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Monday, February 25, 2019

Some Oscar after thoughts.....




2/25




Just a few Oscars afterthoughts. I will leave to others, or another time, the discussion about the Best Picture Award or other critical analysis of what this year's nominations had to say about how we are now. I want to comment on two things : one, this year's collection of short live-action films, and two, a few words about Vice.

The short films are always kind of the poor cousins at the Oscars, this year threatened with exile to commercial time, rescued back to live tv at the last minute.  My good friend Beppe and I always look forward with eager anticipation to our annual visit to the Independent Film Center a week or two before the Oscars to see the shorts. This year's visit was like no other. 

There's usually a variety of movies including at least one with a quirky point of view that comes in at an angle and whisks you away, with a laugh, or knowing nod. This year's collection was relentless and unforgiving in its constant, unrelieved tension. The audience left looking dazed. ('Abused," Beppe said.) 

With one exception, the theme could have been bad things done by and to boys. And with one exception, redemption was hard to find. Two were from French Canada, and on each  from Spain, Ireland and the US.

The opener, Madre (Mother) from Spain, impresses you at first with the way the story develops almost entirely through phone calls. The horror rises as  woman tries to locate her son lost on a beach with a dying cell phone. And it never ends....you are left with the worst possibilities still possible. I through up my hands in frustration as it ended.

Fauve, from Canada, shows the day's explorations of two boys gone tragically bad. Only a final poetic image gives a sense of transcendent beauty amidst the tragedy.  

Also from Canada, Marguerite, a film about a woman dying from kidney failure and her attendant The subtext is how our attitudes about same gender love affairs has grown and evolved. Its end is affecting, moving, a touch of beauty in the midst of tragedy. It was my favorite for its belief in the possibility of grace and beauty in the midst of a depressing season.

The most difficult  to handle is an Irish film, Detained, about the youngest boys (10 years old) to ever be convicted of murder. In what was known as the James Bolger case in which a two year old boy is brutally tortured and then killed for no reason. It certainly draws into question the concept of the innocence of children. I suppose it's valuable and helps us to ponder   how these things can be done by fellow human beings. As a grandfather of two beautiful young grandchildren, it was simply too disturbing for me. And I continue to be haunted  by it. Knowing that the victim's parents objected only heightens my sense of being upset by/with this film. 

Finally, the film that did win,Skin, is a bitter O Henryesque parable on race/perception of color in the US and what we are teaching our children. Despite its capacity to capture the nuance in most lives, eg, a vicious racist can also  be a loving engaged father, it's still a difficult film to watch.

On the one hand, there is high quality in these films. On the other hand, I'm trying to understand what they are saying  about where we are. The theologian Rubem Alves has made it clear that if all we offer are images of suffering, it does not inspire people , it deadens them. If we want people to rise up and fight for a better world, we need to create images of beauty so that the  can become imagined and then  real. 

                                   * * * *

Vice is a fine well made  film with the quirky perspective I missed  in the  short films needed to make a real life horror story easier to absorb. Like Michael Moore with a touch of Garcia Marquez. Not to mention the acting virtuosity of Christian Bale (even physically transformed) and Sam Rockwell. In the end, this film is vitally important right now. 

The reality of life in the Trump presidency has been so overwhelming as to have obscured everything that came before. George Bush, Jr can be a buddy to Bill Clinton and do his painting and be the guy you'd like to have a beer with and we forget the  (literally) horrendous crimes against humanity committed during his administration. The calculated use of the tragedy of 9-11 to justify a war in Iraq at the expense of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives was nothing short of criminal. Not to mention smaller tragedies like costing Colin Powell his integrity. 

We are reminded that Dick Cheney was the architect of all of that. And there is the final tragedy of watching Cheney take the one place in his life where he maintained his decency, his protection of his daughter  Mary from public political strategic homophobia, and tacitly gave the nod to his daughter Liz when she threw her sister under the bus in her own campaign for her father's former seat. 

It's important not to forget this history as we seek to change our present reality. What we're up against is deeper, and more insidious than one bad president, even as we descend ever lower. 

Vice is more than worth a look.

Monday, February 18, 2019

Blessed are...

2/17

Ready for worship
Today I'm back at Good Shepherd Faith. The choir is rehearsing a medley of spirituals as I arrive. The service begins. And after scriptures, my reflection, or "prompting,' as they call it. 

February is the shortest month of the year...but this years' lectionary selections have been kind of a greatest hits collection  with passages like the  First Corinthians 13 "Love Passage" and today's passage from the Beatitudes as Luke presented them.

Let's start by saying Luke and Matthew tell the same story in different ways. Matthew's puts it "on . the mount" while Luke has it "on the plain"...when you go to the actual site at Capernaum, they explain it very easily. There's a hill that leads down to the sea. Either Jesus was on top and the  people below or vice versa. Doesn't matter. What does matter is what he says.

Well, there's a difference  there too. Matthew likes a little nuance, like poor "in spirit" and "hunger and thirst for righteousness."  Luke keeps it simple and straight, and lefty preacher that I am, I prefer that....the poor, the hungry...no nuance...and Luke is not satisfied to leave it with blessings...he adds the curses...but more of that later.

A friend of mine once pointed out that in Luke, Jesus is addressing the crowd...and in Matthew, for most of the passage he's addressing the disciples about the crowd, speaking of them in the 3rd person. It only turns to the 2nd, directly to the disciples, when it gets to what will happen to them...

 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Luke introduces us  to the sermon with a lot of action, healing and exorcisms, people coming from very specific places, like Judea and Jerusalem  in Israel and Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon...

let's see who gets blessed in Luke..

* the poor
* the hungry
* those who weep
* people who are hated, reviled and defamed

that would pretty much qualify as qualify as good news...radical good news...

But let me be clear...we need to resist any efforts to romanticize....there's nothing good about any of these...if you ask most people who are poor what want, the first answer would be, not to  be poor...
hungry people want fed...and  after 24 years here, I still don't know how to respond to those "excuse me ladies and gentlemen....." moments on the subway.

And as for weeping, don't get me started... Friday night, I had to do a funeral for a 31 year old man, with mental illness, who committed suicide. His sister had lost her husband to suicide 10 years ago. His niece says that if God is  trying to teach them something, he should stop doing the same thing over and over because it isn't working.

And I have to explain, like my friend Father Duffell from Blessed Sacrament says, sometimes God is surprised. But God's tears flow with ours and God is there waiting with open arms. I am usually lifted by funerals ...but after Friday I only felt sad. And angry.  After  hearing how much the young man meant to all these people, a friend said to me, "if everyone loved him so much, why isn't he still here?" For me, the fact that the answer is because he couldn't feel it...only left me feeling angry.

What's up with all of this? In the exact center of Leviticus, of all the Law, is the command to love neighbor as self. At the very center of the Torah is the Jubilee...every 50 years was to be a social reset button...all debts forgiven, slaves set free, property returned to the original owner...at the very center of the Hebrew Bible is the idea that no person, family or group should ever have to be permanently  dependent on the largesse of society for survival. 

There is no proof that it ever actually happened..some scholars believe that Jesus's self understood mission was to make the Jubilee real....and that this is behind the beatitudes...

Jesus' woes are also specific...(and "woe" was literally the sound of lost souls in gehenna....Jesus is literally saying "damn you" or "go to hell"....note the this this is one of the few times Jesus contemplates anyone sent to hell.. )


24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

25"Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

"Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

26"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets..

We could just read those and go"mic drop"

What then are we to do?

Latin American theologian Pablo Richard says we North American Christians don't understand power...that if we simply walk away from ours, the world doesn't get better, an evil person will add it to theirs...

We must use what we have, in Presbyterian terms, to contribute to the decent and orderly transfer of power to those  who are excluded..

A freind once pointed out that the Spanish word for Blessed in Spanish"...bienaventurado.." has the sense of "well adventured") to it.

What can we do as individuals? Well one thing for sure, vote...it does make a dfference in real peoples' lives...But as a community? to make the jubilee real? Or even one step closer?

May your adventures go well...

As we talk about this, one person asks "what does blessed mean?"
One person suggests "presence, God's presence"
Another something like grace, something undeserved that you receive. And how we sometimes need to both ask for what we need and also offer to others before they ask. And the bottom line importance of gratitude as not only the response to to but beginning of blessing...

Soon enough, the service is over and I am on my way to a winter wedding in Central Park....

                                                                ****

Later in the day, I would preach essentially the same sermon to the Ecclesia congregation of homeless people in Marcus Garvey Park. Police surveillance has been keeping people away. Today we've got two Josephs...one from Arkansas, the other  from a shelter in theBronx who still follows Judaism. Both with intricate, involved, and somewhat exotic, theological theories. And again, being there for one another seems to be the most important expression of blessing...

                                                               ****
At Good Shepherd Faith, I used Paul Simon's "Blessed are.."

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.
Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon, Ratted on,
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go,
I've walked around Soho for the last night or so.
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no.
Blessed is the land and the kingdom.
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to.
Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, like a wound
That I have no intention to heal.
Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long.

Songwriters: Paul Simon






Gospel Luke 6:17-26

17He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

21"Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

"Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

22"Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

25"Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

"Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

26"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.


Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Love is....

2/3

Beverly...the sun is back...


The deep freeze seems to be breaking up. There's sun...and warmth on the air today as I walk up Beverly towards church...Today we're talking about love....



                                                                          ****

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
Che

All you need is love. Beatles

Seems  like everybody's got something to say about love. . Just like the Christmas decorations go up the day after Halloween, the Valentine's Day hearts and cupids start going up right after Christmas. And we're now 3 days into February, the month of love...

Paul said some hard things, some confusing things and (forgive me) some just out and out things that just don't make sense. But if one time he got things right, it was First Corinthians 13. One of the all time greatest hits. Just like almost every funeral I do, people request the 23rd Psalm, almost every wedding requests 1 Corinthians 13.

(Although for awhile in the 70's, I got this from Tom Robbins: “Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet.”)

You could just about read  1 Corinthians 13 and drop the mic, no further words required. But I made the trip all the way out here, so I should say a few more things.

1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Paul begins by describing how even the most  poetic words ring hollow and untrue without love. Even seemingly righteous religious acts without love are meaningless.

Listen to these next again...

4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

These are not necessarily easy. Patience, especially. And insisting on your own way. That  not rejoicing in wrong doing covers a wide area. Like revenge. Or checking our happiness when we see another's sadness. Rejoicing in truth? How we need to hear that these days. And for all the competing claims about truth, remember this, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life...if you're struggling to know what's true, one question is does it sound like it's of Jesus? And there's your answer...that informs all that follows as well...

Three looks...first interpersonal. Times like Valentine's day can be hard for those of us who don't have a current partner. It can be as painful as mother's day is for some. At one point in my single years, I had finally come to a moment of peace when I considered that friends can get you through tines of no lovers better than lovers through times of no friends. Every relationship with love is a gift of God never to be taken for granted and to be received as a grace.

As far as our corporate life goes, that's pretty simple. We sing this song:  "...and they'll know we are Christians by our love..." So you always have to ask the question do they? If you pull back the camera a bit, what do you see? Here?

One of my biggest learnings I had in seminary came through my urban ministry core group. There were 12 of us, We would meet every Monday for 3-4 hours. Part of that time was prayer.  We had to pray for each other. Let me be honest...there were people at the beginning of that class that I just plain did't like. That I found annoying, irritating. At the end of the term, there were still some I didn't like, but after a semester of praying for them, I had come to love them.

We live in difficult times. I remind myself daily that there are still children in cages in the desert. Old prejudices and nemeses have been unleashed. 

I can only say this, our only answer is love. And it will take strong love to turn back the hate that has been loosed.

One who understood this was Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. And as I said on his birthday, we must resist any efforts to tame Dr.King. 

Listen to these words..

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

and this was the basis of his beloved community, a dream still unfulfilled.


What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
.King

At the end of the day, Just love is the only thing that is going to get us through this tough place of black and white.  Just meaning simple and only. But also just, as in justice.

Michael Eric Dyson's new book, What Truth Sounds Like, tells the story of how Bobby Kennedy changed from seeing the reality of black people as a political problem to be finessed and began to understand it as a personal moral imperative. (Much like Lincoln and slavery  before him...) It began by allowing himself to listen.

So it's Valentine's month. And also black history month. Can we make LOVE part of black history month?

8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Let those with ears to hear, hear....and love.
Amen

                                                            ****

We share our prayers.Break bread together. Then go downstairs for a shared meal. Outside, the sun feels good...

"Seasons of Love"

                                                     "All You Need is Love"

I Corinthians 1: 1-13

1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

"Seasons of Love"

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles
In laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?
In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died
It's time now to sing out
Tho' the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the love
Remember the love
Remember the love
Measure in love
Measure, measure your life in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love