How can we sing a new song?

I went to see the movie, "A Complete Unknown", about the rise of Bob Dylan from Greenwich Village folk singer/ songwriter to rock music icon.  It covers about a 6 year period in Dylan's early career.  From his first album to his sixth, from 1961 to 1965.  He wrote "Blowin' in the wind", "The times they are a'changin'," "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," "With God on our SIde" "My Back Pages", "It Ain't me, babe", and "Like a Rolling Stone." Any of of these songs reveals an inspired poet speaking to a time and a generation having serious moment.  

In a ten year period Dylan released eleven LPs, including the double album, "Blonde on Blonde".  He was about as prolific as the Beatles in the same time period.  

Dylan is a poet and a revolutionary.  His musical style and lyrical sensibilities evolved quickly, faster than his fan base.  He didn't care.  He wrote for himself mostly and sometimes his words and music connected deeply with American youth in the 1960s.  He seems to have a way with the American zeit geist, he read the times like a prophet.  

I confess that I was not a Bob Dylan fan.   I knew Dylan's music, because I'm an American and a music lover. I'm a Gen Xer.   I grew up in the late 70s and 80s.  My parents listened to pop music, country and rock.  I became a fan of the Beatles.  They were my musical inspirations. I was not interested in their early pop tunes.  I was captivated by two albums:  "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver".  That the same band could produce such vastly different music in the matter of a few months astounded me. Their evolution from "Plesase Please me" to "Strawbery Feilds Forever" was the thing that hooked me.  The psychedelic and eastern sounds, the rhythm, harmonies, and lyrics.  And "Here Comes the Sun" is my favorite song and will be played at my funeral. 

The 1960s was characterized by its music. Dylan, the Beatles, CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Joan Biaz, Otis Redding, Motown. They elevated folk music and gospel music to become popular music.  They sang protest songs and freedom songs and love songs and resistance songs and laments. Their music spoke to and for a generation struggling with global existential crises and threats--nuclear bombs and rising imperialist miliarism in the wake of WW2; Vietnam; assassinations; race and civil rights; feminism; sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  It was a creative and violent decade, that went through a lot of change in a brief period of time. Change that brings greater equality, possibility, and peace is welcome change.  Change requires unrest, resistance, and persistent action.  Change demands unity and sacrifice.  Good change involves an awakening and a grounding in the limits of humanity as well as a vision, a dream, a horizon worthy of our greatest efforts. Change inspires protest marches and civil disobedience and speeches and bold, risky moves.  The first revolution is internal; the first revolution is of the mind.  The great philosophers say it.  Its what the old bible word 'repent' actually means. It means to change your mind.  Father Richard Rohr says, "Jesus didn't;'t come to change God's mind about us, but to change our minds about God." Why?  Because when our god is wealth or success or power or personal achievement at any cost, we are lost. It is only when God becomes human, joining us in life's journey, that we can see that God is actually love, compassion, mercy, peace.  

Now is a time of change, revolution, adaptation.  Now is the time to sing a new song!             

I have pretty eclectic musical tastes.  I want to hear songs that say something, that mean something,that tell the truth about things that matter.  Since seeing the movie, I have been listening to Bob Dylan.  The prescience of a song like "The Times Theyare a changin'" is worth hearing, given our present situation.           

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'

And you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won't come again

And don't speak too soon

For the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who

That it's namin'

For the loser now

Will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin'

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

The battle outside ragin'

Will soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don't criticize

What you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one

If you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

                                                                                    For the times they are a-changin'  

At present, the global, existential threat of climate change is concretely realized in the wildfires taking place in southern California.  The violence of nature is experienced in drought, flood, storm, fires, and dehabitation.  Climate displacement and climate refugees are found on almost every continent. As  result of these changing environmental conditions, humans are reacting in dangerous ways.  We are experiencing trememndous wealth accumulation among a very few people.  There are 835 US billionaires.  Globally, the richest 1% own almost 48% of the world's wealth, while people who earned less than $10,000 per year account for more than 40% of the global population and in total have less than 1% of the world's wealth. The world's 26 richest billionaires have more wealth than the GDP of maby countries including, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Australia, and Spain.  Those 26 people are worth $2.872 trillion!  

President Jimmy Carter, who died this week at the age of 100, once said that the most pressing problem that must be addressed in the world is economic inequality.  So much else is driven by these two realities:  Climate change and economic inequality. As Elon Musk takes over the American empire as a shadow leader  beside the president-elect, we will likely see increased poverty, violence, and environmental destruction.  We will also continue to see rising sea levels, global warming, and the effects of ecological disruption.  

It is a lot to take.  The news is hard to watch and hard to avoid.  The existential threats are burning down towns and flooding cities and turning farms into deserts. Meanwhile the 26 richest people are hoarding resources from billions of other people, who will die in poverty. It is hard to be hopeful, to not become cynical, jaded, and ambivalent.  It's hard to know where to put the anger, the rage, the grief, and the fear. In the past, when civilization was going through a time of darkness, a time of uncertainty, people created art and music.    

Now is a time of change, of revolution, of adaptation. Now is the time to sing a new song!    

I'm wondering today, how can we sing a new song?  Who will sing them? What language do we need to protest, to resist, to demand concrete material change? What songs will we sing to console, comfort, and connect us?  What songs will we sing to denounce the billionaires and their political friends?  I'm hoping for a new singer and a new song.  

Our religious traditions bring us many songs to sing; hymns, spirituals, psalms, and canticles.  The resistance song of Mary, the mother of Jesus: "He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.  he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty."  The spiritual, "Wade in the water, Wade in the water children, Wade in the water, God's gonna trouble the water." "When Moses was in Egypts land, let my people go.  Go down, Moses, way down to Egypt land;tell ol' Pharaoh, let my people go."  But fewer of us are religious and know the old songs.  We should keep singing them and we need new songs.  I'm looking and listening.  For a new song. A song like Dylan sang.  A song like Aretha sang. A song like Nina sang.  A song like the children of Israel sang.  A song like Jesus' people sang.  

Are you listening? Are you aching for a new song? Are you waiting for someone to come along?  

Maybe you or I need to write it...  

  

             

            

New Year: 2025

 Happy New Year.  I have not contributed to a blog in over 4 years.  It's not that I have run out of things to say or write about.  I guess I spent my time in other ways.  Did anyone read what I was writing before anyay? I think I wondered about audience, connection, and interests.  Did I have anything interesting to say?  Anything worth writing or reading?  Also, there are so many blogs, podcasts, videos, and general content out there in the democratized space of amateur journalism that exists in the social media context in which we live our lives, that I doubted I could get anyone's attention long enough.  Is that the point?  Getting people's attention?  Do I want people to pay attention to me? Do I need  people to pay attention?  To read or listen to what I say?  What I really want is for people to pay attention to their own lives and the lives of the people around them.  I want people to pay attention to the trees and the birds and the insects and the soil and the wildflowers in the restored meadow behind the Methodist church.  I want people to pay attention to their neighbors.  And people who pay attention to the divine, to the will of God, to the presence of the sacred.  We have got to pay better attention.  We have got to wake up and stay awake!  This is hard, painful work as it turns out.  

A lot of things have transpired nationally in the last 4 years.  Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.  An attempted coup failed.  Just when we thought authoritarianism and fascism was defeated,  Trump defeated VP Harris in a presidential contest that surprised the world.  A global pandemic killed millions of people and climate change is accelerating in various ways, both visible and invisible. Israel and Palestine are at war.  Russia and Ukraine are at war. War persists in various other parts of the world.  Gun violence and the violence of poverty and addiction threaten American society.  Mass shootings have become common.  A deep cynicism, uncertainty, and mistrust pervades our society.  People want enemies to blame, and strong man leaders to promise easy fixes to hard problems.  Demagogues, dictatorships and various forms of religious nationalism are replacing democracies around the globe.  Christian nationalism has arisen in the US as a driving anti-demoractic force to restore patriarchy, heteronormativity, and a narrative of dominance and greatness that excludes certain out groups from equal status.  

I finished my doctoral thesis in 2024.  That was a considerable piece of writing that nearly killed me last year.  I had to finish it by February or I would not be able to graduate. I started the doctoral journey in 2016-2017 and COVID interrupted me.  But I got to write about the Wittel Farm and how it has changed me, what it has taught me.  I'll share what I have learned here.  

 I took on a third position in my vocational life as a pastor and farmer.  In 2022 I joined the staff of POWER Interfaith, a faith-rooted community organizing movement for racial and economic justice on a liveable planet. (I like this tag line). The work is meaningful and has given me opportunity to connect and work ecumenically with faith leaders who are interested in justice as a theological response to the world's problems. It is interesting to think about the political and social implications of an increasingly post-Christian society.  I studied the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer this year and taught a course on his life and teachings. I'm presently involved in the campaign for housing equity in Lancaster County.  I am working with some amazingly passionate people who want to solve a major crisis, by ensuring that our politcs and economics create conditions of well being for everyone, which includes safe, affordable, adequate, and accessible housing for every person who wants it.  We have learned about the politics of housing and why some people are left out of the housing market, are stuck in housing that doesn't meet their needs or exceeds affordability.  We have learned about the causes of homelessness and what it takes to move unhoused people onto a path toward permanent housing.  It takes money and time.  It takes responsible political action rooted in a community- based ethics that sees every person as a human being worthy of respect, safety, and equal treatment.  As an organizer, my role is to invite people, who are committed to finding solutions to their communities problems, to engage political actors and responsible leaders in a negotiation around an achievable goal.  For example, can we compel county leaders to commit an additional $10 million in county rainy day funds to address the deficit in affordable housing stock?  How many people will it take to compel political action?  Do we need to have enough people to threaten reelections?  How will we know?  As an organizer I get to find people and invite them to become responsible actors in public life.  I especially appreciate the role of the faith leader as a public actor, moving people of faith to act courageously to resist the status quo and become architects of a better world.  This is a major challenge because of the internalized powerlessness most Americans experience today.  We see billionaires and politicians aligned in their interess and against the interests of people and planet. What can we do?  We can organize.  Tune in for more writing about the power of organizing to create social change.      

I'm also committed to the writing of John Philip Newell and the Celtic spiritual tradition. It shapes my understanding of an enchanted world, full of wonder and danger and beauty and mystery.  The sacredness of the earth and our role as beloved caregivers defines and energizes the work I want to do, both with the farm and with people.  Can we move toward a restored ecological harmony?  What would it take to do so? How do we disentangle ourselves from the post-industrial worldview that continues to consume, waste, and destroy the earth with every choice we make?  What is permissable, what must we prohibit, and what is necessary?  Should we sell our cars and divest from fossil fuel consumption? If so, how do we live in this society?  I have been reading indigenous wisdom, alongside Newell's work, and I have been listening to the poetry of Mary Oliver.  There are agrarian writers like Wes Jackson, Norman Wirzba, and Wendell Berry that are informing my thoughts on our role in the natural world. Habitus, our habits and daily practices of living are shaped by our habitations, the places we dwell in and with.  And our habits also shape our habitats in good and bad ways.  I am not one for new years resolutions, but I'd like to commit to forming habits this year that will contribute to the greater good of the place to which I have become native.  I am committintg to planting 1,000 trees in Lancaster in 2025.      

Along with Newell, the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 20th century German Lutheran theologian who resisted Hitler and the Nazis, a clearer way of talking about things that matter the most has emerged in my own thinking and speaking.  There are a few important matters that need to be discussed.  I want to broaden the discussions from the academy to the home.  For one, people of faith need to wrestle with the planet's destruction by human industrialization and fossil fuel consumption.  We need to think critically about a theology of creation and what it means to be responsible moral actors on earth. What are the scenarios that climate science anticipates given current global trajectories under the conditions of climate change?  Do we really only have sixty harvests left, given the depleted soil conditions?  What will warming mean for human populations, as habitation becomes more challenging in places currently inhabited?   What should we eat?

 I think 2025 is a year of necessary change.  Adapt or die.  So, what if this blog is a contribution to our adaptation?  We need to adopt new ways of being, living, acting, consuming, working, and resting.  We need to adopt a theology that frees us to live responsibly toward the neighbor, both human and non-human.  We need to experience and embrace humility before God and earth, in order to restore order, balance, and possibility of a future.  So, I will contribute a weekly post in 2025 of thoughts on ecology, theology, community, and adaptation.  What will you contribute?  

 

Liberal and Affirming

A couple of months ago I was asked by a respected colleague if I would like to speak at one of their weeknight worship services.  These services are supposed to be more casual, open to the public, and for the broader community more than for the congregation itself.  In fairness, he sent an email to all of the local faith leaders with whom he has a relationship in our community, asking if any of us would be interested in speaking.  I am a raging extrovert and I love public speaking opportunities.  I said "YES".  It would be in May.  I had time.  But I immediately began to think about what I might share there.  I thought I would talk about the Wittel Farm Growing Project, which I started and direct.  We farm a 40 acre piece of land in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County.  We plant, grow, and harvest with volunteers.  Last year about 500 volunteers served on the farm.  Everything we harvest is donated to Lancaster County food relief organizations.  We work with about a dozen food banks and pantries.  So I thought maybe I would tell the story of the farm and my leadership there.  (I left the family farm to follow a call to ordained ministry.  20 years later, I'm farming to fight hunger. Never thought I would put my farming experience to use in the church and community.  God has a sense of humor).  I love to tell this story and invite people to imagine how God might call them to use their gifts and experiences in life to serve neighbors.  Maybe I would mention what its like to be called to grow food, care for the land, and serve the earth during a time of climate and ecological crisis. Knowing that some evangelicals don't believe in climate change or a Christian call to Earthkeeping, I wondered if that would be acceptable or even heard. I believe that we learn when our perceptions and understandings are challenged.
A couple of weeks ago, my colleague emailed me.  He was embarrassed and apologetic.  It seems that I was the only faith leader who said "yes", but his worship team said "No thank you".  They did not accept my acceptance of his invitation because I am a liberal and I have taken an "affirming" position on social media regarding LGBTQ neighbors.  They did not want to affiliate with me.  Even when my colleagues assured them that I wouldn't seek to offend them, that was not enough.  They were worried that my presence in their building would be perceived to align them with a liberal supporter of LGBTQ rights, participation, and full inclusion in the Christian community.
My first response was, "Hey, a free evening!".  My second one was lament at how deeply divided the church has become in this culture.  We cannot be in the same room with one another when our biblical morality causes conflict.  We prefer the comfort of like-minded or "right-minded" friends.  The enemy is anyone who doesn't think like me or believe what I believe.  We focus on the things that separate us instead of the things that unite us, that we hold in common.  This is part of what is killing the church in the west.
I notice in the gospels that Jesus holds company with synagogue leaders and Pharisees, Samaritans and sinners.  He brings people together who supported Roman policies and hated Roman policies.  He was rejected and ejected from the synagogue.  He protested in the temple.  He debated religion with scholars.  He healed and included people kicked to the margins of society.  He challenged economic and ethnic norms that created inequality, poverty, and wealth.  He told people to give without expecting anything in return.  He fed hungry people without demanding employment.  He favored the underclass, the disadvantaged, and the overlooked.  He touched families that experienced grief.  He made people's broken lives whole.  He sought to give them a chance to live.  He longed for God's heavenly kingdom to be manifest on earth in the human community.  He enacted justice, liberation from suffering, and merciful inclusion of every marginal person.  From children to mentally ill ethnic non-Jews.  Jesus was a liberal in his social policy of love--of neighbor, enemy, God and one another. 
I am labeled in the community as a "liberal pastor."  And apparently that is bad, unchristian, unfaithful, evil.  If "love your neighbor as yourself" is a liberal policy, then what does it mean to be a conservative Christian? I am tired of the "evangelical conservative Christians" having the public microphone and telling the world that a Christian thinks and acts and sounds like them.  And that their values and concerns are exclusively Christian.  And that their moral judgments represent the whole Christian church. And that real Christians vote Republican and love Trump. I am tired of one-issue evangelicalism whose lithmus test for authenticity is the size of your church, the wealth and fame of your preacher, and your stance on sex and abortion.  (Related issues).  What of the Christians who led the abolition of slavery or civil rights or opposed the death penalty or oppose war or serve the poor or welcome the refugee or offer healing or serve the earth?  What about the Christians who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and  house the homeless?  Liberal Christians or progressives or the Christian left must build and announce a counter narrative, an alternative to the gospel of prosperity and exclusion that is poisoning the air we breathe and the waters in which we baptize.  I am a white, educated, cis-gendered heterosexual Christian man and I experience the privilege that offers me all the time.  I have voice and vote and leadership experiences and get- out- of- jail- free cards and access to people and places and things.   I'm usually the host of the meal and the head of the table, not the unwelcomed guest.  I can't even imagine what it is like to be excluded because of my race or gender or sexual orientation or religious faith.  But I am willing to become an ally, a friend, and a companion to those who do experience exclusion and oppression and hate because of who they are.  I am willing, because I'm a liberal or progressive Christian.  I'm willing to fight with and for people who are treated like crap by the church and the policymakers. 
I don't like labels, but I would rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.  I do believe in full inclusion, welcome, and the beloved status of every person.  I do believe the church is supposed to be a sanctuary for marginalized and oppressed peoples, minority groups, and those without the power to secure their own rights and protections under the law.  Black and brown bodies, women's bodies, LGBTQ bodies, addicted bodies, mentally and physically ill bodies, asylum seeking refugee bodies, poor and hungry and homeless bodies---these matter to God and to Jesus and to the church he builds.  I see how the church has harmed people by excluding them, rejecting them for who they are, and denying them a relationship with God.  I would bet that the church makes as many atheists as the world makes. People don't believe in a church whose god is abusive and hateful and inaccessible.  People long for a God who frees people from their captivity to prejudice and hatred.  A God who frees people to serve others, to experience the fullness of life in community, in which they are accepted, loved, respected, and cherished.  I intend to serve that God--the God of the prophets, the God of Jesus, the God of the apostles.  If love and grace and inclusion make me too liberal, then I will wear that!  Yes, I am a liberal pastor.  I stand in the long biblical tradition of the prophets and in the life of Jesus Christ; I long for the full and complete freedom and inclusion and vitality and health of every living person, every living thing in God's good creation. Until all are free, none are free.  To be free is to be accepted as God made you.  To be free is to be you.  To be free is to have agency and safety and access to sufficient provision.  To be free is to live without fear, without discrimination, without the threat of violence.  To be free is to have choice and to choose life, to choose mercy, to choose service, to choose to embrace others as beloved siblings.  Call me what you want, God has called me beloved child and servant.  Nothing matters more. 
    

Justice Doing, Mercy Loving, Humble walking Faith in God

Justice doing is

Sitting at lunch counters and on buses in seats reserved for whites only;

Suing one’s master for freedom from slavery;

Leading your people on an underground railroad,

Going to jail for riding the whites only trolley car and going to the supreme court;

Marching from Selma to Montgomery across deadly dangerous bridges;

Standing up and telling the truth to powerful men until freedom is won for all;

Justice doing is

Marching and protesting and writing letters and campaigning and calling up your congressman or senator or governor to speak your mind on behalf of those who know injustice;  It is a demand that power serve the vulnerable, the least, the marginal, the small. It is a demand for the truth in politics and an end to corrupted self-interest. It is a demand for environmental protection and climate action to save the planet from greed and gluttony and abuse.  It is children marching to end gun violence in schools and children marching for the planet and children leading us to do what is right, even when it isn’t easy. 

Justice doing is

Going to rallies in Harrisburg on buses with strangers who become friends because our cause is the same, our hope is the same, our hearts are the same---until those who are wronged are given every right, we will keep up the fight for justice;  

Justice doing is inclusion and compassion and holiness and bodily presence, a blessing of rightness in a world full of wrong.  It is knowing what is right and acting for the right and demanding that what is right for me and for the white man and straight woman and for the wealthy family is also right for the black man and woman, the gay man and woman, the trans man  or woman, the poor man or woman. Justice doing is a courageous demand for freedom and equality and human dignity and opportunity and reparations for generations of wrong. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  

Mercy loving is

Feeding and clothing and housing the hungry, naked, homeless poor.  It is generosity that relieves suffering by giving some of what I have to you so that you have what you need. It is good samaritan funds spent to keep a family housed or the lights turned on or the heat working in winter.  Mercy loving is holding space for someone to grieve, to fail, to struggle and to stay with them in it. It is empathy for the strugglers, whose lives are too hard, because isn’t it hard for all of us, aren;t we all strugglers on the journey?    

Mercy loving is 

Opposing the death penalty and mandatory sentencing that robs our humanity and destroys black bodies, guilty of blackness if nothing else; and encouraging rehab for almost everyone because everyone has pain and everyone suffers and bleeds.  It is to want affordable health care for everyone because health is not about money. It is to welcome the asylum seeker and the refugee fleeing suffering in search of mercy; it is to oppose public policies that detain and imprison brown children and deport brown parents and reject entry to a better life for black and brown peoples. Mercy loving is to reject war and militancy as the first resort in global conflict or global conquest.  It is to insist that people matter more than profits and bottom lines.    

Mercy loving is

Caring for all the creatures like God cares for all the creatures; it is to adore pets and reduce ones impact on the planet and to be concerned about the planet’s health and to consider the needs of all living things when I leave my house and go out for a walk.  It is to plant trees and flowers and meadows and feed the birds and the bees and the bats and the butterflies. It is to reduce waste and single use plastic and the throwaway consumerism that kills so much, including the soul; It is to give a little extra to save the Koala and the Polar bear because they have value too; Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.

Humble walking is a stroll, a meander, a  hike from my ego-centric self-indulgence toward a self-emptying, subsistence on God, the earth, and the others walking beside me.  It is the insistence that we depend, that life depends, that everything depends on some things we cannot do or accomplish or make ourselves. Humble walking visits the homebound and shows up at gravesides and sorts clothing and packs food and cooks breakfast and doesn’t ask what’s in this for me? Humble walking is worship; Because humble walking is walking toward and with someone else, and God is walking there too.  It is not arrogant strutting or mean tweeting or wealth boasting. Blessed are the meek for they alone will inherit the whole earth!  

What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  Amen.   

Jesus did four things

I’ve never been arrested.  Not yet. 2020 might be the year.  I feel it coming. Sometimes you have to get arrested for change to come.  Christian history is full of arrests for the cause of justice and freedom and mercy.  John the Baptist was no criminal. John the Baptist’s arrest is a consequence of the Roman occupation and the oppressive policies they used to control the Jewish population in Palestine.  He was arrested for calling out, publicly shaming, or protesting the bad behavior of a certain political ruler--Herod Antipas. Jesus’ public ministry began as a response to John’s arrest.  And he begins to preach John’s message. Knowing that it was John’s mouth that put him in jail, he shouts it anyway! Change is coming, God is near! Change is coming, God is near. Change is coming, God is near.  He takes up John’s work, but he doesn’t stay in the predominantly Jewish south. He goes north to the Galilee of the Gentiles, so called because of the mixed population there. For over 800 years, northern Israel was ethnically mixed.  Judea and Jerusalem were much more Jewish. Israel was segregated, north and south. Some Jews were prejudiced against other Jews, and then there were the Samaritans. This is when oppression causes the oppressed to see themselves as inferior and divide themselves from one another.  It is always the powerful’s rule to divide the conquered in order to diminish them and weaken them, to hold them down.     

Jesus takes John’s message to a mixed community of Jews and non-Jews. Because suffering underneath was and is not an exclusively Jewish situation.  

Jesus invites fishermen to follow him.  He suggests that their skills as fishermen may become instruments of God’s work.  Their everyday skills and tasks could be applied to the mission field. They’re going fishin’.  Fishermen know the fish don’t come to you. You got to locate the fish, net the fish, catch the fish, clean the fish, fry the fish. Now I’m getting hungry.  And maybe that’s part of it. Are we hungry to connect with others? What’s our net? Where are the fish? Is the message so meaningful to us that we want others to hear it, know it, experience it?  And fishing is full of hard work and failure. You try one spot, nothing. Try another spot, nothing. Try another spot, jackpot! Go back there the next day, nothing. Fishermen know how to fail and keep going.           

Jesus’ followers observed that Jesus did four things.  He went throughout Galilee; teaching in the synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom; curing every disease and sickness among the people.  These four things, Matthew says, characterize Jesus’ activity.  

Advent 3. December 17. Luke 17.

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=84970407 (Click the link to continue the story)

Forgive over and over again. 
A little faith does a lot.
We are worthless slaves.
Lord, have mercy on us!
Was none of them found to return, praising and thanking God, except this foreigner?
For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.
Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.

A series of wisdom sayings are built into the narrative.  A chapter like 17 can feel a bit disruptive, with less narrative consistency and more sort of wisdom teaching.  But Jesus is inviting us into internal work, soul or heart work, mind-changing work.  The book "Breathing Underwater" by Father Richard Rohr applies the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the Christian life.  He suggests that we are all in recovery from self delusions and denials about ourselves and God. 
We may ask ourselves, what teaching is speaking to me right now?  Is it a need to forgive someone who has wronged us?  We may hear that forgiveness is not a one-time thing, but that we may need to keep on forgiving again and again.  Sometimes a single past act continues to cause us pain and we need to talk our way into forgiveness.  Sometimes we focus on the scar and fail to see that time has healed us and the pain has dissipated.  Sometimes the pain persists and the offense lingers.  So, keep on forgiving.  Its for you, as much or more than for the one who offended or sinned against you. 
To the disciples, faith is accumulative and the more you have the better things will be.  Don't we even say, that person has a lot of faith or is really faithful?  Jesus says that faith is not like money.  It is like food coloring in water; a little changes everything. A little faith is powerful stuff, because it opens us up to a world beyond ourselves, our limited minds and senses. 
The slave analogy is hard to hear from Jesus' lips.  Namely because he suggests that his followers are like slaves, called to be obedient to their master.  I'm not sure how to deal with this right now.  But we must acknowledge it as troubling and perhaps archaic.  Is it a word we ought to forget now?  Slavery is never right.  The thought is, faithful people are called to obey God's commands. 
People are crying out for mercy.  Where have you heard their cries?  Yesterday, I heard the cries of a father and a mother whose children attend toxic public schools, where asbestos and lead threaten the health of their children.  How does Jesus respond to cries for mercy?  He stops, listens, acts, and sends them on their way to receive healing and rejoin the community.
Gratitude is a bold announcement of faith!  God has shown mercy.  God has provided.  God has protected.  God has rescued.  God has healed.  God has saved.  God has intervened.  God has spoken words of love and forgiveness.  Thanks is the natural response.
God is nearer than we see or think.  We are always looking somewhere else to some other place or time.  The grass is always greener, we say.  Jesus says God is present immediately and completely in the present moment, here and now. 
Surrender.  Let God be God.  Learn to trust.  How hard it is for us to do these things.  We are self-sufficient lovers of security.  We have fooled ourselves into thinking we protect ourselves with our wealth or homes or relationships or jobs or insurance policies or elected leaders.  We have been hurt by being vulnerable and trusting.  Self-protection is human, too.  To trust God is to give up on all the false securities. It is to stay vulnerable. This is not easy.  It is a lifetime of internal work.  We are all in recovery after all. 

   
             
      

POWER, power, and the faith to fight racism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbVlLri7X2A
(Click the link to view David Mosenkis's video on racial bias in PA public education funding.)

My congregation (Zion Lutheran, Akron, PA) is on this journey toward antiracism and has joined the fight against racial injustices that plague our institutions, governing systems and policies, local economies and housing markets.  We are a 100% white congregation in the whitest denomination in the U.S. Our lack of racial diversity is symptomatic. But my little, aging white congregation has been on a journey toward antiracism for almost two years and we are not alone.  We are part of something that keeps us moving toward becoming allies in the fight for racial justice.     

Primarily we are working with POWER Interfaith, a statewide antiracism organization based in Philly.  To learn more about POWER click here: https://powerinterfaith.org/.  

We are forming an interfaith coalition in partnership with POWER in Lancaster County.  Over twelve congregations are currently participating, many for more than two years now, in the formation of a faith-rooted antiracism organization.  Eventually, we will become Lancaster POWER Interfaith.  In the meantime, we are participating in a statewide education campaign to end education apartheid and the gross funding inequity that exists in PA.  (See the video above.)  We attend rallies, call and write our elected officials, and seek out additional congregations to join us in this work.  We also continue to learn the history of racism, to analyze current events and policies, and become aware of implicit biases and prejudices that prevent us from building a changed community of justice for all the children of God.  

We have realized that the invisible hand of white privilege  has isolated us from the struggles of black and brown neighbors.  We have not acknowledged our silence, our complicity, our acceptance of white privilege that perpetuates a racialized culture and systems that do harm every day.  Four hundred years ago, the seeds of racial division were sown in the Virginia colony.  The U.S. was organized racially as a mechanism to divide and hold power in the hands of wealthy, landowning, white elites.  The U.S. constitution codifies racial segregation in the 3/5 clause.  Even the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, opens the way to criminalize blackness, setting the stage for Jim Crowe, lynchings, and mass incarcerations.  (At the bottom of this entry, I have named 6 books worth reading in the next 6 months.)