Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, I'm looking forward to our special Sunday kick off for our capital campaign. I'm not going to spill all the beans here, so I encourage you to come and learn more. This Sunday, Mike will talk a little about his experience of the campaign's beginning days, and we'll share news of how much we've raised so far. At coffee hour, we'll have some slides projected in Upper Fales that presents some of the hopes for the campaign for people to look at as we share our coffee. (it'll be more in the background than a formal presentaion; most of the information will be conveyed one on one as people talk with each other) Campaign co-chairs Cathy Hughes and Mike Balulescu and I will be glad to answer questions about what is to come. We are so excited about the good work that is happening. It is a profound honor to witness the generosity, grace, and love that people have for this parish.
In other news, lots of other events are coming up as well; the fall is always a busy time. Driving by, you may have noticed we've put up our "Climate Change is a Moral Issue" banner, as we do every fall in cooperation with other Waltham congregations. This Saturday, Christ Church will host the Waltham Event for the international (yes-international!) Moving Planet Day to move beyond fossil fuels. There are rallies all over the world, encouraging people to travel by foot, bike, or public transportation to raise their voices for solutions to the climate crisis. Our neighbors in Lexington, Arlington, Somerville, and Medford will all host similar events to plan to caravan together to the New England-wide event in Boston on the waterfront at Columbus park (near the Aquarium T). Worldwide, more than 160 countries will have events. In Boston, Steve Curwood from the NPR show Living on Earth will emcee the event, and Episcopal Priest Margaret Bullitt-Jonas will be part of the opening, along with other speakers and action.
"Climate Change is a Moral Issue"-it's a bumper sticker slogan, and if all we do with it is once a year to haul a banner out of the closet to feel good about our dedication, we might as well not bother. As our climate warms, the suffering inflicted by the change is born so disproportionately by those who are already less fortunate. This is a fact: in political debates, you hear again and again how it's a theory that human action is the cause of global warming and that not all scientists agree. I heard one commentator say recently (I wish I could remember who) that deciding not to do something about our carbon emissions for that reason is like sitting in your basement smelling smoke from the kitchen and insisting that there is no way your house can be on fire because you don't actually see the flames.
My cynical voice says that acting on behalf of the environment is naively idealistic: how noble to do something for generations to come! You could put it on a hallmark card. My other cynical voice says that it is almost willfully foolish to think that just one person's actions matter. My screw-shaped light bulbs will not change the world. If I were alone, it would be pointless. But I am not alone, and climate change is not just an issue for Isaiah and Adah to contend with--it will change life in our time, not just theirs. Maybe climate change isn't a moral issue after all; maybe it's a clear-cut case of self-interest. Now that's cynical.
Jesus didn't talk about the environment--the single thing he talked most about was money, actually--not sex, marriage, or even prayer. But he did teach a lot about how we are to understand ourselves, about a church-wide--no, creation-wide!--family that crashes down the boundaries between self and other. He asked what profit it was to gain the material world but lose our souls. Where will we be when Bangladesh is submerged in water? Each of us driving our cars and eating strawberries in January shipped from Chile? I know in my own life, I have so, so far to go, as I have written many times in this space (the ecrier blogspot has five pieces tagged "environment," and I know not everything is up there). But I will keep writing, maybe keep repeating myself, hoping that someday I get the message. In the meantime, I'll see you Saturday.
But ask the animals, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
...and the fish of hte sea will declare to you.
In God's hand is the life of every living thing.
Job 12: 7, 8b, 10a
Blessings,
Sara+
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
September 11, 10 years later
This week, I've been reflecting on the meaning of this upcoming anniversary on Sunday of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In preparation for writing this article, I looked back and found my reflection for this space from five years ago, on the fifth anniversary. There is, maybe unsurprisingly, not a lot more to say; I still remember what it was like that day, I still feel similarly sad about what has happened in our country, the encroaches on civil liberties and rampant racial profiling and targeting of those who are (or "appear to be," whatever that means!) Muslim. Constant war, 10 years later. Deep political polarization (a problem of many ages, to be sure).
At the same time, I was struck with an article in the Globe last week about closure; how, psychologically, it's a pretty nonsensical topic. We don't ever just get over stuff; it feels different over time, but there's no end. Now, I grieve the outcomes of this global "war on terror" as much I do those events of that day. The thousands and thousands killed in the wars of the last ten years are as grievable as the 3,000 on that Tuesday morning 10 years ago. No one is expendable.
10 years later, we meditate on the day that "the world changed." Did it change? Because the US realized that we were not invincible? In the nervous days after September 11, 2001, my new seminary classmates and I joked with each other about how we had to go for drinks/buy an ipod/eat cake/etc, or else the terrorists would have won. Now, you can't leave your suitcase at your seat in the airport to go to the bathroom. Is that the same? As we become more and more suspicious of each other, the simple calculus of "winning" and "losing" doesn't stand up. We're all losing somehow, but it is also true that another 9/11 didn't happen; a lot of hard work has made sure of it, and it would be foolish not to be grateful.
This is what I wrote in this space five years ago:
;The tricky part, of course, is that we are all called to take up that same cross [of Jesus] and embody that same love and peace. All of us, and all the time. We are all called to love and forgive our enemies-always. The hard truth of the cross is that all things are reconciled to God in Jesus Christ-all things and all people. It's not up to you or to me to decide what or who is in or out. At a time of escalating violence-in Iraq, in our cities, in the Sudan, seemingly everywhere-Christ's call to peacemaking is even more important. Today, on this September 12, remember that it's true-we do live in a different world. But it's not a world made different just because of the violence of terrorists, it's a world made different because of Christ's love.
So wherever your political sympathies lie, pray for peace today. Pray for peace that God will show us the path of a third way. Not violence or acquiescence to evil, but the hard and creative and healing path of peace and dignity for all. Pray, too, that God helps each of us to find how we can follow that path.
What is there to add five years later? Hopes, maybe, that I won't write the same thing in another five years. Hope that we won't still be at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Hope we won't have invaded Iran or Syria. Hope that there is peace between Israel and Palestine. Hope that we'll each find our own ways to be, not just pray for, the peace of Christ.
Blessings,
Sara+
At the same time, I was struck with an article in the Globe last week about closure; how, psychologically, it's a pretty nonsensical topic. We don't ever just get over stuff; it feels different over time, but there's no end. Now, I grieve the outcomes of this global "war on terror" as much I do those events of that day. The thousands and thousands killed in the wars of the last ten years are as grievable as the 3,000 on that Tuesday morning 10 years ago. No one is expendable.
10 years later, we meditate on the day that "the world changed." Did it change? Because the US realized that we were not invincible? In the nervous days after September 11, 2001, my new seminary classmates and I joked with each other about how we had to go for drinks/buy an ipod/eat cake/etc, or else the terrorists would have won. Now, you can't leave your suitcase at your seat in the airport to go to the bathroom. Is that the same? As we become more and more suspicious of each other, the simple calculus of "winning" and "losing" doesn't stand up. We're all losing somehow, but it is also true that another 9/11 didn't happen; a lot of hard work has made sure of it, and it would be foolish not to be grateful.
This is what I wrote in this space five years ago:
;The tricky part, of course, is that we are all called to take up that same cross [of Jesus] and embody that same love and peace. All of us, and all the time. We are all called to love and forgive our enemies-always. The hard truth of the cross is that all things are reconciled to God in Jesus Christ-all things and all people. It's not up to you or to me to decide what or who is in or out. At a time of escalating violence-in Iraq, in our cities, in the Sudan, seemingly everywhere-Christ's call to peacemaking is even more important. Today, on this September 12, remember that it's true-we do live in a different world. But it's not a world made different just because of the violence of terrorists, it's a world made different because of Christ's love.
So wherever your political sympathies lie, pray for peace today. Pray for peace that God will show us the path of a third way. Not violence or acquiescence to evil, but the hard and creative and healing path of peace and dignity for all. Pray, too, that God helps each of us to find how we can follow that path.
What is there to add five years later? Hopes, maybe, that I won't write the same thing in another five years. Hope that we won't still be at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Hope we won't have invaded Iran or Syria. Hope that there is peace between Israel and Palestine. Hope that we'll each find our own ways to be, not just pray for, the peace of Christ.
Blessings,
Sara+
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Vengeance is not the Gospel
Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, I've been staying up late reading the Millenium series, the Stieg Larsson trilogy that begins with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They are awfully violent, and there is a lot of sex in them, so as your pastor I would hesitate to recommend that you read them. But they are engrossing! It's hard to argue with a smart crime novel. I read the first two on vacation and got the third when I got home, and I'm almost finished with it. At the same time, I happened upon a book by Larsson's lifetime partner, Eva Gabrielsson. They lived together for 30 years, but since they never married legally she was shut out of inheriting his literary-and financial-legacy. There Are Things I Want You To Know About Stieg Larsson and Me is in part a love letter to a dead spouse, in part a righteously angry story of betrayal, and (the interesting part) a biography of Larsson himself, about his political work as a journalist and his ethical motivations behind writing the books.
Before he was a novelist, Larsson was an activist and journalist; his anti-racist and feminist work was the cause of his life, Gabrielsson says. They met as teenagers at a peace meeting. Leftist politics was his life, and the Millenium stories are not just stories; they are moral tales of revenge and justice-seeking. The original Swedish title of the first book is Men Who Hate Women-and the title is accurate. The crimes that happen in the book are all taken from real-world events of women being treated in ways I will not describe here. What's fascinating, though, is the way vengeance, "getting even" is celebrated. The rapist is raped, the killer killed, a vigilante style of justice that picks up when the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, has lost complete faith in traditional channels of justice because she has been so injured by them (the whole back story doesn't come out until book 2, and it is, indeed, awful). She wouldn't answer a yes or no question to anyone in authority; she's certainly not going to report a crime to the police. For Larsson, telling her story is about revealing that horror, and telling a new truth about self-sufficiency and making your own choices. In that way, I suppose it is a rather American story.
So what is so compelling about these people? Do we like them? Should we? What is, really, the moral tale to be told? The tireless journalist exposing child labor violations and political crimes against children is to be admired. Larsson's own political work, fighting against hatred in all its forms, is a fine example to follow. But it's not the Gospel.
The reason the Millenium series is such a self-indulgent read isn't just for all the free love and fast paced plot-it's because of the simple arithmetic of vengeance. Some part of our reptile brain feels good when people get even, when the 100 pound heroine shoots the 250 lb bully. We have that story in the Bible, too, but the Bible goes beyond it.
And vengeance will not free us. As a perpetrator of another crime, the one who retaliates still lives in the shadow of the aggressor; her actions are still determined by the one who hurt her. Our Gospel reading for this week is part of a teaching on forgiveness that includes Peter's visit to Jesus: "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times." (Matthew 18:21-22) The challenging generosity of the kingdom of God is beyond what we can imagine-not one, but one hundred. Not an afternoon of giving, but a lifetime.
Blessings,
Sara+
This week, I've been staying up late reading the Millenium series, the Stieg Larsson trilogy that begins with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They are awfully violent, and there is a lot of sex in them, so as your pastor I would hesitate to recommend that you read them. But they are engrossing! It's hard to argue with a smart crime novel. I read the first two on vacation and got the third when I got home, and I'm almost finished with it. At the same time, I happened upon a book by Larsson's lifetime partner, Eva Gabrielsson. They lived together for 30 years, but since they never married legally she was shut out of inheriting his literary-and financial-legacy. There Are Things I Want You To Know About Stieg Larsson and Me is in part a love letter to a dead spouse, in part a righteously angry story of betrayal, and (the interesting part) a biography of Larsson himself, about his political work as a journalist and his ethical motivations behind writing the books.
Before he was a novelist, Larsson was an activist and journalist; his anti-racist and feminist work was the cause of his life, Gabrielsson says. They met as teenagers at a peace meeting. Leftist politics was his life, and the Millenium stories are not just stories; they are moral tales of revenge and justice-seeking. The original Swedish title of the first book is Men Who Hate Women-and the title is accurate. The crimes that happen in the book are all taken from real-world events of women being treated in ways I will not describe here. What's fascinating, though, is the way vengeance, "getting even" is celebrated. The rapist is raped, the killer killed, a vigilante style of justice that picks up when the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, has lost complete faith in traditional channels of justice because she has been so injured by them (the whole back story doesn't come out until book 2, and it is, indeed, awful). She wouldn't answer a yes or no question to anyone in authority; she's certainly not going to report a crime to the police. For Larsson, telling her story is about revealing that horror, and telling a new truth about self-sufficiency and making your own choices. In that way, I suppose it is a rather American story.
So what is so compelling about these people? Do we like them? Should we? What is, really, the moral tale to be told? The tireless journalist exposing child labor violations and political crimes against children is to be admired. Larsson's own political work, fighting against hatred in all its forms, is a fine example to follow. But it's not the Gospel.
The reason the Millenium series is such a self-indulgent read isn't just for all the free love and fast paced plot-it's because of the simple arithmetic of vengeance. Some part of our reptile brain feels good when people get even, when the 100 pound heroine shoots the 250 lb bully. We have that story in the Bible, too, but the Bible goes beyond it.
And vengeance will not free us. As a perpetrator of another crime, the one who retaliates still lives in the shadow of the aggressor; her actions are still determined by the one who hurt her. Our Gospel reading for this week is part of a teaching on forgiveness that includes Peter's visit to Jesus: "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times." (Matthew 18:21-22) The challenging generosity of the kingdom of God is beyond what we can imagine-not one, but one hundred. Not an afternoon of giving, but a lifetime.
Blessings,
Sara+
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