Two Worlds Our Choice

On the morning of January 1^st as I started my (almost) daily ritual of prayer and I thanked God for a new day, it occurred to me to thank God also for a new year. Then, as one thought flowed into another, I realized as Christians we celebrate two New Years in very close succession. Advent starts four weeks before Christmas when we start a new year: the beginning of the church colander. Our Christian year, starting then, is marked by the scripture readings of the Common Lectionary. It is possible for our life as Christians to revolve around these readings, either the three year cycle for Sunday worship or the two year cycle for personal reflection.

Then a few weeks down the road another new year is ushered in on December 31^st into January 1^st. This marks the beginning of the new year of our secular life. And here is where it gets complicated. For these two new years symbolize the juggling act we find ourselves in. How do we live in and straddle what are really two worlds the secular and the holy, that exist beside each other? (Fans of science fiction could even imagine them as parallel universes.) When a choice is presented to us that would reflect one world or the other which do we choose? This is a conundrum that has plagued Christians (those who were originally called the Followers of the Way) from the very advent of the Christian church.

Two authors together in two books look at this very question; the question of loyalty to the secular world, the state or loyalty to God's Kingdom. The two books The First Christmas and The Last Week, both written jointly by Marcus J Borg and John Dominic Crossan, look at the very beginning of Jesus' life and the last week of that life. In both books they touch on the question of loyalty between these two worlds. In The First Christmas the authors look at the concept of peace and how the world of the State and the Kingdom of God would achieve this. The authors had earlier in The First Christmas explained how the words used to describe the "divinity" of Ceaser and that of Jesus were the same. At the end of chapter 7 in The First Christmas the authors say this:

The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns again, and always worse than before. And it is that escalator violence that then endangers our world.

The four week period of Advent before Christmas – and the six-week period of Lent before Easter – are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggest that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day's violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent procession of the donkey-mounted Jesus and his companions. We asked: in which procession would we have walked then and in which do we walk now?

We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and individually and internationally.

Christmas is not about tinsel and mistletoe or even ornaments and presents, but about what means will we use toward the end of a peace from heaven upon our earth. Or is "peace on earth" but a Christmas ornament taken each year from the attic of basement and returned there as soon as possible.

Well, is peace a Christmas ornament or is it a concept that we as Christians strive for via justice? Or are we taken in by the constant drum beat of peace via victory? The choice is ours and it begs the question, how do we as individuals practice justice in our day-to-day lives? That is a question for a new year for us as individuals and as a society.

The above words originally written at the start of the secular new year and not posted are relevant as we enter the Lenten season, as we begin that section of our church year that looks back at the time when a state, using violence and death, tried to silence the concept of love and peace represented in the person of Jesus Christ. For a short time the State and violence seem to have won. That victory however was short lived (it lasted from only the day of His earthly death until Pentecost). And today during the season of Lent it is not the State and Caesar we worship it is the divine person of Jesus.

We can ask ourselves today have we as a society learned anything? Do we prefer the Caesar riding in on a war horse with his soldiers that can bring, as the authors of The First Christmas put it, "Victory (that )established not peace, but lull." Or do we long for the Peace that can come via non-violence, diplomacy (blessed are the peace makers) and the Christ centered concept of loving our enemies?

Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Best Interest?

The article that can be read in its entarity at the site address below provides a clear view of why people vote against their own best interest. The thrust of the article has to do with the current debate about national health care. Why would people vote against their own best interest? The article presents some clear, reasonable answers to that question.

"The Republicans' shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US.

Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why is there often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters."

To Read the balance of this article from the BBC go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm

Health Care - What Would Jesus Think

As the House and the Senate send their health care bills to reconciliation in January the Public Option may be in danger of being dropped from the final bill. The current Public Option is weaker than the original proposal but is at least better than nothing; perhaps a starting point.

I discovered the following video clip on You Tube. Perhaps you would like to watch it and then contact your Representative and Senators and encourage them to support the Public Option portion in what ever way they are able.

To view the video go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZfU8GcdSKI/

Peacemakers …children of God

"…the qualities of a growing Christian peace movement in Australia that reflects the disarming grace we find in Jesus. A movement that realises that peacemakers are called "children of God" because they reflect God's burning desire for healing justice. Our God is a peacemaker and the costly love seen on Calvary proclaims: "There is no way to peace — peace is the way."

To see the first part of this quote and the blog it comes from go to: http://blog.sojo.net/2009/12/29/an-activism-that-loves-its-enemies/ taken from God's Politics blogs on Sojuners web site.

Mary’s Magnificat

From " God's politics a blog by Jim Wallis & friends"

Preaching the Whole Magnificat

by Nadia Bolz-Weber 12-22-2009

Again this Wednesday we joined the broader church in singing vespers, the evening prayer which always includes Mary's song, the Magnificat.  We joined Christ's church and Christ's mother in singing about the wondrous things God has done in blessing us and in casting the mighty from their thrones and in feeding the hungry and sending the rich away empty.

Some of you know that the church I went to in High School, and where my parents still attend, is a very theologically and socially conservative congregation in Centennial.  It's, suburban, white, very upper middle class, and privileged.  Very privileged.  Well a few years ago,  over 10 years after becoming a Lutheran and singing the Magnificat in Vespers countless times and really loving how radical it was, I visited my parent's church and was amazed to see in the worship folder that the closing song was the Magnificat.

Continued at http://blog.sojo.net/2009/12/22/preaching-the-whole-magnificat/?continue

 

Progressive Social Reforms

From God's Politics a blog by Jim Wallis & friends from the Sojourners web site.

What Do Health-Care Reform, the 40-Hour Work Week, Unemployment Insurance, the Minimum Wage, etc., Have in Common?

by Chuck Gutenson 11-25-2009

Well, they were all brought to you be political progressives, they were all opposed by political conservatives, and they all are now viewed as fundamental presuppositions of a healthy society by virtually everyone. Okay, all but health-care reform, but trust me, if it passes, in no time at all it will be viewed so positively that we will no longer be able to remember why it took us so long to implement it. And, of course, the list actually includes many, many more initiatives—child labor laws, basic workplace safety rules, social security, Medicare, and so on.

In each case, the vast majority of political conservatives opposed them. They told us that businesses would be ruined, that the problems resulting from implementing the initiatives would be worse than if we left things as they were, that implementing them would make us non-competitive, or, more generally, that the good life as we know it would be gone if we were so foolish as to pass these pieces of legislation. One would think that after being wrong sooo many times, political conservatives would speak with a bit more humility, but alas, not so. If one took some of the speeches in opposition to health-care reform, one could substitute "minimum wage laws" or "child labor laws" in place of "health-care reform" and it would be déjà vu all over again—to quote Yogi Berra.

For the balance of the blog go to: http://blog.sojo.net/2009/11/25/what-do-health-care-reform-the-40-hour-work-week-unemployment-insurance-the-minimum-wage-etc-have-in-common/?continue

Reflections on the execution of D.C. sniper

Reflections on the execution of D.C. sniper

By LEONARD PITTS, JR.

lpitts@MiamiHerald.com

They killed a killer last week.

I kept waiting to feel something when news came that John Allen Muhammad had been executed in Virginia. As a staunch opponent of capital punishment, I wanted some nugget of remorse at the knowledge that the government had taken his life.

But Muhammad's 2002 sniper attacks hit close to home. He terrorized millions of people in the greater Washington, D.C., area, where I live, made us fear to gas up our cars, walk in parking lots, wait on buses, made my grandson scared to go trick-or-treating, even wounded a friend of my youngest son.

So I could not manage remorse. Indeed, what I felt was an unsettling, appalling satisfaction that Muhammad is no longer in the world. I still remember the last time an execution caused my emotions to so thoroughly misalign with my convictions: it was in 2001, when Timothy McVeigh was put to death.

When I argue against the death penalty, I tend to lean on a few salient points: it is far costlier than life imprisonment; it is biased by class, race and gender; it is irreversible in the event of error. I use those arguments because there is ample statistical evidence to back them up, and because they are irrefutable.

But I have one other problem with the death penalty: it's wrong. It debases us. The power of life and death is too awesome to be left in human hands. And here, I know, the abortion opponent wonders how I can square that with support for abortion rights. The answer is simple: I can't

To read the rest of the article go to: http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/1333085.html