A Green Faith

I.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein.” These words open Psalm 24, and, as one of the psalms, we know that these words would have been sung and/or read in worship--certainly at Solomon’s great Temple in Jerusalem and maybe at other gatherings where people came together to praise God as their faith presuppositions would have motivated them to do.

As is often the case, however, we need to check up on translations and see which words were available to the translators in bringing specific words into English. We also have to see if the word chosen speaks with clarity and precision to a contemporary society in which the verse is used for inspiration and/or instruction. The internet makes these tasks possible for non-seminarians and for those who haven’t studied the original language in which a verse or passage was passed down to us.

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” or we could say “...and all that fills it”; “...the world and they who dwell therein.” Undoubtedly, we read that excerpt and hear it as if written by people and for people in our time; this is certainly not the case. The original Hebrews who heard this read and sung in worship were not planetary people in their understanding of the world. They knew little or nothing about the possibility of other planets. When we hear the word “earth,” except for a few instances where we might dress up the word “dirt” by trading it out with “earth,” we think Planet Earth. The ancient Hebrews didn’t hear that at all, and as far as we know had no real notion of what a planet is so let’s change the word “earth” in this verse to “land.” Keep in mind that the land was all gathered into one place according to their worldview and was an island, held up by columns that went down into the watery abyss under the land, the island-earth, to hold the land in place.

The land is the Lord’s and all that fills the land, the world and all who dwell therein. We have exactly the same challenge with the word “world.” We might think of the word, “world,” cosmically; the ancient Hebrews certainly did not. “World” in this stirring verse means “the inhabited land” or, perhaps, “the inhabitable land.”

The role of those who inhabit the land is not detailed here; that is not the subject of this verse. Here one of the several psalmists is making a faith affirmation about what she or he believes makes God praiseworthy. The land is the ground on which we walk; it belongs to the God who created it as does everything that fills the land. Similarly, the inhabitable land and all the inhabitants themselves belong also to God.

In order to make the Hebrew scriptures readable by those who long ago read Greek instead of Hebrew, and this was many years before Paul was busy trying to evangelize the Greek world--in fact, more than a hundred years before Jesus was born, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. That famous and important translation of the Hebrew Bible came to be called “the Septuagint.” In the Septuagint, the word chosen to translate what the Hebrews called “land” is ge, ground. It’s the Greek word from which the first part of our English word “geology” derived. Ge plus logos referred to the study of the ground and eventually much more than the ground alone. What the Hebrews had called “inhabitable land,” the Greeks chose for the Septuagint a word best translated as “economy,” meaning order, but obviously not economy in the sense of money, salaries, investments, and financial wellbeing or lack of same. If you read far enough down in the list of definitions for the word “economy” in your dictionary, you will eventually come to one like this as an option for defining the word: “the arrangement or mode of operation of something.” Thus, “The ground is the Lord’s and all that fills it, the divine economy or order and all who inhabit God’s order.”

One scholar says that modern science, knowing what it knows today about our planet, the planetary system, and the cosmos could legitimately look back and contemporize for today’s readers the word the Greeks translated as “economy” (oikoumene) as “biosphere.” In this scientific era, God’s order, where living entities live, is a or the biosphere.

It is our privilege and our responsibility to care for the biosphere and all who dwell therein on behalf of God, the owner--if you will. We are temporary tenants, and our responsibility is to pass along to those who take up our jobs after us a world that is at least as good as we found it and hopefully better. Having stated that, I will say out loud what many of you are thinking, “It’s been a long, long time since one generation of humans passed on to the next generation a healthier world than the one they inhabited.” This is to say, we in the human family have typically passed on to our descendants a biosphere whose health is significantly more compromised than it was when it fell to us to serve as its caretakers. Not good. Not sensible. Not forward thinking. Not logical. Not caring.

Words from the prophet Isaiah:

The earth dries up and withers, the world languished and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. The earth lies under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt.

And similar words from the prophet Ezekiel:

As for you, my flock... Is it not enough for you to feed on good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?

Very powerful, very penetrating questions put in the mouth of God Godself by the prophet. A paraphrase, mine: “As for you, my twenty-first century flock, ‘Is it not enough for you to have the most and the finest food available to any group of people yet to have lived in the divinely created biosphere? Must you have so little regard for those who will be left to provide food for themselves after you that you rob good and healthy food and provisions for food from them by trashing what has been so good to you? Is it not enough for you to drink pure water if you’re careful enough to find it? Must you leave no unpolluted water for those who will come after you?’” It’s astounding that these questions were first asked thousands of years ago, and we’re just about to make what they anticipated as responses reality by answering yes to all the earth-abuse questions asked so long ago.

All the way back in 1923, Havelock Ellis wrote a book titled The Dance of Life. What he wrote was prophetic in the same sense that biblical prophecy is prophetic; it’s a commonsense statement about what’s going to happen, usually something not good, if the people to whom the prophecy is directed refuse to change their ways. Havelock Ellis: “The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago...had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.” That was hardly high praise for beings created with the capacity to care for their environment. We have so much potential, we humans, and we have done such amazing things. Why is it that we keep ourselves in such a mess?

Gandhi who understood humanity extraordinarily well said, “There is a sufficiency in the world for humanity’s need but not for humanity’s greed.” Ouch!

It’s nice to remind ourselves from time to time that not all of our entertainers have the mentality of Charlie Sheen, and if Charlie’s behavior is related to a disease or disorder, I apologetically withdraw my barb. I am sick of hearing about Charlie, however. Some of our entertainers, and I really have no idea what the percentage is, make tremendously positive contributions to our nation and our world. They use their celebrity to better life for people in need and an environment in need. Robert Redford is one of those good guys. This is what he said about our environmental crisis, and I think it’s profoundly insightful: “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?”

Here’s a poem worth knowing and memorizing. The poet is Alan Eddison:

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.

II.

Two and a half months ago, the City of Brotherly Love, good ole Philly, was named by Forbes as the most toxic city in the United States. Lovely huh? Here’s a quote from Rhonda Abrams writing for “USA Today”:

Philadelphia, a U.S. capital during the Revolutionary War, is often known as the City of Brotherly Love. Yet it gets another, much less flattering moniker in a new scorecard of U.S. cities -- the “capital of toxicity.”

The Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro area, which includes parts of four states (Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland) ranks No. 1 on Forbes’ 2011 Most Toxic Cities list. The reason? It has more than 50 Superfund sites, which are unused areas containing hazardous wastes.

The second most toxic US city is Bakersfield, California. Third, Fresno, California. Fourth, New York, New York. Fifth, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Sixth, Los Angeles, California. Seventh, Houston, Texas. Eighth, St. Louis, Missouri. Ninth, Salt Lake City, Utah. Tenth, Riverside-San Bernardino, California.

I’m pretty sure George Carlin never expected to be quoted in an abundance of sermons, but this is Silverside Church! The poetic George Carlin:

Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.

I’m sure you want to know who’s at the other end of the spectrum, who’s getting this environmentalism thing correct. The LEAST toxic city in the United States is McAllen, Texas. I have no idea where that is. Maybe most people don’t know where it is, which would be why it’s so clean. The upstairs part of my house is the cleanest part of the house because my dogs and I don’t go up there. When we find out where it is, McAllen, Texas, I mean, I think we should give serious consideration to establishing a satellite Silverside out there, Silverside II. The pastor, that would be me, would spend a month here and a month there. There would be so many advantages. Just think! During the months I’d be gone, you could sing only those hymns you love to sing. Actually, that would be the only advantage. So few advantages to having me elsewhere; not even worth thinking about. Forget I mentioned it. So, to quell your curiosity, I looked up McAllen, Texas. It’s right at the southern tip of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley.

The second least toxic US city is Little Rock, Arkansas. Third, Raleigh, North Carolina. Fourth, Orlando, Florida. Fifth, Las Vegas, Nevada. (There are several different kinds of toxicity!) Sixth, Nashville, Tennessee. (I can’t believe it! Three hours from my home town!) Seventh, get this: Scranton, Pennsylvania. Eighth, Bradenton, Florida. Ninth, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (You go, Oral Roberts!) Tenth, Wichita, Kansas.

Let’s put this in a world context. Here are the top ten eco friendly cities in the world, but this time we’re going to count backward from 10 to 1. By the way, slightly different scorecards and a separate panel of evaluators determined the list of the world’s most eco friendly cities so none of the US cities on the “good” list I’ve just read appear on the list I’m about to present to you.

The tenth most eco friendly city in the world is Sydney, Australia. Ninth, Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. Eighth, San Francisco, California. Seventh, London, England. Sixth, Copenhagen, Denmark. Fifth, Vancouver, Canada. Fourth, Malmoe, Sweden. Third, Curitiba, Brazil. Second, Portland, Oregon. First, the most eco friendly city in the world: Reykjavik, Iceland.

Thankfully, this is not hand-wringing Sunday. Next Sunday is hand-wringing Sunday, just in case the predictors of Judgement Day were a day late with their projections. Just kidding, of course. What I want to say, seriously, is that there are many steps we can take to heal our damaged and much abused habitat. Greenworld.com insists that the most important step we can take is to fight global warming, and the very best way to do that is create tree plantations wherever we can. The dramatic reduction of forest space is one factor that has allowed the greenhouse effect to have such a negative impact on our dear Mother Earth.

In order to do something constructive about the increasing average temperature on Planet Earth, creating tree plantations takes the lead in combating the multiple problems of global warming for several reasons. One is that trees reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in our living space. Forests play a vital role in regulating water supplies; they help prevent water shortages during draught times, and they help control damages caused by floods. Trees help prevent soil erosion. Within a plantation of healthy growing trees, other plant life as well as animal life can flourish to the advantage of the environment.

Obviously, ditching our dependency on oil can help to revitalize the health of our environment in a big way--and as a side benefit, oh, get rid of one of the primary causes of war that few people in power will admit to. People don’t have to acknowledge a fact to make it true, though. It’s true.

Recycling is essential. We have to reuse everything we possibly can, and we should make our preferences known by how we spend our money. Don’t buy products that are sold in eco-damaging wrapping materials. David Wann wrote: “The packaging for a microwavable dinner is programmed for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries.”

Humorist and satirist, the late Art Buchwald, wasn’t trying to be funny at all when he wrote:

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place, and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: “Look at this Godawful mess.”

The Greenhouse Crisis Foundation in DC began publishing a list of 101 ways to heal the environment back in 1989. You can look up the whole list if you wish, but I’ll tick off the top 20 suggestions:

Number one. Become an active, permanent part of Silverside Church. Oops. Wrong list, but still a GREAT idea.

1. Insulate your home.

2. Buy energy-efficient appliances.

3. Caulk and weatherstrip doors and windows.

4. Install storm windows.

5. Close off unused areas in your home from heat and air conditioning.

6. Wear warm clothing and turn down winter heat.

7. Switch to low-wattage or fluorescent light bulbs.

8. Turn off all lights that don't need to be on.

9. Use cold water instead of hot whenever possible.

10. Opt for small-oven or stovetop cooking when preparing small meals.

11. Run dishwashers only when full.

12. Set refrigerators to 38°F, freezers to 5°F, no colder.

13. Run clothes washers full, but don't overload them.

14. Use moderate amounts of biodegradable detergent.

15. Air-dry your laundry when possible.

16. Clean the lint screen in clothes dryers.

17. Instead of ironing, hang clothes in the bathroom while showering.

18. Take quick showers instead of baths.

19. Install water-efficient showerheads and sink-faucet aerators.

20. Install an air-assisted or composting toilet.

The Health and Environment Alliance headquartered in Brussels has released this statement: “From asthma and allergies, diabetes and reproductive problems to cancer and obesity, environmental degradation plays a role.” Shocking! In an interview with “The Ecologist,” Genon Jenson, the executive director of the Health and Environment Alliance, said:

I think we would move a lot more quickly and do a lot more on environmental problems if we engaged citizens and the health community on the health side of the issues. That is why I set up the Health and Environment Alliance. It’s not about saving the planet. It’s a question of saving our health. I think the planet will continue to exist, the real question is what kind of quality of life humans will have.

Since money talks, let’s look at the financial benefits of a healthier environment. Ms. Jenson again:

If we commit to a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the current 20 per cent, we can save almost 60 per cent more in healthcare in the EU. That, in a way, speaks very loudly to those involved in climate change--not only environmentalists, but also to the climate negotiators who need to detail how much it will cost to commit to emissions reductions. We are saying it will cost much less, because of the public health savings that the government--and the people--are going to reap.

Whatever would benefit the EU in this regard would benefit us too!

III.

From a Unitarian clergyperson by the name of the Reverend Fred Small:

Automobile fuel economy is an environmental issue. But when our dependence on cheap gasoline drives a tanker aground and the spreading slick deprives an Inuit family of seal meat, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Recycling is an environmental issue. But when a Chicago woman who's never smoked cigarettes gets lung cancer from breathing fumes from an incinerator burning recyclable trash, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Deforestation is an environmental issue. But when tree root systems no longer hold soil in place and a mud slide sweeps away a peasant village, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Energy conservation is an environmental issue. But when our tax dollars subsidize prison construction instead of green job training that could keep at-risk teens out of prison, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

Climate change is an environmental issue. But when people on the island nation of Tuvalu must abandon their homeland before it's swallowed by the sea, that's an issue of justice and compassion.

As we awake to the dangers of global warming, we realize that our profligate use of fossil fuels offends our most fundamental religious precepts.

Every religious tradition teaches us to hold sacred the wonders of creation, yet wantonly we desecrate them.

Every religious tradition cautions us to temper our cravings for sensation and material things, yet we pursue them addictively, vainly hoping to fill our spiritual emptiness.

Every religious tradition forbids theft, yet global warming steals from our children and our children's children. Its victims are and will be disproportionately poor and of color—those least able to contend with or to flee the storms, droughts, famines, and rising sea levels to come.

People of faith take the long view. We know that a community survives and thrives not merely in space but also through time, extending backward through memory and tradition and forward through vision and legacy.

When I was a young preacher, I was intrigued (I guess that would be the best way to describe how I felt) with the man who called himself “the Chaplain of Bourbon Street,” the Reverend Bob Harrington. With that title, you might well expect that the guy was on the flamboyant side of things ministerial. At that point, I had absolutely no hint or desire ever to live in New Orleans--though I surely did love it once I got there!

During my years in New Orleans, Harrington had fallen into disfavor with a large number of people, including many of his former supporters, because he was traveling around having debates with the famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. He, of course, was speaking for Christian believers and she for atheists. I don’t recall how the beans were spilled, but their debates were exposed as staged. It was all a sham, and both of them were making money from their fake debates. In reality, they’d become buddies. He lost his high public approval rating, and the debates were only parts of what was really going on. No one is perfect, except for several members and friends of Silverside Church of course, but “Brother Bob” was shown by the press to be doing everything he preached against. Many years later he got his life back on track and went back to his work in the French Quarter.

Before he fell from grace, as it were, I got to hear this famous preacher in person at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium. He had lots of jokes, mostly canned stuff, but funny enough if you’d never heard them. He asked the packed auditorium if anyone there had a red Bible; anyone who had one, he asked that the person hold it up for everyone to see. No one raised a Bible; nowadays, many folks get colored Bibles. Back in those days, they were rare. Anyway, he said, “No red Bibles here? Not a one of you have READ your Bible? Shame on you.” Ha. Ha. Ha.

Now, there is such a thing as a GREEN Bible. It isn’t all green in color, but it is made of environmentally friendly materials; some editors have gone through the whole Bible, and every passage that they regarded as related to environmentalism was printed in green ink. I bought one the second I heard about it, and I really enjoy it. Sad to say, many copies of the Bible printed since Gutenberg are neither earth nor animal friendly. Ironic huh? Why did it take so long for someone to notice and to care?

Solar energy is a wonderful thing, and I’m so proud of our church’s spiritual and financial investment in it. It seems like such a new thing, but the truth is it was around a long time being ignored. Going all the way back to 1980, Ralph Nader said, “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.”

This is how a fairly new translation of the Bible, the Common English Bible, renders the story of the creation of humanity in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. The second chapter of Genesis, as you may know, has a different order for the creation process, but our concern for today is with the teaching of chapter one--a very beautiful selection from Hebrew mythology. This is a record of God’s activity on the sixth day of creation:

God said, “Let the earth produce every kind of living thing: livestock, crawling things, and wildlife.” And that’s what happened. God made every kind of wildlife, every kind of livestock, and every kind of creature that crawls on the ground. God saw how good it was. Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.” God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and everything crawling on the ground.” Then God said, “I now give to you all the plants on the earth that yield seeds and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. These will be your food. To all wildlife, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything crawling on the ground--to everything that breathes--I give all the green grasses for food.” And that’s what happened. God saw everything [divinely] made: it was supremely good.

Not only is there a wonderful equality between female and male the way Genesis 1 tells the story, but also there is a wonderful circle of life theme in the whole of creation. There is absolutely no way to read acceptability of environmental abuse into this vitally important passage from the Hebrew Bible. Marye Mannes, “The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.”

God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish and the birds, land animals, crawling things, and the earth itself.” Remember that “earth” in the Bible doesn’t refer to the planet, but to the land.

This business of “taking charge” of all living things and the land itself has nothing whatsoever to do with being the big bosses whom everything else exists to serve. “Taking charge” in this context would have a meaning similar to “taking charge” of caring for a child; there is no suggestion that if the child displeases you, you have the right to abuse her or him. Certainly, there is no suggestion that if the child fails to do what brings something selfishly good for you, you have the right to neglect the child. “Taking charge” is taking charge as in stepping up to the plate and exhibiting the care, protection, and growth needed by all parts of the created order including the earth, the land, itself.

Same thing with this imperative: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it.” “Mastering” the created order isn’t showing it who’s the boss; it’s mastering the skills needed to provide the nurture required so all parts of creation are sustained. They last, and they pass into the hands of caring future generations.

Amen.

In Praise of Modern Moms

The Late Barbara Billingsly as June Cleaver on "Leave It to Beaver"

I.

The world continues to change and modernize at breakneck speed and with it the roles of all people--at work, at school, and at home. Technology has taken away the need for some jobs and created the need for many new ones previously unimagined. Didn’t the last Western Union telegram transmitter retire several years ago? I think it was in early 2006. There’s very little need for the once-essential telegram in our high tech age even though many of you probably sent or received a hand-delivered telegram that changed your life. Now, with email and house phones and cell phones, there is seldom the need to send a telegram; there are still a couple of companies that claim to offer the service, mostly it seems, in low-tech parts of the world. Anyway, you get my point.

In contrast, solar panel manufacturers and installers are new jobs that we need for the welfare of the planet. Some people are just now finding out about solar panels even though the technology is in its second, maybe third, generation. New job, new roles, ever-new world.

Roles at home have changed too, but what has not changed is the need for, the benefit of attentive parents who love their children with joy and abandon. Naturally, today we look at this matter in the context of Mother’s Day.

It’s much tougher to be a kid today in most places around the world, and that is one reason it’s tougher to be a Mom today. The two other major reasons Motherhood has changed in terms of role, not function, in the western world are the cultural movement that had the nickname, “women’s liberation,” AND economic pressures and demands.

It should be evident to you that I am not and never have been a Mother, though as most of you know I was a single Dad from the time my sons were 8 and 10 years old--one of the great privileges of my life. Because of this, one of my church members in Baltimore who was a single Mom used to send me a Mother’s Day card, though never a frilly silk night gown with matching house shoes. I’d return the favor on Father’s Day by sending her a Father’s Day card and one of the finest imported cigars to be found in Baltimore. On one level our annual exchanges were little jokes, but like many jokes there was a kernel of truth involved. Though we laughed about it, I have to confess that as someone trying to fill roles of both a father and a mother, the remembrance meant something to me.

My ex-wife who decided that neither I nor rearing children were her cup of te...quila is a lovely woman with many gifts and fine personal qualities. Dwelling within the land of reality isn’t one of them. OK. OK. Let me get by with one tacky comment this month. She really is pretty and effervescent; if you met her, you’d immediately like her much more than you like me...for a week or two. I know, so make it two tacky comments this month, and that’s my limit. Well, three; there’s one more. We haven’t been in touch much since the divorce was finalized 15 or 16 years ago; usually we see each other at events of concern to the boys. That works out fine. One day, a few years ago, however, she did phone me about something. I have no recollection whatsoever why, but I do recall that during the conversation she began to reflect on the “why” of our separation, and she said, “I’m tired of feeling guilty because I stopped being June Cleaver.” I bit my tongue, kept absolutely quiet, and let her continue with her reflection. The whole time, though, I was in near-disbelief, but bursting to say, “Oh, honey. You were never a June Cleaver so live your life guilt free.” Nonetheless, I honor her today as the mother of my children whom I adore, and I look back to the early years, when we both were on the same page about bringing up the boys and loving the day to day joys of being a family in which everyone was valued by the others and the children’s challenges and adventures were of paramount importance to both of us.

Some of you will remember the television character, June Cleaver, played wonderfully by Barbara Billingsly on the top-ranked television show of my childhood, “Leave It to Beaver.” June Cleaver was the perfect 1960’s mother, the ideal parallel to the perfect t.v. father, Robert Young in “Father Knows Best.”

June was a stay at home Mom. She kept a lovely, spotless home. She cooked all the meals, and they were never less than delicious. Despite that hard work, she was always immaculately dressed in a dress or a skirt and blouse; there might have been a few pairs of elegant slacks worked into her wardrobe, but I don’t remember them. She was unflappable, even with two sons who got into more than their share of trouble. She was calm and warm and understanding and patient. She was ever-forgiving and had the requisite maternal ESP. She loved her hardworking husband, Ward, and the highlight of her day was when Ward got home from work. She gathered her husband and sons around a beautifully set table ready to present the meal, the preparation of which she’d devoted a significant part of her day.

Everybody wanted June Cleaver for a mother, or, rather, everyone wanted a mother who had all of June’s qualities. I read and heard interviews with Barbara Billingsly across the years, and she spoke of how she would get fan mail from mothers in her viewing audience seeking her advice on how to handle a real-life motherhood challenge.

Not many modern Moms with children still at home can live up to June Cleaver’s standard, and maybe June couldn’t be June if she were a Mom in the real modern world. There are new demands and expectations. Again, I say that the number one reason the roles of Mothers have changed is because of new sets of cultural demands and expectations on their children. While I’m trying to defend Mothers who couldn’t do the traditional Mother thing for whatever reason, I’m also criticizing many Mothers who along with many Fathers have contributed to some of these new demands on kids. Every child today has to be in training for something related to the arts or sports or both before they are as tall as the bat they’re expected to use or before they can hold and manipulate a musical instrument crafted to its true size so we get mini-violins, mini-cellos, and mini-drum sticks.

I’m certainly not opposed to giving kids opportunities to enjoy and gain skills in a sport; I am opposed to the vicious tension related to competitiveness drilled into the heads of little girls and little boys from teeball on. I am absolutely in favor of giving a child who wants it the gift of music; some few of them will know as soon as they begin to play the instrument that, “This is my life,” but all too many of them are pushed along by parents who want successful children so that they, the parents, can receive acclaim as the ones with the vision to get their kids into music at an early age so that they can manage and use for themselves the money that their prodigy-children earn with their extraordinary talent. I could mention Leopold Mozart, Joe Jackson, and a long list of stage Moms who help their children become famous as they help them lose childhood too.

In some of the apocryphal literature about Jesus--that is the literature about Jesus, among others, which was omitted by those who decided what would be in the Bible and what would have to go (Catholics and Protestants coming out differently on end results)--there are stories about little boy Jesus already having supernatural powers and using them to entertain his friends and to kill off bullies. What if those had been historic accounts? They aren’t, of course, but what if they were? And Mary and Joseph had decided to market the powers of little Jesus to their financial advantage? That would make them wealthy, perhaps, and their son famous! Jesus’ whole life could have turned out differently starting with his desire for the spotlight and his preference for rubbing elbows with the higher ups in society. There likely would have been no special attention to the poor and the needy and the struggling; his male and female inner circles wouldn’t have been seen by him as coworkers and fellow-laborers, but rather as members of his entourage whose jobs would have been to keep him happy and looking good.

Mary wouldn’t have been running around telling people in reference to Jesus, “My son means well, but he’s a little crazy,” which we are told in the Gospels that she did. Instead, she’d have been pushing Jesus to be in the public eye more and more, doing what thrilled the people--namely feeding them and healing them--so they’d keep coming back for more, and the baskets being passed around wouldn’t have been food baskets making sure hungry folk were fed, but rather baskets for collecting money to make her rich and famous as the Mother of the prodigy. Instead of keeping all of Jesus’ traits that amazed her silently in her heart and pondering them there, she’d have been on the interview and scroll-writing circuit too at the expense of her firstborn child’s childhood.

II.

Are Canadian Mothers more stressed than American Mothers these days? An article by journalist Erin Anderssen certainly gives the feel that that’s the case. I hope she’s a Mother, or else I don’t think she has the right to write on Motherhood the way she has. While making some very valid, some very important points about modern Mothers, she clearly thinks of Mother’s Day as primarily a day when Mothers stop to say, “I am MOTHER, hear me roar,” rather than a day for honoring our mothers whether or not we ourselves happen to be Moms.

Oh, to be free of the guilt, the worry, the hand-wringing! No more waking up in the middle of the night fretting about forgotten homework. No more calculating the sodium content on a cereal box. No more planning weekends of “enrichment” while eating lunch at your desk. Just this week, researchers warned that children who don’t have family dinners get fat – heartening news to working parents in this country. (The research was unclear on whether sandwiches in the car speeding to soccer practice count as a family meal; let’s assume, this being Mother’s Day weekend, that they do.) But then, as the growing mound of “science” tells us, the misguided Mom has already doomed her child to a beer belly, or depression or violence, or long years on a couch in the basement. Who can blame the Modern Mom for fantasizing about breezy afternoons sipping martinis on the patio with absolutely no idea what her kids are up to. As one 1970s Mom reminisced this week, the conversation used to go something like, “My kid’s a brat. What do you do with your brat?” Today, there are no “brats,” except the ones we whisper about.

So along comes Mother’s Day, a day upon which most women, when surveyed, desire neither flowers nor pancakes in bed, but a break from being Mothers. Who can blame them? Mother-bashing has a long history, but never has the sniping felt so ubiquitous, the advice so dire and conflicting, both inside the Mom circle and beyond. Judging Mothers is not just permissible these days, it’s obligatory, as if a spanking will bring us all around. “We have one day to celebrate Mothers, and then we lay a trip on them the rest of the year,” observes Gillian Ranson, a sociologist at the University of Calgary. In other words, the roses are nice, but they come with (apron) strings attached.

But before you poke your eye out with the pencil that you are currently using to complete your daughter’s science project, here’s some consolation: the Mommy wars may yet shift in our weary favour. Demographics are on our side. More women are becoming the primary breadwinners in Canada – that was the case for three in 10 families in 2004, even before the recession gutted many male-dominated industries. The next crop of Moms, busily surpassing their future husbands in university degrees and ambition, are unlikely to accept the lion’s share of the laundry burden – and more men taking paternity leave suggests fewer Dads willing to be demoted to “assistant” in their children’s lives.

There will be a Father’s Day sermon next month so we will leave those thoughts for the moment and get to two biblical images, among a fairly long list, of inspiration about motherhood.

The first of the two deals with the maternal qualities of God Godself, and take into account what a stretch, perhaps a risk, it was for a writer in a decidedly patriarchal collection of cultures to dare to write of God as having maternal qualities. Well, Third Isaiah dared to do it. We have one biblical book called Isaiah, but there were materials from three different Isaiahs living in very different times from each other whose works were eventually collected onto a single huge scroll called Isaiah. In Isaiah 66:13, Third Isaiah puts these words in the mouth of God speaking to beleaguered Jews, downtrodden and feeling hopeless: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”

Some anti-female biblical interpreters, and there are probably more of them in the world than there are biblical interpreters who fully affirm women, say that God has chosen to speak in this manner because the Hebrew/Jewish men in ancient times didn’t exhibit softer, gentler emotions, which in the eyes of some make them look weak. Thus, say these anti-female scholars, the image of God as female is only used because the people to whom Isaiah wrote would have no understanding of a big butch God who exhibited emotions such as comfort; that was woman’s work, if you will. Really!?

Scholars who say such things either aren’t really scholars, like those predicting the end of time and judgement day in less than two weeks, or they intentionally ignore the obvious. There were plenty of Hebrew scripture daddies who doted over their children. Isaiah didn’t have to manufacture a feminine, maternal motif to give God a means of offering comfort to those regarded as children of God. If comforting those who hurt made God maternal, well, I have to tell you, God was very much maternal. Thinking of God only in masculine, patriarchal ways devoid of sympathy and profound concern for all people is to miss the whole of the message about God in both Hebrew and Christian scripture. It was clearly Isaiah’s God who said, “Children, I am your mother, and I’m going to comfort you when you are discouraged and afraid.” God, our mother.

King Solomon, son of King David, making Solomon the third King of Israel in its history, was--according to legend--an exceptionally wise man. Was his great wisdom connected to genetics, or was his relational life so enriching that he had remarkable dual hemisphere brain functioning, making him one of the wisest people in ancient times? What I mean is, King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Did that enhance his wisdom? The poor Mormon guy on the recently ended television show, “Big Love,” had three wives and I think briefly a fourth; and he just about went nuts trying to keep everybody happy. Well, you can form your own opinions about why Solomon was such a smart guy.

The biblical writer who most wanted to stress and illustrate Solomon’s wisdom, told this phenomenal story. While he was in power, he alone was the supreme court. If lower level authorities couldn’t settle disputes to the satisfaction of all involved, the cases got kicked up to the King himself.

So, the story goes that two women claimed to be the mother of the same child. There were no DNA tests, of course, and evidently the father of the child was no where to be found so the truth rested somewhere in the testimony of one of these women; one was telling the truth, and the other was lying. Women who want children and can’t have their own have been known right in our own day to steal a child from her or his biological mother. Anyway, what was the wise King to do?

He ordered one of his security guards with a huge sword in hand to cut the baby into two equal parts and give each claimant one of the halves. Immediately, the true mother said, “I lied. The baby is hers. Send the baby home with her, and I’ll accept whatever punishment I must for having lied to the King.” Solomon, of course, never had any intention of harming the infant, but he knew that the true mother would do anything not to have the child harmed, even if it meant letting him be taken by someone else to raise. I love that biblical Mom!

III.

I think good Moms have always had to be adaptable, and I believe that remains very much the case for today’s Mothers so I have taken that word, “adaptable,” and used it as an acrostic to describe characteristics of a successful modern Mother.

The first letter, the first A, in the word “adaptable” stands for “AWED.” I see the most successful modern Mothers as having some kind of spiritual searching going on in their lives or some kind of spiritual foundation on which they feel some grounding.

What I have in mind has nothing to do with any set of doctrines or any religion. An effective modern Mother may only be able to think of God, in Karen Armstrong’s words, as the Great Mystery, may only be able to conceive of God as the collective sparks of divinity that rest in all humans. She knows there is something more to life than what we can see; she may have no idea what that “something more” is, but she is AWED at the prospects; she instills in her children the freedom to search for that “something more.”

The AWE may come from something like Patricia Barrett describes: “Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.”

The “D” in “adaptable” reminds us that effective modern Moms are DILIGENT in the practice of parenting. They should get breaks; they need breaks, but they never stop being Mother to their child or children. Motherhood has nothing at all to do with what is casual or happenstance. Strong Mothers do not sit back simply hoping that the wind will always blow their children in the best directions.

Good Mothers, and I’m very grateful that most of the Mothers I know personally are good Mothers; good Mothers catch on very quickly that in additions to all the joys and all the richness that accompany the privilege of being a parent, there is much hard work. That work changes over time as the child matures. The early maternal sleep deprivation needed to tend to a baby’s needs day and night gives way to practicing basic first aid skills. Then, along comes the work required to help a child learn to socialize effectively while understanding the critical capacities for staying safe at every level. Don’t walk too near the street, and don’t ever give strangers your name. These are just beginning points.

A high quality modern Mom is APPROACHABLE; the second A in the word “adaptable” has us thinking about how important it is for a Mother to be APPROACHABLE where her children are concerned. The groundwork for this is laid in very early childhood where a child learns that her or his questions and needs are not secondary to anything and everything else a Mother might be doing.

Not being able to interrupt an important phone call or refusing to allow a child to butt in to a conversation in which the Mother is already engaged are not signals to a child that her or his Mother is now and will forever be unapproachable; however, if the Mother always seems to have something more important to do than stop and give her child her undivided attention, then the child will learn that Mom is not approachable.

My Mom used to say to my sister and brother and me from time to time, “Please don’t out and get in trouble, but if you do you hurry right home and tell your Daddy me. We may not be pleased with what you did, but we love you; and we’re going to help you.”

The P causes us to keep in mind that a great Mom is PROTECTIVE of her children. There’s a difference between “protective” and “over protective,” and we’re talking about PROTECTIVE here. The potential dangers to children are unprecedented in our high tech world. A Mother, a parent, must be PROTECTIVE. There is no environment in which children are automatically safe. Some children are not safe in their own homes. Some children are not safe at their churches or in their schools. Some children are not safe spending the night with a friend.

We can’t leave our children in the care of any person or group unless we know those into whose care we entrust them. As children grow up, they become annoyed and get embarrassed that their Mother is so nosy about every place they want to go and which friends they want to hang out with. Sad to say, nosiness may be the only thing that keeps a kid safe--away from those who would do them physical harm, who would draw them into the world illegal drugs and drug addiction, who would steal them from their parents and put them to work as street or internet prostitutes.

Effective Mothers are TRUSTWORTHY. You don’t tell your child one thing and do another. You don’t make promises to your children that you don’t keep; same for Fathers, but this is Mother’s Day. My impression is that children who find their parents untrustworthy will find trusting others for the rest of their lives difficult or impossible. That’s a serious wound--a very serious wound because ultimately to get along in this world we have to trust at least a few key people.

Steve Kroening makes three excellent points about what happens to kids whose parents break commitments they have made to their children. First, this behavior teaches the children that it’s ok to do what they see their parents doing so from there on out those kids who become teens and then adults still believe it’s ok to make commitments and not honor them. Second, breaking commitments made to children steals their hope; world events and circumstances make it hard enough to hope in this world. Third, and this is the worst, breaking commitments made to children teaches them that they don’t matter.

An effective modern Mom is AUTONOMOUS; she is an independent woman. She doesn’t lose herself in the relationships in which she is involved, even in her relationship with her children. When I think of adult relational autonomy, I think of self care. To use an overused example, on a plane, just before takeoff, the flight attendant lists steps to take in case of unforeseen developments. If the cabin pressure drops, oxygen masks automatically drop, and parents or other adults responsible for children are told to get their oxygen first and then make sure the child gets her or his oxygen. The two most obvious reasons for this are that the child needs less oxygen than an adult and that if the adult konks out she or he will not be able to care for the child.

An AUTONOMOUS Mother, if she is married or partnered, doesn’t take orders from partner or spouse. Couples who love each other negotiate--some more loudly than others. An AUTONOMOUS mother also does not take orders from her children; she honors their respectful requests. She can only be the best Mom she can be when she is clearly the master of her own fate.

I think a successful modern Mom is BOLD. When I use the word “BOLD” here, I have in mind appropriate assertiveness. There are too many bullies and too much red tape in which any one of us can get lost in this country, in this world. Those best able to be heard and seen are those who speak up for themselves or who have someone to speak up for them, a parent for a child; a friend or relative for someone who is ill.

When someone does you wrong, you don’t need to burn down a house, but you should let the person know that you’re not pleased with it; and by the way it had better not happen again. Children can only learn to be bold and assertive by observing their parents being appropriately assertive or by watching “Judge Judy” every week day afternoon, of course.

There will come that day, joyfully anticipated by some and thoroughly dreaded by others, when the kids will leave home and work toward independence at all levels of adulthood elsewhere. The best skill that can be packed up and taken along is a comfortable BOLDNESS learned by observing Mom or Dad.

The best Moms are LOVING Moms. One wonders if the words “Mom” or “Mother” can or should be used for one who births a child only to be unwilling or incapable of showing the child any love. Maternal LOVE is both a necessity and a given. A Mother doesn’t have to work to LOVE a child; a Mother can’t help LOVING her child, and in many, many cases a Mother would or has put her own life on the line for the wellbeing of her child.

Great American novelist, Washington Irving, wrote: “A Mother is the truest friend we have. When trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavour by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”

LOVE does not, cannot forsake. I have visited a few people in prison--friends, church members, and so on; in those lines for visitation, I believe I have seen more mothers lined up to see an incarcerated child than visitors of any other stripe.

A great Mom is an ENCOURAGING Mom. ENCOURAGEMENT isn’t the same as love; some loving Mothers don’t have it in them, don’t know how, to ENCOURAGE. Perhaps they lacked paternal ENCOURAGEMENT in their growing up years. These are Mothers who seem never to be able to celebrate an achievement with her child or say to a discouraged child, “Go out there, and try again; I know you can do it, and I’m behind you all the way.”

Kids of all ages, you might do well to remember that Mothers need encouragement too. As time moves on, you may well do much for your Mother that she, somewhere along the way, did for you. One thing you cannot do for her, however, is to give her life the way she gave life to you.

Amen.

Marc Chagall, "Moses and the Burning Bush"

I.

Historians of American constitutional development report that the original version of the Constitution was believed, by those who wrote it and endorsed the content of what had been written, to have contained absolute clarity about the protection of the rights of Americans. Not everyone agreed. In fact, there was a stir because specific freedoms were not specifically articulated so that, as the first critics demanded, there could be no room whatsoever for misunderstanding the full freedoms the founders and framers intended for every American to exercise as she or he saw fit. Assumptions, in other words, were both inadequate and potentially dangerous. So, why allow for the possibility of ambiguity when with a little more ink the details could be spelled out?

We have a nation in 1776, but we do not have a full-fledged Constitution. In 1787, when the presumed final draft of the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, it was largely not embraced for the reason I’ve just stated.

The first rumbles of rejection came from Patrick Henry and Virginia insisting that the specific rights and freedoms of the American people must be specified in writing. Other states demanded that a Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution, and some few states ratified the Constitution provisionally, withholding full support until the freedoms of American citizens were enumerated. There must have been some forebears of present Silverside members in the midst of that process, which explains why we here handle constitutional issues so comfortably and so gracefully. More on that subject later--much, much, much later, I hope.

So, the Constitution before having been fully accepted, fully ratified was already being amended, and the first ten amendments to the Constitution came to be called “The Bill of Rights.” Authored and presented by James Madison, in final form, the rights begin with the freedom of and conversely the freedom from religion then moves quickly to deal with freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly along with the right for the individual citizen to petition the government about whatever concerns she or he may have.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Right now, for the sake of completion, but without comment, I’ll tick off the other nine rights or freedoms belonging to Americans, but I will come back to the freedom of religion because I think it may be the one most threatened in our country today

The second, is the right to form a militia to protect a free state and with it the rights of individuals to bear arms.

The third right gave owners of homes the right to permit or disallow troops to be housed and fed in the homes of these private citizens during war time.

The fourth right is protection from unreasonable search and seizure of one’s home or property.

The fifth freedom guarantees someone accused of breaking a law due process including the assurance that no citizen may be tried for the same crime twice if the death penalty is a possible or probable punishment in the event of a guilty verdict. The citizen is free not to incriminate herself or himself, and a citizen may not have her or his land and any buildings on that land taken for official use unless she or he be compensated justly.

The sixth freedom guarantees a citizen accused of some crime the right to a speedy trial, presided over and heard by an impartial judge in the setting of a public trial and the right to competent legal counsel.

The seventh freedom the Bill of Rights guarantees is that some of those who have been charged with a wrong in place of judge only a trial by jury presided over by a fair and competent judge.

The eighth freedom ensures that any bail that is set for someone held in custody cannot be excessive, and if the court finds a citizen guilty the punishment may not be cruel and unusual.

The ninth right or freedom: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In other words, the list of ten may be broad-based and thoughtful, but may not be comprehensive. There may be related freedoms to which we are entitled not described in particular.

The tenth amendment to the Constitution-right-out-of-the-gate was: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” States by the confines of their own laws and federal laws, constitutional laws, have the right to shape themselves. If states want to kill off their citizens with unbridled pollution, to a large measure they have that freedom. Similarly, if a state wants to embrace a state board of education that wishes to have blatant lies written and published as fact in textbooks used by the children in the public schools of that state they have the freedom to do that. In no time at all religiously skeptical deists like Thomas Jefferson who, despite his great skills in statesmanship and understanding of how freedom might or might now work on a large scale and who held slaves having a long time sexual relationship with at least one of his female slaves, can be turned into a rightwing Bible-believing, Bible-toting Christian in conservative churches every Sunday screaming out, “Amen,”and, “Praise the Lord,” every time the preacher pleased him. No, friends, this wasn’t Jefferson at all--the guy who edited out most of Hebrew and Christian scripture to create his own very limited version of the Bible. In Texas, if the state Board of Education has its way, and they do have the freedom to do this, Jefferson can be written up in the textbooks the state is willing to purchase as the rightwing fundamentalist Christian I’ve just described who looks more and sounds more like the typically ill-informed Mike Huckaby than THE Thomas Jefferson.

A majority of early Americans wanted stipulations of freedoms in writing, not just in the hearts of well-intentioned elected leaders or in the hearts and minds of every citizen. Don’t answer this now, but you can answer it if you like in Sermon Talk Back: if you had to give up one of these ten freedoms, which one would it be?

Johann Neen has been writing about the facts that many US Americans are worried that the so-called Christian heritage of the United States is being threatened all over the place and in all kinds of ways, some obvious and some subtle. Neen says that even if this supposed threat is more a matter of perception than a matter of fact, there has been sufficient fear to mobilize influential and powerful religious leaders and well placed politicians to begin loudly questioning the wisdom of the first amendment to the Constitution: should there really be separation of church and state? The rightwing hardliners, religious or not, are saying that this principle really doesn’t work and should be reversed or undone so that our democracy becomes a theocracy. However, and listen to Neen very carefully on this point: “In challenging the separation of church and state today, many American Christians are threatening America’s Christian heritage.” Catch it, and carry it home with you; it is the contemporary Christians themselves are becoming the most threatening enemies of our nation’s Christian heritage.

II.

Maybe you’ve heard of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. It is an

independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. USCIRF's principal responsibilities are to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress.

On this past Friday, April 29, released its annual report of CPS’s: countries of particular concern in the religious abuse department. Most of countries on this year’s report are repeat offenders; at least one is glaringly new. Here’s the list: Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. This year has been the first year in the existence of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom that Egypt has been on the list of countries of particular concern.

USCIRF Chairperson, Leonard Leo, said in a press release:

CPC’s are nations whose conduct marks them as the world’s worst religious freedom violators and human rights abusers. In the case of Egypt, instances of severe religious freedom violations engaged in or tolerated by the government have increased dramatically since the release of last year’s report, with violence, including murder, escalating against Coptic Christians and other religious minorities. Since President Mubarak’s resignation from office in February, such violence continues unabated without the government’s bringing the perpetrators to justice. Consequently, USCIRF recommends CPC designation for Egypt.

There is also a “watch list” of countries under suspicion, but not yet on the list: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

The Cornell University Law School has a Legal Information Institute, which recently published this startling news:

More than one-half of the world’s population lives under regimes that severely restrict or prohibit the freedom of their citizens to study, believe, observe, and freely practice the religious faith of their choice. Religious believers and communities suffer both government-sponsored and government-tolerated violations of their rights to religious freedom. Among the many forms of such violations are state-sponsored slander campaigns, confiscations of property, surveillance by security police, including by special divisions of “religious police,” severe prohibitions against construction and repair of places of worship, denial of the right to assemble and relegation of religious communities to illegal status through arbitrary registration laws, prohibitions against the pursuit of education or public office, and prohibitions against publishing, distributing, or possessing religious literature and materials. More abhorrent, religious believers in many countries face such severe and violent forms of religious persecution as detention, torture, beatings, forced marriage, rape, imprisonment, enslavement, mass resettlement, and death merely for the peaceful belief in, change of or practice of their faith. In many countries, religious believers are forced to meet secretly, and religious leaders are targeted by national security forces and hostile mobs.

So are these scary acts of religious persecution limited to the big bad countries on watch dog watch lists? You know very well that this is not the case. There is religious persecution on our continent as well, especially in the United States and Canada. In most cases, perhaps, death of violators is not involved or, at least, unintended; still, the government gets involved in limited ways to block certain religious practices, usually out of a concern for the well-being of participants who may not understand the risks they are being asked to take when they follow the teachings of a group or a cult leader.

When I was in college about a hundred years ago, there was a freedom of religion fight going on a ways up from Knoxville, in Newport, Tennessee, which had become a kind of regional headquarters for literalists who zeroed in on literally living out what they took to be proofs of true personal faith, which happen to be listed in what scholars call the “longer ending of the Gospel of Mark,” an ending appended to the original odd ending as the author or authors left it. This is how the writer or writers of Mark’s Gospel intended for their little literary masterpiece to end:

As [the women who had gone to anoint Jesus’ body] entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

What a magnificent ending, literarily and theologically! But the later handlers couldn’t leave it be. They wanted a more dramatic ending, one that they thought would draw more people into the movement. This is PART of what they came up with, adding to Mark’s original masterful and mysterious ending:

Later [Jesus, in his transitional body] appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; will speak in new tongues; will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The devout folk in the Newport area were especially focused on snake handling. If, in a religious service, someone handled a poisonous snake, and the snake didn’t bite her or him, that was a low-level sign of “advanced faith.” If, the snake bit, however, and they lived, that was the sign of the height of faith; if the snake bit you, and you died your faith was weak. Too bad there was no more opportunity to work on strengthening that faith.

The government was trying to make snake handling in worship illegal, and the Newport snake handlers were fighting back. My college philosophy professor came to class one day and said he had no interest in handling snakes at church, at school, or at home; but he’d seen many a snake handler at carnivals and circuses never challenged in any way by the government. If it’s OK for side show performers (even though their snakes might have been drugged and defanged) to handle snakes for fun and profit, how can people trying to express their faith be told that they can’t?

More recently, the US government has prosecuted or tried to prosecute Indigenous Americans who, like their ancestors did for centuries, used peyote in religious rituals. It once was legal, but now it’s illegal--even if used exclusively in religious gatherings.

There’s a religious sect in Hialeah, Florida, the Santerians, that sacrifice chickens and other small animals as part of ritual sacrifice. The government says they can’t sacrifice these animals as a part of their religious practices even though poultry producers kill chickens for us to eat, and hunters chase down and shoot the other small animals for food or for sport.

Numerically, the most common serious religious-based attacks appear to be antisemitic actions by skinheads and a handful of extreme right wing political and religious groups. Usually, attacks take the form of desecration of synagogues, cemeteries, schools, and so on. Islamophobia may be getting the Jews off the hook a bit these days as some of the same thugs divert their attention, or some of it, to try to frighten and physically hurt Muslims. Their mosques are desecrated. They are robbed. Their children are threatened. They are beaten and left bleeding in the streets--often in the name of the God of Jesus.

There is a small group of so called Christians attacking those who name themselves Neo-Pagans and who openly practice their faith. The only somewhat recent religiously motivated lynchings and attempted mass murders in the United States have involved these two groups, the Christians out to kill some Neo-Pagans.

There are also deaths, though most are unintended, during certain exorcisms where the person thought to be possessed by demons is beaten in the hopes of driving the demons out of her or his body. In these cases, religious persecution only occurs if the person believed to be possessed is exorcised against her or his will.

III.

Some of the most compelling stories in Hebrew and Christian scripture are set in the wilderness. The Hebrew slaves wandered in the wilderness for forty legendary years on their way out of Egyptian slavery to the land they said God promised them as the place wherein they would be able to live out their freedom. Jesus spent forty days in the literal wilderness or in the wilderness of his mind pondering how in the world he would serve God. John the Baptist lived and preached in the wilderness.

The story from scripture on which we focus today is yet another of the vitally important wilderness stories. Perhaps it is a prelude to the wilderness aspect of the Hebrew slaves’ escape from slavery into their long wilderness sojourn.

Moses is the key figure in our story. He has his father-in-law’s flock trying to guide them to some grazing land and water, but finding mostly desert and wilderness everywhere he turned. Everything looked the same.

Moses was wide-eyed. He wasn’t a lame brain, and he did want the very best for his father-in-law’s, Jethro’s, sheep. He did not want the animals to suffer for several reasons.

They, he and the sheep for which he had responsibility, happened to pass by a mountain, which to many of us in our part of the world would have looked much more like a hill, but to them it was a mountain, Mt. Horeb, which had a nickname, “the mountain of God.” Over somewhere away from the mountain, his eye caught a bush on fire. I’d think something on fire in the desert wouldn’t have been an unusual sight, but in this case it was unusual since fire didn’t consume the little bush in a flash, so to speak. The bush kept burning, but it was not consumed by the flames. Now that was something to take note of.

Moses heard a voice coming to him out of the burning bush, and he took this voice to be the voice of one of God’s messengers with a message for him. The storyteller says that God spoke out of the bush; Moses took the voice to have been the voice of a divine messenger speaking to him; in either case he was confident that the God whom he worshiped and longed to serve was getting a message to him. God was taken with the fact that Moses stopped his search for food and water for the animals for which he was responsible to ponder a burning bush. Not everyone would have stopped to see what it was. As I said before, things burning in desserts weren’t uncommon sights, and neither were hallucinations rare in the extreme heat.

From the bush, his name was being called out, though: “Moses, Moses! Take off your sandals and come no closer because you are standing on holy ground.” People in Moses’ day didn’t wear shoes at home and when they gathered at a holy shrine of some sort. Without a doubt, shoelessness was a sign of respect and honor in the presence of someone deserving of homage just as keeping one’s distance from what was taken to have been divine was respectful.

We presume Moses complied with the requests, but we aren’t told that he did. Whether the storyteller wants us to hear the voice of God Godself speaking to Moses or a divinely ordained messenger speaking on behalf of God, Moses caught on rather quickly that the Creator was speaking to him. He hid his face in the folds of his sleeves both out reverence for God and because he knew he wasn’t supposed to look at God; word was, if you looked at God face to face, you died on the spot. Moses wasn’t ready for that.

God was tapping out Moses to be the one to lead the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. Moses said, “But, God, they aren’t going to follow me.”

God said, “They will when you tell them who has sent you. Moses, I have heard their cries in the pit of their repression and abuse. They are willing to do whatever is necessary to reach for freedom, even if their lives are at risk.” We must never underestimate the power of people sick of abuse and oppression and repression who join themselves to the loving God who wants no person put down, kept down, robbed of freedom to be who she or he dreams to be or aspires to be under God.

“OK, OK,” said Moses, “but they’ve been introduced to lots and lots of goddesses and gods while they’ve been in Egypt. I’m going to have to tell them which God it is who wants to have me lead them out of Egypt.”

“You tell them I’m the true God, the one and only, and because of that I have no name. I Am Who I Am. Tell them the Creator God sends you, the one who will act in the future the same way divine actions have been done in the past.”

“Well, I’ll tell them whatever you tell me to tell them because this burning bush is no joke, but the most popular gods and goddesses are the ones with impressive names. Some of my sister- and brother-Hebrews are going to write me off when I come and tell the god with no name has given me the responsibility to lead them out of their captivity. They’re going to think, ‘Hallucination. Been to the desert with a god with no name....’ That will just make it tougher for both of us, O Great One Who Will Be Who You Have Been.”

“Work with it, Moses!”

James Cone teaches up the road from us, up in New York City at the Union Theological Seminary. No voice for uprooting the racism that chokes people of color has been more powerful except Martin Luther’s King Jr’s. King attacked the problem nonviolently in the streets, Cone from academia--not to say that all he did to fight racism was sit in his comfy office and do “the pen is mightier than the sword” thing.

Professor Cone believes, and was joined in this powerful insight by his late colleague, Paul Tillich, that theology is no more universal and necessarily applicable in all times, places, and circumstances than are ethics. Ethicist Joseph Fletcher made the case for “situation ethics” before I started my undergraduate studies nearly forty years ago. Theology is by no means universal, but rather is tied to specific historical and cultural contexts. Any universal theology is an abstract theology, and abstraction rarely makes a difference when someone’s life is being eaten up by evil. Thus, Dr. Cone formulated a theology of liberation based on the experiences of Black people in this country. The original liberation theologies were Latin American, and Cone had to be, to some degree, influenced by them. So it wasn’t rich, white, first world church goers who initially noticed that Jesus was preoccupied with and spent most of his time with the poor and the dispossessed. The Latin and Black liberation theologians were the first to notice this trait of Jesus with clarity.

Cone says that God identifies with whoever is being downtrodden and, for example, robbed of basic human freedom. For Cone, as a Black man, he realized that God identified with his Blackness.

Quoting Cone here:

The black theologian must reject any conception of God that stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism....The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God’s own condition. This is the essence of the biblical revelation. By electing Israelite slaves as the people of God and by becoming the Oppressed One in Jesus, the human race is made to understand that God is known where human beings experience humiliation and suffering...Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity.

Therefore, my friends, when repression and captivity have robbed certain people of all the life they are willing to have lost by such wasted means, the day will come, and we are seeing it in many places around the world today, where the unfree have had enough. In the spirit of Patrick Henry whom many of today’s freedom fighters, not all fighting with weapons thank goodness, know nothing about, they are saying, “Give us liberty or give us death; to this degree anyway, God is clearly with us!”

Amen.