My mother killed all the Indians. My father killed all the Jews.

June 24, 2012

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Dr. David Trobisch

I was born from a German father and an American mother. In school I had a teacher who told me that my father killed all the Jews. And another teacher told me that my mother killed all the Indians.


I went to kindergarten in Mannheim, Germany. We children played in an abandoned street, just next to the kindergarten. I remember the ruins of houses, the black streaks on burnt walls, four story buildings which had collapsed under American bombs.

My teachers were not wrong. On both sides of my family I am related to people who have done terrible things.

In the 1940's my father was fighting for his German Vaterland.

My father did not talk much about the war. Only once, during a summer vacation in France and Italy, did he pour out his heart. For one hour every day he would tell his three oldest children his story of the war.

He was seventeen when he was drafted into Hitler's army. He was one of the very few who survived the battle of Stalingrad, where more than 650.000 German troops and 500.000 Russian soldiers were killed in a single battle.¹ Of the 850.000 civilians who once inhabited the city, the census after the war counted only 1.500. The overall loss of life amounts to about 1.5 million people. In one single battle.

Heavily wounded, my father was thrown on the back of a truck. The truck driver crossed through two enemy lines without being detected and attacked.

As soon as he recovered from his injuries my father was sent back to the Russian front. This time his platoon was surrounded. The only hope for these young soldiers was to run up a hill under heavy fire. For years my father had been a devout Christian and active youth leader. But it was then that he decided not to pursue his dream of becoming a theater director. If he survived, he prayed, he would study theology and become a minister.

I will never forget how he told us about the longest night in his life, running half a mile up that hill, under heavy fire. My father was the only one in the platoon to survive. For four weeks he walked west, traveling at night, hiding during the day, until he met with German troops again.

The next time my father was sent to the front, he was sent to Italy. On Christmas Eve an American grenade exploded close to him, sending splinters into his neck and upper arm. Until his death 35 years later he would pull little pieces of shrapnel out of his skin.

My American uncles, about the same age as my father, were fighting for America. My father and my uncles were shooting at each other. A family divided? At that time we were not a family not yet.

The house my wife and I had bought and lived in for ten years in Germany before we moved to Maine was an old house. More than a century old. The sandstone walls were two feet thick. On the outside there were marks from the splinters of a bomb, which had detonated in the little park across the street. The splinters had done little damage to the strong walls of our house. Our neighbors, an elderly couple, told us that only two bombs had fallen on this particular part of Mannheim. One in front of our house.

The other bomb, I knew, had hit the home of my Godmother. The house was completely destroyed. It had been a dark night. The city observed a complete black out. My Godmother's neighbor, however, had left a light on, and it was this light that had led the pilot to drop his fatal load.

I am a Lutheran. And as far back as the sixteenth century my family was Lutheran. My Godmother is very active in the local Lutheran congregation.

Several years ago my wife and I attended a church service in Missouri. We were introduced to a retired pastor who had made a fortune in the stock market. With this money he would buy lots in thriving suburbs and help local Lutherans to form new congregations, erect church buildings, and hire pastors. This was his ministry.


When he learned that we were from Germany he told us that he had been in Germany once before.
He seemed a little hesitant at first. But then he explained: He never put his foot on German soil, but as a young man, as a soldier in an airplane, he had seen Germany from above. Their mission was to drop bombs over Mannheim. But they had problems with one of the engines, decided to turn back early, and therefore dropped their bombs on the first target they could identify, a little light.

That little light led the bomb to the house of my Godmother.

My Godmother's house collapsed in a way that the emergency crews could not get to the basement. She, her husband, her mother, and her father were buried in rubble. During that night my Godmother witnessed the slow and painful death of both, her father and her husband. She could not move, lying under a heavy load of bricks, with a broken hip and shoulder, but she heard every word, every cry.
What is the difference between a German and an American? What is the difference between an Iraqi and an American?

I know enough of my father to see that he was not fighting in Stalingrad because he had a choice. And I know enough of my American uncles to understand that they were doing what they felt they had to do. And I know that my Godmother is a good Lutheran and the retired pastor, who bombed her home, is a good Lutheran as well.

We all have had our experiences and we all had to live and cope with the experiences of the generation before us. All of this forms the way we think and it forms the way we speak. And it informs the way we express God's presence in our lives.

When we came to the US one of the early lessons my wife and I learned, was that on this continent God speaks English. All our lives we had prayed to God--together with our families and friends--in German.

My father grew up in former East Germany, in Leipzig, in Saxony. The people there have a strong dialect. The expressions they use the way they pronounce certain words it sounds funny to other Germans. No matter, what they say, the way they say it makes us laugh.

My mother is American. The German she learned, she learned from my father.

After the wall had come down my mother visited her husband's hometown, Leipzig, for the first time. And what did she say when she came back?

"The people from Saxony are the only people in the world who speak German without an accent."
We all have an accent. And the accent betrays our "past". It tells those who me meet, who we are, and where we come from.

We do not speak God's language. God speaks our language. That is why God speaks with an accent as well. God speaks with our accent.

In my case, after living in the US for several years, God starts to speak English, with a German accent.

¹ "When you tally the figures for the German 6th Army and its allied auxiliaries which supported the march to the Volga, the numbers are both impressive and distressing. The Germans lost about 350,000 men, the Italians, Hungarians and Romanians about 100,000 men apiece. The Red Army also must have lost at least 500,000 men in Stalingrad and the surrounding areas which were adjunct to the battle. But the most horrendous toll must have been on the innocent civilians who formerly lived in the city. Stalingrad was estimated to have had 850,000 residents in 1940. It isn't known how many of them may have escaped the carnage and vanished into the interior of Russia. But after 1945, a census showed only 1500 of these people remained in the pile of rubble that had once been Stalingrad." Source: http:www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/stalingrad/annihilation.aspx

When Truth is Treason

June 17, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor



It is difficult to graph a timeline of the world's empires, especially since most of us tend to view the world from the perspective of the Bible, then to Europe and then to the Americas.  In the ancient world there were long lasting empires that did not know about one another.  While Egypt flourished, so did civilizations in Asia and South America.  One of the longest surviving empires of the world was the Mayans and they were largely ignored in such global views until this year when their little calendar issue has received disproportionate attention.

But even if you broad brush the history of empires, from Egypt to Assyria, Babylon to Rome, Byzantine and Mayan, Arab and British and you come down to Soviet and American, the inescapable awareness is that empires rise and empires fall.  And, seemingly, the cycle of rising and falling gets shorter as you walk down that historical timeline.

Early in the 20th century, the United States began to don its imperial robes.  Colonialism was dying off but economic, technological and military colonialism was taking its place.

We were just one of the players in the early development of things like moving pictures, flight and computer technology but we grew and advanced so quickly that our TV and movie industry dominated the world and infused our culture, our fashions and our values into the whole of the world.  There are pilots the world over but if you want to fly and talk to a control tower anywhere in the world, you have to speak English..... our toys, our rules.
Thirty years ago there were lots of kinds of computers as the industry was in its infancy and now it is either PC or Apple in a stand off that gets more like Coke or Pepsi every day.

Cultural empires expressed themselves, in the west, in Greek, then Arabic, Latin and then English and for those of us born in the second half of the 20th century, it is difficult to see that we too, are the kings on the cultural empire hill for only a moment in time.  America will not always dominate the world's technology, culture, military and economy.

Our primary rival for our life times was the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union fell under the sheer weight of an arms race that they could no longer finance.... And now we are expanding our military presence in the Pacific as if we could launch enough ships to contain China.  China's economy is growing and we are increasing our military spending in much the way the Soviet Union did thirty years ago and we will likely hand the baton of world domination to China because we lack the foresight to stop following in the footsteps of the Soviets.

Even in Afghanistan, long known as the graveyard of empires, we watched as the Soviet Union depleted their capital resources in a useless war there from 1979 to 1989 and we have been there from 2001 to the present trying our best to commit economic and political suicide.

We maintain more than 700 military bases in 130 nations, many of which are related to WWII issues even though that war was ended 70 years ago.

In American political debate, both the Democrats and the Republicans have had recent presidential candidates that tried to shine a light on the lunacy of this military empire we have built, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, two very different men from totally opposite ends of the political spectrum but they have both been portrayed as being members of the lunatic fringe.  All politicians probably deserve to be seen as being at least a bubble off of plumb but these two have been escorted to the curb of political consideration because, as Ron Paul said, "Telling the truth is treason in the empire of lies."

Before I appear to be applauding Paul too much, let me hasten to say that he paraphrased that famous quote from his book from George Orwell who said that, "In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

I don't mention the inevitability of the demise of the American empire to be upsetting nor to suggest that we should take steps to remain at the top of the mountain.  I'm just making a observation about power.

We have two scripture readings in our service today when we normally have only one, but both of these are lectionary choices for the day, appropriately paired because they are in contrast with one another..... one of the precious times when the common lectionary gets it right.

The Old Testament lesson comes from the 17th chapter of Ezekiel where the prophet is triumphalistically declaring that the day would come when God would raise up the kingdom of Judah to rule the world.  He uses the image of Israel as a mighty cedar tree growing tall and all of the birds of the air, representing the nations of the world, come to build nests in its branches.
This Zionist vision is repeated here and there through the Bible and is sometimes so subtle that even modern Americans seem to be persuaded that God wants to put this particular government and this particular piece of real estate in a prominent position.  It is absurd if you allow yourself to think about it but the sum total of absurd things I have heard from American pulpits is a huge body of work that grows larger every Sunday.

But the gospel lesson demonstrates that Jesus was not taken in by Ezekiel's excesses of nationalistic enthusiasm. In our gospel lesson from Mark chapter 4, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God, not to a giant cedar tree but to a tiny mustard plant.  He mocks Ezekiel saying that birds build their nest in the mustard plant but not any bird that is not intent upon almost immediate extinction because the mustard week only grows to be about a foot to a foot and a half tall.... It can be crushed by stepping on it and it dies in the first frost.

To rub it in just a bit further, the mustard weed was no kosher and was used only to feed cattle and sheep.  Jesus chose the weakest, most disgusting and unlikely plant to represent the Kingdom of God and he did that just as Roman armies were carrying their fierce symbols of military might all over the western world.

A decade ago I was a board member on more than a dozen of our community's government and civic organizations.  I was on the board of Burrell Mental Health, the Community Foundation, the Community Partnership, The Family Achievement Academy and several others.
At the time I was the senior pastor of one of the big steeple denominational churches in town and being seen on those boards was just the normal role for a person in my position but I begin to notice that even though my name was on the stationary of those organizations, they almost always entirely ignored everything I said.

They used me and my position to garner legitimacy for themselves while often doing exactly the opposite of what I felt was in the best interests of the city's poor, mentally ill, addicted and homeless.  I came to realize that while power and position can be addictive that the real role of the prophet was not to be either on the stationary or at the board table but to be on the sidewalk shaking my fist at the board when they met.

If we are to "speak the truth to power" we have to first accept that speaking is our power.  I am glad when someone from our ranks finds a seat in government or in authority but I am always suspicious of power because every empire eventually becomes an empire of lies.

We not only invaded Iraq under false pretenses, once our initial lies were uncovered, then the defense for occupation was that Saddam Hussein administered a corrupt government that violently put down protest and even tortured prisoners.  But, of course, we also tortured prisoners, violently put down opposition and the amount of corruption and the hundreds of millions of missing dollars forces one to wonder, in a contest between our management of Iraq and Saddam's government which one was the most deadly and oppressive and corrupt.

Of course, I have no idea what the honest answer to that question would be but what I know for certain is that it is not a question that you will hear asked on any corporate owned news media channel nor in any denominational church because speaking the truth in the empire of lies is considered to be treason.

When Jesus points to the vulnerable, non-kosher mustard plant as the symbol for the kingdom where we want to hold our citizenship it is an anti-empire symbol.

As an American, I want my nation to be the one that delivers emergency relief aid.  I even want my nation to be the one that helps to depose dictators, stop genocide and to encourage human rights around the globe.  But I know that power always comes with economic heavy handedness, and we start saying things like, "Water boarding isn't torture because Americans do it and America doesn't torture....." So if speaking the truth is treason in the empire of lies, I just want to make sure that this church is guilty of treason.  Or if you prefer George Orwell's wording so that speaking the truth in an age of deceit is a revolutionary act.... But no matter how you slice it, we should never be afraid to speak the truth to the empire because without us, they are sure to prefer their lies.

Concerning Religion + Politics

June 10, 2012   Proper 5
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Samuel 8:4-20                    
4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7and the Lord said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9Now then, listen to their voice; only--you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." 10So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day." 19But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a king over us, 20so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."

It was not big news in Montgomery, Alabama nor was it much of a surprise to his family when the Rev. Vernon Johns was fired by the Deacon Avenue Baptist Church.  Johns had been fired before and he would be fired several more times after he left Deacon Ave. Baptist.  He was just too political.  He couldn't help himself.  The irony is, however, that the board of this particular church told Johns that they wanted to hire a minister who was more "conventional."

James Earl Jones plays Johns in a movie about his life and it depicts the scene when Johns was introduced to his younger, safer, more conventional replacement, the newly graduated Martin Luther King, Jr.  The idea that a church wanted to hire a minister who was more conventional and less political and ended up with Martin Luther King, Jr. has always amused me but I believe that when King accepted that call that he really did intend to be just what Deacon Avenue Baptist Church wanted him to be.
It was precisely because he was a young college graduate who had not stirred the pot or made any political enemies that the community of black pastors in Montgomery asked him to take the lead in a meeting they held to discuss this incident that had been created when Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus.

There were other actions, protests, resistance before this incident but the real start of the Civil Rights Movement began when Rosa Parks made this courageous gesture.  African American pastors realized that this was the right opportunity for them to organize and act but the competition for recognition among them made it difficult for anyone to emerge as the leader of the boycott so someone called and basically cajoled King out of his home to come chair the meeting.

King became the greatest leader and spokesperson of the Civil Rights Movement and he deserves every bit of recognition and praise that he has received but he became that because the circumstances of America's version of racial apartheid combined with his devotion to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth compelled him to become the man for whom we now have a national holiday.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 44 years ago and for all of my adult life I have heard people asking, "Who is the next Martin Luther King?"  And for many years they have asked, "Why did no one become a leader like King was?"  There may be a myriad of answers to those questions but at the top of the list of answers would have to be that churches still fire pastors who try to speak out about social justice and they tell the successors that they want a more conventional and less political preacher.
To keep their jobs, two generations of preachers have talked about heaven and hell but not much about Main St. and Commercial St. and certainly not Wall St.

The Bible is about 1200 pages long.  If you took the texts read in churches for almost every sermon preached.... Passages about going to heaven.  Accounts of super natural miracles and warnings against going to hell.... And those passages are in the Bible, but you could consolidate them to about ten or twelve pages.  And it makes you wonder if people in church don't ever get curious about what is written on the other 1,190 pages?  Because most of the Bible addresses what the board members at the Deacon Ave. Baptist church called "politics."

Most of the Bible speaks to the just treatment of the poor, about compassion for the elderly, orphans, the sick and the hungry.  Most of the prophetic books have preachers addressing sermons to kings and politicians, condemning them, as we see in this text from 1 Samuel that Dr. Trobisch told us this morning, about the excessive militarism of the government, indifference towards the poor, abusive taxation to serve the interests of the wealthy.... Folks, this is from three thousand years ago and that theme of liberation, of passionate and sacrificial concern for justice is a theme that marches through the history of the judges, prophets, apostles and saints, many of whom were assassinated, imprisoned or repeatedly fired for doing and saying the right things.

I believe that the largest single reason why the mainstream church is dying so rapidly right now is because they have become morally irrelevant.  And fundamentalist churches are growing because they tell people exactly what they want to hear.... They tell people that God is just as militaristic, greedy, racist and sexist as they are and people will eat that up with a spoon.... For a while.
Those of us who regularly go down to Bill's Place to take lunch to the unsheltered homeless of Springfield have gotten to know some of the regulars there.  We were all a bit shocked one day this week when I inquired about one of those regulars who hasn't been around in the last week.

I first noticed Slick months ago because no matter what we were serving, he wanted hot sauce.... Lot's of hot sauce, and we started keeping big bottles of hot sauce in our supplies because we knew Slick would want it.  But the last few weeks I couldn't escape noticing that more often than not Slick would have his wife bring his plate to him in his chair because he was too drunk to stand in line.  I talked to him, encouraged him to be sober the next time I came back but last week he and his wife got into a fight and he tried to cut her throat with a hack saw.

We've been told that she was not seriously injured and that she is recovering well but Slick will be in jail for a long time.  That story was hard for us to hear and I apologize to you for telling you such a gruesome account here in church today because I know it is hard for you to hear too.... But the point is that this is the real world.  This is the world of unemployment, of poverty, of the addiction and violence that comes with racism, with cuts to education, with the transfer of wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller class of aristocrats.

When poverty rates go down, violent crime goes down.  When education rates go up, unemployment goes down.  If we refuse to see the big picture... if we refuse to read from those other 1190 pages....  If we become the church that prays for the sick but doesn't fight for health care access for all.... If we will feed the hungry and walk away without also fighting for jobs, safe housing and meaningful living then we become one of those dying institutions that everyone is trying to leave as fast as they can.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:  "A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions.... Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion."

There is tremendous pressure on every church in America to steer to the safety of the middle ground.... To talk about what is called "spiritual" concerns without recognizing that poverty, addiction, war, domestic violence, homelessness, hunger, racism, gender and sexual orientation prejudices ARE spiritual concerns.

Jim Wallis was fond of telling us in class at Harvard that no one goes to heaven without three letters of reference from homeless people.  We're not here to sing hymns and study religious history.  We come here to get ready to change the world..... and that will inevitably put us at cross purposes with the people who are currently in power.

Winston Churchill said, "So you have enemies?  Good.  That means that at some point in your life you stood up for something."

The narrator of the movie about the life of Rev. Vernon Johns starts the film by saying:

"Before the civil rights movement could begin, it would take the actions of a few brave souls to start that movement into motion. This is a story of one of them."

Fifty years later, we stand at a time when we will either watch the church become as dry as death itself or we will have to be the brave souls to start a prophetic movement that will give life back to the institution that bears the name of Jesus."

Most churches build sanctuaries, gymnasiums and fellowship halls so that they can keep their kids safe and so they can stay far away from people like Slick.  I don't know about you, but I just want to make sure that we keep going to the places where we might be able to show enough compassion to really change Commercial St. and Main St. and Wall St. but whether we succeed or whether we fail, I want to be sure that people like Slick know my name because I just might need a good letter of reference myself someday.

Before the church can come to life again, it is necessary that some brave souls will take the kinds of actions that gives life back to the gospels and the prophets.... And I am betting that you are those people.

Stop Being Afraid

June 3, 2012    Proper 4
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

 Romans 8:14-17      
14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Billy Graham has been, for most of the past 50 years, the exception to the rule of televangelist insanity.  Most of the figures who promoted themselves on the national scene as great evangelists embarrassed themselves both in how they lived and in what they said but Billy Graham generally maintained an impeccable personal reputation and, even though his theology is distinctly evangelical, he made his messages seem somehow more sane and palatable than those of his peers.

But his children seem to have fallen pretty far from the tree.  Though both have done some very laudable things as they have tried to establish themselves as national evangelical leaders, they also regularly appear to be a bit nuts if not downright mean.

I've had my picture taken shaking hands with Roy Blunt, though we both looked a bit shaken by the experience, I can tell you that I never want to stand that close to Franklin Graham!  Billy Graham personally went and bailed Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail a couple of times but his kids appear to be on the other side of the fence.

The 94 year old advisor and friend to many presidents is now out of the spot light but his daughter, Anne, was recently interviewed about her views on who should be the next president.
Evangelicals have had to do a lot of theological contortions since they appear to have to now choose between a Mormon and an African born-Muslim-socialist in the fall election..... of course, President Obama is not a Muslim and is not African born nor a socialist but they are not known for letting facts get in their way and they sure aren't about to start now.

Anne Graham said that the number one thing she looks for in a presidential candidate is that they fear God.  Let me let you hear her saying it herself on Meet the Press, (play clip of Graham saying, "The thing I think is so important is the Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord......)

She is accurate in that the Bible does say this, in both Proverbs and more than once in the Psalms but, of course, the Bible also says, as appears in our lesson from Romans this morning, that as members of God's family, we have no reason to fear.  And 1 John, chapter 4, says that "perfect love drives out fear."

Biblicists are fond of saying that you can't "pick and choose" from among the scriptures but, clearly, you have to because no one can take the Bible as a whole and give equal value to every verse.  There is wisdom and insight in the pages of scripture but there is also prejudice, misogyny, and violence.  As Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer puts it in his interesting little book, Jesus Against Christianity, the Pentateuch basically describes God as being a pathological land thief.  And in spite of how many Zionists in the world continue to insist that God is in the real estate stealing business, I do not choose to believe in that god.

Though I long ago gave up a supernatural view of God that would have required adherence to any particular set of doctrines, I have often jokingly said that were it not for fear and guilt I wouldn't have a job.

But in spite of the potential career risk it may pose, I'm here to tell you that fearing God is not the beginning of wisdom, it is more like the first step towards a therapist's office.

Last Spring there was a fairly short flurry of news reports about pastors publicly saying that they don't believe in hell.  A couple of small church pastors lost their jobs but then an evangelical mega-church pastor, Robert Bell, published a book entitled "Love Wins" in which he affirmed the same belief.  And he was broadly denounced by evangelicals and Christian publishers from coast to coast because if you take away the fear of going to hell there might be a virtual stampede leaving evangelical churches and heading downtown for the gay bars.... Or as one Assemblies of God seminarian told me, "The dancing is so much more fun there."

The Ontario newspaper, The Globe and Mail, just reported yesterday that the Toronto Catholic archbishop had issued a long statement protesting the Liberal Ontario government for passing an anti-bullying ordinance that included language against bullying kids for being gay.  Which is wrong in at least two very serious ways.... The first and most obvious being that an Archbishop protesting an anti-bullying bill is the height of religious hypocrisy but perhaps more seriously, an English speaking Toronto Bishop criticizing anything in French speaking Ontario is tantamount to a declaration of war....... What, you people don't follow Canadian politics?  May I ask one of our Canadian viewers to send me an explanatory note that I can pass along to my Midwestern congregation?
The ancient Persians invented the concepts of heaven and hell because the constructs were useful to the royal class in controlling their slaves and peasants.  Marx wasn't the first to realize that promising the suffering poor "pie in the sky in the bye and bye" might make them more cooperative with being abused.  The Zoroastrians used it on their Jewish slaves in Babylon and they brought the idea back to Judah and infected both the post exilic expression of Judaism and early Christian communities with it.

I believe that the historical Jesus was concerned about alleviating the suffering of the poor, the sick and the marginalized in there here and now and if that is picking and choosing then let me be very clear about this, I do not choose to be afraid of God and I hope that you are not either.

I believe that fear was primarily and originally a form of government manipulation of the population and where religious fear doesn't work, I'm convinced that the government finds other tools to engender sufficient fear to keep us compliant.

So much has happened in the past decade in the name of protecting us from terrorists.  George Orwell never dared to dream of the level of government spying on its own citizens that we now experience.  Terrorism is the excuse used to place cameras and listening devices in public places and to eavesdrop on telephone conversations and read e-mails as if terrorists were likely to send one another emails about their activities..... "Hi, Jamal, the bomb factory is coming along nicely!"

Not that terrorists generally come straight out of the MENSA club.... I'm certain that Homeland Security has thwarted some serious terrorist plots but what we hear about is some guy who turns his car into an incendiary bomb and then locked himself out of his car and couldn't detonate it.  Or the guy who wore an underwear bomb and succeeded only in setting his own private parts on fire.

We had a guest lecturer at Drury University a few years ago who was a strategist for Homeland Security and during the question and answer period I asked him, "Which poses the greatest threat to Americans, foreign terrorists or this winter's strain of the flu."  He was red-faced and angry about the question but the answer is obvious..... if the government were really concerned about saving lives, they would pass out more Kleenex and anti-bacterial hand sanitizer but the flu doesn't require the construction of an office structure larger than the Pentagon and a budget bigger than education.  And while the flu is something to be concerned about, it just doesn't have the sexy fear appeal of terrorism.

I must ask you to consider why people commit acts of terrorism in the first place?  Isn't it to frighten large numbers of people at a small expense?  Terrorism is sometimes called the warfare of the poor and oppressed.  Terrorists can't field a navy or an air force, they don't have armies and tanks so they secretly do the most violently attention getting things that they can do in order to intimidate and threaten their enemies.  So the single most effective counter terrorism measure we can take is to decide not to be terrorized.... To refuse to be afraid, to never make decisions based on fear.

Fear is not the beginning of wisdom.  Fear doesn't cause you to make good decisions.  And fear never inspires what we say that we want..... grace, forgiveness, peace, and certainly not love.

The public rhetoric asks you to be afraid of poor people who might get some of your money for something they didn't work for.  It asks you to be afraid of sick people who might get health care that you might have to help pay for.  You are asked to be afraid of criminals who are treated like royalty while in prison at your expense.  And you are asked to be afraid enough to give up your rights to privacy and to accept outrageous expansions of government agencies and intrusions into your life to protect you from terrorists when lightening poses a much larger threat and the flu is a hundred times more likely to get you than anyone in Al-Qaida.

Apparently, fear makes us stupid and mean and those are two things that are contrary to who we say we want to be.  It is the terrorist who wants you to be afraid, where that is a fanatic with a bomb, or a government that keeps exaggerating the threat of bombers, or religious wackos who make up tall tales about places of eternal punishment..... they are all terrorists and the best thing we can do is to ignore them and get busy being good at loving.