Monday, December 30, 2024

"SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM"

 “SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM”

The world mourns the passing of Jimmy Carter at age 100.  We were blessed to go to his 100th birthday party at the Fox Theater earlier this year, and we give thanks for his life and for his presidency.  It stands in stark contrast to the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, and my blog today is about that time that looms before us.

As we approach the beginning of the apocalyptic second Trump presidency, I am drawn to the 105 year old poem “The Second Coming,” by William Butler Yeats.  Yeats was an Irish poet, born in 1865 in County Dublin, and he was an Irish nationalist.  He wrote this poem in 1919, at the end of World War I, and also in the middle of the flu pandemic of 1917-1919 which killed millions around the world.  Indeed, his pregnant wife almost died from the pandemic.  Yeats meant the poem as a warning about the breakdown of European civilization, but as with all good art, it has lasted and resonates in all ages.  Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats died in France in 1935.  On one of our trips to Ireland, we visited St. Columba’s Church in County Sligo because Caroline’s and my first church was named after St. Columba, the patron saint who brought Christianity to Scotland.  Susan also wanted to see Yeats’ grave at St. Columba’s Church, and we were impressed to stand in that space beside Yeats’ grave.  

I first encountered this poem in a British Literature course in 1967 at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), and it has stayed with me ever since.  I’ll have more to say on the Trumpster, but for now, as 2024 draws to a close, here is my feeling about the coming Trump administration. 

“The Second Coming”

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.


Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


Monday, December 23, 2024

" A DECREE FROM CAESAR AUGUSTUS"

 “A DECREE FROM CAESAR AUGUSTUS”

From my point of view, the two Gospel versions of the story of the birth of Jesus give us Joseph’s perspective (Matthew) and Mary’s perspective (Luke).  While John’s Gospel has a more philosophical approach in chapter 1 (“The Word was with God”), Matthew and Luke both seek to ground the story in history, in the societal realities of the time.  Matthew has Joseph confronting  difficult choices, once he has found out that Mary is pregnant by someone else.  Being a decent man, Joseph decides to quietly end their engagement and send Mary away, back to her birth family, rather than exposing her to the harsh light of public humiliation, including the possibility of her being stoned to death.  He receives a vision from a messenger from God, telling him to stay with Mary, adopt the baby as his own, and raise the baby as his son.  Joseph agrees, and in so doing, he gives Jesus (and Mary) cover and a supportive and present father.  

Luke’s Gospel tells us that rather than being born in his parents’ hometown of Nazareth, the baby Jesus is born in Bethlehem.  Why?  Because the Roman Empire needs more tax money.  The Emperor Augustus (nephew of Julius Caesar and successor to him) sends out a royal decree telling all citizens to return to their hometowns to be enrolled for taxing purposes.  Chapter Two tells us that Joseph and the pregnant Mary make the arduous trip to Bethlehem, where the baby is born on the streets.  Luke wants to make sure that the readers know that the birth of this baby Jesus is no event divorced from human history, that God’s revelation to us comes not outside the swirl of human life, but rather right in the middle of it.  He not only mentions the decree from Caesar Augustus but also tells us that Quirinius is governor of Syria – who is Quirinius, anyway?  Luke wants to remind readers of every age and in every generation that this birth of Jesus should not take us out of the world but should impel us into the hurly-burly of the world.  As Mary put it in her Magnificat, in her song of praise in Chapter One, “God has scattered the proud….has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty-handed.”  In the birth of this baby, it is God’s intention to turn the world upside down.

Decrees from Caesar Augustus – with the coming of our imperial president Donald Trump, this story has been on my mind and heart lately, as I struggle to make sense of the election of Donald Trump as president again.  He certainly would like to be the imperial one, and I’m hoping that Congress will have the will and courage to blunt aside his imperial desires.  With the Republicans controlling all branches of the federal government in 2025, I am skeptical that Congress will have the will, at least until the midterms in 2026.  So, I am thinking about the imperial decrees that President Trump will issue on “day one,” as he puts it.  Surely something on immigration, something on declaring a national emergency at the border, perhaps declaring martial law so as to suspend elections and keep the power in his hands.  And with the adolescent Elon Musk running around, throwing money around everywhere, this could be a grim year of 2025.

Decrees from Caesar Augustus – no matter how grim it looks to us for the future of the United States, we must give thanks that Matthew and Luke have shared these Biblical stories of the birth of Jesus.  While there are some glorious moments in these stories, most of the time, they take place where we live, in the craziness and messiness of the world.  Mary pregnant before marriage, Joseph wanting to get rid of her, the baby Jesus born on the streets, hunted by government soldiers to be executed, the Holy Family fleeing for their lives from the soldiers, refugees on the run, becoming immigrants in a foreign land – we are so glad that Egypt did not have the closed walls that Trump wants to build!  These Christmas stories remind us that God is in the middle of the messy and messed-up world, that God intends to work Her powerful Spirit not as an escape from the world, but in the midst of the mess.

Decrees from Caesar Augustus – we will have plenty of those soon, and in the midst of the suffering and chaos that these decrees will cause, let us draw strength from these Christmas stories.  God has come to us in the flesh-and-blood lives that we live, and though the Caesars roar and maim and kill, God’s truth abideth still, as the Roman Catholic monk put it so powerfully 500 years ago.  As we receive this Christmas season as a time of love and mercy before the would-be Caesar’s onslaught, let us prepare to be as courageous as Mary, as open as Joseph to seeing a new world, and as dedicated and loving as Jesus.  May the power of love and justice sustain us, as it did the Holy Family.


Monday, December 16, 2024

"ON SAYING YES"

 “ON SAYING YES”

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary is a young woman engaged to be married in Nazareth, when she has a vision from God.  She sees the angel Gabriel, who comes to her with a message from God.  “Ave, Maria,” as the Latin puts it.  Gabriel tells her that God wants her to allow herself to be the vessel for the conception and birth of the Messiah, whom she will name “Jesus,’ meaning “God saves.”  This request places Mary in a precarious position – pregnant before marriage by someone other than her betrothed, she will be shunned and perhaps even stoned to death.  It is the first of several steps where God chooses to come among us, not as a glorious king or president, but rather as one conceived in scandal, born on the streets, hunted down to be killed by government soldiers, a refugee whose family seeks political asylum in Egypt.  

Mary says “yes,” that she will be a “handmaiden of the Lord,” as the King James Version of the Bible puts it.  Yes, that same “handmaiden” of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” She is anxious and frightened, but she finds comfort in her cousin Elizabeth, who is also miraculously pregnant.  The community of women gives her courage and power, and she shares her song of vision and justice, called “Mary’s Magnificat” in Luke 1:46-55.  It is not a song of “sweet, little Jesus boy,” but rather a radical vision of what God intends in the birth of this baby:  “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;  God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”  In the birth and life and ministry of this baby, God intends to affirm a much different vision of what life on earth should look like.

I was thinking of this story last weekend when Caroline and I joined Andrew and Amy Marti at the Spelman/Morehouse Christmas Concert.    When Caroline and I were pastors at Oakhurst, we were privileged to be part of church group who attended the annual Spelman-Morehouse Christmas Concert on the first weekend in December.  It would be held twice in King Chapel on Morehouse campus and once in Sisters Chapel at Spelman.  It was always crowded, and it was always a moving experience.  The power of the voices, the arrangements, and the sheer joy of being in Black space to welcome the season – these drew us many times to this annual concert, including this year.

. I have many favorite songs from these concerts, but one song stands out:  “We Are Christmas.” It was co-written by the Spelman Glee Club Director, Kevin Johnson, and by student Sarah Stephens Benibo. Here is the link to Ms. Stephens Benibo as a soloist on the song with  the Spelman Choir (with handbells that year in 2006).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj33F8ZBQCM

      The idea for the song comes from Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “We Are,” and it is based on Mary’s experience in the Christmas story, as well as her vision (“The Magnificat.”). At first the music lulls us into thinking that we have another “Sweet little Jesus boy” song, but the lyrics lead us into something quite different – it is up to us to bring this story to life in our day and in our time.  It tells us that we, too, are asked to say “yes” to God’s coming to us in our lives, both in the birth of this baby named Jesus, and in the continuing revelations of God to us in our lives.  As we dread these coming years of a second Trump presidency, let us remember Mary and her courage and her determination.  We will need all of that to find our way to live as children of the God whom we meet in this Christmas story.


Monday, December 9, 2024

"LAND ON FIRE"

 “LAND ON FIRE”

As we move through the Advent Season, John the Baptizer stands as a prominent figure, and as such, we can use him as an entry point into the Advent story and into the terrible times in which we live

John the Baptizer does not make it into Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, but he plays a prominent part in Luke’s.  Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus begins not with Jesus but with the backstory for the birth of John the Baptizer.  John’s conception is not quite as stunning as Jesus’ conception, but it is miraculous nonetheless.  The mothers of John and Jesus are cousins, and the boys become cousins, with some scholars arguing that Jesus becomes a disciple of John the Baptizer.  Other Gospel accounts, like John’s, portray them as rivals, but whatever their relationship, all four Gospels see John as the precursor for Jesus, as one who prepares the way for Jesus.

John the Baptizer was a Jewish man on fire.  He took the warmth of the love of God and channeled it into a burning call for repentance and justice and equity.  He challenged the Temple as a site of renewal and religious sanctity.  He offered the idea of baptism in the river as a source of renewal and repentance.  By “repentance,” he didn’t mean only the ceasing of doing bad things – he meant a complete re-orientation of our will and imaginations, a re-orientation towards God and not towards the powers of the world.  It was here, in this idea of death and rebirth that is part of the ritual of baptism, that people could find the fire to renew their lives.

John not only used fire as image of renewal – he used it also as an image of consequences and punishment.  His sermon went like this in Luke 3, as he chastised the religious leaders who came out to hear him:  “You children of snakes!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?......Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees;  every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  When the leaders and the people asked him what they could do to escape this kind of fire, he told them to share food and clothes with the poor, to refrain from cheating people and to stop robbing people.  For John, the warmth of God’s love was a fire that burned for justice and for equity.

As the fences were cut and people slaughtered by Hamas in Israel on October 8, 2023,mand as the bombs drop and the fires rage among the Palestinians in Gaza, I think of John the Baptizer and his fiery prophecy.  Israel was established as a nation in response to 20 centuries of horrors against Judaism by Christians, culminating in the still unfathomable Holocaust.  Unfortunately, there were people already living in the lands where Israel was established as a nation, and those people were removed in what is remembered as “Nakba,” or catastrophe.  They were not compensated or given land.  They are now called the Palestinians.  In the right wing movements that seem to be sweeping the world, Israel now has a leader who seems determined to kill his way to the decimation of the Palestinians, not unlike what my European ancestors did to the Jewish people now living in Israel.  Thousands and thousands have died and will continue to die until some semblance of justice is established.

What would that justice look like?  It is complex, but at least two elements must be present for there to be a foundation of peace with justice.  First, the state of Israel must be recognized.  Jewish people rightly feel that they must have a state, a safe haven to protect at least some of them from the 20 centuries (Yes, I said centuries) of death and persecution at the hands of the world, persecution influenced heavily by the followers of Jesus the Jew.  The idea of a Palestinian state from the river to the sea is not a possibility that will lead to peace.  Antisemitism is embedded deeply, especially in the West, but indeed throughout the world.

Despite there being no Palestinian state from the river to the sea, the second element for peace with justice is that a Palestinian state must be carved out somewhere in the area.  The horror and brutality of October 8 arose out of the cries of injustice and suffering on the part of the Palestinian people.  Hamas was not acting as savages, although they did incredibly savage things.  That fury grew out of the suffering and anger, and though the Palestinians do not have the firepower to match the Israelis, they do have that same deep well of suffering and injustice, a well that will always feed groups like Hamas until some justice is established.

The Holy Land is now a land on fire, as John the Baptizer predicted.  I don’t know what John’s thoughts on the current conflagration would be, but he clearly gives us the answers to end the burning and bombing and slaughter – do justice, share kindness.  Because the suffering is so deep on both sides, establishing justice will require people of faith and endurance and commitment to make difficult decisions.  They must be made, however, lest we all fall into the pit of fire.



Monday, December 2, 2024

"OCTAVIA BUTLER AND THE SEASON OF ADVENT"

 “OCTAVIA BUTLER AND THE SEASON OF ADVENT”

In 1993, Octavia Butler published her powerful novel “Parable of the Sower.”  It is about a time in the future when the growing climate crisis and the widening gap between rich and poor has produced a president like Donald Trump and has made for a complete breakdown in society.  When does this novel take place?  In 2024-2025, which seemed a long way away at the time but now seems prescient in its vision and predictions.  I first encountered it in the Oakhurst Supper Club in the 1990’s, and it was astonishing.  It motivated me to read everything that Butler wrote before her untimely death in 2006.  If you have not read Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” go find it and read it – you will need it to get you through the next four years.

The central character of “Parable” is a young African-American woman named Lauren Oya Olamina, and she joins a long line of African-American women who are Butler’s heroines.  There is plenty of suffering and death in “Parable,” but Lauren’s vision and grit and determination carry her and the small community that she is building.  She lives in a time which is eerily similar to ours – a corrupt and narcissitic president who proclaims that he is making America great again,  the growing poverty and climate crisis causing all kinds of disruptions and stresses and violence.  We are not quite there yet, but the deadly potential is there in the second Trump presidency.  

The season of Advent began yesterday, and the lectionary readings for it are apocalyptic in seeking to prepare us to receive a new time, the gift of “Immanuel, God with us,” in the birth of a Palestinian Jew named Jesus.  Those readings may seem more relevant in this year, as we prepare ourselves for what could be an apocalyptic time under a second Trump presidency.  Just as Lauren shows her people the way in “Parable of the Sower,” so we are asked to follow another young woman who will be showing us the way in this Advent and Christmas seasons.  She is a teen-ager like Lauren, and her name is Mary.  The biblical stories do not give us much detail about her back story, although the church has certainly filled in some of the gaps in our desire to know more about this extraordinary young woman.  Mary lives under the oppressive power of the Roman government, and as a woman, she lives under the oppressive power of patriarchy.  

Mary has a vision from God, a vision which tells her to allow herself to be placed in a very vulnerable position:  a woman pregnant before marriage, pregnant by someone other than her fiancĂ© Joseph.  In agreeing to this vision, she places herself in a difficult position:  she may face the death penalty because she has shown agency and has demonstrated sexuality, even though her Scriptural impregnation by the Holy Spirit seems fairly chaste.  The Advent story is disturbing in this sense:  it is rooted  in scandal, oppression, and death.  Rome orders a census so that it can strengthen its tax base;  Mary agrees to become pregnant by someone other than Joseph; and after the birth of Jesus, the Holy Family must flee Bethlehem because King Herod has sent soldiers to kill them.  Fortunately, Egypt had open borders at that time, and the Holy Family was able to sojourn there as political refugees.  

For those who think that the Christmas story is only “sweet, little Jesus boy,” take some time to read the Scriptural accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke.  No sweetness there – rather there is danger, slaughter, and migration.  Yet, the Scriptural accounts are also full of love and courage and community.  Like Mary, let us ponder on these things as we start the Advent and Christmas season.