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Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media. |
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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I comment on things I am reading, thinking about, encountering in media, and spiritual issues. I hope you will find something interesting. PS. I love feedback... |
| Am I the one who set the table or am I the guest? It is Palm Sunday and Jesus is entering the city. The population of Jerusalem will swell from a city about the size of Joplin to two million, about the size of the Nashville metropolitan area for the feast of Passover bringing their lambs as offerings. Some of them are coming with Jesus, and they know it is dangerous, but they have hope. Some hope Jesus will throw out the Roman occupiers so the Jewish people can once more have self-rule. Others hope his coming will lead to some changes in Jewish leadership and become more responsive to the needs of Judaism. Some are just curious. All who come, remember the Historic event of the escape from bondage in Egypt. Trying to imagine how it all looked, I pictured the whole population of Nashville greeting Dolly Parton in Joplin. The excitement might be overwhelmed by the discomfort. Where would they sleep? Think of the noise. And remember, they came by foot or donkey or in carts pulled by other large animals. Think of all those animals! What about the sewage? And they offer all those sheep – the blood and entrails! Let us enjoy our quiet gathering with indoor plumbing and celebrate the apex of Jesus ministry. {The song "Rainbowland" recorded by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus was played earlier}: And Dolly did come, by the miracle of electronics, as they came here just now, to a first grade class in Wisconsin. The class loved their song and asked for it to be played over and over and decided to sing it in their spring concert. However, not everyone was singing along. An administrator forbid the song because it is “too controversial.” I doubt anyone will be crucified, but, we don’t know there won’t be a shooting with and AR-15. We never know. There is no way to know. The people at the Covenant School in Nashville didn’t know. And today, every compassionate person in America who has received the news of this latest shooting is praying and grieving. ………………………………………………………………………………………. Scripture: Epistle lesson: Philippians 2:5-11 Gospel: Matthew 26:14-27;66 The message: Scripture tells us that Jesus knew he would face the worst and was preparing his followers. As I read what he said in preparation, it seems a bit cryptic. It wouldn’t take much denial, much wishing it weren’t so, for the Apostles to not take the message in, to not feel that it was real. So Jesus brings it home in a more salient way: He tells Peter he will deny him three times before the cock crows. He tells them all that one will betray him. Judas knows somehow it will be him and says so. Jesus does not contradict him. Jesus is not in denial. He sees where he is headed and he gives instructions for after he is gone in the form of the rite of communion. The Coptic Christian tradition holds that Judas was a favorite of Jesus and betrayed him because Jesus asked him to do so. We can’t really know because we are here and not there. What we can know is how people behave. We can know that people don’t agree on interpretations of words, don’t agree on correctness of one or another type of behavior, and cannot even agree to be compassionate when children and their teachers are shot in their school. Perhaps some of you have not spent hours reading, listening and watching the wide range of reactions to the latest school shooting. They aren’t any different from the last one, or the one before, or the one before that. Many people show compassion, but some powerful people show none. They have other priorities, as did the Roman government and the scribes and the Pharisees. People with power could set a different direction but choose to turn away, or to encourage a mob to serve them rather than choosing to nurture compassion. That school administrator who forbids the song “Rainbowland” seems to be trying to stop people from doing what he thinks is wrong. Do they think the solution is to teach children there is only one way to be: If they don’t know there are differences, they won’t become different? They seem to assume the children will never encounter rainbows if they just shut them out of the songs, out of the stories, out of the classroom and auditorium. We know what compassion is: it is to sit with another in their time of distress. This is relatively easy to do when the other is like us. I remember asking in a conversation some time ago, How do we act compassionately with Putin? Now, I wonder how do I be compassionate with a person who is taking rainbows away from children? Children love rainbows. I can’t count how many children came into my office and drew rainbows. The children who were not safe drew them more, bigger, more intensely. I would tell them that rainbows are about hope and I wanted them to take their rainbows with them when they left the room. How did I know about rainbows? Why God sent a rainbow as evidence of his promise to Noah that he would never again express his wrath like he did in that flood. I guess he saw that the flood was not an especially good idea or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I do know that rainbows come at the end of the storm, but not at the end of every storm, and sometimes they come when there is no storm at all. When they come, we say oooo and ahhhh and tell others to look and we smile. There are many stories, old and new about rainbows. There is the tradition of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This love of rainbows seemed pretty universal to me, until recently. Now, I have the challenge of showing compassion to people who don’t love rainbows. Bummer. I’d rather just avoid those folks when they are in that mode. I don’t like hearing it. I don’t want to know Christ is about to be crucified all over again. I don’t want to know children will be shot in their school. I don’t want to know another group has parted from their Christian community thinking they did it to protect Christianity, because they don’t want to be inclusive. But I do know. I know in the same ways that you know. We all know compassion will arise just as a rainbow is likely to appear at the end of a storm, but not after every storm. I think the passage from Philippians means to give us direction about how we go about being compassionate. We are to see ourselves as no better than anyone else. We can do this by taking on the role of servant or by seeing everyone as worthy of our love. We in Christianity have a perpetual struggle about this. Do we make ourselves last so we can be first? Is our goal really to be first? Do we make others first in a way that requires that we follow them blindly? Some Christians pick a person to follow and become their servant. You have heard of the Branch Davidians. They have been in the news this week on the 30th anniversary of the tragic fire that killed so many of them. A spin off group from the Seventh Day Adventists, they had a charismatic leader and they followed him into death, taking their children with them. Followers who did not die blamed the fire on the federal ATF officers who had held the compound in siege for days and days before the fire. Other people blamed the leader for putting his followers at risk. Some Christians thought the followers made a bad choice to follow that leader. It really makes no difference in the end. The dead are dead, and we have all moved on. At least that is what I thought until I read that some people still think David Koresh was right and say they would still follow him if he hadn’t died. I thought it was over until a political candidate held a rally there and used the time to complain about how he is a victim of an out-of-control Federal Government. I struggle to have compassion for him. It is so easy to say I can’t be compassionate because of one’s behavior. It is easy to have no compassion for Judas, for David Koresh, for Putin, or for a man who wants to lead, wants followers to believe he has good intentions toward them, but then he leads them into a mess. But I want to be compassionate with everyone. Don’t you? The only person I ever actually hated was someone who wanted followers but clearly did not have their best interests at heart. I managed to get away to a place where he had no influence over me. Then, I ran into him in a public place and he talked to me as though I was his friend. To my surprise I pulled it off. I behaved compassionately toward someone I hated. I hated him because I feared him. That day, however, I did not fear him. I saw him in a new light, as a fellow traveler through the confusion of life. This was possible because no one, not him, not others and not I had any expectation that I would follow him. Christ had no expectation that he would follow the Romans. He had no expectation that he would follow the Scribes and the Pharisees. His expectation was that by following Yahweh, his God would protect him not from earthly death, but from death in the spirit. He knew his followers would not be quite as steadfast as he expected himself to be. Yet, he broke bread with them and asked them to continue to break bread in remembrance of him after he was gone. He showed them compassion. He accepted them as they were and made no judgement of them. He knew the crowds that welcomed him would not act to keep him safe. He did not deride them. He accepted their adulation without changing his way of being in this world. This is what he asks of us, knowing all the while that we will often fall short. He will be reliably who he has always been. He will accept us as we are. He will help in ways only he can do, and he will not lead us into situations that put our souls at risk. He doesn’t have to. Those situations will dependably present themselves. People will try to lead us into their chaos. When this happens, we need to take a deep breath and do as Jesus did: walk on into life with compassion without fear for our souls, and without judgment. Know that when we fall short we will still be loved and forgiven. Keep the inclusive light of rainbows in your mind as a reminder that God loves all of humanity all of the time including you. |
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