an uncommon path (mini)

My friend Alan Storey gave an address (a sermon) at the 2012 Peace Conference in Lake Junalaska.

I was fortunate to get a transcript of his sermon.  It challenged and moved me deeply.  I was reminded that at Christmas I celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, and that His birth and my faith in Him has radical consequences for my life.

The way of Jesus is a bold, loving and gracious way.  It subverts the culture of power and dominance that occupies the popular mind of our time. It reminds me that Jesus came for peace, yet so much of the resources of this world, both financial and human, are spent on war.  The best of our minds, the majority of our budgets, are not applied towards peaceable aims - they are applied in the interests of vengence and violence.  This is an affront to the Prince of Peace who came to live among us, living our life and dying our death in order to overcome both sin and death by His love.

So, this Christmas I was challenged to remember that the Prince of Peace came as a man to die on a cross.  The sacrifice of his life was for the salvation and transformation of the world. At Christmas I am challenged to remember that the Jesus of the manger is also the Jesus of the Cross.

So, this Christmas can I please encourage you to read Alan’s powerful message? It may not be all that easy! But it will be deeply challenging.

I had to face myself and my own denial honestly as I read it. Some of what you read may not be easy to hear - it was not easy for me. But, I would rather face my lies, and the lies of our world with honesty and courage, than be party to deception and simply tell myself that all is well.

The text below comes from ‘The War Crimes Times’ newsletter (Winter 2013, pp. 5-7 and are republished with Alan’s permission).

I wonder what you have just heard during the reading of those Hebrew scriptures. I wonder what you heard. What did you hear?

Did you hear Sunday school children singing, singing about animals going in two by two? Or did you hear children screaming panic-stricken, terrified, gasping for breath; people fleeing to higher ground, pleading, praying to be let into that ark – and if not me, then take my child. Knocking, banging, banging on the ark, let me in! Yet the doors of the ark remained sadistically closed.

What did you feel when those words were read? Did you feel the desperation, the despair, the drowning, the death?

And then after the 40 days, what did you see? The sunshine? Green lush, beautiful blossoming? Birds and bees? Or decomposing bodies, swelling, smelling – disease, decay gathered in every single nook and cranny?

The cruel results, the inevitable cruel results of divid- ing up a world with the simplistic notion that there are some who are wicked and others who are righteous, that there are two types of people in the world: good and bad. And if we can just get rid of the bad people, then we will have peace. There is an axis of evil in the world and if we can just destroy the axis of evil, then all will be safe and secure.

The persons who act on this notion of dividing the world into wicked people and righteous people should be brought before the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity and all of creation – even if that person is God.

This deathly division between good people and bad people continues today especially in my faith tradition – especially in my faith tradition. The Christian faith, more than any other faith, has participated in this deathly division – dividing the world into good and bad, saved and unsaved, those who will be ushered into heaven and those who will be cast into hell. That thought process is nothing less than hate speech.

We go back to the text. These Hebrew narrators were incredibly courageous, risky in the extreme. You see, what these Hebrew narrators are trying to do is not endorse this primitive, partisan God or world view, but rather to cleverly, and with great risk, subvert it. They knew that the common world understanding of God was that God was some almighty superhero that would punish the wicked and bless the righteous. They knew that was the dominant religious world view and understanding of their time. So they risked casting God in that light in their narrative. They don’t believe it, they know that’s not so. But they cleverly start where the audience is.

There were righteous ones, just a few. God saved them and the wicked were punished and the audience applaud. Because that was their world view. Justice has been done, the wicked got what they deserved, and the righteous what was promised. And then the narrator moves to Act II. And we read that once the flood had subsided, wickedness remained.

Please follow this link to read the entire transcript

For the last week or so I have been reading Ranulph Fiennes amazing book ‘My Heroes’.

It tells the stories of various brave and courageous women and men who did extraordinary things in face of great danger and hardship. The story that most moved me was that of hotelier Paul Rusesabagina - the man who saved just over a thousand Rwandans from the genocide that ripped that nation in 1994. I was moved to tears by the tales of women and children who were violently and brutally hacked to death by family and friends in a killing frenzy that spread through the land that year…

[read more…]

Stanley Hauerwas, Working With Words (via invisibleforeigner)

Thomas Merton (via becket)

(via veareflejos)

Saint Augustine (via catholiclifeguard)

Deeply challenging! True love is the way of Christ - but it is extremely difficult!

(via veareflejos)

Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (via invisibleforeigner)

(via redviena)

Thomas Merton (via fycr)

(Source: blog.sojo.net, via christianradicalism)

invisibleforeigner:

Ten years ago a force that distorted religion, had no respect for justice, and had no regard for human life, killed 3,000 people in one day and seared the soul of America.

Yesterday American forces killed the man widely regarded as chiefly responsible for perpetrating those terrible crimes.

This is not a day for celebration.

A celebration would be due if the perpetrators of those crimes had expressed remorse, regret, and repentance. They have not. A celebration would be due if there had been a conversion of Bin Laden or his followers to a truer practice of Islam. There has been none. A celebration would be due if the overwhelming response from Christians in America had been one that embodied the commandments to love their enemies and pray for their persecutors. There has been no such overwhelming response. A celebration would be due if there had been a proper process of justice, involving arrest, gathering of evidence, trial, defense, and prosecution. There has been no such process. A celebration would be due if the 3,000 that died on 9/11 and their memory had been honored by no endless cycle of further killing. Quite the contrary: nearly 6,000 U.S. troops have died in the “War on Terror” since 2001, and countless thousands of Iraqis and Afghans have meanwhile lost their lives in a decade of slaughter.

Having Bin Laden still at large after 10 years was an embarrassment to America, and it’s not surprising the American administration would stop at nothing to destroy him. But this is not a day for celebration. If we assume that killing a suspect without trial, without persuading him of the justice of our cause, and without bringing him to a true expression of his own tradition – let alone our own – is a victory, then it is a sign of how far we have allowed this war to distort the values of our civilization.

Strong words - I hear the power of the Gospel of Christ, the prince of peace, within them.

(Source: facebook.com)

Thomas Merton

William Cavanaugh, Liturgy as Politics (via invisibleforeigner)