By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
Jesus, erstwhile proclaimer of peace and love, hopes for fire and anticipates division within households. Was the Lord having a bad day on the Way to Jerusalem in this Sunday’s Gospel? How can we reconcile his word in this week’s lectionary text (Luke 12.49-56) with what we hear in the rest of Luke’s Gospel? Continue reading “Jesus of Nazareth, Arsonist”
By Elaine Enns
Scripture: “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear… For God will hide me in a shelter in the day of trouble.” Psalm 27:3a, 5a
As babies, both Moses and Jesus were hidden away from danger during times of war and oppression by courageous caregivers. This archetypal script is also found in my family story, and perhaps in yours. My grandmother grew up in the Mennonite village of Osterwick, Ukraine. As a result of endemic injustice under the Tsar, the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, and civil war raged through the country. In Ukraine, a peasant army arose to fight for independence, but their methods were often brutal, including home invasions. In December 1919, my great-grandmother Anna Schulz’s house was commandeered for two weeks. The males of the house had to flee for their lives into the nearby forest, while my fifteen year-old grandmother, along with her sister and girl cousins, were hidden up in the attic. Anna proceeded to feed, clothe, and nurse the rough soldiers. In the face of terror, she committed her life to her Divine protector, and practiced non-violence. Continue reading “Freed from Fear to Shelter the Vulnerable”
From economist and Wayne State University Law School professor Peter J. Hammer who recently submitted written testimony to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission as part of their hearings on the Flint Water Crisis titled, “The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism.” Click here to download the report:
The problem is the often willful blindness of people in positions of privilege and authority (Knowledge-&-Power) to the needs, perspectives and interests of others, particularly when the “other” is from a community that differs from their own in terms of race or class or ethnicity. The problem is that the information and beliefs held by people in authority often reinforce that blindness and permit the unquestioned projection of policies and programs on others, even when it is clear that those policies are inappropriate or have harmful consequences. The problem is that vulnerable populations are often subject to exploitation that strategically manipulates the very vulnerability created by express racism, structural racism and unconscious bias, and yet this exploitation finds ready shelter in the very forces it exploits.
A series of social media posts from Rev. Nick Peterson:
Last night me and a friend were talking inside the Chick fil A when they closed. We continued our conversation outside and after a while 3 male employees came out to tell us that we were not allowed to be in the parking lot after 10:30 pm. We did not know what time it was or that it was already past 10:30. We spent another few minutes wrapping up our conversation. In the intervening time the employees called the police on us. We of course did not know this when we pulled off and one of the young men who initially came to us bid us a good night as we were pulling out of the parking lot.
As we were waiting at the light, two police vehicles pulled in, drove past my white friend in his truck in front of me and when they locked eyes on me pulled a U turn and put there flashers on. My friend was able to make the right turn on Lincoln highway without any officer following him. He proceeded to park across the street and witness both officers round my car for the next 10 minutes. Continue reading “The Need For Whiteness to be Protected”
By Will O’Brien
Several of us attended the “Repairers of the Breach” Moral Revival Tour with Rev. William Barber when it rolled into town on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention on July 25. Will O’Brien write the following short reflection (originally published on the Red Letter Christians blog.)
The Friends Central Meeting on Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia has probably never reeled and rocked like it did on Monday night. Rev. William Barber from the Moral Mondays campaign in North Carolina brought his Moral Revival Tour to our city, slyly scheduling it just as the Democratic National Convention was starting to convene a few miles south at the Wells Fargo Center. Lots of spirited singing, praying, and mighty preaching, all geared toward the prophetic vision of justice. Continue reading “The Moral Revival”
By Carl Wendell Hines, in the wake of the murder of Malcolm X
Now that he is safely dead,
Let us praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name. Continue reading “A Dead Man’s Dream”
A song of St. Anselm:
Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children;
Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
in sickness you nurse us,
and with pure milk you feed us.
Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life:
by your anguish and labor we come forth in joy.
Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness:
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.
Your warmth gives life to the dead:
your touch makes sinners righteous.
Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us:
in your love and tenderness remake us.
In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness:
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.
“We are in a period of struggle with a movement spiritually deep and broadly connected – and a movement that knows it has to go deeper and broader yet. And we need to keep connecting across barriers of faith and ideology. Many of us understand that a deeper resistance is summoned of us. We are trying, praying, working to be strategic, to be faithful, to be human. And we know that we must keep at it: conspire the next steps, be in conversation, be in community, be in the streets, refuse taxes, refuse to fight, disrupt business as usual, prefer poetry to ideology, pray for victims before nations.
The powers of death and destruction appear to reign. But they are undone. In short, dear friends: Be not awed by the mayhem with which the powers of this world would bamboozle us. When you light a candle let it mean intransigent resistance. When you pray imagine a new world is possible. And then live it.” -Elizabeth McAlister
A poem inspired by the book of Lamentations (especially chapter three)by Ken Sehested
Turn off (what passes for) the news.
Boycott the season’s electoral charades.
Don’t give in to Pokémon’s promise of
“augmented reality.” Attend instead to
unmitigated reality: bloodied, stricken
and strewn. Offer grief the hearing it
demands, the voice it obliges, and
the risk it assumes. Continue reading “Lamentations’ call to arms”
By Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson
In the soporific summertime, it is easy enough to lie back, close one’s eyes, and fall into a tranquil sleep. Indeed, many of us could use more sleep, driven as we often are by the exigencies of empire into never-ending task mode. Perhaps ironically, getting more sleep could help prepare us for Jesus’ word to us this Sunday: stay awake (12.32-40)!
The church cycle offers us Lent and Advent as seasonal opportunities to practice anti-imperial wakefulness. With school out, though, the church year seems to take a break from the call to faithful vigilance. But the lectionary surprises us this week, just as Jesus’ message within the text from Luke gives us images of surprising arrivals. Perhaps equally surprisingly, a close listen to our Gospel text invites us to hear precisely what we are called to stay awake against: the lure of the exploitative, anxiety-ridden, imperial economy. At the same time, we are called to stay awake for the opportunity to be servants to one another and all creation. Continue reading “Staying Awake in the Summer”
Radical Discipleship 