Sermon: When You Find Yourself in Azotas

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imagesBy Ric Hudgens
Easter 5, April 29, 2018
North Suburban Mennonite, Libertyville, Illinois

Acts 4:26-40

“But Philip found himself at Azotus.” (Acts 8:40a)

Philip was on the edge of the edge. What I mean is he was a Greek-speaking Jew in an Aramaic-speaking community that (because of their devotion to Jesus) was on the edge of a Jewish culture that existed as a despised, oppressed minority on the periphery of the Roman Empire. It might be more accurate to say that Philip was on the edge of the edge of the edge – of the edge.

Then the Spirit sent Philip into the wilderness. Far out. Over the edge. Continue reading “Sermon: When You Find Yourself in Azotas” →

Prayer from Prison

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marthaReflection by Martha Hennessy
Camden County Jail, Woodbine, Georgia Jail
Kings Bay Plowshares

When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25 You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:

“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against the Lord’s anointed one. (Acts 4: 23-26)

We walked in the dark, stars overhead, with Orion at our shoulder and the waning moon rising late. Praise to you Dear God, for this gift of Eden. There were fire flies and croaking frogs to keep us company. And to think the logic of Trident is the obliteration of Creation. What did God whisper to my ancestors and then to me? Swords into Plowshares! We don’t mean to make everyone furious, but why turn our blood and hammers into spray paint and bolt cutters?* Why continue to set the desecrated altar to the false idols of war? We walked onto a military base that harbors the ultimate destruction, and we prayed for the power of a message, of a witness that could reach many ears; conversion of free will towards life- giving work and away from death dealing false constructs.

We strung up crime scene tape over the model missiles and over the door to the Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic (SWFLANT), a place where war plans promise to take all we love. We wish to indict this war machine for what it is: immoral, illegal, and monstrous. Our foolish plans desire to see a world in which the suffering is lessened, our leaders begin to know what it means if they pull the nuclear trigger. Our action is an invitation to all for a change of heart that will bring us to true revolution.

*Editor’s note: the charging documents and the Magistrate referred to their possession of bolt cutters and spray paint, but ignored mention of the symbols of blood and hammers, which were used by the seven in their symbolic action.

A Disgraceful Race to the Bottom

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GAORe-Posted from Marian Wright Edelman’s CHILD WATCH® COLUMN on the Children’s Defense Fund site.  For further reading, see the archive of her weekly writings.  

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last month, “K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities,” reminds us once again that suspensions and expulsions continue at high rates and offer grave risks to students. The report by this federal monitoring agency reviews data from the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection on school discipline trends across the country, provides a more in-depth look at discipline approaches and challenges faced in five states, and reviews past efforts by the Departments of Education and Justice to identify and address disparities and discrimination. Continue reading “A Disgraceful Race to the Bottom” →

James Cone: ¡Presente!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Race1 Comment

James ConeLiberation theologian James Cone of Union Theological Seminary crossed over yesterday.  He was 81.  This is from his ground-breaking A Black Theology of Liberation (1970):

The Christological significance of Jesus is not an abstract question to be solved by intellectual debates among seminary professors. The meaning of Jesus is an existential question. We know who he is when our own lives are placed in a situation of oppression, and we thus have to make a decision for or against our condition.

An Honest Conversation That Cannot Be Avoided

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LynchingToday, RadicalDiscipleship.net celebrates the grand opening of Equal Justice Initiative‘s National Memorial and Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. It is a six-acre site overlooking the Alabama State Capitol, dedicated to the victims of American white supremacy. Below is a re-post of EJI’s recent release Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.

During the period between the Civil War and World War II, thousands of African Americans were lynched in the United States. Lynchings were violent and public acts of torture that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. These lynchings were terrorism. “Terror lynchings” peaked between 1880 and 1940 and claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children who were forced to endure the fear, humiliation, and barbarity of this widespread phenomenon unaided. Continue reading “An Honest Conversation That Cannot Be Avoided” →

Wild Lectionary: Wild Vine

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13-grist-vineEaster 5(B)
By Matthew Syrdal

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you… My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.                                     John 15:1-8

The invitation is clear, the summons real, in this mashal, this rabbinical parable today as it was then. May we let it sink deeply into the soil of the world in our hearts. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wild Vine” →

Recovery from the Dominant Culture

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OaklandFrom the work of Oakland’s Seminary of the Street, a school for the training of love warriors working toward the transformation of their communities by embodying God’s love in the world. From 2013-2015, they ran an experimental “Recovery from the Dominant Culture” 12-step group. 

 

RECOVERY FROM THE DOMINANT CULTURE
PREAMBLE TO THE TWELVE STEPS

We are a fellowship of people in life recovery who share our experience, strength, and hope in order to be liberated into full aliveness. We believe that our social ills are perpetuated through the manufactured but unspoken cooperation of each of us and that changing our own ways of being can catalyze change in our communities. We do this by working the twelve steps, which teach us the countercultural practices of humility and surrender; honest vulnerability and confession, verbal and living amends as well as forgiveness; and humble service. Because we believe that we cannot fully recover without contributing to the healing of the culture that made us sick, we have modified the twelfth step to include that work. Continue reading “Recovery from the Dominant Culture” →

How Do You Tell the Kids that Grandma Is in Jail for Resisting Nuclear Weapons?

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H14_Ploughshare-activist-arrest-on-US-submarine-base3By Frida Berrigan. Re-posted from truth-out.org.

“Our grandma is in jail,” Madeline tells a woman wrestling a shopping cart at Target.

“She went over a war fence and tried to make peace,” Seamus adds helpfully. “They arrested her, and she is in jail now.”

“Where?” the woman asks, looking from them to me in disbelief and maybe pity.

“We don’t remember,” the kids say, suddenly done with their story and ready to make passionate pleas for the colorful items in the dollar section over the woman’s shoulder. Continue reading “How Do You Tell the Kids that Grandma Is in Jail for Resisting Nuclear Weapons?” →