Junk food for the spirit

Over the years, my test for whether something is of God or isn't has gotten to be very simple. It is Galatians 5:22-23. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." If something emenates from the will of God, it doesn't have to bring all of these fruits at once-but it should bring health to the Body of Christ and to the world. I have a tough time seeing where either the death of Saddam Hussein or a planned surge of troops in Iraq gives us either justice or an end to the bad fruits of the Iraq war. As Shane Claiborne points out in the editorial borrowed from Jim Wallis's blog below, redemptive violence is a myth-junk food for the spirit, which leaves us starving for bread-and under all of our fiery bluster, a little ashamed.
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From God's Politics - a blog by Jim Wallis and friends

Thursday, January 04, 2007
Shane Claiborne: Communicating Through a Noose
"What do you think of that man?" the old guy asked in a raspy voice as I settled in next to him on the plane. He pointed to the face of Saddam Hussein on the front of his newspaper with a headline story of the looming execution. I gathered myself, and prepared for what could turn out to be a rather chatty plane ride. I replied gently, "I think that man needs some love." And the rather boisterous gentleman sat still, perhaps not exactly the response he predicted. Then he said pensively, "Hmmmm. I think you're right..." And finally, he whispered in a forlorn tone, "And it is hard to communicate love through a noose."

Sometimes we just need permission to say, "It's not okay to kill someone to show everyone how much we hate killing." As Christian artist Derek Webb sings, " Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication. It's like saying murder is wrong and showing them by way of execution." I am encouraged by how many Christians I hear voicing an alternative to the myth of redemptive violence in light of the recent killing of Saddam, folks who love Jesus and have the unsettling feeling that Jesus loves evildoers so much he died for them, for us. I have heard many evangelicals who see Saddam's execution as the ultimate act of hopelessness and faithlessness – after all it is humanity stepping in to make the final judgment, that this human created in God's image is beyond redemption. And for those who believe in hell, executing someone who may not yet know of the love and grace of Christ is doubly offensive.

It is rather scandalous to think that we have a God who loves murderers and terrorists like Saul of Tarsus, Osama bin Laden, or Sadaam Hussein – but that is the "good news" isn't it? It's the old eye for an eye thing that gets us. But the more I've studied the Hebrew Scriptures the more I am convinced that this was just a boundary for people who lashed back. As the young exodus people are trying to discover a new way of living outside the empire, God made sure there were some boundaries, like if someone breaks your are, you cannot go back and break their arm and their leg. If someone kills hundreds of your people, you cannot kill 160,000 of theirs.
We've learned the eye for an eye thing all too well. A shock and awe bombing leads to a shock and awe beheading. A Pearl Harbor leads to a Hiroshima. A murder leads to an execution. A rude look leads to a cold shoulder. An eye for an eye we have indeed heard before and learned its logic all too well. But Jesus comes declaring in his State of the Union Sermon on the Mount address (Matthew 5): "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'" but there is a another way. No wonder Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people "did not know the things that make for peace."

Gandhi and King used to say, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world blind" (and with dentures). The gospels tell the story of a group of people who have dragged forward an adulteress and are ready to stone her (this was the legal consequence). Jesus is asked for his support of this death penalty case. His response is this... "You are all adulterers. If you have looked at someone lustfully, you have committed adultery in your heart." And the people drop their stones and walk away with their heads bowed. We want to kill the murderers, and Jesus says to us: "You are all murderers. If you have called your neighbor 'Raca, Fool' you are guilty of murder in your heart." Again the stones drop. We are all murderers and adulterers and terrorists. And we are all precious.

When we have new eyes we can look into the faces of those we don't even like, and see the One we love. We can see God's image in everyone we encounter. As Henri Nouwen puts it: "In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile." We are made of the same dust. We cry the same tears. No one is beyond redemption and no one is beyond repute. And that is when we are free to imagine a revolution that sets both the oppressed and the oppressors free. The world is starving for grace. And grace is hard to communicate with a noose.
Shane Claiborne is a founding partner of The Simple Way Community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in Kensington, North Philadelphia. He is a Red Letter Christian and the author of The Irresistible Revolution.
posted by God's Politics @ 10:22 AM Permalink

A President and The Great Commandment

"In his homily, Episcopal minister Robert G. Certain touched on the fractious debate in the church over homosexual relationships, and said Ford thought the issue should not be splitting Episcopalians. Certain was Ford's pastor at St. Margaret's Church in Palm Desert, Calif.
"He asked me if we would face schism after we discussed the various issues we would consider, particularly concerns about human sexuality and the leadership of women," Certain said. "He said that he did not think they should be divisive for anyone who lived by the great commandments and the great commission to love God and to love neighbor" The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 3, 2006 President Gerald Ford, who died last week, seems like an anachronism in our age of "take no prisoner politics." He was, according to those who knew him well, an unassuming, decent man with a deep desire to bring healing to a country that was mired in the legacy of a failed war and a conspiracy, Watergate, driven by paranoia and fear. A man of great courage, a Yale graduate and a football hero, Jerry Ford was a public servant in a way that seems old-fashioned in these years of destructive Congressional partisanship. Although it has now become obvious. for example, that he disapproved of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, he chose not to speak out while he was alive-but seems to have been aware of the need to set the historical record straight. His pardon of President Nixon is still controversial in a nation which reveres justice and the rule of law-but it is evident that the man who did it was impelled by a strong sense that he was called to model forgiveness to a nation that sorely needed to experience cleansing. It was wonderful to see President Carter give a eulogy in Michigan today before Gerald Ford was laid to rest near his Presidential Library. Carter and Ford remind us that finding common ground with those across the political aisle strengthens this country when it is rent by division. But, as Carter showed us this afternoon when he echoed the words above, they also show us something else-that it is possible to be a professing Christian and a politician without becoming an exhibitionist or a partisan. Ford's words about his denomination, the Episcopalians, might seem very naive to those who have taken sides on the left or the right of this ruinous campaign for victory in the great Anglican shell game. But, in the most basic sense, he and Carter are absolutely correct-if we loved each other, and God, with humility and trust, we would not be so divided. One of the saddest things about the ongoing friction in the Episcopal Church is that it would be extremely unlikely, under these conditions, to produce another Gerald Ford-the country's good servant, to paraphrase Sir Thomas More-but God's first.

Thank you for the kind words

I want to say a warm "thank you" to all of the "Rev Gals" who have welcomed me to their 'blog circle. I look forward to reading your blogs and getting to know you better. Here's to a wonderful year-may the Incarnate Word lead us in paths of grace-and give us guidance, companions and bandaids when we stumble.

Living in Sin

Parenting younger children at bedtime requires a great deal of vigilance-but its also the time when our energy is at its lowest. Did I mutter that exhortation about the teeth or did I say it clearly? Heck, did I even say it to anyone but myself...or did it fall into the chain of commands that usually includes "usesoaphangthetowelsputyourclothesinthehamper"...Well, you know what I mean. Sometimes I think I've said something to Colin or Sian-but I'm truly not sure I've said it to anyone. All of that being said (or not said) the most frustrating moments with your kids may be the ones where they hear what you say-and choose to do something different. I have a mantra I use with Colin before he gets into the bathtub: "Make sure you wash your hair..with soap!" But it wasn't until he came into the kitchen for his evening glass of milk that I noticed his hair was almost bone dry. He knew he should have washed it-I struggled to understand why he didn't wash it. "I don't know" he confessed, putting his arms around my recalcitrant waist. After getting over my annoyance, I went into his bedroom, turned off his light, and threw my arms around him. Then I told him about St. Paul-the man who told us about doing the things we didn't want to do and not doing the things we should do. That's called sin, I told him. He reflected a moment-then Colin Paul Evans said cheerfully-"That's why my middle name is Paul!" Maybe all of us should have the middle name Paul...to honor the disciple who had the humility to name his condition, and the insight to seek the only doctor who could cure it.

Justice upon injustice

Bob Murphy, the senior vice president of ABC News, said the network planned to interrupt whatever program was being broadcast to report the news of the execution in the form of a brief report. “I suspect there will be some form of video released that will confirm the death for the Iraqi people,” Mr. Murphy said. ABC will “fulfill our obligations as journalists in documenting the event,” he said. But he emphasized, “We will absolutely not go too far in showing graphic images. Taste and propriety are the two key guidelines." New York Times December 28, 2006 This comment by a network executive seems oddly, even touchingly naive, in the face of the total lack of taste or propriety around the impending execution of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator. While reading some articles on knowledge management and business tonight I said a couple of silent prayers for his soul...and, with more enthusiasm, for the souls of the tens of thousands of people he had killed. His death amidst the backdrop of this awful war, raises more issues than it answers. There is some question (well, many questions) about the way his trial was conducted. In allowing the trial to be conducted in ways that raised questions about the defendant's rights, the Iraqi courts lost a chance to show themselves significantly better than they were under the dictator. His death will most likely provoke more violence on the part of the Sunni minority-another marker of the lack of planning that has made this war a model for failed revolutions. I don't happen to believe that capital punishment provides true justice for the death victims or heals the suffering of the living. In this case, it will probably just spark the deaths of more innocents-is there some kind of moral or Biblical justification for that?Then there is the gruesome manner of Husseins' death-hanging someone in this day and age seems like a means of death that ought to be consigned to a century when people were also burned alive at the stake. "Why don't they draw and quarter him and put his head on a spike outside the city?"I asked my dad tonight. He responded, with a bit of gallows humor, that perhaps no one had thought about suggesting it. But the manner of Saddam Hussein's death may be the most realistic touch in this tragedy-providing the warlords their bloodbath and intermission, but no real finale.

Chocolate cake and a whole lot more

This is a little parable about chocolate cake-but, like all the best parables, it's actually about a whole lot more than flour, butter, sugar, eggs and...oh (the best part) icing. For some reason (Sian, a creative child with Attention Deficit, is easily bored) my daughter decided to bake a cake this morning at her dad's house. No matter that he had already made his fabulous Christmas cake, a confection rife with fruit, brandy and marzipan icing. Near that cake sat a bag of mom's pfferneuse cookies-so what? Fulfilling her own inner urge to create, Sian got out the ingredients for a decadent confection-with the odd exception of the icing, which she insisted her father buy at the grocery store! No wonder, then, that the first item her dad put in my car when I met him was half of the cake. Those of you who know me, and now those who don't, will know that there is no need for anyone to give me candy and cake-I am perfectly capable of going to the grocery store myself. But even I have my limits. Quickly I began to plot-what neighborhood children could be invited over tomorrow? How about palming some off on Aunt Heidi when we meet her for the musical in Philadelphia in the evening? When Colin began to ponder his dessert choices, I quickly suggested a slice of cake. But when he got Sian's permission to have a slice, it came with a significant condition: the he tell her whether whether it was good. Realizing we didn't have a large window of time, I asked him what he planned to tell her. "If not good, I won't tell her," Colin said. "If it is good, I'll tell her." As he stuck his fork in and prepared to taste, he prayed "Please make this cake good." And something graceful occured, for certain-for when Sian came in for the verdict, my uncannily wise little boy gave her a big hug and said "If the cake were a person, I'd marry her." Squirming out of his embrace, his older sister looked embarrassed...and pleased. Not that she would admit it-after all, who relishes compliments from a little brother? One slice down...only ten more to go.

Through a glass brightly

From today's NYT-the tale of a poor, radical, quixotic man of God who changed the world-and could change it more still if we were open to letting him do more than talk silently to birds and squirrels in gardens. The words of the saints both expand our worlds-and expose our limitations to the core.

December 25, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
The Peaceful Crusader
By THOMAS CAHILL
AMID all the useless bloodshed of the Crusades, there is one story that suggests an extended clash of civilizations between Islam and the West was not preordained. It concerns the early 13th-century friar Francis of Assisi, who joined the Fifth Crusade not as a warrior but as a peacemaker.
Francis was no good at organization or strategy and he knew it. He accepted the men and women who presented themselves as followers, befriended them and shared the Gospel with them. But he gave them little else. He expected them to live like him: rejecting distinctions of class, forgoing honors of church or king or commune, taking the words of Jesus literally, owning nothing, suffering for God’s sake, befriending every outcast — leper, heretic, highwayman — thrust in their path.
Francis was not impressed by the Crusaders, whose sacrilegious brutality horrified him. They were entirely too fond of taunting and abusing their prisoners of war, who were often returned to their families minus nose, lips, ears or eyes.
In Francis’ view, judgment was the exclusive province of the all-merciful God; it was none of a Christian’s concern. True Christians were to befriend all yet condemn no one. Give to others, and it shall be given to you, forgive and you shall be forgiven, was Francis’ constant preaching. “May the Lord give you peace” was the best greeting one could give to all one met. It compromised no one’s dignity and embraced every good; it was a blessing to be bestowed indiscriminately. Francis bestowed it on people named George and Jacques and on people named Osama and Saddam. Such an approach, in an age when the most visible signs of the Christian religion were the wars and atrocities of the red-crossed crusaders, was shockingly otherworldly and slyly effective.
Symbolic gesture, Francis’ natural language, was a profound source he called on throughout his life. In one of its most poignant expressions, Francis sailed across the Mediterranean to the Egyptian court of al-Malik al-Kamil, nephew of the great Saladin who had defeated the forces of the hapless Third Crusade. Francis was admitted to the august presence of the sultan himself and spoke to him of Christ, who was, after all, Francis’ only subject.
Trying to proselytize a Muslim was cause for on-the-spot decapitation, but Kamil was a wise and moderate man, who was deeply impressed by Francis’ courage and sincerity and invited him to stay for a week of serious conversation. Francis, in turn, was deeply impressed by the religious devotion of the Muslims, especially by their five daily calls to prayer; it is quite possible that the thrice-daily recitation of the Angelus that became current in Europe after this visit was precipitated by the impression made on Francis by the call of the muezzin (just as the quintessential Catholic devotion of the rosary derives from Muslim prayer beads).
It is a tragedy of history that Kamil and Francis were unable to talk longer, to coordinate their strengths and form an alliance. Had they been able to do so, the phrase “clash of civilizations” might be unknown to our world.
Francis went back to the Crusader camp on the Egyptian shore and desperately tried to convince Cardinal Pelagius Galvani, whom Pope Honorius III had put in charge of the Crusade, that he should make peace with the sultan, who, despite far greater force on his side, was all too ready to do so. But the cardinal had dreams of military glory and would not listen. His eventual failure, amid terrible loss of life, brought the age of the crusades to its inglorious end.
Donald Spoto, one of Francis of Assisi’s most recent biographers, rightly calls Francis “the first person from the West to travel to another continent with the revolutionary idea of peacemaking.” As a result of his inability to convince Cardinal Pelagius, however, Francis saw himself as a failure. Like his model, Jesus of Nazareth, Francis was an extremist. But his failure is still capable of bearing new fruit.
Islamic society and Christian society have been generally bad neighbors now for nearly 14 centuries, eager to misunderstand each other, often borrowing culturally and intellectually from each other without ever bestowing proper credit. But as Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth, has written, almost as if he was thinking of Kamil and Francis, “Those who are confident of their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faiths of others. ... There are, surely, many ways of arriving at this generosity of spirit and each faith may need to find its own.” We stand in desperate need of contemporary figures like Kamil and Francis of Assisi to create an innovative dialogue. To build a future better than our past, we need, as Rabbi Sacks has put it, “the confidence to recognize the irreducible, glorious dignity of difference.”
May the Lord give you peace.
Thomas Cahill is the author of “Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art From the Cults of Catholic Europe.”