Blog - Resistance

Epiphany.

Here’s a word I hadn’t known before yesterday: Cleromancy.

A Reflection on James 2:1-17, 2nd Reading in the Revised Common Lectionary for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 9, 2018.

I have a dear friend, up here in Two Harbors.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born 112 years ago today on February 4, 1906.

Every day, I get to drive my girl back and forth to her high school in Duluth.

We’ve all asked ourselves, when hearing of some moment of historical courage, “What would I have done?”

It’s 12:10 afternoon on January 1, and I just did a Twitter search for #NewYearsResolutions.

The below was written initially as a FB post this morning, but I’m compelled to post it as a blog.

(The below was a Facebook post I wrote this morning before church.  It seems to have resonated with enough people that I decided to repost it here as a blog.  Peace.)

Let me be clear:

The other day, a person whom I do not know commented on a Facebook post I made objecting to Donald Trump’s announcement that “We’re going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

So, Donald Trump will be inaugurated on Friday as our next president.

What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say–courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature…we lack a holy rage–the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth…a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish…but never the chameleon.
Call committees, when sketching out a profile for their next pastor, are awfully drawn to words like these: kind, available, comforting, pastoral, articulate, flexible, intelligent, dynamic, wise, knowledgable, organized, trust-worthy, confident.

Last night, we learned that there will be no indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.