Take Away the Arrogance and Hatred Which Infect Our Hearts

Six people killed and a member of Congress in critical condition in the hospital. The tragedy in Tucson has saturated the news as people try to respond and comprehend what happened. In what has become a common rite in western society, people have been leaving flowers, keepsakes, and notes in support of Congresswoman Giffords and those who were killed and injured.

Lost in the midst of this tragedy is one reported in the Boston Globe on Wednesday, January 12th in an article titled "Students Mourn Nebraska School Administrator Slain by Teen." A school principal was shot last week by a student she had suspended earlier in the day. Later that same day the student killed himself.

It seems at times, doesn't it, that we live in a society gone mad. I'm not sure if these sorts of things happen more often than they used to or if we just hear about it more because of the overload of information that comes to us. Whatever it is, I wonder what my response is to be to this as a Christian person. These events happened far away from me and my life really has not been changed by them. But do I just let them pass or is this a call to live in a new way?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know where I start in situations like this. I start by praying the prayer "For the Human Family" found on page 815 of the Book of Common Prayer.

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus Christ your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Once I've prayed the prayer, the question becomes: How do I put this into action? It's fine to place my faith in God and wait for God's "good time" to bring the divine purpose into fulfillment. But that doesn't mean I bear no responsibility for the society in which I live today.

As Christians, one of our primary calls is to create community, a special sort of community that lives by faith, hope, and love despite the differences that might divide us. As God's people, as the Body of Christ, we have it within our power to make a difference by showing the world that there is another way to live together.

What might happen if we took seriously not only praying this prayer, but also living it?

Even the Snow Praises God

It's January 12th and we're getting our first "real" snow day of the season in New Hampshire. This seems a good time to lift up a prayer to God using the words of Canticle 12 from Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer.

Invocation
Glorify the Lord, all you works of the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.
In the firmament of his power, glorify the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

I The Cosmic Order
Glorify the Lord, you angels and all the powers of the Lord,*
O heavens and all waters above the heavens.
Sun and moon and stars of the sky, glorify the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain and fall of dew,*
all the winds and fire and heat.
Winter and summer, glorify the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Glorify the Lord, O chill and cold,*
drops of dew and flakes of snow.
Frost and cold, ice and sleet, glorify the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Glorify the Lord, O nights and days,*
O shining light and enfolding dark.
Storm clouds and thunderbolts, glorify the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Doxology
Let us glorify the Lord: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.
In the firmament of his power, glorify the Lord,*
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

On the 10th Day of Christmas . . . Reality Hit!

As always, I feel as if I am at least a couple of days behind on this blog (well, I'm probably behind on more than that, but I'm not going to get too stressed about it today!). Anyway, I'm sitting here at home while most everyone else is starting back to work, school, and the other normal activities of life. Really, I have been working today because I've been mostly off for the past week, but the office is closed so I'm not catching up on some things at home.

We're still in the Twelve Days of Christmas which means that our tree is still up and decorated and the house has a festive look to it. However, most of our neighbors have put their trees by the side of the road, all the things I've put off until after the first of the year now need to be done, and my calendar is about to become very full. Ugh!

This is a good time for me to re-read words by Frederick Buechner in his book, Now and Then.

"Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly."

What this means for me is that it is about time to stop looking for Jesus in the manger and begin looking for him in the midst of the everyday parts of my life, the parts I cherish and the parts I take for granted, the parts I wish I could ignore and the parts I embrace, the parts that cause stress and the parts that lift me up. God, the Incarnate One, is in all of them, if only I will look.

"There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it." And isn't that the point of Christmas anyway?

Is All Really Calm and Bright for the Church?

As we get ready for tomorrow's Christmas Eve liturgies, it seems a good idea to take a look at "A Tough Season for Believer" by Ross Douthat, a column in the New York Times on Monday, December 20. This is not a feel good Christmas column, but it is something that Christians (especially clergy and lay leaders of congregations) need to read. Douthat articulate well, I believe, the place of the church in 21st century American culture.

I encourage you to read the entire column, but here's what he writes at the end:

"This month's ubiquitous carols and crèches notwithstanding, believing Christians are no longer what they once were—an overwhelming majority in a self-consciously Christian nation. The question is whether they can become a creative and attractive minority in a different sort of culture, where they're competing not only with rival faiths but with a host of pseudo-Christian spiritualities, and where the idea of a single religious truth seems increasingly passé.

"Or to put it another way, Christians need to find a new way to thrive in a society that looks less and less like any sort of Christendom – and more and more like the diverse and complicated Roman Empire were their religion had its beginning, 2,000 years ago this week."

With a full church on Christmas Eve, it's easy to think that "all is calm, all is bright," which is to say it's easy to think that all is OK and we can just keep on doing the same old thing. But I suspect the popularity of Christmas these days has more to do with Santa than Jesus.

This is, in my opinion, an exciting time to be a Christian. But for that to be true, we need to find "a new way to thrive." Christmas may be a good place to start.

46 Years Later: An Advent Message We Still Need to Hear

On this date, December 10, in 1964, Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The United States has come a long way in 46 years, but we still live in a nation and world filled with too much injustice, oppression, poverty, and violence. King's words in his Nobel acceptance speech—which resonate from his deep Christian faith—are a good reminder of the need to live with an active hope and faith so that Christ can be known in the world.

Here are a few of his words from 1964:

"I accept this award with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. . . .

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. 'And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.' I still believe that We Shall overcome!"

Now that is an Advent message!

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! In the meantime, empower us to proclaim and bear witness to the coming of your kingdom today and always.

Questioning the Place of the Institutional Church

Did you know we have a "marriage gap" in the United States? (And no, I am not talking about gay marriage.) What the heck is a marriage gap? I'm glad you asked.

Ross Douthat, in his recent column in the New York Times ("The Changing Culture War") defines it this way: "college graduates divorce infrequently and bear few children out of wedlock, while in the rest of the country unwed parenthood and family breakdown are becoming a new normal."

Without going through his entire column, Douthat is essentially sharing more data (in this case based on education levels) that tell us something we already know if we are paying attention: societal definitions of marriage and of family are changing . . . rapidly! For more reasons than I can name here, we're witnessing a huge shift in what it means to be a family. This is not insignificant as the family has been a core institution in our society (and I should add here that I believe this broader definition of family is a good thing).

What really caught my interest in the column is this paragraph:

"But as religious conservatives have climbed the educational ladder, American churches seem to be having trouble reaching the people left behind. This is bad news for both Christianity and the country. The reinforcing bonds of strong families and strong religious communities have been crucial to working-class prosperity in America. Yet today, no religious body seems equipped to play the kind of stabilizing role in the lives of the 'moderately educated middle' (let alone among high school dropouts) that the early-20th-century Catholic Church played among the ethnic working class."

I'm not sure if I agree with Douthat here, but I believe while sharing his thoughts on the institution of marriage he is saying something significant about the institution of the church and its place in American society. From his view, the institutional church is no longer strong enough or equipped enough to play a stabilizing role in a society in which fear and anxiety are prevalent and deep.

Is he correct? I hope not. I'd like to think that--at least on the local, congregational level--the church still manages to be a place of stability in people's lives.

But I have no doubt that--correct or not--he reflects an increasingly common view of the place and value of religious communities in American society. We are not in the center any longer.

So, what are we going to do about it?

A Prayer for World AIDS Day

December 1^st is World AIDS Day. With all the problems in the world, I don't hear much of anything about HIV/AIDS. Here are a few very good reasons to pay attention to this epidemic.

• 30.8 million adults and 2.5 million children. That is the estimated number of people throughout the world who were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2009.
  
• Over 67% of those living with HIV/AIDS live in Sub-Saharan Africa. That's 22.5 million people.
  
• Last year, an estimated 1.8 million people died from AIDS and the total number of children orphaned by AIDS (ages 0-17) by the end of 2009 was 16.6 million.
  
• An estimated 2.6 million people became infected with HIV in 2009.
  

To learn more, go to Avert.org.

In light of all of this, I thought I'd share a prayer today. I found this one on the Huffington Post, along with 14 other prayers and poems.

God who blessed our ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, be with all of those who struggle with AIDS, whose health is impaired by this illness and whose lives have been placed in jeopardy. Give them courage and strength to face their illness and hope for a cure that will embrace them in life.

May your healing presence remain with those who have contracted HIV. Through your caring and the wisdom You have imparted to human healers they have been enabled to succeed in their struggle with their disease. Keep them on the path of health and life.

Be with those who care for people with AIDS and attend to their needs. Bless them with strength and compassion as they labor to ease the lives of those who look to them for comfort and well-being. Let them know the value of their labors, and assist them in the noble work.

Share your wisdom with those searching for an ultimate cure for this disease. Bestow your healing knowledge upon them and reward their efforts with fulfillment.

Bless all of us with compassion and understanding that we may see all those afflicted as You see them: not as recipients of some sort of retribution, but as worthy objects of our concern and love.

May the day come speedily when this scourge too, like so many before it, will not afflict Your children and all of us are liberated from the shadow of its terror.

Amen.

(by Mark Israel and Dan Polish)