Third World

There was a time when we would have been shocked to kingdom come to see that Slavic New Beginnings roadside sign.

"The church for you and your children" it says in Russian. Oh, and they meet on Sunday at 12:00 noon.

Russia was the enemy. Well, not exactly. The Soviet Union was the enemy. Some of the people there spoke Russian. That was the language of trade, government and the military. But in that huge union of "republics", there were many peoples besides Russians and many other languages.

That's why the current Russian Federation is much smaller geographically than the former Soviet Union. After the fall of communism, many of the old republics left to form their own political entities. How much of a nation really is Kyrghyzstan? Uzbekistan? Tadjikistan?

There are lots of familiar place names on the map when I look at that part of the world today in my little atlas of the former USSR. All the place names are in Cyrillic. Just like the Russian on that church sign. The past is now here.

There's some kind of new church in the former location of Dial Travel. I used to have Al and Diane Vavra book all of my air travel there. That was before I had a computer and Internet service at home and had to do it myself.

They booked flights for us from our duaghter Hilary's infancy through her college graduation. I kept up with their family also: kids getting married and having grandkids. In bunches. There was this set of quadruplets all named for baseball parks: Brooklyn, Fenway, etc. You get the idea.

Now it's New Zion Ministries. I guess you'd never call a storefront church "Old Zion Ministries", now would you?

We used to think of the church as bricks and mortar. Jesus always knew it was the people and their bonds of faith and love in the world.

May the Holy Spirit of God bless all these new avenues of good news. The world is smaller every day. It has now arrived here. May we welcome God's people everywhere.

Roger

Recognizing The Need to Do It....

The Rich Man and Poor Lazarus

Rich Dude had the ability to stuff Lazarus the beggar 'neath his table with good food on a daily basis. Didn't, though. Couldn't see ol' Laz. Not 'til Rich Dude died.

We see poorly when smoke gets in our eyes. Rich Dude probably did, too. But fire... Now that's a whole different deal. Clears the vision right up, smoke and all.

As my friend Tom likes to say, "People don't change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat."

Every now and again, but not so much lately, I would hear someone say, "We know what we need to do. We just need to find the political will to do it."

As in:
End homelessness.
Cut our dependence on foreign oil.
Stop deficit spending.
Cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2050.
Stop acidification of the oceans before it's too late.

Yada. Yada. Yada....

The term "political will" is an oxymoron. It wouldn't have to be, but it is.

We're wasting time searching and hoping for political will. Political will doesn't happen much in democracies. It happens in dictatorships, be they malignant or benign ones. When the majority of people get to decide, the majority will generally stay home and not participate. The minority that participate by educating themselves and making a wise choice based on the best information and a sense of the common good . . . well . . . that may be too much to hope for.

What we get instead are tons of advertising and red herrings and a majority of those who vote actually deciding on the basis of short-term self interest, not on the basis of long-term common good.

Take a listen to what this man, Peter Maass, has to say about how our thirst for oil translates into very unhealthy things for the planet and the people:

http://www.theworld.org/2010/05/03/impact-of-oil-spills/

Forget greenhouse gases. Forget global warming, any of that touchy-feely environmental "hogwash" that many people perceive most calls for political will re: climate or energy to be. Just consider the amount of crude oil, refined products and waste products that get spilled onto the soil and into water and the air.

Consider who lives with that and how they live with it. And we can't see 'em?

People who benefit from cheap and plentiful oil will never change their ways when they get "political will". In an effort to pay little or nothing, they will fight, deny and delay action to such an extent that it will cost them (us, actually!!!) much more than doing the right thing in a timely fashion.

It's not a matter of politcal will. It's a matter of moral will. Rich Dude couldn't see Lazarus because he wouldn't see Lazarus. He refused to. Didn't have the moral will to do so. The five Sullivan brothers died in the Solomon Islands because they saw the need to fight. Today I think we'd have hit the remote and clamored for a tax cut.

Peter Maass says we have to make changes in how we use energy so that we drill less, spill less, kill less.

It ain't creation or evolution we're talking about. It's God's life support system. Not that God is on life support. It's that we are--through the system God created. We expect it to function just fine as a non-system. I guess we'll see, won't we?

We will not change until we recognize the need to do so. Abundant evidence of that need is already two decades, 20 years, behind us.

But we won't change if/when we see the light.

We'll only change when we feel the heat. Or . . . get some moral will maybe???

May be a warm "summer" ahead. D'ya think?

Roger

Happy FOSD!

Older Americans lived through 1942. The attack on Pearl Harbor was fresh in the minds of everyone. The Japanese were on the roll in island hopping and establishing outposts across a vast expanse of the Pacific. Europe was a huge mess and not nearly as messy as it would become. U.S. Marines would pay a heavy price and be marched to torture, sickness and death on Bataan.

In what seems now like an incredibly short interval, less time than the average kid spends in high school, things were turned around. Heavy losses were turned into victories, and an incredible national effort, primarily with Britain and the Soviet Union, brought hostilities to an end in 1945.

Americans win. We always do. We've grown up with that unyielding vision of ourselves. And for the most part, it's been good for the world when we do.

We remember June 6, 1944, the Normandy invasion known as "D-Day". We remember V-E Day and V-J Day.

Not many of us remember Fall of Saigon Day, FOSD. There won't be any parades calling that to mind for us. But for family members who lost loved ones in America's 16 years of war in Southeast Asia, April 30, 1975 will be a day they always carry with them. Nobody will go around wishing someone else a Happy Fall of Saigon Day!

But it's something a generation will always carry. That's why they've become so good at making their own parades. This I'm willing to bet: There would be no such thing today as the Patriot Guard Riders if Hanoi had fallen on 04/30/75 instead of Saigon. Notice what the owner of this bike is?

If war is much too important to be left up to the generals, its aftermath is also much too important to be left up to the veterans. It's for all of us.

Yesterday was FOSD. I hope it was a happy one.

Peace,

Roger

Living In The Past

OK. So I've borrowed the title from a Jethro Tull album.

All around I see signs of wishing for a return of the past.

A friend e-mailed me a collection of World War II posters. They weren't campaign posters for a political party. They weren't about an upcoming election, the promotion of a new product or to announce the

concert appearance by American Idol stars or the latest gaggle of ice skaters on tour.

It was a different America. The people in the pictures were all white. None were overweight. Ideal. If we were honest about the "freedom of speech poster", we wouldn't want to hang with 75% of the ideal people in the picture. We wouldn't want them in our cars or homes today. Why? Because their clothes, fingertips and breath reeked of cigarette smoke.

I remember family Christmas gatherings that rotated around the homes of aunts and uncles. I always hated it when it was our turn to host Dad's side of the family. My uncle Elmer smoked cigarettes, and he would do so right in our living room. It was expected that hosts had to accommodate the smoker, not the other way around. We had this metal ashtray on a stand that you could set alongside whatever chair Elmer was seated in. It had a bowl on top with rests for the smoldering white paper tube of dead plant leaves. Once the butt was finished, you could push a button to open a little trapdoor in the bottom of the bowl so that the butts and ashes would drop into a larger bowl below.

Outta sight, outta mind. Or not. My uncle Rudy liked to smoke a cigar after a meal. Whoa, baby! To a family not accustomed to smoke at all, those dog turds were like setting off poison gas canisters in your house.

Now we wonder what to do with our elders. It's a growing problem, especially since they don't look like so many of the youngsters that will someday be responsible for producing all the goods and services and revenue it takes to run this country. And many of these youngsters don't look so hot. Huge numbers are overweight, obese, have type II diabetes--in elementary school.

They don't come from families where brothers would lie about their ages in order to get into the armed forces when a world war was going on. They think "meals" consist of opening a package of something whenever the urge comes, walking to the convenience store, hitting the vending machine at school. They haven't actually sat down at a table where prayer preceded the munching, all electronic devices were extinguished and adults and youngsters who had been together all their lives engaged in the two most basic activities of survival besides breathing: taking nourishment together and renewing their familial bonds. Or at least their associations.

The lofty concept of freedom is not secured or nurtured by war. It cannot be. It can exist only in fully formed and functioning human beings. Don't get me wrong. Fully formed and functioning human beings can be of any race, creed or color. All it takes is, as my uncle Obert used to say, "some fire in the pants".

How's the battle going on that front today?

Roger

Bagpipes in Oklahoma

Timothy McVey.

The Murrah Federal Building.

Pre-schoolers in the ground floor daycare center.

A rental truck filled with granulated fertilizer mixed with diesel fuel.

These are memories of 15 years ago in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Then-Senator Bob Dole was quick to call it the work of Islamic terrorists. They would indeed leave their mark six years later. This proved to be homegrown, apple pie, USA terrorism by someone with military experience--experience in our military. 160+ lives were lost, each marked by the unusual empty glass chairs of the Oklahoma City memorial.

Now, I've been to Oklahoma. I used to live south of there in Texas. I'm always amazed to see footage of memorial ceremonies--whether for firefighters, policemen, soldiers or storm victims--when bagpipers are present in places like that. If you were a guy and wore a skirt and white spats to school, to the rodeo or the honky tonk, something as bad as the OKC bombing might happen to you and your household. For sure your pickup wouldn't survive out in the parking lot.

It's ironic that this odd-sounding musical instrument born of sheepskin, wooden flutes and tinkering in the highlands of the British Isles has become the ubiquitous voice of mournful melodies and reflective moments when stump speeches and solemn exhortations take a rest.

I always thought the true Scotsmen in their native highlands wore red tartan plaids and that some of the Protestant Scots who were sent to supplant the feared Catholics in Ireland by William of Orange became those who wore the green tartan plaids. In some ways, it's the embodiment of what led to 600 years of civil war and terrorism between two groups of people who both call themselves Christians.

My, my, how we weave tangled plots, we humans and our territories, our kingdoms and our unforgiving, warring hearts.

I hope bagpipes are forever played in the Scottish Highlands. And I hope those skirls forever resound across those crags and meadows to sing the grace of God and the wonder of creation. And I hope we always remember that this extraordinarily odd and unique instrument had a life before it became synonymous with mourning, funerals and memorials.

May we always mourn when we should. But may we always live when we must.

Amen.

Roger

Gone Fishin'. Don't Forget the Bread!

John 21:1-19:

Sven: You go fishin' den, Ole?

Ole: Ja, I been fishin'.

Sven: You catch da fish den, Ole?

Ole: Ja, I catch da fish. Lotta fish den.

Sven: How many fish you catch den, Ole?

Ole: You guess how many, Sven, I let you have dem both.

Sven: Vell, den, I guess it was tree fish.

Ole: Sven, you crasy Norvegian! It vass fife!

The things in the background of Bible stories are often just as important as the words. Peter says, "Well, boys, I don't know about you. Our bud, Jesus, is gone. It was quite a ride while it lasted, but that finale scared the crap outta me! I've had it with this itinerant stuff. I'm going back to fishing, to what I know. Anybody with me?" They all are, for the most part. Only problem, the fish aren't cooperating, All night and nothing to show for it.

Approaching the shore, they see him again: Jesus. Standing near a fire broiling some fish. He has the gumption to ask, "Haf you no fish, den, Sven, Ole and Peter?"

No. Bad night, you know. The wind came up a bit. Sea kinda rough, you know. Nothing...

"Put in your net on the right side of the boat," the mysterious Jesus on the shore says.

OK, now have you ever told the vision of a person you know/knew to be dead to buzz off? Don't think so! The net goes in as Jesus says. It fills. Hard to drag that sucker to shore without breaking it. It holds. In the net, 153 of those babies that eluded them all night.

Jesus takes bread, blesses it, shares the fish. Gee, where have we seen Jesus before in the company of mysteriously abundant bread and fish? Did the multitude run short? No! Kinda went the other way, actually. They end up with more than they started with.

There's something else caught in the net. The net in Peter's soul. Three times Peter denied. The first time, he was scared, caught by surprise, didn't have time to think. The second time, it was to save face, be consistent. The third time... Well, by that time he had already dug the hole too deep.

Jesus gives Peter a chance to undo each denial. If Peter had denied five times, Jesus would have asked five times. But there's more: the invitation, "Feed my lambs, take care of my sheep."

"I need you," Jesus says, "I want you, I invite you, I forgive you."

Pretty good deal, if you ask me. Jesus, the bread and the fish are what will feed the world. There will be enough to go around. In fact, there will be more at the end than we started with.

Amen.

Roger

Mixed Media, Mixed Message

Reading Isaiah is not an easy thing to do. Practically every metaphor, every phrase, every word, needs to have some kind of context in order to have meaning.

What did those words mean for and to the people of the day?

What could those words mean for us today?

Not a simple task. Not simply a matter of saying, "The Bible is the literal truth spoken and inspried by God, so all we have to do is do what it says."

Isaiah can be tiresome that way. On the one hand, it repeatedly cautions Israel, "Don't flirt with Egypt. Don't think that making an unholy alliance with Egypt will protect you against Assyria." On the other hand, Isaiah says YHWH will use unholy Assyria to essentially do holy work. Isaiah also envisions a coming together, a three-way unification of Assyrians, Egyptians and Israelites who will all worship God together.

Systematically throughout the book, every geographic place name in the world of Israel's vaguest knowledge gets the same prescription from YHWH: I will flatten you. Then I will build you up. Again and again, Israel hears the warning: Your hearts have been hardened and your worship is empty and your leaders are corrupt. I will punish you. Then I will restore you.

Or, at least a remnant.

It's core material in Judaism and Christianity. No wonder some struggling souls have concluded over the years that the God of the New Covenant is not the same God as the God of the First Covenant(s).

Isaiah's global sense was basically a radius of about 500 miles. Mt. Zion was clearly the center of that circle. Only problem is, every other civilization on the planet considered itself to be the center of everything else as well. How would you have ever convinced ancient Americans living around Harney Peak in the Black Hills that Mt. Zion was where God spoke, and the ONLY place where God spoke to people (after speaking at Mt. Sinai)?

And what about the people who lived around what we today call Ayers Rock near Alice Springs, Australia? Actually, they'd probably have had a much easier time accepting a prophet who walked around naked for three years...

Ever tried evangelizing someone alienated from the church after being abused by the church with the image of a prophet who exposed himself for a thousand days?

It's an awful lot to reckon with as we sing "The King of love my Shepherd is, whose goodness faileth never. I nothing lack if I am his, and He is mine forever."

That's Old Covenant also and seen best in the person and work of Christ. And through the Christ in us. WE make the God in Christ real and believable to people when the Christ in us is real and believable to people.

If Portland cops need mental health professionals to ride along with them, I sometimes wonder if we don't also need mental health professionals to ride along with us in daily life and in our walks of faith. And in walking through Isaiah or Jeremiah or Revelation or Daniel or Ezekiel. Or even Psalm 23. Oh, and don't forget Romans, the book Luther said we should know by heart.

After all, there are a lot of mixed messages and mixed media out there.

Lead us, Good Shepherd!

Amen.

Roger