The Religious Sources of Christian Terrorism

01/27/2016 10:12 am ET | Updated 3 days ago

• Babak Rahimi Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religion at University of California, San Diego

Alfons Teruel / EyeEm via Getty Images

News reports live a short life in the media. Many seem to have already forgotten the militant organization that continues to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. But then many also do not know that these militants are also Christians.
Their motivation is ostensibly a religious one, seeking to appease the "Lord" by armed struggle, posting footage blowing shofar (the Jewish horns made out of ram horns) as a call for "spiritual warfare". The reference to divine militancy is reminiscent of the tragedy of Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado in November 2015, when a militant Christian, obsessed with eschatology and salvation through sacrifice, killed three people. Then there is Reverend Paul Jennings (1994), Scott Roeder (2009) and many other Christians with similar motives.
So, let's call these incidents for what they are: Christian terrorism. While violence in its terroristic form is not an exclusively Christian practice, it cannot be denied that Christians have committed most acts of terrorism throughout history.
Since antiquity, Christians have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people based on the concept of "Holy War". From the Crusades to European colonial conquests, violence has been a central feature of a faith known for glorifying the suffering of its God on the cross. But such suffering is less about self-inflicted violence and more about seeking spiritual glory on the battlefield exemplified by "soldier-saints" such as St George, St. Sebastian, and Joan of Arc.
In modern history, numerous Christians have committed dreadful acts of violence, many times against the civilian population. Here is a short list of modern Christian terrorist groups: Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda; Antibalaka in Central African Republic; the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the National Socialist Council of Negaland in India; the Maronite Christian militias in Lebanon; and, of course, IRA and the Orange Volunteers in Northern Ireland.

For American Christianity the story has a darker side. Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, Ku Klux Klan has used arson, lynching, murder, intimidation, such as cross burning, against the African-American population. Groups such as the Army of God, Eastern Lightning, a.k.a. the Church of the Almighty God, and the Lord's Resistance Army are just a few Christian terrorist organizations that have used or advocated violence based on the Christian beliefs and values. In fact, since 9/11 white Christian terrorists have killed more Americans in the U.S. than any other terrorist groups.
Most analysts are hesitant to associate terrorism with Christianity, a world religion with the most followers in the world, and prefer to view such violence as a mere marginal features of the Christian world. Christianity, they argue, is the religion of love and peace. Those terrorists who claim to be Christians have merely perverted the true teachings of the Bible to justify violence for their personal gain. And likewise the white American Christians (mostly men) who commit terrorism are "lone-wolves," who have mistakenly adopted an anti-abortion or militant agenda as a Christian ideal.
But a mere a glance at various terrorist movements shows that there is something inherently violent about the faith. The violence of course is a natural extension of the Bible, where violence is explicitly stated in the sacred book in terms of vengeance or punishment (see for example Romans 3:10-18; Numbers 31:2; Deuteronomy 20:16-17; Samuel 15:18; Psalms 55:15).
So how can we hold Christianity accountable for the acts of its violent followers? What can Christians do to change their religion? Does Christianity need to be reformed (again)?
Not really. And what you just read was a mockery of a discourse about Islam that has become all too normal in the American public sphere. I used the example of Christianity as an alternative way to show the simplistic approach that defines religion based on ideas, sacred texts and purported ethical ethos that are actually historically dependent on human interpretation in shifting contexts.
You see, the problem is that religion is not all about ideas, regardless of how often times they are expressed as though. The key to religious action is the complex ways it is performed through social practice, and by that I mean the complex ways people bring into "religion" a feature of their human experience and make them sacred, and by extension profane, in a social setting. Sacred text is only an aspect of the social practice.
In religion there are no fixed contents (though certainly many would like to think there are) but only changing experiences. And you know how experiences are like: confound, blurry, messy, especially when the person claims to be absolutely convinced of his or her faith; that's when doubt is most evident.
Let me explain my point about religious action in a different way. The turning of ideas into action is as complicated as driving your car from home to a grocery store: it involves many turns, lefts and rights, distractions, lane changes, stops, and a hectic parking on a busy day. Forget about actually going to the grocery store; I am just talking about possible ways you can zigzag your way just to get there.
What makes us act or behave in a certain way is always constraint to complex processes, with religious "belief" serving only as a means to make sense of the world. "Belief" does not define the mind-set; it only frames it. Now the notion that there is an autonomous set of ideas called "religious values" expressed through "belief" begs the assumption that those who adhere to a religion essentially take doctrines, theologies, eschatology or orthodoxies at face value. However, values are pragmatic accords in the making, not ready-made objects.
The reality is that there is no stable religious "source" that can produce a specific action. A "Christian terrorist" can have multiple reasons for doing something violent. And sometimes these reasons can be unknown to a person, religious or otherwise. As Susan Sontag paraphrases the sages: "Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time."

Astounding Glory/Wholly Holy

Astounding Glory/Wholly Holy

February 07, 2016
Written by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)

Sunday, February 7
Transfiguration Sunday

Focus Theme
Astounding Glory/Wholly Holy

Weekly Prayer
Eternal God, you revealed to the disciples the everlasting glory of Jesus Christ. Grant us who have not seen and yet believe, the gift of your Holy Spirit, that we may boldly live the gospel and shine with your transforming glory, as people changed and changing through the redeeming presence of our Savior. Amen.

Focus Scripture
Luke 9:28-36 (37- 43)

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" — not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

[On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not." Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.]

All Readings For This Sunday
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12–4:2
Luke 9:28-36 (37- 43)

Focus Questions

1. How do we integrate our glimpses of God's love, our tastes of God's glory, into the everydayness of our lives?

2. When have you seen "the glory in the grey"?

3. Is transformation really a sudden thing, or a day-by-day, perhaps even hour-by-hour process?

4. As the United Church of Christ looks back on its own story, where were mountaintop moments when we caught a glimpse of God's glory right here, in our midst?

5. How are we listening to the Stillspeaking God's command to "listen to Jesus"?

Reflection by Kate Matthews

We've come to the end of another season of Epiphany, when we're particularly attuned to the ways and times that God is manifested in our lives and in the life of the world. Here on the edge of Lent, as we turn with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those "peak experiences" so sought after even by post-Enlightenment, scientifically minded folks, as well as by those who call themselves "post-modern." What is that about, that deep human longing to taste, however briefly, the transcendence of God?

Peter, James, and John got much more than a brief taste. They had one of those intense, ecstatic experiences that might have transformed their lives then and there, except that they didn't know what to do with it when it happened. Sleepy-headed Peter, the text says, practically babbled, "not knowing what he said" (9:33), offering to put up tents and preserve the experience. We are sure that he was, of course, only trying to be helpful.

Be quiet and listen, Peter

Those of us who think that every situation requires us to DO something, however well-intentioned our efforts, are called back to faithfulness (and perhaps simplicity) by the voice of God in the story: "This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him!" Lori Brandt Hale imagines a "cosmic hand" from heaven, "reaching down to give Peter a good 'you-are-missing-the point' slap upside the head." We might imagine God's annoyance that Peter didn't have sense enough to remain silent at such a moment. If Moses was told he couldn't see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn't see God and talk so much.

Let's be real: that whole experience up on the mountain must have been frightening for Peter, James and John, and when we're afraid, even in sort of a good way, we don't know what to do. Peter, like any good extrovert, starts talking. And thinking. And making suggestions: I know, let's erect a monument, he says. At least that's what we would do today: let's mark the spot where this great, memorable thing happened. However, as R. Alan Culpepper observes, Peter's attempt to enshrine his mountaintop experience wasn't what Jesus had in mind: "Faithfulness is not achieved by freezing a moment," instead, faithfulness follows God in trust toward the future.

Busily making meaning of experience

Peter, of course, is very much like many of us. We often try to talk our way into understanding, try to process an experience so that we can absorb its meaning and make that meaning part of who we are. That's what we humans do, because we're meaning-seekers at our core. But this story is, first, about Jesus and who Jesus is, and the disciples are invited into an incredibly intimate moment with him, when God speaks of God's own beloved Child. Ann Svennungsen notes the difference between Moses' encounter with God on Mt. Sinai, with its Ten Commandments, and this one, with Peter, James, and John on hand, with one simple command to "listen to Jesus." Don't talk, don't do; just listen. It seems that we find that one simple command as challenging as all ten of the Commandments given to Moses.

In the midst of teaching and healing, Jesus has called his followers to stop and pray, to be open to and strengthened by God's unexpected and indescribable grace, instructed by the voice of the Stillspeaking God, and empowered to continue on the path of Jesus, no matter where it leads. In these conversations, he's told them what's expected of him, and what will be expected of them as well (9:18-27). It seems that Peter and the others are not so keen on these recent words of Jesus about suffering and death, because they're understandably hoping for deliverance from, and maybe even triumph over, their enemies, the Romans (maybe with a little revenge and a bit of glory thrown in). But Jesus hears another call, and he follows it faithfully, inviting his friends, and us, to come along.

Moses and Elijah are the stories, "older than old"

Scholars focus on several details in this story, an unusual one even for the Gospels, with their many accounts of miracles. Most commentators explain the presence of Moses and Elijah as confirmation that Jesus is in continuity with the faith, the story, of his people, that he is the fulfillment of what has come before. Or, as Richard Swanson puts it so evocatively: "Moses and Elijah…are characters from some of the oldest stories told among Jews. They are more real than Peter, James, and John….more real than Caesar…Quirinius…Pontius Pilate…." Moses and Elijah aren't just figures from history, but "figures who are the stories that are older than old."

N.T. Wright also illuminates that connection to what has come before: "The word for 'departure' is exodus," he writes. "In the new Exodus, Jesus will lead all God's people out of the slavery of sin and death, and home to their promised inheritance – the new creation in which the whole world will be redeemed."

Stories that go together

The lectionary brackets the passage immediately following the Transfiguration but it's much more powerful to read the two stories together, as one story. We may not have been up on that mountain with Peter, James, and John, but we can see who Jesus is in what he does with the little boy in the grips of a demon. We might say that in his healing of the child, Jesus demonstrates what the mountaintop experience meant. In fact, N.T. Wright reminds us that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell these stories in this order, as if they "go together: the mountain-top experience and the shrieking, stubborn demon."

Scholars "hear" meaning in the voices of the text as well, even though this passage seems to be mostly about seeing. God's voice, after all, was heard during the glorious episode up on the mountain, but God's power is dramatically revealed in what happens below, where people are suffering: Sharon Ringe suggests that the demon's recognition of Jesus' power, in a sense, confirms what the voice of God said at Jesus' baptism. And Kimberly Miller van Driel makes a poignant connection between the voice of God in the cloud and the anguish of a father in the crowd, each of them speaking of a beloved only child.

Glory and vulnerability

It seems true, then, that in our own lives, thousands of years later, our experience of God, rather than being our own private pursuit and comfort, is inextricably linked to our response to the suffering of the world, and that makes us vulnerable ourselves. Paradoxically, mysteriously, it also seems that the closer we draw to God, the closer we draw to one another and to one another's pain (and joy, of course). Spiritual growth and even true religion itself, then, are expressed in a deeper commitment to compassion and justice for the world God loves.

I'm reminded of an exquisite prayer by Walter Brueggemann, the great biblical scholar who has spent his life helping us to connect with the God of the Bible. His prayer could be for this very occasion, a prayer to Jesus, up on the mountaintop, but headed down to the people below, who yearn for wholeness. He asks God to "move off the page to the trouble" of the world, to "the peace negotiations, and cancer diagnoses, and burning churches, and lynched blacks, and abused children. Listen to the groans and moans, and see and hear and know and remember, and come down!"

What does it all mean today?

And so we meaning-making, meaning-seeking people of faith can't resist our need to ask, "What does this story mean?" First, commentators seem to agree that we are commanded, with Peter, James, and John, to "listen to [Jesus]!" Jeffrey L. Tribble, Sr., urges us to be faithful to our experience of God by being clear, as Jesus was, about our identity and our mission, and not to be deterred or determined by outward success or failure as measured by our current culture. Instead, we should stick with Jesus, abiding in his presence, like Peter, James and John, and we might add, the women who faithfully accompanied him as well.

Our hunger for the experience of God's presence

Earlier in this reflection I mentioned the pursuit of mountaintop experiences by people of faith, and then made the statement that this story is (first) about Jesus and who Jesus is. However, I don't see things quite the same way as Stephen Farris does when he claims that this story is only about Jesus and not about us at all. If our relationship with Jesus, with God, is that – a relationship – then I think it's a good thing to consider our hunger for and response to experiences of God's presence. That question leads to other, rich reflections on the human need to "taste and feel" God with us. (The world certainly bombards us with invitations to taste and feel - and own and take and use - so many things and even people at times. It's enough to distract us from our deepest needs.)

For example, Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon on this text, "Thin Places," is a great starting point for reflection on our spiritual hunger. She spends little time analyzing what happened up on the mountaintop that day (or down below, afterward). In fact, she describes the Transfiguration as something too daunting to talk about, even though its presence in the Gospels has spurred countless people down through the ages who have tried to explain its meaning. (In an age of science and technology, everything can be explained.)

Instead, Taylor talks about "thin places." She writes as a preacher who knows the Bible, a pastor who senses what goes on in the human heart, and a seeker herself who traveled to Ireland where her understanding of thin places was deepened by a pilgrimage up (and back down) a holy mountain. Like our ancestors in faith in ancient times, we humans search for God, but we won't be persuaded by scientific proof or logical arguments about the truth we seek. We want to experience God, not just acquire head-knowledge about God. Taylor describes the thin places so cherished in Celtic spirituality as "cracked doors" that give us a glimpse of heaven and a sense of God's presence.

Holding the vision of healing and light together

It's not that something spiritual happened up above, on the mountain, and then something material, something physical, down below in the town. After all, the people were astounded by the greatness, the glory, of a God who healed a father's only little boy, perhaps as astounded as Peter, James and John were up on the mountain by the vision of Moses and Elijah with Jesus. If we could recover the ability to hold the spiritual and material in a unity that is much healthier than the split between the two that has dominated us for centuries, it will transform everything in our lives, not just up on the mountaintop, but every single day, down here in the lived experience of "the plain," or the town, or the office, or the suburb, or the city...wherever our spiritual journey takes and keeps us.

Thinking about the way "the appearance of Jesus' face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white" (9:29), and then about the way the crowd was "astounded at the greatness of God" (v. 43), I was drawn to consider the experience of light. Not just any light, but Jesus, the Light of the World. Perhaps what happened up on that mountain is that the disciples were given a precious opportunity to see and feel what is present always, the light and glory of God in all of creation, including in us, but that day it just burst forth in Jesus, and their eyes were practically blinded and they didn't know what to do.

Stories of brilliant light

I'm reminded of two stories about a brilliant light that I read long ago: The first one is from the conclusion of War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk's fine novel on World War II (note: spoiler alert). At the end of a long story of indescribable suffering and loss, a young mother, Natalie, is reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. When the child who has refused to speak slowly begins to sing along with his mother's lullaby, the two men watching the mother-and-child reunion "each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light."

The second story was told by a surgeon about a young couple, after the doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on the wife's face so that she could live. As a result of the surgery, the young woman would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this, and watched with a heavy heart as the husband went into his wife's room and saw her for the first time, a line drawing her mouth down on one side. "I think it's kind of cute," he said, "your crooked little smile." The doctor said that he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light were too bright for him to bear.

These stories connect me with the almost inaccessible story of the Transfiguration much as the story of the boy's healing does in Luke's Gospel: those flashes of brilliant light that made those who watched a scene of transcendent, almost unbearable, beauty cover their eyes…that light is what came to my mind when I thought of Jesus all glorious and full of light, up there on the mountaintop with his disciples.

Holding this all together

If we can at last hold the spiritual and material together, won't we care better for the environment in which we live and breathe? J. Philip Newell, the theologian of Celtic spirituality, thinks so, but he also believes that such a wholistic spirituality will affect how we regard the communities of which we are a part. We're reading about God's glory and light in the Gospel of Luke, but Celtic spirituality looks to John's Gospel, where light is present at the very beginning, and "we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth" (1:14b).

Newell draws on John's Gospel to help us see God's glory in everything, and his reflection feels like poetry: "From that inaccessible light of God all life comes forth, whether that be the morning light of the burning sun, the yellow brilliance of the sunflower growing from the dark ground or the glow of starfish emerging in the depths of the sea. It is the light within all life." To see it, of course, we have to use more than our physical eyes; perhaps we have to learn to see with our heart and our soul. And yet, at the same time, God is so far beyond our knowing, "always more than the wind and the waters, other than the bear and the child, greater than thought and image."

God is everywhere and anywhere

Taylor expands on this theme of encountering God in and through creation in her wonderful book An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, a handbook that helps us to encounter God in the everyday experience of human life, here, in the midst of creation, "the House of God." In her chapter on the spiritual practice of "waking up to God," she writes of God as "the More, the Really Real, the Luminous Web That Holds Everything in Place."

Taylor remembers a time when people encountered God out in the world rather than limiting themselves to temples and churches, because they understood that they could encounter God anywhere and everywhere. God was with them wherever they went, even though there were places, here and there, where God's presence was keenly felt, if only for a moment. Doesn't this remind us of Jesus, on the move from that mountain, headed to another one, where he would show us once again what God's love looks like, but this time, without light, and without glory?

Yet another Lenten journey

As we prepare to embark on our Lenten journey, how do read and hear this text as a call to take what we have experienced out into the world? Thomas Merton once said, "We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time." How do we integrate our glimpses of God's love, our tastes of God's glory, into the everydayness of our lives? Are we awake, alert to what God is doing in the world, and in our lives, and in the life of our congregation? Is transformation a sudden thing, or a day-by-day, perhaps even hour-by-hour process?

As the United Church of Christ looks back on its own story, where were mountaintop moments when we caught a glimpse of God's glory right here, in the very human existence of our denomination? Outside our General Minister and President's office is a display of photographs that remind me of such mountaintop moments, and I love that part of a tour of our national offices when we pause to remember when Dr. King or Bishop Desmond Tutu addressed General Synod (or when the GS delegates responded to a call from Cesar Chavez to come to California), or to consider the gift of UCC members like Jackie Robinson and Andrew Young. How are we listening to the Stillspeaking God's command to "listen to Jesus" in the way we live our lives today?

Where is God?

All the earth – all creation, broken yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don't have to climb a mountain to find God, although we might have to turn off our cell phones, our computers, and our television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, "God is in this place, and I wasn't aware of it" (Genesis 28:16). God is in the beauty of nature, in all its glory; God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love we share; God is there, between the lines, when we share our stories and our fragile hopes; God is there, in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful - the light is so bright – you may need to shield your eyes.

A preaching version of this commentary (with book titles) is at www.ucc.org/worship/samuel.

The Rev. Kathryn Matthews serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio (https://www.facebook.com/AmistadChapel).

You're invited to share your reflections on this text on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

For further reflection

Thomas Merton, 20th century
"We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time."

George MacLeod, founder of the modern-day Iona Community, 20th century
"Show us the glory in the grey."

Hafiz, 14th century
"An awake heart is like a sky that pours light."

Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, 21st century
"...he liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye on it -- say, in a nice stained-glass window -- not woven through the fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade."

Irenaeus, 2nd century
"The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God."

Barbara Brown Taylor, 21st century
"Fortunately, the Bible I set out to learn and love rewarded me with another way of approaching God, a way that trusts the union of spirit and flesh as much as it trusts the world to be a place of encounter with God."

Bernie Sanders Opens Up About God

No lack of faith here.

• Antonia Blumberg Associate Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has mostly avoided discussing religion during his Democratic presidential campaign. Unlike some other candidates, he sticks to politics.
But he offered a rare glimpse into his spiritual views in an interview with The Washington Post published Wednesday.
“I think everyone believes in God in their own ways, “ said Sanders, who polls show is neck-and-neck with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and opening a large lead in New Hampshire. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”
Sanders, a strong supporter of the separation of church and state, told the paper, “I think it is important that a sense of morality be part of our politics."
Sanders identifies as both Jewish and secular. He said he's not actively involved in any organized religion. If elected, Sanders would become the fourth president in U.S. history to claim no organized religious affiliation. He also would also be the first Jewish president.
Sanders was raised by Jewish parents. He attended Hebrew school as a child and became a bar mitzvah at age 13, as is the custom with Jewish boys old enough to be accountable for their actions. According to Jewish law, Sanders is Jewish, through and through.
Some see his Jewish upbringing in his frequent discussion of ethics and morality.
“He often talks about the ethical thing to do, and his ethics are shaped by a concern for social justice and for other human beings that is part of a Judeo-Christian tradition,” Stanley “Huck” Gutman, Sanders’ former chief of staff, told The Washington Post this month.
During a meeting hosted by the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines in Iowa in September, Sanders told the crowd: “Historically, the Jewish people have been strong advocates fighting discrimination and fighting for social and economic justice.”
Sanders also draws from the spiritual teachings of other faiths to support his social justice causes. His wife, Jane, was raised Catholic, and Sanders has found an ideological ally in Pope Francis on issues of the environment, corporate greed and inequality.
In a message posted on Facebook during the pontiff's U.S. visit in September, Sanders explained why the pope's views strike such a chord for him -- and in doing so revealed a glimpse at his own spiritual beliefs.
Pope Francis "is asking us to become a different kind of person, where our happiness and well-being comes from serving others and being part of the human community -- not by spending our lives accumulating more and more wealth and power while oppressing others," Sanders wrote.
He expressed a similar view in his interview with the Post, saying: “I want to be treated with dignity and respect, and I want other people to be treated with dignity and respect.

This Is What An 'Urban Coven' Looks Like

At least during a full moon in Los Angeles.

01/25/2016 04:55 pm ET | Updated 5 hours ago

• Antonia Blumberg Associate Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

On Saturday night, close to a thousand women gathered at the eastern entrance of Los Angeles' Griffith Park. At the stroke of seven, they made their way up a narrow trail, lighting their way with flashlights until they reached a clearing at the top. Once they had all ascended the hill, the women turned their heads up to the sky and howled at the full moon.
The event was organized by Becca Gordon, a Los Angeles-based doula, yoga instructor and childbirth educator, who had initially invited nine female friends on Facebook to join her for a hike to celebrate January's full moon. 
"The event struck a chord with other women and went viral," Gordon told The Huffington Post. Soon, the group, which she named The Urban Coven, amassed nearly 3,500 members. She estimates that 1,000 of those women turned up for the hike, which was intended as a way for women -- whether they identify as spiritual or not -- to connect with one another and honor the cycles of the moon. The gathering echoed celebrations that women from different religious and cultural traditions around the globe have carried on for centuries.

I strongly believe that any time women come together in solidarity and sisterhood, great power emerges. Becca Gordon

The event comes at a time when many women around the world are finding ways to create sacred space with one another and form spiritual communities. The hike -- a celebration of the lunar cycle -- was reminiscent of celebrations from modern paganism that honor the full moon as a time of fullness and manifestation.
Amy Clarke, a musician who is active in several earth-based spiritual communities in Los Angeles, said she joined the hike as a chance to celebrate the moon in fellowship.
"At the full moon, I often feel called to celebrate in community," she told HuffPost. Such celebrations, she said, offer a chance to "connect with Mother Earth and our place in the universe."

Amy Clarke, left, and Becca Gordon, right, pose for a photo after the hike. 

The popularity of the event "speaks to a yearning that modern, urban women have for connection with one another," Gordon said.
Many of the women at Saturday's hike were there in groups -- mothers and daughters, friends, colleagues. Some arrived solo and struck up conversations with other women or hiked in solitude.
Once they had gathered at the top of the trail, Gordon lead the women through a short ritual, inviting them to use the full moon as an opportunity to shed old habits and worries.
She asked the women to gaze up at the full moon, then look into the eyes of a woman they didn't know and tell her; "You are perfect, you are whole." Many of them heeded the invitation, and the message spread throughout the crowd.
"The ritual [was] designed to bring us together as a community of sister women and to give all of us an opportunity to share in that releasing or surrender associated with the full moon," Gordon said.
The full moon hikes will repeat monthly, with the next one scheduled for Monday, February 22, Gordon said. As the tradition catches on, she said she hopes to see the community grow.
"I strongly believe that any time women come together in solidarity and sisterhood, great power emerges," Gordon said.
Also on HuffPost:

13 Women Mystics Who Helped Shape Christianity

MORE:

Full Moon, Lunar Calendar, Pagan, Spirituality, Full Moon Hike, Women's Spirituality, Los Angeles, Griffith Park

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We are excited to have our new school year underway. We start with new personnel: Patricia (Paty) Bautista as our principal, Elena González as Principal’s Assistant, Leticia (Lety) Bautista as secretary, Martha Yañez as guidance counselor and new teachers as well.

First day usually begins with students cleaning the school building, our cook making food for everyone and our staff working happily assuming the challenges of a new school year.

Another exciting activity is giving each student back-packs filled with school supplies, such as colored pencils, markers, pens, letter size paper and notebooks. All those items donated by our sponsors.

Several students need aid to buy their uniforms and to pay for their daily transportation to school; you can help them through the Adopt-A-Student Program! Sponsor a student with $35 per month or $420 per school year, this provides free breakfast, as needed and upon availability of funds, uniforms and bus fares.

Two Free Meals And A Snack

          Since our class schedule is 7:30 A.M. until 3:30 P.M. students need energy to do their best at school, besides breakfast paid by sponsors from the Adopt-A-Student Program, our students also receive lunch by noon and a snack. The cost of the second meal is $15 per student per month. Donations are welcome and appreciated.

Other Opportunities To Help Throughout the Year:

¬ PROVIDE ACCIDENT INSURANCE: $600 FOR ALL OUR STUDENTS FOR THE WHOLE SCHOOL YEAR.

¬ HELP STUDENTS PURCHASE THEIR DAILY UNIFORMS AT $75 EACH. OR P.E. UNIFORM AT $30 EACH, OR SCHOOL SHOES OR TENNIS SHOES AT $35 EACH.

¬ HELP PURCHASE CLASS MATERIALS FOR OUR 15 SUBJECTS, OFFICE AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES AT $700 PER MONTH.

¬ PROVIDE INK, PAPER & TONER FOR COMPUTER ROOM AT $75 PER MONTH.

¬ MATERIALS FOR SCIENCE LABORATORY: $75 PER MONTH.

¬ MONTHLY COST FOR UTILITIES: $600.

¬ BUILDING & EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE: $400 PER MONTH.

¬ IN DECEMBER, PROVIDE A FOOD CHRISTMAS BASKETS FOR STUDENTS AT $50 EACH BASKET.

 

Our 50^th Anniversary Silvia Soto and Elena Gonzalez gave graduates and friends, the opportunity to celebrate Panamerican Institute’s 50 years with a dinner on July 21.

Donations to honor PAI’s 50 years of life are welcome and will enable us to continue providing our students, through Education, hope for a better life. Remember that our program depends solely on your contributions.

5 Easy Steps That Will Help You Live A Full And Meaningful Life

Vlogger Martin Sosa shares tips on how you can remain mindful.

01/21/2016 04:32 pm ET

• Antonia Blumberg Associate Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

Are you living the life you always dreamed of?
However you might answer that question, consider this: Each day offers us a fresh opportunity to discover the fullness of life and to follow our bliss.
HuffPost Religion teamed up with vlogger Martin Sosa for some tips on how to live a full and meaningful life. Sosa, 25, is the personality behind PeakYourMind, a YouTube channel that's part of the Outspeak network.
"We've all had moments when we're really awakened to life," Sosa said in the video.
For him, one of those moments arrived when he was 16 years old and had to get screened for cancer. He spent a week waiting for the results, and in that time he said realized that all the "petty stuff" in life didn't matter. "As cheesy as it sounds, love was the only thing that mattered," Sosa said.
We will all have experiences at some point that shake us to the core and make us reevaluate our lives. But day to day, Sosa suggests there are things we can do to remain mindful of our life's direction.
Sosa offers five ways to live fully, ranging from heeding the call of adventure to collecting memories over things.
"Don't hold back love," Sosa offers as his first tip. Challenge yourself, he says, and love "as big and as much as you possibly can."
Watch the video above to hear Sosa's five tips on how to live life fully.

A Tirade For The Trendy Church

A Tirade For The Trendy Church

01/21/2016 04:04 pm ET | Updated 9 hours ago
Jack Levison Author, 'Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
I get up early on Sunday morning and drive to the manufacturing district, which is totally desolate. I'm self-conscious because I'm visiting a hipster church. Naked, too, because I've got no tats. Not even a Bible verse across my ribs from my grad school days. And, at 59, I'm totally grey. My beard. Even my chest hair. (My ear hair isn't, but it's growing long because I'm old.) My eyebrows, too, they're going grey. Legit not on fleek, so I'm embarrassed to begin with. I park my 2004 Honda Odyssey a ways away, obvs, and walk toward the front door of a warehouse building at the end of a deserted street. Totally trendy sign on the side of the building. They open the door for me and smile and say, "Hi! Welcome!" and hand me a piece of paper.
So far, so good. #awesome
Inside is hip, too. To the left, there's a white wall with little rectangular tiles the size of small bricks at the back of a coffee bar. Java! Yaaaaas! Now I'm right at home because I'm from Seattle. So I ask for decaf, but they literally don't even have it. That's right. I'm grey--and can't drink regular. But they're not old. They can drink regular. #typical. I drink pouch-poured hot chocolate. So I feel a little less welcome, but it's my fault (or my body's fault) I can't turn up like I used to.
I look around. There's a little alcove to the right where you walk into the worship space. It has repurposed wood walls. In the middle is a wood cross made up of small, square, rusty nails. Literally so freaking cool.
Now the backstory. (I didn't grow up with this word, so it must be trendy, right?) I taught a class this week on the Holy Spirit. I wanted us to be somewhere Pentecostal or charismatic--somewhere growing--on Sunday. There's just 7 of us altogether in the squad. Two white guys in our 50s. Two guys in their 20s, a young white guy, and an Indian guy (his parents are from India). A 40-something red-head, and 2 African-American women, 1 in her 50s, 1 in her 60s.
Why do you need to know that? Because the people at the church we visited were mostly white. I'm talking 96% white. And mostly young.
So the 7 of us come early because the website, which is totally hip, says Sunday worship begins at 10. It doesn't. It begins at 10:20. Because starting on the hour or half hour would be way too mainstream.
So what to do? We stand in a small half moon in the little alcove which most of the regulars have to pass through to get to the 10:20 service. In and out they go, out and in, passing our little multicultural half-moon without a word. In and out. Out and in. Not a word. Not one.
30 minutes of silence.
1800 seconds tick by without a hello.
I know a lot of people are angry at the suit-and-tie, Sunday-best church. And a lot of churches, with speakers sporting tattoo sleeves, are giving them a home where they don't have to get bored or angry or petulant. The main speaker--the pastor, I guess--talked about dry church.
The church I'm attending is not dry, of course. They're wet. They don't have the crinkly skin or decrepit traditions of old people and obsolete churches.
You're angry at dry church.
You're bored by dry church.
You're sick of dry church.
I get it.
But are you much different from dry church? Or any better, really? When 7 people--people who look a lot different from most of you--stand and half-moon you in the alcove, why don't you stop to say hello?
You don't shake our hands.
You don't smile.
You don't tell us your name.
And admit it. You know we're not one of yours. A 66-year-old African American woman? No way. An Indian? I didn't see one. Except for my student. And there are 7 of us standing at the entrance to the worship room, which has more repurposed wood and a skylight and stark concrete warehouse walls and a drummer in a glass box.
I'm angry.
I'm bored by hipster inhospitality.
I'm irked by Bohemian indifference.
I'm annoyed by trendy aloofness.
No, that's not right.
I'm sad. Disappointed that a church which, on its website, claims that thousands have been touched by its members, couldn't greet strangers in their midst. Their website even makes a lot of going in to worship and out to serve.
So in and out they go. Out and in they come. And not one word of welcome. No. Not one.
Follow Jack Levison on Twitter: www.twitter.com/spiritchatter

Prophet on the Edge

Prophet on the Edge

January 31, 2016
Written by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)

Sunday, January 31
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Focus Theme
Prophet on the Edge

Weekly Prayer
O God of all the prophets, you knew us and chose us before you formed us in the womb. Fill us with faith that speaks your word, hope that does not disappoint, and love that bears all things for your sake, until that day when we shall know you fully, even as we are known by you. Amen.

Focus Scripture
Luke 4:21-30

Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

All Readings For This Sunday
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

Focus Questions

1. Why do you think Jesus confronted the crowd that day in the synagogue?

2. How do the readings from Luke 4 shape (or re-shape) a congregation's ministry?

3. How might your congregation fulfill the promises of the prophet Isaiah?

4. What does the phrase, "the year of the Lord's favor" mean to you?

5. How can a capitalist society practice Jubilee?

Reflection by Kate Matthews

Last week's reading from the Gospel of Luke left us right in the middle of Jesus' homecoming appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth, when he read an inspiring passage from the prophet Isaiah, and followed it up with a simple yet powerful sermon in verse 21: "Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'" If this were the movies or television, there would have been a beat of silence, for dramatic effect, while his words sank into the hearts and minds of his audience. This week's reading picks up the story where we left off, and begins on a positive note, repeating verse 21 as a kind of hinge, and then describing the enthusiastic response of the crowd as they marveled, at least for the moment, at Jesus' "gracious words." Isn't it amazing, they wonder, that one of our very own boys--Joseph's son--could be so impressive? And doesn't he know his Bible!

The warm reception lasts all of two verses, however, because something seems to be bothering Jesus as he listens to the hometown crowd gushing about him. Clearly, he's not basking in the glow of their admiration. Does he know more about their expectations than we can read from the text? Does he feel that they've missed the point? Does he have a sense that they won't like where he's going with this line of thought, about Jubilee ("the year of the Lord's favor") and the liberation of the oppressed? Or does he suspect that that kind of talk is fine as long as it applies to them, but not to those who are somehow judged as standing outside the favor of God? We do not know the answers to these questions, but scholars suggest several questions we might ask as we find our way into the text.

Remember where we are

"Remember." Richard Swanson urges us to remember where we are when the scene opens this week, and what has happened. Jesus doesn't charge into his hometown, brashly preaching a new message that contradicts the God of his ancestors, the God of his people's holy scriptures. No, in fact, Swanson writes, Jesus recites the "old Jewish promises that the Jewish community in Nazareth had nurtured and preserved for long centuries….through all the years of change and loss." The vision of Isaiah has sustained the people as they have struggled to rebuild their community after exile, as they have suffered under the heel of the Roman Empire, and as they have looked forward in faith to a day when God would make all things right and whole again. And now here's Jesus, beginning his own ministry by announcing that the day they have been waiting for has finally arrived, right here and right now--in him.

Did you ever hear news so good that you practically hardened your heart against it, in fear of disappointment? Swanson suggests that the crowd may have been bracing themselves for the letdown, protecting themselves and their ancient hope by rejecting the very one who claimed that those promises were true: "Is this," Swanson asks, "more about the offense of trifling with hopes that have lived for so many years, and have died for so many hopeless quixotic errands? You don't get to claim that the 'hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight,' and then go on with business as usual." Is it possible to live for the future so ardently that we do not see the day of the Lord when it arrives, or experience in this moment a time of liberation and healing, when it is right here, right now, right

before us?

Were the people around Jesus that day reluctant to get their hopes up, or were they mightily offended by Jesus' call for a Jubilee? The latter seems to be Walter Brueggemann's read on this text: he calls their reaction "the most dramatic resistance to Jubilee." He evokes the drama of Jubilee itself by recalling the sound of the trumpet that began "the year of the Lord's favor" – "a signal," he writes, "not unlike the great gavel that ends the fury of Wall Street every day, only it signifies something very different." I've often heard it said that the Good News isn't going to be "good" for everybody, at least not those who want to hold onto excessive wealth and power and place. Brueggemann claims that the people were resisting any "curb" on such excessive accumulation; Jubilee, he writes, "is not just a kind thought or a good intention or a religious idea. It is about money and property being transferred."
It is about the money
We reflected a bit last week on the discomfort we feel, steeped as we are in capitalist values and principles, at the thought of restoring property every fifty years to the previous owner (God, of course, was understood to be the actual owner in those days). And we find comfort in scholarship that says that Jubilee was rarely if ever actually practiced. Brueggemann seems particularly incensed by our need for such reassurance, and our own resistance to what Jubilee would accomplish, as "the most difficult, most demanding, most outrageous requirement of biblical faith," because it flies in the face of "our deep practices of accumulation and our intense yearning to have ours and keep ours and make it grow."
Brueggemann's sermon on this text (in Inscribing the Text) is an eloquent but hard message that wouldn't go over very well in many of our churches, where money is not even supposed to be discussed, despite the fact that the Bible addresses the subject of money and possessions, and our attitude toward them more than 2,000 times in the Bible (and most of us have a pretty good idea what it says about them). He notes that it's primarily in the area of economic justice "that the Bible questions our usual assumptions about life in the world." And it is a question of justice, because the practice of Jubilee enacted "what Moses understood" (and surely Jesus did as well): "that you cannot have a viable, peaceable, safe urban community when deep poverty must live alongside huge wealth, when high privilege is visible alongside endless disadvantage in health and housing and education. You can have some inequities, but the inequities must be curbed by a practice of neighborliness that knows every day that rich and poor, haves and have-nots, are in it together and must find ways of being together as neighbors in common."
For people of faith, could the challenge of Jubilee and of Jesus' speech be more timely, as the gap between the rich and poor widens, and wealth is more and more concentrated at the top, during another heated political season leading to the opportunity to express our deepest values in the voting booth? How does "neighborliness" enter into our political and economic life, if at all? Do we even see our political life as an opportunity to "love our neighbor," as one of the two great commandments requires?
What are we waiting for?
Most scholars approach this text and the anger of the crowd that day in the synagogue by focusing on Jesus' words after his sermon, when things seem to turn on a dime and become quite unpleasant. The people are waiting, all right, and not necessarily for a Jubilee that means they have to give anything up, but for "the day of vengeance" – the line that Jesus, curiously, leaves out of his reading of Isaiah--a time when their enemies will finally get what's coming to them. Among these enemies, and outside the circle of God's grace, are, presumably, the Gentiles. But who are the very ones in his people's own holy scriptures that Jesus lifts up as those who received God's favor and attention? The (Gentile) widow Elijah helped, and the (Gentile, enemy) commander, Naaman! What kind of Messiah shows up and announces "the day of the Lord's favor" without also bringing "the day of vengeance" that was promised so long ago? No wonder the people are so incensed by the stories Jesus recalls, for "anger and violence," Fred Craddock writes, "are the last defense of those who are made to face the truth embedded in their own tradition."
Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that (it always is). The people of Galilee, including Jesus, were looked down upon even by many of their own people. Kim L. Beckmann draws on the work of Caleb Rosado, noting that Judeans would have seen Galileans as "peasants," "common people," "unwashed people of the land" with an accent that betrayed their region's long history of a rich mix of cultures and races. "Rosado," Beckmann writes, "observes that Luke mentions the inn at Bethlehem of Judea as having 'no room' for Mary and Joseph, not as being 'full'"--a small but important distinction, and easy to miss. No wonder, then, that the Galileans longed for the day when the "ancient promises of restoration for those oppressed" would be fulfilled, even for the people of Galilee. However, Beckmann and Rosado would claim that the Galileans were, perhaps, missing the point, or maybe thinking too small, because's God's concern was for all the oppressed, not for one group or another, each one hoping that they would end up on top. Being only human, however, the Galileans "wanted the privileged, chosen status and the prosperity gospel that their brothers and sisters of Judah aspired to, and that the dominant culture had normed."
All of us in the same boat
Perhaps the most moving – and therefore transformational – way to read this text is to let it read us. Renita Weems says that's what Jesus was doing that day, more than just reading the text itself, but "allowing Scripture to read him." Ann M. Svennungsen similarly notes, "In this text, we, too, are made known." Both of these women also remind us of our human nature, our persistence in drawing lines and circles that create a world of insiders and outsiders, and the dismaying way we have, once we're the ones on top, of stepping on those below us.
What a revelation for Epiphany season! And yet there is hope, great hope, and Svennungsen describes God's indifference to "who" we think we are: "God is not interested in faces," she writes; "God is interested in hearts. Not beautiful hearts, not pure hearts, nor perfect hearts, but hearts that know their need of God." If there is something that needs to be made clear to us in this season of light and manifestation, it is this deep need that we have for God, and "recognizing our need," Svennungsen writes, "will transform our relations with others." (We might say that our need for God levels the playing field for all of God's children.) There are no lines, no protective walls: "We are all in the same boat – lost without God."
What would we have said, and what would we have done?
A few weeks ago, we began a new year, but we brought many of the old fears right along with us into this "new" day. If we just sit quietly with this story for a time, would we be able to feel ourselves in that crowd around Jesus in Nazareth so long ago? Is Brueggemann telling us something that we don't want to know about ourselves, that we dread the demands of Jubilee so much that we find incendiary "code" words for it, like "redistribution," so no one will even think of proposing ideas that might make our systems work more compassionately, more justly for all of God's children?
Or does Swanson expose our deep anxieties about hope itself, and our refusal even to try to give ourselves over to a whole new vision for our lives, to risk what we have for what might yet be? Perhaps the other scholars are right: the story of Jesus being driven to the edge by the crowd that day is a story about us, too, because we don't want to hear the truth about ourselves, and we don't want to think that "those other guys" could ever be like us, with us, one of us. Barbara Brown Taylor says that we should expect to be challenged and upset by the truth, by the "people sent to yank our chains and upset our equilibrium so we do not confuse our own ideas about God with God." We don't like "being told that our enemies are God's friends," she writes; "No matter how hard we try, we cannot seem to get God to respect our boundaries. God keeps plowing right through them, inviting us to follow or get out of the way."
"As finite and fragile as clay pots"
When Taylor draws on the thought of Parker Palmer in his book, The Company of Strangers, I'm reminded of one of my favorite passages from that excellent work: "At the heart of any authentic religious experience," the Quaker theologian writes, "is recognition that God's nature is too huge, God's movement too deep, ever to be comprehended by a single conception or point of view…. God's truth is singular and eternal, but the forms in which we give it expression are as finite and fragile as clay pots, and we must always be ready to break them open on behalf of a larger vision of truth." If that is true, and if this reading of our text is true, then isn't it also true that God calls us, who claim to follow Jesus, on a path that may get us into trouble but impels toward an expansive, generous, justice-seeking vision of the world, a vision that shapes a ministry to and with all of God's beautiful children?
What would it look like for Jesus' first sermon and the reading from Isaiah to be fulfilled this day, in your midst? Might it, for example, inspire not only compassionate, generous aid to those who are in need, here and around the world, but also a deep hunger to understand the root causes of that need, and then an even deeper commitment to transforming that suffering - and the systems that cause it - into a new and better way of life for all? Might it call for the kind of interfaith respect and dialogue that could model discourse across divides for our polarized and deeply antagonistic political parties? Would such commitments take us out to cliffs we would rather not face? How large is your view of God's nature, how wide is your understanding of God's embrace, how deep is your sense of the movement of God? Will we run from such a love, and such a call, or will we seek it with all our heart, and let it take us out to the edges, where risk, and hope, and courage all lie?
A preaching version of this commentary (with book titles) is at www.ucc.org/worship/samuel.
The Rev. Kathryn Matthews serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio (https://www.facebook.com/AmistadChapel).
You're invited to share your reflections on this text on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
For further reflection
Parker Palmer, 20th century
"[T]he mission of the church is not to enlarge its membership, not to bring outsiders to accept its terms, but simply to love the world in every possible way - to love the world as God did and does.…If we are able to love the world, that will be the best demonstration of the truth which the church has been given."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 20th century
"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 19th century
"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything,you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."
Julie Polter, 20th century
"This is the big lie the world tells us: that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit — nothing else. Whereas this is the truth of God: all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; that creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts, because its true destiny is joy."

January 31, 2016
Written by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)

Sunday, January 31
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Focus Theme
Prophet on the Edge

Weekly Prayer
O God of all the prophets, you knew us and chose us before you formed us in the womb. Fill us with faith that speaks your word, hope that does not disappoint, and love that bears all things for your sake, until that day when we shall know you fully, even as we are known by you. Amen.

Focus Scripture
Luke 4:21-30

Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

All Readings For This Sunday
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

Focus Questions

1. Why do you think Jesus confronted the crowd that day in the synagogue?

2. How do the readings from Luke 4 shape (or re-shape) a congregation's ministry?

3. How might your congregation fulfill the promises of the prophet Isaiah?

4. What does the phrase, "the year of the Lord's favor" mean to you?

5. How can a capitalist society practice Jubilee?

Reflection by Kate Matthews

Last week's reading from the Gospel of Luke left us right in the middle of Jesus' homecoming appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth, when he read an inspiring passage from the prophet Isaiah, and followed it up with a simple yet powerful sermon in verse 21: "Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'" If this were the movies or television, there would have been a beat of silence, for dramatic effect, while his words sank into the hearts and minds of his audience. This week's reading picks up the story where we left off, and begins on a positive note, repeating verse 21 as a kind of hinge, and then describing the enthusiastic response of the crowd as they marveled, at least for the moment, at Jesus' "gracious words." Isn't it amazing, they wonder, that one of our very own boys--Joseph's son--could be so impressive? And doesn't he know his Bible!

The warm reception lasts all of two verses, however, because something seems to be bothering Jesus as he listens to the hometown crowd gushing about him. Clearly, he's not basking in the glow of their admiration. Does he know more about their expectations than we can read from the text? Does he feel that they've missed the point? Does he have a sense that they won't like where he's going with this line of thought, about Jubilee ("the year of the Lord's favor") and the liberation of the oppressed? Or does he suspect that that kind of talk is fine as long as it applies to them, but not to those who are somehow judged as standing outside the favor of God? We do not know the answers to these questions, but scholars suggest several questions we might ask as we find our way into the text.

Remember where we are

"Remember." Richard Swanson urges us to remember where we are when the scene opens this week, and what has happened. Jesus doesn't charge into his hometown, brashly preaching a new message that contradicts the God of his ancestors, the God of his people's holy scriptures. No, in fact, Swanson writes, Jesus recites the "old Jewish promises that the Jewish community in Nazareth had nurtured and preserved for long centuries….through all the years of change and loss." The vision of Isaiah has sustained the people as they have struggled to rebuild their community after exile, as they have suffered under the heel of the Roman Empire, and as they have looked forward in faith to a day when God would make all things right and whole again. And now here's Jesus, beginning his own ministry by announcing that the day they have been waiting for has finally arrived, right here and right now--in him.

Did you ever hear news so good that you practically hardened your heart against it, in fear of disappointment? Swanson suggests that the crowd may have been bracing themselves for the letdown, protecting themselves and their ancient hope by rejecting the very one who claimed that those promises were true: "Is this," Swanson asks, "more about the offense of trifling with hopes that have lived for so many years, and have died for so many hopeless quixotic errands? You don't get to claim that the 'hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight,' and then go on with business as usual." Is it possible to live for the future so ardently that we do not see the day of the Lord when it arrives, or experience in this moment a time of liberation and healing, when it is right here, right now, right

before us?

Were the people around Jesus that day reluctant to get their hopes up, or were they mightily offended by Jesus' call for a Jubilee? The latter seems to be Walter Brueggemann's read on this text: he calls their reaction "the most dramatic resistance to Jubilee." He evokes the drama of Jubilee itself by recalling the sound of the trumpet that began "the year of the Lord's favor" – "a signal," he writes, "not unlike the great gavel that ends the fury of Wall Street every day, only it signifies something very different." I've often heard it said that the Good News isn't going to be "good" for everybody, at least not those who want to hold onto excessive wealth and power and place. Brueggemann claims that the people were resisting any "curb" on such excessive accumulation; Jubilee, he writes, "is not just a kind thought or a good intention or a religious idea. It is about money and property being transferred."
It is about the money
We reflected a bit last week on the discomfort we feel, steeped as we are in capitalist values and principles, at the thought of restoring property every fifty years to the previous owner (God, of course, was understood to be the actual owner in those days). And we find comfort in scholarship that says that Jubilee was rarely if ever actually practiced. Brueggemann seems particularly incensed by our need for such reassurance, and our own resistance to what Jubilee would accomplish, as "the most difficult, most demanding, most outrageous requirement of biblical faith," because it flies in the face of "our deep practices of accumulation and our intense yearning to have ours and keep ours and make it grow."
Brueggemann's sermon on this text (in Inscribing the Text) is an eloquent but hard message that wouldn't go over very well in many of our churches, where money is not even supposed to be discussed, despite the fact that the Bible addresses the subject of money and possessions, and our attitude toward them more than 2,000 times in the Bible (and most of us have a pretty good idea what it says about them). He notes that it's primarily in the area of economic justice "that the Bible questions our usual assumptions about life in the world." And it is a question of justice, because the practice of Jubilee enacted "what Moses understood" (and surely Jesus did as well): "that you cannot have a viable, peaceable, safe urban community when deep poverty must live alongside huge wealth, when high privilege is visible alongside endless disadvantage in health and housing and education. You can have some inequities, but the inequities must be curbed by a practice of neighborliness that knows every day that rich and poor, haves and have-nots, are in it together and must find ways of being together as neighbors in common."
For people of faith, could the challenge of Jubilee and of Jesus' speech be more timely, as the gap between the rich and poor widens, and wealth is more and more concentrated at the top, during another heated political season leading to the opportunity to express our deepest values in the voting booth? How does "neighborliness" enter into our political and economic life, if at all? Do we even see our political life as an opportunity to "love our neighbor," as one of the two great commandments requires?
What are we waiting for?
Most scholars approach this text and the anger of the crowd that day in the synagogue by focusing on Jesus' words after his sermon, when things seem to turn on a dime and become quite unpleasant. The people are waiting, all right, and not necessarily for a Jubilee that means they have to give anything up, but for "the day of vengeance" – the line that Jesus, curiously, leaves out of his reading of Isaiah--a time when their enemies will finally get what's coming to them. Among these enemies, and outside the circle of God's grace, are, presumably, the Gentiles. But who are the very ones in his people's own holy scriptures that Jesus lifts up as those who received God's favor and attention? The (Gentile) widow Elijah helped, and the (Gentile, enemy) commander, Naaman! What kind of Messiah shows up and announces "the day of the Lord's favor" without also bringing "the day of vengeance" that was promised so long ago? No wonder the people are so incensed by the stories Jesus recalls, for "anger and violence," Fred Craddock writes, "are the last defense of those who are made to face the truth embedded in their own tradition."
Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that (it always is). The people of Galilee, including Jesus, were looked down upon even by many of their own people. Kim L. Beckmann draws on the work of Caleb Rosado, noting that Judeans would have seen Galileans as "peasants," "common people," "unwashed people of the land" with an accent that betrayed their region's long history of a rich mix of cultures and races. "Rosado," Beckmann writes, "observes that Luke mentions the inn at Bethlehem of Judea as having 'no room' for Mary and Joseph, not as being 'full'"--a small but important distinction, and easy to miss. No wonder, then, that the Galileans longed for the day when the "ancient promises of restoration for those oppressed" would be fulfilled, even for the people of Galilee. However, Beckmann and Rosado would claim that the Galileans were, perhaps, missing the point, or maybe thinking too small, because's God's concern was for all the oppressed, not for one group or another, each one hoping that they would end up on top. Being only human, however, the Galileans "wanted the privileged, chosen status and the prosperity gospel that their brothers and sisters of Judah aspired to, and that the dominant culture had normed."
All of us in the same boat
Perhaps the most moving – and therefore transformational – way to read this text is to let it read us. Renita Weems says that's what Jesus was doing that day, more than just reading the text itself, but "allowing Scripture to read him." Ann M. Svennungsen similarly notes, "In this text, we, too, are made known." Both of these women also remind us of our human nature, our persistence in drawing lines and circles that create a world of insiders and outsiders, and the dismaying way we have, once we're the ones on top, of stepping on those below us.
What a revelation for Epiphany season! And yet there is hope, great hope, and Svennungsen describes God's indifference to "who" we think we are: "God is not interested in faces," she writes; "God is interested in hearts. Not beautiful hearts, not pure hearts, nor perfect hearts, but hearts that know their need of God." If there is something that needs to be made clear to us in this season of light and manifestation, it is this deep need that we have for God, and "recognizing our need," Svennungsen writes, "will transform our relations with others." (We might say that our need for God levels the playing field for all of God's children.) There are no lines, no protective walls: "We are all in the same boat – lost without God."
What would we have said, and what would we have done?
A few weeks ago, we began a new year, but we brought many of the old fears right along with us into this "new" day. If we just sit quietly with this story for a time, would we be able to feel ourselves in that crowd around Jesus in Nazareth so long ago? Is Brueggemann telling us something that we don't want to know about ourselves, that we dread the demands of Jubilee so much that we find incendiary "code" words for it, like "redistribution," so no one will even think of proposing ideas that might make our systems work more compassionately, more justly for all of God's children?
Or does Swanson expose our deep anxieties about hope itself, and our refusal even to try to give ourselves over to a whole new vision for our lives, to risk what we have for what might yet be? Perhaps the other scholars are right: the story of Jesus being driven to the edge by the crowd that day is a story about us, too, because we don't want to hear the truth about ourselves, and we don't want to think that "those other guys" could ever be like us, with us, one of us. Barbara Brown Taylor says that we should expect to be challenged and upset by the truth, by the "people sent to yank our chains and upset our equilibrium so we do not confuse our own ideas about God with God." We don't like "being told that our enemies are God's friends," she writes; "No matter how hard we try, we cannot seem to get God to respect our boundaries. God keeps plowing right through them, inviting us to follow or get out of the way."
"As finite and fragile as clay pots"
When Taylor draws on the thought of Parker Palmer in his book, The Company of Strangers, I'm reminded of one of my favorite passages from that excellent work: "At the heart of any authentic religious experience," the Quaker theologian writes, "is recognition that God's nature is too huge, God's movement too deep, ever to be comprehended by a single conception or point of view…. God's truth is singular and eternal, but the forms in which we give it expression are as finite and fragile as clay pots, and we must always be ready to break them open on behalf of a larger vision of truth." If that is true, and if this reading of our text is true, then isn't it also true that God calls us, who claim to follow Jesus, on a path that may get us into trouble but impels toward an expansive, generous, justice-seeking vision of the world, a vision that shapes a ministry to and with all of God's beautiful children?
What would it look like for Jesus' first sermon and the reading from Isaiah to be fulfilled this day, in your midst? Might it, for example, inspire not only compassionate, generous aid to those who are in need, here and around the world, but also a deep hunger to understand the root causes of that need, and then an even deeper commitment to transforming that suffering - and the systems that cause it - into a new and better way of life for all? Might it call for the kind of interfaith respect and dialogue that could model discourse across divides for our polarized and deeply antagonistic political parties? Would such commitments take us out to cliffs we would rather not face? How large is your view of God's nature, how wide is your understanding of God's embrace, how deep is your sense of the movement of God? Will we run from such a love, and such a call, or will we seek it with all our heart, and let it take us out to the edges, where risk, and hope, and courage all lie?
A preaching version of this commentary (with book titles) is at www.ucc.org/worship/samuel.
The Rev. Kathryn Matthews serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio (https://www.facebook.com/AmistadChapel).
You're invited to share your reflections on this text on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
For further reflection
Parker Palmer, 20th century
"[T]he mission of the church is not to enlarge its membership, not to bring outsiders to accept its terms, but simply to love the world in every possible way - to love the world as God did and does.…If we are able to love the world, that will be the best demonstration of the truth which the church has been given."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 20th century
"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 19th century
"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything,you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."
Julie Polter, 20th century
"This is the big lie the world tells us: that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit — nothing else. Whereas this is the truth of God: all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; that creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts, because its true destiny is joy."