to come, or we can throw it away for an estimated three years’ worth of oil.

In the wake of my encounter with the Grizzly I’ve often wondered whether we will ever come to see that the Wild we so fear is ultimately a projection of the danger we ourselves pose. But it’s hard to see that from inside our cars and cubicles. We’ve got to get out into the Wild, which is why its preservation is so important.

When that Grizzly got close enough to make out what I was, she went from a full sprint to a complete stop. I was poised and ready to shoot. We beheld each other for a few brief but unforgettable moments, precious time that allowed me, eventually, to see her as she was. Then, she turned and disappeared into one of the last vestiges of the wild, a place I pray we preserve for generations to come.

Read about a diverse alliance of faith institutions and leaders bringing voice and action on behalf of caring for God’s Creation.

Photo by Elizabeth Meyers on Unsplash

Make Peace Inevitable: Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2017

guest post by John Leung, preached on August 6, 2017
at First Congregational Church, Flagstaff

Scripture: Matthew 14:13-21

Prayer:
O God, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you. If our words and our thoughts offend anyone, Dear God, may there be mutual forgiveness between the speaker and the listener, and may you, our refuge and our redeemer, grant us reconciliation.

Seventy-two years ago today, at 8:15 a.m., Tokyo time, the American warplane Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb into the heart of the city of Hiroshima. A little over 72 hours thereafter, on August 9, a plutonium bomb was dropped into Nagasaki, a port on the other side of Japan. In Hiroshima, roughly 70,000 Japanese citizens were killed, literally in a flash, by the blast and by the firestorm on the same day of the bombing. Approximately another 70,000 would die in the following two to four months from burns, other injuries, radiation sickness and collateral illnesses. In Nagasaki, the numbers were roughly 40,000 and 50,000 respectively. Instantaneously AND in time, those two atomic bombs would claim the lives of roughly a quarter of a million people, and generations of Japanese people would bear the physical, mental, psychological and cultural scars of those bombings. At Noon on August 15, 1945, on radio to a nation reeling from the devastation and mourning for the dead and dying multitudes, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito broadcast his message of surrender.

We are probably familiar with the story, and perhaps even with the statistics. Over the last seventy years, there have been numerous debates, in the media, in scholarly and non-scholarly publications, in and outside academia, about these historical events, mostly centered on the question of whether the use of these atomic weapons was justified, and if so, how? As a professor of history, I have participated in many such debates, and moderated quite a few. Arguments run a broad gamut. Here, in summary and composite, are some of the more common ones I have read and heard.

“The only way to end a war is by overwhelming force. The Japanese deserved it; war is war, and THEY started it. The atom bombs are just payback for Pearl Harbor.”

“The question of tactical or even strategic justification in 1945 is shortsighted. These atomic bombings did not just end WWII; they were also the beginning of the threat of nuclear war, and the world has had to live with that ever since. We also have to live with the fact that the United States is the ONLY nation to have actually employed nuclear weapons in war. This has cast a shadow over nuclear politics ever since, and many of today’s international problems have their roots in this reality.”

For most Americans, looking for a silver lining behind the mushroom cloud, so to speak, a “centrist” perspective is the most appealing, and it goes something like this: “Well, the atomic bombs were necessary to induce Japan to surrender and thus end the war swiftly; more people — certainly many more Americans — would have died if the war had dragged on any longer.”

Some years ago, this “centrist” American position seemed to receive corroboration, from a rather unexpected source. In 2007, Kyuma Fumio, Japan’s Defense Minister at the time, scandalized his constituents of Nagasaki by remarks he made in a commencement address: “I now have come to accept in my mind that in order to end the war, it could not be helped that an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that countless numbers of people suffered great tragedy.” Kyuma’s words translated here as “it could not be helped” were translated and broadcast in the English-language Japanese and international press as “NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE.” Many American observers immediately seized on these words, spoken by a prominent Japanese politician, as validation that, however terrifying the results, the use of the atomic bombs was necessary, and a historical inevitability. On the other hand, however, the Japanese people were shocked by those words. As a consequence of his remarks Kyuma was compelled to resign his cabinet post four days later. This also played a significant role in the ruling party’s defeat in Japan’s upper-house elections that September.

My purpose today is NOT to litigate or adjudicate any of these arguments. I do believe, however, that in these commemorative days each year, we have the opportunity to learn once again from these intertwined awesome and devastating historical events and the world’s memories of them. Some years we may merely repeat the lessons we had already learned from years past; other years we may learn something fresh. What, and how, do we learn this year? And how do the lessons we may learn come from, and in turn, affect our faith, and our faithfulness to God?

The Kyuma episode provokes fresh thinking about attitudes we hold about the “total war” use of atomic weapons at the end of the Second World War and about war itself, AND ABOUT THE ANTITHESIS OF WAR – PEACE. What is “inevitable?” What does “inevitable” mean? With their time-lines and historical interpretations, historians tend to come up with explanations of how wars became “inevitable,” and then such notions of war’s inevitability come to be etched in our collective psyches.

But what if we flipped our perspectives? What case can we make for the INEVITABILITY OF PEACE?

This brings me to the scripture passage that we read earlier. A familiar biblical story – we all probably learned it since we were young. Oddly, however, I step away from the larger narrative picture of this well-known miracle. What struck me more deeply is this:

When it was evening, the disciples came to Jesus and said: This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them: “They NEED NOT go away.”

How often do we come to see things from the perspective of OUR DIRE NECESSITY? We have a problem. Something drastic – and often drastically bad – HAS TO HAPPEN. We have to build a wall! We have to scrap health care for millions of people! We have to deport people! We have to turn people away at the airports! Really?

NO! Jesus said: “THEY NEED NOT GO AWAY.” We say: “War is inevitable! The atom bombs could not be helped!” Jesus said: “No! Peace is inevitable!” Perhaps if we can break down that sense of necessity, of inevitability, of war and conflict, of competition in scarcity, we can begin to take steps down the path of MAKING PEACE INEVITABLE, and the miracle of peace can really happen.

How do we make peace inevitable? Let me begin to offer a modest proposal, inspired by our faith and the words that God Still Speaks to us today.

Number 1. We need to have a revolutionary change of heart. A paradigm shift. Let us start with understanding that WAR IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD. For far too long humankind has projected our wars onto God’s will. Today we decry the word and the idea of Jihad – a perversion of Islam’s concept of struggle, and we denounce the idea of Holy War, which we think is peculiar to Muslims, or some convenient OTHER. However, if we looked back honestly into history, we would find that the idea was, at least just as much, of our own making. The slogan for our version of Holy War, “Deus vult” (God wills it) emerged as the people’s response to Pope Urban’s call for the first crusade in 1095. Can we honestly say that we do not carry a single trace of that mentality in the wars we wage today?

We MUST start with embracing the principle that WAR IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD.

On July 19, 2006, when a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians expanded into massive bombing of cities in Lebanon, the Rev. John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, wrote a prayer accompanying the UCC’s call for peace. This prayer speaks to the point I make today. Please allow me to read it in part to you:

You did not make us, O God, to die in bomb craters or to huddle through the night in basement shelters. You made us to play under olive trees and cedars and to sleep soundly with animal toys and gentle lovers. Lord, have mercy.

You did not make us, O God, to hold hostages for barter or to rain deadly fury on innocent children and beautiful coast lands. You made us, O God, to welcome strangers and to cherish all creation. Christ, have mercy.

You did not make us, O God, to oppress in the name of security or to kill in the name of justice. You made us, O God, to find security in justice and to risk life in the name of peace. Lord, have mercy.

… Save us from self-justifying histories and from moral equations that excuse our folly. Search our hearts for our own complicity. Spare us from pious prayers that neglect the prophet’s angry cry. Let us speak a resounding “no” to this warring madness and thus unmake our ways of death, so that we may be made more and more into your image. Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison.

Included in this change of heart must also be a transformation in our calculus of war and peace. Remember, a few weeks ago, Rev. Margaret Gramley encouraged us to adopt a new way of understanding God’s moral economy – to think of God as a prodigal sower – one who flings the seeds of grace with wild abandon? Then let us think of God commanding that the seeds of peace also be sown with equally wild abandon and fullness and “care-lessness.” Unfortunately that is not so with our usual mathematics of war and peace, often characterized by a “tit for tat” frame of mind. Even in our democratic societies, our politics, our military configurations, and our foreign relations tend to be loaded with dangerous logarithms that make war, not peace, inevitable. We more often demand unconditional surrender than we make peace unconditionally. We forget the words of Christ who said, “I do not give to you peace AS THE WORLD GIVES.” We fail to grasp Paul’s meaning when he described “the peace of God” as a peace “that surpasses all understanding.” Peace will not be made inevitable as long as we remain within our “normal” ways of making peace. We have to think of the peace that we seek to make as the peace of God, a peace that we cannot comprehend normally. When we reach out to others with THAT peace that defies norms, peace will then become a necessity of history, an inevitability.

Secondly, making peace is an ACTIVITY. Peace may be God’s will, but it also will not fall into our laps. We have to DO something to make peace. In describing God’s mandate for peace, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” If peace is to become inevitable, we need to actively disarm, and we need to UNLEARN war. This may not be an easy thing, but think about it this way: As a species, we have spent thousands of years “learning war.” Can we not devote a few decades to unlearning war and learning peace instead? Can we not – should we not — have, at every university and college and school, at least as many students majoring in peace studies as we have in, say, in ROTC and military sciences? We learn a lot of things from the things of our “popular culture” – our literatures, the things we watch, the games we play, the technologies we employ. Why, then, are these things so inundated in the images and ideas of conflict and combat? Can we not devote even a small portion of the technological genius that we deploy in creating such things as films, videos, images on the Internet, and videogames in order to create at least a sector of our “popular culture” that would extol peace, and not valorize war?

One of the things that we must DO to make peace inevitable is to take care of people’s wellbeing and needs. In the next breath, after he proclaimed that the people “need not go away,” Jesus said: “YOU give them something to eat.” He made it clear that simply not turning people away is not enough; we must also bear responsibility for meeting people’s needs. It is so, too, for the peacemaker. War and poverty and scarcity go hand in hand, and it is often difficult to tell which is the cause and which is the effect. It is estimated that about one tenth of the people who died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts did so from causes and conditions complicated by dehydration and starvation. To say that we are giving people peace without addressing their needs makes the promise of peace a hollow one, and such peace cannot endure, much less be inevitable.

We must not fear, nor be discouraged, when our work to make peace inevitable happens on a small scale. That is one lesson I took away from Jody’s sermon last week. The peace that we sow may be the smallest and seemingly the most insignificant of seeds. Let us remember: The horrific bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguably the most enormous weapons ever used, wreaking the greatest destruction, came from SPLITTING THE ATOM, the smallest thing imaginable. Why then should we not learn to sow, instead, the atoms of peace?

Finally, I submit that to make peace inevitable, we must also learn how to live a new life, or, to live Life anew, not only as individuals and families, or even as nations, but as the world, as humankind, as God’s entire creation. Many of us are aware, I am sure, that the famous Godzilla stories and films originated in a post-war Japan in reaction to the atomic holocausts suffered by its people. In the decades since 1945, we have seen the proliferation of films depicting how people learn and struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic global landscape. That survival is not only grim and bleak, but it is also one that is most often filled with the same conflicts that begat the cataclysm in the first place. The question that stares us in the face is: Why do we wait to learn to live anew AFTER the whole world and all Life have been devastated by our weapons? Why can we not start right now to learn to live anew? What on earth are we waiting for?

The lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are lessons for the future and not just for comprehending how the past may be “justified.” They are not merely lessons explaining how such a vast number of people died, but lessons for how the whole world must live.

In March 1988, Japanese author Kurihara Sadako, herself a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, wrote the following poem, teaching us this very lesson:

“In the rubble a single wildflower
Sent out small white blossoms.
From the burned soil filled with the bones
Of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, relatives,
From the now-silent ruins
Where every living thing burned to death:
A small life that taught us to live.
Hiroshima, carrying on from that day –
A flower blooming in the midst of destruction.”

If “inevitability” is not a matter of fore-ordained fate or of strategic expediency or even tactical necessity, but a matter of building up the conditions for a process that points in a particular direction, then it is indeed within the power of every one of us to make peace, not war, inevitable; to make life, not death, inevitable. It would mean that each and every thing we do can, potentially, be a building block for that process, however large or small. It would mean that we, like all the generations of our forebears, are constantly at the crossroads of choice. What is inevitable is of our own making, and of our own choosing.

I used to, sometimes on my way to work at NAU, drive past the Quaker meeting house on Beaver Street and see these inspiring words: “There is no way to peace; Peace is the way.” For people of faith, making peace inevitable must begin with our completely identifying with God’s will for peace and with our own responsibility in the process. It is a painstaking process, one that might not be completed in our own lifetime, but is the most precious legacy and gift we can ever hope to pass on. We can, and we must, build peace in our lives, in our church, in our society, and in the world, piece by piece, peace by peace.

Each year at 8:15 a.m. (Tokyo time) on August 6, Japanese throngs gather at the cenotaph in Hiroshima in remembrance of the horrifying event and those who died in the atomic bombing with a long silence. Representatives of many faiths offer prayers. Then bells are rung to complete the commemoration. Perhaps this year, and for years to come, those bells could ring out not only in Hiroshima but all over the world and most of all in our own hearts, to echo our commitment to make peace inevitable.

Let us pray:
To you, O Christ, who taught us that to be estranged from another human being is to be estranged from God, and that to be reconciled to a brother or a sister or to a “stranger” is to be reconciled to you, to you we pray:

Let a small flower of hope blossom from the rubble of death and destruction, from the ruins of our times, some silent and some still raging with the voices of the dying and the dead;

Come, small life, living, crucified, dead, and resurrected, and teach us how to live. Amen.