Union Church

love demands

Consider News

From Rev. Kent

And so it begins. As the US, Kentucky and even little Berea itself enters election season and as news and politics of all persuasions wax polemic, I have this humble prayer: Lord, may all beings be able to live in safety, to live in health, to be treated with compassion and justice even when in the wrong, and may all people work for these common decencies in every moment of our lives.
This is a prayer, of course, for a morality that greatly exceeds the common rhetoric right now. It is a prayer for a morality that transcends tribalism and the idols of “team” and even “country.”
I don’t think it is too strong to suggest that the life and ministry of Jesus as recorded for us in the Gospels was an embodiment of these petitions. Without regard to his station, the prestige or lack thereof, of others, Jesus sought the highest good. He condemned economic injustice to the poor. He healed the outcast and the children of the rich alike. He challenged all to get clear and act right in regard to treatment of others. And Jesus found ways to turn around even the worst of people in the worst of situations and point them to a better path.
Sadly, Jesus is not running for any office. Nor do I especially think he might have had the right skills or tolerance to hold an American office. But it isn’t Jesus himself we need. It’s the commitment to the wellbeing of others, the total wellbeing, that he embodied.
As followers of that radical vision from so long ago, it falls to us, not him, to act for the wellbeing of others in our own time. It was not enough in the time of Jesus to act solely in self-interest, indeed it was considered blasphemous. Today it is equally blasphemous for those who claim a Christian or Jewish faith, and persons of every faith and none can see that the politics of “only me and mine,” have been disastrous for all but those who can claim “king of the mountain,” in their fleeting moment on the world stage. The parties come and go, but the scars left on families trying to survive, natural resources upon which we depend, and on humanity itself, have been disastrous.
We need a revival of the common good. For all beings. That must be our aim. We must emulate Jesus in caring nothing for race or class in matters of equal treatment, and in risking everything for the wellness of systems, families, individuals, and of creation itself.
As we all debate and deliberate, how best to do that it is natural that there will be competing ideas. There are, as the wise remind us, sometimes many “right” ways up the mountain.  It is imperative, therefore, that any politician, idea, or system that demonstrably is working against of the wellbeing of others, or who cannot acknowledge the worth and value of all people, must not be advanced. Period. If you cannot be a person of decency and honor, working for the decency and honor of all others, then your ideas are tainted and your service should be curtailed. We simply do not have time to waste on the ineffectual and corrosive bigotry, misogyny, white supremacy, and greed that has driven too many to seek and keep powers that are not rightfully theirs to exercise.
And here comes the rub: to achieve this good people cannot surrender the narrative, the airwaves, or the coffee shop talk to haters and those who are not working for the common good. And neither can we hate the haters or exclude them from the same benefits of a working, just society. We just reject the harmful ideas, but find a way to deal justly with the people who hold them.
And that’s hard. I get it.
Jesus’ response? “If any would follow me, let them take up their cross.” Yes, it is hard. But we are a people who know how to do hard things. Yes, it takes research and investigation. Yes, it takes a suppression of both knee-jerk reactions AND resigned apathy. Yes, there will be those who revile and ridicule. And it is STILL the only way to be faithful to the Way of Christ: actions and attitudes that harm must be challenged and opposed. People who endorse harm to others don’t have to be eliminated, but they shouldn’t be elected, either. People of faith don’t shrink from the responsibility of discerning what will help the most people or from challenging those whose “moral vision” has become myopic. People of honor and integrity admit their own failings without suggesting that the bar should be lowered to make an exception.
Followers of Christ are followers not of a team, but of a moral vision. Disciples of Jesus learn from his very life that unless we all win, we have all failed. If we cannot care for the least, the lowest, and the last of these, our personal gain will be hollow and haunted.
Humbly, passionately, urgently, I ask you to pray and act with renewed fervor for new moral vision. We ignore the life and teaching of our Christ to the endangerment of the world.

To Be of Use by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

 

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