WTF-Beta

Was that resurgence, or regurgitance? No thank you.

Appropriately enough, on the same night as the Orange Bowl.

Beware any government that would establish itself as the one who will define a single, officially recognized "good" form of architecture - or painting, or sculpture, or music, or literature, or religion, or morals, or newscasting, or clothing, or housing, or - well, you get the idea.

I dropped mine onto the kitchen floor the other day and pulled a muscle bending over to pick it up. Remember people, always lift from the knees.

There's no glee in any of it for me. It really isn't an issue of just the CEO and his assailant. And as dysfunctional and genuinely evil the entire U.S. for-profit healthcare delivery, pharmaceutical, and insurance complex is, it really isn't even about that. t's just the latest iteration of the age old dilemma: since the worst evil and atrocities in human history have always played out within systems that declared their actions both legal and protected, is there ever a threshold beyond which it is moral and just to work to fight the evil in ways that are declared to be illegal? And if there is such a threshold, how and where is it defined?

Just puttin' it out there - I am NOT the ChatGPT Sermonator. Mine are better - and shorter.

I'd offer a detailed reply, but it's just too damned depressing. Suffice to say that we expect our lives to change dramatically, and we've had serious conversations about what the trigger would be for us leaving.

@AdagioM go to https://www.butlerbooks.com/plausible-deception.html . You can order it directly there, and somewhere on the order page is a prompt something like "Is there anything else we need to know about your order?", special instructions, etc. In that box, just say that you'd like an autographed copy. The publisher has a box of them and will be delighted to send you one.

@AdagioM it's apparently a company that makes artificial colors for beverages. Obviously a non-stick end product, but their process uses ammonia, and a large pressurized storage vessel exploded.

@AdagioM it will eventually be available as an ebook, but it's going to be a while - I can't even give you a ballpark date at this point.

@Big_Al yes, major parts of this book, and any follow-ups, are heavily autobiographical. It isn't a total 1:1 parallel, the Dan and Greg characters are always open to some fictional nuancing for the good of the story, but weaving much personal reality into the book is very intentional. As just one example, the scene detailing Greg's terrifying incident in LAX actually happened, almost exactly as detailed in the book. In fact, it was while discussing that event post-terror when I commented, "This is the kind of thing you read about in a book, not experience in real life!" which, after thinking about it, was how the idea for the book first came about.

There was a massive explosion in a factory here around 3pm yesterday, about a mile and a half from our place. Two employees killed, a handful of others hospitalized. It blew the windows out of many buildings around the plant, and it was heard for miles. It was just down the street from where we do yoga.

@ChatGPT don't quit your day job....

Feel free to add any content you may wish. It's a virtual blank slate.

It's devoid of any actual content, but it isn't deleted.

@wtg First, a correction - I just received a follow-up hostile email from one of the original three complainants, claiming to speak for several others (as they routinely like to do) who were also upset. Ah well.

As far as the sermon, here it is if you're interested...

Mark 12:38-44

As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

=====

Jesus stood by, watching people making their offerings to the Temple treasury, and as we just heard, he saw many people giving offerings out of their surplus – just a bit off the top, whatever the percentage may have been. Then he saw the poor widow toss in her two tiny little copper coins, combined barely worth a penny, and giving inflation and the lack of actual copper content in our pennies now, maybe worth two cents today. And yet, what he marveled at, and what he praised, was the widow who had given just a tiny amount of actual cash, while everyone else gave so much more monetarily – specifically because all the others gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had. She had gone all in with her offering to God.

As with other recent Lectionary texts, it isn’t any coincidence that we get this story in the midst of most churches’ annual stewardship campaigns, and it is important to hear in that light, and I do need to remind everyone that while we’ve had a great kickoff to our stewardship season, we still have a ways to go to meet our total budget for next year, so I encourage everyone to prayerfully consider the commitment shown by this nameless widow.
Now obviously, we can’t literally give all of our money to God, or the church; God doesn’t want us all to starve to death and be homeless, and I think that was clearly not Jesus’ point. Rather, I think he was praising her for the level of faith and commitment to God that the widow’s actions showed. Our commitment to being people of God can’t just be a small percentage, little off the top. Jesus calls all of us, as his disciples, to be similarly “all-in” with our faith. When our faith teaches us one way to be and to live, and those around us claim something else, we’re called to follow our faith.
There’s simply no way to ignore or sugar coat it, but the reality is that this week, a majority of voters chose to empower a movement whose guiding principles are inconsistent with the teachings of our faith. Don’t misunderstand, neither political party is ever perfectly aligned with the teachings of our faith, but the policies and intentions of the movement soon to take power are almost completely, top to bottom, inconsistent with, even antithetical to, the teachings of Jesus Christ, Christian social teaching, and the established theology and doctrines of the Presbyterian Church. I’m sorry if my saying that offends anyone, but this isn’t just my opinion, it’s incontrovertible fact, verifiable by a line-by-line comparison of those positions with Christ’s words and our theology.
I’ve struggled with what I might say about all this today, what gospel I might proclaim in a spirit of truth, love, and compassion. I know that no matter what I might say, some will say I'm being “too political,” while some will say I'm not being political enough; that what I might say is controversial or inappropriate and will create division. But the truth, friends, is that I don’t have that kind of power. Nothing I could say here is going to cause any division that doesn’t already exist; all I can do is speak into that reality - and to do so in a way that I’ve been ordained and charged to do as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, as a Teaching Elder, in the Presbyterian Church.

As I considered what to say, I recognized that as difficult as this current situation is, it isn’t the first time we’ve been in it, and our church’s establishing documents give us an indication of how we’re to respond to it. Our Book of Confessions, half of our denominational Constitution, is packed with historical declarations that teach us that when society around us adopts ideologies contrary to Christ, we’re called to stand up for – to be “all in” - for Christ; and we’re called to reject any of those opposing ideologies, even if they happen to be very popular. Most of our Confessions have been a statement of beliefs and moral truth-claims set over against opposing ones put forth by some temporal political power. They are spiritual confessions that are unavoidably, unapologetically political. This is especially true with the Barmen Declaration, written in the 1930s to oppose the rise of Nazism in Germany, an ideology that a majority of German Christians supported. It was especially true of the Belhar Confession, written in the 1980s to oppose the apartheid political system in South Africa, an ideology that was supported by a majority of South African Christians. The reality is that in our Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, to make a confession of faith has always simultaneously and inescapably made a political statement, too. Even John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, the very foundation of our Reformed tradition, was considered such a dangerous political statement that Calvin himself had to flee the king of France for fear of his life, needing to settle across the border in Geneva for his own personal safety.

The coming months and years are going to be difficult for many of us, and quite possibly all of us. If the policies that this movement has promised to implement actually are implemented, they’re going to cause terrible harm and injustice to many people. And this movement has been, and will continue to be, assisted and empowered by extreme right-wing Christian Nationalists, a movement that mainstream Christians liberal and conservative alike say is a dangerous, harmful distortion of Christianity completely inconsistent with the essential teachings of our faith, and which will continue to hurt the Church by distorting people’s understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
As we’re about to enter into this difficult time, we need to remember that widow that Jesus praised. We need to remember that Jesus calls us to be “all in” in living and espousing the faith that we have professed, and “all-in” in supporting the theology and doctrine of the church that we have chosen to be part of. We can’t offer a percentage of our loyalty to Christ’s teaching, and the majority of it to some other opposing ideology.

So regardless of the outcome of this election or any future election, and regardless of how any individual may have voted in this election or any future election, these facts remain and need to guide us. As individuals, as Christians, as Presbyterians, as the Church:

We have to be all in to stand up for the true loving, compassionate gospel of Jesus Christ, and to oppose any attempt to distort that message into one of hatred and injustice, regardless of what any particular politician, government official, or political party says.

We have to be all in to care for, support, and to provide for the needs of the poor and the sick; and to oppose any attempt to restrict access to basic human needs, regardless of what any particular politician, government official, or political party says.

We have to be all in to treat the resident alien with fairness, compassion, and mercy, treating them as if they were one of our own, as scripture requires of us over and over and over again, and to oppose any attempt to create divisions, to vilify them, to blame them for all of society’s problems, to harm them or to treat them without compassion or mercy, regardless of what any particular politician, government official, or political party says.
We have to be all in to preserve equal rights, full equal protection under the law, equal access to public services, equal access to health care and the right to make one’s own decisions regarding that healthcare – we have to be all in to support and maintain essential human dignity for all of God’s people, to not oppress or discriminate any groups of people for any reason; and to oppose any and every ideology, policy, or program that would thwart that universal equality and dignity, regardless of what any particular politician, government official, or political party says.

This is what we, as individuals, as Christians, as Presbyterians, as the Church, are called to do. This is what Christ demands of us. This is what Christian social teaching shows us. This is what established Presbyterian theology and doctrine teaches us.

We’re also called to do something else. As a result of the election, there are many people who are suffering, within this congregation and beyond. There are many people who are facing dread, fear, anger, frustration, uncertainty, even real existential threat, caused by the movement about to take power. To all those who find themselves suffering, know that it’s one of the core missions of the church to be here for you. To be unambiguously, unapologetically present, and a safe space for you. To be on your side over against those who are harming you. To offer you spiritual and emotional support. To walk alongside you in your grief. And to reject, oppose, and work to end those things in our society that are causing you that harm. That’s what Christ called all of us to do when we professed our faith in him. And when we chose to become a member of Christ’s Church, we agreed to uphold its teachings, above the teachings or ideologies of any political party or other organization or group we might be part of. If the church, for whatever reason, were ever to weaken or dilute its own message and mission, and were to accept and enable any ideology contrary Christ, then we really won’t be the Church at all anymore – we’ll just be a social club with a pipe organ. Friends, I’m convinced that Christ has called us to be much, much more than that. At least, that’s my two cents’ worth.

Amen.

@wtg I'd say that our congregation is around 85% distraught, enraged, and hurting, and maybe 15% are happy with the outcome. The day after the election, we called an emergency gathering at the church - no order if worship, no music, just time to come together, talk, pray, process, rage, cry. There are about 200 in the congregation total. About 25 came to the gathering, another five replied that they wanted to be there but couldn't (schedule conflict, don't like driving in the dark, etc.). Many of them came up to me in the days following saying how much it had meant, and how much it was needed, many of them in tears.

I got three less-than-positive replies. One person gently suggested that to have a special time to comfort those grieving the election results was a violation of the IRS Johnson Amendment, prohibiting nonprofits from endorsing political candidates (it didn't). One person voiced concern that it was a "slippery slope" that had potential to upset those that were happy with the results, so we should play it all straight down the middle and offer no such time to come together (I disagreed, pointing out that a major function of the church is to comfort those who are mourning, even if that upset someone else). And I received one negative email from a parishioner who had meant to send it to someone else but accidentally sent it to me (!) actually complaining that we were having the gathering.

Then following Sunday's sermon, I received many more words of support and agreement. One man came over, shook my hand and hugged me, and said the congregation was so happy that I was there to lead them through this. Before I could self-edit, I replied, "That assumes we aren't going to have to leave the country." He laughed until he looked over at me and realized I wasn't joking. There was one parishioner - a dear person but who is one of the small handful who have really drunk the orange Kool-ade - that I worried about, knowing they were going to get upset by the sermon. She didn't say anything after the service and left pretty quickly afterward after talking to a couple of people but not me. She texted me later that evening, asking for a copy of the sermon so she could review and reacquaint herself with what I'd said.

So all in all, the congregation is for the most part gobsmacked, grieving - and really pissed off and energized.

Your fear is justifiable. As an out, married gay clergy person - especially one in the South - whose progressive stances are pretty visible within the community, I know that fear well. I live with it on a weekly basis as I step into the pulpit. Today was particularly risky, as I needed to speak honestly to the congregation the first Sunday after the election. Adding to the stress was that immediately following the service, there would be a congregational meeting to review and vote on my 2025 Terms of Call (compensation package).

The sermon was measured, as compassionate as possible, but unflinchingly honest and critical of the incoming regime as antithetical to the teaching of Jesus Christ and the church's established moral/social teachings and theology. It bluntly called for a rejection of those ideologies.

It was a very difficult morning.

For what it's worth, my Terms of Call were still approved.

But I don't have any illusions. I'm sure that there will be much division and ugliness in doing my job these next several years. I/we may very well become victims of harassment and abuse, or worse, assuming I'm even able to remain in my position and we're able to remain residents of the United States without having to relocate for our own safety. It's terrifying.

Still, I have to do what I have to do, in order to know at the end of my days that I've lived up to my ordination vows and my pastoral call, and that I've stood on the right side of history. I hope you'll do the same. Capitulation is what they're counting on. If we aren't all willing to take a stand, even in the face of potential risk, they'll have already won.

all thoughtful clergy who have to preach to their congregations this morning in a way that affirms Christ teaching, Christian social teaching, and the established anti-MAGA theology of their churches.