I was told there was a basket ...

Where I live in South Arkansas these latter days have been hot—hotter than normal.  Just a degree or two here or there, but we’re breaking record high temperatures.  So, in the last couple of weeks especially, I’ve been fond of sharing this meme a friend posted online:

More than a summer excessive heat warning, I think my friend was responding to the state of the world—you know “…going somewhere in a hand basket!”  Just a taste of our reality are the wars, and rumors of wars.  Violence, and repeated reports of gun violence.  There were more than 50 people discovered, attempting to flee desperation and avoid immigration, who had succumbed to conditions while traveling in an 18-wheeler trailer a few weeks back, near San Antonio, Texas.  If you’ve been paying any attention at all to headline news, each day of reporting from the January 6^th Special Congressional Committee hearings in congress revealed details of events that many find horrifying (it’s one thing to suspect some form of malfeasance, but another thing to come face to fact with it in the details of witness testimony that even our worst fears about everything were tragically realized and exceeded!).  Rising gas prices have caused some to scuttle vacation plans; and thinking about uncontrolled inflation is nightmarish. 

 In our world with disparaging realities, in this coming Sunday’s lectionary reading, the prophet Amos has an equally belittling and seemingly vilifying word …that also comes in a basket:

"This is what the Lord GOD showed me-a basket of summer fruit.  [God] said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.  The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day," says the Lord GOD; "the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place.  Be silent!"  Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat."  --Amos 8: 1-6

 

I wonder …what do you put in YOUR basket of summer fruit? 

Many of us have ideas about the changes we think or believe are necessary for our lives, and for the world …to be better.  But Amos’ words point at our lack …of ending the trampling of the needy and bringing ruin the poor of the land. 

 

One of my friends (actually, she’s someone I only know through her writing and speaking—Nadia Bolz-Weber) spoke or wrote this: 

“People don’t leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus.  People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much they can’t stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that but clearly isn’t.” 

My church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has been losing membership throughout my whole entire lifetime.  And I wish I could say it was for good and altruistic reasons that Nadia is pointing to, and not the basket of summer fruit that Amos is laying down.  I think that despite our best efforts, just like people who have gone before us, just like Jesus’ disciples, just like Israel or Judah—we lose focus on what we are supposed to have been about and we lose focus on each other.  I love my Church.  But the desperate life we find ourselves living in these days has us grasping at straws—trying to still be people atop the world. 

We long for what we experienced years ago, when we thought we had it all; only the prophet reminds us with a basket of summer fruit that despite our best efforts, we continue acting like people are expendable rather than believing they are people God loves, claims, and redeems.  Maybe not all of us, always; but sometimes, and we all take our turns.  

This season, this pandemic, this wrestling with the ways of the world preys on our fear and reminds us of what we have lost. 

It always sounds healing to aim at reversing the trends—to regain our membership and bolster our resources.  

“This is ironic,” one of my other friends (who I don’t know in person but whose work and words I deeply respect) wrote this, this week: 

“This is ironic considering we are a church that is Reformed and always being Reformed, a group of people who say we worship the Risen Lord, a savior who was resurrected from the dead.  What have we to fear?  Not even death itself.  Surely, we can handle some restructuring.” 

 

Perhaps we should know this by now that our past is not our future.  That the world is constantly changing, that we are being changed.  (If for no other reason, we have every confidence that God is with us AND that God IS CHANGING US!)  We can’t control what happens to us.  We can’t go back.  …A basket of summer fruit has but a season. 

I believe that human beings are created in the image of God and that when Jesus was born into human form—when we look at each other, we are seeing God.  God so loved the world that God created us and gave us to each other.  If we’re going to change the desperateness in which we live, it starts with each of us …recognizing the face of God in one another. 

If I want to change the world, it begins with me. 

I wonder …not only what’s in your basket of fruit, but who you’re sharing yours with? 

These days we’re living desperately.  But into all the chaos God breathes hope.  These days will not last, we know, because we’re still breathing in them too. 

Preaching on the 5th Sunday After Pentecost, Sunday, July 10, 2022

I was preaching again, at the Presbyterian Church of Ruston this week.  You can hear the scripture lessons read, plus my sermon entitled, “Our Desperation, Our Measure, and Our Doing” BY CLICKING HERE.  

“ Prayers. Or, No Prayers ”

 I'm a PK (preacher's kid). When I was in high school, my preacher father was regularly invited to give the invocation before home football games using the PA system at the stadium. Of course, I took my share of ribbing from classmates whenever my father was announced to intone the prayer. High School is socially awkward; sometimes, your father offering public prayer can be even more awkward. But I distinctly remember ...a Friday night, home football game, when my father wasn't praying ...someone else's pastor offered the invocation ...during which the pastor prayed for the holiness of our nation, he mentioned Jesus and that we believed in Jesus, and then prayed that the enemy on the other side would fall injured by the wayside and our team would go on to victory.  

I confess. I cannot remember the exact words. But there has never been any doubt in my mind, or the minds of my friends at the time, that prayers were said, invoking God, and the outcome would involve injured players or persons on the other side of the stadium. And I was utterly embarrassed.  

My father, despite everything teenagers are want to say despairingly about their fathers, always prayed well. And through this other's fault, my dad got a huge status upgrade in my mind (and it shouldn't have taken something this awful).  

It was also the first time I realized or recognized my faith being weaponized.  

I can't imagine what it was like for the other football team, the other band, the other students, the other parents--across the field--labeled as enemies and threatened with injury. As I'm writing this, I'm trying to tell myself all the ways it surely didn't happen as I remember--that no one claiming to be a Christian could pray for someone else to fall injured, or surely I mis-heard and the pastor was referring to the devil or demonic forces to be injured instead of players or students from another school.  

I have willingly participated in the rituals of public prayer as a religious leader, myself. I have defended the opportunity to present public prayers on behalf of communities where I have served as a religious leader; but always holding to my belief that I (and others) needed to be responsible for practicing our faith(s) with great care for everyone and without harm to anyone. I've been joined on some occasions by persons of other faith traditions, and not just Christians. But could it be true that this is simply not possible?  

I suppose, since we have demonstrated an inability to do this well, I should be prepared to live in a world where prayers are no longer offered at football games, before NASCAR races, in the city council and school board chambers, and all the other places. Perhaps we deserve to to not have "in God we trust" printed on our money and to have "Jesus is my co-pilot" bumper stickers banned, too--for the common good. ...But I do believe, somehow, our world would be the worse for it.  

And yet, it might just be worth it, to not have one more ya-hoo praying for people to fall injured by the wayside.

I just don't know how people, who claim to know and love Jesus, can ever get the idea, that Jesus is happy when we pray for others to be victimized in some way. I don't know why we believe Jesus is honored, respected, or glorified, by our insistence that our religious privilege should be to disparage anyone, ever. I don't know why, supposed bible-believing people, can ever believe that human beings are anything other than beloved people of God--in whose image we are created. And how we can see ourselves as "better" than others because we claim to have a personal relationship with God?

 

In our eye for an eye world, the suffering is endless.

 

When we believe ourselves to be better than others, the suffering is endless.

 

I believe Jesus is calls true believers out of this suffering, by changing how we see ourselves, by changing how we see God, by changing how we see others.

 

 

Prayers.  Or, no prayers.