Dear People of Christ Church,
As I do every so often, this morning I was with the Sisters of Saint Anne in Arlington, saying Mass for the convent. Our Gospel was the story of Lazarus and the rich man-Lazarus who suffered at the gate of the rich man's house, poor and begging, and the rich man, who after death found himself in burning flames while Lazarus and Abraham snuggled together in heaven. As I wrote last week, I'm pretty agnostic about an individual "Big Bad" (i.e., Satan/the devil) but I do believe that there must be some sense of wholeness and restoration for us in the passage from life to death, and that must certainly include a sense of sharing in the suffering that we've inflicted.
Let me explain a little more.
I don't think that everything is unicorns and fluffy clouds after we die. Even for the purest in heart, our puny minds can't even imagine how grace-filled and beautiful it is to be united with God. I think we are fully known-that we will see "face to face" (1 Corinthians 13.12) and know as we have been fully known. As we are known, now-then we will know. And part of that knowing surely must be how we are linked to others, how the suffering of one person hurts us all. In our life together now, we hide those connections; we don't see the suffering of the animals we eat, or the panic of polar bears losing the ice they depend on. We don't visit the factories that make our stuff, don't feel the depth of the unending fear of those who live in war zones and suffer genocide. We allow them to stay far away-frankly, we prefer it that way.
How would our world change if we enacted Christ's call to love our enemies? We barely even try to imagine because we're too afraid they'd shoot first.
But in that "face to face" encounter? All of that has to fall away. The cost of our lives comes into focus. Suffering will no longer be invisible. And yes, I think it's going to hurt. Not because God wants to punish us-and likely not with literal flames (IT'S A METAPHOR!)-but because seeing the real nature of reality that we can only dimly imagine now will show us how we are linked. And if a Pakistani woman whose husband has been killed by a drone strike really is my sister, those unicorns and fluffy clouds are going to feel pretty far away.
Still, the heart of the Gospel is forgiveness; still Jesus forgave even from the cross. I also don't believe that what we do is forever. Only God can "do" forever. All we can do is pray with our hearts and our hands, asking God for the grace to be bold enough to witness suffering and strong enough to do something about it. We're called to inhabit the space between, of grieving and seeking to right the injustices of the world but also thanking God for full bellies and access to health care.
But getting back to the rich man-the specific question of economic justice is still an important one, and I don't want to get too far away from it. In our Tuesday Lenten conversation on Scripture quite a bit of energy was generated by Jesus' words about how it's harder for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle. As Jose said, God doesn't want us to be poor-but as Sasha said, God's not quite letting us off the hook, either. What do we make of our own comparative wealth, or the American economy that so lavishly rewards a very few at the expense of everyone else? Compared to a Somali orphan, I'm doing pretty well. Compared to the CEO of Google, it's a wonder I can survive in this world at all driving my little Toyota by myself instead of having a personal limo driver.
Our bishops have invited the diocese to read together a book by the theologian and activist Cornel West and the journalist Tavis Smiley called The Rich and the Rest of Us-I've created a short online survey to discern how it might fit into our spring and summer plans for adult education at Christ Church. Please take a few minutes to fill it out here. I promise it's short!
As part of that same endeavor, they've also invited the diocese into the "B Peace" endeavor, a partner to B Safe in response to the murder of Jorge Fuentes, a B Safe graduate, last year. They're inviting congregations to be part of organizing in partnership with schools and against gun violence-also let me know if you want to hear more about their plans.
A lot is wrong, but a lot is possible, too. And we know we're not working alone.
Blessings,
Sara+
PS: Follow Jesus, but also look at what I post on twitter: your rector has joined the 21st century @revsarai
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2013
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+
Friday, February 19, 2010
The invitation of Lent
A blessed Ash Wednesday to you. I'm in between our services now--we have one more coming, at 7 pm. We had a nice turnout at noon--about half from St Peter's Ugandan congregation--so it was nice to celebrate together. Well, I guess Ash Wednesday isn't celebratory, exactly-but maybe it should be. Lent isn't so much about renunciation and leanness as it is about making room for God's love to come at Easter. We get tangled up in wanting to punish ourselves for being bad, while that can sometimes just turn us more deeply self-ward, rather than God-ward. A friend of a friend on facebook, also a priest, commented on "that great English tradition of thinking ourselves virtuous when, in point of fact, we're merely uncomfortable." Ouch.
As we've been planning, we don't have cut flowers on the altar or in the baptistry this year. Several years ago, Sheila Gillen donated several crown of thorns plants for the Lenten altar. For a while they were in my office, but when one of them died it seemed like the sacristy might be a better place (there's more light--and also I am not great with plants), so it has really grown well. Maybe too well--almost like nature joking with us in our solemnity, last week it also sprung two tiny flowers. You can only see them up close, but it's almost as if we are being told that there will be some tiny sign of new life, even in this dark winter.
What will really bring you new life in Lent this year? What will clear open the space to meet the joy of Easter? One theme that I always come back to again and again is forgiveness--forgiving myself, as much (if not more than) forgiving others. This Sunday, we'll meet upstairs in to watch "The Power of Forgiveness," a documentary on forgiveness in its many shapes, with stories from Northern Ireland, Post 9/11/01 New York City, the Middle East, and more.
I'd like to share a poem (of sorts) that I mailed out last year as well--I'm not sure where it comes from. A friend sent it to me and I thought it captured well the invitation of Lent.
This Lent...
Fast from suspicion and feast on trust
Fast from complaining and feast on appreciation
Fast from judging others and feast on Christ within others
Fast from idle gossip and feast on purposeful silence.
Fast from bitter anger and feast on forgiveness.
Fast from discouragement and feast on hope
Fast from worry and feast on trusting God
Fast from unrelenting pressures and feast on prayer that sustains.
Fast from lethargy and feast on enthusiasm.
Fast from emphasizing the differences and feast on the unity of life.
Fast from thoughts of illness and feast on the healing power of God.
Fast from discontent; feast on gratitude.
Fast from hostility; feast on nonviolence.
Fast from self-absorption; feast on compassion.
Blessings,
Sara+
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Transformation
Dear People of Christ Church,
Thanks to everyone who turned out last Sunday to hear Bob Wocjik speak about families and the prison system. I was surprised to learn that it was the first time he'd given a presentation like that to a group--it was an excellent one. This week after church, we'll meet for our final book group conversation on Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan's "The First Paul."
In very different ways, Bob and the authors of the book are emphasizing the same thing--transformation. Bob talked about how crime, like other professions, runs in families. Like father, like son--his uncle was his co-defendant in his trial, and it took a while of being away from his environment to imagine living differently. It took a while longer after that to realize that he could not just change himself, but also help change the world for the better in supporting the children of his fellow prisoners (as well as being faithful to his own kids).
Radical, personal change from what we have been to what we will be--what Borg and Crossan call "a spirit transplant." That's what the Christian life is about, and that's what Bob's experience testified to. We're accustomed to cynically dismissing the notion of change; we say that people can't change, or won't change, or can't be asked to change. But if Christ's death has any meaning, it must be that, as one person I know put it, "the future can be different from the past." That's the promise of the Gospel that Bob found in his faith, and that's what we're all looking for.
Rather than "justification" (or "salvation," or any of those other big religious words) being about something that happens in the future, Borg and Crossan talk about how it's about the ways we are changed in the here and now. The direction of that change is justice--justice on both a global and a personal scale. God's justice is what Borg and Crossan call "distributive"--not retributive, based on punishment or threat (act the right way or you go to hell), but equally given out to all, the Spirit freeing us to live new lives, and the forgiveness and love of God creating that new life in us--new life and the joy of freedom in Christ.
One of the ways this happens is baptism-as Paul wrote in the letter to the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (2:19-20). We are freed and liberated in baptism. Of course, we renew those vows every time we welcome someone new into the community, as we did on Sunday with little Joe Leonardo's baptism. We need to remember and reaffirm our promises--we slip so easily into our old habits and bondage. The people of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt and we're freed, too, from our own contemporary imprisonments. What do we get imprisoned by? Our desire for success, for material comfort, for power. Addiction, despair, hopelessness. For Bob, liberation happened to come when he was in prison. What gets you stuck? How does your faith help you to find freedom?
Blessings,
Sara+
Thanks to everyone who turned out last Sunday to hear Bob Wocjik speak about families and the prison system. I was surprised to learn that it was the first time he'd given a presentation like that to a group--it was an excellent one. This week after church, we'll meet for our final book group conversation on Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan's "The First Paul."
In very different ways, Bob and the authors of the book are emphasizing the same thing--transformation. Bob talked about how crime, like other professions, runs in families. Like father, like son--his uncle was his co-defendant in his trial, and it took a while of being away from his environment to imagine living differently. It took a while longer after that to realize that he could not just change himself, but also help change the world for the better in supporting the children of his fellow prisoners (as well as being faithful to his own kids).
Radical, personal change from what we have been to what we will be--what Borg and Crossan call "a spirit transplant." That's what the Christian life is about, and that's what Bob's experience testified to. We're accustomed to cynically dismissing the notion of change; we say that people can't change, or won't change, or can't be asked to change. But if Christ's death has any meaning, it must be that, as one person I know put it, "the future can be different from the past." That's the promise of the Gospel that Bob found in his faith, and that's what we're all looking for.
Rather than "justification" (or "salvation," or any of those other big religious words) being about something that happens in the future, Borg and Crossan talk about how it's about the ways we are changed in the here and now. The direction of that change is justice--justice on both a global and a personal scale. God's justice is what Borg and Crossan call "distributive"--not retributive, based on punishment or threat (act the right way or you go to hell), but equally given out to all, the Spirit freeing us to live new lives, and the forgiveness and love of God creating that new life in us--new life and the joy of freedom in Christ.
One of the ways this happens is baptism-as Paul wrote in the letter to the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (2:19-20). We are freed and liberated in baptism. Of course, we renew those vows every time we welcome someone new into the community, as we did on Sunday with little Joe Leonardo's baptism. We need to remember and reaffirm our promises--we slip so easily into our old habits and bondage. The people of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt and we're freed, too, from our own contemporary imprisonments. What do we get imprisoned by? Our desire for success, for material comfort, for power. Addiction, despair, hopelessness. For Bob, liberation happened to come when he was in prison. What gets you stuck? How does your faith help you to find freedom?
Blessings,
Sara+
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