Communion does matter.The Covenant is not the same as Communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury released his Advent Letter today and in it he extols the wonderful work he and others are doing in the Anglican Communion. (It is a public letter but it directed to the Primates and Moderators of the Anglican Communion.) He talks about the Anglican Communion as "a gift" and is dismayed that some see the Anglican Communion as "a problem." He insists that the Anglican Communion needs the Anglican Covenant now more than ever.

ACNS:

(Dr. Williams writes:) "This is why the Communion matters – why it matters for a bishop in Jerusalem facing the withdrawal of a residency permit...a congregation in Nigeria facing more interreligious violence, an island in the Pacific facing inundation because of climate change, an urban community in Britain wondering how to respond to rising social disorder as poverty and unemployment increase. The Communion is a gift not a problem to all such people and many more. Only in such a mutually supportive family, glorifying and praising God in Christ together, can we truly make known the one Christ."

The Archbishop's letter acknowledged the "numerous tensions" in the Communion, but cautioned Communion members never to say "I have no need of you" to anyone seeking to serve Jesus Christ. He also used the letter to appeal for "more careful and dispassionate discussion" on such issues as the powers of Primates' Meetings as well calling for "a sustained willingness on the part of all Provinces to understand the different ways in which each local part of the Anglican family organizes its life."

Dr Williams also commended the Anglican Communion Covenant "as strongly as I can" stressing that it would neither change the structure of the Communion nor give "some sort of absolute power of ‘excommunication’ to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body."

"It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled," he said. "It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function."

He said the fact that the moratoria were being "increasingly ignored" was deepening mistrust "which is bad for our mission together as Anglicans, and alongside other Christians as well. The question remains: if the moratoria are ignored and the Covenant suspected, what are the means by which we maintain some theological coherence as a Communion and some personal respect and understanding as a fellowship of people seeking to serve Christ?"

The Archbishop is right in telling us that Communion is important. It is essential that Anglicans around the world work together on these and other important questions. We need to do more to encourage common mission and the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we all share.

Communion is a gift. The problem is not the Communion. The problem is the Covenant.

To make the argument, Dr. Williams begs the question: since he did all the visits and all these events happened without the Covenant in place, then is it possible to be a Communion without the Covenant? Would these connections cease if the Covenant were to not pass? Would Anglicans stop working together or would our voice be diluted in any way without the Covenant in place?

Put another way, would the voice of Anglicanism be any stronger in Zimbabwe and would it influence Mugabe any more if they had the Covenant in their back pockets? Would having the Covenant stop Polynesian islands from being any more submerged and would the urban parish be any more relevant to it's neighborhood with a fully empowered Anglican Covenant?

Once more he talks about how we must not focus on the things that divide us, while extolling a document that defines itself in terms of division, rather than reconciliation. He says we need this to make room for everyone. Dr. Williams asks for an alternative to the mechanisms outlined in Part IV. He says that no one has offered an alternative. While this point is in itself debatable, allow me instead to make a my own humble suggestion:

Instead of spending time (as Section Four posits) on throwing each other out when we disagree, how about building a communion that encourages dialogue and reconciliation?

Instead of focusing on eliminating conflict by making sure that no innovation can happen without the approval of the most conservative member of the Anglican Communion, how about creating a structure and processes that encourage members of Churches who see the implications of the Gospel differently to come together, listen to one another, pray together, share experiences of mission together, and break Eucharistic bread together?

The Covenant diminishes the Communion because it assumes that Communion only happens when we agree. The truth is that Communion is happening because we share Christ. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is made possible by death and resurrection of Christ. Communion is because we share the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism. A Covenant that does not help us do the hard work of living that out--that helps us pray together--despite our disagreements is not a Covenant worth having.

The Covenant certainly cannot exist without the Anglican Communion, but can the Anglican Communion exist without the Covenant? The answer is that it already does.

An Advent Primer

Confessions of a guilty Christian bystander

Ron Dreher is an American Tory...that is to say he is a conservative in a very different mold that the Tea Party or the "pro-business at all costs" approach of the self-styled Objectivists. He wrote an essay in the American Conservative in which he reflects on the Occupy Wall Street movement and the implications of the unbridled, unregulated wealth of the financial system we now inhabit.

Much of the response to OWS has been either abject horror or undying adoration. Two summers ago before the Tea Party was bought, packaged and re-purposed a corporate-owned re-branding of the GOP at a frat party, I was on the "abject horror" side of their movement. That's why this essay came to me a kind of tonic. In it Dreher offers a third way of approaching the discussion of Occupy Wall Street...and, as I said, perhaps as an overly late corrective to the original Tea Party movement.

After observing an "Occupy Easton" demonstration up close yesterday, I found myself struck by both the anger and the naivete of the participants.

Most of all I was taken by the cozy libertarianism of the group that cut across political lines. There were young second amendment fundamentalists holding signs right along side modern day punks, grown up hippies and guys who went to college on the original GI Bill. The place they picked was a park in downtown Easton that was close to a publicly financed playground for their children. Everyone was angry at Wall Street and Government, those amorphous entities, and well they should be. But very few were thinking about how their anger was shaped by the very values that drove the financial crisis we are now in.

Their anger at Wall Street was that they were not receiving their fair share of the pie. Their anger at Government was an oscillation between not checking the greed of the Street and fear that the Government will take more of "what's mine."

Now Dreher and I are not on the same page ideologically. Where he says that is not possible to be a Christian and a communist or a fascist, I would add that one cannot be a Christian and an (so-called) objectivist. And where he sees the "the most natural political orientation for a serious small-o orthodox Christian is on the Right", I would say that the most natural orientation for a serious small-o orthodox Christian is on the Left. I also think that Dreher pulls his punch when he says: "I do believe it’s vulgar and borderline blasphemous for a political party to claim Christ." There is nothing borderline about the vulgarity. When a political party claims Christ as their own, it is blasphemy. But I quibble over details.

Here are snippets. It is worth reading the whole essay. Especially the story of the epiphany that his financial industry friend experienced.

...I don’t believe that God has a political plan. One can be a good Christian as a socialist. One can be a good Christian as a monarchist. One can be a good Christian as a Republican or a Democrat. One almost certainly cannot be a good Christian as, say, a Nazi or a Communist, because what those political theories require one to believe is antithetical to Christian truth. My point is simply that it’s not easy to discern a particular political program from the Gospels, only general principles. In most cases, there will probably be tension between our political party and our faith convictions. There ought to be. Jesus said that His kingdom was not of this world. As soon as we think we can use politics to create heaven on earth, we lay the groundwork for the corruption of faith, and far worse. Personally, I believe that in this time and place, the most natural political orientation for a serious small-o orthodox Christian is on the Right, but I do believe it’s vulgar and borderline blasphemous for a political party to claim Christ.

And yet we cannot be serious about our faith and act as if it had no political implications. No one can take the Bible seriously and believe that the truths it teaches have nothing at all to do with how we order our common life. There is the matter of human dignity, and justice. The Bible has much to say about the poor — and what it has to say about the rich is not very complimentary, to put it mildly. I believe the free market, for all its flaws, is the economic system that is not only the fairest, but is also the economic system that best conforms to our human dignity. But the market must be seen not as an end, but as a means to an end....

...By this standard, I cannot see how a system that allows so many people who work in finance to grow so spectacularly rich while so many others struggle to get by can be reconciled with Christian truth. But honestly, that is the least of my concerns about Wall Street now (by “Wall Street,” I mean the financial sector in general). What I find far more worrying is the power these men have to control by their actions the fate of the nation. No, I’m not talking about conspiratorial nonsense. I’m talking about the fact that because our political system has given them so much freedom to do what they want to do, our fates are tied to theirs in ways that are incredibly unjust and harmful to the common good. We all know about “too big to fail.” Ever thought about what that means? It means that TBTF institutions cannot be allowed to be responsible for their actions, because if they fail, they take all of us down with them. Wall Street, broadly speaking, has immense power, but no responsibility. Alessandro Rastani may or may not have been real, but he’s telling the truth about global finance: these men don’t care about their countrymen, they only care about making money for themselves and their clients. That is their prime directive....

...It is hard for many American Christians, especially we conservatives, to think of Christian morality as applicable to money. Personal sins — lust, immorality, the usual — we understand. But we shy away from thinking in a Christian way about money, and the way our society is structured economically. I wonder: Do we Christians not fear a reckoning in all this...?

...And so we come to the Occupy Wall Street movement. I have not been impressed by the things I’ve seen and read about them. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt very much that I would be at home with that crowd. Some of the quotes I’ve read from those people are obnoxious and offensive. Many more are just foolish. I don’t look to OWS for any relief, except comic.

But I have to say, I am impressed by this line from Almond’s piece: “They want the traders who work on Wall Street to face the human consequences of their machinations.” Maybe the way they’re calling Wall Street out is silly, pointless, and foolish in a thousand ways. But at least they are there. Where are the Christians? Where are we conservative Christians, who claim to really believe what Scripture says, and look down on liberal Christians for picking and choosing what they want to believe on sexual morality to suit their desires? Do we not have a blind spot when it comes to wealth? Why does the immense power Wall Street wields over the fate of the nation because of its wealth not trouble us enough to bear public witness? Why does it not trouble us much at all? It troubles me, but I don’t know what to do about it. This won’t do.

In that sense, I’ll give Occupy Wall Street its due, as a guilty Christian bystander. There’s a tale about Billy Graham, possibly apocryphal, in which he met a stuffy Anglican prelate on one of his first crusades in England. The story goes that the bishop sniffed to Graham, “Sir, I must say that I do not approve of the evangelism you do.” Graham supposedly replied, “Sir, I prefer the evangelism I do to the evangelism that you do not do.” Quite.

WYSIWYG

The first computer I ever owned was a Macintosh 128k. I saw the famous commercial at the Super Bowl and ran right out and bought one. Later on, I got another...the one pictured here. A 512k which I souped up. I got a couple of hard drives as big as small phone books and was doing serious writing and graphics work. These two machines got my wife through grad school at Columbia and me through CPE at Hartford Hospital and post grad work at Andover-Newton. Consider that I finished seminary in 1979 with my wife using an IBM correcting Selectric II and me using the mighty Royal from World War II...this was quite a change.

Both my kids used these machines. They played games, drew pictures, did their homework on them. We got a program that had a very rudimentary voice synthesizer...it could read simple stories. This, along with the first video game systems of the day, I think got them thinking about the world differently that I did at their age.

I got out of the Mac world somewhere around System 9, which was a dog, but kept those first two machines.

My first new Apple product...after more than ten years...was an iPod that I got for Father's Day one year. And a few months ago I was given an iPad2.

I have to say that the iPad has probably changed my computing habits almost as much that first Macintosh did 27 years ago.

I suppose that most us of learned of Steve Jobs' death the same way: by text, twitter, or FB post. The first thing I thought about was that old Macintosh and the new iPad. I am thankful for the imagination that took us into a new way of connecting our world. Our world is profoundly different because of all that imagination unleashed.

The real sign of Jobs' impact is apparent in what that picture does not show: I took the picture with an Android phone, wrote this post on a PC. The point of all this imagination is not the product but the vision of creativity and connectivity made accessible to the ordinary person. This changed the world as much as the printing press did in its day.

Read Nick Knisely's reflection here.

Church or jail?

Watch out if you go to Bay Minette, Alabama, and are caught doing some sort of minor crime because you will be given a choice. Church or jail.

According to WKRG-TV, starting this week authorities will give non-violent offenders in that community a new choice: Go to jail, or go to church every Sunday for a year. It’s called Operation Restore Our Community and fifty-six churches have signed on.

If offenders select church, they will be allowed to pick the place of worship but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department.

If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender's case will be dismissed.

Bay Minette Police Chief Mike Rowland says the program could change the lives of people heading down the wrong path.

We’ll see if this idea works. Church or jail? Which would you choose? Personally, I’d have to ask which church. Jail might be preferable.

Jesus tells a story about two sons who are asked by their father to go out into vineyards to work. The first son is the one who "I will not go," but later changes his mind and goes. The second son is the one who says he will go but does not go. He then turns to his critics and asks which one of the two does the will of the father? They of course say that the first son, in the end, does the will of the father. In their answer, the super-religious show that what is really important is what a faithful person does that’s important, not just what they say.

A bishop and teacher of the early church named Chrysostom wrote that the Christian is like the son who at any hour turns and chooses to do the will of the father; to go out into the vineyard and work. The Christian is the son who is the missionary.

But I think there is a deeper message that Jesus is offering. While it is certainly true that God wants us to go out into the world—the vineyard—and do God’s work…that is, to do mission… there is something else going on here.

The Good News is that it is never too late to follow Jesus and to do God’s work in the vineyard. God will embrace the son who turns and chooses in the end, no matter what they have been doing, to become a member of the community of faith.

Today’s Gospel story only appears in Matthew, and it reminds me of another one of Jesus’ stories, the one about the prodigal son that is only in the Gospel of Luke. That son squandered everything and came home expecting to grovel and scrape as a slave but instead is welcomed with open arms. Today, the son in Matthew’s Gospel who says “no” but then turns around choosing to do “yes.” He is a prodigal, too. He comes to his senses. He does the work he was asked to do. In both Gospels, a son turns around. In both cases, repentance—turning around—shows that the life of faith is as much an act of the will as is act of the heart. Living faithfully is depends on the deliberate choice to live in concert with God—especially when we don’t “feel like it.” Faith it turns out is both an act of the heart and an act of the will. And that means that we choose not only to believe but we choose how to act on those beliefs. Before long, we learn that our faith is not faith until we choose to act faithfully.

That’s something the Alabama police chief and judge may, in their good intention, may have missed. Or maybe it’s what they hope for. But try as we might, you can’t force people to believe—and the vineyard is not just for sitting and listening to the farmer talk about grapes. They’ve solved the “will” problem—church or jail—but the “heart” and the “action” part--what people do with their belief—they can’t control that. And that makes all the difference.

I wonder about the 56 churches that signed on this program. I wonder if they are ready for the local check-kiter, petty thief, or the chronic “drunk and disorderly” to actually be sitting in their pews. Because, I don’t know about you but I notice that sometimes we get nervous when someone who once said “no” and who now says “yes” to God and is trying to walk a new way comes and sits among us. We are not sure if we can believe it and we have a hard time forgetting that original “no.” And how we act towards people who are new to church…let alone faith…makes all the difference in that person’s success in living out a new-found, but hard-won, faith.

Have you ever noticed that there are two doors in many churches—ours included—a front door and a back door? Both are painted red…for welcome…which is good. And many of us come in the back door because it’s near the parking lot. But there are some people—actually quite a few—who come through those back entrances all the time who would never think of coming in the front doors…the nice carved ones that lead to this sanctuary. They are people who come to the four twelve-step groups that now meet here every week or who eat in the soup kitchen. They are people, especially in the AA groups, who are attempting one step at a time to turn their lives around. Who are attempting after a life of saying “no” to finally say “yes” to God. And yet… sometimes we “front door” Christians have a hard time accepting that those people who have come in another way really belong with “us.” Which makes sense, because they are not so sure either they are worthy to sit in here with us.

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that we are all of us sent into the same vineyard. Sooner or later, we all have to come to terms with the fact that all of us in word or deed have said “no” to God somewhere along the way, and all of us have had to come to our senses and choose to follow him anyway. When you get right down to it, our stories are not so different after all.

Don’t be shocked by this: everyone sins. That’s because we are human. We promise that we will strive to live faithfully and we know that we will fail. We will say “yes” and do “no” At the same time, in our baptismal covenant we say that "when" we sin we will return—we will say “no” and then do “yes.” Christians more than anyone know (or should) that we are not perfect. At the same time, we Christians rejoice when the sons and daughters of God who have led life unconscious of God, or who have led lives saying "no" turn and join the other workers in God’s vineyard. It should not take a local judge to tell us this, but we, the church, exist for those who do not yet belong. We exist so that the vineyard is there ready for the latecomer and for the newcomer to join in God’s gracious harvest.

I smell a gift subscription....

h/t "Friends of Jake"

A table turning experience

Thirty-five years ago today, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed the legislation that made possible the ordination of women to the diaconate, the priesthood and the episcopacy.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a family who are church shopping. It was a tables-turning experience. Here's why:

This husband and wife first came to Trinity while I was on vacation. They are both Roman Catholics who have reached their tipping point with the church of their birth. They are distressed about the decade-long scandals--in particular, the continued inability of the hierarchy to "own up" (as they put it) to their responsibility in the continuing problem. They spoke of the inherent sexism within that polity. These were former RCIA instructors who realized they could no longer tow the party line nor continue to raise their children there. They had been to some Lutheran churches, but felt that the Episcopal Church might be more their cup o' tea..

They really liked Trinity. They started visiting during my vacation. They came once or twice after I came back. Then they stopped. I happened to call them to invite them to our parish picnic and this was when the hemming and hawing began.

You see, when I was away, my supply clergy were all women. The couple realized that I would be the only priest for the bulk of the year. They didn't want to offend me, but after some patient coaxing they finally fessed up that one of the things that they want to demonstrate to their daughters and son is that women can serve at the altar, that priesthood is not reserved for men alone and that in the baptized life men are not privileged over women. They wanted to show their children a church where priests could be moms as well as "Fathers." So they were looking for a church with at least one woman priest on staff.

Ah, I said, I understand.

When I was a child, my parents--having grown up in the South during the Jim Crow era--wanted my brother and me to experience a church where racial integration was the norm and not a novelty. We lived in an all-white suburb that was fighting any hint of integration. They did not want to relive those battles. So they changed churches. (Eventually, we'd change towns, too.) To do that, we drove past two or three suburban Episcopal churches to get to my home parish in the city. So I appreciate what these parents are trying to do.

Looking at their address, I suggested three other parishes in the area which are multiple staff parishes with at least member of the clergy staff is a woman...one of these is a parish where all the full-time paid clergy are female. I told them that there are many parishes in the diocese where the only priest is a woman, some within driving distance. If their desire was to convey to their children a church where it is normal for women and men to serve together as equals, they had lots of choices. I'm curious if any these places become their new church home.

So, there it is. I have now had the experience of a family choosing not to come to my church based, at least in part, on my gender. But there is a difference: They didn't hiss at me, spit at me, claw my hands during communion, or tell me that my orders weren't real--as my sister clergy experienced in my seminary days and beyond. But the tables were indeed turned, and it was a blessing.

A North Korean cruise ship.

I am trying to imagine what a trip on a North Korean cruise ship would be like.

Everyone sleeps in a giant hold, except the captain, who gets his own room. And there is not enough food to go around, except for the captain and the armed marines who are there instead of the ship's stewards. Since the ship is also a giant freighter, there is a lot of room for group calisthenics. If you don't like it, there is an alternative: down in the bunkers where you may get a good cardiovascular workout shoveling coal. And when the cruise ship makes a port of call, no one can get off or even look outside, except the captain, who will come back and tell everyone what he saw.

Everyone will be grateful.

How many Muslims will have to say "I'm sorry" before we will forgive?

Proper 19A- Matthew 18:21-35

Today on the tenth anniversary of the terrible attacks in New York, Shankesville, and Arlington, there will be many virtuous words spoken at ceremonies all around the country. There will be words like honor, courage, sacrifice, duty, community, and, yes, remembrance and hope. But it takes Jesus to use the word many dare not—or cannot—say: forgiveness.

Leave it to Jesus—through a strange coincidence of lectionary, calendar and culture—to say the unmentionable word. He reminds us on this most solemn day that the heart of the Christian faith, the whole purpose of God’s redeeming work—God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ and his ministry, suffering, death and resurrection—is forgiveness.

But how can we forgive? Can we forgive 9/11 anymore than our parents and grandparents could forgive Pearl Harbor? Maybe not but do you remember who were some of the first people to come to New York within weeks of the attacks and offer a word of condolence to people devastated by terror and destruction? Elderly residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who survived the explosion of atomic bombs over their cities 56 years before, that’s who. They came to the City in later in the fall of 2001 to meet groups of survivors and loved ones. Their explicit message: we survived; we lived; now we offer you both comfort and wisdom from what we have learned. Their implicit message: If they can forgive, perhaps…?

We have come to think of forgiveness as a ritual act of letting someone off the hook. When we are caught with our hands in proverbial cookie jar, we expect a little finger wag and a knowing smile with a firm but winking “don’t do it again.” But applied to anything really, really big--where lives or fortunes or egos are at stake-- we find ourselves saying “You’re not going to let them get away with that, are you?”

To which the reply is—who said that forgiveness is letting anybody get away with anything?

William Loader, a Uniting Church pastor in Australia, wrote about this Gospel lesson: “The reduction of the gospel to forgiveness of sins misses the point of the gospel which is about making people whole." Forgiveness is not about scores kept and scorecards being wiped clean. Forgiveness is about making whole.

When God forgives, God makes whole. When we forgive, we participate in God’s wholeness.
Today’s Gospel is the classic story of Peter asking his Master how often we should forgive. What’s the upper threshold of forgiveness? Jesus’ answer: there is no upper threshold of forgiveness. No ceiling. No tipping point. Instead, the question is: what can we do to participate in God’s wholeness?

The Owner who forgives the slave in Jesus’ story, is already something of a sap. He must have been a person extravagant in lending, because the slave has amassed an impossible debt. Ten thousand talents is a sum great than all of the holdings of King Herod in Jesus’ time. And when he has reached his tipping point, when he can bear no more debt, he decides to throw the slave, and all his family, into debtors prison and auction off the goods. The slave pleads for mercy, and receives it.

But, perhaps thinking that he’d better start paying down that principle, he goes and shakes down another slave to whom the first slave lent about 100 days of wages—throwing him in the same prison the first slave escaped.

Of course, the Owner catches wind of this and throws the first slave In jail and tosses away the key.

The problem with the Slave in Jesus’ parable is that he thinks that forgiveness is only about having the score card wiped clean, about being let off the hook. He was free to be as selfish as ever because he saw forgiveness as an escape from punishment. What the Slave did not learn was that forgiveness changes us. As he was forgiven for an unpayable debt, so he was to forgive extravagantly.

The lesson in Matthew is that as we Christians have experienced extravagant forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Now we are to share that same extravagance with others. Not just the ones who we catch with their hands in the cookie jar—everyone. Forgiveness is at the heart of living the Gospel.

Bishop Andy Doyle of Texas notes how Christians love to talk about “the Grace of God and how we are exonerated from our own sins and slavery to them;” and yet, the most obvious part of the passage is also the most difficult. We are to act with others as God has acted with us. We are to be as magnanimous a forgiving agent as Jesus Christ was upon his cross: "Forgive them for they know not what they do." It was not for nothing that Jesus put at the heart of his model prayer that we are supposed to pray all the time: “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Since this part of Matthew’s Gospel is all about life in the Church, we might be tempted that the only people we are supposed to forgive are other Christians. Well, looking at the last ten years, we’ve done a really good of that haven’t we? No, on this point Jesus gives us very little wiggle room.

You see, we focus on the person who wrongs us. Jesus is much more concerned that, instead of keeping score of wrongs that we live in the way of Jesus. “Be humble Jesus tells us. Do not despise others. Do not allow anyone to be lost or to stumble. Seek after the one who walks away. If another person sins against you go and be reconciled with them. You go and find them. Take others and find them. Go out and find them. Be careful what slavery you cast on others as it will bind you. Receive the forgiveness of debt and likewise forgive others.” (Doyle)

In the run up to this afternoon’s Interfaith Service of Remembrance and Hope, I have had the experience of being chewed out by people telling me that they can’t bring themselves to take part in the service because (a) it was not patriotic enough or (b) we invited a Muslim to take part. While I would state my case, in both cases this was not a moment to change minds because the pain that dwells behind the anger was too great. One person's major complaint to me--coming from a first responder who was there--was this: The Muslim's never apologized. Never mind the Islamic religious leaders who condemned the violence. Never mind the Muslims who also died innocent victims of the same attacks and worked the pile and cared for the injured. These were good people, who live good lives and try hard to be faithful. Their losses were so great and their experience on 9/11 so intense, one must not attempt to convince, one can only accompany. And for that, I'll take the chewing out. Because for them, I had crossed some line. We both knew it. And they were not going to let me off the hook--and their responses haunts me.

But if I were Jesus—which I am not—and if I were faster on my feet, I might have asked a question that comes to me in my dreams: “How many Muslims must say ‘I’m sorry’ for you to forgive? Seventy-times seven? Seven? One? One million? How many?”

You see we have a choice: we can organize our whole lives around the injury, we can build our own existence around either re-living or avoiding past hurts. We can live under a constant state of threat. Or we can face the truth of the injury, walk through the pain and the grief together, hear our conflicting and over-lapping stories and we can build our lives around reconciliation. That may mean facing the person who has injured us, not letting them off the hook, but doing whatever we can to seek out reconciliation.

Nation-states and communities will do what they do to keep us safe, but at the end of the day peace does not rest on safety. It rests on reconciliation. And because we cannot do what God requires of us without God's help, we have to rest on that extravagant mercy, that extravagant forgiveness to shape us, changes us and direct to bring that same realistic, sharp-eyed forgiveness to each other.

As we once again look at the image of the burning towers and the towering smoke of their collapse, we have the same choice as our forebears did in the desert as they followed that flaming pillar of God’s presence. We can walk the path of revenge and retribution, holding to ourselves the right to judge and inviting God to do things our way. Or we can journey into the desert, repent of our own need to exact vengeance and enter God’s way, God’s kingdom.

Christ brings us a different covenant. Not a land to be conquered, but a life to be lived and a creation reconciled to God. Jesus forgives. And to do that he walked into the maw of human sin and darkness, all so that we might know the extravagance of God’s generous love and share that mercy as extravagantly with all God’s people.

God for President?

H/T MadPriest and all his minions.