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Anyone who plays modern rock guitar must pay some kind of homage to Jimi Hendrix. One way to celebrate Jimi Hendrix’s 70th birthday is to listen to his haunting version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”

Dylan wrote the song while recouperating after a motorcycle accident. The song is based on Isaiah Chapter 21, verses 5-9:

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield./For thus hath (God) said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth./And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed./…And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground

Hendrix captured the apocalyptic feel of the passage perfectly.

To listen to Hendrix’s cover of All Along the Watchtower, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY

(I am grateful to Sid Hall who told me the story behind the song many years ago)

Oh No! It’s almost Advent season again! After thirty years of giving Advent sermons it is always a challenge to come up with a new sermon series around Christmas. There are only so many ways to talk about shepherds and donkeys.

Each year, when we share the Christmas Eve candlelight service, I remember the words of the Buddha on candles: “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single one, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.  Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

What Buddha taught by sayings, the gospel writers turned into stories. Their truth lies not in recapturing history, but in recapturing the experience people had of awakening. It is a mistake to choose to believe in the stories themselves.  They are like seeds that only become true if we live them out.

It easy to love the porcelain Jesus of a nativity scene, but not so easy to realize that Jesus symbolized a potential within every person, as did Buddha.  To love Jesus eventually means to fall in love with everyone and everything all at the same time.  Christmas is a charming little scene, but Jesus has been stillborn unless the symbol grows into a love of and service to all humankind. To that end, our Advent series will look at the Christmas story as lessons in spiritual awakening.

Dec. 2: Isaiah: The point of prophecy is spiritual awakening today.

Dec. 9: The Star: Spiritual awakening tunes us to nature.

Dec. 16: Mary’s Song: Spiritual awakening calls us to activism.

Dec. 23: The Magi: Spiritual awakening is universal.

Dec. 24: The Manger: Spiritual awakening means a life of service.

Dec. 30: Herod: Spiritual awakening meets resistance from the powers that be.

34 The word of God came to me: ² “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? ³ You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. ⁴ The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.  Ezekiel 34:1-4

If the prophet Ezekiel were to address Washington today, he would not have to change a thing in his condemnation of the rich and powerful of his own day.  Instead, he would recognize the same roles played out by different people.

The companies represented by executives working with the Campaign To Fix The Debt have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies’ tax bills.

And how are the richest of the rich intending to fix the debt? Not by reducing their own pork barrel projects, of course. They will fix the debt by cutting pieces of flesh from the poor.

During the past few days, CEOs belonging to what the campaign calls its CEO Fiscal Leadership Council — most visibly, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell’s David Cote — have barnstormed the media, making the case that the only way to cut the deficit is to severely scale back social safety-net programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — which would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly.

The shepherds of our day are proposing a “territorial tax system” that would exempt their own companies from being taxed on foreign profits.

As part of their push, they are advocating a “territorial tax system” that would exempt their companies’ foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled “The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks” — money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.

The passage from Ezekiel ends with a promise from God: 

^“Thus says God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.”

In biblical days, the prophets were appealing to the powers that be. For example they appealed to the King to do the right thing. In our day, there is no one to rescue us if we do not take responsibility for our own lives. In our day, our only hope is to stop being sheep if we do not wish to become mutton.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/25/deficit-reduction-council-fiscal-cliff_n_2185585.html

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) claims to be a nonpartisan group, but it has been a stealth organization operating primarily within the Republican party to pump out nearly identical bills all over the country calling for cutting taxes, taking revenue from public schools and harrassing unions. As much as I talk about ALEC, I completely missed the good news that 117 of it’s members were voted out of office in the election a few weeks back.

It is expected that 2012 will generate a new raft of ALEC legislation, including bills to roll back taxes and starve state government, bills to privatize public schools, bills to privatize public pensions and other government services and, of course, bills to defund and dismantle unions. What has changed is that now there are active citizen groups across the nation tracking ALEC members, bills and conferences and helping to shed a light on this organization that allows corporate lobbyists to vote as equals with legislators behind closed doors on proposals to change your rights and obligations under the law. Rebekah Wilce, PRWatch

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12914-117-alec-members-voted-out-of-office-in-2012

“It is an appropriate time for the historic mission of the CIA to be reviewed. The CIA does best when it focuses on intelligence gathering. We have had spy planes in the past, it’s nothing new. Surveillance is one thing, armed aggression is something else. The CIA should not be involved in any matter which would put it as a second army. It’s very dangerous. It’s dangerous constitutionally. And it’s dangerous in terms of mistakes being made for which there is no transparency or accountability. Combat roles are most appropriately fulfilled by members of the armed forces who are trained in that. One thing Congress may need to do is legislatively delineate the role of the CIA, with respect to the use of combat drones themselves.

Congress needs to specifically remind the executive branch that it reserves the right to determine whether or not any offensive weapons should be used within any country for any reason. George Bush may have thought that the authorization for the use of military force was a blank check for the global war on terror. Perhaps there are people in the Obama administration who think the same thing. But it was not, it was specific, it was to respond to the attacks of 9/11, it was not a blank check for war forever. So Congress needs to remind the administration that it cannot wage war with abandon, it cannot continue to expose the United States to counter attacks in the form of increased terrorism attacks which will inevitably come as a result of the free hand that this administration would take in waging war abroad.” Dennis Kucinich

http://gizmodo.com/5961924/an-american-moral-crisis-gizmodo-talks-drones-with-dennis-kucinich?tag=war

Yesterday’s article about Professor Fancy Pants dissing Thanksgiving was supposed to be a satire. Apparently I didn’t make that clear enough.

I was fascinated by the almost hysterical responses to Bob Jensen’s article on Thanksgiving.  I assumed people reading my blog would know I was attacking the Jensen article tongue in cheek.

I was glad, however, that people rallied to the cause of the indigenous people. For the sake of the record, I agree with Jensen’s critique so I don’t need any more emails.

When ants reach obstacles they cannot cross, they link their bodies together to form a bridge.   Ant bridges are a lesson in solidarity.  An ant’s brain is very small, but such cooperation makes ants capable of some amazing things.  Many of humankind’s most insurmountable problems would melt if we simply lived in solidarity and mutual aid.

Ant bridges are also a parable about abstraction.  We humans come together to create bridges we call “government” or “religion” or the “economy”.  Unlike ants, our brains are very large and we can come to imagine that these bridges are more real than ourselves.  When we surrender responsibility to any system we are like ants who have made the bridges more real than ourselves.

Whenever someone says “trust the market” or “we must not question scripture” or “we must support the troops” it is possible they have surrendered their own responsibility to an abstraction.  When we look at the institutions of our culture as static forms we can forget that we are building those structures with our words and deeds.

Einstein once said, “Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”  That is probably going too far, but there is a basic sanity in not believing that the categories of our culture are concrete realities to which we must conform.  Even in the Genesis creation story, God gave us the world.  We are responsible for it.  Human institutions are necessary and helpful conventions, but WE are responsible for how we treat one another.  In the end, It’s just we ants.

Yikes! Here I am trying to work on my sermon, and I see that a judge has used going to church as a punishment! Talk about a blow to the ol’ esteem.

In Muskogee Oklahoma a judge sentenced a teenager to 10 years of church attendance for a DUI. The judge was trying to be humane by deferring a harsher sentence and requiring that the teen finish school, attend welding classes and go to church.

Not surprisingly many have seen the verdict as a violation of separation of church and state:

“I’m a minister,” Prescott said. “I want people to go to church, but it’s not helpful for a judge to sentence someone to church. What will the judge do if the young man changes his affiliation in the next few years? Will he be allowed to switch to a mosque or become an atheist? Religion is not a tool of the state, and it’s certainly not for the state to use as a tool of rehabilitation.” -The Rev. Bruce Prescott, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

But the judge said he is receiving calls from both sides of the issue:

“One gentleman from Missouri left a message on my phone. He said judges can’t order people to go to church. People are calling from all around the country. I live in the Bible Belt, though. The Bible is still alive down here; churches are still open. I’m sure those people are right, but they’re going to have to do what they want to do.”

Constitutional issues aside, it does not speak well of my profession that we are now on the list of possible plea bargains.

http://www.religionnews.com/politics/law-and-court/okla-judge-defends-sentencing-teenager-to-church-even-if-its-not-legal

Nowhere are class lines in America more visible than at an airport. As crowds are herded thru the same ramp, four foot strips of red carpet identify early on who is first class and who isn’t. All kinds of labels like “preferred” or “advantage” can mean boarding the plane bare minutes earlier, but to much more legroom and larger Dixie cups.

Realizing there is a marketing niche for  the proletariat section of the plane as well, airlines have added a section that, while still in the main cabin, will sport added legroom. They will call it “Main Cabin extra” which will consist of the very finest of the crummy seats.

American Airlines subcontracted that work so they would not have to pay full wages for their own union mechanics and, as a result, the airline had to ground dozens of airplanes after seats came lose in four different flights. The airline defended their decision to outsource the work as a necessary cost cutting measure:

“Our competitors have forged a path of having their maintenance completed where it is most cost-effective,” she said. “We must similarly adapt.”