A Prayer of Thanks for Prophetic Voices
by Joseph Holub

I am thankful for those few prophetic voices that are left in our midst; those voices who will not compromise grace, compassion and social justice to a condescending use of religious law that legitimizes fear, prejudice and violence.   It is those courageous prophetic voices that rescue God from narrow and parochial paradigms and enlarge God to the mystery that God truly is.  Oh God, I pray that my voice would be so prophetic!  Amen.

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Life of Jesus
by Joseph Holub

I have turned from a Chrstian expression that for all practical purposes ingores the life of Jesus.  If the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin is the "heart of Christianity then all God had to do was drop him down on Friday, let them kill him, and yank him up again on Easter Sunday."(1)  HIs life is what mattered - the way he lived - the way he loved - the compassion he had for the last and the least - the social justice he called for in the face of an oppressive political, economic and relgious domination system that gave leverage to the rich and powerful of both secular and relgious institutions.  Jesus spoke against religion when it elevated regulation over love.  All of that and more is what got the leaders of his own church and the colonial authorities from Rome so enraged that they killed him.    I want to encounter the  Jesus before the cross.   There is no authentic religion after the cross if we don't take the Jesus before the cross seriously.  Salvation is, first of all,  the process of being made whole and fully human as we follow Jesus into the way of his life and embody it in our own, not afterlife for believing "correct"  theological propositions and dogmas about Jesus.  

(1) quote from Rev. Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King Jr's predecessor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, 1960.

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INVICTUS

 Out of the night that covers me,
 Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
 I thank whatever gods may be
 For my unconquerable soul.

 In the fell clutch of circumstance
 I have not winced nor cried aloud.
 Under the bludgeonings of chance
 My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 Beyond this place of wrath and tears
 Looms but the Horror of the shade,
 And yet the menace of the years
 Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

 It matters not how strait the gate,
 How charged with punishments the scroll.
 I am the master of my fate:
 I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

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UNTIED

The Aramaic word for "forgive" means to "untie."  When we are offended or offend we become "tied" to another in a negative way.    As long as we remain in that negative bond we will be oppressed by the offense and offender.  To forgive is to untie that negative bond.  It matters not whether the other deserves to be forgiven or not.  The point is to be "untied" and set free from the negative power that bond holds over us. 

It gets even more complicated when the one that needs to be forgiven is oneself.  How do I untie myself from myself?   I like to think of it as being "untied" from myself of the past.  In that untying I have the oppotunity to become a new person, more enlightened and empowered.  A new person is free to emerge in the present. 

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From "On Coloring Outside the Lines" - an excerpt
from a sermon by Joseph Holub

Do you remember when you were very young and you received your first coloring book and a small box of crayons?  And you went at your coloring  with passion, freedom and sense of joy.  It didn’t matter if faces were colored purple, the sun blue, the sky yellow or the grass red – and, of course, staying within the lines of the coloring book figures was totally optional – not required.   Coloring outside the lines was permitted - even encouraged! 

To be disciple of Jesus means to recapture something we knew and experienced long ago, but somewhere along the way were taught otherwise; taught it was childish and unsophisticated.  But Jesus said, “Unless you become like children…”  To be a disciple is to paint, with freedom, reckless abandon and joy, the world with the bright colors of the love of God in all of its expressions outside the rigid lines that culture and religion have carefully drawn.

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God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes and in my looking;
God be in my mouth an in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be in mine end, and at my departing.
Amen. 

Anonymous: from a Sarum Primer, 1558

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From "A Spirituality of Connectedness" - an excerpt from a
sermon by Joseph Holub

When we look closely at the ministry of Jesus we see he was all about intentionally creating unlikely and improbable connections; connections that were forbidden and considered blasphemous among the super religious and  politically threatening to powerful elites.  Jesus connected with a community of people who were disconnected from the political and  religious institutions that looked down upon them, exploited them, marginalized them and cast them aside as so much human rubbish: prostitutes, political seditionists, women, children and more.

In God's realm, or the Kingdom of God as it's called in the gospels, we are connected to improbable and unlikely people.  The connections that Jesus mentors us in are connections that supersede and breach our instinctive tribal connections that are nothing more than connections of similarity, like-mindedness and security.  The question is will we attempt to any degree to live by those Jesus-connections; allow our lives to be shaped by those Jesus-connections; follow Jesus when he invites and leads us into to those unlikely and improbable connections.  Or will we only live within the safe and parochial boundaries of our narrow connections, and thereby insult Jesus and kiss off with disdain the improbable connections fostered in the Kingdom of God.

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SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION – NOT  THE SAME – AT ALL! 

Quoted, paraphrased and derived from  the book “A Heretics Guide to Eternity” by Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor.

SPIRITUALITY  encourages us to treat each human being equally and explore the feminine of the divine as well as the masculine.  Also spirituality views and expereinces God as panentheistic; that is, everything is "in" God 
RELIGION is dominated by male energy and either subtly or overtly minimizes women.  Religion also sees God a seperate from the cosmos; that is "out-there" or "other-than" and most often personaified as male. 

SPIRITUALITY  encourages a counter-cultural  dynamic, challenging many of the values of materialism.
RELIGION and the establishment (domination systems) often go hand in hand and speaks of materialism as reward for moral goodness and correct belief.

SPIRITUALITY speaks of God as mystery and seeks experiential, first hand encounters with the divine.
RELGION is frequently dogmatic and absolutist and puts God in a box of doctrines and creeds - removing all mystery. 

SPIRITUALITY looks for common ground and seeks interconnectedness amidst diversity.
RELIGION is obsessed with conformity of belief and calls that community.

SPIRITUALITY seeks to move beyond the authority structures that have dominated organized religion, and ascribes authority to each individual.
RELIGION confers authority to a select few in leadership and is often hierarchical and exclusive. 

SPIRITUALITY encourages tolerance and acceptance of difference as the foundation for post-modern ethics.
RELIGION  trades in binary oppositions, clear and rigid boundaries and often cultivates an  us-versus-them mentality. 

SPIRITUALITY  is primarily concerned about the quality of life in this world and connects the divine with life in this world (“thy kingdom come on earth”)
RELIGION is often external and focuses on afterlife and what one must do to get there.

SPIRITUALITY operates on a new cosmology that sees “multiverse” and considers the views of present day quantum physics. 
RELIGION still pretty much operates on a pre-Copernican view of the  world and God. 

SPIRITUALITY  seeks to eradicate boundaries.
RELGION often advances an imperialistic and colonizing strategy. 

SPIRITUALITY trusts that we don’t “opt-in” to grace; grace is pure gift; we are already in; it’s available to everyone; grace is the default setting.
RELIGION insists on mediating grace; that we are all outsiders who need to process a transaction in order to get-in and get-grace. 

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From "Interface" - an excerpt from a sermon by Joseph Holub

If I love my neighbor the first way,  as if my neighbor were like me, that is very much a kind of conditional love - a restrictive love.  For it means that the more my neighbor resembles me, the more I will love my neighbor.  So, in that scenario, I go at my neighbor with an agenda, and my agenda is to love my neighbor, yes, but to make my neighbor look more like me - think more like me - behave more like me - shape their life to look more like mine - and the more they do, the more I will love my neighbor.  It's a conditional expression of love and certainly not a very risky kind of love.  For I am protecting myself in that scenario from really being affected or changed or transformed in any way by my neighbor.  The goal is to make my neighbor look and be as much like me as possible; not the other way around.

But if I love my neighbor as if I were like my neighbor, that is an altogether different thing.  That kind of love is unconditional.  That kind of love takes my neighbor seriously for who they are.  That expression of love meets my neighbor without an agenda.  That kind of love sees the intrinsic value of my neighbor's life.  That kind of love causes me to climb into the skin and soul of my neighbor and get to know my neighbor, not from afar where I am safe and unaffected, but from the inside-out!  And when I love like that, I run the risk that my life may be as transformed and changed by the relationship as my neighbor's life might be. 

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Our gospel story says that Bartimaeus "regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way."    That's also a description of Mark's community.  They lived with a new set of eyes, the eyes of Jesus, that enabled them to see and live into a new vision of reality - see new possibilities for humanity and community that breached all the existing parochial, confining and marginalizing boundaries of their religion and culture that had been accepted as normalcy. 

Mark's faith community hadn't reached a point yet where they had imprisoned God and Jesus inside the confining boxes of doctrines, creeds and correct beliefs that almost always jettison and amputate the "WOW" out of the faith experience. 

I pray that we like Bartimaeus, like Mark's community, will regain our sight and never, never, ever lose the sense and experience of "WOW" as we follow Jesus on the way.   

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Status Quo

I am convinced that many of the complex problems that exist on this planet are ultimately linked with the great disparity that exists between the haves and have-nots of this planet and the systems of domination and exploitation that are deeply embedded in the political, economic, social and religious structures of society, culture and nation to make sure it remains just that way by keeping the status quo!  
-Joseph Holub, August 2009

7.    "It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, Into thy hands I commit my spirit.' Having said this, he breathed his last." (Luke 23:44-46)


To even begin to get this, I think we must look at it with a more-than-literal perspective. 

Luke says the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The curtain was the drape that hid the Holy of Holies, that sacred place beyond description where it was believed God was especially present; a place isolated from the rest of the world. No person could ever enter the Holy of Holies except the High Priest, and he only once a year, on the great Day of Atonement - to make sacrifice for sin. But Luke says the curtain was "ripped in two," reduced to rags!  

The message was crystal clear. The temple aristocracy were no longer to mediate God's grace.  The distribution of God's grace was no longer to be rationed-out like it was in short supply, and of course, only to the defined-deserved.   No longer would God's most serious business of love occur behind curtains and closed doors, in secret and isolation.  God won't be sequestered any more. Grace was officially set loose in the world, turning up in the most unlikely places, even in this most profane place of death and execution.

Do you see the message here?  The lines between the sacred and profane have been blurred; no longer so distinct. It is not clear any more as to what exactly is sacred and what exactly is profane; not clear who is in and who is out; who is included and who is left behind.  Grace on the loose blurs and erases the lines.

Only when the temple was sacked, and narrow, exclusive and oppressive traditional religious practices turned topsy-turvy, did Jesus commend his spirit to God and die. It's Luke's version of John's "It is finished."

The audacity of God!  How dare God do such a thing!  How dare God blur our neatly drawn lines between sacred and profane.  How dare God tinker with our carefully controlled belief systems.  How dare God crack open our carefully crafted God boxes.  God will no longer be confiscated, isolated, and mediated by narrow and arrogant human thinking anymore.

Just try and imagine: grace running loose in the world; cascading through life like a tidal wave,  washing indiscriminately over the sacred and profane, saints and sinners, good and bad alike?  Compassion, acceptance, social justice and inclusivity running rampantly out of control. Just imagine such a world!

Some did and tragically, it was too much for some - maybe for most. Indiscriminate grace was seen to be dangerous and too risky; too out of control.  Much of the history of Christian Church ever since could be described has an attempt to stitch the curtain of the temple back together again; to wrest control of grace back from God; to mediate it narrowly and exclusively using confining institutionally imposed beliefs and doctrinal formulas- insuring that only the defined-deserved receive it. 

I have to wonder what Jesus would say and do if he were to walk among us again and see much of what has been proclaimed and done in his name down through the centuries since?  I suppose he  would probably do what he did the first time: come announcing and embodying the Kingdom of God; preaching the inclusive and lavish love of God's kingdom; lifting up the least and the last that have been oppressed by the domination systems of our day.  He would be especially annoyed with the strictly religious who narrowly mediate God's grace.  And they would be annoyed with him, and would probably conspire to do away with him; and in some way shape or form he would go to the cross all over again.

But he is not here in the flesh to do it again, but we are!  And, my friends, that's the point!   We are now his hands and feet.  Will his heart and soul live on in and through us?   As his followers and disciples it is up to us to take up our cross; to love lavishly and passionately for the sake of the Kingdom of God; to see to it that God's grace is set loose in the world.

An excerpt from an Ash Wednesday sermon
by Joseph Holub, "Authentic Religion"

In his book "Brendan: A Novel" Frederick Buechner creates a story based on a sixth century Irish saint known as Brendan the Navigator who spent most of his life sailing the seas in search of a paradise known as Tir-na-n-Og or "Land of the Blessed", which he believed lay beyond the western horizon, and that its discovery would fulfill all his longings.  After a lifetime of searching for the Land of the Blessed without success, Brendan began to wonder if he hadn't spent all those years on a futile wild goose chase.  Towards the end of his life he meets the Welsh historian- monk Gildas.  They have a conversation,  and when Gildas stands up at the end of conversation, Brendan saw that he had only but one leg, amputated from the knee down. 

As he was hopping sideways to reach his walking stick in the corner, Gildas lost his balance.  He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn't leapt forward and caught him.  At that fateful moment Brendan suddenly had the conviction that he had misspent his life entirely, and he said, "To lend each other a hand when we're falling - perhaps that's the only work that really matters in the end."

When we lend each other a hand, especially those whom the world doesn't hardly recognize, easily overlooks and judges harshly,  we fulfill and embody the kingdom of God.  When we lend a hand of acceptance to the rejected; a hand of affirmation to the discouraged; a hand of empowerment to the powerless; a hand of grace to the condemned we embody the Kingdom of God.   "The kingdom of God is at hand," declared Jesus in his first sermon. It was at hand - embodied in his life and embodied in ours as we follow him.

For me, at this stage in my life, like Brendan, I can see that I often have pursued fickle and foolish dreams and schemes in the name of God; living the delusion that the kingdom of God is all about me and my righteousness.  I thank God that I have lived long enough to at least get a glimpse of the good news that the Kingdom of God is about Jesus and following him on the way that he leads - a way upon which I receive the heart of compassion and justice that God intended for me in the first place, but that I had lost touch with living in the frenetic life of the world.

These days for me Lent is about that journey - that heart - that kingdom - and rediscovering what it means to live with the heart God beating in my soul from the inside-out.   I invite you along on the same journey.

How many of my dreams have died unrealized in your iron grip – a grip I did not resist?

How many estrangements have I left unattended because I let you turn me into a coward?

How much forgiveness have I never asked for or never given because you whispered your lies in my ear and I listened?

How much pain have I inflicted upon others for your sake?

How much prejudice have I passed on through your greased wheels? 

How much social injustice have I remained as silent as a lamb before as I gasped for breath under your suffocating choke hold?

How much?  How many? 

Oh, when will your awful voice be silenced and your power be dissolved?  Only when I rise up and look you in the eye and love you to death with the love that casts out all fear!

From "Who Are the Magi? " - a sermon by Joseph Holub

To me, the point is not whether they were real figures or the result of tradition, or whether there were three, two or ten of them or what their names might have been, but the key to understanding their meaning is why did Matthew include them in his story in the first place.  What is Matthew telling us, his readers, about his real experience of the living Jesus by weaving these characters into his gospel testimony about Jesus? In other words, what is it that Matthew wants us to know about the experience of following Jesus by including this story in his gospel?

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From "Fear Not"  - Christmas Eve sermon by Joseph Holub

What would you say is the most powerful force in the world?  What power has the greatest ability to change, transform, shape and even control a human life more than any other power?  I know what I would say, and I have a pretty good idea what you probably think I am going to say, especially since it is Christmas Eve.  You probably expect me to say LOVE.   I’ll get to love in a moment, but before I get to love, I believe there is another force that is almost as powerful.  If you are a cynic you would say it is more powerful - perhaps the most powerful force in the world.  I am not a cynic so I won’t say that.  It’s a force and a power that is running loose in the world, at times out of control, wreaking its havoc, distorting and disfiguring human life and relationships wherever it exerts its dark influence – and it is called FEAR. 

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Stroll Along the Arkansas

On Monday were were in Buena Vista enjoying the awesome Fall weather.  Knowing the good weather will soon turn wintery, we have been soaking up as much of it as we can.  We took a stroll along the Arkansas near downtown Buena Vista on Monday.  In June this river was a raging torrent as a near record snowpack was fast melting.  Now on this 3rd day of November it is a mere trickle compared to then, but no less beautiful.  Click on the photo to enlarge.

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Implications of Unqualified Grace

Perhaps a reason that some who name themselves as Christians talk about grace in restricted terms and cannot fully embrace the unconditional grace and love of God without qualifications is that they would have to let go of using God as a weapon.   If grace is for everybody then I cannot demonize, minimize or kill you in God's name.  It means that if even if I don't like you, I would have to find a way to love you. 

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"My Personal Faith Priorities for the Election"

I found this article by Jim Wallis of Sojourners to be a very insightful, thoughtful and helpful article in regards to his priorities for the election for this year.  Click here to access article.

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TURKEY VISITORS
On Monday we were at our house in Buena Vista and a flock of
wild turkeys came to our back deck.  There were ten in all.
Click on the photo to enlarge. 

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Wanted - Bridge Like Leaders!

This is what I am looking for in the candidates running for election this year from the president on down - those who reflect the characteristics of a bridge.   In our hyper-charged world of polarizations and accusations, I am looking for those who have a quiet and humble confidence about them, like a bridge.  I am looking for those who have deep roots in a solid foundation of compassion and longing for justice that connects especially to those who have no or little voice.   Bridges connect people on different sides of things without calling undo attention to themselves.  Bridges are so secure within themselves they offer themselves freely and don't seem to mind if people walk on them or even drive over them to connect with those on the other side. 

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From "Press On"  - a sermon by Joseph Holub

If you think about it, so much of who we are, our makeup and identity, is a clinging and clutching to the past, so much so we can get stuck in and entrenched in what was.  The result is who we are today is merely who we were yesterday.  Dear God, that sounds depressing to me – to be trapped in my fears,  prejudices, self-justifications and limited knowledge of yesterday!  Who I am today is merely who I was yesterday?  It’s the cessation of growth and the expiration of wonder.

I see following Jesus to be about something radically different – transformationally different.   Who I am is rooted not in who I was, but in whom I am yet to be as I “press on to make it my own” - to follow the one I name as Lord Jesus and the totally amazing grace of God revealed in his life – and to trust the process of death and resurrection into which I am called and invited and transformed. 

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Always God

God always was...
                   always is -
                              always will be -
                                              never will there not be God. 
What is this life
                  and this world
                              and this universe 
                                               of which we are a part,

but the explosive expression of the being of God
                  in which everything that is -
                                                     is included and within -
                             good and evil -
                  holy mystery....  ever expansive realm... 

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Oh God, Where Are You?

One of the deeply mysterious, yet revealing verses in the New Testament is found in Matthew 25 in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats.   The king in the parable says, “Just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”    To me this parable declares that God is not far away and removed from us living somewhere beyond everyday ordinary experience, but God is imminent – right here. 

Progressive Christianity often uses the term panentheism – that is the belief that everything in creation is in God.  God is not a separate being living “out there” or “up there” beyond the circle of the sky, but God is all around.  We and all creation are in God.    As we relate to the world and the people around us, we relate to God.    Respecting creation and people is to respect God.  Exploiting creation and people is to exploit God.   To experience God you need not begin looking any further than into the face of your neighbor, and if Matthew 25 means anything at all, the face of your neighbor that is suffering.