North Prospect Union UCC

Tax Cuts

Dudley Rose — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:17:17 +0000

This is the end of Sunday’s sermon. You can find the whole thing: text, MP3 and Slides in either recent sermons or the sermon archive. The passage was whether it is right to pay taxes to Caesar, and I have related it to the very different question of paying taxes in our time.

What if Jesus ran for president? What if he was in the debate on TV with a rigged audience, like the one he faced in Judea? What if some opponent asked him about raising taxes on the rich? Maybe he would say, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” And maybe the opponent would reach into his pocket and take out a coin, maybe like this one. {Slide 6} And maybe Jesus would say, “Who is on the coin?” And the opponent might say, “One of our former statesmen, a man who served the country with wisdom.” And Jesus might say, “Not an emperor, then? Not someone claiming to be God?” And the opponent might responds, “Oh no. Just a public servant.” And then Jesus might say, “What is inscribed on the coin?” And the opponent might say, “In God we trust.” And Jesus might say, “Um. It doesn’t say ‘trust in money?’ It doesn’t say ‘In the free market we trust?’” And the opponent might say, “No. In God.” Then Jesus might say, “What’s that other word, liberty, mean?” and the opponent might say, “Oh, that means liberty for all. It’s in our founding documents” Then Jesus might say, “Um, liberty for all. Turn the coin over. What do you see?” And the opponent might say, “That’s the liberty bell, that liberty-for-all thing again.” And then Jesus might say, “What are the words?” And his opponent might say, “E pluribus unum.” And Jesus might say, “Wow. Is that Latin or something? What does it mean?” And his opponent might say, “It means ‘from many one.’ It means that we are all together in this. It takes us all to make the country, and we all benefit.” Then Jesus might say, Interesting. Are you sure it doesn’t say, ‘From the many for the benefit of the few?’” And his opponent might say, “No. That’s not what it says. It says, ‘From the many one.’” And then Jesus might say, “Well, that’s a lot different from what it was back in Judea. If it says that you trust in God, that you stand for liberty for all and that everyone is an equal part of things, I’d say you ought to be glad to pay the tax.

Tea Party’s War on America

Dudley Rose — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:49:04 +0000

Over the next weeks and months we can expect to hear a lot about what just went down in Washington during the debt ceiling debate. Joe Nocera, of the New York Times, offers a compelling opinion worth reading. His main points: We’ve got a deal on the debt ceiling, all right. One that will reduce the national deficit and wreck the economy. So it goes when ideology trumps facts. Link to Article

Quoted article:

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise. When John Boehner, the House speaker, tried to cut a deal with President Obama that included some modest revenue increases, they humiliated him. After this latest agreement was finally struck on Sunday night — amounting to a near-complete capitulation by Obama — Tea Party members went on Fox News to complain that it only called for $2.4 trillion in cuts, instead of $4 trillion. It was head-spinning.

All day Monday, the blogosphere and the talk shows mused about which party would come out ahead politically. Honestly, who cares? What ought to matter is not how these spending cuts will affect our politicians, but how they’ll affect the country. And I’m not even talking about the terrible toll $2.4 trillion in cuts will take on the poor and the middle class. I am talking about their effect on America’s still-ailing economy.

America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined the denominator.” Economic growth could have gone a long way toward shrinking the deficit, while helping put people to work. The spending cuts will shrink growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession.

Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved. What is astonishing is that both the president and House speaker are claiming that the deal will help the economy. Do they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, tried to rein in federal spending. Cutting spending spiraled the country right back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the stimulus package known as World War II. That’s the path we’re now on. Our enemies could not have designed a better plan to weaken the American economy than this debt-ceiling deal.

One thing Roosevelt did right during the Depression was legislate into being a social safety net to soften the blows that a free-market economy can mete out in tough times. During this recession, it’s as if the government is going out of its way to make sure the blows are even more severe than they have to be. The debt-ceiling debate reflects a harsher, less empathetic America. It’s sad to see.

My own view is that Obama should have played the 14th Amendment card, using its language about “the validity of the public debt” to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Yes, he would have infuriated the Republicans, but so what? They already view him as the Antichrist. Legal scholars believe that Congress would not have been able to sue to overturn his decision. Inexplicably, he chose instead a course of action that maximized the leverage of the Republican extremists.

Assuming the Senate passes the bill on Tuesday, the debt ceiling will be a nonissue until after the next election. But the debilitating deficit battles are by no means over. Thanks to this deal, a newly formed supercommittee of Congress is supposed to target another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in cuts by late November. If those cuts don’t become law by Dec. 23, automatic across-the-board cuts will be imposed, including deep reductions in defense spending.

As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible thing. Apparently, that’s their problem.

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

Prayer Requests

Dudley Rose — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 01:44:22 +0000

In order to make prayer requests somewhat easier to submit and also more secure, you will now find the prayer request page in the ‘For Members’ section. This section is visible if you are a registered member of the website. You may register from the “login etc.’ box. Simply fill out the form, and your . . . → Read More: Prayer Requests

Let’s Burn the Bible!

Dudley Rose — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:35:02 +0000

I think it’s time we burned the Bible. Fred Phelps uses the Bible to say that God hates fags and that the U.S war casualties are God’s revenge for our country’s permissive culture. The Rev. Terry Jones in Gainesville, FL plans to burn the Quran because. He says that the God of the Bible tells him that Islam is the Devil. For nearly two millennia there have arisen groups of Christians, many of them mainstream, which have found in the Gospels warrant to eradicate Jews. It’s time to call a stop to it. It’s time to recognize the evil contained in this book. I say, it’s time to burn the Bible!

Now, of course, I have no intentions of burning the Bible. I have a deep, abiding love for the scriptures. To this day, when I hold the Bible in my hands, its sacredness makes me tremble. I can never think of the Bible except I think that through it God is calling me to be more than I am. The Bible coaxes me to forgive, to love my neighbor and even my enemy, to do unto others as I would have them do unto me, to trust in the loving presence of God through whom all things are possible and through whom I may live and move and have my being. None of these things come naturally. Be I alone, they are beyond me. The sacred scriptures are one instrument by which God intends to make more of me than I am. Burning the Bible would incinerate my soul, for it would be to deny God’s claim on me.

The scriptures of every religious tradition create such responses. The Quran of Islam, the Torah of Judaism, the Sutras of Buddhism–and all the others, too–are holy. To burn any of them is an unthinkable atrocity. Nonetheless, the scriptures of most traditions have been marshaled for terrible purposes; certainly the Bible and the Quran have. The scriptures of every tradition call their followers beyond themselves, beyond their own possibilities, beyond and their own greed and self-centeredness, beyond their fear and prejudice. But these human failings are nothing if they are not enduring, inventive and seductive. Our most egregious human instincts, given half a chance, will trick us into believing that our scriptures call us to hatred, condemnation and vengeance. It’s enough to make you want to burn the books–until you remember that the books would call us to be better than we are. It is our sin, if you will, that gives voice to our worst selves.

So, let’s not burn the Bible, or the Quran, or any other holy book. Indeed, let us remind ourselves that, as the Bible would say it, the very idea comes from that within us which is corrupt, not from God.

The Cross at Auschwitz; a Mosque at Ground Zero

Dudley Rose — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:04:15 +0000

James Carroll introduces his book, Constantine’s Sword, by telling the story of a large cross that was placed next Auschwitz. The cross had been used in 1979 for John Paul II’s return home to nearby Krakow, and its move to Auschwitz in 1998 fulfilled his expressed hope that a place of prayer and penance could be built at the site of the death camp. It did not have its intended effect. Jews and many others found the cross at Auschwitz to be offensive. Some said they just wanted the place to be left alone by Christians. Some were horrified, given the Christian church’s part in the Holocaust. And others, who granted the good intentions of the act, understood that the cross gave a Christian interpretation to a site of Jewish sorrow. Carroll begins here to suggest that the complexity of religious symbols in such a place as Auschwitz renders them almost impossible to accomplish their purposes. There are just too many conflicting feelings and meanings to account for. Carroll further wanted to suggest that in placing the the cross there the Christians were at best insensitive to, and at worst dismissive of what the Jews had suffered.

It would be hard not to draw at least some parallels in the desire of a Muslim group to place a mosque and Islamic center 600 feet from 9/11 ground zero. After all, the attacks were promulgated by people who are clear in their hatred of the United States and in their desire to exterminate it, and they have explicitly claimed Islamic beliefs to be the basis for the “jihad.” One would best be careful about drawing the parallels too far. The sheer magnitude of the Holocaust incomparable, for example. But a call for a certain sensitivity to those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and who, even if they didn’t, remain targeted by violence in the name of the religion that wishes to place clear religious symbol so close is understandable.

The complexity and the incendiary feelings the situations arouse call for care and thoughtfulness, and a willingness to make subtle but important distinctions. It seems clear that sensitivity to the pain that both Auschwitz and ground zero represent is, without question, called for. The question is, should that sensitivity preclude the placement of such things as the cross at Auschwitz and a mosque at ground zero. I’m not asking about the right to do it. At least in the United States the Constitution guarantees the right, it seems clear. Nor am I asking whether it is wise, if by being wise we mean that we should expect it to be readily accepted. I am asking whether it is wise for any group, no matter how egregiously offended they are, to refuse the overtures of those they associate with the violence. That is, is it wise to allow the pain to raise a wall?

I don’t think so. For a wall allows us to avoid another complexity, the complexity of human beings and human community. It is hard not to be saddened by the rhetoric today, whether it be from the Taliban, or Al-Qaeda, or militant Christians whose characterizations of their “enemies” are but caricature. We cannot afford to decide building projects, we cannot afford to run election campaigns, and we cannot afford to run wars based on made-up ideas of who other people are. We need the real data that comes from real interaction. In New York, we need honest conversations among Muslims and non-Muslims about the pain on each side, about the hopes and hurts, about offenses imagined and real. Will it be difficult? Of course. Would it be easier not to do it? In the short run, probably. Would it even seem wiser? No doubt. But would it be wise? Not on your life. Not on your life.

Has Politics Become Religion?

Dudley Rose — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:40:09 +0000

Has politics become religion? For some it seems it has. Otherwise it’s hard to explain the call for “separation” between the president of the United States and America’s school children. In the wake of the president’s plan to address the nation’s schools some have reacted very strongly suggesting that the president is forcing children to hear views that they or their parents deeply reject. Have we become so partisan that the chief executive and commander in chief of the country cannot speak to students without being accused of indoctrination? If so, it’s a sad state of affairs.

There may be a silver lining, however. Could this drama in the body politic cause us to reflect on how shrill it sounds when either religion or public life is assumed to be principally indoctrination? Maybe we would begin to think that a more generous spirit in both arenas would make us a better people.

Ted Kennedy and the Politics of Principles

Dudley Rose — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:53:47 +0000

Like many of you, I suspect, I have found myself today mourning the loss of Ted Kennedy and reflecting on his era of political service. Like most of us, Ted Kennedy was flawed, and some of those flaws were glaring and costly to him or others. But today as I read and watched accounts of his long service in public life, I was struck by the depth and sincerity of the principles that guided his commitment to civil rights, healing the wounds of war, and his great unfinished business of universal health-care. It’s fair to say, I think, that Ted Kennedy consistently appealed to our better selves in addressing these issues. And that’s what I find most missing and dispiriting in the current political discourse. Today too many politicians seem to appeal to our basest instincts. Too many unapologetically and shamelessly inflame our passions of greed. Too many smugly preach outright lies simply because it’s what their base wants to hear. Too many would rather tear down their opponents than build up the common good. It is my prayer that in remembrance of Ted Kennedy our politicians might drop the meanspirited posturing and call us all to a politics of principles as we address the important issues of our time: health-care, economic recovery and war, to name a few. What a fitting and positive tribute to Ted Kennedy that would be.

Jeremiah Wright and anti-Semitism

Dudley Rose — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:57:39 +0000

It is with sadness, disappointment and outrage that I read and listened to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s recent comments to a reporter from the Virginia newspaper, the Daily Press. Wright, the former pastor of Trinity UCC Church in Chicago and President Obama’s pastor until Wright’s incendiary comments during the presidential campaign caused Obama to break the relationship, was asked if he has spoken to the President lately. He responded, “Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me.” He later said that he meant to say “Zionists.” Either way the Antisemitism from the mouth of a UCC pastor is appalling. I have sent the following in an email to the President and Minister of the UCC, The Rev. John Thomas.

Dear President Thomas,

I am writing as a UCC minister for over 25 years, as Associate Dean for Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School for over 20 years, and as a long-time admirer of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It would be hard to overstate my disappointment in his most recent anti-semitic remarks. I pray that you will denounce his remarks in the strongest possible terms. As a servant of the UCC and one who has for over 20 years been involved in the education of students for ministry, I grieve his remarks and their reflection on our denomination. I beg you to clearly and forcefully say that there is no room for such remarks or thinking among our ministers, retired or not.

Thank you,

Dudley C. Rose

Sr. Minister, North Prospect Union UCC, Medford, MA

President Thomas did release a statement about our solidarity with both Jews and Palestinians, but, unfortunately from my perspective, chose not to directly condemn Wright’s remarks. Antisemitism has a very long history, and it is well-documented that the Christian Church has had a sordid role in that history. James Carroll’s book, Constantine’s Sword, for example, is quite illuminating in this regard.

We were reminded of the how far the hatred of Antisemitism can go last week when the President visited the camps at Buchenwald, and we were given clear evidence that it is still alive and well when on Wednesday James von Brunn, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist, shot and killed Stephen Tyrone Johns, a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Von Brunn was striking out at “Jews and blacks,” whom he blames for most of our society’s ills.

The message is clear. Hatred is a curse on the human family, and tolerance of it puts us on a very slippery slope. As children we used to say, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” I think we’ve learned time and again, though, that the hatred of name-calling leads altogether too easily to broken bones and worse. Most insidiously, when we believe the name-calling, it becomes a righteous justification for hatred and violence. Just ask James von Brunn. He’ll be only too glad to tell anyone who will listen just how holy is his cause. Surely we have no place for even the beginnings of such rhetoric in our church.

Tough Times

Dudley Rose — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:12:40 +0000

This letter to the congregation was handed out at church on April 26th and is posted here in advance of its appearance in the newsletter.

Dear Friends,

We live in sobering times. While that’s true on many fronts, today I’m thinking especially about the current financial situation. No family or organization is immune to the crisis, and never has it been more apparent just how interconnected we all are. Problems on Wall Street send ripples down every Main Street here and abroad. These are tough times.

Even as some see glimmers of hope and believe that we have seen the worst of it, more layoffs and cutbacks are in the news every day. Those who receive the layoff notices often see their lives turned upside down. Though the pain is spread widely, it is still spread unevenly. I know that some of our church families have been affected directly, and our thoughts and prayers are especially with them in their time of hardship.

Just as some individuals are being pinched especially hard, so it is with organizations. Among the hardest hit organizations are churches. Churches have no product or service to sell. They receive no tuition revenue. They receive no patient fees or insurance reimbursements. Their income comes largely from the generosity of their members, either as annual contributions or income on bequests. A much smaller amount comes from fundraising, rentals and the like.

Our own church depends significantly on income from investments of former bequests. Like all responsible organizations we try to use those funds at a rate that will insure that they are still there in the future. Basically, we budget to spend 5% of the value of the funds each year. The idea is that over time dividends, interest and increases in market value (investment performance) should offset what we use, and our investments should continue to sustain their value. If we were to spend more than we believe would be offset by investment performance, we would enter a perilous downward financial spiral. The value of the investments would decline faster and faster until we were bankrupt. Before our merger North Street Union and North Prospect both looked into the eyes of that particular wolf at the door.

Our merger was a great boon to our congregations, and we have been building an exciting church and ministry together over these last few years. We have a wonderful building, and there’s a great spirit in the place. We have been budgeting within our means, and we have had our investments carefully managed by professionals. In short, we have been looking at a very bright future.

However, and despite our best efforts, we like everyone else have experienced an unprecedented decline in the value of our investments this year. As a result, we cannot balance the budget with our present levels of expenditure and anticipated income. We have three possible responses. The first is perilous. We could put our heads in the sand and keep expenses where they are. Were we to choose such a course, we could predict rather easily how long we would last before we went out of business. The second is painful. We could reduce spending by $35,000 to $40,000. To do so would require eliminating funding for most programs, such as Sunday School teachers, special music and ElderSpirit as well as services such as landscaping. However, since more than 70% of our budget is in salaries, that wouldn’t get us nearly far enough. We would need close to a 20% across-the-board salary reduction in addition. The third is possible but improbable. That is, we could raise an additional $35,000 to $40,000 in current-use funds for next year through raised pledges or other gifts. We are caught in a triangle of perilous, painful and possible but improbable responses.

The perilous choice seems out of the question. If we were to get on the slippery slope of overspending, we would be resigning ourselves to eventually going out of business. I have never seen a case that turned out otherwise. That leaves us with painful and possible but improbable. So let’s consider these two viable courses.

First, let us consider the painful cuts. These are quite serious, I think. It will mean that much more, including Sunday School and childcare will have to be done by volunteers. We’ll have to do without special programs that we have enjoyed. And most painfully, deep salary reductions for our hard-working and loyal personnel will no doubt cause great hardship. I would be glad to be proven wrong, but I think all of these are unavoidable to some degree, nonetheless.

I turn now to raising funds. One of the first things I think of when I hear raising funds is to have some fundraisers. We probably should. In addition, there are some building rentals that we could imagine. We’ve been working, for example, to attract people to rent our beautiful sanctuary for weddings. But we need to be realistic. Fairs, bakes sales and weddings will hardly put a dent in the shortfall. And we need to be careful not to burn people out trying to do the impossible.

In the end we are back where we started. The survival and vitality of the church depends almost entirely on the generosity of its members. In the short run any increase in contributions that we can muster will reduce the budget cuts and therefore the pain. Of course, these are hard times for everyone, and many will struggle to maintain their past giving levels. We hope that those who can give more, even significantly more, will. It will be much appreciated. On the other hand, no member should feel that worth in the church is measured in the ability to give. What we do hope is that every member will do the best they can. God has much left for us to do in this place, and with your help we will be doing it for a good long time.

While current giving is urgent right now, in the long run perhaps the most important form of generosity any of us can exhibit is in the form of a bequest. As I said at the beginning, as a church we don’t have anything to sell. We can’t send bills for services rendered. No insurance company covers the costs for your spiritual care. We don’t charge tuition or doctor’s fees. Our best chance for long-term vitality rests in generous giving through pledging and through bequests from your estate. We have just learned of a generous gift from Dorothy Clauson’s estate. Without it, our cuts would be several thousands dollars deeper this year. I am not rushing any of us to the grave; we’ll all get there soon enough on our own. But I do hope you will name the church in your will and consider some form of planned-giving.

So, where does all this leave us? Here’s one idea. The Executive Council could propose a balanced budget at the annual meeting with all the cuts necessary to make ends meet. We could pass it provisionally at the meeting, with the idea that if we could secure additional income commitments by June 30 for next year, we would adjust the cuts accordingly. That would give us an opportunity to focus on closing the gap for several weeks. Who knows how it might work out?

In closing, let me say again that these are difficult times. Let us keep one another in our prayers. We are all feeling stress at some level. Let us use recognize that whatever we are feeling, it’s a good chance that the person next to us is, too. Let us take the opportunity to be kind to and pray for one another. To do so will lower stress for both the giver and the receiver of the kindness. We are a strong and resilient church family, and with God’s help we will get through these times.

Blessings and peace,

Dudley

Study Bibles Redux

Dudley Rose — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:50:32 +0000

In this post I want to continue thinking about study Bibles. In the last post I concentrated on translations, looking at the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New Living Translation (NLT), and the English Standard Version (ESV). This time, I want to focus a little more on the content of the study materials.

The ESV Study Bible is quite polemically conservative or fundamentalist in its interpretation. It has exceptional maps and drawings and among the most extensive articles and notes. It is, however, quite antagonistic to what it calls liberal Biblical scholarship and theology. I would recommend it as a secondary resource, which would prove helpful both in the extensiveness of its study helps and because it would provide a clear alternative position of Biblical interpretation for comparison.

The NLT Study Bible is a little less doctrinaire, but it shares many of the perspectives of the ESV Study Bible. I would say many of the same things that I said about the ESV in terms of interpretation and extensiveness of its study resources. The real difference is the translation, which is without a doubt is the most different of the bunch. It is true to the original language texts, but it also strives to make the meaning more plain than the more precise (word-for-word) translations ever can. On that basis alone it merits attention. The NLT also comes in other Study Bibles: a life application Bible and a recovery Bible, for example. These and the others are in the web store.

The three other study Bibles I’m highlighting, the New Oxford Annotated Bible, The HarperCollins Study Bible and the New Interpreter’s Study Bible all use the NRSV translation, perhaps the most precise translation of the orginal languages currently available. All three have study notes and articles at the liberal or moderate end of the spectrum and represent the best of current mainstream scholarship. Because the NRSV seeks to translate the original languages word-for-word as much as possible, it is often harder to understand, simply because languages don’t correspond to one another that way. For example, when Jesus answers when Pilate asks him if he is the King of the Jews, “You have said so,” it’s not immediately clear to most of us that he means to say, “Yes,” or something like, “You’re the one who said it, not me.”

So, what’s my recommendation now? Well, here’s one idea. If you had two trasnslations, I might recommend the NRSV and the NLT. If only one of them was to be a study Bible, I would recommend one of the NRSV ones. All three would be fine, but I might have a slight preference for the Oxford Annotated in its 3rd revision. But the HarperCollins or the New Interpreter’s would do just fine. So, let’s say you were going to read the book of Ruth. You could start by reading the articles about the Old Testament. At a minimum, you could start by reading the intrductory material about the book of Ruth. Then read Ruth through in the New Living Translation without worring about study notes. Just read the text of Ruth through. After that go through Ruth much more slowly in one of the New Revised Standard Version study Bibles, reading the study notes and slowly digesting the meanings and your thoughts. You would want to divide this up into manageable chunks, mayber reading introductory articles one day, the book of Ruth (which is very short) another day, and then spending a few moer days reading through it more deliberately with the study material.

I’ve seen one schedule that would get you through the whole Bible in this fashion over the course of five years! I’d be interested to know if there’s anyone who would like to study the Bible this way–the whole thing or a book here and there. I would be glad set up a recommended schedule and arrange for some meetings to discuss how it’s going. Respond to this post, or let me know any way you want.