Egypt is a reminder

Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, people are clamoring for justice, freedom, and peace.

In theological terms, theirs is a cry for the coming of the Kingdom of God or Heaven, depending upon which gospel writer you're reading.

We in this country--with our material abundance and our freedoms and our dysfunctional democracy--would do well to pay attention to the protest movements abroad.

People abroad are tired of autocracy. They're tired of oppression. They're tired of slavery under harsh and heartless rulers. They want to know that they will have what they need for good, healthy, and happy lives for themselves and for their children and grandchildren.

It's a worthy desire, even a timeless one, and it's at the heart of the prophetic tradition of biblical religion.

A few Sundays ago, Christians who follow the Sunday lectionary heard the prophet Micah tell God's people, especially those who had forgotten the deepest part of their faith in God and faithfulness to Him as His servant people.

To paraphrase Micah, God requires of all His people--Jews, Christians, Muslims, people of all faiths--that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

Would that Mubarak in Egypt had done so for the last 30 years of his rule. Would that the leaders of Yemen, of Jordan, of Algeria, of Iran, of Afghanistan, of Iraq would do so.

I hope all the world's leaders, including those in this country, are paying attention to protests.

Would that every ruler and every political party heed the words of the prophet Micah and all the prophets and realize that their loyalty is not to party, not to ideology, not to rich contributors, but ultimately and fundamentally to the God of justice.

Those in positions of authority are God's servant on earth, and as such, they are also servants of God's beloved children. All of them.

When we see that kind of governance--and perhaps it's beginning abroad--we'll see the Kingdom of God or Heaven emerging on earth, which is God's intent.

Reading the Bible through many eyes

When we read the Holy Scriptures through our own eyes only, we see only part of what God wants to reveal to us.

But when we read the Scriptures with others, through many eyes, then we more fully see what God wants to show us about Himself, ourselves, our relationships, and the world beyond our doors.

The theme of this year's Trinity Institute at Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street, which I recently attended, was "Reading Scripture through Many Eyes."

This year's lectures and discussions were illuminating. Two lectures in particular were helpful in broadening my understanding of reading and interpreting the Bible.

In the first lecture of the institute, Dr. Walter Bruggemann, a retired professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Columbia Seminary, traced the history of biblical interpretation over the centuries.

He started with the literalist reading and interpreting of the Bible and then moved on to the historical/critical method of the 19th and 20th centuries and concluded with a call for what he described as a post-critical reading and interpretation for today.

This post-critical method employs the best of its predecessors--the spiritual devotion often found among the literalists, the questioning rationalism of the modernists--and unites it with even more perspectives: psychology, sociology, trauma and gender studies, political theory, and more.

In a more rounded, even global view, readers more fully see the living Word of God amid the words of these sacred texts.

During the last lecture of the institute, Dr. Gerald West, a Biblical scholar from South Africa, looked at ways to involve church people in a deep and thorough process of Scripture reading and reflecting.

This approach sounded a lot like the African Bible study method or the Liberation Theology approach of reading and responding to the Bible in Base Communities.

West urged readers to gather around the Scriptures, to respond to the Word through our many and diverse experiences, and then to share with one another what we hear God saying to us--what God is calling us to be and to do, in African Bible study language.

"The Bible," West said, "belongs to the whole community." He urged readers of the Scriptures to listen not just to one another, but also to "people on the margins," including the poor, the homeless, the sick--whoever the marginalized are.

From church history, I know that when the church has been its most vital, it is because it has reconnected with its ancient roots in the Holy Scriptures. Out of that encounter with the living Word, Christians have renewed, even revolutionized the church and society.

Look what happened during the Protestant Reformation. Remember what inspired the Abolitionist Movement in Britian and in this country during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Today, what if we church people started reading the Bible together, inviting everyone to participate, including the marginalized? Reading the Bible through many eyes, we might get a fuller picture of the living God and His relationship to us and to the world.

We might even say, "We're reading the Bible. Watch out church and world. Change is coming."

Let it snow

I'm in my study watching waves of snow blow past my window. Streets are empty. The only sound is that of the wind whoosing through the trees. It's a time when the feverish pace of life, including my own, slows. A time perhaps when God whispers: Be still and know that I am God.

Today, if the snow confines you, or reduces your activities, or at least forces you to pause amid your usual hurry, thank God for the gift of snow. Seek its blessings. Pray for those who are poor and poorly sheltered, that God will minister to them. Remember those must work amid the storm.

And instead of cursing the snow, contemplate this wonder of God's creation.

Elizabeth Edwards, cancer, and God

Today on National Public Radio, a reporter described an interview he had had with the late Elizabeth Edwards, who died yesterday of breast cancer. Edwards was the wife of John Edwards, former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate.

The reporter himself had survived cancer, he said, and he and Edwards quickly formed a bond because of their illness. He said he was surprised by her honesty, especially about religion. She told the reporter that she couldn't pray to a God who allowed her 16 year-old son to die in a car crash. She said that if God wouldn't save her son, He certainly wouldn't save her from cancer.

The problem of evil, suffering, and death causes many people to stop believing in God, especially in a beneficent God. For millennia, humans who believe in God have wrestled with what theologians call theodicy, the existence of evil, suffering, and death within a context of belief in a God of love, and we have tried to make sense of the pain of life, while still believing in a God who cares and acts for our welfare.

There is no satisfactory human resolution of the problem, but there is the cross of Jesus Christ, in my view.

As a pastor, I am constantly dealing with tragedy of one kind or another: a sudden and unexplained death; the loss of mental functioning by someone who was once bright and creative; the unceasing suffering of people in Haiti.

And yet I believe. Sunday after Sunday, I confess my faith in God in the words of the Nicene Creed. I say I believe in a God who makes Himself known in love for humankind as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe in a God who does not hold Himself apart from humankind and our struggles, but who engages in them with us and aids us in our distress. I see this active, involved God most fully at work in the life, passion and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the cross, God suffers and dies, and on the third day, God, in Jesus, conquers all the evil, suffering, dying, death, tragedy--every enemy of humankind--in the resurrection.

We're Easter Christians, someone once observed, living in a Good Friday world. We face the harsh realities of life in this brutal, but also wonderful world, believing that God is with us and cares for us, that God identifies with us in our humanity in Jesus, that God is victorious over the Evil One, and that one day God's new creation will come to earth as it already exists in heaven, and then suffering and sighing, as Isaiah says, will be no more.

Now, I believe Elizabeth Edwards, who suffered mightily in many ways, knows life eternally in the Communion of Saints. Rest eternal grant to her, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon her. May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercies of God rest in peace.

The church as the heart of a community

In a seminary course on the history of the Anglican church in America, I became fascinated by the 19th century model of the urban church as a community center.

In Jesus' metaphors from the gospels, the church operated in the cities--especially in the presence of poverty, hunger, illness, lack of education--as: "salt," "light," "leaven"--functioning as an agent of transformation.

The church is the most important agent of transformation in society, I believe, because the church, our members united to Christ and to one another in baptism, carries on Christ's transformational work.

Transformation is healing, rescuing, redeeming, saving--making people and institutions whole again.


Last night, I saw that transformational work happening at Christ Episcopal Church.

We held our annual Thanksgiving Dinner for the community. Donya Ross, our Youth Minister, and her team of youth, parents, and others from the parish organized a huge and hearty meal and invited people from the neighborhoods around the church to the feast.


I don't know the final count of people we served, but it had to be upwards of 150. We would have had many more guests, were it not for cold, driving rain.

Even so, the parish hall was packed with single people, families, and lots of children. Most of our guests were living at or below the poverty level; some of them were homeless, arriving in the parish hall with their backpacks and bedrolls.


We also served some Missouri State University students who were natives of Dubai. They had responded to our invitations to the foreign students at MSU and Drury University. I sat at the table with them, making sure that they knew they were welcome in our church and to America.


I'm proud of our church members--young and old. They welcomed our guests, served their meals, sat and ate with them, cleared away the tables afterwards, and did the mammoth job of clean up afterwards.


Last night, I witnessed the Body of Christ in action.

And I saw our parish hall become a community center, where our needy neighbors knew they were welcome and where they found Christian hospitality, a healthy, substantial meal, and the abundant love of Jesus.


May it always be so.

Coffee. Christ. Compassion.

After Penny's and my workout this morning, I indulged in one of my spiritual disciplines:

I went to my favorite coffee shop to enjoy a bold, black coffee and to read The New York Times.

I was content at my table until a man with a long, tangled beard came in the front door. He went to the merchandise displays, mumbled something to himself, and then sat down near me.

He started thumping the table with his hands and talking to himself. Very loudly.

No, he hadn't had a large coffee with six shots of espresso.

Something else was going on. He started to curse his partner, invisible to me, across the table from him.

By now, my contentment had changed to concern.

I'm sensitive to people with illnesses, especially mental illnesses. The ill should receive the very best care available, but I know that many of them don't because they can't afford it; they don't have insurance for doctor visits or hospital stays or money for medicines.

The man at the coffee shop might be one of these people. Or he might have medical insurance, which paid for treatment in the hospital and as an out-patient and for his medicines, but for some reason, he's stopped taking them; it happens a lot.

I didn't ask him about his situation. Uneasy because of his behavior, I left. I went outside, found a table, and finished my coffee and paper, glancing from time to time through the window to see where the man was and what he was doing.

At one point, I noticed him standing near the counter--a small cup of coffee in his hand, talking with someone. Not the invisible person this time, but one of the staff.

After the man left, I went inside and asked my friend who works there about the man, whether he'd had any trouble with him.

"I gave him a sample," my friend said. "And I talked with him a little. And he left."

"You handled that well," I told him, embarrassed at how I'd reacted to the man.

This morning, I responded to that mentally ill man with fear and suspicion. The next time, I want to respond as my friend did--and as Christ would--with compassion.

Learning from the Chilean miners

With millions of people worldwide, I watched some of the 33 Chilean miners rescued after 69 days of being trapped deep within the earth. One by one, the miners were hoisted to the surface in a cage-like tube.

The miners survived because they cooperated with one another. They acted as a team. And their survival has something to teach us.

Above the surface, we humans are unable to get along, especially today in America amid one of the most venomous political campaign seasons in history. Whatever the office sought, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party members, Independents throw themselves against one another like dogs in a pit savaging one another until only one is left alive.

We can do better. We deserve better. And voters must demand better.

What none of the candidates realizes is that whatever our political party, we're all fighting for survival against many threats, including: a persistent recession, massive income inequality, global warming, hatred and"isms" of all kinds, war.

Yes, we have different ideas about overcoming these threats, but differences needn't destroy us. Differences can be discussed, debated, refined into better policies to solve our problems. Moreover, differences shouldn't be exacerbated and exploited by cynical political manipulators for party advantage.

If we continue to attack one another, like pit bulls; if we continue to work against one another, thwarting solutions to national and global problems, then we're doomed. We'll die in the dark.

But if we work together for the common good--not for one party's domination of the others--then we'll survive and even thrive as a nation and people.

What worked underground for those miners will surely work above ground for all of us.