A Prayer for the Haverford Township Board of Commissioners Meeting, July 11th, 2016

[In Haverford Township, the Board of Commissioners still ask our Havertown Ministerium to provide pray-ers for Commissioner's Meetings.  My turn usually comes in July, since our Session meeting doesn't conflict in July.  In the wake of the horrific loss of life in Baton Rouge, outside St. Paul, and in Dallas--this is what I shared:]  

Commissioners, it’s always a privilege and an honor to be with you and to offer an opening prayer for your meeting. 

The last time I was here was back in October, and I asked you to indulge me in a moment of silence because there had been a number of incidents of violence at schools. 

It took my breath away that 9 months later, after another week of horrific violence, I might need to do it again. 

But, silence hasn’t helped, or gotten us to where we’ve really wanted to go. 

So, if you’ll indulge me again, in the wake of Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas—take a moment, not to look down or to look away, but instead, I ask you to look around the room and look into the faces of those next to you and those across the room. 

Look into the faces….  Christians believe that we are all of us as human beings, made in the image of God.  We all have a little bit of God in our faces; we need each other, we are essential to each other—in all of our beautiful diversity. 

Rather than silence, when we’re looking for answers, we might try asking each other! 

I invite you to join me in asking for God’s Blessing: 

Holy God:

We again we have experienced that living is hard, that policing is hard, that governing is hard. 

We are polarized by politics, name-calling, finger-pointing, hand-wringing, blaming, pointing of guns, systemic failures, constantly having to pull ourselves up after another injustice another unfairness. 

We wish that killing were just as hard; but it seems it comes all too easily. 

May we be reminded, O God, that we each share your image; that we need one another. 

May we be reminded that ALL life is all too precious, and far too fleeting. 

May we be reminded that we are all human, that we all make mistakes, but that we are unsatisfied to just let them go, and that we will do all that is in our power to make them right. 

May we disagree, in love. 

May we challenge each other, in love. 

May we work for reasonable solutions—even unreasonable solutions—in love. 

So in this meeting, may our commissioners meet civility and kindness and charity in each other. 

And may those who come with business, meet kindness and charity, and know that we are all doing the best we can. 

May we bless each other with smiles, being grateful for those who give of themselves so that our lives are easier—for those who pick up trash and yard waste; for those who run to the firehouse at the sound of a siren and check out smoke alarms and smoking pots on stove, and unattended barbecue grills; for those who patrol the streets stand in harm’s way, and rescue lost cats; and yes, for those that must vote to make it happen by paying the Township bills and the payroll! 

All of this is hard, but we can do it well.  Smile on us, O God. 

AMEN.  

April 2017 Would Be a Very Good Month for Babies

Way, way, way back when times were tough for God’s people—in bondage, in Egypt, under the threat of death, not because of unfair labor practices but the threat of death because Pharaoh declared a war on male Hebrew babies—stories not often retold these days reveal that Hebrew leaders actually banned having children.  The image of Egyptian soldiers or agents killing infants was too much for them to bear.  So to avoid infant deaths, as this surely was not what God wanted or intended, they chose not having babies.  Seeing themselves as unable to change the system, they admitted their powerlessness and made themselves complicit with the Egyptian edict. 

Husbands and wives refrained from relations.  The Hebrew population ceased to grow.  And the lack of resistance kept a good people down. 

I’m grateful to John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, whose book entitled The First Christmas introduced me to some of this tradition. 

Where the turning of the story began, they suppose, was when a young Hebrew man and his wife chose resistance.  They resisted Pharaoh, they resisted their own leadership, they stood in the face of infants being killed and chose life—intentionally.  They made a baby and named him Moses—and dared Pharaoh to snuff out what God had inspired. 

I write this, horrified by the violence that erupted in the United States from African-American men dying at the hands of white police officers and innocent white police officers gunned down as they protected what was widely reported as a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas. 

I don’t condone the violence.  I don’t condemn police officers.  I don’t blame #blacklivesmatter.  I recognize every day that the violence we abhor is violence we have helped create ourselves.  It’s the violence of not loving our neighbors as ourselves.  It’s the justification of privilege, somehow thinking we’ve “earned it.”  And it’s only a matter of time before the violence explodes in so many different directions.  We are all at risk.  Not just because of the color of our skin, but our refusal to love one another as Jesus teaches us as Christians.  We are also dying because of the color of our skin or the color of our politics or the color of our religious affiliation or the color of our sexual orientation and lifestyle. 

There is many a good reason to give up hope that we can end this cycle of violence.  For us to give in to the idea that this will go on and on and on—much like we have said that the peoples of the Middle East will always be fighting, that the poor will always be with us, that there can be no real peace for human beings.  That someone, somewhere, will always take up arms. 

I’ve spent a lot of today reading online, trying to find out exactly what happened in Baton Rouge, in Minneapolis, in Dallas.  I’ve read facebook posts and tweets, news stories, reflections from friends and colleagues. 

I was moved by a woman who hoped that her son would not have to see her die, like the 4-year-old daughter of the girlfriend riding in Philando Castile’s car watched him die. 

I was moved by a colleague whose eldest child, having gone off to college in Minnesota was going to participate in rallies in the Twin Cities; how words from her dad encouraged her to speak loudly and feel free to get arrested. 

I have spent hours this week thinking about my own children, and in particular, a friend of my eldest son, they both enter 6^th grade this fall, the friend who is African-American, whose mother is white and greatly fearful (and for so many good reasons) of what awaits him in this world.  I, too, am fearful about what that will mean for my son and our families, knowing their years of innocence will likely be impacted now by things they won’t be equal in sharing in because of the color of their skin. 

I have one of those experiences myself.  I remember my own experience in college.  My roommate was African-American, also a Presbyterian preacher’s kid, but adopted.  I was there the day my roommate was arrested for robbing a baseball card store.  My roommate and I both had been on a college-sponsored mission trip to Eastern Kentucky over spring break, the time the robbery had taken place in Arkansas while we were in Kentucky.  When the white police officers asked me if there was any way my roommate could have committed the crime I laughed and said how preposterous it was, “No.  He can’t time-travel, or be in two places at once.  He was with us all night.”  But to my dismay, they believed otherwise. 

In this world where people seem to have no honest chance and hope is fleeting, …I hope a bright young couple is thinking this is the perfect time to have a baby! 

Because it will mean hope is not dead, and life is not in doubt; that someones would be choosing life, and witness, and resistance.  

#makelovenotwar

#killemwithkindness

#loveyourneighborasyourself

#thegoldenrule

#teachthemtoyourchildren

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania