Those Three Magic Words (I Forgive You)

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Easter 2   April 27, 2014

John 20:19-23
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

My daughter is movie star beautiful.  I say that with a certain shameless pride because, clearly, I made no genetic contribution to my very Asian daughter's appearance.  She is movie star beautiful but she is not perfect, a fact which seems to often get lost in the eyes of those who are easily star-struck by beauty.

As an Asian in a 96% white school system, she stood out and, I believe both her school peers and her teachers gave her a pass on many assignments and expectations because people naturally liked her and wanted to be liked by her.  Before adopting this little rock star, I had never had reason to consider the potential liability of beauty.  When friends and success come too easily, you can start to assume that the world owes you kindness, generosity, the best seat, the first place in line, and you can afford to be dismissive of people who don't measure up to your unrealistic standards.

We had several conversations in the process of growing up about the minimum expectation that if someone is nice to you the very least that the universe demands of you is to be nice in return.  Boys fight, vandalize, tear stuff up, and generally test the boundaries of civilization as they are growing up but girls.... Girls verbally cannibalize one another.

When all of her very pretty friends from her cheerleading squad were over for a sleep over, I often found myself thanking God that I was not one of people in their school they were dissecting. Few things made me more proud as a father as when I heard her chiming in to defend one of their peers.

And when she was in college and, naturally, joined the pretty girl's sorority, I was proud when, as an upper classman, she defended the candidacy of young women who were not attractive, who had weight and complexion problems, or who didn't have the resources to have nice clothes.

When I was a kid, one of the most popular movies was they syrupy sad film, Love Story.  Perhaps the single most quoted line from any movie in those days was the claim that.... And I bet you can say it with me.... "Love means never having to say 'I'm sorry.'"

I was no Einstein but even as a very young kid, I knew that was a load of bologna.  I grew up as the youngest of four kids in a family that was, as Elizabeth Warren described her childhood, on the ragged edge of the middle class.  Resources, both financial and emotional, were scarce and so there was some fierce competition among us and we did not always fight fair.

Remaining in a relationship.... Be that marriage, family, friends, work associates, or neighbors, means being willing to say, "I'm sorry."  It means choosing to be grateful for kindnesses shown.  It means learning the relationship skills of not taking others for granted... not abusing them and assuming that it is their job to take it off of you and pretend the next day that it didn't happen because you are so special that you deserve extra grace.
Humans are pack animals.  One of the most cruel forms of punishment in any prison system is solitary confinement.  We do not do well without other people in our lives.  The famous Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, lived as a hermit for years on the grounds of the Gethsemane Monastery.  His abbot agreed to let him live in a hermitage rather than in the monastic house with the rest of the monks because, he said, that Merton was the most difficult person to get along with he had ever met.

Yet Merton wrote in his journal, "Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another." I find that the ability to maintain meaningful friendships, family relationships, marriages and sibling relationships to be one of casualties of the modern era.  Our mobile population with so many forms of entertainment and distraction, and myriad methods of communication has, in many ways, turned us all into the pretty girl in elementary school who can afford to be mean to people at will.

I live alone and work alone.  Other than public services and counseling appointments, it would be entirely possible for me to spend days on end without ever having to interact with anyone.  But I have hundreds of channels on TV, podcasts and videos to approximate human voices and interactions.  I have hundreds of friends on Face Book and thousands of viewers with whom I correspond on line.  Still, I feel the existential reality of my own isolation and am shocked with how fragile real human connections really are.


Most of you know that with this Wednesday's paper, my long running opinion column in the Springfield News-Leader will come to an end.  I was not ready to give it up, even after 20 years of being the most vilified of liberal writers in Southern Missouri, because that media contact with the people of Springfield has been a vital outlet for me.

Still, I am realizing that the drum beat of hate mail, and especially the vicious comments posted every week in the newspapers on-line comment area, have been poisoning me for years.  I never gained the discipline to just not look.  I seemed to be as drawn to the comments as a cat to cat-nip, and I often felt as humiliated by my reactions to the mean and critical posts I read as a cat walking away from a cat-nip mouse hoping that no one saw her behavior.

I'm no saint, but even a saint has a limited supply of patience and thick-skinned endurance.  I believe that for a lot of the past generation I have walked around with most of my supply of patience and generous kindness about a quart low because it was used up on hostile readers.  I am going to make it my conscious goal to be a better friend, a more patient and tolerant person and more naturally forgiving.  But, like when it comes to weight loss, I will not likely appreciate being reminded of this goal or being offered unsolicited advice on how to do it.

Our gospel lesson today comes from the gospel of John.  I usually avoid reading John in our services because the Jesus John describes is the most magical and least human of all of the gospel accounts.

At the end of the first century, John is at such pains to elevate the image of Jesus above any competing religious figures that he gives us gross exaggerations of walking on water, miracle healings and a magical transformation of water into wine.  His resurrection stories make Jesus out to be so much God and that places him beyond meaningful connection to actual people.

But there is something about this story that I can't let go of.  This Jesus, whom John describes as being give sight to the blind, feed the multitudes and to even raise the dead, comes to see his disciples after his own miraculous resurrection and he gives to them one magical power... and I would go so far as to say that it is a magical power... a power given to the apostles and given to you and to me.... John says that Jesus breathed on them.  Breath is symbolic of the force of life, of soul, of spirit... Jesus breaths on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit....now if you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven."

If ever there was a time that you were going to take John literally, please do it here.  You have the power to forgive sins... you just have to be willing to do it.  You have the power to heal broken relationships...To restore family ties...You have the ability to end hostilities...to give strength, confidence, and renewed ability to your own children, if you will choose to forgive.

Marriages don't have to run out of love.  Sisters and brothers do not have to become estranged.  Friendships do not have to die from time and distance.  You never have to throw a co-worker under the bus.  You do not have to give reign to your bad moods to emotionally abuse the people near to you.
The French poet, Anais Nin wrote, "Love never dies a natural death.  It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.  It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.  It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."

Remember the source of what made you fall in love, what common bonds made you friends, the shared vision of justice, compassion and love that drew us together.  And do not forget to use your magical powers for good... forgive... be the first one to forgive.... Forgive generously, recklessly, divinely.

Saving Jesus

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Easter    April 20, 2014


Among the historically anomalous gather of geniuses who were the signers of the American Declaration of Independence and who later gathered to write our constitution was that Renaissance-man, and our third president, Thomas Jefferson.  Though more famous lately for some siring a family blood line through a mistress who was a slave on his farm, other than being a fairly typical 18th century scoundrel, he was also a man who had many interests in which he was well ahead of his time.

He studied architecture, botany, animal husbandry, agriculture, medicine, surveying, government and, of personal interest to me, he dabbled in historical Jesus studies.  He didn't have much to go on beyond his own intuition but he was an uncommonly smart fellow.

Those must have been heady days, once the War of Independence had been won and this robust gathering of thinkers stood on the starting line of what would be the most rapid advance in technology, transportation, communication and philosophy that the world had ever seen.  They were both liberated and compelled towards greatness.  They looked backwards for guidance from the great civilizations of human history but they gave themselves complete liberty to do new things.

Most of our nation's founders were either deists or they were nominally Christian.  As indifferent towards religion as we believe our own time to be, some religious historians estimate that only about 2% of Americans actually attended church at the time the Constitution was written.
The reason you didn't run into any traffic jams on the way here this morning is because even on Easter, only about 20% of Americans are going to church.

An American president couldn't do it today because our nation is much much more religiously conservative now than it was two and a half centuries ago, but President Jefferson read the Christian gospels and felt that there was a message there that was vital to preserve but that message was obscured by a layer of miracles, magic. To recover the teachings of Jesus, Jefferson wrote that, "we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves."

He removed the resurrection texts, the miracles and all references to the divine and had the end product published at tax payer expense so that he could give a copy to every member of Congress.  Something that would have resulted in an impeachment in our era though even then it did kick up a bit of a furor.

Jefferson didn't have the benefit of having access to well thought-out books of theology or historical reviews of scripture.  He was, however, a very intelligent rational man and he just knew that the magical parts of scripture were the commercials but not the real show.  There were those in the ancient church who knew this as well.... When I learned about them in seminary, we called the "heretics".... Arianism and Ebonism both argued for a human Jesus but their perspective and their literature was stamped out by what became the official orthodox view in the time of Constantine.

In the past century, better equipped scholars from the early part of the 20th century tried to rescue the message of Jesus again.  Albert Schweitzer, Paul Tillich, and Rudolph Bultmann would be among the more familiar names from a rising tide of Biblical, theological and historical scholars who worked to bring rational thought back to the practice of faith.

When Tim Rice wrote the lyrics to Jesus Christ Superstar, he was only in his mid-twenties and he claimed to have no particular theological training beyond his parochial school experience.  I find that almost impossible to believe given that I was also a product of the church of the 1960's and there was no such sophistication present in the religious lessons in my childhood.

It is possible that he, like Jefferson two centuries before, just looked at the story and was able to dismiss most of the obviously contrived theological hocus-pocus that had been layered over the real Jesus.  The lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar do not rise to the level of the work of Tillich or Bultmann but it sure does have a better beat.

Were it not for this music, I doubt that I ever would have gotten around to reading Bultmann or Tillich.  Tim Rice claimed that he was trying to tell the story from the perspective of Judas and, to a certain degree, he does though there is a lot of power in the words of Mary, Pilate and even Caiaphas to let us hear the teachings of Jesus more clearly.

I regret for those who follow us on YouTube and iTunes that we cannot legally share with you the music as we are hearing it performed live here today.  I do encourage you to dust off your old album or video and give it another listen.

For those of us here in Springfield, though, I am pleased to be able to join you in this experience of hearing a musical rescue of the Jesus whose teachings still define us.

The Passion Narrative as Autobiography

Community Christian Church of Springfield  
Roger Ray, pastor
Palm Sunday    April 13, 2014

Matthew 27:27-37
27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. 28They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' 30They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. 31After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
32 As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. 33And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), 34they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. 35And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; 36then they sat down there and kept watch over him. 37Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, 'This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.'

It seems that spring is finally here to break the icy grip of one of the most miserable winters in recent history.  Today is Palm Sunday which means that next week we can look forward to a family holiday replete children excitedly wearing their new Easter clothes outside hunting for eggs, the sanctuary will be filled with women in spring hats, and now that the Final Four is over, husbands and wives can try to break the icy silence and begin speaking to one another again.

So I know that the one thing you all want to hear me talk about today is the tortured logic of the Supreme Court's decision to dismantle campaign finance reform regulations.... Don't ever tell me that I don't know my audience!

I happened to be in attending a conference in Washington, DC in 2005 when Chief Justice Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court.  I met an attorney friend of mine for dinner while I was there and she could hardly stop talking about how excited she was to have Roberts appointed to the court.
She had worked with him in a Washington law firm and she told me, "Roger you are going to love this man.  He is an ardent Catholic, a great family man and one of the most honest and intelligent people in the world."

I think that I made some desultory comment about how unlikely that it seemed that I would like anyone appointed by George Bush and we moved on to our remarkably overpriced entrees.  Everything in DC seems overpriced to me but perhaps we have to try to see such things through the eyes of one of Justice Roberts' "Stone Aged" peers on the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said regarding the McCutcheon vs. FEC ruling that lifts that donation aggregate ceiling from $75,000 to $3.5 million, "I don't think that $3.5 million is a heck of a lot of money."

Once you are in a position to say that $3.5 million is not a heck of a lot of money, then paying $75 for half a chicken breast on a bed of pasta makes more sense.  But Justice Roberts, this ardent Catholic, honest, intelligent man, said about this ruling:

"Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder's official duties, does not give rise to such quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner 'influence over or access to' elected officials or political parties."

Now, don't let this slip past you.... Justice Roberts.... This brilliant legal mind, said that people who donate millions of dollars to a political campaign are not necessarily expecting to either influence what candidates do when they are elected nor do they even expect to have greater access to the people to whom they have given millions of dollars.

And you have to say right up front that there is no way that you can claim that Justice Roberts is not a smart man.  This is a very intelligent man who is deeply entrenched inside the Washington bubble who can straight faced look into the cameras and say that people who donate millions of dollars do not want anything in return.

These recent Supreme Court decisions that have opened the flood gate to unlimited political influence peddling is an undeniable attempt on the part of the ruling elite to hold onto power even as their voter base is quickly dying off.  They are manipulating voter registration and voting laws to limit the number of poor, elderly and minority voters will be able to cast votes, and removing all accountability around the money in politics so that the party of the super wealthy can hold onto control of the government for a little longer.

So, when Justice Roberts says that multi-million dollar donations have no influence on either policy or access to elected officials, he is not dumb enough to believe that it is true but, and here is the point of my narrative, he wants to believe that it is true and by wanting to believe it, he can convince himself to deny reality, lie to himself, lie to the world, and ignore the consequences.

And one last political point, because I believe that this needs to be said:  Sheldon Adelson, the casino operator who donated $93 million dollars in the 2012 election cycle, is a conservative Jewish Zionist.

Now let me say that even if I were the dictator of the world and could just move national boundaries around at will, I'm not sure what I would do to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem.  We are more than a half a century deep into a very wrong headed land theft and resettlement program that just isn't workable.  I have sincere feelings of sympathy on both sides of this issue and I have no idea how it can be resolved peacefully.

Still, what I know with certainty is that the American military subsidies of Israel are so huge and so irrational specifically because of the financial influence on our government by political donations from people with mindsets like Adelson.  Adelson donates tens of millions to political campaigns and then our government gives over $3 billion every year to support Israel's military... and though we cannot make huge political campaign donations, we do pay hefty taxes to pay for Israel's military.

With all due respect for Justice Roberts' wishful thinking, I'm suggesting that there not only is a "quid pro quo" involved in these political contributions but I am saying that the quid pro quo come with a huge price tag for you and for me and, more importantly, it keeps us from doing things like extending unemployment benefits, providing mental health care for returning veterans, and appropriate and safe schools for children in poor neighborhoods.

If I can bring this back to the gospel lesson today and pose the larger question, "Why do otherwise good people tell lies and act like they are not lying?"  I am inclined to take my friends word at face value... she knew John Roberts as an attorney, a family man, a business partner and a Christian.
Now the whole world can see that he is also a hypocritical liar but what does he see when he looks in the mirror every morning? My guess is that when John Roberts looks into his bathroom mirror every morning, he sees a brilliant, Supreme Court Chief Justice who is a good family man and a good Catholic.

So we read the passion narrative in the gospels.  Jesus is falsely accused.  His brothers and sisters are nowhere to be seen.  His good friends fade back into the shadows.  Religious leaders conspire with political officials to trump up a case against him.

The priests can say, "Thank God we saved the people from that socio-path they were following."  His siblings can say, "His arrogance finally got the best of him."  The political leaders probably didn't say much at all..... Jesus never came close to the old $75,000 cap on political donations so he never really mattered to them.

We read the passion narrative of Jesus, not because we think that Jesus was God or even because we think the gospel writers are giving us a reliable historical account.  We read it as a story, an archetypal story. We read it because it tells our own story.

When you read any great story, you have feelings for the characters in the story and a lot of those feelings are rooted with how deeply you identify with the characters.  Why do you think that Halloween is such a popular holiday for children?

They have a deep, a primal desire to be the characters they have seen in their stories.  It always worries me a little bit when you see a kid choose to be Darth Vader or Freddie Krueger.... I don't want to over interpret that.
But when you read the passion narrative, you probably want to identify with Jesus, as sad as the outcome of the narrative is.  You don't want to be the callous and morally indifferent governor of Palestine.  You don't want to be the unfaithful friends, the lying religious leaders, the back stabbing best friend who throws Jesus under the bus.  Nobody wants to be Peter on that day.  No one wants to be Judas, or Pilate or Caiaphas.

But what do you want to bet that Caiaphas brushed his teeth that night and went to bed with no trouble at all?  That Pilate got up the next day, looked in the mirror and saw a powerful and wise ruler?  The gospels tell us that Peter was ashamed and Judas killed himself but it this were a real life drama, I would bet that they both would have gotten up the next day and said to themselves, "I sure am tired of all of the drama that Jesus creates."

The passion narrative has staying power through the centuries because, at some level, we have lived it, felt it, known it.  Like all archetypal narratives then, it is cathartic to us to hear it again, to feel it again.  But is there a larger point?

I hope so.  What if Justice Thomas, also an ardent Catholic, had looked at Justice Scalia and said, "You're joking.  $3.5 million dollars is an obscene amount of money and it could ruin our democracy."  What if Justice Kennedy would have pulled Roberts aside and said, "Do you realize that the legacy of your court is going to make you look like a corrupt joke in history?  Don't you want to work to preserve democracy rather than flushing it down the toilet?"

We somehow live in a world in which a President and a Vice-President can say that torturing prisoners is not torture because we don't torture and if we did it that it wasn't torture.  And presented with that circular logic, the country shrugs its collective shoulders and doesn't put that President and Vice-President on trial for war crimes.

Could it be that we are willing to pass on such things because we have grown so accustomed to it in our personal lives?  That people wish that something was true and so they tell themselves that it is true... have we allowed our conscience to wander away from reality so far that we believe in our own innocence, we believe our own lies, we abandon family members, throw friends under the bus, and acquiesce to falsehood to keep ourselves out of any uncomfortable fray?

Would any of us rushed in and saved Jesus from Judas' betrayal, Caiaphas' false allegations, or Pilate's depraved indifference?  If you wouldn't, if you know that you wouldn't, then decisions like our recent Supreme Court decisions and all of the times that you have felt betrayed just make sense... they are par for the course.

I think that what we owe to the universe is more than a casual acquaintance with the truth.  When it really matters, when someone is getting hurt, don't let your friends lie to themselves about their involvement.  Don't turn your back on your siblings when they really need your support.  Don't throw your friends under the bus just because doing so may raise your status or give you a temporary feeling of power.

Don't be Pilate, or Judas, or Caiaphas, or Peter or any of the unnamed siblings or disciples who risked nothing and cost Jesus his life.  You be the game changer, the truth teller, the one who wouldn't go along to get along.
You'll have fewer friends but better friends and when you look in the mirror in the morning you won't have to lie to yourself.

Preaching to Bones (I Can't Believe that I am Still Protesting this Same Old Stuff)

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Lent 5    April 6, 2014

Ezekiel 37:1-14
37The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord God, you know." 4Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord." 7So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.11Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' 12Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act," says the Lord.

I know that it is said that if you remember the 60's that you were not there.  I suppose that I have some advantage for having enter the 60's as a pre-schooler but I remember where I was when I learned that President Kennedy had been shot.  I was at my grandparents' home when Bobby Kennedy was shot.

I remember the Walter Cronkite telling us about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  I remember segregated schools, coloreds only drinking fountains, and more than that, I remember the vociferous debates about women's rights.

I remember enough that if you long for the good ol days that I am willing to say that you were not there.  I remember when my sister had to wear a skirt to school in the dead of winter even when we were being dropped off by my dad on his way to work and we had to stand outside for 30 or 40 minutes while my sister and all of the other girls shivered in their absurdly short skirts.

I remember the public humiliation of anyone in the church who got a divorce for any reason.  I remember the shame involved with out of wedlock pregnancy and the fight that did not come to the Supreme Court until the 1970's for a woman to be able to govern her own body and I remember how we lost the first for an equal rights amendment to the constitution.

The arrival of the birth control pill was relatively new in those days, setting off a heated debate about God's role in pregnancy and the moral decisions to either prevent pregnancy or terminate an unwanted pregnancy.  The private and most personal aspects of a woman's life were literally on the witness stand of a culture that did not want to give up on 19th century morals in light of a 20th century culture.

I don't miss those days.  The prevalence of television news, the advent of a phone in every house and the explosion of publication were helping the world to awaken from its infancy.  But there were casualties along the way.

We did not know how to protest a war and honor the poor who were drafted to fight in the war.  The seeds of political polarization and distrust for government were planted in those years with the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the televised impeachment of Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal.  No matter how much TV sitcoms may try to romanticize this era, I was there and it was nothing to idealize.... And I was a white, male, Protestant, middle class, heterosexual which, in almost every way that mattered, meant that this was the pinnacle of social success for people like me.

I had only just adopted my little brown daughter when I moved to Springfield and at my first Council of Churches annual dinner, the speaker was a former president of what was then called Southwest Missouri State University.  This distinguished white, male, Protestant, upper middle class, heterosexual spoke at length about the changing demographics of America.

In intonations of dread and fear, he recited the numerical shifts from a majority white America to a majority non-white America...from a safely secure English speaking America to a bilingual America. The brown, immigrant, woman I had mistaken taken to the dinner with me kept looking at me as if I had taken her to a KKK rally that I had innocently enough assumed would be a church dinner.

I'm pretty sure that the speaker was trying to say that we all needed to prepare for substantive change in our nation but he was not saying it with joyful anticipation.... It was more of a call to stockpile weapons and provisions for the coming anarchy.

More than 20 years have passed since that day and I'm certain if the speaker in question were to hear my description of his presentation that he would be mortified and would, just as segregationists of the 1960's did after integration, and he would insist that he had recited these numbers as a ebullient herald of good times to come.

The gains made in civil rights and women's rights in the 1960's and 70's and the gains made in gay rights as the millennial mark was passed were, in many ways, concessions of a majority to a minority. Now, as that majority fades into the reality of the approaching minority status, we are seeing some old bones of battles fought long ago, coming back to life to fight once more.

The image of a field of dry bones in the book of Ezekiel is, of course, a highly symbolic account.  The question being posed to Ezekiel is if the ruined remains of Judah can ever be revived.  The vision is set on a battlefield where Judah had suffered its most decisive defeat.

The text has appealed to preachers who see themselves as the prophet and their congregations as the field of dry bones.  It seems to rarely occur to preachers just how narcissistic that setting really is.  I have always hated the association with shepherding language in the ministry in which the pastor is the shepherd and the congregation is a flock of sheep.  If you know much about sheep, that is not much of a compliment.

You are not sheep and I am not a shepherd.  And you are most certainly not a field of dry bones being addressed by a prophet.  We are either a prophetic community together or I am just an opinionated corpulent cleric as full of hot air as the next excessively opinioned guy with a web page and a podcast.

The dry bones that I am seeing come back to life in our nation right now are the dry bones from the 60's and 70's from battles that I thought we had won long ago and would never need to be discussed again.  What we called "the pill" way back then is, for reasons I find to be absolutely beyond comprehension, under discussion again.

Rush Limbaugh made a complete fool of himself calling a young college student derisive names for wanting birth control bills included in their health care coverage two years ago but that that time he looked like a loan lunatic.  Since then we have had corporations, churches, and even politicians weighing in from former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, suggesting that women just need to hold their knees together to just a couple of weeks ago, Alaska state senator, Pete Kelly insisting that women who use contraception lacked self control and even going so far as to say that women should have to take a pregnancy test in bars before being allowed to order a drink.... All of which is an attempt to put American women, not so much back into a skirt but into a social burka that would place them back in the control of men.

And, not that this is a comfortable topic for the pulpit, but just in the past three months there have been more than 40 state and federal attacks on providing birth control to women without so much as a mention of the money provided for both male impotence medications and even the $172 million dollars spent by Medicare for a pump used by men.



A device that, until recently, I just thought was an Austin Powers movie joke but, and I am sad to tell you, this is true, these devices exist and we are paying for them with our tax dollars for senior citizens while trying to deny young women basic birth control.

Abortion rights, hard fought for in the 1970's, has been under attack ever since but now, failing on that front and facing a declining majority, there is a veritable American Taliban trying to bring back an era that none of us would want to live in even if it could be brought back.

Just this week the conservative majority of the Supreme Court struck down, over minority protests, what little remained of the election reforms passed by congress after Watergate.  As their voting base gets smaller and smaller, the white, male grip on power is taking desperate measures to make it harder for minorities to vote and easier for rich people to buy elections.

The congress passed these election contribution limits so that people could regain confidence in our government and believe that we were really a part of a democracy.  But Chief Justice Roberts said that the campaign contribution limit of just less than $75,000 every two year election cycle was limiting freedom of speech.

Now, folks, work with me here... in a democracy, doesn't freedom of speech mean that we all have the same freedom?  But if money is speech, then the people who have more money, have more speech, right?  Did lifting the maximum contribution to political campaigns of $75,000 affect any of you?
Do any of you have more freedom of speech now than you had last year?  Most people of modest income don't contribute anything to political campaigns.  The highly motivated might donate $5 or $10.  I am very highly motivated, I earn a professional salary and I have never made a political contribution of more than $50 because, quite frankly, I can't afford much more.

If I thought it was urgent.... Let's say that Wendy Davis had a real chance of winning her gubernatorial candidacy in Texas or if Elizabeth Warren were running for president, I might go crazy and donate a $100.  Of course, now the very wealthy on the other side of the equation can donate a million dollars or more.  So one wealthy person can have as much freedom of speech as a thousand people like me.

Or if you are one of the really big players, like Sheldon Adelson, who donated $93 million dollars in 2012, then he has more voice than a million people like me, and if you factor in the people who will donate $5 then this one casino owner has more freedom of speech than twenty million Americans.  Is that democracy?

We have, at times, derided the compromise our founding fathers made in writing the constitution in which they decided that a black person was three-fifths of a person.  There were those who felt that slaves were not people at all and southern slave owners who wanted to count their slaves in order to gain more political influence in the federal government so they settled on the compromise of the three-fifths rule.

That was a horrible, demeaning, morally repugnant page in American history but looking at our Supreme Court today, I would say that it was at least three-fifths!  In matters of political speech, no one in this room is three-fifths of a person, none of us are one tenth, one hundredth of a person.

If we do not speak collectively, our voices cannot be heard at all.  We do not exist.

These protections of democracy are being dismantled in hurried succession with the assumption that the collective will of the people that demanded an end to the war in Vietnam, an end to segregation, an end to gender discrimination and a liberation of the gay community is now either asleep or lying scattered around a field of dry bones..... no longer willing to muster the energy or breath to resist a return to the days of domination, oppression and control.

The greatest criticism I have of the modern day progressive is that our cynicism has become our sacrament.  There is no collective action ever taken by people who are just privately bitter.

The real gift of Martin Luther King in the 60's and Rev. William Barber, the organizer of the Moral Mondays protests in North Carolina in our time, is that they have been somehow able to get people to bring their anger, their cynicism, their disappointment, their refusal to accept oppression, into collective action to stand together, to march together, to sing together, to worship, protest and organize so that they can bring the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the union movement, the gay rights movement, together to speak with one prophetic voice for justice.

Can the dry bones of our former passions be knit together, covered with flesh and given new breath?  I don't know.... I honestly don't know.  But I hope so.  The only substantive hope is if we will stick together.

None Are So Blind As Those Who Refuse To See

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO  
Roger Ray, pastor
Lent 4a    March 30, 2014

John 9:1-9
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' 3Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. 4Wemust work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes,7saying to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam' (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, 'Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?' 9Some were saying, 'It is he.' Others were saying, 'No, but it is someone like him.' He kept saying, 'I am the man.' 

I've been a fan of Jon Stewart's fake news show, The Daily Show, for more than 15 years.  His irreverent and incisive interviews have often made him a more reliable news source than most of the professional journalists on TV.  He has interviewed presidents, authors, heads of state, movie stars, religious leaders and corporate giants but I have only seen him awe-struck once and that was when he interviewed a 15 year old girl.  And there are none of his famous guests whom I would love to have a chance to personally meet more than that little Pakistani survivor of a Taliban assassination attempt, Malala Yousuf.

She was only 11 years old when she began writing a blog for the BBC about her life under the rule of the Taliban and her urgent desire for girls in her country to have access to education.  When she was 15, an assassin boarded her school bus and fired three shots right at her head.  One bullet ran along the side of her head and entered her shoulder.  Malala has undergone a number of surgeries and was hospitalized for more than four months.  The shooting has left her disfigured and she has suffered hearing loss as well as some speech problems but in little more than a year after she was shot, she was sitting in the Oval office of the White House trying to educate President Obama about terrorism.


Though a faithful Muslim herself, Malala has been a victim of Islamic extremism in a way that few human beings alive today can fully understand.  If anyone has reason to want to see an aggressive prosecution of the war on terrorism, surely it would be Malala Yousuf.

After the meeting, she told reporters, "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism," she explained to our president, "Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact."

Malala says that she would like to one day be the Prime Minister of Pakistan, which, I suppose, is a worthy goal since our constitution would not allow her to be elected to be the President of the United States.  But I wish.....

In the Bible, blindness is used metaphorically to represent those who can see but who refuse to see.  Modern readers can be ridiculously fact-literal about biblical stories and by reading them that way, become blind to the point themselves.  John takes a lot of precious ink and paper to recount a narrative that was too long for us to read in church today though I suspect that most of you know the story pretty well.

If John were just trying to list miracles to get readers to believe that Jesus had magical powers, he would just say, "30 years ago, Jesus cured a blind man named John Smith who lived on Main St. in Jerusalem."

John is not trying to prove that Jesus was magical, he is telling you a story about blindness.
The early part of John's gospel is full of brilliantly written metaphorical narratives starting with Jesus' conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well but this one, this story in John 9, is deeply ironic because in a story crowded with bumbling disciples, gossiping neighbors, judgmental religious leaders and back stabbing family members it almost seems like the blind man in the story is the only person in Jerusalem who can see and everyone else is blind to reality.

I am convinced that what John wanted to tell us about Jesus is that Jesus was able to see this blind man as a human being in need of real help when everyone else around him saw him as an opportunity for pity, gossip, religious debate, or as a family burden or a neighborhood problem. And folks, if we are in any way followers of Jesus, we want to be able to see in this way too....because we live in a blind culture too.

Sean sometimes sings a song for us from the 1940's Broadway musical, South Pacific, called, "You Have to be Carefully Taught."

You've got to be taught To hate and fear,

You've got to be taught From year to year,

It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught!

Certainly Malala's parents deserve no small amount of credit for helping their daughter to see the absurdity of the prejudice against females in conservative Islam...or, more accurately, the version of Islam practiced by misogynists.... I believe that Islam is more inherently egalitarian in matters of gender than either Judaism or Christianity but there is a very backwards, fearful and prejudiced expression of conservative Islam that Muhammad would have rejected more than 500 years ago.  After all, in his house, he was the one who was illiterate and his wife was the one who had an education.  If not for her, there wouldn't be a Quran!

But like the song says, prejudices have to be taught very early to make them stick.  By the time they are teenagers, most girls in the Middle East have accepted a secondary role in society.  Just as most of us here who grew up in the segregated school system of the United States, learned to accept that the races somehow were supposed to be kept apart.

There is no logical reason why any of us who are straight ever wasted a single second of our lives, an ounce of our energy worrying about what gay people do.  Yes, we can all have an innately negative reaction to the unfamiliar and the different but by and large all prejudices are taught, carefully, and through constant repetition until we are so blind that we can no longer remember how to see.

I lift up Malala because she, at the age of 16, still struggling to recover from having been shot in the face by a crazy fanatic, sits down in the Oval Office with the first black President of the United States, a man who has lived abroad, a man who grew up without a father, a man who has suffered as the victim of racial prejudice,
....but a man who still seems to believe that sending his flying assassin robots into foreign nations and killing innocent civilians in the process of killing suspected terrorists will help to stop terrorism.

I understand that there are dangerous people in the world and that the use of drones has all kinds of advantages over launching most other more conventional forms of military attack.  But once we became capable of what seems to move away from what would be considered warfare towards what has to be seen as political assassination, then it became too easy to do without risk to American lives.  And then, when used so often and without any way of isolating a suspected terrorist from the children who are playing in the streets, the mothers who are hanging out the laundry and the men who are gathered around a pot of coffee in conversation, then blowing up a house to kill one terrorist but accepting the deaths of a dozen innocent people as being merely collateral, then guarantees that the survivors on that block have just become ready to be recruited as terrorist.

What Malala said to President Obama was what President Obama should already know, what he would already be able to see if he had not simply refused to see it before.... Killing innocent people doesn't end terrorism, it causes terrorism.  And she even offered him a workable alternative..... focus on education because education actually does deter terrorism.

She lives there, she knows.  The Taliban has no greater deterrent than the voice of this 16 year old, future Prime Minister.  Realistically, the Taliban's best recruiter is President Obama but the person who has done the most to turn Pakistani citizens against the Taliban is Malala.

I think that being a disciple of Jesus is a matter of learning how to see again.... It is about fighting the blindness of prejudice, ignorance, racism, sexism and classism.  Believing that Jesus was born of a virgin, died a substitutionary death to save our souls, that he was divine, walked on water or made blind men see is not what being a Christian is all about.... Forgive me for saying it quite so bluntly, but that stuff has to do with being rather gullible and maybe even being a tad bit slow..... but being able to see through the prejudice we have been taught.... Being able to see the oppression of the poor and the abuses of corporations that we have been taught to bow down to in the name of patriotism, democracy, freedom and the American way..... that's what it means to be a person after the heart of Jesus.

So, you want to learn how to be a better Christian?  Pay attention to this little Muslim girl.... I think she can see better than we can.

Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By

March 23, 2014    Lent 3
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Romans 5:3-5a
And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us,

A week ago our senator, Clair McCaskill, was in town to deliver a speech at Drury University in which she announced a new initiative to combat rape on college campuses.  Rape is a problem on college campuses and so, on the one hand, it is good to hear that she is against it.  But as politics goes, is there a "pro-rape" constituency?  Not withstanding some of the colossally stupid things that have been said about rape by some of our other Missouri politicians, it is actually difficult to imagine that Clair was risking a lot of political capital by going on the record as being opposed to rape.

One of my former associate ministers who took a church of her own several years ago decided that she would try and follow my lead in the media and she wrote a passionate opinion column in which she decisively announced her opposition to child abuse.  That was more than ten years ago and we have yet to see the opposing article in which someone goes on record as being in favor of child abuse.

You may think that I have made a career out of tilting at windmills, but, no one can accuse me of charging a windmill that wasn't there.

But let's get back to Claire...our senator came to town to announce her opposition to rape on college campuses a scant week after she had blocked passage of the long fought for bill sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Senator Gillibrand's bill would have removed the trial process of rape in the military from military courts where they have a backlog of over 1600 cases they have not investigated yet and many estimate that fewer than one in ten rapes are actually reported because of they horrific way these cases are handled in the military.

The case for Gillibrand's bill was bolstered just before Senator McCaskill voted against it by the news that Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair plead guilty to having repeatedly raped a woman under his command and threatening to murder her and her family if she told anyone.  And that news was backed up by a sexual assault charge against Lt. Col. Joseph Morse, who is the army's chief prosecutor in military sex crimes.

I think that Clare McCaskill is a smart woman and I like her politics a whole lot more than her former political opponent, Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin. And, to be fair, I am certain that Clare is actually opposed to rape in the military, on college campuses and everywhere else...the difference is that when she had the opportunity to do something significant about it, she decided to vote with the Rand Paul's and Lindsey Graham's of the Senate to please her Ft. Leonard Wood constituency.

This banner we commissioned for our church that features the winged lion holding up a tablet that reads "Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By."  The quote comes from Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which he said that the Holocaust only happened because most people simply watched it happen.  Genocide can only happen if the majority of the population decides not to get involved.

I had latched onto that quote many years ago, and those of you who have been in my home have seen a ceramic relief I had made for the mantle by a different artist because it expressed the core of what I believed prophetic ministry to be and it sums up what has disappointed me about my most of my experience with my denominational heritage.

There was a period of my life when I was very connected to denominational affairs.... And when I say "affairs" sometimes that's what it was.  I became aware of allegations of sex crimes committed by the former General Minister and President of the Disciples of Christ, William Nichols.  The denomination was paying off accusers in out of court settlements and trying to hush it all up.  I insisted on notifying the police and the response from the denomination was to threaten to sue me.

I reached out to members of the clergy I knew from the west coast to the east coast and not a one of them would take a stand with me against hiding these sex crimes.  I emailed more than 6,000 members of clergy and not a one of them would get involved.  I really couldn't believe it but even after all of the Catholic priest scandals have been in the news, when it comes right down to potentially harming your own denomination, the institution where your own pension fund rests, there is not much love of principle.

Standing idly by becomes nearly sacramental.... To commanding officers who are aware of the tens of thousands of military sexual assaults....to popes, bishops and priests who hide pedophilia to solid, salt of the earth, church going folks who don't want to shine a light on injustice, or even know too much about it.... Not enough to have to get involved.

Army officers can say to elected politicians, "We do not want to be held accountable for our misconduct."  And politicians say in reply, "And we don't want to hold you responsible either."  Long after this national conspiracy to hide sex crimes in the Disciples of Christ Church, I reported two incidents of embezzling.... One at the national level and one in our Springfield office of the Ozarks Lakes Area.

Both were swept under the rug.  No criminal charges were ever filed, responsible parties made off with nearly a half a million dollars of donors' money between the two incidents.  Nothing was done.  I couldn't even get our local paper to cover the local crime... no legal charges filed, everything held in personnel files that are not subject to sunshine laws....everyone knew what happened but no one would do anything about it.

The Area Minister even kept his job.  He lives in this neighborhood just over the hill from us which is why I asked to have my name put on the sign in the front yard in large block letters so that he has to see it every morning and evening that he goes passes by.  Maybe everyone else gives silent consent, but I don't.

When we went downtown a couple of years ago to protest the anti-illegal immigrant measure being voted on by the city council, there were some of my old denominational peers out there carrying signs.  They, like we, were protesting the inherent xenophobia behind this E-Verify movement but the irony that struck me hard that day was that they refused to get involved in huge ethical matters about which they actually had a vote.... They have a say in the management of their own denomination but when the authority was handed to them to make a decision, they voted "not present."

When it comes to telling city government how they should run the city, they are ready to speak up but in their own house, they hear no evil, see no evil and will not speak out against evil.


Albert Einstein said, "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a [person] does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses their intelligence."  If you stand up to the injustice of the world you will find that you immediately have a lot of enemies, almost every one of them, however, will reveal themselves to me mediocre, not only in intellect but in morality and in courage.

Paul wrote to the Roman church warning them that they would endure opposition... there will be suffering if you stand for anything, but if you practice, you gain endurance and that endurance will produce character and if enough people care about building character, the world will change.

But, folks, we have created a little liberal enclave for ourselves out here.  We have this progressive church where we can gather with fairly consistently like minded people and we could meet out here once a week and decry the hypocrisy of politicians, priests and the corporations that own them both but, you know, that can become just another way of standing idly by.  There is no substantive reward for holding informed, progressive thoughts if you hold them privately.

I printed on the cover of the bulletin this morning this delightful picture of a girl's soccer team all wearing traditional Muslim headscarves, the hijab.  This is not a soccer team in Bahrain or Indonesia; this is in Aurora, Colorado.

Even though the soccer association had ruled that women could wear the hijab during games, this one referee sent the only Muslim girl on the team off the field.

Now, I've seen high school friends shave their heads in solidarity with a classmate who was undergoing chemotherapy.  And that is a sacrifice and a noble gesture but it is not like there was a pro-cancer club in their school.  It is a symbolic act but their hair will grow back whether their friend survives the illness or not.

But these Colorado girls deciding to identify with a Muslim team-mate... that's a bit different to me.  I don't like the fact that Muslims ask women to cover up in ways that men do not have to.  I think it is unfair, it is sexist, it is misogynistic.

I think that it even poses some security risk for people to be able to enter banks and airports and even stores with their identities partially or entirely hidden.  I suspect that a number of these girls might feel much the same way that I do about the hijab but they put one on anyway.

They didn't wear a hijab to defend Islam.  They wore it rather than stand idly by and curse the referee who was being a jerk.  They wore it rather than putting their arm around the Muslim teammate after the game and telling her they were sorry for what happened to her.  They were not simply opinionated about injustice, they were unwilling to passively watch it.

The Holocaust would not have happened if the people of Germany, Russia, Latvia, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Poland had not let it happen.

That story we have all heard about how the Germans ordered the Jews in Denmark to wear the star of David and the next day the king of Denmark came out wearing a star himself...that didn't happen...that's a myth. We wish the people of Europe had done something like that but they didn't.

The story about the girls in Overland High School wearing the hijab to their soccer game....that happened, and it should happen more often in more places.  But you would never have the courage and self awareness to stop a holocaust if you don't practice...if you are not willing to stand up for a young girl who is being turned away from a soccer match.

Yes, I know, we can't be involved with everything that happens...we have to choose our battles.  I'm just saying, if we got in the habit of standing up for justice we probably wouldn't have to do it so often anymore.

Our government, our religious institutions, our corporations have learned to depend upon our compliance, our silence, our passive indifference and so far they have been right to do so.

Howard Zinn wrote in Failure to Quit, "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."

It is a big problem that has only one solution.  You have to decide that you will no longer stand idly by.

The Origin of Sin

Lent 1     March 9, 2014
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7          
15The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
16And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

3Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" 4But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Like many of the people who voted for this year's Oscar awards, I have not had a chance to see most of the movies that were nominated.  Still, I could not escape either news reports or comedian's commentary on the best actor award recipient's self-congratulatory comments.  Matthew McConaughey did manage to thank God and his parents before launching into a very uncomfortable series of explanations for why he is his own hero.

I want to believe that he is not as narcissistic as he sounded but at the very least this is a good example of why even really good actors need to have a writer to prepare their speeches for them.  The story-line of the film, as I understand it, makes a beautiful and wonderful moral point but it is not hard to be deceived into believing that it is really all about you when you see your own face up on the screen and you are receiving accolades from all of the world.
I always find it painful when news-commentators decide to run for public office.  They have come to believe, over years of looking into a camera and reading off of a teleprompter that they are no longer just reading the news, that they have become, themselves, the news.

For centuries the Catholic Church has implied that the "original sin" has something to do with sex.  That is not what the Genesis narrative suggests.

We may be annoyed when squirrels get into the bird feeder but we do not talk about sinful squirrels.  Squirrels just do what squirrels do because that is the nature of being a squirrel. We sometimes hate it when the deer wander into the yard and eat our vegetable garden, our shrubs and flowers but we do not call them sinful.  They are just doing what deer do.

Human beings, as naked apes, only talk about sin because we consider ourselves to be aware of what is right and what is wrong and even though we are aware, we still often choose to do what is wrong.  The Garden of Eden story says that the narrative of human sin began with hubris.... Arrogance... narcissism.... The desire to be equal with God.

I have often joked that were it not for the church's mastery of guilt and fear that I would not have a job.  Clearly, in the progressive church, we are not too easily manipulated by either of those old standbys of religion but I think that we have reason to slow down a bit and give it a moment's reflection.



Like most aspects of spiritual thinking, there is both the macro and the micro consideration... the personal and the social, the individual and the global perspective.

This past week, Rachel Maddow aired a special to answer the question, "Why did we invade Iraq?"  Based on recently released documents from the Bush administration, it becomes inescapably evident that our nation used the tragedy of 9-11 to attack a nation whose only provocation was that they were dragging their feet about getting their oil onto the world market.

Like many of you, I was involved in protests prior to the invasion of Iraq carrying signs that said, "No Blood for Oil."  Though we suspected that oil was the real reason for the war, if we can trust the honesty of Maddow's reporting on the newly released documents, the indefensible hubris that allowed us to justify killing off our own soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis to keep oil prices low, now seems to be unavoidably true.

How could we not call this sin?  How is this not hubris at a national level?  Energy executives, in secret meetings with Vice-President Cheney, with the blessings of President Bush, mapped out a strategy that would use Iraqi oil to bump up the world supply even though it would mean the deaths of so many people.

Now I watch the unrest in the Ukraine with a mixture of sympathy and fear.  I am not certain that the people there have not been encouraged to sever ties with Russia and align with the west because Russia has been a major exporter of natural gas which flows through pipelines in the Ukraine.
Now that the United States finds itself awash in natural gas, we're looking to export it and that would be much more profitable if we could cut off the Russian supply of natural gas to Europe.  I don't mean to use the pulpit for a foreign policy speech.  What I'm trying to point out is that we can do things out of greed, self-interest, out of a narcissistic world view, all the while telling ourselves that we are doing something noble, praiseworthy, even courageous.

Søren Kierkegaard once said that we are objective about others but subjective in our view of ourselves when, in fact, we should be subjective about others and objective in our self-appraisal.  That is, we look across the globe and we make ourselves comfortable in portraying Vladimir Putin as and old Soviet style dictator and allowing ourselves to view our own nation as being a beacon of freedom and democracy.  What if Putin is really just defending Russia's natural gas trade and we are trying to take it from him?

Can we be objective about our own motives and allow for a bit of subjective view of the motivations of people we do not and cannot know?  That the citizens of Ukraine are in danger is a horrible thing.... But I am not certain that the natural gas market is not what is really ratcheting up the national danger of civil war.  I feel that it is important enough that we must come down off of our imperial throne of national arrogance this time before we do again what we did in Iraq.

Empire building is bad when Putin does it and, we should be able to admit, it is bad when we do it.

But this is no less true when it comes to taking an objective view of our selves on the individual level.  International politics is a complicated, mixed up can of worms but so are our own motivations.  No one is pure.  No one is without ego.  We all have mixed motivations for everything we do and if we cannot be honest about them, the mix can become quite toxic.

It is unfortunate that a great deal of the talk about sin has had to do with piety rather than actual human evil.  I hope that the progressive movement is delivering us from puritanical concerns with believing the right things, praying the right way, worshipping the right way.... I hope that we can put distance between ourselves and all of the really mentally ill obsessions with managing the sex lives of others or loathing our own bodies or natural instincts.  That stuff is really messed up.

But I earnestly hope that we will not abandon entirely an awareness of personal sin.  It is not right to hurt other people, to exploit them, take advantage of them, lie to them, rob them of either their property or their dignity.

Just as we know it would be wrong to stir up a civil war in Ukraine in order to increase our international market for natural gas, it is wrong for us to tear down another human being in order to gain status for ourselves..... or to expect them to work and still be poor.... Or to accept that the well off can have health care and that they need to quietly hurry up and die.



Without a concept of sin we may think that we can return to the unadapted animal state of innocence but do you really want to start growling at the neighbors and licking your private parts in public?  

We have eaten the forbidden fruit.  We cannot claim that we do not know the difference between right and wrong. We cannot, as individuals nor as a nation, live in the dark as if the harm we do to others can be excused because it tilts the scales in our own favor.

Wars are a human creation.  Poverty is a human creation.  Racism, sexism, nationalism are all human creations and the only thing that can prevent wars, end poverty, erase prejudice and create justice are persons who have a conscience that they are willing to use.