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My Easter Sermon will look at the story of the resurrection and ask what that symbol might mean for a modern mind. In researching a sermon I always run into more information than I can use. I definitely can’t use this essay, but it might be fun to think about. This is a tongue in cheek case against immortality,
To read, click here.

Looking at the Times this morning I almost fell into the trap. The headline read: “Iran’s Efforts to Stir Afghan Violence Worry U.S.” For a moment I almost forgot that you can’t ever just relax and read the newspaper. You always have to remember that the people that pay for our newspapers are the people who profit from our wars. Iran may be up to no good, but one almost gets the impression from reading this article that the cause of violence in Afghanistan is a few agents from Iran, not the thousands of bombs we ourselves are dropping.

“Just hours after it was revealed that American soldiers had burned Korans seized at an Afghan detention center in late February, Iran secretly ordered its agents operating inside Afghanistan to exploit the anticipated public outrage by trying to instigate violent protests in the capital, Kabul, and across the western part of the country, according to American officials.”

First of all, exploiting tension in other nations is something every nation does. We certainly are masters of the practice. Secondly, the story is going to be based on secret U.S. sources, and the Times is more than willing to spin the whole story uncritically through those eyes. For example, they spin Iran’s warning that it would defend itself if attacked by Israel as a “threat.” If you’re not paying attention that “spin” will seem like factual reporting.

“For the most part, the efforts by Iranian agents and local surrogates failed to provoke widespread or lasting unrest,” the officials said. “Yet with NATO governments preparing for the possibility of retaliation by Iran in the event of an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities, the issue of Iran’s willingness and ability to foment violence in Afghanistan and elsewhere has taken on added urgency.”

So we can’t see any proof that Iran’s efforts were successful, but the fact that they would defend themselves if attacked, and that they are making efforts to gain allies in the region adds “urgency” to the situation.

Here’s a sampler platter of the rhetoric of the article:

“The most visible rioting that American officials say bears Iranian fingerprints”

“Iran has denied any government-backed effort to foment unrest in Afghanistan, but American officials see a pattern of malign meddling…”

“Amateurs are tougher to detect and catch. It caught our surveillance off guard. We were looking for pros. They went below the radar.” (So now Iran is sending amateurs?)

I would be surprised if Iran isn’t doing mischief, but what the Times isn’t sayng is we are doing mischief on a much greater scale. To tell the entire story through secret sources from one side is not reporting, but propaganda. A newpaper has some obligation to be a mirror so a nation can seek sanity, not a mouthpiece of the national delusions. When another nation looks like a terrorist and a criminal for wanting to do the same things your nation is doing, it is time to take stock. If newpapers will not seek truth, who will?

I haven’t seen the movie, but I enjoyed this review. It talks about the paradox of social justice movies spawned out of a system that makes that justice impossible. I don’t know if it is fair to the movie, but I think this insight is vital to escaping the labyrinth we currently inhabit.

Apparently “Hunger Games” is based on a thoughtful novel about empire where citizens are pitted against one another in a reality show reminiscent of colosseum days. In the book apparently the focus falls upon the inner anguish of one contestant forced to kill or be killed. Ironically, in the movie, the audience ends in cheering for the actual hunt. So a novel intended to reveal the brutality of our situation, in the movie, becomes an example of it.

The same point has been made on a recent Disney movie based on Dr. Suess’s criticism of consumer culture. A book intended to criticise consumerism, becomes itself a commercial. .

There is nothing wrong with enjoying such movies, but at some point they should help us realize that capitalism has turned our entire world into one big infomercial. It pits us against one another in the kind of hunt pictured in “Hunger games”. As long as we do not realize that war and pollution are the natural by products of our economic system, smart money is on the Minotaur.

To read original article, click here

Scientists working on possible hydrogen energy made an amazing discovery lately. Efforts to harness sunlight were twice as effective when they mimicked the shape and texture of a black butterfly’s wing. I don’t understand the physics, and I maybe misstating some of this, but this discovery seems to have very hopeful implications for solar if not for hydrogen energy. We need water more than we need energy, so I’m not sure about that, but this story certainly is a reminder in parable that our survival may depend on ending our efforts to master mother nature and, instead, on harmonizing our existence to her.

“Scientists long have known that butterfly wings contain tiny scales that serve as natural solar collectors to enable butterflies, which cannot generate enough heat from their own metabolism, to remain active in the cold. When butterflies spread their wings and bask in the sun, those solar collectors are soaking up sunlight and warming the butterfly’s body.”

To read article, click here

David Korten has a way of both helping us face the mess we are in, but also giving us some hope that we might be able to clean it up. In this essay he discusses the trance imposed on the American people by a constant barrage of propaganda by our economic overlords, and also helps discuss ways to break the trance.

“1.Our individual and collective well-being depends on acting with concern for the well-being of others. We all do better when we look out for one another.

3.The proper purpose of the economy and the enterprises that comprise it is to provide good jobs and quality goods and services beneficial to the health and happiness of people, community and nature. A modest financial profit is essential to a firm’s viability, but is not its proper purpose.”

Good stuff.
To read article, click here

The Easter sermon is always a challenge for me. The rest of the year, I try to give sermons for people with scientific minds. If I’m going to talk about the meaning of life, I don’t leave out the fact that Darwinism has forever changed that topic. If I’m going to talk about heaven, I have to deal with the fact that, after Einstein, we can’t really think of an eternal place because space and time cannot be separated.

Within my own limits, I try to make St. Andrew’s a place where people with a modern worldview can be intellectually honest. So, I dread Easter morning when so many visitors come for the first time expecting the story of Easter to be told as they have always heard it. When I try to discuss what “resurrection” might mean within reality as we live it, I can almost see the flowers on their bonnets begin to droop.

This year I’m thinking about looking at Psalm 46 to tell the Easter story. This is the Psalm that Luther used to write “A Mighty Fortress.” It talks about earthquakes and falling empires and says there is a river running through it all. I’ve always loved that image of eternity being in the midst of change. I also want to take a scientific essay called, “The Immortality of the Flock” and looks at how a flock remains the same through all the births and deaths of individuals. Their “immortality” isn’t found in stretching out their own individuality, but in joining a larger life.

Hopefully that fusion will be reality based enough for St. Andrew’s regulars, and hopeful enough for our Easter visitors.

Andrea Tone has written a book on the history of contraceptives in America. Long before the pill “experts” told women that douching with “safe” and “gentle” products like a Lysol soap could not only give them “dainty feminine allure” but also be used as a birth control method.

“By 1911 doctors had recorded 193 Lysol poisonings and five deaths from uterine irrigation. Despite reports to the contrary, Lysol was aggressively marketed to women as safe and gentle. Once cresol was replaced with ortho-hydroxydiphenyl in the formula, Lysol was pushed as a germicide good for cleaning toilet bowls and treating ringworm, and Lehn & Fink’s, the company that made the disinfectant, continued to market it as safeguard for women’s “dainty feminine allure.””

To read the article in Mother Jones, click here.

When I first heard our leaders use the word “terrorist” I predicted from the pulpit that they would never define specifically what they meant when they used that word. When they began to use the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” I expected (and received) a similar obscurity. Like the word “torture” these terms are used only for the actions of our enemies and never for our own.

Even if we commit the same acts of violence, and use weapons infinitely more deadly, the different terms we use for ourselves and our enemies will always cast us as heroes and them as villains. They are “militants” we are “soldiers.” All of our military action falls under the category “defense” no matter how far away a war may lie.

In typical clarity, Gleen Greenwald writes his own insights on the subject of propagandist words like “terrorist.”

To read, click here.

Jane Spahr is one of the prophetic voices of our time. This May, in a meeting of the Presbytery of the Redwoods, she is scheduled to be officially rebuked for showing the love of Christ to GLBTE persons (gay, lesbian, transgender, bi-sexual and etc.)

Since a rebuke is the modern equivilent of a stoning, I thought I would honor this great moment in the history of our church by sharing the stoning scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

To see clip, click here

We in the church have changed our clothes, but some of our minds are are still living comfortably in the first century. Presbyterian brothers and sisters, there is now only one way to save our church from becoming a joke for the ages, lay down your stones.

(Thanks to Jimmy Spahr for the Photo of Janie.)

When I graduated from seminary, I had no idea of ever being political in sermons. Basically I just want to be liked. I saw political issues as a struggle between two extremist groups and imagined myself to be standing in the sane and moderate middle.

When I arrived at our church there was a pro-life group. I saw the church as a big umbrella so I said nothing. One day the preschool director buzzed me on the intercom and asked if I could come to the church parlor. When I arrived there was a woman sobbing. She was a mother of four who had been told by her doctor that her latest pregnancy could kill her and leave her other children without a parent.  She had called a “crisis pregnancy number” and our pro-life group had lied to her telling her they would help her get an abortion. When she arrived they showed her the “Silent Scream” which is a graphic anti-abortion film.

I tried to find my typical middle ground, but the truth was, I needed to make a decision. Either I would be a part of such dishonesty and cruelty, or I would not. As the years went on, I realized that was true of many issues of injustice. For the oppressed, social issues are not matters of opinion, they are matters of survival. In times of injustice the person standing in the middle, for all intents and purposes, has sided with the powerful .

This Sunday we celebrated Palm Sunday as a kind of “Occupy Jerusalem” protest.  If politics means how we treat each other, then  love must express itself politically. We cannot say we love God and stand by silently while others suffer.

The word “protestant” and the word “protest” come from the same root. We cannot say “yes” to humanity, unless we can say “no” to all that is inhumane.  We cannot say “yes” to a religion of love, unless we oppose that which is cruel. We cannot say “yes” to life, unless we say “no” to all that poisons life as we actually live it.