jimrigby.org

"In classroom settings I have often listened to groups of students tell me that 
racism really no longer shapes the contours of our lives, that there is no such 
thing as racial difference, that "we are all just people." Then a few minutes 
later I give them an exercise. I ask if they were about to die and could choose 
to come back as a white male, a white female, a black female, or a black male, 
which identity would they choose. Each time I do this exercise, most 
individuals, irrespective of gender or race invariably choose whiteness, and 
most often male whiteness. Black females are the least chosen. When I ask 
students to explain their choice they proceed to do a sophisticated analysis of 
privilege based on race (with perspectives that take gender and class into 
consideration)." -bell hooks 

Coming up with a new Christmas sermon series every year is hard. After 30 years there are only so many new twists on mangers, shepherds and donkeys.

This year I want to do a series on the mystical imagery of the Christmas story as found in the hymns. I think the Christmas hymns touch us in a way that the other symbols usually don’t. I think they are more transparent. We have a better sense that they are speaking of living and loving and not about an historical event.

In addition to celebrating  the Christmas season, my hope is this series may illumine some of the other symbols of our faith as well.

Everyday Mysticism: The message of the Christmas hymns 

“The Silent Word is Pleading” (from “What Child Is This?”)

Can the words of religion awaken us to awareness instead of belief?

“God rules the world with truth and grace” (from “Joy to the World”)

Can we imagine the sacred without any idea of domination?

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” (O Little Town of Bethlehem)

Practical mysticism is living in the ambiguities of life. Personal peace is not numbness, but a balance of our fears and desires.

“Love’s pure light” (from “Silent Night”)

Love is the litmus test for our religion. It illumines everything.

“Peace on earth good will to all” (from “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”)

Religious unity is not found by choosing the right sect, but in opening to universal compassion.

“How silently, how silently the precious gift is given” (from O Little Town of Bethlehem)

Learning that life is the answer and religion consists of the questions that lead us to a full life.

“Domination delegates the physical violence on which it rests to the dominated.” -Theodor Adorno

As we rise to power within a system, it becomes less and less necessary to be personally violent in order to dominate others. At some point, the system does our dirty work for us. When we become powerful and gain undue influence upon forming the laws, any movement of resistance against our exploitation can be deemed a crime. In olden days, the escaped slave was considered the criminal, the vicious master, the victim. In our day, chains are no longer necessary. Economic conditions have become a prison system of their own. At this point, we do not need to personally rob others at gunpoint. We can hide behind unfair economic conditions, and, if anyone resists us, the police will bring the guns. The poor will be deemed criminal just because we have put them in prison. The violence of the whole system, of course, will be remembered as law and order.

Certainly violent crime must be prosecuted, but the greatest crimes go unpunished so long as the overall system of domination is seen as order.

Probably the criticism I get most as a preacher (and on this blog) is, “why are you so negative? We know there are problems in the world, but we can’t do anything about that. We come to church to feel better.”

I certainly understand that feeling. John the Baptist used to be my least favorite figure in scripture. I like happy thoughts as much as anyone, but here’s the problem. Our current level of consumption as a nation has put us on a collision course with catastrophe that no pleasant words can prevent. We either change course or we will bring enormous suffering into the world. When I look into the faces of our children I am overcome with grief for the world we are giving them. Would we rather be comfortable in worship, than be transformed into agents of their best interests?

And, in looking at our own children, I cannot help but think of the children of the world our nation puts in harm’s way. Who will be their voice in a nation that does not want to hear? If we realized they have the same worth as our own children, would be not be crying from the roof tops?

So some weeks I do sound a bit like John the Baptist. I am not trying to make people feel bad, but I still believe there is a chance to save our planet if we are willing to change ourselves. The Hebrew word for “repent” simply meant to “turn.” Feeling quilty wasn’t the point, the point was to change direction.

I have no idea whether it is too late to prevent climate disaster, but I do know that choosing to join the struggle for the earth, for the animals and for our human family, will give us noble lives regardless of what happens. I do not see this position as pessimistic, it is simply the reality we have inherited. I do not mean to be negative, I just believe our chances of facing this crisis are infinitely better with our eyes wide open.

“People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they’re right. The system is rigged.” -Elizabeth Warren

I sure wish the US was ready for someone like Elizabeth Warren to be President. I’m afraid we have one more sequel in the Clinton/Bush/Obama tragedies. It will be nice to have a woman president like Hillary, but I’m not sure we can wait 8 years before we begin to radically reform our economy. I’m not sure I can go through 8 more years of the murderous foreign policy she represents.

Until someone recognizes and names the robbery going on by our financial institutions and prosecutes their crimes, we will continue to lose this shell game we call our economy. And until someone can remember that the purpose of a military is to protect the people of our nation, not the economic interests of American corporations, we will continue to have presidents whose job will be to supply noble rhetoric to our acts of barbarity.

But I still have hope. After we have exhausted every other possible option, maybe our wounded nation will try sanity.

“It’s an unthinkable trade-off, but it’s happening. Although the 2013 SNAP (food stamp) budget of $78 billion is less than the 2012 investment earnings of 20 wealthy Americans, SNAP is being cut while not a penny extra is taken from the multi-billionaires.

The children, who make up nearly half of the 48 million recipients, will now get $1.40 for a meal instead of $1.50.”

-Paul Buchheit, Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/11

Some religion is an escape and a contraction from the immensity of the universe. Religion is frightened people huddling together surrounded by a circle of stones to find a sense of closure in an infinite cosmos. But religion is also expansion. Religion is also a courage to open to something larger than ourselves.

Ancient images of a God in the sky may have always been a kind of primordial memory that we human beings come from stellar dust as well as terrestrial carbon. It is possible that some religion has been an aching memory that we are born of exploding stars, that  our true life story goes back for billions of years, and that we when we look up at the sky some part of us knows we belong to it all.

Our minds are only now discovering through science  what our bodies may have always known. We belong to it all.

John Merrick was a real life person who suffered from a disease that greatly distorted his appearance. He was discovered working as a circus “freak.” This is a scene from a play about his life called The Elephant Man:

John Merrick: [after seeing pictures of Dr. Treves’ family] Would you care to see my mother?

Dr. Frederick Treves: [surprised] Your mother? Yes please.

[John pulls out a small portrait]

Mrs. Treves: Oh but she’s… Mr. Merrick, she’s beautiful!

John Merrick: Oh, she had the face of an angel!

[sadly]

John Merrick: I must have been a great disappointment to her.

Mrs. Treves: No, Mr. Merrick, no. No son as loving as you could ever be a disappointment.

John Merrick: If only I could find her, so she could see me with such lovely friends here now; perhaps she could love me as I am. I’ve tried so hard to be good.

[Mrs. Treves begins to cry]

 

Is there anyone who does not, in the deep of night, feel a freak? Is there anyone who does not still hear the echoes of  cruel laughter of others at our tenderest soul? Knowing that we are all worthless and ugly to some people leaves its scar on us all. And is not this same wound the source of our greatest cruelty, and our profoundest kindness?

I appreciate the bravery and sacrifice of our soldiers. For that very reason I hate war.

After today’s parades are over, 63,000 veterans will spend the night without a home. Almost a million veterans have been diagnosed with a mental disorder since 2,000. It is estimated that 22 veterans take their lives every day. If you love a veteran, isn’t it time to face the fact that there is something terribly wrong? How long can we stand by silently by while our leaders send brave men and women off to fight questionable wars and then, when the war is over, throw them away?

And are soldiers any less brave because they were born on the other side of a border? Are they less worthy of honor if they believe the lies of some foreign leader rather than the lies of our own?

The word “libertarian’ is a bit confusing. In it’s original iteration it was a synonym for “anarchist.” In the United States we usually use the word to the word “libertarian” to refer to someone who deems individual freedom an ultimate organizing principle, and reserve the word “anarchist” for violent nihilists like the Joker in Batman. Nothing could be further from the truth. The word “anarchist” originally meant “no leader” and was a rejection of all forms of co-ersion and domination.

In some parts of Europe the anarchist movement split into two camps, one based on individual liberty and the other, still anarchist, embraced the common good through socialism. Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarchist. His rejection of individualist anarchy is a nice expression of the problem I find with American libertarianism. I have not been able to make clear what I am trying to say, so hopefully Malatesta can say it better:

“However, I deny that that kind of individualism can be included among anarchists, despite their liking for calling themselves so.
If anarchy means non-government, non-domination, non-oppression by one human being over another, how can any call themselves anarchist without lying to themselves and the others, when they frankly claim that they would oppress the others for the satisfaction of their Egos, without any scruple or limit, other than that drawn by their own strength? They can be a rebel, because they are being oppressed and they fight to become oppressors, as other nobler rebels fight to destroy any kind of oppression; but they sure cannot be anarchists. They are would-be bourgeois, would-be tyrants, who are unable to accomplish their dreams of dominion and wealth by their own strength and by legal means, and therefore they approach anarchists to exploit their moral and material solidarity.
Therefore, I think the question is not about “communists” and “individualists”, but rather about anarchists and non-anarchists. And we, or at least many of us, were quite wrong in discussing a certain kind of alleged “anarchist individualism” as if it really was one of the various tendencies of anarchism, instead of fighting it as one of the many disguises of authoritarianism.”

Mikhail Bukunin was a Russian anarchist who made the same diagnosis of individual anarchism or libertarianism. He saw freedom and equality as equally binding on the human conscience. One without the other always meant tyranny.

“We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called “the People’s Stick.””

I would never argue with the value of freedom or equality, but when one of them is lifted up without the other, problems are never far behind. To paraphrase Bukunin, freedom without equality is just a fancy word for bullying, equality without freedom is just a fancy word for a herd.