Please pray and please help

At 4:31 in the morning of Martin Luther King Day, January 17, 1994 my world shook. That's when the Northridge Earthquake hit Southern California. My wife and I were teaching at Los Angeles Lutheran Jr/Sr High School. Her parents were visiting us that weekend and staying with us in our tiny apartment in Sylmar, CA.

Our apartment was shaken off it's foundation. By the next day we'd realize we were temporarily homeless. I'd never been through even a mild quake before. I held on to the bed for dear life. Seconds seemed like an eternity. I was frantically reciting the Lord's Prayer. We assumed this was "the BIG one." I wondered if it was the end of the world or a nuclear war.

As we struggled to find each other and leave the apartment building we heard the constant crunch of broken glass from windows, mirrors, picture frames and dishes. When we returned to salvage our belongings later, we saw that what kept our bare feet from being bloodied were the layers of books that had fallen from shelves and covered the shards of glass.

The four of us sat in our underwear under blankets on the curb. Frightened neighbors smoked cigarettes to settle their nerves, but this frightened us because we could smell the gas leaking from severed pipes and watched as a fire blazed on the hill across the highway from us.
I remember that one of the things that made me realize the magnitude of the destruction was the fact that we could hear and see sirens of emergency and police vehicles and helicopters but that none of them ever stopped at our apartment complex. The pool had been emptied by the jolt. There were frequent after shocks where you could literally see the asphalt roll and the buildings sway.
God got us through and as stressful as the next year, including the post traumatic stress was, we now look at it as a time when He was forging our faith.

Our quake was said to be a 6.8, though many accounts vary from 6.4 to 8.0. I can not imagine what it was like for the people of Japan to go through a 9.0!
This morning, my mother forwarded a prayer request from the K-12 school I attended growing up. Because of my own experience with an earthquake, you can imagine that I had to post it here. What follows is the forwarded email and the notes which I included when I posted it on our church's website.

From: Julia Perry-Clark, Christ Lutheran School, Phoenix, AZ Sent:Friday, March 11, 2011 10:07 AM 

Dear Friends of our Japanese family of Urawa Lutheran School;
May the God of protection surround them now as they are remaining at the ULS campus following the powerful earthquake that struck  Friday at 2:46 PM.  Mr. Hodgson and I reached the school about an hour ago, 12:30 AM their time and we spoke directly with Miss Ishii and she shared that all of the students and faculty are still at school and not allowed to leave. Please keep them all in your prayers today.  We will call them again later to check in.Please pass this prayer request on  to your circle of family and friends.May God use this time in a powerful way as the Christian community at ULS reaches out to all of the students and faculty in the name of Jesus.

In Christ,Julia Perry-Clark

Dear Members of St. John, Charter Oak- 


I attended CLS growing up in Phoenix. Bill Hodgson was one of my junior high school teachers and one of the reasons I became a teacher. Please pray for Bill and Julia, for ULS and for all of the thousands of families that have been effected by this tragic disaster in Japan.


Christ's servant,
Ted Mallory


Here is a downloadable bulletin insert to help churches wishing to support LCMS relief efforts in Japan: http://bit.ly/gU6m0j

If you would like to support the people of Japan through Lutheran World Relief, please send your donation to:
Lutheran World Relief - Japan Earthquake/Tsunami
P.O. Box 17061
Baltimore, MD 21298-9832
USA

Or, click here to make a secure gift online. Be sure to designate it "Japan Earthquake/Tsunami"

Religious leader loved enemies, prayed, taught, stood for grace

Originally published in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper & Schleswig Leader, Thursday, March 15, 2007 

Once upon a time, in the ‘Dark Ages’ there was a Christian family living near the coast of Britain in an outpost of the dying Roman empire. This family included a young boy by the name of Patrick. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

Legend has it that he was kidnapped by a band of barbarians, Celtic barbarians. Did you happen to see “Barbarians Week” on the History Channel? Great stuff. The Celts made some great swords, they beat iron into steel... but I digress.

The Celts, known for their pagan worship of tree spirits, took Patrick for a slave. Among his other duties, he was taught fishing and shepherding. During his long hours watching sheep, he spent a lot of time talking to God. Some people call that prayer.

It was an odd thing because he wasn’t mistreated too badly as a slave, as a matter of fact, he became very fond of the people he served and had compassion for them. How about that? Sounds crazy. Actually, it sounds a little bit like something Jesus once said, what was that? Oh yeah, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)
But the shepherd slave boy did miss his family. Legend has it that he promised God that he would become a priest if He let him somehow escaped.

Sure enough, (you knew where this was going, didn’t you?) sure enough, Patrick escaped and became a priest. Eventually he volunteered to return to the people who had kidnapped him and became the first serious Christian missionary to Ireland.

Now the legends say that Ireland was being plagued with snakes. In a story that was part Moses and part Pied Piper, Patrick was supposed to have led all the snakes into the sea.

Truth is never as exciting, but sometimes just as important as fiction. Geologists and biologists suspect that there never were snakes in Ireland to begin with, yet archaeologists have found lots of images of snakes there. Well, scholars have two thoughts on the snake thing.

One is that snakes and serpent-like dragons were used in much of pagan Celtic designs. The Celts had at one time dominated most of Europe and eventually settled in the British Isles, so they surely would’ve seen plenty of snakes beyond Ireland. At any rate, some historians think that Patrick’s evangelism was so successful and spreading the Word of Jesus, that he symbolically drove out the snakes by overcoming the ancient spirit and nature worship.
The other theory is that he drove the snakes out symbolically by teaching the truth and overcoming a popular heresy of his time, Pelagianism.

Pelagius was a monk, supposedly from Ireland, who taught that the human will, along with good deeds and self-denial, was enough to be considered righteous. He told his people that being good was all you needed for salvation. To him, the grace of God was just a booster; a help, but not necessarily essential. Pelagius didn’t believe in “original sin,” but thought that Adam had just set bad example, rather than condemning us all to perpetual state of selfishness and short-sightedness. He also thought that Christ’s good example showed us the path to salvation, not by His sacrifice on the cross, but through self control.

Because of the whole Adam and Eve being tempted by the serpent in the garden imagery, this false doctrine of Pelagianism was often represented by snakes.

Whether God miraculously used him to save Ireland from literal snakes or just from “snakes in the grass,” you can understand why Patrick became a national hero.

Perhaps his most important contribution was his helping people overcome their confusion about the Trinity. He used the shamrock, the three leafed clover, to explain how God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and yet only one being, only one God.

Patrick’s success at converting the Irish people to Christianity upset the Celtic Druid priests and chieftains. They had him arrested several times, but he escaped every time. He established monasteries and set up schools and churches all over the emerald isle.

After thirty years in ministry he retired to County Down, where died on March 17, 461 A.D. That day has been commemorated as St. Patrick’s Day ever since.

No historians have been able to find any evidence that Patrick himself ever tried green beer.

Door Matts #3- How do you find peace? Stop fighting it- duh!

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~Matthew 11:28-30

I've already figured out that it will be pretty unrealistic for me to think I could write full-blown essays on different parts of the book of Matthew for the next 40 days- too much life interfering, to many worries, to many responsibilities, deadlines, schedules, pressures etc. etc.

Maybe you can relate. But in the middle of all this torrent, God reminded me of something He's told me over and over again. To stop, to “Be still, and know that I am God; " Psalm 46:10

He was trying to tell me yesterday too, I'm reading Chinese church leader Watchman Nee's 'Sit, Walk, Stand.' As the title suggests, the whole first chapter is about bing still and not doing but just being. This isn't just a reflection of Eastern philosophy, this means resting in Christ's accomplishments and His victory. "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" ~Ephesians 2:6

Today I was especially anxious about a variety of different stresses. On the drive in to work I was nervously spinning from one radio station to another, not able to listen to the daily news about high oil prices, the struggling economy, political unrest in the Middle East and political polarization here at home. Eventually I landed on Charles Swindoll's show, Insight for Living. Whatever I might say about his mega-church and media empire- whenever I've heard him teaching, he has taught God's Word.

This morning he was talking about one of my favorite parts of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, but for whatever reason, he deviated a bit from Matthew 5 to Jesus promise in Matthew 11.

He explained that the Greek word for "gentle" that Jesus uses here is the same used on horses that have been domesticated (broke). Surely an analogy that a Texan like Swindoll can appreciate. His point was that like a trained horse, Jesus retains all of the power and strength, but unlike a wild mustang, He also has self-control.

If we can't handle our load, it may just be because we're working too hard, we want to do things OUR way and we want to be in control. We aren't humble or gentle, we're proud and maybe just flailing about recklessly. When things go bad, we feel like we're spiraling out of control. But He has already gone through the worst stress and survived. He has already defeated every possible enemy and won.

If we will just calm down and trust Him to help us carry our worries and our woes, guess what? He will teach us His ways and He will get us through whatever we're going through. Our problems are temporary but He is eternal.

And, if instead of undertaking a behemoth hermetical study of a two or three chapters worth of of teaching, we decide just to share how He used a few short verses to work in a real and practical way in your life... He can turn that into a whole long essay and not merely a pithy quote. It's crazy, it's like multiplying bread and fish. It's not what we can do alone with difficulty- it's what He can do with us easily, if we'll just be humble and calm and trust in Him.

Me ka pule,

Pirate Ted

Ash Wednesday

For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears ~Psalm 102:9


Every Ash Wednesday I want to write something very profound and reflective. I like to read T.S. Elliot's poem, 'Ash Wednesday,' and I miss attending morning chapel services either at Concordia University, Nebraska or at Los Angeles Lutheran Jr/Sr High.

At Concordia, you almost felt Catholic. You were part of the eons old ritual of this first day of the season of reflection, repentance and sacrifice that is Lent, preparing your mind and heart to receive Christ again on Easter. 

Of course (as I sit here listening to Gregorian chants from the Netherlands on http://www.concertzender.nl) it occurs to me that being so self-indulgently melodramatic about basking in tradition and identification may actually be a little antithetical to what Lent is really all about.

What I loved about our "contemporary" youth-oriented rituals at Lutheran High is how deeply meaningful and practical they were. Ash Wednesday was a powerful object lesson. Many churches will save the palm fronds from the previous year's Palm Sunday services and use them to make the ashes that their pastors use to mark parishioners' heads with the sign of the cross. 

What we did at Lutheran High was more interactive. John Imme, our Spanish teacher and pastor of an interracial church in nearby Lake View Terrace spoke to the students about how sin is anything that impedes or interferes with our relationship with God. Sin can also damage or destroy our relationships with others and that ultimately, whether through guilt, or self-destructive choices, sin erodes our sense of self and as the Bible says, leads to death. 

Then he encouraged everyone to write down those sins which we asked God to help us be freed from. Everyone was to fold these strips of paper tightly, share them with no one else, and put them in an offering plate. Then Stan Dobler and Al Ludtke, the Religion teachers would take the papers outside behind the school and burn them all.

John explained that on Good Friday, Jesus Himself was the ultimate sacrificial burnt offering that paid the price for our sins. That with the resurrection on Easter Sunday our freedom from sin, death, and the Devil was won and that now our sins are as far from us as the East is from the West.

The ashes were then brought back into the chapel. John explained that Jesus gave up His very life for us, in response to that love, many Christians chose to sacrifice something during Lent, as a show of appreciation and as a way to remind themselves of how much He sacrificed for us. Then, they used those ashes, the burnt sins, for marking student's foreheads with the cross.

May the God of Easter, bless you this Ash Wednesday, renew you, and help you grow deeper in your relationship with Him and your service to others. 

Me ka pule,

Pirate Ted

Door Matts #2- A Jew in the IRS and a swashbuckling Italian

THIS TIME I actually wrote something, instead of just starting a draft and accidentally letting Blogger post it with nothing but the picture and the Bible verse. Hope it was worth the wait. Happy Fat Tuesday fellow pirates! Once Mardi Gras is over, I hope you'll visit here for some spiritual feeding throughout Lent.

This Lent I'm trying to write a series of essays on the Gospel of Matthew, I call them "Door Matts," because it's the first book in the New Testament, it's sort of the welcome mat, the gateway-drug, if you will, into Christianity. These may not go in any particular order. Hopefully, we'll dig up plenty of pirate's treasure as we weigh anchor and delve into the headwaters of God's living waters!

Matthew 9:9-13
9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Ya gotta love this. Michelangelo Caravaggio was the most famous painter in Italy in the early 1600's. He had a reputation as a passionate, short tempered playboy who got in lots of fights and plenty of trouble with the cops. Lots of mystery surrounds his death, a fugitive on the lamb for accident;y killing someone, he is said to have succumb to wounds received in a sword fight while hiking a long way seeking pardon and protection from some religious leader of some kind.

Fascinating as his personal life is, I'm more fascinated with Caravaggio's paintings (of course as a high school Art teacher I would be). He used powerful dark backgrounds like his Dutch contemporary Rembrant. This is called "tenebreaism," from the Latin "Tenebre," for dark (like Good Friday Tenebre service). This way, his subjects were lit in a focused, almost theatrical way. This contrast made for extremely dramatic scenes.

He was also known for his gritty realism. Other painters gingerly flattered their subjects, especially in religious paintings; David as big as Goliath, Mary young and attractive at Jesus' death, Apostles dignified and blemish-free. Caravaggio painted age, poverty, sweat, blood and dusty feet.

I love this painting of the calling of Levi (Matthew). Caravaggio made the tax collectors and officials in contemporary dress. Imagine Jesus in an IRS office, pointing over the cubicles to Matthew in his button down shirt and tie, talking with colleagues over by the Xerox machine. As I understand it, this made this painting somewhat controversial at the time. Today we just think it's corny because first century Palestinian Jews are dressed like 17th Century European dandies, at the time it was really edgy.

Instead of angels and cherubs coming down from Heaven onto Matthew, Caravaggio simply uses the daylight from a window behind Jesus to follow his gaze and arm to an incredulous Levi. The tax collector has a strange look on his face like "Me? You want ME to be Your disciple? Are you NUTS? What could you possibly want with somebody like me?"

But exactly Matt, Jesus didn't come for those goody-goody Pharisees who are so pious and perfect that they don't think they need God. He came for the rest of us, as Grace the secretary in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' might say, He came for "the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."

Was Matthew a sell-out to the Romans? Was he greedy or corrupt? Was he a nerdy, bean-counting accountant? Of the four Gospels, his is the one most aimed at Jewish readers. As someone who collected taxes for Herod the regional tetrarch he was probably resented by his own people.

Yet Jesus chose him. Jesus chose him to follow him and to tell His story, first to those very people who resented him, then to all of us. His is the first name Sunday School kids memorize when they have to learn the books of the New Testament.

You have to love Matthew's response to being called, he throws Jesus a party at his house- and he invites his friends so that they can meet Jesus too! Shouldn't we all be like that? That's when the religious leaders threw a huff. "Well, Jesus can't be trusted or respected as a spiritual teacher, look who he hangs out with!"

After Jesus ascension, tradition holds that Matthew stayed in and around Jerusalem for several years preaching to the Jews. Jewish Christians were sometimes called Nazarenes at that time. Later, he is believed to go down to Ethiopia like Phillip, Macedonia (Greece) and eventually up on to what is today Iran and possibly to where Pakistan and Turkmenistan are now. That makes some sense to me because he's often paired with Thomas, who was supposed to have gone all the way to India.

Misinterpretations

Here are just few church-words that I feel are woefully misinterpreted. It seems to me that if we used and understood these terms correctly, we would be less likely to be misled by mis-perceptions and/or false teachings.

• An "Apostle" is one who is sent out on a mission, not just 11 of the 12 guys in Jesus inner circle. If you believe and accept the Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20), then you too are, like the Blues Brothers, "on a mission from God."
• A "Prophet" is NOT somebody who foresees or predicts the future, that's something that sorcerers and soothsayers do (or pretend to do) and that's a form of divination, which God prohibits (Leviticus 19:26). REAL prophecy, simply put, is speaking God's Word or what He has revealed to you. Often, prophetic speaking is unpopular because God is having the prophets say something that people would rather not hear. When you look at the Old Testament prophets from Jonah to Jeremiah, Elijah to Zechariah,  many of them faced opposition but all of them spoke truth to power.
  
  You might've noticed that this one is part of the name of this website. I don't post malarkey about "the end-times" here, and many's the time when I've tried to challenge the popular assumptions in our culture and things I feel aren't authentically based on Scripture but are often presented as presumably "Christian." Mind you, I'm not great prophet and I don't pretend that every one of my opinions are God-breathed, but I am of the opinion that just as Jesus is out Prophet, Priest, and King- we too, His followers (disciples) have been given the mission (apostolic) to share His Word and His truths (prophets), intercede on behalf of others (priest), and set a positive example and/or step-up as servant-leaders (kings).
• Most people don't realize that "apocalypse" is a Greek word ( ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis) that means "lifting of the veil" or "revelation." That meant that it is a disclosure or revelation of something hidden from us by falsehood and misconception. So a prophet brings an apocalypse. Sure, eventually the ultimate apocalypse will be at Jesus' second coming, but I think it's a word that gets thrown around carelessly by people who either don't know what it means ("snow-pocalypse") or who want to scare people into accepting their version of Christianity (the apocalypse, armageddon, the rapture, the tribulation, etc.) Usually this comes from a tradition of special-dispensationalism which is a late 19th/early 20th century misinterpretation of Scripture that developed here in America but more often than not, it's a desperate tactic used by zealous believers who don't seem to have enough faith themselves to rely on grace and love, so they turn to fear and guilt for the leverage they think they need to convince people to become Christian.

I hope that this brief vocabulary lesson in religious jargon was apocalyptic for you!

Prayer for Transfiguration Sunday

"Lord,
transform our perceptions
with the purest light that shines,
and recast out life's intentions
to the shame of your designs
till we seek no other glory
that what lies past Calvary's hill
and our living
and our dying
and our rising
by Your will."

-Thomas H. Troger, 1994
'Swiftly Pass the Coulds of Glory'
Lutheran Service Book (LSB) #416

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will." ~Romans 12:1-2

Door Matts #1- We need to be doing for our brothers and sisters

³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’   ⁴⁰ “The King 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.’ ~Matthew 25:37-40

Not long ago I heard a radio personality criticizing the religious right in our country. He cited Jesus parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-40 and claimed that this was the one verse where Jesus explained how salvation is won. Well, thank God this pundit was wrong. 

We know that nothing we can do or fail to do will get us into heaven, it is only by believing in Jesus and what He did on the cross that we are saved (Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 10:9).

Be that as it may, genuine, sincere religion cares for the widows and orphans (James 1:27), it doesn't just say "yeah, I'm saved" and then go on being selfish and short-sighted. Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." and then in Matthew 19:21 He told the young religious scholar, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”


What does it mean to follow Jesus?


One of my big problems with contemporary Christianity is that we're just about identity, not about purpose. We say, "we're saved, they're not," and want to leave it at that. Jesus is our ticket to the afterlife, but if you consider Him a role model, an example, a teacher and any kind of a social reformer or revolutionary- well then, you're trivializing Him, you're missing the point- He's not those things, He's the very Son of God. He IS God. 


Well, yeah, but just because He didn't come to just shake things up, he came to die for my sins, doesn't have to mean that he can't also be a role model, a teacher and a leader too. Doe sit?


The guy on the radio was pointing out how hypocritical it is for those of us who call ourselves Christian to be absolutely incensed at the sin of abortion- calling for the protection of the rights of the unborn but shamefully complacent, ignorant and apathetic when it comes to the lives, living conditions, and rights of millions of poor and oppressed peoples after they've been born.


He was wrong about what the requirements for salvation are, but he was right about the fact that too often too many of us take the rest of humanity for granted. We assume that life is about accumulating stuff for ourselves and our immediate family and defending that stuff from other people who have no right to our stuff! And by God, the government had better keep it's hands of our stuff too! We forget that all that stuff, and all the other people, (and our own selves too- for that matter) all belong to God. 

Maybe a week later a student in one of my classes was explaining to someone how "everyone misinterprets John 3:16, that it doesn't really mean that God sent His son so that whoever believes in Him can be saved- that's too easy, no god in his right mind would do that!"

I couldn't believe my ears. Never had I more wished I was back in a parochial school instead of a public one so that I could preach, teach, and reach that mistaken kid. Again, it is nothing we do, nothing we ever could do, it is only by Jesus' suffering, His death, His resurrection by which we are saved.


But, again, this passionate teen did have one thing right. It's not enough to just be saved. Oh, don't get me wrong. I can not in any way shape or form EVER save myself. Only Jesus' grace IS sufficient for that. But Jesus doesn't want to be just our Savior. He wants to be our Lord too. As in "Lord AND Savior, Jesus Christ."


Yes, if deists and agnostic's perception of Jesus was all there was, we would be lost. But if we say be believe in Jesus and look forward to the afterlife but fail to follow His example in this life? What good is that? 


"You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." James 2:19. We could learn a lot by considering how those deists, agnostics, bleeding-hear do-gooders, and even how Buddhists, and so-called "socialists" perceive Jesus.


He told us not just to believe in Him, but to follow Him. So, what did Jesus do? Did He cheat on His taxes? Did He preemptively take out potential enemies? Did He spend His life defending his hard-earned possessions, His good name, and the positions of influence He'd achieved? Hell no! He gave it ALL away. He touched the untouchables, associated with the unacceptable, fed the hungry, healed the sick, loved the dispossessed, had compassion on the hurting, challenged the smug and arrogant, washed people's feet, and finally laid down His life.

It is a shame that some people follow His teachings and example, but don't really know Him personally. It's even more of a shame if they don't believe He came to save them. Pray that God will open their eyes.

But it is almost just as much a shame that so many of us believe in Him, but fail to follow where He trod, fail to see others the way He sees them. How can we say that we know Him when we don't act anything like Him?

Think about that Evangelical catch phrase, "personal lord and savior?"

Is he BOTH your savior AND your lord? Are you BOTH believing AND following?

Is it personal? It is to Him.

Here are just a handful of links for organizations that can help you help others: 

Feed the hungry- Bread for the World, Heifer International

Drink for the thirsty- The Water Project, Clean Water Action

Shelter for the homeless- Habitat for Humanity, National Coalition for the Homeless

Clothes for the needy- Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries

Helping the sick- The Red Cross, Saint Jude's Children's Hospitals

Freeing the captives- Amnesty International, Prison Fellowship

Mind you, this is a sanitary, safe, hands-free way to do unto the least of these, but you've got to start somewhere. The best ways are local, perhaps through your own church or civic organizations. 

Even better is on the ground level, not just donating money or clothes, but volunteering our time, our presence. After all,the best way to break down barriers and build up communities is to get to know real people who are hungry, thirsty, need shelter, healing, love and comfort. 

The best way to open our eyes and hearts to the hurting and disaffected is be among them and get to know them as human beings, neighbors, brothers and sisters.

---

Every year I challenge myself to write some sort of devotions, Bible studies, prayers, or commentary on this blog more regularly during Lent. Some years I'm more disciplined, others I'm about as sporadic as the rest of the year. This year I'd like to write a series of essays on the Gospel of Matthew, I call them "Door Matts," because it's the first book in the New Testament, it's sort of the welcome mat, the gateway-drug, if you will, into Christianity.


These may not go in any particular order. This first one covered passages toward the end of the book. It fits pretty well with the overall goals of this blog- a potent blend of Orthodox (conservative) Theology and Progressive (liberal) Politics. Be prepared when I riff on Jesus' "7 Woes" sermon against hypocrisy in Matt. 23! I've wrote a lot on this blog about Matthew Chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount. Hopefully, we'll dig up plenty of pirate's treasure as we weigh anchor and delve into the headwaters of God's living waters!

Irresistible book

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Not sure where to begin. I seem to be suffering from writer's block lately. I'll say what I told the friend who suggested this author to me- he is convicting and challenging yet warm, engaging and funny.

Claiborne really exposes what huge hypocrites most of us soft, complacent, selfish, American "Christians" are! We really have let the contemporary Pharisees tell us what Christianity is supposed to be instead of listening to what Jesus has really said Himself. This is a radically different interpretation of discipleship, stewardship, and fellowship than you will find in most Christian bookstores, between the Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck biographies.

I wish my head wasn't so full of DayQuill, so that I could do this book justice. All I can say is that I want my conservative Christian friends to open their eyes, ears, and hearts to recognize that the right wing may be right on some things, but they're certainly not right on ALL things.

I want my progressive and liberal friends to know that Jesus does not hate, condemn and dispossess them, indeed, His truth may be closer to the compassion and concern already in their hearts.

Most of all,  I want all of those who like me, have felt pulled by the presumably conflicting passions to love the Lord and also love they neighbor are not so paradoxical or mutually exclusive after all- AND, you are not alone! Not all followers of Jesus are purveyors of laissez-faire economics, anti-intellectualism, and right-wing demagoguery (even if it might seem that way sometimes).



View all my reviews

Do you know my friend Martin?

The other day at school, a student asked me why they get MLK Day off but not Columbus Day. Columbus discovered American, they reasoned. We don't really get MLK Day off, students do but teachers have a staff development day. As a former History teacher (I now teach Art) I began to explain about Brendan the Navigator, Leif Erikson, the Chinese and the fact that the indigenous peoples were already here... before I could get to slavery and disease and operating under the delusion that Hispaniola was in Asia- the kid moved on. "I mean, what did he even do, anyway? Give some speech about a dream? So he was in some marches, so what?"

I'm pretty sure that this White teenage girl isn't racist, but was just trying to rile me and (she thought) she was being funny. Be that as it may, it did trouble me that so few kids understand who Martin Luther King Jr. was, let alone appreciate his legacy. After all, he helped end apartheid in the United States!

Two of the most amazing books I have ever read are Doctor King's Strength to Love and The Measure of a Man. Each of these books profoundly effected and influenced my faith and understanding of theology, society, politics, justice and grace.

What a lot of people don't know is that even though they were Baptists, King's father changed both of their names to Martin Luther after a trip to Germany where he studied about the protestant reformer's commitment to the liberating power of the Gospel.

I don't think we should recognize and commemorate his civil rights work or his fight against poverty or his opposition to injustice and political hypocrisy. I think we should remember him because he sacrificed everything to do those things. He risked his life and forfeited prosperity and security to do those things. No, I do not elevate him to the same level as Jesus Christ- he would not either. His death didn't bring salvation- if anything his savage murder denied the world of his further wisdom and an his potential further leadership and example. But one reason he should be remembered is that he followed Christ's example by spending even his own life for the sake of others.

If you need a refresher in civil rights history, read this brief explanation:

King helped change America’s conscience, not only about civil rights but also about economic justice, poverty and war. As an inexperienced young pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, King was reluctantly thrust into the leadership of the bus boycott. During the 382-day boycott, King was arrested and abused and his home was bombed, but he emerged as a national figure and honed his leadership skills. In 1957 he helped launch the (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) SCLC to spread the civil rights crusade to other cities. He helped lead local campaigns in Selma, Birmingham and other cities, and sought to keep the fractious civil rights movement together, including the NAACP, Urban League, (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) SNCC, (Congress of Organizations for Racial Equality) CORE and SCLC. Between 1957 and 1968 King traveled more than 6 million miles, spoke more than 2,500 times and was arrested at least twenty times while preaching the gospel of nonviolence. Today we view King as something of a saint; his birthday is a national holiday and his name adorns schools and street signs. But in his day the establishment considered King a dangerous troublemaker. He was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. The struggle for civil rights radicalized him into a fighter for economic and social justice. During the 1960s King became increasingly committed to building bridges between the civil rights and labor movements. He was in Memphis in 1968 to support striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated. In 1964, at 35, King was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. Some civil rights activists worried that his opposition to the Vietnam War, announced in 1967, would create a backlash against civil rights, but instead it helped turned the tide of public opinion against the war.

From: The Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century by Peter Dreier, The Nation Magazine, September 2010

"Deep Christianity"

Hope on a Tightrope: Word and Wisdom by Cornel West by Cornel West

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'd seen Professor West's books on shelves in bookstores and was interested. Why Race Matters and why Democracy Matters seemed like important discussions that we still need to have in the United States. But I confess my own racism/prejudice- I saw his afro and I wondered if as a middle class, middle aged, Midwestern White male I could relate to him. I worried that his politics would be too liberal even for a left-leaning centrist Democrat like me.

Then I caught his appearance on a late night talk show and he wasn't talking with arrogance or anger about race or politics- he was speaking about Jesus. He was speaking about faith and love and forgiveness and suffering.

When I fount this book, with the word "hope" right in the title, I wondered if it would be about President Obama or about the civil rights movement. It's not. It is about us, all of us. And in it, West introduces us to Jesus.

Not the confident, indignant, powerful Jesus that Pat Robertson and James Dobson talk about- the strict, White American, Republican patriarchal Jesus who opposes government regulation, taxes, and gay marriage and supports the troops and the Tea Parties and the NRA.

Not the optimistic, affluent, sexy, successful Jesus that Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar talk about, waiting to solve all your problems and shower you with material blessings if you just believe enough.

West reveals the Jesus who is humble, genuine, unpretentious but more importantly the Jesus who is brutally honest, patient, kind, just, loving, and wise. The Jesus who turns the other cheek, walks the extra mile, offers the shirt off His back, loves his enemy and was willing to risk everything and sacrifice everything for the sake of others.

Yes, West talks about race and politics, history and economics in this book. He talks about institutions and empire, families, education, and culture. But mostly he talks about depth. Deep Learning, Deep Democracy, and Deep Love, deep enough to sacrifice everything for the sake of justice, equality, and hope.

West says that he's made it his mission to make the world safe for Martin Luther King Jr. That's awesome, because anyone who's read King's 'Strength to Love,' knows that King had made it his mission to make the world safe for Jesus.



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Good quote

Vanity is the involuntary inclination to set one's self up for an individual while not really being one; that is to say, trying to appear independent when one is dependent. The case of wisdom is the exact contrary: it appears to be dependent while in reality it is independent. -Nitzche