Here before we know it

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People sometimes ask me when I became a Christian, and that’s a hard question to answer because I am pretty sure that by the time I asked Jesus into my heart, he’d already been living there for a while.

          Rachel Held Evans

 

“If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you

          John 14:15-17

 

Jesus asks, "Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?".

          Luke 6:46

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Hey God

Are you out there?

Somewhere?  Anywhere?

Do you sit in heaven (if there is such a place)

And watch with horror as we make a mess of things?

 

And what are you like, anyway?

Are you aloof and on a throne

Ready to judge the quick and the dead?

 

Every Sunday we pray

Come, O Creator God, and be with us

Come to this special place we have made for you

Beautiful with its stained glass and its peaceful elegance

 

Hey Yahweh

Hey Jesus…

 

Perhaps we have missed the point

What is in a name?

Everything.

 

You gave us a name

I am

Or rather, Whatever I am I will be

 

Yes, you are

You incarnated

You expressed yourself and told us who (and what) you are

 

You are

In the mountains we love, the air we breathe

In the rippling roaring springs

In the cry of the eagle

In every living creature

Even us

 

You gave us a name

And you gave us a person

Jesus

 

And in that name, you told us everything

You said, “I save.”

I rescue, redeem, recreate

 

You are the one who comes into the midst of

The world you have made and

The mess we have made

 

You come while leaders lie and steal

When power is abused

And innocents are killed

And the planet is assaulted in the name of greed

 

You gave us one we call Emmanuel

God with us

One who taught us who you are

You are love

 

But wait, there’s more.

You have told us, promised us

That you are also in us

 

You are pneuma hagion

You are holy, sacred wind

 

It has been said that one cannot catch the wind

But this wind is in us

Restless and powerful

Unsettling

 

It roars through our souls

And it too

Is you

 

You live in us, O Creator

You live in us, O savior

You make ourselves at home in our

Vulnerability

 

And you have one desire.

That we let the wind be wind

That we let your moving, rushing, roaring presence

Make us

Another incarnation

 

But Lord, we stifle the Spirit

We quench your holy fire

We check and constrain the wind

 

We say Lord, Lord

And then live for power or money

We say God is love

And then hate

 

We proudly say your name

We claim your presence and favor

But we deny your presence

 

No one would know you are in residence

By the way we talk, think,

And live

 

Don’t give up on us, Lord

Your very name suggests you won’t

But in your name, missiles rain down on children

Killing and maiming

 

In your name lies are spoken

Laws are broken

Injustice is perpetrated

 

In the actions of Presidents,

And Secretaries of War, and Majority leaders

Your presence is denied

Your name violated

 

Me too

Us too

We, too, sometimes fail to do what you say

 

But still, you stay

You are

You are in us to save

You are in us to heal and empower

 

Lord, when we are in the midst of strife and division

When everything seems to be disintegrating

Lord, when we feel so alone

And cry out for your presence

 

Remind us that you are already here.

 

In Silent Agony

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Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world

          Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

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The world screams

The not-so-silent cry of a plundered planet

The wild rants of the rich and powerful

Shrouding silent screams of loneliness and fear

The soft sobbing of the abused, cowering

The whispered fear of children, wondering if today a shooter will come

The anguished pleas of the immigrant being kidnapped by ICE

The revelations of sexually abused young women, heard but not believed

The desperate and angry words of the person caught in poverty and injustice

 

We hear them

The suffering ones

But we do not hear the silent agony of the soul

That deep rending pain

That can only be hinted at

Dropped into the world half-formed 

 

Sometimes we are left speechless

We watch as evil people lie and manipulate

Belittle and bully

We hear fear disguised as patriotism

and prejudice portrayed as justice

We are overwhelmed by the hunger, the empty eyes,

Stunned by the bodies filling the doorways, sidewalks and underpasses

Because there is no room in the inn

 

But we cannot be silent

We must speak with

We must speak for

 

We must join our voices with others

And we must be the voice when all others are silent

We must respond to the silent agony

 

Hearing the words in the silence

Hearing the pain hidden in the hate-filled rants

The loneliness caught in the throat

The hopelessness unuttered

 

We must be a voice

Saying “This stops here”

“That is not the truth”

“There is hope”

“You are forgiven”

“You are loved”

 

Prophets all

We are called to proclaim God

To proclaim love

We are called to speak truth

 

And we are called to change the world

To claim and reclaim

To restore and transform

 

The arc of history may bend toward justice

Toward equity

Toward love

 

But only if we help bend it

You can't go back

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All freedom journeys require an open mind—a mind that is not conditioned by past knowledge and experience, but open to possibility. Questioning opens the doors of our imagination, enabling us to consider alternatives to the status quo. Unless one is capable of imagining another possible reality, one cannot free oneself from bondage.…

 

The compulsion to repeat the past is apparent in the biblical myth of the Exodus. When Moses led the Israelites to freedom, they often yearned to return to Egypt. Though they were miraculously provided for throughout their forty years of wandering in the desert, the Israelites were often nostalgic for the “good old (bad) days” in Egypt:.. “ They missed the predictability and sense of control they felt in Egypt—where everything was known. Though in actuality they were oppressed and enslaved by the Egyptians, the Israelites looked back on their time in Egypt with nostalgia because they could not bear the uncertainty they faced as a free people.

          Estelle Frankel

 

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

          Paul

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We seem to love the prisons we have created for ourselves

Even the tombs we have dug ourselves.

 

We prefer confinement to freedom

Safety to possibility

 

We do not trust the One who sets us free

But instead turn again and again to what enslaves us

The God (s) of our own making

 

Our God (s) are “that about which we are ultimately concerned” (Tillich)

We need only look at the systems we created

Economic, social, and political

To understand which ruler we have chosen.

 

The center of our worship is no longer the church or cathedral

We bow down in front of the corporate monument

We prostrate ourselves before gilded palaces and magnificent ballrooms

And whose image glares down at us

From the façade?

 

We may believe in God

But what gods shape our lives and determine our priorities

 

We are called by One who would set us free

Into uncertainty

We are called to let go of so much

The myth of exceptionalism

 

Or belief that progress is inevitable

The delusion that we can have it all

 

An ever-expanding economy

Universal prosperity

Healthy bodies

A healthy planet

 

We are called forward by a God who wants to lead us

To a new heaven and a new earth

 

But we are slaves

That is who we are

Slaves to an illusory past (that never really existed)

Slaves to the way of domination

Where might makes right a peace comes through coercion

 

Slaves to a belief that life is all about

Winners and losers

And that the one who dies with the most cryptocurrency

Wins

 

Our slavery is revealed

In the abuse of immigrants

The destruction of the planet

The worship of America, the global bully, yay!

The avoidance of uncomfortable truths  

The retreats (thanks, Team USA) into misogyny

The acceptance of the unacceptable, our protection of abusers

 

The wilderness is scary

Leaving slavery is harder than we believed

 

But somewhere out there

In a future we can’t understand

Somewhere out there

Amidst the rocks and thorns

And an infinite horizon

 

There are streams of living water

and the freedom

to live as children of God

to be loved

and to love