earth as it is in heaven

Some Thoughts on Hermeneutics

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:31:00 +0000

I've been in conversation with colleagues at Shaw, with students, and with old and new friends from other schools in recent days about hermeneutics and what matters to our faculty at Shaw University Divinity School. Now let me say right away that we don't all agree at Shaw. In fact, we could have some serious disagreements if we tried to nail down a united approach to biblical interpretation. I reckon that would be true of most theological faculties. Yet during recent conversations we have been to a great extent on the same page.

Having conversations about the approach to teaching New Testament that we believe is important for our Divinity School, one of the central things we agree upon is that our approach to theological education is rooted and grounded in the acknowledgement of our intentional social location: we are teaching ministers in the context of the black church. Perhaps some of you now are thinking, "Tell me something I didn't know." You are right that it is obvious to anyone who takes a moment to learn about SUDS that our context is the black church. Ninety-nine per cent of our students are African American, and they are almost all part of historical African American congregations and denominations. Moreover, nearly all of our faculty are part of African American congregations, where some are pastors and most are ministers. You may think I am just stating the obvious.

I'm not.

There is more to what I am saying than an observation about whom we associate with. To say that we teach ministers in the context of the black church is not merely a statement about membership and skin color. It is not merely a statement about "style," either. It speaks up about vision, what we see and how we conceptualize. I am on the verge of opening the floodgates here, but I will try to keep this concise.

I have previously mentioned the term "normative gaze." This term presents the claim that dominant groups or elites function as the eyes of society. The facts as they see them, the theories of social existence they hold, the interpretations of texts they favor--all of these become the normative way of seeing things. Thus, as they gaze out upon the world, their eyes see normatively. Seeing normatively, they thereby see things as they are. These groups, having enculturated their majorities or their dominant communities, their ruling classes, and in the modern world, especially, their racial and ethnic majorities, can make claim to recognizing "the plain sense" of Scripture, the "literal" reading.

The normative gaze functions as a kind of blindness, or at least as blinders, to another set of data. That is the data of minority cultures' counter-readings, counter-histories, and counter-narratives. The normative gaze may look upon "diversity" and "multiculturalism" as ornamentation upon the normative vision. It may see minority variations as fascinating boutiques, cultural sightseeing, but not as systemic challenges to the norm. Of course, modern white supremacy has often categorized minority variations as steps along the way toward whiteness, as immature forms of knowledge, or even digressions from the normative path. All such characterizations make sure not to question the supremacy of the normative gaze. Thus, we can call this a kind of blindness.

Our faculty have converged on the conviction that the way of teaching ministers at majority institutions is not universal, general, or normative, but it is oriented toward the white church. To even say "white church" creates some discomfort, some uneasiness. It raises defensiveness among some faculty who have understood their approach to theological education to be without the need of an adjective, a modifier, a qualification. They do not see what they are doing as white biblical interpretation. I don't know if all my Shaw colleagues would agree with me in this precise statement, but I believe that is what is happening at most seminaries and divinity schools.

Saying that schools are teaching white biblical interpretation is not the same thing as saying those schools work for the Devil or that those professors are on the road to Hell. I'm not saying that. I am saying that the tradition of biblical interpretation which grows out of modern European and American scholarship and which operates within a self-referential community of academics and clergy is a narrow and parochial view of the text. Of course, academics have been eager to call parochial such scholarly productions as black theology, African American biblical interpretation, womanist biblical scholarship, Latin American liberation hermeneutics. Such work even claims for itself adjective-laden, modified, qualified labels. I am merely saying that the unlabeled approaches are equally parochial and require modifiers and qualifications.

A second step in this conversation is that we believe that every approach to scholarship must seek out its own critics for the sake of conversation and removal of blinders. North American Bible readers need to read what African and Latin American Bible readers are saying about the text. Twentieth-century Bible readers need to read what fourth-century and thirteenth-century and sixteenth-century Bible readers were saying about the texts. If we admit that much of our reading is captive to our cultural backgrounds, then a critical part of reading critically is to seek out ways that those who love God, serve Christ, and live in the Spirit have understood the Bible in different times and places. Using various skills, methods, and techniques of interpretation are also valuable, as can be reading contemporary exegetical and expository interpretations of the Bible. But alone, no technique, skill, or method can do as much as conversing across geographical and cultural boundaries, across centuries and continents.

So if you are wondering how we think about hermeneutics at Shaw, I am pretty confident these are some points on which we agree. If my colleagues tell me otherwise, I'll let you know. You know how these academic conversations go.

The Long, Drawn Out Fight Against Foreclosure Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:11:00 +0000

In December 2010, I was part of a national gathering of citizens' groups who met with Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller in Des Moines. We announced and discussed with him our agenda to push for a just and broad-ranging settlement between the fifty states' Attorneys General, various key federal agencies, and the large banks who had committed fraud in their dealings with homeowners on mortgages and foreclosures. Miller was the lead AG in the negotiations, and he was talking tough at our gathering. At that time, we were hopeful for a settlement in the next six months.

During the ensuing months, NC leaders met twice with NC Attorney General and his staff to discuss progress and emphasize the need for justice for homeowners. We continued to hope there would be a resolution in the near future.

That six months passed. Then in July 2011, I joined another group of leaders in Chicago at the meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, where outgoing president of the group, NC AG Roy Cooper, presided. We had conversations with various AGs and their staff, capping off our visit with a face-to-face meeting with four of the state AGs: Cooper of NC, Miller of Iowa, Lisa Madigan of Illinois, and George Jepsen of Connecticut. We came away from the meeting encouraged that our allies were continuing to fight, but discouraged that the final agreement remained elusive. Hopes for a large fine to create a fund to assist homeowners were diminishing, with the figure $20 billion circulating widely (compared to the $700 billion bailout received by the banks).

Some state AGs threatened to pull out of the negotiations, frustrated over the compromises being forced by other state AGs, who were taking sides with the banks. These compromises would gut their efforts for justice and leave citizens, municipalities, pension funds, and homeowners high and dry with no recourse. Soon the California and New York AGs did withdraw from the negotiations. Miller's reports to the public seemed to predict limited settlements that would let the banks off the hook. The delays favored the banks, who continued to make large profits, pay out large bonuses, and foreclose on the little people, homeowners and the unemployed, who have no cash reserves to endure a prolonged battle. News in the fall and winter showed little progress.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and its many sibling Occupy movements raised hopes. Their agenda, as a mass movement, was less focused than our organizing had been. However, they had similar concerns about big banks, the failed bailouts, people losing their homes, and an economy that serves only the elite 1%. "We are the 99%" is a powerful cry of defiance. I suspect that this movement played a part in building pressure on the state AGs to stand more firmly with the people suffering rather than with the banks stonewalling.

In part because of some organizing around foreclosure fraud in January, President Obama responded in the State of the Union Address that he had directed AG Holder to intensify his efforts on the foreclosure fraud issue, creating an office focused on bringing these negotiations to completion. He then announced revisions in the HAMP program which would make unspent funds available to a larger range of homeowners. He further changed the existing programs to bring Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac mortgages into eligibility for assistance. So the end of January offered portents that change might be coming.

So I rejoiced to read the news this week that there are signs of progress toward a better settlement than had previously been intimated. The fine paid by the banks will likely be larger than expected, even if still only around $25 billion. The question of whether banks will be immune to further lawsuits seems to be shifting toward allowing homeowners, mortgage-based security buyers, and other interested parties the right to sue for damages. This means that city, state, and private pension funds who were enticed into purchasing investments that were hiding toxic assets will have recourse to recover losses. This could mean good news for so many people whose retirement savings were set back dramatically by the recent crash.

Keep watching for news that this drawn-out battle will end soon. It's about time for justice.

Nathanael: A Person for Such a Time as This, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:34:00 +0000

Continued from previous post

     Of course, Judas finally lost his way. He may have become disillusioned with Jesus, impatient with Jesus’ unwillingness to take up violence against the oppressors. He may have simply lost his vision and started wanting some riches. Whatever it was, he turned against the best friend he ever had. He made a terrible choice, and he regretted it as a terrible mistake. He could not take back what he had done, and his co-conspirators laughed in his face and mocked him. It was too much for him, and he took his own life. Jesus saw the good in Judas, but Judas lost sight of the good in himself.
   I need to stop and make an important point about this story. Some Christians believe that when a person takes his or her own life, it is an unforgivable sin. The first important thing I must say is that we have no justification to try to put limits on the forgiveness and grace of God. God is able to forgive without our permission, without our understanding, without our agreement, without our acknowledgement. God’s grace is immeasurable, and it is greater than all our sin. Destroying a human life is a grave act, and it is not one to be taken lightly. God has never take our sin lightly. God came in Jesus Christ to face sin down, head on, with all seriousness and gravity. Consequently, Jesus died on a cross because of the murderous ways of humanity. Yet from that cross, he cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
     One reason that some Christians believe that there is no forgiveness for an act like Judas’s is that they have accepted a mechanical understanding of our relationship with God. We know that we ought to confess our sins to God and ask for forgiveness. Many Bible teachers who have helped me learn to serve God have spoken of the promise in 1 John 1:9 as the “Christian’s bar of soap.” “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Yes, it is true that we ought to confess our sins. But it is not true that God is keeping a checklist and making sure that we stop to name everything we did and ask forgiveness individually for each item. God is not operating a sin accounting firm, trying to catch us and nab us for forgetting to confess. If that kind of mechanical operation were required, we would be caught up in another form of works-righteousness: it’s like believing God will only save you if you will always name every sin and ask for forgiveness for each one. It is a way of saying that salvation is just an input-output machine. Put in the confession. Take out the forgiveness.
     So even if a person dies before she or he has a chance to ask for forgiveness, God is not sitting at a desk making sure that every box has been checked off. God has known us and loved us even before we were born into this world, and God has not stopped loving us even until now. What can separate us from the love of God? When we have faithfully sought after God in this life, God stands faithfully with us through our best and worst times, welcoming us into our eternal rest. God is free to forgive us, even when we have not lived up to our side of the bargain. Though we are faithless, God will remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself.
     Another disciple, Thomas, remains mostly unknown until after the resurrection. We know him as doubting Thomas, because he found it hard to accept the testimony of others that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Frankly, I can see his point. But what we have called doubting could also be called square dealing. Thomas was not one to be impressed with fantastic theories, wild imagination, or fancy words. If he were from the United States, he would have lived in Missouri. Thomas would say, “Show me,” when the story sounded too fishy. When someone’s explanation did not seem to add up, he would ask him or her to go over the story again. Thomas asked people to “put up, or shut up.” He wanted a practical, workable, realistic plan. He did not want to be counting on something to appear out of thin air.
     Jesus needs people who are not satisfied with endless talking and imagining what can be. Some people need to bring folks like those back down to earth to start laying the paving stones toward progress. Jesus needs people to keep it real, to be a down brother or sister who knows what’s jive and what’s real. Jesus called Thomas to help keep his ministry team on the ground and dealing with reality.
     Simon the Canaanean was probably a Zealot. That means he was committed to the overthrow of the Roman Empire and the reestablishment of a Jewish state in their homeland. Jesus knew that Simon loved his people and hated to see them treated so badly. He saw in Simon someone who could analyze the political and social world and recognize how power functioned and who was pulling the strings. Jesus called him to follow because that kind of insight is needed if God’s people are going to live up to their mission to change the world. Certainly Simon’s revolutionary ways needed to be tempered by the meek and nonviolent ways of Jesus. But taking up the ways of nonviolence is not the same as just letting the oppressors do whatever they want.
     Jesus wants leaders who can see the political and economic injustices of the world and guide the church to take strategic action. Some Christians who have this kind of insight may misuse it to manipulate power in the church. Others may think the church has no use for their abilities. But God wants all of our talents to be ordered toward the work of doing the will of God here on earth as it is in heaven. When churches simply ignore the use and abuse of power in the community, they have truncated, or cut short, the gospel. God is concerned about every part of our lives and every person in the community. Using the wisdom God has given us about social strategies for change is what God has called us to do in the gospel. That is good news for the poor and freedom for the oppressed.
     Thaddaeus may be the one we know least about. His name probably meant strong-hearted. He may have been, like Simon, a Zealot. But whether or not he was part of that movement, Jesus needs people who have strong hearts, courage to act, and love that does not fade under pressure.
     There was another James in the list, and it tells us his dad’s name was Alphaeus. We also know very little about him. Some think he might have been a cousin of Jesus. Maybe because his dad’s name is given, it means he was from a famous family. In either of these cases, it seems that a key aspect of his calling was his connections to people. When Jesus calls us, he calls us in the midst of our relationships. He expects us to be a lifeline to those around us. As friends of Jesus, we become part of a chain, the so-called six degrees of separation, by which we link one another to Jesus through our witness, our service, and our caring relationships.
     That brings us finally back to Nathanael. What I find particularly compelling in this story today is what Jesus said about the man. “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Jesus calls Nathanael an honest man. Nathanael tells the truth. He says what he thinks and not what he thinks Jesus wants to hear. Jesus admires this characteristic in a world where flattery and fluffy talk are the rule of the day. When everyone is thinking it and no one wants to say it, we need a Nathanael to break the ice. When the doublespeak has fogged our vision, someone needs to speak up and tell what is wrong.
     Jesus calls people like Nathanael who will be willing to take the heat and tell the truth anyway. It’s not the same thing as saying everything that is on our minds. That might turn out to be cruelty, rudeness, and half-truths. But when people are beating around the bush, the church needs someone who will make things plain. When the competing stories leave everything fuzzy, someone needs to lead the way toward a clear picture of things. When everyone is afraid, someone has to name the problem.
     Jesus saw Nathanael as the person for such a time as this. Jesus’ elder cousin and mentor, John, was being discredited by powerful people. The fledgling movement was under attack. Political intrigue between powerful Roman, Herodian, and Jewish leaders seemed to shift the landscape everyday. Nathanael was ready to say what needs to be said. Jesus could help him find the truth that everyone needs to hear.
     On this weekend we remember a man who might have been any ordinary man. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a preacher’s son who was blessed to get an excellent education. He was ready to fit into his role as an urban pastor, doing the expected duties and nothing spectacular, but Jesus had a task for him. While he did not fully know what gifts and talents he had, Jesus needed a Nathanael to tell the truth. Jesus needed a Simon to see the political landscape and think strategically. Jesus needed a Peter to step out boldly when everyone else was timid. Jesus needed a Son of Thunder to blast forth the trumpet of justice. Jesus needed an Andrew sold out to God, longing to know and love God better in all dimensions of life. Jesus needed a James who would use his connections to build a movement and bring more and more people into the vision of freedom only Jesus could offer.
     And in our day Jesus needs a Nathanael who will stand up to the bankers and to say God expects them to be stewards of the people’s money, not gamble it away and steal it bit by bit. God needs a Nathanael in whom there is no deceit to remind the public officials whom they serve and whom they need to protect. God needs a Nathanael to tell our neighbors and friends that Jesus came to give us a life in which loving God and loving one another shape the parameters of our existence.
     Jesus is calling us today to be a person for such a time as this. Whatever our gifts, whatever our abilities, whatever our talents, whatever our skills—Jesus has sized them up. Jesus has a place for them. Jesus has a place for you. Jesus has a place for me. Jesus is calling us to walk in his way. Jesus is calling us for such a time as this.
     If you have never answered the call to follow Jesus, you need to know that he has looked you over, sized you up, and said, “Follow me.” Jesus can take whatever mess you have made of your life and put you on the right way, the way to life, the way to a future and a hope. God is ready and able to forgive whatever you may have done.
     You may have been sitting at home, or sitting in church, for some time, thinking you have nothing Jesus could want. You may have become discouraged about your life and your usefulness to God. I’m here today to say that God has not made any junk. God has not populated this world with useless people. God has a plan for your life. God has a job for you to do. If you are ready to take up the gospel call and stop sitting on your hands, then Jesus will make it plain what you need to do. Don’t let yourself become deadwood in the building God is building.
     Jesus is telling us to “Come join in.” Follow Jesus on the way to life. There is a job for you to do, a place for you to stand, a reason for you to live.

Nathanael: A Person for Such a Time as This, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:22:00 +0000

First preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, Durham, NC, January 15, 2012

John 1: 43-51

     What sort of time is this? It is a time of economic crisis affecting families. Families struggle to maintain their homes, to keep or find jobs, and may have to delay or set aside their educational goals. It is a time of economic crisis for institutions. Institutions such as churches and universities, public schools and medical facilities, struggle to keep their programs running at minimal funding and staffing, hoping for a change that will bring donations, remuneration, government funding, faculty, employees, student enrollment, and service workers back to a more reasonable level. It is a time of economic crisis in the housing industry. Housing values continue to drop, putting homeowners under water. People wanting to sell a home receive offers far below their expectations, and people wanting to buy search far and wide trying to get a loan. Many neighborhoods have as many empty, foreclosed homes as there are occupied homes. It is a time of economic crisis for jobs. With so many jobs shut down and taken overseas, the employment base has crumbled. Jobs dependent on high levels of consumption have disappeared along with the easy credit of the housing boom and bubble. All the paper wealth five years ago has turned into unemployment and foreclosure for workers.
     What sort of time is this? It is a time of war. War drags on almost endlessly in the strategic battle to control oil and gas reserves. Wars are threatened or break out over trade as countries try to maneuver for advantage over one another. Wars continue in Africa over cattle or control of precious gem mining. Wars erupt when popular movements demand change in dictatorial regimes across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Leaders foment wars in the name of revenge. Bigots go to war because they nurse hatred toward their neighbors.
     What sort of time is this? It is a time of political disarray. Four who hope to run for president accuse one another of the basest of motives and most despicable acts. Congressional leaders stand in the way of just and humane policies for the sake of defeating their opponents. Political speeches target scapegoats as the cause of all social problems, all the while ignoring the obvious roads to progress. Corporate money plays an ever-bigger role in political decisions, and the politicians seem happy to keep it that way. And as the political wheels keep turning round and round, the public sentiment increasingly disapproves of everyone in government and politics.
   What sort of time is this? It is a time of change and unexpected arrangements. I can be a full-time professor at Shaw in North Carolina and a resident of Texas, spending one-third of my time in North Carolina, teaching both face-to-face and through the technological advances of the internet. It is a strange time, a time of change, a time of challenge, a time of struggle, and a time for people to rise up and hear the call of God.
     Today’s Gospel reading tells a familiar story about the beginnings of Jesus’ public ministry. Two of the four gospels introduce Jesus to us through stories of his birth, infancy, and early childhood. All of the Gospels tell us about his cousin John, the forerunner, who begins the work by stirring the hearts of people throughout Israel. Then just as we are getting acquainted with the grown man, Jesus, he begins to call together a team of followers. The stories are brief. These thousands of years later, we only know the sketchiest of details about most of the early followers of Jesus. Even among some of the best known, the twelve we often call “the disciples,” our knowledge is limited.
     Perhaps in the first century, when these literary works were being composed, many more stories and details about these followers of Jesus were circulating. At least in Galilee, families and church elders had told stories about Jesus and the people around him, stories that did not all get transcribed into the record of Jesus’ life and times that the Gospel writers finally recorded. Thus, what we are left with are a few fragments of a greater story, a story whose fullness would be too great for all the paper and ink that we could gather.
     Yet we need not be despairing about the fragments that come down to us in the Gospels. They are not mere random scraps patched together. They are stories chosen with a purpose. They convey central truths about the presence of God in this world as revealed in the divine and human one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, with this premise that what we can read in the Gospels is rich with significance, there should be much for us to glean by examining stories about the ones whom Jesus invited to join in his work. We can still learn from the ones who left behind their work and homes and families to take up the great adventure of announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God, when God will reign in love and justice in this world.
   At this point in the Christian year, after Advent and Christmas, after celebrating Epiphany, we enter the season in which the Lectionary offers us stories from Jesus’ months and years of preaching, teaching, healing, confronting, and ministering, the fruition of the life to which he was called and for which he was born. Here on this second Sunday of the season, we read about an episode during which he was gathering others to work alongside him. Nathanael, who is likely also known as Bartholomew in the other Gospels, is one of the twelve. Some others are better known to us: Simon Peter, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Judas Iscariot, Thomas, Matthew, Andrew, and Philip. Others may be less well known—another James, Thaddaeus (who may also have been called Jude), and another Simon.
     Reading this story of Nathanael elicited questions in my mind. What was significant about this story that made it important enough to write down in John’s Gospel? Who are these people, and why did the Gospel writers remember them? Why does knowing about these people help us to know and love God better? I propose that there are good reasons to look at the stories of Jesus’ calling of the disciples. Above all, we can learn about the way Jesus is still calling people today. Jesus did not come into the world to be a recluse or a solitary old codger. He came into the world as an outpouring of the love of God for humanity. He came to draw people to God, to attract people to a way of life, to bring people together who had divided themselves from one another. He came to enjoy God and enjoy his fellow human beings. Jesus is still calling you and me to let God’s love flood our lives. He is still offering a better way for us to live. He is calling us to stop building walls that divide us. He is inviting us to a feast, to relish the wonder of this marvelous world where God has placed us. Yes, the stories of the disciples help us understand that Jesus steps out into our world and says, “Come with me.”
     We can see evidence of those very things in the story of Nathanael. Off by himself, perhaps a bit too sure of himself, or should I say a bit to full of himself, even a bit too self-satisfied, Jesus calls Nathanael to join in his mission. So Nathanael leaves his comfy little shade tree to take on the challenges of Jesus’ way. He lets Jesus break the yoke of self-satisfaction and enters the yoke Jesus offers, a yoke in which Jesus is bearing the greater burden. Nathanael becomes overwhelmed by the power and wisdom of this man he previously underestimated. In the brief story of Nathanael, there are many things we can learn. Among those things, one may be that we can learn why Jesus called this particular person to become his partner in ministry. I will come back to this story of Nathanael. But first, let’s take a look at the other eleven whom Jesus called.
     Maybe, in fact, we can discern something similar about the other disciples as well, if we give some freedom to the sacred imagination. Why did Jesus choose these people?
     John’s Gospel suggests that the very first of the twelve to begin following Jesus may have been Andrew and Philip. It tells us that these two had been following John the Baptist, listening to him preach, even assisting in his work. When John introduced Jesus to the crowds, they determined to follow him to see what sort of person he was. Andrew and Philip were devoted to God. They had already, even before meeting Jesus, focused their lives around becoming close to God and serving people who were seeking after God. They were not merely satisfied to meet the legal requirements of religion. They were out in the countryside, helping set up the camp meetings, listening, praying, and doing what John asked them to do. So when they inquired after Jesus, he told them to come along. They spent the whole day together, and Jesus saw what kind of people they were. Jesus called Andrew and Philip because he could see in them an unquenchable thirst for God.
     Do you thirst for God? Do you long to be in a right relationship with the one who made heaven and earth and placed you in the midst of it? Longing for God’s presence and love is in the very nature of who we are, and nurturing that longing helps us to get on the path toward its fulfillment. Jesus looks upon our longings and seeks to redirect them in the right path, a path that will lead us to know and love God better. Count it a gift if you already find in yourself a deep thirst for God. Like Andrew and Philip, Jesus will honor your longings and draw you near.
     Andrew’s brother was Simon, whom Jesus renamed Peter. Peter was not exactly like his brother. He was busy with the family business. Maybe he thought Andrew was not being practical enough. Yet he must have been raised by his parents to understand that nothing else can replace having a right relationship with God. After spending the day with Jesus, Andrew went home to find his brother, and he brought him to Jesus. Based on the many stories of Simon Peter in the Gospels and Acts, we have a better picture of him than of any other member of the twelve. Peter was strong and solid, and not merely in bodily strength. Jesus called him a rock. For the most part, the stories of Peter show his courage and exuberance. These qualities are what Jesus saw in Simon Peter, and they show us why Jesus called him to join up.
     The reasons for calling James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were probably similar to the reason for calling Peter. They picked up the nickname “Sons of Thunder.” They were bold, outspoken, perhaps excitable and boisterous. Thunder is loud, and it can shake the buildings we are in. The stories tell us that on the day Jesus called them, James and John were at the seashore working hard. He must have observed their work ethic and perhaps their lively and boisterous conversations. Maybe on another occasion he had seen their tempers explode into shouting. Such passion misdirected can lead to harmful actions and violence, but if powerful passions are turned toward love and justice they can bear fruit for good. Jesus saw in these powerful fishermen a potential for bold preaching and hard work to change the world around them.
     What makes you become passionate? Do you sometimes feel a welling of emotion, of anger or resentment, and wonder if you can keep control? God made us to be emotional beings, and covering up our emotional side, trying to hide our passions, is not what God wants for us. Rather, God wants us to learn to aim our emotions toward the right objects. Love our neighbors, not our money. Hate injustice, not people. Be angry and sin not. Do not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoice in the truth. God has made us passionate beings that we may pursue what is good for us and our neighbors. Thus, our loves have a direction. They should all move in the direction of loving God with our entire heart, mind, and strength. Jesus saw the potential for such powerful love in the brothers, James and John. He still calls people who can turn their passion toward doing good for others.
     When Jesus was getting to know people around the towns of Galilee, he sometimes fell in with a disreputable crown. That is how he found himself having a party with a group of tax collectors and other shady fellows. He came to know one of them named Matthew, probably also called Levi. Matthew enjoyed having the gang over for a good time. He also was a shrewd businessman. Jesus saw him in the city gates taking care of business when it was time for work. He saw how Matthew had turned his talents toward getting rich and having a good time with his riches. What if his active mind could be busy with the Lord’s work? What if his insight into what makes people tick could be channeled into ministry?
     It’s so common in our lives that we find what we are good at doing, but then we keep it to ourselves. By that I mean that we figure out how to do our thing for me, myself, and I. We use our talents to boost ourselves, and the friends we make become just so many stepping stones to getting our own little kingdom. But Jesus sees our skills and talents as ways to bless the people that come our way. He sees the energy and effort of Matthew repurposed for the good. He sees a way that every one of us can do what we are best at in service of God.
     Judas Iscariot must have been a man with a purpose. He had a strong focus on what he wanted to accomplish. Some think he may have been part of a revolutionary cell who attached himself to Jesus as the most promising leader of the day. Others see him as more self-serving. We read about him in hindsight. The Gospel writers introduce him as the one who betrayed Jesus. But when Jesus called the disciples, that betrayal was far in the future. I have no doubt Jesus could anticipate that someone close to him might not remain loyal, but I don’t believe Jesus went out looking for a traitor to join his team. Jesus attracted and invited followers who would devote themselves to building up God’s reign on earth. Judas Iscariot showed promise in his hard-nosed dedication to keep things moving toward the goal. He may have struggled with patience, wanting Jesus to get on with the revolution and not dilly-dally with things that Judas saw as frivolous. But that is not necessarily a bad quality; it just needs refinement.
     Jesus needs some people who are impatient about the injustices of this world. Jesus needs some people who don’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over when it has not worked the first ten times we tried it. Jesus needs some people who don’t want to burn daylight when they could be making a difference. Jesus may call you to use that inner drive, that longing for change, that love of getting things accomplished, and to direct it toward the work of the Kingdom of God.

Continued in next post

Waiting for Life to Happen

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:10:00 +0000

Back in November, this essay appeared as a guest post on Stan Dotson's blog, Daily Passages.

Daily Passages: Prophetic Passage for Nov. 10
Guest writer Mike Broadway

Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage (Isaiah 55:6-13) transports us to that inward place where we find ourselves twiddling our thumbs, spinning our wheels, waiting for life to happen. The inward place may correspond with any number of outward places: a doctor’s office waiting room, a line at the department of motor vehicles driver’s license office, a room full of people trying out for a part in a show, a bed in the dark after drinking too much caffeine. Sometimes the place where we are waiting for life to happen is more like being trapped: a job from hell, a jail cell, a mountain of debt, a deafening silence between spouses.

Isaiah was writing to the people of Judah in exile, far from home in Babylon. As a displaced minority, most of them probably lived in substandard housing on marginal land. The first generation remembered better times back home, and the new generation had heard the stories and built up the resentment that goes with being an outsider in the only home you have ever known. It would not have been hard for these people to find themselves in that inward place of waiting for life to happen. When will we go back home? When will we get our piece of the pie? Maybe after a little longer, things will start to go right.

At the very beginning of their sojourn in Babylon, Jeremiah had warned them about this kind of thinking. He told his people in Babylon to settle down, build houses, have families, and make the most of life wherever they were. As the bestselling title from Jon Kabat-Zinn cribs from ancient wisdom, WhereverYou Go, There You Are. Now decades later, Isaiah speaks again into this pain in which people wait for life to happen while life is passing them by.

Anyone whose livelihood depends on the land might know this place of waiting during severe drought conditions. The prophet describes the water cycle and the productivity of the farm to remind the people that much is happening when they may not be able to see it with their eyes. Water disappears into the soil to do its work. It evaporates invisibly and makes its way toward cooler altitudes to form clouds. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” More is going on than the drudgery of the daily routine. When our eyes are fixed on the television or computer screen, a whole world of life is going on outside that tunnel of vision. While I wait to get a new driver’s license, so many other people are getting theirs. My moment of seeming stagnation means I am ignoring a universe of frenetic activity. In my moment of isolation, God is present and loving in infinite worlds and ways. Am I really destined to miss out on all that while I’m in a stuck place?

What the prophet wants his friends to remember is that their time is limited. They do not have an endless number of mornings. If they can’t change everything about their situation, they can at least try to find what God is doing in the middle of their little patch of the world. Isaiah is convinced that when they start looking they will find with William Blake, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God . . . . There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” They will find that at root, it’s all grace. It is grace on grace on grace. Grace all the way down. When we’re waiting for life to happen, grace happens. Settle into it. Wallow around in it. Breathe it in deep. Go ahead on.

How about you? Where does this prophetic passage take you on your journey?

Getting Back to the Task, and a Word About Elijah

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:02:00 +0000

I guess it looks like I'm not really trying to be a blogger. It's about time I got back on the task.

As for my most recent post about Elijah, I accept the comments saying I'm overstating my case. If I have implied some limits on the grace available to Elijah or the rest of us, I should not have done that. God's grace, freely given, is a boundless wellspring. My point is that in my previous readings of this story, I have assumed a narration sympathetic to Elijah. However, as I reconsidered the text, I was inclined to reject that previous reading. The story lacks praise for Elijah's actions. If that is wrong, show me where I should read the narration as claiming his acts are praiseworthy.

Another Look at Elijah

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:11:00 +0000

I was listening to a Rich Mullins song this morning.

The Jordan is waiting for me to cross through.
My heart is aging I can tell.
So Lord, I'm begging for one last favor from You:
Here's my heart--take it where You will.

This life has shown me how we're mended and how we're torn;
How it's okay to be lonely as long as you're free.
Sometimes my ground was stoney,
And sometimes covered up with thorns.
And only You could make it what it had to be.
And now that it's done,
Well, if they dressed me like a pauper,
Or if they dined me like a prince,
If they lay me with my fathers,
Or if my ashes scatter on the wind,
I don't care.

But when I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire.
And when I look back on the stars
It'll be like a candlelight in Central Park.
And it won't break my heart to say goodbye.

There's people been friendly, but they'd never be your friends.
Sometimes this has bent me to the ground.
Now that this is all ending,
I want to hear some music once again
'Cause it's the finest thing that I have ever found.

But the Jordan is waiting,
Though I ain't never seen the other side.
Still they say you can't take in the things you have here.
So on the road to salvation,
I stick out my thumb, and He gives me a ride.
And His music is already falling on my ears...

It is an insightful reflection on the uncommon life of the prophet. It suggests the roller coaster of emotional and mental states the itinerant messenger of judgment must have faced. Of course, Mullins intermingles his own life with Elijah's, bringing them together in the refrain by saying he wouldn't mind going out like Elijah.

At the heart of the lyrics (the quote above is only partial--for more click here) is the weariness Elijah must have felt after so many difficult years spent in isolation, under threat, and bearing the heavy weight of a message it seemed no one wanted to hear. He felt like a pariah, and he wondered whether he had a friend anywhere.

But Mullins also captures what must have been a deep assurance in Elijah's being. "Only You could make it what it had to be." That abiding hope in God would allow Elijah or Mullins to ask one last favor: take my heart, and take me where you will take me. It is the basis on which he can say that his hope for salvation means risking it all on God: "I stick out my thumb, and He gives me a ride."

Having turned the screws on Elijah recently by employing the hermeneutics of suspicion, let me come back to him with a sympathetic reading by means of Mullins's theological imagination. Elijah bore the burden of unwanted leadership in one of the most difficult episodes of the history of Israel. It is understandable that he resented how he was treated and that he wondered why he got stuck with this gig.

Whatever else one might say about him, he stuck with it and pushed back the darkness to let in the light. He set a standard of boldness (even though he sometimes ran away) that nourished the subsequent prophetic tradition to stand against the crowd. So with Little Brother Rich, I think I can feel the old prophet. Going out on a chariot of fire, looking back on a world that treated him bad--that's a pretty fine poetic ending.

Attacking Health Care, Medicare, Social Security: Class Warfare Waged by the Wealthy

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:23:00 +0000

Dean Baker reiterates two of his key ideas in this critique of a recent article full of poor analysis of the economy, published in a major newspaper. First, the high cost of health care is the major cause of the deficit and a major contributor to economic problems for most Americans. Second, the political struggle over who gets the most financial benefits from government economic policies is not a philosophical debate--it is a political war waged by lobbyists trying to allow a very small group of citizens to keep more of their wealth at the cost of the rest of us. It is not philosophical. It is class warfare waged by the wealthy.

It is also worth noting that, at least in the U.S. case, the projected long-term budget problem is due to our broken health care system. If our per person health care costs were comparable to those in any other country then we would be looking at long-term budget surpluses, not deficits.

While the health care industry is incredibly powerful in the United States, making cost reductions difficult, it is in principle possible to open the sector to trade, which would allow people in the United States to take advantage of the more efficient health care systems in other countries. Unfortunately the NYT and most other major media are such hardcore protectionists when it comes to the health care industry, they do not allow the topic of freer trade in health care to even be discussed.

Finally, this piece tell us that at its core this debate is about philosophy:

“Everywhere, though, the debate is about much more than just partisan advantage or the next election. It is a philosophical debate.”

The only evidence for this assertion is a quote from Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. There is nothing obvious philosophical about this debate. The issue is whether we are going to cut benefits like Social Security and Medicare that the overwhelming majority of the working population depends upon now or expects to in the future. The protection of these programs is supported by large majorities of every demographic and ideological group. Even large majorities of self-identified conservatives and Tea Party supporters are opposed to cuts in these programs in poll after poll.

Of course paying for the programs will require some amount of additional tax revenue (presumably mostly from upper income taxpayers) and also restructuring of the health care system in ways that will hurt the incomes of insurers, drug companies, medical instrument manufacturers, and doctors. These powerful interest groups will fight the effort to reduce their incomes in any way they can.

Since they are a small minority of the population it is understandable that they would want to confuse matters by turning this into a debate over philosophy. However there is nothing obviously philosophical about whether we should pay more than necessary for prescription drugs and medical equipment so that some people can get very rich.

An Honest Preacher

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:31:00 +0000

In mid-October, I participated as one of several teachers in a course for seminarians and college students as part of the Christian Community Development Association annual conference. Jimmy Dorrell of Mission Waco coordinated the course. He is one of the bright stars of Christian ministry in recent decades. You can read about his work in his two books: Trolls and Truth and Dead Church Walking.

I gave a presentation on the church and the economy, and if you follow this blog you would be familiar with much of what I had to say. I was on a panel with several leaders discussing Community Transformation. There were students from a dozen colleges and seminaries participating, including a pastor from North Carolina who will soon complete his M Div degree at Shaw University Divinity School, Elder Henry Rodgers, of Bethlehem Disciple Church. Among the other students present were Jeff and Kathy Burns of Truett Seminary of Baylor University. As we became acquainted, I found out that they attend a church not far from where I am living in Salado.

Miller Heights Baptist Church is on the southeast side of Belton, Texas, in a neighborhood that reminds me of parts of Durham. There are small houses and some multifamily dwellings, some built for working class families and others likely built as subsidized housing for the working poor or disabled. A little research revealed that the neighborhood is multiethnic and transitional, as a generation who first settled there gives way to new arrivals. Having been part of urban churches for my adult life, I recognized these characteristics of the neighborhood, common from small towns to big cities.

I went to worship with the folks at Miller Heights Baptist Church this week, and there were many ways in which it felt like home. Their web site told me I could come dressed as I felt comfortable, so I wore my standard uniform of a guayabera, slacks, and sandals. I was a bit early. A few dozen people were conversing the sanctuary, but the Sunday School classes had not arrived. I found a pew near the front and hoped I was not taking someone's "assigned seat." I apparently chose well, because people came in to sit all around me, saying their polite, smiling hellos.

Soon Jeff came in, making his way through the crowds, greeting, chatting, and doing those important pastoral things he has to do on the run before service. Along another aisle came the pastor, Bro. Mike Meadows. I took it as a good sign when I found the website listing him with the title "Bro." I've always held a deep respect for my dad's commitment to be one among many, a minister set aside but not set above the people. He always chose the title Brother, refusing to be Reverend as long as he was a pastor. As he got older and no longer served a single church except in interim roles, it was harder to enforce, but he never changed in his convictions.

Jeff introduced me to his pastor. Bro. Meadows made the obligatory self-effacing remarks upon finding out I was a seminary professor--he would have to go back and work on his sermon some more. I continued to watch him work the crowd, and he has the face of someone who cares for the people God is sending his way. Near the front of the sanctuary, he passed through several rows of children who sat together with a few adults mixed in. They seemed neither awed nor afraid of him, but greeted him playfully, or blissfully ignored his passing by.

Having mentioned that the children were sitting in the front, I should remark on the arrangement of people in the sanctuary. The building has a traditional central-aisle arrangement, with pews facing the front; there is a small, low platform area with a pulpit and a choir stand behind it. The piano was moved forward toward the congregational seating, and a group of four miked singers stood just behind the piano. One of the singers also played a guitar. Opposite the younger children on the front left side, many of the teens sat in the front pews on the right side. Jeff, whose duties include youth ministry, sat in that general area, as did Kathy and a few other young adults. The rest of the pews were not stuffed full, but a respectable sized crowd mostly filled them. Overall, the congregation looked like many urban protestant churches of this era, with many senior adults.

One of the clearest signs that the church is making transitions from what it once was to what it will become was the music leadership. In the more traditional location and arrangement for a choir sat a group of mostly older women. As already mentioned, there was also a group of what many churches call "worship leaders" off to one side, and these four plus the pianist had individual mics for leading the songs. The singers blended together well, and we sang a collection of songs of the sort that I like to see: some hymns from the hymnal along with some contemporary chorus or worship songs that were strongly tied to biblical texts. The congregational singing was robust, but what was more notable to me was that I did not see anyone opting out of the songs to listen or let the mind wander.

Finally, to get to the point of my title, I want to comment on the pastor's worship leadership and preaching. My judgment on this day was that far more significant than his sermon content (which was fine) was the way the pastor offered himself to the people through his leadership. I use the phrase "an honest preacher," knowing that it could be interpreted differently. Some preachers think that being "honest" means saying whatever thought they have on their minds. They think it means telling people off by "being honest about what I believe." There is a difference between honesty and arrogance, and there is a difference between honesty and untested emotive outbursts.

What I am talking about with Bro. Mike is an honest presentation of himself. He chose what he knew would be a controversial topic, and he chose to deal with it in a nondogmatic way. That in itself is admirable. But even more important was his willingness to open up his own reflective process and growth to the congregation. He gave them a picture of himself as a real person, and in the process created the reflexive space for them to be real people before one another and before God. He assured them that even if they did not agree on everything, they would be able to continue to grow together and serve together. He was respectful toward the people in the pews.

Let me emphasize again what I saw as the key opportunity for communion with God in this worship service. Along with everything else, the pastor lifted up God as he offered himself to the people. He gave them a person on pilgrimage with God, and through that narration offered them a glimpse of what walking with God can be for all of us. If this Sunday is in any way a snapshot of the ongoing work of God at Miller Heights Baptist Church, they should have many opportunities to be blessed and be a blessing in the place where God has planted them.

Elijah in the Cave: Encouragement, or Maybe Not

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 05:16:00 +0000

I recently heard a very good sermon on 1 Kings 19:1-18. Delivered to a couple thousand people engaged in front-line ministries, the preacher found in the story "teaching, reproof, correction, and training unto righteousness" that could encourage the hearers in their work. I am not going to reproduce that sermon here, but it was a well-structured exposition of the text.

It is not uncommon for me to have a sermon and a biblical text set my mind to racing in various directions. This was one of those times when I was listening and reflecting on the sermon at the same time that I was puzzling over the text. My imagination kept pushing me to look at other paragraphs in this section of 1 Kings, sections which this particular sermon did not highlight. I'm not criticizing the hermeneutical decisions or homiletical strategies for the evening. I appreciated the message I received from a pastor worthy of my admiration. But an impeding thought kept interrupting my concentration. A divergent trajectory kept pushing its way around my reading of the stories.

I can thank some of my former students like Sam Ewell and Vincent Chun-Pang Lau for helping guide me onto this trajectory of biblical narrative. As good readers of James W. McClendon and John Howard Yoder, they facilitated my deeper understanding of these theologians on whose shoulders I stand. Particularly in For the Nations, Yoder describes a way of reading the biblical narrative that locates a critical interpretive key in two events which bracket the Bible's historical presentation of the Israelite monarchy. These events are

the people's demand that Samuel appoint a king over them, with Samuel's warning of their folly, and
Jeremiah's presiding over the end of the failed monarchy with a theological "told you so."

This framing of the monarchy helps to offer a counterhistorical arc of the biblical narrative, embedded in a historiographical presentation which maintains a dual agenda: it is constantly critical of the monarchy's failures while at the same time it retains an element of conventional histories with their heroic kingship story lines. Against this dual agenda, the counterhistory places front and center the conviction that power structured by domination, violence, and economic oppression will never achieve what God intends for humanity in the world. For Israel to be the pilot project of human social existence, it must not give in to the temptation to be like the other nations. It must understand power in a different way and live in different forms of social structuring.

This is not an easy hermeneutical place to arrive for cultures shaped in the mission of European world domination and the white man's burden. Leading theologians who helped to provide grounding for modernity (even our beloved Jean Calvin) came to believe that, with all its flaws, the Israelite Monarchy and its legal system should be the model of human society in the temporal world. (Modern Reconstructionists still hold this, perhaps more literally than Calvin himself.) In the wake of such reasoning, God remains, for so many of our churches, the political manipulator, willing to assassinate rulers, starve cities, and demand genocide in the name of some higher purpose. You know I'm not exaggerating. Many of you who attend Bible studies and listen to preaching regularly have heard people explain why God would do such things in biblical times, and perhaps now. Pat Robertson has certainly made much of his beliefs that any particular disaster can be interpreted as a direct act of God to bring judgment on Pat Robertson's enemies and call the world to Pat Robertson's agenda. Of course, Pat saw them as God's enemies and God's agenda, because it all fit neatly into his narration of the character of God.

So how does this pertain to Elijah near the end of 1 Kings?

The standard interpretation I have heard over the years when preachers have spoken or written of Elijah's flight to the cave takes the following path. In the time of terrible drought, Elijah arranged to do battle with the false prophets by calling for a demonstration of God's power. After the prophets of Baal prayed, shouted, and otherwise acted out to no avail, Elijah made a show of calling for God to send fire and burn the sacrifice on the altar. Once this great challenge had gone his way, Elijah incited the crowds, and together they killed hundreds of prophets of Baal. Jezebel grew angry, and her threats struck fear into Elijah. Therefore, Elijah fled far from the antagonistic rulers to a cave to hide and feel sorry for himself. It is told as a story of Elijah's greatest triumph suddenly followed almost immediately by his deepest despair. Many a preacher characterizes Elijah's defeat (killing) of the prophets of Baal as his greatest triumph.

This story arc is what was troubling me that evening as I kept rereading the passage. So I went looking for any textual clues that the reader should think of this event as Elijah's greatest triumph.

The first thing I noticed was that God sent Elijah to meet Ahab, but God did not specify anything about having a contest against the prophets of Baal. While we appropriately conclude that God blessed Elijah's demonstration of YHWH's power and supremacy by sending down the fire to burn the wet sacrifice and evaporate all the standing water, there is no recorded command to take up this strategy. I'm not saying that people seeking to serve God, whether Elijah or someone today, must have a direct command in order to take any action. Certainly it could be that Elijah was acting in accord with his understanding of the calling of God. He sought to publicly demonstrate what God had often shown in smaller venues: God has power over all. God can keep the hungry fed in times of famine. God can raise the dead. So why not call a convocation and demonstrate that God can light a fire on an altar, unlike the impotent false gods that the royal family has helped to promote in the land?

On the other hand, Elijah may not be much more pure than the rest of us in calling forth this great public demonstration. It certainly made him look like the hero he imagined himself to be. Through several chapters, Elijah repeatedly refers to himself as the only one left who is faithful to God. He repeatedly finds out that he is exaggerating his significance. Obadiah, a servant of Ahab, has risked his life to save many persecuted prophets of YHWH. Even having been told that, and having won the crowds on his big fireworks demonstration day, Elijah still describes himself as the lone faithful follower of God. This ongoing discrepancy ought to raise our suspicions. Perhaps it should remind us of the counternarration. It certainly shows a kinship between Elijah and Samuel, both of whom get a little confused about whether the people should follow them or follow the God they serve. Both have to be reminded by God of their place in the larger scheme of things.

Having let suspicion urge us to look behind the veil of the triumphal narrative, an even more disturbing element pushes itself upon us. Having seen the glorious work of God, Elijah's ecstasy does not lead him to sing a praise song as Miriam did, or to dance before the altar as David danced before the Ark. He does not call the people to prayer as Solomon did, nor does he instigate a festive celebration of God's goodness as the Torah prescribes for many annual feasts and other holy days. What does Elijah do? He incites mob violence. He lets the ecstasy of seeing God's power demonstrated become warped into blood-lust. He leads a mass execution of those he deems his enemies. He exterminates the officials who stand for his arch-enemy, Jezebel. As the story is told, he leaves no quarter. His thirst for blood is not sated until all lie dead.

Again, we have to notice that there is no command from God to kill these false prophets. Was Elijah acting out of his conscientious devotion to YHWH, or was he acting out of his human desire for vengeance against those who had usurped his "rightful place" as the prophet and judge of Israel? There is enough uncertainty in the narration to incline me toward the latter conclusion. Elijah got carried away with his victory and gave himself over to violence. Now many would argue that Elijah was simply following the trend of the biblical narrative in which God metes out reward and punishment upon the faithful and unfaithful. Humans become God's instruments of punishment through violent acts in many of these narratives. Of course, many other violent acts are judged to be outside the divine will.

It is a complex narration of theme and antitheme, story and counterstory. In the midst of the historiography, one may discern that the people of Israel, their prophets, their griots, their chroniclers, their historians, their compilers and editors, are passing through moments of recognition and misapprehension, of vision and blindness, of enlightenment and opacity. Like their forebear Abraham, who began his pilgrimage not even knowing who this God is who sent him to a strange land, they live in the midst of a slowly unfolding understanding of God. They compare God with what they have heard, what they know about the gods of the nations. They assume who God is, and experiment with God's expectations. Often they are wrong. Amazingly, they often are right. But the truth and falsehoods about God remain mixed in their faith. Perhaps Elijah mistook the God of Israel for a god of bloody revenge. Perhaps he glimpsed another possibility, but chose to cling to the vengeful idol.

Am I second-guessing the great prophet? Of course I am. But what else is expected of us as we grapple with the word of God in Scripture? Moreover, if we believe the word of God is in Scripture, we must also remember that our primary confession of the Word of God is the eternal Son, incarnate in Jesus Christ, revealing the true and full picture of the Holy One of Israel, the Triune God who is Alpha and Omega, superabundant in goodness and love from everlasting to everlasting, the Prince of Peace. Is this the God whom Elijah longed to know and diligently sought to serve?

Yes this the same God, but Elijah had not the benefit of Jeremiah's backward look upon the failure of the monarchy. He did not see the vision of the suffering Servant of Isaiah, of Ezekiel's fantastic glimps of the Majestic On enthroned on a chariot throne to reign over any and every land. He had not come to see that it would not be in magnificent spectacle, but in a minor village of Bethlehem that God's salvation would arise. He did not yet realize that the longing would outlast the monarchy and be replaced by a hope for a servant-king, riding on a colt of a donkey. Yes, Elijah listened for the word of God, but in all his faithfulness also remained far off from knowing what it would take his people centuries more to begin to discern. Standing in the dawning of the prophetic line, he did not yet see what his descendents would come to know. They stood on his shoulders, and from that height they saw even greater vistas of divine revelation.

So where does that leave me in reading the rest of this story of Elijah. It is worth noting again that in his flight from Jezebel, Elijah repeatedly whines about his mistreatment. He claims that he only has been faithful, and challenges God for not rewarding him in the manner he thinks that he deserves. Having made this claim once, he has a long time to meditate on what God has done to take care of him, only to repeat the very same whining complaint again.

How does God respond? Many a preacher or teacher would have us think that God comforts Elijah in his despair. That may not be completely wrong, but I think it is a pretty big stretch to let that be one's primary conclusion from the text. What does God say to Elijah? God does not praise Elijah for massacring the prophets. God does not tell Elijah not to worry, that Elijah will have many more years of fruitful ministry. The text explicitly says that all the spectacle and whoopdeedoo are not the place to look for the work of God. Should one conclude that God is more interested in a steady faithfulness, obedience to the Torah, neighbor love, and justice rather than frenzied acts of violence in defense of a God who needs no human defender? That is part of what occurs to me in this text.

A harsher reading is certainly defensible. Has God listened to this whiny prophet who is too full of his own desire for status until God has had enough? What are God's words to Elijah after the last time the prophet claims to be the only faithful one? They are final instructions: Go anoint a king of Syria and a king of Israel. Then go appoint your successor. I have no more need of you. Pass on the work. You have become an instrument of violence rather than a healer of my people. You took up the same strategy as Jezebel--killing the prophets. You have cared too much for your status and too little for the building up of the faithful. Don't you realize there are thousands more who are faithful? The prophets Obadiah saved, of whom you are well-informed, are just a drop in the bucket. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE! So Elijah, let's call it a day. Wrap it up. The mess in Israel was not fixed by your frenzy of violence. The people you anoint will continue their violent ways, killing each other in a cycle of violence that never seems to end, unless someone has the courage and love and devotion to say no to violence. It's a wrap, Elijah. You gave it your best most of the time, but this last debacle has worn me out. It's time to give someone else a chance.

Now maybe that harsh reading is not the best one. My mom certainly thinks I've pushed it too hard. She listened to me talk this through for long time over the kitchen table. She was not convinced. She might be right about that. Mom is a good Bible teacher who has never led me astray. So let's say God was not that harsh. Even so, God did not offer comforting words. At the most, God told Elijah things will not get better anytime soon, so why not let someone else carry the load. Come on over and let's have a cup of coffee together and remember old times. Even if they were hard times, we were in them together.

Frankly, trying to understand scripture has become both harder and easier over the years. I have reason to hope that I have come to know and love God better through the years, but I have also come to know my limitations better. I have no imprimatur to offer on this textual reading, but I also do not offer it without some degree of confidence that it sheds light on the Scripture. I also have come to trust that when the text of Scripture troubles me, I had better try to pursue that troubling Spirit to see where it leads me.

May the Holy Spirit illuminate and guide our reading in community, that the Spirit and Word may bear witness together to the mysteries of God and our calling to live as God's people. Amen.

Homeowners' Shame

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:09:00 +0000

Since the foreclosure crisis began to be named in 2009, I have been noticing a pattern among homeowners facing hardships. They are ashamed, so they keep their problems to themselves.

This speaks to certain moral convictions that form the bedrock of what many would believe makes a good U.S. American. Because in the U.S., the concept of what it means to be a Christian is largely derivative from, or a corollary to, what it means to be a good U.S. American, these moral convictions find their way into the character and lives of good, church-going people.

Self-reliance is one of the moral convictions of which I am speaking. Christians are likely to cite Paul's remarks to the Thessalonians in support of a belief in self-reliance: those who will not work, shall not eat. Again in Galatians, just after telling the church folk to bear one another's burdens, Paul turns around to say that each one should carry her own load. Thus it is not outside of Christian faith to believe in the goodness of carrying one's own weight.

Yet for faithful biblical and theological teaching, self-reliance is always tempered by being set in the context of community mutual responsibility. Isolated from the communal context, self-reliance can become arrogance and blind optimism in times of good fortune, or it can transform into self-hatred in times of bad fortune. "Fortune" is a key concept here, but one that self-reliance likes to ignore.

Contrary to the self-deceptive claims of the Romantic/Progressive era, which led poets to wax eloquently about being "the master of my own fate," human beings are not individually in control of their own destinies. First of all, human society is a complex, dynamic system in which many people are engaged in non-coordinated activities and agendas. What I do may effect you, and vice versa. Second, many powerful forces can affect the lives of particular people, completely without their own knowledge and participation. The housing bubble, the house of cards called credit default swaps, and the entangled labyrinth of mortgage-backed securities were mostly invisible to average people. Yet when these huge economic systems began to implode, they took away jobs, home values, credit availability, health insurance, and hope for many people.

Under new circumstances, people formed by self-reliance and the assumption that it mechanically leads to success, found themselves in a pit of shame. They should have known, they thought, not to buy that much house, get that big a mortgage, borrow against their equity, etc. Certainly there was a time, in another generation, when many people would have been more cautious. Yet fed by a steady diet of "the rules of the old economy no longer apply" and "low downpayments are the new norm" and "housing values never go down," plenty of people were pointed, urged, or lulled into believing that extending more credit and taking out more debt would be an excellent plan, even a good example of self-reliance.

Closely related to self-reliance is the moral conviction of individualism. This more encompassing concept asserts that knowledge, value, and action originate in the individual person. Thus, individualists make up their own minds for themselves, adopt their own values, and do what they decide to do. The myth that individualism perpetuates is that "doing it my way" is both a good idea and an actual practical activity. The outcome is that people who do not have all the information that they need, have not experienced the pitfalls of certain activities, and may not be reasoning with full clarity, become convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt and "know that they know that they know that they know" what they should do.

Individualism linked with positivity can be a dangerous combination. Many people think that if they do not think bad thoughts, entertain bad consequences as real possibilities, or say out loud what might go wrong, then everything will be fine. This ignores that one person's thoughts and words operate without any relation to the risky, careless, and unjust actions of others who may be controlling millions and billions of dollars of economic power.

Individualists, counting on self-reliance, operating with positivity, expect that their efforts will lead to satisfying results. They don't deny risks, but they have done what they should have done and things should go well. If things don't go well, the self-reliant individual has trouble avoiding the conclusion, "I have no one to blame but myself."

Thus, shame has a powerful role in an economic crisis. It protects the wealthy securities traders from a mass uprising against them because the average people blame themselves for their economic problems. Many keep the problems to themselves, ashamed to admit that something has gone wrong.

People who lose their jobs, have their homes foreclosed, and fall into medical debt may stop going to church, or even leave their churches, ashamed to admit that they are not prospering. They theologize the problem to believe that they have sinned or failed God, interrupting the input-output machine of being a good person in order to get blessings from God. They must be bad, for the blessings have stopped.

This shame makes it hard to organize people harmed by the economic downturn. Some simply give up. Others keep trying the same thing over and over, sure that if they just try harder the system will work. Only a few get so fed up with the way that powerful economic institutions abuse and oppress them that they start to fight back.

What got me to write about this was a personal experience. I am not facing foreclosure. For now, my wife and I both are holding our jobs. We are not in economic distress, as compared to many people. We are, however, making lots of big financial decisions because we are relocating from North Carolina to Texas, while I still work in North Carolina. After a year and a half of transition, we are finally preparing to sell our house.

Credit is tight, so even with a respectable credit rating, borrowing may not be easy. Optimistically thinking that the process of getting a construction loan would not be hard, I was awakened repeatedly to realize there are many hoops to jump through and obstacles to overcome. I can take that--life is not easy.

What caught me by surprise was a powerful emotional hit that came when a lender suggested that there were undisclosed details that would hinder the loan process. Along with dread, there was a deep feeling of failure and inadequacy that welled up. The dread was that feeling of wondering if there would be anything I would be able to do to solve the problem. My self-reliance had not worked. I was ashamed.

Now frankly, it was a very minor setback. We continue to make progress on remodeling and getting credit to put our house in order. It is not all worked out, but I'm not in the kind of mess many people are in. But the reason to write about it is that I had a temporary and partial glimpse of what is multiplied millions of times over in this country with people who have lost jobs, lost homes, face foreclosure, face medical costs they can't pay, and feel ashamed.

If there is any truth in the Christian faith, then the teachings of the Bible should make it clear that the winners and losers of economic life do not equate to the ones God loves and hates. Economics is rough in its sorting process. Leverage, muscle, cheating, and injustice have inordinate power over people's destinies. That is why the Sabbath Year and Jubilee systems were put into place in the biblical economic teachings.

No economic system can claim to be just if it allows and promotes permanent indebtedness, homelessness, poverty, and joblessness. There has to be a reset system to get people back into the economic game.

Moreover, our wealth is not our own. It is for all of God's children. Churches must find a way to leave behind their accommodation to modern economics and recommit themselves to be communities in which "there is no one in need among you." We don't have to be ashamed to love one another enough to share our lives with one another. That is the way of Jesus, who said, "Follow me."

An Ironic Reading of Psalm 8: Is Humanity All That Much?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:56:00 +0000

Psalm 8

To the leader: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
to silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

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I recently attended Emmaus Way community's Sunday worship gathering. The preaching at Emmaus Way usually takes the form of a conversation, or at least a dialogical sermon. Pastor Tim Conder led the conversation on Psalm 8, calling on persons in the congregation to read the Psalm aloud, then launching some open-ended questions for the gathered community to ponder and discuss. If you are not familiar with Emmaus Way and Conder, then you may be interested to check out a book written by Conder and fellow pastor Dan Rhodes, Free for All: Rediscovering the Bible in Community. Dan and Tim and their congregation have developed a way of reading in community that seeks to embody what numerous theologians and church trendspotters have been describing in theory. Now that I've given Emmaus Way and Free for All a plug, I'm going to shift away from that event and do some of my own reflections.

+++++++

I have been thinking about the reading and misreading of this Psalm for many years. At the heart of it is the phrase that the Authorized Version (KJV) translates "a little lower than the angels." "Angels" translates the Hebrew plural of the generic term for God: Elohim. Thus most recent translations have changed the sense of the text to say that humans are a little less than God.

Perhaps it is in part the reference to the angels that leads to the problem I have with common readings of the text. I am not a person who rejects the notion of hierarchy in all of its possibilities, although I do reject the idea that systems of domination are a necessary part of human existence. So theories of hierarchy always evoke a sharper scrutiny when I find them imposed upon or derived from biblical texts. In conversations about this text, I usually hear the construction of a vast hierarchy of being. This assumption rightly understands that God is that than which no greater can be conceived. Then the ranks get assigned from higher to lower: angels, humans, various land, air, and sea animals. The heritage of dominion theology finds its way into Christian theology, to a great extent, from this passage linked to other biblical texts.

But is this Psalm an effort to assert the rank of humanity within the great chain of being? Certainly we know that has been a common reading of it through many different eras and in many different places. Perhaps that ought to be enough to convince me to just "leave it alone." I can't do that. The concept of dominion as domination has too great a corrupting influence for me to leave it alone.

Churches teaching dominion as domination, combined with Americanized pre-millenialism, is what led former U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt to claim that industries should be allowed to rapidly use up the earth's resources without regard to pollution or damage to ecological systems. For Watt and his fellow-travelers, God gave humans the earth to use, and since the world would end soon humans must get to work and use it up fast. Dominion as domination is what led European Christian leaders, theologians, bishops, popes, kings, and speculators to theorize an Imperial World Order under domination of the white races, in which all other peoples of the world find their value and meaning in serving the good of the superior white Europeans.

If dominion as domination corrupts Christian theology and practice so horribly, then it seems incumbent on readers to think again about constructing an extensive hierarchical metaphysics behind, around, and in front of this Psalm. There are other possibilities here. Issues of empire, of environmental degradation, and of the potential for human damage to one another all may help the reader raise questions about received interpretations of this text.

One thing a reader has to remember about reading the Psalms is that they are the outcries of God's people in lament, praise, thanksgiving, fear, and longing. They are not necessarily statements of divine ordering, even if they often do give insight into the divine order. They are written as the words of Israel to God, not as divine decrees. This characteristic of the Psalms helps to explain statements such as the one in Psalm 137 which proclaims a blessing upon those who "take your little ones and dash them against the rocks." Infanticide, although it may serve to display an exaggerated or distorted anger toward enemies, will not bring a blessing from God. The prayer of Psalm 137 expresses the vengeful orientation of some of the Jewish exiles. It is not any kind of divine decree. Elsewhere, the Psalms call on God to destroy enemies and other self-centered acts. Just because someone, even someone as prestigious as King David, prayed such a prayer does not mean that the prayer expresses the will of God.

With that caveat in mind, Psalm 8 offers a vision of humanity's place in the grand scheme of things without necessarily revealing a divinely decreed ranking of species. It says that humanity has been made a little less than divine, made to be the dominant force among species on earth. It need not be interpreted to say that God made everything to be under humans, or made humans to dominate everything else. Any of us could observe, without the need of a theory of hierarchical status, that in the grand scheme of this planet's existence, human beings are capable of great and fearful acts. Our species, just short of the divine power of God, can burn down a forest, pollute a lake, wear out fertile land, poison waters, and more.

I have heard some people say this Psalm can't be about environmental degradation because that is a modern concept that ancient peoples would not understand. I disagree. Archaeologists tell a history of the Greek islands which hosted prosperous communities only to have their soil eroded by deforestation, overpopulation, and overcultivation, leaving only bare rocky crags jutting out of the sea. The ancient cities of Babylon were eventually abandoned and buried in sand, in part from the deforestation and overcultivation of land which became barren and underwent desertification. In the wealthy city-states of the Maya, in fertile and productive regions, silting of rivers from deforestation and overpopulation led to the decline of highly civilized communities. Ancient farmers of China, India, and Peru developed sophisticated methods of combating soil erosion, recognizing how it occurs and what its results would be. So environmental degradation caused by human activity is not anew idea. People of ancient times, before and after the Israel of the Psalmists, knew of this human possibility. Human beings are capable of building up and destroying great life on vast tracts of land, across great empires. Why else would we find existing in ancient Israelite law a plan for letting land lie fallow? They knew that human activity can destroy productive farmland.

It is not uncommon in biblical interpretation to identify a statement as ironic, as representative of a view to be upheld for ridicule. With that in mind, it is worth considering whether some of the latter portion of Psalm 8 might be rhetorically ironic. Are there any textual clues that might make us alert to potential ironic language? I think there may be more than one.

Clearly the Psalm displays a primary theme of the majesty and sovereignty of God over all creation. The opening and closing lines bracket all else with this affirmation. After the initial affirmations of God's greatness, the Psalm takes a surprising turn (in a text that scholars say is very difficult to translate) by saying that the cries of infants and babes protect the people from the enemies of God. Hmmm... That is not an image of human might. It is not elevating human cleverness to near divinity. As we move beyond this difficult verse, the next part reverts to the majesty of God as the context to offer an inquiry of perplexity. God's works are so great, who are we scrawny human beings? Why would God even notice us? Here we find an acknowledgment of the incapacity of humanity to approach the greatness of God's works.

Then comes the passage that many use to justify a divinely sanctioned hierarchy of beings. "You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor." It is not hard to imagine such words coming from the mouth of the emperor, or from the official mouthpiece charged with praising the emperor. We know that this sort of praise of imperial power was widespread in the era of biblical writings, lasting even into the era of Eusebius's praise of Constantine in the post-canonical era. Could it be that the Psalmist, who has been belittling human capacity in order to evoke humility before the majesty of God has now put these ironic words into the mouths of arrogant humanity? We are just a little less than divine (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). We can run this world (into the ground). King Soandso is the head man in charge of this world and day by day everything is getting better and better (oh, yeah, right!).

To say that all creation is "under their feet" is to acknowledge that it is far too easy to crush and stomp God's good creation to death. It is to acknowledge that walking softly, leaving a light footprint, is necessary in this world. Other species can disappear and be destroyed because of the power of humanity. It is not to say that ever living thing and every non-living thing is our underling. It is to say that we are capable of sustaining the good of all, or of destroying all of it, including ourselves. The cattle and sheep, the wild creatures, birds, fish and sea creatures, are all also God's good creation. An overestimate of human importance is another attempt to do what the first humans in the Garden did--an attempt to become like God. Thus, the final line returns to the first. It is God, not arrogant humanity, who is great.

I recognize that I am swimming upstream with this proposed interpretation. Many doctrinal questions arise concerning the imago Dei, human uniqueness, visions of creation, and probably more. Of course, this literary interpretation faces many possible objections from other literary readings, along with other types of textual analysis. But I've chewed on it long enough and lived with it long enough to think that it at least deserves some conversational scrutiny. I have, as always, plenty more to say. But for now, have at it.

Attorneys General Must Get Tough on Foreclosure Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:55:00 +0000

NAAG is the National Association of Attorneys General. AGs from the fifty states and the various other jurisdictions such as territories, districts, etc., gather periodically to cooperate in how to manage common issues and work together on multi-state problems. Some of the cooperative work they have done includes the Tobacco Settlement and the current Foreclosure Fraud Investigation.

Through North Carolina United Power, I have been participating with a working group of national organizations who are in conversation with the AGs about the Foreclosure Fraud Investigation. Recently, we took a group to Chicago to meet with some of them about their work to protect homeowners and keep families in their homes. I was interviewed by the local CBS radio affiliate in the hours before our meeting.

Among the key items of our agenda are:

broad availability of principal reductions to reset the housing market and remove the risk of more foreclosures;
remedies for all who have been harmed by fraud other criminal acts, whether they have already suffered foreclosure, are in process, or are facing impending foreclosure;
the end of dual tracking, with simultaneous loan modification discussions and foreclosure procedures;
all possible efforts for loan modifications and other non-foreclosure procedures should precede the initiation of foreclosure procedures;
criminal prosecutions for criminal acts; and
regulatory regimes to keep this kind of mortgage fraud from being repeated.

We were able to meet with four of the state Attorneys General: Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Tom Miller of Iowa (the leader of the task force working on the foreclosure fraud investigation), Roy Cooper of North Carolina (President of NAAG who pushed the foreclosure fraud investigation forward), and George Jepsen of Connecticut (newly elected). Our conversation was formal, perhaps overly so. We discussed our agenda, they discussed their records, and then we exchanged questions and vague answers. The time was short: only 30 minutes. There was very little new that came out of the meeting, but do not assume that I am saying it was not worthwhile. Let me clarify why this was such an important meeting.

In organizing, we plan an action to get a reaction. When we get our reaction, then we evaluate what we have learned and begin to plan future research and actions in light of it. Our action in Chicago revealed a number of important things about our work on to change the conditions faced by so many families being hit by foreclosures.

This action showed something to our organizing groups, to the four AGs present in our meeting, to the many other AGs at the hotel but not at our meeting, and to the press and their readers. To us, it showed that we have the power to bring the key law enforcement figures in the foreclosure negotiations to the table, even if we and they know they cannot negotiate publicly with us about potential criminal proceedings against banks. Not only do they meet with bankers. They also meet with us.

To the AGs present, we were able to deliver a multiracial, multiethnic, knowledgable, prepared, faith-based and non-faith-based, nationwide constituency to speak intelligently and passionately about this critical work they are doing. They found us to be what we said, representatives of hundreds of thousands of citizens, thousands of churches and synagogues and mosques, and from states all across the nation.

To the AGs not present, we made it publicly clear that their colleagues who are leading in this foreclosure investigation are willing to meet with us. Miller, Cooper, Madigan, and Jepsen will meet with us not only in their private chambers back home but in a public forum where they can express, even with the press in the room, their strong agreement with our agenda. They were very adamant that they would not settle for an agreement that did not fundamentally change the practices of mortgage lending and foreclosure. They believe the result must benefit homeowners and borrowers, not primarily get lenders off the hook.

To the press and their readers (including bankers) we were able to show that the case for principle reduction remains strong, with a powerful constituency. Among the key items reported was the commitment to take banks to court if the negotiations do not bring fundamental change. These AG negotiators have not given up on a strong settlement and will not accept a weak settlement. Our action got broad coverage in newspapers and in banking industry news sources.

The investigation and negotiation of a settlement could come very soon. Or it could drag on through the summer. Sooner is better, and we are expecting to see a court decree with tools to provide real help to homeowners.

Ticks and Chiggers, and a Wild Goose Errand

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:45:00 +0000

Last year, a local boy, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, was a speaker at a conference in England called Greenbelt. In conversations, I learned a bit more about the conference, and I looked up the lineup. I was pretty impressed with the mix of artists, activists, preachers, and intellectuals. So a few months later when I heard there would be an attempt to hold a similar event in North Carolina, I thought it would be worth a try.

I sent information to my daughter, Lydia, who would be living with me in Durham while I stayed there to teach summer school, and she said it looked like something she would like. Thus, the two of us got tickets to the Wild Goose Festival at Shakori Hills, not far from Carrboro or Pittsboro, NC. There were lots of big names on the program, and quite a few not so famous people who I also knew about.

The first session we attended dealt with the question, "Why can't the church be a place where people can find healing for their darkest struggles?" That may not be the exact wording, but it gets the point across. I was not so sure how it would go, but some very good insights came up along the way. When one of the discussion participants offered a testimony, he ended his comments with a question he wants his church to be able to answer affirmatively, "Can I trust you with me?" (I burst with pride later when I spoke with him to find out he is a Shaw University Divinity School graduate, from before I was at teaching in divinity school. But I digress.) Not long after that, floods of memories washed over me about regrets in certain relationships, and I could not hold back tears. It was an unexpected grace to begin thinking and planning about how to respond to those thoughts and emotions. Afterward, I told Lydia some of what had touched me, and I commented that if the first informal discussion would hit me that hard, the rest of the conference looked promising. We were not disappointed.

I admit to being an old fogey in the realm of popular music. I've become a news junkie when it comes to radio. Consequently, I do not really keep up with pop music. A couple dozen musicians played on the main stage or in other side venues. I had never heard of any of them, except Psalter. Still, the music was great. We had a couple of nights out under the stars listening to the last band. I enjoyed what I heard from several: Derek Webb, Over the Rhine, Tom Prasado-Rao, Ashley Cleveland, Agents of Future, Psalter, and David Bazan. With every band or soloist I heard, I thought, "I could listen to a CD of this music." On a blanket, watching the clouds go by, or tracing the Drinking Gourd constellation, even mediocre music would have sounded better. As it was, we heard some great performances.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Rev. William Barber shared a stage one morning. Their story of a friendship is interesting to hear on its own, but Barber did not disappoint with incisive analysis of race relations and contemporary politics, especially the politics of health care and education. Shane Claiborne told stories to a crowd that burst out of the tent shelter and into the adjoining woods. I got a brief portion of Richard Rohr speaking about two halves of our lives, and it was just enough to make me want to hear more. Friends like Nancy Sehested, Jane Childress, Linda Weaver-Williams, Joyce Hollyday, Diana Butler-Bass, Nick Liao, Jesse Deconto, and Amey Adkins also made the time worthwhile.

One theme of the conference that still intrigues me was a collection of speakers who come from exquisite Evangelical pedigrees, only to undergo faith crises and end up far away from their previous theological and ecclesiological homes: Bart Campolo, Jay Bakker, Frank Schaeffer. I heard Campolo and Bakker, and I read some remarks by Schaeffer. I sometimes wonder why we don't hear more stories like these. I suspect that for many who undergo a crisis of faith, coming anywhere near the church is not something in which they have any interest. But stories like these represent one of the authentic paths of faithfulness in an era when so many churches are thoroughly co-opted by empire.

When my Dad used to take us kids to the State Fair, I remember asking in the parking lot, "What ride is your favorite?" His response puzzled me, with my concrete and physical reasoning about rides and having fun. He said, "I just enjoy seeing you all have fun." I remember thinking that was strange, when the real fun would be on the Ferris Wheel or the Sky Ride. But at 53 I know just what he meant. Even if I had not enjoyed the festival at all, spending it with Lydia and seeing her enjoy it was the best result I could have hoped for.

Oh, yeah. I picked up a couple of ticks and a large clan of chiggers while out in the country. It was nothing to get upset about, although the chigger bites kept me itching for a week or so.

Halloween, Masquerades, Bandits, and Burqas

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 04:40:00 +0000

I wrote this guest post for Stan Dotson's blog "Daily Passages." Check out his blogs and other great work at his website In Our Elements.

Friday, July 1st, 2011

Fellow Travelers: This week’s Pastoral Passage (2 Corinthians 3:12-18) transports us to childhood play and childhood fear. Children hide their faces on Halloween to play a game that promises lots of free candy. Part of the game is shouting a mostly empty threat, “Trick or treat!” Dressed in costumes with masks, the little ones see others who are also wearing masks, and sometimes the fear overwhelms the fun. Adults laugh when children turn around running to Mom or Dad or Big Sister to escape a masked figure too scary to pass by.

Many, if not most familiar occasions for wearing a mask circle back around to conjuring up fear. A masquerade party aims at fun, but part of the fun is the uncertainty and fear that come from not knowing who one might end up talking or dancing with. In a less playful vein, bank robbers and bandits use a ski mask or bandana to hide their faces, knowing that their anonymity arouses the fear that they will act more violently since their faces can’t be identified. Part of the fear of Islam in the 21st century often gets focused on the burqa or niqāb, sartorial interpretations of the Qur’an which encourage women to cover their faces. French legislators outlawed this sort of Islamic dress in public, in part for fear of what the “foreigner” may be hiding, and in part for fear of the loss of hegemonic French cultural identity.

The Apostle Paul retold a story about Moses and a mask in this letter to the Corinthians. Actually, it was a veil that Moses wore after he came down from Mount Sinai with the two stone tablets (Exodus 34:33). The people saw him coming, and his face was shining like a light. They were afraid and would have run away, but Moses called out to them so they would know who he was. Aaron and some of the leaders got the courage to go meet him. After he talked with them for a while about what God had to say, he put on a veil. So in this case, the mask was a way to calm down the fear rather than stir it up. Don’t ask me to explain how Moses’ face got shiny. I’ll just let the story stand as it is.

Paul isn’t particularly concerned with the details of Moses’ veil and its purpose according to Exodus. He’s out to make another point. He says that Moses put on a veil so that the people would not keep staring at him while the shiny face faded away. Paul seems concerned that people might have stared at Moses and become mystified. Instead of recognizing the unrestrainable, indomitable, effusive glory of God as having left a residue on the prophet who talked with God, Paul says that back in the day people missed the whole point. They might have fixated on Shiny Moses himself, as if he were the source of all this glory, the Divine Lawgiver in the flesh.

Then Paul says something else completely about the veil. He says the thickheaded and offbase thinking of the ones who were afraid of Shiny Moses is a kind of thickheadedness that endures down the ages in all humans who can’t see the signs of the glory of God when they show up. Barry Harvey, in Can These Bones Live?, writes about the persistent inability of humanity to understand the presence and work of God when we try to “read the book of the world.” Paul sketches a picture for us of people who are not interested in having God lead the way, going around like we have a veil on our faces. The veil makes everything blurry and fuzzy, and we end up stumbling over things that should have been in plain sight.

The shocker of this story comes when Paul explains why things don’t have to be that way. He says that God in Jesus Christ has come to set us straight on how to recognize God's leading, prodding, nudging, and dragging us toward our purpose in this world. When we turn to look at the Lord Jesus, the veil gets lifted. He’s the Rosetta Stone, the Rand McNally Road Atlas, the corrective lens that makes it possible for us to see what God is up to. But I said there was a shocker, didn’t I. Here it comes.

When the veil gets lifted, when we turn to look at Jesus, we find out that this man born of woman, this humble servant who is God incarnate, is the true image of the race of humans. He’s the pattern, and we find ourselves and our lives when we look at him. So with unveiled faces, the glory of God shows up in the mirror. As brothers and sisters of Jesus, we come to see the truth about us is that we “sort of favor” Jesus. We may not be his spitting image, but the image is there, growing, becoming visible in our faces because the Holy Spirit is transforming us. The glory of God is visible when humanity lives in the mutual giving and loving goodness of the Triune God who loves immeasurably in eternity. Look in the mirror, brothers and sisters. Don’t you see it? It’s right there as plain as your face.

Don’t be afraid to lose that veil.

How about you? Where does this Pastoral Passage take you on your journey of faith? Feel free to comment.

Pentecost and Education Day at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Numbers 11:24-30 (NRSV)

24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. 25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. 27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28 And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” 29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” 30 And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Getting an education, going to school, is like having a job. It has its good days and its bad days. It has its steady tasks and its deadlines. It has issues of getting along with supervisors and peers. It requires an everyday dedication that at worst becomes drudgery and at best reveals new blessings from day to day.

In one way then, completing a course of study or finishing a degree is like finishing a task on the job. Deadlines have been met. The work has been approved. Catch your breath. Okay, what’s next?

But in another way, finishing a course of study or a degree is a major crossroads in life. It is both a consummation and a watershed. It is an ending and a beginning. It is a time of looking back and looking forward.

For this reason, we gather as a congregation to celebrate Education Day. As God’s people, we gather today to consecrate the accomplishments and achievements of all who strive to better themselves through education. As the body of Christ, we gather bearing sacramental witness to the work of the Holy Spirit who pours out grace upon grace into our community of faith.

This Education Day is therefore both a joyous and a solemn occasion. It is a joyous day of looking back as we remember the blessings of friendships, the fascination of new knowledge learned, the satisfaction of a tasks completed successfully, and the affectionate pride of our loved ones. It is a solemn day of looking back when we remember the sacrifices required of us and others to reach this accomplishment, when we recall the many times when the line between success and failure was as thin as a hair’s breadth, when we relive the moments when the first try was not good enough, and when we meditate on the grace required to hold us up through the challenges we faced.

It is also a joyous and solemn day of looking forward. It is joyous to revel in the knowledge that fifth grade or middle school or high school or a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree is done and we never have to do that again. It is joyous for many who have been waiting while studying, looking ahead to the opportunity of work or further education that can only come when this degree or course of study is complete. We are joyful when we realize the possibilities for serving God that have become greater because of what we have learned and now know.

It is also a solemn occasion of looking forward. One segment of life is complete, and whatever comes next will have a whole new set of challenges. It is solemn for those who move forward to jobs or further education, knowing the opportunity will still require striving and struggle. It is solemn to look ahead and see that God’s purposes for our lives draw ever nearer and require greater faith and discipline than we have yet demonstrated in our lives.

Education Day, thus, is a day for celebrating the joy and reflecting on the solemnity we meet at the current crossroads of our lives.

You may not realize that this Education Day has also fallen on one of the high holy days of the Christian year. By habit, Baptists are keenly aware of Christmas and Easter, but we often do not hold in mind the third great festival of the church, Pentecost. On Pentecost we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit with power to enliven and commission the church to be the body of Christ in the world, receiving the task of living out the very purposes of God for all creation. On Pentecost, we receive the calling to break down the barriers of race, class, nationality, language, and any other superficial distinctions, and we become the family of God, a holy nation, a peculiar people who up until Jesus called us together were not a people. We become a family, not by blood relations but by a new creation, united with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection as a new race of humanity from every tribe and nation, people and language.

As the festival of the Holy Spirit and the church, Pentecost has much to tell us about how to celebrate Education Day. On Education Day, we don’t want to merely acknowledge accomplishments from a secular realm of life, say a prayer over them, and then let our education and worship part ways for the remainder of our lives. As I said earlier, we celebrate Education Day as a consecration of the work we have done in school, not for ourselves, but for the good of all of God’s people and for the glory of God who made us able to learn, grow, and achieve. In that way, the diploma or degree takes on sacramental significance. Just as Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and humanity, so we mark our educational achievements as steps toward taking onto ourselves the full stature of Christ, bearing his image as a new creation.

The Old Testament lesson for this Pentecost Sunday speaks to our reason for celebrating Education Day. It is a familiar story about Moses and the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus. Moses, as the leader of a great crowd of people, often found himself overworked and worn out. Perhaps Moses had the kind of personality that sometimes led him to think only he could do things right. If you want a job done right, he might have said to himself, do it yourself. Or maybe, and this hits closer to home for me, Moses tended to put off getting things planned and finished. Dragging everything down to the last minute meant that when the crunch time hit, it was too late to get the help that he needed. We don’t fully know the cause of Moses’ problem as described in Numbers, but we do know how his God recommended that he solve the problem.

God told Moses that he was not the only one who could do the important tasks needed to lead the people. He was not the only one who could discern the will of God and speak a word from the Lord. So God told Moses to select seventy elders from among the people to share the burdens of leadership. Spread out the work, God told Moses, and don’t be surprised that there are many more gifted people out here ready to lead.

Well Moses was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and he eagerly did what God told him to do. As Numbers puts it, God “took some of the spirit that was on Moses” and spread it out by putting some on each of the seventy elders. It is a kind of crude image in a way, but it gets the point across. If we imagine that Moses had power from God smeared around all over him, then what was to prevent sopping up some of that and smearing it around on a bunch of other folks?

So there we have it. Moses and God transferred some of the leadership responsibilities to others, and the story tells us that all of the seventy elders began to prophesy, just as Moses had been prophesying. Now we don’t use the word prophesy very well in our time. We tend to narrow its meaning to be the same as predicting the future. But Numbers is not telling us that the seventy elders formed a psychic hotline and started predicting the future. No, prophesy means first of all to deliver a message from God. These elders became leaders who spoke the truth of God and guided the people in solving their problems and getting their lives moving the right direction. These elders became servants of God to serve the common good. They began to focus their life’s work around making everyone’s lives better. With all of these elders serving the common good, less of that work fell on Moses. And since it was no longer just one man’s job, probably a whole lot more got done.

One of the questions that came to my mind in reading this story has to do with the number of elders. Now we know that symbolically, the number twelve is very important for understanding the people of Israel. The twelve tribes are a constant organizing principle, and so we might have expected God to tell Moses to choose twelve elders, one for each tribe. Instead, God told him to choose seventy. Seventy is not even a multiple of twelve. That would have been seventy-two, making six elders per tribe. But the number is not seventy-two, it is just seventy.

If we analyze the number seventy, we can see some possible reasons for choosing that number. The most obvious thing to see is that it is a multiple of seven. With seven days of creation and Sabbath, a seven year cycle of debt remission and letting the land rest, a seven day week, and for many other reasons, seven is also a highly significant number. It is a number that expresses completeness. It is a number that implies a cycle of restorative justice. It is a number reminding us never to get too carried away with our schemes and activities without stopping to devote ourselves to God and renew our covenant relationship.

So choosing seventy has within it a symbolism of completion, of divine remembrance, and of just social existence. But Moses did not choose only seven elders, but seventy. Now seventy is a round number, and round numbers have a biblical symbolism of many and plenty. If seven is symbolic of completion, seventy symbolized complete and more, plenty to accomplish the task. So what we see in Moses’ selection of seventy elders is choosing a number adequate to do a very big job.

Sometimes in church we get a couple of people together and just try to get by, do the minimum to say we have fulfilled our responsibility. In this case, Moses is choosing enough to get the job done effectively and get the job done right. This plan from God for Moses does not operate in an economy of scarcity, fearful that if Moses does not have most of the power, then these other leaders will edge him out or steal his turf. It is not about jealousy and control. This selection of elders is about what is good for the people. And unless Moses wants to be a candle burned out by next week, it is also going to be good for him.

So on Education Day, we acknowledge with Moses that the work of God is far too great for Dr. Turner to do it all himself. The work of God is far to vast for a few people to hoard all the power of God’s Spirit as if it were their personal possession. On Education Day, and on Pentecost, we recognize that the Holy Spirit has come with power. God has poured out the Spirit on all flesh, on the young and the old, on the women and the men, on the slave and the free, on the Jew and the Gentile. By striving for knowledge and working to complete a course of study or a degree, we offer ourselves as servants of God, as vessels of the Spirit’s power. Today, on Education Day, we gather to consecrate this commitment to serve God and to share in the coming of God’s Spirit with power on each of you who have offered yourselves as a living sacrifice to God. You today stand in the position of the seventy elders of Israel. The Spirit is calling on you to use your gifts to prophesy, to speak a word from the Lord, and to serve the good of all the people.

Now there is another interesting detail in this story of the seventy elders that we do not want to miss. Joshua got very disturbed about one thing that happened. He was a young man with a lot to learn. As the story unfolded, a couple of the elders chosen to lead did not manage to make the official meeting at which they would be set aside for service. We don’t know why Eldad and Medad did not make it to the big house . . . I mean the tent where they were supposed to gather. Maybe they got preoccupied with work they were already doing. [From the pew, Dr. Turner inserted, “Maybe they overslept.”] Maybe someone told them it was a mistake that their names got on the list, and they should just go on home and not try to be uppity. Maybe they never got the message that they were supposed to go to the meeting. Maybe a family crisis came up, and they decided to give up their dream in order to support the family. We don’t know why they did not show up.

However, when the meeting was held, and the elders were set aside for their task, the power of the spirit came upon all seventy of the elders. That means that when the other sixty eight who showed up for the meeting started to prophesy, Eldad and Medad started prophesying, too, back in the hood. It was such a big deal that a youngster got all excited and ran to the tent of meeting to tell what was going on. Joshua heard the news and started worrying that Eldad and Medad were getting out of line. He burst out to Moses saying, “This has got to be shut down. We can’t have stray people prophesying here and there and acting like they are in our select, elite group. There are rules and precedents to follow!”

I suspect Joshua was pretty surprised by Moses’ reply. The Bible says Moses was the meekest man on earth, and here is one of the occasions when we can see what that means. Moses did not need to be the head man in charge of everything. He was happy to see the work of God done, no matter who was doing it. He told Joshua that as far as old Moses is concerned, he wished everyone would become a prophet of God.

Whoa, Moses! Thank you God for setting Moses’ mind on You. On the day of selecting the seventy elders, Moses has caught a glimpse of Pentecost. He is looking for and longing for the day when God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh.

Moreover, this day of setting aside seventy elders to lead and speak a word from the Lord also looks ahead to a day when Jesus gathered his followers and sent out seventy missionaries to all the towns and villages to tell them the good news of the Kingdom of God. As it was when Jesus’ sent the seventy, the God of Jesus Christ is in the business of calling all of us out to take up the task of living and loving and bringing about the beloved community. These elders could no longer live merely for themselves, but they now would live for the good of the entire community. Eldad and Medad, back in the hood, would live for God and for the good of the whole community. No more looking out only for number one. Now they must look out for the way that we can all become one.

Some of you, in completing this season of school work, may remember bitter moments when you were told you were too dumb to finish school. Maybe someone told you your clothes were too plain, your teeth too crooked, your hair too nappy, your skin too dark or too light, your speech too country, your voice too squeaky, your people too poor, your neighborhood to run down. Maybe it was even someone with the status of Joshua who stood in your way and made you feel like you should not even try.

But like Eldad and Medad, if you are here today, you have found the courage and strength to put that dispiritedness behind you. You have risen over that adversity, using it as a stepping stone to remember that God has called not only this preacher and the teachers and the ministers and the deacons, but God has called you. Maybe nobody wanted you to know that you could come to Moses’ meeting. Maybe somebody got in your way. But praise be to God that the Spirit is poured out on all flesh. If God is calling you, nobody can stop the power of God from filling you with all that you need to do what God has for you to do.

On the Feast of Pentecost, we unite ourselves with the Holy Spirit who gives gifts to all. The Apostle Paul, who sometimes reminds folks that he was a latecomer to his work, maybe like Eldad and Medad, wrote to the churches that we are one body with many gifts. The Spirit gives each one a gift, and each gift is needed for the good of the whole community. If you don’t cultivate your gift, grow it, and allow it to flourish, all of us will be diminished. God’s Spirit is poured out on all of us, and our educational milestones of maturity are part of the process of learning to exercise our gifts for the good of all.

The Gospel Lesson for today comes from John, chapter 7. In that passage, Jesus says to the crowds in Jerusalem that the day will come when the Spirit will work with power in the lives of all believers. He says, “Out of the believer’s heart will flow rivers of living water.” This is the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in all of us, and in all of you whom we recognize on this Education Day. God is at work to will and to do in you what has not yet been seen or imagined. The transformation of your life underway through the work of the Spirit will make you into a wellspring. The gift of the Spirit will be the water of life for all those whom God sends your way. Whether back in the hood with Eldad and Medad, or at the big meeting with the rest of the elders, you will be a vessel of the very life of God.

Receive this work of the Holy Spirit. Lift up your hearts to God. You stand here today as a sacrament of the work of the Holy Spirit. You are gifted. Hasten to use the gifts you have received. Amen.

Follow-up on a Day with Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:57:00 +0000

After Dad and I made our tour of central Texas, where we saw not only hoards of goats and a few buffalo, but also a trio of elk behind a very tall fence, I traveled to NC for a few days. Upon my return, I had about a week in Texas to get a few things done and prepare for a long stay in Durham to teach summer school at Shaw. Yes, we did manage to get the university reopened for summer school, and I have two full classes. We anticipate having the dormitories and dining hall reopened by the end of July in order to welcome back undergraduate students for the Fall 2011-12 semester.

Dad asked around and found a friend from church who was willing for us to get our rolling cart/shelf units using his pickup. Moreover, having known my dad for some time through Sunday School class and other church activities, he decided to drive us himself. He told me he couldn't think of much better than getting to spend a few hours with W. D. and hear him tell stories.

The drive was uneventful, and our friend was not disappointed. All along the way, Dad would tell about a pastor whom he had known who served a church in the small town we were passing through, or about the time he preached a revival at a church on the side of the highway, or a funny story about a preacher or church in this or that town. In fact, we worked Dad so hard that he started getting hoarse by the time we reached Huckabay, our destination for the furniture acquisition. We took a slightly different route, and along the way we saw winter wheat and hay ready for harvest.

As I had judged earlier, the people at the Huckabay I. S. D. were very nice people. If they got a laugh out of our last visit, no one let on. Instead, the business manager apologized to me, as if her description of the units had not told me enough to save me from that first unsuccessful trip. I reminded her that the auction listing did include the exact measurements, which I had failed to think through adequately. It took only a couple of minutes to load both items into the truck and tie them down. Then we were back on our way.

We stopped again in Hico for lunch. Dad and I had the blue plate special--meat loaf--which was excellent. The dessert for the lunch special was "coconut pudding," basically a coconut merengue pie without any crust. That's two pies I've tasted there--about fifteen or more to go.

We got the furniture back home, letting Dad nap a bit while we told some of our own stories in the front seat. I rolled them into the garage and piled them high with boxes, making a way to more easily move stuff around in the crowded garage. That night, I moved another pile of boxes to get them out of my mom's way so that she would not have to deal with them while I was gone for a half the summer. We also spent a couple of days getting her pantry and cabinets cleaned out and reorganized. It was a busy and rewarding week.

The shelf units cost me a total of $16 at auction. I suspect that equivalent units would cost $500 each, give or take a hundred dollars. Even building them from scratch would take a long time and cost $100 or more in supplies. They should be sturdy enough to do what we need. Dad bought our friend lunch, and Mom cooked him dinner. I bought him a tank of gas for about $80, making the total price of each unit $48 for me (I'm not counting the Day with Dad trip since we went to see Aunt Joyce.) Considering the good times had by all, I would say we all came out very well.

A Day with Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sat, 14 May 2011 05:35:00 +0000

For the last couple of weeks, I have been preoccupied with grading papers or with things that suddenly become crucial to do rather than grading papers. I've been retreating to the back room, to a coffee shop, or wherever I can to try to keep my focus. That means that the people I live with have also tried to stay out of my way and not expect much of me.

Going back a few more weeks, I have also been trying to help Dad get set up better with his gardening. First, I found a utility sink on Craigslist to put on the back patio. With a couple of fittings, I rigged a damaged water hose to run from an outdoor spigot to the sink. The drain, for now, can drain into a bucket or into one of the dozens of potted plants he has in the back of the house. That was a big success: good quality sink, low Craigslist price.

My next project was to find some kind of cart to set up as a potting table and workspace next to the sink. One place I looked is an auction site for government surplus sales, Public Surplus. This site has lots of school equipment for sale, as well as police departments, county governments, etc., and you can sort by state. I found a big printer table not far away in Georgetown. It is the kind you used to see in Human Resources offices, out in the hallway, running constantly, printing checks with all kinds of attached documentation on fancy paper with perforations. Those printers were noisy, so the tables for them often had a plastic cover to mute the noise while letting a person see the machine at work. I thought this was a great idea for a mini-greenhouse work table, with wheels to boot. But I did not win the auction.

I tried Craigslist again, and found a heavy-duty steel cart, tall enough to do potting work standing, and with big wheels. The guy selling it said it was cluttering his garage and he wasn't using it any more. A bit of negotiation, and I had a deal. That makes two successful back porch improvements for Dad's gardening work. And I have not spent even close to $100 for both items.

In all my heady success, I decided to bid on a couple of rolling shelf units, or more accurately classroom media carts that were surplus at a small school district "not too far" from where we live. Remember that I have been living in NC for 24 years, so my memory of the map of Texas and distances is a bit rusty. I did not expect to win the auctions because my bids were pretty low.

But lo, and behold, when the auctions closed I had won both items. A couple of half-hearted bids had challenged my offer, but the price was way lower than I could have expected to pay. I scheduled a day to go pick them up, and I did a little measuring of the doors to Dad's Chrysler minivan. All looked fine to me. Famous last words . . .

I reached a good point in my grading, came out of hiding, and Dad and I agreed to go together and retrieve the shelving carts, which I plan to use in the garage to make compact storage of boxes more easy to manage with these rolling units. We checked the map, and to my surprise the location was 2.5 hours away. Now that is small potatoes in Texas, but it is a bigger part of the day than I had anticipated. To make double duty, we planned to visit Dad's oldest living sister, Joyce Harbour, in Hico, about thirty miles from the school of our destination in Huckabay.

The route was nice. Before long we had passed out of the dried up region and into green meadows where there has been some consistent rain during the past month of storms. The times, they are a-changing, and we passed from cattle ranches into goat ranches and eventually buffalo ranches on the road to Hico. I don't remember many goats in Texas when I lived here before, and I don't remember ever seeing a buffalo ranch south of Wyoming or Montana.

Dad and I talked about all sorts of things on the trip. I had brought some work to do, but the conversation was good and the scenery was interesting. When we finally got to Hico, we took note of a little cafe called the Koffee Kup, which has received some recognition from travel magazines for its food and its pies. I knew where I wanted to be in a couple of hours.

We headed on up to Huckabay, and I think you may know where this story is going. It is a small school district with 192 students from K-12. One of the business administrators met me, and she went to get the bus driver to show us where the carts are. Immediately, he began to express reservations about where we planned to put the carts for transport. I assured them I had measured the doors of the minivan and all should fit. They called out the principal of the school to help me load things up. These were generous, hospitable people.

What I had not taken into consideration was the depth of the carts. While I had accurately found that the length of the cart would fit through the side door (45"), I had not taken into account that the door would not open wide enough to accommodate the 28.5" depth of the cart. Nor would the cart fit through the back gate on its side.

I reckon some small-town folk got a few laughs about the city folk who drove all the way from Salado to pick something up without planning how to fit it in their vehicle. I was chagrined and a little embarrassed. The business manager tried to comfort me by pointing out that even if I had gotten one cart through the door, I would have had to make a second trip to get the second one because they were too thick to get both in the van. Yes, Mike, there are three dimensions in space, even if you are looking at a two-dimensional picture.

One thing I have learned from Dad, and over the years have gotten a little better at doing, is rolling with the punches and not letting things upset me too bad. This was one of those days that I was able to roll. We thanked the people, scheduled a later visit with a borrowed truck, and headed back to Hico. Dad picked up some chocolate candy for Joyce, and we went to see her at the nursing home. I was happy that she recognized me before we even said anything. We talked about this and that, caught up
on the relatives, gave our hugs, and prayed together.

Then it was off to the Koffee Kup for CFS (that's Texas shorthand for Chicken Fried Steak), onion rings, and pie. Filled to satisfaction, we retraced our route back to Salado, having visited Aunt Joyce, scouted the two big shelving carts I bought for a total of $16 (and as Everly will never let me forget, spent way, way, way more on gasoline), eaten pie (a notable achievement in itself), and covered thoroughly the full range of the world's and the family's topics. If there were any problems, we solved them several times over. Even with the silliness of poor planning, that was a good day with Dad.

Witness at Bank of America Shareholders Meeting

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sat, 14 May 2011 05:19:00 +0000

On May 11, 2011, North Carolina United Power (NCUP) gathered with some allies to challenge Bank of America to clean up its act concerning mortgage modifications and foreclosures. We brought banners and posters, including a banner displaying the text of Micah 2:1-2.

Associated Press photo

Alas for those who devise wickedness
and evil deeds on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in their power.
They covet fields, and seize them;
houses, and take them away;
they oppress householder and house,
people and their inheritance.

Rev. Clyde Ellis came from Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE) came to speak about the disaster of foreclosures in Prince William County, VA. Peter Skillern of Community Reinvestment Association-NC (CRA-NC) and Josh Zinner of Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP) in New York City addressed the slow pace of improvement made by Bank of America in dealing with the enormous number of troubled mortgages they service.

Iraq Veteran Blackmon of the Harry Veterans Community Outreach Service in Winston-Salem addressed B of A's work with military families. Rev. Spencer Bradford of Durham Mennonite Church spoke about bankers and homeowners sharing the same neighborhood, in the spirit of rejecting the utilitarian vision condemned by the Prophet Micah. Rev. Dr. Greg Moss of HELP, Rev. Dr. Carlton Eversley of CHANGE, and many more from Durham CAN, Davidson County HOPE, Orange County Justice United, and the NC Latino Coalition, gave comments or stood to represent the continued efforts to bring change and justice to the foreclosure crisis.

The big news of the day came from information shared with us by the County Clerk of Court of Guilford County. In our effort to slow down the railroading of foreclosures perpetrated through "robosigning" and other fraudulent practices of a hasty and careless banking industry, we have been meeting with County Clerks of Court in NC to promote the use of best practices in foreclosure procedings, especially in the determination of who holds the original promissory note on the mortgage. We found that in Guilford County alone, the Clerk of Court had identified over 4500 fraudulent or forged documents presented to support foreclosures. That is one county. We had specific numbers for each bank, as well as the names of robosigners whom banks had employed. We are calling for a county by county audit of foreclosure documents in NC to get to the bottom of this illegal practice.

Associate Press photo

The following is the speech I gave to open the witness outside the shareholders meeting.

Good morning. I am Dr. Mike Broadway of Shaw University Divinity School and Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church in Durham.

When theological educators in North and South Carolina issued a statement on this economic crisis, we identified key convictions about justice and the economy from our tradition of faith. Among those convictions was that all people should share in the gifts of God's creation. Another was that no society can allow a permanent debtor class to emerge, a kind of debt-sharecropping. A third, among many more, was that the risks and benefits of the economy should be shared by all participants, not dumping all risks on the weak and paying bonuses to the elite. It is with these kinds of convictions that we stand here today to address foreclosure fraud and mortgage modifications.

Some people say theologians and preachers should stay out of this business. That's nothing new. Long ago in the days of the Prophet Micah, the so-called leaders of the people did not want to hear what he was sent to say. The economy was in turmoil and people were suffering mightily. But the leaders preferred a preacher who would gloss over it all and say, "Live it up! Go have another drink! Life is good!" They wanted happy talk while people were losing their homes and livelihoods through fraud and injustice (Micah 2:6-7, 11; Isa. 1:15).

We don't want to be those kinds of preachers. We don't want to be churches of the sort that Fannie Lou Hamer came to despise during her civil rights work. She saw so many churches as hypocrites gathering "for the sake of paying the minister's way to hell and theirs, too." No, we do not want to join the misleaders of the people.

Both the Prophets Micah and Isaiah challenged the financial and political elites of their day for being misleaders. To the financial leaders they said, "you mislead and confuse the people," and "the spoils of the poor are in your houses" (Micah 2:1-2, 8-9; Isa. 3:12-14). Back in those days, and now in our time, the financial elite manipulated the structures of the economy "because it is in their power" (Micah 2:1). They preyed on the hard-earned livings of the working people.

The prophets said that the "add house to house" and "field to field," leaving "many houses desolate" (Isa. 5:8-9; Micah 2:2, 9). In ancient Israel they foreclosed on the working class in massive numbers, transferring wealth from the producers to the predators, just as is happening in our day. They turned from leadership to predation. The prophets say the obvious: the poor are losing their homes and livelihoods and widows and orphans are abandoned.

Why can this happen? It seems patently unjust that some can ruin others simply "because it is in their power." The prophets go on to say that the foreclosures and mass economic turmoil happen because political leaders "write oppressive statutes" and "turn aside the needy from justice" (Isa. 10:1-2). Just yesterday, ten Attorneys General of the states met in Atlanta to oppose and try to derail a fair resolution of the mortgage crisis. Recently, the Comptroller of the Currency suggested that the banks need not bear the weight of setting things right in this foreclosure crisis. Then who will bear it? If it is not a shared burden, then average homeowners will bear this burden that is too great for us. We don't need this kind of misleader deciding our futures.

We think that Bank of America wants to be a leader for the average consumer. We think that Bank of American can be a leader in finding a resolution for the foreclosure crisis that will be good for all parties. That is why we are here today. We are calling for leadership toward a just, streamlined process for mortgage modification, foreclosures as a last resort, and a solution that makes the Bank more profitable while keeping people in their homes.

It may seem that we are just a few average, unimportant people standing here today calling out for justice in the tradition of Micah and Isaiah. But to quote Marian Wright Edelman, "You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation." And enough fleas can transform the biggest bank, too.

Eat at Joe's

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Sat, 14 May 2011 05:11:00 +0000

“I know what it’s like not to have. My highest goal in life is to help people.”--Joe Bushfan

After Shaw University Commencement on Saturday, I finally made my way to a place I have been hearing about even before it opened: Joe's Diner on Angier Avenue at Driver Street in Durham. My friend Steve Bumgardner has been telling me about these great hot dogs that Joe Bushfan was selling out of a cart. Quite a few years ago, Joe Bushfan married one of Durham's finest home-grown citizens, Elaine O'Neal Bushfan, that's Judge Bushfan to you and me. He settled into Durham and made friends easily. And he came up with a plan to make his life and work benefit a whole community. I don't need to tell the whole story, because much of it has already been told here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

I do want to report on my first time to Joe's Diner. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, so the pace was slow after lunch and before dinner. I studied the menu, introduced myself to Joe, and told him Steve had sent me. I looked over the diner options: the feature is his all beef hot dog brand from Massachusetts, Pearl Frankfurters. A quarter-pound dog is close to the size of a large hot dog you might be familiar with. A half pound dog is not much longer than usual, but really big. Then there is the one pound hot dog. I saw one being cooked: it looked like a great big red snake. It is thick and about three times or more longer than your usual grocery store hot dog. He does have some skinny dogs that look familiar. I only saw a footlong.

The menu has many different ways to serve the hot dogs, as well as some spicy dogs and sausages. I went fairly conservative for my first try: half pounder with yellow mustard, ketchup, cheddar cheese, and chopped onions. With such a big dog, I had to ask for a few more chopped onions to make it come out even, and they were glad to pile them on. The flavor of the frankfurter did live up to the reputation. It was good enough to enjoy it for its own flavor, not merely as an excuse for a big pile of condiments. I'm going to try something else next time. The Apollo Dog looks pretty good, if I don't have to buy a whole pound of frankfurter. For folks from Chicago, New York, or other towns with specialized hot dog styles, you can get what you want.

Besides hot dogs, Joe's has hamburgers, from normal to extra large, fixed up in a variety of interesting ways. Then there are other sandwiches, including some pastrami that caught my eye (I'd better not tell my friend W. C. Turner, Jr., about the pastrami. He says it is the only thing that successfully tempts him to give up his dietary discipline.) And Joe's serves breakfast all day. I definitely want to go back for that.

One of the specials on the day I went was a pork chop sandwich. Now if I had not gone in planning to try the hot dog, that is what I would have eaten. I can't vouch for Joe's pork chops yet, but I will not let a pork chop special pass me by again when I eat at Joe's. There are some of the usual diner sides like fries, but I passed on all of that to make sure I could get through the big hot dog. It was not as daunting as I had imagined.

Joe is a hard-working, friendly guy. The other folks working at Joe's also aim to please, and they kept checking on me to make sure I had what I needed. Tea and sodas are refillable, so I had my diet soda refilled to wash it all down. Joe's got a score of 100 on its last health code inspection, and he has the good grade displayed on the front window for all to see. The place was obviously spotless. Joe did most of the work to restore the old building and install the fixtures himself. A few of the more technical jobs were contracted out. The black granite countertop he installed gave sitting at the counter a touch of class. It has the look and feel of a place that has been around for a long time. We all can hope it will be around a whole lot longer.

The place was kind of laid back while I was there. A few people were eating, and the staff was serving and doing some cleaning up from the lunch rush. Joe made himself a cheese steak sandwich while I was relaxing with my soda. We chatted about the work he had done to get this fine establishment operational.

The whole place livened up for a few minutes when someone brought up boxing. Joe got animated talking about a recent pre-fight weigh-in. Everyone had an opinion about who would likely win, where the best place to watch would be, or how these fighter compared to the ones from back in the day. Customers hung on every word when Joe told about conversations with famous fighters from the past. I suspect that kind of animated conversation is not unusual when the diner is busy.

I'll be in Durham for about six weeks this summer, teaching summer school and working on getting my house ready to sell. I'll be checking back in at Joe's Diner to sample the food and fellowship again. I hope you will do the same.

From the Jubilee File--Hon. Rt. Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:40:00 +0000

I have a file buried several layers down in my Documents file on the laptop. I have visited it often in the past two years to save or retrieve documents relating to community organizing work on the economy. I named it when I was working on a theological reflection on the economic crisis with a group of colleagues. Since so much of the biblical discussion of usury kept taking us back to the Jubilee practices of the Israelite society. So I called the file "Jubilee." A big part of my life and creative work for the past two years gets documented in the Jubilee file.

It's been a Jubilee year, and in the past few days I have been reminded to count my Jubilee blessings. Willie James Jennings, my younger brother, turned 50 last Friday. I was in Texas, fittingly grading papers, on the birthday of my brother in the professoriate. I lift an analytical reading report in your honor, my brother, to toast your Jubilee Day.

Willie has worked as hard as anyone has to be my friend. I take it that some of my professorial instincts and habits--absorption in private study, narrowly focused thinking, lack of awareness of the passing of time, occasional absent-mindedness (to put it lightly), aversion to being told what to do and when, being enamored by my own words--make it a bit harder to be my friend. I hope I have other qualities that compensate. But Willie thought it worth his time to keep a friendship going.

Although we met as students, it was after marching for graduation in 1994 that we stoked the fires of friendship. Willie and I shared Saturday morning coffee for many weeks while our daughters (my youngest and his oldest) hopped and skipped and leaped with joy in the little kiddie's dance class. We talked through some hard times and some good times. He put a black man's mirror up for me to look at my white man's life in a racialized world. I knew that something bigger than I could handle was happening to me. I had no idea that he was finding in me some hope for the church's deliverance from its demons of malformed desire and imagination.

I did not know this because as a scholar-friend, Willie kept his cards close to his chest. I understand this a little better now that I've seen him in action recently on a panel to discuss his book, The Christian Imagination. Some people in the gathering raised questions which begged for a polemical response. They either did not understand his arguments from the book, or they just wanted to see if they could get a rise out of him.

But Willie did not take the bait in his Jubilee year. He generously referred to the antagonistic comments as "matters of deep importance," or something to that effect. I was ready to pounce, but Willie gave his winning smile. It may be that he was simply being political, having learned such skills as a faculty dean for so many years. But I think it was also a commitment to listen and remain in a friendly conversation with people who are sure that he has gone off on a fool's errand.

This Jubilee year I was blessed to read The Christian Imagination with a class of Shaw students taking Systematic Theology. As with J. Kameron Carter's Race, in reading Willie's book with my students I continuously found ways that it could challenge my previous theology lectures and supplement the textbooks with which I have become so familiar. The Christian Imagination opened doors for me and for my students that made theology more alive.

So often when we take theology to be the gleaned gems of a long [tired] tradition, we find it hard to get a lever on how Christian faith, its leaders, its institutions, and its social productions could become so corrupted and contrary to the ways of the one from whom they take their name. Books like Willie's give us hope that theology does not have to be merely the crusty oozings from the cracked plaster walls lining the edifice of Euro-American World Domination. Can there be life within those walls of ageless stone? Could the academy have a heart of beating flesh? Or are we destined to have hearts of stone?

So it is that in this Jubilee year, Willie opened the floodgates which had held back a deep lake of theological reflection, fed by mountain streams and woodland springs, flowing through the dark places of middle passage, bottom lands of enforced toil, and the hopeful self-direction of a Second Great Migration. Along the way, a few droplets from the deeps had come my way, but the halls of Duke and Shaw, only thirty miles apart, are worlds away from one another. If there were open conversations in Durham, I was out of that loop.

Moreover, the fast scholarly pace of read, reduce, destroy that makes up hyperacademia is not on the menu at Shaw. I don't mean to be "hatin' on" Duke, but they really are caught up in the university-military-industrial complex, on a high-speed train toward producing the next world, and the next, and the one after that. Surely, Willie wisely let only a few droplets out so that when the flood arrived, it would be a season of reckoning. Folks on the train would have to stop and get off if they were going to have a word to say about it. He gave us far more in this Jubilee year than we could chew quickly, unless we want to choke on it.

So the back and forth clicking to the Jubilee folder was more than I realized. In his year of Jubilee, my friend ripped open a place in my heart through which the Holy Spirit may shine to make me a better man than I was, burn away the malformations of desire, and kindle an imagination of another way of being Christian, of being a community that longs to know one another as God's bountiful creation and election.

Happy Jubilee, Willie. Love that house full of women with all that you have in you. And save a minute for me so we can plot the revolution.

Improvised Egg Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:31:00 +0000

This is a funny story I posted on facebook. I thought some of you might like it.

We have a few plastic Easter eggs somewhere in a box, but I could not find them. So after lunch, I got 7 egg cartons (1.5 dozen each) full of golf balls my dad has found in his yard.

That makes 126 golf balls. I tossed them around the yard for an egg hunt for the young adult chirrens.

They groaned about having an egg hunt. Lydia even made the excuse that she had homework to do. What's up with that? I mean, they are only 19 to 24 years old. Surely they still like egg hunting.

Everly said it was because there was no candy reward. We made the strategic mistake of handing out all the candy at lunch time. So we came up with an other reward. That made sense. The egg hunts back in the day usually had a few eggs with money in them. We did a little math, grouping the factors 7 x 3 x 3 x 2 until we came up with a plan.

I announced a bounty of $1 for every three golf balls, and they flew out of the house to get their share of $42. I got just what I wanted: David, Naomi, Lydia, Megan, and Casie (Lydia's buddies from Baylor who live too far away to go home for the long weekend) giggling and running around the yard like old times.

We tallied up the collections: 19, 22, 23, 27, and 33. Of course, David has always taken on egg hunts as serious business, and he got the most. I think it's time for him to go professional. All but two golf balls got picked up. We rounded up to the nearest dollar, then scrounged together dollar bills, dollar coins, quarters, fives, and tens. Everybody got a nice payout.

For me and Everly, Hugh Delle and W. D., it was $42 very well spent. Quoting a lyric from Michael Card: "I would wander weary miles, and welcome ridicule, my child, to simply see the sunrise of your smile, to see the light behind your eyes, the happy thought that makes you fly."

The joy kept on giving. W.D. came in the next morning having found one of the stray golf balls, and he was as happy as could be.

These few minutes of joyful play are not all that we did on Easter. Earlier in the day, we worshiped at First Baptist Church, Austin, where I raised the eyebrows of the girls by singing loudly on all the harmony parts. Roger Paynter preached an excellent sermon, almost slipping into a hoop, about the way that the greeting from Jesus to the Marys was one word that changed everything. One good turn of phrase said, "He had us from 'Hello.'" Out front of the sanctuary, church members had brought and placed flowers on the Easter Cross.

Storm at Shaw University on April 16

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:33:00 +0000

It occurred to me that some of you may have heard about the tornadoes that swept across parts of the Midwest, South, and Southeast in the past two weeks, and particularly about a tornado that hit Raleigh and Shaw University's campus. I was present and teaching on campus during that storm, so I am posting the report I gave to my dean about the events of that afternoon.

Hello, Dr. Grady,

As you requested, I am sending you a narrative of the events of yesterday afternoon on the Shaw campus. Around 1:30 pm, a student spoke with me about the anticipated storm and its effect on our schedule for divinity classes. I told him my opinion, which was that we would be safer in the building than we would be out in our cars if a dangerous storm did hit. I went online to WRAL and checked the live radar reports on the storm. It was still in the Winston-Salem area at the time and not anticipated to arrive very soon.

After meeting with a student until about 2:30 pm, I went to meet my class in room 302 of Leonard Hall. I noted to the students that the attendance was low, and they responded that some students had stayed away because of the predicted storm. I repeated my opinion that we would be safer in the building tan out in our cars. We checked the radar, which I projected onto the wall. It showed storms which would arrive in our area in the next hour or so. Then we proceeded with class.

With occasional checks out the window, we proceeded with classes. Apparently, at least two other classes were meeting in the building. Sometime near 4:00 pm, we noticed the storm becoming much more intense outside. Within a brief period, several things happened to alert us. A student received a phone call from his wife, reporting that the TV weather report was placing a serious storm approaching downtown Raleigh. Another student whose laptop was online received a weather alert about severe weather approaching downtown Raleigh. And I noticed that the scene outside the window had become a blur with objects moving horizontally and none of the usual buildings, trees, parking lot, etc., visible.

I advised the students to come out of the classroom into the hallway between the classrooms. About that time the electricity went out in the building. I closed every classroom door so that there would be no direct line to a window from which flying glass might approach us. Some students asked whether we should move to the central staircase. Certainly, a lower floor would be better, but passage to the staircase would require moving into the hallway between the restrooms and the main building, and I thought passing through there would be unsafe. I urged students into the short hallway of the classroom wing, and we waited while the building shook violently for some time.

When the intense storm had passed, and light began to come from windows around the building again, we reentered the classroom. The outer window had bowed inward but not broken. Water and debris had entered the room, getting all over Michelle Outlaw's books, computer (a closed laptop that seemed to only get wet on the surface), papers, and bags. Otherwise, the room was in the same condition as before. There were no broken windows on the third floor. Cornelius Atkinson checked the restroom and told me that there was considerable water damage in the men's room. I later went to check and found that light was coming through from above the false ceiling and some ceiling tiles were broken or damaged. The women's room also had damaged ceiling tiles.

Students milled around, talked with one another, and made phone calls for a few minutes. We had a prayer of thanksgiving led by Horace Mason, and then we began making our way out. I looked around the building. In the Lewis Lecture Hall, at least one window had bowed under pressure sending water and debris into the room. Overall, no damage was visible there. I did not check the second floor, although other classes may have been meeting there. I checked all the Wiggins Library windows, and no water had come in through them. I saw Dr. Greaux also scouting the building before he left.

A number of students, Mrs. Goldston, and Dr. Brock continued to assist one another and check out conditions in the building and parking lot. Dr. Walker-Barnes, her husband, and her son were in their car as the storm approached, and they drove to the Leonard Building for shelter. Students went outside to find that their cars had been damaged by broken trees and flying debris. Claudia Cofield had a very large dent in the driver's side of her car from a fallen tree. Cornelius Anderson had a broken window. James Collins had the rear hatch of his vehicle pulled open by the storm. Other students had windows broken. My raggedy old 1989 Corolla was untouched.

A tree was blocking the entrance to the Leonard parking lot, so people had to drive over the curb and grass to exit to the road. Some of us attempted to pull the tree out of the way, but it was intent on staying where it was. Two oil tanks were pushed over by the wind. Between the two doors at the end of the Duplex building there is a tank painted silver. It was lying on its side. As best I could tell, it is not currently in use and likely had no fuel in it. Around the back of the Duplex another oil tank painted brick red had been knocked down and pulled around the AC unit and the back porch until it reached the limit of its fuel line going to the furnace. I sniffed around and smelled a faint whiff of oil when I got right next to the fuel line. I could see no obvious leak at any of the joints, valves, or pressure points.

I attempted to report the roof leak and the oil tank to security numerous times, but the power outages prevented my getting through to them. Sometime after 4:30 pm I left to return home. A few students were working together to tape up their car windows. Dr. Brock, showing his pastoral heart, was doing his best to take care of everyone that he could. Mrs. Goldston was also still in the building.

You spoke with me around 5:00 pm as I was driving home, and you took an oral report on these events. At that time I brought these two matters of the roof and oil tank to your attention. I have seen reports of the Fire Department inspecting the Shaw campus today, so these matters should be inventoried and resolved soon. It still may be advisable for you to forward this information to persons in charge on campus.

After seeing the damage to the cars outside, I was glad that I had advised students to stay in the building rather than risk driving through the storm. Of course, none of us could have predicted that Shaw's buildings would be right in the path of such an intense storm. Even so, all who were in the building were safe with no injuries.

Submitted respectfully,

Mike Broadway

Theology and Economy Update

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:29:00 +0000

For those of you who check in here now and then, you probably know that in 2009 a group of theological professors in North Carolina and South Carolina distributed a working paper, "Theological Reflection on the Economy." It was an early step in a series of actions and campaigns through which faith communities have organized around economic justice in the current economic crisis. Since that time, I have occasionally communicated with the group of professors about active campaigns, particularly the "10% Is Enough" work on usury pertaining to credit cards and other consumer interest. This week, I sent a note to update them on the range of actions and campaigns in which North Carolina United Power has continued to organize in the past year and a half. Here is an excerpt of the note I sent them.

Hey, folks,

A year and a half ago I was sending you lots of emails as we started work on a major organizing campaign dealing with economic justice issues. As theological scholars and servants of the church, we recognize our responsibilities to follow Jesus in the task of serving the poor, offering ministry of relief, building ecclesial structures to reshape economic life in our neighborhoods, and seeking justice in the face of economic powers. Thus, the theological reflection leading to the "Theological Reflection on the Economy" of 2009 was an exercise of our vocation which helped to provide grounding for faith-based people's movements which have gone many directions. The document has been studied in churches, in minister's conferences, in seminary classes, and far beyond North and South Carolina.

The paths of discipleship continue to open before us even now. Let me highlight some of the work linked to our efforts of 2009.

1. The "10% Is Enough" campaign in the Eastern US, London, and Berlin, has continued to bear fruit. We did not convince banks to voluntarily cap credit card interest rates, nor did with convince Congress to cap consumer interest rates. But we have built relationships with bank executives which are paying off in continued access and influence. Moreover, leaders of the "10% Is Enough" campaign have met with Dr. Elizabeth Warren to help shape the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Caps on interest rates continue to be a lively topic, in part because of the strong work of MetroIAF, of which we have been a part.

2. The "6% Is Enough" campaign to protect military families from predatory credit practices and foreclosure has been an overwhelming success. This is a NC United Power campaign, and we have worked with Wachovia/Wells Fargo and Bank of America. B of A held ongoing conversations with us for over a year. Last summer they agreed to everything we were asking for, extending benefits beyond the legal requirements for nine months of protection from rising interest rates. For several months, they were reluctant to admit publicly that they had changed their policies in response to negotiations with NCUP. This month, in a surprise turn, CEO Brian Moynihan publicly thanked NCUP and Gerald Taylor for our work in this crucial area. Our fellow signatory, Dan Rhodes, was present to meet personally with Moynihan, the first time he has met personally with members of our organization.

3. The effort to bring justice to the foreclosure crisis has taken off in recent months, in part because of the attention that NC Attorney General Roy Cooper has given to foreclosure fraud as President of the National Association of Attorneys General. For this work, NCUP (also going by the name IAF-SouthEast) has made partnership with People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), National People's Action (NPA-US), Alliance for a Just Society, and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), all faith-based community organizing groups, stretching our organizing from the west coast to the east coast, from the Rocky Mountains to the midwest to the south. We have met with key leaders, including Iowa AG Tom Miller and NC AG Roy Cooper, all the while keeping our efforts alive with Bank of America. One summary of our proposals, "The Homeowner's Bottom Line," has gained significant interest, and most of its proposals remain on the table in the nationwide AG's investigation and potential settlement with the major banks to improve the foreclosure process.

4. In conversation with a major funding organization (no funding yet) for theological education research, I have piloted a course at Shaw University Divinity School, "Pastoral Readiness for Economic Crises." We covered financial literacy and financial freedom for pastors as well as a form of Christian formation for churches and their communities. We looked at a wide range of theological sources on money, possessions, economics, and consumption from the earliest churches down to our times. We looked at tools for churches to evaluate their relationships with banks that may or may not be serving poor communities. We looked at models of community development, such as the Christian Community Development Association model of ecclesial politics of neighbor love. Finally, we looked at faith-based community organizing. With this trial run under our belt, I am hoping to work with some of you as partners in developing a proposal for adapting this sort of clergy training to other seminaries and to continuing education programs for current pastors.

5. The predatory practices of payday lenders and car-title lenders will not die without a fight. From Texas to North Carolina, from Mississippi to New Hampshire, strong lobbying efforts to open the door to astronomical interest rates on small dollar loans are alive and well in the state legislatures. I've testified before legislative committees in Texas, mentioning you all and our work. Just this past week, a bill was introduced in the NC legislature to reopen the door to usurious rates. When there is the chance of ripping people off legally, there will always be people trying to do it. Contact your legislator right away to stop the progress of HB 810. South Carolina, having passed important reforms in 2009, seems not to have any pending legislation at this time.

On two matters I am seeking your response to moving forward with this work.

First, . . . we are considering a clergy witness [at an upcoming event], with particular attention to dealing justly in the foreclosure crisis.

The text of Micah 2:1-11 is directly relevant to this matter (not to ignore Isaiah 5:8-17). The injustice of Samaria and Judah included coveting and seizing houses, ruining people financially (v2). The powerful put people out of their homes (v9). All the while they continue to practice the trappings of faith. Predictably, they demand that anyone who might preach judgment against their greed should stop saying that stuff (v6). The prophet says they only want a preacher who says, "Go on and get drunk. Live it up!" (v11), while they "rise up against my people as an enemy" (v8).

We hope we might gather 100 clergy and seminarians to speak a word of witness about the injustices of foreclosing on people whose financial security was destroyed by the greed, risks, and fraud of bankers, brokers, and insurers. . . . Details of when and where to meet will be forthcoming, depending on whether we believe we can gather an appropriate-sized group for witness.

Second, I will be trying to convene a meeting of some of you professors in late May. If you would be interested in meeting for three or four hours to evaluate the course I put together and to brainstorm about expanding clergy training for economic life, let me know. . . .

For more information, see

News coverage of recent NCUP action: here and here

Foreclosure Justice: Homeowner's Bottom Line

Broad Campaign for Financial Reforms: Showdown in America

Against Usury: 10% Is Enough

Military Families: 6% Is Enough

Periodic updates on "earth as it is in heaven"

Madder as the Day Went On!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Broadway) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:54:00 +0000

Last night, I fell asleep looking at a news story about the bombshell budget proposal whose poster boy is Rep. Ryan, R-Wisconsin. Then I woke up this morning thinking about it, so I finished reading the article. Then, as the day went on, I kept reading and kept getting more upset.

As has been the case with the Party of NO for the past few years, Social Security, Medicare, and the social safety net have been held up as bankrupting the country. There is no doubt that the cost of health care is at the heart of what is destroying the people of the US and the economy. But Medicare and Medicaid are not the cause. Medicare and Medicaid are expensive because the health care industry is operating with out-of-control greed, and the health care industry lobbyists are running the government.

Pres. Obama and his advisers offered ideas about reform, but before reform could get started the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, the hospital industry, and on and on had derailed real reform. What we got was, I think, a step in the right direction. But it did not do what was needed to slow the growth of health care costs. Its opponents also have no interest in slowing the growth of health care costs. They only want to make American safe for health care profits. So if health care is going to cost more and more, they want to make sure that taxpayers are not paying for the poor and elderly to get some. That might require the wealthy to pay their fare share of taxes, and the sinister dementia of current right-wing politics is that the wealthy deserve all that they have gotten, and the rest of us deserve to do without.

As you can tell, I have been getting madder as the day has gone on. I have tormented my facebook friends with post after post, which of course they have been free to ignore. So I decided I would collect them all into one blog post for those who want to think through this with me.

around 11 am

Thank you, government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Don't forget, corporations are people, too. In fact, they are special people who get a better deal than the rest of us lowly human people. Mr. Obama, Mr. Ryan, stop posturing and FIX THIS!

10 of the Biggest Corporate Tax Cheats in America

f you or I were running a small business and we kept one set of books showing how much money we were making and a second set for the IRS that painted a picture of an enterprise on the brink of bankruptcy, we'd end up behind bars.

But that's standard operating procedure for corporate America.

around 3 pm

Let's see: spinach, hamburger meat, peanut butter, chicken, tomatoes, and besides food there's lead paint on toys, radioactive compounds in toys. All in all, doesn't Ryan's budget make sense when it fires all the inspectors? Mr. Obama and Mr. Ryan--tell the truth, serve the people, do what is right, FIX THIS.

Congress: Support funding for FDA food safety

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, urged Congress to support funding for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)s food safety functions in advance of a House hearing on the FDA budget.

around 3:30 pm

I gave some effort but should have tried harder at my kids' high schools. Let's hear it for this Atlanta group's recruitment for non-violence.

American Friends Service Committee/Atlanta: SCAP Brings Non-Military Options to Stephenson High

Stephenson High school invited Student Career Alternatives Program to their first spring career fair, which took place today. This marked our second visit to the Stone Mountain high school. One striking thing that we again noticed today that the student body is over 99% African American, which seems to further confirm the fact that Atlanta Metro school have become resegregated over the past 20 years.

We were all impressed with the counseling staffs dedication to the students and their post high school careers. So many high school counselors cave into parents request to hold career fairs after school instead of during school. The fairs that take place during school hours are so much more accessible to students.

We had hundreds of students come talk to us through the course of the fair. Students explored ways to serve their country, travel the world, find adventure, get money for college, develop artistic skills, and other job skills training without out having to join the military.

around 3:30 pm

Recruiting for nonviolence

Before You Enlist! (2011 revision)

Straight talk from soldiers, veterans and their family members tells what is missing from the sales pitches presented by recruiters and the military's marketing efforts. Produced by Telequest, Inc with support from AFSC. See http://youth4peace.org/ for more info.

around 4 pm

Here is the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Bill to Massively Increase Senior Adult Medical Bankruptcy presented by Rep. Ryan.

Representative Ryan Proposes Medicare Plan Under Which Seniors Would Pay Most of Their Income for Health Care

That is what headlines would look like if the United States had an independent press. After all, this is one of the main take aways of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the plan proposed by Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee.

still around 4 pm

The budget debate is between those who would reign in the mountains of money going to pharmaceutical corporations, physicians, for-profit and "non-profit" hospitals, and private insurance companies, and those who would keep letting them rob the rest of us to pay bonuses to their top executives. Mr. Ryan and Mr. Obama, tell the truth, stop the "giant sucking sound" of money going from the people to the corporations.

The New York Times Thinks That Congress is Full of Philosophers | Beat the Press

The New York Times apparently missed the elections last fall. This is the only possible explanation for its assertion that the budget debate in Congress "is likely to spur an ideological showdown over the size of government and the role of entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare."

The people serving in Congress got their jobs because they are effective politicians. This means that they have the ability to appeal to powerful interest groups; there is no requirement that they have any background in, or adherence to, any political philosophy.

The debates over competing plans for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are most obviously about the distribution of income between the wealthy and the less wealthy.

a little later, around 4 pm

Look at the third graphic line from the bottom: this is the projected percentage of health care cost turned back upon the retiree on fixed income in Ryan's plan. Of course, if most of the seniors go bankrupt, then we can put them on Medicaid instead--oops, that will be gone, too. Sorry, Mom and Dad, but we're better off if you die. Ryan says this will save the taxpayers $400 billion over 10 years, which may or may not be accurate. Ten years of war in Afghanistan has cost $400 billion, and eight years in Iraq has cost $800 million. This year $119 billion is budgeted for Afghanistan alone. Ron Paul, where are you when we need you? Cut the cost of these wars and bring the troops home. That way we can keep medical care available for seniors. Cutting the cost of medical care is essential, but this is not the way to do it.

around 7:20 pm

Calculating the costs of killing--Cadillac Death Machines and Yugo Safety Nets

MLK, Jr., speaking about the war in Vietnam in 1967: "You may not know it my friend, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 dollars to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only $53.00 dollars for each person classified as poor. And, most of that $53.00 dollars goes to salaries for people who are not poor."

Available data on enemies killed per year in the past three years is sketchy, ranging from under 2000 (Army data in mid 2009) in a year to about 4000 (Wikileaks) to 5225 (Afghan government). At a cost of over $100 billion a year that would mean somewhere between $20 million and $50 million dollars to kill each enemy soldier. Grisly. Sickening. Expensive.

Who is benefiting from such an outsized cost for the blood and guts of war? Not the taxpayers. Not the soldiers. Not the seniors on Medicare or the malaria sufferers of Africa.

So there you have it. Mad. Sick and tired. The world is not the church. Too often, the church is not the church. The phrase "hell in a handbasket" comes to mind.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is despair, let me sow hope. Where there is darkness, let me sow light. Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.