Competing “Violence Against Women Act” Bills Explained

Matthew 25:40: “The Lord will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Are you for Violence Against Women or against it? Well, that’s the first problem with this legislation. It’s named for the behavior that the bill seeks to prevent. “Support for Victims of Domestic Abuse Act” seems a better title, but someone paid bigger bucks than I came up with that title.

Despite the somewhat confusing name, it’s been a good law. The present bills in Congress would re-authorize the law, which was first enacted in 1994. I don’t pretend to understand why the law has an expiration date. Why do they have to keep re-authorizing it? Does anyone think it won’t be necessary in five years?

But to the point. I saw a link to an article in Christianity Today saying that evangelical Christians were divided on the issue. That story and others I read did not make clear that TWO bills were before the House of Representatives — one backed by Republicans and one backed by Democrats. In e-mails from supporters and opponents I have pieced together at least one difference is that the Democrats’ bill keeps protections for immigrant spouses of American citizens who are involved in domestic abuse. That’s the version that passed in the Senate. The present law and the Senate bill would protect this very vulnerable group from being deported because their spouses beat them.

The version passed in the House, backed by Republicans, would remove protection of immigrant victims of spousal abuse.

U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-St. Louis), in reply to an e-mail message I sent asking about this issue, clarified it for me.

Here’s the text from his message (I added bold-face emphasis and color coding to the bill numbers to help clarify):

VAWA was first enacted in 1994 to provide a comprehensive approach to address the needs of victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault. This important piece of legislation provides funding to state and local communities to improve enforcement efforts against domestic violence, to provide housing protection for victims, and to improve educational and social programs to prevent crime. VAWA has a proven track record of success, and since its enactment, has been reauthorized twice, first in 2000 and again in 2006 with my support.
VAWA is set to expire this year unless Congress takes action to extend these vital programs. With overwhelming bipartisan support, the Senate recently passed S. 1925, which extends and expands VAWA for 5 more years. In addition to maintaining current VAWA grant programs, this legislation would increase the cap on available U-Visas to grant nonimmigrant status to immigrants who are victims of domestic violence, redefine “underserved populations” to include those who may be discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity, enhance criminal penalties for criminal and civil rights violations involving sexual abuse, and address jurisdictional issues relating to VAWA’s impact on tribal lands.

As you may know, there are currently two competing versions of the Violence Against Women Act in the House, H.R. 4271, and H.R. 4970.  H.R. 4271, of which I am a proud cosponsor, very closely mirrors the VAWA reauthorization legislation that passed out of the Senate. H.R. 4970, another version of the VAWA reauthorization, does not include many of the key protections contained in H.R. 4271 as it only protects some victims of violence, not all.
On May 16, 2012, H.R. 4970 was brought before the full House for consideration. Because this bill does not provide for full protections for all victims of violence, I voted against this legislation. While H.R. 4970 narrowly passed, I joined with many of my colleagues in supporting the alternative version, H.R. 4271, since it extends protections to all victims of domestic violence.
I firmly believe that VAWA needs to be reauthorized and needs to be supportive of the needs of domestic violence victims. Since both the House and the Senate have passed versions of the VAWA reauthorization, the bills move to conference in order to be reconciled before being sent to the President.  Please be assured that I will continue to fight for final passage of a bill that most closely resembles H.R. 4271 and S. 1925.  U.S. Rep Russ Carnahan (D-St. Louis)

So there you have it. The Republicans in the House passed a watered-down version of the current act; the Democrats (and some Republicans) in the Senate passed a beefed-up version of the law.
When the advocacy groups start pestering you to call your congressional representatives to urge the conference committee to come to an agreement, it’s the Senate bill that increases support for women victims, including the most vulnerable, and the House bill that decreases support.

Breaking: Senate Agrees on Something!

An interesting thing happened yesterday (May 21, 2012). The U.S. Senate voted 61-34 to approve an Obama appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals. (Paul J. Watford, of California, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit). This is important because the judiciary has a number of vacancies at every level and the Republicans have been blocking appointments in the judiciary and elsewhere since Obama took office.

I had been alerted to the vote early in the day by Marge Baker of People for the American Way, who said this:

Both the White House and Senate Majority Leader Reid are really buckling down on trying to move stalled judicial nominees. There is a particular urgency for this nomination. The caseload per judge is so bad on the Ninth Circuit that the vacancy Watford would fill has been formally declared a “judicial emergency” by the Administrative Office of United States Court. According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee, the Ninth Circuit has 1,453 cases per three-judge panel. She said that’s by far the highest in the nation, and more than 400 more than the next highest court.

KUDOS to all 52 Democrats present (and Bernie Sanders) who voted for the appointment, as well as these 8 Republican senators who joined the democratic majority:
John McCain, AZ
Jon Kyle, AZ
Scott Brown, MA
Susan Collins, ME
Olympia Snow, ME
Lindsey Graham, SC
Richard Lugar, IN
Murkowsky, AK

ONIONS to our Missouri senators:
Roy Blunt who voted against it
Claire McCaskill who was absent for the vote

And a BIG DISAPPOINTMENT that neither the Washington Post nor the St. Louis Post-Dispatch deemed the vote worthy enough for even a brief. Our Congress is so dysfunctional that whenever the lawmakers agree to agree, we should take note and thank them.

Here’s the full roll call vote

Peace Banners

Scripture:  Mark 11:1-11,  Philippians 2:1-13

I saw this picture on the Internet — a familiar painting of Jesus with a cloak over his head, only this time it had the caption, “Jesus wore a hoodie.”

Last week our sister congregation St Johns UCC, led by Rev. Starsky Wilson, wore hoodies to church in solidarity with Trayvon Martin, the youth who was gunned down for walking through a neighborhood with the audacity and posture of someone who had a right to be there — which he did. But he was black and young and it was a gated neighborhood of mostly white people, mostly older, and it was in Florida, which has a law, called “stand your ground” that would appear to let Trayvon’s murderer off the hook because he felt “threatened” by this unarmed teenager wearing a hoodie and talking on a cell phone.

When a TV commentator suggested that the shooter was justified because a black youth in a hoodie could be interpreted as threatening enough to justify being killed, people all over the country began wearing hoodies — to church, on the street, in legislative sessions and in their profile photos on Facebook.

Jesus wore a hoodie.  It reminds me of a button I used to wear before it fell off my coat in the grocery store:  Jesus was a low wage worker.

Compare these modern-day descriptions — Jesus wore a hoodie, Jesus was a low wage worker — to what the people shouted as they waved palms or other leafy branches and spread their coats on the ground in our scripture lesson from Mark this morning: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”

This triumphant entry by Jesus into Jerusalem where he knows they’re out to kill him can be interpreted in so many ways. Today, I’d like to expand on what we know of this familiar parade, and see it as a peace march. Waving palms and wearing hoodies in a non-violent effort to counter evil and bring about peace.

Jesus showed us– and in the tradition of “God is still speaking,” Jesus is still showing us — how to seek peace through non-violence, to counter evil with good, to be steadfast in our love in the face of hatred.

Lets look first at the Mark passage that John read. Jesus planned this parade. Its whole purpose was to call attention to himself and make a few symbolic points. Because — did you notice this? — at the end of the passage, when Jesus and his disciples got to the temple, they looked around and went back to Bethany.

Yes. After all that hoopla of borrowing an animal to ride, people shouting and waving branches and coats, they retraced their steps and went back to the suburbs where the parade began that morning. Jesus’s point had been made and he would come back the next day to make some more points. We’ll be reading about his last days in Jerusalem all this week. This was Jesus’s first dramatic non-violent act of his last week of life.

This parade was planned for a particular purpose, to call attention to Jesus on the very day that historians now tell us, Pontius Pilate was coming into Jerusalem at a different gate, with a much different parade. Pilate rode a horse, or maybe was driven in a chariot. He had Roman legionnaires to accompany him. If there was any cheering, it was forced, because the people of Jerusalem had no love for the Romans. Most likely the watchers were silent, and you could hear much jangling of harnesses and rumbling of chariots and wagons carrying the retinue of a Roman governor, coming into Jerusalem to keep the “Roman peace” among people celebrating Passover, a festival of deliverance from an oppressor that reminded them of the sovereignty of God over Caesar.

Jesus’s parade of God’s peace was a contrast to Pilate’s entry. Jesus chose a donkey colt, a very common farm animal, not useful in war.

Jesus sent his advance men out to get the colt. They didn’t ask for it, they didn’t offer to rent it. They took it, and when they were stopped — lucky for them the people who stopped them weren’t armed with pistols, ready to shoot first and ask questions later — the disciples simply said, “The Lord has need of it.”  A potential confrontation was diffused. I think we can assume they brought it back. Maybe that’s why they went back to Bethany that night, to return the colt.

The procession itself seems to have been a very spontaneous parade. Jesus evidently had no inside knowledge about anyone preparing banners to welcome him. Instead, they spread their clothing on the road in front of him. This was a very big gesture among people who owned only the clothes on their backs.

Nevertheless, when they saw Jesus coming, people waved their sweaters or cloaks or hoodies in the air. They ran out into the fields or shimmied up palm trees and cut branches and waved them.

They didn’t cry, “Hail Caesar!” They cried “Hosanna!” which means, “Please save us!”
And they shouted, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

That was brave of them. Their scripture, what we call the Old Testament, is full of people who came in the name of the Lord. Most of them were prophets, and the people — especially the people in power — weren’t always comfortable with what these spokespeople of the Lord said. They often said things like, “Let justice roll down like streams of water,” and “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.”

If you shout, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” you must have a pretty good idea that the Lord is not going to side with your oppressor. See it from the point of view of a poor person who owned only one hoodie, someone who really needed saving from the empire and its systems of oppression, someone who was familiar with the healing Jesus, the Jesus who said ‘blessed are the poor and the meek,’ the one who told parables that made the powerful guys want to kill him.

And here he is, riding in on a little donkey, holding a parade, a sort of anti-empire parade. So you shout, “Hosanna, blessed is he and blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”

Modern English translators stumble over the word “kingdom,” with its connotation of hierarchy and royalty. I’ve heard it translated as “realm,” or “reign of God” instead. But most recently, I’ve heard it translated, “commonwealth of God.”

That’s in the book we’ve been reading for Lent, Practicing Peace, which is about the Quaker tradition of non-violence. Commonwealth of God. Yeah, that says, to me, that we all have a stake — an equal stake — in common, in the wealth or the welfare of the realm. Not a community led by royalty or dominated by the elite, but a coming together of people for the common good. I like that, the Commonwealth of God.

This book has a lot of wise, important points to make about practicing peace in our everyday lives. Knowing that several of you have been reading and discussing it while I was away visiting my mother for two weeks, I decided to let it inform this sermon. Seeing Palm Sunday through the eyes of non-violent practice has been very helpful.   Especially as I caught up on news I had avoided while I was away.

How do we respond to the hard-to-ignore evidence that the Commonwealth of God seems as far away as ever? When Trayvon Martin’s killer can claim the right to shoot, based on his “feeling threatened” and there is an apparently serious debate about who is at fault in this teenager’s death?

Or when we read stories like the one in the Post-Dispatch last Sunday about a young woman who died less than an hour after being  arrested for disturbing the peace, because the hospital emergency room personnel missed the blood clot in her leg and assumed she was faking her pain to get drugs? She died when the blood clot reached her lungs. She died because she was poor, black and loud. How do we respond?

How do we respond when our elected officials and our judicial system seem hell-bent on destroying our democracy for their own power and greed? When they introduce, and sometimes pass, bill after bill aimed at attacking workers, teachers, voters, pregnant women, young women, all women… Don’t get me started.

As I read my emails and let the outrageous, unjust behaviors wash over me, I felt so powerless. But I kept reading Catherine Whitemire’s collection of sayings in Practicing Peace. They reminded me that seeking peace, or practicing peace, as she calls it, brings about good, even if the victories are tiny and the struggle seems endless.
She quotes Kenneth Boulding, who wrote in 1945,

But though hate rises in enfolding flame
                                                                          At each renewed oppression, soon it dies:                                                                     
It sinks as quickly as we saw it rise,
                                                                                  While love’s small constant light burns still the same.
                                                 Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong,
                                                      Yet hate is short, and love is very long.

Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa knew that love trumps hate. When the apartheid, segregationist powers gave way to Mandela and Tutu’s freedom movement, the new victors did not seek to punish their former oppressors. They started a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to allow people to confess and forgive openly, without retaliation. The commission has been criticized for letting perpetrators off without sufficient punishment. But the leaders knew that forgiveness is a better healer and a better instructor than vengeance.

Bishop Tutu said of the process, “Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. Forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss that liberates the victim.”

The same kind of forgiveness occurred in Mozambique, the homeland of an Eden classmate of mine. He told me his cousin was kidnapped by rebels who killed her father, and she eventually became the rebel leader’s “woman,” mother of his children. After more than a decade of civil war, church leaders in Mozambique and neighboring countries brokered a peace agreement that allowed the rebels to return to their homes in exchange for their laying down their arms.

This woman’s family welcomed her back, with her children and her husband. Her husband who had killed her father. “What else could they do?” my classmate asked. She was their daughter, their sister, their cousin, and her children were family. So, too, was the children’s father their family. Hate is short and love is very long.

When we see injustice and hate, we don’t have to stand back feeling helpless. In fact, many of the people quoted in the book say, we must not stand back feeling helpless. In large ways or small, we need to take sides — on the side of non-violence. If we had been there in Jesus’s time, we might have been the one to tie a colt outside our door for Jesus to ride in his parade.

Today, maybe we take a photo of ourself in a hoodie and post it on Facebook. Maybe we sign a petition calling for an end to payday loan sharks — Lois has one she’ll be happy for you sign. Maybe we support candidates for public office, like Jeanette, who seek to pass laws for the common good. Maybe we just make an effort to smile and look someone in the face that we would ordinarily ignore in passing at the grocery store or bus stop.

Maybe we write a letter in support of health care for all, so that a young woman with leg pain can see a doctor outside the emergency room, well before her condition becomes life threatening. Maybe we pray for politicians we do not agree with, recognizing that they, too, are God’s children and that there is a difference between causing evil and being evil.

Maybe we even pray for forgiveness for George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon. Or if that’s unrealistic, maybe we ask God to forgive us for not being able to forgive Zimmerman. Then we may realize that forgiveness is a gift that God bestows and that even our confession of imperfect forgiveness is a non-violent response that Jesus would have understood.

We are here today, commemorating the parade, the little drama that Jesus and his disciples cooked up. We needed historians to rediscover that other parade of Pilate going into Jerusalem, but all Christians remember Palm Sunday. This week we will be reading and discussing, singing about and feeling in our hearts the story of Jesus’s last week.

It is a story of meekness winning out against might; of non-violence quietly resisting violence, even unto death; of love outliving hate.

In the words of Paul to the Philippians, “Be of the same mind, having the same love, (as Christ) being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

And when we are acting in the name of Jesus, seeking to follow him in non-violence and peacemaking, we can take to heart what Paul said: “for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you, both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.”

So lets have our own peace parade. Lets hold up these palms as peace banners; lets wave our hoodies in the air; and lets march in the light of God, knowing that while hate is strong, it is also short; and love … love is very long. To the Commonwealth of God. Praise God, Amen.

Called by God in the Name of Love

Scripture References:
1 Samuel 3:1-10
John 1:43-51

Called by God in the name of love. We have several people in the Bible and in history and in our own times that would fit that description.

Take Samuel. What we read earlier is just part of the story of how he was called by God. Actually, Samuel’s call, started before he was born, before he was even conceived. His mother, Hannah, prayed to God for a son. She was at the temple after a festival and Eli — the same priest that is in the story we read today — mistook her silent mumblings for drunkenness. When she protested and explained she was praying, Eli replied with a non-commital blessing, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

Hannah promised that if she conceived and bore a son, she would dedicate him to the service of God. And when he was still a small child, she made good her promise, taking him to serve with Eli, the same man that first doubted her prayer and then sent her away with a lukewarm blessing.

I look at Hannah’s gift with new eyes, now that I am grandmother of two boys. Oh how the entire family rejoiced when they were born. How sweet they were as babies and toddlers. Jake is 4 and Denny is 5 and they’re both unique packages of sweetness and energy. I cannot imagine taking either of them when they were still preschoolers to a mostly clueless man like Eli and saying, “Here, he’s dedicated to God for life.”

But Hannah did so, to keep a promise, made in the name of love. Her song of gratitude and praise for God is very similar to the magnificat that Mary sang when she learned she was to be the mother of Jesus. It begins, “My heart rejoices in the LORD.”

You could wonder who did the calling — did Hannah call upon God, or did God call upon Hannah? — but the result is the same. Samuel was born and set apart as special, called by God. It’s obvious he didn’t know what that meant. Well apparently nobody did. Scripture tells us that In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.”

I’ll give Eli credit. He eventually figured out who was calling Samuel. Eli wasn’t a bad guy, just not very effective. He had tried, maybe a little half-heartedly, to correct his sons and urge them to take their priestly duties seriously and quit swindling people who came to make sacrifices to God. He warned them that if they sinned against another person, they could expect a mediator to help them (maybe their father?). But if they sinned against God, which he said they were doing, nobody could help them.

So it seems that Eli might have known something was up, when God started calling the boy Samuel. Again, Eli did the right thing. He asked Samuel to tell him everything. And Samuel did. It was a hard truth — his sons would die before him, and he would have no descendants to carry on the priestly call in Shiloh. Samuel would be groomed to take over instead.
It was a revolutionary message, delivered by the child Samuel in the name of love. I would say that Samuel’s first response to God’s call came in two parts. First, he listened to God and then he delivered God’s message.

The Old Testament writer tells us that “The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and God let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD.”

Samuel went on delivering tough-love messages from God, first calling and anointing Saul as the first king of Israel, and then calling and anointing David to be the second king of Israel after Saul didn’t work out. Hmm. I wonder, did God keep changing the divine mind about the leaders God chose, or were Eli and his sons and then Saul simply the inevitable demonstrations of how some folks called by God can end up disappointing instead of serving God? I think it’s the latter.

Even if the messages to Eli and to Saul were not something they wanted to hear, however, Samuel delivered the bad news: God is going to make a change. Hard words, but said in the name of love.

Other prophets and leaders in the bible struggled more with their call than Samuel. Moses tried to argue his way out of serving God on several occasions. Jonah went in the opposite direction when told to prophesy to Ninevah and didn’t accept the call until he was in the belly of a “big fish.” The Psalms are full of people who doubted their call or were afraid of what their enemies would do to them while they were following God.

Nathaniel is our next example in today’s scripture of a man who at first was reluctant to respond to the call by God.

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”

The story about how Nathaniel was called to be a follower of Jesus is not nearly as well known as the story of Peter, Andrew, James and John being called to be “fishers of people.” That’s next week’s passage, by the way.

No this call story of Nathaniel’s is an odd little incident, isn’t it? When Jesus says, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” you kind of get the feeling that Jesus heard what Nathaniel said about his home town, don’t you?

Nathaniel sounds a little cynical for someone that you’d expect Jesus to call to be among his closest followers. Someone who is skeptical and has his prejudices — for instance, against anyone from that down-at-the-heels village in Galilee, Nazareth.

But Nathaniel’s prejudices don’t appear to be deep-seated. Jesus mentions he saw Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree before Philip called him to ‘come and see’ Jesus, and Nathaniel does a complete about-face. He drops the skepticism and declares Jesus to be the Son of God and the King of Israel. You have to figure there was more to the discussion than this. It cries out for a Paul Harvey-type treatment — “And now for the rest of the story…”

But we don’t see Nathaniel in scripture again until John’s story about the resurrected Jesus appearing to the Galilean disciples — who were Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples. They were on the beach, and Jesus appeared and gave them breakfast and asked Peter to “feed my sheep.” Nathaniel didn’t get any lines in that scene, just a walk-on part. At least he was named, unlike the “two other disciples.”

Nathaniel’s story is growing on me. I like it because it’s very hard to smooth it over and make it sound sweet. It’s Nathaniel’s 15 minutes of fame as an ordinary guy who didn’t appear to be anyone special — either good or bad — but was open to transformation by following Jesus. He was remembered by name by the folks who recounted stories of Jesus in the decades after the resurrection and before the gospel writers wrote them down.

All that survived of Nathaniel’s particular life story is his slam against Nazareth and the fig tree. But he was one of the close disciples who was there at the beginning, before Jesus performed his first miracle, and there at the end, when Jesus appeared to his close followers before going away to heaven.

Nathaniel’s call story gives us the bare bones of the typical — if there is such a thing — call by God. Someone invited him — in this case, Philip, who suggested he ‘come and see.’ Philip saw something in him worthy of God’s call. So, evidently, did Jesus, who gave him that odd compliment about having no deceit.

Nathaniel had his moment of resistence, and abruptly, he answered the summons. This same gospel writer told us that it took Andrew an entire afternoon of sitting at the master’s feet before he told his brother, Peter, “We have found the Messiah.”

Even Jesus seemed a bit surprised that Nathaniel was so easy to convince. “You believe[a] because I told you I saw you under the fig tree,” Jesus said.
You will see greater things than that.”
The writer of the gospel of John describes a Jesus sure of his call. In a bit of foreshadowing John quotes Jesus — well before the first miracle signals the start of his ministry — saying to Nathaniel and Philip and others, “Very truly I tell you,[b] you[c] will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’[d] the Son of Man.”
But even on Jesus, the call of God did not always rest comfortably. None of the gospel writers quote Jesus as saying he was the Son of God or the Christ, the anointed one. Other people — like Philip and Nathaniel — give him those titles. But Jesus calls himself the ‘Son of Man,’ a reference from scripture that sort of describes an ordinary mortal called to lead the people in a time of cataclysmic change.
We know Jesus had moments of doubt and fear. We know this very human, very divine person responded to the very real threats against him with courage in the name of love. And he called on everyone else to respond to life with love. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he said.
We have no better modern example of responding to God’s call with love than Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate today. Many people (including me) believe he was a modern-day prophet, delivering God’s message of change and speaking in the name of love.

Like Samuel, Dr. King was designated for the Lord’s service early in his life. His grandfather and father were both ministers, both leaders in the Black Christian community in Atlanta. Like Samuel, King dedicated his youth and young adulthood to study in the service of God.

King was well into his first pastorate when he realized the extent of God’s call. I’m going to read the summary presented by John Dear, a Jesuit, scholar of Dr. King and follower in his footsteps, having been arrested dozens of times for demonstrating for civil rights and peace issues. Here’s what Father Dear wrote in, a column titled, “The God at Dr. King’s Kitchen Table,” in the January 16, 2007 National Catholic Reporter:

It was the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks had just been hauled to the police precinct for her audacity on the bus. And amid the electricity in the air, Dr. King emerged — the man of the hour, a confident new leader who would take on racism and injustice and violence, and surprisingly, in a spirit of confident, public nonviolence.
At least by the outward look of things. Privately, however, he started out as a reluctant prophet. By all means, he would help advance nonviolent change. But to be thrust in the spotlight of national leadership — that was another matter indeed.
On the other hand, an assumption mitigated the pressure. The boycott, assumed everyone — including King — would last but a few days. Symbolic victory achieved, and in short order things put back to normal. The days, however, lengthened out and passed over into weeks and months, and white Montgomery rightly discerned a bona fide economic threat. That’s when the death threats began. Chilling and cutting to the chase: “Call off the boycott or die.” Towards the end, as many as forty such phone calls came in every day. And on one occasion, when the police had hauled him into jail for speeding, in the clutches of the police at last, he imagined himself on the threshold of being lynched. Fear descended like a fog.
It reached an apex late Friday night, January 27, 1956. King slumped home, another long strategy session under his belt, and found Coretta asleep. He paced and knocked about, his nerves still on edge. And presently the phone rang, a sneering voice on the other end: “Leave Montgomery immediately if you have no wish to die.” King’s fear surged; he hung up the phone, walked to his kitchen, and with trembling hands, put on a pot of coffee and sank into a chair at his kitchen table.
Here was the prelude to King’s most profound spiritual experience. He describes it in his book “Stride Toward Freedom.”
“I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud.”
“The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.’”
“At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: ‘Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.”
[That ends the quote from Dr. King and I resume Father Dear’s account.]
Three days later a bomb blasted his house, and his family escaped harm by a hairsbreadth. “Strangely enough,” King later wrote, “I accepted the word of the bombing calmly. My religious experience a few nights before had given me the strength to face it.”
News of the bombing drew a crowd. A mob formed within the hour, all clenched jaws and closed fists. And they pressed up against the shattered house and shouted for vengeance. King mounted the broken porch and raised his hands. “We must meet hate with love. Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop because God is with this movement. Go home with this glorious faith and radiant assurance.” And thus the mob dissipated, their mood disarmed and their ears ringing with the message of gospel nonviolence.
Some eleven years later, King spoke before an audience of his epiphany in the kitchen. “It seemed at that moment, I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’ I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”
God strengthened Martin and in turn, Martin strengthens us. “Stand up for justice, stand up for truth, stand up for peace. And I will be at your side forever” — the message spoken to Martin but a message intended, [John Dear said he believes], for all of us. Dr. King staked his life on it and we can too. We can confidently embrace it as God’s leading of you and me toward prophetic work, a message uttered to all as to one, [Dear said].
Martin Luther King, John Dear and Bono, the leader of U2 and writer of the song featured in the prelude today — they have heard and answered a call of God, “in the name of love.”
“What more in the name of love” Bono asks.
What more? Shall we speak truth to power, like Samuel and Martin Luther King? Shall we witness to the greatness of others called by God, like Philip, Nathaniel and John Dear?
For we are all called, are we not? We are all called by God in the name of love.
Praise God. Amen.

Take Back Our Holidays

Years ago, kicking off the Christmas “shopping season” the day after Thanksgiving was kind of fun. It meant that stores would not put up Christmas decorations and promotions until then. And it was a fun outing for family members who didn’t see each other that often.

Now, it’s become this frantic chase for “bargains” on the part of consumers and market share on the part of retailers.

I know a few people — my niece Betsy, for instance — who thought it was fun to get up before dawn and line up outside a big box store to be first inside for those “bargains.”  It was never my thing, but I wouldn’t begrudge her the fun, if that’s her idea of a good time.

But now Target and WalMart and who knows else are opening at midnight, and forcing their employees to start work at 11 p.m. or earlier on Thanksgiving Day.

This has GOT to stop. I’m already part of  Advent Conspiracy, to help churches urge a turn away from consumerism and toward the real meaning of Christmas. Now I urge everyone to pledge:

NO SHOPPING ON BLACK FRIDAY

until Target and WalMart and the other big box retailers give their employees a break on Thanksgiving. Some things are more important than shopping. Really.

I urge you to go to this website and sign the petition to Target to give their employees a break.

Now We Know

Occupy St. Louis

A Message to the people of Occupy St. Louis, inspired by Occupy Wall Street:

I’ve been saying for at least 10 years that we need to make the tax system more fair — so that rich people pay their fair share and so that governments have enough funds to provide essential services such as education and police protection.
But what I heard on TV and radio and the reader entries in online news forums was that few people agreed with me. I suspected that the Tea Party was as much a media creation as a real movement. I suspected that those of us on the left (who can spell our signs correctly) were not getting our opinions across effectively.
NOW WE KNOW…hundreds of thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds agree that we need to take our country back from the rich fat cats who are stealing our wages, robbing our 401Ks, illegally foreclosing on our houses and oppressing us at every turn.
NOW WE KNOW…because people took to the streets and parks in non-violent, non-strident ways, simply standing there, sitting there, erecting a tent or bringing a sleeping bag.
NOW WE KNOW…that the media can no longer ignore our message and our opinions, even if many of the tents have been folded.
NOW WE KNOW…just how strong our numbers are. Because for every person who slept in a tent, there were 10 or more people like me — who can’t sleep on the ground, can’t spend all our time in a park, but who came to an Occupy site every sunny afternoon and who support the Occupy cause and the voices of those willing to stand in for us.
NOW WE KNOW. And we will not forget. Not this month, not next year.

Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

Scripture:  Exodus 17:1-7,  Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:23-32

Sermon preached at Epiphany UCC, St. Louis on Sept. 25, 2011

Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

One of the things I love about reading the Bible is the realization that people haven’t changed all that much. From the time of Moses, through the days Jesus walked among us, to today, human nature has been pretty consistent.

Take the Israelites, for instance. The passage we read today occurs after the plagues that forced the Egyptians to release the Israelites; after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and the Egyptian soldiers drowned; after God showed Moses how to sweeten bitter water; after God fed the people with manna and quail. The people have had ample demonstration that God is guiding Moses to provide for God’s chosen people.

But the very next time they have a need and do not see an immediate remedy, they forget what God has done through Moses and they accuse Moses of bringing them into the wilderness to die of thirst.

Can you blame Moses for asking God, “What shall I do with this people? They’re ready to stone me!”

We can do a 180 and look at the story from an ordinary Israelite’s point of view, and Moses and Aaron come off as not always dependable, especially after that euphoric moment when they crossed the sea and their enemies were stopped. Once they were in the wilderness, the people didn’t get these miracles until they complained long and loud about Moses’ leadership. You notice Moses didn’t ask for God’s help until the people were ready to stone him. Who’s the stubborn one?

Figuring out the best way to lead and the best way to follow has been a problem for humanity since the dawn of time. I used to think of history as a continuum of progress, human beings learning from their ancestors and predecessors, aided by the spread of wisdom through written, as well as oral, communication.

But in the 21st century, we’re still dealing with the same struggles. A traditionalist would call it sin. A psychologist would call it the human condition. Today, in our American society, we’d call it, “just politics.”

How do people act as “a people” to meet their needs and how do leaders lead them? How do we all follow God’s will to accomplish that?

That’s why I cherish the UCC slogan, “God is still speaking.” God is still speaking through these scriptures, because we’re still having the same kind of problems. And God is still speaking through people like Moses and the writer of Matthew and Paul and the people to whom he sent his letters. And people like us.

Lets take the Matthew passage. The chief priests who question Jesus’s authority have based their own authority on an assertion very similar to statements made by Moses and Aaron:  That is, when you complain to us about our leadership, you are really complaining about God.

That’s why I was so intrigued by the decision of the lectionary folks to pair the Exodus and Matthew scriptures in the same week’s reading. In Exodus, Moses and Aaron ARE God’s instruments. In Matthew, the priests only THINK they are God’s instruments, or maybe they know they’re not, which is why they’re so touchy about Jesus.

In both passages, the question is “by what authority do you do these things?”   In the words of the Israelites in Exodus, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Or other ways of asking it, “Are your words and actions from God or not?” “Should we listen to you or follow your leadership as having God’s authority or not?”

We readers of the Matthew story have the advantage of knowing the rest of the story. When the priests challenged Jesus, we know they were challenging God as directly as any person ever could. But they didn’t know that. They seemed quite certain of their own authority. They probably felt confident they could trace their lineage straight back to Aaron himself, even though plenty of people then and now would say they were lackeys hand-picked by the Romans.

In fact, Jesus (and Matthew, in the telling of it) turns their question of authority right back on them. He asks them about the source of the authority of John the Baptist.
The description of the chief priests’ and elders’ dilemma brings another element into the question:  The crowd. The people have already determined for themselves that John’s baptism and his authority are from God. If the priests dismiss his actions as not from God, they’re afraid of what the crowd will do.

The crowd. Jesus describes the followers of John — and by implication the followers of Jesus himself — as tax collectors and prostitutes. Isn’t it amazing that these powerful chief priests, appointed by the Roman emperor or his agents, would be afraid of tax collectors and prostitutes?  Kinda reminds you of the people who were about to stone Moses if he didn’t ask God to find some water, doesn’t it?

OK, so how does anyone determine that a leader who professes to speak for God really is speaking for God? Jesus gives us a pretty good benchmark with his parable of the two sons. One says he won’t do his father’s will, but then changes his mind and goes and does it. The other is very respectful of his father and says the right thing. But he doesn’t do it.

If the question had been, “which son has shown the proper respect for his father?” some people would take the words at face value, especially if they were spoken in public, or, say, on TV. They would say the second son showed the proper respect.

But Jesus didn’t ask about how things appeared, or what the motivation was of the two sons. He asked which son did what the father wanted done.

We’re locked into just such a contrast at the moment. We hear a lot of politicians and other opinion leaders saying they honor God and are speaking for God, but their actions do not match their words. Jesus tells us, in this Matthew passage, that the actions are what counts. And even those without honor — prostitutes and tax collectors — can tell the difference between the empty rhetoric of the chief priests and elders and the message of John and Jesus.

I’ll read that part again where Jesus says to the chief priests:  “For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

Notice the translation is not “believe IN him.” But just “believe him.” John’s message was to repent, because another one greater than he was coming. The priests didn’t believe it. The people did, especially the people who had little or no power and no honor or respect in society. They saw and they believed and they changed. And they “are going into the kingdom of God” before the chief priests.

Are going. I used to interpret such passages as indicating they’ll go to heaven after they die. But Jesus is talking in the present tense, not after they die. Right here, right now. They’re going right now into the kingdom, which Jesus said was “at hand.”

That has been an evolving understanding for me, that the kingdom of God is here right now. Not completely — for if it were all accomplished, we would not be praying to God every week, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

But in those instances where God’s will is being done, God’s kingdom is there — that day in the temple with the chief priests disputing with Jesus as the crowd looks on, as well as here today, when, despite sin and the human condition and “just politics,” when people manage to do God’s will.

In those instances, the answer to the Israelites’ question of, “Is God here among us or not?” The answer is, “Yes. God is among us.” we are going into the kingdom.

Paul, in his letter to the people at Philippi, gives us some more clues on how to judge who has God’s authority and how God is acting among us.

If the peope have  “any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy,” they will show it by “having the same love [as Jesus].” They will be “in full accord and of one mind.” They will  “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than themselves.”

In the kingdom of God, each person “looks not to his or her own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Here is the perfect description of doing God’s will, of demonstrating “God among us”:

Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
You want to know the one whose authority comes from God? Look for the person who does not exploit the name of God, but accepts the servanthood of others, who looks to the welfare of others before his or her own power and honor and glory.

I find one glaring irony resulting from this passage about Paul’s understanding of Jesus and God’s kingdom:  that in such close proximity to an expression of awe at Jesus’s humility — that he emptied himself — some demagogues take the next description of honoring Jesus as a demand that all people bow their knees to one single (and not necessarily accurate) understanding of the statement that “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Sometimes I fear that such people who are so certain of their own authority — and their own interpretation of Christianity –  are more like the chief
priests and the elders in Matthew than they are Moses or Jesus or Paul.

When we see someone who does nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regards others as better than themselves, someone who looks not to his or her own interests, but to the interests of others, then we see, in the words of Paul, “God who is at work in that person enabling that someone both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.”

Then we can say, “yes, the Lord is among us,” right here, right now, in the kingdom of God.

Praise God. Amen.