Is Immigration Reform More Biblical Than Protecting Marriage?

Jason Micheli —  May 14, 2013

12EVANGELICALsub-articleLargeThis past Sunday our scripture text was Romans 3.9-20, a passage that begins with Paul reiterating the Torah’s insistence that ‘no is righteous, not one.’

Like much of what Paul writes, that phrase is meant to be a breadcrumb trailing the reader back to a story in the Hebrew Bible. In this case, Genesis 18, the story of Abraham negotiating with God over the imminent destruction of Sodom.

In my children’s story, I retold the narrative of Abraham going back and forth with God, pleading with God to spare Sodom if only 50 righteous people could be found in it…only 45 righteous people could be found…and so forth until…zero, nada.

I left out of my children’s story the actual destruction of Sodom, even I have boundaries. I don’t mind telling kids violent stories as long as its not God doing the wielding.

I also left out, to one person’s mind who was leaving worship perturbed with me, the reason for Sodom’s destruction: homosexuality.

To conflate the issue of homosexuality with the destruction of Sodom is not only a gross adventure in misreading the text, it’s simply anachronistic. It’s true a sordid little confrontation happens in Sodom in the next chapter of Genesis, an encounter from which we now unfortunately derive the word ‘sodomy,’ but that’s actually quite irrelevant as God had already determined Sodom should be destroyed.

And why was Sodom on God’s s$%^ list?

The Book of Ezekiel provides the answer, making it all the more infuriating that people read homosexuality into the passage:

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.”  

-  Ezekiel 16:49

Christians can (and do) debate homosexuality but the biblical passages that discuss homosexuality are few and, narratively, incidental.

By contrast, how God’s People relate to ‘the stranger in your land’ is a core confession of scripture.

God explicitly commands we extend compassion and care to the alien. What’s more this isn’t but one command among many but it’s rooted firmly in remembering our core identity. We love the alien in our land because once we were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Much like bread, wine, lamb and bitter herbs, our loving relationship with the immigrant recalls the Exodus story- the story of the Old Testament and the guiding metaphor in the New.

This year we kicked-off a new youth group experience for 4th and 5th graders I developed called Tribe Time, in which every session is playfully grounded in the Book of Leviticus.

While most adults shy away from it, Leviticus’ combination of gross, random imagery and moral stipulations makes it good fodder for training in the virtues.

You can check out the sessions outline for Tribe Time here: Tribe Time Sessions Outline

My point is that we have 80 kids in Tribe Time who all know that God commands us to welcome, love and respect the immigrants in our land because once we were in their shoes. And yet most church-going adults in America do not sense that immigration is in any way a theological or biblical concern.

One hears many warnings that welcoming immigrants will be the undoing of the American way of life. One does not hear many any warnings that failing to love the immigrant will be the undoing of our Christian way of life.

That this is so is but another indication, I think, that most of us are more truly formed not by the story of Israel/Christ but by the story called America.

Here’s a good, fair-minded piece from the NY TImes about how immigration is being rethought in many evangelical circles.

IMMIGRATION reform is not a liberal idea. It is good, old-fashioned conservative policy — at least that’s what its supporters want the Republican faithful to believe.

The Republican Party has “historically been pro-immigration,” Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist, said after the 2012 election. The conservative National Immigration Forum declaresthat America needs reform that “celebrates freedom and values hard work.”

Some of the most enthusiastic endorsements of the new immigration bill have come from traditional evangelicals, who insist that reform “respects the God-given dignity of every person.” Richard Land, a Southern Baptist leader who was among the 300 evangelicals who went to Washington last month for “a day of prayer and action for immigration reform,” said that once Republicans toned down their anti-immigrant rhetoric, Latino voters would follow.

“They’re social conservatives, hard-wired to be pro-family, religious and entrepreneurial,” he told me. Mr. Land pointed to Senator Marco Rubio as the face of this “new conservative coalition.”

“Let the Democrats be the party of dependency and ever lower expectations,” Mr. Land added. “The Republicans will be the party of aspiration and opportunity — and who better to lead the way than the son of Cuban immigrants?”

The Christian right may be too optimistic about any change in the political sympathies of Latinos. Increasing numbers tell pollsters they favor same-sex marriage, for example. But the real surprise is that evangelicals may be wrong about the unyielding conservatism of their own movement.

Evangelicals’ growing support for immigration reform suggests an important shift in how conservative Protestants — who policed the boundaries of our national identity for almost four centuries — think about what it means to be American. It may also point to the beginnings of real change in how evangelicals understand the problem of justice in a fallen world, and the challenge that Latino and other minority Christians pose to the assumptions of the culture wars.

From the anti-Catholic paranoia of the Know-Nothings in the 1850s to today’s Tea Party tirades about immigrants’ taking American jobs, each wave of nativist hysteria has had its own enthusiasms. But all have feared that newcomers would subvert democracy and sabotage citizens’ claim to the American dream. Racism often inflamed this anxiety (Benjamin Franklin worried about the influx of Germans settling in Pennsylvania and doubted that they could ever “acquire our Complexion”).

Yet the more basic fear — underlying warnings that Irish Catholics corrupted elections by voting in blocs or, more recently, that undocumented Mexicans and their “anchor babies” sponge off the welfare state — has always been this: These foreigners don’t respect our values and if we let them in, they will destroy us.

For much of American history, most white Protestants shared in the belief that immigrants were vectors of anti-democratic viruses like Catholicism, anarchism and Bolshevism. Although by the 1950s liberal mainline Protestants had come around to the idea of relaxing immigration restrictions, the conservative National Association of Evangelicals opposed the liberalizing reform act of 1965, fearing “infiltration by influences subversive of the American way of life.”

Today, the culture wars and the constant skirmishes over the size and scope of the welfare state have convinced conservatives that the country’s direst enemies are not “subversive” foreigners, but homegrown liberals.

International experience has connected more American evangelicals to Christians living in immigrant-sending countries, and they now view them as ideological allies. Organizations ranging from Focus on the Family to Anglican splinter churches have been building relationships in the global south for decades. They have come to see Latin Americans and Africans as defenders of traditional gender roles and Christian civilization.

“We have a very positive ‘immigration problem’ in this country, in that the Latino community coming in, both legally and illegally, generally possesses a value system that is compatible with America’s value system,” Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, told me.

It’s true that Latino Americans tend to be religious (according to Gallup, 54 percent are Catholic and 28 percent are Protestant). However, even those at the forefront of collaboration with white evangelicals stress that important differences remain. Jesse Miranda is a Pentecostal who founded a national organization for Latino Protestants, Alianza de Ministerios Evangélicos Nacionales (AMEN), in 1992. “We used the term ‘evangélico’ when I founded AMEN, and said we won’t use the word ‘evangelical’ so the media won’t identify us with our white brethren,” he said.

Most Latino evangelicals are recent converts to Protestantism with no stake in the battles between fundamentalists and modernists that divided white Protestants a hundred years ago, or in the more recent campaigns of the Christian right. They care more about education for their children than quarreling over the theory of evolution.

This difference is not just political, but theological, and has consequences for the fate of illegal immigrants. For a Christian, the question of whether an undocumented immigrant is a criminal or a victim trapped in an unjust system depends on how one thinks about sin and human responsibility.

A century ago, preachers of the “Social Gospel” argued that sin was not only a matter of personal depravity: it was also a social problem. Our society, built by flawed human beings, is full of institutionalized sin, of greed and cruelty cemented in the structures that govern our lives.

The theologian Walter Rauschenbusch lamented in 1913 that “as long as a man sees in our present society only a few inevitable abuses and recognizes no sin and evil deep-seated in the very constitution of the present order, he is still in a state of moral blindness.” He urged Christians “to see through the fictions of capitalism.”

Conservative evangelicals decried Social Gospelers as liberals who replaced soul-winning with social work — or worse, socialism. They stressed personal responsibility and argued that genuine social change could come only through converting one sinner at a time to Christ.

Latino Protestants may share the core doctrines of white evangelicals, but not the fusion of Christianity and libertarianism that has come to pervade the right, perhaps in part because they have intimate experience with the inequalities ingrained in American institutions.

They have left their forefathers’ faith, but they tend to retain the common Catholic conviction that being “pro-life” requires combating social injustice and reining in capitalism when necessary. In 2011 the polling organization Latino Decisions found that although Latinos are committed to the American ideal of self-sufficiency and hard work, most don’t believe the free market can solve all problems. “Minority citizens prefer a more energetic government, by large and statistically significant margins,” wrote the organization’s researchers Gary Segura and Shaun Bowler. In 2012, 71 percent of Latinos voted for President Obama.

Americans’ opinions on immigration have always been connected to their broader ideas about the role of government authority. The platform of 19th-century nativists contained more than racist invective. It also proposed strong states’ rights, a smaller standing army and tight limits on government expenses — all to preserve the American ideal of the independent yeoman free to defend his homestead from crowned tyrants and foreign invaders.

White evangelical leaders are loudly rejecting the xenophobia of their ancestors, though most still cherish that old libertarian creed. It

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Junk in the Trunk

Jason Micheli —  May 13, 2013 — 4 Comments

Justified_2010_Intertitle_8064Here’s the sermon from this past weekend on Romans 3.9-20.

You can listen to it in the ‘Listen’ widget on the side of the blog.

And also here:

 
 

As many of you know, I do a lot of my work at Starbucks.

I have my reasons.

For one thing, I get more accomplished without Dennis pestering me to show him how his computer works.

But to be honest, the main reason I go to Starbucks…is because I like to eavesdrop. 

It’s true. What ice cream and cheesecake were to the Golden Girls eavesdropping is to me.

At Starbucks I’m like a fly on the wall with a moleskin notebook under his wing.

I’ve been dropping eaves at coffee shops for as long as I’ve been a pastor and, until this week at least, I’ve never been caught.

This week I sat down at a little round table and started to sketch out a funeral sermon.

At the table to my left was a 20-something guy with ear phones in and an iPad out and a man-purse slung across his shoulder.

At the table to my right were two middle-aged women. They had a bible and a couple of Beth Moore books on the table between them. And a copy of the Mt Vernon Gazette.

The first thing I noticed though was their perfume. It was strong I could taste it in my coffee.

Now, in my defense I don’t think I could properly be accused of eavesdropping considering just how loud the two women were talking. Like they wanted to be heard.

Their ‘bible study’ or whatever it had been was apparently over because the woman by the window closed the bible and then commented out loud:

‘I really do need to get a new bible. This one’s worn out completely. 

I’ve just read it so much.’ 

 

Not to be outdone, the woman across from her, parried, saying just as loudly:

‘I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t spend time in the Word every day. 

I don’t know what people do without the Lord.’ 

“They do whatever they want” her friend by the window said.

And I said- to myself- ‘Geez, I’ve sat next to two Flannery O’Connor characters.’

I assumed that since they were actually reading the bible there was no way they attended this church, but just to make sure I gave them a double-take.

 

They had perfectly permed hair flecked with frosted highlights. And they had nails in which I could see the reflection of their large, costume jewelry.

 

“Baptists” I thought to myself.

 

They continued chatting over their lattes as the woman by the window flipped through the Mt Vernon Gazette. She stopped at a page and shook her head in disapproval.

Whether she actually said ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ or I imagined it I can’t be sure.

 

The other woman looked down at the paper and said: ‘Oh, I heard about that. He was only 31.’ 

 

‘Did you hear it was an overdose?’ the woman by the window said like a kid on Christmas morning.

And that’s when I knew who they were gossiping about. I knew because I was sitting next to them writing that young man’s funeral sermon.

‘Did he know the Lord?’ the woman asked.

‘Probably not considering the lifestyle’ the woman by the window said without pause.

 

They went on gossiping from there.

They used words like ‘shameful.’

They did not, I noticed, use words like ‘sad’ or ‘tragic’ or ‘unfortunate.’

 

It wasn’t long before the circumference of their conversation spun its way to encompass things like ‘society and what’s wrong with it,’ how parents need to pray their kids into the straight and narrow, and how this is what happens when our culture turns its back on God.’

 

After a while they came to a lull in their conversation and the woman opposite the window, the one with the gaudy bedazzled cross on her neck, gazed down at the Mt Vernon Gazette and wondered out loud:

‘What do you say at a funeral like that?’ 

 

And without even looking at them, and with a volume that surprised me, I said:

‘The same damn thing that’ll be said at your funeral.’ 

     They didn’t even blush. But they did look at me awkwardly.

‘I hardly think so’ the woman by the window said, sizing me up and not looking very impressed with the sum of what she saw.

And so I laid my cards down: ‘Well, I probably won’t be preaching your funeral, but I will be preaching his.’ 

 

And then I pointed at her theatrically worn bible, the one resting on top of her copy of A Heart Like His by Beth Moore, and I said: ‘If you actually took that seriously you’d shut up right now.’

     “No one is righteous, not one.” 

Sounds a little harsh, right? I mean, no one?

Just try filling in the blank of Paul’s assertion. Think of the best person you can and stick them down inside Paul’s sentence and listen to how it sounds.

     No one is righteous, not one, not even Mother Theresa.

No one is righteous, not one, not even Gandhi.

No one is righteous, not one, not even your Mother. (Happy Mother’s Day)

When you hear today’s scripture text the first time through it sounds like this is Exhibit A for everything people hate about Christianity.

Here’s this God who made us and then made a measuring stick that was just a little bit higher than the best of us and a lot higher than most of us.

But to hear it that way is to miss who Paul is speaking to and where this falls in Paul’s letter.

In case you’re just tuning in, so far Paul has spent chapters 1 and 2 of his letter pointing out everything that’s wrong with the world. Everything that’s broken in God’s creation.

And in chapters 1 and 2, Paul makes his case by pointing his finger at “those people.”

“Them.”

Not the good, every Sunday people at church in Rome but those other people. ‘Society.’ You know, those people? The ‘lost’ people who don’t believe in God, who don’t attend worship, don’t raise their children right.

Those people.

They’re greedy, Paul says. Violent even. They’ve got no morals or values.

‘Just listen to the way they talk’ says Paul, ‘all cursing and slander.’

Those people.

They’re broken the institution of marriage and the family. They just hop from one bed to the next, one mate to another, like people are just a means to an end.

Those people.

They’ve got no commitment. No decency.

Paul spends chapters 1 and 2 pointing at ‘those people’ and ticking off their every sin and flaw.

And you can bet that with each and every indictment, you can imagine as the accusations build, the members at First Church Rome nodded right along with self-satisfied smiles on their faces.

     You can imagine them saying to themselves: ‘That’s right, that’s exactly how those people are. Thank God I’m not like those people.’ 

     And that’s Paul’s rhetorical trap because in chapter 3 he turns his aim at the good People of God, and he says: ‘No one is righteous, not one.’ 

Which is Paul’s way of saying: not even you.

And then Paul hits them, us, with this battering ram of accusations about how we sin every day with our minds and our lips and our hands and feet, by what we do and by what we leave undone.

And Paul lifts those accusations, one by one, word for word, straight out of scripture.

And that’s Paul’s point.

That’s Paul’s point when he says we’re not justified by the law, by scripture.

You see, the takeaway from today’s text isn’t that you’re a perpetual disappointment to God. If that’s what you leave with then you’ve missed what Paul’s doing here.

The takeaway is that belonging to a religious community doesn’t make you any closer to God than anyone else. Believing in the bible doesn’t make you a better person than anyone else because that same bible indicts you too.

     You may go to church every Sunday but the Book of Micah says God hates your praise if there’s a single poor person in the streets.

You may be a good mother and love your kids, but the Book of Mark says if you don’t love Jesus more then…

You may be a clergy person like me, you might’ve given your whole career to God, but the best the Book of Matthew has to say about that is that I’m like a white-washed tomb, a hypocrite with lies on the inside.

Don’t confuse your place in the pews with a place in God’s favor- that’s Paul’s point- because the only advantage this (the bible) gives us is that it tells the truth about us.

Who we really are.

    ‘No one is righteous. Not one.’ 

The woman by the window actually did shut up for a moment, clearly trying to figure out how this had become a 3 person conversation.

And then it hit her: ‘Have you been eavesdropping on us?’ 

‘Of course not,’ I lied.

‘Why don’t you mind your own business’  she scolded.

‘But that’s just it’ I said, ‘it is my business. I’m a preacher and so I couldn’t help but notice that I had two Pharisees sitting next to me.’ 

She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice: ‘Listen, young man. I’ve been saved. I love the Lord, talk to him and read his Word every day.’ 

‘Apparently you’ve not retained very much’ I mumbled.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked with mustered outrage.

‘It means you’re no better than that guy over there’ and I pointed to a homeless guy who was nursing his coffee and muttering to himself.

‘In fact, you’re not good at all. And neither am I. None of us is in a position to judge anyone else, and someone with a worn out bible should already know that.’ 

I thought that I’d just played a trump card. The end.

‘Well, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing right now? she asked me. And suddenly I felt the tables turning.

‘Uh, what do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Well, it sounds like you’ve been eavesdropping on us for the last 10 minutes and judging us the whole time.” 

I felt myself blush: ‘Not the WHOLE time.’ 

‘I bet you started judging us before you even heard what we were talking about.’

‘I did not’ I lied, ‘Don’t forget you’re talking to a pastor.’ 

And I thought that was the end of it, but then she turned her chairs towards me, like we are all together, and she asked:

     ‘So, what makes you do it? Why are you so quick to stick your nose in other people’s junk and judge them?’ 

I considered punting on her question, telling her I had work to do and leaving it at that.

But she’d caught me eavesdropping so I thought I should balance out my vice with a little virtue.

I told her the truth: ‘Probably because I have junk of my own that I don’t know what to do with.’ 

‘Me too’ she said, and suddenly she dropped her guard like we were fellow addicts at an AA Meeting.

She said: ‘I’m constantly carrying around things I’m not proud of, things I’m ashamed of, things I try to keep locked and hidden away, because I don’t know what to do with them.’  

 

And then her friend, the one opposite the window, sipped her coffee and then said: ‘Me three.’ 

I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that if you’d been sitting there you too would’ve said..

Me four.

Because it’s true of all of us.

We condemn and we criticize and we label and we gossip and we judge.

We raise an eyebrow at other people’s mistakes, other people’s sins, other people’s problems- because we’re carrying around our own junk and we don’t know what to do with it.

 

But Paul shows us what to do with our junk.

Paul shows us what to do with the worst secrets about ourselves that we carry around with us.

     You can’t forget that when Paul directs his attack in chapter 3 at religious people, the first person Paul has in mind is Paul.

     You can’t forget that when Paul levels the accusation that ‘No one is righteous, not one’ Paul’s speaking in the first person before he’s speaking about any other person.

Paul cursed and condemned Christians. Paul’s encouraged executions and stood by smiling while Christians were stoned to death.

Paul’s the one whose throat was an open grave.

Paul’s the one who used his tongue to deceive and had venom on his lips.

Paul’s the one whose mouth was full of bitterness, whose feet were swift to shed blood.

Paul’s the one who knew not the way of peace…until he met the Resurrected Christ.

And after he meets the Risen Christ, Paul is free to own up to all of it.

All the junk he would otherwise want to hide and deny and push down and repress and keep locked and hidden away.

Paul shows us what we can do with our junk.

Paul shows us that if we’re more convinced of God’s grace than the sin we’re convinced we must keep secret from everyone, then we can open up this junk we carry around with us and we can say:

‘No one is righteous, no one, especially not me. 

     Look at what I’ve done. 

     This is who I was. 

     These are the words I spoke in anger that can never be taken back

     This is the relationship I pretended was fine until it unraveled away. 

     These are the kids I took for granted until they were grown and gone. 

     This is the person I see in the every mirror every day and have never learned to love. 

    This is the addiction I always insisted didn’t have the better of me. 

     This is the insecurity that masks itself as cynicism. 

     These are all the people I refused to forgive. 

     This is the person closest to me I cheated on…

     But God…God forgives…all of it.’ 

     Paul shows us that our worst junk can become a living, breathing example

of what God’s amazing grace can do.

Which is kind of a shame.

Because I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that most of you pretend you’re not so desperate as to need a grace that’s anywhere near amazing.

Most of you pretend you’re not actually carting this junk around and have no idea what to do with it.

For many of you, church is the last place where you’re really you, and Sunday morning is the time of the week you’re the least open about who you really are.

Church is where you grin and pretend like it’s all good and you’ve got your ______together.

Many of you have come to church for years so determined to not let anyone find out what’s in here (junk in the trunk) that you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ in here (your heart).

And that’s a shame.

Because Paul shows us- the things we’re most burdened by are the things the world most needs to hear.

Paul shows us that if we open this up and admit that no one is righteous, not even me…and here I’ll give you a ‘for instance’

Paul shows us that if we can say that then what someone else can hear is: ‘If God’s grace is for them…then it’s even for me…’    

 

     Yesterday afternoon nearly 500 gathered to celebrate that young man’s funeral.

We sang Amazing Grace.

We heard a reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. It was different words but the same meaning. And I preached, the Gospel.

The same message I’d preach at any of your deaths.

After the funeral, I was walking past the receiving line, which started here at the altar and snaked its way to the other end of the building, and one of the deceased’s friends grabbed my elbow and said to me: ‘If what you said is true for him, then it’s true for me too…right?’ 

     And I said: ‘Yeah.’ 

    And he let go of my elbow and said, ‘Thanks for sharing that.’ 

 

 

     

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Waiting on a Prayer

Jason Micheli —  May 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

photo-300x300

This is from Elaine Woods, our Children’s Director-

Don’t Hesitate to Wait: God is Never Late

Whether you are waiting in line at Starbucks, waiting for your child in the kiss and ride line, or waiting in traffic, we all know what it’s like to wait.  Luckily, most of us have smart phones that keep us entertained during these times.   In this culture of immediate gratification, we’ve become impatient and want every minute to count.

Even waiting for something enjoyable such as a concert to begin, or a wedding to start can be a nuisance.  It isn’t in our nature to wait.

One of the hardest waits I find is waiting for answered prayer.  Sometimes God answers prayer immediately; other times we wait years to hear.  I remember praying before bed for an interesting idea to blog about, and in the middle of the night, an idea came to me.  I also have a prayer I’ve been praying for about 10 years now and still haven’t heard the answer.

But we have to remember that God’s timing is different than our own. He sees things from a different lens and sees the whole picture, not just what we want, but what is best for us in His grand plan for our lives.

Whether WE believe it or not, God has created and designed the world to fulfill HIS purpose.

Of course, when we are hoping, praying and waiting for something, it’s easy to forget this. After all, waiting is “remaining inactive in one place while expecting something.”  Being inactive means feeling powerless and at the mercy of the world – nobody likes that feeling.

But we must keep in mind God’s greater plan and His perfect timing.

Lamentations 3:25

The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.

It’s understandable to have doubt.  It’s normal, not unusual, to question God’s presence in your life.

I sometimes feel that God is answering everyone else’s prayer before mine.

But remember that God said He will never leave us or forsake us. If He seems silent now, it is because He has another plan, different timing or a way to answer our prayer that has not been revealed to us yet. We must trust in His plan.

The Bible is filled with stories of people waiting on God’s timing:

·  Jesus was about 30 years old when He began His ministry

·  Moses was in the desert for 40 years before he was sent by God to rescue the children of Israel from the Egyptians

·  David had to wait at least 15  years before he became king of Israel

·  Abraham had to wait 25 years for the birth of his son Isaac

·  Noah had to wait 120 years from the time God told him to build the ark until the time the flood actually occurred

·  The apostles waited until after Jesus ascended into Heaven before they received the Holy Spirit in the upper room

The key to waiting is not the length of time but how we handle the wait. The Bible teaches us that we should “wait on the Lord.” We must choose to be optimistic about our future as God guides our lives.

After all, if we had all the details in advance, we wouldn’t be walking in faith would we?

Isaiah 40:31

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

 

God usually answers yes, no, or hold on…I have something better planned for you.  Waiting strengthens our faith, teaches us patience, and reminds us it’s not all about us.

This Prayer can help you as you wait on God’s perfect timing:

Gracious God,

I have been waiting for ________________ for so long now, and I come before you today to ask for your help. I pray that you will strengthen my faith so that I will put my trust in your perfect timing and plan for my life. I thank you for the blessings you have given me so far.  I will put my complete trust in you that you will answer my prayers in your own time.

Amen

 

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What is a Christian?

Jason Micheli —  May 12, 2013 — 2 Comments

faith4This week and next we’re in chapter 3 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, a pivotal section for Paul’s argument and a money chunk of the letter when it comes to notions of what does and does not constitute a legitimate follower of Christ. 

“I’m not that interested in Christianity. I am interested in worshipping the God that raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel from Egypt.”

Too often, people miss the painstaking connections Paul makes- the continuity- between the faith of Israel and the faith of Jesus.

Stanley Hauerwas, #3 on my man-crush list, doesn’t make that mistake. He has this concise, thoughtful and spot-on synopsis of ‘What is a Christian.’

It’s well-worth the few minute view. Consider it a preview for next week’s sermon.

Click here to see it.

 

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Would You Give the Boston Bomber A Place Near Your Grave?

Jason Micheli —  May 10, 2013 — 2 Comments

14I realize Kim Kardashian’s bathing suit pics are a juicer story, but somehow this story slipped me by.

Admittedly, this is a sensitive issue, but I wonder what people think about so many funeral homes, cemeteries and communities refusing to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

From a Christian perspective at least, one would think ‘love of enemy’ extends even necessarily to people like Tsarnaev and does so in death as much as life.

I also can’t help thinking one’s view should be tempered by the fact that our Lord died a shameful criminal’s death and was buried properly in a grave only because two Jews’ generosity and compassion claimed his body when no one else would for the risk and shame involved with being associated with him.

Christians too easily forget:

To be condemned to death on the cross was always also the condemnation to be left upon the cross as carrion.

The shame of the cross wasn’t primarily the pain involved. It was the shame. To be exposed, naked and abandoned. And then to be left there as scraps and trash.

If the sins of the father should not be counted towards the son then neither should the sons’ sins be reckoned upon their entire family by denying a base dignity such as burial.

The Worcester police chief puts it less theological:

“We are not barbarians. We bury the dead.”

If you’re inclined to disagree, then here’s my question/pushback:

Imagine what a powerful witness it would have been had a Christian community stood up and, assuming the risks involved, offered to bury the criminal out of obedience to Christ.

03-30-13_amish_originalSix years later and the Nickel Mines story, in which an entire Christian community forgave their children’s killer, remains what it was then, rare.

This is from the Huffington Post:

WORCESTER, Mass. — The body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was entombed in an unknown gravesite Thursday after police said an anonymous person stepped forward to help arrange the secret burial.

The burial ended a weeklong search for a place willing to take Tsarnaev’s body out of Worcester, where his remains had been stored at a funeral home amid protests. In that time, the cities where Tsarnaev lived and died and his mother’s country all refused the remains.

Amid the frustration, Worcester’s police chief urged an end to the quandary. “We are not barbarians,” he said. “We bury the dead.”

By Thursday, police announced: “As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased.”

Police in Worcester, about 50 miles west of Boston, didn’t say where the body was taken, only that it was no longer in the city.

The director of Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, Peter Stefan, also refused to say where the body was buried or to speak to media gathered outside the funeral home.

Tsarnaev’s burial place is expected to become known with the release of his death certificate.

Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are accused of setting off two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs April 15 near the marathon finish line in an attack that killed three people and injured more than 260.

Days later, the brothers engaged in a firefight in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was shot by police and then run over by his fleeing brother. A wounded Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, ditched the car and was later found hiding in a boat parked in a Watertown backyard.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was pronounced dead at a hospital in Boston, where he could have been buried under state law, because the city was his place of death. But Boston officials said they wouldn’t take the body because Tsarnaev lived in Cambridge, and Cambridge also refused.

The mother of the brothers, ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who lived in Massachusetts, said officials in Russia, where she lives, also wouldn’t accept the body.

In addition, Stefan said scores of individual offers fell through because cemeteries in their communities wouldn’t take the corpse.

On Thursday, Gov. Deval Patrick called the weeklong drama to find a burial site a circus, but said he doesn’t know where the site is. Patrick said he hopes attention can now return to caring for the victims of the bombing.

The family of the youngest of the three killed, 8-year-old Martin Richard, said Richard’s 7-year-old sister has undergone a “milestone” 11th operation on her left leg, which she lost below the knee.

The surgery performed Wednesday on Jane Richard at Boston Children’s Hospital closed the wound and will allow for the eventual fitting of a prosthesis, the family said in a statement Thursday.

The family said that because of the surgeries, infections and other complication, the girl was unable to communicate with her parents and doctors for two weeks, so she did not know at first that her brother was dead.

“There are not words to describe how hard sharing this heartbreaking news was on all of us,” said the family, which was within feet of the second blast.

In Washington, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told Congress on Thursday that the FBI did not initially share with Boston police the warnings from Russia’s security service in 2011 about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. At the time, four city police representatives were on a federal terrorism task force.

Davis’ testimony at the hearing on the government’s response to the attack revealed a gap in information-sharing between federal and local officials.

The FBI closed its assessment of Tsarnaev after a cursory investigation, and Davis said that police might not have uncovered or disrupted the plot even if they had fully investigated Tsarnaev’s family.

“I can’t say that I would have come to a different conclusion based upon the information that was known at that particular time,” he said.

 

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Pope Francis Says: ‘Chillax”

Jason Micheli —  May 9, 2013 — Leave a comment

BELIEFS-popupPope Francis: His Life in His Own Words is now out in bookstores. No sooner had the ‘habemus’ smoke hit the air than this book must’ve hit the press. It’s amazing how quickly the Catholic Church turn such a publication around. If it was the United Methodist Church, the book would be stuck in committee for a quadrennium.

The book is a collection of interviews with Pope Francis when he was still known by his first name, ‘Cardinal.’ One of the interesting notes in the book is Francis’ stress on the importance of rest as a Christian practice in need of recovery.

Francis says:

“Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport. But this is being destroyed, in large part, by the elimination of the Sabbath rest day. More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.”

In such cases, he concludes, “work ends up dehumanizing people.”

In other words, it’s not simply about how you observe don’t observe the Sabbath, it’s about how your refusal to obey the commandment contributes to a system wherein workers, who may wish to observe the Sabbath, are forced to a punch a clock when they should be chillaxing in the grace of God.

Mark Oppenheimer who writes about the book in the NY Times adds this comment:

“Catholic social teaching is known for promoting the idea that workers deserve dignity, which includes rest. But Pope Francis seems to be saying something more: that an authentically Christian life includes a proper dose of leisure and family time.”

The article, which is worth a read, is here.

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Does Your Guilty Conscience Disprove Total Depravity?

Jason Micheli —  May 9, 2013 — Leave a comment

1101480308_400This week we continue our sermon series through Romans by taking a look at Romans 3.9-20, a passage with an important place in Protestant history.

Paul’s insistence in 3.9 that ‘no one is righteous, not one,’ a phrase that hearkens back to Genesis 18 and the story of Sodom, has been the cornerstone of the Calvinist doctrine of ‘Total Depravity.’ It’s the ‘T’ in Tulip acrostic of Calvinist theology.

Total Depravity holds that because we’re all under the power of sin every act and aspect of our lives is compromised by sin.

Even are good deeds are ‘like filthy rags’ because ultimately they’re motivated not by a desire to serve God or neighbor but to justify our own selves.

I’ve never been able to swallow total depravity hook, line and sinker. It’s always struck me as a doctrinal answer in search of a theological problem- a problem I don’t necessarily agree Paul was primarily addressing.

The notion of total depravity made me remember this quote from Reinhold Niebuhr, a liberal theologian from the 20th century and one I’m not normally given to quoting in any positive way (save the title of this blog):

“Man loves himself inordinately. Since his determinate existence does not deserve the devotion lavished upon it, it is obviously necessary to practice some deception in order to justify such excessive devotion.  While such deception is constantly directed against competing wills,seeking to secure their acceptance and validation of the self’s too generous opinion of itself, its primary purpose is to deceive, not others, but the self. 

The self must at any rate deceive itself first.  Its deception of others is partly an effort to convince itself against itself. 

The fact that this necessity exists is an important indication of the vestige of truth which abides with the self in all its confusion and which it must placate before it can act. 

The dishonesty of man is thus an interesting refutation of the doctrine of man’s total depravity.”

Niebuhr’s point is that our self-deception itself presupposes that somewhere deep down within us we know that we’re not living out who we were created to be and that we disobey God.  Even if this is only on the subconscious level it undermines the notion that we’re completely depraved in the Calvinist sense. It also suggests, contra Calvinism, that non-Christians as creatures of God still live their lives imbued with the grace of the imago dei.

Our guilty conscience, then, might be the best sign we have for hope.

 

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Were the Crusades Morally Superior to Paintballing?

Jason Micheli —  May 8, 2013 — Leave a comment

09battle-pic-articleLargeThis rant cum historical excursion has been brought to you by the article I read today in the NY Times, The Holy Grail of Battle Re-enactments. 

Being in church work, I’ve gone paint-balling a few times.

Truth be told, I’m not a half-bad paint-baller. I’m not much of a strategist and I’ve got subpar aim but that’s ameliorated by my base desire to win and my rather high threshold for a hot pain that comes in the form hickey marks.

I never considered joining the military but paintballing confirms the USA lost out on an at least one gutsy commando.

On one hand at least, paint-balling with church folk is instructive.

It gives you a brief, if pretend, glimpse into which members of your flock just might be willing to lay their lives down for another.

It shows you which church people need only a momentary whiff of the chum of victory to go bat-ass crazy on an erstwhile friend.

And it reveals- or confirms- which of your would be Jesus followers are actually cheaters in Flanders’ clothes.

We’ve actually had to kick adult chaperones out of the game for cheating against children.

And shooting said children (sometimes their own children) after the whistle.

At close range.

In the face.

Or close to the border of their huevos.

(I know adults are constantly trying to recover their youth, and while the fountain of youth remains elusive, I do know paintballing is where adult men go to recover their juvenile adolescence.)

So religiopaintballing is not with out its edifying uses- I forgot to mention its ability to make an ordinary pastor look, if not cool, legit.

Nevertheless, on each occasion I left the ‘arena’ feeling infected with a low-grade moral confusion about this vicar of Christ’s participation in and de facto affirmation of faux bloodletting.

Each time and every time I’ve left feeling that paintballing is not a little like pretending to beat your wife or kick your dog. For a small fee and ammunition cost.

“Put your sword away!”
-Jesus addressing Peter in the Garden of Gethsamane

The conundrum:

If violence is counter to the way of Christ then does paintballing mock the One who would have us turn the other cheek?

Or, if Christ would have us put away the sword does pulling out an air-powered paint gun that cannot kill constitute an acceptable alternative?

Almost like Guerrilla Theater?

I’ve always felt a similar but more urgent strand of this moral quandary when it comes to war reenactments.

It’s one thing to usurp God’s sovereignty and ignore Christ’s cross (the sacrifice to end all sacrifices- Hebrews) to participate in the taking of human life when society deems it necessary, just and a last resort. But it strikes me as odd to reenact- with glee and outlandish seriousness- battles our forebears likely wished they didn’t have to fight.

civil_war_soldiers-union_confederateThis winter I even attended a parade for Stonewall Jackson’s birthday so my son could get first rate material for his report on the Confederate hero.

Confederate flags, uniforms, tearful tributes, drums and period authentic artillery were everywhere. When asked, on my iPhone camera, about Stonewall Jackson a costumed reenacter began:

‘Well, you’ve got to remember Stonewall Jackson loved the blacks…’

Like the elder Dr. Jones to Indy when they sneak about in Berlin in The Last Crusade, I said to Alexander: ‘We’re in the belly of the beast, son.’ BerlinRally

Celebrating our forebears’ selfless sacrifice is one thing.

To celebrate by simulation the very they thing regretted having to do is another. I’ve met plenty of folks who participate in reenactments (I’m from southern Richmond after all) and I can say with a modicum of authority that war reenactments have all the moral seriousness of my boys’ playing with their plastic, bloodless, lifeless GI Joe figures.

 

On the other hand, the men and women I’ve known who’ve actually served in a real, honest to goodness war are nothing if not morally serious about what we ask of and from them. We ask them not just to give their lives potentially but to sacrifice their God-given reluctance to kill. For us.

“Pilate deserves our sympathies, not because he was a good though tragically misunderstood man, but because we are not much better. We may believe in Jesus, but we do not believe in his ideas, at least not his ideas about violence, truth and justice.”

-Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

Across the spectrum of history, Christians have nearly always held war to fall somewhere between ‘always an evil’ (Christian Pacifism) and ‘sometimes a necessary and tragic evil in which we do not glory‘ (Christian Just War Perspective).

I know, everyone likes to cite the Crusades as though that’s the eternal, definitive manifestation of Christian praxis.

It’s interesting how the Crusades get blamed on the evil institution that is the Church when every other war in history would suggest political and economic concerns agitated the Crusades…and Christians went- or were taken- along for the ride.

Speaking of the Crusades:

It’s not the golden egg of an argument people assume because even after having battled the infidels, Christian soldiers were required to do penance when they returned home. After all, even if it was a ‘holy‘ war, by taking another’s life they’d still committed sin.

The NY Times, The Holy Grail of Battle Re-enactments. details the experience, motives and COST (!!!!) behind the peopled participating in the holy grail of war reenactments. This battle simulates, down to loose teeth and concussions, the warfare of Medieval Europe, a time to which I’m sure we’d all like to return. Not.

I’ve gone paintballing enough to know that most of these folks are probably like the hardcore wannabes who show up to paint ball with their own custom weapons, bedecked in expensive gear, and armed with a nickname inspired by Deerhunter. The same guys who don’t realize Deerhunter is meant to be a tragic, critique of the war, movie. images

AKA: Guys without girlfriends.

And sadly, we all know that most fallen soldiers did have girlfriends. Or more.

Here’s the article:

Inside Craig Ivey’s travel bag are objects reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

He has a steel, rounded shield; a five-sided, wooden shield; a red, white and blue surcoat; a protective vest; a wraparound helmet, pockmarked with dents; steel pads to hide his forearms, knees, legs and hands; and a blunt-edged sword designed to inflict pain but not cut. His collection cost about $4,000.

Ivey, a fitness trainer in Atlanta, will use all 60 pounds of the equipment Thursday at an outdoor arena in Aigues-Mortes, in the south of France. He will compete in his first Battle of the Nations, a modern-day, medieval-like combat involving national teams of fighters.

“Everybody thinks I’m a little crazy,” Ivey said, without refuting the perception.

Ivey, 34, is among an estimated 500 participants from 22 countries entered in the four-day event.

Full-contact armored fighting events grew out of participation in historical re-enactments, which are largely theatrical and tame. More common re-enactment fighting involves wooden weapons in the United States. The Battle of the Nations, in its fourth year, is the first international full-contact competition of this scale that uses steel armor — a heightened risk factor that has attracted a certain breed of fighters. It has been won by Russia every year.

Many fighters are intrigued by a time when differences were settled by sword fights to the death.

“I’ve always been interested in history and war,” Ivey said. “To be able to get my mind around what it was like back then, I look at it from this perspective: If I lose the fight, that would be me dying out there.”

The Battle of the Nations consists of four fighting formats: 1 on 1; 5 on 5; 21 on 21; and all against all, in which some opposing squads join forces. Winners of each match are decided by which side has the last fighter, or fighters, standing. A combatant bows out when three body parts, which include the feet, are touching the ground. Matches involving fewer fighters are usually over within a couple minutes, while the all-versus-all match can last up to 10 minutes.

Elements of the competition have been borrowed from other sports. The referee, called the knight marshal, issues soccer-style yellow and red cards for rule infractions. Fighters are assigned positions similar to those in American football, like center, guard and flanker.

Jaye Brooks, 47, executive officer of the United States team, described the game strategy partly as keeping adversaries from getting behind a team’s players, similar to hockey and soccer.

Brooks, a senior project manager in Nashua, N.H., recruited a team of 50 fighters, including himself and his son Catlin, 25, for the event. Last year, Brooks said, participants needed to meet only two qualifications to make the squad: paying for a trip to Poland and “having the guts to do this.”

The United States finished fourth of 14 teams in its international debut last year, and 18 of the 29 members from that team returned. The average age of this year’s American players is 37. And while no woman has competed for the United States squad, Brooks said, a women’s division is being considered.

Ivey’s motivation to compete is similar to that of others who are willing to fight, with an understanding that injuries are possible. He described his mind-set as being like that of a soldier.

“If you get hurt, you get hurt,” he said.

A military background is common for the participants. At least a quarter of this year’s United States fighters have served in the military, Brooks said.

Not everyone, including friends and family members, appreciates such enthusiasm for this niche style of martial arts.

“They think I’m a little bizarre,” said Brooks, whose sports background includes football. “But if everyone was the same, the world would be an awfully boring place.”

Brooks’s teammate Bryan Cannata, 42, an information technology specialist in Augusta, Ga., regards armored combat fighting as a natural extension of his interest in the medieval period.

“It’s not something I want to do,” Cannata said. “It’s something I have to do.”

There are rules to the game, but not ones that are restrictive enough to eliminate serious injuries.

Unlike in traditional sports, equipment is inspected to ensure it conforms to a period in history that the particular competition is commemorating, based on historic findings and evidence.

Weapons must be blunted. Stabbing or thrusting, which Brooks defined as repeatedly delivering excess force to the same point of contact, is not allowed. Fighters can hit any region in the “kill zone,” which excludes the feet, back of knees, groin, back of neck and base of skull. Vertical strikes to the spine and horizontal strikes to the back of the neck are forbidden.

Injuries have included dislodged teeth and broken or severed fingers. In the United States, the athletes also undergo baseline testing to check for the possibility of concussions.

This year’s United States team will be accompanied by a support staff of 50 members, including a physician, a psychologist specialized in head trauma, cooks, armorers, knight marshals, squires and a masseuse.

But injury precautions and preventive measures can only do so much. Cannata, who has a background in fencing and martial arts, said, “The potential for life-altering injury is very serious.”

Brooks, who has torn knee muscles competing, will take any punishment that comes with recreating a period in history.

“This is the perfect sport for someone who wishes to participate in one of the roughest sports on earth, has a love of armor and weapons and Western martial arts, and a desire to be as close to being a knight of old as is possible in this modern age,” he said. “Most of us doing this sport dreamt as children of being a knight one day. Who knew we could make that dream a reality?”

 

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Religion Beyond the Right

Jason Micheli —  May 8, 2013 — 1 Comment

121101065950-red-blue-state-jesus-custom-1This is a good take on the perspective of a good many people in my congregation. Frank Bruni does a good job of reminding us that Christian values include more than one value.

Faith in Jesus Christ- the faith of Jesus Christ for that matter- should pull us in more than a single political direction.

He says:

As the Boy Scouts of America reassesses its ban on gay scouts and leaders, we’re hearing a lot about the organization’s need to remain sensitive to people whose religions condemn homosexual behavior. Their morals must be properly respected, their God aptly revered.

But what about the morals and the God of people whose religions exhort them to be inclusive and to treat gays and lesbians with the same dignity as anyone else? There are many Americans in this camp, and their opposition to the Scouts’ ban is as faith-based as the stance of those who want it maintained.

Take Scott Ward, 48, a public relations executive and married father of three in Takoma Park, Md. He’s a scout leader, with a 10-year-old son who’s a scout. He’s also an elder in his Presbyterian church.

And for him, the ban must go not in spite of what Christianity says about homosexuality (or what selective literalists have decided it says), but because of what it says about humanity.

“From my faith perspective, singling people out for exclusion from the life of the church or the life of the community cannot possibly be part of God’s plan,” Ward told me on the phone recently.

He added, “If you look at the people Jesus tended to be most suspicious of, they were people who sat in positions of authority to say that they had the unique ability to judge others.”

We refer incessantly in this country to the “religious right,” a phrase routinely presented as if it’s some sort of syllogism: to be devoutly religious is to gravitate to a certain side of the political spectrum, one set of values dictating the other. “Christian conservatives” is an almost equally ubiquitous bit of alliteration.

But there’s a religious center. A religious left. There are Christian moderates and Christian liberals: less alliterative and less dogmatic, but perhaps no less concerned with acting in ways that reflect moral ideals. We should better acknowledge that and them.

And we should stop equating conventional piety with certain issues only and sexual morality above other kinds.

Our tendency to do that was illustrated by the hullabaloo last year over the Nuns on the Bus. The Vatican officials who wanted them to be more assertively anti-abortion and anti-birth control were portrayed as the dutiful guardians of tradition, while the nuns, focused on matters of economic justice, were the rebels.

Why? It’s as fundamentally Catholic and Christian to care about the underprivileged as to safeguard the unborn (or to combat homosexuality). Indeed, many Catholics look to a politician’s social welfare policies as much as they do to other positions, and vote in a manner that would be accorded a label other than conservative.

Many people of faith are pacifists, and that’s a decisive factor in how they cast their ballots, though this concern is infrequently characterized in religious terms.

You can read the rest here.

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The Cancer of Optimism

Jason Micheli —  May 7, 2013 — 2 Comments

05OPTIMISM-articleLargeOne thing pastors get good at over time is assessing what doctors tell their patients. Sitting next to congregants’ bedsides I often glean more than they or their families do from what the round-making doctor has said about their condition, about the next steps, about what they can expect hope for next.

Very often, patients and their families don’t learn what they ought from their doctors because they don’t know what questions to ask. And how could they? For many in that situation it’s their first time in that situation.

Another thing pastors get good at over time is noticing how often spouses and children and family realize that their loved one is about to die, how seldom doctors come out with it and tell their patients ‘there’s nothing we can do, anything else we try will only prolong the inevitable (and the suffering), there’s no hope.’

And I don’t mean by this to beat up on doctors.

By and large, I think doctors have better bedside skills than most clergy.

Nevertheless, over time as a minister I’ve noticed that many doctors are simply not good at helping their patients to die.

And again, I’m not blaming doctors.

I think their reluctance owes to the fact that we don’t want them to help us die.

We want them to help us live- at all costs- because when you get down to the bitter truth, we don’t really believe there’s any living to be done after we’re dead.

The eternal optimism patients crave is but a symptom of our pessimism regarding eternal life.

Optimism is almost by definition not the same thing as faith.

I bring this up having read HAIDER JAVED WARRAICH’s piece in the NY Times, The Cancer of Optimism. Here’s the heart of the reflection:

I have come to believe that I was a victim of irrational optimism, a condition running rampant in both doctors and patients, particularly in end-of-life care.

Physicians are thought to be the harbingers of bad tidings, the people who use cold words like “prognosis.” But studies show that they are just as capable of emotions as their patients are. According to a study published in 2000 in the British medical journal BMJ, about two-thirds of doctors overestimate the survival of terminally ill patients.

This optimism is far from harmless. It drives doctors to endorse treatments that most likely won’t save patients’ lives, but may cause them unnecessary suffering and inch their families toward medical bankruptcy.

One source of this optimism is pop culture, which frequently depicts heroic recoveries from seemingly life-threatening situations. Another is the medical school experience. What motivates weary medical students is the hope that one day interventions they perform will save lives, heal families and enact cosmic good.

Later, our judgment becomes clouded as we build relationships with patients, share their fears and anxieties, cherish their small victories and celebrations and hope that there may still be a way, however unlikely, they can make it to their grandson’s bar mitzvah.

And yet studies have shown that patients almost universally prefer to be told the truth.

The article called to mind one particular death I was privileged to be a part of years ago.

I was present with a family as they stood vigil at the passing of a loved one. The dying man was elderly and at the end of a long, difficult decline.

The family knew they were at the point where the faithful thing to do was to let go of life. He was joined in the room by his wife, his sons, his two daughters-in-law, and grand-daughter. The man’s grand-son was present, too, through a cell phone connection.

As the man’s death approached, at the request of the family, we read scripture and then shared together in the sacrament of the eucharist. After praying as a group, the family took turns telling the man how thankful they were for his life, expressing gratitude for what his life had meant to and contributed to their own.

He died while we worshipped in this way. And when the family realized his passing, they all kissed him and embraced one another and concluded by singing the doxology: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below…” 

That such a ‘good’ death has been rare in my ministry is unfortunate.

That so much of our cultural expectation of medicine makes that rarity a reality is tragic.

 

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