Shekinah Glory

Jeremiah & I Corinthians 13

Last week I was entertained in reading the high jinks by the conservative guerilla videographer James O’Keefe III and his gang of bumbling insurgent phony, phone repairmen. If you don’t know the story yet it is as amusing as it is infantile. The news was quite prominent that four men had been arrested for tampering with Senator Mary Landrieu’s phone system under false pretenses. Evidently 3 men entered her office dressed as telephone repairmen while O’Keefe filmed them with a cell phone. They were hoping to catch the Senator in a lie about her phone system. She had previously apologized to constituents for not answering angry phone calls by saying that her phone lines had been overwhelmed and did not work. This was obviously something that O’Keefe and his friends did not believe.

This mid-twentysomething group had not really thought through what would happen if someone actually asked them for identification. They also had not really thought through the fact that the conspiracy they were participating in was a federal offense that could put them in federal prison for 10 years. It was just such a fascinating story. I sort of moved between laughing at their adolescent prankishness masquerading as responsible “journalism” and anger at how damaging their attitude is toward the idea of responsibility in our society.

What do I mean? I read it in two places in the last week and they are things related to this case that often pass us by in this culture. First, was his lawyer Michael Madigan’s early assertion that everyone one should realize that we are merely, “dealing with kids.” Second, is James O’Keefe’s own statement on the Big Government webpage minimizing the importance of any wrongdoing he might have participated in by pointing to “journalistic malpractice” Instead of an apology for his own journalistic misconduct we are told he could have done a better route. That someone like James would not take responsibility for their own misguided actions does not surprise me in our political culture and climate of the ends justify the means.

Yet, it was really the lawyer’s statement stuck in my craw. Four men who are college graduates are kids, beyond responsibility because their action seemed juvenile and prankish? Is this where our culture really wants to go, extending childhood well into adulthood? I would hope that no matter where we fall on the political spectrum we would affirm the basic need for responsibility. We are foolish if we buy into this lawyer’s reasoning and infantilize our entire ethical culture. Adults are to take responsibility as are sometimes those who are not yet adults.

God has held people responsible in the Bible well under the age of 24 before. Whether it was Samuel, Timothy, Mary or like this morning the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah is vested with a blistering 50-year message against kings and the Jerusalem he loves that lands him in chains and death sentences. It even got so bad that he begged God to quit speaking through him. Yet, today’s text shows that God holds people responsible when they have God’s word in their mouths. “Do not say that you are a child! It is my word that you are responsible for.” God’s responsibility is awesome and persistent.

Yet, now we have moved from ethical and legal responsibility to moral responsibility toward others. Here is another area where our modern political culture lets us down. How can you believe in stirring up partisan hate on either side of the aisle and read I Corinthians 13 with integrity? We are full of overblown charactures meant to inflame partisan identity and branding. We’ve heard them all: Obama as Hitler, Palin as a stupid hick, Biden as a blowhard, Polosi is a witch, Lieberman is a traitor, McCain is an angry old man, red states are fly overs and blue states are liberal, champagne swilling elitists. Then there is Paul admonishing us to love! I truly believe that the uncivil climate in our power structures is systemically bleeding into our culture and our churches. Hate, anger and fear are enflamed as means to an end, and to hell with the consequences for community. We are responsible! Not merely adults but all of us are responsible this morning to respond to the prophetic message of love. Don’t wiggle, don’t abdicate, don’t turn the blame outward toward others it is your responsibility, and mine. God doesn’t want to hear you should probably have done something different, God wants to hear, “I will begin to love others right now!”

Are you patient, kind, longsuffering, gentle, rejoice in truth and lack envy? Do you boast, are you arrogant, rude, insist on getting your own way, irritable, resentful, rejoice in wrongdoings, bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things? Oh boy, that is a lifetime of responsibility in love. Going through that list convicts me with my actions to friends, enemies and people in the church. If it doesn’t convict you I worry about your own self-reflection. The responsibility of love makes it possible to endure people like James O’Keefe in spite of their childishness because it makes us care for him as a human equal loved by God. I am not one for the cry of civility in the public square, but differences guided by the principle of love are a much different thing. Not showing love shows spiritual immaturity, childishness in God’s eyes. Let’s look toward the transformative power of love toward one another. This will change the very way that we live and don’t forget it is your responsibility.

Let’s not create infants
Of fully grown men
Giving them patronage
For childish choices,
Paying their debts
Of full responsibility
When they turn beauty
Into handfuls of dust.
They must face
The miasma of sin
Co-mingled in reflections,
Distorting human features.

With each moment I aim to please
Hoping you will not catch shifting allegiances
And contradictory words.
It is with anguish that I realize
These defects of my personality
Knowing that I am hedging my bets
To try and keep you happy.
It never really works in the end
And I feel completely compromised.
The big lie is that your happiness
Is more important than my integrity.

All week I have been thinking about Donald Rumsfeld and that is a pretty rare thing for me. Donald Rumsfeld has kept a pretty low profile ever since resigning in November of 2006. Now whether you agree with his politics or not he was one of the most befuddling and captivating speakers of the entire Bush administration. I will admit to you now that no matter what program that he was on whether Meet the Press, Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room or a State Department’s Press conference I was completely mesmerized by his verbal gyrations. Often he would say things that would leave me scratching my head, but he said it with such confidence that it was hard to deny his convictions.

Here is one of his gems: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Or who could forget, “I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.” These where not gaffs, but non-answers that were brilliant in their nonsensical, sensical sounding nature.

Yet, it is on made in December 2004 that came to mind when I read the text from I Corinthians that was just read. Rumsfeld came under fire after a “town-hall” meeting with U.S. troops where he responded to a soldier’s comments about inferior military equipment by saying “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

This was a rare glimpse of clarity in the slow motion nightmare that had been the Iraq war part two. It was an acknowledgement that things were not the way imagined or explained, but were much different on the ground. It was shocking and is still shocking to think that something like this could be said to a soldier when other troops were dying. Yet, Rumsfeld was right in the smaller context of the quote. Our military vehicles had inadequate armor. Rumsfeld, the Army and everyone at that point wished we had armor to keep our soldiers safe. On the other hand the offhand comment came off as too flippant about the military that Rumsfeld himself was constantly heralding and badgering others to support. It made the mouthpiece for the Commander in Chief appear to say we have an inferior army, but we will make do somehow. This is not what anyone wants to hear in the middle of a protracted war.

Coming up to our annual meeting sometimes I feel that we get this type of mentality in the church. I know I get it myself. I wish we had consistent attendance. I wish that some of our members gave more money so that we could make budget. I wish that this place were more important to everyone’s daily life. I wish that we had 20 more new members. I wish Brian were more businesslike and less emotional. I wish I didn’t have to attend 1 ½ to 2-hour meetings once a month. I wish they would have more professional musicians. I wish we had more programs like the church down the road. I wish there were more high school aged kids. I wish that the Ham and Oyster wasn’t cancelled. I wish we didn’t ever have to dip into our foundation to keep this church functioning. I wish people would volunteer more. I wish some people wouldn’t gossip so much. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish….

Oh well, you worship with the church that you’ve got, not the one that you want or wish to have at a later time. You know Rumsfeld’s words actually have a good feeling when it comes to letting go all of my expectations, prejudices and frustrations. Paul turns these words on their head and sees them as the greatest celebration of the diversity of the church. Somehow Jesus takes the diversity of gifts that we bring to the table and turns it into a functioning body where every part is vital. We are asked to trust that Christ is working through us for the good of the whole. Yet, we cannot get there without participation. So, that is our challenge. We are a body with many vital organs and parts, each essential to the body’s function.

That is the beguiling thing about God. God uses and calls whom God chooses. Whether king or pauper, male or female, intelligent or lacking, spiritual or not all have their place in the church. In God’s grace filled vision each person is vital in working toward the bringing about grace, love, mercy and justice in the world. Our liabilities are God’s precious gifts toward our own redemption. They are also what make us essential toward the functioning of the church. According to Paul God sees the weakest of us as indispensable to the functioning of the whole. You are each an essential element to the whole, but the person next to you is essential as well. So, Donald Rumsfeld’s unfortunate comment can be a celebration when it is turned into the context of the church. We worship with the church we have and not the one that we want, thanks be to God.

God Complex Radio 2.0 is back on the air and their first show interviews Brian McLaren. There is also good discussions about art and Haiti.

The moon

Like the drooping eyes of an infant
Lazily you prop into the corner of the sky.
This must be your final stage
Before turning toward a grey glow
And again becoming the wide eyed pupil
In the dark night sky.

How can I un/imagine you?
Bring you back to the depth
From which I conjured unholy
Memories and obstinate grief?
So you are here antichrist, thief,
Blasphemer of innocence!
Carry me away from your lair
Where sharpened knives
Are found in children’s hands
Thrusting outward in jest,
Drunken men drop silver dollars
From dangling arms
Stretched like a loose canvas
Over plump cushions,
Half crazed carni workers
Roam outside with guns
Muttering how you screwed their wife
And ruined an already
Pock marked and lacerated life.
Still I stumble through piles
Of watches, noisemakers and spoons
Attempting to make a path
Amongst the rubbish
That is no longer arm’s length
From the couch’s crease.
When you remove your shirt
I see the scars lashed across it
From tangles with barbed wire,
Sturdy walls and violent fights.
There are hives down your arms
shaking more pills toward your mouth.
I would try to leave,
But I am too comfortable here,
Yet I know I must let it go.

I have listed on my church’s website a growing list of organizations that will need direct aid in the coming days, months and years to help with the disaster in Haiti.
www.thepalisadeschurch.com

From a very young age I was attracted to theater. At a certain young age I found myself devouring any book that I could get my hands on. I was curious and when the Westerns, Mysteries, science fictions and the sports biographies ran thin I turned to this odd section of books that rarely had patrons in our local library. It was called the Literature section. It contained magical books of poetry, fiction and these strange slender books that contained mostly dialogue and direction. These of course were plays and the ones that really interested me from the first were Greek tragedies. Euripides and Sophocles held me spellbound.

Yet, looking back on that childhood fascination I realized one thing about those tragedies that appealed to me most, and still appeals to me. It is the foreknowledge that the audience has of the impending tragic circumstances of one of the protagonists. Whether it is by the oracle of Delphi or the Chorus there is little drama in what will happen, it is all revealed from early in the play. Now, I know that what attracted me so deeply to those plays was the foreknowledge of tragedy, the ability to know fate.

The surprise and horror that the loss of a brother brings is a deeply wounding tragedy. It is hard enough for friends, relatives and coworkers to say goodbye to someone. Yet, a brother and sister relationship is a much different tie. It is here that we yearn for the foreknowledge of the chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy. “If only I had known, been able to prepare, said all the things I wanted to.” Yet, we are not all knowing, we are like the characters in those plays that must live out tragedies, sadness and horrors of loss.

I wish that we could prepare more for loss, that we could not intensely feel the jolting loss of someone close to us. I think that it is human to want to avoid pain and suffering, but it is also human to experience them as well. One of the most beautiful things about being human is that we expect life and that death still shocks us.

So, we are left with loss and absence when a death like Alvaro’s comes. Unexpected or not it is always a shock. It makes for an absence of someone’s vital presence in our lives and reminds us that we are on this plain for a mere shadow of time. We are not to avoid these feelings of sadness, but attempt to touch them deeply. That is what makes us human as well. So, as we say goodbye to Alvaro we will remember all the things that made him an important part of our lives. We will grieve his uncalculated loss on our lives and know that moving forward we will be missing something in our experiences from now on. We will celebrate and grieve, we will remember, laugh and cry, but most of all we will support each other in making it through one more tragedy in our own journey in life.