He Was Jesus

He was Jesus. That's what Maurice Clemmons told his wife and young relatives as he ordered them to line up and undress. He had visions, apocalyptic visions of the end of the world.

At age 37, Maurice Clemmons is now dead after taking the lives of four Lakewood, Washington, police officers and taking away three fathers and a mother from nine children.

They're always Jesus. They always have the apocalyptic visions. Ain't it uncanny how the nightmarish imagery of the Bible's minority report goes so hand-in-hand with mental illness, delusions and violence involving guns?

I found the little die-cast aluminum soldier with his ancient water-cooled machine gun while cleaning the attic. Our house wasn't built until 1955-56, so the toy is only about 50 years old. But he's in World War I attire. Definitely no camo and Kevlar vest, no night vision goggles.

These days the average madman and middle schooler can get their hands on more firepower in a heartbeat. And end a bunch of other heartbeats quickly.

What the damaged and seriously ill Jesus wannabe's never seem to grasp is that Jesus never packed heat, likely not even a knife. How many did Jesus kill? How many did he save? Whose life was laid down in order to do that?

Guns don't kill people. People kill people--so often with all their @#$@#$%^#$%^# guns. We won't stop making guns. We'll never keep them out of the hands of seriously ill and angry people. But we can save the lives of countless people by taking care of the sick, by being honest about the mental health of people raised in violence and who turn to violence at a young age.

And we can prevent so much by making better people: parents, families and children.

In the Portland metro area in the month of November, there were five incidents of domestic violence that led a man to kill his wife/girlfriend/children and then himself. Oh, my God!

200 years ago Charles Wesley wrote, "Come, thou long-expected Jesus; come and set they people free..."

He has come. Time for us to set ourselves and others free from our darkness, our chains, our delusions and our violent ways. Amen.

Pax,

Roger

Happy Birthday, Jean!

Happy birthday, sweetheart! I'm so blessed that for 2/3 of our lives you have been my wife, best friend and partner in all things.

And besides, you're a pretty terrific bag lady!

God bless!

Love,

Roger

Thanksgiving Day '09

We drove down to Cannon Beach on the Northern Oregon Coast for Thanksgiving Day. Rainy drive, and light rain on the beach. But not too rainy to walk. We had mid-afternoon turkey and trimmings next to the big warm hearth at Morris' Fireside Restaurant after our walk.

They've had powerful storms on the coast recently. How'd you like to drive up to your rather spendy beach getaway house and see this in your driveway? Yes, that's sand. It's on the roof and in the gutters above the covered entryway. It wasn't all blown there by wind.

Notice how much sand is between the sliding glass doors here. There was sand on the sills of the windows to the left.

The once bare concrete patio looks like just another part of the beach. I can't imagine how much water flooded into the house as the waves were pounding the windows and doors. Inside, the floors, subfloors, carpet and drywall have to be soaked. It will take a major "gut and stuff" rebuild.

How many of us have wished for some kind of beach house all our own with sunset and sunrise views to die for? Can you imagine the consequences around the globe if sea levels rise another six inches? Another two feet? The poor will suffer much more than the wealthy.

There are many things to be thankful for in life. I find more all the time.

Most of all, I'm thankful for these two people of my family. That's especially so considering our (now) long life together. There were times when I could have lost them both, these gifts, these priceless treasures.

We have each other. We shared hours together loving the company of one another. We drove to Cannon Beach and returned home safely in our newer car with 411,000 miles on it. We've all had our colds in the past few days but no flu. We have our health. We have a home with a few leaves to clean up but not a truckload of sand and water damage to face as our Christmas gift to each other. Life is truly good.

May we all walk more lightly on the earth and treasure each step together.

Give thanks each day in peace.

Roger

In God We Trust?

This penny appeared in the offering basket at Operation Nightwatch last Sunday night.

It reminds me of something Mr. Behrens said perhaps 55 years ago. Mr. Behrens was principal of St. Paul's Lutheran school in rural Nebraska, my school for the first eight years of my education. All our U.S. coins and currency bear the words In God We Trust. Mr. Behrens pointed out how the more of them we have in our pockets, the less we seem to trust in God.

That was before sports stars and rock stars and Wall Street stars made millions and billions.

Lately, I wonder whom we trust and how much.

Consider what we can't do because we don't have the money (bear in mind, that "we don't have the money" often comes across as "it might hurt the economy"):

1. Be the leading innovator and global example for renewable energy, all sorts of new technologies and replacing throw-away lifestyles with sustainable ones.

2. Provide universal health care cheaper than we do it now non-universally.

3. Provide ourselves with transportation and infrastructure that doesn't increasingly make us look like a thrid-world nation.

4. Begin planning for the implications of global climate change (even if it's 100% non-human caused, climate change will require nearly everything about our lives to change in some way; the sooner we plan and prepare, the less disruptive and costly it will be).

5. Work increasingly toward non-military responses to terrorism, poverty and ignorance. I'm dead certain that they would be far cheaper and far more effective, both in the near-term and long-term, than what we are doing now--which, by the way, we can't afford.

We seem to be approaching the world from one perspective only, that of scarcity. We are afraid there won't be enough so we withdraw from embracing the world of possibilities. Our actions seem to say that we trust our dollars and not our God. Are we more motivated by fear than love?

I'd love to be wrong about this.

What do you think?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Roger

Five Barley Bagels

Five barley bagels. No, the next lines don't lead to "And a partridge in a pear tree."

Jesus once fed 5K people with five barley bagels. And two cans of tuna. When all was said and fed, his students policed up 12 bushels of leftovers from the picnic grounds. They were so blown away by this incredible multiplication of gifts that they didn't even notice the 14 black plastic bags. The bags were huge, some 50-gallon size. And stuffed. The rabbi's students walked right past 'em, left 'em lying out there on the grass.

But the people from Cornerstone Church went gleaning on the picnic grounds. They found those 14 bags and delivered 'em to where they belonged. Bags were stuffed with coats, sweatshirts and blankets.

My friend Kevin delivered 'em to Operation Nightwatch last night. Filled up the whole bed of his F250 pickup. Some were a challenge to carry up the two flights of stairs leading to the third floor storage area.

In one fell swoop, Cornerstone Church just out-donated dozens if not hundreds of other churches. No committee proposal or big debate. Somebody just went ahead and did it: asked people to go through their closets.

Pastor Barry was pretty modest about it. He says it says something when this much warm clothing can be found just lying around unused in our closets and garages. Some folks for sure went out and spent money to buy things for other people, either new or from thrift stores and garage sales. But Pastor Barry says even his generous folks still have some way to go before reaching the level of Philippians 4: giving until they themselves have "need".

Maybe. But his people are far ahead of most of us. Makes a person wonder what we might do here if we gave as the folks in Philippi did. Even the folks at Cornerstone Church.

Why, we could be walking around lucky and not even know it.

We could be walking around wildly wealthy. And not even know it.

Give thanks in peace!

Pastor Roger

Christmas According to Mark

When Jean and I lived in Turkey, we would occasionally visit Istanbul. I remember walking past the Consulate of the Soviet Union several times. It had a heavy steel gate around it. At the gate was a guard shack and a room about the size of this garage. A bronze plaque near the entrance to the room proclaimed Zal Ozhidaniya ("Hall of Waiting").

I often joked, "Yeah, I'll bet there's ozhidaniye going on in there alright. Hour after hour after hour. . . Waiting is something modern folks don't do well, especially with the advent of online shopping, a 24-hour news cycle and instant messaging.

OK, a few days back I asked people to read the Christmas story in the Gospel According to Mark. By now, everybody must think, "Well, he must have meant Matthew, not Mark. There is no Christmas story in Mark."

Exactly my point.

But there is really a Christmas story in Mark. It just looks different. Consider this. In Mark, there is :

1. No genealogy.

2. No annunciation to Mary.

3. No magnificat.

4. No angel Gabriel telling Joseph to take Mary (with child) as his wife.

5. No stable and manger.

6. No shepherds abiding in the fields.

7. No Magi from the East. So that means no star seen in the East. No gifts.

8. No slaughter of the innocents by Herod.

9. No flight of the Holy Family into Egypt.

10. No presentation in the temple and Nunc Dimittis by Simeon.

11. No boy Jesus at the age of 12 staying behind in the temple in deep discussions of the Torah while his parents walked a whole day's journey.

12. No water turned into wine in Cana of Galilee.

None of the above. But here's what Mark does have in the first 15 verses:

1. Mark says it's a good news story and that Jesus is Messiah and Son of God.

2. There's a prophetic reference, actually from Malachi, not Isaiah.

3. John the baptizer is preaching a baptism of repentance.

4. John is wearing the attire of a true prophet like Elijah. (In the Passover seder ritual, a door is left open so that if Elijah returns he can enter the house; the return of Elijah will signal the arrival of Messiah and a new messianic age. If Elijah's here, so is the age.)

5. Jesus is baptized by John and the Spirit descends to identify him.

6. Jesus is immediately tempted in the wilderness w/o food and water--just like Elijah.

7. John is arrested.

8. Jesus takes up the prophetic mantle and returns to Galilee calling people to repentance and to believe in the good news that the kingdom of God has come near.

The kingdom of God is Mark's Christmas. The kingdom of God is what Jesus proclaimed. It was the hallmark of his ministry. Today it seems like a present that we have never unwrapped.

What are we waiting for?

I hear people on radio and TV talking about "the Christmas season". They universally refer to the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when they talk about the Christmas season. But wait, doesn't the season of Christmas begin after Christmas?

What do we have before Christmas? We have Advent, a time of waiting, a time of preparing, a time of living in the kingdom of God. Followers of Christ in the time of Mark referred to their core beliefs and the life they led them to lead as "The Way".

Maybe we should wait to celebrate Christmas until we have actually experienced Advent. Maybe we should wait to celebrate Christmas or even speak the word until we have lived Advent, until we have figured out what The Way and the kingdom of God are.

Mark's gospel has no traditional birth narrative. But it does have Easter. It does have the kingdom of God. Should we have any trouble figuring out the implications of relative importance from that?

Happy journeying on The Way! Awesome Advent to you and yours! It won't be Christmas until we figure out what the kingdom of God is--another 34 days or as long as it takes in the Zal Ozhidaniya.

Shalom,

Roger

Uncle Sam Wants You

We often say that we owe our freedom to our soldiers. Some of our honored veterans of military service are in this picture of the recent Living History Day at Milwaukie, OR High School. Thanks, sisters and brothers!

We owe our freedom to our military?

That may be true of Gen. Washington's Continental Army which lost most battles but won the campaign by being an insurgency, not much of a military force. It may be true of WWII.

As a Cold War veteran during the Vietnam era, I think that our military--especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan today--contribute to our safety and security. That is, provided that the net result of these wars is not an overall increase of extremism and terrorism. The jury is still out on that.

But only we can keep ourselves free as a people. We do that by vigorously exercising the rights and responsibilities of citizenship: informing ourselves, educating ourselves, expressing ourselves, asking questions, seeking answers and solutions, and communicating regularly with our neighbors as well as our representatives and leaders in government. It also requires us to hold our sources of information every bit as accountable as we do our leaders and our own family members. There is no substitute for honesty. Anywhere.

That requires us to actually know something about what is going on. That requires us to invest some sweat equity to acquire actual information and to process that into some kind of knowledge. That requires us to do more than simply hold opinions which are plentiful and free-of-charge. How well are your fellow Americans doing that?

Take this little self-test as a starter. Then see how your friends and neighbors do.

Test your knowledge with 12 questions: http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/quiz/index.php

Still think we are a free people? Are terrorists the only ones who hate our freedoms? Do we deserve the service of the people in harm's way on our behalf today?

As Jesus said, "Watch and pray."

Pax,

Roger