For 2013: Living by the Values of the Future

 One of the responses to the recent rash of mass killings in this country has been to advocate for even more civilians being armed as a way to help prevent such tragedies. But to me that represents another step backwards to a less civilized and more violent era of human history. Aren't we supposed to be maturing to becoming better and wiser than that?

I once heard George Brunk III, former dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, say, “Our faith is not so much about preserving values from the past as it is about living by the values of the future.”

In other words, we’re not just about resisting change and holding on to our good heritage, but are called to radically demonstrate a way of life now that has never yet really been, except maybe in the Garden of Eden. Thus as a people of God we are to be an advertisement about what the future will be like, when the Prince of Peace is fully sovereign, when God’s will will be done on earth as it already is in heaven.

And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes; 

and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 

neither shall there be any more pain: 

for the former things have passed away.

That’s what the future will look like, and that's what fashions the lives of a people who are already living by the rules of the future, when people everywhere will model the prophet Isaiah’s vision of  refashioning “swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks,” and will “study war no more.” Like Jesus, we will already live as though the wolf were lying down with the lamb, the leopard with the kid,  and with a little child leading them. Thus it can be said of us, “(T)hey will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”

That’s the tomorrow we’re being enlisted to join and rehearse for today, to truly become a showcase, a demonstration site, a foretaste, an Exhibit A, of what God’s forever world will inevitably be like. God’s people, inspired by God-with-us, simply can’t wait for the next life to begin living that way.

This is the good news, that wherever on earth God reigns, the peaceful rule of Messiah has already begun.

So for the New Year and forever, "Shalom, Peace, Salem to all"      

  

What Weapon Would Jesus Approve?

Ancient sword

  

1795 Springfield rifle

Modern Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle

 

"Put away your sword, 

for those who take up the sword 

will perish by the sword."        

(Matthew 26:52)

"The fairest weapon in the land

 is the plow in the farmer's hand."  

(old Anabaptist saying)

One tongue-in-cheek proposal I ran across recently to help curb the growing epidemic of gun violence is to allow ownership of only the kinds of weapons the founders had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. This should please those who favor the strictest possible interpretation of the Constitution as well as help satisfy those who want guns for hunting and self defense.

Seriously, it is doubtful that the founding fathers ever meant for ordinary citizens to bear semi-automatic Bushmasters with clips containing 100 rounds of ammunition. There just is no way they could have anticipated today’s super efficient killing machines, nor could they have imagined the nation ever earning the distinction of having the highest murder rate of any industrialized (not to be confused with civilized) nation in the world.

 As it turns out, the US also has the highest total number of guns of any nation, a total of 310 million, which represents half the total number of guns in existence, owned by just 5% of the world’s population. This is more than enough to arm every able bodied American from fledgling first graders to aging grandmothers.

Meanwhile, while US crime rates have gone down, crimes committed with guns have increased, resulting in 32,000 deaths and 100,000 gun-related injuries a year (including suicides). If this trend continues there will more deaths from gun shots by the year 2015 than from automobile accidents. And there would be far more fatalities yet if it weren’t for the fact that medical professionals have become ever better at treating the wounded.

ABC News website

According to data compiled by the United Nations, the United States has four times as many gun-related homicides per capita as do Turkey and Switzerland, which are tied for third. And the U.S. gun murder rate is about 20 times the average of the other G-8 countries on the chart above. That means that Americans are 20 times as likely to be killed by a gun than in these other developed countries.

In spite of this, just a week ago the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre issued the organization’s first public statement since the Newtown shooting, railing against schools being designated as gun-free zones, and insisting that having even more guns, including in schools, is the answer.

While LaPierre was speaking, and while still more residents of Newtown were burying their dead, there was another multiple shooting going on in Blair County, Pennsylvania. That tragedy involved a handgun shooting of two men and a woman (the latter in a church). The shooter then injured three patrol officers before turning the gun on himself.

When it comes to reducing such tragedies, I know there are numerous problems that need to be addressed besides regulating guns, but all too easy access to all too many firearms loaded with far too much ammunition is surely a major part of the problem.

As to armed civilians helping stop armed killers, according to Mother Jones Magazine, in the 62 mass-murder cases over the past 30 years, not one was stopped by an armed civilian. A sheriff’s deputy at Columbine High School in 1999 fired at one of the two killers while 11 of their 13 victims were still alive. He missed four times.

There are no easy answers, but we must do something to stem our epidemic of gun violence.

See also, http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=the+right+to+bear+cars
and local musician Doug Hendron's latest song, "Too Many Guns"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC574hNwLnc&feature=youtu.be

For Saint Stephen's Day

In this early Rembrandt painting, the artist's head appears directly behind Stephen's.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was one of seven leaders chosen by the early church to help minister to the needs of his fellow Greek-speaking believers, according to Acts 6 and 7.

Not a controversial assignment, so why does this young deacon provoke such outrage on the part of Jerusalem’s religious establishment? And why is his public defense, so laced with familiar stories from their Bible, so controversial?

Blasphemy is the original charge brought against him. Stephen was accused of disrespecting two sacred Jewish symbols, the temple and the Torah (Law). To even question the need for a temple, for example, seemed unthinkable to those who had only recently acquired their new house of worship (courtesy of King Herod) and who controlled the finances and clergy required to operate it.

Under Roman rule, established religion at this time was flourishing, at least from the perspective of the local clerics and court lawyers. Their one remaining dream was to have Messiah come to bring a full restoration of their national sovereignty. But Stephen claimed that God needed neither of these, and chose the following examples from history to make his point:

1. God favors the landless and dispossessed

Stephen reminded his listeners that Abraham and Sarah, the ancestral heroes of their faith, were landless immigrants. While God called them to a new land, they “never owned even a foot of it,”  he said. Stephen didn’t mention the one field Abraham did purchase--a burial site--his point being that God sides with sojourners moving about with tents rather than with people settled in fortified palaces. 

This is good news to newly baptized followers of the Way, largely members of Jerusalem’s landless underclass.

2. God works through ostracized and unconventional leaders

Stephen’s next point is that the leaders God calls are seldom people who would win a popular election, citing Joseph as a prime example. His brothers hated him and sold him to Egyptian slave traders, but God chose this rejected son of Israel as their deliverer.

The same was true of Moses. In Stephen’s time, he was the most revered of all Jewish leaders, but he too was originally a mistrusted member of the oppressor Pharoah’s administration.

God’s choice of outsiders represented good news to a maverick community of believers led by twelve unschooled apostles and their seven immigrant helpers. It was just like God, Stephen insisted, to raise up prophets and servant-leaders rejected by their peers but confirmed by God and by later history. Jesus himself, he says, the keystone that the “builders” of his time rejected, became the chief cornerstone in God’s new architecture, and “You cruelly persecuted and killed him, just as you did all the other prophets of God.”

3. God prefers buildings not made by human hands

Stephen's stoning took place near the site of Herod’s Temple, the sacred center of Jewish worship that Jesus once predicted would be demolished. To question God’s link to this symbol of their faith was shocking. But Stephan pointed out that God lived without such a shrine for most of history. The only house of worship God designed, he reminded them, was a mobile tent, the tabernacle God’s people carried from place to place during Israel’s wilderness journey and early years in Canaan. Yes, King David later asked God’s permission to build a more permanent house for God, but that permission was granted (reluctantly?) only to his son Solomon.
   
Stephen then declares, “The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands.” Then quoting from Isaiah 66, he adds, “‘Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, so what kind of house will you build for me?’ says the Lord?”
    
To members of a grassroots house church movement, this too was good news. God’s presence was truly among them as they met in each other's homes to worship and break bread together. The gathered believers themselves made up God’s new temple.

Concluding Questions For St. Stephen’s Day

Is God still inclined to vacate existing religious institutions in favor of leaner movements empowered by fresh winds of the Spirit and led by members of the underclass? 

Does God remain as uninterested in our multi-million dollar budgets for temple and institution building today as was the case 2000 years ago?

Stephen’s message suggests some disturbing--and liberating--answers.

Christmas, a Promise of Permanent Peace

Sadly, peace came too late for these 58,272 warriors and their loved ones.

Every warrior’s boot used in battle

    and every garment rolled in blood

will be destined for burning,

    will be fuel for the fire. 

For to us a child is born,

    to us a son is given,

    and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace

    there will be no end.

He will reign on David’s throne

    and over his kingdom,

establishing and upholding it

    with justice and righteousness

    from that time on and forever.

Isaiah 9:5-7 NIV 

Above photo of Vietnam War Memorial by commandpost.com

Advent Anticipation: The Eve of Christmas Eve

Stone painting by Lin Wellford http://www.linwellford.com

O holy Child of Bethlehem

Descend on us, we pray

This is the season to focus on the advent of that One and Only Child in whom God descends to earth naked and disarmed--a defenseless Lover and Lamb unwelcomed in the town of his ancestry. "He came to his own, and his own received him not."

Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born in us today

In a world of inequity and injustice, the Bethlehem baby comes needy and hungry, utterly dependent on the care of a first-time teen mother and her ordinary working-class husband. Yet this is the wonder of Christmas, the focus of our songs and of our celebrations in this holy season.

We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell

This is truly a time when God tugs hard at our hearts and calls us to care deeply and provide generously for all the newborn of the world, red, brown, yellow, black and white, for all of the Afghans, Hondurans, Haitians, Congolese, Palestinians, Syrians and others for whom there is no room except in stable-like shelters, tents and tenements. "As you have done to the least of these, you have done it unto me."

O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord, Immanuel

May we all love as God loved, live as Christ lived, so Christmas will not have come in vain, so all will will be blessed, and there may yet come "peace on earth, goodwill to all."

From all of us, our family and our house church family--our love, prayers and blessings.

All I Want For Christmas

I found the following piece in a Dear Abby column a couple of years ago, written by a set of unnamed parents for their children and grandchildren:

So many of you have asked (since Yuletide’s drawing near)
‘What do you want for Christmas? What can we give you this year?’
If we say, ‘We want nothing!’ you buy something anyway,
So here’s a list of what we’d like; believe now what we say:

Pajamas for a little child, food to feed the poor,
Blankets for a shelter, and we ask but little more.
Perform good deeds and let us know, or volunteer your time.
These last are worth a fortune, and they needn’t cost a dime.

We have too many things now, vases, candles, tapes and clocks.
We have our fill of garments, ties, underwear and socks.
Candy is too fattening, crossword books we’ve more than twenty.
We don’t need trays or plates or cups, and knickknacks we have plenty.

We’ve no walls to hang more pictures; we have books we’ve not yet read;
So please take what you’d spend on us, and help the poor instead!
Just send a Christmas card to us and tell us what you’ve done;
And we’ll open them on Christmas Eve and read them one by one.

It won’t cost as much for postage as a package sent would do,
You’ll need no wrapping paper, ribbons, ink or glue.
And we’ll thank God you listened to what we had to say,
So we could be the instruments to help someone this way.

Our sentiments exactly. Have a blessed Christmas!

Here's the link to the YouTube on The Story of Stuff.

Has God Forsaken Our Public Schools?

Photo by MercuryNews.com

Just hours after the massacre of innocent children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mike Huckabee, one of the few Fox News commentators I sometimes listen to, stated, “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be surprised that schools become a place of carnage?"

I wanted to ask how he explained the tragic murders of devout and innocent Amish children in the 2006 Nickel Mine School shooting. Had they removed God from their school? I don't think so. At any rate, unlike some of Huckabee’s faith-related observations, I reject the above on many grounds:

1. A compassionate God who observes each sparrow’s fall--and who is outraged by innocent people suffering for any reason--will never allow himself to be removed from any place on the planet.

2. God is certainly present wherever there are loving parents who daily send their children to school with their prayers and blessings. But God also inhabits shopping malls, parks, hospitals, work places, and even places of worship ;-), regardless of what religious activities may (or may not) be going on there.

3. My experience with the bland prayers and readings I was exposed to in public school (where virtually all students were from Protestant Christian homes) was extremely minimal compared to the influence of my family and congregational family, along with some of the good role models I had in many of my elementary teachers.

4. One doesn't have to be smarter than a fifth-grader to realize that public schools today represent a much more religiously diverse population than when I attended, and that it would be almost impossible today to devise prayers for all that would not be offensive to some, including myself.

5. While we would love to have our grandchildren be able to attend one of the good Christian schools in our area, our two local grandstudents have been blessed with exceptionally dedicated (some Mennonite) teachers in the dual Spanish/English program they are enrolled in at the Smithland Elementary School. God is obviously present in many of these teachers' lives, and we pray for them and for our grandchildren every day.

Meanwhile, our fervent prayer is that we all utilize every possible moral, spiritual, medical and/or legislative way possible to stop this kind of carnage. If we don’t, deaths in the US resulting from gun violence will begin to surpass those caused by automobile accidents.

We can't afford to let that trend continue.

See also http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=the+right+to+bear+cars