Witnesses to a World-Transforming Event

There's Something About Mary, part 1

There’s Something About Mary – which was the title of a 1998 Ben Stiller movie that has nothing that all to do with what I’m talking about. There was another movie, and book, The Da Vinci Code, which does relate because it plays on the fascination with Mary Magdalene and the possibility that she may have had a child with Jesus. We have no evidence of a child – though, of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: there might have been one. We do have texts that refer to Magdalene as the woman Jesus loved best among women – whatever that might mean.

Whatever happened at the death of Jesus and the birth of Christianity, Mary Magdelene is at the center of it. She was there at the foot of the cross with Jesus’ mother, Mary, as Jesus’s life ebbed away. She was there at the discovery of the empty tomb. Jesus appears to her, and it is she who then tells the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” With those words, the Christian religion begins.

The Four Canonical Gospels differ on what happened Easter morning: Mary Magdalene went by herself to the tomb, or she went with another Mary, or there were three women, or at least four. She, or they, were taking spices to prepare the body for burial. She came in the pre-dawn darkness, or they came when the day was dawning, or the sun had already risen. They arrived just in time to see an angel roll the stone back, or found the stone already rolled back. In Matthew, the two women saw an angel and some guards. Mark says the three women entered the tomb and saw one “young man dressed in a white robe." Luke says the group of four or more women saw “two men in dazzling robes.” In John, Mary Magdalene went alone and saw no one; she then left, found two of the male disciples, told them the body was missing, rushed back to the tomb with the men. They saw nothing but linen wrappings. The men left Mary alone crying, and only then did she look into the tomb and see "two angels in white."

In all four gospels, women were the first to find the tomb empty and were the only witnesses who had seen Jesus placed there and could vouch that the empty tomb really was the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid a day-and-a-half before. In two of the Gospels, women were the first to see the risen Lord.

In Jewish Palestine of the time, women’s testimony was widely regarded as unreliable and untrustworthy. Women were not eligible to be witnesses in court. They “were thought by men to be gullible in religious matters and especially prone to superstitious fantasy and excessive in religious practices.” In that world – and, to an unfortunate extent, persisting still today -- men’s dominant power enabled the delusion that men alone occupied the rational domain while women belonged to the more suspect emotional end of the spectrum of human response. Given those attitudes about women, why would the gospels give such a prominent role to women? Why would anyone make up a story based on such low-credibility witnesses?

According to the story, women were the first, and in some cases only, witnesses to key aspects of the death and resurrection narrative. But that's in flagrant violation of the norms of credible story-telling. So it's probably true that women really were were the ones who discovered the empty tomb, and told the others about it. If that part were made up, it would have been made up with men being the main actors and witnesses. By the time the Gospels shifted from an oral to a written form, some one to two generations after Jesus’ death, that story had been so widely retold that it had a staying power that the prejudices of later writers could not overcome.

The Christian tradition, at its inception, took the patriarchal religious priority given to men in God’s dealings with the world and turned those assumptions on their head. By giving women priority, the story confronts and challenges cultural assumptions. “In these stories women are given priority by God as recipients of revelation and thereby the role of mediators of that revelation to men” (Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women, 2002, 275). By reversing the normally expected priority of one gender over another the gospel cancels out gender privilege in the new order heralded and constituted by the resurrection – a kin-dom of God in which, as Jesus had said, “the last shall be made first and the first last.”

Because we see women central to the creation and dissemination of the message, we understand that everyone is included in the hope of the message. In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene tells the apostles that they have been commissioned by Jesus to spread the word of hope. She was the apostle to the apostles. The women become

“witnesses of the crucified and risen one...through the deeply disturbing encounter with the numinous that transforms their faithfulness into something more than their accepted role: the vocation to be witnesses of a world-transforming event.” (Bauckham 293)

* * *
This is part 1 of 3 of "There Something About Mary"
See also
Part 2: Her Gospel
Part 3: Our Commission of Compassion

Divine Sources of Heart Hardening

The Jewish holy week of Passover began this year at sundown, Mon Apr 14. The celebration of freedom continues eight days, through the evening of Tue Apr 22. The first two days and the last two days are full-fledged holidays: the middle four days are semi-festive. The first two days commemorate the 10th plague, when Yahweh killed all the firstborn of Egypt, but passed over the Israelites: hence Passover.

At this, Pharaoh released the Israelites from bondage. They immediately fled. Pharaoh changed his mind and went chasing after them. A week later came the episode of the parting of the Red Sea, commemorated the last two days of Passover.

Before any of the plagues, Yahweh said to Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.”

After the sixth plague (boils), we’re told “Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh.”

After the seventh plague (thunder and hail), Yahweh tells Moses, “I have hardened his heart.”

Three more times, after the eighth plague (locusts), after the ninth plague (darkness), and after the warning about the tenth plague, each time the same language occurs: “Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”

Isn’t that interesting? Why would Yahweh do that? There are a couple places that say Pharaoh hardened his heart, and a few other times it says Pharaoh’s heart hardened, without saying who hardened it. But the predominate message is Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart. What do you make of that?

Even when our hearts harden, this, too, is the playing out of the divine. I know the temptation is to add the word, “plan,” and say, “It’s part of the divine plan.” Especially in the context of the Passover narrative, it might seem it's all part of a big plan. That’s not how I see it.

The divine does not scheme and plan, but it does unfold, develop. It unfolds like natural evolution. Evolution did not begin with a plan in mind for what species were to be created. It began with infinite possibilities, most of which never happened, and most of those which did are now extinct. It’s an utterly unpredictable process – yet it does, overall, tend toward greater diversity and greater complexity: more and more complex creatures living in a more and more complex balance – or, we might say, harmony.

I see the divine as playing out in this same way: unplanned, and with many dead-ends, yet with each move, hinting at possibilities for a greater harmony.

“Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh.” When has your heart hardened? Did you make a conscious and rational calculation to harden it, or did you notice, after the fact, that it had hardened without your intentional will -- as if on its own? I don't think I have ever consciously and deliberately decided, "I'm going to harden my heart now." But I have I sometimes noticed that my heart grew hard. Habit -- in particular, the self-protective habits accumulated over the years -- overrode the inner voice of compassion. There is a place for choice, and that place is in choosing to begin the discipline of cultivating new habits and skills. This takes a while. In the heat of a given moment, I won't hear the voice of compassion unless I've put in the time developing the habit and skill of hearkening to what compassion says.

Other factors include fatigue and stress. When I'm well-rested and relaxed, I'm more likely to be open-hearted and compassionate. I'm more able to be flexible and see things in a new way. When I'm tired and stressed, I have a narrow focus on what I want, and how I want to get it. Rested and calm, I'm open to a wider variety of goals or purposes, and a wider variety of strategies for realizing them. Perhaps Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart by making him tired and stressed.

Fatigue, stress, and the undevelopment of skills of compassion are all the playing out of the divine -- they happen when conditions are such as to bring them about. When I notice hardening in others’ hearts, if I understand it as simply the product of holy conditions, it helps soften my heart.

Our current Pharaoh, it could be said, has a hard heart. But we don’t have to let that harden our hearts toward him or his supporters. With his, or any, hard heart, we can choose the route of compassion. It might be hard to make that choice, but it gets easier with practice. With practice our thoughts more quickly and and easily go to the recognition of others' suffering, and that their suffering echoes our own.

Yes, sometimes we need to extricate ourselves from a situation. Yet even when it’s clearly time for “Exit, Us,” we can do so without blame, and with compassion.

Passover and Easter both commemorate a waking up to new possibilities -- liberation and transformation.

Going Home (script)

Script used in the CUUC Animal Blessing service.
Substantially adapted from Margaret Wild, Going Home.

ACT I

[Beatrice standing, slippers in hand. Boris and Maru on their beds. Toby enters with Mom]

NARRATOR: Toby had to go to the hospital.

TOBY: [To Mom] Mom, how long will I have to stay here?

MOM: A few days, honey. Maybe a few more. We don’t know for sure. They’re going to help you get better.

TOBY: And then I can come home?

MOM: And then you can come home.

NARRATOR: Toby was on a ward with other children. Toby arrived just as another kid, Beatrice was leaving to go home.

BEATRICE: I’m going home!

TOBY: I wish I was.

BEATRICE: You just got here.

TOBY: Already I miss my home.

BEATRICE: Hey. Did you bring slippers?

TOBY: No. I didn’t know I’d need my slippers.

BEATRICE: That’s all right. Here, take these. I think you’re going to need them.

[Beatrice exits]

MARU: [Without taking her eyes off her phone]: Hi. I’m Maru.

BORIS: [playing with a deck of cards on his bed]: I’m Boris.

TOBY: [Hugging Mom] I’ll miss you, Mom!

MOM: You’ll be OK, Toby. I’ll come visit you every day.

TOBY: Can you bring Schrodinger?

MOM: No, mijo. No cats allowed at the hospital.

TOBY: Can you bring Darwin?

MOM: No dogs allowed either. Bye now, Toby. I’ll see you tomorrow.

[Mom exits]

TOBY: I wish I were home.

NARRATOR: That night, Toby woke up. He thought he’d just go peek down the hall and see what was going on in the middle of the night at the hospital. He put on a slipper, and heard an elephant shriek.
[Elephant trumpeting sound] Toby looked around, but the loud noise didn’t seem to have disturbed anyone. The elephant shrieked again.

ELEPHANT: [from offstage] Come, come home with me.

NARRATOR: Toby put on the other slipper, and the hospital room melted away.

[Enter Elephant]

He was standing beside an elephant on a wide grassland. In the distance, he could see lions playing rough-and-tumble games. He saw wildebeests migrating across the plains.

TOBY: Where are we?

ELEPHANT: This is Africa. My home. Thank you for coming home with me.

TOBY: [thoughtfully] Do you like it here?

ELEPHANT: Everybody likes their home.

TOBY: What do you do here?

ELEPHANT: I walk a lot. I love to cover many miles every day. I love the grass and the water holes. I love my baby elephants.

TOBY: Sounds wonderful!

ELEPHANT: I worry about tusk hunters though. They kill elephants so they can cut off our tusks and sell them.

TOBY: Oh, no. I’m so sorry!

ELEPHANT: [nodding thoughtfully] Every being wants to live in peace in their home.

NARRATOR: Toby stayed with the Elephant and learned more about her home.
After a while, he took off one slipper, and was back in the hospital room.

[Exit Elephant. Enter Mom and Cathy]

The next day, Toby’s Mom and little sister visited.

MOM: What have you been up to?

TOBY: Quite a lot. I went to Africa.

MOM: Lucky you.

CATHY: It’s not fair! I only went to kindergarten.

MOM: Yes, Cathy, and after kindergarten where did you go?

CATHY: Home.

TOBY: I’d like to go home.

[Exit all]

ACT II

[Toby, Maru, and Boris in beds]

NARRATOR: Late at night the second night, Toby woke again. He put on a slipper and heard a howler monkey roaring.

MONKEY: [from offstage] Come, come home with me.

NARRATOR: When Toby got the second slipper on, he was there.

[Enter Monkey]

He and the howler monkey swung through the jungle treetops. He saw sloths sleeping upside down. He saw an emerald tree boa hiding in the leaves. He saw toucans gobbling berries.

TOBY: Where are we?

MONKEY: This is the Amazon jungle of South America. My home. Thank you for coming home with me.

TOBY: [thoughtfully] Do you like it here?

MONKEY: Everybody likes their home.

TOBY: What do you do here?

MONKEY: I howl a lot. I love the seeds and fruits of the jungle trees. I love jumping from tree to tree. I like playing with the other monkeys. I love my tail: I can hang from it anywhere and even pick things up with it.

TOBY: That’s really great!

MONKEY: I worry about deforestation though. The beautiful forest that is my home is being cut down.

TOBY: Oh, no. I’m so sorry!

MONKEY: [nodding thoughtfully] Every being wants to live in peace in their home.

NARRATOR: Toby stayed a while and talked and climbed and swung with the Howler Monkey. When it was time to go, Toby took off one slipper, and was back in the hospital room.

[Exit Monkey. Enter Mom and Cathy]

The next day, Toby’s Mom and little sister visited.

MOM: Where did you go this time?

TOBY: Quite far. I went to the Amazon jungle.

MOM: Lucky, lucky you.

CATHY: It’s not fair. I only went to the corner shop.

MOM: But then you came home.

[Mom and Cathy exit]

NARRATOR: Late at night the third night, Toby woke again. He put on a slipper and heard a snow leopard calling,

SNOW LEOPARD: [from offstage] Come, come home with me.

NARRATOR: When Toby got the second slipper on, he was there.

[Enter Snow Leopard]

He ran beside the snow leopard. Together they hurtled through snow and ice high in the mountains. He saw a yellow-billed blue magpie. He saw a flock of Demoiselle cranes flying overhead.

TOBY: Where are we?

SNOW LEOPARD: This is the Himalayan Mountains of Central Asia. My home. Thank you for coming home with me.

TOBY: [thoughtfully] Do you like it here?

SNOW LEOPARD: Everybody likes their home.

TOBY: What do you do here?

SNOW LEOPARD: I hunt and have a family. I love the wind. The wind in my ears helps me get of mites. The wind brings me the smell of food. I love the feel of the wind in my whiskers.

TOBY: What a great life!

SNOW LEOPARD: Sometimes there are droughts. The changing climate is hard on me. When there’s a drought, the animals I hunt have to go down the mountains looking for water, and I have to go down, too. I don’t like the lowland so much. My home is in the mountains.

TOBY: Oh, no. I’m so sorry!

SNOW LEOPARD: [nodding thoughtfully] Every being wants to live in peace in their home.

NARRATOR: Toby stayed a while and talked and ran with the Snow Leopard. When it was time to go, Toby took off one slipper, and was back in the hospital room.

[Exit Snow Leopard. Enter Mom]

The next day, Toby’s Mom and little sister visited.

MOM: Been traveling again?

TOBY: Yes. I went to the Himalayas.

MOM: How about going home? The doctor says you can come home today.

TOBY: Yay!

BORIS: Come back and visit me.

MARU: I wish I were going home.

TOBY: [Giving Maru the slippers] Here Maru. I want you to have these slippers.

ACT III

[Maru and Boris in beds]

NARRATOR: Late that night, Maru woke in the darkness and decided to go look around. She put on a slipper and heard a tiger calling,

TIGER: [from offstage] Come, come home with me.

NARRATOR: When Maru got the second slipper on, she was there.

[Enter Tiger]

She ran with the tiger through the humid jungle. She saw a tapir rooting for grubs. She saw a king cobra rearing up its head, and she ran on by.

MARU: Where are we?

TIGER: This is the Tropical Jungle of India. My home. Thank you for coming home with me.

MARU: [thoughtfully] Do you like it here?

TIGER: Everybody likes their home.

MARU: What do you do here?

TIGER: I hunt. I raise my young. I love to hide. When I hide in the undergrowth I feel I am one with the forest. I dissolve into it. I love that.

MARU: I wish I were a tiger!

TIGER: My kind are endangered. People are always after us. What’s wrong with eating an occasional calf? We are being hunted out of our forest.

MARU: Oh, no. I’m so sorry!

TIGER: [nodding thoughtfully] Every being wants to live in peace in their home.

NARRATOR: Maru stayed a while and played with the Tiger. When it was time to go she took off one slipper, and was back in the hospital room.

[Exit Tiger]

The next day, Maru was released.

MARU: [joyfully] I’m going home! Boris, I’m going to leave you these slippers. I think you’ll like them.

[Exit Maru]

NARRATOR: Late that night, Boris woke in the darkness and decided to go look around. He put on a slipper and heard a King Penguin calling,

PENGUIN: [from offstage] Come, come home with me.

NARRATOR: When Boris got the second slipper on, he was there.

[Enter Penguin]

The air he breathed was very cold, but Boris was covered with a layer of warmth. He walked along beside the penguin. He saw albatross gliding overhead. He saw elephant seals lounging along the shore.

BORIS: Where are we?

PENGUIN: This is Antarctica. Thank you for coming home with me.

BORIS: [thoughtfully] Do you like it here?

PENGUIN: Everybody likes their home.

BORIS: What do you do here?

PENGUIN: I swim and fish and sit on my egg until it hatches and then feed my young. I love to swim. The taste of fish and squid is so good.

BORIS: It seems very good.

PENGUIN: The warming of the sea surface by even half a degree changes the fish populations, and I can’t get enough food for my chick. Overfishing and oil fouling are also making it hard for me.

BORIS: Oh, no. I’m so sorry!

PENGUIN: [nodding thoughtfully] Every being wants to live in peace in their home.

NARRATOR: Boris stayed a while and played with the Penguin. When it was time to go, he took off one slipper and was back in the hospital room.

[Exit Penguin]

With the other slipper still on, though, he could still hear sounds from far-away lands.

[Animals speak from offstage]

PENGUIN: Home is where the coldwater fish are.

TIGER: Home is where the thick jungle hides me.

SNOW LEOPARD: Home is where the wind is.

MONKEY: Home is where the trees to climb are.

ELEPHANT: Home is where the vast grasslands are.

BORIS: My home is me.

NARRATOR: Boris was in the hospital for three more days. Using the magic slippers at night he visited giraffes in Africa, wolves in Canada, and even an orca in the ocean. When the doctor finally told Boris he was better and could go home, Boris, like Maru and Toby, had learned a lot about other animals' homes. In a funny way, he understood his own home better: his place in the family of all beings.

Never a Greater Need

Stewardship, part 3

“Steward” comes from an Old English word for house guardian or housekeeper. After the Norman conquest, it merged with a word meaning “overseer of workers.” We are the stewards of our congregation: the keepers of our shared house, our place – and the overseers of our own work.

Nautically speaking, the steward was the officer on a ship in charge of provisions and meals. Our sanctuary ceiling has always suggested to me the hull of a boat, and we are, indeed, all in the same boat. On this boat, we are in charge together of keeping ourselves spiritually fed.

In early England and Scotland, a steward was a high officer of the state, and hence became the name of “one who manages affairs of an estate on behalf of his employer.” Who is our employer? Our employer is our mission: nurture spirituality, foster compassion, engage in service. We have joined together in the employ of that mission for spirituality, compassion, and service. On behalf of that mission which employs us, we manage the affairs of this “estate.” Our affairs fall into four categories: worship and celebration, religious education, caring for each other, and being a force for a kinder and more just world. We manage these with caring and careful budgets to which we generously contribute.

We do this – we accept the role of stewards – because it is a high honor to serve together our mission; because it is such joy to be and have and make community; because the steward’s job is to protect and sustain the institution so it can be passed on to those who come after.

The need for Community Unitarian Universalist, for this congregation of ours, has always been great – and when I say “always” I’m talking about throughout our congregation’s history: ever since 1909. The need for our congregation has always been great and never greater than in these times. I am, and maybe you are, too, more deeply concerned about the trends in our country than I have ever been. The politics of cruelty, hate, fear, and intolerance is ascendant, and whether this is a dark phase in our nation’s history, a phase that will pass, or presages much worse to come, I do not know.

Threats to our air and water and climate threaten the survival of many species. Environmental degradation can lead to political instability and war. If that war extends to nations with nuclear arms, the species threatened with extinction could include homo sapiens.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, xenophobia rive the public sphere. We have been called to live into these times, to rise to these challenges, though they are not the ones we expected or asked for. The strength and health of our Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation at White Plains is essential and critical for answering that call we must answer.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for a place devoted to nurturing one another in our spiritual journey, for fostering compassion and understanding, and for engaging in service to transform ourselves and our world.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for our little counter-cultural space, our light in the wilderness, our beacon in the storm – strengthening ourselves to help strengthen others build resistance to trends of the time and build hope for a new and different day.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for this place of restoration for our weary spirits, this place of abundance amidst the reigning fearful ideology of scarcity, this place of love and honor for our family and all families.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for this place for practicing being our best selves, negotiating our own misunderstandings so as to sharpen the skills our bruised and hurting world needs us to have.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for this place of learning more about things like economic inequalities, climate change, and the insidious, pervasive functioning of white supremacy.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for this place transcending the generational separation of schools and senior living centers and bringing together the young and the well-seasoned to enrich and teach and learn from each other.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for this place of questioning, re-examining our assumptions, investigating our own biases, freely and responsibly searching for truth and meaning.

The need has always been great and never greater than now for our place and all places that nurture spirits and help heal our world. There are many such places, though not enough – and this one is yours. The world is counting on you to be faithful and effective stewards – to keep this place, our congregation, strong and vibrant.

Jesus' disciples were on the verge of turning away from engagement and connection -- from the possibilities of community. Jesus answered them, "You give them something to eat." And lo, there was abundance.

* * *
This is part 3 of 3 of "Stewardship"
See also
Part 1: The True Loaves and Fishes Miracle
Part 2: Abundance Is the True Law of Life

Abundance Is the True Law of Life

Stewardship, part 2

Abundance is the true law of life. The Jewish scriptures say it over and over. God is good, God provides, God is faithful. God loves us extravagantly and wants to provide for us, richly and abundantly.

The Buddhist tradition teaches loosening the grip of desire. Not eliminating desire, but just minding less whether a given desire happens to be satisfied. When desires take over our lives, all we’re focused on is how to meet them, and how they aren’t met yet. It’s the scarcity mentality: I don’t have enough, I have to get more and better and more and better. Loosening the grip of desire lets the recognition come forward of what abundant bounty is already provided to us. Wanting things to be different obscures from us awareness of the ample riches that are present to us right here, inalienable from us, we have but to notice them.

We have these abundant resources – and they become manifest when we share them.

“In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically. It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common store. Whether the scarce resource is money or love or power or words, the true law of life is that we generate more of whatever seems scarce by trusting its supply and passing it around. Authentic abundance does not lie in secured stockpiles of food or cash or influence or affection but in belonging to a community where we can give those goods to others who need them -- and receive them from others when we are in need. Abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole, and in return, is sustained by the whole. Community doesn't just create abundance -- community IS abundance.” (Parker Palmer)

Trust its supply and pass it around – that’s how what seems scarce is revealed as abundant. What we pass around, what we share to create the abundance that is our congregation, is our time, our talent, and our treasure. By “treasure,” I mean – and I hesitate to say this – money. I hesitate because studies say that just saying the word causes an unconscious reaction, a resistance, a closing.

It’s funny. When some monopoly money is present in a room – not talked about or alluded to, but just there, not even looking like real money – just the presence of monopoly money makes people less kind. This has been measured with the pencil-pickup test: as the subject is leaving the room, they bump into an assistant carrying in some supplies, and box of pencils spills. Everyone will bend down to help pick up the mess. But if monopoly money was in the room, the subject picks up 15 percent fewer pencils than if there’s no hint of money around. If you seat people near a screen saver showing currency floating like fish in a tank, or you have them descramble sentences, some of which include the words, “bill,” “check” or “cash” they become just a little more anti-social, just a little less oriented toward sensitivity to others. They give less time to a colleague in need of assistance and less money to a hypothetical charity. When asked to pull up a chair so a stranger might join a meeting, they place the chair at a greater average distance from themselves. When asked how they’d prefer to spend their leisure time, they are more likely to chose a personal cooking lesson over a catered group dinner. Given a choice between working collaboratively or alone, they are more likely to opt to go solo.

This is not always a bad thing. I do not see this as a manifestation of humanity’s sinful nature. Rather, it’s just that we have a part of us that focuses on efficiency and productivity and self-sufficiency. We also have a part of us that cares about other people, that finds joy in company, that wants to be compassionate, that delights in our interdependence, that feels enriched by helping others and being helped, that is happier working collaboratively, that loves and wants to love and be loved.

In other words, we have a scarcity-oriented part and an abundance-oriented part. And just mentioning money – budgets and expenses – tends to activate the scarcity-minded part of a human psyche. It tends to. It does not have to. So I mention these findings about psychology of money in the hope that by bringing these unconscious effects into the light of consciousness, we can choose not to be governed by self-protective scarcity-mindedness.

What our hearts truly yearn for is community and connection and caring: the abundance that is community. In our togetherness, caring about and for each other, we enjoy more, not less, efficiency and productivity than we do in pursuing the self-sufficiency strategy.

* * *
This is part 2 of 3 of "Stewardship"
See also
Part 1: The True Loaves and Fishes Miracle
Part 3: Never a Greater Need

The True Loaves and Fishes Miracle

Stewardship, part 1

There's a miracle story about loaves and fishes. You might have heard it:

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand. (Mark 6: 3--44, NRSV)

Now, I wasn’t there. The story might be entirely made up, but let’s just suppose that something happened that prompted the telling of that story -- that it's based, however, loosely on something that actual happened. Let’s suppose that whatever happened, it wasn’t “an interruption of the causal nexus of history and nature” (a phrase of the British theologian Daphne Hampson). The actual event perhaps did interrupt the mind’s chatter about its needs and fears. Whatever really happened was probably something that interrupted obliviousness and allowed people to notice wonder and beauty – the abundance that life presents in each moment. What was it? What happened?

I would name this miracle Neighborliness. Neighborliness happened. Neighbors gather, community happens, and abundance flourishes. My favorite Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, notes,

“Jesus talks a great deal about the kingdom of God -- and what he means by that is a public life reorganized toward neighborliness.”

That’s the kingdom – the kin-dom – of god Jesus was talking about: public life reorganized toward neighborliness.

I imagine a crowd of people in the grip of scarcity thinking gathering to hear Jesus teach. They had secreted away for their own use food for themselves. Under the influence of this remarkable teacher, they began to open up, began to sense the intrinsic abundance of the life they breathed, and the universe in which they swam. From that sense of boundless provision welled up an urge to share of this manifest plenty of which they were suddenly so acutely aware. From the bottoms of bags and folds of clothes came forth food to share. It was a miracle all right. I’d call it the miracle of neighborliness, the miracle of community. Parker Palmer explains:

“The disciples, asked to feed the crowd, are sure that food is scarce. Jesus performs a ‘miracle’ to reveal how abundant food is even when there is none in sight. In this story, as throughout his active life, Jesus wanted to help people penetrate the illusion of scarcity and act out of the reality of abundance.”

I saw that miracle of neighborliness and community yesterday. I walked through our kitchen a little before 10, and again a couple hours later, and again a couple hours after that. Each time I saw eight or ten members of this congregation busy at the food preparation tasks for today’s brunch we’ll soon be enjoying. And over the speaker were the sounds of our choir and musicians rehearsing for the sock hop – that we’ll soon be enjoying.

People gave up a big chunk of their Saturday to come together, to make food and make music, to offer their gifts. And it wasn’t because they didn’t have anything else to do. It’s because they didn’t have anything better to do – and that’s because there isn’t anything better for human beings to do than share of themselves – their time, talent, treasure, and the sacred mystery of their personhood -- in the making of community.

It is such abundance we make: working, learning, sharing, and just being together. I felt it yesterday. I feel it every Sunday morning I’m here. And I look forward to being in its midst on into the afternoon today.

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This is part 1 of 3 of "Stewardship"
See also
Part 2: Abundance Is the True Law of Life
Part 3: Never a Greater Need

More of Us Than of Them

The Third Reconstruction, part 3

Groups that seem as disparate as the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the ACLU, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the coalition to stop gun violence, voting rights organizations, the Human Rights Campaign for LGBTQ, and Amnesty International are all working for healing what is at root the same wound: the impulse toward dominance.

No one has done more to bring these different orientations together into a single movement than William Barber. He explains how it got started:

“In December of 2006, we called a meeting of potential partners for this new coalition. Representatives of sixteen organizations showed up. We started with a blank sheet of butcher paper and asked each group to write the issue they were most concerned about. Then, on another sheet, we asked them to list the forces standing in the way of what their organization wanted. We learned something important at that first retreat: though our issues varied, we all recognized the same forces opposing us. What’s more, we saw something that we hadn’t had a space to talk about before: There were more of us than there were of them.” (The Third Reconstruction 50)

Yes, there are some differences. If you cherish diversity, then you have to be OK with disagreement. That’s how the forces of domination prevail – by turning anti-domination factions against each other. Yes, it’s true that Barber’s base in the Black Church is strong on civil rights, voting rights, education, and housing – and often less enthusiastic about LGBTQ equality.

In 2012, Barber’s coalition encountered an attempt to cripple his coalition by dividing it against itself. That year a group called the National Organization for Marriage got a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the North Carolina ballot. The National Organization for Marriage’s internal documents – eventually ordered released –

“revealed that their goal had little to do with morality. They had pitched this so-called ‘Amendment One’ as a way to split North Carolina’s growing black vote, pointing out that many African Americans were religious conservatives and would not support [same-sex] marriage. The way to split a moral movement, they said, is it get them arguing about morality.” (90)

What Barber recognized was the need to keep the focus on domination – the curtailment of freedom, the legalized discrimination, the codified hate. People who couldn’t see how it could be right for two women or two men to be married to each other could nevertheless see that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom protected the right of every religious institution to discern together what God’s definition of marriage is. They could see that “Our First Amendment right entailed freedom from any government attempt to tell us what God says about marriage.” They could see that,

“In the end, it didn’t matter whether my faith tradition told me marriage was to be between one man and one woman; all of our faiths made clear that the codification of hate is never righteous. Legalized discrimination is never just. And a moral fusion movement cannot be divided by the fear-based tactics of so-called conservatives.”

Amendment One did pass in North Carolina, and stood for two years until struck down by the courts. But the campaign for Amendment One did not divide the fusion movement. Barber explains:

“We learned quickly, that once we were able to reframe the issue, people quickly grasped how the treatment of LGBTQ citizens was an issue of civil rights and human rights....Amendment One passed before we could get to all of North Carolina’s rural communities. But in the places where we were able to reframe the issue, the results were clear: voters in majority-black precincts in North Carolina’s five major cities rejected the amendment....It failed by a ratio of two to one on the African American side of Scotland Neck, a rural community in Halifax County, where our movement has established a strong base by organizing against environmental racism.” (92)

Another issue that you might think could divide the fusion coalition is women’s reproductive freedom. I was moved to read how Barber handled that:

“Now here were, standing together. I noted the pink shirts of Planned Parenthood members and recalled my early conversations with their president, Janet Colm. I’d told her that with our broad coalition we could not endorse abortion, so she asked, 'Can you support women’s rights and access to health care?' Absolutely, I told her, but I also needed something from her. Could she give us white women to speak up for a black woman’s right to vote? She said she’d do it herself. We went on a national talk show together. When the host asked Janet about Planned Parenthood, she said, ‘I’m actually here today to talk about voting rights.’ When she turned to me as a representative of the NAACP and asked about voting, I said, ‘I’m actually here today to talk about women’s rights and access to health care.'” This fusion coalition had brought us together, confusing old dividing lines and making more than one interviewer stutter as they tried to figure out new categories to name what was happening.” (108).

Diversity is our strength. The diversity has sometimes been turned against us to divide us. But we don’t have to let it. No, Barber’s defense of LGBTQ rights and of abortion rights is not as full-throated as mine would be, but I’m not going to let that stand in the way of supporting as much as I can the Moral Mondays campaign – and also supporting Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ inclusion as much as I can in ways that go further than Moral Mondays alone does.

We need not think alike to love alike. Our differences won’t divide us if we stay focused on opposing the domination strategy that engenders all of these injustices.

So here’s my ask. I ask you to get this book: William Barber, The Third Reconstruction. I ask you to read it. And then let’s talk about it. I ask you to come on Thu Apr 20 – Fellowship Hall – 7:30. Let’s talk about what we learned, and what we can do about it together.

Let’s do this because there is no peace for our spirits when our country’s policies increase domination and inequality and cruelty. Let’s do this because a faith institution concerned with healing spirits must address the social causes that wound our spirits. Let’s do this because when we see the one wound that underlies all the different justice issues, and we join together against domination, then there are more of us than there are of them.

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This is part 3 of 3 of "The Third Reconstruction"
See also
Part 1: Truth, Hope, and America
Part 2: I Thought I'd be Saying...