What WOULD Jesus Say?

Sometimes, I find myself wishing Jesus would come to earth for a few days and clear some things up.

He could probably settle a lot of the confusion that swirls around him.

It would be interesting to see how he looked, and what he would say about pictures that have him with that long brown hair.

But mostly, it would be interesting to get his take on what he reportedly said.

This little diatribe comes on heels of my reading a comment on a blog, “Unedited Politics,” which had put President Obama’s recent speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on his site. One of the comments said something to the effect that Jesus wanted individuals to help poor people, that “social justice makes Christians lazy.”

Seriously?

The person who made the comment referred to the Biblical passage found in three of the Gospels, where Jesus says to people around him, in response to their ire at a woman anointing his feet with some very expensive oil, that “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” That passage is found in Matthew and John as well.

Someone had apparently lifted that passage of scripture as proof that Jesus is a supporter of social justice, i.e., societies helping the poor, and the writer of the comment took issue, lifting up the “social justice makes Christians lazy” jewel.

That comment has bothered me all day. It reminded me of how the late Strom Thurmond once said, in acknowledging that Jesus advised us to help and love our neighbors, that Jesus would certainly allow us to “choose our neighbors.”

I know from having studied how the words of the Bible have been manipulated in order to keep certain power relationships intact – meaning the Bible’s words have been used to justify sexism, racism, militarism.

But Jesus’ words seem so…obvious. How is it that anyone could think that the words of Jesus do not mandate us to engage in social justice, to take care of each other, the “least of these,” as he said in the Gospel of Matthew?

The late Derrick Bell writes, in Faces at the Bottom of the Well, that racism is permanent, that it will never go away. That is a sad and sobering thought, but if the words of the One who was sent to teach us about the love of God cannot or are not interpreted uniformly, perhaps Bell is right.

I guess it makes no difference that people in the Bible were always under some kind of oppression, so a mandate for social justice would make sense. From the beginning, there was always a “we” and a “them;” oppressors included the Egyptians, the Assyrians, Babylonians,Persians, Greeks and finally, the Romans. In times of prosperity, the people of God would forget their God and go after the pagan gods, trying their best to fit into that society. Always, the oppressors would take economic advantage of the oppressed, but the oppressed, instead of turning back toward the the Hebrew god who had led them through the wilderness, would turn toward those whom they could see and aspire to be like them.

It spelled disaster for God’s people, if the Bible is to be believed.

I have heard people reject what seems to be a god who turned away from his people because of their apostasy, but goodness, is anything in the Bible sacred, beyond convenient translation and interpretation?

If a person can interpret the words of Jesus in such a way that would make social justice not a central part of Jesus’ message, then what is sacred? What WOULD Jesus say?

I wish he’d come for a visit, if just for a few days.

A candid observation …

No Outrage Over Poverty

How come it seems like nobody gets outraged about poverty in the United States?

I ask the question on the heels of the outrage expressed by Catholic bishops over the Obama administration’s policy that would have required Catholic institutions (churches excepted) to cover birth control in the health insurance coverage for their employees. Catholic bishops and others protested, calling the requirement an assault on religious freedom.

The furor has somewhat died down, as President Obama has announced a compromise that will require insurance companies to require contraceptive coverage directly to women. While some are skeptical of the new policy, others say the compromise is on target.

But I found myself shaking in my boots as I wondered why there seems to be so little outrage about poverty in this country? In the United States, there are 46 million people who are officially “poor.” Marian Wright Edelman, president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, wrote this week that the disparity between rich and poor is making hunger in America more and more real for more and more people; for as many as 14 million children, free food programs provide some with the only food they get. She reminded readers that hunger due to extreme poverty has been an American reality for a long time by recalling a visit Robert Kennedy made to the Mississippi Delta in the 60s where he saw for himself children who were literally starving. Ironically, today, while some children are becoming obese, many others are losing weight not because they want to, but because they do not have enough food to eat.

One thing is clear: we as humans tend not to empathize with the plights of people unless we see with our own eyes what people are going through. The stark pictures of people’s suffering after Hurricane Katrina mobilized the nation and the world to do something; in the 60s, the nation and world, again, were both outraged and provided the impetus for Washington to do something. When I have visited tropical islands, West and South Africa, my privileges as a tourist seemed less palatable after I traveled into the territory beyond the posh hotels, including the shanty towns in Cape Town, South Africa, and saw how awful living conditions were for so many of the people.

The lack of a deafening outrage from religious and non-religious leaders makes me wonder if people really know how bad poverty is in America, and how many it is affecting. Sabrina Tavernise wrote in Friday’s The New York Times that poverty is affecting education as well. While the big gap in educational achievement used to be that between white and black children, Tavernise wrote that “the achievement gap between rich and poor children is double that between black and white children according to a study done by a Stanford University sociologist.”

We already know that poverty has resulted in people not being able to get health care, which was a major impetus for the push for health care reform. In this, the richest nation in the world, people are dying from illnesses that are treatable. Just last month, I learned of a woman who contracted a cold which didn’t get better, but the woman couldn’t go to a doctor because she had no health care, though she was a full time employee at a fast food restaurant. Her cold developed into something more serious, landing her in an emergency room, then in intensive care. She died after two weeks on a respirator.

How come there are no religious leaders, no political leaders – somebody – screaming about poverty in America?

A person attending my church one time took me to task for talking about poverty. Her statement still troubles me. “You are wrong to talk about poverty,” she said. “The Bible says that the poor will always be with us. There are supposed to be poor people.”

I was stunned at her comment. It is true that in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, Jesus says, “The poor you will always have with you, and you can always help them, but you will not always have me.” The statement came after a woman came to anoint him with expensive oil from an alabaster box. Those surrounding Jesus were angry at the apparent waste of the oil. Some in Jesus’ presence said that the ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Apparently the oil the woman used was so precious that it could have been sold for 300 denarii! (One denarius is said to be worth about $20)

Were the oil that valuable, I rather doubt money garnered from its sale would have been given to the poor …but the point is, the woman who approached me had apparently read that scripture to mean that there are supposed to be poor people.

Interestingly, she didn’t mention Deuteronomy 15:11 where it says that there will be poor people and therefore “I command you to be open-handed toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.”

There is nothing fun about being poor; it is far easier to avoid the poor sections of town, and to complain that the poor are poor because they want to be, that they are lazy and want to live off the wages of others. It is as easy to do that as it is to go to Cancun and stay protectively cooped up in the luxury hotel and banish the real world out of our minds.

But the luxury hotels are not the norm. The people who serve us in the luxury hotels and on the cruise ships, many of them, are horribly poor. While they serve us the best of foods, many have little to eat themselves.

Why isn’t there more outrage about poverty? It is OK for the Catholic bishops to be outraged about contraception and a perceived imposition of a federal policy on religious liberty, but where are their collective voices – in fact, where are the collective voices of religious leaders, period, on the subject of poverty?

It seems we have it confused; we honor and reach for prosperity. The poor, who should have a voice through us, are ignored largely because of us.

A candid observation …

The Convenient Use and Disuse of God

When I visited the Holy Land some years ago, I remember standing on what I guess was a plaza. In back of me was the Wailing Wall, where Jewish men (no women !!) were praying fervently; to my left was the Dome of the Rock, or the Temple Mount, built atop the earlier place where the Jewish Temple had stood before being destroyed in 70 ACE, and to my right was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

All three sites are awe-inspiring; all mark important holy sites with rich histories for all three major religions. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for example, stands on the site where Golgotha, or Calvary was, the place where Jesus was hung on a cross to die, and that site is also believed to be the place where his tomb was originally. Just the thought of the importance of that site is chilling.

For the Muslims, the Temple Mount is third in terms of being a holy site, after Mecca and Medina, but it sacred to Jews and Christians as well. It was the location of the Temple of Jerusalem, that built by Solomon and the Second Temple which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ACE. It is supposedly the place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son Isaac. for Muslims, it is thought to be the place from which the prophet Muhammad journeyed to heaven.

The Wailing Wall is thought to be the western wall of the Second Temple. It is a moving site to see people praying there, sometimes wailing, and sometimes writing prayers and pushing them into holes that are in the wall itself.

The image of that place is something I cannot get out of my mind. The “truly religious” pray there, members of the three major faiths of the world. It is almost as if you can feel God himself there.

But in spite of the holiness of that place, the profound sense of the presence of God, there is the reality – and it hits you like a ton of bricks – that in spite of God and all this holiness, there is not peace but war, not a desire to be drawn together and live together, but a desire to use God and religious beliefs to keep apart and flame disagreements using God as the cover and the rationale.

The sense of holiness I felt was doused at that moment by cloud of sadness.

I thought about that site as I watched a program on the history of the Ku Klux Klan. I was mostly fascinated by what I was learning, but found myself deeply saddened as Klan members explained the meaning of the burning of crosses. Jesus was the light of the world, the Klansman said, and we light crosses to remind people that we bring the light of the world to a world of darkness, a world where (the “n” word) and Jews are not wanted.

Then the program showed a cross burning, or cross lighting ceremony, where scriptures were read and where, to my horror, the song “Amazing Grace” was sung as crosses were lit and were allowed to burn.

It hit me that God, or the sacredness of God, is different, and is explained and understood differently, by humans. The God of the KKK is one who allows murder and domestic terrorism in His name; this God condones racial and religious hatred. The God that everyone worships in Jerusalem on the site where all three major religions are represented is a God who allows, sanctions, enmity between religious groups, again in the name of God.

The God I believe in doesn’t condone or approve of any of that.

President Jimmy Carter explained, in an interview by Paul Raushenbush on the Huffington Post that he felt part of the reason he was elected president was to help bring peace to the Middle East. He was and is deeply religious, as was Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Three people of different faiths, President Carter suggests in the interview, had like minds when it came to what God would have wanted. These men seemed all to have been whispered to by God to bring the confusion about who God is and what God wants to an end.

Their efforts were not appreciated. Anwar Sadat was assassinated, and President Carter was voted out of office;Begin lost support amongst Israelis and after his wife died, became more and more depressed and kind o faded out of the spotlight. Before that happened, Begin and Sadat signed a peace treaty; they had been brought together by President Carter. The Camp David Accords were socially historic but religiously monumental. Here were three men who saw God in the same way, their different faiths notwithstanding…but they were not appreciated. Their people thought they were wusses.

I think of the first term of President Barack Obama. I remember him saying he was going to reach across the isles; he was going to try to make Washington a different place. It was going to be place where “change” included Republicans and Democrats actually working together.

Instead, it has been a mess, with the Republicans jamming the president at every turn and the president coming off and being touted as being “weak” and “too accommodating.” It is as though the Gospel precepts are good for church, but are damned if one tries to practice them in real life.

One must not appear to be weak, and how better to appear strong if you take controversial stands on things, like your political beliefs, and use God as justification?

I cannot help but thinking that believing in God is a hard thing to do, if one is genuine. Believing in God and trying to do what a loving God would want does not win people praise or accolades, but instead resigns them to places of despair and loneliness.

I found myself, as I watched the history of the Klan, being angry at God. “Why don’t You just fix us?” I asked, meaning, why doesn’t God make us differently, wire us differently, so that we are not only capable of bringing real peace to the world, but willing as well.

Of course, God didn’t answer.

God usually doesn’t…

A candid observation.

Paul, Santorum Need Come to Jesus Meeting

I keep thinking that somebody ought to tell Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum that racism is…not presidential.

Both gentlemen fared well in the Iowa caucuses, and both seem to have a hunger for the nation’s highest office.

But Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum, can we talk?

Just a couple of days ago, Rick Santorum said that he “didn’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.” He was speaking to a group of white people, and I guess…well, I guess he was comfortable and he knew what they’d want to hear.

In the name of God, some white folks just think black folks ought to just …shape up, right?

He later on said that he didn’t recall making the statement, but that’s only after he said, in an earlier statement, that he had probably been thinking about what he saw in the movie “Waiting for Superman,” which focuses on black kids trying to get into charter schools…

Santorum said to Sean Hannity on the latter’s television program that, well, he doesn’t make racial distinctions, and, by golly, he has some black friends! Yep, sure does. Michael Steele and J.C. Watts, both black, are his friends.

Never mind that neither of those gentlemen seem to relate to the real plight of many African Americans.

And then there’s Mr. Paul, who, back in the day, had newsletters written under his name. Now, he says he didn’t read any of “that stuff,” but the fact is that “that stuff” appeared in these newsletters and he did not disavow any of it.

What didn’t he disavow, you ask? Well, for one, his statement, “If you’ve ever been robbed by a teen-aged male, you know how fleet-footed they can be.” (italics mine) In that same newsletter, published in 1992, he said that “we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males (in Washington D.C.) are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” He was the only member of Congress that opposed giving a Medal of Honor to Rosa Parks and opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mr. Paul said he is not a racist; in a 2008 CNN interview, he said that he’s the one who protects blacks in the inner city. He says that the statements show the tendency of the media to take things out of context.

That’s fair. The media does have a tendency to take things out of context.

He said in the 2008 interview that he repudiates all of the statements in the newsletters, and that is good. He said he has never read the stuff written under his name.

He said that the real issue is the drug laws that so unfairly impact black people, and he’s right on that.

But it’s the little things, the little tongue-in-cheek things that are said that help keep racial tensions alive, and keep marginalized people feeling, well, marginalized. It is a myth that most of the people on welfare are African American; though proportionately, the poverty rate for African Americans is higher than that for whites, statistics show that more white than black people are on welfare.

One of these presidential politicians ought to say that, don’t you think?

I know it is the job of a politician to get elected, and politicians will say anything to get elected. Ironically, I think of the words of the Apostle Paul, who said in 1 Cor. 9: “Though I am free, and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.” (9:19) Later he says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way to get the prize.” (9:24) I chuckled as I read that entire passage of scripture and wondered if Paul, in addition to fiercely loving Jesus the Christ was not also a politician?

It seems to me, though, that a good politician ought to have the adjectives “honest” and “sensitive” somewhere in his or her resume. Mr. Santorum and Mr. Paul need to “fess up” to saying, or allowing to be said in their names, some pretty racist stuff. It happens. This is America, and it is no secret that many to most white people have grown up with disparaging views and opinions about black people. How great it would be to hear a white politician just “own up” and admit they’d said some things that reflected how they grew up and were taught?

When we admit our goofs, we can begin to fix them.

And fixing their apparently racist ways of looking at black people is a must, in my view, for anyone who is striving to get to the White House. The American government has not been a friend to black (or brown) people, or to women or other oppressed groups. The American government turned its head to the injustices suffered by black people and would not, did not, protect its black citizens.

The country has suffered as a result of that.

Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum would do themselves and their campaigns a favor if they would just have a “come to Jesus” meeting with Jesus, and ask Jesus to change their thoughts and beliefs when it comes to black people, black life and black culture.

Because the country is not a lily-white place, gentlemen, and the country cannot be as great as it has the potential for, if all of its people are not treated having been created equal.

A candid observation.

RuneScape Wiki: The Ancient Curses are a set of prayers obtained as a reward after completing The Temple at Senntisten. →

Jesus, the Homeless Hero

Every now and then, a question will come from out of nowhere that is so profound one has to stop and think. Such a question was in a post by Paul Raushenbush on the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/shane-claiborne-new-monastics_b_1156525.html) this week: How can you worship a homeless man on a Sunday and evict him on a Monday?

The question was in reference to Jesus, the Christ, whose birth Christians the world over will celebrate this Sunday. The scriptures that will be read, describing the night the child was born in a manger “because there was no room in the inn,” are romantic at best, because they camouflage the fact that even in Jesus’ time, the issue of class was a problem.

Jesus, the Palestinian Jew (despite Newt Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an “invented” people) was not part of the in crowd. His parents were not wealthy, not even close; they did not belong to the upper class. Clearly, that is the case, because had they had money, someone, somewhere would have found room for this very pregnant woman.

Throughout Jesus’ life, he posed a problem for the powers that be. Scholars including James Cone, William R. Herzog and the Paulo Freire and Obery Hendricks have suggested that Jesus’ life and ministry was all the more dangerous and difficult for him because he was part of the oppressed class, and spoke against oppression in what some would call “subversive speech.”

We Christians are too far removed from the Palestine and Roman Empire of Jesus’ day; we have a need to believe in the myth of Jesus as opposed to his hard message. We forget that Jesus saw the elitist class of Jerusalem collaborate with the Roman government, something that resulted in more oppression for “the least of these.”

Jesus, in Matthew 25, was not an observer, looking into the lives of the oppressed; he was an insider, looking out, and not liking what he saw.

Freire said that understanding Jesus’ life that way, we understand that the parables were not “earthly stories with heavenly meanings,” but rather they were earthy stories with heavy meanings.” William Herzog, in his book, Parables as Subversive Speech,” said that Jesus was aware of the exploitation of the masses that went on, and he challenged it. Herzog said that the “parable was a form of social analysis, every bit as much as it was a form of theological reflection.”

We Christians do not want that, though. It seems that we cannot fathom the idea that Jesus was not mild and meek, but was instead a rabble rouser, every bit as irritating and annoying to some as is Michael Moore or the late Rev Dr. Martin Luther King. The thought that Jesus might indeed be in the midst of an Occupy tent camp repulses those of us who hold onto myth.

The truth is that we tend to deify people once they are gone. Jesus was hated when he was alive; once he died, he became a hero. The week of his death, according to the Bible, was one in which this schizophrenic type of belief was obvious; on a Thursday, they hailed him as a hero, but a couple of days later, egged on by the religious elitists, they urged the government to crucify him.

That biblical reality notwithstanding even in hero status, the message and mission of Jesus as a social revolutionary is a message that the hero-makers want to, frankly, subvert, recast, and ignore. We are not unlike the Maundy Thursday crowd, praising Jesus (for our own selfish purposes) one moment, but then rejecting him three days later.

He was not rich enough, not “right” enough, not “connected” enough, to be worth caring about deeply. The upper class cares for its own but Jesus just did not belong to them.

We Christians may not all be upper class, but we have issues and beliefs which we hold onto, and frankly, this notion of Jesus as a revolutionary, one who challenged the status quo, just does not work for us.

Sad.

In essence, we are still capable of worshipping him, a homeless man, on a Sunday …and evicting him on a Monday.

A candid …and painful …observation.