For those who can gather at 7:30 tonight, we’ll have a service in the chapel with the imposition of ashes on our foreheads.

I will invite those present to consider some form of fasting during Lent, a practice that goes back to ancient Israel, and other religions, too.  The traditional practice is to abstain from food (not water, or, better, fruit juices) for a time.  That might mean not eating for 24 hours, if you can (check with your doctor if you have any questions).  It might mean skipping a meal one day a week.  Again, some medical conditions make a food fast not feasible.

A fast can also involve turning your TV off for a week, or not using your cell phone for a day, or any of a hundred other variations and ideas.

The point is to find a time and way to interrupt your habits and ask God to be present.  And, if it makes sense, to respond in some meaningful way.  You might donate the cost of lunch to GEDCO’s food pantry or to ACTC.  You might write a letter instead of calling.  You might read instead of TV.

Another possibility is a “carbon fast”—discovering ways to reduce your carbon footprint.  If that is of interest, you may sign up to receive a daily email from the 2012 Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast. 

Click here to learn more: http://macucc.org/pages/detail/2410 

Click here to sign up (http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=001qi8i2NccjZ4qnzUqCHK8T27YjgUkvQuw1TQN3L2drzDplziG5lvOSCvl3bmRZXC5wjMzomrZ4vK4nZ99R645HtNaylzDhPYN)  

If you sign up, beginning Ash Wednesday and throughout Lent, participants will receive a daily email with the day’s suggested carbon-reducing activity.  When possible, this will include a quantitative measure of the carbon reduction resulting from the activity.  Those who are willing then could share how it’s going during Fellowship on Sundays.  They may gather in the Parlor.

Finally, for those who would like a daily devotional, you can try Journey to the Cross: http://www.d365.org/journeytothecross/.  You can sign up to receive a daily email prompt at the very end of the devotional.

May your Lent be filled with the presence of God the Holy parent, God the Holy Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Call me a flaming liberal, but I believe fear, hysteria, and stereotypes are a really bad basis for public policy. I take my cue from Jesus.

Public policy in Jesus’ day required lepers, the demon-possessed (aka epileptics, and those with various mental illnesses) to be isolated from “regular” people, “whole” people, “normal” people. It was against the law to touch lepers. It was against the law to touch all kinds of things—dead bodies, mildew, women if you were male. Yet Jesus touched such people (I admit, there’s nothing in the Bible to suggest Jesus ever touched mildew). He crossed the boundaries that kept “abnormal” people, foreign people, and other undesirables away from “good” people.

He did so in order to heal, to set right what was wrong. The result of that healing was more than personal. It was social, religious, and political. It allowed the excluded to rejoin their families, their villages, their synagogues… their lives.

Why? Because he understood the prime directives from God were mercy and justice. Not either one or the other. Both.

So I am dismayed at the fear and hysteria that have popped up around the anti-discrimination policy that would protect transgendered people in public—even in bathrooms. If you need an overview, the Baltimore Sun ran an article on February 21 (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-02-19/news/bs-md-co-transgender-discrimination-20120219_1_chrissy-lee-polis-transgender-people-transgender-woman) summarizing the issue.

It is simply silly, if not delusional, to imagine that protecting peoples’ rights to fair treatment will somehow result in targeted violence against women and rampant moral turpitude. If you want moral decay, turn on your TV.

Now if you want someone to explain how someone becomes transgendered, you’ll have to ask one. I don’t begin to get it. The fact is I don’t understand how I knew I’m heterosexual. I just knew.

More than that, I can’t really explain how I know God loves me. I just know. Come to think of it, there’s no rational reason God would want anything to do with any of us. And yet…

“And yet.…” There it is—the harbinger of grace. And yet… God does love me… and you… and every person on the planet. As we are, and as we can become. Jesus came to make that clear. Indeed he died to try to show us the folly of hate and fear. He knew we can do better.

Surely he is right.

Grace and peace, Jamie

It’s here if you’d like to check it out: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol6/7Aug1959MyCalltotheMinistry.pdf

It’s not especially brilliant or striking. In fact it’s very similar to most people I’ve ever heard talk about their sense of call. No bolts of lightning or burning bushes. Just listening, sensing, listening.

Dr. King speaks about his inner sense of call, mentions being called to his first congregation, and refers to seminary, an allusion to the need to cultivate his gifts for ministry, intellectual and otherwise.

In one short paragraph he touches on all three elements of a specific call to serve in some way. The inner sense of being nudged or drawn in some direction; the public affirmation of some community; and the presence (and need for cultivation) of specific gifts fit for that particular call.

The only aspect he doesn’t mention directly is his baptism. Baptism is foundational, for in it Christians receive the call to follow Jesus. He implies in this statement that the call to follow Jesus that came with baptism means for him that only a vocation in which he could serve both God and people would be fitting for him. He discerned that ministry, not medicine or law, was that vocation.

So how did he figure that out? Listening–in prayer, in conversation with other people, in reading scripture. Trying things out–taking courses to prepare for medicine and law, and of course ministry. It wasn’t not magic, and it wasn’t sudden.

Maybe that’s how heroes get made. They listen to the pain of the world, to the cries of people. They see the needs spreading before them. They prepare themselves. And when the call comes–through personal conviction and public affirmation–they act.

What do you hear going on around you today?

The Carter Center, the U.N., the Catholic Church, and numerous other observers in DRC all raise serious questions about the election. Truckloads of bags of ballots dumped in the rain; polling places burned; people shot going to the polls in some places. Most seriously “official” counts that show over 100% turnout in some Kabila strongholds, with ballots from some 2,000 polling stations in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi’s base, missing! The election “lacked credibility” indeed!

Simply put, if these neutral observers are correct, the election of Joseph Kabila is not legitimate. Heck, if they’re only 1/3 correct, the election should be restaged.

Part of the reason Western governments are willing to tolerate this “election” is the perception that his primary opposition, Etienne Tshisekedi, is, to quote Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times, a “rabble-rouser.”

Tshisekedi, to be sure, is not all sweetness and light. He can be erratic, with a mercurial temper. He’s demanding and tough. You might be, too, if you had spent 30 or more years struggling for free, fair, transparent, and democratic elections. And for your efforts every president since Mobutu, including the current incumbent, has harassed, beaten, falsely detained, and otherwise intimidated both Tshisekedi’s supporters, and the man himself.

At the very least Western governments should insist that the Kabila Parliament repeal the law he pushed through this year which declared that a simple plurality of votes, not a majority, is enough to win an election. It’s pretty clear that in a run-off between Kabila and Tshisekedi, there is little question that Tshisekedi would win. Maybe that’s why few voices in opposition got any attention at all in Western foreign offices.

Pray for Congo. And call your congressional representatives.

The group was in the United States at the invitation of the U.S. State Department, sponsored by the Civilizations Exchange & Cooperation Foundation, President, Imam Mohamad Bashar Arafat. The CECF is headquartered in Baltimore.

Their purpose in the U.S. was to gain exposure to religious and cultural pluralism, to explore interfaith initiatives, to examine religious freedom., and to observe the process of democracy, especially as it involves Muslims in America.

They all teach at Al Azhar University in Cairo in various departments.  For brief bio’s, click here.

Some of the points made were that they understand mercy to be the primary attribute of Allah, which entails behaving with mercy toward others, including non-Muslims. They see education as key to the continued development of Egypt and the Middle East.

In the second hour a panel of local Christians joined Imam Arafat in a brief discussion of “A Common Word,” a statement by over 130 Muslim scholars and leaders in 2007.

During questions and answers after the presentations, among other topics, the Egyptian scholars said that their view is that current treaty with Israel ought to be honored, provided that Israel honors it.

The congregation of Brown Memorial Woodbrook Presbyterian Church was delighted to host the evening. About 75 people attended.

I know it’s six weeks since July 4.  Nonetheless I want to offer some thoughts around the topic of our American ideals.

When I lived in France for a year, a friend and I hitchhiked to Paris once. On the freeway somewhere, the police stopped us. They asked for passports. I presented mine first. They assumed I and my friend (who was French) spoke no French. So they just waved us off the highway. An American passport in France turned out to be a convenience.
When I lived in Zaire (now Congo) for a year, some friends invited me on a picnic on an island in the Zaire River. We were all American. We didn’t realize that Zairian law required us to be off the island by sunset. It was a restricted area, to try to control smuggling.

When we sauntered across the bridge after dark back to the shore, a squad of soldiers met us. Luckily the driver of my car spoke some Kituba. So did the officer, who demanded to know what we were up to. We told him. He finally got disgusted, pointed to an unlit shack off in the woods, and told us he would put us in there and hold us if we didn’t tell the truth. So we palavered for an hour or two. It turned out they just wanted to shake us down for whatever food we had left, and some money. They got the food and let us go.

On the drive back into town, we all admitted that the prospect of being held incommunicado was sobering. But we also realized that there were people who knew where we were, and if we didn’t show up, they would ask questions. And if push came to shove, we had American passports. Somebody at the American embassy would come for us if it came to that. In that case an American passport was a God-send.

It can be hard to be a foreigner—even if you have papers.

The truth is there are all kinds of places in the world where the niceties of any passport make little difference. People get killed or jailed or run out of their homes without any legalities at all.

It is an incredible blessing to live in a country of law. It is also a blessing to be able to receive people from places where law is held in less esteem.

I believe that when we are at our best in this country, we do our best to welcome strangers, to make them feel accepted. That among other reasons is why I am so dismayed by the campaign to overturn the recent Dream Act to allow the children of illegal immigrants who qualify to pay in-state tuition at Maryland colleges. The effort to repeal appeals to our fears, resentments, and too often, gross misinformation.

Part of our own story as Christians is having ancestors who were slaves, foreigners, undocumented aliens in Egypt. Somehow we forget that piece of who we are. It’s time to remember.

Grace and peace,  Jamie

In short order, three of my primary take-aways are…

• The politics in Israel are so incredibly complex, it is hard to imagine how anything gets done, much less a peace agreement with the Palestinians. And we did not have the opportunity to explore the intricacies on the Palestinian side.
• A number of corollaries flow. Any notions of how to resolve the conflict must come from the two parties. That implies, as Rabbi Ron Shulman observed at a public presentation on Dec. 2, we who do not live there should learn to hold our own opinions lightly.
• A key part of the issue is the differing narratives, Palestinian and Israeli, both of which seem to me to trade in being seen as victims. As soon as any hard questions get asked of either side, the reflexive response is too often to retreat to “my narrative.” This reality means that jumping to endorse the narrative of one side is going to make it that much more difficult to have meaningful dialogue with the other side. See Rabbi Shulman above. The challenge for both parties is to begin to listen to the other side, to hear their poetry, as one speaker said.
• Dr. Shlomo Avineri and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the last two people we met, were in some ways the least encouraging, but at the same time were the most hopeful. Now that I think about it, Rabbi Michael Melchior, the very first person we met, said some similar things. I heard them saying in effect that no grand deal where everyone sits down and signs off on a deal, and says, “That’s that,” is likely at this stage.

What is possible are incremental changes, and decisions to change behaviors, and in some cases perhaps even to change particular policies. So, for example, PM Fayyad talked about his efforts to create a government of accountability, transparency, and consistency (so, e.g., foreign aid actually gets to its intended target, banks make loans openly and fairly, courts function according to law), and a credible and trained security force which is clear about its mission–to protect the population.

From Fayyad and from others (maybe it was Col. Marom (ret.), former commander of the Lebanese border region) we heard that cooperation between the Israeli army and Palestinian army/police is better now than it has been in years.

It was perhaps a minor point, but we all laughed about having our bus escorted to the meeting wtih Mr. Fayyad by two Palestinian police in a vehicle with siren blaring and blue lights flashing. First time any of us had ever been on the giving end of blocking traffic. But consider the irony: a group including Jews were protected by Palestinian police. It’s hard to imagine that happening during the first or second intifadas.

Well, that’s it for now. Read the blog http://www.icjs.org/mciblog/.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men* are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That sentence is the heart of the argument Mr. Jefferson lays out in the founding document of this country, the Declaration of Independence. It is this document whose ratification we celebrate this Sunday.

Now whether Mr. Jefferson was Christian in any orthodox sense is highly debatable. Most historians at my alma mater, the university he founded in Virginia, describe him as a deist. That is, he believed in a God who created the universe, set it in motion, and then sat back, letting things work out as they would. He had a profound problem with the notion that Jesus was God’s Son, or that God intervened in human history in any meaningful way.

So on one hand it is not surprising that he locates his notion of rights in creation, with no hint of redemption. The Creator in his view puts our “unalienable rights” into place, and then leaves humans to work out what they mean in practical terms.

On the other hand it is surprising that he locates his notion of rights in creation. It leaves open the very real possibility that people who were and are more orthodox in their Christian beliefs would understand these rights as a matter of Christian faith, gifts of the Creator we know in Christ.

That is to say, Christians locate our rights not simply in creation, but in God’s revelation through the giving of the law at Sinai, through the history of God’s acts with Israel, through the prophets, and through Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

What that does, in brief, is connect the freedom from sin and death in Jesus Christ, with the political freedom Mr. Jefferson envisions in this document.

Paul in his letter to the Galatians does not connect freedom from the law (5:1) explicitly with political or social “freedom” as such. But he does in 3: 28 understand the thrust of grace to be in the direction of equality for those from different religious and cultural backgrounds, for those with different social and economic situations, and between men and women. It’s not a huge leap to see that “freedom in Christ” can carry political freight as well.

So, if you want a church free from politics, you have to deny any connection between the Mr. Jefferson’s Creator and the God of the Bible.

You may already have guessed: I affirm the connection, and thank God for it, as I thank God for the awesome privilege of living in this grand experiment in the equality of all people, made concrete in their “unalienable rights,” which experiment we call the United States of America.

*people

We commit to living out God’s love through:

Compassion
Showing God’s love without judgment by
· Engaging with others
· Standing with others
· Seeking the best for others
· Being changed by the experience

Learning

Living / Wondering / Discovering / Applying God’s Word

A cycle that centers on God’s word and begins in daily living.

Inclusion
Opening
· Hearts to welcome
· Minds to listen
· Voices to speak and be heard
Diversity
· Of people
· Of ideas
· Of participation
Faith
Belief and trust in God – the bedrock of understanding and experience on which we stand.

Core Values
1/17/2009

(text in parentheses has not been agreed by all. It represents J. Dale’s understanding of what he heard.)

We (commit to?) live out God’s love by:

Learning
(A cycle that centers on God’s word and begins in daily living, encounters questions and issues that cause us to wonder, motivates us to discover and learn more about those questions, and leads us to apply them to our lives.)

God’s Word
Living Applying Wondering Discovering

Compassion
Showing God’s love without judgment by
· Engaging with others
· Standing with others
· Seeking the best for others
· Being changed by the experience

Inclusive (sic)
Opening
· Hearts to welcome
· Minds to listen
· Voices to speak and be heard
Diversity
· Of people
· Of ideas
· Of participation

Faith
Belief and trust in God – the bedrock of understanding and experience on which we stand