May 15, 2008
April 30, 2008 - The Christian and the environment - Hayward Fong
Genesis 1:1, 26-30
A week ago, yesterday was designated as “Earth Day.”
James Washburn’s article in the April 17, 2008 edition of the L.A. Weekly provides some interesting history and background for my thoughts today.
The first Earth Day took place April 22, 1970, thirty eight years ago. In 1970 the world’s human population was just under 3.7 billion. It had taken nearly 2,000 years to plump that number up from a mere 200 million that populated the earth in Bible days. In merely 38 years the 3.7 billion has been inflated by another 3 billion.
In 1970, gas was 34 cents a gallon and few people pondered what the lead in it was doing to the environment, except those in the DuPont board room which had covered up lead’s downside for decades. Our oceans were still teeming with fish, and they weren’t anywhere near full of mercury yet. Delaware-sized chunks of Arctic and Antarctic ice shelf weren’t yet crumbling into the sea.
Back then, the weather extremes, species die-offs and oceanic dead zones of today were still within realms of conjecture between science and science fiction. Some events have come to pass that even the writers of science fiction could not have imagined, such as in 2004, when Australia’s epic drought drove thirst-crazed kangaroos into urban areas where they attacked humans.
In 1970, our dichotomy regarding the earth as both our oyster and our toilet hadn’t taken so obvious a toll on the planet, nothing like what is happening now. But it was enough to get people thinking and organizing. Earth Day was a huge event in which 20 million Americans took part…from teachers taking school children to tide pools to experience touching sea creatures to participants fostering substantive legislative, scientific and academic change.
Earth Day has since gone global, observed in 174 languages. But here at home it has slowly demonstrated our political inertia, particularly over the past seven years of environmental rollback. I don’t believe anything will change until policy changes are made at the Environmental Protection Agency. Since these changes will come about only with direction from the White House, much will depend on what happens in November.
It is ironic that the Agency owes it existence to the first Earth Day. President Nixon, being politically astute, saw how he could bolster falling public support of his administration by giving lip service to what he saw represented by the 20 million people that first Earth Day. By combining various elements of existing cabinet departments, tying a bow around it, and calling it the Environmental Protection Agency, he gave away nothing and gained support from both sides of the Congressional aisle but most importantly outflanked his chief rivals in both political parties for re-election in 1972.
Lobbyists are in charge of agencies that should be policing the lobbyists’ polluting industries. Whistle blowers are fired or shunted into obscurity. Science has been so censored and distorted by the current administration that over 4,000 scientists, including 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences and 48 Nobel Prize winners, issued a 48 page detailed letter condemning these actions.
The question you and I need to ask ourselves is, “What is our role as Christians in the environmental issue?”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).So begins our Bible. So begins the history of the universe and mankind. Our very life, and that of future generations, depends on our love and care of our planet Earth. We celebrate Earth and our God-appointed task for its care every day.
"It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (I Corinthians 4:2).Those first photographs from space appeared in the early sixties and changed forever the way we see the earth. For the first time we beheld our planet whole: a blue and white jewel set in the blackness of the universe, lovely beyond imagining but also fragile beyond imagining, - a shimmering dot in the yawning immensity of space. It was no longer the enormous earth that men had struggled to explore and conquer… a mountain here, an ocean there, elsewhere a desert or a forest. Our portrait from space showed us a unity, a little ball, bound together and interconnected in every part.
But the revelation wasn’t new, not really. That view of us from beyond ourselves is God’s view – the picture of the Bible painted long before the camera caught it. God created the earth whole. He made it beautiful. He created Adam, “Earthman,” to tend it in His name.
God said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).I developed an interest in bonsai art when I was working for the Los Angeles County Road Department. Over the years, I lost interest in it, but renewed my interest when I went to work for the City of Gardena where they have an annual bonsai festival.
I can still recall the elderly Japanese gardener bending ever so close to this tiny tree that his chin literally stroked the needles of this 200 year old bonsai pine, only eighteen inches high. He then moved to a miniature maple, again lowering his head in what seemed an intimate communion, a relationship between man and the living things in his care. Next he stooped over a small sturdy oak, then a two foot high cedar, product of nearly 300 years of devoted care. What empathy with roots and soil, sap and bark, generation after generation, had gone into the nurturing of those trees!
When I asked him as to whether he was speaking to the trees, the old man with a face seemingly full of age and wisdom as the trees themselves, answered, “No, I do not speak to the trees. I listen to them.” We need to learn the language of God’s creation.
Two weeks ago, I spoke on how Christianity has and should play a role in the environment, sharing several articles on how Christianity has been deemed to be a source of the earth’s degradation. So what is our responsibility as Christians for the future of this earth?
Reading from the Bible, humanity was not created to take advantage of creation, but rather to keep it, nurture it and sustain it: “We were formed in God’s image to represent Him on earth so that all the earth, in turn, could glorify Him better and better.”
The environment is an issue that the Church must not ignore. Intellectually we may know that God gave humanity the job of dressing the earth and keeping it, but how do we accomplish it? How can we even begin to be truly committed to the care and preservation of our earth?
In an attempt to help us answer this question on the environment in its biblical context, let us see what the Bible has to say.
The Bible tells us that we have a Creator God, that He does care about the environment, and shows us what our responsibilities toward nature and family are from His point of view.
The definition of a steward is one who looks after and takes care of the possessions of another. Most Christian authors agree that human beings were put here to be stewards over the physical earth. The concept of stewardship is a most important one. Humanity’s job was - and is - to manage and to take care of what God has given us.
Thus, stewardship, for the Christian, focuses on God’s creation. It encompasses all His gifts, including time, talents, money, earthly opportunities - to name a few. It recognizes responsibility for His world - being proactive in managing the gifts of the Creator.
So, why has it taken us so long to recognize that our physical environment is crumbling faster than the technicians can reassemble it? Why are we more or less content to watch the world God made turn into a chemical swamp? Perhaps it’s because we think the problem is too big for us to deal with and that we can’t do anything about it, or even want to be bothered. All stewards must account to his principal; as such, we, you and I, will be judged by what we do with what God has given us.
The environment is an ethical and spiritual issue that should motivate us to prayer, meditation and action. Ecological problems are real and we’re not going to make them go away by consistently ignoring them. They won’t and can’t fix themselves if we continue to contribute to the problem rather than the solution. Christians must be active and involved.
World crises and problems that command our immediate attention will come and they will go, but acid rain, salinization, pollution of our water ways and the extinction of species will quietly continue.
People in nearby communities have taken heed. Young people have taken it upon themselves to clean up our beaches and flood control channels and help restore them to their God intended natural states. They have scheduled regular programs to remove trash that has been dumped or brought down from upstream storm drains. The trash you see at the street corners eventually ends up in the ocean by way of streams like the Los Angeles River even though its concrete walls make it difficult to think of it as a waterway. The hundreds of tons of trash and rubbish these volunteers remove enable God to rehabilitate this and other water courses and save His environment
On a larger scale, our elected officials must enact legislation to protect our environment and not allow corporate America to put the dollar sign in front of their eyes.
Global warming is causing an ever increasing rate of irreversible polar ice caps recession, raising the water level of the oceans and threatening the habitat for numerous animals such as the polar bear, fox and wolf, and the food chain for the creatures of the sea.
In the April 20th edition of the Los Angeles Times, this headline appears: “A global warming calamity is building in the Himalayas.” Here are some excerpts from that article.
“PUNAKHA, BHUTAN – High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a ‘tsunami from the sky.’The article goes on to say, “Because of Earth’s rising temperatures, at least 25 glacial lakes in Bhutan are at risk of overflowing and dumping their contents into the narrow valleys where much of the country’s population lives.”
“This lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the glacial warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.
“Such floods from above have hit Punakha before, most recently in 1994, a calamity that killed about two dozen people and wiped out livelihoods and homes without warning. But scientists say a new flood would unleash more than twice as much water as before and be far more catastrophic.”
It is a long article and addresses other matters affected by the climatic changes such as agriculture and disease. It concludes with the following statement.
“Despite Bhutan’s records as one of the world’s most environmentally vigilant nations, it has no choice but to confront and plan for problems incurred by the actions of others, …‘There is a sense of helplessness,’ said Doley Tshering of the United Nations Development Program, ‘but at the same time, you can’t sit back and do nothing about it.’”Our nation with its insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is the world’s largest contributor to this problem of global warming. A total of 174 nations including all of Europe have affirmed the Kyoto Protocol designed to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide and other gases that create the greenhouse effect causing global warming. President Bush has refused to ratify this Protocol negotiated over a period of almost ten years, ignoring the report by his Environmental Protection Agency and advice from the National Academy of Science as to the major cause of global warming. As a country professing to be “one nation under God,” the President’s action does not bear a good witness to the world.
You and I, as Christians, are called to keep God’s creation, nurture it and sustain it. We are formed in God’s image to represent Him on earth so that all the earth, in turn could glorify Him better and better.
References:
L.A. Weekly, April 17, 2008, James Washburn, “Headin’ for the Tar Pits, One and All”;
L.A. Times, April 20, 2008, Henry Chu; P/T; DG 0422/23/2490;
042397, 042298, 042199, 042804, 042705. 042606.
April 28, 2008
April 27, 2008 - Resistance: The work of resurrection - Frank Alton
John 15:1-8, 18-20
MP3 File
How many of you have gone through periods when things in & around your life seem like they will never stop changing? They can be good changes or bad changes. I remember the month I graduated from college my best friend also graduated magna cum laude, and celebrated his 21st birthday, and got married. I was just a tad bit jealous of him, but I also realized that’s a lot of change for one month. I know some of you who have had periods of going back and forth between no work and too much work and back again. Others have gone through a period when people you are very close to keep dying. Still others have the same experience with their own health; first it gets worse, then better, then worse again. Sometimes it happens all at once: you lose your job, then your car gets totaled in an accident; then you need physical therapy but your health insurance went the way of your job.
Jesus’ disciples were going through a period like that. Just a few years earlier Jesus had called them to follow him. Most of them had left their jobs; at the very least they spent less time with their families; they gained a new purpose to their lives; and they were given new focus in their relationship with the world. Now Jesus has gathered them for a last meal together because he senses that the end of his life is near. He knew that his death would create another huge period of change in their lives.
In this morning’s passage, known as the Farewell Discourse for obvious reasons, Jesus was trying to help them prepare for and respond to this giant new change that was about to take place in their lives. At one level change always evokes resistance in human beings. Even when we say we like change, there are elements of resistance that pervade our lives in the midst of big changes. Jesus was very realistic about resistance. He didn’t see it as all bad or as all good. He wasn’t surprised by it, & he didn’t want the disciples to be either. In fact, one could say that responding to resistance is resurrection work. Jesus was preparing the disciples to do that particular part of the work of resurrection.
Today’s passage comes right in the middle of the Farewell Discourse. Both before and after this section Jesus focuses on the sorrow and anxiety that his absence would cause them. But here he focuses on two new realities that would become regular parts of their lives – one internal and one external. He calls the new internal reality pruning: “every branch that bears fruit is pruned to make it bear more fruit.” He calls the new external reality persecution: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you... Neither pruning nor persecution was completely new to the disciples – they had already experienced both to some extent. But now they were going to be facing them without Jesus being physically present when they happened.
We all have a pretty good idea of what persecution is, whether we’ve experienced it personally or simply read or heard about other people being persecuted; but what about pruning? In horticulture, gardeners know that they have to keep pruning the bush, the rose, the vine, to keep it healthy. You sacrifice twenty potential buds and new shoots in order that the two or three that remain may grow strong and produce much better flowers and fruit than would otherwise have happened. As someone who is not much of a gardener, I find myself resisting the waste of it: all that potential life, all those potential flowers, being ruthlessly cut off.
I find that most of us resist spiritual pruning in the same way. Spiritual pruning involves cutting out some things from our lives which may be good in themselves and which would in principle have had the potential to develop into fruit bearing branches. Pruning also involves cutting out parts that have turned negative even though they might have started out as good or necessary. We no longer need them, and they might be doing us harm. Defense mechanisms are good examples of these. As children we learn ways to cope and survive – like pretending it doesn’t hurt when someone says something hurtful to us. But as we grow up those coping strategies are no longer needed, and if we cling to them, they keep us from the very intimacy to which Jesus invites us. But whether we’re talking about too many good parts or parts that have turned negative because they’re hurting our growth, the pruning-knife cuts them out so that other things may flourish. Pruning is always painful & threatening. That’s why we resist it. When it does happen, it’s important to grieve the losses involved. But Jesus indicates that the vine dresser – the very source of love – is never closer to the vine, never more intimately concerned with it, than when wielding the pruning-knife.
Resistance to pruning is a fact of life. We’re going to resist, whether we like it or not. The challenge is to resist in ever healthier ways. Some unhealthy ways for adults to resist are to deny reality, to blame ourselves or others, and to repress our true emotions because we think they are unacceptable. Once again, those forms of resistance may have been necessary at an earlier stage of life. Children who experienced abuse had to deny reality in order to survive. The psychological term for it is “disassociation.” Sometimes it involves separating “me” from my body. It often leads to repressing the memory of the experience because it is too overwhelming to face at a child’s stage of development. Children don’t decide to disassociate or repress a memory. Their minds and bodies do that by themselves.
But as we grow up, we need to realize that we now can access the psychological and spiritual resources to face the memories. That is how we become more fruitful. Even that doesn’t mean we are necessarily ready today. Healthy resistance for adults sometimes involves postponing pruning until we are in a better emotional space. Even mere acknowledgment that we are resisting can be healthy. Eventually, however, we have to face the pruning-knife.
The distinction between healthy & unhealthy resistance doesn’t only apply to the internal threat of the pruning-knife. It also applies to external threats that evoke resistance. We usually experience as threats any change in the conditions of life, or the expectations that others place on us. The mere anticipation of Jesus’ absence came as a threat to the disciples. But Jesus goes on to speak of persecution. Persecution is a specific kind of external threat that involves opposition – whether physical violence or verbal abuse. It's at least as true in justice-making as in teaching or psychotherapy: the work starts where the resistance starts. If we're not encountering any resistance, then we have to ask ourselves whether we've confused the Gospel of Jesus with our culture's rules for respectability. John's community knew it. Israel's exiles hearing God's prophetic word in Isaiah about their being the vine knew it. The new life that God brings comes in the midst of powers that are hostile to it.
But persecution isn’t the only form of external threat. We also feel threatened when someone tries to impose something on us. When someone tries to get us to accept something we are not ready for, they are imposing their ideas on us. Even a good idea that comes from outside can come at a bad time. Surely you’ve had some one try to give you good advice that simply came at the wrong time? You may even recognize it as good advice; but it infuriates you that they are offering it at that moment. It can be healthy to resist such advice.
That’s why the best therapists are those who understand that each of us have most of the resources we need for our own healing and growth inside us. I believe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “you have already been pruned by the word that I have spoken to you.” The “word” that Jesus spoke to them mostly came in the form of parables. Parables do not impose ideas. They create space. They invite reflection. They encourage us to access our internal resources.
It may surprise us to call working with our resistance “resurrection work.” In the church I grew up in as a young Christian, Easter and Resurrection were about success. They still are. Having lines out the door to get in to Easter worship; testimonies of success attributed to God in peoples’ lives; everything running smoothly in the church – all those signs of God’s goodness. And they look pretty good to me. But in the Bible, Jesus’ followers experienced resurrection more often as a threat that evokes resistance than a victory that leads to success. Poets like the Guatemalan Julia Esquivel know that. She wrote a poem that became the title of a book called, “Threatened with Resurrection.” She describes the word that has pruned us. According to Julia,
The Word, for our sake, became poverty clothed as the poor who live off the refuse heap. The Word, for our sake, became a sob a thousand times stifled in the immovable mouth of the child who died from hunger. The Word, for our sake, became danger in the anguish of the mother who worries about her child growing into adulthood.The Word cut us deeply in that place of shame: the painful reality of the poor. The Word blew its spirit over the dried bones of the churches, guardians of silence. The Word awoke us from the lethargy which had robbed us of our hope. The Word became a path in the jungle, a decision on the farm, love in women, unity among workers, & a Star for those few who can inspire dreams. The Word became Light, the Word became History, and the Word became Conflict.Those are parabolic words that allow us to work with our resistance to external threats in healthy ways. Prophetic action is the biblical form that healthy resistance takes. But not everything that goes in the name of prophetic action is healthy. Much so-called prophetic action is reactionary. It hasn’t passed through the pruning process. People talk about counting to ten before acting. Hopefully some of what happens while we are counting to ten is to pay attention to our own pruning and our own resistance, and how the thing we are getting ready to protest is true in our own lives. That doesn’t mean we don’t protest it. Prophets didn’t wait until they had their own lives together before they spoke truth to power. But in their most effective expressions they spoke with a humility that comes from self-reflection.
April 20, 2008 - Escape or Entanglement? Two Visions of the Cross - Frank Alton
Acts 7:54-60
MP3 File
I want you to do some musing with me this morning about Immanuel’s ministry. The text we just heard from the Book of Acts is the conclusion of an extended speech given by Stephen, one of the first deacons selected to wait on tables during the distribution of food. Stephen would have been like one of the volunteers in Immanuel’s Food Pantry. That’s an interesting, important & threatening perspective from which to view Immanuel’s ministry. I say threatening because Food Pantry volunteers tend to be people who are full of compassion and not too patient with aspects of institutionalism that might get in the way of compassion.
Too many institutions have failed & too many physical structures have distracted from the real mission of God’s people. That’s what Stephen communicated in his speech. Stephen’s speech debunks any illusion that God will protect institutions or physical structures that get in the way of the Spirit’s mission. Immanuel is currently engaged in conversations and actions that focus a lot on this institution and its buildings in order to sustain Immanuel’s ministry in the years ahead. This passage raises important and uncomfortable questions about all that – questions that we avoid to our peril and engage to our benefit. Stephen incarnated those questions in his speech to the council, and he did not mince words. Of course he was about as well received as Rev Jeremiah Wright would be in the Bush White House. You remember Jeremiah Wright, don’t you? He is the retiring pastor of the Trinity UCC in Chicago who officiated at Barack Obama’s wedding, baptized his children, and shaped his faith. That association has been about as helpful to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as an association with Stephen would have been to a member of the Sanhedrin.
But we dare not try to escape the likes of Stephen, because to deny a connection with Stephen is to deny the founding story of the church – namely, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The parallels with the story of Jesus cannot be missed – from the rage of his enemies, to the forgiveness offered to them, from the covering of the ears to keep from hearing an alternative version of the story to the focus by the victim on the will of God.
What do we need to hear from Stephen at Immanuel at this point in our history? For several years now the leadership of Immanuel has been addressing the matter of the sustainability of this ministry. In the past year the pace of that work has increased. Currently we are engaged in a feasibility study to determine how much money we could raise to restore this beautiful and well used building so that it can continue to be a center of activities for the many communities it serves, including & especially this congregation. We have also been working diligently to develop affordable housing on our parking lots that will both meet a huge need in this community as well as help sustain Immanuel’s ministry financially.
At the same time we continue to nurture relationships with tenants and potential tenants who can share this space in ways that serve the community and share in the expense of our building. A key piece of that strategy involves our efforts to establish a partnership with the Korean Church of Peace, so that after the Open Door Church leaves to their new building next year, we might participate in a ministry among Korean people in this community that is congruent with our own ministry.
Yet another group of Immanuel folks has been looking at all these factors and developing different scenarios for our future. When we put them all together, what options exist for Immanuel? That is a tough question, but it is necessary that we ask it. We are stewards of Immanuel’s ministry. Prior generations established this church, built this space in which we carry out our ministry, and participated in life-giving mission around this city and around the world. We have a responsibility to discern how best to go forward with all that.
What does Stephen’s threatening message have to teach us in the midst of that institutional work? I believe there are several lessons. I want to focus on four: Don’t forget the people. Expect opposition. Keep listening. Practice forgiveness.
Don’t forget the people. Stephen’s sermon was mostly about people. He told the stories of Abraham and Sarah who had to leave the settledness of life in Haran; of Joseph who worked with the Pharaoh of Egypt to save the family that had rejected him; and of Moses and the women who sustained his life when it was threatened. He concludes that those who held the reigns of power, who ran the institutions and inhabited their palaces and temples, were often on the wrong side of history.
What does that mean for Immanuel as we work to sustain our institution and buildings? I want to suggest that it means we dare not focus exclusively on funding this ministry by squeezing every last penny out of our property. We are a congregation that is too small for this building. Look at us. We rattle around in this huge sanctuary. Many of us have arrived at this church wounded from other church experiences. Some of those churches focused a lot on growing in numbers. So most at Immanuel are loathe to do anything that smacks of church growth.
But we have been told by many that Immanuel is one of the best kept secrets in Los Angeles. The truth is there is probably only a small slice of Los Angeles that would be attracted to our ministry. Our model of ministry is threatening to many Christians; and those who want what we offer aren’t expecting to find it in a church. But even a small slice of a city the size of Los Angeles could easily double or triple our numbers. If you have walked or driven around this neighborhood, you see all the new apartment buildings going up. Many new neighbors will be moving in to this area. Will any of them find Immanuel?
I’m not talking about proselytizing people to believe something they don’t want to believe. I’m talking about sharing a specific version of the good news with people who are looking precisely for what we offer. Who will find those people? My sense is that most of us believe someone else will. But I’ve got news for you. There isn’t anyone else. While we strategize about how to get new groups to lease space on our property, Stephen’s message to us is “don’t forget the people.” We also need a strategy to reach the people. We are here to minister to people, not to be landlords. The staff and Session can take care of the landlord part. But all of us need to reach out to and minister to the people. Will you step up to the plate?
The second lesson I see in Stephen’s sermon is “Expect opposition.” Jesus and Stephen are dangerous characters to know. There is no response we can make to Jesus that will protect us from experiencing danger of some kind. If we try to escape the danger by avoiding Jesus, or by hiding from the truth he awakens us to, we will remain locked in fear. Fear leads us to all kinds of dangerous behaviors. If we actively reject or oppose Jesus or his followers, we end up on the wrong side of history, which means the wrong side of justice, compassion & freedom. Stephen was accusing the council of being on the wrong side of history. On the other hand, if, like Stephen, we embrace Jesus and his mission, we expose ourselves to danger from all the forces that feel threatened by the changes Jesus brings into history, all those who oppose the arc of justice. So the best way to move forward is to consciously expect opposition so that it doesn’t discourage us before we build up momentum.
Immanuel has taken positions on many issues that have led people to either actively oppose us or simply avoid us. Some people left when we started having a bilingual service each week. Others left because of our inclusiveness with the GLBT community. Still others oppose our hospitality with undocumented immigrants. We’ve engaged opposing forces in the struggle for affordable housing, better schools for the children of this neighborhood, and a host of other issues. Sometimes I’ve been shocked and discouraged by the opposition. Some days the struggle feels too hard. I want to learn the lesson from Stephen that we need to expect opposition.
Thirdly, we need to keep listening. As the members of the council heard Stephen call them “stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and hears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit… they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen… he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look’, he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’” In response, we are told that “they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him.”
Now the members of the council weren’t evil people. They were like a council of bishops, or like a Presbytery, full of the most committed people among the faithful. They had good intentions & truly wanted to serve God. But they had stopped listening. They had put ministry on auto pilot and moved forward. When they heard something that sounded familiar but that didn’t fit in with their current plans they “covered their ears” in an attempt to avoid the dissonance of the message with their current priorities.
Notice that there are two moments of listening. There is the ongoing listening required to stay attuned to God’s Spirit, so we don’t go astray ever so gradually into ways that make all kinds of sense at each tiny step. Each & every one of us needs to pray, to meditate, and to reflect on our lives on a regular basis so that we don’t get too far off track. But it is practically inevitable that at certain periods we will get off track. That’s when the second moment of listening matters so much. We hear that voice calling to us from a place on the very path from which we have grown distant. Because of the distance the voice sounds discordant. We are tempted to reject it. The challenge is to listen to it, to attend to it, to allow it to break through our resistance and hear its urging to keep taking risks.
The final reminder from Stephen’s story is to practice forgiveness. Like Jesus before him, Stephen prayed that God would forgive his persecutors: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” One writer (Gil Bailie, in Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary) pointed out the difference between Jesus and Stephen on the one hand, and John the Baptist on the other. All three were persecuted as innocent victims. Like Jesus, Stephen keeps his eyes on God, so that he can do what needs to be done right there: forgiveness. The only one in the position to forgive is the victim. In going around and forgiving people, Jesus was using his power as the "Lamb slain since the foundation of the world." This is what Andrew McKenna calls the "victim's epistemological privilege." He's the only one with perfect lucidity at this moment. But John the Baptist was glaring back at Herod, his accuser. He was into that little scandal, and nothing would come of it.
Julian of Norwich says this in one of her writings: "God lays upon everyone he longs to bring into his bliss something that is no blame in his sight, but for which they are blamed and despised in this world. Scorned, mocked, and cast out. He does this to offset the harm they should otherwise have from the pomp and vainglory of this earthly life, and to make their road to him easier, and to bring them higher in his joy without end." Being in that position of being the accused, cures us of a lot of our craziness.
So, as we move forward at a critical juncture for Immanuel, Stephen’s words speak important truth into our reality: Don’t forget the people. Expect opposition. Keep listening. Practice forgiveness. We could do a lot worse than remembering those truths. So, “Listen, sisters, brothers, to the news that we proclaim.”
