By Ched Myers, for the 14th Sunday of PENTECOST (MK 7:1-23)
Note: This is an ongoing series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B, 2015.
After a lengthy hiatus in John, the RCL gospel returns to Mark, though it piecemeals this Sunday’s text (I’ll read it whole, and suggest you do as well).
Continue reading “Open Borders!”
By Rev. Nick Peterson (right, being introduced by Ruby Sales)
Without this effort, the secret place is merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness.
James Baldwin, Another Country (1962)
My friend was in pain. All the things he held dear and cherished were slipping from his grasp. In naming his losses he named his desire to grab ahold of something, something to help him live, to help him cope. I wanted to comfort him, to hold his hand, make some kind of physical contact, to disrupt the isolation he was feeling. But I hesitated, unsure of an appropriate way, a manly way, to comfort my friend. Truthfully, I was paralyzed by the fear of what my touch might communicate about my identity as a man, my sexuality, and my connection to him.
Continue reading “I Need A Hand”
The legendary Vern Ratzlaff (right), Canadian Mennonite pastor and professor, was sporting his 5-inch beard long before practically every American white guy under 35 started growing theirs. Vern is spending free time at his outpost in Saskatoon reading dense anti-imperial theology and writing concise summaries for the rest of us. He reported this week of “an orgy of fresh tomatoes” in his garden.
The Message and the Kingdom, J. Richard Horsley & Neil Silberman, GrossetPutnam, 1999.
The Message and the Kingdom is a careful analysis of the religious, political and social aspects of the Roman empire; the world of Jesus and of Paul was not only a spiritual battleground but a landscape of far-reaching dislocation, cultural conflict and political change.
The book points out how the message of Jesus resounded among a people suffering under Roman tyranny. The revolutionary message of Jesus ignited these listeners, infuriating the Roman imperial establishment. Saul of Tarsus had a vision that persuaded him to deliver Jesus’ message throughout the empire.
Horsley’s and Silberman’s book shows how the message of Jesus and Paul was shaped by the history of their time and by the social conditions of the congregations to whom they preached. The book details how the quest for the kingdom of G-d by Jesus and Paul is both a spiritual journey and a political response to the acts of violence, inequality and injustice that characterized the kingdom of humans.
Paul’s writings ‘are extracts from the handwritten journal of a revolutionary work-in-progress—a collection of passionate notes from the underground.’ (p 147) ‘Membership in the kingdom of G-d offered disenfranchised people a means to empowerment.’ (p 153) As implementation of this vision, the Philippian church was in partnership in the form of financial sacrifice (Phil 4:l)(p 154), a situation where ‘community was everything and personal status a thing to be despised.’ (p 155). Sharing their wealth with those with whom they had no blood kinship or political connection, the assemblies committed themselves to self sacrifice and on effecting a particular social change (p 185).
From Coalition of Immokalee Workers, on PCUSA’s eloquent and inspiring statement of solidarity:
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders are celebrating a major milestone in the ongoing campaign to improve the lives of farmworkers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) announced that Ahold USA became the first major grocer in the U.S. to join the CIW Fair Food Program. Ahold is the parent company of Stop & Shop, Giant Foods and online grocer Peapod and operates nearly 780 supermarkets in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
Continue reading “PCUSA: Long Time Allies of Coalition of Immokalee Workers”
By Tommy Airey
The Spirit of the crucified god
wells up in me
when I give up my own
Continue reading “Spirit”
A Call to Worship written by Nick Peterson (photo: far right) for today’s service at Capitol Presbyterian of Harrisburg, PA:
The Lord be with you.
A year ago today, Michael Brown, Jr., an 18-year-old recent high school graduate while unarmed was shot and killed by officer Darren Wilson in Fergson, MO. His death and others like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and Oscar Grant sparked a national movement aimed at bringing awareness to racialized police violence and excessive use of force.
Continue reading “Faith in a Christ Who Understood In His Own Body Oppression & Suffering”
From Glenn Greenwald’s piece last week in The Intercept. The entire article, obviously, is worth reading, but this section has important implications for all of us seeking to creatively and courageously name, resist and transform the System:
The more one delves into what is being done here — the extreme abuse of the criminal law to stifle nonviolent political protest or even just pure political speech, undertaken with tragically little attention — the more appalling it becomes. There are numerous cases of animal rights activists, several of whom spoke to The Intercept, who weren’t even accused of harming people or property, but who were nonetheless sent to federal prison for years.
Continue reading “Glenn Greenwald on Political Protest”
From Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace, in a DemocracyNow.Org interview covering the creative and courageous action blocking Shell Oil ships heading to the Arctic to drill:
Well, yesterday was an absolutely incredible day, a display of people power. Throughout the day, the crowds just kept growing, as you said. There were hundreds of kayakers going in shifts, filling the river so that if the boat tried to leave, there would be both lines of defense—the aerial barricade and then the people.
Continue reading “People Power in Portland”
By Tommy Airey
The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between The World & Me (2015)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for the The Atlantic, received numerous awards last year for his ground-breaking cover story, “The Case for Reparations.” His much-anticipated Between The World & Me is a 152-page letter to his 15-year old son in the grievous aftermath of the Michael Brown non-indictment.
Continue reading “Between The World & Me: A Review”
This is the last question and answer of James Wilt’s interview with Carol Adams, the author of the vegetarian and feminist classic The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990) in the current issue of Geez Magazine:
You make it clear in Sexual Politics that you’re a cultural worker, not an academic. You’ve been involved in advocating for and helping battered women and involved in animal rights for many decades. What keeps you grounded, from getting depressed, or anxious, or saying it’s not worth it in the end?
There’s a quote from Susan B. Anthony about how she always had great company. She wasn’t doing it alone. Václav Havel said we have to do what we’re doing to change the world not because we know that we’ll prevail, but because it’s the right thing to do. We can’t measure success by some sort of end goal. We have to simply subsume ourselves in the process of it. I think that ties into an ecofeminist philosophy.
Continue reading “The Source of Joy Can Change”
Radical Discipleship 