In his book Do I Stay Christian?, Brian McLaren highlights solidarity as a universal value supporting of our common life:
There may be a way to draw the best resources we can from all our traditions, not to cure us of being human, but to help us become humane, because in the end, we humans are all connected, woven, as Dr. King said, in an inescapable web of mutuality. [1] …. If we are to avoid self- destruction, it will require solidarity across all our traditions.…
If you choose solidarity, instead of pulling away from those you once suspected, avoided, vilified, or rejected, you see them as neighbors. You smile. You talk. You try to collaborate for the common good in whatever ways you can. When you disagree, as you must, you do so boldly but also graciously, not burning bridges, not breaking solidarity. They may be your opponents for the moment, but you don’t write them off as enemies.
When you embrace solidarity, you embrace humanity, including Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, humanist, and atheist humanity, and including the humanity of those Christians whose behavior consistently prompts you to ask if you can stand staying Christian for even one more second.
McLaren describes the new friendships that are possible when we embrace the inclusive message of Jesus:
If you choose solidarity … in the way modeled by Jesus, then you don’t have to stop being Christian. In fact, you may have just become a better Christian than you’ve ever been…. You may have some old friends reject you, and you may struggle to keep accepting them anyway. You may have to find new teachers and mentors who can walk with you toward Christianity’s deeper, wider heart…. If you dare to follow that summons deeper into the darkness of unknowing, eventually you will come into a new place, a good place, a place not of elite religiosity but of shared humanity.
You will look around and feel that all are welcome here. They have come from different places, but by the same path, the path of love. Muslims have come in their caravan of love. Jews have pursued the Torah of solidarity. Buddhists have followed the noble truth of compassion. Sikhs have learned to see no stranger, and Hindus have descended into essential oneness. Atheists and agnostics have discovered in humanism a path into our common humanity….
When you find that this option of solidarity is open to you, this option of going to the deepest and most genuine core of your Christian tradition and there finding a love that connects you to everyone and everything, everywhere … you don’t need to go anywhere else. Of course, you can if you want to. But here is a way of staying Christian that connects you to others in a quest for solidarity rather than separating you from them in a quest for innocence, dominance, or supremacy. This feels to me like the way of Christ. This feels like the way of life.
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Sarah Young
Jesus Calling: October 31st
Learn to listen to Me even while you are listening to other people. As they open their souls to your scrutiny, you are on holy ground. You need the help of My Spirit to respond appropriately. Ask Him to think through you, live through you, love through you. My own Being is alive within you in the Person of the Holy Spirit. If you respond to others’ needs through your unaided thought processes, you offer them dry crumbs. When the Spirit empowers your listening and speaking. My stream of living water flow through you to other people. Be a channel of My Love, Joy, and Peace by listening to Me as you listen to others.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 3:5 (NIV) 5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
1st Corinthians 6:19 (NIV) 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
John 7:38-39 (NIV) 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Additional insight regarding John 7:38: Jesus’ words, “come and drink” alluded to the theme of many Bible passages that talk about Messiah’s life-giving blessings (Isaiah 12:2-3; 44:3-4; 58:11). In promising to give the Holy Spirit to all who believed, Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, for that was something only the Messiah could do.
You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.… If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? —Matthew 5:43–48
In a 2017 homily based on this Scripture passage, Father Richard reminds us of the foundational requirements of Christian living:
As Christians, we proclaim that this scripture has authority over our lives, but I am hearing from more and more pastors from all denominations that they are afraid to preach the gospel in this country because they know half the church will walk out. You know what I’m talking about. We are in a state of such deceit, dishonesty, and lack of love for anybody but ourselves that is almost impossible to preach the gospel. The ancient Israelites were told “to love your neighbor,” but Jesus takes it to the nth degree. He says, “No—love your enemy.”
Is there anything happening in America today that would make you think we believe we should “love our enemies”? If Christians do not decide to finally be like Jesus, then let’s just give up on this whole Christian thing. It doesn’t mean anything! If it’s just going to church on Sunday, then we have to stop pretending we’re following Jesus, because we’re just like everybody else—we are into power and money and deceit and war. If we do not preach the gospel, if we do not begin to live the gospel now, then let’s stop pretending that we care about Jesus or about following Jesus.
We are in a very scary position in the United States, and the whole world sees it. We are called to engage in a great mobilization, recognition, conversion, and transformation, because now the issues are too big, too real, and too right in front of us every day.
We cannot be silent any longer. Do not expect me to be silent, and I won’t expect you to be silent, either. It’s going to take courage. It’s going take each of us making little decisions in our little worlds to love, not just our neighbors, but even to pray for our enemies, to pray for our president, to pray for our country. If we can’t do these little things, what does it all mean?
Every one of us in this room has power. To pretend we don’t, so we can just be silent is to say what’s happening is OK and it isn’t! I just read the gospel aloud and held the book above you. You stood up and you said, “Thanks be God,” so now let’s say thanks be to God with our lives. Thank you for allowing me to preach the gospel.
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Confusing Creature and Creator
Click Here for Audio If the first of the Ten Commandments is about keeping God first, the second commandment is about keeping God separate. The Lord said, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath . . .” This command is not a prohibition against artistic works, which is how some have understood it. Traditional Islamic art, for example, usually features plants, words, or geometric patterns, but no animals or people out of an abundance of caution. Islam, which is adamantly opposed to all idolatry, doesn’t want anyone to interpret God as a person or animal even accidentally.
But within the context of the Old Testament, it becomes clear this is not what the second commandment intended. Remember, the tabernacle that God himself commanded his people to build as the centerpiece of their worship included many images of animals and angels. Rather than a prohibition against certain forms of art, the second commandment establishes an absolute barrier between the uncreated God and the rest of creation. It accomplishes this by forbidding the representation of the Creator as a mere creature.
This is the basic error of all idolatry—it confuses the Creator with the creature, the eternal with the temporal, the non-contingent with the contingent. It was a radical idea at the time. Other ancient cultures depicted their gods as animals, human kings, or celestial objects. When we equate God with some element of his creation, however, we diminish his glory and limit his grandeur.
Thomas à Kempis in his classic work, The Imitation of Christ, spoke of the utter uniqueness of God. He wrote, “The difference is great—yes, very great, indeed—between delight in the Creator and in the creature, in eternity and in time, in Light uncreated and in the light that is reflected.” This cosmos, its creatures, and the works of human hands are marvelous, but their glory is at best a reflected one. To be against idolatry doesn’t mean diminishing the value of God’s good creation. It doesn’t mean eliminating the beauty of art or the delight of beautiful things from our lives.
Instead, it means recognizing the glory we see in creation is not from itself. It is the indirect radiance of the Creator. Therefore, when we marvel at any created thing we ought to offer our praise and gratitude to God, rather than to the thing itself. The second commandment invites us to delight in the One who cannot be contained by space or time, nor by the human mind, and certainly not by any craft of mere human hands.
Almighty God, who did wonderfully create humanity in your own image, and did yet more wonderfully restore them, we ask you, that as your Son our Lord Jesus Christ was made in human likeness, so we may be made partakers of the divine nature; through your Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, world without end. Amen.
In an interview for the Daily Meditations, Sikh activist and author Valarie Kaur places love at the center of our ability to bring about wholeness in a divided world:
What does it mean to return to a kind of wholeness where the way that we love informs what we do in the world and what we do in the world deepens our love?….
What I want to remind us all is that as much as we must fight for our convictions and stand for what is just, remember that all those people who vote against you are not disappearing after Election Day or Inauguration Day. We have to find a way to live together still. The only way we will birth a multiracial democracy is if we hold up a vision of a future that leaves no one behind, not even our worst opponents. So you might be in the position to have that conversation with the neighbor down the street or the uncle at the family table or the teenager who doesn’t want to vote because she’s too cynical. What might happen if you leave them alone? [Philosopher] Hannah Arendt says isolation breeds radicalization. [1] You might be the person to puncture the [social media] algorithm, to sit in spaces of deep listening—and deep listening is an act of surrender. You risk being changed by what you hear.
We don’t see those spaces modeled in the world around us. We have to create them in the spaces between us. Oftentimes it means listening over time, being in relationship. Human beings mirror each other, so if you come with daggers out, they’ll come out daggers out. If you come out and you really wonder “Why?,” beneath the slogans and the soundbites, you’ll hear the person’s story and you’ll see their wound. You’ll see their grief. You’ll see their rage. You might not agree with it, but I’ve come to understand that there are no such things as monsters in this world, only human beings who are wounded, who act out of their fear or insecurity or rage. That does not make them any less dangerous, but once we see their wound, they lose their power over us. And we get to ask ourselves: How do we want to take that information into what we do next?
I invite people to take their wounds [and] their opponents’ wounds into spaces of re-imagination—of imagining an outcome, a policy, a relationship that leaves no one outside of our circle of care, not even “them.” This kind of labor, this kind of revolutionary love, it’s not the sacrifice of an individual, it’s a practice of a community.
When we invite people to practice revolutionary love, we always ask, “What is your role in this season of your life?”…. Whatever you choose, it can be a vital practice of love, of revolutionary love. And if all of us are playing our role—not more, not less—then together we’re creating the culture shift that we so desperately need.
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We Are All Idolaters
Click Here for Audio The first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Some of us read that and think, “No problem. I’m a committed monotheist and have never been tempted to worship another god. Let’s move on to the more difficult commandments.”Not so fast.Our reading of this commandment depends entirely on our understanding of the word “gods.” We may understand a god to be an object, a function, or both. For example, a chair is both an object and a function. A chair is made for sitting, but a chair is a chair whether I sit on it or not. Its chair-ness is inherent. A box, by contrast, is not a chair. Yet, if I sit on the box it may function as a chair. The box’s chair-ness is defined by how it is used, not by what it is.
The same goes for gods. Some gods, like a chair, are clearly recognized for their god-ness. The word “god” brings to mind deities like Ra in Egypt, Zeus in Greece, and Ganesh in India. But there are many other things that are not gods but may nonetheless function as gods just as a box may function as a chair. Strictly speaking, power, wealth, fame, and pleasure are not gods. Neither is the United States, the Chicago Cubs, nor Nike shoes. And yet, any of these may functionas a god in a person’s life.
Therefore, if we read the first commandment as a prohibition against worshiping other deities, it seems like a pretty easy law to obey. If, however, we read it as a warning against allowing anything other than the Creator to function as a god in our life—well, suddenly the commandment becomes more difficult.The theologian Paul Tillich declared that faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” He argued that because each person has something of ultimate concern that defines their life and identity, all people are religious—even the atheists. Every person has something in their life that functions as their god. For some, this god-function is occupied by a recognizable deity attached to some religious tradition.
But this is increasingly not the case. Instead, the god-function is filled by something else like ambition, self-actualization, a dream, a goal, a social movement, or perhaps a political or cultural tribe. Few of us, in obedience to the first commandment, actually put our Creator in this all-important place in our lives. The truth is we are all idolaters. We all find ourselves bowing to and giving our lives to false gods with stubborn regularity.Ask yourself, what is my ultimate concern today? What occupies my imagination? What do I daydream about, and what motivates my actions? The first commandment is a warning to not give this precious, life-defining position to anything or anyone unworthy of it. It belongs to your Creator alone.
Almighty God, who did wonderfully create humanity in your own image, and did yet more wonderfully restore them, we ask you, that as your Son our Lord Jesus Christ was made in human likeness, so may we be made partakers of the divine nature; through your Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, world without end. Amen.
Father Richard Rohr recognizes how a focus on religion as a matter of personal belief has discouraged some Christians from engaging in political action.
For many people, politics and religion are so personal that neither topic is deemed appropriate to discuss publicly. While separation of church and state is an important protection for all religions, it doesn’t mean we as people of faith shouldn’t engage in our civic duties and the political process. The idea of “staying out of politics” doesn’t come from God. My sense is that it arises from our egoic, dualistic thinking that has a hard time hearing a different perspective or learning something new. [1]
Christianity in its first two thousand years has kept its morality mostly private, personal, interior, fervent, and heaven bound, with very few direct implications for our collective economic, social, or political life. Politics and religion remained largely in two distinct realms, unless religion was uniting with empires. Yes, we looked to Rome and Constantinople for imperial protection, little realizing the price we would eventually pay for such a compromise with foundational gospel values.
This convenient split took the form of either the inner or the outer world. We religious folks were supposed to be the inner people while the outer world was left to politicians, scientists, and workers of every stripe. Now this is all catching up with us, as even the inner world has largely been overtaken by psychology, literature, and the huge world of self-help. Fewer and fewer people now expect religion to have anything to say about either the inner or outer worlds! But if we do not go deep and in, we cannot go far and wide.
In my opinion, the reason we lost our Christian authority is because we did not talk about the inner world very well. We were much more focused on believing doctrines, practicing rituals, and following requirements, which are not, in and of themselves, inner or deep. Frankly, Buddhism spoke to inner transformation far better than the three monotheistic religions. We Christians did not connect the inner with the outer—which is a consequence of not going in deeply enough. Christianity now has become increasingly irrelevant, often to the very people who want to go both deep and far. We so disconnected from the political—the welfare of God’s aggregated people and the public forum—that soon we had nothing much to say.
I am not talking about partisan politics here, but simply the connecting of the inner world with the outer world. We have allowed the word partisan to be the first and sometimes only meaning of the word political and so people don’t even allow us to preach a purely gospel message from the pulpit—as it might sound “political”!
Here is my major point: There is no such thing as being nonpolitical. Everything we say or do either affirms or critiques the status quo. Even to say nothing is to say something: The status quo—even if it is massively unjust and deceitful—is apparently okay. This “nonpolitical” stance is an illusion we must overcome.
A Politics Rooted in God’s Love
When deciding how we want to act in the public sphere, Rev. Wes Granberg-Michaelson reminds Christians to begin with the personal experience of God’s overflowing love for the world:
Our temptation is to begin with politics and then try to figure out how religion can fit in. We start with the accepted parameters of political debate and, whether we find ourselves on the left or the right, we use religion to justify and bolster our existing commitments….
But what if we make the inward journey our starting point? What if we recognize that our engagement in politics should be rooted in our participation in the Trinitarian flow of God’s love? Then everything changes. We are no longer guided or constrained by what we think is politically possible, but are compelled by what we know is most real. At the heart of all creation, the mutual love within the Trinity overflows to embrace all of life. We are invited to participate in the transforming power of this love. There we discover the ground of our being, centering all our life and action.
This was revealed most fully in Jesus, as God’s Son. His love for enemies, his non-violent response to evil, his embrace of the marginalized, his condemnation of self-serving religious hypocrites, his compassion for the poor, his disregard for boundaries of social exclusion, his advocacy for the economically oppressed, and his certainty that God’s reign was breaking into the world all flowed from his complete, mutual participation in his Father’s love. Jesus didn’t merely show the way; he lived completely in the presence and power of God’s redeeming, transforming life.
Granberg-Michaelson envisions a future based on God’s desire for the world:
Transformative change in politics depends so much on having a clear view of the desired end. Where does that vision come from? Possibilities may be offered by various ideologies, or party platforms, or political candidates. But, for the person of faith, that vision finds its roots in God’s intended and preferred future for the world. It comes not as a dogmatic blueprint but as an experiential encounter with God’s love, flowing like a river from God’s throne, nourishing trees with leaves for the healing of the nations (see Revelation 22:1–2).…
Such a vision strikes the political pragmatist as idyllic, unrealistic, and irrelevant. But the person of faith, whose inward journey opens [their] life to the explosive love of God, knows that this vision is the most real of all. It is a glimpse of creation’s purpose and a glimmering of the Spirit’s movement amid the world’s present pain, brokenness, and despair. This vision also recognizes the inevitable journey of inward and outward transformation—the simultaneous, continuing transformation of the inward hearts of people liberated by God’s astonishing grace and the outward transformation of social and economic structures liberated by God’s standards of justice.
Note to CO Few: This is from Mark Longhurst. He assists Richard Rohr with writing, compiling and editing. This is his comment about a book he has written. DJR
I’m not being falsely humble when I say I wrote The Holy Ordinary as an aspiration rather than a lived reality. I feel drawn to a life of spiritual depth, but I’m not a monk, nun, or even a professional pastor serving a church anymore. I’m just an ordinary dude, working a job I am privileged to love, raising boys who play soccer, going to the movies, reading, and spending time with my wife. I also, frankly, am not very good at slowing down and appreciating the holiness of the ordinary. I have an anxious and task-oriented psyche that leads me into obsessive thought patterns more than it does a trusting posture of enjoying the moment.
But as I write in the book, I’m convinced that “underneath the rhythmic contours of each day are deepening roots that sip from mystical streams.” I sit in silent meditation or chant morning psalms—which is something monks and nuns have been doing for centuries—and I’m reminded at some level that my true life is not found in the things that I’m doing and that my belonging lies in a deeper, divine love in which I am invited to participate.
Here’s the thing: once you know that there’s a deeper love pulsing behind and through all things, you can’t unknow it. It doesn’t mean I’m special; I’ve just glimpsed something beautiful that I believe is true, and I know I’m not the only one. I meet so many people (many on Substack!) who are living regular lives on the surface, who are perfectly ordinary in our wounds and failures, many of whom do not go to church or find belonging in traditional religious structures but who have glimpsed something deeply loving about reality—and can’t unsee it.
This is the call that the “mystic” has traditionally responded to. For about 1,500 years, the “mystical” meant monastic—but we’re living in a time where this is no longer true. In our ecumenical era, the divisions that once caused wars between Protestants and Catholics are no longer ultimate. Lots of people are leaving Christianity altogether, and often with good reason—but lots of people also realize that there are treasures hidden in Christianity and that they don’t need to belong to one denominational group or the other to enjoy them. So, in today’s religious landscape, you could run into evangelical Christians praying Psalms like monks, liberal Protestants singing songs from the French monastery Taizé, or thousands of people who don’t belong to any tradition hiking a former medieval pilgrimage path—the Camino de Santiago. Christians practice silent meditation and yoga now, practices traditionally reserved for Christian monks, Buddhists, and Hindu renunciates, and the Trappist monastery a few hours away from me in Spencer, MA, makes jam and beer.
I’m asking through this book: What if mysticism is for everybody? What if it’s not for those special people but for me—for us? And what if following a path of deep spirituality in this way helps us discover the radical “holiness” of ordinary life?
So, what is the holy ordinary—and what is mysticism? Well, how do you begin talking about the ineffable? I don’t have a specific answer, but I can tell you what I’ve learned from others. One medieval scholar, Jean Gerson, described it as “the experiential knowledge that comes from God through the embrace of unitive love.” So, it’s experiential and not something we learn from reading books. That’s extremely difficult for someone like me who loves reading theology and spirituality books. I often can trick myself into believing that because I’ve read or thought something, I’ve experienced it fully—but that’s decidedly not the case. Mysticism comes from God, or ultimate reality, whatever word you want to use, through an embrace of love. Mysticism has everything to do with knowing, feeling, and trusting that an embrace of love is at the heart of it all. But it’s also “unitive,” meaning it unites us and connects us to God, each other, and the earth. It’s a love that heals and brings together and does not separate. I’m convinced that that’s what we most need today.
This loving, uniting embrace is available to me in all our ordinary moments, from standing waiting at the bus stop to doing the dishes to working on a deadline for our jobs. It’s available when cooking, walking in nature, or playing with our kids. This loving, uniting embrace is also available as a resource to me and each of us in the hard moments. It holds us in the grief of our heartbreaks, diagnoses, and deaths, ever prompting us to solidarity with those who are most suffering and are marginalized. Discovering the “holy” ordinary means living a life that trusts this loving embrace.
Earlier this week, we shared with the CAC community that our beloved teacher Dr. Barbara Holmes passed away. As CAC Executive Director Michael Poffenberger expressed with deep sadness, “we lost a giant in our community.” “Dr. B.,” as many referred to her, has now become a spiritual ancestor. In the video series Wisdom in Times of Crisis, Dr. B. reminds us that we can draw on the wisdom of our spiritual ancestors to guide our actions:
Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, and others—their stories of resistance, survival, and faith inspire and guide us. We have to know that we’re not alone. Despite a concerted social effort to convince us that we are radical individuals, that our motto should be “I’ll get mine, you get yours,” a deeply communal spirit arises when we least expect it and when we need it most. According to author James Baldwin, we are a community of witnesses with responsibilities to the next generation. He says, “Nothing is fixed forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.” [1]
So, visionaries, prophets, and Jesus have all warned us that this journey that we are on will be beset by troubles. In this life, you will have trouble. How we handle that trouble is our witness to future generations. An old order is passing away. A new order is on its way, and we do not have the power to stop or slow the transitions that we encounter, but we can live through it and help one another.…
What I want to say about the wisdom that matters now is that this wisdom often comes from discernment of Divine Spirit in our midst. Hearing and heeding the voice of the Divine is critical during difficult times. But sometimes, with all of our media distractions and our own boredom, it’s difficult to hear the voice of the Creator. So, I’m going to suggest that if you’re hoping to hear beyond this realm into the next, remember that the key is newness. The Creator does not come as we expect. The Spirit does not move under our command. When we expect divine intervention in one way, it usually comes in another. We expect the warrior king to set things right, God sends a baby in a manger. We expect wrongs to be punished, God extends grace and mercy to all.
Read 1 Kings 19:11: “And the Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.” So, where is the Divine One in the midst of crisis? I suggest that God is in the whispers of the heart, and the love of neighbor. Rejoice, beloved, you are not alone.
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Oct 25, 2024, Skye Jethany Psalm 149: Expecting Softballs but Getting Curveballs
A few weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attack, I was invited to be a guest speaker at a college and young adult ministry at a very large church. The pastor asked me to teach a series over multiple weeks on the book of 1 Corinthians. I was still a seminary student, and these opportunities were rare, so I was eager to accept.The pastor knew I had studied Islam as an undergraduate, so before speaking to the group on my first night, he pulled me aside and said, “We’re going to do some Q&A after your message. Because of the terrorist attack, I may throw you some softball questions about Islam.” That made sense to me, but his questions turned out to be curveballs, not softballs.After a few questions about 1 Corinthians from the group, the pastor shouted his question from the back of the room. “Skye, you’ve studied Islam. Can you explain why it’s a religion of violence, but Christianity is a religion of peace? ” That’s a common stereotype,” I said, “and the attack on 9/11 has reinforced it. But it’s important to remember that there are over one billion Muslims in the world, and the overwhelming majority believe that God has called them to live in peace.
And while Christ clearly preached a message of peace, we shouldn’t ignore the terrible violence that has been done in his name throughout history.”The pastor was not happy with my answer, so he tried again. “But doesn’t the Quran command Muslims to kill their enemies?” he said.“There are verses in the Quran that have been interpreted that way,” I said. The pastor smiled and nodded. But then I continued. “Of course, there are also verses in the Bible that have been twisted and used to justify violence against non-Christians as well—particularly in the Old Testament.” I then read to them from Psalm 149. “May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands, to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples” (Psalm 149:6-7).The Q&A time came to an abrupt end after that.After the service, the pastor was furious with me. “Look!” he said pointing his finger at my chest, “there are people here struggling with God. They’re questioning everything, and you had a chance to explain why Christianity is better.” I told him that I would gladly speak all night about Christ, the gospel, and why I’m committed to the Christian faith after studying many others. But I’m not going to do it by misrepresenting other religions or disparaging my Muslim neighbors. And I’m not going to hide or whitewash the mistakes Christians have made in the past.
To no one’s surprise, the rest of my series on 1 Corinthians was canceled and I was never invited back. I share this story because it illustrates the common tendency to emphasize the parts of the Bible we like and diminish or ignore the parts we do not. Likewise, we quickly point out the specks of violent history, weird doctrine, or troubling verses in another religion’s eye, and ignore the same specks—or truckloads of lumber—in the Church’s eye. For me, Psalm 149 is one of those troubling parts of the Bible—particularly the part about praising God with our mouths while inflicting violence with a sword in our hands.
Historically, Christians have tried to erase the violent imagery of this psalm by reinterpreting the “double-edged sword” through a New Testament lens. In both Hebrews and Revelation, a double-edged sword is used as a metaphor for the Word of God (see Hebrews 4:12 and Revelation 1:16). Therefore, some try to argue that Psalm 149 is figurative; it’s about wielding Scripture not slaying enemies. Honestly, I remain unconvinced and I continue to grapple with how to understand and apply this psalm. Pop Christianity wants us to believe the Bible is a book of softball answers, but passages like Psalm 149 remind us that the Bible is full of curveballs.
WEEKLY PRAYER From Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1975)Lift up our hearts, O Christ, above the false show of things, above laziness and fear, above selfishness and covetousness, above whim and fashion, up to the everlasting Truth that you are; that we may live joyfully and freely, in the faith that you are our King and our Savior, our Example and our Judge, and that, so long as we are loyal to you, all will ultimately be well. Amen.
Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev describes how the ancient prophets listened for God’s liberating word:
At its heart, the prophetic witness was a way of listening, listening beyond the social norms of the day, listening to the word of the liberating God. The prophets urged the people to listen to God’s word because the discourse of the king, princes, and wealthy landowners was too narrow and was limited to the interests of these elites. This conversation did not include the voices of suffering people. The prophets, in God’s name, offered a much broader discourse, a conversation that listened to and addressed the needs of the poor and the disadvantaged….
The prophetic listening tradition is alive today to inspire people to listen beyond the established conversation. The prophetic tradition challenges us to listen especially to the cries of those who suffer and to listen to the voice of alternative possibility, to the voiceof God.
Ward-Lev shares that the living presence of God is still calling to us today:
The Living Presence also speaks within our lives, wordlessly calling us out into life, encouraging us to grow beyond our current limitations. This Presence breathes into us desires and visions of whom we might become. Listening to the word of God is opening to the often-wordless speech of this Presence, allowing the transcendent to touch us, to inspire us, to beckon us across boundaries, to take the next step in our lives. Listening well to our inner lives—to the thoughts, inclinations, images, and emotions that arise within us—is an important practice along the liberation journey. Listening is essential in relationship to the Living Presence and in mutual relationship with people….
In my life, listening is a prime spiritual practice. Throughout the day, I seek to listen. I find that I sometimes hear the words but do not bring my full attention to listening. A friend is speaking to me; am I listening with a quiet mind? I see the beauty of the roses in my garden. Am I listening internally, taking a moment to notice the effect that the beauty of the roses has on me? I hear an undocumented immigrant in my community describe how her family lives in fear. Am I listening with a responsive heart? I read a story in the newspaper about heroin addiction in our state. Am I listening? I study a passage in Scripture. Am I paying attention to the details in the passage? Am I providing the time and attention to notice what the text might be stirring up in me?…
Listening is an essential practice along the liberation journey. Deep listening challenges our internal status quo and exposes us to new possibilities. The world is full of possibilities for healing and wholeness, for well-being and joy. Like the biblical prophets and contemporary people who live in their lineage, all those of us on a liberation journey are called to listen, to learn, and then to act to bring a more fruitful future into the world.
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Sarah Young Jesus Calling
Jesus Calling: October 24th
Come to Me when you are hurting, and I will soothe your pain. Come to Me when you are joyful, and I will share your Joy, multiplying it many times over. I am All you need, just when you need it. Your deepest desires find fulfillment in Me alone. This is the age of self-help, Bookstores abound with books about “taking care of number one,” making oneself the center of all things. The main goal of these methodologies is to become self-sufficient and confident. You, however, have been called to take a “road less traveled”: continual dependence on Me. True confidence comes from knowing you are complete in My Presence. Everything you need has its counterpart in Me.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
John 15:5 (NLT) 5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
Additional insight regarding John 15:5: “Fruit” is not limited to soul winning. In this chapter, answer prayer, joy, and love are mentioned as fruit (John 15:7, 11, 12). Galatians 5:22-24 and 2nd Peter 1:5-8 describe additional fruit: qualities of Christian character. Remaining in Christ means (1) believing that he is God’s Son, (2) receiving him as Savior and Lord, (3) doing what God says, (4) continuing to believe in the Good News, and (5) relating in love to the community of believers, Christ’s body.
James 1:4 (NIV) 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
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We ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord. —Colossians 1:9–10
For Father Richard, contemplation cultivates an ability to discern right action:
Our goal consists in doing the will of God, but first we have to remove our attachment to our own will so that we can recognize the difference between the two. Throughout history, many people who did horrible things were convinced that they were doing God’s will. That’s why we have to find an instrument to distinguish between God and us. Paul calls this gift the discernment of spirits. We have to learn when our own spirit is at work and when the Spirit of God is at work.
The most convincing social activists in our country were and are people of prayer, like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Sister Simone Campbell, John Dear, and Jim Wallis. It’s important that we bring the contemplatives and the activists together in the Church and in the world, because neither group is credible without the other. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days; only after that did he begin to preach the reign of God and to heal the sick. And along the way he kept reminding his disciples to withdraw and rest in quiet, peaceful places (see Mark 6:31).
With this withdrawal and this emptiness, we are, so to speak, cultivating fertile soil where we can be receptive to the seed of God’s word. I don’t believe that Jesus dumps the harvest into our laps. Rather, he shows us a process of growth. He shows us a way we can learn to hear God, a path of self-surrender and forgiveness. He trusts that his followers, as they practice this way of prayer, will learn to hear the truth ever more clearly. The great truth will always lie beyond us. The great truth of God will never underpin a small world. This means that the Christian life must be a constant journey back and forth between the radical way inward and the radical way outward. [1]
Dutch priest and author Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) views discernment as a gift that comes from our intimacy with God:
I can see no other way for discernment than a life in the Spirit, a life of unceasing prayer and contemplation, a life of deep communion with the Spirit of God. Such a life will slowly develop in us an inner sensitivity, enabling us to distinguish between the law of the flesh [ego] and the law of the Spirit [soul]. We certainly will make constant errors and seldom have the purity of heart required to make the right decisions all the time. But when we continually try to live in the Spirit, we at least will be willing to confess our weakness and limitations in all humility, trusting in the one who is greater than our hearts.
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OCT 23, 2024. Psalm 147: God Cares About the Immense and the Mundane Click Here for Audio
In 1985, Ronald Reagan went to Geneva, Switzerland, for his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to discuss nuclear disarmament. While in Geneva, the Reagan’s borrowed the chateau of a Muslim friend. The homeowner’s son, Hussain, left a note for the President asking him to please feed his goldfish, which Mr. Reagan was happy to do.On the first morning of the summit with Gorbachev, tragedy struck. A goldfish was dead at the bottom of the tank. The First Lady later said the President was so upset that he called his entire staff into the boy’s bedroom to figure out a solution. In the end, the summit with the Soviet leader was a huge success marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War. And before leaving Geneva, President Reagan personally wrote the following note to the homeowner’s son: Dear Friend, On Tuesday I found one of your fish dead in the bottom of the tank. I don’t know what could have happened but I added two new ones, same kind, I hope this was alright. Thanks for letting us live in your lovely home. Ronald Reagan The President of the United States
It’s a charming story, but what I find most remarkable is the contrast between the two challenges the President was facing. On the one hand, he was responsible for managing the fate of humanity by de-escalating the threat of a nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, he was concerned about one boy’s dead goldfish.A similar but far larger contrast is seen in Psalm 147.
YHWH is described as having limitless cosmic power. He commands the earth and the heavens, supplies rain and manages the seasons, and governs the stars above and the nations below. Verse 5 captures this vision of God when it declares, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limits.”But this expansive vision of YHWH’s awesome power is contrasted by his intimate concern for those who suffer. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (verse 3). And while “he determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name” (verse 4), his thoughts are not so lofty that he cannot give his attention to those who are overlooked here on earth. “YHWH sustains the humble” (verse 6).
The message of Psalm 147 is echoed by Jesus in the gospels. When speaking to his followers about persecution, Jesus offers comfort by reminding them of God’s intimate care. He counts every hair on our heads, and he knows every sparrow—and goldfish—that falls (See Matthew 10:26-31). For the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, who is robed with immense power, there is nothing that’s too mundane to be beyond his care.
WEEKLY PRAYER From Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1975) Lift up our hearts, O Christ, above the false show of things, above laziness and fear, above selfishness and covetousness, above whim and fashion, up to the everlasting Truth that you are; that we may live joyfully and freely, in the faith that you are our King and our Savior, our Example and our Judge, and that, so long as we are loyal to you, all will ultimately be well. Amen.
Spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton shares how the Ignatian practice of discernment helps us to recognize God’s guidance in our lives:
The habit of discernment is a quality of attentiveness to God that is so intimate that over time we develop an intuitive sense of God’s heart and purpose in any given moment. We become familiar with God’s voice—the tone, quality and content—just as we become familiar with the voice of a human being we know well. We are able to grasp the answers to several key questions: Who is God for me in the moment? Where is God at work, continuing to unfold [God’s] love and redemption? Who am I most authentically in response? It is a way of looking at all of life with a view to sensing the movement of God’s Spirit and abandoning ourselves to it….
For many of us, though, knowledge of God’s will is a subject fraught with doubt and difficulty. Is it really possible to know the will of God? we wonder. Do I really trust [God] to do what’s best for me? How do I know whether I have “discerned” God’s will or if it is just a good way to justify what I want? How do I make sense of those times when I thought I understood the will of God but it ended up being a mess? It was hard enough to trust God the first time. How can I trust God again?
Barton writes that an authentic discernment process identifies love as our primary calling:
For the Christian person, the choices we make are always about love and which choice enables us to keep following God into love. There may be other factors to consider, but the deepest question for us as Christian people is, What does love call for in this situation? What would love do?
Why is it that we so rarely ask this question relative to the choices we face? What distracts us from love in various situations in which we are trying to discern God’s will? I don’t know your answers to this question, but I can tell you a few of mine. For one thing, love is a major inconvenience at times. It is rarely efficient…. Furthermore, love challenges my self-centeredness, and sometimes it requires me to give more of myself than I want to give. Sometimes love hurts, or at least it makes me vulnerable. All the time, love is risky, and there are no guarantees.
And yet love is the deepest calling of the Christian life, the standard by which everything about our lives is measured…. Any decision-making process that fails to ask the love question misses the point of the Christian practice of discernment. Discernment is intended to take us deeper and deeper into the heart of God’s will: that we would follow God passionately into love—even if it takes us all the way to the cross.
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A Few Quotes from George MacDonald
Sad, indeed, would the whole matter be if the Bible had told us everything God meant us to believe. But herein is the Bible greatly wronged. It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever-unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” not the Bible, save as leading to Him.
I am so tried by the things said about God. I understand God’s patience with the wicked, but I do wonder how he can be so patient with the pious!
All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us- inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us.
Father Richard Rohr considers the many challenges we face when seeking to “hear” God’s voice:
Humanity is in a time of great flux, of great cultural and spiritual change. The psyche doesn’t know what to do with so much information. For most of human history, knowledge was written down, gathered in libraries, and shared physically; now, we’re linked 24/7 to unlimited data via televisions, our phones, or computer screens. That may explain the confusion and anxiety that we’re dealing with today.
In light of today’s information overload, people are looking for a few clear certitudes by which to define themselves. We see fundamentalism in many religious leaders when it serves their cultural or political worldview. We surely see it at the lowest levels of religion, where God is used to justify violence, hatred, prejudice, and “our” way of doing things. The fundamentalist mind likes answers and explanations so much that it remains willfully ignorant about how history arrived at those explanations or how self-serving they usually are. Satisfying untruth is more pleasing to us than unsatisfying truth, and full truth is invariably unsatisfying—at least to the small self.
Great spirituality, on the other hand, is always seeking a very subtle but creative balance between opposites. When we go to one side or the other too much, we find ourselves either overly righteous or overly skeptical and cynical. There must be a healthy middle, as we try to hold both the needed light and the necessary darkness.
We must not give up seeking truth, observing reality from all its angles. We settle human confusion not by falsely pretending to settle all the dust, but by teaching people an honest and humble process for learning and listening for themselves, which we call contemplation. Then people come to wisdom in a calm and compassionate way without the knee jerk overreactions that we witness in so many today.
Faith isn’t supposed to be a top-down affair, but an organic meeting between an Inner Knower (the Indwelling Holy Spirit) accessed by prayer and experience, and the Outer Knower, which we would call Scripture (holy writings) and Tradition (all the ancestors). This is a calm and wonderfully healing way to know full Reality. [1]
Adam Bucko shares how contemplation refines our inner knowing:
Contemplation is about receptivity, about deep listening, about wrestling with questions like what breaks your heart, what makes you truly alive, and allowing those questions, as well as the pain of the world, to shatter us. When we do that, in the midst of all of that, we discover that there’s something arising deep within. For me, that’s the Holy Spirit looking to essentially flow into our lives, take whatever is left of us, and reassemble it into something that can become our unique gift to the world. The contemplation part is the receptivity and consent, and the action part is simply letting God live through us as much as possible, letting Christ live and love and protest through us.
A Loving Voice
If we can trust and listen to our inner divine image, our whole-making instinct, or our True Self, we will act from our best, largest, kindest, most inclusive self. —Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ
Richard Rohr describes how we can humbly receive and share God’s “good word” for ourselves and the world:
We must receive all words of God tenderly and subtly, so that we can speak them to others with tenderness and subtlety. I would even say that anything said with too much bravado, over-assurance, or with any need to control or impress another, is never the voice of God within us. If any thought feels too harsh, shaming, or diminishing of ourselves or others, it is not likely the voice of God. Trust me on that. That is simply our egoic voice. Why do humans so often presume the exact opposite—that shaming voices are always from God, and grace voices are always the imagination?If something comes toward us with grace and can pass through us and toward others with grace, we can trust it as the voice of God.
One holy man who came to visit me recently put it this way, “We must listen to what is supporting us. We must listen to what is encouraging us. We must listen to what is urging us. We must listen to what is alive in us.”I personally was so trained not to trust those voices that I think I often did not hear the voice of God speaking to me or what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.” Yes, a narcissistic person can and will misuse such advice, but a genuine God lover will flourish inside such a dialogue.
We must learn how to recognize the positive flow and to distinguish it from the negative resistance within ourselves. It can take years, if not a lifetime. If a voice comes from accusation and leads to accusation, it is quite simply the voice of the “Accuser,” which is the literal meaning of the biblical word “Satan.” Shaming, accusing, or blaming is simply not how God talks, but sadly, it is too often how we talk—to ourselves and to one another. God is supremely nonviolent; I’ve learned that from the saints and mystics that I have read and met and heard about. That many holy people cannot be wrong. [1]
There is a deeper voice of God which we must learn to hear and obey. It will sound like the voice of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of common sense, of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of our deepest self. It will always feel gratuitous, and it is this very freedom that scares us. God never leads by guilt or shame! God leads by loving the soul at ever-deeper levels, not by shaming at superficial levels.
(from John Chaffee’s Monday email on the mystics) Learning from the Mystics: Julian of Norwich
Quote of the Week: “Our soul is one-ed with him, and he is unchangeable goodness. There can be neither anger nor forgiveness between God and our soul. For the goodness of God has made our soul so completely one with him that there can be nothing separating us.” – Chapter 46, p 114.
Reflection: For Julian, the line that separates the creation from the Creator has largely dissolved. In today’s world, someone is considered spiritual or learned because of their ability to separate, to distinguish, to be apart rather than unified, reconciling, and integrated with the world around them. Julian was under some level of scrutiny for these comments, but she was likely under the watchful eye of people who were “higher” in authority but “earlier” in their faith journey and maturity. Julian was unable to find a word to talk about the intimacy of God and our being she invented a new term: being one-ed with God. Elsewhere in the Showings, she likens the soul and God is tied in a knot, two ropes in one existence. If we take a moment to realize what she is saying, it is nothing more than what happens in the climax of Romans 8, that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Sometimes we read that passage and affirm it conceptually but not in reality. For Julian, she took the intimate closeness of God and the human soul to be the reality upon which all other theology and spirituality should be built.
Prayer Dear Lord, help us not only to affirm but to also live from the deep reality that you have chosen to tie yourself to us, that we are united in one existence by sheer grace and love. Help us also to recognize the deep unity and interrelationship of all things, and overcome every separation, segregation, and division that we foolishly employ. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Life Overview:
Who Were They: Julian, also known as Juliana Where: Norwich, England When: 1343-1416AD (During the Bubonic Plague) Why She is Important: She is the first published female in the English language, and is known for her incredibly hopeful, intimate and tender theology of God. What Was Their Main Contribution:The Showings (or Revelations) of Divine Love
Endless Strength! / Your love authored life / when You spoke that one Word. / You’re the One who ordered / order, created / Creation, Your own / way. —Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Father Richard understands the cosmos as the first Incarnation of God:
The first Incarnation of God did not happen in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. That is just when it became human and personal for us, and many people started taking divine embodiment seriously. The initial Incarnation actually happened around 13.8 billion years ago with the “Big Bang.” That is what we call the moment when God decided to materialize and self-expose.
Two thousand years ago marks the human incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the first and original incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and “every kind of wild beast” according to the creation story in Genesis 1:3–25. This was the “Cosmic Christ” through whom “God has let us know the mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made from the beginning in Christ” (see Ephesians 1:9–10). Christ is not Jesus’ last name; it’s the title for his life’s purpose.
Jesus is the very concrete truth revealing and standing in for the universal truth. As Colossians puts it, “he is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation” (1:15); he is the one glorious part that names and reveals the even more glorious whole. “The fullness is founded in him … everything in heaven and everything on earth” (Colossians 1:19–20). Christ, for Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus, was the very first idea in the mind of God [1] and God has never stopped thinking, dreaming, and creating the Christ. “The immense diversity and pluriformity of this creation more perfectly represent God than any one creature alone or by itself,” adds Thomas Aquinas. [2]
For most of us, this is a significant shaking of our foundational image of the universe and of our religion. Yet if any group should have come to this quite simply and naturally, it should have been the three groups of believers that call themselves monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe that the world was created by one God. It would seem to follow therefore that everything, everything without exception, would bear the clear imprint and likeness of the one Creator.
Our very suffering now, our condensed presence on this common nest that we have fouled, will soon be the ONE thing that we finally share in common. It might well be the one thing that will bring us together. The earth and its life systems on which we all entirely depend (just as we depend on God!) might soon become the very thing that will convert us to a simple gospel lifestyle, to necessary community, and to an inherent and universal sense of the holy.
In much of our culture, leadership has become a dirty word. Trust in institutions has plummeted over the last 30 years because of toxic, abusive, or corrupt leadership. The greed of financial leaders created the mortgage crisis that nearly destroyed the economy in 2008. The self-interest of religious leaders led them to cover up abuse scandals in some of the country’s largest churches and denominations. And let’s not even get into the shortcomings of our political leaders.
I don’t know if today’s leaders are more corrupt and less virtuous than leaders from the past, or if we simply see more of their shortcomings now because of technology and social media. Either way, the temptation to abuse power is not a modern problem, and neither is the desire to seek a leadership position for selfish gain and ego inflation. The Bible is full of terrible leaders, some good leaders, and many flawed leaders. David belonged to the last category.
In Psalm 144, David speaks of his leadership by echoing the words of Psalm 8. John Goldingay says, “Psalm 8 marvels that God puts mere humans in control of the world; Psalm 144 marvels that God puts a particular human being, the king or governor, in charge of Israel.” (See Psalm 8:4-6 and Psalm 144:3). Although David is just a mortal man, YHWH has given him the power of life and death, the power to make war, and to subjugate people (verses 1-2). It is a terrible and awesome responsibility that is easy to abuse—and often is.
The final verses of Psalm 144, however, reveal David’s wisdom. He understands that God has not given him this leadership role to glorify himself, but to serve the interest of others. David recognizes that being a faithful and successful king will result in future generations being blessed. He speaks of Israel’s sons and daughters living in peace and prosperity, and free from the fear of poverty or slavery (verses 12-14). Simply put, YHWH made him king to serve and bless God’s people. God’s people do not exist to serve and bless the king.
Although the church has no king but Jesus, the same principle implied by Psalm 144 is found in the New Testament. When speaking about gifts within the church, Paul is careful to say that the Spirit gives gifts “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). And gifts often associated with leadership—apostleship, prophecy, teaching, etc.—are not given to believers for their own benefit, but to build up and strengthen others within the church. Therefore, any Christian given a role of influence is to have the same mindset as Christ. We are to value others above ourselves and use our power to serve and bless others. Maybe if this Christian vision of power were seen more within the church, leadership would no longer be a dirty word.
O Lord, the help of the helpless, the hope of the hopeless, the savior of the storm-tossed, the harbor of voyagers, the physician of the sick; we pray to you. O Lord, you know each of us and our petitions; you know each house and its needs; receive us all into your kingdom; make us children of light, and bestow your peace and love upon us. Amen.
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This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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